Twitter is the king of social media, a micro-blogging wonder that has swept the world leaving even the most ardent sceptic interested in how such a simple concept has become so addictive to such a large number of online users. Twitter has now acknowledged the launch of a new Geo-Tagging feature that will allow accounts to be filtered by location. Is this the beginning of a more community based Twitter experience? Could Twitter communities be based around local areas?

Twitter is adding an easy to use Geo-Tagging option to all Twitter accounts. Users will be able to update their location via an API. Developers will be able to tag latitude and longitude coordinates to all posts allowing real time, location based blogging.
“We’re gearing up to launch a new feature which makes Twitter truly location-aware. A new API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any tweet. Folks will need to activate this new feature by choice because it will be off by default and the exact location data won’t be stored for an extended period of time. However, if people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information. “ Wrote Biz Stone on the Twitter Blog.

I think what is particularly exciting is the possibility of generating real time opinion based content, which is not only current and user generated but also is based on a location. Imagine the possibilities, trending public opinion based on location, country and subject, simply amazing. The main issue is Privacy. Twitter have addressed this with the option to enable the service from within the user settings and all accounts will have the service turned off by default.

Potentially Twitter could bring back the voice of local communities, a modern day equivalent of a town meeting place. We have lost a key element of social living which made the UK great, maybe social networking could potentially reintroduce the concept of localised communities?

We will have to wait and see what amazing mobile applications are launched on the back of this new service. You have to wonder, will Google Latitude come into the equation and is this the first sign of a Twitter Google collaboration? We will have to see, but the prospects are very exciting.

Article by Creative SEO

Facebook have announced the launch of a new search facility which will allow users to search the last 30days of Real Time status updates for users who have public profiles.

“You now will be able to search the last 30 days of your News Feed for status updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared by your friends and the Facebook Pages of which you’re a fan. If people have chosen to make their content available to everyone, you also will be able to search for their status updates, links and notes, regardless of whether or not you are friends. Search results will continue to include people’s profiles as well as relevant Facebook Pages, groups and applications.” Taken from the Facebook blog.

Facebooks existing search is terrible and the news of a new real time search facility will be a great addition to the service and open Facebook to new opportunities. Our biggest concern is the content of the status updates. Unlike Twitter, Facebook is a very personal service; users tend to be a lot more open and personal with their individual status comments. With Twitter you are aware that you are Tweeting to your selected audience, it feels a lot more public, but with Facebook a user could be under the misconception that they were only Tweeting to their immediate friends, especially if the user has not correctly updated their privacy setting. This could result in personal status updates being publicly viewed. Obviously this is an existing issue with the service as it stands now, but a new search could massively increase this problem, bringing unwanted exposure to unknowing Facebook users.

Real Time search is a great addition to Facebook and we are really keen to test the service as soon as it’s available.

Article by Creative SEO UK

Google have today announced a new deal to acquire On2 Technologies, a leading video compression company that provides high quality video at high compression rates.

Google are committed to offering high quality, streaming video to both its Google Video users and its YouTube users. Google have talked about improving the quality of streaming video and adding further value to the user experience by providing more HD quality content.

High Quality streaming video is one of the many holy grails of the internet. Large file sizes and download rates restrict the existing technology from being available to every household, causing long and slow downloads and buffering. The higher the quality of the service, the faster the streaming and download times, the more likely web based video will integrate into consumer households.

If streaming web based video could potentially match High Definition quality television, with low file download sizes, let’s say HD at a minimum of 720p, more households would use the internet to watch and download content. This could potentially open a massive new market to Google for paid download and subscription based video and content through YouTube. The opportunity to provide advertising including video commercials at the beginning and end of content would potentially offer Google a very lucrative channel to resell advertising. Google have already signed a deal to provide Disney content on the YouTube network. As a user can you imagine being able to choose any film or video content and instantly watch and stream the content in real time at an HD quality directly to your home TV. No download time, no waiting, just click and watch. This same technology would help to improve mobile and handheld video content, providing mobile users with a greater array of streaming content without the need to download or buffer large files.

The deal with On2 outlines the importance of the technology and shows Google’s resolve to investigate the video compression further. The deal is subject to approval by On2 Technologies stockholders and the regulatory authorities.

The acquisition marks a clear commitment by Google to develop their existing video content, what Google have up there sleeves at this point in time no one knows, but as always it looks very exciting.

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It seems as though Yahoo have been getting there house in order after the recent announcement of the much anticipated Yahoo Bing partnership agreement. Already this week we have seen the update of Yahoo owned Delicious and now, close on its heels, Flickr search has undergone a facelift.

Flickr, one of the internet’s most popular image sharing communities, has undergone an update of its search facility. The changes have been designed to improve the user experience of the site and offer more relevant results to the user. Instead of scrolling through a massive list of images, the results are now displayed in a grid formation. This simple change dramatically improves the user experience and simplifies the process of search.

 

Another new addition is the ability to filter image search results by size, although a very simple interface it does offer new value to the user. Something we particularly like is the new information feature, if you hover over an image you will see a small “i” (information icon), clicking on the icon reveals image information including the number of views, comments, date added, favourites and associated tags.

Although the changes are only small it is great to see Yahoo paying an active interest in its website assets. The changes to Flickr improve the user experience, let’s hope Yahoo’s new interest in its products continues and we start to see some exciting new features developing.

Article by Creative SEO UK

Delicious.com, one of the forefathers of social networking, has been updated with a whole bunch of great new features. Finally Yahoo has taken the time to upgrade this ageing dinosaur with a set of fresh new features which embrace real time search, social sharing and provide more relevant information to its users.

Delicious has remained extremely popular with the online marketing community but its appeal to general users has been over shadowed by the likes of Digg, Stumble and Twitter. The “Popular” page generated massive amounts of traffic for anyone lucky enough to be part of the list but finding relevant information was always difficult for the average user. The new updates are set to improve the user experience and include a newly designed “fresh bookmarks” section, new sharing features and an improve search facility.



The most noticeable addition is the integration of Twitter content; you’ll notice that related tweets are now attached to bookmark listings. This is not just a great addition way of monitoring what people are saying about a bookmarked page, it is also an essential part of the ranking process for bookmarks. The new algorithm uses both Twitter and Delicious popularity to generate rankings, which it has to be said, seems a very intelligent method of gauging the importance of a topic. The biggest concern is the potential to spam and manipulate the ranking of Delicious bookmarks. Delicious will need to carefully monitor the ranking process in order to provide relevant results.

The new send tab allows users to login to their twitter account and share their bookmarks directly with their followers. Ok this really isn’t giving us anything new but it does help to improve the sites user experience.

The new and improved Delicious search is perhaps one of the more important updates to the site. The new search features a filter by tag option and displays a timeline of tag performance. This cool new feature could be used to identify tag trends or identify high popularity tags, a very popular addition which will be utilised by the marketing community.

Since Yahoo bought Delicious back in 2005 we have seen little if no major changes to the network. The new updates are an extremely important move by Yahoo to improve the quality of its assets in light of the recent Yahoo Bing partnership agreement.

What we can say is the changes are a massive improvement on the original platform and let’s hope this is just the beginning of a new interest in the development of Delicious by Yahoo.

Article by Creative SEO – Search Marketing Consultant