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For some, spooky season begins sometime in late August—when Target puts out the animatronic skeletons and ghost projectors, and when every vacant retail space is possessed by a Spirit Halloween. For others, it's after Labor Day. For yet another subset, spooky season runs year-round. A quick check of the calendar reveals that at least one of those criteria have been met, which means it's time to queue up something with chilling vibes—even if the sun is shining. Talk to Me (2022) A group of teens comes across an embalmed hand and realize that they can use it to conjure spirits, which is all tremendous fun until it most assuredly isn't. While there are elements of "elevated" horror here in the film's suggestion that grief and trauma are pretty much the real gateways to hell, Talk to Me is also packed with old-school thrills and a general freakiness that we love to see. You can stream Talk to Me here. Psycho (1960) What could possibly be scary about sweet Norman Bates, a boy whose best friend is, after all, his mother? Alfred Hitchcock's film shocked audiences back in 1960, and still stands as a high-water mark in slasher cinema, with masterful twists and shifts in perspective that keep Psycho thrilling even after decades and endless imitators. Anthony Perkins makes you kinda cheer for Norman, even after you're wise to the movie's climactic reveal. You can stream Psycho here. I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) Of the many (many, many) Scream imitators that came out post-1996, I Know What You Did Last Summer was the most effective (it was also written by Kevin Williamson), and has proven to be the one with the most staying power—the original sequels were not so much, but there's a fair bit of anticipation around a new movie coming this summer. With the '90s super-group cast of Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, and Freddie Prinze Jr., Last Summer gets off on the right foot with a smart, simple premise: a group of kids accidentally hit someone while driving their car, but, as suggested by the title, they're unable to put that event behind them. You can stream Last Summer here. Scream VI (2023) While the venerable franchise's future is looking increasingly rocky (the upcoming sequel lost several actors, a director, and a lot of good will on its way to theaters), Scream came back in a big way in 2022 with a wildly successful sequel/reboot from Radio Silence. Scream VI moves the action out of small-town Woodsboro, California for the first time, sending our previous film's survivors off to New York City, and without decades-long-lead Neve Campbell. No worries, though: Ghostface is as brutal and funny as ever in a film full of impressive set pieces and with a central mystery that's as well-constructed as any in the series (meaning that it mostly makes sense). The big finale is probably the most elaborate of the series. You can stream Scream VI here. Train to Busan (2016) Before Parasite, Yeon Sang-ho’s film was, perhaps, the biggest South Korean film to break into the American market, even if some of the subtext gets lost stateside (Busan was a haven for refugees during the Korean War). The 2016 film follows Seok-woo, a workaholic divorced dad who comes to feel that he’s running out of time to be the father he ought to be for his daughter Su-an. He has no idea how right he is. The train trip he plans for them as bonding time becomes something much more desperate when a zombie-infected woman hops aboard just before departure. What follows is one of the best action-horror movies of the past decade, but also a surprisingly moving story about a father and daughter reconnecting at the end of the world, as well as one that doesn't shy away from some pretty pointed critiques of modern capitalism. You can stream Train to Busan here. Compliance (2012) No need for zombies, demons, or ghosts here: just plain old humans being horrifying without any supernatural help. And this one's based on a true story, replacing a real-life McDonalds with the fictional "ChickWich." Becky (Dreama Walker) is working her shift at the fast-food restaurant when she's called into the office—it seems that an "Officer Daniels" (Pat Healy) is on the phone, and that Becky matches the description of a woman the police are looking for regarding a series of thefts. Manager Sandra (Ann Dowd) first questions Becky and then, under instructions from the man on the phone, strip searches the young woman. Things get far worse from there. You can stream Compliance here. The Deliverance (2024) Any cheapo movie can be weird, but with big name talent, a weird movie can really enter the cultural conversation—to whit, The Deliverance is helmed by Precious/The Butler director Lee Daniels, and stars Andra Day, Glenn Close, Mo'Nique, and Omar Epps. And the discourse here? It's mostly centered around the age-old question: What the fuck did I just watch? Based on a true story (which: sure), it stars Day as a struggling single mom with a prison record who is raising three kids by herself while paying for cancer treatments for her mom (Glenn Close). It hits many typical exorcism-movie beats, but by the time you get to EGOT nominee Close sprouting fangs and screaming about what body parts she can smell from across the room, it's clear we've been in high-camp territory all along. You can stream The Deliverance here. Under Paris (2024) You might want to rethink those Paris travel plans after this one. This is an aggressively fun (and very French) update on Jaws that sees a killer mako shark loose, first in the Seine and later in the famous catacombs. An Olympic qualifying event is about to occur in the city, which, of course, the mayor won't call off in spite of the growing body count. There's some stuff here about environmental catastrophe being the cause, but mostly it's just a bone-chomping good time. You can stream Under Paris here. Thanksgiving (2023) Eli Roth dropped his first straight-up horror movie since 2013's The Green Inferno in this funny but bleak satire. When an unruly mob storms a Walmart (ahem: "RightMart") on Black Friday, violence and bloodshed ensue, leading one of the victims of the incident to seek revenge. Patrick Dempsey stars in this bit of wild and gory holiday fun. You can stream Thanksgiving here. Blood Red Sky (2021) German widow Nadja is taking a flight to New York with her kid, Elias. She seems sick—we and her fellow passengers are meant to think that she has cancer, which makes her an easy mark for the terrorist hijackers who board the plane and shoot her out of pique. Big mistake. The vampires-on-a-plane high concept at work could have been silly, but at no point does the movie forget that we're seated for gory bloodsucking action. You can stream Blood Red Sky here. Nightbooks (2021) So, Nightbooks is technically for kids, and therefore might not provide quite the volume of scares that a grown-up horror audience might be hoping for. That being said: There are some legit frights here, frankly a little beyond what you’d expect from a kids’ movie. It’s the old story of kids kidnapped by a witch (Krysten Ritter), with the added twist that one of the kidnapped, Alex (Winslow Fegley) writes scary stories, and has to tell one each night that he’s trapped in the witch’s apartment in order to stay alive. There’s imagery here to creep out just about anybody. You can stream Nightbooks here. Bone Tomahawk (2015) What's that? You want even more Patrick Wilson in your horror movies? He joins this modern cult classic, led by Kurt Russell as Sheriff Franklin Hunt, in charge of a posse to rescue a young woman from a group of inbred cannibals in the old west. The "Weird" Western, in which we encounter ghosts, aliens, or, in this case, cannibals in the old west, is a venerable genre in literature, but rarely if ever done so well on the screen. This is old west horror done right. You can stream Bone Tomahawk here. Apostle (2018) If you’re familiar with the wild tower action spectacle The Raid, you might have some sense of the energy that director Gareth Evans brings to Apostle’s second half, even if the styles are very different. This one’s pure folk horror, with nods to The Wicker Man: Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey, The Guest) plays Thomas Richardson, a now-faithless missionary who returns home to discover that his sister has been kidnapped by a religious cult on a remote Welsh island. What starts out feeling a bit like a sleepy period drama evolves into a truly wild gorefest before it’s done. You can stream Apostle here. His House (2020) As fraught (and snooty) as the term “elevated horror” has become, it’s good to remember that a movie can have deep emotional resonance and a social conscience, all without sacrificing the haunted-house chills. Here, Bol and Rial (Sope Dirisu and Wunmi Mosaku), with their daughter Nyagak, flee war-torn Sudan to find refuge in a quiet English town, only to find that there’s evil waiting there for them. You can stream His House here. Gerald’s Game (2017) Gerald’s Game, from the 1992 Stephen King novel, never seemed terribly filmable. The story is set entirely in an isolated cabin in the woods, and involves a single immobilized character for much of its page count. Enter director Mike Flanagan—who, in addition to his successful miniseries projects (The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass, The Midnight Club), did the impossible in crafting a killer adaptation of King’s lesser-loved Shining sequel, Doctor Sleep. Carla Gugino stars as a married woman trapped when her husband, played by Bruce Greenwood, dies after having handcuffed her to the bed. Increasingly delirious, she’s forced to face not only her past trauma, but the hungry dog that keeps sniffing around. You can stream Gerald’s Game here. Creep (2014) One of the better (maybe one of the best) found footage-style films of recent years, Creep takes place within the camera of Aaron (Patrick Brice, who also directed) and stars Mark Duplass (The Morning Show) as a dying man who hires the videographer to document his final days for his unborn son. The movie builds its tension around, initially, Aaron’s excessive friendliness—there are few better ways to create an atmosphere of unease than by offering up a character who’s a little too nice. Before long, the guy’s effusiveness curdles into an unpredictability that gets, well, creepier and creepier. You can stream Creep here. The Platform (2019) The metaphor might seem a little heavy-handed—but modern life has begun to teach us that even the direst of dystopian sci-fi is just around the corner. The titular platform is a large tower, euphemistically referred to as the “Vertical Self-Management Center,” in which food is delivered via a shaft that stops on each floor from the top down: those near the top get to eat their fill; those at the bottom get scraps. The Spanish-language thriller is wildly violent, but inventive, and it’s not as if real-life capitalism is particularly subtle in its deprivations. You can stream The Platform here. Under the Shadow (2016) In Tehran during the Iran-Iraq War, a woman estranged from her husband is forced to protect her child from mysterious supernatural forces as the bombs continue to fall. Writer/director Babak Anvari’s Under the Shadow invokes the jinn (neither necessarily good nor evil, but potentially threatening) as a way to talk about the strife and turmoil of war and political conflict, as well as about the anxieties of women in oppressive societies. The atmospheric film plays simultaneously as the story of a haunting, and also as one about women and civilians in times of war; each element serves to heighten the other. You can stream Under the Shadow here. The Call (2020) I love a time-travel horror movie (a tiny but venerable genre that includes movies like Timecrimes, Triangle, and Happy Death Day). This one involves Seo-yeon (Park Shin-hye) visiting her childhood home in 2019, only to discover that an old cordless phone still works (never a good sign), and connects her to Young-sook (Jeon Jong-seo), living in the house in 1999. The two bond over shared experiences, but things soon go very wrong when Seo-Yeon tells the other young woman about the future, and influences her to make changes. Some events, it seems, are best left alone. Clever and disturbing, with a solid high concept. You can stream The Call here. Cam (2018) Director Daniel Goldhaber (the upcoming How to Blow Up a Pipeline) teamed up with writer Isa Mazzei, who based this Black Mirror-esque story partly on her own memoir. Madeline Brewer (Orange is the New Black) plays online sex worker Alice Ackerman, aka Lola_Lola, who one night discovers there’s another Lola out there—a cam girl who’s identical to Alice in appearance and general vibe, but whose willingness to go further puts her out in front in terms of viewership. It’s a horror movie with a lot to say about the dehumanization of sex workers, with a great central performance from Brewer. You can stream Cam here. I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016) Girl, yeah you are! A brisk, chilling, and effective gothic horror film starring Ruth Wilson as a live-in nurse who comes to believe that the creaky old house where she works is haunted. This one’s less concerned with immediate shocks and scares than with getting under your skin, but there’s definitely a creepiness here that lingers. Director Osgood Perkins had similar success with The Blackcoat’s Daughter and Gretel & Hansel. You can stream I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House here. The Block Island Sound (2020) Strange doings are afoot on the title's Block Island, the most obvious being the vast numbers of dead fish that keep washing ashore. Almost as alarming, though, is the behavior of one of the local fishermen, Tom, who keeps waking up in strange places and generally losing time. His daughter Audry (Michaela McManus) works for the Environmental Protection Agency and is sent to investigate the mass fish deaths; she brings along her daughter and reunites with brother Tom (Chris Sheffield) along the way. Together, they discover that no ordinary environmental catastrophe is to blame (I guess it wouldn't be much of a horror movie if it were), as the film blends family drama and the eerie local events as it builds to a pretty chilling climax. You can stream Block Island Sound here. Cargo (2017) With the always-welcome Martin Freeman in the lead, this is, OK, yet another zombie film, but one that still manages to do things a bit differently. An Australian import, this one tweaks the rules so that the infected have just about 48 hours of humanity before they turn, meaning that everyone has a bit of time to contemplate their fates, and maybe even to think about how to make the best use of their time. It’s a more melancholic take on the zombie apocalypse, full of chilling outback atmosphere and some genuine scares. Don't get confused with the 2020 sci-fi movie of the same name, also on Netflix. You can stream Cargo here. Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016) We heard you like movies about toys? (Hey Barbie!) Hasbro brings you this sequel to the fairly by-the-numbers 2014 movie based on the company's "let's pretend to talk to the dead" board game. But there's a shocking twist: This one's actually good, or certainly better than it has any right to be, which probably has something to do with the involvement of co-writer and director Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep, The Haunting of Hill House, etc.), who treats this like an actual movie rather than a bit of tie-in marketing. Set in 1967, the movie finds a mom/con artist running a fake medium business out of her home. "Let's add a Ouija board to the proceedings," she thinks. "It'll be fun." Spoiler: it is not fun, at least for her family. But it's a spooky good time for the rest of us. You can stream Origin of Evil here. Dawn of the Dead (2004) Director Zack Snyder commits a bit of cinematic blasphemy in remaking George Romero's brutal and pointedly funny 1978 satire; this one doesn't try for social commentary or consumerist critiques, and that's probably for the best. What we get instead is a sharp, fast-paced, and fairly well-acted zombie action movie. It's brisk and brutal and without much socially redeeming value, but manages to be a bloody good time even still. You can stream Dawn of the Dead here. There's Something in the Barn (2023) A Christmastime horror comedy from Norway that, I'd say, can be enjoyed any time of the year that you're in the mood for holiday fear. An American family is dragged back to their ancestral family farm in rural Gudbrandsdalen, Norway by an overzealous dad. No one else is terribly happy about it until they discover an elf living on the property. At first it seems like a cool thing, having a mythical creature out back—until the family begin ignoring the three simple rules one must always observe in the presence of a barn elf. What starts as a quirky holiday comedy turns into a full-bore gorefest by the final act. You can stream There's Something in the Barn here. Trap (2024) Cooper (Josh Hartnett) is a pretty cool dad in M. Night Shyamalan’s latest, taking his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to see a very cool Taylor Swift-ish pop star in concert. We quickly learn, though, that Cooper is a hunted serial killer, and that the FBI knows that "The Butcher" will be at the concert, even if they don't know exactly who it is. Of such premises are fun thrillers made, as Cooper has to try to escape the pop concert while somehow making sure his daughter gets to enjoy the show. You can stream Trap here. Verónica (2017) Loosely based on purportedly true events, this import from Spain is all spooky atmosphere and old-school chills. It's the story of a young woman who conjures up evil demons following some ill-conceived Ouija-play. (Seriously: Stop messing with those things). When some friends try to conjure up lost loved ones during a solar eclipse, they wind up making contact with a spirit they weren't expecting. Because of course they do. It's not the most original chiller, but the creepy fundamentals are sound, and there are plenty of solid scares. You can stream Verónica here. Sister Death (2023) If Verónica was your cup of sangria, you can click right over to this sequel (actually a prequel set in 1939), following Sister Narcisa (Aria Bedmar) after she arrives at a Spanish convent. As a child she'd supposedly seen a vision of the Virgin Mary, making her both famous and a bit notorious around the place, which quite naturally is rife with spooky doings in the style of several other nun-related horror-movies of recent years. Sister Death breaks from the habit by being just a bit scarier, and quite a bit smarter in its consideration of all the ways religion can turn people into monsters. You can stream Sister Death here. Hunger (2023) This one isn’t billed as a horror film, but good luck finding a more harrowing psychological thriller on the streamer. Whether it’s The Bear, The Menu, or Triangle of Sadness, some of the most intense dramas on TV and in film are centered around preparing or eating food. Restaurant-related anxiety is deep in the zeitgeist right now, perhaps reflecting our deep understanding that the food is running low, whether we care to acknowledge it or not. Here, Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying plays Ayo, a young woman working in a family noodle shop who finds a mentor in the dictatorial Chef Paul (Nopachai Chaiyanam). It’s worth it, she figures, even as her climb exposes her to a world for which she’s not prepared. You can stream Hunger here. 1922 (2017) Another Stephen King adaptation (this one from a novella) and another reminder that, while they aren’t all winners, there’s still plenty of gold to be mined from the King canon. Here, farmer Thomas Jane convinces his son to help him kill wife and mother Molly Parker (she wants to sell the family farm and move to the big city), leading to a solid example of the one-thing-leads-to-another genre of horror film, wherein the lead character just keeps getting deeper and deeper into a crime with increasingly wild and horrific results. You can stream 1922 here. Watcher (2022) A straightforward premise is impossibly tense under the direction of Chloe Okuno. An American couple moves to Bucharest, and Julia (Maika Monroe) quickly finds herself isolated: She's alone for hours of the day while her husband works and she doesn't speak the language, so has a hard time making friends or even communicating. So it's even more terrifying than it might otherwise be when she starts seeing a man who appears to be following and watching her wherever she goes. You can stream Watcher here. Bird Box (2018)This high-concept thriller might be horror-lite in some regards, but the clever premise generates a ton of tension throughout. The premise here is that, if you see the creatures that have descended upon the world, you die. So Bullock and co. are forced to navigate by sound alone, and the invisible threats are almost certainly more scary than anything Netflix might have visualized. The sequel, Bird Box: Barcelona (also a Netflix original), is somewhat less effective but still entertaining. You can stream Bird Box here. The Ritual (2017) What do you do when one of your best friends is murdered in a botched liquor store robbery? Go to Sweden and tromp around in the woods, obviously! The four friends here do just that in this effective film that blends don’t-get-lost-in-the-woods horror with some genuinely mythological frights that play to the best traditions of folk horror. You can stream The Ritual here. The Babysitter (2017) It’s not terribly original, but that’s kind of the point. In the film, 12-year-ole Cole finds out that his hot babysitter (Samara Weaving) is part of a murderous satanic cult. It’s a bloody, gory, high-energy comedy from director McG (Charlie’s Angels), and one with a really game supporting cast having fun playing with, and against, the usual tropes. The 2020 sequel, Killer Queen, feels like more of the same—but worth a look if you enjoy this one. You can stream The Babysitter here. Calibre (2018) It’s more of a thriller than a straight-up horror movie, but there’s enough of a body count here to qualify, and an ending that goes pretty hard (there are Scottish townies involved, so the folk-horror vibes are well-earned). On a hunting trip in the highlands, two posh and obnoxious friends accidentally kill a child, and then his father. The two men figure they can just cover up the crime and get on with their lives—which, of course, they absolutely cannot. You can stream Calibre here. May the Devil Take You (2018) Indonesia has been a particularly fertile ground for the development of horror movies for a long time, and Netflix has hosted a few recent bangers. This one’s a pretty straight-up story of demonic possession and being very careful what you wish for, involving a man who sells his soul for wealth and success, only to release a demonic presence that brings goopy, gory harm to his loved ones. It might not be the most visually explicit in terms of its body horror, but it’s up there. The 2020 sequel, May the Devil Take You Too, is almost as good. You can stream May the Devil Take You here. Malevolent (2018) It goes off the rails a bit (quite a bit, actually) in the final act, but Florence Pugh (as Angela) gives a great performance of one half of a scammy brother-sister team of ghostbusters in the 1980s. In Scotland. In the course of the movie, Angela discovers that her mom’s supposed ability to communicate with the dead wasn’t a lie, and that she also has the ability—complicating their lives, especially when the siblings learn more than they should about a house where a group of children were killed. You can stream Malevolent here. Fear Street Trilogy (2021) I'm covering three movies at once here, as each film in the trilogy, adapted from the R. L. Stine books, shares a tone, quality, and director (Leigh Janiak, best known for Honeymoon prior to Fear Street). Fear Street Part One: 1994 kicks off the films by introducing the town of Shadyside, which the local kids call “Shittyside,” and has a dark history of multiple murders, most of them covered up. A group of teens upsets the grave of a witch, kicking off the revival of a murderous cult. The vibe here is a little bit Stranger Things, with some legit gore and scares (it’s YA, but definitely not kids’ stuff) as Janiak pays homage to a wide range of horror movies past. The series continues with a camp slasher homage in Fear Street Part Two: 1978, and then an origin that brings things to a conclusion in Fear Street Part Three: 1666. You can stream Fear Street Part One: 1994 here. The Perfection (2018) A short synopsis, involving Charlotte Willmore (Allison Williams) returning to her prestigious music academy after an absence and finding that another woman (Logan Browning) has taken her place at the head of the class, might make it seem as though we’re entering Black Swan territory, at worst—but the intentionally disjointed narrative here quickly careens into wildly claustrophobic body horror. It might not be the first film to mine dark thrills and gore out of arts education (Suspiria, anyone?) but it goes as far as any of them, and even beyond. You can stream The Perfection here. View the full article

My SEO colleagues have a tall task on their hands, one that grows taller by the day as AI-powered search proliferates: compensating for eroding website traffic. Yes, I’m talking about zero-click search, which is taking root across AI search and LLMs like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini – and the AI Overviews creeping into more traditional SERPs. A recent report featured in these pages cites an organic SERP CTR drop between .64% and 1.41%. The smart money is on that CTR dropping as zero-click search behavior gains momentum. (Though recent Semrush data showed zero-click behavior declined slightly.) I would also bet on Google finding more ways to minimize the “necessary evil” – their words – of sending traffic to publisher sites. In other words, you can’t count on your current SEO strategy to deliver the levels of organic traffic you’re accustomed to. Even if you succeed in showing up prominently in search results in an evolving landscape, there’s no guarantee you’ll get clicks. If you’re on the PPC side, and you’re determined to be great partners to your organic colleagues and the clients they serve, what’s your charter? That’s what I’ll explore in this article. Know the impact on your industry User behavior (and search platform presence) is highly variable by industry. AI search is gaining tremendous traction in retail and travel, with queries showing activity all along the purchase journey, a recent Adobe report shows. For B2B, which is a big part of our client portfolio, we’re seeing the most AI search activity on top-of-funnel, research-based searches. When people are searching for branded terms, we’re not (yet) seeing much AI Overviews volume in the SERPs. For B2C and ecommerce, then, your zero-click mitigation strategy needs to cover the full range of searches. For B2B, you can focus on the top of the funnel and demand generation, at least for now. Expand your channel presence My SEO colleagues have been pounding this drum for a while, and it’s important to consider for paid as well. No matter the size of your brand, allocate some budget to expand outside of your biggest channels, which are still: Google and Meta for B2C. Google, LinkedIn, and Meta for B2B. (Before I go any further here, I’ll note that we still talk to brands that are only active on Google search, which never fails to surprise me.) If you’re in B2C, consider testing the waters of: TikTok. YouTube. Pinterest. Connected TV (CTV). Even Reddit, if there are robust communities relevant to your product or service. If you’re in B2B, consider moving even more up-funnel on LinkedIn. We’ve seen thought leader ads bring in good reach and engagement. Also, invest in Reddit and Quora. Even TikTok has a growing B2B presence that you should put on your radar. The reasoning for expansion goes beyond reach (though that’s important). The social proof provided by some of these channels, particularly TikTok and Reddit, packs a huge mid- and lower-funnel punch. The trend of increased searches for Reddit content on Google shows that users have more trust in less-varnished, more authentic content: Last – and certainly not least – content that draws strong engagement on some of these platforms (particularly Reddit, TikTok, and Quora) is frequently pulled into Google SERPs. It’s a great multichannel diversification play, even if AI Overviews is shoving that content down the page. Dig deeper: Search everywhere optimization: 7 platforms SEOs need to optimize for beyond Google Keep coordinating with your SEO colleagues We talk about “being the primary source” at my agency, and this extends to paid as well. Make sure you’re in close communication with your SEO team to understand their most critical queries and how PPC can supplement your brand presence for them, particularly if your SEO team is seeing CTR slip on those terms. Get fluent with placement data (and Performance Max) One thing Google doesn’t appear to be blowing smoke about is increased search volume. That could mean (and Google has certainly been claiming this for months) that people actually like AI Overviews content, which marketers need to take seriously. With AI Overview ads live and AI Mode ads starting to leak out, I assume that those placements will eventually be part of the Performance Max portfolio (and I also assume there won’t be a specific way to target them). Now, the performance of those ads is very tough to predict, but if you want to test them, you’ll need to be: Active on Performance Max, which I certainly don’t recommend for all B2B brands unless you have a strong offline conversion tracking and enhanced conversion setup. Up to speed on PMax’s new placement reporting functionality, which should ultimately deliver AI Overviews and AI Mode data. What’s next? It’s been a strange year for performance marketers. Aside from the uncertainty of TikTok advertising in the U.S., most of the biggest news is happening on the organic and user-behavior fronts. But smart performance marketers aren’t staying heads-down and conducting business as usual. They’re looking for ripple effects and ways to adapt their strategies to mitigate organic loss and capitalize on positive organic trends. View the full article

After filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for a second time this week, Rite Aid is already planning to wind down operations at underperforming locations in at least nine states, court documents show. The long-suffering drug store chain, which is scrambling to sell parts of its business less than one year after emerging from bankruptcy the first time, has identified 47 locations that it will initially close as is negotiates with potential buyers and moves through the Chapter 11 process yet again. Rite Aid has 1,277 pharmacies, three distribution centers, and more than 24,000 employees across 15 states, and it’s hoping to sell many of its locations to preserve jobs, minimize the impact on customers, and extract the most value out of its business operations—especially its prescription files, which it sees as its most vaulable assets. However, it saw “little or no value” in the initial stores that were marked for closure in this week’s filing, and so it has either started the process of closing the stores down or will do so soon. Fast Company has reached out to Rite Aid for more details about the timeline of these store closures. Will all Rite Aid locations eventually close? Some news outlets have falsely reported that Rite Aid is already planning to close all of its locations, but the company has made no such announcement. While many stores will no doubt shutter as the bankruptcy process unfolds, others could be sold to new owners. Which stores will be sold and how many is unclear. What is clear is that this will be a fast-moving process, as Rite Aid believes time is of the essence. Why is this process moving so quickly? This is not Rite Aid’s first time at the Chapter 11 rodeo. The company knows from its bankruptcy in 2023 that the longer it takes to secure deal with buyers, the more pharmacy customers it’s going to lose. That’s because people who get their prescriptions from Rite Aid are increasingly likely to transfer them elsewhere the more they read about the company’s bankruptcy in media reports. A substantial customer exodus will make Rite Aid’s business less attractive to buyers. “The timeline proposed for the contemplated sale process is, in the Debtors’ business judgment, essential to preserving value and facilitating an orderly sale process,” Rite Aid wrote in a court filing. “Based on Rite Aid’s prior experience selling similar assets, the longer the sale process takes, the greater the value erosion through attrition in the meantime. This risk is entirely one-sided and to the Debtors’ detriment.” Which locations are closing soon? According to this week’s filing, the following 47 locations are set to close and may already be in the process of doing so. (Based on a search of their Yelp pages, some may have already closed.) Rite Aid says it chose the locations based on factors such as underperformance and “lack of proximity” to competitors that might be willing to buy the locations. California 211 East 17th Street, Costa Mesa, CA 92627 1331 Wilshire Boulevard, Santa Monica, CA 90403 446 East Washington Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90015 23 Peninsula Center, Rolling Hills Ests, CA 90274 3300 East Anaheim Street, Long Beach, CA 90804 1203 West Imola Avenue, Napa, CA 94559 1550 Hamilton Avenue, San Jose, CA 95125 501 South Gaffey Street, San Pedro, CA 90731 4840 Niagara Avenue, San Diego, CA 92107 32450 Clinton Keith Road, Wildomar, CA 92595 720 Sutton Way, Grass Valley, CA 95945 34420 Yucaipa Boulevard, Yucaipa, CA 92399 2751 Del Paso Road, Sacramento, CA 95835 1038 East Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena, CA 91106 6150 Van Buren Boulevard, Riverside, CA 92503 220 West East Avenue, Chico, CA 95926 1534 East Florence Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90001 4774 West Lane, Stockton, CA 95210 4920 La Sierra Avenue, Riverside, CA 92505 Connecticut 56 Rubber Avenue, Naugatuck, CT 06770 113-115 Mill Plain Rd., Danbury, CT 06811 180 Main Street, Cheshire, CT 06410 Massachusetts 10084-02 1031 Main St., Clinton, MA 01510 New Hampshire 354 Winchester Street, Keene, NH 03431 19 Wilton Road Ste 1A, Peterborough, NH 03458 75 Portsmouth Avenue Unit 1, Exeter, NH 03833 New Jersey 75 South Main Street, Neptune, NJ 07753 403 Sicklerville Road, Sicklerville, NJ 08081 New York 55-60 Myrtle Avenue, Ridgewood, NY 11385 8222 18th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11214 5901 Bay Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11204 50-15 Roosevelt Avenue, Woodside, NY 11377 60-26 Woodside Avenue, Woodside, NY 11377 Oregon 2521 South Sixth Street, Klamath Falls, OR 97601 700 S.E. 3rd Street, Bend, OR 97702 514 NE 181st Avenue, Portland, OR 97230 1400 West 6th Street, The Dalles, OR 97058 Pennsylvania 304 Market Street, Harrisburg, PA 17101 23 North Elm Street, Kutztown, PA 19530 3773 Peters Mountain Rd., Halifax, PA 17032 843 Rostraver Road, Belle Vernon, PA 15012 400 West Second Street, Berwick, PA 18603 1039 2nd Street Pike, Richboro, PA 18954 10941-01 Pittsburgh Intl Airport, Pittsburgh, PA 15231 209 Atwood Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 Washington 248 Bendigo Blvd S, North Bend, WA 98045 250 Basin Street SW, Ephrata, WA 98823 View the full article

It has been a couple of weeks since we last reported on a Google search ranking update, I bet a ton of you were wondering if I was feeling off. But it has been relatively calm for the past couple of weeks, that is until today. I am seeing renewed volatility over the past 24-hours and the SEO community chatter is picking up on it as well.View the full article

Last week marked The President’s first 100 days in office—and when it comes to climate policy, things are already pretty grim. In just three months, the president has elevated fossil fuels, pulled back billions from green investments, and implemented tariffs that make it harder to import renewable infrastructure. And that’s just the start. But despite The President’s relentless attacks on the environment, there are still some bright spots—from climate startups, from cities and states, and from nonprofits that are taking these actions to court. In a recent conversation, Fast Company senior editor Aimee Rawlins and executive editor Morgan Clendaniel discussed some of The President’s most significant attacks on the environment—as well as the ways that people are pushing back. If you missed the subscriber-only event, you can catch the whole conversation in the video above. View the full article

Google has launched several new charts within the Google Ads interface. We recently saw the table tree view (which was not 100% new, I was told) and now we are seeing new stacked bar chart, stacked column chart, combo chart, stacked area chart and 100% stacked area chart.View the full article

Google is testing new buttons and tags on its local listings and local ads. These include a new "read reviews" button, various appointment tags and other business descriptive tags.View the full article

There may no longer be space for two major parties of the traditional middle after Reform’s disruptionView the full article

Yesterday, Apple's Eddy Cue said searches on Google via Safari were down last month for the first time in 22 years. Then later, Google issued a statement saying there was an "increase in total queries coming from Apple's devices and platforms."View the full article

Google is testing a slightly different layout for its search result snippets. Google seems to be indenting the title link, URL and description to the right and placing the favicon indented to the left of that placement.View the full article

New Delhi also claims knocked out air defence system in Lahore View the full article

Google Business Profiles has another bug, this time with the toggle to hide or show the business address. The toggle for "Show business address to customers" just does not work - I even tried it myself and it is not working for my business.View the full article

At a recent fundraising event, I stood backstage with a young woman waiting to give a speech in front of 550 people to honor her alma mater. She was visibly nervous; I watched as she paced, taking deep breaths to calm the adrenaline that was flooding her body, twisting her hands, and looking toward the stage door as if she might try to make a run for it. As a charity auctioneer who has spent more than two decades on stages around the world commanding rooms filled with thousands of people, I know that feeling. There were so many nights in the beginning of my career when I felt the same way. But spending 1,000-plus nights onstage has given me plenty of practice to learn what it takes to cultivate confidence—and keep it—in my professional and personal life. Here are two easy mindset shifts that anyone can use to boost their confidence walking into any room. Find Your Strike Method Every time I walk onstage as the auctioneer, I bring a small gavel to bang down three times to get the attention of the crowd. After many years of hearing the gavel crack three times against the podium, I associate the habit with the most confident version of me. On nights when I forgot my gavel, I started to use anything within reach to mimic the motion and sound—a saltshaker from the table, a tube of lipstick, even a hockey puck when I was taking an auction at a hockey arena. I also found I could use this offstage as well. Whenever I am about to step into a difficult meeting or a big presentation and find my confidence starting to recede, I visualize the gavel strike. The familiar method reminds me to throw my shoulders back, put a smile on my face, and walk in like I own the room. For my book The Most Powerful Woman in the Room Is You, I interviewed professional athletes, CEOs, and people at the top of their industry and realized that most successful people have their own version of a “strike method.” Whether it be a mantra, an action, or a physical item, there is something that helps them conjure strength and confidence in the moments when they don’t feel it. To cultivate confidence, spend time thinking about the moments when you feel your most powerful. Come up with your own mantra or action that you can use anytime you aren’t feeling your most confident, and let your strike method empower you to move forward. Nail Your Sales Pitch When it comes to shifting your confidence mindset, inner work is as important as anything you do in your personal or professional life. You may dream about building the biggest business in the world and spend hours designing your dream life, but if you haven’t mastered your sales pitch, you will always find yourself fumbling when asked a question about yourself. Sit down with a piece of paper in a quiet place and write down a list of everything you want people to know about you: what you are good at, what you do, where you are headed. If you find that you have written about things that you no longer want to be known for, simply cross them off the list. Once that list is complete, spend some time writing a 30-second sales pitch that describes these key details: who you are, what you are doing, and, most importantly, where you are headed. Articulating this vision and putting it into a concise sales pitch will put you in control the next time someone asks, “So tell me about you.” A few minutes before the nervous young woman stepped onstage, I walked over and gave her an unsolicited hype speech to help her own the moment. “You are going to rock this speech, and everyone in the audience is ready to watch you command the stage.” I saw her stand up taller, still nervous but now ready to take up space on the stage. Confidence ebbs and flows, so don’t forget to surround yourself with people who believe in you—and give you a hype speech on the days when you aren’t feeling the most confident. View the full article

No one likes to be left on ‘seen’ — not your friends, not your partner, and definitely not your social media community. Social media monitoring is the process of tracking your brand mentions, post comments, and direct messages (DMs) on all major social media channels. Sounds simple, right? Reply to every comment, DM, and brand mention you receive. But messages start slipping through the cracks as your social media presence expands. Maybe you’re on many social media channels, and it’s hard to respond everywhere promptlyMaybe your social followers have ballooned rapidly (yay!), and the number of messages and customer queries you receive is piling by the minuteMaybe you’re held by a thread and respond to every DM, comment, and direct tag, but miss the organic brand mentions (where you’re not directly tagged)Enter: Social media monitoring tools. These are tools that collate all your social media conversations under one roof. In this article, I’ll share a list of the seven best ones. But before that, let’s tackle some common FAQs: Why is social media monitoring essential for your social media strategy?What’s the difference between social media monitoring and social listening?Do you need a social media monitoring software when you’re able to track everything manually?4 benefits of social media monitoringWhat’s the harm in post and ghost? Social media monitoring is often an overlooked part of a social strategy. After all, if you’re posting consistently, is it really a problem? Here’s the thing: Social media is a two-way street. It’s a place to build a community of people who might benefit from your product or service. Posting without interacting with your followers is like treating social media as a billboard on a highway. Social media monitoring upholds the sentiment and potential of social media as a whole — communicating with people and forming strong connections. But even beyond this, social media monitoring has plenty of benefits to contribute to the success of your marketing strategies: 1. It helps you understand customer sentimentSocial media analytics are great, but data isn’t everything. Social media monitoring tools help you gain qualitative feedback about your product or service and understand what people actually feel about your social media content. For example, skincare influencer Aishwarya Kandpal shared how Solved Labs could improve their packaging experience using her Instagram Stories. She also shared how her community had the same complaints from the brand. The above is a great example of how social media monitoring can help you capture useful customer feedback about your products or services from actual buyers. (It’s not clear if the brand ever responded to Aishwarya, though their packaging has not changed since she shared the feedback). 2. It protects your reputationBrand reputation is a fickle thing: One piece of misinformation or misunderstanding and your image could take a knock. Social media monitoring could come to the rescue here — it helps you spot negative comments, complaints, and crises early on and nip them in the bud. For example, the curly hair care brand Fix My Curls faced a scam when a marketplace sold low-quality dupes of their products. When customer complaints rolled in, the brand jumped in with the armor of social media monitoring to educate customers on spotting a fake product. By reacting to the news on time and providing a new, real product if a customer received a dupe, Fix My Curls preserved its brand reputation. Reputation management is a crucial aspect of running a business. Social media monitoring helps you avert a crisis on time and understand consumer sentiment. 💡Related reading: Should I Reply to Every Social Media Comment?3. It helps you improve customer serviceSocial media is becoming many people’s go-to medium to voice complaints and concerns: 79% of customers even expect brands to respond to a complaint (made using social media) within 24 hours. How do you stay on top of these conversations and ensure customer satisfaction? Social media monitoring. It ensures you don’t miss any brand mentions and answer all customer questions quickly. Social media monitoring tools can be particularly helpful for customer service. They collect all social interactions related to your brand in one place, so you can address every query without missing a beat or drowning in notifications. At Buffer, a subset of our customer advocacy team keeps a close eye on all our social channels, ready to jump in if a Buffer user is experiencing issues (or even just wants to express how much they enjoy Buffer) — whether they tag us or not! It’s a powerful way to make sure all our customers feel seen and heard (and get help ASAP if they need it!). @buffer Hello! Since a few hours, the automatic link shortening (I use https://t.co/Bix743aCTG) for posts to X and Bluesky has stopped working in the last few hours, *but only from the iOS app*, not from the web interface, wheee it continues to work fine. — Koenfucius 🔍 (@koenfucius) April 14, 2025 4. It provides content ideasWhen you monitor audience sentiment using social media monitoring, you’re gaining a deeper understanding of your target audience. For instance, there may be a topic that gets many comments because your followers have tons of follow-up questions. Maybe it’s time to start a social media series on the subject. Perhaps you identify emerging trends where people’s opinions on a common industry topic are shifting — which encourages you to take a stance on the matter. All of this wouldn’t be possible without social media monitoring. 💡Related reading: How to Find Unlimited Content Ideas for Social MediaSocial media monitoring vs. social media listeningSocial media monitoring is often used interchangeably with social listening. And while they are related, they aren’t the same thing. Social media monitoring is reactive. It’s the act of responding to online conversations about your brand.Social listening is proactive. It’s the process of uncovering insights and changes in your industry by keeping a pulse on online conversations.What’s common? Social media monitoring and social listening both involve listening to your audience. However, in social media monitoring, you focus on what your target audience is saying about your brand. In social listening, you zoom out and analyze online conversations based on broader themes in your industry as a whole. For example, let’s say you work in the publishing industry and sell e-readers. When you act on specific feedback or complaints about your e-reader — like slowness, bugs, appearance options, etc. — you’re practicing social media monitoring. You saw online conversations about your product and implemented customer feedback.When you monitor conversations about e-readers as a whole — like Amazon refusing to let you own books on Kindle, you’re practicing social listening. You saw social media conversations beyond your own brand and product and understood the current audience sentiment as a whole. The next step is determining where your product fits in, and how to participate in the discussion in a way that is true to your brand.If you’re just getting started with your social efforts, begin with social media monitoring. It’s easier to get started with it and it’s also more important. Once you get the hang of monitoring, start embedding social listening, too. Many social listening tools also include social media monitoring features. If you’re looking for a software that combines the two processes, check out our social listening tools list. Do you need social media monitoring tools?You can do social monitoring manually in the beginning — especially when you’re a social media manager with a tight budget. But as your social media presence grows, you’ll want deeper insights. And that’s when social media monitoring tools become essential. Here are five reasons you might want to opt for a tool over manual social media monitoring. You might miss a few mentions — especially the ones you’re not tagged in. If you’re managing multiple channels, you may miss a few notifications here and there. And tracking mentions where your brand handle is not tagged isn’t easy or straightforward on most social media platforms.You’ll struggle to scale your social media efforts. It’s easy to respond to all comments, DMs, and mentions when you’re just starting out. But as you scale your marketing strategies, social media monitoring will become incredibly time-consuming — especially if you’re the solo social media manager of your brand. Social media monitoring tools centralize all social media conversations in one place — making the activity much faster.You won’t get real-time crisis alerts. Social media monitoring tools often provide real-time alerts — making crisis management smoother. Manually, you can’t track conversations about your brand 24/7.You’ll miss out on valuable insights. Social media monitoring tools don’t just provide a centralized dashboard — many also mark negative sentiment comments and share custom reports. You don’t gain these qualitative social media metrics analysis manually.You won’t be able to spot trends. Social media monitoring software often have trend tracking features — helping you spot a keyword frequently used in your DMs, a repetitive question from customers, or a common feedback. There are also ways to analyze when your brand mentions spikes and when they fall (especially if you’re in a seasonal business). Doing all of this manually is time-consuming and prone to error.Manual social monitoring is definitely possible, but it’s limited in scalability and efficiency. Social monitoring tools automate the tedious tasks and save you tons of hours. If you’re on a tight budget, invest in an all-in-one social media management tool that can help you not only track mentions, but also schedule posts, create reports, save ideas, and analyze social media performance. You’ll find a few of them in the social monitoring tools list in the next section. 7 best social media monitoring tools for creators and marketersThere are mainly three types of monitoring tools: Dedicated social monitoring tools: These tools can track brand mentions, respond to them, and analyze conversations (only brand-centric) on various social media platforms. Using these tools, you can’t identify larger industry trends or do any other social media management tasks.Social listening tools that also have monitoring features: These tools are great for both social listening and social media monitoring. They have a feature set for both — you can monitor conversations about your brands and identify emerging trends in your niche. But they don’t have social media management features.Social media management tools: Some social media management platforms have social listening and monitoring features, too. You can do all social media management tasks using these tools — scheduling posts, monitoring relevant conversations, tracking mentions, and analyzing social media performance. The only downside here is that the listening and monitoring features often aren’t as strong as dedicated tools. Or if they are, the tool’s heavy on the pocket.In the list below, you’ll find a mix of all the above tools — there should be one that fits your budget and needs! 1. BufferBest social media monitoring tool for creators and small business ownersPrice: $6/month/channel. All paid plans have a 14-day free trial. Supported platforms: Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Pinterest, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube Buffer is a social media management tool — it can help you schedule posts, store ideas, analyze performance, create reports, and engage with your audience. All from one tab. My favorite thing? How easy it is to use. When you log in and start exploring, everything just clicks — the design is intuitive and user-friendly. You can hit the ground running with no learning curve. When it comes to engagement features, Buffer helps you: Respond to comments on your Facebook and Instagram accountsHighlight comments with a question or negative sentimentRespond fast using keyboard hotkeys and smart emojisBuffer is perfect for creators and small business owners who are just getting started with their social media monitoring efforts. It’s best to pair Buffer with a dedicated social listening or monitoring tool as you scale. Buffer has a free plan, but it doesn’t include the monitoring features. Get started with a free trial of Buffer. 2. VerlynkBest social media monitoring tool for filtering your conversationsImage SourcePrice: Free plan available for three social media channels. Paid plans begin at $9.99/month. All paid plans have a 30-day free trial. Supported platforms: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, X, YouTube Verlynk is another social media management tool that can help you do a host of things — such as scheduling posts, maintaining a content calendar, and monitoring your analytics. Its monitoring tool is called “Unified Inbox” because it helps you collect conversations from all your social media accounts in one place. You can also create canned responses for frequently asked questions. My favorite feature is the ability to filter all your comments, messages, and mentions. Verlynk allows you to apply filters based on the social channels, audience sentiment, message type, timeline, and conversation status. These customizable filters are great for: Conducting a qualitative analysis of a specific time, social channels, sentiment, etc.Assigning different team members different types of messages to track their performance and capitalize on their strengthsTag conversations that need follow-ups or responses without letting them slip through the cracksSlice and dice the social media data from your messages to spot patternsYou can also set up real-time alerts for the supported social channels if you wish to. Overall, Verlynk is best for use cases where you get a large number of messages: Think social media agencies or companies that are present on a large number of social channels. Sign up for Verlynk. 3. EclincherBest social media monitoring tool for brick-and-mortar businessesImage SourcePrice: Plans start at $149/month. Paid plans have a 14-day free trial. Supported platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok Eclincher is an excellent social monitoring tool for businesses that have a physical location, thanks to its local SEO features. It has AI-powered insights to boost your local search rankings, keep your business details accurate across social platforms, and help you implement your social media strategy. Along with the traditional unified inbox features, Eclicnher also offers geo-location-based listening to help you understand your customers better. Its AI features also help you conduct a sentiment analysis by marking comments as positive, negative, or neutral. You can even monitor how audience sentiment has evolved over time. It’s a great tool, but since Eclincher can help you manage social and local SEO, the price tag reflects it. But if you are considering having a social and local SEO strategy, Eclincher is a good way to combine both. Schedule a demo with Eclincher. 4. OctolensBest social media monitoring tool for B2B SaaS brandsSourcePrice: Plans start at $59/month. All paid plans have a 7-day free trial. Supported platforms: Bluesky, Dev, Github, HackerNews, LinkedIn, Reddit, Stack Overflow, X, YouTube Octolens is a great brand monitoring tool for B2B SaaS companies. It’s a social media tracker that tracks not only your brand mentions but also your competitors' mentions to conduct a competitive analysis. Its AI feature filters for relevant conversations so you never miss any critical discussion related to your business. You can also set up getting real-time alerts on Slack, email, and Webhook. Octolens is best for B2B SaaS businesses because it tracks the relevant channels and publications in the industry, such as HackerNews and GitHub. It even monitors newsletters for brand mentions. Start a free trial of Octolens. 5. YouScanBest social media monitoring tool for image monitoringImage SourcePrice: Plans start at $299/month, billed annually. Supported platforms: Not specified YouScan is a well-known listening tool that also has excellent social monitoring capabilities. Its standout feature is its AI-powered image recognition. This means you can track not only mentions when someone mentions/tags your brand name, but also spot your logo in images on the internet. This means you can collect much more relevant conversations about your business in social media posts — even if your brand name isn’t included within the post. You can also detect any counterfeits or negative visual mentions. YouScan doesn’t have the traditional inbox management features to help you respond to your audience directly, though. It’s better as an add-on to your social management software or a dedicated monitoring tool. It’s also expensive, but powerful if spotting your brand out in the wild is critical. Request a demo of YouScan. 6. MentionBest social media monitoring tool for monitoring your brand across the webImage SourcePrice: Plans start at $49/month. All paid plans have a 14-day free trial. Supported platforms: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, X Mention is one of the most comprehensive monitoring software on this list. You’ll get the most out of its potential when you also use it for social listening. When tracking mentions, it doesn’t just scan the key metrics and social conversations, but also media coverage from multiple networks across the globe — like news sites, blogs, forums, and review websites. In the U.S. and Canada, it even performs sentiment analysis on radio and television. If you need a complete 360-degree view of how your brand is perceived online, Mention can help you monitor conversations across the web. I also love its “word cloud” to classify your brand mentions online as positive, negative, or neutral. Start a free trial of Mention. 7. TalkwalkerBest social media monitoring tool for enterprise companiesImage SourcePrice: Not publicly available Supported platforms: Instagram, LinkedIn, Vimeo, Pinterest, Twitch, Reddit, Disqus, and more Talkwalker is an enterprise social media monitoring tool that combines the power of social listening, monitoring, and benchmarking in one software. You get valuable insights about your brand reputation and your audience from over 150 million sources across 239 countries. If your brand has a global audience, Talkwalker can pull them all together. My favorite feature is its Blue Silk GPT, which helps you predict future trending topics, spot your logo in any media form (whether that’s images, videos, or GIFs), and conduct sentiment analysis. Its robust capabilities will not only help you practice social media monitoring (and listening!) at a higher level, but also save you loads of time. Hootsuite has acquired Talkwalker, and the former’s enterprise plan includes social media management features along with Talkwalker’s monitoring capabilities. It is a good option to make the deal slightly more cost-effective. If you’re looking at alternatives, Brandwatch and Brand24 are also worth considering. Book a demo with Talkwalker. Social media monitoring tools are your ears on the internetSocial media monitoring is all about being a watchdog for brand mentions, comments, and messages. Picking the right tool can save you time and help you become more efficient: You don’t spend time manually responding to each comment on multiple platforms and also get neat valuable insights you would’ve missed otherwise. It’s advisable to look for a monitoring tool that doubles as a social media management software or a social listening tool. This way, you get the most value for money and don’t replace your stack of social notifications with a stack of social tools. View the full article

The 2002 sci-fi thriller Minority Report depicts a dystopian future where a specialized police unit is tasked with arresting people for crimes they have not yet committed. Directed by Steven Spielberg and based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, the drama revolves around “PreCrime”—a system informed by a trio of psychics, or “precogs,” who anticipate future homicides, allowing police officers to intervene and prevent would-be assailants from claiming their targets’ lives. The film probes at hefty ethical questions: How can someone be guilty of a crime they haven’t yet committed? And what happens when the system gets it wrong? While there is no such thing as an all-seeing “precog,” key components of the future that Minority Report envisions have become reality even faster than its creators imagined. For more than a decade, police departments across the globe have been using data-driven systems geared toward predicting when and where crimes might occur and who might commit them. Far from an abstract or futuristic conceit, predictive policing is a reality. And market analysts are predicting a boom for the technology. Given the challenges in using predictive machine learning effectively and fairly, predictive policing raises significant ethical concerns. Absent technological fixes on the horizon, there is an approach to addressing these concerns: Treat government use of the technology as a matter of democratic accountability. Troubling history Predictive policing relies on artificial intelligence and data analytics to anticipate potential criminal activity before it happens. It can involve analyzing large datasets drawn from crime reports, arrest records and social or geographic information to identify patterns and forecast where crimes might occur or who may be involved. Law enforcement agencies have used data analytics to track broad trends for many decades. Today’s powerful AI technologies, however, take in vast amounts of surveillance and crime report data to provide much finer-grained analysis. Police departments use these techniques to help determine where they should concentrate their resources. Place-based prediction focuses on identifying high-risk locations, also known as hot spots, where crimes are statistically more likely to happen. Person-based prediction, by contrast, attempts to flag individuals who are considered at high risk of committing or becoming victims of crime. These types of systems have been the subject of significant public concern. Under a so-called intelligence-led policing program in Pasco County, Florida, the sheriff’s department compiled a list of people considered likely to commit crimes and then repeatedly sent deputies to their homes. More than 1,000 Pasco residents, including minors, were subject to random visits from police officers and were cited for things such as missing mailbox numbers and overgrown grass. Four residents sued the county in 2021, and last year they reached a settlement in which the sheriff’s office admitted that it had violated residents’ constitutional rights to privacy and equal treatment under the law. The program has since been discontinued. This is not just a Florida problem. In 2020, Chicago decommissioned its “Strategic Subject List,” a system where police used analytics to predict which prior offenders were likely to commit new crimes or become victims of future shootings. In 2021, the Los Angeles Police Department discontinued its use of PredPol, a software program designed to forecast crime hot spots but was criticized for low accuracy rates and reinforcing racial and socioeconomic biases. Necessary innovations or dangerous overreach? The failure of these high-profile programs highlights a critical tension: Even though law enforcement agencies often advocate for AI-driven tools for public safety, civil rights groups and scholars have raised concerns over privacy violations, accountability issues, and the lack of transparency. And despite these high-profile retreats from predictive policing, many smaller police departments are using the technology. Most American police departments lack clear policies on algorithmic decision-making and provide little to no disclosure about how the predictive models they use are developed, trained, or monitored for accuracy or bias. A Brookings Institution analysis found that in many cities, local governments had no public documentation on how predictive policing software functioned, what data was used, or how outcomes were evaluated. This opacity is what’s known in the industry as a “black box.” It prevents independent oversight and raises serious questions about the structures surrounding AI-driven decision-making. If a citizen is flagged as high-risk by an algorithm, what recourse do they have? Who oversees the fairness of these systems? What independent oversight mechanisms are available? These questions are driving contentious debates in communities about whether predictive policing as a method should be reformed, more tightly regulated, or abandoned altogether. Some people view these tools as necessary innovations, while others see them as dangerous overreach. A better way in San Jose But there is evidence that data-driven tools grounded in democratic values of due process, transparency, and accountability may offer a stronger alternative to today’s predictive policing systems. What if the public could understand how these algorithms function, what data they rely on, and what safeguards exist to prevent discriminatory outcomes and misuse of the technology? The city of San Jose, California, has embarked on a process that is intended to increase transparency and accountability around its use of AI systems. San Jose maintains a set of AI principles requiring that any AI tools used by city government be effective, transparent to the public, and equitable in their effects on people’s lives. City departments also are required to assess the risks of AI systems before integrating them into their operations. If taken correctly, these measures can effectively open the black box, dramatically reducing the degree to which AI companies can hide their code or their data behind things such as protections for trade secrets. Enabling public scrutiny of training data can reveal problems such as racial or economic bias, which can be mitigated but are extremely difficult if not impossible to eradicate. Research has shown that when citizens feel that government institutions act fairly and transparently, they are more likely to engage in civic life and support public policies. Law enforcement agencies are likely to have stronger outcomes if they treat technology as a tool—rather than a substitute—for justice. Maria Lungu is a postdoctoral researcher of law and public administration at the University of Virginia. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

The Arizona-based mortgage brokerage claims a former director of training is keeping the domain name of its loan officer training website hostage. View the full article

Agreement likely to be narrow in scope and largely an exercise in damage limitationView the full article

Given President Donald The President’s well-established penchant for golden objects, it was not a surprise to many when images of his administration’s decorative choices in the Oval Office started appearing. The space now abounds in gold. There are gold picture frames, gold statues, gold trophies, gold crown molding, and gold coasters. The Wall Street Journal reported that The President called in his Mar-a-Lago “gold guy” to assist with the redesign, adding custom-made and gilded carvings. Compared to those of presidents past, The President’s Oval Office decor is a maximalist and glistening tour de force. To some, the decoration is all a bit much. New York magazine called the overall decorative approach in the White House “tacky and trollish.” An opinion piece in The Washington Post called the decoration “gaudy-awful.” Another drew a direct line between The President’s decorative leanings and the over-the-top opulence of the Palace of Versailles. President George W. BushTreasury Secretary Scott Bessent “In order to gain a certain kind of reputational notoriety he emulates this style that’s connected with the elite. But he does so in a very pastiche way,” says Robert Wellington, a professor of art history at the Australian National University and a specialist in the arts in France during the reign of Louis XIV. The President, who has called “the look and feel of Louis XIV” his “favorite style,” has interpreted this period mainly through items that are, or look like, gold. “Perhaps he’s trying to create a sense of material splendor around him that gives a sense of power and buttresses his claims to the success that his administration is having,” Wellington says. “He wants to give that illusion of success.” What are those things? According to information from the White House, some items in The President’s Oval Office actually do have legitimate value, both materially and historically. On top of the mantle, there is a line of seven historic items from the White House collection dating back to the early and mid-19th century. This is the lineup, according to details from the White House curator’s office, that was provided by a source in the White House. On the outside edges there are two gilded silver dessert stands made around 1810. Next to those are two gilded silver figurative centerpieces made around 1843. Next to those are two gilded bronze vases made around 1817 and associated with James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States. And in the center is a gilded bronze basket made between 1815 and 1820. All the items originated in either England or France. The provenance of these pieces may have some subversive significance for those who read between the lines. The four outermost pieces were bequests from Margaret Thompson Biddle, heir to a diamond- and copper-mining fortune and one of the richest American women of the mid-20th century. Once married to a diplomat, she lived for many of the pre- and post-World War II years in Europe, and hosted famous salons in her Paris home with the leading lights of American and French society. The centerpiece was a gift of Gifford B. Pinchot, an early trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an organization that by its own accounting sued the first The President administration 163 times. Pinchot, who donated the piece in 1973 and died in 1989, was the son of Gifford Pinchot, the first head of the U.S. Forest Service and a close ally of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th U.S. president, with whom he helped formulate the federal government’s approach to resource conservation. Neither of these people would seem ideologically connected to the current administration’s policies. Made in the USA? Not in the White House More notable, perhaps, is the fact that none of the items on the mantle in The President’s Oval Office were made in the U.S., which contrasts with the administration’s present focus on imposing tariffs on foreign-produced goods and services. “There is a long passion for French decorative arts in America, through the Gilded Age patrons but also in the White House itself. So it’s not completely outrageous to imagine these French styles coming into the White House,” Wellington says. Unsplash But Wellington also sees a deep irony in The President’s affection for Louis XIV and the Palace of Versailles, which he explores in a forthcoming book, Versailles Mirrored: The Power of Luxury, Louis XIV to Donald The President. Wellington notes that Versailles was built as a kind of advertising program, establishing France as the center for luxury production by putting its finest craftsmanship in furniture, metalwork, mirrors, silks, and paintings on display. The palace’s decorative approach was also a form of protectionism, meant to stop people from importing luxury products from other countries. “It was state-sponsored luxury production which led to France being seen as the place where the very finest things could be made,” Wellington says. The President’s version of Louis XIV’s approach is more surface than substance, Wellington says. In contrast with the industry-boosting decoration at Versailles, the White House decor undermines one of the administration’s key policies. “If The President wanted to be a Louis XIV, I think he would be well placed to support the arts and culture. Instead, there’s very regressive ideas about arts and culture being supported under the The President administration,” he says. “To be a great model of patronage you would be looking to the greatest minds of the day, the greatest artists of the day to create an image of America, to make America great again,” Wellington adds. “The way that you would do that is to think to the future, not to lock into some old idea.” View the full article

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Figures released as central bank is expected to cut interest ratesView the full article

Your flights will probably get noticeably bumpier over the next few years, according to new research on how climate change is affecting turbulence. Paul Williams is a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Reading in England who has researched turbulence for more than a decade. In a presentation at the European Geosciences Union conference last week, Williams shared his research showing how global warming is likely leading to an uptick in something called “clear-air turbulence,” or turbulence that can’t be seen on an airplane monitor or from the cockpit. Based on Williams’s research, severe clear-air turbulence has increased by 55% since the 1970s, and it’s only going up. Over the next few decades, Williams told Inside Climate News, turbulence is expected to quadruple along some busy routes, presenting potentially dangerous conditions for aviation. What is clear-air turbulence? Clear-air turbulence, in simple terms, is turbulence that’s not caused by clouds or storms—meaning that, for flight crews, it can essentially appear out of the blue. Whereas the more common turbulence happens due to weather, clear-air turbulence is most often due to jet streams in the atmosphere. Jet streams are strong, river-like air patterns, about 6 to 8 miles above the Earth, that contain many layers of air blowing at different speeds. These streams, which travel west to east, appear when warm air runs into much colder air. As the Earth is heated unevenly (with more sun in the tropics and less in the poles), warm air expands and rises up, and cold air rushes in to take its place, creating a moving current. There are multiple jet streams around the globe, and their strengths change throughout the year based on how hot and cold the converging currents are at a given time. In an interview with CBS News, Daniel Adjekum, a pilot and aircraft safety consultant, explained that the differing air masses inside a jet stream can cause a lot of friction, and, in turn, turbulence. The major issue with this is that normally pilots can predict convective turbulence based on moisture content in the air. Because clear-air turbulence isn’t caused by moisture patterns, it doesn’t show up to the naked eye or on flight instruments. Hassan Shahidi, president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation, told CBS that clear-air turbulence is “typically very violent.” Some experts believe that it was responsible for extreme turbulence on a Singapore Airlines flight last year, causing the aircraft to drop thousands of feet in just a few minutes. The incident killed one person and injured more than 70 others. In recent months, unexpected severe turbulence has also led to multiple injuries on two separate United Airlines flights. How is global warming making clear-air turbulence worse? Williams coauthored a paper in 2023 demonstrating that clear-air turbulence has been on the rise over the past several decades. Now he’s uncovering how global warming is driving that pattern. The main piece of the puzzle, he explained in his presentation last week, is something called vertical wind shear. Inside jet streams, vertical wind shear is a phenomenon that occurs when two air currents close to each other move at different speeds. If the variation is wide enough, the atmosphere breaks into unusual, bumpy patterns, resulting in a turbulent flight experience. A growing body of research demonstrates that climate change is disrupting jet streams and, in turn, worsening vertical wind shear. Studies show that faster rates of global warming at the poles can twist jet streams into unusual patterns, creating “rough patches” with high wind shears—some of which are expected to worsen near busy transatlantic flight paths. Based on Williams’s research, vertical wind shear has already increased by around 15% over the past 40 years. If rapid warming continues on its current trajectory, his models show that vertical wind shear inside jet streams could increase another 29% by 2100. “This, of course, means a lot more turbulence in not that many years from now,” he concluded at last week’s presentation. Flying is still considered to be a very safe form of travel. However, when problems do arise, they’re often caused by turbulence: Data from the National Transportation Safety Board shows that more than one-third of all airline incidents in the U.S. from 2009 through 2018 were related to turbulence, and most of them resulted in one or more serious injuries, though no damage to the plane. Now, Williams’s research shows, flight safety agencies may need to find new ways to monitor ever-bumpier skies. View the full article

Generative AI is radically reshaping the job market—creating new roles, changing some, and phasing out others. But here’s one effect of the transformative technology that’s not as widely talked about: It’s deepening long-standing workplace gender gaps. A double disadvantage According to a recent report from the World Economic Forum and LinkedIn, women systematically face a two-part problem in the ongoing AI transformation. Relatively fewer women are currently in jobs that are being augmented by generative AI, and relatively more are in roles that are being disrupted. According to LinkedIn data for the US, 24.1% of men work in augmented occupations, while 20.5% of women do. At the same time, 33.7% of women work in occupations that are being disrupted, compared to 25.5% of men. Related research by LinkedIn shows that the pattern of men’s higher representation in augmented roles holds for 95% of the 74 countries with available data. Examples of occupations that look set to be disrupted in the US include medical administrative assistant (91% female) and office manager (88% female). Augmented fields, meanwhile, include electrical engineer (94% male) and mechanical engineer (89% male). The STEM Gap The data align with broader AI-related disparities in STEM education and employment. Already, too many women are lost in the transition from STEM degrees to their first job in the STEM workforce. Women who graduated in 2021 accounted for 38.5% of STEM graduates, but only 31.6% of STEM job entrants in 2022. This decline in representation continues across the hierarchy once women are in the workforce: in 2024, women held 29% of STEM entry-level positions and 24.4% of STEM managerial positions in STEM, but only 12.2% of STEM C-suite level roles. Women are also underrepresented in AI-related academic and leadership roles. To ensure that those who have the right skills have a fair chance to succeed and advance in the workplace, regardless of their gender, business leaders need to review and rethink their hiring practices, performance evaluation methods, and promotion processes. Generative AI itself can both help and hinder efforts to create a more level playing field. Relying on historical employment patterns to make predictions about future performance has too often overlooked women’s potential to succeed in jobs where they have not traditionally been represented. On the other hand, using generative AI to predict future success based on current skills is a powerful way to deploy the latest technology to debias hiring processes and create a more level playing field. Some positive news When it comes to AI skills, there are encouraging signs that women are catching up on both AI literacy and AI engineering skills. In 2018, 23.5% of AI engineering skill-listers on LinkedIn were women; in early 2025, this number had risen to 29.4%. Over the past five years, the gap narrowed in 74 of the 75 economies with available data. At the same time, research by LinkedIn suggests that women are more likely to underreport AI skills in their professional profiles. Disparity among inventors Currently, no economy is fully leveraging all of the available talent to drive innovation, but some are doing better than others. In a race where every competitive edge counts, this is significant. High-level data on the gender breakdown among inventors, named as such on patent applications, reveals that East Asian economies are drawing on a more extensive talent pool, with more than 25% of inventors being women in China (26.8% in 2019) and South Korea (28.3% in 2019), which is around 10 percentage points higher than in the European Union (EU) and the United States. Around the world, the generative AI boom is being shaped in ways that don’t fully reflect the diversity of society, leaving women underrepresented in the jobs and leadership roles of the future. Yet this moment offers a rare opportunity to course-correct. By investing in skills, using AI in a way that makes hiring and promotions more equitable, and ensuring technology is built by and for a broader range of people, we can create a more competitive future that expands economic opportunity and promotes fairness. Without such action, generative AI will reinforce inequality instead of driving meaningful progress. View the full article