These are my links for December 25th through December 27th:
2009 As Seen Through Twitter Hashtags – You may have seen Twitter’s recently announced most discussed topics of ‘09. The list really highlights the gravity of this important year: A new US President was sworn into office, celebrities died and celebrities were born, there were revolutions, there were pandemics, and technology continued its rapid advance.
The Top Ten IPO Candidates For 2010 – Below is our list of the top ten IPO candidates for 2010 in the technology industry (and, no, it doesn’t include Twitter).
64% Prefer Old Twitter Retweets to New Style – We mixed up our weekly Web Faceoff series a bit this time, with a novel head-to-head battle between Twitter’s old and new style of retweets. In the previous 3-way matchup we saw Digg beat out Reddit and StumbleUpon for social news supremacy, and this week we saw another heated battle come to a close with perhaps a surprising winner.
Drunk Drivers in Texas to Be Named on Twitter – Drunk driving in Montgomery County, Texas, this holiday season? Expect to see your name in Tweets, as the local district attorney’s office has vowed to name and shame drunk drivers on Twitter.
Foursquare vs. Gowalla: Location-Based Throwdown – Just when you thought you had enough social networks in your life, two hot new ones are vying for your attention. Combine the benefits of sites like Yelp, Twitter, and Google Latitude, add in social gaming and some privacy measures, and you have the recipe that Foursquare, the app that’s been called “next year’s Twitter,” by Mashable’s own Pete Cashmore, and its chief competitor, Gowalla, are cooking. Each has attracted a rapidly growing user base in 2009, and each is rushing madly to beat the other to your smartphone in 2010.
Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below
To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Digg Makes it Easier to Get Dugg – Digg has announced that it is revamping its API so that developers can create more feature-rich applications for the social content-sharing site and write/contribute data using OAuth. The new API will also let developers write tools that give users the ability to Digg, bury or comment on stories.
Google Rolls Out New Format for Image Results – According to an announcement on the Official Google Blog, the search engine giant is rolling out a new format for their universal image results. Set to go live over the next 24 hours, the updated format will now feature one larger image alongside multiple smaller images. Because of this new layout, you'll be able to see "more pictures than before," writes Google Software Engineer Alex Petcherski in the blog post.
Facebook, Google & Twitter Unite for World AIDS Day Around the Web – Thanks to efforts from Facebook, Google, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube, AIDS is a more visible topic today than perhaps at any other point in the history of World AIDS Day. Read on to see what each site has done and the impact this joint campaign is having on users.
Google Steps Where Many Have Stumbled: Sidewiki – By 2001 web startup Third Voice, which let people annotate websites via a browser plugin, was done. Website owners just didn’t like the idea of people “defacing” their websites with comments they couldn’t control. But the idea has lingered (really), and now Google is taking a shot at their own version of the service. It’s called Sidewiki, and it just launched.
Microsoft’s Courier Tablet Is ‘Astonishing’ – Technology News Briefs | Newser – Microsoft’s foray into tablet computers looks to be “astonishing,” Gizmodo blogger The Paperboy raves after getting a look at leaked photo of the Courier, which has two screens and opens like a book. It has touch-screen and stylus capabilities, and is in the “late prototype” stage, sources say.
Courier: Microsoft Has an Apple Tablet Rival, And It Looks Impressive – microsoft courierAlthough the Apple Tablet remains one of the most hyped (and mysterious) upcoming devices, it’s now not expected to launch until February. In the meantime, a variety of other innovations are looking to steal some of its thunder.
STATS: 84% of Social Media Programs Don’t Measure ROI – We talk a lot about the rapid adoption of social media in a wide array of industries. According to an August 2009 survey by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education, 86% of professionals in a variety fields said that they have adopted social media in some way.
Google Crowdsources Reader, Docs and Search Features – Google has just opened the floodgates. With millions of users, it's only natural that the company is prioritizing features and crowdsourcing new product ideas. In a recent blog post, the company has revamped Google Product Ideas as a series of separate feedback pages for iGoogle, Google Docs, Google SketchUp, Google Ad Planner, Google Custom Search and as of today, Google Reader.
Picasa 3.5: Ruining Your Good Name with Face Recognition Tagging – Say goodbye to your controlled web presence and say hello to Picasa 3.5. Google released Picasa 3.5 with a slew of new features including facial recognition and name-based batch tagging, faster geo-tagging and better web uploading functionality. The service is so good at finding your mug and tagging it that wild photos from yesteryear can resurface and wreak havoc on your reputation.
Yahoo! Search Gets a Massive Revamp | Search Engine Journal – There you go, Yahoo has just announced a major revamp of its search portal, particulary the search results format. According to the Yahoo Search blog the new Yahoo Search format aligns with the previous changes recently made on Yahoo’s other products such as the Yahoo homepage, Yahoo Mail, and Yahoo Messengers video calling feature.
Dropbox’s Web Interface Gets An Overhaul: Adds Bulk File Management, Search, And More – Dropbox, the impressive file syncing service which makes it easy to sync your files across multiple computers and the web, has released a brand new version of its online interface. Today’s upgrade brings with it a number of new features that will make it much easier to manage the large number of files users often have on their Dropboxes.
Yeah, But Did You Steal The Zynga Playbook, Playdom? – It’s a day late, but social game site (and Zynga-antagonizer) Playdom has finally responded to our request for comment on the lawsuit and temporary restraining order they got hit with earlier this week.
Skype Kills Extras (and Its Developer Ecosystem) – Skype’s new owners should be aware of one small thing: They are paying $2 billion for a company that, despite having more than 400 million subscribers, doesn’t know how to leverage that platform. Why? Because it doesn’t understand developers. It never has. We have consistently pointed out this lackadaisical attitude towards its developer ecosystem. The fact is that if you put your lot with Skype, then you are really on your own. Today the company announced that it’s killed Skype Extras, an API-based effort that was launched with much fanfare in June 2007.
Yeah Ok, So Facebook Punk’d Us – Techcruch's report of the "Fax Photo" feature in Facebook was a joke played on them by Facebook.
Twitter Changes TOS, Opens the Door for Ads – The new TOS, which is far more expansive and specific than the old one, not only addresses privacy concerns, but ownership, spam, rights, and links. The microblogging company said that, now that they better understand how users utilize Twitter, they can update the TOS to match.
Facebook Friends Can Now Be Filtered By City (Again) – Over the last few weeks, Facebook has been removing regional networks. Silicon Valley? New York City? Peoria, IL? They have been slowly stripped from Facebook, to the dismay of many. The biggest complaint from users? They want to find their friends by location when they travel.
Facebook’s heard the complaints and they understand the value of finding friends by region. So Facebook has decided to address that complaint by adding a filter to find friends by their hometown. This was announced via a Facebook wall post.
Morning Types Crash Faster Than Night Owls, Study Says – Habits – Lifehacker – The early bird may get the worm, but there's something to be said about burning the midnight oil. In fact, according to a new study, staying up later and longer may increase alertness and productivity more than being an early riser.
Your Tweets Are Yours: Now Back Them Up – Yesterday’s change in Twitter’s Terms of service, in which they explicitly state that every user owns their own tweets is cool, but what does it really mean for the user?
EduFire Raises $1.3 Million For Video Education Platform – EduFire, the startup that offers online video classes for a variety of subjects, has raised $1.3 million in Series A funding from Battery Ventures, with Google AdSense godfather Gokul Rajaram and Western Technology Investment participating.
The Top 20 VC Bloggers (September 2009) – When it comes to lists of top VCs, one of our favorites is the top VC bloggers. Larry Cheng, a partner at Fidelity Ventures, started keeping just such a list last May, based on how many subscribers each VC blogger has on Google Reader. This morning he updated his VC blogger leaderboard. The top 20 are below, all 100 are on his own blog, Thinking About Thinking (No. 71).
Smart.fm: How Well Do You Know Your Facebook Friends? – Smart.fm aims to act as a full-fledge learning platform, wherein users can access the site, say “I want to learn about this topic” and be presented with tools, quizzes and world lists that test memory retention and understanding. There is a social element too, and users can both add their own information to existing courses, and share their learning schedules, remix content and ask and offer help.
While the companies are not each others' biggest rivals, they are increasingly competing with each other.
This follows years of enjoying one of the coziest relationships in Silicon Valley — one that will now get more complicated as the companies compete in more areas.
10 Incredibly Cool DIY Projects – 2009 Backyard Genius Awards – Popular Mechanics – To create an incredibly cool car-crusher or oversize rocket or solar-pedal powered contraption that the world had no idea it needed takes brilliance, determination and a healthy dose of crazy. The winners of our Backyard Genius Awards have all those qualities, and we salute them for it.
Security Threat: WordPress Under Attack – To prevent this attack, if you have not done so already, update your WordPress install immediately to the latest version. Change all your passwords to a strong password (cough), including WordPress blog access for all users, database, FTP, control panels, etc. These are all highly recommended procedures.
WordPress › Blog » How to Keep WordPress Secure – Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. This particular worm, like many before it, is clever: it registers a user, uses a security bug (fixed earlier in the year) to allow evaluated code to be executed through the permalink structure, makes itself an admin, then uses JavaScript to hide itself when you look at users page, attempts to clean up after itself, then goes quiet so you never notice while it inserts hidden spam and malware into your old posts.
Improve Keyword Conversion Rates with Google Analytics – When you check all of your carefully selected and researched keywords, the results put a smile on your face because they are in the top spots in each of the search engines. You then look at your site traffic numbers for these keywords, and they are higher than ever. Then you scratch your head and ask, “Why are conversions so low?” Take a breath: the answer can be found in your Google Analytics data.
Bit.ly Launches J.mp to Save You Two Characters – Need to save two characters in a tweet? You could rework your wording a bit (change “people” to “ppl” or “for” to “4” for example), or, if your tweet includes a link, you could turn to a shorter URL.
Bit.ly, Twitter’s default shortener, is already plenty short, but if you want the same experience in two less characters, you can now use j.mp, which appears to simply be bit.ly rebranded with a new URL.
Bad Neighborhood – Link Exchange Tool – Text links are an important factor in today's search engine optimization, and exchanging links with other websites is a good way to get them. However, doing a link exchange with a website that is penalized can have some detrimental results.
Is Google Using A Privacy Double Standard? – On one hand Google doesn't abuse your data and personal information, other hand if the government and legal system comes knocking your information might not be safe from their eyes.
My Favorite Link Building Lie – While it is pointless to seek links (via email or any other method) for crappy content from other sites with equally crappy content, link building via email does in fact work perfectly – but only under one perfectly obvious and sadly overlooked circumstance: when the link seeker represents meritorious content and the link granter is looking for that type of meritorious content to link to. It’s so painfully obvious to me, that I fight the urge to laugh out loud when I read quotes like the one above.
Amazon Adds A Virtual Private Cloud – ReadWriteEnterprise – Amazon has created a hybrid cloud that can work securely for the enterprise, balancing the need for encryption with the low cost and scaling power that the cloud provides.
The Twitter Exploit That Could Have Stolen Your Info and Much, Much More – Found by David Naylor, the vulnerability exploits an issue with a recently added an HTML tag to all of their links (rel=nofollow, which tells GoogleGoogleGoogle that links on Twitter shouldn’t count in its algorithm). The result is that David was able to change the links in such a way that it generates a huge cross-site scripting vulnerability.
Over 80% of Americans Use Social Media Monthly – The demographic data follows the trend we see overall—younger people are more heavily involved, but over-35s and over-55s are becoming more and more active in social networking. While 10% or less of online adults aged 18-34 are “socially inactive,” the older age ranges are showing high growth. Among adults 35-54, participation grew 60% over last year:
Top 5 Current Email Scams You Should Know About – There are numerous ways to be scammed nowadays. Pyramid schemes, ‘too good to be true’ investments and of course the good old internet. There are literally millions of websites that will gladly take your money, personal info, bank details and a host of other things from you and then skedaddle.
2009 Facebook and Twitter Growth by Age Group | Ignite Social Media – The following chart by Nielsen shows that audiences above 25 have experienced a whopping 84% growth in Twitter adoption over the past 6 months. Also interesting is the 20% growth happening within the 55+ age range, compared to the 16% increase in 2-24 year olds. This slight discrepancy in growth doesn’t mean that younger audiences aren’t interested in Twitter, but suggests that they have already adopted it. (Also, after seeing the age ranges listed on this chart, I now want to see what a two-year old would tweet.)
Facebook Acquires FriendFeed (Updated) – Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, weve learned. Were gathering details now.At this point details on the acquisition are still very sparse, but its clearly a good match. Over the last year or so, Facebook has borrowed quite a few of features that FriendFeed popularized, including the Like feature and an emphasis on real-time news updates.
6 Twitter Directories To Add Yourself To – Everyone is always looking for new ways to get more Twitter followers. Well, one of the best ways to do this is by getting discovered through Twitter directories. There are many out there to choose from and its very quick and easy to add yourself to them. So, here are a few to get you started. Feel free to share your favorite (whether listed or not) in the comments.
What is a Natural Link Growth Profile? | SEO Book.com – 3 Common Link Building Strategies1. spiky. if the spikes are associated with news and viral marketing then that is not a big problem, but if they are sorta bought links, low quality links, etc. then this is sorta the worst way to do it.
2. linear. not as bad as spiky…but not as good as geometric. this is where a webmaster tries to build the same number of links each month.
3. geometric. this is where link building starts off slow, but then keeps getting better each month.
Company Boasts it Sold Twitter Followers to Michael Jackson – With the increasing popularity of social media sites and the power of marketing on them, more and more people have been investing in services which can increase their rankings faster than they could do on their own.One such service is the highly-controversial paid Twitter follower service which has been offered by web promotions company uSocial.net for several months now. Now theyre claiming theyve had the attention of some of the worlds largest names, including one interesting one in particular.
Reporting SERP Spam: Know How to Report & Reclaim Your Rankings – Below is a guide about spam results, how to detect them, and finally where to report them. If you want all the links to submit a spammy site, theyre at the bottom (but if you skip all the interesting info you might not know what to look for!).
Twitter Co-Founder: Attacks Continue to Change in Nature and Intensity – Apparently, were not out of the woods just yet. While Twitter itself has been working reliably for most of the day, some third-party applications remain impacted by measures the company has taken to defend against DDoS attacks.
Have you heard the news? Yahoo has officially bought the photo-sharing startup Xoopit.
Yahoo! acquires Xoopit.
Xoopit is joining Yahoo! to make the world’s best email even better.
Yahoo! will be integrating both our photo sharing applications and our content indexing and discovery technology into Yahoo! Mail and other services over the coming months.
Xoopit has emerged as a leader in mail applications, indexing and content discovery. Yahoo! has recognized that Xoopit’s technology elevates photos to the forefront of people’s everyday email experiences. Mail is the original online photo sharing experience, and combining these two products results in an evolved inbox experience. Yahoo! Mail users can expect to see their mail become even more efficient, social and fun!
The Xoopit team would like to thank our users for all the support and guidance in developing a service that people love. We would also like to thank our angels and venture investors, Charles Moldow from Foundation Capital and Theresia Gouw Ranzetta from Accel Partners for wisdom and commitment along the way!
This is an interesting purchase from the search company, especially since they already own a very robust photo-sharing site, that some might remember, Flickr.
Why Yahoo hasn’t been able to really monetize Flickr, your guess is as good as mine. But with this latest purchase, Yahoo seems to have Gmail, search-giant and arch-rival Google’s email client, in its sights. It’ll be interesting how the companies merge.
What I don’t understand is why Yahoo hasn’t integrated Flickr into Yahoo Mail? Why buy another photo-sharing product? What are your thoughts? Post them in the comments.
Welcome to the Official Goldstein Media blog. We frequently post about all types of Internet-related topics ranging from Social Media, Internet Marketing, and Viral Marketing to the latest in Web Design and Development.
You'll see that there is a trend with our posts and we hope that you find them informative and helpful.
We are constantly on social media platforms of all types. Some of our favorites are:
We love comments on our posts and welcome your feedback and thoughts.
If you have any questions about what we post or if you would like to talk to someone at Goldstein Media about hiring us for Social Media Marketing, Internet Marketing, Viral Marketing or Web Design, please contact us today!
Please explore not only our blog but our entire Website. We've worked hard to provide you our visitors and our clients with a good resource.
Thanks again for checking out our blog!
Contact Us:
(215) 645-2298
Please use the top navigation to browse our site and contact us for a free quote or any questions or comments you might have.
-
