Content Cannot Be Searched If It Is Not There
August 16, 2016
Google Europe is already dealing with a slew of “right to be forgotten” requests, but Twitter had its own recent fight with deletion related issue. TechCrunch shares the story about “Deleted Tweet Archive PostGhost Shut Down After Twitter Cease And Desist” order. PostGhost was a Web site that archived tweets from famous public figures. PostGhost gained its own fame for recording deleted tweets.
The idea behind PostGhost was to allow a transparent and accurate record. The Library of Congress already does something similar as it archives every Tweet. Twitter, however, did not like PostGhost and sent them a cease and desist threatening to remove their API access. Apparently,Google it is illegal to post deleted tweets, something that evolved from the European “right to be forgotten” laws.
So is PostGhost or Twitter wrong?
“There are two schools of thought when something like this happens. The first is that it’s Twitter’s prerogative to censor anything and all the things. It’s their sandbox and we just play in it. The second school of thought says that Twitter is free-riding on our time and attention and in exchange for that they should work with their readers and users in a sane way.”
Twitter is a platform for a small percentage of users, the famous and public figures, who instantly have access to millions of people when they voice their thoughts. When these figures put their thoughts on the Internet it has more meaning than the average tweet. Other Web sites do the same, but it looks like public figures are exempt from this rule. Why? I am guessing money is exchanging hands.
Whitney Grace, August 16, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
There is a Louisville, Kentucky Hidden /Dark Web meet up on August 23, 2016.
Information is at this link: https://www.meetup.com/Louisville-Hidden-Dark-Web-Meetup/events/233019199/
Vodafone Improves Search Management
October 20, 2015
More than 8,000 call center agents use Vodafone’s internal knowledge management platform dubbed AskVodafone to access client information. AskVodafone’s old system was not performing as well as it used, so the company decided to upgrade to Exorbyte. Motor Traffic runs down Vodafone’s upgrade process in the article, “Exorbyte Matchmaker Managed Over 2 million Searches A Month On The Platform AskVodafone.”
Vodafone wanted to shorten an agent’s processing time on phone calls. The solution required faceted search, keyword suggestions, more accurate search results, and information related to a caller’s issue. Exorbyte created an individualized solution for Vodafone and they were given the job:
“Through the experience with the Exorbyte solutions and, of course, the existing site license used in the company the contract has been awarded directly to Exorbyte. These Andreas Vieth, Product Manager Search: ‘Due to the long and successful collaboration with Exorbyte it was logical for us to continue with them in the modernization of AskVodafone portal and to develop synergies between these and the Exorbyte search on the Vodafone website.’”
The solution indexes over 25,000 Web sites and it has increased the center’s data quality and results relevancy. The end result is that over 8,000 calls and 50,000 searches performed on AskVodafone are resolved faster and with better information.
Whitney Grace, October 20, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Google has Made Web Sites Hot and Angry
April 7, 2015
Business Insider tells more about Google’s dominating behavior in “The Google Backlash Is Growing.” The backlash spawned from the FTC’s recently leaked report about how Google threatened to remove Web sites from search engine results if they did not allow Google to use their content.
“At the heart of the matter is the internal FTC report’s finding that Google was effectively blackmailing competing sites like Yelp and Amazon into using their data in its own search result. If they didn’t agree, they would get blacklisted from search results entirely.”
Google was facing a lawsuit, but they made some changes so they were able to escape…in the US. In Europe, an investigation is still underway. Some think the EU is harboring hostilities against a US company, but they are say it is not.
People in the US like Consumer Watchdog want the US Senate to reopen investigations to prove that Google is favoring its own services in search results and making competition appear in lower search rankings. Google, however, maintains its innocence and wants the matter to rest.
Is it not common business practice to downplay the competition? Not to say Google is innocent, but it makes logical sense to use that old school business tactic, especially when they control a whole lot of search.
Whitney Grace, April 7, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com

