Happy Monday!

The sunset as incredibly beautiful. It glowed through the spindly winter branches. They were reaching for the vivid sky, same as I. There is something captivating about forest sunsets, trapped beneath the trees. You can’t see the full splendor, but you see enough to know it’s there. I ran through the forest to get a clearer view, but it wasn’t until we topped the mountain that the real artistry unfolded. It was certainly a sight to behold.

Online reviews are a big part of consumers’ purchasing decisions. Some 20.1% of US internet users said they always check online reviews before making a purchase. And more than a quarter (29.5%) of respondents said they check online reviews most of the time.

Consumers Like Reading Online Reviews, Not Writing Them - eMarketer

Survey after survey keep showing the importance of online consumer reviews but there is an imbalance between the likelihood of reading them and writing them and hence a challenge for etailers.

(via analyticisms)

Hidden Galaxy IC 342

Similar in size to large, bright spiral galaxies in our neighborhood, IC 342 is a mere 10 million light-years distant in the long-necked, northern constellation Camelopardalis. A sprawling island universe, IC 342 would otherwise be a prominent galaxy in our night sky, but it is hidden from clear view and only glimpsed through the veil of stars, gas and dust clouds along the plane of our own Milky Way galaxy. Even though IC 342’s light is dimmed by intervening cosmic clouds, this sharp telescopic image traces the galaxy’s own obscuring dust, blue star clusters, and glowing pink star forming regions along spiral arms that wind far from the galaxy’s core. IC 342 may have undergone a recent burst of star formation activity and is close enough to have gravitationally influenced the evolution of the local group of galaxies and the Milky Way.

Credit & Copyright: T. Rector (U. Alaska Anchorage), H. Schweiker,  WIYN, NOAO, AURA, NSF.

Time And Space

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

Winston Churchill

Only two (very interesting) charts from a long article with many more stats about the effectiveness of various paid social ads. A good read for B2C and B2B social media marketers.

The story of a man, a camera, social media, and dogs. Lots of dogs.

nick dewolf

1960