Facebook announced that it will enable users who are using tablets and smartphones to search for past posts of their friends when necessary. The California-based social network giant said that they are already testing the feature that uses keywords to find old posts.Read More
Is Social Media Here to Stay?
We were all aware how Facebook began, how Myspace tragedy looked like, and how Instagram is taking us by storm. But a few years from now, have you imagined what social media will look like.
Gina Lednyak, founder of L&A Social Media in Australia, shares” Looking at the advancement of social media in the current landscape, we can get a good sense of the trajectory of big themes that will emerge over the coming years.”Read More
Facebook Manipulated Emotions of Nearly 700K Users For Research
Facebook has admitted that it has manipulated the News Feeds of nearly 700,000 users as part of its research study on emotional states.
According to a report by Forbes, the data scientists of the social media giant manipulated the News Feeds of 689,003 users by removing either all of the positive posts or all of the negative posts, with the purpose of seeing how their moods are affected by such changes. It found out that emotions can be contagious, even without “direct interaction between people.”
The results of the study, which ran from January 11–18, 2012, was published in the PNAS, the official journal of the United States National Academy of Sciences (NAS).
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How Long Everything Online Should Be According to Studies
If you’re wondering how long your tweets, Facebook posts and Google Plus headlines should be, Kevan Lee has created for Social Media Today a list of the ideal length of everything online.
According to Lee, solid research had been done to determine how long tweets, titles and posts should be for them to be effective. Tweets, for instance, should be 100 characters. The ideal length of a Facebook post, on the other hand, is less than 40 characters. Slightly longer is the ideal length of a Google Plus headline, which is pegged at less than 60 characters.
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Google Braces For Removal Requests Following EU RTF Ruling
The residents of Europe who are worried some of their information on public record and published online might ruin their reputation now have the right to request the removal of that information from search results, and Google is bracing for countless such requests from 28 countries in Europe.
Citing a story by Reuters, Search Engine Land says a European Court has ruled that everyone on the continent has a “right to be forgotten” (RTF). With the ruling, individuals can now request and eventually demand that search engines—Google included—remove from search results any unflattering or undesired information about themselves even if the said content is legally published and maintained. A personal bankruptcy is one such undesired information that an individual can request to remove from search results.
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Bing Snapshot Results Now Has Food and Drug Info
The Bing’s library of facts has just gotten bigger with the expansion of its Snapshot feature, which now allows users to get quick access to information about drugs and food.
Appearing in the Snapshot area on the right side of Bing’s search results, the food and drug results present information that any user can digest at a glance. Upon closer inspection, the information is incredibly detailed, from different brand names of a drug to its known side effects, all neatly laid out in a Snapshot.
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Yahoo Search Share Likely to Slip Below 10 Percent Next Month
Despite its partnership with Microsoft, Yahoo’s search share continues to dip, as its rankings in comScore’s “May 2014 U.S. Search Engine Rankings” is likely to hit below the 10 percent mark, according to SearchEngineLand.
SearchEngineLand bases its prediction on the comScore’s rankings last month, when Yahoo only managed to record a 10% share, down 0.1 percent from March. In contrast, both Microsoft and Google registered a 0.1% increase from March.
If the predicted ranking of Yahoo on the next comScore report comes true, it will represent the lowest recorded search number for the pioneering search engine since comScore started making the reports.
Yahoo’s rankings are a far cry from its 19.3 share of the US market in July 2009, when its partnership with Microsoft was announced. While Microsoft’s search share steadily rose, Yahoo’s continually declined over the years.
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Travel Back In Time With Google Street View
Google, it seems, is not contented with just giving people a view of almost any road in the world via their computers. As if that wasn’t amazing enough, Google has introduced an even more amazing feature, one that virtually allows users to travel back in time, so to speak. According to a report by Gizmag, Google announced a new feature that lets users see what a street looked like up to seven years ago.
The feature, which is indicated by a clock in the upper left-hand corner of an image, can be used with a simple click of that clock. A window will then pop up and present you with a slider that you can move to street scenes from as far back as 2007. The thumbnails of those scenes will change as you move the slider, and you can take a closer look at any given thumbnail by clicking on it.
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Which Emotion Makes People Decide To Share and Trust According to Science
For an Internet marketer, it is an inherent goal for their posts, emails and other contents to be actively shared by readers and recipients with other people. These, however, have to contain certain emotions in order to be shared as actively as we want. This is the gist of an article written by Courtney Seiter for Buffer.
The four basic emotions
Seiter cites a study conducted by the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Glasgow, which says there are actually only four “basic” emotions: happy, sad, afraid/surprised, and angry/disgusted. And these emotions, according to Seiter, have to be present in posts and emails for people to actually share them to their friends.
Happiness, for its part, is already a main driver for social sharing. The more positive the content, the more likely it is going to become viral. Sadness, however, also triggers sharing as it helps us connect and empathise. Fear/surprise, meanwhile, make us desperate for something to cling to, as well us feel a greater attachment to any given brand. Lastly, there’s anger/disgust, both negative emotions that are positively associated with virality.
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Study Shows Removing Social Sharing Buttons Boosts Conversions
An A/B test conducted by a Finland-based hardware eCommerce store has shown that contrary to popular notion, removing social sharing buttons boosts conversions.
According to a report published in Visual Website Optimizer, Jani Uusi-Pantti of Taloon.com, which sells plumbing, electrical, gardening and other construction materials, removed Google+, Pin it and Facebook share buttons from its product pages to see if it will have any impact on the site’s main CTA or call to action button.
Much to the surprise of Jani Uusi-Pantti, the change, which ran for a week, recorded an 11.9% increase in CTA clickthroughs compared to when the site had social sharing buttons right below the product photos.
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