Retailers Seek Partners in Social Networks

Just a few years ago, the retail industry was deeply shaken by a growing trend in store browsing — shoppers wandering around the aisles with their cellphones, surveying the merchandise while looking online for somewhere else to buy it for less.

Some retailers explored blocking Internet service in stores. Others swapped out bar codes to make them incompatible with their competitors’. But ultimately, most major retailers decided that many customers would be on their phones regardless of what stores did — so they decided to get on their customers’ screens.

With online retail competition increasing, nowhere is that frantic embrace more evident this year than in the parade of partnerships and projects traditional retailers have formed with digital companies, many of them for the holidays.

“We want to be where the consumer is,” said Gregg W. Steinhafel, chief executive of Target, in an interview.

“I think it’s like anything that hits you with a ton of bricks, it requires you to step back and say, ‘O.K., it’s very sobering, now what does this mean for us?’ ” he said. “We ultimately concluded that if that’s the way the guest is going to live and shop, then we want to be a showroom. And we love showrooming — provided we can capture that sale.”

For Target and many other retailers, among this season’s favorites is Pinterest, which Casey Carl, president of multichannel at Target, described as “one of the social platforms where it’s actually not only about sharing.”

“It’s not just about, ‘Hey, look what I had for dinner!’ It’s about products,” he said.

There are holiday-party-planning boards for Target Red Card holders. Nordstrom, which already released its holiday catalog on Pinterest, says it will station signs in its 117 full-line stores that highlight some of its popularly pinned wares.

Pinterest itself is starting a new feature on Wednesday, a “Holiday Gift” category that will not only offer shoppers gift ideas but will give retailers yet another display window — this one online — for their items.

“Pinterest is a service about connecting with things, things you have, things you like, things you want,” said Steve Patrizi, head of partner marketing for the nearly four-year-old company. “So for retailers, it’s a no-brainer. Go where people are already looking for things.”

But as the title “multichannel” or “omni-channel” coordinator might suggest, most major retailers are not linking themselves to just one social media site.

Walmart is leveraging Facebook and Google. Toys “R” Us is pushing hard on YouTube. Sears is on Instagram and hosting holiday parties on Twitter.

According to comScore, a company that collects and analyzes online data, Pinterest has plenty of competition. Compared to its more than 43 million unique visitors in October, Twitter had 64 million, and Facebook towered over its neighbors with more than 178 million unique visitors.

And while shoppers referred from Pinterest to retailers spent more, according to IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark, those referred from Facebook were buying more frequently. During a four-week period in October and November, customers referred from Facebook spent an average of $54.64 per order, compared to an average of $123.50 per order from Pinterest, IBM found. Referrals from Facebook converted to sales at nearly four times the rate of Pinterest referrals.

“Last year we would’ve used three or four social platforms,” said Jeffrey J. Jones II, chief marketing officer at Target. “This year we’ll use seven or eight.”

Nicolas Franchet, head of retail and e-commerce for Facebook, said that while the company did not disclose what portion of their advertisements came from retailers, it was an important area for Facebook, which worked with retailers big and small.

“If you find somebody” we aren’t working with, Mr. Franchet said, “let me know.”

Walmart, for example, will use Facebook to announce its local store manager’s special on Black Friday. Those deals will vary by location, and will be posted on each store’s individual Facebook page, like Walmart South Boston, Va.

Social Networks in a Battle for the Second Screen

The companies were seeking more than just bragging rights.

Facebook and Twitter both see the social conversation around television as a way to increase use of their sites and win a bigger piece of advertisers’ spending, which eMarketer estimates will be $171 billion across all types of media this year in the United States. In recent months, they have engaged in an escalating battle — publicly and behind the scenes — to claim the title of the nation’s digital water cooler as they woo networks and advertisers.

Sorting out which site deserves the crown, however, is tricky. Each company uses its own standard for determining social TV conversation, and unlike other types of Internet traffic, there is no neutral arbiter.

Twitter, citing data calculated by Nielsen’s SocialGuide service under a confidential formula, said about 600,000 people had posted more than 1.2 million messages, or tweets, about the “Breaking Bad” finale over about a 10-hour period surrounding the East and West Coast broadcasts. But that included retweets, which are messages that simply pass along what others have posted.

Facebook said three million people had chimed in on its service. But that counted original posts, comments on those posts and even “likes,” the quick thumbs-up that people can give to a friend’s Facebook item. And the service looked at everything in a 24-hour period that included the broadcasts.

The public relations blitz shows how important old-fashioned television has become to the Internet-era social networks, particularly Twitter. The company, based in San Francisco, has signed TV-related deals with dozens of advertisers and content distributors over the last year, like Verizon Wireless and ESPN, to burnish its growth prospects as it prepares to sell stock to the public for the first time. That initial public offering is likely to take place next month.

Neither Facebook nor Twitter has disclosed how much revenue it makes from advertising related to TV, and some industry experts doubt they are earning much.

Still, there is little question that television is a favorite topic for users. About half of Americans visit social networks while watching TV, and one in six Americans posts comments about shows during their broadcasts, according to a coming report by eMarketer, which found that people in some countries like China and India are even more active in their chatter.

Live events like sports attract the highest engagement. “Sports events comprise somewhere between 2 and 3 percent of TV programming in any given month but generate close to 50 percent of the Twitter activity” around TV, said Sean Casey, senior vice president for product at Nielsen’s SocialGuide unit.

Nielsen has found that the average audience for Twitter messages about a TV show is 50 times the number of people posting messages about the show. If 2,000 people are posting messages about a show, for example, an average of 100,000 people are seeing those messages. The research firm also found that heavy Twitter activity around a popular broadcast can drive more people to both the show and Twitter.

That kind of potential impact intrigues networks and advertisers, and this week, Nielsen began reporting detailed Twitter activity along with conventional TV audience ratings to its clients.

For viewers, the line between what they see on TV and what they see on their smartphones and tablets is quickly blurring.

During this year’s United States Open, for example, the beer maker Heineken sponsored the tennis tournament in New York, the television broadcast and video highlights posted on Twitter, including a remarkable 54-shot rally between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. Potential viewers could catch up on the matches from anywhere.

“We were trying to bring people to the event who weren’t there,” said Ron Amram, senior media director at Heineken USA. “All of us have realized how powerful Twitter can be to get the conversation going.”

Twitter, considered by many to be the leader in social conversation around live TV, has spent much of 2013 courting networks like Fox and MTV and consumer brands like Heineken. Last week, for example, it signed a deal with the National Football League to distribute football clips sponsored by Verizon Wireless and other companies.

Such partnerships have created a significant new revenue stream for Twitter.

“We’ve built a business around working collaboratively with TV,” said Adam Bain, Twitter’s president of global revenue. “We really see our role as a force multiplier.”

Although Mr. Bain declined to provide financial details about the initiative, the public may learn more when the company files information for prospective investors, which could occur as soon as this week.

Facebook, whose social platform is built more around each individual’s web of relationships than rapid-fire conversation, has a more complicated relationship with TV.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 3, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated, because of erroneous information provided by Nielsen, the average audience for Twitter messages about a TV show. The number of viewers of such messages was found to be 50 times the number of people posting the messages (some posters send multiple messages); it is not the case that an average of 50 people see each tweet. 

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Cyberattack Hits South Korean Banking Networks

The attacks, which left many South Koreans unable to withdraw money from A.T.M.’s and news broadcasting crews staring at blank computer screens, came as the North’s official Korean Central News Agency quoted the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, as threatening to destroy government installations in the South, along with American bases in the Pacific.

Though American officials dismissed those threats, they also noted that the broadcasters hit by the virus had been cited by the North before as potential targets.

The Korea Communications Commission said Thursday that the disruption originated at an Internet provider address in China but that it was still not known who was responsible.

Many analysts in Seoul suspect that North Korean hackers honed their skills in China and were operating there. At a hacking conference here last year, Michael Sutton, the head of threat research at Zscaler, a security company, said a handful of hackers from China “were clearly very skilled, knowledgeable and were in touch with their counterparts and familiar with the scene in North Korea.”

But there has never been any evidence to back up some analysts’ speculation that they were collaborating with their Chinese counterparts. “I’ve never seen any real evidence that points to any exchanges between China and North Korea, ” said Adam Segal, a senior fellow who specializes in China and cyberconflict at the Council on Foreign Relations,

Wednesday’s attacks, which occurred as American and South Korean military forces were conducting major exercises, were not as sophisticated as some from China that have struck United States computers, and certainly less sophisticated than the American and Israeli cyberattack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. But it was far more complex than a “denial of service” attack that simply overwhelms a computer system with a flood of data.

The malware is called “DarkSeoul” in the computer world and was first identified about a year ago. It is intended to evade some of South Korea’s most popular antivirus products and to render computers unusable. In Wednesday’s strikes, the attackers made no effort to disguise the malware, leading some to question whether it came from a state sponsor — which tend to be more stealthy — or whether officials or hackers in North Korea were sending a specific, clear message: that they can reach into Seoul’s economic heart without blowing up South Korean warships or shelling South Korean islands.

North Korea was accused of using both those techniques in attacks over the past three years.

The cyberattacks Wednesday come just days after North Korea blamed South Korea and the United States for attacks on some of its Web sites. The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said last week that North Korea “will never remain a passive onlooker to the enemies’ cyberattacks that have reached a very grave phase as part of their moves to stifle it.”

The South Korean government cautioned that it was still too early to point the finger for Wednesday’s problems at the North, which has been threatening “pre-emptive nuclear attacks” and other, unspecified actions against its southern neighbor for conducting the military exercises with the United States this month and for supporting new American-led United Nations sanctions against the North.

“We cannot rule out the possibility of North Korean involvement, but we don’t want to jump to a conclusion,” said Kim Min-seok, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry.

The military raised its alert against cyberattacks, he added, and the Korea Communications Commission asked government agencies and businesses to triple the number of monitors for possible hacking attacks. South Korea’s new president, Park Geun-hye, instructed a civilian-government task force to investigate the disruptions.

It could take months to determine the true source of the attacks, and sometimes investigators never come to a firm conclusion. In 2009, a similar campaign of coordinated cyberattacks over the Fourth of July holiday hit 27 American and South Korean Web sites, including South Korea’s presidential palace, called the Blue House; its Defense Ministry; and Web sites belonging to the United States Treasury Department, the Secret Service and the Federal Trade Commission.

Nicole Perlroth contributed reporting from San Francisco, and David E. Sanger from Washington.

Court Upholds F.C.C. Rule on Use of Data Networks

WASHINGTON — Cellphone companies must allow customers of competing wireless carriers to use their networks for the Internet and e-mail when outside their home territory, a federal appeals court said here on Tuesday.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that just as the Federal Communications Commission required wireless carriers to allow voice-service roaming by customers of other carriers, it also can require the same, at commercially reasonable rates, for data customers — in essence, those who use smartphones, tablets and other wireless devices.

The judges’ 3-to-0 decision is a significant victory for the F.C.C. The agency has lost authority over Internet communications in recent years. And it is a big win for smaller cellphone companies, who now have the leeway to offer customers national calling and data plans, albeit ones that could generate extra charges.

On the losing side is Verizon Wireless, which had challenged the agency’s data roaming order in 2011. The company argued that the agency did not have authority to oversee data communications on wireless broadband networks and that it was imposing “common carrier” regulations on companies — essentially, regulating them like public utilities, as it does with home phone service.

Verizon said that it already had data roaming agreements so there was no need to codify the practice. “As we made clear throughout the case,” Ed McFadden, a company spokesman, said on Tuesday, “Verizon Wireless regularly enters into such data roaming agreements on commercially reasonable terms to meet the needs of consumers, and will continue to do so.”

The decision has broad implications for the agency, analysts said. “This does bode well for the F.C.C.’s ability to assert its authority in regulating wireless services,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, senior vice president and policy director for the Media Access Project, a nonprofit law firm that promotes consumer choice. “This is the first time these issues have come up in the context of data, which obviously is our future,” he said.

The F.C.C.’s chairman, Julius Genachowski, went further, saying the court’s opinion “confirms the F.C.C.’s authority to promote broadband competition and protect broadband consumers.”

In 2010, in Comcast v. the F.C.C., the same appeals court rejected the legal theory that the agency was using to validate its regulation of broadband Internet service. While Tuesday’s decision does not reverse that ruling, it does signal that the agency may have found a justification for its broadband rules.

Both Tuesday’s and the 2010 decisions were written by one of the appeals court’s more liberal members, Judge David S. Tatel.

John Bergmayer, senior staff lawyer at Public Knowledge, which filed a brief supporting the agency, noted that many of the legal arguments Verizon made in the case are also part of another challenge in the same court.

There, Verizon is trying to overturn the agency’s Open Internet order, a 2011 regulation that contains elements of net neutrality rules. Those rules require Internet service providers to treat all traffic equally, rather than favoring some transmissions over another.

The Open Internet case is in its early stages and has not yet been argued before the appeals court. But agency officials say they think the appeals court, in Tuesday’s case, rejected at least one of the arguments Verizon makes in the Open Internet case.

Many small wireless companies had supported the agency’s data roaming requirement, saying that it would provide more competition, particularly by allowing them to offer national service to compete with Verizon and AT&T.

The large wireless providers argued that the data roaming order gave them less incentive to invest in their networks, because it would benefit rivals that would not shoulder any of the costs of building infrastructure.

Social Networks Can Affect on Voter Turnout, Study Finds

The study, published online on Wednesday by the journal Nature, suggests that a special “get out the vote” message, showing each user pictures of friends who said they had already voted, generated 340,000 additional votes nationwide — whether for Democrats or Republicans, the researchers could not determine.

The scientists, from Facebook and the University of California, San Diego, said they believed the study was the first to show that social networks could have at least some impact on elections, and they added that the findings could have implications far beyond voting. For example, research is now being conducted on the use of social networks to help people lose weight.

Significantly if not surprisingly, the voting study showed that patterns of influence were much more likely to be demonstrated among close friends, suggesting that “strong ties” in cyberspace are more likely than “weak ties” to influence behavior. It also found an indirect impact from the messages: friends of friends were influenced as well.

“What we have shown here is that the online world and the real world affect one another,” said James H. Fowler, a professor of medical genetics and political science at the university.

On Nov. 2, 2010, the day of the nationwide Congressional elections, nearly every Facebook member who signed on — 61 million in all — received a nonpartisan “get out the vote” message at the top of the site’s news feed. It included a reminder that “today is Election Day”; a link to local polling places; an option to click an “I Voted” button, with a counter displaying the total number of Facebook users who had reported voting; and as many as six pictures of the member’s friends who had reported voting.

But two randomly chosen control groups, of 600,000 Facebook members each, did not receive the pictures. One group received just the “get out the vote” message; the other received no voting message at all.

By examining public voter rolls, the researchers were able to compare actual turnout among the groups. They determined that the message showing friends who had voted was directly responsible for 60,000 more votes nationwide and indirectly responsible for 280,000 that were spurred by friends of friends — what they called “social contagion” effect.

Intriguingly, they also discovered that about 4 percent of those who claimed they had voted were not telling the truth.

Because only about 1 percent of Facebook users openly state their political orientation, the researchers said they could not determine whether political leanings had any influence on social networking and voting behavior.

The study was financed by the James S. McDonnell Foundation and by the University of Notre Dame’s Science of Generosity Initiative, which is supported by the John Templeton Foundation.

Past studies have shown that a variety of methods for mobilizing potential voters have a disappointing effect. Knocking on doors is the most effective technique; e-mail is one of the least.

While the number of votes generated by the Facebook message was small compared with the overall turnout (about 90.7 million, or 37.8 percent of the voting-age population), the researchers said it could well have made a difference in individual races. After all, they pointed out, the 2000 presidential election was decided by less than 0.01 percent of the vote in Florida.

Social Networks Can Affect on Voter Turnout, Study Finds

The study, published online on Wednesday by the journal Nature, suggests that a special “get out the vote” message, showing each user pictures of friends who said they had already voted, generated 340,000 additional votes nationwide — whether for Democrats or Republicans, the researchers could not determine.

The scientists, from Facebook and the University of California, San Diego, said they believed the study was the first to show that social networks could have at least some impact on elections, and they added that the findings could have implications far beyond voting. For example, research is now being conducted on the use of social networks to help people lose weight.

Significantly if not surprisingly, the voting study showed that patterns of influence were much more likely to be demonstrated among close friends, suggesting that “strong ties” in cyberspace are more likely than “weak ties” to influence behavior. It also found an indirect impact from the messages: friends of friends were influenced as well.

“What we have shown here is that the online world and the real world affect one another,” said James H. Fowler, a professor of medical genetics and political science at the university.

On Nov. 2, 2010, the day of the nationwide Congressional elections, nearly every Facebook member who signed on — 61 million in all — received a nonpartisan “get out the vote” message at the top of the site’s news feed. It included a reminder that “today is Election Day”; a link to local polling places; an option to click an “I Voted” button, with a counter displaying the total number of Facebook users who had reported voting; and as many as six pictures of the member’s friends who had reported voting.

But two randomly chosen control groups, of 600,000 Facebook members each, did not receive the pictures. One group received just the “get out the vote” message; the other received no voting message at all.

By examining public voter rolls, the researchers were able to compare actual turnout among the groups. They determined that the message showing friends who had voted was directly responsible for 60,000 more votes nationwide and indirectly responsible for 280,000 that were spurred by friends of friends — what they called “social contagion” effect.

Intriguingly, they also discovered that about 4 percent of those who claimed they had voted were not telling the truth.

Because only about 1 percent of Facebook users openly state their political orientation, the researchers said they could not determine whether political leanings had any influence on social networking and voting behavior.

The study was financed by the James S. McDonnell Foundation and by the University of Notre Dame’s Science of Generosity Initiative, which is supported by the John Templeton Foundation.

Past studies have shown that a variety of methods for mobilizing potential voters have a disappointing effect. Knocking on doors is the most effective technique; e-mail is one of the least.

While the number of votes generated by the Facebook message was small compared with the overall turnout (about 90.7 million, or 37.8 percent of the voting-age population), the researchers said it could well have made a difference in individual races. After all, they pointed out, the 2000 presidential election was decided by less than 0.01 percent of the vote in Florida.