Digital Media Madness

5 things I learned playing beach volleyball that changed my professional life

Volleyball is my favorite team sport. I simply love it. I’ve been playing indoor volleyball for almost 22 years (dang!) and shortly after I moved from Italy to California 5 years ago, I decided to focus more on beach volleyball. Learning how to play this sport, that is extremely different from indoor, has been an amazing journey. Plus, many of the things I learned really changed the way I…

As UX professionals, it’s important that we stay on top of our game when crafting web and mobile experiences for people to enjoy. That means we have to keep our eyes peeled at every opportunity.

But user experience design is more than just knowing the latest trends; having a virtual toolbelt of reliable and useful templates, tools and inspiration can help any UX designer work better and become…

How 5 Tech Giants Make Their Billions [Infographic]

Last year, Visualcapitalist published a chart showing that tech companies have displaced traditional blue chip companies like Exxon Mobil and Walmart as the most valuable companies in the world.

Here are the latest market valuations for those same five companies:

Rank Company Market Cap (Billions, as of May 11, 2017) Primary Revenue Driver #1 Apple $804 Hardware #2 Alphabet $651 Advertising #3…

Consumers willing to share Personal Data for Deals and better Customer Service

Consumer surveys have repeatedly shown the public’s ambivalence about digital privacy. When there’s a clear value exchange or concrete reason for information sharing, consumers will do it — but typically not without some hesitation.

A new surveyby YouGov, conducted for [24]7 in March, asked more than 1,000 US adults about their feelings on a range of customer-experience issues tied to…

Snapchat and Instagram Stories will disrupt Social Customer Care in 2017

Customer Serviceis undergoing a major evolution, with online communication moving away from private, anonymous, one-to-one channels toward public one-to-many channels that are mobile, social, and attached to real identity. In brief, social media is changing the entire business of customer service, posing great challenges and presenting new opportunities for brands. In the midst of this seismic…

How much do Influencers get paid?

Since January, more than 200,000 posts per month on Instagram, a picture-sharing app owned by Facebook, have been tagged with “#ad”, “#sp” or “#sponsored”, according to Captiv8, an analytics platform that connects brands to social media “influencers”. Hiring such influencers allows companies to reach a vast network of potential customers: the soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo has a combined…

The Intricate Anatomy Of UX Design [Infographic]

We toss around the term “user experience” (UX) a lot, mostly as a shorthand for something like “where industrial design meets interface design.” But to be perfectly honest, that tendency does this branch of design very little justice.

The Disciplines of User Experience Design is a mega Venn diagram by Dan Saffer (given a pretty makeover by Thomas Gläser) that explores all of the overlap between…

The Dark Social: see no evil, but learn to Trust and Measure

You may or may not have heard of ‘dark social’, but I can guarantee if you use social media, you will have created ‘dark social’ visits. That is, if you have ever seen an interesting news story and grabbed the link and sent it to a friend on Facebook Messenger, or texted your mum asking if she still wants those tickets to see Mumford & Sons for her birthday and included a link to the venue’s…

77 New Emojii! No condom, but get ready for arm-taking selfie, avocado and pancakes

Be ready to update your social media post!

Unicode Consortium released 77 new emojis, including the highly anticipated avocado emoji, two strips of bacon, a (very topical) gorilla and an arm taking a selfie. Also included a handshake, pancakes, a green salad and a drooling face.

However, the new emojis doesn’t include a condom, as Durex petitioned for in an effort to promote safe sex.

See all the…

Define your Online Video Strategy: Facebook Vs. YouTube

If it were five years in the future, would you be reading this article or would you be watching it? As online video continues its inimitable rise, it’s an interesting question to ponder.

Just take a moment to read these statements:

By 2017, video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic, according to Cisco.

If a picture paints 1,000 words then one minute of video is worth 1.8…

Why do people uninstall apps?

Why Do People Uninstall Apps? Well according to ITR, a company that specialises in translation and localization services for software applications, the most overwhelming reason for uninstalling apps is that they take up too much space!

The infographic covers:

how long we keep apps for

why apps are being uninstalled

the 8 most common design mistakes

the difference between the Apple store and…

Mobile Browser has the reach, Apps have the engagement. So, who’s winning?

Last month, comScore released its Mobile App Report (see this amazing article by Marketing Land). The report contained many interesting findings, but its big takeaway was this:

There’s a divergence between reach and engagement.

The desktop and mobile Web have much greater audience.

Consumers spend the majority of their mobile time with a very few heavily used apps.

As the chart below indicates,…

The Science of Instagram

If you want to see data like this about your account specifically, check out the Instagram analytics tool released by Dan Zarella: PicStats.com

I do believe the story of the present and near-future of social media is visual content. From the impact of images and video on Facebook and Twitter to the new crop of media-centric social platforms like Instagram and Pinterest, it’s clear that inbound…

6 New Facebook Features for Business Pages

Thanks to Social Media Examiner for this amazing article!

#1: Encourage Your Fans to Use the See First Option

Facebook now allows people to customize their news feed to prioritize updates from particular friends, groups and pages. This is great news for pages with good content, so fans can prioritize your posts.

Educate your audience on how to select to see your posts first in their news feed.…

Parents use a variety of social network sites, with Facebook being the most popular. Usage rates for social media are similar to those of non-parents.

Fully 91% of parents1 in this survey use the internet. This is significantly higher than rates seen in the general adult population 2and among those adults who are not parents.

Among these internet-using parents, social media use across a variety…