MktSentiment.com is one realization of that mission as applied to the stock market. MktSentiment.com uses intelligent algorithms to analyze real-time market sentiment in social media (Twitter, forums, blogs, analysts opinions, news reports, etc.) and charts the correlation of past sentiments with future stock price movement. The proprietary algorithms and domain specific knowledge base for sentiment understanding and correlation analysis were developed and tested over a two-year period. The Sentiment-Price Correlation (SPC) charts provide a useful and unique tool to analyze stock trends and spot trading opportunities.

In the coming months, more advanced features will be introduced, but they are accessible only to subscribing users, including,

* Advanced filtering to identify trading opportunities, e.g., filtering for significant sentiment-price divergence, opportunities for contrarian moves, etc.
* More advanced correlation analysis, a range of correlation charts to choose from for detecting different correlation properties specific to each stock, and historical correlation data going back longer than 30 days. (The SPC shown on the home page is only one type of correlation analysis. Advanced correlation analysis will be accessible to subscription users.)
* Tracking stocks and alerting when filtering conditions are triggered, and more

The advanced features of the service is only offered to an exclusive group of serious investors. You may visit their Sign Up page to reserve an account.

The Real-time Sentiment Analytics technology is not limited to what’s demonstrated on the Mktsentiment.com website. Customized solutions can be developed for other applications, including:

* Sentiments in social media and customer support forums/systems towards your company or products, morale in company internal communications, etc., and how they correlate to your sales or any other business performance measures you use;
* Sentiments towards political candidates or parties, or hot social topics, and use correlation analysis to predict polling or voting results.

Yesterday, thousands of Facebook users were chosen to test the beta version. Many logged on to see this message on their home page:

Unfortunately, I haven’t been selected as of yet, but hopefully we will be able to post a review of sorts of the service.

There is debate whether Facebook Lite is another direct attack on Twitter. Facebook has been trying to make itself more competitive with Twitter over the last few months. It has been introducing features such as  public profiles, profile fans, public status updates, and realtime search. This new service is another attempt to simplify Facebook, but whether it has anything to do with Twitter or Friendfeed, is just speculation so far.

Facebooks official response was:

We are currently testing a simplified alternative to Facebook.com that loads a specific set of features quickly and efficiently. Similar to the Facebook experience you get on your mobile phones, Facebook “Lite” is a fast-loading, simplified version of Facebook that enables people to make comments, accept Friend requests, write on people’s Walls, and look at photos and Status updates. We are currently testing Facebook Lite in countries where we are seeing lots of new users coming to Facebook for the first time and are looking to start off with a more simple experience.

This evening, the test was temporarily exposed to a larger set of users by mistake. We have not opened up access to lite.facebook.com to all users at this time. People who are not part of the test and are trying to access “Lite” will be directed to Facebook.com as usual.

Given that only handful of users have been selected for testing, getting a preview screenshot of Facebook lite is quite difficult. However, courtesy of jasonlbaptiste.com, we have a screenshot to show what Lite looks like:

From this screenshot, there doesn’t seem to be that much different from the normal Facebook, but it does seem to have a much more cleaner, polished feel to it. Arguably the normal Facebook, has evolved into a much more cluttered site than it was, so this Lite version seems very interesting.

What are your opinions of Facebook Lite? Do you think the main intention is to create a speedier version for slow connections, or is there a hint of a direct attack on Twitter? Will people use it? If any readers have also been lucky enough to test it, please do feel free to write you thoughts in the comments!

Apple are reportedly in talks with Twitter for a potential sale the social networking site for $700 million. Valleywag, the digital media blog, claims to have contact with an inside source at Apple, who is reporting that a deal is close, and that the acquisition could be completed by 8th June.

Apple is going to bid $700 million in a full cash bid. This is in contrast to Facebook’s $500 million offer last November, which was a hybrid cash and stocks bid. Twitter turned down Facebook, partly because, Twitter’s investors could not agree on whether Facebook’s stocks were worth as much Facebook claimed them to be. When Twitter turned down that deal, co-founder Biz Stone said that the company wanted to be independent and wanted to expand “its messaging service and there would be no disagreement about the value of its stock”.

Apple’s interest in Twitter seems to be stemming from its tie-in with the iPhone. Many Twitter applications such as ‘Tweetie’ have been big sellers for Apple. However, the big question is- if this acquisition is successful, then how would Apple make any money? Twitter, with 6 million users and a 1,300% growth yet, has yet to turn a profit.

Apple, however, have reported to having $30 billion in cash, so this is nothing but small change for them. Additionally, internet experts have suggested that this will be more of a statement purchase, than a massive money spinner.We just now have to wait and see how this story develops.

ValleyWag

Twitter's user loyalty always been lower compared to other social networks

According to analysts, research has suggested that more than 60% of Twitter users stop using the social network within 30 days, most of whom use it for commercial gain.

As you can see from the above graph, at this moment in time Twitter has a retention rate of 40% demonstrating that over 60% quit the micro-blogging service, for most they have had enough of the facebook shortened micro blogging service.

Twitter could have a bigger retention rate if it wasn’t for the high profile sign ups including Barack Obama, Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey who sustain much of the typical user’s time in which they see what the celebraties are up to. Oprah Winfrey quite recently made a statement conveying her trust in Twitter, boosting traffic towards the 40% retention mark.

Retention rate half as much

The micro-blogging service, that enables users to post a message in 140 characters, popularity seems to declining as it was almost a short term thing. Worryingly, the above graph also demonstrates that at the same time, Facebook and Myspace had retention rates much higher and now stand at almost double, 70%.

However, researchers have not taken into account the retention rate coming from widely used third party applications such as Twitterfeed and Tweetdeck, which incidentally half of the twitter population use meaning the retention rate for the whole of Twitter would be much higher, whereas traffic goes straight to the other social networks like Facebook, as there are no other third party apps available.

Twitter has bigger retention rate than analysts originally anticipate excluding 3rd party apps

Microsoft Vine, designed exclusively to spread important information quickly in an emergency

Microsoft have officially unveiled a beta version of its new social network Vine

The social network enables you to transfer valuable news to small organizations such as your local book club. It is a lot like twitter, as you are able to send a similar number of characters as the micro blogging service and maintain contact with your friends. It is available via a downloadable app.

However, as with most beta introductions, it is only applicable to those in the US at this moment in time. Microsoft have tried to make the social network come across as a personal organizer to people who are involved in community activities or communicating with family and friends in the case of an emergency. But we all know this won’t apply to most of the users, a lot will try to use it as a way to attract traffic to their sites as is Twitter.

Microsoft Vine is supported by Windows XP with SP2 or Windows Vista 32- and 64-bit versions. As Vine is in beta, it is only available to 10,000 people who live in the Seattle.

To show you a demo of what Vine will look like , Microsoft have released a demo which you can view here.

Microsoft aim to make the service comfortable for users, similar to what facebook users are like who feel completely natural when talking to family, friends or the community. To do this they will try to integrate Vine with other services such as Twitter and landline phones.

How did Vine happen?

Strangely, Microsoft Vine came along in response to the Hurricane Katrina as it almost destroyed the whole of the Gulf Coast.  Microsoft have delivered this service after four years of researching and developing the network which will come in useful when people are suffering a country attack.

One of the videos Microsoft have posted to advertise the new service is quite farfetched and amusing. The video conveys one person stranded in snow and the other person, who is a woman, has an ill grandmother. As you would expect, they both use Microsoft Vine and help comes straight away and all is well, what else would you expect in an introductary video?

Microsoft Vine is not here in the UK just yet, which is quite annoying as I would be able to share more information about the new service. which incidentally is no-profit at the moment but surely has plans to monetize itself. I am positive there a number of people in the States using it right now, if anyone is, we would be glad to hear your comments!

Well, what can I say? Twitter is getting bigger and bigger. Soon, it will be the norm to tweet every other hour!

ComScore Incorporated, the marketing research company, announced today Twitter’s statistics for March. Comscore estimates an 131% increase in unique visits to a staggering 9.3 million visits, making the comparison between February stats and March Stats. Don’t forget this is just the stats for U.S visitors think about what the Twitter worldwide statistics could be.

In February, Comscore estimated a 55% increase which is nothing compared to this month, knowing that there are double the people in the social networking site. Remember, these figures do not include apps from Desktop or Mobile Phones, not even any international visitors proving that they are probably as big as Barack Obama at the moment.

This years stats for month-to-month growth in unique visits based in the US,

March, 2009: 131%
February, 2009: 55%
January, 2009: 33%

However, I am anxiously waiting for Comscore to release the worldwide stats for twitter, which will take place later in April. The reason behind this is because Twitter recieved 9.8 million visitors worldwide and 4 million in the US. This means after the increase the total number worldwide could be around 22 million unique visits, which is insane.

Well, Twitter is going forward quickly, but other social networks like identica, plurk and Friendfeed are not increasing at their rate. Other social networks need to turn more into their superiors like Twitter!

"I did it out of boredom," Mikeyy said. What could real hackers do if they did it for something else....

Twitter has fallen victim to the Mikeyy Worm for the fourth time.

The Popular Social Networking site, Twitter, has been struck by more protection schemes over the last couple days. Surprisingly, this time the worm acted differently as its aim this time was just to have some and mess about instead of more serious actions such as hacking into Twitter accounts.

The Worm who is referred to as, “StalkDaily” ripped through the micro-blogging service like lightening. Literally when a normal Twitter onto a twitter account that had been infected, their account would automatically post a “spam” message promoting Mikey’s site.

“StalkDaily” has already owned up to his actions, who has been identified as Michael “Mikeyy” Mooney and said he acted this way as an act of boredom.

On the Twitter Blog, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote,

“At about 2AM on Saturday, four accounts were created that began spreading a worm on Twitter.”

““From 7:30AM until 11AM PST, our security team worked on eliminating the vectors that could identify this worm. At that time, about 90 accounts were compromised. We identified and secured these accounts.”

After being hit hard throughout the weekend, Twitter workers had to work fast!

“Our team quickly pulled together and started fighting the attackers in real time.”

“Again, we secured the accounts that had been compromised and removed any content that might help spread the worm. All told, we identified and deleted almost 10,000 tweets that could have continued to spread the worm.”

Twitter will have to look at the codes carefully to stop anything like this occuring again as for Mikeyy or any other hacker, it could be easier to hack and worse than last time. As Mikko Hyponnen, chief research officer at anti-malware firm F-Secure attempted to call out to the Twitter public and suggest you shouldn’t just go on any link you see!

“This is not over, There’s going to be quite a few modified Twitter worms for a day or two. Be careful in Twitter.”

Surely, after the set of the attacks on Twitter, many users must feel the need to delete their accounts and go to other secure networks such as Facebook or Myspace.

If you have “Mikeyy” you should do the following:

-Clear your browser cache and turn off JavaScript.

-Log into Twitter and delete any messages your profile automatically posted that contain the word “Mikeyy”.

-You can turn JavaScript back on so you change your bio and URL, and reset your color scheme from your profile as well as Password.

-Finally logout and try and use a third-part application such as WordTwit or Twitterfeed.

*IMPORTANT* Do not Retweet anything whilst you have the worm

This deeply upsets me because for such a site with heavy traffic to be easily compromised, the security must get up to scratch otherwise no one will feel safe or ever will be safe on Twitter. Potentially this means Twitter could possibly lose everything, its users and everything it has worked so hard for.

Remind you of any other social networking site?... Thought so!

 Futuristic Design attracts much attention

FriendFeed offers a different kind of service to its customers. As well as posting updates like Twitter and Facebook allow you to do, it also  is a feed aggregator that consolidates the updates from other micro-blogging services. 

People do not really pay much attention to FriendFeed until now even though it is being used by over 200 million people. The best thing about FriendFeed is that it accumulates and distrubutes lots of information to you so quickly without having to refresh your page. However, in other services like Facebook you have to refresh the page and even then there is limited information, many people refer to it as “static.”

Oh yes, that is where I saw it from!

Though Friendfeed has re-designed its site to attract the same amount of visitors as facebook. However, it has a long way to go still as there are over triple the amount of users using FriendFeed in comparison to Facebook.

Now that FriendFeed has used Facebook’s design to its advantage, inevitably it will soon take small, useful features which will be good for FriendFeed, but I wonder what Mark Zuckerberg would think!

Saying this, I still think Facebook has a long way to go until it becomes the central website on the Internet. Perhaps, if FriendFeed would possibly share their features such as “Like” which they have already done. Facebook with FriendFeed’s aid and vice-versa, they could both benefit from each others help which makes each social network so unique.

Generally, I think Social Networking as a whole is going in the right direction, they are using each others findings well and soon this category will be people’s homepages as well the world’s number one site, perhaps even in front of the mighty Google or Yahoo!