The latest post on ‘ReadWrite’ is titled “PayPal’s David Marcus Has A Plan—And It’s So Money 3.0”. Owen Thomas says, “In one salty word, PayPal president David Marcus summed up how he’s changing a company whose reputation for innovation and customer service had taken a dive before he took over. Executives who say they don’t have time to respond to customers on social media? “It’s bullshit,” Marcus told me on stage at our latest ReadWriteMix event in San Francisco on Tuesday evening. “If you lead a company, you’re the master of your calendar. You need... [...]

The latest post on ‘ReadWrite’ is titled “Samsung Is Still King Of Mobile Mountain”. Dan Rowinski says, “The final 2013 numbers are in and Samsung once again reigns supreme over the mobile ecosystem. According to research firm IDC, Samsung’s shotgun strategy of developing dozens of smartphones across a variety of size and price points led to 313.9 million smartphone shipments, or 31.3% of the global smartphone market share in 2013. Apple was second with less than half of Samsung’s total volume, shipping 153.4 million iPhones for 15.3% of the global market share. “Apple... [...]

The latest article on ‘The Forrester Blog’ is titled “China’s Online Retail Sales Passed $300 Billion in 2013”. Kelland Willis says, “We recently published an online retail forecast for Asia Pacific, followed by an online forecast specific to China. The numbers are staggering! To give you an indication of the speed at which eCommerce is taking off in China, consider that recent figures from the State Post Bureau of China indicate that more than 6 billion packages were shipped in the first three quarters of 2013 – an increase of 61% from the same period in 2012. Factors contributing... [...]

The latest post on ‘ReadWrite’ is titled “Is Pinterest With GIFs A Recipe For Tackiness?”. Lauren Orsini says, “Pinterest, the last bastion of good taste in social media, is opening the floodgates to animated GIFs. In the company’s announcement, which already looks like a Buzzfeed listicle, Pinterest on Thursday demonstrated the wide range of wacky moving images now available to pinners, from dancing Beyoncé to a pixelated scene from Star Wars. A Pinterest spokesperson told ReadWrite that while Pinterest has been testing the feature for a little while now, 100% of pinners... [...]

The latest post on ‘ReadWrite’ is titled “Facebook Is About To Get More Friendly—Just Not To Brands”. Selena Larson says, “You’re going to start seeing a lot fewer text-only Facebook updates from big companies and other brands—and more from your friends—as a result of the social network’s latest update to its newsfeed algorithm. When Facebook tested this newsfeed tweak and displayed users more updates from their friends, they posted more of their own. Although exactly how much isn’t clear. The company said that users in the test wrote an average of nine... [...]

The latest article on ‘The Forrester Blog’ is titled “B2B Marketers Expect Bigger 2014 Budgets: How Will You Spend It Wisely?”. Laura Ramos says, “Sound the fanfare!  B2B marketing budgets are on the rise! Today, Forrester published results from a joint study with the Business Marketing Association (BMA) that looks at CMO-level expectations for overall program budgets, the composition of the 2014 marketing mix, and spending related to technology and innovation. BMA members may download a complimentary copy here. In this research (subscription required), we found that, on average, B2B marketers... [...]

The latest post on ‘ReadWrite’ is titled “How To Manage A Sales Team In The Era Of Bring Your Own Everything”. Bernard Lunn says, “Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is a well-defined management issue by now. But management is only just starting to adapt to a world where you “bring your own everything.” Choosing the right mobile devices for salespeople is not so much of an issue now that HTML5 has matured to a point where it is perfectly acceptable for most business apps. It’s the app that matters, not the device. Here’s what I mean: 1. Bring your own social... [...]

The latest ‘Econsultancy’ blog post is titled “January: the ideal time for an AdWords spring clean”. Shane Jones says, “If you manage your own Google AdWords account but the very thought of logging in and performing tweaks sends shivers down your spine, I’ve put together a really simple five point checklist for you. There’s no better time to spring clean your AdWords account than the dawn of a New Year – so what are you waiting for? An AdWords campaign is never complete. The most successful campaigns are chopped and changed regularly in order to wring out every... [...]

The latest article on ‘The Forrester Blog’ is titled “Native Advertising: Worth Pursuing”. Ryan Skinner says, “Forrester analysts are encouraged to “make the call” and here’s a call that is sure to invite some heated disagreement (native advertising has a way of doing that). Today my report about native advertising came out and, if I had to bottle up the recommendation of the entire report in a two-word slogan, this would be it: Worth pursuing. That’s not “pour all your advertising dollars into it”, “go hog wild!” or any variant on that theme. By “worth pursuing”,... [...]

The latest ‘Econsultancy’ blog post is titled “Five digital analytics tips for SMBs”. Daniel Waisberg says, “The phrase of the day is ‘Big Data‘, everyone talks about how it can boost your business and make you a successful organization. But how can big data help a small business? Can you still use it to drive decisions and optimize your business? The answer is: yes you can! In this post I will provide a few tips that can help SMBs to get up and running with data analytics”. There is still a lot of confusion among marketers and publishers about what... [...]