Top New Social Sites and Why Facebook is no Longer Hot
September 16, 2013
According to the recent MakeUseof.com article “Facebook Usage is Changing – So Which Online Social Activities are Growing?” Facebook is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Instead of utilizing social networks that are tied to their real-life identity, today’s teens are flocking towards other networks that allow them to use pseudonyms and avatars.
Some of the hot new social sites that are taking the world by storm are: Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and (of course) Twitter.
The article explains why Twitter was included in the list, and how it differentiates itself from Facebook:
“There’s some evidence that Twitter is becoming more popular, with usage among teens doubling in the past year. Twitter might seem a bit stuffy, like one of the established social networks, but it has much in common with some of the upstarts. Unlike Facebook, Twitter doesn’t demand your real name — you can use anything you like as your Twitter handle. You can then engage publicly with other people about topics of interest or set your Twitter account to private and have your tweets visible only to your friends, although most Twitter usage is public. You don’t even have to send your own tweets — you can follow other accounts and just view them.”
As with everything in technology, what’s cutting edge today is inevitably going to be old news tomorrow. With this in mind, its no surprise that Facebook is losing its momentum. I wonder if they, like Twitter, will find new ways to stay relevant.
Jasmine Ashton, September 16, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Taming the Analytic Fire Hose of Twitter
July 24, 2013
If anything, Twitter is less a social media portal and more of an informational fire hose. The data that comes barreling through that outlet has been a horse no digital cowboy could break. However, we are starting to see promising signs of tools to do just that, according to a recent All Twitter article, “FirstRain Unveils First Tweets, Bringing Curated Twitter Intelligence to Sales Teams.”
According to the story:
“FirstRain’s FirstTweets bills itself as ’the world’s first solution for extracting business-relevant Twitter intelligence for sales, marketing and senior leadership teams.’”
The product filters out 99.9% of the Twitter fire hose to deliver only the most relevant Twitter intelligence directly into businesses’ CRM software and social enterprise platforms.
As anyone who’s used Twitter before, especially on behalf of a large brand, knows, it can be incredibly time-consuming to weed through hundreds of thousands of tweets to determine which to respond to, which accounts to cultivate relationships with, and what’s being said about your business on an hourly basis.
We are really excited to see this in action. However, we are cautiously optimistic. We’ve seen too many other social media analytics opportunities not live up to the billing. However, if FirstRain can pull it off, this will be on everyone’s wish list.
Patrick Roland, July 24, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Little Big Data Analyzed to Glean DOMA Ruling Response on Twitter
July 22, 2013
The article titled What Twitter Had to Say About Doma and Prop 8 on Lexalytics attempts to break down the social media sites statistical response to the Supreme Court rulings handed down on Wednesday, June 26. According to the blog, about 180,000 tweets were posted on Twitter in response to the rulings, and of those tweets twice as many were positive (about 43%) as negative (about 19%). The article explains why this may be slightly misleading,
“As we can see more clearly here in our top themes, some of it is just the wording. Tweets including words such as “Good riddance” are scored by the software as negative, although they obviously aren’t feeling negative about the DOMA and Prop 8 rulings.
The themes “equal liberty”, “same-sex marriage”, and “marriage ruling” are swayed by more technical discussions of the Supreme Court’s actual rulings. “
Even stranger to those interested is the idea that only 180,000 tweets can count as Big Data. Isn’t Big Data supposed to be about terabytes? This seems like a junior sized portion. The article does take care to note that the sample can in no way be called representative of the general population, taking into account that only a small percentage of the general population even uses Twitter.
Chelsea Kerwin, July 22, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Twitter Shortcut for Search Results Related to Products and Services
July 13, 2013
The article titled How to Find People Asking For Your Products Or Services on Twitter on Market Intelligence offers a simple tip that might yield results for certain services. Typing –http ? “Keyword” into Twitter’s keyword search will discover the stream of search results for any given keyword. The article explains,
“Imagine you are a company selling cosmetics and are launching a new face cream. By entering the query -http ? “face cream” into Twitter search, you will see a stream of all people who mentioned face cream in a tweet… The first girl is asking for suggestions for a night time face cream. Do you offer a similar product? If so, hit reply and send her your recommendation.”
The article goes on to look closely at the first few hits, noticing that, (voila!) one of them is a blogger who might write about her interaction with the face cream touted on Twitter. I imagine in real life this would take a lot more combing through inane and irrelevant posts. Whether or not it works when the product or service is not popular on Twitter, or even non-existent, is not mentioned in the article. Perhaps this advice is aimed only at mainstream services, making it, like Twitter, useful to some, but useless to many.
Chelsea Kerwin, July 13, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Twitter Needs To Watch Its Tweets Google Plus Is Catching Up
May 29, 2013
When Google joined the social networking circle, users bemoaned it was too late to join the ride, simply hanging on the coattails of Facebook and Twitter. Quite the opposite appears to be happening, however, according to the Business Insider article, “Google Plus Is Outpacing Twitter.” GlobalWebIndex reports that Google Plus has outranked Twitter as the number two social media service. Google Plus continues to add users at a high rate, the reason is most likely due to Google streamlining its services—you log into one and you are signed into all.
Google Plus has become more of a social meeting environment, like the AOL chat rooms of days of yore. Facebook is better to use to maintain connectivity with established friends. Google is taking advantage of this offering and hopes to expand its offerings:
“’We’re extremely happy with our progress so far, and one of our main goals is to transform the overall Google experience and make all of the services people already love faster, more relevant, and more reliable,’ Google said.”
Not many people have Google Plus accounts, yet everyone seems to have a Facebook account. Google Plus is still in that phase between societal acceptance and select-few usage. Give it another year and time for Facebook to go down the tube more and it will catch on. Twitter may have reason to fear, but not enough to stop chirping.
Whitney Grace, May 29, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Death to All Tweets
May 15, 2013
Do not get the pitchforks and torches ready, instead set a countdown clock and wait for the explosion! The Verge tells us that you can “Give Tweets A Death Sentence With Efemr.” Efemr is a web app that gives tweets a time limit and then it is permanently deleted. The idea is replicating SnapChat’s popular idea: snap a photo, add destruction time, and it is lost to the ages. Once you download Efemr, you give it access to your Twitter account and you create the time limit with hash tags.
Despite the momentary life span of its content, Efemr has a purpose:
“The web app is advertised as a means of making your Twitter activity more fleeting, but also as a tool to “protect your e-reputation.” That latter point is somewhat questionable, since all it takes is a retweet to ruin any attempt to cover your tracks on the popular service. SnapChat has shown there’s demand for this type of erasable social media, though we’re not convinced trying to shoehorn the concept within Twitter is a good strategy.”
The demand is that people want these social media Web tools to be more life real conversation, momentary and fleeting. Social media documents everything and leaves visible evidence that used to disappear. The Library of Congress will not like that, because when the tweet “goes boom” there is nothing to search for.
Whitney Grace, May 15, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Chattering About Big Data
April 22, 2013
As social media outlets such as Twitter continue to grow analysts can tell a lot from what users are tweeting or which topics have the most followers. It seems that Big Data is really buzzing in the Twitter world and created quite a stir in 2012. According to the DataSift article “Who’s Big in Big Data? the data science team at DataSift did an analysis of the amount of social interaction that Big Data received in 2012.
“A record number of Tweets were reported relating to big data within the technology sector in 2012 showing a continual growth of social interaction around ‘Big Data’. Using our sophisticated social data platform, we ran a DataSift Historics query against our hot list of Big Data products and conversations to identify which vendors were the most socially interactive, which domains were the most favorable in publicizing ’Big Data’ Tweets, the quarterly traffic progression for mentions of ‘Big Data’ and the most Tweeted stories.”
From the comparison of the various Tweets concerning Big Data, DataSift was able to determine which topics were the most popular. They then went a step further and looked at which links people shared and what Big Data sites people went to the most. Results showed that over 2.2 million Tweets were generated and Apache was the most popular Big Data vendor. As an added bonus DataSift also was delighted to learn that a BBC news article on DataSift took 2nd place in the running for most shared Big Data stories of 2012. This type of social media analysis not only provides companies with valuable insight for their daily business but also shows who the heavy hitters really are in the Big Data world.
April Holmes, April 22, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Beyond Search Pirated Twitter Stream
March 17, 2013
Several of the goslings have been in contact with Twitter. So far the teen age funster continues to use this somewhat unexciting blog to disseminate information about various activities of little interest to a 69 year old or the librarians assisting me. We will keep you informed but for now, just unfollow the Beyond Search stream on Twitter. What’s interesting is that Twitter is “trying” to assist us. Hmm.
Stephen E Arnold, March 17, 2013, 9 30 am Eastern
Do Not Try To Keep Up With Twitter
March 11, 2013
Real-time tools are used to record information that corresponds directly to actual life. One of the best examples of real-time information is the social networking tool Twitter. CNET wrote an article about Twitter’s time fallacy, “Time Calculator Shows Futility In Trying To Keep Up With Twitter.” The article mentions that in small doses, Twitter is a great tool to keep updated on information, but if can make someone instance trying to follow it all the time. If you feel like life is passing you by if you cannot keep up with tweets, then web developer Koobazaur created the Tweetulator. The Tweetutular calculates how much time you would need to read every single tweet on your feed.
You input the number of people you follow, reading speed, and number of tweets you read a day. For example Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey would need fourteen hours each day to keep up with the 1330 people he follows.
“The Tweetulator results aren’t really that surprising, but it does manage to put Twitter time into perspective. Let’s just say that if I miss a few tweets here and there, I’m not going to feel bad about it.”
Let us say there is more to life than Twitter and time can be better spent developing new enterprise search strategies.
Whitney Grace, March 11, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Twitter Expands Search Reservoir
February 25, 2013
Twitter, now with more tweets! I suppose that’s a real plus for some. ComputerWorld announces, “Twitter Search to Show Tweets More Than a Week Old.” Writer Jeremy Kirk explains:
“Twitter is modifying its search engine to include tweets more than a week old, a move it said will help users uncover better content.
“Over the next few days, searches will return ‘a fairly small percentage of total tweets ever sent’ but that will increase over time, wrote Paul Burstein, an engineer who works on Twitter’s search infrastructure, on a company blog.
“‘We look at a variety of types of engagement, like favorites, retweets and clicks, to determine which tweets to show,’ Burstein wrote. ‘We’ll be steadily increasing this percentage over time, and ultimately, aim to surface the best content for your query.'”
I suppose a wider search results field is better, whatever the platform. The expansion was announced alongside Twitter‘s updates to its search function in its iOS and Android mobile apps. These apps now return tweets, photos, and people in a single results stream rather than separate tabs. One other change saves users a step by letting them go directly to a linked Web site without opening the corresponding tweet. Ah, the relentless march of progress—now saving us a few seconds at a time.
Cynthia Murrell, February 25, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext