When it comes to creating content for a company blog, "if you build it they will come" is not the right mantra. Smart social media promotion of your content is key, and it's almost as important as creating the content itself.

That said, copying and pasting the same old thing to every social network -- or worse, automating it -- isn't an effective strategy. Each platform has its own unique nuances that, when wisely taken advantage of, can increase clicks on links you share and page views for your blog. Here are tips on how to do that on each platform.

Twitter
Headlines: You only get one shot at a first impression. On a social share, the headline is it. Lists, how-to's, a…
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More About: Facebook, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter, contributor, features

Welcome to this morning's edition of "First To Know," a series in which we keep you in the know on what's happening in the digital world. Today, we're looking at three particularly interesting stories.

Hashable Is Shutting Down

The virtual business card startup Hashable is shutting down. "We regret to inform you that the Hashable mobile apps and Hashable.com will be shutting down on July 25th. The service will be unavailable after this date," said Hashable in an email to users.

The founders will start a new company, focusing on mobile ads.

IDC and Gartner Say the PC Market Was Flat in Q2 2012

Global PC shipments totaled 87.5 million units in Q2 2012, which is a dec…
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More About: features, first to know series, hashable, mashable

Planning to augment your viewing of this summer's London Olympics action with a trusty iPad by your side for stat updates, Twitter chatter and other social interaction? Well, thank your lucky pixels -- consumer tablets weren't even a thing for the last Summer Olympics, in 2008.

Smartphone use hadn't truly taken off back then, either. The increase in mobile technology is sure to have a profound effect on how millions of viewers -- and many athletes -- experience the 2012 Games. Fans will be able to converse, debate and rave communally as never before because of mobile proliferation and the explosive growth of social media over the past four years.

We recently took a look at how Facebo…
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More About: Facebook, Mobile, Twitter, infographics, olympics, smartphone, sports, tablets

1. The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger

The honey badger is king of the crazy nastyass jungle — er, desert. This YouTube classic explains why. Posted by reptheevt.

Click here to view this gallery.

Reddit has made a habit of lampooning befuddled cats, bizarre musical remixes and stunts gone wrong. But only now have all these incredible novelties come together in one epic Reddit thread.

User Doctorsnazzbaggle posted on AskReddit Tuesday, asking fellow Reddit users, "What YouTube video makes you laugh uncontrollably?"

A sidesplitting, bellyaching, knee-slapping smörgåsbord of funny clips flooded in, and a few revelations followed. First, Reddit loves animals. Second, Reddit loves when animals hurt themselves. Third, Reddit loves people dressed as animals hurting themselves.

SEE ALSO: YouTube's 10 Most-Shared Ads in June

Other videos featured a David Blaine impersonator, a…
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More About: Video, YouTube, features, humor, reddit, viral, watercooler

If you're a Yahoo Voices user, it's time to change your password.

Security for the service appears to have been compromised early Thursday morning. A list titled "Owned and Exposed" which is "brought to you by the D33Ds Company" was posted online revealing a number of details for the service including all of the email addresses and passwords for Yahoo Voices' 450,000 users.

The site hosting the information is intermittently down; however, we were able to open the document and verify that it does in fact contain user emails and password data.

At the end of the document the group remarks that it posted the information to be a "Wake-up call" rather than a threat.

"We hope t…
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More About: Yahoo, Yahoo Voice, trending

Internet personality Julie Klausner is on a mission to pet Bush's Baked Beans four-legged mascot Duke -- and with the help of Twitter, it just might happen.

Klausner runs the podcast How Was Your Week in between professing her love for basset hounds and making small talk with corporate Twitter accounts. At the moment, she's got her eye set on Duke, the golden retriever featured in Bush's Baked Beans commercials.

Klausner's plea to pet Duke sparked Monday after seeing an ad for Bush's Baked Beans.

"I grew up with those ads and I've seen Duke, the dog, for years -- but for some reason it just really occured to him the other night how badly I'd like to pet him," says Klausner.

T…
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More About: Twitter, comedy, humor, social media campaign, watercooler

NationBuilder, a service that provides state-of-the-art digital organizing technology to almost any political campaign, has made what the company's president called "probably the largest deal ever struck in political technology" in terms of the number of elections it can potentially impact.

The deal? NationBuilder will be the exclusive campaign technology of the Republican State Leadership Committee, whose mission is to elect Republican candidates running for office at the state level across the U.S.

Through the arrangement, Republican candidates running for about 7500 different offices will get greatly discounted access to the service. NationBuilder will provide those candidates with…
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More About: Politics, US, nationbuilder, republicans

A professional triathlon coach in Texas was able to successfully recover at least $18,000 worth of stolen bicycles from his home with a little help from his friends -- his Facebook friends that is.

When Todd Codish and his wife realized their garage had been broken into and four premium racing and mountain bikes had been taken, they immediately used their Facebook community to help catch the criminal.

Kristen Codish posted this message to her Facebook page: "For those of you that watch craigslist and eBay for used bikes, we had four stolen tonight. A Look, Cervelo, Kestrel and Trek mountain bike. Very sad night."

SEE ALSO: Wanted Man 'Like…
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More About: Facebook, craigslist, theft

33. Kitten in Hamster Ball

It goes on too long, and could do with a little more motion to justify the Stealer's Wheel soundtrack. But these are forgivable sins in the cat video world, it seems; Tom Tom's spherical plastic antics have racked up more than 11 million views.

Click here to view this gallery.

Cat videos -- you thought they were a colossal (if cute) waste of time, right? You had no idea they were art.

But Tuesday's announcement, heralding the first ever international cat video festival, changed all that. Roll over, Sundance! Move aside, Cannes! Cue the rise of an entirely new breed of journalist, the cat video critic.

For all you aspiring Roger Eberts of the feline film scene, we put together the video gallery above. These aren't the Oscar winners of the genre -- when it comes to cat videos, quality is in the eye of the beholder -- but they are the box-office sensations.

We researched all videos that focus on cats or kittens on YouTube, including animation (how could we…
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More About: YouTube, cat videos

Payphones in New York City have largely been made obsolete by the fact that almost everybody's got a cellphone for staying in touch on-the-go. Luckily for the long-forgotten phones that still dot the city's streets, they're about to get a twenty-first-century upgrade.

New York City's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications introduced on Wednesday the city's first payphones-turned-Wi-Fi hotspots. They're free of charge for any nearby New Yorker (or visitor) to use for connecting his smartphone, tablet or laptop to the Internet. Internet services are being provided in cooperation with Van Wagner and Titan.

So far, 10 payphones spread across Manhattan, Queens and B…
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More About: Mobile, Tech, US, cellphones, hotspots, laptops, new york city, smart cities, tablets, technology, wifi

Amid all the hoopla around politicians using social media platforms to engage voters, the Obama and Romney campaigns are still employing a stalwart communication tool: email. The problem, however, is that both campaigns constantly break the golden rules of email, to the frustration of many.

What's This About?

First, there are the subject lines, which are usually misleading or do little to inform recipients what the message is actually about in the hopes of getting them to open the email -- a practice known in the digital journalism world as "clickbait."

Here are some recent subject lines from team Obama: "Go ahead, keep waiting." "Here's a twist." "Midnight, your time." "Dinner?"…
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More About: 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney, Politics, Social Media, US, barack obama, email

Reddit user delverofsecrets posted photos of a cryptic note that he or she obtained from a "homeless looking man" on the 1 train in New York City. The user asked Reddit for help in identifying what the characters might mean, and the post quickly shot to the top of the front page as Redditors discussed and looked for clues.

"I bumped into a raggedy dressed man as we got on and he shot me a quick smile. I [thought] nothing of it until he went to get off at 14th street and he handed me a $50 bill along with a note. Before I could even open my mouth to ask him a question, he was gone," delverofsecrets writes in the post. "I've been looking at the note all day, and needless to say, I h…
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More About: reddit, watercooler

bowlinshoes

"Livin' In America"

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There is no one way to celebrate. Whether holidays or small, personal moments such as birthdays, graduations or achievements, celebrations take all shapes and forms.

Last week, we asked you to send us photos of your celebrations for the Mashable Photo Challenge.

Our readers sent us all kinds of pictures commemorating two recent national holidays: the 4th of July in the United States and Canada Day on July 1.

SEE ALSO: 16 Photos From Our Readers' Commutes

We received stunning pictures of fireworks lighting up the sky across North America, along with amusing shots of our readers celebrating all over the world. From foam parties to giant bonfires, you know how to celebrate — n…
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More About: Mashable Photo Challenge, community, instagram, photography

Long before Apple ever launched its App Store, Tap Tap Revolution was being played on iPhones worldwide.

Originally released for and played on jailbroken devices in September of 2007, the game was also one of the first available in the iPhone App Store when the shopping stop did launch -- although it was then listed under a slightly different name, Tap Tap Revenge.

The exceptionally popular game was downloaded 1 million times in just 20 days after its launch. To put that number in perspective, less than 6 million people were running iOS 2.0 at the time and even had the ability to download the app in the first place.

By April 2009 comScore declared that one in every three iPhone…
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More About: Disney Mobile, ipad, iphone

Cord-cutting startup Aereo got an early win Wednesday in its on-going lawsuits with major broadcasters including ABC, NBC and CBS.

A federal judge in the Second District of New York denied broadcasters' request for a preliminary injunction against the New York-based startup. Aereo argued that such an injunction would essentially put it out of business.

In his decision, Judge Alison Nathan writes of the litigious broadcasters that, "although [the plaintiffs] have demonstrated that they face irreparable harm, they have not demonstrated that the balance of hardships decidedly tips in their favor.

"As such", Nathan says, "the Court denies Plaintiffs motion for a preliminary injunction."…
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More About: Aereo, cord cutting, iptv, lawsuits

Before Tuesday's Major League Baseball All-Star Game, MLB officials hyped it as "one of the most social events in baseball history."

They weren't lying.

The event drew more than 800,000 comments from nearly 440,000 users across social media platforms, according to data from the social TV analytics company Bluefin Labs. The game's first inning alone sparked more conversation than the entire 2011 game did, and the overall chatter was amplified 3.6 times over last year. San Francisco Giants accounted for the game's two most buzz-worthy moments with a Pablo Sandoval triple and Melky Cabrera home run sparking around 8,000 comments per minute.

The MLB organization encouraged fans to t…
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More About: Facebook, Social Media, Twitter, infographics, sports

A few weeks ago the U.K. government agency, Action Fraud, warned that cyber criminals were sending fraudulent phishing emails to Royal Bank of Scotland's NatWest banking customers. The phishing emails stated that users must click on a link and update their personal information to complete a 'security upgrade.' The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the country's top derivatives regulator, revealed it had also been attacked in almost the exact same manner by spear phishers. In this case, the major data breach resulted in the exposure of employee social security numbers and other personal information.

SEE ALSO: 5 URL Expanders to Help You Avoid Spammy Links

These s…
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More About: contributor, features, malware, phishing

The ubiquitous Adobe Flash Player update message appeared to hijack an electronic billboard in Atlanta. A Redditor named FireZeMissles (the user did not want to be identified for privacy reasons) posted the photo on Wednesday and insisted it was real.

That sounds plausible enough. Such updates are so prevalent that they've been called out in, among other things, a popular comic that recently ran on this site.

Here's the closeup:

More About: adobe, pics, viral

1. Search Autocomplete

Type in a search term — for example, "Twitter" or "Jeremy Lin" — to find relevant topics or handles in record time. In the past, users had to type in a search term like "Jeremy Lin" in its entirety and scroll down the page to find results. Typing in "Jeremy" will now pull up relevant celebs, friends and top users. Image courtesy of Twitter.

Click here to view this gallery.

Microblogging platform Twitter overhauled its search this week, making finding users, hashtags and mentions easier.

Twitter's "simpler search" lets users discover more news in real time. The search updates also let users connect more efficiently. Just think about all the times you've input the wrong name or misplaced a letter and subsequently missed out on results.

Even when a search term is misspelled or slightly off, Twitter now pulls up results for what you may have meant. The spelling correction feature and related suggestions are improving the Twitter search experience tremendously.

Twitter will be rolling out autocompletion to users over the next few weeks, Twitter's produc…
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More About: How-To, Social Media, Twitter, features, social networking

Yes, we know. Another one. The dead horse has not only been beaten, it's been dragged through the streets of YouTube-land. But we can't help it. The "Call Me Maybe" song is sinfully catchy and this parody features the superstars of Big 10 Conference colleges -- their mascots.

SEE ALSO: Half-Naked Abercrombie Models Perform 'Call Me Maybe' [VIDEO]

This might be the only time usual sports rivals like Penn State's Nittany Lion, Michigan State's Sparty and Ohio State's Brutus Buckeye are on the same team (Carly Rae Jepsen's, apparently).

If anything, the video will bring back some collegiate memories of chasing cheerleaders around campus trying to get them to call you, maybe…
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More About: Call Me Maybe, Carly Rae Jepsen, college football, sports, viral, viral videos

Now is the hour of RIM shareholder discontent. Research In Motion has lost much of its market value in the past 12 months and is fighting for relevance and, perhaps, its life, while it refocuses the company on delivering BlackBerry 10, its cross-product platform solution that could change everything -- if the company can deliver it in time.

In the meantime, RIM is now doing the "Strategic Options" dance, a process that could mean anything from breakup, to merger, to licensing of BlackBerry software to other companies to outright sale. In a fast-paced and engaging conversation with RIM CEO Thorsten Heins, the seemingly unflappable (a stark contrast from his predecessor) Heins said his…
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More About: BlackBerry OS, RIM, RIM Playbook

All your events on Facebook can now be viewed on a calendar.

Originally created during one of Facebook's company hackathons, the new feature gives you the option to see upcoming events -- as well as things like friends' birthdays -- on a calendar rather than in Facebook's traditional list format.

"A couple of us felt there should be a better way for people to see their friends' birthdays a few days in advance and make plans for the weekend. So we built it," Bob Baldwin, the Facebook software engineer behind the project said in a blog post on the site.

"Before a recent hackathon, a few of us created a Facebook group called 'Social Calendar Dreamers' to spark discussio…
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More About: Facebook, Facebook Events

DirecTV customers lost access to Viacom channels such as MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and more on Tuesday at midnight ET after the two media giants couldn't reach a deal on programming fees. Before the blackout, both companies took their dispute online, using social media to rally support and inform followers.

Now, Viacom has unleashed a VH1 style pop-up video, taking DirecTV CEO Michael White's video statement to customers and plopping text bubbles on the footage.

The text bubbles mock White's perspective on the very public battle and draw attention to a phone number that directs people to a DirecTV call center.

DirecTV has claimed Viacom wants customers "to pay over 30% …
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More About: Entertainment, TV, directv, trending, vh1, viacom

Social network Formspring is the latest victim of a massive password leak. More than 420,000 member accounts were compromised, the company has confirmed.

Formspring posted a message on its site on Tuesday that a hacker released 420,000 password hashes from its servers and posted the log-in information to a security forum. The news comes just weeks after sites such as LinkedIn, eHarmony and Last.fm experienced similar security breaches.

"We learned this morning that we had a security breach where some user passwords may have been accessed," Formspring wrote on its site. "In response to this, we have disabled all users passwords. We apologize for the inconvenience but prefer to play…
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More About: Facebook, Twitter, eHarmony, last fm, linkedin, trending

If you're not sure which candidate to vote for in the upcoming presidential election, you might consider going Pink. Pink as in Barbie, who formally threw her hat into the ring with Mattel's 2012 Barbie I Can Be…President doll.

Barbie's campaign platform -- she's running in the 'B Party' -- calls for girls of all ages to 'B inspired,' 'B informed' and 'B involved.' And don't let them tell you the life of a presidential candidate isn't glamorous.
Aside from her designer power suit, pearls and great hair, Barbie's running a social 'glam-paign.' She has her own Instagram and Tumblr channels where supporters and fans can engage and follow Barbie on he…
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More About: Barbie for President, barbie

Worried that a message you posted to your Facebook Group went unread? Worry no longer.

Members will soon be able to see exactly who has viewed each update posted to a Group, Facebook announced Wednesday. Below each post appears "Seen by" followed by a number; users can hover over the text to see who read each message and when they read it. The feature, which Facebooks calls "read receipts," also work on mobile.

Facebook introduced read receipts into another of its applications, Facebook Messenger, in early May. The feature appears in both one-on-one messages and in group chats.

Read receipts are undoubtedly useful in the context of Groups, but are already raising privacy con…
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More About: Facebook, Facebook groups, trending

Microsoft plans to divest itself of MSNBC's web properties, which will be taken over and rebranded by NBC, according to a report.

The agreement would rename MSNBC.com as NBCNews.com, according to The Daily Beast, which cites "people familiar with the matter." The announcement is expected within days, though final details have not been hashed out, according to the report.

Reps from Microsoft and NBC could not be reached for comment.

The report cites unnamed NBC executives who have complained about the dissonance between the left-leaning MSNBC TV network and the MSNBC website, which attempts a more middle-of-the-road approach and aggregates content from other news outlets. Abo…
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More About: Media, msnbc, nbc, trending

Getaround is an hourly car-sharing service with 10,000 cars currently on the road. Co-founder Jessica Scorpio approaches car sharing from a problem-solving perspective. "We're solving a problem that we call car overpopulation," she explains. "There's 1 billion cars on the planet and 250 million cars in the U.S. that sit idle 92% of the time."

In a world where we worry about over-fishing and recycling, why don't we take a look under our hood and realize that we are under-sharing? Not only can you make a buck while sharing your car, but you'll also score some major eco-cred.

"When people switch from car ownership to car sharing,…
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More About: Video, car sharing, trending, valleygirltv

Marry me! Arrested Development will start shooting new episodes for Netflix in just four weeks.

Executive producer and show narrator Ron Howard tweeted some photos from the new writer's room and of some bonding time with show star Jason Bateman and show creator Mitchell Hurwitz.

Arrested Development for Netflix. IT'S ALIVE. This is what the writer's room looks like twitter.com/RealRonHoward/‚Ķ— Ron Howard (@RealRonHoward) July 10, 2012

Mitch let Jason and I in on some of the twists and turns ahead.hilarious twitter.com/RealRonHoward/‚Ķ— Ron Howard (@RealRonHoward) July 11, 2012

Bateman followed up with his own tweet, and photos of the three pals.

T…
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More About: arrested development, netflix, trending

 

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney received a mostly warm welcome during a speech given Wednesday to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

However, he received boos from many in the crowd after he promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act -- also known as "Obamacare."

Romney was discussing his belief in the need to reduce government spending and increase hiring when the jeers came.

"I'm going to eliminate every non-essential, expensive program I can find, that includes Obamacare," said Romney before being interrupted by the crowd.

After the interruption subsided, Romney cited a recent study that suggests many business owners are…
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More About: 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney, Politics, US, Video, viral