relevance
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Twitter's search results are now sorted by relevance
Earlier this year, Twitter started moving away from the reverse chronological timeline and started prioritizing algorithmically "relevant" tweets in order to keep users more engaged. Starting today, Twitter will now be ordering its search results the same way in hopes that more relevant results will improve the search experience as well.
The Daily Grind: Should old content be made easier or relevant?
There's probably no one in the world who really wants go back through the Cataclysm raids in World of Warcraft. It's something you do because you like the looks of items and want to walk around looking pretty, not because you just can't get enough of that content. Since this content generally can't be just powered through alone, you have to get several like-minded people willing to revisit old content in the hopes that you might get some vanity items... which is easier said than done, and it's not all that easily said. Pretty much any game has a backlog of old content that's no longer relevant. An obvious solution is to just make this something that players can explore alone and easily; if no one's going back here as a challenge, wouldn't it make sense to just let everyone cruise on through as a tourist? But there's also the option of making it relevant in some fashion again, some way to make you feel you're not just pounding your head against content that provides a non-trivial but irrelevant challenge. So what do you think? Should old content be made easier for newer players or characters? Should it be made more relevant in some way? Or is it just fine to let it lie and let the people who missed out just keep on missing out? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Google Takeout introduces transfer tool for Google+ circles, merges your work and personal life
Those who extol the virtues of keeping one's personal and professional life separate probably never had to juggle two Google+ accounts. Folks saddled with a Google+ profile for both their personal Gmail account and their organization's Google Apps account can now migrate circles, blocks and other information from one account to another using Google Takeout. The new tool won't eliminate your double digital life completely, however -- content such as posts, profile information and comments don't migrate. The process takes time, too, kicking off with a seven day waiting period before restricting the user's Google+ access for 48 hours while Takeout boxes up the data. Still, this should make managing Circles across multiple accounts a little simpler. Check out the official Google help page at the source link below.
Google+ learns about trending topics, photo filters and how to appease Google Apps users
Still having a blast adding people into circles? Well hold on tight, because Mountain View just introduced some worthy upgrades to its social network. First up is a new feature dubbed "What's Hot" which, much like trending topics on Twitter, highlights popular content being shared on the social network. Photography aficionados in the audience can gussy up snaps with more photo editing features dubbed "Creative Kit", including a multitude of filters -- some of which (for a limited time) pertain to Halloween. And finally, those of you who use Google Apps within an organization can now partake in all the Google+ fun -- provided your IT admin isn't a social networking-hating luddite. Links explaining all that and more await you below, but before you go, why not hop past the break for some vampiric renditions of Larry and Sergey, and a few other celebs. [Thanks, Rich]
The Daily Grind: Do you complain about games you don't play?
It seems like everyone has an opinion on big-name MMOs, even if the person with the opinion has never been past the starter areas. Whether you're discussing EverQuest or Star Trek Online, there's someone who has a long list of reasons about why the game is terrible. Of course, said complainers frequently don't play the game, sometimes because of the issues they like to raise -- but sometimes this leads to people complaining about bugs or bad systems that have been patched out months ago and are no longer an issue. Sometimes, the complaints are simply "I didn't like how it was designed and it's not for me." Other times, the complaints are hate-filled rants that would fit nicely in a breakup letter for an ex-lover. But whether the complaints are valid or not, today we ask you if you complain about a game that you do not play. If so, which game, and how much did you play before you left? And if not, what springs to mind when you see people who do? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Blizzard gets an F at the Better Business Bureau
Looks like quite a few of those players who threatened to complain about Blizzard ended up doing so: over on the local Better Business Bureau website for Blizzard's region, our favorite game developer has earned an F. The BBB says that they've been given this rating "for reasons such as that they have failed to respond to complaints, their advertising is grossly misleading, they are not in compliance with the law's licensing or registration requirements, their complaints contain especially serious allegations, or the company's industry is known for its fraudulent business practices." Ouch. We don't really know that any of those things are true about Blizzard's way of doing business, but there are certainly many people on the forums every day who claim that the first two especially are major issues.Personally, I'm as big a critic of Blizzard as anyone when I think that there's something to complain about, but this rating hardly seems justified -- even if the BBB has received tens of thousands of complaints, that's still just a small portion of the playerbase. And despite the occasional downtime and various class nerfs, they hardly deserve an F rating, especially when a company that many people really do have issues with is riding along with an A rating. The BBB page also says that Blizzard's mass bannings have been a factor in many complaints -- there is probably no distinction made (or that can be made) in terms of complaints between people who have broken the ToS and people who have not.At any rate, even if the F rating is there, it obviously has very little effect on Blizzard's business -- how many of you ran to check the rating before you decided to subscribe to World of Warcraft? It seems like a few customers (who may or may not have broken the rules to begin with) have ruined Blizzard's reputation with the BBB, but it's fairly apparent that the BBB doesn't hold much sway among Blizzard's customers anyway.[Thanks ThisURLNotFound!]
