Blog

  • Egyptian MOI Developing A Social Media Tool

    Egyptian MOI Developing A Social Media Tool

    The Egyptian MOI has announced that they will be monitoring the internet in Egypt, and especially the social networks like Facebook, twitter, and youtube in order to avoid, limit terror and violence arrangements over the internet, so that they’re developing a social media tool a long side with an agency from the UK.

    social media tool to monitor the stream in Egypt

    People started to wonder, how they will do that? Do they really mean it? Many question came across and finally we got the below attached request. The request is directed to an agency in the UK, worked before with the UK government to monitor YouTube and Twitter for authorities in the UK after the violence took place months ago. Now the Egyptian ministry of interior has decided to use their efforts to develop a similar tool, to be able to implement a solid monitoring over the internet usage in the country.

    Our question is, will they be able to meet such requirements? Read the requirement below and let us know your opinion.

    (more…)

  • Facebook Downtime for 30 Minutes

    Facebook Downtime for 30 Minutes

    Facebook downtime on 19th of June, 10:55 PM, GMT+3 time, the world started to report the Facebook downtime sharing the same error message appeared to everyone “Sorry, something went wrong. We’re working on getting this fixed as soon as we can”

    Facebook downtime error message

    Facebook Downtime Reports

    The news spread fast on the second biggest social network in the world “Twitter”, people reported the outage instantly with screenshots from their Facebook. Also the downtime detractor page, reported that +3541 persons from around the world reported that they cannot access Facebook.

    In the beginning we thought it in a specific region, but quickly realized that it’s a global Facebook downtime. “The most visited website is completely down for all users around the world”

     

    Facebook downtime reports

    Did the Facebook downtime affect Instagram or Whatsapp?

    Once people heard about the Facebook outage, they started to check their Instagram & Whatsapp as they’re a Facebook products and might have been affected due to that outage.

    Facebook is up & running again after 30 minutes

    30 minutes without Facebook. Was really shocking for so many people, and if we stopped a second to think, what if Facebook isn’t there for us? Finally it’s back. However, the world will keep talking about this incident for so long.

    Facebook downtime is over after 30 minutes

    Follow us on twitter to get more updates instantly @adigitalboom

  • Support your team during World Cup 2014 with Twitter hashflags

    Support your team during World Cup 2014 with Twitter hashflags

    Twitter launched a new world cup feature called “Hashflags“, along with other features to help you keep up with the #WorldCup. You can now cheer for your World Cup team with flags, actually, Twitter launched this feature during the world cup 2010 in South Africa, and today they’ve brought it back to life to let fans support their teams in Brazil.

    How to use HashFlags?

    Hashflags are so easy to use, Hash the first three letters from your team’s name and it will be turned into a colored flag like the one below — Support your team now!

    Vote For Your World Cup Team on Twitter

    What if your team had to get the most Twitter mentions to win the World Cup? Who would win? Support your team and find out. Click VOTE to send out a Tweet with a hashflag.

    vote for your team

    Support Your Team

    You can easily follow along with what’s happening via Twitter World Cup timelines. If you’re already on Twitter, you can also support your team and take advantage of these new World Cup features by clicking here.

    Choose a team

    World Cup Timelines

    The World Cup and match timelines make it easy to stay up to date with the World Cup –– search for or tap on #WorldCup or #WorldCup2014 to view them. In the World Cup timeline, you can view Tweets related to the World Cup from people in your network, along with relevant Tweets from teams, players, coaches, press, fans in the stadiums, and celebrities. The match timeline shows Tweets about specific matches that are happening in real-time to help you keep up with the latest goals, and saves. Even if you’re not near a TV. And if you want to view Tweets with photos and videos, just choose the photos-only view.

    WorldCup timelines

    Love every second with Twitter #WorldCup features

    Twitter also offers you and other fans around the world a front-row seat to all 64 matches. Whether on Twitter for iPhone, Android, or twitter.com, you can easily follow all the matches, players, coaches, and more.

    Enjoy the world cup #ITA #ENG #ESP #BRA What’s your team?

  • EdgeRank Checker Powered by Socialbakers

    EdgeRank Checker Powered by Socialbakers

    EdgeRank Checker “Applum LLC product” is now powered by Socialbakers and even more. ShareGrab, ContestCapture & PostAcumen are also Applum LLC products and were also transferred to be powered by Socialbakers.

    On June 6th, 2011 Applum started with EdgeRank Checker, developed PostAcumen, then ShareGrab and ContestCapture. Three years later, Applum announced that they are teaming up with industry leader Socialbakers. This powerful partnership will combine EdgeRank Checker, ShareGrab, ContestCapture, and PostAcumen with Socialbakers’ social insights across platforms including Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

    EdgeRank Checker, ShareGrab, ContestCapture, and PostAcumen will now be powered by Socialbakers, who is a major leader in social media analytics with over 300 employees and 2,000 clients around the world.

    We’re so excited to work with Socialbakers, and leveraging their platform will enable us to do great things in the future.

    Applum said

    What will happen to your EdgeRank Checker, ShareGrab, ContestCapture, and PostAcumen accounts?

    Applum sent updates to accounts holders aligning them to the changes taking place 9th of June: Your account will be securely transferred into Socialbakers’ system Today (June 9, 2014), and there should be no interruption in service or change of data. There will be a few minor changes to the product, and an upgrade that should improve site speeds and overall performance.

    EdgeRank Checker – Understand Facebook Algorithm

    EdgeRank Checker is the only one of its kind, a unique online tool, it revealed the mystery behind the Facebook news feed algorithm to improve your page’s reach, by Allow ERC’s deep learning algorithms to analyze your Page and provide actionable steps to increase engagement.

    EdgeRank Checker was the first and maybe the only tool to empower social media analysts to understand Facebook algorithm with the science of Affinity, Weight, & Time Decay.

    Features:

    • Recommendations
    • Real-Time Competitive Analysis
    • Post Grades
    • Negative Feedback Analyzer
    • Photo report
    • industry report

    Price: $15/month

    PostAcumen – Competitive Facebook Analytics

    PostAcumen is another Applum product, helps you get answers for many questions in mind like:

    Where does my brand rank in the industry?
    Use Industry Report to compile custom industry insights. Analyze exclusive metrics such as Estimated Reach & Clicks. Show your client/boss available opportunities.

    What’s going on right now on the news feed?
    Monocle monitors the news feed right in real-time, updated every 30 sec. What content is eating up engagement, when is the next available opportunity for your brand to post & more…

    Which posts dominate the news feed?
    Sort all posts by a variety of metrics with Post Visualizer. Need to know what Pepsi did on Friday afternoon or what photos they post when Asking for Engagement?

    Strategy Analysis

    What is a particular brand’s strategy? How consistent are they with this strategy?  Understand what type of tactics each brand is using in their Facebook marketing.

    PostAcumen dashboard

     

    Best Photo

    Visually analyze which photos are receiving the best engagement.

    postacument best photo

    When are people engaging on Facebook?

    Use Pulse to check when people are engaging with Facebook, in real-time. Monitor all of Facebook’s American activity to see when brands and users are active. See opportunities when brand activity is low, but user activity is high.

    PostAcumen Pulse

    Side by side

    Compare metrics and strategy side by side for an easy visual analysis. Look at baseline activity between brands to understand what metrics are dominating.

    PostAcumen sidebyside

    Page Profiles

    Look over a Page’s metrics as a whole.

    PostAcumen Page

    PostAcumen Full Features:

    • Industry Report
    • Side by Side
    • Content Type Analysis
    • Leaderboard
    • Monocle : Real-Time
    • Best Photos
    • Estimated Clicks
    • Exportable CSVs
    • Post Visualizer
    • Engagement Analysis
    • Estimated Reach
    • PDF Reports
    • Best/Worst Strategy
    • Post Frequency Analysis
    • Estimated Virality

    ShareGrab – Wondering what to post today?

    The best post content is highly Shareable… Get the most Shareable content from your most appealing Facebook page you choose, whenever you need it.

    It’s FREE

    Contest Capture – Export Likes and Comments from Contest Posts on Facebook

    Export Likes and Comments from Contest Posts on Facebook. Facebook now allows pages to do contests via posts. Here’s an easy way to keep track of contest entries via Likes and Comments…for FREE!

    Do you think that integration will benefit you as a social media analyst, and will Socialbakers improve Applum projects to fit more in the market? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments box below.

  • Huawei Ascend P7 is Thinner, Sleeker & Cutting Edge

    Huawei Ascend P7 is Thinner, Sleeker & Cutting Edge

    Let’s start with the facts.

    There is explosive demand for bigger smartphones. A 4-inch smartphone feels small now; somewhere around 5 inches is the new normal. Yet too many large-screen phones are cumbersome, awkward, and often just plain bad or just like any other smartphone, have many problems in connectivity during calls, capturing really low quality selfies, or even unreliable with internet speed. Huawei has started taking good steps with obviously huge markets and being the first manufacturer to really nail the execution of excellent with edges phones.

    Add those three things together, and this phone on my desk isn’t at all surprising. It’s the Huawei Ascend P7: a bigger, brighter, thinner, sleeker, and cutting all edges. P7 designed to appeal to the customers whom are looking for high connectivity, social networks geeks, selfie lovers, and elegancy seekers as well. (Which is basically everybody nowadays). It priced at $300 and comes in black and white. It’s full of new technology and crafted with perfection. Huawei intends for it to be the new standard in a new type of smartphone, to be the cutting edge phone that anyone wants. Not the best phone, but the most reliable and connectivity driven phone. The phone everyone dreams of.

    Of course, Apple, Samsung, HTC, and others have been making brilliant phones too, and they have years of iteration and millions of sales to show for it. This is a new edge to climb yet: can it leapfrog the entrenched competition and prove that Huawei can do better?

    The Huawei Ascend P7 delivers powerful performance because of its double antennas for never cut-off internet during normal calls, 13M front camera for stunning selfies, beautiful design and is ready to meet all your day-to-day needs.

    8MP BSI Front Camera For Stunning Selfies

    The Ascend P7 redefines the possibilities of the smartphone camera experience. The 8MP 5-piece aspherical lens front camera incorporates a Blue Glass infrared sensor that enhances the clarity of every photo, helping to avoid object deformation and purple fringing, making every photo you take a memory to treasure.

    Not only an edge with front camera but main camera

    Low-Light Performance

    Huawei Ascend P7 – Low Light Performance

     

    The Ascend P7 gives you an edge in low light settings with Blue Glass infrared filters on the front and rear lenses to provide a sharper image, with better noise reduction and bright colors and details, even in low light conditions.

    Switching

    Huawei Ascend P7

    The Ascend P7 is built for enhanced connectivity in the era of lightning-fast 4G LTE. But when you’re away from a 4G network and need to improve the stability of your signal, or just want to save some extra battery power by using a 3G connection, the Ascend P7 switches automatically between networks.

    Huawei Ascend P7 Launch in Paris

    At a dedicated event in Paris, Huawei – the third biggest smartphone maker in the world – announced its brand new flagship smartphone, the Ascend P7.

    Here’s where we take a look at the new Huawei Ascend P7’s release date, specs and features.

    https://youtu.be/ZvonZZDZca4

    Huawei Ascend P7 Full Specifications:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c36XCdGJdVI

    Update

    Our Predictions on Huawei’s Market Share in The Smartphone Market After The Launch of Ascend P7

    In the first quarter of 2013, Huawei’s market share in the smartphone market was at 4.3 percent. The Ascend P7 is going to improve Huawei’s market share in few months as it comes with variety of cutting edge features, high quality and people will notice this easily.

  • Why You Must Attend Social Media Day Egypt 2014

    Why You Must Attend Social Media Day Egypt 2014

    Social Media Day Egypt is coming this year on the 21st of June, earlier 9 days than the original date to avoid the holy month of Ramadan. Mashable SMDay original date is 30th of June every year…The event organizers decided to make it more flexible to suite people attending to make the most of the celebration away from the loaded Ramadan calendar.

    “Oventure” the event organizers are planning to take the experience this year to another level.

    2014’s Social Media Day Egypt Overview:

    • “Fun” More excitement with extraordinary celebration
    • “Awards” Recognizing the top campaigns on social media last 12 months
    • “Trends” Reveal the latest trends and what’s coming next in the digital arena
    • “Networking” Social Media people will be around, don’t miss the chance to gain more connections from your field
    • “Job Opportunities” For the first time in Egypt, a Social Media Job Fair

    Accordingly, and responding to people’s feedback from last year, this year’s Social Media Day will be held in Cairo instead of Alexandria giving more brands, agencies and social media wanna be(s) from Cairo the opportunity to attend and celebrate.

    Social Media Day Egypt 2014 Event Details:

    Date: 21st of June, 2014
    Venue: The Greek Campus – Tahrir Square area, Cairo, Egypt
    Registration: Register now
    Twitter: @SMdayEgypt
    Global Hashtag: #SMDay
    Local Hashtag: #SMDayEgypt
    Event on Facebook: RSV on SMDay Event on Facebook

    More about Mashable Social Media Day

    In 2011, Mashable initiated the idea of celebration the social media revolution, and called it the Social Media Day. Mashable didn’t want to limit the celebration on USA only, but allowed anyone from anywhere around the world to organize the Social Media Day in their country and celebrate with his local colleagues and whoever wants to join.

    The idea got a wide acceptance allover the world, and people started to organize the Social Media Day in their cities every year in the same date as mashable suggested.

    The following year “2012” Mashable launched a dedicated page & a Facebook group to gather organizers and give them more power and branding for the day. And the success follows year over year.

    Let’s celebrate together in Egypt this year in the Greek Campus.

  • 30K retweets give 17 employees a trip to Dubai

    30K retweets give 17 employees a trip to Dubai

    A trip to Dubai with just a tweet! While we were exploring our Twitter timeline, we found an RT by our friend Shaden. The tweet was by “Badr El Saad asking for 30K retweets to help him beat his manager and get a trip to Dubai for the team of 17 persons working in Smaat KSA.

    A Trip to Dubai With Just A Tweet

    30K Retweets – Trip to Dubai

    The Twitter Magic Just Happened

    Only 24 hours to get 30K Retweets and 17 employees won the trip to Dubai.

    Badr Made His Homework By Cycling His Request On Real-time platforms like Twitter & Vine, But That Wasn’t The Only Key

    We have analyzed the reasons why people helped Badr get the 30K Retweets and found that:

    • The spontaneous writing of the tweet, it’s not well-organized but has all aspects and a clear call to action with strong visual
    • Twitter users tend to fight against political leaders “Managers have something in common”

    Those are the 2 key reasons Twitter users decided to help Badr for.

    Congratulations Smaat for having such a creative & challenging team.

  • Hello Happiness phone booth: A debatable Initiative

    Hello Happiness phone booth: A debatable Initiative

    Coca cola is one of the world’s most loved brands, but in the UAE it’s not the market leader. The company decided to increase brand love by launching an initiative which targets the country’s large asian population, most specifically the blue color workers, who leave their families behind and comes to UAE and in search of a better future.

    This segment usually only targeted with basic freebies and generic prizes, Coca Cola tapped into an insight that the workers can truly related to.

    Coca-Cola decided to spread a little happiness by helping these Asian workers connect to their families back home more often.

    “The call costs $0.9 per min. and those Asian laborers average wages is $6 per day.”

    Hello Happiness phone booth was created. Smartly turns the Coca Cola bottle caps into currency to be be used as a currency to call their families through the Hello Happiness phone Booth.

    Over 140,000 minutes were logged in the first 30 days. The video got over 820 million media impression as it was picked up by international media, bloggers, after becoming the UAE’s top trending topic online.

    Coca-cola estimated the brand love increase by 13.5% after the campaign.

    The Debate – What Have People Said About Coca Cola Initiative Online?

    We’ve scanned the web for real feedback about the initiative in Dubai, here’s a summary for what was being said:

    Sentiment Analysis – Hello Happiness by Coca Cola Dubai

    • 45% praised the initiative for creativity and humanity
    • 55% who disliked the initiative have a lot to say about slavery, poverty, bad marketing, Coca Cola real intention is to increase sales, Coca Cola is destroying poor people’s health by misusing them for marketing? A Coca Cola bottle costs $0.5 while $0.9 per min., so you’re not helping, you’re increasing sales, and more from people to be displayed next, please continue reading…

    Verbatim/YouTube:

    Debate on YouTube

    In a post by MENA Tech on Facebook, People expressed their dissatisfaction and anger toward Coca Cola’s latest marketing campaign “Hello Happiness”.

    Negative Verbatim

    on Twitter

    Volume of negative tweets is low, the campaign didn’t make that propaganda on Twitter, however, we’ve been able to capture some of people’s concerns around the campaign as following:

  • Sheryl Sandberg The Woman Behind Facebook

    Sheryl Sandberg The Woman Behind Facebook

    Sheryl Sandberg, born August 28, 1969, is an American businesswoman, activist, and writer. As of August 2013, she is the chief operating officer of Facebook. In June 2012, she was elected Sheryl Sandberg The Woman Behind Facebookto the board of directors by the existing board members, becoming the first woman to serve on Facebook’s board.

    Before Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg was Vice President of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google and was involved in launching Google’s philanthropic arm Google.org.

    Before Google, Sandberg served as chief of staff for the United States Secretary of the Treasury.

    According to Time magazine, in 2012, she was named in the Time 100, an annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people. As of January 2014, Sandberg is reported to be worth over US$1 billion due to her stock holdings in Facebook and other companies.

    Sheryl Sandberg story with Facebook:

    In late 2007, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder, and chief executive of Facebook, met Sheryl Sandberg at a Christmas party held by Dan Rosensweig; at the time, she was considering becoming a senior executive for The Washington Post Company. Zuckerberg had no formal search for a COO but thought of Sandberg as “a perfect fit” for this role. They spent more time together in January 2008 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and in March 2008, Facebook announced hiring Sheryl Sandberg away from Google.

    After joining the company, Sandberg quickly began trying to figure out how to make Facebook profitable. Before she joined, the company was “primarily interested in building a really cool site; profits, they assumed, would follow.”By late spring, Facebook’s leadership had agreed to rely on advertising, “with the ads discreetly presented”; by 2010, Facebook became profitable. According to Facebook, Sandberg oversees its business operations, including sales, marketing, business development, human resources, public policy, and communications.

    2493 people in Luleå standing on ice to form the world’s largest human Like! – by Sheryl Sandberg

    Sandberg’s executive compensation for Final Year 2011 was $300,000 base salary plus $30,491,613 in Facebook inc. Shares. She also owns 38,122,000 stock options and restricted stock units (worth approx. $1.45 billion as of May 2012) that will be completely vested by May 2022, subject to her continued employment through the vesting date.

    In 2012 she became the eighth member (and the first female member) of Facebook’s board of directors.

    In October 2012, Business Insider reported that stock units (appx. 34 million) vested in Sandberg’s name accounted for nearly US$790,000,000. Facebook withheld roughly 15 million of those stocks for tax reasons, leaving Sandberg with nearly US$417,000,000. The media reported on August 12, 2013, that Sandberg sold 2.4m shares in the company worth US$91 million—5 percent of her total stake in the company.

    In April 2014, it was reported that Sandberg had sold over half of her shares on Facebook since the company went public. At the time of Facebook’s IPO, she held approximately 41 million shares in the company. After several rounds of sales, she is left with around 17.2 million shares, a 0.5% stake in the company, worth about one billion dollars.

  • Heartbleed bug : Change your passwords to avoid

    Heartbleed bug : Change your passwords to avoid

    Heartbleed is a bug in the open-source cryptography library Open SSL which allows attackers to read the memory of servers which use Open SSL. The bug is considered as the biggest

    heartbleed

    threat since the internet was invented, as it affects many popular social networks and online services like Facebook, Google, Dropbox, and more to be listed below.

    What caused the heartbleed? On April 7, 2014, it was announced that OpenSSL 1.0.2 beta, as well as all versions of OpenSSL in the 1.0.1 series except 1.0.1g had a severe memory handling bug in their implementation of the TLS Heartbeat Extension. This defect could be used to reveal up to 64 kilobytes of the application’s memory with every heartbeat.

    Top social networks & online service got affected by the heartbleed bug

    Status Recommended action according to the service providers’ responds
    Facebook Affected “We added protections for Facebook’s implementation of OpenSSL before this issue was publicly disclosed. We haven’t detected any signs of suspicious account activity, but we encourage people to … set up a unique password.”
    Twitter Not affected No action required
    Gmail Affected “We have assessed the SSL vulnerability and applied patches to key Google services.”*Google said users do not need to change their passwords, but because of the previous vulnerability, better safe than sorry.
    Paypal Not affected “Your PayPal account details were not exposed in the past and remain secure.”
    LinkedIn Not affected “We didn’t use the offending implementation of OpenSSL in www.linkedin.com or www.slideshare.net. As a result, HeartBleed does not present a risk to these web properties.”
    tumblr Affected “We have no evidence of any breach and, like most networks, our team took immediate action to fix the issue.”
    Amazon Not affected Nothing required – no statement
    Dropbox Affected “We’ve patched all of our user-facing services & will continue to work to make sure your stuff is always safe.”
    SoundCloud Affected “We will be signing out everyone from their SoundCloud accounts … and when you sign back in, the fixes we’ve already put in place will take effect.”
    Wunderlist Affected “You’ll have to simply log back into Wunderlist. We also strongly recommend that you reset your password for Wunderlist.”
    Yahoo Affected “As soon as we became aware of the issue, we began working to fix it… and we are working to implement the fix across the rest of our sites right now.”
    Microsoft Not Affected Nothing from your side
    Hotmail/outlook Not Affecte N/A

    Up till this moment 22:21:31, 2014-04-10, we didn’t detect any complaint from any individual or corporation around the world reporting any infringement to their passwords caused by the heartbleed – We will capture any thing for you as it happens – keep an eye on Digital Boom.

    In the meanwhile, to stay safe, we recommend to change all important services’ passwords in order to maintain your privacy and keep things organized.