Analytics

Facebook has launched Topic Data, a new service that reveals to advertisers the subjects users discuss, the brands and products they use, and the activities they follow. Marketers will be able to sift through data compilations of what users say about events, brands, subjects and activities. Facebook...

Square on Monday introduced two new services for small businesses: instant deposits; and protection for disputed purchases. Square, which six years ago began offering square-shaped mobile credit card readers for smartphones and tablets, has shifted its focus away from point-of-sale operations and to...

IBM launched its newest mainframe, the z13, last week in New York City. Built for the mobile economy, the z13 can process 2.5 billion transactions daily. It enables real-time encryption on all mobile transactions at scale, and it includes embedded analytics that provide real-time transactions faster...

Since December 'tis the season when industry prognosticators provide their predictions for the year to come, I'll offer my ideas about how three major tech forces -- cloud computing, big data the Internet of Things -- will converge in 2015, and four ways organizations can capitalize on this converge...

Mobile advertising is booming. Revenues increased by 92 percent to $19.3 billion in 2013 over 2012, based on global figures IAB, IAB Europe and IHS Technology released this summer. More and more marketers are eager to engage with consumers on the devices they use for just about everything these days...

IBM on Tuesday introduced Verse, its entry into the reinventing email derby. Verse, which will be available in both enterprise and freemium editions, integrates the many ways people communicate with each other every day -- email, meetings, calendars, file sharing, instant messaging, social media and...

Shine Technologies may well upend the Net neutrality issue with the launch of AdSight, an ad technology product in development. AdSight reportedly will allow wireless carriers to monitor the ads being delivered over their pipes. The data provided will be very granular, including who the ads are from...

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff last month tweeted about the tentative agenda for this week's Dreamforce and caused a tizzy by revealing a keynote session entitled "Analytics Cloud." Although the company immediately denied that it was planning to unveil such a thing or that Benioff intentionally spi...

The U.S. is facing a retirement wave. Seventy-six million Baby Boomers are beginning to hit the 65-year-old mark. By 2025, the number of people between 65 and 85 will account for 16.6 percent of the total population. In the U.S., the elderly prefer aging in their own home, but it can be risky. Conne...

The power of e-commerce lies in the simplicity and ease of use delivered to customers. Giving customers the ability to quickly find a product, buy it and have it delivered -- without visiting a store or even speak with a salesperson -- lets companies sell on a massive scale with little overhead. How...

There is no question that one of the hottest topics in the tech industry is the rapidly evolving world of the Internet of Things. The seemingly infinite variety of use cases for capturing data from a widening array of connected devices and objects is inspiring the imaginations of corporate decision ...

Twitter this week announced that its analytics tool, first made available to advertisers, Twitter Card users and verified users, now can be used by everyone. Twitter's analytics tool lets users click on any tweet to see how people engage with it in real time. They can compare their tweet activity mo...

Big Data's legend has reached mythical proportions. Increasingly, it is described as a powerful solution that could resolve some of the world's most complex challenges, from terrorist strikes to curing cancer. It is still early days for Big Data implementation, however. Every industry and category i...

Let's get one thing straight: E-commerce will not kill the physical retail store. Hold on, I hear you object, the digital world has utterly disrupted our shopping habits. We rarely enter a store without having researched the big-ticket items we want to buy. Much of our holiday shopping is done with ...

Another Yahoo acquisition hit the news last week -- Flurry Analytics, and it was widely seen as a bid to raise the company's profile in the hot mobile ad market. Mobile advertising will exceed $31 billion this year, eMarketer has predicted. The market currently is dominated by Facebook and Google, w...