Due to the coronavirus pandemic think tanks around the world are working under quarantine and have cancelled all events in the coming months. They will have to rely more on social media to get their messages across. How successful are free-market think tanks today in trying to attract traffic to their websites, as well as views and followers on other platforms?

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Self-quarantining during COVID-19 has caused some, especially those in the travel industry, to take a bigger hit than others. Those who usually work from home have had to make less of an adjustment, though booking paid partnerships is a struggle industry-wide.

As a result, many influencers are getting creative with their social strategies. Those who are multiplatform and have more than one revenue stream are coming out on top.

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If you are a hard-core Slack user, you might find yourself spending more time within the confines of that collaboration tool than any other. If thats the case, why not get your news there as well? Sound like something you might want or need? If so, it is a good thing Slack allows the addition of RSS feeds.

With this feature, you can always be up to date on your favorite topic-specific RSS feed from within your favorite Slack workspace. It is a one-two punch of efficiency. If that sounds like something you might want, lets see how it is done.


The only things you will need to make this work are: An RSS feed to follow and a Slack workspace that allows you to install apps. If your workspace doesn't allow the installation of apps, reach out to the Slack admin for your company or team and see if they can install the app for you.


The easiest way of installing apps on Slack is either via the desktop app or the web-based interface. The good news is that, no matter which route you take for installation, the RSS feed will show up on your workspace, no matter if you're using the desktop app, the web-based interface, or the mobile app.

1. Open the Slack desktop app
2. Click the + button under Apps
3. In the resulting window, type RSS and hit Enter on your keyboard.
4. Click the Install button associated with the resulting RSS app listing.
5. When your default browser opens, click Add To Slack and then click Allow.

Feedly, a popular RSS feed reader with millions of users worldwide, recently announced the creation of a new AI research assistant named Leo. Their goal with Leo is to create an AI with a set of skills that will enable it to better prioritize articles from news feeds.

Social media has been one of only a handful of sectors that is benefiting from the stay-at-home environment. Social distancing has forced social interactions online for the time being, but investors looking to capitalize on the surge in social media usage be surprised at the big winner.

On Friday, DataTrek Research co-founder Nicholas Colas said the biggest social media winner from the COVID-19 era is not Facebook, Inc.
FB , its subsidiary Instagram, Snap Inc  SNAP 0.06% or Twitter Inc TWTR 0.02%
.
Instead, teen-oriented video platform TikTok has seen the biggest surge in Google search volume over the last 90 days. TikTok is owned by the private Chinese company ByteDance.

Social Media Search Numbers
Colas said Facebook and Twitter saw only a small bounce in worldwide Google search volume since global lockdowns went into effect. In the chart below, searches for Snapchat have demonstrated a similar trend, while searches for TikTok have steadily risen over the last 90 days.

Our stress levels are at an all-time high right now, which means our attentiveness to our own self-care should be, too—especially those of us with wanderlust. Traveling from the living room to the kitchen and back is no one’s ideal of a vacation, yet here we are. On top of that, our social media platforms seem determined to remind us of better days: Hey, look where you were a year ago today! blares Facebook, serving up a photo of a gorgeous beach or other getaway spot much more alluring than the permanent butt-groove you have formed in your couch.

For many of us, looking back on our travels past is not doing us much good at the moment. Luckily, there are a few methods to keep them from showing up in your social media feeds.

When most people talk about social media, they are usually referring to platforms like Facebook or Instagram, but rarely think of LinkedIn as part of the vast array of social media platforms available.

We tend to assume that LinkedIn is not such a valuable place to be and often, even businesses make this mistake, assuming that it would be far more beneficial to focus on their presence on Twitter, for example. There is a logic behind this – LinkedIn is a place for businesses, but I’m looking to advertise to real people, and they are going to be on other, more laid-back platforms, so I might as well go there, too.

This logic is flawed. Why? We are just about to show you.

On LinkedIn, you can build your brand.
This is true both for individuals looking to expand their job potential, and for businesses wanting to grow their brand. As an individual, where can a possible employer find you? On Facebook or Instagram. But do you really want them to see that snapshot of you in your undies at the beach, or the dirty joke you posted last night?

Probably not. These are personal details about you that chip away at your professional brand.

With most Americans under orders to stay at home due to the coronavirus pandemic, many people are turning to social media for a fun distraction. Taking a Facebook quiz about how well you know a friend or what character from your favorite TV show best matches your personality may seem like a harmless way to pass the time while quarantined, but it could also give scammers your personal information for nefarious purposes.

Not all social media quizzes are data collection scams, but some quizzes collect personal information by asking questions like: What is your mothers maiden name? or What is the name of the street you grew up on? These are common security questions for banking and credit card accounts. Sharing this information can lead to your accounts being hacked and your personal and financial information being stolen. It also can enable a scammer to impersonate you to your friends and family.

Tips to avoid social media scams:

• Be skeptical. Before you take a quiz, figure out who created it. Is it a brand you trust? Just because something appears to be fun and innocent, doesn’t mean there isn’t an inherent risk.

• Adjust privacy settings. Review your social media accounts privacy settings and be strict about what information you share — and with whom you are sharing it.

In Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures, Tama Leaver, Tim Highfield and Crystal Abidin elaborate on why Instagram is more than just a social media platform: instead, it has become an icon that has altered understandings of visual social media cultures. By doing so, they focus on different aspects of Instagram, such as its aesthetics, cultures, ecologies and economics, supported with real-life examples and cases.

Instagram has tried to keep itself distinct from Facebook and other social platforms.

While usage of most mobile apps has remained neutral during the coronavirus pandemic, social media app usage has exploded during the lockdown, according to new data from Nielsen.

Why it matters: Prior to the pandemic, consumers and tech companies were both becoming more aware of the overuse of social media and actively trying to limit it. In a time when people can not connect with friends and family in person, companies have put these efforts on pause.

By the numbers: Prior to the pandemic, social media usage for most of January, February and early March remained relatively flat at around 20% of total mobile app usage, according to Nielsens data.

But beginning in mid-March, when statewide stay-at-home orders went into effect, social media app usage began to increase significantly, and now consumes around 25% of all mobile app usage for U.S. adults.

Other media app usage, like video, lifestyle, and finance apps have mostly remained the same, in part because consumers are now leveraging other devices, like desktops and television screens, for more activities while home.

An Italian-based artificial intelligence company is regularly analyzing social media posts about the coronavirus for their emotional content.

Why it matters: Classifying tens of thousands of posts by their emotional tone provides a snapshot of how people feel about the pandemic. Spoiler alert: not great!

How it works: Expert System specializes in semantics and natural language reading, a branch of AI involving computer systems that attempt to make sense of written language.

In doing so, a computer can rapidly analyze vast amounts of the written word — like, for example, a day's worth of social media posts about the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the past few weeks, Expert System has been collecting English language social media posts each day that feature frequently used hashtags like #coronalockdown and #covid19. Its AI can extract the emotional content of those posts, which is then analyzed and interpreted by Sociometrica.

Web based feed readers are kind of a pain to use. They often implement changes that you don't want, while taking away features that you like.  Local readers are much better when it comes to this, because you can revert to an older version in case of adverse changes.

Smart RSS Reader is a feed reader extension for Firefox and Chrome that I have been using for a week; I am quite impressed by it so far.

Install the add-on and click its toolbar icon to open a new tab with the extension's RSS reader. It has three panes, each of which has a toolbar at the top. The left pane is the feeds pane and lists all RSS feeds that you're subscribed too. Selecting a feed displays the title of the articles published by the site in the center pane. It also displays the author's name and the date when the article went live.

Apple has announced that Shortcuts, a powerful automation app for the iPhone and iPad, will come pre-installed on iOS devices starting this fall. This is great news because its an incredibly handy app — based on Workflow which Apple acquired in 2017 — that lets you combine multiple actions to perform a specific task.

What kind of things, you ask? Well, you can for example make it easier to open your favorite Apple Music playlist, find travel times to an address, create GIFs, and more. But one of its best uses in my opinion is use it as an RSS reader.

The method of getting your podcast out to the world might not be the way you think.

Unlike most popular forms of online content, podcasts utilize a form of forbidden arcane knowledge; an ancient method of internet distribution discussed in hushed tones and under furtive glances as really simple syndication or RSS for short.

First of all, we need to draw a critical distinction between traditional RSS feeds and podcast-only RSS feeds. An RSS feed is a format of internet file that can contain any sort of content, while the podcast-only variety is, unsurprisingly restricted to only podcasts.

A podcast-only RSS feed is a subtype of the internet file type known as RSS. This file can be easily distributed to a variety of different directories that updates the displayed content in real time alongside changes made by the creator.

This format restriction is what allows podcast directories to so easily display and showcase new content; everything that is submitted is, from a technical standpoint, completely identical!

Social media has become one of the most important instruments of hybrid warfare which is named the new generation warfare method, said a Turkish digital media researcher.

According to the general definition, hybrid warfare is one of the war strategies that combine political warfare, conventional warfare, irregular warfare, and cyber warfare methods, including fake news, diplomacy, lawfare, and foreign electoral intervention.

In an exclusive interview with Anadolu Agency, Ali Murat Kirik, an academician and expert digital media researcher at Marmara University in Istanbul, increasing activities of perception management and social engineering in social media proves that it is used as a warfare tool.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has issued a warning about sharing too much information on social media while being at home.

The FBI specifically is warning about trends such as posting your senior picture and graduation year.Officials also say beware of social media games that require you to tag a parent or post a picture of your first car.

They say these are often the answers to security questions and hackers can use the information to reset your passwords and get into your accounts.

In a recent survey of 1000 consumers and 500 businesses, Animoto found that 75% of Millennials purchase decisions were influenced by a brands social media presence. But that's Millennials, a generation that's largely grown up online, and those response figures vary significantly across the different age brackets - so which platforms should you be focusing on to reach your target market?

To provide more insight, the team at Animoto broke their research down by generation.

Some of their key findings include:

Gen Z chose Instagram as the platform to follow brands
Baby boomers spend most of their time on YouTube and the Facebook Feed
Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X selected YouTube as the platform they rely on when making purchase decisions

The NIA said that the agency along with Punjab and Haryana police arrested Ranjit Singh, allegedly a notorious narco-terrorist, on Saturday as he was acting as a conduit for Pakistan-based groups to push drugs into India and the money generated was used for terror activities. Singh, who has been on the run for nearly a year, was arrested from Sirsa, the NIA said.

The Indian Railways has operated 302 ‘Shramik Special' trains since May 1 and ferried home more than 3 lakh migrants stranded in various parts of the country amid the coronavirus-induced lockdown, officials said. The national transporter has planned to operate 47 trains on Saturday, out of which 34 trains have already departed, they said.

The West Bengal government on Saturday said it had brought back around 6,000 residents stranded outside the state and ensured safe return of people of other states stuck here due to the lockdown, virtually refuting the claims of non-cooperation made by Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

The testing capacity for Covid-19 has been scaled up to around 95,000 tests per day and a total of 15,25,631 tests have been conducted so far across 332 government and 121 private laboratories, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Saturday. The minister reviewed the status of Covid-19 in the northeastern states along with the measures taken for its containment.

The NFL schedule just dropped which means we're one step closer to football. Here's what we know about the Ravens upcoming season.

Fred Warner has watched Super Bowl LIV a few times, and he knows what went wrong against the Chiefs.

Indianapolis Colts quarterback Philip Rivers has already lined up the first job of his post-playing career. Rivers was introduced Friday as the head coach-in-waiting at St. Michael Catholic High School in a news conference on campus. The 16-year veteran of the Los Angeles Chargers signed a one-year deal worth $25 million guaranteed in March.

The 49ers are going to be good next season. But how good?

One of the best guards of 2019 is all of a sudden on the market.

The '"Around The NFL" crew list their can't-miss games on 2020 schedule.

The Patriots announced yet another signing of a draft pick. Actually, they announced four, but three previously were reported. The team has come to terms with offensive guard Michael Onwenu, a sixth-round choice. He becomes the eighth choice to agree to terms, leaving only second-round safety Kyle Dugger and third-round tight end Dalton Keene unsigned. [more]

Fred Smoot compared the Cardinals' defender to his former teammate Sean Taylor.

Joe Staley left 49ers guard Laken Tomlinson with some valuable lessons.

The new era of New England Patriots football has its schedule and Tom E. Curran and Phil Perry are breaking it down on the latest edition of Curran's Patriots Talk Podcast.

Yahoo Fantasy’s Liz Loza and NFL writer Eric Edholm provide their NFL player comparisons for the rookie wideout from South Carolina. Subscribe to the Yahoo Fantasy Football Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

NFL Network's Mike Robinson believes the Philadelphia Eagles should still be favored vs. Dallas Cowboys in the NFC East.

Thursday Night Football includes a number of marquee matchups with intriguing storylines in 2020.

The 49ers are far less likely to encounter the extreme weather they dealt with at various points last season.

Larry Warford isn't going to be out of work long. Only as long as it takes the Pro Bowl offensive guard to make up his mind on his next home. The Texans are interested in Warford, John McClain of the Houston Chronicle reports only hours after the Saints released the lineman. That's not a surprise [more]

Don't you want me, baby?...DJ Bean points out that Tom Brady's first season in Tampa Bay is loaded with games against teams who passed on the legendary former Patriots quarterback in free agency.

It seems there isn't much we agree on these days, but one thing America is united on is this: The Bears blew it in 2017. Even Bears fans wouldn't argue that point. Chicago, of course, could have had Patrick Mahomes or Deshaun Watson and didn't have to trade up to No. 2 overall to get [more]

The NFL's regular-season schedule surprisingly opens with a bang. In a year during which the NFL could have loaded up the first weekend with so-so games and fans would have lapped it up like malnourished kittens, the league has instead loaded nine division games into Week One. From the banner raising in Kansas City featuring [more]

The 2020 Monday Night Football slate looks terrific, including a number of marquee matchups and plenty of intriguing storylines

"The Bears NEVER ONCE talked to me..."

David Haugh, Chuck Garfien and Mark Carman join Kap for a casual Friday edition of SportsTalk Live.

The 2020 Sunday Night Football slate looks terrific, including a number of marquee matchups and plenty of intriguing storylines