Archive for November, 2008
Five on Friday - five fabulous Web 2.0 tools and sites of the week (28-11-08)
November 28th, 2008
This week has been a bit mental, but as always I fail to disappoint with my favourite 5 web 2.0 tools and sites of the week.
1. First off we have Popacular. A very simple looking site that give you a list of the most popular websites mentioned on Twitter. You can also do the same for Delicious bookmarks.
2. This next one is something I have not actually tried! But the description got me buzzing. It’s a new web browser called Lunascape. It claims to be the fastest start up browser, here are some of the features:
- Crash protection functionality
- Mouse gestures
- Tab browsing
- Abundant plug-ins
- Smart favourites
3. Splitweet allow you to use multiple Twitter accounts at the same time, it also give you real time mentions of any keywords/brands you wish to monitor. - Could this be a Tweetdeck killer?
4. Microbloging is all the rage at the moment, if your a fan then this next web 2.0 tool might be right up you street. It is called ShoutEm. ShoutEm is simply a very customisable way or creating your own microblogging community, some of the features include links and photo sharing, geo location sharing and mobile browser support. There is also a paid for service which gives you a few more options such as private domains instead of *.shoutem.com domain. View the ShoutEm deom video.
5. Finally today is a review site called Trustpilot. Trustpilot collects the information about the company that you would have taken hours to find, and informs you automatically about positive or negative conditions you should know about.
Here are some of the company’s Trust pilot have reviewed (click to see the bigger picture)
November 26th, 2008
Don’t worry, this isn’t a post about the economic slow down, I think we’ve had quite enough of that for now. No, this post comes as a result of Jon Henley’s article on Guardian.co.uk today titled: ‘The bloggers who take it one post at a time’. It’s a great piece, based in turn on a recent article from the New York Times titled: Blogging at a snail’s pace.
As you can probably gather, both pieces overview a more relaxed approach to blogging, quality over quantity if you like, where the object is not the first to get a post published on a breaking issue, but the one that can add most value.
Both of these pieces refer to Todd Sieling’s ‘A slow blog manifesto’ written in 2006 by the technology consultant from British Columbia, who formulated a structure for the slow blogging movement, saying: “Slow blogging is a rejection of immediacy, it is an affirmation that not all things are worth reading are written quickly.”
Having digested these articles, I felt it was worth pointing out that they have a lot of relevancy in the communications industry, and would be good advice to take on board for any blogger. In fact it’s something that I recommend to my clients: don’t try to be the first on the scene, try to add to the conversation.
It’s still true that blogging, and the wider circle of social media, moves quickly. The last few years have seen a constant push to get more information out in as short a time frame as possible. Twitter is an example of the success of quick fire candid comment, but blogging gives us the opportunity to add more than just news or speed to an issue. It gives us the opportunity to put our opinion across and delve deeper into the discussion, or at least look at a different angle.
It’s too easy to forget that blogging isn’t a race; we need to listen to our community and understand what would be most useful, to be relevant in a conversation. If that’s speed and constant availability, Twitter is probably a much better outlet for you.
If your subscribers read your posts because they appreciate your knowledge or like your take on issues, then that’s what they want to hear, whether that’s an hour or two days after the issue has broken. I myself often like to sit back and see how an issue develops before posting or commenting, it makes sense to get the whole picture before joining in, and simply joining in shouldn’t be a key motivator.
So, what have I taken from the slow blog theory? Well, affirmation of a belief that time isn’t the key factor in blogging, it is important, but it isn’t the issue we should focus on. Offering something to the debate should be the focus.
This isn’t an excuse for those that like to post every few months to say that they are using their time to think - we know that isn’t the case, and it isn’t supposed to be a mantra that every post should be an epic, short posts are very useful and relevant, it’s just confirmation that slowing down and adding value is something that will be appreciated by your subscribers and wider community.
Google Lively shuts as there is no second life for flat virtual worlds
November 25th, 2008
So farewell, then, Google Lively. Six months into development and soon (December 31) the virtual world is to be no more.
A deluge of news and opinion, and not a few blogs, have followed the announcement this week and from my scattered reading focussed on the economics and cultural reasons for the search company’s decision.
Google has made so many good calls in its 10 years that it’s weird to think it could make a bad one. But in the case of Lively, it does appear to have burnt considerable cash and resources on the construction of a useless product.
In the few times I ventured into Lively, there was an overpowering sense of pointlessness, which I’m pretty sure wasn’t a manifestation of mid-life crisis because my mood lifted as soon as I exited the virtual world.
Maybe at the root of this is an indication of what virtual worlds must have to thrive – a sense of belonging, of purpose, of achievement and, whisper it quietly, a sense of fun. I don’t think that these are easy elements to conjure up in a virtual world (and I did try to build one commercially some time ago) but without them, there really is no point in construction.
The knives are out now for Second Life but at least that environment does offer some of these key elements, albeit in a clunky, steam-punk style (without the Gothic class). We can watch SL fight for survival and keep an eye out for Sony’s Home - and gaze with mild disenchantment at the XBox Experience… but also remember that virtual worlds are still very little to do with state-of-the-art 3D and much more about a gentle ecstasy, joy or something close to that.
Five on Friday - five fabulous Web 2.0 tools and sites of the week (21-11-08)
November 21st, 2008
Back again, Fridays come around so quickly!
Anyway here’s the usual my round up of five of the best web 2.0 tools and sites of the week.
This week it’s all about Twitter!
1, Want to know how much your Twitter profile is worth? Check out Tweet Value which gives you a value in dollars. Then it gives you an option of promoting the amount via a badge you can put on your site.
2, This is the best site of the week so far and it only costs $150 to create. It’s called Twollow. Add key words within Twollow, then when someone tweets the keywords that you have specified you follow that account. - Neat!
Quick Twollow.com Demo from jon on Vimeo.
3, Twinfluene is a Twitter API to measure the combined influence of Twitterers and their followers, with a few social network statistics thrown in as a bonus.
4, Next Twitter tool of the week is Tweet Scribe. Tweet Scribe is a new service that gives you a Twitter feed by topic or search term, instead of by who you know.
5,Twitter Lights is the final twitter tool of the day. You have to down load an application for this, but it looks worth it. Use i-lighter to highlight specific sentences on web pages then Tweet via your Twitter account.
Here is a video of how to use i-lighter:
Thats all folks!
Will SEO drop out of the social media mix in the future?
November 20th, 2008
After reading an excellent post by Learn to Duck, titled SEO is dead, I started to wonder, where does that leave SEO? And, who now owns the majority slice of the social media mix, if not SEO?
To recap, the main points of the ‘SEO Is dead’ post were:
- There was a time when SEO consultants could charge a fortune for services, but now everyone is a so called SEO expert.
- Web designers are designing websites with SEO in mind.
- Platforms such as Wordpress have SEO principals in their framework.
- SEO organisations need to re-position themselves within the next three years.
So where does this leave the SEO specialists, if in three years time SEO is dead and buried?
I think there will always be a need for SEO expertise, but not in the traditional stand alone sense. We have to develop a more joined up sense of how online PR, or any other element of the social media mix, links with SEO tactics. The joined up approach is the way Liberate Media likes to operate, meaning in an ideal scenario our client’s online services will be streamlined and focused on the same overall strategy, like a well-oiled machine. So, SEO expertise is still a very valued service but in the wider context of a digital strategy. In the future, I don’t think SEO will be seen as a standalone service.
Therefore, if we remove the channel approach, who will own the future SEO slice of the social media pie if not search agencies? - Online PR, marketers, digital agencys, freelance consultants, something completely new, or all of the above? Will our skills need to encompass the entire digital range to become truly proficient social media marketeers?