Let’s all say it together: the Internet is a pretty public place. But not everyone seems to understand that, and now some teens who posted questionable pictures on Facebook have seen those photos resurface in their high school yearbook.
Yet, even if those teens should have known better, the yearbook staff is also to blame - the pictures were reprinted without asking students’ permission, and the yearbook didn’t mention any of the original photographers. Plus, well . . . there’s a certain laziness factor.
“Downloading pictures from Facebook proved more efficient than roaming campus with a camera,” states Daniel de Vise, a reporter with the Washington Post. “Some students used pictures from their own Facebook pages, while others used images culled from the pages of friends and classmates.”
I’ll admit to having a Facebook profile, but in terms of photographs, the site only contains a few pics of my car (with the license plate dutifully blacked out). That’s one way to avoid this problem; another would have been for the yearbook committee to receive more oversight, but de Vise notes, “The yearbook adviser . . . told students to avoid Facebook and MySpace at the start of the academic year but subsequently went on maternity leave and was replaced by a substitute, according to an account published in the school newspaper, The Pitch.”
Ah, well. This incident likely embarrassed some students - and angered some parents - but it’s not the worst thing that could have happened. Hat tip to Techdirt’s Mike Masnick.
Source:www.webpronews.com
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Facebook Photos Show Up In Yearbook
YouTube Crushes All Video Competition
Video sites have been ground into the grooves of YouTube's virtual tires on the information superhighway, in terms of online traffic.A 60 percent market share that is 50 percent greater than the next 64 video sites combined makes for a dominant position in the online video industry.
That's where Hitwise research director LeeAnn Prescott places YouTube, Google's $1.65 billion video acquisition.
Said Prescott:
YouTube's growth has not begun to slow yet this year. Hitwise traffic data shows that the market share of US visits to YouTube has increased by 70% when comparing January 2007 to May 2007 (this only includes site visits, not streams or streams from views on embedded videos).
Those 64 other video sites, in a custom category measuring US visits, grew by only 8 percent during the same period.
MySpace videos picked up 16 percent market share, good enough for second behind YouTube. Google, Yahoo, and MSN Video rounded out the top five, respectively.
Much of the traffic arriving on YouTube and other video sites comes from search engines. Prescott said about 20 percent of their traffic starts at a search engine result. "Clearly, optimizing your videos for search is just as important as getting your videos up on the web," said Prescott.
Yuntaa Launches Virtual Desktop for File Management
Yuntaa is an online desktop application that lets you store and share your digital media from a central location. Yuntaa is a hosting service, so you’ll have to pay to use it based on the amount of space you’d like to have. There is a free plan for you to use, though.
With this service, you can upload your images, music and videos, share items with the community, and manage all of your files. Yuntaa is designed to mimic your desktop, granting you a few desktop widgets for things like the time and your account info (which can be moved, but not deleted), and easy access to your files. The Yuntaa Manager is a downloadable application that lets you drag and drop items from your computer to Yuntaa, and also select files from your hard drive to be backed up on the site. These files can be automatically updated with the sync function and scheduled to occur on a regular basis.
There are a few community features within Yuntaa as well, giving you access to public files and other user profiles. You can make friends, comment on other media, save copies and download public files as well. The community functions of Yuntaa are not very developed though, and it wouldn’t be fair to say this is much of a social network. For example, sharing an item only gives you the option of sharing it with the community, or with Yuntaa friends.
It would be interesting though, to enable Yuntaa users to leverage this service as a collaborative file management tool, similar to Egnyte. Allowing Yuntaa to be used in a similar manner to sites like Zoomr, as a file hosting service for those that display media on their social networking profiles, including MySpace, hi5 and Piczo, wouldn’t be much of a stretch either.
Source: www.mashable.com
Monday, June 25, 2007
Fairtilizer Launches Basic Search and Discovery Music Site
Fairtilizer is a new music community that launched today.
The purpose behind fairtilizer is mostly for search and discovery, and not so much about the promotion of new artists. There are several ways to filter through songs, as you can search by artist, album, keyword, geographical location, username and genre, among other things. You can preview songs from your main search results page, as well as from the song’s profile page. Add songs to your favorites by voting for them, or add them to your playlists. These sections of your profile are available for other users to see as well.
Like YouTube, the fairtilizer rules say to follow copyright laws, but there is plenty of copyrighted music that’s been uploaded by users. The downside to this is that it makes it more difficult to search for music by artist name, as it would depend on the user to include the artist’s name within the tag words.
Similar to Finetune or MyStrands, there is a way to listen to your playlist independently of your fairtilizer browser window, and you can also embed the FairPlayer widget into another site, such as your MySpace, hi5 or Piczo profiles.. This could prove rather cumbersome. A few more additions to the site that would prove helpful for search and discovery would be the ability to save other users’ entire playlists, links to places where songs can be purchased and downloaded, and offering more information about artists.
Source: www.mashable.com
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Photorgy Uploads Images with an AIM Bot
Send photos to photorgy, and they’ll be displayed on your profile. Images go to a general folder, where you can organize them into albums later on. This organization feature uses drag-n-drop functionality, and works for your user photo and your Favorites section that shows along the right side of your profile. Photorgy uses an AIM bot to upload your images, and this can be extended to a larger group of friends looking to contribute to one photo album. You can upload an entire folder as well.
It’s important to note that you can’t use the Pictures tool on newer versions of AIM. There’s also no way to send photos directly to an album on Photorgy–you’ll have to send them to the general folder to be sorted out later. I also think it’s somewhat limiting that the only way to register and upload photos is by using AIM. Many of the Photorgy’s features are similar to Flickr, and this is definitely the market it’s after. Photorgy is pretty good about letting users know that its service can be used for image hosting, taking a direct stab at gaining Photobucket’s demographic.
Source: www.mashable.com
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Business Reviews Added To Google Maps
Google will tap its users for business reviews to complement the ones they collect from other online sources and display.
User-generated content has been at the core of the success of social media sites. Google will try tapping the desire of people to share their opinions on local businesses through the Google Maps service.
Such user-contributed reviews have been a fixture on Yahoo's competing product for some time. As with that service, Google requires reviewers to login to post their thoughts about a business.
Those reviews and other content as appropriate appear when the "More Info" link for a business has been clicked. For example, a hotel link has an overview of its features, details, reviews, photos, and web pages listed for its additional information.
From the reviews option, one can add their thoughts about the business from Google Maps. The reviewer adds a title and their review, and can select a star rating for the business in question. The nickname in use for the logged-in user can be edited to something different.
When searching for a type of business, people have the option to take a look at existing user-created content. A link at the bottom of the search results for a query leads to the available reviews placed on Google Maps previously.
There are some bugs to work out with the reviews. Searching for a dentist in Chicago brought up about 22 reviews, but not all of the content returned were reviews. One was a job listing for a network development manager with 'dentist' in the description; the listing came from Indeed.com.
Another review was a news story about a 79-year-old would-be bank robber who claimed to have come from a dentist and could only talk quietly. Neither of these results fulfilled what should have been review results.
Priceless Search Engine Marketing Tips
Search engine marketing is nothing but marketing about your goods and services in all major search engines to become popular on the web. Search engine marketing is entirely different from the traditional marketing methods that are used. This is the main reason why search engine marketing tips is very much sought after by any one who is setting up an online business and wants publicity for this.
Search engine marketing tips are not a difficult thing to be found. With so many online sites one just needs a few hits with the mouse and the information will be displayed to you. The only thing which one needs to be cautious is to make sure that they do not end up following and implementing the improper search engine marketing tips to market their goods and services. Listed below is some search engine marketing tips which will help a business in progressing towards the target that has been set.
• Research is vital and there is no two ways about this. As a business owner you must know the competition that is present in the market. Only then will you be able to make strategies that will help your business in succeeding.
• Analyze the market and see the trends that are doing rounds. No business can succeed without knowing what the competing business is up to. Try to find out how successful a particular strategy is and if this is suitable for your business or not.
• Change is the only constant element in the digital market. So you must be updated with all the changes that are taking place. This is the only way and in fact the best way to keep pace with all that is going on in the digital world.
• Determine what aspects are important and focus your attention on that. If getting huge number of customers is your goal, concentrate all your resources toward that. But make sure that you do not neglect the other aspects of your business.
• Each business ahs different requirements, so first you nee to find out exactly what you would like achieve. Setting realistic goals is vital; you must remember that no business can become an overnight success.
Each business wants to be successful, and it is only that the ways and means through which one can become successful that is different. Promotion about this in just the right places is very crucial; you must identify your target audience properly and make sure that the results are fruitful for your business. Search engine marketing tips if followed in its proper perspective has the capacity to propel a business to unexpected corridors of success.
Search engine marketing tips are not a difficult thing to be found. With so many online sites one just needs a few hits with the mouse and the information will be displayed to you. The only thing which one needs to be cautious is to make sure that they do not end up following the improper search engine marketing tips to market their goods and services.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Google to use YouTube to amass video database
It turns out the site could bring an even bigger benefit to the Mountain View company: It may provide a way for Google to easily and legally amass the world's biggest database of video, helping it figure out better ways to search that kind of material.
Google confirmed Tuesday it would begin collecting that content as part of the test of a system to prevent unauthorized material from showing up on YouTube. Disney, Time Warner and some unidentified content owners will be participating in the experiment, which will start next month.
"What we are trying to do is get this to work for You Tube's entire library," said spokesman Ricardo Reyes.
Google had been using technology provided by Audible Magic, a Los Gatos company that identifies copyrighted songs or videos by creating a digital fingerprint and comparing it to a database of such works. That deal was first reported by the Mercury News in February.
The technology, which focuses on fingerprinting audio tracks, is used by video-sharing sites like MySpace, Microsoft (Soapbox), Break.com, Dailymotion, Eyespot, GoFish and Grouper to identify both copyrighted music and video.
Google, however, only used the technology to filter music, and said Tuesday it would create its own system for videos .
Its system would have participating entertainment companies provide material that Google would add to a giant database of video content that it would maintain. It would use that database to track down unauthorized content. For instance, a studio would give Google copies of "Sopranos" episodes, against which it could compare illegally posted copies of those episodes on YouTube.
The issue of culling out offending content became especially critical for Google when Viacom and other entertainment giants requested that YouTube remove more than 100,000 unauthorized clips and prevent users from posting unauthorized copies of movies, television shows, music videos and other copyrighted works.
Viacom subsequently sued Google for massive copyright infringement in March, seeking $1 billion in damages. Viacom and other entertainment companies have complained that Google tried to force them to do deals to license their content by refusing to protect copyrights in the absence of an agreement.
And Google has come under fire from others for the way it has handled the copyright issue. Lou Solomon, an attorney at Proskauer Rose who has filed a class-action suit against Google and YouTube on behalf of content owners such as France's professional soccer league and national tennis association, said Google's agreement with Audible Magic proves it already had the capability to police its site.
"Content owners should have a choice whether someone takes their property or not," he said.
Josh Bernoff, an analyst with Forrester Research, said Google's approach could end up benefiting the company. While YouTube's users may object to the new filtering system, nearly all YouTube's competitors have put similar systems in place, leaving unhappy users with few options.
Search Advantage
Buried in the news about the filtering announcement were hints of a different agenda at work at the search engine giant. Bernoff noted that the creation of a massive database of video content could give Google an advantage in solving the problem of video search. "The key is to have a huge amount of material to apply your algorithms to," he said.
Some observers said $1.6 billion could end up being a cheap price to pay for a collection of the world's most valuable video. For instance, Google plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to create the world's largest library of digital books.
Still, Vance Ikezoye, the chief executive of Audible Magic, wondered if content owners would be willing to provide Google with copies of their work. "I believe the value we provide is that we are a third party who is independent," he said.
Source:www.siliconvalley.com
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
AdWords Gets Content Placement Reports
Google announced today the addition of Placement Performance reports to AdWords, which allows advertisers to see exactly which sites their ads are appearing.
In addition to knowing where ads show up, the reports provide site-by-site metrics like domain, URL, impression, click, conversion, and cost data, and aggregated metrics for traffic generated from AdSense.
The new offering is intended to increase transparency and giver advertisers greater control over contextual advertising.
The company says reports can be coupled with conversion tracking tools like AdWords conversion tracking or Google analytics.
Source:www.webpronews.com
Social Media Optimization is an Innovative Optimization Method
Social media optimization is the newest thing which is happening in the World Wide Web. Everything associated with the web is changing on a constant basis and to be attuned with the latest, one needs to know all about the latest happenings like social media optimization.
The internet world is rapidly expanding these days and the due to this the way we communicate with people is also undergoing vast changes. Earlier after people left school, college or their birth city there was very little chance of getting in touch with family and friends who are associated with those places. Today that is no longer the case, all thanks to social media platform which in turn has given rise to social media optimization. Today, social media optimization has become the best means through which one can promote anything on the web.
Social media optimization ideally means promoting about something on all the social media platforms. Studies have found out the more then 70 percent of people those who surf the web regularly have an online profile on some social networking site or the other. So it makes sense if someone wants to promote about their things on all these social networking platforms and attract attention. The whole idea is to create a buzz on the web about the thing which you want the people to know.
Naturally when a buzz is created everywhere, there will be lots of discussion and debate about that aspect and this is a very good means to become popular on the web without making extensive efforts.
Getting popularity is not an easy task and one needs to undertake lots of work and effort to make this a success. The business world is rapidly expanding and one needs to know all about the latest which is happening to become successful.
One of the main things, which need to be done for successful social media optimization, is facilitating free travel of content on the web. Webmasters are always on the lookout for well written content and if you have really good content written on your site you can become popular very easily. Whenever someone uses the articles or content from your site, a link will of your site will be provided and this will make sure that more and more visit your site and you become popular.
The basic idea behind social media optimization is rather simple. You just need to implement certain things on your site which will make it more easily accessible to visitors at all social media platforms. Another means which can be implemented for social media optimization is through participating in all the discussions that are taking place on the web about the subject on which you are promoting.
The web is populated with forums on anything and everything. The best part about talking part in these discussions is that even if there is no discussion taking place, you can very easily create a thread about the concerned subject and start the discussion. Social media optimization has huge scope and all you need to do is identify the proper method for doing this.
Getting popularity is not an easy task and one needs to undertake lots of work and effort to make this a success. The business world is rapidly expanding and one needs to know all about the latest which is happening to become successful. One of the main things, which need to be done for successful social media optimization, is facilitating free travel of content on the web.
Monday, June 11, 2007
ESPN Buys Cricinfo
ESPN has announced they are purchasing Cricinfo, a cricket Web site, from the Wisden group.
"Growing our business in the on-line world is vital for us to serve sports fans," said Russell Wolff, managing director of ESPN International. "Cricinfo is a tremendous property with a great fan base and it will be a strong addition to ESPN."
The purchase of Cricinfo will add to ESPN's on-line portfolio, which includes ESPN.com, ESPNdeportes.com, a Spanish language sports Web site and ESPNsoccernet.com.
Wisden Group director Mark Getty, said: "Cricinfo has developed into a significant cricket brand in its own right, combining huge global popularity with strong commercial success."
"ESPN is a major sports broadcaster and international rights holder and will provide the perfect environment for Cricinfo to further realize its enormous potential. The Wisden Group will continue to focus on its Hawk-Eye sports technology business in cricket, tennis and a growing range of other sports."
ESPN's digital media initiatives deliver a combination of live and on demand sport events, including sports news, scores, analysis, on demand video, fantasy sports, video games, mobile and other platforms.
Plans For Google Kenya Kick Into High Gear
My surprise at this move shouldn’t be construed as an insult; it’s just that Kenya isn’t widely viewed as a technological hotspot. In an article posted on allAfrica.com, Russell Southwood made a similar point, writing, “Google is moving outside of the continental comfort zones for most global investors, North and South Africa, and is opening its first operation in Sub-Saharan Africa.”
Then again, we have seen Google’s name associated with Kenya at least once before -the search engine giant came bearing Google Apps - so this shouldn’t come as a complete shock. And we should remember that Google’s move to North Carolina raised some eyebrows, as well.
In any event, Southwood continues, “Kenya has been chosen as the base camp for what is likely to turn into a sub-regional business.” He then notes that Joseph Mucheru has been chosen to head up the operation.
This detail could be treated as a story in its own right. African Path celebrates Mucheru’s past accomplishments (he is “one of the true leaders in the ISP space”), and then reveals, “This is Google’s first sub-Saharan Africa employee, not counting a couple sales guys in SA.” There’s even a picture of Joseph Mucheru sitting with Russell Southwood (I’m thinking that Southwood is the chap who looks like Colin Mochrie).
And if Kenya’s newly situated Mucheru has any questions, he can always call up his fellow Googlers in Egypt and Israel. Together, those locations may put Google a few steps ahead of Starbucks and McDonalds in that part of the world.
Source: www.webpronews.com
Friday, June 8, 2007
Google Spreads Out AdWords Account Snapshot
All of its advertising clients will be able to use the Account Snapshot page in AdWords, and utilize it beyond the desktop browser.
Beta testing has ended on the new AdWords feature that provides key account information in one place. Google summarized the Account Snapshot features on their help pages:
Important account and campaign alerts and status updates
A performance overview with configurable statistics and graphs for your advertising costs, clicks, impressions, CTR, conversion rate, and more Links to helpful tips and other resources to help you get the most out of AdWords
Advertisers can set the Snapshot as their AdWords starting page simply by clicking a link at the bottom of the Campaign Summary page.
The Inside AdWords blog noted what's new for advertisers, as a feature on the Snapshot page:
The page also offers something completely new to AdWords - SMS (or mobile phone) alerts about important account events related to billing, disapproved ads, and campaign maintenance. In addition to SMS, you can choose to be alerted online or via e-mail.
Source: www.webpronews.com
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Street Level Google Flashes The World - Literally
Ironically, you'll need the latest version of Flash to see this. Google's latest addition to its Maps service – Street-Level pictures – could cause some folks to get their, um, panties in a twist.
That is, unless they don't mind showing their thongs to all of creation. San Francisco is pretty well known for its liberal tendencies, so maybe she's cool with it.
Or maybe it's an art exhibit. The query was, after all, for a museum.
If you're looking at this article through your fingers to maintain your pure thoughts, here's a brief description: the street level view shows a young lady getting into or out of a white pickup.
While it's not exactly the Full Monty – and certainly viewable on network TV – I don't know too many young ladies on this coast that would be comfortable showing their underwear, literally, to the world. (Click on the image to see it better on Google Maps. -- UPDATE: the image has been removed from Google Maps.)
Sorry for being cheeky.
And for cracking jokes.
This is a mild PG-13 example, but it makes you wonder what else photographers have captured at the street level, and how much Google is monitoring or approving the pictures that show up there. It's only been a week or so since the Street-Level view was launched and already we've been mooned.
Privacy, for sure, seems a thing of the past.
Willie Nelson, whatever you do, do it indoors.
Source: www.webpronews.com
DoubleClick, Pepperjam Partner
Strictly speaking, this alliance only involves two online marketing companies, but you know that, somewhere back there, Google’s watching. It’s Google’s pal DoubleClick that’s involved, you see; the other party in this technology partnership is called Pepperjam.
Details about the deal are slim. According to a press release, “Pepperjam ... has selected DoubleClick’s integrated DART platform to meet the digital marketing needs of Pepperjam and its clients.”
And that’s all good and well, but it may leave some of you wondering what, exactly Pepperjam is. The job of describing - or at least giving you an idea of - the company may be best left to Jason Bigler, DoubleClick’s vice president of product management. “Pepperjam is growing tremendously, adding new clients each week and we are thrilled that they have decided to streamline their ad management with DoubleClick,” said Bigler in a statement.
He went on to describe Pepperjam’s work as a series of “world-class advertising campaigns that produce great results and allow Pepperjam to achieve operational excellence.”
DoubleClick and Pepperjam should be able work together - and hopefully achieve still more of that “operational excellence” - without upsetting any of the FTC powers-that-be. On Pepperjam’s blog, Kris Jones, the CEO and president of the company, writes, “Truth is we’ve been in negotiations with Doubleclick dating back before Google’s $3.1 Billion acquisition.”
There’s been no word from the Googleplex, but, if Google was unaware of these dealings, that information had to come as good news. I’m sure the search engine giant doesn’t, on the whole, mind the deal between DoubleClick and Pepperjam, either.
Source: www.webpronews.com
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Google, Salesforce.com partner on Web site
Salesforce.com and Google launched a Web site on Tuesday that is designed to allow the online customer relationship management software maker to act as a reseller for Google's AdWords.
For Salesforce.com, the alliance expands its efforts to tie its hosted CRM software with Google AdWords, following its acquisition last year of privately held Kieden, which had created an add-on to Salesforce's hosted services for purchasing and managing Google-driven ad campaigns. Salesforce.com will expand beyond allowing its customers to launch Google AdWords from a Salesforce.com application to one in which it will act as a reseller of the Google AdWords platform.
The two companies jointly developed Salesforce Group Edition, which features Google AdWords, and will jointly market the offering, said Kendall Collins, senior vice president of marketing for Salesforce.com.
Salesforce Group Edition is designed to allow companies to connect to Google AdWords and have their advertisement displayed on Google.com when related search terms are entered on the site. They can also distribute their ads on Google AdSense, the advertising program that allows Web site publishers to earn a portion of ad revenue by hosting Google-sponsored ads on their sites.
When potential customers click on the advertisement, they are taken to the company's Web site and are encouraged to fill out a form that records their name. This information is then transmitted to a company's sales team as a potential sales lead via Salesforce's technology.
"This alliance was a natural fit for us," said Collins, noting that the two companies are similar in the way they approach delivering services over the Internet, such as leveraging open application program interfaces (APIs).
The Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords targets midsize to small companies and costs $1,200 per year for five users, although a 30-day promotion is under way that offers the product for $600 for five users for the first year. That promotional price includes a $50-per-year Google AdWords credit.
As part of the nonexclusive deal, Salesforce will receive all proceeds from the sale of its Salesforce Group Edition and share a nominal portion of any Google AdWords sales, Collins said. The remainder of the proceeds from Google AdWords will go to Google.
While the joint-development efforts between the companies has produced one product, Sean Whiteley, director of Salesforce's search marketing, said its customers will drive future development plans.
"We're hoping that as people use these products, it will become evident what we should do next," Whiteley said.
The two companies also share common values, such as placing a high priority on services, multitenancy and ease of use, Marc Benioff, Salesforce chief executive, said during a presentation Tuesday afternoon in San Francisco to introduce the Google alliance and debut the company's Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords.
"We have a dream to create millions of AdWords users," Benioff said.
Google, meanwhile, said the alliance will aid them in their effort to make marketing campaigns and advertising, as cost efficient as possible for their advertisers--a customer group that supplies the Internet giant with the bulk of its revenues.
Citing a common complaint in the advertising industry, Sheryl Sandberg, Google vice president of global online sales and operations, said advertisers lament: "I'm wasting half of my ad budget, but I just don't know which half."
The alliance is designed to provide advertisers with information and graphics on how their customers are responding to their ad campaigns, via following their movements on their respective Web site from the time they click on a banner ad to the time they exit the site.
Source: www.news.com
Get Innovative by Adopting Social Media Optimization
Today social networking is the most popular means through which people stay connected with their family and friends. Gone are the days when one actually had to travel to long miles to meet their childhood friend or college friend. Now with the wonderful innovations made in the world of internet staying in touch has become extremely easy. The ideal platform to be in touch on the web today is trough the social networking platforms. A study has indicated that more then 80% people have an online profile of some kind or the other. So now if you have to optimize your site on the web, these social networking platforms are the best place to do it. Social media optimization has immense potential if used in the right ways.
Having great content on the site is one of the benchmarks of doing good and successful social media optimization. There has always been a scarcity of good content on the web and if you have that on your site, you are already ahead of your competitors. Earning profit and being ahead of competitors is what all business aims at doing. It is another matter that only few of them actually manage to be successful and implementing social media optimization strategies can surely help a business in becoming a success story. Another thing which you can implement for social media optimization is to make your content in the form of audio and video files. Being innovative and different is what attract people these days and if you can incorporate your content in the form of audio and video files you can go ahead in the market really soon.
Change is the one thing which you need to bring about in your business. So whether it is social media optimization or any other new business strategy, as the owner of a company or business, you have to make a wise choice about this. Remember that every strategy will not be successful and just because one technique is very popular does not mean that you have to use this or that it will be perfectly suitable for your business. You need to analyze the market thoroughly and determine what you need to do for your company. The call is your and make sure that you make a wise move and do not get swayed by anything and everything that you come across.
Having great content on the site is one of the benchmarks of doing good and successful social media optimization. There has always been a scarcity of good content on the web and if you have that on your site, you are already ahead of your competitors. Earning profit and being ahead of competitors is what all business aims at doing.
Source: www.cometsearchenginemarketing.com
Defining Social Media
"Social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives and media itself.
Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. These sites typically use technologies such as blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs to allow users to interact.
A few prominent examples of social media applications are Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), Gather.com (social networking),YouTube (video sharing), Second Life (virtual reality), Digg (news sharing), Flickr (photo sharing) and Miniclip (game sharing)."
You have to start some place. OK, first I think one of the biggest myths regarding social media is that it equals user-generated content. I think the definition of "user-generated" content might be the only thing more confused than the definition of social media (which might make them a great pairing). Second, there is nothing about social media that demands user creation. The "media" part of social media can be anything from professional content to home videos.
Just because "America's Funniest Home Videos" consisted of user-generated content certainly didn't make it social media. Conversely, just because "Heroes" is professionally produced doesn't mean that it can't be social media.
The real difference between broadcast media and social media is not the media itself, but the system of discovery, distribution, consumption and conversation surrounding the media. This brings me to my point of contention with Wikipedia's definition. As "America's Funniest Home Videos" was user-generated content before the YouTubes of the world, so social media existed before MySpace. It's just that before digital technology, it took significantly more effort for media to inspire dialogue and sharing among communities of people. Sharing a VHS among friends, or gathering groups to watch a popular television show, is a lot more work than simply clicking and sharing media content.
What many of us are defining as social media today are actually just technologies specifically architected to facilitate people's natural tendencies to seek out, share and discuss media content. Think about it.
How is MySpace social medium? I would certainly say that MySpace is the largest and most influential social media platform of our time, but it doesn't create media (at least not for most of it). The media one finds on MySpace is a mix of professional, semi-professional and (I hate using the term) "user- generated" content, and that media is made social by the context of its distribution and its ability to create dialogue between people.
ANY TYPE OF MEDIA CAN BE SOCIAL MEDIA -- and eventually all media will be social media in the most literal definition. This will have serious implications for media companies and advertisers alike, so it is important that we are not dismissing social media as the user-generated portion of the Internet.
By Joe Marchese Source: www.mediapost.com
Google, BBC Make Mash-Ups
The word “mash-up” has certain connotations; the product may not be too polished, or it could be downright amateurish. The British Broadcasting Corporation is not an amateur, however; the BBC is, in fact, the world’s biggest broadcasting corporation. And the BBC’s into mash-ups.
That’s interesting information, but even more interesting is the name of the BBC’s pal in this endeavor: Google. “One-third of the prototypes hosted on backstage.bbc.co.uk - where developers can post ideas and prototypes for reusing Auntie’s content in new and interesting ways - are mash-ups with Google Maps or other Google apps,” reports Silicon.com’s Gemma Simpson.
Also, lest you should get the idea that Google somehow slipped those mash-ups into place while “Auntie” (also known as the BBC) was looking the other way, Simpson adds that “Matthew Cashmore, BBC Backstage producer, said a lot of the content on the BBC website has a geographical element . . . and this sort of content fits well within a Google Maps mash-up.”
The BBC has, after all, proven that it wants to transition smoothly into the 21st century; it even arranged a deal with Google-owned YouTube. As for Google, well . . . we all know how the search engine company loves to forge partnerships and make acquisitions. In the end, it’s nice to see both gigantic corporations taking an interest in mash-ups, though what this means for the traditional creators of such things remains to be seen.
Source: www.webpronews.com
SMX: SEO Tip! Love The Social Media
Social media marketing can turn the mild-mannered site marketer into an energy-wielding superhero, infused with the pure power of link love and heavy traffic.
WebProNews will have stories and videos from Danny's inaugural Search Marketing Expo titled "SMX Advanced" in Seattle this week. Stop by our site or sign up for our free newsletter and follow the search marketing news.
Mmm, site traffic. More of it can be attained through social media marketing, as a variety of search marketing and optimization pros attested at SMX: Advanced.
Rand Fishkin talked about differences between social media marketing and viral marketing. The key difference comes in building authority. Social media links can be a big authority boost.
He noted some examples of what's out their in social media. The very popular Yahoo Answers has its topics place well in the SERPs for Google as well as Yahoo. A site publisher with quality content for a given category should try being active in the relevant section of Answers.
Comments from photo sharing site Flickr don't place a nofollow attribute on their outbound links. As for blog search site Technorati, site publishers should definitely tag their content to take advantage of its recently updated properties.
Viral media, especially when video sharing site YouTube is in the conversation (and virtually defines it) can boost search rankings and site traffic thanks to the growing fan base. Other viral sites that can push a flood of traffic include Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and NewsVine for those who reach the "top of the vine."
Neil Patel chatted about the rules for social sites: don't pay for votes; don't create multiple accounts for voting purposes; and don't submit illegal content.
He put those tenets to the test on one such social media site, creating 30 accounts from his IP address while submitting illegal content and paying for votes. The result: he was banned within hours.
In Patel's experience, the young and frequently chippy audience for many of these social media sites can be a problem. A site publisher who participates in the community, and submits comments and content of value, can build a valuable social brand in turn.
Seeking social media superpower requires intelligent, focused effort. The rewards for that work can be, well, super.
Source: www.webpronews.com