Google in more trouble with Buzz

Buzz is less than a month old and has already got itself into trouble regarding privacy issues. The controversial “auto-follow” which Google called “auto-suggest” means that Buzz automatically sets you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. This is great if you email people who are your friends, but you don’t want to follow work colleagues or your boss, who you also have to email on a regular basis.

However, Google are now serving its ads with other people’s content. This means that Buzz republishes the content, the full article, not just parts of it, in Gmail without asking permission. Apparently it also strips advertising from that content serving Google ads so this means people are losing money. There was an interesting post on Econsultancy’s website which goes into greater detail according to one blogger’s experience.

So it seems that Google’s attempt to try and spread itself into social media has not got off to a good start. On the plus side though, the location-based features in Google Buzz for mobile seems great. Buzz updates is not limited to 140 characters like Twitter.

I will be monitoring Google Buzz over the coming months and will update this post to reflect the news.

Vodafone making headway in social media

Ok so this post is a little late, but better late than never. Vodafone announced a new service last month to connect all social network contacts called Vodafone 360. Vodafone are reinventing themselves as a software and social networking provider. Seem familiar to Nokia and its Ovi product? Vodafone 360 includes a cloud-based address book, full-track music downloads, app store (called Vodafone Apps shop which will launch with 1,000 mobile applications) picture geo-tagging, and integration with social communities such as Facebook and Twitter.

This service is available on a wide range of handsets and to make this launch even more special (or more marketable) Vodafone will have two new exclusive 360 handsets developed by Samsung that syncs automatically with the PC. The H1 followed by the M1. There will also be four Nokia Symbian smartphones pre-loaded with Vodafone 360 but these have yet to be announced.

The famous tag line “make the most out of now” will be replaced with “power to you” as Vodafone sets to rebrand itself as a communications specialist. (words from Vittorio Colao CEO of Vodafone). The new mobile internet service is expected to launch by Christmas in 8 different European countries.

As you are well aware of since the explosion of the mobile apps, all mobile operators have been jumping on the bandwagon and Vodafone is no exception. For those aware of mobile sync and back up, Vodafone bought Zyb last year for £28.5m. Zyb was a small mobile start-up that had developed software that lets mobile phone users share information and messages between their contacs in their address book. This was the start of Vodafone 360.

One year later and the 360 internet service has developed further to include gathering all customer’s friends, communities, entertainment and personal favourites such as music, games, photos and video in to one single place. It brings together all contacts from the user’s mobile phone, social networks and their gmail, hotmail and any other internet account. What is great about this service is that it is automatically backed up and synchronised, regularly and wirelessly, between the mobile and PC and yes the mac as well.

Some interesting articles:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/sep/20/vodafonegroup-telecoms

http://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/news_analysis/115121/Vodafone_launches_360_services_and_devices.html

Popular websites

According to research by Nielsen, the two most heavily used web brands are Facebook and MSN/Windows Live. They account for almost 11 billion of the 48 million minutes Britons spend online. Coming in third is Google and fourth place is eBay with total UK users spending a whopping 2,560 minutes and 1,978 minutes respectively on these sites in April 2009.

Facebook is one of the major reasons people are spending more time online. People in the UK spend a total of 22 hours and 20 minutes online which is up on 34% a year ago. (April 2008 – April 2009) However, facebook recorded people spending 3.8billion more minutes in April this year than April 2008

The most heavily used web brands are those in the communication and entertainment industry. Hotmail’s instant messenger has people hooked for hours online, chatting away to friends or sending work files to colleagues. YouTube is the entertainment channel for most users online, allowing those to search for quirky videos or funny clips.

The 10 most heavily used brands online are the following:
1 Facebook
2 MSN/Windows Live
3 Google
4 eBay
5 Yahoo!
6 AOL Media Network
7 BBC
8 YouTube
9 Microsoft
10 Apple

facebook

By now most of you will have heard of facebook and I am sure a lot of you have or had a facebook account.
Some people have hundreds of friends, but they are not real friends.

Here are some facts about facebook

What is a facebook friend?
Someone who you have not spoken to for over 10 years and you found them on facebook. You exchange a couple of emails and plan to meet up, but most often do not.

What is the wall?
An area where you can snoop in on conversations your “friends” are having. People don’t realise your wall messages can be followed by anyone if you have not amended your security settings.

What is the info on the wall?
The area where people reveal their whole biography, where they went to school, where they work, their life story.

You must be careful what you put on your facebook. One 16 year old recently got fired as she said that her job was boring. Another worker got fired when he called in sick, only for his colleague to see on facebook that he actually was just hung over.

Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging site which has taken off in the UK since March 2009 but has been around since 2006.

It allows you to stay in touch with all friend and family in real time.  You can leave “tweets” which are short messages, no longer than 140 characters anytime.  Some say Twitter is the SMS of the internet.  You will begin to have “followers” who are updated with your tweets.

“Should I join Twitter?” I hear you say.  Well it is free and easy to set up like any social networking site. Only join it if you have the time to update your “tweets” and if you have interesting messages to leave.  However, celebrities who have also been bitten by the Twitter bug often leave just random comments.  Stephen Fry and Lily Allen are just two of the many celebrities who have joined Twitter and who have a lot of followers.

Here are a few reasons to use Twitter:

1. Push traffic to a site.
You can use Twitter to drive traffic to your site or your friend’s websites. Post a link on your page and start discussing it with other friends and you will notice an increase of visitors.

2. Network
You can meet many people in the same industry using Twitter. You can start following other twitter people and vice versa.

3. Friends
You can also meet people on twitter who have similar interests, and you can even make friends.

4.Work
Twitter can be used to find work and also freelancers to work with you.

So you never know what is out there till you try. Go on, get your twit pic today.

Social networking site

They seem to have sprung up all around us and now the internet is flooded with them. What is a social networking site (SNS)?

Well they are an internet based service that allows users to create profiles about themselves and interact with other people on the site. In short, they are a way to communicate with friends and family on line. You can post photos and videos of and share them.

One of the most popular sites for University students and those in full time employment is facebook.  Since infiltrating the UK market in February 2007, it has grown to over 175 million active users. MySpace users are a younger profile, mostly aged from 14 to 18 years old who are still at school or college. MySpace has been used by many people in the music industry to promote themselves, Lily Allen found fame through MySpace.  She now uses another social networking site as well called Twitter.  Many celebrities are using this site which is third position behind MySpace and facebook.  Users can update their own blog with “tweets” , posts of up to 140 characters and you can subscribe to be part of their updates.

You don’t need to put all your information on these social networking sites as this can lead to identity theft.  It is recommended to set your profile to private so that only your friends who you know can see your photos.  And be careful when updating your profile, don’t do it during work hours especially with comments such as “I am bored” or “I have such a bad hangover”.   Your boss could be reading this and decide to show you the door. Be careful when changing your relationship status as these appear on the home page feed of facebook and people may be rushing round to congratulate or commiserate you.

The best thing about SNSs is to have fun, share photos and videos and don’t take it too seriously.

Start seo today

What is seo?

Seo has to be one of the most talked about subjects on the internet.

Seo stands for “search engine optimisation” and is the process of how to increase traffic to your website from search engines. Some of the most well known search engines are google, yahoo, alta vista and msn. Seo is a fundamental part in website development and maintenance and everyone who is managing a website whether at home or at work should be clued up on seo.

Don’t worry if you are new to this, if you keep reading seojoblogs, you will be an seo pro in no time.

Building a brand new site

If you are building your site from scratch you will want to  liaise with your graphics, marketing and development team to plan the site. If you are lucky enough to have these people on hand to help you.  Most of the time you will have to do this by yourself.  Don’t panic, here are a few simple steps to get you on your way.

1. Content is king

That has been said over and over again but I cannot stress the importance of dynamic and rich content which include targeted keywords.  You should have relevant text on your website which you update regularly.  This means when someone types in for example “Seo blogs” they will come to this site.

2. Meta information

The meta tags are the keyword and description tags.  The description tag is seen in the search engine results page and is therefore often seen as more important than keyword tag. However, both are important and contribute to search engine ranking. The meta information is in the code behind the web page and look like:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”keyword1, keyword2, keyword3″>

3. Title Tags
The title tags of each page are the most important element for SEO.  It describes a specific web page. Creating relevant title tag is a very important factor in achieving high position in search engine. Title tag should contain no more than eighty characters. The title tag is a representation of the core keywords.

4. Image Tags
Images on the website should all have ALT tags. Alt tags help visually impaired people browse the site.  They are also a place where keywords should be inserted to improve rankings in SERPS.

5. Header Tags
H1, H2, H3 etc. tags are not strictly essential but they do contribute to ranking.
H1 Tag are the main heading describing the content of the page.
H2 Tags are the subheadings on each page.
H3 tags are the smaller headings.

6. Sitemap
A sitemap page is essential to help Google find all the pages and also gives you a place to link to any new ‘SEO pages’. A sitemap is an interactive table of contents that visitors can view. The site map breaks down the website’s information into different categories and can include every page of the website. Normally it is found on the footer of a website.  Some, have all the links displayed below the fold of their website and it occurs on every page.  This is a great way to provide in bound links to your site – which I will talk about next time.

That’s it for now.  That wasn’t so bad as the introduction to SEO was it?