When betaworks acquired Digg a month ago many folks were confident that they had the right attitude, team and environment to resurrect the failing site. Today that dream died when the new Digg was officially launched. The betaworks team worked for six weeks to rebuild the site form scratch, and it shows. New Digg v1 comes without user profiles, all user history is absent, no Digg login exists (only Facebook,) no commenting is allowed and users have to submit a link via Facebook or Twitter. Digg, the slowly dying social news site can now officially be pronounced. Digg is dead. The new Dig [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Digg | Social Media Marketing | Top News

Several analyst firms have recently released tablet market-share estimates; however these are based almost entirely on "shipments," which are not reflective of actual device sales or usage. By contrast, ad network Chitika released data today showing the breakdown in actual usage by device type in North America. As the chart below illustrates, the iPad still overwhelmingly dominates with more than a 90 percent share of tablet-generated web traffic. However a few Android devices seem to be gaining. Source: Chitika Among the gainers are the Samsung Galaxy Tab, Google Nexus 7 (just i [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Apple: iOS | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google: Android | Google: Mobile

Here's our daily recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web. From Marketing Land: Twitter Apologizes, Admits One Department Helped NBC Get Journalist’s Account SuspendedTwitter has confirmed that one of its departments helped NBC report the account of journalist Guy Adams to another of Twitter’s departments as violating Twitter’s privacy rules, getting the account temporarily suspended. Twitter’s apologized for that interaction. The Apology In a blog post today, Twitter’s general counsel Al [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Marketing Day

Twitter has confirmed that one of its departments helped NBC report the account of journalist Guy Adams to another of Twitter's departments as violating Twitter's privacy rules, getting the account temporarily suspended. Twitter's apologized for that interaction. The Apology In a blog post today, Twitter's general counsel Alex Macgillivray wrote: We want to apologize for the part of this story that we did mess up. The team working closely with NBC around our Olympics partnership did proactively identify a Tweet that was in violation of the Twitter Rules and encouraged them to file a support [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Top News | Twitter | Twitter: Business Issues

Google to marketers: we may be a bit, uh, behind in social, but come buy social programs through us anyway. That seems to be the gist of what the search giant is saying with its acquisition of Wildfire, a social media marketing platform that works primarily with Facebook, but also with Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn. Though Google didn't disclose a purchase price when announcing the acquisition, reports peg the value of the deal at around $250 million. The union makes a lot of sense for Google, which has historically not had a problem with purchasing companies that wor [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Acquisitions | Internet Marketing Industry: Acquisitions | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Social Media Marketing: Advertising | Top News

Yesterday, journalist Guy Adams, who writes for The Independent, found his Twitter account had been suspended. The reason? Twitter claimed he tweeted the email of an NBC executive in charge of that network's Olympics coverage in a way that violated Twitter's rules on privacy. But why suspend Adams and not so many others, including celebrities, who have done the same thing? Adams is back on Twitter now, saying that Twitter emailed him that NBC retracted its original complaint. This follows on news today that Twitter itself may have tipped NBC to the tweet and suggested a way that it co [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Features & Analysis | Twitter | Twitter: Business Issues | Twitter: Legal | Uncategorized

Consumer perception of Chick-Fil-A has dropped significantly in the wake of perceived anti-gay comments made earlier this month by the company's president, a drop that highlights the risks of corporate entities dipping their feet -- or mouths -- into sensitive social/political issues. According to a BrandIndex study by the market research company YouGov, Chick-Fil-A's index score dropped from 65 on July 16th to 39 on July 25th. July 16 is the date that Chick-Fil-A President Dan Cathy told the Baptist Press that the company is "very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definitio [...]

Related Topics: Branding | Channel: Strategy | Features & Analysis | Statistics: General | Word Of Mouth Marketing

[caption id="attachment_13726" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Summer has a way of making us all a bit lazy"][/caption] This article is late.  Very late.  Like late enough to where my editor should probably fire me (now might be a good time to point out how amazing, smart, talented, and, did I mention amazing, she is). But it’s not my fault.  It really isn’t. You see, every year as summer starts to roll in, a relaxed complacency starts to set in both personally and marketing-wise. Holiday 2011 is a distant memory, but Holiday 2012 is still too far off to talk about. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column

Facebook now claims 543 million monthly active mobile users. The good news for Facebook is that mobile users are "more active" than PC users. The bad news is that mobile users are much harder for the social site to make money from. This challenge has been widely discussed and was the subject of several questions on the recent Q2 Facebook earnings call. Facebook executives repeated several times during the call that they were being cautious about monetizing mobile so as to not disrupt the user experience. Source: Facebook Facebook is going to need to do something different with its [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Mobile | Facebook: Statistics | Facebook: User Interface | Statistics: Social Media | Top News

Mozilla’s latest upgrade to the Firefox web browser, Firefox 14, officially launched on July 17th and brought with it a number of desirable new features. These features, however, can have some not-so-desirable consequences for data analytics. One of the more notable changes (from both the user and the marketer’s perspective) is that Firefox will now encrypt all searches made through the location bar, search box, and right-click menu using Google SSL search. By enabling secure search as a default for users searching on Firefox, Mozilla aims to provide a more secure web browsing experi [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Analytics & Marketing Column | Channel: Analytics | Google | Google: Search

A few weeks ago Google Analytics launched Content Experiments, a new testing functionality that can be used to create A/B/N tests to optimize campaigns and overal website experience. Last week Google announced 3 upgrades that will make testing with the tool significantly easier and more powerful. Below I discuss each of the upgrades and how they can enhance testing with Google Analytics 1. Ability To Copy Experiments This new functionality is valuable as it allows marketers to perform additional tests to the same page without modifying the codes, which makes the process much shorter. [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Channel: Analytics | Google: Analytics

Last night Twitter announced that the usage of the cashtag (dollar sign in-front of a stock symbol) will now direct users to a search on the specific stocks and companies. The dollar sign now joins the @ and # symbols as being the only official interactive operators. Now you can click on ticker symbols like $GE on twitter.com to see search results about stocks and companies— Twitter (@twitter) July 31, 2012 The cashtag was created and popularized by StockTwits, a social community for traders & investors. StockTwits used the cashtag to aggregate updates and conversations on s [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Twitter

Passed over for the top job in favor of former Googler Marissa Mayer, former interim CEO Ross Levinsohn is departing Yahoo, as first reported by AllThingsD and confined by a Yahoo spokesperson. Levinsohn had headed up the company's key Americas unit, including overseeing advertising sales. According to the terms of the separation agreement and 8K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Levinsohn will receive 67,000 shares of stock currently valued at $1.1 million, along with 250,000 stock options at a per share exercise price of $15.80, the closing per share price on July 26. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Yahoo: Business Issues

E-commerce store builder Limited Run isn't happy with the results on recent Facebook ad tests, so upset they are planning on deleting their Facebook page entirely. The firm is claiming that only 20% of the clicks purchased could be verified. When analyzing the ad clicks Limited Run claimed that a whopping 80% of clicks that they were being charged for came from users who didn't have JavaScript turned on. As of late 2010 the number of users who did not have JavaScript turned on in the US was only 2%. Seeing this information, Limited Run allegedly built their own analytics software that found [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook | Facebook: Advertising | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Advertising

Here's our daily recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web. From Marketing Land: Facebook’s Share Of Social Logins At 48 Percent, Has Grown For Two Straight YearsFacebook continues to be web users’ preferred option when it comes to social login, and has now seen two consecutive years of quarterly growth in that area. According to Janrain’s latest quarterly report, Facebook now accounts for 48 percent of all social logins as of Q2 2012. That’s up from 45 percent in Q1 of [...] Bitly Launches [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Marketing Day

Facebook continues to be web users' preferred option when it comes to social login, and has now seen two consecutive years of quarterly growth in that area. According to Janrain's latest quarterly report, Facebook now accounts for 48 percent of all social logins as of Q2 2012. That's up from 45 percent in Q1 of this year, and represents eight straight quarters that Facebook's share has risen -- dating back to Q1 of 2010. Google remains second at 30 percent in Q2, which is consistent with where it's been over the last six quarters. Twitter has moved into third place with nine percent, th [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook | Facebook: Open Graph | Facebook: Statistics | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: Market Share | Statistics: Online Behavior | Statistics: Social Media | Top News

Popular URL shortener and bookmarking tool bitly has announced "realtime," an aptly named real-time discovery engine.  Realtime pulls in click data from a variety of social networks and allow searchers to view by topic, query, location, language or domain. Realtime (URL is rt.ly) pulls in all posts from "across the bitlyverse" which allows users to see what is being clicked on now.   One of the most beneficial application of the service is showing what is happening on each social network including Twitter, Facebook, tumblr, ameblo and Linkedin. Not only can you search a query acro [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Marketing Tools: Social Media | Marketing Tools: URL Shorteners | Social Media Marketing | Top News

According to AllThingsD freshly minted Yahoo CEO is making some initial changes at the Sunnyvale company intended to boost morale and inject new energy into the place. Among the changes being implemented are a Friday afternoon "all-hands" meeting, free food and forthcoming reworking of the workspaces. In these moves Mayer is apparently using Google as the model. However, product changes and upgrades are coming too. AllThingsD's Kara Swisher says that her indefatigable sources at Yahoo suggest there will be an acquisition or product-related announcement coming soon, to signal Yahoo's return [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Top News | Yahoo | Yahoo: Business Issues | Yahoo: Mobile

Pinterest marketing is one of the latest things that internet marketing consultants are trying to stay on top of. The basic actions on Pinterest that can be done by businesses make it possible to stay connected with current fans of their brands and products while also growing brand exposure. Re-Pins Re-pinning pins that relate to your industry and values is the fastest way to grow a company's own pin boards while also getting a good idea of what is popular in those industries. Re-pins are actually a good part of regular maintenance, as they are fairly quick to do. Regular Maintenance [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Pinterest | Pinterest: Business Use & Advertising | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing Column

With a U.S. court telling Pinwheel that it couldn't use that name anymore, the location-based startup has chosen a new name: Findery. It also has a new lantern icon (shown at right) on its renamed Twitter feed and its new Facebook page, and a new blog where founder Caterina Fake's first post explains that nothing but the name has changed. A New York court recently agreed with Pinweel, a mobile photo-sharing site, that Pinwheel (with the "h") was infringing on its trademark. Yesterday, Pinwheel temporarily redirected its site to 2bkco.com, the name of its parent company. Today, Finde [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Findery | Legal: Copyright & Trademark