• twitter-ads-api

    March 7, 2013

    Why Social Media Marketers Will Love the New Twitter Ads API

    Twitter has recently announced that it is rolling out an Ads API, which isn’t much of a surprise. The move had been predicted for almost two years by various rumor mills, with LinkedIn and Facebook already making a similar service available. In Twitter’s case, it was just a matter of when it would happen.

    Many see this decision as a wise move by Twitter for numerous reasons. It lets Twitter profit from the expertise of various third party developers that have a lot of experience putting together online marketing platforms which will help advertisers create, manage and optimize advertising campaigns of different sizes.

    But what impact will this have on marketers and companies advertising budgets? What can advertisers get from third party advertising solution partners soon?

    Buying Ad Units on Twitter Will Become Easier

    Previously, Twitter only had two ways to buy advertising: either using their basic interface by yourself or contacting Twitter’s direct sales team. The problem with this approach to buying ads is that it becomes quite hard to scale if the advertiser wants to run several campaigns frequently. By making the Ads API available, Twitter has taken steps to make things easier for online marketers, giving them the ability to purchase and manage Twitter ad units from numerous third party developers.

    It is Easier to Create Ad Campaigns on Twitter

    Putting up and managing advertising campaigns on Twitter was quite tedious. The process wasn’t really adapted to the needs that big brands and advertising agencies have. If an agency had to create thousands of ads for different clients each day, the process would be quite painful for them.

    By giving them the ability to use third-party tools such as Adobe Marketing Cloud and TBG Digital One Media Manager, advertisers now have the ability to upload and change ads in bulk, making the creation and management process a lot easier, just like on YouTube or Facebook.

    Better Analytics and Reporting

    While the current reporting tools allow someone to see their followers on Twitter, checking impressions, clicks, retweets and replies, they don’t do much else. Twitter will now add more content to analytics and reporting tools, even letting advertisers compare their campaigns with the ones they run on Facebook and LinkedIn.

    Improved Targeting Options

    Of course, it is possible to buy Twitter followers in addition to using the ad platform, but to be effective an advertising campaign needs to be highly targeted. Twitter’s new Ads API, together with their partners will offer more precise targeting, which can do things like ranking individuals according to how much influence they have on particular topics. This goes far beyond targeting by gender, interests and location.

    You Can Expect to Get Ad Optimization in Real-Time

    There are hundreds of solution providers which can help find relevant conversations and make suggestions to optimize ad campaigns based on Twitter trend monitoring. Another useful element to optimize campaigns is the testing of a “Get it Now” button, which lets advertisers generate leads right from their tweets.

  • twitter-ecommerce-savings

    February 25, 2013

    Cashing in on the Holiday Spirit All Year Round

    Any small business owner knows that connecting with customers is not an easy task in a competitive and crowded marketplace. That is why more and more companies are using holiday-themed marketing techniques and promotions to boost business. Holidays provide an excellent opportunity to connect with the themes that are already on the minds of customers and make it possible to channel their brands through the more inviting language of festivity. And it’s not just the big holidays anymore. President’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Veteran’s Day, and many others are routinely exploited by business-to-consumer and business-to-business organizations alike in order to boost exposure and increase sales.

    On February 7, 2013, in conjunction with Smallbiztrends.com, FedEx Office hosted a Twitter chat called “How SMBs Can Take Advantage of Consumer Holidays.” Twitter followers from across the business community contributed ways to creatively capitalize on the holidays, offering unique promotion ideas and emphasizing the need to choose holidays wisely and plan accordingly. Some of the suggestions include: the use of giant themed inflatables, targeting customers on Facebook depending on their relationship status, and working together with other businesses on joint promotions. There are also some helpful tips for restaurants in particular, including offering promotions on the days surrounding the holiday itself and printing special menus.

    Holiday-themed marketing is a great way for businesses to connect with customers online. This technique is practically the norm on many ecommerce sites. Facebook and Twitter have become major outlets for letting customers know about new deals and promotions, as well as acting as effective sounding boards for customer feedback. Utilization of unique or interesting holidays can be a powerful tool in reaching new customers through social media as well. By investing in marketing and promotional efforts online, businesses can, in effect, buy Twitter followers or Facebook likes while at the same time gaining a deeper understanding of customers’ specific needs.

    Often, a company will select a specific holiday for use in advertisements or promotional efforts in order to imply something deeper about the brand. For example, many businesses offer Memorial Day or Veteran’s day promotions in order to paint themselves as patriotic supporters of America’s heroes. This can be an effective tool for targeting a particular market.

    It is essential that today’s businesses reach out to customers through the internet and social media. Combined with thoughtful and pertinent holiday-based marketing and promotional efforts, businesses can target more customers more effectively, foster more meaningful relationships with them, and increase their bottom line.

  • cyber-hacking

    February 23, 2013

    Eastern Europeans crack into Apple, Twitter and Facebook

    Cyber hacking has become increasingly prevalent as the age of the internet advances and valuable company secrets, codes and identifying information are embedded in popular websites. When the major companies get hit, it breaks headlines, but countless other, smaller companies are exploited for this information as well.

    Two anonymous informants told CNN that the suspects seemed to be searching for proprietary research or intellectual information that could be repackaged and resold on the black market.

    Apple subsequently confirmed that their employees’ computers had been violated after they visited a site that exploited a weakness in the Java software it employed. Facebook released a similar statement after its employees’ visited such a site. However, both companies denied any user data being violated in the intrusions. Twitter, however, also admitted being hacked into, yet followers on Twitter were not so fortunate as many user names and emails were exposed.

    The president’s cyber security team is looking for culprits. China denies any foul-play despite some suspecting otherwise. The authorities on the subject feel that the most proficient cyber criminals are from the Eastern parts of Russia; to boot, this area has grown into a rampant black market where software tools are exchanged and sold to terrorist groups and other organized criminals.

    These intrusions were generated via secondary websites that the criminals hacked into and embedded virii in. The chosen websites were suspected by the hackers to be likely visitation sites of the victims. Once the bait is set, all that remains is patience until the hacked website is visited.

    Although this method does not guarantee that the hackers will be able to exploit their main target (as hackers cannot control who takes the bait), once the site is visited and the party infected, they can be followed back to their own website and have their personal data inspected.

    iPhone Dev SDK, a developers site that partners with Apple’s mobile OS, was a victim of this attack. They reassured the public that they had no real reason to believe their user data was compromised. However, to err on the side of conservatism they reset all passwords, a decision that if followed in suit, would not be in remiss buy Twitter followers.

    Security loopholes in the Java software code are responsible for a number of the latest hacks. Apple responded by shipping its newest hardware without Java preloaded, and if installed, set the plugin to disable after 35 days of dormancy.

  • February 22, 2013

    Vimeo Takes Down the Iconic “I Have a Dream” Speech on Internet Freedom Day

    Last year, as many will likely remember, there was a coordinated protest of the two anti copyright piracy bills in the US Congress: SOPA, also known as the Stop Online Piracy Act and PIPA, the Protect IP Act. This protest was announced to Congress by the Internet through a coordinated blackout. Almost 75,000 websites participated in this protest against the two bills, which were widely perceived to overstepping the bounds of both legality and morality.

    This same issue seems to be in the spotlight again, with the one year anniversary of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) protest. The anniversary of the blackout is now dubbed the Internet Freedom Day. The internet freedom advocacy rights groups called Fight for the Future has uploaded a video of Martin Luther King Jr’s legendary “I Have a Dream” speech onto the Vimeo video sharing platform. The video is original footage of the 1963 speech, and the copyright is owned by a British company called EMI Publishing. Before reaching a significant amount of vimeo views the video was taken down by Vimeo on the count of it violating the Terms of Service.

    The video was uploaded to honor both the Internet Freedom Day and Martin Luther King’s legacy, so it’s a shame it did not receive any vimeo views. It was brought down under the pretense of it violating copyright law and therefore the Terms of Service of the site, when in fact many companies violate the Terms of Service in a much more egregious fashion daily, such as when they buy vimeo views, and the site rarely does anything about those videos.

    At 1pm Eastern Time Fight for the Future group, who is the group responsible for uploading the video, announced on Twitter the fact that the video was pulled and the reasons for this. Ms. Tiffany Chen, who is one of the founders of the Fight for the Future group, commented to the press on the take down of the video. She revealed that they received an automated notice that the video was violating the terms of service.

    More news is expected on the matter in the future, since Fight for the Future is an activist group, we can be sure that they will not let this matter rest, but will in fact pursue it further, if anything to garner more attention from the mainstream press and to highlight the need to fight bills like SOPA and PIPA.

  • tweet-major-advertisers

    February 21, 2013

    Twitter Becoming More Popular for Major Advertisers

    As Obama gave his State of the Union speech, advertisers clamored for tweets on Twitter to promote their products and company values. Several companies and organizations, including Chevron, AARP, Microsoft and the National Rifle Association, were busy bidding on tweet placement before and during the hour-long speech. By winning bids on sponsored tweet spots, advertisers were able to put their tweets in front of more users who looked up terms related to the speech. Each company specifically targeted certain terms from the event that related to their stance on the issues and their own commercial interests.

    Twitter Growing As Companion to TV

    In years past, the social networking site was known mainly as a place for celebrities and commentators to give their thoughts on everything in pop culture, but it has been turning into a companion for major television events, such as the Academy Awards and the Super Bowl. The opportunity to place relevant social networking advertisements in front of TV-watching consumers comes at a far lower price than television commercials. In addition, the interactive nature of tweeting invites more attention from consumers.

    Social Networking Strategies Developing

    40 percent of TV viewers say they use their smartphones as they watch television programs. Many viewers enjoy commenting on what celebrities wear, eat and drink on live television. When something exciting happens on television, advertisers can reap big rewards by getting in on the action with relevant tweets. During the State of the Union speech, AARP constantly had two employees watching the speech, with one in charge of tweeting about what the president said and the other bidding for placement of their tweets. As the organization posted more tweets, they got information from the social networking site about the numbers of posts made in response to them. Advertisers consider this constant feedback to be invaluable.

    Twitter Counting on Advertisers

    As it grows beyond its role as a small private blogging platform, the social networking site is counting on advertisers to help it develop into a major force on the business scene. It’s already hired a former ad sales manager from Google to handle advertising from Washington lawmakers. As the public becomes more interested in real-time interactivity in the public sphere, entities that fail to advertise on social networking are missing out on a potentially huge source of exposure.

    Getting More Followers

    With each major television event, millions of users are following their favorite posters and making their own tweets. However, advertisers know that their success on the social networking site rests on their having lots of followers. Unfortunately, this can be a difficult prospect for companies who are just beginning to promote their goods or services on the site. For this reason, it’s not unusual for savvy companies to simply buy Twitter followers to encourage their expansion on the site.

  • search-twitter

    February 20, 2013

    What Do We Really Know About Twitter’s Search?

    When you think of searching and Twitter, then you may think that there are a lot of similarities between the two, but that is not the case. Search engines are usually the first thing that springs to mind. When you use a search engine such as Google, then you are probably certain that you will be able to easily find important information.

    Search engines such as Google has powerful algorithms that makes their search engines work. Search engines do not work well because they are able to index every little thing in the world. In matter of fact, if you are like many people, then you probably do not even go past the first or second page of Google, therefore you are not going through all of the data that Google has collected and stored. Many people who use Twitter want the site to do the same thing. Basically there are quite a few people who would like to access every single tweet that has ever been Tweeted. However, you do not want to be able to access every single tweet; the only tweets you want access to are the good ones.

    One thing is for sure, and that Twitter is a very powerful tool for all types of people involved in many different industries. The more Twitter followers someone has, the better off they are because it means even more exposure for themselves and their business. If a person does not have time to gather followers, then the best option to do is buy Twitter followers. A person can purchase Twitter followers and gain a huge following in a very short amount of time, which is good news for them.

    It seems that the main issue with the site is figuring out which Tweets they should show users when they search for a particular hashtag, phrase or topic. For example, if you typed in #Grammys, then the site will return a lot of useless junk, which means that your experience would not be a very good one.

    The big question is, is the site planning on trying to change the way search looks? Sources say that the answer to this question is yes.

    Remember last year when the site rolled out a feature that allows people to download archives of Tweets? During that time, there was probably a bunch of people who used the feature once, maybe twice and then thought they wanted the feature, but then thought if they actually really needed it?

    As of now it is the site’s problem, and everyone will have to wait and see what the site has planned for the search world. No other service can be compared to the site’s service, so everyone is going to have to wait and see what the site decides to do in the future.

  • posterous-logo

    February 18, 2013

    Posterous Is Taking the Axe from Twitter

    People not up to date on what’s going on in the world of social media will be surprised to hear that Posterous, the blogging and note sharing platform, will be shut down at the end of April.

    Posterous allowed its users to post blogs using email to what they referred to as “Spaces.” What was originally meant as a place to share thoughts and spaces, quickly turned into a social media website that shared snippets and photos. Twitter bought out Posterous for an unknown amount back in March of 2012.

    After the acquisition, Twitter announced it would allow Posterous and its team to continue to refine and develop the social media platform, with the hopes that it would become a rival to the popular Tumblr. These hopes did not come into fruition and no one has really heard much of Posterous since their Twitter buy-out.

    The announcement that Posterous will soon be closing was made on the Posterous blog. Posterous founder and CEO, Sachin Agarwal, also confirmed and agreed with Twitter’s decision to shut down the platform and its string of mobile apps.

    In the statement,Agarwal said that him and his team would be working, focusing, and concentrating their efforts on other Twitter-made projects. This helps reinforce the theory that the company bought out Posterous for its talent, as according to a number of heated Twitter followers.

    Many Twitter followers, and those looking to buy Twitter followers who used Posterous for its simplicity, are voicing their angers, concerns and frustrations over the Posterous shut-down.

    Posterous launched back in 2008, with their main mission being to make photo sharing easier and the process of connecting across multiple social media platforms simple. Agarwal claims that him and his team will continue to push their methods and features into their future projects.

    Posterous will be closing its doors on April 30, where Posterous spaces will not be allowed to be viewed or edited. Keep in mind that Posterous users will still be able to download all of their photos, documents and videos until April 30. Posterous goes into greater detail on how users can back up their files on their company blog.

  • mark-zuckerberg-facebook

    February 11, 2013

    Facebook and Twitter Are No Longer The Most Innovative Companies In The World

    Twitter nor Facebook produced any major innovations this past year, hence the reason they are not on this year’s MIC, or Most Innovative Companies list. A spot on the MIC is never guaranteed, and each year all companies’ accomplishments and innovations are evaluated, to determine who gets a spot on the list. This year only seven companies appeared on last year’s list, which indicates the amount of new companies in different parts of the world finding ways to innovate to find a competitive edge.

    There is a reason why both companies are worthy of special comment – they are one of the few companies who seem to be making the list often. However, recently they have been guilty of engaging in the opposite of innovation: thinking of the short term over the value of the long-term. One of the biggest and most high profile innovations for Facebook in 2012 has been copying Snapchat, with their Poke app. Snapchat is a popular app with teenagers and “sexters” for sharing photos. The Poke app was a failure almost out of the gate. In fact, facebook has made a habit out of trying to copy popular web services, such as Pinterest and Yelp, instead of focusing on developing new ideas of it’s own, to please it’s users. Twitter’s recent strategy seems similarly short-sighted and made as a defense against competition, rather than true innovation for twitter followers. It’s most high profile development in 2012 has been the photo filters, which in 2012 is not an innovation at all.

    Both of these companies seem to be focusing recently on pleasing the shareholders, rather than their users. FB has been trying to ward the prospect of a constantly falling stock price. The previous understanding of how the site works was your followers would see your posts, now it seems only a small percentage actually do, which the company is more than happy to alleviate by providing you with the ability to pay for ads or buy facebook fans. On top of this FB has been meddling with their privacy policy, which has bred a deep distrust by their more vocal users, especially as it relates to photos shared on Instagram. Twitter, on the other hand has been changing their mobile experience from an elegant look and feel to a more cumbersome desktop feel, since that design pleases the advertisers. This sort of innovation is not innovations at all, and is in fact the opposite of good product development.

    Neither company is not necessarily on the decline, however they would both be wise to focus on what made them popular in the first place: pleasing the users first and being a platform for developer innovation, and ensuring that their services are ones where their social media users call the shots, rather than the advertisers.

  • vb-twitter

    February 9, 2013

    Vanessa Bryant Uses Instagram

    Social networking websites and online photo sharing websites are extremely popular, so much so that virtually everyone from the average citizen to the most famous celebrity engage in them. Instagram is a photo sharing website that allows users to share their photos on a variety of social networking websites, such as Facebook and Twitter. The site allows users to snap pictures from their cell phones and then post them on their albums for their Instagram followers to view. Then, they can apply digital filters to their photos before uploading them and sharing them on their social networking profiles. It also makes all images square images instead of the 4:3 ratio images that most cell phone pictures are by default.

    One proud user of the site is Vanessa Bryant, the wife of the NBA star, Kobe Bryant. Being the spouse of an NBA celebrity, Vannessa certainly doesn’t have to buy Instagram followers. She uses the site to post photos and comments about important events in her family’s lives. For instance, on her daughter, Natalia’s, 10th birthday, Vanessa uploaded a picture and posted the following on page:

    “Happy 10th Birthday Natalia! Te Amo Princessa/Principessa.This is your first double digit birthday and I am amazed at how time has flown. I am so proud of my sweet, kind-hearted, loving, smart, beautiful and thoughtful little girl. God is great! Happy Birthday Natalia Diamanté Bryant! We love you baby girl., Mommy, Daddy and Gigi.”

    Another one of Vanessa’s posts include a photo of her and her nephew wearing masks together. The comment that accompanied the photo read the following:

    “This is what happens when you go color hairspray shopping with my nephew @kristiangonzalez24 for a “Crazy Hair” party. #Nephew#PhotoBombing #Auntie”

    Another bit of news that Vanessa shared on her page concerns her reconciliation with Kobe. (They were in the process of getting a divorce after they separated in December of 2011.) On her profile, Vanessa said the following:

    “We are pleased to announce that we have reconciled. Our divorce action will be dismissed. We are looking forward to our future together. Kobe & Vanessa.”

    Additionally, Vanessa has also shared some memoir photos of special events in her family’s lives. One of the photos she posted was of her family at a basketball game. She posted the following comment of the photo:

    “7 years ago today Kobe scored 81 points the night after Natalia’s 3rd Birthday Party! Congratulations Bay-Boo! His lovely Grandmama Cox also attended the game with Natalia and I. (I was pregnant with Gianna.) I’m so glad I convinced Grandmama Cox to go to the game since she had never watched Kobe play live in an NBA game. It was also Kobe’s sweet, late-grandfather Cox’s birthday. What a game to remember….Photo by Noah Graham”

    As anyone can see, this photo sharing website helps keep people up to date on what’s going on in their friends’ lives as well as their favorite celebrities’ lives. It is an easy way for anyone to share news of any sort.

  • pinterest-plans

    February 8, 2013

    How Brands Could Benefit From Pinterest’s Recent Changes

    Pinterest has jumped on the bandwagon with other social media sites and changed, not only their visual appeal, but also by expanding upon the information seen next to pins. This is most beneficial to branding because pinterest pins will now see more information about each individual pin, including other relative pins and the source of the pin. This will help with advertising and generate organic traffic and customers to related pages.

    Since Facebook and other social media outlets have implemented large, visual effects and had success with their outcomes, Pinterest has up-scaled their pages to include larger graphics and better visual appeal. It seems that this new social media site is stepping it up in order to keep up with its predecessors.

    With the new changes, pinterest followers will be able to see related content which means eventually this could provide an outlet to make money using the site. Companies could buy ad space and have their brand show up next to related pins, similar to what Facebook and other social media sites have already been doing. It would make it possible to buy pinterest followers and increase visibility of a company’s brand. It would be just one more way to use social media to advertise a product or company on a high-traffic social media site.

    Other social media sites have already implemented ad systems and companies have been cashing in on the buying of followers for quite some time. Now, with the recent changes at Pinterest, it could provide a money making opportunity for a variety of different interests. With the ability to buy pinterest followers, companies could boost their brand visibility through advertising.

    Pinterest’s changes have not yet gone into effect, but are scheduled to take place within the next few months. Trial runs of the new intuitive interface have already been offered, but the switch will happen gradually within the next month or two. Users will then see pins that boast graphics in higher resolutions and present a showcase for a company’s products. Pins will also be more informative and link related content to make it easier for users to find what they are interested in.

  • obama-plan-for-immigrants

    February 7, 2013

    Promoting Immigration Plan, Obama Emphasizes Instagram Began “With the Help of an Immigrant”

    In an effort to gain support for his plan for immigration reform, President Barack Obama showcased the life of Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, who was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil and relocated to California in 2004 to attend Standford University. He promptly earned his H1-B worker visa for highly skilled workers, and within eight years, he sold his company to Facebook. The acquisition earned him $1 billion dollars. By detailing this rigorous work ethic and accomplished business record of Krieger, Obama stressed an important economic aspect of his argument: every immigrant that is allowed a pathway to citizenship and a chance to participate generates revenue for our economy instead of for the economies of other countries these people might take their talents to if the United States immigration laws are too restrictive for them to be able to join in.

    The two men are known acquaintances, with Krieger having been a personal invitee of Michelle Obama to the State of the Union Address in 2012. As such, it should be no surprise that the two are coordinated in an effort for immigration reform. A main platform of the president’s message is that all immigrants are united in their intention to do the hard work necessary to solve the difficult issues the country faces today; this commitment, Obama posits, is a shared patriotism.
    The specifics of the President’s immigration proposals are wide-ranging and open up the specter for a fundamental shift in the country’s handling of undocumented citizens. Needing bipartisan support for his bill to pass, Obama has offered to heavily increase border security, a popular idea among conservative thinkers, and to offer green cards to all post-secondary graduates in the competitive fields of engineering, science, mathematics and technology, which is a widely endorsed platform of liberals in the legislature.

    It was to those who are undecided, however, that Obama’s mention of Krieger was targeting. Anyone who might be skeptical of immigrants’ capacity for contribution will see these plain statistics and realize the need to end exclusionary practices and incorporate everybody that is willing to engage in our economy. Archaic rules that banish productive members of society need to be ended, or influential companiesmight be founded elsewhere in the future.

    Because a means of massive worldwide communication was developed in the U.S. instead of abroad, all Instagram followers generate money here instead of for our competitors like China. Immigration reform will continue to facilitate American innovation by inviting great minds to stay and work there. In America, while technology companies like Instagram are being bought and sold, there are businesses in China with their only specialty being to buy Instagram followers. Because of their name recognition, Obama and Krieger don’t need to purchase Instagram followers to spread their message, which is that America has set the standard for technological growth and, with reform, should continue to.

  • Wanelo-pinterest

    February 5, 2013

    Wanelo Benefits from Pinterest’s Weakness

     

    Pinterest is a social networking website similar to Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and other social networking websites. Basically, it is a virtual pin board where Pinterest followers share things that they like on the Web by posting them to their pin boards. People use the site to create home redecorating plans, wedding plans, and even their own fashion style. Not only do people create their own designs and plans on Pinterest, they can also browse other users’ pin boards to get ideas for tasks that they might want to complete.

    One of the downfalls to the site, however, is that it does not offer users a way to purchase the items that they see. It receives approximately 28 million visitors per month; however, despite the enormous amount of Web traffic it receives, it still has not disclosed how it plans on monetizing its website. Its procrastination on this matter has proven beneficial to some innovative entrepreneurs like Deena Varshavskaya, the CEO of Wanelo.

    Pinterest’s rivals like Wanelo target its weakness, which is that it doesn’t indicate which items out of the billions on its website are available for purchase. It is missing out on an opportunity that is sometimes referred to as “discovery commerce.” It is quite different from normal e-commerce Internet shopping; it is much more like virtual window shopping. Rather, discovery commerce is much like browsing through a magazine catalog and discovering things that you didn’t realize you wanted to buy until you saw them, hence, “discovered” them. The site has no need to buy Pinterest followers because once it begins to categorize items into sorted categories such as “Buy” and “Browse,” followers will come.

    Wanelo is a website that takes advantage of the discovery commerce opportunity. Wanelo optimizes the items that can be bought and includes links for users to purchase the items they see that they like. Wanelo also offers a mobile application that makes it quicker and easier for customers to purchase items from their cell phones. Users can post any items they like from any online stores on Wanelo for other users to see. Wanelo is ideal for letting other users know gifts that you would like, and it is also ideal for promoting items that you want to sell from your own personal website.

    Wanelo has grown drastically since its conception. Wanelo’s visitors spend approximately 16 minutes on the site. Additionally, Wanelo boasts 149,000 Facebook fans and had approximately 1,367,000 unique visitors in December, according to ComScore. However, Wanelo isn’t making money yet either, but it definitely has the potential to do so due to its high position in the search engine rankings. Once Wanelo implements a plan to take a commission from the sales it refers, it could rise to be one of the most profitable social networking websites on the Internet.

  • twitter-advertising

    February 4, 2013

    Expect to See More Advertising on Twitter Soon

    Social media marketing is a cornerstone for many modern businesses. In addition to Facebook, Twitter is one of the most popular forms of social networking out there. A business might even go so far as to buy Twitter followers in order to increase its visibility and to try and earn more cheap twitter followers that it didn’t bankroll. However, while Facebook tends to be stuffed with advertising, it’s tweeting competitor was relatively free of conspicuous ads that got in the way of sending out messages. Or at least that was the case; sources say that isn’t likely to be true much longer.

    Is Twitter Getting its Own Advertising Plug In?

    Most of the advertising users would see on their way to publicize a tweet or two was sponsored links. None of them were very obvious, and it was generally not the sort of advertising that cluttered up the website’s pages. However, that could change in the near future. This company, like many of its social networking peers, is planning on creating its own advertising plug ins and selling space to companies. This will increase the amount of revenue earned by the little blue bird, and it will ensure that it keeps running smoothly so that it can keep providing a free service to all of the users that currently make up its massive base.

    What Took So Long?

    There have been rumors about this particular social network doing something with advertising for many months now, but none of those rumors ever manifested. The reason is likely because of all the problems it had as a company, and with the technology. For instance, Facebook gets a great deal of information about its users because of their profiles, the groups they join, the surveys they take and dozens of other sources. Facebook Fans don’t have to jump through those same hoops, and as a result there’s a lot less information for the company to work with to target the advertising. When it comes to Internet marketing, targeting the ads to the proper audience is everything.

    Additionally, the company has had difficulty putting together the actual technology for the plug in due to the sheer size of the advertising machine. Twitter understandably wants to get it right the first time, so it’s being very, very careful about making sure that the ads work just the way they want them to before the mechanical parts of the service are integrated into the website. Once it’s all been completed though, the site is going to look, and act, very differently than it has in the past.

  • superbowl-twitter-ads

    January 31, 2013

    Twitter Has Legit Superbowl Ads

    Twitter has come a long way. Now more than ever people are using Twitter to exploit their products and business. It is an ideal way to redistribute promotion, marketing and advertisements. Take for example the recent political debates in the United States as well as the upcoming Super Bowl. Fans and companies will now be using hastags to further push their ads for the big game.

    Something that has become trendy is now businesses can buy Twitter followers before the Super Bowl to increase their sales potential. Twitter followers can then retweet and use hastags they see on commercials and on Twitter to help further share and distribute sales ads for major companies and corporations. The idea is to make hashtags fun, but the ultimate motive is to sell more of a particular company’s product.

    This does not hurt Twitter at all. They are using their social network site more effectively now than Facebook, according to some recent news articles. In other words, businesses are trying to maximize their greater potential with as little cost and stress as possible. Since Facebook has limited the amount of exposure a given post may have, Twitter has kept these options open. In addition, both Facebook and Twitter allow businesses and people to promote or sponsor paid updates, Twitter is the only one that allows each post to be seen by the total amount of followers on each account. The main difference is that Facebook restricts the amount of views, even in regards to paid promoted or sponsored posts.

    Furthermore, Twitter ups its game in the Super Bowl ads and is becoming a leading pioneering figure in the advertising and marketing game for social media networks. In the years to come it will be interesting to see who really takes the lead between Facebook and Twitter. But right now the stress-free, easier to use model of Twitter seems to be in the lead. It remains to be seen how many companies and commercials use hastags during the Super Bowl, but one thing can be expected for sure. There will be loads if not thousands of hits on Twitter during the big game this year.

  • January 15, 2013

    Facebook Launches Poke, Rumored Snapchat Competiton

    On Friday Facebook released a new way for users to chat, in a independent app called Poke. The app is available for iOS and if you have an iPhone, iPad or iPod you can download it for free now by going to the App Sore on your device.

    This new application allows the user to send videos, pictures or text messages that expire within a few minutes; thus bringing in a new era for the poke feature which has been around since 2004 as a term from Facebook Fans. In a blog post on Friday, Facebook says that this is an app that brings a new poke experience for mobile.

    How the application works is you can set the time allowed til the message expires (1, 3, 5, or 10 seconds). You are allowed to poke an single person or multiple friends at once. When time runs out, the message is no longer able to be seen.

    Last week a report from AllThingsD said that Facebook was planning to release it’s own Snapchat like app. Friday’s launch of the app confirmed those reports.

    Snapchat was launched in September 2011 for iOS devices and allows the same features as Facebook’s new poke app, with the only difference being the ablity to send hand drawn message also. Once again you are able to set the amount of time, up to 10 seconds that the message can be seen before it is deleted from the app. Snapchat became very popular with new users over the last year, but was also grounds for criticism by some, being called a tool for sexting.

    Facebook’s new poke app works the same way as Snapchat. The user can send a message t one friend or a group of friends. You will be able to specify your location and even see when a recipient takes screenshot of your message. After receiving the message or ‘poke’ as Facebook calls it, you can easily hold and press the senders name to view your message.

  • twitter_followers

    January 9, 2013

    The Business of Buying Social Media Followers

    Many online websites, such as Fiverr, InterTwitter.com, USocial.net, etc. offer customers to buy Twitter followers, that is fake followers, online. A person can even buy fake Twitter followers for a friend. Fiverr site offers consumers to buy up to 3,200 followers for only $5.00. Consumers are able to buy up to 1,000 Twitter followers for $14.00, and 2,500 followers for $26.00, on the InterTwitter.com site. For $39.00, an user can buy up to 15,000 followers on the followersale.com site, and 25,000 followers for $69.00. The selling price rises for larger numbers of followers for various sites.

    So why buy fake followers? New online businesses such as MyTab.co, a company that raises money for trips, bought 2,500 followers on Fiverr for $5.00, and subsequently saw their actual members rise by the thousands in their twitter and Facebook account. The company got the popular boost that they needed. Also, followers are usually bought by celebrities, such as rock stars, stand-up comedians, actors/ actresses, even politician, and anyone who would benefit from having a wider social media footprint, without actually having to keep up their social network ties.
    The practice of buying followers is fairly simple. By typing in “buy Twitter followers” using the Google search engine, will in turn produce a page with a list of website links, such as Fiverr, InterTwitter.com, followersale.com, USocial.net, etc. on which consumers can buy thousands of twitter friends. Similar online services offer to buy followers for YouTube and Facebook. In order to buy the followers the user can simply key in the information for their twitter handle and credit card number, and then subsequently see their follower rise by the thousands in a matter of a few days.

    Having fake followers does not necessarily mean that they were purchased. Unlike Facebook friends that need to be approved, anyone can follow the user on Twitter, from their close relative to a spammer.

    There are two types of followers that the industry recognizes, including the “targeted” followers, and the “generated” or “bots” followers. Targeted followers are retrieved using a software that recognizes similar interests (with that of the user) and follows them on twitter, who may in turn follow the user back. Generated followers are retrieved using accounts that are inactive or from spamming computers to generate the followers.

    The practice of buying fake followers have become such a widespread use, that a London based social media company release a web tool recently, named the Fake Follower Check, that can detect the number of fake followers that an user or their friend may have accumulated on their twitter account.

  • facebook_zuckerberg

    December 28, 2012

    How Facebook’s paid-message plan could backfire

    Is Facebook serious? This time the concept that the company is getting the most controversy with, is it’s strategy to allow both businesses and individuals to actually pay to send messages across the social networks, even without a prior rapport or business relationship amongst the people involved. Facebook seems to be making one mistake after another, especially in light of the recent issue with their affiliate Instagram where they were inserting ads into photos. It is apparent that Facebook is working on proving that they can expand and grow beyond their client and advertisers expectations.

    This recent decision resulted from the fact that over the past couple of months, Facebook investors have chosen to see a faster return on their original stock investment because their original focus to own shares of the venture is slowly dissipating. So the pressure is on for Facebook to prove itself worthy in dollars and cents. The investors are beginning to ask questions like, “If Facebook is bringing is one billion dollars in users why is there not enough money being generated?” There are many obstacles that Facebook is facing. The investors feel that Instagram’s solution will not cover the larger issue.

    Facebook is focusing on generating more leads of businesses to share more advertising images and photo, in an attempt to show it’s advertising platform’s strength and efficiency. However, Facebook advertising has not yielded a sufficient return for businesses that have used it and unfortunately some large conglomerates have given up on it. All is not lost with advertising on Facebook however. Most internet marketing experts are in the process of brainstorming which forms of visually based marketing and ads will be effective on the ever popular social network.

    Wall Street is growing impatient by the minute as FaceBook’s stock price have profoundly taken a strong plunge in recent months. There is a growing concern over the thirty percent loss of revenue from their original investment. Therefore the pressure will continue for Facebook to do whatever it deems necessary to achieve that advancement in revenue. The sacrifice Facebook may encounter here is that advertisers will get their cut of the deal, while the average Facebook fans are losing out.

    Although we are not yet sure how this decision will impact Facebook in the years ahead, it will need to be something that will benefit advertisers, investors as well as Facebook Fans as a whole.

  • meteor-shower-over-planet-x

    December 24, 2012

    NASA Proves End of The World “Armeggedon” A Myth on Youtube

    Nasa certainly did not have to buy youtube views from advertisers yesterday when it decided to to debunk the prediction of the end of the world on December 21, 2012. They uploaded the video on December 20th, 2012, “Why didn’t the world end yesterday?” Most youtubers have been viewing the video ever since it’s post a couple of days ago. There is apparently a misunderstanding of the root of how this myth of the earth’s ending came to be. Therefore social media networks, traditional media and scientists have been going along with the concept of the ancient Mayan calendar that begins December 1st and ends December 21st. Most people are literally reading into it, as the end of the physical earth, when it has more of a spiritual meaning in Mayan culture. They believe it to be the end of one cycle of life and the welcoming of a new one, which is similar to what North American’s know as New Year’s eve, according to the Gregorian calendar.

    The story that most people have been told about the Armeggedon is that the Earth will collide with a planet called Niburu. In a separate Nasa video Nasa’s head of the Near Earth object program, Don Yeomans explains that we should have seen signs of the planet Niburu or at least some type of effect on the planets close to Earth, but there has been no such discovery. For some reason many have still fallen prey to the myth, across America and Mexico that the world is definitely coming to it’s physical ending, once Niburu strikes, giving the planet it’s new birth on December 21st, 2012.

    Some wonder is NASA still covering up any recent discoveries of Niburu to prevent any panic? No one wants to believe that hundreds of well respected astronomers and researchers are not disclosing what they know about the planet’s fate. Niburu is also called Planet X, was also supposed to have an impact with the earth in May 2003. When this event failed to transpire, then the prediction was moved to the end of the Mayan’s winter solstice, on December 21st, 2012. Yeomans furthered his point by expressing that other predictions will also therefore be debunked, including the aligning of the planets that was said to cause a total blackout or destructive tidal wave that will destroy the Earth. Yeomans concludes that there are many misunderstandings and errors in the interpretations of the Earth’s physical demise that are constantly being debunked year after year.

    One of the first researchers of these misinterpretations was conducted by a radio astronomer by the name of Carlson who was committed to studying planets and galaxies. He found a profound interest in the 2012 prediction in the 1970′s when he met with the Advancement of Science committee when he began researching on the ancient Mayan culture and civilization. Most of the rain forests where the Mayans resided, still stand and Carlson became strongly interested in their evolution. He studied their highly detailed temples, incredible pyramids and well designed cities. He was awe strucken by the Mayan’s discovery of written languages and astronomical facts.

    After his findings, Carlson wondered how the Mayan culture would feel about all of these false misinterpretations of Mayan predictions. Carlson discovered that Mayans have a belief that the gods who formed the world would return and regenerate the cosmos. The world would be replenished at this time, not destroyed, Carlson concludes.

  • contentisking3

    December 18, 2012

    Steps for Enhancing the SEO of Blog Posts

    One of the most crucial components of an online marketing strategy is content. The reasons for this finding are multifaceted but how customers shop and research products has something to do with it. Customers oftentimes use search engines to locate the very best product; for this reason, the content that is disseminated by one’s company or website is hugely important. The produced content can either attract customers or repel them from your website.

    Blogs, SEO & Social Media

    An increasingly popular way to increase traffic to your business website is via blog posts. Understanding the mechanics of search engine optimization can also spell extra visitors to your website and perhaps increased revenue. When you think about it, each fresh blog post adds another layer to your website that was not there yesterday. This means that traffic to your company’s website may increase in lockstep with its more favorable standing on search engines like google. Here are some more steps to better utilizing search engine optimization for your website. Social media also plays a large role in your overall SEO strategy. People will sometimes buy Twitter followers online to increase their followers, many say its cheating or “unethical” but at the end of the day, 90% of people online are on porn sites.

    Keywords and SEO

    Search engines actually notice both inbound links and linking structure of the pages within your website. The trick with search engine optimization is to have customers not only come to your website, but browse while they are there. In other words, search engine optimization should be the lure that attracts customers to your product and blog posts.

    Added Tricks

    One way to almost guarantee that customers click on more than one page within your company’s website is affixing a deep link to the SEO directed page. Utilizing anchor text, customers may link over to a product that particularly interests them. This actually further enhances page hits and creates excitement about the website. A good rule of thumb is to attach one link per page. Too many links can lead the customer to wrongly assume they are being spammed and too few links does not optimize your website.

    The Importance of H Tags

    Customers sometimes merely peruse blog posts rather than furnishing them with their undivided attention. For this reason, parsing blog posts may improve readability and ultimately attract the customer’s attention. Subheadings using h tags can prove an excellent way around hackneyed spaces or bullet points. The resulting text will likely be highlighted by search engine spiders and bolster your customer’s confidence in your website.

    SEO Plug-Ins and URL Edits

    Most people aren’t aware that adding an SEO plug-in can aid customers or researchers of your website to edit and make handy amendments. An SEO plug-in helps customers add title, description, and targeted keywords information. Typically, the title should be within fifty and one hundred characters. The description should be less than one hundred and fifty characters. It’s important to write the title and description such that keywords are optimized for SEO benefits.

    One more trick that website creators might want to consider is editing the website’s URL such that customers may get an instant and convenient flavor for the website’s content and tone. Sometimes URLs are extremely long and cumbersome. Because URLs that contain hyphens and slashes can be unsightly, your customers may appreciate shortened and simplified URLs to your website.

  • skydrive-cloud-storage

    December 16, 2012

    Does SkyDrive Need to Play by Apple’s Rules?

    A glitch has developed between Microsoft and Apple over the fees over the SkyDrive iOS app. The app has been blocked from new updates by Apple. The policy of Apple is to collect a 30 percent cut when a user purchases increased storage through the app.

    Microsoft offers users for their SkyDrive service the opportunity to upgrade storage for a fee. This fee is at the heart of Apples spat with Microsoft. Apple announced a new subscription policy for apps that are available on its app store back in February of 2011. The policy states that Apple wants to see 30 percent of any fees that are charged to consumers through an app. If a consumer can subscribe outside of an app, then an option must be included inside the app.

    The reasons from Apple is that consumers need to be able to subscribe with one-click inside of any app that is purchased. App publishers are also not permitted to include a link that takes a consumer to a web page to renew or make a purchase outside of the app.

    The issue with Microsoft’s is that a purchase of SkyDrive extra storage does not fit into Apple’s policy for app subscriptions. The purchase of additional storage is a one-time fee and Microsoft feels that any collection fee is unacceptable because Apple’s cut is indefinite. This means that fees are collected from any future purchase.

    The problem that Microsoft has is that Apple’s policy means that once a purchase is made by using any iOS app, they expect a cut. This is due to the fact that a purchase is made using an iPhone or other type of iOS device. If a user makes a one-time purchase on a device for additional SkyDrive storage, then a 30 percent fee will apply for the life of the account. The fee would continue to apply if the user moved to another mobile device.

    Microsoft has offered to make changes to their app to remove subscription options. However, Apple is not willing to accept this offer. This means that users are not able to upgrade the app to correct bugs and get access to improved functionality. Microsoft is currently in contact with Apple concerning an update to their SkyDrive app. They hope to reach a resolution over compensation in the near future.

    Apple is insisting on taking a share of any revenue generated from an app. This is a problem with apps like SkyDrive that are not technically a subscription service. Users of a mobile app may see this issue as an attempt by Apple to leverage their products and restrict how apps are developed. The future will see if Apple’s policies will cause a user backlash.

  • yahoo-email

    December 15, 2012

    Yahoo Revamps Email Service

    Yahoo has redesigned it’s email to compete with Gmail, to regain the users it lost to the email giant. It recent months we have seen a redesigned Gmail, redesigned Hotmail and a newly launched Outlook.com but Yahoo is still trying to stay within the game; giving customers a reason to stick around with the online company. Yahoo processes around 30 billion emails per day and estimates that users check their inbox about 190 million times per day.

    Gmail isn’t staying still either, it is currently getting ready to make changes of it’s own to add new features a launch a new look. But as most customers still rely on Gmail as recent numbers still show Gmail has around 295 million customers and currently leading the email pack. Hotmail stands at about 284 million users while Yahoo is at third at 282 million users. Last year in October Hotmail was leading email with 335 million users, Yahoo behind them with 303 million users and Gmail at more than 245 million users.

    The Yahoo email overhaul is part of new CEO Marissa Mayer’s attempt to bring the brand back to the glory it once had. Mayer hopes to sell more advertising while bringing in more revenue for the now struggling company. For the past four years the company’s stock price has remained under $20. Shares were around $30 when the company sold itself to Microsoft in May 2008 for around $33 a share.

    Stocks at Yahoo have risen about 25% since Mayer took over about 5 months ago. Mayer spent 13 years as a top Google executive; the main rival company to Yahoo. She helped to take Gmail when it was just launching in 2004 and turn it into the record breaking service it is today beating both Yahoo & Hotmail.

    Yahoo recently decided to work in the smartphone and tablet market by launching apps for the iPhone, iPad. Yahoo also offers apps for Microsoft’s Windows 8 devices through it Windows Store. Yahoo, based in Sunnydale, CA also updated it’s email app designed for Google’s Android Operating System.

    Email retooling is a necessary way to keep traditional email alive with more users relying on texts messages sent from their phones and sharing their thoughts and opinions on Social Media websites.

    At this time no major email provider charges for it’s user accounts; the services are very valuable however as they encourage repeat visits and require log-ins. Internet companies love activities occurring under a logged-in activity because it gives them the ability to track the users preferences and help create tailored ads to appeal to the users interests. User’s are now going online to buy Twitter followers and increase their vanity on various social networks.

  • twitter-bird

    December 8, 2012

    Twitter Must Be A Good Corporate Citizen

    Today twitter is not just a social media outlet, but now it is becoming one of the best and powerful tool. It is becoming popular to promote the democracy in the Middle East. Not only this, celebrities and highly respectful people such as Pope Benedict XVI and Chris Brown etc., are known to buy Twitter followers. @Pontific is the Pope Benedict’s twitter account that he got recently and is becoming more famous day by day. Leader of Global Catholic Church has recently joined the people of the world from the social media site.

    People can now give answers to the questions about the faith in his tweets. If you wanted to send him a question you can do via hashtag #askpontifex or by #B16. In his recent press conference in the Vatican, on the Monday morning, they said, “The Pope’s presence on Twitter is a concrete expression of his conviction that the Church must be present in the digital arena,”

    After that a written statement from the church came out that said, the presence of Pope on Twitter “can be seen as the ‘tip of the iceberg’ that is the Church’s presence in the world of new media.”

    Vatican officials had told CNN that the pope will compose tweets himself for his new account. For the very first retweet, people will press the button to send tweet but latterly others will send tweets on his behalf. Well the first tweet sent by the pope was for the news site of www.news.va through @news_va_en and he wrote in that tweet, “Dear friends, I just launched News. VA. Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers ad blessings, Benedicts XVI.”

    At first the signatures @BenedictusPPXVI was considered the account name for the personal account of 85 years old Pope. @Pope would also consider a best signature for the Pope because (Benedicts PP XVI as in Latin “PP” means papa and that is the Latin word for the pope.

    In Latin @Pontifex means the “bridge builder”. So the pope has chosen handle with another name for the office that he holds.

  • MANDATORY CREDIT: Baltimore Examiner and Washington Examiner OUT

    December 6, 2012

    Social Media Ratchets up Pressure Upon Routine Officer Call

    A consistent existence as an observer in crime scenes, as well as a taxi driver, 47-year-old Frank James MacArthur, went on Twitter and Internet radio service in order to stream his dealings with officers at his house December 1, 2012 to execute his arrest warrant linked to a 2009 weapons charge in which he’d received probation prior to judgment.

    One spokesperson for the Dep’t of Public Safety & Correctional Services in Maryland confirmed that Frank was held without any bond, following being taken within custody late on Saturday.

    Frank’s case did test the usual approach for negotiators of crisis’ striving to contain situations, cutting off a subject from exterior voices, something which was simple to perform in the age of land-line telephones, yet now, a lot more difficult, as nearly anybody may become included within the dialogue in between a suspect and the police.

    Officers stated they’ll serve many of warrants over the week. Taking Frank within custody ought to have been a routine occurrence, yet within the days that led up to MacArthur’s ultimate peaceful arrest, he’d been utilizing threatening language towards officers on the Internet and implying that he wouldn’t quietly go.

    From above, with helicopters observing the scene unfolding, officers sent in the SWAT team, as well as shut McKewin Avenue, where MacArthur resides, down. For his portion, MacArthur took to an Internet radio platform he’s been utilizing within recent weeks then streamed live the conversation with an officer negotiator, making known publicly what’s typically private conversations where policemen attempt to build up a rapport with the subject.

    The radio platform’s chief executive, Francesco Baschieri, stated during the apex of Frank’s broadcast that 1,000 people were tuned in, as well as 10,000 individuals heard at the minimum of a portion of it. In the evening on Saturday, the case was a popular subject nationally amongst Twitter users. During one point, MacArthur exchanged messages on Twitter with Roland Martin, CNN commentator, who encouraged MacArthur to turn himself in.

    A lawyer who’d been in contact with him prior to his arrest, Del. Jill P. Carter, stated she sees value within documenting officer activity within real time due to it helping to avoid abuse.

    She added that she thinks so many times all individuals actually wish for is to have the ability to tell their side of the story and that she believes this might have been a portion of what went on that day.

  • google-chromebook

    November 29, 2012

    Google takes over Times Square, just to prove that Chromebook is for everyone

    Chromebook For Everyone

    In the latest of Google’s campaign to demonstrate how their new Samsung Chromebook is for everyone they have taken over four marquees in New York Times Square to help shoppers visualize its usefulness. They have taken their newly created ‘Gallery for Everyone’ from the computer screen to the New York’s Times Square marquees. What better place to reach numerous shoppers than in Times Square?

    In this ‘Gallery for Everyone’ Google has people to upload an image of themselves or friends and explain what they are using the Chromebook for. Do you watch movies; check your Gmail, etc.? On their ‘Gallery for Everyone’ you will find pictures with titles called, “For Wisdom”, “For Finding Your Way”, “For Getting Somewhere”, “For Tea Time” “buy Twitter followers“, so on and on. Customers have created and shared numerous ways they have used their Chromebooks and the many places they have been able to take them. Now their users can upload their picture onto a marquee in New York’s Time Square. Do you want to see yourself on a marquee in New York’s busiest shopping area? 

    The Samsung Chromebook is Google’s attempt to create a laptop that is light and portable and can be used by everyone. The Chromebook is more cost-efficient and is helping Google to promote their idea of moving people to the Cloud. Cloud services are the trend of the future in networking. Cloud computing uses resources delivered over a network. The infrastructure and platforms on which the applications run are managed by cloud providers. This is a utility-style infrastructure. The end users access the web to visit websites like this through a web browser and the cloud provides the applications the user needs without the user having the expense of purchasing and maintaining the hardware or software. The Chromebook supports cloud providers. The Chromebook is considered an alternate laptop for everyone and is conveniently tied to other Android devices.

  • ws-space-apple-logo1

    November 27, 2012

    Buying Twitter might help Apple figure out how the internet works

    The question was raised recently, about how Apple is going to stay competitive in the growing social web services market. For Apple has a reputation that is making businesses question the company’s understanding of the Internet, or at least the needs of users.

    Historically Apple has been successful at designing new and innovative technologies for the public, but are lacking in the area of online services. This is not new to even die hard Apple users worldwide.

    There are several examples come to mind commonly.

    Apple iTunes users have had consistent problems with the music platform being unstable. Problems range from loss of music data to being generally unfriendly to users. Game Center and Ping are examples of social media expansions that are essentially empty web space. The same fate seems to be apparent with the greatest of all Apple experiments, the iCloud.

    Apple has been directly in competition with Google for users of web services in recent history. The iCloud and iTunes being the yin to the yang of Gmail and Google Play. Despite Apple being a superior company in development of technologies, Google has outdone them consistently in their design of web services.

    What really is the difference that gives Google such an edge in web based services for the Internet?

    Google’s main advantage has been simple. The way Google has progressed in their method of design more quickly than Apple. It is sad to say, that Apple has lagged in their understanding of the needs of the Internet since the earliest days. Now that it is the age of social media and streaming services, Apple has lost a competitive edge once again.

    Partly due to this, Apple became partners with Twitter. This partnership has allowed integration of social web services to go more smoothly for Apple. A similar deal was recently struck with Facebook also.

    According to Patrick Gibson, a former Apple engineer, the mega computer company should consider buying Twitter followers. This is an opinion that is shared by some other members of the web services industries. This is a noble idea in theory, but the list of reasons why it is unlikely are numerous. Most come down to it is not economically sound for either Twitter or Apple at this time.

    It would be almost as easy for Apple to consider acquiring Google.Yet stranger things have happened in the quickly evolving social web today. The future remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure. Apple is missing the loss of it’s founder Steve Jobs at this point as a company.

    To keep their edge as a company, Apple must learn how to better anticipate the needs of users in the web based services industry.

  • November 26, 2012

    Do You Know When To Trash or Trade Up?

    Oh No! You dropped your laptop computer on the ground, screen down, and now you have to throw it in the trash because a computer is unusable without a working screen. Well, you really don’t have to throw away your entire computer just because you broke your screen, thanks to the expanding and growing knowledge in computer, there are several new, easy options that can repair broken laptop screens. It doesn’t make sense to throw away a perfectly good laptop computer in the trash because, quite frankly, there are ways that computer professionals fix broken laptop computer screens.


    Pearland computer repair technicians fix broken laptop screens by replacing the screen with a new and improved one. The first step to repairing a broken screen is to separate and remove the bezel from the rest of the computer. To do this, computer technicians must turn of the power supply of the laptop computer by totally removing the batteries. Then they must expertly and very carefully remove the bezel from the computer so that they can access the screws that keep the laptop and screen together. Usually the screws are covered by a special rubber material, which are responsible in keeping the bezel and laptop connected. Once the bezel’s screws are removed, the technician will use a special device to completely remove the bezel, thus exposing the panel that holds the LCD screen.
    Once they finish that step, the LCD panel will be exposed, and the technicians will be able to remove some screws that keep the monitor in place. Once those screws are out of the way, the technician will carefully remove the broken LCD panel.


    Then the next step is to install a new LCD screen. This process is very simple and only takes a few minutes to complete. The computer repair Pearland technician’s job will be to do the steps mentioned above, but instead they will do them in reverse. He will place the LCD panel inside of the bezel and screw it back into place. After that process is finished, the technician will test to see if the new screen works. Once he does that, he puts the bezel over the new panel and viola; you will have a now working laptop computer.
    The most common, and defiantly the easiest, way of fixing a broken laptop computer screen is to replace it all together. Replacing it is certainly your best option, and you can find a computer technician that will repair it and even upgrade it.

  • retailmenot

    November 25, 2012

    RetailMeNot Launches Facebook App With Personalized Deals From Facebook Likes

    With the economy still in rough shape people are looking to save money whoever ever possible. Many of these people do not have the time to search through the newspaper and clip out coupons. The site RetailMeNot.com is helping people save money but finding online deals and coupon codes for people to use on items ranging from grocery to shoes and everything in between. Intertwitter has also recently launched a service to buy Facebook fans that will help people find coupons that are relevant to their likes and interests.

    RetailMeNot has help over gotten over 450 million visit’s a year . A person has to allow the app to see their Likes on Facebook. The app will then send the person coupons or promotional code based on these interests. These coupons can be saved or shared with Facebook friends. The app will search over sixty thousand retailers so the user does not have to. Once a new discount that fit’s the user’s interest is posted the app will let them know. Instead of competing with other website the app is using social media to help people save money. Since the app was first put on Facebook it has reached over two million users. 

    This app from RetailMeNot is helping to change the way that people shop. The app is making shopping easier for the consumers and will help draw them to the deals and interests that are best suited for their likes. This app will also help businesses get the attention of their target audience and have the opportunity to gain more customers.

  • instagram-interface

    November 16, 2012

    An Instagram Photo is Worth a Thousand Tweets

    Users were already devoted to Instagram well before super storm Sandy washed ashore, but as Sandy changed the shape of the coastline she also changed how many Americans use social media.

    If you can remember this far back, when citizens of a town or city were affected by ferocious or unusual weather systems it was common to snap pictures and send them in to the local weather channel. Way back in time this used to take about a week. Several years after that when Windows gave us the skills of emailing picture files like magicians, our photos of the icicles dangling from the new spring leaves were uploaded directly onto the news channel’s website. Depending on your internet connection and the number of anxious children checking for school closings this could take anywhere from 10 minutes to a half an hour.

    Fast forward to the 2000s and suddenly we are surrounded by snapshots. Most people have upwards of four cameras in their homes capable of capturing a moment. They are everywhere: phones, tablets, desktops, laptops, video game consoles, even Barbie can come with a camera. The effects of this technology combined with the growing trends of logging all of our actions on social media has resulted in a surge of personal experiences reaching out to friends, relatives, and strangers. Where we went last night, what we did, who we went with, and what we ate may appear on any one of four different social applications. Social media has flourished recently gaining popularity as even the stars begin to tweet and buy twitter followers.

    With the smashing success of Instagram we saw an application take all of these fantastic tricks of technology and combine them into one essential tool: a free application capable of capturing a memory, making it look awesome, tagging where it happened, and sharing it instantly on any social media stream.

    Enter Superstorm Sandy. Instead of capturing one single photo to remember the worst storm of the last decade after you are safe and warm, Instagram users collected almost a million pictures and shared them while the storm was still raging. Instagram became a tool for storm tracking, for assessing local damaging, and for sharing heartbreak instantly. It turned everyday smart phone owners into the first reporter on the scene.

    Instagram came into its own during the hurricane. If you have something to say, tweet it. If you woke up with a headache, change your Facebook status. If a once in a century storm sweeps away most of your house, Instagram.

    Did we mention that you could buy Instagram followers super cheap? We found a good site with decent pricing. Until next time guys!

  • Barack-Obama-7

    November 14, 2012

    Four more years” President Obama joins the Twitter onslaught after he was declared the winner of Tuesday’s election.

    Twitter has been a valuable tool throughout the approximately two year election, providing insight and laughs during the primaries as well as the debates. This is the first National election where Twitter was a significant contributor to the conversation from start to end. Even Big Bird got in on it, tweeting about his future status as an unemployed PBS icon if Mitt Romney won.

    “What is happening over at Fox News” or something like was tweeted and retweeted thousands of times as Karl Rove tried to stop Fox News from calling Ohio for President Obama. Mr. Rove’s disappointment was not shared by everyone though. Soon the twitterverse exploded with congratulations from around the world. Heads of State such as British Prime Minister David Cameron Malaysia’s PM Najib Razakand tweeted their well wishes to President Obama his hard fought victory. Even Deepak Chopra tweeted his congratulations and hope for a happier world.

    The President responded in kind tweeting: “This happened because of you” to his twitter followers as he was waiting to give his victory speech. Tuesday was the most tweeted election in our nation’s history although that will change with the next national election undoubtedly. Twitter reported that in the moments following Obama’s win, Twitter was in a frenzy, with a peak of 327,000 tweets a minute. Another tweet from the President read: “Four more years” and showed a picture of him hugging his wife, became the most retweeted tweet in the history of the site according to Twitter. Let’s not forget to mention his obvious attempt to buy twitter followers at one point of his campaign.

    But the President’s victory was not the only news being tweeted about Tuesday. Twenty women have Senate seats now. This did not go ignored on Twitter. Elizabeth Warren was first announced as victorious on Twitter long before any of the network news organizations called her the winner. That is when the Twitter echo chamber took over causing a few news organizations to have to apologize for reporting from Twitter without fact-checking. But all was well in the end as Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren actually did win in Massachusetts. Mother Jones and a few bloggers apologized no harm was done.

  • November 13, 2012

    Personal Injury Attorneys Know The Expectation Requirements For A Natural Disaster

    A natural disaster can occur at anytime in the world but when your governor has given orders that your specific area of the city should be evacuated then every citizen should obey the emergency order. After all a natural disaster can range from an earth quake or flood occurring in your city that will put you and your family at risk if you decide to ignore the evacuation request. This type of disobedience often proves to be disastrous not only to the people who decided to stay in their homes but also to the rescue workers who will be needed to save your family when the natural disaster becomes more than you can handle.

    That is why Houston personal injury attorneys are needed whenever a natural disaster occurs just in case someone who stayed behind becomes injured. Although many people see natural disasters as an unfortunate inconvenience to their lives, it is the public-safety part that requires all residents in the area to obey an evacuation notice. In fact, when people decide not to obey the evacuation notice for their city, and someone becomes injured a good personal injury lawyer should be available to inform them of their rights.

    The compensation for someone becoming injured during a natural disaster will require a Houston personal injury attorney because not only will he know the prerequisites to what is considered negligent, but he can help them in the court process. So for those people who choose to stay behind after the entire city has been ordered to leave due to a natural disaster if they become injured there a greater chance to sue your neighbor if there is a proof that they were negligent in securing their personal items before the evacuation. When this type of negligence occurs and someone who stayed behind becomes injured a result then there is a stronger possibility of a lawsuit. By taking the time to speak with a personal injury attorney the injured party will have a better understanding about the expectation that is required of people to take so that no one becomes injured by their items during a natural disaster.

  • twitter-fail-whale

    November 6, 2012

    What Not to Do on Twitter- Top Mistakes to Avoid

    If you are new to Twitter, it might be tempting to just say whatever comes to mind. It might be tempting to get into one of the famous Twitter battles with someone just because you can. In fact, there are quite a few things that might sound like a great idea, until you realize that like everything else, there are consequences to misusing Twitter. You may actually find yourself regretting not only your tweets but joining Twitter in the first place. Before you make these all too common mistakes, take a few minutes and learn what they are and how to avoid them.

    Keep Your Tweets Short but Sweet, You Never Know Which Words You’ll Eat

    A tweet posted in anger can resonate through the Twittersphere in a matter of seconds. If you wouldn’t want your mother to read it, then do not post it. Remember, once you have tweeted something, it is going to be out “there” forever. If someone else sees it and retweets it, then it will just continue to loop back around and haunt you. Always think before you tweet.

    Are You Confusing Your Followers?

    People choose to follow one another on Twitter because they are interested in what they have to say. But, if you are having a private conversation with one person in this very public forum, you are going to confuse and frustrate everyone. Instead of blasting out potentially private information, send a private message directly to that person. Tweet things that are for the general public but message things that are private.

    Don’t Try to Make Random Connections

    Too many new Twitter users will try to get as many followers as possible without stopping to think of their actual value. They may try to follow too many people as well. Everyone that you are following or want to have follow you should add some kind of value. Even when you buy Twitter followers, the followers will most likely not be targeted. For instance, if you are a professional writer, then you would want to follow people who have the kind of connections that might get you new jobs or further your chances of being published. You will want to follow other authors, especially those who write in the same genres as you so that you can learn some of the tricks of the trade. Those followers might also serve as inspiration for your new projects as well.

    Mind Your Manners

    Twitter is probably the social media site that leads to the worst spelling and grammar simply because of the way the messages are written. While the 140 character limit does create the need for more flexible spelling, it should not give you the free reign to be rude. You should still be polite whenever possible especially if you are tweeting on a professional based account. A simple thank you (ty) or you’re welcome (yw) is always well received. Some people do like to thank new followers for joining their circle, but that is not always necessary. While you are learning how to use Twitter, watching successful tweets can go a long way to helping you find your own way in this new world.

  • backofanaptkin

    May 22, 2009

    Solving Problems With Pictures

    Book Review

    The back of the napkin:

    Solving problems and selling ideas with pictures.

    Dan Roam.

    Penguin/ Portfolio, 2008. 278 p.

    http://www.thebackofthenapkin.com/

    Whether or not you rated highly on the analytical skills section of the Graduate Record Exam, you can learn to take an immensely complicated problem, break it down into constituent parts, explain how things work, identify what is missing, and develop an elegant solution.

    Dan Roam insists that we all have have the ability to think visually. From the beginning of our lives we learn to look, see, imagine, and show. And almost all kinds of problems can be solved with pictures: business issues, political deadlocks, technical complexities, and organizational dilemmas. That’s because pictures can represent complex concepts and summarize vast sets of information in ways that are easy to see and understand.

    Roam presents a case study, spread across six chapters, each showcasing one visual framework. Here’s the scenario: “Our latest product release a year ago introduced many new features, making our software the most feature-rich available, but our customers’ reception has been lukewarm. Our sales reps complain that they’re having an increasingly hard time selling our expensive software, given the rise of open source freeware over the past year.”

    He walks us through the process of determining why that’s the case. To introduce his concept of visual thinking, he applies the 6 W questions we were taught to ask in journalism class:

    ‘Who’ and ‘what’ problems relate to things, people and roles.

    ‘When’ problems relate to scheduling and timing.

    ‘Where’ problems related to direction and how things fit together

    ‘Why’ problems relate to seeing the big picture.

    ‘How’ problems relate to how things influence one another

    ‘How much’ problems involve measuring and counting.

    When presenting data, Roam says, there are thousands of possible charts we could make, but all are derived from just six basic “showing frameworks” or a combination of those six. Learning when to apply these six frameworks and how to draw them gives us the ability to create a pictorial representation of almost any problem we can see.

    He then walks us through a visual imagination activation tool he calls SQVID, a series of 5 questions that brings an initial idea to visual clarity and to refine its focus:

    S: Simple vs. Elaborate

    Q: Quality vs. Quantity

    V: Vision vs. Execution

    I: Individual attributes vs. Comparison

    D: Delta (or change) vs. Status quo.

    Combining the six ‘W’ questions and the 5 imagination-focusing SQVID questions creates a powerful analytical tool. Before we know it, solutions begin to appear on the page.

  • February 5, 2009

    Networking with LinkedIn

    Book Review

    LinkedIn for Recruiting. Bill Vick and Des Walsh. HappyAbout Books, 2006/ 2008.109 p.

    42 Rules for 24-hour Success on LinkedIn. Chris Muccio with David Burns & Peggy Murrah. Superstar Books, 2009.117 p.

    I’m On LinkedIn: Now What? Jason Alba. HappyAbout Books, 2008.133 p.

    About 30 million professionals use LinkedIn to network, exchange information, hunt for jobs, and recruit. Setting up a free profile allows you to strut your professional stuff and to ask and answer questions of practice. According to author Chris Muccio, LinkedIn’s average user is 41 years old and has a household income of $109,000.

    LinkedIn reports that the typical user has about 80 connections and an extended network of about 30,000. Upgrading from a free to a premium account provides access to the whole 30 million–plus network. Businesses use LinkedIn too. They research prospective partners, find industry experts, locate and get background information on potential employees, perform research on competitors, contact media, and close sales.

    LinkedIn for Recruiting

    Of the three titles reviewed here, LinkedIn for Recruiting is possibly the most valuable. Nearly 50 professional recruiters contributed comments, short case studies, and testimonials about using LinkedIn to place job candidates. Even if you’re not a recruiter, this book is interesting as it provides insight into how recruiters think.

    Recruiter Shally Steckerl recommends posting a LinkedIn profile that goes beyond a standard resume. Rather than listing the highlights of your career, he recommends telling your story: what you are like, what makes you who you are, every job you have ever had.

    Some recruiters use LinkedIn to collaborate and to arrange “splits,” in which two or more recruiters agree to share the search for candidates and split the fees. Recruiters remark on its value for finding people in really specialized positions, who may be “deep down” in a company and not readily located.

    42 Rules for 24-hour Success on LinkedIn

    Here’s a good starter book for general readers as well as recruiters. In 7 sections, Muccio and colleagues discuss what LinkedIn offers, how to create a strong profile, how to build your network, how to manage recommendations, how to raise awareness of yourself by posting and answering questions, how to search the LinkedIn database, and how to create or join an affinity group.

    Muccio recommends setting aside at least an hour each week to nourish and build your network.He also recommends choosing your contacts judiciously:Fifty quality contacts are more valuable than 500 people you really don’t communicate with. The quality of your network should be measured by quality of the resources available from your network.

    LinkedIn for the individual user

    Jason Alba’s “I’m on LinkedIn, Now What?” aims generally at theindividual user. He discusses LinkedIn contacts as a source of knowledge about business and political issues, career management, job leads, and consulting opportunities.

    Alba recommends using LinkedIn for “your personal branding strategy,” a theme that informs the book. He shares some thoughts on netiquette and discusses using LinkedIn alongside Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and Yahoo! Groups.

    Alba highly recommends participating in LinkedIn “Answers” service, and mentions the section called This Week’s Top Experts.A particularly helpful hint is his pointer to Guy Kawasaki’s essay called “LinkedIn Profile Extreme Makeover”

    This book’s pace is sometimes slowed by numbing technical details and a tendency to be pedantic, e.g., “LinkedIn has over 90,000 Groups. When you join a group you get access to the other Group members.” Nevertheless, it’s chock-full of information for users new to the service.

  • June 20, 2008

    2011: Trendspotting

    2011: Trendspotting for the next decade.
    Richard Laermer
    McGraw Hill, 2008. 305 pp.

    First: The difference between a trend and a fad:
    A fad is a “flash in the pan that doesn’t deserve mention,” says veteran Trendspotter Richard Laermer, while a trend is “something that is just beginning to percolate—but is happening in a significant enough manner that we can see how it’s going to change us.”

    If you’ve read Laermer in Huffington Post or elsewhere, you know he is funny, blazingly smart, and … well… he loves to write. Among other titles, he is the author of Native’s Guide to New York (1989), TrendSpotting (2002), Full Frontal PR (2003), and and co-author of Punk Marketing (2007). He has contributed to Public Radio’s Marketplace program and he copublishes the BadPitchBlog.

    Although it’s impossible to do justice to this 300-page book and its nearly 80 essays covering every conceivable topic part in contemporary life, here’s a stab at it. . . .

    Do you want practical tips?
    “If you’re not thumbing through business magazines on a regular basis, checking out industry blogs … and staying informed about the world, you’ll be left behind.
    “You’ve got to evolve or die.
    “Be a noncliché spotter of trends so that you don’t become obsolete or, worse, stale.”

    Or do you prefer Gestalt?
    Picture a tree, Laermer suggests. “The roots of new trends are in technology, while the branches are finance, travel, weather, sex, education, communication techniques, gracefulness, and societal changes.
    “Most trends come and go, but some recur like the seasons. Rather than stemming from the vacillations of technology and pop culture, they are rooted in deeper phenomena . . . “perennial” or “meta- trends.”

    Do you want research?
    Laermer’s essays cite data from the census bureau, the FDA, the World Health Organization, the Harvard Medical School, and other studies. “By 2008 the median age of the workforce is expected to rise from 38.7 to 40.7. Contributing to these trends is the new influx of ‘boomerangs’—those boomer retirees who come back to the workforce after a short time away.”

    Or do you prefer personal observation?
    Laermer’s encyclopedic knowledge of popular culture informs many trends he identifies.
    “Teens shall remain narcissistic. Those whom I dub Generation Broke … have their parents navigating and engineering their lives. They don’t subscribe to the so-called learning via the school of hard knocks, or making the grade, or rising up the ladder, or earning one’s keep.”

    How about an insider’s view on the media industry?
    “When you deconstruct the news … you need to know that most information comes not from sources who proffer it because they wish to “get the story out” (or are prodded to do just that), but rather from those who are paid to make sure the world knows about their latest glory. … “News is a consumer product just like all the others: it’s created by someone, for someone, with a single goal in mind—to make a profit.”

    His web site www.laermer.com offers “essays, trend advice, ways to spot trends, and blog posts. It provides links to many other useful and entertaining sites too.

    General readers will find this book entertaining, funny, and thought-provoking. Practitioners of marketing and public relations will take away some new things to try.

  • December 5, 2007

    The starfish strategy

    Robert Scoble’s piece in Fast Company (December/January) makes the case that expecting your Web site to be a destination all by itself is soooooo 1990s. Scoble notes that this season’s presidential candidates use what he calls a ‘starfish’ strategy. “A starfish has many legs radiating outward from its central core. It uses its legs to move toward its prey, which it will ultimately devour….”

    Consider your Web site the belly of the starfish. Add legs to the starfish as new technologies emerge. For example:
    Mitt Romney uses his blog to push audiences to other pieces of his communication ‘starfish’ where they can learn more.
    Barack Obama’s campaign uses text messaging to send updates to (mostly young) people.
    John McCain’s YouTube channel shares debate highlights, TV spots, and town hall footage.
    John Edwards’s Flickr photo sharing site provides an inside look at his campaign.
    Candidates also use social networking sites and Google Blog search to track what others are saying about them.

    “Attract people into your sphere, entertain or engage then, and then close the deal,” Scoble says.