EdgeTheory: The Battle for Real-Time Reporting, Curation

The issue of real-time news reporting and curation is becoming increasingly visible and important as news breaks on blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other social media properties. Tonight, Chris Saad and I talked about how the mainstream media can adapt to involve content curation in addition to their content creation, and how it still makes sense to have some investigative reporting in addition to real-time reactions.

The discussion weaved from curation tools like Cascaad and my6sense to the recent news of Teens In Tech Networks CEO Daniel Brusilovsky leaving TechCrunch, and how the news was interpreted.

Original Post Here: ET Conversations

Listen in below:


Disclosures: my6sense is a client of Paladin Advisors Group, where I am Managing Editor of New Media. In addition, I am an advisor to Teens In Tech Networks.

Cascaad Taps Social Graph for Tailored News

In the world of custom news applications that look to provide you personalized content, there are a growing number of contenders using different methods to filter the "best" from the "rest". Some, like Techmeme, utilize editorial directive in picking the top stories to present. Others, such as Tweetmeme and Digg, use popularity as that method. my6sense watches your own activity and customizes it for you. Meehive, Regator and others show content based on topics you have selected. Cascaad, a new entrant, takes a different approach, leveraging your personal social graph, suggesting to you the stories your friends have found valuable. It also shows you news by category, both on your iPhone and on their Web site.

Like many other social applications, Cascaad asks you to connect using Twitter OAuth or Facebook Connect. Cascaad then pulls in recent links shared by friends, and aims to find popular items that are gaining conversation (tracked by Twitter replies, for instance), or groups them by keyword.


One Popular Cascaad Item and Related Conversation

Items flow in from the top, like a cascading waterfall, similar to Lazyfeed's new approach, and leading to Cascaad's name. You can click any item and make a response, or "like" the item with a simple thumbs up. You can also share the messages by e-mail or on Twitter and Facebook.


Cascaad Channels and News In Focus

Cascaad's power, aside from bringing shared links from friends, is in the channels section, coming preinstalled with a number of topical channels, while also letting you create your own. Cascaad bundles channels from top topics like News, Business, Tech, Sports and Entertainment. With the addition of a few keywords, such as "Apple iPad" or "Super Bowl", you can make your own personalized channel that taps your social streams to show you related links, and who originated those links. You can also search the real time stream and show shared links on Cascaad.


Cascaad Custom Channels and Search

Cascaad says you can train the application to improve filters, based on those items you like, much as my6sense's digital intuition creates a tailored stream. Thus far, I haven't seen a dramatic personalization from the product, as I did with my6sense, but it may come with more use. Cascaad's benefits largely lie in the ability to see conversations from Twitter, connecting initial links with nested replies, and in being able to filter the real-time conversations by topic.

You can try Cascaad on the Web at http://cascaad.com/, or on the iPhone by downloading free from the iTunes store. I have also embedded a video from Robert Scoble interviewing Cascaad founder Erik Lumer below:


Disclosures: my6sense is a client of Paladin Advisors Group, where I am Managing Editor of New Media. In addition, I have previously done work for Kosmix.com, creator of MeeHive. My comments on the companies' products are always independent, and do not pass their way in advance.

Twitter Trip-up Triples Tweet Tallies

Over the last ten days, many Twitter users have found the total counts listed by their profile off by as much as three times. While the focus of the popular microblogging service is around the conversations and links, statistics and numbers continue to draw attention, so such a massive change has people asking questions. Meanwhile, the company's help forum shows the bug was initially a low priority issue, anticipated to only impact a few users, since found to be much more widespread.

The team is working on it, and expects it to be resolved "relatively soon", with the latest update posted Friday, February 5th.

Orli Yakuel Was Hit By the Latest Bug

The issue does not impact anyone's ability to send updates or see updates from others. It also does not mean that tweets were previously sent in triplicate, nor does it mean their are ghost tweeters updating on your behalf, so the bug is a minor one, albeit annoying for those who like to keep their data clean.

EMC-er Christopher Kusek Questioned His Proclivity

The known issue, titled as "inflated tweet count" was posted to the help forum on January 25th, and users affected were asked to identify themselves, while showing what the anticipated disparity was between actual usage and reported usage. By February 2nd, Twitter's team said it was "a low priority issue" and said they "did not expect to have this issue fixed in the immediate future for this reason". But by Friday, the tone had changed. An update said, "This problem is now important and have engineers currently working on resolving the improper tweet counts."

Jesse Stay Wondered If The Numbers Were Cache Related

Like the examples I am including here, my own stats have been tripled, from what is likely in the range of 4,300 updates to more than 12,000. Not a big deal to me, but others are asking in public, and I thought it made sense to show Twitter is working on it. Like other occasional stats-related bumps on the service in the past, I would assume this to be reversed relatively quickly. And if it's not, there's always TweetStats.

Blippy Surfacing Popular Purchases to Increase Engagement

A few weeks ago, when I first started using Blippy, the site that tracks my purchases offline and online, I said it simply proved how boring I am. Aiming to not itself become boring, as exciting as reading old receipts as popular funnyman Stephen Colbert recently called it, the site recently introduced two new features that will highlight user activity and popular purchased items, bringing discussions to the top.

For fellow FriendFeed veterans, Blippy's move is much like increasing the visibility of active discussions on the site through "best of day". It also mirrors the recent move by Facebook to highlight popular entries from you and your friends in the newsfeed.

Lively Chatter in My Blippy Stream Surfaces Active Purchases

While previously, activity on your Blippy stream would move chronologically out of the main view as you made more purchases, active threads can now be found in a section Blippy calls "Lively Chatter". Also, you can check "Popular Purchases" from everyone on the site, leveraging the increasingly popular standard of "likes" and comments.

One Active Discussion on Blippy

The more people you follow on Blippy, the more likely it is that you will see comments and likes in your stream. These are highlighted in "Recent Activities". Clicking on "Lively Chatter" shows items that have gained comments (including comments from yourself), letting you see conversations about the movies and music and apps that you are buying.

Another Active Discussion on Blippy about Siri

For now, Philip Kaplan (aka Pud), creator of the site, is the most frequent commentor in my feed, which comes as no surprise, but this may change as people grow more accustomed to making the site more of a two-way platform, instead of just simply importing.

While some look at Blippy as a perfect example of oversharing or our own willingness to put personal data on the Web, I see it as a logical extension to our recommending and telling people what we "like". Pud, curious about the series "Breaking Bad", which popped up in Mike Arrington's stream, even had the show gifted to him due to his curiousity. I expect to see many more similar actions driven directly from activity on the site.

Siri Brings Artificial Intelligence to the iPhone

For decades, many have dreamed of having a virtual assistant to answer our questions and do our bidding. Through advances in artificial intelligence, speech recognition and a seemingly endless array of search engines and directories, we are getting ever closer to this fantasy becoming a reality. A new application, Siri, billed as a virtual personal assistant, debuts today on the iTunes store, and promises to be a new way to interact with the mobile Web. The application takes queries from natural speaking, and does its best not just to find the right answer, but the right action as well.

Fueled by SRI International and powered by Nuance's voice recognition capability, Siri comes loaded with hooks to dozens of partners to help bring whatever you have in your mind to your phone.


Siri Sets Up Dinner and Gets You A Meal
While many of us have grown accustomed to making voice searches on Google's mobile application with the iPhone, this functionality, so far, has been limited, acting as a regular text search from the Web or any Internet-connected device. Siri doesn't just search on the terms you enter, but looks to find the correct answer, and put you in position to make a decision based on that answer.

Siri's dashboard makes it clear how to get started. It asks "what can I help you with?", and shows options including restaurants, movies, events, local businesses, taxis and weather. But rather than just having a solid directory, whereby you could click through and find options, you can just talk to the phone. Click the "Say It" button, and ask the phone anything.


Siri Presents Answers If You Ask Just Right
For example, if you ask why the sky is blue, or how old president Obama is, Siri will tap into the Web and find the answers, to the best of its ability.

Also, you can ask for a gourmet French restaurant near you, and it will translate what you have asked to words it can use, such as "expensive", and translate near you to restaurants in a nearby geographical area.


Directions and a Taxi to Pick You Up
Ask Siri what movies nearby are showing Avatar, and it will tell you. Tell it to get you a pair of tickets to the 5:30 showing, and it will start that process.

Siri didn't try to reinvent the Web by setting up dedicated services for each of its functions, connecting to a vast network of partners to bring their content to the iPhone. In tests, I could find schedules of events at popular sporting arenas, could call a cab to pick me up at a specific location, or see how far away I was from locations on a Google map.


Movie Tickets and Sporting Events on Siri
Siri works best with fast phones and fast Web connections, as you can guess, given it needs to tap into the cloud to get the data, and present it back to you in natural language. The product is optimized for the iPhone 3GS, and works best over WiFi or 3G. You can get it to work on Edge of course, just expect some latency.

Check it out at http://www.siri.com/ or on the iTunes store.