What really is Search Engine Optimization? (Photo credit: Go Local Search)
More and more people all over the globe are taking the plunge and diving into the world of self-employment. Even though the economy is not what it used to be, it is relatively easy to find your place in the modern market and open a business of your own. Furthermore, when starting a small business, you are faced with a large number of problems which should rather be seen as challenges. These challenges are often difficult to overcome, but some of them such as the challenge of creating a strong online presence, is extremely important to overcome. Here, we will talk about SEO challenges that small business are faced with. read more
Mark Zuckerberg and company originally agreed to pay $1 billion for social photo sharing company Instagram but ended up paying far less.
Purchased in April the social world was abuzz with news that Zuckerberg purchased the company without first talking to his board of directors.
In a quarterly investment report that was filed on Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission Facebook added 11 million shares to its total. Those new shares are valued at $194 million and were given to Instagram employees at the close of the September deal. read more
A new Facebook app called Vote With Friends has just been released and its sole purpose is to create voting advocacy among Facebook users and the friends they influence.
The app was created by internet advocacy group Fight For the Future and it allows users to check whether or not their friends on Facebook are registered to vote or whether they have pledge to register. The program also tells users if their friends actually went and voted on election day.
“The idea? Take Facebook’s “Poke” concept, and use it to bring a little positive peer pressure into democratic participation”
Tiffiniy Cheng, co-founder and co-director of Fight for the Future says of the Vote With Friends app:
“We think [voting] is essential to what makes a vibrant democracy. Especially in the United States, we’re seeing that what your fiends are asking you to do actually affects whether or not you go vote. If that’s a part of voting in America, we should absolutely have the ability to do that online.” read more
Facebook is increasing its focus on mobile security, promising to work towards a more secure platform that protects users from malicious URLs, scams and other threats.
Starting today users can download virus scan software from the likes of vast!, AVG, Avira, Kaspersky, Panda, Total Defens and Webroot. Those programs add to the company’s computer downloads which includes software from Microsoft, McAfee, Norton, TrendMicro and Sophos.
“As with our existing partners, these seven companies will help protect Facebook’s community of over a billion users by improving our URL blacklist system. This system scans trillions of clicks per day, and before each click, the system consults the databases of all our AV Marketplace partners to make sure the website you are about to visit is safe.”
Facebook launched its security initiative six months ago with the hopes of lessening the reach of virus and malware programs being discovered on its network. Among the company’s initiatives is the AV Marketplace, a system that allows users to download a six-month license for the virus scan program of their choice and at no cost. read more
If you have “liked” an item on the internet up until this point you could share it with your friends just like you would posts, likes, photos and comments, but the “transaction” so to speak ended there. That all changed on Monday when the company began rolling out ‘collect’ and ‘want’ options for photos.
Fans of a product can now list products they want and even buy products that are within a collection they find on a friends account.
Facebook is not attempting to become an online retailer, instead it will send customers directly to the online stores e-commerce page. read more
With the arrival of Google’s search algorithm update known as Penguin, there was a panic among small businesses and bloggers that their SEO work may fail them, sending them plunging down the results page and into online obscurity. The damage to their profits could be tremendous.
Building high quality backlinks naturally isn’t a secretive process. It’s something anyone can do if you commit to the right strategy and the hard work it requires. Here are a few tips for building high quality backlinks that will last: read more
Facebook pages are now integrated into Klout scoring. In announcing the new feature Klout feature the company predicts that users with a Klout score between 70-80 has an average of 13,000 users talking about their Facebook page.
By connecting your brand or organization’s Facebook Fan page your Klout conversation increases and hence your score goes up.
The announcement comes just one month after the social media metrics website pushed out a new look and updated Klout scores.
Joe Fernandez, founder and CEO of Klout tells Mashable:
“We went from about 100 variables that we were looking at to over 400. We’re looking at a bunch of new stuff.”
This past week Facebook began to remove fake accounts from its network and with that removal many Fan Pages inevitably lost “Likes.” As expected most of the biggest “losers” in the Facebook purge were popular Facebook pages created for the likes of Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Justin Bieber.
In fact as Mashable points out Lady Gaga lost enough fans to fill Madison Square Gardens three times.
Facebook announced plans to purge fake accounts earlier in the week, citing the need for the network to keep its integrity in check.
Celebrities were at the highest risk of losing fans since out of the top 500 pages on Facebook seven of the top 10 belonged to celebrities.
The biggest loser however is social gaming network Zynga which lost massive fan numbers for Texas Holdem, CityVille and Mafia Wars. Those three games were the only non-celebrity pages to reach into the top 10 on Facebook. read more
Want to post a message to a friends wall that they can never delete? If you follow the steps for a recently discovered Facebook bug that impossible to delete post is a possibility.
Here is how the bug works. Once you block a person on Facebook they can no longer see content that you have posted to the social network, that include posts you have made to their wall. Since they can’t see the post you put on their wall they can’t delete it. Sure you can’t post again to their wall but they also can’t delete your posts.
Facebook in all fairness does warn users of this possibility. When attempting to block a user the following message displays:
“Blocking means you won’t be able to see or contact each other on Facebook.” read more
Facebook users in Europe should be noticing by now that they can no longer use the photo-tagging suggestions feature on their account. The site removed the feature after complaints were raised from privacy regulators across the EU.
News of the photo-tagging suggestion feature shutdown was made by Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) Billy Hawkes who issued a report this morning regarding Facebook’s compliance with organizational recommendations that were suggested in December 2011.
“As our regulator in Europe, the Irish Office of the Data Protection Commissioner is constantly working with us to ensure that we keep improving on the high standards of control that we have built into our existing tools.
This audit is part of an ongoing process of oversight, and we are pleased that, as the Data Protection Commissioner said, the latest announcement is confirmation that we are not only compliant with European data protection law but we have gone beyond some of their initial recommendations and are fully committed to best practice in data protection compliance.”
