Twitter has introduced a two-step authentication process which it hopes will prevent accounts on the social network being taken over by hackers.
When the “2FA” feature is enabled, any attempt to log into an account from a new device will require an authentication code, which will be sent to the account holder’s mobile phone. Even with the correct password, any login attempt from a new device without the authentication code will fail.
The move follows a number of high-profile hackings in recent months, particularly those performed by a group known as the Syrian Electronic Army. In April, the group accessed the Associated Press account and posted a false tweet claiming US President Barack Obama had been injured in a bomb attack.
The SEA has also hacked the accounts of other global news organisations, such as the Guardian, the BBC and the Financial Times.
Jim O’Leary of Twitter’s Product Security Team wrote in a blog post: “Much of the server-side engineering work required to ship this feature has cleared the way for us to deliver more account security enhancements in the future.
“Of course, even with this new security option turned on, it’s still important for you to use a strong password and follow the rest of our advice for keeping your account secure.”
Twitter has been under increasing pressure to bolster its security measures in the face of the aforementioned high-profile hackings, especially as the social network is becoming more and more important to high ranking individuals and organisations who boast huge numbers of followers.
The BBC is more likely to appear in Google News’s search listings than any other UK news websites, research has found.
The study searched for “several million” keywords and phrases on Google.co.uk throughout April, and found that the BBC was the most popular site in the News section of the search results.
Newspaper websites The Guardian, Mail Online and The Telegraph came second, third and fourth respectively, while The Independent website also appears in the top ten.
Although the study was conducted by looking at the UK version of Google, plenty of international news sites appear in the top ten, including the Huffington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the India Times.
Marcus Tober, spokesman for the agency that carried out the research, said: “While it isn’t surprising that the BBC, with its wide range of content, should top our study, our data indicates that there are increasing opportunities for smaller sites to appear in news results as Google is now showing more content from a wider range of sources.
“Getting into news results is even more valuable because they always appear on the first page and are positioned near the top.”
The full top ten, with number of occurrences for each site in the news search results during the month of April, is:
Yahoo! has announced that it has agreed a buy-out of the blogging service Tumblr, in a takeover deal that was confirmed on Monday and is thought to be worth around $1.1billion.
Tumblr currently has around 100 million active users around the world, who post and share blogs containing text, images and videos amounting to roughly 90 million posts a day.
At the moment Tumblr is largely ad-free, and generated just $13million in revenue last year. This is an area that Yahoo! will almost certainly look to develop as part of the takeover, as the company looks to move into other ventures to try and catch up with runaway market leader Google.
In a post published on her own Tumblr blog, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer said: “Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going. We promise not to screw it up.”
“In terms of working together, Tumblr can deploy Yahoo!’s personalisation technology and search infrastructure to help its users discover creators, bloggers, and content they’ll love. The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance user experience.”
Meanwhile, Tumblr founder David Karp said of the takeover: “Yahoo! is the original internet company, and Marissa and her team share our dream to make the internet the ultimate creative canvas. I couldn’t be more excited to have her help. We won’t let you down.”
Google Glass has been heralded as the “next big thing” in the technology stakes, but it seems that Google’s groundbreaking new project is hitting stumbling blocks before it even hits the shelves.
This week it has emerged that numerous cafes across America have already banned its customers from wearing the Google Glass specs in their premises over concerns about privacy.
A cafe owner in Seattle has ruled that customers must remove their Google Glass frames before they come into his cafe, and has hung up a sign which reads: “Respect our customers’ privacy as we’d expect them to respect yours.”
The move comes as various other establishments across the US begin to consider bans on Google Glass, due to the frame’s ability to take pictures and shoot video via voice command.
Cinemas are likely to prevent its customers from wearing Google Glass to crack down on film piracy, while casinos are also thought to be considering a ban as the glasses may help gamblers to gain an unfair advantage.
UK legal firm Olswang is already compiling a privacy lawsuit against Google, labelling Google Glass “the ultimate snooper’s gizmo.”
Dan Tench of Olswang said: “If you walk around with a video camera filming, it’s obvious what you’re doing, but with Google Glass, it’s much, much more invasive.”
Google Glass is currently only available to 2000 select customers around the world, but is expected to go on general sale later this year, costing around £980 a pair.
The news that David Moyes will become the new manager of Manchester United seemed to be announced by an over-eager social media team before either party was ready to confirm the news.
A post on the Premier League champions’ official Facebook page early yesterday afternoon claimed a deal had been reached for the current Everton manager to take over the reigns from the retiring Sir Alex Ferguson next season. The only problem being that the news had not been officially confirmed by either club.
Although the post was quickly taken down, a link to a form allowing fans to leave their “personal welcome messages for new manager David Moyes” remained active on their Facebook page long after the post was deleted.
The damage caused by this slight of hand appears to be minimal, as Moyes’ managerial appointment was confirmed by Everton on their own social media channels soon afterwards; possibly earlier than they would have liked, having been pressured by the “leak” from United’s media team.
Social media has become an important tool for sports teams, specifically football clubs, to engage with supporters and keep them firmly up to date with team developments. But this is not the first time an overly enthusiastic social media executive has caused a marketing headache for their clubs.
Last summer, a post on a website for a business relating to the owners of Liverpool FC appeared to claim that the club had agreed a deal to sign Fulham’s American star Clint Dempsey. Fulham strongly denied the deal, and the PR disaster culminated in Dempsey signing for rivals Tottenham in the dying seconds of transfer deadline day. It is thought that Liverpool’s “leak” angered their Fulham counterparts and caused the deal to collapse.
What this, and previous situations serve to prove is how important it is for businesses from ALL sectors to keep a close eye on their social media presence, and take the management of their Facebook and Twitter accounts very seriously as part of an overall reputation management strategy.
Klout human created expert answers have been integrated into Bing search results. It is the latest attempt from a major search engine to take advantage of Q&A content in online search.
Yahoo and Facebook have both made well documented attempts to adapt the question and answer format into their content. Now, Klout and Bing launch their own bid for social Q&A success.
Answers from the top Klout users and influencers will enjoy pride of place at the top of Bing search listings, thanks to the new Klout Experts product.
With Klout Experts, the leading Klout users, selected by their online influence score or Klout Score, have been asked a series of questions based around the topics in which they are influential. The system then collects these responses and selects responses to be displayed within Bing results when a relevant query is made.These results will also be visible to users logged into their Klout accounts. Klout will feature index-able answer pages. Users will contribute to their Klout score by answering questions.
As of yesterday the Klouts Experts product was launched for topics and industries including travel, movies, music, cooking and technology.
Bing will display Klout content as in-line answers on their main search results portal. This marks a shift from their handling of other social content which exists within the social bar. Answers will be displayed as search listings and the results will allow users to click through to the Klout profile of the author.
This data will only be available for a small number of queries in this early period. Plans are in place, however, to roll out answers for hundreds of millions of queries.
Whilst we are sure the Glazers are not frantically scanning twitter or the blogosphere looking for advice and opinions on who should replace Sir Alex Ferguson as Manchester United manager it definitely makes for interesting reading.
Journalists and players giving glowing tributes to a man who is arguably the greatest club manager in history, Evertonians lamenting the loss of their manager, the odd shell-shocked United fan wondering why on earth Sir Alex is quitting because of hip-hop. It’s all there for everyone to see. The era of 24 hour sports news means rumours are magnified and reaction instantaneous, it can make for a huge amount of background noise and separating the wheat from the chaff an insurmountable challenge.
It is for scenarios like this Hit Search developed their unique reputation management tool. A tweet or a blog post is a drop in the ocean but our system is purpose-built to sift this data to analyse and make sense of the underlying sentiments. Tested successfully against demanding projects such a presidential elections (analysing swing-state political activism to gain a feeling for which voice was gaining sway between Democrat & Republicans) and reality tv (successfully analysing volumes of support and criticism ahead of weekly phone-votes) the model can be applied to sport at times like managerial changes and transfer deadline days.
The table below illustrates which target people tweeted about and how positive or negative the tweet was. A total of over 300k tweets in a 24 hour period.
The reaction for Sir Alex is undeniably positive, it would be remarkable if rival fans were able to drown out the praise for him given his unparalleled record of success. The bookmakers quickly installed Everton manager David Moyes as the likely successor however overall the reaction to him getting the job is more mixed. Sentiment analysis initially returned neutral assessments and analysis of the raw data backed this up with a mix of praise and wariness plus negativity over the prospects for his current club Everton.
Reaction for the other viable candidate Jose Mourinho was actually more positive then for Moyes but perhaps because of his links with the Chelsea job the volume was significantly lower.
Whilst the public mood counts for nothing at board level it might be worth wondering what would have happened if more attention was paid to the public mood ahead of appoints such as Steve Kean at Blackburn Rovers and Rafeal Benitez at Chelsea.
