pew-mobile-owners-app-privacy-concerns-sept2012.pngSome 43% of all mobile phone users use applications, but 54% of those app users have decided not to install an app due to concerns about sharing or collecting of personal information, and 30% have uninstalled an app for the same reason, according to [pdf] a September 2012 report from Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

via Privacy Concerns Cause Mobile Phone Users to Uninstall, Avoid Apps.

President Obama’s Reddit AMA Wednesday was an important moment for the intersection of politics and Internet culture. But for Reddit, the event serves as the site’s coming-out party to mainstream Internet users.

via Reddit Rising: Community Site Just Had Its Coming-Out Party.

But the hackers who planted fake news stories on Reuters’s website earlier this month weren’t doing it for fun. Reuters was caught in the middle of an “intensifying conflict in cyberspace between supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad,” in the words of one of its reporters, as hackers attempted to co-opt the news agency’s credibility in order to support government forces in the Syrian national conflict.

via Hijacking the news: how hackers are manipulating the press from the inside out | The Verge.

What was the last thing you shared on the web? There’s a good chance it was either a photo or a video. And increasingly, that shareable content is originating from brands.Companies are quickly learning that visual media is one of the most effective ways to share their stories. In a study of the top 10 brands on Facebook, users liked photos twice as often as text updates. And they shared videos 12 times more than photo and text posts combined.

via For Brand Engagement, Visuals Rule [INFOGRAPHIC].

Content 4.0 is here.That’s content worth paying for — and consumers are buying lots of it.For the preceding decade, content has been available for free online, both legally and illegally. So why are people buying it now?Because technology is making content more convenient, attractive, relevant and emotional. From iTunes to Amazon, from Netflix to the New York Times, the signs of Content 4.0 are everywhere.

via INFOGRAPHIC: Content 4.0 And IGNITION – Business Insider.

Traditional agencies may be slow to adapt to social outreach due to their sheer size, says Michael Litman, senior social strategist at AnalogFolk. The larger an agency gets, the more processes and layers it encounters, and thus, it becomes harder to adapt and change alongside industry trends and client needs.

“You can compare a traditional media agency to an oil tanker and a boutique agency to a small dinghy,” says Litman. “Both have their benefits and drawbacks. Oil tankers are safer, been around longer and have a greater amount of resources at their disposal. But moving them is pretty tough and needs a lot of people. Boutique agencies are nimble, adaptable, have few layers of hierarchy and are more likely to experiment and iterate.”

Still, traditional agencies have been creating conversations since first opening their doors, although they’re not presumed to be on the pulse of social media strategy. It’s simply that the mediums of communication have evolved, from print and television to include social media. And while that’s a big consideration, it doesn’t change the fact that effective messages make a splash, no matter the delivery method. So don’t necessarily assume that traditional marketing firms can’t also approach social media effectively — it’s likely they’ve been talking to customers for a long time.

via Does Size Matter? The Pros and Cons of Boutique Media Agencies.

As it turns out, the ones who do it well are rare and far less visible because – like good programmers – their work is a lot harder to notice. Good marketing is a product of the same inputs as good code; long hours, sweating the details, and the judicious application of experience doing it the right way.

via Brooklyn Hacker • What A Hacker Learns After A Year In Marketing.