Back in the late 90s, when standards were proprietary and communication protocols complicated, two data formats appeared on the horizon. The first was the extensible markup language, born as an extension of an existing markup language standard (XML), and designed (by an open committee) with the purpose of storing and defining documents and data through the optional use of a schema.  The other, JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), born out of a programming language, was almost the exact opposite – a serialization format with requirements so simple they fit on the back of a business card. XML exploded in application development and communication platforms in the 2000s due in large part to the sheer demand for a human readable, vendor-neutral data format that was easy to read, write and share. As applications and platforms evolved and efficiency grew in priority, APIs evolved to become leaner, and JSON overtook XML as the preferred data interchange format among developers across many technology stacks.

JSON vs. XML: The battle for format supremacy may be wasted energy

Currently, the world’s population is 7.5 billion, 3.8 billion are internet users and 2.8 billion of them are social media users. 1.8 billion of the entire world population is made up by teenagers from the ages of 13-19 years old. Instagram alone has 500 million active monthly users. Instagram users have shared over 40 billion photos to date and share an average of 95 million photos and videos per day. Snapchat has 166 million daily users. Although adults do also use some social media, teenagers are the majority of users.

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Your Twitter feed is going to get even busier thanks to the microblogging service unlocking auto-playing video ads for advertisers. Starting today Video Website Cards are available to every ad-buyer. In limited beta tests (like the one embedded below; videos do not seem to work with embeds), Twitter has found them pretty successful, with a 200 percent higher clickthrough rate compared to the leading standard. So yeah, expect to see an awful lot more of these coming soon.

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Remember the good old days (a la 2009) when social media was fun?

Think back to a time before all talk turned to fake news, algorithm hacks and carefully curated influencer feeds.

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For retailers, the line between online and offline shopping experiences no longer exists. Todays consumers expect consistent branding and service across all platforms, whether they are physically in a store, browsing products on a website or reaching out on social media.

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CJ Marple wanted to teach his young students how quickly information can spread on the Internet.

So earlier this year, the third-grade science teacher wrote up a tweet with the help of his students, asking for other users to retweet the message, or even reply to the message with their location.

The Kansas teacher says he expected 1,000 or so retweets, but within days the tweet went viral and gained more than 227,000 retweets and 75,000 replies from users all over the world. His students, who are probably a little too young for their own social media accounts, learned a lot that week about the power of social media.

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Generally speaking, there are two main ways that you can store your RSS feed:

1) On Your Own Website (self-hosting your RSS)
2) On Your Media Host’s Website (the place where you store your files)

The reason why I have often elected for self hosting (option 1 above) is a simple one: 100% control.

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Convinced that faith communities would want to share prayer requests, announcements and service opportunities without going to multiple platforms and without being awash in advertising, a group of friends created an app just for that.

With $2 million in seed money, Pray.com was beta tested with 100 churches in 2016. Today, 6,000 faith communities and thousands of other groups use the app to host their members’ need for prayer and offers of support, as well as to recruit volunteers for local service projects and to collect donations, said two of the co-founders.

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When is the best time to post on social media? Unmetric, an AI-powered social media analytics platform, reviewed social media posts from 100 brands over a five-week period, then compiled the data into an infographic that explores the answers to that question.

The data shows...

• Surprisingly, Instagram user activity peaks at 3-4 AM on Sundays (because of global interactions, yet Instagram posts on Tuesdays received the best engagement.

• Facebook's sweet spot for engagement is on Thursdays, 9-10 AM; and weekends show lower engagement on Facebook.
• The most rewarding time for brands to post on Twitter is between 11 AM and noon.

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Why would these companies pay when so many of us are willing to do it, as you say, for free? When big tech wants the public to generate a new set of data for them, they design a fun new device designed to train us to do it. And we pay them for the privilege! More and more people have either the Apple, Amazon, or Google home assistant, which we know is already recording our passive conversation for use in improving each company’s voice recognition software and AI.

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The biggest mistake people make when promoting their brand, company or even themselves on social media is thinking that simply posting is enough. However, that’s far from the case. Managing a Facebook, Instagram or Twitter account means having to strategize ways to keep your current audience captivated, while simultaneously attracting new users to your page.

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The one constant about social media is change, so it is a good practice to step back once in a while and ensure that your companys strategy is still current and effective.

As we enter the second half of the year, it is time to take stock in the social media strategy that was probably developed in late 2017 or early 2018. Is your company up to date on all of the social media platform changes? Do you know what is working and what is not?

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While responding quickly to incoming customer inquiries has almost become table stakes in social media, many sophisticated brands have learned that proactive customer care can provide additional benefits to both the company and the customer.

Proactively contacting prospects and customers can create a surprisingly positive customer experience, provide marketing benefits like brand awareness, and even save servicing costs. It can also Proactively listening to prospects and customers on social media can identify key trends, new product opportunities, and customer pain points.

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Today, almost every business has a website -- the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker alike. If you are happy with the number of customers you currently have, then do not read this article. If you would like to bring your products to new markets, read on.

There is a catch: Getting more quality traffic means you will have to do some work.

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As an entrepreneur, you are in a Catch-22. If you don’t spend time marketing your business, it can not grow. If you spend too much time focused on marketing, you can not develop or enhance the products or services you are selling.

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Gray Hat SEO is an SEO practice that's riskier than White Hat SEO, but one that may or may not result in your site being banned from search engines and their affiliate sites. Generally, Gray Hat SEO practices belong in neither the Black Hat nor White Hat category because the terms of service regarding the issue are unclear. In this tutorial, you will get the answers to the following questions:

What is Gray Hat SEO?
Why does it matter?
What Gray Hat SEO should mean to you

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I have been hearing a lot of marketers talk about social commerce, which is exactly what it sounds like: using social media networks to help sell products online. This may sound like a relatively new idea, but when you take a deeper look, social commerce was actually introduced by Yahoo in late 2005. At the time, things like product reviews and sharing wish lists were cutting edge, but that was one of the early examples of combining social networking with online commerce. Technology has since evolved, but the idea remains the same. To understand how to succeed in social commerce, here are five tips for using social networks to sell products online.

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Every parent that has a teen or a preteen should have both Snapchat and Instagram on their phones. If their child uses those applications, you should follow your child on those applications and I think having constant conversations with kids about responsible social media use is important, said Haase.

If they want their child to use social media responsibly, Haase said the parent needs to model good social media behavior as well.

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It is easy to get news on the Internet these days. In fact, it’s too easy to get news from the Internet to the point that it is also to easy to get the wrong news. Some have considered RSS feeds obsolete and boring but when it comes to getting news straight from the horse’s mouth, nothing still beats this direct and largely open method. Last time we looked at Wallabag for saving your articles. This time we are going to take a look at some open source RSS feed readers that give you those articles in the first place.

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Mozilla to kill off RSS features in Firefox because they're hardly used and would take too much effort to modernize.

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Nearly two months ago, Twitter began testing a feature that made it easier for users to see the latest tweets on their feed first, rather than the ones pushed by the companys algorithm. It is a toggle dressed as a sparkle icon that lives above the home timeline, which keeps you from having to go deep into your Twitter settings to get that purely chronological view. Certain iOS users have had access to this since October, but today Twitter is making the change permanent and rolling it out to everyone on Apples platform. Twitter's Android app as well as its website are getting the new magic button, too, but that won't be coming until after the holidays.

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Pinterest has updated its chronological feed with a redesign as well as an easier way to visit publishers web pages.

These updates can be found in the Following tab, introduced earlier this year, which only contains pins from accounts that a user has chosen to follow.

By comparison, the main Pinterest feed contains a mix of pins from followed accounts as well as algorithmic recommendations.

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This past year, many people deleted their social media accounts following revelations about privacy violations on social media platforms and other concerns related to hate speech.

As people adopt their resolutions for the year, it is likely that many more will reconsider their social media use.

However, as a scholar of social media and religion, I would argue that rather than just stop using social media, people could use it to improve their overall well-being. Here are three ways to do so.

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Firefox maker Mozilla will kill off support for RSS and Atom feeds in this December's release of Firefox 64.

Along with dropping RSS and Atom syndicated-feed support, Firefox 64 will no longer contain the Live Bookmarks feature for subscribing to RSS feeds, nor the feed-preview feature.

Instead of maintaining built-in RSS support, Mozilla believes users should install RSS-reader Firefox add-ons.

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This past year, many people deleted their social media accounts following revelations about privacy violations on social media platforms and other concerns related to hate speech.

As people adopt their resolutions for the year, it is likely that many more will reconsider their social media use.
However, as a scholar of social media and religion, I'd argue that rather than just stop using social media, people could use it to improve their overall well-being. Here are three ways to do so.

1. Be active
Studies have shown that there is a big difference between passive social media use and active use. Scrolling through a newsfeed and merely looking at what others have posted is considered passive social media use.

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I am blessed to say that I get to wake up and live out my dreams each day, says social media influencer, comedian and actress Lala Milan. She creates content for many platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, as well as various apps, doing almost all of the writing, filming, directing, and editing herself. This career has enabled her to generate a six-figure annual income and secured her celebrity bookings at events. Recently, it landed her a role on Boomerang, a TV series coming to BET in February 2019.

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Let's take a tour of Turkey through Krystle's eyes.

Ekta Kapoor's show Kasautii Zindagii Kay travels to Switzerland.

'Even Aaradhya watches KBC,' Amitabh Bachchan tells us.

Ameesha Patel enters the house, Paras Chhabra fights with Asim Riaz.

Is love in the air?

It's Shefali Bagga versus all the celeb contestants inside the house!

Devoleena becomes the first queen of the house, and dear readers, you got that right too!

With the Bigg Boss finale just two weeks away, the contestants are beginning to feet the heat.

Do you think Rashami will be evicted?

Siddhartha Dey feels Siddharth is always ready to fight with the girls and that's no way a man should behave.

Day 18 inside the Bigg Boss house was full of drama and fights, courtesy Siddharth Shukla, who seems determined to become the villain of the season.

The twist leads to Abu Malik's eviction.

Day 24 inside the Bigg Boss house gets super interesting when Shefali Bagga shows off her journalistic skills.

'People, who are less deserving, are still inside the house while I am out. Mahira Sharma made it to the top only because of luck and the ticket to the finale task. Arti Singh does not have a strong opinion on anything. I don't know what she is doing in the house.'

Will Vishal get into fights straightaway or will he play the game politely? Let's wait and watch!

After a good dose of dance and masti, the episode gets explosive as Asim Riaz and Siddharth Shukla got into a physical fight during a rather fun task.

After Siddharth Shukla and Asim Riaz's showdown in the last episode, equations have changed drastically inside the Bigg Boss house, as Mahira Sharma and Paras Chhabra are now supporting Sid.

After touring Paris and Switzerland, television actress Surbhi Jyoti spent her next vacation in Australia.