Twitter Reaching out to Developers

Below is an interesting article and brief video interview with Biz Stone on the heels of our conversation today. Twitter is pulling together developers for Chirp, the first official Twitter Developer's Conference. Clearly, Twitter sees benefits to others monetizing the platform and its capabilities. They seem to be relying on network effects from outside development to increase their own piece of the pie.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/36514015

Bing rolls out real-time Twitter feed

Bing rolls out real-time Twitter feed

Bing is tapping further into Twitter to deliver the latest tweets on timely topics.

Microsoft's search engine is in the midst of adopting a new feature called Social Search, which will include tweets that are just minutes or even seconds old in regular search results. The goal is to provide more relevant tweets that appear in real time so that people can follow the latest trends and thoughts on subjects of interest, Microsoft'sBing blog announced Tuesday.

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This mash-up is a great example of how Microsoft is fusing the real time and cached information of the world wide web. Though the algorithms will need to be finely tuned to ensure value add results, the potential relevance of the search results could help Bing gain market share over Google.

Will Twitter open their ads to third parties?

Twitter vs. TweetUp?

TweetUp - the Adsense of twitter that launched out of Idealab incubator merely 24 hours before Twitter announced the promoted ads on its own website.

What does TweetUp do?

1) Relevant search results (metrics: retweet frequency, popularity, and how popular links in each tweet are) vs. reverse-chronological search results.

2) Display of relevant ads - not always at the top of the page (as against Twitter, where promoted ads will be at the top of page, as of now): So, the results feel more organic, and not forced on the user.

3) TweetUp’s self-service model is working well for a long tail of local businesses looking to run their own ads. Twitter, on the other hand, is going for big brands such as StarBucks.

TweetUp is making a very tempting proposition: it’s giving developers who integrate the service 50% of the ad revenue. Likewise, publishers can integrate a TweetUp widget that uses AdSense-like technology to display sponsored tweets relevant to the content on their site. TweetUp is also paying some developers up front to integrate the service. Its roster of partners already include Seesmic, Twitdroid (a popular Android client), twitterfeed and Answers.com.

How will Twitter Respond ?

Apple Rains on Adobe's Parade

Adobe is set to unveil its newest creative software suite, Creative Suite 5 (CS5). The most exciting aspect of the new CS5 is a feature that allows app programmers to write a program once and have it able to run on multiple devices. To those who campaign for open source and a level playing field, the announcement of this feature in CS5 may seem like a watershed moment for applications on mobile devices...

Yet amid the hype, Apple has stepped up and thrown a wet blanket on the whole idea. Apple spokespeople have been quoted as saying that although the company "embraces standard technologies" , Adobe's Flash is closed and proprietary, and thus Flash is barred from apps created for Apple's iPhone and iPad.

To me the accusation that the proprietary nature of Flash is why Apple has chosen not to support the new CS5 offering from Adobe is a thinly veiled attempt at maintaining a competitive advantage in the marketplace. In fact the opposite appears to be true: Apple's currently enjoys an advantage in the market because of the superior apps that it offers on their devices and they don't want anyone to mess with the current nature of things.

But with Android gaining share in the market Apple is now forcing programmers to choose between which operating system their app will run on. Perhaps more realistically, Apple is just forcing programmers to do more work by creating the same app on two different systems. Seems pretty silly to me... maybe Apple should come out with a catchy ad campaign about how the end user loses out on this one.

Visa uses shopping habits to determine credit worthiness

Credit Card companies are watching what your buying and make inferences on who you are and your credit worthiness based on your shopping pattern:

Have you used your credit card at merchants specializing in secondhand clothing, retread tires, bail bond services, massages, casino gambling or betting? Your credit card issuer may be taking note -- and making decisions about your creditworthiness based on your purchasing behavior.

While, it is assumed they were tracking spending habits, the subjectivity involved such as assuming if you shop at thrift stores than you are less credit worthy seems ludicrous.

Imagine if they can combine that with the data from OnStar as referenced in today's class----how will your driving patterns be used by Visa in the future?

Make Your Facebook Account Private

http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Make_Your_Facebook_Account_Private?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29

Facebook recently (in December, 2009) unveiled a radically revamped set of privacy controls. They are better and more forward-thinking than its previous efforts, but Facebook made one very important change in late 2009: almost all user data is now made public by default.

Facebook users were asked to verify their privacy settings using Facebook's "Privacy transition tool" that recommended some default settings. Oddly, the suggested defaults made most profile settings, photo uploads, status updates and application settings viewable by everyone on the internet. This means the whole world could see everything Facebook users post if they didn't change the defaults.

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This update takes advantage of the average unaware Facebook user. Facebook should have followed a status quo update model and not change a user's privacy for them. The concept of a "Privacy transition tool" is only as useful as its accessibility and Facebook did not think about the Internet of Things. Many Facebook users only check their profiles via an iPhone or other device and it seems that Facebook did not do a good job at universally announcing this privacy update.

Nonprofits and Geolocation: Fun Now, Funds Later?

I'm not officially studying the nonprofit sector for IS714, but I've had an abiding interest in the area since writing my final paper for IS837 on the strategic use of IT in a British museum. To that end, I was excited to come across a blog post on how the Brooklyn Museum has used FourSquare, an application that allows individuals to "check in" at various locations, share tips on that location with friends, and earn points and status (like becoming the "mayor" of the location) along the way. Thus far, the Brooklyn Museum has used FourSquare to:

• Reward most-frequent-visitors (mayors) with free membership
• Create a mashup with the Yelp API, highlighting the specific restaurant pics of the museum staff among all those in the local area

To facilitate the use of FourSquare, the museum has also created a mobile version of its website, which itself spawned the idea of users going on a "Gallery Tag" mobile scavenger hunt across the museum, labeling objects with either pre-determined or user-created tags.

While the Brooklyn Museum is in something of a playful, exploratory phase with geolocation right now, it's exciting to imagine how the museum might use the technology more strategically going forward. For example, they could:

• Partner with those local restaurants recommended by museum staff, as well as other local shops and services, driving customer traffic bi-directionally by prompting users who have logged in to one venue to complete the pair by logging into the other (e.g., "Visit Joe's Burgers after you leave the museum to get 10% off your check!")
• Use geolocation at a micro-level within the museum, prompting users to log in and comment at those exhibits or works they find particularly interesting. Data patterns on these log ins and comments can then be analyzed to inform decisions on what objects to keep in (or remove from) the current collection, and what types of potential acquisitions make the most sense to purchase given customer viewing preferences.
• Better manage customer retention by analyzing log in data to determine the frequency of an individual user's visits, incentivizing a once-frequent, now-lapsed visitor to come back with a free admission ticket or gift shop discount

It's great to see a non-profit among the pioneers of a new technology - we'll have to stay tuned to see how they proceed!