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That crash you heard today was the real-time data door slamming shut on Facebook, Microsoft, etc. Say what you might about Twitter's slowing growth, but mainst

by rrggrr 12y ago

That crash you heard today was the real-time data door slamming shut on Facebook, Microsoft, etc. Say what you might about Twitter's slowing growth, but mainstream news cycles and breaking news are increasingly preceded by and/or quote tweets. Where are Google's competitors going to turn to deliver similar real time results? PR Newswire? Associated Press? Reuters? Huge win for Google who needed this and big oversight on the part of Facebook IMHO.

austenallred 12y ago
I talk with the Google News Labs team on occasion (it's a brand new team, which should tell you something), and I can safely say there's a race going on in real time news (My company is building a real-time crowdsourced newsroom - https://grasswire.com https://grasswire.com). My guess is there will be some major acquisitions taking place in the real-time news space this year. Facebook, Microsoft and Google are all realizing it's going to be a landgrab. If nothing else it's fun and exciting.
- sparkzilla 12y ago
  >it's a brand new team, which should tell you something What does that tell you? I'm not sure if it's good or bad. Having seen a few attempts at crowdsourced newsrooms (infobitt, Inside.com, the earlier version of Grasswire) I don't see how they compete with Twitter. At best they filter Twitter and are in competition with Google News. That said, I'm also in that space with Newslines a crowdsourced news archive (http://newslines.org http://newslines.org) so the idea of a hot news acquisition market is all to the good.
  - austenallred 12y ago
    It tells you he space is heating up, and companies are finding breaking news data valuable. And to be clear: We don't compete with Twitter - we're a layer of data on top of the raw twitter/youtube/etc data that makes them more valuable. Infobitt and Inside.com are vaguely in the breaking news space, but that's about as far as the similarities go.
    - sillysaurus3 12y ago
      It tells you he space is heating up, and companies are finding breaking news data valuable. I don't understand how that conclusion follows. There were many teams created to deliver pet food at one point, along with many other types of activities that are no longer relevant. Popularity doesn't seem to be a good proxy for long-term relevance. If it were, an investor's job would be easy. The reason I'm skeptical breaking news is valuable is because the value of information itself is declining over time. The more accessible information becomes, the less one can charge for it. Newspapers were valuable because they controlled a channel, not (only) because they delivered information. The current models will have to follow suit, otherwise they won't be profitable. And an information channel controlled by one or two entities is a pretty grim prospect.
      - austenallred 12y ago
        The fact there's a Google News Labs team is only one of the many points I have to conclude that the space is heating up, so maybe that's not fair. But it's definitely (almost tangibly) different than it was even a six months ago. The level of interest in the space compared to last year is seriously something along the lines of 10x. Two years ago nobody cared. As far as newspapers go, you're right - the important thing is controlling the channel. Google, FB, and Twitter all want to control that channel, but they need the data in order to do so. Reliable, verified breaking news data is much harder to come by than one would think, especially at scale.
        sillysaurus3 12y ago
        That's very interesting. What are some of the problems with getting reliable news data at scale? And what's the value of getting it? Specifically, how will you make money? Sorry for the prying questions. I'm not dismissing. Just the opposite: I'm quite interested to see whether it could work.
        austenallred 12y ago
        Knowing (or rather finding) content that is important/reliable (signal:noise ratio), and knowing what content is accurate.
- dchuk 12y ago
  FYI, your landing page still references January as when something new is coming.
  - austenallred 12y ago
    Ya, I'm actually updating that as we speak. We let in the first groups of users in January, and I've been so focused on the product I almost forgot about the landing page. Thanks!
- DonHopkins 12y ago
  What ever happened to Technorati?
fpgeek 12y ago
I don't follow your logic. I didn't see anything in the story that indicated that the deal was exclusive. Twitter certainly wouldn't want it to be - they're trying to increase reach. In theory, I can see how Google might want the advantage of an exclusive data source. However, in practice I suspect Google thinks they can get enough of an advantage from using Twitter's firehose better than their competitors do, especially since paying extra to get Twitter to lock out competitors would invite even more antitrust scrutiny. With the Google/Twitter firehose deal, Google's competitors have lost a potential advantage, but that doesn't mean they've picked up a corresponding disadvantage.
beedogs 12y ago
> big oversight on the part of Facebook IMHO. Status updates != tweets For one thing, most status updates aren't public. It would be absolutely horrifying if they suddenly became so, just to be fed into a search engine.
- thomasfoster96 12y ago
  Facebook is certainly testing a public status updates firehose: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/public_feed/ https://developers.facebook.com/docs/public_feed/
- cryptoz 12y ago
  That depends on who you are. For a very important segment of users, Status Updates == Tweets. Additionally, from the perspective of their followers, it would not be horrifying if those suddenly became more public. In fact, for certain users, that may be preferred. Social networks are weird to talk about on forums online since everyone has such personal experiences with them. I think that this taints our perspective more than usual, and makes it more difficult to properly assess their real value. Not to take sides over FB vs TWTR. But, your "absolutely horrifying" could very well be everyone else's "absolute best case".
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    As a person who has his status updates default to public on purpose, I agree. And yes, it's hard to talk about social networks because there's a very vocal group here insisting that using Facebook = being dumb and/or making selfies and/or being terribly security-unconsciosus. Facebook ecosystem has its problem, but it's also an excellent communication tool.
jussij 12y ago
> but mainstream news cycles and breaking news are increasingly preceded by and/or quote tweets. That is nothing more than an indication main stream news is no longer reporting the news, but rather quoting gossip, which I don't disagree is the case. News organizations around the world are facing cost pressures, so rather than pay a specialist to investigate and write articles, it's much cheaper to pay a lesser skilled worker to troll Twitter and copy and paste a few tweets. But those news organizations are on a race to the bottom. If people aren't prepared to pay for well research, well written, hard hitting journalistic articles, they are certainly not going to pay for a few copied tweets.
smackfu 12y ago
Facebook has a real-time feed of which tweets are being shared on Facebook. That seems like enough signal to capture major happenings.

by rrggrr 12y ago

austenallred 12y ago

I talk with the Google News Labs team on occasion (it's a brand new team, which should tell you something), and I can safely say there's a race going on in real time news (My company is building a real-time crowdsourced newsroom - https://grasswire.com https://grasswire.com). My guess is there will be some major acquisitions taking place in the real-time news space this year. Facebook, Microsoft and Google are all realizing it's going to be a landgrab. If nothing else it's fun and exciting.

sparkzilla 12y ago
>it's a brand new team, which should tell you something What does that tell you? I'm not sure if it's good or bad. Having seen a few attempts at crowdsourced newsrooms (infobitt, Inside.com, the earlier version of Grasswire) I don't see how they compete with Twitter. At best they filter Twitter and are in competition with Google News. That said, I'm also in that space with Newslines a crowdsourced news archive (http://newslines.org http://newslines.org) so the idea of a hot news acquisition market is all to the good.
- austenallred 12y ago
  It tells you he space is heating up, and companies are finding breaking news data valuable. And to be clear: We don't compete with Twitter - we're a layer of data on top of the raw twitter/youtube/etc data that makes them more valuable. Infobitt and Inside.com are vaguely in the breaking news space, but that's about as far as the similarities go.
  - sillysaurus3 12y ago
    It tells you he space is heating up, and companies are finding breaking news data valuable. I don't understand how that conclusion follows. There were many teams created to deliver pet food at one point, along with many other types of activities that are no longer relevant. Popularity doesn't seem to be a good proxy for long-term relevance. If it were, an investor's job would be easy. The reason I'm skeptical breaking news is valuable is because the value of information itself is declining over time. The more accessible information becomes, the less one can charge for it. Newspapers were valuable because they controlled a channel, not (only) because they delivered information. The current models will have to follow suit, otherwise they won't be profitable. And an information channel controlled by one or two entities is a pretty grim prospect.
    - austenallred 12y ago
      The fact there's a Google News Labs team is only one of the many points I have to conclude that the space is heating up, so maybe that's not fair. But it's definitely (almost tangibly) different than it was even a six months ago. The level of interest in the space compared to last year is seriously something along the lines of 10x. Two years ago nobody cared. As far as newspapers go, you're right - the important thing is controlling the channel. Google, FB, and Twitter all want to control that channel, but they need the data in order to do so. Reliable, verified breaking news data is much harder to come by than one would think, especially at scale.
      - sillysaurus3 12y ago
        That's very interesting. What are some of the problems with getting reliable news data at scale? And what's the value of getting it? Specifically, how will you make money? Sorry for the prying questions. I'm not dismissing. Just the opposite: I'm quite interested to see whether it could work.
        austenallred 12y ago
        Knowing (or rather finding) content that is important/reliable (signal:noise ratio), and knowing what content is accurate.
dchuk 12y ago
FYI, your landing page still references January as when something new is coming.
- austenallred 12y ago
  Ya, I'm actually updating that as we speak. We let in the first groups of users in January, and I've been so focused on the product I almost forgot about the landing page. Thanks!
DonHopkins 12y ago
What ever happened to Technorati?

fpgeek 12y ago

I don't follow your logic. I didn't see anything in the story that indicated that the deal was exclusive. Twitter certainly wouldn't want it to be - they're trying to increase reach. In theory, I can see how Google might want the advantage of an exclusive data source. However, in practice I suspect Google thinks they can get enough of an advantage from using Twitter's firehose better than their competitors do, especially since paying extra to get Twitter to lock out competitors would invite even more antitrust scrutiny. With the Google/Twitter firehose deal, Google's competitors have lost a potential advantage, but that doesn't mean they've picked up a corresponding disadvantage.

beedogs 12y ago

> big oversight on the part of Facebook IMHO. Status updates != tweets For one thing, most status updates aren't public. It would be absolutely horrifying if they suddenly became so, just to be fed into a search engine.

thomasfoster96 12y ago
Facebook is certainly testing a public status updates firehose: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/public_feed/ https://developers.facebook.com/docs/public_feed/
cryptoz 12y ago
That depends on who you are. For a very important segment of users, Status Updates == Tweets. Additionally, from the perspective of their followers, it would not be horrifying if those suddenly became more public. In fact, for certain users, that may be preferred. Social networks are weird to talk about on forums online since everyone has such personal experiences with them. I think that this taints our perspective more than usual, and makes it more difficult to properly assess their real value. Not to take sides over FB vs TWTR. But, your "absolutely horrifying" could very well be everyone else's "absolute best case".
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  As a person who has his status updates default to public on purpose, I agree. And yes, it's hard to talk about social networks because there's a very vocal group here insisting that using Facebook = being dumb and/or making selfies and/or being terribly security-unconsciosus. Facebook ecosystem has its problem, but it's also an excellent communication tool.

jussij 12y ago

> but mainstream news cycles and breaking news are increasingly preceded by and/or quote tweets. That is nothing more than an indication main stream news is no longer reporting the news, but rather quoting gossip, which I don't disagree is the case. News organizations around the world are facing cost pressures, so rather than pay a specialist to investigate and write articles, it's much cheaper to pay a lesser skilled worker to troll Twitter and copy and paste a few tweets. But those news organizations are on a race to the bottom. If people aren't prepared to pay for well research, well written, hard hitting journalistic articles, they are certainly not going to pay for a few copied tweets.

smackfu 12y ago

Facebook has a real-time feed of which tweets are being shared on Facebook. That seems like enough signal to capture major happenings.