Google to launch ‘Friend Connect’ tonight
Google’s newest foray into social media will launch tonight in preview release at Campfire One. Google’s announcement about Friend Connect states that webmasters may use the service to easily set up social media sharing services on their sites, encouraging online communities to develop and potentially help to promote the site. Google Friend Connect functionality includes user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, reviews, and third-party applications provided through Google’s OpenSocial developer community. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 05/12/2008
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Filed under: Google, Social Media Optimization Friend Connect, Google, Social-Media, Web-2.0
Internet Retailers Finding Growth During The Recession
I earlier wrote about how businesses could take advantage of a recession by swooping in to grab up some marketshare from more fearful businesses who might choose to cut back advertising and expansion during an uncertain period. Now Forrester Research and Shop.org have released some survey results indicating that many online merchants are seeing growth while brick-and-mortar businesses are experiencing reduced sales.
The one cautionary note a Forrester analyst added to the release was that many retailers are apparently planning to advertise more in social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, even though it’s “still unproven how such sites might build direct revenue for retailers” (paraphrased).
I’d note that many of us in internet marketing have identified fairly significant promotional potential in social media sites, and that some degrees of integration with them are possible in many cases without incurring advertising costs — so, it may be that judicious campaigns should still be attempted, even if there is not a lot of research evidence indicating good ROI. Just as with any promotional campaigns, it’s important to try to measure results as you go, and adjust as indicated.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 04/08/2008
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Filed under: General, Market Data, Social Media Optimization economy, internet retail, online retail, Recession
LinkedIn Beta Tests New Homepage Layout
So, I’m at the SMX West conference tonight, hopping around networking with people and every so often updating my Flickr pix or sending work emails when I noticed that LinkedIn is apparently beta-testing a new homepage layout on me. Check out the screengrab of what I see now when I login to LinkedIn:
So, they want feedback on their new design, so I’ll give it here. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 02/28/2008
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Filed under: Best Practices, Design, Social Media Optimization linkedin, Social-Media, website-design
Mahalo now associates user profiles
Mahalo has begun allowing users to associate their profiles with their user profiles at MySpace, StumbleUpon, Digg, Twitter, Flicker, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pownce.
This is pretty cool for people who would like to start getting their various social media efforts coordinated, and who wish to promote their work across multiple sites.
I previously mentioned Spock, a service that does something similar, only Spock is coordinating results and information without asking permission to create combined user profiles on people – something that some have found a bit creepy. Mahalo’s opt-in format is in contrast the noncreepy way to go about doing this sort of thing.
This looks like a useful self-promotion tool to me, and another service to keep in mind when doing social media optimization (“SMO”).
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 01/28/2008
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Filed under: Social Media Optimization Mahalo, Social Media Optimization, spock
Superpages.com Adds More User-Generated Content to the Local Mix
About a week ago, Idearc announced that Superpages.com had introduced more user-content features.
Previously, the primary component of user content on the site was limited to user ratings and reviews associated with business listings.
Some of the new features this recent upgrade added include allowing all users to enhance basic biz profile information, uploading pictures of organizations, wiki-like biz listing “blog” features which could allow simplistic blogging by businesses and/or could be used as a consumer comment or Q/A zone for each business since any user could submit info to them.
Of all the top online yellow pages and local search sites, I believe that Superpages may now have the distinction of having the greatest (more…)
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 11/14/2007
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Filed under: Design, Local Search, Market Data, News, Online Directories, Social Media Optimization, Yellow Pages idearc, Internet-Yellow-Pages, iyp, Local Search, superpages, Yellow Pages
Antisocial Media Optimization
Techcrunch amused me greatly by mentioning Hatebook, the “anti-social utility that connects you with the people YOU HATE.” If you’re already a member you can “Bog off”, and it invites you to “upload blackmail material”, “publish lies”, and “get the latest gossip from your enemies”. The jokes abound on this antisocial networking site — check out the stuff on the “edit your profile” screen I saw when I signed up:
The site made me stop and think: would it be possible to optimize through antisocial networking? (more…)
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 10/15/2007
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Filed under: Social Media Optimization antisocial, antisocial-media, antisocial-networking, Social Media Optimization, Social-Media, social-networking
Barack Obama Ad on LinkedIn
I saw this clever ad for Barack Obama running in the right sidebar of my LinkedIn profile page today:
I think it’s an ad, because the clickthrough link is tracked through DoubleClick. When you click on that ad, though, it pops you over to LinkedIn’s Question & Answers section… (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/13/2007
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Filed under: Advertising, Marketing, Social Media Optimization Barack-Obama, linkedin, Political-Advertising, SMO, Social Media Optimization
Facebook to Expose Profile Info
Facebook just announced that they are going to begin exposing a minimal amount of user profile information to people who are not logged-in to the service, including allowing the info to be crawled and indexed by search engines.
I’ve previously blogged about how using LinkedIn is important for the purposes of professional reputation management, and this change that Facebook has announced today causes me to state that they should also be something that users integrate with for the purposes of networking, proactive reputation management, and good career building.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/05/2007
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Filed under: Social Media Optimization Facebook, linkedin, Professional-Networking, reputation-management
Use LinkedIn for Career Building & Reputation Management
This past week, LeeAnn Prescott at Hitwise reported that usage of LinkedIn has risen by 323% in the past year:
For those of us working in the internet and information technology fields, this probably isn’t a big surprise. I started getting increasing amounts of LinkedIn invites a few years ago. If you’re not yet aware of the LinkedIn phenomenon, it’s a professional social networking site which allows you to post some biographical material, resume information, and then you can link up to your colleagues and other professional contacts who also have LinkedIn profiles.
If you haven’t joined LinkedIn yet, I’d encourage you to do so, because I think it’s beneficial to your career and good for your company. You should get everyone else in your company to integrate with it as well, because this could be beneficial to your company’s search engine optimization, too. Read on for more details.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 07/16/2007
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Filed under: Social Media Optimization hitwise, linkedin, Social Media Optimization
AMA Hot Topic Series: Search Marketing in San Fran
The San Francicso leg of the American Marketing Association’s Hot Topic Series on Search Marketing this past Friday was really great! The crowd was intimate, which allowed all of us speakers to mingle and have some quality discussions with folx, and the seminar/conference/workshop was excellently organized.
Read on for more details about the AMA Hot Topic Series day’s sessions.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 04/25/2007
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Filed under: Conferences, Google, HTML Optimization, Keyword Research, Link Building, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Seminars, SEO, Social Media Optimization AMA-Hot-Top-Series, AMA-Search-Engine-Marketing, American-Marketing-Association-Hot-Topic-Series-on-Sear, Google-Sitemaps, google-webmaster-tools, Search Engine Optimization
