Facebook Offers: Why you could soon be buying from your favorite brands in your News Feed In the past 24 hours, coverage has spread across the Internet of the launch of a new feature by Facebook, one that allows businesses and brands to utilise an ‘Offers’ feature that delivers daily deals to a brand’s Page and a user’s News Feed. The new service is a twist on the traditional Daily Deals market, particularly because it allows Facebook users to remain in direct control over the offers they see. Instead of functioning as a dedicated website like Groupon, LivingSocial and AmazonOffers, Facebook has the ability to drop targeted deals into a user’s News Feed in line with status updates, photo posts, location checkins and other more social features. To some, it may be puzzling as to why it has been reported that Facebook launched Offers over the past couple of days. The truth is, it didn’t. Offers are a free new way for businesses to share discounts and promotions directly from a Facebook Page. What makes it different from Groupon et al? Won’t it pollute the News Feed? Will it work?
50 Life Hacks to Simplify your World Life hacks are little ways to make our lives easier. These low-budget tips and trick can help you organize and de-clutter space; prolong and preserve your products; or teach you something (e.g., tie a full Windsor) that you simply did not know before. Most of these came from a great post on tumblr. 20. 40. Sources – muxedo task: 99 Life Hacks to make your life easier! If you enjoyed this post, the Sifter highly recommends:
Sell Downloads Writers Network and Resources for Writing, Editorial Opportunities | RRD Content Source Network Can Twitter Predict the Volume and Price of a Specific Stock? In a world where everyone’s opinion is publicly recorded, it should be theoretically possible to determine the most popular concept of the moment — be it a movie, a song, a feeling or even a stock. Certainly, we don’t have enough information at this point to record everyone’s fleeting thoughts, but Twitter is something that makes a good temporary approximation. And that’s what led University of California, Riverside professor Vagelis Hristidis to investigate whether Twitter sentiment could help predict the stock market. Hristidis and his team have set out to look at how Twitter activity is related to stock prices and traded volume. Specifically they look at the volume of tweets and the link between between those tweets, other users’ tweets and specific stocks. This is different than an experiment from March of 2011, where a group of researchers from Indiana University used the mood of the overall Twitter community to attempt to predict upcoming moves in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Netvibes – Social Media Monitoring, Analytics and Alerts Dashboard The Magic of Doing One Thing at a Time - Tony Schwartz by Tony Schwartz | 8:53 AM March 14, 2012 Why is it that between 25% and 50% of people report feeling overwhelmed or burned out at work? It’s not just the number of hours we’re working, but also the fact that we spend too many continuous hours juggling too many things at the same time. What we’ve lost, above all, are stopping points, finish lines and boundaries. Tell the truth: Do you answer email during conference calls (and sometimes even during calls with one other person)? The biggest cost — assuming you don’t crash — is to your productivity. But most insidiously, it’s because if you’re always doing something, you’re relentlessly burning down your available reservoir of energy over the course of every day, so you have less available with every passing hour. I know this from my own experience. If you’re a manager, here are three policies worth promoting: 1. 2. 3. It’s also up to individuals to set their own boundaries. 1. 2. 3.
Free English Grammar Lessons and Tests With New Tool, Visual.ly Wants To Replace PowerPoint With Infographics "Before PowerPoint, you had to go find a designer to create a custom presentation," says Stew Langille. "Even though everyone hates PowerPoint now, it was really helpful when it first came out." Now Langille’s startup, Visual.ly, is attempting to do for infographics what Microsoft did for presentations. Today, the company launched a new platform to allow virtually anyone to create data visualizations. "We hear a huge influx of people saying, 'How can I get someone to help me create an infographic or a dashboard or an interactive visualization?'" The startup, which has raised $2 million in VC funding to date, unveiled the self-service platform at SXSW today. Currently, Visual.ly offers a small range of what Langille calls "WordPress-like themes," and a short list of datasets. The service is free, though Visual.ly does offer premium accounts. There is both a strong downside and upside to automating infographics. Click here to try Visual.ly’s new tool. [Image: Kinetic Imagery/Shutterstock]
Otohits.net - Homepage BlackbaudNow: Publish a Website and Accept Donations Online PayPal and Blackbaud have teamed up to provide a simple website to serve small and growing nonprofits. Point and click to create your site, with built-in donations. No hosting setup fee No monthly hosting fee You simply pay 4.95% + $0.30 / transaction Use your domain name or ours We were advised to get a web based donor management program, but they are all too big and complicated. Without spending a lot on training, you can't really use them. Amy Pratt, The Greene School How Does it Work? Select Your Theme Choose from a library of website designs.
Top Startup Businesses for 2012 | The Business Finance Store Top Startup Businesses for 2012 You want your startup to succeed, so do we. In the process of funding over 2,000 new businesses in 2011 alone, we frequently get asked for input from our clients on specific businesses or industries. A recent IBIS World research study reviewed the best industries for your next startup. According to Brian Bueno, economic research analyst at IBIS World, the economy beginning to stabilize and other conditions such as job growth, credit conditions, and consumer spending will put “more money in the pockets of consumers and various opportunities for new businesses.” If you’re ready to start a business and want to improve your chances of success, read the descriptions below of which are the up and coming industries of 2012: Relaxation Beverages: Everyone’s heard of energy drinks, but IBIS World’s research indicates that relaxation beverages are going to be big in 2012. About the author.
How to Add Google AdSense to Your Tumblr Blog Would you like to make a bit of revenue from your blog? Here’s how you can make your content work for you by adding Google AdSense to your Tumblr blog. Blogging can be serious work, and with your easy-to-use Tumblr blog, you might be posting more than ever. Either way, your blog takes real time, and it might be nice to make a little money from it. Please note: This article is designed for users who don’t know how to edit HTML, and so may seem overly simplified if you’re already a code ninja. Signing up For AdSense Before you can add AdSense to your site, you’ll need to register for an AdSense account with Google. Fill out the form as usual, with information about your site as well as some personal contact information. Accept the additional policies at the bottom of the form, and then click Submit Information. Make sure your information is correct, then select if you have a Google account and either enter your account info or create a new account. Create an AdSense Unit for Your Tumblr Links
Mobile SEO for Beginners: How to improve App Store Search Ranking by Vi Tran This is a guest post by Naoki Shibata, founder of SearchMan.com, part of our 2nd accelerator batch. SearchMan helps app developers to make their apps easy to find in AppStore. SearchMan SEO tracks search rankings, analyzes keywords, competes for rankings, and optimizes everything. Follow them on Facebook and Twitter for more content. Problem: Creative app developers pursuing the huge long tail of mobile app revenue, will continue to out-innovate each other. Solution: A little known fact is that more than half the world’s smartphone users discover new apps by entering a search keyword into the search box inside the App Store. Check out SearchMan.com’s how-to guide on getting started with mobile SEO. Vi Tran Vi is the Social Media Intern at 500 Startups.