Make friends via Social Media

There has been a change in the way the world makes friends. Thanks to social media and web 2.0! Notice how your parents made those very few special friends. They made friends with the girl/boy down the lane, or people they met during school and college. And they mastered the art of making friends with ease. (My mom's closest friends are the ones she met in college...) With the coming of social media and technological advancement, we accept and reject friend requests instantly!

Social networking sites such as Orkut and Facebook are a hit with Indian youngsters. These sites put you on cloud nine, when you see the number of friend requests that come your way. (Many have met their school friends and have arranged reunions. Thanks to Orkut and Facebook!) It also annoys you and brings in a whole lot of competition among friends and relatives! (Facebook poke, hit, slap...and the friend requests on Orkut “Hey am so on and so...can we be friends??) Have you realized that you are posting on people's wall with whom you have just exchanged greetings during college days! What an irony!
Microblogging sites such as Twitter lets one 'follow' and 'unfollow' people. Tweeting thoughts in140 characters or less is an art that youngsters are getting hooked to.

Also friends exchange images frequently over social networking sites such as Facebook which lets you' tag' friends. Does it invoke feelings of jealousy? The updates on Facebook profiles have often made your day but have broken the hearts of your friends and relatives. (A Facebook update showing you are on a 15 day trip to Egypt will not go down too well with your relatives!)

Communication has changed over the years and the fact that social media is here to stay makes it all the more challenging. It is a two-way medium with messages being exchanged faster than ever before but all you psychology students out there are interested in the body language and the personality of an individual rather than updates and posts. There are a majority of people who get out of their boredom managing Internet relationships. Consider, for example, how people you know often seem different online displaying sides of their personalities you have never seen before. Do you see some of your friends show a different side of their personality? Are they aggressive? Are they saying things that they would not otherwise? Do they seem new to you? Welcome to the whole new world of making friends online!


Source: Online.wsj

Google Page Rank Update 2008

Ok so 2008 gave us a decent page rank boost, we moved from a PR 1 to PR3. I'm still not sure what we did right. The biggest question though after the update was "Which is the best way to promote a website in 2008?" This is the most common question that are being currently asked in the seo forums at the moment. Google has, from what many forum members say, already had a pr update in 2008; this was perhaps just a partial update.

Page rank updates are becoming less frequent as the years go by. They used to be something to look forward to for the majority of webmasters, these days they are something to be quite worried about.

If you are playing by the rules as described in the Google webmaster guidelines then you will have nothing to fear. If you have been buying or selling links or have been participating in excessive link exchanges then you may be in danger of a page rank reduction or some other form of penalty. You may not agree with the rules, as many people certainly don't, but they are here to say. As Google states, it is our search engine and we will do what we want with it.

In my opinion, I would advise people to play by the rules. Cheating, by purchasing links, may work in the short term; however you should be playing the long game. Do not just think of tomorrow, think also of next year and the next five years.

You may want to be number one in the search engine rankings today, don't we all? Just think for a moment, the people who are number one may be buying links and when they are caught Google may well demote them some what.

Play by the rules, work hard at producing quality unique content and you are sure to succeed. There is a famous saying, cheaters never prosper!

However stay tuned for my next post which will be on How you can use the social media to get incoming links :)

MoDazzle : Next generation mobile networking

Technology has become a vital part of our life. It is creeping into our daily activities, and it has become crucial. Can we imagine living without mobile? Gosh…it will be our first expression. And now the new craze is social networking sites, people are just addicted to it. Believe it or not, people check their favorite social networking sites every second, to find who has scraped them and who is online. Imagine accessing these sites through your mobile, how easy it will be.

MoDazzle does the same. www.modazzle.com gives you the opportunity to access social networking sites through mobile via SMS and email without Internet, GPRS or EDGE on your phone. You can access LinkedIn, SalesForce and Facebook. The list doesn’t stop here you can also find out nearest star bucks, weather updates, Stock quotes and directions and many more.

To access all you have to do is, register yourself at www.modazzle.com and specify what you want to access through mobile; LinkedIn, SalesForce or Facebook. You can register for how many ever services you want.

With Linkedin on your mobile,

MoDazzle allows you to search for company details, people search also you can invite your contacts, search for person details and check out for common contacts between you & your friend. Like wise with Facebook you can send messages to you friend, you can read messages from your inbox, post a note on to your profile, poke and lots more.

As we know, SalesForce is the leader in customer relationship management. SalesForce enterprise users with the help of

MoDazzle can attach a document, find account information, can log sales call and get the tear sheet find out the new task, all through their mobile via SMS and email.

MoDazzle-easy to access and free to register. Once you have registered, accessing Facebook, LinkedIn and SalesForce is at your finger tips. Just register and make your life easy.

Google OpenSocial to launch Thursday

Google is working on new project “OpenSocial”. Google wants to create an easy way for developers to create an application that works on all social networks. Google’s goal is to fight Facebook by being even more open than the Facebook Platform. If Facebook is 98% open, Google wants to be 100%.

OpenSocial is a set of common APIs (Application programming interface) that application developers can use to create applications that work on any social networks (called “hosts”) that choose to participate. The three common APIs with input from partners that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks:

• Profile Information (user data)
• Friends Information (social graph)
• Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)

Partners are in two categories: hosts and developers.

Hosts are the participating social networks, and include Orkut, Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster, Viadeo and Oracle.

Developers include Flixster, iLike, RockYou and Slide.

The URL will go live on Thursday, 1st November, so keep watching!!!!

Source: Techcrunch

Effective Marketing on LinkedIn

What is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a professional niche social networking site. On LinkedIn, you can connect with professional colleagues, meet new people, find recommended services and find new contacts in your current network.

What You Can Do With LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a good tool to reach specific people; it is not so good at mass market broadcasting. If you want to reach ten million people, then this may not be your best avenue.

By using LinkedIn effectively you can:

• Increase the visibility of your business and brand
• Pursue direct sales
• Generate traffic and support your SEO efforts

Building Your Network on LinkedIn

There are people known as “open networkers” on LinkedIn, who tend to link to as many people as possible. By inviting a few of these “power networkers” to your network, you can access to all of their first degree and second degree contacts. These Open networkers can be found by doing simple search on LinkedIn for “LION“.

The other way to find high volume LinkedIn networkers is to visit TopLinked.com.

Marketing Strategies

Increasing Your Brand’s Visibility

There are several ways you can use LinkedIn to increase the visibility of your business.

· Display your expertise in “Answers”

· Announce your services to others in Answers.

· Drive readers to your blog posts

· Get your service recommended in “Services”.

Generating Sales Leads

· Reach potential clients through LinkedIn by conversing with people in “Answers”.

· Respond to service requests, such as when people are looking for a consultant in your field.

· Look for the right person to contact at the organization you are seeking to do business with.

Supporting Your SEO

· In order to make the link viewable to search engines, it is important to add the “show website” feature to each profile that will link to your site. This can be done in each account by clicking on “Edit My Public Profile“, make sure “Full View” is checked, and that also “Websites” are also checked. This will make the website link public.

· You can also respond to service requests and other questions in LinkedIn “Answers”, in which you can post a link to your website as a reference.

LinkedIn is not meant to be a mass market platform, and it is difficult to reach a wide variety of people on the site. However - LinkedIn allows for very highly targeted-marketing. LinkedIn allows you to reach the one influential person who is in need of your services.

Source

Becoming More Social

Basically, there are two aspects of social media.

The first aspect encompasses things like blogs, pod casts and video casts

The other, more social aspect includes applications like Gather, MySpace, YouTube and Second Life.

Using the social side of social media to market business can be tricky. Why because, sometimes the site on which you are marketing might get unwanted attention from media because of the adultery content, even in case of Youtube you can never be sure as to what kind of video the service will show after yours plays.

Here are some bits to keep in mind before getting into social media

Examine your target market. Are you marketing to finance types? Then more social aspects of social media may not be the best place to find and communicate with your audience.

Yet if you're marketing to a more casual customer, social media may be just the carpet ride your business needs.

Take time to find out about type users of a social networking site. Few social networking sites have teenagers more, compared to adults.

Focus on the return and the investment. Figure out well in advance what you're willing to invest to get the return you want.

Set and measure your digital yardsticks. As the saying goes, "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." Always set a goal for how many friends you want to have within a certain period of time.

Contribute to the social network--don't just market to it. The Text 100, a global public relations firm who won an award for the launch of presence in Second Life say “Don’t just try to push your goods but try to contribute to the good of the overall community”

Protect your brand. The sad truth about the more social aspects of social media is that there are some not-so-savory characters that'll be using the same medium to get their message across. Examine where you'll be placing your brand and what types of companies are going to be sharing that space with you.

Finally, social media can have a positive impact on your business, if done right.

Source

If you have Myspace account, you can check out profile of “Kathy Cano-Murillo” who promotes craft things on her site. She has 6,500 friends on MySpace and that her website gets 1.8 million hits per month.

United Online’s Classmates Media unit filed for a $125 million IPO

Classmates files for $125 million IPO by ZDNet's Larry Dignan -- United Online’s Classmates Media unit filed for a $125 million IPO in what could be a good litmus test for social media plays on Wall Street. Classmates isn’t Facebook (all resources), but does have enough name recognition to garner interest for investors looking to buy into the social media hubbub. The company plans to trade under [...]

Social Networking for the Over-50 Set

Hi all… guess what? Have you heard of a social networking site for the age group over 50??

Well... Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor's www.eons.com is quickly proving there's no age limit on social networking. The social portal's mantra is "Lovin' life on the flip side of 50". They have about 1 million unique visitors per month.

Eons' site content is divided into several pillars, including apposite subjects for the well-retired and well-seasoned demographic, such as money and health. An offshoot of the latter is a longevity calculator designed to help users predict their life spans and recommend how they can extend it. There are plenty of other sections devoted to plain old fun. Quizzes and games are complemented, for example, by virtual gifts similar to what users can exchange on Facebook.

From the technical point of view, Eons is no different from the other social networking sites that target the younger generation. Its distinction lies in the audience base. According to Eons, one user calls the site, "MySpace with brains."

Those brains has secured Eons' place in some powerful political campaigns. Among the 2008 U.S. presidential candidates who have created personal profiles on the site are Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Barack Obama, and John Edwards. There's also a Campaign Central section (http://community.eons.com/microsite/election2008) where users can discuss political issues and voice their intention to vote.

Beyond the political space, Eons is attracting major brands from sectors like finance, healthcare &beauty, technology and travel. When the site was launched last year, initial advertisers included Fidelity, , Liberty Mutual, and Verizon Wireless.

The site also partnered with CVS (CVS Caremark is the nation's premier integrated pharmacy services provider, combining one of the nation's leading pharmaceutical services companies with the country’s largest pharmacy chain) in a unique marketing program, integrating the drug store into the longevity calculator. When users completed the quiz, Eons would generate a customized CVS shopping list based on aspects of their lifestyles that were found to need some attention.

Virtual gifts can also be branded, or created as limited-edition offers, so site users can offer a friend a cup of coffee from a favorite coffee chain or a virtual bouquet of flowers from a real-world online retailer.

"What's most important, and what we're saying to brands, is that they should try to create conversations and invite the consumer into the discussion," says Perry Allison, Eons' VP of sales. Because the site is still relatively small, Eons.com is actively driving internal traffic to brand profiles and applications through house ads, which are also used to promote new site-generated content. "It's about giving users interesting things to see and do without having to leave Eons," she says.

This may sound like it benefits the site far more than its advertisers, its just the marketers need to venture beyond social network banner buys and create something customized and relevant. Given this booming site a couple more years to grow its audience base and sharpen its ad offerings, its users won’t be the only ones loving the flip side of 50 :)

A Fishy Social Networking Campaign

All the social networking sites these days are about one thing and that is Friends… Without them there would be no impetus to join, and no sustainable interest in remaining a member. Depending on the network, users add friends.

A Canadian telecommunications company named Telus launched an application on Facebook. It is supposed to be the best sponsored application on Facebook.

Last month, they introduced a new cell phone application called My Faves, which allows users to pick five friends – regardless of their own carrier – with whom they can receive unlimited talk and text services. With a target market of high school and university students, and an objective to raise awareness of the new service, social networks were the ideal venue through which to inform and educate consumers about the plan.

Telus looked to Toronto based creative agency Teehan and Lax and media strategy firm Media Experts to create a social networking application reflective of My Faves’ key characteristics. Facebook was the obvious network of choice. According to comScore data, the site drew 7.5 million unique Canadian visitors under the age of 25 in March.

Facebook has found, 27 percent of its Canadian audience is under the age of 18 and 56 percent is between 18 and 24. Earlier this year, the site's traffic surpassed that of MySpace, making it the leading social network in Canada.

Telus' advertising application’s incorporates animals. The company is known for employing "spokes critters" and nature-based themes in its campaigns, both to differentiate itself from competing wireless carriers and to cleverly highlight different aspects of its services.

In My Faves' case, the critter of choice is fish. The application takes the form of a fishbowl, to which Facebook members can add to their Profile page. To occupy the bowl, they select up to five Facebook friends, each of whom is represented by a different variety of fish. Users can also add famous Canadian landmarks to their fishbowls, including the CN Tower and the famed Sudbury Nickel.

The language used throughout the process is consistent with the Telus brand and references the product it's ultimately intended to promote. While customizing the application, Facebook users receive the message: "What crowd do you swim with? Tell the world with your own customized virtual fishbowl for your profile."

After creating a fish to represent the user, Telus delivers the message: "You look lonely. You should always swim with a buddy or five. Let's start adding your faves." When friends are added, they receive an e-mail notification that references the Telus My Faves plan:

Check out a custom fishbowl that I built for us to hang out in. Then build your own to show the world who you call a fave! My Faves is a great new plan from TELUS that gives you unlimited local talking and texting to any 5 numbers, on any network, anytime.

Once the customization process is completed, users are provided with access to the code to add to their personal blogs or other social networking sites.

The application, seamless in its execution, isn't unlike the Top Friends widget that's been making the rounds of Facebook of late. Where it differs is in its relevance to Telus' latest offering. There's an intuitive connection between the idea of hosting a virtual gathering for critter friends in a Facebook fishbowl and the five friends calling plan. Whether Facebook users who download it are Telus subscribers or not, they can enjoy the concept behind the tool.

Since launching in late July, the My Faves application has received over 7,500 downloads on Facebook. The company also sponsored a news feed targeting every Facebook user within its student demographic. Most recently, a Telus-sponsored Facebook Group was formed to generate feedback on the application. A My Faves representative is actively involved in monitoring discussions and responding to consumer comments.

From concept to ad buy, it's a prime example of how social sites can be effectively used to go beyond branding to increase awareness of -- and interest in -- a new product.

So add the application and start building your own fish bowl!!!

New SN site for age group 25 and above

Social networking has really taken off globally, during the past year, literally hundreds of millions of youngsters around the world are visiting social networking sites each month and many are doing so on a daily basis. It would appear that social networking is not a fad but rather an activity that is being woven into the very fabric of the global Internet.

Most of the Social Networking Sites have been populated by the youngsters ranging from 15 to 23. What about people who are above this age group? Will they be left alone? Is there any site dedicated for them as well.

For those above 25, who fear they’re losing touch with the kids of today, never fear.

New Zealander David Wolf-Rooney is soon to launch a networking site for grown-ups, specifically targeting 25-55 year olds. His site, iYomu, will have no advertising and will provide up to 1GB of storage space for music, photos and videos. Most interestingly, though, iYomu will only be open to those over the age of 18. While there’s an exclusive, invite-only beta version available, most of us will have to wait until August 13th for the spectacular launch of iYomu.

Source

The Momentum Effect

What is the momentum effect? The "Momentum Effect", is a term created by Marketing Revolution that measures the effect of a brand within a social network and examines consumer -to- consumer communication.

A marketing ROI measurement firm, examined the impact of social interaction on advertising campaigns within MySpace. They found that brands such as adidas and Electronic Arts attributed over 70 percent of their marketing return on investment to the "Momentum Effect."

The study found that 40 percent of social network users visit the sites to learn more about a product or brand they like, and 28 percent said a friend has recommended a brand or product to them.

Social networks are more popular than other forms of communication and entertainment according to the study. When asked what free-time activity they would prefer, users chose interacting on social networking sites over TV but equal with cell phone usage. For more on this you can read David Utter's article here.

Social networkers spend on average over seven hours per week on sites such as MySapce, which increased the growth of overall time spent online. More than 31 percent of those who use social networks report that they spend more time in general online after starting to use a social network.

"Users are empowered to create and share, build and maintain relationships and in the process have created an entirely new medium that is deeply integrated into their everyday lives", said Chris DeWolfe, CEO of MySpace.

"Smart marketers know how to tap into the passion and energy of individuals who care about their products to vastly multiply the impact of their campaigns."

The study included approximately 3,000 U.S. Internet users, as well as MySpace clients for in- depth case studies.

Social Networking On Mobile

Social networking is all about making connections and bringing people together. Conversations that take place in social networking contexts are inherently social, and often revolve around shared activities and interests.

Users are tremendously interested in social networking sites because of the community, the content, and the activities they can do there. They can share information about themselves, find out what their peers think about topics of interest to them, share music and play lists, and exchange messages with their friends. Some of the best-known examples, MySpace, Facebook and Orkut, have thousands of members who connect daily or hourly.

The good news for the Users is that they can also access these Social Networking sites on their Cell Phones with the help of WAP or GPRS. How Technology is helping us make our lives easier. But again what if the Users don’t have Internet i.e. WAP or GPRS on their phones? So is there any Technology that can help the Users check their comments or scraps on the phone without WAP or GPRS?????