Posts Tagged ‘social media marketing’

Link Report for September 23rd through September 25th

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

The Link Report

This is the Link Report for September 23rd through September 25th:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

  • WARNING: Facebook Worm Spreading via News Feed – Malware and spam are finding new ways to spread across social media. A few days ago, a nasty Twitter Worm spread through DMs. Today, we have received multiple reports that a new worm is spreading via Facebook wall posts and status updates.
  • Google Hits Back At AT&T Over New Google Voice FCC Complaint – Ironically AT&T is using the very controls put on them by the FCC against Google Voice. Ironic? Only a little
  • We Hold Twitter Ransom For $100 Billion Dollars – 37signals founder Jason Fried probably had the post of the day today mocking Twitter’s $1 billion valuation on its latest rumored round of funding. The post, titled “PRESS RELEASE: 37SIGNALS VALUATION TOPS $100 BILLION AFTER BOLD VC INVESTMENT” is very funny. But it’s also disingenuous.
  • Dropbox Reaches 2 Million Users; Continues to Grow – Dropbox, the impressive file sharing service which makes it easy to sync your files across multiple computers and the web, has announced that it has reached two million registered users, just four months after reaching one million users. Of those, Dropbox has almost one million users that are active.
  • Video: Symantec Shows The Danger Of Shortened Twitter Links – While there is often a lot of talk about the downside of URL shorteners being that if they go down, they take your links with them, the much more obvious and real problem is that they very easily mask potentially bad sites. We’ve been seeing this more and more in both public tweets and DMs, but luckily so far most of those have just been worms meant to replicate themselves, rather than really bad viruses. But security software company Symantec released a video today to show some very bad links in action.
  • Place Pages: Google Launches Rival to Yelp – Just moments ago, Google announced that they are adding information on businesses, restaurants, points of interest, neighborhoods, and more on separate web pages within Google Maps. The project, Place Pages for Google Maps, replaces those expanded info bubbles that used to be part of Google Maps. Yelp had better watch out.
  • PostRank Combines Google Analytics With Social Media Stats – As conversations surrounding blog posts start to take in place other places (Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed (FriendFeed), etc.) and people use tumble blogs like Tumblr (Tumblr) and Posterous (Posterous) to quickly comment and share helpful information, tracking that data and its correlation to overall traffic numbers can become really, really helpful.
  • Seven Easy Ways to Integrate Your Google Apps – Google Apps – Lifehacker – The information you keep in Google apps like Gmail, GCal, Reader, and Voice doesn't just live in one place. Check out a few easy but non-obvious ways to plug different Google apps together and share their data and features.
  • How To Measure The Value Of A Fan Or Follower In Social Media – It’s hard to justify the time spent on social media account management. But there are ways to measure the real value (monetary or otherwise) of fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter. These top two social media websites offer free advertising, an open customer service and communication platform and a demographics database all wrapped up in one, so knowing the value of fans and followers can be a big help when deciding how much time should be allotted to social media efforts. Here are some of the ways to measure how much Facebook and Twitter users are really worth.
  • Will Social Media Drive a Web Without Walls? – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – A key question that remains to be answered in the social media battle is the interconnectivity of all the pieces. Carmakers don't use the same supplier for all of their various parts; rather, they select a specialized manufacturer for each component (e.g., headlights, sun roof, seats). Similarly, social media providers can't be the best at every functionality (social network, social bookmarks, wikis, video sharing, photo sharing, etc.).

Daily Link Report for September 23rd

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

The Link Report

This is the Daily Link Report for September 23rd

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

  • SEOmoz | Followed Links from Four Unexpected Sources – Great follow links
  • Is Microsoft’s DRM Patent for P2P Networks Too Late, or Ahead of Its Time? – If Microsoft’s freshly granted patent for a digital rights management system sounds like a 2003 idea coming to fruition in 2009, that’s because it is — the patent that was granted yesterday was filed six years ago. The newly codified bit of intellectual property is a DRM system that’s distributed over peer-to-peer networks, decentralizing a processing mechanism that traditionally resides on a central server. The entertainment industry has used DRM to prevent unauthorized duplication of copyrighted material, but it’s been largely abandoned by the music business in response to customer demand for unprotected files.
  • Will Cuil’s New Streaming Feature Put It Back on the Map? – I thought this thing was dead. My god. Die already. You're not Cuil! Get it?!
  • Twitter Gets an Unofficial App Store [INVITES] – One of Twitter’s fundamental strengths is its third-party ecosystem. From sending tweets, tracking stats or sharing media, there are web apps, desktop clients, mobile apps and services that add value to the microblogging juggernaut.
  • Greatly Improve Your Physical Workspace with Small Changes – Office – Lifehacker – Many of us spend quite a lot of time in our workplaces yet spend precious little time thinking about how that workspace is laid out. It's time to assess the state of your workplace and improve it.
  • The Beginner’s Guide to Tricking Out Your WordPress Blog – Blogs – Lifehacker – You took the leap and installed WordPress to host your own blog because you want complete control over how it looks and works. Now, it's time to power it up, lock it down, and make your blog completely yours.
  • Google Wave Team Gives Up on Internet Explorer | Smarterware – After “countless hours” of work, the Google Wave team has thrown up their hands and decided not to make Wave work in Internet Explorer natively. Instead, they released Google Chrome Frame, an IE add-on that puts Chrome’s backend inside Internet Explorer. Next week another batch of Google Wave invitations will go out, and IE users will have to install Chrome Frame or switch to Firefox or Safari to try Wave. (The screenshot is the prompt IE users will get when they try to log into Wave.)
  • Why Your Company Needs Social Media | Search Engine Journal – There are case studies abound of how big brands such as Zappos, Jet Blue, Comcast, etc. have put social media into action and the success that they’ve had with it. Can small businesses be just as successful using social media? Absolutely! There are many advantages of using social media during the sales process for customer service, sales prospecting and customer retention for small businesses.
  • Google Says, Referrer Spam Does Not Hurt Your Google Rankings – Referrer spam is a kind of spamdexing (spamming aimed at search engines). The technique involves making repeated web site requests using a fake referrer url that points to the site the spammer wishes to advertise. Sites that publicize their access logs, including referrer statistics, will then end up linking to the spammer's site, which will in turn be indexed by the search engines as they crawl the access logs.

    This benefits the spammer because of the free link, and also gives the spammer's site improved search engine placement due to link-counting algorithms that search engines use.

  • Apple: New Nano Not Banned By Health Club Chain – Tech Trader Daily – Barrons.com – The hot button topic of the day among Apple (AAPL) obsessives was the theory that the new video-camera equipped iPod Nano might be banned in health clubs. That would not be good news, given the number of people that buy iPods specifically to listen to music while working out.

Link Report for September 22nd through September 23rd

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

The Link Report

This is the Link Report for September 22nd through September 23rd:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

Link Report for September 20th through September 22nd

Monday, September 21st, 2009

The Link Report

This is the Link Report for September 20th through September 22nd:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

  • 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.
  • SEOmoz | How to Export Google Analytics Data to Excel via the API – From @wilreynolds. A way to export Google Analytics data to Excel through the API
  • 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

Link Report for September 18th through September 19th

Saturday, September 19th, 2009

The Link Report

This is the Link Report for September 18th through September 19th:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

  • Social media on marketers’ menu for 2010 – Trends & Ideas – BizReport – While email remained the most popular media among marketers for use next year (56.8% "realistically" plan to use it), social media isn't far behind. Over half (56.3%) "realistically" plan to include it in future marketing plans, found the Center for Media Research.
  • Business Implications of Facebook Lite: Advice for Social Media Marketers and Businesses on Facebook | Suite101.com – Facebook Lite is a stripped-down version of the Facebook social media application that went live in September of 2009. Facebook has stated their intention to be the service of those users who do not have high-speed internet connections or bandwidth to support the main site.
  • Local companies embrace social media to bond with customers | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ – We've heard a lot lately about the power of social media services like Facebook and Twitter to connect people, spread news and even influence world events. Tens of millions of people are signed up for one or more of these services that connect folks with shared interests or concerns.
  • The New AIM: Less Clunky and Annoying, More Social – PC World – I use AOL’s instant-messaging network all day long, but I’m not sure when I last used the AIM software itself (with the exception of the iPhone version). I’ve associated it with feature bloat, annoying ads, and a sort of old-timy, Web 1.0 feel. So I long ago switched to other clients that support the AIM network (Apple’s iChat when I’m on a Mac, GAIM when I’m on Windows, and the Web-based Meebo anywhere and everywhere).
  • Blueprint: A CSS Framework | Spend your time innovating, not replicating – Blueprint is a CSS framework, which aims to cut down on your development time. It gives you a solid foundation to build your project on top of, with an easy-to-use grid, sensible typography, useful plugins, and even a stylesheet for printing.
  • Ultimate Cheat Sheet Colllection – Hungred.com – Cheat Sheets are handle for web development. Usually, these sheets are either printed out and pasted on the wall of your working area or they are placed on your computer as wallpaper. Referencing in this way makes working faster and more effective. Here are a complete list usually used by most designers and developers during web development. Enjoy!
  • Tutorial: How to change plugin table structure in WordPress – Hungred.com – Some of us will have problem updating or changing your table structure in your WordPress plugin after it has been released to the public. Many people will come up with different ideas to change their existing plugin structure to a new one. Idea such as checking for that particular column existence either through pure SQL or mixture of SQL and PHP. However, the approach here may be a bit overkill. There is a much simpler way.
  • RedBeacon Wins The Top Prize At TechCrunch50 2009 – RedBeacon is a new service that made its public debut at TechCrunch50 that further streamlines this process by bringing the OpenTable model of online transactions to much broader spectrum of services.
  • Google Launches New Ad Marketplace; Display Ads Will Never Be the Same – You’re probably familiar with Google AdSense and AdWords, Google’s (Google) flagship advertising products. It’s how Google makes its billion of dollars. Highly targeted text ads appear on Google search and third party websites that are part of the AdSense program. Advertisers buy ads based on keywords, with more popular keywords costing more per click than less popular terms.
  • MediaPost Publications Study: Half Of Ad Impressions, 95 Percent Of Clicks Fraudulent 09/18/2009 – Click fraud continues to plague online advertising, but many just want to sweep it under the rug. Radar Research managing partner Marissa Gluck calls it "the dirty little secret of the online ad industry that no one wants to talk about."

Link Report for September 17th through September 18th

Friday, September 18th, 2009

The Link Report

This is the Link Report for September 17th through September 18th:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

Link Report for September 16th through September 17th

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

The Link Report

This is the Link Report for September 16th through September 17th:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

Daily Link Report for September 15th

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

The Link Report

This is the Daily Link Report for September 15th

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

  • Facebook COO’s advice: Just post quickly – Postcards – Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg offered up some tips on how businesses can best use the social networking site during Fortune’s Most Powerful Women conference.
  • Mood Lighting and DIY Privacy Screens – Workspaces – Lifehacker – What do you do if you want some extra privacy in your office but you're not at liberty to go around tearing walls down and remodeling to fit your needs? Don your DIY hat and set to work.
  • Fast Food Chart Rounds Up the Unhealthiest Items at Popular Chains – Eating – Lifehacker – It's a given that fast food isn't the most nutritious way to sate your hunger, but as a helpful reminder, the gang over at web site Next Generation Food have charted the unhealthiest items from the most popular chains.
  • Windows 7 Transfers Your Wireless Settings Easily – windows 7 – Lifehacker – After discovering how easily WEP can be cracked and creating a long, secure WPA2 key, you've probably noticed it's a pain to get friends connected to your Wi-Fi network when they stop by. Windows 7 makes this process easy.
  • Facebook Crosses 300 Million Users. Oh Yeah, And They Just Went Cash Flow Positive. – 300 million is the obvious big news. But really, it was always just a matter of time before Facebook was going to hit the milestone. They hit 250 million back in July. Really, the much bigger news is the second item.
  • Breaking: Adobe To Acquire Omniture For Approximately $1.8 Billion – Adobe Systems has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Omniture for the former to acquire the latter in a transaction valued at approximately $1.8 billion on a fully diluted equity-value basis. Under the terms of the agreement, Adobe will commence a tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding common stock of Omniture for $21.50 per share in cash. The proposed offer represents a premium of 45% over Omniture’s average closing price for the last 30 trading days through yesterday’s close.
  • The US Government Is Going Google – It looks like The White House has copied a page from Google’sGoogleGoogle playbook and is now advocating that federal agencies move to the cloud. Google has long been a proponent of business in the cloud, most recently advocating their web-based Google Apps to enterprise prospects in the “Going Google” campaign.
  • Google Releases Chrome Version 3 – While the new stable release doesn’t introduce anything groundbreaking (unless you just love custom themes), it does provide some important tweaks. The biggest one focuses on Google’s (Google) #1 obsession: speed. This is Chrome’s (Chrome) bread and butter. The search company claims that the new browser is 25% faster at executing JavaScript than Chrome V2, among other speed fixes.
  • One in Five Tweets Are Free Brand Advertising – Research from Penn State found that a full twenty percent of tweets mention specific brand names or products. Out of half a million tweets examined during the study, one fifth were essentially free brand advertising.
  • Of course the Zune HD has been torn apart and photographed – It’s a tradition around these parts to photograph a dissected gadget. This time around it’s the new Zune HD which looks just as good on the inside as it does on the outside. Hit up anythingbutipod for the complete gallery of the teardown.

Link Report for September 14th through September 15th

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

The Link Report

This is the Link Report for September 14th through September 15th:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

  • Redesigning Your Web Site? Don’t Neglect SEO – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – Usability and SEO go hand-in-hand. Search engines want to rank Web sites that provide a quality user experience for the searcher. How that's defined can be somewhat subjective (every Web site is unique and its target audience will also be unique).
  • SEOmoz | Google Quietly Pushing More Links + Data in Snippets – The last 3 months have heralded a bevy of new tests and features from Google's search results, and it's worth taking a review of the most frequent of these and examining what it potentially holds for optimization of the future.
  • SEOmoz | A Link Building Rule to Cut Out and Keep – Link Building Explained
  • ReadTwit: All the Links From Your Twitter Stream in A Filtered RSS Feed – ReadWriteStart – In these hard times, it takes something pretty nifty to get us to write about a Twitter app; our eyebrows rose an inch or two when we were told about ReadTwit, an RSS application that makes Twitter smaller, faster, and better for those who need to find and consume interesting links.
  • Personal Relationship Manager Gist Launches to Public – Gist is not a system for the casual email user whose main communications involve sending email forwards to friends and pictures of the kids to mom and dad. Instead, Gist is designed to help the professional email user who often opens up their inbox only to feel like it's helplessly out of control. How do you know what the most important communications are? How can you stay up on what your email contacts are doing? Gist aims to solve these problems.
  • Brier Dudley’s blog | Microsoft launches Zune, clarifies what’s up apps, raps iPod | Seattle Times Newspaper – The HD Zune is here chock full of features.
  • Zune HD to get Twitter, Facebook as Microsoft abandons ‘squirting’ – Microsoft will support the two major players in the social media space.
  • New Facebook Application Creating Massive Volumes Of Photo Spam – The photo tagging phenomenon has officially jumped the shark on Facebook with the All my Friends! application which lets you instantly tag your friends in pre-made images. It’s not exactly a new concept but for some reason this iteration of the application has been extremely successful having attracted over 5 million users so far and growing daily.
  • Make Google Search Real-Time With This URL Hack – Google web search results can be limited by timeframe using the "search options" link on every page, but one startup company CEO discovered today that searches can also be limited to results indexed minutes or seconds ago by making a simple change to the search results page URL.
  • Ask.com Powers Breast Cancer Cause-Search Campaign – According to Ask.com spokesperson Nicholas Graham, while companies are expected to help community organizations, it's not unheard of for these cause-related partnerships to also benefit the companies. After donating $25,000 to Autism Speaks through a targeted awareness campaign, 80,000 visitors changed their Ask home pages to Autism Speaks-related skins and 63% of campaign visitors became permanent users. Despite the fact that the promotion lasted only a few days, Ask saw a 10% increase over other holiday and non-cause related skinning promotions. In anticipation of October and Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Ask is building upon its community successes and teaming up with Susan G. Komen for the Cure in "Search for the Cure".

Link Report for September 11th through September 13th

Saturday, September 12th, 2009

The Link Report

This is the Link Report for September 11th through September 13th:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

  • What’s Yahoo’s “Plan B” For Search? – If the DOJ won't let the Microsoft/Yahoo Deal go through, what's next for the #2 search engine?
  • 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.
  • What information is "personally identifiable"? | Electronic Frontier Foundation – You'd be surprised how information thought to be obscure really isn't.
  • Facebook Lite Threatens Facebook’s Brand Advertising Businesss – Facebook Lite seems to be missing the mark. A very interesting piece on how this could hurt brands.
  • 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.

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