Microsoft Launches GeoFlow 3D Data Visualization Tool For Excel + MORE

Remember a time when you could not go anywhere without your laptop? You used it for scheduling, taking notes, presentations, etc. These days, with smartphones and tablets, it’s almost as if a weight has been lifted off of you. Actually, it has.
A smartphone is an email center, research device, camera, alarm clock, calendar, multimedia player, and more…

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg waded further into the world of politics on Thursday with a Washington Post op-ed announcing FWD.us, a group of tech luminaries arguing for immigration reform.
In the opinion piece, Zuckerberg describes how, while teaching middle school, he met a student who showed promise but had no hopes of going to college because the student was an undocumented immigrant who was born in Mexico…

Facebook today announced the availability of new “partner categories,” audience segments created by third-party data providers that U.S. advertisers can use for targeting via Power Editor or the API. Grocery habits, occupation and car ownership are among the new options self-serve advertisers have access to on the social network
Partner categories are similar to Facebook’s broad category targeting, but they are created with data from third parties that many advertisers already work with, Acxiom, Datalogix and Epsilon…

Facebook today officially announced its enhanced status update product, which allows users to share what they’re doing or how they’re feeling in a structured and visual way. The feature will be available to all U.S. users in coming weeks and will likely expand globally after that.
Overall, structured status updates could lead more users to share their activity in a way that can be later used for ad targeting or indexed in Graph Search…

Foursquare, the social, location-based check-in app that has been pivoting into becoming a more of platform for local search, has finally closed its Series D round of funding. Foursquare tells TechCrunch that it is $41 million, led by Silver Lake Partners in the form of a multi-year loan from the Silver Lake Waterman growth debt fund; and convertible debt from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and Spark Capital…

This is a guest post from Mike McGrail. He is the owner of Velocity Digital, he likes scotch and leather-bound books, and you can follow his ramblings on Twitter. He also resides on Google Plus.
While the digital world develops every day into a even more powerful force, it can be easy to forget about the real-life, tangible activities that many marketers still take part in and benefit from…

Microsoft has released a public preview of GeoFlow today, a new 3D visualization tool for Excel which allow users to create, navigate and interact with time-sensitive data applied to a digital map.
The idea is that users log all of the necessary data in Excel, and then reproduce it in 3D so that it can be shared with other people as an interactive tour…

We’ve been saying this for a while now: Foursquare isn’t about badges and mayorships anymore. You need only look at the company’s latest round of funding for confirmation.
Foursquare announced today that it has raised $41 million in a fourth round of funding led by private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, Bloomberg reports…

Facebook is testing a homepage module that recommends a recent engaging post for page owners to promote and reach more people with.
Reader Matteo Gamba says he saw the “Get More For Your Budget” prompt, shown right, next to his News Feed today beneath a summary of his current ad campaign…

The “fake followers” epidemic has been a problem on Twitter for some time – and it’s well-documented here on All Twitter – but did you realize the trend of trading cash for social media currency is prevalent across all networks?
These days, you can pay for just about any symbol of popularity on social, from Facebook likes to Pinterest repins to YouTube views…

The Walking Dead is this week’s most talked about page for TV shows. The page has been popular consistently, earning the same title last February. The page is the top PTAT gainer in its category, receiving almost 1.4 million engagements over the last week, an increase by over 40,000 compared to the prior week…