Cell Phones
Pew: Mobile phones have become a near-ubiquitous tool for information seeking and communicating; http://eicker.at/CellPhones
Tagged: Real-time RSS Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
Gerrit Eicker
Google Plus Search Impact
Google adds public Google Plus posts to Google Social Search, impacting Google Search; http://eicker.at/GooglePlusSearchImpact
-
Gerrit Eicker
Google: “Back in 2009, we launched Google Social Search, and we’ve made several improvements since then. And earlier this year we made an update which let you get more information from people you’re connected to on other publicly available sites. Today, we’re including public Google+ posts as well. So if you’re signed into your Google Account, your search results may start including posts shared publicly by people you’re connected to on Google+. … Remember, to experience this updated feature, you’ll need to be on Google+ and also make sure that you’re logged into your Google Account when you search. In addition, only public posts on Google+ are visible in search results. Private posts on Google+ aren’t. – We’re rolling out this update over the coming days. This is just the latest step in helping you find the most relevant information possible, personalized to your interests and the people you care about.”
SEL: “Google has added another source to its social search results: public posts from Google Plus. – Social search has been adding annotations to search results when content from your social connections (not to be confused with your Google+ Circles) was shared on services such as Twitter, LinkedIn and others. – Soon you may start seeing annotations that mention Google’s own social service, and these will come from people in your Google+ circles… Google Social Search continues to operate as before. Things shared socially at places like Twitter and Facebook by those you’re connected with may appear with annotations and rank better in results. – The main difference is, as Google’s post says, is that things you share on Google+ itself are now part of the mix.”
TC: “In a move that was pretty much inevitable in Google’s overall strategy of eventual Google+ integration into most if not all Google products, the search engine has announced that it will now be including publicly shared Google+ posts in its ‘social search’ results. … After getting confirmation from Google, Danny Sullivan responds, ‘It’s new. Posts you share on Google+ now appear and rank better. Previously, only posts you shared elsewhere would.‘”
Gerrit Eicker
Wired: “Google is making plans to turn its +1 button into a crowdsourcing tool that helps it re-order search results and fight web spam. – While not surprising, the move would bring Google’s search engine into the social networking era, while simultaneously creating a new avenue for blackhats to manipulate search results and potentially incurring the wrath of trust-busting authorities. – Google confirmed its plans in an e-mail to Wired.com: ‘Google will study the clicks on +1 buttons as a signal that influences the ranking and appearance of websites in search results,’ a spokesman wrote. ‘The purpose of any ranking signal is to improve overall search quality. For +1′s and other social ranking signals, as with any new ranking signal, we’ll be starting carefully and learning how those signals are related to quality.’”
Gerrit Eicker
Google Plus Realtime Search
Google Realtime Search will return with and for Google Plus, including other sources; http://eicker.at/GooglePlusRealtimeSearch
-
Gerrit Eicker
Mashable: “Google Realtime Search is coming back soon, and it will include data from Google+ and other social sources. … When asked about if or when Realtime Search would return, Singhal responded by saying the Google Search team is ‘actively working’ on bringing the product back. He added that the team was experimenting with adding data from Google+ and other sources. It seems as if Google doesn’t believe it needs Twitter data to deliver a compelling real-time search offering. – Danny Sullivan, the panel’s moderator and Search Engine Land editor in chief, also asked the panel why the Google+ stream doesn’t have its own search engine (it’s one of the social network’s most requested features). – ‘We are on it,’ Singhal responded.”
SEW: “Since the new Realtime search is expected to be bumped to the front page, much like Places or image data, this works as a way for Google to cross-promote its content. It also falls into the same category as the antitrust concerns currently being reviewed in both the U.S. and Europe, which are focused on whether Google is unfairly favoring its own sites and services. – Will Google realtime even matter without Twitter? As Marketing Pilgrim noted, ‘even once (if) Google+ becomes heavily trafficked, it’s likely that the postings will resemble those you find on Facebook. Google already admitted, that Facebook wasn’t very effective as a real-time news source, so how is Google+ going to be any better?‘”
WPN: “Google Needs Twitter for Realtime Search – If you want to see up to the second results from around the world on what people are saying about any given topic, where do you go? Google+ or Twitter? – If Google really wants to organize the world’s information, maybe it needs to fork out enough money to get that firehose back. At least for a while. The early days are promising, but it’s still entirely possible that Google+ could turn into another Google Buzz or worse yet, another Google Wave. – I still can’t believe Google of all companies launched such an important strategic product without search in the first place.“
Gerrit Eicker
Computable Document Format (CDF)
Wolfram has released the Computable Document Format (CDF): bringing interactivity via computation; http://eicker.at/CDF
-
Gerrit Eicker
Wolfram: “Today we launched our Computable Document Format, or CDF, to bring documents to life with the power of computation. – CDF binds together and refines lots of technologies and ideas from our last 20+ years into a single standard—knowledge apps, symbolic documents, automation layering, and democratized computation, to name a few. – Disparate though these might appear, they come together in one coherent aim for CDF: connecting authors and readers much better than ever before. … With CDFs we’re broadening this communication pipe with computation-powered interactivity, expanding the document medium’s richness a good deal.”
RWW: “It isn’t simply readers who are meant to benefit from having more interactive publications. Wolfram says that the CDF is also designed to make it easier for authors and publishers to create and incorporate these knowledge apps into documents, arguing that up until now, these sorts of things have often required a knowledge of programming. CDFs can be created using the Mathematica software, and Wolfram insists that building a knowledge app is as easy as writing a macro in Excel.”
O’Reilly: “Wolfram’s tools create documents that can be shared on the Web, and are free for use by people who publish free documents. The tools can be licensed by organizations that charge for documents. Access to the tools can be on the Wolfram site (Software as a Service), or licensed and installed on your own server. – These tools look to me like a boon to educators, and I predict that all manner of publishers in the sciences and social sciences will license them. … Wolfram plans to release the format itself as what they call a ‘public standard.’ This is not the same as an open standard. … I assume Wolfram will keep strict control over the format, which draws a lot from the Mathematica language, and I doubt other companies will want to or be able to catch up to Wolfram in the sophistication of the tools they offer.”
Gerrit Eicker
Google Realtime Search
Sullivan: As the deal with Twitter expires, Google Realtime Search goes offline; http://eicker.at/GoogleRealtimeSearch
-
Gerrit Eicker
Google: “Since October of 2009, we have had an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results through a special feed, and that agreement expired on July 2. – While we will not have access to this special feed from Twitter, information on Twitter that’s publicly available to our crawlers will still be searchable and discoverable on Google. … Twitter has been a valuable partner for nearly two years, and we remain open to exploring other collaborations in the future.”
Twitter: “Since October 2009, Twitter has provided Google with the stream of public tweets for incorporation into their real-time search product and other uses. That agreement has now expired. We continue to provide this type of access to Microsoft, Yahoo!, NTT Docomo, Yahoo! Japan and dozens of other smaller developers. And, we work with Google in many other ways.”
SEL: “The end of Google Realtime Search means that tiny search engine Topsy remains in the enviable situation of having the only major Twitter archive available on the web, to my knowledge. – Twitter’s deal appears to be continuing with Bing. I still see search results showing up over there that include Twitter. But Bing’s service never went as far back in time as Google’s. … You can certainly understand why Google+ has become even more important to the service now. While Google has gotten by largely without social signals from Facebook, having its own data from Google+ gives it insulation if it now has to get by without Twitter signals, as well.”
RWW: “It’s easy to read the falling out between Twitter and Google as being connected to the newly launched Google Plus, but it’s far too early to make any sweeping pronouncements about Google no longer needing Twitter to beef up its social search now that it has what appears to be a successful social component on its hands. Google has managed just fine without having Facebook integration, of course. But the value of Twitter in real-time searches seems to go beyond just ‘the social.’ Add to that, Google+ still a nascent network, one that may be, at least according to journalism professor Jeff Jarvis, somewhat less useful of a tool for breaking news coverage and by extension, less useful for real-time search.”
Gerrit Eicker
Real-time
Bell on news: It is not about being first at the cost of being right, it is about being there, or not; http://eicker.at/RealTime
Gerrit Eicker
Passive Experience
GlobalWebIndex: Open web turns to packaged internet, passive experience to rise; http://eicker.at/PassiveExperience (via @rww)
-
Gerrit Eicker
GlobalWebIndex: “Social media has reached mass maturity. Today it’s no longer about massive growth but a shift of already active social consumers to ‘real-time’ technologies, such as status updates or tweets. The old view of text-based social media, defined by blogs and forums, is being surpassed, moving the impact of social media, from creating content and publishing to sharing other people’s content and ‘live’ opinions about real-world events. In short ‘real-time’ is re-orientating consumer from creator to distributor and moving the focus to traditional media and professional content. – The open browser-based web is losing out to packaged internet platforms such as mobile apps, internet connected TVs, tablets, e-readers, pc apps, gaming and video platforms. These packaged platforms are re-engineering the internet and destroying the notion of the internet being a singular entity. Crucially for the entertainment revolution, they provide professional media with the means to create sustainable internet business models, something the economics of the browser-based web totally failed to enable. – Professional ‘traditional style’ content is now a core part of the consumer online experience. Internet platforms, for hundreds of millions of consumers, are increasingly the entertainment platform of choice. This is due to continual growth of professional content in video sites (legal and illegal), the rise of ‘real-time’, and the growth of packaged platforms.”
RWW: “The report states that in the new era of social entertainment, traditional media holds the power – a change from the ‘web 2.0′ era, when the user ruled. The report argues that this will lead to a return to passive experiences by consumers. … ‘Professionals are back in the driving seat when it comes to content,’ states the report. This, it says, will lead to the Internet eventually becoming the primary mass entertainment and content delivery platform. – While that is undoubtedly true, it’s difficult to see how the author comes to this conclusion: ‘We as consumers are going back to traditional needs and demands and seeking a more passive experience.’ – The report explains that social entertainment is far more about content sharing, than creation. It goes on to suggest that this ‘light nature of interaction’ is moving the consumer back to the passive state they were in before the Internet came along. Further, that services like Facebook and Twitter turn consumers into ‘distributors.’“
Gerrit Eicker
Time: “The dream of Web 2.0 may be over. If a new report on internet usage is to be believed, social media has turned the internet into more of a passive experience again. … The change, the report suggests, is that social media is more about content sharing than content creation, turning users into passive consumers – or, worse, distributors – of others’ work. … Instead of a shift back towards professional/audience mode, this feels more like a blip as the landscape gets used to its new tools than anything else to me, but what do you think?”
Gerrit Eicker
Facebook Comments
Facebook makes comments real-time and seems to open its functionality to third-parties; http://eicker.at/FacebookComments
Gerrit Eicker
Data Markets
Valeski: Read the terms of service for social media services before you complain about privacy; http://eicker.at/DataMarkets
Gerrit Eicker
Display Ads
Price: Why display ads are cool again: the shift from episodic to real-time banner ad marketing; http://eicker.at/DisplayAds
Gerrit Eicker 09:38 on 17. August 2011 Permalink |
Pew: “Mobile phones have become a near-ubiquitous tool for information-seeking and communicating: 83% of American adults own some kind of cell phone. These devices have an impact on many aspects of their owners’ daily lives. In a telephone survey conducted from April 26 to May 22, 2011 among a nationally-representative sample of Americans, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that, during the 30 days preceding the interview: Cell phones are useful for quick information retrieval (so much so that their absence can cause problems)… Text messaging and picture taking continue to top the list of ways that Americans use their mobile phones – three quarters of all cell owners (73%) use their phones for each of these purposes. Other relatively common activities include sending photos or videos to others (54% of cell owners do this) as well as accessing the internet (44%). – One third of American adults (35%) own a smartphone of some kind, and these users take advantage of a wide range of their phones’ capabilities. … Many activities – such as downloading apps, watching videos, accessing social networking sites or posting multimedia content online – are almost entirely confined to the smartphone population.”