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Can Pinterest Sustain The Growth In 2012?

Thomas Oppong — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:57:01 +0000

Pinterest is rising and growing at an amazing rate. Pinterest is a vision board-styled social photo sharing website and app where users can create and manage theme-based image collections. Pinterest has became one of the top social sharing sites on the planet now. The site now has a global Alexa traffic rank of 110 and its also ranked 22 in the US.

I have written about three posts on Pinterest already. Mashable and Techcrunch have both written lots of articles on the social photo sharing in the past three months. Everyday new bloggers write their own reviews about Pinterest. Take a look at Pinterest’s one-year traffic on Compete from Oct 2010 to Oct 2011.

Pinterest leverages web content from Tumblr, hence riding on top of its network-effect while not requiring user generated content like many services. In-networking virality (pin, repin, like) has been impressive on the site. Out network sharing via Facebook, Twitter is also possible to grow virally. I believe social sites with impressive visual effects have also ejoyed huge traffic and usage because of the way humans interact with images. Site like 500px, Snapfish, shutterfly,Path and Instagram, have witnessed massive usage in recent times because of the fact that users are able to share visual images of themselves, others and items easily.

Pinterest is still in an invite-only beta. I recently received an invitation to join Pinterest and so far I am impressed with how I am able to pin images and share them with others. I think opportunity for growth are enormous, considering the fact that the site has a devoted users who visit the site on daily basis to check out new images and pins of interest to them. A large part of the invite system may be to avoid spammers getting on Pinterest. It looks like invite-only has become the new way to protect your site or app from spams and most importantly get more people to talk about it and get their friends to join them on new sites. For some reason it works. It worked for Google+ last year when they launched. Naturally people get curious and want to know what the app is all about hence the need to request for invitation from friends.

The big question is-Can Pinterest Sustain the growth in 2012?. Pinterest has grown a devoted base of users — most of whom are females — who enjoy “pinning” items they find around the Web especially home decor, wedding, fashion and recipe items.Will the same users be around and use the Pinterest the same way they are using it by close of the year.

Pete Cashmore, founder and CEO of Mashable believes Pinterest is the breakout social network of 2012. Do you agree and do you think the growth will continue in the coming months.

Facebook’s Timeline Movie Maker Turns Your Facebook Profile Into A Movie

Thomas Oppong — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 23:33:40 +0000

If you still do not like Facebook’s timeline profile feature, maybe Facebook’s new Timeline Movie Maker can change your mind.Timeline Movie Maker is an app that creates a movie out of the content on your new Facebook Timline.Timeline Movie Maker was created in conjunction with marketing agency Definition6. Timeline Movie Maker only works if you’ve updated to Facebook’s new profile view called Timeline.

Timeline Movie Maker takes about two minutes to check out and it gets you your movie right away. After clicking “Make Your Movie” and granting the app permission to access personal data, Timeline Movie Maker creates one-minute movies featuring highlights from your timelines.

Once you view your movie, you can edit and replace images, videos, and check-ins that appear, as well as select from various soundtrack options. And the completed movies can be shared via Facebook.

Every time you click a photo, a new one appears, and you may keep clicking until you get a photo that you like. Once done, click Remake, and a new movie with a collection of different pictures will instantly be created.

Facebook Is Ready To Make History

Thomas Oppong — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:23:28 +0000

The most anticipated historic IPO of the year is almost here. Facebook plans to file papers with the US SEC on Wednesday to begin the process of becoming a publicly listed company, reports suggested. According to the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, the world’s largest social network is being valued at around $75 and $100 billion.

The New York Times and CNBC have reported their own sources in articles posted late Tuesday, saying that the filing will land Wednesday. Facebook is seeking to raise up to $5 billion in its offering, they added.

At a $100 billion valuation, Facebook would be worth about the same as McDonald’s Corp. and nearly half of Google.

“The minute the IPO is filed, there will be pandemonium,” said IPO Boutique’s Scott Sweet, who says he has never seen anything quite like the pent-up demand for Facebook shares.

Anticipation of the biggest IPO ever for an Internet company has real estate agents seeing a note of urgency in the local market, Wall Street money managers moving in for a piece of the action, and even state budget analysts factoring in a “Facebook effect” that could top $1 billion.

Top Historic Internet IPOs

On top of the list for historic IPOs is the San Francisco based credit card company, Visa, at $17.9 billion in March of 2008.

Social gaming company Zynga raised $1 billion in its IPO in December, 2011, the biggest web-related IPO since Google, according to the Associated Press.

LinkedIn went public in May of 2011 and raised $352.8 million. In 2004, Google raised $1.7 billion.

Goldman Sachs, one of the largest investment banks in the US, went public with $3.7 billion IPO in 1999.

Cardcloud Lets You Create And Share Virtual Social Business Cards

Thomas Oppong — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:34:30 +0000

Does business cards always have to be printed? Traditional business cards always run out. It happens at most events where you need them most. Why aren’t there better tools to either connect the information digitally and add it into your contact information or just digitize it from a web site? Well if you have ever asked yourself this question before, Cardcloud has news for you. Cardcloud allows you to create a digital business card by using the Cardcloud app on your mobile phone, and share it with anyone. Recipients do not have to have the app installed. Cards can be shared from phone to email, or from phone to phone.

You can now share your social business cards with anyone and and the company aims to be a network that collects contextual information around new contacts.

In simple steps-you add your name, title, company, phone number, and address. And you also get to add your online services like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You can add simple notes to cards. But it doesn’t stop there: add tags to index a person and even rate their importance.

You can send it to someone via email, or “beam” it to them from one device to another if both people have the app. The email that gets sent to someone also includes a .vcf file that can be imported into address book software like Outlook and Apple Address Book, or imported directly to your mobile device’s contact list.

Features of Cardcloud
-Create a digital business card and share it with anyone.
-Ability to share from phone to phone or phone to email.
-Gather contextual information about each new person you give your card to.
-Easily remember who, where, when and how you met someone.

Cardcloud has versions for iPhone and Android devices.

Some of The Best Social Media Monitoring Practices For Your Business

Thomas Oppong — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:04:45 +0000

Customer and internet users are now armed with all the tools they need to wreak havoc on any business or individual. Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Yelp and some customer feedback and complain sites are the new ways of sharing frustrations and anger. The unfortunate part of it is that you can’t control what they will say about you or your business. But the good news is that there are equally brilliant and great tools that can help you monitor and respond accordingly to all the negative noise on the web about you and your business to protect your online reputation. There are now countless social media tools out there for managing your social reputation.

You need to have a plan to work with. Do not just start monitoring because its a new trend. Put your thoughts into writing if you are the social media strategist or manager of your business. You should have a plan with goals to achieve and targets to meet. Are you monitoring to protect just the company or its executives as well or tracking social comments for marketing purposes. Establish that right from the beginning.

It’s your job to find out where you or your brand is being discussed and respond if you have to. You can either employ a social media manager to take care of that or delegate one of your employees to monitor your brand. It’s also important to get all your employees to look out for comments that can harm you or your business.

Brand and reputation management are now key components of most business. A lot of businesses have identified quality and great leads or customer care problems that may have gone unnoticed. In your monitoring process, its important to prioritize the issues and comments identified. You could group them into the ones you need to deal with now, good or negative and treatment later category.

It is important to also note that there is no single best tool to manage and control every comment or statement on the web. The tool or combination of tools your business will choose should combine with business goals and objectives. You can choose to choose to select multiple social tools you will find useful for your business. Try them out and watch out for progress and treatment.

The best part of social media monitoring is the ability to interpret the data you gather to improve your products, your operations and your customer service. If you have negative comments, do not treat them lightly. Customers verge their anger mostly on what does not work, what is broken, unattended problem or poor customer service. This is an opportunity to address those issues and fix what is broken. Forward concerns to appropriate departments for easy response.

A crucial part any social media monitoring is the ability to identify commentors with the loudest voice.Find out which of the them are influencers, how many followers they have, how often are their tweets being retweeted, how many external links point to their blog, and how many comments their posts attract, particularly the post you are tracking. The earlier you respond to influencers the better for your brand or executives.

A lot of businesses have used the data and results they get from social tools to improve marketing strategies, to increase customer satisfaction, to generate customer insight. Make the best use of the results you find to protect your reputation and that of your business.

Facebook Edgerank – What It Is All About And How To Make The Most of It

Guest Author — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:36:20 +0000

What is the first thing you do when you first step in your office cubicle? Be honest, no need to be a shy guy. Yah, we know you, like most others, are used to check the status or content shared your our friends on Facebook. Then like a sensible human being, you start liking some content, shares pictures that you might have forgot to upload at home or commenting randomly at other photos. But the tea is being served, the whole process gets interrupted and the daily grinding thus goes on. But have you ever wondered why some content appear at the top while other lags behind others? This is not a co-incidence kind of thing; there is a science behind it. Even it determines how much of your content shared by you will be visible to others. Facebook has named it as Edgerank and this is the secret to success. So, here we are going to dive into the details so that you can have a fair idea of what the Edgerank is all about.

4 Pillars of Edgerank that You Should Remain Aware Of:

If you wish to see your brand page on Facebook getting maximum exposure on the news feed sections of the visitors, you need to put some extra effort to ensure that your Facebook fanpage is buzzing with visitors and their activities In the form of shares, comments, likes and all that. The more your fan page manages to draw attention of users, the greater will the chance to surge ahead of others in the news feed of general Facebook users. It will consequently make you see a visible increase in Facebook affinity score. High affinity score gives Facebook a hint that your objects are important and should be placed higher.

Another passing observation is that ‘stalking’ a fan page or a profile does help to improve the affinity score which will certainly lead to higher Edgerank performance. This will have ripple effect in getting to the top in general Facebook users’ news feed. Higher affinity score will lead to better Edgerank and this will eventually give a boost to your website’s visibility in Facebook.

It has been observed that sharing links, photos etc have a direct impact on Edgerank. Probably Edgerank gives more value to photos, videos and links than to status updates and probably comments give the bigger pie of exposure thank Likes. So, keep posting and sharing great images. links, photos etc and the pagerank weight of your Facebook fanpage will increase for sure.

Date and time matters too. Most recent updates are most likely to get better position rather than updated done long time ago. So, now we have all the information about what the edge rank is all about. Lets see how we can ensure a powerful presence in it.

Quality of Fans: Do not envy if your competitors have got more friends, because that does not prove that they have got bigger brain. The number is important but to some extent, what is even more important is whether the fans are really interested about your brand. Ask yourself these questions:

Are the fans commenting on the post proactively?
Do they have an impressive presence in Facebook?
Are they real or just another fake profile maintained for increasing the number of fans in Facebook?
Do they have huge fans and followers in Facebook?

If the answer to all these questions is “Yes”, you have got a strong Facebook fan base to be envy of. So, be anxious about the quality of the fans rather than counting on the number solely.

Quality of Content: To keep your fanpage active and look fresh, you need to do keep on posting things in your fanpage and this is where quality of content comes into being. To have a constant high edgerank and to ensure that the updates are getting the maximum exposure, you need to give utmost attention to quality. However, since the entire thing is determined by some also unknown, you need to make it a point that the updates are getting loves of the fans in the forms of Likes, shares, comments etc.

Give the above tips a go and I believe that a strong and impressive presence is waiting for you in Facebook.

Author Bio: Michael Evans is a blogger and social media addict. He is passionate writer and loves experimenting with FBML and Facebook marketing. Check some of his facebook templates at FanpageTemplates.org

Google Apps Browser Is A Great Way To Access All Your Google Mobile Apps

Thomas Oppong — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:02:54 +0000

A lot of people use Google products and services on daily basis. Others have signed on to a few they access constantly.Google has build official mobile versions of some their products, but not all of them are optimized for your mobile device. G-Whizz! Apps has created a Google apps browser to help you access and use your favorite Google products on you smartphone.

If you are an avid user of Google apps, Google Apps Browser will be perfect for you. You have access to over 20 apps right on your smart phone including Google+, Google Docs, reader, Google Voice, Gmail, plus Facebook and Twitter. You can send free text messages, track your schedule with Google Calendar, get driving directions and stay up to date with Google News.

Google Apps Browser 1.5 introduces Smart Tab management which dynamically reorders tabs based on the most-used Google Apps and adds new dedicated Browser and Google Apps search tabs.

Almost all the Google products and features have been covered by the Google Apps Browser. You can Check your Gmail, chat with your friends, You can even keep in touch using Facebook, follow your friends on Twitter, obviously you should be able to connect with friends on Google+, receive chat alerts for Google Talk, send free text messages, watch YouTube videos, find cool pics with Image search, view your favorite photos in Picasa. Google Apps Browser has also integrated with Instapper to make it easy post to Instapaper and Read It Later, you can follow your favorite sites with Reader, access your Google docs files and documents on your mobile device.

Other things you can do with the Google Apps Browser is to discover the perfect restaurant with Places,
track your schedule with Google Calendar,stay up to date with Google News. Almost every Google product you can think of has been covered.

How To Use Facebook Insight To Grow Your Facebook Fan Page

Guest Author — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:04:50 +0000

So, you have been working round the clock to keep your fan page growing and thriving with visitors and buzzing with their interactions in the form of Likes, sharing, comments etc. But have you ever looked at the details to figure out what fans of your fan page really want from you? Do they want you come up with some funny staffs that may had them roll down the aisle or they are looking for some genuine information that have got nothing to do with the flippancy which are quite omnipresent in most social networking website. Yah, yah I know Facebook is a place to chill out but since we are marketers by profession, probably destined by God, we have to go deep down to the details so that we can have everything before us to make our fan base grow like anything else. And thanks to the introduction of new Facebook metrics, we will be able to have deeper and better insight into what our community wants from us, which will lead to engaging and impressive presence in Facebook.

Let’s try to decipher what remain behind the below metrics:

Main Insight: To start with, you need to click on the Main Sight option and there you will see a graph of the latest activities going around your fan page for the last month. It looks much more improved with additional details to find what is cool and what is not so cool about your fan page. The best part of this main insight section is that it lets you view and analyze individual posts in different ways. Below are some crucial segments that deserve your attention:

Engaged Users: This is the total number of unique people who have got the time to click on your post. The more, the better.
Reach: This is the second most important metric that should not get any less attention from your side. It is the total number of people who happen to find your post in Facebook.
Talking about: This is the number of people who cared to comment onto any particular post or Liked or shared any post.

Virality: This thing involves a simple math. This is the result of “Talking About This” number divided by number “Reach”.

Now, you might wonder how on earth you are supposed to use this number to your advantage. Simple, if you happen to find that the top three pages when sorted by “Engaged Users” are three posts containing some awesome images, you need to focus on posting images in fan page to make each post go viral. Or else you can sort posts based on Virality, and if you find that the top posts are informative, you need to make it a point that the upcoming posts are in line with it if you are to see some progress in the engagement front.

Reach: This section will give detail analysis of people who have come across your posts in your Facebook fan page in one way or the other in the last week. A chart representing demographics of people will be there to make your task easier. There are options to figure out how you have reached your audience in the last week but the most important segment that you need to look out for is the number of people you are reaching more frequently. These people are your code audience and therefore, you cannot afford to lose them.

Check the details carefully and make necessarily changes in the strategy to see more interaction. Try to make some experiments with the number of postings, time of posting etc to be able to see some visible improvements.

Options are there to find information about where the visitors are coming from and the number of page views. If external referrers graph shows that majority of people are coming from Google, you need to pull your socks and get to some actions, I mean, you need to do some guest posting, blog commenting etc to spread the words about your Facebook community.

Likes: Likes is as you know very well is the most important and the most precious thing out there in Facebook. It shows the affections of Facebook users. The Likes area of the metrics show you fans sorted by demographics, a very useful tool to launch and run your future Facebook ad campaign with meticulous efficiency. Go to Graph and then go to “Where Your Likes Came”. Watch the number of spikes and sudden drop in the Likes and Unlike graph and this will give you fair amount of information about what you are doing it right and what you are wrong on a given day.

People Talking About This: This data will give you enough scope to measure actual engagement of the users. This data include almost anything or everything that are elaborated below:

Sharing, commenting or liking a page
mentioning a page in a comment
tagging a page in a photo
Checking in it a place
Answering a posted question
Posting something on the wall of the fan page

So, it seems we have loads of data for crunching. So what are you waiting for? Just start crunching the data to have a deeper and more powerful insight on your Facebook fan page.

Author Bio: Michael Evans is a passionate writer and he has been writing for Site2You which is an easy website builder. He has written different article on web design, online marketing and SEO. He is equally enthusiastic about latest gadgets.

Reid Hoffman’s Greylock Partners Invests $5 Million In Wrapp(Social Gifting Service)

Thomas Oppong — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:52:57 +0000

Wrapp, a new social gifting service has received $5 Million from Greylock Partners. Wrapp, which lets you celebrate friends and family with free digital gift cards provided by top brands that want to attract new customers, received $5.5 million in November from Atomico and the Nordic venture firm, Creandum, which provided Wrapp’s original seed funding nine months ago.

Reid Hoffman, a Greylock partner and co-founder of the social network, LinkedIn, will join Zennström, Atomico’s CEO and founding partner, and Johan Brenner, Creandum partner, on Wrapp’s board of directors.

Wrapp connects you with retailers around the world and allows you to discover, plan and send digital gift cards to the people you care about.

Wrapp allows friends to give and contribute to free and paid digital gift cards provided by top brands, making it as easy to send a gift of real value, as it is to send a greeting. Founded in the first half of 2011 by a group of serial entrepreneurs, Wrapp is based in Stockholm, London and Silicon Valley. Three months after launch, half of the 4.8 million Swedish Facebook users have tried Wrapp.

Current Greylock portfolio companies include Apptio, Cloudera, Data Robotics, Facebook, Groupon, Imperva, LinkedIn, One Kings Lane, Palo Alto Networks, Pandora, Picarro, Redfin, Workday and ZipCar.

How To Use Social Media for Profit, Not Just For Fun

Guest Author — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:03:32 +0000

Social media networks have grown by leaps and bounds over the last couple of years. There is no doubt that if you want to build a strong online market base that you have to utilize social media networks. Chances are that you are already using Facebook or Twitter to connect with your friends. But, did you know that you can use these platforms to make a little bit of extra cash on the side? As a matter of fact, there are individuals that are earning over $500.00 per month from Facebook.

If you love to use social media and know how to use it inside and out, then you have an opportunity to make cash. Businesses as well as organizations are looking for ways through which they can enhance their presence online, and are searching for social network savvy people to help them with this. But, the million dollar question is “How do you launch your social media advertising firm?” Illustrated herein, are a couple of things that can help you start your own social media advertising firm and make money in the process:

Create Your Online Credibility

First and foremost, you need to build your online credibility. You can online guarantee yourself business when you have credibility. This way, your potential clients will know that you have what it takes to give them the kind of online presence that you have. There is no one that will be willing to work with you if you do not act as a professional. Other than having a massive following, you need to provide some value through your communication channel.

Identify What You Would Like To Offer

You cannot do everything at the same time. If you try, you will only fail at all of them miserably. Identifying something that you are good at and pursue it, for example, would you like teach other people how to use the social media to increase their businesses? If you do not want to do everything, you can come up with strategies and show others how to implement them. Once you have identified something to sell, come up with a plan on how you will go about it.

Opt For A Market Niche

As pointed out earlier, you cannot serve everyone in Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Look for a business or organization that you would like to work for. For example, do you have an interest in travel, politics or nature? The more particular you become, the higher the chances that somebody’s eyes will brighten up when you tell them about your services. While you can always venture out of your chosen niche once in a while, it is highly recommended that you choose a specific market niche and stick to it. This way, you will be able to grow your market base with ease.

Start Looking For Customers

No matter how small your business venture is, the best means to get your business growing is to shout out loud that you are available for hire. Specify the kind of services that you are offering. For example, are you offering a one-on-one coaching, corporate roundtables or business strategies?

Daniel K. Lebrun is from Exams King, He has been blogging from last 3 years, He is Professional Content Writer and also SEO guru, He is full with possessions of experience, and even more degrees, these days he is busy in CLO-001 Certifications. He gets pleasure from Blogging.