Author: Josh Wolford

Today, Amazon beats Apple in a way that doesn’t specifically pertain to tablets, ebooks, digital music, streaming content, or any other area in which the two routinely do battle. Today’s victory is all about the consumers and their views on the companies as a whole.

We’re talking Harris Interactive’s annual Harris Poll RQ, which measures the perceived reputations of the sixty most-visible companies in the United States.

And this year, it’s Amazon that takes top honors.

Last year’s winner, Apple, falls to second place in the 2013 poll.

Google also had a strong placement, coming in 4th. Rounding out the top 5 were The Walt Disney Company and Johnson & Johnson.

The RQ looks at 6 different dimensions to corporate reputation. Amazon ranked in the top five in five of the six dimensions.

“Amazon had a five point advantage over any other company in the study in the dimension of Emotional Appeal, despite an entirely virtual relationship with the public. Amazon also achieved the top rating in the dimension of Products & Services,” says Harris.

“Our results show that Amazon has managed to build an intimate relationship with the public without being perceived as intrusive,” said Harris Interactive VP of Reputation Management Robert Fronk. “And as the company that is so widely known for its personal recommendations, more than nine in ten members of the public would recommend Amazon to friends and family.”

Here are the winners in each of the six different categories. You can see that five are tech companies.

Unsurprisingly, AIG and Goldman Sachs logged the two worst RQ scores.

[All Images via Harris Interactive]

Twitter and American Express have just announced a new program that will allow users to make purchases inside of Twitter by simply tweeting out specific “Buy” hashtags.

Here’s how the hashtag-buying works, after you sync your Amex card to Twitter of course.

Cardmembers tweet special product #hashtags for the product they want to purchase with their synced Card. Cardmembers then check their Twitter mentions in the @ Connect tab for a response from @AmexSync containing a confirmation #hashtag. Tweet the confirmation #hashtag within 15 minutes of the response from @AmexSync to confirm the purchase.

And the product(s) should arrive on your doorstep via 2-day shipping.

The hashtag-buying will officially kick off Wednesday at noon ET with these specific products:

$25 American Express Gift Card: $15.00; Amazon Kindle Fire HD: $149.99 plus tax; Sony Action Cam & Waterproof Headband Mount: $179.99 plus tax; Urban Zen Bracelet Designed by Donna Karan: $80.00 plus tax; Xbox 360 4GB console with a 3-month Xbox LIVE Subscription and 2 game tokens: $179.99 plus tax; Xbox Controller: $29.99 plus tax.

“Based on the initial success of Amex Sync for offers, we know there is significant power in combining our assets with Twitter’s platform to bring value to Cardmembers and merchants,” said Leslie Berland, Senior Vice President, Digital Partnerships and Development at American Express. “Now, we’re leveraging our unique technology and closed-loop network to introduce a seamless solution that redefines what’s possible in the world of social commerce.”

Amex has partnerships with Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook and other networks that leverage synced accounts, but until now these have only been used to unlock discounts or purchase credits. This is the first time that social media users will be able to initiate an actual purchase with something as simple as tweeting out a hashtag.

It’s a great time of the year for Overly Attached Girlfriend (Laina Walker). Valentine’s Day means loads of attention from boyfriends and husbands. It’s that one special holiday where you’re forced to declare your intention to belong to someone.

Be mine.

And you better not turn down OAG’s Valentine. Seriously. Don’t do it.

Continuing the massive push into the original content game, Netflix has just announced a partnership with DreamWorks Animation SKG for the release of its first-ever original series for kids.

It’s called Turbo: F.A.S.T. (Fast Action Stunt Team), and is based on the upcoming animated feature Turbo, set to hit theaters in June.

Turbo: F.A.S.T. will hit Netflix in December, 2013.

“Families love Netflix, so creating an original series for kids was a natural for us. And we’re doing it in a big way by adapting Turbo, this year’s DreamWorks Animation summer tentpole movie,” said Ted Sarandos , Chief Content Officer of Netflix. “DreamWorks Animation has a long track record of creating incredibly successful characters and stories that delight people of all ages. We’re thrilled to add Turbo the series as well as all new DreamWorks Animation films, starting with their 2013 slate, to Netflix.”

Netflix has been rolling out their “Just for Kids” content option to more compatibel devices. It landed on the Xbox 360 back in August of 2012 and on the iPad in October.

“Netflix boasts one of the largest and fastest-growing audiences in kids television. They pioneered a new model for TV dramas with House of Cards, and now together, we’re doing the same thing with kids’ programming,” said DreamWorks Animation’s Chief Executive Officer, Jeffrey Katzenberg. “DreamWorks is thrilled to be part of the television revolution.”

House of Cards was the first big-budget original series that Netflix offered all at once, in its entirety to subscribers. In April, Netflix will premiere the Eli Roth horror series Hemlock Grove. And we now know that Netflix is partnering with French studio Gaumont to produce a new series based on the life of Colombian druglord Pablo Escobar.

It looks like Twitter is making a small, non-intrusive push to promote more interaction between members of the service.

Some users are seeing a new message appear atop their streams on Twitter.com. It notifies them that someone (a particular @person) is “back on Twitter.”

“Welcome @person back to Twitter,” it reads. “You friend @person is back on Twitter. Mention them in a tweet to welcome them back.”

Inside the prompt is a quick link to compose a tweet that mentions said @person.

This appears to be a fairly new feature and was just spotted by Fred Wilson over on his AVC blog (via AllTwitter). It’s clear that Twitter is looking to help spur engagement between users, especially ones that they fear may be flirting toward the dark side (or have just come back from it). You know, that “inactive user” label. Any social network is going to be constantly waging a war against inactive users, but Twitter, specifically, has seen its share of troubles in that department.

In December 2012, Twitter hit 200M monthly active users. But some reports have put the number of actual Twitter accounts at well over 500 million. Of course, some of this discrepancy can be attributed to duplicate, fake, and otherwise spam accounts. But some of it has to do with users who created an account, quit, and then never came back.

It makes sense that Twitter would try to rope users back to becoming regular daily or monthly users, and tapping their pals to welcome them back and get them engaged seems like a good plan.

It’s unclear exactly what prompts Twitter to feature an account in the “Welcome Back” message. It could be that the user tweeted again for the first time in a long time – or it could be that they reactivated a stagnant or deactivated account. We’ve reached out to Twitter for clarification and will update this article accordingly.

In a recent list of America’s “Most Generous Donors,” tech comes out very well.

The list comes to us from The Chronicle of Philanthropy, a magazine devoted to tracking to world of nonprofits.

Mark Zuckerberg and his new wife Priscilla Chan rank #2 on the list after donating nearly $500 million to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Zuckerberg made the donation back in December 2012 in the form of 18 million Facebook shares. The Silicon Valley Community Foundation is a leading philanthropic trust organization in the area. It’s Zuckerberg’s largest single charitable donation to date, having given $100 million to improve public schools in Newark, New Jersey back in 2010.

Their gift of $498.8 million is second only to Warren Buffet, who spread nearly $3.1 billion around Howard G. Buffett Foundation, NoVo Foundation, and the Sherwood Foundation.

In fifth place on the list is Google’s Sergey Brin and his partner Anne Wojcicki, who donated approximately $222.9 million in 2012, most of it to their own Brin Wojcicki Foundation, which supports multiple causes including “education, environment, women’s issues, and many other causes; the Human Rights Foundation; and Tipping Point Community, a nonprofit that seeks to eliminate poverty in Northern California.”

They also made a $32.8 million contribution to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen also broke the top 5, coming in at #4 for his $309.1 million in 2012 donations.

On Valentine’s Day, as you settle in with your significant other for some food, wine, and probable sex, remember that all of those feelings you’re feeling can be easily explained by chemical reactions in your brain.

OK, maybe not all of it. AsapSCIENCE doesn’t want to take the mystery out of love or anything, they just want to let you know that your brain on love is pretty much the same as your brain on coke. And it’s the result of millions of years of evolution, baby.

Yeah, evolution. You know how hot that is, baby.

[AsapSCIENCE]

Meet Adeline.

Adeline is already pretty cool. But she’s going to be really cool when she grows up. Here, watch this video and you’ll see why.

Here’s Adeline hearing Bad Brains for the first time. You can’t teach this stuff. As one YouTube user put it, “slamdancing is in our genetic code.”

“Turn it up a little bit!”

D’aaawwwww…I mean, MOSH!

It’s going to be another Apple-heavy FLOTUS box at Tuesday night’s State of the Union address.

First Lady Michelle Obama will be welcoming Apple CEO Tim Cook as one of her guests at the SOTU. According to the White House, Cook will be accompanied by “military families, those championing immigration reform and those whose lives have been touched by gun violence.”

Also sitting with Mrs. Obama tomorrow night: Bobak Ferdowsi, better known as the “Mohawk Guy” from NASA that gained an internet following after the Mars Curiosity rover landed successfully on the Martian surface.

This is the second year in a row that Michelle Obama has tapped someone associated with Apple to be her guest at the SOTU. Last year, her featured guest was Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

It’ll be interesting to see just how far the First Lady and Tim Cook are seated from Ted Nugent.

[via Mercury News]

Bill Gates has just finished up his first-ever reddit AMA, answering users’ questions for just under one hour. Among the topics of discussion included Microsoft, coding, his wealth, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, vaccines, and yes, Bing.

Replying to question “Do you guys really use Bing? I mean seriously?” Gates had this to say:

Seriously Bing is the better product at this point. Try the challenge. I am biased but the work to make Bing better has been amazing.

So there you have it, folks. Bill Gates thinks you should take the Bing challenge.

Among the other interest answers given by Gates…

Since becoming wealthy, what’s the cheapest thing that gives you the most pleasure?

Kids. Cheap cheeseburgers. Open Course Ware courses…

What one Microsoft program or product that was never fully developed or released do you wish had made it to market?

We had a rich database as the client/cloud store that was part of a Windows release that was before its time. This is an idea that will remerge since your cloud store will be rich with schema rather than just a bunch of files and the client will be a partial replica of it with rich schema understanding. (WinFS)

Can you still jump over chairs?

Less than I used to. It was part of exercise for snow skiing. I still ski but I am not as hard core…

How was your relationship with Steve jobs? I always hoped that y’all were really good friends and competitors.

He and I respected each other. Our biggest joint project was the Mac where Microsoft had more people on the project than Apple did as we wrote a lot of applications. I saw Steve regularly over the years including spending an afternoon with him a few months before he tragically passed away…

What emerging technology today do you think will cause another big stir for the average consumer in the same way that the home computer did years ago?

Robots, pervasive screens, speech interaction will all change the way we look at “computers”. Once seeing, hearing, and reading (including handwriting) work very well you will interact in new ways..

Head here for to read the whole Q&A session.

Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is known as the world’s busiest airport, serving over 250,000 passengers daily and over 900,000 flights in the course of a year. Now, it has another distinction:

The most popular place on Foursquare.

Today, Hartsfield-Jackson became the first location (of any type) to ever log 1 million check-ins. As of the writing of this article, Hartsfield-Jackson has 1,001,776 total check-ins from 280,746 different people. Foursquare users have also left nearly 2,500 tips for the airport and uploaded over 7,200 photos.

In honor of the milestone, Foursquare is sharing some interesting stats about the airport based on its 1 million+ check-ins.

For instance – Terminal B sees the most traffic, and Mondays is the busiest day to fly. One Flew South is the most popular restaurant inside the airport, and people love to look at a particular collection of Zimbabwean sculptures while they wait.

Foursquare has also provided a heatmap of check-ins at the airport, no doubt coming from their 500M check-in map project, just launched last month.

Cool stuff.

[Photo via]

There is absolutely no chance that this is legit. But that should in no way affect your decision to enjoy every second of it.

“I helped my pastor make this music video when I was in high school. Thought you guys might get a kick out of it! May the Lord bless and keep you,” says YouTube uploader Brian Spinney.

What follows is…well…is something. JC means a lot of Pastor Jim Colerick and he knows that if he wants to reach the “urban” crowd, he has to speak the language (Warning: NSFW language):

The video has flown to the front page of reddit, where the skeptics have been hard at work figuring out what’s going on here. On January 15th, 2013, two things happened. First, the YouTube account that uploaded this video was created. Second, this page was registered. It’s supposedly the official website of West Dubuque Church of Christ, led by “Pastor Jim.” In the “news” section, we learn that the church was apparently shuttered in June of 2004.

As amazing as it would be if this was simply one youth pastor’s misguided attempt to connect with the kids, we’re just looking at a very well-made comedy video. Emphasis on very well-made.

Amazon has just landed another exclusive content deal for its Prime Instant Video service. This time it’s the upcoming CBS drama Under the Dome.

Here are the specifics of the deal: Just four days after each episode airs on CBS, they will pop up on Amazon Prime Instant Video. The episodes will be available to stream on CBS.com, but only for the first three days after airing.

Under the Dome is based on a 2009 Stephen Kings novel of the same name that’s about a small New England town that is suddenly cut off from the rest of the world by an giant, transparent dome. It’s being produced by Steve Spielberg’s Amblin Television and will premiere on CBS on June 24th.

“With creative forces of Stephen King and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television behind Under the Dome, we think our customers will love this new show and we’re excited to be able to offer this highly-anticipated series at no additional cost to Prime members,” said Brad Beale, Director of Digital Video Content Acquisition for Amazon. “Adding a current season major network TV series like Under the Dome to the Prime Instant Video library so shortly after its live airing enables us to increase our exclusive selection of great TV shows and give customers access how, when and where they want to watch it.”

Last week, Amazon made another big play when they stole Downton Abbey away from Netflix and Hulu. Per that deal, Prime Instant Video will be the only subscription-based streaming service where viewers can watch episodes of Downton Abbey – past, present, and future (starting some time this year).

If you’re looking to promote your brand with one of Twitter’s most visible ad products, the Promoted Trend, you’re going to have to shell out a little bit more money than you did last year.

Peter Kafka at All Things D reports that the asking price for a Promoted Trend has been raised, and now sits at $200,000 per trend. The previous price for an all-day Promoted Trend was $150,000, and the change occurred back in January.

When Twitter first launched Promoted Trends back in 2010, they were only $80,000.

Promoted Trends are one of Twitter’s major ad offerings, working alongside Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts. Promoted Trends always take the top spot on the trends list and are seen on the web, mobile, and all Twitter apps. Clicking on a Promoted Trend prompts a search (it’s usually a hashtag), in which tweets about the trend are surfaced organically.

Of course, Promoted Trends can generate tons of publicity for your business, site, or brand. But since the trends generate content organically, without any tweaking for the trend-buyer, things don’t always go as planned.

Still, Twitter has been able to generate plenty of revenue through the Promoted Trends product, and this significant increase in the asking price suggests that Twitter is confident that brands will continue to pay a premium to direct the conversation on the site.

There is usually only one Promoted Trend per day, and it runs all day. Twitter doesn’t always run a Promoted Trend, but they do on a large majority of days. If they were to run a promoted trend at this price point every day for the next year, it would generate $73 millon in revenues.

It looks like Netflix’s interest in Sony films wasn’t strong enough to shake things up.

Starz and Sony Pictures Entertainment have just announced an expansion of their previous deal that will see Starz remain the exclusive home for Sony Pictures theatrical releases through 2021. The old deal saw the same agreement through 2016.

Starz has been the exclusive pay-TV home for Sony Pictures’ films since 2005.

“Starz has been a terrific partner and we are excited to be extending our relationship with them through the 2021 slate,” said John Weiser, President, U.S. distribution for Sony Pictures Television.

Recent reports suggested that Netflix was interested in grabbing Sony films for its streaming service. When asked about it during January’s earnings call, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that his interest in Sony content was “just like it was for Disney. It’s strong.”

“We’re interested. We’ll see how it works out,” Hastings said.

In December, Netflix inked a huge deal with Disney to become the exclusive source for Disney, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar, and Marvel theatrical releases, inside the pay-TV window, starting in 2016.

Back in September of 2011, Netflix and Starz were unable to come to an agreement to keep Starz Play content (which included many Sony films) on the service.

As a culture, we are fascinated by celebrities, death, and the death of celebrities. I’m sure you already knew that, but some interesting new stats from the world of Wikipedia prove it.

Wikipedia user West.andrew.g has been looking at the popularity trends of Wikipedia articles over the past few years and has just published those findings in The Signpost, Wikipedia’s community newspaper. He breaks “popular” articles into two categories: isolated popularity and consistent popularity. The latter are articles that simply receive the most traffic, at all times. The top articles on this list include Facebook, United States, YouTube, Google, Sex, Justin Bieber – no big surprises there.

But it’s the isolated popularity of certain Wikipedia articles that’s truly interesting.

If you want your Wikipedia article to experience a surge in traffic, you have to die or play at the Super Bowl.

Five of the top eight biggest spikes (measured in an influx of traffic in a one-hour period) occured due to celebrity deaths – Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Steve Jobs, Osama bin Laden, and Ryan Dunn. Two of the spikes were for Super Bowl halftime shows – Madonna and The Who.

Whitney Houston’s Wikipedia page saw 425.6 views per second during an hour-long period on February 12th, 2012.

Other than deaths and the Super Bowl, other things that can drive traffic spikes to Wikipedia articles are being featured as the subject of a Google Doodle, being a TV show with a concerted “second-screen” effort, and being linked to on a site like reddit (Today I learned…).

[The Signpost via The Verge]

Twitter, who is always looking to give you plenty of reasons to second-screen it during bid television events, has just put up their suggestions for who to follow if you want to get a little extra insight into this year’s Grammy awards.

Twitter is apparently music-driven, at least according to some choice stats. Did you know that music is the second-most discussed topic on Twitter in the U.S.? Or that 50% of all active users follow at least one musician? How about the fact that the top 4 most-followed people on Twitter (globally) are musicians?

Here’s Twitter’s lists for who to follow if you want additional access and commentary this Sunday.

First, people who will actually be there while they live-tweet:

@TheGRAMMYs
@CBS
@CBSTweet
@GRAMMYKen
@PauleyP
@TheEllenShow
@hunterhayes
@zacbrownband
@emeliesande
@Pharrell
@SteveAoki
@dianamadison
@hollyscoop

Next, the people who Twitter describes as “couch commentators”:

@common
@shinedown
@chevelleinc
@honorsociety
@parachute
@steveangello
@puddleofmudd
@sebby_g
@iamjericho
@tranquilmammoth
@ash_costello
@michaelvampire
@TheRealBSmyth
@mindlessbehavior
@zedd

If you want to be a part of the conversation, you can use the #grammys hashtag or a new one that they’re promoting this year, #TheWorldIsListening.

The image you see below is of several Atlantic City firefighters swearing allegiance to Steve Jobs in order to be promoted to the ranks of Battalion Chief and Fire Captain.

No, not really. What you’re actually seeing is several Atlantic City firefighters swearing in on a bible iPad app in lieu of an actual bible because someone forgot to bring the actual bible to the ceremony.

Close enough, right?

[NBC40 via BuzzFeed]

TWITTR HAS JUS ADDD NEW LANGUAGE, AN IZ TEH LANGUAGE OV TEH LOLCATS.

LOOK:

Happeh Fridai! U can nao change ur language 2 lolcat in Settings. Hope u liek it. twitter.com/settings twitter.com/twitter/status…

— Twitter (@twitter) February 8, 2013

HEERS WUT IT LOOKZ LIEK IN DA SETTINGS:

[If none of this made sense, Twitter has added lolcat as a new language. It’s available in your language settings. That’s all]

I’m not sure why this is so perfect, but it is.

You know how deciding what to eat with your significant other is usually one of the hardest things to do, even when you’re both hungry? Yes, you do. It’s a ubiquitous non-argument.

Well, here’s that argument, but with drums instead of words.

[charstarleneTV (Charlene deGuzman) via Patton Oswalt]