That’s good news for an industry in upheaval. Just this month, there’s been a flurry of deals involving struggling marquee American publications. Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) founder and CEO Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post (WPO), Red Sox owner John Henry purchased The Boston Globe, and Newsweek was bought by a digital news company IBT Media. Job cuts had been common at all three publications in recent years.

via Journalist jobs are picking up – Aug. 15, 2013.

It’s never been easier to stay informed about the world–provided you know which information matters. That’s no easy feat. We’re overwhelmed with content from media amateurs and professionals alike. How to wade through the static and find the info we actually need? Follow the sources with the highest signal-to-noise ratio and ignore the rest. WIRED’s array of blogs, Tumblrs, and Twitter feeds are a great place to start, but let’s say you want more. Fine. The following 101 signals–blogs, feeds, podcasts, and more–provide everything you need to know and nothing you don’t. Packed with information, these sources serve up the core nutrients of your data diet, with no empty calories. We’ve focused on passionate and knowledgeable individuals, not massive media outlets that need to monetize content by the gigabit. These are the best reporters, writers, and thinkers on the Internet–people who understand what’s happening.

via Time for a Data Diet: These Are the Only Sources You Need to Stay Informed | Wired Magazine | Wired.com.

If your brand just posted a status on Facebook, don’t waste time waiting to amplify it with an ad buy. If you don’t do so within 24 hours, you will lose a great deal of the engagement and viral impressions that would have been generated by posting earlier.

This is the gist of new research from the cloud marketing technology firm Unified Social. Jeff Widman, the director of research there, recently crunched some numbers and found that posts that were sponsored in the first 24 hours received 2.6 times more viral impressions and 2.7 times more viral engagements than older promoted posts.

via Researcher: Advertise Your Facebook Post Within 24 Hours or Don’t Bother.

It’s a question as old as YouTube: Why do some Internet videos go viral while others sit and collect virtual dust?

It’s not an easy question to answer — there’s no secret formula for viral video success (unless, of course, you’re Justin Bieber). But that didn’t stop Twitter from exploring the phenomenon in a recent study, examining three viral video examples for signs of consistency.

via Watch Videos Go Viral on Twitter.

Checking Facebook made people feel worse about both issues, and the more they browsed, the worse they felt, the University of Michigan research said.

via BBC News – Facebook use 'makes people feel worse about themselves'.

Marketers operating in the business-to-business B2B realm have seen a steady uptick in dollars dedicated to marketing over the past year. According to April 2013 research from American Business Media ABM, a B2B industry association, 29% of US marketers reported increasing their B2B advertising budgets over the preceding 12 months, while 59% said outlays had remained about the same. Only 9% indicated they had decreased at all.

via B2B Marketers Expect a Bump in Ad Budgets in the Next Year – eMarketer.

Part of the reason Facebook is losing my generation’s attention is the fact that there are other networks now. When I was 10, I wasn’t old enough to have a Facebook. But a magical thing called Instagram had just come out … and our parents had no idea there was an age limit. Rapidly, all my friends got Instagrams.

via I’m 13 and None of My Friends Use Facebook.

clip_image002The co-author of Influence Marketing, Danny Brown asked this question in a recent blog post: What’s the future of influence marketing? Brown goes on to outline in an infographic how agencies and brands are doing influencer marketing and how social scoring will most likely be replaced by return on investment (ROI) and performance metrics. Brown raises an important question, so I’ve decided to dig a little deeper to understand how the best are doing influencer marketing today, and to zero in on any performance metrics that may exist today.

via 8 Of The Best Influencer Marketing Campaigns From 8 Hot Agencies – Forbes.

The number of adults who use social networks is up to 72 percent in 2013, according to data from Pew Research Center. This is up 5 percent from last year and 64 percent since 2005 when Pew first started studying social adoption.

via Social Media Usage Amongst Older Generations Triples, According to Pew | ClickZ.

ABM-B2B-Marketers-Most-Successful-Platforms-Aug2013A recent survey [pdf] from ABM asked B2B media users which media types they rely on for decision-making. The study also contains some interesting results from the marketer side: which platforms do they think are most successful in creating awareness among existing customers and generating targeted leads of prospective new buyers? It turns out there’s quite a bit of consensus: face-to-face event attendance is rated the most successful platform, by a fairly wide margin.

via B2B Marketers Rank the Best Platforms for Reaching Customers and Prospects.