Microsoft Launches Socl Social Network: A Look Inside

May 20, 2012 at 1:33pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Congrats, Mark Zuckerberg. You went public on Friday, got married on Saturday and now as a special present from part-owner and best partner Microsoft have a new social network to contend with: Microsoft’s So.cl. But don’t worry too much. I just spotted the news of So.cl going live on Techmeme. This being a Sunday, I [...]

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Facebook IPO Fails To Deliver Anticipated “Pop”

May 18, 2012 at 5:29pm ET by Greg Sterling   

I had assumed, as did many others, that Facebook shares would open at $38 and head north from there. In fact I thought demand would be so brisk that the shares might hit $100. Was I wrong. I believed there was considerable pent-up demand for what was the biggest tech IPO ever. But that demand [...]

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Americans Watched Record Amount Of Online Video Ads In April [Report]

May 18, 2012 at 2:38pm ET by Matt McGee   

Americans watched a record 9.5 billion video ads during April, according to the latest report from comScore’s Video Metrix service. Video ads, comScore says, represented about one of every five videos watched online last month. Leading the way in video ads was Hulu, which delivered about 1.6 billion of those ads, or almost 17 percent [...]

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Report: Facebook Sued For $15 Billion Over Improper User Tracking

May 18, 2012 at 10:33am ET by Greg Finn   

Today, on the day of Facebook’s IPO, Bloomberg reports that Facebook (FB) is being sued for $15 billion for improper user tracking. The suit claims that Facebook invaded privacy by tracking users, logged in or out of Facebook. The lawsuit was filed in Federal Court in California and combines 21 cases from across the country according [...]

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Twitter Now Supports “Do Not Track” Capability

May 17, 2012 at 3:34pm ET by Greg Sterling   

As announced on the Twitter Twitter account and further explained by the New York Times, Twitter becomes another high-profile publisher that supports Do Not Track. The actual “Do Not Track” functionality is accomplished via the browser. Right now the system is voluntary for publishers, who must recognize and respect the user request to opt out [...]

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Pinterest Gets $100M In Funding From Japan’s Rakuten, Now Valued at $1.5 Billion

May 17, 2012 at 7:27am ET by Greg Finn   

The 3rd largest social networking site, Pinterest, has pinned down a lead investor in their highly contested round of funding according to AllThingsD.  The Japansese e-commerce company, Rakuten, will invest “upwards of $50 million in a $100 million round.”  This total investment round will place the valuation of Pinterest at $1.5 billion dollars. The partnership [...]

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Facebook Accounted For 9 Percent Of US Internet Visits In April, Hitwise Says

May 16, 2012 at 8:01pm ET by Matt McGee   

With Facebook’s gazillion-dollar* IPO inching closer, Experian Hitwise has shared a number of statistics that provide something of a snapshot about the site and its audience. One of the numbers that stands out is that nine percent of all U.S. internet visits last month were to Facebook. Hitwise says Facebook is averaging more than 229 [...]

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Is Mother Nature Causing Stormy Sales? Weather Underground Shows How Weather Impacts Your Bottom Line

May 16, 2012 at 11:31am ET by Matt McGee   

Is bad weather good for business? Or is good weather a pain in the bottom line? Weather Underground has launched what may be the first of its kind — a tool that lets marketers track sales against local weather conditions. It’s called “Sales Tracker,” and it’s part of a new (and still in beta) Business [...]

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Ahead Of IPO, GM Drops Facebook Ads; Forrester Warns Other Companies May Follow

May 15, 2012 at 5:34pm ET by Pamela Parker   

It couldn’t have happened at a worse time for Facebook, which has its initial public offering of stock later this week. General Motors has decided to stop advertising on the social networking giant, citing concerns about the site’s effectiveness. Meanwhile, a Forrester analyst says other companies are having doubts The GM news comes from a Wall [...]

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Understanding The True Reach Of Pinterest

May 15, 2012 at 3:01pm ET by Monica Wright   

Pinterest became the social media’s new golden child earlier this year when marketers learned that it drives more web traffic than YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn combined. Yet despite recent studies showing that referral traffic from the channel is decreasing, it’s still a big hitter in the social space. As B2B publishers we haven’t seen the [...]

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Survey: Nearly 50% See Facebook “Fading Away” Over Time

May 15, 2012 at 10:48am ET by Greg Sterling   

A new poll from AP and CNBC on the eve of the Facebook IPO shows that Americans are ambivalent about the company and that it faces numerous challenges as it seeks to generate more revenue growth from its already massive user base. The AP-CNBC poll was conducted May 3 through May 7. The  survey sample [...]

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Google Wins 750+ Domains From Cybersquatter Who Wants ‘Google’ Trademark Canceled

May 14, 2012 at 4:07pm ET by Matt McGee   

The National Arbitration Forum (NAF) has given Google ownership of more than 750 domains that used its trademark name, often in conjunction with other well-known trademarks and/or celebrity names. In one of its legal filings, Google called it “one of the most aggressive campaigns of domain name infringement that [Google] has encountered.” The domains were [...]

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New Interim CEO Levinsohn Tries To Rally Yahoos After Major Shakeup

May 14, 2012 at 10:28am ET by Pamela Parker   

It was a busy weekend for the Yahoo board. Former EVP of Americas and media guy Ross Levinsohn has taken the helm after Scott Thompson stepped down to end a 5-month tenure — including the last two weeks of uproar about incorrect educational information on his biography. Thompson is also reportedly battling thyroid cancer, which was [...]

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Will Apple’s Move Bring A Real & Perhaps Better Google Maps To iOS?

May 11, 2012 at 2:55pm ET by Greg Sterling   

After I wrote the story saying that Apple was going to replace Google Maps with its own product when it rolls out as part of iOS 6, I had a conversation with a friend. He reminded me that Apple is actually in control of the majority of elements of the Maps app on the iPhone. [...]

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Check-In Service Usage Has More Than Doubled In Past 9 Months, Study Says

May 11, 2012 at 2:04pm ET by Matt McGee   

The number of Americans using check-in services has more than doubled in the past nine months according to a new Pew Research Center study. Pew’s Internet & American Life Project surveyed more than 2,200 adults earlier this year and found that the use of geosocial services — such as Foursquare and Gowalla* — to check-in [...]

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“Internet Marketing” Isn’t A Scam; Fix It, Please, The Verge

May 10, 2012 at 4:58pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Hey, The Verge. Can I just call you Verge? We’ve got a little problem. Apparently you’ve grown past your gadget roots. In doing so, you’ve stumbled into just labeling a wide swath of legitimate marketers as scammers. By the way, in doing so, you’ve made yourself out to be scammers as well. You know what [...]

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Report: 6 Months In, Google+ Brand Pages Show Continued Growth

May 10, 2012 at 8:24am ET by Greg Finn   

Yesterday marked the half-birthday for Google+ brand pages.  In honor of this anniversary, social analytics company, Simply Measured, released a report focusing in on Google+ brand page adoption and engagement since inception.  The Interbrand 100 were used in measuring all the statistics for the study.  One constant across all of the data is growth.  The number of circlers [...]

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With More Than 14 Million Domains On Board, AddThis Launches Expanded Set Of Social Plugins

May 10, 2012 at 7:01am ET by Matt McGee   

AddThis, a provider of social sharing buttons, says it now has more than 14 million domains in its publisher network and reaches more than 1.3 billion web users per month. For comparison, ShareThis says it has 1.3 million publishers in its network and Shareaholic says it has more than 200,000 websites using its tools. AddThis’ [...]

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Facebook Announces App Center, The Hub For Social Apps

May 9, 2012 at 5:11pm ET by Greg Finn   

Facebook apps are are getting a new centralized, mobile-friendly destination for users.  The App Center has been officialy announced as the new home for all social apps.  Apps can be easily viewed, sorted, search, reviewed and previewed: Not only does the App Center look slicker, it will have a variety of benefits for users and [...]

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The Google+ iPhone App Gets A (Much-Needed) Major Overhaul

May 9, 2012 at 4:04pm ET by Matt McGee   

Love or hate Google+ itself, there’s one thing that almost everyone could agree on: Its iPhone app has looked and behaved like something Google cooked up as a last-minute afterthought. No more. Google has just announced a much-needed overhaul of the Google+ iPhone app and … while I can’t speak to how it works yet [...]

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