Darwin Discovery Engine Blog

Cesar Brea Writes About Darwin Ecosystem

2010-03-19T03:35:00-04:00

We were pleased to see the post, Filtering The Collective Preconscious: Darwin Ecosystem, by Cesar Brea. Cesar’s firm, Force Five Partners “designs, implements, and optimizes multi-channel marketing programs to exploit today’s increasingly fragmented and digitally-dominated channel landscape. Beyond driving for bottom line improvements, we also build our clients’ analytics capabilities to sustain these gains. This has become mission-critical as the expanded use of digital channels forces marketers to sink or swim in oceans of data.”

Cesar has said that the next area of focus on the Web is analytics and we were pleased to show him how the Darwin Awareness Engine works and very pleased to see his response in this post. Cesar begins with a useful framework for look at content on the Web (in his words)

Professional filters: we follow people whose jobs are to cover an area. Tom Friedman covers international issues, Walt Mossberg covers personal technology.

Technical filters: we use services like Google Alerts to tell us when there's something new on a topic we're interested in

Social filters: we use services like Digg, Reddit, and Stumbleupon to point us to popular things

Tribal filters: we use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and (Google hopes) Buzz to get pointed to things folks we know and trust think are important

I follow all of these but an especially heavy user of the tribal filter. When I first started a blogs six years ago people used to send me stuff through email. Now my Twitter provide my favorite tribal filters. Cesar is one of these.

Cesar goes on to write that in addition to what gets through, there's how it's presented. He then describes Darwin’s content filtering and visualization. Cesar concludes, “if you are responsible for syndicating and helping users usefully navigate a highly dynamic information set collected through a multitude of sources -- say, a news organization, a university, a large consumer products or services firm -- and are evaluating monitoring technologies, Darwin is worth a look.” We agree and greatly appreciate his commentary.

Our Favorite Tweets March 1 - 14 2010

2010-03-17T03:07:00-04:00

Here is the thirteenth in a new series of posts that provide access to our favorite tweets that contain links to useful information. Some of these we did to link to things we found useful and others are RTs. Since Twitter archiving is an oxymoron, we are now going to post our favorite links for the month so they can be easily accessed later. We will repeat this once a month if that timing seems to work best. We may adjust the timing.

We spot tested the reduced shortened urls and they all should work. We hope this is also useful for you. Let us know your favorite tweets for the month.

Apple’s Spat With Google Is Getting Personal - NYT http://nyti.ms/d95786 March 14

RT @alora: Post Edited: Lies, Damn Lies and SEO http://cli.gs/r2Waa March 13

RT @frankzamani: Innovation, the Real Benefit of Cloud Computing http://is.gd/8km3B Mrch 13

RT @ariegoldshlager: How Reputation Affects Knowledge Sharing Among Colleagues: http://bit.ly/66uqOT Mar 13th

F.C.C. Plan to Widen Internet Access in U.S. Sets Up Battle http://nyti.ms/dwxKGZ 8:16 AM Mar 13th

RT @KevinDMcNabb: Apple Selling 20000 iPads Per Hour? http://bit.ly/cuWYd7 March 12, 2010

five biggest challenges to social media monitoring on Twitter http://bit.ly/ail0qV March 12, 2010

Hidden bias of social media sentiment analysis http://bit.ly/aufcZX via @SBoSM March 12, 2010

RT @frogpond: The Future of Book Publishing Business Models http://goo.gl/fb/GWAI March 12, 2010

Social networks a challenge to cable news: CNN US president http://bit.ly/bniy5x via @SBoSM Mar 11th

RT @tobyward: Bogus intranets scam university students http://bit.ly/cEuXDt March 10, 2010

Twitter Turns On Geolocation as does Facebook http://tcrn.ch/d3COCe via @SBoSM March 10, 2010

Visual Navigation: Google Suggestions In A Tree Form http://bit.ly/bOXrpZ via @psfk March 10

RT @Emergent007: RT @loic: Facebook Will Allow Users to Share Location http://ping.fm/Xjzdc @jonhusband March 9

RT @dhinchcliffe: Google Launches the Google Apps Marketplace http://bit.ly/aiPpf2 app store for businesses March 9

RT @cesarbrea: Filtering The Collective Preconscious: Darwin Ecosystem http://bit.ly/dqomoc 8:26 PM Mar 9th

via @johnjambrose: What Happens to Book Sales if Digital Versions are Given Away? http://bit.ly/abSIJo 11:11 AM Mar 9th

RT @thoughtfarmer: We blogged. "3 Potential Benefits of a Social Intranet." http://bit.ly/9TFl2d > good points 8:43 AM Mar 9th

RT @dhinchcliffe: Oh No, Social Media Creates Even More Information Silos: http://bit.ly/borUH1 Mar 8

RT @GeorgeDearing: "Spending on digital media up 9.6 percent to $119.6 billion this year" http://bit.ly/bdE6tP [Bloomberg] Mar 8

iPad Arrives April 3rd: 8 Apps We Can't Wait to Try http://bit.ly/cPkv9U March 8, 2010

RT @ariegoldshlager: Idea Generation and Quality of Best Idea: http://bit.ly/djVAqi Via: @fredzimny @wimrampen @GrahamHill 3:08 PM Mar 7th

Google Implements Gesture Search For Android Devices http://bit.ly/bsiMKY 10:11 AM Mar 5th

Twitter Hits 10 Billion Tweets http://bit.ly/cieCMh 9:16 PM Mar 4th

European social networks are robust channels http://selnd.com/aWBLPX 3:10 PM Mar 4th

Mobile Social Networking Usage Soars http://bit.ly/9uUOpt via @SBoSM 2:47 PM Mar 4th via TweetDeck

The Oscars Twitter Effect http://bit.ly/d3cLa7 via @SBoSM Mar 3

RT @forrester: Hispanics use of social media is rising from @tamarabarber http://cot.ag/c3lAQw Mar 3

Marketeers like buzz not buzz words in social media http://bit.ly/dcFIzS via @SBoSM 1:56 PM Mar 2nd

Twitter Drops MySQL For Cassandra http://bit.ly/aDzlQ8 8:57 AM Mar 2nd

RT @GeorgeDearing: there's some European media companies proving paid-content models can work [Ad Age] http://bit.ly/adWmkV 10:16 PM Mar 1st

RT @tobyward: Survey Finds Slack Editing on Magazine Web Sites http://nyti.ms/bcZ4ce 7:03 PM Mar 1st

Twitter Influence Graders: Behind the Green Curtain http://bit.ly/9pNoLE 5:43 PM Mar 1st

Network News at a Crossroads NYT http://nyti.ms/bgDXW7 5:14 PM Mar 1st

Redrawing the Route to Online Privacy NYT http://nyti.ms/9VOznd via @SBoSM 4:28 PM Mar 1st

When American and European Ideas of Privacy Collide NYT http://nyti.ms/cHYWTV 4:12 PM Mar 1st

Darwin Uncovers Oscar Winner Connections: A Case of Discovery, Beyond Search

2010-03-15T03:30:00-04:00

Search engines are great for finding things you know you are looking for. While it was recently passed by social networking as the most popular Web activity, search remains a strong second. Many people use it as their gateway to the Web. But there is a new opportunity, discover what is happening around an event, person, or place you are interested in. In this case you may not know in advance the connections you are looking for. You just whant to know what relates to your topic of interest. This discovery function is one of the goals of the Darwin Awareness Engine. I now use both search and discovery every day to make better use of the content on the Web. Here is an illustration of discovery and how it differs form search. It happened one day after the Oscar ceremony.

I was in front of my computer, wandering among my emails, my music and my chats. Then I opened my Darwin page, to see what was going-on out there. At that time, I did not have a deep interest in mind. So I was in a full discovery and alert mode, very similar to your state of mind when you go for a trekking, and you want to seep-in beautiful scenery or picture, capture any smell or any sound that will fulfill your outdoor experience.

So I looked at the last 24 hours news attractor. It showed me a scan cloud. From this point, the experience with Darwin Awareness Engine takes a different path than the one we use with search engines. My attention was brought in by the Tag - Oscar (which reminded me of the ceremony that I watched the day before). When I moused over this tag, I discovered it was related to the term - war. At this time, my personal interest shifted to the context of movies, oscars and war. By the way, nobody, not even myself, could have guessed that I would be interested in that particular context at any time. So I clicked on Oscars, to elevate the relevant links, then I also clicked on War, to refine further the relevant links (see portion of the Darwin Scan Cloud (TM) below with War and Oscars higlighted).

At this point, Darwin had filtered the most relevant feed links to my context of interest. Here were the articles displayed in the upper right of the screen for the terms - oscars and war - within the Scan Cloud shown above.

I then chose a formal news feed from those above, which I read with great pleasure. Among other stuff, It helped me to discover that Kathryn Bigelow, was the Director of another movie that I liked a lot and remembered was directed by a woman. However, shame on me, I could never remember her name. This movie was “Point Break, “ an amazing story with breath taking shooting. My experience had been exciting.

Then I went to Google in order to compare the experience. First major difference, in front of the empty box of Google, I had no inspiration. But enriched by my Darwin experience, I knew that I was in the mood of Oscars. So I searched for Oscars. And I got the screen shown below.

How disappointing! The first link gave me the results that I already knew from yesterday. There were many other links that brought me nothing nor inspiration (like oscar.com, oscar night winners╔) In conclusion, search is here only when I want to find what I am looking for or I know it exists somewhere.

In contrast, Darwin helps me relate with the world out-there via the digital media content by allowing me to both focus and broaden the filter and discover the unexpected, the enlightening and the enriching information that makes me happier, smarter or more up-to date.

Predicting the Strength of Ties Through Social Media

2010-03-12T03:41:00-05:00

Eric Gilbert and Karrie Karahalios at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently published an interesting paper on Predicting Tie Strength With Social Media. Building on the theoretical work on strong and weak ties started by the classic Mark Granovetter 1973 paper “The Strength of Weak Ties,” they looked at whether social media behavior could be used as a predictor of tie strength. In this paper the researchers present a predictive model that maps social media data to tie strength. The model builds on a dataset of over 2,000 Facebook relationships and distinguishes between strong and weak ties with over 85% accuracy.

They asked 35 people to rate a number of their Facebook friends that were randomly selected. Then they looked at the Facebook behavior of these people to see if could accurate predict the strength of their ties as reported by the participants. Dimensions such as the use of words associated with intimacy and intensity, duration of communication, social distance, and other factors were looked at for their predictive power. The complete set of variables was combined to form the predictive model that worked in 85% of the instances.

I am sure that the researchers would be the first to agree that more work needs to be done. As a former researcher I can see many potential confounding variable but, at the same time, the work looks promising. They offer some practical applications. For example, a “system that prioritizes via tie strength, or allows users to tune parameters that incorporate tie strength, might provide more useful, timely and enjoyable activity streams.”

This is especially true as many people are building friends or followers that number in the hundreds, if not thousands. This would also apply within the enterprise as the use of social media within the firewall continues to grow.

Darwin Uncovers Emerging Buzz Over UCLA Tuition Hike

2010-03-10T03:12:00-05:00

Here is an example of how the Darwin Awareness Engine ™ can uncover breaking news before it hits the mainstream press. We have the concept of rising and falling stars as topics gather or lose momentum on the Web. These rising and falling starts are displayed in a ticker tape type across the top of the Darwin screen.

Recently, Thierry Hubert noticed an acceleration or rising star on the term – tuition hike. He looked at the formal mainstream media and found nothing. Then he looked at informal media through Darwin and found a lot of content is a variety of related themes as displayed on the Scan Cloud™. For example, there was a video of UCLA students protesting the tuition hike at their school. There are several other sites with similar videos. It appeared to be a coordinated by the UCLA students through social media. Here is a link to a video of the Darwin screens and results.

We found a similar example recently, when we saw that the Latino community was organizing through social media to get rid of Lou Dobbs on CNN. This social media effort appeared through Darwin before it was picked up by the mainstream press

Enterprise Search Summit 2010 Comes to NYC and KM World 2010 Moves to Washington DC

2010-03-08T03:18:00-05:00

This year’s Enterprise Search Summit 2010 will be at the New York Hilton on May 11-12. The KM World Conference & Exhibition 2010 has moved to Washington, D.C. It will be November 16 - 18, 2010 at Marriott Renaissance, It is nice to see these two conferences on the East Coast. I went last year in the November to the combined conference in San Jose.

Thierry Hubert and I will be presenting at the Enterprise Search Summit 2010. We are presenting on Deriving Order From Chaos Through Discovery and Awareness. Our session is on Wednesday May 12 at 1PM. The Enterprise Search Summit says that the “emphasis for Enterprise Search Summit is on how enterprise search enables Information Access. Search can no longer be viewed as a stand-alone application. It is increasingly part of everything we do and has become the de facto gateway to information in the enterprise.” I would certainly agree and we hope to see you there.

The KM World announcement said that this year's theme is KnowHow: the Knowledge-Driven Enterprise. “The knowledge of how to do something smoothly and efficiently with technical skill and expertise -- also known as "knowhow" -- drives every enterprise, agency, and organization. Creating knowledge bases, sharing them effectively, using them for decision-making and innovation.”

This sounds familiar but it is great that it is still very relevant. The session shave a 2.0 flavor like last year. I hope to be able to attend. Deadline for speaker submissions is March 1. Here are my notes from the combined event last year.

KM World and Enterprise Search Summit: Is Semantic Technology Real?

KM World and Enterprise Search Summit: Evolve From a Tactical E-Discovery Approach to Search and E-Discovery

KM World and Enterprise Search Summit: The Role of Social Techniques in Search & How It Impacts Your Organization

KM World and Enterprise Search Summit Sessions: From Birth to Billions: The Life Story of Google Enterprise Search

KM World and Enterprise Search Summit Sessions: Fundamentals of Enterprise Search

KM World and Enterprise Search Summit Sessions: Enterprise Search Technologies

Pivot is a New Way to Look at Data - TED Demo

2010-03-05T03:02:00-05:00

Gary Flake recently demoed Pivot at TED. It is a new way to browse and arrange massive amounts of images and data online. Built on Seadragon technology, it enables spectacular zooms in and out of web databases, and the discovery of patterns and links invisible in standard web browsing. Gary is a Technical Fellow at Microsoft, and the founder and director of Live Lab. He shows how you can take control over data to see trends that might be undiscovered otherwise. For example, being able to see all Wikipedia pages related to a topic at once, allow you to see trends that are not contained in any single entry.

He said that with Pivot you can navigate the Web as if it is a Web and see relationships. He talks about taking the curse of data overload and turning it on its head to take advantage of quantity to see the patterns within it. Here is Gary’s Pivot talk on TED.

Although we take a different approach this is exactly the goal of the Darwin Awareness Engine. Instead of bringing you long lists of content on topic that are order by popularity, we show the top 100 themes within the content that relates to your topic of interest. We attempt to let you discover unexpected patterns, content, and relationships in this manner.

Our Favorite Tweets February 15 - 28, 2010

2010-03-03T03:07:00-05:00

Here is the twelfth in a new series of posts that provide access to our favorite tweets that contain links to useful information. Some of these we did to link to things we found useful and others are RTs. Since Twitter archiving is an oxymoron, we are now going to post our favorite links for the month so they can be easily accessed later. We will repeat this once a month if that timing seems to work best. We may adjust the timing.

We spot tested the reduced shortened urls and they all should work. We hope this is also useful for you. Let us know your favorite tweets for the month.

Nat Science Foundation visualization winners http://bit.ly/azs62D Feb 27

RT @hebsgaard: #KM in the media - Toyota recall http://bit.ly/c9K6Ns 3:30 PM Feb 27th

RT @hebsgaard: Here's A Comprehensive Directory For #SocialMedia Monitoring Tools http://bit.ly/bNoxvb 2:54 PM Feb 27th

25 Ways To Overcome Creative Blocks http://bit.ly/bHrb7A from @psfk 10:31 AM Feb 27th

Do paywalls hurt social news? http://bit.ly/cYErBl IMO YES 4:30 PM Feb 26th

Communicating Science In A Post-Newspaper Era http://bit.ly/aFCtiI from NPR 9:17 AM Feb 26th

via @digiphile: Facebook granted patent for dynamically providing news feed about user of social network http://j.mp/cDKTEY 9:30 PM Feb 25th

Social Media Is Removing The Last Of The Content Barriers http://bit.ly/bACuSN Feb 25

RT @hebsgaard: Are The Fortune 100 Now Beginning To Embrace #SocialMedia Tools? http://bit.ly/9iT26Q Feb 25

via @GeorgeDearing: old business model for newspapers has come undone. new model is in birth http://bit.ly/bMfqsS Feb 25

RT @hebsgaard: Gartner’s Top 5 #CRM Predictions For 2010, Social Apps are Key http://bit.ly/bKmo6f Feb 25

Larger Threat Is Seen in Google Case NYT http://nyti.ms/buP55o Feb 25

Yahoo-Twitter Partnership via @SBoSM http://bit.ly/cznQNp Feb 24

Role of Curation In #Journalism http://bit.ly/aUch0e via @psfk Feb 24

Apple's iPad Disrupting Network TV Business Model? http://bit.ly/9tRCVo Fast Co 8:56 AM Feb 23rd

RT @hebsgaard: 10 emerging Enterprise 2.0 technologies to watch -- http://bit.ly/9Tq1fg #startups http://bit.ly/dmlint 11:06 PM Feb 22nd

RT @SmartDataCo: Microsoft's anti-Google weapon: Open-source Bing http://goo.gl/fb/tRBI #cloud 10:57 PM Feb 22nd

Google Buzz No Facebook, Twitter Killer, Google Exec Says http://bit.ly/d5FVlv via @SBoSM 5:12 PM Feb 22nd

Cloud Collaboration Wars Ramp Up http://bit.ly/9DIEZe 4:36 PM Feb 22nd via TweetDeck

Interactive Data Visualizations: Experiencing Abstract Information http://bit.ly/9WnSa4 via @psfk Feb 20

Social Networking Now More Popular on Mobile than Desktop http://bit.ly/bhrhPk via @readwriteweb 1:08 PM Feb 19th

RT @SmartDataCo: Predictive Analytics: 8 Things to Keep in Mind (Part 1) http://bit.ly/bu4lTt #cloud 3:57 PM Feb 18th

10 Cloud Computing Trends That Are Rapidly Catching On http://bit.ly/aGv0XT 3:15 PM Feb 18th

The iPad and the Life Between Buildings http://bit.ly/b9SUoV via @psfk 2:51 PM Feb 18th

Private Cloud Deployments: Top 8 Planning Requirements from CIO http://bit.ly/9tojgu 2:02 PM Feb 18th from TweetDeck

RT @Emergent007: How Google Went Into "Code Red" And Saved Google Buzz http://bit.ly/dq30uJ (via @jmgall) Feb 17

RT @servantofchaos: Some good reading: Social Media Needs Accountability - http://bit.ly/9rUbPp 7:50 PM Feb 16th

RT @SmartDataCo: Data Glut? The Answer Is Innovation http://bit.ly/bgGziK #cloud 8:43 AM Feb 16th

RT @dhinchcliffe: Google Buzz vs. Outlook 2010 Social Connectors: http://bit.ly/d73Pn0 4:37 PM Feb 15th

Google Buzz: 5 Tips for Power Users http://bit.ly/bWPYIy via @SBoSM 2:51 PM Feb 15th

Google changes #Buzz privacy settings--again http://bit.ly/9iYjSj 10:07 AM Feb 15th

RT @GautamGhosh: RT @petergold99: Messaging & Collaboration Businesses Get Serious About Social sw http://bit.ly/cvTuXw 8:51 AM Feb 15th

Tracking the Buzz as TV Becomes More Social

2010-03-01T03:36:00-05:00

Social Media is moving into television on an increasing basis and this will have a number of implications. This is the theme of a post by Tim Dillard on TheNextWeb: Will 2010 be the Year of Social TV? For example, fans of certain TV shows from different time zones are saving the latest episodes of their favorite shows and then arranging common viewing times with their friends to watch the shows whilst discussing the action together on Skype,

The shows themselves are also launching efforts, sometimes with mixed results. In the UK, high profile post-apocalypse drama, BBC's 'Survivors', launched with stream of tweets from 'survivors'. They were supposedly trying to get messages out to a world in which most of the population had been wiped out by a mystery virus. However, the effort did not last. In another failed case, Fox tired integrating Twitter during reruns of sci-fi series 'Fringe' in the US. It got criticism almost immediately from the show's fans by swamping the screen with tweets from the cast and crew of the show, thus obscuring much of the action. Sounds like those tweets do blast you with multiple tweets in a row, except even worse.

It seems the most successful efforts so far are user generated. For example, with Twitter, real-time conversations about TV shows at the shows are broadcast live are linked together through the use of hashtags. This is the same with online communities. The television shows will need to move better in this direction by listening to their viewers and being creative.

One of the issues that comes up with this move is the ability to track the buzz around shows. The Darwin Awareness Engine™ provides one solution to this tracking issue. With its real time reach and the display of rising stars as buzz climbs, the Awareness Engine can help shows keep up with their buzz.

Demand is Rising for TV Web Convergence

2010-02-26T03:41:00-05:00

Rob Paterson recently did a post, TV and Radio and the web, where he reported some interesting survey data. The desire to hook up their TV to the Web is rising in US Internet users. In 2009, the percentage of US interest users that would like to hook up their TV to the Web: ages 14-26 – 74%,, ages 27-43 – 71%, ages, 44-62 – 59%, and ages 63-75 – 46%. In talking with a number of people in their 20s and 30s, they say that they only watch TV in the OnDemand mode. I have tried this and it was a great way to watch and tape the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert.

Rob wrote that he has cancelled his cable access and has been connecting directly to the web for 2 months now. He writes that the reasons for doing this are: greater control, , no ads, no paying for unwanted content, and plenty of good Web TV content. Also the the pathways there – iTunes, Veoh, YouTube are good enough and getting better. He uses a simple mini connector on his MacBook to link to his TV set and uses the screen management feature to synch the screens. I can do the same on one of my TV sets, the one I purchased in 2009. Rob adds that in 2010 even these simple technical hurdles will go away.

Rob predicts that in 2011 the Web will be the channel for TV. Others have said it will happen in 2010. For example, eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey writes in his 2010 Predictions Round-Up, “The Consumer Electronics Show in early 2010 will usher in TVs with direct Internet connectivity, or with on-screen access to content portals such as YouTube, Blockbuster and Netflix. As online video becomes intertwined with the living-room TV experience, download and streaming services will take on a prominent role in the home entertainment ecosystem.”

I am looking forward to this as I watch Van Morrison’s live performance of Astral Weeks on my TV through DVD. It should only get better. This convergence will only increase the amount of content generated through social media and develop new audiences for this content. At Darwin Ecosystems we eagerly await this trend as it will only increase the value that the Darwineco Awareness Engine™ can provide.