Microsoft To YouTube: Where’s That Interoperability Larry Page Was Talking About?

May 15, 2013 at 8:08pm ET by Matt McGee   

Microsoft and Google are involved in a battle over the YouTube app for Windows Phones, and Microsoft has followed a cease-and-desist letter from Google by questioning Google’s commitment to interoperability and working together. As The Verge reported today, Google sent Microsoft a cease-and-desist letter demanding that Microsoft remove the YouTube app from its Windows Phone [...]

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Google+ Stream Gets Fresh New Look & Automatically-Added Hashtags At Google I/O

May 15, 2013 at 4:13pm ET by Amy Gesenhues   

Google announced a number of Google+ upgrades during the keynote presentation at today’s Google I/O, including a new responsive, multi-column layout for Google+ Stream. Now, users will see one, two, or three columns of content depending on their device’s screen size and orientation. Photos and videos have been enhanced as well, fitting the entire width of [...]

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New Google+ Hangouts App Enables Cross-Platform, Multi-Media Conversations

May 15, 2013 at 4:00pm ET by Ginny Marvin   

Google announced the new Google+ Hangouts app at Google I/O today. The new app combines Google’s chat, voice and video services into one product. The stand-alone version of Hangouts allows users to combine images, video conferencing and text chats (now complete with emoji) in one experience. Video calls can include up to 10 people. As [...]

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Study: Organic Posting Is Most Popular Social Media Tactic, But Not The Most Successful

May 14, 2013 at 5:06pm ET by Ginny Marvin   

  More than one in three large social media advertisers are not satisfied with their efforts from both paid and organic social media strategies. Those marketers that are satisfied with their social efforts are happiest with the results they achieve from paid social advertising than from using organic tactics alone. These are conclusions of a [...]

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Schmidt: Google Has More Respect For “Real World” Concerns, One Reason Why Google Glass Is Limited

May 14, 2013 at 1:57pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Whereas the Google of old might just throw products “over the wall” and not think much about their real world impacts, the Google of today has much more respect for what its digital products might do in the real world, says Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt. That’s one reason why Google Glass is in a [...]

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Online Sales Tax: Why E-Commerce Companies Are On Both Sides Of The Debate

May 13, 2013 at 4:10pm ET by Ginny Marvin   

If passed by the House, the Marketplace Fairness Act, which aims to level the playing field between online retailers and brick-and-mortar businesses, could go into effect as soon as this fall. As it stands now, the bill would require remote sellers, including online businesses, with gross receipts over $1 million to collect sales tax in qualifying states [...]

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Google: We’re Okay With Facebook Home … For Now

May 13, 2013 at 3:11pm ET by Matt McGee   

One of Google’s top executives says the company is okay — for now — with Facebook Home’s presence on Android devices, but it may change its mind in the future. Sundar Pichai, who recently took over Android in addition to leading Google’s Chrome and Apps efforts, spoke about Facebook’s new Android experience in an interview [...]

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Google+ Adds Content Recommendations For Mobile Websites

May 13, 2013 at 2:41pm ET by Matt McGee   

Website owners with a Google+ page will soon be able to add content recommendations to the user experience on their mobile websites. Google just announced the new feature today, which blends both Google+ activity (such as +1s and shares) and search authorship to determine the best related content to show to users as they browse [...]

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Google Glass Diary, Part 2: Positive Public Reactions & The Importance Of Google I/O This Week

May 13, 2013 at 8:44am ET by Matt McGee   

There’s a hint of truth in Peter Shankman’s recent article, the one where he says Robert Scoble is so over the top about Google Glass that he’s damning the device to be nerds-only for eternity. But, the reality is that most of America (much less the world) doesn’t know or care who Scoble is, and [...]

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Facebook Home Crosses 1M Downloads Threshold In One Month

May 10, 2013 at 12:04pm ET by Greg Sterling   

It may not sound like much for a site with more than a billion users and 751 million mobile active users, but a million downloads of Facebook Home is significant. Facebook revealed the figure at a “whiteboard session” held yesterday at the company’s Menlo Park, California headquarters. Home had 500,000 downloads as of April 21. [...]

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YouTube Launches (Ad-Free) Paid Subscription Channels

May 9, 2013 at 4:46pm ET by Ginny Marvin   

YouTube officially launched its anticipated pilot program for paid subscription channels. The program debuts with 53 paid channels and subscription fees starting as low as $0.99 per month. All channels have a 14-day free trial with. And all are ad-free. Users subscribe to the channels from a computer, and then have access to their paid [...]

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Picture This: Instagram Is The Fastest Growing Social Network For Brands With 14% Growth This Quarter

May 9, 2013 at 12:28pm ET by Greg Finn   

Since Facebook purchased the filter-friendly photo app Instagram last year, brand adoption has skyrocketed, according to a new study of the top 100 brands by SimplyMeasured. Since purchase last year, the Facebook-owned Instagram has flourished. The post-purchase growth jumped 500% in just a year, going from 22 million active monthly users to nearly 100 million [...]

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Study: Frequent “Smartphone Shoppers” Buy More Than Others

May 9, 2013 at 11:23am ET by Greg Sterling   

If you’re a retailer or an agency serving retailers, mobile is arguably now your most critical channel. Yet, despite the mounting evidence of consumer reliance on mobile devices in shopping, a majority of retailers still have “experimental” or very tepid mobile strategies. Considerable research has already established that smartphone owners use their devices heavily during [...]

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Facebook Likely In Talks To Buy Social Navigation App Waze

May 9, 2013 at 10:55am ET by Amy Gesenhues   

Will Facebook acquire social traffic and navigation app Waze? TechCrunch ran an article today claiming that three Israeli papers, Calcalist, Ynet and The Marker, have reported that Facebook is in talks to acquire the company in a billion-dollar deal that would help further grow Facebook’s mobile efforts. According to the article, a private source confirmed [...]

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Klout To Compete In Social Answers Space With New ‘Klout Experts’ Product

May 8, 2013 at 2:30pm ET by Greg Finn   

Watch out Quora; Klout is coming. The popular social influence tool, Klout, is launching a new product that is geared to help provide human answers from the Web’s top influencers – ‘Klout Experts.’ This product will allow users to answer questions in 300 character responses on topics that they are deemed to be influential in. [...]

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Study: WordPress Grabs More Share Of Top 100 Blogs

May 8, 2013 at 11:34am ET by Ginny Marvin   

WordPress continues to gain in popularity among top blog publishers. The blogging platform’s market share rose to 52 percent, up from 48 percent last year, according to Royal Pingdom, which uses the Technorati Top 100 blogs list for its annual study. To get a sense of WordPress’ growth trend, in Royal Pingdom’s first study in 2009, [...]

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With New Gmail And Chrome Integrations, Is Google Trying To “Colonize” iOS Devices?

May 8, 2013 at 11:00am ET by Greg Sterling   

Is Google simply trying to create a better user experience on the iPhone and iPad or is it trying to “colonize” iOS with its apps? It all depends on your point of view — though, it’s probably a bit of both. When the new Gmail app for iOS was released May 6, immediately, inflammatory headlines [...]

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Google Glass Diary, Day 1: Getting Started With Google Glass

May 7, 2013 at 5:23pm ET by Matt McGee   

With an open mind and help from a Google staffer showing me how the device works, it was pretty easy to see some compelling use cases within the first hour that I was a Google Glass owner. On Monday, I visited Google’s Mountain View headquarters for my onboarding appointment with a Glass specialist. Marketing Land/Search [...]

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Why Yahoo Will Never Reach The “Revenue Per Search” That Microsoft Promised

May 7, 2013 at 2:29pm ET by Danny Sullivan   

Microsoft has effectively renewed its search vows with Yahoo a second time, pledging once again that Yahoo will indeed earn a high “revenue per search” that was promised back when the alliance was made in 2009. That’s not going to happen. When the latest extension expires in a year, the expected RPS still won’t be [...]

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Sharethrough Mobile Platform Launches To Power Native Advertising On Mobile Devices

May 7, 2013 at 12:51pm ET by Ginny Marvin   

Today, native advertising company Sharethrough announced the launch of Sharethrough Mobile, a platform that allows advertisers to promote branded content through native ads across mobile devices. Sharethrough uses proprietary technology called Real Time Templating (RTT) that enables the platform to identify the style elements of any webpage and match the look of each individual ad [...]

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