Some people might think that online privacy is, well, a private matter. If you don’t want personal information getting out online, then you can just not put it out there. Right? Wrong. Keeping your information private isn’t solely your choice anymore. Friends can play a big role in your privacy, new data show. And the more they share on a social network, the more that social network can figure out about you.

Someone who joins a social network — such as Snapchat, Instagram or Facebook —wants to find their friends. Often, the social network can help. Many apps offer to import contact lists from your phone or e-mail. These apps then use that information to find matches with people already in the network, and suggest them to you.

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Over 90% of medium and large businesses have used social media in their marketing for five years or longer. Yet the CMO Survey reveals that nearly half of marketers are unable to show the impact of their social media investments. That’s why, no matter what your social media strategy is, it is always a good idea to go back and make sure you have the basics covered. Your company may discover that it needs a strategic do-over.

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Blogs are the lifeline of companies across the world, and marketers are hungry for B2B blog marketing tips. According to a study conducted by Content Marketing Institute (CMI), blogs are the 3rd-most popular content marketing strategy, just behind social media marketing and articles.

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Decisions made by Facebooks human content moderators to weed out hate speech posts are often inconsistent, causing some offensive content to wrongly remain on the platform, according to investigative journalism group ProPublica.

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Happy New Year! Are you looking to reach and engage with customers in a new and exciting way? This is going to be the year your business embraces content marketing in a real and serious way. Why is this going to be the year of content marketing?

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When effective content marketing meets your customers, the magic happens. Before we dive in to the secret sauce behind the magic, what comes first, content or the customer? That is not a trick question. It’s a real test to see which direction your content marketing is headed. If you’re not sure about how this should play out for the benefit of your marketing and your customer…read on.

As a marketer and a consumer, I always think about the value content plays in a marketing strategy and campaigns.

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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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Ten years ago if we told people that social media management will be a full-time job, they might have laughed at us. As simple as they are to use, managing a number of platforms for businesses can be quite challenging. With so many platforms and changing algorithms, and hashtags to choose and use, you can easily feel that things are getting out of control.

I spoke to my colleague Sarah who manages different social media accounts for our clients and asked her about the common mistakes that people make when managing their brand accounts, and what should business owners avoid doing on social media:

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Social media is great for keeping tabs on your old college roommate or staying in touch with that aunt who lives in another state. As millennials, we’ve grown up with social media being part of our daily lives. It’s probably rare you go through your day without checking your accounts.

In this day and age of having everything a click away, have you considered the opportunities that could be at your fingertips? Outside of keeping in touch with your friends and family, social media can do wonders for your professional network. Social media has been one of my go-to tools to make connections and grow my network.

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Social media marketing plans can decide the future of a business and a brand. As the technologies advance, the boundary between social media marketing and mainstream marketing is becoming more blurred than ever. Chalking out a social media plan is no easy task for a first timer, but getting a few tips from the pros certainly helps. Very simply put, every social action must culminate to a larger social media marketing strategy. People, their likes, shares, replies, and posts should all be a part of a larger plan that generates leads, drives sales, or contributes in other ways to a business goal.

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For years, we have known that social media platforms inspire jealousy. A 2013 study showed that people fall into a spiral of envy when Facebook reveals that their friends are excelling or leading glamorous lives. Scientific American reported that many studies indicate that spending a lot of time on Facebook is linked to diminished well-being, with Facebook-inspired envy increasing feelings of depression. FOMO (fear of missing out) has become a very real thing

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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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Facebook began testing a  breaking news label for developing stories back in November, and now the social network is expanding the option to more publishers. Starting this week, the company says 50 more outlets in North America, Latin America, Europe and Australia will be privy to the tag. That is in addition to the small group of local and national publishers that are already using it. If all goes well, Facebook said it may offer the option to even more publishers in the future.

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Earlier this week, we endured another school shooting. This time, in Parkland, Florida, where at least 17 students were killed. During the shooting's aftermath, hoaxes and disinformation spread on Twitter. It is a phenomenon that happens after every tragedy, and it doesn't seem to be going away.

As is common in these cases, many of the initial fake tweets misidentified the gunman.

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According to a new study, people with certain personality traits are more likely to develop a social media addiction.

The study found that three personality traits in particular — neuroticism, conscientiousness and agreeableness — were related to social media addiction. Two other personality traits, extraversion and openness to experience, were not linked with social media addiction.

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And yet, unlike other social networks that followed it, HASTAC has managed to remain scandal-free. There have been no mass boycott movements and no accusations that the network ever misused anyone’s data.

Cathy Davidson, co-founder and co-director of HASTAC, and a professor of cultural history and technology at the City University of New Yorks Graduate Center, said that the secret to the networks good relationship with its users has been its decision to treat user data with respect from the outset. Privacy and security have been priorities for the network since its inception, and are built into every facet of the network.

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Everybody uses Facebook because everybody uses Facebook.

But lately Facebook — and all the other social networks, for that matter — seems to be turning into a distracting, time-wasting and manipulative surveillance machine that does more harm than good.

This is a huge problem for professionals and businesses of all sizes, including enterprises.

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Fears about the potential effects of propaganda and fake news remain high, and American officials are determined to keep track of media outlets in a bid to curb these misinformation campaigns. The Department of Homeland Security has put out a call for companies that could create a database tracking over 290,000 media influencers around the world, including online news outlets, bloggers and prominent social network accounts. The system would identify contributor details (such as contact info and their employers), and would allow searching for individuals and outlets through categories like their locations, the focuses of their coverage and their sentiment.

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The perfect social network would have the following characteristics:

It would have a lot of users — at least as many as Facebook.
It would filter spam and harassment, but otherwise not algorithmically sort or filter.
It would enable us to interact with people on all the social networks.
It would have no advertising.
It would be user-controllable and user-automatable.
It would be usable on both mobile and desktop.
It would have great search (unlike Facebook).

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Facebook announced a new initiative today aimed at improving its policies and the role its platform plays in elections. The company acknowledged that it was slow to respond to election interference efforts that took place on its site and says it wants to learn more about social medias role in elections around the world. To do that, it's putting together a group of researchers that will then develop a research plan, get proposals for projects that address issues defined in its plan and manage a peer review process that will determine who will receive funding and access to Facebook data for their research.

The commission of experts will initially work for one year and Facebook says membership will be determined soon.

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What predicted Facebook’s FB, +1.63%   scandal involving data firm Cambridge Analytica and the private information of 50 million user profiles without their consent?

How about the 2010 film The Social Network?

The movie, directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, was a fictionalized account of how Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg messily developed the social-networking site while at Harvard.

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Facebook purged  583 million fake accounts in the first three months of 2018, demonstrating the amount of spam, violent content and hate speech that gets smeared across the social network.

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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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Half a million doctors worldwide are sharing their knowledge on a social network for medics to find answers for their patients.

On MedShr, set up in 2014 by a London cardiologist, doctors can post details of cases and other medics can give their input.

A doctor treating a young Afghan refugee in Serbia, who needed plates and pins in his legs, received advice from other specialists that helped formulate a plan to help the boy walk again. In Kenya, hospitals run by junior doctors are able to get remote support from seniors.

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The next money-maker could be this tool for connecting marketers to social media creators so they can team up on sponsored-content Facebook  ad campaigns. The Branded Content Matching search engine lets advertisers select the biographical characteristics of creators fans they want to reach, see stats about these audiences, and contact them to hammer out deals.

Leaked screenshots of Facebook’s promotional materials for the tool were first attained and published in German by AllFacebook.de.

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According to a survey in 2017 by the Royal Society for Public Health, Britons aged 14-24 believe that Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter have detrimental effects on their wellbeing. On average, they reported that these social networks gave them extra scope for self-expression and community-building.

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Cryptocurrencies are digital currency designed to represent the architecture of the internet. Rather than counting on a standard financial institution to guarantee and verify business deals, cryptocurrency transactions are examined or confirmed, by the computers of the users on the currencys network. The computers used in verifying the deals usually receive little amount of the currency as a reward.

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In 2015-16, roughly four-in-ten adults across the emerging nations surveyed by Pew said they used social networking sites, and as of 2017, a majority (53%) use social media. Whereas, over the same period, social media use has generally been flat in many of the advanced economies surveyed.

Internet use and smartphone ownership have also stayed level in developed markets over the same period vs rising in emerging economies.

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Are you still using RSS? If you are (and you should be, as we will see in a moment), then you should use the Feed Hawk app on your iPhone and iPad. Feed Hawk puts itself in your iOS Share Sheet and locates the RSS feed(s) from any website you visit. If you want, it can automatically subscribe you to the RSS feed in your RSS reader of choice.

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Across 39 countries, a median of 53% say they use online social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter. However, that figure conceals large differences around the world, and the relationship between social media use and national wealth is not as strong as it is for overall internet use and smartphone ownership.

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According to the same Kaplan survey mentioned above, the percentage of college admissions officers using social media for admissions criteria went down from 40 percent in 2015, to 35 percent in 2016, to 29 percent in 2017. Students seem to be making it more difficult for college admission personnel to check them out on social media.

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Why would these companies pay when so many of us are willing to do it, as you say, for free? When big tech wants the public to generate a new set of data for them, they design a fun new device designed to train us to do it. And we pay them for the privilege! More and more people have either the Apple, Amazon, or Google home assistant, which we know is already recording our passive conversation for use in improving each company’s voice recognition software and AI.

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The biggest mistake people make when promoting their brand, company or even themselves on social media is thinking that simply posting is enough. However, that’s far from the case. Managing a Facebook, Instagram or Twitter account means having to strategize ways to keep your current audience captivated, while simultaneously attracting new users to your page.

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Blockchain has gained increasing popularity over the past year. Having begun as the technology behind cryptocurrency exchanges, it has now shown promise in almost every other sector of the economy as it’s a secure, reliable and tamper-proof way of recording transactions and exchanging data.

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Twitter is cracking down on bots after it announced changes to its API that will massively reduce the impact of services that allow links and content to be shared across multiple accounts, i.e. the software that powers Twitter bots.

So that means an end to services that let those controlling large numbers of accounts to batch tweet, follow users, retweet or like tweets. Twitter will continue to allow content to be posted to accounts using software, for example, weather alerts, RSS feed updates and more, but they will now be limited to a single account going forward.

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A US law gives parents control over what information websites can collect from their kids.

The Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, imposes certain requirements on operators of websites and online services -- including social media sites -- so that personal information from children under 13 is not collected, disclosed or used without parental consent.

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Mozillas current plan aims for a removal of both features in Firefox 63 or Firefox 64, out October or December 2018. The change won't affect the current Firefox 60 ESR version but the next Firefox ESR after Firefox 60 ESR won't support both features anymore as well.

We published an overview of Live Bookmarks in 2014, but Firefox supported the feature for much longer. Live Bookmarks allowed Firefox users to subscribe to a site's RSS feed so that new articles would be displayed in a bookmarks folder in the web browser.

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Shares of Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc. endured a surprise rout this week, as investors were rattled by signs that users are souring on the social-media stalwarts.

Twitter said Friday that its number of monthly users dropped in the second quarter and could continue to fall as it purges fake accounts, results that echoed Facebooks bombshell guidance Wednesday that its growth is expected to slow through the end of the year.

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Social media has been a rising player in the digital marketing game for so long now that many are wondering when it’s going to start losing steam.

The answer to this question? Not anytime soon.

People are in love with social media platforms.

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The network theory of attitudes is a simple idea that has profound implications, if true. This is the theory that when two people hold the same attitude, they are linked together as a result, like two people holding strings to the same balloon. When different people are holding the same bunch of attitudes, they are grouped together and different groups are distinguishable by the different sets of attitudes they are holding.

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Some social media-content is easy to evaluate. Cute cat pictures? Great. Helpful how-to videos? Perfect. Unfortunately, parsing posts gets a lot more complicated when the content flowing through the tubes of social media involves news. Earlier this week, the House Judiciary Committee brought in representatives from Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook to discuss the companies policies and practices for evaluating and moderating content (mostly political in nature) and the internet scourge that is fake news.

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Thousands of years ago, clans gathered around fires to share their days experiences and to tell stories that established group norms and shaped social organization. Today, the fires embers have been replaced by the glow of internet-connected devices, but the communal exchange of stories and perspectives remains a fundamental force in social development.

From a business standpoint, a few important differences emerge from this evolution. Social media users can now publicly discuss their experiences with brands or products, forming large coalitions of interest that exert vast social pressure on brands and other organizations. From the presidential election to the newest cereal, everything is now a matter of public interest.

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As Reuben alluded and our sources VERIFY, the claim is false. Facebook did announce, in January, it would be changing its status update philosophy.

The social network explained it is going to try to show users more posts from friends that have "meaningful interactions." It plans to do that by reducing the number of articles and videos that appear on news feeds.

But, Facebook never said it is limiting news feed updates to 25 friends. Rather, the social network is just prioritizing the statuses users will be more inclined to see.

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As an entrepreneur, you are in a Catch-22. If you don’t spend time marketing your business, it can not grow. If you spend too much time focused on marketing, you can not develop or enhance the products or services you are selling.

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Gray Hat SEO is an SEO practice that's riskier than White Hat SEO, but one that may or may not result in your site being banned from search engines and their affiliate sites. Generally, Gray Hat SEO practices belong in neither the Black Hat nor White Hat category because the terms of service regarding the issue are unclear. In this tutorial, you will get the answers to the following questions:

What is Gray Hat SEO?
Why does it matter?
What Gray Hat SEO should mean to you

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Are you ready to boost your web traffic? If you are relying on people to find you through the internet, then Search Engine Optimisation should be at the top of your priority result. You can’t be able to generate more leads to your business if nobody finds you.

Do you know about 93% of experiences on the Internet start with a search engine? So what happens after someone search the internet? The top results on Google have higher chances of getting clicked. If you are not on the top of the list, you have missed potential traffic. What is even more surprising is that about 75% people won’t even move to the second page of the search results.

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One of the most significant and important markets in America right now is marketing. Catering to a generation that is hooked on the internet, their phones, constantly browsing, and enjoying the instant gratification of e-commerce might seem easy, but brands have to have insights into who they cater to and how. They also have to keep up with constant updates in technology and strategy.

Marketing relies on creativity to stay ahead of the competition. There are some little-known facts about SEO and marketing strategy that may surprise you.

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RSS is the standard for the syndication of published content across the open web. For law firms, RSS is how their content reaches many readers, especially their blog content.

But of late, I am finding many law firms not using RSS in publishing, even in their blogs.

Other firms have their RSS feeds set up incorrectly. All of their blogs in one RSS feed so users receive content they do not want. RSS feeds kicking out some content, but missing other content – almost like a magazine with blank packages here and there.

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The social network ended the third quarter with 2.27 billion monthly active users, up slightly from the 2.23 billion it had last quarter.
As problems persist for Facebook over its handling of user data, the social networking giant revealed that user growth continued to slow during its third-quarter earnings report on Monday.

Facebook had 2.27 billion monthly active users (MAUs) during the quarter, up 10 percent year-over-year but only up slightly from the 2.23 billion it reported at the end of the second quarter. In the U.S., Facebook added just 1 million MAUs. Meanwhile, it lost 1 million MAUs in the Europe. Most of the company's growth came from Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world.

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