If Twitter is broken, it shouldn’t be that hard to fix. Most of Twitter’s ailments are self-inflicted, and curable by a dose of focus. It must define and serve its audience properly, invest in data licensing, and forget about distracting product development.…
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What’s needed from marketing clouds
All the big guys - Adobe, IBM, Salesforce, Oracle - have a suite of marketing tech platform tools they call marketing clouds. Social media marketing is the obvious focus, but what else is required for these platforms?…
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Gigaom Research survey: Tell us your thoughts on marketing-tech platforms
Big players like Adobe, Salesforce, IBM and Oracle offer suites of tools for managing marketing technology. Some call them "marketing clouds." Give us your thoughts on what forces are shaping the industry, and which companies might be best-positioned to harness them.…
Read MoreCelebrity social media firm Ad.ly predicts $5M in revenue after embracing analytics
Ad.ly is a social media ad agency that provides brands with celebrity endorsements. To come up with a more steady revenue stream, it's turned to offering analytics.…
Read MoreKlout aims for new targets with launch of Klout for business
Klout is moving to target a slightly new audience with its latest product: businesses. Klout for Business will allow corporate customers to measure their company's influence on social media, moving Klout away from just targeting consumers.…
Read MoreSocial media analytics startup Socialbakers raises $6M
Prague-based social media analytics startup Socialbakers on Monday announced that it had raised $6 million in funding from Index Ventures and Earlybird Venture Capital. The startup says that more than a fifth of all Fortune 500 companies are its clients.…
Read MoreWill Vibrant Media’s redesigned in-context ads win over consumers?
Vibrant Media, the company behind many of the in-text ads on the web, is on Wednesday rolling out a redesign meant to make its advertising more transparent and interactive for users.…
Read MoreGannett may follow WaPo into social ads with BLiNQ Media buy
Gannett Co., the media giant behind USA Today and other properties, is reportedly buying social-media marketing company BLiNQ Media, which helps brands execute and manage advertising campaigns on Facebook and other social platforms.…
Read MoreSocial marketing platform Unified gets more Yammer-like
Enterprise-focused social marketing startup Unified Wednesday released an updated version of its social operating platform that layers on a Yammer-like user experience to the workflow specific to a brand or agency executing multiple social media campaigns.…
Read MoreUnified raises $14M for ‘social operating platform’ for enterprise
Unified Social, which calls itself an enterprise-grade social operating platform, announced Thursday that it had raised $14 million in new financing.…
Read MoreBuddy Media rolls out new social tools for marketers
Social marketing platform operator Buddy Media is rolling out a bunch of updates to its suite of tools including a unified social data API, the ability to track conversions and campaigns across their entire social media efforts, and a new mobile content development platform.…
Read More3 accurate metrics for ROI on social media campaigns
Businesses are struggling with how to evaluate the effectiveness of their social media campaigns. Currently, most companies are using metrics that fail to provide a clear picture of which marketing programs are increasing their revenues. Here, Sudha Jamthe outlines five metrics that accurately measure success.…
Read MoreLouis C.K.’s lesson for marketers: Honesty is the best strategy
Much has been made of the success of Louis C.K.’s self-released video special, but Jessica Lee examines it as a social media marketing campaign, chalking his success up to one ingredient that’s often missing in marketing: trust.…
Read MoreCrowdbooster makes social media campaigns smarter
Crowdbooster, a Y Combinator start-up, is publicly launching a new social media optimization platform that pairs analytics with tailored recommendations about how to employ social media. The company, which just raised seed funding, is looking to stand out by telling customers what to do and when.…
Read MoreNice timing: Facebook debuts “Facebook for Business”
Facebook has launched Facebook for Business, a step-by-step online guide aimed at helping small businesses use the social networking site. The timing is interesting, as it comes just a week after Google began shutting off all company profiles on its Google+ social network.…
Read MoreWhat makes Millennials click?
If you want to reach the Millennial generation, it's probably a good idea to use the Internet. But according to new research from MTV, companies run the risk of alienating their target audience if they go about social media marketing in the wrong way.…
Read MoreLinkedIn outbox like a broken record? Tout has an app for that
Many white-collar workers end up sending slight variations on the same email over and over again. Web application startup Tout has announced a new integration with LinkedIn that could be a major boon to a number of potential power users in fields like sales and PR.…
Read MoreVictoria’s Secret more likable than Walmart — on Facebook
When it comes to the social networking crowd, sex apparently sells. Victoria's Secret ended June as the top retailer on Facebook with more than 14.3 million fans, according to the latest data from e-commerce software provider ChannelAdvisor. Walmart, the world's top corporation by revenue, ranks fourth.…
Read MoreThe social web still has a lot of room to grow
The web may be more social now than ever before, but according to a recent study, there's still a lot more room to grow. Fewer than half of the world's top websites link to Facebook or Twitter on their front pages, according to a new research.…
Read MoreNetvibes goes social with new enterprise offering
Netvibes, the San Francisco-based startup that allows people and brands to create personalized RSS feed dashboards, has added social analytics capabilities to its web content monitoring platform. But can the company hold its own in today's world of hyper-funded and hungry social media analytics startups?…
Read MoreWildfire Interactive is spreading like you-know-what
Wildfire Interactive has had solid success with its flagship product, CEO Victoria Ransom tells me. Since the company's public launch two years ago, Wildfire has attracted big name clients, grown its staff, and become profitable. But the Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup isn't resting on its laurels.…
Read MoreGruvi.tv: Personalized Film Recommendations for Facebook
A new Facebook app launching in the U.K., called Gruvi.tv, wants to help users find the right movie to see this weekend Gruvi.tv's personalized recommendation system for movies currently in theaters uses Facebook activity, and that of your friends.…
Read MoreSinglePlatform Makes Sense of Mobile, Social and Web Marketing
Wiley Cerilli saw the growing plight of restauranteurs, who were inundated with marketing options created by social sites, mobile apps and group buying services. Instead of launching another start-up aimed at tapping local merchant marketing dollars, Cerilli is trying to be the solution to the madness.…
Read MoreDon’t Do Social Media Marketing by the Numbers
As the social media industry matures and best practices continue to refine, I'm struck by how too many people tend to get caught up in the numbers -- or at least the wrong numbers -- and let those numbers dictate how and when they use social media.…
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