TweetPing Pinpoints Tweets In Real-Time

Website TweetPing, the brainchild of front end developer Franck Ernewein, tracks the World’s tweets in real-time, displaying each one as a pinprick of blue light on a map of the Earth.

The site starts tracking tweets every time it is loaded, registering each tweet posted on Twitter in a counter, as well as tallying each of the five most populated continents’ tweets separately.

North America, South America, Europa, Africa and Asia compete for the highest tweet count, with Asia having the added allegiance of Australasia.

Each word and each character is also tallied, with a bar chart beneath registering the regularity of each continents’ tweets and the World’s in total.

The most recent hastag and the most recent mention are listed beneath, constantly changing as more and more tweets are posted.

A pie chart to the bottom left of the screen monitors which continent is posting the most tweets. As you can see, at the time of writing (11:20 GMT) Asia and Europe are ahead, with North and South America still slumbering.

The table at the bottom of the screen which displays all the information pertinent to the map can be toggled on or off the screen.
As each tweet is posted, it pops up to label the part of the World where it originated, appearing only for a fraction of a second. Of course not every tweet pops up, rather, as many as can be processed in time.

In one minute roughly 2,500 tweets were registered on TweetPing, equating to 150,000 tweets an hour being sent worldwide.

The site has no obvious application in the business world, as it maintains no record of the data it compiles except the blue dots. However, were the information to be recorded somehow, companies could monitor the adoption of their hashtags by twitter users, or discover which hashtags were trending.

Of course, the site does display which areas of the World are most active and when, which many may deem useful, but it is not particularly surprising information as, not only is it available elsewhere, but it is obvious: continents are more active in their daytime.

This should take nothing away from the site, however, as its attractive method of data tracking is almost hypnotic.

Can you think of a practical application for the data TweetPing compiles?

Facebook Writes New Language To Fight Spam

On Thursday, Software Engineer Louis Brandy revealed that the engineering staff at Facebook have created a new programming language to combat spam.

The programming language, called Feature eXtraction Language, or FXL for short, is “a domain-specific language forged in the fires of spam fighting at Facebook”.

Brandy admits that writing a language from scratch is not always the most effective approach to fighting spam. FXL, however, “is not a novel language”.

In reality, FXL is “a narrowly-optimized implementation of a well-chosen subset of Standard ML (with some customized syntax)”, modified to tackle the ever-evolving spam that bombards Facebook’s servers on a daily basis.

FXL was designed to cope with spam threats which change “on a daily, or even hourly, basis”, meaning it is “easy to write”, but still capable of sifting through the enormous amounts of data on Facebook.

To display FXLs superiority as a Facebook spam fighter, Brandy gives a few examples of “contrived spam fighting rules, expressed in FXL, for catching dangerous URLs:”

If (Reputation(SharedUrl) < 0) Then [LogRequest] Else []

If (Reputation(SharedUrl) == MALWARE) Then [BlockAction, LogRequest] Else []

If (Average(Map(Reputation, PreviousSharedUrls(User, 5))) < 0) Then [WarnUser, LogRequest] Else []

Brandy then explains the problem:

These rules retrieve the user’s URL sharing history and fetch data from a URL reputation service. While they coherently express business logic for detecting spam, these rules are poor expressions of the optimal data fetching logic. A conventional implementation would evaluate this code top to bottom, left to right. We would fetch data sequentially, conducting an excessive number of network round trips between the machine executing FXL and the reputation service. This is a classic problem of large computer systems: naively mixing business logic with data fetching logic, resulting in pathologically bad performance. A more sophisticated approach would find a way to batch these data fetches in a single network round trip. FXL was designed to do precisely this and automate these data fetches.

Because FXL is “a "pure" language with no side effects” – i.e. it does not update the data it fetches – there are a number of shortcuts that can be made when combing through data:

All features and functions can be safely memoized...

  1.  F(X) will always be Y, no matter how many times we compute it
  2.  Random() is not pure, therefore not memoizable (and not allowed inFXL) 

or executed lazily... 

  1.  "False && F(X)" can safely skip F(X)
  2.  "If False Then True Else F(X)"  as well 

or safely reordered. 

  1.  "G(F(x), F(y), ...)" will give the same result, no matter which F is executed first.
  2.  "A(x) + B(x) + C(x)" as well”

Brandy then takes a snippet of the code from before to use as an example:

Map(Reputation, PreviousSharedUrls(User, 5))

It would take another URL reputation service up to five attempts to finish this snippet, FXL can do all five simultaneously. “This is not a special property of the Map() function” affirms Brandy, “as this optimization is performed across all expressions of all rules.”

FXL is able to batch requests together because the order in which it evaluates these function calls has no bearing on their results (this follows from their lack of side effects). FXL will actually halt the execution of one function, begin executing a second function, and only later return to complete executing the first function.

In the call to Map() above, FXL makes five calls to Reputation(). FXL begins executing the first call to Reputation(), then halts its execution at the point it would need to fetch data from the URL reputation service. FXL then begins executing the second call to Reputation(), halting again before fetching any data.

FXL repeats this begin-and-halt procedure on the third, fourth, and fifth calls to Reputation() as well. At this point, no functions remain which have not been partially executed. No function can proceed without fetching data, so FXL fetches all the data needed by these functions in a single batch. Having obtained the URL reputation data, it can resume execution of all five calls to Reputation().

Consequentially, FXL’s batched fetching is twenty times faster that a “a naïve execution model that fetches data eagerly.”

The Facebook engineering team also uses memoization to speed up FXL’s process: “all common FXL expressions” are memoized, so that every repeated expression is executed only once.

Despite the frequent spam-related complaints from Facebook users, the amount of data fetching FXL performs compared to what little spam gets through suggests that the language performs its function admirably.

Have you ever encountered spam on Facebook? Do you think FXL performs its task well?

More Personal Facebook Data Shown By Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha, the computational knowledge engine that previously launched a Facebook tool for Personal Analytics has expanded what it can do and how much it can analyse. This is quite the achievement considering how much it could previously do.

John Burnham of Wolfram Alpha wrote in a blog post that: “One of the most shared pods from our first release was our colorful social network visualization.”

“We’re extending this idea to help you better understand how your social network fits together. To start with, we’re showing you a new visualization that highlights friends based on the way they fit into your network.”

“Say you’re a college student. You might have a group of friends from college, and another group from your old high school. If you’ve got any college classmates who also went to your high school, we might label them on your report as social connectors, because they connect two otherwise separate groups of your friends.”

Five different network roles which have been updated on Wolfram Alpha are social insiders and outsiders, social connectors, and social neighbours and gateways.


Burnham continued to say that “Social insiders and outsiders are opposites . . . A social insider has a lot of friends in common with you (e.g. your girlfriend since freshman year); conversely, a social outsider is someone with whom you have few or no mutual friends (e.g. that girl you met horseback riding in Romania).

“Social gateways and neighbours are also opposites: a social gateway contact has a lot of friends that are outside your network (e.g. the editor of your college newspaper), whereas a social neighbour has few friends outside your network (e.g. your identical twin).”

“Social insiders and social neighbours sometimes overlap, as do gateways and outsiders – but not always. For example, a social outsider simply may not have enough outside friends to be a social gateway.”

Multiple aesthetic changes have been made to the site as well as a colour coding addition to different properties (e.g. relationship status, age, sex). The ability to filter your network by age, location, etc, is another new feature.

The development and evolution of your Facebook profile can be displayed as Wolfram Alpha have introduced Facebook Historical Analytics which collects information to be able to show all data.

This analysis is a good way to access this data for those who are still waiting to have the Facebook Graph Search accessibility distributed to them. To use the Facebook analysis, go to Wolfram Alpha, search ‘facebook report’ and then click on ‘Analyze my Facebook Data.”

What do you make of Wolfram Alpha’s data analysis?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below 

HiveMindMap Helps You Track Top Tweets

The Twitter statisticians at HiveMindMap display the most popular hashtags from the last seven days in a kaleidoscopic spider diagram, with affiliated links connected by multicoloured tendrils.

The site, which is updated and filtered for spam nightly, also displays hashtags which are strongly connected to the most popular links.

You can navigate around the diagram easily, scrolling, zooming in and selecting preferred hashtags with the mouse or keyboard.

There is also a toolbar at the top of the screen with a help button, a zoom out button and a tab to open a calendar showing all the week’s trends at their specific time.

Clicking on a hashtag will highlight all the links to relevant hashtags and zoom in. For example, here is the diagram for the Australian Open.



Clicking on the ‘i’ above the selected link will open an information pop-up with four tabs: a line graph displaying the hashtag’s popularity over time, top tweets related to the hashtag, the related tags as shown on the spider diagram and tweeters who have used the hashtag.



Businesses could use HiveMindMap to find out who is talking about what, when, discover how interests are connected and identify trends related to their services.

For example, the employees of a sports wear company could click on the #ausopen hashtag to find out what related subjects are being talked about and join the conversation themselves, or they could find people on Twitter who have the most interesting things to say about the event and Tweet them about the company’s products.

Follow @HiveMindMap on Twitter for more information.

How would you use HiveMindMap for your business?

Make Your Facebook Profile Business Friendly With Web App

Facewash is a new web app that gives users of Facebook the ability to clear out profanities and cursing from their profile in order to look more professional and business friendly.

A negative and sometimes embarrassing profile on social media can often be the difference between being accepted into the business world, or continuing to be overlooked for a professional role.

Party photos from nights out, bad language, and confusing privacy settings will often cause a bad impression to a potential employer when they begin researching job applicants. This sort of content will now become even more evident due to Facebook’s Graph Search feature.
The Facewash app will search through your Facebook profile once you have connected to it with your account. The app will scan through photos that you’re tagged in, photos that you have posted, comments posted on your wall, status updates, links that you’ve liked and more for anything that resembles offensive content.

Comments such as ‘xxx’ will be flagged up, with users of the app also able to search for specific content or words that they feel may offend someone. This content can then be deleted should they wish to do so.

Although the default that Facewash abides to isn’t perfect, it definitely looks along the basics of what could be considered offensive and negative.

Social media, and in particular your Facebook profile is often visited by businesses when they review applications for a particular role in their company. Having a profile which is politically correct and offers nothing in terms of offense will give a good impression and increase chances of finding work.

Businesses can also profit from the app as their own page could be scrutinised by potential customers for having negative content on display. The company then will be able to distinguish which comments are constructive and which are merely offensive.

To use/experiment with the app, click the following link: Facewash

What do you think of Facewash? Does your profile need cleaning up?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or via Twitter.

Twitter Opening Office In Sao Paulo, Brazil

Twitter has announced that the company is building an office in Sao Paulo, the Brazilian city in which Facebook has based its South American branch.

Sao Paulo, which is the eighth most populous city in the world, is enjoying a internet boom along with the rest of Brazil, the country where Twitter has its second largest membership base after the US, counting 40 million users.

"We believe our new office in Brazil will allow us to get closer to the users and show the value of our platform," Facebook’s Brazilian company manager, Guilherme Ribenboim, told Reuters in a recent interview.
"Brazil has rather mature Internet and advertisement markets. Our audience is very big and active," he said. "We are going to try to monetize it."

Twitter is hoping that, by setting up offices in Brazil, it will not only attract more members, but also increase the usage of those who have already joined: Brazil is currently fifth in Twitter usage stats.

Twitter, which recorded 150 million messages at one point during the London Olympics, will certainly be looking to take advantage of the two huge events taking place in Brazil in the next four years, the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics – both spectacles will have a significant impact on Brazil’s booming economy.

During the London Olympics, Twitter users turned to the service to stay abreast of what was happening, to share opinions on the big talking points and to see the pictures and messages posted by athletes and teams. Advertisers saw a brilliant opportunity to target huge numbers of consumers at once.

Due to the relative success the site had during the London Olympics and subsequent similar events, Twitter is planning to offer social media marketers opportunities during the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.

"It is already happening”, said Ribenboim. “We are talking (to advertisers) looking for opportunities, strategies."

Do you think Twitter’s move into Brazil is a clever one? How would you use the Brazilian World Cup and Olympics to advertise your business online?

Google+ Begins Pushing Communities, But How Can They Help Your Business?

Google+ have begun prompting users to create their own Communities.

The Google+ Communities feature provides people with a place to share, enjoy and talk about their common interests with other Google+ users.

Members of a Community can share photos, videos and experiences, start competitions or discussions, or even create events using the selection of tabs on the Community page.

Businesses can also benefit from joining Communities: they can learn more about their target audience, connect with others in their industry and, in certain instances, market their products and services.

Here are the five steps to take when using Google+ Communities to the benefit of your business.




1. Connect

There are hundreds of Communities on Google+, each one catering to a different interest. There are Communities for people who love to cook, for fans and players of specific sports and for car enthusiasts.

Try to find the Communities that are most relevant to your business. For example, if you own a high street retailers, then join a fashion community. Communities recommended for you appear to the left of the Communities page.

Once you’re part of a Community you can post questions and comments, answer the questions of others (if you know the answer) and share your experiences, whether in photo, video or message form.

By posting interesting and relevant information on a Community page, you can make friends, broaden your network and raise your business’ online presence.



2. Create

If there aren’t any Communities which cater to your interests, then why not create one? Creating Communities is very easy, just make sure you know what your Community is all about so that you can describe it succinctly in the About section.

Add an eye-catching photo to your Communities page, one that instantly encapsulates your pages purpose.
You will administrate the page, but you can add administrators if you want. Decide whether the page is public or private. You can customise your pages viewing restrictions further: do new members need to be vetted by administrators? How much can non-members see?

Once you have created your Community, make sure that you keep it current and interesting. Once you have enough members then the Community will become self-sufficient, you will, however, need to make sure you check that all the posts are suitable.

Only create a Community page specifically for your business if it is meant as a private tool for communication between employees. Communities are not brand profiles! Google+ already provides that service on the site.



3. Teach/learn

Whether you’re part of a Community or you create one, you can use your experience to give useful tips and advice to other Community members.

If you post interesting articles or you prove yourself an expert in your industry, then other Google+ members will begin to look to you for advice: they will equate your business with the expert advice that you give. You can, of course, post as your business from your company’s profile.

If you’re having difficulty finding out what your target audience want from a brand, why not ask them? Start a conversation or ask a question if you want some hints.

4. Target

Some big brands have fan-made Community pages ready made: Ford, Audi and BMW all have Communities devoted to the celebration of their cars.

Your business is unlikely to have such a devoted following on Google+. However, if you have followed the advice of the tips above, you will have been able to connect with other Google+ users who may have an interest in your business.

It may also be worth finding your competitors on Google+ Communities, just to see how they’re utilising the service, or even to connect with them.

5. Market (carefully!)

If done correctly, you can advertise your business on Community pages.

Follow the conversations on Community pages carefully. An opportunity to mention your own business may arise. For example, if there is a conversation about the history of the Tour de France on a Community page for cycling enthusiasts, and you sell retro cycling jerseys, you can post about your company and the deals you have.

It is extremely important that you don’t spam Community pages that you belong to: If you are just a member then your messages will be blocked by administrators, if you are an administrator then members will leave the Community.

How have you used Google+ Communities for your business?

Gmail Compose Box Gets New Features

The Gmail compose box, which was released late last year, now allows users to add labels and stars to messages.

“How many times have you been writing an email and had to reference something in another message? Saving a draft, opening the old email, and then reopening your draft wastes valuable minutes. The new compose pops up in a window, just like chats (only larger),” said product manager Phil Sharp on the Google Enterprise blog.

“This makes it easy to reference any other emails without ever having to close your draft. You can even do a search or keep an eye on new mail as it comes in. And because the compose window works the same way as chats, you can write multiple messages at once and minimize a message to finish it later.”

Gmail users can now add stars to important messages in the compose box and labels in order to categorise them, making sorting and finding sent emails easier and quicker.

The update was announced by the Gmail Google+ account, informing users that both new features can be found in the More Options menu of the compose box.

How useful have you found these updates to Gmail?

Facebook Close To World Domination

Facebook is the most dominant social media platform on the planet as it is the most heavily used in 127 of 137 countries around the world which have been tracked by Alexa.

A “world map of social networks” composed by Vincenzo Cosenza is created every June and December to reveal which social platform is most popular in every country around the world.

Facebook has over 1 billion active users every month and so it is not particularly surprising that it has retained its spot of social champion.


The only challenge now left for Facebook is to overcome rivals in countries where governments have blocked the site. A difficult task.

The continued growth of Mark Zuckerberg’s creation comes due to a rise of popularity in Asia where is has almost 300 million users (278,000,000) which recently overhauled Europe’s 251 million according to the Facebook Ads Platform.

These two surpass the other continents where North America has 243 million users, South America has 142 million, Africa almost reaches 52 million and Oceania has 15 million.

The December edition of the map shows five different social platforms are top in at least one country in the world. Facebook, QZone, V Kontakte, Odnoklassniki and Cloob.

Do you think Facebook will eventually rule the world?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below

2012: The Year On Twitter

 
2012 was a big year for Twitter. The microblogging and social messaging site cemented its position as the second most popular social media site by reaching 200 million monthly active users in mid-December.

2012 was also the year of many Twitter firsts: new Tweeters, records broken and improvements to an already popular service.

Here is a list of some of Twitter’s highlights from 2012:

The Top Tweet

Barack Obama @BarackObama - “Four more years”

After being elected for a second term as US President, Barack Obama tweeted an emotional photo of a shared embrace with wife Michelle, accompanied by the message “Four more years”.

The Tweet, which was posted on 6th November, was retweeted over 800,000 times and favourited over 300,000 times, becoming the most popular Tweet of 2012 in a matter of hours.



Hot Topics

London 2012 Summer Olympics

Over the two week long event, 150 million Tweets were sent regarding the Olympics. The closing ceremony saw the largest spike, with over 116,000 Tweets being sent a minute.

A celebratory Tweet by Team GB (@TeamGB) was one of the most popular Tweets of the year, amassing over 67,000 retweets and 5,000 favourites.



The US Election

More than 31 million relevant Tweets were sent on the day of the election. As the votes were counted that evening, the conversation on Twitter reached an impressive 327,452 Tweets per minute.

New Faces

The Pope @Pontifex

Pope Benedict XVI has amassed almost 2.4 million followers across his 8 multilingual accounts since joining Twitter last month.

The English version of his first tweet, which thanked Twitter users for their “generous response”, was retweeted over 64,000 times.

David Cameron @David_Cameron

English Prime Minister David Cameron joined Twitter in early October after previously making derogatory statements about those who post ‘too many tweets’, statements for which he has since apologised.

David Cameron’s first tweet was not greeted with much enthusiasm by the public, but in the few months he has been active Cameron has managed to amass over 200,000 followers.



Pelé @Pele

Brazilian football legend Edison Arantes do Nascimento, known to the world as Pelé, set up a Twitter account on 9th April. The man, who some say is the greatest footballer ever, has over 388,000 followers, and posts regularly in both English and his native Portuguese.

Twitter Firsts

The Deepest Tweet

Blockbuster Hollywood director James Cameron (@JimCameron) sent the deepest ever tweet from his DEEPSEA CHALLENGER submersible, 35,775 feet beneath the Pacific Ocean’s surface in the Mariana Trench.

“Just arrived at the ocean's deepest pt. Hitting bottom never felt so good. Can't wait to share what I'm seeing w/ you @DeepChallenge”, tweeted Cameron.



The Twitter Literature Festival

In late November and early December, Twitter held the first ever Twitter Fiction Festival, challenging writers to compose a narrative using the 140-character limit.

29 different projects were chosen to be featured throughout the festival, with ideas as diverse as a romance between a girl and a sasquatch and a challenge to users to write Twitter epitaphs.

Anyone could get involved in the festival by using the hashtag #twitterfiction.

Twitterrific!

Speak2Tweet

During the Syrian uprising, Twitter revived the Speak2Tweet initiative.

The service provided Syrians whose internet and electricity had been cut with a hotline which, when called, posted Tweets on their behalf.

Hurricane Sandy

During Hurricane Sandy, Twitter offered free promoted Tweets to a number of charities and relief organisations on the East Coast of America.

People were able to use Twitter to follow the progress of the storm and access vital information about staying safe.

The service proved invaluable, especially as Twitter had resurrected their SMS service to provide coverage in areas where the internet was down.



Baby Hashtag

On Saturday 24th November, baby Hashtag Jameson was born. Following in the footsteps of baby Facebook and baby Like, baby Hashtag’s parents decided on a name for their daughter that they could be certain no other child would have.


New Features

Twitter Photo Filters

In early December, Twitter and photo sharing service Instagram had a very public falling out. Instagram stopped supporting Twitter Cards, which meant that photos posted from Instagram onto Twitter stopped showing up properly.

Twitter acted quickly, bringing out their own Aviary-supported photo filter service. Although not as comprehensive as its Instagram counterpart, Twitter photo filters impressed users with its ease of use and intuitiveness.

Header Images

Twitter introduced Header Images in September, giving creative Tweeters a chance to express themselves.
Ryan Seacrest’s profile page was perhaps the most lauded: showing him embracing the American Idol judges.


Tailored Suggestions

The “Who To Follow” sidebar uses data gathered from users’ browsing history and integrated websites to suggest who they should follow next.

Despite early concerns that the feature would be too invasive, it proved to be a vast improvement on the previous system, which just suggested people similar to the user.

Downloadable Tweets

Dick Costolo promised, and delivered, downloadable tweets in December, after many users had asked for the service.

Costolo promised the service would be up and running in time for Christmas, despite evoking the ire of his engineers, who felt that they would need more time to develop the system.
 
The engineers managed to develop the feature, despite the time constraint, allowing Costolo to keep his word.



Negative Keyword Targeting and Trend Matching

Twitter updated their promoted Tweets service for businesses last month, allowing companies to disassociate themselves from potentially damaging words or phrases.

With the update, the search engine matches companies to specific trends relevant to their service or produce.

What was the highlight of your year on Twitter?

Businesses Can Now Interact With Users Outside Their Circles On Google+

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Businesses with Google+ Pages can now comment on, +1 and share posts made by users who are not within their circles.

Businesses will be able to increase their Google+ following thanks to the change, which was made on Friday, by targeting and interacting with users who post updates, articles and information relevant to their products or service.

There are concerns that some will abuse the service, spamming other users with replicated messages or direct advertising. However, the freedom the update allows business suggests that Google+ trusts them to use it responsibly.

Of course, responsible use is within a business’s best interests, as users will be unlikely to follow companies which spam their Google+ feeds.

The update was first noticed by Google+ user Talking Moose Media who posted about the discovery on their Google+ page, noting the ability to plus mention personal profile pages.

The Next Web reported the update, receiving confirmation correspondence from Google:

“We’re always experimenting with new ways to make the social experience more organic. As such, Pages are now able to comment freely on posts of interest to them. We think this provides a better sharing experience for pages and profiles alike. For example, if someone praises their favorite bakery on Google+, that baker could now say thank you to that customer, right in the stream. Or if someone posts about a customer service issue, that business could reply directly, providing a better user experience.”

Do you think your business can benefits from this Google+ update?