Tagged: Twitter

Jan 30

Gang Members Keep in Touch With Social Media

by Bethaney Wallace

Growing up as a white girl in rural Kansas, my knowledge of gangs was very limited. Yes, I’m part Italian, but it’s not like we’re born with a copy of “Mobbing 101.” Somewhere down the line, I probably have a distant relative that slung handguns or laundered cash, a respectable living in the eyes of the mob. But seeing as they don’t like talking about their highly illegal professions, I got all of my drug trafficking facts from the media; rap songs and Hollywood literally taught me everything I knew about gangs.Screen shot 2012 01 30 at 3.29.05 PM1 300x296 Gang Members Keep in Touch With Social Media

From the section of Goodfellas I didn’t sleep through, I learned three distinct features about mob members: they had nervous habits, no qualms about cheating on their wives, and they are super organized. Extensive measures were taken to ensure fluidity and well-executed plans. There were calling trees (this was before email) to keep everyone informed, code words for security, driving routes. And most everyone had a specific job, like it was a union. If these men had been looking for a business front to exploit, they would have been great professional organizers.

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Jan 23

Predict the Stock Market with Social Media

by Bethaney Wallace

From someone who knows nothing about the stock market, I’m able to give little advice as to how one should or shouldn’t go about buying stocks. If investing, I’d probably choose stocks the same way that I choose sports teams, by factors that have nothing to do with their abilities, such as mascots and colors. No one respects a team with a lame mascot, like a rainbow or a tree. And anyone with baby blue uniforms obviously sucks; that’s just logic. These are the same methods I’d consult when choosing my stock preferences. “Hmm, Apple is named after a food that I like, while Spam is a food I do not like,” and so on. Money making abilities wouldn’t so much matter as much as how I felt about each company personally.Screen shot 2012 01 23 at 1.37.02 PM Predict the Stock Market with Social Media

So, to sum up, you should not trust me for stock advice. But, even me, the person who would pick chapter 11 over the wrong color of blue, knew to stay away from Netflix last fall. Thanks to the hundreds of negative comments, blogs, news reports, and any other form of online media, I knew the company wasn’t exactly bringing in its top market numbers … to put it lightly.

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Jan 03

New Trend: Social Media Sobriety Tests

by Bethaney Wallace

Screen shot 2012 01 02 at 3.28.01 PM 300x198 New Trend: Social Media Sobriety TestsFor decades police departments and highway patrols have been enforcing drinking laws with what is known as the sobriety test. Questionable drivers are pulled over and asked to walk a straight line, reverse the alphabet (a feat I’m not sure I could accomplish completely sober), or touch fingers to their little noses. But with the invention of a new product, it won’t be just the roads being checked for the intoxicated, it will be the Internet as well.

14Four Interactive, an online development agency, began making online sobriety kits last year, a program where a user must complete simple tasks before logging into their favorite social media accounts. Those who download the application follow instructions, such as typing the alphabet backward or following a moving object with their mouse, to prove their sober-ness. ( Read more )

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Posted in Et cetera, social media

Dec 30

Klout Has It All Wrong: When It Comes to Link Response on Social Media, Timeliness, Not Follower Count, Is What Matters

By Kelsey Jones

Klout has it all wrong. How many followers a person or business has on Twitter or how many thousands of users have liked a company on Facebook doesn’t matter as much as timeliness does. In order to get responses from businesses and individuals on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media avenues, no one is going to see a post when it is posted when they aren’t online.

According to Bit.ly, most links posted on social networks last about three hours, with YouTube having the longest longevity of links. The Bit.ly blog states, “In general, the half life of a bitly link is about 3 hours, unless you publish your links on youtube, where you can expect about 7 hours worth of attention. Many links last a lot less than 2 hours; other more sticky links last longer than 11 hours over all the referrers.”

Graph is from the Bit.ly blog post:

halflife density thumb Klout Has It All Wrong: When It Comes to Link Response on Social Media, Timeliness, Not Follower Count, Is What Matters

Therefore, the actual time a user or business posts on their social network profiles will directly influence the chance that they will share or click on a link. For important content or messages, Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land recommends posting a “Second Chance Tweet”:

“On our @sengineland Twitter account, we tweet a story as soon as it’s posted. However, many of our Twitter followers might easily miss this, if they’re not online, busy and so on. That’s why we schedule a “second chance” tweet for most major stories to go out a few hours after they originally get tweeted.

Typically, we receive about 50% more traffic from Twitter from our second chance tweets as from the original ones. In other words, by simply tweeting a story again, some hours after the “half-life” of the original tweet has expired, we pick up 50% of the traffic that the original tweet generated.”

The content a profile posts, combined with the time they post it and how many times the content is shared, will be the key influencers on how many times a link is clicked on and shared. Do accounts with larger numbers of followers or likes have a greater chance of someone seeing their content based on the likelihood of higher impressions? Yes, but in order to make these numbers effective, businesses and individuals must pay attention to when and what they are posting.

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Posted in Business, Et cetera, social media

Dec 19

Could Online Friends Hurt Your Credit Score?

by Bethaney Wallace

6209753987 80bac44c74 300x200 Could Online Friends Hurt Your Credit Score?In a time where credit rankings affect almost everything – homeownership, the ability to qualify for a credit card, obtaining a loan, etc. – there is now one more aspect that can stand in the way of a high ranking score. Where once credit scores were purely based on one’s ability to earn and pay back money, there is now an outside factor being put into the mix: social media accounts. But here’s the scary part, it’s not necessarily your social media account that can affect the rankings, but your online friends’.

In an article by Beta Beat last week, the magazine tells their story of applying to a loan company, Lenddo – the first loan co. to use social media as a decisive factor. Beta Beat said they first were asked to give their Facebook profile, then several other user names to online accounts, including gmail and Twitter. And then, they were denied for not having enough friends with high credit scores. (Just to be fair, as the story pointed out, even if they had qualified, they wouldn’t have gotten the money as Lenddo is based in Hong Kong.)

How Does it Work

Lenddo uses a “proprietary and secret” algorithm to help determine credit scores and loan-worthiness, according to the company’s CEO, Jeff Stewart. He also said, “…if Lenddo sees one of your best Facebook buddies took out a loan and paid it back, there’s a good chance you will too.”

When Beta Beat applied, they were told they’d need at least three friends with a score more than 400 in their “Lenddo trusted network.” It’s also probably safe to say that, because they are a magazine, their friend base (and therefore scores) are askew. But what about the social media enthusiast with fully paid loans who just happens to have a lot of “friends” who are bad with money? Will they be denied as well? This is one answer Lenddo’s new loan program doesn’t offer an answer to.

Who’s Next?

What about American banks? Will they be next to hop on the social media algorithm factor? I sure hope not. Yes, America has quite a few citizens to default on loans, to owe credit companies money. But there are also plenty of the financially-sound kind as well. Why should a person’s high school friend’s credit score affect their ability to buy a house or build a new one? Why should keeping in contact with someone with poor financial skills be a punishment? Isn’t checking individual scores enough? Monitoring a person’s friends’ credit scores is essentially judging them on something they have no control over. How many even know what kind of credit your best friends have? Sure you know whether or not they pay their bills, but who knows it they’re on time, or if they pay their credit card minimum or entire balance each month?

No word yet on Mark Zuckerberg (although Lenddo quotes his willingness to advance social media), as to how he feels about this next advancement to his multi-billion dollar invention. However, if this program does continue to grow, it could chance social media and online friends as we know it – taking online profiles from a way to keep in touch, to something that could actually affect the way you live your life.

Photo courtesy of Flickr.

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