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Social Media Finally Does Something Useful In South Carolina
Jan 23rd
So far I have been skeptical about how much of a role social media buzz has been playing in the presidential primaries, particularly when it comes to “predicting” winners. But of the three primaries to date, Saturday’s race in South Carolina may have been the one that was most influenced by Twitter.
Traditional polls still did a better job of predicting the outcome of Saturday’s South Carolina primary, but a backwards look at Twitter may show why and how Newt Gingrich scored such a decisive, 12-point victory over national front runner Mitt Romney. And in some regards, social media was able to tell a story in South Carolina that polls could not.
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Public Policy Polling did a much better job than social media analytics by GlobalPoint in predicting the actual results of Saturday’s results, in large part because Ron Paul’s votes have yet to catch up with his social media mentions. To its credit, though, Global point saw Gingrich with 31 percent of the vote to Romney’s 19 percent, while the traditional poll was prediciting a much tighter, six-point race.
What social media did do better than traditional polls, however, is show how Gingrich’s support surged followed Thursday night’s debate. That night could have been a toss-up for Gingrich: while pundits said Gingrich held his own and Romney may have lost ground, Gingrich had the added potential pitfall of an ABC News interview with his ex-wife that night.
Twitter almost instantly showed that the ABC interview was not going to be a factor, and any mentions of the interview – positive or negative – may have actually helped Gingrich by pushing negative, social media comments about his debate performance to the background.
Meanwhile, OhMyGov is reporting that Gingrich saw a surge in Facebook fans and Twitter followers in the hours that followed the debate. That followed a surge of social media activity (and a corresponding bump in the polls) for Gingrich following the first of two debates in South Carolina on Jan. 16.
The lesson thus far in the 2012 election that social media, like traditional polling, can’t accurately predict races (particularly races involving Ron Paul, it would seem). But as researchers spend more time analyzing the data, social media is showing itself as an effective tool in better understanding a presidential campaign, which amounts to a daily war of attrition for public sentiment.
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New Open Group Cloud Standard Introduces “XaaS” – Something as a Service
Jan 19th
As prominent as cloud computing has already become in today’s enterprises, it’s amazing to realize that the world’s reference standards are only now catching up with the concept. On Tuesday, the consortium of industry stakeholders known as The Open Group updated its reference standards for Service-Oriented Architecture. You remember SOA, don’t you?
Well, if you’ve been following along with the SOA story, you know that cloud computing platforms have catapulted the service concept onto a huge and growing platform. Now, the consortium – led by software giants IBM, Oracle, and SAP, along with HP, and business consultancy CapGemini – has produced a formal interpretation of the role services play in the cloud, by offering a new term for the concept. Say it with me (if you can): XaaS.
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If a component delivers a service over a network using a service-oriented infrastructure, the Open Group now explains, in whatever form that takes, the concept will be referred to as XaaS. Literally, the X stands for… anything.
“This is the essence of cloud computing,” reads the Open Group’s new Service-Oriented Cloud Computing Infrastructure (SOCCI) framework. “It refers to an increasing number of services that are delivered over a network. Anything as a service requires an understanding of the service objectives and the accounting of service use and quality. The objectives, use, and quality can be determined from the underlying reference model for SOI: Broad network access (cloud) + resource pooling (cloud) + business-driven infrastructure on-demand (SOI) + service-orientation (SOI) = XaaS.”
SOCCI is a necessary adaptation to the OG’s existing SOI concept, mainly because certain aspects of cloud services had become incongruous with the formal framework for SOI even up until last week. The expectation for SOI was built around software contained within the fixed space of server hardware (note: no virtualization) in an enterprise data center, or perhaps (begrudgingly) through cohosting services. Resources were provisioned directly and manually by administrators, and financing was often expected to be handled as capital expenditures.
The new SOCCI framework embraces the modern understanding of cloud services as spelled out by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. There are three principal divisions – SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS – and usually anything else that vendors may attach to an “-aaS” is arbitrary and often self-serving. Open Group leaves the door open for something else to fit there later, but makes clear that these three pillars are the only ones that need to hold up the cloud for now.
Previously, the SOI framework helped organizations to understand how to design, using architecture, the hardware foundations for their services. With cloud computing, much of that architectural process is rendered moot. You provision the basic characteristics of the virtual systems you need to deliver services. And if they don’t work well or properly, you change those characteristics. SOCCI has adopted this concept now, and is advancing it up until the time it needs to be completely redefined all over again.
Quoting from the newly revised framework:
Cloud computing puts new demands on the IT infrastructure and management thereof. It requires an abstract approach to the operational environment. A cloud computing provider cannot any longer tailor its environment for each subscriber. It means that instead of a physical device, cloud computing offers an abstraction of a server, file system, storage, network, database, etc. Moreover, increasing providers’ profitability and maximizing the utilization of resources requires multi-tenancy, dynamic allocation of resources, and metering with charge-back.
At the same time, subscribers expect to see implementation of a utility model since they want to allocate resources on-demand and pay exactly for their usage while being able to sustain their operations, much like the electric bill. Hence, new infrastructure should be agile and elastic and create an illusion of infinite computing resources available on-demand. While SOI did not offer the whole spectrum of the characteristics desired, it became an enabler for what came to be known as Service-Oriented Cloud Computing Infrastructure (SOCCI). SOCCI can be defined as service-oriented, utility-based, manageable, scalable on-demand infrastructure that supports essential cloud characteristics, service, and deployment models. In other words, SOCCI describes the essentials for implementing and managing an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) environment.
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Facebook Promised Something Awesome, Now They Have To Deliver
Jul 5th
In the midst of all the Google Plus hype last week, Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg dropped in an interview with reporters that the company is going to announce “something awesome” this week. The statement was cryptic and a giant tease to tech reporters looking for the next big story. Now Facebook has to live up to the words of its CEO and actually deliver something awesome.
Awesome is a pretty subjective word. What could be awesome to Zuckerberg could be lame to the rest of the world. What could that be? Powers of deduction around the rumor mill have pointed to some type of Skype integration with Facebook. Zuckerberg made his comments at the Seattle Facebook office. Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond are 15 miles from Seattle. Microsoft was an early investor in Facebook and has had a good relationship with the company. Microsoft bought Skype not long ago. Do all these signs lead to Skype integration within Facebook connected with a guiding hand from Microsoft? Or is it something else entirely, like new photo-sharing tools or an HTML5 application store? Let’s take a look at the rumors to see what kind of awesomeness could be released in Palo Alto, Calif. tomorrow.
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Facebook & Skype
Back in September 2010, it appeared that Facebook and Skype were ready to announce “a deep integration partnership” that would bring Facebook the type of communications tools enjoyed by Google such as browser-integrated video chat. For some reason, that deal was never closed. At the time it looked like Skype would enable Facebook users to call and SMS their friends from Skype but the rumors made no mention of being able to video chat with friends from within the Facebook ecosystem in the browser. The ability to embed Skype directly into Facebook would certainly be a killer feature.
Microsoft and Facebook have a close relationship. Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook in 2007. More recently Microsoft debuted its “social search” capabilities by integrating Facebook data into Bing search results. Embedding Skype into Facebook would be a big win for Microsoft and a validation of the $8.5 billion it spent to acquire the service.
Google Plus has an exciting feature called Hangouts that allows up to 10 people to video chat in the same room. When it comes to real-time communications on the Internet, that is a powerful new tool. Will Skype integration into Facebook reach that level of “awesome?”
iPad Application, HTML5 Mobile Web Apps
According to Reuters, the 40-person Facebook team in Seattle has a background in mobile development. Does that mean that Facebook is finally going to release an iPad app or something similar in the mobile realm?
An iPad app does not seem like something that would fall into the “awesome” category. If Facebook was serious about an iPad application, it would have developed one by now, 15 months after the release of the original Apple tablet. A source tells TechCrunch that the announcement will not be an iPad app.
Facebook could still be going after the mobile realm though by releasing an HTML5 version of its platform that would be specifically designed for smartphones and tablets. Would that be the so-called “Project Spartan” that reportedly will try to create an application model to undercut iTunes? Maybe, though reports said that Project Spartan would not be available till mid-July at the earliest.
New Photo-Sharing Tools
When it comes to mobile photo sharing, Google Plus beats Facebook without a doubt. Yet, Facebook could be working on upgrading its photo-sharing tools that utilize sensor data on a device. If the Facebook team in Seattle is really a mobile-first operation, this might make sense. Facebook would like to create more connections using implicit data and as such creating a team of developers to emulate and add upon the ideas of photo-sharing app Color would make a lot of sense. Facebook + photo sharing + implicit data would probably fall into the category of “awesome.” This may or may not be another aspect of Spartan.
Facebook could also update its photo-sharing capabilities in the same rollout. Improvements to Facebook’s mobile uploads would be the ability to upload more than one photo at a time (or enabling “instant upload” the way Google Plus does) that could easily be shared with specific groups of people on Facebook but not the entire user stream.
We will be covering Facebook’s announcement tomorrow at 10 a.m. PST. What do you think? What kind of awesomeness do you want from Facebook? What do you think Facebook will announce on Wednesday? Let us know in the comments.
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3 reasons why SEO does mean something to group buying – Memeburn
May 30th
 Memeburn |
3 reasons why SEO does mean something to group buying
Memeburn In my travels along the social commerce road so far in South Africa, I've often been told that SEO plays no role in bringing in traffic to to group buying site. There are generally two kinds of sites, when you look at traffic: those where … |
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Get a Great Deal on Learning Something New with TeachStreet
Apr 6th
TeachStreet, the online community that helps lifelong learners find teachers and classes on almost any subject, is joining the “deals” space today, launching a new feature with both an online and (for now) a local Seattle deal.
This week’s online deal: $59 for a 6 month access pass to Educator.com (normally $150). This week’s local deal: $25 for a 3-class package at Arthur Murray Dance (normally $59). Share the deal with 3 friends who sign up, and yours is free.
“We should have done it a year ago,” admits CEO and founder Dave Schappell. Perhaps. But the addition of deals to TeachStreet doesn’t make sense simply because of the explosion of interest in the space. Instead, TeachStreet has spent the last year or so focused on building a vibrant community of teachers and learners. There are just under a half million classes listed on the site, offered by around 100,000 teachers and schools.
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Unlike other sites that are focused on deals only and offer a range of discounted services – deals on spa services, restaurants, tours and the like – TeachStreet will remain focused on education. That means these deals will be targeted at quite a different consumer. Rather than pitching a service to someone who’s on the look out for a deal – any deal – the addition of deals to TeachStreet will benefit those interested in lifelong learning and will serve as another marketing vehicle for the teachers on the site.
It will also add a layer of virality as well, as learners are encouraged to share the deals with friends in order to secure free classes for themselves. And in many ways, classes are more fun with other friends along.
Not all teachers are required to offer deals, of course. “We offer a suite of ways to use the site,” says Schappell. That includes a number of other tools and metrics for teachers, who are able to see for example how many leads they have, how people view and click on their profiles, how many enrollments they’ve got, and so on.
Adding deals to classes makes sense as lessons are the sort of thing that you want to buy multiples of. And in turn, teachers are interested in deals as those who are willing to buy multiple sessions are probably more serious students.
But in the end, says, Schappell, it isn’t simply a matter of promoting just the deals, and he thinks the new feature will be a boon to all the other class-providers on the site.
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Microsoft Needs to Open-Source Something Big. But What?
Mar 31st
Microsoft is trying hard to become an open source friend company, and it’s made some strides since the days in which Steve Ballmer was calling Linux a cancer. But today, everyone pays lip service to open source. It’s harder to walk the walk than to talk the talk, as we explored in our article on how to spot open-washing.
Microsoft has open-sourced various projects, is working with developers to run open source programming languages on its operating systems and recently hired a senior director of open source communities.
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“I used to be completely anti-Microsoft,” says Michael Szul, partner and developer at Barbella Digital. “I didn’t even have a Windows desktop.” Now, Szul is considering purchasing a Windows Phone 7 handset to replace his Android-based phone. Szul says that even though Microsoft abandoned IronPython and IronRuby, it still supports the community and has even kept developer open to assist the Mono team. Szul’s gripes as a developer are less about Microsoft’s openness, and more about the how fractured its marketplace ecosystem is between XBOX Live, Zune Marketplace, MSN Marketplace, etc.
But even as it has improved its standing in the developer community, it’s lagging behind other companies. Apple, Facebook and Google make major open source contributions with projects likeWebKit, Apache Cassandra and Android. What has Microsoft built? A bunch of open source ASP.NET code.
If Microsoft wants to go from just having a better reputation to being a real player in the open source community, Microsoft needs to open-source something big, and soon.
But what could it open-source that would have a big enough impact?
Windows
This would obviously be huge, but it will almost certainly never happen. It’s too large a source of revenue for the company to risk cannibalize its sales by allowing other companies to package competing distributions. There’s also the matter of all the proprietary components licensed from other companies.
Perhaps the company could take some sort of an open core approach, though. Perhaps some of those licensed components could even serve as the differentiators between the open source and proprietary versions of Windows. But even this scenario seems unlikely.
Windows Phone
This is also unlikely. Considering the amount of money Microsoft spent getting Nokia to run Windows on its phones, Microsoft probably isn’t about to give it away for free, let alone open-source it. It’s made even less likely by the fact that the Windows desktop, tablet and phone operating systems are likely to converge in Windows 8.
Internet Explorer
This makes sense, apart from dealing with separating operating system components from the browser, and dealing with licensed technology. The other big browsers – Safari, Chrome and Firefox – are either open source or based on open source software, and Microsoft gives IE away anyway. But would it make any difference at this point whether IE was open source?
ServiceOS
We first told you about the Microsoft Research project ServiceOS back in 2009 when it was called Gazelle. It’s still vaporware as of now, but it there’s a strong case for open-sourcing it. Google ChromeOS is starting to trickle into the marketplace, as are other lightweight browser-oriented operating systems. Open-sourcing Internet Explorer and this tiny operating system would give Microsoft something it could give away to netbook manufacturers as an alternative to Chrome. Meanwhile, it would be tuned specifically towards services like Bing and Office 365.
Would an open source ServiceOS make any difference at this point? We’re not sure. Microsoft may never see the need to open-source it either, considering that it was already able to get vendors to install Windows instead of Linux on netbooks once. Not to mention the perception that tablets are the future, and Microsoft already has a tablet strategy in Windows 8.
Office
I can’t see this happening. Ever.
What Else?
What else does that leave? Perhaps some elements of Azure could be open sourced? The Kinect SDK?
The other major alternative that I can see is that Microsoft could create something entirely new and open-source it.
What do you think? Does Microsoft need a big open source initiative? If so, what could it realistically do?
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Listen Up, Small Businesses: Your Customers Are Telling You Something
Feb 17th
Last week’s inaugural Conversational Commerce Conference (C3) was dedicated to bringing together relevant groups and influencers to discuss the growing connection between marketing and customer service. Core to this discussion was the rapid adoption of social media and mobile Internet-enabled…
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