Adly, a startup that connects advertisers with celebrities willing to post promoted messages on social networks, recently raised $2 million in additional funding. The new funding came from previous backer GRP Partners and new investor Siemer Ventures. Adly has now raised a total of $7.5 million.

No longer just an oddly flavored potato chip, the Limon is also a new sexy-time vibrator from a startup called Minna. The company is looking for backers for its "couples' vibrator", which just so happens to look like a pink lime-lemon hybrid. However, the Limon is no lemon or lime. It's an ultra-powerful bullet vibrator that is controlled by how hard you squeeze it. That is, the harder you squeeze the lime part of the Limon, the harder the lemon-style tip will vibrate.

It's almost impossible for the average computer to mine Bitcoins in any efficient way, hence the rise of Bitcoin mining machines so tuned to their specific purpose that they barely resemble PCs. To wit: the Cryonic Bitcoin FrostBit machine is a PC in name only and contains a liquid nitrogen generator, special ASIC chips, and a price tag that would make the Winklevii twins think twice.

You know viewability is a big deal when rivals in a given space band together to promote a new open source standard around it. That's what's happening in online video, as TubeMogul has organized a group of fellow video ad tech vendors including BrightRoll, Innovid, LiveRail and SpotXchange to support a viewability solution for in-stream [...]

The Federal Trade Commission may not be done with Google yet, opening a new investigation into whether the search giant abuses its market-leading position to curb competition in display advertising, according to a Bloomberg News report. 

Google reported $2.26 billion in display ad revenue in the U.S. last year, a figure that is projected to hit $3.11 billion this year, according to eMarketer. Google's 15 percent share of the market bests Facebook (14.5 percent), Yahoo (9 percent), Microsoft (4.5 percent) and AOL (3.5 percent).

According to Bloomberg, the FTC is examining whether Google's DoubleClick ad network and its planning and buying tools force ad buyers to purchase ads in other Google services and avoid competing nets like Yahoo and Microsoft.

The probe would come five months after the FTC concluded a two-year investigation into whether Google unfairly manipulated its search results. To the disappointment

Smartphone and tablet users have unique preferences, and savvy mobile marketers can use them to create better campaigns All mobile devices are not created equal, and we’re not just talking about screen size. A new report by Forrester Research shares insights into the different habits and preferences of tablet and smartphone users. Marketers can use [...]

If you think 740 million video views sounds like a lot, prepare yourself for a shock. According to the latest comScore Video Metrix’s report, YouTube visitors (in combination with other Google properties) watched 13 billion videos in April. Yes, billion with a ‘b’. What’s really fascinating is the rate of the climb. Look at these [...]

As great as the web is, I still haven't been able to kick my habit for buying fashion and lifestyle magazines off the newsstand. One of the things I love the most about monthly glossies are features like Vanity Fair's My Stuff and Us Weekly's What's In My Bag, in which notable people reveal the exact products that they actually buy and use (celebrity chef David Chang uses Sensodyne toothpaste and wears Levi's jeans, FYI.) It's just compelling to find out more about people through their stuff. The folks at New York-based startup Vaunte think so too, and in fact, they think it could be the next generation of luxury e-commerce. Vaunte has created a web platform where notable people (think starlets, fashionable executives, designers, and socialites) show off

The video ad network has been looking to go public for a long time. More video IPOs likely this year.

Have America’s teenagers begun losing interest in Facebook? A new report says the answer is in the affirmative, and marketers may want to take note. A freshly published Pew survey indicates that the social network of one billion is becoming too much of a headache for some teens to handle. Why so? Because their moms, [...]

On Thursday, LogicBuy posted a must-read report on smartphones and the often-touted specs that should actually carry very little weight with consumers in the market for a new or refreshed device. “For example,” reads the guest post by Shaun Chatman, “did you know that so-called native apps take up huge allotments of your phone’s memory: [...]

Bloomberg today reports that Google could face a new U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) antitrust probe into its display advertising business. As Bloomberg's Brian Womack and Sara Forden note, the FCC is looking into whether Google used its strong position in this market to "illegally curb competition." The investigators, the report also notes, want to see if Google used its display ads business to "push companies to use more of its other services."

Toshiba isn’t exactly known for churning out attractive, high-end notebooks, which is why the company’s new Kirabook is such an oddity. It's a handsome little thing if you're into very (and I mean very) understated designs, though I imagine at least a few people will think the Kirabook looks downright dull. The Kirabook is wedge-shaped like many of its other ultrabook brethren but it's thankfully very light on branding (save for a small, chrome-esque Toshiba logo slapped on a corner of the Kirabook's lid), and finish that comes as a result of the magnesium allow chassis is nice enough. Sadly, that magnesium frame doesn't mean the Kirabook is immune to scratches, something I quickly learned after stowing the thing in a checked bag while flying to Austin.

Convertibles were all the rage back in the 1950s (thanks to tailfins and the Corvette) and in the early 2000s (thanks to Microsoft and Sony). In the 2000s, however, we saw convertibles in the form of laptops that could twist and turn themselves into tablets. The result, usually, was a not-very-good-laptop folded into a not-very-good tablet.

Apple’s iAd has earned a rare distinction among mobile ad networks. iAd has become the first major mobile ad network to be fully accredited by the Media Ratings Council. The achievement, AdAge reports, is the result of Apple’s purported strict adherence to the standards that the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Mobile Marketing Association released in [...]

Why is Social Media Management Important?

With so many different social media sites to post, share articles, and track engagement on, finding a reliable social media management tool to help streamline your social media tasks is pretty essential.

Social media managing tools can help marketers save time, stay organized, and optimize their efficiency.

Today we’re looking at some of the top contenders for social media management systems. While some overlap, each has its own advantages and disadvantages. This guide should help you determine which tool is the best fit for your business.

Social Media Management Tool Reviews

The pricing design of these social tools is fairly consistent – there’s usually a set of plans ranging from the cheapest and most basic, to the more expensive and advanced. Cheaper plans usually have a limit on the number of social media profiles and pages you can hook up to, while pricier plans allow for more accounts and

Salesforce.com met analyst expectations for its first quarter with non-GAAP earnings per share of 10 cents. Total first quarter revenues were $893 million, an increase of 28 percent on a year-over-year basis. Subscription and support revenues were $842 million, an increase of 29% on a year-over-year basis. Professional services and other revenues were $50 million, an increase of 25%. It had operating cash flow of $283 Million, up 33%. Salesforce also raised its 2014 fiscal year reenues to an estimaged $3.835 to $3.875 billion. Salesforce.com is on a bit of a roll. Gartner nmed it the number one CRM platform in the world this past quarter. CEO Marc Benioff said in the earnings call that it had a record number of SAP customers moving to Salesforce. (We will update the story as more information comes available.)

Google conversational search rolled out on the new version of Chrome this week. While the “OK Google” search prompt we heard about at the I/O event is not yet available, Google is attempting to have relevant conversations with users.

Pandora has had a busy quarter. In March, the social radio company saw its long-time CEO Joe Kennedy abruptly step dow , leaving the board to scramble to find a replacement. On the bright side, Kennedy’s exit, while likely a result of stress, followed relatively good times for Pandora. And it’s continued to push forward since. Pandora launched an ad-free version for Windows 8 in March, surpassed 200 million users (with over 140 million accessing Pandora via mobile) in April, then launched a “Premieres” station for U.S. users and deepened its Facebook integration with a new Timeline App. Today, Pandora’s first quarter earnings reflected this flurry of activity, as the company saw GAAP total revenue increase 97 percent year-over-year to $83.9 million (with non-GAAP mobile revenue of $86.7 million), which outpaced mobile listener hour growth at

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

• Google Pushed Out The Major Penguin Update (v2.0 #4)
  As I reported last night at Search Engine Land, Penguin 2.0 / 4 is now live - this is the next generation Penguin update. As Google's Matt Cutts added, this impacts 2.3% of English queries and also impacts other languages but the percentage depends on the level of spam in those languages...
• Google Site Command Temporary Issue Due To Domain Clustering
  As I reported yesterday at Search Engine Land, the site command may be a bit buggy for you right now and may not be resolved for about a week. In short...
• Google Knowledge Graph Nudity Removed Quickly
  A Google Web Search Help thread had a solo post from a user

comScore released their April Video Metrix and the ad boom continues, as we saw yet another record amount of ads last month. Virtually everything stays the same from March in total videos viewed, unique viewers, and so on.

Target recently launched a new digital coupon app called Cartwheel that is supposed to make shopping more social. It begins with a great idea; personalized digital coupons but from there, the wheel gets a little wobbly. Here’s how it works. First, you have to log on to the Cartwheel site and sign-up using your Facebook [...]

Postmates is looking to expand its business and make mobile, on-demand deliveries a widespread thing throughout cities around the country -- that we already know. The company has been operating in San Francisco for a while, and launched in Seattle about three months ago. But where will it land next? All signs point to New York City.

Twitter today launched a new advertising product that will target promoted tweets to users who watched TV programs during which related television commercials were aired.

The ad product continues to show Twitter working hard to dominate the second screen marketing experience. Last year, 32 million people in the U.S. tweeted about TV programming.

“Synchronized Twitter and TV ad campaigns make brand messages more engaging, interactive and measurable,” Twitter said.

The product builds on the technology the company acquired with Bluefin Labs. Twitter can now more intelligently monitor shared content for references to ongoing television programming, even when users don’t explicitly reference the title of the program. It uses this data to display promoted tweets to users who have likely just seen commercials for the same products on TV.

If a user has tweeted about a television show during which a Trident

Apple confirmed Thursday that the keynote address for WWDC 2013 will take place on June 10th, as the conference begins that morning at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California. Tim Cook will commence WWDC 2013 by presenting the keynote address, sources confirm. In past years, Apple hasn’t been forthcoming about what announcements will be [...]

A new bulletin from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warns that lethal, undetectable 3D-printed firearms may be "impossible" to contain. After a Texas law student designed and released digital blueprints for the world's first fully printable gun, the files have allegedly been downloaded more than 100,000 times, despite a domestic ban on distributing the files from the U.S. State Department.

SEO Newsletter May 2013: Rolling out the Red Carpet Edition was originally published on BruceClay.com, home of expert search engine optimization tips.

This month's SEO Newsletter: The Red Carpet Edition celebrates some of the top performers in the category of Internet marketing optimization. Among the stars were quality content creation and keyword research. In the feature article, Quality Content Delivers Stellar Performance, take a look at the role quality content plays in all the genres of internet marketing. Advertising, public relations, communications, brand voice, social media and web pages have all cast content.

Google almost completely revamped the Google+ photo experience last week, but somehow the company didn't get around to announce one of the coolest photo-related features in its repertoire: Google now uses computer vision and machine learning to let you search your photos for things like sunsets, food and flowers. I also tried terms like "cars," "beach" and "bikes" and Google consistently returned the right results. This search is build into Google+, but you can also use the regular Google search and use the query term [my photos of xyz] to find the right images.

Google has added a new visual feature in Google Trends that allows users to explore trending people, places, and things over time, back to 2004. Interactive charts are sharable, allowing users to highlights data that’s interesting to them.

After being acquired by Facebook, the mobile back-end service Parse has been busy integrating itself into the company, as well as launching new services like web hosting for developers. The service has built tools to help developers focus on the front-end of their product, while handling all of the messy back-end things like cross-platform compatibility and testing. Naturally, Facebook integration is easier than ever for mobile developers thanks to the acquisition. Its been six years since Facebook's Platform launched, and during a whiteboard session at its Menlo Park headquarters, the company discussed just how far its come.