There’s a lot of buzz around Medium right now. It’s shiny and incredibly easy to use! Great sharing features mean increased social media buzz! Founded by some of the guys who made Twitter so of course it’ll be awesome! And there are curated posts, so if you write something really fantastic, you’ll get tons of exposure.

via The Problem With Medium — Writers on Writing — Medium.

Silverpop-Perceived-Advantages-of-Behavioral-Marketing-July2013A new study [download page] commissioned by Silverpop and conducted by Forrester Consulting indicates that the vast majority of marketers surveyed believe that behavioral marketing can boost their performance in a range of areas, most notably in return on investment, revenue attributable to marketing activities, and customer satisfaction and loyalty. Though the sample size is small, responses suggest that mature or transitioning behavioral marketers are indeed seeing better results than their peers.

via Most Believe Behavioral Marketing Can Boost ROI.

RKG-Mobile-Share-Search-Visits-Q2-2012-Q2-2013-Jul2013The influence of mobile devices on paid and organic search continues to grow. According to the latest quarterly report from RKG, smartphones and tablets combined accounted for 26% of organic search traffic in Q2, up from 15% a year earlier. Most of that traffic 18% came from iOS devices, fairly evenly split between the iPad and iPhone, as Android devices contributed another 7% of traffic. While Google has traditionally seen a greater share of mobile traffic than Yahoo, this past quarter saw Yahoo pulling even, with each generating close to 28% of traffic from mobile devices.

via More Than One-Quarter of Organic Search Visits Came From Mobile Devices in Q2.

Mobile device penetration in the US is contributing to a concurrent rise in usage among travelers. eMarketer estimates that 40% of digital travel researchers will plan trips via tablets and smartphones in 2013, and that more than one-quarter of digital travel bookers will buy on their mobile devices.

via Travelers Get Comfortable with Mobile Conversions – eMarketer.

Unruly-Branded-Video-Sharing-by-Day-of-Week-July2013Unruly has released a comprehensive white paper examining various elements of branded video sharing, including the best day for launching a campaign and the creative factors that are most likely to make a video go viral. According to “The Science of Sharing,” [download page] the data is important as the researchers believe that “the success of ‘water cooler’ content can both be predicted and repeated.”

via When – and Why – Branded Videos Go Viral.

Covario-Global-Search-Engine-Market-Share-in-Q2-Jul2013Chinese search engine Baidu’s share of global paid search clicks continues to grow, according to [download page] Covario’s latest analysis of pay-per-click advertising by its enterprise technology, consumer electronics, and retail clients. In Q2, Baidu accounted for 27% share of all clicks (up from roughly a quarter in Q1), despite capturing only about 7% of all spend. Google dominated with 86% share of spend, while accounting for a relatively smaller 62% of clicks.

via Globally, Google Still Eats Up Most Search Spend, While Baidu Keeps Generating More Clicks.

It makes some of the fastest cars on the planet, but the Italian manufacturer Ferrari is concerned that the indiscriminate use of emails in the office is slowing down its employees.

via Ferrari puts brakes on staff emails | World news | The Guardian.

Janrain-Preferred-Social-Logins-in-Q2-Jul2013The top-level social login landscape in Q2 was unchanged from the prior quarter, finds Janrain in newly-released data. While it’s an unremarkable result, it does mean that Facebook put an end to a slide that had lasted a couple of consecutive quarters and seen its share of logins drop from 54% to 46%. Google was once again the second option in Q2 among online users who opted to use a social network identity to speed up registration on sites across the web, capturing 34% share of logins.

via Social Login Landscape Unchanged in Q2.

Pew-Reddit-Usage-by-Age-Gender-July20136% of online adults use reddit, finds a new study [pdf] from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, a figure that puts it on par with Tumblr. While use of both sites is higher among 18-29-year-olds 11% for reddit; 13% for Tumblr, the platforms differ when sorting by gender. Whereas there is no overall gender disparity in Tumblr usage, reddit is twice as popular among men than women 8% vs. 4%. And nowhere is that disparity more evident than in the 18-29 bracket.

via Profile of Redditors Shows Significant Skew Towards Young Males.

VisionCritical-SocNet-Characteristics-According-to-Users-July2013Pinterest users (in the UK, USA and Canada) tend to find the social network useful for satisfying a range of creative urges, while Facebook users are more drawn to matters of communication and connectedness, details Vision Critical [download page] in a new study. Asked their agreement with a number of social network characteristics, Pinterest users were most likely to agree that it’s useful for ideas and projets (80%), that it’s easy to find things that interest them (75%) and that it’s inspiring to see what other people pin (64%).

via Pinterest is for Creativity; Facebook for Communication.