Mahalo, backed by Jason Calacanis, has now gone live in an early “Alpha” test release. In Mahalo, human editors have crafted shows up in the top search results for popular queries. Penny-wise, Calacanis is optimistic he has things covered….
Here is Jessica Bowman's 13 efficient ways for boosting favorable content to the page one of Search Engine results: 1. Review the “About” section of your website for opportunities to incorporate Links within your existing content. 2. Look at…
Something more colorful could invade your offline web applications. And it will be delivered straight by Google, the Internet Search Engine giant. Aaron Boodman and Erik Arvidsson, Google Gears engineers, posted this article titled “Going offline with Google Gears”…
Filed under: News, Web services, Social Software
Looks like the rumors were true. Auction site eBay is shelling out $75 million to buy social web discovery service StumbleUpon.
According to the press release, the acquisition gives eBay exposure to StumbleUpon’s growing community of over 2 million users. Still seems like an awkward match to us. In recent years, eBay purchased PayPal, but that was a no-brainer, and Skype, which has an obvious commercial aspect.
The company hardly needed StumbleUpon to build its brand recognition. And if they just start injecting eBay auctions willy nilly into stumble results, they’ll pretty much break the community they bought as members begin to evacuate the spam-laden sinking ship. Still, a separate “stumble to find books, computer parts, or hummels” section could make a lot of sense.
eBay senior director Michael Buhr assumes the post of general manager of StumbleUpon, while StumbleUpon’s current management team remains in place.
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Filed under: Business, Design, Developer, Internet, Web services, Social Software
Jason Calacanis, the man behind the Weblogs Inc empire, (that this blog is a part of) has officially announced his latest project, Mahalo, and its main goal is to help people - a lot. Jason has kept a great number of people itching to know what he’s been working on during his Entrepreneur in Action at Sequoia Capital and the news was dropped today at the Wall Street Journal’s D conference.
Mahalo (thank you, in Hawaiian) plays off what Yahoo and Ask did way back in the early days of the internet and what DMOZ is still well known for today, indexing internet content by hand. However Mahalo spices things up to provide much better end results for users. But how can people do this better then say for instance, Google’s machines? Typically when searching Google, Yahoo, or other machine based search engines, top quality results can get lost in the mix, and a real deep quality search might not get made. Mahalo’s search guides that compile these results do use top locations like Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN, Flickr, Delicious and other services to create clean and organized results, except they aim to get the best results possible for users. Could it ever beat out Google? No, they really are not in competition, but it sure can provide an additional location to search for more accurate and higher quality results.
The 40 person team behind Mahalo currently has the top 4,000 Search Engine result pages complete so far in the initial Alpha launch, and hopes to have over 10,000 by the end of 2007.
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So everyone is talking of Facebook. My Twitter is abuzz with it. My aggregator is bursting with blog posts around it. The social media blogworld is freaking out in it. Even my 79 year old aunt who sent me an add as friend invite! Reminds me of the old days when we all moved from one social networking site to another. This one’s different of course - its more than small pieces loosely joined and the potential is immense with the opening up of their platform. Widgets and plugins around VOIP, presence, twitter, music, video being created with a frenzy. A great platform play. I like this play - although I haven’t done much with it yet.
Still, I can’t help wondering, with all the attention it’s getting and with this invasion of geeks, social media analysts and older folk like me, how the youth on Facebook are going to react! Ironically, they are the ‘older’ Facebook users - we are the newbies. Will they see us as an intrusion? Will they build their own walls now that it’s less of a gated community? What might those walls be? Will they revolt, as they did last September when they felt their privacy was compromised by the addition of new features? Their definitions of what’s public and what’s private is different from ours. Will the more geeky among them, who would like to build on the platform read the fine print and get put off? Will the opportunity for marketing and advertising that it’s going to encourage put them off? Or will they embrace this change and build their own worlds on the platform? Will there be a massive shift from Orkut and MySpace into Facebook?
Hmmmm. Interesting to see how this one progresses.
Filed under: Business, Blogging, Social Software
Does your business have a Facebook page? MySpace? Chances are you have heard about each but chances are also that if you’re a small business owner, you haven’t had time to figure out how to get yours or worse, what to do with it. Heck, you don’t even have a blog yet, do you?
You’re way out of the loop and I won’t even mention Twitter or Jaiku. (Not yet.) But they’re coming.
The 2008 Presidential primary is an investigation of who’s using the Internet more (although who’s using it creatively would be a better benchmark). Every major candidate has a space on the social networking sites and each wants an “I’m-first-to-do-this” feature. Sure, they pay Internet consultants for this edge, so take advantage of their investment and borrow the best from the brightest for your business.
As ecommerce sites invest R&D into social features (like e-notifications, RSVP systems, unique hyperlinks, photo albums, message books, and registry systems you can put on your own site), you can see how ecommerce is seeping into social networking. For starters, we use office product sites that remember (for free) what we bought last time.
IT’S TIME TO GET YOUR SPACE - Log into the well-known social networking sites and claim your business name’s space. It’s a good idea to get a Web-email address to use (free Web-mail from Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, and others) to control likely spam. If you have teenagers handy, they can help make the process understandable. You don’t have to build it up yet; just get your name branded there and think about offering something to download. If a number of people want it, create an email list.
DON’T BLOG. MICROBLOG
Continue reading Social Networking and Ecommerce
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An Aussie outfit is set to release a Search Engine which it claims is far better than Google. Rob Gabriel of MyLiveSearch uses an engine which is live rather than building a vast index of web pages, via automated…
Jeff Bertolucci of the PC World has this fascinating article titled Search Engine shoot-out: How we tested the search engines. It says: We tested a total of 55 services in six categories: general (text info), video, mobile/local, news, images,…
How do you like specialized search? If you do, here are some Internet search engines to help you manage deals online. www.bookfinder.com www.pricewormer.com/books Book Finder lists the lowest-priced books not only for new copies but used, as well. The…
When you are thinking of embarking upon a Search Engine Optimization campaign, the first thing to ask is whether you can take care of the campaign in house or you will be hiring an outside SEO firm. Doing search…
Newly released Web CEO 7, SEO software, meets modern SEO demands. Now it comes with the most significant changes and additions that include the following: • Unified Import System that allows importing settings from other tools and projects. Users…
Filed under: Web services, Social Software
One fascinating aspect to online social communities is the ability to meet people around the globe who share your interests. In many cases, you’re introduced to people you never would have met under other circumstances.
But the truth of the matter is most of us don’t even know the people in our own neighborhoods. Of course, you could walk out the front door and ask to borrow a cup of sugar from the house across the street or better yet, bring them some fresh baked cookies. But where’s the fun in that?
Fatdoor is a new social community site (with an awful name) that lets you find people, businesses, and organizations in your area in a Web 2.0 way. In other words, you get a map. And user reviews. Not sure if that restaurant on the corner is any good or if there’s a cheaper grocery store nearby? Fatdoor lets you rely on the wisdom of the masses, if you believe there is such a thing, and if enough folks from your neighborhood have signed up.
You can write information about yourself, about your friends and neighbors, and about local institutions. In other words, this startup will either be an excellent replacement for the phone book, or it’ll become the online equivalent of a stall in the men’s room.
While Fatdoor has launched in alpha, not all neighborhoods are covered yet so you might receive a message alerting you that your neighborhood is in invitation only mode when you attempt to sign up.
user. Hopefully
[via Mashable]
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Actually, the rel=nofollow attribute should prevent search engines from following special Links. Some webmasters might have found out that nofollow links will help your Search Engine rankings though.
Filed under: Design, Features, Blogging, Productivity, Social Software
WordPress is a powerful and very extensible blogging engine that is gaining more CMS (Content Management System) features with each release. As anyone who has downloaded a copy can probably tell, the directory structure is pretty friendly to hacks and plug-ins, but unless you are your own WordPress coding ninja, you might be asking yourself: where exactly can all these themes, plug-ins and hacks be found? Thus the idea for a short roundup of WordPress download sites and communities was born. Following is a starter list of sites for themes, plug-ins, tips and tricks of all kinds, ripe for helping you take your WordPress-powered site as far as you need to go. Since we’re sure we haven’t found every site for WordPress goodness, feel free to add your favorites in the comments and we’ll update this post with the good ones.
Continue reading A primer for WordPress themes, plug-ins and tips
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Say goodbye to freebies, free rides… News.com reports: After years of delivering faster and faster chips that can easily boost the performance of most desktop software, Intel says the free ride is over. Already, chipmakers like Intel and Advanced…
Google and Korea Daum are in talks on YouTube and ad deals partnership. MarketWatch reports: Google Inc. may share YouTube video content and cooperate in online advertising, the Korea Herald reported, citing unidentified industry sources. Google Chief Executive Eric…
Filed under: Fun, Internet, Utilities, Web services, Social Software
How can “we-find” a better connection when on the go…and get it quickly? Searching for that perfect connection is such a hassle, especially if you aren’t familiar with the area you’re in. You can spend hours trying to activate your wireless. WeFi aims to change that through an online community; linked by wireless access.
WeFi launched a short while ago and provides its users with pinpointed WiFi locations, and connects users of that connection with one another. The tool is a downloadable client for Mac and PC users, having a similar feel to an IM application. When WeFi is launched users are presented with a map of all of the WiFi connections in the area. This includes open, locked, and restricted connections.
Adding a social aspect to the tool is the ability to see which friends are currently online by adding them to your contact list. Friends can then share locations, maps and hot spots with each other.
In the future, WeFi will be incorporating all sorts of tools that help users gauge the quality of signals including hot spot reviews. Nonetheless, this is one tool to have in your wireless connection arsenal when traveling to not only a new location, but anywhere around your town where you are not familiar with signals.
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Filed under: Fun, Web services, Browser Tips, Social Software
Twitterbar brings Twitter to your Firefox toolbar. Released under the GPL, Twitterbar adds a tiny icon to the right hand side of the addressbar. Type your twitter into the addressbar, mouseover the icon to see how many characters you have left and click to post; It’s just that simple.
Twitterbar also supports URL only tweets, simply click the icon without changing the addressbar text, the resulting tweet will automatically prepend “Currently Browsing: ” to the URL.
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Minus the search engines, Internet is meaningless. How many websites do you visit using the major search? Compare it with the number of websites by actually typing their URLs. Their importance cannot be overemphasized. This is why optimizers are…
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