When bad online reviews turn good
A five-star rating might not be all it’s cracked up to be in the world of online reviews – in fact, a four-star rating could be better for product sales in the long run. If that sounds strange, think about what you are looking for when you read online reviews of a product with a… more »
Facebook Lifestage app vs. Snapchat
Facebook launches Lifestage app for school teens In a constant attempt to innovate and gain a younger audience, Facebook is directly taking on Snapchat by launching a video-sharing mobile app aimed at teenagers. Those who use the Lifestage app can create profiles based on shared pictures and videos according to their feelings, likes and dislikes…. more »
Pay-By-Selfie? Amazon files patent for new payment system
The rise of the selfie appears unstoppable. The online retailer Amazon first patented one-click purchasing; now they have gone one step further by submitting a patent application for payments by selfies. The patent application shows that while many approaches rely on a password to be entered for user authentication, these passwords can be taken or… more »
Google Trends reveals the gold standard of Rio 2016 searches
Google Trends have been tweeting some of the latest search trends amid the ongoing sporting events of the Rio 2016 Summer Olympic Games. With Team GB scooping medals in the cycling and the rowing, related searches surged in popularity as viewers at home checked on all manner of topics. In cycling-related searches, most people wanted… more »
Premier League club’s marketing appeal
The 2016/2017 Premier League football season is vastly approaching and many of our favourite teams have new commercial sponsors and partners. We decided to have a look at the colossal amount of money these global brands spend on such marketing activity. Just last week Richard Branson’s Virgin Money teamed up with Manchester United as their… more »
To mark World Emoji Day, new emojis are released to break gender stereotypes!
July 17th was World Emoji Day, marking a global celebration of the emoticon-style icons that have become an online language in their own right. Emojis fly in the face of plain-text web design, turning entire words into a single icon, such as a national flag to represent a country name, or a tiny globe in… more »
Are dating apps the ultimate platform for marketing?
For obvious reasons, you’d expect users to be more focused on finding a dishy date rather than clicking on and engaging with ads, right? As busy schedules and other commitments flourish, often people’s love lives suffer, resulting in online dating’s popularity growing rapidly. Brands have seen this as an opportunity to introduce themselves into… more »
Pokémon Go craze hits the UK!
After a delay due to unexpected demand, the wildly popular app Pokémon Go can now be downloaded in the UK. Over 15 million people have downloaded the app since its launch last weekend – such huge volumes caused the servers to crash – but you can now relax, it’s finally here! If you’re not familiar… more »
How to drive ROI from your digital marketing
Digital marketing is a world of three-letter acronyms – SEO and PPC are the first two that spring to mind – but in business the acronym ROI should rule your decision-making. It is only worth making an investment into your marketing if it will drive a positive return for you in the long run, either… more »
Oculus lifts headset DRM restrictions
Virtual reality company Oculus has removed DRM (Digital Content Management) that disallowed individuals to play games made for its Rift headset on an adversary gadget. When the locks were added, VR fans developed a small application called Revive that let individuals move or port Oculus protected software on to the HTC Vive made by HTC… more »
Brexit: The Story in Search
The nation went to the polling stations on June 23rd, but it was not until the morning of June 24th that the results began to come in – and Google Trends highlighted some of the immediate effects this had on people’s search behaviour. First of all, at 3:44am, long before the Leave victory was confirmed,… more »
Your phone is getting locked up at Alica Keys’ Gigs
Musicians are getting tired of mobile phones zapping the atmosphere of their shows, especially Alica Keys. Yondr thinks they’ve found the solution to ‘free people’ from their mobile phones. The small start-up company from San Francisco have created a lockable case, into which guests are required to place their mobile phones to create phone-free zones…. more »
Apple WWDC 16 Highlights
Apple’s annual WWDC event was last night and some of us from the office eagerly watched to see what the tech giant has in store for us this year, as usual they haven’t disappointed. We’ll quickly run over some of our top highlights from this year’s event. Apple Pay Since Apple Pay was released back… more »
France Launches Terror Attack APP Ahead of Euros 2016
The French government has launched an app ahead of the Euro 2016 Tournament that will alert users to a possible terror attack and provide them with useful information on how to stay safe. The app that was announced by the French Interior Ministry on Wednesday 8th 2016 is called SAIP (Système d’alerte et d’information des… more »
Twitter could be about to get noisy
Major changes to Twitter are often met with dismay from long-time users, who are typically quite resistant to change, and the latest announcements from the social network have continued that trend. Over the past few years, certain elements have gradually been moved outside of the standard 140-character limit, although the core functionality of the site… more »
Instagram go flat-out
Instagram could be facing more challenges than most in the social media segment, as their target market is being eroded from all sides. Twitter and Facebook have both launched image ‘alt text’ capabilities in different ways recently, helping to make their own images more search visible, while Instagram still relies largely on plain text captions… more »
Google leads the way with HTTPS for Blogger
Google have revealed that all Blogger-hosted blogs will use a secure HTTPS connection in future, with the transition due to be completed by early May. HTTPS means any data sent by the website to the user’s computer, or vice versa, is encrypted so that sensitive information like credit card numbers cannot be stolen simply by… more »
Facebook unveils AI image alt text
Image alt text was one of the very first places to get used for SEO, way back when marketers realised the text on their pages could be important in determining their rank in the search results. More recently, correctly worded image alt text became significant in Google Images searches, allowing the search engine to understand… more »
Twitter adds search-visible image alt text
Twitter recently announced the addition of ‘alt text’ image descriptions to its official Android and iOS apps, allowing users to add a plain text description to the images they tweet as an accessibility feature. Image Descriptions can be switched on under Accessibility in users’ account settings in the newest versions of the app on compatible… more »
Introducing accelerated mobile pages (AMPs)
We all know the mobile web is continuing to rise in importance all the time, bringing new opportunities in local SEO and in better ranking for mobile-friendly websites. But if you use the internet via a mobile device regularly, you’ll know that a large part of what’s already out there is far from mobile-friendly, whether… more »
