Twitter is going all Facebook with new, expanded profile pages. The new profile pages offer a wider banner, a larger profile image, and the ability to “pin” a tweet to the top of your profile. The profile pages will now emphasize your tweets with the most engagement by making them larger. First Lady Michelle Obama …
Friday 5 — 4.4.2014
A Pew report on older adults and technology use finds that more seniors are online. Today, 59% of 65+ adults are connected, compared with 53% in 2012 and only 35% back in 2008. And they’re more social: more than half of women 65+ use social networking sites, validating my theory that grandchildren photos are a …
Friday 5 — 3.28.2014
This week, Facebook acquired virtual reality purveyor Oculus Rift for $2B in cash and stock. This purchase gives the social networking company, which was only two years ago struggling to get its arms around mobile, a leg up in virtual reality hardware. What will they use it for? Gaming’s an obvious first use case, but …
Friday 5 — 3.21.2014
Medium has released its first mobile app, bringing its elegant, curated reading experience to your iPhone. Login requires Twitter, and they made the somewhat curious decision not to “bog users down” with a homepage. Still to come: more robust search and a mobile writing experience. The internet of things garnered a lot of attention in January …
Friday 5 — 3.14.2014
Comscore data show that users coming directly to a news site stay longer and view more pages than those coming from search and social. Users arriving via search and social drive up views, but are more difficult to convert into loyal readers. Two caveats to the study: mobile traffic is not included, and email is often …
Friday 5 — 3.7.2014
Getty Images made 35 million images available for free in a move that should send shockwaves through the stock photo business. In an era of rampant copyright infringement, this move seems to imply that defending the photos was a bit like, well, tilting at windmills. Nieman Lab offers some thoughtful insights about the canny brand, …
Friday 5 — 2.28.2014
Pew released a report on the Web at 25 — and how Americans have adopted and are affected by the internet usage. A full 87% of us now use the internet, 90% have cell phones, and 58% have smartphones. And as you can see from the chart above, many report it would be very hard …
Friday 5 — 2.21.2014
Facebook forked over $19 billion for WhatsApp, and the internet is full of articles explaining why. Among the most compelling is Buzzfeed’s take that WhatsApp posed a significant threat. WhatsApp is growing fast globally, consumes a great deal of young users’ smartphone time, and fills that critical “staying in touch” niche that Facebook would like …
Friday 5 — 2.14.2014
Does it seem like you’re spending more time on your smartphone than you used to? If you’re anything like the U.S. digital consumers in this Nielsen survey, you’re spending 9 hours and 52 minutes more each month. Smartphone time spent on social media rose rapidly, with 37% year-over-year growth in use of social media apps. …
Friday 5 — 2.7.2014
Is your app addictive enough to make money? Eric Reiss lists eighteen elements to consider when gauging your app’s ability to engage and retain users. If you’re trying to see what an addictive app looks like, you could do a lot worse than Flappy Bird. This difficult game manages somehow to infuriate and retain users, raking in $50K …