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Archive for December 2013

Best of 2013 Apps from Apple

Posted Friday, December 20th, 2013

Apple has just published its Best of 2013 page, highlighting some of the most popular music, movies, TV shows, iOS apps, ebooks, and podcasts from the past year. In the music section, Lorde’s “Royals” took the pick for Song of the Year, while Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ The Heist was named Best Album.

Gravity, the box office hit starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock, was named Movie of the Year. Despite the confusion it caused when its final season was broken into two separate purchases earlier this year, Breaking Bad was Apple’s pick for Show of the Year.

On the App Store, the language-learning app Duolingo took home the title of iPhone App of the Year, while Disney Animated won the iPad’s version of that award.

You can find the entire list—including more awards, best sellers, and a solid editor’s choice lineup—on the Best of 2013 page in iTunes.

 


5 predictions for social media in 2014

Posted Friday, December 13th, 2013

Snapchat will get bigger, Tweets will grow louder, and your boss might even understand Twitter.

Will Snapchat catch fire? Will those annoying Promoted Tweets keep invading your Twitter stream? Will Facebook continue to dominate?

1. The rise of snapchat

Regardless of whether or not you think Snapchat is worth the $3 billion Facebook offered it, one thing is clear: There’s an appetite out there for content that literally vanishes seconds after being received. And, contrary to popular perception, this isn’t just about sexting and X-rated selfies (though it definitely is about that, too). Snapchat and services like it has restored some of the fun and spontaneity to social media. Just like a real-life interaction — where ideas flow freely and you generally don’t worry about everything being recorded for posterity and broadcast to the world — SnapChat and networks like it offer a channel for genuine, unfiltered exchange. And the kids really like it. While Facebook’s own CFO officially acknowledged last month that teen use of his network is declining, the number of teens on SnapChat — at least anecdotally — is exploding.

2. Learn to tweet- before you become like your boss!

You know the old guy who’s been at the company forever and still can’t figure out email? If you don’t get up to speed on social media in 2014, you’ll be that guy. Compared to last year, there are 13 times as many jobs advertised on Indeed.com that mention the use of social media. “We are seeing an increased demand for social savvy candidates across the business — from human resources to product to customer service,” Amy Crow, Indeed’s communication director told Quartz earlier this year. Not only are departments like marketing, sales, and customer service expected to be on Twitter and Facebook, teams as diverse as R&D, logistics, and HR are increasingly using internal networks like Yammer to streamline operations. Social media has grown so critical to the workplace, in fact, that major universities are beginning to offer certificate programs for socially inept corporate types to get up to speed.

3. Social customer service kills the dreaded phone tree and maybe even poor customer service

The ability of customers to air their dirty laundry to the world via Twitter and Facebook has already changed the customer service game. A 2012 Nielsen survey shows more than half of all customers now turn to social media for redress; meanwhile, some 81% of Twitter users expect a same-day response to questions and complaints. But things recently got even more interesting: On Sept. 2, British Airways passenger Hasan Syed spent an estimated $1,000 to purchase several promoted Tweets blasting the company for losing luggage. With paid social media now in customers’ arsenal, 2014 may mark the beginning of the end of abysmal customer service at major airlines, credit card companies, banks, and other repeat offenders, characterized by endless phone wait times and those automated “phone trees” (i.e., “Press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish, 3 to waste your entire afternoon on hold …”).

4.Social media finds you as you browse

From the beginning, social networks have been effectively walled off from the Internet. The treasure trove of content on Facebook, for instance, doesn’t generally show up on Google. But does it have to be that way? Wouldn’t it be convenient to see Twitter search results automatically displayed alongside a standard Google search, for example? And why, for instance, don’t the latest tweets about a restaurant pop up when you’re searching Yelp? The competing interests of different networks sends this content behind proprietary walls, but a number of tools offer creative ways to bridge the gulf.

5. Get ready to see ads from the neighborhood pub on Twitter

Native social media ads — the ones that appear right in your Twitter and Facebook streams — exploded in 2013. Love them or hate them, they’re only getting bigger in 2014. This year, expect some significant, if slightly creepy, advances in location-specific targeting. Twitter, for instance, just unveiled a feature enabling paid Tweets to be targeted by zip code. You walk into a neighborhood, for instance, and suddenly Promoted Tweets for the local bar, dry cleaner, and McDonald’s pop up in your Twitter stream. This kind of “geo-fencing,” which Facebook has had since 2011, enables businesses to court nearby customers who might actually want to get ads offering special deals, in-store specials, etc. The upside: more relevant ads and promos you can actually use. The downside: more ads.

What are your social predictions for 2014?


 
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