Business As Usual In The New Silicon Valley

Now here is one spectacular tale. A company, with little PR or marketing, grows in just a handful of years to connect half a billion people around the world through a simple messaging app. The company gets acquired for a hefty sum; in this case, the largest sum ever in the history of venture-backed startup acquisitions. Billionaires and millionaires are created almost out of thin air.

How Facebook's WhatsApp Deal Compares to Other Tech Acquisitions

Facebook announced Wednesday that it will acquire popular messaging app WhatsApp for $16 billion ($19 billion, if you include restricted stock units for the WhatsApp staff). It's hard to believe that only two years ago, the social network acquired Instagram for a then-shocking $1 billion. How times (and dollars) have changed.

20 Tools To Stop The Social Media Timesuck

The longer I work in social media, the more I realize that the biggest danger for a social media marketer isn’t proving ROI, anticipating Facebook algorithm changes or even dealing with Twitter trolls — it’s the dreaded Social Media Timesuck. You’re probably familiar with it. It’s what happens when you go to Facebook just to post a link to that latest blog entry but somehow end up staying for an extra 30 minutes and opening 7 new tabs.

Facebook Buying WhatsApp For $19B, Will Keep The Messaging Service Independent

Facebook is purchasing messaging giant WhatsApp for $16 billion in cash and stock, according to a regulatory filing. The deal is being cut for $12 billion in Facebook shares, $4 billion in cash and an additional $3 billion in RSUs for employee retention. A termination fee is attached to the deal that would cost Facebook $1 billion in cash and $1 billion in shares if the deal fails to pass regulatory muster.

Facebook to Buy WhatsApp for $16 Billion

Facebook has entered into an agreement to acquire WhatsApp, the popular messaging app, for $16 billion in cash and stock, according to a filing Wednesday. The deal is by far Facebook's largest acquisition to date and comes after rumors in late 2012 and early 2013 that Facebook and Google were vying to buy the messaging service. According to the filing, Facebook has agreed to pay $12 billion in stock and $4 billion in cash for the company. Facebook has also agreed to pay an additional $3 billion

10 Big Brands That Were Penalized By Google, From Rap Genius To The BBC

It’s been a busy year already with big brands getting hit by Google penalties. First came Rap Genius, slammed so hard that you couldn’t find it for its own name. Then came Expedia’s suspected penalty that may have hurt its traffic. But these are also a familiar tune. Big brand violates Google’s rules, gets in trouble but ultimately returns to Google’s good graces with what may seem a virtual wrist-slap.

5 Times Google Penalized Itself For Breaking Its Own SEO Rules

Make no mistake. Plenty of sites — big brands included — willingly do things in an attempt to rank better on Google that go past SEO tactics that Google itself considers acceptable. However, there’s also no better poster child for how complicated and confusing Google’s rules can be than the fact that Google has had to punish itself with penalties over and over again.

101 Best Websites To Make Money Writing Articles

101 Best Websites To Make Money Writing Articles "There are many of us who know a number of useful websites using which we are earning couple hundred dollars, but we would never want to share that website with anyone else. Why would we? The world is full of competitions."

20 Sites To Get Paid For Writing And Blogging

It’s not like writing for a book, or publication, a newspaper or magazine but blogging is prevalent on the Web because we love sharing, reading and hearing about new experiences. And unlike freelance writing, you don’t answer to a client’s demand or write to adhere to a blog’s direction or scope. Still, it feels good to be paid to write articles, and you don’t have to manage a blog to actually make money out of your writing.

26 Sites That Pay You To Blog

Writing paid post is perhaps the most straight forward ways to earn some revenue from blogging. The way pay post works hasn’t changed much; after reaching mutual agreement with advertisers, you write about them, they pay you. And if there is a 3rd party (middle man company) involve, they take cut. Most middle man company provides marketplace for advertisers to look for publishers, vice versa.

Top 10 Tools For Managing Your Social Media Accounts

Attempting to juggle each and every one of your social media accounts can be tricky, scary, and time-consuming. For example, while you’re busy updating your Facebook status, you might have forgotten to favorite a tweet. Speaking of tweets, when is the best time to send one out to followers? Ugh. It can seriously give you a migraine. Thankfully, we live in a world and time where developers are rectifying that problem! Now, there are plenty of tools that can easily sync with all of our social media accounts

Yahoo Mail Accounts Hacked, Passwords Reset

An unspecified number of Yahoo Mail users have had their usernames and passwords compromised, the company announced late Thursday. The hack appears to have taken place via a compromised third party database, and Yahoo has taken the precaution of resetting the passwords of affected users.

Top 10 WordPress Plugins That You Need To Be Using In 2014

If you’re running a WordPress-powered website or blog, then you’re always searching for a way to innovate and make your site easier to use –for both you and your visitors.  This is one reason why WordPress plugins are so unbelievably awesome, because they seem like quick little cheats and hacks that take little-to-no time to learn, install, and use. 

One of the most important parts of the plugins we chose is that all ten of them can help just about any blog in some way.

Facebook ads: cost per impression up 186%, cost per click up 35%, revenue per click up 83%

E-book advertisers, everything is going up and to the right: impressions, clicks, costs … and revenue. “The 2.9X increase in CPMs year-over-year shows the continued demand for valuable inventory as Facebook has continuously ramped up its direct response advertising capabilities,”

Keywords to Concepts: The Lazy Web Marketer's Guide to Smart Keyword Research

The SEO's system for themed keyword research. If Google's Penguin update and Knowledge Graph have taught us anything, it's that concepts have become more important than individual keywords for search marketing. 

Many people in the SEO space mistakenly assume that because Google withholds keyword referral data

Must-Have Social Meta Tags for Twitter, Google+, Facebook and More

we strive to include social media metadata in all new pieces of content that we publish. This allows us to optimize for sharing Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinerest by defining exactly how titles, descriptions, images and more appear in social streams. Think of it as conversion rate optimization for social exposure.

40+ Tools to Advance Your International SEO Process

Most frequent questions I get is about the tools that I use for international SEO, and although I included most of them in my international SEO presentation at MozCon, since I didn't had the time to focus on them, I would like to share how I use them to support my international SEO activities. There are tools to support every part of your journey, including identifying the potential, targeting an international audience, optimizing and promoting the websites, earning international popularity,

Announcing the Brand New Beginner's Guide to Social Media

The Beginner's Guide to Social Media.The prevalence and importance of social media to web marketing can't be overstated. To quote a few statistics from the guide itself, 72% of online adults use social networking sites, and YouTube now reaches more U.S. adults aged 18-34 than any cable network. With that kind of traffic, it's no wonder marketers now use these networks to interact with their customers, and there's plenty more data to prove it.

31 Link Building Tactics Discovered From Competitive Analysis

On the Moz blog there's always been a large discussion around competitive analysis. From how to conductcompetitive analysis using Google docs to in depth articles about competitive link analysis using Excel, or even just the fact that Moz has Open Site Explorer, one of the ultimate analysis tools for competitive backlink analysis. The fact of the matter is competitive analysis can be a very worthwhile exercise to help you determine the best strategy for your online efforts.

Ten Factors To Consider Before Spending Money On Facebook Ads

If you’re reading this, then it’s probably because you or your company has been thinking about launching a Facebook page. This social network currently boasts over one billion members, which is what makes advertising to this captive audience is so powerful. Before you jump into the deep end and start paying for Facebook ads, there are some key items to consider. Nobody likes to waste money, but if you don’t plan your campaign effectively,