Burst Media, an online media company and wholly owned subsidiary of blinkx PLC, released the results of a survey revealing how and why web users interact with brands via social media. Conducted in March among 2,577 U.S. online adults, the study found that the effectiveness of social cues in advertisements varies by the medium.

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer is making news again: this time with the $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr. All Things D, among a bevy of other publications, reported late last week that anonymous sources said Mayer had met with Tumblr CEO David Karp and was interested in bringing the popular blogging service into the Yahoo! fold. Then, Monday morning the companies announced the deal was final via a press release.

Apigee, the API company, launched the Apigee Institute, a research and strategy organization formed to help Global 2000 companies extend their leadership in the app economy. The Apigee Institute delivers strategic insights and practical recommendations based on real-world benchmarks and original research, with a focus on guiding organizations as they build strong digital ecosystems through apps, APIs and data.

Medio, which specializes in optimizing the acquisition, retention, and monetization of mobile users, announced the launch of K-Invite. Named after the viral coefficient "K," K-Invite empowers mobile app developers and marketers to create and track the virality of their mobile applications. The net result is higher quality installs at a fraction of the cost charged by traditional ad networks.

A Tapjoy survey of 25 million moms on its network and found out quote a bit about when, where and how this powerful demographic is using smartphones. It's probably not a surprise that when it comes to moms, "social beats gaming" as the most popular leisure time activity for moms on their smartphones, with Facebook and Instagram as their top two favorite apps.

There were plenty of lessons to be learned from this year's Streaming Media East conference, held May 21-22, in New York City. Digital content creators of all stripes have plenty to learn from the video-focused crowd at SME, but a few key takeaways stood out above the rest.

Sean O'Neal is the chief marketing officer for Mail Online, the wildly popular online newspaper. Mail Online is regarded as the world's most widely read newspaper site, and turned its first profit in 2012, setting it apart from many of its competitors. EContent talked to O'Neal about some of the secrets to its success, as well as its efforts to grab an American audience.

When company executives think about managing the online reputations of their organizations, they are typically concerned with what people are writing about them on websites, blogs, and social media platforms. But they must now recognize their reputations can be damaged in the electronic media space by something "worth a thousand words": a picture. Without saying a word, disgruntled consumers can paint a negative picture of a company's trademarked brand.

The journalist's toolkit has changed dramatically, according to news industry analyst, Ken Doctor. He considers an early 20th Century doctor and the meager tools of diagnosis he had in his traveling black bag. "The journalistic equivalent is the pencil and pad," Doctor says, jotting down facts in chicken-scratch shorthand that only he could read (if lucky), and traveling here and there to gather the facts from the most reliable sources. Now that journalist has the whole world at his fingertips. Even in an age of endless web information, it goes beyond Google searches and Wikipedia entries; today's journalists are also scouring social media, namely Twitter, for breaking news ideas.

The textbook market has long been ahead of the rest of the publishing industry when it comes to digital books. Textbooks were a natural fit for e-readers, allowing for easy updates and social studying features, but a recent Springer whitepaper, "eBook Use and Acceptance in an Undergraduate Institution," says the proliferation of devices has not necessarily translated to higher ebook acceptance among college students at Wellesley.

While it may be easier than ever to disseminate content to the public via the web, it's not easy to build and monetize your audience and quickly expand a fledgling presence into a thriving publishing empire. Nevertheless, every year a few more brave souls take a leap of faith into the great econtent unknown and manage to make a go of it. Here is their advice to the future digital publishers of the world.

Naming the top digital media influencers today is no easy task. There are so many great people responsible for developing digital media into the powerhouse it is now and will continue to be in the future. The list of thought-leaders grows every day, but we asked some digital media experts who they felt are the most influential people in the industry and why. We received a wide range of responses from our experts. Most of the nominees are responsible for innovations in digital media that have forever changed our world. There is certainly no lack of big-name innovative companies and their concepts, but they aren't the only ones influencing digital media today.

Digital data has not only gotten "big," as we now put it. Data has gotten fast, unstructured, and overwhelming. According to IBM, 90% of the data in the world has been produced in just the past 2 years. Feeds from social media, offline transactions, user video and image posts, and more all converge into massive dashboards that give marketers and now publishers increasingly real-time, unmediated, and holistic views of the consumer. The big impact of Big Data is only beginning to be felt among content providers, but many in the industry see it as both a threat to the traditional ownership media companies had over audiences and an opportunity to reinvent content as data-driven products and services and to give a struggling media industry new business models.

Maybe it's the cachet that comes with increased media attention. Often it's the quick opportunity to reward eager venture capitalists and other money seeders. Likely it's the promise of liquidity and a quick infusion of cash. But whatever the reason, the allure of going public is hard to ignore for a privately held digital content company that has its sights set on bigger, better things.

They say the best things in life are free: love, health, happiness--and maybe even software. Indeed, completely gratis open source software (OSS) with no licensing strings attached is all the rage today, as evidenced by the popularity and proliferation of OSS products currently in use, including the Apache HTTP Server, Linux, Android operating systems, internet browser Mozilla Firefox, and ecommerce platform osCommerce.

The marathon bombing changed a lot of things for the people who call Boston home. It certainly changed things for me. It made me love the city I live in just a little bit more. It gave me a new respect for the law enforcement officials who protect the place I call home. It changed how I feel when I walk down Boylston Street toward the Boston Public Library and Copley Square. And it gave me a heightened appreciation for technology, specifically social media.

The problem with identity creep is that it goes beyond individuals. While your business may not be pulled over by customs anytime soon, you may be surprised to find that people who search for your company are asking who you are, where you are, and what you've done. The confusion that follows can cost you contacts, leads, and sales.

The idea for this column started a few weeks ago when I read an article about self-described "tech evangelist," Adria Richards. Richards had been on the road for a few weeks, checking out tech conferences all over the country. At PyCon, a developer's conference in California, Richards heard the two men using sexually suggestive language such as "dongles" and "forking" in relation to some of the topics being discussed. From what I've read, it didn't seem like these men were making these comments in reference to Richards, but in the long run, that's neither here nor there. In a professional setting, their words were inappropriate, period. To make a long story even longer, Richards took a picture of the men, tweeted her frustrations, and watched as the two were removed from the room by PyCon staffers.

I've been rereading Katharine Graham's autobiography Personal History, which describes her role as publisher of The Washington Post in the 1970s when that paper played such a momentous role in national affairs. It's a fascinating book that I haven't dipped into for at least 5 years, and I've been forcefully struck by how very much has changed, and how quickly, in the world of publishing. In many ways the newspaper world of the 1960s and 1970s (and even the 1940s and 1950s) that Graham describes doesn't differ that much from the one I remember when I first worked in publishing in the early 1990s: display and classified ad-driven, with clear and well-defended roles for journalists based on decades of independent thinking and reporting, and plenty of distance between the business and editorial sides of the paper.

I admit it. I'm overwhelmed with information. I'm disorganized, inefficient, and easily distracted. The worst part is, I'm painfully aware that it's pretty much all my own fault. If you're like me (and chances are good that you are), you spend each and every day trying the best you can to meet the demands of your job. You do so by leveraging an increasingly long list of content development techniques, software tools, and electronic gadgets all designed to make your lives easier. But no matter how hard you try, you never seem to catch up.