Twitter Spends Time and Resources on a Face Lift

It looks like twitter is trying to compete with the cool slick twitter clients that are available today.

If I owned twitter I would spend more time trying to make the program more stable and try to eliminate the famous twitter down time.

This new design is interesting. They made everything smaller so they could get more information on the page and above the fold. They have taken real estate away from you personalization. They have even added a background to my profile photo that makes me look like I am wearing a cowboy hat. At least this doesn’t show up in my icon.

Here is what twitter is touting, some screenshots, a few comments, and even a video.
(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)

 
The New design

You will now find @mentions, retweets, searches, and lists just above your timeline – creating a single, streamlined view on the left of the screen. On the right, you can see the features you’re familiar with, including whom you recently followed and who recently followed you, favorites, and Trending Topics.

Now you need a wide screen to see the background image you have so carefully chosen.

 
View photos, videos, and other media content

Now, it’s easy to see embedded photos and videos directly on Twitter, thanks to partnerships with DailyBooth, DeviantART, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, TwitVid, USTREAM, Vimeo, yfrog, and YouTube.

 
Discover related content

When you click a Tweet, the details pane shows additional information related to the author or subject. Depending on the Tweet’s content, you may see: @replies, other Tweets by that same user, a map of where a geotagged Tweet was sent from, and more.

Everyone is using the geolocation function in twitter aren’t they?

 
Mini profiles

You can click a @username to see a mini profile without navigating from the page, which provides quick access to account information, including bio and recent Tweets.

Does this remind you of the LinkedIn rollover to view a mini profile function? The difference – you have to click on the icon to view it and you have to close it too.

 
Rollout timing

These changes will roll out as a preview over the next several weeks. During the preview, you’ll be able to switch back and forth so you have time to grow accustomed to the way things work. Eventually, everyone will have the updated version of Twitter.com.

Old Twitter

New Twitter

They are also promising that their infrastructure and operations engineers are responding to the incident.

One more thing… I can’t find where you log out… ;-(
It’s in a dropdown under your name in the upper right hand corner.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

#NewTwitter – The NEW Twitter is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

How Popular are Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz Compared to the Search Engines

Last week a friend of mine, John Poling, forwarded me an email with some questions.

I figured I would make a blog post out of my answer. I have included both the forwarded email and the comment from John.

Hi Gary,

This update just landed in my in-box this morning. Why did I send it to you? Well you are the best person to ask about “how to get the best search results” that I know. I could send you a lot of questions that this email raised in my mind or I could just invite you to do the next BizNet program. Your comments please. I have had several BizNet members ask me about how to build a more professional. I always recommend that they contact you. I have no way to know if they do or not. Maybe you could school us on how to better work with you and each other to better use the Internet for our real estate, investment and small business purposes.

Thank You,
JOHN

The forwarded email.

“This is also a good time for search marketers and marketers in general to think again about Facebook, if you haven’t already. More and more Facebook content has been made visible to search engines over the years.” Sullivan then goes on to say “Google’s move makes having Facebook fan pages even more essential. Without one, you’re missing out on a chance to be found within yet another area, Google’s real time results.”

Danny said it all – if you don’t have a page – now is the time!

Don’t forget in addition to the Notes, Links, Discussion and Wall (default tabs on a Facebook Fan page) you want to create custom tabs with FBML to make the page more compelling and a stronger marketing tool. If you don’t know how to work with code, let me know and I’ll be happy to get you a quote on us creating the page.

Got a Fan Page already? Send me the URL and I’ll take a peek and see if I have any suggestions to improve it.

To Your Success,

Jennifer Horowitz
Director of Marketing

While it is important to have a Facebook fan page is definitely not the most important. Once again your Internet marketing and search engine rankings are like feathers on a balance beam. The balance beam is the ranking scale and all we have to place on the scale to increase our rankings is feathers. So the more feathers you place the higher rankings are going to be. Therefore you should at least be aware of all of the social media.

You should concentrate on the social media that is most applicable to your product or service and your skills. You don’t overlook anything. Make sure to use what you’re best at promote yourself and your business.

Even though the Facebook Fan Pages updates now appear on the Google Real Time Search Results they are not alone.

The search results also include the following:

1. Twitter tweets
2. Google News links
3. Google Blog Search links
4. Newly created web pages
5. Freshly updated web pages
6. FriendFeed updates
7. Jaiku updates
8. Identi.ca updates
9. TwitArmy updates
10. Google Buzz posts
11. MySpace updates
12. Facebook fan page updates

(Post from Search Engine Optimizician.)

According to Twitter.

Monday 2-22-10
Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second.

In a post by Matt McGee he quotes twitter as saying that they are currently seeing 50 million tweets per day which breaks down to about 600 per second.

And he brings up the question how does this compare to Facebook, known as the king of social networking and Google buzz, the new kid on the block.

Even though the numbers show there are more Facebook updates per second than tweets Matt’s post was tweeted 335 times as compared to only 39 shares on Facebook.

Updates/Posts:

• Facebook status updates: 700 per second
• Twitter tweets: 600 per second
• Buzz posts: 55 per second

Compared to searches:

• Google: 34,000 searches per second
• Yahoo: 3,200 searches per second
• Bing: 927 searches per second

Disclaimers:

• On Twitter, every post counts as a “tweet” no matter if it’s an original tweet, a comment from another user, a link being shared, a retweet, etc. All of those are rolled into one number.
• Facebook’s number is only status updates. It doesn’t include comments from other users on someone’s status update, nor does it includes “likes” of a status update — both of which are popular activities on Facebook. More importantly, it also doesn’t include photos, links, notes, and all the other types of user activity that happen on Facebook.
• Buzz was only two days old when Google published its numbers.

Using comScore’s recent worldwide estimates for Google, Yahoo and Bing Danny Sullivan did some division to come up with the following figures:

• Google: 34,000 searches per second (2 million per minute; 121 million per hour; 3 billion per day; 88 billion per month, figures rounded)
• Yahoo: 3,200 searches per second (194,000 per minute; 12 million per hour; 280 million per day; 8.4 billion per month, figures rounded)
• Bing: 927 searches per second (56,000 per minute; 3 million per hour; 80 million per day; 2.4 billion per month, figures rounded)

So what does all this meet us. The numbers show me that social media and search are both here to stay. And we’d better step up to the plate and take as many pitches as possible. We no longer live in the world for doing one thing will get you the results that you want. We have to do everything that we possibly can, we have to do it often and we have to do a right.

Late,
Gary Pool SEO

Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, & the Search Engines by the Numbers is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Everyone is all astir over Linkedin finally connecting its status updates to twitter, but in my opinion, this recent update is not as wonderful as it first seems. In fact, in the few days since it’s been started, I’ve already seen the quality of status updates on Linkedin degrade because people aren’t using #in for sending tweets, but instead are sending all of their tweets over to Linkedin. I’ve learned more about cats, sports teams, and other equally irrelevant information (for Linkedin) in the past few days because people haven’t exercised the proper awareness of how to use the new Linkedin Twitter connection effectively.

A good example of the right way to use the twitter-linkedin connection and the wrong way to use it can be seen in the screenshot below. The top post is the wrong way to use the linkedin-Twitter connection. The person has responded to someone on twitter, but that post has also been sent to Linkedin. In fact, every time this person posts a tweet, it will show up in Linkedin. The result is that we’ll see a message, which isn’t relevant on Linkedin, because even if it’s a professional message, it’s a reply to someone else on Twitter, as opposed to Linkedin. And of course we could also get more mundane and non-appropriate posts, such as the post about a sports team. It’s not remotely relevant to Linkedin, because it’s not a professional update. It’s actually rather unprofessional and is a good example of how to use a social network inappropriately.

The post from the person in the middle is appropriate to Linkedin, at least in terms of describing something professional. He’s also chosen the option where the post from Twitter will only appear if he uses #in. That hashtag indicates that the message should get posted on both Twitter and Linkedin. Without that hashtag, his post will only go to Twitter (and other services he’s connected to Twitter).

What’s happened with the Twitter and Linkedin connection is that most people have simply connected Twitter to Linkedin without using the #in tag. The result is that a lot of non-professional tweets and responses to people in twitter are showing up on Linkedin, but the material isn’t really relevant to Linkedin as a social networking site. This diminishes the usefulness of Linkedin, in terms of status updates, because many of the status updates aren’t relevant to the purpose for using Linkedin.

To set-up your Linkedin and twitter connection, click on the blue Twitter icon. A new window will appear, asking you to authorize the connection. You’ll need to enter your twitter handle and password, in order to authorize the connection.

After you’ve authorized the connection, the window will display the settings for the Twitter-Linkedin connection. Make the Twitter account visible to everyone, unless you don’t want people to see it on your profile. On your profile page, people will see a link to your twitter account, which will allow them to connect with you on Twitter if they choose.

Under share your Tweets in your LinkedIn status DO NOT select all tweets. If you do people, will see all your tweets, including ones which aren’t relevant to Linkedin. Instead select “Only tweets that contain #in.” This way the only time your Linkedin status will update to your twitter account is if you’ve actually included the hashtag in your message. Yes, this means you will need to include the hastag, but this will also help you determine if the update you’re about to post is really relevant to your audience on Linkedin.

If you need to change your twitter settings at any time, simply click the blue twitter icon again and select Twitter Settings. You’ll then be able to change any settings you’ve made to your Twitter-Linkedin connection.

Remember that as tempting as it might be to send all your tweets to Linkedin, it defeats the purpose of the status update feature in Linkedin, if any of those tweets aren’t relevant to your professional activities. Also, when it’s a response to someone on Twitter, it won’t really make sense because the context of the conversation is missing. Restrict your tweets to Linkedin by using the hashtag #in and you’ll not only be using the connection properly for professional activities, but you’ll be showing a sophisticated awareness of how to use social media properly. Remember Linkedin is not Twitter and should not be treated as such!

Taylor Ellwood
Business, Writing, & Social Media Coach

How to use the new Twitter Linkedin connection properly is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Twitter lists is twitter’s version of groups

It’s similar to a group you might create on Tweetdeck or Seesmic, but there are several advantages to creating a list on twitter. The list feature allows you to organize the people you’re following on Twitter, or find new people to follow. When you look at the list you can get an overview of what those people are up to. So far that sounds like what Tweetdeck and Seesmic offer with their group feature, BUT the lists feature also allows you to add someone to your list that you aren’t following. So, for example, if you know someone who tweets a bit too often for your taste, but you’d still like to keep an eye on them, you can add them to a twitter list and then check up on them, without having to actually follow them.

Still, you might wonder at the wisdom of creating a list on twitter, as opposed to creating a group on Tweetdeck or Seesmic. In my opinion, you can and should create both. While you’ll likely be using Tweetdeck or Seemic more to monitor and manage your conversations, creating a list on Twitter allows you to also add the group functionality on the site. Additionally, because you can add people to the list that you don’t follow, you can keep up with what they are doing, by checking your list on twitter. Finally, because lists are public (unless you choose to make them private), other people can actually see your list, and you can also see who has added you to a list. This is a functionality that isn’t offered by other platforms, and it can be useful for determining what kinds of lists you appear on.

I would suggest creating the following types of lists:

• Industry: Create a list following people in your industry and related industries. This could also be a list where you keep  track of your competition and anything new they are doing. I’d suggest making this list private, if you don’t want to tip people off that you are keeping track of them.
• Co-worker/Employee: A company or employee may want to create an employee or co-worker list to keep track of what employees or co-workers are saying. This can have its advantages and disadvantages in terms of how people may respond to that. On the one hand, it’s useful for monitoring what is being said by representatives of the company, and on the other hand it can come across as big brotherish. If you do create this list, you may want to keep it private.
• Networking/Referral/mentors: If you do a lot of networking, you may want to create list for people who you network with on a regular basis. It can help you see what they are up to and also help you think of them. I’d also include mentors in this list because these are people you want to network with and learn from.
• Local: It can be useful to create a list of local people, to keep up with what they are doing, or what’s happening in your city or hometown.
• Media: Keep track of editors of magazines, radio shows, or TV people you want to stay in touch with or work with. This list allows you to focus exclusively on those people.

These are just a few examples of lists you can create. You can create up to twenty lists, with a maximum of 500 followers per list, though this number will likely change as times goes on. I do recommend creating lists and logging into twitter to check them, especially to see what the people you aren’t following are saying.

You can also see what lists you are on by selecting the listed link. You can even choose to follow someone else’s list, by clicking on the name of list, and then on the list page selecting the Follow this list button.

There are also several third party sites that provide information on lists. Listorious is maintains a categorized directory of Twitter lists that you can search or browse through. TweetMeme Lists is another tools, which focused on the most popular lists, the ones that have been tweeted about the most. Using either of these sites can help you find more lists, if you want to follow the lists other people create. Personally, I’ve opted to just create my own lists and keep track of them. I might look at another person’s list occasionally for people I’d like to add to my lists, but I’d prefer to only keep track of my own.

How to create a twitter list

Creating a new list is easy to do. Login to twitter and click on the new List link. After you’ve done that a new window will appear asking you to name the list and indicate if it is a public or private list. Choose a name for it that is descriptive for you. I chose the name of example, but you can obviously pick a more descriptive name than that.

After you’ve created the list you’ll be taken to a page where you can start to find people to add them to your list. You’ll also have the option of going to your follow page to add someone there.

Once you’re on the follow page, select the lists icon and then select the checkbox next to the list(s) you want to add a person to. Remember you don’t need to follow the person to have him/her on the list.

If you ever want to edit or delete a list, select view lists and then select the link to the list you want to edit or delete. Delete gets rid of the list, while edit allows you to edit the name and the privacy settings of the list. You can also get off of someone else’s list, by blocking them, which will then remove you from their list.

Taylor Ellwood
Business, Writing, & Social Media Coach

How to use Twitter Lists to monitor topics of interest is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

One of the features I like on Twitter is the search engine

Recently they’ve even improved it, so that you can do a search on twitter for a specific topic while logged in. You can search for industry specific topics, keywords, and phrases to see what people are tweeting about, in relationship to what you offer.

For example, if you’re a business owner who creates wedding invitations, a search phrase to use would be wedding invites or wedding invitations. You would enter the information into the twitter search box, and press search.

Twitter will then display real time results for the phrase you searched for. Thos results will show you what people are saying about that specific subject, and can sometimes be useful as a way of determining what someone needs. Below are search results I got when I typed the phrase wedding invites and searched for it.

As you can see there’s some definite conversation around wedding invites, but not all of them will be ones that a business would send a reply to. However, LisaWeddingGirl, Fastpitch, and maxturner are a few people that someone who does wedding invites could make a response to. To make a response you simply hover your mouse to the right of the message by the person and click on the arrow (see picture below). Then an @ symbol and the name of the person will be displayed and you can write your response.

When making a reply, I don’t recommend replying with a link. Reply, instead, with a helpful suggestion, and if you get a response, follow-up with another one, and then follow up with a link. Remember, you need to build rapport, and a relationship with this person, before trying to direct that person to your website. Also, there’s no guarantee that the person will go to your website, but in general, if someone feels you are being helpful, they’ll at least check it out.

The search engine on twitter is pretty powerful and useful. I recommend logging onto the twitter site directly a couple times a week, at least and doing a search on what people are commenting on that relates to your industry. If you’re feeling really adventurous and want to take you social media marketing up a notch, do a search on twitter a couple of times a day on words or phrases that are associated with your industry and start making some responses to people.

Taylor Ellwood
Business, Writing, & Social Media Coach

How to use Search on Twitter is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

SMX Advanced 2009 Seattle – SEO Track – SEO Ranking Factors In 2009 Marty Weintraub

Post from Search Engine Optimizician.

On and off-the-page factors that influence web search, what remains useful and what new signals are growing in importance. [Part 3 of 3]

Marty Weintraub
President aimClear

Marty is an avid blogger and has written about the industry for aimClearBlog, SearchEngineLand & SearchEngineWatch. 2008 speaking engagements include SEMpdx Searchfest (Portland), SES New York, SMX Advanced, SES Toronto & SMX Local/Mobile. The “keyword” in Marty”s presentation is “ATTAINABLE“.

Attainable SEO: Page Strength & SERPs Difficulty

• Good SEOs worried about attainability since around 1996
• Easy to deduce ranking factors
• In the “Good Old Days” it was like stealing

Before You Start

• Understanding page strength & SERPs competitiveness
• Advise every SEO process
• Internal linking, tags, internal site linking
• Inventory your choices

What important keywords can your page rank for?
Be realistic.
Cool API’s will soon handle the crudeness of state of the art.
It doesn’t matter if you rank well on keyword phrases no one searches for.
WebmasterCentral is cool but it doesn’t give you any critical SEO data.
We are sitting at the dawn of “Next-Generation” tools that will allow us transparency in our research.
We will be able to measure raw external link strength and internal distribution data.
One of the best tools available for this type information is Linkscape from SEOmoz.

Black Box is NOT the New Color Black
Dear Yahoo & Google We KNOW the DoFollow Links Now Dude.

Tools can deliver almost all known and suspected SEO ranking factors

• Majestic SEO
• WayBack Machine
• WhoIs
• Alexa
• Hitwise
• Compete
• Social Media For FireFox
• Twitter Search
• etc…

“Here’s How Ya’ Do It”

• Search Target Keyword Un‐personalized
• Paste first 3 organic search results into spreadsheet
• Grab page correlation attributes
• Compare the page to ranking pages in SERPS on a grid

The big question is is technology making our job as a SEO harder or easier?
My answer is neither, just more complex.
With more complex searchers come more complex searches, more complex search engines, and more complex search engine ranking you will need more complex research tools.
It doesn’t look like it will get any simpler either, even though every day there is a new advertised program that will do your work for you.

Late,
Gary Pool

SEO, Search Engines, Twitter, and Search Engine Ranking is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Just like anything that has become popular Twitter is attracting scammers and frauds too

Post from Search Engine Optimizician.
You have heard all the horror stories about Craigslist. Before Craigslist there were scams and frauds using email, newspaper classified ads, and just about any other thing people use on any consistent basis. The Nigerian Scam is the first to come to mind and how about the Yahoo Christmas scam. As long as there is communication there will be scams and thieves. Email scams, internet scams and scams of all kinds are, sorry to say, here to stay.

So of course twitter is being used again as the tool for the scam world

While drinking coffee and keeping up on the internet news this morning I came across an interesting blog post about twitter and scams.
UPSTART BLOGGER “The Twitter Traffic Machine scam exposed” by Ashley Morgan:

It’s time to expose another Twitter scam. The Twitter Traffic Machine, the brainchild of self titled social networking evangelist and professional monopoly player Bill Crosby, makes it’s ugly presence felt all over the Twittersphere with alarming regularity. The reason for it’s obscene level of penetration is pretty obvious to anyone used to this sort of junk. It’s seen as an easy sell and is picked up by thousands of con artists, happy to push their affiliate links in direct messages all day long, desperately trying to make a quick buck.

The Twitter Traffic Machine is a series of videos that claim to explain how to grow a Twitter following on autopilot. Claims are made about how anyone can grow their following from zero to thousands in a matter of days, all with no effort, all on autopilot, all automated.

All lies. All a con. All a scam.

Ashley’s post is located here if you’d like to read it in its entirety.

You cant blame the tool. Twitter is a great tool for those who use it properly and it can also be used to come back and bite those who don’t. So tweet this blog post and show your bite.

Remember the immortal words:
If it sounds too good to be true – It probably is.

Late,
Gary Pool

Twitter, Craigslist, Yahoo!, email Scams, and Internet Scams is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician