It was once a quaint music festival. Today, it’s arguably the most important tech, music, and film gathering in existence. It’s a big party. It’s a place where movers and shakers move and shake. It’s SXSW and it’s going to be huge once again. If you’re going to SXSWi, we want to hear from you. Sure, the music and film parts are important, too, but it’s the interactive portion of SXSW that truly interests us. This is where the likes of Google and Facebook engage with their users. It’s the venue where politicians can share a stage with startup giants. Something big has been coming out of SXSW every year for…

If you’re going to spread your message on Twitter, it’s best to avoid the Viagra technique. That’s the message coming from capitol hill as Congressman Steve Stockman (R-TX) released evidence in a press release that he is being spammed by twitterbots. “Obama’s anti-gun campaign is a fraud,” Stockman said in the release. “Obama’s anti-gun activists are trying to defraud Congress using the same scam that sells ‘male enhancement pills.’  Every day thousands of Americans call, write and email the Capitol opposing Obama’s anti-gun schemes.  Obama’s supporters are panicking…

Some Minecraft faithful might view the video below as an abomination, hurtling their beloved creation engine into the sordid depths of short-lived internet memes. Others will see it as a valiant use of the game to touch a mainstream world with exposure that can only help the Minecraft world grow larger by riding the coattails of the popular Harlem Shake viral video family. Most will watch the 30-second clip and spend even less time than that thinking about it. Regardless of where you fall on the Minecraft Harlem Shake desecration chart, you can appreciate the effort to make it a reality. Or, you…

They say you learn something new every day. I learned something about Pinterest the other day that blew my mind a little. Users like links. This might seem like a no-brainer to some, but it goes against what I’ve learned in my years on the various social networks. On most networks, there are images and there are links. Images normally perform the best across the board. Links, on the other hand, do not. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ all prefer images over links. It isn’t just the algorithms on Facebook and Google+, it’s also the overall community sentiment on all three, including Twitter. Pinterest…

Nobody wants to get hacked. The very concept is terrifying to many and at the least a personal violation to most. Despite our desires, hacking happens every day. It’s quickly becoming the most widespread crime in the world as far as reach with over half a billion victims last year. Sometimes there are no ways to completely prevent getting hacked, but there are definitely ways to make it harder. This infographic from BotRevolt comes to us from Visually and breaks down some basic information about hacking. * * * “Hacking” image courtesy of Shutterstock.  …

In one sentence, the advice that business owners and marketers need to hear is this: “Everything on your Facebook page should be centered around the real world.” No, I don’t mean the reality TV show that launched it all in 1992. When The Real World launched on MTV 27 seasons ago (yes, it’s still going strong in case you weren’t aware), it set in motion a genre of television that many people claim to hate but that still gets millions of viewers every day. Today, the day to day version of “the real world of marketing on Facebook” should take one concept from the original show intro: “…start getting real.”…

When Google first announced the Glass Project nearly a year ago, it looked like a nice enhancement to life that puts many of the powers of smartphones into the handsfree realm of wearable tech. Using voice commands and visual displays in the top right corner of view, the dream was to connect the world through the web in an intuitive interface that combined form and function beautifully. After watching the video below, Google Glass now appears to be the most dangerous new technology coming available. I’m only half kidding. This technology may be so cool, so useful, so distracting, that the funny…

The changes are cosmetic and symbolic. They’re also the most important changes that have happened to the Yahoo! homepage ever because of what they mean. This is CEO Marissa Mayer’s Yahoo! whether you notice it or not. The functionality on both the PC side as well as the mobile side are improved. It’s dramatic in that it’s quite different from the old look but not so much that people have an opportunity to complain. The same basic design is there. This is important because wholesale changes to look, feel, and functionality have proven disastrous for most who try it and Yahoo! doesn’t have a popularity…

Twitter is still the most used social network by businesses. This surprises some, but the latest statistics showed that 77% of businesses were on Twitter versus 74% on Facebook. It’s not a big difference, but it’s still at least a little surprising to many who view Facebook as the big social network and Twitter as the other guy in the field. Twitter is easier. It requires less time. It’s more about communication than popularity and there are no algorithms that can make your efforts meaningless like they can on Twitter. I’m not suggesting that businesses should be on Twitter and not Facebook. On the…

“Never” is a bold word. It is absolute and endless. To say that something can never happen is one of the most ignorant things that someone can say (or blog) in public. Thankfully, I tempered my statement with the word, “may”. “Impossible” is word that is similar to “never”. I’ll invoke it now: it isn’t impossible for social media to continue in one form or another indefinitely because of its nature. As long as there are humans, there’s a good chance that there will be some variation of social media. It’s a hard cat to put back in the bag. The folks over at Dashburst put together a graphic that explains five…