Mediaboss Marketing

Big news is swirling in the social media world. The rise of social networking and online communities has exploded in recent years. With all the content being shared on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, there's one common theme being spread across these communities like wildfire, and that's sports.

Fancred, a startup out of Boston - who recently received $3 million in funding led by Atlas Ventures and Militello Group - are looking to capitalize on all that content and condense it into one digital shoebox.

"Sports has always been able to carve out a really strong vertical for itself in any form of communication, whether it's print, radio,or tv. We believe that we're in the forefront of how people are using social networks to communicate with one another. We think sports will demand its own vertical", said Kash Razzaghi, CEO of Fancred in an interview with UPI.

To put it simply: Fancred is the Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Vine/Pinterest for sports fans.

Fancred condenses all the best features of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram into one social network platform. From there, you build a community of friends that share the same interests in teams, or your can just build a network of friends. While you're uploading animated gifs, pictures of ticket stubs, and rival parodies, you're also building up your "cred" or your Fancred for that matter.

The idea came to Kash Razzaghi from personal experience and market opportunity. "The premise of Fancred comes from a personal point in my life", Razzaghi told UPI. Kash grew up in a small town of Mississippi, with his family originally from Iran.

He realized very early on that the fabric of small towns connect and build deep community around team sports. So he used team sports as a way to integrate himself into the community. So naturally, he became a passionate Mississippi State fan.

Attending many games while growing up, Razzaghi would find himself saving a ticket stub, photos, programs, all the way to the pom-poms. After he accumulated all these keepsakes, he would put them in a shoebox. After a while, he noticed he gathered up two dozen shoe boxes of just sports memorabilia!

"Fans do that, they save these things because I think to them, sports is more than who wins and loses, it's more about the things that are memorable", Razzaghi explains to UPI.

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Fancred plans on building a social media empire for sports fans

Facebook will soon allow advertisers to target users based on their most recent location, the social networking giant announced Tuesday. The new service, dubbed local awareness ads, is expected to make advertising for local businesses easier and more effective.

The ads, which will target Facebook users within a mile from a particular advertiser, will be targeted at users who have allowed the Facebook mobile application to access their location, the company said in a blog post. According to Facebook, the company's system will use data about users' location to help businesses reach out to people who are located nearby or were recently near a particular business. Advertisers will also be able to see the kind of reach their ads will have.

With local awareness ads, businesses can quickly and easily find new customers by showing ads to groups of people who are near that businesss neighborhood, Facebook said in the blog post.

Facebook has introduced several products this year designed to help marketers target consumers more effectively. Last week, the company unveiled a people-based marketing service, which allows advertisers to know if a user has seen their ad, Bloomberg reported.

Facebook also assured users that their private information will remain safe and will not be misused.

Facebook does not tell advertisers which specific people are in any audience and, as with our other advertising products, all audiences must meet a minimum required size, the company said in the blog post. People have control over the recent location information they share with Facebook and will only see ads based on their location if location services are enabled on their phone.

The social networking giant was recently rumored to unveil a new advertising platform to improve the way marketers target users on its social networking website. The new platform, dubbed Atlas, was expected to help marketers track Facebook users who have seen, interacted or acted upon ads found on the social network as well as on third-party websites and apps, the Wall Street Journal reported.

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Facebook To Allow Advertisers To Target Users By Their Location

Nearly a third of all candidates use social networking websites like Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn to gather information about open positions as well as the organisation they wish to work for.

According to a report by ManpowerGroup Solutions, in order to engage prospective talent, employers should focus on the content and functionality of their websites besides maximising their presence on social media.

"Since 9 in 10 candidates (86 per cent) use them as primary sources of information about employers, making them relevant, compelling and user-friendly should be a priority of employers," ManpowerGroup Solutions Vice President Jim McCoy said.

"By maximising their presence on, and engagement with carefully selected social media, employers can attract and engage the right candidates faster and more efficiently," McCoy said.

According to the report, more than 70 per cent of social media users have Facebook accounts and they use them to learn about organisations and available jobs.

Around 43 per cent of social media users have acquired information about jobs and employers through their Google+ and LinkedIn accounts.

Besides, the other top social media platforms used to gather information about employers and open positions include -- Pinterest (22 per cent), Instagram (15 per cent), Twitter (13 per cent) and others (10 per cent).

Though technology and social media can reinforce their brand and enhance their reach, technology cannot replace the impact of human interactions, the report said.

"Even as technology -- and the awareness of new tools -- continues to rapidly advance, the tried, but true methods of in-person and phone interviews and more frequent, personalised interactions with hiring managers or recruiters remain the clear preference of job seekers across generations," McCoy added.

The study results show that the nature and frequency of employer-candidate interactions should be driven by the type of talent employers wish to attract.

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Job aspirants use social media to seek info about employers

While alleged Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbrichts trial wont start for another month, the legal battle is already heating up in court filings, centered around two questions: How did the Feds locate the Silk Road servers, and were Ulbrichts Fourth Amendment rights violated in the process? In its latest response, the government says it doesnt matter if the FBI hacked the Silk Road servers last OctoberUlbrichts rights still wouldnt have been violated.

Back in October 2013 when the Silk Road servers were seized by the feds in Iceland, no one knew exactly how the government had located the websites servers. Soon after, the feds arrested Ulbricht in San Francisco, claiming he was the Dread Pirate Roberts and the mastermind behind the online drug bazaar. Since then, Ulbricht has been charged with seven drug trafficking, narcotics, and ID theft charges.

But the details about how the government found the servers remained a mystery until last month. At the beginning of August, Ulbrichts defense filed a motion claiming that Ulbrichts Fourth Amendment rights had been violated by the government, and that by the fruit of a poisonous tree, all evidence stemming from the seizure of the Silk Road servers should be suppressed.

In order to respond to the motion, the government was forced to reveal for the first time how it discovered the Silk Road. According to a response filed last month with a declaration by FBI agent Chris Tarbell, the Silk Road servers were discovered by the FBI because of leaky code coming from the Silk Road website. When the leaking IP addresses were plugged into a non-Tor browser, part of the Silk Roads login page appeared. The feds then contacted Icelandic authorities, asking for imaging of the servers. The entire process was legal and not in violation of Ulbrichts rights, according to the FBI.

The defense was not convinced by the FBIs facile explanation and filed a response last week with a declaration by defense lawyer Joshua Horowitz, who specializes in technology and computer software. His analysis of six terabytes of discovery data presented to the defense poked holes in Tarbells account and likened the FBIs actions to hacking.

In his declaration, Horowitz claimed that the FBIs description of how the Silk Road servers were discovered was implausible. He notes that the governments account of how the servers were discovered varies from the description the FBI gave to Icelandic authorities, and that many modifications were made to the Silk Road servers before the FBI claims to have reached out to the Icelandic authorities. Horowitz argues that Tarbell failed to follow even the most rudimentary standards of computer forensic analysis. Highlighting a number of inconsistencies he found, Horowitz asked for more information from the government.

In a response filed on Monday, the government steered away from addressing any of Horowitz claims or questions. Instead, the prosecution argued thattrue or notHorowitzs claims are irrelevant because they dont prove that Ulbrichts rights were violated.

The Horowitz Declaration nowhere alleges that the SR Server was either located or searched in a manner that violated the Fourth Amendment. It merely critiques certain aspects of the Tarbell Declaration concerning how the SR Server was location, the governments response reads.

In any event, even if the FBI had somehow hacked into the SR Server in order to identify its IP address, such an investigative measure would not have run afoul of the Fourth Amendment, the response continues.

The government also questioned why Ulbricht did not submit a personal affidavit explaining how his privacy was violated. In response, the judge gave the defense until Tuesday night to submit a personal affidavit from Ulbricht. The defense has asked for an extension until October 9, because of the short notice and because Ulbrichts lawyer Joshua Dratel is in the midst of another trial.

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Feds Say That Even If FBI Hacked The Silk Road, Ulbricht's Rights Weren't Violated

Washington, DC - infoZine - Scripps Howard Foundation Wire - Nicholas Heien was arrested in 2009 after being stopped for a broken brake light. During the traffic stop, he consented to a search of his car that yielded a bag of cocaine. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 to 12 months in jail.

Why isnt the consent the end of this case? Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked.

The simple answer, according to Jeffrey Fisher, who represented Heien, is the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine, which says evidence discovered through an illegal search must be excluded in a trial.

But Robert Montgomery, who argued on behalf of North Carolina, pointed out the states laws can easily be misinterpreted, and officers need to be able to use their discretion when they are out on as call or at a traffic stop.

Because of the conflicting laws, Montgomery argued, offices need to be able to exercise their judgment.

Still, Fisher said the search was illegal under the most relevant law, and therefore Heiens consent was irrelevant.

The constitutional problem is the admission of this evidence, Justice Antonin Scalia said. And it seems to me whether its properly admitted because the Fourth Amendment wasnt violated or whether its properly admitted because the remedy for that violation is not exclusion of the evidence; you lose either way, dont you?

The question came down to a definition what is unreasonable, which Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked.

Well, it would be unreasonable if there was plain language of the statute that no one could reach a different interpretation about at all if it was plain, Montgomery said, or if there was a definite decision by an appellate court, it would be unreasonable for an officer to interpret it in his own way.

Roberts called the definition broad, and he said giving officers such a scope would be troubling.

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Supreme Court Starts Term with Fourth Amendment Case