To Tweet or Not to Tweet: The Lingo of Social Media and the New York Times

The New York Times—or more specifically their standards editor Phil Corbett—has decreed that the use of the word “tweet” is no longer welcome in the pages of the famed newspaper. His reasoning?

Some social-media fans may disagree, but outside of ornithological contexts, “tweet” has not yet achieved the status of standard English. And standard English is what we should use in news articles.

Except for special effect, we try to avoid colloquialisms, neologisms and jargon. And “tweet” — as a noun or a verb, referring to messages on Twitter — is all three. Yet it has appeared 18 times in articles in the past month, in a range of sections.

As The Awl points out, Corbett makes some good arguments here. I’m a bit of a grammar nut myself, and I cringe every time someone uses the verb “tweet”—especially during a news cast. It sounds rather insipid, and completely out of context, even to me (someone who uses Twitter every single day). But at the same time, the technology is changing the lingo and try as we die-hard wordwrights might try, in the end we’re not the ones who make the decisions about phrases. To balk the majority means creating a likely rift between the audience and writer.

So: alternatives, perhaps? “Chirp” sounds lame. And, honestly it’s a little difficult for me to think of anything else other than “tweet” at this point. I think that Corbett—however well intended and dead-on about the lingo he is—is fighting a losing battle. That is, assuming that Twitter stays around for another decade. As much as I love Twitter, I’m just not sure it’ll have the staying power of something as game-changing as email (as Corbett discusses in his guidelines). So maybe this entire argument is just, well, for the birds.

How about you? Do you cringe at the word “tweet” like I do in journalism? Can you offer any better suggestions? Or is this just a fruitless argument?

(Photo CC: by Matt Hamm)


WTF Vehicle of the Day: Introducing the Terrestrial Shrub Rover

I’m not exactly sure why someone would want to build something like that, but Justin Shull went and did it anyways. But why Justin, WHY? Unless your real name is Wile E. Coyote and you’re looking to sneak up on your all time nemesis, Road Runner, I don’t really see a practical use to that thing. In any case, it sure will bring everyone’s attention on you the next time you go grocery shopping, that’s for sure.

[Justin Shull | Via Dvice]

Ever Gotten a Date Online? [Infographic]

We use the Internet for a lot of things…paying the bills, reading the news, keeping in touch with old friends, but a growing trend if finding your mate online. More people than ever are utilizing dating services and many are finding success. You have seen the commercials, now it’s time to read the stats on this booming trend.

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Google Search Gets Caffeine Jolt

Google has launched a major overhaul of the way it produces its search results. If it works as designed it could mean new content appears in results much more quickly.

The key to Google, like any search engine, is that queries don’t literally search the Internet but rather Google’s index which is repeatedly updated by scanning web pages to make the index more current.

Until now, the index has been built into several “layers” which are refreshed at varying intervals. The main “layer” updated roughly once every fortnight meaning that on average the data Google used for an individual web page would be a week old. (There are exceptions for sites known to be updated more frequently, for example those scanned for Google News.) Here’s an explanation from Google of how the old system works:

That system has been replaced by “Caffeine”, a system which throws out the layers and breaks the web down into much smaller chunks. Rather than running on a cycle, the index is continuously updated. This means new content goes “live” on the index as soon as Google finds it, rather than at the next scheduled update.

According to the company, this makes its index “50 percent fresher”, whatever that means. It also notes that the entire Caffeine database is almost 100 million gigabytes and the daily refresh rate is in the hundreds of thousands of gigabytes range.

What’s not yet clear is if this will have any impact on search engine optimization and the factors which determine where pages appear in the Google rankings. It appears that the frequency at which individual pages are scanned won’t change; instead it’s the speed at which the data collected in that scan is built into the live index. Still, that change may have affect the number of pages which wind up benefiting from whatever element of Google’s algorithm favors recently-written content.

Christopher “moot” Poole: The Case for Anonymity Online

In the following video, the founder of 4chan, a controversial, uncensored online imageboard, describes its subculture, some of the Internet “memes” it has launched, and the incident in which its users managed a very public, precision hack of a mainstream media website. The talk raises questions about the power — and price — of anonymity.

World Cup Forecasting the Analysts Way

The FIFA football World Cup begins this Friday: but don’t worry soccer-haters, this isn’t an article about the game itself. Instead, we’ll be taking a look at attempts to predict the outcome using facts and figures.

Most people, let’s be honest, predict the results through a combination of guesswork and gut instinct. While there’s a theory many events on which people can gamble may be easier to predict by applying the “wisdom of crowds” philosophy to the cumulative wagers, that’s somewhat trickier for the World Cup where bets in individual countries are significantly distorted by patriotism outweighing judgment.

So what’s the objective way to make a prediction? Well, it might be quantitative analysis.

The term refers to a wide range of techniques used in the finance world which work by applying mathematical formulas and calculation to make predictions. Whether such techniques work depends on whether you believe human nature can be reduced to mathematics, particularly when aggregated on a large scale.

Several financial firms have chosen to test their skills by applying their techniques to forecasting the World Cup. The results may not guarantee we’ll know who will win, but the techniques and rationale are intriguing.

Danske Bank’s report is mainly about the effects the tournament will have on regional economies, but does predict the football. Its method works on a blend of football factors (historical performance, current form, home field advantage) and economic factors, the idea being that larger and richer populations are better placed to produce a skilled and well-trained team. The analysts looked at the last four tournaments to see how important these relative factors are. Their prediction: Brazil beats Germany in the final.

Goldman Sachs offers a less sophisticated method. It simply works on the basis of past performance and how that plays out with the groupings in this year’s events. It doesn’t forecast a winner but tips Argentina, Brazil, England and Spain as the semi-finalists.

JP Morgan bases its predictions on the three types of information it uses in stock market forecasts: valuation metrics; price trends; market/analyst sentiment; and company fundamentals. These translate as: the official FIFA rankings and odds from bookmakers; changes in both of these factors over the past year; performance in previous tournaments and recent games; and a combination of how widely odds on each team vary (the less variation, the more reliable the information is assumed to be) and the quality of recent opponents.

Applying these factors (in a ratio based on their perceived importance) shows Brazil as the strongest team. However, given that two close teams may well draw, the model also takes account of two factors which would play a role in a “tie-break” penalty shoot-out: goalscoring ability and penalty saves. Running the tournament match by match then sees Brazil eliminated in the quarter-finals on penalties, with England beating the Netherlands on penalties in the semi-finals and beating Spain on penalties in the final. Given that England have been eliminated on penalties in five of the last eight international tournaments they have competed in, that sounds dubious to say the least.

Finally UBS relies on three factors: performance in previous tournaments, home-field advantage, and performance in the past three months. It argues that socioeconomic factors such as population and wealth aren’t a guide to results. It doesn’t make predictions as such, but rather offers percentage likelihoods. One surprising figure is that it ranks South Africa as having the strongest likelihood of advancing to the second round, a prediction apparently based on the grounds that every previous host nation has done so: that may be an unreliable strategy given South Africa is also by far the weakest footballing nation to host the event. The firm predicts Brazil as most likely to win, with a 22% chance of success.

[Picture credit: Flickr user Coach_J]