SocialROI, a company that brings marketers, public relations professionals, charities and social media influencers together for mutual benefit, today launched its first offering, TweetROI (Return on Influence).

TweetROI is a Web-based technology platform that merges a business’ need to influence and monetize social media through Twitter, with that of an influential social media user’s, in this case a Twitter user, desire to derive an income from their work in building a following via Twitter.

TweetROI offers a pay-per-tweet platform that enables a company to purchase influence and exposure through Twitter. Coming out of its beta testing phase, TweetROI will be attractive to influential Twitterers because: TweetROI unites influencers with marketers and protects the authentic personality of Twitter; Twitterers recommend, in their own words, goods and services they like; and marketers and public relations professionals get valuable, previously unavailable social media exposure.

“We are pleased to debut TweetROI to the public and Twittersphere,” said Brian Carter, co-founder and chief marketing officer of SocialROI Inc. “Through this new venture, we at SocialROI believe that we are delivering a service that will be able to help bring quantifiable results and a stronger sense of influence to social media marketing.”

TweetROI is the most appropriate and immediate way for a company to leverage social media to generate quantifiable results for their business. In addition, charitable agencies can use TweetROI as a gratis service to help promote their charity’s needs and functions. The platform will have significant appeal to companies that come to realize the small amount of reach that their individual social media efforts can yield.

The obstacles to social media marketing for the typical business are significant, as it is still unproven, time intensive and expensive. The typical social media program takes a long-term commitment to generate results, but TweetROI solves this problem by giving participants access to influential people who are already leveraging Twitter in a way that gives immediate access to a plethora of potential brand spokespersons who can immediately engage followers to generate a return on their influence for companies and products.

Twitterers can already use TweetROI to get paid to Tweet about several companies and charitable organizations including: AMCTV; Jelly Belly; Skechers; Search Engine Strategies; ChristianCafe.com; Auto Parts Warehouse; and GerberLife; and 12for12k.org.

Social media channels have become an important tool in the marketing arsenal and it’s important to measure its impact, says Veronica Fielding, president of Digital Brand Expressions. With the increased attention on using social media for brand awareness, marketers are beginning to realize they need to measure social media’s impact, especially during a recession when budgets are tight.

“The newest analytic tools and applications can help track the number of unique users, referring site statistics, and the ratio of blog comments on your social media outposts,” explains Deepa Maran, Group Manager of Technical Services at Digital Brand Expressions and a Google Analytics Qualified Individual. “Those who are using LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc. to make their brands more visible in the social media space need to define what success will look like and then set up ways to measure their success.”

Many of the basic web analytics tools available today are free or low cost. They not only track and monitor traffic but can also measure social media’s impact – how people are hearing about your business, which efforts are bringing in the most traffic (blogs, forums), and whether you are attracting the right people.

For example, Omniture has a new application that measures the popularity and success of Facebook applications. And, Google Analytics has begun providing flexible segmentation definitions, which provide in-depth insight into behaviors (customer engagements, conversions, etc.). Google Analytics also helps track the interactions with social media widgets and video components.

“The most successful organizations are adopting tools and methodologies that help them listen to and learn from customers and prospects,”” says Ms. Maran. “We recommend that all organizations using social media to harness brand awareness set up at least some basic monitoring to analyze what’s working and what’s not”.

Digital Brand Expressions offers these tips for measuring social media:

• Define metrics for measuring your social media monitoring effectiveness.
• Regularly measure the ROI of your social media marketing efforts. Size does not matter when it comes to measuring social media return on investment. With social media marketing, the two core metrics are influence and engagement.
• Set up specific campaigns and event tracking for social media – choose analytics software that can track specific events.
• Use event tracking to follow the user engagement with the social media elements (videos, any social media applications, etc.) that are in a site. Tracking fans, followers, etc. over time shows how interest is growing and helps you refresh your content and share it through other channels as interest grows.
• Learn more about where your visitors come from and how they interact with your site so you can write better ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives, and create higher-converting websites.
• Determine which of your social media efforts bring more traffic and make a visitor more likely to use your product/service.
• Research plug-ins and tools like Bit.ly, xinureturns, PostRank, and SocialToo, which can supply data about your social media outposts.
• Aggregate your analytics – record all your information in one area or build a spreadsheet for analyzing your numbers. Use your social media analytics to engage your audience.

Digital Brand Expressions specializes in helping brands of all sizes to be found on the Web through customized solutions that typically include search engine optimization, paid search, and social media marketing for F1000 and middle market companies and provides social media educational tools for individuals.

GamersFlux, a company developing online services for gamers, launched its public alpha WOWPals service to World of Warcraft gamers. The service lets World of Warcraft players hook up with other local players, form local communities, easily find members for local guilds and share WoW related updates between friends through Twitter.

WOWPals is the first to provide location-based services for gamers. GamersFlux built WOWPals to ease the task for World of Warcraft players and guilds to connect with other players around their geographical area.

“Being World of Warcraft fans ourselves, we were frustrating by the lack of an organized way to locate and connect with local players in the area where we live. So, we came up with WOWPals,” says Danny Tsechansky, GamersFlux Co-Founder.

World of Warcraft players and guilds can register their account for WOWPals.NET and start connecting with other players in just a matter of minutes by going to WOWPals site and filling a short registration form.

GamersFlux was founder by Danny Tsechansky and Nadav Har Tzvi, avid gamers themselves, who started the company with the hope to eliminating the frustration they experienced over connecting and sharing with players alike.

Adfonic launches the industry’s most comprehensive mobile advertising marketplace. It will enable advertisers and agencies to bid for advertising on mobile sites and applications, creating a new revenue stream for mobile publishers. Adfonic’s self-service global mobile advertising platform will address the advertising community’s increased demands for more sophisticated mobile campaign management and maximize the earning potential for a new generation of mobile internet sites and applications worldwide.

With Adfonic, advertisers and publishers alike will benefit from the most advanced targeting capabilities in the market, detailed web-based real-time reporting and analytics, and an intuitive user experience.

“We are creating a transparent marketplace for advertisers to buy mobile inventory using a bidding model which will keep costs low whilst protecting their brand. Mobile has the potential to be the most powerful channel in the marketing mix. Our goal is to turn that potential into reality,” says Victor Malachard, CEO of Adfonic.

Adfonic’s campaign management tools have been designed from the ground up to allow advertisers and agencies to connect with their desired audiences, with a wealth of targeting options including location, device, mobile operators, demographics and day-time parting. A Web 2.0-style “tag” approach further helps advertisers reach a contextually relevant set of publishers, who in turn benefit from increased earning potential.

The Adfonic platform will serve display advertising to mobile sites and applications at launch, and publishers and advertisers can create an account for free in minutes. The easy-to-use interface is designed for companies ranging from larger brands and established mobile destinations to bloggers and small developers seeking to monetize or drive traffic to their sites and iPhone applications.

The three co-founders of Adfonic – Victor Malachard, CEO; Wesley Biggs, CTO; and Paul Childs, CMO – collectively bring 40 years of mobile marketing, mobile technology and start-up experience to their roles. The company is founded on the principles of trust, openness, flexibility, innovation and continuous improvement: essential elements for the development of a vibrant mobile community.

MyLife, the world’s most thorough people search, announced two new partnerships that extend the reach of MyLife’s superior people search service and enhance the people search experience for consumers. WhitePages and Ancestry.com, part of The Generations Network, Inc. network of sites, are leveraging MyLife’s dynamic people search results to drive business value and extend the reach of their respective brands.

With this partnership, MyLife is taking the Google approach to a broad distribution of results to expand its reach and provide value to consumers who want help finding people. WhitePages and Ancestry.com can now supplement users’ search queries with MyLife’s contextually relevant and three-dimensional people search results.

“As the leader in people search, our partnerships allow top Internet companies to add value to their sites and improve the customer experience by providing people search results that offer a unique, 360-degree-view of real people.” said Jeffrey Tinsley, founder and chief executive officer of MyLife.

These partnerships come shortly after the former Reunion.com and Wink services combined to launch MyLife, the most effective and efficient way for people to find and keep track of everyone in their life. MyLife is a profitable online business with over 15 million unique monthly visitors and a large user base of more than 50 million members growing at a pace of more than two million new members per month.

MyLife has more than 62 million members and is growing at a rate of more than 2 million new members per month. The new company was founded by entrepreneur Jeffrey Tinsley, former CEO of GreatDomains.com and Reunion.com. To build on and expand its proven revenue generating model, MyLife has received $25 million in funding from Oak Investment Partners.

Since its launch in late 2004, Digg has tried its hand with several outside advertising networks, going from an off-the-shelf Google AdSense arrangement to working with Federated Media before finally signing a deal for Microsoft to deliver its display advertisements. But in April of this year, Digg announced it would end its deal with the software giant in favor of selling and delivering its own ads. Earlier this month, it announced that in the coming months it would introduce Digg Ads, a platform that involves injecting sponsored links directly into Digg’s news stream, allowing users to Digg up or bury the ad just as they would any other story.

Over the past several years, it has not been unusual for a Digg user to screenshot a Digg display ad that he found particularly annoying or ironic and submit it to the site itself — in fact, several such items have made it to the front page. Describing Digg’s user base as anti-consumer wouldn’t be quite accurate given the daily front page stories of the latest gadget news on Gizmodo and Engadget, but its community has been quick to lash out against corporations seen as having brushes with unethical behavior.

Like all major Internet communities, Digg’s hosts a fair number of trolls (though the community itself polices the worst offenders) and the user base has never hesitated to criticize the very site that hosts their comments. Given all this, it’s not difficult to be skeptical that advertisers would want to throw their brands right into Digg’s news stream, possibly placing them within the cross hairs of an extremely outspoken and acerbic community.

Over the past few week, I reached out to several of the site’s most powerful users, people who have pushed hundreds of submissions to the coveted front page. All of them spend sometimes hours a day on the site, commenting and Digging their friends’ articles. Did they think that the community would welcome sponsored submissions and treat them just like the dozens of other stories, videos and images that flow across the front page every day?

Power Users react

Steve Elliot became an active user of the site in April of last year, pulled in initially by the idea of promoting his own content. But like other power users, he quickly realized the quid pro quo nature of Digg, in which you must push and network other Diggers’ content. He told me that he’s hopeful that the new ad platform will work, but that he’s worried about the “noise” generated with front page submissions.

“I think that it’s possibly a workable system, but for it to be workable, they’re going to have to find a way to cut through the noise of the automatic knee-jerk negative reaction a lot of people have to any front page story,” Elliot said. “For any paid content, there’s going to be even more users ready to react negatively to it. So if there is a way to separate that inevitable sizable negative reaction to an ad, then maybe out of the rest you can get enough usable data of up and down votes to see what kind of advertising is most effective.”

He explained that if a company feels like an outsider to the community, then they’re going to have a different experience of feedback than if they somehow integrate themselves into the community. The question, he said, is whether they can learn and replicate the formula for a popular Digg submission. He believes that it’s possible.

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” he said. “And when I say I’m optimistic, it goes beyond the baseline optimism that maybe they can pull this off. It goes for me all the way to the level that I’m hopeful that maybe in their attempts to catch the eye of the Digg community…instead of trying the same little tricks of old media, maybe they’ll get creative. Maybe they’ll break some new ground, and maybe we’ll see some exciting ideas and ways of interacting with the community, which to me is what Digg is all about.”

Abusing the ‘Bury’ Button

A Digg power user named Patrick (he didn’t want me to use his full name) told me that he thought that the idea was a “brilliant one on Digg’s part,” because of the potential for massively higher click-through rates than you’d ever see with standard display advertising. And, unlike some, he was confident that the advertisers could create enticing content.

“I’m sure Digg has people who are smart enough to come up with stuff that’s eye-catching, and I’m sure that people who work for Digg monitor the site and know what works really well and what doesn’t,” Patrick told me. “So they know what formula works. They know the algorithm…If I saw [an ad] that caught my eye, I’d click on it just like any other Digg submission. By the time I opened it and checked it out, and if I’m reading it and checked it out that long, I’m going to Digg it because it held my attention.”

As for what consumer products would work well under this new system, Patrick said that anything involving mobile phones and tech products already gets a lot of coverage on the site, but pointed out that, with entertaining content, almost anything could work. His only fear would be that a certain percentage of the site’s users would automatically bury all sponsored content.

“They should get rid of the bury button, because more often than not it’s misused,” he said.

Rami Taibah, who has submitted over 700 stories to Digg, over 100 of which made it to the front page, said that the Digg demographics — and likes and dislikes — could be somewhat limiting in terms of what advertisers could be successful on the new platform. He noted that companies that have prior histories of perceived unethical behavior will likely have some negative pushback from Digg, no matter what the content.

“Advertisers will have to try to understand the Digg community and what the users like to click,” he said. “It’s very anti-establishment, and is pro-Apple, pro-Linux, and very anti-Microsoft. If they try to understand the submission culture, then yes they can succeed. There are a lot of social media experts out there that could help such companies to customize articles and content that would sit well with the Digg community.”

When I pointed out the sometimes-trollish behavior of some Digg commenters, Taibah said that this is simply the nature of the Internet and that he didn’t believe that such a thing should or would deter companies from promoting their brands through the social news site.

Digg Ads

Mike Maser, Digg’s chief strategy officer, told me in a phone interview that they first approached a few of the site’s advertisers with the idea years ago and were met with enthusiasm. As their ad budgets have continued to contract - especially in the last year or so - the companies have been looking more toward performance-based advertising and less toward the traditional branding approach.

“They believed in this model that Digg was leading, which was this user-generated, user-led definition of what’s popular content,” Maser said. “But they wanted to apply those ideas in some way to their advertising as well. I remember a conversation with Intel, which has been a longtime advertiser with Digg, in late 2007. We came in and said, ‘What if we could apply a Digg platform, the Digg model, to advertising?’…And they were absolutely interested in that because they were seeing that consumers were part of that conversation already, whether they like it or not.”

Maser explained that a large percentage of Digg’s front page stories are already directed toward promoting consumer products, and he doesn’t think it will be very difficult for advertisers to sponsor that kind of content. Not only that, but they would have monetary incentive to tailor their submissions to those users.

“So let’s say an advertiser comes in and has a $10,000 budget,” he said. “We place their advertisement into the system. Let’s say it starts a baseline of $1 cost per click. So the ad gets shot out to the Digg audience in the stream of news. If that ad is really resonating, and people are clicking out to see the content…that dollar will come down so every time there’s a click maybe they pay 90 cents, or even better 80 cents and so on. So even more people are clicking on that advertisement and it’s spending more of their budget, but the incremental cost of that ad is going down.”

The flip side is that if people aren’t Digging the piece, or if they’re actively burying it, the cost-per-click will go up until it hits some pre-set maximum, causing the ad to fall out of the system.

User control

But what if a so-called “bury brigade” forms that automatically buries every sponsored post?

“When we announced this last week, we saw a lot of generally positive reactions from our user base,” Maser said. “The notion going into this is that there will be more control over the ad experience, so when Digg is transparent with their users and gives them that control over the site, they’ve actually really taken it to heart and appreciated that control. So we feel like the users being able to sort of have a more relevant content experience on the site is one way we’ll mitigate any sort of backlash.”

And then there’s the Digg algorithm. For years the site has refined the algorithm to weed out organized attempts to “game” the system, so Maser was sure that they were well equipped to locate any sort of advertisement bury brigade and neutralize its efforts.

The ad platform is still a work in progress and won’t be rolled out for a few months. Maser said they announced it early so they can work with advertisers over the coming months, developing the kind of content and ideas that will attract Digg’s user base.

“I do think innovation is the name of the game,” he said. “I think that sites need to come up with advertising experiences that are more endemic to their own property and their user base. So I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all approach to advertising anymore. Does that mean that display advertising is going away? No, but I do think systems like Digg Ads speak directly to our audience; it has a pricing mechanism that works for advertisers. Being more performance-oriented advertising, it gives them a more innovative option than display advertising.”

Of course, Digg’s display advertising isn’t going away. But with continuous reports that advertisers are getting frustrated with the lack of effectiveness of traditional CPM advertising, it’s not unfathomable that they would want to take the risk and inject their brands right into the user base. What the users do with the brand once it’s in their hands will likely determine whether Digg has come up with an advertising program that will truly break the mold.

About the Author : Simon Owens is a former newspaper journalist and an associate editor for MediaShift. You can read more of his writing at his blog or contact him at simon[.]bloggasm [at] gmail.com.

Photo of Mike Maser by Scott Beale of Laughing Squid.

Truphone has added 11 additional Nokia handsets to the list of devices compatible with Truphone and whose owners can now ring up big savings by taking advantage of Truphone’s broad range of calling plans and services.

With the addition of the 11 new handsets, Truphone is now compatible on 26 Nokia devices. Of those, software for 14 of the Truphone-compatible devices can now be downloaded from Nokia’s new Ovi store, with the software for 11 of the remaining 12 new devices to be added to the Ovi store soon.

In addition to the Ovi Store the Truphone application is also available for all 26 Nokia devices as an SMS over the air (OTA) download from the Truphone web site, and will always parallel the applications available via the Ovi store. The Truphone Web site will also include applications for other Nokia devices not currently available via Ovi, as well as the other supported mobile platforms.

The new Truphone-enabled Nokia devices are :

• N96
• N78
• N85 (also VoIP enabled)
• N79 (also VoIP enabled)
• 5630 (also VoIP enabled)
• 5800
• 5320
• 6210
• 6220
• 6650
• E63

After downloading and installing the Truphone application to their handsets, Nokia device owners will be able to take advantage of two calling plan options - Truphone Anywhere and Truphone Wi-Fi calling.

GeneTree has been named by Family Tree Magazine to its annual list of the 101 best family history Web sites for the second year in a row. This DNA-enabled family history-sharing site is listed among the 10 best Web sites for storing and sharing. GeneTree’s unique approach to family history provides users with access to the world’s largest correlated genetic genealogy database.

Family Tree Magazine is the largest-circulation genealogy magazine in the United States and is written for a growing consumer audience. Ancestry research is among the most popular online activities and much of it is taking place on an estimated 300,000 genealogy Web sites.

“It is exciting to be a part of this prestigious list for the second year in a row,” said Matt Cupal, GeneTree president and COO. “Since our launch, GeneTree has received a remarkably positive response as novice and avid genealogists use our tools to discover additional family lines and connect with family members from around the globe. As we continue to innovate new ways to share genealogy information, the possibilities the Web site provides to reach relatives—both past and present—are truly endless.”

GeneTree takes family history research to the next level by allowing users to have their DNA tested and then mapping those results with the Web site’s worldwide genetic genealogy collection. Through this technology, even novice genealogists can discover portions of their deep ancestral histories that predate written records. Those who elect to have genetic analysis done may choose from several types of DNA tests.

The GeneTree Web site also applies rich media technologies and collaboration tools to genetic genealogy, giving users innovative ways to map, assemble, record and share their family histories. Participants may work together to build new connections with previously unknown living relatives.

Whether you are a professional writer or student, you need all the inspiration you can get. Much of this inspiration can be found from other writers online in a variety of blog posts. Check out this collection to find lots of great posts that can help you become a better writer.

Subject Inspiration

Learn how to write better headlines, create strong content and more from these posts.

1. 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work: Copyblogger’s post explains a simple way to create compelling titles.
2. How to Use Social News Aggregators as a Source for Content Ideas: If you’ve run out of ideas for writing, be sure to check out this post that offers a great strategy for finding inspiration.
3. 31 Ways to Find Inspiration for Your Writing: Check out this blog post to find smart ways to get inspired in your writing.
4. Who Needs Headlines?: Get insight into the art of writing effective headlines from this post.
5. Zen Power Writing: 15 Tips on How to Generate Ideas and Write with Ease: This post will help you learn how to easily generate writing ideas.
6. How to Write Great Headlines: Here you’ll learn about the art of creating a perfectly crafted headline.
7. 50 Ways for Writers to Find Article Ideas: Here you’ll find 50 great ways to find inspiration for articles.
8. Using Titles Effectively on Blogs: You can learn how to make a good first impression with the help of this post.
9. Do You Feed Your Muse Well?: Learn about creating inspiration from this post.
10. Are You Using the Right Content Development Strategy for Your Website: This post explains a smart way to develop writing content.
11. The Discipline of Content Strategy: Learn how to plan for the creation of usable content from this post.
12. Writing Inspiration: Check out this post to find writing inspiration from Raymond Chandler to Alex Barris.
13. How to Build a Successful News Blog: 10 Information Sources You Can Use: This post explains how you can use information sources for news blog inspiration.
14. Marinating Ideas into Blog Posts: Use the techniques found in this post to marinate great ideas for your writing.
15. Sources of Inspiration for Your Blog: Find your muse through the resources in this post.
16. The Lazy or Smart Blogger’s Way to Create Content for Niche Blogs: In this post, you’ll learn about easily creating content for your niche blog.
17. How Great Headlines Score Traffic: This post explains why great writing headlines are so important.
18. Blogging and My Inspiration: Find out how one blogger gets motivated by reading this post.
19. Do You Digg This Headline?: Learn how to write headlines that attract attention on social networks from this blog post.

Techniques

Check out these posts to learn techniques for better writing.

1. Learn to Be a Better Writer by Becoming a Better Critic: This post explains how becoming more critical will improve your writing skills.
2. Putting the Fun Back Into Writing: Read this post to consider why it’s important to have fun when you write.
3. The Benefits of Keeping a Private Journal: Read how keeping a private journal can help you think better as a writer.
4. Pare a Phrase to Paraphrase: Correctly Use Paraphrases in Your Writing: This post will help you understand the art of proper paraphrasing.
5. Writing Content That Works for a Living: This post aims to help you better write persuasive content and beyond.
6. 3 Easy Ways to Write with Style: In this post, you’ll find out how to write with more style.
7. How to Be Interesting: This blog post shares ideas for being a more interesting writer.
8. How to Say Nothing in 500 Words (A Lesson on Writing): In this post, you’ll find a summary of 9 important points from the essay on writing, “How to Say Nothing in Five Hundred Words.”
9. Improve Your Writing with These Editing Tips: This post will help you understand how editing can make you a better writer.
10. The Secret of Writing Funny: In this post, you’ll learn all about writing humorously.
11. Writing for Busy People: This post explains how best to write for people who just don’t have time.
12. Ten Timeless Persuasive Writing Techniques: This post will explain the essentials of persuasive writing.
13. Better Writing Through Design: Learn how to improve your visual language from this post.
14. How to Use Reading to Become a Better Writer: Read this post to find out how reading can improve your skills as a writer.
15. Five Easy Steps to Editing Your Own Work: Follow these tips to learn how to edit your own work.

Productivity

Get inspired to be a more productive student or writer by these posts.

1. Unlock Your Creativity: Read this in-depth article to find lots of great ideas for getting your creative juices flowing.
2. Battling Bloggers Block: This post has great advice for getting around the wall and getting started writing.
3. 10 Productivity Hacks for Freelancers: Check out this post to find 10 ways to get moving with your writing.
4. Edit this Post on Editing: Find out how to edit effectively with the help of this post.
5. Breaking Writer’s Block: Learn how to take down writer’s block with the help of this post.
6. How to Slog Your Way Through a Boring Assignment: Get through your most boring assignments with the help of this post.
7. Declaring War on Blogger Apathy: This post will teach you how to fight back against apathy.
8. How to Write an Article in 20 Minutes: Try these techniques to speed up the process of your writing.
9. Effective Writing, Effective Work Habits: Learn how working effectively can help improve your writing.
10. 52 Simple Things You Can Do Right Now to Jumpstart Your Writing Efforts: Use these 52 techniques to give your inspiration and creativity a shot in the arm.
11. My Trick for Writing Difficult Articles: Find out how to make difficult articles work with the help of this post.
12. Managing Information Flow: How Prioritization Will Improve Your Work and Learning Efficiency: Make your stream of information flow just a little bit easier by applying the techniques in this post.
13. When You Can’t Get Started Writing: Check out this post that discusses getting started with writing.
14. Beating Burnout Creatively: This post will teach you how to get over burnout in some really smart ways.
15. Do You Recognize These 10 Mental Blocks to Creative Thinking?: Avoid these mental blocks to open up inspiration in your writing.
16. 3 Can’t-Fail Steps for Writing Without Intimidation: Find out how to keep yourself from holding back on your writing from this post.

Mistakes

Check out these posts to learn what you need to avoid.

1. Just Say No to These Three Enemies of Clear and Direct Writing: Make sure that you’ve avoiding these mistakes and writing as clearly as possible.
2. That’s Not What I Thought I Wrote!: Read this post to find out how to write to be understood.
3. Do You Make These 7 Mistakes When You Write?: In this post, you’ll see seven common mistakes that must be avoided.
4. Want Your Ideas to Spread Easily? Try Narrowing Your Message Focus: Remember that keeping focus is essential to good writing-learn more about the concept in this post.
5. The Inigo Montoya Guide to 27 Commonly Misused Words: This post will help you better understand how to use words correctly.
6. Five Grammatical Errors that Make You Look Dumb: Learn about grammatical errors that can destroy your credibility from this post.

Blogging

These posts offer a wealth of information and advice for writing online.

1. Put on Your Game Face: This post discusses building your identity as a blogger.
2. The 5 Immutable Laws of Persuasive Blogging: Follow these rules to become a better blogger.
3. How to Write a Better Weblog: Here you’ll find useful advice for making your blog writing better.
4. You’re Not Just a Writer, You’re the Editor-in-Chief: Bloggers should read this post to get inspiration for self-editing.
5. 5 Ways Blogging Can Make You a Better Writer: Read this post to find out how blogging can help improve your writing in other areas.
6. How to develop stickyness to your blog: Check out this blog post to learn how you can write in order to keep your readers coming back.
7. 21 Ways to Write Posts That Are Guaranteed to Grow Your Blog: Here you’ll find 21 excellent strategies for effective blog writing.
8. Writing Good Content: Learn some back to basics advice for creating good blog content from this post.
9. 10 Tips on Writing the Living Web: Get advice for writing on an ever-changing platform from this post.
10. 10 Tips for Writing a Blog Post: Get really simple tips for blog writing from this post.
11. Bring Your A-game to Write for Blogs: This blogger explains how you can draw upon experience as a writer when working on a blog.
12. Writing Blog Content-Make it Scannable: Learn about one of the most crucial techniques for bloggers-writing scannable copy.
13. How to Craft a Blog Post-10 Crucial Points to Pause: Here you’ll find 10 important points for writing a blog post.
14. A Dozen Online Writing Tips: CyberJournalist shares some insight for writing well online.
15. How to Write Excellent Blog Content-What We Wish We Knew: Find out how and why it’s so important to create good blog content.

Tips & Advice

Find specific advice and tips for improving your writing in these posts.

1. Ernest Hemingway’s Top 5 Tips for Writing Well: Find out what Ernest Hemingway has to say about being a good writer.
2. The Easiest Way to Become a Better Writer: This post offers advice for significantly improving your writing skills.
3. Joss Whedon’s Top 10 Writing Tips: Take some writing advice from Joss Whedon.
4. How to Become a Better Writer: Read this post to take your writing to the next level.
5. 15 Tips for Becoming a Better Writer: Follow this post to find 15 simple tips for improving your writing.
6. Short Stories: 10 Tips for Novice Creative Writers: Students of creative writing can develop their skills by following this resource.
7. Writing, Briefly: Author Paul Graham shares his outlook on writing.
8. How Can I Become a Better Writer?: wiseGEEK shares advice for the process of becoming a better writer.
9. 10 Steps to Becoming a Better Writer: Check out this simple post to get inspiration for growing as a writer.
10. Learning to Write Invisibly: Get some great advice on writing from novelist Elmore Leonard here.
11. Do You Practice the Top 2 Traits of Good Writers?: Find out what the most important traits are for writers, and why they’re so important, from this post.
12. A Guide to Becoming a Better Writer: 15 Practical Tips: This blog post offers 15 great ideas for becoming a better writer.
13. 10 Ways to Become a Better Writer: Follow these 10 tips to improve your skills as a writer.
14. How to Write (in a thousand words or less): Learn the basics of writing from this post.
15. Writing for Readers-What’s My Promise as the Writer?: This post will help you learn how to fulfill promises to your readers.
16. How to Become a Better Writer: Johnny Kramer shares some valuable advice for improving your writing.
17. Advice for Students: 10 Steps Toward Better Writing: Students can get the basics of writing improvement from this post.
18. How Can I Write a Strong Essay?: Check out this post to learn more about writing thoughtful essays.
19. Ten Ways to Become a Better Writer: These tips will help you develop yourself to become a better writer.
20. 2 Ways to Become a Better Writer: Here you’ll find 2 simple ways to make your writing better.
21. 9 + 1 Things Every Reader Wants from a Writer: Check out this post to find out what your readers are looking for.

Tools

Check out these posts to find tools that can help make you a better writer.

1. 30+ Tools for the Amateur Writer: Make use of these tools to make writing easier and more fun.
2. Darkroom: A Text Editor That Helped Me to Writer Better Content: This post explains how to use Darkroom for better writing.
3. Blogging Toolbox: 120+ Resources for Bloggers: Learn about some of the best resources online for bloggers from this post.
4. Fifty (50!) Tools Which Can Help You in Writing: Make use of these tools to see a great improvement in your writing skills.
5. Twenty Writing Tools: Find out which writing tools are Roy Peter Clark’s favorites.
6. Discover Hundreds of Post Ideas for Your Blog with Mind Mapping: Learn how you can put mind mapping to work to gain inspiration through the knowledge in this post.
7. Writer’s Toolbox: 35 Best Tools for Writing Online: Get loads of use out of these tools when doing your writing online.
8. Back to School: Writing Tools, Part 1: Check out this list to find tools you can use for writing.

Thanks to OnlineBestColleges.com

Centrl is the first location-based social network to partner with Navteq’s (part of Nokia) LocationPoint location-based advertising platform

Finally, a location-based social network that has the potential to go mainstream. We have been waiting for years now for an LBSN like this. Centrl finally merges together all the right components for a truly useful LBSN with benefits for everyone, such as:

• Easy login from all major social networks (no need to create a new account).
• Free messaging between its users (no SMS/text messaging charges).
• Layers of data that can show you anything from restaurant reviews to concerts to rental apartments around you (Yelp, Wikipedia, CitySearch, etc).
• Money-saving offers around you.

Centrl just announced that now they are serving geo-targeted ads to their 425,000 users from Navteq’s LocationPoint location-based advertising platform. I checked it out on my iPhone, and very quickly I found some great offers (like 10% a hotel stay, etc). This seems like finally the promise of LBA is starting to be fullfilled.

Centrl looks like a small company in NYC, they are angel-funded at the
moment. But it seems like they have big potential to dominate this space since the other LBSN’s are still not focusing on major user benefits like Centrl is doing. Most other LBSN’s I have used are like bulletin-boards. You post something, you see other posts, you SMS your friends, that’s it.

With Centrl, it’s more like a real-time virtual world. You see your friends’ real locations and you also see other people around you, but only where they are looking at on the map, not where they really are. Then you can really engage with anyone through the free text messages. You see people moving around, and you can move around to other cities and interact with people there. It’s really cool to talk to people from all over the world. You can even send them virtual gifts.

On top of this, you can click on the deals, other users’ favorites and the layers to access all kinds of useful information around you. You can even share these things (especially deals) with your friends.

And the best part is you don’t have to create a new account, you can use your Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, Ning, Orkut, Bebo or Friendster account. And it is connected to Twitter as well.

Given that they are the first LBSN to partner with Navteq’s LocationPoint LBA platform shows that Centrl is on its way to go mainstream. We will be watching them closely. Check out their iPhone, BlackBerry or Android apps at Centrl.com