WTIA Kick Off 2011 Networking Event Join the WTIA community at the Lake Union Cafe to Kick Off 2011! The venue is conveniently located on Eastlake and is famous for its hand pounded copper ceilings, art deco interior, old fashion copper and cane pulley fan system and one of the finest sets of cut grain [...]
Who: Real Self Position: Community Marketing Manager Where: Seattle (Belltown) What: As our community marketing manager, you’ll promote a conversation on RealSelf that empowers people to make informed decisions about their personal appearance, body, and well-being. You will constantly look for scalable ways to foster community, the exchange of ideas, and building of important connections [...]
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Dress to impress and join the WTIA community in celebrating the holiday season on The Royal Argosy Cruise Ship! Have a drink on us and enjoy a full appetizer buffet of Argosy’s most delicious samplings and treats, while mixing and mingling with Seattle’s current and up-and-coming movers [...]
WTIA November Marketing Community Meeting presents: When Worlds Collide: Market Research meets Competitive Intelligence In this presentation we’ll cover how traditional market research techniques differ from the techniques utilized by Competitive Intelligence professionals. While there is some overlap the goals of a competitive intelligence effort differ in many ways from traditional market research. This presentation [...]
WBE Breakfast Event: The Secrets of Self Starters Speaker: Dr. Julie Miller, leadership consultant, business owner, and author of “Secrets of Self-Starters: 48 Amazing Stories to Ignite the Self-Starter in YOU!,” shares how those self-starters utilized one key trait to rocket them to the top of their game.” The WBE networking breakfast is held the [...]
Who: Enviroissues Position: Web Developer Where: Seattle (downtown) What: EnviroIssues is a public involvement and community outreach consulting firm. We are a staff of 70, and since 1990 have successfully worked to communicate complex government, transportation, environmental, and urban planning issues to members of the public in the Pacific Northwest. Our goal is to provide [...]
Who: Real Self Position: Health & Beauty Community Moderator Where: Belltown What: RealSelf.com–the most visited social media site in aesthetics and professional strength beauty–is seeking a full-time Community Moderator who is passionate about empowering millions of women (and men)to make informed health & beauty decisions.
Amazon welcomes the local technology community to the first Amazon Technology Open House. Come hear from Amazon CTO Werner Vogels, grab a beverage and network with fellow technology leaders. The event will be hosted in the historic Van Vorst building on Amazon’s new campus in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood. Register early as space is [...]
Join us as Brian Goffman, Co-Founder & CEO at Optify, leads us through a discussion on measuring social media ROI. If you’ve got a Facebook page or Twitter feed, we’ll discuss potential ways to measure and monitor your social media investment and maximize your returns. This discussion with provide practical advice and applications you can [...]
What do AT&T’s Bell Labs, Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs, the “Language Bank” of the American Red Cross and Seattle’s Literary Source have in common? For Northwest native Jennifer Hodgdon, who combines a PhD in physics and a passion for mathematical modeling and Web programming with a life of social responsibility, they are all part of [...]
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May 14 2012
Google Blinks! Bing Sings, and Slings the Arrows of Social Interface Discontent! Amazon’s Social “Denny Triangle!”
At last week’s Bing Search Summit in San Francisco, Microsoft took the wraps off a brand new Bing featuring a new, right-hand social column (“The Sidebar”) that will eventually include Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Quora and LinkedIn integration, as well as people who may know something about your most recent Bing query. The new Bing search even offers a way to ask questions on your favorite social network, directly through Bing. “The search engine has been reinvented!” wrote Mashable’s Lance Ulanoff.
In total, there are three new Bing columns in all:
* Core Search: minus many of the social annotations that Bing has added over the years (that have been relocated).
* Snapshot: providing additional information about a particular search listing, without having to leave Bing
* Sidebar: serving as the new home for social integration with search
“With this update, the competing search philosophies are clearer than ever,” opined Mashable. “Google sees the world as a deep blend of data, people and activities, all of which can be mined simultaneously for a rich and useful experience. Bing sees a more structured world, where social interactions, while extremely helpful, are kept a safe distance from the core results you desire.”
How does Bing build these “Friends Who Might Know” lists? Microsoft execs explained they’re leveraging as much publicly available data as possible from Facebook (for now) and soon Twitter and other networks. Inclusion in the list is not necessarily based on something you posted about the topic.
The sidebar includes people you know through your social networks that have, say, posted a photo about the topic, liked a certain relevant topic or searched for a similar topic in Bing, and people you don’t know, who are, for example, known Topic Experts and Enthusiasts (identified by Bing). All of them could be considered helpful in your quest for knowledge. Conversations revolving around a query topic are viewable through the social pane — you just hover over the activity and a small box will slide out to the left with the original post. You can add comments in any conversation in the activity pane or see the conversation in the slideout.
For example, a search for “Seattle restaurants” might pull up Facebook friends who have “liked” dining establishments in the metro area under a header that reads “Friends Who Might Know.” Bing users can also post comments or queries in the sidebar interface that will automatically be published to their Facebook page (provided they’re signed into Facebook) and could hypothetically flag their Seattle-based friends in posts seeking advice on where to go for dinner.
To see the new pane at work, you have to sign into Facebook and install the Bing App in Facebook. With that done, your social pane will be filled with recent Bing activity that’s also been shared on Facebook. When you enter a search query in the Bing interface on the left, the pane will also display a list of Facebook friends, and topic experts who might be able to assist with your query. Note: The Bing App defaults to sharing your posts with Everyone. If you do a lot of searching, you may want to dial that down a bit.
This deep integration with Facebook isn’t the first time the two have collaborated, and Bing has been adding social recommendations powered by Facebook to its search results for the past year. But it’s a sure sign that Microsoft — which bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 million in 2007 — will lean on a company it’s heavily invested in to improve on the social-search product Google introduced in January. “Search Plus Your World” pulls up Google+ content deemed relevant to signed-in Google users and has gotten a tepid reception, said Adage. [24x7]
Amazon Advances Its Vision for a Social Campus Compass, Not an “Apple Circle,” but a “Denny Triangle.”
The City of Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development has posted the latest renderings of Amazon’s proposed Denny Triangle campus.
At a public design review board meeting, attendees liked proposed amenities that include outdoor artwork, a playing field, a dog park and space for food trucks.
The venue also incorporates a healthy measure of social engineering into the design. To ensure public open spaces between buildings are both lively and safe, buildings are designed so that people who park their cars in the underground garages will have to walk outside to get from the garage elevators to the elevators in the building lobbies. “That will help ensure a steady flow of people moving through the plazas.”
The project will also be a haven for bicyclists. Each of the three blocks will have a dedicated bike entrance and storage for as many as 400 bikes. That could allow as many as 1,200 Amazon employees to bike to work. [24x7]