Bing on Social Search Controversy between GOOG and Facebook
February 9, 2012
Bing finally speaks up about its social search advantage; surprising, since the company has somehow been flying under the radar recently with the controversy surrounding Google privacy and social networking.
Liz Gannes from AllThingsD.com interviewed Bing Search director Stefan Weitz regarding social data and search results in the article, “Bing–Which Has Deals With Facebook and Twitter–Finally Speaks on Social Search Controversy.” In the interview, Weitz states that social search has positively impacted the Bing experience and attributes that impact to the company’s attention to people. Weitz also comments on capitalizing on the debate around Google’s privacy and social settings. The article states:
“They [Google] are doing a nice job on their own of handling this problem. But they are learning just like we are. They did what we didn’t want to do, which was make the user experience peppered with this stuff, with +1s everywhere, the Google+ content in the top corner. I think [Google] realized we were ahead and they overextended. But I know a ton of guys there and they’re smart and they’re reacting to what has been said.”
I struggle to see exactly how Microsoft is different than Google on this issue. Instead of pressing the company’s own network (like Google using Google+,) Microsoft is using Facebook and Twitter in the same regard. Bing has just been a little slower about incorporating social data into its search results—according to Weitz, this is because making sense of social signals is complex.
I think making sense of this social search contention is possibly even more complex. Is there too much ego and testosterone in the social locker room?
Andrea Hayden, February 8, 2012
Social Networking and Ad Revenue: Trending Down
February 9, 2012
Google Plus or Google+ (yikes, a name with a reserved character) is supposed to be the new Google. Well, Google depends on ad revenue. Some Googlers will insist that the 95 percent of the revenue is NOT from advertising, but I don’t believe them. Sorry.
Social networking accounts for one of every five minutes spent online, making it the most popular online activity worldwide. Media Post recently reported on the financial impact that social media is having on ad spending in the article “Social Networking Lags in Capturing Ad Spend.”
According to the article, a new report from comScore found that social networking sites lead all content categories in the number of display ads delivered, accounting for more than 1 in 4 U.S. display ad impressions. Despite this fact, it is not attracting ad dollars.
The article states:
The 17% of time spent online using social media is roughly comparable to the 15% share of display ad dollars. Furthermore, much of the marketing on Facebook comes in the form of earned or owned media via brand pages and apps, rather than through paid advertising. Much of the paid advertising on Facebook is small, low-cost ads from long-tail marketers rather than high-cost campaigns from big brands.
Facebook and Twitter are the leading social networking sites and they are becoming internationally popular and a phenomenon that is enjoyed by all age groups. If this report is correct, then the ad industry should strike while the iron is still hot. If social ad revenue does not hit the lofty targets required to keep billion dollar babies in diapers, trouble may arrive quickly.
Jasmine Ashton, February 9, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
A Fairy Tale: AOL Was Facebook a Long Time Ago
February 8, 2012
The Wall Street Journal amuses me. A Murdoch property, the newspaper does its best to minimize the best of “real” News Corp. journalism. I appreciate objective editorials which present oracular explanations of meaningful events in the world of “real” business.
A good read is “How AOL—Aka Facebook 1.0—Blew Its Lead” by Jesse Kornbluth. What is interesting is that this is a report from a person with Guccis on the ground. According to my hard copy edition, February 8, 2012, page A15:
Mr. Kornbluth was editorial director of America Online from 1997 to 2003. He now edits Headbutler.com.
I did a quick search on Facebook 3.0—aka Google—and learned from no less an authority than the Huffington Post the Mr. Kornbluth edits a blog which is a “cultural concierge service.” He is a “real” journalist and has been a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and new York, and a contributor to the New Yorker, the New York Times, etc.”
The addled goose is still in recovery mode, sort of like a very old restore from the now disappeared Fastback program. Thinking of old software and AOL, I think in 1999America Online was in hog heaven in terms of stock price. I recall shares coming in the $40 to $100 range. The accounting issues of 1993 were behind the company. The merger with Time Warner was a done deal by mid January 2000. The $350 billion was a nice round number. The New York Times marked the 10th anniversary in its “analysis” on January 11, 2010, with the story “How the AOL-Time Warner Merger Went So Wrong.”
Now I learn that AOL was Facebook 1.0. I had forgotten about AOL’s chat rooms. When I think of chat rooms, I recall CompuServe, but I was never into AOL despite the outstanding marketing campaign with the jazzy CD ROMs that seemed to be everywhere. Here’s Mr. Kornbluth’s Facebook parallel:
Infegy: The Social Radar Company
February 8, 2012
In 2006, founders Justin Graves, who was working for an interactive advertising agency at the time, and Web developer Adam Coomes used $50,000 of their own money to launch Infegy. Its key technology is “Social Radar”, a social media monitoring and Web analytics platform that measures online sentiment to gauge trends, predict consumer needs, and drive corporate strategy. The data is delivered through the cloud in a subscription-based format. A March 2011 upgrade generates faster results and features new spam filtering and a customizable drag-and-drop dashboard.
Social Radar sorts through some 8 billion Internet posts (including Tweets, blog posts, and customer comments), ranking not just the rise and fall of volume on a topic, but also the tone of discussion and the words that resonate. Companies can run in-depth analytics on Web and social media content to see how products and campaigns are received in the marketplace, what customers are saying online, and how and why trends have changed over time. Social Radar’s database allows views within targeted demographics.
In 2009, the company had over $350,000 in revenue and became profitable. In 2010, Graves and Coomes were Bloomberg/Businessweek’s America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs finalists. In 2011, International Data Corporation selected Infegy as an Innovative Business Analytics Company Under $100M to Watch. Following the March 2011 upgrade release, Coomes left the company.
Infegy’s primary clients are mostly advertising agencies and market research firms, such as ORC International, VML, and Mason Zimbler, interested in what consumers are saying about their brands and campaigns in the social media sphere. Think candid focus group minus the two-way mirror. Political campaigns have also shown interest. Brands using Social Radar include Viacom, 3M, Pizza Hut, MTV, and Sony. Competitors include Radian6, Collective Intellect, Crimson Hexagon, and Temetric Research.
Rita Safranek, February 8, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Facebook in Brazil
February 4, 2012
It is no secret that Facebook is the world’s leading social networking site. But it is not every day that you see it leave competitors in the dust. Read Write Web recently reported on the social networking giant in the article “It Only took One Year for Facebook to Beat Orkut in Brazil.”
According to the article, after being launched in 2004, Orkut quickly became the top social networking site in Brazil and it remained dominant until a few months ago. However, a recent ComScore report showed Facebook steadily increase and eventually beat out Orkut with 36.1 million visitors in December 2011.
Alex Banks, ComScore’s managing director in Brazil said:
Brazil has always been a particularly social market and currently owns the fifth largest social networking population in the world. But despite the cultural affinity for social media, Facebook adoption had traditionally lagged in the market.
What changed? maybe globalization has proven to be stronger than Brazilian nationalism?
Jasmine Ashton, February 4, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
IBM Helps Electrolux Workers Connect
February 3, 2012
IBM makes a social software sale. Did Watson help or is me-too-ism at work? Writer Darryl K. Taft doesn’t say in “Electrolux Taps IBM for Social Software” at eWeek. Looking to bring its workers in 60 countries together for collaboration, appliance maker Electrolux turned to IBM. The new intranet is based on IBM Connections and, not surprisingly, Microsoft SharePoint.
The write-up reports:
Electrolux employees are using IBM Connections microblogging to quickly spread information across the organization, including new-product and customer care ideas, and strategic organizational announcements. In addition, Electrolux employees will also have access to a social-collaboration dashboard. Through integrating IBM Lotus Notes email and IBM Sametime instant messaging, employees will be able to drag an email into a Connections Activity and discuss with colleagues in that specific window.
Besides enabling teamwork, the software cuts down on space-eating email attachments. There is, of course, also a dashboard feature. Whatever did we do before those were invented? We are still waiting for a public demonstration of Watson, not via television post production.
Cynthia Murrell, February 3, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Is Google Pushing Plus Too Hard?
February 3, 2012
From the desperation marketing department:
With tongue firmly in cheek, VentureBeat declares, “This Post on Google+ Statistics is a Billion* Times Better than Any Other Post.” Writer Rocky Agrawal can be excused for resorting to sarcasm, for he is righteously angry at Google and other companies who distort the facts to mislead.
Last week, Google CEO Larry Page played up the numbers for Google+. He said the social network has reached 90 million registered users, among other claims. To take that example, Agrawal is right to say Page’s boasting is deceptive; the number includes all those who registered and tried the service a few times, never to return.
The article contains several more examples of Googley distortion, but Agrawal knows that company is not the only one mutilating statistics. He writes:
Using deceiving numbers leads to a race to the bottom where companies use [worse and worse] numbers to look more and more impressive. Companies that want to be forthright can’t — otherwise they look weak and unsuccessful. That’s bad for the startup ecosystem. It also keeps companies focused on vanity metrics to impress the press. That’s largely irrelevant. Startups should spend their time building great products that people want to use, not just sign up for.
He’s right, but good luck enforcing the concept. It’s up to the rest of us to take corporate statements with a grain of salt. Is Google pushing a little to enthusiastically its social service? Interesting question. We think about Google as search and advertising, not social and advertising.
Cynthia Murrell, February 3, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Thomson Reuters Get Social
February 2, 2012
If you don’t association Thomson Reuters and social, you are not alone. Fresh from the innovative print magazine for the consumers at the World Economic Forum, Thomson Reuters is going social. You can check out the service at the Reuters Social site. According to “Introducing Reuters Social Pulse,”
Today we launched Social Pulse, our new social media hub on Reuters.com designed to show you the most talked-about news, companies and influencers across the Web. The first thing you’ll see on the page is the news most popular in Reuters social network.
Interesting. One question comes to mind, “How will this generate money to get the $13 billion dollar outfit growing and producing enough cash to pay dividends, debts coming due, and the costs of innovations like the social site and, of course, the consumer magazine for Davos types?”
Stephen E Arnold, February 3, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
MediaFunnel: Social on Steroids
January 30, 2012
Formerly known as TweetFunnel, MediaFunnel was founded by serial entrepreneur Andreas Wilkins, and Steve Chipman, president of Lexnet Consulting. The namesake technology, originally developed by Cloud10Apps, is a social media management systems geared towards fostering team collaboration to effectively interact with customers and prospects over social channels. The organization is self-funded but is in the process of looking for additional funding.
MediaFunnel tackles the problem of coordinating the efforts of multiple (each with multiple social profiles), allowing a team of users to synchronize communications with customers and prospects over Facebook and Twitter. On the back end, the technology integrates with applications like Salesforce.com (which turns tweets into sales leads), Zendesk (which creates customer service tickets), Twilio (which allows users to post via SMS for alerts and both internal and external user postings), and YouTube (which lets users concurrently upload videos to YouTube while posting content to Facebook) to extend social interactions into traditional processes. The brand monitoring functionality for Twitter can track conversations based on keywords, mentions, and direct messages and includes search and pre-set alerts for social mentions and brand monitoring.
Adding workflow to managing a corporate social networking presence, MediaFunnel allows anyone across an enterprise to contribute content that can be reviewed, edited and then disseminated to a community via Twitter or Facebook, moving content creation beyond the social media team to everyone within an organization and outside with a guest posting feature. Contributors, who can submit material via e-mail or text, are assigned varying degrees of editorial control. The technology’s editorial review process helps companies control brand imaging and compliance.
MediaFunnel’s current architecture is based on Ruby on Rails, MySql and Amazon EC2 cloud services. Competitors include HootSuite, CoTweet, and Threadsy. Segments that may find the technology particularly advantageous include PR firms, consumer brands, mass media, and retailing.
Rita Safranek, Janaury 30, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Censorship Inputs: Filtering Content and Unintended Consequences
January 29, 2012
I find “inputs” annoying. An “input” is advice, a comment delivered in parental mode, or suggestions which are more about the person making the suggestion than the person receiving the suggestion. Twitter is getting “inputs” about the alleged filtering of tweets in certain countries. (Keep in mind that search engines filter on a routine basis.)
No tweets needed in this woodcut of the 1844 Nativist riot in Philadelphia. Social media just accelerates information flow. A happy quack to Wikipedia.
A good example is “Letter to Twitter Executive Chairman Jack Dorsey Urging Him Not to Cooperate with Censors.” The idea is a simple one—When asked to filter content, Twitter should ignore the request. But what happens when the request is made by a governmental entity? Does Twitter ignore that governmental request. This type of blow off sounds great sitting in a college dorm at 3 am talking about what is right and wrong. The problem is that it ignores three salient facts top most in the minds of governmental executives around the world:
- Social media is the mechanism for starting and sustaining revolt. Even the Googler involved in Egypt’s transformation pointed the finger at Facebook. Facebook’s executives were half a world away and probably not thinking about the system as a mechanism for revolt.
- Governments are behind the curve when it comes to technology. As a result, governments and officials with power want to stop the technology in its tracks. The idea is that if a service is a problem, one can make the problem go away. That’s why India, China, and other outfits want to clamp down hard on certain content channels or at least be able to pry them open and take action if warranted.
- The companies want to keep earning money and keep their executives out of jail or out of harm’s way. Most of folks providing inputs don’t know what could and may happen to a frisky executive who ignores a request from a nation state. In case you don’t know, the actions range from jail time, death, harassment, and multiple actions across financial and personal spheres of behavior. This is hard ball, kids, and you need to know that nation states act lawfully within their borders and have the same extra-nation state options that the US, England, Israel, and other countries do.
Here’s an example of the sort of input which can lead to some interesting situations:
We are very disturbed by this decision, which is nothing other than local level censorship carried out in cooperation with local authorities and in accordance with local legislation, which often violates international free speech standards. Twitter’s position that freedom of expression is interpreted differently from country to country is inacceptable. This fundamental principle is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We call on you to be transparent about the way you propose to carry out this censorship. Posting the removal requests you receive from governments on the Chilling Effects website will not suffice to offset the harm done by denying access to content. Twitter has said that, if it receives “a valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity,” it may respond by withholding access to certain content in a particular country, while notifying the content’s author.
I heard that one nation state turned force on a crowd of protestors. See “Chinese Troops Seal Off Tibetan Protest Region.” Quite a spicy filter in my opinion. This is the real world and the social media which is touted as replacing search as the next big thing is fostering some interesting unintended consequences; namely, forcing governments to embrace tougher behaviors. I generally worked for governments and law enforcement. As a result, I am making an observation based on experience. There are two types of force: hard and soft. Filtering with software is about as soft as force gets. The hard force, on the other hand, is not something most readers of this blog want to experience as a receiver of input with intent.
Remember: I am okay with a person making inputs. I am not okay with the assumption that a commercial enterprise is going to be able to do the college dorm version of the “right thing.” Missing a class is one thing. Getting arrested, killed, or becoming the focus of a disinformation attack is another.
Finding is one thing. Inciting is quite another. Lowest common denominator, consumerization, commoditization—describe it as you will. There are interactions in the real world that don’t exist in a philosophical discussion among soon to be unemployable students.
Stephen E Arnold, January 29, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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