About.me, a personal profile builder that keeps your biographical information and social media accounts on one page, has added custom domains and other features as part of a premium package. For $4 a month, you can attach your homepage to a custom URL (yourname.com instead of about.me/name) and remove the navigation bar at the top of the page for a more customized look. “Displaying your page on a personal domain (ie: yourname.com) has been the most requested feature from our users,” the company explained in an email to subscribers, “and we’re happy to announce it’s available.” You’ll also have access to … [Read more...]

Choosy moms choose GIF with a soft “g” sound. Shortly after GIF creator Steve Wilhite declared that the acronym for Graphics Interchange Format should be pronounced like the peanut butter, Jif fired back on Twitter with a link to a GIF of its own. Wilhite settled the pronunciation debate once and for all in his acceptance speech at the 2013 Webby Awards, where he received a lifetime achievement award for the dancing images that he created in 1987. Rather than worry about branding or copyrights, Jif’s Twitter admins jumped on the #Jif #GIF hashtags, added a trademark symbol to the company’s name, and spread the word like it was … [Read more...]

Happy Friday, SocialTimes readers! The YouTube Spotlight channel been pumping out funny videos all week long for YouTube Comedy Week, a celebration of YouTube’s most hilarious creators that started on Sunday and ends tomorrow. As per usual, there were far too many videos to include in one round-up post, so we’ve selected one special video for every day of the week. Sunday “Welcome to YouTube Comedy Week,” by YouTube Published on May 19, 2013 2,682,213 views, 22,328 likes, 4,793 dislikes YouTube Comedy Week kicked off with this highlight reel full of comedians including Eric Wareheim, Sarah Silverman, and more. Click on the … [Read more...]

Google+ users will now be able to search through their photos more easily, thanks to an update that Google rolled out today that connects the social layer to the search bar and enhances the process with a new technology that recognizes pictures by their contents instead of their captions or tags. After signing in on Google+, users can type “my photos” and a few keywords into Google.com or directly on Google+ to find pictures from their own albums or those of their friends. “To make computers do the hard work for you, we’ve also begun using computer vision and machine learning to help recognize more general concepts in your photos … [Read more...]

Comedian and filmmaker Mark Malkoff took to the streets of New York to find out what the average person thought of Google Glass, the wearable computers that not many people have had the pleasure of trying on. What these bystanders didn’t know was that the headset Malkoff was wearing wasn’t Google Glass; it was actually a gaming console from the 90s called an R-Zone. The clunky headset made by Tiger Electronics in 1995 is about as attractive as an old pair of braces in the days before Invisalign. It doesn’t give directions as well as Google Maps, either. Though the video was only uploaded yesterday, more than 19,000 people have … [Read more...]

Google+ shares are more valuable to merchants than referrals from Twitter or Facebook, according to an analysis of $5 million worth of online purchases that came through the social commerce platform Addshoppers.com. While Facebook claims the highest percentage of social revenue overall (38.76 percent), a referral from Google+ is worth an average of $10.78, compared to a Facebook referral at $2.35 and a Twitter referral at $1.62. Email shares were the most valuable at $17.93. Google+ users are most likely to share electronics, the researchers found. The average order values, however, were highest on Tumblr, where popular categories include apparel and … [Read more...]

Pandora has partnered with Facebook to bring personal recommendations from the music streaming service to users’ Timelines, the companies announced today. Pandora listeners typically amble through a stream of songs that are served up by an algorithm instead of a human DJ — a system that works well for Pandora’s 200 million registered users around the world. Now Pandora has extended the discovery process to Facebook through an integration with the social network’s Open Graph, which connects people by their interests. Although Facebook has worked with Pandora in the past, and other services like Rdio and Spotify are already … [Read more...]

Social media is a key factor in managing a brand’s online reputation, according to an analysis by MDG Advertising. Research shows that 92 percent of consumers trust the brand recommendations they receive from friends and family, and that 70 percent also value other consumers’s opinions online. Combining case studies, statistics, and practical advice, this infographic illustrates the need for brands to incorporate social media into their reputation management strategies. … [Read more...]

Sophie helps a guest check her bags. I spent the summer of 2008 living in a youth hostel in the middle of Times Square, where an old classmate I had reconnected with on MySpace had filled his two-bedroom apartment with bunk beds. I shared a basement with a rotating cast of 14 tourists and two kittens while he slept in a loft space above the living room and his roommate took the other bedroom. The idea was ahead of its time — Airbnb, a site for listing short-term rentals of rooms or entire homes, emerged just a couple months later. In exchange for free room and board for the summer, I would help my host check the guests in, hand them their keys, … [Read more...]

This week, Yahoo got a much-needed dose of cool when the company announced its plans to acquire the blogging site Tumblr for $1.1 billion. In 2008, long before Tumblr CEO David Karp said “fuck yeah” to Yahoo, he told Mediabistro  in an interview about his plans for the startup, “I don’t think we aim to sell anything.” Read an excerpt from our 2008 “So What Do You Do?” interview with Karp below: Describe the ideal situation for Tumblr, five years out: What will be its key features and how many users will you have registered? How many will be on staff? In five years, I have absolutely no clue. Hopefully … [Read more...]

This week, Yahoo got a much-needed dose of cool when the company announced its plans to acquire the blogging site Tumblr for $1.1 billion. In 2008, long before Tumblr CEO David Karp said “fuck yeah” to Yahoo, he told Mediabistro  in an interview about his plans for the startup, “I don’t think we aim to sell anything.” Read an excerpt from our 2008 “So What Do You Do?” interview with Karp below: Describe the ideal situation for Tumblr, five years out: What will be its key features and how many users will you have registered? How many will be on staff? In five years, I have absolutely no clue. Hopefully … [Read more...]

Brooklynites love Brooklyn Bowl for its 16 bowling lanes, live concerts, cushy leather seats, fried chicken from Blue Ribbon, and selection of Brooklyn Brewery beers, but how does the rest of the world discover a remote corner of Williamsburg that’s big enough for a whole bowling alley? And how does the venue keep New Yorkers coming back for more? Social media. Founded in 2008, Brooklyn Bowl now has the most-followed Instagram profile of any venue in New York City (8,940 followers). In 2011, “Brooklyn Bowl” was the tenth most-searched Google keyword in the New York metropolitan area. Justin Bolognino, founder and creative director … [Read more...]

YouTube has announced the winners of its Next Vlogger competition: an elite group of video bloggers who inspire others while they sit in front of the camera and talk about everything from their latest hauls from the beauty supply store to the best uses for pineapples. The YouTube judges were looking to crown the next Philip DeFranco or iJustine, who are just two of the many talented vloggers who have made the format so popular on the video-sharing site. The judges found talent in the U.S., England, Ireland, and Australia who cover a broad spectrum of geekery, beauty, comedy, and other topics. And the winners … [Read more...]

No wonder Grumpy Cat is so grumpy: parents are now sharing more videos of their kids than of their cats, according to a survey of parents by Magisto.com and PlayScience global research firm. In fact, parents are three times more likely to shoot and share videos of their kids (27 percent) than they are of their pets (9 percent). Shooting a video does not always guarantee that it will be shared, the research showed. Overall, 60 percent of parents said they shoot at least three videos per month, while less than half (44 percent) say they share at least three videos per month. But 53 percent of parents said they shoot videos of their kids just so they … [Read more...]

People who watch entire seasons of television in one sitting are willing to share where they are in a series, but are careful of revealing spoilers, according to an analysis by social media research firm Fizziology. These binge viewers, as they’re called, showed very different behaviors for “House of Cards” than they are showing now for the upcoming season of “Arrested Development”:  two Netflix original series that viewers can watch at their own pace. Fizziology president and co-creator Ben Carlson recalled that during the plot-driven “House of Cards,” where “no one knew where anyone else was,” … [Read more...]

Pinterest is making its collection of images more informative with a new format for a select group of pins that show products, movies, and recipes, the company announced today. Instead of just showing a small, formless caption beneath the pin, the new format will include an extra compartment for details like ingredients and cook times on Recipe pins, prices and store locations for Product pins, and ratings and cast members for Movie pins. An icon beneath the picture will let users know when there’s more information. The details will appear when users click on the pin to enlarge it. For now, only a select group of 45 businesses and bloggers … [Read more...]

Yahoo has officially announced its plans to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion. Much like Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram in 2012, Yahoo’s latest purchase will bring the company a younger user base with the promise of more revenue. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said that she expects that Tumblr will give Yahoo’s traffic a 20-percent bump and could also expand Yahoo!’s audience by 50 percent to more than a billion visitors per month. The six-year-old blogging site is especially popular with a younger demographic – ”the youngest of any site of scale,” said Mayer in a press call. More than half the users … [Read more...]

For three elementary school teachers in San Francisco, Pinterest is a window into other classrooms – a virtual chalkboard where they can view lesson plans and fresh ideas from other educators without leaving their desks. “The uses are endless!” said Brianna Boedecker, who teaches 4th and 5th graders at Grattan Elementary school. Boedecker was planning her dream wedding on Pinterest when she discovered that she could get ideas for school projects there as well.She shared her find with her colleague Cate Walter, also 4th and 5th grader teacher, who has been in the business for 10 years. After a while, said Walter, “You get stuck … [Read more...]