Posts tagged Voting
Zuck Voting for Mitt? How Facebook “Like” Makes Things Ambiguous
Feb 10th
Sometimes the “Like” button is not as clear cut as it seems. Even Zuck would agree.
ZDNet reports that a Facebook design flaw has accidentally convinced some readers that Zuckerberg is endorsing Republican Party presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
The awkward “Liking” took place earlier this week. Zuck “liked” a story by Salon.com’s Farhad Manjoo, who posted the following status along with a link to mittromney.com: “Try, just looking at the Romney logo without seeing the word MONEY.” When that image shows up on users’ news feeds, however, it appears as if Zuck “liked” the Mitt Romney link rather than Manjoo’s comment, coupled with a link to the Romney website. Whatever happened to the “Like” button making things simple?
Sponsor
On Manjoo’s Facebook profile, however, it’s pretty clear that Zuckerberg “liked” his status update joke. Check it out. Facebook prominently displays Zuckerberg’s name as one of the 526 people who, as of right now, “like” this post.
Seeing this out of context in the main news feed might lead some to believe otherwise. It looks like Zuck is endorsing Romney. Here’s the screengrab of the news feed view that ZDNet posted:
This sort of screw-up is just a byproduct of Facebook’s annoying oversharing features that clutter up users’ news feed.
Do Facebook users really need to know what their friends “like” in as prominent a spot as the main news feed? The same goes for the news ticker, which brings a micro-view to what every single one of a user’s Facebook friends likes and comments on.
Just think: If Facebook tweaked both the news feed and the news ticker to show users content that has real value, rather than the mundane activities of other Facebook users, “like” ambiguities might happen a lot less.
But back to the whole Manjoo/Zuckerberg/Romney “like” thing.
On Manjoo’s side, the status update could have been clearer and more poignant if he just wrote that joke as a status update, and included an image of Romney’s name-as-logo. (Switch two letters around and Romney spells “money”!)
Still, the Zuckerberg “like” would have come up the same in the main news feed. It just would have looked like Zuck “liked” an image of Romney’s logo, which could also be misconstrued.
So to completely avoid any Facebook false endorsement snafus like this one, Manjoo should have posted this as a Twitter-like, witty one-liner status update. Of course, that would have been too simple, even by Facebook standards.
A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Is There a Future For Voting on iPads?
Nov 8th
Today is Election Day in the United States and for the first time ever, some voters are casting their ballot using the iPad, the Associated Press reports. In a special primary election in Oregon, disabled residents will have the option of voting on Apple’s tablet computer, which has several accessibility advantages for such voters.
As revolutionary and exciting as this may sound at first blush, the program is pretty limited. The iPads are administered by the state and voters have to have one brought to their homes. The final votes are printed out and sent in via mail. Still, this is the first time a tablet voting initiative of this kind has been used in the United States. Is tablet-based voting something we should expect to see more of in the future?
Sponsor
It’s worth noting that the United States falls behind a few other Western democracies when it comes to online voting. Aside from a few experiments here and there, U.S. voters cannot cast their ballots via the Internet, due primarily to security and fraud-related concerns. Even so, Canada and a handful of European countries have implemented Web-based voting to some degree.
Blazing the trail in online voting is Estonia, according to CNN. The small baltic state has allowed its citizens to cast ballots on the Web for four years.
If security is such a serious impediment to browser-based voting, perhaps Apple’s much-maligned “closed” ecosystem can provide an antidote to the wild, open Web.
We could imagine a state-developed voter registration and balloting app down the line, but such a solution wouldn’t be without it’s challenges. For one, the iPad still costs $500 and tablet user adoption is only at 11% in the U.S. So much for a revolutionary explosion is democratic participation.
Even though iOS is typically viewed as more secure than some other platforms, no system is free of malware or hackers. Anybody who’s had their iTunes account hacked knows this all too well. For any kind of Internet-based ballot box to work, whether its based on desktops, tablets, smartphones or all three, will need some serious security measures in place. Even the multi-tiered security on banking apps wouldn’t be enough to ensure votes are cast and counted fairly.
That’s not to say that such a challenge is insurmountable. Developers have solved so many of life’s little problems, and even a few big ones. Whose to say democracy can’t be next?
What do you think? Can you see a future in which mobile and tablet-based voting is a reality? Would you want to do it? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
I’m Voting for Structured Data
Nov 2nd
On this Election Day, I’d like to discuss what I believe to be one of the most critical topics in search today: structured data. As millions of new pieces of content are added to the web each day, all in different types of formats and each with their own purpose, search engines need ways to effectively parse out this data based on user intent. Rich snippets are an experimental semantic web feature which according to Google’s Pravir Gupta at the June 2010 Semantic Technology conference have seen an impression growth of four-fold since October 2009.
To put it simply, rich snippets are just a more structured form of data that helps search engines understand what content is about and helps to connect that with users based on the intent of their search query. A common example of a rich snippet:
Because Amazon has provided additional information in a structured manner, Google is able to display additional review specific details (ratings) in the search results.
Currently, rich snippets are available for reviews, people, business & organizations, events, products and recipes. Google also recognizes markup for video content. It’s interesting to me that rich snippets are not yet a common place technique implemented by all site owners that could benefit. This is one of the simplest ways that webmasters can provide organized and optimized data to search engines and enhance the display of their site in search results, most likely improving organic click through rates. And with all the fuss about videos – I feel like this is still an opportunity yet to be tapped into by most websites that provide video content.
Google supports two video markup formats: Facebook Share and Yahoo SearchMonkey RDFa. If you use one or both of these formats to mark up your video directly in your HTML document, it will help Google better understand and present your video content.
Example Code (RDFa)
Example in Search Results
Finally, Google has also announced that rich snippets are also supported for local search. By providing this structured data, Google can show your Place page with comprehensive information and in the most effective manner. Now that the local search world has been shaken up with Place Search, local listings are dominating nearly the whole first page of search results, so it is more critical than ever to ensure local listing optimization.
So on this Election Day in 2010, please cast your vote for structured data. As the start of the New Year is just months away, I have no doubt in my mind that rich snippets will play a critical role in search marketing for 2011.
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
I’m Voting for Structured Data
View full post on Search Engine Journal
Social Voting Sites Dying & Struggling
Sep 24th
It’s been a rough week for two of the bigger players in the social voting space. Propeller, an AOL-owned property that grew out of the old Netscape website, has announced on its home page that the site is shutting down on October 1st.
Propeller was pitched as a challenger to Digg’s throne. But that never materialized. [...]
*** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above ***
View full post on Search Engine Land: News About Search Engines & Search Marketing
Hot On Sphinn: In Defense Of Links, Sphinn Drops Voting, Image SEO & More – Search Engine Land (blog)
Sep 7th
|
Hot On Sphinn: In Defense Of Links, Sphinn Drops Voting, Image SEO & More
Search Engine Land (blog) Along with that, articles more specific to link building were also popular, as was an article on image SEO. But the hottest discussion topic of the week was … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Hot On Sphinn: In Defense Of Links, Sphinn Drops Voting, Image SEO & More
Sep 7th
A three-part series about linking — and more specifically, how search marketers may view links differently from other Internet users — all went hot on Sphinn last week. Along with that, articles more specific to link building were also popular, as was an article on image SEO. But the hottest discussion topic of the week [...]
*** Read the full post by clicking on the headline above ***
View full post on Search Engine Land: News About Search Engines & Search Marketing
