Reuters team says, “Twitter Inc’s quarterly earnings and revenue blew past expectations, but its monthly average user number grew at its slowest pace since it went public in 2013, and its shares fell about 7 percent after hours. “We do not expect to see sustained meaningful growth in maus until we start to reach the mass market,” Chief Financial Officer Anthony Noto said, referring to monthly active users of the microblogging service. The company said on Tuesday it had 304 million core users in the second quarter, up from 302 million in the prior quarter. “This is... [...]

Anthony Carranza says, “It’s hard to believe that the pinnacle of video streaming, YouTube, recently turned ten years old. YouTube is the second largest search engine to no other than Google. It has more than one billion users that watch hundreds of millions of hours per day. This extraordinary revolution has provided tremendous opportunity; brands are experiencing growth, engagement and views that in turn offer opportunities to generate leads from this active audience online. A recent blog post titled “Top 100 Brands Report: Insight into Brand Content on YouTube” highlighted... [...]

Kimberly Truong says, “Windows 10, Microsoft’s highly-anticipated upgrade, both looks ahead and harks back to the good old days. The system includes revamped versions of older features, like a redesigned Start menu that includes your most-used apps and PC settings, along with a set of customizable live tiles for your apps. See also: Windows 10 review: A needed upgrade with missing pieces The upgrade is also equipped with a suite of new features, including Cortana, Microsoft’s personal assistant feature that can help manage your schedule and answer queries — even the silly... [...]

Michelle Beeson says, “Europe’s eBusiness professionals are increasingly focused on their digital presence, and with good reason. Digital touchpoints are feeding into almost every stage of the customer life-cycle. For many retailers over half of all online traffic comes from mobile devices, like smartphones – yet, smartphone conversion rates are considerably lower. Initially this may appear as a cause for concern. But Forrester’s updated European Cross-Channel Retail Sales Forecast sheds a different light on this phenomenon by quantifying the influence of digital touchpoints,... [...]

Adriana Lee says, “For all their rhetoric and idealism about changing the world, consumer-facing technologies have largely failed at least one major set of users: people with disabilities, a segment that represents roughly 1 in 5 people in the U.S. As the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) approaches, a new group has formed to champion the cause of development for accessibility. Several educators and tech companies have joined forces in an effort dubbed Teaching Accessibility. According to its website, the group aims to address the “lack of awareness and understanding... [...]

Jack Simpson says, “This article isn’t about Carlsberg the beer. It’s about Carlsberg the unbelievably successful marketing machine. Let’s take a look at some of Carlsberg’s best marketing efforts. Video content In its most popular YouTube video of all time, Carlsberg sets up a ‘friend test’ whereby people call one of their friends and pretend they’re short of money in a dodgy poker game to see if they’ll come to the rescue. Then the set explodes into an orgy of Carlsberg-branded euphoria, obviously”. Carlsberg: probably (some of) the best marketing in the world ‘Econsultancy’... [...]

Rahul Varshneya says, “Where do you start, with marketing, when you’re about to launch your product or service? This is possibly the most asked question when it comes to startup marketing, and one Guy Kawasaki once famously weighed in on, saying, “Sales fixes everything.” Certainly, in today’s context, that’s true: Sales is about driving inbound leads to your business. But Kawasaki also added this: “If you have more money than brains, you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing.” So, where should... [...]

Greg Finn says, “It was just under two years ago when the injection of Google+ into YouTube comments caused quite a controversy. This change required the use of a Google+ account to participate in conversations on Google products. A new announcement today is decentralizing Google+ for Google users and focusing back on a standard Google account. This move to force Google+ on users was widely criticized as a method to boost overall network numbers. The original argument for the integration was that it made life easier and more convenient for users. Welp, Google has now changed their mind: People... [...]

Zia Daniell Wigder says, “In last year’s global eCommerce predictions report, we wrote that in 2015, cross-border eCommerce would become “more seamless and less apparent to shoppers”. We’ve started to embark on this path: Today consumers around the world have access to growing selection of products as more retailers make their offerings available to shoppers in other countries. My colleague Michelle Beeson recently documented that cross-border sales in Europe alone will reach €40 billion by 2018. Retailers that haven’t yet started to ship cross-border—and those that... [...]

Niti Shah says, “In the world of email marketing, opens and clicks are everything, which means email marketers are always testing ways to improve these metrics. We’ll tweak subject lines, calls-to-action, images, headers, layout, link positioning, copy, length, tone, content … the list goes on and on. Through all of this testing, there’s one hard truth we’ve discovered: Aside from proper list segmentation, nothing boosts opens and clicks as well as an old school, plain-text email.  Here’s how we came to that conclusion. Beyond Deliverability The (relatively)... [...]