Cocktail Hour: April 13, 2012

In case you were living under a rock this week, Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion. Please take this opportunity to make a Justin Timberlake Social Network reference of your own making. Thanks. Will this mean more pictures of people’s dinners in your News Feed? This will never be okay with me until those photos include a delivery button.

Check out ReadWriteWeb’s listing of what Instagram got right, then check out some other great stuff from this week:

Caine’s Arcade: Remember when you were a kid? How you could have fun for hours with a cardboard box and some couch cushions? Take ten minutes and watch the story of a nine-year-old boy who turned those cardboard boxes into his own arcade at his dad’s auto parts store. His imagination and creativity attracted the Reddit community, and you can see for yourself what happens next. We all need these reminders of positivity and imagination in our lives. Warning: Completely “Awwwww”-inducing.

Why Data Visualization is a Win for Content Marketers (Contently): Okay, infographics are everywhere (we even had an all-infographics edition of this column), but it’s not without merit. Eighty-three percent of learning occurs visually, so why not? Plus, how much more interesting is it to read facts from a cool illustration than a five paragraph essay? Maybe this should’ve been an infographic...

Getting More Out of Social Media (Inc): If you aren’t offering social media or it’s still a very small part of your organization, this is a valuable read. What does “talking about this” mean? Is it important? Is social media IN GENERAL really that important? Weigh the pros and cons of your usage and act accordingly. Mostly, keep yourself educated to see what types of effort are most valuable for you.

Get to Work by Meeting Procrastination Head-On (Fast Company): Holy hell, I love the Internet. Unfortunately, all of its bells and whistles might tempt me a little too much from time to time, causing some problems with procrastination. How many times have you said, “I’ll get to it, I just want to watch oneeee moreeee episode of Law & Order: SVU”? Kevin Purdy’s piece shows us beating procrastination is a process, but one we can tackle. Save the SVU for a reward...get to work! (Full disclosure: I am watching SVU as I write this because I have a serious addiction to offenses that are considered especially heinous.)

Startups, this is how design works. (Wells Riley): How familiar are you with design? If you’re anything like me, you can look at something and say what you think about it, but aren’t able to perform the mechanics behind it. Wells Riley put together this neat informative page on design tenets, types, terms and and trends. Take a few minutes and acquaint yourself with this information. It won’t make you a master of Illustrator, but it will make you more fully understand illustrations.

What are you reading this week?