Facebook Gets Serious About Discovery With Graph Search

Facebook has rolled out a search feature that helps users locate information in the depths of its vast archives of posts. The technology is designed to help people find relevant information based on their friends' posts, but it is more limited in scope than Google. "It's not going to tell you the score of a baseball game," said Ovum analyst Jan Dawson. "It's not going to help you with your homework."

Finding anything on Facebook has been a difficult exercise for years, but that's about to change.

After a year of intense, secret development, the social network on Tuesday rolled out its new search technology called "Graph Search."

The technology is designed to make it easier for Facebook members to find information about their friends and others. It takes advantage of the vast amount of information Facebook has stored and tagged about the billion or so people who use its service.

All those pieces of information are like dots on a graph, and Graph Search permits Facebook users to connect those dots in unlimited ways.

 Not Web Search

Lest it goad the ire of Google, Facebook made a careful distinction between Search Graph and Web search.

"Web search is designed to take a set of keywords (for example: "hip hop") and provide the best possible results that match those keywords," the company explained. "With Graph Search, you combine phrases (for example: 'my friends in New York who like Jay-Z') to get that set of people, places, photos or other content that's been shared on Facebook."

Distinctions aside, there are those that see Graph Search as a threat to Google's search hegemony.
Leapfrogging Google

Graph Search gives Facebook the potential to create targeted advertising with greater depth and relevance than Google, according to Michael A. Cusumano, a management professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management.

"Facebook has the potential to go deeper than Google does because [Facebook] has a lot of information on friends and friends of friends," he told TechNewsWorld. "Google really doesn't have that kind of information from people who use search."

The use of that type of granular information can give Facebook, in the future, a leg up on Google in the highly competitive Internet advertising market, according to Venkat N. Venkatraman, chairman of the information systems department at the Boston University School of Management.

If the ads on Graph Search pages receive more clicks because they're very relevant to a search, he told TechNewsWorld, "Facebook has a basis to leapfrog Google."

A Google search for the best hotels in San Francisco, for example, will display results based on links, Venkatraman noted. It's a kind of universal opinion. The same query posted to Facebook will display hotels your friends think are the best, which may be more relevant to you.

Facebook did not respond to our request to comment for this story.

Won't Help With Homework

Graph Search, though, won't be appropriate for the vast number searches people conduct on the Web, according to Jan Dawson, chief telecom analyst with Ovum. "It's not going to tell you the score of a baseball game," he told TechNewsWorld. "It's not going to help you with your homework."

"It's only appropriate for finding recommendations about things connected to your friends," he observed. "It's a very narrow set of search results delivered to you."

Whenever Facebook debuts a new feature, the first thing that enters the mind of many people is, how is it going to violate my privacy now? This time, though, Facebook was ready for the privacy crowd.

"We've built Graph Search from the start with privacy in mind, and it respects the privacy and audience of each piece of content on Facebook," the company said. "It makes finding new things much easier, but you can only see what you could already view elsewhere on Facebook."

Perpetual Embarrassment

While Graph Search may be dredging up information that was already available to searchers if they dug for it, the technology may still shock users concerned about their privacy, argued Adi Kamdar, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"What people once thought was shared only to their Facebook audience -- whether that's their friends, networks, or the whole public -- but figured was too hard to find is now readily available," he told TechNewsWorld.

Years ago, for example, you may have "liked" a Samsung Mobile page, Kamdar noted. Now, if you work for Apple and every time someone searches for "People who work at Apple who like Samsung Mobile," your name pops up. "That could lead to a heavy dose of awkward."

Source: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Facebook-Gets-Serious-About-Discovery-With-Graph-Search-77093.html

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How Your Facebook ID Can Get You More Wi-Fi Access

Giving someone access to your Wi-Fi network—say, a visitor to your home or business—can be awkward, involving, among other things, handing out your password. A Swedish startup called Instabridge thinks it has an easier way.

Instabridge’s free Android app lets you automatically share Wi-Fi networks with your Facebook friends. Available in a handful of European countries, the app works by taking advantage of the Facebook Connect authentication tool, which lets users to log on to websites with Facebook credentials.

Instabridge’s cofounder and CEO, Niklas Agevik, is betting that, as more people adopt smartphones and tablets, the inconvenience of having to share a Wi-Fi password (and the prospect of saving money, for those on limited data plans) will help his startup develop a user base.

Wireless carriers, which increasingly aim to offload high-speed network traffic to fixed-line networks in order to avoid clogging their airwaves, may also find Instabridge’s approach appealing. Agevik, formerly an engineer at Swedish telecom Ericcson, says Instabridge has been contacted by carriers who want to work with the company. He says Instabridge plans to make money by working with carriers and device makers, and already has a deal with Samsung to produce a version of Instabridge with near-field communication capabilities.

When you install Instabridge, you need to log in with your Facebook username and password. The app then determines who your friends are and lets you invite them to use a network.

To share a Wi-Fi network through Instabridge for the first time, you must type in your network’s password, which is encrypted and stored on Instabridge’s servers. Then you can invite your friends to share your networks and vice versa. If a friend using the Instabridge app on his smartphone comes within range of a network you’ve shared, Instabridge pushes the network credential to your friend’s phone so he can get online, but it doesn’t show it to him. Once he’s moved out of range, the credentials are deleted from his phone, Agevik says. You can also lock users out of your network if you change your mind.

The Instabridge app includes a map showing all the networks available to you. An upcoming version will let you add friends with the address book on your phone, Agevik says, and Instabridge also intends to let users connect with friends on more social sites, such as Twitter and LinkedIn.

While Instabridge must be running all the time (along with your smartphone’s Wi-Fi), it doesn’t run down the smartphone’s battery, Agevik says, because it operates in the background and hooks into the phone’s normal Wi-Fi scanning activities only when it sees a network it recognizes.

The app is currently available only for Android users in Nordic and Baltic countries (including Sweden, Estonia, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland). About 5,000 people have downloaded the app from Google Play, Agevik says, and there are about 2,000 active users.

Instabridge plans to gradually launch the app in other countries, including, in early 2013, the United States. The company is also considering an iPhone version of the app.  

Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/509121/how-your-facebook-id-can-get-you-more-wi-fi-access/

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Facebook just realized it made a Horrible Mistake

Facebook (FB) announced on Tuesday that it will begin opening Facebook Messenger to consumers who do not have a Facebook account, starting in countries like India and South Africa, and later rolling out the service in the United States and Europe. This is a belated acknowledgement of a staggering strategic mistake Facebook made two years ago. That is when the messaging app competition was still wide open and giants like Facebook or Google (GOOG) could have entered the competition. WhatsApp, the leading messaging app firm, had just 1 million users as late as December 2009. By the end of 2010, that number had grown to 10 million. Right now, it likely tops 200 million, though there is no current official number on the matter.

SMS usage started peaking in countries like Netherlands in 2010. Companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google were being offered a giant new market on a silver platter with more than 3 billion consumers worldwide use texting on their phones and many of them started drifting away from basic SMS towards IP-based alternatives a few years ago. None of the behemoths saw or understood the opportunity.

They allowed the mobile messaging market to turn into a free-for-all between tiny start-ups like KakaoTalk, Kik, Viber, WhatsApp, etc. And with astonishing speed, the global market picked a winner and rallied around it. Back in early 2011, there was serious debate about the relative merits of different messaging apps and which one might ultimately edge ahead.

In December 2012, the competitive landscape is stark. Kik is not a Top 5 app in any country in the world. Viber is a Top 5 app in 21 countries, but they are countries like Barbados, Nepal and Tajikistan. WhatsApp is a Top 5 app in 141 countries, including the U.S,, U.K., Germany, Brazil and India. The only real weakness of WhatsApp lies in China, Japan and South Korea, where local champions still lead. But those local apps have zero chance of breaking out of their home markets.

The mobile messaging app competition is over. It turned into a red rout sometime during late 2011 and WhatsApp has emerged as the sole beneficiary of a textbook case of the network effect.

Facebook, Google and Twitter threw away their golden chance to create an SMS killer and grab hold of a billion users globally. It would have been so easy and cheap to develop a simple texting app in 2009, leverage the current user base of any of the IT giants and then watch the app soar to global prominence.

And it is so very, very hard to do now. Dislodging WhatsApp now would mean neutralizing a smartphone market penetration advantage that is hitting 80% in some markets. People often ask me why I’m so fixated on WhatsApp and the answer is simple: it’s the most popular and important mobile app in the world. And it beat Facebook, Twitter, Google and other major companies before they even realized there was an important war being waged.

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Facebook's latest privacy changes put to a vote

 Users have one week to vote on the proposed changes to Facebook's policy, including the ability of users to vote on future privacy changes.

Voting opened on Monday, and users have until Monday, December 10, at noon PST to make their opinions heard. Facebook has put up a custom voting app powered by a third-party company for this vote, and the results will be tallied by an independent auditor.

"This feedback allows us to respond to your questions and make substantive changes to our proposals before they are implemented," Elliot Schrage, Facebook's vice president of communications and public policy, said in a blog post announcing the vote.

Facebook proposed the latest changes to its Data Use Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities on November 21. Users and privacy groups immediately expressed concerns over the modifications. In addition to a proposed end to public voting on these types of issues, Facebook wanted to change to how users control who can send them messages. Also, an addition to the Data Use Policy would allow Facebook to share data with affiliated business, such as Instagram.

On Friday, two privacy groups, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Digital Democracy, sent an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg objecting to the proposal.

"Because these proposed changes raise privacy risks for users, may be contrary to law, and violate your previous commitments to users about site governance, we urge you to withdraw the proposed changes," read the letter.

They also say the changes could violate Facebook's settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, in which the social network said it would obtain consent from users before sharing their personal data with third parties, and provide users with clear notice when that information is shared.

Facebook has a rocky history with privacy changes and resulting backlash from members.

In 2009, the site made previously private data such as friend lists and profile photos public by default. The following year, users were automatically oped into a new "Instant Personalization" feature that shared private information with outside companies such as Pandora.

The outpouring of comments on the Facebook post announcing the proposed policy updates was huge. More than 20,000 people commented on the post, voicing concerns over the company's proposed updates.

"I don't want advertisers to have my information. I made this account back in 2005 as a way to keep in touch with friends, not be bombarded by ever increasing advertisements," commented user Nic Raines.

In that post, Facebook also proposed to end public voting on changes to site governance. The voting option was first rolled out in 2009 in response to privacy complaints over a chance to the sites term of use. At the time, Facebook had just 175 million users.

This voting app is a improvement over the previous system. Past votes just required 7,000 users to comment on an official Facebook post. Facebook said the reason it wanted to do away with votes was that the comment system valued "quantity over quality," a problem the new system already seems to address.

There are about 1 billion people on Facebook, not including bots or fake accounts. Facebook will require 30% of those active registered users to take part in the vote for the outcome to be binding. If less than that percent vote, the company will take the results under advisement.

Getting 300 million Facebook users to vote could be difficult, especially with the lack of viral appeal such as a fake lottery ticket.

In addition to voting and commenting, Facebook users can join a live webcast on Tuesday, during which Facebook officials will answer questions.

Source: CNN

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In hurricane, Twitter proves a lifeline despite pranksters

As Hurricane Sandy pounded the U.S. Atlantic coast on Monday night, knocking out electricity and Internet connections, millions of residents turned to Twitter as a part-newswire, part-911 hotline that hummed through the night even as some websites failed and swathes of Manhattan fell dark.

But the social network also became a fertile ground for pranksters who seized the moment to disseminate rumors and Photoshopped images, including a false tweet Monday night that the trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange was submerged under several feet of water.

The exchange issued a denial, but not before the tweet was circulated by countless users and reported on-air by CNN, illustrating how Twitter had become the essential - but deeply fallible - spine of information coursing through real-time, major media events.

But a year after Twitter gained attention for its role in the rescue efforts in tsunami-stricken Japan, the network seemed to solidify its mainstream foothold as government agencies, news outlets and residents in need turned to it at the most critical hour.

Beginning late Sunday, government agencies and officials, from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo(@NYGovCuomo) to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (@FEMA) to @NotifyNYC, an account handled by New York City's emergency management officials, issued evacuation orders and updates.

As the storm battered New York Monday night, residents encountering clogged 9-1-1 dispatch lines flooded the Fire Department's @fdny Twitter account with appeals for information and help for trapped relatives and friends.

One elderly resident needed rescue in a building in Manhattan Beach. Another user sent @fdny an Instagram photo of four insulin shots that she needed refrigerated immediately. Yet another sought a portable generator for a friend on a ventilator living downtown.

Emily Rahimi, who manages the @fdny account by herself, according to a department spokesman, coolly fielded dozens of requests, while answering questions about whether to call 311, New York's non-emergency help line, or Consolidated Edison.

At the Red Cross of America's Washington D.C. headquarters, in a small room called the Digital Operations Center, six wall-mounted monitors display a stream of updates from Twitter and Facebook and a visual "heat map" of where posts seeking help are coming from.

The heat map informed how the Red Cross's aid workers deployed their resources, said Wendy Harman, the Red Cross director of social strategy.

The Red Cross was also using Radian6, a social media monitoring tool sold by Salesforce.com, to spot people seeking help and answer their questions.

"We found out we can carry out the mission of the Red Cross from the social Web," said Harman, who hosted a brief visit from President Barack Obama on Tuesday.

SPREADING INFORMATION

Twitter, which in the past year has heavily ramped up its advertising offerings and features to suit large brand marketers like Pepsico Inc and Procter & Gamble, suddenly found itself offering its tools to new kind of client on Monday: public agencies that wanted help spreading information.

For the first time, the company created a "#Sandy" event page - a format once reserved for large ad-friendly media events like the Olympics or Nascar races - that served as a hub where visitors could see aggregated information. The page displayed manually- and algorithmically-selected tweets plucked from official accounts like those of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, who was particularly active on the network.

Agencies like the Maryland Emergency Management Agency and the New York Mayor's Office also used Twitter's promoted tweets - an ad product used by advertisers to reach a broader consumer base - to get out the word.

The company said offering such services for free to government agencies was one of several initiatives, including a service that broadcasts location-specific alerts and public announcements based on a Twitter user's postal code.

"We learned from the storm and tsunami in Japan that Twitter can often be a lifeline," said Rachael Horwitz, a Twitter spokeswoman.

Jeannette Sutton, a sociologist at the University of Colorado who has received funding from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Homeland Security to study social media uses in disaster management, said government agencies have been skeptical until recently about using social media during natural disasters.

"There's a big problem with whether it's valid, accurate information out there," Sutton said. "But if you're not part of the conversation, you're going to be missing out."

As the hurricane hit one of the most wired regions in the country, news outlets also took advantage of the smartphone users who chronicled rising tides on every flooded block. On Instagram, the photo-sharing website, witnesses shared color-filtered snapshots of floating cars, submerged gas stations and a building shorn of its facade at a rate of more than 10 pictures per second, Instagram founder Kevin Systrom told Poynter.org on Tuesday.

Many of the images were republished in the live coverage by news websites and aired on television broadcasts.

LIES SLAPPED DOWN
But by late Monday, fake images began to circulate widely, including a picture of a storm cloud gathering dramatically over the Statue of Liberty and a photoshopped job of a shark lurking in a submerged residential neighborhood. The latter image even surfaced on social networks in China.

Then there was the slew of fabricated message from @comfortablysmug, the Twitter account that claimed the NYSE was underwater. The account is owned by Shashank Tripathi, the hedge fund investor and campaign manager for Christopher Wight, the Republican candidate to represent New York's 12th District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Tripathi, who did not return emails by Reuters seeking comment, apologized Tuesday night for making a "series of irresponsible and inaccurate tweets" and resigned from Wight's campaign.

His identity was first reported by Jack Stuef of BuzzFeed.

Around 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Tripathi began deleting many of his Hurricane Sandy tweets. Tripathi's friend, @theAshok, defended Tripathi, telling Reuters on Twitter: "People shouldn't be taking "news" from an anonymous twitter account seriously."

Tripathi's @comfortablysmug's Twitter stream, which is followed by business journalists, bloggers and various New York personalities, had been a well-known voice in digital circles, but mostly for his 140-character-or-less criticisms of the Obama administration, often accompanied by the hashtag, #ObamaIsn'tWorking.

On Tuesday, New York City Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr. appeared to threaten Tripathi with prosecution when he tweeted that he hoped Tripathi was "less smug and comfortable cuz I'm talking to Cy," presumably referring to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.

For its part, Twitter said that it would not have considered suspending the account unless it received a request from a law enforcement agency.

"We don't moderate content, and we certainly don't want to be in a position of deciding what speech is OK and what speech is not," said Horwitz, Twitter's spokeswoman.

But Ben Smith, the editor at Buzzfeed, which outed Tripathi, said Twitter's credibility would not be affected by rumormongers because netizens often self-correct and identify falsehoods.

"They used to say a lie will travel halfway around the world before the truth puts its shoes on, but in the Twitter world, that's not true anymore," Smith said. "The lies get slapped down really fast."

For Smith, the ability to disseminate information via Twitter and Facebook on Monday night became perhaps even more important than his Web publication, which enjoyed one of its better nights in readership but went dark when the blackout crippled the site's servers in downtown Manhattan.

Buzzfeed's staff quickly began publishing on Tumblr instead, and Smith personally took over Buzzfeed's Twitter account to stay in the thick of the conversation.

"Our view of the world is that social distribution is the key thing," Smith said. "We're in the business of creating content that people want to share, more than the business of maintaining a website."

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/31/net-us-storm-sandy-socialmedia-idUSBRE89U07L20121031

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Google pays Pinkie Pie $60K for Chrome hack

A youngster who goes by the name Pinkie Pie made $60,000 for hacking into Google today. In fact, Google was the one who paid up.

This is the second time the teenaged reverse engineer enthusiast was able to collect the grand exploit prize from Google in less than a year. In order to take advantage of the computer underground, Google recently began allowing anonymous participants to hack its Chrome systems with the understanding that they would report all vulnerabilities and collect a prize at the end. This second “Pwnium,” as it’s called, occurred at the Hack in the Box Conference in Kuala Lumpur.

Google labeled the discovery “critical” and called it “another beautiful piece of work.” The company promises it will not release details about any of the vulnerabilities discovered during Pwnium unless the majority of users have been patched.

Google announced the contest in August, promising up to $2 million in prizes to those with the best exploits. Those who found a “full exploit” win up to $60,000, whereas a “partial exploit” will bring $10,000 less. Google isn’t the only one with a program like this. The first Pwnium only offered $1 million in prizes, though that’s not exactly chump change for hacking into one of the most famous companies in the world.

Facebook also financially supports its “bug bounty” program, which pays hackers and developers alike to find vulnerabilities in the social network’s systems.

For more news on technology: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-pays-hacker-pinkie-pie-60k-for-cracking-chrome/2012/10/11/ac0c9bf8-1343-11e2-9a39-1f5a7f6fe945_story.html

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Freaked out about Facebook Privacy?

We've seen this script so many times already.

A rumor gets started about a Facebook privacy breach. It matters little whether the story turns out to be true because we're hooked on the stylized drama guaranteed to follow: Before long, all kinds of folks are running around as if their hair's on fire, screaming about how Mark Zuckerberg is a rat fink who betrayed his oath to protect their online identities. Then old farts like me, who still remember what it was like when our world was not an open book, chime in with thumb-suckers decrying what's lost in our overshared, increasingly cyber connected lifestyle. Blah, blah, blah. Zzzzz.

OK, it's a complicated relationship -- and not just with Facebook but also other social networks. More about that in a moment.

The latest uproar started early Monday after French newspapers reported that private Facebook messages had mysteriously popped up on user Timelines. On this side of the pond, the rumor picked up speed and it wasn't long before the general freak-out was underway. Turned out it was another case of much ado about nothing. The problem had to to do with the format of wall posts that read like direct messages as Timeline now makes it easier to locate previous wall-to-wall interactions.

But this was just one example of the weird direction that discussions about user privacy and Facebook often take. I don't feel sorry for Facebook, which has itself to blame for the lousy reputation. After years taking a sometimes indifferent approach to user privacy it shoulders the burden of proof. But concern is one thing, paranoia's something else. Writing in PandoDaily, David Holmes offered the spot-on observation that a fresh Facebook privacy scandal seems to roll off the transom each week. Even when it's a faux scandal, we're still left with the impression that somehow, Facebook screwed up again.

Turn off, tune out, drop out?

Let's at least be honest with ourselves. Companies are collections of imperfect beings, and try as they might, they'll always disappoint when it comes to making good on privacy protection guarantees. When you decide to post information on Facebook, it's out there, for better or for worse. Sam Biddle of Gizmodo had it just right when he tweeted the other day about people's shortsightedness when it comes to privacy tolerance as "we're outraged by things we ourselves did."

At this stage in the info sharing revolution, I'm not offering any revelation by noting there's always a risk that someone other than your friends will be able to take a gander at your Facebook posts -- either because of user error or due to a real privacy glitch. For most of us, that's not a big deal. Some 900 million-plus people continue to share messages and pictures because they get value out of using a social network to keep up with family and friends. If the minority out there still can't take the privacy jitters, my advice is to delete your Facebook account and use the phone. In 1999, Sun CEO Scott McNealy caught a lot of flak after declaring that "you have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." He was blunt and he offended a lot of people, but he was right.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57519407-93/freaked-out-about-facebook-privacy-then-break-up-already/

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Be Fluent in Social Media

Pittsburgh police plan to train their officers to be fluent in social media, joining other departments nationwide, days after a man armed with a hammer and kitchen knife used a hostage's computer to post Facebook messages lamenting his troubles.

The case of Klein Michael Thaxton, who is accused of picking a hostage at random in a downtown office tower and then kept authorities at bay for hours before surrendering and releasing the hostage, was a first for the Pittsburgh department.

There is some reflection about whether officials did the right thing by not immediately shutting down the suspect's Facebook page. Police say they want to make sure officers are prepared for such judgment calls down the road.

"I think it's something we will train for in the future," said Lt. Jason Lando, who acted as a coach to the primary negotiator, Officer Matt Lackner.

Members of law enforcement are finding variations of the Pittsburgh situation nationwide. The International Association of Chiefs of Police now has a Center for Social Media to help officers prevent and solve crimes using social media. The center's website contains training tools for law enforcement, and a list of crimes where social media played a role. Special software applications are even being created to help monitor and solve crimes.

Gary Noesner, a former chief of the FBI's Crisis Negotiation Unit, said his instinct would have been to shut the Facebook page down immediately, though he agreed it might also have provided some useful information to law enforcement.

"The whole social media situation is really fascinating, the impact it is having on operations," Noesner added.

Pittsburgh police wouldn't detail their specific conversations with Thaxton, 22, whose defense attorney didn't return calls for comment.

But, in general, Lackner said negotiating with a hostage taker is like "riding a seesaw," as authorities try to "reduce the emotionality and raise the rationality" of their subject.

"When one goes down, the other goes up," Lackner said.

But until police got federal authorities to intervene and shut down Thaxton's Facebook page about four hours into the ordeal, the negotiators couldn't control how many other people might be riding that see-saw. Thaxton's posts drew about 700 responses, most from family members and friends expressing concern and the hope that he'd do the right thing. But other messages were "ridiculous," Lando said, and had the potential to incite Thaxton.

Lackner said that even seemingly positive messages could have posed a problem because police were primarily concerned with establishing a one-to-one rapport and building trust with Thaxton.

"Any outside influence is distracting and, generally speaking, does not help our cause," Cmdr. Scott Schubert said. "We want our subject speaking to us."

Last year, a Utah man posted updates on his Facebook page during a 16-hour standoff with police. According to reports at the time, some of his friends and relatives urged him to "be careful" while at least one tipped him off to the location of a SWAT officer.

In another Utah case last year, a woman used Facebook to seek help after she and her 17-month-old son were held hostage at a residence for nearly five days. According to police, the woman hid in a closet with a laptop computer to post her plea for help, saying she and her son would be "dead by morning" if they were not rescued.

Thaxton, who remains jailed unable to post $1 million bond, faces a preliminary hearing Oct. 17 on charges of kidnapping, aggravated assault and terroristic threats in the confrontation at a financial services firm on the 16th floor of Three Gateway Center, a 24-story office tower in Pittsburgh.

Although police were vitally concerned about the hostage's welfare, and did what they could to check up on him, the negotiators were careful not to ask Thaxton too much about his hostage.

"Clearly we're always very concerned about the hostage," Lando said. "But when we're doing negotiations, we have to make it all about the hostage taker."

Too many questions about the hostage and the suspect "might feel like, 'You don't care about me. You just want to say whatever you need to say to get this person (the hostage) out of here,'" Lando said.

Instead, negotiators try to find people the hostage taker cares about who will help the negotiator build empathy.

"People want to tell their story," Lando said. "Listening to them is a cheap concession."

In Thaxton's case, key issues were his inability to find a job and his feelings for an ex-girlfriend he hadn't seen since 2008. Police arranged for her to speak with Thaxton, but only once the hostage was released. Thaxton surrendered, and police were sure they could keep the woman safe with Thaxton handcuffed and in custody.

"We try to find hooks — their schooling, work history, personal relationships," Lando said. "Oftentimes personal relationships are the source of why they find themselves in crisis."

To get more updates visit: http://news.yahoo.com/pa-hostage-call-prompts-social-media-training-062744292.html

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