2013 has been marred by yet another tragic event. The bombings at the Boston Marathon and the subsequent acts of violence have resulted in death, injury and perhaps for many, a general feeling of despair. It is times like these when acts of kindness are most appreciated.

Individuals and businesses, in Boston and throughout the country, have reacted, contributed and shown their support for those affected by the tragedy. Perhaps no show of support has been more selfless or inspiring than that of Ehab Sadeek, owner of a bagel shop in Winchester, MA. For Sadeek, an Egyptian Muslim, the Boston Marathon bombings were personal.

He told WBZ NewsRadio1030:

“They don’t represent my faith. They don’t represent my religion. They will not hijack my religion…Being a Muslim, I felt I cannot stay quiet about that.”

Ehab Sadeek is donating 100% of his shop’s profits to One Fund Boston, the foundation set up by Governor Deval Patrick and Mayor Tom Menino to help those most affected by the bombings. Sadeek says he will continue to give the shop’s profits to the fund until the last victim is out of the hospital. If you’re in the Winchester area, stop by Bagel Land for a bite. If you can’t do that, make a contribution to One Fund Boston.

This morning we needed some batteries, so we were excited to give Portland startup Bettery a try. Bettery kiosks, located in select Whole Foods locations and at Portland State University, allow customers to purchase charged batteries and return them after the charge has worn out.

Founder Charlie Kawasaki got the idea from Redbox — the kiosk where customers can rent DVDs, Blu-Ray and games — but Bettery kiosks carry AA and AAA batteries. First use costs a customer $10 for a pack of four batteries and then $2.50 each time they want to exchange used batteries for freshly charged ones. Bettery also allows customers to recycle non-rechargeable batteries at no cost.

The company has six kiosks in Seattle and Portland and is in talks with other retailers in the Portland area as well as nationally.

…and a great day for a timelapse out the office windows.

The Human Rights Campaign’s iconic equal sign has gone viral. On the first day of oral arguments in marriage equality cases before the Supreme Court, hundreds of thousands of Facebook users have changed their profile pictures to the red equal sign as a show of support for marriage equality. Stay current on the Supreme Court hearings and find out how you can stand for marriage here.

The same mobile trends that Forrester, a global research and advisory firm, predicted in 2012 still hold true according to this year’s report, “2013 Mobile Trends For Marketers.” Each year, Forrester makes predictions on the changing face of mobile and this year they’ve identified that mobile trends center around long-term and large-scale investment in mobile marketing and technology. The predictions fell into two major categories for marketers to focus on:

1. Treat mobile as a strategic priority by implementing a multiyear strategy.
2. Business and technology changes mean that mobile investments must rise.

As the amount of mobile devices in consumers’ hands grows, marketers will continue to focus on multiyear strategic plans and significant investments in technology and customer communications.

Download the full report here: 2013 Mobile Trends For Marketers.

South by Southwest (SXSW), the once indie- and DIY-centric music and film festival held in Austin, TX, has come to a close for 2013. In recent years, advertisers and big business have taken notice of the giant marketing opportunity that SXSW is, and many have remarked that the festival has thus become too corporate. SXSW Interactive, the week-long conference dedicated to technology and digital media, has especially been criticized for having lost its edge.

Wherever you may stand on the SXSW critique spectrum, you cannot maintain that SXSW Interactive is insignificant. Attendees waited for hours to meet and take a photo with a grumpy cat, and the closing keynote speech (given by the creator of web comic The Oatmeal) received an overwhelmingly positive response—a first for SXSW. What’s the significance in this, you say? Well, the Web is fickle, but the tech world is ready to be wowed (Grumpy Cat won’t be a phenomenon forever) . And devoted online fans take their devotion—which is both active and contagious—seriously. Marketing is tough and important, and there are countless others to compete with for attention online. But if you can create something more compelling than a cat meme, you may be on track to garner some serious attention, and most importantly, some serious devotion.

Facebook might soon be adding hashtags as a part of its popular social media platform. What used to be a Twitter-only phenomenon, the hashtag has evolved past real-time reporting on Twitter into a popular social trend. It’s already been incorporated as a popular tool on the Facebook-owned Instagram, so why not Facebook itself?

From Adweek:

If Facebook adopts the hashtag, it will bring more marketers to its biggest platform yet – more than are on Google+ or Instagram. This would help boost marketing brands through both Facebook and Twitter by increasing the consumer conversation through all channels.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Despite being only a fraction of the size of Facebook, Twitter’s success of the hashtag has perfected real-time advertising. Twitter has been more aggressive on advertising, closing the gap on advertising revenue with Facebook – both within mobile ads and online ads.

Whether this is Facebook’s rebuttal on the feud with Twitter or Facebook finally jumping on the hashtag bandwagon, its use would definitely create a hashtag #revolution for marketing and cultural memes.

Though the Internet is made up of tens of millions of web sites, people spend the vast majority of time on just a handful of them. According to comScore, an Internet analytics company, Americans spend most of their time online on Facebook — 10.8% in December 2012. That month, Americans spent another 10% of their Internet time on Google properties, including Google search and YouTube. Based on comScore’s report, “U.S. Digital Future in Focus 2013,” 24/7 Wall St. identified the 10 Web properties where people spend the most time.

Many of the top online sites have managed to significantly increase the time spent on their sites in the past year due to the rise in mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones. The top 25 digital media properties in December 2012 increased their reach through mobile channels by 29% compared to December 2011. Some increased significantly more than that. ESPN expanded its digital reach by 56% compared to 2011, more than any of the 25 largest online properties except for Pandora.

Read the full story on USA Today

10. ESPN
–0.6% of time spent online
–38.7 million desktop visitors
–34.6 million mobile visitors
Based on unique visitors, ESPN is the 23rd largest U.S. digital property and the No. 1 sports-related property. ESPN has made a push into mobile during the past year. Between December 2011 and December 2012, mobile engagement based on unique visitors grew 59%, more than any other of the top 25 Web properties, except for Pandora Media (P). ESPN currently offers 13 different mobile applications, including SportsCenter Feed, to get up-to-the-minute “news, scores, video and audio,” along with the company’s Fantasy Football and Fantasy Baseball apps.

9. Craigslist
–0.7% of time online (tied for 7th)
–60 million desktop visitors
–mobile visitors, not applicable
Craigslist says it has more than 50 billion page views monthly. But while people tend to spend a hefty amount of time searching through apartment listings, job openings and personal ads on the site, Craigslist has yet to roll out a mobile application for either smartphones or tablets, leaving third-party Craigslist apps to fill the void. The company only recently released mobile-friendly features, such as a map view and an image-heavy grid view of its offerings.

8. Tumblr
–0.7% of time online (tied for 8th)
–desktop visitors, not available
–mobile visitors, not applicable
Tumblr is not among the 25 largest Web properties in the U.S., but those who go on the site spend a lot of time there. Consuming 5.7% of all time on social media, more time is spent on Tumblr than any other social media property, except Facebook. Lipsman of comScore noted that Tumblr really took off in the past year and continues to grow each month, particularly among those ages 25 and under. He noted that Tumblr’s growth has been more organic, rather than through overt attempts by the company to increase engagement. Notably, the site has become popular for fashion and humor blogging.

7. eBay
–0.9% of time online
–77.7 million desktop visitors
–39.5 million mobile visitors
EBay (EBAY) has benefited from the large growth in online retailing. In the fourth quarter of 2012, revenue in the marketplace division — the e-commerce segment of the company — grew 16% compared with the same quarter the prior year. EBay also owns PayPal, an online payment processor. The service generated $1.5 billion in revenue during the fourth quarter of 2012, an increase of 24% compared to the prior year. PayPal processed roughly 700 million payments during the quarter and had 123 million users. Like most of the top digital properties, the use of eBay on mobile devices has grown rapidly. Between December 2011 and December 2012, mobile engagement based on unique visitors grew 23%. The company has been working to get more people to use its service on tablet devices. CEO John Donahoe has publicly said that people are more likely to purchase items on a smartphone or tablet than on a PC.

6. Amazon
–1% of time online
128.2 million desktop visitors
–80.5 million mobile visitors
Similar to eBay, Amazon.com (AMZN) has been a huge beneficiary of the increase in online shopping. During the most recent holiday season, sales conducted by a third-party on the web site were up 40% from the same time in 2011. Amazon also is directly challenging Hulu and Netflix (NFLX) with its Prime Instant Video service. The streaming service has added movies and TV programs to its portfolio in recent months. Amazon recently announced that shows from the E.W. Scripps (SSP) network of channels — such as HGTV, Food Network and Travel Channel — will soon be available through the service. Amazon has made significant inroads in mobile usage as well. More than 80 million people in the U.S. accessed an Amazon site through a mobile device in December 2012, higher than all Web properties except for Google, Facebook and Yahoo!

5. AOL
–2.5% of time online
–117.6 million desktop visitors
–62.4 million mobile visitors
AOL (AOL) has transformed itself from a company that was primarily providing dial-up Internet service into a media company. The company’s most popular news web site is The Huffington Post, which it bought in 2011. The Huffington Post, like many news outlets, recently has devoted many of its resources to video programming. The company launched its news streaming service, HuffPost Live, in August 2012. The service was created with the intent to engage users. Features, such as the “join this segment,” let viewers speak their mind via webcam.

4. Microsoft
–4.9% of time online
–170.9 million desktop visitors
–55.2 million mobile visitors
Microsoft’s (MSFT) sites, including MSN, Hotmail and Bing, had more unique visitors in December 2012 than any other web property except for Google and Yahoo! Bing, the second-most popular search engine behind Google, has seen its share of search grow slightly, from 15.1% of all searches in December 2011 to 16.3% in 2012. Microsoft has made a major push into mobile with its new Windows Surface Tablet, which was released late in 2012.

3. Yahoo!
–7% of time online
–185.8 million desktop visitors
–92.2 million mobile visitors
Although Yahoo! (YHOO) has struggled in recent years because it has lost advertising market share to Facebook and Google, it is still the most popular portal on the Web. The company recently redesigned its web site to make it more personalized. The site includes a live news feed customized to visitors’ interests and to what their friends share on social networks. The company has made significant strides in mobile as well.

2. Google
–10% of time online
–193.8 million desktop visitors
–113.7 million mobile visitors
Google (GOOG) owns YouTube, by far the most visited video site. In 2012, more than 188 billion videos were streamed on the web site, according to comScore. In comparison, only about 8.9 billion videos were streamed on Hulu, the second-most visited video property. Despite becoming a multidimensional company over the years, Google shows no signs of letting up on its original business of search. A whopping 66.7% of Internet searches were conducted through Google in December 2012, up from 65.9% during the same month of 2011.

1. Facebook.com
–10.8% of time online
–150.3 million desktop visitors
–97.7 million mobile visitors
More time is spent on Facebook (FB) than any other site. Of all time spent on social networking sites, 83% is spent on Facebook. The company has made significant inroads in mobile, with time on Facebook’s smartphone applications making up 23% of all time on apps. However, Americans have shown they are willing to give up Facebook — albeit only for a short time. According to a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 61% of the site’s active users have taken a multi-week break from the social network at some point. Furthermore, 27% of people surveyed said they planned to spend less time on Facebook in 2013, while only 3% intended to spend more time on the site.

SmartBlogs.com writes about Mattel’s innovative media campaign: Barbie for President. In addition to clever ideas pre-election; Mattel was able to keep the campaign alive and relevant post-election.

One of the most interesting takeaways from Mattel’s social media managers is the use of Tumblr for a quick, low-lift, microsite or landing page to show off the campaign’s content.

Political campaigns take note: Tumblr  has a dedicated following and is filled with  great templates. Most of all, it’s simple and easy to use and landing pages can be edited to match your regular website.

From the SmartBlogs.com article by Andy Sernovitz:

Find ways to stay relevant even after one-off campaigns. Harding and Kimiabakhsh decided to use Tumblr as the hub for all of Barbie’s presidential material, instead of building a microsite, so they could easily transition their content. They saw this as a great opportunity for earning followers and keeping their attention.

Don’t put all of your eggs in all of your baskets. While it’s important to be consistent, posting all of your content on every social media site isn’t necessary. They explained how knowing the strength of each platform was key to making more meaningful interactions and not spamming fans.

Partner with great causes. To make Barbie’s run for the presidency more meaningful for fans of all ages, Mattel sponsored the White House Project’s EPIC Awards and promoted Take a Girl to the Polls Day.

View the presentation from the Mattel team from SocialMedia.org

Mattel: Barbie for President: Social Media Case Study — presented by Travis Harding & Jessica Kimiabakhsh from SocialMedia.org on Vimeo.

We wanted to personally thank Representative Earl Blumenauer for his continued support for animal rights!

He has added his name as co-sponsor of the Animal Fighting Spectator Prohibition Act (H.R. 366) that helps prohibit spectator support for animal fighting events. This bill helps close the loopholes that allow for such events to continue through knowing attendance and bringing a minor to such events.

To help add your representatives name as co-sponsor of the bill, send your message through the Humane Society of the United States.