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Facebook: “Smashed-in skulls are fine, nipples are not”
22 Feb2012
This post was written by Andrew Nattan
The online magazine Gawker has managed to get hold of Facebook’s mysterious moderation guidelines. And it appears that the world’s largest social network has a few strange ideas about what’s acceptable and what’s not.
The guidelines, released to Facebook’s outsourced moderation teams around the world, have a distinctly American moral bias, where sex and nudity is grossly offensive, but the odd bit of gory horror is absolutely fine.
It also states just how much abuse can be levelled at public figures (Paul McCartney is their example) and politicians (Barack Obama) before things should be moderated, and explains the difference between bullying and humour.
We’ve listed some of the banned and allowed content below, so you can get an idea of just what you should and shouldn’t be posting to your social network profiles. And some of it may surprise you…
The full leaked document has been made available here. (Warning: Contains some explicit written content)
What’s Banned:
- Breastfeeding photos
- Drunk people with things drawn on their faces
- Photos comparing two people (or an animal and a person that resembles them)
- Maps of Kurdistan
- Cartoon nudity
- “Nipple bulges” and “Moose knuckles”
What’s Allowed:
- Any depiction of marijuana use… unless the poster is selling, buying or growing it
- Hate speech/racism (as long as it’s in an obviously humorous context)
- Graphic images of animals being mutilated (in the context of food processing or hunting)
- Deep flesh wounds and excessive blood
- Crushed heads, limbs, etc (as long as no insides are showing)
So, next time you’re on Facebook, remember this: Pictures of a pot-smoking racist comedian with a smashed-in skull should be fine, but don’t you dare draw anything on your drunken friend’s face!
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The Wall Street Journal have reported that Google are deliberately ignoring security settings designed to restrict the amount of information that the search giant can collect.
Apple’s Safari web browser (as seen on iPads and iPhones) comes with a suite of security tools that restrict the access that companies have to cookies – small files which record information about your surfing habits. By turning these tools on, third party websites are unable to keep tabs on your online behaviour, which can cause issues for targeted advertising campaigns such as Google AdWords.
However, when that third party website is Google, security settings apparently don’t matter. An investigation by researchers at Stanford University, which was picked up on by the Wall Street Journal shows that while advertisers aren’t allowed to store cookies on Safari-enabled devices, Google services were managing to evade the security settings and store cookies anyway.
Predictably, Google have claimed that this is all a misunderstanding brought about by Google wanting to offer personalised search on mobile devices, and not a deliberate ploy to harvest advertising information which would be unable to rivals such as Bing:
“We created a temporary communication link between Safari browsers and Google’s servers, so that we could ascertain whether Safari users were also signed into Google, and had opted for this type of personalisation.”
“The Safari browser contained functionality that then enabled other Google advertising cookies to be set on the browser.”
“We didn’t anticipate that this would happen, and we have now started removing these advertising cookies from Safari browsers.
Senior Vice President Rachel Whetstone
Unsurprisingly, online privacy campaigners are yet again up in arms over Google’s refusal to play by the rules, and this latest breach could influence the EU’s decision on whether or not to change the way that cookies work – despite the fact everyone thinks this proposal isn’t a great idea.
One thing’s for sure. At a time when Google are regularly coming under fire, this isn’t going to be welcome news.
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One of the joys of the web is being able to find out just what people are interested in. That’s why trending topics, hashtags and search volumes receive so many digital column inches.
But going to the effort of trawling through dozens of websites to try and get an overview of what’s hot at the moment is a huge investment in time, and exposes the would-be-researcher to so much nonsense that they’re tempted to write off trend tracking completely.
Until now, because Microsoft have come to the rescue of those who want to keep their fingers on the pulse of the internet.
msnNOW aggregates and analyses data from Facebook, Twitter, Bing and BreakingNews.com in order to explain what people are talking about, searching for and interested in. And it’s not just useful for people who are being a bit nosey.
Knowing what people are searching for is a key part of search engine optimisation, which is why any SEO worth their salt spends a decent amount of time carrying out keyword research and trying to predict what people will type into a search engine.
While msnNOW is focused mainly on conversations, celebrities and viral content, it has shown that a few products are already trending – vital information for any sellers and stockists.
As of 10am today, the site has analysed over 133 million Bing searches and 8 million social updates, so it’s far more reliable than just Twitter’s trending topics. But without Google data, it remains to be seen just how useful this will be for online marketers and businesses in the long run.
Gossip fans, however, can make hay while the sun shines.
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Twitter has become a bit old-hat for UK and US politicians, with everyone from Barack Obama to Boris Johnson deciding that a bit of Tweeting could do wonders for their poll ratings.
But it’s not just the English speaking world that have embraced the microblogging website. As well as traditional media, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has launched his own Twitter account as part of his re-election campaign. The President can be found at @NicolasSarkozy, while his opponent Francois Hollande has already accumulated 146,000 followers from his @fhollande account.
Bonjour à tous, je suis très heureux de lancer aujourd’hui mon compte
#Twitter. Merci à ceux qui voudront bien me suivre! – NS“Hello to you all, I’m very happy to launch today my #Twitter account. Thank you to all of those who would like to follow me! – NS”
President Sarkozy‘s first ever Tweet
This shows that Twitter isn’t just being taken seriously in the Anglosphere, and that clever use of social media could help you take your business to a global audience. With everyone from Egyptian revolutionaries to French leaders embracing the site, it’s clear that you’ll be able to get your message out there.
So make sure you brush up on the FirstFound Blog’s social media advice for businesses, and start appealing to the global masses.
In other Twitter news, the microblogging platform has prevented stockholders from selling more than 20% of their shares, in order to keep the company private. Given that Facebook are about to go public with an incredibly high valuation, this move has confused industry and business experts alike.
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Not since Lazarus decided to stop lying about and take a victory lap around Bethany has a more unlikely resurrection taken place. The dear deceased social network MySpace has shaken off the legacy of Rupert Murdoch‘s mismanagement and taken its first shaky steps towards becoming relevant again.
MySpace hit the peak of its powers in 2005, and was subject of a $580 million buyout from Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp. But unfortunately for fans of music that wouldn’t turn off, glittery wordart and the sort of web design that wakes our design team screaming in the night, the site couldn’t keep up with Facebook and new signups dwindled away to nothing.
Despite a $35 million buyout from entrepreneurs Chris and Tim Vanderhook (and pop star/actor Justin Timberlake), online experts expected MySpace to go the same way as Geocities – an outdated relic rightly doomed to history’s dustbin.
But it looks like MySpace has found a future after all, after focusing on the musical side of its career. A new music player was launched in December, and this has prompted over 1 million new signups and 25.1 million hits in January alone – this first increase in traffic in over a year.
Over 42 million licensed tracks are available through the social network, dwarfing the libraries of Spotify and Rhapsody – and easy Twitter and Facebook integration allows users to share what they’re listening to. Although this reliance on other social networks seems a clear indication that MySpace’s owners don’t see any future in vainly trying to overtake Facebook and return to the social networking top spot.
More proof of MySpace’s media-centric future can be seen in last month’s announcement that the site will be partnering with Panasonic for MySpace TV, allowing users to enjoy a range of music videos and TV shows.
Which just goes to show, there’s nothing less accurate than the blogosphere’s claims that a particular site, marketing tactic or way of doing things is dead.
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Britons Made 2.3 Billion Google Searches in January
13 Feb2012
This post was written by Andrew Nattan
Various people throughout the SEO industry might be fed up with Google’s constant tinkering with the search engines, but the Great British public are still as enamoured with Google search as ever.
In the month when the bloggerati were up in arms over Google’s move to a more social search, and leading voices in the search and SEO industry proclaimed that the time is nigh for a mass migration to Bing, the number of visits people in the UK made to Google increased.
January 2012 saw over 2.3 billion searches made by web users in Britain – an increase of over 100 million on January 2010′s figures, and 4.5% more than were made in January 2011.
But while the number of visits we’re making to Google has risen, Google’s market share in the UK has actually declined. We’re making more searches than ever before, but it appears that Bing is taking more than it’s fair share of new searches.
The Microsoft search engine’s market share has now risen by 0.59% in the UK, although they’re still some way behind Google’s dominant share of 90.64% of the search market (down from 91.75% in December).
It’s a different story in the USA, as Google’s market share rose to 66.2%. With over 17.8 billion searches made in the USA, that means that Google delivered answers to 11.79 billion searches in a 31 day period. In comparison, Bing and Yahoo registered 2.71 billion and 2.51 billion searches respectively.
What this data shows, according to Hitwise, is that it’s even more important than ever before to make search part of your marketing strategy:
“Search is one of the most crucial elements of online marketing and our data shows that search is growing, with nearly 100 million more visits going to search engines this January than last January.
As search continues to grow marketers need the right tools at their fingertips to understand how they can maximise their search campaigns, to get traffic delivered to their website.”
James Murray – Market Research Analyst, Experian Hitwise
If you don’t yet have a search marketing strategy in place, then you’re missing out on business. FirstFound can help. For a free search engine ranking report, call us now on 0161 909 3400. Together, we’ll take your website to the top of the search engines.
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If you’re using the Ice Cream Sandwich version of Android (seriously, who comes up with these names?), you can lose your standard Droid browser, because Google are taking the battle for browser supremacy into a whole new arena.
Not content with their 27.3% browser market share, Google have decided they want a slice of the mobile pie, and have released a version of Chrome tailored for the mobile browsing experience.
In order to make things easier for current Chrome users, and cajole a few Android users into ditching FireFox and IE, Google have announced a number of features that make Chrome Mobile a really attractive prospect:
- Full synchronisation of mobile & desktop browsers (through Google accounts)
- Bookmark sharing and porting
- Tabs opened on one device can be synched immediately to another
- Autocomplete & most visited pages data shared across platforms
Unsurprisingly, Google are raving about how this new mobile browser will make surfing on the move far more intuitive, quick and simple than previously:
“Like the desktop version, Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but it also features seamless sign-in and sync so you can take your personalized web browsing experience with you wherever you go, across devices.
We reimagined tabs so they fit just as naturally on a small-screen phone as they do on a larger screen tablet. You can flip or swipe between an unlimited number of tabs using intuitive gestures, as if you’re holding a deck of cards in the palm of your hands, each one a new window to the web.”
Sundar Pichai – Google Senior Vice-President for Chrome & Apps
The new Chrome browser is available from the Android marketplace in the UK from today. And no, we’ve still not found out why they called it ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’ either.
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Twitter teams up with Yandex to deliver real-time social search
21 Feb2012
This post was written by Andrew Nattan
Their partnership with Google might be long gone, but Twitter aren’t wasting any time in bringing social search to the masses. Following on from their reported $30m deal with Bing, Twitter are now teaming up with Russian search engine Yandex.
Yandex is currently the top search engine in Russia, and accounts for over 60% of the search market. This deal will allow them to analyse (primarily) tweets in Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian or Kazakh and feature relevant tweets in both the Yandex blog search, and a dedicated search function found at twitter.yandex.ru.
Twitter’s director of business development, and Yandex’s blog search manager have both claimed that this is a huge step forward for real-time social search, especially after the collapse of the Google/Twitter partnership which happened following the announcement of Google+:
It’s widely expected that this is just the first local partnering deal that Twitter will attempt to strike. Bing gives them access to the ‘Anglosphere’ of English speaking countries, while Yandex has allowed them to effectively corner social search in the Russian market. As such, it seems like a natural progression to seek similar agreements in India and other emerging internet markets.
It’s not just Twitter’s 100m active users and April Underwood who rely on being discovered through search engines. More and more businesses have realised that topping Google, Bing and Yahoo is crucial to succeeding in the online market. So if you’d like to take your first steps towards topping the search engines, contact FirstFound’s dedicated search engine consultants on 0161 909 3400 today.
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