About two-thirds (67 percent) of American adults currently use Facebook according to the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. The research also indicates that 61 percent of current Facebook users have voluntarily taken a break of at least several weeks from the social network in the past, and 20 percent of the non-Facebook using adult population (or about 5 percent of the total adult population) once used Facebook and now do not. Continue reading Pew Research Breaks Down Usage Statistics for Facebook

Entrepreneur Yoarv Lorch’s newest enterprise hopes to disrupt what he views as an antiquated system of book sales. Total Boox offers book payments by the page, rather than paying for the entire book up front. Lorch argues people often purchase a book on a whim and then realize they do not like it after a few pages. When books had to deal with publishing and distribution costs the advanced payment method made sense, but may not in the world of e-books. Continue reading Total Boox Offers New Pay-As-You-Go E-Book Reading Service

Samsung disclosed details this week regarding its planned Silicon Valley innovation center, which will help build partnerships between entrepreneurs and the company’s nine product divisions to develop new product ideas. The center is also expected to encourage expansion of the company’s mergers and acquisitions strategy by determining which companies and emerging technologies can help fill existing product gaps. Continue reading Samsung to Tap Silicon Valley Innovation in Post-PC Era

Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast featured a compelling use of crowdsourcing. To promote its halftime show, Pepsi incorporated thousands of photos submitted by customers as part of its video introduction welcoming Beyonce to the stage. The promotion serves as another interesting example of the growing crowdsourcing phenomenon, which continues to generate innovative new business and marketing approaches. Continue reading Pepsi Turns to Crowdsourcing for Super Bowl Halftime Video

The 34-minute Super Bowl power outage caused a Twitter uproar, but while many fans used social media to make jokes, Oreo seized the opportunity to launch a viral marketing campaign. Oreo’s 15-person Super Bowl social media team reacted quickly to the blackout, tweeting an ad that read “Power Out? No problem.” The Tweet was accompanied by the image of a single Oreo in a half-blacked out setting with the caption, “You can still dunk in the dark.” Continue reading Oreo Goes Social for Spontaneous Super Bowl Advertising

Nearly two years (and three CEOs) after its intended start date, Bookish finally launched earlier this week. The company is backed by “big-six publishers Hachette, Penguin and Simon & Schuster” and intends to “promote book discovery and sell books,” writes paidContent. The company wants to be “a one-stop shop for readers looking to connect with authors and find their next book.” Continue reading Bookish Now Live, Features Database of 1.2 Million Titles

Traditional television viewing continues its decline, according to new charts published by Morgan Stanley analyst Benjamin Swinburne and his team. The charts show the “long, slow decline of old-fashioned broadcast and cable TV, and the number of ad dollars chasing the dinosaur medium,” writes Business Insider. According to the numbers, there has been a 50 percent decline in broadcast TV audience ratings since 2002. Continue reading Is Decline of Broadcast TV to Blame for High Cable Bills?

Facebook acquired Instagram in part because Instagram’s success on mobile challenged Facebook’s subpar mobile application. The purchase helped improve Facebook’s mobile presence, and now the social network has helped redesign Instagram to serve desktop audiences with the launch of a full newsfeed for browsers. Now Instagram joins Facebook as a complete Web entity. Continue reading Instagram Launches Full Image Feed for Desktop Browsers

The National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) and equipment supplier Cinedigm plan to help drive-in theaters convert to digital projection. The aid comes as many drive-ins run the risk of extinction since studios plan to stop releasing 35mm film versions of their movies later this year. While most drive-in theaters screen physical film on their outdoor projectors, the move to digital puts the theaters in a difficult position. Continue reading Drive-In Theaters to Receive Help with Digital Transition

YouTube’s “de-spamming” initiative aims to remove unintended views from videos. The initiative has removed millions of views from videos, and large channels like Sony, Universal and RCA have been among the most affected. Together, these channels have lost upwards of 2 billion views since the Google-owned video site began its de-spamming efforts in December 2012. Continue reading YouTube Channels Lose Millions of Views to De-Spamming

Sunday’s collection of Super Bowl ads failed to impress advertising columnist Stuart Elliott. “The commercials that CBS broadcast nationally during the game were, by and large, disappointing,” he writes. “They represented a missed opportunity for marketers and agencies to demonstrate that they had at least some understanding of how contemporary consumers think and behave.” Continue reading Super Bowl Ads: Too Much of Vintage Vibe and Tired Tactics?

The first day of the Macworld Expo featured iPhone photography as artists and photojournalists discussing a variety of related subjects. Some tried to dispel the notion that iPhone cameras do not have good resolution (they argued that everything is online anyway, and how high-resolution scanners can help create larger images), while others discussed how to use multiple editing applications to create artwork that is not the product of any one editing platform. Continue reading Macworld Expo Dedicates First Day to iPhonography Artists

The University of Strathclyde in the UK has created the Intelligent Lighting Centre (ILC), a consortium comprised of researchers from several universities, to investigate ways to transmit Internet communications using LED lights. The research focuses on using the flickering of LED lights to transmit messages using visible light rather than radio waves, Wi-Fi signals, cell signals or cables. Continue reading Li-Fi: Using LEDs to Transmit Data at One Gigabit Per Second

New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer wants to improve the company’s mobile search, which trails far behind offerings from search giants like Google and Bing. In her first one-on-one interview since being named CEO, Mayer spoke with Bloomberg Television about the future of Internet search technology, data portability and strategic partnerships. She sees personalization as the key to mobile for Yahoo. Continue reading Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Talks About the Future of Mobile

Hackers have carried out a sophisticated attack on Twitter, prompting the company to release a statement explaining how its “investigation has thus far indicated that the attackers may have had access to limited user information — usernames, email addresses, session tokens and encrypted/salted versions of passwords — for approximately 250,000 users.” The nature of the attack suggests it could be part of a larger effort. Continue reading Twitter Hacked: 250,000 Users Affected by Recent Attack