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How long should a Facebook post, a Twitter post, a headline, or an e-mail subject be if you’re looking for maximum engagement?

You can read the full post with methodology and outbound links here, or check out this infographic for a condensed version: This is mostly designed for marketing through social media / web / e-mail, but I’d probably disagree on the… Continue Reading

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The tipping point for Twitter will come when its need to be a public company surpasses what made it successful. Hello, new interface.

Twitter turned eight last week, which prompted a rush of business/tech journalism on where it’s been and where it’s going. (This happened a few months back, when Facebook turned 10. Would third-grade human version of Twitter be friends with fifth-grade human… Continue Reading

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Social vs. search vs. direct: How do you get to a website? (Or, why ‘we put it on Facebook’ is a bad strategy.)

There are a couple of different ways a person can reach your website, but three of the biggest would be social (i.e. from Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest or what have you), direct (typing in/bookmarking the URL) or search (i.e.… Continue Reading

14.7 million tweets were sent during the 2014 Oscars, mostly related to Gravity, Jennifer Lawrence, and Ellen’s best selfie of all-time

If only Bradley's arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap — Ellen DeGeneres (@EllenDeGeneres) March 3, 2014 That shot above — which is pretty cool — did become the most-retweeted photo of all-time eventually: https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/440340258140323842 Overall, during the time… Continue Reading

Twitter is good for finding information, for sure. But could it be used to predict events ahead of time?

Could you use Twitter to ostensibly figure out that a historical tide is shifting before it actually does? Kinda. This is from a new study done by a PhD student at MIT named Nathan Kallus. Here’s the abstract: With public information becoming widely… Continue Reading

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24.9 million tweets were sent during Super Bowl 48 — and the scrollable refresh trigger is lining Twitter’s pockets

There’s a chart of the peak moments on Twitter during last night’s Super Bowl, via Twitter’s official blog. Overall 24.9 million tweets were sent — last year’s Super Bowl, which was a much closer game, had about 24.1 million tweets sent… Continue Reading

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Ah, the future of social media as local social? Meet Nextdoor

Even though I’m a reprehensible snob about it, Facebook is a good way to keep track of what’s going on in the lives of your far-flung friends. Twitter is less so for that (unless all your friends happen to be… Continue Reading