Melih Oztalay says, “LinkedIn groups are for professionals in the same industry or with similar interests to dialogue, share information, learn from each other, establish themselves as subject matter experts, and much more. Group members can share experiences, business knowledge, interests, and ideas with a broad variety of individuals from around the world. This is the fifth installment of my 5-part series on using LinkedIn for your local business. The previous installments were “Using LinkedIn to Attract Consumers, Prospects,” “Using LinkedIn Company Pages for your Local Business,” “Using... [...]

Selena Larson says, “Facebook wants to make it easier for you to buy things. On Thursday, the company announced it’s testing a new way for people to buy stuff through ads and page posts with a new buy button, allowing users to purchase products and services without leaving Facebook. The company said in a blog post that the test is limited to “a few small and medium-sized businesses in the U.S.” It’s not the first time Facebook has tried to tackle payments. It has launched and killed a number of features wanting your money, including both virtualand physical gift shops that let you... [...]

Selena Larson says, “Twitter wants to make it as easy to buy as it is to tweet. On Tuesday, the company announced the acquisition of CardSpring, a payments startup that makes it easy for developers to add payment services to apps and products. The social media company has tried to capitalize on e-commerce with tweet-to-buy initiatives that have yet to gain visible steam. The acquisition of CardSpring will add experts to Twitter’s staff who have particular experience helping developers add payments features. “The CardSpring team and the technology they’ve built are a great fit... [...]

Matt Asay says, “No one doubts anymore that Amazon Web Services is a big deal. But few appreciate just how unprecedented its growth has been. In fact, no other software business in history has grown as fast past the billion-dollar mark as AWS, as Businessweek’s Ashlee Vance points out. Such growth is particularly astounding given the doubts Amazon has had to overcome relative to security, performance and more. Today those concerns seem puny compared to the overarching convenience AWS provides developers“. Amazon’s Cloud Is The Fastest Growing Software Business In History ReadWrite  [...]

Helen A. S. Popkin says, “Good news, everybody who meant to share their feelings about the latest net neutrality proposal from the feds, but just never found the time! The 700,000-plus comments pouring in from your fellow lollygaggers and sundry netizens who perhaps had more stuff to say crashed the FCC’s quaint old-timey infrastructure, and now the deadline’s been extended. “Not surprisingly, we have seen an overwhelming surge in traffic in our website that is making it difficult for many people to file comments through our Electronic Filing System,” the FCC said in a statement“. FCC’s... [...]

Jason Del Rey says, “As Kara Swisher reported yesterday, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong would love to merge with Yahoo, but Marissa Mayer does not “get” the deal. Today, at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference, Yahoo M&A chief Jackie Reses acknowledged as much, shooting down the possibility of a deal between the two legacy Internet media companies. Asked in a panel discussion whether AOL would be purchased in the next two years, Reses responded, “Not by us.”“. Yahoo Won’t Buy AOL, Yahoo M&A Chief Says Re/code  [...]

Melissa Mackey says, “For local businesses, being found online can be challenging. Advertising on a national scale, with Google Adwords, for example, doesn’t make sense when your customers are local. Many businesses long for the simplicity of the Yellow Pages of days gone by. Online directories are today’s equivalent of the Yellow Pages. In fact, the Yellow Pages has an online directory, but there are a lot of online directories out there besides Yellow Pages. HubSpot lists 50 of them here. So how does a local business get listed on these directories? Your first thought might be to visit... [...]

Helen A. S. Popkin says, “In lieu of enforceable net neutrality rules—which don’t yet exist—the Internet Association posted on Monday a handy infographic on what such rules about managing Internet traffic might look like on paper. At least in the opinion of the Internet Association, anyway. It’s part of the Silicon Valley lobby group’s campaign to make the FCC issue rules that will keep cable companies and mobile providers from interfering with network traffic. Facebook, Google, Amazon, eBay, Netflix and the other three dozen Web companies which make up the Internet Association all... [...]

Owen Thomas says, “Every morning, my phone fills up with notification badges—a dozen little inboxes asking to be cleared before I even get to my email. Dutifully or obsessively, I open them all as I walk my dog. There’s a special pleasure I take in swiping through LinkedIn Contacts, a standalone app from the professional network. Job changes, work anniversaries, and mentions in news articles add up to a customized newsletter about people I know through my world of work. LinkedIn is doubling down on this aspect of its Contacts app for iPhones, and it’s even renaming the app LinkedIn... [...]

Peter Minnium says, “Standard ad formats are the backbone of the digital advertising industry, having driven the medium’s growth from nil in the early 1990s to over $40 billion in 2013. They are essential to delivering the scale needed by national advertisers. The demands placed on digital ad standards have increased exponentially since their inception, fueled by the rapid increase in bandwidth, device proliferation, and user expectations. The next generation of standards must work for different ad types (e.g., brand vs. directresponse) in a world where content is fluid across screens,... [...]