“Full Disclosure” Shutdown Raises Questions About Email Mailing Lists In The Social Media Era Editor’s note: Tom Cross is Director of Security Research at Lancope, where he works on network behavioral anomaly detection technology. He is also the cofounder of MemeStreams, a collaborative bookmarking platform and a Signal Media subject matter adviser. In the days before Twitter, Facebook and even Friendster had arrived, a great deal of social interaction on the Internet occurred via email mailing lists. The Full Disclosure mailing list is a loosely moderated forum where computer security researchers disclose the full details of vulnerabilities in software products, in some cases before those vulnerabilities have been fixed. However, there are three key characteristics associated with email mailing lists that social media platforms currently have trouble replicating. Centrality. One way to combat the lack of a central monitoring point is to use hashtags on Twitter. Moderation. Permanence. One solution is to mirror every disclosure on multiple websites. Image by dwori/Shutterstock
User Research Basics User research focuses on understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies. Mike Kuniaysky further notes that it is “the process of understanding the impact of design on an audience.” The types of user research you can or should perform will depend on the type of site, system or app you are developing, your timeline, and your environment. When to Perform User Research Methods Guided by the user-centered design (UCD) process, we have provided examples of the types of research could perform at each phase of your project. Best Practices During Project Planning you should: Consult the UCD Guide for a step-by-step visual map to guide you through the user-centered design process. References Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide for User Research by Mike Kuniavsky
Commenting Platform Disqus Introduces Sponsored Comments Disqus, which says it powers the comment sections on almost 3 million websites, is announcing a new type of ad unit today — Sponsored Comments. Since Disqus already runs ads through its Promoted Discovery program, the idea of a Sponsored Comment seems like a pretty natural addition. However, in a company blog post, General Manager David Fleck said this actually stems from the launch of Featured Comments a month ago, with the Disqus team asking, “Can we use the concept of Featured Comments in order to make more money for publishers and allow brands to reach specific audiences?” It sounds like a Sponsored Comment is basically a Featured Comment that advertisers pay for, occupying the same spot at the top of the thread. Not only should it bring in money for Disqus and the publisher, but Fleck suggested that it’s good for marketers, too, because it helps them advertise on “passion blogs around specific topics,” which might not be large enough to employ their own sales team.
Scaling Quality Content The author's posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz. As someone who is fortunate enough to get invited to speak at numerous conferences I pride myself in not reusing presentations unless someone specifically requests it. However, for the SEO audience, there has always been a huge disconnect between the concepts of quality and scale when it comes to content. To some degree, this makes sense because until 2011 content quality didn't really impact Organic Search performance. Fortunately, we're now in a post-Panda era where Google has effectively killed the "SEO" page through a combination of FUD and algorithm improvements. I, for one, love it, because it gives us the opportunity to step our game up and deliver higher quality web experiences. Here's the deck. Everybody's talking about content The Content Marketing conversation has reached a deafening pitch within the past two years. And why not? Three things.
NUS biomedical ethics centre made WHO collaborating centre SINGAPORE: The Centre for Biomedical Ethics at the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine has been appointed by the World Health Organization (WHO) as Asia's first collaborating centre for bioethics. The centre joins four other collaborating centres in the world to support the WHO in developing work in the field of ethics and health, in areas such as organ transplantation, universal health coverage, managing non-communicable diseases and advancing mental health. The appointment will be effective for four years. The NUS Centre for Biomedical Ethics will be part of the Global Network of WHO Collaborating Centres for Bioethics, which comprises key institutions with in-depth and extensive expertise in research into and the teaching of biomedical ethics. They provide expert advice to the WHO and help the organisation in its work of advancing and implementing the practice of ethics in member states.
A Five-Step Process For Conducting User Research Advertisement Imagine that this is what you know about me: I am a college-educated male between the ages of 35 and 45. I own a MacBook Pro and an iPhone 5, on which I browse the Internet via the Google Chrome browser. I tweet and blog publicly, where you can discover that I like chocolate and corgis. If your financial services client provided you with this data, could you tell them why I’ve just decided to move my checking and savings accounts from it to a new bank? We can discern plenty of valuable information about a customer from this data, based on what they do and when they do it. User research helps us to understand how other people live their lives, so that we can respond more effectively to their needs with informed and inspired design solutions. So, how does one do user research? “The spiral is based on a process of learning and need-finding,” Sanders says. The research learning spiral is a five-step process for conducting user research, originated by Erin Sanders at Frog. 1.
Harvard Library Is Hiring a 'Wikipedian in Residence' The school's Houghton Library is seeking someone to help make its collections as accessible as possible. WIkimedia Commons The Houghton Library on the Harvard campus holds the university's collection of rare books. The Houghton Library on the Harvard campus is awesome, is what I'm saying. Yesterday, John Overholt, Houghton's Curator of Early Modern Books & Manuscripts, posted a job listing. The Wikipedian in Residence will, according to the job announcement, help to "expand coverage on Wikipedia of topics relevant to Houghton collections." This won't be the first Wikipedia in Residence attempting to narrow the divide between the intellectual resources of the campus of those of the web. Overholt explained the reasons for the creation of the Harvard version of the job over email: We're hiring a Wikipedian in Residence for the same reason that lots of museums and libraries have over the last few years.
Don't Be a Content Marketing Dinosaur -- 5 Must-Haves to Stay Current Join Entrepreneur in a free, live webinar event to master SEO strategies that can grow your business. Register to Attend 3/16 » “It's hard to stay ahead of the curve. Every time I write a scene that I think is the sickest thing I have ever dreamed up, it is surpassed by something that happens in real life.” -- Carl Hiaasen Hiaasen, a longtime journalist and novelist, knows a thing or two about telling stories. In 2014, staying current means keeping up to date on how the content-marketing scene shifts on an almost month-to-month basis. Related: 5 Extremely Effective Content Marketing Formats According to Content Institute, content marketing may be in for some big changes in 2014. 1. “Short-form, mobile-friendly micro content will be the new strategic darling.” -- Jay Baer, president at Convince & Convert According to a Compendium infographic, “The State of Mobile Content Marketing,” mobile users are browsing blogs more and more, but have less patience compared to desktop users. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6 Ways User-Generated Content Can Double Your ROI Are you soliciting user-generated content (UGC) for your business? Would you like to know how to get the most out of user-generated content? Medtronic Diabetes, which develops and sells diabetes management products, has been soliciting user-generated content since 2012. Their Share Your Story Facebook app has been so successful that it is driving a 2-to-1 return on investment (ROI) for their entire social media program. Read on to discover best practices from Medtronic Diabetes for how to get the most out of user-generated content. The Share Your Story app prompts users to like the Medtronic Diabetes Facebook page before sharing. Organization: Medtronic Diabetes Social Media Handles & Stats WebsiteBlogFacebook – 150,724 fansTwitter – 12,700 followersYouTube – 272,728 views Highlights #1: Put Customers Front and Center Medtronic Diabetes does not use professional models. Medtronic Diabetes’ first Facebook banner photo, featuring a customer. The company soon realized they wanted a Facebook app.
How GoPro and Tesla Hacked Digital Marketing Dominic Smith is a senior writer and content strategist for Rackspace Digital, the digital marketing infrastructure specialists. Digital marketing, like the “analog” marketing that came before it, relies on word of mouth. Clicks, shares, pins and retweets are all part of the conversation. Even in the age of BuzzFeed and go-viral formulas (online quizzes involving yesteryear celebrities apparently back in style), many brands still engage traditional ad agencies and marketing consultants to craft their message. Two companies that have broken away from the pack for their unconventional use of digital marketing channels are GoPro Camera and Tesla, the electric car manufacturer. Its secret sauce? GoPro camera: A window onto the world At its most basic level, a camera is a lens, a window onto the world. Even though it’s mostly invisible in this video, it’s the camera and the GoPro brand that get most of the credit. Tesla: A carmaker without a dealer network The power of “free” advertising
Idea Curation: How to Get More Ideas for Great Content 105 Flares Filament.io 105 Flares × Where do blog post ideas come from? This one came from someone else’s headline. We are constantly inspired by the amazing work of others, and we owe a lot to the deep thinking and amazing resources that are readily available within the industry. How can we get more ideas more consistently? There’s inspiration everywhere. Copyblogger gave us the inspiration for this post. So here it is. How we curate ideas at Buffer “I write only when inspiration strikes. This quote about writing and inspiration could work just as easily for idea curating and inspiration. Our infrastructure for ideas depends on a couple of key points. We aren’t shy about taking inspiration from others.We spend a lot of time reading, thinking, and sharing the stories and ideas we love.We save all our ideas—no matter how small Let’s dig a little deeper into each of these. Taking inspiration from others “You are the sum of your influences.” – Austin Kleon Belle took it from there. We listen.
Social Media Frequency: How Often to Post to Facebook, Twitter 2.1K Flares Filament.io 2.1K Flares × Subway has this sandwich with Fritos on it. I know this because their commercials play constantly on my TV and computer such that I nearly have the ads memorized. Every time their commercial airs, Subway is flirting with the fine art of frequency. How often is too often to share with your audience? Social media marketers face the same dilemma. If guessing is required for finding the optimal frequency, then at least we can be making educated guesses. Strike the balance between informative and annoying Good content can be found in a multitude of places, and once you find it all, the next question you may ask yourself is how often you can share. Our post on curating content sparked this exact question, asked in the comments by Ryan Battles. I’ve started tweeting content from Buffer, ranging from 3x per day to 7x per day. Informative versus annoying. How frequently Buffer shares to social media Twitter – 14 times per day, from midnight to 10:00 p.m. Predict.