Social Media Marketing

Twitter on Monday began testing a new Buy button with a small percentage of its users in the U.S. -- one of the first steps in a larger initiative to build purchase functionality into the service. A small group of brands, including Burberry, Home Depot, Keith Urban, the Nature Conservatory and Sound...

It is a given that a marketing campaign must include a social media element -- especially when a brand is rolling out a new product. What is less certain is on which channel the brand should focus its time and resources. An answer was provided last week by Aol Platforms, which released the results o...

Twitter this week announced that its analytics tool, first made available to advertisers, Twitter Card users and verified users, now can be used by everyone. Twitter's analytics tool lets users click on any tweet to see how people engage with it in real time. They can compare their tweet activity mo...

Clickbaiting may soon come to an end on Facebook, which has launched an effort to eradicate it. Posts with clickbait headlines get higher placement in News Feeds -- but 80 percent of the time, users prefer headlines that help them decide whether they want to read a full article before having to clic...

Twitter has reported success with its BotMaker spam-prevention system. Because Twitter operates in real time, BotMaker is designed to work fast to eliminate spammers. Its main goals are to bar spam accounts from being created, to reduce the time they spend on Twitter if they do show up, and to reduc...

Facebook chalked up $2.68 billion in ad revenue in Q2, up 67 percent year over year, and mobile ads accounted for about 62 percent of that haul, totaling $1.66 billion. Facebook cracked the $1 billion mark for mobile ads in Q1. "The ability of Facebook to move into the mobile ad space and to monetiz...

Secret last week announced that a recent round of funding, to the tune of $25 million, would help it expand its reach in the social networking space. Since its launch about six months ago, Secret has provided a platform for users to post anonymous notes on topics ranging from the ridiculous to the s...

Facebook is testing a function that would allow users to buy products without leaving the site or app. Small and medium-sized businesses in the U.S. that are taking part in the trial can add the Buy button to ads displayed in users' News Feeds or in posts on their pages. Users will see the Buy butto...

Amazon is now allowing consumers to add items to their shopping cart simply by sending a reply on Twitter. Users who connect their accounts on the two services can add a product they see in a Twitter link to their Amazon shopping cart simply by replying to the tweet with the hashtag #AmazonCart -- o...

Why is question-and-answer website Quora so popular with investors? "Because of the high quality of the discussions on the site," answered Paul Levinson, professor of communications and media studies at Fordham. To get a true expert take on the matter one would have to consult Tiger Global Managemen...

Several members of Hollywood's elite walked out of the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles clutching golden statues on Sunday, but it might have been Samsung that landed the largest victory at the event. Partway through the show, host Ellen DeGeneres stopped to capture the moment by using a Samsung phone t...

The interaction of connected consumer electronics and digital media is creating vast and limitless amounts of user data, now commonly coined "Big Data." Many new business models are forming around these data, but for advertising, data have always been at the core of its business. Data of all varieti...

Twitter has launched analytics for Twitter Cards to help users determine how well their media-rich tweets are performing on the network. Twitter Cards allow developers, brands and publishers to add photos, videos, deep links within their apps, content previews, and other rich media assets to their t...

Facebook has reportedly joined the GSM Association, making plain its heightened interest in mobile and wireless. GSMA is a group made up of mobile operators and other technology companies interested in standardizing and promoting the GSM cellular system. Nearly 800 of the world's mobile operators ar...

Google on Monday introduced a new social media feature called Helpouts, a real-time channel that's designed to let businesses and individuals give and get help over live video. Powered by Google's Hangouts video chat platform, Helpouts can be used to offer instruction in a wide range of areas, from ...