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| Charting the CES Chatter, Friday Edition [INFOGRAPHIC] | | Friday, January 13, 2012 11:33 PM | Sam Laird |
|  What were the hottest brands, trends and topics on Thursday's penultimate day of CES 2012? People couldn't stop buzzing about Motorola for the second consecutive day. OLED display technology and tablet devices are still popular, but ultrabook laptops faded in the conversation as audio and gaming technology surged. And people shared more CES-related video than ever. All this comes to us via Twitter this week in Las Vegas, provided by Simply Measured analytics. Click here for our report from Thursday, here for our report from Wednesday and here for our report from Tuesday. Check back this weekend for a comprehensive breakdown of CES Twitter buzz as a whole. How Did Thursday's Twitter Chatter Compare to Last Year? As on the previous two days, overall Twitter talk tagged #CES showed the same general trend in 2012 as 2011, but with people tweeting at a higher rate this year. On Thursday both years, the Twitter action started slow in the wee hours before ramping up to peak in the late morning and then gradually ebb as the afternoon wore on. (Note on graphics: CES officially runs Tuesday through Friday, so Monday is referred to as "Day 0," Tuesday is referred to as "Day 1," Wednesday is referred to as "Day 2" and Thursday is referred to as "Day 3.") Thursday's Biggest Brands Motorola dominated the #CES-tagged conversation on Thursday, and peaked quite early in the day. The company has been very successful in creating buzz this year, largely on the heels of its announcement that it has agreed on a multi-year deal to create a series of Intel-based phones and tablets. No one came close to matching Motorola on Thursday, although Samsung did see a modest jump around late morning. The Hottest Trends Audio technology enjoyed a big Thursday, becoming the most mentioned tech trend for its first time this week. OLED display technology has remained steady all week, although Thursday represented its least noteworthy day so far. Meanwhile, slim ultrabook laptops have faded in relation to tablet devices over the course of CES 2012. Could this portend ultrabooks' ability to compete against tablets? Thursday's Most Popular Domains People shared more video than ever on Thursday, with YouTube becoming the top-tweeted domain name for the first time this week. As usual, the list of most-tweeted domains was heavily dominated by tech news and social sharing sites. Twitter has remained strong all week and hovered near the top of the chart again on Thursday, while Facebook had another slow day following a solid start to the week. Who Are the Overall Brand Leaders? Microsoft and Motorola are now tied for the largest share of #CES-tagged tweets, but are traveling on opposite trajectories. Microsoft grabbed a whopping 12% of the conversation on Monday, when CEO Steve Ballmer gave a highly anticipated keynote address, but has trended downward since. Motorola started slow but has increased in percentage each day. But Microsoft has gotten more value per tweet, as people who mention the Seattle company have an average of 6,605 followers. That doesn't measure up to Google, though; its mentioners average more than 13,000 followers each. But enough from us. What does this data tell you? Let us know in the comments. |
| Why Companies Need to Iterate Based on User Feedback | | Friday, January 13, 2012 9:40 PM | Ryan Martens |
|  Ryan Martens is the founder and CTO of Rally Software, which provides agile application lifecycle management solutions and services to software developers. Rally is Ryan's fourth software startup. Follow him on Twitter @RallyOn. Unfortunately, Twitter and Facebook have become real-time streams of rotten tomato throwing. Just ask Bank of America, which encountered wrath from its Facebook customers when it decided to tack on monthly debit card fees. Or Virgin America, when its site crash and subsequent system failure ignited a blaze of ticked-off fliers. We all know the drill: You're supposed to listen to your customers in social media, engage them authentically, and act like the human you are, not the company you represent. But I'm here to add that engaging with customers after they start using your product isn't enough. You simply can't wait until customers start getting mad and yelling at you online to change your product or strategy. At that point, it's too late. Given the ability to reach customers and prospects via social networks, it's now easier than ever to embrace customers in your product development process. Changing this process may not save you from the inevitable system failures, but it will help you avoid the slip-up phases typically associated with releasing new products or services. Users rule the world now; therefore, businesses must be more responsive by using agile and lean practices. Here are three simple steps to guarantee the development of desirable products and services. 1. Find Your Earlyvangelists Today's smart company asks lots of questions up front. The brand involves its customers in the product development process from the very beginning. Often called the "customer development model," the premise is described by Steven Blank in The Four Steps to the Epiphany. Blank describes earlyvangelists as "a special breed of customers willing to take a risk on your startup's products or service because they can actually envision its potential to solve a critical and immediate problem." 2. Build a Minimum Viable Product Start with bare bones. Put together a product that has the minimum bells and whistles, focusing on the must-have features only. Let your customers try it out and see what they like. Let them tell you what is missing. Let them tell you what is extraneous. Then build what really satisfies that problem, and stop there. When you solve a problem for earlyvangelists, you build a supportive customer base that will promote the product to other visionary customers. You may now consider whether this product is desirable for an even larger market. In the software world, agile and lean software development methodologies leverage fast feedback from customers. Google's product cycle is a pretty classic example of this customer-focused approach. Gmail Labs was designed to tighten the feedback loop between users and developers, so that it could learn quickly what people liked and disliked. It took out the extra step of having to go to a customer support forum or email a representative, and let users communicate directly with developers. This experiment greatly increased the frequency and quality of feedback, which in turn, allowed Google to rapidly improve Gmail and its suite of apps. Eric Ries's book, The Lean Startup goes into these concepts in great detail, explaining how applying a combination of agile customer development methods and lean social media engagement can create a true collection of thinking and acting tools for today's complex world. 3. Release, Iterate and Repeat Once you have a desirable initial product, you can begin to test extension and offers into other markets and user segments. Using tools like KISS Metrics, you can now easily track the conversion metrics based on different offers to different segments before you build. This type of market feedback allows you to bring back "validated learnings" to the product team. It lets you co-develop your market in the most capital-efficient and viral way possible. This is where the value of agile development kicks in. The short growth cycles that adapt to both positive and negative feedback let you steer your product into the segments without wasting precious development cycles. Surprisingly, many companies aren't really embracing customer development yet. Maybe because they're still afraid of what lies beyond company walls. If you have not figured out how to energize or support your customer base in 21st century social networks, then you might be very cautious with customer development. So knock those walls down and begin truly embracing customers and prospects early in your development process. It's clear that users rule, but they need you to make projects affordable and scalable first. Otherwise, be prepared for a social media rotten tomato storm. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Mableen |
| Internet Overuse Could Cause Structural Brain Damage [STUDY] | | Friday, January 13, 2012 9:06 PM | Kate Freeman |
|  Unlike drugs and alcohol, excess Internet usage could help your career, make you more informed and keep you up-to-date with the latest hilarious memes. But a recent (small) study by researchers in China showed that too much Internet usage -- to the point that it's an addiction -- can cause structural damage to your brain. The researchers studied 17 adolescents with Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) and found structural and functional interference in the part of the brain that regulates organization, possibly causing cognitive impairment similar to that caused by gambling and alcoholism. Here's the science behind it: White matter is composed of nerve cells, while the gray matter that we hear so much about is made up of cell bodies. Myelin is a type of fat in the white part (nerve-heavy area) of the brain. This fat insulates the white matter in the brain and makes the transmission speed between nerve signals fast. The researchers took MRI scans of the subjects and used a method called fractional anisotropy (FA), which measures organization in the brain by locating the presence of white matter. The teens in the study who had been diagnosed with Internet addition showed lower FA than the typical teens. However, the study only tested 17 young people with IAD and compared them against 16 healthy control subjects. "Overall, our findings indicate that Internet addiction disorder has abnormal white matter integrity in brain regions involved in emotional generation and processing, executive attention, decision making and cognitive control," write the authors. "The results also suggest that IAD may share psychological and neural mechanisms with other types of substance addiction and impulse control disorders." Internet addiction is not officially recognized as a disorder because it has yet to be classified in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), an encyclopedia of mental and cognitive-related conditions that's a virtual bible for psychologists. But the American Journal of Psychiatry says IAD is common and should be included in the DSM-V, due out May 2013. People struggling with addiction often exhibit the same types of compulsive and impulsive behaviors. Something becomes an addiction when it interferes with daily activities and the person's ability to enjoy life without that thing -- whether drugs, gambling, Internet or some other vice. Some people might joke they're addicted to their smartphone or computer, but there's a difference between a constructive and enjoyable habit, and a real addiction. Are you addicted to the Internet? Take the poll below and read these symptoms from the American Journal of Psychiatry's article about Internet addiction: "All of the variants share the following four components: 1) excessive use, often associated with a loss of sense of time or a neglect of basic drives; 2) withdrawal, including feelings of anger, tension and/or depression when the computer is inaccessible; 3) tolerance, including the need for better computer equipment, more software or more hours of use, and 4) negative repercussions, including arguments, lying, poor achievement, social isolation and fatigue." Are You Addicted to the Internet? Do you think a person can be clinically addicted to the Internet? |
| Intel's Social Cockpit: A Command Center for CES Buzz | | Friday, January 13, 2012 8:30 PM | Meghan Peters |
|  LAS VEGAS -- CES 2012 is likely to be remembered as the most social trade show yet. The products themselves have had a huge focus on connectedness while social chatter around the event has increased significantly since last year. For Intel, a social conversation tracker was a natural fit for the company's booth this year. Dubbed "the Social Cockpit," Intel's tool is an Adobe-Air based desktop application that collects CES buzz on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs and forums. Don't let the name fool you: There's no control yoke or headsets. Rather the analytics tool is projected on screens in a small private room above Intel's main booth area, serving as its team's social command center. The Social Cockpit tracks not just hashtags, but specific topics, products and brands being discussed online. The data is updated each hour to give a sense of who's on top throughout the day as well as a daily report to sum up social conversation, said Aaron Strout of WCG, a communications agency that helped with the project. While much of the data on Intel's dashboard suggests widespread interest in ultrabooks, it also showed that Microsoft, Sony and Samsung were on top throughout the week. Mentions of mobile, specifically Android, were significant as well, Strout said. The Social Cockpit may not be much different from monitoring tools like Radian6 or Chartbeat, but its presence at CES shows tech giants like Intel are committed to social media. These traditionally gadget-focused companies are aiming to gain a deeper understanding of how users engage around not only their brand, but technology in general. The next step? Allowing products to be driven by this social conversation. CES 2013: The social media world awaits you. |
| This Web-Connected Robot Gives Your Tweets and Facebook Comments a Smell | | Friday, January 13, 2012 5:56 PM | Joann Pan |
|  A company has found a way to incorporate smells into the Internet. Imagine, your significant other mentions you on Twitter and magically you smell his/her perfume. If someone tags you in a Facebook video, the scent of buttered popcorn or fruit fills the room. Olly makes an Internet with smell possible. Olly -- a web-connected smelly robot -- created by London and New York-based company called Mint Foundry will give all your online notifications a scent. The creators figured since the web incorporates sight and sound, it's time to experience it in a different way. Olly would scent anything from a tweet on Twitter, Like on Instagram, to a photo tag on Facebook. As seen in the video, Olly is a compact white box that has a removable space in the back that can be filled with any scent you desire. The company suggests essential oils, fruit, perfume, cologne or a drop of gin. They can be stacked, so you can give all your online accounts a different smell. The process would involve downloading an application, signing in with a username and password into the Olly app and having the physical Olly reader. Olly is not available for purchase yet. The company is working to garner backers for the project. Would you want to experience the web with smell? Leave your thoughts in the comments. |
| Most Parents Monitor Kids on Facebook -- And Have Their Passwords [INFOGRAPHIC] | | Friday, January 13, 2012 5:47 PM | Samantha Murphy |
|  If you think parents are keeping tabs on their kids' Facebook profile pages and pictures, you're absolutely right. According to a new infographic released by market research firm Lab42, parents are keeping a watchful eye on their child via Facebook, with many checking out their pages daily (43%). The study -- which was conducted among 500 social media users - found that 92% of parents are Facebook friends with their children (of all ages) and more are turning to the site to monitor their kids' interactions. Safety was named as the top reason for looking at their profiles (40%), followed by curiosity (15%). But 55% of parents are also making sure the site isn't it interfering with homework, chores or other activities. Other top concerns include not spending enough time with friends and family (45%), the potential of meeting strangers (41%), bullying others (17%) and being a victim of bullying (16%). Meanwhile, a high majority - 72% -- even have their kids' Facebook passwords. (Lab42 didn't provide details on which age demographics for their kids fall into this category.) However, kids are also checking out their parent's Facebook pages too. In fact, they are almost equally writing on their parent's wall (54%) and commenting on photos (51%) as their parents. But even still, it's mostly the parents initiating the friend requests, with 55% sending it rather than receiving. Although most children make fun of their parents for their lack of Facebook knowledge (76%), most parents consider themselves very proficient (67%). For more stats on parent-child interactions on Facebook, check out the infographic below. |
| FTC to Investigate Google+ as Part of Wider Probe [REPORT] | | Friday, January 13, 2012 5:23 PM | Todd Wasserman |
|  The Federal Trade Commission will include Google+ in its ongoing probe of Google, according to a report. The FTC sees the launch of Google's social network as relevant to its investigation into whether Google is violating antitrust laws by giving its own services favorable treatment, reports Bloomberg, which cites "two people familiar with the situation." The FTC launched its probe into Google's operations in June. The agency has investigated Google before, over Google Buzz privacy issues, but the FTC deems its latest probe its most comprehensive. The report comes the same week in which Google integrated its Google+ data into its search results, a move that prompted criticism from Twitter, among others, including watchdog group EPIC, which sent a complaint to the FTC urging the agency to look into the Google+ integration. Is Google+ a worthy target for investigation? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. |
| Why Google's Social Search Is Too Much, Too Soon | | Friday, January 13, 2012 4:44 PM | Sarah Kessler |
|  Google's recent change to its search engine is losing in the public opinion arena. Analysts have suggested the new feature, Google Search, plus Your World, "Pushes Google+ over Relevancy," and "just made Bing the best search engine." Twitter called it "bad for people." Meanwhile, about 2,000 Mashable readers have answered the poll question, "Would you prefer that Google, etc. go back to their old 'natural' search methods or do you find that inclusion of this data makes it easier to find what you're looking for?" Sixty-three percent of them said they don't want social search results. But is the idea behind "Search, plus Your World" terrible? We're not so sure. Social connections are a potentially great way to determine relevance. That's why Google, Bing, Blekko and DuckDuckGo have been incorporating social data into their results long before Search plus Your World arrived on the scene. And it's hard to argue that some facets of Google's new search feature aren't useful. When you search for a name, for instance, the new feature returns results for the "Ben Smith" you are connected to rather than for hundreds of other men who share his name. Adding someone to a social network directly from a search results page? That saves me a step. And there are some searches for which social context is important. What I dislike about Search plus Your World isn't that Google has more deeply integrated social data on its search results pages. It's that the search engine has gone overboard with Google+ in a way that makes me feel like I'm being force-fed a new social network. It's too much, too soon. Too Much The majority of Google's revenue depends on people using its search engine, and most searchers choose to use Google over other search engines for one reason: it's really good at returning relevant results. We don't Google for the doodles, and we don't Google for the Google+. Some of the ways that Google has integrated Google+ into its search engine interfere with its users' primary objective of finding a specific piece of information. Social search results, for instance, often push more relevant non-Google+ results almost halfway down the page. When I search "Justin Bieber," I see his official page, images from my network, three comments from my Google+ circles, and only then do I get to his Twitter page. He has 16 million followers on Twitter and posts frequently. He doesn't have a Google+ page that I can find, so I don't see any of his social properties without taking time to scroll down the page to the eighth result. When I Google myself, I get a full-page snippet of my own Google+ profile, complete with a button to update it. I don't have a problem with Google showing me what friends have said about a topic on its network or asking me if I want to update my Google+ profile. But I do have a problem with those results being so prominent that they make it harder for me to find the other information I'm looking for. If I want to know that much about what my friends are saying about a topic on Google+ that bad, I'll search directly from my Google+ account. The same would go for comments made in my Twitter and Facebook networks, if they were included in Google's social search results. It's true that people who don't want social results can simply hit a toggle switch to return to Google as they knew it last week (in my example above, this would make Justin Bieber's Twitter page the fifth result), but it doesn't make sense to me why social results can't be incorporated less intrusively. Too Soon By some estimates, Google+ is on track to reach 400 million users by the end of 2012. That's twice as many as Twitter. Google hasn't released user numbers for Google+, but analyst Paul Allen recently estimated that the site has about 62 million users worldwide. This means that no matter their potential, at this point in time, Google+ profiles are likely not the most relevant social search results. Including Google+ pages at the top of results, despite the network's relatively low adoption levels, makes it feel like Google is using its search engine to amp up activity on its social network. But Google users have already made it clear they don't like it when Google uses one service to turn them on to another. When Gmail-based Google Buzz launched in 2010, users complained so much about features that automatically added frequent contacts to the social network, and linked Google Reader and Picasa web albums, that Google changed these features four days after launch. Google could have launched an option for Google+ users to attach their accounts to Search rather than automatically connecting the products. It also could have waited until Google+ is more relevant before increasing the integration of its pages -- in-rank with their actual relevancy -- in search results. What I Want "Search, plus Your World" to Be I'm not in charge of fixing social search for Google. But if I were, here's what I would change: Suggest social profiles from other sites: Right now, Google only features Google+ pages in the people recommendations it has added to the right-hand column of results. But these aren't necessarily the most relevant social profiles, and they leave out anybody who doesn't have an active Google+ account. Facebook doesn't let Google crawl its private pages and Twitter adds "nofollow" tags to links that might help search engines figure out how its users are related to each other. But, as Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan points out, Google's search engine does pull up Facebook and Twitter profiles in its search results. It should include those in its relevant people suggestions as well. Get out of the way: I use Google search to find specific information. It's interesting to see how my social network has commented on a relevant topic, but that doesn't have to interfere with my search for that information. Google could put it next to results instead of in them, as it has with its new people recommendations. It could also put them in a separate search tab, the way it does with "news" and "images." |
| Comedy Central App Lets You Program Its Friday Night Line-Up | | Friday, January 13, 2012 4:13 PM | Zachary Sniderman |
|  January is Stand-Up Month at Comedy Central -- and the network is letting all you funny people program its Friday night line-up via a Facebook app, CC Stand-Up. CC Stand Up is an app attached to Comedy Central's official Facebook page. Once users Like Comedy Central, they'll be given access to the app which lets them vote for a series of comedians by watching short clips of their performances. The top-voted comedians will then have their pre-taped specials broadcast on Friday night at 9 p.m. Eastern Time leading up to a brand-new debut special from a featured comedian. The four premieres include Tom Papa, Kevin Hart, JB Smoove and John Mulaney, though users can vote on a huge swathe of top talent that includes pre-taped specials from Donald Glover, Aziz Ansari, Jim Gaffigan, Michael Ian Black, Chelsea Handler and more. SEE ALSO: The Charlie Sheen Roast: Comedy Central's Ambitious Social Media Experiment The whole app has been built with social in mind. CC Stand Up was created by the same company, Omnigon, that built Comedy Central's social dashboard for the Charlie Sheen Roast that blew up on Twitter. What's more, "votes" are cast by following or "Liking" the comedian's social profiles. Not only does this help boost those profiles but it necessitates that any participating comedians are also on Facebook or Twitter. "When you come in here and do "Like" or follow, you're liking or following the comedian themselves, not us," says Steve Grimes, Comedy Central's SVP of Digital Media. "You like our Facebook page to participate but after that we're really getting the audience to engage with the comedian directly." Comedians are getting involved as well. A news feed of tweets and comments from that week's candidates shows them reaching out to voters and promoting their own material. "One of the main reasons why we're so focused on these social platforms is that comedy lives on these social platforms," Grimes says. There is also some social science around which comedians are chosen for the premier: "We took a central comedian and find comedians that are associated with them in some way, shape or form," Grimes says. "you know, maybe he follows them on Twitter? There is some sort of social thread that connects them." Stand Up Month is an annual tradition for Comedy Central but this is the first year that users have been the social keys to the comedy car. Grimes says the network wanted to get away from having one major showdown at the end of the month and instead focus on creating conversation and promoting a variety of artists and specials throughout the duration. Comedy Central has gone all-in when it comes to social, and CC Stand Up is just the tip of the iceberg. The network is getting ready to revamp its entire stand-up website, Jokes.com, to be more social. "The Facebook app is actually a bit of a sneak peek of what the site will look like," Grimes says. The new stand-up site is expected to launch by late spring or early summer. Do you think Comedy Central is right to bet so heavily on social? Can networks trust us to help them program their shows? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below. |
| Lawmakers to Homeland Security: Monitor More Social Media | | Friday, January 13, 2012 2:42 PM | Alex Fitzpatrick |
|  The top two members of a House subcommittee want the Department of Homeland Security's intelligence chief to keep a closer watch on social media traffic. According to Reuters, Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-PA) and Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) wrote a letter to DHS Intelligence Chief Caryn Wagner pressing her to more carefully monitor users' posts on sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Meehan is the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee's subcommittee for intelligence and counter-terrorism, while Speier is the subcommittee's highest ranking Democrat. A Homeland Security spokesman told Reuters that the DHS currently monitors social media only "within the clearly defined parameters articulated" in published department privacy guildelines. That suggests the DHS already monitors social media to some extent. According to Reuters, the DHS' current list of watched websites include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others. However, none of the publicly accessible DHS privacy guidelines, save a white paper on the EINSTEIN hacking detection system, mention the words "social," "Facebook," "Twitter" or "Internet." The DHS may be currently applying privacy guidelines not specific to Internet users to their online monitoring approach. In the letter, the two representatives said they "believe it would be advantageous for DHS and the broader Intelligence Community to carefully parse the massive streams of data from various social media outlets to identify current or emerging threats to our homeland security." The fear of the DHS becoming too invasive isn't lost on the pair. The letter confirmed that monitoring social media networks would raise "privacy and civil liberties concerns," and the representatives considered the idea of establishing guidelines which balance privacy issues with DHS' mission of sniffing out threats to national security. Meehan told Retuers in an e-mail that a December congressional hearing "examined the evolving terrorist use of social media and effective intelligence and law enforcement responses." He also said that "if terrorists are operating in Pakistan or communicating through social media sites like Facebook, we need to remain vigilant. "Yet there are important civil liberties questions involving U.S. government monitoring of social media and Americans' Internet traffic. We are seeking answers on the Department's guidelines and procedures to ensure Americans' civil liberties are safeguarded." The Department of Homeland Security was not available for comment. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, adventtr |
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