Facebook has officially launched their *NEW* Streamlined Inbox.  According to an article written a month ago on Mashable, Preview Your New Facebook Inbox, “the new feature isn’t live for everyone yet, and might not be for a few weeks.” Facebook provided the above preview image for what the updated Inbox will look like…and tonight, IT WENT LIVE!

My *NEW* Inbox Has Been Updated

For your own viewing pleasure, here’s what it looks like, for real. Click on the image below to get a closer look.

As you can see, the new filters appear to make it much easier to filter through read and unread messages as well as messages from people versus groups. Mashable did a good job of asking the question: What’s missing? “Being able to reply to messages from your own email address would still be nice, but don’t expect to see that feature added any time soon.” But that’s fair…we wouldn’t need to ever visit Facebook otherwise…and that wouldn’t be smart.

So What Does This All Mean?

For starters, it seems I’m one of the first to get the update (and blog about it) and secondly…I’m not sure, but it seems like Facebook is turning into a Facebook describes the upcoming changes as follows:

“The new Inbox design gives you more control over organizing messages and choosing which messages you receive. You’ll notice that there are now filters at the top of your Inbox to help you identify unread messages as well as to report any spam, or unwanted messages, you may receive …

To find specific messages within your Inbox, you can type a keyword or a friend’s name in the search box in the upper-left corner of the screen.”

How Will This Change The World?

Well, I’d formulate my own opinion, but another (random) blog did a pretty good job of saying it better a month ago: “The company had previously claimed that they aimed to make Facebook Inbox as usable as any dedicated email service so that users can in fact use it as their primary email client.” (Stuff.TechWhack.com)…and it’s quite evident that this is happening. Could this be the beginning of the end end of dedicated e-mail services as we know it? Will Google, Yahoo and MSN find a way to fight back? Stay tuned to find out what happens next…

Posted under Social Networks

In yesterday’s article, How Will The Internet React?, I said it very clearly: “This is going to be HUGE!”…And I was right! According to BBC News, “the internet suffered a number of slowdowns as people the world over rushed to verify accounts of Michael Jackson’s death.”

MJ Goes Viral: Top 10 List

Effecting almost every area of the net, here’s a detailed lists of how MJ’s Death has literally slowed down the internet…(*sources include BBC News, ABC News, and MTV)

1. GOOGLE: It’s true that between approximately 2.40PM Pacific and 3.15PM Pacific, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson and saw the error page,” said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker. 
2. GOOGLE: According to ABC News, Of the top 100 Google searches Thursday, more than 50 were related to Michael Jackson, the company said, adding that as people searched for lyrics to favorite songs, “Thriller,” “Man in the Mirror,” and “Billie Jean” were three most popular.
3. TWITTER: According to initial data from Trendrr, a Web service that tracks activity on social media sites, the number of Twitter posts Thursday afternoon containing “Michael Jackson” totaled more than 100,000 per hour. That put news of Jackson’s death at least on par with the Iran protests, as Twitter posts about Iran topped 100,000 per hour on June 16 and eventually climbed to 220,000 per hour.
4. NEWS-SITES: Keynote Systems reported that its monitoring showed performance problems for the web sites of AOL, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and Yahoo.
5. BLOG SITES: Popular websites TMZ, Perez Hilton and other related blog sites reportedly blacked out continuosly
6. YOUTUBE: In Jackson’s honor, YouTube spotlighted Jackson’s memorable videos on its homepage and linked to the artist’s YouTube channel. The channel has garnered more than 9 million views. The “Thriller” video alone has attracted two million and counting.
7. iTUNES:In Apple’s iTunes store, Michael Jackson’s music quickly shot into the top 10 charts within a matter of hours.
8. NEWS WEBSITES: Full-blown memorial sites, such as MemoriesofMichael.com and Michael Jackson Memorial, have already been launched and invite fans to post videos, news and messages commemorating his life.
9. FACEBOOK: Less than an hour after Jackson’s death had been confirmed, more than 500 groups remembering Michael Jackson appeared on Facebook, some with more than 50,000 members. The fan page R.I.P. Michael Jackson (We Miss You) had attracted more than 220,000 fans by midday Friday.
10. WIKIPEDIA: Contributors  arewarring over official confirmation of Jackson’s condition and engaging in back-and-forth edits of the star’s entry eventually forced administrators to lock down all information related to Jackson until there was agreement among mainstream media outlets.

So yea…i’d say he took the internet by STORM On a final note, here’s Thriller with 61,348,893 views and still climbing:

Posted under Blogs, Online Marketing, Online Video, SEO/SEM, Social Networks, Viral Marketing

Remember Quake? The first-person shooter video game that was released by id Software in ‘96? I’ll never forget it, b/c it was the first time I tried to download to download a game off the internet. It was also the first time I downloaded a virus. 5 minutes later my Macintosh hard drive shut down for the final time, never to turn on again. 13 years later and my father still doesn’t trust me on his computers.

13 years later and the internet is exponentially filled with harmful crap. Now more than ever, it is import to have Antivirus software on your computer. You need them to prevent and remove computer viruses  including worms, trojan horses, adware, spyware and other forms of malware.

Viruses: 30 Second History Lesson

Before Internet was widespread, viruses were spread via infected floppy disks. Soon after Antivirus Software came into use, but unlike today it  did not require frequent updating. Emails soon became a central target using executable attachments. Virus checkers essentially had to check executable files, floppy disks and hard drives. As Internet usage became more common so did the online-virus. Check out the evolution of online viruses on Wikipedia’s: Timeline of Computer Viruses and Worms.

Virus 2009: Still A Relevant Issue

This past January, “businesses worldwide were under attack from a highly infectious computer worm that has infected almost 9 million PCs, according to antivirus company F-Secure”. (PC-World) It is known as the Conficker Virus and it was predicted that on April 1st, 2009 the creator would activate this virus on all the effected machines. Computers in schools, hospitals and government departments (including the defense forces of Britain, Germany and France, grounding the French Navy’s fighter jets for a time). In march the House of Commons memorandum revealed that the parliamentary IT network had been infected. According to TimesOnline, Microsoft had offered $25,000 (£17,500) for information about Conficker’s creator. So as you can see…Virus’s continue to pose a serious threat.

Protect Yourself: Free Tools

Unless you have online-storage and don’t care about your computer, I would highly suggest you get Anti-Virus software ASAP! Check out the following 3 tools. They’re free, easy-to-use and without them, you’re computer is at risk of getting sick:

AVG
This is an easy-to-use programs that kills virus’s and spyware and stops users from going to infected websites. AVG also prevents users from opening infected executable files or programs already on your computer. Type “anti-virus” into Google and AVG ranks #1. The beauty is how fast it works and everything is pretty much automated and auto-updated. I’ve been using for 10+ years and haven’t had a single issue.

Advanced Systemcare by IOBIT
The pitch is simple: “A Click A Day to Clean, Repair, Protect & Optimize your PC”Advanced SystemCare Free (formerly Advanced WindowsCare Personal) has a one-click approach to help protect, repair, clean, and optimize your PC. With over 20 MILLION downloads since 2006, this fantastic, award-winning, free PC repair software is a “must-have” tool for your computer. 100% safe with no adware, spyware, or viruses; a PC maintenance program that’s incredibly easy to use.

AVAST! Home Edition
This all-inclusive program will protect you from viruses, malware, spyware and creepy little programs that try and hide on your PC. They’re known for protecting computers from malware picked up by peer-to-peer programs (LimeWire, BitTorrent, Napster, eDonkey, etc.) and Instant Messaging Services (AIM, Yahoo, ICQ, etc.)

Posted under Tech2.0

I recently installed “Rank Checker“, a free Search Engine Ranking checking tool (by SEO Tools). I ran it for the first time today, and to my surprise,  MarketingBlog.NET ranks #1 in Yahoo for the keyword “Marketing Blog”:

Having been up for less than a year, this website is significantly growing.  Ranking higher than TopRankBlog.com (aka: MarketingBlog.com), I find this to be one of my first noteworthy accomplishments. For the same keyword in Google, I rank #21 (SERP #3).

But there’s even more good news. For the keyword “Online Marketing Blog”, I find myself on PAGE #1 of Google and Yahoo!, so not bad for a hobby Thanks for your support and if you have any suggestions as to how I can improve this site, please let me know.I hope this #1 Ranking continues. Feel free to check in on Yahoo! ranking by clicking “Marketing Blog  – Yahoo! Keyword Search” to see if I’m still up there. If I’m not, it must mean someone didn’t like what they saw on this blog post. BRING IT!

Posted under Blogs, Online Marketing, SEO/SEM

I recently attended my 5th Ultra Light Startups and as expected, it was a success!  I have covered their recent event topics including Monetization via Ads, then Outsourcing, & last months SEO/SEM. But this months topic was highly controversial: Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS). Topics included:

• The most popular Open Source CMS’s – Drupal, Joomla & WordPress.
• Examples of successfull startups on each platform.
• What are the main differentiators between the platform.

For those of you unaware of this event, the mission is simple: “Tech entrepreneurs, sharing techniques to launch faster and cheaper!” It is a great source of networking with a panel also included to help drive engaging/helpful discussions to improve your startup.

As usual, the night kicked off with 1 minute elevator pitches by the event participants. Rami Weiss of Boomerater.com, explained why this was so crucial: “Pitching is important and practicing your pitch is the only way to perfect it!” (His tips included: Stand Up, Explain What you do, Your Business Model, Funding, Size and Other Stats). There were a lot of web-design and CMS design companies present, but a a few stood out from the crowd.

• Jason Calderon, BrandYourBaby.com – Child naming and website apps
• Benjamin Horst, Wishler.com -Social wishlist sharing site
• Michael Meyers, NowPublic – NextGen “Reuters”/1st VC’ed Co. using Drupal.
• Peter Raymond, Human Condition – Feel what a disease feels like…
• Joshua Russak (Me), RezRedo.com – Database of Resume Job Experiences
• Boris Bulayev, Educate – Educating Africa’s Future Leaders

Also, a last-minute addition, the creator of the website Overheard In New York, Morgan Friedman, talked about how he achieved success with his ‘ultra light’ startup. The best advice he gave came from his Rabbi: “Any problem that can be solved by money isn’t actually a problem”. Following his speech, came pizza+pop+networking which is a core to this event. After a 1/2 hour of business card collection the panelists took their seats. The panelists were as follows:

• Vishy Venugopalan (moderator) , The 451 Group.
• Steve Bruner – Founder/CEO, SlipFire; Organizer of NY WordPress Meetup.
• Ezra Gildesgame – Drupal contributor;Co-author Drupal in Action.
• Donna Vincent – Principal, JoomSites, LLC; Maintains NYC Joomla Group.

In the past, I covered the events in a Q&A format on my blog, but I decided to try a new form of event coverage: Flip Video! First suggested to me by Melissa Salas (Director of Marketing, Buy.com, met her at Affiliate Summit Social 2008), the Flip is a great way to quickly video-capture events and easily upload them 1-2-3 to social video networks. So…instead of taking notes at this event…I put a fun little video together. Questions covered in the video include:”Describe your CMS…“,”Examples of websites that use your CMS“, “CMS Developer Communities“, “What’s next?” and more…

If you liked what you read here, come out to next months Ultra Light Startup Event: Startup Revenue Models. I look forward to seeing you there.

Posted under Events, Ultra Light Startups

SearchEngineLand recently published “a list of things that small businesses can be thankful for — one for each letter of the alphabet — this Thanksgiving. These are things that can make the difficult challenge of online marketing a little easier for any small business.” I’ve went through the list and find it a great resource for small business owners. You can find the exact list, word-for-word (as found on SEL’s blog) below:

A: Analytics – It wasn’t too long ago that a full-featured analytics package was out of budgetary reach for a lot of small businesses. But thanks to Google Analytics (and, hopefully, Yahoo Web Analytics when it launches publicly), small business owners now have access to the type of data that only their deep-pocketed competition could previously afford.

B: Blogs – Have you noticed in my ongoing “Small Business Success Stories” series here on Search Engine Land how often a blog plays a major role in a successful online marketing campaign? Element One Photography, real estate agent Teresa Boardman, and Avante Gardens are just three examples of successful small business blogs.

C: Common Craft – “Explanations in plain English” is the tagline for this video-making company that takes somewhat complicated ideas/services/tools and brings them to the masses. RSS in Plain English is their most popular work so far, and a great primer for small businesses who don’t quite “get” why RSS is so great.

D: DomainTools.com – It’s not the best place to brainstorm domain ideas for your small business, but DomainTools is the best place to do competitive research on domains that have already been registered.

E: Education – From Search Engine Land to Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Guide, and the countless other excellent web marketing sites, getting an online education is pretty easy. Is there another industry in which the best in the business consistently share their wisdom so openly?

F: Firefox – Any small business owner wanting to become a do-it-yourself search marketer can thank the Firefox web browser and its countless plug-ins that put a wealth of SEO data at your fingertips.

G: Geotargeting – There are almost 20 cities named Columbus in the USA. Those dentists in Columbus, Ohio, sure don’t want their ads being clicked on by searchers in Arkansas, North Dakota, and Texas. We overlook it, but the ability to geotarget ads is a real blessing for small business owners.

H: HitTail – It’s not the only analytics-type service you should use, but with almost-real time tracking of sites and keywords that send visitors to your site, HitTail is a great complement to your primary web stats program.

I: iStockphoto – A great photo or image can dramatically improve any piece of content, no matter how well written it is. iStockphoto offers an amazing collection of images, many of which can be purchased for web, blog, e-book, or similar uses for just a couple dollars.

J: Junk Mail Filters – Be glad that you can filter away all those “Submit your web site to 5,000 directories” and “We’ll put you at #1 on Google for $49.95 per month” emails. They’re useless and should be ignored at all costs.

K: Keyword Research Tools – Whether it’s Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, or one of the many others, keyword research tools seem to get more powerful every year while still staying affordable for small business owners.

L: Local Search – All three main search engines offer local search business listings, and countless other local/social directory sites bring value to small businesses, too. Add it all up, and local search is the best way for local businesses to connect with local customers.

M: Matt Cutts – You may not like all of Google’s policies, but give credit where it’s due. Small business owners can be thankful that Matt’s blog offers a direct window into Google’s anti-spam and search quality efforts.

N: Networking – When you start a new small business, the first piece of advice you’ll get is to join the Chamber of Commerce. Why? Networking. It’s how you meet local people who might become customers or business partners and help you grow your business. Small business owners can also network online thanks to social media sites with local networking opportunities.

O: Onebox – Thanks to Google’s local search onebox, a small business now has an extra ten chances to show up on page one of Google’s SERPs.

P: PPC – For many small businesses, there’s no better and faster way to get search engine visibility than a well-planned PPC campaign. Pay-per-click advertising can bring in targeted traffic while you’re waiting out those weeks or months for your SEO campaign to bring results.

Q: Quality Over Quantity – Small businesses can be thankful that, when it comes to content and links and competing in local search, it really is about quality over quantity. With a few exceptions, you probably don’t need to go out and find hundreds or thousands of links; a few high-quality links should be enough.

R: Reviews – No small business owner likes getting bad reviews, but progressive small business owners know that it’s smart to embrace online reviews and encourage happy customers to write reviews. Searchers rely on reviews to make buying decisions, and local search algorithms look at ratings when determining rank order.

S: Social Media – Many small business owners don’t quite understand social media, but there are numerous ways for any small business to succeed with social media.

T: Tools – Using the right SEO toolbox can give any small business a big advantage over the competition. But it’s important to remember that tools can’t make decisions for you; that’s your job.

U: Unleashed – Geared specifically to small business owners, the Small Business Marketing “Unleashed” conference has quickly become a must-attend event for both its educational and networking opportunities.

V: Video – Video used to be something that only Big Companies could afford, but today there are numerous companies bringing affordable video marketing to the small business sector. And with blended search results becoming more widespread, videos can be an effective tool for attracting new traffic and customers.

W: Webmaster Central – It’s not just the tools and data you get from having a Google Webmaster Central account that matters; equally important is the fact that GWC provides a direct line of communication between small businesses and their primary source of natural search traffic. The communication aspect is highly underrated, but something to be very thankful for.

X: Xenu – Give thanks to Xenu Link Sleuth, which advertises itself as a tool for checking broken links, but really provides so much more link information than that.

Y: Yahoo Site Explorer – With Google and MSN both neutering their public link reporting tools, Yahoo Site Explorer offers the best free, straight-from-a-search-engine snapshot of a site’s indexing and inbound links.

Z: Zappos – Any small business that thinks social media, and Twitter especially, are useless as business/marketing tools need only look at what Zappos is doing. They’ve become the poster child for how to connect with customers online.

©2008 Third Door Media, Inc.

Have a happy thanksgiving and thanks again to SearchEngineLand for providing me with great content and an easy way out of having to blog pre-thanksgiving. For more about SearchEngineLand, check out their parent company ThirdDoorMedia.com, creators of SMX, Sphinn and SearchMarketingNow.

Posted under Blogs, Social Networks, Ultra Light Startups

LinkedIn's New & Improved Search Capability

LinkedIn just released another improvement to their UI that allows you search all areas of LinkedIn…wait a second…I was able to do this before!! From what it looks like, they made some small changes to their search accuracy and decided to promote that as “New and Improved”. But who am I to get mad at them for tricking me into thinking “oh wow! another new feature”? I mean, all month they have been implementing changes including one of my favorites, LinkedIn Applications.

This is a great example of web-marketing and engaging your users. They took a rather minute change and informed their users. This is great for marketing. Imagine if you made a small change to your web-site and then left a flag by it letting your users know it was “NEW & IMPROVED”. It has been used time and time again by many large companies. I saw an interesting response to the following question on a  Yahoo! Answers forum:

Q: Why do they say ‘New and Improved’? How can it be new if it was improved?

A: It is part of marketing. Why would someone want to buy a “improved” ipod if they already have one, for instance. But, if they say “new and improved” hey i don’t have that 1. Its just another way to make a few more dollars. (or millions

This is a worthy marketing tactic and it took something minutes liked LinkedIn’s “New” search capabilities to get me to actually notice this approach. Let me know if it works (or ever worked) for you or your company.

Posted under Social Networks

I was reading a CNN article “Ten Jobs That Pay $80,000 A Year“, and noticed that Marketing Manager held the #6 spot. The statistics were as follows: Annual mean income: $86,283, Projected employment in 2016: 192,000, Increase between 2006 and 2016: 14%. That looks like a promising future, but I decided to do a little research of my own. I wanted to see the difference when I specified the position as “Online Marketing Manager”.

So I went to 6 different Salary Predicting sites, typed in the term “Online Marketing Manager” and here is what I came up with:

1. Indeed.com: $72,000
2. SimplyHired: $76,000
3. Salary.com: $73,000
4. Yahoo! Hot Jobs:$64,145
5. CareerBuilder Salary: $86,746
6. Monster.com: $81,555

I was also able to get my hands on an effective PayScale salary widget. PayScale is a market leader in global online compensation data, and this widget directly accesses the world’s largest database of individual employee compensation profiles. Give it a shot:

Posted under Online Marketing