It’s back, but most likely you probably never knew it was gone. Google has some fun features sometimes that really don’t seem to serve much of a purpose. Maybe Google just decided that they were bored and wanted to add a new feature. These are the type of things that make us smile and enjoy Google. Of course we are talking about the amazing timer feature that can be accessed right from the search tool.

With over 70 million active users in 2013 Pinterest growth rate surpassed Facebook and LinkedIn. Pinterest became the 3rd most popular place to share things on the Internet, cruising past email. This growth was driven by women who make up 65% of the social network. With all of this growth we knew that changes would soon be coming to the popular platform.

In 2014, Content Marketing is still the key to a powerful SEO campaign and an active, engaging social media presence. The opportunities for content placement are growing because online publishers need to make money!

A study by J.D. Power found that in 2012, 47 percent of vehicle owners indicated they used a downloaded app on their smartphone for navigation in their vehicle, compared with 37 percent in 2011. Notably, 46 percent of owners indicate they “definitely would not” or “probably would not” repurchase a factory-installed navigation system if their smartphone navigation could be displayed on a central screen in their vehicle.

Instagram is the picture and video sharing service that Facebook so wisely acquired just a few years ago. In 2012 the Instagram community grew to 80 million users, with the number of users growing substantially each year. As of January 2014 the service now has over 150 million active users. With over 55 million photos posted daily, Instagram is considered one of the most dominating social media services and has one of the most popular websites in the world.

It’s a New Year and we all know what that means, it’s time for us to make another New Year’s resolution. One that we will all keep this year…Right? As you have probably guessed the top resolutions have to do with getting in shape, eating better, or just losing weight in general. It always comes back to being more healthy overall.

In 2013 it seemed like everyone was on social media. Kids that were as young as 13 and grandparents that were 85. Social media was used to spread viral videos, update everyone on breaking news, complain about life, keep in touch with distant friends and family members and some people enjoyed gloating to everyone on their friends list. If there was a way to use social media, it was being done in 2013. With this many people on social media, it became the go to platform for companies to raise brand awareness and advertise their services.

With video playing such an important role on the Internet in 2013, is your company leveraging video as a form of advertising? Billboard has started using video views to account for the top 100 singles. That means that song in a viral video could start to climb the charts. We all remember "What Does the Fox Say" or "The Harlem Shake" each received millions of views, got themselves onto the billboard charts and earned tons of money through video advertising. Of course the companies doing the video advertising were definitely the real winners. 

A 23-year-old entrepreneur did. Evan Spiegel, the co-founder and chief executive of Snapchat, rejected a $3 billion cash buyout offer from Facebook. Snapchat is a photo messaging application with which users can add text and drawings to photos and videos and send them to a list of recipients. The sent photographs and videos are known as “Snaps.” Users set a time limit for how long recipients can view their Snaps (ranging from 1 to 10 seconds), after which they are deleted from Snapchat’s servers.

Sometimes as a small business owner you might not realize how important it is to have a website that is visible by millions of people. It’s almost 2014 and some small business owners still don’t even have a website. Today, it’s not enough to simply have a website, you absolutely must be found as well. Pretty pictures and sliders won’t do this for you anymore. Now you are responsible for optimizing your site, writing blogs, link building, building citations, and getting on every social network known to man. This is a lot of hard work. This hard work is known as SEO or Search Engine Optimization.