Social Media Listening on Facebook
June 9, 2015
The article on Virtual-Strategy Magazine titled NUVI and Datasift Join Forces to Offer Clients Access to Anonymized and Aggregated Facebook Topic Data explains the latest news from NUVI. NUVI is a growing platform for social media “listening”, allowing companies to combine and visualize the data from a variety of social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit and more. NUVI is also the exclusive partner of Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary Business Wire. NUVI is now partnering with Datasift, which gives it access to collected and anonymous Facebook topic data, which includes such information as the brands being discussed and the events being held on Facebook. The article states,
“Access to this information gives marketers a deeper understanding of the topics people are engaging in on the world’s largest social platform and the ability to turn this information into actionable insights. With NUVI’s visually intuitive custom dashboards, customers will be able to see aggregate and anonymized insights such as age ranges and gender… “Our partnership with DataSift is reflective of our desire to continue to provide access to the valuable information that our customers want and need,” said CEO of NUVI.”
Tim Barker, Chief Product Officer of Datasift, also chimes in with his excitement about the partnership, while mentioning that the business value of the deal will not affect the privacy of Facebook users. At least the range of information businesses will glean from a post will not contain a specific user’s private data, just the post they probably have no clue is of value beyond the number of likes it gets.
Chelsea Kerwin, June 9, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Facebook Program May Disintermediate Google
June 5, 2015
Soon, Facebook users may not have to navigate to Google for relevant links then copy-and-paste them into posts and comments. TechCrunch reports, “Skip Googling with Facebook’s New ‘Add a Link’ Mobile Status Search Engine.” If this program currently being tested on a sample group makes it to all users, you can impress your “friends” a few seconds faster, and with fewer clicks. Actually reading what you find before you share the link is up to you. The article describes:
“Alongside buttons to add photos or locations, some iOS users are seeing a new ‘Add A Link’ option. Just punch in a query, and Facebook will show a list of matching links you might want to share, allow you to preview what’s on those sites, and let you tap one to add it to your status with a caption or share statement. Results seem to be sorted by what users are most likely to share, highlighting recently published sites that have been posted by lots of people. …
“If rolled out to all users, it would let them avoid Googling or digging through Facebook’s News Feed to find a link to share. The ‘Add A Link’ button could get users sharing more news and other publisher-made content. Not only does that fill the News Feed with posts that Facebook can put ads next to. It also gives it structured data about what kind of news and publishers you care about, as well as the interests of your friends depending on if they click or Like your story.”
Writers Josh Constine and Kyle Russell observe that, as of last year, Facebook drives nearly 25 percent of “social” clicks, and publishers are becoming dependent on those clicks. Facebook stands to benefit if their Add A Link button enhances that dependency. Then there is the boost to ad revenue the site is likely to realize by keeping users inside their Facebook sessions, instead of wandering into the rest of the Web. A move that will both please users and the bottom line– well played, Facebook.
Cynthia Murrell, June 5, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Facebook Offers Ad Revenue for Streamlined News Experience
May 28, 2015
Facebook is offering an interesting carrot to certain publishers, like the New York Times and National Geographic, in the interest of streamlining the Facebook use-experience; CNet reports, “Facebook Aims to Host Full Stories, Will Let Publishers Keep Ad Revenue, Says Report.” Of course, the project has to have a hip yet obvious name: “Instant Articles” is reportedly the feature’s title. Writer Nate Ralph cites an article in the Wall Street Journal as he tells us:
“The move is aimed at improving the user experience on the world’s largest social network. Today, clicking on a news story on Facebook directs you to the news publication’s website, adding additional time as that site loads and — more importantly for Facebook — taking users away from the social network. With Instant Articles, all the content would load more or less immediately, keeping users engaged on Facebook’s site. The upside for publishers would be increased money from ads, the Journal said. With one of the versions of Instant Articles that’s being considered, publishers would keep all the revenue from associated ads that they sold. If Facebook sold the ads, however, the social network would keep 30 percent of the revenue.”
Apparently, some news publishers have been “wary” of becoming tightly integrated into Facebook, perhaps fearing a lack of control over their content and image. The write-up goes on to note that Facebook has been testing a feature that lets users prioritize updates from different sources. How many other ways to capture and hold our attention does the social media giant have up its sleeve?
Cynthia Murrell, May 28, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Emojis Spur Ancient Language Practices
May 12, 2015
Emojis, different from their cousin emoticons, are a standard in Internet jargon and are still resisted by most who grew up in a world sans instant connection. Mike Isaac, who writes the New York Times Bits blog, tried his best to resist the urge to use a colon and parentheses to express his mood. Isaac’s post “The Rise Of Emoji On Instagram Is Causing Language Repercussions” discusses the rise of the emoji language.
Emojis are quickly replacing English abbreviations, such as LOL and TTYL. People are finding it easier to select a smiley face picture over having to type text. Isaac points to how social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat users are relying more on these pictograms for communication. Instagram’s Thomas Dimson mentioned we are watching the rise of a new language.
People string emojis together to form complete sentences and sentiments. Snapchat and Instagram rely on pictures as their main content, which in turn serves as communication.
“Instagram itself is a means of expression that does not require the use of words. The app’s meteoric rise has largely been attributed to the power of images, the ease that comes, for instance, in looking at a photo of a sunset rather than reading a description of one. Other companies, like Snapchat, have also risen to fame and popularity through the expressive power of images.”
Facebook and Twitter are pushing more images and videos on their own platforms. It is a rudimentary form of communication, but it harkens back to the days of cave paintings. People are drawn to images, because they are easy to interpret from their basic meaning and they do not have a language barrier. A picture of a dog is still the same in Spanish or English. The only problem from using emojis is actually understanding the meaning behind them. A smiley face is easy to interpret, but a dolphin, baseball glove, and maple leaf might need some words for clarification.
Isaac finishes that one of the reasons he resisted emojis so much was that it made him feel childish, so he reserved them for his close friends and family. The term “childish” is subjective, just like the meaning of emojis, so as they become more widely adopted it will become more accepted.
Whitney Grace, May 12, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Reading in the Attention Deficit World
May 12, 2015
The article on Popist titled Telling the Truth with Charts outlines the most effective and simple method of presenting the information on the waning of book-reading among Americans. While the article focuses on the effectiveness of the chart, the information in the chart is disturbing as well, stating that the amount of Americans who read zero books in 2014 is up to 23% from 8% in 1987. The article links to another article on The Atlantic titled The Decline of the American Book Lover. That article presents an argument for some hope,
“The percentage of young folks reading for pleasure stopped declining. Last year, the NEA found that 52 percent of 18-24 year-olds had read a book outside of work or school, the same as in the pre-Facebook days of 2002. If book culture were in terminal decline, this is the demographic where you’d expect it to be fading fastest. Perhaps the worst of the fall is over. “
The article demonstrates the connection between education level and reading for pleasure, which may be validation for many teachers and professors. However, there also seems to be a growing tendency among students to read, even homework, without absorbing anything, or in other words, to skim texts instead of paying close attention. This may be the effect of too much TV or
Facebook, or even the No Child Left Behind generation entering college. Students are far more interested in their grades than in their education, and just tallying up the numbers of books they or anyone else read is not going to paint an accurate portrait. Similarly, what books are the readers reading? If they are all Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey, do we still celebrate the accomplishment?
Chelsea Kerwin, May 12, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Neural Networks Finally Have Their Day
May 11, 2015
The Toronto Star offers a thoughtful piece about deep learning titled, “How a Toronto Professor’s Research Revolutionized Artificial Intelligence.” Professor Geoffrey Hinton was instrumental in pursuing the development of neural network-based AI since long before the concept was popular. Lately, though, this “deep learning” approach has taken off, launching many a product, corporate division, and startup. Reporter Kate Allen reveals who we can credit for leading neural networks through the shadows of doubt:
“Ask anyone in machine learning what kept neural network research alive and they will probably mention one or all of these three names: Geoffrey Hinton, fellow Canadian Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun, of Facebook and New York University.
“But if you ask these three people what kept neural network research alive, they are likely to cite CIFAR, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. The organization creates research programs shaped around ambitious topics. Its funding, drawn from both public and private sources, frees scientists to spend more time tackling those questions, and draws experts from different disciplines together to collaborate.”
Hooray for CIFAR! The detailed article describes what gives deep learning the edge, explains why “machine learning” is a better term than “AI”, and gives several examples of ways deep learning is being used today, including Hinton’s current work at Google and the University of Toronto. Allen also traces the history of the neural network from its conceptualization in 1958 by Frank Rosenblatt, through an era of skepticism, to its recent warm embrace by the AI field. I recommend interested parties check out the full article. We’re reminded:
“In 2006, Hinton and a PhD student, Ruslan Salakhutdinov, published two papers that demonstrated how very large neural networks, once too slow to be effective, could work much more quickly than before. The new nets had more layers of computation: they were ‘deep,’ hence the method’s rebranding as deep learning. And when researchers began throwing huge data sets at them, and combining them with new and powerful graphics processing units originally built for video games, the systems began beating traditional machine learning systems that had been tweaked for decades. Neural nets were back.”
What detailed discussion of machine learning would be complete without a nod to concerns that we develop AI at our peril? Allen takes some time to sketch out both sides of that debate, and summarizes:
“Some in the field believe that artificial intelligence will augment, not replace: algorithms will free us from rote tasks like memorizing reams of legal precedents and allow us to pursue the higher-order thinking our massive brains are capable of. Others think the only tasks machines can’t do better are creative ones.”
I suppose the answers to those debates will present themselves eventually. Personally, I’m more excited than scared by the possibilities. How about you, dear reader?
Cynthia Murrell, May 11, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Digital Economy Growth Engines Lose RPMs
April 24, 2015
Short honk: I read several articles about the financial reports of Facebook, Google, and Yahoo. I enjoyed the explanations about the revenues and profits. Here are the write ups open on my desktop monitor at this moment:
- “Despite Headwinds, Analysts See Even Larger Facebook Upside Into 2016”
- “Google Caps Costs as Growth Slows” for which you may have to pay to read.
- “Yahoo Q1 Results Miss Expectations on Both Lines”
Is there a message to be decrypted from these data? Yep.
Stephen E Arnold, April 24, 2015
Google Allegedly Just Gets a Good Idea: A Data Platform
April 24, 2015
Wow. I read some interesting and often crazy stuff. But this is a keeper. Navigate to “Google Builds a Data Platform That’s the Last Piece of Its Ad Empire. Connects Dots for Marketers and Challenges Facebook.” Never mind that the Google has been working on the data platform thing for advertising for what is it now, 12 or 13 years. Never mind that the guts of the ad system’s interfaces have been a project at the Google for more than a decade. Never mind that the guts of the data platform idea originated before Google hired Drs. Halevy and Guha along with hundreds of other scientists and engineers eager to knit together data from Google’s various repositories. But, hey, it is an advertising Web site, and I assume advertising experts are a heck of a lot more informed than little old me.
I read:
Of course, Google faces regulatory scrutiny for any move it makes, as well as talk of anti-competitive practices. In fact, the company was charged in Europe last week with behaving like a monopoly in search. The ad tech community has been concerned that Google is offering all the services that lock advertisers into its ecosystem and squeeze out rivals.
What the write is about is the “lead” which Facebook has over Google. The problem is not technology, in my humble opinion. The problem is that Google is focused on technology and Facebook was built to allow a person to get a date. Facebook followed its social-human thing, and the GOOG has been embracing the ever lovable zeros and ones. There are Googlers at Facebook, but Facebook will not become a Google. I would argue that Google cannot become a Facebook.
The data platform is secondary to the source of the information fueling the respective systems. Facebook users are the content sources. Google’s content comes from other places. Both companies face significant challenges and neither is likely to morph into another.
Why not merge into a Googbook or Facegle? If it works for Comcast and Time Warner, it might work for Google and Facebook. Ad buys just become easier. Ad people often prefer the easy approach.
Stephen E Arnold, April 24, 2015
The Elusive Video Recognition
April 22, 2015
Pictures and video still remain a challenge for companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, and more. These companies want to be able to have an algorithm pick up on the video or picture’s content without relying on tags or a description. The reasons are that tags are sometimes vague or downright incorrect about the content. VentureBeat reports that Google has invested a lot of funds and energy in a deep learning AI. The article is called “Watch Google’s Latest Deep Learning System Recognize Sports In YouTube Clips.”
The AI is park of a neural network that is constantly fed data and programmed to make predictions off the received content. Google’s researchers fed their AI consists of a convolutional neural network and it was tasked with watching sports videos to learn how to recognize objects and motions.
The researchers learned something and wrote a paper about it:
“ ‘We conclude by observing that although very different in concept, the max-pooling and the recurrent neural network methods perform similarly when using both images and optical flow,’ Google software engineers George Toderici and Sudheendra Vijayanarasimhan wrote in a blog post today on their work, which will be presented at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference in Boston in June.”
In short, Google is on its way to making video and images recognizable with neural networks. Can it tell the differences between colors, animals, people, gender, and activities yet?
Whitney Grace, April 22, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
A Former Googler Reflects
April 10, 2015
After a year away from Google, blogger and former Googler Tim Bray (now at Amazon) reflects on what he does and does not miss about the company in his post, “Google + 1yr.” Anyone who follows his blog, ongoing, knows Bray has been outspoken about some of his problems with his former employer: First, he really dislikes “highly-overprivileged” Silicon Valley and its surrounds, where Google is based. Secondly, he found it unsettling to never communicate with the “actual customers paying the bills,” the advertisers.
What does Bray miss about Google? Their advanced bug tracking system tops the list, followed closely by the slick and efficient, highly collaborative internal apps deployment. He was also pretty keen on being paid partially in Google stock between 2010 and 2014. The food on campus is everything it’s cracked up to be, he admits, but as a remote worker, he rarely got to sample it.
It was a passage in Bray’s “neutral” section that most caught my eye, though. He writes:
“The number one popular gripe against Google is that they’re watching everything we do online and using it to monetize us. That one doesn’t bother me in the slightest. The services are free so someone’s gotta pay the rent, and that’s the advertisers.
“Are you worried about Google (or Facebook or Twitter or your telephone company or Microsoft or Amazon) misusing the data they collect? That’s perfectly reasonable. And it’s also a policy problem, nothing to do with technology; the solutions lie in the domains of politics and law.
“I’m actually pretty optimistic that existing legislation and common law might suffice to whack anyone who really went off the rails in this domain.
“Also, I have trouble getting exercised about it when we’re facing a wave of horrible, toxic, pervasive privacy attacks from abusive governments and actual criminals.”
Everything is relative, I suppose. Still, I think it understandable for non-insiders to remain a leery about these companies’ data habits. After all, the distinction between “abusive government” and businesses is not always so clear these days.
Cynthia Murrell, April 10, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
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