The Gradual Fade of Google Plus
May 20, 2014
There is fresh news on the Google+ front; unfortunately for the underperforming social site, the story is a prediction of its demise. The Verge reports, “‘Sign In with Google’ Button Could Send Google+ to Oblivion.”
The article discusses several recent events that suggest Google may be ready to ditch the underperformer. That Google+’s creator, Vic Gundotra, has left the company is one indication. Other signs include media reports that Google+ is on the chopping block, despite company denials. The clue that cinches it for writer Casey Newton, though, is a new option that has quietly been offered to a few website developers: they can install a blue “Sign in with Google” button instead of the red Google+ button. Newton believes this is the first step in an effort to gradually fade Google+ out of existence. The article suggests:
“Since December, the single sign-on button has supported all three account types. In that sense, the blue button just offers a fuller picture of what Google’s identity platform now encompasses. But it also suggests that the company no longer wants Google+ to represent it around the web. Google’s brand is much stronger than that of its social network, and some developers may be more comfortable adding a generic Google login to their sites and apps. Given those facts, the blue button may be better for Google as it competes with Facebook, Twitter, and others for single sign-on supremacy. But rolling it out will only reinforce the perception that the best days of Google+ are behind it.”
That’s just a perception? I’d accepted it as a given. However, that doesn’t mean the whole project was a waste of time and effort. Google is successful in part because they are not afraid to fail with any one of their many experiments; they both repurpose parts that worked (or would work well for something else) and learn what not to do. Let us shed no tears for Google+.
Cynthia Murrell, May 20, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Google Plus: The Future Evokes a Strong Reaction
April 30, 2014
Forget the change in leadership. Google’s social network, either Google Plus or the almost unsearchable Google+, is triggering some Internet chatter. I enjoyed “’Sign in with Google’ Button Could Send Google+ to Oblivion.” The word “oblivion” is an interesting one, but I noted this passage:
The abrupt departure of Google+ creator Vic Gundotra from the beleaguered social network led to immediate speculation that its days as a competitor to Facebook and Twitter are numbered.
I marked this segment as well:
But it also suggests that the company no longer wants Google+ to represent it around the web. Google’s brand is much stronger than that of its social network, and some developers may be more comfortable adding a generic Google login to their sites and apps.
I am not a social media cheerleader. A telephone works pretty well for me. I am also able to send an email. The notion that I want followers, a job, or extensive digital contacts is interesting. I am not sure that embraced the assertion that Google Plus/Google+ was the new Google.
Google does one thing today that makes lots of money. The company sells ads to those who do not have another way to generate sales leads. As traffic to Web sites erodes, leads are needed. Google, rightly or wrongly, thrives on the perception that online advertising is the solution to a company’s marketing problems. Here in Harrod’s Creek, few remember that Google’s online ad business is a variant of the original pay to play or pay to get traffic models developed by GoTo. With the decline of traditional desktop Internet surfing, the future of information access for many people is a mobile device. For Google, the problem is that screen real estate is less generous. For folks like me, tapping on a tiny keyboard or talking in a noisy restaurant to a smart speech to text system is frustrating. Google’s current management shift is one consequence of a fundamental change that is taking place in online access.
It is easier to ask someone a question or seek another option. For me and it seems lots of other people, that option did not include Google Plus or Google+. I just received another thick paper business directory. Is it my imagination or are traditional print sales media making a come back. A big thick phone book stuffed with ads and fat envelopes with coupons for El Nopal Restaurant tell me that online ads are not for everyone.
It is possible that Google will dust off Alon Halevy’s approach to figuring out social data. It is possible that Google will try again to roll out a social media service that will pump up Google’s revenue so that the company’s growth knocks the socks off analysts. It is possible Google will roll out another “me too” business.
Stories that reveal management churn and raise questions about major Google services have one benefit. The Wall Street analysts have an opportunity to interpret this executive change as a definite “plus”. I look forward to those positive insights because some of the write up are downright inventive.
For now, Google is looking more and more like a company with a potential flop on its hands. I hope not. I enjoy reading about Google Plus or Google+. It is tough to search for information about the service though. That pesky reserved character “+” is a challenge for some search systems.
Stephen E Arnold, April 30, 2014
Layers A Search Engine for Social Media
March 14, 2014
The article on wlfi.com titled Frankfort Teen Creates Idea for New Search Engine discusses the work of fifteen-year-old Spencer Jordan. His new idea for a search engine was to focus the search among ones social media networks. He got the idea when he was switching from one social media app and another, and noticed that it might be possible to streamline that process. Layers, Spencer’s search engine, is still in the “dream” phase,
“For now, “Layers” is just an dream, but to make it reality, Jordan has to pay a programmer to create the site. In order to raise the $10,000 needed, he began fundraising through an online donation website. “I’ve been trying to get my friends, and family and the public to support me, and to back me and to help me accomplish this,” said Jordan. As of Sunday, Jordan hasn’t raised any of his $10,000 goal, but he said failure is not an option.”
In spite of the lack of funding, Spencer is not ready to quit. (As of Thursday, February 27 he has raised $80.) Should Google be nervous or just open its checkbook to buy this idea? The ability to search through Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram is appealing; in Spencer’s words it “declutters” social media.
Chelsea Kerwin, March 14, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Tumblr Firehose Now Integrated into Pulsar Platform
March 12, 2014
The social media specialists at Pulsar have incorporated Tumblr’s Firehose data sluice into their platform, we learn from their blog post, “Introducing Tumblr Firehose Data on the Pulsar Platform and a Whole New Interface for Mining Visual Content.” Writer Cierra Buck tells us that access to all of that Tumblr data, real-time and historic, has been integrated into their revamped dashboard. Though many types of data pass through Firehose, most of it is visual. This means Pulsar had to make a few changes. The write-up specifies:
“Working with a platform like Tumblr where 84% of the content is visual, we also realised that researching it meant designing a whole new interface which would allow visual mining. The first step we are taking to support visual mining is re-designing the Results and Conversation Views. This allows Pulsar to display the actual image and video content rather than a preview end enabling endless scrolling rather than organising the content in pages. This allows for easy browsing of rich media social content which, coupled with advanced filtering using all the metadata we generate, is going to give you a powerful mining tool to uncover visual patterns and trends in your dataset. To start with, Pulsar now displays the actual images and video content in the Results View.”
See the post for more details and some screenshots. Boasting a decade of social-data experience, Pulsar counts big names like NBC, Lysol, and ING Direct among its clients. The company maintains offices in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
Cynthia Murrell, March 12, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Protest Outside Sochi Olympics
March 11, 2014
Here’s an interesting roundup of responses to Pussy Riot’s Sochi PR play. MediaMiser reports, “Sochi 2014: Social Media Reacts to Pussy Riot Olympic Controversy.” For anyone who is unaware, Pussy Riot is a Russian punk-rock band famous for their political protests. Writer Elisabetta Bianchini summarizes the precipitating events:
“The band ended their five-day stay in Sochi today [February 20] with a video posted on YouTube criticizing the Olympics and President Vladimir Putin. This video follows the two best-known members of Pussy Riot, Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alekhina, being detained on Tuesday for alleged theft from their hotel, and being beaten by Russian authorities (see the video footage here).
“Pussy Riot is known for creating music videos condemning Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church in their colourful balaclavas. The band started making headlines after filming a video protesting Putin in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, and were subsequently sentenced to two years in a penal colony for the crime of hooliganism.”
Most of the tweets Bianchini samples are supportive of Pussy Riot’s efforts. One, however, suggests that it is inappropriate to conflate the Olympics with protests against the Russian government. I understand the call to show respect for the Olympics, which is supposed to bridge all things political. On the other hand, I imagine the fleeting international attention posed an opportunity the protestors couldn’t pass up.
Curious geese that we are, we tried to get more information about this event and the band’s grievances. Oddly enough, searches for inside info are not too helpful.
Cynthia Murrell, March 11, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
People Are Too Busy To Read
March 4, 2014
The Internet is good for many things, especially generating tera-quads of content. News, social media content, videos, etc. pop up every second and people simply do not have the time to read it. The Verge posted the tongue-in-cheek article, “You’re Not Going To Read This” and it talks about the skyrocketing amount of content. The CEO of Chartbeat Tony Haile dropped a bomb for companies that specialize in content, “We’ve found effectively no correlation between social shares and people actually reading [an article].”
What a smack in the face!
People wear tweet and shared numbers like Girl Scout badges. If this has no value, what is the point of having a social media specialist? It’s not that generating content is bad, but people do not have the time to read every article. They usually skim the headlines and tweet without reading what they send. It really is a data overload.
Upworthy, one of the data companies, found different results. They discovered that people who read 25% of an article are likely to tweet it. Companies are actually changing their approach to marketing content, rather than relying on page views they are focusing on how engaged users are. It is measured by the new metric “attention minutes” that measure how people actively pay attention to a Web site along with the amount that is actually paid. Confused yet? It makes sense after reading more of the article.
Do not worry that quality content will go away, though:
“Upworthy’s critics say it maximizes for social media shares, “sending a (false) message to Facebook that those headlines are the stories its users really want to read,” as Reuters columnist Felix Salmon put it. But the company’s new emphasis on the time spent on a story contradicts that claim, suggesting that Upworthy is playing a longer game. While the number of times a story is shared may not be a perfect signal of quality, it’s reassuring to know that stories that hold a reader’s attention all the way to the end are also rewarded by the Twitter sphere.”
Should we roll our eyes or start changing our social media approach? Is this a surprise or just the rise of content marketing and busy MBAs?
Whitney Grace, March 04, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Big Promises for Social Media Monitoring
February 28, 2014
The article titled How to Predict the Future Using Social Media Monitoring on Digimind claims to offer four methods to utilize social media for predictions in your business. The term “future perspective” is offered up, near the phrase “rendering the feeling of regret impossible.” The article’s four main points are Desires, Destiny, Fortune and Fate. Some of the advice offered under the Fate section (with the subtitle “Predict a Downfall”),
“With social listening, brands can set alerts if the number of negative mentions about them passes a certain level, in order to be able to react immediately. Social listening tools allow brands to cluster online information by keyword, media type, country, sentiment and influence as soon as it appears online, meaning the most impactful criticisms can be quickly located and dealt with immediately. Social clairvoyance means brands are predicting downfalls before they happen, and unsealing their fate with fully targeted responses.”
The article also suggests that businesses must hurry to keep up with the online insights available, and be aware of the search behaviors related to their sites. Of course, the question that one must ponder while reading about the wonders of predictive social media monitoring is, if it works, why aren’t all licensees wallowing in dough?
Chelsea Kerwin, February 28, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Putting a Value on Unstructured Data
February 21, 2014
The conventional wisdom is that the data derived from social media has great value. It is fast overtaking traditional media, with 70% of adults in the US using Facebook, and 63% of all Facebook users visiting the site at least once a day. That doesn’t even begin to address Twitter, LinkedIn or niche social networks like Ravelry.
What users share on social networks is unstructured data, and IT’s challenge is to extract business value from that unstructured data. But what is that data worth? Loraine Lawson considered the question in her recent blog post “Do Businesses Really Value Social Media Data?” for IT BusinessEdge.
Lawson notes that Dun and Bradstreet has entered into a partnership with business analytics vendor FirstRain that will allow D&B to integrate unstructured social data into its existing enterprise data products at no additional cost. Forbes’ Ben Kepes reported this development, and his column sparked Lawson to wonder,
“Social media data that has been integrated and given to clients…for free? As Kepes notes, that could be interpreted as ‘an admission that enterprises aren’t buying into the idea of unstructured data’s value proposition on its own.’”
On the other hand, Oracle will be happy to sell you a solution to leverage social media data. It’s clear the marketplace hasn’t quite reached consensus on the value of unstructured data.
Laura Abrahamsen, February 21, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
A Researcher Makes Social Media More Scientific
February 20, 2014
The article titled Can Social Technologies Increase Our Dunbar Limit? on Lithosphere is a continuation of a scientific approach to social media behavior. The earlier articles by Michael Wu, the author and Chief Scientist at Lithium Technologies, are The Relativity and Economics of Relationship and Where is the New Dunbar Limit? (Wu begins this article with the cautious suggestions of skimming the others prior to diving in.) Dunbar’s number, for those unfamiliar, is the number of people with whom one can form and maintain a social relationship (and the suggested number is about 150.) In the article, Wu grapples with the possibility that social media may enable this number to increase (largely due to technologies making our ability to socialize more “efficient”. The article states,
“Although the internet has made communication more efficient in many ways, it is also limiting in other ways. The internet cannot transmit many nonverbal signals (e.g. touch, scents, physical proximics, body languages, etc) that are often very important for relationship building… Since social technologies are not able to help us build relationships more efficiently, I must come to consensus with Prof. Dunbar that modern social technologies probably cannot increase our Dunbar limit any further.”
The article delves into a comparison of socializing and communicating, pointing out that these are very different concepts. It also provides a brief history of human socializing behaviors. Ultimately Wu concludes that socializing includes many non-verbal cues which technology cuts out. Hence the Dunbar number remaining static. The article is fascinating as a more scientific approach to social media.
Chelsea Kerwin, February 20, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
DataSift Announces Trainable VEDO Processing Engine
December 30, 2013
The folks over at DataSift dropped us a line announcing the release of their next-generation processing engine, VEDO. The company’s founder and CEO Nick Halstead writes about the product at the company’s blog in, “DataSift VEDO: Programmable Intelligence.” The central idea, they told us, is to apply context and capture value from social data with less manual processing than before. That is a welcome advance. We wonder: can Datasift match Topsy’s spectacular deal with Apple?
Halstead relates:
“So today we are announcing VEDO – an extension of our core platform that brings programmable intelligence to the masses. Building upon our incredibly rich text pre-processing and parsing capabilities, we have added a whole new engine that allows customers to take advantage of advances in machine learning, statistical models, rich taxonomies and much more all through a simple and unified approach. As with the rest of our platform, we want to reduce the cost of developing this kind of functionality for our customers and let them focus on innovation and not on infrastructure.
VEDO brings the power to understand the context and the meaning of the content itself. It can be trained to understand any subject and to contextualize it so that the data can be inherently joined to other structured data within the business.”
Halstead goes on to advise that this connection between social data and other business data is the key to realizing value from investments in social-media data. A DataSift representative explained that three new components, programmable user rules, machine learning, and a library of pre-built classifiers, have been added to the processing engine. These features let users tailor VEDO to automatically categorize, interpret, and deliver social data in the ways most useful to their companies.
DataSift is holding a webinar on VEDO on January 9th; see here for details. True to its roots as an offshoot of the now-defunct TweetMeme, the company envisions a day when all organizations employ social-media data to inform their business decisions. Founded in 2010, DataSift has offices in San Francisco, New York, and Reading, U.K.
Cynthia Murrell, December 30, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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