Week in Review
Week in Review
Yelp, Facebook Screw Up
A security flaw on Yelp made it possible to get Facebook users’ names, e-mail addresses, current locations and photos. The flaw has since been corrected, but the damage has been done – or has it? Many users seem too complacent about all this Facebook stuff lately, “Probably because they they don’t care very much about living private lives. They are narcissists (we all are) who love sharing everything about themselves and Facebook helps them do it.” (Business Insider)
Animated GIFs in E-Mails Growing in Popularity
The use of animated GIFs in retail e-mails has surged 64 percent from last year, according to recent data. While these images can “inject excitement” into an e-mail, they do have limitations, including poor support in both the realm of mobile e-mail and Web. (MediaPost)
Facebook Privacy Issues: How Real are They?
This post walks through many of the privacy concerns on Facebook to find out just how serious each one really is. (Inside Facebook)
The State of Real-Time Search
Despite all the buzz, real-time search seems to be something mostly used by early adopters searching for topics like technology, entertainment and politics. API accounts for 60 percent of all queries, and queries on the whole are less unique than general search queries, and are far different. Oh, and “sex” takes a backseat to the likes of “jQuery CSS” and “thanksgiving.” (ReadWriteWeb)
Top U.S. Search Terms in April
Here are the top 10 U.S. search terms in nine major categories, according to Hitwise. “Facebook” and “Netflix” are the big overall winners. (ClickZ)
What ‘Like’ Means for Advertisers
What do Facebook “likes” mean for Facebook advertisers? For one, a regressive and easily manipulated system that rages against the online world’s affinity for performance tracking. (AdAge.com)
SEO: A Zero-Sum Game?
For every winner, there’s a loser, and with the pervasiveness of scumbag affiliates, it’s not too farfetched to argue that SEO is a zero-sum game – at least, according to this writer. (SEO Book)
Zuckerberg Meets with Foursquare
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley this past weekend. The potential ramifications of this meeting of minds is “tantalizing,” especially when you take into account how little Crowley sold Dodgeball to Google for. (Business Insider)
SEO Site Tools
No, that’s not just a generic headline – it’s the generic name of a pretty comprehensive SEO extension for Google Chrome. If you’re not using Chrome yet, this may be another good reason to at least test drive the browser. (Search Engine Journal)
Google’s Redesign and Social Marketers
Google’s new look could be gold for social marketers. Blogs, Twitter and Google Buzz updates, and forums (yes, forums) might benefit from the facelift. General results and SEO, on the other hand, might slip a bit in value. (Search Engine Journal)
Developers Hate NYC
Why is it so hard for startups in New York City to find developers? Here’s an in-depth analysis of why the supply of/demand for developers in the Big Apple is so lopsided. (Business Insider)
Verizon Trumps All Carriers
Verizon clearly outperformed all other U.S. cellular carriers, according to a recent customer satisfaction survey. If Verizon eventually gets a CDMA iPhone, the landscape could shift even more in favor for the wireless carrier. (CNET)
10 Ways to Boost Page Load Speeds
Here’s a list of 10 factors in Web page load times, along with 10 solutions. These include large HTML files, inline coding, too many DNS requests, too many external files and slow server connections. (SEO Lair)
Mozilla Firefox 4
Mozilla has been slipping lately, but Firefox 4 looks like it could restore some of that lost ground. Here’s a quick recap of the major new features, including an interface that looks quite familiar (see: Chrome). (ReadWriteWeb)
Education 2.0
The culture of Education 2.0 should take after Sparta, not Athens. Bravery, determination, honesty and resourcefulness are all involved here. (O’Reilly Radar)
Facebook’s Open Graph and E-Commerce
Amazon won’t be the only online store with in-depth personalization, thanks to Facebook’s Open Graph initiative. Also among the impacts of the social network’s new ambition are Facebook’s potential to drive more traffic to some online stores than Google and rising conversion rates for e-commerce. (Mashable)
The Wonderful World of Triggered E-Mails
Trigger-based e-mail messages can potentially give you returns that are many times greater than those in your broadcast campaigns. These messages won’t replace broadcast efforts, but offer a supplement that requires fewer resources. Start by focusing on shopping cart abandonment or adding cross-sell/upsell content to transactional messages. (MediaPost)
Facebook Adds ‘Unlike’ Buttons
Facebook recently added “unlike” buttons on Pages, which has some interesting ramifications for Page owners. (All Facebook)
A Call for an Open Alternative to Facebook
Facebook has gone rogue, so it’s time to get serious about finding an open alternative to the power-drunk social networking tyrant. (Wired.com)
10 Useful Search Tools
Feed Compare, xFruits, Krunchd, Pingdom and Copygator are just some of the 10 random search tools listed in this straightforward post. (Search Engine Journal)
What the New Google SERPs Means for Your Traffic
SEO efforts might be a bit shaken up thanks to Google’s new SERPs, so it’s important to take a look at what will be different going forward. Real-time search is now more important, as is paying attention to where you’re ranking in Google’s various search platforms. (WebProNews)
Facebook’s Gross National Happiness
According to a rather fun metric that takes Facebook status updates into account, the U.S., Canada and India are pretty happy, while Colombia and Venezuela are not. (Mashable)
10 Reasons Why You’re Never Leaving Facebook
While many Facebook users aren’t really jumping with delight over its new privacy tweaks, it’s unlikely that many of them will deactivate their accounts. Here are 10 reasons why. (Business Insider)
Facebook, Latitude Set to Check In
Facebook and Google Latitude are getting ready to unveil check-in functionalities. For Facebook, this may happen before this month is up, with McDonald’s ready to pave the way. For Latitude, which boasts 3 million users, a timeline is a bit vaguer. Foursquare, Gowalla and MyTown might have less elbow room in the near future. (Business Insider, TechCrunch)
Diaspora Project: The Anti-Facebook
Everything “evil” about Facebook is absent from the Diaspora project, a neat project headed by four NYU computer science students. It aims to offer a decentralized social Web that uses computers (or “seeds”) instead of a central server. It recently met its funding goal. (ReadWriteWeb)
Facebook Chat Makes Things Worse
A bug that enabled Facebook users to view friends’ live chat sessions and pending friend requests forced the social networking giant to disable its instant-messaging service. This doesn’t help the company’s cause, in the lingering concerns over its disregard for its users’ privacy. (PCWorld)
No Facebook Backlash?
Facebook is no stranger to user-launched backlashes, but it seems that the company’s latest ambitions haven’t quite gotten many people’s goats just yet. Could the worst responses be over? Are the site’s users just used to Facebook’s numbness to their privacy concerns? It might be too early to tell, but Zuckerberg seems to be winning the “battle” so far. (ClickZ)
Blackbird Pie Sucks
If you had the choice to go through eight steps or three, which would you choose? Three, of course. That’s why you should consider taking a look at this neat bookmarklet to embed tweets. (TechCrunch)
Web Design Trends of 2010
If you’re tired of reading, this post is just what you need. Enjoy this visual journey through wondrous Web designs. Design for Delight, Keypress Navigation and Horizontalism are just three of the five trends highlighted here. (Smashing Magazine)
Citysearch Gives Away Content
What’s one way to catch up to your more-successful competitors? Give away your content. This is the strategy Citysearch is employing, with some success. (NYTimes.com)
Chrome Gets Even Faster
Google Chrome was already fast, and its new beta release keeps the ball rolling – quickly. The new Chrome is 30-35 percent faster, according to Google. (InfoWorld)
Google’s New Look
It’s been slowly trickling onto browser screens for the past few days, but it seems that Google’s new search results pages are now making their way to more and more screens. The new user interface has quite a few noticeable differences. While it’s nice, “copycat” comes to mind when a user looks at the three columns Google now uses. Here’s Danny Sullivan’s thorough overview. (Search Engine Land)
