Bigmouthmedia search engine news: personal-search

Digital prankster hacks celebrity Twitter accounts

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:00:00 GMT

Popular Micro-blogging site Twitter has had to temporarily suspend the accounts of several celebrities including Barack Obama, Britney Spears and CNN anchorman Rich Sanchez. The accounts were suspended due to a prank by an unknown hacker who hijacked the accounts with comical tweets.

CNN anchorman Rich Sanchez was among the targeted after sending out a feed which read "I am high on crack right now, might not be coming into work today." Fox News was also attacked after breaking the misspelled news; "Bill O'Riley is gay." Also making the hilarious headlines was Britney Spears who sent out a tweet saying "Hi Yall! Brit Brit here, just wanted to update you on the size of my..." - well, you get the picture.

Although Twitter admits that 33 accounts were hacked, we are still waiting in suspense to see who the other 29 'victims' were.

So how did it happen? According to a Twitter blog post, the entertaining tweets were orchestrated by someone who "hacked into some of the tools our support team uses to help people do things like edit the email address associated with their Twitter account when they can't remember or get stuck."

All of this is apparently unrelated to a separate security issue which is concerning Twitter users at the moment. Over the weekend, 'civilian' accounts were targeted messages offering free iPhones with the messages redirecting Twitter users to a fake login site. Twitter has since advised many users to change their passwords.

So who's the Twitter Trickster? Techcrunch who have put a lot of research into the story believe the trail leads back to the website digitalgangster.com, where a hacker known as 'gmz' is known to lurk. While tweets about Spear's anatomy are difficult to track, messages from the Facebook and Obama Twitter accounts redirected users to an affiliate site. In theory, Twitter only need to find out who owns the bank accounts in order to find the identity of the internet farceur.

In reality, very little real damage was done to those attacked. Rich Sanchez presumably made it into work and if Britney really wants to update us about her lower regions, she will do so when she next gets out of a taxi. The story is a nice diversion from the more worrying phishing attacks Twitter is failing to defend itself against.

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Google and Baidu fail China's content standards

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 12:00:00 GMT

In an attempt to "purify the Internet's cultural environment and protect the healthy development of minors," Chinese authorities have started a campaign to rid the Internet of what they deem to be unhealthy content.

The crackdown primarily focuses on online pornography, and officials have said that China believes it has a duty to protect public morality.

The officials have also published a list of 19 websites that have failed to remove questionable material.

Among the websites are Google and China's top search-engine Baidu. The authorities noted that both Google and Baidu have failed to take "efficient" actions after being asked to remove content from their results.

The Associated Press reports that seven government agencies are working together on the campaign. A statement released by the Chinese government said that violators will be punished, but did not give any specifics as to how the top search-engines could face penalty.

"If we find any violation, we will take action. So far, I haven't seen any examples of violations," said a Google representative in China, who noted that the site does not have any pornographic content. Baidu has not yet released a statement.

China's rapidly growing Internet population was thought to have reached 137 million in 2007 and continues to grow. In the same year, Chinese Communist Party Chief Hu Jintao announced his vow to "purify" the Internet.

China has a long history of Internet censorship, with the Chinese Ministry of Public Security holding very strict control over what Chinese citizens can access online. Censored websites include those that belong to outlawed groups, sites with pro-democratic content and sites that are deemed "subversive" - including the BBC website.

In August 2007, police in China created cartoon depictions of the Chinese Internet police that are displayed to users every 30 minutes as they browse online. The cartoons are meant to remind users to avoid any illegal online content

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Digital friends: online-only relationships on the rise

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:00:00 GMT

A new study from TNS Global has released a goldmine of information surrounding recent digital trends. The study, entitled "Digital World, Digital Life", was conducted in 16 countries with over 27,000 people aged 15-55 taking part.

Highlights from the report include information showing that virtual friendships are now the norm for many people across the Western world. Industry website Herd said the study found that people from the UK have an average of 17 online-only friends - representing about 25 per cent of their friends in total.

Surprisingly, those between the ages of 35 and 44 had higher proportions of online-only friends, with 33 per cent of their pals being online, than younger age groups. Americans see their number of online-only friends at 20 per cent, while Australians have the highest percentage at 40 per cent.

And when it's time to revel in our time off, those of us in Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand are now spending between a quarter to a third of our leisure time online.

"Based on TNS's data, in the US 30% of customers' free time is being spent in a medium where they have no exposure to traditional big bucks marketing campaigns," wrote TNS.

The survey found that in particular, British housewives are spending 47 per cent of their leisure time on the Internet. UK housewives spend more time online than the Chinese (44 per cent) and Koreans (40 per cent). The rest of Britain spends about 28 per cent of their free-time on the Internet.

The stats from the TNS report also support recent evidence from a US-focused Pew Research report that found many people believe blogs lack credibility when it comes to reporting current events.

The Pew Research study found that 38 per cent of people trusted online news, but that trust did not extend to blogs.

"While between 20-40% of consumers in Western countries read and contribute to blogs, they by and large take what they read with a pinch of salt," Herd reported. Globally, only about 10 per cent of people report that they trust blogs for news.

So it seems that people are logging on to exchange stories and gossip but that doesn't mean that their trust extends to factual information.

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Parlophone release game to promote Lily Allen single

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Lily Allen's new single, 'The Fear', is to be promoted with an online game that can be found on the singer's official website.

The game - "Escape The Fear" - is based on content from her new album and uses a simple three key control. The player takes the role of Lily as she makes her way through a number of levels collecting letters and avoiding spikes, monsters and bottles of intoxicating liquid on her way to fulfilling her musical dream.

Dan Duncombe, digital director at Parlophone: "We wanted to find a way to reach a new audience for Lily on her second album. There is a huge, relevant demographic out there who don't regularly explore music so we're using the game as a tactic to introduce the new single.

"The instant gratification of this type of game makes it inherently viral and with the new single as its soundtrack we're potentially reaching a new audience who are not listening to the radio or reading the music press,"

Lily, who came to fame after huge success on MySpace, has often been seen to be at the forefront of pop music's internet activity.

The daughter of actor Keith Allen has seen previous releases backed by internet campaigns. In 2006, her single 'Littlest Things' came with a media player that allowed fans to have Lily's video playing on their social networking profile and Parlophone - her record label - became the first label in the UK to use pay-per-click mobile advertising for the 2007 release of 'Shame On You/Alfie'.

Lily's official site offers a host of 'goodies' for visitors including MySpace skins, e-mail signatures and wallpapers to promote her new album It's Not Me, It's You. The site also features a tunemaker gamer.

EMI-owned Parlophone are the label behind Kylie Minogue's X campaign that saw the creation of Kylie Konnect - a social networking site for the more dedicated fans of the Australian singer.

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YouTube ahead with HD ready content

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:00:00 GMT

It didn't take much to predict that this move was in the pipeline, but YouTube has finally officially launched a new portion of its site dedicated to HD, creating the webs largest archive of HD content. A move that will no doubt make them even more popular and, seeing as they already account for 25% of all Google searches, the video portal is hardly in need of new friends. According to TechCrunch, in the US alone, YouTube generated 25.4% of the 2.73 billion Google searches.

At the moment the videos are not defaulted to HD quality so the user has to click on the HD link below the video. There is a pop up box that appears when the HD option is available to inform the user of the new HD option and pointing to the 'Watch in HD' link below the video.

YouTube has also created an HD option in the 'videos' YouTube authority page, increasing the HD presence. To improve the user experience on the site, the HD movies are also now being played in a large video player that doesn't go into the often irritating full screen mode but does take up much of the screen.

YouTube has been busy in other areas too - it also launched a set of portals encompassing sectors like News, Music and Movies to collate the most popular videos in each sphere. With these new improvements, the sexier Movie features in particular, YouTube is asserting its position and hitting out at rivals such as Hula.

The main criticism that seems to be popping up online is a fairly minor one - many blogs and forums are suggesting YouTube introduce a 'darken' button to make the videos appear brighter on the screen and for it to be a more TV-like experience. It begs the question, how long will it be until TV manufacturers are seriously struggling to compete with online viewing options?

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Google give clues to the future of search

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:00:00 GMT

In talk at Le Web conference in Paris, Google executive Marissa Mayer gave some answers about the way Google sees the future of organic search. But does their logic extend to other areas of organic search and what are the implications for SEO?

Google recently launched SearchWiki , its customisable search function. Since then there has been plenty of speculation that Google have long term plans to use this information to influence organic results. Google previously admitted to Search Engine Land that they were "not closing any doors" to the idea of using this information and Marissa Mayer made mention of this again at Le Web yesterday.

According to TechCrunch, who covered the Google executive's talk, Mayer spoke about using SearchWiki data to at least make obvious changes, the example given being that if "thousands of people" were to remove the page from their personal results, Google would be likely to make a change.

The point she was making seems to be that Google feel personalisation is part of the future for search in general and that that is why they have introduced SearchWiki but, if they have all this wonderful data about what people like, why not use it to produce better results?

That seems a reasonable suggestion but how could they actually use this data? Google have been in the search game, fighting spammers for too long to jump in head first and make SearchWiki data a major part of their search algorithms so don't expect to see that any time soon. The system would be too easily "gamed" by black hat SEOs in a similar way to the way social media sites such as Digg are abused now. It's far more likely that it would be subtly added in as a minor ranking factor or used to flag sites up to human quality evaluators. With testing over time it may be then become a larger ranking factor, or not.

Google have given the impression here that they are using all the information at their disposal to improve the quality of their organic search results which is understandable. So what are the implications? Google has always maintained that it does not use information from Google Analytics as a factor in organic search results but it's easy to see how the wealth of data collected from sites could be used effectively in this way.

Not every site uses Google analytics so perhaps that wouldn't be fair or perfect anyway but Google has huge amounts of information on which pages are clicked in their results. They know how soon users return to search again or click another link from the same results. This can be used to calculate a bounce rate i.e. number of users who click that link then only look at one page before moving away from the site. It also gives a good idea of how long people spend on that page. Removing a page that had thousands of clicks, a 99% bounce rate and time on page of under 3 seconds might be a better signal to lower a pages ranking than relying on people's opinions on SearchWiki.

Google is, for good reasons, secretive about the factors it uses to rank sites for organic search. There is a possibility that bounce rates etc. are being used already to rank sites. We wouldn't expect Google to tell anyone and it can be very difficult to test for minor ranking factors when there are so many others involved.

For any site, factors like bounce rates and time spent on the page are important to the overall health of the site and should really go hand in hand with good SEO practice. Improving site content and many other white hat SEO factors will automatically improve a site in these areas and this should be the aim of any site with long term goals. Perhaps using bounce rates and other analytics factors wouldn't be such a bad idea after all. If they're not being used already.

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ArenaFest to show online live social networking service

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:00:00 GMT

In recent times, social networking has become a very important part of society with many people now choosing to spend any free time they have available immersed in a wide range of social networking websites - such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.

What's more, social communities - like Second Life - have also proven to be popular choices to spend time in, encouraging individuals to meet and interact in virtual worlds.

So it's not all that surprising that a recent announcement from US firm ArenaWorks Entertainment details how the company is launching "ArenaFest" in summer 2009 - its very own virtual world bringing live events online, much to the benefit of social networking users.

ArenaFest provides the opportunity for visitors to interact in a giant virtual arena. Users will be able to check out live concerts, live sports and even modelling contests. In addition, friends will be able to compete against each other through various contest stations in challenges that include the popular computer game Guitar Hero, the Next Top Model series and also participation in dating games.

The live events that are due to take place will occur across 10 arenas in the US but it is expected that the events will eventually take place across at least 50 major sports arenas. The cost of a ticket will be $27.50, with expectations that high school and college audiences will continue to return to watch further events.

Furthermore, ArenaFest has teamed up with SellaBand - a website allowing music fans to fund unsigned bands - for the live music events. Adequately-funded bands from the SellaBand network will be able to enter a battle of the bands style competition in order to win the chance to perform live at an ArenaFest venue.

What with Google recently announcing the closure of its virtual world, Google Lively, ArenaFest may prove to be an innovative social community website. With such a diverse range of events on offer, there should be something for everyone to enjoy online in summer 2009.

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Twitter clones litter the web

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 12:00:00 GMT

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and if that's the case then Twitter must be one of the most lauded sites around.

The micro-blogging site allows users to send updates (or Tweets) of 140 characters or less - to accommodate mobile phones and their limit on the length of text messages - and has enjoyed a spectacular rise in popularity. In fact, it was the huge surge in users in its early life that created the biggest problems - and the most criticisms - for Twitter as their servers struggled - and often failed - to cope with the massive demand its users created.

However, help has never been far away as opportunist webmasters have looked to copy Twitter's formula to steal some of its members and give relief to the burgeoning Twitter servers. German sites were the first to try it out with many hoping to cash in on Twitter's success - Frazr, Sloggen, Wamadu, Faybl and 1you were all similar enough to be classed as clones. According to news site TechCrunch Duduku was another that tried and failed as the website was quickly put on eBay in an attempt to claim back some of the start up costs.

Other sites have taken the basic Twitter principle and tried to do something different with it. Gospelr has the same basic set up but it has been developed for the Christian community, Blip aims to bring together music fans and allows people access to streaming songs and the ability to create their own music station, while Twatr was set up for people with a heavy adult interest (although this site, despite its great name, seems to have disappeared now).

Koornk (a distorted Slovene word for a chicken coop, apparently) is the latest micro-blogging site to hit the net and it's as close to a duplicate site as possible. Both the function and the design (including colour scheme and a bird as a mascot) of Twitter have been mirrored and users have been left wondering what the difference really is.

With so much attention being focused on Twitter, it's no surprise that Facebook coveted the site as and although Twitter are standing strong in their attempt to remain independent they might want to watch out for one of their clones making good use of Facebook's vast sums of money.

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Slart could spell the future of Second Life

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:00:00 GMT

The names Richard Minsky and Victor Vezina may not mean much to you, but to the Second Life community they could dictate the future of virtual life. In the past Second Life has been a form of escapism, a virtual world where 'normal people' can escape the daily churn of the real world and enjoy life in a virtual utopia. However, it now seems that Second Life is becoming a little too much like real life.

It all started when news of a divorce case fuelled by 'virtual cheating' hit the headlines worldwide. Now Second Life is back in the headlines again, this time over a trademark infringement regarding the term 'Slart'.

Slart, for those of us not in the virtual loop, now refers to Second Life art, the designs and creations showcased at the numerous art galleries in the virtual world. Art in the Second Life has picked up a huge following with many avatars (characters) attending exhibitions, purchasing art and discussing it with their fellow avatars. Slart however, is also the trademarked term for SLART, a Second Life art magazine and website owned by founder Richard Minsky.

Who is Richard Minsky? Minsky is the founder of 'The Center for BookArts in New York as well as the owner of the magazine SLART. A huge fan of second life art, Minsky started a blog and website known as SLART which was published as an art critic's review of art in the Second Life.

Not a lot is known about his counterpart Victor Vezina. In fact that's not even his real name. His avatar profile describes him as an "ageing rockr, into writing, blogging, walking, talking, flickring, secondlifing, painting, photographing and surfing." Vezina is also a fan of Second Life art and early in 2007, he launched an art gallery named 'SLart'. Now, the mysterious Vezina may be the subject of a trademark infringement case, along with SL founding company Linden Labs and a few other fictional people who have uttered trademark blasphemies.

If Minsky were to win this court case, it would effectively see Second Life become a playground for lawyers and now doubt a lot more words prefixed with SL making it into our daily vocabulary.

Minsky's greatest achievement is not the start-up of a website or print magazine, but coining a phrase and trademarking it. In fact Minsky has trademarked every variation of the term Slart, from SLArt to slart, though SL-Art and SL Art are not covered by this. In hindsight, the easiest solution for the Second Life community would be to create a new buzz-word for Second Life art and use that instead. Unfortunately though, they took to their blogs and websites and effectively made the phrase 'Slart' completely synonymous with Second Life art.

It looks like we will have to wait a few months to see how this latest Second Life saga ends. After scanning the blogosphere it doesn't look like Minsky has made many fans, but there are sure to be many lawyers on the edge of their seats until the outcome of the case is revealed.

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Facebook to no longer pursue Twitter acquisition

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:00:00 GMT

There have been rumours circulating that social networking giants Facebook might acquire the popular micro-blogging site Twitter for quite a while now. However, it now appears that a potential deal has broken down between the two companies.

Facebook - the popular social networking website that allows people from around the world to connect and collect online friends - has publically expressed its interest and respect for Twitter and its progress. Not all that surprising, as Twitter's popularity has been growing steadily, particularly amongst businesses, in recent times. Twitter operates by allowing users to post short blog posts of up to 140 characters in length, in response to the question: What are you doing? In addition, once you are signed up to Twitter, you are then able to follow the posts and updates from other members..

There have been several reasons reported for the acquisition falling through such as cost and integration; however, one of the more important reasons seems to be that Twitter's investors and executives stated that they would like to build up more revenue on their own.

But, at present Twitter feel's it can overcome the economic downturn on its own, despite the company receiving no revenue; the idea behind the operation of the website is one that it hopes will continue to grow in popularity. In fact, it has been reported that Twitter is exploring other possibilities for revenue making, including charging a fee to business users and possibly adding advertising into the consumer service.

Another important factor in the break-down is the fact that Facebook was offering $500 million of its stock at the $15 billion valuation. As it goes, concerns were raised as to whether the amount offered in stock was actually worth $500 million; what's more, Twitter was not interested in receiving the funds in stock.

The failure of the deal doesn't seem to have damaged the mutual respect of the companies though, so maybe it's a case of never say never. Facebook has a following of 120 million active users, whilst relative newcomer Twitter has a reported 6 million registrations already. This is quite an impressive growth, considering the strong competition involved amongst social networking sites. So whether they go it together or alone we'll surely be hearing plenty about the two of them in the future.

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YouTube goes live in San Francisco and Tokyo

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:00:00 GMT

YouTube has hosted its first ever live streaming event, a music and variety show that featured performers who found notoriety after posting their clips on the video sharing site.

The event, held at the Fort Mason Centre's Herbst Pavillion in San Francisco, was described by YouTube as a "celebration of... the vibrant communities that exist on the site, including bedroom vloggers, budding creatives, underground athletes and world famous musicians."

Among the audience of 3,000 people that turned out for the event were YouTube favourites Beardyman, the Brighton based human beatbox, Ask a Ninja, and Lucas Cruickshank, the 15 year old creator of Fred, a hyperactive child who's adventures have helped make him on of YouTube's most popular characters.

Will.i.am and Kate Perry, whose worldwide hit single "I Kissed a Girl" was first discovered on YouTube were also at the event to perform live.

It wasn't just the people who found fame on YouTube who attended the celebratory event, as one of the site's originators, Chad Hurley, was there along with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google who purchased YouTube in 2006 for more than $1.5 billion.

Despite some critics attending the event suggesting that while some of the individual performances work in the intimate context of a video, they don't translate well in front of a live audience such as the one that packed the Herbst Pavillion, the general public tended to react positively.

According to TechCrunch, YouTube did 700,000 streams of the live event via Akamai, the streaming media service. While this number is impressive, it's still dwarfed by MSN streaming the Live Earth Concert in 2007 which reached more than 10 million viewers.

The success of the YouTube live event in San Francisco doesn't look like it will be matched by the second event, scheduled to take place in Tokyo, Japan. Mike Abundo, a tech and media expert, wrote: "Whereas YouTube Live in San Francisco attracted 700,000 concurrent live viewers, YouTube Live Tokyo attracts none - because it's not even live. The show was supposed to start at 3pm Japan Standard Time. It is now 7:56pm in Japan, and there's nary a stream in sight."

Instead of streaming video, all those attempting to view the Japanese event saw were "...periodic uploads of clips, with artists performing on a cute but cramped YouTube-themed stage."

Despite the shortcomings of YouTube Live Tokyo, the San Franciscan event maintained a positive atmosphere throughout, with the event reminding everyone of the hundreds of rags to riches stories that posting videos on YouTube has led to.

Juan Mann was one of the website's stars who made the trip from Sydney to San Francisco for YouTube Live. In 2006, a film of Mann wandering around a shopping centre carrying a sign which offered free hugs to all comers was uploaded onto YouTube and quickly become a worldwide hit. Mann admitted to being friendless and aimless at the time of filming the video.

Mann told the Guardian, "One week I was washing dishes in Sydney, the next week I was on the Oprah Winfrey Show. I have friends, I have a fiancée, I have a purpose. And I have never washed dishes since. Unless they're my own of course."

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