Author Archives: Matt Kapko

The cyberbullying problem at Twitter is so bad that critics are starting to suggest it could bring the company down.

On Thursday, a rumor about a Twitter shutdown in early 2017 spread faster than wildfire in Southern California. Users chimed in en masse, making #SaveTwitter a trending hashtag that spawned memes, jokes and ridicule. By midday, Twitter had to awkwardly deny reports of its death.  

[Related: Twitter needs to stop the harassment]

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Many titans of technology today have well-known reputations of being innovative and creative. However, new research based on the experiences of employees who work at these firms suggests external perceptions may not represent reality. 

Facebook, for example, doesn’t prioritize creativity in the workplace as well as its peers, and Microsoft is more specific than Facebook and Google when it looks for certain traits in employees, according a report from Good&Co, a firm that surveys professionals on their work histories and tries to match people with appropriate employers. The company recently evaluated responses from 4,364 users who work at the tech companies featured in the study and compared findings to develop profiles of tech’s biggest stars.

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Facebook this week took a stand against the makers of ad-block software by providing more controls for users to opt out of targeted advertisements. The company says today’s ad blockers are part of the problem, so it designed a new way to bypass ad blockers in desktop browsers and force ads through.

A number of motivations likely influenced Facebook’s decision. While it stands to benefit financially from the strong-arm play, the move is also symbolic, and the company should earn tremendous goodwill from the advertising and media industries.  

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Millions of fans will tap their favorite social networks during the coming weeks for live updates, highlights and on-the-ground reports from the Rio 2016 Olympics. Social sites are also where fans will turn to share the glory of the athletes’ greatest achievements in real time. Social media’s biggest companies all struck deals to better position their apps and services to showcase the action in Rio de Janeiro. Here’s how to follow it all from afar using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat.

How Facebook does Rio 2016 

LinkedIn shot for the moon with its first broadcast TV commercial in March, but the company quickly careened back earth when Microsoft scooped it up for $26.2 billion in June. The 14-year-old company is financially healthy, but the acquisition suggests LinkedIn may have hit a ceiling. Are the company’s best days behind it?

The social network for professionals is diverse, with business units that range from publishing and educational training to sales-lead generation. But LinkedIn is still primarily a way for people to find their next jobs. Under Microsoft, LinkedIn has an opportunity to focus on its areas of strength and growth opportunities, according to a set of analysts and LinkedIn experts who spoke with CIO.com. 

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If Snapchat is still just a little too confusing for you, Instagram might have a solution. The Facebook-owned company today revealed a new feature that resembles one of Snapchat’s most popular attributes: “disappearing” photos and video. 

“Instagram Stories” could help you find a happy medium between over-sharing and under-sharing. As the feature rolls out globally via Android and iOS during the coming weeks, Instagram’s 500 million monthly active users will gain access to a daily feed of photos and video that resets after 24 hours. The photos and video added to the Instagram Stories feed will “disappear” after 24 hours and won’t appear in the main Instagram feed or in the grids on users’ profiles, according to the company. 

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 Three of the world’s largest and most influential technology companies — Apple, Facebook and Google — this week reported their latest earnings results for the quarter ending in June 2016. Facebook closed the week with its stock at an all-time high. Following impressive growth during the previous quarter, it is now among the five most valuable companies in the world. Apple sits atop that list with a market cap of $567.8 billion, and Google is next, with a cap of $546.7 billion. Facebook is valued at $362.9 billion, placing it fifth on the list behind Microsoft ($444.4 billion) and Amazon ($368.5 billion).

Here’s a quick summary of the highs (and lows) of the financials from the three companies:

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Ad blockers have a bad reputation in some circles, but they also get a lot of love.

A new study from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) found 26 percent of desktop computer users and 15 percent of mobile device owners use ad blocking software to remove advertisements from the sites they visit. Males between 18 and 34 years of age represent about 32 percent of all ad-blocker use, and women of the same age range comprise 22 percent of use, according to IAB. 

The advertising trade group is no fan of ad blockers. In fact, the head of IAB kicked off 2016 by blasting ad-block makers as “unethical, immoral, mendacious” profiteers. The new research conducted by C3Research for IAB adds fuel to that fire. The report’s findings are based on a study that displayed ads from 36 different sites to 103 adults, as well as a separate panel of 1,292 people who looked at desktop ads and 201 who viewed mobile ads, according to IAB. 

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When marketing and technology collide, too many IT departments react with extreme measures. CIOs and IT professionals can choose to block marketing efforts, get out of the way entirely or embrace strategies that position their technical expertise to have the greatest impact, according to a set of marketing executives who spoke with CIO.com. 

Businesses fall into two camps, in which IT professionals become “order takers or stonewallers,” and these relationships breed resentment among all involved, according to Keith Sibson, vice president of product and marketing at PostUp, an email marketing firm. IT professionals should try to understand their marketing colleagues’ motivations and then work in tandem to develop programs that meet those goals. However, marketers also need to be pragmatic in their requests, he says. “Marketing and IT should be open and honest partners for each other, willing to compromise and approach problems constructively.” 

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