Report: one in four online teens now use Twitter
What are teenagers up to on social media? Twitter use has grown dramatically since 2011, while Facebook stays dominant but shows flat growth. Read more »
Buying Tumblr might make Yahoo cool — but buying Pinterest might have made more sense
There are plenty of reasons why the announced Yahoo Tumblr deal makes sense for those companies. But Marissa Mayer might have seen a much greater payoff from acquiring Pinterest instead. Here’s why. Read more »
What Tumblr’s sale means for New York startup ecosystem
photo: Om Malik
The New York startup ecosystem will get a big boost from the $1.1 billion sale of Tumblr to Yahoo. The exit, one of the biggest New York has seen, shows that with content becoming important, New York is finding its footing on the startup stage. Read more »
Pinterest takes a “first step” toward working with big brands
Pinterest is unveiling a new pin structure for different types of products and an integration with a large number of retail brands, as it continues buildng up the platform and paving the way for growth. Read more »
Crowdsourcing is here to stay — now it’s about building tools for networked journalism
photo: Flickr / Christian Scholz
NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen says that many of the cultural barriers to doing “networked journalism” have been lowered, and he is trying to help media outlets develop smart tools and ways of making use of crowdsourcing. Read more at paidContent »
With Lucky Sort creators on board, Twitter is officially a data company
photo: Lucky Sort
With its acquisition of Lucky Sort, Twitter seems to be acknowledging that it’s a data company after all. The plan appears to be building a services that would do for Twitter equivalent to services such as Google Trends and Google Analytics. Read more »
It’s not about how long-form your content is, it’s about engagement with the reader
photo: Scholastic
As more sites focus on longform content, Fast Company disclosed some statistics on how its longer pieces have been doing — but the data shows that the real secret isn’t length but ongoing engagement with readers. Read more at paidContent »
Back to the future: What if the ‘mass media’ era was just an accident of history?
photo: Shutterstock / Feng Yu
We are used to thinking of a “mass media” market made up of large newspapers and TV networks as the normal state of affairs in media, but what if that was just a historical anomaly? Read more at paidContent »
News flash: Twitter doesn’t have to hire journalists to be a powerful media competitor
photo: Shutterstock / noporn
Twitter says it doesn’t have any interest in hiring reporters or performing other journalistic functions — but regardless of whether it does so, it is still a powerful media entity and one that grows stronger by the day. Read more at paidContent »
Why Branch could have a future connecting companies with customers
photo: Albert Chau
Branch might have set out to connect the world’s conversationalists on one platform, but it’s interesting to see how companies are adopting the resource as a more limited way to connect with customers. Read more »
Five things you can actually learn from #followateen
photo: Corbis / Blend Images / LWA / Dann Tardif
The battle of adults versus teens has taken on a new format in #followateen versus #followanadult. Read more »
It’s not always about ads, as data researchers use Facebook likes to gauge public health
A new study finds that Facebook likes and interest data could be used to map obesity prevalence. Read more »
Pict announces new funding as it expands to tag photos for social shopping
As more and more photos are shared across the web on Pinterest and Facebook, it’s a challenge for companies to bring customers back to their sites from those photos has become a challenge. Pict looks to make it easier to keep track of your customers. Read more »
Pew: All politics isn’t social just yet, but it’s getting there
photo: Shutterstock/Gunnar Pippel
Are all those Facebook posts about political candidates amounting to much when it comes to civic engagement? A new report from the Pew Research Center breaks down civic participation and social media. Read more »
Twitter partners with Fuse and Trident to produce cross-platform music TV show
photo: GigaOM
The conversations you’re having about music on Twitter could do more than build up artist fan bases — you could be helping power an entertainment television show called Trending 10. Read more »
Salesforce.com seeks more advertising, marketing revenue from social
photo: Jordan Novet
By connecting its customer-relationship-management system with social-media monitoring and publishing tools it’s taken on in the past two years, Salesforce.com looks eager to become an advertising and marketing destination. Read more »
New Salesforce.com features meld social media, marketing and CRM
photo: Salesforce.com
To help businesses focus their ad spending on specific social-media users, Salesforce.com is adding the ability to combine existing customer-relationship management lists with social monitoring and publishing tools. Read more »
How a Star Trek convention explains the secret to selling more stuff
photo: Flickr / Magic Madzik
When it comes to forming a bond with customers, one expert suggests using big data to help them form a bond with each other. Read more »
New social sports site For The Win aims for non-fans too
For The Win wants to take a BuzzFeed-style viral media approach to sports media. The new site, which will compete with rivals like Deadspin, will focus on finding “shareable” content that will be appealing even to people who don’t follow sports. Read more at paidContent »
Social shopping pioneer Modcloth plots mobile strategy for digital fashion
What’s the trick to getting consumers talking about your products and shopping on mobile? Fashion retailer Modcloth isn’t afraid to try out a lot of tactics. Read more »
Hyper-connected, real-time news is a good thing — but so is accuracy
The big news events of today are increasingly becoming participatory, thanks to growing and hyper-connectivity. This new landscape means, the media and its process — but not its real job – has to evolve. Read more »
Podcast: More media, more problems and more music on Twitter
photo: Corbis / Jim Frazier
This week’s news wrap up examines new media both in the immediate wake of the Boston attack as well as it’s slow evolution as an industry. Read more »
Reddit + Boston: Journalism gets better when more people are doing it
photo: Flickr / Christian Scholz
While both Twitter and Reddit have come under fire for distributing incorrect information about the Boston bombings, mainstream outlets have done so as well. In a real-time news environment, having more sources is ultimately better. Read more at paidContent »
When the search for the Boston bombing suspects comes to your neighborhood
photo: Getty Images
When you’re in official lock-down, piecing together what’s going on a mile from your house requires triangulation — police scanners, Twitter, Facebook, radio and TV — all come into play. Read more »
Can brands evolve from digital advertisers to mass communicators?
photo: Albert Chau
Brands claim they’re taking to social media, but they’re really inserting ads into other people social engagement streams — not engaging themsleves, says the founder of the Dachis Group. Read more at paidContent »
New Google tool lets you share email when you die — but not your books and music
Google has a useful new tool to manage your “digital afterlife.” The feature sends passwords to trusted contacts if you have been inactive, and provides a way to send on many aspects of your digital life — except for any media you bought. Read more »
Google sold Frommer’s Travel — but kept all the social media data
People wondered why Google sold Frommer’s Travel barely nine months after acquiring it in the first place. The answer is that it’s keeping a huge number social media followers from sites like Facebook. Read more at paidContent »
Want to get people shopping socially? It might be harder than you think
photo: Corbis / Heide Benser
How does a large e-commerce site appeal to a wide variety of shoppers online — and then get them used to the idea of shopping with social? Zappos is working to figure out the answer to social commerce. Read more »
When cancer stole Roger Ebert’s voice, Twitter gave him a new one
Film critic Roger Ebert talked about how much Twitter meant to him as a form of conversation, and his enthusiastic use of it as a way to connect with readers is a lesson to journalists of all kinds. Read more at paidContent »
Bloomberg adds Twitter feeds to financial platform on heels of new SEC rules
The financial company Bloomberg says it will add Twitter to its platforms now that the SEC has given a green light to companies to use social media to announce market moving news. Read more at paidContent »
Looking to find new apps? Twitter adds third-party app discovery and deep links
Looking for more information on other apps for your phone, or looking for more visual content in your Twitter feed? Twitter’s new updates to how third-party developers can create tweets has you potentially covered on both fronts. Read more »
Why I admire the OC Register, even though I disagree with almost everything they are doing
photo: Shutterstock / Voronin76
I may disagree with them about the benefits of a hard paywall, or the wisdom of cutting 90 percent of the newspaper’s blogs, but at least the owners of the Orange County Register are putting their money where their mouths are. Read more at paidContent »
Prince would Sue U 4 using Vine
photo: Flickr/PeterTea
Have you checked out Vine recently? Legendary pop artist Prince has, with his record label filing a copyright notice with Twitter regarding videos on Vine. It seems like the general public might be giving Vine a serious look. Read more »
Podcast: Why the digital age needs an effective content licensing strategy
Publishers must now focus on a strategy for effectively licensing digital content. In the latest GigaOM Research Podcast, analyst Paul Sweeting discusses why we need a strategy and how it will impact publishers and others. Read more »
Instagram makes us all paparazzi, but we’re not all celebrities
photo: Shutterstock / Zurijeta
Instagram might be changing the economics of the paparazzi business, but the photo-sharing service and its social media peers can also make celebrities — willing or not — out of ordinary people. Who should pay when digital activity has real-world consequences? Read more »
BuzzFeed courts Brits with new UK homepage, London launch
Can America’s viral site BuzzFeed succeed in a country where sensationalist journalism already thrives? We’ll soon find out. Read more at paidContent »
Shame on us? Why the power of social media must be used wisely
photo: Flickr user jettheriot
For better or worse, we all live in glass houses. Yet social media has made it easier and faster than ever before to throw stones, and that’s not always a good thing. Read more »
Lesson learned? If you’re gonna cheat, don’t tweet about it
photo: Flickr Ivy Dawned
Massachusetts education staffers are watching Twitter for signs of cheating on the statewide MCAS exams. Read more »
Yahoo acquires social recommendation startup Jybe
Yahoo has acquired Jybe, the personalized recommendation app that aimed to help consumers get recomendations from friends around them, and then also move toward making purchases through the app. The acquisition shows part of Yahoo’s latest social strategy. Read more »
Three startups to watch from Founder’s Den spring demo day
Looking for interesting companies coming out of Founder’s Den, the co-working space and entrepreneur network in San Francisco? Here are our top three picks from Tuesday’s demo day. Read more »
