Matt Cutts, one of the lead guys on the Google team, shares his ideas about SEO and spam. As you will see in the video below, Matt Cutts, Google, and FMMG are all on the same page…

Here’s a little more information on Matt Cutts if you’re interested: He received his Ph.D in computer graphics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has an M.S. from UNC-Chapel Hill, and B.S. degrees in both mathematics and computer science from the University of Kentucky. He wrote his first version of Safe Search which is Google’s “family filter”. He has worked on search quality and web spam at Google for the last several years.

Facebook: New guide provides advice on how to make the most of the site

Facebook has launched a new page called Facebook for Business.

The how-to page guides businesses on how to best use the site’s pages, ads, deals, social plugins and sponsored stories.

The page was added to Facebook after Google not only asked businesses to wait for a more robust version of Google+ to be released, but kicked out some companies that set up accounts on their own.

Intel’s former CFO lined up as chairman Starbucks trials business intelligence on tablets for executives Olympic Games CFO hails “the greatest show on Earth.”

“I do think there’s some urgency there [for Facebook] to jump on it before Google gets its act together,” said Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with Yankee Group. ” Facebook has a huge lead with consumers, so where can Google effectively compete with Google+ — businesses. If Facebook gets a jump [in the business market] now, that puts them in a leadership position.”

A Facebook spokeswoman said the new how-to page focuses on helping small businesses make their way in the new social world.

“Facebook [for Business] allows small businesses to create rich social experiences, build lasting relationships and amplify the most powerful type of marketing – word of mouth,” said Carley Lake, a spokeswoman for Facebook. “We created Facebook.com/business to make it even easier for people to reach these objectives and grow.”

Businesses have been hot to create a presence on Google+ , which is nearly a month old. While Google+ has far fewer members than than the long-established Facebook network, the new site has shown a lot of momentum and has been garnering significant interest among both consumers and businesses.

Businesses like Ford Motor Company and Sesame Street found their way onto Google+ early on.

However, Google quickly asked them to refrain from using the site, acknowledging that the first iteration is geared for individuals, not for companies and organizations. A business focused site is in the design stage, Google added.

There has been so much interest in that business version that Google has picked up the development pace.

At first, Google said it expected to release a business version by the end of this year. Just days later, Google said it planned to soon pick a few companies to participate in a field trial of a business version of Google+.

And then last week, Google changed its stance once again by announcing plans to push out a business version for everyone to try in the next few months.

Kerravala said there’s a very good business case for companies to get involved with social networking, though none of the top sites have made it easy to do.

“I do think there’s a role for social networking with businesses,” he said. “I just think no one has really helped businesses figure that out.

“It looks like Facebook’s how-to page is almost a paint-by-numbers model for businesses. It’s a cool idea. It’s my sense that most businesses have no idea what to do with Facebook,” Kerravala added.

Original Source Computerworld US

There are geniuses and then there’s Google. Google seems to constantly do things, invent things and implement things that makes our life easier. I’m not talking about Google Wave here, I’m talking about tools like Gmail, analytics, YouTube…

A couple of days ago Google unveiled its latest advance: search results show up as you type. I love this!. I got the idea for this post from Jeff Jarvis (Author of What Would Google Do?) who tweeted  the results of a little experiment he started. The Buzz Machine blogger typed one letter into Google and see what turned up. So, I decided to do the entire alphabet.  I’m not sure how personalized or localized this is, but I certainly got local results when I went through the alphabet.  Let us know in comments if you get anything different (and where you’re located).

Here’s my list:

• A = Amazon
• B = Bank of America
• C = Craigslist
• D = DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles)
• E = eBay
• F = Facebook
• G = Gmail
• H = Hotmail
• I = Ikea
• J = Jet Blue
• K = KTLA (Local Channel 5)
• L = Lakers (No explanation needed)
• M = MySpace
• N = Netflix
• O = OC Fair (Orange County Fair)
• P = Pandora
• Q = Quotes
• R = Ralphs (Grocery Store)
• S = Skype
• T = Target
• U = USPS
• V = Verizon
• W = weather (with Walmart as second)
• X = Xbox
• Y = Yahoo
• Z = Zillow provides free real estate information)

Please add your results and comments below.

A large portion of my clientele are folks who have gotten a bad deal or, in a lot of cases, made a bad deal for themselves when hiring a designer for their website.

I spend a lot of time cleaning up other “designer’s” messes, in large part, because the client didn’t know a few key things to do when looking to hire a Web Designer or Web Design firm. Following is your six item checklist of things to do before you hire a web designer.

1. Make Sure the Web Designer Has a Website

This is HUGE mistake number 1!

Come on folks. This is so obvious, it is almost embarrassing to mention. However, for some reason, this gets the pass often. Never, what’s the word? NEVER hire a designer or design firm if they have no site. It’s like hiring a money manager who is broke!

Are they active in Social Media? Do they promote themselves? If not, how successful will they be build a marketable site for you?

Do they blog about their business? This  is a good indicator of what and how much they know and understand about the business of designing a successful web site.

If you answer no to any of these questions, chances are, they can’t help you either.

2. Make Sure They Have a Portfolio

Check out their client list and portfolio. Do you like the design style? Good, now dig deeper. Are the sites live? This is a very good indicator of the clients satisfaction level.

3.  Ask For References

No brainer again. If they have happy clients, they will happily supply references. On the other hand, if they hesitate; that loud sound going off is a warning siren!

When you check with the references, ask these questions:

a. How was their experience with the designer?
b. Did the designer seem knowledgeable about the “business” of the internet?
c. What are their results?

4. Pay Attention

When meeting with the web designer or firm, make sure to pay attention to every detail. See if they ask you about your business, goals and target market? See if they offer suggestions to broaden your target market, business ideas and online marketing efforts?

Are they taking detailed notes and offering suggestions of what type of site would be effective for your business and explaining why? If not, ask why not?

Are they taking the time to explain the web design process explained to you so you know what to expect?

Are they organized?

Does it feel like the are running a business?

These are all things that any professional web designer would cover during an initial client meeting. If they aren’t bringing any business savvy to  the table, it’s probably because they don’t have any.

5. Ask Questions

During the meeting ask the company how familiar they are with your industry. Is this important? Yes and no. I lost a client to a designer more familiar with the aerospace industry – and I can assure you that in this case, it did not make any difference. Unless the designer is creating content, this is not really necessary.

Ask them what programming languages they use. A good understanding of various programming languages is helpful.  Ask them if they can build content management websites or sites that will allow you to update the site in the future. For us, this is a must. We exclusively use WordPress as an amazing blog platform and content management system. Most business sites do not need systems like Joomla or Drupal. Those are usually overkill and not very simple to self-manage.

Have them detail their web design experience and tell you how long they’ve been in the industry. Ask them if they are familiar with search engine optimization. Ask them for examples of their results.

You are the client, so do not be afraid to ask questions.

6. Go With Your Instinct

Most people have pretty good intuition. If something doesn’t seem quite right, it most probably isn’t. If this is the case, continue with your search until you find a company that you can trust.

Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Google Wave is a real-time communication platform. It combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client. You can bring a group of friends or business partners together to discuss how your day has been or share files.

This from Mashable:

Google Wave has a lot of innovative features, but here are just a few:

- Real-time: In most instances, you can see what someone else is typing, character-by-character.

- Embeddability: Waves can be embedded on any blog or website.

- Applications and Extensions: Just like a Facebook (Facebook) application or an iGoogle gadget, developers can build their own apps within waves. They can be anything from bots to complex real-time games.

- Wiki functionality: Anything written within a Google Wave can be edited by anyone else, because all conversations within the platform are shared. Thus, you can correct information, append information, or add your own commentary within a developing conversation.

- Open source: The Google Wave code will be open source, to foster innovation and adoption amongst developers.

- Playback: You can playback any part of the wave to see what was said.

- Natural language: Google Wave can autocorrect your spelling, even going as far as knowing the difference between similar words, like “been” and “bean.” It can also auto-translate on-the-fly.

- Drag-and-drop file sharing: No attachments; just drag your file and drop it inside Google Wave and everyone will have access.

All of this sounds quite amazing – we’ll have to see if it lives up to the promises. As of now only a relative handful of people have been invited to take part in initial Wave testing, but I hear you can buy an invite on Ebay:

With Google releasing 100,000 invites to test the beta version of the much-hyped Wave, one enterprising blogger decided to capitalize on all the buzz surrounding the new messaging and collaboration tool by selling his invite on eBay.

Hagan Blount, a 30-year-old food blogger based in Baltimore, had been listening to the chatter about Wave and hatched the idea to auction his invite on eBay. “I figured there’s a whole lot of buzz. I wonder how many hits this would get?” he said.

Of course, Mr. Blount hadn’t yet received his invite, but he said that a software developer friend of his who did not wish to be identified had promised to procure one for him. Mr. Blount commenced the auction on Tuesday night, and by the time he had woken up at 6 a.m. Wednesday, the day that Google would be releasing Wave invites, his auction had already received 12,000 hits.

If you want to learn more about Google Wave, check out the official Google Wave Page and Mashable.com.

1. PhotoScape

PhotoScape is an all-in-one style photo editor with fun and ease of use. Major capabilities are: viewer, editor, batch editor, page, combine, animated GIF, print, splitter, screen capture, color picker, rename, raw converter, resizing, brightness/color/white-balance adjustment, backlight correction, frames, balloons, text, drawing pictures, cropping, filters, red eye removal and blooming. PhotoScape has been used for two years and is expanding its features continuously.

2. GIMP for Windows

GIMP is a popular open-source image editor originally developed for Unix/Linux. Often lauded as the “free Photoshop,” it does have an interface and features similar to Photoshop, but with a steep learning curve to match. Because it’s volunteer-developed beta software, stability and frequency of updates could be an issue; however, many happy users report using GIMP for Windows without significant problems.

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

Requirements: GIMP should run on any NT-based version of Windows (NT4, 2000, XP or Vista). Older GIMP versions (2.0.x) could also work with older versions of Windows such as Windows 95 but they are not supported anymore. The amount of memory can be an important factor, especially if you intend to work on large images. A minimum of 128 MB of RAM is recommended, but the more RAM the better.

3. Paint.NET

Paint.NET is a free photo editor for Windows XP.

Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.

It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple tool for photo and image editing.

4. Serif PhotoPlus

PhotoPlus is the amazing photo editing software from Serif that enables you to enhance your digital photos and images, create stunning bitmap graphics and even web animations.

With PhotoPlus you can easily edit images, enhance colour balance, adjust brightness and contrast and make many more changes and adjustments to achieve fantastic results every time! The Pro version costs under $80!

5. Pixia

Pixia is the English version of a popular free painting and retouching software that originated in Japan. It features custom brush tips, multiple layers, masking, vector- and bitmap-based drawing tools, color, tone, and lighting adjustments, and multiple undo/redo. Like many freeware editors, there is no support for saving GIF format. Pixia is also available for many other languages. Pixia works with Windows 95, 98, Me, NT4, 2000, and XP.

6. VCW VicMan’s Photo Editor

VCW VicMan’s Photo Editor is a versatile image editor with an intuitive interface and a wide variety of features. This powerful application is user friendly, offering simple image editing, high productivity and easy customization.

Now you don’t have to fork out hundreds of dollars for a quality image editor. This award-winning application is freely downloadable and comes with a wide range of essential features for both novice users and professional designers. With VCW VicMan’s Photo Editor you can refine your digital photos, draw artwork naturally and effortlessly, producing superb graphics for the web.

7. PhotoFiltre

PhotoFiltre is a complete image retouching program. It allows you to do simple or advanced adjustments to an image and apply a vast range of filters on it. It is simple and intuitive to use, and has an easy learning curve. The toolbar, giving you access to the standard filters with just a few clicks, gives PhotoFiltre a robust look.

8. Ultimate Paint

Ultimate Paint is a full-featured 32-bit Windows graphics program for image creation, viewing and manipulation. On this page you can download different versions, see what extras UP gives you compared to other paint programs, take a look at its cool plug-in effects, register the trial version and browse the tutorials.
In the latest trial version all basic functionality can be used without limitations. In addition we have also introduced a new freeware version.

UP supports JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, PCX, AVI (reading only), TGA, WMF/EMF, ICO (reading only), IFF/LBM and WAP BMP image formats and Twain compatible scanners. You can easily print your image, setting its size, position and orientation.

9. ImageForge

ImageForge provides you with a set of powerful tools for painting and editing images, photos or other graphics.

Create and edit images, acquire pictures from your scanner, digital camera or other Twain-compliant device, apply special effect filters, produce your own photo albums and simple slide shows, and much more.

Upgrade your ability to edit images with this free paint program.

10. Picasa

This third version of Google Picasa is earning enthusiastic reviews for its improved image management and editing features, along with a basic movie editor and a lot of web synchronization. It even has a face-recognition feature that helps you find photos with people in them. The Mac version has now been released, joining versions for Windows 2000/XP/Vista and Linux. Older versions of Picasa run on earlier Windows operating systems. Reviews now give Picasa 3 the edge over other free photo software and say it may well be all you need — unless your collection gets too big.

If this post was helpful or if you have any photo editing suggestions, please add a comment below.

If you can’t afford to purchase software, you can still find free software to create and edit images. Some of this software is developed by individuals, and some is feature limited or an earlier version of a more advanced program. Here are 5 freebies we like and 1 awesome program that under $100 for you to checkout. Enjoy.

1. Photoshop.com

Photoshop.com is the new companion Web site to Photoshop Elements 7 and Premiere Elements 7. The goal of Photoshop.com is to extend the capabilities of your Elements experience by giving you a place to store and share your creations. They offer templates and tutorials that can be delivered to your software on a regular basis. It will let you backup and store your images and videos online, as well as allowing you to access these items anywhere you are.

There are two types of memberships to Photoshop.com. The first is a basic membership and it is absolutely free. It gives you 2GB of storage space where you can upload, view, edit and access your images anytime you have an Internet connection. You do not have to purchase Photoshop Elements or Premiere Elements to join, and if you want more storage space, you can purchase up to 100GB for an annual fee.

2. The Gimp

The GIMP is arguably the most powerful free photo editor available today. With that comes the Photoshop comparisons. Often lauded as the “free Photoshop,” the GIMP does offer many features similar to Photoshop, but it has a steep learning curve to match.

From the Developers:

“GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

“It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.

“GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.

“GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But basically the same code also runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X.”

3. Seashore

Seashore is an open source image editor for Mac OS X’s Cocoa framework. It features gradients, textures and anti-aliasing for both text and brush strokes. It supports multiple layers and alpha channel editing. It is based around the GIMP’s technology and uses the same native file format.

However, unlike the GIMP, Seashore only aims to serve the basic image editing needs of most computer users, not to provide a replacement for professional image editing products. Seashore was created by Mark Pazolli who led the project until the end of 2009.

4. Chocoflop

ChocoFlop allows you to edit your photos or design stuff using Apple’s CoreImage technology. It takes advantage of the power of your graphics card (GPU).

Because of this it can show real-time previews of filters and keep modifications live for as long as you want.

This means that you can add for example a blur filter on your text and keep everything dynamic. You can change the strength of your blur filter at any time or edit your text, the blur will apply on the updated text. That’s called non-destructive image edition and it really saves you a lot of time.

*This is BETA software. It may not always work as expected. You might want to work with copies of your images.

5. Picasa

This third version of Google Picasa is earning enthusiastic reviews for its improved image management and editing features, along with a basic movie editor and a lot of web synchronization. It even has a face-recognition feature that helps you find photos with people in them. The Mac version has now been released, joining versions for Windows 2000/XP/Vista and Linux. Older versions of Picasa run on earlier Windows operating systems. Reviews now give Picasa 3 the edge over other free photo software and say it may well be all you need — unless your collection gets too big.

6. Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 **

This is not free but great for any budget!

Reviews say Adobe Photoshop Elements just keeps getting better, holding its lead over Corel Paint Shop Pro X2 — partly for ease of use.

The newest version of the #1 selling consumer photo-editing software, Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 combines power and simplicity so you can easily tell amazing stories with your photos. Bring all your photos and video clips together in one convenient place where you can easily find, view, and manage them; protect them with automatic online backup and 2GB of free storage; and then dive right into a full range of creative activities. Make your photos look extraordinary with editing options that let you recompose photos to any size while keeping key subjects intact; combine multiple exposures into a single, perfectly lit shot; and quickly preview a range of adjustments before choosing the perfect one. And share your stories in unique photo books, scrapbook pages, slide shows, and interactive online experiences.

If you found this post helpful – how about leaving a comment and/or Tweeting about it?!

Have an amazing day!

Lennie

How many times in an email, Facebook, Twitter or other sites have you seen a web address like this: www.govisitmysite.com and the damn thing isn’t clickable? A little annoying, right?

How many times have you copied and pasted the link?

My guess… very few. By adding these 7 simple characters, you unleash the mad, straight up power that is the INTERNET! You are leaving money, leads, customers, clients (and did I mention MONEY) on the table by not making your link clickable everywhere and anywhere you can!

NEWS FLASH —–> No one is going to take the time to copy and paste your link, EVER! (almost)

Err on the side of good business – use the http:// and your link  becomes live: http://www.govisitmysite.com (this is an example only). Don’t leave prospective clients, customers and/or cash hanging on Facebook, Twitter and even in your email.

The other bonus is that you get those important backlinks to your site – without the http:// all you get is some text on another site…

Here’s a little experiment for you. Pay attention to all the non-working links you see, just on Facebook (especially on the person’s profile and their own link) and report back here. I would love and appreciate the feedback. If you found this post helpful, Please leave a comment!

Thanks and happy linking, Facebooking and Twittering…

To learn more about this great Google feature click here.

And these methods are… Drum roll please…

1. Article Marketing

Article marketing works great! First off, it’s free. Second, you can attract targeted traffic when your articles get ranked in Google for the specific targeted keywords that you know your potential clients and/or customers are searching for. Getting a top spot on the left side (organic search results) of Google is as (or more) valuable as getting a top spot on the right (sponsored listings via Adwords). But the difference is it is free!

Using an article directory like EzineArticles, you can target specific, low competition keywords (aka long tail keywords) and rank within days, sometimes hours. Research shows that people searching 2 or less words tend to be browsers, while those searching phrases of 3 or more words tend to know what they want and are more likely to be buyers!

2. Forum Marketing

Forum marketing is another powerful free traffic driving technique. The key lies in using a catchy signature like “List building secrets of the masters”, or “5 killer secrets to an obedient dog!” But make sure the claims are legit. Remember, it’s all about the signature!

Participate daily in a handful of forums forums within your niche. Always go where your potential customers/clients are.  Not only will you get traffic, you will also get some quality backlinks to your website.

3. Social Networking Sites

This refers to the new Web 2.0 social marketing communities like FaceBook, MySpace and Twitter. Even YouTube and other video sites count as part of this category. The best part of these Social Networking Communities is the huge audience.

Millions of people participate in these sites. And these are real-life audience! A good YouTube video can get lots of viewers. If you remember “Chocolate Rain” by Tay Zonday, that now has over 32,460,229 views. This video even landed Tay a Dr. Pepper spot and a knockoff/spoof, “Chocolate Rain by Chad Vader” has over 3 million views! See the

The potential for huge amounts of free targeted traffic is great!

Web design plays an important role in marketing success. With an attractive web site, the success is guaranteed (as long as you have compelling content). Internet marketing is not all about getting as many visitors as possible but also to capture the interest of the visitor once he’s on that specific web site, so what better way to do this if not by web design?

Well, one way is to have compelling content, an authentic message and a strong, congruent marketing message!

This is where the 2 roads meet – Form & Function.

For any website to have success, it must capture a few key components:

1. Nice visual styling – The big boys (Yahoo, Google, Youtube) can get away with plain styles because the offer so much content. You and I, on the other hand, need clean, smart, even elegant design as a frame to display our compelling, rich content.
2. Easy, Intuitive Navigation – Don’t make your visitors guess how to navigate your site. Make it easy. ‘Nuff said…
3. Compelling Content – This would be informative content for site visitors. It should be keyword rich for the search engines too. Remember, stay on topic. Don’t add backpacking content to a site about hamsters…
4. Marketing Message – It doesn’t matter if your site is a personal site or business site… You are always marketing. Whether it’s to friends, family, spouses, business associates, future customers or clients, keep your message clear!
5. New Content – Visitors won’t come back to your site if nothing ever changes. Dammit get yourself a blog. It’s easy to update, there are tons of pre-designed templates (and it you want a custom designed one, we can do that for you) and did I mention that it’s easy to update? The best blog out there? WORDPRESS!
6. Truth – Nobody likes a liar… Stay true, authentic and connected to your message. People are attracted to messages that a consistent with the messenger!

A strong visual presence coupled with a strong message and compelling content will always increase you chance for online success!

Just wanted to announce the launch of our newest site for musician/master bassist Mark Andes.

Heart, Spirit, Firefall, Canned Heat, Stevie Nicks, Dan Fogelberg, Whitesnake, Jo Jo Gunne, Chris Hillman, Kim Carnes, John Fahey, Iain Matthews, Kelly Willis, Jim Lauderdale, Eliza Gilkyson, and Joe Walsh. . . all have relied on the brilliant musicianship of Mark Andes to punctuate their songs and elevate their musical visions to chart-topping status. He has been the rock solid support on bass guitar, songwriting and vocals for all of the above. . . and more.

Growing up in Los Angeles, Mark was a founding member of such cutting edge bands as Canned Heat and Spirit while still a teenager. Spirit is still considered by many to be the first band to successfully fuse jazz and rock with protest, folk-like lyrics and is known as a progressive rock innovator. Their four albums (Spirit, The Family That Plays Together, Clear, and The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus released from 1967-1970) all are propelled by the visionary rhythm section of Mark and Ed “Cass” Cassidy and include radio staples such as “Got A Line On You” and “Nature’s Way”.

Mark and Spirit’s lead vocalist Jay Ferguson went on to form the hard rockin’ Jo Jo Gunne (which also included Mark’s brother, Matt and Curly Smith on Drums) and quickly scored a top-30 hit with the infectious “Run Run Run”.

Check it out, would  love some feedback. Mark Andes Music

Mark Andes Music

Mark AndesMusic

Mark Andes Music

In it’s ongoing legal battle Viacom over copyright, a judge has ordered that Google must do the unthinkable…

Google will have to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users’ names and IP addresses, to Viacom, which is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyright videos to appear on YouTube, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Viacom wants the data to prove that infringing material is more popular than user-created videos, which could be used to increase Google’s liability if it is found guilty of contributory infringement.

This according to an article in Wired Magazine.

Although Google argued that turning over the data would invade its users’ privacy, the judge’s ruling described that argument as “speculative” and ordered Google to turn over the logs on a set of four tera-byte hard drives.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has already reacted, calling the order a violation of the Video Privacy Protection act that “threatens to expose deeply private information.”

The Court’s erroneous ruling is a set-back to privacy rights, and will allow Viacom to see what you are watching on YouTube.

So let’s just breathe and see what happens…

There is a great article in the new Fast Company Magazine all about the do it yourself social network “”Ning”.

The article begins by letting us in on a little secret:

Here’s something you probably don’t know about the Internet: Simply by designing your product the right way, you can build a billion-dollar business from scratch. No advertising or marketing budget, no need for a sales force, and venture capitalists will kill for the chance to throw money at you.

The secret is what’s called a “viral expansion loop,” a concept little known outside of Silicon Valley (go ahead, Google it — you won’t find much). It’s a type of engineering alchemy that, done right, almost guarantees a self-replicating, borglike growth: One user becomes two, then four, eight, to a million and beyond. It’s not unlike taking a penny and doubling it daily for 30 days. By the end of a week, you’d have 64 cents; within two weeks, $81.92; by day 30, about $5.4 million.

Yeah we all remember that little game, “I’ll give you $1 Million today or one single penny and double everyday for a month, which would you rather have?

Me? I’ll take the “Viral expansion loop” – but I want to call it the “Viral Spiral”.

This article goes on to explain how the viral loops (spirals) work as an accelerant for internet businesses – take Google, PayPal, YouTube, eBay, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Flickr as good examples.

So where does Ning fit in?

Well they use this concept on steroids! What they’ve got going is a “double viral loop”.

Only Ning, Andreessen declares, benefits from a “double viral loop,” which spreads two ways, because every network creator is a user and any user can become a network creator. Say someone sets up an Angelina Jolie net with 10 members, which grows as each person draws in others. Then an adoption site breaks off, a Jon Voight hate group rises up, and a Brad Pitt love club forms. Meanwhile, a Lara Croft nostalgia net launches, spawning a legion of soft-core cyberporn spin-offs. Soon you have 2, 3, 10 networks — all expanding simultaneously. Meanwhile, the original group is attracting even more users. Ning swells like a river fed from an ever-growing number of tributaries.

You can read the rest of the article here

I feel it is very representitive of my overall work and felt it was very important to showcase that work in a frame that did it justice.

I would appreciate any and all comments

Have a great day

Lennie

Did you know that Blogger has its own channel on YouTube? I LOVE IT! The folks at Google, who own both Blogger and YouTube, have saved me the trouble of building my own Blogger tutorials. Talk about Good luck!

If you haven’t heard this from me before, Google is so loaded with great, free resources: From Gmail, to Webmaster tools, to Google analytics, to add words, and now these great blogger tutorials.

Blogger is such a great tool. Here’s how you work it. Create a blogger blog, making sure that you name the blog using the keywords you are targeting. Add a handful of relevant ARTICLES ( blog posts). Make sure that you use your keywords in the body of all the posts on this blog. Using the keyword method of linking, link that keywords or key phrases to the relevant page on your site. Not only are you getting “backlinks” you are getting back links from a site with relevant content using relevant keywords leading to a page with more relevant content.

What a great strategy to use.

As a little primer, here is a tutorial explaining how to set up your first Blogger blog.

What are you waiting for, get your blogger blog today. Here’s the link to the blogger tutorials.

Stephanie Leffler of Network Solutions gives SEO Tips. She talks about all the things I am constantly harping on. Whether you are an e-commerce site or a local business.

3 things you need:

1. Content – Write articles about your product or service
2. Get inbound links (super important to get keyword links) – If your website isn’t about “click here” don’t make these the words linked in a inbound link.
3. Title Tags and Meta Tags – Although some folks think these are becoming irrelevant, I beg to differ. Just make sure the tags are relevant

Google’s commitment to “green” means that the company sources carpet and sofas made without PVC, paints without volatile organic compounds, and cafeteria food from local growers. It’s not surprising, then, that they would roll out the largest commercial solar deployment in the US—a 1.6MW installation that covers most of the buildings at Google’s campus and extends even to shaded parking spaces. At the ETech conference in San Diego this week, Google’s Anthony Ravitz explained how Google did it, and why.

The move to solar made sense for Google, and not just “hippie Gaia-loving” sense. Ravitz said that Google will earn its investment back in 7.5 years, after which it will continue to enjoy inexpensive power for decades. With the company sprawled across a large campus of many low buildings, roof space was easily available. Solar also has the unique property of pumping out more energy when power is the most expensive—peak afternoon hours. When air conditioners across California kick into action on sunny days, Google generates the most power.

On November 28th, 2007, news comes out that Google is going into the green energy business.  Google has been pouring investment money into this sector. Besides investing in solar, wind and geothermal companies, Google will create its own research and development group “to look very aggressively at what we think are some promising technological pathways,” said Bill Weihl, Google’s green energy czar.

Google said that it’ll spend “tens of millions” to research clean-energy alternatives to coal-fired power plants and “hundreds of millions” to cut the costs of this power.

The goal is to produce 1 gigawatt of power from clean power sources – enough to light up a city the size of San Francisco – at a cost that’s the same as if the energy came from low-cost, high-polluting coal.

How soon? “Within years, not decades,” Google co-founder Larry Page wrote in a Web post.

Not much to do with marketing on the web, but good for the earth, don’t you think?

Now there are quite a few new design conventions available to web designers in this new 2.0 era.

Gradients, 45° angled lines, glossy buttons, wet floor reflections, and bright colors are all traits common to the Web 2.0.

This article posed a lot of good questions and I believe that they are worth asking. With all the slick new tools available for designers I look forward to a brand new era of design.

Colors are brighter, button have become glossy and the new Web 2.0 sites are not show about using strong colors.

Like the Metafluence article states, I too believe that Apple was really the trendsetter in the aesthetic journey that we see in Web 2.0. Come on. . . Ever since Apple’s aqua interface hit the scene, web asthetic has never been the same.

Read the whole article here

MySpace and Six Apart will announce that they are joining Google’s OpenSocial initiative. Silicon Alley Insider reported the MySpace rumor earlier today. We’ve confirmed that from an independent source, as well as the fact that Six Apart is joining. Per the update below, Google has also confirmed Bebo is joining.

This according to Tech Crunch

Facebook is publicly saying they have not officially talked to Google about OpenSocial. Although sources say that that Facebook and Google have been talking about OpenSocial…including today. So pleading ignorance won’t last as a strategy for dealing with the OpenSocial movement.

You gotta love it. . . intrigue running rampant. Personally, I think it’s so cool that Google is developing this platform! Remember my previous post and my theory about Google’s bid attempt (?) for that coveted piece of Facebook. . .

I’m gonna have to learn how to build apps!

Just ran across this great blog: Tech Crunch and a great article written by Michael Arrington

Today there is a story about a developer who goes by the alias “theharmonyguy” and describes himself as “just an amateur” who evidently hacked into the RockYou OpenSocial application on Plaxo called emote.

At this stage I think it is pretty good to discover vulnerability in these apps. Better now than later!

I really like the idea of OpenSocial. I think the cross platform ability of these apps to perform is a pretty nifty idea. This gets me thinking. . . Google didn’t conceive of this idea after losing a bid against Microsoft to acquire a bit of Facebook, methinks. . . Maybe they just forced up the price increasing the (pre) value of Maka Maka. . .

Ah. . . I deviate. . . Oh yes, OpenSocial hackers. . .

Read the story from Tech Crunch here

Blogging Improves Web Traffic

Everytime you update your blog, a little shiver runs up Google’s spine. This is really no joke. The search engines love blogs because they are updated frequently. Having a blog is one of the best ways to improve your search engine rankings. Content the King reigns here. Pepper targeted keywords into each post you make, drive traffic from your blog to your Web site, and promote your products and services all in one place. Blogging is a sure fire way to generate more traffic to your site.

Blogging Can Make You Extra Money

You can really put your blog to work for you in many ways that will help you to make extra money. You can promote your affiliate products in your blog and include links to order pages. You can use programs like Google AdSense in your blog and earn commissions when your readers click on those advertisements. You can even join referral programs where you promote the services of other businesses and collect a commission each time someone places an order using the link you use on your blog. But most importantly, you can drive your readers (Read: potential customers) to products and services within your own site.

Blogging Can Build Relationships with Customers

Having a blog is a great way to let your customers get to know you so you’re more than just another online business. Blogging help build relationships. People are more inclined to buy from people they know (or feel like they know), so the more you can build your relationships, the more successful you’ll be in selling your products and services.

The Power of Multiple Blogs

My recommendation is to always have a blog installed on your own site. There are a couple of great blogs that I recommend: WordPress and Textpattern. They install easily and can be heavily modified so the integreate into any site. That being said using free online services like blogger can drive traffic to your site by adding links to your site in the posts. Running multiple blogs can help greatly with the search engine ranking since a major criteria tht they loook for is relevant inbound links. And as an added bonus, readers of your other online blogs are more likely to become customers. Why? If they click the links in these posts, they have already found value in what you are saying, thus more likely to be interested in more. The purpose of multiple blogs is to have several places where you can filter people into your site. Consider it free advertising.