How to Find Twitter Twits to Retweet Your Tweet! – A popular topic at the moment is the increasing importance of Twitter as a marketing and traffic generation tool. In the UK Twitter has been growing rapidly during the last 12 months and many people are now realising that micro-blogging is quickly becoming a very useful social media marketing tactic.
Is Your PC Part of a Botnet? – ReadWriteWeb – Being part of a botnet is no fun. Your computer becomes your worst enemy, watching everything you do, collecting all of your secrets, and then delivering all that data to the bot-herder; the person who originated the network. But what does it really mean to be part of a botnet, and is there anything that can you do about it?
27 Things To Do Before a Conference | chrisbrogan.com – If you’re attending events over the next several months, you might give some thought to a quick checklist that might help you better accomplish your goals. As I’m not entirely sure of your goals, I’ll list a bunch of ideas, and you can just narrow it down to what you think works best for you. Feel free to add more ideas to the comments section.
FriendFeed launches AIR-powered desktop notifier | Webware – CNET – FriendFeed has a new way for users to keep track of conversations in real time, and it may be the first thing the company has done that I just plain don't like. It runs in Adobe AIR and pops up with small notifications every time there's activity on your home feed or a selected friends list. If you can catch the notification window in time, it even lets you post a response without having to fire up your browser.
Google Earth updates maps of Mars | Webware – CNET – Google announced Friday a major update to show more details of Mars both in its history and the present day. Originally the 3D maps of Mars were available with the release of Google Earth 5.0, just a little more than a month ago. The update shows how our knowledge of Mars, and our study of astronomy, has evolved over time.
RideCharge: Tip a cabbie from your phone | Webware – CNET – Not everyone is as lucky as we are to work adjacent to a hotel with a fresh supply of taxicabs pulling up to its curb. When you're stuck without a ride, cab-calling applications can make ordering a taxi through local companies a surer, safer thing than throwing yourself in the middle of a darkened street and flailing your arms wildly.
A new report from traffic tracker Hitwise shows that U.S. visits to Facebook grew 149 percent in February compared with the same month a year earlier. That pushed Facebook's market share among folks in the United States visiting social-networking Web sites to 36 percent last month, versus 14 percent in February 2008.
Facebook stayed in second place, but it's gaining ground against the No. 1 site. In February, MySpace accounted for 52 percent of U.S. visits to social-networking sites, but that's down 28 percent from its year-earlier market share of 73 percent.
"Twitterview" Scheduled Between McCain, Stephanopoulos | WebProNews – The average person, if asked to visualize George Stephanopoulos interviewing John McCain, would probably imagine both men in a television studio, wearing suits. But this Tuesday, it seems that McCain and Stephanopoulos will instead be hunched over keyboards and possibly dressed in their jammies.
Stephanopoulos and McCain have announced that they'll be holding a "Twitterview." Anyone who's interested can send discussion ideas to the television reporter's Twitter account, and then, starting at noon on the 17th, Stephanopoulos will pose questions to McCain 140 characters at a time. McCain should answer in the same fashion (although he may be able to tweet more than once per exchange).
More to Real-Time Search Than Twitter | WebProNews – Google's Seattle site director Brian Bershad told TechFlash.com, "There's relatively little data in Twitter," Bershad said. "I think if you could take a Twitter-like service and combine it with a lot of other data sources about the users, you might be able to come up with something more interesting."
Twitter’s Traffic Growth & The Rise Of Social Search – There’s a lot of stats and analysis today about Twitter’s traffic, how it compares to other social search sites, and who’s benefiting from all the traffic Twitter can send. It seems no one argues that Twitter is on the rise, but just how high it’s risen is still up for debate.
Act Like A Cybersquatter To Capture Your Long-Tail Brand Traffic! – If your company has a major brand, domainers who exploit cybersquatting have likely already targeted your business. Their practices are often looked down upon, but if their dark powers weren’t effective, they wouldn’t make money. Still, you can learn the same black magic and turn it into good and profit for your company. In this down economy, don’t ignore the shady domainers—instead, strike back by reducing what they’re costing you and increasing your profits! Read on and I’ll explain how.
Jesse Newhart (@jessenewhart) has posted an amazing video on YouTube on how you can get the most out of Twitter using Tweetdeck. Check it out. How do you have your Tweetdeck setup? Post your comments below.
These are my Delicious links for March 11th through March 13th:
Google Explains How Search Ads Rank & Cost – The Inside AdWords Blog posted a video from Google’s Chef Economist, Hal Varian. The video shows how Google prices and ranks search ads in the AdWords system based on quality and bid. This is a really basic overview of the AdWords model, but I personally find the video to be incredibly easy to understand and great for beginners or for SEMs to show clients who are beginners.
SEOmoz | SEMpdx's Searchfest 2009: The Best of the Bunch – Earlier this week Rand and I spoke at the third annual Searchfest, put on by SEMpdx and a load of lovely sponsors. Loyal readers and R. Kelley fanboys (and girls) will remember that my first ever speaking engagement was at the first Searchfest two years ago. The organizers were gracious enough to overlook my profound suckitude and invited me back to speak about link building last year. This time around, they asked me to participate on the blogging panel with Stoney deGeyter and Heather Lloyd Martin. I wasn't sure what to cover since the panel details simply said "Blogging," so I talked about various blogging myths. It seemed to go over fairly well considering it was 9:00 am–I think my half naked pictures of David Hasselhoff helped.
30+ Google Analytics Tools, Goals, Segments, Filters, Hacks & Resources | SEOptimise – Google Analytics is used most of us search marketers with the exception of the paranoid and even a growing number of top 500 websites. These free web analytics suite is just too tempting not be used. It’s very advanced compared to many other, especially free web analytics tools. Google Analytics has some significant flaws and shortcomings though.
Marketing in a Recession: Getting a Bigger Piece of a Smaller Pie – There is always something to be learned from history, either from mistakes or successes. With the current state of the economy, I chose to focus on the positive. The other day I was thinking that there must have been businesses that thrived during a time of an economic slump. After all, there is always a need for something, and so there should always be someone who is able to recognize a need and fill it. So, I did some recession research and found quite a few well known and successful companies that have grown during a recession and even during the Great Depression.
Security considerations for brands using Twitter | Feeds | ZDNet.com – There’s been a lot of chatter about social media and security issues, from social engineering to the naivete of users. There’s especially been a lot of talk about Twitter and security issues, especially in the case of last week’s account hijackings. Much of this talk has focused on how individuals might better secure themselves. What about brands? And, more than that, how to brands take better social media security responsibility to protect their users? Because like it or not, some of the onus is on them. Here are two examples.
SEOmoz | Facebook Advertising – An Opportunity for Deep Targeting at Very Low Cost – The following post is a collaborative effort by myself and David Klein (DK), who does far more Facebook advertising consulting than SEOmoz. He recently visited with the Facebook crew and has been helping more online marketers get comfortable and invested in the space.
Hidden links – Most people understand hidden text is something like white text on a white background, and know to steer clear of it. Let me show you an example of a hidden link. Normally a hidden link could be in several forms:
- hidden text that also happens to be hyperlinked, e.g. white text on a white background, and the text is a link
Does Google Care If A Link Is Underlined? – SEO FAQ – A visitor dropped by my site asking whether Google cared about a link’s styling. I got in touch with Matt Cutts, and he was nice enough to take a few minutes to share an answer. Here’s what Matt said:
10 MORE Must Have Twitter Tools – If you loved our 10 Twitter Tips that Help You Work Smarter, you’ll find our newest list of even more “must have” Twitter services and plugins even better! Special thanks to fellow TwiTip readers whose suggestions were invaluable in helping us create the latest list. It was difficult to narrow it down to just ten, but here they are!
Democrats.org Becomes Parasite Host | WebProNews – Google’s trust of Democrats.org, the Democrat National Party’s official website, is being abused by cybercrooks to spread spam and malware via search results. Criminals are able to achieve high ranking for their sites in the search results simply by setting up a blog at the DNC website and passing on link juice from there.
Gary Vaynerchuk may sound like an all-American boy, but at 33 he is a successful, grown-up businessman who has put his enthusiasms — and his penchant for publicity — to work in achieving 15-fold sales growth in his family's wine business in the last decade, to $60 million.
Accessibility Can Be Profitable – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – In today's competitive market, one of the questions I often hear is, "Is someone or some company trying to take over my market?" This can be very hard to answer. It takes several factors for a large company to take over a market.
Big Brands are Starting To Get It — or is Google Starting to Get Big Brands? – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – Last year, I "called out" American Express for issuing a handbook ("OPEN BOOK, a Practical Guide for Business Growth") to all small business owners that provided them "helpful advice" on how to run and market their businesses. Their handbook was a compilation from many sources, including an "expert" interactive marketer who suggested that companies "Don't waste money on a so-called Search Engine Optimization (S.E.O.) Specialist."
These are my Delicious links for March 7th through March 11th:
What Should You Do When You Get Canned? – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – Seasons change, time passes. People change. Goals change. Objective alignments change. Technology changes. The entire country is drunk on the concept of change. For a whole lot of reasons, and at one time or another, everyone has gotten the axe.
How To Create Good Copywriting For Conversions | WebProNews – SEO has a crucial role in the success of your Internet venture, but SEO by itself is not the "be all and end all" or only factor in that success (– gasp – the SEO said what??). SEO is an absolute must, but increased rankings and drawing more visitors is only the beginning…
SEOmoz | Google's Sandbox Still Exists: Exemplified by Grader.com – For many in the SEO field, Google's "sandbox," a filter the search quality team created to help fight spam, is a relic of days gone by. However, we've been spotting new cases over the last few years, and I finally found a great example to share publicly (and got permission from the site owner). Grader.com, and the four subdomains underneath it – Twitter.Grader.com, PressRelease.Grader.com, Website.Grader.com & Facebook.Grader.com are all under pronounced effects that highlight this algorithmic element's impact.
The Definitive List of Local Search Directories You Need To List With. | eMarketing Matador – With most local business searches happening online through local search engines and local search directories, local search marketing and local search advertising are more important than ever. A huge part of local search optimization is the local search directory. There are now dozens of places online to find local businesses, so knowing how to submit to and get listed with all these local search sites and directories is extremely important to today’s local business.
Local Search 101, Part 2 – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – As a quick follow up to "Local Search 101, Part 1," I'd like to add that there's a growing list of sites to get listed on. Keith Hagen, who commented on the article, posted this link to his site that keeps a list of local search engines and directories. It's a good idea to check this list for more providers to get listed on, as the list will continue growing.
Trends – March – ASTD – Here’s a scenario to give trainers pause. You’re presenting at a conference. Minutes into your session, a number of people are tapping furiously on their phones or reading incoming messages. Most of these people get up and leave the room, while another bunch trickles in. At least a third of the audience continues tapping out short bursts of text throughout your presentation. It’s as if you aren’t there.
New Trending and Search Features Coming on Twitter | Pistachio – Brian Chappell at Ignite Social Media in North Carolina was one of the recently selected users given access to test Twitter’s new search and trending features. Twitter announced on their blog that a random subset of users would be selected while they tested the features. But as of last week, more and more people were finding the features on their home pages, indicating that Twitter may be rolling out the features across the service.
Free: FedEx Offices Offering Free Resume Printing Tomorrow – If you live anywhere near a FedEx Office (formerly Kinko's), you can stop by tomorrow with a paper or CD copy of your resume and get 25 copies printed for free. Details (and discussion) below.
How Accurate is Google’s Traffic Estimator? – Using Google’s Traffic Estimator tool is a good way to get an idea of how much a new campaign is likely to spend once it is launched. Nobody expects this tool to be perfectly accurate, I’m sure, but I always wondered just how accurate it is so I did a little test.
Twitter Friday: How to Measure Twitter Authority? | SEOptimise – This week the focus of much Twitter buzz was the question how to measure Twitter authority. There is a growing sentiment and consensus that it can’t be the sheer number of followers as it’s easily manipulated and even if the followers are real you can’t effectively follow them back without drowning in information overflow.
Five Marketing Mistakes to Avoid – Why are there so many unsuccessful websites when others continue to flourish? Much of the reason has to do with poor marketing. This article explains five of the most popular marketing mistakes made by new website owners trying promote themselves. Usually with tight time constraints and even tighter budgets, the margin for error is very slim. Keep these points in mind before starting your next marketing campaign and you’re sure to see much better results.
Aaron Greenspan: Why I Sued Google (and Won) – Like most Americans, I use Google's search engine several times a day without so much as a second thought. It was only in 2007 that my company's relationship with Google, Inc. temporarily escalated to that of a full-fledged customer, when Think Computer Corporation became yet another a Google AdWords advertiser. (AdWords advertisements appear on the right side of the main Google search results.) Sadly, the several ad campaigns we tried during this brief experiment failed miserably to bring in any new revenue, and so I personally went back to being just another user of Google's search service — at least until March, 2008. That's when my company signed up for the flip side of Google's advertising juggernaut: AdSense. In anticipation of a new product, Think had acquired a brand new domain name that was unexpectedly receiving a high volume of internet traffic. Instead of paying Google for Think's ads, I thought it might make more sense for Think to get paid for displaying Google's.
Beckström — a management theorist, entrepreneur and author — was named last year to head up the new National Cybersecurity Center, or NCSC. To some, it seemed an odd choice since Beckström isn't an expert in security. But the hope was that he could use his management skills to help coordinate the nation's often-dysfunctional network defenses.
Recently Google screwed up. The search giant found a bug that shared unshared documents in Google’s famed Google Docs with others. According to their figures only affected 0.05% of users, the the implications are huge for the idea of putting everything in the cloud.
Dear Google Docs user,
We wanted to let you know about a recent issue with your Google Docs account. Weve identified and fixed a bug which may have caused you to share some of your documents without your knowledge. This inadvertent sharing was limited to people with whom you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, had previously shared a document. The issue only occurred if you, or a collaborator with sharing rights, selected multiple documents and presentations from the documents list and changed the sharing permissions. This issue affected documents and presentations, but not spreadsheets.
To help remedy this issue, we have used an automated process to remove collaborators and viewers from the documents that we identified as being affected. Since the impacted documents are now accessible only to you, you will need to re-share the documents manually. For your reference, weve listed below the documents identified as being affected.
We apologize for the inconvenience that this issue may have caused. We want to assure you that we are treating this issue with the highest priority.
The Google Docs Team
Granted there is an inherent risk to putting your documents online, but a snafu like this could have cost companies using the Google “operating system” tons of money.
The draw to using the Cloud for computing is simple. You can access your documents and files from anywhere in a “secure maner.” Now Google says it’s fixed the problem, but should we trust that it won’t happen again? I’m not so sure.
What are your thoughts. Post them in the comments.
Combating SEO Implementation Paralysis – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – For several years, SEO consultants and agencies have faced one major challenge, beyond keeping up with ever-changing organic ranking algorithms: lack of implemented recommendations. What causes this "implementation paralysis"? The answer is typically grouped into three areas:
1. Technology barriers.
2. The approval process.
3. Ownership issues within the site's organization.
Don’t be a Social Media Sleestack – Now that social media in general and Twitter specifically is going more mainstream, it seems like the Sleestacks are scurrying out of their dark corners in increasing numbers. So what does being a social media Sleestack in mean? It means operating in ways that are nefarious at best, dishonest as worst.
SEOmoz | What Digital Experience Does Your CEO Need? – One of my strategic objectives this year is to get closer to the boards of some of our large clients. It should be clear to all of us in search that the companies winning the search game are those prepared to think about it most strategically. If nothing else, the trends towards brands performing increasingly well (as discussed eloquently by Aaron recently) reflects changes to the underlying algorithms and / or an increasing sophistication from (some) big brands when it comes to search.
HTML 5 – Work on HTML5 originally started in late 2003, as a proof of concept to show that it was possible to extend HTML4's forms to provide many of the features that XForms 1.0 introduced, without requiring browsers to implement rendering engines that were incompatible with existing HTML Web pages. At this early stage, while the draft was already publicly available, and input was already being solicited from all sources, the specification was only under Opera Software's copyright.
HTML and XHTML 5 : Overview – Hidden Pixels – HTML 5 (HyperText Markup Language Version 5) is the fifth major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web, HTML. HTML 5 specifies two variants of the same language, a "classic" HTML (text/html) variant known as HTML 5 and an XHTML variant known as XHTML 5. This is the first time that HTML and XHTML have been developed in parallel. The HTML 5 draft specification defines a single language that can be written in HTML and XML.and addresses the needs of Web Applications, an area previously not adequately covered by HTML.
Buzz Monitoring = Brand Development – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – Every day, people are talking online about your company and products. Some discussions are positive; some are negative. The trick is to capitalize on these discussions to build a better brand and link popularity.
So how can you determine whether a social media strategy is proving beneficial to your business? How do you know that it is working out for you? And is now really the best time to find out?
Twitter Is More Than Connecting – It has been said (too often) that Twitter is for connecting. And with over 6 million users it certainly is. But it’s for so much more than just connecting.
* Can you learn on Twitter? Personally I think it’s one of the best places on the net to get an education on just about any subject you care to name.
* Can you get traffic on Twitter? More than you can cope with if you’re prepared to invest a little time and a little of yourself.
* Can you sell on Twitter? Yes, if you make the right moves.
SEO Linguistics: Updates, Changes, Glitches, Semantics, & NOISE : SEO Book.com – A lot of our best SEO tips are shared on the blog here. That strategy originally came to be because my original business model (for this site) was to sell an ebook, and it was hard to stuff everything inside 1 ebook and expect it to come out congruent, especially
* while selling it to a wide audience
* when revising it many times
* with SEO touching upon so many other disciplines like psychology, sociology, public relations, branding, advertising, content creation, information architecture, social networking, algorithm testing, etc.
These are my Delicious links for March 5th through March 6th:
Having A Crawlable Site Architecture Still Matters – Over the past few years, all of the search engines have made tremendous strides in trying to discover different parts of the web, find deep content and understand complex URL structures better. The first big stride came when each of the search engines adopted the XML Sitemap protocol. Website owners now had the ability to give the search engines a list of all of their URL’s.
Last year, Twitter acquired Summize, which was a Twitter search developed on the API. Twitter search is increasingly popular, especially for finding real-time chatter on a given topic. Recently, a Greasemonkey script was created to incorporate Twitter search into Google results (for those who install the add-on in Firefox).
Meanwhile, Facebook is competing with Twitter. It had been rumored that Facebook sought to acquire Twitter, but the deal fell through (apparently because Twitter wanted to go after search). Now, Facebook is going after Twitter by adding more live-stream features to their network.
Last year, Facebook updated user profile pages and the user experience, focusing on streams of updates by friends. Now, public profiles and organizations are getting pages that look more like user pages. The focus, again, is on the real-time stream of updated information.
Additionally, Facebook is updating their home page with the live-stream concept
I have written about content management systems before. I have highlighted the their hidden costs, explained the differentiators behind the feature list and even provided advice for CMS users. However, I have never actually asked what features you should look for in a content management system. And that is what I will address here.
TechBlog: Firefox has more flaws than IE, but they're fixed faster – Firefox has the reputation of being a safe browser. It's what all the cool, tech-savvy kids use (well, when they're not using the hipper Google Chrome or the fanboy-favorite Apple Safari), so it's gotta be a smarter choice than Internet Explorer, which is about as solid as Swiss cheese, right?
Twimailer – E-mails are NEVER stored! Twimailer is just a middle man. All DM’s and other e-mails from Twitter are piped directly to your original e-mail address you provide.
The End of the Beginning – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – New search, old search, revamped search, universal search, three dimensional search, Live search, Kumo search, optimized search, paid search, natural search. As the world economic conditions continue heading south, the search world continues climbing up and reinventing itself.
Facebook's fan page facelift diminishes brands | Feeds | ZDNet.com – Today the social network introduced it’s new homepage layout and a new look and feel for its fan pages, aka the pages that many brands and their customers are using to interact with each other. Fan pages originally had a nice quality about them. They looked clean and were customizable and showed a streamlined feed for information that companies fed into them. If brands wanted to, they could have interactive dialogue via the wall without compromising the flow of news that other members of the fan page wanted to see. Applications, if the brands chose to use them or even pay to develop them, were visible. It was attractive. Did I mention clean?
Nevertheless, this is big news. According to the January 2009 data release today by the comScore Video Metrix service, more than 147 million U.S. Internet users watched an average of 101 videos per viewer in January. This means 76.8% of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed 14.8 billion online videos during the month.
""Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as sort of poor man's email systems," the Silicon Valley Insider reported he said at Morgan Stanley's technology conference.
Twitter destined to replace Google Search – Search engines know little of context. They only know what content authors tell them. Search engines pride themselves on returning as many hits as possible, as quickly as possible. Users of search engines have to search for terms they think the original content author would have used.
New Coupon & Deals Search Engine Launches – In light of the current economy, Vertive, Inc., is banking on now being the right time to launch a new search engine for coupons and deals. It’s called Offers.com, and it enters an already crowded space of coupons/deals sites.
Not Everyone Has The Aptitude For SEO – Large companies with many divisions have many SEO opportunities, yet also many challenges. One of the first things I do when consulting with companies on how to implement enterprise-level SEO is to identify who needs to do what. But that doesn’t always work out, because not everyone has the aptitude for SEO.
It’s Not ALL About Conversions – A Wider Perspective On B2B Search Campaigns – Ok, so I’m really passionate about looking for ways to improve conversion rates – I admit it. I’m kind of a conversion junkie. But sometimes I make the mistake of getting so focused on conversions that I can lose site of the bigger picture. I end up only staring at the trees right in front of me, without taking the time to take inventory of the forest. Such a shortsighted viewpoint can undermine a B2B search engine marketing campaign to the detriment of a sales organization. Let me explain…
Gmail: Import and Export Your Gmail Filters – Another day, another Gmail Labs feature. You can now export and import your Gmail filters to and from a file, so you don't have to remember a complicated setup to get some good filtering.
Firefox: Firefox Updates to 3.0.7, Fixes Bugs and Improves Security – Nothing too sexy to report, but Firefox updated tonight to version 3.0.7. Head on over to the release notes for more of the specifics, but basically you'll get several behind the scenes security and stability fixes as a part of a big old list of bugs that were smashed. If Firefox didn't already take care of the update for you, Click Help -> Check for updates to get your update on.
Notice the “#t=31m08s” on the end of the url? That link will take you 31 minutes and 8 seconds into that video. Linking to a particular minute and second can be really helpful — for example, that link takes you straight to where someone asks Eric Schmidt a question about Twitter. From there, you can listen to his answer, where he says (among other things):
“We’re in favor of all of these new communications mechanisms. …. I think the innovation is great …. Twitter’s success is wonderful, and I think it shows you that there are many, many new ways to communicate, especially if you’re willing to do so publicly.”
Deep-linking to a specific part of a YouTube video is really easy, so I wanted give a short example to tell how to link to a certain minute and second of a video.
The free social-networking Web site is the new bling of the communication age. Celebs, pols, and millions more – even those who shun the Web – are scrambling to master it. This is Twitter's moment as symbol of status, popularity, and power. And no one wants to be left out.
Seen In the Wild – John Battelle's Searchblog – As I think about Picasa, Google Desktop, Print, Keyhole, Blogger, and Google Groups come to mind, as does Google's long held aversion to consumer marketing. And I've come to the conclusion that Google can no longer afford to avoid consumer marketing. In order for these services to really scale, to get to where they need to go, Google will have to start promoting them. It's unavoidable – even if you do have the best product in the world, you need to tell people about it before they get locked into other options…
These are my Delicious links for March 4th through March 5th:
Restraining Order Issued Against Facebook Spammers | WebProNews – Facebook sued Wallace and two other cybercriminals—Adam Arzoomanian and Scott Shaw—last week, alleging the trio was spamming Facebook members’ walls in phishing attempts. Facebook said they were impersonating friends and posting links to malicious websites. The court issued a temporary restraining order from them.
IAB described the Principles as "the UK's first self-regulatory guidelines to set good practice for companies that collect and use data for online behavioural advertising purposes." The Principles have been approved by the Information Commissioner's Office, which reports directly to Parliament.
MySpace Credit Card Introduced | WebProNews – MySpace has stamped its name on a new Citi Credit Card, in which users can earn rewards redeemable through MySpace such as free music downloads, concerts, movie premiere screenings, etc.
Behavioral Targeting Gaining Public Acceptance | WebProNews – Truste Has released the findings of a very interesting survey it conducted regarding behavioral targeting. It turns out that consumers' comfort level with the concept is going up.
Truste "Up until now, consumers haven’t been fully aware of behavioral advertising, although it’s a part of their everyday lives if they spend any time online," a Truste representative tells WebProNews. "But brand new research is showing that now the cat is out of the bag – and as more consumers become aware that their online behavior is being tracked, more appear to actually be okay with it."
Generation Y At Higher Risk For Online Identity Theft | WebProNews – People in Generation Y tend to be at a higher risk for online identity theft, but are less concerned with the threat than those in Generation X and Baby Boomers, according to the J.D. Power and Associates Identity Theft Report.
Online conversations about identity theft indicate that 83 percent of the Baby Boomer generation (those between the ages of 45 and 63) say they have a high level of concern about identity theft, compared to 79 percent of those in Generation X (ages 31 to 44) and only 47 percent of those in generation Y (ages 19 to 30).
SMB Link Building Without a Dime – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – Because you demanded it, today we'll discuss how to obtain a strong inbound link profile without spending any dollars out of your budget. Link building like this definitely takes time, so we're not talking completely free — just no out-of-pocket money involved.
BitLocker and BitLocker to Go – In Windows 7, core BitLocker Drive Encryption functionality is enhanced to deliver an improved experience for IT professionals and end users—from simple enhancements such as the ability to right-click on a drive to enable BitLocker protection to the automatic creation of the required hidden boot partition. Learn about these enhancements and the new BitLocker To Go, which gives system administrators control over how removable storage devices can be used and the strength of protection required.
Learn About Windows 7 BitLocker-to-Go – While UAC has gotten most of the attention during Windows Vista's tenure, the runner up for most discussed Windows Vista feature is probably BitLocker. It seems like a week doesn't go by without some sort of major compromise of sensitive data resulting from a lost or stolen laptop. BitLocker guards against these types of data security breaches by providing whole disk encryption, protecting all of the data on the hard drive and preventing unauthorized users from accessing it even if they happen to be in possession of the laptop.
Facebook Launching New Real-Time Homepage – Facebook is making a host of product announcements today, the most significant of which is a renovation of the News Feed that users see when they login. Starting next week, the News Feed will be moving to a real-time format, versus the current updates that happen “every 10-15 minutes” according to the company.
Measuring Your Twitter Network’s Health – It’s not about you. I know, sounds cold but it’s true. It’s really not about you. It’s not about the number of followers YOU have on Twitter. It’s about how much value THEY gain from following you.
Forrester is Wrong About Paying Bloggers – ReadWriteWeb – Analyst firm Forrester published a report this morning telling corporations that it's a good idea to engage bloggers in "sponsored conversations," or the exchange of goods or credit in exchange for blog coverage. The report, titled "Add Sponsored Conversations to Your Toolbox", is 8 pages long, focuses on a number of high profile examples like the case of KMart and Chris Brogan, and sells for $795.
You’re Doing It Wrong | chrisbrogan.com – # You follow too many people on Twitter.
# You don’t allow blog comments.
# You add people to LinkedIn that you don’t know very well.
# You have ads on your blog.
# You use partial RSS feeds.
# Your blog posts are too short (too long).
# You shoot really long videos and don’t edit.
# You don’t follow people back.
How to Shape Your Blogs Brand – In this post we continue to look at tips for established blogs wanting to step up to the next level (this is the 6th tip in this series) by taking a look at how to shape the brand your blog.
Report: Growth Of Paid Search Budgets Decline While SEO Budgets Increase – eMarketer’s latest report named Search Marketing Trends: Back to Basics says that in the realm of search marketing budgets, SEO budgets will increase in the next five years, while paid search budgets will decline relative to the overall marketing budgets for companies.
These are my Delicious links for February 27th through February 28th:
SocialToo Dumps Auto DM Support – ReadWriteWeb – One of the biggest complaints we hear from Twitter users is the increase in Twitter auto direct message spam. You know, those “thanks for following me” DMs that include a link, almost as an afterthought, offering you a free gift, the ability to earn a ton of cash, or the opportunity to check out a new product. Well, we’re a bit sick of them too.
Gary Vaynerchuk Expands His Web Video Empire With Obsessed TV – Gary Vaynerchuk is going after the Oprah set. The wine wholesaler who launched a career as a Web video celebrity talking about wine and marketing just launched Obsessed, a new video talk show hosted by Samantha Ettus. With Obsessed, Vaynerchuk hopes to move beyond niche programming on the Web to appeal to a mainstream audience.
?? ???? » ????? ????? » Persian blogs on Bluehost will be going down – #bluehost There are certain events which happen at the backstage of the blogosphere, not where the readers of a blog would directly notice, but yet can have a serious impact on the performance of any blogger. The issues regarding hosting services are among these.
5 Essential Social Media Strategies for a Bad Economy | Social Media Explorer – Everywhere you turn someone is talking about how bad the economy is. From the housing markets to the stock market, optimism is a trait that you would be hard pressed to find. Depending on which news channel you watch and what economist you listen to, the prognosis is that before it gets better it probably will get worse. With the job market shrinking and budgets becoming tighter, its vital that you have a strategy in place especially if youre hoping that social media will play a role in career advancement or new business.
How The Small Guy Can Use Trust To Win The SEO Game : SEO Book.com – As we all know, the last thing Google wants to do is make life easy for SEOs, so we’ll just have to live with the constant change. One of the biggest changes SEOs have had to adapt to in recent times has been algorithm shifts that reward big players
Google’s New Search Engine Ranking Places Heavy Emphasis on Branding – Originally when we published this we were going to make it subscriber only content, but the change is so important that I thought we should share some of it with the entire SEO industry. This post starts off with a brief history of recent algorithm updates, and shows the enormous weight Google is placing on branded search results.
Unlocking Twitter’s local news potential – Twitter has received a lot of publicity for the speed and first-hand accounts following big news stories. The Mumbai attacks, a California earthquake and the emergency landing on the Hudson all showcased the power of Twitter.
Why it Makes Sense to Target Longtail Keywords First : SEO Book.com – When launching a brand new website in a competitive marketplace you have a lot of network effects working against you. Your competition has years of conversion data, an older trusted site, tons of content, and thousands of organic inbound links. Try to beat them right from the start for the most potent high-value keywords and you will likely fail.
Twitter Used For Social Media Fundraising? | WebProNews – As some of you may know, I was recently involved in a tagline competition for The Printed Blog.The prize for the winner was a Nintendo Wii. Despite being way behind after missing a days worth of voting, I ended up winning the contest, with over 51% of votes.My sincere thanks to everyone who voted for me, from Twitter, Facebook and a few emails that were sent out. When the Wii arrives, Ill be taking it down to the kids at the Sick Childrens Hospital in Toronto. They need it far more than I do.
Duplicate Cleaner – Find Duplicate files – Freeware – Duplicate cleaner is a tool to assist anyone in cleaning up the contents of their personal hard drive or corporate network. You’d be surprised just how many redundant or duplicate files you could find forgotten in an obscure documents folder. Photos, music, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, videos – you name it, if it appears twice on your computer then Duplicate Cleaner will find it.
The size of social networks | Primates on Facebook | The Economist – THAT Facebook, Twitter and other online social networks will increase the size of human social groups is an obvious hypothesis, given that they reduce a lot of the friction and cost involved in keeping in touch with other people. Once you join and gather your friends online, you can share in their lives as recorded by photographs, status updates and other titbits, and, with your permission, they can share in yours. Additional friends are free, so why not say the more the merrier?
Facebook Management Has Lost Its Grip on Reality – ReadWriteWeb – Facebook made one of the most important announcements in the young company’s history today. It has proposed a set of foundational documents, including the first official statement of Facebook Principles. The proposal is made to Facebook’s users, who will now have 30 days to read, comment and perhaps vote on the documents.
Facebooks Radical New Approach to Terms of Service | Technologizer – Last week, Facebook reversed some changes it had made to its terms of service after it faced an uprising of unhappy members who werent pacified by founder Mark Zuckbergs initial explanation of why the amendments shouldnt bother anyone. That was expedient. Today, the company followed up by doing something kind of extraordinary: Its created drafts of overarching Facebook Principles and specific Facebook Rights and Responsibilities, and is soliciting member feedback on them before theyre finalized. Zuckerberg also says that members will get to vote for or against the revised versions of both documents, although I cant tell from his post whether those votes will be binding.
Gary Vaynerchuk had another great video posted today about how a hip/swanky hotel’s brand was damaged because of a decision they made. Never under-estimate the power of social media. Check Gary out on Twitter at @garyvee
I was in Miami last night and we had a little run-in with the hotel, which led to some tweets about the situation, which led to a person changing their mind about using the hotel. Watch as Dave Morin and Josh Elman of Facebook and David Recordon of 6 apart tell the story.
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Recently Google screwed up. The search giant found a bug that shared unshared documents in Google’s famed Google Docs with others. According to their figures only affected 0.05% of users, the the implications are huge for the idea of putting everything in the cloud.
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