This is the Link Report for September 30th through October 29th:
Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below
To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Facebook Revamps its Privacy Policy – Earlier this year, Facebook was hammered for changes it made to its Terms of Service. The result was an uproar that eventually led to the Facebook Democracy, an initiative by Facebook to let users vote and comment on its governing documents.
Rand Fishkin: SEO, Mentors & What Pisses Him Off » aimClear Search Marketing Blog – Rand Fishkin is a singular personality and, to those in the SEO industry, needs little introduction. Having “started playing” with Microsoft FrontPage WYSIWYG web page software in 1993 as a high school student, he’s grown his company SEOmoz to take its place amongst the most recognized brands in search.
iMedia Connection: How to be a good social media listener – At this point, most digital marketers understand why they need to monitor the conversations that are happening on the social web. But in doing so, are they really listening? It's one thing to know what is being said about your brand on social networks. But it's quite another to draw actionable insights around which future campaigns and communications can be crafted.
Mobile And Social Platforms Want To Be The King Of Local Search – The study shows that the web generally, but in particular mobile and social network search, are increasingly factors fueling growth in the overall search market. This grew to 21.9 billion total US searches in June 2009, a year-on-year increase of 31%.
10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips – Begin by outlining clear goals for your social media marketing efforts and figuring out how you’ll measure success. Once you’ve outlined your goals, let’s look at 10 great ways you can begin to leverage social media for your marketing efforts.
How to Earn Respect in Social Media – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – Just because you sell a product or a service that is the top selling or highest rated in the industry doesn't mean people will listen to you when you arrive. Announcing your arrival doesn't gain you immediate respect. You won't suddenly have a band of followers once you strike up a conversation or answer a question or two on a topic.
Facebook’s ‘Reconnect’ Strategy is Brilliant – Recently, in addition to giving you suggestions to which friends you might add to your profile, Facebook also started enticing users to reconnect and engage less active users. The campaign has partly backfired, as some of the recommendations were dead people and ex-lovers, but I still think it’s brilliant, and a good sign that Facebook has a clear strategy laid out for the future.
Initially rolled out for select images only, the capability is now being rolled out for what seems to be the majority of images in Google image search. This is particularly useful when search terms include homonyms, we think; and we applaud Google for removing a major pain point in our searches for pics of Tesla the band as opposed to Tesla the scientist or Tesla the automotive brand.
BuddyPress.org – BuddyPress is a suite of WordPress plugins and themes, each adding a distinct new feature. BuddyPress contains all the features you’d expect from WordPress but aims to let members socially interact.
Twitter Blog: Soon to Launch: Lists – Lists are public by default (but can be made private) and the lists you've created are linked from your profile. Other Twitter users can then subscribe to your lists. This means lists have the potential to be an important new discovery mechanism for great tweets and accounts.
A Dozen Social Media Applications – Social media gets lots of attention these days. The NFL banned players from using Twitter. Bing integrated Twitter results into its search engine results pages (SERPs). When Michael Jackson died the site handled an estimated 5,000 tweets per minute and, proving Twitter's global reach, a state department official asked Twitter to postpone scheduled maintenance due to the critical role the site played in the recent Iran elections.
Software Polices Employees’ Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn Posts by Wall Street & Technology – How to let traders, salespeople, customer service reps and investment bankers use social networking in a beneficial way (to attract customers, fix problems, share tips, collaborate, etc.) and be certain that confidential information about the firm will not be leaked, that no employee will ever post an inappropriate comment on a social network, and that no rule will ever be broken (for instance, FINRA's rule requiring customer communications to be monitored and archived) — is a challenge to compliance and risk managers on Wall Street.
Social Networking Entrepreneur Taking It To The ‘Next Level’ – Venture Capital Dispatch – WSJ – Steve Ressler, a former IT auditor with the Department of Homeland Security, spent a lot of time studying the world’s terrorist networks. He later developed a keen interest in different kinds of networks, and founded Young Government Leaders, Washington, D.C.’s premier professional organization for government employees. Ressler also started GovLoop, an online social network for government workers that numbers about 20,000 members.
3 New Facebook Strategies for Building Your Personal Brand – With over 300 million users, no one can deny the power of FacebookFacebookFacebook. In fact, 50% of users log in every single day and spend over 6 billion minutes on the platform. What are they doing on it? Depending on the intent of the user, they’re sharing personal stories and updates, staying connected to friends and colleagues, and even building businesses. Many people only use their profile to keep in touch with friends and family, and form a brick wall so no one else can come inside. This strategy won’t help your career, but if you choose, you can also leverage Facebook to build your personal brand.
SU – The Battle to Align PR and Interactive Marketing – PR firms are poised to lead the way in social media because they approach conversation influence from an earned media perspective — finding existing story lines and figuring out how to make their clients’ point relevant. PR firms with a digital development capability can use visual and dynamic storytelling to add a deeper layer of engagement–digital assets designed specifically for social media engagement.
How #FollowFriday Works – What is #followfriday? Every Friday, you’ll see thousands of people on Twitter using this phrase, so we thought we’d take a moment to explain what Follow Friday is, and how you can join in with this Twitter game.
Here is a quick guide to the FollowFriday phenomenon:
Emurse.com: Resume Builder | Maker | Creator – Creating a quality resume is a difficult task. Emurse allows you to focus on what's most important — writing quality content and selling yourself.
Metaweb Technologies, Inc. : About – Freebase, created by Metaweb Technologies, is an open database of the world’s information. It’s built by the community and for the community – free for anyone to query, contribute to, build applications on top of, or integrate into their websites.
‘Facebook Five’ go to court over internet complaint row – The Daily Record – New South Wales state prison authorities accused the five guards of misconduct and threatened to fire them last month over their disgruntled cyber exchanges about their superiors, including the man who runs the state's prisons, Corrective Services Commissioner Ron Woodham.
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”.
Joe Wilson’s Payments Provider Reports DDoS Attack – The Austin-based online payments startup Piryx reports that it was targeted in a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack yesterday due to its hosting of a fundraising campaign for Joe Wilson – the politican who made headlines this week after shouting “You Lie!” during Obama’s health care reform speech.
Why Social RSS Could Be Huge – Phil Baumann talks about how using RSS socially could really bring about great results
Forget Gen Y: Gen X is Making Real Change – ReadWriteEnterprise – Sometimes even the best researchers forget that the answer you get depends entirely on who you ask. A new Forrester survey of 2,000 information workers has revealed that despite the hype, it's not Gen Y that's getting business to adopt collaborative technology. Gen X, those who are 30-43, are the ones leading the charge for social computing.
SEMPO Says Time To Get Serious About Mobile Search – SEMPO yesterday released a “POV” white paper that seeks to orient search marketers to the growing mobile market, mobile SEO and mobile paid search in particular. It cites the dramatic growth of mobile web usage and anticipated future growth in arguing that search marketers now need to take mobile seriously. Developed by SEMPO’s Emerging Technologies Committee, the report asks (and seeks to answer) several key questions
The most popular digital goods are virtual money, weapons and gifts | VentureBeat – People are paying real money for digital goods in all sorts of online applications ranging from Facebook apps to massively multiplayer online games. The No. 1 thing they buy is virtual money. Other top items include virtual weapons and gifts for social networking friends, according to a survey released today.
No, the Cloud is Not Killing Open Source – Andrea DiMaio from the Gartner Blog Network asks an interesting question in a post titled "Is Cloud Computing Killing Open Source in Government?," and InfoWorld weighs in on the issue as well. One might as well not limit the question to government usage. Is cloud computing killing open source in general? DiMaio notes that government officials in London and Washington D.C. are finding that primary drivers for open source adoption–including cost savings and vendor independence–are going away, while free, cloud applications proliferate and grab headlines.
Uh-Oh! DOJ Expands Review of Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal – Google may already have a monopoly on search, but that doesn’t mean the proposed search deal between Microsoft and Yahoo will be automatically greenlighted by federal officials. The Justice Department has expanded its review of the partnership agreed to by the search laggards, Bloomberg is reporting. The DOJ is going to challenge the argument that you need to be bigger in order to compete. I couldn’t agree more. My view is that you need to be smarter and faster. Of course as both Microsoft and Yahoo’s history in search proves, they’ve been neither.
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.
This week yet another privacy issue with the popular social media site Facebook emerged. We’ve all see those quizzes where you can find out what type of mythical creature you are or where you should live. And you know what? Most of us are probably guilty of taking one or two ourselves. But did you know that when you take those quizzes you’re letting the quiz owner have all your private information? I didn’t think so.
Ready for a Mobile (Advertising) Storm? – Website Magazine – Website Magazine – A report from Juniper Research has found that growing consumer adoption of mobile Internet services and heightened brand engagement with mobile services will be reflected in a sharp increase in expenditure on mobile Internet advertising. How much of an increase? According to the report, ad spend on the mobile Internet will reach $500 million globally in 2009 and rise to nearly $2 billion per year by 2014.
The plugin is extremely easy to add if you are using one of the latest versions of WordPress. Simply download the zip file and upload it through your WordPress administration panel. You can then choose your settings for the plugin under your WordPress "Settings" section – either a text-only link or a small image and text link, and whether to add the link to every post.
Snow Leopard review – A very thorough review of Apple's new Snow Leopard OS at Engadet
EASTER EGG: Yelp Is the iPhone’s First Augmented Reality App – This makes your iPhone just that much more cooler and helpful. Augmented reality uses your iPhone’s camera, GPS, and compass to show virtual items in the real world. Put your camera in front of a restaurant and it will come up with info, or use it to find nearby Twitter users
Social Networks: Boomers Feel Left Out – Even though baby boomers make up more than one quarter of all US Internet users, and even though the majority of this group spends over five hour per week online, a new survey by Burst Media found that only 14% of boomers feel that the content on the Internet is focused on people their age.
5 Social Media Lessons Learned from Whole Foods – Whole Foods is into using Social Media. The best way to improve your own company's use of social media is to learn from others. Check out the case study on Mashable.
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.
Today across the Web, people have been buzzing about the new Terms of Service over at Facebook. Upon reading the TOS, the legalese makes it appear that Facebook owns your content once it’s put on the service. The TOS also states that Facebook can use the data for whatever it wants.
Now, as expected, people were outraged at this new clause. There were strong debates across not only throughout the Internet, but the Twitterverse and the Blogosphere.
Finally, Facebook head honsho Mark Zuckerberg, obviously seeing the chaos that the TOS has caused, released the release below on the Facebook blog to set the record straight (the post is below in complete). Users own their data on the service.
Now in the post, he says that they are trying make the rules more understandable. They are? Did I miss something.
I’d like to hear your take below in the comments.
A couple of weeks ago, we updated our terms of use to clarify a few points for our users. A number of people have raised questions about our changes, so I’d like to address those here. I’ll also take the opportunity to explain how we think about people’s information.
Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with. When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebook a license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they’ve asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn’t help people share that information.
One of the questions about our new terms of use is whether Facebook can use this information forever. When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are createdone in the person’s sent messages box and the other in their friend’s inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.
In reality, we wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want. The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work. Our goal is to build great products and to communicate clearly to help people share more information in this trusted environment.
We still have work to do to communicate more clearly about these issues, and our terms are one example of this. Our philosophy that people own their information and control who they share it with has remained constant. A lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective of the rights we need to provide this service to you. Over time we will continue to clarify our positions and make the terms simpler.
Still, the interesting thing about this change in our terms is that it highlights the importance of these issues and their complexity. People want full ownership and control of their information so they can turn off access to it at any time. At the same time, people also want to be able to bring the information others have shared with themlike email addresses, phone numbers, photos and so onto other services and grant those services access to those people’s information. These two positions are at odds with each other. There is no system today that enables me to share my email address with you and then simultaneously lets me control who you share it with and also lets you control what services you share it with.
We’re at an interesting point in the development of the open online world where these issues are being worked out. It’s difficult terrain to navigate and we’re going to make some missteps, but as the leading service for sharing information we take these issues and our responsibility to help resolve them very seriously. This is a big focus for us this year, and I’ll post some more thoughts on openness and these other issues soon.
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atrick Barbanes, The Branding Professor
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