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The Twilight Saga: New Moon Takes Over Social Media

Jeremy Muncy — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:01:51 -0500

Shhh, can you hear that? What you're hearing is the collective shrieks from Twihards everywhere as The Twilight Saga: New Moon is upon us. For those of you asking yourself, what is a Twihard? I’ve included the definition below.

twi-hard noun
A serious/obsessive reader of the Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer, one leap above Twilighters.

Are you a Twilight fan? Do you plan on seeing the movie? Let us know.

Currently the Twilight Saga is all the rage, and seems to have taken over almost every aspect of social media. If you venture over to MySpace.com you’ll see that the homepage has been New Moonified. It should be noted that New Moon & MySpace seem to share the same demographic, Tweens... so it only makes sense to try and grab those pageviews.

MySpace has been all about some New Moon here lately, as they just hosted an exclusive stream of the red carpet during the films premiere, which pulled in 3 million viewers. Did you watch any of the red carpet stream? Tell us.

Over on Twitter, Twilight holds 3 of the top 10 trending topics including the highly coveted top spot.

If you search for "New Moon" on Twitter it seems like you need to constantly refresh so you can see the hundreds of new Tweets. Below is an interesting graph, which shows the buzz over New Moon, comparing blogs to Twitter. You can obviously see the drastic climb just from last month, as the hype around the movie grew with each day.

YouTube is even trying to cash-in on the New Moon craze by adding a “Twihard” box atop their site that states the following, "The world is gripped by Twilight mania these days and on YouTube that translates into videos that celebrate, discuss and even mock the cultural phenomenon."

Like I said before, New Moon hits theatres today and is expected to make somewhere between 85 million – 100 million dollars this weekend, and could possibly break some box office records when it’s all said and done. It’s already broken the advance ticket sales record, previously held by Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. How much do you think New Moon will make when it's all said and done? Tell us.

It'll be interesting to compare New Moon's "social media status" against the next film in the saga when it hits the cinema around this same time next year, to see if it stil has the same amount of hype around it.

Why do you think Twilight is such a huge success? Tell us know your honest opinion.

If You Care About Search, You Must Care About Social Media

Chris Crum — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:48:11 -0500

All of the search engines are rushing to incorporate more social media elements into their interfaces. Examples of this are evident in things like Google and Bing's deals with Twitter and Facebook. You can see it in Yahoo's new Twitter tab for news results. You can see it in Google's Social Search lab. Really you can see it in everyday search results.

Do you consider a social presence an important element to your search campaign? Discuss here.

A lot of Internet users spend a great deal of their time socializing or using social media sites in one way or another, whether that is to connect with others or simply to obtain information. Information is a key component of social media that often takes a backseat to communication in discussion of social media tools.

The fact of the matter is that more and more people are getting more and more of their information from social sites. That could be in the form of following a news publication on Twitter, following company updates on a blog or a Facebook page, or something as simple as a friend sharing a link.

Given that people are getting more info from social media sites, of course search engines want a piece of that, because their whole reason for existence is naturally to help users find what they are looking for on the web.

So, it stands to reason that if you want people to find information that you are producing, it can help a great deal to publish information and participate in conversations on social media sites. Never mind that users of those particular sites will have access to it. The general public will as well by way of search, regardless of whether or not they are a part of any particular community.

In an interview with WebProNews, Vanessa Fox, who used to work for Google, talked about reasons that businesses should be thinking about social media with regards to search. It's about visibility. If you are having discussions out there about relevant topics, they could appear in search results not only in real-time search, but further down the road as well.

In other words, if you have a conversation with a peer on Twitter about some topic related to your niche, there is a good chance the resulting tweets of that conversation could appear in search results for that topic on Google, even a year from now, if that tweet happens to be relevant enough. That's just an example (note: it's hard to say at this point, just how tweets will impact search once the Google-Twitter deal starts showing results).

There are a variety of ways in which a social campaign can contribute to your performance in search engines, regardless of what these recent deals might produce. Like Lee Odden of Top Rank Online Marketing recently discussed with WebProNews, you can optimize your social content.

The web went blog crazy a few years back. Marketers found out that blogs were great for achieving search engine visibility because of the content and links that can come from them. It's not that different with social media now. The web has largely moved into a social media-heavy phase, as I'm sure you've noticed. Search engines obviously know this and care about it.

As Fox says in her interview, it's getting to the point where more businesses are starting to realize that they need to be involved with social media. However, surveys still frequently suggest that many are reluctant, and even if they do engage to some extent, they are still holding back, and not reaching the potential they could be.

You know search is important to marketing on the web. Really, it's important to marketing, period. If you operate on the web or off, your customers are on still online, as Fox noted. Social media is growing increasingly important to search. And search is only one aspect of online marketing. There are many more benefits to social media than that.

How important is social media to search? Share your thoughts.

Related Articles:

> Facebook/Twitter Use May Now Mean More for Google/Bing Rankings

> Social is Only Going to Become More Important to Search

> Where Social Media Fits Into the SEO Equation

What's Not to Like About Twitter's New Retweet Feature?

Chris Crum — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 05:01:06 -0500

Twitter is of course in the process of rolling out a new retweet feature. The feature adds a retweet button to each tweet on your timeline, much like the "reply" button that has always been there. However, one distinct difference between these two buttons is that where the reply button fills out your form with the proper information ("@username"), the retweet button sends the initial tweet to your followers' timelines without giving you your own tweet.

Do you prefer the old way of retweeting or the new way? Share your thoughts here.

In other words, you don't get to add anything to it, you're just duplicating a tweet that came to you and sending it to your followers. You're forwarding it.

There are things to like about the feature. For one it's more convenient if you just want to pass on an interesting tweet. If you're the one being retweeted, it puts you in the spotlight in other people's streams rather than the person who retweeted you. It kind of feels like you're getting more credit for your tweets, although if you are just tweeting a link to someone else's blog post that might not necessarily come off as a positive. Twitter CEO Evan Williams put up an interesting blog post last week defending the feature before it even had much of a chance to get torn apart by users. He knew it would be controversial, and he even acknowledged that fact.

As happens when any heavily-used site makes changes, some people get upset about it. Lisa Barone at outSpoken Media made a list of "things that suck" about the new retweet feature, and she brings up a number of good points, but her biggest peeve seems to be that of the avatars of people she doesn't know showing up in her stream.

"Showing the unfamiliar avatar does not give me 'more context' for the tweet. It gives me less because I don’t know this individual," she says. "If I were to see Rae’s avatar, I’d know to trust the content. I'd know it already passed the snuff test. When I see someone else’s avatar, I’m thrown off and confused. Will I get used to it? No, I'll simply learn to ignore things from people I don’t know."

She has a valid point in that seeing unfamiliar faces can be a bit off-putting, but aren't the retweets still passing the "snuff test" since they are still being retweeted by people you follow? It's not like these "strangers" are actually coming in and spamming us. It's just a visually different way of presenting them. Whether or not we like that is one thing, but it's a retweet from someone we're following just as it was before in this regard. A great many Twitter users probably don't even recognize half of the people they follow anyway.

That said, there are a number of other issues with the feature, as Barone points out. Some of the ones she touches on are:

- Can't add own commentary (what if you don't agree with what you're retweeting?)

- Plays down user's visibility in own network

- Changes the definition of retweeting (makes it more like a Facebook "like")

The feature is still in limited beta testing, so regardless of what you feel about the feature, there is a possibility it will change. Even still, if you don't like the feature, you don't have to use it. You can still use the classic "RT" method just as you have always done. You just have a new option now. Depending on how many of the people you follow use the new feature, your Twitter experience can be affected more or less by it.

Are you getting the new retweet feature yet? What is your opinion? What do you like about it? What do you dislike about it. Tell WebProNews readers what you think about it.

Related Articles:

> An Equation for Getting More Traffic from Twitter

> Wonder What Percentage of Tweets are Retweets?

> More to Retweeting Than Meets the Eye for Businesses?

Google to Alert Webmasters of New Software Versions

Chris Crum — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:23:13 -0500

Google is going to start letting webmasters know when the software they run on their site is outdated. Through Webmater Tools, Google will begin alerting users of new versions of software when they are released.

"One of the great things about working at Google is that we get to take advantage of an enormous amount of computing power to do some really cool things," says Patrick Chapman of Google's Search Quality Team. "One idea we tried out was to let webmasters know about their potentially hackable websites. The initial effort was successful enough that we thought we would take it one step further by expanding our efforts to cover other types of web applications—for example, more content management systems (CMSs), forum/bulletin-board applications, stat-trackers, and so on."

"This time, however, our goal is not just to isolate vulnerable or hackable software packages, but to also notify webmasters about newer versions of the software packages or plugins they're running on their website," he continues. "For example, there might be a Drupal module or Joomla extension update available but some folks might not have upgraded."

One way Google identifies sites that need to be notified is by parsing source code of web pages that it crawls. Content management systems usually include generator meta tags that specify the version number. This helps Google figure out when sites aren't running the latest version.

The company is encouraging developers to use such generator meta tags in their software if they are not already doing so. This, along with Google's efforts, should theoretically keep their users using the most recent versions. That is Google's goal, anyway.

Google says they will begin sending out notifications soon, but doesn't give a more specific time. Do you think this is a good idea?

Related Articles:

> Google Ditches PageRank in Webmaster Tools

> Google Alters Site Verification in Webmaster Tools

> Microsoft Takes Users Behind Bing

MySpace Reaches Deal With Another Music Label

Doug Caverly — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:27:16 -0500

The "virtual fifth label" is now friends with MySpace. Merlin, an organization that represents independent music companies, is supposed to have signed a deal with the social network that should nicely complement MySpace's existing partnerships with EMI, Sony, Universal, and Warner.

Merlin's association with indie artists and late arrival to the music scene (it launched in January of 2007) set it apart from the so-called Big Four. Just the same, Merlin's a major force, with members in more than 25 countries, and names like Cat Power, Tom Waits, and The White Stripes linked with it.

So it's quite noteworthy that, according to Andrew Orlowski, a Merlin spokesman stated, "After more than a year of negotiations, MySpace Music has finally offered Merlin a deal that is acceptable to its members, members who represent 10% of the global music market."

What's more, "The same eligibility and level of participation will be offered to all independent labels licensing content to MySpace Music."

Of course, the details of the arrangement haven't yet been made public, which leaves a lot of questions unanswered. But it looks like MySpace, which acquired Imeem just yesterday and launched MySpace Music Charts the day before, is really on a roll on the music front.

Related Articles:

> MySpace Picks Up Imeem

> MySpace Launches New Music Charts

> MySpace's "New Moon" Webcast Brings In 3m Viewers

Americans' Social Media Habits Highlight Business Potential

Chris Crum — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:20:02 -0500

Euro RSCG released some interesting findings from a study exploring the different ways Americans are using social media to "redefine their lives." The study looked at 1,228 social media users in the United States.

"Word of mouth has always been the most powerful marketing tool; what social media has done is dramatically increase the scale, velocity and immediacy with which people can influence each other and create the biggest revolution to hit our industry since television," said David Jones, global CEO of Euro RSCG. "One of the interesting findings of the study is that it's the combination of online and offline experiences that creates the biggest impact."

Other findings include:

- Even though 53.5% of respondents have met new people through electronic media, face-to-face interaction is still the "gold standard"

- Consumers are engaging more in multi-way exchanges of ideas and opinions among consumers and brands

- Consumers are not only move involved with family and friends, but they have increased involvement in political and humanitarian issues.

- 40% agree that social groupings online can be truly social, while only 14% disagree. According to Euro RSCG, figures varied little across age, gender, ethnic, or income groups.

"Online social networking has become part of our culture so quickly, it's easy to forget just how new it is and how much it's a work in progress. People are still experimenting with the different options and finding ways to make it part of their life," said Marian Salzman, president of Euro RSCG Worldwide PR, North America. "Forget the images of sad antisocial types. Smart consumers are mixing and matching the tools that come available to meet their social needs. Electronic tools are making them even more socially active, just as the telephone did back in the day."

Perhaps more interesting than the statistics provided by the firm, are the key takeaways it cites. This includes things like the fact that social media is an important consideration for any communications strategy, and the fact that it's impossible to predict how bits of communication will spread across social media.

The firm also says that even though the web is world-wide, its emerging power is hyperlocal. This is because this is the space where online and offline most often meet. That is a key reason why businesses, particularly local businesses should not ignore social media.

Related Articles:

> If You Care About Search, You Must Care About Social Media

> A Few Guidelines for Drafting Social Media Guidelines

> Businesses Benefit From Reviews On Their Website

Facebook Sends Cease And Desist To Friend-Seller

Doug Caverly — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:17:28 -0500

uSocial is a controversial advertising company that specializes in social media. For a fee, it promises to get stories on the front page of Digg, direct followers to a Twitter account, and/or find someone Facebook fans (among other things). But Facebook's put at least a temporary stop to the sale of friends.

The BBC reported this afternoon, "Facebook sent Cease and Desist letters to USocial claiming that the way the marketing firm operates violates its rights by sending spam, using web tools to harvest pages, getting login names and by accessing accounts that did not belong to the marketing firm."

As a result, "USocial defended itself against Facebook's claims, saying that it did not spam users or use web tools to gather information about profiles. . . . However, in response to the legal letters, USocial said it would delete the login information it had collected and broadly stop offering to sell Facebook friends."

This is an interesting development insofar as, three months ago, Twitter also tried to crack down on uSocial. Its back-channel methods apparently didn't succeed, but now that Facebook's established a precedent, we might see another attempt. Delicious, Digg, and Reddit could well join the fight, too.

Of course, the hubbub around such a scuffle would act as free advertising for uSocial and might spread the notion that these social media sites can be gamed, so it's also possible that absolutely nothing will occur.

Related Articles:

> Facebook Puts Privacy Policy In Users' Hands

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Microsoft Takes Users Behind Bing

Chris Crum — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:48:57 -0500

Microsoft has launched a new site for Bing, where users can go to find out the latest features that have been implemented into the search engine (excuse me, "decision engine"). The site's called Behind Bing.

"You can see each feature in action though a screencast, see me talk about why we did it the way we did (for those who like to geek out), and get some drill-down details," says Bing's Stefan Weitz. "For those of you pressed for time, check out 'Features for You' at the bottom of the site which highlights some features that I thought were especially cool depending on what and where you are."

Highlighted on the site currently are sections looking at:

- Real-time search
- Bing Local
- Weather/Event results
- Enhanced Results
- Enhanced hover
- Bing for mobile
- Videos
- Bing Travel
- Bing Health
- Visual Search
- Bing Shopping
- Wolfram Alpha
- Search Sharing
- Reference

There are videos and other sections for "explore," "overview," and "insight guide." If you don't regularly keep up with Bing's announcements or search news in general, this should serve as a good place to check out from time to time just to see what the search engine has been up to, and to stay informed about any functionalities that you may have otherwise missed. That will of course require that Microsoft keeps it updated.

On a related note, all of the features that Bing announced last week are supposed to be "100%" live now for all users, but that doesn't seem to be accurate, as I am not able to access some of the new stuff yet.

Related Articles:

> Bing Gets a Bunch of New Search Features

> Yahoo and Microsoft May Be Close to Signing

> Some Bing Users Seeing Latest Posts on Publisher Searches

Bing Gets a Bunch of New Search Features

Chris Crum — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:54:57 -0500

Update: According to Bing, all of the features that were announced are now live. However, they do not appear to be live yet for me. I am guessing they will be soon at least.

Original Article: Microsoft has announced the addition of a number of new features to its Bing search engine. The company says it has been examining the trends in search and in feedback, and is working to accommodate these. Microsoft is referring to trends like the demand for faster access to knowledge, offering different user interfaces for different kinds of results, and an increased focus on "getting things done" with search.

Would you use Bing more if it added the right features? Tell us what it's missing.

Bing is rolling out a new "task-focused" version of its home page. It looks relatively the same as before, but when you mouse over different categories, you will get more search options. For example, if you mouse over "Travel," you will get links like "find flights" and "find hotels," and you can conduct your search from there.

"There is also an interactive Instant Answer that allows you to enter your origin, destination, travel dates and…click…you are in Bing travel," says Bing Product Manager Henry Hall. "Within Bing travel you have fast access to flight purchase recommendations via the price predictor that tells you the least expensive times to fly. In addition to money, you’ll save time as well with Bing travel’s comprehensive flight listing results and links to top travel sites and airlines."

Bing is also enhancing local information for hundreds of cities looking for things like local attractions, points of interest, neighborhoods and other local information sources like newspaper web sites. Bing has developed enhanced city results, which include links to key information and high-resolution slide shows.

Bing is making it easier to find the preview feature. "We're doing a better job mining things like contact phone numbers and email addresses from web pages and displaying them clearly under a Contact banner, and generally cleaning up the interface to make it easier to decide if this a site you want to visit," says Hall. "Last, we're also integrating images in some preview results. We believe that all these features will allow for a faster decision about whether a site is right for your needs, which means less clicking on your browser’s back button."

Bing has also added a new Event Search feature, which gives users a summary of events for major cities, which can be filtered by things like performances, food & dining, fairs & festivals, music, etc.

Bing has also made it easy to share results for shopping searches on Facebook, a feature Hall deems ideal for passing on holiday gift ideas. There are also better results for health-related searches, including, conditions, medications, and hospitals. Each type of query will return more info and a more organized set of results.

Perhaps the biggest addition to Bing is that of Wolfram Alpha's algorithms and "expertly curated data". Wolfram Alpha will help power Bing's results for nutritional information and math searches.

When users search Bing for specific food items, they will get a nutrition quick tab that shows more information about it and a nutrition facts label at the bottom of the results page.

"Another helpful tool is the body mass index that tracks your workout progress," the Bing Team says. "We have introduced Wolfram|Alpha’s body mass index interactive form on our results page. If you search for ‘bmi’ you’ll get the option to enter your height and weight. Click ‘Calculate’ and you’ll get a detailed Body Mass Index analysis directly on Bing."

Bing will also rely on Wolfraph Alpha's ability to solve complex math functions.

Bing says there will be more new features highlighted on the Bing Search Blog over the next few days. The features are just starting to roll out in the US, so it could be a while before you actually see them.

More on the newly announced features, read this post. For more on Bing's integration with Wolfram Alpha specifically, read here.

Will the addition of new search capabilities increase Bing's market share? Share your thoughts.

Related Articles:

> Bing Maps Gets an Upgrade

> Wolfram Alpha Hasn't Exactly Set the World on Fire

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Barnes & Noble Says No Nook For Holidays

Mike Sachoff — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:44:33 -0500

Barnes & Noble said today it has sold out of its new nook e-reader due to high demand and shipments will not arrive in time for Christmas.

“nook continues to be the fastest-selling product at Barnes & Noble, and pre-orders have continued to exceed our expectations,” Barnes & Noble said on its eReading blog.

“While we increased production based on the high consumer interest, we’ve sold out of our initial nook allotment available for delivery before the holidays.”

Barnes & Noble said those ordering a nook beginning today should expect their device to begin shipping the week of January 4, 2010. For customers purchasing nooks as holidays gifts, the bookseller has created a holiday certificate, noting an expected January ship date.

The announcement by Barnes & Noble comes a day after Sony said its new electronic reader, the Reader Daily Edition would experience shipping delays. Sony said pre-orders for its latest e-reader would ship between December 18 and January 8, and “an actual delivery date cannot be guaranteed.”

Sony’s Reader Daily Edition sells for $399 while Barnes & Noble’s nook is available for $259.

Barnes & Noble said it is working to increase the supply of its nook in the coming year. “We continue to ramp up nook supply to meet the demand in the New Year,” the company said.

“We’re committed to providing timely updates to our customers on expected nook availability and will do so through in-store, online and our direct-to-customer communications throughout the holiday season.”

Related Articles:

> Android May Power New Barnes & Noble E-Reader

> Consumer Interest In E-Readers Mixed

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Bebo May Beat Retreat From Australia

Doug Caverly — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:15:26 -0500

Sometimes you just have to know when to call it quits, and a new report indicates that Bebo has decided now's the time to cut its losses in Australia. Bebo is supposed to end its operations in the country before the end of the year.

Paul McIntyre, who was the first to report this potential move, noted today that nothing official's been announced. He then continued, "However, Bebo has already started informing Australian partners of its exit, which is due in part to Facebook."

And Facebook's growth in Australia has indeed been phenomenal. A director of analytics at Nielsen told McIntyre that Australian Internet users are dedicating about 30 percent of their online hours to Facebook, leading the firm to divide things into "Facebook Time" and "Non Facebook Time."

By comparison, recent Hitwise stats show that Facebook receives about one-fourth of all U.S. page views, and one-seventh of all UK page views.

So it's quite plausible that Bebo will exit Australia, a market in which its performance has been substandard. This would represent a significant loss for AOL, though, which paid $850 million for Bebo last year.

Related Articles:

> Former Googler Gets Top Spot At Bebo

> MySpace, Bebo Not For Sale

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National Dog Show Available Online At Hulu

Mike Sachoff — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:38:40 -0500

NBC said today "The National Dog Presented by Purina" will be available online Thanksgiving Day (Noon - 2 p.m. in all time zones) at NBCSports.com.

The television broadcast will also be available online after 2 p.m. ET on Hulu.

To complement the TV special and showcase all the breeds, NBCSports.com will feature video of the walks, examination and judging of all the breed-winning dogs with commentary from announce Wayne Ferguson, President of the host Kennel Club of Philadelphia.

NBC is inviting viewers to vote for their favorite group winner in a best in show poll. TV viewers will be able to vote online at NBCSports.com or by texting the word "DOG" to 5155 on their cell phones.

"The success and popularity of the 'National Dog Show' is because it reaches all generations and families can watch the show together," said Jon Miller, Executive Vice President of NBC.

"There is also growing interest in all of the different breeds and we recognize the importance of providing online coverage of each one."

NBC says "The National Dog show" attracted 18.7 million viewers last year, and this year it will again follow the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The show is hosted by John O'Hurley and analyst David Frei.
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Susan Boyle Breaks Amazon Pre-Order Record

Mike Sachoff — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:50:42 -0500

Amazon.com has announced that Susan Boyle's upcoming album, "I Dreamed a Dream," has become its largest global pre-order in the history of the online retail giant.

The album will be released by Sony Music Entertainment on November 23. Boyle became a reality show and Internet sensation after her April 11, 2009 appearance on the TV show "Britain's Got Talent," where she sang "I Dreamed a Dream" from "Les Miserables."

"We were excited when Susan Boyle's album became the top CD pre-order in the U.S. We're absolutely ecstatic now that the album has become our largest global CD pre-order," said Craig Pape, senior manager of Music at Amazon.com.

"Looking at the rest of our global Top 5, you see titles that resonated in their local markets. Susan's album is clearly capturing the hearts of our customers around the globe."

A video on the Amazon Music Store allows fans to watch Boyle the first time she sang "I Dreamed a Dream." To watch the video and learn more about Boyle, fans can visit Amazon's Susan Boyle store. Fans can also enter a sweepstakes to win a trip for two to London to have afternoon tea with Boyle.

Boyle's "I Dreamed a Dream" CD is available for pre-order for $9.99 and can be downloaded from Amazon MP3 on November 23.

Here's a list of the Top 5 CD pre-orders of all time for Amazon, along with their top-selling country:

1. Susan Boyle, "I Dreamed a Dream" (2009), U.S.
2. Mr. Children, "Supermarket Fantasy" (2008), Japan
3. Ken Hirai, "Ken Hirai 10th Anniversary Complete Single Collection, '95-'05" (2005), Japan
4. Norah Jones, "Not Too Late" (2007), U.S.
5. Take That, "Never Forget: The Ultimate Collection" (2008), U.K.

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Google Doesn't Know if Your Site is in the Cloud

Chris Crum — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:23:26 -0500

Google's Matt Cutts discussed how the search engine handles sites that that are "in the cloud" with regards to how listings are affected. Matt's explanation was a response to the following user-submitted question:

Can moving my website to "the cloud" harm my listings? Say my server's in Germany and I move the website to Google's App Engine or Amazon S3. Does this harm my listings for German results - or is it enough to set the "geographic target" in GWT to Germany?

Matt broke the question down into separate parts to answer them. First, he took on the part about moving a site to "the cloud" harming the users' listings. His answer for this is basically that Google doesn't even know if your site is in the cloud, so it can't use that information to affect listings.

"We don't know what is happening on the side of your web server. Your web server could be running Perl, PHP, Python, or Ruby on Rails," said Cutts. "All we know is what the web server returns. So your web server could be running code that would go talk to Amazon's cloud or Appspot or anywhere else in the cloud, but we wouldn't even know that. We don't even know whether a page is dynamically created or statically created. All we know is what the web server sends back."

He says if your site is talking to the cloud behind the scenes, there is now way for any search engine or bot to know about that. Watch the video above to hear Matt's explanation for the second part of the user's question.

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Google Enhances Real Estate Search

Chris Crum — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:51:20 -0500

Google has added some new real estate search features to Google Maps. Earlier this year, Google expanded this functionality by letting you select "real estate" from the "more" menu. Now you can just search for "real estate" or other real estate-related geographical queries and get listings.

"The idea is to make it really easy for you guys - you tell us what you want, and we get it back to you! Of course, we'll continue to work to return the best results for all your Google Maps queries, whether you're looking for local businesses, geographic features, or your perfect home," Google says in an announcement on its Australian blog.

Are you familiar with Google's Place Pages? These are pages for businesses that Google creates for listings in Google Maps. They launched this feature earlier this year also. Now real estate listings have their own place pages as well.

"Now clicking the 'more info' link next to a listing takes you to a faster, easier-to-read page that gives you all of the information we have about a listing: photos, inspection times, videos, details, a Street View preview and nearby public transit information if available, allowing you to quickly find the listing you want and click through to the sources of the listing," explains Google.

As Matt McGee at Search Engine Land points out, Google has shown individual property info for a while now, but this provides a much more user-friendly approach. Google Maps may start to be considered the place to go to find real estate online.

Related Articles:

> Google Adds Real Estate to Australian Maps

> Google Maps Takes Another Crack At Real Estate

> Will Google Eliminate the Need for Small Business Websites?

Sony Plans New Online Service In 2010

Mike Sachoff — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:21:51 -0500

Sony has plans to launch a new online service next year that will allow users to download music and movies to their televisions.

"I'd like it to get off the ground as quickly as possible," said Kazuo Hirai, executive vice president of Sony and head of its Networked Products & Service Group, in an interview at the company's Tokyo headquarters. "Earlier in the year is more preferable."

The service for now is named Sony Online Service and will include more offerings than the existing PlayStation Network, which currently has 33 million register users and allows console owners to download games and connect with other gamers.

"One of the things we really need to get into is the whole concept of user-driven content," said Hirai. "There already are a lot of services out there but we want to try to bring something that is uniquely Sony to the experience."

Hirai said Sony Online Service will increase the value of its hardware, while also raising its brand awareness.

Sony forecasts sales from the new service will generate Y300 billion by 2013, but the company will also provide a variety of free content to users.

"The first priority is for us to make sure the Sony Online Service is a point of differentiation for all Sony devices," said Hirai.
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eBay Completes Skype Sale

Doug Caverly — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:49:07 -0500

It looks like the eBay-Skype spectacle has finally come to a close. Despite all of the arguments (legal and otherwise) that cropped up at one point or another, representatives of both companies announced last night that the sale of Skype to an investor group is complete.

Josh Silverman, the president of Skype, adopted a rather enthusiastic approach when breaking the news. He wrote on the Share Skype Blog, "Great news - we've closed the deal with the new investors. . . . Our journey continues: say hello to the future!"

And that future appears to be a bright one, by the way. As had been agreed earlier, the transaction valued Skype at an impressive $2.75 billion (impressive if you ignore the fact that eBay bought it for $2.6 billion in 2005, anyway), and $1.9 billion in cash actually changed hands as the investor group acquired a 70 percent stake.

What's more, the investor group (which was led by Silver Lake) includes such interesting organizations and people as Andreessen Horowitz, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Joltid Limited, and Skype's original founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis.

This would appear to make it much more likely that SkypeIn service will expand into Canada, and there's no telling how else the new owners will try to grow and improve the company.

Related Articles:

> eBay And Skype Settle Litigation

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> eBay Sells Skype, Which Is Worth $2.75 Billion

Twitter Expands Into More Than Just 2 Languages

Chris Crum — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:14:24 -0500

Update 2 : Twitter is now supporting the French language.

Update: Twitter is now supporting the Spanish language.

Original Article: Twitter announced that it intends to roll out the service in the French, Italian, German, and Spanish languages. Currently it's only available in English and Japanese.

Expanding into more languages should have a profound impact on Twitter's growth in new users. The company doesn't plan to stop there either though. Co-founder Biz Stone says that's just a starting point.

Twitter is taking a cue from Facebook and calling upon users to help with translations. The company has launched a tool for people with experience in different languages to suggest translations for the Twitter site itself. "Then, we'll follow up technically," says Stone.

"We are inviting a small group of people to become volunteer translators at first," he explains. "As more folks volunteer, the translation suggestions should accumulate faster and we'll have enough material to respond by making Twitter available not only in English and Japanese but also French, Italian, German, and Spanish. We will distribute the translations to Twitter platform developers making it easier for them to offer multiple language support as well."

Our latest numbers have shown that new user registrations have declined slightly for Twitter. The more languages that Twitter supports, obviously the more useful more people will find it. It has a long way to go to get Facebook-like numbers, but this would be a huge step in the right direction (along with the forthcoming "lists" feature) to step up the game.

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Twitter Makes Geotagging Tweets Possible

Chris Crum — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:08:08 -0500

Back in the summer, Twitter announced that it was working on an API to give developers the ability to geotag tweets. The company has now made that available.

There is no geotagging on Twitter.com yet, but Twitter apps will now be able to support it. So potentially, you will be able to geotag tweets and show the location from where you tweeted.

"The added information provides valuable context when reading your friends tweets and allows you to better focus in on local conversations," Twitter says in the announcement. "Now you can find out what live music is playing right now in your neighborhood or what people visiting Checkpoint Charlie are saying today about the anniversary of the Berlin Wall. These are only the beginning and we are really looking forward to seeing the creative uses emerge from the developer community."

If you're concerned about privacy, you should note that geotagging is disabled by default for all users. You have to opt-in to use it. You can do so by going to the settings page and clicking "enable geotagging."

In addition to that, Twitter has updated its privacy policy to include geotagging, as well as to "describe the public nature" of most of what people post to Twitter. "We've tried to keep it short and sweet with lots of real life examples so it's simple to read through," the company says.

The location element can make Twitter more useful in some cases.This doesn't only apply to where a Twitterer happens to be at any given time, however. It is also helpful to know where they are from or where they reside, in some cases. This means you can find Twitterers of interest in your own town, for example. Our own Twellowhood tool (part of our Twellow service) is a great way to do this.

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> Is Your Neighbor On Twitter?

> Twitter to Become Location Aware

> Twitter Gives Apps Access to People Search

"What's Happening" with Twitter?

Chris Crum — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:09:25 -0500

There's a lot of change going on with Twitter these days. Recently we got the highly-anticipated Lists feature, which helped us to organize our streams and discover new, interesting people to follow. Then Twitter began rolling out its retweet button feature, which seemed like something that had been strangely missing from the service for a long time, but has ultimately caused something of an uproar among some of its users who don't like the way it was implemented.

Now Twitter has gone so far as to change the text above the field from which users update their statuses. In fact the reason for this is that Twitter is no longer simply about updating one's status.

"Twitter was originally conceived as a mobile status update service—an easy way to keep in touch with people in your life by sending and receiving short, frequent answers to one question, 'What are you doing?'" explains Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone. "However, when we implemented the service, we chose to leave something out. To stay simple, Twitter did not require individuals to confirm relationships. Instead, we left things open."

"People, organizations, and businesses quickly began leveraging the open nature of the network to share anything they wanted, completely ignoring the original question, seemingly on a quest to both ask and answer a different, more immediate question, "What's happening?" A simple text input field limited to 140 characters of text was all it took for creativity and ingenuity to thrive," he adds.

So that's what Twitter now asks you: "What's happening?" It's no longer "What are you doing?" It's hard to miss the practicality of the change, especially after reading Stone's comments on it. But you can't make changes to a popular service without people finding a reason not to like it.

This move will probably not cause the controversy that the retweet feature has caused, simply because it does nothing to alter Twitter's functionality. In fact, I'm sure many will agree with the company that "What's Happening?" really is the better question. I'm almost certain that a much greater amount of people will respond with a complete lack of caring.

Stone closed his explanation of the change fittingly with the following statement: "We don't expect this to change how anyone uses Twitter, but maybe it'll make it easier to explain to your dad."

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> What's Not to Like About Twitter's New Retweet Feature?

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A Few Guidelines for Drafting Social Media Guidelines

Chris Crum — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:30:05 -0500

For all of the great opportunities that can come from social media, there are plenty of negatives that come with it as well. This is of course why many businesses are hesitant to adopt social media strategies and/or let their employees engage with different social networking tools. It is also why many of the companies that do have social media strategies in tact, and do allow employees to use these tools have guidelines in place.

Does your company have social media guidelines? Tell us about them.

The merit of such guidelines is often debated throughout the blogosphere and on various social media platforms, but a business has to do what it has to do to protect its brand, and ultimately, nobody can make that decision but the managers and owners of those businesses. A business must do what is right for itself, and guidelines that may work well for one business may not necessarily fit the mold for another.

If a business does choose to seek the opportunities that await it with a social media strategy, it is probably for the best that they not go into it haphazardly and expect a great outcome. As has been discussed repeatedly in the past, there have to be goals.

As Wayne Sutton of OurHashtag mentioned in a recent interview with WebProNews, companies should do research before engaging with social media personas that can have an impact on their brand. He says, for example, that you should research a person's audience before sending them a product to review just because they have a significant number of Twitter followers.

If you feel that your company requires some guidelines for social media use, you may want to consider putting something in there about not putting the company's brand in situations where its trust may be sacrificed. For example, companies will often have somebody saying positive things about their product on blogs and social networks, when that person will actually work for or be affiliated with the company, without actually disclosing such information.

This is why the FTC felt it necessary to draft some guidelines on this practice (whether or not such guidelines are justified - it is a topic frequently debated). Regardless of what you feel about the FTC stepping in, you will probably agree that such a practice is not the best way to build trust for your brand. As Patrick O'Keefe of the iFroggy Network mentioned in another WebProNews interview, you will likely be found out sooner or later if you engage in this kind of practice, and the damage that can do to the trust of your brand may well be beyond repair.

Another point O'Keefe mentioned in that same interview was that it is not wise to force people to use various social media tools in the same manner. Just because you find a tool to be valuable a certain way, does not mean that someone else will not find it more effective in a different way. With that point in mind, perhaps you should pick the brains of employees to find out how they would go about using social media to help the company if given the opportunity.

The fact of the matter is, there are many, many ways to utilize all of the different social tools out there. If you are going to draft guidelines, you should get all the perspectives you can before you set anything in stone. If you don't, you may potentially be shutting out some great opportunities, business, and sales simply because you banned employees from using tools in ways that you hadn't thought of. Granted, you don't have to accept all of these ideas as good ones.

The topics discussed in this article are certainly not the only ones to consider when drafting a social media policy. What are some key points that you include in yours? Discuss here.

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Twitter Continues Beta Testing of Retweet Feature

Chris Crum — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:15:05 -0500

Update 3: Twitter is now telling me that I am part of a beta test group for the retweet features, so I guess it is no longer on hold.

Those who are part of the test get the following message:

Hi there, you're part of a beta group receiving this feature, which means you may start seeing retweets in a new way. People who don't have this yet will see your retweets prefaced by "RT".

Update 2: Twitter says on the Twitter Status blog, "We’re working on a few problems related to the ongoing rollout. These should be resolved quickly and it will be back on for those who had the Retweet feature previously. And we’ll then continue the incremental rollout of this feature to everyone."

Update: There is an interesting post here from Twitter CEO Evan Williams, which talks about how the retweet button works, and why Twitter is doing it the way it is.

Original Article: Back in the summer time, Twitter announced that it intended to add a retweet option to its service and the API. Twitter is now rolling out the feature to a small percentage of Twitter users.

"You may remember that we shared the mechanics of this feature with developers a while back so they could think about how to work it into Twitter apps," says Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone on the company blog. "Now we're ready to start trying it on Twitter. The plan is to see how it goes first with this small release. If it needs more work, then we'll know right away. If things look good, we'll proceed with releasing the feature in stages eventually arriving at 100%."

If you are a regular Twitter user, it's pretty much a given that you know what retweeting is, but Stone describes what the button does to those in the dark. "Retweet is a button that makes forwarding a particularly interesting tweet to all your followers very easy," he says. "In turn, we hope interesting, newsworthy, or even just plain funny information will spread quickly through the network making its way efficiently to the people who want or need to know."

The Impact of Retweets

Retweets have already been a great way for content and updates to go viral. Now as the actual feature rolls out, that should only increase. Read this article for a look at the pros and cons of retweets (there are more pros).

Now that retweeting is becoming an actual feature of Twitter, you're going to want to keep in mind the tweetability of your content. Shéa Bennett, who writes the blog Twittercism, came up with a helpful equation for maximizing retweet potential. We talked about that here, but basically what it boils down to is leaving enough room in a tweet to accommodate what others will add to it as they retweet it.

This means keep titles short (at least in the tweet). For example, if you use some form of "tweet this" button on an article that automatically fills out the Twitter form with the article info, make sure there are not too many characters taken up. As you're probably aware, Twitter only allows for 140, and that's not very many. Keep in mind the "RT," hashtags, usernames, etc.

Tweaking Twitter Trends

In another piece of Twitter-related news, the company also announced that it is experimenting with improvements to trends that will help users find more relevant tweets. They say they're working to show higher quality results for trend queries by returning tweets that are more useful.

"The improvement won't be very noticeable at first, but this is a small step toward unearthing more value in search and getting you more relevant results," says @JennaDawn.

This means you will probably see less spammy trending topics popping up, which should benefit anyone who follows the trends.

Related Articles:

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YouTube Launching Automatic Video Captions

Chris Crum — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:00:15 -0500

YouTube is readying the launch of an automatic captions feature for the site's videos. This and a new automatic caption timing feature will make it easier for anyone to add captions to their videos, and will enable anyone to read captions on more videos.

"Since the original launch of captions in our products, we’ve been happy to see growth in the number of captioned videos on our services, which now number in the hundreds of thousands," says software engineer Ken Harrenstien, who helped design YouTube's caption features. "This suggests that more and more people are becoming aware of how useful captions can be. As we’ve explained in the past, captions not only help the deaf and hearing impaired, but with machine translation, they also enable people around the world to access video content in any of 51 languages. Captions can also improve search and even enable users to jump to the exact parts of the videos they're looking for." (emphasis added)

"However, like everything YouTube does, captions face a tremendous challenge of scale," adds Harrenstein. "Every minute, 20 hours of video are uploaded. How can we expect every video owner to spend the time and effort necessary to add captions to their videos? Even with all of the captioning support already available on YouTube, the majority of user-generated video content online is still inaccessible to people like me."

To help with this problem, Google has utilized its automatic speech recognition technology, and integrated it with YouTube's caption system to offer automatic captions. The captions generated by this will not always be perfect, as you can imagine, but as Harrenstein notes, even when they are flawed, they can still be quite helpful. He also says the technology will continue to improve over time.

YouTube is also launching automatic caption timing to make it easier to create captions manually. With this feature, users can just create a simple text file with all the words in the video, and Google will use the automatic speech recognition technology to figure out where the words are spoken and create the captions for the video. That's pretty useful stuff.

Google says both new features will be available in English by the end of the week. At first, auto-caps will only be visible on a few partner channels, so they can get feedback. Eventually, they will roll out more broadly.

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> YouTube Adds Captions Option to API

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Fortune 100 Companies Still Awkward Around Twitter

Doug Caverly — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:08:00 -0500

Fortune 100 companies don't quite know what to do with Twitter, according to a new report. Public relations firm Weber Shandwick instead painted a picture of big corporations just staking out their territory and then occasionally issuing the 140-character equivalents of press releases.

The Weber Shandwick report stated, "73 percent of Fortune 100 companies registered a total of 540 Twitter accounts. However, about three-quarters (76 percent) of those accounts did not post tweets very often, and more than half (52 percent) were not actively engaged."

Furthermore, "50 percent of the Fortune 100 accounts had fewer than 500 followers, a small number in relation to the size and reach of a major corporation. Another 15 percent were inactive . . ."

So there you have it, although "it" is something from which it's hard to draw conclusions. After all, Fortune 100 companies are by definition doing more than all right, regardless of their awkwardness on Twitter. And many Twitter users have claimed that they don't want to be bombarded with marketers' messages, anyway.

What'll be interesting to see is how this situation develops over time. Twitter's said before that it might unveil analytics packages to attract big corporations.

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Google Ditches the Google Base Search Page

Chris Crum — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:01:35 -0500

Update: Google has officially retired the Google Base search page. The company announces:

As we announced we'd be doing a few weeks ago, we've retired Google Base's separate search page today. We don't expect that this change will have much impact for data providers. However, if you have any questions about this or any other issue, check out the Google Merchant Center Forums to get help from the Base community and Google staff.

Original Article: Google is shutting down Google Base's search page. The company has deemed the page all but worthless, saying that people search Google Product Search for products and Google Maps for houses for rent/sale.

"Since not many people use the page, this change should not have a big impact [on] your traffic," says Google Base Product Manager Robin Züger. "All data remains available through the Google Base API and through any applications that make use of it. As before, you can search for your own product listings in Google Product Search."

"We expect this change won't be very disruptive," adds Züger. "As always, please refer to the Merchant Center help forum if you have questions, and feel free to post a new question if what you need isn't already answered there."

All data will remain available through the Google Base API and any apps that utilize it. The search page will be eliminated in a few weeks.

Google recently split up Google Base into two separate entities - Google Base and the new Google Merchant Center. The Merchant Center was set up to replace Google Base for users who submit product-type items to Google.

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Report Details Ongoing Twitter Downtime Problems

Doug Caverly — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:29:07 -0500

Most companies try to improve themselves over time. Twitter, unfortunately, hasn't managed to do so. A downtime report from CheckMySite indicates that Twitter's still suffering problems on a regular basis, and that it hasn't done well at all in comparison to Facebook and MySpace.

Here's the golden standard (or the norm, depending on how you look at it): Facebook and MySpace both achieved an uptime of 100 percent over the past 14 months, according to CheckMySite. Twitter, meanwhile, averaged closer to 99.69 percent.

What's more, Twitter's figure for November 2009 - 99.91 percent - is worse than the figures recorded in July 2009, January 2009, and December 2008. Plus, October 2009 was especially ugly, with CheckMySite pegging Twitter's uptime at just 99.18 percent.

Some folks might shrug Twitter's outages off as a quirk; the failwhale has its own fan club, after all. Downtime can be off-putting to other individuals, though, and could pose a very serious problem as far as Twitter's appeal to businesses goes.

There's not much else to say on this subject, considering how long downtime issues have plagued Twitter. The company just needs to sort this out sooner rather than later.

Hat tip goes to Don Reisinger.

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> You May Get More Traffic From Twitter Than You Realize

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You May Get More Traffic from Twitter Than You Realize

Chris Crum — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:28:21 -0500

If you use Twitter or create content, you have probably figured out by now that it can be a great tool for driving traffic to your site. There are measures you can take to expand this if your content is not bringing in the Twitter traffic on its own.

Is Twitter a significant traffic source for your site? Comment here.

If you're not seeing much traffic from Twitter, there is a chance it's coming in anyway, and you're just not aware of it. For that matter, if you are getting a lot of traffic from Twitter, you may be getting even more than you thought.

Stan Pugsley, director of business intelligence for iCrossing says that nearly 70% of referral traffic from Twitter goes unmeasured, particularly if you are using web analytics tools like Google Analytics or Omniture.

"The problem is not with the web analytics tools, but with the Twitter applications like Tweetdeck and Twhirl that are not based in an Internet Browser," explains Pugsley. "When a user clicks through a link in a tweet, those applications do not register a referring URL that can be picked up by the destination website. It appears that they are coming directly to the site. According to TweetStats, only 31.7% of tweets originate from twitter.com, and those are the visitors that can be tracked back to tweets."

Pugsley suggests testing this for yourself, by installing a Twitter app like Tweetdeck, installing the Live HTTP headers plug-in for Firefox, and clicking through the URL in a tweet, then looking at the referrer.

His observation about missing Twitter traffic stats is not a new one, but probably still a topic that gets overlooked frequently. Back in the summer, Danny Sullivan wrote a couple of articles for Search Engine Land tackling the subject. These dig in quite a bit further. If you feel like you are being shortchanged on your Twitter traffic, these are required reading.

As far as simply increasing your traffic from Twitter, here are a few tips:

1. Include some kind of Twitter/tweet button on your content.

2. Abide by this equation, or at least the principle behind it.

3. Make your Twitter presence known throughout your site

4. Use your Twitter presence along with your site on business cards, signatures, etc.

5. Actively engage on Twitter.

6. Tweet your own content. If they're following you, they must be interested in what you have to say (that doesn't mean to just tweet ads and sales pitches. Tweet useful information.).

7. Include ways to share your content on other social networks. It will often find its way to Twitter by other people.

8. Integrate Twitter into your other marketing channels (email for example).

I'm sure there are plenty of other tips that could go here. Feel free to share some if you have them.

Twitter is much more than a way to drive traffic, but when traffic is the goal, it certainly holds a great deal of potential. If you were unaware that you may be getting Twitter traffic that is not being counted as such, perhaps you will see even more potential.

Have you found Twitter traffic that wasn't being counted by analytics services? Tell us about it.

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> Driving Traffic with Twitter

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The FDA Targets Websites Over Drug Sales

Mike Sachoff — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:09:09 -0500

The Food and Drug Administration is cracking down on 136 websites it says were selling illegal or misbranded drugs to U.S. consumers.

The FDA says none of the websites are for pharmacies in the United States or Canada.

The agency has sent 22 warning letters to the operators of these websites and notified Internet service providers and domain name registrars that the websites were selling products that violated U.S. law.

The FDA says in many cases, because of the violations, Internet service providers and domain name registrars may have grounds to terminate the websites and suspend the use of domain names.

"The FDA works in close collaboration with our regulatory and law enforcement counterparts in the United States and throughout the world to protect the public," said FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D.

"Many U.S. consumers are being misled in the hopes of saving money by purchasing prescription drugs over the Internet from illegal pharmacies. Unfortunately, these drugs are often counterfeit, contaminated, or unapproved products, or contain an inconsistent amount of the active ingredient. Taking these drugs can pose a danger to consumers."

The FDA's latest move was part of a coordinated, weeklong, international effort, called the International Internet Week of Action, aimed at curbing illegal activity involving medical products.
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Google Improves Google News on More Mobile Devices

Chris Crum — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:27:47 -0500

Google has announced a new Google News for iPhone, Android, and Palm Pre users. The company already offers one for other devices like Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and S60, although they say more improvements to those versions will be coming soon, as well.

Today's new version includes a new Google News homepage, which shows more stories, sources, and images, but keeps the same basic look and feel.

"Also, you can now reach your favorite sections, discover new ones, find articles and play videos in fewer clicks," says Google's Mobile News Team. "If you are an existing Google News reader on desktop, you will find that all of your personalizations are honored in this mobile version too."

Google News for mobile is currently available in 29 languages and 70 editions.

In other recent Google-related mobile news, AdMob, which Google recently acquired, has unveiled a new interactive video ad unit for the iPhone. Google also acquired Gizmo5, a VoIP firm, which will see VoIP integration with Google Voice, and Google Latitude introduced location history and smart alerts.

On the news search front, today Yahoo began incorporating tweets into its search results for select news stories.

Related Articles:

> Google Further Customizes the News Experience

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(Private) Facebook Shares Up 42% In Four Months

Doug Caverly — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:10:50 -0500

Some time ago, Mark Zuckerberg began allowing Facebook employees to make a quick buck by selling their shares through private channels (as opposed to waiting for Facebook to hit the Nasdaq or Dow). Since then, many have done exactly that. The interesting thing is that the price of Facebook's stock has risen a whole lot in recent months.

Brian Womack talked to Adam Oliveri, a managing director at SecondMarket, and discovered, "Facebook shares are currently selling for about $21 each . . . . That's up from $14.77 in July." Which works out to a gain of 42 percent.

The Dow, by comparison, has risen about 23 percent in the same period. And the Nasdaq - which, with all its tech stocks, makes for a better point of comparison - is only up 20 percent.

So why all the interest in Facebook? Well, its growth rate has been spectacular. And it's not like similar companies are going unnoticed; just yesterday, we reported a big transaction involving Xing.

Still, it looks like folks are again expecting a Facebook IPO. Paul Bard, a Renaissance Capital analyst, told Womack, "The fact that the stock on these private exchanges moved - I'm sure that has to do with the fact that people think a deal is coming sooner rather than later."

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Google Testing a Revamp of the Search Results Page

Chris Crum — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:03:44 -0500

Google is testing a new user interface for its search options feature. If you are unfamiliar with the search options feature, it is the link on your search results page that says "show options" and brings up a menu on the left-hand side of the screen providing a number of ways to filter your results.

According to Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land, a "small number" of Google users will see the new interface starting today. The aim of the new interface is to provide users with a cleaner display. Sullivan says that if the testing goes well, Google may roll it out after the New Year. He quotes Google's Marissa Mayer as saying, "We're basically looking at a new look and feel for Google. It's an overall cleaning up of the search engine results page."

Do you think Google's results pages need a new look and feel? Tell us what you think.

Images of this new look and feel look strangely familiar - similar to that of a certain "decision engine." Take a look:

Of course, the Google's search options and Bing have been compared in the past (and other search engines utilize a similar design too for that matter), in terms of the general layout. Their functionalities differ on various levels. It's important to note that this will just be how the search results pages will look, without having to click the search options link to get to it. There has been discussion in the past about how much users actually use Google's search options, simply because the feature is easy to overlook. Such a change would put the options right in your face.

Besides being visually different, the options themselves are different in some areas. For example, a "see also" section has been added, which suggests related queries. There is also a section called "show search tools," which now contains things like the Wonder Wheel, Timeline View, and "more shopping sites."

Google may start messing around with the top navigation on search results pages next year, but the company has acknowledged that it works well right now. It will be interesting to see the change in use of this top navigation if the left-hand options go mainstream.

What do you think of this re-working of Google's search results pages? Do you want to see it go mainstream, or do you like it better how it is right now? Share your thoughts.

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> Google Launches Search Options

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Google: Page Speed May Become a Ranking Factor in 2010

Chris Crum — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:19:25 -0500

Over the course of 2009, a consistent theme that Google has been involved with is that of speed. In announcement after announcement, Google has talked about the importance of speed on the web, and how the company wants to do everything it can to make the web a faster place. Has it occurred to you that how fast your page loads may have a direct effect on how your site ranks in Google?

Don't worry, it hasn't had an impact...yet. In an interview with WebProNews, Google's Matt Cutts told us that speed may soon be a ranking factor.

"Historically, we haven't had to use it in our search rankings, but a lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast," says Cutts. "It should be a good experience, and so it's sort of fair to say that if you're a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus. If you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don't want that as much."

>> Site speed ranking comments starts at the 02:35 point in the video...

"I think a lot of people in 2010 are going to be thinking more about 'how do I have my site be fast,' how do I have it be rich without writing a bunch of custom javascript?'" he says.

I would say that based on Matt's comments it is probably fair to assume that Google will indeed begin taking page speed into consideration as a ranking factor, although he doesn't come right out and say that they definitely will. That said, making your site faster is going to benefit your users and possibly your sales anyway, so you might as well start optimizing it for speed anyway. Then if Google really does start using this as a ranking factor, you will have a head start on boosting your rankings.

Google has generally been pretty good at providing webmasters with tools they can use to help optimize their sites and potentially boost rankings and conversions. Google recently announced a Site Speed site, which provides webmasters with even more resources specifically aimed at speeding up their pages. Some of these, such as Page Speed and Closure tools come from Google itself. But there are a number of tools Google points you to from other developers as well.

If you're serious about wanting your site to perform better in search engines, and you haven't given much thought to load times and such, it's time to readjust your way of thinking. Caffeine increases the speed at which Google can index content. Wouldn't it make sense if your site helped the process along?

Have you given much thought to site speed? Is your site up to snuff? Discuss here.

Related Articles:

> Google Wants the Web to Function Like a Magazine

> Google Provides Tool for Speeding Up Web Pages

> Google Lets Businesses Speed Up Videos

Google Finally Shows Off Chrome OS

Chris Crum — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:32:36 -0500

Everybody has been waiting to see a glimpse of Google's upcoming Chrome OS - that is Google's new operating system. Those who attended an event at the company's headquarters today had a chance to view a demo in person, and many more details than previously available are now out on the OS.

Google has now opened up the code for Chrome OS, so developers can get in there and see what it's really all about. For all of the non-developer types, Google has provided the following short video, which sums up what Chrome OS is as a concept.

Google says Chrome OS is focused on three main things: speed, simplicity, and security. The main philosophy behind Chrome OS is that most people use their computers mostly to access the web, so Chrome OS cuts out the middle man, which is your operating system. With Chrome OS, your browser is the operating system. The programs you would use on Chrome OS are all web apps. They're all in the cloud. Nothing is saved on your computer. This mean that if your machine dies on you, or you lose it, or if it gets broken, you can just get another one and all of your data will be readily available, because it's all in the cloud.

Google says that it takes about seven seconds to go to the log-in screen, and three more to log on to an application. That's much less time that it probably takes you to boot up and get onto Facebook on your current machine.

The look of Chrome OS is very similar to the Chrome browser, but it has application tabs and an app menu. You may have seen the screenshots at TechCrunch recently. Google did note, however, that the user interface could change to some extent by the time it actually launches.

When you use apps in Chrome OS, they can take up the entire screen, so that it doesn't even look like you're using a browser or an OS. You can also drag and drop tabs. If you hook up additional hardware to the machine, it will bring up windows for that. For example, at the demo, they pointed out that if you hook a camera up, it will bring up a window with the picture files, and you can pull a picture up and open it in a new browser Window.

Fore more technical details about Chrome OS, and how it handles security issues, read this live blog. Here is another account from Danny Sullivan.

From the sounds of it, Google Chrome OS will not be replacing established operating systems for users who use a lot of programs that aren't web-based. However, it has the potential to cut significantly into the market share of Windows, Mac, etc. among users who do mainly use their machines to connect to the web. I can see this catching on in a big way, particularly with the Netbook crowd, which Chrome OS is essentially aimed at.

Google Chrome OS is currently scheduled to launch sometime before the holiday season next year. Do you think Chrome OS will be a hit? Tell us what you think.

Related Articles:

> Will Google Chrome OS Challenge Windows?

> Intel Apparently A Google Chrome OS Partner, Too

> Steve Ballmer Skeptical Of Chrome OS

80% of Consumers Would Not Pay For Content

Chris Crum — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:16:51 -0500

As you've more than likely heard by now, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch in an interview last week talked about the possibility of blocking search engines from indexing News Corp. publications' content. While this may or may not actually happen, it is one of the latest (and biggest) examples of a publisher taking the position of search engines hurting them rather than helping them.

In an informative piece at Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan interviews Google News business product manager Josh Cohen about how Google handles paywalls. "For me, I find it puzzling publishers believe they have to make a choice," says Sullivan. "They can have their paywall AND Google traffic combined, via Google's First Click Free program. Are there many publishers who simply aren’t aware of this program?"

"First Click Free is only one example of the ways that publishers can make subscription content available," says Cohen. "They can do previews, they can block it in different ways. I think there are a lot of those questions about the nuts and bolts of how you can work with us, subscriptions just being one of them."

Sullivan highlights the following ways in which Google handles free and paid news content. They boil down to four basic scenarios: free content, first click free, subscription, and preview. First Click Free puts content behind a paywall, but Google indexes it and makes it searchable, and users can get to it from Google and read the entire article for free, but can't access other stories from the site without paying, unless they go back to Google and start over. The subscription option puts the content behind a paywall, and Google indexes the whole article and makes it searchable, but people can only read the whole thing if they pay. The preview option puts the content behind a paywall, and Google does not index the entire story, but only a preview. People can then pay to read the whole thing.

There are many talking points on these options, and Sullivan does a wonderful job of going through them with Cohen. The real question, however, is whether or not it is worth it to even have a paywall. If the latest research from Forrester is any indication, offering only paid content is not the wisest decision, because 80% of consumers wouldn't access news sites if they had to pay.

Forrester's Sarah Rotman Epps says the data suggests two things:

1. Publishers should continue to offer free, ad-supported products to the 80% of consumers who won't pay for content online; and

2. Publishers should offer consumers a choice of multichannel subscriptions, single-channel subscriptions, and micropayments for premium product access.

As she says, consumers want choice. "The need for a multichannel product and pricing strategy is further reinforced by the 'what if' scenario of print being discontinued," says Epps. "When we asked consumers, 'If the publications you read were no longer available in print, how would you prefer to access that content?' we found that no single channel dominated responses."

37% of US consumers said they'd prefer to access content via a web site, 14% said by mobile phone, 11% said by laptops and netbooks, and 3% said by eReaders. 10% said by PDF by email.

Related Articles:

> Obvious: People Don't Want to Pay for Online News

> Murdoch On Blocking Search Engines: "I Think We Will"

> Google Okay With Blocking News Corp.

Paid Twitter Accounts To Debut This Year, Says Stone

Doug Caverly — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:08:44 -0500

Corporate Twitter accounts are still on the way, and should be introduced by the end of this year, according to cofounder Biz Stone. Stone chatted a little more about these accounts - along with the company's problematic growth rate - while on a NESTA panel in London.

"One of the first things we are going to do explicitly is commercial accounts," Stone said, as reported by the BBC. He then (re)confirmed some of the rumors and ideas that have been floating around, adding, "Twitter will always be free to everyone but you will be able to pay for an additional layer of access to learn more about your Twitter account - get some feedback, some analytics, become a better Twitterer."

This development should come as a big relief to Twitter's backers. Over time, the site's lack of a business model has gone from being something of a laughing matter to (at least in some corners) acting as a cause for serious concern. Also, the fact that firms like Compete and Hitwise believe Twitter's growth has ceased hasn't helped.

Stone had something to say about that, too, however. Twitter's "continuing to grow very fast from an international and a mobile perspective," he stated.

And it's quite possible that the introduction of paid accounts will help Twitter generate more interest within the business community, anyway.

Related Articles:

> Yahoo Showing Tweets For News Results

> You May Get More Traffic From Twitter Than You Realize

> Fortune 100 Companies Still Awkward Around Twitter

Murdoch On Blocking Search Engines: "I Think We Will"

Doug Caverly — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:47:26 -0500

There's a chance that the content produced by the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and a number of other important organizations will soon become impossible to find using Google. Rupert Murdoch indicated in a recent interview that News Corp. may block search engines.

News Corp. is the world's second largest media group. It owns enough stuff that even hitting the highlights would take far too much time. (Wikipedia has an 861-word entry titled "List of assets owned by News Corporation" if you're feeling adventurous.)

Murdoch's interview with Sky News editor David Speers could be of huge significance, then. In it (the relevant part of the conversation starts around the 3:10 mark), Murdoch said, "We'd rather have fewer people coming to our website, but paying." In reference to "search people," he next added, "They don't suddenly become loyal readers of our content."

Finally, in response to a question regarding why News Corp. doesn't just block search engines, Murdoch said, "Well, I think we will . . ."

But here's the tricky part: Murdoch cited the Wall Street Journal's current approach to pay walls and subscriptions as an example of what he'd like to implement on a larger scale, and it's actually possible to access WSJ stories using Google. It's only when clicking around within the WSJ that you run into truncated articles.

So we - and a lot of industry decision-makers - will see what happens. Whichever way Murdoch leans, he definitely has the power to start a trend.

UPDATE: Danny Sullivan has pointed out a sort of middle ground at which Murdoch might arrive: "Publishers can have Google News index the entire text of their articles but NOT show the full story to visitors who come from Google (for Google's web search, that's not an option - but you can provide summary pages). They can also, if they choose, have only a small summary of their content indexed."

That would allow News Corp.'s properties to by and large stick to the WSJ model without sacrificing loads of search traffic and becoming less visible to potential ad-clickers and paying customers. A smart compromise, perhaps.

As for when a change might go through, Jon Miller, News Corp.'s Chief Digital Officer, gave a rough deadline by talking about "months and quarters - not weeks" at a conference yesterday. But according to Emma Barnett, he also indicated that News Corp. wouldn't do anything drastic on its own, which may either be a polite way of contradicting Murdoch's statements or a hint that the industry really is about to change.

Related Articles:

> MySpace To Miss $100 Million From Google Search Deal

> Murdoch Says Newspapers Must Charge For Online Content

> News Corp. Posts Disappointing Financial Results

Yahoo Showing Tweets for News Results

Chris Crum — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:42:53 -0500

Yahoo Search is now including a new Twitter feature in search results for select topics that are in the news. For example, if you search for "health care reform," or "obama," you will get a section for news results, which contains tabs for news, photos, videos, and Twitter.

The results look something like this:

This is perhaps the best integration of Twitter that exists in any of the three major search engines at this point. That will likely change, once Twitter's deals with Google and Bing start to produce results, but Yahoo is providing an interesting way of incorporating tweets into search results, even if they only come up for select queries.

Of course, Yahoo Search will most likely be taken over by Bing results in the not-too-distant future. Recent reports suggest that Microsoft and Yahoo are getting pretty close to getting the deal done (still pending regulatory approval, which the companies remain optimistic about).

As Ben Parr at Mashable suggests, Yahoo's inclusion of these tweets shows that Yahoo isn't just sitting on its hands waiting for the Bing deal to go through. The company is in a variety of ways showing that it still does care about search. They recently launched a whole new version of Yahoo Search, let's not forget.

Meanwhile, Yahoo is losing market share to both Google and Bing, according to the latest numbers. As long as that deal goes through, it will all be found market share for Bing either way.

Related Articles:

> Yahoo and Microsoft May Be Close to Signing

> Yahoo Pushes Out the New Search Design

> Google, Bing Perform Well In Latest comScore Report

New Network Gives Smaller Online Publishers Free Legal Help

Mike Sachoff — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:32:51 -0500

The Citizen Media Law Project (CMLP) has launched the Online Media Legal Network (OLMLN) that will offer free legal advice to online journalists and bloggers.

Lawyers participating in OMLN will provide smaller online publishers with free and reduced legal help on a broad range of issues, including business formation and governance, copyright licensing and fair use, employment and freelancer agreements, access to government information, pre-publication review of content, and representation in litigation.

"Unlike established media organizations that have the resources to pursue important reporting in the face of legal challenges, many online ventures lack the expertise and financial resources to protect themselves and thrive in an uncertain legal environment," said David Ardia, director and co-founder of the CMLP.

"In order for these new media ventures to survive and flourish, they need a legal safety net, and OMLN aims to provide that safety net with the help of lawyers interested in promoting a vibrant online media environment."

OMLN said its staff will pre-screen prospective clients and prepare summaries so that participating lawyers can decide if they want to take on a question, case, or transaction. The summaries will be sent out to network lawyers via a bi-weekly email newsletter and will be available any time on the password-protected OMLN website.

Network lawyers will be able to search the website and filter client and case information based on client location, type of assistance needed, and legal help required.

"We are proud to launch OMLN and look forward to collaborating with lawyers and journalists to help ensure that journalism thrives on the Internet," said Ardia.

Related Articles:

> Google Takes Us To Law School

> Tagged.com Reaches Settlement With NY AG

> FTC Guidelines Raise Big Bloggong Questions

5 Less Obvious Online Reputation Management Issues

Chris Crum — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:51:16 -0500

There are a lot of elements to online reputation management. Really, depending on how far you want to take it, the elements are basically limitless. Any web property out there that gives people a voice caters to potential reputation smearing.

There have been entire books written about online reputation management, and countless articles, but I just wanted to take the time to point out five things to keep track of that you may not have considered (or maybe you have...if so, good thinking).

What do you watch when monitoring your online reputation? Tell WPN readers.

1. Google Sidewiki

There is a chance that people are talking about you right on your site, and you don't have any clue. A while back Google launched SideWiki, a feature for the Google Toolbar (and also available as a bookmarklet for web browsers), which lets people comment on any page on the web. Anyone who is using Sidewiki can see the comments that have been posted or leave their own. Granted, not all comments left will necessarily show up (Google controls this), but you should do yourself a favor and check to see what kind of comments are being left on your site. If you have a lot of pages, it may be hard to get to them all, but you can focus on the ones that you feel are the most important (or bring in the most traffic).

2. Blog Comments

You may be on the look out for blog posts being written about your brand. People are going online more and more to research businesses before they buy. They're looking for reviews and what people have to say about businesses and products.

It doesn't stop at the blog post, however. Often times, some of the most passionate and/or nasty comments will come in the comments sections of these blog posts. If you need to defend your brand or product out there, don't overlook what people are saying in the comments themselves.

That's assuming that the comments are negative, but it can also pay to acknowledge the good comments. Engage with people and show that you care and appreciate the kind words. As Connie Bensen of Techrigy recently told WebProNews in an interview, "You're never done building you brand." You should always be listening, work with those who are being negative (when possible), and thank the ones who are being positive.

3. Ex-Employees

Speaking of comments and blog posts, it is often ex-employees who have been let go who can leave the nastiest comments and posts. As Doug Caverly noted in a SmallBusinessNewz article, firings don't often lead to warm, fuzzy feelings. Some people can just get plain malicious, and these people will do what they can to ruin you. You can set up alerts for ex-employees, and this will often help you encounter any negative words they are putting out there. This can be difficult to manage depending on the privacy settings of any social networks they may be sounding off on, but Google Alerts, Twitter search feeds, etc. can potentially catch a great deal of smack talk.

4. Watching What You Tweet

Twitterers say the darndest things. When you see all of the ridiculous stuff people are saying on Twitter, it's easy to dismiss any discretion (particularly if you like to tie on a buzz and speak your mind as plenty in the industry clearly do). Just think before you tweet. Tweets are automatically set to public unless you change your settings. Once you say something, it's out there for the world to see, and how close attention do you really pay to your list of followers? Anyone can follow you if you haven't changed your settings.

Sure, if you slip up and wish to take back something you said, you can always delete your tweet. However, Twitter is largely about real-time communication and what is happening right now. So once it's been said, there is no telling how many people may have seen it.

Being yourself is one thing. There's nothing wrong with speaking your mind (even if you do have a buzz). People often put their foot in their mouths in the offline world. The same goes for Twitter. That's all I'm saying.

5. Photos Posted by Others

Luckily things like photo tagging on Facebook and other sites lets people upload photos of you with your name attached to them. If you're not ashamed of anything you've ever done, than maybe you have nothing to worry about. I would guess that most people cannot say that, however. And it's funny how cameras are often present at those times that lead to any shame. What may be funny to your college roommate (and perhaps even you still), may not be so appropriate for potential customers and business contacts.

Keep an eye on your Facebook photos (and anywhere else, where they may be popping up). Tell your friends to cut you some slack. Tell them it's funny, but they may be losing you business. If they're really your friend, they'll understand.

Wrapping Up

Clearly, there are many more things to consider within the practice of managing one's online reputation. A lot of it comes down to how comfortable you are with your professional persona - your brand's image (in the eyes of the public). Can you think of some potential reputation hazards that may not occur to everybody? Please share in the comments.

Related Articles:

> Picking Your Online Reputation Battles

> Baby Food Recall Shows Reputation Management Done Right

> Killing Bad Search Results with Reputation Management

> Fighting a Bad Online Reputation & Keeping a Good One

Businesses Benefit From Reviews On Their Website

Mike Sachoff — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:32:26 -0500

Small businesses that features reviews on their website are seeing significant returns, according to a new survey from RatePoint.

Among the 30 percent of small business retailers who had product reviews on their websites, 43 percent said reviews had led to more sales, while 28 percent indicated they had resulted in more traffic.

"Reviews help small business owners learn more about how customers use their products, find latent issues with their site or shopping process they hadn't yet discovered and most importantly, find satisfied customers whose positive feedback will build trust with potential customers," said Neal Creighton, CEO of RatePoint.

"Missing out on all of the information and opportunities that reviews provide is something that small businesses simply can't afford to do."

Some small business owners have the perception that reviews can be damaging to a brand, but data has shown that reviews are much more likely to impact a business positively than negatively. RatePoint survey data released in July found reviews were six times more likely to impact a business positively.

Research from Deloitte & Touche, found more than 82 percent of those who read reviews said their purchasing decisions have been directly influenced by those reviews. In addition, 69 percent of consumers who read reviews share them with friends, and family.

"Research clearly shows that peer reviews increase consumer trust when shopping online," said Creighton.

"Small businesses who have implemented reviews on their site are uniquely positioned to stand apart this holiday season as shoppers look to transact with sites and brands they can trust."

Related Articles:

> Online Retailers Seek To Improve Checkout Process

> 5 Less Obvious Online Reputation Management Issues

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