Social Good. Web design ressources. Conversion Marketing. Cloud. Mashable. Better late than never. Twitter is projected to top 300 million users worldwide in 2016 and have nearly 400 million users by 2018, according to a new report from eMarketer. That might sound like a lot in the aggregate, but the data shows just how much Twitter's user growth is slowing on a year-over-year basis.
Mashable. Crowdfunding. What do selfies really say about us? Gamification. Inventor of World Wide Web Calls For Online Magna Carta. The inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, believes an online ‘Magna Carta’ is needed to protect the independence of the Web and the rights of its users, The Guardian reports. On the 25th anniversary of his first draft of the first proposal for what would become the World Wide Web, Berners-Lee warns that the neutrality of the medium is under threat from governments and corporations.
He tells The Guardian: “Unless we have an open, neutral Internet we can rely on without worrying about what’s happening at the back door, we can’t have open government, good democracy, good healthcare, connected communities and diversity of culture. It’s not naive to think we can have that, but it is naive to think we can just sit back and get it.” Berners-Lee has been a critic of the spying tactics that American and British governments have been accused of, in the wake of revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden. Image via Danny Lawson/AFP/Getty Images. U.S. Adults Spend 11 Hours Per Day With Digital Media [CHART] Here's a stat we've heard over and over: 58% of American adults own smartphones.
Pair that with the fact that digital culture permeates almost every aspect of our lives, and we can already assume the average person spends a lot of time with gadgets. According to a new cross-platform report from Nielsen, our suspicions are confirmed: The average American adult spends 11 hours per day with electronic media. That includes the age-old activities of watching TV and listening to the radio — which, surprisingly, are the top two digital activities in the average American adult's day. Following live TV and radio, Americans spend their digital time with smartphones, Internet (on a PC) and timeshifted TV (e.g., DVR). The following chart, created by Statista, breaks down each activity by hours and minutes. Have something to add to this story? 'Lego Movie' Producer Bringing 'Minecraft' Game to Theaters.
6 Ways to Make People Love Your Brand. "People don't buy things for logical reasons," Zig Ziglar once famously said. "They buy for emotional reasons. " Which means: In order to gain customers—and keep them for life—you've got to do more than introduce them to your brand, business, or product. You've got to make them fall in love with it. Want to see how it's done? Photo of heart courtesy of Shutterstock.
Nielsen: Internet Advertising Grew 32% In 2013, But It’s Still Only 4.5% Of Spend Vs. TV At 57.6% Nielsen put out its latest figures on the state of the advertising market across old and new media platforms this morning. One big takeaway is that Internet advertising continues to be the fastest-growing medium, but it remains a small player. Global display advertising across the web, mobile internet and apps collectively grew by 32.4% in 2013 — by far the biggest leap of any media — but that still worked out to a 4.5% share of the overall spend in ads. In contrast, television grew only 4.3% but remains the behemoth when it comes to ad spend, taking nearly 58% of the market. Nielsen does not include monetary figures in its forecasts — only what percentages each platform is getting in terms of ad spend, and how those are declining or growing. For an idea of what kind of size we are looking at here, Zenith Optimedia estimates that in 2013 ad spend passed $500 billion for the first time.
Spotify and Rdio Go Freemium to Stay Ahead of the Competition. Rdio launched a free, ad-supported version of its music streaming service for listeners in the United States yesterday. It’s only available on the Web and affects just one of its 51 markets worldwide, but Rdio was making a clear statement. It wants more listeners. Spotify offers a similar service, after recently pulling the 10 hours per month listening cap that affected non-paying users in certain parts of Europe.
The company also introduced a free, shuffle-based version for smartphone and tablets; another huge move that made it easier for new users to try its services. Beats Music Spotify and Rdio have never faced tougher competition. Beats Music, a music streaming service by headphone and speaker manufacturer Beats, is launching in the United States next week. Although the company isn’t offering a free tier for Beats Music at launch, the backing of such a prominent brand will certainly make Spotify and Rdio feel more than a little apprehensive.
The big guns The stakes are high. Valve’s SteamVR beta lets you use the Oculus Rift to navigate Big Picture mode. 14 January '14, 12:08pm Follow Valve has released an experimental mode for its Steam gaming client that integrates the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. It allows players to view Big Picture mode, Valve’s living room-friendly Steam interface, as if it was floating in front of them. “It looks exactly like Big Picture mode displayed on a curved screen a few feet away,” one forum member reports. “No other 3D effects or VRness. If you’re interested in trying out SteamVR, you’ll need the beta version of the Steam client and an Oculus Rift development kit. After pressing the Big Picture button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, the new ‘Big Picture + VR’ mode will be activated.
Valve is expected to show off a standard interface for virtual reality hardware at is Steam Dev Days event in Seattle later this week. ➤ Steam Community (Via VG24/7) Image Credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images. Newspaper to Put All Reporters Through Social Media Boot Camp. One of the country's oldest remaining big city newspapers, the San Francisco Chronicle, is set to announce a radical plan to arrest circulation decline and remain relevant in the digital age, Mashable has learned. Audrey Cooper, the first female managing editor in the paper's 148-year history, will require all staff to enter what is being described as a startup-style incubator. In a plush off-site office procured from the paper's Food and Wine section, journalists will undergo two months of rigorous training — in effect, a digital and social media boot camp. "The approach is novel for newspapers," says Cooper. "It physically removes reporters from the traditional newsroom and gives them new digital metrics, such as engagement time, to judge whether their stories have reached our core audience.
We also plan to use real-time monitoring of the clicks we get from social media and other referral sites, including LinkedIn, Pinterest and Reddit. " Image: Flickr, Juliandunn.
Startup marketing. 12 New "It" Social and Content Careers for 2014. 2013 has been quite a year for the startup community and social and technology-related businesses in particular. In just a few months, Twitter went public, Google Glass showed up on our train route to work, and YouTube hosted ‘live’ music video awards. Clearly, social media (and all the content creation that comes with it) is a hot place to be. If anyone was asking a few years ago what “social media” was, now they’re building whole departments around it.
What’s next? What do you think will be the new “it” social- or content-related job in 2014 for startups and why? Here’s what they had to say: 1. The year for Google+ in social is 2014. 2. Consumers are an emotional bunch, and we’re drawn to great brands with fantastic stories. Growth among businesses such as Contently, Skyword and Scripted demonstrates that businesses (big and small) are starting to pay attention to the power of storytelling. - Danny Wong, Blank Label 3. 4. 5. 6. This position will blend creative design and writing. 7. 8. This Resume Alternative Could Land You Your Dream Job. Here's one new year's resolution that you'll be happy to have made: getting your dream job. The unemployment rate in the U.S. has been steadily declining since a high of 10% in 2009, but it still hasn't reached the lows seen in the early years of the millennium.
At 7% as of November, things are certainly getting better, but they are slow coming. With a high unemployment rate, you're doing well just to have a job. But how can you land a good, or better yet, your ideal one? According to Joanna Weidenmiller, cofounder of 1-Page, a job proposal platform, the answer is simple: go on the offense. Instead of sending in a resume in response to a job description, Weidenmiller's platform allows you access to research relevant to companies looking to hire. The goal for the job seeker is to find a market problem and come up with a solution that will give the company a competitive edge. "A resume begs a company to find a problem," says Weidenmiller. And so far, the 1-Page platform is working.
UX. Ecommerce. Musetrek. Online Communities 2. Online Communities 2. There?s A Hall Of Fame For That: Introducing The App Hall Of Fame. Impeccably timed with the news that apps have become as popular as news and sports broadcasts (thanks Flurry) as well as the news that Apple has trademarked the phrase “There’s an app for that,” the folks at 148Apps have taken a cue from the Baseball Hall of Fame and today launched the App Hall of Fame, which honors 12 of the very best applications each month, “no matter if they have sold 6 million or 600 copies.” In the October 2010 inaugural class? From left to right Angry Birds from Rovio, Flight Control from Firemint , Doodle Jump from Lima Sky , Shazam from Shazam Entertainment , Evernote from Evernote , Plants vs.
Zombies from PopCap Games , Pandora Radio from Pandora Media , Simplenote from Simperium, Twitter from Twitter, Inc, Instapaper from Marco Arment , Homerun Battle 3D from Com2uS , and Fieldrunners from Subatomic Studios. I pretty much agree with all these choices except for the ones I haven’t tried, like Homerun Battle 3D. From Jeff Scott, founder of 148 Apps,