Cheryl Waller

Twitter mobile app updates for iPhone and Android

February 21, 2012 By twitter Leave a Comment

New versions of both Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android are available today. Both apps bring back high-demand features, including the swipe shortcut, and they also introduce new design and functionality improvements. Here’s a rundown.

Both apps

Swipe shortcut: Swipe a Tweet in your home timeline to reply to, retweet, favorite or share it, or view the Twitter user’s profile, without leaving your timeline.
“Find friends”: We’ve added a confirmation alert when you select “Find friends”. This notification more clearly and explicitly messages the fact that when you upload your contacts’ email addresses and phone numbers, you can quickly find which of your friends are on Twitter (that is, if they’ve chosen to be discoverable by email or phone number).

Twitter for iPhone

Swipe shortcut: Swipe a Tweet in your home timeline to reply to, retweet, favorite or share it, or view the Twitter user’s profile, without leaving your timeline.
Copy and paste: We’ve returned the ability to copy and paste the text of Tweets and user profiles. Just press and hold to copy.
Link love: The “share” feature used to just give you the option to copy or email a link to a Tweet. Now, if there’s a link within a Tweet, you’ll see the option to tweet, copy or mail that link, or you can choose to read it later. (Select a “Read Later Service” under Settings > Advanced.)

Pressing and holding links provides similar options, along with the ability to open the link in Safari.

Direct messages: We updated the design for Direct Messages and returned the ability to mark all DMs as read. Simply tap the check mark in the lower right corner.
Font size settings: Change the font size under Settings > Advanced.

Twitter for Android

New devices: Twitter for Android is now optimized to run on Android devices running Ice Cream Sandwich, as well as on the Kindle Fire (available today through the Amazon Appstore) and the Barnes & Noble NOOK Color and NOOK Tablet (available February 23 though the Barnes & Noble NOOK Store).

You can download Twitter for iPhone today from the App Store and Twitter for Android from Android Market.

Filed Under: Facebook, search engine optimization, Social Networking Tagged With: Blogging, Facebook, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking

Using Foursquare to Drive Repeat Business

February 21, 2012 By Stephanie Miles Leave a Comment

From Stephanie Miles:

A marketing platform that brings in new customers, drives repeat business and costs absolutely nothing to use sounds too good to be true, but as 500,000-plus local merchants already know, these are just a few of the marketing objectives that can...

Filed Under: Facebook, Idea Hub, search engine optimization, Social Networking Tagged With: Article, Blogging, Facebook, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking

Klout Star: Ben Lang

February 21, 2012 By Klout.com Leave a Comment

Our Klout Stars series highlights top influencers and how they got to where they are today.

About: Ben Lang is the 18-year-old founder of EpicLaunch and MySchoolHelp. He’s now working on the marketing team at Wibiya, a platform for adding social features to your site. Ben sometimes contributes to Business Insider, Mashable and TechCrunch.

1.How did you get started in social media?
When I was 14 I started an eBay selling business and was looking for ways to gain more clients. I played around with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and started to understand how powerful they were in finding potential clients. Over the past few years I’ve continued to use social media as a means to stay connected to my network, build relationships and essentially learn about the world.

2. What role does social media play in your current job or industry?
Currently, at Wibiya, social media plays a huge role in my job. It’s the most powerful way for me to engage with our users and easily connect with the community we’ve built. Through different tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and now even Pinterest we engage the community in different ways and in the most effective manner possible. The fact that our product incorporates all of these social services on to one bar for anyone to customize and add to their site, makes it even more important for us to stay constantly be connected with out users through these channels.

3. What does influence mean to you? Who influences you the most online?
Influence to me means a huge amount of effective engagement with others. People such as Gary Vaynerchuck, Hiten Shah, Jack Dorsey, Eric Reis and Dharmesh Shah influence me every day by sharing fascinating content and responding to their followers through channels such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and more.

4. What advice do you have for someone who wants to take their online presence to the next level?
The simplest way to get started is by finding influential and interesting people in your niche. Find their profiles on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, About.me, LinkedIn, Tumblr and all the rest and see what they’re doing. Who they’re talking to. What they’re sharing. Use them as inspiration.

Focus on what interests you and start sharing everything that comes up in that niche. Start a Tumblr or Wordpress blog and share your experiences and what you learn. Build your authority by guest posting on other blogs in the same area.

Connect with people that are passionate about the same things as you. The more you progress the more influential you’ll become in your niche.

Connect with Ben on Twitter at @Benln

Filed Under: Facebook, Search Engine Marketing, search engine optimization, Social Networking Tagged With: Blogging, Facebook, klout stars, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking

For Some Developers, Amazon Appstore Now Brings In More Money

February 21, 2012 By Sarah Perez Leave a Comment

In the latest monthly report from app analytics firm Distimo, the company delved into the revenue generating possibilites for apps sold through both Google’s Android Market and the Amazon Appstore. Looking at the top 110 apps available in both marketplaces, Distimo found some surprising data: 42 of those top apps made more money on Amazon’s store than in the more widely available Android Market.

That the Android Market has its challenges when it comes to paid applications, is widely known. In fact, just the other day a friend was telling me how when she went to buy her first new smartphone, the Verizon rep was pushing Android devices because they “have more free apps” than the iPhone. Great story, right developers? Now the Android Market’s inability to make you money is a selling point for Android phones. Excellent news.

So maybe it’s not so surprising that Amazon’s Appstore is beginning to prove itself as a better revenue generating platform for some mobile application developers than the official Android Market. After all, Amazon’s store is a “curated” collection of apps. The apps are tested, reviewed and made sure to be malware-free and stable before being listed on Amazon’s store. (Hmm. Does that process sound familiar?)

Still, the Amazon Appstore is only a small piece of the overall revenue pie for now, delivering just 28% of the top 110 apps’ revenue. But then again, Amazon’s Appstore is barely a year old, and is rapidly gaining strength. For example, the total number of downloads generated by the top 100 apps in the Amazon Appstore increased 14-fold in December 2011, compared with just 2 months earlier, Distimo found.

Today, Amazon hosts 28,826 mobile applications, compared with about fourteen times more apps on the Google Android Market. (It’s now pushing 400K+). Half of all Amazon’s apps are also available on the Google Android Market. But the Amazon market is catching up in terms of size. In December and January, the number of new apps in the Android Market was only 5x the number new apps in the Amazon Appstore, as compared with 22x in September 2011.

The Amazon Appstore is also more likely to favor paid applications than the Android Market, as 65% of all its apps are paid apps, a figure that has remained stable for the past 7 months. Meanwhile, Google’s Android Market sees 32% of all apps as paid apps, and that figure has dropped from 38% during the same time frame.

In addition, the average price for the top 100 paid applications is 40% lower on the Amazon Appstore ($2.89) than on the Android Market ($3.47) for the top 100 paid apps. That’s because Amazon, not developers, controls the apps’ prices. That means some of the discounted top apps could be bringing down the average, of course.

This pricing strategy appears, at least in some cases, to be working in developers’ favor. Users think they can find cheap apps on Android’s store, and aren’t disappointed. But while there, they download other apps, too.

Download volumes on Amazon’s store during November (when the Kindle Fire launched) quadrupled from the previous month. In December, downloads increased even further to more than 14 times October’s volume, then stabilized once again in January. During this time, 42 of the top 110 revenue-generating apps made more money on Amazon’s store than on the Android Market. It’s not a majority, obviously, and information about what types of apps, or what these apps may have shared in common, are details that are unfortunately lacking in Distimo’s analysis.

But this is the real gem in Distimo’s data: for some developers, Amazon’s Appstore is working. It’s too soon to call the success a fluke or a trend, especially with the Kindle Fire’s new(ish) arrival on the scene. But if Amazon is helping some developers make more money, it’s probably not due to a single, easily pinpointed reason. It’s more likely to be a combination of all factors: app curation, discounts, catalog size, promotions, user interface, brand recognition, price setting, and more.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: amazon, android, apps, Blogging, Facebook, Google, mobile, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, TC

Could Google Delete Copyrighted MP3s From Gmail? ‘Only In Extreme Cases’ It Says

February 21, 2012 By Ingrid Lunden Leave a Comment

Some rather inflammatory news has been making its way around the web today: a user posting on the Pirateweb message board has accused Google of removing copyrighted MP3 music files from a Gmail account — possibly using the scanning services that Google employs to block illegal content on YouTube, possibly using something else.

Shocking if true, so we went to Google to get a response. And the short answer is: no. Or not, at least, just like that.

Perhaps it’s the confluence of other things — Google’s upcoming privacy policy changes, and murmurs that Google could remove illegal content that people store in their Google Music digital lockers — that make this story sound plausible.

But a spokesperson from Google has come back to us with a denial that it is doing anything of this kind.

However — and this might be a worry for some who store all kinds of things in Gmail — he also left open the possibility that Google could do something like this “in extreme cases,” for example, in response to court orders.

“We do not go into or interfere with user’s Gmail accounts, except in extreme cases, such as in response to court orders. Emails, data and files contained in Gmail are users’ private information.”

Before you read too much into that, he also pointed out that the scanning service used with YouTube is only used there:

“Our Content ID service, which enables us to scan uploaded YouTube videos for copyrighted material, is only ever used on YouTube. It does not work on our other products, including Gmail.”

The original note raising the issue was published last week. The user, one Honey Escreveu, said that a folder she kept in her Gmail account, which contained MP3 files for copyrighted music, suddenly got deleted. It’s not clear whether those were legally-owned files or not. The only two MP3s that remained in her Gmail, apparently, were for “unsigned indy artists” who are not on YouTube.

So, the jury is still out on whether Honey got the wrong end of the stick, is a hoax, or really has seen the phantom disappearance of her files. If the latter, we are still none the wiser about where the music has gone.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Blogging, copyright, Facebook, Google, Google Music, mp3s, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, TC, WTF

Customer Satisfaction Research

February 21, 2012 By Cheryl Waller Leave a Comment

The modern marketplace is changing at a rapid pace. Demographics are shifting, technologies are advancing, information is expanding and new goods and services are in demand. Capturing a comprehensive view of customer behavior is now more important than ever. Companies have to pay attention to the trends and correspondingly update their business processes in order to take advantage of the opportunities these changes present.Holding Head Frustrated on papers Screaming Phone

Thankfully, customer satisfaction research and loyalty research methodologies have rapidly matured in recent years. The relationship between service / product quality and customer satisfaction and its importance to the bottom line have been demonstrated; the impact of even small improvements in customer retention rate on revenue has been confirmed; and the reasons underlying repurchasing behavior, switching propensity and customer loyalty have become easier to identify. So the tools and metrics necessary to keep abreast of market transformations are available. What corporate researchers need is help carrying the burden of tracking and measuring these changes.

Today’s managers are very focused on return on investment, so research and quality assurance programs must now be conducted within tighter budgets and with heightened scrutiny about cost reduction and spending. Thus, the economical outsourcing of data collection and analysis for customer satisfaction research is an important concern.

Responsiveness is another big concern for research departments. Compiling internal and external secondary research, choosing an interviewing methodology, designing questionnaires and determining sample takes a lot of time. Corporate inertia and the diffusion of responsibility for business processes also slow the implementation of organizational change. Delays in the completion of data collection projects by outside firms should not add frustration. Ideally, researchers should be able to view results as they are being collected. Tables, computations and other reporting related to these results should be almost immediately available for further analysis, manipulation and development. Researchers can’t research when they are busy collecting, compiling and disseminating findings.

Flexibility, effectiveness, the ability to garner honest feedback that can be translated into action to achieve optimal organizational growth and development, confidentiality and security are also key factors to consider when contemplating whether to utilize a third party vendor’s services for satisfaction research.

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The Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Friend

February 21, 2012 By MG Siegler Leave a Comment

Microsoft and Apple should hate one another right now. I mean, really hate each other. After decades of domination, Microsoft has watched their rival move from death’s door to become the most valuable company in the world — over $200 billion more valuable than Microsoft itself. And it was Microsoft who helped get Apple there, remember, with a timely cash infusion in 1997.

Steve Ballmer laughed off the iPhone, which eventually helped kill off Windows Mobile — and it’s now bigger than all of Microsoft’s businesses combined. And the company shrugged off the iPad, even as it established a category, tablets, which Microsoft itself had been trying to establish for years.

Now Apple’s iOS ecosystem threatens the very fabric of Microsoft. Given the rise of the iPhone and iPad, and the halo-effect they’re having on the Mac, products like Windows and Office don’t hold the same importance that they once did in the computing world. And their shine is ever-diminishing. People are realizing that they just don’t need them anymore. Apple’s rise is slowly killing the Microsoft we’ve all known for years.

And yet, Microsoft rarely bashes Apple publicly anymore. In fact, they often take their side on arguments or come to their defense on issues. Again, these were once bitter rivals. And these times should be the battleground for their bloodiest battles yet. Instead, it’s all holding hands, s’mores, and Kumbaya.

Why? Because Microsoft has an enemy they hate much worse than Apple. And Apple has the same enemy. Google.

This is nothing new, but the animosity continues to build between the parties. Look at the news today, for example. Following last week’s headlines that Google was bypassing privacy settings in Apple’s mobile Safari browser, Microsoft today says that Google is doing the same thing to their own IE browser. Meanwhile, Google says that Microsoft is full of shit, while Apple is probably off in the corner smiling.

It wasn’t long ago that Apple and Google were aligned against Microsoft. Remember, then-Google CEO Eric Schmidt was on Apple’s board and the two sides worked closely on projects like the original iPhone. Then Android came along and destroyed that relationship. While Google probably didn’t consider it at the time, this set the stage for Microsoft and Apple to align on things like the Nortel patents.

Microsoft should probably be going all-in to combat the rise of iOS, but instead they seem far more concerned with spending obscene amounts of money to bolster Bing as a Google competitor. And they seem to truly enjoy undermining Android by way of licensing agreements with key OEM partners.

Meanwhile, Apple seems downright bored if you ask them about Microsoft as a competitor. But ask about Google (Android in particular) and the knives come out.

Maybe this all just means that Google is doing something right. They have all the biggest technology companies in the world pointing guns right at them. You don’t get to the top without pissing off people along the way. But the way Google has managed to unify all of these main rivals against them should at the very least give them pause. Microsoft and Apple are the two biggest examples. But Facebook and Twitter are finding common ground against Google as well thanks to the search giant’s foray into the social realm.

All of this makes for a fascinating situation in the tech world. On one side there’s Google. On the other side there’s basically everyone else, with new members seemingly joining on a daily basis. And this side is filled with rivals that under any other circumstance would hate each other. But here they’re allied. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

[image: New Line Cinemas]

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: android, apple, Blogging, Facebook, Google, iOS, Microsoft, Opinion, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, TC

Yandex, Google’s Russian Rival, Is Twitter’s New Real-Time Search Partner

February 21, 2012 By Ingrid Lunden Leave a Comment

A significant step for Twitter in its international growth: Yandex, Russia’s search giant, today announced that it will carry Twitter data in all of its search results.

The news also underscores one possible route to revenue generation for Twitter: Yandex describes this as a licensing deal. The terms of it were not disclosed but Microsoft reportedly paid Twitter $30 million for a similar search agreement.

The agreement with Yandex will see Twitter’s data firehose appear both in Yandex’s blog search, as well as through a dedicated URL, twitter.yandex.ru.

The Yandex agreement is similar to the real-time Twitter search that used to be offered by Google — a partnership that ended last year around the time that Google was launching its own Google+ service.

Yandex says it has licensed the “full feed of all public tweets,” covering all languages — but seems to highlight specifically those tweets that are in Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian or Kazakh, covering tweets from more than two million users. People will be able to search by usernames and hashtags, too. In total, Twitter has around 100 million active users, covering some 250 million tweets per day.

This looks like Twitter’s first big deal with a Russian portal, and could point to more local partnerships of its kind — useful for Twitter extending its coverage and usefulness beyond its home market and English.

For Yandex, the Twitter deal gives the search giant — which currently has around 60 percent of the market in Russia — a leg up in its own strategy to do more in social networking: Yandex already offers people Google-like features to share news and other content and this will enhance that.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Blogging, eu, Facebook, Google, russia, Search, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, TC, Tweets, Twitter, Yandex

‘Go Away! Google Plus’ User Script Lets You Hide Google+

February 20, 2012 By Alexia Tsotsis Leave a Comment

Let’s say that you’re browsing the searchable web at your job, looking for some facts on some hot startup or whatever it is you get paid to do …

You’re sitting there web surfing, just going about your business on Google.com, and all of a sudden it’s like “Well gee I’ve got seven notifications on ~~Robert Scoble~~ Google+ … Well let me just click on this animated red button here …”

“Hmm … well look at this ‘hi sweet baby how r u’ comment some stranger has left on my last post [click] …” And boom, seventeen hours later you awaken deep inside the belly of the Google+ beast, with the crumbs from day-old Dorito taco shells crusted around your mouth and empty Merlot bottles strewn across the floor.

“FROM WHERE YOU ?” some random person from your “Public” circle asks from within your 20-person Google+ hangout. The answer is … “I DON’T KNOW.”

My point is that ~~my Presidents’ Day weekend~~ your whole Google+ K-hole could have been avoided, had I you used “Go Away! Google Plus” a user script that eliminates those pesky (and manipulative) Google+ notifications and requests to share plaguing you every time you visit a Google site, except for when you visit plus.google.com on purpose, of course.

The script can be installed directly from this page in Chrome and needs a Greasemonkey extension to work in Firefox, an extra plugin to work in Safari and what the hell are you doing using IE?

~~Now if you’ll excuse me I’m gonna go wash Doritos out of my hair.~~ Enjoy!

Image via Guanabee