marketer

Twitter suffered its largest outage in some time Monday following an error in a "routine change" to the microblogging site.

In a statement, the company said the site was not available from 1:08 p.m. to 1:33 p.m. PT. A mere 25 minutes. For the 200 million Twitter users, that was a while, at least since the days of the regular "fail whale."

But now that Bloomberg terminals -- the computers that Wall Street analysts, financial types, and traders use -- have tweets flowing through them, there's a greater onus of responsibility … Read more

The Android version of Chrome has begun carving a niche for itself in the mobile browsing market.

In May, usage of the mobile version of Google's browser on smartphones and tablets accounted for an all-time high of 3.2 percent, according to Net Applications' usage statistics. That figure may not sound like a lot, but the browser only crossed the 1 percent threshold in November 2012, and it's now surpassed Microsoft's IE at 2 percent of mobile browser usage.

At the same time, Google's unbranded Android browser, which predates Chrome, appears to be waning. Its usage … Read more

Google's bid to connect everyone to the Internet may have it entering the wireless service business.

The company is looking at building cellular networks and offering service to emerging markets such as sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, according to The Wall Street Journal. Citing anonymous sources, WSJ reported that the networks would be available outside of big cities, where service is spotty or not available. Google is reportedly working with local companies on a possible deployment and thinking up business models to support the networks.

Google is also looking at building low-cost phones using its Android operating system, considering … Read more

Verizon Wireless already sells its customers' mobile data to marketers. Now European enterprise-software giant SAP is taking things a step further by testing a service that will sell data collected by a number of wireless providers.

SAP announced its Consumer Insight 365 mobile service this week at the CTIA 2013 wireless show in Las Vegas. The service will, the company said in a release, pull data from SAP's "extensive partner network" including "over 990 mobile operators;" aggregate and analyze it "without drilling down into user-specific information;" and make results available to subscribers through … Read more

BlackBerry has managed to regain some lost market share in its home country of Canada.

In a research note to investors on Thursday, Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt reported that while BlackBerry's market share was just 6 percent in Canada in the fourth quarter of 2012, it jumped to 13.5 percent in the first quarter of 2013. The analyst believes that there was some excitement that cropped up around BlackBerry's latest handsets, the Z10 and Q10, which helped spur the change.

Still, BlackBerry is still far behind where it once was. According to McCourt, BlackBerry had a … Read more

Apple's got about 429 million more app downloads to go before it tops 50 billion, and two companies are putting money down if their apps are the 50 billionth.

Addappt, a social address book service that launched last June and was created by former Microsoft and LinkedIn employees, says it will give the person who wins Apple's 50 billion app download giveaway a $10,000 Apple store gift card if the app they downloaded was -- you guessed it -- Addappt.

That prize would be on top of the $10,000 App Store gift card Apple says it … Read more

AT&T is getting closer to its quest of covering 250 million people with 4G LTE by the end of 2013. On Monday, the carrier announced five more markets that will receive the faster 4G speeds.

The new markets are:

This brings AT&T's total to 212 4G LTE markets and nearly 200 million people, up from 175 LTE areas just a month ago.

Verizon's needle, meanwhile, hovers in the 500-market range.

Just three months after release, Twitter's Vine video service for creating 6-second clips has already become the muse of marketers looking to reach people through imaginative messaging.

Brands such as Lowe's, Urban Outfitters, Taco Bell, and Bacardi, with the help of their digital agencies, have embraced the platform to test unconventional campaigns on social audiences who seem to appreciate their business-as-unusual approach.

What follows is a panoply of creative Vine brand campaigns. If advertisements as looping, GIF-like videos scare you, I suggest you turn away now.

Note: If for some reason a particular clip below shows up as nothing more than a black box, you can click on the white banner along the top of the box to open the clip in a new browser tab.… Read more

At first glance, new numbers released by research firm IDC show that Apple has nothing to worry about regarding its control of the tablet market, but a closer look could raise some doubts.

While Apple is still the world's No. 1 tablet maker, Samsung is No. 2 and growing at a faster rate. Looking specifically at year-over-year growth from first quarter numbers, Apple grew by 65 percent -- not bad. But, Samsung grew by 282 percent, Asus grew by 350 percent, and Amazon grew by 157 percent.

The question is: Is this part and parcel of a bigger problem? … Read more