When we talk to our less technologically-inclined friends about Twitter , we often run across the objection that they really don't care what so-and-so ate for lunch today or what movie they are seeing tonight. And every time, we try to extol all the other benefits of the world's most popular microblogging service. But could we be wrong? Is Twitter mostly people talking about themselves and what they ate for lunch? Well, SemanticHacker , the blog of contextual ad platform Textwise , has crunched some numbers and we may have to eat our hat. Sponsor Parlez vous Twitterspeak? The blog used Twitter's streaming API to gather nearly 9 million tweets from over 2 million individual users. Before looking at the data for meaning, the company first took a look at the language distribution of their sample. While the SemanticHacker team expressed their surprise at the language distribution, particularly the strong showing of Portuguese, we at ReadWriteWeb couldn't help but wonder about the 10% labeled as "Unknown/Misclassified." Are these tweets simply so horribly misspelled that the language-guessing program they used on the data could not venture a guess? Or could it be that 10% of the Twitter populous is now writing in that contracted form of text message Twitter-speak that it could no longer be classified as a recognizable language? (If you're looking for a good example, find a 12-year-old and exchange text messages or just give Sarah Palin's Twitter a look.) What We're A-Twittering About The folks at SemanticHacker then took a random sample of 1,000 English-language tweets and broke them down into eight categories. According to their findings, it seems that Twitter really is full of people talking about themselves. A full 57% of the sample falls into tweets about what a person is doing, or private conversations between individuals. That leaves just 43% for other purposes, but when we take a look at that, the findings seem to become even more dismal. If we take away another 8% for "Other Messages" and "Unknown," and another 8% for "Spam" and "Advertising," we're left with a mere 27% of the information on Twitter having some sort of value. Maybe it isn't as bad as it looks, though. We're willing to bet that if we wrote down everything we said in a day, the meaningful parts might not even reach the 27% mark. Oh, did I tell you about the tasty lentils I had for lunch today? Discuss
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Is Twitter a Mental Vacuum?
Look at how smart phones are reaching into the enterprise and it's clear a cultural shift is taking place that is transforming the relationship between IT and business users. Smart phones in the enterprise are a user-driven phenomena. People buy smart phones to do work, but also for personal use. IDC is estimating that by 2013, a billion mobile devices will access the Internet. In light of this onslaught, how do IT managers keep things in check? MobileIron believes the trick is in treating smart phones as computers. By employing a data-centric model, IT can manage and control how smart phones are used, while at the same time creating a cooperative environment with users. Sponsor MobileIron uses the data from smart phones to help IT administrators create social graphs for users that gives insights into the business. Call histories and SMS messages are no longer locked in the phone. Instead, the information can be aggregated and analyzed. IT is slowly learning that the days of using command and control tactics are ending. As smart phones become ubiquitous, IT is struggling to keep up with security and the costs of managing how employees access information and applications. Serving as a police agency is ineffective. The real answer is to develop a cooperative culture. For example, MobileIron provides the capabilities for an enterprise to establish its own "app stores." IT can manage what applications may be accessed by users. The MobileIron methods allow for all sorts of opportunities. Costly roaming charges can be monitored as can service quality. MobileIron demonstrates how smart phones are becoming an icon for cultural change in the enterprise. In many ways, the social Web is changing how we view the way we work. The advent of smart phones accelerates that shift and will force the enterprise to alter the way IT has historically worked with business users. Discuss
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Smart Phones Show How the Times are a Changing
Rackspace is launching a new service called " Cloud Drive ," that allows businesses to store, share and back up files in the Rackspace cloud. Rackspace is one of the world's largest hosting companies but with more services being offered in the cloud, it is starting to look like it is also establishing a presence as a collaboration services provider. Sponsor Pat Mathews, president of email and apps for Rackspace said this is exactly what is happening. "We are definitely moving down the collaboration path with Cloud Drive," Mathews sad. In reality, Rackspace is following a natural progression. With the ability to move IT to the cloud, Rackspace will have to deepen its collaboration service. For instance, search is not a part of the current offering. But it is part of the roadmap and will become a critical service for customers as they move their files to the cloud. It's a focal reason why collaboration providers like Box.net put a heavy premium on search. Customers need the capability. Without it, the information can end up in folders without ever being touched again. Some of the features that are part of Cloud Drive include: Synchronized folders across one or more computers. Syncronized version control to make sure colleagues are working with the most recent files. Automatic data backups in the event of a hardware failure. Complementing Cloud Drive is Rackspace Server Backup, which backs up applications and protects file server data. Its primary function is to back up Windows or Linux data. Bot Cloud Drive and Rackspace Server Backup are powered by Jungle Disk , which Rackspace acquired last year. Rackspace Cloud Drive costs $4 per user, per month. Rackspace Server Backup costs $5 per server, per month. Discuss
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Rackspace Adds More Cloud-Based Services, Moves Down the Collaboration Path
