As you may know, I’m a pretty voracious reader and generally share a bunch of news & reviews via my social platforms. Here’s a countdown of the top six most important articles I’ve shared in the last day. I curate this top six based on number of retweets, clicks, favorites, and mentions, so you guys are a large part of what ends up listed here :).
#6 Image Ad Startup Cortica Raises $7M From Li Ka-Shing’s Horizons Ventures And Ynon Kreiz
Cortica announced that they have raised $7 million in funds. The company’s image recognition technology helps serve up incredibly relevant ads; just take a look at the example inside this article. TechCrunch blogger, Anthony Ha, says the money comes from Horizons Ventures, the firm owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing, and from Ynon Kreiz, the former chairman and CEO of the Endemol Group, the world’s largest independent TV production company.
#5 Sign and Send Contracts From Your iPhone For Free With HelloSign
Not quite a social story, but bear with me – this is a pretty big productivity booster! HelloFax, the company that allows you to send and receive digital faxes, has spun off its digital signature service into a new product called HelloSign. Emily Price, writer for Mashable, says documents can be signed and securely returned to their sender from both the web and the company’s new iPhone application. Unlike other services and apps that are already out there, digital signatures using the service are free and unlimited so you can send and receive just a few documents with no cost.
#4 Why Is Great Service So Rare?
Great service is something that every customer wishes to have at all times. Everyone loves a customer-friendly brands like Zappos, and gets weak in the knees when a customer service rep actually treat us to great service. Who couldn’t agree with that? But besides the obvious business advantages, outstanding service remains frustratingly mysterious, as contributor Dorie Clark outlines in this Forbes piece.
#3 Is Social Media Destroying Real-World Relationships? [INFOGRAPHIC]
It’s no secret that social media allows us to organize our real-world relationships.It allows you to meet new people outside the digital realm — both of which can be great, life-enhancing things. Sam Laird writes on Mashable asking if social networking could have an adverse effect on our quality of life? After all, 24% of respondents to a recent survey indicated that they had missed out on participating in a major event in person because they were too busy documenting their life online. Pretty useful infographic included in this piece, too.
#2 Rumor: Google Puts A Hold On New Google+ Acquisitions
Frederic Lardinois and Alexia Tsotsis report for TechCrunch that Google may be putting a stop to all acquisitions related to Google+, at least until the end of this year. Google is cautious of both growing the Google+ team right now and providing the product with any more resources until January. It will be interesting to see if Google+ marketing spend goes down in the short-term. Is Google looking to see if Google+ can continue its forward momentum without as much of a concentrated push on their part? Could be. At a certain point, Google+ has to succeed or not on its own merits.
#1 8.7% of Facebook accounts are fake? Still, that leaves 872m bona fide users.
According to Paul Sawers, writer for The Next Web, 8.7% of Facebook accounts are fake, as CNET noted earlier today. That means about 83m users, if we’re using the 955m figure announced by Facebook recently. While this obviously leaves Facebook with a pretty significant number of worldwide adoptees, the amount of accounts purported to be fake is pretty staggering.
