WebProNews

Tag: interviews

  • Here’s Some Kid Talking About ‘The Facebook’ on CNBC in 2004

    Here’s Some Kid Talking About ‘The Facebook’ on CNBC in 2004

    I dunno who this guy is, but he’s not very good at selling his product, which appears to be some “cyber-matchmaking” service called “The Facebook”.

    The fact that he has over 100,000 users and is looking to expand to hopefully 100 colleges soon is pretty impressive though.

    CNBC unearthed this interview with a very young Mark Zuckerberg, talking about a fledgling service where people can create online profiles, make friends, and then stalk each other. This was 11 years ago today:

    As of now, 936 million people get on Facebook every single day.

    Yes, Dylan Ratigan, I think it’s the next big thing.

  • Amanda Knox Interview Recalled Amid Spectacle Of Bruce Jenner’s Turn With Diane Sawyer

    The Amanda Knox interview with Diane Sawyer is already two years in the past, but Friday night’s Sawyer interview with Bruce Jenner, and the media hype built around it, put huge interviews back in the spotlight for many.

    Bruce Jenner finally confirmed to the world that he wanted to live as a woman, and that is big news for him, his family, and others who might be struggling with gender identity.

    However, two years ago it was the Amanda Knox interview that was so highly anticipated.

    Amanda Knox was convicted and then exonerated, after spending four years in an Italian prison, of the murder of her roommate, Meredith Kercher.

    While fighting for her innocence, Amanda Knox faced ridicule, abuse, and other horrible circumstances.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV8WjklJwio

    Everyone wanted to hear what Amanda Knox had to say about what happened that fateful night in Italy, her actions after the murder, and her life behind bars.

    The special Diane Sawyer interview was called A Murder. A Mystery. Amanda Knox Speaks. and brought in 8.5 million viewers.

    The case of Amanda Knox spawned a movie, Face of an Angel, that explores the case from the perspective of the reporters covering the trial.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvj_GCVTb9s

    Mainly reports from Newsweek and Daily Beast writer Barbie Latza Nadeau.

    The film stars Daniel Brühl, Cara Delevingne, and Kate Beckinsale.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5OuI8t7yu8

    Amanda Knox continues to deny that she had anything to do with Meredith Kercher’s death, and she is attempting to make a life of her own after her ordeal.

    Amanda Knox was fully exonerated on On March 27, 2015 by Italy’s highest court.

    Last year, Amanda Knox started working as a reporter for a local weekly newspaper in her hometown of Seattle, the West Seattle Herald.

    Earlier this year, Knox became engaged to childhood friend and musician Colin Sutherland.

    Remembering some of the biggest interviews in recent history makes me wonder what the next big news story, deserving of an hour or more of prime time TV, will be.

    What do you think it will be?

  • John Oliver, Edward Snowden Talk Surveillance, Hot Pockets, Dick Pics

    On Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, HBO’s John Oliver took a long, hilarious, but ultimately frightening look into the Patriot Act, government surveillance, and the man who revealed it all a couple summers ago – Edward Snowden.

    But the show wasn’t your typical show. Oliver actually flew to Russia to conduct an interview with the former NSA contractor.

    Oliver offered a brief refresher on exactly what Snowden leaked and why we should all care (even though many of us don’t).

    “I’m not saying this is an easy conversation,” said Oliver, “but we have to have it. I know this is confusing. And unfortunately, the most obvious person to talk to about this is Edward Snowden – but he currently lives in Russia, meaning if you wanted to ask him about any of these issues you’d have to fly all the way there to do it. And it is not a pleasant flight. And the reason I know that is last week I went to Russia to speak to Edward Snowden, and this is what happened.

    You should watch the whole segment, but the Snowden interview starts at around the 14-minute mark. Leave it to John Oliver to boil a complicated concept down to your nude cellphone pics – and have it work beautifully as an explainer.

    Image via Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, YouTube

  • Flipboard Tips From The Service’s Editorial Director

    According to Guy Kawasaki, speaking at Social Media Marketing World, “Curation is just as valuable as creation.”

    Flipboard, which turns its users into curators, apparently doesn’t quite see it that way. Editorial director Josh Quittner told The Drum a couple years ago, after the launch of its now fundamental “Magazines” curation feature, “The creator is still 
more valuable than the curator.”

    In other words, the content being curated by Flipboard users has to come from somewhere, and creators can take advantage of that fact and potentially gain traffic from the service. We recently dove into how you can go about doing so, but have since reached out to the company itself for some additional insight. The result was a Q&A with Quittner.

    Is Flipboard part of your content strategy? Let us know in the comments.

    First, he addressed a question about how Filpboard chooses what stories to show users, beyond the personalization that comes with topic, magazine, and profile following.

    “When you go to Flipboard, the first thing you see is your Cover Stories with highlights from everything you follow, including magazines, sources, topics and social networks,” he says. “We look at a whole bunch or heuristics to determine what to show in your Cover Stories such as comments, likes and interactions on Flipboard as well as the social networks you have connected. As you add more things on Flipboard such as sources, magazines and people, their posts will begin to appear in your Cover Stories. We also give personalized recommendations for magazines and people to follow based on your interests. An algorithm-driven discovery engine analyzes millions of articles each day across more than 34,000 topics, suggesting content based on your interests and preferences. These are some of the ways we strive to make content that’s relevant to you more easily discoverable.”

    Flipboard has a set of community guidelines on how to share and how not to share content on the service. Asked about some dos and don’ts beyond the standard guidelines, Quittner had the following to say.

    “We see that readers appreciate focus. General topics such as ‘technology,’ ‘food’ or ‘design’ are great if you’re curating a collection for your own reference, but if you want to build an audience, general topics don’t give readers much to get excited about. Get specific, like instead of ‘gadgets’ go for ‘gadgets for kids’ or instead of ‘recipes’ choose ‘slow-cooker recipes.’”

    “Once you’ve picked a topic, start thinking about your perspective on it. A magazine with a point of view and a tone of voice resonates well with readers. We see magazines about the same topic but with different points of view all the time. Your take on happiness, healthcare or fast cars will be different than anyone else’s.”

    “When you first start a new magazine, keep it private for a while until you have about 40 items in it. By then you will know if you picked a topic you are really interested in and for your readers there will really be something to read. I’ve seen exceptions too – if you’re making a magazine about an event or for a class for instance you may not need the same amount of content. The 10 articles to read for science class this week can also work.”

    “Then there are some practical things you want to think about such as a magazine title and cover photo. A compelling magazine title, which can be descriptive or creative, can attract new readers and so can an attractive cover. And don’t forget the basics: make sure your profile has a photo and description. Providing a face to a name helps establish trust and adds a human element to your profile.”

    “I also want to make sure curators know they can use badges to spread the word about their magazines. At share.flipboard.com you can find tools to help build your magazines’ reach. There is a profile badge that will take people to your profile page with all your magazines, as well as a magazine widget. If you add the widget to your website, a magazine cover that updates dynamically will be displayed.”

    On whether it’s better for users to create/curate one or two magazines or a bunch of them…

    “Curating is personal so it really depends on what your goals are,” says Quittner. “If you want to connect with likeminded people and build up an audience, I recommend curating a separate magazine for each interest. If your magazine is more for yourself, than it’s fine to collect everything in one magazine.”

    A couple of questions that a lot of people would probably ask are: Does it matter how much of the content in a user’s magazine comes from their own website? Is it always better to have a mix, or is it sometimes good to have magazines that explicitly feature your own content?

    “It’s really up to you,” says Quittner. “A Flipboard magazine can be a great way to make your blog more discoverable or to make it look beautiful on a mobile device. We see bloggers who flip a lot of their own blog posts into a magazine and mix in stories by others about the same topic or with a similar point of view. We also see bloggers compliment the magazine with their own content on other platforms, for instance Medium posts, Tweets, Instagrams or photos from your phone.”

    “Some of the larger blogs, curate multiple magazines on Flipboard,” he adds. “For instance, if your blog is about technology, you could curate all your stories about wearables into one magazine and create another magazine with all your games content.”

    He notes that Flipboard has tools specifically for bloggers, which you can look through here.

    As noted in a previous article, we’ve seen some people speculate on the SEO value of having content in Flipboard. Asked about this, Quittner says, “We’ve seen that Flipboard helps drive traffic to publishers and content creators by making content more discoverable. Now that Flipboard is on the Web, you may have noticed that your magazines will surface when you do a Google search. Adding descriptions to your magazine and your profile helps people understand what your content is about and it’s part of what the search engines crawl.”

    In October, Flipboard said 10 million magazines had been created. Asked for an update on that and how many are actively updated, Quittner tells us, “Since we launched the third generation of Flipboard in October, which introduced topics we saw the number of magazines created by our readers grow fast. We’re now at 15 million. And over the same period of time we doubled the number of active curators. Flipboard 3.0 has also made people more engaged and while we had 30 million monthly active readers in October of last year, we now have almost 50 million.”

    In addition to asking Quittner some questions, we reached out to Mathew Ingram, formerly of Gigaom (which was still operational at the time of our interaction), about getting more out of the service. Ingram has been featured on Flipboard’s own blog, where he talked about how he uses the service.

    “I actually think having multiple magazines makes a lot of sense,” he tells WebProNews. “That way you can segment and target your various interests and appeal to different readers.”

    On how much of the content in your magazine should come from your own stuff, Ingram says, “I think a 70-30 breakdown is a good rule of thumb for a lot of social media — so 70 percent or so content from other publishers or creators and about 30 percent from you.”

    Asked about traffic, Ingram says, “We often see some high volume from Flipboard to our stories, although not regularly enough to count on. And it’s difficult to track why some stories take off and others don’t.”

    Are you taking measures to increase your content’s exposure with Flipboard? Do you plan to in the future? Let us know in the comments.

  • Should Viewability Standard Just Be A Jumping Off Point?

    As you know, the issue of ad viewability can be a contentious one among advertisers, agencies, and publishers, and we recently looked at this from various angles based on what such parties have been saying in the media.

    Some of that contention is related to the industry standard that calls for desktop display ads to be considered viewable if 50% of their pixels are in view for a minimum of one second (for larger units it’s 30% for one second).

    Ted Dhanik, CEO of digital advertising company engage:BDR shares some thoughts.

    “The industry-accepted standard for viewability, set by the 3MS, is an important step in the pursuit of heightened ad quality across the board, and adoption of it is necessary for players in our space,” he tells WebProNews. “However, at engage:BDR, we don’t believe that the conversation ends there. We encourage advertisers and publishers to use this standard as a beginning, and transact on metrics that push for heightened engagement.”

    He says the definitions set by organizations like the Marketing Research Council and the Interactive Advertising Bureau are a “good start” and are “much needed by the industry,” but that they aren’t a full solution, but rather “a good jumping off point.”

    “The conversation needs to include what happens after a minimum standard is reached,” he says. “In our eyes, that minimum standard is great for establishing a human user. However, vendors need to offer solutions that answer needs past that- perhaps an advertiser wants to pay only for views exceeding five seconds, or perhaps they believe true engagement must include 100% of pixels.”

    Dhanik doesn’t think pushing for a stricter standard is the right way to go, but rather that advertisers and publishers “need to address other factors in the conversation around viewability, so that whether or not an ad met the minimum standard is not the only measure of success.”

    He thinks advertisers should push to buy ads at a higher threshold based on their creative.

    “No one is going to fully consume the content of an ad at one second, and if they do, they certainly won’t recall it,” he says. “Advertisers should set the threshold based on the content of their creative. A simple creative might be great at a three-second minimum, but for a pharmaceutical brand, who has a lot of details to include, you might want to buy 20-second slots.”

    According to Dhanik, publishers can optimize content to create ad engagement and monetize at a higher rate, even for below-the-fold placements.

    “As we all know, content is king,” he says. “Publishers who provide high-quality content below the fold will be able to monetize those spaces better than ever before, since viewers will be spending time there, and we are now able to measure that and provide our publishers with appropriate rates.”

    He says he has nothing but respect for the 3MS, noting that the association “established something groundbreaking in our industry.”

    “I see a heavy push from advertisers and agencies asking for higher time thresholds, as well as full units on screen, but we wouldn’t even be having that conversation without the 3MS,” he adds.

    One of the biggest issues about viewability is that there has been a lot of confusion surrounding it. We recently looked at an infographic from The Mobile Majority focusing on clarifying mobile viewability. Check that out here.

  • SEO Vet Bill Slawski On Google’s Knowledge And Answers

    SEO Vet Bill Slawski On Google’s Knowledge And Answers

    In case you haven’t noticed, Google has changed a lot over the years, and much of the search engine’s focus is on showing users answers and information about what they’re looking for directly on search results pages through things like direct answers and Knowledge Graph.

    Is the Google experience improving as a result? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    On top of that, Google thinks it can effectively dig into websites and distinguish what is fact from what is not, and use that as a ranking signal. This was explained in a recently released research paper about what Google calls “Knowledge-Based Trust,” though the company maintains it is not using it at this time.

    Google owns a ton of patents, and there are clues sprinkled throughout that trove about its methods for implementing this stuff. With that in mind, we reached out to THE person who spends more time analyzing Google patents than anybody else on the web, to get some perspective on how Google is doing with these initiatives.

    If you follow the SEO industry, Bill Slawski needs no introduction, but just in case, he is the president and founder of SEO by the Sea as well as the Director of Search at Go Fish Digital. His blog has been going strong for the past decade, and is without a doubt the best place to read analysis of Google’s search-related patents.

    Let’s get to the Q&A.

    In your opinion, how is Google doing with “knowledge” right now? Are they getting it right? Are there too many errors? How do you feel, overall, about how Google has progressed here since first implementing Knowledge Graph?

    Bill Slawski: Google is trying a multitude of approaches in responding to Knowledge Graph answers. One of the biggest areas of change happening at Google and at Bing right now is the evolution of search results. With Google, we are seeing increasing numbers of Direct answers, Structured snippets, and rich snippets in response to queries. The Answer Box has been around at Google for a few years, and when it first started out, it tended to be filled with vertical search results that it thought might be appropriate in response to a query – responses filled with News results, Local results, Book results. and others that were different from the 10 blue links that Google had been showing searchers. In Google’s Financial 10 K statement for 2014 they stated that they would be trying to provide more direct answers for natural language queries:

    It’s been that way from the beginning; providing ways to access knowledge and information has been core to Google and our products have come a long way in the last decade. We used to show just ten blue links in our results. You had to click through to different websites to get your answers, which took time. Now we are increasingly able to provide direct answers — even if you’re speaking your question using Voice Search — which makes it quicker, easier and more natural to find what you’re looking for.

    Google did have a program that was run by Andrew Houge, now the director of Engineering at FourSquare, which he referred to in an online copy of his Resume, the “Annotation Framework” which resulted in a number of knowledge Web based patents being developed at Google, including Google Maps, which seems like a proof of concept for the creation of a knowledge-based index. He then was involved in the Acquisition of Meta-Web , which ended up bringing a number of new search engineers to Google focused upon Semantic Web Technology.

    Google has had other people involved in bringing knowledge graph technology to the search engine, including their Head of structured search Alon Halevy, who was involved in The WebTables project that is being used for query refinements in response to different queries and Google’s Structured Snippet, which enrich snippets with content from tables found on pages that are being indexed. Also Google’s Ramanathan Guha, inventor of Google Custom Search Engines, and Google Rich Snippets (his name is on the Google Blog post that introduced rich snippets to searchers.)

    It’s clear from that financial statement that the audience Google is responding to with queries are searchers and not site owners.

    How about direct answers? Are they doing an adequate job or is there a great deal of room for improvement? Any particular niches you think Google is doing a better job at than others?

    BS: Google has been increasing the number of direct answers they show searchers, and recently overhauled the medical answers they were showing searchers, improving those with input from people at the Mayo Clinic and with Google Medical Staff. A White paper that Google released on “How-to” type direct answers described how Google was using a Semantic Sense framework to try to understand the sources of such content better. See: Cooking with Semantics.

    What do you make of the recently released research paper about “knowledge-based trust” as a ranking signal? Google has said it’s not using this in search right now, but do you expect them to? Do you believe they should, and that it should carry more weight than links/PageRank?

    BS: The team that released this Knowledge-based Trust paper seemed very familiar – Many of them were among the people releasing a paper on Google’s Knowledge Vault, which identified a number of ways that Google could potentially improve the quality of information in Google’s knowledge Base. If you were following along at the time that paper was released, it described a number of approaches that the knowledge graph could be improved, and people were talking about the knowledge Vault being a replacement for Google’s Knowledge Panel at the time. They did describe a number or ways of improving the quality of information in the Knowledge Panel. As I look at more and more patents and papers about Google Knowledge, it does appear that “authoritiative source” information for things like direct answers are located based upon things involving Google’s link graph, like the rankings of pages in response to certain queries, or how often those pages get clicked upon when they are displayed as a search result for a query that might be relevant to the topic of a direct answer. If that is how Google is selecting “authoritative” sources for answers, than using a Knowledge-based Trust approach doesn’t sound like a bad way to go.

    Roughly how many patents by your estimate does Google own that you can see directly applying to Knowledge Graph and related features? How many do you see specifically related to Knowledge-based trust?

    BS: Questions like this one are why the idea of a Web where better use of Data on the Web might be helpful. Patents at the USPTO (US Patent and Trademark Office) are classified into different categories, but there’s no easy way to sort those patents into those different categories. It would be nice if it were easier to use that classification data to answer a question like this one. Instead I’m left to try to guess. I’ve been searching for patents related to the Knowledge graph. There are a number that have been published at WIPO (The World Intellectual Property Office). I’ve written about a number of Patents published (released as patent applications or granted patents) by Google that directly apply to the knowledge graph, and there are some that I haven’t written about because i had wondered how helpful it might be to write about them. The annotation Framework patents I mentioned earlier, there may have been around 30 or so, and there may have been at least as many others. I haven’t seen any patents that I can say are specifically related to “Knowledge-Based-Trust, though it’s possible that some may have been filed, and not yet made public by the USPTO or WIPO.

    It seems like Google does a pretty good job (for the most part) of determining factual information for its own direct answers. It also seems like Google could apply some of this to KBT. Do you see KBT and the work Google has done with direct answers as related at all?

    BS: It does seem like the Knowledge-based-Trust approach could lead to better direct answers.

    In general, how much of what Google patents ends up being put to use in your estimation?

    BS: There’s so much range to what Intellectual property that Google attempts to protect with patents, that I think it’s impossible to make that estimation. I don’t usually spend too much time on patents from them that have little to nothing to do with search (unless they cover something like a cure for cancer).

    Is Google’s work with direct answers a serious detriment to webmasters or is this blown out of proportion?

    BS: Google’s work with direct answers appears to be a natural evolution of what searchers appear to want in search results – and make it more likely that searchers will continue to use a search engine to perform searches on Mobile devices and using spoken queries.

    What are some search-related Google patents you’ve analyzed that you don’t see Google utilizing, but that you think it should?

    BS: It’s difficult to answer this because it’s sometimes hard to determine whether or not Google implemented some patents. Google announced recently that they would be taking action against doorway pages on site. I wrote a post about a Google patent granted in 2007 that was originally filed in 2003, that seemed like it addressed many issues related to doorway pages, and yet they are announcing they are going to come out with a new algorithm to address that problem?

    —–

    Indeed they are. You can read more about that here.

    Slawski recently wrote a series of posts about Google’s Direct Answers, which if you should also take a look at. Those start here.

    Do you want to see Google implement the Knowledge-Based Trust signal? Let us know in the comments.

    Image via SEO by the Sea

  • Instagram For Business: Where To Start

    Instagram For Business: Where To Start

    Instagram is about four and a half years old now, and has over 300 million users, but a lot of businesses are still just trying to get started with a presence on the visual social network. Some have been nailing it for a long while now, but for a lot of smaller businesses, it’s just another thing to keep up with, and many no doubt wonder just where they should start.

    Is Instagram part of your marketing plan? Does it directly contribute to conversions for your business? Let us know in the comments.

    We had a conversation with Gary Jordan of TheInstagramExpert.com, and he shared his thoughts on how businesses should approach getting started with the platform.

    Jordan says the best thing businesses can do when they’re getting started on Instagram is to set themselves up for success from the very beginning by making an easy-to-read username with very few underscores,periods, or numbers (unless they’re absolutely necessary) as well as including an easily identifiable profile picture or logo. It should be easily read/seen on a small cell phone screen. You should have an appealing/intriguing bio, and add the right URL to the best landing page on your site for conversions, he says.

    “If you don’t get these essentials right from the beginning, it will be a lot harder for you to get Instagram followers, no matter how much uploading you do,” says Jordan.

    According to Jordan, the best way to grow followers for a business just starting on on Instagram differs slightly from one that already has an established fan base. For those starting out, he says, “One of the best ways to grow your Instagram follower count is by implementing an entertaining content strategy that is more than just pictures of your products. People want to feel the personality of your brand. Portray a lifestyle, and people who are interested in it will follow.”

    “No matter what stigma you have against it or advice that you have heard, one of the fastest ways for a new brand/business to grow a following on Instagram, is to follow others and follow your current followers back,” he adds. “Instagram is one of the best social media platforms for this strategy because they allow you to follow up to 7500 people.”

    Instagram added a new discovery feature in November, making it easier to find people to follow. This hasn’t been Instgram’s strong suit in the past, so it’s a welcome addition.

    “In the beginning, consistency is going to be key,” Jordan says. “Posting once a week is not going to help you to gain loyal followers. Ideally you would want to post something to your Instagram account at least twice a day, but once a day will suffice if you do the other things above.”

    Asked about best practices for mentioning, hashtags, liking, and commenting, Jordan says utilizing these things effectively is one of the most important things in Instagram marketing.

    “You have to foster a conversation between your brand/business and your followers/customers,” Jordan says. “The closer they feel to the business, the more likely they are to become a superfan. This can be done relatively easy on Instagram by just liking & commenting on the content of other users, and re-posting some of your favorite photos of theirs on your timeline and shouting them out.”

    “Another good way to keep your followers engaged is to have them submit their best photos to you, that are related to your business or what it offers, for a chance for them to be featured on your page,” he adds. “The best way to keep all submissions in order is by utilizing a specific hashtag that your followers can use to submit.”

    Video has become very popular on Instgram since it was launched about a year and a half ago. Don’t forget that as of earlier this month, videos now loop continuously.

    Jordan says videos are one of his favorite things to use on Instagram because most competitors don’t use them to their full potential yet.

    “If used right, they can be like mini 15 second commercials for your business/brand every time you post,” he says. “I would say the best way to get started posting videos on Instagram is by re-posting other videos that are related to your business that you believe your followers may like. After a while you can venture into making your own videos of your business, products, services. Make them personable and tell a brand story and people will watch and enjoy. Always remember to tag them with the appropriate hashtags.”

    We asked Jordaon what the most common mistake is that he sees businesses making on Instagram. His answer is a pretty easy one to correct. It’s simply not getting started or signing up and forgetting about it.

    “If you want it to work and bring you in business, you have to be willing to put in at least 30 minutes to an hour a day to grow and maintain your following. But think about it, if you can gain just 50 followers a day, that’s 18,250 in one year. That can be a game changer for a lot of businesses.”

    Asked about brands that are doing it right, he says, “There’s a lot of brands out there killing it right now but some of my favorites are: @SnoopDogg, @NBA, @GoPro, @Starbucks, and @CousinCoutoure. I like them because they all post consistent, relevant content and make it fun and interesting for their followers.”

    I always thought Bolthouse Farms did a great job using Instagram to inspire product sales. They’ve run campaigns that encourage users to take a picture of their product, and upload it to Instgram with the right hashtag in order to get a significant discount. More on that here.

    Last year, we spoke with Curalate CEO Apu Gupta about how brands should be using visual social media, including Instagram.

    “Two things work particularly well with Instagram,” he said at the time. “From the perspective of a brand, Instagram offers an opportunity to bring the consumer into the brand’s world in a very human and authentic way. It’s about artistry and the celebration of how lives are enhanced by being connected to the brand. The other thing we see work really well with Instagram is taking the photos that fans have generated and making those photos shoppable. Curalate has worked with numerous brands including Rebecca Minkoff and Urban Outfitters to do just this, and the results have been astounding.”

    In the summer, we looked at data from Shareablee finding that Instagram brand posts were getting three times the engagement of Facebook posts. Just two months ago, SocialBakers shared data showing that Instgram is completely blowing Twitter away in engagement among the most engaging brand profiles.

    In other words, Instagram is a pretty great social network to participate in if you’re looking for followers that will actually interact with your brand.

    Have you had success with Instagram? What are some ways you’ve used it for business? Please discuss.

    Images via Instagram, SocialBakers

  • What Google’s Twitter Deal Means For You

    What Google’s Twitter Deal Means For You

    News came out last week that Google and Twitter have struck a new deal to put real-time tweets back into Google’s search index. The companies aren’t providing much in the way of details about the deal at this point, and it’s possible that they never will, but they did confirm the deal, and indicate that it will go into effect in a few months.

    Do you expect to benefit from the deal? Tell us what you think about it in the comments.

    Years ago, when the two companies had a similar relationship, Google had a search feature called Realtime Search, which displayed a set of scrolling results at the top of the search results page on some queries (typically newsy ones). The feature didn’t rely solely on Twitter. It incorporated other sources, but it was clear that Twitter was the one that really mattered, especially when the whole feature went away upon the expiration of the companies’ initial deal.

    Ever since that fell apart, Google has been lacking in the real-time department. In the early days of Google+, it seemed like Google thought it might be able to replace Twitter with its own real-time content, but obviously that never materialized to the extent of what Twitter has to offer. Meanwhile, Google would continue to index tweets in its regular search results, but it would never be able to index them in real time, and the ones it did index would only be a small percentage of the larger tweet pool.

    Eric Enge’s Stone Temple Consulting released some new findings about how Google indexes tweets currently, which provides some insight into how things may change when the new deal goes into effect. His team analyzed over 133,000 tweets to see how Google indexed them, and found that about 7.4% of them were actually indexed, leaving 92.6% completely left out of the search engine.

    That tells us a great deal right there. Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” As we’ve discussed in the past, Google is essentially failing that mission without Twitter’s firehose. Today, the world’s information is coming at us in extremely rapid fashion, and as far as public information goes (Facebook is working to do more with the non-public stuff), Twitter is the best provider of that rapid-fire info. How can Google possibly succeed in its stated mission if it’s only organizing a little over 7% of that information?

    Stone Temple’s findings suggest that Twitter accounts with larger follower counts are getting more tweets indexed, though it may be only a correlation. Enge says he doesn’t think Google is looking specifically at follower count, but that other signals are affecting which profiles get indexed more (i.e. links to those accounts’ profiles). Either way, he notes, more value is clearly being placed on the authoritative accounts.

    Out of the accounts with over a million followers that the research looks at, there were 13,435 tweets with 21% of them being indexed by Google. Out of 44,318 tweets in the 10K to 1M follower range, only 10% were indexed. For 80,842 tweets from accounts with less than 10,000 followers, just 4% were indexed.

    Stone Temple says images and/or hashtags seem to increase a tweet’s chances of getting indexed with percentages registering higher than average. Mentions, on the other hand, register negatively. It also points to another of its studies, which showed that links from third-party sites have a significant impact.

    “Google still loves links. 26% of the tweets with an inbound link from sites other than Twitter got indexed. That is nearly 4 times as much as the overall average rate of indexation,” Enge says in the report, adding that link quantity correlates highly with a tweet getting indexed.

    They found that out of 21 accounts and 91 tweets with with over 100 inbound links, 46% were indexed. The number goes down the less inbound links there are. Those with less than ten links only saw a 7% index rate.

    Be sure to check out the research for additional findings.

    Following the release of this research, we did a Q&A with Enge:

    Do you think Google will re-implement the kind of real-time scrolling results feature at the top of search results like it used to have with its old Twitter deal?

    Enge: Not really, I don’t think that this is what Google is looking for. I suspect that the UI impact will be minimal, but that more tweets will get indexed. However (and this is a big however), what will really be interesting to see is if Google uses tweet data to help drive personalization in one fashion or another. One simple way to do this? Simply favor content that people link to from their tweets in future related search results.

    This type of prioritization is similar to what they do with Google+ already. This is just speculation on my part, but I think it could be a huge win for Google if this deal gives them enough visibility to allow them to do that.

    Under the deal, do you think we’ll see a lot more brand new tweets appearing HIGH in search results? Do you expect the freshness of a tweet to be heavily factored into Google’s ranking signals when indexing tweets?

    Enge: Great question. What our study showed is that Google currently places minimal impact on freshness of tweets today. Perhaps when crawling needs to be done to discover them it’s just not worth it, and it might be that the new deal will change that. However, I suspect that it’s not the tweets themselves that Google really values the most, but the content they link to that Google wants to discover more quickly. That said, if they see a tweet getting major engagement, chances probably would go up that this tweet will show up higher in the results.

    The study suggests that tweets with images and/or hashtags have a better shot at getting indexed, and those with mentions have less of a shot. It’s acknowledged that this may or may not be simply a correlation. What does your gut tell you?

    Enge: I think it’s real. Bear in mind that the study we published in December on Twitter engagement also shows that images and hashtags have a positive impact on user engagement. This means that people see them as more valuable, and Google wants to place more value on the content that users value the most. So, my gut tells me that this is actually a causal situation, not just a correlation.

    When the study is talking about the impact of 3rd party sites linking to tweets as something Google likes, are we talking primarily about tweets that are being embedded on these sites, just plain old links, or a combination of the two?

    Enge: As you may know, there are many sites out there that simply replicate lots of tweets on their sites. I am not sure what value they serve, or if any people actually visit such sites. But, some of the links tweets get come from such sites, and my bet is that Google ignores those.

    However, there are other sites that may reference tweets within a blog post or article, and link in a clean traditional web link based fashion to the URL for the tweet itself (what you referred to as “plain old links”). It is these links that I believe that Google is placing a high value on.

    How do you expect Google to react to promoted tweets? Let’s say Google indexes your tweet when it’s organic, but then you decide to promote it? At that point, Google is basically indexing an ad. Will Google shy away from indexing promoted tweets altogether?

    Enge: If a promoted tweet gets a ton of engagement, as well as external links, I think that it might still get indexed and rank, but I’d expect that the threshold will be higher than it is for organic tweets. I don’t have any science for that answer, but it is my sense as to how they will treat it.

    Your site uses “tweetable quotes” throughout its content. Has this been particularly effective for increasing Twitter traffic? Have you measured this specifically or are you familiar with any studies that have?

    Enge: Mark Traphagen pushed us into doing this, and makes sure all of our posts include these. He also tracks it very closely. Within 5 hours of the Twitter indexing study going live today, 67 people have already used the click to tweet boxes to generate tweets, and this has driven 207 unique clicks to the article. Pretty valuable I’d say!

    Would you recommend sites use this more in light of the Google deal?

    Enge: Yes! People do respond to the click to tweet boxes and that helps us get more tweet-love for our articles, and more visits. We use ClickToTweet.com for this, but there are other good services out there. Note that to make this look nice, Mark figured out a process to take the ClickToTweet link and embed it in an image as well.

    …

    All great stuff to know. Enge gives us some incredibly valuable insight as usual. Again, don’t forget to check out Stone Temple’s study.

    Are you looking forward to seeing Google indexing Tweets in real time again? Let us know in the comments.

    Image via StoneTemple.com

  • Facebook Forces Marketers To Get More Creative

    Facebook Forces Marketers To Get More Creative

    Businesses using Facebook for marketing have been dealt a pretty bad hand over the past year. Facebook has drastically cut down the amount of organic reach Page posts typically receive, meaning fewer of any given Page’s fans are likely to see an any given update from that Page, which they went out of their way to “like”.

    Have you found ways to overcome a decline in organic reach on Facebook? Let us know in the comments.

    Mark Zuckerberg himself said in a Q&A in November, “I just want to express some empathy in that we understand what it’s like to be a business – especially from being a startup and trying to reach your customers, and reach people and communicate, and grow, and we care really deeply about the different changes in our product, and how that affects all the businesses and people who are using fan pages. And we take it really seriously when any product change that we do will change or have an impact on someone’s business.”

    Then last month, Facebook made some algorithm changes that would hurt posts it finds to be too overly promotional. These are the examples Facebook shared in its announcement:

    With Facebook throwing all of this at Pages, what’s a business to do? We had a conversation with Dovev Goldstein, CEO of Moment.me, which provides social media advertising services. He shared some thoughts about how businesses should be reacting to Facebook’s harsh changes.

    How are brands most affected by the decline of organic reach?

    “For brands who have put all their efforts into developing and growing a community on Facebook, the decline of organic reach feels like being denied access to their own fans. Brands now have to work harder to reach their target audiences, or, they simply have to cough up the money,” Goldstein says. “For big brands with deep pockets, this might be less of a problem, but for small to medium businesses, this new development can seem to pose a big barrier to making social media work for them.”

    How is the social media marketing industry affected by the decline of organic reach?

    “Given that social media marketing budgets are up again this year (even with Facebook announcing their plans for promotional posts well in advance of the new year), it seems as though the social media marketing industry isn’t overly fazed by this latest development,” Goldstein says. “We also have to remember that social media doesn’t begin and end with Facebook, and fellow giants Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram (even if it is owned by Facebook) and LinkedIn continue to be important.”

    “While it might seem unfair to brands who have spent time and money growing their likes on Facebook, for social media marketers themselves, this development simply forces them to get more creative and clever in how they use the social medium as a way to promote their brand’s story. Yes, the decline in organic reach does mean that social media marketing will have to be conducted differently, but it can also be looked at as a new opportunity to redefine how brands communicate in this space. Small businesses in particular have an opportunity to shine here. They can use their relatively small size to be hyper-targeted in their outreach, going after individual users as opposed to posting a promotional post designed to pull in more quantity over quality.”

    With organic reach on Facebook all but dead, what are some of the best alternatives for free social media marketing?

    “As I mentioned above, one of the best alternatives for getting the most out of your social media outreach is by being hyper-targeted,” he continues. “Use a social media analytics tool that allows you to identify who are the most the relevant target users who also have the most reach and followers. Official ‘influencers’ might cost money, but just reaching out to someone with a lot of followers and friends and encouraging them to interact with your brand in a public way can have a huge impact.”

    “Ultimately, the best way to circumvent the decline in organic reach is to encourage users to ‘Share’ instead of just ‘Like’. Moving forward, it will be imperative to set up the infrastructure to make more authentic interactions snowball to turn each contact into an ongoing conversation and an engaged connection.”

    Do businesses absolutely have to spend more money on social media to have success?

    “Not necessarily, but they may have to spend more time,” he says. “Either way, businesses should be making an investment in social media if they want to have success in today’s digital age. Social media is one of the many digital channels customers interact with on a daily basis, and from a customer engagement standpoint, you’ll want to engage with your biggest supporters and fans where they interact the most. Having said this, in order to get the most out of your social media investment, being (pro)active and responsive is essential. Just being present on social media is not enough to have a positive outcome, responsiveness to customers is the key to success.”

    Can businesses afford not to spend money on Facebook?

    “Facebook is definitely a place many businesses will want to focus some of their resources, but the investment doesn’t have to be in paid Facebook services to deliver on their social media goals,” he says. “Moreover, as I said above, there are plenty of other social media platforms available. For those businesses who really need Facebook, however, there are tools out there which can help maximise the impact of any money businesses might spend on the platform. Above all, having a well thought-out strategy is the key to ensuring you don’t end up spending more than intended.”

    Can a business find social media success entirely without Facebook?

    “It’s entirely possible for companies to find social media success without using Facebook,” says Goldstein. “It all comes down to the type of business you have and who your customers are. Depending on who your target market is – the demographics of your customers, their gender, and age – will all be factors in determining which specific social platform is best for engaging your audience. Let’s not forget that some of the biggest brands in the world – like Apple for example – are not even on Facebook.”

    Last week, Facebook released its quarterly earnings report. The company’s ad revenue was up 53% year-over-year.

    Be sure to check out our recent interview with OutboundEngine CEO Branndon Stewart about how SMBs can deal with Facebook’s News Feed changes.

    Does your marketing budget have room for a lot of paid Facebook posts or are you pursuing alternatives? Let us know in the comments.

    Image via Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

  • Newscred, Percolate, Brand.com Scheme To Alter Digital Content Creation

    Newscred, Percolate, Brand.com Scheme To Alter Digital Content Creation

    A group of companies is seeking to change the face of content creation and alter how brands are able to connect with target audiences online. They’re attempting to make an impact on the online news industry in a way that’s meaningful to businesses looking to promote their products and services, without compromising the integrity of interested publications.

    Companies like Newscred, Percolate, and Brand.com are giving content creators tools to not only create original, interesting content, but get it distributed in helpful ways.

    Investors see a lot of potential in these kinds of services. Earlier this year, Newscred raised a new $25 million round of funding (less than a year after it raised $15 million). A couple months ago it launched new partnerships with Getty Images, Visual.ly, and others. Percolate also recently raised $24 million.

    We had a conversation with Brand.com president Mike Zammuto about how his company in particular views the new landscape. He believes that these types of platform companies are changing online news media.

    Brand.com matches newsmakers (the aforementioned businesses who need to get word out) with journalists and publications looking for interesting stories. It enables news outlets to get info straight from the source while maintaining the editorial control that’s important for maintaining credibility. Brand.com’s platform enables brands to explain how they want to look online, and commission writers and reporters to tell their story as an alternative to “old-fashioned” press releases. It has distribution partnerships with media outlets like CNN, Forbes, Reuters, The Huffington Post, MSNBC, Fox News, etc.

    
To maintain credibility, they filter out self-promotional and advertorial copy, ensuring that story ideas really are newsworthy, and provide content that is actually valuable (otherwise this wouldn’t work).

    “Content creation, whether it’s marketing content or news content, should have benefited immensely from the rise of Internet tech, but it hasn’t,” Zammuto tells us. “Platform companies provide an opportunity for reporters to actually utilize the parts of the Internet that are the most beneficial for creating the news. Brand.com creates an ecosystem that connects publishers and reporters with newsmakers with a genuine story to tell – reporters don’t have to dig around for scoops anymore. They can go straight to the source, easily and efficiently.”

    “In the past, news creation relied largely on one-on-one communications,” he adds. “Platforms can improve scalability and efficiency. More broadly, news publishers have seen revenue for advertising and subscriptions fall off with no adequate replacement, and the industry is becoming desperate for a new business model that supports editorial independence and a free and open press, but also the prospering and growth of these publications so that they can continue to support their editorial goals. A platform is a scalable and flexible model. Just as social media streamlined online social interaction, our news platform streamlines the process of identifying and creating great news stories.”

    In case you haven’t heard, native advertising is trending in a big way. This may leave some businesses wondering if they should skip this type of content production, and simply go the native ad route.

    Here’s what Zammuto has to say about it: “PR and native advertising are both ineffective. Native advertising is simply a way to sneak PR into a news content platform. That strategy doesn’t benefit the editors and reporters or the readers. We want the control to ultimately remain in hands of the editors and reporters, not PR middlemen peddling promotional stories. Newsmakers have always wanted to contact reporters and vise versa, and a platform can link these bodies without relying on any intermediate point of contact that might dilute true news.”

    “Travel agencies were a pre-Internet necessity,” he continues. “Now, they just stand in the way between travelers and travel providers. Eliminating a middleman benefits every party involved, in news media and, historically, in all other industries.”

    Still, new native advertising options are launched all the time. Media companies are investing more and more in offering this to advertisers. A recent report from eMarketer found that for media publishers, native advertising represents an opportunity to “reverse the tide of flat or declining revenues”. So far, brands seem to be biting.

    As far as reporters go, it’s church and state, ads and editorial. Zammuto’s company claims to provide reporters with a way to find interesting and original content.

    “When reporters know and trust the platform as a location for exclusive scoops and sources, I’ll know that we’ve succeeded,” he tells us. “And when I see high quality but financially ill news organizations newly able to reinvest in original, high-quality news content, I’ll know that we’ve succeeded.”

    “We see signs of success every day,” he says. “It’s a success whenever a publisher tells us that we are giving their reporters access to great stories and newsworthy exclusive topics. Our platform’s analytics can currently indicate to us who is reading the content, which is a major success for any brand working with us that is used to inefficient and unpredictable PR industry outcomes. Soon the SaaS model will provide us with a holistic end-to-end view of the news, from creation to publishing to analysis of associated demographics. Here’s how a successful article looks to us: publishers are confident that great content is reaching the right audiences, audiences have access to the information they want to read, and brands are able to track who reads published content and what other content those readers might find compelling.”

    
From a brand’s perspective, an offering like this can go a long way in spreading the word for a newsworthy brand in an era where everybody has a voice (and an opinion). Brand.com, Newscred, and Percolate are attempting to offer new and more dynamic options for brands for determining how to create and circulate content online.

    Image via LinkedIn

  • Gene Wilder Talks Mel Brooks, His Mother, And Willy Wonka In ‘Lost Interview’

    PBS Digital Studios’ Blank on Blank is highlighting a “lost interview” with Gene Wilder. He was interviewed by Letty Cottin Pogrebin in March of 2007.

    In this segment of the interview, which PBS Digital Studios has animated, Wilder talks about Mel Brooks, his mother, and Willy Wonka.

    “I was miscast in my first big part on broadway,” he says. “One night after a show, there was Mel Brooks wearing a merchant marine pea jacket. He looked striking in it. I said, ‘Hello, hello. How nice to meet you. My goodness, you look so wonderful in that pea jacket,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, they used to call them urine jackets but they didn’t sell.’”

    He then shares some memories about making his ill mother laugh followed by an anecdote about making Willy Wonka.

    He tells the interviewer, “I was offered the part of Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and when the director came to my house, I said, ‘Well, I like the script except when the audience sees Willy Wonka for the first time, I want to come out of a door with a cane, and limp my way to the crowd, and they’re all like, “Willy Wonka, he’s a cripple…oh my god, who thought…” and they quiet down, quiet down, quiet down, then Willy Wonka’s cane gets stuck in a brick, and he starts to fall forward, and he does a forward somersault, and jumps up, and the crowd cheers and applauds,’ and the director said, ‘What do you want to do that for?’ and I said, ‘Because from that time on, no one will know whether I’m lying or telling the truth.’ He said, ‘You mean if I say no, you won’t do the picture?’ I said, ‘I’m afraid that’s the truth.’

    Here’s the full interview:

    Check out the recent “lost interviews” Blank on Blank has featured with Johnny Cash, Kurt Cobain and Heath Ledger as well.

    Image via YouTube

  • Erin Andrews On Her DWTS Interviews

    As a veteran sports reporter, Erin Andrews is used to asking the questions that everyone wants to know, and that is exactly what she has been doing as the new co-host on Dancing with the Stars.

    “Since I was 21 years old working in sports, especially being a female in the sports world, you better ask the question everybody wants to know,” she explained. “Because if you don’t, you don’t know the game, you don’t know the sport, you don’t know what you’re talking about, and you’re not going to be on the sidelines for very long.”

    Andrews recently told ABC News that she feels that she is doing a good job hosting the show, and is having a good time doing it.

    “I think I’m doing a good job,” she said. “I’m sitting here right now and I have Michael Strahan on [‘LIVE with Kelly and Michael’], who I look up to a lot. The biggest thing I would like to do and what I told the producers, ‘I just want to be really good about being playful.’ I love watching Strahan and how playful he is with his guests and he makes them feel so comfortable.”

    She explained that she likes working on DWTS because she can show a more playful side than she could while reporting for ESPN. “In the sports world, I can’t be like that,” she explained. “On Dancing With the Stars, they don’t want me to be so serious. The cool part about doing this show is showing I have a bit of a playful side.”

    However, Andrews sometimes puts her foot in her mouth and makes the contestants feel a bit uncomfortable. This past Monday, Andrews questioned dance partners James Maslow and Peta Murgatroyd about their relationship in real life.

    “It’s not like I’m grilling them,” she said. “Like the James and Peta thing this past week — I didn’t ask them if they were dating, just like, ‘Please say you are!’ My girlfriends want them to date. They are so adorable together!”

    How do you think Andrews is doing as a co-host on DWTS? Leave your comments below.


    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Johnny Cash Talks Long Hair And Dying In ‘Lost Interview’

    PBS Digital Studios’ Blank on Blank is highlighting a “lost interview” with the legendary Johnny Cash. He was interviewed by Barney Hoskyns in October of 1996.

    Blank on Blank takes obscure interviews with entertainment icons, and sets them to interesting animation. Here are a couple samples of what Cash had to say in his:

    “I’ve always hung out with long-hairs. I’ve always hung out with people of that ilk. I’m one of the originals. I had sideburns down to my chin…for a while there I did. When I started my own TV show in Nashville in ’69, I had a group called The Who on, and I forget which one of them said, ‘Thank God we’ve got somebody on television with long hair – talking about me, you know? Only it was’t all that long.”

    “My mother always told me that any talent is a gift of God, and I always believed it. If I quite, I would just live in front of the television, and then get fat and die pretty soon. So I don’t want to do that. You know, I just hope and pray I can die with my boots on. I’ve been in hospital beds, and I don’t want to end up there.”

    Check out the recent “lost interviews” Blank on Blank has featured with Kurt Cobain and Heath Ledger as well.

    Image via YouTube

  • Here’s Larry Page’s TED Talk

    Here’s Larry Page’s TED Talk

    Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page participated in a TED talk by way of interview by Charlie Rose last week at TED2014. He discusses his vision for the company, which includes things like Internet balloons (which it already has) and aerial bikeways. He talks about the company’s acquisition of artificial intelligence company DeepMind, and why he’d consider giving his money to Elon Musk.

    “He wants to go to Mars,” Page says. “That’s a worthy goal. We have a lot of employees at Google who’ve become pretty wealthy. You’re working because you want to change the world and make it better; if the company you work for is worthy of your time, why not your money as well? We just don’t think about that. I’d like for us to help out more than we are.”

    The video page has the transcript if you’d rather consume it that way.

    Image via YouTube

  • Heath Ledger Talks Acting And Michelle Williams In ‘Lost Interview’

    Blank on Blank, the PBS Digital Studios project, which takes obscure interviews from entertainment icons, and sets them to interesting animation, has a new video out featuring the late Heath Ledger talking about role playing and about Michelle Williams, who is also featured throughout the visuals.

    The “lost interview” was conducted by Christine Spines in 2005. Her profile appeared in Entertainment Weekly.

    Ledger recalls he and Williams living in a trailer with Williams, saying, “It was really beautiful. Yeah it was very romantic. We were suddenly thrown into a little husband-wife situation. Our bed, honestly, was no bigger than that little round table there. My legs would hang off this far at the end. But it was worth it. And it was comfortable, somehow…Yeah, it was sweet. It was very, very sweet. I could have stayed like that for years. It was very, very, very sweet.”

    He also talks about his nervous energy, his dislike for rehearsals, and Ang Lee.

    Also, check out the lost Kurt Cobain interview Blank on Blank did a while back if you missed it.

    Image via YouTube

  • Exclusive: StumbleUpon CEO Gives Us A Big Update About What We Can Soon Expect

    StumbleUpon has been around since 2001, providing a unique way for Internet users to find websites and pages related to topics they’re interested in. The company has long provided a method of content discovery that has for one, gone virtually unparalleled by competitors, and for two, been lauded for years by marketers and webmasters who have have seen tremendous amounts of traffic to their own sites.

    Are you seeing significant results from StumbleUpon these days? Let us know in the comments.

    While the company has seen ups, downs and a lot of changes over the years (like being bought and eventually spun off by eBay), the company is still going strong despite laying off 30% of its staff in January, and having an otherwise quiet year with few announcements.

    Rest assured, StumbleUpon is doing just fine. As a spokesperson for the company recently told us, they’ve been keeping their “heads down, working on product,” in 2013. And that’s paying off. The company has been hiring again, and this week, revealed that it has achieved profitability, and for the first time, shared some revenue numbers.

    We had a conversation with CEO Mark Bartels, who took over the role after founder Garrett Camp stepped down last year, but has been with the company since 2008 (he was previously CFO) about StumbleUpon’s growth and strategy moving forward. Don’t expect things to be as quiet as they’ve been so far this year.

    StumbleUpon expects to grow revenue to $35 – 40 million this year, and a significant portion of its revenue is already coming from mobile. In fact, nearly 40% of all stumbles are coming from mobile (up from 20% in 2012). Last year, the company launched some major updates to its mobile apps, which drastically improved the StumbleUpon experience. Expect even more expansion into mobile and other devices, opening up a lot more potential for stumbling (and ultimately opportunities for advertisers and web traffic).

    “We continue to invest in moving beyond desktop – and our mobile-first approach is focused on smartphones and tablets, but also interactive TVs and gaming consoles,” Bartels tells WebProNews. “As we invest in these platforms our revenue continues to increase and this year our mobile share of revenue is 20%, and we expect that number to climb.”

    The new mobile apps included a lot of new features. One of them lets users stumble through content much more quickly, by showing quick previews before the pages finish loading.

    When asked if he attributes the growth in mobile stumbles to any specific feature, and whether the preview feature has affected sponsored content, Bartels tells us, “We have enhanced our overall mobile experience for both iOS and Android operating systems so that the recommendations and textual input we serve up to users is a better experience on small screens, wearable devices or set-top box.”

    “Around one out of every twenty stumbles is sponsored content. Since our over 30 million users interact with paid and unpaid content the same way, we have seen an increase in engagement across the board.”

    The company has over 100,000 advertisers that have created native ads. These include Comedy Central, Relativity Media, Levi’s, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar. Advertisers are going to be seeing some new opportunities.

    “StumbleUpon is rolling out new publisher and partner tools that allow advertising on our platforms to be simple and seamless,” Bartels says.

    “Recently we worked with Elle and Harpaar’s Bazaar around New York Fashion Week to engage StumbleUpon users and expand fashion coverage beyond their traditional audiences,” he notes.

    Elle Stumble The Trends

    When asked about the layoffs and how that has affected StumbleUpon’s growth, Bartels says, “The vision remains the same which is to help users discover and explore the best content on the web. We streamlined the company to focus more resources on engineering and product development in order to prioritize internationalization, moving beyond the desktop experience and our advertising platform. We are growing; we are hiring and have expanded to open up a second office in New York.”

    On how the company’s strategy has changed since he took over as CEO, he says, “StumbleUpon’s goal has always been to be the number one discovery tool, and since I have become CEO I have been working on a vision to bring this mission to life across multiple platforms. We are building the next generation of mobile-first products, maximizing personalization technologies and expanding internationally.”

    “In the near future, we will be expanding our mobile reach by releasing our Android app in German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Chinese,” he adds. “iOS is next.”

    Bartels says the company also intends to “continue the migration beyond the website and onto multiple platforms including interactive TVs, gaming devices, publisher sites and APIs.”

    “We predict that online video traffic will be the majority of all consumption by 2016 and mobile will be the driving platform. StumbleUpon will be taking advantage of this trend with new products and ways to discover video content.”

    Like I said, things aren’t going to be quiet at StumbleUpon for much longer.

    While StumbleUpon has continued to drive traffic huge traffic to websites, it sounds like those who are able to capitalize on it might be able to see even greater amounts. Stay tuned.

    Are you still seeing significant traffic from StumbleUpon? Success from its ad platform? Let us know in the comments

    Image: StumbleUpon

  • Diane Kruger Says She Hurt Men Over Daddy Issues

    Diane Kruger is on the cover of Marie Claire UK this month, and in the magazine’s interview, the actress is quoted as calling herself an idiot, speaking out about therapy, and being remorseful for the way she treated men.

    The 36-year-old star told the magazine that she was “and idiot” around the time she turned 30, and that she “didn’t know shit about anything.” She turned to therapy to get help with her issues – something she stated has helped her deal better with her life. Kruger even complimented the U.S., and the L.A. area in particular, for its forward-thinking outlook on therapy, saying, “I really like that about America.”

    According to Kruger, one major outcome of therapy has been improved relationships. She stated that she had dated men older that she believe she should have, and that she “punished many men for my lack of father figure.”

    The therapy seems to have paid off. Kruger has been in a long relationship with actor Joshua Jackson since 2006. Though the couple may never get married (Kruger was married to Guillaume Canet from 2001 until 2006 and has since stated she doesn’t believe in marriage), the actress has stated the pair have made a commitment to each other.

    (Image courtesy Georges Biard under Creative Commons license)

    (via Marie Claire)

  • Imgur CEO Talks New Mobile App, Relationship With Reddit

    Imgur CEO Talks New Mobile App, Relationship With Reddit

    On Monday, image sharing service Imgur finally released its first mobile app, launching on Android first. It turns out it’s not that they just wanted to start with Android, however. They’ve run into some issues with Apple, but the iOS app should arrive in the coming weeks.

    This is all coming significantly later than we expected. Last year, we were told that we would probably see Imgur’s mobile apps in the fall, but that obviously didn’t happen. When asked about the delay, Imgur CEO and founder Alan Schaaf tells WebProNews, “Of course, we would have loved to have seen the app even sooner too. That Fall timeframe was an off-the-cuff mention, and more aspirational than anything. Unfortunately, that wasn’t matched with our actual roadmap at the time. The core work started later so the app was simply completed later.”

    Imgur did launch a major redesign of its site in the fall, and that appears to have paid off for the company. Imgur is often thought of as the place for images shared on reddit, but the redesign has apparently helped it branch out further.

    “Absolutely, we continue to see more traffic coming from other social sources like Facebook and Twitter,” Schaaf tells us. “But [the] most notable increase is in our direct traffic and users finding us through organic search, just searching for Imgur. Direct and search traffic now account for nearly 30% of our traffic. This is exciting news because that means we continue to become a destination site where users come to spend time, again and again.”

    Just because Imgur would like to be thought of more and more as a destination site, does not mean that it is not appreciative of what reddit has done for it.

    “Reddit is an awesome site with an awesome community, and we are members of that community, so yes, we are proud to embrace that association,” Schaaf says. “But as a separate company we have our own set of goals, and we are focused on becoming the world’s best image sharing site. We are all about the instant gratification that images can provide, and helping people discover and share the web’s most viral images. Our next phase is about perfecting an entertaining experience on mobile and web that will have our millions of users coming back on a daily basis.”

    “We see Imgur as a complementary service that adds value not just to the Reddit community, but to the entire Internet,” he says. “Imgur is certainly one of the largest hubs where images originate and then get shared out. That gives us unique access to see how images move across the web and what is trending. We have developed our own ecosystem based not only on sharing images but delivering all of the best content image content the web has to offer, right on our site.”

    “Imgur is also positioned differently from other image sharing services because we are not tied to social networks, and we make it easy for anyone to share with everyone, anonymously,” he adds. “So when you come to Imgur you don’t have to choose who to follow or have to go find friends. It’s all about consuming and engaging with great content. The new mobile app will help deliver that same entertaining content stream and quality user experience to all of our users on their mobile devices, and continue building out our destination site.”

    Imgur is promising other new features in the coming months that will help aid content creation, personalization and discovery. If you use Android, you can download it from Google Play right now.

  • Check Out These PS4 Developer Interviews From E3 2013

    Over the past week, you’ve been bombarded with trailers and gameplay videos for all the newest games hitting the PS4, Xbox One and Wii U. Only Nintendo thus far has released any developer interviews, but Sony is coming in from behind with more developer interviews than you can shake a stick at.

    On the E3 show floor, Sony was livestreaming developer interview after interview for pretty much every major game coming to the PS4. Those interviews have now been broken up into smaller, digestible chunks for your enjoyment. Check them out:

    inFAMOUS Second Son

    The Order: 1886

    The Evil Within

    PlanetSide 2

    Mad Max

    Knack

    Need For Speed Rivals

    If you want to see more of E3 and the games, check out our extensive coverage.

  • Channel Intelligence Execs On Why This Was The Right Acquisition For Google

    Channel Intelligence Execs On Why This Was The Right Acquisition For Google

    Last month, Google signed an agreement to acquire Channel Intelligence to improve Google Shopping. At the time, a Google spokesperson told WebProNews, “We want to help consumers save time and money by improving the online shopping experience. We think Channel Intelligence will help create a better shopping experience for users and help merchants increase sales across the web.”

    Earlier this month, the deal was finalized. We had a Q&A with Channel Intelligence CEO Doug Alexander and co-founder Rob Wight about why this was a good pick up by Google, and how search-based ecommerce is evolving.

    Neither will be working for Google. Wight will continue the role he began two years ago, as founder and CEO of myList, and Doug Alexander will support him in this role while he continues as President of ICG, the company Google bought CI from. myList was spun off from Channel Intelligence in 2012, and it has operated, and will continue to operate as a separate entity.

    “[Brand visibility in ecommerce] is important for the same reason that it’s important to be on a shelf in a store,” Alexander tells WebProNews. “It is how you get into the consumer’s decision set when they are ready to purchase. And just like in a store, brands that do a better job of merchandising and a better job of giving the customer the complete and accurate information they need to make a purchase (correct pricing, sizes, availability, etc.) will be the brands that customers choose to buy.”

    “[Google’s new paid inclusion model for Google Shopping] gives Google an opportunity to create better shopping experiences for consumers,” he says. “Now that it is paid, retailers will focus on presenting the very best offering to win the consumer’s attention. When it was free, it was easier for retailers to treat this channel more casually.”

    “For over ten years, CI has focused on making it easy for consumers to find and buy products online, whether the buying process initiates on a brand’s website or on a shopping platform,” he says, on why this was the right acquisition for Google. “Our expertise with product data optimization and our deep relationships with retailers, manufacturers, publishers and agencies makes CI a natural fit with Google’s ongoing innovation to create outstanding consumer shopping experiences.”

    “It should help all businesses, regardless of size, be more successful in reaching consumers with their products within Google Product Search,” he adds. “What will it mean for consumers? It should mean that consumers will have an even easier time finding, researching, and buying products online.”

    Wight thinks search-based ecommerce is evolving into a more social media based experience.

    “One of the places people naturally go when they’re thinking of making a purchase is to their friends,” he says. “You’ve seen the studies – Nielsen reported a year ago that 92% of people say they trust recommendations from people they know … which is well over the 47% who said they trust ads on TV or in magazines. Social media enables this discovery process to happen online, and people are already trading information – lots of information – there about the products and services they trust. It’s just still in a really fractured kind of way, with one-off conversations and, generally speaking, incomplete information, which is inefficient. So it’s not a matter, necessarily, of people changing anything they’re doing on Google. It’s more a matter of making what they’re already doing in offline conversations and within social media a lot more effective, and hopefully a lot more fun.”

    “A friend of mine posted a really cool GPS tracking watch the other night,” says Wight. “He was raving about it. I was really intrigued, and pretty sure I wanted one too, but I didn’t want to leave where I was to go search for the price, colors, retailers, and all of that, so I just kept scrolling. If the picture my friend had shared has included the important product info, had shown me that 5 other of my friends already also had the watch, and had a simple link to buy it, I’m pretty sure I’d have made the order right there.”

    “There are a lot of ‘disembodied heads’ of products floating around in social media,” he adds. “Just pictures, with a comment or a like. They’re just begging to be gathered up into one complete representation of the product, along with the rest of the kind of merchandising they’d get in a store, or that the brand would put on their product page on the brand site.”

    Wight also sees another opportunity in social for brands to be able to act with more knowledge.

    “This is good for consumers, for the brands, and for the social platform,” he says. “Ads are spam when they’re irrelevant, but [when] they’re relevant, they’re welcome. Google has done a great job with this: when I search for, say, a wetsuit, Google shows me ads for wetsuits. Helpful. I love that. I’ve told Facebook that I like triathlons, but up until now, there hasn’t been a way for me to signal when I’m in the market for a triathlon bike. If I’m talking about them, posting pictures of them to friends, pulling together a list of ones I might want to buy, that’s hugely useful for the brand to know, right? What brand wouldn’t advertise to me on Facebook if they knew I was actively interested? And as a consumer, these advertisements would be welcome, not an intrusion, because they’d be relevant … meaning I’d value the ads more, the platform more … a win for everyone.”

    Google acquired CI for $125 million.

  • Kate Winslet Divorce, Marriage Discussed in New Interview

    Kate Winslet graces the cover of the newest issue of Harper’s Bazaar, and the Daily Mail has the scoop on the magazine’s interview with the Oscar winner.

    According to the report, Winslet speaks about her divorce, her recent marriage, and her newfound clarity about how her past experiences have shaped her.

    Winslet also provided a rambling account of how her personal life has affected her acting. “I have so much more material to draw on for work – rubble, bricks – and I know I can carry it now,” the Daily Mail quotes Winslet as saying. “I’m not going to drop it, and if I do, I’ll sift through it. Does that make any sense at all? Probably not…”

    Winslet was married to English director Jim Threapleton from 1998 until 2001. More recently she was married to English director Sam Mendes, but the couple divorced in 2010. Last December Winslet surprised many by marrying Ned Rocknroll, a Virgin Galactic executive and nephew of billionaire Richard Branson.