Former executives from the NBA and the NFL say that teams and leagues should encourage players to use Twitter — even if some foreseeable headaches occur. The marketing benefits are worth it and the number of gaffes may subside as players get used to the medium. Read more »
Social media analytics firm Dataminr announced that it has raised a $13 million Series B round of financing. The company accesses the Twitter firehose and provides an early warning network for finance and government clients. Read more »
I was an AirBnB sceptic for a long time, but trying the service made me realize just how disruptive it could be — and how it also shares a lot of the same characteristics of other disruptive businesses that are powered by the social web. Read more »
At ONA, Dick Costolo promised free curation tools to help newsrooms better present the flavor of news events. That’s all well and good, but can these tools–and the ability to download your own tweets — resolve growing tensions between Twitter users and Twitter itself? Read more »
James Bond is 50, a nation of deadbeats, Stone Age brains dealing with Facebook, living literally inside the computer and reverse network effects — these are some of the topics I have put together for this week’s seven recommended reads. Plus a great essay on men’s style. Read more »
Private social networking apps like Path and the SMS-based GroupMe are trying to capitalize on the fact that most people only communicate regularly with a relatively small set of contacts. That requires thinking about social networking and content in a new context. Read more »
Whether it’s the iPhone 5, the importance of LTE, or BYOD trends disrupting the enterprise, there are always technologies, trends, and companies changing the way we define mobile. Here are some noteworthy segments to watch in the coming months, from location-based shopping to apps to wireless networks. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The ability to distribute real-time information through social networks like Twitter is a powerful thing, but a new study points out that one of the downsides of this phenomenon is the fact that much of the content that gets linked to eventually disappears. Read more »
News-filtering service Prismatic has just launched a new “friend following” feature. Although this may look like a social-networking copycat move, founder Brad Cross says it is all about increasing the amount of data the service has about its users so that it can make relevant recommendations. Read more »
Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo announced a major redesign to the site that puts media and photographs front and center. The company also launched a new iPad design. Read more »
Listening platforms — or social media monitoring, analysis, and engagement tools — are bringing massive amounts of new information to businesses’ marketing departments. These tools are also leading the way in the growth of social media information and access throughout organizations so that customers’ wants and needs can be better understood and, presumably, satisfied. This report analyzes how the adoption of listening platforms is transforming marketing departments, their relationships with central IT, and the core systems that run the enterprise. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Twitter has argued that it doesn’t own a user’s tweets, but at the same time the company wants to control what users do with their content so that it can monetize the network. There’s an inherent conflict there that is becoming increasingly difficult for Twitter to avoid. Read more »
If you think fake online reviews are bad now, just wait a few years. Gartner predicts that in two to three years, 10 to 15 percent of all online reviews will be bought and paid for by businesses. Read more »
Despite all the gloom in the newspaper business, which he says will likely still have to suffer more pain and possible bankruptcies, New York Times media writer David Carr says he believes that thanks to the internet we are living in a “golden age for journalism.” Read more »
A New York judge who has been disciplined in the past for misusing social media today forced Twitter to turn over the tweets of one of its users. The surrender serves to undercut Twitter’s right to appeal part of the closely watched social media case. Read more »
Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams has launched a news-filtering service called Nuzzel that is powered by social-networking activity. But while his previous ventures have been early to the market, his new offering suffers from the opposite problem — the market is already saturated with similar services. Read more »
Twitter is fighting a major privacy case that will help determine who has rights in social media. Unfortunately, the case is before a judge who has been disciplined for misusing Facebook. His track record suggests that he is the very last person who should be deciding these issues. Read more »
The new “public editor” for the New York Times has been getting good reviews for the way she is handling the job of being a go-between for readers and editors. But wouldn’t it be better if every NYT writer and editor did that for themselves? Read more »
One developer who has been creating custom Twitter applications for corporate clients says the network’s crackdown on use of its API makes him afraid for his livelihood, but could also damage the company’s long-term prospects if enough people like him start looking for alternatives. Read more »
Evan Williams, the co-founder of Twitter and the company’s former CEO during the beginning of its evolution from a side project into a major social-media entity, says that the influence of the network’s ecosystem has been overstated. But is that true? Read more »
UK thriller author Stephen Leather’s admission that he created fake accounts to review his own books has led to a storm of controversy over bad author behavior and “sock puppet” reviews. Here’s what’s happened so far and how bad author behavior might be fixed. Read more at paidContent »
The first employee and lead architect of the company that later became Twitter has sold his Uruguay-based dev shop to lean startup consulting group New Context, which counts Eric Ries as a partner. The move marks the emergence of customer development as a service. Read more »
Twitter’s ongoing moves to control more of its network — in order to monetize it — is an attempt to turn back the clock and undo some of the openness it started out with. But will it also rob the service of what made it so powerful? Read more »
Twitter’s ongoing evolution from open platform to global media company has all kinds of ramifications for the social-media industry and for businesses, but it also has implications for users. This is my attempt to look at why I have a love-hate relationship with the service. Read more »
Yahoo fired its former Washington bureau chief on Wednesday for a joking comment he made during a video broadcast from the Republican convention. Isn’t it about time we admitted that journalists have emotions and opinions, rather than expecting them to be impartial robots? Read more »
There has been a rush of fact-checking of recent comments made by Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, but does this mean the traditional media’s obsession with objectivity and the “view from nowhere” has changed? Not really — which is why more alternative sources are necessary. Read more »
Ever since Facebook stumbled with its IPO, there has been a constant drumbeat of criticism saying Mark Zuckerberg should step down as CEO — but Silicon Valley is devoted to the idea of strong founders retaining control of their companies. Will that be Facebook’s undoing? Read more »
In a move to boost sales through social recommendations, online shoe and clothing retailer Zappos, which is owned by Amazon, has added a new feature called “PinPointing” that offers recommendations based on Pinterest accounts. Unfortunately, the feature doesn’t work very well yet. Read more »
As Twitter continues to expand its control over the content that runs through its network, even as it forms partnerships with large TV networks like NBC, media entities of all kinds are going to have to ask whether their reliance on the service is wise. Read more »
Although the ad-driven business model behind Facebook looks similar to that of a newspaper, the crucial difference is that the social network knows a lot more about its users. The more focus that newspapers put on doing the same, the better off they will be. Read more »
Twitter has removed sourcing on individual tweets showing what clients were used to post them, a change that’s new on the web but has already existed on mobile, as the company works through its relationship with third-party clients on the ecosystem. Read more »
The rise of social media tools such as blogs and Twitter have changed the political landscape, in part by speeding up the news cycle and broadening the range of sources that are available. But are these developments good or bad for the practice of political journalism? Read more »
As Twitter shuts off the access that services like Instagram and Tumblr used to have to its valuable “follower graph,” it is also promoting the new relationships it has with media players like NBC. Between them, those two moves speak volumes about the company’s future. Read more »
Sling Digital is taking what it calls the Moneyball approach to Twitter ads, letting customer buy cheap keywords that still connect to the audiences they are targeting. The service analyzes users’ conversations to find out what they’re talking about and who they’re following and sharing from. Read more »
Schools like the University of Kentucky are forcing athletes to install software that monitors their social media accounts for words like “panties” or “fight.” Some states are proposing laws to put a stop this. Read more »
Twitter seems to be at a crossroads, and according to a recent GigaOM survey, its prospects for the next five years are promising. Key challenges in the near future will be establishing a revenue model and survive the backlash from developers. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Topsy, one of only a handful of companies with access to Twitter’s entire data stream of information, is releasing Tuesday a pro analytics service that will give brands greater access to that information. Read more »
A memo written by the managing editor of the Washington Post in 1992 says a lot about how much of the future of media was obvious even then, but it also misses the most disruptive force the industry has seen — namely, the rise of social media. Read more »
The reaction to Twitter’s restrictions on its API has focused mostly on whether the moves are unfair to third-party developers and apps. But what about the impact they will have on users? Twitter seems to care more about monetizing its network than what users want. Read more »
Twitter says its Clockwork Raven web app will make it easier for even non-technical people to post job requests to Amazon Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing job site. The app is now available for download from Github. Read more »
