Social Media

Earlier this week, I questioned whether social media could replace my need to blog. In my article, I mentioned that Google+ and LinkedIn as social network platforms are able to provide near blog-like functions. Since that article posted, I've already heard comments from my Facebook and Twitter friends that no one uses Google+. I respectfully disagree with my friends. While people like to call Google+ a ghost town the numbers would indicate otherwise.

A few months ago, I had a problem. After eight years of non-stop writing, I found myself exhausted of all enthusiasm to blog. Let me tell you, it's a sad day in Web City when an advocate for content management systems has no real desire to author new content. I was also questioning in this age of "always on" social media whether the traditional blog had lost value not only to me but my readers. If content is no longer king, why should I spend so much effort creating new content? So as summer approached, I decided to take a break from blogging.

This week, Kentico Software announced the release of Kentico 8.1. According to the company, Kentico 8.1 features a variety of new enhancements that bring greater website performance and ease of use to the digital marketing activities of today’s digital agencies and professional marketers. With new “Buy X, get Y” discount capabilities, Kentico 8.1 promises to offer customers new ways to maximize their online sales.

Big data and social media, individually and together, are changing the world in so many different ways. Not only are Facebook and Twitter some of the biggest developers in big data technology, but the information they gather is so important to so many different companies.

One of the more important ways that big data and social media are changing the world landscape is through their effects on Human Resources (HR). They totally change how companies do business. Big data in the cloud is making it easier and more affordable than ever for companies to implement big data technology.

It’s no secret that social media is a tremendous tool for keeping in contact with friends and family. Businesses have quickly picked up on just how effective it can be for marketing purposes as well, particularly mobile marketing. More people are connected to the internet than ever before, and mobile platforms are driving that explosive growth. In fact, internet traffic on mobile devices is expected to exceed the internet traffic on desktops soon. Much of that internet use is geared towards social media outlets, so mobile marketers are finding new ways to use social media to reach new customers and inform existing fans.

"As a result, it’s been bizarre to see the constant stream of falsehoods and confusion about Google+, which I know to be untrue. One writer after another used to say Google+ was a “ghost town,” and in 100% of those cases the author was not circling people or engaging. They confused their own lack of activity with a general lack of activity on the network."

- Mike Elgan, What I Learned On The Way To 3 Million Google+ Circles, Cult of Android, Jan 19, 2014.

Research by Searchmetrics identifies most tweeted newspaper stories in 2013

New York - January 09, 2014 - The Washington Post, New York Times and USA Today figure in the top three positions in a study which analyzes prominent US newspaper websites for their popularity on social network, Twitter.

Content from USA Today and the Washington Post was also found to dominate the list of the top ten most tweeted newspaper website stories during 2013 in the study by digital marketing software and services company, Searchmetrics.

Festive Pinterest boards on display from US retailers such as Walmart and QVC

Amazon.com is the most popular US online retail site when it comes to having web content shared on Pinterest, the pin-board style social network, in the run up to Christmas 2013. In a study of ten top US retail sites^[1], images and pages from Amazon.com are being shared most frequently on Pinterest, with Walmart and Apple taking second and third positions respectively.

Ever since social media and social networks have gone mainstream, our digital lives have become complicated. There are a number of social media management tools already out on the market that aim to give users the tools they need to better mange, filter, and prioritize the content they read from their favorite blogs and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Almost all these tools fall short of their intended goals and why I'm always on the lookout for something better to come along. 

Over the years, we all have abbreviated DotNetNuke as DNN as we've discussed this open source .Net based content management system. It looks like the corporate folks upstairs have finally made this interchangeability official. DotNetNuke Corp will now be known as DNN.