Google Tries Social Inputs for News
April 27, 2011
In the midst of farming and Panda bashing, pundits and poobahs did not pound the drum for Google’s social ranking tests. Nieman Journalism Lab did examine one of Google’s projects in “The Layered Look: How Google News Is Integrating the Social Web.” Google keeps plugging away with social features, of course, but this one is a little different. It’s a layer of social networking- based rankings integrated into the Google News page. Writer Simon Owens explains:
I spoke with Jeannie Hornung, a spokesperson for Google News, about the various ways Twitter and other social media platforms are used by the aggregator. She pointed first to the ‘Most Shared’ section, found on the right sidebar near the bottom of the main page. At the time of this writing, it displays headlines from a mixture of blogs and more traditional news outlets and allows you to sort the most popular stories by day, week, and month.
Owens was unable to get straight answers as to how exactly some of the ranking works. Twitter feeds factor prominently, but it looks like the share feature also plays a part.
The component may seem superfluous to some. But for those of us looking for the most important (or at least most shared) news stories in a limited browsing time, it can be a helpful tool.
One thing is certain, some Googlers will respond to the money carrot that Google is dangling in front of its engineers. Will those crunchy treats result in real progress in the social media sector? Facebook, according to some, is on a roll. To date, Microsoft, not Google, has a stake in Facebook. More significantly, when making news, a Googler in Egypt mentioned Facebook as one of the conduits for the social movement. Will that type of nuance be hooked into the new social news algorithm?
Cynthia Murrell April 27, 2011
Freebie
Protected: SharePoint 2010 Heads to Social Networking
April 27, 2011
Protected: Microsoft SharePoint a Swiss Army Knife? Almost.
April 22, 2011
Online Addiction: Will Search Be a Controlled Service?
April 20, 2011
TechEye.net reports that “Kids Go Cold Turkey When You Take Their Technology Away.” We never agreed 100 percent with Marsshall McLuhan and his hot and cold thing. We do understand dependence, involvement, and digital magnetism. If the good Dr. McLuhan were in Harrod’s Creek today, he would sit up and take notice at this story.
Researchers at the University of Maryland subjected participants ages 17 to 23 to 24 hours without cell phones, the Internet, and TV. They could use landlines and read books. (Our view is that digital addiction can take place much, much earlier.)
The subjects’ diaries show that such restrictions threw many of them off their game. For a generation raised with such devices, unplugging is apparently unnerving, according to the article:
“[The study] found that 79 percent of students subjected to a complete media blackout for just one day reported adverse reactions ranging from distress to confusion and isolation… One of the things the kids spoke about was having overwhelming cravings while others reported symptoms such as ‘itching’. . . .One in five reported feelings of withdrawal like an addiction while 11 percent said they were confused. Over 19 percent said they were distressed and 11 percent felt isolated. Some students even reported stress from simply not being able to touch their phone.
And on the plus side, one in five enjoyed the experience, and some found they had more in-depth conversations during that day.
For a busy one parent family, hooking a child or adolescent means some blissful moments of peace. But what about other effects? How will these dependencies change search and content processing. Can an addicted user discern whether information is accurate or inaccurate? Will the user notice? Will the user care?
The study has me wondering about the future—will our grandchildren have chips in their heads that keep them wired 24-7? Will in-depth conversation, even in-depth thought, go the way of bound books? Key word search seems less likely to appeal to those who find the warmth and comfort of online so appealing. Facebook, on the other hand, offers a warmer place. Is this the McLuhan “hot”?
Will the solution be to make search a controlled service.
Cynthia Murrell April 20, 2011
Freebie
Greplin: The Next Google?
April 18, 2011
The idea of challenging Google or other giants in the search sector is an appealing one. “How This 19 Year Old Is Taking on Google” describes the search start up Greplin, “the search bar for your life.” The company’s idea is that social search is an area not well served. The method of implementation is a Chrome extension a hook to Evernote and other methods for integrating Greplin into your work flow.
The founder is an Israeli who moved the the San Francisco area to get his new company in the thick of the search battles. Daniel Gross told Inc.:
It never occurred to me to wish I could find things on social networking sites or in cloud storage the same way as on the non-password-protected Web, but now I wonder why I never thought of it before.
Not only did he receive help from Y Combinator before he even settled on a concept, once the scheme was finalized he secured an additional $4 million from Sequoia Capital last December. Since then, Gross and his co-founder Robby Walker have implemented their service.
Curious about that name? Gross explains,
This guy Adam Goldstein. . . just threw out this name. And using the word grep, which in CS programming is essentially a command for search. So a lot of nerds get that. Adam threw out the name, and people liked it. “It’s also a good one because people can pronounce it, spell it over the phone, and has a backwards inside joke that you’ll only get if you a technical person. Total win,
You can keep up with the new service at http://blog.greplin.com.
Cynthia Murrell April 18, 2011
Facebook Remains a Threat to the Google
April 18, 2011
Does Facebook’s reach know no bounds? ABC’s Good Morning America reports, “Michigan Man Finds Kidney on Facebook.”
You may be familiar with the glacial pace of organ donation waiting lists. Patient Jeff Kurze of Warren, Michigan, achieved a way around that arduous process. His wife Roxy found a kidney through Facebook. Yep, just like the Egyptian dust up, the method relied upon Facebook. Even a Googler involved in some aspect of the Egyptian protest used the “F” word on a TV news program I watched. Google is search. Facebook is something else.
In the ABC article, I noted this passage:
After Jeff suffered a mini stroke last fall, doctors said it could take five years for him to climb the kidney waiting list and get the type O match he needed. That’s when a desperate Roxy took to Facebook. Wishing a kidney would fall out of the sky so my husband can stop suffering,’ Roxy Kurze, a 30-year-old web designer, wrote on her Facebook wall. ’So if anyone knows of a live donor with type O blood, PLEASE let me know.’
Facebook friend Ricky Cisco responded, and to make a long story short, the transfer was arranged. Fabulous human interest story, but the part that intrigues us at Beyond Search is this: as people turn to the Facebook community more and more to find everything from a book recommendation to an organ donation, how will Google and its ilk adapt? Will hooking a bonus to social innovation deliver a kidney to the faltering Google?
Cynthia Murrell April 18, 2011
Freebie
Google and Its Social Signal
April 17, 2011
This short item is about improving relevance ranking, not about getting 20,000 Googlers to “do social” in order to get a super sized bonus. With the carnage search engine optimization wizards and content farm managers have created, relevance is trendy again at the “new” Google.
So, the 12 year old Google is on the lookout for ways to improve their ranking systems and it seems that they are at it again. According to the Search Engine Watch article “Checks and Balances in Ranking Signals” Google has introduced a new social signal. The new signal is known as the +1 button.
According to the author of the article this new system is simply “Google’s latest move to reshape their ranking algorithms.” Links were once the primary way that people found the information that was relevant to them until spammers entered the scene. According to the write up:
An ongoing battle between Google and the spammers has followed. Google gradually made some progress, with most of the major firms who sell links exiting that business.
Google has introduced programs such as Google Analytics and Google Toolbar that work as a type of checks and balances to weed out the spammers. Google can monitor the user behavior on each of these sites and determine what search results users find relevant thereby weeding out potential spammers. Though the idea of weeding out spammers seems good with the amount of money that Google makes from advertisers it’s likely that spam isn’t Google’s main concern.
The challenge, however, is that some users may be quite comfortable relying on services that make it easy to ask a friend for the needed information. That method does not lead directly to Google and its search box that requires the user’s query to unlock a treasure trove of information. Facebook, to cite one example, lets a teen, tween, or recent journalism school graduate ask a friend. Catching up might be harder to do than Neil Sedaka’s challenge in “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do”. To wit:
I beg of you, don’t say goodbye
Can’t we give our love another try
Come on baby, let’s start a new
‘Cause breaking up is hard to do
Get your copy on iTunes right now.
Stephen E Arnold and Alice Holmes, April 17, 2011
Freebie unlike an iTunes music object
Twitter Firehose News
April 15, 2011
There is a tweak to the Witter and Mediasift partnership. You can read about it in the DataSift write up “Twitter Partnership”.
Mediasift and Twitter have agreed to a partnership that has the potential to change how marketers and companies understand conversations about their products as well as how they choose to market them to target audiences. By utilizing the advanced DataSift software they are able to break down “tweets” into a language that is easily understandable and searchable and is still quite cost effective with it’s “pay per use” subscription. The article said:
As a company we have been very fortunate to have access to the Twitter Firehose for quite some time. This has enabled us over the past two years to refine our thinking, leading to the incarnation of DataSift.
DataSift compiles multiple social media feeds and additional data sets to create a common abstract layer which provides meaningful insight into much of the chaotic and unstructured data from the outlets. It took nearly 18 months to complete the DataSift platform but it has already seen a huge outpouring of company and marketing support with more than a billion requests per month.
Important stuff for the real time crowd.
Leslie Radcliff, April 15, 2011
Freebie
Attivio: A Wave Maker
April 13, 2011
“Attivio Software Making Waves” reported that Attivio, Inc. and Traction Software have teamed up with the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative and Cornell University to collaborate on a “community portal”. The portal will bring together members of the scientific community, including universities and agricultural organizations from around 45 countries. They will work together to study wheat rust (a fungal disease that jeopardizes wheat, barley, and rye crops) and to prevent it’s spread. The write up said:
Knowledge is typically spread through presentations and the publication of research within leading journals – a process that can slow the exchange of knowledge by months and years…Given the severity of the threat to the world’s food supply, the BGRI could not afford to operate on that kind of timeline. We needed a collaborative platform that could be easily organized and updated and be accessible from anywhere in the world.
The Attivio software has the ability to compile the information of scientists all over the globe. Scientists often use a wide range of formats and file types. The Attivio system processes a range of content types, include information in SharePoint or locked up in the unwieldy Adobe Portable Document Format. Attivio does search as well as business intelligence functions. The objective is to save scientists time and money in their efforts to stop the Borlaug Global Rust blight. Without the Attivio system , wheat rust might extend its reach.
Worthwhile effort at a time when most search vendors want to do customer support (also a blight of sorts) and shift the responsibility of finding information to algorithms (an intellectual blight of sorts).
Leslie Radcliff, April 13, 2011
Freebie
Has Facebook Netted the Chinese Golden Carp?
April 11, 2011
I was in Hong Kong 10 or 11 days ago. I had a number of informal conversations with individuals who were wild and crazy and who were straight and narrow. Baidu is definitely a factor in the China market, but if the folks with whom I spoke know their dry fried Szechuan crispy beef, the Chinese government is generally keen on having a purpose-built, slices-dices-chops search engine. Oh, it will curate too. Like the word “curate”. It means filter I believe.
When I read “Facebook May Strike China Deal With Baidu,” I wondered if the deal would have legs. I don’t doubt that there will be some type of “play” for Facebook. In fact, I agreed with this statement:
These sources said the new venture wouldn’t involve Facebook.com, which is blocked inside China like many more social networking sites, but a jointly owned, new social networking website. It’s unclear when the site could launch: joint ventures need to be approved by the Chinese government and that can take a while, and they have to staff it up with experienced executives that both sides can agree on.
Three observations.
First, the social function of next generation communications is pretty darned impressive. In a nation state which is into black and white rules, the likelihood of unfettered social media is probably not a popular idea among the government’s senior officials. I am not sure it is all that popular in other countries, but China is the new superpower so what it does is quite influential.
Second, if China whips up a “good enough” search engine, life for the non governmental entities can be okay but probably not great. The unfettered approach to business that is popular in the US is not likely to flourish quite as business would in the US ecosystem. Stated another way, don’t get a Baidu tattoo just yet.
Third, in the business and political climate of China and its client states, I am not sure that “social” is going to work exactly as it has in Egypt. Social conditions are different and there is a some evidence that cleverness is a key part of survival in China.
When I was in Xian, a city alleged to be one of the termination points for the “Silk Road” trade route. According to information provided to me by my “personal guide”, merchants would be admitted to a special area connected to the main city. Upon entering the area, the merchant would see a big space. When the gate shut, the merchant would see he was in a walled area. Egress required opening a gate. Merchants, according to my “personal guide” did not get keys. The big gun would negotiate with the merchant. If the merchant was recalcitrant, the big gun had the merchant in a good looking, secure holding pen.
I figured out that if the big gun made an offer, it was probably a good idea to accept that offer. After all, I understand the notion of “shooting fish in a barrel.”
Whether this anecdote is correct is irrelevant. The fact that I heard it from a “personal guide” provided sufficient insight to how at least one Chinese professionals perceived the best practice for negotiating with merchants from outside of the Middle Kingdom. I recall reading this bit of advice:
All warfare is based on deception.
Net net: The search and social story is still unfolding for a darned big market that Google has managed to blow off and Facebook is angling to net like a big golden carp. My, my. Interesting.
Stephen E Arnold, April 11, 2011
Freebie
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
