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The Most Popular Social Networks and Who Is On Them

By Caitlin Rambo in Featured

How much time do you spend online?

According to a time use survey compiled by ComScore Media Metric, the average American spends 33.9 hours on the Internet every week. Depending on age and other demographics, this number can double! And for those lucky individuals whose occupations rely primarily on computers: the Internet commands their lives and they are never not connected.

Computers have drastically changed the technological landscape. The Internet has facilitated efficiency in a number of offline processes. We use the web to communicate with our family, friends and business acquaintances in real-time chats. Books and other multimedia are available for online viewing and instant download. We can even shop for gifts online – often offered at a deeper discount than in brick-and-mortar stores! The Internet has revolutionized the way that we live, as we now spend one-sixth of our lives in the digital world.

Exhibit 1: 100 Most-Visited Websites by category, according to Google Ad Planner

Where are We Actually Spending Our Time Online?

Google has compiled a list of the 100 most-visited websites in the United States. (Being the modest company that they are, Google has chosen to omit their website and statistics from the study.) These 100 websites are sorted into six categories: social networking, search engines, shopping, entertainment, business and software.

The 10 Basic Rules of Social Media Marketing

By Allison Kahn in Featured

Social Media Marketing is the act of using social media (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) in order to promote a business.

Many companies will want to start their own social media marketing campaign and create a Facebook page or Twitter account. The problem with is they don’t have a clue on how to run a successful social media marketing campaign. Here, I have listed 10 of the most basic rules when it comes to social media marketing. Follow these rules in order to have successful accounts with Facebook, Twitter, etc.

The 10 [basic] Rules of Social Media Marketing

1. Update! I shouldn’t even have to list this as a rule, but many forget how important it is. You should try and update daily because when consumers visit your page and it has not been updated in over a month, they will assume it is inactive and decide not to follow your business. Also, they could easily go with your competitor because their page is so active they feel that business will give them better service. You do not want that to happen, so update your social media accounts regularly!

2. No pitching! You are not Billy Mays. Therefore, you do not need to yell at consumers telling them to buy your product or use your business. Social media is meant to connect, not pitch. If your consumers feel they have a connection with your company through your Facebook page or Twitter feed, they are more likely to use you over another business that does not make an earnest effort to connect.

The Introvert’s Guide to Marketing With Video

By Marcia Yudkin in Featured

The other day while watching a training video created by another marketer, I missed the whole beginning of the program. The guy stood facing the camera, lecturing in a friendly manner and gesturing smoothly at some props behind him. I couldn’t take in his words because my mind was shouting, “That’s something I could never do!”

In truth, I probably could do it, but only with weeks of practice. And I probably wouldn’t feel happy about the effort. Creating a marketing piece with the camera focused on my face much or all of the time feels uncomfortably egotistical to me as an introvert. I’ve heard similar sentiments from introverted clients who get freaked out about video and TV but enjoy performing on radio and can manage public speaking, where they focus on the experience of their audience.

Yet does that mean introverts can’t comfortably use video as a promotional tool?

Not at all.

Appearing as a talking head is only one method of using video, and it’s probably the very most challenging video mode for introverts. Here are five alternate ideas for producing video content without forcing yourself into activities that feel alien and frightening.

How Small Business Can Capitalize on Google’s Algorithm Change

By Karl Walinskas in Featured

In February 2011, Google made big news on the Internet by publishing an algorithm change for search engine relevancy. By and large this was designed to punish duplicate content farms that re-purpose the same written content over and over in different forms. I’ve seen plenty of panicked content online about what this means to e-marketers and website developers, but little in the way of how small business owners can capitalize on the Google algorithm change. This post is for you.

Winners and Losers

There were plenty of losers that aggregate informational content that are now scrambling to learn what has happened and re-strategize ways to defeat the Google changes, much like the continued war between police radar methods and the radar detector manufacturers.

There were winners too, whose keyword positioning has increased their relevance in the alpha-dominant world of Google. Take a look at the following portion of a spreadsheet, taken from wisetartupblog.com and originally compiled by Systrix:

View Image: Systrix Chart

This is only a partial snippet of an extensive table. What you need to focus on is the % win column. By way of comparison, article farm sites like ezinearticles.com posted negative percent losses exceeding 90%. The short of it? The bad actors according to Google got their a%#es kicked and the better, content rich sites like the sampling above benefit in SEO rank as a result.

Using Video for Your Online Business Marketing

By Susan and Chris Beesley in Featured

There are many ways in which video can be used in your online business for both branding and marketing. Just think the statement “if a picture paints a thousand words” what impact do you think that using video would have on your business?

Just think about YouTube for a moment since it is the biggest video sharing site. The statistics are mind boggling (Source: Google March 2011) :-

- YouTube has more than 2 billion views every single day

- 24 hours of video are uploaded every single minute

- The average person spends 15 minutes a day on YouTube

It is pretty clear then that video is definitely here to stay and will continue to grow at a great pace. Make sure that you use video for building your online business. Let’s look at some of the ways you can use the video phenomenon to your advantage.

The YouTube Star Making Machine

By Anthony Mora in Featured

According to a YouTube press release:

More than 13 million hours of video were uploaded during 2010.

35 hours of video are uploaded every minute.

More video is uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than the 3 major US networks created in 60 years.

YouTube reached over 700 billion playbacks in 2010.

Less than a month after its fifth birthday, YouTube has announced that it has exceeded two billion video views per day.

That is a lot of video. How does anyone break through all of those images, music talk and clatter? The amazing thing is that many do and some ride it on to major success. That Bieber guy for example.

Although it’s only been around since 2005, and was sold in 2007 for 1.65 billion (yeah, billion with a B) to Google, YouTube is now a household name, a major player and a launching pad for new careers. The list of those who have emerged from YouTube includes Justin Bieber, Soulja Boy, and Tay Zonday, among others. The list is varied, from Bieber to the Bed Intruder to the double rainbows guy. John Jacobson and his Double Dream Hands video became a huge hit thanks to YouTube. Jacobson ended up on Ellen’s TV show teaching her staff how to do the dance on her birthday segment. There is now a Double Dream Hands phone app and a book and DVD are on the way.

Whereas YouTube used to be the site to visit to watch goofy, crazy videos, it is now the new engine for launching talent and careers. It is a community where viewers go to find news, sports, science, music and how-to information. Like a social network it also allows viewers to subscribe to different channels, friends, etc.

YouTube creates stars and sensations; Auto-Tune the News’s “Bed Intruder Song” was the year’s most-watched, non-major label video on YouTube. The site helped take it from obscurity to online sensation.

The Bieber Effect: The Beiber story is the most striking. The sixteen year old Canadian singer shot from anonymity to super-stardom in three years. After his debut release of “My World” he topped 100 million YouTube views. The Bieber effect signaled a new phenomenon – a combination of digital/viral social media and a crossover of digital/analog/print phenomenon. This was a true example of the new media melding with old.

Apart from videos from major labels, last year’s most popular videos were inspired by or take offs on established performers such as Lady Gaga, Ke$ha and, of course, Justin Bieber. There was also the Old Spice guy, and we’re all still recovering from the double rainbow. But musicians, performers and comedians aren’t the only ones to profit from YouTube. Who are they and how do they do it? I’ll be talking about that in my next article.

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Anthony Mora Communications, Inc. is a Los Angeles-based public relations company that has placed clients in: Time, Newsweek, 60 Minutes, CNN, USA Today, Oprah,The New York Times, Vogue, and other media. Anthony has been featured in: USA Today, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The BBC, CNN,Fox News, and other media outlets. Copyright © Anthony Mora 2011

What Are The Top Ten Most Visited Sites Of 2010?

By Jamie Lyons in Featured

We all think we know the answer to this question, or at least we have all had a best guess at it. We decided that we would do a bit of digging around and provide for certain the top ten most visited websites (in order) of 2010.

Through a variety of sources we landed at our finished list so sit back and enjoy.

Google

Yes hitting the top spot is of course that rather small search engine Google. I don’t suppose this will surprise anybody but its still good to know that our favorite website is still Google whether we like it or not.

Facebook

Sitting not so far behind is the number one social media website Facebook. Before the inception of social media nobody would have believed that there would have been a website that you would constantly check every single day of your life yet Facebook jumped into our lives and now we have confessed Facebook addicts. How long before there is Facebook rehab?

YouTube

The video sharing network is third in our list because we simply can’t get enough of watching other peoples misfortunes or videos of cats doing human like things. Not to mention dancing babes and that Charlie who likes to bite peoples fingers.

Yahoo

Yahoo still pops up every now and again although considerably a lot less than our number one friend Google. People are still using this search engine and it has jumped in at number four. How long that will last is anybodies guess.

Windows Live

This one surprised us all, but yes another search engine has bounced into our list again not sure if this is by choice or simply because it was preloaded on various machines upon purchase?

Wikipedia

Ah Wikipedia the only website where fact doesn’t really have to come into it. Despite not having to be factual it seems that rather a lot of still visit Wikipedia and take its answers as gospel when arguing with friends. “It says so on Wikipedia so it must be true.”

Blogger

Google’s attempt at a blogging platform. Extremely popular this year but since they have taken the FTP capabilities away I am guessing it won’t be appearing in the list next year.

Baidu

China is rather a large place so its surprising that Baidu has only dropped in at number seven. I can’t really report to much about this search engine (yes another search engine) because everything on it is written in Chinese.

MSN

Search engines are very popular and MSN has come and joined the party. With its very popular instant messaging service this one has come at no surprise as is still the instant messaging tool of choice for lots of people. Its nice to see and will probably hold its own for a long time despite efforts to better it. Google Wave being one of them.

Yahoo Japan

The only website to have a double entry. Yahoo Japan finishes off our top ten listing quite nicely.

That concludes our list of the top 10 most visited websites of 2010 we hope there wasn’t to many shocks in there and lets hope that 2011 brings us some more surprises.

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Written on behalf of Digital Hearing Care and Discount Hearing Aids
www.digitalhearingcare.org.uk
www.discounthearingaids.org.uk

Educating the Non Geeks in Your Life

By Kalena Jordan in Featured

This time of year can be a bit of a challenge for computer geeks.

If you’re anything like me, you get bombarded at every Xmas function or family get together with the dreaded “Will you fix my computer?” question.

While there are tshirts you can buy that tactfully state your opinion on the matter, they don’t actually address the problem itself, which is the computer issue keeping your friend / colleague / relative awake at night.

Never fear geek friends! Some Google staffers with too much time on their hands have put together the solution in the form of the web site Teach Parents Tech.

Now you can simply avoid awkward technical conversations by sending helpful tech support videos to all the non-geeks in your life. You simply choose the most appropriate wording for your email care package (with tone ranging from condescending to helpful) and attach one or more video tutorials.

There are over 50 basic instructional videos available, divided into the following categories:

* The Basics
* World Wide Web
* Communication
* Media
* Finding Information

Now, instead of dreading a drunk Uncle Dave cornering you after Xmas pudding with the question “I want to be an Internet zillionnaire. How do I schtaart my own webblog thingy *burp*?”, you can simply pre-empt it by emailing him a helpful How to Make a Blog video tutorial.

When your school secretary contacts you complaining that her computer is broken because nobody in her 2000 member email list has received her 20MB newsletter attachment, you’ll be ready with a helpful How to Share a Big File video.

When your elderly neighbor asks you to switch out her David Hasselhoff screensaver for one featuring Justin Bieber, you’ll be able to send her the perfect video instructions to do it herself.

Geeks Unite! Now the only thing you have to dread is the awkward silence next Xmas when Uncle Dave asks why nobody is visiting his blog.

YouTube DMCA Ruling is Good News for Blog Sites

By Chip Cooper in Featured

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides a “safe harbor” from strict liability for copyright infringement to online service providers that satisfy its requirements.

A June, 2010 ruling by a U.S. District Court in New York in favor of YouTube established an important precedent for blog sites for avoiding strict liability for copyright infringement by blog posters.

The DMCA

Online service providers such as blog sites are vulnerable to claims for copyright infringement if visitors post infringing material on their websites, even if the service providers are unaware that the material is infringing. This unfortunate result – that’s often quite surprising to blog site webmasters who are unfamiliar with copyright law – is due to the strict liability principles of the U.S. Copyright Act.

Signed into law in 1998, the DMCA protects online service providers from strict liability for copyright infringement by their users if they:

* post a specific DMCA notice prominently on their websites,

* register with the US Copyright Office, and

* promptly block access to, or take down, allegedly infringing materials if they receive a notice from a copyright owner claiming infringement, or if the service provider has “actual knowledge” that it is hosting infringing material or if the service provider is aware of facts or circumstances that should make it “readily apparent” that there is infringing activity.

This protection by DMCA is known as a “safe harbor”; it completely protects the service provider from vicarious liability for copyright infringement.

The YouTube Case

YouTube’s online video sharing service permits users to post videos to the YouTube site which then can be accessed and viewed by anyone who visits the YouTube site.

Viacom International sued YouTube alleging that YouTube was liable for copyright infringement of numerous videos for which Viacom owned the copyrights. Viacom argued that YouTube was aware that some of its users posted infringing videos on the YouTube site and that this awareness disqualified YouTube from the safe harbor protection of DMCA.

The YouTube case involved the third bullet point above – whether YouTube’s general knowledge that some of its users post infringing content on the YouTube website can amount to either:

* “actual knowledge” of infringement, or

* qualify to make it “readily apparent” to YouTube that there was infringing material on the YouTube website.

The court rejected Viacom’s argument and ruled that YouTube was not disqualified from the DMCA safe harbor. Specifically, the court found that YouTube’s general awareness of infringing activity by some of its users did not rise to the level of “actual knowledge” or knowledge that would make it “readily apparent” which videos were infringing. The court noted that YouTube had removed allegedly infringing videos promptly after receipt of notice sufficient to identify specific infringing videos.

Finally, the court ruled that YouTube had no general obligation to police its website for infringing videos and to determine whether specific videos were infringing.

Conclusion

In general terms, the key rulings of interest to blog sites were that:

* YouTube had no general obligation to police its site for infringing videos, and

* that YouTube’s general knowledge of infringement, but not of specific infringing videos, was insufficient to disqualify YouTube from the DMCA safe harbor.

Blog site webmasters should be aware, however, that there are specific requirements that must be satisfied in order to take advantage of the DMCA safe harbor. It’s essential that these specific requirements be satisfied in order to qualify for DMCA?s valuable protections.

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Leading Internet, IP and software lawyer Chip Cooper has automated the process of drafting Website Legal Documents www.digicontracts.com/whichdocs/ for website legal compliance. Use his free online tool — Website Documents Determinator — to determine which documents your website really needs for website legal compliance. Discover how quick, easy, and cost-effective it is to draft your website legal forms at DigiContracts.com.

Google’s New Search Engine: YouTube!

By Titus-Hoskins in Featured

Only half joking when I say Google’s new search engine will be YouTube, because there are many strange things happening in Googleland. As a professional search engine marketer I have to keep my eyes glued to what is happening with Google, the most dominant search engine in the North American marketplace, if not the world.

Since my livelihood depends achieving high rankings in the search engines, you more or less become conditioned to jump every time one of them makes a move, especially Google. Recent changes within Google with the Caffeine and the May Updates (we won’t even mention the WonderWheel) had a few of my profitable keyword rankings in Google jumping all over the place.

Well, things have calmed down and everything has fallen back into place and traffic to most of my sites are up. However, even before the dust has settled on those changes, Google is on the move again. There are rumors that Google is developing a Facebook killer, its own social networking site that could compete with Facebook.

Can this be true?

Only Google knows for sure but there are some other concrete changes which already have been made by Google which keeps one wondering. For example, Google has moved the enormous list of YouTube users into its Google Accounts system. You can no longer log into your YouTube account with your old username and password, users must switch and log in through their Google Account.

This is somewhat curious because ever since Google bought it in 2006 for $1.65 billion, YouTube has kept its own brand. Why consolidate it with Google Accounts? Could this move have something to do with the endless stream of data and content which is flowing into YouTube every second? More importantly, does this change now make the handling or manipulation of this data easier for Google to incorporate into its search engine rankings?

This has to be questioned because there are other recent changes within YouTube which are also curious. Users can no longer rate videos on a five star system but must now use a thumbs up for like or a thumbs down for dislike. A much more “Black and White” rating system which is more in line with the one used at Facebook.

Forget the Bing/Yahoo union which has already begun, Facebook is becoming Google’s biggest competitor when it comes to online search. Facebook is showing the traffic and numbers which can make a one-trick pony like Google more than a little jumpy. Google has to compete with Facebook, not only for the attention of the majority of web users, but also now when it comes to online search.

Granted, Facebook is still in its infancy when it comes to search, but its “Like” rating system and search box must have Google paying attention. Keep in mind, Facebook’s Open Graph Protocol doesn’t rely upon keywords but lets users rate the webpages which are most popular or liked. This grass roots consumer or user ranking system will grow in importance as the general surfing public becomes more aware of just how “fake” or “manufactured” organic results are in the major search engines, including Google.

Link buying and selling, keyword positioning, fake software generated content… all are making it hard for search engines to return valid organic results to web users. One obvious solution is to draw more of your organic results from real live voting users who actually rate the content or webpage. These kinds of ratings are much more harder to manipulate by the big multi-national companies who have suddenly realized the pure economic generating power of getting top rankings for lucrative keywords in the search engines.

One would expect the importance of old style backlinks to be replaced by more valuable social bookmarks, such as how many Diggs, Tweets, Facebook and YouTube Likes… will determine what rankings a piece of content receives in the search engines of the very near future. And in the process, one would also expect the already massive corruption of organic search results, to become much more democratic and truly reflect how web users rate content on the web.

Most savvy webmasters have already made it easy for their visitors to bookmark and rate their content by displaying handy social bookmark logos and buttons on their sites. This is probably a wise route to take as the search engines, especially Google, will probably place more emphasis and value on user generated ratings supplied by such sites as Facebook and YouTube.

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All views and opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the author Titus Hoskins, who is a full-time online marketer. To find out more about him and his sites, just Google his name.

© Copyright 2012 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

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