Pinteresting
Shareaholic: Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google Plus, YouTube, LinkedIn combined; http://eicker.at/Pinteresting
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Gerrit Eicker
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Gerrit Eicker
Dark on January 18, 2012
The Web goes dark on January 18, 2012, protesting #SOPA/#PIPA: Wikipedia, BoingBoing, many more; http://eicker.at/J18 #J18
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Gerrit Eicker
Wikipedia: “Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States – the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate – that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia. … My hope is that when Wikipedia shuts down on January 18, people will understand that we’re doing it for our readers. We support everyone’s right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression. We think everyone should have access to educational material on a wide range of subjects, even if they can’t pay for it. We believe in a free and open Internet where information can be shared without impediment. We believe that new proposed laws like SOPA – and PIPA, and other similar laws under discussion inside and outside the United States – don’t advance the interests of the general public. You can read a very good list of reasons to oppose SOPA and PIPA here, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. … On January 18, we hope you’ll agree with us, and will do what you can to make your own voice heard.”
BoingBoing: “On January 18, Boing Boing will join Reddit and other sites around the Internet in ‘going dark’ to oppose SOPA and PIPA, the pending US legislation that creates a punishing Internet censorship regime and exports it to the rest of the world. Boing Boing could never co-exist with a SOPA world: we could not ever link to another website unless we were sure that no links to anything that infringes copyright appeared on that site. So in order to link to a URL on LiveJournal or WordPress or Twitter or Blogspot, we’d have to first confirm that no one had ever made an infringing link, anywhere on that site. Making one link would require checking millions (even tens of millions) of pages, just to be sure that we weren’t in some way impinging on the ability of five Hollywood studios, four multinational record labels, and six global publishers to maximize their profits.”
SOPA Strike: “On January 18th, 2012 the internet is going on strike to stop the web censorship bills in Congress! Now is our moment – we need you to do everything you can, whether you have a website or not. … January 18th is going to be amazing. Sites are striking in all different ways, but they are united by this: do the biggest thing you possibly can, and drive contacts to Congress. Put this on your site or automate it by putting this JS into your header, which will start the blackout at 8AM EST and end at 8PM EST. … On Jan 24th, Congress will vote to pass internet censorship in the Senate, even though the vast majority of Americans are opposed. We need to kill the bill – PIPA in the Senate and SOPA in the House – to protect our rights to free speech, privacy, and prosperity. We need internet companies to follow Reddit’s lead and stand up for the web, as we internet users are doing every day.”
TC: “Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales wanted to send a ‘big message’ to the U.S. government regarding the two heinous internet censorship bills currently being considered, and after a brief period of debate the world’s encyclopedia will soon do just that. – The Wikipedia founder announced on Twitter today that starting at midnight on Wednesday, January 18, the English language version of the world’s encyclopedia will go dark for 24 hours in protest of SOPA and PIPA. With their commitment confirmed, Wikipedia will be joining a slew of websites and companies that will suspend their operations for one day in an effort raise awareness around the two bills. … Though the event is meant to raise public awareness over two critical pieces of legislation, Wales still took a moment to offer a bit of sage advice for students heading back to school: ‘Student warning! Do your homework early. Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday!’“
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Gerrit Eicker
Google Analytics Social Data Hub
Google opens its Social Data Hub to 3rd party social networks to integrate with Google Analytics; http://eicker.at/SocialData
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Gerrit Eicker
Google: “Every day, millions of people share and engage with content online. But most sharing doesn’t happen on the site where it was published, it happens throughout the social web. Marketers and publishers are looking for a comprehensive view of all interactions with their content – on and off their site – and so we’re working hard to make this happen. – To enable our customers to discover who’s sharing, voting and bookmarking their content on the social web, cross-network measurement needs to become easier. So today we’re inviting social networks and platforms to integrate their activity streams with Google Analytics. Through these integrations, marketers and publishers will be able to discover off-site engagement, optimize their engagement within each social community, and measure the impact of each social channel and its associated digital investment. … To make integration easy for social networks and platforms we’ve created a social data hub – it’s based on widely deployed, open web standards such as ActivityStreams and PubsubHubbub. A number of partners are already working with us to improve measurement of social actions – including Delicious, Digg, Diigo, Gigya, LiveFyre, ReadItLater, Reddit, TypePad, Vkontakte, and of course, Google+, Blogger and Google Groups.”
Google: “Plug your social data into Google Analytics – As the number of social networks and activities performed grows, there’s no comprehensive way for marketers and publishers to see the big picture of how social behavior really impacts their brand, let alone understand how these social actions lead to engagement or true return on investment [ROI] of their content. – That’s why we’ve developed the social data hub – so any network can integrate their activity streams – like +1, votes, and comments – into Google Analytics Social Analytics reports, which will be available next year.”
Google: “The social data hub is a free platform that social networks and other social platforms can use to integrate their activity streams- like +1, votes, and comments-with Google Analytics. – Enable your social network to be visible to marketers, publishers and analysts using Google Analytics – Promote a broad, comprehensive and inclusive picture of the global social media landscape – Advance accessible measurement of all social media platforms and activities … To integrate your social network with Analytics, you need to meet the following criteria: You operate a Social Network/Platform – You own the social data and/or are legally able to share it with Google.”
Google: “Google Analytics will provide a social reporting suite so marketers and publishers can see how their content is being shared or interacted with off their site. This will include visibility into social actions such as voting, commenting and sharing amongst other reports helping marketers tie social activity back to engagement and conversion. The social data hub will supply the data needed to enable these Google Analytics reports.”
WMG: “In other words, the platform vendors did little if anything to tie the output of their platforms with anything specific or practical enough (probably, because they couldn’t yet do so) to be meaningful. While Facebook may drag their feet implementing and interfacing with Social Data Hub, Twitter already has been using Google Analytics to track every important action, and it’s not a stretch to see Twitter adopting the Social Hub, and eventually, Facebook will have to, as well, because advertisers and publishers will demand it. – Which, as Lovett says, is good for all of us. Will it be good for the vendors? That all depends.”
SEW: “While social media integration into analytics packages is relatively new, there are a few enterprise-level analytics software that already offer users the ability to integrate not only social sharing sites, but also information about apps in their respective stores. Webtrends, for one, allows users to enter their usernames and passwords for various social sites and app stores directly into the software and data from those respective sites are seamlessly integrated into reports. … Is this a good idea or a bad idea for social networks? How would you use integrated social analytics in your day-to-day analytics reports?”
WPN: “I couldn’t help but notice that Facebook and Twitter are not on that list.“
Gerrit Eicker
Internet Censorship: SOPA and PIPA
Internet censorship made in the USA: SOPA and PIPA are a major attack on Internet freedom; http://eicker.at/InternetCensorship
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Gerrit Eicker
Wikipedia: “The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as H.R.3261 and the E-Parasite (Enforcing and Protecting American Rights Against Sites Intent on Theft and Exploitation) Act, was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011 by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. – The bill’s sponsors and advocates say it’s needed to help U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders fight online traffic in copyrighted intellectual property and ensuing revenue and job losses. Its opponents say it will ‘break the internet’, cost jobs, and threaten whistleblowers and other free speech. Now before the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008. The Senate’s corresponding bill, the Protect IP Act, was prevented from passing in early 2011 with a hold placed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR). – The bill is divided into two titles with the first focusing on combating ‘foreign rogue sites’, websites outside U.S. jurisdiction that enable or facilitate copyright infringement, and the second focusing on increased penalties to combat intellectual property theft via digital means.”
Wikipedia: “PIPA – Protect IP Act, or (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011), is also known as United States Senate Bill S.968. It was introduced on May 12, 2011 by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and 11 initial bipartisan co-sponsors. Its goal is to give the government and copyright holders additional tools to curb access to ‘rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods’, especially those registered outside the U.S. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that implementation of the bill would cost the federal government $47 million through 2016, to cover enforcement costs and the hiring and training of 22 new special agents and 26 support staff. The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bill, but Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) placed a hold on it. – The Protect IP Act is a re-write of the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), which failed to pass in 2010. A similar House version of the bill, theStop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was introduced on October 26, 2011.”
American Censorship: “American Censorship Day: Nov 16, 2011 – Congress holds hearings of the first American Internet censorship system. This bill can pass. If it does the Internet and free speech will never be the same. Join all of us to stop this bill. … Website Blocking – The government can order service providers to block websites for infringing links posted by any users. … Risk of Jail for Ordinary Users – It becomes a felony with a potential 5 year sentence to stream a copyrighted work that would cost more than $2,500 to license, even if you are a totally noncommercial user, e.g. singing a pop song on Facebook. … Chaos for the Internet – Thousands of sites that are legal under the DMCA would face new legal threats. People trying to keep the internet more secure wouldn’t be able to rely on the integrity of the DNS system. … Supporters: Public Knowledge, EFF, Free Software Foundation, Mozilla, Demand Progress, Fight For the Future, PPF, Creative Commons, Wikimedia”
Mashable: “Tumblr, Firefox and Reddit drew broad black lines on their websites Wednesday to protest a proposed U.S. law that Internet companies have dubbed ‘censorship’ and entertainment companies ‘piracy protection.’ – Tumblr has blacked out all user-generated content you see when you first log in. When you click on the gray lines to investigate, you’re told: ‘Congress is holding hearings today and will soon pass a bill empowering corporations to censor the Internet unless you tell them no,’ and then have an option to leave a phone number to be connected to your elected representative.”
TC: “Among numerous other issues, SOPA and its Senate counterpart, the PROTECT IP Act, would allow copyright holders to easily obtain court orders to stop US payment and ad providers from doing business with foreign sites, force search engines to block links to allegedly infringing sites, and require domain service providers to block domains of allegedly infringing sites from being accessible. Be sure to check out Devin Coldewey’s excellent teardown of SOPA and PROTECT IP for more details on why we and many (but not all) other internet users are opposed.”
Guardian: “Stop Sopa now – The Stop Online Piracy Act will kill online innovation and serve the interests not of ordinary web users but a corporate cartel – America is fond of chiding other nations about freedom of speech in the internet age. Leaders including President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are constantly reminding their global counterparts, especially in places like China, that internet censorship is a detriment to open government and honest self-rule. Yet, the Obama administration has used tactics that smell of censorship, and Congress is making common cause with a corporate cartel that wants to turn the internet into little more than an enhanced form of cable television. … The damage Sopa would cause to existing services is bad enough. But the longer-range damage is literally incalculable, because the legislation is aimed at preventing innovation – and speech – that the cartel can’t control. … Meanwhile, the major media have been essentially silent on the issue. I’m not surprised. Big Media is an ally and member of the copyright cartel – and there may be more than a few people in traditional news organisations who fear the internet more than they worry about stifling speech.”
GigaOM: “The Internet isn’t just pipes; it’s a belief system – Draconian new anti-piracy laws that are being pushed through both the Senate and the House of Representatives are about more than just an academic debate over different legislative methods for fighting copyright infringement. … As the Stop Online Piracy Act – and its cousin the E-Parasite Act – have worked their way through the Senate and the House, a loose coalition of technology companies and open-Internet advocates have come together to oppose the legislation – including companies such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo… The Internet by its nature is – among other things – a giant copyright-infringement machine. Because anyone can grab whatever content they wish and change it, mash it up with other content and instantly republish, it’s hugely frightening and threatening for many media companies and content owners. … That doesn’t mean we should encourage piracy, or deprive content owners of the tools to fight it when it occurs, but the reality is that they have those tools already in the DMCA and other existing legislation. SOPA and the E-Parasite Act aren’t just an expansion of those tools, they would alter the balance of power on the internet in fundamental ways and threaten the openness and freedom that generates a lot of the web’s value, both for businesses and for society as a whole. That’s not a trade we should make lightly, if at all.”
EFF: “This week the House of Representatives opens hearings on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill that EFF – along with a number of prominent organizations and other actors – has opposed loudly and vigorously. – Though the bill would have grave implications on free expression for American Internet users, website owners, and intermediaries, its effects on the international community are even worse. In light of that fact, a coalition of international civil society and human rights groups have penned a letter expressing their opposition to the bill.”
SOPA Letter From Int’l Human Rights Community: “As press freedom and human rights advocates, we write to express our deep concern withH.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). While this is a domestic bill, there are several provisions within SOPA that would have serious implications for international civil and human rights which raise concerns about how the United States is approaching global internetgovernance. … Through SOPA, the United States is attempting to dominate a shared global resource. … SOPA puts the interests of rightsholders ahead of the rights of society. … Censoring the internet is the wrong approach to protecting any sectoral interest in business. By adopting SOPA, the United States would lose its position as a global leader in supporting a free and open Internet for public good. – The international civil and human rights community urges Congress to reject the Stop Online Privacy Act.”
GigaOM: “What the web is saying about SOPA – We’ve gathered a sample from various sources to help readers get a feel for the comments out there and see the big picture. Happy reading.”
Gerrit Eicker
Chime.in
UberMedia starts its own social network: Chime.in, a Twitter, Digg, Reddit, Facebook clone; http://eicker.at/Chimein
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Gerrit Eicker
VB: UberMedia CEO Bill Gross isn’t dodging the fact that his latest app, Chime.in, is a patchwork of other successful apps. – ‘It’s an amalgam of blogging and Reddit and Facebook – there’s aspects of each in there,‘ he told VentureBeat in a phone interview last week. – ‘We’re definitely borrowing those good ideas. But this is a deeper dive into their interests and intelligent conversations around [users’] passions.‘ – The Chime.in site will launch tomorrow, but the app is available now in the iTunes App Store. – As Gross mentioned, it has a lot in common with other social media tools. It gives users and brand-oriented publishers a public, online forum for sharing text and picture updates, just like Twitter. You can also share videos and polls, just like on Facebook.”
TC: “A tipster informs us that UberMedia, the company behind social networking apps like Echofon and UberSocial / Twidroyd, has unintentionally pushed its new iPhone application onto the App Store… This is plausible, because the Chime.in website isn’t accessible yet at the time of writing, although the support pages appear to be live already. – So is Chime.in the oft-rumored challenger to Twitter, which UberMedia has had run-ins with in the past? UberMedia has always denied that it had plans to launch a competing social network, so it’s a question worth asking. And the answer is no, not really. – Chime.in is described on the support pages as an online and mobile network organized around interests, or an ‘interest network’ to keep it brief. Still according to the support pages, Chime.in was ‘was created for people who are active in social media and looking for a way to engage in conversations and more deeply interact with content related to their interests’. … ‘All other social networks are all about connecting with people. Chime.in is about connecting with interests and people – it’s an interest network. It lets you tailor the content you see and search for to the topics you care about, so you aren’t bogged down sorting through posts you aren’t interested in.'”
GigaOM: “Bill Gross wants to take on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ – [H]e is launching a content-focused social network called Chime.in that will compete not just with Google’s new social platform Google+ but with Twitter and Facebook too, and link-sharing sites like Reddit and Digg as well. Does the world need another social platform for sharing content? Gross says that it does, and that his connections with content companies will help Chime.in succeed – but the odds are stacked against him. … Chime.in may not be a direct competitor to Twitter, but it is clearly a shot across the bow. According to the support pages for the service [which have since been taken offline], it will allow users to post to Twitter or Facebook or Google+ as well as to the Chime.in network, and is therefore not competitive but ‘additive to the ecosystem.’ … [T]he biggest hurdle for Chime.in is the simple fact that Facebook now has 800 million users and Twitter has 200 million or so, with Google+ in the 50 million range. Useful features aren’t always enough for a social network to flourish, especially when there is so much competition. In the end, even if you build it they might not come.”
ATD: “Serial entrepreneur Bill Gross’s latest effort is called Chime.in, a social platform for writing about and discussing common interests. What makes it different from other social network and social news sites is that Chime.in wants to pay people for their contributions. … Gross argued that the Chime.in community will police itself against gamers and crappy content – the kind of stuff that’s plagued sites like Digg and content farms like Demand Media – because users won’t recommend Chimes they don’t like. – ‘The breakthrough that’s happened is if you let people have the flexibility to share, they’ll get the message to the right people and do the dirty work for you,’ Gross said.
Gerrit Eicker
Interest Graph
The interest graph: spanning serendipity vs. search, personalised vs. popular information/news; http://eicker.at/InterestGraph
Gerrit Eicker
Curation
Why search fails and why curation probably returns as a new foundation for a new algorithmic search; http://eicker.at/Curation
Gerrit Eicker
WordPress.com Goes Social
WordPress.com added Zemanta, Jabber, subscriptions and social sharing via Facebook, Twitter, others; http://j.mp/buZXJg
Gerrit Eicker
Referral Traffic Sources
What are the top referral traffic sources from search, social networks, bookmarking, and media? http://j.mp/d8nq7R
Gerrit Eicker
PostRank: Social Engagement Metrics
Get social engagement metrics for any web site over the last 30 days with PostRank Analytics Tour; http://j.mp/5uaqCF
Gerrit Eicker 16:30 on 1. February 2012 Permalink |
Shareaholic: “Welcome to Shareaholic’s Referral Traffic Report. According to our findings based on aggregated data from more than 200,000 publishers that reach more than 260 million unique monthly visitors each month, Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google Plus, LinkedIn and YouTube combined. … Pinterest grew from 2.5% of referral traffic in December to 3.6% of the referrals in January. That’s impressive growth from just owning .17% of the traffic back in July. … Referral traffic from Google+ dropped slightly in January, although Google’s product set (Google news, Google images, Gmail) continues to be a top referral source. Google continues to integrate Google+ into its offering more and more, so it will be an interesting trend to watch. … Eyeing its IPO this week, Facebook continues to dominate referral traffic, with mobile traffic alone accounting for 4.3% of overall referrals. Referral traffic grew by about 1% in January, making it the second fastest-growing site for referral traffic after Pinterest.”
GigaOM: “Not surprisingly, Facebook is holding steady at the top of Shareaholic’s survey, as it was responsible for more than a quarter of all referral traffic in January. Next in line was StumbleUpon, with 5.07 percent. It bears mention that while the Shareaholic survey is global, in the United States market alone StumbleUpon has in the past unseated Facebook as a top driver of referral traffic. – It’s exciting to see a relative newcomer growing so quickly in the web space. While the web’s more established companies are quite powerful these days, the fact that a startup like Pinterest has successfully established its own foothold shows that the competitive landscape is still alive and mainstream users are open to trying things from new players.”
Solis: “Many consumer brands are also experimenting with Pinterest, using pinboards to present complementary products, ideas, and imagery to inspire consumers to visualize and remix new possibilities. From fashion to interior design and home to retail to entertainment, brands are using Pinterest to thoughtfully assemble a curated lifestyle. And, they’re packaged for the social and mobile web and optimized for driving actions as part Facebook’s new frictionless sharing ecosystem.”
RWW: “Among many Pinterest users, as well as several artists who have had work pinned on the site, a code for giving proper credit is developing. Artist Laura C. George said Pinterest has no way of knowing if links tied to images link back to the original artists’ Web site, but so far Pinterest users have been better about giving credit than Tumblr.”