beautiful bytes – Full house!

Twitter quickest for news

Something we’ve been seeing for the last few weeks is the notion that social media is helping to break stories quicker than mainstream press.

The latest example comes after the sad passing of Whitney Houston, where it has been claimed that a Twitter user tweeted the news almost half an hour before the press.

This is a stark reminder as to how quickly individuals can be heard voicing an opinion or news story on social media – and subsequently how quickly that can spread.

Search continues to evolve

Take for example, a Google search for ‘famine’. Currently, a search engine doesn’t ‘know’ what famine is, it merely uses its search algorithm to match the phrase with content already on the web. Google has been researching how to change this, and is developing what it calls ‘Knowledge Graph’.

Knowledge Graph will change how search works, so Google will effectively understand what famine is. However, a search for that term could also return other useful information such as causes, impact and solutions.

You might be asking yourself how this will affect your website in terms of search engine optimisation, but the truth is, what this all seems to come down to is content. The phrase ‘content is king’ still applies, as it is content rich sites that will help Google ‘understand’ topics, as well as the sites that have a relationship with it.

Zynga Bingo

Zynga, creators of hit Facebook game Farmville, are set to release their version of every pensioners favourite game, Bingo. This could spark an interesting time for the social network. Will the game attract a new set of users to Facebook in the form of the traditional Bingo player (I’ll leave that to your imagination!) or will it attract an unexpected demographic?

Whatever happens, the game is likely to be a runaway success considering Zynga’s previous triumphs.

Are UK Pinterest users more ‘work’ focused?

An infographic from Mashable (via visual.ly) shows activity on the ever popular Pinterest. Perhaps the most intriguing point made is the contrast between post content by UK users compared to US users (see diagram below):

It would be interesting to compare what these users share on other social networks, in particular Twitter. This could then show whether this is a general trend across all social networks or whether different people (or event countries) use each network for posting different types of content.

Until next week,

Ash