Mediaboss Marketing

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science have developed a program they're calling Livehoods, which organizes "check-ins" from the popular social networking site Foursquare into a cultural database of local habits and trends.

Livehoods' organizers say the program provides an opportunity for city planners and others to track and aggregate the real-time cultural habits and diverse makeup of certain neighborhoods, from block to block, and to see how they change over time.

"A lot of people might look at this project and say at first, it's obvious," says Justin Cranshaw, a Ph.D. student at CMU and one of the project's leading researchers. "Maybe it's obvious to locals, but to people unfamiliar with that part of the city, this [provides] an accurate snapshot of what's really going on."

The program's algorithm examines the check-ins and identifies unique trends pertaining to that particular neighborhood. This information is then mapped to reveal an area's "Livehood," unique to each section of a city, displaying the most popular things to do and places to go. A user can browse the most frequented locations in a certain area, see what kinds of places they are -- restaurants, movie theaters, bars, etc. -- and learn where people with similar habits are hanging out across the city.

One wonders whether enough types of city-dwellers are logged onto Foursquare these days, but Cranshaw insists that the social-networking site has become more diverse. When Foursquare first started in 2009, it seemed primarily geared toward technologically savvy people in big cities who wanted to score the most check-ins at their local dive bar.

Though it still only reflects the cultural habits of those who own a smartphone and choose to use its service, the site has clearly expanded significantly. Today Foursquare boasts over 20 million users around the world, and it has racked up around 2 billion "check-ins" at various locations. Driving across the country last fall, it was even possible to check in at "the middle of nowhere" somewhere in North Carolina. There was a mayor and a badge and everything.

Cranshaw notes that over the years, computers have become more adept at map-making and providing detailed directions and reviews, but they're still "not that great at determining real cultural knowledge." Livehoods, he says, sorts the local "knowledge" of each community into browsable regions.

"In urban studies, researchers have always had to interview lots of people to get a sense of a community's character and, even then, they must extrapolate from only a small sample of the community," Raz Schwartz, a visiting scholar at the CMU School of Computer Science's Human-Computer Interaction Institute and another researcher on the project, said in a statement. "Now, by using Foursquare data, we're able to tap a large database that can be continually updated."

So far, Livehoods has maps for San Francisco, New York and Pittsburgh, and has analyzed millions of unique check-ins at various locations.

Cranshaw said that the project will not only help city developers and planners, but also business-owners looking to determine the best location to open a new store or restaurant.Certainly advertisers and other marketing agencies will be happy to gain access to the information as well.

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Livehoods Maps Neighborhoods For The Social-Networking Age

Facebook, the company that turned the social Web into acultural and business phenomenon, is worth as much as $95bn, accordingto the price range for its upcoming initial public offering of stock.

Facebook's IPO, expected in a couple of weeks, would be the biggest so far for an internet company. Facebook disclosed the price range of $28 to $35 pershare in a regulatory filing on Thursday.

At the high end, Facebook and its current shareholders could raise as muchas $13.58bn, far more than the $1.9bn raised in the 2004offering for current Internet IPO record-holder Google Inc.

The IPO valuedGoogle, now worth about $200bn, at $23bn.

Facebook Inc's IPO has been highly anticipated, not just because of howmuch money it will raise but because Facebook itself is so popular.

Theworld's largest online social network has more than 900 million users.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who turns 28 this month, has emerged as a wunderkindleader who has guided Facebook through unprecedented growth from its scrappystart as an online hangout for Harvard students.

Road show

Facebook's offering values the company at $76bn to $95bn,based on the expected number of Facebook shares following the IPO.

Facebook's next step is an "IPO road show," where executives talk topotential investors about why they should invest in the stock.

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Facebook pushes record-breaking IPO

Newswise DALLAS The Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) House of Delegates adopted new policy guidelines on the appropriate use of social media and social networking sites by physicians during the FSMBs 2012 Annual Meeting in Fort Worth, Texas, on April 28.

Developed by the FSMBs Special Committee on Ethics and Professionalism, the "Model Policy Guidelines for the Appropriate Use of Social Media and Social Networking in Medical Practice" provide recommendations for state medical boards to consider in educating their licensees on the proper use of social media and social networking websites.

Digital media has enormous potential for doctors and patients, allowing us more opportunities to share information and establish meaningful professional relationships, said FSMB President and CEO Humayun Chaudhry, DO. However, physicians also need to be aware of how to maintain the same professional and ethical standards in their online activity as they do in the rest of their practice. Failing to do so can hurt patients and physicians careers.

Violations of online professionalism are prevalent among physicians, according to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study, conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars at Yale in collaboration with the FSMB, found that 92 percent of state medical boards in the United States have received reports of violations of online professionalism.

Developed by the FSMB to encourage physicians who use social media to protect themselves from unintended consequences, the new model guidelines include these recommendations:

Physicians should only have online interaction with patients when discussing the patients medical treatment within the physician-patient relationship and these interactions should never occur on personal social networking or social media websites.

Patient privacy and confidentiality must be protected at all times, especially on social media and social networking websites. Although physicians may discuss their experiences in non-clinical settings, they should never provide any information that could be used to identify patients.

Physicians should be aware that any information they post on a social networking site may be disseminated to a larger audience, and that what they say may be taken out of context or remain publicly available online in perpetuity.

The "Model Policy Guidelines for the Appropriate Use of Social Media and Social Networking in Medical Practice" is available on the FSMB website at http://www.fsmb.org.

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Originally posted here:
New FSMB Policy Addresses Appropriate Use of Social Media by Physicians

May 5, 2012

Enid Burns for RedOrbit.com

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has drafted a controversial proposal that would require social networking sites, VoIP services and other online platforms to build a wiretap-friendly back door. The government organization is making the rounds to social networking companies including Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo and Google to urge them not to oppose the proposal.

In a time when more lines of communication are open, such as instant messenger, social networking sites and Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP), the FBI worries it wont have access to communications between suspicious individuals. A ZDNet article states that The FBI General Counsels office has drafted a proposed law that the bureau claims is the best solution: requiring that social-networking Web sites and providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and Web e-mail alter their code to ensure their products are wiretap-friendly.

The proposal hopes to amend the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. CALEA requires telecommunications providers to provide the tools for an easily implemented wiretap. In 2004 the Federal Communications Commission extended CALEA to encompass broadband networks.

In defense of the original CALEA enacted in October of 1994, the FCC says it was intended to preserve the ability of law enforcement agencies to conduct electronic surveillance by requiring that telecommunications carriers and manufacturers of telecommunications equipment modify and design their equipment, facilities and services to ensure that they have the necessary surveillance capabilities.

The law includes common carriers, facilities-based broadband internet access providers, and providers of interconnected VoIP service. The agency fears a Going Dark trend. Going Dark is a term the FBI revealed in early 2011 to describe how new technologies and rapidly changing communications modes erode the ability of the government to conduct court ordered intercepts of wire and electronic communications.

Sources say the FBI has held meetings with Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Facebook as well as the White House and U.S. Senators to discuss the proposal. In talks with internet companies, the FBI reportedly urged companies not to oppose the action.

Many social networking companies already comply to law enforcement actions, to a degree. The safety center page on Facebook states the conditions under which it cooperates with law enforcement authorities within the U.S. and international jurisdictions.

In the U.S., Facebook complies to the federal Stored Communications Act (SCA). Under this act the social network complies with federal and law enforcement requests with a valid subpoena issued in connection with an official criminal investigation; a court order issued under 18 U.S.C Section 3703(d); or a search warrant issued under the procedures described in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

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FBI Pushes for Wiretap-Friendly Social Networks

New guidelines released this week by the New York City education department make it clear that social networking has a place in education, but they call for restrictions on how educators and students interact in such spaces.

The guidelines recommend prohibiting students and teachers from being "friends" on popular social-networking sites, such as Facebook, and instruct teachers to create school-related email accounts that are separate from their personal email accounts, for example, for interacting with students. The guidelines also call for principals or educational supervisors to closely monitor social-networking sites that are set up for educational purposes.

Despite the restrictions, city Schools Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott touted the use of social networking as way to engage students and boost learning. In a letter to school principals released April 30, he wrote that the responsible use of such digital tools is important.

"We seek to provide our students with the opportunities that multimedia learning can provide--which is why we should allow and encourage the appropriate and accepted use of these powerful resources," he said.

Matthew Mittenthal, a spokesman for the 1.1 million-student district, emphasized that the guidelines do not recommend banning social-networking sites or interaction between students and teachers on such sites. The district will continue to collect feedback on the guidelines and will review them every three months and update them as needed, Mr. Mittenthal said.

Nancy E. Willard, the director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use, based in Eugene, Ore., called the guidelines "noteworthy" in their "obvious concerted effort to recognize the importance of social media for instructional activities and the effort at distinguishing between professional and personal socializing."

But she and others expressed worries about how the guidelines will ultimately be carried out. For example, the recommendation that principals and supervisors oversee educational social-media sites and review their content closely is unlikely to work in the real world, she said.

"There is no way ... a principal can effectively manage a multitude of professional social-media sites," she said. "Impossible."

Communication Issues

In crafting the guidelines, the country's largest school district is following in the footsteps of other districts, including the 664,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District as well as the 9,000-student Minnetonka, Minn., district, which Mr. Mittenthal said were both used as models for the guidelines.

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N.Y.C. Outlines Social Media Guidelines for Educators