Ecommerce sites tend to use Facebook and Twitter above other Social Media Sites in their Digital Marketing Campaigns.
This is according to a new survey by Practical eCommerce, which shows that 78 per cent of the US online retailers it polled use Facebook, while 75.6 per cent utilise Twitter for social media marketing purposes.
Almost three in ten retailers cited other social networking sites, including LinkedIn, YouTube, MySpace and Google Buzz.
About 11 per cent of respondents revealed that they do not make use of any social media sites at all.
Nearly seven in ten retailers said they intend to up their social media online marketing activity in the future, with 26.8 per cent to keep their campaigns the same.
When asked how social media had helped their businesses, over half said it had had a beneficial effect.
A recent study by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth found that Fortune 500 companies are increasingly utilising social media marketing.
The number of firms found to be using blogs and social networking websites like Twitter increased significantly between 2008 and 2009, according to the research.
Source:
http://www.bluhalo.com/news/view/7769/facebook-twitter-most-used-social-media-sites-in-ecommerce
Professional Web Design Chicago
Showing posts with label Twitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Twitter. Show all posts
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Steady growth for Twitter, despite hiccups
Fans of microblogging service Twitter are apparently impervious to repeated outages and technical problems--and their enthusiasm is spreading.
Research firm Hitwise on Tuesday reported that traffic to the Twitter site increased 500 percent the week ending July 5, 2008, compared with the same period last year. That's a significant jump for a service that's continually up and down--and still lacking a clear revenue stream.
What's more, many users of the service appear to be unruffled by Twitter's technical issues. The share of returning visitors has averaged approximately 53 percent over the past four months, according to Hitwise.
Twitter also still has a leg up over its few rivals in the microblogging space. Twitter traffic last week was 12 times higher than that of Plurk and 24 times higher than FriendFeed, Hitwise says. So even though Tweeters may be getting restless, not all of them are abandoning the service in favor of similar finds.
"Despite user complaints about outages, Twitter has remained the most popular among the micro-blogging services," Hitwise said in a statement.
Earlier Tuesday, rumors escalated that Twitter was in the throes of buying Summize, a Twitter search engine. Neither Twitter nor Summize have commented on speculation of a possible merger.
Source:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-9985999-93.html
Chicago Web Site Design Company
Research firm Hitwise on Tuesday reported that traffic to the Twitter site increased 500 percent the week ending July 5, 2008, compared with the same period last year. That's a significant jump for a service that's continually up and down--and still lacking a clear revenue stream.
What's more, many users of the service appear to be unruffled by Twitter's technical issues. The share of returning visitors has averaged approximately 53 percent over the past four months, according to Hitwise.
Twitter also still has a leg up over its few rivals in the microblogging space. Twitter traffic last week was 12 times higher than that of Plurk and 24 times higher than FriendFeed, Hitwise says. So even though Tweeters may be getting restless, not all of them are abandoning the service in favor of similar finds.
"Despite user complaints about outages, Twitter has remained the most popular among the micro-blogging services," Hitwise said in a statement.
Earlier Tuesday, rumors escalated that Twitter was in the throes of buying Summize, a Twitter search engine. Neither Twitter nor Summize have commented on speculation of a possible merger.
Source:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-9985999-93.html
Chicago Web Site Design Company
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
If Google Wave Is The Future, Google Buzz Is The Present
Google has a problem. Despite having their hands in just about everything online, they’ve never been able to tackle what is a key part of the fabric of the web: social. Yes, they have Orkut and OpenSocial, but no one actually uses them. Okay, some people use them, but not in the meaningful social ways that people use Facebook or even Twitter. Today, Google may have just solved their social problem.
Google Buzz is easily the company’s boldest attempt yet to build a social network. Imagine taking elements of Twitter, Yammer, Foursquare, Yelp, and other social services, and shoving them together into one package. Now imagine covering that package in a layer that looks a lot like FriendFeed. Now imagine shoving that package inside of Gmail. That’s Buzz. If Google Wave is the future, Google Buzz is the present.
FriendFeed Reborn. On Growth Hormone.
Fundamentally, Buzz is a stream of status updates, pictures, links, and videos from your friends. You can “like” these items and you can comment on them. And if you use Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader, or Twitter, you can also automatically have those items imported into your stream. And Buzz will recommend items you might like based on your friends’ activity.
Yes, again, it sounds a lot like FriendFeed. But it has a critical component that FriendFeed never had prior to its acquisition by Facebook: a massive installed user base. Maybe you missed the key bit of wording above: it resides inside of Gmail. Rather than trying to build its own new social service from scratch, Google is making Buzz a key part of their email service (right below the Inbox tab) that 176 million unique visitors each month, according to comScore.
Source:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/09/if-google-wave-is-the-future-google-buzz-is-the-present/
Chicago Web Site Design Company
Google Buzz is easily the company’s boldest attempt yet to build a social network. Imagine taking elements of Twitter, Yammer, Foursquare, Yelp, and other social services, and shoving them together into one package. Now imagine covering that package in a layer that looks a lot like FriendFeed. Now imagine shoving that package inside of Gmail. That’s Buzz. If Google Wave is the future, Google Buzz is the present.
FriendFeed Reborn. On Growth Hormone.
Fundamentally, Buzz is a stream of status updates, pictures, links, and videos from your friends. You can “like” these items and you can comment on them. And if you use Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader, or Twitter, you can also automatically have those items imported into your stream. And Buzz will recommend items you might like based on your friends’ activity.
Yes, again, it sounds a lot like FriendFeed. But it has a critical component that FriendFeed never had prior to its acquisition by Facebook: a massive installed user base. Maybe you missed the key bit of wording above: it resides inside of Gmail. Rather than trying to build its own new social service from scratch, Google is making Buzz a key part of their email service (right below the Inbox tab) that 176 million unique visitors each month, according to comScore.
Source:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/09/if-google-wave-is-the-future-google-buzz-is-the-present/
Chicago Web Site Design Company
Monday, February 1, 2010
Google Nexus One Users Report T-Mobile Service Outage
T-Mobile customers who use the Google Nexus One smartphones are reporting widespread data outages on their devices.
The outages are being reported at multiple online sites, including Twitter, where T-Mobile staff are directing affected customers to the carrier's message boards.
Google Nexus One vs. Motorola Droid: Breaking down the basics
According to ZDNet writer Matthew Miller, T-Mobile is sending users messages on their devices telling them that they need to sign up for data plans, despite the fact that they are already T-Mobile data subscribers. Miller says that he personally has "the unlimited Android web plan" and that it "worked just fine until this morning." A Gizmodo reader reported encountering the same problem when he tried to use his Nexus One to surf the web this morning.
Neither HTC nor Google has publicly commented on the reported outage or have given any indication of how they plan to fix it.
The data outage for the Nexus One comes just months after T-Mobile Sidekick users were plagued with a massive outage that initially was thought to have wiped out significant portions of their personal data.
The Google Nexus One first came to T-Mobile earlier this year as the first official phone released by Google. Designed by handset manufacturer HTC, the Nexus One is due to be released on the Verizon network sometime over the next few weeks.
Source:
http://www.itnews.com/smartphones/13678/google-nexus-one-users-report-t-mobile-service-outage
Professional Web Design Chicago
The outages are being reported at multiple online sites, including Twitter, where T-Mobile staff are directing affected customers to the carrier's message boards.
Google Nexus One vs. Motorola Droid: Breaking down the basics
According to ZDNet writer Matthew Miller, T-Mobile is sending users messages on their devices telling them that they need to sign up for data plans, despite the fact that they are already T-Mobile data subscribers. Miller says that he personally has "the unlimited Android web plan" and that it "worked just fine until this morning." A Gizmodo reader reported encountering the same problem when he tried to use his Nexus One to surf the web this morning.
Neither HTC nor Google has publicly commented on the reported outage or have given any indication of how they plan to fix it.
The data outage for the Nexus One comes just months after T-Mobile Sidekick users were plagued with a massive outage that initially was thought to have wiped out significant portions of their personal data.
The Google Nexus One first came to T-Mobile earlier this year as the first official phone released by Google. Designed by handset manufacturer HTC, the Nexus One is due to be released on the Verizon network sometime over the next few weeks.
Source:
http://www.itnews.com/smartphones/13678/google-nexus-one-users-report-t-mobile-service-outage
Professional Web Design Chicago
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Apple Wins Appeal of iPod Hearing Loss Case
A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld a lower court ruling that said Apple's iPod music players do not pose an unacceptable risk to users' hearing.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth District affirmed a 2008 decision by a California district court to dismiss a long-running lawsuit that claimed iPods endangered users' hearing. iPods, said the original 2006 lawsuit -- which eventually boasted three plaintiffs and sought class-action status -- were defective because they could play music at unsafe volumes above 115 decibels (dB).
The district court disagreed, saying that any dangers of hearing loss from playing music too loud were "obvious" and "unavoidable." The plaintiffs then appealed.
Yesterday's appellate court ruling essentially repeated the arguments raised by the lower court. "The district court did not err," said Senior Circuit Judge David Thompson, who wrote the court's opinion. "The plaintiffs admit that the iPod has an 'ordinary purpose of listening to music,' and nothing they allege suggests iPods are unsafe for that use or defective. [Their] statements suggest only that users have the option of using an iPod in a risky manner, not that the product lacks any minimum level of quality."
Additionally, said Thompson, the plaintiffs failed to prove injury had actually occurred. "The plaintiffs do not allege the iPods failed to do anything they were designed to do nor do they allege that they, or any others, have suffered or are substantially certain to suffer inevitable hearing loss or other injury from iPod use," added the court's opinion.
iPod sound volume has been of interest to others beyond the plaintiffs. Last September, the European Commission ordered all makers of portable music players to add a default volume setting of around 80 dB, as well as a health warning to all new devices within the next two years. Before that, the EU had set a maximum volume limit of 100 dB on all portable music players sold in its member countries.
Apple already includes a warning with all iPods that reads in part, "Permanent hearing loss may occur if earphones or headphones are used at high volume."
Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld . Follow Gregg on Twitter @gkeizer , send e-mail at gkeizer@ix.netcom.com or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed .
Source:
http://www.itnews.com/mac/12419/apple-wins-appeal-ipod-hearing-loss-case
Chicago Website Designers
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth District affirmed a 2008 decision by a California district court to dismiss a long-running lawsuit that claimed iPods endangered users' hearing. iPods, said the original 2006 lawsuit -- which eventually boasted three plaintiffs and sought class-action status -- were defective because they could play music at unsafe volumes above 115 decibels (dB).
The district court disagreed, saying that any dangers of hearing loss from playing music too loud were "obvious" and "unavoidable." The plaintiffs then appealed.
Yesterday's appellate court ruling essentially repeated the arguments raised by the lower court. "The district court did not err," said Senior Circuit Judge David Thompson, who wrote the court's opinion. "The plaintiffs admit that the iPod has an 'ordinary purpose of listening to music,' and nothing they allege suggests iPods are unsafe for that use or defective. [Their] statements suggest only that users have the option of using an iPod in a risky manner, not that the product lacks any minimum level of quality."
Additionally, said Thompson, the plaintiffs failed to prove injury had actually occurred. "The plaintiffs do not allege the iPods failed to do anything they were designed to do nor do they allege that they, or any others, have suffered or are substantially certain to suffer inevitable hearing loss or other injury from iPod use," added the court's opinion.
iPod sound volume has been of interest to others beyond the plaintiffs. Last September, the European Commission ordered all makers of portable music players to add a default volume setting of around 80 dB, as well as a health warning to all new devices within the next two years. Before that, the EU had set a maximum volume limit of 100 dB on all portable music players sold in its member countries.
Apple already includes a warning with all iPods that reads in part, "Permanent hearing loss may occur if earphones or headphones are used at high volume."
Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld . Follow Gregg on Twitter @gkeizer , send e-mail at gkeizer@ix.netcom.com or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed .
Source:
http://www.itnews.com/mac/12419/apple-wins-appeal-ipod-hearing-loss-case
Chicago Website Designers
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Facebook’s Killer Feature: The Mutual Friends List
2009 has been a busy year for Facebook. The Social Networking Service just reached a whopping 350 million users. It redesigned its site, then redesigned those redesigns (say that three times fast). And as Mark Zuckerberg, the site’s founder and chief executive, announced Tuesday, the company is getting ready to release a new set of privacy policies in the coming weeks.
Facebook has also been on the receiving end of some heavy criticism this year for an array of privacy issues and a perceived desire to look and act more like Twitter. Some of these concerns are valid, and some are just the growing pains of a five-year-old company in a market that continues to change and adapt at breakneck speeds.
All of that aside for a moment, I believe that Facebook has one important, underutilized feature that no other site can replicate or compete with: the “mutual friends” list.
When you go to an individual’s Facebook Page, the list sits in a little box on the left of the page, visually displaying who you know in common. For me, this often-overlooked feature has become an integral part of my Facebook experience. Sure, I still go to the site to update my status and peruse my news feeds, but I use Mutual Friends more than anything else.
This feature enables me to supplement the real world with additional digital information. When I go to a meeting or party, I take a minute to look up who’s attending and quickly explore friends we might share. It’s the perfect digital icebreaker. Increasingly, when I go to a conference and meet someone new, I’ll sneak into the hallway and look them up, too. Or, if they seem unencumbered by potential privacy concerns, we pull out our phones, and using Facebook’s mobile application, look each other up.
Last year, for example, I met Wired columnist Steven Levy at a conference in Boston. After a few minutes chatting about mundane tech stories, we quickly pulled out our laptops, zipped along to Facebook.com and sat for an hour discussing who we knew in common.
Of course, the “mutual friends” list has its drawbacks. Maybe I don’t want you to know we are both friends with the same political activist. Then there are the random acquaintances you’ve collected over the years — they’re not really friends, even though they send you messages that say “Hi, we have 10 friends in common so we must be friends!”
Still, for me, the Mutual Friends list has become an integral part of my digital life.
And five years after the site’s launch, this feature is something only Facebook really offers. It would be close to impossible for Twitter to do, since its service is built on a find-and-follow mentality. I follow people I’m not friends with, and in turn, people I’ve never met follow me.
What about Google’s Gmail? Its address book, although a prodigious resource, stores every e-mail address you’ve ever encountered, including those random Craigslist purchasers and every spammer who made it over the drawbridge and through its filter.
LinkedIn, the business social connection site, is Facebook’s closest competitor in the mutual-friends arena, but it generally connects people based on work affiliations, whereas Facebook tends to include personal friends, family and professional connections.
As the Facebook community continues to grow by over 600,000 people a day, there is a lot of potential for Facebook to move beyond who we know in common to what we know in common. As I update my status with movies I’ve seen, books I’m reading or news articles I like, these features could help make all kinds of conversation — not just introductory ones — a lot more engaging.
Source:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/facebooks-killer-feature-the-mutual-friends-list/
Professional Website Design Services
Facebook has also been on the receiving end of some heavy criticism this year for an array of privacy issues and a perceived desire to look and act more like Twitter. Some of these concerns are valid, and some are just the growing pains of a five-year-old company in a market that continues to change and adapt at breakneck speeds.
All of that aside for a moment, I believe that Facebook has one important, underutilized feature that no other site can replicate or compete with: the “mutual friends” list.
When you go to an individual’s Facebook Page, the list sits in a little box on the left of the page, visually displaying who you know in common. For me, this often-overlooked feature has become an integral part of my Facebook experience. Sure, I still go to the site to update my status and peruse my news feeds, but I use Mutual Friends more than anything else.
This feature enables me to supplement the real world with additional digital information. When I go to a meeting or party, I take a minute to look up who’s attending and quickly explore friends we might share. It’s the perfect digital icebreaker. Increasingly, when I go to a conference and meet someone new, I’ll sneak into the hallway and look them up, too. Or, if they seem unencumbered by potential privacy concerns, we pull out our phones, and using Facebook’s mobile application, look each other up.
Last year, for example, I met Wired columnist Steven Levy at a conference in Boston. After a few minutes chatting about mundane tech stories, we quickly pulled out our laptops, zipped along to Facebook.com and sat for an hour discussing who we knew in common.
Of course, the “mutual friends” list has its drawbacks. Maybe I don’t want you to know we are both friends with the same political activist. Then there are the random acquaintances you’ve collected over the years — they’re not really friends, even though they send you messages that say “Hi, we have 10 friends in common so we must be friends!”
Still, for me, the Mutual Friends list has become an integral part of my digital life.
And five years after the site’s launch, this feature is something only Facebook really offers. It would be close to impossible for Twitter to do, since its service is built on a find-and-follow mentality. I follow people I’m not friends with, and in turn, people I’ve never met follow me.
What about Google’s Gmail? Its address book, although a prodigious resource, stores every e-mail address you’ve ever encountered, including those random Craigslist purchasers and every spammer who made it over the drawbridge and through its filter.
LinkedIn, the business social connection site, is Facebook’s closest competitor in the mutual-friends arena, but it generally connects people based on work affiliations, whereas Facebook tends to include personal friends, family and professional connections.
As the Facebook community continues to grow by over 600,000 people a day, there is a lot of potential for Facebook to move beyond who we know in common to what we know in common. As I update my status with movies I’ve seen, books I’m reading or news articles I like, these features could help make all kinds of conversation — not just introductory ones — a lot more engaging.
Source:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/facebooks-killer-feature-the-mutual-friends-list/
Professional Website Design Services
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Analytics at Twitter
Last week I spent some time speaking with Kevin Weil, head of analytics at Twitter. Twitter, from a technology perspective, has had a bit of a hard time due to their stability issues in their early days. Kevin was keen to point out that he feels this was due to the incomparable growth Twitter was experiencing at the time and their constant struggle to keep up. Kevin was also keen to show that Twitter prides themselves on striving for engineering excellence, the creation & contribution to new technologies and generally assisting in pushing the boundaries forward. Our conversation naturally centered on analytics at Twitter.Twitter, like many Web 2.0 Apps, started life as a MySQL based RBDMS application. Today, Twitter is still using MySQL for much of their online operational functionality (although this is likely to change in the near future – think distributed), but on the analytics side of things Twitter has spent the last 6 months moving away from running SQL queries against MySQL data marts. This was because their need for timely data was becoming a struggle with MySQL, particularly when dealing with very large data volumes and complicated queries. For Web 2.0 the ability to understand, quantify and make timely predictions from user behavior is very much their life blood. When Kevin arrived at Twitter 6 months ago he was tasked with changing the way Twitter analyzed their data. Now the bulk of their analytics is executed using a Hadoop platform with Pig as the “querying language”.
Hadoop is a distributed shared-nothing cluster which locates data throughout the cluster using a virtualized file system. What has made Hadoop particularly popular for large scale deployment is the comparative ease of writing distributed functions through a process known as map/reduce. Map/reduce hides much of the complexity of running distributed functions, even when running over a very large numbers of nodes. This allows the developer to focus on their “application logic” rather than worrying about specifics of the execution process (Hadoop handles distribution of execution, node failures, etc). But in saying this, expressing complicated application logic directly in map/reduce functions can become quite laborious as many pipelined map/reduce functions may be required to take raw data through to a useful processed result. Because of this complexity several higher level scripting languages have appeared to abstract this.
Pig is one such scripting language for Hadoop. Pig takes the developers requirement expressed in the script and produces the underlying map-reduce jobs that are executed on Hadoop. This abstraction is incredibly important as without it the complexity of expressing difficult analytical ‘queries’ directly in map/reduce would be highly time consuming & error prone. This can be thought of as being similar to the way SQL is a higher level abstraction language that hides all the query plan routines (written in C) that operate on the data in a traditional RDBMS. Of course abstraction provides increased efficiency in creating analytical routines, but comes at a performance cost. Kevin quantified his experience, he found typically a Pig script is 5% of the code of native map/reduce written in about 5% of the time. However, queries typically take between 110-150% the time to execute that a native map/reduce job would have taken. But of course, if there is a routine that is highly performance sensitive they still have the option to hand-code the native map/reduce functions directly.
Ok, so why use Hadoop and Pig instead of more traditional approach like an MPP RDBMS? Kevin explained that there were a few reasons for this. Firstly Twitter, like many Web 2.0 companies, is committed to open source and likes to use software that has a low entry cost but also allows them to contribute to the code base. Kevin mentioned that Twitter did look at some of the open source MPP RDBMS platforms but were less than convinced of their ability to scale to meet their needs at the time. And the second reason is exactly that, scale. Twitter is understandably coy on their exact numbers, but they have hundreds of Terabytes of data (but less than a Petabyte) and one could assume that to get reasonable performance they are running Hapdoop on a few dozen nodes (this is a guess, Twitter didn’t say). As they grow analytics will become more important to their business, this may expand to hundreds (or thousands) of nodes. A “few hundred” nodes is right on the upper limit on what is possible today with the world’s most advanced MPP RBDMS’s. Hapdoop clusters, on the other hand, grow well into the hundreds and even the thousands of nodes (e.g. at Google, Facebook etc).
So Hadoop was the platform choice, but why Pig? There are other “analytical” scripting languages that sit over Hadoop, notably Hive which was popularized by Facebook (Pig was popularized by Yahoo). On discussing the merits of Pig vs Hive it became apparent that Hive was more in tune with a traditional approach (“database like”). Hive requires data to be mapped to a given structure and the queries (using a SQL like derivative) are submitted against that schema. Pig on the other hand is less prescriptive in terms of schema and individual queries can define the structure of the data for that execution. In addition, Pig is more of a “procedural” language allowing the complicated data flow process to be more easily controlled and understood by the developers.
So, as mentioned, Hapdoop is a batch based job processing platform. Jobs (in this case map/reduce jobs generated from the Pig queries) are submitted and results are returned sometime in the future. Exactly when in the future varies from a few minutes (e.g. they run jobs hourly which only take a few minutes to run) through to many hours for jobs that run over much larger sets of data. This leaves a gap in “near real-time” analytics between the lightweight queries they can run on the transactional system and the more intense Hadoop based analytics. This has been a space that Twitter has been investigating solutions to fill. This space will be used for things like improved abuse detection, issue analysis and so on. Twitter is currently considering their data platform options here including Cassandra, HBase and may even decide to use a closed sourced MPP solution to fill this need (I can’t say what, sorry) due to the lack of suitable open source MPP alternatives.
For more technical info on Twitters use of Hadoop and Pig you can check out Kevin’s slide deck from the recent NoSQL East conference.
Source:
http://blog.tonybain.com/tony_bain/2009/11/analytics-at-twitter.html
Web Designers Chicago
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
FaceFaceTime's Database Acquisition Highlights Need for Web 2.0 Control
FaceTime Communications today announced that Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. has acquired its application classification and signature database to add a new level of security for use in Check Point Security Gateways. Check Point's purchase of the database validates the need for businesses to implement Web 2.0 controls and security.
FaceTime incorporates the database in its recently announced Unified Security Gateway 3.0 - the first secure Web gateway to combine content monitoring, logging, management and security of Web 2.0 applications, such as social networking, instant messaging, and Unified Communications, with URL filtering, anti-malware and Web anti-virus protection.
The momentous growth of Web 2.0 platforms and the benefits gained through their use introduces significant new compliance and policy challenges. Government agencies and corporations worry about sensitive information leaking out over Twitter or Facebook and organizations now face new rules, from regulatory bodies such as FINRA, specifically relating to content posted to social networks.
"The growth in corporate use of Web 2.0 Applications and in the number of different applications being used makes compliance with legal and regulatory obligations incredibly important", said Michael Osterman, principal of Osterman Research. "Our research has shown that a large and growing proportion of corporate users are using Web 2.0 tools on a regular basis. Consequently, organizations must control how these tools are used and the information that is transmitted through them or face significant consequences for not doing so."
Source:
http://web2.sys-con.com/node/1198097
Professional Web Design Chicago
FaceTime incorporates the database in its recently announced Unified Security Gateway 3.0 - the first secure Web gateway to combine content monitoring, logging, management and security of Web 2.0 applications, such as social networking, instant messaging, and Unified Communications, with URL filtering, anti-malware and Web anti-virus protection.
The momentous growth of Web 2.0 platforms and the benefits gained through their use introduces significant new compliance and policy challenges. Government agencies and corporations worry about sensitive information leaking out over Twitter or Facebook and organizations now face new rules, from regulatory bodies such as FINRA, specifically relating to content posted to social networks.
"The growth in corporate use of Web 2.0 Applications and in the number of different applications being used makes compliance with legal and regulatory obligations incredibly important", said Michael Osterman, principal of Osterman Research. "Our research has shown that a large and growing proportion of corporate users are using Web 2.0 tools on a regular basis. Consequently, organizations must control how these tools are used and the information that is transmitted through them or face significant consequences for not doing so."
Source:
http://web2.sys-con.com/node/1198097
Professional Web Design Chicago
New Oxford Names Facebook’s “Unfriend” as Word of the Year 2009
The New Oxford American dictionary has named “unfriend” as the 2009 Word of the Year, which literally means removing someone as a friend on popular social networking websites like Facebook and Friendster.
The word was chosen from a pool of finalists with a technology savvy lineage, Oxford said in a statement.
Oxford’s US dictionary program senior lexicographer Christine Lindberg said that the word was chosen among other finalist for its currency and potential longevity characteristics.
“It has an exact definition or meaning when being used as a verb or an action word by the online community. Its meaning is understood, because of this, the adoption of ‘unfriend’ as a modern form of verb makes it more interesting to be chosen as the Word of the Year,” Lindberg added.
Other finalists came from economic terms, technological trends, political, and current affairs as chosen by the Britain Oxford University Press, the publisher of the said dictionary.
For technology, “hashtag” was also named, which means a hash sign connected to a word or a phrase that allows users of popular microblogging website Twitter to search similar tweets; also chosen was “intexticated,” which literally means texting-while-driving; and “sexting,” which from the rootword means sending sexually explicit messages and MMS through cellphones.
Meanwhile, among the top choices for the economy terms were “freemium,” which means basic services that are offered free in some forms of business models; and “funemployed,” which refers to people or an individual taking advantage of his newly acquired status of being unemployed by pursuing or having fun with his own interest.
For the political and current affairs category, “birther, ”which refers to a person or a group conspiring or having a conspiracy theory regarding the birth certificate of United States President Barack Obama; and “choice mom,” which can be simply put as a single mother by choice.
Other words that made it to the shortlist of the Word of the Year 2009 were “deleb” or a dead celebrity; and “tramp stamp” or a tattoo on the lower back of a female.
Source:
http://www.socialnetworks10.com/new-oxford-names-facebook%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cunfriend%E2%80%9D-as-word-of-the-year-2009
Web Design Firms Chicago
The word was chosen from a pool of finalists with a technology savvy lineage, Oxford said in a statement.
Oxford’s US dictionary program senior lexicographer Christine Lindberg said that the word was chosen among other finalist for its currency and potential longevity characteristics.
“It has an exact definition or meaning when being used as a verb or an action word by the online community. Its meaning is understood, because of this, the adoption of ‘unfriend’ as a modern form of verb makes it more interesting to be chosen as the Word of the Year,” Lindberg added.
Other finalists came from economic terms, technological trends, political, and current affairs as chosen by the Britain Oxford University Press, the publisher of the said dictionary.
For technology, “hashtag” was also named, which means a hash sign connected to a word or a phrase that allows users of popular microblogging website Twitter to search similar tweets; also chosen was “intexticated,” which literally means texting-while-driving; and “sexting,” which from the rootword means sending sexually explicit messages and MMS through cellphones.
Meanwhile, among the top choices for the economy terms were “freemium,” which means basic services that are offered free in some forms of business models; and “funemployed,” which refers to people or an individual taking advantage of his newly acquired status of being unemployed by pursuing or having fun with his own interest.
For the political and current affairs category, “birther, ”which refers to a person or a group conspiring or having a conspiracy theory regarding the birth certificate of United States President Barack Obama; and “choice mom,” which can be simply put as a single mother by choice.
Other words that made it to the shortlist of the Word of the Year 2009 were “deleb” or a dead celebrity; and “tramp stamp” or a tattoo on the lower back of a female.
Source:
http://www.socialnetworks10.com/new-oxford-names-facebook%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cunfriend%E2%80%9D-as-word-of-the-year-2009
Web Design Firms Chicago
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Oracle's Sun Deal: Oracle May Need to Loosen Its Grip
When Oracle announced its $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems in April, the software behemoth was acting on a grand vision. The deal was part of Oracle's aim to become a soup-to-nuts supplier of everything companies need to run their computer systems, from chips and operating systems to databases and business programs. The grand plan may need some revision.
In order to alleviate pressure from European Union regulators worried about Oracle's (ORCL) growing power, Oracle may be forced to give up some control of a key aspect of the deal: the open-source MySQL database software owned by Sun.
The EU on Nov. 9 formally objected to Oracle’s acquisition of Sun. A Sun regulatory filing said the EU believes Oracle’s ownership of MySQL would have “potential negative effects on competition” in the $19 billion-a-year database market. SUnN (JAVA) makes computer systems and software including the Java programming language and MySQL database, a kind of electronic filing system.
"Taking a Tough Stance"
MySQL, available free of charge, runs the Web sites of some of the Internet's biggest brands. Among them: Twitter, Facebook, Google (GOOG), and Yahoo (YHOO). "They're taking a tough stance because 10 years down the road this could be a pretty big competitor to Oracle," says a securities analyst who asked not to be named because he was expressing personal views on the deal.
After saying in September that it's looking into aspects of the deal, Europe's more formal objection to Oracle's acquisition of Sun sets the stage for negotiations on how to make the deal pass muster. Regulators may ask Oracle to release a new version of MySQL that it doesn't control to preserve competition. Sun bought MySQL for $1 billion in 2008.
Oracle declined to comment for this article, but issued a statement Nov. 9 that said the EU’s objection "reveals of profound misunderstanding of both database competition and open-source dynamics…Because MySQL is open source, it cannot be controlled by anyone," Oracle said.
MySQL is distributed under an open-source licensing agreement, which lets users freely modify its code, companies including Google, Amazon.com (AMZN), and a software development project called Drizzle that's staffed partly with Sun employees, have already modified the database or incorporated it into commercial products without buying an officially supported version from Sun. For example, Amazon.com on Oct. 27 announced that customers can rent the MySQL database from Amazon over the Internet, paying by how much data they store and transfer. Google maintains its own version of MySQL, too.
The EU Is Positioning Itself
The presence of these versions in the wild suggests that forcing Oracle to spin out yet another version of the software may be redundant. "The remedy's already there," says one industry executive familiar with the EU's thinking, who says a regulated new version of the software would have little impact on the way companies license and use MySQL, which is prized for its speed and adaptability to running large Web sites. "The vast majority of the installed base isn't controlled by the vendor…I'm at a loss why any other remedies would be needed," this person says. "There's something illogical in the whole thing."
Whatever the proposed concessions, even Oracle's competitors believe the Sun deal will get done. "They're doing what the EU always does—making provocative statements," says an executive at an Oracle competitor. Analysts say the EU wants to position itself as an advocate for technologies that are more open rather than proprietary—closely guarded by license owners.
Source:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2009/tc2009118_559520.htm
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Friday, October 30, 2009
Twitter Lists: Share Yours in the Comments!
As we noted last night, Twitter has significantly expanded the rollout of its new “Lists” feature over the past day or so.
The feature looks to accomplish a couple different goals: for one, it lets you organize the people you follow into groups – for example “co-workers,” “social media experts,” or “celebrities” – serving as a filter of sorts for tracking updates. This is similar to the functionality already available in clients like TweetDeck or Seesmic.
Additionally, and perhaps more exciting, it’s a way to discover new users by exploring the lists that others have created. However, the only way to find these currently is going profile-by-profile or looking at the lists you’re already on (assuming you have the feature enabled).
In the future, perhaps Twitter will build a “most followed lists” feature or something similar to help you find Lists, but for now, we figured we’d open up our comment section to let you share the lists you’ve created and discover those created by other Mashable readers.
So, drop some links to your lists along with a brief description in the comments! One thing to note – if you don’t yet have lists enabled, you won’t be able to see any of them (sorry), but we’ll continue to reference this post in the future.
Source:
http://mashable.com/2009/10/29/twitter-lists-share/
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The feature looks to accomplish a couple different goals: for one, it lets you organize the people you follow into groups – for example “co-workers,” “social media experts,” or “celebrities” – serving as a filter of sorts for tracking updates. This is similar to the functionality already available in clients like TweetDeck or Seesmic.
Additionally, and perhaps more exciting, it’s a way to discover new users by exploring the lists that others have created. However, the only way to find these currently is going profile-by-profile or looking at the lists you’re already on (assuming you have the feature enabled).
In the future, perhaps Twitter will build a “most followed lists” feature or something similar to help you find Lists, but for now, we figured we’d open up our comment section to let you share the lists you’ve created and discover those created by other Mashable readers.
So, drop some links to your lists along with a brief description in the comments! One thing to note – if you don’t yet have lists enabled, you won’t be able to see any of them (sorry), but we’ll continue to reference this post in the future.
Source:
http://mashable.com/2009/10/29/twitter-lists-share/
Professional Web Design
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Twitter: You Say Transparency, I Say Vulnerability
We received a number of tips early this morning that the majority of web servers at Twitter was exposing server and load-balancer status information to the public. The status page which are an (often default) option in the open source Apache web server dump an output of all connections and state information for a particular server. The information is used by administrators to monitor servers, and the pages are often either removed entirely or locked down to prevent the information from being used for nefarious purposes.
At some point in the past 24 hours (I would more accurately guess 22 hours 28 minutes and 4 seconds ago, based on the status page itself), the Twitter Web Servers introduced a misconfiguration to expose this information to the public. The page includes overall server statistics along with every HTTP requests currently being handled by that server, with the full request URL. The server status page is usually accessed by requesting /server-status for a web server. In the case of Twitter, this exposure allows anybody to see requests that sometimes rely on being secret to remain secure, such as oAuth keys, which are used to authorize applications to access Twitter accounts.
News of the pages being open spread quickly through Twitter, with some calling it “great transparency” while others recognizing it for what it is – a little too much transparency, and unintentional. Twitter were very quick to respond and blocked all access to the page, and the vast majority of the information found is purely informational and can be deduced through other means. Your Twitter account is probably safe again, but that doesn’t mean we can’t geek out while we get a sneak peak at what Twitter looks like behind the curtain.
Screenshot of one such page below with some of the information cut out.
Source:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/21/twitter-you-say-transperancy-i-say-vulnerability/
Chicago Web Design
At some point in the past 24 hours (I would more accurately guess 22 hours 28 minutes and 4 seconds ago, based on the status page itself), the Twitter Web Servers introduced a misconfiguration to expose this information to the public. The page includes overall server statistics along with every HTTP requests currently being handled by that server, with the full request URL. The server status page is usually accessed by requesting /server-status for a web server. In the case of Twitter, this exposure allows anybody to see requests that sometimes rely on being secret to remain secure, such as oAuth keys, which are used to authorize applications to access Twitter accounts.
News of the pages being open spread quickly through Twitter, with some calling it “great transparency” while others recognizing it for what it is – a little too much transparency, and unintentional. Twitter were very quick to respond and blocked all access to the page, and the vast majority of the information found is purely informational and can be deduced through other means. Your Twitter account is probably safe again, but that doesn’t mean we can’t geek out while we get a sneak peak at what Twitter looks like behind the curtain.
Screenshot of one such page below with some of the information cut out.
Source:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/21/twitter-you-say-transperancy-i-say-vulnerability/
Chicago Web Design
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Twitter Warns Users Not to Change Log-In Data Until Further Notice
Twitter is investigating instances where users lost access to accounts after changes were made to their usernames, passwords, or e-mail addresses
Twitter users should refrain from changing their log-in data until further notice or else risk getting locked out of their accounts.
Twitter is investigating instances of users who have lost access to their accounts after modifying their usernames, passwords or e-mail addresses, the Microblogging Company said on Tuesday.
Until the problem is resolved, Twitter users shouldn't modify their log-in data, according to an official posting on Twitter's Status Web site.
"This seems to affect new users as well as long term users," the note reads.
Users first started reporting the problem late last week, according to messages posted on the site's Known Issues section.
Twitter has made the fixing of this problem a top priority, and at the moment believes the cause might be a caching bug somewhere in its systems, according to information on the Known Issues page.
This is the latest technical hiccup that has affected Twitter in recent days. On Monday, the company acknowledged that the site experienced increased system errors and that users had trouble authoring and posting messages. The latter issue apparently remains outstanding. Last week, a bug caused a delay of several hours in updates to users' message streams.
Twitter, a social network and microblogging site, has become tremendously popular among individuals and organizations since its launch in March 2006, but along the way has earned a reputation for having wobbly performance and uptime.
Twitter experienced lengthy and frequent system outages in 2007 and during the first half of 2008, but since then the situation has improved.
Twitter ended 2008 with 84 hours of downtime, which gave it an uptime frequency of 99.04 percent, the worst among 15 major social-networking services reviewed by Web monitoring company Pingdom.
At Twitter, individuals provide real-time updates about themselves, while organizations use it as a marketing tool. Twitter messages cant' be longer than 140 characters.
Source:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/twitter-warns-users-not-change-log-in-data-until-further-notice-815
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Twitter users should refrain from changing their log-in data until further notice or else risk getting locked out of their accounts.
Twitter is investigating instances of users who have lost access to their accounts after modifying their usernames, passwords or e-mail addresses, the Microblogging Company said on Tuesday.
Until the problem is resolved, Twitter users shouldn't modify their log-in data, according to an official posting on Twitter's Status Web site.
"This seems to affect new users as well as long term users," the note reads.
Users first started reporting the problem late last week, according to messages posted on the site's Known Issues section.
Twitter has made the fixing of this problem a top priority, and at the moment believes the cause might be a caching bug somewhere in its systems, according to information on the Known Issues page.
This is the latest technical hiccup that has affected Twitter in recent days. On Monday, the company acknowledged that the site experienced increased system errors and that users had trouble authoring and posting messages. The latter issue apparently remains outstanding. Last week, a bug caused a delay of several hours in updates to users' message streams.
Twitter, a social network and microblogging site, has become tremendously popular among individuals and organizations since its launch in March 2006, but along the way has earned a reputation for having wobbly performance and uptime.
Twitter experienced lengthy and frequent system outages in 2007 and during the first half of 2008, but since then the situation has improved.
Twitter ended 2008 with 84 hours of downtime, which gave it an uptime frequency of 99.04 percent, the worst among 15 major social-networking services reviewed by Web monitoring company Pingdom.
At Twitter, individuals provide real-time updates about themselves, while organizations use it as a marketing tool. Twitter messages cant' be longer than 140 characters.
Source:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/twitter-warns-users-not-change-log-in-data-until-further-notice-815
Professional Website Design Services
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Twitter Seeks to Build Value, Not Revenue
Despite its rapid growth, Twitter has yet to make any money. Or even earn any revenue.
And Evan Williams, co-founder and chief executive of the microblogging service, is totally fine with that.
Mr. Williams founded several companies before Twitter, including the Blogger service that he eventually sold to Google. One lesson he has taken from them all: “Create something that you want to see in the world,” not what some M.B.A. brandishing a business plan suggests.
“I am motivated by the world telling me I am going to fail,” Mr. Williams told hundreds of journalists gathered in San Francisco for the Online News Association’s annual conference. (You can follow all the tweets about the conference with this tool .)
Even after snagging $100 million in new funding from investors, Mr. Williams seems to feel no pressure to come up with a revenue model for his popular service.
He said the company is instead focusing on building value, such as through the new Twitter Lists, which will allow anyone to create a custom list of Twitter accounts that can be shared publicly or privately. For example, you could compile your 10 favorite Twitterers on the topic of chocolate into an All About Chocolate List that anyone could browse.
It’s a potentially powerful tool that could empower a new class of Twitter curators that will guide others to the best content on Twitter, and Mr. Williams encouraged journalists — already in the business of curating and editing content — to jump into the fray.
While lists are one step towards taming the chaos of Twitter, a robust search tool is even more important.
In an interview after his keynote presentation, he acknowledged that the current Twitter search engine is too basic and the company has a “significant search team” working on improving it.
The next goal, he said, is to eliminate the duplicates and other “noise” that come up in most search queries.
Mr. Williams said the company is also releasing a tool for developers Friday that will allow geographic locations to be embedded in tweets.
Source:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/twitter-seeks-to-build-value-not-revenue/?ref=technology
Chicago Website Designers
And Evan Williams, co-founder and chief executive of the microblogging service, is totally fine with that.
Mr. Williams founded several companies before Twitter, including the Blogger service that he eventually sold to Google. One lesson he has taken from them all: “Create something that you want to see in the world,” not what some M.B.A. brandishing a business plan suggests.
“I am motivated by the world telling me I am going to fail,” Mr. Williams told hundreds of journalists gathered in San Francisco for the Online News Association’s annual conference. (You can follow all the tweets about the conference with this tool .)
Even after snagging $100 million in new funding from investors, Mr. Williams seems to feel no pressure to come up with a revenue model for his popular service.
He said the company is instead focusing on building value, such as through the new Twitter Lists, which will allow anyone to create a custom list of Twitter accounts that can be shared publicly or privately. For example, you could compile your 10 favorite Twitterers on the topic of chocolate into an All About Chocolate List that anyone could browse.
It’s a potentially powerful tool that could empower a new class of Twitter curators that will guide others to the best content on Twitter, and Mr. Williams encouraged journalists — already in the business of curating and editing content — to jump into the fray.
While lists are one step towards taming the chaos of Twitter, a robust search tool is even more important.
In an interview after his keynote presentation, he acknowledged that the current Twitter search engine is too basic and the company has a “significant search team” working on improving it.
The next goal, he said, is to eliminate the duplicates and other “noise” that come up in most search queries.
Mr. Williams said the company is also releasing a tool for developers Friday that will allow geographic locations to be embedded in tweets.
Source:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/twitter-seeks-to-build-value-not-revenue/?ref=technology
Chicago Website Designers
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