Collin Condray's posterous

Flickr Can't Go Back To What It Once Was-And it's a shame

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 11:41:57 -0800

The new Flickr homepage will look more like the slick, image-only homepages of online visual pinboard Pinterest and photo-sharing app Pixable. There will be little white space on the homepage. In the new version, photos will appear four times their current size. They will lie on the page, scattered about like puzzle pieces slipped together without overlap. Flickr is repositioning itself to look more like an app, which is right in line with Yahoo's "mobile first" strategy. But this is a Web-only photo community - and if Instagram is showing us anything, it's that the future of photography is in smartphones.

via readwriteweb.com

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[STUDY] Facebook Defriending is on the Rise-This means the remaining friends are a more intimate group

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 10:24:00 -0800

If you've been defriending a lot lately, you're not alone.

A new study out from Pew today confirms what we already know: People don't want to collect as many Facebook friends as possible. Social networkers are becoming more selective, managing their accounts and "pruning" people from their lists. More users are untagging themselves from photos, deleting comments and unfriending others. Women and younger users tend to prune more than others: 67% of women with social network site profiles have deleted users compared with 58% of men.

via readwriteweb.com

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Supercharge your social media strategy by getting back to basics-Including a simple strategy to get back on track

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 12:43:26 -0800

Kenichi Ohmae, known as Mr. Strategy, spent 20 years at McKinsey, the management consulting titan, honing his craft. His most notable achievement was the creation of the 3Cs — a deceptively simple framework for businesses to achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

It so happens that it’s a nifty tool for building a social media strategy too.

The 3Cs are Customer, Company, and Competition. Focusing on what makes you special in each of these areas is the secret sauce.

via socialmediatoday.com

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Social Media Key Influencer in Multi-Exposure Purchase Path-Social Media may not make a sale, but it can make it bigger

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 09:33:00 -0800

The study found that when consumers were exposed to social media in addition to other online ad formats or marketing channels, such as search, email and display, the average revenue per order for US advertisers was $280.71—more than double the order size compared to the average of all digital channels.

via emarketer.com

Need help getting started with social media? Let us know how we can help.

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Caffeine Zone 2 Tracks Your Caffeine Usage and Tells You if Another Cup Will Do Any Good-I really need this app

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:09:00 -0800

via lifehacker.com

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Google Knowledge Graph Could Change Search Forever-Say good-bye to link building

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:17:00 -0800

via mashable.com

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How Pinterest Is Becoming the Next Big Thing in Social Media for Business

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:38:00 -0800

Perhaps the most powerful business application is the ability to post images of your company's products on your Pinterest board and link them back to your website. It works as a sort of virtual store catalog.

But remember that this is social media. If you simply display images of your products without contributing other content or sharing other users' pins, you'll likely find that people don't pay much attention. After all, no one likes a self-absorbed blowhard.

via entrepreneur.com

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Pinterest Becomes Top Traffic Driver for Retailers-Here's another good reason to become interested in this site

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:24:00 -0800

via mashable.com

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How Google's New Privacy Policy Could Affect You-You will be assimilated

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:04:00 -0800

“Google has always collected information. That hasn’t changed,” Opsahl said. “But information that was once siloed will now be co-mingled.”

Google’s new policy replaces more than 60 existing product-specific privacy documents, for services including Gmail , YouTube and Google Docs. Google says the unified terms will provide better search results and serve up ads that are more likely to be of interest. By combining your history across products, it will have more data to work with.

via scientificamerican.com

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Ghostery is a browser plugin that shows who's tracking you online-Makes me want to move to Montana and raise goats

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 07:29:00 -0800

Ghostery sees the invisible web - tags, web bugs, pixels and beacons. Ghostery tracks the trackers and gives you a roll-call of the ad networks, behavioral data providers, web publishers, and other companies interested in your activity.

via ghostery.com

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How to Get More Clicks on Twitter via @DanZarrella-Interesting that you get more clicks later in the day

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:55:43 -0800

I’ve often said that the best use of Twitter is as a broadcast medium. You should be creating a ton of interesting content and sharing it with your followers. To that end I’ve done a bunch of research on how to optimize the clickthrough rate (CTR) of the links you’re tweeting.

via danzarrella.com

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Pages With Too Many Ads "Above The Fold" Now Penalized By Google's "Page Layout" Algorithm-And it probably doesn't look cool either

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 07:51:19 -0800

From Google’s post on its Inside Search blog today:

We’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away.

So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience.

Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.

via searchengineland.com

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Pages With Too Many Ads "Above The Fold" Now Penalized By Google's "Page Layout" Algorithm-And it probably doesn't look cool either

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 07:51:19 -0800

From Google’s post on its Inside Search blog today:

We’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away.

So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience.

Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.

via searchengineland.com

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Teenager has never seen a record before-My toddlers will probably have the same reaction to CDs

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:41:19 -0800

Watch as John Scalzi's 13-year-old daughter sees an LP record for the first time.

This is... This is... What? What?! This is huge! This is like ten CDs in one. How many songs does it have on it?

I believe the record in question is from Jonathan Coulton. (via ★mathowie)

By Jason Kottke • Jan 19, 2012 at 10:41 am • John Scalzi video

via kottke.org

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How To Use Contra-Competitive Timing for More ReTweets, Likes, Comments and Clicks via @DanZarrella

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:50:07 -0800

via danzarrella.com

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What are the Best Times to Blog? via @DanZarrella-Good info to know if you have a blog post coming up (which I do)

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:42:52 -0800

via danzarrella.com

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3 Successful Google+ Pages and Why They Work-You Can No Longer Ignore Google+

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:36:00 -0800

Google+ may be the newcomer in social media, but it can no longer be dismissed. And don’t take my word for it. Chris Brogan claims Google+ “changes EVERYTHING.” In a recent article, he cites two factors as being game-changers:
“Search is probably the biggest reason it changes everything. Second, a very wealthy company (Google) is pushing Plus to be a very powerful effort to change the way we share information on the web. They’ve spent money on commercials during many mainstream events, and they’ve changed up many of their disparate applications and processes to point harder toward Google+. They’ve really quickly moved towards building a social backplane that is a lot more functional than any other social network.”

via socialmediaexaminer.com

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Why Apple Won't Disrupt the Textbook Industry Anytime Soon-I wished I'd had one of these when I was a kid

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:33:00 -0800

Apple revolutionizes stuff. It's practically conventional wisdom in the tech world that, even if they're not first in the game or necessarily even the best, the Cupertino-based giant has a tendency to make a noticeable impact. They didn't invent the MP3 player, smartphone or tablet, but they sure have redefined all of those products. Even if this tendency is strong, it's not necessarily always how things play out. For an example, look no further than the Apple TV.

Today, the company set their sights on textbooks, an industry Steve Jobs himself described as being "ripe for digital destruction." True as that may be, is what Apple planning to do in the space really all that disruptive?

via readwriteweb.com

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4 Tips to Keep Your Website Ahead of the Curve-Websites are still more flexible at this time

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:42:56 -0800

Sure, having a website for your business serves a practical need: to draw net-surfing users to your product or service. However, it’s also much more than slapping on a run of the mill two-column template and calling it a day. Nothing kills an online buzz like a poorly designed or drastically outdated website. Dry and boring default templates, broken assets, confusing pages and invasive widgets do nothing but harm a page’s style, which in turn reflects poorly on the company.

2012 is heralding a new wave of innovative web technologies and design, and a page that stays in step with these trends is bound to pique interest and lower your bounce rate. Even more, a well done and on-trend website remains effective well after the year is over, reeling users in with thoughtful design and building a design-conscious and taste-making reputation. Keep these tips in mind when you clean up your company’s website, and stay ahead of the curve for the new year.

via mashable.com

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How (and why) To Turn Off Google's Personalized Search Results-Get the old school way of seeing Google

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:13:25 -0800

Earlier this week Google announced that search is going “social,” so that what you find when you do a Google search will be influenced by what your friends on Google+ are saying. In a blog post, Google said that it’s “transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships.” In addition to putting your friends posts and pictures front and center in search (subject to the privacy options they chose when the posted it), Google now presents search results based on what your friends are saying. So, if your Google+ friends like a certain restaurant, its more likely to come up higher on a search. And if you search for a person and that person has a Google profile, that’s what’s likely to pop up.

via forbes.com

If you're not on Google+ and need help getting started, let us at Blue Zoo Creative know.

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