Getting people to interact with others and upload content to a community-driven site enough may sound easy, but engagement doesn’t happen automatically. It takes time and work, and much of the right formula is deduced through trial and error.
Here are 10 tips for increasing user engagement that work for news community web sites, but can apply to all types of online user-engagement communities. Read more at mashable.com |
There is a lot of buzz around SimpleGeo right now. The service, which participated in our RealTime CrunchUp earlier this month, also took home two prizes at the Under The Radar conference just prior to that. And that was a big deal for the company considering it won the audience award even though it’s not exactly the most consumer-oriented project. But people seem to understand that the location space is getting really hot right now, and SimpleGeo, which provides its geolocation infrastructure to other companies, offers one of the best models to capitalize on that. So it should be no surprise that they’ve attracted some big time investors.Read more at www.techcrunch.com |
Speed has always been important to Google. Design and the web have not always been synonymous but with proper architecture and streamlining CSS with Sass and using sprites, we should not have to compromise beauty to have speed anymore. Google’s Matt Cutts hinted this past week that Google is considering using a site’s speed as part of the algorithm that ranks the order of pages in its search results. Fast sites might rank higher, while slower-loading sites might suffer. It’s a proposal that’s proving controversial.
To quote from Cutts’ video interview on WebProNews:
“We’re starting to think more and more about should speed be a factor in Google’s ( ) rankings?
…A lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast, it should be a good experience; and so it’s sort of fair to say if you’re a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus. Or maybe if you have a really awfully slow site, users don’t want that as much.” Read more at mashable.com |
Nice to see M&A’s more common over the last couple months. HP is acquiring network infrastructure manufacturer 3Com for $2.7 billion. 3Com provides networking, switching, routing and security components.
HP says the acquisition will further its data center strategy “built on the convergence of servers, storage, networking, management, facilities and services.” The acquisition of 3Com also help to expand HP’s Ethernet switching offerings, add routing solutions and significantly strengthen the company’s position in China thanks to 3Com’s strong presence in China. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2010.
It seems that HP struck back with a huge acquisition of its own after rival Cisco went on a shopping spree recently. Cisco responded to HP’s acquisition with this statement: Read more at www.techcrunch.com |
The most radical shift to media in recent years is that we now have a central real-time hub that serves to enhance every other content platform on the web. Sure, we could always use RSS for blogs, and sign up to follow a person’s activity on a video or photo sharing site, but used correctly, Twitter ( ) now provides a one-stop, real-time service for all of a person’s content. It allows us something that in the past only huge corporations could have: our own broadcasting network. If you’re on Twitter, and to a certain extent Facebook ( ), you are in the broadcasting business.
Of course, real-time status sites like those very much depend on other services: YouTube () and other video sharing sites, Flickr () and photo sites, and WordPress (), Blogger (), and the rest are all important for publishing and hosting content. However, Twitter and its ilk provide the hub, the means of connecting all of one’s online activity to create a real-time, people-run and Read more at mashable.com |
After previously only having an option to rent HD movies, back in March, Apple added the option to be able to buy HD as well. The problem? A complete and utter lack of options. Even now, some 8 months later, there were only a few dozen HD movies you could buy, and the majority were movies like The Midnight Meat Train — movies you probably had no desire to buy, let alone for the amped-up $19.99 HD price. Today, that changed.
Apple has just added a range of HD movies available for purchase on iTunes. Here’s the kicker: There are actually some good movies, finally. Sure, previously you could grab a few gems like Casino Royale. But now, for example, a total of 9 James Bond films are in HD (though sadly, only two of the Connery ones are, and Goldfinger is not one of them). Read more at www.techcrunch.com |
Some of these are pretty ingenious.  Print adverts need to get a message across with a single image and without the recourse of interactivity that we find today on the Internet.
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As interactive media expands, attention spans are getting shorter and shorter every day. |
For any company trying to get their product or service out in print format, the task is ever more challenging and difficult. |
Humorous ads remain one of the few effective ways to engage an audience in a very saturated advertising market. This is an area where the audience is far more receptive and still willing to pay attention. Read more at www.webdesignerdepot.com |
Mobile local search is growing like wild fire. It’s the natural platform for local. The real issue I see is not only the overall adoption but the experience that users crave. It’s still early folks. The study shows that the web generally, but in particular mobile and social network search, are increasingly factors fueling growth in the overall search market. This grew to 21.9 billion total US searches in June 2009, a year-on-year increase of 31%. Read more at www.techcrunch.com |
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