What Makes This Change a Different One: How Google+ Could Kill Google Search Business


Nathan Safran writes at Search Engine Watch: “There have been numerous instances in the past where users have been up in arms about the latest Google change, insisting they were moving on to other search engines. Panda, while painful for many publishers ultimately proved itself to improve search results relevancy. Google Instant and Preview brought with them cries of “SEO is Dead!” and vows to move on to greener pastures. All the while the needle hasn’t budged on Google’s market share. But what makes this time different is this is the first time the credibility of their core search results are being called into question. Without question, social is an important part of how online users will consume and spread quality content. But it has to be integrated in a manner that doesn’t degrade core search functionality, or worse, sully searcher trust in what is still the most utilized search engine in the world. Because this, more than anything Google’s core competitors can do to them, could prove itself to be the tossed pebble that brings the mighty giant to its knees.” Interesting, informative. 8/10 Read the full article: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2141766/How-Google-Could-Threaten-Googles-Core-Search-Business 
Via searchenginewatch.com

The Why and How Self-Publishing a Book Is A Great Idea For Any Entrepreneur | Techcrunch


James Altucher tackles three issues on Techcrunch: “Why self-publish rather than use a traditional publisher, why entrepreneurs should self-publish, and finally, HOW does one go about self-publishing.” A few highlights from the article:  “…when I self-publish I make about a 70% royalty instead of a 15% royalty with a traditional publisher. I also own 100% of the foreign rights instead of 50%.” “You won’t make a million dollars on your book (well, maybe you will – never say never) but just being able to say, “I’m a published author” extends your credibility as a writer/speaker/enterpreneur when you go out there now to sell your book, syndicate your blog elsewhere or to get speaking engagements, etc.” “I used createspace because they are owned by Amazon and have excellent customer service. They let you pick the size of your book and then have Microsoft Word templates that you download to format your book within” Read the full article: http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/28/why-every-entrepreneur-should-self-publish-a-book/  (Curated by Robin Good)
Via techcrunch.com

NFL Like Socialism


A stylish and elegantly irrevent motion graphic video animating a short essay from the audio recording of ‘The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass’. 
Via vimeo.com

Optimize Your Published Video for SEO: The Video Sitemap Guide for Vimeo and YouTube


From the original article: “Did you know that major search engines want you to make video sitemaps for all of your embeds, even if you’re hosting on Vimeo or Youtube? Not only does it help them spider your website by giving the search engines clues as to where to look for video embeds, it may also earn your site a click through boost by giving you a picture in the SERP. … There are several reasons why you’ll want to add a video sitemap. It makes it clear to Google what your content is. You have the opportunity to provide a range of details through schema. Additional presence on video.google.com search. RAD picture thumbnail, which is a pretty great call to action.” Full article: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/video-sitemap-guide-for-vimeo-and-youtube 
Via seomoz.org

App Pricing: What Works Best?


Tom Krazit reports at PaidContent: “In an insanely crowded mobile apps marketplace, pricing is one of the ways to stand out from the competition: for better or worse. Distimo shared some data Thursday on app-pricing strategies as well as the old-fashioned retail concept of the sale.” The report entitled “The impact of app discounts and the impact of being a featured app” has indeed some useful information that can help you understand a what price level to offer your iPhone/iPad/Android app. Download the report here: http://www.distimo.com/publications/  “Those who have erred on the high side and aren’t getting the response they would like should consider a sale: in Apple’s App Store average revenue rose 41 percent on the first day of a sale and by 22 percent over the course of 15 days, Distimo said in a new report on app pricing.” “…steep(er) cuts paid off: “For example, offering a discount of one dollar on an application that normally costs $7.99, lowers the revenue, whereas offering a discount of three dollars on average increased the revenue by 131 percent,”… Original source: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-distimo-when-its-time-for-a-mobile-app-sale-choose-your-price-wisely/ 
Via paidcontent.org

Curate and Compare Your Collection of Favorite Products: GetVega


GetVega is a Pinterest-like visual clipping tool, which allows you to create lists and visual collections of commercial products while easily capturing selective info relative to each one (cost, size, weight, price, etc.).  As I have been writing, one of the key next evolutionary areas for content curation tools, is the delivery format. It is on this front that there are lots of marvellous opportunities yet to be tapped. And GetVega is one of the first curation tools to do a great job on this front.   In fact, one key feature inside GetVega is the ability to display curated collections in one of three different visual formats, depending on the type of list and use you want to make of it. One such display format is extremely effective and valuable as it makes it easy to “compare” products and info within one collection. GetVega provides a Google Chrome extension that allows you to easily clip one or more images from any product page, as well as any specific product info text or video. Check out for example this curated collection of iPad alternatives: http://www.getvega.com/list/4f030465e91683175200a750-do-i-really-need-an-ipad You can see at a glance the different tools and their key specs.  Collections can be set to be either “public” or “private” and can be easily shared on  Similar “product curation tools” include: Polyvore, Wanelo, Bagcheck, Curisma, OpenSky, Lyst   Recommended. 8/10 Try it out now: http://www.getvega.com/ 
Via getvega.com

Everything You Need to Know To Video Stream A Live Event


Robin Good: What does it take to pull off an effective live video stream for a real event? What are the problems and bottlenecks to face and how to spot them? In this hour-long video Rob Roskin, senior manager for video operations and emerging technologies at MTV, explains everything you need to know, from cameras to encoding to bandwidth, that you need to know to stream a live event successfully. Check full video and article: http://www.onlinevideo.net/2012/01/tips-for-pulling-off-a-live-streaming-production/
Via onlinevideo.net

Help Readers Discover More of Your Content: The Slide by SimpleReach


Robin Good: You have probably seen this cool little widget at work on many sites already, and have probably been wondering, how could you get that on your web site too. Well the answer is simple: The Slide by SimpleReach does it all for you, and at no cost. It recommends related posts without asking you much in return. It can increase pageviews and the time web visitors spend on your web site. Useful. 8/10 http://simplereach.com/ 
Via simplereach.com

Advertising Not: How Context and Sharing Disrupt The Most Popular Online Business Model


Robin Good: Felix Salmon on the Reuters blogs has a short but insightful article on how content creation and distribution is changing and on the diminishing value of being an integrated silo that created, edits, publishes and distributes its own content. He writes: ”Facebook and Google have become two of the biggest media companies in the world in extremely short amounts of time, precisely because they don’t have much interest in owning any content. Rupert Murdoch looks at Google and sees a pirate because he does everything: he both creates content (think 20th Century Fox), and also distributes it (think Sky TV). … While the social, digital world is one where the biggest media companies have a much lighter touch, and where the content creators with the broadest reach will be the ones who care the least about protecting their copyrights. I suspect that we’re only in the very early days of seeing how this is going to disrupt just about every media organization built on the idea of hosting a website and selling ads, including highly socially-attuned ones like the Huffington Post. HuffPo is built on the idea that when stories are shared on Twitter or Facebook, that will drive traffic back to huffingtonpost.com, where it can then monetize that traffic by selling it to advertisers. But in future, the most viral stories are going to have a life of their own, being shared across many different platforms and being read by people who will never visit the original site on which they were published.” Insightful. 9/10 Read the full article: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/01/23/how-sharing-disrupts-media/ 
Via blogs.reuters.com

Content Curation World TV: My Curated Video Channel on Redux


Robin Good: Redux has recently revamped its curation features especially in the direction of providing a unique platform to curate thematic video channels. Anyone can easily sign-up, create a custom channel, and add URLs of video clips that they like to add to their video channel. The TV-like interface REDUX has created is very cool and allows you to watch any channel in full screen mode with clips in your channel that play back-to-back. You can test out and watch this full screen video channel I have curated exclusively with “curation-related” video content: http://bit.ly/curationtv  Check out the channel content here: http://redux.com/stream/channel/ContentCuration  N.B.: There is not yet a browser bookmarklet that facilitates the clipping of new video content as you browse, the ability to delete a channel, or to scan other video clips to watch as you watch a channel, but these are likely upgrades coming soon.
Via redux.com

The Google Penalization Guide: Everything You Wanted To Know About It


Robin Good: If you are looking to understand more about Google penalizations, whether “algorithmic” (like Google Panda) or “manual”, here is a great guide by David Harry to dive into. Key sections in this guide include: Have You Been Penalized?What Can You Get Penalized For?Diagnosing a Google PenaltyHow to Deal With a Google PenaltyDealing with Algorithm ChangesWhat Data to Keep for the SEO Doctor Recommended. 8/10 Full article: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2141098/Google-Penalty-or-Algorithm-Change-Dealing-With-Lost-Traffic 
Via searchenginewatch.com

Monetize Specific Parts of Your Public Content: Cleeng


Robin Good: Cleeng is a service that allows content publishers to monetize their content by placing certain sections or specific content items on their site behind a paid wall. Payments can be made in one-click and Paypal, major credit cards, SMS payments are all supported. “Cleeng patented solution allows publishers to hide specific part of their content between two tags: for example a blogger can monetize an entire article or just a part of it, a novelist can cover just a few pages. With Cleeng, you define which part of the content is available for users and the price for each item of content. … When published the content item is hidden behind a secure Cleeng layer on your website, so the page remains completely visible to search engines.” Key features: http://cleeng.com/us/features/  Demo-examples: http://cleeng.com/us/features/demos/  Find out more: http://cleeng.com/ 
Via vimeo.com

Content Curation For Large Companies and Brands: Where To Start | Digiday


If you are looking at content curation from the perspective of a large company, you may want to read this article from Josh Sternberg on Digiday, which provides some valuable recommendations. Here a few highlights I have extracted from the article:  “Curation is the vogue digital term for the ability to not only aggregate and distribute carefully selected information, but also to provide a unique voice on top of the original pieces of information. … “The best way to do it is to identify a high-interest topic that you want to be perceived as an expert in,”… “Curate that topic and provide some context around it. If you’re curating a lot of content in a topic area, over time that leads to expertise and credibility. … **There can’t be articles that make the reader question why a brand is sharing it. **Also, brands need to make sure they’re not just regurgitating content, but instead offering readers/followers valuable information, as readers will quickly determine the curated content — and thus the brand — is not worth their time.” Rightful. 7/10 Read the full article: http://www.digiday.com/publishing/brands-apply-for-content-curator-roles/ 
Via digiday.com

Create Custom Professional Data-Maps: TargetMap


Robin Good: TargetMap is a free web service that allows you to create and customize professional-looking data-maps with any country or area in the world.  Maps created with TargetMap (satellite, physical, hybrid, etc:) can utilize excel-formatted data, can be color-coded and customized manually, or specific data can be input in them.  The user can also leverage existing public maps for the creation and customization of new ones.  Final maps can be exported as images, embedded in your web site or blog or shared directly to Facebook and Twitter. Three options are available for your maps: shareable, not shareable and private/business. The first two options are free and the third one starts at $49/month. Free shareable maps do not support the zip code field.  Find out more: http://www.targetmap.com/ 
Via youtube.com

Google Panda 3.2 Update Confirmed


“Google has confirmed reports of a Panda update with us. [Google] told us they have done a data refresh of the Google Panda algorithm about a week ago, and added that there were no additional signals or algorithm changes. This was only a data refresh. I saw reports over the past week or so of webmasters commenting about their rankings. Most were complaining that they lost rankings, but some said sites that were originally hit by Panda regained their traffic levels pre-Panda. This would explain the data refresh, where Google ran the algorithm and updated the sites that should or should not have been touched by Panda.” Read the full article: http://searchengineland.com/google-panda-3-2-update-confirmed-109321  (thanks to Giuseppe Mauriello)
Via searchengineland.com