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Real-Time Data: You’re Doing It Wrong [VIDEO]

When it comes to predicting the future, Chartbeat’s CEO Tony Haile thinks you’re awful. At the Mashable Media Summit, Haile spoke about the importance of real-time data and what your business should be doing with that information.

“The more we think we know, the more expert we believe ourselves to be,” says Haile, “and the more likely we are to trust our judgment when we shouldn’t and get things wrong.”

SEE ALSO: The Return of Real-Time Social Environments

Haile talks about replacing complex future predictions with simpler ones for right now, and looking at data as an environment instead of a generated report.


The Mashable Media Summit in Pictures



Media Summit 2011



The Mashable Media Summit on Nov. 4 at the Times Center in New York City attracted professionals in digital, tech, advertising, sales, marketing, mobile and publishing from all over the world.

Click here to view this gallery.


Presenting Sponsor: AT&T


More About: data, mashable media summit, Media, real-time, Video

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from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2011/11/16/real-time-data-video/?utm_source=feedburner&ut...

20 TV Shows With the Most Social Media Buzz This Week [CHART]

Just by looking at the top television trends, you can tell awards season is upon us. The BET Hip Hop Awards and the Latin Grammys topped the cable and broadcast categories, respectively. The CMAs and MTV Europe Music Awards came in second and third in either category as well. We can’t wait to see how new Oscar host Billy Crystal affects the social TV rankings in 2012.

Also, we’d just like to say something else really quickly: Spongebob, really?

The data below is compliments of our friends at Trendrr, who measure specific TV show activity (mentions, likes, checkins) across Twitter, Facebook, GetGlue and Miso. To see daily rankings, check out Trendrr.TV


Image courtesy of iStockphoto, narvikk

More About: features, Social Media, social tv, social tv charts, Trendrr, TV

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from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2011/11/14/social-tv-chart-11-14/?utm_source=feedburner&u...

Twitter Can Predict Who’s Winning the GOP Presidential Race [STUDY]

Twitter Follower Spikes Predict Election Polls


Political candidates do better in the polls when they gain more Twitter followers, new research reveals. National polls happen all the time but it’s possible to predict when certain candidates will climb in the rankings based the rate they are followed.

Zach Green, CEO of Twitter election researcher 140elect, wrote in a blog post Friday that he anticipated this trend, but now has the stats to prove it.

“A lot of people were surprised [Newt] Gingrich is now in second place, but we’ve seen that coming since Sep. 7,” Green told Mashable. “Twitter indicates he’ll continue to pick up.”

Gingrich (visualized below) gained a slew of new followers when he announced his candidacy on May 11 and on Sept. 7 after an impressive GOP debate performance. Both events led to poll gains. The candidate’s Twitter momentum has steadily increased over the last two months, which Green predicts will lead to continued poll gains.

There are similar trends for the other candidates. Rick Perry’s Aug. 13 candidacy announcement led to his greatest spike in followers. He then rose in polls for the following two weeks. Green notes that although Perry is now talked about a great deal on Twitter, he is often mocked and isn’t gaining new followers at the same rate. It is more important to be followed than to be discussed, especially if the discussion is negative.

Michele Bachmann’s rate of new followers has been in decline since Aug. 15. She’s been falling in the polls ever since.

Mitt Romney’s three largest Twitter spikes — after his June 2 announcement, the Sep. 22 debate and the Oct. 11 debate — were all followed by growth in the polls. However, his recent Twitter decline preceded his Nov. 11 fall in polls.

Green expects to see current front-runner Herman Cain lose his lead following his sexual harassment allegations, which effected his likability and standing with women. Though he was on the rise following three of the GOP debates, Cain has lost his Twitter momentum. Green estimates Cain will drop to approximately 17% popularity in the polls.

Statistics analyst and data visualizer Lori Williams with Tableau Software combined the 140elect Twitter data with information from HuffPost Pollster, resulting in the above visualization.

What do you think of the findings? Are Twitter and polls a case of cause-and-effect or just coincidence?


BONUS: 10 Unforgettable On-Air Political Bloopers



Rick Perry: "Oops"


2012 presidential candidate Rick Perry drew a massive blank Wednesday night during CNBC’s “Your Money, Your Vote” GOP debate. On stage in Michigan, Perry attempted to rattle off three federal government agencies he would eliminate, but failed to remember number three: “Commerce, education and the … uh, um, what’s the third one there. Let’s see … ” The mental block lasted about 40 more seconds before Perry uttered, “Oops.”

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More About: campaign, Politics, primaries, study, Twitter

from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2011/11/14/twitter-predict-polls/?utm_source=feedburner&u...

The Future of Social TV [VIDEO]

Technology is changing entertainment for better and for worse, according to TV Guide’s general manager and executive vice president, Christy Tanner, who spoke at the Mashable Media Summit.

SEE ALSO: Social TV: How Content Producers Can Engage Their Audiences in New Ways

TV Guide launched Watchlist, a social feature that lets users search online to see where they can find their favorite shows on TV or on other connected devices. Tanner also talked about social media’s effects on the TV-watching experience.


The Mashable Media Summit in Pictures



Media Summit 2011



The Mashable Media Summit on Nov. 4 at the Times Center in New York City attracted professionals in digital, tech, advertising, sales, marketing, mobile and publishing from all over the world.

Click here to view this gallery.


Presenting Sponsor: AT&T


More About: features, mashable media summit, Media, social tv, television, trending, Video

For more Entertainment coverage:

from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2011/11/14/social-tv-media-summit-video/?utm_source=feedb...

Tincta Is a Free, Fully-Featured Programming Text Editor [Mac Downloads]

Mac OS X: Our favorite programming text editor for Mac costs $40, so we're always excited when a good and free option comes along. Tincta is just that, offering several great developer-friendly features like code syntax highlighting, line numbering, autocomplete brackets, and much more. More »


from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/5859325/tincta-is-a-free-fully+featured-programming-tex...

Laser Ball Is Life of the Party, Makes Regular Tennis Balls Feel Inferior


LeoneLabs on Instructables posted this fantastic how-to on adding 14 lasers to a regular tennis ball to make a Laser Ball. Why? He says that it’s fun to build, it can be done in an afternoon, and “lasers are cool.” The lasers are driven by a Teensy USB Development Board, which is stuffed inside the ball and controlled from outside with an infrared remote control. The Instructable shows you how to make your own in painstaking detail, but you can also follow the build step-by-step in this fun video. [Thanks, Luis!]

from MAKE http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/11/laser-ball-is-life-of-the-party-make...

Reporters Use Twitter to Promote, Not Report [STUDY]


News organizations use Twitter mostly to promote their own stories. Sharing of other content and engagement with readers is “rare,” according to a new study.

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and The George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs collaborated on a report that examined 3,600 tweets from 13 news organizations for the week of Feb. 14-20. The analysis found that 93% of the tweets contained links to the organization’s own site. Only 6% of the tweets contained no link, only 1% linked to another news site and another 1% linked to non-news content.

While Twitter is often seen as a medium for leveling the walls between journalists and their readers, the report found it’s primarily used as a tool for publicizing stories. Only 2% of the tweets analyzed during the period were designed to cull information from readers. Fox News was a notable exception — 21% of its tweets asked for readers’ input.

The same held true for journalists who manned their own Twitter accounts: Just 3% used their personal Twitter feeds to solicit information from readers.

The researchers likened the news organizations’ use of Twitter to the early days of the web: “Initially, news organizations, worried about losing audience, rarely linked to content outside their own web domain,” the authors wrote. “Now, the idea is that being a service — of providing users with what they are looking for even if it comes from someone else — carries more weight. It bears watching whether Twitter use for mainstream news organizations evolves in this same way.”

The report also showed strong growth for Twitter from November 2010 until June 2011. During that time, the percentage of “online Americans” using the micro-blogging platform rose from 8% to 13%, a growth of 63%.


BONUS: 10 Historic Tweets That Captivated the World


The Hudson Plane Landing


When a commercial flight was forced to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River, Twitter -- with the help of image service Twitpic -- told the story.

Click here to view this gallery.

Image courtesy of Flickr, west.m

More About: Media, Social Media, trending, Twitter

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from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2011/11/14/twitter-engagement-news-rare/?utm_source=feedb...

Avoid Making the First Concession When Bargaining to Come Out Ahead in the End [Negotiation]

Negotiating and haggling are difficult skills to learn, but they're valuable in almost every situation. One negotiating tactic to keep in mind is to avoid making the first concession. When you do, you increase the chances you'll make most of them over the course of the conversation. Make your concessions small, make them slowly, and make your opponent earn every one. More »


from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/5859186/avoid-making-the-first-concession-when-bargaini...

Sundance Channel Premieres Show on Twitter


The Sundance Channel is premiering the new season of its returning show Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys on Twitter.

The network is offering the first episode to users via a TwitVid embed beginning today. The show will make its traditional broadcast premiere on Thursday.

This is the first time that Twitter has been used as a television distribution platform. In March, Paramount released the first trailer for its summer thriller Super 8 on Twitter.

Just as networks frequently offer early episodes of new TV shows using iTunes or the web, releasing a show using Twitter is as much about building word-of-mouth interest and increasing exposure as it is a pure promotional exercise.

For a show like Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys, this tactic is also about leveraging the show’s strengths. It has already amassed a big social following — with more than 200,000 fans on Facebook.

Sarah Barnett, general manager and EVP at Sundance Channel, told us, “We want the show to get exposure to as many people as possible. Increasingly our viewers turn to social media to get their information and to discover new shows.”

For Twitter, this sort of experiment gives the platform more credibility as a media platform, rather than just a messaging system. Twitter’s Adam Bain told us, “The Sundance Channel is taking a savvy approach to sharing exclusive content like this on Twitter. It’s a great way to reward their followers and drive word of mouth about the series, and is a strategy that other networks can emulate.”

The Sundance Channel will also be leveraging second screen experiences with the broadcast version of Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys. Starting this Thursday, viewers can access a second screen experience app using Facebook or SundanceChannel.com. This experience is akin to many other tablet-based second screen apps in that it uses audio-syncing from the program to display pertinent information about the show. Sundance worked with ClipSync on the app, which will include real-time chat, polls, quizzes and other information abut the show.

What do you think about networks using Twitter as a way to promote and distribute shows? Let us know in the comments.

More About: girls who like boys who like boys, social tv, sundance channel, Twitter

For more Entertainment coverage:

from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2011/11/14/twitter-tv-show-premiere/?utm_source=feedburne...