… a new generation of companies is beginning to deploy algorithms that sieve through these data to separate trustworthy borrowers from those likely to default and to price their loans accordingly. Some—like the Hong Kong-based Lenddo, which currently operates in the Philippines and Colombia—do so by scrutinizing the applicants’ connections on Facebook and Twitter. The key to getting a successful loan from Lenddo is having a handful of highly trusted individuals in your social networks. If they vouch for you and you get the loan, your select friends will also be notified of your successes in repaying the loan. (In the past, Lenddo even threatened to notify them—exerting maximum peer pressure—if you had problems repaying the loan.)

Similarly, the U.S.-based LendUp, which hands out short-term loans with high interest rates while allowing its most trusted established clients to move to more attractive longer-term packages, looks at social media activity to ensure that factual data provided on the online application matches what can be inferred from Facebook and Twitter.

Via Slate

Scientists don’t usually share data. But with brain imaging studies expensive and difficult to differentiate real effects of gene variations from “noise,” scientists are starting to see the value of pooling their knowledge.

Merging imaging and genomics, research from the US, Australia and the Netherlands persuaded 200 researchers around the world to contribute to one large database with brain scans from 21,000 people. Collectively, scientists were able to identify the effect of specific gene variations on brain structures associated with intelligence.  

clipandshare:

Via: Posted by Anthony Wing Kosner, Contributor Quantum of Content, 2/18/2012 at forbues.com

Pinterest, the almost two-year-old social scrapbooking site, is on a tear. TechCrunch reported on Tuesday that Pintrest reached 11.7 million monthly active users. Whether they…

By creating a social network for scientists a firm based in Berlin is aiming to do for the academic world what Mark Zuckerberg did for the world in general. About 1.4m researchers have signed up already, and that number is growing by 50,000 a month.

At the moment, most  users are in their 20s. Their favourite activity is to ask each other questions about practical research problems, from DNA-sequencing techniques to statistical tricks. They are also busy reading each other’s papers: more than 10m have been uploaded. 

Source: The Economist

With newspaper circulations down, television commercials easily skipped and social media the number one activity on the web, brands are naturally following the crowd by going ‘social’ and joining millions of people online.

They’re setting up Twitter accounts and Facebook pages. They’re getting on Google+ and even dipping their toe into LinkedIn. Some have started blogs and created Flickr or Vimeo accounts to share pictures and videos.

Whilst this is all worthwhile, many brands are still getting it completely wrong. They’re trying to integrate social media into their old ‘marketing mix’ rather than understanding the whole purpose of social media.

They’re missing the point by throwing out one-way marketing messages like before, screaming things like ‘Buy This’ and ‘Get your 20 per cent discount today! Ok maybe that last message pulls a lot of eyeballs but is that any way to build a premium brand?

This traditional, one-way marketing doesn’t work anymore. Consumers are already bombarded with thousands of marketing messages on a daily basis but the majority of them are ignored. Most banner ads don’t get a click-through - it’s about 1% on the good ones. Nearly half of all direct mail is never opened. And there are OVER than 200 million Americans on the ‘Do Not Call’ list.

So what else can you do to get your messages out there?

Today, we are all connected. Today, smart brands make business personal. And they do that by becoming a social business rather than applying the same old marketing techniques to the new medium of social media. They realize that ‘social’ isn’t a new way of marketing, It’s a new way of doing business.

A social business doesn’t just do social, it uses strategic and creative excellence, and extraordinarily well thought through content to create brand lust, engagement heat and ultimately passionate advocates for the business and it’s products and services.

Brands that get social media right by becoming social see phenomenal success. Just look at the facts. Nearly two thirds of businesses have acquired a customer through their blog. A quarter of B2B firms have gained a client through Facebook. Company websites that have a blog get 55 per cent more visitors than those who don’t. There’s even evidence to suggest that web visitors from social sites convert 59 per cent higher than those who aren’t communicating directly with their customers. On Thanksgiving day our clients at Jim Beam welcomed their 1 millionth fan on Facebook, after some savvy social by our Beam & StrawberryFrog team.

You see - it’s not just about ‘going social’. It’s about becoming a social business. It’s realizing that marketing doesn’t work like it used to. Today, successful brands become social ones.

So how do you become a social business?

strawberryfrog:

More businesses are embracing social tools to build internal and external communities, improve communications, and delight customers.

When the Enterprise 2.0 conference, a UBM TechWeb event, opens in Boston next week, corporate technology and community managers hope to shift some of the conversation away from potential applications and toward real achievements.

Conference track organizers for Enterprise 2.0 say they expect to spend less time selling a vision for enterprise social networking and collaboration because the vision is more widely understood. Turning it into a reality for more people is still going to take some work, however. The Enterprise 2.0 conference is sponsored by our publisher, UBM, and brings together technology and business leaders exploring the potential of Web 2.0 and social media in the enterprise.

“One thing that I think has changed is we’ve kind of entered the mainstream—most executives at most companies are kind of intrigued and exploring,” said Rachel Happe, who is chairing the conference track on managing communities to engage external audiences. Some of those business leaders are still seeking to establish a business case for moving forward, she said, “but we’re not having to convince people that it’s interesting, or that they should pay attention to it.”