Facebook Acquires Storytelling Site Storylane in Talent Grab

Facebook has acquired Storylane, a relatively young social network focused around telling stories, for an undisclosed sum.

Storylane announced the acquisition in a blog post Friday, noting that the service will wind down and the team will join Facebook. "After a lot of discussions with Facebook about how our teams might work together to have even greater impact, we are announcing today that the Storylane team will be joining Facebook," Storylane's founder and CEO Jonathan Gheller wrote in the post.

Facebook confirmed the acquisition in a statement provided to Mashable: "The team from Storylane will be an incredible addition to Facebook. Their previous work showcasing real identity through sincere and meaningful content will make them a perfect fit at Facebook."

We've heard from a source that the five-person staff at Storylane will join Facebook's Timeline team, reporting to Sam Lessin, who heads up the "Identity" product group at the company.

Storylane launched in October with the goal of prompting users to share meaningful stories from their lives. The service is perhaps most similar to Medium, the publishing platform launched last year by two of Twitter's co-founders. Gheller was ambitious in his goals for the service, telling Mashable at the time that the service was trying to "build a library of human experiences by crafting a community where people can share things that really matter."

For those who did share stories on the service, Storylane plans to roll out tools to help migrate those posts to other sites. Gheller also says Facebook will not be getting any of the company's data or operations as part of the acquisition.

Here's the full announcement Gheller made to the Storylane community:

Two years ago the team behind Storylane began working to help people connect in more fruitful and meaningful ways. We took on a mission – trying to help people better communicate who they are and what they care about, improve the way we do business with each other, find love and make new friendships. And at the heart of this work has always been our drive to build a more genuine online identity.

After a lot of discussions with Facebook about how our teams might work together to have even greater impact, we are announcing today that the Storylane team will be joining Facebook.

This is an exciting opportunity. Facebook’s mission of connecting the world has always been at the center of our work, and like our friends at Facebook, meaningful connections are what our team is most passionate about.

The beautiful stories you have decided to share with us are yours to keep and share in however way you want. We are building tools that will help you migrate the content to other services if you so desire. I will be in touch with you about those specific tools later, but I can confirm that Facebook is not acquiring any of your data; and we’re working to make sure you can migrate your content in a manageable way.

We want to give special thanks to our investors who supported us and encouraged us to dream big. It has been an absolute honor to work alongside such an outstanding group of people. Our journey as a young company was made possible by their commitment and patience. Without their guidance we would not be in a position to further our mission through Facebook.

Most of all, I want to thank our users. Your passion, sincerity and willingness to share, has made Storylane the incredible experience that exists today. We have learned so much from you. Your ideas and creativity will stay with us and inspire us on the next stage of our journey.

Image courtesy of Storylane.

Facebook Unveils a Radically Redesigned News Feed

Facebook announced Thursday it is giving its venerable news feed a new look and feel.

The new news feed represents the first major overhaul of Facebook's core service since the launch of Facebook Timeline at the end of 2011.

"The news feed is one of the most important things we've built," Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the press event. Likening news feed to "the most personalized newspaper," Zuckerberg added that "the stories around you deserve to be displayed with more than just text."

"How we're all sharing is changing and the news feed needs to evolve with those changes. This is the evolving face of news feed."

The new news feed features three major components:

• Bigger Images
• Multiple Feeds
• Mobile Consistency

A New Focus on Imagery

The new look is a radical departure from the Facebook of old. It's mobile-inspired and consistent across devices.

When it comes to the feed itself, the focus on stories is now much more visual. Greater emphasis is given to images — which are now much larger. Photos now make up nearly 50% of news feed stories and are now front and center.

If you see shades of Instagram — or Google+ — in the new feed, you aren't alone. We see them too. Facebook says it is following trends on where design is headed and it is clear that trend includes big photos and a clean, navigable design.

More Feeds, More Control

As for the "feeds" aspect of news feed, users now have access to more types of feeds and have more control over how those feeds are displayed.

Users can subscribe to different types of feeds, including feeds from all friends, close friends, music, photos, games and those who a user "follows."

And, for those of us who hate how Facebook sorts news feed content, a chronological view is now available.

It's not clear how these new feeds will affect promoted stories and content or the longer-lasting impact it may have on brands and pages.

Mobile Consistency

The new news feed design was inspired by mobile. It takes significant cues from the Facebook mobile apps for phones and tablets, adding a new side navigation bar and more white space.

Understanding that more users are accessing Facebook from mobile than ever, Facebook is focused on making the overall experience more consistent, regardless of platform.

The new feed will start rolling out today on web.

Let us know your thoughts on the changes in the comments.

What Facebook's New News Feed Means for Marketers

Facebook on Thursday unveiled its first major redesign of the News Feed since 2009, making the page more visually rich, and giving users new options to filter what they see by different feed categories like Music, Photos, Games and Close Friends. At first glance, the changes appear to be a win-win for users who want more control over their Facebook homepage, but the redesign may prove to be more of a mixed bag for marketers.

For brands, the biggest positive about the new changes is that there is suddenly more real estate for in-stream ads. Facebook has expanded the size of the News Feed itself and shrunk the right and left rails surrounding the Feed. "Having a larger canvas to work with will be a real benefit to marketers," said Debra Williamson, an analyst with eMarketer. "[Marketers] have always wanted more real estate and Facebook has always been more reticent to give them more play. By expanding the News Feed, that by default gives advertisers more room to play with as well."

A Facebook rep confirmed to Mashable in an email that Sponsored Posts will appear in-stream in the new News Feed just as they do in the current version, only "richer/bigger."

Greater real estate isn't the only big perk for marketers. Facebook is emphasizing visual content like pictures and videos in the feed, which provides brands with the opportunity to get creative. Williamson expects that brands will be able to capitalize on this by increasing their use of imagery in Sponsored Posts and eventually, if not inevitably, turning to video ads. "We didn't hear Facebook talk about video ads in this presentation," Williamson says, "but certainly Mark Zuckerberg has alluded to the fact that there will be more video in the News Feed, so there's an opportunity for brands to display video."

Beyond that, Facebook's decision to streamline the News Feed design across desktop and mobile is also a boon to marketers. According to Dan Slagen, SVP of marketing at Nanigans, this move "reduces friction" for advertisers planning out campaigns for mobile and desktop by ensuring a similar experience on each. "You are able to take one message and put it in the mind of a consumer and you are really able to drive that message home," he says.

However, the situation gets murkier for brands and marketers when it comes to the manynew subfeeds that Facebook has introduced. Until now, content from brands and publishers appeared in a user's News Feed right along side posts from friends and family. With the additional feeds, users have a quick way to focus on only what their friends are sharing (through the All Friends category), or even more specifically, on what their closest friends on the social network are sharing. Any user who choose these options is effectively opting out of seeing content from publishers, businesses and influencers whose pages they follow, but who they are not in fact friends with.

"The friends-only feed could get a lot of the volume, which may be a concern," said Simon Mansell, CEO of TBG Digital. "It might affect our ad delivery in the short-term if everyone starts using it."

"The friends-only feed could get a lot of the volume, which may be a concern," said Simon Mansell, CEO of TBG Digital. "It might affect our ad delivery in the short-term if everyone starts using it." That said, Mansell argues it's a necessary risk for Facebook to take to ensure the quality of the "core platform experience." Marketers may still choose to advertise in those feeds, but Mansell says they'll need to think harder about how to do so: "If you're trying to focus on your friends, you have to be careful how brands interrupt in there."

On the other hand, the additional feeds finally provide brands and advertisers with a way to better target the appropriate audience on Facebook. Before, a Sponsored post from Sony might show up in a user's News Feed regardless of what the user was doing in that particular session. Now, a company like Sony might only choose to place a Sponsored Post on the Music or Games feed, where it's presumably more relevant to that audience. Likewise, if users check their Following feed, it essentially means they've opted in to see content from brands and publishers, which means promotional content placed in that feed might see greater engagement from users.

"With most changes like this, it is always going to affect some people positively and some negatively," said Mauricio Aguayo, senior social strategist with Rokkan. "The user is now much more in control about what they want to see and they will be much more prone to engage with it because they've in essence raised their hand and asked to see this publication. But for awareness purposes and pushing content out, it may be a little negative." Aguayo speculates that Facebook may eventually offer brands and publishers the option to surface their posts in other feeds besides Following for an additional cost.

Facebook, for its part, suggests in a blog post that the new Following feed will benefit brands and publishers: "Thanks to a new 'Following' feed on the right-hand side of the home page, people will be able to discover more content from the Pages they like and the people they follow."

For better or worse, Facebook has also effectively downplayed the presence of ads in the right rail in order to place more emphasis on ads that appear in-stream. Not only is that problematic for marketers who rely on the sidebar ads as a cheaper way to reach users on the social network, but Williamson says it also undermines what has historically "been a pretty big contributor to Facebook's ad revenue."

The assumption going forward, according to several of the marketing experts we spoke with, is that providing more real estate and more prominence to visual content will help Facebook command greater ad rates. While that's good for a public company still looking to show meaningful revenue growth to Wall Street, it also means advertising on the social network will likely become significantly pricier and more competitive in the future.

Image courtesy of Facebook 

source

Four Ways Publishers Can Optimize for Facebook's New News Feed

Facebook unveiled its "new" News Feed Thursday, and while we won't know the full range of effects it will have on the pages of brands and publishers for some time, Facebook has provided a few clues to help administrators optimize their pages ahead of its rollout.

First, let's take a look at the changes. The new News Feed is cleaner, more visual and has more filtering controls. The size of photos and videos have been enlarged, making the quality of visual media more important than ever before. That's great news for magazines and other publishers with deep photo resources; for publishers that rely largely on Creative Commons or stock imagery, the challenge is greater.

In addition to larger photos and videos, Facebook has introduced a number of "sub feeds" to give users greater control over what updates appear in their streams. Users can opt to view updates from All or just Close Friends, only photo updates, only music updates, only updates from pages and public figures they follow (i.e., subscribe to), only updates from Groups and only updates from game apps. They can also view updates in reverse-chronological order.

While these changes could have a negative impact on publishers' pages, particularly if users opt to spend all or most of their time viewing updates from their Close Friends, Facebook insists it could be a boon as well, because users can switch over to the "Following" feed to get updates outside their friend circles precisely when they want them.

Beyond those changes, the look of the new News Feed is far more consistent across smartphones, tablets and desktops than previously. For a visual overview of the alterations, click through our slideshow, or check out Facebook's official overview.
Optimization Strategies

Publishers can make some changes to their content to take advantage of the coming changes. Here's a few recommendations:

1. Invest in high-quality, high-resolution images. High-quality imagery is more important than ever before. Photos now make up nearly half of all News Feed stories, according to Facebook, up from 30% just a year ago. That growth is likely to accelerate now that Facebook is enlarging the size of photos in the News Feed. Facebook recommends publishers use images with a width of at least 552 pixels. As a bonus, publishers no longer need to upload full-sized images next to their story links. According to one Facebook source, Facebook will now display thumbnail photos pulled from story pages at the same size as images uploaded directly to the News Feed. As such, it's important for publishers to upload thumbnail images with a width of at least 552 pixels on their sites.


2. Improve your cover photo. Publishers may have had little incentive to invest in a great cover photo until now because it never showed up in the News Feed. That's about to change. When a group of friends Like or otherwise interact with a Facebook page, that Page may be highlighted in the News Feed with its cover photo on display. As Facebook says, "Having an engaging cover photo that tells your or your Page's story is even more important to improve your discovery through connection stories."

3. Post about trending topics. News stories about a single topic will be highlighted in thumbnail-rich carousels in the News Feed, like the one featuring Taylor Swift stories, below. Thus it may be more advantageous to share trending rather than outlier stories on Facebook.

4. Share different types of media. If publishers want to have a presence in users' sub feeds — namely, their photo and music feeds — consider sharing more photos, and linking a company Spotify or Rdio account to Facebook.

Identify any other optimization strategies for the new News Feed? Please share them in the comments section below.


Images courtesy of Facebook

source

Google to Cut 10% of Motorola's Workforce

Google's Motorola is planning to cut 10% of its global workforce, the Wall Street Journalreports.

The news comes from an internal company email which explains the reasoning behind the job cuts. "While we're very optimistic about the new products in our pipeline, we still face challenges," it says.

"These cuts are a continuation of the reductions we announced last summer. It's obviously very hard for the employees concerned, and we are committed to helping them through this difficult transition," a Motorola spokesperson said.

Google plans to shed jobs in China, India and the U.S. A total of about 1,200 employees will lose their jobs.

This is a second major wave of layoffs in the company after Google decided to cut the Motorola Mobility workforce by 20% in August 2012. In December 2012, Google sold off Motorola's set top business to Arris for $2.35 billion.

source

Watch Zuck, Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey, & Others In Short Film To Inspire Kids To Learn How To Code

For more details click here techcrunch.com

TEN Things to Look for in a Web Hosting Service

Here's a look at the kinds of questions and issues you want to think about before deciding where to host your website.

Gone are the days when having a website for your business was optional. In fact, many businesses these days can't afford even a few minutes of downtime where their customers can't access their site. That means that choosing a reliable web hosting service has become mission critical for most business owners. But that can be easier said than done given the hundreds of options out there that range from local mom-and-pop providers to national providers like Go Daddy and Rackspace, all of which range in terms of their price and service offerings. But how do you know whether you need to spend $10 a month versus $100? What follows are 10 tips, from business owners and experts alike, about the kinds of questions and issues you want to think about before deciding where to host your website.

1. Support
Ask yourself what type of support will you need, says Angela Nielsen president and creative director of One Lily, a web design and hosting company in Barstow, California. "The worst thing that can happen is for a website to go down, or having an email issue," Nielsen says. "Nobody can prevent glitches 100 percent, so if and when you find yourself in the middle of one, its best to have someone you can call on to get immediate resolution." That means looking for providers that provide 24/7 free phone support with customer service reps who speak your language and actually pick up the phone when you need them to.

2. Parking Service
Find out if you can easily park your company's other domain names. "This is a big one," says Beatrice Johnston, director of Brand Excitement, a branding agency in New York City. "Most companies buy their .com, .net, .org, hyphenated versions of their domain name, misspellings, service names, and more. It's most efficient and convenient for brand management to have these in one control panel and know that you're not going to lose any traffic."

3. Backup
Make sure your web hosting service provides adequate backup, says Johnston. "I once mistakenly deleted the entire blog directory for my website—ouch," she says. "I contacted my host and because they provide automatic backup every day, I was able to hit a few keystrokes, select two days previous, and voila—my blog and content was back online as if it never happened." Find out what your host's disaster recovery plan is, as well, to ensure that they are backing up their backups.

4. Uptime Guarantee
The last thing you want your customers to experience is a blank screen when they type in your URL, so you'll want to shop for a hosting service with a strong reputation for uptime and redundancy, says Nielsen. "Your site can't be seen if the host constantly has server outages," she says. "Look for an uptime guarantee of 99 percent or more. Also make sure the server has multiple backup locations (mirrored servers) so that if one goes down, they have another already online and ready to go."

5. Accessibility
You might find that some hosting services make it difficult to make changes to your site. If so, avoid them. "Make sure the host you choose gives you access to the server so that you can easily create new email accounts, make changes to server settings, etc.," says Nielsen. That goes double for ensuring that you can get access to your email online and not just through Outlook. "Most hosts provide this, but some do not," says Nielsen. "Make sure you will have the ability to login online to check your email from when you are away from your computer, and in case of emergency like when Outlook crashes."

6. Blogability
Another staple of most company websites these days is a blog, in addition to other social media tools. Even if you don't blog, you might in time, so make sure that the hosting service meets the minimum requirements for WordPress, the leading blogging platform. "So many small businesses are utilizing WordPress for blogging and or for their entire website, and not all hosts yet support this," says Nielsen.

7. To Share or Not to Share
One of the ways that you can save money on hosting your website is by turning to something called "shared hosting," which basically means that your site is being hosted along with dozens (if not hundreds) of other sites which is why you might pay as little as $5 a month for hosting fees. The downside, though, can be that troubles with one of those sites could lead to problems for all the sites hosted on that server, says Roland Reinhart, owner of the Reinhart Marketing Group in Bridgewater, New Jersey. "Having a fast website response time is crucial so that your visitor doesn't grow impatient and click away and that Google uses page load speed as one of its many factors in determining whether your page will be show high in search results," he says. That's why he prefers to pay more for access to a Virtual Private Server (VPS)—also called a Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS). "VPS is a bit more complicated to set up, but at $40 to $50 a month, you have a much higher quality web server and faster performance," he says.

8. Watch for Add-ons
Even if you like the price a web hosting service quotes you, make sure you know what you're paying for. "Hosting services often grab you with a low start-up rate," says Marianne Carlson, president of Emcie Media, a communications and marketing firm in DeLand, Florida. "But then it's, 'Oh, you want an email account too? That's extra. You want to forward the email to your existing email account? That's extra. And you want a blog? That's extra too.' You get the idea."

9. Scalability
While you might be shopping for a hosting service for your small business, you should consider partnering with a service that can scale with you as you get bigger. That can mean that the service offers different tiers of service based on the number of expected visitors you receive each month where, as your business takes off, you can easily upgrade your plan. Just as importantly, you may want to evaluate providers based on how they deal with unexpected "spikes" that tear into your available bandwidth. Consider what happened to Scott Gerber, managing partner of New York City-based video production service Sizzle It and founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council, whose site crashed after The New York Times ran a cover story on him and again after he wrote a blog post for Inc.com titled, "Why 'Be Passionate' Is Awful Advice." "You must make sure that your service provider—or at least your service plan—are capable of dealing with spikes," say Gerber. "Additionally, you want to make sure that spikes don't cost you an arm and a leg as some providers charge you very large amounts of money for additional usage."

10. Exit Strategy
Even if you're excited about everything your new web hosting service has to offer, make sure you read the fine print about what they have to say if you decide to take your business elsewhere, says Ken Dawes, who helps small businesses build websites through his business, The Web Mechanic, which is located in Aptos, California. "One of my pet peeves is when a host makes it difficult to find what you need to move your domain name away from them," he says. "I think a provider that is confident in their service won't need to make it difficult."

The Things To Know About Web Hosting

Web hosting, by definition, is the process of making a webpage or website available for viewing online in the Internet.

There are several web hosting services that offer to store information, images, video or other content for individuals, institutions or entities.  Web hosts provide store information, such as web pages on their server.  Internet service providers, aside from giving customers a way to connect to the internet, also offer to host web pages without any additional charge.

Hosting services offer different service packages to fit the need of the consumer.  The most basic type is the web page and file hosting.  This type of hosting package is usually free.  Customers can upload web pages or files via FTP or file transfer protocol, and the website will be posted “as is,” although advertisements may be posted on one part of the web page.  This hosting service package is offered by companies like HostGator and IX Webhosting.      

For more complex and technical websites, some companies offer database support and application development platforms such as PHP, Java and ASP.NET.  These programs allow customers to write scripts for their websites.

If one is planning to create an e-commerce website or a website that allows credit card or debit card transactions, then he would need to get a package which employs the SSL technology.  This is what makes a “secure” website.  SSL, or secure socket layer, is a type of program or platform that encrypts sensitive information such as social security or credit card numbers for security purposes.

Some web hosting companies may also provide customers direct access to the web server, through programs such as the cPanel. The customer can then access and manage the website’s e-mail accounts, domains management, sub-domains, and other
actions required to run a website.

Below are the types of web hosting services, in detail:

1. Free web hosting service

It may be offered free by ISPs, but most companies will host personal websites for a minimal fee.  This type usually supports advertisements, and offers limited support.

2. Shared web hosting service

Companies offer to store a website’s information and content in their server, along with other websites.  Some companies, such as freewebs.com can offer this service free of charge, but one would need to provide a link to the host’s website.  Some features can not be added to the website, too, like forums.

3. Dedicated web hosting service

With this particular hosting service, one has more freedom because the webmaster will have full control of the entire web server.  Some companies advertise web servers for rent or lease, and the webmaster is given administrator access.

4. Co-location web hosting service

This refers to the physical space offered by hosting companies for rent.  Because a server needs to be running all the time, it needs to be placed in an area that where it can be maintained by technicians.

5. Reseller web hosting

This type of web hosting service allows clients to sell server space.  A client can choose to rent a server, for example, and have other customers use the server space for their own websites.

6. File hosting service

This is a type of internet hosting service created to host static content, usually large files which are not web pages.  The files which can be stored in these servers can also be freeware or shareware, programs that are offered free to everyone.  Because downloading programs eats a lot of bandwidth and are costlier, most shareware authors sign up for file hosting service accounts.

Aside from these six primary internet hosting services, there is also specific web services such as image hosting, video hosting and blog hosting services.

Because of the popularity of blogs or web journals, image hosting and video hosting services have also become popular.  People who sign up for image hosting accounts only have personal web pages provided by their ISPs.  Since ISPs provide limited storage space, webmasters get image hosting services to store photos and direct link from the host’s server to their web page.  Although there are restrictions to the maximum file size and the bandwidth allowed per user, it is usually higher that what ISPs are offering.

Blog hosting services, on the other hand, are hosting services that offer to host web journals online.  “Bloggers” access weblog applications to update their website.

The seven web design errors and how you can avoid them

Seven Common Web Design Errors

1 . Busy pages make bad pages

Trying to cram too much on to a single page is a sure fire way of putting visitors off. Not only is this practice generally a bad idea, but it can actively impede users logging on via a mobile device (of which there are ever-growing numbers).

White space is a good thing and gives users valuable breathing space to digest content. Make sure you’re spacing out columns, graphics, text and especially links. Above all, don’t try and do too much on one page.

2 . Hiding your links away

Links are arguably the most important feature of your website, so don’t hide them away or obscure them. First and foremost, you want to be consistent with how you highlight links, then apply this format across your entire site.

The opposite also applies, so don’t make un-linked text look like linked text. Some easy ways to distinguish links from regular text are with colour, underlining or bolding.

3 . Needless navigation is a no-no

It’s hard to overstate the importance of navigation on web design. This element will impact how easy and ergonomic your site is to get around, so spend some serious time putting yourself in the shoes of a new visitor.

While arty navigation (e.g. turning the page on a virtual book) is both pretty and tempting – and was fashionable for a period – it’s remarkably unintuitive to use. When setting out navigation for your site, bear in mind the key tenet of content being easy to find with the least amount of effort.

You should apply this doctrine to every aspect of your site, from drop-down links to images and beyond.

4 . Where’s your call to action?

Having a brilliantly designed and easy-to-navigate site is all well and good, but if it doesn’t prompt visitors to do the thing you want (i.e. click on something, share something, sign up to something), then it’s of no use at all.

You need to make sure that you include a clear call to action in a relevant place. However, this should by no means be intrusive, nor should it annoyingly interfere with navigation.

5 . Search and ye shall find

If you’re running a website (and particularly an e-commerce site) there is no excuse not to include a search function. Whether you have the resources to create this yourself or outsource it to a specialist, this is a necessity in the 21^st century.

Not only will this improve the functionality of your page, but it will also help to keep visitors who couldn’t immediately find what they were looking for on-site. One easy solution for newcomers to site design is Google’s Custom Search. By simply copying over the appropriate HTML code, you can incorporate a custom Google-powered search box for your users.

6 . Testing

Like GLaDOS from Portal, this should be your watchword. People will visit your site via a growing variety of means and it’s more important than ever to ensure an ergonomic experience for all.

Some common issues to look out for include being able to view the site in different environments, browsers and with different settings (e.g. having JavaScript disabled). There’s a vast variety of tools for such tasks available for free or at a marginal price, so there’s nothing holding you back from getting stuck in and keeping your website functioning at its peak.

7. Keep your content coming and current

If you do opt to include a news, blog section or social media feed on your site – make sure to keep it up to date. If you fail to keep content relevant, it can make it appear like you’re out of businesses or are vastly behind the times.

Even if you have nothing to say yourself, it’s always possible to curate content you – and ideally your target audience – will find interesting and relevant.

Lastly

Successful web design is more of an art than a science, but what doesn’t mean you can’t be empirical about the process. Look at your competitors’ sites and see what they do well – and badly – and then co-opt or discard these elements as needed.

Test the functionality of the site on those who’ve never used it and above all, have empathy. When viewing your work, try and put yourself in the shoes of a first-time visitor and alter elements accordingly.

source

How SEO Can Help You To Get Best Returns From Your Website

 

What is an SEO?
SEO is a short form for ‘Search Engine Optimization’ or ‘Search Engine Optimizer’. SEO is normally used to explain the procedure of optimizing the website in such a manner that it will come out higher in rank while exploring the search engines of the world wide web. The natural or organic results denote those search results that are put back on left side of screen. Specialized SEO services intend to advance your position in organic search result. A website that is optimized using effective SEO tools can obtain vast returns from your online business marketing.

Why is SEO so Significant?
Since several users utilize the search engines, especially Google, to check on the services and products prior to opt for purchasing, it is vital for the powerful and strong existence on the internet search engines. If your product, service or brand cannot be seen on the search results, users will obviously turn to your competitors in the same field who have top rankings of their sites at the time of search results. If your internet presence has been set up strong with an attractive and search engine friendly web site the opposition parties or groups will fail to pass you through in the search engine results.

Why to Opt for SEO?
Though ‘Pay Per Click’ results can increase the clicks to your website fast, for long term, it is a very costly means to advertise your website. It is believed that if PPC is used combined with SEO, it can get you clicks of numerous targeted visitors. Some of the benefits of SEO which you must know about:

• Majority of Click fall On Organic Results – Researches have proved that internet surfers are more tempted to go for the site appearing in result in this sector than on paid results.
• Branding – It is the high position in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) that helps you to build a “top of mind” branding among the customers and it is a highly influential means of marketing.
• Free – Different from pay per click (PPC) marketing, if your website is optimized and developed once and standing on top for the required keywords, you don’t need to pay and it is absolutely free for going to the organic results.
• Long Term Traffic – If your page is well-optimized, it will usually rank on the top position of the search results for over prolong period, and will get dividends in due course.

How SEO can help you get Best Return from your Website?

• Keywords Analysis: Select the best keywords for your website.
• Website Optimization: SEO ensure your website is content wealthy and search engine friendly.
• Link Competition analysis: SEO assess how many links will be needed to get your site into that looked for after 1 and 2 rankings on key search engines.
• Link Building: SEO make appropriate and permanent links that make targeted traffic to your site and augment your place on search engines.

Proper use of Search Engine Optimization helps your site to render what the customer need and to appear before the customer when they search. Search Engine Optimization increases the exposure of the website to increase your profitability. To sum up, SEO is certainly one of the most important and helpful internet marketing methods to attract customers offered today…

Yahoo Is Now Officially Calling Itself A ‘Technology Company’, Ditching The ‘Digital Media’ Tagline

Yahoo on Friday, March 1st, 2013 issued its annual 10-K report to the Securities And Exchange Commission. These kinds of forms have a lot of boilerplate language that is reused again and again — often, companies just change the relevant revenue numbers and leave everything else the same for years (come to think of it, isn’t that the excuse former Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson made for the errors in his official bio?)
But with this latest 10-K, its first with Marissa Mayer at the helm as CEO, Yahoo switched up its language in an interesting way. Yahoo is now labeling itself first and foremost as a “global technology company,” in the place where it used to call itself a “digital media company.”
Here is the first sentence of today’s 10-K (bold type added by TechCrunch for emphasis):

“Yahoo! Inc., together with its consolidated subsidiaries (‘Yahoo!,’ the ‘Company,’ ‘we,’ or ‘us’), is a global technology company focused on making the world’s daily habits inspiring and entertaining.”

And here is the first sentence of the 10-K Yahoo filed last year and the two years prior, respectively (again, bold type added for emphasis):

“Yahoo! Inc., together with its consolidated subsidiaries (‘Yahoo!,’ the ‘Company,’ ‘we,’ or ‘us’), is a premier digital media company.”

“Yahoo! Inc., together with its consolidated subsidiaries (‘Yahoo!,’ the ‘Company,’ ‘we,’ or ‘us’), is a premier digital media company that delivers personalized digital content and experiences, across devices and around the globe, to vast audiences.”

“Yahoo! Inc., together with its consolidated subsidiaries (‘Yahoo!,’ the ‘Company,’ ‘we,’ or ‘us’), attracts hundreds of millions of users every month through its innovative technology and engaging content and services, making it one of the most trafficked Internet destinations and a world class online media company.”

It seems that Mayer, a bona fide engineer by training, is working to put an end to that long-running debate as to whether Yahoo is primarily a media firm or a tech firm — no more quibbling, technology is the top priority. Like other corporate moves since Mayer has taken over as Yahoo’s CEO, it’s a small change, but it’s a symbolic and important one.

source 

If You’re Worried About Likes, Avoid Posting To Facebook From Twitter

Facebook is showing your content to far fewer people than they used to, says Nick Bilton at the NY Times, pointing out that while his subscribers have soared, the number of likes per post has declined rapidly. Josh Constine writes his thoughts here.

Bilton’s theory is that Facebook wants to incent people to pay to promote their content, so they show unpaid content to far fewer people. Hunter Walk has other theories (and correctly points out that comparing old data to new could be explained in other ways as well).

Occam’s Razor suggests Bilton is right, simply because Facebook has the incentive to make the free views scarce to increase demand for the paid views. But I just don’t know. As an aside, when I promoted a post back in November, Facebook told me I “had 969x as many views because you promoted it.”

Here’s what I do know – if you really care about Facebook likes, don’t just post your stuff to Twitter and then rely on it being republished automatically to Facebook. In my sample size of one, Facebook penalizes you significantly for that and shows that content to far fewer people.

I have Twitter auto post to my Facebook page, and I occasionally post things directly to Facebook as well. I’ve always noticed that the direct-to-Facebook approach generates far more likes, but I’ve never actually gone back and run the averages. Today I did, although only for the last few weeks of posts.

Here’s what I found. The average post published to Facebook by Twitter gets 13.6 likes. The average direct to Facebook post gets 81.1 likes.

I don’t care enough to change the way I publish to social networks. But you might.

Disclosure: I am a partner at CrunchFund, a venture firm. I and CrunchFund each own shares in Facebook. CrunchFund owns Twitter shares. More information is here.

Socialmatic Camera Creates Real-Life Instagram Pics

Eric Larson16 hours ago

Instagram's great. But have you ever wondered what it would be like to experience it outside the digital world? Snap a photo, select a filter and then — not tweet it, but — print it out to physically share? A new company called Socialmatic is hoping to make it a reality.

We've seen this cool design before, but now Socialmatic announced a branding deal with Polaroid for an Instagram-esque camera that lets you add filters to and instantly print your photos.

The device, which is still in its concept stage, dispenses photos from a built-in Zink printer — similar to a regular Polaroid camera. It additionally includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips, a 4.3-inch touchscreen and a custom operating system that syncs to both Instagram and Facebook apps.

SEE ALSO: The Wrong Time to Use Instagram

The official press release says product design and other details are still in development. The launch is planned for 2014.

Watch the video above to learn more. Does this sound like something you'd use?

More images

source 

How To Choose Web Hosting Provider For Your Business

Choosing a Web Hosting provider is so easy. Most of us only see the price and amenities offered. Yet beyond that so many things that should be the primary consideration in choosing web hosting. Web Hosting is one form of rental accommodation services on the Internet that allows individuals and organizations displaying their products or services on the web / Internet sites. The place can also be interpreted as data storage in the form of megabytes (mb) to terabytes (tb), which has a connection to the Internet so that data can be requested or accessed by a user of all places simultaneously. This can lead to a website can be accessed simultaneously in a single time by a multi-user. (Wikipedia)

8 Important Factors Before You Choose Your Web Hosting Provider

Almost all companies race – the race offers the lowest possible price with unlimited all-round facilities. Even some that offer unlimited space facilities. It is quite impossible because almost all the infrastructure that supports web hosting has its limitations that can not be avoided. You need to be sure before choosing a web hosting provider that will support your business, and to help you with this, you can check out Best web hosting – a popular and well established web hosting review and resources website.

1. Price vs Quality. Is a marketing gimmick that is quite misleading if there is a mention that the prices are not proportional to the quality. Cost is a logical consequence to deliver a service that really – really reliable. Often times a new web hosting business players were involved in this business only consider the resource space and traffic limits. Yet beyond that a lot of restrictions – other restrictions of which is a server CPU load and memory. Therefore if the price is on offer is very low then the consequence is a reduction – the reduction of potentially large hosting facilities impose an excessive burden on the server. If anyone is offering a very cheap price but still offer the facility – a fantastic facility, then this should be a big question mark. However, please do note that you can actually get very good discounts by using web hosting coupon codes which you can find on 100webhosting.com. For example, you can sign up with HostGator using the coupon code “GATORSPECIAL2011″ and get 25% off instantly! Isn’t this a great web hosting deal? HostGator is a popular web host and is well loved by bloggers and webmasters. 
2. Business Solutions Unlimited? Impossible! Applications are usually able to make the CPU load is high among them is the web itself, databases, mailing lists, and FTP. For the web hosting companies usually limit the number of mailing lists, FTP accounts, and databases to maintain service reliability. Besides traffic per month is also limited by the assumption that if traffic is high, then the server load is high. Therefore, review again your choice if the choice falls on a web hosting company that offers unlimited all-round facilities. 
3. Ownership and Domain Settings. Domain rightly belong to the customer and the customer entitled to make arrangements for him. Therefore, customers must be given access to the domain control panel that serves to regulate the administrative domain (whois info / ownership) and technical (nameserver settings). If the customer is given a domain control panel settings, then if one customer wants to move the hosting, do the nameserver settings, and transfer of domain ownership or transfer to another domain registrar will find it difficult because it depends on the hosting company where customers purchase the domain. Before you hire a hosting should first consider your needs. If your site a blog, I suggest to not hire a hosting huge capacity of hard disk. But if your website to shop online then use hosting that has a large hard disk storage as most online stores use images as a means of mediation. 

1. Speed. The first thing you should notice is the speed of connection is owned by web hosting. Speed relate to the technology used by the web hosting firm. 
2. Server. Should you choose a server from your web hosting that is one location with your target visitor. If you are the target visitors in US then choose a server that is in US. But if you are a visitor target abroad try to use overseas servers. 
3. Stability. Server stability is important. So try to select the server relatively stable / rarely broken connections, down time or up time is very affecting your business site. 
4. Security. Hacker attacks, spam, viruses and most likely will happen to you so always be aware of these things. 
5. Technical Support. Try to use web hosting services that have a Technical Support for 24 hours straight. Because if one day you use a web hosting experience a problem it will be immediately confirmed by Technical Support. You’ll get frustrated if you fine something wrong with your site and there is no support team from the web hosting company can assist you to solve the problem. Live support is really important for web hosting business because an error can happen any time. Don’t forget phone or email support from your web hosting provider. 

There are so many factors you need to consider before choosing a web hosting provider to support your business, beside your budget, you need to consider what you need from a web hosting provider for your business, you may have a deep consultation with an expert before you make your decision.

Love The Article? Your Friends Will Love It Too, Share! source