Worth your time to go read as it will change the way you interact with other humans (and Alots)…
So the next time you are reading along and you see some guy ranting about how he is “alot better at swimming than Michael Phelps,” instead of getting angry, you can be like “You’re right! Alots are known for their superior swimming capabilities.”
via Hyperbole and a Half: The Alot is Better Than You at Everything.
Andy Beaumont on the plague of Pop-Ups 2.0 and the reason why publishers of all sizes are rushing to put them on their sites (hint.. doing analytics wrong):
I have tested this design pattern with real people, and a significant portion of them believe that they must do what the box is begging them for in order to close the overlay. These people remember, they’re people, not “conversions”, are signing up to a newsletter they don’t want. They’re then going to be irritated by it for several months until they work out how to unsubscribe from it. The analytics guru you brought in is walking away with a chunk of your money, in exchange for having pissed off a whole bunch of existing and potential customers.
I like this approach… I’ve been using it somewhat regularly here but need to be better about posting things like images or bookmarks here first and then letting them go out to the silos.
Networks like Instagram are still hard to do, but Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus are pretty easy.
POSSE is an acronym/abbreviation for Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. It’s a Syndication Model where the flow involves posting your content on your own domain first, then syndicating out copies to 3rd party services with perma(short)links back to the original version.
POSSE lets your friends keep using whatever silo aggregator (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) they’ve been using to read your stuff.
It’s a key part of why and how the “IndieWeb” movement is different from just “everyone blog on their own site”, and also different from “everyone just install and run StatusNet/Diaspora” etc.
via POSSE – IndieWebCamp.
Good read…
The demand for commodified authenticity is an expression of consumers’ nostalgia for a never-existing time when one had total control over the development of one’s identity. That sort of authenticity has always been a fiction, but the very real existence of goods that signify authenticity masked that fact. Consuming authentically could seem to prove fidelity to our “real self.”
Interestingly enough, Sony has been a great study for how businesses (large and small) can leverage Pinterest to drive traffic and revenue back to a site.
Sony has done a great job of not just community evangelization and using Pinterest as a place to engage current and potential customers, but they have also successfully cross promoted their own account there with promotional emails to existing newsletter subscribers.
The one thing many companies, especially in the performance marketing industry, look over when creating social media campaigns is the need to promote accounts via something like an existing newsletter subscriber base. By combining those two, there’s a great potential left on the table for many companies…
Pinterest Suggestions from Sony
1. Send a dedicated Pinterest email to showcase your boards and encourage following
2. Add the Pin It button next to product shots in emails to get people pinning
3. Create unique boards that appeal to different groups of people
via Sony: Making email more interesting with Pinterest | Pinterest for Business.
Twitter quietly rolled out a huge and needed update to its developing analytics offering for businesses using its ad system to promote tweets and accounts.
Google obviously rules the roost when it comes to advertising on the web, but as Google continues to try and find its own footing with the Hummingbird update to better encompass mobile user experience (which is an important and growing traffic segment, of course), Twitter really has a chance to grab and keep substantial traffic when it comes to mobile users. According to Twitter, there are 230 million users of their services globally, and 76% access Twitter on a mobile device. Unlike Facebook, Twitter has a real chance to be a dagger in Google’s side given its focus on the mobile experience.
If it can better deliver ads and messaging to those users, there’s a real income source for Twitter to be had.
By offering companies the ability to segment down to the mobile OS and device versions along with location, this could be a big deal for Twitter over the long haul.
BTW If you’re not reading the Twitter Advertising Blog, you’re missing out.
Previously, we offered advertisers the ability to reach our highly mobile users by targeting only their operating system. Today we’re announcing greater flexibility to this targeting capability: Now all advertisers can segment audiences on iOS and Android by operating system version, specific device, and WiFi connectivity. And we’re also introducing granular reporting analytics for these targeting types across all campaigns.
via Enhanced mobile targeting by device, OS version, wifi | Twitter Blogs.
While tools like Storify have been doing something similar to this, Twitter’s newly unveiled custom timelines feature could be incredibly popular (and valuable for your business):
Starting today, we are introducing the ability to create custom timelines in TweetDeck. Custom timelines, which were just announced, are a new type of timeline that you control by selecting the Tweets you want to include.
via Twitter Announces Custom Timelines For Hashtags Or Topics On Tweetdeck, Launching API Too.
For instance, here’s a quick curated timeline I just put together:
!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?’http’:’https’;if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+”://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js”;fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,”script”,”twitter-wjs”);
Why are these important and not just another random Twitter feature that only a few power users will use?
Think of this as the ability to “pin” Tweets into curated lists as you would do with images around certain topics on Pinterest. While you can do something like that by favoriting tweets (something I love to do), being able to assemble tweets in a non-timed based manner and more focused on certain hashtags or topics is exactly what Twitter needed to compete with other social services.
It looks like Twitter learned a great deal from Pinterest here and this is going to be popular with live sports events and reality shows like The Voice (pictured above). Your business could benefit.
Instagram is rolling out a preview of its coming ads with an example from Levi…
Now, Instagram, in a blog post today, revealed what ads will look like on the platform. It turns out, they look like any other Instagram photo with a “sponsored” tag and the ability to like and comment.
via Facebook’s Instagram Reveals What Sponsored Ads Will Look Like | Adweek.
With Instagram’s popularity still rising, it will be interesting to see the public reaction (particularly among its younger users who have moved away from Facebook partly because of its monetization attempts).
Facebook is rolling out an interesting new way to advertise to its members who have visited your website…
Today we’re announcing new custom audience features that can help marketers reach people who have visited them on desktop or mobile. Website and mobile app custom audiences will soon be available to a limited number of test partners and will roll out globally in the coming months.
Facebook continues to open up its userbase to advertising and with its tentacles in all parts of the web, this is definitely an interesting aspect to what you can do with their ad platform.
#xoxofest @marcoarment: My podcast app is called Overcast – it's about halfway done, but the back end half. http://t.co/fx2lHaZRXc
— Kevin Marks (@kevinmarks) September 22, 2013
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Based on the current hotness that podcasting is going to experience in 2013 and 2014, Marco (founder of Instapaper and The Magazine) has a new podcast app:
I like some iOS podcast apps, but I don’t love any of them. So I’m making my own. It’ll be released when it’s ready. Maybe later this year.
via Overcast.
If you’re not doing podcasting, you’re missing out.