Last week saw the announcement of a whole host of new Facebook features, which will have a serious effect on the way we use the social networking site. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg personally delivered the keynote speech at the f8 conference in San Francisco. The conference is primarily aimed at developers and business partners, but the main announcements will have major implications on the way that the everyday user experiences Facebook. Zuckerberg announced changes relating to the look of the profile, social integration and a major new partnership with online music streaming service Spotify. All these changes are aimed at making Facebook an ‘entertainment hub’, where the sharing of music, film, books and games is taken to a whole new level.

Timeline – Your Personal Facebooking History

One of the biggest announcements at this year’s conference was the introduction of Timeline. Timeline is a new way of viewing one another’s profiles. It is essentially a plotted history of your time on Facebook, or, if you add more content from before you first used Facebook, a history of your life. A sample Timeline profile (available to view on the Facebook website) also shows the user’s recent music on Spotify, films on Netflix and Hulu, books read, pages liked, and more. While some of these individual elements are available to see on Facebook at the moment, but the new organisation is much more streamlined and integrated.

Ticker – An Extra Feed for the Little Things

Ticker is a feature that many users will already have noticed on their main profile page. The ticker feed has been compared to Twitter. The main point of Ticker is to provide an extra feed, so your main news feed doesn’t get clogged up with information that is of no significant interest for you. For example if someone changes a profile picture, it is likely to go into the new Ticker, as it’s not something that most people would deem to be important enough to warrant a place in your main feed. Ticker allows your main news feed to be filled with more important and relevant posts and updates.

New and Improved Spotify Integration

There were numerous internet companies that were in attendance at the f8 conference, many announcing partnerships with Facebook, but the standout development is the further integration of Spotify and Facebook. The new changes will mean that a user’s activity on Spotify is more easily visible to Friends on Facebook, as well as recognising similarities in the music choice of their friends. However, it now also means that you must have a Facebook account to sign up with Spotify.

Initial Reactions

The reception of the new and soon to be implemented changes has been decidedly mixed. Many critics feel that Facebook is trying to spread itself too thinly, rather than focusing on what it is good at: being a place to communicate with friends. The recently introduced Ticker has received criticism for further changing the profile layout, in a similar way to that of the new chat box. However, it must be remembered that many Facebook changes have been criticised, primarily due to changing a layout that users are accustomed to, but these criticisms are often forgotten once users have familiarised themselves with the new features.

More positive comments have focused on the ability for Facebook to be a ‘distribution platform’. This means that it will be easier for you to discover things you like, and the ability to pass these interests on to friends. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings made a point about how friends have a big influence on our choices. He told a story about how the Netflix algorithm always told him to watch the TV show Breaking Bad, which he constantly overlooked, but when told on the new Facebook platform by a Friend to watch it, he immediately decided to do so.

Be Prepared for Big Changes

Whether you appreciate the new Facebook changes or not, it is undoubtedly one of the biggest periods of transition that the company has gone through. It will be a little while before all of the changes are implemented, but will alter the way we connect socially. These changes will also have an impact on the way advertisers use the power of Facebook. As yet the full extent of this is not known, but will likely give companies an opportunity to interact with users in whole new ways.

Get ready for battle to commence in 2012 when the new Windows 8 explodes on to the tablet market. Apple has remained to stay on top despite the introduction of competitors like BlackBerry and Android introducing their versions of the tablet; no one has yet been successful in bringing down the technology giant as no other tablet has outdone the iPad. However there is speculation that the Windows 8 Tablet could finally erode their hold on the business market. The tablet has functions that may be more appealing to the business customers; it has the ability to connect to a keyboard and dual monitor, turning the tablet into an impromptu workstation, compatibility with existing Windows apps and connectivity with Windows. These features will appeal mainly to business users, who are Microsoft’s main demographic. This could be their immediate launch in to the tablet market, making them an instant threat to the well established iPads.

However, although Microsoft is offering the correct product and the correct hardware, many other companies have tried to take on Apple in the tablet war and have been unsuccessful. RIM is still trying to push the necessity for a BlackBerry Playbook, but everyone still wants the iPad. Somehow Apple have kept the novelty of this piece of technology and kept up momentum with the introduction of the iPad 2. There is a much higher status around the iPad and Apple cannot be faulted in this sense. They have successfully introduced a unique, compact and functional range of products that bring efficiency and fun into people’s lives.

The speed of this market can also not be underestimated. According to a forecast by HIS Inc, 60 million tablets will have been shipped by the end of 2011. By 2015, that number is expected to rise to 275.3 million mainly to global consumers. Considering that the tablet became a phenomenon in 2010 when Apple’s iPad was first launched, the market will get to a point of mass reach in 3-5 years. The market is therefore still extremely young; however it is maturing much quicker than any other market. Therefore if Microsoft delays, customers will have established their product and will be set in their ways by the time the Windows 8 is introduced. Apples products also tie in with each other so effortlessly, they have the laptop, the iPhone and then the tablet, which can all be linked with iTunes and the App Store, consumers have everything where they need it so why would they change?

The tablet wars are surely going to heat up when the Microsoft 8 is shipped next year, maybe Apple is working on something to up their game in the tablet market to make sure they are not outdone by their major rivals. However for years Microsoft has been relied on by many business users, and there are businesses and individuals in the world who have never switched from the trusted company. Now they are about to introduce the much awaited tablet that Microsoft users have craved it may be successful. Microsoft was going to have to jump on the tablet train at some point with the growing success of the market and shifting consumer needs. But the stakes are high for Windows, if they do not give their consumers what they want they could face an epic fail in the market they always used to dominate, however if this is a success for Microsoft, it will open lots of doors for massive potential and opportunity.

Technology giant Google has enabled the residents of Silicon Valley, Stanford University student living area, to try out the new 1GB per second broadband speed. This is 100 times faster than the regular internet and has ultra-high speeds for downloading and uploading material. Currently only Stanford are able to access the high-speed networks that Google are building, but it will soon be wired up to almost half a million homes in order to see what differences and benefits it can bring to families in different areas. The download speeds can get up to 300 Mbps, with an upload speed of 150 mbps, making it the fastest internet available to the home user.

This new innovative technology could be an improvement for many, taking just a matter of seconds to download massive files and Google has labelled it as the next step towards high definition broadcasts. Movies, TV series and songs will be downloaded in a matter of seconds making things much easier, faster and waiting will be a thing of the past. Other services can benefit from this increase of speed like emergency services and online medical consultations. This is all made possible by using networks of fibre optic cables, rather than the original copper and wire telephone cables like before. It is giving a groundbreaking speed that is going to make those impatient internet users very happy. Normal cable download speeds are about 13Mbps, or about 1/20th the speed of Google Fibre, hailing this the fastest speed yet.

With internet being the most important part of communication and networking, faster internet is always going to be needed. It is essential for businesses and new jobs to have faster internet connections and Google have once again managed to deliver to their demanding audiences. Google are giving the internet to Silicon Valley free for one year, this campus is home to many students and on-site teachers who are regular users of the internet facilities and will quickly be able to recognise the benefits that it brings. Faster, faster, faster is always Google’s plan and it is going to be used in areas within America where there are people who want and can afford super fast broadband but cannot access it, America currently only ranks 15th in the world for access, and the internet is a huge driver for jobs and businesses which America needs to push. So will Google reach their goals and have the world’s fastest internet to a million users by 2020? Watch this space, they haven’t failed us yet.

Football fantasy is soon to become a reality with progress in the 3D technology. There is a new, intriguing principle that allows subscribers to put on headphones and sit comfortably from their own home, in front of their 3D high definition screens and watch the football. However this offers a whole new twist on the 3D experience, viewers have the opportunity to make selections from drop-down menus and choose which fixture they want to watch, they can watch the match that they want and choose the end that they would prefer to sit in. Once this is decided they can then relax and watch the game as if they were at the ground supporting from the sidelines. With added surround sound it will be like transporting out of your living room to the centre of the action.

All of this does seem a million years away from the technology that we have today but in the virtual reality, it will be happening within the next few years. With the advances in technology and 3D television, there is going to be a way of watching and consuming football that offers a much richer viewing experience. Currently testing in Beta you put on headphones and sit in front of a screen and have the feeling of being sat in a stadium, if you turn your head either way you can look at the goals at each side of the pitch as you watch the action unfold right in front of your eyes. This immersion technology is currently being developed to transform every viewing experience in the world of sport.

Sony and the Premier League are currently working over concepts to bring bigger and better things for the viewing of football. Sony wants to bring the panoramic experience to viewers all over the world by getting different shots from different angles so that you can immerse yourself in the game and become a part of it. It may restore the initial passion and enthusiasm of the actual sport when people can watch the detail and feel the excitement and remind the nation why it was such a special sport, rather than the more commercialised competition that it has become today. EA wanted to look a different approach and bring 3D to the audience but by creating holographic representations of the different points of the game. This will be able to be accessed via Sky. However the problem of this concept is bringing this fascinating technology to real time, they are currently working to improve this issue.

So is this new technology going to relight the flame of traditional football, and remind the fans why the sport is valued and eliminate football hooliganism and bring supporters together? Or is it simply going to be even less than that; the whole point of going to the game is to be part of the atmosphere and if you can get that at home, why would you go to the grounds. If the crowds dwindle there is no longer a point to the games, therefore there would have to be limits and boundaries in this country to what was being offered, this is more of a global vision. However just the mere thought that this could happen in our living rooms in the very near future is an exciting concept alone. Technology develops and improves every single day and there is always a question of where it will end, at the moment however, it is a very fast moving and exciting time in the viewing of television, technology and experience.

When conducting search engine optimisation, there is something thing that needs to be remembered and noted; measurement is critical to success. The progress needs to be tracked in order to see if the hard work is paying off or if it is having a minimal effect. It is important throughout an SEO campaign that you identify trends, strengths and weaknesses to see where to go next, what to change and what is actually having the desired effect. One metric that should be tracked every month is the contribution of each traffic source, from direct navigation, referral traffic and search engines. It is important to see where most of the traffic on your site is coming from in terms of bookmarks, email links, promotion campaigns and queries that sent traffic. Measuring the contribution of search engine traffic is also important, how many visits to your site is referred by and which specific search engines?

Keywords are the next thing to track, how many visits are referred by these particular searches? It is important to establish this because the popular keywords driving a lot of traffic to your site needs to be used through your content, titles and tags, their may be keywords that you are underserving. The keywords need to be used effectively as keywords stuffing can have a detrimental effect on your sites ranking. Conversation rate by search query term is another aspect that can highlight performance. These phrases send relevant visitors that convert to conversation, like filling out forms on the site. The term ‘relevant’ is the optimum word here because they need to be interested in your site to do this. This also includes relevant backlinks, your site needs to link to other sites that are relevant, you don’t want them clicking on your link then leaving your site straight away, this will then increase the bounce rate.

Watching the trends over time allow you to see a pattern emerge, using analytics software which can be paid for or that can be accessed for free, will show the progress of these points on your site. You need to be able to effectively interpret this data to apply successful changes, like fluctuations in the data. If there are significant drops in links or traffic there may be a loss of link juice, this means it will need to be checked if the important links still exist. Drops like this can also be due to penalties from search engines or blocked access. Measurement and tracking is highly important in SEO and is an ongoing process. It needs to be considered on a regular basis in order to keep your site at a high ranking or for your site to improve, if it is neglected your site will keep dropping and will become nothing but another lost site in the vast sea of the world wide web.

We recently received a rather innocuous email from a speculative “up and coming” web designer, which we thought was a worth discussing here as an example of how not to use email marketing.

First of all, the email rather oddly requested our name and address so that they could send their business card to us. The email also contained a link to an underwhelming and rudimentary portfolio website. Not a great impression for someone selling their design ability.

Despite ending up in our company spam folder, the email was instantly noticeable because it had several hundred email addresses in the CC field, listing every web design agency and related business in the Newcastle area.

So far, so unremarkable. We receive tens of similar emails every single week, although they’re almost always done with more self-awareness and panache.

Then a reply from one of the many recipients – copied to everyone on the original list – helpfully pointed out some of the shortcomings to the approach. Shortly after that another reply explained how the freelancer had allegedly stolen their design and entered it into a competition. As the morning went on, more and more emails dropped in from others who had suffered the same fate, or avoided it by quickly ascertaining that he perhaps wasn’t what he claimed he was. More emails appeared simply expressing amusement at the haplessness of the whole thing.

In short, just about everything that could go wrong with this particular mailshot did go wrong, to the extent that the sender wouldn’t be able to even speak to anyone on the list, let alone work with them.

Besides the obvious issue of publicly contacting people who you’ve previously offended, this example highlighted some fairly basic and easily avoidable slip-ups.

• Bulk CC lists. No-one wants to be contacted via CC as it literally indicates that they’re not the primary recipient. When the CC field contains lots of email addresses this sense is worsened massively. It shows that the message is general and imprecise, and therefore not really worth attention. It’s a rare piece of email marketing that doesn’t go to lots of people, but the CC field is not the place to list all of the addresses.

• Unusual, time-consuming request. In this case, the request was for a name and address to send a business card to. Asking for a director or HR contact isn’t a particularly unusual thing in itself, but it is typically done via a phonecall. Sending a generic email asking the recipient to go to the bother of replying, to receive a business card of all things, is staggeringly outdated. Email marketing should be all about the benefits to the reader, tempting them into action with something that’s worthwhile to them.

• Less than impressive offering. All other mistakes aside, the email contained a link to the designer’s portfolio website, giving one last hope of redemption to the whole sorry incident. A portfolio website is a chance to shine, to show off your abilities. However the website in this case was, at best, sub-standard. To compound things further, the list of services on the website included various advanced level and cutting edge technologies – which the sender plainly wasn’t conversant in. There’s so much choice out there today for everything, that whatever you’re offering needs to stand out somehow.

• Spelling, grammar and presentation flaws. When an email contains such errors as regularly using a lower case letter for “I” and the incorrect form of “their”, it suggests that the sender is either incredibly careless or isn’t capable of the most basic rules of writing. This is an elementary turn-off for the reader.

Email marketing, as we say time and time again at Green Media, is a very powerful form of advertising. Arguably the most powerful when you consider potential reach, precision targeting recipients, cost and return on investment. It forms the basis of many successful businesses entire marketing strategies.

When it’s done right email marketing can;

• Grow your business and amplify brand awareness
• Keep your customers happy with regular communication
• Highlight promotions, sales and offers precisely when needed

We’ve used email marketing for all of these things and more, for companies ranging from some of the biggest automotive manufacturers in the world to innovative local small businesses, and we’ve always achieved the right results.

If you’d like to have a chat about email marketing for your business, drop us a line on 0191 232 8088 or email info@green-media.com

Looking at reviews of the iPhone 4, from both consumers and writers on technology websites, it’s hard to find any that don’t give it a very high review. For example if you type ‘top ten smartphones’ in to Google, the iPhone 4 is listed as number one in seven of the first ten relevant results. This shows that the iPhone is regarded as one of the very best and most advanced smartphones on the market.

Admittedly, the choice of smartphone is all down to opinion and iPhones are not without their critics. It is often criticised for its ‘closed’ system in the App Store, where all apps are vetted by Apple before being allowed in the store. This is the opposite of its main competitor, the Android operating system, which has an ‘open’ system. This means that there are no restrictions on the content that can be created, but this has led to apps being potentially virus ridden, whereas the Apple app store is a safer alternative. The iPhone 4 was also heavily criticised for its reception problems, which meant that some phones required a rubber ‘bumper’ to improve the signal.

Opinion aside, the iPhone’s sales figures are very impressive. The iPhone 4 sold an estimated 13.5 million handsets in the 3rd quarter of 2010. The Android operating system has sold 20 million in the same quarter, but this is spread across dozens of handsets with varying features and power. The iPhone 4, as the name suggests, is only the fourth handset from Apple and one of only two still in production. No single handset has come close to selling the same amount as the iPhone 4.

The major breakthroughs and selling points of the original iPhone have become a standard feature expected on any high-end smartphone bought today. The most recent offerings from Samsung (Galaxy S2), HTC (Sensation) and LG (Optimus 2X) can match an iPhone 4 for performance and the majority of features available. The three phones, all running on the Android operating system 2.3, called Gingerbread, have been met with very positive reviews. All three phones use a dual-core processor, which increases the processing capabilities of the phones and the Samsung Galaxy S2, according to official specifications, is a full 0.7mm thinner than the iPhone 4.

There are a number of exciting new phones and new innovations that will make the competition even fiercer. The Windows Phone 7 operating system, while still in its infancy, has been met with positive reviews. Windows Phone 7 has also recently announced a partnership with Nokia, who are still the market leader in the overall mobile phone market. There is also a 3D offering from LG just a matter of weeks away. We must also remember that the current iPhone is now a year old and even though potential features of the new model are under wraps, we can expect considerable improvements when it is finally released.

The arguments over the best smartphone will rage on and it’s all about opinion and what features you look for in a phone. It may be smarter to ask whether we will see a smartphone that can offer something that will tempt the fiercely loyal Apple consumer away from the lure of a new iPhone. These are exciting times in the world of smartphones. However, the iPhone 4 reigns supreme in the battle for sales, at least for the time being.

Super search engine Google has taken a leap forward in to the realms of social networking. Joining in with the fun of liking, digging and tweeting, Google now aims to have everyone ‘plus oneing’. The +1 button that was rolled out in March, which allowed people to like Google searches has been expanded in to more sites on the internet. The new revelation in SEO is being used on websites such as masher, Bloomberg and addthis. It hopes to expand its presence to sites like you tube and blogger in the very near future.

Google’s +1 button has been put in place to compete with the Facebook ‘like’ button. With Facebook having over 600,000,000 active users it is a force to be reckoned with, the Facebook like button has been very popular and become a global phenomenon, a second nature to most. The +1 button allows Google users to show their appreciation for a blog, a site, an object, anything on the internet that they want to share with friends. It is a quick and easy way for people to find pages that they will like, or that friends think they should ‘check out’.

Problems have already been highlighted for the new feature. Currently the webmasters like their balanced world and their social media strategy. They will need to implement the +1 button dynamically and quickly without upsetting their current social media strategies. A belief that the increasing amount of buttons with all the different uses is going to start confusing the consumer and after all, those are who we completely rely on to press the buttons and up ratings of the websites!

Clicking the +1 button publicly gives something your stamp of approval. It can help your friends, contacts and others on the web find the best stuff when they search. As the internet is now such a vast sea of information, the +1 button will refine the mass of knowledge and make searching even quicker. Social media has changed the current world, where would we be now without Facebook and Twitter? And in the grand scheme of things they have not been around for very long! So for this reason it is not a surprise that Google want to become more social.

So can Google really take on the powerful forces of Facebook? With the internet moving so quickly and the sheer impatience and thirst for current technology it is likely that they could. The majority of social networkers have now worn out the Facebook ‘like’ button so maybe they will look for something new and exciting. Google is a trusted search engine so curiosity will certainly drive people to try it out. So sit back and watch the battle of the buttons begin.

There are lots of misconceptions when it comes to SEO. Some are based on guesswork, dubious technical knowledge, hearsay or just plain ignorance of the fundamental principles of the process. Some are based on old information that was relevant once upon a time, but for all intents and purposes is defunct and useless today. One of the most enduring of these ‘legacy’ SEO concepts is that of ‘submissions’, and the idea that a website can be physically requested to rank on a search engine.

In the early days of search, around the late-1990’s, search engines did indeed have pages where webmasters could submit URLs for consideration. Although it was never a fast-track to ranking, or even guaranteed that a search engine would acknowledge it, submission was a legitimate part of SEO.

To say that the submission process is long gone would be to indulge in the most ludicrous and obvious understatement. Search engines operate by crawling the web, indexing pages on a wide range of technical and content-based parameters. This means that websites are ranked and classified on their merits, and whether they provide the information that the user is searching for… not because a webmaster has simply asked for the site to rank through a manual submission.

It’s been this way since 2001.

Search engine submissions are literally a decade out of date.

Amazingly (or should that be disgracefully?), some SEO companies are still offering submissions as part of their paid-for service. This should be considered one of the calling-cards of someone who, a) doesn’t really know what they’re doing, b) is trying to pad out their proposal, c) is trying to bamboozle their client, or d) is operating a service from 1998. None of which would make for a successful business relationship.

Gaming giant Nintendo is set to announce the successor to its successful Wii console at next month’s E3 event, revealing the specifications of the machine that will follow the 86m selling phenomenon.

With rivals Sony and Microsoft staying silent on their next-generation plans for now, Nintendo is effectively the first of the trio to break cover, which is a bold strategy and one that hasn’t always proven to be the right one in the gaming industry.

The story of Sega – and specifically its ill-fated Dreamcast console – should serve as a precautionary tale to Nintendo, highlighting the potential pitfalls that can come with being the first to show your hand.

The Dreamcast Nightmare

Having earned its spurs in the nascent industry with the Master System, MegaDrive and Saturn consoles, Sega made its bid to strike a crushing first blow of the next generation, releasing the Dreamcast in late 1998. The new console was undoubtedly ahead of its time; with advanced graphical capabilities, online play (DreamArena) and a novel LCD screen insert for controllers. What could go wrong?

Well, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, having been beaten to the punch, used Sega’s early release as an opportunity to refine and perfect their offerings against the Dreamcast, and released the Gamecube, Playstation2 and Xbox respectively. This created an unusually saturated market with more choice than ever for consumers.

The early release of the Dreamcast made the console appear to be an older, less appealing proposition for buyers… and its fate was effectively sealed.

With customers increasingly opting for the newer alternatives, the Dreamcast lasted just three years against the competition, falling several years short of the expected lifespan of the console. The official discontinuation was announced in 2001 after months of falling sales. The failure had near-terminal repercussions, and Sega never recovered as a hardware manufacturer. The Dreamcast was the last console it produced, with the company moving solely into software publishing, where it remains today.

So, despite getting in first, despite the genuine innovations and despite the technological ability of the machine being on par with its competitors, the Dreamcast debacle almost killed the company.

While such an outcome would be perhaps unthinkable for Nintendo this time around, Sega’s dramatic fall from grace will not be far from their minds as the release of the Wii’s successor draws nearer.