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People feel worse about themselves when they use Facebook, regardless of how happy or unhappy they were before looking at the site, researchers say. "We measured lots and lots of other personality and behavioral dimensions, like, for example, frequency of Facebook use. ... The more you used Facebook, the more your mood dropped,"
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Billionaire investor Carl Icahn used Twitter on Tuesday to reveal that he has a large amount of Apple stock, and that he believes the company to be "extremely undervalued." The tweet, and a follow-up about discussing share buybacks with Apple CEO Tim Cook, sent Apple's price soaring, boosting the company's value by about $20 billion. "I don't know that market-moving information breaking on Twitter will become 'the norm,' but it has certainly become important," said Henry Blodget, CEO of Business Insider.
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Instagram has signed up Peter Deng, a Facebook product manager, to be its first director of product. Deng is capable, but his presence might make it harder for Instagram to retain its own independent culture and direction, Ellis Hamburger writes. "[W]hen you bring in someone used to doing things Facebook's way, there's a real chance you'll end up with something that looks like Facebook,"
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Facebook is testing a payments engine that could prove a threat to PayPal. The tool would allow users who have previously paid for something on Facebook using a credit card to make payments on third-party sites without re-entering their card information. Still, some analysts are skeptical about consumers' willingness to share their credit card and purchase details with Facebook.
Read More Here. http://allthingsd.com
Small businesses should make sure each Web page serves a clear purpose, according to the Webreep Annual Online Consumer Behavior Report. Pages that are trying to do too much might end up falling flat, the report warns. "If your website isn't easy to use, your visitors will walk. The information on your website needs to be highly relevant and targeted to help your website visitors achieve their goals,"
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Mobile website designers can make forms easier to fill out via touch keyboards with a handful of tools, including disabling auto-correct for form fields such as e-mail address where the dictionary is likely to be weak. Dedicated keyboards for specific functions also help decrease errors, and making sure "next" and "previous" buttons follow a logical sequence will decrease user frustration.
Read More Here. http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com
The crux of Hooters' "Step Into Awesome" rebranding campaign from Skiver Advertising is social promotion asking users to share experiences on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and elsewhere. Hooters had added its #StepIntoAwesome hashtag to all of its marketing and had more than 10,000 user-posted photos with that hashtag in the first 30 days of the campaign. Hooters even added a "Miss Social" category to its swimsuit pageant for the contestant with the most social activity.
Read More Here. http://www.mediapost.com
CNN is overhauling its website with a responsive design interface to create a more consistent experience for the 40% of visitors who access the site through a mobile device. The redesign will include new native and responsive advertisement formats aimed at boosting revenue. The public beta debuts in September, and the full site is slated to go live worldwide in November. "I fervently believe that mobile is our future, or a huge part of our future, and what I've challenged not just this team but our ad sales team to do is make the transition that much easier," said CNN President Jeff Zucker.
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Just 35% of Americans approve of President Barack Obama's handling of the economy, according to a new Gallup poll. That's down seven points from June, with Obama's handling of taxes and the federal deficit coming in for particular criticism, but still better than the 26% rating he garnered in mid-2011
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A Subaru dealership in the United Arab Emirates has apologized after posting a misogynistic screed about female drivers -- in response to a fatal accident -- on its Facebook page. The uproar over the post made its way onto Subaru of America's page, where officials responded by emphasizing that Subaru Emirates and Subaru of America are separately run, and pledging an investigation into the original post.
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Pinterest has added e-mail price alerts to the "rich" pins feature it introduced in May. "Pinterest will send these sale alerts through aggregated and summarized emails, so as to prevent users from getting spammed," writes Melanie White. Amplify social media manager Adam Dacosta calls it "a very clever move."
Read More Here. http://www.clickz.com
Going to the movies would be a better experience if cinemas turned up the lights, provided power outlets and encouraged people to tweet and use second-screen devices, venture capitalist Hunter Walk argues. Walk's controversial idea generated plenty of chatter, with some saying that cinemas shouldn't try to turn themselves into people's living rooms. "A movie theater is still a sacred place. Mr. Walk can wait to tweet until he gets home, just like the rest of us,"
Read More Here. http://hunterwalk.com
The explosion of content marketing, the proliferation of social platforms and the growth of digitally driven channels have fundamentally changed the relationship that today's B2B buyer has with marketing materials and the sales force. Brendan Dell explores the new behaviors and preferences of today's B2B buyer and provides best-practice advice for crafting content campaigns.
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Nearly half of U.S. companies have a formal content marketing strategy and 44% of these companies say increasing leads is the main goal, according to a report from IMN. Price might be a big factor in the strategy's adoption since one-third of respondents said they spend less than 10% of their marketing budgets on content marketing.
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Eight-four percent of Chinese companies project that mobile sales will grow over the next year, and 16% are already marketing regularly through mobile, an Experian Marketing Services' whitepaper reports. Currently, text is the main marketing channel but other technologies, including QR codes, are expected to take a bigger share.
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Brand mobile websites, QR codes and other native mobile experiences outperform mobile banner advertisements by a wide margin when it comes to consumer engagement, according to a global study from media agency Initiative. Voucher code sites received the highest level of engagement at 74%, compared to 52% for banner ads. The study also found that the more time consumers spent browsing with their mobile devices, the more likely they were to also use it for shopping.
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Snap Mobile is offering 11 simple-to-use templates as part of its Rich Media 5 project, which allows advertisers to quickly create engaging rich-media mobile ads in Hong Kong. The HTML5 templates, with more to come, are being offered free to advertisers with a promised three-day turnaround time. "We are making it very simple. All clients and agencies need to do is come up with a storyboard," said Kevin Huang, chief executive of Snap Mobile parent Pixel Media.
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Microsoft has expanded its African tests of white-space broadband service to the Limpopo province of South Africa following the launch of trials in Kenya and Tanzania. Microsoft is trying to show South Africa that white-space technology can help meet the government's goal of an 80% broadband reach by 2020, according to a published account.
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Facebook is recruiting mobile-game developers for its new publishing platform that includes revenue sharing. "With more than 800 million monthly users of our mobile apps and more than 260 million people playing games on Facebook, we are using our unique reach and targeting capabilities to help games in our program find and engage a valuable audience of the right users," Facebook's Victor Medeiros wrote in a blog post
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Why Google+ feared the "tin-foil-hat" privacy brigade Google reportedly backed away from CEO Larry Page's planned privacy "slider" -- a tool that would have allowed users to select privacy options on a sliding scale -- after realizing that the tool's "tin-foil-hat option" for maximum privacy would have conflicted with Google+'s data-collecting and -sharing strategy. Still, the company is still working behind the scenes to find ways to balance privacy and information sharing...
Read More Here. http://online.wsj.com
Mozilla is experimenting with an opt-in system that would potentially allow ad targeting to users of its Firefox browser. The move is surprising "considering Mozilla's recent efforts to curb the ability for other companies to drop tracking cookies on Firefox users," writes Kate Kaye. A Mozilla blog says users would be sharing their interests "with specific websites for a personalized experience" and is intended for content-targeting.
Read More Here. http://adage.com
CNN plans to focus on boosting its prime-time lineup and enhancing its mobile presence, while offering a broad mix of news, from politics to lighter topics, Jeff Zucker, president of CNN Worldwide, said at an industry event. "What I want CNN to be about is all of the news, and all of the news is not just what's happening in Washington or in the Middle East, but it's also about entertainment and business and sports and culture and [things] that we all talk about," Zucker said.
Read More Here. http://variety.com
Just starting out in business-to-business marketing? Need immediate access to a network of professionals who can offer guidance, resources and support? The Business Marketing Association is here to help. If you are 30 years old or younger, we offer a full year of membership in our Young Professionals Program for just $75. This is $135 less than the standard membership fee and is available only to new and renewing members who meet the criteria. If you are a full time student, you can join BMA for $25!
Read More Here. http://www.marketing.org
Facebook will begin selling 15-second video ads on a full-day basis for $1 million to $2.5 million each day, according to sources. Targeting of the ads will be based only on age and gender, as the social net looks to better mirror the way TV ads are purchased. Users will see a commercial up to three times each day....
Read More Here http://www.bloomberg.com .
Lenovo will expand its 5 GB Reach cloud-storage service for files and passwords to all users in North America as it looks to improve sales numbers for its hardware offerings. However, similar efforts by hardware companies Asus and Acer have not increased device sales, according to this report.
Read More Here http://www.computerworld.com.
Siemens has announced that finance chief Joe Kaeser will take over as CEO from Peter Loescher, who was ousted amid concern over tumbling profit. Kaeser will be challenged to put the sprawling engineering group back on track but has the expertise for the task, analysts say. "Kaeser was the logical candidate to succeed Loescher. It made perfect sense to nominate him," says analyst Ingo-Martin Schachel of Commerzbank.
Read More Here. http://www.bloomberg.com
Microsoft and Nokia both recognize the importance of recruiting independent application developers. Nokia's Jo Harlow says, "We need more awareness of Windows phones and Lumia, we need a broader ecosystem of applications." She touted the new Lumia 1020 smartphone as an example of the growing partnership between Microsoft and Nokia.
Read More Here. The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com
Google is featuring game developers that tout the value of the Google Play game services and new Google Play Games application, Jeffrey Grubb writes. For example, Concrete Software's PBA Bowling Challenge says the game platform's services -- which include cloud-based game saves, real-time multiplayer competition and leaderboards -- were easy to implement and increased time spent in the game by 15%. Glu reports 40% higher seven-day retention for Eternity Warriors 2. "The availability of these features in Google Play game services helps us make our games stickier," Glu's Sourabh Ahuja says
By some counts, Twitter now has 500 million users -- but is that enough of a critical mass to ensure that the microblogging service doesn't fizzle out? Other analyses suggest that the site's active user base is substantially smaller, and that Twitter isn't out of the woods yet. "It's not so hard to imagine the 200 million or so monthly active users finding another club to play in," Rebecca Greenfield writes
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http://www.theatlanticwire.com http://www.ecomaff.in/
Facebook is getting too tangled and overloaded with features, and it's time for it to start putting simplicity ahead of growth, Jeff Stibel writes. Much as the brain prunes synaptic connections to avoid excessive complexity, Facebook should cut out the distractions and focus on streamlining its core functions, Stibel argues. "[T]here is now more value, more utility, in offering less. ... Just like the brain, Facebook could separate out the fluff and strengthen the important relationships,"
Read More Here. http://www.wired.com
Chipotle's recent Twitter "hack" publicity stunt was a lame one at that, Molly McHugh writes. The move highlighted the broader problem with Twitter buzz, which rewards brands for using PR gimmicks rather than building real engagement, McHugh writes. "Twitter is all about notoriety and follower numbers -- it's a social ladder to be climbed. ... [M]aybe we sucked it dry of anything genuine," she writes.
Read More Here. http://www.digitaltrends.com
This event will be held Thursday, Aug. 8, 5:30 to 7 p.m., at IDS Technology Marketing, 14811 N. Kierland Blvd. Suite 300, in Scottsdale, Ariz., when Scott Salkin, founder and CEO of IDS Technology Marketing, will share real-life lessons and insight from his entrepreneurial journey, turning a business idea into a multimillion dollar B2B marketing firm in just a few years. Scott's discussion will include sharing stories from his 10-year journey from being a high-tech intern to becoming a high-tech marketing business owner; lessons from six years of business ownership; why he decided to give up a comfortable job and start a business in the Great Recession; and his thoughts on what young B2B marketers and entrepreneurs should be focused on as they build their careers. Scott was recently listed as one of Arizona's "Top 35 Entrepreneurs Under 35" and was recognized in 2013 as the Phoenix Business Journal and Business Marketing Association "Marketer of the Year."
Read More Here. http://bmaphoenix.org
The recent announcement of service integrations between Salesforce.com and Oracle has conjured up images of improved products and business intelligence in the minds of enterprise customers. These hopes include Oracle's Endeca using Salesforce data to manage sales and customer information, plus integration of order processing and fulfillment. The companies will listen to customers to guide their next steps, said Kendall Collins, executive vice president of products at Salesforce.com.
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Gmail now provides users a set of inboxes that automatically sort messages it deems "Promotions" or "Social" into tabs that are separate from a user's main inbox -- a feature that has implications for e-mail marketing. MailChimp and Return Path have noticed a small decline in open rates, but it is still too soon to determine the full effect. "Our advice is: Don't panic," Constant Contact CEO Gail Goodman said.
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Mobile is catching up with PCs in terms of consumer open rates for marketing e-mails, according to research by marketing solutions provider Harland Clarke Digital. Smartphones tend to be used for this purpose during work hours, and tablets see more e-mail openings in the evening.
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Getting marketers into the field and having them meet more often with sales teams and customers will allow companies to better understand clients and correct buyer-process maps, says Motorola Solutions' Eduardo Conrado, senior vice president of marketing and IT. This process also involves having more of a local presence to make sure materials match regional cultures, technologies and habits.
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Brainstorming is a powerful tool for driving innovation, but it needs to be conducted in a manner that's free of preconceptions and unthinking constraints, write Alan Iny and Luc de Brabandere. If you're brainstorming the wrong way, you won't come up with useful ideas, they warn. "It's always easier to blame the tool than to question your technique, but would you blame the hammer if you hit your thumb?" they write.
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Wall Street's financiers aren't using their capital to effectively drive innovation, and that's sucking the creativity out of the U.S. economy, argues Lynn Parramore. The expectations of analysts aren't helping, Parramore argues, citing Lawrence Mitchell, who wrote about a survey in which 4 of 5 CEOs "at least moderately mutilated their businesses in order to meet [financial] analysts’ quarterly profit estimates."
Read More Here.
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