As part of the ongoing Mashable Awards, we’re taking a closer look at each of the nomination categories. This is “Must-Follow Personality.” Be sure to nominate your favorites and join us for the Gala in Las Vegas! Sponsorships are available. Please contact sponsorships@mashable.com for more information.
In a world where social media and pop culture collide, 2009 might’ve been most remembered for a certain race to 1 million followers. While 2010 has had its share of popularity contests too, we’ve also seen a myriad of innovative uses of digital media that have both catapulted some previously unknowns to “must follow” status and re-invented the careers of others.
Whether it was playing a key role in shaping the news, creating online personas that went viral and became much more, or using the
Below, we take a look at some of those people who have made a major splash in the online world in the past year.
1. Ben Folds
While it looks like Chatroulette’s 15 minutes of fame might be up, no one was a bigger part of that 15 minutes than musician Ben Folds.
Inspired by chatroulette improv piano guy “Merton,” the singer-songwriter began broadcasting improv piano tunes from his concerts onto the random video chat site, and quickly saw himself become a big part of one of the year’s top memes.
Because Merton rather closely resembled Folds, speculation ran rampant that the two were actually the same guy. Numerous YouTube videos — some of them originating here on Mashable — added fuel to the fire, though the fable was ultimately disproved once and for all (we think) in a video that the two created together last month.
What started as a clever play on a pop culture phenomenon ultimately became a blueprint for sustaining social media buzz.
2. Conan O’Brien
When Conan O’Brien took over as host of The Tonight Show in mid-2009, one of his first sketches poked fun at Twitter for its banality. Little did he know at the time that mere months later, he’d become the center of a massive user-created digital movement (“Team Coco”) as NBC pivoted to shift Tonight Show hosting responsibilities back to Jay Leno.
Following his ouster, Conan quickly moved to capitalize on his Internet momentum, establishing a Twitter account that would serve as his comedic outlet while he sorted out his next career move, which he ultimately decided would be a new show on TBS.
Whereas Conan’s Tonight Show played the traditional willfully ignorant-of-technology card, Conan’s new show has made social media the centerpiece of a campaign to try and get the masses to shift their late night viewing habits to cable. As a result, we’ll soon find out if digital loyalty translates to television ratings.
3. BPGlobalPR
This year’s BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was one of the biggest environmental catastrophes in recent times, and the company’s much-maligned handling of it had some speculating that bankruptcy might be imminent for the petroleum giant.
Providing comic relief through the whole ordeal, however, was @BPGlobalPR, a satirical Twitter account pretending to be BP’s public relations department. With updates like “Sadly we can no longer certify our oil as Dolphin Safe,” the account quickly amassed tens of thousands of followers.
As for his inspiration, the man behind the account, “Terry,” told Mashable in an interview that “They pay people like me a TON of money to make it look like they’re doing stuff, but really we don’t have to do much except talk. Our talking buys them time to figure out how they are going to sweep it all under the rug and go back to making lots of money.”
While BP eventually closed the oil leak and activity on the @BPGlobalPR account has slowed, the feed served the dual role of both entertaining and reminding the world that BP was not doing a very good job at either closing the leak or communicating effectively with the public.
4. Dan Savage
In recent months, one of the most prominent social issues in America has been the bullying of gay teenagers. In response, sex advice columnist and gay rights activist Dan Savage launched the “Its Get Better” YouTube channel, where everyday people have uploaded hundreds of videos providing encouragement and inspiration to gay teens, telling them they have much to look forward to.
It didn’t take long for the channel to go viral with openly gay celebrities like Neil Patrick Harris and Ellen DeGeneres contributing video messages. Within about a month of launching, the channel attracted a video from President Obama broadcasting the “It Gets Better” message.
The campaign has been nothing short of inspiring, and we will be following Savage to see how he uses his various social media channels –- which also include a popular blog, Twitter feed, and podcast –- to raise awareness for important LGBT issues going forward.
5. Darren Rovell
It’s been a spectacular year for stories about the business of sports, and sitting at the center of it has been CNBC’s sports business reporter Darren Rovell.
There was simply no better feed to follow on Twitter than Rovell’s as the world of Tiger Woods came crashing down following a car-accident-turned-sex-scandal turned tens of millions of dollars in lost endorsement deals.
Then, when LeBron James made the universally mocked decision of broadcasting “The Decision” on ESPN, Rovell again was the point man for assessing brand and consumer response as one of the world’s most highly paid and previously admired athletes suddenly became one of the sporting world’s biggest villains.
In between, Rovell’s Twitter feed and blog has broken news on everything from TV ratings to jersey sales to free agency moves. To an extent, he’s also made the business of reporting on sports sexy, as evidenced by some of the competitors he’s now attracting.
What’s Your Take?
Which personalities do you follow via social media? Let us know in the comments or nominate them for the Mashable Awards.
The Mashable Awards Gala at Cirque du Soleil Zumanity (Vegas)
In partnership with Cirque du Soleil, The Mashable Awards Gala event will bring together the winners and nominees, the
Date: Thursday, January 6th, 2011 (during International CES Convention week)
Sponsorships are available. Please contact sponsorships@mashable.com for more information.
Thanks to our sponsors:
Mashable Awards Gala Partner:
From a group of 20 street performers at its beginnings in 1984, Cirque du Soleil is now a global entertainment organization providing high-quality artistic entertainment. The company has over 5,000 employees, including more than 1,200 artists from close to 50 different countries.
Cirque du Soleil has brought wonder and delight to nearly 100 million spectators in 300 cities on five continents. In 2010 Cirque du Soleil, will present 21 shows simultaneously throughout the world, including seven in Las Vegas.
For more information about Cirque du Soleil, visit www.cirquedusoleil.com
Mashable Awards Online Partner:
Have you ever wished for your own personal gourmet Chef?
The Fresh Diet is like having a Cordon Bleu chef prepare your meals in your own kitchen. There’s no cooking, cleaning, shopping – just fresh prepared delicious meals, hand delivered to your door daily! Whether you want to lose weight or just want to eat healthy, The Fresh Diet can help you meet your goals. The best news, we’re giving away a FREE week of The Fresh Diet every day on our Facebook page. Just click here to become a fan and you could be the next winner. Join now!
Mashable Awards Partner:
Join us at the 2011 International CES®, the global platform for inspired ideas and innovation. With 2,500 exhibitors, CES continues to be the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow and always reflects the dynamic consumer electronics industry. The International CES is not open to the general public and all attendees must be in the CE industry to be eligible to attend the show. Register FREE for the 2011 CES with priority code MSHB, an exclusive promotion for Mashable Readers.
Mashable Awards Category Sponsor:
About Research In Motion (RIM)
Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications including the BlackBerry® wireless platform. For the latest on BlackBerry products join us at www.facebook.com/BlackBerry.
Every great website starts with a name.
At Dynadot we know the value of your name on the Web. Dynadot is an ICANN accredited domain name registrar and web host where you can register the perfect domain name affordably, reliably, simply and securely. Whether you are a blogger, business owner, or planning on creating the next best Internet meme you need a domain that represents you. Let Dynadot help you establish your web identity today. Join us on Facebook for special offers and Mashable awards fun!
Mobile Future is a broad-based coalition of businesses, non-profit organizations and individuals interested in and dedicated to advocating for an environment in which innovations in wireless technology and services are enabled and encouraged. Our mission is to educate the public and key decision makers on innovations in the wireless industry that have transformed the way Americans work and play and to advocate continued investment in wireless technologies.
Our “Mobile Year in Review 2010” animation proves a glimpse into the most notable breakthroughs in the wireless industry this year.
Yahoo! is an innovative technology company that operates the largest digital media, content, and communications business in the world. Yahoo! keeps more than half a billion consumers worldwide connected to what matters to them most, and delivers powerful audience solutions to advertisers through its unique combination of Science + Art + Scale. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit the company’s blog, Yodel Anecdotal.
Mashable Awards Gala Silver Sponsor:
Aro Mobile is an intelligent mobile experience that includes better email, connected contacts, smarter calendar and improved browsing.
The Aro system automatically learns what’s important in your life—the people, places, dates and organizations you care about most. In your communications, Aro automatically identifies people, places, events, dates,organizations and locations. From any recognized term, Aro offers quick action menus to speed up your day.
The unique Aro experience is powered by advanced web services: next generation natural language processing and semantic data analytics services. Aro gives you the power to see through the clutter and focus your mobile life.
About Research In Motion (RIM)
Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications including the BlackBerry® wireless platform. For the latest on BlackBerry products join us at www.facebook.com/BlackBerry.
Mashable Awards Gala VIP Lounge sponsor:
Influxis specializes in the deployment of creative streaming solutions. Services include large scale deployment, mobile streaming, turn-key applications, and enterprise support with custom network options. With the unique combination of a worldwide network, knowledgeable developer support and nearly a decade of streaming media experience, Influxis is an essential partner to businesses, advertisers, developers, educators, and others who seek expertise in innovative streaming.
Mashable Awards After Party Sponsor:
About Research In Motion (RIM)
Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications including the BlackBerry® wireless platform. For the latest on BlackBerry products join us at www.facebook.com/BlackBerry.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto
For more Social Media coverage:
Andy Sjarif has an almost weird, man-crush on Google. No matter what crazy things Eric Schmidt may promise shareholders, Sjarif is in no doubt that the great and mighty Google can achieve them. Self-driving cars? Trips to the moon? Wind farms? All in a day’s work at the Googleplex. Google with its execution, its Ph.Ds and its algorithms is Sjarif’s mahaguru.
But – all that said – he still wants to slaughter them in the Indonesian market.
To that end, his company Sitti has indexed more than 20 terabytes of data; comprising 12 million articles, 12 million Twitter accounts, 800 million pages of websites and blogs, 10 million Facebook conversations, 20 thousand words of slang and 2.7 billion Google search terms– all in Bahasa Indonesia and all to make mathematical sense of Bahasa language context, so that it can match ads to content better than Google.
Google has been supporting an Indonesian language version of Chrome for a few months, but it only launched Adwords and announced it was ready to serve the market October 8… about a week after Sitti just launched a trial of its contextual ad engine consisting of that consisted of 2,700 individual ads for 529 brands. It must be doing something right; not only did Google come into the market almost immediately but, the day after the campaign launched, Google bought the keyword in Bahasa for “Sitti.” See the screenshot, grabbed by Sjarif below.
A few weeks later, Google sent a team to Indonesia and held dozens of job interviews. Sjarif claims a few candidates were told that Google was going to crush the small upstart. They are said to be hiring a local team of about a dozen employees in 2011.
Of course, the timing could all be coincidence. Indonesia is a hot market that, as I’ve argued before, only a fool would completely ignore. But, if nothing else, it certainly makes Sitti look good to the locals. There’s that nationalistic pride issue of Google making more than anyone else when it comes to Indonesian Web advertising, but not employing many locals and not paying much in local taxes. Sitti is undoubtably a gnat in the Google universe. But every once in a while, a gnat gets your attention and you swat at it, right?
Whether he helped provoke it or not, Sjarif is thrilled Google is coming into the market, because he thinks it’ll drive more professionalism, attention and revenues for the ecosystem as a whole. Google Adsense tailored for Indonesia means local Web companies can better bootstrap companies with Google ads, the way the early Web 2.0 wave of companies in the United States did. The two could co-exist the same way mass players like Google and more tailored ad networks like Federated Media did for US startups.
Google brings heft to the market, but it will never get as deep into the nuances Bahasa indexing as Sitti is. Sitti cites the example of ZAO Begun in Russia, which Google tried to buy for $140 million before it was blocked by the Russian government, as evidence that language can be a powerful differentiator on the Web.
More than a year ago, Sjarif tried to raise funding from Valley VCs and one very well-heeled one he asked me not to name said, “It’s not that your technology isn’t hot, it’s the fact that you’re here. In the Valley, people would be fighting over you.” So Sitti raised money from a handful of local angels instead. They were offline moguls who didn’t know a thing about the Web, but backed him anyway. This is a running theme among Jakarta Web companies I met this past trip. Knowing the big families is important as entrepreneurs shape a new industry in a country with infrastructure issues and little local venture capital. One of these angels called him the day after he committed the money and said, “Andy, do two things for me. The first is don’t die, because this is going to be big. Now, explain to me what you do.”
Indonesians complain about a lack of sophisticated Web expertise and mentorship, but it’s one of the only emerging markets where I don’t hear complaints about a dearth of angel money. Sitti’s angels have given the company a long leash, deep pockets and helped open doors to the country’s old media elite. Sjarif now turns down traditional venture firm money, bootstrapping the company’s growth by giving big brands local media consulting advice for digital campaigns. “I want to talk to VCs when I don’t need their money,” he says. Smart plan. Venture money can come and go quickly in markets that don’t have a track record of returns.
But back to the product. Sjarif is so deep into how, when, where and what Indonesians say on the Web that he can tell you a lot about this phenomenon. He says three things drive the Indonesians love affair with Tweeting and Foursquare for instance: They’re narcassists; they love to gossip about one another (more than celebrities, unlike the US) and they get bored during urban traffic jams. He says he can map the traffic flows in Jakarta based on the volume of Tweets he indexes at any given time.
Here’s a visualization Sitti did of part of my Bahasan Twitter connections, created in part to embarrass me at an event. In true polite Indonesian style there was little embarrassing on it, except for the fact that ARRINGTON is the biggest hub on this map. And, what the hell is Mashable even doing on there? I might get fired for that if the big yellow dot ARRINGTON sees it. Interesting that @katharnavas in India is the same size dot as @arrington. Thanks for the links, whoever you are. The yellow dots are my connections; the red dots are connections to them or connections with smaller networks that have mentioned me; and the size of the dot indicates how frequently.
And this is a relation of most common words associated with “Sarah Lacy” into Google.co.id’s engine:
It’s certainly different than the words most related to me in an English-language search. It seems in Indonesia, haters don’t gotta hate quite as much. Good to know. The company also did a visualization of topics on my personal blog and conversations over Twitter they’ve indexed that relate to me.
Sitti wasn’t the only company I met trying to build a business out of social media sentiment in markets that were ignored by companies like Google up until recently. There are several companies in Asia generally seeking to make sense out of the wave of pages being created on the Web in Asian languages in order to turn all that traffic into actual cash. Since, most of those pages are being created over social media, it takes a company that can understand slang, context, and meaning in just 140 characters. And a lot of these companies put the Valley’s self-proclaimed “social media consultants” to shame with highly scientific and proprietary approaches.
Two very different examples are Brandtology in Singapore and Scraplr in Indonesia. Brandtology promises to make better sense of what social media is saying about a brand by hiring an army of smart college grads to sit and parse queries so the machines don’t mis-read things like sarcasm and local slang. While, I’m sympathetic to the idea that there are certain things an algorithm doesn’t get, the economics of this company didn’t quite sense, and didn’t quite hold up the more questions I asked. How do you hire enough college-educated locals to filter all those keywords and still have a cost-effective solution? The answer is it’s not a free product. It costs between $1,000 and $10,000 a month depending on what percentage of keywords you want examined. Without paying extra, you don’t really get better relevance. I’m not sure that scales as the cost of talent rises.
Scraplr takes a totally algorithmic approach, that is specifically tailored to Bahasa, not emerging market languages broadly. Because it takes a machine-only approach it has a freemium model. That means more people can see how good the site is, but making money will be a bigger challenge. There is probably room for all three, as long as they perform as advertised. Indonesia and social media are both black boxes the West is struggling to understand.
eric seiger
Tuesday's <b>news</b>: Studying Shea Weber's super slapper - On the Forecheck
He has broken the bones of teammates and foes alike, rent Olympic nets asunder, and piled up goals at a prodigious rate over the last few years.
Fox <b>News</b> Turns Obama's Kid Book Into Anti-American War Epic
When news aggregation goes wrong: Fox News republished a USA Today article called "Obama Shares Dreams for His Kids in Book About 13 Americans." Fox News' headline? "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed US General."
Celebrities Looking Older Than Their Age Can Be Good, Bad & Really <b>...</b>
Commonly all the plastic surgery that celebrities undergo to preserve their age backfires and makes them look as though they have tacked years onto their plastic bodies. Other times, celebrities ar...
eric seiger
As part of the ongoing Mashable Awards, we’re taking a closer look at each of the nomination categories. This is “Must-Follow Personality.” Be sure to nominate your favorites and join us for the Gala in Las Vegas! Sponsorships are available. Please contact sponsorships@mashable.com for more information.
In a world where social media and pop culture collide, 2009 might’ve been most remembered for a certain race to 1 million followers. While 2010 has had its share of popularity contests too, we’ve also seen a myriad of innovative uses of digital media that have both catapulted some previously unknowns to “must follow” status and re-invented the careers of others.
Whether it was playing a key role in shaping the news, creating online personas that went viral and became much more, or using the
Below, we take a look at some of those people who have made a major splash in the online world in the past year.
1. Ben Folds
While it looks like Chatroulette’s 15 minutes of fame might be up, no one was a bigger part of that 15 minutes than musician Ben Folds.
Inspired by chatroulette improv piano guy “Merton,” the singer-songwriter began broadcasting improv piano tunes from his concerts onto the random video chat site, and quickly saw himself become a big part of one of the year’s top memes.
Because Merton rather closely resembled Folds, speculation ran rampant that the two were actually the same guy. Numerous YouTube videos — some of them originating here on Mashable — added fuel to the fire, though the fable was ultimately disproved once and for all (we think) in a video that the two created together last month.
What started as a clever play on a pop culture phenomenon ultimately became a blueprint for sustaining social media buzz.
2. Conan O’Brien
When Conan O’Brien took over as host of The Tonight Show in mid-2009, one of his first sketches poked fun at Twitter for its banality. Little did he know at the time that mere months later, he’d become the center of a massive user-created digital movement (“Team Coco”) as NBC pivoted to shift Tonight Show hosting responsibilities back to Jay Leno.
Following his ouster, Conan quickly moved to capitalize on his Internet momentum, establishing a Twitter account that would serve as his comedic outlet while he sorted out his next career move, which he ultimately decided would be a new show on TBS.
Whereas Conan’s Tonight Show played the traditional willfully ignorant-of-technology card, Conan’s new show has made social media the centerpiece of a campaign to try and get the masses to shift their late night viewing habits to cable. As a result, we’ll soon find out if digital loyalty translates to television ratings.
3. BPGlobalPR
This year’s BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was one of the biggest environmental catastrophes in recent times, and the company’s much-maligned handling of it had some speculating that bankruptcy might be imminent for the petroleum giant.
Providing comic relief through the whole ordeal, however, was @BPGlobalPR, a satirical Twitter account pretending to be BP’s public relations department. With updates like “Sadly we can no longer certify our oil as Dolphin Safe,” the account quickly amassed tens of thousands of followers.
As for his inspiration, the man behind the account, “Terry,” told Mashable in an interview that “They pay people like me a TON of money to make it look like they’re doing stuff, but really we don’t have to do much except talk. Our talking buys them time to figure out how they are going to sweep it all under the rug and go back to making lots of money.”
While BP eventually closed the oil leak and activity on the @BPGlobalPR account has slowed, the feed served the dual role of both entertaining and reminding the world that BP was not doing a very good job at either closing the leak or communicating effectively with the public.
4. Dan Savage
In recent months, one of the most prominent social issues in America has been the bullying of gay teenagers. In response, sex advice columnist and gay rights activist Dan Savage launched the “Its Get Better” YouTube channel, where everyday people have uploaded hundreds of videos providing encouragement and inspiration to gay teens, telling them they have much to look forward to.
It didn’t take long for the channel to go viral with openly gay celebrities like Neil Patrick Harris and Ellen DeGeneres contributing video messages. Within about a month of launching, the channel attracted a video from President Obama broadcasting the “It Gets Better” message.
The campaign has been nothing short of inspiring, and we will be following Savage to see how he uses his various social media channels –- which also include a popular blog, Twitter feed, and podcast –- to raise awareness for important LGBT issues going forward.
5. Darren Rovell
It’s been a spectacular year for stories about the business of sports, and sitting at the center of it has been CNBC’s sports business reporter Darren Rovell.
There was simply no better feed to follow on Twitter than Rovell’s as the world of Tiger Woods came crashing down following a car-accident-turned-sex-scandal turned tens of millions of dollars in lost endorsement deals.
Then, when LeBron James made the universally mocked decision of broadcasting “The Decision” on ESPN, Rovell again was the point man for assessing brand and consumer response as one of the world’s most highly paid and previously admired athletes suddenly became one of the sporting world’s biggest villains.
In between, Rovell’s Twitter feed and blog has broken news on everything from TV ratings to jersey sales to free agency moves. To an extent, he’s also made the business of reporting on sports sexy, as evidenced by some of the competitors he’s now attracting.
What’s Your Take?
Which personalities do you follow via social media? Let us know in the comments or nominate them for the Mashable Awards.
The Mashable Awards Gala at Cirque du Soleil Zumanity (Vegas)
In partnership with Cirque du Soleil, The Mashable Awards Gala event will bring together the winners and nominees, the
Date: Thursday, January 6th, 2011 (during International CES Convention week)
Sponsorships are available. Please contact sponsorships@mashable.com for more information.
Thanks to our sponsors:
Mashable Awards Gala Partner:
From a group of 20 street performers at its beginnings in 1984, Cirque du Soleil is now a global entertainment organization providing high-quality artistic entertainment. The company has over 5,000 employees, including more than 1,200 artists from close to 50 different countries.
Cirque du Soleil has brought wonder and delight to nearly 100 million spectators in 300 cities on five continents. In 2010 Cirque du Soleil, will present 21 shows simultaneously throughout the world, including seven in Las Vegas.
For more information about Cirque du Soleil, visit www.cirquedusoleil.com
Mashable Awards Online Partner:
Have you ever wished for your own personal gourmet Chef?
The Fresh Diet is like having a Cordon Bleu chef prepare your meals in your own kitchen. There’s no cooking, cleaning, shopping – just fresh prepared delicious meals, hand delivered to your door daily! Whether you want to lose weight or just want to eat healthy, The Fresh Diet can help you meet your goals. The best news, we’re giving away a FREE week of The Fresh Diet every day on our Facebook page. Just click here to become a fan and you could be the next winner. Join now!
Mashable Awards Partner:
Join us at the 2011 International CES®, the global platform for inspired ideas and innovation. With 2,500 exhibitors, CES continues to be the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow and always reflects the dynamic consumer electronics industry. The International CES is not open to the general public and all attendees must be in the CE industry to be eligible to attend the show. Register FREE for the 2011 CES with priority code MSHB, an exclusive promotion for Mashable Readers.
Mashable Awards Category Sponsor:
About Research In Motion (RIM)
Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications including the BlackBerry® wireless platform. For the latest on BlackBerry products join us at www.facebook.com/BlackBerry.
Every great website starts with a name.
At Dynadot we know the value of your name on the Web. Dynadot is an ICANN accredited domain name registrar and web host where you can register the perfect domain name affordably, reliably, simply and securely. Whether you are a blogger, business owner, or planning on creating the next best Internet meme you need a domain that represents you. Let Dynadot help you establish your web identity today. Join us on Facebook for special offers and Mashable awards fun!
Mobile Future is a broad-based coalition of businesses, non-profit organizations and individuals interested in and dedicated to advocating for an environment in which innovations in wireless technology and services are enabled and encouraged. Our mission is to educate the public and key decision makers on innovations in the wireless industry that have transformed the way Americans work and play and to advocate continued investment in wireless technologies.
Our “Mobile Year in Review 2010” animation proves a glimpse into the most notable breakthroughs in the wireless industry this year.
Yahoo! is an innovative technology company that operates the largest digital media, content, and communications business in the world. Yahoo! keeps more than half a billion consumers worldwide connected to what matters to them most, and delivers powerful audience solutions to advertisers through its unique combination of Science + Art + Scale. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit the company’s blog, Yodel Anecdotal.
Mashable Awards Gala Silver Sponsor:
Aro Mobile is an intelligent mobile experience that includes better email, connected contacts, smarter calendar and improved browsing.
The Aro system automatically learns what’s important in your life—the people, places, dates and organizations you care about most. In your communications, Aro automatically identifies people, places, events, dates,organizations and locations. From any recognized term, Aro offers quick action menus to speed up your day.
The unique Aro experience is powered by advanced web services: next generation natural language processing and semantic data analytics services. Aro gives you the power to see through the clutter and focus your mobile life.
About Research In Motion (RIM)
Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications including the BlackBerry® wireless platform. For the latest on BlackBerry products join us at www.facebook.com/BlackBerry.
Mashable Awards Gala VIP Lounge sponsor:
Influxis specializes in the deployment of creative streaming solutions. Services include large scale deployment, mobile streaming, turn-key applications, and enterprise support with custom network options. With the unique combination of a worldwide network, knowledgeable developer support and nearly a decade of streaming media experience, Influxis is an essential partner to businesses, advertisers, developers, educators, and others who seek expertise in innovative streaming.
Mashable Awards After Party Sponsor:
About Research In Motion (RIM)
Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications including the BlackBerry® wireless platform. For the latest on BlackBerry products join us at www.facebook.com/BlackBerry.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto
For more Social Media coverage:
Andy Sjarif has an almost weird, man-crush on Google. No matter what crazy things Eric Schmidt may promise shareholders, Sjarif is in no doubt that the great and mighty Google can achieve them. Self-driving cars? Trips to the moon? Wind farms? All in a day’s work at the Googleplex. Google with its execution, its Ph.Ds and its algorithms is Sjarif’s mahaguru.
But – all that said – he still wants to slaughter them in the Indonesian market.
To that end, his company Sitti has indexed more than 20 terabytes of data; comprising 12 million articles, 12 million Twitter accounts, 800 million pages of websites and blogs, 10 million Facebook conversations, 20 thousand words of slang and 2.7 billion Google search terms– all in Bahasa Indonesia and all to make mathematical sense of Bahasa language context, so that it can match ads to content better than Google.
Google has been supporting an Indonesian language version of Chrome for a few months, but it only launched Adwords and announced it was ready to serve the market October 8… about a week after Sitti just launched a trial of its contextual ad engine consisting of that consisted of 2,700 individual ads for 529 brands. It must be doing something right; not only did Google come into the market almost immediately but, the day after the campaign launched, Google bought the keyword in Bahasa for “Sitti.” See the screenshot, grabbed by Sjarif below.
A few weeks later, Google sent a team to Indonesia and held dozens of job interviews. Sjarif claims a few candidates were told that Google was going to crush the small upstart. They are said to be hiring a local team of about a dozen employees in 2011.
Of course, the timing could all be coincidence. Indonesia is a hot market that, as I’ve argued before, only a fool would completely ignore. But, if nothing else, it certainly makes Sitti look good to the locals. There’s that nationalistic pride issue of Google making more than anyone else when it comes to Indonesian Web advertising, but not employing many locals and not paying much in local taxes. Sitti is undoubtably a gnat in the Google universe. But every once in a while, a gnat gets your attention and you swat at it, right?
Whether he helped provoke it or not, Sjarif is thrilled Google is coming into the market, because he thinks it’ll drive more professionalism, attention and revenues for the ecosystem as a whole. Google Adsense tailored for Indonesia means local Web companies can better bootstrap companies with Google ads, the way the early Web 2.0 wave of companies in the United States did. The two could co-exist the same way mass players like Google and more tailored ad networks like Federated Media did for US startups.
Google brings heft to the market, but it will never get as deep into the nuances Bahasa indexing as Sitti is. Sitti cites the example of ZAO Begun in Russia, which Google tried to buy for $140 million before it was blocked by the Russian government, as evidence that language can be a powerful differentiator on the Web.
More than a year ago, Sjarif tried to raise funding from Valley VCs and one very well-heeled one he asked me not to name said, “It’s not that your technology isn’t hot, it’s the fact that you’re here. In the Valley, people would be fighting over you.” So Sitti raised money from a handful of local angels instead. They were offline moguls who didn’t know a thing about the Web, but backed him anyway. This is a running theme among Jakarta Web companies I met this past trip. Knowing the big families is important as entrepreneurs shape a new industry in a country with infrastructure issues and little local venture capital. One of these angels called him the day after he committed the money and said, “Andy, do two things for me. The first is don’t die, because this is going to be big. Now, explain to me what you do.”
Indonesians complain about a lack of sophisticated Web expertise and mentorship, but it’s one of the only emerging markets where I don’t hear complaints about a dearth of angel money. Sitti’s angels have given the company a long leash, deep pockets and helped open doors to the country’s old media elite. Sjarif now turns down traditional venture firm money, bootstrapping the company’s growth by giving big brands local media consulting advice for digital campaigns. “I want to talk to VCs when I don’t need their money,” he says. Smart plan. Venture money can come and go quickly in markets that don’t have a track record of returns.
But back to the product. Sjarif is so deep into how, when, where and what Indonesians say on the Web that he can tell you a lot about this phenomenon. He says three things drive the Indonesians love affair with Tweeting and Foursquare for instance: They’re narcassists; they love to gossip about one another (more than celebrities, unlike the US) and they get bored during urban traffic jams. He says he can map the traffic flows in Jakarta based on the volume of Tweets he indexes at any given time.
Here’s a visualization Sitti did of part of my Bahasan Twitter connections, created in part to embarrass me at an event. In true polite Indonesian style there was little embarrassing on it, except for the fact that ARRINGTON is the biggest hub on this map. And, what the hell is Mashable even doing on there? I might get fired for that if the big yellow dot ARRINGTON sees it. Interesting that @katharnavas in India is the same size dot as @arrington. Thanks for the links, whoever you are. The yellow dots are my connections; the red dots are connections to them or connections with smaller networks that have mentioned me; and the size of the dot indicates how frequently.
And this is a relation of most common words associated with “Sarah Lacy” into Google.co.id’s engine:
It’s certainly different than the words most related to me in an English-language search. It seems in Indonesia, haters don’t gotta hate quite as much. Good to know. The company also did a visualization of topics on my personal blog and conversations over Twitter they’ve indexed that relate to me.
Sitti wasn’t the only company I met trying to build a business out of social media sentiment in markets that were ignored by companies like Google up until recently. There are several companies in Asia generally seeking to make sense out of the wave of pages being created on the Web in Asian languages in order to turn all that traffic into actual cash. Since, most of those pages are being created over social media, it takes a company that can understand slang, context, and meaning in just 140 characters. And a lot of these companies put the Valley’s self-proclaimed “social media consultants” to shame with highly scientific and proprietary approaches.
Two very different examples are Brandtology in Singapore and Scraplr in Indonesia. Brandtology promises to make better sense of what social media is saying about a brand by hiring an army of smart college grads to sit and parse queries so the machines don’t mis-read things like sarcasm and local slang. While, I’m sympathetic to the idea that there are certain things an algorithm doesn’t get, the economics of this company didn’t quite sense, and didn’t quite hold up the more questions I asked. How do you hire enough college-educated locals to filter all those keywords and still have a cost-effective solution? The answer is it’s not a free product. It costs between $1,000 and $10,000 a month depending on what percentage of keywords you want examined. Without paying extra, you don’t really get better relevance. I’m not sure that scales as the cost of talent rises.
Scraplr takes a totally algorithmic approach, that is specifically tailored to Bahasa, not emerging market languages broadly. Because it takes a machine-only approach it has a freemium model. That means more people can see how good the site is, but making money will be a bigger challenge. There is probably room for all three, as long as they perform as advertised. Indonesia and social media are both black boxes the West is struggling to understand.
eric seiger
Tuesday's <b>news</b>: Studying Shea Weber's super slapper - On the Forecheck
He has broken the bones of teammates and foes alike, rent Olympic nets asunder, and piled up goals at a prodigious rate over the last few years.
Fox <b>News</b> Turns Obama's Kid Book Into Anti-American War Epic
When news aggregation goes wrong: Fox News republished a USA Today article called "Obama Shares Dreams for His Kids in Book About 13 Americans." Fox News' headline? "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed US General."
Celebrities Looking Older Than Their Age Can Be Good, Bad & Really <b>...</b>
Commonly all the plastic surgery that celebrities undergo to preserve their age backfires and makes them look as though they have tacked years onto their plastic bodies. Other times, celebrities ar...
eric seiger
eric seiger
eric seiger
Tuesday's <b>news</b>: Studying Shea Weber's super slapper - On the Forecheck
He has broken the bones of teammates and foes alike, rent Olympic nets asunder, and piled up goals at a prodigious rate over the last few years.
Fox <b>News</b> Turns Obama's Kid Book Into Anti-American War Epic
When news aggregation goes wrong: Fox News republished a USA Today article called "Obama Shares Dreams for His Kids in Book About 13 Americans." Fox News' headline? "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed US General."
Celebrities Looking Older Than Their Age Can Be Good, Bad & Really <b>...</b>
Commonly all the plastic surgery that celebrities undergo to preserve their age backfires and makes them look as though they have tacked years onto their plastic bodies. Other times, celebrities ar...
eric seiger
As part of the ongoing Mashable Awards, we’re taking a closer look at each of the nomination categories. This is “Must-Follow Personality.” Be sure to nominate your favorites and join us for the Gala in Las Vegas! Sponsorships are available. Please contact sponsorships@mashable.com for more information.
In a world where social media and pop culture collide, 2009 might’ve been most remembered for a certain race to 1 million followers. While 2010 has had its share of popularity contests too, we’ve also seen a myriad of innovative uses of digital media that have both catapulted some previously unknowns to “must follow” status and re-invented the careers of others.
Whether it was playing a key role in shaping the news, creating online personas that went viral and became much more, or using the
Below, we take a look at some of those people who have made a major splash in the online world in the past year.
1. Ben Folds
While it looks like Chatroulette’s 15 minutes of fame might be up, no one was a bigger part of that 15 minutes than musician Ben Folds.
Inspired by chatroulette improv piano guy “Merton,” the singer-songwriter began broadcasting improv piano tunes from his concerts onto the random video chat site, and quickly saw himself become a big part of one of the year’s top memes.
Because Merton rather closely resembled Folds, speculation ran rampant that the two were actually the same guy. Numerous YouTube videos — some of them originating here on Mashable — added fuel to the fire, though the fable was ultimately disproved once and for all (we think) in a video that the two created together last month.
What started as a clever play on a pop culture phenomenon ultimately became a blueprint for sustaining social media buzz.
2. Conan O’Brien
When Conan O’Brien took over as host of The Tonight Show in mid-2009, one of his first sketches poked fun at Twitter for its banality. Little did he know at the time that mere months later, he’d become the center of a massive user-created digital movement (“Team Coco”) as NBC pivoted to shift Tonight Show hosting responsibilities back to Jay Leno.
Following his ouster, Conan quickly moved to capitalize on his Internet momentum, establishing a Twitter account that would serve as his comedic outlet while he sorted out his next career move, which he ultimately decided would be a new show on TBS.
Whereas Conan’s Tonight Show played the traditional willfully ignorant-of-technology card, Conan’s new show has made social media the centerpiece of a campaign to try and get the masses to shift their late night viewing habits to cable. As a result, we’ll soon find out if digital loyalty translates to television ratings.
3. BPGlobalPR
This year’s BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was one of the biggest environmental catastrophes in recent times, and the company’s much-maligned handling of it had some speculating that bankruptcy might be imminent for the petroleum giant.
Providing comic relief through the whole ordeal, however, was @BPGlobalPR, a satirical Twitter account pretending to be BP’s public relations department. With updates like “Sadly we can no longer certify our oil as Dolphin Safe,” the account quickly amassed tens of thousands of followers.
As for his inspiration, the man behind the account, “Terry,” told Mashable in an interview that “They pay people like me a TON of money to make it look like they’re doing stuff, but really we don’t have to do much except talk. Our talking buys them time to figure out how they are going to sweep it all under the rug and go back to making lots of money.”
While BP eventually closed the oil leak and activity on the @BPGlobalPR account has slowed, the feed served the dual role of both entertaining and reminding the world that BP was not doing a very good job at either closing the leak or communicating effectively with the public.
4. Dan Savage
In recent months, one of the most prominent social issues in America has been the bullying of gay teenagers. In response, sex advice columnist and gay rights activist Dan Savage launched the “Its Get Better” YouTube channel, where everyday people have uploaded hundreds of videos providing encouragement and inspiration to gay teens, telling them they have much to look forward to.
It didn’t take long for the channel to go viral with openly gay celebrities like Neil Patrick Harris and Ellen DeGeneres contributing video messages. Within about a month of launching, the channel attracted a video from President Obama broadcasting the “It Gets Better” message.
The campaign has been nothing short of inspiring, and we will be following Savage to see how he uses his various social media channels –- which also include a popular blog, Twitter feed, and podcast –- to raise awareness for important LGBT issues going forward.
5. Darren Rovell
It’s been a spectacular year for stories about the business of sports, and sitting at the center of it has been CNBC’s sports business reporter Darren Rovell.
There was simply no better feed to follow on Twitter than Rovell’s as the world of Tiger Woods came crashing down following a car-accident-turned-sex-scandal turned tens of millions of dollars in lost endorsement deals.
Then, when LeBron James made the universally mocked decision of broadcasting “The Decision” on ESPN, Rovell again was the point man for assessing brand and consumer response as one of the world’s most highly paid and previously admired athletes suddenly became one of the sporting world’s biggest villains.
In between, Rovell’s Twitter feed and blog has broken news on everything from TV ratings to jersey sales to free agency moves. To an extent, he’s also made the business of reporting on sports sexy, as evidenced by some of the competitors he’s now attracting.
What’s Your Take?
Which personalities do you follow via social media? Let us know in the comments or nominate them for the Mashable Awards.
The Mashable Awards Gala at Cirque du Soleil Zumanity (Vegas)
In partnership with Cirque du Soleil, The Mashable Awards Gala event will bring together the winners and nominees, the
Date: Thursday, January 6th, 2011 (during International CES Convention week)
Sponsorships are available. Please contact sponsorships@mashable.com for more information.
Thanks to our sponsors:
Mashable Awards Gala Partner:
From a group of 20 street performers at its beginnings in 1984, Cirque du Soleil is now a global entertainment organization providing high-quality artistic entertainment. The company has over 5,000 employees, including more than 1,200 artists from close to 50 different countries.
Cirque du Soleil has brought wonder and delight to nearly 100 million spectators in 300 cities on five continents. In 2010 Cirque du Soleil, will present 21 shows simultaneously throughout the world, including seven in Las Vegas.
For more information about Cirque du Soleil, visit www.cirquedusoleil.com
Mashable Awards Online Partner:
Have you ever wished for your own personal gourmet Chef?
The Fresh Diet is like having a Cordon Bleu chef prepare your meals in your own kitchen. There’s no cooking, cleaning, shopping – just fresh prepared delicious meals, hand delivered to your door daily! Whether you want to lose weight or just want to eat healthy, The Fresh Diet can help you meet your goals. The best news, we’re giving away a FREE week of The Fresh Diet every day on our Facebook page. Just click here to become a fan and you could be the next winner. Join now!
Mashable Awards Partner:
Join us at the 2011 International CES®, the global platform for inspired ideas and innovation. With 2,500 exhibitors, CES continues to be the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow and always reflects the dynamic consumer electronics industry. The International CES is not open to the general public and all attendees must be in the CE industry to be eligible to attend the show. Register FREE for the 2011 CES with priority code MSHB, an exclusive promotion for Mashable Readers.
Mashable Awards Category Sponsor:
About Research In Motion (RIM)
Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications including the BlackBerry® wireless platform. For the latest on BlackBerry products join us at www.facebook.com/BlackBerry.
Every great website starts with a name.
At Dynadot we know the value of your name on the Web. Dynadot is an ICANN accredited domain name registrar and web host where you can register the perfect domain name affordably, reliably, simply and securely. Whether you are a blogger, business owner, or planning on creating the next best Internet meme you need a domain that represents you. Let Dynadot help you establish your web identity today. Join us on Facebook for special offers and Mashable awards fun!
Mobile Future is a broad-based coalition of businesses, non-profit organizations and individuals interested in and dedicated to advocating for an environment in which innovations in wireless technology and services are enabled and encouraged. Our mission is to educate the public and key decision makers on innovations in the wireless industry that have transformed the way Americans work and play and to advocate continued investment in wireless technologies.
Our “Mobile Year in Review 2010” animation proves a glimpse into the most notable breakthroughs in the wireless industry this year.
Yahoo! is an innovative technology company that operates the largest digital media, content, and communications business in the world. Yahoo! keeps more than half a billion consumers worldwide connected to what matters to them most, and delivers powerful audience solutions to advertisers through its unique combination of Science + Art + Scale. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit the company’s blog, Yodel Anecdotal.
Mashable Awards Gala Silver Sponsor:
Aro Mobile is an intelligent mobile experience that includes better email, connected contacts, smarter calendar and improved browsing.
The Aro system automatically learns what’s important in your life—the people, places, dates and organizations you care about most. In your communications, Aro automatically identifies people, places, events, dates,organizations and locations. From any recognized term, Aro offers quick action menus to speed up your day.
The unique Aro experience is powered by advanced web services: next generation natural language processing and semantic data analytics services. Aro gives you the power to see through the clutter and focus your mobile life.
About Research In Motion (RIM)
Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications including the BlackBerry® wireless platform. For the latest on BlackBerry products join us at www.facebook.com/BlackBerry.
Mashable Awards Gala VIP Lounge sponsor:
Influxis specializes in the deployment of creative streaming solutions. Services include large scale deployment, mobile streaming, turn-key applications, and enterprise support with custom network options. With the unique combination of a worldwide network, knowledgeable developer support and nearly a decade of streaming media experience, Influxis is an essential partner to businesses, advertisers, developers, educators, and others who seek expertise in innovative streaming.
Mashable Awards After Party Sponsor:
About Research In Motion (RIM)
Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications including the BlackBerry® wireless platform. For the latest on BlackBerry products join us at www.facebook.com/BlackBerry.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto
For more Social Media coverage:
Andy Sjarif has an almost weird, man-crush on Google. No matter what crazy things Eric Schmidt may promise shareholders, Sjarif is in no doubt that the great and mighty Google can achieve them. Self-driving cars? Trips to the moon? Wind farms? All in a day’s work at the Googleplex. Google with its execution, its Ph.Ds and its algorithms is Sjarif’s mahaguru.
But – all that said – he still wants to slaughter them in the Indonesian market.
To that end, his company Sitti has indexed more than 20 terabytes of data; comprising 12 million articles, 12 million Twitter accounts, 800 million pages of websites and blogs, 10 million Facebook conversations, 20 thousand words of slang and 2.7 billion Google search terms– all in Bahasa Indonesia and all to make mathematical sense of Bahasa language context, so that it can match ads to content better than Google.
Google has been supporting an Indonesian language version of Chrome for a few months, but it only launched Adwords and announced it was ready to serve the market October 8… about a week after Sitti just launched a trial of its contextual ad engine consisting of that consisted of 2,700 individual ads for 529 brands. It must be doing something right; not only did Google come into the market almost immediately but, the day after the campaign launched, Google bought the keyword in Bahasa for “Sitti.” See the screenshot, grabbed by Sjarif below.
A few weeks later, Google sent a team to Indonesia and held dozens of job interviews. Sjarif claims a few candidates were told that Google was going to crush the small upstart. They are said to be hiring a local team of about a dozen employees in 2011.
Of course, the timing could all be coincidence. Indonesia is a hot market that, as I’ve argued before, only a fool would completely ignore. But, if nothing else, it certainly makes Sitti look good to the locals. There’s that nationalistic pride issue of Google making more than anyone else when it comes to Indonesian Web advertising, but not employing many locals and not paying much in local taxes. Sitti is undoubtably a gnat in the Google universe. But every once in a while, a gnat gets your attention and you swat at it, right?
Whether he helped provoke it or not, Sjarif is thrilled Google is coming into the market, because he thinks it’ll drive more professionalism, attention and revenues for the ecosystem as a whole. Google Adsense tailored for Indonesia means local Web companies can better bootstrap companies with Google ads, the way the early Web 2.0 wave of companies in the United States did. The two could co-exist the same way mass players like Google and more tailored ad networks like Federated Media did for US startups.
Google brings heft to the market, but it will never get as deep into the nuances Bahasa indexing as Sitti is. Sitti cites the example of ZAO Begun in Russia, which Google tried to buy for $140 million before it was blocked by the Russian government, as evidence that language can be a powerful differentiator on the Web.
More than a year ago, Sjarif tried to raise funding from Valley VCs and one very well-heeled one he asked me not to name said, “It’s not that your technology isn’t hot, it’s the fact that you’re here. In the Valley, people would be fighting over you.” So Sitti raised money from a handful of local angels instead. They were offline moguls who didn’t know a thing about the Web, but backed him anyway. This is a running theme among Jakarta Web companies I met this past trip. Knowing the big families is important as entrepreneurs shape a new industry in a country with infrastructure issues and little local venture capital. One of these angels called him the day after he committed the money and said, “Andy, do two things for me. The first is don’t die, because this is going to be big. Now, explain to me what you do.”
Indonesians complain about a lack of sophisticated Web expertise and mentorship, but it’s one of the only emerging markets where I don’t hear complaints about a dearth of angel money. Sitti’s angels have given the company a long leash, deep pockets and helped open doors to the country’s old media elite. Sjarif now turns down traditional venture firm money, bootstrapping the company’s growth by giving big brands local media consulting advice for digital campaigns. “I want to talk to VCs when I don’t need their money,” he says. Smart plan. Venture money can come and go quickly in markets that don’t have a track record of returns.
But back to the product. Sjarif is so deep into how, when, where and what Indonesians say on the Web that he can tell you a lot about this phenomenon. He says three things drive the Indonesians love affair with Tweeting and Foursquare for instance: They’re narcassists; they love to gossip about one another (more than celebrities, unlike the US) and they get bored during urban traffic jams. He says he can map the traffic flows in Jakarta based on the volume of Tweets he indexes at any given time.
Here’s a visualization Sitti did of part of my Bahasan Twitter connections, created in part to embarrass me at an event. In true polite Indonesian style there was little embarrassing on it, except for the fact that ARRINGTON is the biggest hub on this map. And, what the hell is Mashable even doing on there? I might get fired for that if the big yellow dot ARRINGTON sees it. Interesting that @katharnavas in India is the same size dot as @arrington. Thanks for the links, whoever you are. The yellow dots are my connections; the red dots are connections to them or connections with smaller networks that have mentioned me; and the size of the dot indicates how frequently.
And this is a relation of most common words associated with “Sarah Lacy” into Google.co.id’s engine:
It’s certainly different than the words most related to me in an English-language search. It seems in Indonesia, haters don’t gotta hate quite as much. Good to know. The company also did a visualization of topics on my personal blog and conversations over Twitter they’ve indexed that relate to me.
Sitti wasn’t the only company I met trying to build a business out of social media sentiment in markets that were ignored by companies like Google up until recently. There are several companies in Asia generally seeking to make sense out of the wave of pages being created on the Web in Asian languages in order to turn all that traffic into actual cash. Since, most of those pages are being created over social media, it takes a company that can understand slang, context, and meaning in just 140 characters. And a lot of these companies put the Valley’s self-proclaimed “social media consultants” to shame with highly scientific and proprietary approaches.
Two very different examples are Brandtology in Singapore and Scraplr in Indonesia. Brandtology promises to make better sense of what social media is saying about a brand by hiring an army of smart college grads to sit and parse queries so the machines don’t mis-read things like sarcasm and local slang. While, I’m sympathetic to the idea that there are certain things an algorithm doesn’t get, the economics of this company didn’t quite sense, and didn’t quite hold up the more questions I asked. How do you hire enough college-educated locals to filter all those keywords and still have a cost-effective solution? The answer is it’s not a free product. It costs between $1,000 and $10,000 a month depending on what percentage of keywords you want examined. Without paying extra, you don’t really get better relevance. I’m not sure that scales as the cost of talent rises.
Scraplr takes a totally algorithmic approach, that is specifically tailored to Bahasa, not emerging market languages broadly. Because it takes a machine-only approach it has a freemium model. That means more people can see how good the site is, but making money will be a bigger challenge. There is probably room for all three, as long as they perform as advertised. Indonesia and social media are both black boxes the West is struggling to understand.
eric seiger
eric seiger
Tuesday's <b>news</b>: Studying Shea Weber's super slapper - On the Forecheck
He has broken the bones of teammates and foes alike, rent Olympic nets asunder, and piled up goals at a prodigious rate over the last few years.
Fox <b>News</b> Turns Obama's Kid Book Into Anti-American War Epic
When news aggregation goes wrong: Fox News republished a USA Today article called "Obama Shares Dreams for His Kids in Book About 13 Americans." Fox News' headline? "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed US General."
Celebrities Looking Older Than Their Age Can Be Good, Bad & Really <b>...</b>
Commonly all the plastic surgery that celebrities undergo to preserve their age backfires and makes them look as though they have tacked years onto their plastic bodies. Other times, celebrities ar...
eric seiger
eric seiger
Tuesday's <b>news</b>: Studying Shea Weber's super slapper - On the Forecheck
He has broken the bones of teammates and foes alike, rent Olympic nets asunder, and piled up goals at a prodigious rate over the last few years.
Fox <b>News</b> Turns Obama's Kid Book Into Anti-American War Epic
When news aggregation goes wrong: Fox News republished a USA Today article called "Obama Shares Dreams for His Kids in Book About 13 Americans." Fox News' headline? "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed US General."
Celebrities Looking Older Than Their Age Can Be Good, Bad & Really <b>...</b>
Commonly all the plastic surgery that celebrities undergo to preserve their age backfires and makes them look as though they have tacked years onto their plastic bodies. Other times, celebrities ar...
eric seiger
Tuesday's <b>news</b>: Studying Shea Weber's super slapper - On the Forecheck
He has broken the bones of teammates and foes alike, rent Olympic nets asunder, and piled up goals at a prodigious rate over the last few years.
Fox <b>News</b> Turns Obama's Kid Book Into Anti-American War Epic
When news aggregation goes wrong: Fox News republished a USA Today article called "Obama Shares Dreams for His Kids in Book About 13 Americans." Fox News' headline? "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed US General."
Celebrities Looking Older Than Their Age Can Be Good, Bad & Really <b>...</b>
Commonly all the plastic surgery that celebrities undergo to preserve their age backfires and makes them look as though they have tacked years onto their plastic bodies. Other times, celebrities ar...
eric seiger
Tuesday's <b>news</b>: Studying Shea Weber's super slapper - On the Forecheck
He has broken the bones of teammates and foes alike, rent Olympic nets asunder, and piled up goals at a prodigious rate over the last few years.
Fox <b>News</b> Turns Obama's Kid Book Into Anti-American War Epic
When news aggregation goes wrong: Fox News republished a USA Today article called "Obama Shares Dreams for His Kids in Book About 13 Americans." Fox News' headline? "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed US General."
Celebrities Looking Older Than Their Age Can Be Good, Bad & Really <b>...</b>
Commonly all the plastic surgery that celebrities undergo to preserve their age backfires and makes them look as though they have tacked years onto their plastic bodies. Other times, celebrities ar...
eric seiger eric seiger
eric seiger
eric seiger
eric seiger
Tuesday's <b>news</b>: Studying Shea Weber's super slapper - On the Forecheck
He has broken the bones of teammates and foes alike, rent Olympic nets asunder, and piled up goals at a prodigious rate over the last few years.
Fox <b>News</b> Turns Obama's Kid Book Into Anti-American War Epic
When news aggregation goes wrong: Fox News republished a USA Today article called "Obama Shares Dreams for His Kids in Book About 13 Americans." Fox News' headline? "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed US General."
Celebrities Looking Older Than Their Age Can Be Good, Bad & Really <b>...</b>
Commonly all the plastic surgery that celebrities undergo to preserve their age backfires and makes them look as though they have tacked years onto their plastic bodies. Other times, celebrities ar...
eric seiger
Tuesday's <b>news</b>: Studying Shea Weber's super slapper - On the Forecheck
He has broken the bones of teammates and foes alike, rent Olympic nets asunder, and piled up goals at a prodigious rate over the last few years.
Fox <b>News</b> Turns Obama's Kid Book Into Anti-American War Epic
When news aggregation goes wrong: Fox News republished a USA Today article called "Obama Shares Dreams for His Kids in Book About 13 Americans." Fox News' headline? "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed US General."
Celebrities Looking Older Than Their Age Can Be Good, Bad & Really <b>...</b>
Commonly all the plastic surgery that celebrities undergo to preserve their age backfires and makes them look as though they have tacked years onto their plastic bodies. Other times, celebrities ar...
eric seiger
Tuesday's <b>news</b>: Studying Shea Weber's super slapper - On the Forecheck
He has broken the bones of teammates and foes alike, rent Olympic nets asunder, and piled up goals at a prodigious rate over the last few years.
Fox <b>News</b> Turns Obama's Kid Book Into Anti-American War Epic
When news aggregation goes wrong: Fox News republished a USA Today article called "Obama Shares Dreams for His Kids in Book About 13 Americans." Fox News' headline? "Obama Praises Indian Chief Who Killed US General."
Celebrities Looking Older Than Their Age Can Be Good, Bad & Really <b>...</b>
Commonly all the plastic surgery that celebrities undergo to preserve their age backfires and makes them look as though they have tacked years onto their plastic bodies. Other times, celebrities ar...
eric seiger
After studying your article you have to understand what I actually have written here. nutrition info apple This one is being written once you have a proposal from you.
ReplyDelete