Google Dictionary Is Now Undefined

Google has closed yet another property. The Google Dictionary is yet another service to get the proverbial ax. It is just another in a long line of abandoned Google properties, which include their web directory,Google Labs, and Google Wave, just to name a few.

Before the “Google is burning to the ground” reactions start appearing, it should be noted that Google is doing just fine on the financial end. The shuttling of these properties are little more than housekeeping and the removal of extraneous materials that people may or may not miss. Nevertheless, when Google discontinues something, even something as innocuous as a dedicated dictionary, it’s newsworthy.

That being said, it’s not the end of the world, although some are disappointed. Furthermore, Google is very a “trial and error” company, and if something doesn’t work the way they envisioned, and/or it’s not being used by the masses, the company has no problem scuttling what it considers dead weight. As pointed out by Barry Schwartz, a Google employee ventured to the Google Web Search Help forum to explain Google’s decision.

Simply put, they didn’t need a standalone dictionary any longer, at least from their perspective:

As many of you know, we’ve recently introduced a dictionary tool into Google Web Search to help you quickly look up the definition of a word,. Because the dictionary tool offers the same functionality as Google Dictionary, we’ve decided to discontinue dictionary.google.com.

For your definition needs, you can type your query right into the search box and use the dictionary tool located in the left-hand panel on the results page, or you can type [define (your word)] right into the search box.

User Reactions

As for the reaction to the closing of the Google Dictionary, that’s precisely what led Kelly F to issue her response. There’s only so much of this you can take without setting the record straight:

OMG! How can google do this without any warning. I’m not a native user. So, I use Google dictionary all the time. It’s the best dictionary out there. I’ve starred a lot of words too. Now I don’t see a way to get them back. Please google make Google Dictionary available again!!! Definitely a bad move by Google.

The sources Google gets/got their definitions from are not gone. Is typing “Dictionary” into a Google search bar really that difficult?

mashable

Tweet Lots of Links To Get Followers

To get followers on Twitter isn’t about herding unicorns — that is, there’s nothing mythical about it.

Looking at the relationship between the number of followers a user has and the percentage of their Tweets that are “@” replies: Highly followed users are less conversational than those with few followers.

Looking at the relationship between follower count and the percentage of a user’s tweets that contain links and are not replies: Using a sample of random, recently active Twitter accounts, there is a strong correlation. As the amount of links a user tweets increases, the number of followers they have also increases. And users with more than 1,000 followers tend to tweet many more links than users with fewer than 1,000 followers.

The data is starting to mount to suggest that “engaging in the conversation” is a waste of time from a marketing and reach-building perspective, especially when compared to sharing content.

 

Alton Brown Twitter Meltdown

Ah, the possibilities of social media are endless. So are the possibilities of abuse:

It’s easy to see why Twitter is so popular, if, for nothing else, the ability to follow and grief your favorite celebrity. Just ask Food Network personality, Alton Brown. Like most people with any kind of celebrity following, Brown had an active Twitter account, and because of some Internet impersonation, Brown’s previously-active Twitter account is now gone.

According to the Fancy Pants Foody blog, Brown abandoned his Twitter account because someone impersonated his wife, DeAnna.

Apparently, Brown’s Twitter account had only been active for two months.

Fancy Pants Foody has the details:

…AB got the mother of all stalker tweets from someone apparently pretending to be his wife, DeAnna. Details are sketchy (and the tweet and account were deleted before I knew about it), but it reportedly included a photo of his wife and child, Zoey.

Later in the day, his account was gone. This time, apparently, for good. And I can’t say I blame him.

Christie, the blog’s lead writer, goes on to say that it appeared as if Brown’s Twitter had been set to private, but now, when @altonbrown address is entered, the return response is “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist!” However, before Brown took his Twitter account down, he gave the impersonator a piece of mind–140 characters at a time. And while the account has been removed, Brown’s reaction was caught in screencaps:


If the Internet griefer who started the fake account had kept his posts to simple mockery, Brown may have simply ignored it, but once images of Brown’s family were introduced into the situation, Brown understandably reacted with some venom.

And now, Brown’s Twitter account is no more. Brown did, however, address the issue at his blog:

I didn’t leave Twitter because my wife started tweeting. I left Twitter because a parasitic troll fraudulently posing as my wife started tweeting. It even used a photo of my family as its avatar.

The way I see it, Twitter is like a big cocktail party. If I was at a cocktail party and someone puked on my wife’s shoes, odds are excellent that we’d leave. Does that mean I won’t attend any more cocktail parties? Maybe not. Maybe I’ll just have to figure out a way to host my own cocktail parties where people have to actually be accountable for their behavior.

Did Brown overreact? Granted, when images of your family start showing up on other people’s profiles, that may be reason to take pause. That being said, a simple Google Image Search for “Alton Brown Family” reveals at least two images that fit the description. Granted, because the griefer account has been taken down as well, there’s no telling if the person was using Google Image Search to find pictures of the Brown family, or if the offending image was something not readily accessible from Google.

Whatever the case, because of the nature of the Internet anonymity–that is, to give people a hard time under an anonymous guise–Alton Brown’s Twitter account is no more.

________________________________________________

Managing social media is a full-time job. Call us.

407-378-7817
https://iquariusmedia.com/tag/result
iquariusmedia.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2022-27
53789
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:FEMHGNSSOEFJD6BIHDSDBW3PEONVQCJI
<urn:uuid:4ec3fa8b-5a9d-4c57-9c0d-30131cea76e2>
2022-06-27T06:24:19Z
52.72.74.109
text/html
sha1:GRHRS6SDYGSXERJ6XMAUDGKUBA7V64QE
<urn:uuid:b8a59dd0-0b5e-4c1a-8f6a-33f67b427dd2>
https://iquariusmedia.com/tag/result
response
<urn:uuid:233800e6-4dd3-4e5a-8f85-1a3db7701188>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2022-27
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for June/July 2022
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-253
software: Apache Nutch 1.18 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.3-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/