Facebook Lexicon Picks Your Brain...Sort Of.

by J. Butler, Applecore Content Development Specialist

Here's a good indication of how social media has its finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist. Here's a graph of a certain keyword mention on Facebook from October of last year to February of this year:

The keyword in question? "Laid off." Unsurprisingly, it begins to peak right around the time that most major news organizations started reporting on the recession, something that has popped up in the top stories one way or another.

This data comes courtesy of Facebook Lexicon, which is more or less Google Trends for the Facebook crowd. It's a useful way to basically survey what words pop up most on the site, and an interesting way for Facebook to finally put all that data they've acquired to good use. You can even compare up to five keywords, separated by a comma.

It doesn't yet boast the comprehensive features that Google Trends does -- for example, it stalls on some two-word phrases or low-frequency words, and lacks a demographic spread that covers things like geography or language. But it's definitely a step in the right direction, and a great tool for someone trying to read the minds of Facebook users.

Incidentally, a glance at Google Trends for this same time period reveals a very similar spread, suggesting that reading the minds of Facebook's diverse users may be a good makeshift indicator for the feeling of the times.

Thanks to the Social Media Blog.

Twitter Gets Punk'd

by J. Butler, Applecore Content Development Specialist

Word leaked yesterday that Twitter, long trying to construct a workable business model, had finally developed premium accounts for their most devoted followers. The account were split into four tiers:

• Sparrow ($5/month) – Users get 145 character limit, 5 extra random followers.

• Dove ($15/month) – Users get 160 character limit, 25 extra random followers, 1 random celebrity follower, auto-spell check, "Fail Whale" T-shirt.

• Owl ($50/month) – Users get 250 character limit, 100 extra random followers, 2 random celebrity followers, 30 minutes on recommended list, auto-spell check, "Fail Whale" hoodie.

• Eagle ($250/month) – Users get 500 character limit, 1000 extra random followers, 3 celebrity followers of their choice, 5 hours on recommended list each month, Twitter Concierge for Tweeting while user is asleep or busy (and more), auto-spell check, "Fail Whale" tuxedo, custom "Fail Whale" page when service is down.


The article cited co-founder and CEO Evan Williams as saying that "Celebrities and large corporations have begun flocking to Twitter for their social media needs, and growth has accelerated. Many users have expressed willingness to pay for accounts, and now we give them that opportunity."

But for any savvy reader, it became clear by the closing paragraphs that it was all just a joke (emphasis mine):

Users in any tier will be able to purchase an EmbellishTwit add-on for $100/year, which directs tweets to a well-educated offshore employee who will embellish tweets. For example, "Just had a whole wheat bagel and coffee for breakfast," becomes "Just got in from clubbing all night and Heidi Klum is spreading brie on a baguette just flown in on the Concord for my breakfast."


Rumors of an even higher level of service the secret "Black" account, which has J. K. Rowling, Stephen King and other famous authors write your tweets have not been confirmed.

With the reports veering quickly into the ridiculous (mandatory celebrity followers?) to the unbelievable (Stephen King penning Twitter accounts?), many appreciated the humor in this look at social media gone wild.

The really remarkable thing is how people reacted to this fake announcement. It picked up speed on Twitter, with people sending out Tweets questioning the post, with many more picking up that it was a tongue-in-cheek jab at Twitter. By midday, it had 3 terms on the search.twitter.com home page.

The cherry on the story comes when Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, caught wind of the story and posted it on his Twitter account:



Brian Briggs, the original poster, was thrilled at the attention and how quickly the story caught on:

Holy crap, the co-founder of AOL, Steve Case, just tweeted today's story link. If that's really him then that's totally awesome. OK, now Kevin Rose just retweeted it, and he has over 300,000 followers. Oh, and it's on Farktoo. Yippee.

And a happy social media fable comes to a close.

Microsoft Internally Testing New Search Service dubbed 'Kumo'

by J. Butler, Applecore Content Development Specialist

Looks like someone's trying to get a piece of the Google pie...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft is testing a new version of its online search service internally under the name of Kumo.com, a spokesman for the software company said on Monday.

The service is not yet available outside the company, but may eventually form part of Microsoft's attempt to catch up with Internet search leaders Google Inc and Yahoo Inc.

The new service was unveiled in an internal memo sent by the head of research at the company's online services division on Monday. It did not provide details about the new features.

"Kumo.com exists only inside the corporate network, and in order to get enough feedback we will be redirecting internal live.com traffic over to the test site in the coming days," said the memo from Satya Nadella. "Kumo is the codename we have chosen for the internal test."

Coming on the heels of last year's attempt to buy up Yahoo!, this seems like a defensive move on Microsoft's to nip Google encroaching on their software business in the bud. Only time will tell how this project shapes up, but it's an interesting development indeed. Full story at Wired.com.

What is gooleads.g.doubleclick.net?

by Greg Pike, Applecore Web Developer

Last week, we were noticing some weird referrals listed under Google Analytics, our website statistics package. Being a naturally curious bunch, we wanted to get to the bottom of it. And so, after some research (which included trolling through online forums and calling up our Google contact), we determined these odd referrals were in fact coming from Google.

Last year when Google acquired DoubleClick, a digital marketing technology and services firm, it was integrated into their AdSense service. If you're running an AdWords campaign in the Google Content Network, you'll experience referrals from the domain googleads.g.doubleclick.net in your Google Analytics or equivalent stats package software.

These referrals aren't dangerous. Google has simply migrated much or all of their AdSense hosting to this network. Therefore, googleads.g.doubleclick.net referrals are just paid ads run through Google’s content network.