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Latest, free research from Google. Includes latest insights, a full research library, planning tools, facts and statistics, and much more.

A tremendous resource by Google, who is taking a big leap forward by sharing as much data, insights, and tools found in their Think with Google site.

So… Ask me what I think of Sprout social

I like it…

Ask me again what I think of it.

I reaaally like it

Okay ask me what i reaaally think of it.

Okay, if you insist.. here are my unbiased review of what i REALLY think of Sprout Social.

Follow the link for an overwhelmingly delightful review of Sprout Social.

For a student on a budget, look no further—Sprout Social is for you.

The problem for print publishers — one that Netflix arguably doesn’t share — is that their legacy business still produces the bulk of the revenue they pull in via advertising, and therefore, the incentive to de-emphasize or radically downsize that part of the business isn’t as obvious. Hence, the reason why you see so many publishers opting for paywalls, which bring in incremental revenue but are mostly intended to function like a line of sandbags, keeping existing print subscribers from deserting that business for the free web.

Netflix doesn’t have to worry about the impact of its shift on advertising revenue the way that newspapers do, which is probably why it has accelerated its move, while many print publishers are still waffling about what to do more than a decade after the rise of the consumer web. All Netflix has to worry about is the impact on its customers, which is why Hastings has become so apologetic. The effect of the changes on the company’s revenue — and the resulting decline in the company’s share price — are enough to make it obvious that people don’t like the change.

Poor, poor Netflix. This is starting to feel like the early stages of a (very) bad breakup.

We already loved you—how could we not? You have spent years enticing us—the eager and easy-to-please consumers—with simple DVD rentals and multiple-device streaming services, along with an ever-growing library of movies, documentaries, and television shows—both new and old.

Stop trying so hard to make us hate you!

I really do love the quality of content produced by SEOmoz, especially for Whiteboard Fridays. Always original, exclusive, and enjoyable to read/watch.

Posts range from highly relevant to exceedingly relevant, with this week’s excursion into the dark side of article (or content) marketing is no exception.

Here, Rand shows off his keen ability to be perfectly in-tune with the current state of content (or article) strategy.

Extremely relevant to anyone in the midst of planning or implementing any type of related content strategies for their organization (e.g., hiring bloggers to write on your niche topic, either for your blog or elsewhere; enabling staff to become your organization’s ‘industry experts’ via tweeting or manning the Facebook page; or simply any other planned strategic activity with content creation a core tactic—and these will always have a certain degree of inherent risk).

Highly recommended.

New feature by Foursquare allows you to “share the places you love” with Foursquare lists.

Sounds similar to Twitter lists, but is it?

What do you think?

Will this attract new and old users to Foursquare? Will it be a top feature? Will it only be used by everyone, or just anyone on vacation?

What do you think the intent is of Foursquare by releasing this feature?

Is it, perhaps, to compete with Twitter or Google+?

Cooling the deals has led Old Spice body wash to a 24% sales decline in the four weeks ended July 10 and a 9% decline for the 12-weeks period vs. a year ago, according to SymphonyIRI data. Yet it’s still ahead of Axe for each of those periods and, by a smaller margin, for the 52 weeks. And any way you cut it, Old Spice is the leading men’s brand now — though that data doesn’t cover Walmart, club and dollar stores. And Beiersdorf’s Nivea and Henkel’s Right Guard are gaining more ground than either of late.

One of the most fascinating aspects about the launch of Google+ is the way it reframes how we, as individuals, interact with our communities. As Brian Solis so rightly points out, the initial Facebook model of creating a single social graph of up to 5000 friends must now be compared to a series of what Google+ calls ‘circles’ that expand and contract as we pass through various life stages, jobs, relationships and experiences in our lives.

This contrast is very instructive as to the future, and is particularly important for brands trying to engage with their customer communities. By now, most brands have overcome their reticence to participate in social media, and exhausted their knee-jerk reaction to buy their way to a sizable social footprint that is at least comparable to their competitors. But the challenges continue to arise.

This new reframing, just as Twitter emerged after Facebook, and Google+ after Twitter, we will see more social platforms emerge that will become increasingly sophisticated and nuanjced in their expression of how individiuals prefer to relate to each other.  Ultimately, it’s possible that these platforms themselves will be designed as templates that the users themselves can customize in terms of the best way to express their community and experience of life.

What this means for brands is significant. It is already challenging to engage and maintain the interest of your customers in real time across multiple platforms, especially as many brands are still fighting the inertia that inevitably comes with hierarchical structures designed with control in mind. But now, as the social business marketplace becomes increasingly fragmented and more and more micro-communities, specific to a variety of media (Path, Instagram) start to emerge, brands face the prospect of reaching an increasing number of specific audiences, conversations and communities all in real time.

Topsy is a dedicated site for searching Twitter. It’s better, it turns out, than Twitter’s own search functions.

If you’ve tried to search for tweets on Twitter’s built-in search box, you know it can be frustrating.

For a currently popular topic, you’ll get dozens of recent tweets. For an older topic, you may get no results at all. Twitter has an advanced search page, but a better alternative is Topsy, a dedicated Twitter search engine. It’s so good that even Twitter’s official guide for journalists suggests using Topsy to research news topics.

Topsy’s advanced search, linked from its home page, lets you search for specific Web domains or Twitter users, tweets posted during a specific period of time in the past, and for all tweets with the word “lady” but not “gaga.” You can also specify only tweets that include photo links, video links or Web links.

Social Networks

The way people connect digitally.

Topsy has indexed tweets back to mid-2008. It does not keep them all, but it does keep the ones that were retweeted a lot, or that came from people whom Topsy deems influential because they are often retweeted or cited in other people’s tweets. That same influence algorithm lets you sort search results by relevance rather than in chronological order.

Topsy is also a good way to check in on what’s hot on Twitter right now. The site’s home page features a frequently updated list of trending links, again sorted by relevance. For example, if a few celebrities tweet a video, it will rank higher than one tweeted by a larger group of little people. And there’s a special page devoted to trending videos. Click the video thumbnail, and Topsy pops up a video player rather than sending you to YouTube or another site. Right now the top video is a bunny playing with a ball of string. The people have spoken.