Archive for the ‘Best of the Web’ Category
#4sqday Tampa
Last Updated on Saturday, 17 April 2010 02:16 Written by Mike Saturday, 17 April 2010 01:41
What a novel concept concocted by my friend @NateBW over at Bright Eyes Vision Care. That’s right a person I know, came up with the whole foursquare day idea. April 16th is now officially known as foursquare day. 4/16 is 4squared = 16 Get it? Yeah OK just checking 
What an awesome event this was, it really brings home the impact social media has on local businesses. Tweetup’s are pretty informal and probably a lot less organized or centered around businesses than a 4sq swarm type event. We unlocked the Swarm badge (50+ checkins at one location) in like 30 minutes. While Tampa did not make the Goal of 250 check ins for a Super Swarm badge, something tells me we are not far from achieving that milestone.
Afterall foursquare is still young. Most people have heard of twitter and facebook. If you mention foursquare, people probably think you are talking about that game you played in grade school. Remember that? four kids, four squares in a 2×2 grid, one ball…the ensuing chaos!
This version of foursquare is much, much better. This version is a game of sorts, with people ‘checking’ in to places they frequently visit. Earning badges and completing to do’s. Competing for mayor titles, and generating user supplied content about the places they frequent.
Businesses are in love with the cost effective ways of promoting their offerings through an online presence. Take for example the Hyatt Regency in Downtown. Not only did they host the Tampa 4sqday event, they offer a huge discount of %50 off purchases made by the mayor of their location. You get to be mayor of an establishment by checking in there more than anyone else over a 60 day period.
Watch this service blossom as adoption rates by local businesses soar. What possibilities could foursquare unlock for your business? Does you business have any tips? Have you claimed your business and made a special offer available to foursquare users?
You should act now, before your competition does. This is one great tool for business. Geek out!
Posted under Geek Tech, Sites, Social Networks | View Comments
Preparing a blog for Google News
Last Updated on Friday, 18 December 2009 05:03 Written by Mike Friday, 18 December 2009 02:21
It’s come to my attention that a fair amount of traffic can be had if your blog is approved for Google News. With that in mind this blog post will attempt to chronicle the steps necessary in order to to have your blog approved for Google news consumption. one important thing to keep in mind here is that news will not just index or accept any content.
Google is rather picky about what they except for syndication, they look at a few factors to determine which news sources to accept. After all if they were not picky Google News would be full of spam and junk and no one would be interested in what was there. Instead you must create a trustworthy and useful news resource.
Of course, not just any site will be accepted into Google News, it is recommend that you should be producing real news content on a daily basis. this should be done before you even consider submitting your site to the Google News service. We don’t want to see SEO shams competing to get past the editorial filters.
Okay, Now that that’s out of the way let’s take a look at the technical requirements:
- You can help the Google crawler gather articles correctly by ensuring that each that displays articles full text has a unique URL that ever changes. Google will not include sites in Google News at this point multiple copies of the same articles at the same URL.
- The URL for each article also should contain a unique number consisting of at least three digits.
- Remember that Google cannot include sites for which the URL of your main page includes the date. URLs with dates in them often change. This prevents Google from crawling the site for new content, as Google is unable to detect the most current URL to be crawled.
- Google’s automated bot works best when it is crawling with regular HTML links. Google is still unable to crawl image links or links embedded within JavaScript.
In addition to the technical requirements you must still make a case as to why your blog should be accepted. You could do this by providing relevant information about the site including the historical background, describing any awards site has received. In addition you wish to provide stats about the site. You can also discuss who links to your site (especially popular sites). In addition make sure you have news related or mostly news related content.
Tags: Google, Google News, News | Posted under Geek Tech, Sites | View Comments
Sponsored Tweets Review
Last Updated on Thursday, 12 November 2009 04:12 Written by Mike Wednesday, 11 November 2009 03:18
First let me say this is not a ‘paid’ post. I have not received nor do I expect to receive any compensation from this post. With that out of the way. Let’s talk about Sponsored Tweets.
Now that I have been using sponsored tweets for a little over a month, it’s time to share my thoughts.
Sponsored Tweets is a new service aimed at marketing on twitter. Twitter users sign up and are paid to tweet marketing pitches to their followers.
There is an interesting comment thread over at Mashable with Sponsored Tweets founder Ted Murphy taking part in the discussion.
There is also a lot of controversy regarding this service. Twitter purists argue that they will un-follow someone as soon as they see a sponsored tweet. These elitists state they are on twitter for the conversation, the passing of information and that marketing is not what twitter is about.
Really?
Anyone else fail to see the logic behind that? Remember Twitter’s Founders saying that “Twitter is what you make it.”
So, who the hell are you to declare what Twitter is for? Did you invent the service? NO you did not, so STFU already.
All the purists need to step down from their soap boxes. We doubt you would unfollow your sister or college roomie if they suddenly became a sponsored tweeter. Real people are not going to unfollow every single person that participates in sponsored tweets.
You elitist schmucks can leave now. You will not be missed in my stream.
Let’s look at it this way
Almost everyone of the opportunities Sponsored Tweets presented to me seemed useful. Some actually interested me. I did refuse a couple opportunities that were nothing more than links to “how to increase your twitter followers” crap. Crap that will not do well on the Sponsored Tweets platform.
If a sponsored tweet inflames you to the point that you feel it necessary to un-follow me, then please do. I don’t need that kind of a follower. There are plenty of more exciting things to do than worry about offending you with a paid tweet. Problem solved for me and the advertiser. Since you will never click on a sponsored tweet, the advertiser wins too.
In the 30 or so days of using sponsored tweets I have had 28 opportunities. That’s less than $50. @tall_geek has about 5400 followers. That’s 28 tweets mixed in with the hundreds of other tweets and retweets that are part of my regular conversations. It’s extra money, and the advertisers typically pay less per click than similar Ad Sense pricing. I think Ted Murphy and Izea is the clear winner here. Ride the wave while you can guys.
If ads incense you that much you probably need to spend less time online.
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