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Long before Taylor Swift was the subject of serious  ire  and  scrutiny , she was interested in laying out puzzles and being the sole keeper of the key. Her  album liner notes  have always had hidden clues, as complicated as a Zodiac cypher, put there obviously enough for fans to figure out but never quite so obviously as to be confirmable. She’s known for naming names, but more often than not she has actually let fans do that last bit of work for her. On her 2012 album  Red , she even didn’t have to say “Jake Gyllenhaal.” She said only “twin fire signs / four blue eyes,” left a liner puzzle that spelled out “SAGITTARIUS,” and appended  a bonus track  explicitly about being stood up on her birthday. Who else? Gyllenhaal’s birthday is December 19th; Swift’s is December 13th. Publicly, they broke up sometime in December 2010. she stumbled in the transition between paper notes and the notes app As the times shifted away from notes passed to fans on literal paper and Swift had to reck

Penalties imposed on major exchanges underscore  perceptions that bitcoin requires heavy regulation and oversight. Across China, blockchain technology is recognized as an increasingly important development; however, bitcoin as a “virtual good” in China is facing yet another challenge from the People’s Bank of China (PBOC). On May 10, 2017, China’s top-tier financial media outlet,  Caixin , reported that “according to a person close to PBOC, PBOC will soon issue a notice of penalties to BTCC, OKCoin and Huobi for irregularities based on its previous inspection in the past few months. The major problems are [related to] illegal margin trading services and lack of internal controls for anti-money laundering. The related penalty details have already been confirmed internally; all that is left to do is go through approval procedures.” Caixin also stated that, according to their source, further “regulation on bitcoin exchange and regulation on anti-money laundering systems for bitcoin ex

Snapchat's corporate parent seeks to raise more than $2 billion for the fast-growing social media group in the tech sector's largest public offering in nearly three years, documents filed Thursday showed. Outlining the financial details of its initial public offering (IPO), Snap Inc. said it expects net proceeds of some $2 billion. It will offer 145 million new shares and sell 55 million from existing share owners, with an expected price range of $14 to $16, the documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed. The offering -- confirmed with a public filing on February 2 -- would be largest in the sector since the Chinese online giant Alibaba's US market debut in 2014. The listing would value Snap at between $19.5 billion and $22.2 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources familiar with the deal. The move is expected to be closely followed by Wall Street and the tech sector, with other highly valued peers such as Uber and Airbnb also s

Donald Trump with Michael Flynn during a discussion on national security in his offices in Trump Tower in New York on August 17.AP Photo/Gerald Herbert In a series of tweets Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump blasted reporting on his campaign's ties with Russian intelligence officials as "conspiracy theories and blind hatred." "The fake news media is going crazy with their conspiracy theories and blind hatred. @MSNBC & @CNN are unwatchable. @foxandfriends is great!"  Trump tweeted . Both MSNBC and CNN led Wednesday morning shows with a  New York Times report published Tuesday night that said members of Trump's campaign  had multiple communications with senior Russian intelligence officials before the US election,  as CNN White House video producer Elizabeth Landers  observed. Landers also said Fox News had not reported on the Times article Wednesday morning. In a follow-up tweet, Trump dismissed the "Russian connection non-sense" as

Playboy, the men’s magazine, announced in October 2015 that it would stop publishing images of naked women, seeking to attract more advertisers and secure better placement on newsstands. MANDEL NGAN / AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES By SYDNEY EMBER Playboy is returning to the bare essentials. A year after the famed but struggling men’s magazine stopped featuring photographs of naked women, it has apparently had a change of heart. From now on, women will shed much of the scanty clothing that had been covering them up. The next issue, which hits newsstands at the end of the month, will feature women who are topless and almost fully exposed. (Think strategically placed leaf, hand or leg.) Cooper Hefner, a son of the Playboy founder  Hugh Hefner , signaled the change in a  Twitter post  on Monday : “I’ll be the first to admit that the way in which the magazine portrayed nudity was dated, but removing it entirely was a mistake,” he said in a quotation superimposed over a photogra

  Columnist Stephan Spencer explains the benefits of podcasting, as well as how to optimize your podcast for visibility in search engines, YouTube and platforms like iTunes or Google Play. Along with technical SEO and links, high-quality, interesting, engaging content is one of the three main pillars of any successful SEO strategy. Traditional content strategies use blog posts, articles, images, and sometimes video as the main sources of content. And while those can be awesome for driving traffic and supporting your SEO efforts,  podcasts  are an often overlooked and underestimated medium. Podcasts can build your brand and drive direct traffic, while at the same time adding rich content to your site and supporting your link-building efforts. Of course, you not only need to know how to leverage your podcasts for SEO, but also how to rank well on the platforms specific to podcasts. So whether you’re starting out or are an established podcaster, read on for specific tips on how

Amy Gesenhues on February 10, 2017 at 1:46 pm Another Supercell video game made its way to the top of YouTube’s ad leaderboard last month with Clash Royale’s “The Last Second” spot earning 11.1 million views. While Supercell’s Clash Royale ad ranked No. 1, Apple was the winning brand overall — earning a combined 14.1 million views for two different iPhone 7 ads at No. 2 and No. 3. The 11.1 million views earned by the Clash Royale spot was significantly lower than the results Supercell saw in December of last year. The ad garnered just over a third of views generated by Supercell’s “Clash of Clans 360-Degree Experience — Virtual Reality Raid” spot that ranked No. 1 in December with 30.2 million views. In fact, the mobile video gaming company owned half of the  December 2016 ad leaderboard  with four of its ads for Clash of Clans ranking in the No. 1, No. 2, No. 5 and No. 6 spots, and an ad for its Boom Beach game taking the No. 9 spot. Of the more than 100 million combined views by

Don’t get me wrong — I love Likes. They continue to serve as a simple way for people to show support for a thought, product offering or opinion, and they have provided marketers with a valuable tool to measure media effectiveness. Unlike the one-way nature of other media, social feedback mechanisms allow you to see how your audience is responding to different types of content with one lightning-fast, simple metric. But ever since  Facebook Reactions  were introduced, things have become a bit more complicated. A Like has always signified support for a message, where negative thoughts had to be expressed in comment feeds, or perhaps, not at all. Facebook Reactions (represented as Love, Sad, Wow, Angry and Laughing icons) have changed the way users can express their feelings for a piece of content. As marketers who love data, we should be taking advantage of any information that can help us create better posts. Reaction data is exactly that — signals from the audience about what mak

Instagram has become more prevalent on the web than Twitter, according to an analysis by website tool provider  SimilarTech  of the top 1 million sites based on their global traffic, including publishers, brands and e-commerce sites. At the start of 2016, Instagram trailed Twitter in the number of sites that embedded its users’ posts or featured its social widgets, like follow buttons. But from January through December, Instagram’s footprint expanded by 308 percent to overtake Twitter, whose footprint expanded by 36 percent over the same period. It’s unclear what pushed so many sites to begin embedding Instagram posts and widgets on their pages in 2016. Instagram introduced the ability to  embed people’s posts on sites back in July 2013  and rolled out  follow buttons, or “badges,” in November 2012 . Instagram’s monthly user base growing from  400 million people in September 2015  to  600 million people in December 2016  likely helped. But it doesn’t explain what spurred the adopti

Bloomicon  /  Shutterstock.com YouTube is opening its  mobile live-streaming  feature to creators with, at least, 10,000 subscribers and has added a “Super Chat” feature that monetizes the live-stream chat function. According to the announcement, live streams will include the same features as regular YouTube videos — they will be searchable; listed in video recommendations and playlists; and, protected from unauthorized use. YouTube’s live streams also come with the new “Super Chat” monetization tool, allowing viewers to pay for more prominent messaging: “It lets any fan watching a live stream stand out from the crowd and get a creator’s attention by purchasing chat messages that are highlighted in bright colors and stay pinned to the top of the chat window for up to five hours.” YouTube shared the following GIF, showing how to start live streaming using the “”Capture” button built into the YouTube app, and included an example of a “Super Chat” message (the chat highlighted with a

Tamar Weinberg tanuha2001  /  Shutterstock.com With Twitter’s  rampant  abuse problem, the company has been aggressively trying to find the right way to handle its crippling problem. An announcement  today  addresses Twitter’s overall improvements toward a safer, more pleasant tweeting experience, with the addition of three primary changes: abusive account creation prevention, safer search results and collapsing low-quality (or abusive) tweets. New Accounts Twitter says it’s being proactive about identifying users whose accounts have been suspended, primarily as a result of abuse and harassment, to ensure that they will not recreate new accounts. Safer Search A “safe search” will be implemented to remove tweets that contain sensitive content or tweets that have been made by blocked/muted accounts. The objective is for search to be less cluttered with more relevant (and possibly more interesting) results. Collapsing low quality tweets While Twitter advocates toward free speech,

Facebook's ad policies have been updated to increase opportunity and prohibit discrimination. Tamar Weinberg Late last year, Facebook committed to updating  its ad targeting  practices to prevent discrimination for housing, employment or credit-related ads. Today, the company is  putting  its ad discrimination policy into practice with policy updates, tools and further education. Policy updates Facebook is strengthening its stance with clearly defined prohibitions against ads with discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, color, national origin, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, family status, disability or medical/genetic condition. Education Facebook has also updated its policy with a  section  about discriminatory practices. Advertisers are prohibited from wrongfully targeting or excluding audiences in their ads. This section expands to groups of individuals who are connected to the ACLU, Department of Justice — Civil Rights Division, Leadersh

WHY IT MATTERS TO YOU The Super Bowl ad for Google Home showed off the device's keen sense of hearing and attention to the "OK Google" wake word. Right around the time New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady orchestrated the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history, Google officially introduced the world to its  Amazon Echo -competing home servant,  Google Home . A  one-minute advertisement  showing off the different ways in which people have the ability to interact with Home, the spot featured — over and over again, mind you — people uttering its popular wake word, “OK Google.” Due in part to the wake word’s prominent feature, Google Home users all over the country say their devices acted a bit erratic during the ad, responding to the commercial’s commands. At least it’s reassuring to know the Home as a keen ear for its wake word, right? Though the gaffe didn’t cause any serious harm to anyone — unless, of course, it accidentally turned off the lights while someone

Retailers that sell online and in-store need to balance where to send users in their paid search efforts. Columnist Andy Taylor explores when advertisers might want to rely on local inventory versus regular product listing ads. Andy Taylor  on February 3, 2017 at 10:30 am In response to the growing popularity of searches with local intent, Google released  Local Inventory Ads  (LIA) a few years ago as a variation of  Product Listing Ads  (PLA) that include information on when a product is available at a nearby store location. Taking into account the local intent of each search query in determining when LIAs should be featured, Google can serve these units in a similar format to traditional PLAs, as well as in other LIA-specific formats, such as beneath a Google Maps display. These units are steadily becoming an important part of paid search campaigns for brands with brick-and-mortar locations, and LIA traffic increased 60 percent Y/Y in Q3 2016 for the median Merkle retailer. How

Last year, Google introduced  local search ads and promoted pins  to wring a few extra dollars out of Maps. By extra, I mean potentially an additional  $1.5 billion in 2017  alone. Maps inherently have local intent; local intent has a high likelihood for conversion. No surprises there. But ads run counter to a quality user experience. We as advertisers can perform all the mental gymnastics we want, but the truth is, ads are a nuisance. Especially on maps. When you’re looking for a location, the last thing you want to see is a map resembling a pincushion or a shotgun’s scatter pattern. Striking the right balance between organic and paid listings is critical. Unfortunately, as the screen size shrinks, the challenge of balancing paid and organic gets magnified on the map. On desktop, there aren’t so many paid ads that you can’t find organic listings. In fact, it’s almost a happy compromise. You get to use Google’s mapping services for free; Google gets to turn a profit. Fair deal. Wi

  1990 was a year of life and death for Clark Martin. His daughter was born, and he was diagnosed with cancer. Over the next 20 years, as his daughter took her first steps, experienced her first day of school, and eventually grew into a smart, fiercely independent teenager, doctors waged a blitzkrieg on Martin's body. Six surgeries. Two experimental treatments. Thousands of doctor visits. The cancer never went into remission, but Martin and his doctors managed to keep it in check by staying vigilant, always catching the disease just as it was on the brink of spreading. Still, the cancer took its toll. Martin was riddled with the effects of anxiety and depression. He had become so focused on saving his body from the cancer that he hadn't made time for the people and things in his life that really mattered. His relationships were in shambles; he and his daughter barely spoke. So in 2010, after reading an article in a magazine about a  medical trial that involved giving people

Snap and Google will be partnered for the next five years, according to Snap’s S-1 filing released last week. Completed on January 30, the deal commits Snap to purchasing $400 million in Google's cloud services annually until 2022, totaling $2 billion over the period. The new lease is a formal continuation of a partnership that began around 2013,  TechCrunch notes .  The deal is a big win for Google Cloud, as mobile video is poised to make up a larger portion of the data storage space. Snapchat users are highly engaged, with the average daily user turning to the app 18 times each day, according to Snap's S-1. And although Google doesn’t break out revenue from its cloud business, instead lumping it together with nonadvertising, which includes the Google Play store, the $400 million deal will give it a hefty annual bump. In Q4 2016, nonadvertising accrued $3.4 billion in sales. Mobile video already accounts for more than half of all mobile traffic. In 2015, mobile video acco

This file photo shows a missile being fired from the direction of Yemen toward Saudi Arabia. Yemen's local media have reported a ballistic missile attack on Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh. The Yemeni army made the announcement of their first ever attack on the city via a  statement  released by the official state Yemen news agency on Sunday. In the statement, they claimed that the missile had been launched at a Saudi military base located to the west of the capital in retaliation for the kingdom’s relentless war against their country. It went on to stress that the attack shows that Riyadh is well within the range of Yemen’s missiles. Saudi officials have not made any comments on the reports yet, but locals have said on Twitter that the missile struck a military camp to the west of al-Mazahimiyah town near Riyadh. The regime in Riyadh has been incessantly pounding Yemen since March 2015 in a bid to reinstall the country’s ex-government and crush the Houthi Ansarullah movement.

Facebook Back in the '90s, before memes were really a thing, it was kind of a meme to pass around pictures of Bill Gates as a Borg — the cyborg baddies of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" fame. If you're not a "Star Trek," fan, trust me, it's a sick own. Before the Borg attacked, they would issue their famous warning: "Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile." It was a warning that resonated with the tech industry of the day. Under Gates' leadership, Microsoft became known as a company that would win at any cost. From productivity apps to web browsers, any competitor Microsoft couldn't simply buy it would crush by making a new, competing product and win by selling to its huge existing customer base. Now we're starting to see history repeat itself, but Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stepped in to the role once occupied by Gates. Consider Facebook's reaction to Snapc

The Facebook logo is displayed on their website in an illustration photo taken in Bordeaux, France, February 1, 2017 Social media companies Facebook, Google and a group of news organizations launched an initiative on Monday to tackle fake news stories in France, with the media in the spotlight as the country's presidential election approaches. Facebook said it would work with several leading French news organizations, including Agence France-Presse, BFM TV, and newspapers L'Express and Le Monde to ensure that false news items were not published on its platform. Google also said it was part of the initiative, dubbed "Cross Check" by the partners. Facebook has faced criticism that it did not do enough to prevent false information being republished on its platform during last year's U.S presidential campaign, and in response has set up measures to try to tackle the problem. There have been similar concerns that people could disseminate false information on Faceb