Fans of The Bachelor are all too familiar with this season’s over-the-top contestant Courtney, who makes snide comments at the camera and likes to take off her bikini top. Now, a video has popped up on YouTube that has turned some of her signature phrases — from “Winning!” to “I do modeling” — into a catchy Auto-Tune clip. The contestants are vying for a rose from winemaker Ben, and Courtney has rubbed many of them the wrong way. The video shows why. This is not the first time YouTube users have  show all text

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Amazon and Viacom might sign a deal as soon as this week, bringing Amazon one step closer to launching a standalone video streaming service.

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Moda Operandi, the closely watched online retail operation from ex-Gilt exec Aslaug Magnusdottir and Vogue contributing editor Lauren Santo Domingo, is in transition. Once accessible only via application, the year-old site is opening its doors and bolstering its content offerings in an attempt to draw new shoppers in and keep them there. Moda Operandi sells clothing “straight off the runway” through a series of three-day online trunk shows. Instead of waiting for items to appear in stores half a  show all text

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There’s usually one commercial during the Super Bowl that outshines the others for its creativity and laughter-inducing antics — and gets watched over and over. Twitter’s Ad Scrimmage wants to be the website where you do that, as well as vote for your favorite. But move fast; it won’t be around forever. The idea behind Ad Scrimmage is to get people talking about the companies and brands behind the ads (which shelled-out beaucoup bucks for these coveted spots) and extend the ad value and enterta...  show all text

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Samsung has made one thing clear in its “Next Big Thing” Super Bowl spot — it wants to be the anti-Apple. The South Korean electronics maker is marketing it’s 5.3-inch smartphone with stylus as the latest player in the world of connected devices. The ad — as we already new from its teaser released last week — pokes fun at Apple fanboys and fangirls who notoriously camp out in anticipation for iDevice launches. The towns of San Francisco, Calif, Boston, Ma. and Denver, Co., erupt in non-choreogr...  show all text

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The rage in social networks right now is Pinterest, partly because it’s probably the first social network that has a much higher adoption rate by females than males, and partly because it’s an interesting concept: somewhere between visual social bookmarking and scrapbooking. What also might not be immediately obvious is that it’s just “easier” to interact there. In that way, Pinterest has something in common with Instagram, which is community around photos. What I’m interested in, though, is Ge...  show all text

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The New York Giants official website accidentally announced the winner of Super Bowl XLVI more than 24 hours before Sunday’s big game even started, by the look of images floating around the web. The error was immortalized Saturday in this TwitPic screenshot (above), which Jeff Frias posted to Twitter. No signs of the mistake are left on the team’s site other than a reported link that leads to the image below: The Giants have yet to publicly confirm whether this whammy is real or the handy-work ...  show all text

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This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. The Google Chrome Web Store has made it easy for anyone to stay organized, and the browser has gotten much faster, as we’ve noticed in the beta version of Chrome 17. But as the web gets bigger and stronger, so many apps and plugins are available that it’s hard to know which is the best for you. If you’re running a business  show all text

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This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. Companies that rely on a visual or photographic web presence often find it difficult to convey their media on Twitter. Take, for instance, apparel brands that need to get social media eyes on their merchandise, or a design firm that seeks exposure. How can these types of businesses ensure that Twitter followers see their ...  show all text

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1. Join If you haven't already, sign up for a Pinterest account. There's a waiting list to join now — talk about exclusivity — but you can beat the system by having an existing Pinterest member send you a request. If you don't know anyone on Pinterest, some have had success by finding members via Twitter and asking for invitations that way. Click here to view this gallery. If you’re planning a wedding and knee-deep in collecting ideas for the perfect dress, hairstyle and invitations, there’s  show all text

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Bouncer scanning software, developed by Google, is designed to search the Android market for software that could be malicious, the company announced Thursday on its blog. With the success of Android this year, the company says it wants to protect its many users and their devices from harm. “Device activations grew 250% year-on-year, and the total number of app downloads from Android Market topped 11 billion,” Hiroshi Lockheimer, VP of engineering, wrote on the Google Mobile Blog. “As the platfo...  show all text

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Facebook’s $5 billion IPO is not the biggest of all time, but it’s up there, which means it’s faced with the same gimlet eye as every other big Internet public offering. The word “bubble” has been floated. That’s unfortunate since there is nothing bubble-like about Facebook. People, though, are insistent. “This is the beginning,” I’ve been told. Others put Facebook’s filing among a growing chain of Internet IPOs (Zynga, Groupon, LinkedIn), making it like a rather ungainly bauble in a charm brac...  show all text

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Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, got paid $30.87 million last year, making her the most highly compensated employee at the company in 2011. That disclosure, including in Facebook’s S-1 filing with the SEC on Wednesday, further outlines that Sandberg got $295,833 in salary plus a bonus of $85,133 and stock awards worth $30,491,613. That trumps the $1.49 million that CEO Mark Zuckerberg received. Zuckerberg’s compensation included a salary of $483,333 plus a $220,500 bonus and  show all text

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Are you wondering how to add social media to your email communications? Email and social media marketing go together like Batman and Robin. They both can be effective on their own; however, when combined, their (super) powers can save the city and exceed your marketing goals. Is Email Dead? In this article I’ll show you how to combine email marketing with your social media efforts. In a recent StrongMail survey, ”More than two-thirds of business leaders (68%) say they plan to integrate social m...  show all text

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YouTube head Salar Kamangar gave a clear explanation today of why YouTube recently reorganized itself into channels: so it can charge more for advertisements. Kamangar was speaking at the D: Dive Into Media conference in southern California today, and explained that YouTube was once known for videos of dogs on skateboards. The ad rates for those videos -- measured in CPM, or cost per thousand clicks -- are because users aren't very engaged. "But if you packaged those videos as part of a dog-lov...  show all text

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“Twitter is not a media company,” Twitter CEO Dick Costolo declared on stage at AllThingsD‘s media conference in Laguna Nigel, CA, Monday evening. The statement was surprising given Twitter’s well-publicized role as a platform for breaking news, entertainment and other communications. “You [even] sell advertising,” AllThingsD‘s Peter Kafka pointed out. “We’re in the media business, but we’re not necessarily a media company,” Costolo elaborated. “We don’t create our own content; we’re a distribu...  show all text

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Are you looking for some good blogs to read? Look no further! Our third-annual social media blog contest generated nearly 600 nominations (almost twice as many as last year’s contest). Our panel of social media experts carefully reviewed the nominees and finalists, analyzing the quality of their content, the frequency of posts and reader involvement (among other things). With that in mind, here are ten blogs that need to be at the top of your reading list. #1: Social Mouths Social Mouths, the b...  show all text

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We’re back again with another roundup of the top Mashable comments of the week. In this weekly segment, we showcase the week’s best comments on our site. We’re always looking for thoughtful comments that engage the community and drive more conversation, as well as those that make us laugh. This week, the Mashable community took an interest in the recent announcement of Facebook Timeline and coverage on the Presidential Campaign. This week’s comments truly made the Mashable team laugh and were l...  show all text

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Let’s face it: Apple is rich. So rich it could send a crowd of people to the moon to build a luxury hotel and hang out there for a few years. Here’s what else it could do, according to our friends at The Joy of Tech. It’s not surprising Apple is so deeply awash in cash, especially after its spectacular first-quarter earnings announced this week. You can see the details of Apple’s unbelievable numbers here, but will give you a highlight: the company’s revenues for the quarter were higher than its  show all text

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It’s no secret Apple, one of the most valuable public companies in the world, is making major cash off today’s tech gadgets — but how much? This week, the company reported a record net profit of more than $13.6 billion for its quarterly report lasting 14 weeks and ending Dec. 31, 2011. A rumored summer release of the iPhone 5 will help keep the money flowing in this year for the more than $400 billion company. “We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iP...  show all text

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Most member states of the European Union have signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) at a ceremony in Tokyo, Japan on Thursday, Jan. 26. ACTA is a global treaty that tries to normalize copyright protection and IP standards. It’s similar to SOPA and PIPA, proposed U.S. laws which have recently been dropped after massive internet protests, but in many ways even more dangerous. Unfortunately (and unlike SOPA and PIPA), ACTA has been signed by many states without a wide, open public ...  show all text

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In this optical illusion, do you see it moving fast or slow? This is a psychological test!会动的图片第二季：据心理医生说，图片与心理承受力有关，你的心理承受力越强，图片转动越慢。Follow…

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“More power!” You can imagine Steve Ballmer yelling it through Microsoft’s halls but that’s exactly what is happening with the Xbox 720, according to reports from IGN. The next Xbox — rumored to be the “Xbox 720″ — will ship to retailers in late October or early November 2013 and have six times the processing power of its predecessor, the Xbox 360, sources close to the project told IGN. The next console will use the AMD 6000 series, which should run similar to the Radeon HD 6670. That all sounds  show all text

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Mashable’s Davos coverage is presented by BMW i, a new concept dedicated to providing mobility solutions for the urban environment. Documented@Davos The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, has been called one of the most important conferences in the world. Once a year, heads of state, politicians and leaders from across the world join together for a week to discuss the key global economic, societal and political issues that will shape the coming year. There’s often a debate about the ...  show all text

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This guest post is by Harry Bingham of Writers’ Workshop. Most blog posts are dull. They might be well-informed, offer interesting insights, teach useful things—but they can do all those things and still be dull. Although readers do come to blogs to learn, they are only ever two clicks away from rival offerings, which means you’re under constant pressure to retain those eyeballs. And eyeball-retention is a learnable, replicable skill. I’m a novelist, after all. People don’t come to my books in ...  show all text

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Gearing up for Twitter’s self-serve advertising launch — currently in beta stage with only a small selection of advertisers — the company announced its acquisition of spam and malware protection service Dasient on Monday. Dasient will be integrated into Twitter’s “revenue engineering team because they have a deep understanding of advertising-platform security issues,” says Rachael Horwitz, a spokesperson for Twitter. The team will be very valuable as Twitter continues to expand its ad products....  show all text

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If you enjoy using Spotify or Foursquare on Facebook, imagine having the same integration with a bevy of other apps. Now you can share more than just your location, music tastes and which story you enjoyed reading on the Washington Post that day using Social Reader. Facebook’s announcement on Wednesday of 60 new apps has some people scratching their heads and asking, “How will this look on my timeline?” Until now only a selection of apps were integrated with Facebook’s Open Graph — Spotify, Fou...  show all text

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We all know how easy it is to build a WordPress website from scratch but what can you do when you start getting real blog visitors but they do not seem to stick around. Wouldn’t you love to grab these visitors and stop them from leaving your blog? Of course you would. Here are a few basic tips: Captivating Content This is not going to be the good old clique “content is king” but I will say that it is important! In fact, if you do not understand what great content is then this is the first thing...  show all text

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