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Thoughtpick: A unique perspective of the Web and social media...
A unique perspective of the Web and social media...

August 31, 2009

Social Media & Medical Diagnosis: Could Your Online Doctor Kill You?

Is social media slowly replacing the traditional form of curing illnesses by doctor visits followed by diagnosis and medical prescriptions? Can social media really kill you through misdiagnosis? Should we really trust online doctors who give out free or universal drug prescriptions?

An Intro into My Train of Thoughts…

Misdiagnosis By Angela Melick

Misdiagnosis By Angela Melick

I won’t go as far as Voltaire and say, and I quote: “Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing.”But I sure do agree that this quote can be applied to many “trendy” online doctor-wannabe’s who claim to have the know-how to diagnose medical issues simply through reading a bunch of symptoms!

Recently, and with the increasing reliance on social media for almost every little piece of news we read and advice we need, social media has become a place for “self-acclaimed” gurus in every field, even the critical field of medicine!

This worries me!

If you look at solid statistics, you will be able to clearly see that there are around 80,000 deaths reported annually, in the US alone, due to doctors’ mistakes and wrong diagnosis! Add to that the fact that, in these times we’re living, anything can kill you; what you eat, what you drink and even anger!

[read full article >>]

Filed under: Controversial Picks — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Beirut @ 7:52 pm

August 29, 2009

When will Facebook realize that it won’t ever be “Twitter”?

Watch the sequence very carefully: First, Facebook changed their status feeds into a Twitter-like live stream, then they introduced their own version of real-time search, after that they acquired FriendFeed, and now they plan to launch Facebook Lite – a simplified (twitterified?) version of Facebook itself -.

Their obsession with Twitter is far beyond my comprehension! With their huge size, and continuous growth, they can’t be threatened by the increased popularity of Twitter. It probably has something to do with their strategy of biting off chuncks of every aspect of the social networking market. But the question is, do Twitter’s features really suit Facebook’s digestion system? How far should Facebook go in changing its anatomy in order to catch up with Twitter’s *cool* appeal?

Broadcast vs. Feed

Facebook is for feeds – mostly friends’ feeds -, Twitter is for broadcast; this is a core and fundamental difference that defines the nature of both services. You log on to Facebook in order to check out your friends’ activities and connect with them, while on Twitter you log on in order to say something, broadcast it, and promote it to the world. It is not common to add people who you don’t know over Facebook, but it is very common to follow and be followed by people you have never met in your life on Twitter and start some conversations with them. Facebook friends are also limited in number; you can only add up to 5000 friends, which limits the broadcasting capabilities for those trying to reach more people, unlike Twitter, where there is no limit whatsoever. In my opinion, even though many companies and celebrities find Facebook’s fan pages useful, I don’t think it gives Facebook a business and marketing value as Twitter does.

Facebook Lite... a Twitter look-alike?

Facebook Lite... a Twitter look-alike?

[read full article >>]

Filed under: Controversial Picks — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — Fadi @ 7:36 pm

August 28, 2009

What Does Your Twitter Avatar & Background Say About YOU?

Do you think your Twitter avatar and background have an impact on how your current and potential followers view you? Can using an “inappropriate” avatar or background actually  be a reason to lower the number Twitter users interested in following you or even attract the “wrong” type of followers?

A few introductory words…

There’s an old saying that goes something like this: “Don’t judge a book by its cover“. But how else would you judge a book if you can’t really see what’s inside of it in terms of content originality, uniqueness, usefulness and/or creativity? The same applies to interaction over social media channels, especially in the case of Twitter!

Regardless of which follow technique you’re using, you will eventually evaluate those you are planning to follow based on one or more of  these elements:

  • Activity (number of tweets).
  • Engagement (number of retweets).
  • Following to followers ratio.
  • Profile name.
  • The avatar (and sometimes the background as well).

Taking that into consideration, I guess it’s safe to say that your avatar and background can say something about you!

What do you want them to say?

Each of us uses Twitter for a certain aim and tweets for a different reason. Therefore, it is highly essential that your avatar and background are able to clearly corroborate the message you’re trying to communicate.

Below, you will find the top 5 ways how your Twitter avatar matters followed by another list of top 4 ways how your twitter background matters …

5 top ways how your avatar matters:

  1. Recognition: It has been proven that human beings are wired in a manner which allows them to recognize and remember faces. Therefore, if you use a picture of your face in your avatar, you have a higher percentage of being remembered by your followers.

    Mashable: An Avatar People Will Remember!

    Mashable: An Avatar People Will Remember!

    2. [read full article >>]

Filed under: Deductions and Realizations — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Beirut @ 10:17 am

August 27, 2009

Anonymous Atheists, Christian Evangelists & Mosques in Second Life… Spam?

“Have you met my friend?” A question asked too often at malls in the Midwest yet now, it carries a totally different meaning in the post-Facebook world. Muslim and Christian Evangelist of all shades and colors, who includes you: early Sunday morning door-knocking Jehovah’s witness, have been making our life more colorful by stopping the normal flow of our lives at malls, schools, and even at our own home with attempts to salvage our souls. Now they have gone digital and with a zeal.

The Holy Book in my right and a mouse in the left?

The mating of religion and social media seems like a perfect match but is it? Let me extrapolate; Evangelists are always striving to save as many people as they can, why else would they go to the depth of the Amazon spending decades trying to convert some reclusive tribe. Therefore, tools that enable them to reach a wider audience would surely be of an interest to them. The internet is one of those tools, and social media is definitely where the people are at. So in recent years, we have been seeing many examples “religious” people using social networks to further their cause. Popular ministers such as Rick Warren and Joel Osteen have about 30,000 followers each. You can even find people as important as His Holiness on the web.

The Muslim’s won’t be outdone either!

Christians aren’t the only faith group embracing social media; all of them are. If you went to the Middle East Island in Second Life last week you would have been greeted by this lovely invitation.

Invitation to the lecture

Invitation To The Lecture

This is an invitation to a lecture presented by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, they are the same people that banned cats, dogs and the color red. The lecture commemorated Ramadan, the holy month of fasting for Muslims, and encouraged the denizens to bask in the holiness of the month. The community that is hosting the lecture in their own virtual estate proudly boasts being able to “revert” 7 people from the United States to Islam when they visited the mosques. Online evangelism is hardly as passive as this lecture makes it seem! Religious people are taking a trick out of their playbook and being more proactive in their activities in the virtual world. So instead of waiting for people with similar interests to flock to their virtual Meccas, they are going out soliciting con(re)verts.

[read full article >>]

Filed under: Controversial Picks — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — M. Bamieh @ 4:33 pm

August 26, 2009

Dell vs. Toshiba – Death Match via Youtube, Facebook & Twitter…

Is social media turning into one of the main reasons for purchasing trendy, fashionable and tech products these days? Could a brand’s wrong utilization of social media affect its image negatively? Is it fair to solely depend on web marketing and social media channels (such as Youtube, Twitter and Facebook) in order to decide whether to purchase a certain brand or its competitor?

A month or more ago, I published an article about Blackberry Storm vs. iPhone 3G. I noticed that our readers really enjoyed this type of topics. Therefore, the ThoughtPick team, and after an idea-loaded brainstorming session, decided to turn this type of posts into a series: Social Media & Web Marketing Wars!

A Little Bit of History…

Before moving on to evaluating the effectiveness of their social media utilization, it is only fair to talk a little about Dell and Toshiba’s histories.

Let’s begin with Dell. Dell was established in 1984 by Michael Dell and it employs more than 76,500 people worldwide as of 2009. “Dell grew during the 1980s and 1990s to become (for a time) the largest seller of PCs and servers. As of 2008 it held the second spot in computer-sales within the industry behind Hewlett-Packard. The company currently sells personal computers, servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, and computer peripherals”.

As for Toshiba, it was founded by the merging of two companies in 1939. Toshiba America Information Systems was created in 1989. “Toshiba is the world’s fifth largest personal computer manufacturer, after Hewlett-Packard and Dell of the U.S., Acer of Taiwan and Lenovo of China.”

Dell & Toshiba… “Social Medially”!

As a crucial part of my research, I made an effort to cover 4 important aspects of Dell and Toshiba’s online presence, especially when it comes to social media platforms: Twitter, Youtube, Facebook and Blogs.

1. Twitter:

What does Dell conduct itself on Twitter?

Dell seems to very well understand the power that Twitter is able to equip it with and appears to be doing the most it can to reap the benefits of having a strong presence as a Twitter user:

Filed under: Deductions and Realizations — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — Beirut @ 3:47 pm

August 25, 2009

What are you working on? Top 5 Enterprise 2.0 Platforms Reviewed

Communication has always been a key factor in determining the efficiency of how companies do business. For a long time, fax, telephone and email managed to facilitate business communications and saved companies a lot of time and effort. Today, social media comes into play, it opens new channels that give any company’s communication methods a whole new untapped dimension. From Wikis and shared feeds, to online real-time collaboration and microblogging, there is a new generation of platforms that aim to tackle this area and give your business the tools it needs to fit as a 2.0 enterprise.

Most Popular Enterprise 2.0 Social Platforms

We, here at Thoughtpick, were interested in researching the Enterprise 2.0 social platforms out there. Obviously we found many, we checked out most of them and decided to bring you the 5 most popular ones according to compete stats, with Yammer being the most popular.

Below are the top 5 picks along with our opinion:

1. Yammer: It takes microblogging to the Enterprise Arena. It provides a simple way for employees to connect and share by posting short – 140 char - messages. It builds on Twitter’s concept that we have all grown accustomed to, and adds corporate necessary options such as employee profiles, file sharing, groups and organizational charts. Recently it rolled out some new features that include a revamped iPhone app, “like” options, threads and an improved search.

Thoughtpickers’ opinion: The power of Yammer - like Twitter – lies in its simplicity. It provides a very simple and clean interface that allows for easy flowing interaction between employees – interaction that is built on 140 char text messages. Yammer is mainly a microblogging tool and thus it lacks some features that other Enterprise 2.0 social platforms offer such as wikis and feeds. With over 40,000 companies worldwide signed to Yammer, one should not neglect the power of this tool. It’s worth checking out.

[read full article >>]

Filed under: App Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — Fadi @ 5:25 pm

August 24, 2009

A Glimpse at Web 3.0: 13 Semantic Web Applications Reviewed

Web 2.0 was all about getting people to connect with one another and establishing a presence for them on the web. Now that you have gotten the chance to get to know each other through the web, it’s time for our computers to socialize. The aim of the next iteration of the web, Web 3.0, is that computers will be able to understand the content and the information they contain. Rather than the data just being a document, it will be put within context helping the computer to relate pieces of information and present them to you accordingly. Therefore, you will no longer have to sift through a pile of search results, some of which are irrelevant, to get the information you want.
While most of the semantic technology is still pretty much underdevelopment and improvement, we at the Thoughpick blog came up with a list to whet your appetite on, in no particular order.

For all the denizens…

  1. Bing’s reference search – Bing has a lot of hidden gems, one of those is its use of semantic technology. For Wikipedia results, you can click on the “enhanced view” and browse the Wikipedia article with a nifty vertical menu from within Bing.
    Also some searches will provide you the option to “reference” search, which appears on the left pane.  By selecting it, you will be able to access relevant Wikipedia articles, image results and more. Try it out, some of the searches that trigger this are Facebook and squirrel monkey.
    bing

    Bing Search

  2. Wolfram Alpha – This is an interesting search engine. It recognizes your queries and will bring you relevant information regarding it. For instance, if you put “new york” you will get information about New York city’s population, weather, and location with a couple of other options at the top for disambiguation.
    [read full article >>]
Filed under: Future of the Web — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — M. Bamieh @ 7:07 pm

August 23, 2009

Twitter’s Block-Unblock Bug: Force Followers to Unfollow You…

During the past few months, we have noticed a couple of bugs/issues with the popular real-time micro-blogging platform, Twitter. You can learn how to post a tweet longer than 140 characters, or how Twitter has been losing users’ tweets during the past few weeks. Today, I noticed a new bug – I’m not the first to do so, but it’s still worth talking about - it’s the block/unblock bug.

There is a new Twitter “gambling” game called Bet Your Followers that exploits this bug. Their elevator pitch is that “Bet Your Followers is a Twitter game that lets you gamble your followers as currency“, and the block/unblock bug is one of the reasons this game was possible to create in the first place.  The part where they force users to follow you if you “win” still puzzles me, though – if it works of course.

What is it & how to do it?

Twitter's Block-Unblock Bug

Twitter's Block-Unblock Bug

I have a few annoying followers that I keep filtering out every time I try following back all those who follow me. So every time around, I have to keep an eye out for those users and make sure I do not follow them back by mistake. At the same time, I do not want to negatively affect these users’ accounts by blocking them indefinitely. At the end of the day, this maybe how Twitter determines and terminates spam accounts.  The Twitter issue I’m referring to as the Block/Unblock bug simply eliminates this problem by forcing this follower to unfollow you without the need to hack their account to unfollow yourself ;). This is done by simply blocking and unblocking the user.

To do it yourself, just do the following:

  1. Go to the Twitter profile page of the user that you’d like to force to unfollow you. This should be like http://twitter.com/annoyinguser
  2. Locate the “block @annoyinguser” link and hit it. Now neither you nor @annoyinguser follow one another.
  3. Unblock him now using the same link on his profile page – unless he’s a spammer of course!
  4. That’s it – his “following” count just dropped one!

Final thoughts…

It’s not the first time I hear about bugs, security issues and unexpected downtime of platforms around the Web. So, should we trust Twitter and Facebook (…etc) with our data and the protection of our privacy? Is it a mistake?

Filed under: Hacks and Workarounds — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Amer Kawar @ 2:38 pm

August 22, 2009

Is TrueTwit up to the Task of Reducing Twitter Spam? I don’t think so!

Spam on Twitter is an obvious and growing problem. I mean, many of the tweets in my stream are about “how to make money on Twitter” or some loser trying to sell an eBook. Don’t even get me started on auto-DMs – especially when I tried getting notifications on my mobile! I don’t want to check your Facebook profile, I am not interested in voting for whatever you want me to vote up and I do not want to know about what new porno movies you have on your disgusting website!

Yes, Twitter spam is getting on my nerves and might be a deal breaker unless Twitter does something about it.

TrueTwit.com attempts to solve the problem of Twitter spam - I don't think so!

TrueTwit.com: Nice interface but not a solution to Twitter's spam problem!

What’s spam on Twitter?

Hmm, I think you already have a bunch of examples pop into your mind. It’s not only the annoying list I mentioned above, but also Twitter bots, numerous fake Twitter accounts as well as spammers trying to use trending topics to gain exposure. I am sure there is more, but these are the examples off the top of my head right now.

There are many tools attempting to solve this issue, but recently, I ran into and tested out TrueTwit.com, and I was not too impressed by the logic behind it. Here is why…

[read full article >>]

Filed under: App Reviews — Tags: , , , , , , , — Amer Kawar @ 5:15 pm

August 21, 2009

Why Do People REALLY Tweet? The Psychology Behind Tweeting!

What are the real, closeted reasons behind the action of “tweeting”? Why would someone spend hours tweeting to complete strangers he/she has never met before and will probably never meet in person? What needs does tweeting fulfill? Do we really think of the psychology behind our tweeting habits?

Past findings…

Researchers and scientists always have some kind of explanation or another about any given subject or trend! Take Freud for example, he was able to relate every possible human action, dream and thought to some sexual problem or fetish!

In one of the articles I have recently came across, “I Tweet Therefore I Am”, the clinical psychologist Oliver James stated that “Twittering stems from a lack of identity”. He further goes on to say that “no one would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity“. What would you say to such accusations?

Sadly, at least to a certain extent, I would have to agree.

How I see it…

Amongst the many scientific theories I truly respect and even believe in, Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs shines through! Whenever I think of Twitter and the possible reasons why anyone would tweet, apart from the obvious sales or marketing efforts, I think of this simple yet highly valid hierarchy!

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Here is why…

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Twitter…

According to Maslow, everything we do is derived from and revolves around a certain need we are seeking to satisfy. In his pyramid of needs, Maslow demonstrates how “the lowest level of needs is associated with physiological needs, while the uppermost level is associated with self-actualization needs, particularly those related to identity and purpose. Deficiency needs must be met first. Once these are met, seeking to satisfy growth needs drives personal growth. The higher needs in this hierarchy only come into focus when the lower needs in the pyramid are met”.

How does Twitter fit into this equation?

So now that we have established our basic physiological needs such as guaranteeing food, shelter, water and so on and we were also able to cover our safety needs in terms of property, employment and family. We are still not satisfied! What can we do next? [read full article >>]

Filed under: Deductions and Realizations — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Beirut @ 5:41 pm
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