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TC Cribs: Hunting “Evil” at Baidu (TCTV)

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:00:45 +0000

Baidu is one of the most known of the Chinese Internet giants. Some of the buzz is admiration for Robin Li, one of the pioneers of the Chinese Web scene who built a global giant that succeeded in a political environment where Google cried “uncle.” Others have painted Baidu as the mirror image of Google’s lofty “do no evil” credo. So on our recent trip to Beijing, we decided to take our cameras to the search giant’s massive headquarters– which spans more than one million square feet– to see if we could find any torture chambers. Big thanks to our gracious host and good sport, Baidu spokesperson Kaiser Kuo.

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TC Cribs: Hunting “Evil” at Baidu (TCTV)

LivingSocial Now Testing Food Delivery & “Room Service”

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:58:34 +0000

LivingSocial is now testing a new food ordering and delivery service as a part of LivingSocial Instant , the company announced this morning. At launch, members in the Washington D.C. area can now order food from select area restaurants and have the meals delivered to their home or workplace. In conjunction with the restaurant delivery service, the company is also launching something called “LivingSocial Room Service,” which will offer “white glove delivery” from top restaurants, with special amenities and personal touches, like those you would find at a nice hotel. The standard food delivery option offers the ability to order from over 70 D.C. area restaurants, including Wisey’s, Chix, Sala Thai and Shawafel. The restaurants will be able to utilize LivingSocial’s marketing tools in order to link their Daily Deals to LivingSocial Instant, the company explains. For example, a restaurant whose daily deal voucher was offered on a Wednesday can become immediately redeemable on Thursday via the new delivery service. The company also hopes it will entice new customers to join LivingSocial for the food delivery option, and then return for the daily deals. As for the fancier LivingSocial Room Service, this option will include “high-quality tableware, dining accessories, top-shelf presentation of food and a special after-dinner treat.” (Let’s hope they mean dessert.) Unlike Instant Ordering, Room Service will only be available downtown on Thursday and Friday nights and will feature one restaurant per week. The prix fixe menu will change based upon each chef’s expertise and specialities, as it would if you were dining out at the restaurant that night. Both services are online now for D.C. residents at livingsocial.com/instant . To order, just input your current location and preference (pickup, delivery or dine in).

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LivingSocial Now Testing Food Delivery & “Room Service”

How Hashtagging the Web Could Improve Our Collective Intelligence

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 16:25:47 +0000

Laura Larsell is the information ontologist at Trapit , a content discovery, personalization and curation platform currently in beta. Laura holds an M.A. in library sciences from the University of Texas at Austin. I rolled my eyes when the Library of Congress announced in the spring of 2010 that it would be archiving Twitter . Great, I thought — drunken tweets about burritos preserved for eternal posterity. But the Library of Congress, as it turns out, was more forward thinking than I could have imagined. Twitter data, presumed to represent the pulse — and sometimes the future — of popular consciousness, now commands big bucks from hedge funds that in turn use Twitter data to make investment predictions. Even scientists are tapping into Twitter data for research purposes . Why all the fuss over tweets? Twitter hosts valuable, communal conversation in real-time. And Twitter trends become more powerful the more users contribute to the dialogue. Finally, Twitter allows the chatter of millions to be parsed into channels (hashtags) of real-time conversation that covers widely varying topics. Jokes, rumors, political movements, pop culture fanaticisms, the collective screaming of teenagers — they all bubble to the surface and shift and change like an oil slick, much like a collective human consciousness. While Twitter generates mass interest and curates collective thought, until usage stats rise significantly, its trends cannot represent the true pulse of world conversation. That needs to change. Applying Twitter Logic to the Web Twitter captures an admittedly small slice of the collective world consciousness — in the U.S. only 78.2% of households have access to the Internet, and only 13% of online Americans actively use Twitter . It is also a platform as much about stats and bot spammers as it is about honest conversation. Despite the clutter, Twitter continues to generate an abundance of sociologically interesting data every day. Researchers from Cornell University recently used Twitter data to look for and examine trends in mood over time. They determined that collective mood patterns fluctuate in predictable ways over the course of the day and year. While this conclusion may seem obvious, before Twitter came along, documenting this type of pattern would have required a massive survey and multiple studies. One thing that makes Twitter so powerful is its use of a standard language: hashtags. Any hashtagged tweet is automatically linked to every other tweet that shares the same tag. This allows for consistent dialogue and measurement. However, the Internet as a whole is not a very consistent medium. Patterns emerge in specific areas of the web, but no uniform underlying structure exists to merge these patterns. Content may go viral or score a high page rank, but it doesn’t easily connect to related topics or encourage a larger conversation. It is a frustrating vestige of print culture that my web curation should be limited by my search ability. Furthermore, what happens to long form digital conversation in the era of Twitter? Consider especially that long form conversations include more invested and potentially expert perspectives. These perspectives are different from the collective consciousness, and yet, are not easily parsed into mainstream channels. The Watermelon Story A big part of what I do every day is train an algorithm to tag documents in the manner of my choosing. The software is in beta, and is presently only culling from a selection of web content, but it does pretty well with simple concepts. Early on, I set the machine to find content relevant to the subject/tag “watermelon.” It’s a limited data set, but this is what I’ve found so far: People write about watermelons consistently throughout the summer, most frequently in mid-summer. Again, this may seem an obvious conclusion, but proving it would have taken an incredible amount of time and effort on my part. So what do people write about watermelons online? Recipes involving or featuring watermelons are by far the most popular watermelon content, and the most popular serving suggestions feature various kinds of boozy drinks and popsicles. The second most popular posts are how-tos that guide readers through the watermelon selection process (knock on it, listen for the right sound). More niche discussions about watermelon include analyses of racial stereotypes , a story about Palestinian prisoners’ daily fruit allowance , and a report on a new variety of cold weather watermelon grown in Turkey. What conclusions can we draw from this sampling of watermelon content? Over time I’ll be able to draw quantitative conclusions about the state of watermelon journalism on the web. Watermelon may not be aggregated often (there are no watermelon sections of the newspaper), however, the ability to easily track more important ideas involving watermelon (like racial stereotypes) over time could prove illuminating. Content Organization = Collective Knowledge Twitter can gather direct, mass conversation into subject categories like #watermelon, but the conversation is limited by the short form nature of the platform. If longer form methods of online communication could be aggregated into a similar form of direct conversation, it would serve both spectators and authors alike. For that to happen, citation must be standardized. Current citation methods like hashtags are rarely, if ever, exhaustive, and they often take on the subjective viewpoint of the author or sharer. Imagine the level of constructive debate and creativity that we might achieve when we organize and bucket all web content into Twitter-like categories. Imagine the kinds of things we might learn about our collective culture. Images courtesy of Flickr, misspixels , D Sharon Pruitt More About: algorithm , content curation , contributor , data , features , trending , Twitter , web

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How Hashtagging the Web Could Improve Our Collective Intelligence

5 Google Paid Search Products You Need to Know

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 01:31:26 +0000

For many digital marketers, the fall of 2011 might be remembered for bringing dynamic advertising to paid search. Google’s newest offering, said to flip “the search engine on its head,” does away with the traditional keyword advertising approach in lieu of matching landing pages with the right user search. Dynamic Search Ads is just one of dozens of innovations Google has made to its AdWords product over the past few years. Google paid search has evolved to include everything from video to coupons and a call feature, all in the name of improving advertiser results. Not every Google product is a good fit for every advertiser – in fact, some of its offerings aren’t even available to the masses yet. But Google is nothing if not progressive, and for this reason many of them warrant a closer look. Google Image Search. Instead of advertising exclusively on Google’s web results page, this product allows brands to place their listings next to Google Images. Typically, this approach is best suited to those who’ve noted a distinct benefit to presenting consumers with a product image up front. The campaign is set up through AdWords, except that instead of uploading ad copy alone, the advertiser also submits an image that will precede the organic image search results on the page. Google Media Ads. Previously known as Google Video Plus Box, this program was initially tested in beta with advertisers ranging from automotive to CPG. A box beneath a standard search ad would display a web-only video such as an instructional product clip, and advertisers would pay the equivalent of their cost-per-click text ad bid when the video hit the 10-second mark. The unit has since morphed into Google Media Ads and is open only to the entertainment vertical (at least, so far). Google Product Ads/Extensions. Similar to the video extension, this unit allows brands to include additional promotional material in their text ads. The ad pulls information from an advertiser’s existing Google Merchant Center account and can include anything from images to business center maps, product titles, detailed descriptions, and prices. Brands can promote their entire product inventory through paid search and, in theory, generate more qualified clicks because they’re providing the user with more product information up front. Google Redemption Ads/Offer Extensions. Through this program, brands can deliver a coupon directly to search engine users from their paid search ads. Several user options exist, including having the coupon emailed to a desktop or texted to a mobile phone – they can even be saved to a user’s Google Wallet. Redemption options, too, are varied: depending on what the brand is looking for, consumers can redeem in store, online, or by mail. Google Call Extensions/Metrics. When generating phone calls is a campaign priority, Google’s call feature can help. Advertisers include in their paid search ad a unique toll-free number provided by Google that links to the marketing client’s existing phone number. Advertisers can then track which AdWords campaigns their calls are coming from, along with the duration of the calls and the caller’s area code, through their existing Google account. Google Sitelinks. One of the most useful of Google’s newer products, Sitelinks affords the ability to include up to six additional links in your AdWords text ad. This gives brands complete and immediate control over the pages, products, and messaging they wish to promote. Considering the length of time it can take for Google to re-index a site, and the urgency of updating ad copy and Sitelinks for such events as new product line launches, this can be a critical advantage. “You’re giving the user seven links to choose from and letting them select exactly where they want to go,” says Nathan Lewalski, one of Enlighten’s senior interactive media planners, “but you’re also gaining a competitive advantage by owning more real estate on the results page.” Click-through rates on these ads tend to be higher because users instantly know what to expect from a site. “Without paid search,” Nathan says, “it’s unlikely the user would see a brand’s newest messaging or get sent directly to new pages in time.” Google is infamous for experimenting with its AdWords products (not to mention giving them countless different names). The advantage for advertisers is a glut of program options and a fresh take on how to supercharge those two little lines of text. Take some time to learn what’s new in Google Ad Innovations . The company’s next unit could be the one you’ve been waiting for. Image courtesy of iStockphoto , hillaryfox More About: Advertising , Google , Marketing , mashable , Search For more Business coverage: Follow Mashable Business on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Business channel Download our free apps for Android , Mac , iPhone and iPad

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5 Google Paid Search Products You Need to Know

How Citizen Journalism Is Reshaping Media and Democracy

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 01:02:08 +0000

Layla Revis is vice president of digital influence at Ogilvy PR Worldwide . Her specialties include international affairs, tourism and multicultural marketing. “So long as the dominant culture’s images of the world continue to be sold to others as the image of the world, image makers are being unethical.” — Jay Ruby The global media market is dominated by roughly nine or ten transnational corporations: General Electric, AT&T/Liberty Media, Disney, Time Warner, Sony, News Corporation, Viacom, Seagram and Bertelsmann. However, with the advent of social media and blogging, the role of the citizen journalist is becoming more valuable than ever. He has the opportunity to present a unique perspective — to breathe fresh air into a society herded by mainstream media. The citizen journalist provides invaluable information that can democratize media, as well as nations. For instance, the arrest of 29-year-old Egyptian blogger Alaa Abd El Fattah of Manalaa.net prompted Cairo activists to demand his release . Working with 14 other clandestine reporters in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, citizen journalist Ryan Boyette and his colleagues have been documenting Sudanese government atrocities by gathering testimonies, photos and video from survivors and eyewitnesses. The team often includes GPS coordinates that locate the attacks, which they transmit to organizations like the Enough Project and Satellite Sentinel Project via solar-powered laptops and satellite phones. When asked about his work, Boyette communicated his frustration with the lack of global attention the Sudanese crisis had been receiving. The Enough Project explains, “Boyette said he was translating the testimony of an elderly man who had fled the fighting when he realized he needed to bring the stories directly to influentials in the United States.” These citizen journalists fight to create a well-informed public in which media also serves as moral education. This philosophy radically departs from mainstream journalism, an overarching goal of which is to sell its product. Citizen journalism, on the other hand, allows marginalized people to reclaim their voices, to tell their otherwise silenced stories firsthand. With the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street movements, we’ve already seen the ability of digital media to democratize. Twitter and mobile technology have allowed citizen journalists to more effectively broadcast the consequences of a repressive Iranian regime – even when major news outlets were blocked. And user-generated images of Abu Ghraib prison allowed a wider public to view immediate content in the palm of its hand. Charlie Beckett, founding director of Polis, the London School of Economics and Political Science’s forum for international journalism debate, explains, “[Networked Journalism] may contribute to the reformation of the global public sphere by connecting with the world beyond the newsroom…and by transforming the power relationship between media and the public [to reformulate] the means of journalistic production.” As traditional newsrooms become more constrained by time and resources, the advent of user-generated content on the web can only strengthen journalism. For example, media offshoots like BBC’s User-Generated Content Hub , Reuter’s partnership with blogging network Global Voices , and sites like PJ Media can significantly lower operating costs. On Reuters’ Africa website, bloggers contribute first-hand perspectives, giving Africans a chance to speak for themselves through a blog linked directly with a mainstream media network. Such online tools not only allow citizens to feel increasingly connected to their communities, but they also provide the opportunity for more balanced reporting. Of course, readers must be able to trust their citizen reporters. Beckett notes, “They are not usually in it for the money…Untrustworthy or irrelevant bloggers tend to get ignored.” However, there’s always the question whether networked journalism will eventually eliminate the role of the practiced journalist. In that case, consider a certification process that would maintain ethical standards of practice and promote self-regulation, net neutrality and accuracy. The main takeaway is that citizen journalists act as another check and balance to the mainstream press. Sociologist Michael Schudson explains, “When minorities and women and people who have known poverty and misfortune first-hand are authors of news, as well as its readers, the social world represented in the news expands and changes.” The ultimate question is: How will global media conglomerates handle this change? One thing is certain — systematic online migrations and newsroom layoffs are prompting fast change. As media outlets and technology shift to include the citizen reporter, readers will adapt and – hopefully – welcome the fresh voice of democracy. Image courtesy of iStockphoto , jcarillet , Flickr , S a l e e m – H o m s i More About: blogging , citizen journalism , contributor , features , journalism , Media For more Media coverage: Follow Mashable Media on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Media channel Download our free apps for Android , Mac , iPhone and iPad

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How Citizen Journalism Is Reshaping Media and Democracy

Visually Beautiful Recipe Curation Site Gojee Adds Drinks To The Mix

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 20:00:14 +0000

Foodie favorite Gojee , which curates recipes from food bloggers around the web in a visually beautiful way, is branching out today to beverages, and will offer drink recipes (including both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks). As we wrote in our earlier review of the site, Gojee lets you search for recipes by ingredient, either via ‘cravings’ or by one ingredient you have in your pantry. You can also input your dislikes or allergies and Gojee will make sure to surface recipes without these ingredients. If you has leftover beets in your pantry, you that query and Gojee will show youa ll the recipes that include that ingredient from the many food blogs it curates data from. The site presents a beautiful image of the food along with a list of what else is included in the dish, a short description of the dish, and a link to the full recipe on the food blog. You can also star the recipe to save it to your favorites. Similar to the way you search for food recipe, you can enter mixers, liquor, etc. in the search box and Gojee will show you drink recipes with those ingredients included. The startup is working with 50 of the best bloggers, bartenders, and drink aficionados to curate beverage recipes. As Gojee explains, the recipes curated are for innovative, high-quality drinks. Gojee recently raised $1.2 million in funding.

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Visually Beautiful Recipe Curation Site Gojee Adds Drinks To The Mix

Identified, The Search Engine For Professionals, Opens Public Access To Its 50 Million Rankings

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 14:00:26 +0000

With an enormous professional social network consisting of over 100 million users, LinkedIn is undoubtedly a great business — and a valuable service. Of course, the problem with LinkedIn and other professional networking and job platforms is that there’s a lack of real conversation between individuals and businesses. Hands down, businesses are looking to hire great talent, but they want more robust ways to find the most relative candidates for their open positions and job seekers want better tools to find the top ranked companies that are relevant to their backgrounds, what those companies are looking for in candidates — and they want feedback. In September, two Stanford Business School, grads Brendan Wallace and Adeyemi Ajao, launched the beta build of Identified , a professional job search engine built on Facebook data that looks to take on LinkedIn and BranchOut (among others) in an effort to give job seekers and companies a better way to connect and find talent. The main feature of Identified is its so-called “Identified Score”, which assign a numerical rank (out of 100) to professionals based on their work history, education history and social network. Wallace and Ajao call these rankings “Google Page Rank for people”; just as the search giant ranks websites based on their relevance to certain search terms, Identified uses its scores to do just that with professionals. The ranking is a proxy for relevance, so based on a user’s most up-to-date background information, they will show up in searches for categories that are relevant to their most recent jobs, etc. Working with metadata from Facebook, Identified has already created listings for more than 50 million people, although only 150K of those people are active monthly users. But that’s just in six weeks since the launch of its beta. Already, tens of thousands of people are accessing Identified Scores each day to evaluate professionals for recruiting, sales, networking, background checks, and more. What’s more, over 1.8 million scores have been viewed to date, and Wallace says that thousands of companies have already requested access to these scores to pre-screen candidates for recruiting. But the real value here, Wallace said, is that the average age of the Identified user is 24, and over 90 percent of its users are under the age of 30. With companies vying, categorically, to hire the best young talent, Identified offers businesses an easy, score-based (and relevance-based search) method of finding that talent. Today, Identified is officially launching out of its public beta, and will now be offering free and open access (for both companies and the public) to the scores of those 50 million-odd professionals. This means that all Identified Scores are now public and will be searchable and accessible to anyone on the Web (and will pop up in Google searches) — companies included. Privacy settings will be included, thankfully. And to that point, Identified also offers scores for over 60,000 companies and more than 8,000 universities, and Wallace said that many of the early signups the company has seen have come from employees wanting to add more relevant information to the listings of their company or university to up their scores. It’s this kind of gamification that can be a huge legup for Identified. As Identified Scores go up based on interest from other users or companies (by way of number of views, clicks, and actual hires), the more one adds to their profile, the higher the likelihood becomes that their score will go up, presumably based on their being placed higher in search rankings. Wallace believes that this “the more you add, the higher you’re ranked”, gamified approach presents a higher degree of opportunity for engagement among users, as interaction with their rankings have real world, and career implications. Of course, having made their scores public so that anyone can now view the scores of 50 million people, there’s some potential here for controversy, but Identified has built in controls so that non-Identified users can only view those profiles of companies and individuals that are registered users. Yet, the other question for Identified’s ranking system is: What if you didn’t go to an Ivy League school, but you’re still an awesome engineer, for example? Since the point of building its platform on top of Facebook data is to allow people to create networks around the friends and associates they actually interact with (and count as “Friends” on Facebook), if a user shows impressive career history and strong connections/relationships to top engineers, then not having gone to a “top school” becomes less relevant. Of course, Identified Scores are not meant to be reflective of a person’s “actual worth” — just because you have a “65″ and your friend has an “80″, doesn’t necessarily mean that your friend is a better person, is smarter, etc. In a sense, the company’s scores are like stock prices, in that they don’t necessarily reflect one’s true inherent value, they are based on relevant criteria — in this case to search terms. The scores aren’t perfect. Even so, Identified adds a level of transparency to the labor market and opens a channel of communication between companies and professionals that has been incomplete to date. Being able to see how “in demand” you are based on your professional history, which companies are looking for employees like you, and how, in turn, you can make yourself more attractive to employers — is a valuable step forward for the professional networking space. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s a step in the right direction. Whether or not Identified becomes a potential target for acquisition by LinkedIn or just a flat out competitor remains to be seen. But, according to Wallace, they’ve seen that some recognizable names at LinkedIn have been checking out the site. And investors are certainly interested, as the startup has already raised $5.5 million from Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, Bill and Tim Draper, former Facebook VP Chamath Palihapitiya, Farmville Founder Zao Yang, among others. For more on Identified, check ‘em out here , or see Robin’s initial coverage here .

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Identified, The Search Engine For Professionals, Opens Public Access To Its 50 Million Rankings

Recipe Search & Sharing Service Foodily Arrives On iPhone

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:55:09 +0000

Recipe search engine Foodily is arriving on mobile today, with an all-new iPhone application that will allow users to search recipes while on the go, see what recipes their friends have liked and share their own recommendations via photos snapped with the iPhone’s camera. In addition to the social features, the app provides mobile access to Foodily’s recipe search engine, so you can find the ingredients you need for a dish while you’re out and about. There’s a little bit of a Foodspotting feel to the new Foodily iPhone app, as it also lets you snap and share photos of delicious creations and share them with friends. Recipes and photos can be shared directly to Foodily’s website as well as to your wider social network via the app’s Facebook integration, which takes full advantage of the new “Open Graph” features introduced at F8. But while Foodspotting is about finding and sharing great dishes at local restaurants, Foodily’s photo-taking feature is about sharing dishes you’ve created yourself. It’s not just about bragging, though. The photos you take via Foodily are actually attached to the recipe online, so people can see how it actually turned out. There’s even a so-called “Yummify” feature that enhances mobile photos so they appear more like high-quality pics when shared on the network. (Specifically, the app increases the contrast optimizing for white point, sharpens the image and increases the color saturation, if you must know). To discover new recipes, there’s the Foodily recipe search engine which supports email, in case you need to remind yourself, a friend or family member about the ingredients you’ll need to buy later on. Although there are plenty of competitors in the recipe search space, Foodily has some momentum, having already raised $5 million from Index Ventures . The service was founded by former Yahoo’ers (Yahooligans?) Andrea Cutright and Hillary Mickell.

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Recipe Search & Sharing Service Foodily Arrives On iPhone

How Google+ Could One-Up Facebook’s Brand Pages

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:05:09 +0000

Google today launched the first iteration of its brand Pages product for Google+. The company has some big choices to make about how it will flesh out this skeleton to challenge the Pages product Facebook has had years to work on. Still, comparing the two visions of brand presences now can give us a sense of what might be next on the product roadmap for Google+ Pages, and the opportunities Google has to exploit weaknesses stemming from Facebook’s need to promote its application platform and draw advertising dollars. Two core ways Google+ could make its Pages better than Facebook’s would be letting brands target updates to demographic subsets of their followers, and providing official app templates that let brands easily assemble their own custom apps rather than going through third-party developers. Page Set Up Over the next few days Google plans to give all users the ability to create Pages. The rollout is a bit of a mess now, though, as every existing Page features a “Create a Google+ Page” link that abruptly roadblocks some users with a notice that they can’t actually do that yet. Similar to Facebook, Google currently offers a few overarching types of Pages that break down into many sub-categories, according to Search Engine Land . Both include a special format for local businesses that allows them to list information like an address and phone number. Facebook provides very little instruction about how to choose the right category and how that choice will impact functionality. A better in-line Page creation tutorial could keep brands on Google+ from worrying they’ve screwed up their crucial first steps. Google+ Pages lack custom vanity URLs, though you can assume that’s coming. Multiple admin support is reportedly on its way. The option to assign different roles and privileges for admins such as the ability to publish updates or remove other admins could make Google+ Pages more secure and easier for teams to manage. Following and Publishing As Jason Kincaid points out in his article on the launch of Pages (linked above), Google confusingly lets users both add a Page to their circles, or +1 it. The former means a user will start seeing the Page’s updates in its main stream and the stream of any circle they add the Page to, while the latter lets users share a link to the Page. Google will need to make following a Page an obvious and straightforward experience if it wants Pages to gain enough followers for brands to invest resource in publishing through them. A great feature of Google+ Pages is Direct Connect, which lets users add a Page to their circles by searching +[brand name] on Google. This takes significantly less work than having to visit a Facebook Page in order to Like it. Direct Connect also builds on Google’s dominance in search — something it should exploit in other areas such as email and maps to differentiate its social network. Another big potential advantage of Google+ Pages is that they can create their own circles which can then be selected as the audience of a post. Currently Google creates “VIPs”, “Customers”, and “Team members” circles that admins can populate. If Google provides an efficient and accurate way to sort followers into circles by age, location, and other characteristics, Pages could publish different updates to different demographic subsets of their audience to maximize the relevancy of those updates. For example, if retailer Macy’s could publish updates to a circle of all their followers under the age of 30, it could serve its younger audience updates about more youthful products without annoying its older followers. Similarly, rather than creating separate Google+ Pages for their presences in different cities, brands could publish city-targeted updates about local promotions. Facebook currently only allows Pages to target posts by country and language, preventing age or more granular location targeting. Google+ users can comment on the posts of Pages but can’t post directly to the wall of a Page. They can mention a Page in one of their own updates by typing a ‘+’ directly before its name, but this won’t appear on the Page the way Facebook mentions do. The ability to post questions and feedback to their walls and have discussions with admins and other fans is leading Facebook Pages to become a new customer service channel that brands can’t afford to ignore. Google+ should think carefully about how much of a two-way communication medium it wants Pages to be. As of right now, there appears to be no sign of analytics for Google+ Page admins. Being able measure engagement with posts and Page growth is critical to brands justifying allocation of resources to Google+, so it will need its own version of Facebook Page Insights at some point. This decision to keep Page performance opaque for now could be to keep brands from writing off the new social network before Google thinks it has attained a sufficient number of users. Hosted Applications In addition to news feed posts, a key driver of engagement and new fans for Facebook Pages is the ability to host applications. Pages use these apps to create landing pages that encourage Likes, sign-up forms for email and mobile marketing, contests and sweepstakes, games, and ecommerce storefronts. However, to create these apps, Page admins have to find solutions from third-party developers, and in some cases have to license Page management platforms to offer the apps they want. Google has a chance to make Page applications more accessible to all businesses by creating official templates that can be customized with the images, copy, and functionality desired by brands. Rather than forcing admins to choose between apps built by unknown third-parties, it could give them free templates they can trust to work. This would also allow Google+ to offer Page apps without first having to create a robust set of APIs to support them. Facebook has forged a functional model for brand presences on social networks. Unfortunately, its focus on app developers and its desire to get brands advertising in order to target specific demographics has left Google some big opportunities to create a friendlier platform for brands. By adding app templates and granular Page update targeting it could convince brands that Google+ could be a powerful, free, and easy-to-adopt component of their digital marketing strategy. Crunchbase GOOGLE FACEBOOK Company: Google Website: google.com Launch Date: July 9, 1998 IPO: NASDAQ:GOOG Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information…. Learn more Company: Facebook Website: facebook.com Launch Date: January 2, 2004 Funding: $2.34B Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original idea for the term… Learn more

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How Google+ Could One-Up Facebook’s Brand Pages

Alien Invasion Not Imminent, White House Says

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:17:13 +0000

Well, perhaps not an invasion , but the White House has issued an official statement saying that there is no evidence that life exists outside of Earth. The statement came in response to two petitions on We The People, the White House’s experiment in crowdsourced petitioning and public opinion. Any petition that gains at least 25,000 signatures will be passed along to a top policymaker for a response. The petitions asked the White House to “ formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race” and to “ immediately disclose the government’s knowledge of and communications with extraterrestrial beings.” Both petitions claim that extraterrestrials exist on Earth and that the government has gone to lengths to hide this information. The White House, though, says: The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye. The combined signatures don’t add up to 25,000, so it’s odd the White House would respond to this petition instead of others on the platform. Here are some pros and cons of the decision . Pro : Despite the seemingly outlandish petition, the White House responded with a respectful and fairly lengthy response penned by Phil Larson, who works in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In it, Larson says that while aliens aren’t on Earth, “that doesn’t mean the subject of life outside our planet isn’t being discussed or explored. In fact, there are a number of projects working toward the goal of understanding if life can or does exist off Earth.” He lists three programs — SETI, the Kepler spacecraft and the Mars Science Laboratory — as examples of the search for life on other planets. Con : The White House chose to answer this petition instead of handling more controversial topics such as those addressing the electoral college , Keystone XL Pipeline or same-sex marriage . Pro : This response is encouraging to the validity of the We The People platform. No matter the petition, if it receives enough popular support, the White House will take it into consideration and respond. Con : Occupy Wall Street is picking up speed and influence. The 2012 election is top of mind. The job market is still dismal, and there are tensions running across political and economic divides. While space exploration is certainly an important element of the U.S.’s tech history, the decision to handle this petition, titled “Searching for ET, But No Evidence Yet,” seems like a case of bad timing especially since it has fewer than 25,000 signatures. Now it’s your turn: Did the White House make the right decision by responding to this alien inquiry? And are your Area 51 beliefs crushed, or do you still hold out hope for alien life? BONUS: Our Favorite YouTube Videos: The Space Edition Space Jam Trailer Adam Ostrow: Space Jam , an essential movie in the sports star meets cartoon character meets outer space genre. Click here to view this gallery. Image courtesy of Flickr, Markusram More About: crowdsourced , government , obama , White House