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Facebook Builds Up Edge versus Other Social Networks

The growing competition between social networking websites continue to build-up as online social networks continue to update their website features. According to a report from CNN Money, Facebook, one of the most popular and widely viewed social networking website in the United States, is currently creating a new feature that would enable users to group their work friends separately from other social and school friends. But introducing this feature already provided by another professional social networking website, LinkedIn, could mean an affront challenge to websites that target users who are connected professionally or by employment.

Internet marketing experts and analysts believe that Facebook’s recent move to introduce user options of creating a professional profile aside from its current social one and separating friends for each profile would be a lot popular especially with the social network’s existing users. However such development would make specialized social networking services such as LinkedIn obsolete. “At some point people are going to want to simplify. The open question that no one is really prepared to answer is how many networks do you really want to belong to?” Jupiter media analyst Barry Parr explains.

Although the two social networking websites differ in targeted user audience, once the new features become finally introduced, Facebook could increase its edge over other social networking websites including specialized social networks such as LinkedIn. But all would depend on how both Facebook and LinkedIn users would react to these developments and spell out how this could contribute to the expansion of each website.

The emergence of online social networks has proved that Internet marketing could mean work and “play” at the same time. Facebook was launched on February 4, 2004 as an online version of paper facebooks that feature members of school communities that are usually distributed by colleges and preparatory schools in the United States to incoming students, faculty and staff to help them make acquaintances and to know other people on campus.

Initially restricted to Harvard College students, where its founder, Mark Zuckerberg graduated, the social network subsequently expanded to other schools in Boston such as the Boston College, Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tufts and eventually to other schools across the country such as Rochester, Stanford, New York University, Northwestern and all Ivy League schools all within a period of two months. The growth continued steadily over the next year, allowing individual users with a university email address to join the social network. The expansion of the social network continued by allowing high school students and large company employees to join the website and just recently, it has become possible for any user with an email address and within a certain age range to join the social networking website. The social networking features also continued to be improved as users can also join other networks aside from their college network such as high school, employment or even geographical region.

As of July 2007, Facebook continued to be the largest college-focused social networking website with over 34 million active users from all over the world. In over the year, it jumped from being 60th to 7th most frequently visited website and with over 8.5 million photos uploaded daily, it is currently the top website for photos in the United States, way ahead of public websites like Flickr.

Online Marketing Ideas for Beginners

It has always been known that behind a successful sales transaction, brilliant marketing is involved. And with the advances in technology, it is not even surprising that many businesses choose to advertise over the internet. In fact, many businesses can attribute their success to excellent internet marketing ideas. Although there are many marketing ideas in the market today, here are some of the most effective internet marketing ideas that will guarantee your business a lot of profit.

Internet Marketing Idea #1: Target a Specific Market
With the millions of people using the internet everyday, it would be good for your business if you would pick a particular group that you would like to sell your products or services to. Make sure that all your marketing campaigns and efforts are directed toward this group. Targeting a particular audience will ensure a nice profit. If you do some research, you can determine which market is the largest and what product is in great demand. You would not want to sell services or products that no one would want or only a few would think of buying.

Internet Marketing Idea #2: Create an Irresistible Offer
After selecting a target market, make sure that your services and products will be noticed by the consumers, despite the tough competition. You can accomplish this by offering consumers with services and products that are unique – something they will have difficulties resisting. Just make sure that you do not make any false promises of offer features and benefits that the consumer will never enjoy.

Internet Marketing Idea #3: Drive the RIGHT People to Your Site
Some online businesses thought that it is not enough that their site has much traffic. It does not matter that the users who visit their site do not buy or avail any of the services. To ensure that your online business is successful, you should concentrate on driving your target audience to your website. This could be achieved by using many marketing methods such as optimizing your site for search engines, joining social networking groups as well as advertising via pay-per-click.

Internet Marketing Idea #4: Establish Contact
Ensuring that customers will return to your site is very important. Again, you can accomplish this by adding an Opt-In mailing list. This way you will have the email addresses of your potential and regular clients, along with other contact information.

Internet Marketing Idea #5: From Visitors to Clients
If you are successful in driving your target audience to your site, you will have to give them reason to buy something from you. Accomplishing this is easy with low prices, special offers and free shipping. Your visitors should not find any reason to look anywhere else.

Internet marketing is very effective – if you know how to use it to your advantage. You should never ignore the opportunities it offers you. Converting traffic to successful sales transactions is the key to ensure that your online business will be quite successful and able to beat other competitors.

SEO and Page Optimization

If you have an online business, you should know by now that optimizing your site for search engines is one of the ways to generate traffic. There are actually many methods you can use to accomplish this. What many online businesses fail to remember is that their site should also be optimized for internet users. It is not only enough that your website results to high ranking. But it is also quite crucial that your visitors will be able to get relevant information from the content of your site. Here are some tips that will help you optimize your website for visitors and search engines.

Keywords
The number of times you use these keywords and where they are placed in your content is one of the ways you can optimize your site for search engines. For your visitors, make sure you avoid stuffing your content with keywords as it will appear redundant and unintelligent. Using too much keyword will also result to the search engine penalizing you. You would certainly not like being considered as spam. Ideally, you should only use keywords at a density of 2-7 percent in order to make your website search engine-friendly although now, a density of 1-2 percent is preferred by the search engine Google.

In addition to the frequency of keywords, it is also generally recommended that you sprinkle words that are related to the subject. Your page title should also have these keywords aside from your content. Most search engines would naturally base their content search from the titles of your pages. Using one keyword in your page title should be sufficient. Lastly, it is important for your content to be readable despite the presence of these keywords.

Meta Tags
Many SEO professionals no longer depend o meta tags to optimize their pages since they have been widely-abused and almost every search engine do not give them much importance. But if you still want to use the, you can do so. You should just avoid using the meta description and meta keyword that are not included in your content.

Links
To be popular among search engines, you can also choose to add links. Of course, it is to your advantage that the links you add are directed to other sites that contain related content. These links should be genuine and accurate as well.

Although on page search engine optimization is effective, you can not ignore the fact that visitors would want useful content. Along with making sure that your website is keyword-rich and contains meta tags, meta description and links, you should also make an effort to make your content reader-friendly, direct to the point and well-written.

Enjoying top ranking among search engines will be useless if you do not have content that is interesting. In the same way, having intelligent content will be a waste of effort if your site does not appear in the search engine’s top results. A healthy balance between these two will ensure that your website will enjoy much traffic.

Multilingual Search Engine Optimization

Language reflects the culture of a certain community. It has its own nuances that impede the flow of meaningful communication.

Language is also a barrier in the internet business as statistics says that 63 percent of internet users are non-English speakers. With this fact, non-English speakers tend to use search engines with their own regional language, setting aside Yahoo and Google, two of the most famous but English-using search engines in the planet.

To address the problem, Google is currently developing a translation program which aims to translate documents into any of the world’s main languages. Google wants to substitute this for human translators who used to create a database containing the nuances of a certain language. With this data, Google thinks, that computers are now ready to find patterns in these languages and hopefully could create a system for that so-called “engine translators”.

Franz Och, head of Google’s translation, admits that the process is not perfect, but he is hoping that this could be an improvement on previous machine translation concepts. Further, he said that there is no such thing as as “mostly correct translation” but acceptable translation. And this database may never be at a par with human translation.

Och said that the more you feed data in the system, the more comprehensible the translation will turn out. Arabic and English are on of the most frequently-used language in the web, while Aafrikans, is the least-used language thus Google’s engine translator engine.

Google is now slowly penetrating into the Asian markets. In China, Google is planning to buy up to two Chinese companies and invest in as many as five more over the next year, says IDG News Service reports.

Google wants to gain grounds on its Chinese rival Baidu, a search engine for online marketing officers was formed in 1999 by Mr Robin Li and has a market value in excess of $3 billion, according to the New York Times. It was foreseen that over the next year, Google will acquire one or two companies in China and invest in four to five companies.

Google is also trying to penetrate one of the most challenging markets in Asia-the North Korea where all information including songs and praises found in the Naenera website is a tribute to it’s leader Kim Jong-I.

Who knows a few years later, Google will also include Philippines in its list and further explore possibilities on using regional languages in the web. Yet, that would still be a vision as these engine translators are still on its way in developing a unifying system that would translate languages so as to further advance human communication.

Please view the Multilingual Search Engine Optimization services provided by ComCorp.

Introducing the Google Map

When Galileo Galilei first invented the telescope in 1600, the Europeans were overwhelmed that in truth, they are not the only living denizens in the whole world. And the island they call their “world” is just a tiny speck of the vast universe. After then, science has always help mankind with new inventions to answer questions of the developing human mind.

In the 21st century, with the advent of the Internet and the help of orbiting satellites, maps have progressed to the point that even an ordinary citizen can look at a world map in their homes, for free! With this concept, Google has developed Google Earth, which allows users to expand their horizons. The user will be able to look at places in other continents in the minutest details. Google will allow the user to be able to zoom in and out of any place registered with the program. This allows the user to appreciate the place as if he was actually there in person.

If you happen to go to the Google Earth gallery, it will automatically provide you with information of the place you are looking for. For example, if you want to go to where the famous post-impressionist painter, Paul Cezanne lived, Google Earth will provide you with a map of France indicating Cezanne’s community. It will also provide you with more information and other highlights.

Google Earth offers different packages hoping to answer every need of its clients. Its services include maps for Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Global Paleogeographic Views, 3D content, and Google Earth Plus, with different prices appropriated for each product.

The three-dimensional maps in Google Earth are provided by many affiliate organizations and millions of users around the world. One just simply had to open and browse the file like an ordinary document, but in a very interactive interface with its three-dimensional features.

What are the limits of the Google Earth program? The British Astronomical Association’s Dr John Mason said that because of pollution in so many areas, people can only view “a few dozen” stars when they look up in the sky while viewing it in Google Earth. And with a bad weather, the Google satellite will also have difficulty in tracking places.

Google Earth is not only made for aesthetic purposes such as appreciating maps or other places. Google believes that everyone will have a chance to take a look at the Earth from a different perspective

With the innovative Google Earth program, even the youngest in the family will get a chance to have a whole new experience with the different places that they can only see on paper or TV. When kids look at the maps in the Internet, they will also learn about what lies beyond the Earth, questions that Galileo have asked before. But Galileo’s telescope is a thing of the past, with Google Earth, the Internet is now participating in mankind’s leap to outer space and in finding out what lies ahead.

Hostway Pronounces Winner of iPhone

Hostway Corporation, the online company recognized as a world leader in web hosting, declared the winner of an 8 GB Apple iPhone from this month’s drawing. The lucky winner is Luis Boria the proud owner of Coraima Music Publishing.

Luis Boria is one of Hostway’s long time clients who place an order of a hosted Microsoft Exchange account from the same company. He believes that He will be able to take full advantage of the options provided with the hosted Microsoft Exchange on his brand new iPhone from Apple. Boria had been searching for a personal mobile device which he could use with his account with the Microsoft Exchange.

Boria worked as an IT professional in Connecticut. He has several extensive years using MS Exchange while working there. He says that he has been searching for the right server that can provide him with functionality which is the reason why he added MS Exchange to his business.

A hosted MS Exchange is a certain kind of enterprise-level type of messaging system. It offers the user a wide variety of features. It was not until recently when the cost of maintaining as well as housing a MS Exchange server left small businesses and individuals such as Boria to be able to make use of the email solutions with very little functionality. The hosted MS Exchange solution, which is one of the services provided by Hostway, allows the businesses to be able to gain access to the MS Exchange’s enterprise-level features. This can also be achieved without the usual high overhead costs of having an in-house system.

Hostway’s lottery of the new iPhone involved anyone who was able to sign up for their hosted MS Exchange account during the month of August. The person who signed up is automatically included in the drawing of the iPhone, the innovative and new wireless device from Apple. Boria will now be able to make use of all the functionality of the MS Exchange on his brand new iPhone in order to help make his music business grow. The online business managed and owned by Luis Boria is about building a presence on the Internet with his new www.coraimamusic.com website.

Hostway Corporation is a world-leader in providing various kinds of services such as online marketing services, web design, SaaS hosting, managed dedicated hosting, collocation, eCommerce and web hosting, and domain name registration to more than 600,000 customers all over the world. The company makes use of state-of-the-art data centers which can help reduce the cost and complexity of maintaining Internet-based technologies for large enterprises as well as for small businesses. The company started its online business in 1998. Ever since their grand opening, Hostway became one of the world’s three largest companies whose services include web hosting. Hostway has a direct presence in over 11 countries, 15 operation centers scattered all over the world, and employs over 700 men and women. Hostway has several franchises which include WinSave, ValueWeb, Service Over Internet, Server Service, RegistryPro, PowerMedium, NetNation, Hostway Denmark, Hostway Australia, Hostway Korea, Hostway Netherlands, Hostway UK, DiscountDomains, Bigstep, and Affinity Internet.

Google Discusses Its Future in SES Conference & Expo

The Internet, which used to be viewed as something alien to the human personality, is now expanding its boundaries to reach out the most private spheres of individuals.

During the Search Engines Strategies (SES) Conference & Expo in San Jose, Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products and user experience, revealed that Google plans to develop the concept of personalization in the web for the next ten years.

With Google’s development of new programs like Facebook, one can have a sort of journal as a record of things such as when two people meet, the things that they like about each other, and how their relationship is going on. Google’s Facebook allows individuals to know each other better even if they live very far away from each other.

To avoid other users from gaining access to your account which usually results to inappropriate use, Google made sure that every user has the ability to protect the user’s privacy. One of these security features enables the user to see their search history and remove particular searches to tweak the personalization. Google is considering the possibility of informing the user when the results are have been personalized as well as offering a way to toggle between personalized and default results. Mayer predicts that this information will be very useful and will be very much available in the near future. This feature will also be a sort of “intelligent social graph” that will be a good way to help predict how relationships develop, grow, or why they fall apart.

Mayer also proposes that the ads can be personalized as well. Whenever there is somebody who would like to make a search for a certain topic, the advertisers related to the topic will also appear with just a click of the mouse. Google also plans to incorporate blog search, scholar and other types of searches into its Universal Search results page, which today is weaving together the search results taken from news, video, maps, and image search.

Meanwhile, Google predicted that in the next fifteen years, mobile phone industry will take off as observed with the use of Google mobile applications during this summer. In this season, people will usually stay indoors avoiding the hot weather and would prefer to communicate through their personal mobile computers. “You could see people almost switching off their computers and switching on their handhelds,” Mayer said.

Mayer also endorses her iGoogle wherein users could use Google’s free voice-activated yellow pages service, the Google 411, which is an online yellow pages service and comes with a map as well. With innovative online service is no need to bring maps with you. You can locate anybody using the iGoogle.

With these new programs, Google is expanding its boundaries in transforming lives of every persons, making communication easier, more humane, and interesting. With the more personalized environment that Google wants to create, users can now express themselves in the Internet and know more people.

Unveiling of Exclusive Internet Marketing Resource

The OnlineBusinessRevenue.com has recently announced news that will definitely bring a smile to many online marketers. They have aired a major website upgrade. This exclusive Internet marketing giant boasts of a humble objective: to help new and promising Internet marketers boost sales and earn more.

Regular visitors of the site have now been given access to a more advanced and comprehensive resource center. This is indeed great news not only for marketers affiliated with the site but for any owners of online businesses since the upgrade will give the chance to be one of the firsts to know significant and up-to-date data and information critical to man a business, improve sales, and eventually increase profits.

But with today’s trend of continuously saturating the Internet with contradictory information regarding effective methods of marketing products and services on the net, novice marketers are finding it difficult to scour for dependable information that will prove useful in developing their businesses. Online entrepreneurs are urged to spend endless hours searching for valuable data. This was until OnlineBusinessRevenue.com came. OnlineBusinessRevenue.com is aimed to solve the problem.

Tim Godfrey, founding officer of OnlineBusinessRevenue.com, confirmed that among the major problems that owners of online businesses have these days is the Internet’s saturation of contradicting information. Some people are flooding the Net with false data or promises that their products or services come with great commissions. Others provide wrong information on how to develop one’s business, giving new entrepreneurs false hopes.

“More of than not, these tactics result in a large amount of money spent on products and services that are practically useless and actually unnecessary,” Godfrey added. It is for this purpose that OnlineBusinessRevenue.com was established: to put a stop to all these false data feeding and instead spread the real deal when it comes to the Internet world—what works and what doesn’t, period.

OnlineBusinessRevenue.com has set its focus on being the number one when it comes to providing topnotch information for both starting and experienced online business owners. They have exhaustively come up with, made, and continue to develop videos, product reviews, tools and tips, articles, and a whole lot more to realize this purpose.

Visitors to the site can explore the various categories that OnlineBusinessRevenue.com has to offer. Each of these features contains vital information for online entrepreneurs: article directory, search engine optimization, video library, Internet marketing tips and tools, and a whole lot more.

The Power Profits Workshop, a product of the founder himself, is one of the features that OnlineBusinessRevenue.com takes prides in. In coherence with the site’s aim, this seventy-page book (which comes free), is a gold mine of significant resources and information. The book is every young Internet entrepreneurs’ bible that will aid them to start right and eventually get profits without much waste of time and money. Aside from getting the book for free, a subscriber is further offered a 10-page product website. This is automatically optimized and will enable the owner to earn some dough from commissions coming from affiliates.

Cutter & Buck Doubles Customer Conversions Using Visual Science

Visual Sciences Inc was contracted by Cutter and Buck, an online retailer that offers a wide array of women and men’s apparel which also includes embroidered sports apparel. Since online customers convert at a low rate in Cutter and Buck’s previous search engine, the company declared its need to switch to stronger search engine that can resolve this issue and will be able to give better results.

Visual Sciences Inc has just recently launched it Visual Science 5.0 in which Cutter and Buck started using. Visual Science 5.0 is a product that is an on-demand site search which regulates workflows and presentation templates.

The new version of Visual Sciences has already been used and transformed the website of Cutter and Buck. According to the catalog and Web marketing manager of Cutter and Buck, “The conversions from search are now significantly higher that the average site conversion”. He further added that because of this, their customers were satisfied to the performance of the new search engine. Customers give compliments of the quality results they are getting and their improved ability to get down into the results they want. “And now with our ability to advertise products, we’re seeing even better results from our search pages. In fact, our results are so good that we’ve begun pushing our paid search page click throughs to our Visual Sciences search results pages,” Allen concluded.

The SVP of search and contents solution of Visual Science, Brian Sullivan, recognized the importance of improved and quality site search for businesses. He mentioned that it is the principal method needed by the visitors of the site to relate with the website of the organization therefore the search engine should be accurate, relevant, compelling and intuitive. “The enhancements introduced in Search 5.0 ensure that our clients can offer that experience to their visitors and support their other channels,” he said.

The enhancements made to Visual Science 5.0 includes an auto complete feature that prevents mistakes on spelling and display the full content of the site right before the search is even submitted. With this, there is an available queries guide where the visitor can be led to the right search result that would make it easy for them. Another is that the enhancements give visitors an intuitive experience by allowing them to go back to the previous results that were done without necessarily going back to the search box and begin the search again. Also, targeted presentation presents site that displays the results that matches with the query of the visitor, its context and the results that returned.

In cases when the results had some variations that have pictures on it, the enhancement provides a display of the product gallery of the results made. For single results, the search would show the product with related relevant information. The next feature is that when customer opts not to buy online for some reasons, the search can provide a list of store nearest their location. Lastly, the search has a personalize alerts where the visitor can save the searches they made. In addition, the visitor may give out details of themselves for the business to alert them with a personalized email when new product or content is already available on the site that matches their interest.

British Airways Launches “Exceeds Expectations” Ad Campaign

Formed in 1935 as one of the world’s first international airline companies, British Airways is not slowing down its advertising campaign in the hope to lure more globe trekking jetsetters. Launched recently as the summer travel season comes to a close and the holiday travels starts up, the British airline company’s new aggressive advertising campaign dubbed “Expectations Guaranteed” intends to assure its frequent fliers of its strong commitment to meet what people would expect from a top airline company.

Unlike the usual incentive points or frequent flyer miles, British Airways is offering a free upgrade to a first class service if the deluxe business class service fails to meet a flyer’s expectation, provided he discloses his reasons to the airline company. But the airline’s advertising campaign is not limited to free first class service upgrades, but with the help of online advertising firm Agency.com, British Airways is linking its online advertisements to news and other media content which are related to airline services.

The recently launched British Airways advertising package includes a new interactive website, online sponsorships on other websites, social networking features, behavioral targeting and re-targeting strategies with full RSS and search marketing capabilities. But going beyond standard advertising strategies, the airline is also posting ad supported pages linked with media websites like MarketWatch.com, Reuters.com and Hoovers.com where airline related advertising material will be placed side by side with related content such as news or information of activities or events that reflects the airline’s exceeds expectations image. Going way beyond conventional online ads, the new advertising campaign will maximize contextual targeting hoping to develop stronger interactive connections between the airline company and potential clients. By integrating various online advertising tools and strategies, British Airway’s newly launched advertising campaign is broadening its reach to a wider variety of airline customers.

But this is not the first time that British Airways has taken advantage of the Internet in order to bolster its marketing campaigns. With the cost efficient and convenient electronic infrastructure of the Internet, the airline has continued to expand its long established and large marketshare and broaden its competitive advantage by building its online presence through its website, www.britishairways.com, where airline passengers can get ready information and even make online business transactions such as travel arrangements and airfare payments. Through links from travel websites, it becomes more convenient for travelers get needed information on how to book their travel and know the available flight schedules as well as other special offers that the airline has to offer.

This official flag carrier of the United Kingdom has a huge number of available international flights to the United States and Canada. With its many years of service and time tested experience, British Airways continues to be the best way to fly from London to anywhere in the world. True to its “exceeds expectation image”, British Airways has made it sure that its newly launched advertising campaign will extend beyond conventional advertising strategies, open up new avenues for online marketing and result in increased profit gains for the airline company.