On June 1, 2011 Google announced the launch of its Google +1 button for websites.  Early this March Google launched Google +1 Experiment for users and opting into this experiment was left as choice for Google users.  It clear from the functionality of the button that it gives direct competition to Facebook ‘Like’ button.  I did a quick installation of Google +1 button on my WordPress blog by taking directions from official Google webmaster guide that can be seen here and from Mashable’s Blog post here .   Please watch the how to video that is embedded at the bottom of this blog post.

I +1d one of my blog posts and did a quick test. The result was instantly seen on Google search results. The test can be seen in action in the image below -

The how to guide to install the Google +1 button with using a Plugin on your WordPress blog is below. Some dependencies will stay on the kind of theme you are using, hence it is not successful for every WordPress site.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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First of all if you are a facebook user with personal profile then this won’t interest you much.  This blog article is mainly for facebook page admins.   But you may wish to continue to read it as it is incredibly interesting. Yesterday Facebook quietly announced upgrade for Facebook pages via a note on their official page for Facebook Pages . If you are an admin of any facebook page then you can preview / upgrade to new page from here.  If you do not wish to upgrade now then automatically facebook will upgrade your page by March 11, 2011.

I took preview myself and captured some screenshots that will give you a good idea what these changes will mean to you as Facebook page admin.

CHANGE # 1

Just like your personal profile photos can be showcased on the top of the page.  You can showcase the photos that you upload on your wall or tag your page to here. The photos uploaded by people who like you page cannot be showcased here. And just like your personal profile you can click on “x” and hide the photo that you do not wish to showcase.

CHANGE # 2

Navigation is on the left – Info , Photos , apps ( earlier used to be on tabs ) etc.

CHANGE # 3

Admins can now show the top post on the page wall to their likers ( fans ) of the page .  This feature is great to promote a message, deal, event etc.  The drawback is if you opt for ‘top post’ to show then you will miss the advantage of showing chronology on info shared on the page.

CHANGE # 4 Use facebook as a page

Use Facebook as YOUR PAGE .  This is kind of having an AVATAR.  This is incredible feature for business owners.  Now you can switch your personal profile to your page profile and start interacting with other pages as your own page. THIS IS REAL FUN. Whenever you wish you can switch back to your own profile and use facebook as you and not your page.  This in other words mean one can be a business , interact with other businesses ( pages ) as business and continue to be self while interacting with friends or for unofficial conversations.

Why facebook allowed interaction only with pages while using ‘Facebook as a Page’ is could be because facebook wants to make sure that page admins are still paying for ads to promote page to users.  Another reason could be to control spam. But I see spam could increase because I can be a page called ‘ JB is cutie pie ‘ and I can go on putting spam on pages. [ this sucks but we know such pages exist] Note : FB spam filter on pages is Good so life for such spam pages will be very less.

But pages interacting with pages means a whole new “official” world for facebook users. I would like to call is as LinkedIn part of Facebook.

How to Switch to a Page Avatar

Switch to Page Profile and Activate Notifications when fans interact with your page or post

Step-1

Click on your account on top right hand as seen in image below

Step 2

Choose which page you would want to use facebook as (in other words choose your Avatar ) by clicking on switch.

Step-3

You will get the confirmation as seen in image below

What all you can do when using facebook as Page

• Receive Notifications when people interact with your page or post

• You can search here to find more pages on facebook to like them or to comment on them

• Like the Page as Page

• See newsfeed just for the pages you have liked

NOTE: In case you wish to go back to your personal profile. Just switch it back as indicated in image below

How to Edit Page Settings

Next step is to click on “Your Settings” and then check the second box as seen below

I also saw an alert to link my Twitter profile with Facebook page.

Note for developers – starting March 11^th use of static FBML in tabs of the page would be stopped. You can use only the iframes.  Facebook is recommending to start migrating to iframes already.  Facebook introduced iframe tabs for pages. This is primarily done to support apps running on HTML5 . Facebook is suggesting all developers to start migrating to iframe tabs. By March 11th 2011 no more static FBML tabs would be possible , however tabs created before March 11th will continue to be supported by FB. FB is recommending to discontinue using fbml and start using iframe as eventually entire FB platform will be made HTML5 compatible. here are more details if you want to readhttp://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/462

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1. First things first , how to stay safe on Facebook, click here for the safety guide
2. Official Facebook Engineering Page
3. Official Facebook Page
4. Official Known issues on facebook Page . Updates about known bugs and issues within facebook . You can report bugs from this page as well.
5. People directory on Facebook
6. Page directory on Facebook
7. Applications directory on Facebook
8. Groups directory on Facebook
9. Facebook official blog
10. Facebook Developers’ blog – All the Geeky stuff !
11. Facebook Developers’ site home page – More geeky stuff
12. Official Facebook platform showcase –  ( check how open graph is implemented on world’s best sites )
13. Official Preferred Developer Consultants directory –  hire or use the free tools from these organizations for your website/s
14. Get BADGES for your profile, pages, Albums, and Like Badge( for the pages that you like ) from here . For pages that you are admin of you can get the badges here
15. If you want to get a like box for your website ( it is a great way to make your website visitor like your facebook page without leaving your website ) Go for it now! —  . I even did a how to video on this that you can check out here.
16. Select a username for your profile or your fanpage if you have not already. You need to have minimum 25 likers before you become eligible to choose an alias.
17. There is whole Forum Dedicated to Facebook support . Of course this is run by FB users themselves. Give and get help here . This is serious job , you can see the top contributors here .
18. And Finally if you think that Facebook should hire you then here is the place for  you
19. All the above did not make any sense ? New to Facebook?  Get started here

Note: facebook may change the URLs of these info elements anytime. If you find any links broken or missing please report the same to me by placing your observation in the comments. Thanks for reading! Happy Clicking !

Updates:

• To check if facebook platform is working fine or not you can go here .
• Official Facebook RESOURCE guide
• Check your Page insights HERE
• Contest Guidelines on Facebook are HERE
• Discover Facebook Pages from HERE

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As a business have you ever thought of generating revenues from a place where your business does not exist? Sounds a bit weird, correct ? But it is not actually that insane. Stores and brands always try to achieve this by selling their gift cards online, in grocery stores, pharmacy, gas stations etc. Win for the customer who does not have time to go buy the gift and win for the brand as they get someone to pre-pay for their product or service without being physically present at a POP (point of purchase). The picture below shows a typical process of how a gift card reaches its final user. We have a buyer and good friend Andy who buys the gift-card  –

Imagine a system that will enable Andy to send gift card instantly to his friend either from his home or office, all he needs is a device with internet connection. This device could be a mobile phone or a notebook or could even be a computer.

Look at process below that shows gift-card buying process via Green Commerce Inc’s Instant gift-card system.

Benefits of Instant or textable gift-cards to buyer –

1. A buyer can buy the gift-card from internet and can send it on email and or mobile phone of a friend. CONVENIENCE !
2. Time and money saved in personally handing out the card or shipping it
3. Buyer can send the gift card from anywhere in the world without doing much of advance planning.  Since the delivery is instant the gift-card can be sent at nick of the time

Benefits of Instant or textable gift-cards to user ( Redeemer ) –

1. Redeeming is easy. All you have to carry along with you is your mobile phone which you do generally.
2. No hassle of remembering to carry the gift-card with you.
3. Redeem either in full or partially.

Benefits of Instant or textable gift-cards to BUSINESSES –

1. Sell more gift cards
2. Pay only when you sell it. No sale no payment.
3. Quick and easy set up
4. It is unique and is Cool
5. It is personalized
6. It is instant
7. It is convenient
8. It is secure
9. IT IS GREEN! (No plastic!)

What kind of businesses should use this system ?

• Restaurants
• Spas
• Salons
• Art gallery
• Tattoo studios
• Holiday homes
• Travel agencies
• Malls
• Book stores
• Cake Shops
• Other retailers

The list is endless………………………………………………………

You can CLICK HERE to see few our already existing customers in action.

As a business owner if you are hoping to see this system help you grow your business then your excitement should be doubled as Green Commerce Inc is offering to set-up the system at ZERO cost to the businesses for a limited time. Usually a customized set-up costs around $500.00 BUT NOW IS THE OPPORTUNITY to get it done for $0.00. Comment bellow if you have any questions. You can reach out to me at msinghal at greencommerce dot com for any further details.

Staying in touch is important for news, views, special offers or just for saying hello PLEASE LIKE OUR PAGE ON FACEBOOK BY CLICKING THE LIKE BUTTON BELOW

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Yesterday I was updating my LinkedIn profile as few of the items needed some attention.  All of a sudden my eyes got stuck on the advertisement on the right hand side of my home page that said – Build your showcase of Network-aware Professional Recommendations. Upon click I reached on LinkedIn’s Official Marketing Solution website .  So I collected the information available here and on LinkedIn’s official Blog and below are the details –

FOUR Tabs on Company Pages

1. Overview Tab
2. Product and Services Tab
3. Analytics Tab
4. Careers Tab

LinkedIn New Company Pages

As per the Official blog post the few very clear take aways both for professionals and the Companies ( Small and big sizes ).

For professionals

• Making intelligent recommendations helps define  professional’s persona as an influencer and helps the professional build credibility with potential employers, partners and colleagues.
• Professionals play a critical role in helping other professionals and peers cut through the clutter in making time-sensitive decisions about key purchases.

For Small and large Companies

• Showcase recommendations from their customers and helps building brand virally and credibly on LinkedIn.
• Analytics will enable Page admins to accumulate much needed data for various kinds of decision making
• Careers tab will enable companies to attract right kind of human resources and possibly this will bring down the head hunting costs.

SO THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURE WILL BE SHOWCASE OF PRODUCT AND SERVICES AND RECOMMENDATIONS ATTACHED WITH THE SAME.

LinkedIn claims that some 40 companies started their pages on the day of launch on November 1, 2010 .  You can find the companies and their respective Company pages by searching from here.   If you want to browse the Industry then you can do it from here.  And you want to add a company on LinkedIn then here is the link for you.

NOTE : These pages are not visible on internet outside LinkedIn in complete form. The snapshot below of Dell’s page will show the sign in or sign up message if someone wants to access the company pages on linked.

Since this is a new development at LinkedIn, do share your thoughts and Ideas in the comment section on how we can leverage these new features for marketing our respective businesses.

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I am currently listening to Mark Zuckerberg live and blogging this post. Today Facebook at SFO announced the release of Seamless messaging that will be available only via invite now and will gradually be released over period of next few months. After F8 conference and release of Social graph one great change that has happened in facebook culture is that they have started announcing new features on their official blog around same time when they are having press conference/announcements

Mark Zuckerberg announcing the release of Facebook's Seamless Messaging System

1. Seamless Messaging – Modern messaging System. In nutshell Email ( all email services including Gmail), facebook messages, chat, text messages can work on same thread regardless of how the sender has sent you a message. For example you receive a message on fb and if you are logged in to your chat then you will get this message inside chat. Everyone will have @facebook.com email id.
2. Conversation History – self explanatory .
3. Social Inbox – filtering messages that you want to read (to me it sounds analogous to priority inbox that we use in Gmail ) . Of course since it is on facebook this will trickle down to the friends of the friend that I care more about. My personal take on this is that this is going to be more intuitive and will improve over period of time.

Components of Facebook's seamless messaging system

OTHER POINTS -

=>Mark Zuckerberg was not averse to saying that VOIP feature can also be part of future if users want it.

=> The advertising will not be inserted inside this messaging system yet.

=>Mark also claimed that this product is not a Gmail killer but is a Giga box killer. Also shared that he thinks Gmail is a great product. However, this product will work for Gmail users as well .

=> Message forwarding will be enabled. Allow people to add into thread and leave the thread.

=> A good user will have infinite storage space.

=> works with Jabber/XMPP , SMTP will be released soon and Facebook API

UPDATE : You can request for your facebook message invite from HERE . Be sure to log in to Facebook first .

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Several months ago I wrote a post on how Google Apps can really provide you the much needed free of cost collaborative environment for your small business. In this blog post I am going to share with you on how to do this yourself. This is a 2 part video tutorial. I recommend to watch both the parts together one after the other and then ascertain whether you have all requisite info in hand to do it yourself. This recommendation specially goes out to non-technical readers.  No matter what business you are in , google apps is an excellent suite of tools and services that will enable you and your team to work collaboratively with possibility of managing your office work from mobile devices. You get FREE official Email, site, calendar, docs and much more .

HERE IS THE HOW TO VIDEO PART 1

Click here to view the embedded video.

HOW TO VIDEO PART 2

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Today is another exciting day on social media. While people are making hue and cry on another new policy change by facebook on default landing tab for a facebook page ,  I took some time to compile my notes I created while watching the Google I|O keynote live from their official Google channel.

1. Things started with HTML5 and amazing applications like http://mugtug.com/ and http://www.clicker.com/ were invited to showcase what they built with already available open source.
2. Google announced WebM, an open web media format project and open-sourced VP8, a high-quality, web-optimized video codec, that Google is contributing to under a royalty-free license.
3. Adobe’s Kevin Lynch gave a demo for Dreamweaver CS5 the HTML5 Pack and can be downloaded from here http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/html5pack.html
4. Google App Engine for Business, which offers new features that enable companies to build internal applications on the same reliable and secure infrastructure that Google uses for their own apps. $8/user/month/app . Maximum of $1000/app to me is such an amazing deal for businesses.
5. Google waves is now free for all no invite needed. salesforce.com now have incorporated Google waves in their app for instant collaboration.
6. http://www.vmware.com/ cloud portability partnership with VMware was announced.  It was shared that this is to make it easier for companies to build rich web apps and deploy them to the cloud of their choice or on-premise. In just one click, users of the new versions of SpringSource Tool Suite and Google Web Toolkit can deploy their application to Google App Engine for Business, a VMware environment or other infrastructure, such as Amazon EC2.
7. New Chrome Web Store was announced as an open marketplace for web apps that helps people find the best web applications across the Internet
8. Some new resale of APIs were done –
   1. Google Maps API Premier is not ready for Enterprises. Mobile strategy now inbuilt in it.
   2. New Feed API for enhanced Ad sense experience and benefits , more details here
   3. New Google Latitude API — location can make mobile apps and websites more useful.
9. Two new developer tools —  BigQuery and Prediction API this is explained more here http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/05/bigquery-and-prediction-api-get-more.html
10. Simple yet powerful apps built on HTML5 were shared like chromabrush.com
11. Twitter for Android: A closer look at Android’s evolving UI patterns check the screen shots here http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/05/twitter-for-android-closer-look-at.html

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Hi everyone, yesterday I did this video to share with some facebook friends who had a question about – how to take a backup of all the names and email ids of the facebook friends. This question came in the discussion we were having about lack of data backup on social media accounts like facebook, twitter etc.  I have a backupify.com account and feel a bit safe about data being secured to some extent. So in the event of any technical catastrophe the account can be reinstated to some extent if not perfectly.

My good facebook friend and  Social Media Expert , Mirna Bard rightly pointed out that this method can be misused by the spammers.  My message for users who want to misuse this method is that try this at your own risk as facebook is damn smart to figure the culprits out and they don’t wait, yes in a blink you will be banned.  :-)

Watch the video below to see how to export the names and email ids for your facebook friends and make the data safe -

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Google’s advance search has really become advanced now a days. Ever since Google bots have started crawling the social media sites like twitter for real time search the whole search related to news ( BREAKING news to be more precise) has changed.

Yesterday there was a bomb scare on the Robert F Kennedy bridge in New York City and the video below shows how I tracked down who and how the news broke on Twitter.

UPDATE: Google’s search navigation has changed beginning today , I will repost the video with new navigation

Click here to view the embedded video.

Feel free to leave any questions in the comment section regarding Google search.

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