Posts tagged World
SEO Positive’s Head of Search Announces Presentation Slot At Internet World … – PR Web (press release)
Feb 8th
 International Business Times |
SEO Positive's Head of Search Announces Presentation Slot At Internet World …
PR Web (press release) It's been announced this week that Head of Search Matt Wood at SEO Positive will be presenting a speech at Internet World 2012 in April. Following news that team members from internet marketing agency SEO Positive will be presenting talks at the … SEO Link Monster: All About the New Blog Network that Promises Top Ranking for … Googler: SEO Is A Bug, And Google Is Trying To Fix It Future of SEO: Change, Convergence, Collaboration |
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Solve for X: Google’s Answer to All World Problems
Feb 7th
Google believes that we can solve some of the world’s greatest problems by working together. We Solve for X appears to be more focused on global problems, using them as opportunities to encourage “moonshot” thinking.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
SEO Impact of Google’s Search Plus Your World – Practical Ecommerce
Feb 3rd
 Practical Ecommerce |
SEO Impact of Google's Search Plus Your World
Practical Ecommerce The biggest impact SPYW has on SEO is the visual and personal nature of the results it returns. Compare these two search result sets for a very common search phrase: “shoes.” On the left is the typical Google search result set with a couple of high … |
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Get Ready For a World of Connected Devices
Feb 3rd
“This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.” HAL; 2001: A Space Odyssey
Editor’s note: this is a longer version of ReadWriteWeb Editor-in-chief Richard MacManus’ article for the SAY Media newsletter. The newsletter is delivered weekly and features SAY Media’s take on media, culture, venn diagrams and the occasional Kubrick homage. You can sign up for it here.
Over half of all devices at this year’s CES, the world’s largest consumer electronics trade show, were Internet connected. Nearly 60% of those were non-traditional computing devices such as TVs, cars, refrigerators and washing machines. Connected devices are proliferating throughout our homes and the world around us. Which means consumers are about to become a whole lot more connected to the world.
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According to the GSMA, a worldwide association of mobile operators and related companies, there are 9 billion connected devices in the world today. By 2020, there will be 24 billion and over half of them will be non-mobile devices such as household appliances. The GSMA estimates that connected devices will be a US$1.2 trillion market by 2020. So marketers and publishers better get ready for this new world too.
Reaching Consumers in Their Connected Cars
Connected devices will be a US$1.2 trillion market by 2020. So marketers and publishers better get ready for this new world too.
Consumers now expect to have a personalized media experience wherever they go. Look at how online music services have ramped up over the past year, in particular Pandora, Spotify, Rdio and MOG. With these services consumers can personalize their music listening on their computers, smartphones, tablets – and now their cars. The implication is that you’ll need to reassess how people discover and keep informed about your product or service. People will listen to the car radio less now, for example, because they can access a personalized music stream in their car via services like Spotify and Rdio.
At this year’s CES, car manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz, Ford and Audi were touting new media and communications features. Commonly referred to as a connected car, the prevailing trend is to integrate smartphone apps into the car’s dashboard. This enables drivers and passengers to listen to online music, access news and other content, stream video and more.
Because media is so much more personalized now, you will be able to target your message more precisely to the audience you want to reach.
The bad news for marketers is that this narrows the range of broadcast media where you can reach consumers even more. The car radio will soon be usurped by online content, whether it be for music or news. The good news is that because media is so much more personalized now, you will be able to target your message more precisely to the audience you want to reach. That’s because streaming media inside cars and throughout the home dramatically increases the amount of interest data collected about users. For example every song listened to on Spotify – no matter if it’s played on a computer or inside a car – is logged by Spotify (and increasingly Facebook) into a database with the rest of that user’s music preferences. It will all be anonymized, because privacy will become the biggest hot topic for users in this new era, but it’ll still be very valuable demographic and interest data for marketers.
To give you an indication of how pervasive the trend of connected cars is becoming, look at the evolution of Ford.
The American firm first introduced Internet technology inside its cars with Sync, launched in 2007. Sync is voice-activated technology which connects your smartphone and MP3 player to your car’s dashboard and steering wheel. There are currently 4 million Ford cars in North America that have Sync running. The latest evolution of Sync is called MyFord Touch, an in-car communications and entertainment system which makes it even easier for drivers to consume Internet content.
In short, the connected car is going mainstream. In Ford’s newest hybrid car, the 2013 Fusion, one of the main features is its connection to the Internet.
Connected cars are set to ramp up rapidly in the coming years. The GSMA predicts that the automotive sector will account for 1.4 billion (nearly 6%) of the world’s 24 billion connected devices by 2020. If you’re a marketer or publisher, that’s a platform you’ll want to be on!
Internet TVs & Personalized Media
For the consumer, it’s all about personalizing one’s media experience. The TV is another device where this trend is playing out.
Formats will evolve. We’ll see TV stars and brands creating their own YouTube channels and releasing short bursts of content to the Web.
Traditional TV networks have already been disrupted by time-shifting devices, which enable consumers to fast forward through ads. The next step is bypassing TV networks altogether, as consumers increasingly access TV content via the Web. YouTube is undergoing a transformation as we speak: from a place to watch cat videos on a PC, to a place to watch high quality professional video content on a TV set.
While popular TV network shows such as Mad Men and Breaking Bad will continue to reach a large swath of people, Internet TV opens up opportunities for new types of video content to emerge and become popular too. Formats will evolve. We’ll see TV stars and brands creating their own YouTube channels and releasing short bursts of content to the Web. But also, we’ll see web applications arise that mix TV content with Internet programming. This is fertile ground for publishers to innovate and for marketers to latch onto to reach niche audiences.
The rise of Internet TV was evidenced at this year’s CES by Samsung’s announcements.
Samsung is the world’s number 1 TV brand and it launched significant upgrades to its Smart TV product line. Samsung’s 2012 model TVs will enable users to consume a mix of traditional TV programming and Web apps. The devices are ready, now it’s time for new types of content and apps to bloom.
The next big thing in computing isn’t a new model smartphone or laptop. It’s the Internet empowering everything else around us.
Another trend to watch is the increasing interactivity of TV. A key part of Internet TVs is moving beyond the remote control and into other forms of user interface. With a new feature that Samsung calls “Smart Interaction,” viewers will be able to control their TV using gesture and voice controls, as well as face recognition. This is similar to how Microsoft’s Kinect works on XBox. It will be an increasingly common form of user interface, as 24 billion devices go online over the next 8 years. Publishers and marketers will need to adapt to these new forms of interaction.
The next big thing in computing isn’t a new model smartphone or laptop. It’s the Internet empowering everything else around us. Our cars, TVs and many other devices. Which means we all need to think about engaging digital Internet experiences for the car, TV and every device imaginable – because that’s where audiences are heading.
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How Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg Became one of the Most Powerful Women in the World
Feb 1st
Mark Zuckerberg is on his way to becoming one of the richest people in the world, but when it comes to influence in the worlds of politics and business, he sits in the shadow of his chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg.
Sandberg, 43, is credited for the success of Facebook’s advertising strategy. When she joined Facebook in 2008 it had 130 employees and no cash. Three years later Facebook was profitable, 2,500 people worked there and the userbase had jumped from 70 million to almost 845 million. But her career – and influence – began long before Zuckberg sought her out.
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“Don’t leave before you leave.”
Sandberg was born in 1969 in Washington, D.C., and at the age of two her family moved to Miami, where she grew up. She is the oldest of three siblings, David and Michelle.
As an undergraduate at Harvard, Sandberg majored in economics and took Lawrence Summers’ class in public sector economics. Her midterm and final grades were the highest in the class, and Summers ended up becoming the adviser on her senior thesis, “how economic inequality contributes to spousal abuse.”
When Summers became the chief economist at the World Bank in January 1991, he recruited Sandberg, hiring her as his research assistant. After two years of working for Summers, she took a job at McKinsey & Company, and married (and later divorced) a businessman named Brian Kraff. When Summers became the Deputy Treasury Secretary in the Clinton Administration, he asked Sandberg to join as his chief of staff. She accepted.
In Sandberg’s talks about women in the workforce, she reinforces the fact that women need to stand up for themselves, and speak up.
“Sit at the table,” she said in her 2010 TEDWomen Talk. “At the corporate level, women in C-level jobs the number of women tops in at 15%. How do we change those numbers? She asks a willing audience. “By keeping women in the workforce.” She adds that she is not here to judge anyone – and those who don’t want to stay in the workforce is okay. But her one caveat: This talk is specifically for women who do want to be in the workforce. “Success and likeability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women,” says Sandberg. “And men are reaching for opportunities more than women.”
The Sheryl Sandberg resume
- Currently:
Center for Global Development – Director
Walt Disney Company – Director
Starbucks Corporation – Director
World Economic Forum 2012 – Co-chair
President’s Council on Jobs & Competitiveness – Member - Formerly:
Google – VP of global online sales & operations
McKinsey & Company – management consultant
Secretary of the Treasury (Lawrence H. Summers) – chief of staff - Education:
Harvard Business School – 1993-1995
Harvard University – BA, Economics, 1987-1991
That was the first of three points she delivered. Second, she tells women to “make sure your partner is a real partner.” At the Grace Hopper Conference, Sandberg expanded on that statement, speaking to an audience of young women. She told them that it was okay to get involved with those “crazy types” when they’re young, but do not marry them. In 2004 she married her long-time best friend David Goldberg, who is also the CEO of SurveyMonkey. Together they have a five-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter.
Her third point speaks to her choice to have a family and a career. “Don’t leave before you leave,” she told the TED audience. Don’t leave the workforce to have kids and not return because you didn’t get that job you wanted before you left.
Sandberg demonstrated that first point during her time with Summers. She always made sure she was at the table, even if it meant asking others to move. In 1999, at 29-years-old, Summers became Treasury Secretary; Sandberg was his chief of staff. “If I was making a mistake, she told me,” Summers told The New Yorker. “She was totally loyal, but totally in my face.”
In 2000, the Clinton Administration came to an end. Sandberg left Washington for the Silicon Valley shortly thereafter. Google had been aggressively recruiting her – and finally she accepted their offer. She joined in 2001, at a time when Google was still new and not-at-all profitable. But she joined Google for the same reason that she decided to get involved in politics: there was a bigger mission at stake. At Google, that mission was to make the information more accessible and freely available. Sandberg is credited with making Google AdWords profitable. These ads don’t really affect the user experience; but on the flip side, they are gathering keywords from personal data found in email exchanges.
By 2008, it was time for a change again. Zuckerberg sought out Sandberg after they ran into each other at a party in the Valley. After months of negotiations, Sandberg decided to leave Google for Facebook, whose goal was “to make the world more open and connected.” It was a perfect fit.
The Business & Culture of Facebook
Sandberg started working at Facebook in 2008, when she was 38 years old. When she joined under the title of “director,” she was granted .1% of the company. That means that when Facebook begins to trade on Wall Street later this year, she will became one of the richest self-made women in the world. She just bought a house down the street from Facebook, and she’s going to stay there – at least, for the time being. In 2011, Forbes listed her as the number 5 most powerful woman in the world.
As an influencer, Sandberg focuses her energies on companies with broad, powerful missions. In politics, it’s about the greater good; at Google, she focused on making the world’s information accessible to all. And now she is at Facebook, where the goal is “to make the world more open and connected.”
At Facebook, Sandberg’s work not only influences politics and information-sharing, but is shaping the way humans think about communication. Because Facebook is not only a freshly minted public company – it’s a culture we live in.
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Breaking Down the Myths of NFC, Mobile Payments and Real World Adoption
Feb 1st
From a technological perspective, near field communications (NFC) is one of the most powerful and prominent innovations to come about in the last several years. But from a functional, real world standpoint, NFC is a technology without a clear-cut purpose. What problems does it actually solve? When it comes payments, how much different is a tap with your smartphone than a swipe of your debit card? What about the ability to open doors or share content with your friends? There are solutions already available on mobile devices for many of these “problems.” So, what is the real future for NFC?
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NFC Growth Not Tied To Payments?
Those that read the ReadWriteWeb series on mobile payments know that I have never really been all that high on NFC. To me it is a curiosity that I keep track of because the technology is extremely interesting. The ability to tie a mobile wallet to a physical retail space through NFC has some disruptive opportunities and could be a game-changer in how money flows from one place to another.
“At the same time, it is hard to ignore that NFC is not yet a leading differentiator while customers shop for new phones (most are simply unaware),” wrote Cherian Abraham at Drop Labs today. “Solutions outside of payments that leverage NFC are still maturing (e.g. authentication, access control, discovery and media sharing to name a few).”
Abraham is right. Outside of payments, there is a significant development community working on NFC related material. One of the cheekier uses was announced today. Something called “Sound Pound,” which ” lets you share an audio greeting (a Sound Pound) with friends just by touching phones. It’s like a fist pound (or a high five) with sound!”
Honestly, I cannot tell if this is a step back or a step forward. It reminds me of some of the first popular iOS apps that did nothing but make fart noises.
Sequent on NFC “Myths”
Companies like Sequent, a NFC software maker, have a stake in seeing NFC rolled out to more than just payments. Sequent’s team shared some thoughts on what CEO Drew Weinstein believes are the “myths” about NFC.
Here are Sequent’s myths with my reaction to each.
The mobile wallet is important: “Google Wallet is the predominant storyline in the NFC dialogue, but NFC isn’t very interesting if it just serves to recreate a physical wallet on a phone. Digital wallets are simply one kind of mobile app, and NFC only becomes a dynamic technology when it goes beyond the wallet and is applied to all apps. NFC needs a more consumer-centric approach, one that offers people a variety of NFC-enabled apps that make their lives easier.”
- Reaction: I actually agree with this one. Mobile wallets at this point are some kind eclectic choice by some technological early adopters. I do not have a mobile wallet and do not expect to have one for some time, whether that revolves around NFC or some other technology. My experience is probably closer to the consumer experience than what Google, MasterCard and the banks would like you to believe.
Payment is the best use case to drive adoption of NFC technology on mobile devices:
NFC is really a technology solution looking for a problem: “Those same [banks and payment processors] parties have not been successful in defining the commercial and operational dynamics of mobile payments, due to friction with mobile network operators (like Verizon) and operating system owners (like Google). Merchants have also been slow to install the new payment terminals needed for NFC. This offers a huge opportunity for non-payment NFC use cases – such as ticketing (like movies or concerts), transit, access control, and tag-enabled advertising and promotion – to lead the NFC mobile consumer adoption curve.”
- Reaction: This is the top-down approach to NFC and mobile payments. Really, is user behavior going to change just because the large corporations of the world start brow beating people to use NFC? No. Adoption is going to have to start from the infrastructure layer, not the app layer and that means more use cases for NFC outside of the payment arena.
NFC is really a technology solution looking for a problem: “NFC solves a very real problem – enabling mobile apps to interact in the physical world. Technology is about removing friction, making things more intuitive and enriched. The ability to bring two NFC-enabled devices together to allow instant, secure and auditable data exchange is not trivial.”
- Reaction: While Sequent posits this as a myth, I actually agree with the statement. I do not think that payment delivery needs a fundamental overhaul. Nor do I think NFC is an absolute must-have technology that bridges the digital and physical worlds. It is the fringe benefit of technological growth, not a quintessential piece of a digitally connected world. As a professional early adopter, I will likely have NFC and use it in a variety of use cases. As a consumer, I am not sure I realized that NFC solved a problem until I have the solution actually in my hand.
Overall, NFC will likely be a common technology that is prominently used within the next three to five years. That has more to do with the fact that companies and payment processors will start to adopt it and push it on consumers than any real consumer groundswell in which users realize they absolutely must have NFC and have it right now.
Note: This story has been edited from its original version.
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4 SEO Questions for 2012 – Promotion World (press release)
Feb 1st
 International Business Times |
4 SEO Questions for 2012
Promotion World (press release) by Brian Easter Frequently in our office, a comparison between SEO and PPC is made where SEO is the plodding marathoner, maintaining a steady pace to eat up the miles and win the race, while PPC is the sprinter, rapidly looping the track to top their … Top SEO Firms 2012 Free SEO Book Provides Important 2012 Updates SEO Positive Partners With Bournemouth Nursing & Residential Home |
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AdWords, Plus Your World – 7 Examples of How SPYW Could Impact SEM
Jan 30th
When Google+ first hit the scene this past summer, I couldn’t help but think about how the fledgling social network could eventually be monetized by Google. I do a lot of SEM work and know how powerful Google’s AdWords platform is, as well as how much revenue it generates for Google. The AdWords platform generates [...]
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Tech World Overreacts to Google’s New Privacy Policy – How Does It Affect You?
Jan 26th
Google updated its privacy policy on Tuesday. It replaced more than 60 separate policies with a single one that treats Google users and their data as the same across all Google services. Reactions were shrill. “The End of ‘Don’t Be Evil’” was trotted out for the umpteenth time. The Washington Post quoted privacy experts saying, “There is no way anyone expected this.” My, that sounds terrible!
But it’s not true. Everyone watching should have seen this change coming. Google executives have maintained for so long that their new direction is one unified Google product. The new policy doesn’t track any new data. It doesn’t change the user’s settings. Users can still export all their data and leave Google forever. All this does is change perception.
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It’s Nothing New
Before, every Google service was a different website. After March 1, they’ll all be treated as one. The old arrangement meant that each service had its own privacy policy. That doesn’t mean it was more private. Google still tracked users. It still shared data from some of its services with others.
On March 1, the rules become much simpler: Google is all one thing. If you use it, it tracks your usage, it stores your data, and it uses your activity to personalize its services for you. Every single way in which it will do so is clearly laid out.
Today, members of Congress sent a letter to Google CEO Larry Page about the policy. They said it raises questions about whether consumers can opt-out of the new data sharing system either globally or on a product-by-product basis.” That is crazy talk. You opt out “globally” by not using Google. That’s how privacy policies work. It’s true that you can’t opt out of the privacy policies for individual services anymore. You know what you can do? Stop sharing things you don’t want tracked.
Reflexively Reacting
To make sure I wasn’t crazy for thinking this way, I spoke to Colin Zick, a partner at Boston law firm Foley Hoag and contributor to its blog, Security, Privacy And The Law.
“What we have is not a reaction to a change in legal language. It’s a change in perception.” – Colin Zick
In his post about Google’s new policy, he noted that “[t]hese changes are likely to draw FTC scrutiny, especially in light of the recent decision by Google to incorporate data from its social network, Google+, into search results, which has already resulted in a FTC antitrust investigation.” I asked Zick if these concerns are warranted.
“From a legal perspective, I’m not seeing anything that’s much different in what’s being proposed to take effect on March 1 and what’s in place right now,” Zick says. “In particular, the language about sharing across services has been in [Google's policies] for a long time.”
Zick points out that all the past versions of Google’s privacy policies are on the website, and the last two versions offer line-by-line comparisons to the previous version. Zick expects that Google will do the same with the new policy once it’s officially issued.
“What we have is not a reaction to a change in legal language,” Zick says, “but it’s a change in perception. … People are just reflexively reacting to the idea that Google is big.”
Google Is Not Off The Hook Here
There are perfectly good things not to like about Google’s new direction. For example, its community management strategy for Google+ is broken. Its names policy is only designed around appearances. As long as your name looks “real” to robots and engineers, you can go nuts. But you still can’t use a handle, nor can you use a pseudonym unless it’s “established,” and you can prove it with some form of identification.
“Pseudonymity makes it possible for the most marginalized people in our community to communicate with us.” – Cory Doctorow
This is a misguided policy. It doesn’t protect politically active, marginalized or victimized users who still want to use Google+ but can’t have it connected to their identities. You can step back even further and argue that it doesn’t reflect the way human identity works at all.
“Identity is prismatic,” as Chris Poole so eloquently told us at Web 2.0 last year. Google (and Facebook) want to lock users into a single identity on the Web as far as their services are concerned. There’s no question that Google’s new direction is to be a bigger part of its users’ lives.
You Don’t Have To Like It
The idea of what Google is has grown. This month, Google unveiled Search plus Your World, its integration of Google+ social results into Web search. Google+ had already been integrated into YouTube, Gmail and so many other Google services. But search was the Google we used to know. The change upset people, myself included.
Google has been accused of breaking a promise about how it should work. Its founders used to pride themselves on the fact that Google search didn’t favor its own services. Google has been scrutinized for years for backpedalling on that stance, but Search+ has been treated as a last straw. For people who don’t use Google+, Search plus Your World doesn’t work.
google social search – I hate this: mlkshk.com/p/BZOU
— David Jacobs (@djacobs) January 26, 2012
But this is the new Google. You don’t have to like it. If you don’t like Search plus Your World, you can opt right out. You can opt out of sharing browser history by using incognito mode. You can also opt out of targeted ads. You can’t opt out of Google’s new privacy policy, because that’s how Google’s business is going to work from here on out. The data you create anywhere on Google are available to the rest of Google. Google is one big service for better or for worse. You don’t have to use it.
No One Is Making You Use Google
The new privacy policy changes the way it feels to use Google, but it doesn’t change the way it works. What are people afraid of Google tracking? Their name and address? Their location? The contents of their email? Their Web browsing habits? Google already tracked these things. So does Facebook. So does everybody. These are things you choose to share with Google. Who said you had to use Google? It’s not the power grid. It’s not the sewer system.
You have a choice. You can choose between Google’s new direction, an all-in-one, twice-a-day everything-service its executives want you to use like a toothbrush, or Google’s competitors. There are plucky start-up search engines out there that might remind you of classic Google. Microsoft also has a social search engine, a free email service and a suite of cloud-based office software. Oh, you don’t like them as much? Boo hoo!
Google is making its move. It’s changing its nature. Some changes are bad, and other changes are good. Users who like the changes will be happy, users who hate them will be sad. Google offers more tools than anybody else to give its users control over their data. As it says in the overview of its new privacy policy, users who don’t like the new direction are welcome to export their data and take it elsewhere.
What do you think? Has Google gone too far? Will you take your Web activities elsewhere? Share that with us in the comments.
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It’s Like Facebook For The Art World
Jan 26th
Forget the random pictures of babies and puppies, alarming status updates from family members and political rants. On My-ArtMap, you will be immersed in art. It’s as simple as that. The site, which is targeted at an international audience, is available in English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish and Chinese. You can create a username and password for the site, or login using Facebook Connect. It is also available as an iPhone app.
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My-ArtMap is a social network exclusively for the art and art market. Like the Art World, it is populated by art professionals, including auction houses, galleries, museums and art collectors. The site just exited beta, shortly after acquiring many new members from Spain, Italy and Germany. It is heavily focused on Europe, at least for the time being.
“Facebook is a great project, but the international art market is very closed and the requirements especially for this market are really different in comparison to other markets,” says ArtMap CEO Stefan Sebök. “Facebook and Google are too big and not specialized enough for the art market!”
The site’s news feed is known as the Newscafe. Much like Facebook, it surfaces stories posted by fellow users. But unlike the Facebook algorithm, My-ArtMap does not differentiate between highlighted and most recent stories.
The “Galleries” section allows users to create their own virtual art galleries around specific topics. These images can either have a certain theme, or could be a collection of artwork. For some reason, even though I set the language to English, the text in this section keeps popping up in German.
Users can also create groups around a specific topic to discuss ideas privately.
The site still has quite a few quirks. It’s unclear how the Newscafe algorithm sorts stories, and sometimes the text doesn’t translate. Still, this is an interesting project that seems like it could become a very useful tool for the social networked Art World.
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