At Foursquare Venues, The Mayor Eats For Free – Foursquare, the geo-location based check-in game, just announced its first venue that is combining badges and promotions. On Foursquare you get badges for checking into places. The person who checks into a place the most becomes the “Mayor.” You also get promotions from restaurants and bars nearby based on your location. Now those two elements are being tied together.
Twitter’s Most Influential Topics of 2009 – In 2009, influence emerged as a source of filtering and focus, especially when Twitter released its new “lists” feature to empower users to organize and follow custom streams by topic, personality, and themes.
ShopSavvy Barcode Reader for Android: Now With QR Code Support – When Google’s Android platform first launched in late October of 2008, ShopSavvy from Big in Japan was easily one of the most impressive apps available for the platform. Using the phone’s built-in camera, ShopSavvy scans barcodes of any product and then uses the data connection to search the Internet for the best price. It’s one of those really genius mobile app ideas, and it is no surprise that ShopSavvy was one of the winners of Google’s Android Developer Challenge in 2008.
Tweetup and Hashtag Make the List of Top 2009 Words – “Tweetup,” “hashtag,” “freemium,” “paywall,” “unfriend” and “tag cloud” all made the list, which was compiled by dictionary expert Susie Dent after poring over the two billion-word Oxford English Corpus database. One of the more “late to the party” terms included is “Slashdot effect,” which finally achieves its small measure of lexical legitimacy despite having already arguably had its heyday.
This is the Link Report for November 25th through December 2nd:
Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below
To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Microsoft Launches its own Twitter… in China – Microsoft is making its own Twitter… in China. They are capitalizing on the popularity of their Instant Messenger client in that country.
Facebook’s Road to 350 Million Users – Mark Zuckerberg’s note about Facebook’s latest privacy changes also contained an announcement about another important milestone for Facebook: 350 million users.
Facebook CEO: Prepare for Some Big Privacy Changes – In a rare open letter, Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced a series of privacy changes, starting with the removal of regional networks.
What Will Comcast-NBC Mean for Hulu? – It looks like Comcast's purchase of 51% of NBC will not kill he online video site Hulu. Though we might be paying for the content in 2010.
Twitter Ads Are Evil: Here’s Why – Advertisers are frustrated. You’re all having direct conversations with friends on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and the rest while totally bypassing the mass mediums they understand. Rather than consuming content all day on TV, in newspapers and on the radio, you’re engaging, one-to-one, with individuals you trust. They can’t get in the middle of that. They hate it.
Google Profiles Turn Into OpenIDs – As part of its push to go more social, Google has been attempting to unify its various account profiles into one Google Profile. And now it’s more useful. Google’s Brad Fitzpatrick has just tweeted out that Google Profiles can now be used as OpenIDs.
Small Businesses Look to E-Mail and Social Media – eMarketer – Three-quarters of small businesses will increase their spending on e-mail marketing in 2010, while nearly seven in 10 will put more dollars toward social media, according to VerticalResponse data.
Google Wave Invites: How To Get Them – The web is buzzing with excitement and anticipation. In less than 24 hours, Google Wave will launch to 100,000 early adopters. The real-time communication platform has been making headlines ever since it was announced back in May as a result of its potentially game-changing features.
Dropbox Meets The iPhone; Access Files On The Go – Dropbox, the easy to use file access manager which syncs your files across all your computers and the web, has introduced an iPhone application to make it even easier to access your files anywhere in the world. After almost 7 weeks of waiting, Apple has finally approved the application. With this new iPhone app, users will get access to all their Dropbox documents, PDF’s, pictures, videos and much more. Dropbox also introduced offline viewing in the iPhone app, with “Favorites.” If you add a file to your ‘Favorites’, they’ll be accessible at any time. To do so, just hit the star at the bottom of any file, and it’ll be added. Otherwise, your files stay in the cloud.
Sean Parker Joins Yammer’s Board Of Directors – Sean Parker is no stranger to Internet success. He’s 28 years old and has already helped start four very well-known services on the web: Napster, Plaxo, Causes, and of course, Facebook. And now he’s taking his impressive resume to Yammer, where he is joining the enterprise microblogging service’s Board of Directors.
FCC’s Broadband Plan: A Need for (Actual) Speed – U.S. broadband policy must take into account real network speeds, which lag advertised speeds by at least 50 percent, according to the FCC task force charged with helping to develop a national broadband plan. But just how policy should address the differences between the two is far from clear.
Metered Broadband Is the Future: Verizon CTO – Verizon Chief Technology Officer Dick Lynch said today that in the coming years, wired broadband will likely be sold in packages based on the amount of data a person wants to consume, much like wireless broadband is sold today. In comments made to press at the 2009 Fiber to the Home Conference Expo in Houston, Lynch stressed that he wasn’t announcing a shift in pricing for Verizon, but that: “We’re going to have to consider pricing structures that allow us to sell packages of bytes, and at the end of the day the concept of a flat-rate infinitely expandable service is unachievable.”
STUDY: 80% of Twitter Users Are All About Me – Rutgers University Professors Mor Naaman and Jeffrey Boase set out to analyze the content and characteristics of social media activity. They dubbed communications systems like Facebook and Twitter, “social awareness streams,” and then took to examining user behavior.
SEOmoz | Design Trends: The Single Purpose Homepage – This post focuses on a design style that's both retro (it's been around a long time) and emerging (the popularity, at least to me, feels like it's on the rise) – the single-purpose homepage.
Twitter Tips to Help Brands Stay Authentic and Transparent – Online Marketing Blog – Any marketer who’s successfully made the move to social media will tell you the rules of traditional marketing have to be reexamined. That’s particularly true with Twitter, where brands have just 140 characters to inform, evoke emotion and inspire action. One of the most basic and critical rules for brands on Twitter? Be authentic and transparent in all you do.
Five Search Marketing Tips For The Holidays – What is unique for holiday season 2009 are the specific strategies online retailers must take this year to reap the most sales possible. With lessons learned from last year’s bloated inventories and fire-sale prices, many retailers this year are restricting inventories and fine-tuning merchandising in an attempt to lure shoppers to purchase earlier and at higher prices. And, of course, the best way to get potential shoppers to your site is via search engine marketing. 82% of holiday shoppers polled by Google said they find search engines “extremely or very useful” in making their purchases.
Google Chrome Injects Itself Into Internet Explorer With Chrome Frame – Google just announced the launch of Chrome Frame, a new open-source project that will allow Chrome's rendering engine to run within Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6,7, and 8. This plugin, which is available now, will give developers the option to ask users if they would prefer to switch to the Chrome rendering and JavaScript engine. Users simply continue to use Internet Explorer and the switch will be completely seamless, with no noticeable changes to the user interface.
Mobile SEO Best Practices | mobiThinking – Our basic mobile SEO advice is to assume nothing, go right back to basics and think through the following principles:
Mobile Search 101, Part 2 – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – One of the challenges for developing and marketing on mobile devices is dealing with different browsers and how they render the Web. This has always been an issue for developers. Another challenge is the different screen sizes, orientations, and rendering speeds.
Mobile Search 101, Part 1 – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – According to a recent Gartner report, mobile advertising is poised to grow 74 percent this year to $913.5 million. It's then predicted to accelerate in 2011 and then reach $13 billion in 2013. The increased consumer use of smartphones is said to be the contributing factor for the explosion.
Tweet Scenes Launches Yet Another Twitter Background Creator – Companies and brands always want to have their Twitter profiles and background images fit their profile. Tweet Scenes is hoping to make the process of creating backgrounds for Twitter users much easier. You upload your logo, photos, text and links, and give some basic background information on your company and what you’re looking for. You then pay a flat fee ($129) up front, and get your design done in three business days.
Our Microblogging Lives: Work, Home, Lunch, Sleep? – According to a study conducted by the researchers from Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, Google (Google) and Elisa the top 5 most frequent microblogging posts are “working,” “home,” “work,” “lunch,” and “sleeping.”
7 Ways to Boost Your SEO Career Profile | Search Engine Journal – In the current economic climate where the job market has become more and more competitive, sometimes sticking out from the crowd can be as easy as boosting your SEO resume by doing the things that you love.
TinyChat – Disposable Chatrooms for the Twitter Generation – Even though we live in an age of instant Qik streams, video chats on Skype, and micro-blogging on Twitter, sometimes all you need is a simple chatroom for real-time text chats. TinyChat solves this problem by creating simple, disposable chatrooms. Tinychats works exactly as advertised. It's a disposable, no-frills chatroom, with a deliberately limited feature set. There are no accounts to sign up for and whenever you open up a new room, TinyChat will simply create a new URL for you.
Greetings! – A quick primer on how to handle business events correctly
Getting more traffic than your competitors is what most companies are striving for online. Achieving this usually requires that you rank better than your online competitors – this requires that your website has more authority and that your content is better optimised.
Twitter Closing New Venture Round At $1 Billion Valuation – Fast growing startup Twitter will soon be joining a select group of startups with private venture round valuations of $1 billion, we’ve heard from multiple sources. CEO Evan Williams disclosed the round to employees at a recent all hands meeting.
Oneok Sues Twitter For Trademark Infringement [Update: Dropped] – Natural gas distributor Oneok Inc. has sued Twitter for trademark infringement. The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Tulsa, said that Twitter had allowed an anonymous user to use the user name ONEOK, a company’s trademark.
5 Easy Steps to Stay Safe (and Private!) on Facebook – Unbeknownst to most mainstream Facebook users, the social network actually offers a slew of privacy controls and security features which can help you batten down the hatches, so to speak. If used properly, you'll never have to worry about whether you should friend the boss and your mom. You can friend anyone you want while comfortable in the knowledge that not everyone gets to see everything you post.
HOW-TO: Write Effectively for Twitter & the Social Web – Social media itself has changed writing online – making it more informal and personal. In fact, when you’re writing online these days, you’re writing not only for your audience but also for search engines and social media sites. Add Twitter to the equation and the need to communicate with only 140 characters raises writing for the social web to a new art form.
Facebook Photo Tag Search: The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread – facebook_photosYesterday we wrote about Facebook prototypes, a new Facebook (Facebook) feature which lets you try out beta versions of new features. Click on “Applications” at the bottom left of your screen, then “Browse More Applications”, and then on “Prototypes”.
The Top Twitter Client Is Still the Web – Despite what many of us Twitter-holics think most people still use the Web interface for Twitter more than any other means of access. Why? I don't know.
How to Use Twitter in Your Web 2.0 Marketing Strategy – The economy has significantly changed customer and vendor behavior. Spending marketing dollars in the wrong place limits the information available to your prospective customers. Making sure you are connecting well with your customers is the ROI that will truly fuel your company's growth. Before you allocate your reduced marketing budget, make sure you are connecting with your prospective customers online. Here, Knowledge Center contributor Mary Van Zandt explains how to use online communities and social media sites such as Twitter to maximize your company's marketing strategy.
Low-Hanging Fruit for Content Promotion & Links – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – Are you frustrated that your remarkable content (a.k.a. link bait) isn't acquiring high-quality links? The problem might be that your focus is too broad and competitive. These days, it's easier to focus on minor topics to obtain high-quality links.
Palm’s Colligan Said to Reject Jobs’s Offer to Stop Recruiting – Bloomberg.com – Former Palm Inc. Chief Executive Officer Ed Colligan rejected a proposal from Apple Inc.’s Steve Jobs to refrain from hiring each other’s employees two years ago, calling it wrong and “likely illegal,” according to their communications.
You Don’t Need Bit.ly, Tr.im & Co.: Just Host Your Own URL Shortener – All the recent talk about the future of tr.im and giving up control over our links on Twitter to third parties made us look into alternative solutions for shortening our links over the last few weeks. While there aren't too many alternatives to using hosted services for short links, we did come across two self-hosted solutions that you can install on your own hosting account: z.ips.me and Shorty. Both have some pros and cons, but they do give you total control over your short links.
What Women Want from Social Sites – eMarketer – Unsurprisingly, Facebook was the most popular social network among these users, with 83% belonging to the site. Nearly three-quarters (73%) were members of LinkedIn and 55% were on Twitter, while just 41% belonged to MySpace. Almost one-half of respondents (48%) reported belonging to four or more social networks—the most common response.
Professional networking and staying up-to-date with friends were the most compelling reasons to visit social networks, according to the respondents. Substantial majorities also considered researching products and services (79%) and finding deals and discounts (64%) important.
Google News Now Recrawling & Reindexing Stories For Updates – A Google News Help thread has confirmed reports from Google's Inbal that Google News now reindexes and crawls news sources for the latest version if those updates are posted within a "short period of time." So if you make a mistake in your publication, you now have a short window of opportunity to update the article, in order to make sure Google News updates your mistake in their index.
Facebook Sued for Privacy Breach – US News Briefs | Newser – A group of Facebook users has sued the social networking company for violating consumer privacy laws by harvesting personal information for commercial purposes and failing to compensate clients, reports CNET.
10 valuable Twitter utilities for business users | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com – One of the biggest reasons for Twitter’s growth and success is that the Twitter team allowed the service to be morphed and re-shaped by the user-base from the very beginning. We saw it happen in the way that the Twitter community instituted replies, retweets, and #hashtags.
Twitter vs. Facebook: Who Will Win in Real-time Search? – For the last year, Twitter has had no major rival in real-time search. But last week, that all changed when Facebook launched its real-time search engine. Not only can it search status updates, but it also tracks photos, notes, videos, and more. Can Facebook, with its larger userbase and recent talent acquisition, make Twitter Search irrelevant? Or does Twitter’s open platform and first-mover advantage give it the edge?
HOW TO: See Twitter Like Someone Else – Ever wanted to see Twitter the way someone else does, with all the Tweets from the people they follow? Now you can.
New Privacy Lawsuit Throws The Kitchen Sink At Facebook – So what are the Plantiffs accusing Facebook of? The suit alleges that that Facebook is at its core a “data mining company.. [that] seeks to open and/or disseminate private information to third parties for commercial purposes and economic benefit” and that “Facebook has created a business model and apparatus designed to harvest as much personal and private information as possible in easiest, quickest, and most innocuous-looking manner possible.” Cue the ominous music. It gets better.
Facebook Grew Twice As Fast As Twitter In July – Facebook not only bought Friendfeed this month they grew twice as fast as twitter in July. Making them the clear dominant market leader.
YouTube Launches Its Redesign – Now that redesign is going live for all users. If you take a look at YouTube (YouTube).com, you will see the new interface for yourself. YouTube has also blogged about the redesign, explaining some of the new features and a few that were removed. Here’s the text and a screenshot:
Technology Review: Blogs: TR Editors’ blog: Caffeine Injection Gives Google Search a Boost – For instance, Caffeine is undoubtedly faster than the current Google Search, often coming back with results in about half the time. It also appears to crawl many more pages–sometimes twice as many for a particular keyword. And according to some pundits, Caffeine's results suggest that it also uses a more complex combination of keywords to rank pages.
Pixorial: Bringing Sexy Back to Online Video Editing? – Put together by former executives from Netscape and Oracle, Pixorial has been in private beta since January of this year. Its mission is to “help people do more with video memories than ever before,” and to that end offers an interesting mix of digital and analog video services.
Most of us know how hard it is to participate in a large lecture class when there is a discussion. Often times students are timid and don’t want to talk in front of 90+ students to voice their opinions.
Enter Twitter… the 140-character microblogging service allows one History class at the University of Texas in Dallas to conduct a History discussion and involve more of the students.
Watch the video below. I’d like to hear what your thoughts are on this. Post them in the comments section.\
Found this via Twitter and @prsarahevans and Mashable. It’s a good slide to illustrate the validity and usefulness of Twitter. I’d like to hear your comments on this slide. Please comment below.
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