Archive for September, 2009

Yahoo Meme, Posterous and Your Social Media Srategy

by Ades on September 27, 2009 in Blogging Tips with 54 Comments

As you might know Yahoo launched new service called Meme.Yahoo (Beta) recently. It’s basically an attempt to simplify the whole blogging and information sharing thing.

Will it get adopted? Hmm… given the terrible track record of Yahoo in Social Media sites (Delicious, MyBlogLog and Flickr are slowly dying), it’s hard to tell if this one will succeed. Nevertheless, as a service it’s very simple and extremely easy to use.

yahoo meme screenshot

Check out my Meme at http://meme.yahoo.com/ades. Since it’s still in beta, if you want to register for an account you will need an invite for it. I have 15 invites at the moment, if you need one just let me know in the comments section of this post and I will send it to your email.

Posterous

Similar service Posterous.com on the other hand seems to be doing great. Many people are catching up, mainly pushed by early adopters and influencers such as:

Michael Arrington (Techcrunch) – http://techcrunch.posterous.com
Robert Scoble (Scobleizer) – http://scobleizer.posterous.com
Guy Kawasaki (Alltop) – http://holykaw.alltop.com (using custom domain)
Jason Calacanis (Mahalo) – http://jasoncalacanis.posterous.com
and more…

How to Keep Up With Social Sites?

Social sites are cropping up like mushrooms after the rain these days. And they are getting replaced at a faster pace by the new ones. Remember sites like Friendster, Hi5, and MySpace? Now all we know is Facebook and Twitter.

It takes time to build your user base in every social site. And when these sites are replaced by the new, more recent one, you will most likely lose many users. Yaro Starak has an interesting read related to this discussion on his blog, titled “Social Media Mistakes: Are You Forgetting Your Fundamentals?“.

He basically suggests that you shouldn’t concentrate on building a user base on Social Sites per se. But your objective should be to utilize them to channel and build a user base on your own blog and most importantly a mailing list. He argues, Social Sites come and go, but your blog (or mailing list, or brand) will stay as long as you want it to stay. I agree.

Dashboard Screenshots of Yahoo Meme after the jump Continue reading →

Google Sidewiki and Your Blog

by Ades on September 25, 2009 in Blogging Tips, Marketing with 37 Comments

Google’s New Toolbar with Sidewiki is an interesting tool that can have great impact on the way people comment on blogs and websites (even if the websites do not provide commenting options).

Google describe Sidewiki as: “Google Sidewiki is a browser sidebar that lets you contribute and read information alongside any web page.”

So, basically it’s a tool that allows you to leave comments on any website or page on the net. And anybody who has (New) Google Toolbar installed on their browser can see your comments that you left for that particular page.

What If I am The Owner of The Page (Blog)?

If you own the page, your comment will be displayed on top of all the other comments. So, this is a little privilege that you get by being the owner of the page. You can post a ‘welcome message’! (see below).

google sidewiki and your blog

In order to inform Google that you are the owner of the URL, you need to:

Add and verify your site in Google Webmaster Tools. This process links your site to your Google Account.
Once a site is linked to your Google Account, visit your page and click the Sidewiki button to create an entry.
Select the ‘Write as the page owner’ checkbox in the entry form.
Click Publish.

Some Random Thoughts…

Few things come to in mind with the introduction of this Sidewiki.

You can now comment on any page.
You can now benefit from the comments of other people on particular pages/sites. You can read:
- unbiased product reviews by actual people,
- will be able to find out if the sites are ‘scam’ or ‘illegal’ sites.
- find out better deals from other people’s comments on e-commerce sites. Normally, sites wouldn’t link to competitors’ products ;)
If you are blogger or website owner, it also means goodbye “comment moderation”. You are no longer in control of your comments, at least as far as Sidewiki is concerned (you have this much control).
Just like in blog comments, bloggers can use Sidewiki to their advantage to promote their blogs by leaving comments on other blogs.
Spam will be an issue. As usual.
This is a speculation but Google actually might use the comments (Sidewiki) to improve its Search Results in the future. For example, if people comment that particular site is a scam site and let’s say there are 200 such comments by actual people who have been cheated by this website. Then Google might ban this website from its Search Results and Indexing. Thus improving its Search Results!
I personally believe Google is moving in that direction, where the mass help improve Google its Search Results. As you know Google is already using people to improve its results, at least on personal level for the time being. (see below):

But I think it’s just a matter of time before they go public with this feature i.e meaning that people’s actions on search results promoting some sites and dropping some sites, will actually affect Google’s Search Results in the future.

What’s your thoughts on this? Comments both on the blog and Sidewiki are welcome :)

retweet club

by Ades on September 23, 2009 in miniblog with 11 Comments

daniel scocco launched a members only retweet club with initial 100 members. objective of the club is to collect like minded people and promote each others’ blogs/sites/products on twitter. i think this will be a hit. excited to be in the club.

keywords meta

by Ades on September 22, 2009 in miniblog with 11 Comments

Google says they do not use (and haven’t used) meta-keywords in ranking sites on search results. that’s very interesting. so, shall we stop using keywords? read the post here

Welcome ProBlogger.net Readers!

by Ades on September 21, 2009 in General with 48 Comments

I have guest-blogged on Darren Rowse’s blog Problogger.net, the post title is “5 Ways to Get Your Blog Indexed by Google in 24 Hours“. It’s a very practical post that will be beneficial when you launch a new project. I hope you will find it a useful read.

My thanks to Darren for the opportunity!

ProBlogger Readers, Welcome to AdesBlog!

If you came here from Problogger.net, I would like to welcome you to my blog. My name is Ades and this is my blog AdesBlog.com where I talk about Blogging, Usability, Making Money Online, Entrepreneurship, WordPress.. etc.

If you have found my guest-post on Problogger useful, you might like the following posts too.

For more great posts please go to my Popular Posts page, you may also browse the blog through Categories links in the right column below.

Lastly, I hope to see you around on my blog from now onwards. Please drop by again for more great articles!

Subscribe to my RSS: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/AdesBlog
Great Free Color Picker for Bloggers: http://www.adesclrpicker.com – my freeware software that will make getting HTML color codes from screen a snap! Give it a try!

Eid Mubarak!

by Ades on September 20, 2009 in miniblog with 6 Comments

For my Muslim brethren who have followed the command of Allah and fasted for one whole month, have a blessed Eid! May Allah SWT accept your fasting, ibadah‘s and supplications. Ameen. Enjoy the celebrations!

reCaptcha

by Ades on September 17, 2009 in miniblog with 6 Comments

Google reportedly had acquired popular captcha tool reCaptcha, official blog post here. via @arstan

ConceptFeedback – Get Second Opinion on Your Design for Free

by Ades on September 17, 2009 in Links, Usability with 22 Comments

ConceptFeedback is a great site where you can get free reviews from Web Designers on your newly launched blog/website’s design, usability, logo design etc.

To get started i.e to be able to post your website (concept) for reviews, you need to review at least 5 other websites first. And that’s the main engine that keeps the site running. Otherwise, people would just post their own website and not review others’.

It’s a great idea – getting opinions of web designers for free. Very useful tool I would say for new bloggers who are new to effective webdesign and usability.

Website: http://www.conceptfeedback.com

Fixed Rate Banners Coming Back

by Ades on September 17, 2009 in Make Money, News with 19 Comments

Popularized by BuySellAds.com, it seems like fixed monthly rate banners are coming back to the advertising networks again.

Today one of the major ad-networks LinkWorth introduced new fixed rate option called LinkBanner. They are running it with selected publishers for now, but will be implementing it network-wide soon.

Since global economy is struggling to come out from recession, I think it’s very timely to introduce fixed-rate banner options now. Because most advertisers would welcome this kind of advertising options, especially on high traffic sites (provided that the rates are affordable).

cfformsii: Advanced Contact Form Plugin for WP

by Ades on September 10, 2009 in WordPress with 29 Comments

If you need a simple contact form for your WP blog, plugins like Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form are great.

But if you want more advanced contact form with tons of customization options (eg; upload file option, see screenshot) look no further than cforms-II by Nicky. It’s a great plugin with many features, I won’t be listing all the features here.

Again, it’s little more work to setup this plugin compared to other simpler plugins, but for someone who is looking for specific features, it’s worth it.

Download Plugin: http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin