n a recent research study, we spoke with dozens of professionals about their use of social media, and were struck by the variety of approaches they are using.

Some professionals, we found, still manage to avoid social media altogether. But most see that as unrealistic in many occupations, and are unwilling to be deprived of the advantages social media affords in terms of connecting to people and collecting information.

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In the early days of search engines, I was not much of a believer in XML sitemaps. But over time, I began to see first hand how they can benefit websites.

XML sitemaps serve as a way to communicate directly with the search engines, alerting them to new or changed content very quickly and helping to ensure that the content is indexed faster.

For content publishers, it has become critical to help Google specifically understand if your site is the original publisher of content. Why? Panda.

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Taking a look at the state of RSS on iOS post Google Reader, it is actually in better shape than it was before Google killed off the popular service. There are variety of sync services out there.

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When Anil Chawla built a start-up that uses software to archive social media posts, he never imagined that his biggest clients would be government agencies.

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Microsoft is also opening its Health Cloud platform to outside developers, allowing them to integrate fitness data into their Microsoft Band apps.

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RecordForAll allows for you to easily record, and edit audio files.

Free evaluation version available for download!

Audio Recording Software for Podcasters

Microsoft is letting developers create apps for its Band fitness tracker that convey information pulled from RSS feeds and display it on the devices screen.

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Facebook refused to fill its site with flashy animated banner ads for a decade. Zuckerberg thought these interrupted the user experience, and could stunt growth. But after reaching near ubiquity and acclimating users to video ads, today the company tells me it’s relaxing its standards and starting to allow businesses to post GIFs as ads and Page posts.

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A national diaper company is on the defense after a mothers video on social media went viral, claiming glass shards were in a bag of wipes. Other angry parents also took to social media to attack Huggies, showing how claims, founded or baseless, can reach thousands, even millions in just a few hours or days.

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That little row of social media buttons has become a ubiquitous feature of most websites. After all, it is good to show off that you are social, and that there are channels where you can interact directly with stakeholders.

But is your website header or sidebar the best place to show that off?

Here are five reasons why having social media buttons on your nonprofits website might do more harm than good:

1) They send visitors away from your website

Keywords. They are still as powerful as they were in 1996 or the introduction of the Internet to the world. No matter what keywords you have, they can provide your content the kind of impact that it deserves.

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Learn how IoT, cloud, social networks and last but not least, humans, can be integrated into a seamless integration of cooperative organisms both cybernetic and biological. This has been enabled by recent advances in IoT device capabilities, messaging frameworks, presence and collaboration services, where devices can share information and make independent and human assisted decisions based upon social status from other entities.

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Celebrity selfies and fan-snapped shots on the Internet have cut the prices they can charge for their pictures. But those tweets and Instagrams and Facebook posts allow them to track down and trail boldfaced names like never before.

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The 4 well established steps of a social media audit include the following;

Step 1: Review your Social Media profiles

Where are you present?
The first thing to start from is mapping your social media presence. Locate all the social media accounts for your brand and write down the current status and audience size. This is a a great base to evaluate your presence on each platform at a later stage. Here’s an example from a recent social media audit for Twitter Counter.

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In 2015, we have seen several major changes and improvements to the way we conduct business on social media. We have seen brand new networks rise, while others have fallen. We have watched popular networks pivot, and promising networks not take off as expected.

This years social media ad revenue is estimated to total $23 billion.

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According to a study by Pew Research, the number of people who get their news from Facebook and Twitter has increased significantly over the past few years. As of 2015, 63 percent of Facebook users turn to the social platform for their daily news, and the same percent of Twitter users browse news stories via the site.

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This week, a group of Android users noticed a new feature in the Twitter app: a GIF button that can be used to search through trending GIFs to drop into status updates.

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We keep hearing that RSS is dead but is it? No, RSS feed usage is up and those who switch off their feeds are harming their business.

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Social media is not always an online distraction or procrastination platform. While some may be addicted to their social media networks, it is one of the best ways to stay informed. Major news outlets, corporations and persons of interest use social media to deliver messages to the masses. With items posting immediately, the public stays informed. Some issues cause controversy, but social media does more good than harm in retrospect.

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After you have you social media profiles up and running, you may forget to pay attention to your profiles. It is easy to do as you are focused on posting, tweeting, and uploading videos. However, in order to maintain a positive image on social media networks a bit of maintenance is required. You need to make sure that you keep your social media profiles up to date at all times.

The social media profile is extremely important, so here are some things that you can do to make sure that you are getting the most out of your profile.

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Since starting the Johnny Bullet comic strip, I’ve begun reading many more web comics than before to the extent that I read more of them than print or digital comics. It has been an interesting transition from one of those comic book store devotee to getting most of my comics from individual creators online. One technology has helped make this transition possible. It is the RSS feed.

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The most fervent political supporters think only their candidate can possibly win. Bloomberg View columnist Megan McArdle blames these beliefs on the echo chambers found on our social media feeds.

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We are a great believer in achieving the widest possible distribution as possible. RSS feeds allow that because they can be easily consumed in many places. RSS was one of the principle ways in which the early bloggers were able to syndicate their content and achieve large scale distribution. To this day, RSS remains one of the best ways to get content onto many people’s screens in as friction free a way as possible.

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Get the most out of Facebooks Fan Pages despite Facebook doing its best to limit what posts you see on your timeline
            
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New-age publishers are toying with innovative content models that offer more value to end users and set their cash registers ringing. It does not come as a surprise, when content is evolving as a major source of income for them. By offering high-value content and a trove of inbound links, digital publishers can maximise the profitability of their websites.

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Mobile users spend little time viewing web content on their mobile browsers, preferring to read most of it through their social networks. As a result, publishers are losing control of their content, and users are overloaded with content sources.

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With Lines IPO, I thought this would be a good time to ask about the role that new social networks will play in the larger social network ecosystem. Will they cannibalize Facebook’s usage? Or can we expect to see the biggest players continue to be dominant in social networking?

For those of you who don’t know, social networking has a special place in my heart. In 1997, I launched the world’s first online social network called sixdegrees. And as part of that, we wrote a patent that defined a social network as the ability to index multiple relationships in a single database. It gives you the ability to see the people you don’t know through the people you do know.

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Maintaining assets used to be considered a necessary evil, but manufacturers now see strategic asset management as an important way of delivering value and achieving competitive advantage.

With the emergence of sensors and novel data collection technologies, we can connect and monitor assets in a way that is light years from the old method of maintenance, which was essentially ‘wait until a machine fails and then fix it’.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has enabled a new paradigm called e-maintenance where assets can be monitored remotely. This enables OEMs to provide innovative maintenance service solutions to their asset users.

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For more than 56 years the charity I work for, Bloodwise, has been working to beat blood cancer, the third most fatal form of cancer. In our work, we have had to constantly evolve and adapt to meet the ever-changing needs of our supporters and patients.

Unsurprisingly, the rise of digital channels has been transformational for us, from the delivery of patient information online to communicating with supporters via social media. However, as the importance of digital grew, we knew we needed to use data and insight to understand our online audiences better and measure our performance.

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While you may be tempted to check out a job candidate's social media presence before hiring, doing so might not be worth the risk.

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RSS was first invented by Netscape. They wanted to use an XML format to distribute news, stories and information. Netscape refined the version of rss and then dropped it. Userland Software to control of the specficiation and continued to develop it releasing a newer version. A non-commercial group picked up RSS at the same time and based on their interpretation of the Netscapes original concept of RSS they too released a new version. UserLand was not happy with the non-commercial version and continued development of their own version of RSS (Really Simple Syndication), eventually UserLand released RSS v2.

The History of RSS

This question was put to me by Motherboard Editor-in-Chief Derek Mead and I can not stop thinking about it: What is the smallest code?

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Social media monitoring services such as Geofeedia rely on bulk data access to be able to search far larger volumes of social media posts, and more efficiently, than the average user.

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The US government has begun requesting foreign travelers to submit their social media information to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) before traveling into the country. The practice is claimed to be part of broader efforts to identify potential terrorist threats.

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Social media can be a great way to promote your MIT department, lab, center (DLC), or group and to engage with your audience. For those who are new to it, though, running multiple sites for outreach can be daunting. Jenny Fowler, the manager of social media strategy in MITs Communications Initiatives, shares some tips for those starting to build a social media presence.

Which platform?
The most popular platforms are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, with Snapchat on the rise. Fowler recommends Facebook for those new to social media.

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With social media substituting real-life communication, one-third of people communicate less face-to-face with their loved ones, a key factor for damaging relationships, a study has found.

The findings showed that a significant third of people communicate less with their parents (31 per cent), children (33 per cent), partners (23 per cent) and friends (35 per cent) because they can see and communicate with them via social media.

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Facebook is under quite a bit of pressure of late. It's trying to fix the rise of fake news and clickbait on its News Feed and, more recently, it's had to deal with the Zenimax lawsuit against Oculus. But all of that hasn't eaten into Facebook's bottom line. As its Q4 2016 earnings report shows, the company once again raked in cash hand over fist, with $8.8 billion in revenue and $3.56 billion in profit.

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We think the world is dominated by Facebook, but is it really the world’s favourite social network? And what about the second most popular social networks? Lets check the world map!

I won’t keep you hanging. Yes, Facebook is still the worlds most popular social network, and by far. But the following maps, designed by Vincenzo Cosenza, are still full of interesting – and sometimes surprising – insights on how the world uses social media platforms.

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In Manilla a  technology law expert casts doubt on the effectiveness of House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez's proposed bill seeking to regulate social media use in the Philippines.

Under House Bill 5012, a person can be penalized for creating a social media account using someone elses identity. Alvarezs proposed measure also mandates social media networks to verify the identity of their users.

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Social media is quickly becoming the most important tool used for businesses. If you think social media is not worth your time then surely you are missing out on one of the most powerful social media marketing tools available to you. A number of brands have experimented with social bots that can help them improve their customer process. A growing amount of social media content is generated by autonomous entities known as social bots.

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If you have ever bought an item that a celebrity recommended on Twitter or been persuaded by a discussion with a Facebook friend, you know that social media can impact your behavior and opinions. But you might be surprised to know that there is a science behind social media interactions.

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Currently, the world’s population is 7.5 billion, 3.8 billion are internet users and 2.8 billion of them are social media users. 1.8 billion of the entire world population is made up by teenagers from the ages of 13-19 years old. Instagram alone has 500 million active monthly users. Instagram users have shared over 40 billion photos to date and share an average of 95 million photos and videos per day. Snapchat has 166 million daily users. Although adults do also use some social media, teenagers are the majority of users.

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Have you tweeted, posted an Instagram photo or just generally engaged in social media before? Then it’s possible you have been part of a research experiment of sorts. Think that raises some ethical questions? You are not the only one.

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Social networking sites have moved to the foreground of news consumption for the masses. Politicians now take to Twitter to reach citizens directly: Facebook has algorithms to decide what news will encounter the highest click baits and Snapchat offers ‘snap’ news stories at the bottom of your friends update

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Did you know that the average CTR for any form of online advertising went from 0.09% to 0.05%? For this trend we are to blame the rise of social networks and ad blockers which helped consumers successfully fight the unwanted ads.

Where does this leave marketers?

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As Facebook fights its own fake news problem, Twitter looks like it's interested in finding more ways to push news content to its microblogging service. According to a report at BuzzFeed, Twitter has confirmed that it is testing new algorithm-curated timelines when big events happen, then putting tweets from news organizations and other users at the top of your timeline. So far, Twitter says humans are involved in story selection, but a Twitter spokesperson told BuzzFeed that it could be come only algorithmic in the future.

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In this hi-tech, pre-armageddon, screen-filled modern world, social media is all pervasive.

It has sucked us in. It is the new God. We are now its slave.

That might be over-egging things slightly, but for some people, social media has become a true addiction.

So, how do you know if your social media habit has descended from a harmless pastime into a full-blown addiction?

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Have you ever seen someone on social media, maybe someone in your profession, with a hundred thousand followers and wondered, how the heck did they get so popular?

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There are some new products and services that are very obviously good  — a cure for a deadly disease, for example, or some other type of medical innovation. But other innovations have value that is more uncertain, such as an unproven technology. In her latest research paper, Wharton management professor Valentina Assenova examines the role of social networks, both online and offline, in the spread of these complex innovations.

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Convinced that faith communities would want to share prayer requests, announcements and service opportunities without going to multiple platforms and without being awash in advertising, a group of friends created an app just for that.

With $2 million in seed money, Pray.com was beta tested with 100 churches in 2016. Today, 6,000 faith communities and thousands of other groups use the app to host their members’ need for prayer and offers of support, as well as to recruit volunteers for local service projects and to collect donations, said two of the co-founders.

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