Twitter

• On March 21^st, Twitter turned 7 years old, and announced that they have more than 200 million active users and 400 million tweets sent every year. Check out Twitter’s celebratory YouTube video for more stats.

• Speaking of videos, Twitter’s GIF-like looping video platform Vine, which allows users to embed videos in their tweets, was announced.
• Twitter introduced new targeting features and more detailed analytics for small business and advertisers. Businesses can now target users that follow a specific @username as well as choose from a list of 350 categories. In addition, advertisers can target specific platforms and devices.

Google+

• Google+ focused on improving the user experience related to images. Users can now use animated GIFs as their profile picture, something usually prohibited on social networks.
• In addition, Google+ added photo editing and filter functionality to its mobile application.
• Other new features enabled easier content sharing and easier community management right from the mobile application.

YouTube

•  Kicking off March, YouTube rolled out its new design, One Channel, which simplifies the previous multiple layouts YouTube offered to provide one clear view that looks better on all browsers and devices.

• According to their blog, YouTube hit one billion monthly users. What does this look like? Well they told us in their blog:
  • Nearly one out of every two people on the Internet visits YouTube.
  • Monthly viewership is the equivalent of roughly ten Super Bowl audiences.
  • If YouTube were a country, we’d be the third largest in the world after China and India.
  • PSY and Madonna would have to repeat their Madison Square Garden performance in front of a packed house 200,000 more times. That’s a lot of Gangnam Style!
  • Lastly, YouTube searches are now available on Google Trends, allowing marketers to explore trends on popular YouTube-related search queries.

LinkedIn

• According to LinkedIn, 5.7 billion professionally-oriented searches were done last year, which led them to introduce new internal search features, including auto-complete, suggested searches, a smarter query intent algorithm, advanced search and automated alerts.  More information on “Smarter LinkedIn Search can be seen here:
  
  Smarter LinkedIn Search from LinkedIn

  Pinterest

  • Pinterest unveiled their new brand makeover with a cleaner design and new features.  These new features allow for new ways to discover pins via “Pins from the same source” and “People who pinned this also pinned.” The new look can be found on the Pinterest Blog.
  • Pinterest also introduced an analytics platform in March allowing site owners to track engagement on their boards.

  What’s new at Catalyst?

  • Catalyst had two speakers at SES NY. Dan Cristo, Director of SEO Innovation, spoke about Activating the Social Search Dynamic and Clayburn Griffin, Organic Search Director, spoke about Facebook Graph Search.
  • Dan Cristo had an article titled “Social SEO Insights for the new Age of Search” published on Search Engine Journal.
  • Clayburn Griffin was featured on Website Magazine’s article “2013: Social SEO Required.”
  • Jason Corrigan, Organic Search Manager, published two articles this month. The first, “Twitter’s Vine App Will Make Social SEO Campaigns More Awesome,” was posted on Search Engine Journal, and the second,  “How User-Generated Content Powers Better social SEO Results,” was published on Social Media Explorer.
  • Andrea Caruso, Organic Search Manager, published an article on Smart Insights titled,  The Importance of Engagement in Social SEO.”
  • Matt Proctor, Organic Search Manager, wrote an article for Content Marketing Institute, “Creating Compelling Content using Social Media: 4 Steps.”
  • Ben Spiegel, Director of Organic Search, wrote an article titled “Optimizing Videos for Search: a Complete Guide” that was featured on ClickZ. In addition, Ben will be speaking at Interactivity Digital this May. Check out their Q&A interview with Ben.

  Have any questions about any of the above stories or think we missed something? Let us know in the comment section below. Also, be sure to check back in May for the next monthly recap!
  

  The post Internet Marketing News March Recap appeared first on Catalyst.

  ]]> http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/internet-marketing-news-march-recap/feed/ 0 http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/using-graph-search-survey-and-analysis/ http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/using-graph-search-survey-and-analysis/#comments Thu, 28 Mar 2013 13:15:54 +0000 Clayburn Griffin http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/?p=6501 Today I’m speaking at SES NY on the topic of Facebook Graph Search.  I’ve had access to Facebook’s new search engine for a couple of weeks, albeit on a dummy/test account.  Since Graph Search is not yet rolled out to everyone, there isn’t much insight into how it’s being used.  For my panel, I needed [...]

  The post Using Graph Search: Survey and Analysis #SESNY appeared first on Catalyst.

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  Today I’m speaking at SES NY on the topic of Facebook Graph Search.  I’ve had access to Facebook’s new search engine for a couple of weeks, albeit on a dummy/test account.  Since Graph Search is not yet rolled out to everyone, there isn’t much insight into how it’s being used.  For my panel, I needed to do some research.  So, I created a usage survey to better understand what people are doing with Facebook Graph Search.  Here are the results:

  Is Graph Search Useful?

  If Facebook is going to get people to use Graph Search, it ultimately has to be useful.

  Most people using Graph Search see it as useful.  And with this being the beta version, lacking several important search operators, its usefulness is expected to improve soon.  The data could be biased towards “useful” due to the absolute nature of the available choices.  Even if Graph Search isn’t extremely useful, it’s not necessarily useless.  So, we’ll want to take this in the context of the rest of our survey results.

  Graph Search Privacy Concerns

  Anytime Facebook does anything it causes a whole slew of privacy issues.  How are people feeling about privacy and Graph Search?

  

  Interestingly, privacy is not a huge concern.  It seems like the media has jumped on this more because it sounds like something to be afraid of, but regular people don’t seem all that concerned over privacy.  This is likely why Facebook and others still get away with apparent invasions of privacy without causing a mass exodus from their service. People are very comfortable being shown in Graph Search results, which is good news for Facebook.  In order to serve accurate results, Facebook will need as many willing participants as possible.  This survey suggests they shouldn’t have a problem finding them among their billion+ members. Only a third admitted to feeling less protected thanks to Graph Search.  Most felt that Graph Search didn’t change their privacy on Facebook, and some even feel more protected, perhaps because Graph Search allows users to easily check what they’re sharing with a simple query.

  How are people using Graph Search?

  

  An interesting takeaway here is that Graph Search is still predominantly a people search engine.  Facebook has always been a preferred people search engine.  So, while the advanced targeting options might make finding people easier, it hasn’t seemed to change people’s behavior too much; at least not yet.

  

   Are Graph Search results accurate?

  As part of the survey, I had people perform searches with a particular intent.  They responded with the query used and then responded whether or not the search returned accurate results.

  

  

  

  Accuracy is an issue.  Google was able to dominate the market because they provided the right results to the user.  They even had the “I’m feeling lucky” button to prove the point of how accurate their results were.  Graph Search is only accurate about 70% of the time.  That won’t cut it.

  Looking over the particular queries people used, the biggest reason for this might be human error.  People don’t seem to know how to use Graph Search yet.  Perhaps relational queries are too complex for the average user.  We’re used to a search engine where we just type what we want, like “pizza” for instance.  I type “pizza” into Google and it will give me nearby results along with their star ratings and addresses.  But in Graph Search I have to think about what would likely indicate a good pizza place.  The queries can get very complicated.

  The other issue at play could be the accuracy of social results in general.  Are results by democracy necessarily better?  The best pizza place may not be the one most of my friends like.  And if you’re looking to discover something new, then popularity won’t be the answer to that search.  Chances are you’ve already seen the movies most of your friends like.  You’ve probably even watched a few with them.

  

   

   

  Are people acting on Graph Search results?

  Search is a valuable channel to marketers because it brings conversions.  Will people be converting off of Graph Search?  Or will it just be a better way of stalking people online?

  

   

  Overall, people don’t seem to be acting off of their searches.  People are not using Graph Search to inform their behavior.  With Graph Search being new, this could simply be because people haven’t had the chance yet.  They’ve researched, they’ve experimented with it.  Perhaps these people will pick a movie or restaurant down the road because they came across it on Graph Search.  As of now, though, there isn’t a lot of connection between a Graph Search query and a real life conversion.

  Demographics

  Graph Search hasn’t rolled out to everyone yet, so it will be interesting to see what the reality of its use looks like as it becomes more widely available.  As of now, the results from my survey have been interesting and have given me some useful insights.

  Here’s the general demographic information reported from the survey.

  

  Have you had a chance to play around with Graph Search yet?  What are your thoughts?

  The post Using Graph Search: Survey and Analysis #SESNY appeared first on Catalyst.

  ]]> http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/using-graph-search-survey-and-analysis/feed/ 0 http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/google-consumer-surveys-can-help-to-answer-your-business-questions/ http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/google-consumer-surveys-can-help-to-answer-your-business-questions/#comments Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:31:10 +0000 Kirill Balchenkov http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/?p=6448 John Wanamaker, who some call the “pioneer of marketing,” used to say, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” He was describing how difficult it is to measure and keep track of costs spent to target a potential customer. Wanamaker had a point, it used [...]

  The post How Google Consumer Surveys Can Help to Answer Your Business Questions appeared first on Catalyst.

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  John Wanamaker, who some call the “pioneer of marketing,” used to say,

  “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

  He was describing how difficult it is to measure and keep track of costs spent to target a potential customer. Wanamaker had a point, it used to be very difficult indeed.  However, things have changed. Marketers have tools that help test future campaigns and project their outcome even before anything is invested in advertising. For example, let’s take a look at robust and flexible online consumer surveys powered by Google.

  What are Google Consumer Surveys?

  

  Google Consumer Surveys are fast, accurate and affordable online focus groups that allow large brands and small businesses to gather consumer feedback on various questions. Whether it’s testing a new logo or determining the highest price that someone is willing to pay for a product, you can get it through Google consumer surveys.

  Why Use Google Consumer Surveys?

  

  Last year, New York Times published an interesting article on brands’ consumer surveys, where the latter were criticized for being too lengthy and lacking focus.  Additionally, traditional consumer surveys can be costly, time consuming and hard to administer.  Even the screening process of a traditional survey requires a lot of time and effort. Google, on the other hand, provides a more straightforward and easy way to manage a survey.

  Google uses a screening question approach that works like a filter. The responder is typically asked one screening question to determine if they would qualify to answer actual survey questions.

  The questions are served by Google to people browsing the Web and trying to access premium content such as  news articles, videos, etc. that are not available for free. By answering a survey question, users get to view the content for free while the business gets their answers. According to Google, this one-question approach tends to result in higher response rates (15-20% vs. industry standard 0.1 – 2%) and more accurate answers, since long surveys can turn off a responder and be viewed as boring tests.

  How Do Google Consumer Surveys Work?

  So, let’s say that you’re a brand that wants to create a new design for a cereal box. You can figure out which box is the best by performing these three relatively easy steps.

  Step 1:

  First, pick an audience and set up a screening question. Screening questions allow you to capture the most relevant respondents for your actual survey questions.  The screening question should be simple and clear, for example, “Do you eat cereal?”  If the answer is “Yes” then the responder would move to the actual survey questions. And in this case, you obviously don’t want to hear from anyone who doesn’t eat cereal.

  In addition to the screening question, you can set up audience targeting, to further narrow down the results by age, gender and some geography.
  
  
  

  Step 2:

  

  Next, you have to select a question format. Since we are looking to compare new cereal box designs, we are going to select the side-by-side images format. Google allows many other additional options beyond the simple “yes” or “no” questions. You can get as complex and open-ended as you like.

  Once you’ve chosen the format and the question, you need to upload the box design images, so that your survey respondents can see them.

  Keep in mind that more than one question can be chosen, but each responder will only see one question at a time.

  

   Step 3:

  Now that your questions are finalized, the last step is to pick how many responses are required for each question and, if applicable, set the frequency. It will only cost .10$ per response if no screening question is chosen, and .50$ per response if you do use a screening question. You’ll also need to spend the minimum charge of $100 to get the survey out there.

  

  Now, here is the best part: reporting.  You will get access to all of the survey data in real time as soon the answers come in. In addition to the raw data, Google will provide you with some demographic and geographic information by using a DoubleClick cookie and the respondents IP addresses.

  In case you wonder what the dashboard looks like, here is an example of the aggregated data.

  

  With this dashboard you can sort the answers by gender, age, geography and income level. All the data can be exported and used for further examination.

  Google Consumer Surveys can be used by both large companies and small business owners.

  You can access some case studies for all different business types here: http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/case_studies

  For example, Lucky Brand, denim fashion company wanted to test offline vs. online consumer purchasing behavior. They used Google Surveys, and found that their customers are not as comfortable purchasing clothes online as Lucky Brands initially thought. Because of that research, Lucky Brand shifted their strategy to better assist their offline consumers, by directing them to the more appropriate outlet stores.

  As I mentioned, these consumer surveys are not just for the big guys. Kasa, a small Indian restaurant in San Francisco, used Google survey to test new menu items and marketing messaging for their food truck operations. By utilizing a screening question, they were able to target responders who liked Indian food. By using this targeted approach, they weeded out unqualified answers and captured the most relevant responses, which allowed them to make better decisions and serve their customers better.

  As you can see, there is a lot of potential with testing your ideas, products or marketing efforts with Google Consumer Surveys before you launch them. Once the product/service is up and running, you can start to use A/B testing to further improve customer experience, but that’s a topic for another article.

  The post How Google Consumer Surveys Can Help to Answer Your Business Questions appeared first on Catalyst.

  ]]> http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/google-consumer-surveys-can-help-to-answer-your-business-questions/feed/ 0 http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/behind-the-scenes-with-heather-frahm-queen-of-cpg/ http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/behind-the-scenes-with-heather-frahm-queen-of-cpg/#comments Tue, 12 Mar 2013 14:30:50 +0000 Rich Ezzo http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/?p=6404 This week I sat down with our President and co-founder, Heather Frahm, to chat about her recent cover page interview on the topic of Search and CPG in the Winter Issue of Search Marketing Standard. Here Heather talked about her experiences with the world’s largest marketers and their evolution through search adoption. With all of [...]

  The post Behind the Scenes with Heather Frahm, Queen of CPG appeared first on Catalyst.

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  This week I sat down with our President and co-founder, Heather Frahm, to chat about her recent cover page interview on the topic of Search and CPG in the Winter Issue of Search Marketing Standard. Here Heather talked about her experiences with the world’s largest marketers and their evolution through search adoption. With all of this experience, she is affectionately known as the “Queen of CPG” in many circles, so I wanted to hear firsthand what the monarch had to say.

  So, who coined you as the “Queen of CPG?”

  I’m not exactly sure, but I like them!

  Who do you feel would benefit most from reading your article?

  The obvious answer is certainly any brand manager of a CPG would benefit from reading this article. But I have found that companies that want to lean forward as an organization have their CMO’s as well as heads of digital strategies reading articles like this. The overall theme I have seen is that companies that integrate search throughout their marketing efforts are far more successful than those who don’t; and who better to tell that story to than CMOs?

  There’s a funny story you tell in the article about a Fortune 500 executive many years ago saying that search marketing is corrupt.  Should we assume he’s been fired by now?

  (Laughing) No Comment, it was a she.

  You touch on social SEO in the article, on a scale from 1-10, with 10 being the best, how would you rank most CPG companies with their social SEO strategies?

  I’d say 2.  In most cases, the social and search agencies are separate and operating in different silos.  Social agencies don’t have working knowledge of the algorithms and the positive impact the social agencies could have if we aligned on themes and worked together.  And search agencies need to capitalize on all this great social information to create the best search campaigns.  Finally, CPGs need to develop more socially enhanced content that is more conversational and less informational.

  Can you go more in depth about “Socially Enhanced Content?”

  Sure! I often explain the SEO progression in three steps. The first step, where many CPGs are today, is using search simply to provide information or how-to’s around their products. Many sites like this prominently display FAQs alongside their basic product pages. The second step is occasion related, a great opportunity for brands to utilize their social networks. Think of a brand like Pantene that can feature tips to keep your hair from frizzing during a large rainstorm in the northeast. The last step, where we are encouraging brands to enter, is localized content marketing. Brands need to position themselves as trusted advisors and friends of their consumers. So the same way many of Pantene’s loyalists are asking their friends and family about salon recommendations, Pantene can provide content around the best salons for dyed hair in Boston. For anyone who is interested in learning more about social SEO, be sure to check out Catalyst’s free eBook Social SEO Strategies: Mastering the Art of Social SEO.

  If you had a follow-up article to this, is there anything else you’d add to it?

  I mentioned the benefits of responsive design in the article, specific to mobile sites. However, I should have made the caveat that I was being specific to North America. Due to phone capability limitations, many brands don’t have the luxury of making responsive design standard across their global sites.

  This brings up a larger issue many CPG brands face- how to foster innovation on a global level. Brand Managers can meet the needs of their baseline consumer’s technology or break standardization and innovate in pockets. While it is much harder to manage, I do think brand managers need to combine scalability and standardization with innovation at the local level whenever possible.  

  The last thing I would add in a follow-up article would be the importance of Google+. In this very same edition, there is an article that takes an in-depth look at the growth of Google+ and why brands need to act now, which is actually written by one of our Search Managers, Matt Proctor. While many brands discount Google+ as a viable social network, they are overlooking the clear sign that it will change how consumer’s search in the very near future. I definitely recommend reading his article for more information.

  In keeping with the digital trend, we learned that this will be the final print edition for Search Marketing Standard. How do you feel about being the last one ever on their cover?

  Well, they’re going out with a bang!

  And that sounds like the perfect ending. Thank you, Heather.

  If you’d like to read the full article by Heather Frahm as well as an article by Matt Proctor, check out the Winter Issue of Search Marketing Standard.

  Do you have any questions for Heather Frahm or Matt Proctor? Let us know in the comments below.

  The post Behind the Scenes with Heather Frahm, Queen of CPG appeared first on Catalyst.

  ]]> http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/behind-the-scenes-with-heather-frahm-queen-of-cpg/feed/ 1 http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/seo-and-business-intelligence-tools/ http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/seo-and-business-intelligence-tools/#comments Thu, 07 Mar 2013 19:40:46 +0000 Ed Ng http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/?p=6385 Today, data analysis is a part of any SEO professional’s everyday life. Data collections are getting broader and more data is being collected and analyzed. Many SEOs are now considering business intelligence (BI) tools as an integral part of their optimization work. So how does Business Intelligence help SEO? We need to understand how data [...]

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  Today, data analysis is a part of any SEO professional’s everyday life. Data collections are getting broader and more data is being collected and analyzed. Many SEOs are now considering business intelligence (BI) tools as an integral part of their optimization work.

  So how does Business Intelligence help SEO?

  We need to understand how data analysis workflow typically evolves. When you’re working with a small website, analysis can be managed with a simple spreadsheet with formulas and pivot tables containing metrics such as visits, page views and bounce rates.. As the site  gets more traffic and/or more comparison sites are added as part of the analysis, the amount of data will grow and eventually push beyond the limit of today’s spreadsheets (the current row limit of an XLSX document in Excel is about 1 million). Spreadsheets will take longer to open. Calculations will slow to a crawl. If your computer does not have enough memory, opening an enormous spreadsheet can crash your machine.

  The next logical step is to move the data into a database. Databases will solve the row limit problem immediately. They allow you to scale up to storing millions of records. Data aggregation will also be reasonably fast. A decent SATA drive lets you scan hundreds of thousand rows per second. Assuming your data set is at the millions of records scale, you can expect data aggregation response time within a few seconds. One caveat is that you will have to learn SQL to get the most benefit from database usage. As calculation complexity increases, response time can sometimes increase exponentially.

  Another logical next step is to follow the OLAP (online analytical processing) model by building data cubes. Cubes are basically pre-calculated aggregated result sets. Instead of performing data aggregation at request time, it is provisioned, pre-calculated on a set schedule and stored into cubes. Retrieval is extremely fast but this model is not very flexible and data availability is subject to latency. Once a cube is created, it’s fixed and cannot be modified easily. If you want to dissect and aggregate the data differently, a new cube will have to be designed and implemented. That takes time and effort. On the positive side, OLAP is a good and scalable solution as long as the cubes can answer all questions users may ask and latency is not an issue. OLAP is not a new concept and it has been very popular in BI space for decades. For the SEO industry, OLAP, is a valuable BI tool when designed correctly.

  What does this mean for SEO?

  SEOs are always hungry for data and want to access it as soon as it’s available. With social networks becoming more prominent in search, more data will need to be analyzed. OLAP is great for data analysis but the added latency prevents users from accessing data soon enough. One solution is in-memory OLAP. Being stored in memory, offline data aggregation can be quickly calculated on-demand, with results provided in less than a second. It solves the flexibility issue, allowing you to slice and dice data any way you want, and the latency issue, so you get to see aggregation results immediately.

  In-memory OLAP has gained popularity over the past few years. If you do a search on Google for “in-memory OLAP” or “in-memory analytics,” you will find quite a few big software vendors offering their own solutions. Some notable big vendors are Oracle, SAS and Google. Some companies offer desktop products with visualization capabilities and others  provide service-based solutions that give you scalability on a distributed platform. A desktop product is easier to set up than a service-based product, and gives you instant gratification with pretty visualization. The only limit is amount of RAM you have in your system. RAM is cheap, so I recommend installing as much RAM as you can on your computer. More RAM means that more data can be analyzed. Service-based solutions let you set up a cluster of machines to store your analytics data. It usually facilitates a highly optimized storage strategy that reduces storage requirements and improves retrieval speed.

  To sum all of this up, in-memory OLAP is the new, sexy way of doing data analysis. If you like visualization, go with a desktop product.. If you are very hands-on and enjoy writing queries, a service-based solution will give you more flexibility in the long run. In-memory OLAP is a slight update from a traditional OLAP. When computing power becomes cheaper and more powerful, we may see something even more interesting in the future.

  Don’t you agree that BI is an exciting field? What do you think of BI solutions for SEO based on your experience?

  The post SEO and Business Intelligence Tools appeared first on Catalyst.

  ]]> http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/seo-and-business-intelligence-tools/feed/ 4 http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/february-search-news-recap/ http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/february-search-news-recap/#comments Fri, 01 Mar 2013 19:30:05 +0000 Freddy Dabaghi http://www.catalystsearchmarketing.com/?p=6362 As we say hello to March and hopefully spring, let’s take some time to recap the top stories in the search industry. February started out with an 11% increase in the US search activity, between the months of December and January.  Google stayed constant at 67% of the market share with Bing rising to an [...]

  The post Internet Marketing News February Recap appeared first on Catalyst.

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  As we say hello to March and hopefully spring, let’s take some time to recap the top stories in the search industry. February started out with an 11% increase in the US search activity, between the months of December and January.  Google stayed constant at 67% of the market share with Bing rising to an all-time high of 16.5% (ComScore). Below are some of the top stories for each big player.

  Google

  • The largest story for Google this month is the new enhanced campaigns and the major impact they will have on mobile and desktop paid search that will roll out this summer. While a lot of details are still being uncovered, Google did release a new bidding tool for the new structure.
  • The second largest story was releasing a video showing titled, “How It Feels [through Glass]” as well the #ifihadglass purchase campaign
  • Google also made a variety of updates, including incorporating search funnel data in campaigns, ad groups, keywords and ads tabs to make it easier for advertisers to act on.  A second change is the introduction of extension ads offer to only those who have upgraded to enhanced campaigns.

  

  • Google signed a deal with Yahoo to display its ads on selected Yahoo properties and co-branded sites. This deal is non-exclusive, so Yahoo will also continue to display ads from competitors such as Bing.
  • There were also two main penalties in February regarding selling links and advertorials. Both Interflora and UK Newspapers were penalized followed up with a warning on their webmaster blog.

  Bing

  • Bing has also made some updates including a faster, more accurate auto suggest functionality. The speed is done through “ghosting” where Bing can serve suggestions in the main box and alternatives below which Bing claims has sped up user searches by over 16%. Suggestions are made more accurate based on two key themes- navigational queries and search history.
  • Bing also announced a new Sitemap plugin which will help webmasters create two different types of XML sitemap files. One is a comprehensive sitemap of all URLs seen in sever traffic and another is dedicated to store URLs that have changed recently.

  Yahoo

  • Marissa Meyers is the center of news over at Yahoo. Early on in the month she expressed unhappiness with the current Yahoo-Microsoft deal saying she would wish the two companies would exchange more than search market share.
  • Her new HR policy at Yahoo that eliminates work from home options by June 1 sparked quite a controversy. While she does give employees until the summer to make adjustments, she’s received criticism and backlash both internally and externally about this decision.
  • In more search news, Yahoo has promoted Laurie Mann to run Yahoo Search and the UI Innovation.
  • Launched a more personalized redesign of their homepage which is also optimized for mobile tablet.

  Facebook

  • After January with the launch of Facebook graph, Facebook switched to ads and ecommerce. Facebook did introduce promoting your friends posts for $7, an extension of promoting your own posts which they launched in October.
  • Introduced gift cards where you can load dollar amounts to stores such as Jamba Juice, Olive Garden, Sephora and Target in one reusable card.  This enables gift giving right  over the social network.
  • Building off of the free voice calls you could make over the messenger app, announced in January, you now have the same functionality in the native IOS app.
  • Wrapping up February, Facebook announced they would acquire Atlas Advertiser Suite which would add tools to compete with Google.

  Twitter

  • Made a series of eCommerce plays in February.. The first was teaming up with American Express to allow customers to pay with hashtags. For those that sync their American express card with Twitter, users can use a hashtag to activate your account for payment.
  • Announced its own Advertising API which will allow large ad agencies develop far more sophisticated campaigns like they would on Facebook and Google.
  • Redesigned its search functionality which allows users to uncover older tweets. Twitter will decide which old tweets show up in search based on engagement, favorites, retweets and clicks.
  • Twitter also got roped into some bad press around both Burger King and Jeep being hacked. While both brands were generally unaffected in the end, many called for Twitter to ramp up the security with dual verification.

  Google+

  • Google+ now allows third party developers build Google+ authentication, sharing and interaction into their services. This will allow users to log into sites using there Google+ profile similar to how they already can use Facebook and Twitter. This also means that Google now can access more information about their users and how they act on non-Google sites.
  • NASA hosted an hour long Q&A with three astronauts on the International Space Station through Google+ Hangout. They welcomed questions via Google+, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook before the event as well as in real-time.
  • BrightEdge announced a study that stated followers of Top 100 Brands on Google+ grew 9,400% since 2011.These top 100 brands have 20.9 million fans on Google+ up from just 222,000 in 2011. While this doesn’t compare well to Facebook and Twitter, Google+ is looking more like a mainstream social network.

  

  YouTube

  • Some big changes are coming to YouTube in early March including redesigned channel pages as well as a subscription guide that will follow you across YouTube. Check back here in March for a full overview.
  • There are also plenty of rumors that YouTube will reveal a pay-to-view service. In addition Android Police is set to uncover a brief string of code in the most recent update for YouTube’s application that hints at a premium retail model.

  What’s new at Catalyst?

  • Catalyst celebrated our 15^th year anniversary! Check out the pictures of the celebration on Facebook.
  • Catalyst published a new eBook: Social SEO Strategies: Mastering the Art of Social SEO.

  Have any questions about any of the above stories or think we missed something? Let us know in the comment section below. And be sure to check back later for an a recap each month.

  The post Internet Marketing News February Recap appeared first on Catalyst.

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