Report From SMX West: An Overview Of Augmented Reality Mobile Apps
I was sitting in the mobile app panel at SMX West when the subject turned to “augmented reality.” Some great live blogging of the presentation by Cindy Krum is on her RankMobile site.
Augmented reality is basically presenting some kind of digital overlay on top of a view of the “real world.” Think about [...]
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YouTube Gets Makeover (Again)
Today, YouTube is rolling out its video rentals program (maybe it’s a good thing Blockbuster is already closing all those stores!). And just in time for the Sundance rentals, YouTube is trying out another stripped-down version of its video viewing page.
The most noticeable improvements are in the video player. The player now offers more viewing options, including viewing with a larger player (without going to full screen) and multiple resolutions. Also, if you search while watching a video, the video continues playing in a small left-side panel, while search results are listed in a larger right column
Last month, YouTube experimented with the “Feather” layout for video viewing—and there are a few marked similarities. The new layout is opt-in (via this link), just as the “Feather” layout was. Like that layout, this one removes a lot of the features from the video viewing page and rearranges some of the page elements (without JavaScript). Mysteriously, despite the quest to cut down on clutter, both layouts include the comments.
However, there are many improvements as well. YouTube says the related videos feature will be smarter now, taking into account how you came to this video (just check out the “Search Results” box in the upper right of the main screen shot). They’ve moved the description from the right-hand side where it usually sits to right underneath the video with the stats. Actions like sharing, rating and blogging videos have been grouped together into a single “button bar,” and the ratings system has been simplified into a “like/don’t like” option (since most YouTube users gave either 1 or 5 stars to videos).
YouTube is asking for feedback on the new design through a survey or in the comments to their blog announcement.
I think it’s great that YouTube is taking user feedback into account. It looks like they took feedback from those using the Feather layout and worked to improve that model.
What do you think? Will you want the stripped-down player? Will it stick?
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Now That Everything Is Known, Will The Google Nexus One Phone Launch Generate A Collective Yawn?
The way that the “Google Phone” rumors and later Nexus One blogging played out probably mean that when Google finally announces the device on January 5 (in all likelihood) there won’t be much news. I could be quite wrong of course. Regardless, I imagine the event will be interesting — something like “a year of [...]
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Twitter Mobile Gets a New Look
I admit, I am coming at this one a little uneducated. You see I never used the Twitter mobile site until today when I even considered that it existed. With the third party apps available I just don’t think about Twitter as the place to ‘micro-blog’ but rather the act of ‘micro-blogging’. I suspect that will make sense to some and for those who get it maybe you should be just a little worried.
Back to the important news at hand. The new Twitter mobile site preview was touted today on the Twitter blog . Leland of Twitter tells us
Our new mobile web site is previewing today, just point your phone’s browser to http://mobile.twitter.com. Its got a great new look, and has some great new touches that will make your mobile experience on Twitter a bit more fun and a lot more helpful. Let us know if you agree and especially tell us how we can make it better.
Here’s a look see.
For someone like myself who is pretty committed to Tweet Deck as my third party Twittercation of choice this redesign will have little impact. I suppose it would be good to ask how many readers use the mobile Twitter site regularly. Is there anybody out there?
Leland talks about the soon to be replaced version of the mobile Twitter experience as ‘m’ and seems to be trying to break the news to ‘it’ as nicely as possible.
What may be a less known fact is: Lots of people access Twitter on their phones via our good ol’ mobile website, and trusty ‘m’ has been delivering tweets faithfully. However, ‘m’ doesn’t fully feel like Twitter, and could probably do a bit more things for you.
‘M’ should also be fantastically innovative — naturally the best way to do that is use our own APIs. So, the mobile team here built a brand new mobile web client from scratch, using only Twitter APIs, and we’d like to share the results with you.
So it looks like ‘m’ is going to be kicked to the curb. Tossed away like so much rubbish despite the loyal and faithful work it has done in the past. So ‘m’. when your days are over I shall remember you fondly which mean much more if I had ever used you before writing this post. Anyway, good luck ol’ boy. You’re not the only one being put out of work these days.
The Evolution of Blogging
Oh, how I wish this was a cool YouTube video that could go viral. But it’s not. Instead, it’s some pretty interesting research by PostRank on how reader engagement in blogging has evolved over the last three years.
Not so surprisingly, trackbacks as a means of joining the conversation have dropped off in favor of taking the discussion to Twitter or other social sites. Over the last there years, trackbacks have dropped from 19% of total engagement to 3%, while social networks have soared from <1% to 29%.
This is indicative of the larger trend—the move to engagement off the site itself:
On-site engagement is down 50%, but total engagement engagement is still high—the conversation has just moved onto Facebook, Twitter and other social networks because of the “Share this” phenomenon.
Finally, the study also found that posts have a longer lifespan of engagement, due largely to the fact that engagement in the first hour has decreased:
Back in 2007, we observed that over 94% of all the engagement occurred within the first day of publishing the article. Even more interestingly, the 98% of the engagement on that first day occurred within the first hour. In other words, the half-life of a story was, and still is, less than an hour!
Fast forward to 2008 and 2009, and we’re seeing a steady increase in the lifespan of a story: down to 83% of total engagement for the first hour in 2008, and 64% in 2009.
While the majority of engagement still takes place in the first hour, the engagement is also more spread out today—because more and more people are discovering the post later, thanks to the social sharing options that have become so popular.
What do you think? Have you seen this phenomenon in your blogging and sharing?
Most Bloggers Discuss Products/Brands
According to Technorati’s 2009 State of the Blogosphere report, 70% of bloggers talk about products or brands on their blogs, eMarketer reports. And obviously some of these mentions would be prompted by free sample products, etc.—a practice popular enough to draw the notice of the FTC, which now requires disclosure on such review products.
Interestingly, corporate bloggers were least likely to blog about brands and products (lawsuit anyone?), and hobbyist bloggers were second least likely. Technorati defined hobbyist bloggers as those that blog for fun. They don’t make money (and only some of them want to, which I think is awesome). Instead of brands and products, they mostly share “personal musings” (53% of hobbyists), and 76% blog to speak their minds. 72% of bloggers fell into this category.
“Part-timers” were most likely to mention brands and products. They blog to supplement their main income. 15% of respondents, most part-timers blog to share their expertise or attract new clients.
“Self-employed” bloggers, 9% of the survey respondents, blog full time for their own company or organization. (Corporate bloggers, 4%, blog for someone else’s company/organization—including their employer.)
Despite the focus on products and brands, bloggers felt that the free goodies weren’t the most important benefits from their blogs—gaining visibility (individually or for their business) and bringing in new business were the top two benefits cited by bloggers surveyed.
What do you think? Do you blog about brands? What benefits have you seen from blogging? Which group do you fall into?
3 Lessons Learned From Successful Corporate Blogging
I’m just back from speaking at MarketingSherpa’s B2B Summits in San Francisco and Boston, where I was giving a joint presentation with a client on seo. As part of that presentation, we talked about the role and impact of corporate blogging.
The client is a professional services firm operating solely in the B2B space. Theirs is [...]
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Yahoo Search No Longer Uses Meta Keywords Tag
Yahoo in the past few months has stopped using the META keywords meta tag as part of their ranking algorithm. We just learned this in a session at SMX East in the Ask the Search Engines session.
I have the live blogging of this in the Q&A where Cris Pierry from Yahoo was asked this [...]
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A Billion Reasons for Twitter to be Happy
So it looks like Twitter has entered some rarefied air for sure. According to ReadWriteWeb and TechCrunch the micro-blogging juggernaut is moving into an exclusive club by securing a new round of funding ($50 million) based on a valuation of $1 billion (yup, it’s a b). No doubt, this will begin to stir the supporters and detractors alike. Unless we have ridiculously short memories or just think that this time will be different one has to wonder how a company that no one can figure out revenue wise can be valued at that much.
While I am not an analyst I did think about staying at a Holiday Inn Express over the past year so I qualify for jumping into the fray, right? Let’s hear what the RWW folks had to say first though.
While it’s unlikely that Twitter CEO Evan Williams was wearing a Dr. Evil costume when he delivered the news, he had the pleasure of announcing his company’s $1 billion dollar valuation today at an all hands meeting. According to TechCrunch, the company has raised a $50 million dollar funding round and the money will be in the bank shortly. Given the fact that Twitter turned down an offer to be purchased by Facebook earlier in the year, it appears the two are about to tango.
So of course, this conversation wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without bringing Facebook into the mix. Facebook is starting to look almost like IBM compared to Twitter. What with actual revenue generation plans and actually having the audacity to be cash flow positive one begins to wonder if Facebook is going to actually merit its own valuation. As we mentioned yesterday, Master of the Universe, Mark Zuckerberg, has something to say in the Facebook blog.
We’re also succeeding at building Facebook in a sustainable way. Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010, and I’m pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter. This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.
So is Twitter in for the long term? They certainly still have the buzz going and now there appears to be a a real Facebook faceoff looming for the foreseeable future.
In the past, ReadWriteWeb has looked at Twitter’s platform potential. The service has already been used to create meme trackers, emergency alert services, news feeds and brand monitoring tools. As the infrastructure and search have improved, Twitter has become the go-to site for real time media. But can the company make a Facebook-like leap?
Facebook has added Twitter like features so why not? So what’s your take? I bet there at least a billion opinions on this one.
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Google Blogger Adds Search Box
One of the major usability issues with Google Blogger has long been making the millions of blogs hosted on the service searchable on an individual basis. While the Blogger header bar featured a search box, many bloggers didn’t want the Blogger-branded bar “cluttering” their blog.
A year ago, Google first started testing a solution—a search box that could be placed in a sidebar. Like in WordPress, the search box was available as a sidebar widget (”Gadget”)—but only in Blogger in Draft. At the same time, Google announced an embeddable comment form in Blogger in Draft.
The embeddable comment form moved to full-fledged Blogger in October, but the search box remained in Blogger Draft. Eight month later, the search box is finally joining the Blogger widget family.
To add the widget, go to Layout—Add a Gadget. Select search box. (The pop up window also gives a preview of the search results.)
Where the old Blogger search on the header bar showed the results integrated with the blog template, the new search box creates a results frame above the blog content (search box in the left sidebar; results box in the main post column):
The tabbed results frame also offers results from web pages linked from your blog, and the web at large. If you have a link list, that’s a fourth option for a tab. If you don’t want these tabs, these options can be customized when you add or edit the Gadget.
Overall, this is a good step toward making Blogger a stronger hosted blogging platform. Making the individual blogs more powerful and user friendly is definitely a smart move. The only question here is: is this too little, too late?
