The Social Media Roundup
It’s been a rough month or so. I started this site with the intent of daily updates as a way to keep myself and others in the know as far as the world of Social Media Optimization goes. Having never run a blog before I learned a lot right off the bat. Including why so many blogs just up and disappear, regardless of their intentions. In the past couple of months, I have:
- started this site from scratch
- moved in 6 inches of snow
- taken a new job in different aspect of web marketing
- begun training someone for my old job
- gone from silent backup on dozens of clients to being el numero uno
- overcome the flu
- risen over and above the loonacy of jury duty
- and just about 1million personal things that are none of your business
So yesterday when I was searching for some freeware I found an ad that peaked my curiousity, and forced me to remember that which I’d been neglecting.
For those of you not scavenging the net looking for the latest craze to hit the SMO world, I thought I’d do a little roundup, to show you what’s been up:
Firefox Social Plugin: The Coop
The Coop is a Firefox addon in development that will let users keep track of what their friends are doing online, and share new and interesting content with one or more of those friends. It will integrate with popular web services, using their existing data feeds as a transport mechanism.
Users will see their friends’ faces, and by clicking on them will be able to get a list of that person’s recently added Flickr photos, favourite YouTube videos, tagged websites, composed blog posts, updated Facebook status, etc. If a user wants to share something with a friend, they simply drag that thing onto their friend’s face. When they receive something from a friend, that friend’s face glows to get the user’s attention.
Danny Sullivan hates my opinion on Google’s Personalized Search
Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Land wrote an article discussing what he feels are the ins and out of Google’s Personalized Search. Much against the SMO mashup opinion, he comes away loving it and probably should carry a towel before he sucks any more Google juice:
Don’t Fear The Personal Results!
The change is good news for searchers. It’s also good news for site owners with good content, who should get rewarded by visits. That’s especially so if you try these tips:
* Titles & Descriptions are crucial: You need the clickthrough more than ever. Clickthroughs get your site as seen as possibly important to a particular person’s profile.
* Get on the Google personalized homepages of searchers. That means offering them a feed or a gadget and encouraging take-up with an Add To Google buttons.
* Put Google Bookmark buttons on your site, such as the one offered by AddThis. Getting bookmarked also helps you be seen as important.
Google Notebook VS del.icio.us
Google Notebook is a Firefox extension that looks like it could be a del.icio.us killer. For as socially inclined as Google may be, they are pretty late into the social bookmarking game. However, they were late to the email table as well and look how well gMail has done so, late doesn’t mean out. We’ll see how it fairs however so stay tuned. Hotmail anyone? LOL.
A new study release by JupiterResearch called “Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape” finds that 48% of brand marketers plan to use social tactics in 2007. Jupiter defines social networking sites as websites designed for members to create and post content, usually in the form of profile pages, primarily in order to communicate with each other.
Although I think that Jupiter’s (and therefore 48% of all marketers) are defining it the wrong way, I can’t help but feel that their path is correct. Though it might be the long hard road out of hell and into Hades 2.0, fools and their money soon part and are greeted on the far side of the river by demons like me who can show them how to use it effectively.
and finally…
The latest numbers from Hitwise show that MySpace and Facebook continue their dominance of the social networking space.
Both of these 2 juggernauts combined equal over 91% of all social networking hits in the first quarter of 2007. The breakdown..
Top 20 Social Networking Sites, February 2007:
- MySpace 81%
- Facebook 10%
- Bebo 1%
- BlackPlanet 0.88%
- Xanga 0.87%
- iMeem 0.73%
- Yahoo! 360 up 0.72%
- Classmates up 0.72%
- hi5 0.69%
- Tagged 0.67%
- LiveJournal 0.49%
- Gaiaonline 0.48%
- Friendster 0.34%
- Orkut 0.26%
- Live Spaces 0.18%
- HoverSpot 0.18%
- Buzznet 0.18%
- Sconex 0.14%
- MiGente.com 0.11%
- myYearbook 0.11%
posted by greg :: Apr.10.2007 ::
Social Media Optimization News
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Nice roundup! Welcome back and congratulations on the job.
Thanks man! It’s good to be back.
I agree nice roundup. Long time no see or chat and congrats on the job.
Do you think The Coop will really make any difference in the Firefox browser? Or will it just slow it down with all the transfer rates from user to user. I mean wouldn’t the browser suffer bandwidth if the application is running continuously and users are bombarding you with links, videos, bookmarks, photos, and all the other crap they want to share with you. Sorry for that little rant but you get what I mean.
Hey Rootstem!
I think you bring up 2 valid thoughts.
Do I think that The Coop will really make any difference in the Firefox Browser?
MMmmmm.. No. I think, if developed enough and with a good strong backing in the community and through developers that it could be a cool extension to have if it manages to target the networks that you use AND if it makes it easier to use these networks by somehow integrating it with the browser. As more than an extension though and becoming some sort of household tool? Nope.
Do I think that it will slow down the browser?
That’s fairly nebulous. I would say that if it hits the markets that it’s aiming for.. then maybe. Perhaps it, like most email clients do, would allow you to set updating intervals to conserve bandwidth. I’d say this could play out many different ways and that it’s probably to early to tell. It definately has that potential though so they’d be wise to heed this thought and keep it in mind as things develop.