Tag Archives: social media

Gillmor Gang: Watertown

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The Gillmor Gang — Danny Sullivan, Dan Farber, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — note the intersection of social and mainstream medias as the events in Boston unfolded in real time. What has been framed as a competition became something more, as Twitter streams, scanner apps, and local news streams meshed with CNN et al.

Inspired curation by @dannysullivan produced an authoritative feed of credible crowdsourced updates. Tweeters at the scene produced wry commentary on reporter exaggeration, eventually encouraging a hybrid blend of real time speed and news judgement. Our thoughts remain with the brave and resilient people of Watertown, Cambridge, and Boston.

@stevegillmor, @dbfarber, @dannysullivan, @kevinmarks, @jtaschek

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor

Ars Technicast Ep. 25: Would you like some social media with your news?

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These days, when a big story breaks, one of the first places that people go to for information is social media, as was the case in the recent attacks in Boston. The hack of the Associated Press’ Twitter account and the drop in the financial markets afterward also reflects how much the public at large has come to rely on social media for news delivery.

In turn, public reaction on social media has become part of the headlines themselves, as social networks like Facebook and Twitter are used to both distribute and consume news. It’s a big change from the news cycles of the past.

With so much immediate information bombarding us, we set out to discuss what makes news today different from the pre-social era. Join Senior Apple Editor Jacqui Cheng, Ars Contributor Casey Johnston, Microsoft Editor Peter Bright, and Social Editor Cesar Torres in this episode of the Ars Technicast.

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Social Media Manipulation? When “Indie” Bloggers and Businesses Get Cozy

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Brands have sought to partner with influential bloggers for nearly as long as there have been blogs, with ads, sponsored posts, and more. Lately, however, a new relationship between brands and popular social media practioners is emerging: It’s not a traditional endorsement deal, and yet an “independent” endorsement for the brand is all but guaranteed. So how exactly does that work? Well, for the companies involved, there is a simple two-step approach to establishing such relationships: 1) Locate people who love your brand and hold influence in the social media world; and 2) give these people even more reason to love your brand, so that they’ll use their influence to somehow help promote that brand. Chipotle is following such a strategy by giving free burritos for life to pro athletes. Free burrito cards aren’t being handed out willy-nilly to every well-known athlete, of course. Instead, the criterion is pretty obvious: The freebies are given to athletes who have already stated publicly (via Twitter, most likely) that they love Chipotle. [CLARIFICATION: A firm representing Chipotle reached out and clarified that these cards don't guarantee free burritos for life. Instead, cardholders get one free burrito per day for one year, with the opportunity to renew when the 12-month period is over.] The fast-casual chain is banking on the strong likelihood that if these athletes are munching on its burritos for free regularly, they’ll plug the brand occasionally. The athletes aren’t official spokespeople and aren’t featured in company ads. But in essence, they are endorsing Chipotle, and they’re being “paid” for their endorsement in the form of free burritos. (MORE: Stealth Celebrity Endorsement: No Money Changing Hands, Just Free Burritos) Popular bloggers, on the other hand, often agree to relationships with brands that might include official sponsorships, invitations to focus groups on products in the works, or special perks such as freebies or sneak peeks at merchandise before it’s in stores. In 2009, the FTC released guidelines that require full disclosure of “material connections”—sponsorships, free products and perks, and any money changing hands

Is Our Addiction To Tragedy On Social Media Inspiring Violence?

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If terrorism requires an audience, then the recent mainstream adoption of social media may be giving violent actors a bigger stage than ever before. There are many reasons people lash out at the world, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that becoming the center of the attention could be a factor pushing some to commit atrocities. Our retweets could be delivering their messages of fear.

This is not to say social media infamy is the cause of any of the recent tragedies in Boston, or Sandy Hook, or anywhere else. I have no knowledge of the motives of the suspects in those cases. But watching the world feverishly tweet and Facebook post about the manhunt unfolding in Watertown last night frightened me. I couldn’t help but wonder if other angry, disturbed, or mentally ill individuals might be watching, too, and craving that same notoriety. I shuddered to think of a future where a terrorist in hiding laughs as they see their actions trigger millions of mentions.

Some believe that social media’s role is no different than that of traditional media years ago — that terrorists and killers in the 1920s would have just been just as attracted to becoming a newspaper headline as the subject of a sea of tweets. I disagree. Those old outlets were broadcast mediums; they weren’t participatory. Listening to reports of catastrophe on the radio and discussing them with people nearby doesn’t internalize the fear the same way as personally re-sharing and reacting to them in a real-time global forum. Social media instills emotions deeper.

According to Max Abrahms, PhD, a counter-terrorism research fellow at Johns Hopkins and author of “What Terrorists Really Want” from the International Security journal, ”One thing counter-terrorism researchers want to know is what is the motive of the terrorist. They want to know that because they want to deprive terrorism of any utility. If we could remove the value of committing terrorism they wouldn’t do it.” He tells me, “One of the main goals of terrorists is to get attention. By it’s very definition, terrorism requires an audience, so it’s no surprise the advent of terrorism came alongside the growth of mass media in the 1880s. Social media today no doubt spreads the message of terrorists even quicker and to more people.”

We’ve already seen perpetrators make use of social media to promote their point of view, like Christopher Dorner who was caught in an extended manhunt after killing several police officers in February. He may have wanted the manifesto he posted to Facebook accusing police of corruption to be widely shared. And we shared it. His message hit closer to home because it was our friends distributing it, rather than a newspaper like the letters from the Zodiac Killer.

If killing sprees are a cry for attention or help or an attempt to show the world someone’s pain, then our fixation on tragedy, our willingness to pause our lives and spread the news bit by bit could be playing into their hands.

In fact, when video footage of Osama Bin Laden in his compound was recovered, Abrahms says one of the most striking things we found was that Osama was sitting on his sofa watching himself on television. It suggests terrorists do derive utility from knowing millions of people are paying attention to them.

Our real-time updates can even have real negative consequences for the safety of those involved in pursuits of criminals. In February during the Dorner manhunt, the San Bernardino District Attorney tweeted that “The sheriff has asked all members of the press to stop tweeting immediately. It is hindering officer safety. And last night, the Boston Police Department discouraged people from posting what they heard on police scanners:

But does this kind of attention inspire violence? When I asked Abrahms who studied at Oxford and has spoken on Al Jazeera, he explained “In a sense, yes. Ideally we would completely ignore terrorism.” That’s not to say discussion is bad, and Abrahms notes social media’s potential to surface evidence in investigations. Still, propagating the fear and grief caused by acts of violence has the potential to satisfy those who commit them.

This isn’t a call for guilt, or even abrupt change, but for mindfulness. When the Internet crowds around tragedy, do we think about the impact of feverishly sharing the latest gruesome details? There is a difference between distributing actionable news and trumpeting fear, and being aware of that difference is critical now that we each have our own audience.

Abrahms concludes, and I agree, “if people are sharing news stories they find intellectually interesting, there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem is if people internalize it and come to overestimate the chance of they themselves being victim of a terrorist attack. You don’t want society to overreact.”

Hello Social Launches Platform And API For Building And Monitoring Every Aspect Of Social Marketing Campaigns

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hello-fbappHello Social is a new Toronto-based startup launching today, with the aim of improving the amount of useful data captured from online social media marketing campaigns. The startup, co-founded by design professional Dominik Dryja and technical lead Barek Nowotarski, provides tools for companies looking to run campaigns like contests on platforms like Facebook, or via their own web properties, and provides intelligent metrics around those contests to help identify trends and opportunities to drive greater engagement and higher conversion rates.

Tint Gives Businesses An Easy Way To Bring Social Media Feeds To Their Websites, Apps And Facebook Pages

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Last year, Tim Sae Koo, Nikhil Aitharaju, Eunice Noh and Ryo Chiba launched HypeMarks to give people a less hectic way to consume social media. The startup aggregated tweets, articles, links and more shared by influencers and celebrities on social media accounts and, by grouping those by topic, aimed to give people a snapshot of an industry through the eyes of the people who know it best.

Although the USC grads were able to generate some interest and raise a small round of seed funding from Bill Gross and Idealab, the service never quite took off. Using the social media aggregation technology they’d developed for HypeMarks, they shifted their focus to take a B2B approach to social media aggregation. In December, they launched Tint — a simple, DIY platform that helps brands aggregate, curate and display social media feeds from multiple networks on their websites, in their mobile apps, Facebook pages and event displays.

In other words, Tint’s platform is designed to help brands create social hubs on top of their digital properties and, in turn, create a deeper level of engagement with their audiences. The idea is that, while there are a number of social media aggregators out there, the average consumer tends to gravitate towards one particular social network and, once there, tends to do their socializing and interacting on that network, rather than switching between them.

Tint allows businesses and brands to connect their social network accounts with their websites, in part to help them promote their products and services through their social feeds, but also to provide their websites with more engaging content. Businesses can link their Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook and RSS feeds to their Tint accounts, whereupon the service auto-populates the page from those feeds, serving the social content in a river that is Pinterest-like in design.

Or, perhaps the better analogy is Flipboard, as each piece of content is given a headline, an excerpt and a photo, served in a create-your-own social magazine sort of layout. Users can then personalize their pages by changing fonts, background colors and so on or change the headline, URL and image of each piece of content. Tint also offers a handful of starter templates (on of which is free) in case you want to get started quickly.

After that’s done, you can embed the product on your site, tweaking the code to customize it for your site or page, whether it be WordPress, Tumblr, Weebly or some other. Tint also allows you to choose the dimensions you want the embedded stream to be and the number of cascading columns you want to appear, automatically serving up the embed code. Take that to your blog, page, drop it in, and bingo, bango, bongo, you have a social feed on your website that is automatically updated every time you tweet or post cat pictures to Facebook.

Admittedly, Tint probably sounds a little bit like Rebelmouse, but Sae Koo tells us that there are a few differences: Namely, Tint enables you to display social media feeds from specific hashtags, YouTube channels and Pinterest boards to help keep your users on your website, app or event (and engaged). Plus, he says, Tint wants to be a platform tool and an aggregator, not a publishing CMS — and one that’s easy to use and takes 10 minutes to set up. The alternatives, he says, are generally expensive, custom solutions that take time to implement and integrate.

While it may not sound earth-shattering, in the four months since launch, Tint has started to build some traction. Over 10,000 brands are actively using Tint on their sites, averaging 2.5 million monthly pageviews and has been doubling revenue and user growth month-over-month. Today, Tint’s clients include Enrique Iglesias, Toni Braxton, a number of NFL and NBA teams, Honda and more, and its 10,000 clients have averaged a 10 to 15 percent increase in traffic, 20 to 30 percent increase in time spent on their site and 12 to 18 percent decrease in bounce rate, the founders tell us.

Next up, Tint will be looking to expand its partnerships with digital agencies, build out its templates and customization options and finish raising its seed round.

Find Tint at home here.

Ars Technicast, Episode 23–Ghosts of online services we abandoned

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Over the years, most of us have left certain online services behind. We closed out some of our accounts and let others languish in the graveyard of the Internet. Today, we talk about the ghosts of those screen names past. Some of the services we talk about in this show include the original Hotmail, AOL, LiveJournal, and MySpace. Join our host, Senior Apple Editor Jacqui Cheng, as well as Ars Contributors Andrew Cunningham and Casey Johnston, and Social Editor Cesar Torres in this look back at the things we abandoned as our lives grew more connected with the Internet.

Share with us your own stories of online services that you abandoned in the comments below. Also, if you enjoy the Ars Technicast and you happen to subscribe via iTunes or Stitcher, please leave us a review or comment in those places. Also, don’t forget to take our poll below.

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ShareThis Aims For Mobile, With $23M Series C Led By T-Venture, Acquisition Of Social App Platform, Socialize

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Palo Alto-based publisher platform ShareThis, the maker of those “social sharing” buttons scattered across the web, is today announcing having closed on $23 million in Series C financing, in a round led by T-Venture, the venture capital arm of Deutsche Telekom. Additionally, in another move signaling its intention to unify its platform across web and mobile, ShareThis has also acquired Socialize, a startup whose developer toolkit helps make any app social.

The new round of funding included new investors Harbourton and corporate funds represented by West Capital investors, as well as participation from existing investors, Blue Chip Venture Company, DFJ, Illinois Ventures, Matthew Pritzker Company, Mercury Fund and RPM Ventures. As a part of the new round, Bernhard Gold of T-Venture will join ShareThis’s board. ShareThis’s total raise to date is $54 million.

Today, ShareThis offers publishers sharing widgets, developer tools, and an analytics dashboard detailing social sharing trends across sites, and more, as well as tools for advertisers that allow them to run targeted campaigns across the ShareThis network. But while its platform does offer some mobile sharing tools, ShareThis CEO Kurt Abrahamson says that their focus was primarily on mobile web, not apps.

“We have a fairly large distribution of tools, so Socialize was partially about distribution in the app space, but it was primarily about finding a really strong team that had mobile a little bit more in its DNA,” he explains. “They’re a great team; they’re based in San Francisco – culturally, everything was 100 percent.”

Abrahamson says that although ShareThis had an app solution, it hadn’t pushed it, and now following this acquisition, Socialize’s app solution will become the new default.

Socialize, for those unfamiliar, spun out of the startup’s earlier efforts with a service called AppMakr (also now owned by ShareThis), which helped individuals and businesses build their own native iPhone applications. As Socialize, the company put out a “Social SDK” (software development kit), which allows app developers to quickly add social features to their mobile applications such as likes, comments, shares, an “activity pane” showing other users’ in-app activity, and more. The idea is that it can add a social layer to any app, adding not only the ability for users to connect with each other, but a way for the brand to connect with their in-app user base, as well.

As of last spring, the company had 150 live apps on its platform, with another 500 or so in testing, and was reaching around 10 million end users. Today, Socialize has grown to 800 apps across 67 million unique devices, and had just this month scored its first enterprise contract with Warner Bros., which will now be integrating Socialize into its various mobile apps, starting with its “Ellen” app (the daytime talkshow).

The Socialize platform will remain up-and-running following the ShareThis acquisition, though it might eventually be rebranded. All six members of the current Socialize team will operate out of ShareThis’s San Francisco office. Former Socialize CEO, now SVP of Strategic Partnerships at ShareThis, Daniel Odio, says that the service won’t be changed for current users – in fact, he adds, it will now be actively improved as a part of ShareThis.

Abrahamson also says that Socialize will help give ShareThis a better position in mobile. “The biggest challenge is that there’s not consistent metrics across web and mobile. One of the things we’re going to focus on is figuring out a solution that will allow publishers to see the sharing of their content across multiple platforms, and not just toggling between one and another,” he says. “In the world we’re evolving to, publishers need to optimize content for all devices, and I think they’ll see different social sharing patterns, depending on the platform.”

He adds that, today, many web publishers are seeing higher percentages of users coming from mobile than they may have expected. So with the acquisition, ShareThis wants to be able to analyze that traffic and present it back to publishers, letting them see the value on mobile.

The integration of Socialize into ShareThis’s platform will take around two quarters to complete, with the initial effort focused on developing a version of ShareThis’s SQI measurement (Social Quality Index) for mobile, a proprietary ranking metric that allows publishers to compare themselves to competitors in their same space.

Also reflective of its increased focus on mobile is the new T-Venture investment, which brings a mobile perspective to ShareThis. But more importantly, perhaps, it brings an international angle. Although there are many publishers outside the U.S. using ShareThis, the company hasn’t really focused on the global market. That will now change, as ShareThis plans to expand internationally in 2013, including establishing European offices, possibly in Germany or the U.K., expanding its head count along the way by two to three dozen.

ShareThis currently has a publisher base of 2.3 million. The company says its tools are seen by 95 percent of the U.S. Internet audience each month – over 200 million uniques. In 2012, it grew revenues 155 percent, and grew its staff from 50 to 95. On the advertising side, it works with a large number of major brands, including Microsoft, Samsung, Best Buy, Disney, American Express and others.