Zuckerberg's hearing in US Senate

If you are a marketing person or an entrepreneur then you got to watch Facebook's CEO - Mark Zuckerberg's hearing in US Senate. Key points:

• Violation or Exploitation of Privacy is not new. Google does it in bigger and better way and so is other social media platforms. It's just FB is caught. 
• Free service is never free. As the old saying "there is nothing free in life. Somebody is paying something somewhere". All the social media platforms or in that case many high tech firms - Ad network plays the major role in revenue generation.
• There is nothing that you can do about it. It's part of our lives, you cannot shut it down - but what needs is laws, guidelines and regulations. 
• It was interesting how Zuckerberg was answering the questions. He never went overboard or aggressive. Never flaunt with the ego of senators, show off "I know everything attitude".
• Most of his answers were diplomatic, and on the lines of finding solution rather than - I am the culprit or fight against the people.
• Good learning for every entrepreneur to deal and talk with government authority.
• Your data is never too safe. There are tones of loopholes. Having anonymity is next to impossible in today's world if you using bank account, mobile phone, internet etc.

Full video is available on youtube. Just search and you can find good link. 

Energy Demands from Cloud Computing Companies

Well Safecloudlocker.com is going to be a cloud storage business and thus while reading through this article, make me thinking as "How can we go green for backend servers and infrastructure".
Here is the report that can make us thinking...

If cloud were a country, its electricity demand would currently rank 5th in the world, which is ahead of India’s total electricity demand and this is expected to triple by 2020.
A recent report by Greenpeace slams big computing companies for using *dirty* energy to drive their cloud computing initiative.
As more people around the world use the cloud to store and share photos, videos, and documents, IT companies have to build more data centres –buildings so large they are often visible from space – that house thousands of computers and consume tremendous amounts of electricity. These cloud data centers consume a tremendous amount of electricity; some consume the equivalent of nearly 180,000 US homes or close to 1.8 million Indian homes.
Electronic devices and the rapidly growing cloud that supports our demand for greater online access are clearly a significant force in driving global energy demand. The report shares a few specific examples of how companies have used data center location to their advantage:
- Yahoo, US: Yahoo’s decision to locate in Lockport, New York, was connected to its ability to secure a substantial (15MW) allotment of hydroelectric power from New York Power Authority.
- Facebook, Sweden: Facebook built its third major owned and operated data center in Lulea, Sweden, a location chosen for the large amount of existing hydroelectric capacity at high availability. The data center can be fully powered with renewable energy
- An increasing number of cloud companies have begun to take charge of their electricity supply chain by signing long term contracts to buy renewable electricity from a specific source through a utility or renewable energy developer via a power purchase agreement (PPA) to help drive renewable electricity onto the grid.

Open publication – Free publishing – More climate change

Download the report (pdf) from here
[Source : Pluggd.in]

Its all about content baby.... Interesting

All the website entrepreneurs out there, read this very intersting artcile that I found on plugged.in.  In the fast pace world everyone wants to move ahead and were content is most important criteria esp. for some web domains. Just don't copy the most important part of your business referring to this case model - which is very common around India and I bet across the globe.
Zomato has published strong proof against Burrp accusing them of copying restaurant listing data from their site. From what it looks like, there is no excuse that Burrp team can really present for this. And as usual saying, “User submitted data” is as lame as it can get.
In nutshell, Zomato publishes their own number for some restaurants that they have up tie-up with. Burrp, as accussed by Zomato, while copying data, also copied this phone number and hence was easily caught.

We have been experimenting with a few business models and have for a few restaurants put our own phone numbers on which we take table reservations on behalf of the restaurant. These instances are very few in number (~1% of our database). So these numbers are our numbers, the restaurant staff doesn’t know about this and these numbers have no business showing up on some other website (even our API does not serve these numbers). Also, we have our own proprietary GPS systems which help us collect very very accurate (within 2 meters) GPS coordinates for restaurants listed on Zomato. So when these coordinates, until the 5th decimal point show up on some other website, we have a problem.
Now, we found a few such instances on Burrp.com; these instances are incomplete listings (they didn’t take our data which they thought would be proprietary), but these listings have our phone numbers and our GPS coordinates in them. Here is a screenshot:

Note: I have saved snapshots of these Burrp pages on Freezepage at these URLs:
Zinos on Burrp on Freezepage
Mangal’s Profile on Burrp on Freezepage
Btw, we found these listings by doing a simple “site:burrp.com 49422222” search on Google. 49422222 is a Zomato owned phone number in Delhi.
We have found multiple other such instances on Burrp.
Now, we have pointed out such issues to Burrp twice earlier and the response we got was:
“This was a user upload, we have nothing to do with this, we will take down the listing. Thanks for keeping an eye on us. And please don’t make a mountain out of a molehill. We maintain 150,000 listings, so we don’t bother about copying your data at all. We don’t do such things.”
Now, this is not a user upload. The ‘user’ who added this listing is a Mangal84, who has added 11052 listings to Burrp (yet) with 0 reviews (!). Clearly a Burrp employee, since May 5, 2009. More about it here: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mangal-shewale/23/519/867 or http://www.freezepage.com/1316835281MDMFHBHHQU
With user uploads, I can understand, shit happens. But even then, you just cannot pass off shit in the name of user uploads. It’s a well known fact that Burrp verifies and moderates every listing upload that is submitted on the website. How could such a thing get through the moderation and verification system? So, if it is indeed some users uploading Zomato data to Burrp’s servers, we strongly recommend that Burrp should either strengthen its moderation systems or shut down the sections of its business which they clearly cannot manage.
What I have not been able to understand is the map coordinates available for a few restaurants on their system. I don’t really think that a user would go to the extent of going through our source code, extracting the map coordinates and submitting them to Burrp. As far as I know Burrp doesn’t even have a facility to submit raw map coordinates. And I think there is only a one in a million chance that the user accidentally dropped a pin on a google map which is exactly the same as the super accurate coordinates collected with our GPS systems. I would like to give Burrp the benefit of doubt, but it is highly unlikely that a user is doing this. As shown above, its quite likely that a Burrp employee is behind all this scraping from Zomato.

This is not the first time that Network18 has been accused of data stealing, earlier JustDial had sued Askme for data theft and the latter was asked to shutdown as well. It seems Network18′s web presence is nothing but a content farm. Their in.com property is also known to be reproducing SEO rich content from all over web on connect.in.com. They are so sure they are violating copyrights that they have published a notice for Copyright Infringement Issues on all pages.
While there are strong and might we say ‘insensible’ laws being made around web publishing that even go on to restrict fundamental rights of speech, there is no action on mass infringement like these. You need to individually go fight cases. I wonder why Google’s Panda update hasn’t taken up on this. Though one remarkable thing here is that in.com was doing all this through help of Bing until now but now Bing’s logo has been removed.
On web where having data is major part of your product it seems people have taken it for granted. Earlier even Cleartrip has been accused of data theft by Travelocity. The case led to momentary arrest of Cleartrip’s CEO.

Plus coming up with Business Page and Games

Well yes we all are waiting from Google Plus to come out with its Business Page and Game Page. In my past article on "Google Plus for Business. Signup for testing the Business Pages " they said that they want everyone to hold on the business profiles and wait till the year end for an official Business page.

But things are moving fast and might be rolled out in next couple of months. Their is a high demand for the Business page from the Tech community.

Also if Plus wants to win the war against facebook, they need to have the Games page. I know many people who don't want to jump on Plus since they will miss their Farmville or other similar games. Thus Plus needs to get Games on board at earliest.

So here is the official news from Google Plus's Christian Oestlien



Also recently Google acquired two social gaming companies like Social Deck and Slide. Thus its just matter of time to see the gaming part of Google Plus.

Top 5 Social Media Automation Tools

Yes checkout the Top 5 Social Media Automation Tools that we use for our clients campaign.

1) Social Oomph :

Social oomph does just about everything, from scheduling tweets and Facebook updates, auto-following, auto-Direct Messaging, to managing multiple accounts and tracking activity related to your profiles.

2) Hootsuite :

Hootsuite is a slick collaborative “Social Media Dashboard”. That said, it’s much more than a dashboard with scope to manage multiple accounts, assign tasks to team members and track/monitor your presence.

3) Twitterfeed :

Twitterfeed is not just a feed for twitter as the name might suggest. It’s a great way for you to syndicate content (that’s available in a feed) to your other social media profiles…e.g. Your latest blog post shared on twitter, Facebook etc.

4) Gist :

I’m only new to Gist, but it’s already proving very useful. Gist combines the information you provide into consolidated Gist profiles. Then, Gist goes to work on your behalf aggregating sources like blogs, Twitter feeds, company information, and news articles from thousands of news providers.

5) Social Mention :

When it comes to tracking social media mentions of yourself, your company, your brand, your products or even your competitors, there’s no easier way than through Social Mention.

Now – there’s plenty more tools and automation services out there in “social media” sphere…
If there’s a FREE automation tool you use to streamline your social media efforts, share it with us via the comments below.

Source: ineeedhits

Also I am looking for a tool that would include google plus.. but on luck.

If you know any tool that works with Google Plus..please post.

Google Plus for Business

There’s a new social network on the block, and publishers and brands are scrambling to figure out how to use Google+ for business. When a social platform starts growing exponentially [personally, I already have 49 Google+ followers and it’s only been a week!], good marketers take notice and move in fast. However, social media marketers have hit a major roadblock with Google+ – there are no business tools. What’s a company to do?

We got word yesterday from Google+ Ads Lead Christian Oestlien – fittingly in a YouTube video posted on his Google+ profile page – about Google’s plans for business-oriented tools. Here’s what you need to know:

1. Don’t create a business page yet: Oestlien asked brands and business to hold off using consumer profiles to create a business identity on Google+. Using a personal profile for a company or brand violates the Google+ terms of service (much like Facebook’s policy). Google says it will be “actively working with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles,” although companies like Ford already have profiles which Oestlien himself has shared in his feed. In summary, create pages at your own risk until the proper tools become available.

2. Google+ business tools will be coming… sometime this year: Google engineers are currently working on separate business pages, which will include integration with other services like AdWords. According to Oestlien, the “business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses.” However, no time frame has been set for the deployment of these tools.

3. Apply to be part of the Google+ for business pilot: Google will be testing business features with a small number of users. You can apply to here: http://goo.gl/zq95C

The fact that Google+ has an Ads Lead is a hint of things to come; clearly Google intends to put some form of AdWords on the site, like it has with every other major Google property.

In the meantime, the Google+ rollout is having a massive effect on Google services across the web, and publishers, brands and businesses should take note. The Google 1+ button is has already been deployed on Google AdWords and search results. Publishers can (and should) add the 1+ button to their content, similar to “Tweet This” or “Share on Facebook” buttons. It is likely that these “votes of confidence” from users will show up on their Google+ profile pages and be integrated into Google’s search rankings secret sauce. In addition, Mashable reported that Google will rebrand Blogger and Picasa to bring them into the Google+ fold.

It took brands years to get on Facebook; a year or so to realize the value of Twitter. Clearly times have changed. What’s next for Google+? Stay tuned…

Orginal Article by Alexia Nielsen

What do Google execs know about Google+ privacy that you don't?

I finally made it into Google+, the new Facebook-like social service from Google that’s in “limited field trials” right now.

It has at least one useful but hard-to-find privacy feature that is disabled by default. How did I stumble across this setting? Simple: I looked at the Google+ profiles of top Google executives and engineers. Every single one of them has changed this default setting.

You can see the evidence for yourself by visiting a new website, SocialStatistics, that serves as a leader board for the new service. Does anything jump out at you from this chart?

Hmmm. The list of top 10 users, as ranked by the number of people following them, includes the two Google co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, along with Senior VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra, who runs the Google+ project. Google Engineer Matt Cutts is at #6 on that list.

Those four high-level Google execs and employees are all listed as having 0 Friends, whereas everyone else in the top 10 has lots of friends. Mark Zuckerberg has added 69 people to his Google Circles. Leo LaPorte has 330 friends, Bradley Horowitz has 748, and Robert Scoble has, as expected, thousands of “friends” after only four days.

If you go through the rest of the list, 12 of the top 50 Google+ members have 0 friends (the percentage is even lower if you look in the top 100). And more than half of those zero-friend people are high-level Google employees or company insiders like Gina Trapani.

What they’ve done is perfectly reasonable. In fact, once I saw this, I dug into the Google+ interface to see how they did it and made the same change to my own settings. Here’s the secret:

1. Go to your Google Profile and click Edit Profile.

2. Click the little globe icon to the right of the list of people in your circles.

That opens the dialog box shown here.

3. Clear the top check box to hide your circles completely, OR click Your Circles under Who Can See This? if you want to restrict access to this list to people who are in your circles. (I suspect this is what Page, Brin, et al. have done.) The globe changes to an empty circle.

4. Click Save to accept the changes and then click Done Editing to hide the privacy icon again.

There, you’ve just hidden the list of people you’ve chosen to follow on Google+.

My question is: If this setting is one that everyone on Google seems to feel is important for their privacy, why isn’t it the default for the rest of us?

Original Article by Ed Bott

Facebook Vs Google Plus

Yes..google plus is out. Everyone is talking about it and wondering who is better. Well here is the box comparison between the two and I guess time will predict the winner. But its going to be a tough fight.

Feature	Facebook	Google Plus
Groups	Facebook calls it Lists. Its not that user friendly and I have separated my coworkers with rest (as don’t want to share all the info with everyone) Rating: 2/5	Google plus calls it Circles. Its easy and user friendly – drag and drop. Actually its one of the main feature of Google plus. Rating: 4.5/5
Interest	Facebook don’t have any exact features of interest. But you can join Groups of specific interest and get the info. Again it can be useful info to rubbish. Rating: 2/5	Google Plus calls it Sparks. Again it searches various blogs and group over the web and helps you to keep watch on those. Good but not best. Rating: 4/5
Video Chat	Facebook just introduced their Skype feature. It is of great quality. But you won’t be able to watch Youtube videos. Rating: 3.5/5	Google calls it hangout. Nice feature and easy to do. You can do it with complete circles or just few friends. Rating: 5/5
Chat	Facebook’s very popular feature. It will allow on site users to chat. Also on mobiles its done thru various third party apps. Rating: 4/5	Google calls it Huddle. Can be easily done from iphone/android phones. Groups chat are also very easy. Google uses Gtalk of website chatting Rating: 4/5
Like something	Facebook have Thumbs up Like sign. Like is iconic. Rating: 4/5	Google has colorful +1 sign. Its new might catch up later. Rating: 2/5
Privacy Concerns	Facebook have an option of selecing different profile of different groups. But hardly anyone know it or uses it. It also non-user friendly. Rating: 2/5	Google lets you choose how your profile will look to others. Circles sharing makes profiles more private. Rating: 4/5
Brand/Company Page	Facebook has fan page. It is very popular and every other good brands wants to be on facebook and get more likes. Rating: 4/5	Google Plus yet to have this feature. I don’t think it will take long for them to add one. Need to wait and see Rating: 0/5
Users	Everyone is on facebook. They have first movers advantage. Lets see how they are holding the on. Rating: 4/5	Google Plus have all the gmail and other service users with them. It won’t be too hard to convert to google. But will take time and have to do well through the process. Rating: 2/5
Integrated Services	Facebook is a good social networking site. It needs to add multiple service like what they did with Skype to take on google. Rating: 2/5	Google is a mammoth. They have so many good services besides search engine that facebook needs to be on their toes to beat them Rating: 4/5
monline’s conclusion	Facebook is good and so far have done well. But need to really have more features and ties and one point integration tools to beat the beast.	Google needs to capture all the users of facebook and add be a one palace for your daily web access needs. Its not easy to change people mindsets (after people are used to with Facebook). It not easy but google has all the money and talent to beat the surprise billionaire.

Let me know your views.

Free eBook: 7 Google Tools to Improve Your Marketing Effectiveness

Google is a key player in the rapidly evolving landscape of Internet marketing. The search engine remains the dominant destination people land on when they do research, look for reviews and shop.

However, Google is not only a search engine. It also owns a range of assets that provide marketers with social networking and content creation opportunities.

Find out about some of Google's lesser known tools and learn how to use them for marketing your business. HubSpot's latest eBook will help you get started with 7 of these tools and improve your marketing effectiveness.

In this eBook you will learn how your marketing can benefit from:
1. Google AdWords
2. Google Docs
3. Google Keyword Tool
4. Google Alerts
5. Google News
6. Google Reader
7. Google Places

Download the Document here

39 Things You Should Know About Google+

Google+ is HOT rightnow. Well read on to get the highlights, let me know as what you think about google+.

1. Google+ is currently available on an invitation-only basis.

2. Google does not consider it a Facebook competitor (at least publicly).

3. Google+ is currently available for download as an app in the Android Market.

4. When you download that app, it splits off the "Huddle" feature as a separate app.

5. Users can post status updates, and these appear on the Google Profile under a tab called "Posts". The +1's and Buzz tabs remain separate. I have to wonder if we'll see Buzz and Posts merge eventually.

6. What is available now is "just the beginning" according to Google. These are just the first features or presumably many more to come.

7. Circles is one current feature. It lets you share things with different people (kind of like Facebook Groups) but with a very different user interface. Watch this video.

8. Another feature is Sparks. This looks for videos and articles it thinks you'll like, so "when you're free, there's always something to watch, read, and share." Filter Bubble anyone?

9. Hangouts is another feature. It's basically group video chat. Google describes it as "the unplanned meet-up."

10. Instant uploads is a mobile-specific feature. Photos upload themselves as you take them, and are stored in a private area on the cloud.

11. Huddle is another group-conversation feature for mobile. Essentially, it's group chat.

The Stream

12. The stream is basically the equivalent of the Facebook news feed.

13. When you share something with Google+ it's added to your stream and the stream of everyone you shared with.

14. The stream shows you what all of your Circles have shared with you.

15. If you mention a user, using the "+" or "@" symbols, the person may receive a notification that you mentioned them.

16. You can see who specific posts were shared with in the stream -- whether they were shared publicly, to extended circles, or a limited group.

17. You can filter the stream by specific Circles.

18. You can chat directly in the stream

19. You can report inappropriate content.

20. You can search for people from the search box at the top of the stream.

21. Soon, Google says you'll be able to search the stream itself from the search box.

22. If you leave comments on a post, you can edit or delete them.

23. The same goes for posts, but you can't edit a post's sharing settings after the post has been shared. However, you can delete the post and share again to different circles.

24. You can "reshare" posts made by others (like retweeting).

25. You can "mute" a post. This will let you stop receiving updates from a post, like if the comments get out of control for example.

The Google Social Network

26. You can use the "Google+ Bar" that appears at the top of various Google products as your connection to the social network.

27. When you're signed in you'll see your full name or email address displayed with a photo or avatar next to it, to help you identify which account you're currently signed in to.

28. If you've enabled multi sign-in you can sign in to two different Google accounts and switch between them using the Google+ bar.

29. When you sign up for Google+, you're also signing up for Picasa Web Albums, so all photos and videos uploaded to Google+ (including from your phone via Instant Upload) will also be available in Picasa Web Albums.

30. You can use the Google +1 button from the stream.

31. You can have a ton of friends on Google+. Robert Scoble quickly added over 1,000.

32. The central user interface is very Facebook-esque.

33. Google+ quickly became the butt of a lot of jokes (and even cartoons), but has also received a great deal of praise thus far.

34. With Google+ Google adds a "You" link to the recently redesigned (painted black) navigation bar across Google properties

35. You can view public Google+ content without actually being invited (Danny Sullivan has a guide on how to view it )

36. China is already blocking Google+. That didn't take long.

37. Invitations have been listed on eBay.

38. There are already privacy concerns about Google+ but the Privacy Guide can be found here.

39. According to the Financial Times article, you can share something within a closed "Circle," but somone from that circle can then reshare it with anyone, and even make it public.

List by Chris Crum

It’s clear that Zuckerberg sits on top of something that other leading companies want and they want it bad. After all, who wouldn’t want to get a piece of an almost billion person pie that is superbly ripe for monetized business and contextual marketing?

Last year, Steve Jobs tried his hand getting into the social/sharing game by infusing Ping into the iTunes offering. Jobs and Zuckerberg tried to get cozy over dinner early on but after eighteen months of trying to strike a technology partnership, it fizzled. Apple claimed that Facebook insisted on “onerous terms that we could not agree to” so they launched Ping without a Facebook tie-in. The Facebook/Apple relationship was further strained when Apple attempted to install Facebook’s public “Connect” login interface without inking a deal with Facebook first, so Facebook blocked them. After Ping’s launch, it never really took off. Why? Well, for a couple reasons. First off, we were already sharing music in a more open environment with sites like Blip.fm, which of course plugged right on into our Facebook and Twitter accounts no problem. Second, no one cares about Ping. Social media is based on a premise that goes against everything Apple’s business is about - sharing and openness. Why would the social media population adopt a social effort by a company that is already known for putting guard rails on everything in their ecosystem so that you do everything you do online but only on Apple’s terms?

Apple isn’t the only frustrated behemoth.

Google tries again with Google +1.

With the latest push of Google +1, Google’s own version of a “Like” button and their third attempt (remember Buzz and Orkut?)at riding the social media wave (pun intended), it’s clear that Google is still an engineering-centric company in their approach. They’re known for having some of the most intelligent brains behind what they do but their philosophy has always been “algorithm is king.” This is why Google is amazing at search. Algorithms are in their DNA. The problem they face with social network customers is that while Facebook’s backend might run on algorithms, its customers and the social media culture don’t.

Here’s why I think Google’s social efforts are gonna matter about as much Apple’s Ping did in social media:

1. The people have chosen their platforms. The mainstream isn’t interested in, nor has the time, to maintain multiple networks. Almost a billion people worldwide on are Facebook. Every new generation that comes online starts with their first email address and then signs up for Facebook. It was one of the highest priorities for my teenagers to get an account and they pushed me every month until they were 13 when I could legally cave. Just like the Starbucks appeal with a bazillion locations always packed with people looking for the same coffee experience over and over, people use Facebook so much that it has essentially defined what the social network experience should be.

2. People don’t want multiple “Like” buttons. If Google was really smart, they would’ve partnered with Facebook to allow Facebook’s own Like buttons to be part of Google search results instead of using their own. I think it actually would’ve worked out amazingly for both Facebook and Google. It could’ve been seamless AND familiar for content consumers and would have resulted in much more overlap traffic-wise for Google. Facebook is currently bedding with Microsoft/Bing though for their “web results” within their search results template so maybe the Google/Facebook love fest wasn’t possible to begin with. Honestly, I never click on Like-esque buttons that aren’t Facebook because the result of that action doesn’t go anywhere since all of my friends, family and business networking constituents are all on Facebook! If I “Like” a blog post on the Disqus network for instance, using their proprietary “Like” tab, no one but Disqus and those on the Disqus network really see what it is I liked unless I follow through with the two additional steps during the “Would you like to share” process in their widget to publish to Facebook or Twitter, hence my point.

3. Stick with what you know. Successful companies should avoid getting into online spaces that others already clearly own and are better at. Apple makes premium consumer technology products that work amazingly and integrate with our personal lives better than almost any other. Google is the master at search, having hired the world’s top engineers and data/behavioral scientists. Apple and Google should just stick to those and they’ll be fine.

Apple and Microsoft meet the personal computing needs of the people. Google and Bing meet the search needs of the people. Facebook and Twitter meet the online social needs of the people.

Let’s keep it that way.

Also check out…

The official Google +1 video on YouTube







Article by Rich Harris @ ZDnet

Yahoo's Apps Search for Mobiles

Realizing that mobile searches are increasingly taking over PC searches, Yahoo has introduced two new search tools to make mobile app searches a less tiring task.

Yahoo! App Search for the PC and the Yahoo! AppSpot for iPhone/Android will make it easier for users to browse through the thousands of mobile apps available on the iPhone Store and Google’s Android Market.

The Yahoo! AppSpot is a free mobile applet that allows users to locate and view a comprehensive description, snapshot, price and star rating of the apps.

The highlights of this tool are:

• Personalized Recommendations: A daily personalized recommendation regarding the apps you have recently searched
• Precise Results: Shows you the most relevant apps by matching the titles and keywords you type in during your search
• Related Apps: While searching for an appropriate app, you can now look forward to receive a list of several related apps within the “more apps you’ll love” section that best match your requirements
• At-a-Glance Shopping: You can see comprehensive information including price, overall star ratings, screenshots, and description on one screen instead of continual navigation through the screen
• Fast & Easy Downloads: Direct links to the specific apps on the Apple App Store or Android Marketplace will be provided to allow for a quick and easy download

The Yahoo! App Search is a computer-based version of AppSpot which can be found on the top panel navigation panel on the Yahoo! Site. This feature allows users to conveniently search and download apps to their mobile devices directly from a desktop. Users can search for an app by category, operating system (OS) or by simply typing the keywords into the search box.

It’s apparent that Yahoo! is trying to reclaim its dwindling existence in the search market and at the same time is adapting to the steadily evolving trend of mobile searches.

Have you tried either of these tools yet? If so, feel free to share your thoughts below.

Article by SearchNews

Are you scored as influencer on twitter?

Imagine a world in which we are assigned a number that indicates how influential we are. This number would help determine whether you receive a job, a hotel-room upgrade or free samples at the supermarket.
If your influence score is low, you don't get the promotion, the suite or the complimentary cookies. This is not science fiction. It's happening to millions of social network users.

If you have a Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account, you are already being judged -or will be soon.
Companies with names like Klout, PeerIndex and Twitter Grader are in the process of scoring millions, eventually billions, of people on their level of influence -or in the lingo, rating “influencers.“ Yet the companies are not simply looking at the number of followers or friends you've amassed.
Rather, they are beginning to measure influence in more nuanced ways, and posting their judgements -in the form of a score -online.

Influence scores typically range from 1 to 100. On Klout, the dominant player in this space, the average score is in the high teens. A score in the 40s suggests a strong, but niche, following.
A 100, on the other hand, means you're Justin Bieber.
On PeerIndex, the median score is 19. A perfect 100, the company says, is “god-like.“

How does one become an influencer?

After analysing 22 million tweets last year, researchers at Hewlett-Packard found that it's not enough to attract Twitter followers -you must inspire those followers to take action. That could mean persuading them to try Bikram yoga, donate to the Sierra Club or share a recipe for apple pie.
In other words, influence is about engagement and motivation, not just racking up legions of followers.

Article by Stephanie Rosenbloom in NYT

Free Holiday Picture Slide Show

Checkout http://tripwow.tripadvisor.com/

Tripadvisor have started a free service of slideshow with music from your holiday pictures. They have beautiful themes to go with your holiday settings like Beach, Family, Romantic, Outdoors, etc.

Also one can upload the pictures from their Facebook, Picasa, Flickr accounts or even MyComputer etc.

Moreover - the slideshow can be downloaded on the computer or DVD.

Overall, a good bet for your vacation photos. Try it out.

 

Monsoon in Lonavala Slideshow: Vivek’s trip from Mumbai, Maharashtra, India to Lonavla was created by TripAdvisor. See another Lonavla slideshow. Create your own stunning slideshow with our free photo slideshow maker.

Filters by the Websites on the internet

Very interesting session from Eli Pariser at TED Conference at Long Beach, CA in Feb.2011. He talks about the privacy and filters that are pulled upon us by the biggies like Facebook, Google, Netflix etc. Our clicking/surfing patterns are always interpreted by some complex algorithms and gives us a refined/altered/filtered data. Watch the video...its of good quality and short (9.05min).

Marriot International, Inc launches Facebook game as recruiting tool

Marriott International, Inc is launching a game on Facebook called ‘My Marriott’ which is to be used as a recruiting tool for approximately 50,000 positions this year, particularly in India and China. According to the company release, at My Marriott Hotel on Facebook, gamers will first manage a 'virtual' hotel restaurant-cum-kitchen before moving on to other areas of hotel operations. The game will be available in English, Spanish, French, Arabic and Mandarin. My Marriott Hotel is similar in concept to the Farmville and Cityville games.

“As Marriott expands in growth markets outside the United States, and as we seek to attract more Millennials – those between the ages 18 and 27 – to our workforce, we must find new ways to interest them in hospitality careers. This game allows us to showcase the world of opportunities and the growth potential attainable in hospitality careers, especially in cultures where the service industry might be less established or prestigious,” said David Rodriguez, Executive Vice President, Global Human Resources, Marriott International.

Launched just a month ago, Marriott’s Jobs & Careers page on Facebook has more than 12,000 active users and more than 270,000 page views. The most active users are from the United States, Egypt and India.

Article by Hospitality Biz India Staff

What will we be using facebook for in Five Years?

Facebook is estimated to have somewhere around 700 million users art this point. It was only 500 million when the marketing campaign for The Social Network launched last year.

How long until it reaches a billion?

Facebook is seeing a great deal of growth in countries like Brazil, Indonesia, Philippines, Mexico, Argentina, India, Columbia, Egypt, Turkey, and the UK. Facebook has become the top place for communication, photos, games, charity, and news for a lot of people already, and we’ve not even come closer to seeing the limit of what will be done using the social network. One of the interesting things about Facebook’s growth is that the more things people are able to do with Facebook, the more it is likely to grow still. And the company hasn’t even had an IPO yet.

We’ve seen plenty of glimpses into the future of Facebook – things that are being done on a modest scale, which will likely blow up in time (e-commerce, payments, videos, travel, etc.) As Facebook’s growth continues, more businesses are going to feel comfortable using it as a platform of operation, or at least as a major component of it.

E-Commerce

We’ve already seen e-commerce on Facebook increase over the last year or so, with more businesses setting up storefronts on Facebook itself, but I expect this to grow much more significantly over the coming years. It will be like selling merchandise through websites used to be. At first, many businesses didn’t offer their actual products through their sites, but now, most do. This will likely be the case on Facebook too, and it might not even take as long.

Most businesses have already recognized the benefits of at least having a Facebook Page, and given the ease of setting one up, compared to creating (and maintaining) a website, it’s not hard to see why wider adoption came so quickly.

We recently ran an article by Krishna De, who discussed nine tips to increase your social commerce success:

1. Have an attractive image for your store
2. Make use of your profile photo
3. Add a customized tab on your Facebook page
4. Incentivize your Facebook fans
5. Mention your Facebook Store in a status update
6. Test the Facebook Store out yourself
7. Consider using Facebook Ads to build awareness
8. Mention the launch on your site
9. Encourage people who purchase to leave a recommendation

Identity

Identity is the key to everything Facebook does, and is a major component in every business, app, and website that associates itself with Facebook. It’s all about personalization, and last year when Facebook launched its Instant Personalization features and social plugins for websites, it truly took over the web. Today, you’d be hard pressed to find a credible website that doesn’t have some kind of Facebook integration, even if it’s as small as simply the use of a “like” button.

Despite privacy concerns from many users, they still continue to use Facebook, and using Facebook they can log into and interact with other sites and apps, without having to create a separate account. It ups the convenience factor significantly, and reduces friction. This will continue to be key for future endeavors, and every facet of Facebook usage, whether that be paying for goods online or off, playing games and keeping your records, getting personalized news, keeping personalized music playlists, or whatever else.

Facebook faces competition from companies like Google and Twitter (more so now with Twitter’s integration into Apple’s iOS 5) in the area of identity, but Facebook has a huge lead here, particularly in how it relates to personalization and actual friend-related data.

Of course, you still need an email address to have a Facebook account.

Payments

It is the identity aspect of Facebook that lends it to payments. With Facebook Credits, the social network has its own currency, which one can easily envision becoming a widely adopted and acceptable form of payment given the rise of innovation in the mobile payments space for the physical world, the fact that so many sites are integrated with Facebook in the online world, and the fact that every business already wants you to “like us on Facebook”.

Imagine going to McDonald’s or Sears, and tapping your phone on a device at the register to pay with your Facebook Credits.

By the way, Facebook Credits will reportedly work with iTunes apps too.

Travel

There are 107 apps currently on Facebook listed under “Travel,” and that’s just internal Facebook apps – apps you access while on Facebook itself. That doesn’t include the Facebook integration Travel sites all over the web are employing. Look at what Delta Airlines is doing, for example. Its Ticket Counter app lets users check in online and access their boarding pass on Facebook within 24 hours of their departure. It also lets you check flight status, view trip details, and view skymiles.

Travel is just one aspect of life where the ubiquitousness of Facebook comes in handy, as those catering to that aspect (like Delta) are able to take advantage of your Facebook ID to provide you with a helpful service.

Given Microsoft and Facebook’s relationship, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more Facebook and Bing Travel integrations over time either.

Search

Speaking of Bing, and its partnership with Facebook, don’t be surprised to see Facebook become a much bigger part of the search market picture. Facebook has data that search engines crave already. Personalization is the name of the game, and nothing on the web can come close to delivering the kind of personalized experience Facebook can to those that use it.

We’ve talked at length about Facebook’s potential in search in the past, so I’m not going to go on and on about it here. I’ll simply give you a link or two. But suffice it to say, Facebook is very relevant to search, and search is very relevant to Facebook. It will be even more so, as more businesses and people flock to the social network.

Advertising

Businesses are already recognizing how powerful Facebook ads can be. I expect Facebook Ads to continue to grow as a more popular place for companies to advertise. The targeting based on all of the data Facebook has about users is simply too great.

Just this week, MerchantCircle put out results of a survey finding that 22% of local merchants have used Facebook ads, and two-thirds of them intend to do so again. That’s as they stand now. You have to consider that Facebook is going to continue to make new features available over time, and find ways to make ads even more attractive to advertisers. It’s highly unlikely that they think their work is done, and that they’re not going to improve.

That goes for Facebook as a whole, by the way. There’s no telling what Facebook and its pool of top engineering talent will come up with in time, that nobody’s even considered yet. Look at everything Google’s done in the last decade. Who knows what Facebook will have its hands in another ten years. By the way, much of that top talent has come from Google.

Entertainment

Obviously games are already an enormous part of Facebook use for a lot of people. One can’t help but wonder if it has even played a part in the cancellation of certain soap operas. Movies and music may be poised to make up an even greater part of the puzzle as well.

As you may know, Warner Bros. has already been testing Facebook movie rentals. You go to a fan page for a movie, and then, you can rent the movie from right there. It’s not at all hard to imagine this becoming commonplace in the industry.

Facebook has also been talking with various music services, according to reports. The product of these talks is rumored to be a tab/widget that would display a user’s most-played songs and provide an easy way for friends to hear them. People are already sharing music on Facebook all the time, whether that be through a YouTube video, a SoundCloud file, or other formats, and bands are already connecting with fans through their Pages.

Musicians are even charging Facebook credits for on-demand concert streams.

News

People are already getting a lot of their news from Facebook, and Facebook has been placing more emphasis on this side of things itself. If you’re doing all of these other things with your Facebook account, it only makes sense that you would get at least some of your news through this venue as well, by “liking” publications’ Pages, which share links and notes about stories, and through posts that Friends find worth passing on (including through Facebook’s social plugins – like the “like” button or the newer “send” button).

A couple months ago, Facebook announced the launch of new journalist resources and a series of events for journalists to come together and find new ways to better harness the social network for their craft. Of course Facebook has played a significant role in creating the news as well (see recent revolutions).

Acquisitions

Looking at Facebook’s list of recent acquisitions can give us hints as to what the company might be up to, though as they are often geared toward talent rather than product, we can only speculate until we see results. Recent acquisitions from Facebook include:

- Drop.io (file hosting and sharing)
- Rel8tion (mobile advertising)
- Beluga (group messaging)
- Snaptu (mobile app development)
- DayTurn (infographics)
- Sofa (mac apps)

What Will We be Using Facebook For in Five Years?

This is where I’d like to call upon feedback from our readers. I’m sure I’ve barely scraped the surface of what the future truly holds for this increasingly powerful company. I want to hear some ideas from you about what you think we’re in for. So, I ask you: what will people be using Facebook for five years from now, that they aren’t already using it for? What would you like to see Facebook do in the future that it doesn’t already do? What would you like to see it stop doing?

Article by Chris Crum. Twitter: @CCrum237

Visit monline.in for your social media marketing needs.

Blogger vs. Wordpress.com Comparison Chart - 2011

Well back to the same old story. Is Blogger better or Wordpress. I have Blogs on both the sites. I am running a general personal blog on blogger - http://daavpani.blogspot.com/ and my this site - http://www.monline.in is made and developed in Wordpress.

Thus I was looking for a comparison between both of them and here I found a wonderful article at http://pulsed.blogspot.com/2007/07/blogger-wordpress-chart.html by kPulsed. Check

My personal conclusion: Blogger is good if you have a non-commercial blog/website. But if you having a domain name and hosting and want to host your blog and site then Wordpress has the upper hand. Thus check it out and decide you self as what fit for you.

- Vivek Bhalavat

In the following chart features at Blogger (blogspot.com) and Wordpress.com are compared. These are the two main contenders for free blog hosting. Features which are clearly better at either BlogSpot or Wordpress have been highlighted. Widgets are listed in another summary table after the features list. If you have your own website with PHP/MySQL support, you can download and use WordPress with no restrictions (get it here).

Updated June 2011.

Feature	Blogger.com	Wordpress.com
Themes and customization	Blogger has introduced a collection of easy-to-customize templates with Google Web Fonts. Earlier templates can still be edited, but don't have all the features. New: Mobile Templates.	No template editing. Style sheet editing is only available as a paid upgrade. Many of the 100+ themes let you upload a header image. Some have additional customization options.
Visitor stats	Built-in dashboard stats (more info). You can also include third party tracker scripts — or any type of script.	No scripts allowed. The admin dashboard shows 2 days of stats and daily, weekly and monthly charts.
Import	Only from another BlogSpot blog.	Import from Blogger, Yahoo! 360, Type·Pad, MovabIe·Type, Blogli, Israblog, Posterous, Vox.com, Live·JournaI or another WordPress blog.
Image storage	1 Gigabyte. There is no interface to browse through the images unless you sign up for Picasa Web Albums.	3 Gigabytes. Paid upgrades are available to add more space. You can also upload .ppt, .doc, .odt and .pdf files (more file types with an upgrade).
Galleries	You can use Picasa Web Albums.	Simply add the tag to any post or page (more info).
Static pages	Blogger allows up to 10 static pages to be created (more info).	Create posts or 'pages'. Static pages are listed in separate menus.
Categories	'Labels'.	'Categories'.
Post excerpts	Expandable post excerpts (more info).	Post excerpts with a "more" tag.
Post by email	Submit your posts by email. You can receive new posts by email too (helpful for team blogs).	Submit your posts by email. Images can be attached (more info).
Contact forms	Not available. You could add a third-party contact form, however.	Simply add the tag [contact-form] to any post or page or use advanced features.
Domain names	Free domain name mapping (more info).	A paid upgrade is required to map a custom domain.
Private blogs	You can restrict access to invited Google account holders.	You can restrict access to 35 invited Wordpress account holders (unlimited with a paid upgrade). Alternatively, individual posts can be password protected or Private.
Team blogs	Administrators and non-administrators only.	Administrator, Editors, Authors & Contributors. Option to receive post changes by email.
Comments	Visual confirmation, spam filtering and moderation options, but no editing of comments.	Moderation, comment editing and Akismet spam protection.
Widgets	See the next table.

Blogger comments:

Visitors can preview comments. They can also choose to receive follow-up comments by email. However, the embedded Comment Form option is entirely dependent on JavaScript. Spam filtering is now available as an alternative to moderating every comment.

Wordpress comments:

In 2009 Wordpress.com added follow-ups by email and comment threading options. Wordpress has more comment options than Blogger, but there have been problems with Akismet spam protection. See this post on the WP user forum...
http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic.php?id=16584

Widgets compared:

BlogSpot Widgets	Description
Add a Gadget	Software applications that do cool things. There's an extensive menu in the sidebar.
Popular Posts	Displays a list of popular posts on your blog.
Blog stats	Displays your blog's visitor count.
Pages	Displays a list of stand-alone pages on your blog. You can create up to 10 pages.
Followers	Displays a list of users who follow your blog.
Search Box	Search over your blog, your blogroll and everything you've linked to.
HTML/JavaScript	Add third-party functionality or other code to your blog. [ i.e., any third-party widget]
Text	Add some words to your blog - like a welcome message - with our rich text editor.
AdSense	Earn revenue by displaying relevant ads on your blog.
Picture [for the sidebar]	Add a picture from your computer or from somewhere else on the web.
Slideshow	Add a slideshow of your photos to your blog.
Video Bar	Clips from YouTube and Google Video for readers to watch without leaving the page.
Poll	Survey your visitors by adding a poll.
Blog List	Show off what you read with a blogroll of your favourite blogs.
Link List	Add a collection of your favourite sites, blogs or web pages.
List	Add a list of your favourite books, films or anything you like.
Feed	Add content from an RSS or Atom feed to your blog.
Newsreel	Automatically add current headlines from Google News to your blog. (see an example)
Labels [categories]	Show all the labels of posts in your blog.
Subscription Links	Let your readers easily subscribe to your blog with popular feed readers.
Logo	Choose from a variety of Blogger logos to add to your page.
Profile	Display information about yourself. [Wordpress blogs have an "About" page]
Blog Archive	Display links to older posts.
Page Header	Display your blog's title and description.
Wordpress.com Widgets
Akismet | Archives | Authors | Author Grid | Blog Stats | Blog Subscriptions | Box.net file sharing | Calendar | Categories | Category cloud | del.icio.us | Flickr | Gravatar | Image | Links | Meebo | Meta | Pages | Recent Comments | Recent Posts | RSS | RSS Links| Search | SocialVibe | Tag Cloud | Text | Top Clicks | Top Posts | Top Rated | Twitter | Vod:Pod Videos

In addition, WordPress shortcodes are widgets for individual posts.

Theme choices

Blogger has introduced new, easy-to-customize templates. Earlier templates can be modified, or you can install a third party theme. Make sure that third party themes have the latest layout tags.

Although the Wordpress.com collection of 100+ themes sounds like a lot, finding features you might want is a challenge. Customization options are limited unless you pay for an upgrade that allows stylesheet editing. Wordpress.com uses a scheme called Typekit for changing fonts, while Blogger offers a straightforward method to choose between standard fonts (in addition to standard fonts there are Google Web Fonts). Both systems have Mobile Templates.

WordPress theme browser: http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/

Ongoing improvements

The WordPress team frequently add new features and themes, and since the new BlogSpot publishing system was rolled out in 2006, the Blogger software team have added new features too. Visit the developer blogs to find out what's new:

• http://en.blog.wordpress.com/
  
• http://bloggerindraft.blogspot.com/
  

Conclusion

In 2007, I wanted to find out what was on offer in terms of free blog hosting. Before that, Blogger was looking stale, and Wordpress.com didn't have nearly as many themes or features as it does now. I chose Blogger, and this was my first post. If Wordpress.com allowed stylesheet editing without having to pay, and visitor stats comparable to the tracker scripts you can obtain for free, my choice would have been Wordpress.com for sure.

Facebook Fan page VS Website

Q: I’m a small business entrepreneur, and I’ll be introducing a consumer product soon. Should I create a website for my company or a Facebook fan page?

A: I faced a similar question a few weeks ago for my book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions. I had three options: create a site for the book, add a section for the book to my existing website, or create a Facebook fan page.

After five minutes of thoughtful deliberation, I decided to add a bare-bones section to my website (which I haven’t gotten around to do yet—which should tell you something) and create a Facebook fan page but not to create a website for the book. Here’s why I did not choose a website:

1. I’m busy. Designing a website is a big deal. I can’t create one by myself so this means I’d have to find a company to do it or impose on my friends. A template or canned package would never make me happy, so I’d end up spending mucho time interacting with whoever is building website for me.

2. I’m impatient. I like to go from idea to implementation in a week or two. From start to “finish” (if a website is ever finished), it’s hard to make a website happen in two weeks.

3. I’m cheap—and picky. The good news about a website is that you can make it do anything. The bad news about a website is that you can make it do anything—as long as you pay for it. I wanted a site that can engage people by letting them discuss the book, post pictures and video, take quizzes, and enter contests. A website can do all this if you’re willing to pay thousands of dollars.

4. I’m realistic. Let’s say that I got beyond the laziness, impatience, cheapness and pickiness and somehow obtained a great website. The next challenge is getting people to visit it. Sure, I’d put the Facebook “Like” button, Tweetmeme “Retweet” button (disclosure: I invested in Tweetmeme), or Twitter “Tweet” button on it, and I’d blog and tweet the hell out of it, but the building traffic is still hand-to-hand combat.

By contrast, here’s my experience with a Facebook fan page:

1. Instant gratification. You get 25 friends, a Facebook vanity username, and boom, you’re in business. It’s still easier to get a Facebook vanity URL than a good domain name. Either that or God was with me a few weeks ago because Facebook.com/enchantment was available when I looked.

2. Built-in functionality. The social networking functionality you’d want on a website is built into Facebook: commentary, discussion, visitor posting of photos and videos, and reviews. This means you don’t have to figure out how to add this functionality to a website or pay someone to add it for you.

3. Limited flexibility. Facebook fan pages don’t provide the total flexibility of a website, but that is an advantage for people like me because it prevents us from going nuts with features and design. Basically, there are tabs and sub-tabs to play with. A side benefit is that people don’t expect a unique/cool/whatever website because they see that all Facebook fan pages have a similar look and feel. As my boss at Apple, Mike Murray, used to tell me, “Discipline sets you free.”

4. Flexibility. Within the limited flexibility of Facebook, however, there is substantial flexibility. You can choose from hundreds of Facebook apps to add functionality. If you can’t find what you want, then you can ask someone who knows a lot about Facebook like Mari Smith to recommend a developer. That’s what I did, and she sent me to Hyperarts Web Design. Two weeks and $2,000 later, you’d have a custom looking Facebook fan page that looks like this. I would have had to spend more than $2,000 just to buy the domain that I wanted for a website.

5. Curation. Facebook is a more curated environment than the wide-open web. People have to join Facebook, and most people care about their identities and reputation. You can also block orifices and complain to Facebook about them. On the web, it’s much easier for anyone to litter your website with trashy comments, photos and videos, and it’s much harder to get rid of them too. For the better, Facebook is a controlled environment.

6. Inherent spreadability. The best part of Facebook is that there are, depending on who you believe, about 400 million members. In other words, if Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest in the world—behind China and India but ahead of the United States. Every time people do something on your fan page, they spread the word about it to their social contacts. This is the holy grail of marketing: unconscious word-of-mouth advertising! I like this a lot better than hoping people will click on a “Like” or “Tweet” button on a website or forward a website’s URL in an email.

Here’s a tip for you. I discovered that you can create a “reveal” Facebook tab. This is how it works: People must “like” the page in order to see its content. I did this with the PDF version of my first book, The Macintosh Way. If people “liked” this page, they were presented with a link to download the book for free. It generated thousands of fans. If you have something you can give away such as a PDF, song, or discount coupon, you should try this.

7. Gratification. I’m a shallow person: I like to increase the number of followers on Twitter and fans on Facebook. Just as there are only two kinds of people on Twitter (those who want more followers and those who are lying), there are only two kinds of companies with Facebook fan pages: Those who want more fans and those who are lying.

I find that getting fans on Facebook is more gratifying than getting followers on Twitter for two reasons: first, on Facebook you pretty much know that a person made a manual decision to “like” your page. You’re never sure on Twitter if your new followers are bots, spammers, clever manipulation of Twitter’s database, or 50-year-old men with a 18-year-old, hot-babe avatar. Second, the follower count on Twitter for anyone who was on the Suggested User List is meaningless. The number of Facebook fans is a much more accurate proxy for the quality of your fan page interactions—or the offer on your “reveal” page.

8. Free. It’s hard to argue with free. I’ve paid nothing to Facebook for all the wonderfulness that it’s provided me. In fact, I would be happy to pay Facebook just as I would be happy to pay for my use of Twitter because both companies provide such valuable services. Until Facebook asks me to pay, I’m more than willing to let it run ads on my fan page. I don’t even want a cut of the ad revenue—keep it, Facebook, you earned it.

What are the dangers and disadvantages of a Facebook fan page strategy vis-a-vis your own website? There are some:

1. You are supporting Facebook’s inexorable ascension to worldwide domination. Is this different from using Windows? (Something I don’t do.) Or buying an iAnything from Apple? (Something I do quite regularly.) I’d rather ride a tsunami than build my own sand castle. Heck, if Facebook helps my book and your product succeed, maybe it deserves to achieve worldwide domination. I don’t care if Mark Zuckerberg is a punk or if Facebook is leaking my data (What is it going to leak—that I like hockey?). All I care is whether Facebook works as a marketing platform. “It’s not personal. It’s just business.”

2. You’re putting all your chips on Facebook. This is true. If Facebook pulls a “MySpace,” your fan page might disappear one day. The odds are, however, that my book will go out of print before Facebook dies. If it does go out of print, then the fate of Facebook won’t matter. On the other hand, if the book achieves critical mass (hopefully, in part because of its Facebook fan page), it won’t matter if Facebook dies. In other words, I don’t care if Facebook implodes as long as it doesn’t implode right away. It won’t.

If you have a long-term corporate perspective as opposed to my short-term, product-introduction orientation, then Facebook’s longevity is a serious consideration. But in the long term, we’re all dead anyway, and you can always start with a Facebook fan page and create a website later as your sales ramp up.

3. Gurus will tell you that won’t get the black-magic SEO juice, brand awareness, inbound links, street cred, etc. of a website. Also true. But then again I can allocate the time, effort, and money that I’m not investing into making a website into other efforts to make the book successful. When all is said and done, either a product sells or it doesn’t. I doubt that the cause of failure will be using Facebook instead of a website although I am betting that using Facebook will help make my book more successful than using a website.

Here’s some inspiration to look at to get your fan-page juice flowing: Starbucks (17 million fans!), The Wave and Mari Smith. These were the sites that I looked at when making my decision. For you, the bottom line is that if you’re small business owner who is busy, impatient, cheap, picky and realistic (shallowness is optional) and want to ride a tsunami rather than roll your own sand castle, then it’s time to consider a Facebook fan page instead of a free-standing website. Kawabunga!

Answer by OPEN Forum's expert Guy Kawasaki.

Also checkout this video by Change for a Dollar