Author: Josh Wolford

YouTube has just announced that Sesame Street is the first non-profit to hit 1 billion views on their YouTube channel.

In honor of this milestone the Count has made a video, well, counting the views. Check it out:

The question of how Facebook decides how many people see the content that you post has been a pretty volatile topic over the last few months. Basically, Facebook has been accused to limiting the reach of people and page’s normal posts in order to force them into using Promoted Posts, thus generating revenue for Facebook. Facebook adamantly denies all of this. But more on that later.

In the aforementioned climate, just days after they released a long defense of their ranking algorithms and practices, Facebook has published a new study on “estimating audience size” on the site.

Spolier alert: Facebook says that people vastly underestimate how many people see their posts.

Facebook asked 1,131 users a simple question: How many of your friends do you think actually saw this (a single, specific) post?

Here are the results:

“By and large, people underestimated the size of their audience. When we asked users how many friends saw a particular post, the median user guessed 20 friends, while the actual median was 78.”

For the more visually oriented, Facebook has provided some graphical support. Every dot under the dotted line represents a user who underestimated the reach of their post:

Overall, Facebook says that the median user reaches 60% of their friends over the course of a month.

Facebook expanded their research and looked at 220,000 users and the connection between audience (how many saw the post) and both total number of friends and number of comments on the post. Spoiler alert: things vary quite a bit and neither is a very good predictor of eventual reach of any given post.

What the data does do is show that as you gain more friends, the percentage of them who will see your posts decreases. But, the high end of the audience reach is probably a bit higher than you thought.

Facebook has said in the past that overall, any post will be seen by somewhere around 16% of a user’s friends. This new data shows that the variations are pretty wild. For instance, a person with 400 friends can possibly have a reach of just a couple of percent, all the way up to nearly 40%.

Of course, plenty of things go into who sees your posts on Facebook. For instance: number of friends, what time of day you post it, how many shares it gets, competition in friends’ news feeds and yes, Facebook’s system of ranking algorithms that determine much of this.

After once again being accused of decreasing the visibility of users’ posts in order to promote their Promoted Posts product, Facebook defended themselves earlier this week.

“There have been recent claims suggesting that our News Feed algorithm suppresses organic distribution of posts in favor of paid posts in order to increase our revenue. This is not true,” they said.

Still, page owners continue to report that they are seeing less reach on their posts than they used to, and many blame Facebook for shady practices.

This new research from Facebook suggests that people have a tendency to underestimate the reach of their posts, and that using likes and comments on a post to judge how many people actually saw it is unreliable at best.

What an interesting time to publish such a message. Coincidence? I think not.

Amazon today announced a new kids show in development from Amazon Studios. Prime Instant Video has greenlit the pilot for interactive math-based puzzle show Sara Solves It.

Here’s Amazon’s official synopsis of the show:

Viewers follow brother and sister duo Sara and Sam on absorbing and relatable mysteries that spring from the questions young children encounter in their daily lives. Each mystery is an interactive, math-based puzzle that the home viewer can solve along with the characters.

Sara Solves It is created by Carol Greenwald, the Emmy award-winner who produced shows like Curious George and Arthur and Angela Santomero, who worked as a writer and producer on Blue’s Clues.

Amazon says that this makes 12 different pilots currently being produced by Amazon Studios. Whenever those shows come to fruition, Amazon says that they will stream them on Prime Instant Video for free.

Amazon is not just working on original series, but has also been busy snatching up content – much of it as exclusives. Last month, they bascially stole the popular PBS series Downton Abbey from Netflix and Hulu, and they also announced that they will be the exclusive online home of FX’s Justified and the upcoming CBS drama Under the Dome.

Oh, ans speaking of original kids shows. Netflix will debut their first original children’s series in December.

It’s been exactly one year since Google merged the Android Market, Google Music, and the Google eBookstore into a singular product called Google Play. So, happy first birthday, Google Play!

And for a week, Google is offering some free gifts to Play users in celebration.

“It was just a year ago today that we launched this amazing shop on the interwebs to offer the best in digital content. Since the best parties are the ones that send you home with a present, today we celebrate our birthday with a festive goodie bag full of gifts. Don’t delay in picking up these limited-time offers. Continue the celebration all week with even more special deals on music, movies, books, magazines and TV along with exclusive gaming gifts. It’s been an incredible first year and we look forward to sharing the gift of digital diversions for many more to come,” says the Google Play team.

Among the gifts for U.S. users (things should vary a bit by country) is free music from LCD Soundsystem and The Velvet Underground, the pilot of Breaking Bad, and offers from Fancy, Hotels.com app, and Gyft.

To check out the full list of offers, check out the birthday page.

On Thursday, Facebook will hold a big event to unveil a “new look for the news feed.” Facebook’s news feed, the core part of the site’s experience, last received a major change in 2011.

According to a report at TechCrunch, Facebook will debut new content-specific news feeds, as well as tweak image sizes and add image-based ads.

“Multiple sources” confirm that Facebook is adding a few new ways to sort posts from your friends in your news feed. The first one of these new categories is a photo-only news feed that will take from both Facebook photos and Instagram photos. This will be the first major Instagram/Facebook integration since the photo-filtering app was purchased by Facebook last year.

Another content feed that will launch is for music, and will feature info from Spotify, Rdio, and others. You will also find info on nearby concerts, new albums, and a consolidation of all the posts from artist’s pages that you like. It’s possible that there could eventually be more of theses content-specific feeds for things like videos or apps.

Alongside the new photo feed comes a bigger focus on images in general – and yes that means within ads too. Facebook will reportedly unveil larger images throughout the news feed – in both organic posts from friends and in advertisements.

These changes will first affect the desktop news feed, and could later expand to mobile.

As always, we’ll be covering the event on Thursday. Check back with us to see what happens during the big reveal.

No, the internet couldn’t just leave it alone. Two minutes of goats yelling like humans wasn’t enough. Inserting a screaming goat into that one Taylor Swift song, and subsequently every other song under the sun also wasn’t enough.

Now, we have humans yelling like goats yelling like humans.

God, what is my life?

[oldepayphone]

A new lawsuit filed by a Facebook shareholder claims that the company knew about downward trends in revenue tied to increased user defection to mobile from desktop use.

Gaye Jones says that such information was shared with key investors.

“The defendants were unjustly enriched because they realized enormous profits and financial benefits from the IPO, despite knowing that reduced revenue and earnings forecasts for the company had not been publicly disclosed to investors,” says the lawsuit.

This is definitely not the first time that a lawsuit has been filed with a nearly identical claim.

Soon after Facebook’s stock price began to plummet, a flood of lawsuits poured in accusing Facebook of concealing severe reductions in revenue growth due to the increase in mobile users and Facebook’s perceived inability to monetize mobile.

So, new lawsuit, similar complaint.

Jones’ new lawsuit is a derivative suit, which means that the investor “seeks to step into the shoes of the company and any money recovered from Zuckerberg and others would be paid to Facebook, not shareholders.”

Four previous derivative suits have been dismissed after a U.S. District Judge ruled that the shareholders did not own stock when Facebook allegedly deceived them before the IPO. Plus, he said that Facebook indeed “repeatedly made express and extensive warnings” about the trend toward mobile. In this case, Jones did in fact own Facebook stock since February 2012, months before the IPO filing in May.

Back in January, Facebook stock rode an upward trend and topped $30 for the first time in nearly six months. As of right now, the price sits at just over $27.50.

[Reuters]

Google has added another metric to its Transparency Report so users can identify one more manner in which the government is requesting their information.

Starting today, Google is now including data about National Security Letters on its U.S. Transparency Report.

National Security Letters (NSL) are a form of a demand letter that are used by the U.S. Government (mostly the FBI) to extract information from an organization in the name of national security. The kind of info requested in NSLs includes stuff like transactions, phone numbers, and email addresses.

In the period following 9/11, the FBI’s use of National Security Letters dramatically increased with the implementation of the Patriot Act.

The thing about NSLs is that they also come complete with a gag order (most of the time), so the companies who received the letter can’t discuss it with the users whose information has been requested. For the Transparency Report, Google has worked with the FBI to loosen this secrecy – ever so slightly.

The first thing that you’ll notice when looking at the new NSL stats is that they are unspecific – to a ridiculous degree. For instance, Google is only reporting the number of NSLs received in batches of 1,000. That means that every year on record (2009-present) has logged between 0 and 999 NSLs.

“You’ll notice that we’re reporting numerical ranges rather than exact numbers. This is to address concerns raised by the FBI, Justice Department and other agencies that releasing exact numbers might reveal information about investigations. We plan to update these figures annually,” says Google.

I guess something is better than nothing. Still, it’s a good step forward for the Google Transparency Report.

Peanut butter & jelly, on a burger. Calling your ex-girlfriend at 3am “just to talk.” Mashing up Nine Inch Nails’ “Head Like a Hole” and Carly Rae Jespen’s “Call Me Maybe.”

One of these three things is a bad idea, and the other two are great ideas. One of the ones that is a great idea actually sounds like a terrible idea. That’s the one that you’re about to experience and most likely love. Or at least tolerate it – which is a miracle in its own way.

Seriously, I’m not kidding. It’s pretty good.

[pomDeter via Gawker]

We’re learning more and more about how Facebook plans to promote their new Gifts program. Last week, we saw that Facebook was beginning to suggest that you give gifts when friends post celebratory statuses.

Facebook has been suggesting that you give gifts to your friends on their birthdays and when they get engaged or married for some time. That’s not what we’re talking about here. Facebook has just begun to add a “give gift” button inside statuses that feature some sort of keyword trigger. For instance, we’ve spotted the new feature inside statuses about new babies, new jobs, and more.

Now, it looks like Facebook is really hammering the gift idea home by suggesting you give gifts to your friends that are simply in the middle of a big life event, even inside statuses that have nothing to do with said life event.

Let me explain:

My friend just had a baby. Yesterday (congrats!). As expected with Facebook’s new feature, a “give a gift” button appeared on one of her statuses last night. It said something about the baby and quoted his measurements. It’s clear that those keywords tipped Facebook to suggest that I give them a gift in celebration.

But today, I noticed that another one of her statuses had the “give a gift” prompt inside of it. This status has absolutely nothing to do with the baby or any other big life event, for that matter. See?

So, it appears that Facebook is giving people who announce big life events some sort of blanket congratulatory period. And inside that period, even statuses that don’t actually reference the life event will still come equipped with the suggestion that their pals give them a gift.

Clever move, Facebook.

If I had a toddler, I would hope that I would have the courage to troll it this hard.

[ToddleTale]

According to a report from Fortune that cites multiple sources inside both Google and the record industry, YouTube is set to launch its own subscription music service later this year in tandem with the Google Play subscription service that we’ve been hearing about.

The service would allow anyone to listen to music for free, but would include a subscription element that would unlock bonus features and of course, get rid of the ads that would be needed to support the free version.

Recent reports suggested that Google was in fact working on a subscription music service that would take on Spotify, Pandora, and others. A Bloomberg report cited multiple sources who said that negotiations were already underway with major record labels to launch a streaming service in the third quarter.

Apparently, the YouTube effort will see some overlap with the Google-branded effort.

YouTube had this somewhat revealing comment on the report:

While we don’t comment on rumor or speculation, there are some content creators that think they would benefit from a subscription revenue stream in addition to ads, so we’re looking at that.

Basically, we’re not going to confirm that, but a bunch of people think it would be a good idea.

Google Maps for iOS has just received its first major update since launching back in December. Today’s update brings a couple of new features that will make it easier for users to find people and places inside the app.

Version 1.1 now allows you to search you Google contacts inside the app. When you sign in, you’ll be able to see all of your friends’ saved addresses – even if they aren’t stored on your device.

The update also adds category searches for locations, meaning that you can browse local bars, restaurants, etc. within the app.

Here’s the full list of what’s new in v1.1:

• Search your Google Contacts; sign in to have your saved addresses show up when you search for friends and family by name.
• Quickly search for local places by selecting popular categories such as restaurants, bars, cafes, gas stations, etc.
• Choose between Kilometers or Miles for your preferred distance units.

Google finally launched a native iOS maps app back in December after Apple booted it from iOS 6. Considering how ill-received Apple Maps was, it was no surprise that Google Maps for iOS took off, topping 10 million downloads in just two days.

You can snag the update right now on iTunes.

If you’re on Twitter, you know that users there have some pretty strong opinions on what’s currently going on in the world. But a new study from Pew calls into question the reliability of Twitter as a true gauge for public sentiment.

In the study, Pew looked at eight different major news events over the past year. They compared each event in terms of positive and negative opinions – on one side stemming from public opinion polls and on the other side Twitter reaction. What they found was that most of the time, the sentiment expressed by Twitter users didn’t align with the sentiment expressed by Americans in national polls.

Take for instance the times in which Twitter reaction was much more “liberal” than public opinion polls showed. When President Obama was reelected, 52% of those asked in public opinion polls were “happy” about it, as opposed to 45% that were “unhappy.” But on Twitter, his reelection generated 77% positive feedback.

And in February 2012, when the California gay-marriage ban was deemed unconstitutional, only 8% of Twitter users had a negative reaction to it. Public opinion polls showed that 44% did.

Twitter doesn’t always lean more liberal, however. Take for instance Obama’s recent inaugural speech. Although 48% of the public opinion poll respondents reacted positively toward it, only 13% of Twitter users did.

In only two of the eight cases studied did public opinion match well with Twitter sentiment.

But in general, Twitter users tend to lean more Democratic and younger.

Twitter users are not representative of the public. Most notably, Twitter users are considerably younger than the general public and more likely to be Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party. In the 2012 news consumption survey, half (50%) of adults who said they posted news on Twitter were younger than 30, compared with 23% of all adults. And 57% of those who posted news on Twitter were either Democrats or leaned Democratic, compared with 46% of the general public.

One final thought from Pew:

“At times the Twitter conversation is more liberal than survey responses, while at other times it is more conservative. Often it is the overall negativity that stands out.”

So we can’t always count on Twitter to accurately depict the views of all Americans. But one thing we can count on is that, more often than not, Twitter users are going to give you the cynical side of things.

“Could you make me nachos? / Well, you’re in a bad mood / I got cramps.”

And with that little back and forth begins the Amazing Spider-Man saga you didn’t see in theaters.

[BadLipReading]

In May of 2012, Facebook unveiled a brand new feature for page owners. It was called “Promoted Posts,” and it allowed admins to pay a small to medium fee (depending on the follower base) in order to hoist their posts to a more prominent placement in users’ news feeds. Basically, it allowed page owners to make sure their most important posts were seen by more people, and provided a great revenue opportunity for Facebook.

A few months later, Facebook extended the Promoted Posts functionality to individual users. By October, anyone with an account could pay to promote their witty status, cool new article, or cute new baby photo.

Ok, cool. So far so good. You may think that the entire Promoted Posts concept is wacky, but hey, to each his own. As a page owner, you could simply choose not to participate in Promoted Posts and go about your business as usual – simply posting away.

As a page owner, have you seen your average engagement decrease since the launch of Promoted Posts? Have you used Promoted Posts? Let us know in the comments.

Of course, that zen-like mentality could quickly disappear if, let’s say, Facebook was rigging the game. And that’s exactly what some page owners began accusing Facebook of late last year: one giant bait-and-switch.

The “Bait-and-Switch”

Reports emerged that Facebook was deliberately decreasing the reach of regular, non-promoted posts in order to force people into paying for the Promoted Post product. In fact, that was the whole point of unveiling the feature – to cast un-promoted posts into oblivion so that people would see such a small return (likes, comments, and shares) that they would have no choice but to pay to promote.

Most of the claims hinged on the simple observation by the accusers that posts published on their Facebook pages were not driving the traffic that they used to – which naturally meant that not as many people were seeing the posts in their news feeds. How could my likes be increasing, but my traffic from Facebook be decreasing?

The common conclusion from people like Richard Metzger at Dangerous Times and even popular Facebook celebrities like George Takei (who hopped on the bandwagon) was that Facebook was turning down the volume on their regular posts.

Although the accusation gained plenty of steam inside the tech media circles, Facebook maintained its innocence in the matter. The company said, point blank, that they did not decrease the visibility of page posts in order to force people into buying Promoted Posts.

And there was some pretty compelling evidence to support Facebook’s innocence. Facebook has admitted that only around 16% or so of a page’s followers even see their posts in the news feed. It’s always been like this. Facebook has never been able to show 100% of followers 100% of posts from pages and people they subscribe to. There’s simply too much competition for real estate in the news feed. As users begin to friend more and more people and like more and more pages, their overall engagement with each individual person and page is going naturally decrease.

Josh Constine over at TechCrunch suggested that a move that Facebook made to fight spam had actually been one of the root causes of the so-called “visibility decreases” that many page owners were reporting.

“We made a relatively large ranking change in September that was designed to reduce spam complaints from users. We used [spam] reports at an aggregate level to find Pages or apps generating a lot of reports [and decrease their reach]. We’ve also added personalized attempts to reduce presence of posts you’re likely to complain about,” said Facebook.

In short, the less engaging your posts were, the less likely they were to show up in your followers’ news feeds.

And the push to control spammy posts is simply one news feed algorithm tweak that Facebook made – and they make a bunch, all the time. Facebook is constantly changing the way its algorithms decide what shows up in whose news feed. The bottom line, according to those who believed Facebook, was that sure, your post reach could be fluctuating (or even simply decreasing), but it’s not because Facebook is pulling a bait-and-switch with Promoted Posts.

Still, page owners continued to complain that for them, personally, they were seeing less return from their posts. Sure, you can throw graphs and excuses at the issue, but you can’t explain that the decrease in visibility coincided with the dawn of Promoted Posts. Although Facebook has been adamant that they are not pulling this “bait-and-switch,” many page owners and public figures with many subscribers have remained unconvinced.

New Accusations

Fast forward to a couple of days ago and to an article by Nick Bilton in the the New York Times’ “Bits” tech blog. It begins, “something is puzzling on Facebook.”

What it asserts is the same argument that we discussed above: Facebook is screwing you. Hard.

His story picks up soon after Facebook first allowed users to “subscribe” to public figures back in 2011. At that point, he had about 25,000 subscribers and his average article post on Facebook would receive a few hundred likes and at least a few dozen shares (535 likes and 53 shares or 323 likes and 88 shares, numbers like that).

Today, he has over 400,000 subscribers. If you think that means the number of likes and shares per post will have increased 16-fold, you’re wrong.

“From the four columns I shared in January, I have averaged 30 likes and two shares a post. Some attract as few as 11 likes. Photo interaction has plummeted, too. A year ago, pictures would receive thousands of likes each; now, they average 100. I checked the feeds of other tech bloggers, including MG Siegler of TechCrunch and reporters from The New York Times, and the same drop has occurred,” says Bilton.

So, he tested out a Promoted Post. After paying $7 to get one of his article posts promoted by Facebook, he says that he saw a 1,000% increase in interaction in a few hours.

“It seems as if Facebook is not only promoting my links on news feeds when I pay for them, but also possibly suppressing the ones I do not pay for,” he concludes.

Fact Check

Although Facebook has been denying this claim for months and months, this week was the first time that they published a lengthy “fact check” post on the topic.

In it, Facebook unequivocally states that it’s a false allegation.

“There have been recent claims suggesting that our News Feed algorithm suppresses organic distribution of posts in favor of paid posts in order to increase our revenue. This is not true.”

Facebook says that in reality, engagement has increased among people who allow subscribers – 34%, in fact. That means likes, comments, and shares.

“News Feed shows the most relevant stories from your friends, people you follow and Pages you are connected to. In fact, the News Feed algorithm is separate from the advertising algorithm in that we don’t replace the most engaging posts in News Feed with sponsored ones,” says Facebook.

The “fact check” post seems to stem directly from and come as a pointed rebuttal to Bilton’s NYT article. Twice, Facebook makes a point to say that you can’t just compare anecdotal evidence from separate posts that occurred years apart.

The argument here is based on a few anecdotes of one post from one year to a totally different post from another year.This is an apples-to-oranges comparison; you can’t compare engagement rates on two different posts year over year.

For early adopters of Follow, we do see instances where their follower numbers have gone up but their engagement has gone down from a year ago. When we first launched Follow, the press coverage combined with our marketing efforts drove large adoption. A lot of users started following public figures who had turned on Follow. Over time, some of those users engaged less with those figures, and so we started showing fewer stories from those figures to users who didn’t engage as much with their stories. The News Feed changes we made in the fall to focus on higher quality stories may have also decreased the distribution for less engaging stories from public figures.

Read: that aforementioned spam adjustment. Facebook is saying that yes, we adjust the news feed algorithm to show users more relevant posts, but we are in no way decreasing organic reach to force our Promoted Posts product on people.

All this being said, Facebook is taking it head on. For many Facebook users, trust in Big Blue isn’t a common emotion. For page owners and popular figures who have seen their engagement decline, it may be hard to swallow that there’s not something malicious going on here.

Do you believe Facebook when they say that they are not decreasing visibility of non-promoted posts in order to generate revenue from Promoted Posts? Let us know in the comments.

In products that are so simple that they’re kind of genius news, I’m probably going to spend a few bucks and grab this new wooden spoon/stylus for my kitchen.

As sites like CHOW, Food 52, and even All Recipes as well as apps like Epicurious continue to replace traditional recipe books for many home cooks, sticky, contaminated iPads and other touchscreen devices become more and more of a problem.

For $7, you can avoid most of this hassle. Meet the ispoon kitchen stylus, a wooden spoon that doubles as a stylus for your in-kitchen touchscreen-using needs.

Just imagine: You grab a handful of ground beef and throw it in the skillet. You grab your wooden spoon to start breaking it up. Oh crap, how much cumin was I supposed to put in there? Now you can either wash your hands, or you can just flip over your spoon and tap your screen to find your answer. Hooray! No more E. coli on your iPad!

Sure, you could wash or wipe your hands between contacting your cooking ingredients and checking the recipe on your iPad. In this regard, this isn’t an essential product. But damnit, it’s cool and I want it.

[Umbra via Gizmodo]

Nevada Assemblyman Harvey Munford is concerned about all of the people he has seen texting while walking. And why shouldn’t he be? I mean, people are walking off piers left and right. Apparently, he’s been on the lookout for the dangerous practice since a constituent brought it to his attention last year.

“I was just amazed by what I saw,” he said. “So many people are almost oblivious. They are texting and texting, totally unaware as they cross even six-lane highways.”

Not wanting to leave it to natural selection to sort everything out, Munford has proposed Assembly Bill 123, which will outlaw texting and walking pretty much everywhere in the state. That means texting while walking on urban streets, state roads, and even out in the suburbs would be met with a penalty.

That penalty would start with a warning and increase to a $250 fine by the time the violator receives their third citation.

The only exceptions to the statute would allow for people to text while walking across the road in two specific situations – either a medical emergency or the reporting of a crime.

Reporting to your friend Ashley that whatever Taylor was wearing at the club last night was a “fashion crime” will not be exempted.

Munford is following in the trailblazing footsteps of officials in Fort Lee, New Jersey. In May of 2012, that town of just over 35,000 began to ticket “distracted walkers.” Before resorting to fines, Fort Lee tried reasoning with the population by issuing pedestrian safety messages. That didn’t work, so they started giving summons to those caught texting while crossing the street.

Fines for texting while walking may seem a bit dramatic to some. Maybe we should try texting “e-lanes,” jokingly proposed by Philadelphia last year?

Or, as previously suggested, maybe just let it work itself out.

[LA Times]

If you caught SNL last weekend (or have been on the internet, at all, in the past couple of days), you probably heard the short but intoxicating 15 or so seconds of music that Daft Punk teased during a commercial break.

Well, some genius has looped that little tease for 10 hours.

We know that Daft Punk’s new album is slated to launch in May on Columbia Records. For now, enjoy 10 hours of the same (amazing) four bars of music. Because, really, what’s better?