Tag Archives: sales

Twitter to Spray Developers With the Coveted Firehose

Twitter announced that it will be opening up its data stream (otherwise known as the Firehose) in early 2010. This means the number of Twitter apps will skyrocket, and the potential for functionality in existing Twitter apps will be greatly increased. That means good things for developers, and most likely great things for Twitter. Twitter reportedly made this and several other announcements at the Le Web event in France. Other announcements involved a new developer site that will be launching soon, an increased rate limit for services that use OAuth, an API for browser-less apps to be launched in 2010, and an official Twitter-hosted developer conference called Chirp. The firehose would give developers access to the same spectrum of Twitter data that Google and Bing have access to, as Pete Cashmore points out . Twitter says there are already over 50,000 registered Twitter Apps so far. Imagine how many more will come out with such new possibilities made available. You can probably expect a lot of new "coolness" from our own Twitter-app Twellow , once we get access to the firehose, Twellow's lead developer Matthew Daines tells me. The firehose will mean a lot more accurate and real-time functionality for a lot of Twitter-related applications. With this, Google launching real-time results from Twitter and other sources, and announcements from other important companies , we're really going to be seeing the "real-time web" we've talked about so much start to truly take shape. On a related note, Twitter also stressed that it wants to become more transparent and communicate better with developers. In addition, the company intends to announce a business model that will involve "sharing money and success" with partners. If you thought 2009 was the year of Twitter, it looks like things are really going to get interesting in 2010. Related Articles: > New APIs Should Help MySpace Stay Relevant > Dell Attributes $6.5 Million In Sales To Twitter > Continue reading

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged apps, business model, coolness, daines, data stream, get-interesting, important companies, potential, review and story, sales, time web, twellow, twitter, twitter-apps | Leave a comment

Small Businesses And Social Media

Early this year, Burger King made waves with a "Whopper Sacrifice" Facebook app. Continue reading

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged bad luck, burger-king, dislike, facebook, laycock, long term relationships, omnipresence, sales, small-business, social-media, tabke, videos | Leave a comment

Yahoo and Microsoft Finalize Deal

Update: Continue reading

Posted in Business, Legal, Online Advertising, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged agreement, boomtown, finalize, license agreement, microsoft, october 27, rsquo, sales, swisher, week | Leave a comment

Google: Page Speed May Become a Ranking Factor in 2010

Over the course of 2009, a consistent theme that Google has been involved with is that of speed. In announcement after announcement, Google has talked about the importance of speed on the web, and how the company wants to do everything it can to make the web a faster place. Has it occurred to you that how fast your page loads may have a direct effect on how your site ranks in Google? Don't worry, it hasn't had an impact...yet. In an interview with WebProNews , Google's Matt Cutts told us that speed may soon be a ranking factor. "Historically, we haven't had to use it in our search rankings, but a lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast," says Cutts. "It should be a good experience, and so it's sort of fair to say that if you're a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus. If you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don't want that as much." > > Site speed ranking comments starts at the 02:35 point in the video... "I think a lot of people in 2010 are going to be thinking more about 'how do I have my site be fast,' how do I have it be rich without writing a bunch of custom javascript?'" he says. I would say that based on Matt's comments it is probably fair to assume that Google will indeed begin taking page speed into consideration as a ranking factor, although he doesn't come right out and say that they definitely will. That said, making your site faster is going to benefit your users and possibly your sales anyway, so you might as well start optimizing it for speed anyway. Then if Google really does start using this as a ranking factor, you will have a head start on boosting your rankings. Google has generally been pretty good at providing webmasters with tools they can use to help optimize their sites and potentially boost rankings and conversions. Google recently announced a Site Speed site , which provides webmasters with even more resources specifically aimed at speeding up their pages. Some of these, such as Page Speed and Closure tools come from Google itself. But there are a number of tools Google points you to from other developers as well. If you're serious about wanting your site to perform better in search engines, and you haven't given much thought to load times and such, it's time to readjust your way of thinking. Caffeine increases the speed at which Google can index content. Wouldn't it make sense if your site helped the process along? Have you given much thought to site speed? Is your site up to snuff? Discuss here . Related Articles: > Continue reading

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged google-provides, importance, page loads, sales, search, search people, seo, speed, video, webpronews | Leave a comment

Amazon and Walmart Engage in Price War Over Holiday Book Shoppers

Amazon and Walmart have been engaged in an online price war over holiday sales of bargain books. The whole thing began when Walmart announced that it would let customers preorder 10 of the most highly anticipated upcoming books for as little as $10 each. In a matter of hours, Amazon matched the price for all of the same books. Walmart then dropped the price to $9. Then Amazon did the same. After this, Walmart dropped the price to $8.99. At this point, even Target decided to get in on the action and also posted prices for the same books at $8.99 a piece. Then Walmart lowered its price by another penny. As a result of this price war, traffic to the product pages of these books jumped. The following graph from Compete shows you how. "Over the course of this war, interest in these books at Walmart has been fickle," says Compete's Debra Miller . "Despite lowering prices first, Walmart has been unable to unseat the online book king in terms of the number of people shopping for these books. Continue reading

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged amazon-launches, delivery-option, online, other-retailers, product, related, retailers, review and story, sales, walmart, walmart-brings | Leave a comment

Promote the Right Landing Page to Maximize Holiday Sales

With the holiday season on the way, online retailers are obviously going to be looking for big sales. A lot of retailers are turning to Facebook and Twitter to help in that department, but if you sell goods online, there's no better place to start than on the site itself. Amazon, probably the most successful online retailer there is, knows this, and that is one reason why it has prepared for an influx of holiday shoppers by creating its own Holiday Toy List . Amazon knows what people are going to be looking for , and it has put together this list to make finding these things as easy as possible . It's not just a list, but a page that points to these items. “The Holiday Toy List is a helpful tool for parents, friends and family members who are searching for the perfect toys for the kids on their list,” says Sarah Wood, director of the Toy Store for Amazon.com. “With navigation that’s simple, convenient and fun to use, it’s easier than ever to find great gifts at Amazon’s everyday low prices.” Not only has Amazon created the page, but they have promoted it . They have issued a press release for news organizations and bloggers to pick up, which should give the list plenty of coverage. It will likely lead to increased sales on popular items. Now, granted, not everyone can put out a press release and expect to get the kind of coverage Amazon does. Amazon's huge. Your online business is probably not quite so big. That doesn't mean you can't put special focus on the items you expect to sell the most during the holiday season and promote them in other ways. Continue reading

Posted in Business, Email Marketing, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged amazon-launches, Business, delivery-option, facebook, gifts-at-amazon, holiday, holidays, kids, list, online, related, review and story, sales | Leave a comment

Facebook Reminds Users How to Handle Death

If you've had a friend or loved-one die during the Facebook age, you may or may not have known that Facebook will memorialize their profile if you let them know about it. Facebook's Max Kelly reminded us of the fact in a post on the company's blog today. While the process has been around for a while, the company evidently thought it best to bring up because as Facebook recently redesigned its home page, a new feature was added that gives suggestions for "reconnecting" with old contacts. As Pete Cashmore pointed out over the weekend, a lot of people are getting suggestions for people they really don't want to reconnect with, and in some cases people who have died. Kelly talks about how the company was once faced with deciding what to do with the profile of a dead friend and co-worker. "The question soon came up: What do we do about his Facebook profile? We had never really thought about this before in such a personal way," he recalls. "Obviously, we wanted to be able to model people's relationships on Facebook, but how do you deal with an interaction with someone who is no longer able to log on? When someone leaves us, they don't leave our memories or our social network. To reflect that reality, we created the idea of 'memorialized' profiles as a place where people can save and share their memories of those who've passed." "We understand how difficult it can be for people to be reminded of those who are no longer with them, which is why it's important when someone passes away that their friends or family contact Facebook to request that a profile be memorialized," continues Kelly. "For instance, just last week, we introduced new types of Suggestions that appear on the right-hand side of the home page and remind people to take actions with friends who need help on Facebook. By memorializing the account of someone who has passed away, people will no longer see that person appear in their Suggestions." When a Facebook account has been "memorialized," Facebook sets the privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in a search. People are also prevented from logging into it, but it lets friends and family leave posts on the profile's wall as a memorial. This is something to consider if you ever lose someone who is a Facebook user. It also brings up a broader discussion about what to do with any social media profile, blog, or site when someone passes away. Do you think Facebook's profile memorialization is the appropriate way to handle the situation? Discuss here . Related Articles: > Continue reading

Posted in Business, Pay-Per-Click | Tagged Business, facebook, friend-or-loved, friends, google-advisor, memories, profile, review and story, sales, sievers-passes, social, suggestions, thought-it-best | Leave a comment