Facebook posts made by retail brands during the overnight hours of 8 PM to 7 AM drive 20% more user engagement, in terms of like and comment rates, than posts made between 8 AM and 7 PM, according to a new report from Buddy Media. It is the latest of a series – a large, ever-expanding series – of data points offered up to the marketing industry about the best time to send a campaign.
Boston Globe has launched a snazzy new website, in an attempt to create a more immersive news-reading experience, on a platform that appropriately features long-format journalism and better promotes a subscription-based business model. That’s all lovely for readers, but the site also has a modern, adaptive design that will make many web designers swoon (or go green with envy).
Load up the site and drag the window about; note how the newspapery and readable design effortlessly reworks its columns, and how the navigation works in its narrowest form. Lovely. We wanted to find out more, so quizzed some of the people behind the build: Filament Group’s partner Patty Toland and two designer/developers, Scott Jehl and Mat Marquis.
via Behind Boston Globe’s responsive layout | News | .net magazine.
Google is giving preference to single-page versions of a web page as opposed to component pages that contain only a portion of the information, forcing the user to click to “next” and load another URL.
Paginated content, in other words, can be counted as another factor it likely considers in search rankings.
via Google’s Gripe Against Paginated Content – MarketingVOX.
The keyword “dollars off” in a retail offer-related Facebook post provides the highest user engagement — 55% higher than average — out of 10 popular choices, according to a September 2011 report from Buddy Media. And ubiquitous “coupon” ? It had an engagement 39% above average.
On the other end of the spectrum, seemingly popular keywords, such as “sale”, “save,” “deal,” “% off” and “bargain” have lower-than-average engagement rates – 30% lower in the case of “sale.”
Buddy Media, which has produced a comprehensive report on what works and doesn’t on Facbook, is hardly the first to weigh in on the subject of effective words on social media.
Oregon senior citizens Bruce and Esther Huffman were playing with their new laptop and trying to figure out how to use its camera function. They ended up inadvertently making a video that’s been watched more than 4 million times since a granddaughter put it on YouTube last month.
He sings, burps and makes faces — and gets a little frisky. She keeps trying to find out how the dang thing works.
via Haven’t Seen The ‘Webcam 101 For Seniors’ Video Yet? Here It Is : The Two-Way : NPR.
Hard drives are getting bigger and faster every year, but they’re just barely keeping pace with the rate at which our data are expanding. A new service called Bitcasa wants to be the last hard drive you ever need, by offering seamless and infinite (infinite!) cloud-based storage for all of your data.
Bitcasa is a simple concept: a little piece of software lives on your computer and creates a virtual drive by connecting to Bitcasa’s servers. Every time you save something to that drive, it goes off to live in the cloud, and you never run out of drive space. Bitcasa will figure out what files you use most often and keep them local for fast access, but in general, you’re simply not storing any data on your computer.
via New cloud service gives you ‘infinite’ HD space for $10/mo | DVICE.
Today Google launched the beginnings of an API for the company’s Google+ social network.
APIs allow outside developers to connect with and build applications on top of web services like Facebook, Twitter and now Google+. In fact much of the success of Twitter and Facebook is a result of both services’ developer APIs. If Google+ is to have any hope of catching its competitors it needs a strong API.
via Google Rolls Out a Developer API for Google+ | Webmonkey | Wired.com.
Facebook news feed updates by both users and Pages display a “Share” button that lets users repost that update to their friends. Updates that have been reposted at least once display a count of how many times they’ve been reposted next to a link labeled “View Shares”. This link helps posts stand out in the feed and indicates to your audience that other users thought the update was important and its therefore worth reading, clicking or reposting. Its important for you to solicit Shares of your updates so they receive this distinction.
Here we’ll walk-through how the View Shares link works, and provide strategies for how you can attain Shares and the benefits they bring for your business.
via How to Get Users to Repost Your Facebook Page’s News Feed Posts Through the Share Button.
This week we profile the top 10 podcasts for web designers and developers that you have nominated in the .net Awards 2011. Which one’s your favourite show?
Whether video or audio, you have nominated 10 podcasts in the .net Awards 2011 that cover the subjects that web designers and developers are passionate about with energy, enthusiasm and authority. But only one of them can be our Podcast of the Year. Who is it going to be?
Our shortlist consists of some heavyweight long-running shows, but there’s also a few new names.
via .net Awards 2011: top 10 podcasts | Feature | .net magazine.
Designing a great user interface can be a challenge, even for the most seasoned designer. Countless factors need to be taken into consideration and the difference between a good UI and a great one often boils down to paying close attention to the smallest details.
When undertaking such an important and often complex task, it’s helpful to have some handy resources for both education and inspiration. We’ve put together a list of some of our favorites below. Since we can only scratch the surface of the wide variety of UI design resources available, we invite you to share yours in the comments.