Hasta La Gadget!

Ever wanted to search for tweets about a particular day or event that happened in the past? Twitter doesn’t exactly offer a tool to do that. Its search function is tweaked to put up fresh and most recent tweets about a particular topic. One can scroll down to view all results, but if what you’re searching for happened a few years ago, that can become a titanic task. There’s a new solution though. Social analytics firm Topsy has launched a search engine for tweets. Topsy claims that it has indexed 425 billion tweets, which basically means that you’ll be able to search every single tweet posted to Twitter ever since it launched back in 2006.

Searching for tweets is quite easy. Simply enter your query and Topsy will display relevant results which can be adjusted by date, time and languages. Photos and videos can be differentiated as well.The tool will be particularly help for those who’re trying to do some research and are trying to gauge views posted on Twitter in the past, for example, one could see what people thought of the presidential race back in 2008, or one could even go back in time to find out who started a particular trend. Topsy offers the service for free.

Topsy Is A Search Engine For Tweets original content from Ubergizmo.

Soon after enabling hashtags, which were undoubtedly made popular on the internet by Twitter, Facebook announced that it will soon start testing trending topics. At first the test was being conducted on a very small scale, trending topics were only available to U.S. users and that too through the Facebook mobile website. It has now rolled out the trending topics box on the main website’s homepage News Feed “to a small percentage of U.S. users.”

A Facebook spokeswoman has said that the feature is currently in early stages of development, adding that the social network will disclose more details if it plans on rolling out the feature to more users. As of now the trending topics box appears on the upper right hand corner on the main website, putting topics that are generating buzz across Facebook upfront, thus allowing users to easily know what’s trending at a glance. Clicking on a particular topic will reveal what a user’s friends and the general public is saying about it, the topic may relate to personalities or different subject matters. Trending topics make it quite easy for users to join in conversations taking place at a global scale, the results are evident on Twitter. Will they be able to command a similar following on Facebook? Lets wait and see. [Image via CNET]

Facebook Trending Topics Box Appears For Some U.S. Users original content from Ubergizmo.

Its actually not that hard to spot spammers on the world’s biggest social network. Most of them operate through Facebook Pages, by posting links to direct traffic to third party scam websites. A team of security researchers based in Italy have investigated hundreds of thousands of posts on Facebook to conclude that spamming has become a business that pays north of $200 million annually. Facebook has over a billion users, many of them like dozens of Pages each day, Pages that resonate with their likes and interests. Spammers set up fake Pages, build following and start directing those fans to scam websites.

Carlo De Micheli, one of the leaders of this team, said that spam posters make an average of $13 per post for Pages that have nearly 30,000 fans. Based on the number of fans, he says that the average revenue per post ranges between $13 – $58. A spammer told these researchers that Facebook doesn’t ban them because they generate the content on the social network itself. He said that “Without the fan pages Facebook would be an empty place,” adding that he materializes funny and interesting content every day that gets liked and shared by thousands of users. Facebook says that it has developed a number of automated systems to identify links that might be potentially harmful, and that it doesn’t have any tolerance for spammers. Saying that Facebook doesn’t ban spammers because the content that they create generates more hits for Pages might be a bit far-fetched, but that doesn’t mean the company won’t have to ramp up efforts. Seeing as how this has been turned into a lucrative business, one can bet that spammers won’t be migrating from Facebook on their own anytime soon.

Facebook Spammers Running A $200 Million Business [Research] original content from Ubergizmo.

The Auto Awesome enhancements in Google+ are great for livening up drab pics and bursts of photos with animations, but you’ve got to dig through your albums to discover if the features were even triggered. That’s no longer an issue in the wake of an update: Google+ now sends notifications whenever it creates Auto Awesome animations, filmstrips and panoramas. The alerts are rolling out today on Android, iOS and the web, so you won’t be left wondering about your photo collection again.

Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile, Google

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Source: Virgil Dobjanschi (Google+)

Its no secret that there are vindictive people out there who post photos and videos once taken in private on the internet to shame their ex-lovers. They provide the content for ‘revenge porn’ websites, which have become a thriving source of revenue for people who run such websites. Its bad enough to have an embarrassing photo being posted online, one can’t even fathom the horror of finding a photo or video that lets the world peek into some of their most intimate moments. The California State Assembly debates a bill today that aims to deem revenge porn a criminal misdemeanor, those found guilty are likely to face up to one year in prison.

According to this bill, people who upload pictures and videos which show a person in “a state of full or partial undress in any area in which the person being photographed or recorded has a reasonable expectation of privacy,” “with the intent to cause serious emotional distress” will face jail time. Roping in uploaders is just one part of the solution. The websites that host such content are free from any civil liability because Section 230 of the Federal Communications Decency Act says that third-party platforms don’t have any liability for content generated by users. Such sites have been subjected to lawsuits though, and various advocacy groups believe that they should be held liable as well. Once a compromising photo or video ends up on a website, it usually spreads like fire so much so that it becomes virtually impossible to petition each and every website to take it down. [Image via The Verge]

California Might Deem ‘Revenge Porn’ A Criminal Offense original content from Ubergizmo.