Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

Posted on October 28, 2009 - by admin

Google flexes Twitter integration with Social Search Lab

Today, a new experimental Google search feature called Social Search was made live in Google Labs, following up on last week's announcement that Google and Twitter had established a partnership.

But the implementation of this Twitter data is much more conservative than many were expecting. Following the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, a lot of talk in the search community revolved around "Realtime Search," (a buzzword formerly known as "conversational search") where chatter (articles, blog posts, comments, forum entries, status updates, tweets, videos, and podcasts) on a particular subject is indexed in real time, putting searchers more or less directly into the conversations as they occur.

Read the full story at Betanews

Posted on August 22, 2009 - by admin

Geolocation Data Could Lead Twitter to Treasure or Trouble

Twitter says it will soon enable tweets to include geolocation information. The feature will be implemented on an opt-in basis, and app developers will be given a special API for using the information. It could spell revenue opportunities for the service, but the idea of tweeting one’s specific location could create some security issues, especially if the user does not mean to share the info.

In a move that might finally open a moneymaking channel for the company, Twitter announced on Thursday that it will launch a geolocation feature as part of its microblogging service.

Read the full story at Technology News

Posted on August 22, 2009 - by admin

Facebook phishing app plague may be getting out of control

In the Internet equivalent of the old “whack-a-mole” game, Trend Micro researcher Rik Ferguson — who helped call attention to the Conficker worm early on — has this week been calling attention to rogue Facebook applications whose main purpose appears to be to collect users’ passwords. Using the usual attention-grabbing headings to grab users (repeating the word “sex” is apparently still effective), these apps redirect users to what looks like a legitimate login page, making users believe they need to log into Facebook again.

Read the full story at Betanews

Posted on August 20, 2009 - by admin

MySpace to acquire music discovery service iLike

It was no secret that social network MySpace was looking to acquire music discovery service iLike, thanks to reports earlier this week. Today, however, it was made official.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but rumors this week valued iLike at around $20 million after subtracting the cost MySpace will incur from maintaining the entire iLike staff, which includes CEO Ali Partovi, President Hadi Partovi, CTO Nat Brown, and all 26 employees.

Read the fiull story at Betanews

Posted on August 18, 2009 - by admin

Twitter tweets are 40% ‘babble’

A short-term study of Twitter has found that 40% of the messages sent via it are “pointless babble.”

Carried out by US market research firm Pear Analytics, the study aimed to produce a snapshot of what people do with the service.

Almost as prevalent as the babble were “conversational” tweets that used it as a surrogate instant messaging system.

Read the full story at BBC News

Posted on June 19, 2009 - by admin

Twitter grows up: Lessons from the Iran experience

Carmi Levy: Wide Angle Zoom Iranian citizens aren’t waiting for media platforms to evolve. So why are we?

It was do or die for Twitter last week. To its credit, it didn’t die.

Every promising new technology reaches a point in its life cycle when it either grows up and becomes part of the everyday landscape, or it flames out and becomes a footnote to history.

And as history illustrates, it’s a process that often repeats itself like clockwork over surprisingly long periods of time. Almost twenty years to the day since student leaders of a massive protest in China’s Tiananmen Square used then-novel fax machines to bypass traditional media, organize themselves and share their message with the world, opponents to the disputed election in Iran found themselves using Twitter in much the same way.

Read the full story at Betanews

Posted on June 13, 2009 - by admin

Facebook Members to Become Masters of Their Domain Names

At midnight, Facebook will give users the chance to claim a cleaner URL for their pages. What was once a messy string of numbers and letters could simply be changed to facebook.com/YourNameHere, for example. The move may make it easier to find other people and companies, but did the social networking site give businesses enough time to gear up? Is there potential for IP conflicts?

Just when you thought you had that 12:01 a.m. Saturday deadline figured out for this weekend’s big switch from analog to digital television, along comes another form of midnight madness to worry about — that is, if you want to make it easier for Facebook friends to reach you, or have a brand you want to protect from the dark side of social media.

Beginning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday morning, Facebook will allow registration for customized URLs (example: facebook.com/YourNameHere), instead of the usual long list of numbers that show up as a Web address for a profile. The world’s largest social media network began sending out notices for the process on Wednesday, including a link for registered trademark brand owners to place their names on a restricted list, in the hope of avoiding the cybersquatting phenomenon that has long plagued the Internet domain name process.

The advantages are obvious: an easier way for users to track down their friends — or their favorite companies — on Facebook. It also gives those companies a shot at ranking higher on a Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) search.

However, given complaints from its members regarding past terms-of-service changes, is Facebook ready to get into the domain name business? Can it truly protect trademark owners from seeing their intellectual property pilfered by those who would grab a username, only to sell it back to its legitimate owner? Can Facebook’s servers handle what may turn out to be a midnight crush?

Read the full story at Technology News

Posted on June 13, 2009 - by admin

TwitterFon Pro: Tweet Harder, Tweet Smarter

TwitterFon is a great free Twitter app for iPhone, but is the Pro version worth $5? It depends on what you need and what annoys you. Pro has Bit.ly integration and a landscape keyboard, among other perks. It also has no advertisements. However, some of the added features proved to be a little hard to find.

Twitter was made for the mobile device. If it was confined to a desktop browser, the question “What are you doing right now?” wouldn’t have much of an answer, other than something like “Looking at this Web page — here’s a link.” Access Twitter on your cellphone, though, and you can tweet from almost anywhere and probably say something at least marginally more interesting.

Twitter’s creators have put some effort toward facilitating the use of the site on mobile browsers. Sign onto Twitter.com from an iPhone’s Safari browser, for example, and the server will recognize you’re coming in from a handset. The page it will show you conforms nicely to the screen — no zooming, pinching or panning required.

Still, third-party iPhone developers have recognized an opportunity to create apps that make Twitter on a smartphone more usable and feature-rich. My favorite is TwitterFon, and I’ve been using the free version for a few months. TwitterFon also has a paid version on the App Store, TwitterFon Pro, so I decided to see what extras you get for US$5.

Let’s make this a contest. Since the free version costs five bucks less, we’ll give it a five-point head start.

Score: Free: 5 / Pro: 0

Read the full story at Mac News

Posted on June 10, 2009 - by admin

Twitterers defy China’s firewall

On the eve of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen killings, social networking sites such as Twitter and the photo-sharing site Flickr were blocked in China in an attempt by the government to prevent online discussion on the subject.

But Chinese twitterers proved that there are ways to get round the great firewall of China.

Read the full story at BBC News

Posted on June 10, 2009 - by admin

Facebook to offer first-come-first-served vanity URLs

Expect a mad scramble Friday evening.

In contrast to Twitter’s announced rollout of identity verification — measured, maybe even slow, and celebrity-oriented — Facebook is going with the sheer-mayhem approach as the service throws open the registration process for vanity URLs late Friday evening.

Vanity URLs have been available on a very limited basis previously, but most URLs are simply numeric. But on Friday at 9:01 pm PDT (a minute after midnight on the 13th for the East Coast), users will be given the option to select one username of at least five characters in length and using the Roman alphabet, numbers or a dot.

Read the full story at Betanews