Adweek: “Facebook’s issues with reporting ad reaches larger than the actual population base appear to be even more prevalent, according to a new report from the Video Advertising Bureau. Early last month, Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser pointed out discrepancies between Facebook’s ad reach and U.S. Census Bureau data, including: Facebook claims that it can reach 41 million… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: E-Commerce
Google – First, Flexible Sampling will replace First Click Free for Articles
Google Blog: “Journalism provides accurate and timely information when it matters most, shaping our understanding of important issues and pushing us to learn more in search of the truth. People come to Google looking for high-quality content, and our job is to help them find it. However, sometimes that content is behind a paywall. While… Continue Reading
Google complies with EU antitrust order to show competitors in shopping search results
Bloomberg: “Google will create a standalone unit for its shopping service and require it to bid against rivals for ads shown on the top of its search page, in an effort to satisfy European Union concerns over the display of product results, three people familiar with the investigation said. Google faces a Thursday deadline to comply… Continue Reading
German universities looking to pursue alternatives to Elsevier journal access
Follow up to Academic institutions in Germany continue to cancel journal subscriptions as costs soar see Loans between libraries, and research sharing between colleagues, could allow country to sever links, negotiators claim “German universities have coped “easily” when cut off from Elsevier journals and do not need to rely on pirate article-sharing sites such as… Continue Reading
Google Developer Documentation Style Guide
Google Developer Documentation Style Guide “This style guide provides a set of editorial guidelines for anyone writing developer documentation for Google-related projects. Goals and audience – The primary goal of this guide is to codify and record decisions that Google’s Developer Relations group makes about style. The guide can help you avoid making decisions about… Continue Reading
New studies continue to predict troubled waters ahead for paywall journals
Phys.org – “Two independent studies looking at two aspects of paywalls versus free access to research papers suggest that trouble may lie ahead for traditional journals that continue to expect payment for access to peer-reviewed research papers. In the first study, a small team of researchers from the U.S. and Germany looked at the number… Continue Reading
New Yorker – Who Owns the Internet?
Who Owns the Internet? What Big Tech’s monopoly powers mean for our culture. “…Today, just about everybody uses it for everything. Even as the Web has grown, however, it has narrowed. Google now controls nearly ninety per cent of search advertising, Facebook almost eighty per cent of mobile social traffic, and Amazon about seventy-five per… Continue Reading
Buzzfeed News Analysis – Inside The Partisan Fight For Your News Feed
How ideologues, opportunists, growth hackers, and internet marketers built a massive new universe of partisan news on the web and on Facebook. “The most comprehensive study to date of the growing universe of partisan websites and Facebook pages about US politics reveals that in 2016 alone at least 187 new websites launched, and that the… Continue Reading
Myth of one internet has morphed into reality of the ‘splinternet’
August 4, 2017, Terry Flew: “Both The Economist and WIRED are worried about the “splinternet”. The UK research organisation NESTA thinks it could “break up” the world wide web as we know it. What is this awkwardly named idea? It’s the concept that someone’s experience of the internet in Turkey, for example, is increasingly different… Continue Reading
Elsevier acquires bepress – leading showcase of academic research
News release: “Elsevier, the global information analytics business specializing in science and health, today acquired bepress, a Berkeley, California-based business that helps academic libraries showcase and share their institutions’ research for maximum impact. Founded by three University of California, Berkeley professors in 1999, bepress allows institutions to collect, organize, preserve and disseminate their intellectual output,… Continue Reading
EPIC Files FTC Complaint to Stop Google from Tracking In-Store Purchases
“EPIC has filed a complaint with the FTC asking the Commission to investigate Google’s tracking of in-store purchases. According to EPIC, Google collects billions of credit and debit card transactions and then links that personal data to the activities of Internet users. Google claims that it protects online privacy but refuses to reveal details of… Continue Reading
Sci-Hub’s cache of pirated papers continues to expand with ramifications for subscription journals
Sci-Hub’s cache of pirated papers is so big, subscription journals are doomed, data analyst suggests: “There is no doubt that Sci-Hub, the infamous—and, according to a U.S. court, illegal—online repository of pirated research papers, is enormously popular. (See Science’s investigation last year of who is downloading papers from Sci-Hub.) But just how enormous is its… Continue Reading
