Digital Marketing Forum

As many of you are probably aware, DaniWeb was hit hard by Google's Panda algorithm update back in February. A news story written by Davey entitled [url=http://www.daniweb.com/internet-marketing/search-engine-optimization/news/350575]Google Farmer Update: what went wrong?[/url] explained that the February 24th Panda algorithm targeted at content farms literally cut DaniWeb's US traffic by half. …

A number of the nation's biggest media sites were hit with a lawsuit last week, claiming that they are violating federal eavesdropping and hacking laws by using "zombie cookies." [ATTACH=right]16245[/ATTACH]The technology, created by Quantcast, allows sites to use Adobe's Flash player to reproduce tracking files, even after a user has …

I have always thought of Google as being a search engine for everyone, that's part of the appeal. So when the development team behind a web portal for 'mature users' contacted me about the launch of a new search engine specifically designed for the older user I was a little …

Social networking site [URL="http://www.friendster.com"]Friendster[/URL] is going to get an overhaul under its new owner [URL="http://www.molglobal.net"]MOL Global[/URL]. Commentators including the [URL="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/aug/18/socialnetworking-facebook"]Guardian[/URL] in the UK have reported that the site will become a games portal, putting it on less of a head-to-head footing with its main rival, [URL="http://www.facebook.com"]Facebook[/URL]. You could predict that …

Is the press release dead? Earlier this month, Esther Schindler [URL="http://tinyurl.com/6e5rmu"]wrote in her You’re the Boss blog [/URL]that “PR is broken. Social media might, [I]might[/I] glue some of the parts back on.” To test this supposition, I spoke to David Meerman Scott, who is the author of the bestselling book …

[ATTACH=RIGHT]22416[/ATTACH]A group of social media experts meeting at Microsoft's London offices has warned that social media is more than just a numbers game and for marketing campaigns to succeed, business must understand how a blend of creativity and science drives it. The round robin event featuring social media experts from …

Forget the Windows 7 launch, the real big news from Microsoft this week is that it has reached a deal with Twitter to include real-time tweet data in Bing searches. If that wasn't excitement enough for the Twitterati, just a few hours after Microsoft made its announcement Google joined in …

A funny thing happened this week. Google tried to become Bing by displaying full color pictures on its Home page, and was undone by a bug. The irony here is just too obvious to ignore. Bing influences Google to change its plain white page, and it comes apart because of …

Probably the most common Olympic Games 2012 scam is that of unofficial ticket sales. No great surprise there, but the fact that Google appears to be in on the act might come as a shock to many. So what, exactly, is going on? [ATTACH=RIGHT]23779[/ATTACH]A little known law in the UK …

Recent movie trailers have previewed the upcoming film [I]The Social Network[/I], directed by David Fincher and produced by Sony. "You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies," the movie's tagline declares, but the movie's already made a few enemies itself. In fact, Sony discovered it can't …

Imagine this: You go to your local 7-11 convenience store, and you’re at the counter to buy a coffee. You realize you forgot your wallet or pocketbook in the car and all you have is your phone on you. Your phone happens to be a smart phone with the required …

On the evening of 24th February, Google Principal Engineer Matt Cutts promised that a newly [URL="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html"]tweaked search algorithm that impacted on 11.8% of search queries[/URL] (an absolutely massive change to the way that search works, in other words) would "reduce rankings for low-quality sites which are low-value add for users, …

[ATTACH=right]16169[/ATTACH]Today on [URL="http://news.google.com"]Google News' Top Stories front page[/URL] you could find plenty of coverage of the ruling allowing the [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story299633.html"]"jailbreaking" of iPhones[/URL] as well as some discussion of the soon to be released update of the Android operating system and continued skepticism about Microsoft's upcoming Phone 7. Just above most …

Ask a group of 100 people how they search for images online and the chances are that the vast majority will give the standard 'Google' response. Indeed, Google Images is a useful search engine if you are satisfied with a scattergun approach to finding all images that match a specific …

[ATTACH=RIGHT]16523[/ATTACH]Skype, the Luxemborg-based internet video phone service, filed for its initial public offering (IPO) on Monday (August 9) to list on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The value was tentatively set at $100 million, a number analysts suggest is merely a rough estimate set to help the Securities and Exchange Commission …

[ATTACH=RIGHT]21542[/ATTACH]Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg announced today that there are going to be a few changes to Facebook. The big story is that Facebook has teamed up with Skype to deliver video chat so that you can talk to your friends through Facebook. This is no surprise considering the partnerships Facebook …

[ATTACH=RIGHT]21691[/ATTACH]“Your PC may be infected” says Google, which has taken the unusual step of [URL="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/using-data-to-protect-people-from.html"]warning users[/URL] that a couple of million or so of them have most likely been taken in by a fake AV scam. According to a post on the official Google blog by security engineer Damian Menscher, …

Sometimes you see a press release that's just company puff. Other times you find something you weren't expecting - like the revelation that 46% of the UK's smallest businesses don't have a website, according to [URL="http://press.1and1.co.uk/xml/article;hsessionid=ac170c23hPUPCtPdReCSi1kPQvlF3gQG?article_id=766"]1&1 Internet.[/URL] The initial reaction is to start making excuses. If they're very small then …

Anyone who uses Twitter, and has at some point posted a link to something interesting, will have almost certainly used a URL-shortening service such as bit.ly for example. Now the spammers are exploiting the popularity of such link-reduction services by establishing their own fake URL-shortening services in order to redirect …

What do you, dear reader, call a posting on Twitter? I'm guessing the chances are high that you call it a tweet, like pretty much everyone else I know. Apart from the editorial elite at the New York Times that is, which has just banned the word 'tweet' from being …

Facebook users have been making a lot of use of the new 'like' feature which allows users to link to webpages that they, well, like funnily enough. Not so funny when Facebook users are claiming to like a site called "101 Hottest Women in the World" which features an image …

[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg"]Mark Zuckerberg[/URL] famously started Facebook in his dorm room. He's a geek who got lucky and today he is the CEO of a major corporation. Judging from his actions over the last year or so, I'm wondering if he's really suited to this job. He has little tact when speaking …

Music sharing with Facebook friends just became easier, and if that isn't enough to distract you, how about a game of Internet pinball? Two manufacturers are banking that these innovations will keep Facebook users entertained 24/7. Facebook users that subscribe to [URL="http://www.thumbplay.com/"]Thumbplay Music's desktop app[/URL] can combine it with iTunes …

The media seems to have been a-buzz this week following the release of the top search terms from 14.6 million searches picked up by parental control service OnlineFamily.Norton - mainly because it 'revealed' that kids are searching for sex online. I am a parent myself, of young kids, and while …

Last week, Google's [URL="http://www.google.com/corporate/execs.html#marissa"]Marissa Mayer [/URL]and [URL="http://www.google.com/corporate/execs.html#eric"]Eric Schmidt [/URL]appeared in separate interviews on the [URL="http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10129"]Charlie Rose [/URL]show, and not surprisingly they spoke in one voice where privacy and trust were concerned. They both said that when we use online services, we give up privacy in the process. There it is …

We all know what Web 1.0 was about. Essentially that's when the web was born and we were able to retrieve information from various sites. Web 2.0 changed the whole dynamic of how we use the internet as end users allowing us to store data, software applications within the browser, …

Many bloggers have tried to find a business model for blogging, but Steve Gibson's figured out a way to make money off the bloggers themselves. He relies on suing them. Gibson is CEO of Las Vegas company [URL="http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/copyright-trolling-for-dollars/"]Righthaven[/URL], which purchases the copyright to newspaper content and then sues bloggers and …

[ATTACH=RIGHT]16416[/ATTACH]This Friday, Google will announce its acquisition of [URL="http://www.slide.com/corp/index.html"]Slide[/URL], for $182 million. Earlier this year, Slide was [URL="http://www.fastcompany.com/mic/2010/industry/most-innovative-web-companies"]named one of the ten most innovative web companies[/URL] by Fast Company. If you've ever thrown a sheep at someone on Facebook, you've used a Slide product. The company, which says it's responsible …

[ATTACH=RIGHT]16322[/ATTACH]This week players of Facebook games found themselves unexpectedly rewarded for their playtime. The frequent messages that Facebook has awarded the gamer with credits signals Facebook's push to implement [URL="http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=837"]Facebook Credits[/URL], a virtual currency intended to standardize payments across the multitude of Facebook applications. The push of the credits program …

[ATTACH=RIGHT]16185[/ATTACH][URL="http://www.amazon.com"]Amazon.com[/URL] has launched a Connect to Facebook feature that will allow users to receive product recommendations based on data from their Facebook profile as well gift suggestions for friends on Facebook based on their data. The feature, which is currently in beta testing, will also allow users to find friends' …

I'm sure many of you who use Pandora wonder why it hasn't been sucked up by Microsoft, Google or Apple. For those of you who don't even know what Pandora is, it is a internet radio station that uses algorithms to fit your music tastes. How does it fit your …

[ATTACH=RIGHT]20608[/ATTACH]When Groupon turned down offers from Yahoo and Google last year it stirred a buzz that had people, myself included, wondering what they know that we don't. Founded in 2008, Groupon secures incredible deals on everything from pedicures to flight lessons by negotiating a "group" discount our their members' behalf. …

"It's unbelievable, the kind of data that's out there about you," Cisco's principal security strategist Patrick Gray told a crowd in Boise, Idaho, this morning. The problem is that criminal hackers can use that kind of information to target a company, Gray said. He described one case where criminals in …

Internet marketers using social networks beware - linking to stories on the Internet, much as news bloggers do here on Daniweb and elsewhere, may be about to become a high risk activity. The owner of website [URL="http://www.skyscrapercity.com"]skyscrapercity.com[/URL] is being sued by the Las Vegas Review-Journal for infringement over one of …

At the start of the year, Barry Collins (news editor at PC Pro magazine) published an [URL="http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/354457/whatever-happened-to-second-life"]interesting piece[/URL] on how he had recently revisited Second Life having three years earlier found it to be packed full of folk doing lots of things including having lots of virtual sex, only to …

Having returned from a pleasant family vacation where the main topic of conversation was a huge tanker being split in two by controlled explosions off the East Devon coast in England, it was nice to get back to reality and discover the nerdfest surrounding how much power could be saved …

[ATTACH=RIGHT]16283[/ATTACH]An [URL="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703977004575393173432219064.html"]investigation by the Wall Street Journal[/URL] found that many of the largest websites in the U.S. are installing technologies on the computers of visitors - sometimes tracking them in over a hundred ways. The Journal examined the 50 most popular websites in the United States in order to see …

Google Buzz has been the center of attention this week to anyone who has a Gmail account. I have to say that Google Buzz took me by complete surprise, so of course I wrote a blog anout how it is Google's new spam system. Well now I'm writing this article …

Last month [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story297374.html"]DaniWeb reported how Justin Bieber beat Lady Gaga to become the King of YouTube[/URL] with the most viewed video ever. Gaga has proven harder to tackle on Twitter where the quirky pop star has just knocked Britney Spears off the top spot in terms of the most followers. …

The issue of death and how to deal with it has already come to social media, with a number of social media sites having [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/reviews/post978070.html"]policies [/URL]on how to deal with dead members, notifying the dead person's friends, allowing people to memorialize the dead, and so on. But a new problem …

Smart phone users, including iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, will now be able to see more advertising on their phones thanks to a new interactive video ad player that automatically detects the user's device and switches it to HTML5 and the appropriate video required by that device. [ATTACH=right]16572[/ATTACH]The [URL="http://www.jivox.com/"]Jivox Interactive …

When I researched an article on multimedia search last year for [URL="http://www.econtentmag.com"]EContent Magazine[/URL], (The [URL="ttp://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=9879"]resulting article[/URL] was republished on Streamingmedia.com last December.) I learned in the course of my research that it's hard to search for non-text elements because they lack the contextual language of text. Seems logical enough, but …

Teen pop sensation Justin Bieber has already conquered Twitter, and now it would appear he has become the undisputed King of YouTube after knocking Lady Gaga off of the 'most viewed video ever' spot. According to a posting on Twitter by YouTube, Bieber first overtook Lady Gaga on Thursday night …

Not everything Apple touches turns to gold, a case in point is the .mac service which has recently been rebranded with not terribly clever moniker: MobileMe. What Apple fails to understand from the get-go is that people expect their cloud services to be free or at least extremely cheap and …

After two years of criticism against the online classified ad site Craigslist because people post ads for prostitution there, the site is now being accused of hosting ads for child prostitution as well. "Last month, two girls trafficked for sex through the website Craigslist wrote an open letter to its …

Google is making it much simpler to work out which photos you're allowed to use for what, and which you aren't. The company is allowing people to search for pictures and you can filter by what's available for reuse, what's available for reuse without modification and so on. It's using …

The great thing about modern technology is that it makes our lives easier, well, most of our lives that is. For some, it would seem, technology just adds another layer of confusion into the whole living their life thing. Take the many cases of people apparently having to do exactly …

The [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story291317.html"]founder of Facebook might be facing the death penalty in Pakistan[/URL] but social media growth is showing no sign of slowing down in India. In fact, it is displaying some of the fastest social networking growth on the planet. [attach]16882[/attach]According to a [URL="http://www.comscore.com"]comScore report on Social Networking Sites in …

The [URL="http://twitter.com/kevinrose/status/22303570291"]post on Twitter late last night[/URL] simply said "changes coming to digg v4" but it was enough to get me excited, mainly because the person posting those five words was none other than Digg founder and head honcho Kevin Rose. [attach]16949[/attach]The [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/news/story306994.html"]launch of Digg version 4[/URL], which as we …

What might be the most convincing way to get people to look at your Web site? Tell people they could get $10,000. Or, in the case of two Brooklyn artists, produce a series of videos, post them online and tell people the videos hold clues to the location of a …