Twitter Revealed Epidemic Two Weeks Before Health Officials [STUDY] Health providers have suspected for some time that social media might be an early indicator of an epidemic. Now they have proof. In particular, a new report shows that Twitter provided an early account of the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti. "We can definitely use these sources to get early information about how a disease is spreading, and consequently help inform control or response efforts sooner," says the report's lead author, Rumi Chunara, Ph.D. Chunara and the other two authors of the study, Dr. "One of the great benefits of these novel data streams is that they are available in real time," Chunara says. The next step, she said, would be determining how to utilize real-time data concurrently, or even prospectively, to control outbreaks. SEE ALSO: How Twitter Tracks the Spread of Disease in Real Time To conduct the study, the researchers created a timeline by searching for the term cholera and the #cholera hashtag on Twitter from Oct. 20 to Nov. 3, 2010.
Amir Khan's tweets cast further doubt on defeat to Lamont Peterson | Sport Amir Khan, left, has questioned the presence of a mystery man in a hat, circled, at his defeat to Lamont Peterson. Photograph: HBO Amir Khan is looking for a mystery man he fears may have interfered with the scoring during the controversial loss of his world titles to Lamont Peterson in Washington last month. Peterson, the long-shot local challenger, took Khan's WBA and IBF light-welterweight titles after the referee, Joe Cooper, deducted two points from the champion for pushing in separate incidents during the 12-round bout on 10 December. In a desperate effort to unearth evidence for his appeal against the verdict when those organisations meet in New York on 17 and 18 January, Khan sent out a flurry of tweets on Thursday, accompanied by annotated YouTube tape of the fight, asking for help from the public in identifying "a guy wearing a grey suit with a blue shirt wearing a hat".
Twitter data accurately tracked Haiti cholera outbreak | Global development Haiti: Twitter helped track cholera outbreak. Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images The informal information source Twitter was yielding data that would have been a quicker way of detecting and tracking the deadly cholera outbreak in Haiti than traditional methods, according to a study. The study found that online social media and news feeds were faster than, and broadly as accurate as, the official records at detecting the start and early progress of the epidemic, which hit Haiti after the earthquake in January 2010 and has killed more than 6,500 people. The results appear this week in a special section of the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, published on the second anniversary of the earthquake. The authors used HealthMap, an automated surveillance platform, to measure the volume of news media generated during the first 100 days of the outbreak, and they also looked at the number of "cholera" posts on Twitter.
6 Steps to Getting Started With Google+ Are you thinking of using Google+? This article will explain why Google+ should be considered and show you how to get started. Why Google+? Google+ has quickly become a rival social network to Facebook. People who like Google+ say they like the clean, non-cluttered presentation of their information. They like how easy Google makes it to protect their privacy. Google+ has had a growth rate much faster than that of Facebook or Twitter. Google is rolling out a navigation system across these products that subtly and effectively promotes Google+. Once you’re started, Google+ is literally in your face. As if that weren’t enough, Google’s search is now using the +1 button (the Google+ version of a Facebook “Like”) to help influence its search results. Here are six easy steps to get you started on the right foot. #1: Sign up As Maria said in The Sound of Music, “Let’s start at the very beginning.” Even if you're not yet using Gmail, signing up is fairly quick and simple. #2: Upload avatars
6 Tips to Make an Awesome Impact with Social Media If you’ve begun your pursuit of success and fame via social media you’ve probably found yourself spending a lot of time on your social network of choice. There is so much great information to read and so many connections to be made – where do you draw the line? Can you really make an impact without spending half of your day commenting, interacting, and retweeting? Very simply, yes. Tip 1. You need to ask yourself the 6 W’s. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. If you aren’t sure where to start, Crowdbooster.com is a great resource to help you research your audience. Crowdbooster Dashboard Tip 2. Based on what you discovered in step one, establish a schedule to meet your audience where they are and provide what they want, when they want it. If you are having trouble sticking to your time allocation, head over to the web store on Google Chrome and download StayFocusd (or LeechBlock for Firefox). StayFocusd (for Chrome) Tip 3. Do you want to increase traffic to your website? Tip 4. Tip 5. Tip 6. More Reading
Rest in Peace, Social Media ROI Doubts: 2006-2012 Many of us would love to be trained to have more social skills in everyday life, whether at work or at home. Or perhaps we wish other people we know would receive that kind of training. But is socializing online something that people need to be trained how to do? It might have sounded silly a few years ago, but social technology has now clearly become an important part of workplace activity and productivity. Tech giant IBM believes that the socialization of business presents a big opportunity to train people to do it really well. "Social business" is a trend and term that's been emerging for some time now. If doubts about the ROI of social technology began sometime recently, we might as well pick 2006 as the date, when that silly distraction turned mega-platform Twitter was founded. In 2012, things have now come far enough that it makes sense for one of the world's leading technology services companies to jump into that market. That which can be measured can be improved, too.
Win Free Tickets to Small Biz Success Summit 2012 **UPDATE: We have announced our two winners. The winner of the comment/blog portion of the contest, receiving two tickets to Small Biz Success Summit is Paulette Salvia, read her comment here. The winner of the Twitter contest is Ali Goldfield. Thanks to everyone who participated in the contest. Want to win a free ticket to the largest online social media marketing event for small businesses? Social Media Examiner has secured some of the top names in the industry to bring you Small Biz Success Summit. And we’ve come up with a fun way to get you involved. First, what is this event? Small Biz Success Summit 2012 is a large online conference dedicated to helping small businesses master social media marketing. More than 800 small businesses have already signed up—people just like you. Twenty-eight of the world’s most respected small business social media marketing experts will share their strategies with you. How can you win tickets? Two ways to win: #1: Twitter entry #2: Written entry
How Google's Social Search Shift Will Impact Your Brand's SEO Erin Everhart is the director of web and social media marketing at 352 Media Group, a digital marketing agency that also provides web and mobile app development. Connect with her on Twitter @erinever. In what could be hailed as the update that sparked an all-out Internet riot, Google has launched "Search, plus your World," which pours personal social results into your public search listings. This could prove to be an even bigger search engine development than Google's infamous Panda update, which aimed to remove sites with low-quality content. The Impact on Brands What does a change this big mean for businesses that depend on their Google rank for traffic and sales? Personalized results are the default when users are logged into their Google account, so it will be harder to determine your rankings. But the biggest problem is, they’re not always relevant. I can use my own company as an example. Two out of three top results, traditionally coveted for clicks, are filled with social mentions.
Measuring Social Media ROI & Goal Conversions with Google Analytics 5 First off, I want to preface this post with the fact that social media shouldn’t be done only with the goal of making direct conversions. Social media is about building new relationships, generating word of mouth marketing, and strengthening brand loyalty with your customers. That said, I know that there are a lot of you who may be curious about the monetary value of your social media campaign, have clients that are asking the value of the social media services you provide for them, or simply want to learn more about how your social media strategy is leading to conversions. You’ll be celebrating your social media goal conversions too! The following are the steps you must implement to be able to see the return on investment and goal conversions for your social media campaign. Track goal conversions for your website in Google Analytics, a plus regardless of whether you care about social media conversions or not. Tracking Social Media Conversions in Google Analytics 5 1. 2. 3. 4. Step 1.
mpany sues ex-employee for his Twitter followers | Technology A Twitter signup page. Legal observers say that PhoneDog's suit against Noah Kravitz could set a precedent for assigning a commercial value to Twitter followers acquired in a business context. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA A Twitter user is being sued for £217,000 by his former employer for taking his online followers with him when he switched jobs. Noah Kravitz, a writer from Oakland, California, amassed 17,000 followers on the social networking site when he worked for PhoneDog, a website providing news and reviews about mobile phones. He posted Twitter messages under the name @Phonedog_Noah, but in October 2010 he left the company, renamed his account @noahkravitz and took his following with him. PhoneDog has launched legal proceedings seeking damages of $2.50 a month per follower for eight months, for a total of $340,000. The case raises questions about the value of Twitter to companies that are increasingly using the website to communicate with customers and promote their products.
Harvard Study: Social Networks Do Little To Influence Taste And Interests Here’s a bit of science that’s contrary to what a heavy utilizer of social networks might expect. Researchers at Harvard tracked the Facebook activity of hundreds of college students for four years, and came away with the rather unexpected result that the interests of friends don’t, in fact, tend to influence one another. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen at all, of course, but it’s clear that propagation and virality are subtler and more complex than some people (marketers and, I suspect, researchers) tend to think they are. But the study is also clearly flawed in ways that those versed in social graphs are likely to easily perceive. Pulling useful data from social networks is like catching lightning in a bottle, and I wonder whether the findings may in fact be, as the study attempts to avoid, “a spurious consequence of alternative social processes.” The central source of data for the study, in fact, doesn’t strike me as solid. Who among these people was a supernode?
McDonald's Twitter Campaign Goes Horribly Wrong #McDStories Twitter users threaten boycott over censorship accusation | Technology "The Tweets must flow", Twitter declared a year ago, and quickly became an instrument of fast-moving revolution across the Arab world, coordinating mass protests in Egypt and sidestepping the state censorship in Syria. But, the microblogging site conceded that the tweets would not flow evenly in every country. The company was accused of censorship by many users and threatened with a one-day boycott on Saturday after announcing that it could remove tweets in certain countries which have "different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression". Twitter insisted that it would not use the gagging system in a blanket fashion, but would apply it on a case-by-case basis, as it happens when governments or organisations complain about individual tweets. But the reassurances were not enough to prevent a torrent of outrage from twitter users and freedom of speech campaigners. Jeff Jarvis, the media commentator, said the move set the microblogging site onto the "slippery slope of censorship".
Facebook will needs lots of friends to justify a $100bn flotation | Technology | The Observer Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg: expectations rising as Facebook gets closer and closer to a flotation. Photograph: Rex Features Another week, another rumour about a Facebook IPO. Stories that the social network is about to go public have been circulating for over a year now. One day soon, they will be true. The excitement is palpable. Last week, Facebook's law firm, Fenwick & West, temporarily halted trading in Facebook's privately held shares on the secondary market, sparking fresh rumours that an announcement is imminent. So what would life look like for Facebook after an IPO – and why does it need to go public? It's also about size. None of this new wave of dotcom flotations has lived up to the initial hype but Facebook is a different beast. On top of this – unlike Myspace, the social network that boomed and busted – Facebook has established itself as its own universe for other businesses. The company even turns a profit – reportedly more than $1bn last year, double what it made in 2010.