Archive for the ‘Social Networking’ Category

This billion-dollar startup helps neighbors and local businesses stay connected and help each other during the COVID-19 lockdown – Business Insider

captionNextdoor allows neighbors to help each other through social distancing.sourceFertnig/Getty Images

In times of crises, our network is our first port of call: our family, our friends, our colleagues.

Increasingly, as a society, knocking on our neighbors door has become a last resort.

In Bowling Alone written in 1995 but what may prove to be seminal theory in the post COVID-19 world the political scientist Robert Putnam describes how the chaos of modern life: longer working hours, staring into screens, and driving everywhere has made us residents of, rather than active participants in, our communities.

He talks about the damaging decline of social capital deeply rooted civic relationships, rather than pages full of so-called friends we only interact with online in modern American life.

Founded in 2011, Nextdoor is the worlds largest private network for neighbors, currently in 11 countries and 260,000 neighborhoods and with plans to expand globally.

At its core, its a place where someone can ask for help finding a local plumber or selling a bike.

Increasingly, its becoming a hub for local government and trade, where agencies can post area specific information and businesses in the area can advertise discounts.

Over the last few weeks of the global COVID-19 lockdown, more people are at home, confined to exercise, shopping, and interactions in their locality only, and so neighbors have become a lifeline.This should be Nextdoors moment.

Prakash Janakiraman, the cofounder of Nextdoor, agrees. Engagement picked up at the end of February and then skyrocketed from March. Usage is up 80% in most neighborhoods, he said.

We need to know that we can still function day to day, individually, and as a household if we have dependents. We also need a bit of reassurance when so much is out of our control.

Nextdoor is founded on trust and utility. We have a friction-full verification process, so we are sure every resident is who they say they are and lives at the address given, said Prakash. This makes it a safe environment for people to reach out for and offer help.

There has been a 262% increase in conversations around help on the platform, and in response, Nextdoor added a Help Map feature.

This allows users to mark their location and list what errands they can run or support they can give. This is in addition to Nextdoor Groups, which are formed around a mix of needs and interests, from parent groups to book clubs.

Prakash is proud that local government, police, and fire departments trust the platform as a space to get information out to residents.

To ensure visibility, the company has put public agency information at the top of the feed during the lockdown period. We have seen a tripling in the number of public agencies posting in recent weeks but we expect them to continue to engage after this is all over, he said.

Although a private social network, Nextdoor is very much a public chat room where agencies, businesses and neighbors share information. This will always carry a certain level of risk; Facebook and Twitter learned the importance of content moderation the hard way.

We have invested heavily in artificial intelligence. A kindness reminder pops up when it detects text that has been flagged as inappropriate in the past; this makes people step back and think again before posting. Our content teams are also constantly monitoring activity across the platform, he said.

While being neighborly might be at the center of Nextdoors mission, as its user base grows, theres opportunity to strengthen its relationship with businesses and to cash in on big advertising dollars.

At the end of 2019, it launched Local Deals, where businesses could target direct marketing only to people living near their premises. Door-to-door mailing is time- and labor-intensive for a small business, and many inboxes are already packed with promotional mail.

The idea is that the members on Nextdoor have already signed up to be a part of the local conversation and are more likely to want to support the shops and restaurants down the street.

As well as teaming with local businesses, contracts with big corporations are very much part of the growth plan. In April, at the height of the global lockdown, it launched Neighbors Helping Neighbors with Walmart a service that connects elderly or less-able members with other members willing to get groceries for them. This has obviously been a critical service during the COVID-19 lockdown but we expect it will continue and grow, said Prakash.

Having raised $170 million in its last funding round, Nextdoor is comfortably in unicorn territory with a current valuation of $2.17 billion. It was well capitalized to strengthen communities across the world before COVID-19.

In fact, as citizens get ready to head out into the world beyond our zip code and reflect on the lockdown period, we may ask ourselves why we dodged our neighbors for so long.

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This billion-dollar startup helps neighbors and local businesses stay connected and help each other during the COVID-19 lockdown - Business Insider

Bolton’s rivals Tranmere call for League One relegation to be scrapped – The Bolton News

TRANMERE chairman Mark Palios has called for relegation to be scrapped if League Ones fixtures cannot be completed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The former Football Association chief executive believes deciding placings in the table based on a points-per-game basis would be unfair and has called on the EFL to void the season if it cannot be resumed.

It now means that both of the teams alongside Wanderers in the relegation zone have now called publicly for the season to be scrapped completely, with Southend chairman Ron Martin declaring his stance several weeks ago.

Rovers sit in the bottom four, three points off safety albeit having played a game less than 20th-placed AFC Wimbledon.

League Two clubs last week voted to curtail their campaign, agreeing a PPG system and promotions but no relegation to the National League.

Clubs in the third tier seemingly remain at odds over whether to resume competitive football or not but are likely to be presented with options by the league by the end of the week.

Palios said on Tranmere's official website: "In a sporting competition, you set the rules at the start of a competition and everybody's happy, understands the rules and the consequences of success and failure - you don't change the rules of the league mid-season.

"If the decision is made that we will not play the season out then I think it's quite clear that the season should be voided, rather than deciding on what is a mid-season change of rules and a fairly arbitrary decision as regards how we deal with promotion and relegation.

"In order to find an acceptable compromise, it has to be just: a compromise that is fair.

"Our suggested solution follows on from what League Two voted in favour of last week and while that's not a binding vote, it's indicative of where their intentions were and that is promotions, without relegation."

Palios added that PPG is "flawed as a mechanism" before writing on Twitter: "If you want to change the regs in mid-season then do so but don't penalise teams as a result so no relegations. Use PPG with a margin for error."

Palios' wife and Tranmere's vice-chairman, Nicola, then wrote on the social networking site: "If PPG had been used to determine the outcome last season, at the same point in the season, 3 out of the 4 teams who would have been relegated were not in fact relegated. Those who argue it is the "fairest" way are factually wrong."

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Bolton's rivals Tranmere call for League One relegation to be scrapped - The Bolton News

Zuckerberg warns that Facebook’s content moderation efforts have been hampered by coronavirus – CNBC

Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies at a House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, October 23, 2019.

Erin Scott | Reuters

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday said the company's ability to moderate content on its social networks has been impacted by Covid-19 limiting its use of human moderators.

As the coronavirus began to spread in the U.S. in mid-March, Facebook and its partners sent content moderator contractors home to keep them safe, Zuckerberg said. That decision reduced Facebook's number of human content moderators down to just its full-time moderators, he said.

"Our effectiveness has certainly been impacted by having less human review during Covid-19, and we do unfortunately expect to make more mistakes until we're able to ramp everything back up," he said.

Facebookmade the decision to prioritize the use of human moderators to do initial reviews of the most severe content violations reported by its users. As a result,Facebookhas relied less on human moderators to look at appeals involving other types of content.Zuckerberg said he expects the amount of appealed content to be much lower in the company's August report.

Already, that drop in content appeal reviews can be seen in the Tuesday report. Content appeal reviews for January through March came in at2.3 million pieces of content, down nearly 18% from content appeal reviews between October and December 2019 and down nearly 26% fromJanuary through March 2019.

Despite this dip, Zuckerberg said Facebook will continue to issue its content moderation transparency reports.

"We're going to keep sharing our report even if our numbers dip in some places because I believe transparency in how we're handling the safety of our community is as important as the reports that we make on our quarterly earnings," he said.

Facebook is now in the process of bringing itscontent moderator contractors back online to help with the review of content, and the majority of those reviewers can now work from home, said Guy Rosen, Facebook vice president of integrity.

"There's obviously difference in what that works is like, so we're working hard to make sure that we're prioritizing things the right way," Rosen said.

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Zuckerberg warns that Facebook's content moderation efforts have been hampered by coronavirus - CNBC

What Is the Future of Legal Marketing, Near-Term and Ongoing? – JD Supra

Updated: May 25, 2018:

JD Supra is a legal publishing service that connects experts and their content with broader audiences of professionals, journalists and associations.

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What Is the Future of Legal Marketing, Near-Term and Ongoing? - JD Supra

LabRoots Announces Open Registration for 4th Annual Laboratory Automation & Informatics Virtual Event, Scheduled on May 20th – PR Web

YORBA LINDA, Calif. (PRWEB) May 14, 2020

LabRoots, the leading scientific social networking website, offering premier, interactive virtual events and webinars, is pleased to bring together research scholars, innovators, top scientists, life science professionals, engineers and informatics specialists from around the world to attend its free, online Laboratory Automation & Informatics event scheduled on May 20, 2020, aimed to improve the science and practice of laboratory automation and technology.

Following on the success of 2019, the Laboratory Automation & Informatics 2020 conference will focus on practical strategies and technologies related to high throughput biology, microfluidics enabling automation, and method validation and LIMS. This years online forum will include a blend of leading academia and industry expert speakers promising an end to end program sharing expertise in every session leaving attendees with tools and insights to address the needs and challenges in the laboratory.

You wont want to miss engaging in enlightening discussions centered around topics including, gene editing by a click-of-a-button, unique droplet microfluidic technology to automate the digital PCR workflow, the strategic and commercial key criteria for a Lab 4.0 solution and the benefit of an end to end workflow, current approaches to single-cell secretion analysis, single cell genomics tools for better understanding and treatment of human disease, the validation of LIMS as a part of the data integrity and which tools to use, zero-effort analytical method validation in a lab environment, and next-gen protein assays enabling precision medicine and data-driven biology, and much more, to further round out the agenda.

Kicking off the day, the following two stellar academic professionals will present keynote presentations on their novel research and findings:

Abraham (Abe) Lee, Professor, Professor, Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Irvine; Director, NSF I/UCRC Center for Advanced Design & Manufacturing of Integrated Microfluidics (CADMIM), and serves as Editor-in-Chief for the Lab on a Chip journal, will speak to Bridging Multiscale Physiological Systems via Microfluidics-from single cell to tissue-scale to organ-scale, explaining the approaches for microfluidics to tap into the current cellular and immune-therapies, in the session of high throughput biology.

Since microfluidics has proven to be a valuable tool to operate at the live single cell level, it is ideal to both scale-up towards organ-level functions and scale-down towards genomics and proteomics expressions for a complete picture of the physiological health status, said Dr. Abraham Abe Lee, Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of California, Irvine. The future of microfluidic precision medicine will enable patients to have access to their own health information in real-time and provide personalized options to help them live lives to their fullest. During the LabRoots conference you will learn about the advances in research labs that are rapidly moving into the clinic, and even the home-based medical solutions as the shelter-in-place orders are inevitably accelerating these developments.

Dr. Adam Abate, Associate Professor at the University of California, San Francisco will address Quantitative biology with droplet microfluidics, and describe the application of microfluidics to bottom-up cell community assembly and the familiarization with microfluidic methods for single-cell multi-omics analysis, in the session of microfluidics enabling automation.

Dr. Adam Abate, Associate Professor, University of California, San Francisco commented, We believe high throughput single cell analysis will transform research and medicine and microfluidics and automation approaches will be critical to facilitating the process.

We are committed to providing our participants with an unmatched conference experience, and the shared knowledge presented by these renowned speakers further ignites LabRoots commitment to providing exceptional content offered year after year while exploring new innovations and discussing the future of the laboratory science and technology field, said Tracy Salcido, Vice President of LabRoots.

Produced on LabRoots robust platform with the capability to connect across all desktop and mobile devices, the virtual environment is tightly focused with a lobby, auditorium, poster hall, exhibit hall (highlighting the latest array of products and technologies), and networking lounge allowing an interactive learning experience for all participants. LabRoots, an approved provider of continuing education programs in the clinical laboratory sciences by the ASCLS P.A.C.E Program, offers attendees the opportunity to earn 1 Continuing Education Credit per presentation for a maximum of 30 credits.

For more information or to register for the event, click here. Use #LRlabauto to follow the conversation!

About LabRoots LabRoots is the leading scientific social networking website, and primary source for scientific trending news and premier educational virtual events and webinars and more. Contributing to the advancement of science through content sharing capabilities, LabRoots is a powerful advocate in amplifying global networks and communities. Founded in 2008, LabRoots emphasizes digital innovation in scientific collaboration and learning. Offering more than articles and webcasts that go beyond the mundane and explore the latest discoveries in the world of science, LabRoots users can stay atop their field by gaining continuing education credits from a wide range of topics through their participation in the webinars and virtual events.

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LabRoots Announces Open Registration for 4th Annual Laboratory Automation & Informatics Virtual Event, Scheduled on May 20th - PR Web