6 Ways to Spot and Capitalize on Emerging Social Media Trends | Entrepreneur

Social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools available to small businesses and entrepreneurs. Currently, 84% of all consumers check out a brand’s social media page before making a purchase, resulting in about 20% of all sales coming directly through links from social media. For this reason, entrepreneurs often prioritize getting as much visibility on social media as possible. One of the most effective ways to accomplish this is by creating viral content and taking advantage of emerging trends.

The challenge with trends is that they only create a very short window of opportunity, lasting just a few days or weeks. These trends can be difficult to spot when they are just warming up. Most brands that try to capitalize on trends do so when the trend is fizzling out and don’t get the most benefit. Companies that can jump on the leading edge of a trend can significantly improve their ability to be prioritized by the social media platform’s algorithm and gain massive momentum from going viral. This can result in thousands, if not millions, of additional views to your post or social media profile. A single viral post can completely change the trajectory of your business’s long-term success.

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Reddit Rival Digg Is Making a Comeback, Using AI to Moderate | Entrepreneur

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, 41, has joined forces with former rival Kevin Rose, 48, to revive Digg, a social and link-sharing website Rose founded in 2004 — it was divided up and sold for parts to Betaworks, LinkedIn, and The Washington Post in 2012. The two intend to infuse the new Digg with AI content moderators, a move not yet implemented by Reddit.

The Digg of 2004 allowed users to share links that others could “digg” and upvote or “bury” and downvote, creating a place for trending news. Users could comment on links too, with the most popular content ending up on the homepage.

In its heyday, Digg attracted 40 million monthly unique users, but after a 2010 update removed the “bury” button, users revolted and left the site in droves, leading to its demise.

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Best of MWC 2025: The age of ultra-thin phones is upon us | Mashable

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that it’s impossible to judge how interesting the Mobile World Congress will be based on pre-announcements and teasers.

Yeah, we knew the Nothing phones are coming, and Xiaomi’s new phones weren’t exactly a secret, either. But at the show floor, we’ve also found some extremely thin phones, some wonderfully weird (but useful!) phone accessories, and we even got the first real-life glimpse of Xiaomi’s new supercar.

Here’s a list of the best and the most interesting stuff we’ve seen this year.

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Apple announces the M3 iPad Air with Apple Intelligence | Mashable

Apple just dropped a new iPad Air with an M3 chip, and yes, it has Apple Intelligence.

The M3 iPad Air is twice as fast as the M1 iPad Air which was released in 2022, according to the announcement. The M3 chip also gives the iPad Air faster graphics performance and the same dynamic caching support that comes in other M3 models, which boosts performance and response time.

The M3 iPad Air comes with iPadOS 18, which supports Apple Intelligence features, including Writing Tools with ChatGPT integration, type to Siri, Image Playground, and Genmoji creation. Apple Intelligence for iPad also has photo and graphics editing tools like the Clean Up tool in Photos and Image Wand in the Notes app that works with the Apple Pencil.

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Dow tumbles 650 points as Trump confirms tariffs on Mexico and Canada will start Tuesday | CNN Business

US stocks slid Monday as investors braced for President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico to go into effect by the midnight deadline. The Dow tumbled 650 points, or 1.48%, to close at 43,191.

The Dow fell almost 900 points in afternoon trading before pulling back slightly. The broader S&P 500 fell 1.76% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 2.64%.

The S&P 500 posted its biggest one-day decline of the year. The Nasdaq is down about 6.5% since since Trump took office on January 20.

“Tomorrow, tariffs — 25% on Canada and 25% on Mexico,” Trump said during a press conference at the White House. “And that’ll start. … What they have to do is build their car plants, frankly, and other things in the United States, in which case they have no tariffs.”

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The housing market has shifted in favor of buyers — depending on where you live | CNN Business

Americans looking to purchase a home in certain US cities might be pleasantly surprised to find the tide is shifting their way this spring after years of challenging affordability.

There were 3.7 months of for-sale supply on the market in January, the most in six years, according to a recent Redfin analysis. That means it would take more than three months to sell all the homes that were listed for sale in January, given monthly average sales volume.

The findings point to a housing market where sellers are slowly losing leverage after years of having the upper hand. Generally, more than four months of supply sitting on the market indicates a full-tilt buyers’ market.

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Why can’t you tickle yourself? | Live Science

For many of us, the tickling response is paradoxical — the playfulness it inspires is typically enjoyable, but the overstimulated nerves and loss of control can feel distressing. Whether you find it enjoyable, uncomfortable or somewhere in between, you can’t tickle yourself. But why?

The answer has to do with the brain already knowing about and downplaying the expected, predictable sensation of the self-tickle, experts told Live Science.

“It’s because the brain is always predicting into the future,” David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, told Live Science. “Brains are not just reactive; they are trying to guess ahead at what’s going to come next.”

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This year’s flu shot was up to 78% effective at preventing hospitalization in kids, early data finds | Live Science

This year’s flu shots have dramatically reduced hospitalizations for seasonal influenza, early data suggest.

For kids and teens, the shots were at least 63% effective against flu hospitalizations and up to 78% in some regions. That’s according to data pulled from two networks of health care centers that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) monitors to assess flu shot effectiveness.

“Vaccine effectiveness” reflects how much a shot lowers the chances of a particular health outcome in the real world, and it’s calculated by comparing how often that outcome occurs in vaccinated versus unvaccinated people. So in this case, vaccinated kids had a 63% to 78% lower chance of being hospitalized for flu.

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10 Leadership Goals You Should Set | Business News Daily

Being a leader is not just a position in a hierarchy, a higher pay grade or additional responsibilities – it is a skill set that you should be continually developing. Every leader at every level of experience and skill has room for growth, but the thought of setting and achieving leadership goals may leave you wondering where to begin. There are 10 basic leadership development goals that, depending on your position and skill level, you should strive toward. Once you have identified the goal(s) you want to strive for, the next step is to develop an action plan to help you achieve them and track your progress. Following this process will help you become the leader your organization deserves.

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What Lead Qualification Is and How It Works | Business News Daily

Successful business owners know how to focus on providing great products and services and finding new customers at the same time. Generating new leads is the first step to driving new business, but it’s important to determine which leads are more likely to pay off.

Qualifying your leads can increase the number you convert to customers. Doing so is no small feat; only 1 in 5 leads ultimately becomes a customer. This means that for every new customer you get, there are four who were not persuaded to use your products or services. That’s a lot of time and money lost but smart lead qualification can minimize this concern.

What is lead qualification?

Lead qualification is the process of predicting the likelihood that a sales prospect will become a customer. To inform this prediction, you’ll need to gather data about your prospects through lead capture forms and other processes conducted in the lead generation process. While lead qualification begins at the top of the sales funnel, it doesn’t end there ― it continues up until your prospect becomes a paying customer.

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