TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Happy 90th, Mister Rogers! Twitch to stream all 856 episodes. “Need a trip back to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe? Don’t we all? Starting Tuesday, you can watch all 856 episodes of classic children’s show ‘Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood’ on free live-streaming site Twitch.” It started yesterday.

Search Engine Land: Google stops showing zero search results for time, calculations & conversions. “Google has stopped showing zero search results, i.e., only the answer, followed by a button to ‘show all results’ for searches related to time, calculations and conversions. The blue search results links are now back.”

Digital Trends: Google is making it easier to manage your podcasts straight from the Google app. “Google is getting better at helping you keep track of your favorite podcasts. Google first brought podcast support to Google Play Music in 2016, at which point users were able to search for and play podcasts straight from Search. Now, it looks like Google will be both improving podcast support from the Google app, and bringing some of that functionality to Google Assistant — meaning you’ll be able to manage your podcasts using only your voice.”

USEFUL STUFF

Library of Congress: How to Locate the Bills and Amendments a Member of Congress has Sponsored or Cosponsored in Congress.gov. “One of the questions we are frequently asked is how to locate a bill or amendment that a member of Congress has sponsored or cosponsored. There are a few ways to do this on Congress.gov.”

Social Media Today: How to Use Twitter to Automatically Monitor for Press Opportunities. “From startups to established businesses, PR is an awesome growth tool that, when leveraged correctly, can boost your brand profile, and generate significant opportunities. However, the reality is that for most entrepreneurs, founders, and startups, there are two major challenges to using PR as a marketing tool – time and money…. For those who lack the resources, here’s an easy way to locate some basic PR opportunities without a huge time or money investment. All you need are two free, user-friendly platforms, and a little bit of initial effort.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Quartz: Google and Facebook are losing their locks on digital advertising. “Google and Facebook are loosening their grips on online advertising. The web giants will command $61 billion in US digital-advertising spending in 2018, eMarketer predicts. Yet, their combined share of the total US digital-advertising market is expected to dip to 56.8%, from 58.5% last year, and keep declining.”

BuzzFeed: How Facebook Groups Are Being Exploited To Spread Misinformation, Plan Harassment, And Radicalize People. “One week after the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, those searching on Facebook for information about the upcoming March for Our Lives were likely to be shown an active group with more than 50,000 members. Called ‘March for Our Lives 2018 Official,’ it appeared to be one of the best places to get details about the event and connect with others interested in gun control. But those who joined the group soon found themselves puzzled. The admins often posted pro-gun information and unrelated memes and mocked those who posted about gun control.”

BBC News: ‘Siri, will talking ever top typing?’. “We’re growing more used to chatting to our computers, phones and smart speakers through voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google’s Assistant. And blind and partially sighted people have been using text-to-speech converters for decades. Some think voice could soon take over from typing and clicking as the main way to interact online. But what are the challenges of moving to ‘the spoken web’?”

SECURITY & LEGAL

BusinessWire: Hagens Berman Files Class-Action Lawsuit Against Six Major Hotel Chains for Antitrust Scheme (PRESS RELEASE). “The lawsuit states that each hotel defendant agreed to refrain from using certain online advertising methods to compete for consumers. The agreement prevents competitors from bidding for online advertising that uses competitors’ brand names. For example, Hilton Hotel declined to bid on keywords that would allow its ads to appear in response to internet searches for Hyatt. This makes it more difficult for consumers to get information about competing hotels, and to compare and contrast competitive information, such as price and quality, between the two hotels.”

Yahoo News: EU to unveil digital tax targeting Facebook, Google. “The EU will unveil proposals for a digital tax on US tech giants on Wednesday, bringing yet more turmoil to Facebook after revelations over misused data of 50 million users shocked the world.”

LA Times: Twitter stock dives after Israel threatens legal action over pro-terrorism tweets. “The Israeli government is considering taking legal action against Twitter Inc. for ignoring repeated requests to remove online content that was inciting or supportive of terrorism, Israel’s justice minister warned Tuesday. Twitter shares tumbled more than 10%, their biggest drop in eight months.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Chronicle of Higher Education: Twitter for Scientists: an Idea Whose Time Has Finally Come?. “There’s abundant evidence that widely sharing a research finding in just one or two simple sentences greatly increases its use and effectiveness. But, ugh, that usually means Twitter — in the eyes of many, a low-attention-span cesspool of trolls, political partisans, and amateur comedians known more for braggadocio and snark than reason and facts. Now, with federal backing, there’s another option.” Good morning, Internet…

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