Facebook has made an adjustment to its ban bot, which bans applications it deems too spammy. A lot of apps have been shut down in the process, including some legitimate ones. Naturally, developers are upset. For more background read this. …
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Jun 28th, 2011. 
Twitter followers and followees are as unique as they come. Some tweet every time they eat and some only tweet when breaking news explodes; some tweet strictly in stream of consciousness mode, and some tweet strategically, attempting with every word, link and hash tag to maximize the sales potential of Twitter’s 140 characters. Every Twitter participant, whether celebrity, business or average Joe has their own passions, agendas and incentives. From a business strategy perspective, Tweeting benefits your company because it allows you to keep track of your prospects, customers, fans and partners. The question is; how can you unify your Twitter analytics efforts?
stay on trend in five tools or less
Here are five tools that bring together Twitter and other social media platforms:
- TweetDeck – TweetDeck, a company recently bought by Twitter, organize tweets into separate, customizable topic columns. This way, you can keep better track of the affiliates, fans and competitors you follow. The easy to read column structure auto-populates with tweets, messages and mentions.
- Seesmic – Seesmic’s benefit is the same as TweetDeck’s, with one key advantage: it allows users to manage social accounts on both Twitter and Facebook. Seesmic makes it easier to track multiple accounts, posts and tweets.
- CoTweet – CoTweet helps everyone in your business or organization, whether they work in marketing, IT, customer service or HR, manage and track conversations about your brand on Twitter and Facebook. It keeps everyone on the same page and up to date on the latest market pulse when interacting with clients.
- Skimmer – Skimmer allows users to track followers’ updates on their favorite social sites: Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Blogger. A fun fact: Skimmer gives users the ability to customize their pages for a more unique user experience.
- Mapmyfollowers – Mapmyfollowers allows you to see where in the world your followers are. This tool brings additional insight to what markets you’ve already successfully tapped and which ones are still on the need-to-conquer list.
#trendy
Take advantage of these innovative social media tools to stay on trend. Don’t fall behind and risk missing something in the social media world. The way you present yourself with social media and the Internet essentially defines your company and your marketing strategy, for better or for worse.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Jun 18th, 2011.
Google unveiled Google Wallet yesterday, and it’s already gotten the company a lawsuit. It comes from PayPal, and names two Google executives – Osama Bedier and Stephanie Tilenius, both of which used to work at eBay, and worked on extensively on PayPal.
The suit has actually been in the works for some time, and alleges that Bedier stole confidential information from PayPal and that Tilenius violated contractual obligations. Bloomberg reports:
PayPal also alleges that Bedier, who left the company in January, discussed a job with Google while simultaneously leading negotiations to make PayPal a payment option on Google’s Android Market. He didn’t disclose the job-related talks, a breach of his fiduciary duty, the company said.
Tilenius, who left EBay in 2009, was under contract not to recruit employees, PayPal said. She messaged Bedier on Facebook Inc.’s social-networking Web site, telling him she had a “HUGE” opportunity for him, and sent him e-mails and text messages offering advice while he interviewed for a position, according to the complaint.
The suit itself says Bedier “is now leading Google’s efforts to bring point of sale technologies and services to retailers on its behalf,” and that “Bedier and Google have misappropriated PayPal trade secrets by disclosing them within Google and to major retailers.”
Google Wallet lets users store credit cards, coupons, loyalty, and gift cards on a smartphone, and uses near field communication technology, enabling tap to pay functionality. Google has partnership with Citi and MasterCard in place.
It has been well established that competition in the mobile payments space is going to continue to get fiercer, and with Google officially in the game, things are already getting much more interesting. Wait until Apple and Facebook make their marks in physical world payments. And let’s not forget Square, which just launched Card Case, which allow consumers to use tabs for payments.
PayPal, a leader in the payments space, needs to break out every line of defense it can as the industry in which it’s been pretty comfortable in for quite some time is becoming greatly disrupted at a rapid pace. Tricia Duryee at All Things Digital brings up an interesting point, saying that PayPal is on track to become bigger than its parent company eBay.
Google has yet to comment on the suit.
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Internet Marketing Tools For The DIY’er HERE
Filed under Internet Marketing by on May 27th, 2011.
Google’s recent algorithm update aimed at content farms has drawn a mixture of praise and criticism. Much of this has from those questioning how Demand Media’s eHow was actually helped by the update, despite often being associated with the phrase "content farm".
EzineArticles was one of the hardest-hit sites by the update. CEO Chris Knight wrote a blog post about how his site was affected, and what he is doing to try and get back up in the rankings.
"While we adamantly disagree with anyone who places the ‘Content Farm’ label on EzineArticles.com, we were not immune to this algorithm change," said Knight. "Traffic was down 11.5% on Thursday and over 35% on Friday. In our life-to-date, this is the single most significant reduction in market trust we’ve experienced from Google."
"Google has a lot of smart PhD types working on this problem that I believe is not over by a long-shot. Reason: If you do a query for popular terms that we formerly ranked very high with, instead of an EzineArticles result, you may find low-quality sites that deliver even lower value to the user than our own members’ content! This is frustrating for sure," he added.
To try and get back into Google’s good graces, EzineArticles is reducing the number of article submissions accepted by over 10% – articles that "are not unique enough". It will no longer accept article submissions through a WordPress Plugin. They’re reducing the number of ads per page. They’re raising the minimum article word count to 400. They’re "raising the bar" on keyword density limits. They’re removing articles considered "thin and spammy", and will put greater focus on rejection of advertorial articles. Submitted articles are required to be exclusive to the submitter (but won’t be required to be unique to Ezine Articles).
Adding NoFollow to all links was on the list of things to do, but Knight decided against it after complaints from submitters erupted in the comments on his post. Among the first to complain was copywriter Susan Greene, who said that many of the copywriters actually give priority to EzineArticles because of the lack of NoFollow.
When another commenter suggested that EzineArticles doesn’t exist to provide authority to submitters’ sites, but to provide beneficial information to the readers, Greene wrote, "Not sure what Pollyanna planet you’re from but let me assure you, EzineArticles does not exist ‘to provide information that is beneficial to the readers.’ EzineArticles is a business, not a government organization or charity. EzineArticles was created to make its owner(s) money. There’s nothing wrong with that, but don’t fool yourself into thinking they’re a bunch of do-gooders. By the same token, the majority of us who publish on EzineArticles don’t do so to benefit readers. We too are running businesses, and EzineArticles helps our own websites get traffic and ultimately sales."
That ought to help EzineArticles’ case. Google loves content that isn’t written to benefit readers (note sarcasm).
On removing NoFollow from the to-do list, Knight told commenters, "If you notice, it was near the bottom of our short-list which means it was only icing in the cake to further prove to Matt Cutts and Google that we’re not here to game Google nor let our Expert Authors do so via our platform."
I’m not sure that point is going to be very well proven if Cutts and co. read the conversation.
While he said he wouldn’t be acting on it for now, Knight did seem interested in another idea from a commenter: making NoFollow the default and making DoFollow something that could be earned through proof of quality.
Knight did point out that competing sites that have been including NoFollow were also hit by Google’s update.
Filed under Uncategorized by on Feb 28th, 2011.
