Otterly.ai is an Austrian software company, founded in 2024, that provides tools for generative engine optimization, the practice of monitoring and optimizing results in large language models. == History == Otterly.ai was co-founded in 2024 by Thomas Peham, Klaus-M. Schremser and Josef Trauner. The concept for OtterlyAI was developed in response to the increasing use of generative AI tools in digital search and content discovery. The company announced a technology partnership with SEO platform Semrush in January 2025.
Inferential theory of learning
Inferential Theory of Learning (ITL) is an area of machine learning which describes inferential processes performed by learning agents. ITL has been continuously developed by Ryszard S. Michalski, starting in the 1980s. The first known publication of ITL was in 1983. In the ITL learning process is viewed as a search (inference) through hypotheses space guided by a specific goal. The results of learning need to be stored. Stored information will later be used by the learner for future inferences. Inferences are split into multiple categories including conclusive, deduction, and induction. In order for an inference to be considered complete it was required that all categories must be taken into account. This is how the ITL varies from other machine learning theories like Computational Learning Theory and Statistical Learning Theory; which both use singular forms of inference. == Usage == The most relevant published usage of ITL was in scientific journal published in 2012 and used ITL as a way to describe how agent-based learning works. According to the journal "The Inferential Theory of Learning (ITL) provides an elegant way of describing learning processes by agents".
Vans challenge
The Vans challenge is a viral internet challenge that began in March 2019 where people show their Vans shoes landing right-side up after tossing them in the air. The viral sensation reportedly started after a Twitter user shared a video of the occurrence, which was captioned: “Did you know it doesn’t matter how you throw your Vans they will land facing up.” Since then, multiple people on social media posted similar videos of them throwing their Vans in the air and landing right-side up, along with Crocs, UGG boots, and other popular shoes. This theory proved false, as these shoes have not always landed facing up after tossing them.
Viral marketing
Viral marketing is a business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product or service on social media platforms. Its name refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people, much in the same way that a virus spreads from one person to another. It can be delivered by word of mouth, or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet and mobile networks. The concept is often misused or misunderstood, as people apply it to any successful enough story without taking into account the word "viral". Viral advertising is personal and, while coming from an identified sponsor, it does not mean businesses pay for its distribution. Most of the well-known viral ads circulating online are ads paid by a sponsor company, launched either on their own platform (company web page or social media profile) or on social media websites such as YouTube. Consumers receive the page link from a social media network or copy the entire ad from a website and pass it along through e-mail or posting it on a blog, web page or social media profile. Viral marketing may take the form of video clips, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, text messages, email messages, or web pages. The most commonly utilized transmission vehicles for viral messages include pass-along based, incentive based, trendy based, and undercover based. However, the creative nature of viral marketing enables an "endless amount of potential forms and vehicles the messages can utilize for transmission", including mobile devices. The ultimate goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to create viral messages that appeal to individuals with high social networking potential (SNP) and that have a high probability of being presented and spread by these individuals and their competitors in their communications with others in a short period. The term "viral marketing" has also been used pejoratively to refer to stealth marketing campaigns—marketing strategies that advertise a product to people without them knowing they are being marketed to. == History == The emergence of "viral marketing", as an approach to advertisement, has been tied to the popularization of the notion that ideas spread like viruses. The field that developed around this notion, memetics, peaked in popularity in the 1990s. As this then began to influence marketing gurus, it took on a life of its own in that new context. The brief career of Australian pop singer Marcus Montana is largely remembered as an early example of viral marketing. In early 1989, thousands of posters declaring "Marcus is Coming" were placed around Sydney, generating discussion and interest within the media and the community about the meaning of the mysterious advertisements. The campaign successfully made Montana's musical debut a talking point, but his subsequent music career was a failure. The term is found in PC User magazine in 1989 with a somewhat differing meaning. It was later used by Jeffrey Rayport in the 1996 Fast Company article "The Virus of Marketing", and Tim Draper and Steve Jurvetson of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 1997 to describe Hotmail's practice of appending advertising to outgoing mail from their users. Doug Rushkoff, a media critic, wrote about viral marketing on the Internet in 1996. Bob Gerstley wrote about algorithms designed to identify people with high "social networking potential." Gerstley employed SNP algorithms in quantitative marketing research. In 2004, the concept of the alpha user was coined to indicate that it had now become possible to identify the focal members of any viral campaign, the "hubs" who were most influential. Alpha users could be targeted for advertising purposes most accurately in mobile phone networks, due to their personal nature. In early 2013, the first ever Viral Summit was held in Las Vegas. == Factors == Marketer Jonah Berger defines six key factors that drive virality, organized in an acronym called STEPPS: Social currency – the better something makes people look, the more likely they will be to share it Triggers – things that are "top of mind" are more likely to be "tip of the tongue" Emotion – when people care, they share Public – the easier something is to see, the more likely people are to imitate it Practical value – people share useful information to help others Stories – like a Trojan Horse, stories carry messages and ideas along for the ride. Another important factor that drives virality is the propagativity of the content, referring to the ease with which consumers can redistribute it. == Psychology == To form deeper connections with viewers and increase the chances of virality, many marketers use psychological principles. They argue that this approach is scientific and can foster an environment where the odds of gaining traction are much higher. People find psychological safety and can develop a sense of trust when more people interact with online content. For this reason, marketers work to develop media that resonates with viewers on a deeper, emotional level as this approach frequently results in higher engagement. This level of interaction serves as a sign of approval, reducing the personal risk that is subconsciously linked to associating oneself with a company or brand’s content. Professor Jonah Berger at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business affirms that marketing campaigns that trigger psychological responses linked to strong emotions tend to perform better. In particular, Berger found that positive emotions like happiness, joy, and excitement have more successful share rates than their negative counterparts. This outcome results from the human instinct to respond more positively to content with activating emotions, increasing the desire to share content, which contributes to its virality. Viral marketing utilizes the primitive feeling of frisson to increase their view and share counts. This feeling of excitement is considered powerful because of its ability to cause a physical response. From increased heart rates to full body chills, Professor Brent Coker at the University of Melbourne describes that this approach to marketing triggers a primitive response that immerses the viewer in the content on a deeper level. Researchers Juliana Fernandes from the University of Florida and Sigal Segev from the Florida International University also found that people are more inclined to share emotional campaigns over those that are heavily informational. They claim that consumers do not often care to learn about a product’s actual features and benefits. Instead, people prefer to be immersed in experience-based content that creates an emotional impact. Companies and brands can benefit from treating their content in this manner and go viral more frequently than those who do not. Social proof is another psychological phenomenon that impacts viral content. Experts in this field argue that it is a natural instinct to want to behave similarly to others because it results in positive validation. This phenomenon explains the human need to conform, so marketers focus on creating engaging content that encourages interactions and causes a snowball effect. This subconsciously influences people to like, comment, and share if they already see others doing the same. Social proof goes further by providing people with a form of social currency. When individuals interact with and share content, they become associated with the topics at hand. People naturally tend to perceive one another, and this pattern carries over to the digital world. As a result, many people tend to be vigilant about the viral marketing they engage with, since they want to be perceived positively. Companies and brands have the opportunity to develop social currency themselves by aligning with their target audiences and creating marketing campaigns that fit their interests or match their values. == Methods and metrics == According to marketing professors Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein, to make viral marketing work, three basic criteria must be met, i.e., giving the right message to the right messengers in the right environment: Messenger: Three specific types of messengers are required to ensure the transformation of an ordinary message into a viral one: market mavens, social hubs, and salespeople. Market mavens are individuals who are continuously 'on the pulse' of things (information specialists); they are usually among the first to get exposed to the message and who transmit it to their immediate social network. Social hubs are people with an exceptionally large number of social connections; they often know hundreds of different people and have the ability to serve as connectors or bridges between different subcultures. Salespeople might be needed who receive the message from the market maven, amplify it by making it more relevant and persuasive, and then transmit it to the social hub for further distr
Why We Post
Why We Post is a research project funded by the European Research Council and launched in 2012 by Daniel Miller with the objective of examining the global impact of new social media. The study is based on ethnographic data collected through the course of 15 months in China, India, Turkey, Italy, United Kingdom, Trinidad, Chile and Brazil. The results of this project were released on 29 February 2016. This included the first three of eleven Open Access books (available via UCL Press), a five-week e-course (MOOC) on FutureLearn in English, also available in Chinese, Portuguese, Hindi, Tamil, Italian, Turkish, and Spanish on UCLeXtend. In addition a website containing key discoveries, stories and over 100 films is available in the same 8 languages.
Microscope image processing
Microscope image processing is a broad term that covers the use of digital image processing techniques to process, analyze and present images obtained from a microscope. Such processing is now commonplace in a number of diverse fields such as medicine, biological research, cancer research, drug testing, metallurgy, etc. A number of manufacturers of microscopes now specifically design in features that allow the microscopes to interface to an image processing system. == Image acquisition == Until the early 1990s, most image acquisition in video microscopy applications was typically done with an analog video camera, often simply closed circuit TV cameras. While this required the use of a frame grabber to digitize the images, video cameras provided images at full video frame rate (25-30 frames per second) allowing live video recording and processing. While the advent of solid state detectors yielded several advantages, the real-time video camera was actually superior in many respects. Today, acquisition is usually done using a CCD camera mounted in the optical path of the microscope. The camera may be full colour or monochrome. Very often, very high resolution cameras are employed to gain as much direct information as possible. Cryogenic cooling is also common, to minimise noise. Often digital cameras used for this application provide pixel intensity data to a resolution of 12-16 bits, much higher than is used in consumer imaging products. Ironically, in recent years, much effort has been put into acquiring data at video rates, or higher (25-30 frames per second or higher). What was once easy with off-the-shelf video cameras now requires special, high speed electronics to handle the vast digital data bandwidth. Higher speed acquisition allows dynamic processes to be observed in real time, or stored for later playback and analysis. Combined with the high image resolution, this approach can generate vast quantities of raw data, which can be a challenge to deal with, even with a modern computer system. While current CCD detectors allow very high image resolution, often this involves a trade-off because, for a given chip size, as the pixel count increases, the pixel size decreases. As the pixels get smaller, their well depth decreases, reducing the number of electrons that can be stored. In turn, this results in a poorer signal-to-noise ratio. For best results, one must select an appropriate sensor for a given application. Because microscope images have an intrinsic limiting resolution, it often makes little sense to use a noisy, high resolution detector for image acquisition. A more modest detector, with larger pixels, can often produce much higher quality images because of reduced noise. This is especially important in low-light applications such as fluorescence microscopy. Moreover, one must also consider the temporal resolution requirements of the application. A lower resolution detector will often have a significantly higher acquisition rate, permitting the observation of faster events. Conversely, if the observed object is motionless, one may wish to acquire images at the highest possible spatial resolution without regard to the time required to acquire a single image. == 2D image techniques == Image processing for microscopy application begins with fundamental techniques intended to most accurately reproduce the information contained in the microscopic sample. This might include adjusting the brightness and contrast of the image, averaging images to reduce image noise and correcting for illumination non-uniformities. Such processing involves only basic arithmetic operations between images (i.e. addition, subtraction, multiplication and division). The vast majority of processing done on microscope image is of this nature. Another class of common 2D operations called image convolution are often used to reduce or enhance image details. Such "blurring" and "sharpening" algorithms in most programs work by altering a pixel's value based on a weighted sum of that and the surrounding pixels (a more detailed description of kernel based convolution deserves an entry for itself) or by altering the frequency domain function of the image using Fourier Transform. Most image processing techniques are performed in the Frequency domain. Other basic two dimensional techniques include operations such as image rotation, warping, color balancing etc. At times, advanced techniques are employed with the goal of "undoing" the distortion of the optical path of the microscope, thus eliminating distortions and blurring caused by the instrumentation. This process is called deconvolution, and a variety of algorithms have been developed, some of great mathematical complexity. The end result is an image far sharper and clearer than could be obtained in the optical domain alone. This is typically a 3-dimensional operation, that analyzes a volumetric image (i.e. images taken at a variety of focal planes through the sample) and uses this data to reconstruct a more accurate 3-dimensional image. == 3D image techniques == Another common requirement is to take a series of images at a fixed position, but at different focal depths. Since most microscopic samples are essentially transparent, and the depth of field of the focused sample is exceptionally narrow, it is possible to capture images "through" a three-dimensional object using 2D equipment like confocal microscopes. Software is then able to reconstruct a 3D model of the original sample which may be manipulated appropriately. The processing turns a 2D instrument into a 3D instrument, which would not otherwise exist. In recent times this technique has led to a number of scientific discoveries in cell biology. == Analysis == Analysis of images will vary considerably according to application. Typical analysis includes determining where the edges of an object are, counting similar objects, calculating the area, perimeter length and other useful measurements of each object. A common approach is to create an image mask which only includes pixels that match certain criteria, then perform simpler scanning operations on the resulting mask. It is also possible to label objects and track their motion over a series of frames in a video sequence.
Social media use by businesses
Social media use by businesses includes a range of applications. Although social media accessed via desktop computers offer an online shopping variety of opportunities for companies in a wide range of business sectors, mobile social media, which users can access when they are "on the go" via tablet computers or smartphones, benefit companies because of the location- and time-sensitive awareness of their users. Mobile social media tools can be used for marketing research, communication, sales promotions/discounts, informal employee learning/organizational development, relationship development/loyalty programs, and e-commerce. Marketing research: Mobile social media applications provide companies data about offline consumer movements at a level of detail that was previously accessible to online companies only. These applications allow any business to know the exact time a customer who uses social media entered one of its locations, as well as know the social media comments made during the visit. Communication: Mobile social media communication takes two forms: company-to-consumer (in which a company may establish a connection to a consumer based on its location and provide reviews about locations nearby) and user-generated content. For example, McDonald's offered $5 and $10 gift-cards to 100 users randomly selected among those checking in at one of its restaurants. This promotion increased check-ins by 33% (from 2,146 to 2,865), resulted in over 50 articles and blog posts, and prompted several hundred thousand news feeds and Twitter messages. Sales promotions and discounts: Although customers have had to use printed coupons in the past, mobile social media allows companies to tailor promotions to specific users at specific times. For example, when launching its California-Cancun service, Virgin America offered users who checked in through Loopt at one of three designated taco trucks in San Francisco or Los Angeles between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. on 31 August 2010, two tacos for $1 and two flights to Cancun or Cabo for the price of one. This special promotion was only available to people who were at a certain location at a certain time. Relationship development and loyalty programs: In order to increase long-term relationships with customers, companies can develop loyalty programs that allow customers who check-in via social media regularly at a location to earn discounts or perks. For example, American Eagle Outfitters remunerates such customers with a tiered 10%, 15%, or 20% discount on their total purchase. Informal employee learning/organizational development is facilitated by social media. Technologies such as blogs, wiki pages, web forums, social networks and other social media act as technology enhanced learning (TEL) tools, and their users perceive change in organizational structure, culture and knowledge management. The prerequisite for the successful use of social media are motivated employees who want to use the new technologies. It is central for companies to understand the factors that determine the willingness to use social media. Customer service and support: A company can gain cost savings and increase revenue and customer satisfaction by using social media platforms in customer service and support. By using social media tools, company's have easy and widescale contact to its customers and simultaneously increase their brand knowledge. E-commerce: Social media sites are increasingly implementing marketing-friendly strategies, creating platforms that are mutually beneficial for users, businesses, and the networks themselves in the popularity and accessibility of e-commerce, or online purchases. The user who posts their comments about a company's product or service benefits because they are able to share their views with their online friends and acquaintances. The company benefits because it obtains insight (positive or negative) about how their product or service is viewed by consumers. Mobile social media applications such as Amazon.com and Pinterest have started to influence an upward trend in the popularity and accessibility of e-commerce. E-commerce businesses may refer to social media as consumer-generated media (CGM). A common thread running through all definitions of social media is a blending of technology and social interaction for the co-creation of value for the business or organization that is using it. People obtain valuable information, education, news, and other data from electronic and print media. Social media are distinct from industrial and traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, television, and film as they are comparatively inexpensive marketing tools and are highly accessible. They enable anyone, including private individuals, to publish or access information easily. Industrial media generally require significant resources to publish information, and in most cases the articles go through many revisions before being published. This process adds to the cost and the resulting market price. Originally social media was only used by individuals, but now it is used by both businesses and nonprofit organizations and also in government and politics. One characteristic shared by both social and industrial media is the capability to reach small or large audiences; for example, either a blog post or a television show may reach no people or millions of people. Some of the properties that help describe the differences between social and industrial media are: Quality: In industrial (traditional) publishing—mediated by a publisher—the typical range of quality is substantially narrower (skewing to the high quality side) than in niche, unmediated markets like user-generated social media posts. The main challenge posed by the content in social media sites is the fact that the distribution of quality has high variance: from very high-quality items to low-quality, sometimes even abusive or inappropriate content. Reach: Both industrial and social media technologies provide scale and are capable of reaching a global audience. Industrial media, however, typically use a centralized framework for organization, production, and dissemination, whereas social media are by their very nature more decentralized, less hierarchical, and distinguished by multiple points of production and utility. Frequency: The number of times users access a type of media per day. Heavy social media users, such as young people, check their social media account numerous times throughout the day. Accessibility: The means of production for industrial media are typically government or corporate (privately owned); social media tools are generally available to the public at little or no cost, or they are supported by advertising revenue. While social media tools are available to anyone with access to Internet and a computer or mobile device, due to the digital divide, the poorest segment of the population lacks access to the Internet and computer. Low-income people may have more access to traditional media (TV, radio, etc.), as an inexpensive TV and aerial or radio costs much less than an inexpensive computer or mobile device. Moreover, in many regions, TV or radio owners can tune into free over the air programming; computer or mobile device owners need Internet access to go to social media sites. Usability: Industrial media production typically requires specialized skills and training. For example, in the 1970s, to record a pop song, an aspiring singer would have to rent time in an expensive professional recording studio and hire an audio engineer. Conversely, most social media activities, such as posting a video of oneself singing a song require only modest reinterpretation of existing skills (assuming a person understands Web 2.0 technologies); in theory, anyone with access to the Internet can operate the means of social media production, and post digital pictures, videos or text online. Immediacy: The time lag between communications produced by industrial media can be long (days, weeks, or even months, by the time the content has been reviewed by various editors and fact checkers) compared to social media (which can be capable of virtually instantaneous responses). The immediacy of social media can be seen as a strength, in that it enables regular people to instantly communicate their opinions and information. At the same time, the immediacy of social media can also be seen as a weakness, as the lack of fact checking and editorial "gatekeepers" facilitates the circulation of hoaxes and fake news. Permanence: Industrial media, once created, cannot be altered (e.g., once a magazine article or paper book is printed and distributed, changes cannot be made to that same article in that print run) whereas social media posts can be altered almost instantaneously, when the user decides to edit their post or due to comments from other readers. Community media constitute a hybrid of industrial and social media. Though community-owned, some community radio,