Google is always dabbling in new adventures and ways to increase their profit margins.  Their most recent endeavor is providing search engine results on live TV!  Currently, Google is in the testing stages with Dish Network to create an exclusive TV programming search engine service.

This is still in it's initial testing stage and is not set to be released anytime soon.   Supposedly, there is an additional box that will search through Dish network and YouTube for entertainment for you to view on yout television set.  This may be similar to the premier TiVo service announced early March 2010.

This is not the first time Google has dabbled into the realm of television.  In 2008 Google AdWords launched Google TV Ads for companies to advertise their ads through.  This has not been as successful as other Google ventures, but there is always time to tweak their platform and make changes.  this could very well be the future of television.

What is your take on Google entering into your home TV set?  Are you excited or nervous to see this happen?

Earlier this week, March 8th, the extremely popular and useful social media tool, HootSuite has decided to integrate MySpace and Foursquare this week. 

HootSuite was initially launched as a Twitter application and has quickly gworn due to its ease of use, sleek interface, and customization.  It is a time saver for any internet marketer who manages multiple social networking and micro blogging accounts.


What does this mean for all the social mediaholics and gurus?  You will have an one-stop place to magae all of your social media sites.  With the recent teaming up together;Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and FourSquare can all be accessed and managed through one platform and log in.  Plus you can manage multiple accounts via HootSuite.

Unfortunately, they have not released any information as to how the new social networking sites will be integrated into HootSuite's Teetdeck, but it is likely to resemble the current layout (as seen above).  The FourSquare program begins to become more complicated and may have some redesign done to the Tweetdeck interface to make it flow smoothly and seamlessly. 

Blogging has become explosive in recent years and many people are confused as to what all the hype is. Blogging allows you to quickly relay your message to a captive audience. By speaking directly with your clients or customers, you are establishing a positive relationship with them.

Rather than being just another company with a website, they will know that there is someone behind the website that cares and is willing to help with any questions or concerns you may have.There are many excellent blog solutions that are free such as Blogger and WordPress.

Blogs also offer something else that website cannot, updated content on a constant basis. Google and the other search engines love to see fresh, new, updated, original content on the web. This means that your blog and all its pages will be in the search results, ranking high. This means that all blog posts will be ranking high up on the organic search results.
In order to keep your blog posting at the top of the search engines, you must build links back to each post. Creating a viral buzz is great by using social networking sites such as Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, twitter, Google Buzz, etc. The more you promote the post, you will see an increase in visitors and links back to the page. This is the perfect combination for having a successful SEO friendly blog.

Looking at the statistics from blogs, it is proven that most visitors are new to the site and arrived via search. While having high-quality content is critical to blogging, SEO and SEM techniques are valuable tools to measure ROI. Blogging should be part of any companies online marketing campaign, should be updated weekly (if not more), and will definitely improve your SEO rankings.

In an attempt for Facebook to make even more money off their insanely successful site they have switched their developer rules.  Facebook will now offer facebook credits to developers.  This is treated as cash and when profits are made facebook is not entitled to 30% f their revenue.

Facebook credits are their vitural currency traded amoungst members of the highly successful social networking website.  These were origionally created last Spring to allow users to purchase gifts.  This soon changed when Facebook allowed you to purchase credits through PayPal.  This enticed huge game developers to get the ball rolling with new games because of the opportunity to make cash.  And when we say they make money, we mean it.  Developers can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a month by creating a superb app that becomes an instant hit.

Coincidentally, this is the same amount Apple takes from its app store sales.  Well, maybe it is not a coincidence. 

Facebook's reasoning behind taking 30% of the application developers revenue is to invest "heavily into the eco-system".  Marketing efforts will be in place to inform the public about the Facebook currency.  This should in turn bring in more sales to facebook app developers in the future, if the marketing efforts are a success.

In addition to this, Facebook runs ads on the right column of every profile, has games, and other sources of income that are not yet released.  What do they have in store for us in the near future?  Only time will tell, but you will not have to wit long.

Yet again, Goole has released another Beta program out of the hands of a a select few gmail users accounts.  On Tuesday February 9th, 2010 Google released Buzz to ALL gmail account holders.  What is Google Buzz and what is it all about?  Why do the major social media sites have to worry?

Well, it is somewhat like Twitter in a sense.  It allows live updates of information shared between your social networking circles.  You can share you thoughts and multimedia links to your friends through your mail account.  It shows updates about users statuses and lets others follow you.  It very much resembles Twitter in a sense and may become competition if Google plays their cards right.



Some critics of this say it is an invasion of privacy and has sparked dispute among many concerned people.  What is all the fuss about?  Well, Google uses your email contacts and connects them into your network.  This sounds god, until you start to think about all your contact.  There may be people you do not want to share information with or do not want others to know about.  You may have a secret lover, personal information, doctors names, etc. in your emails.  Why do you want to share these people with your social contacts?

What is Google's response to this?  If you have something to hide then don't use the web.  They are taking all complaints into consideration as this is still the testing phases of the program and they have many bugs to fix and tweak before releasing it to the masses.

In a switf and timely manner (Feb 13, 2010), Google has recently updated their privacy status after many compaints were filed.  You now have the option to disable Google Buzz and limit who you share your information with.  This will help calm the storm of criticism it has received.

Google Buzz has the potential to be monstrous in its quest for fame in the social media sphere.  Twitter has approximately 30 million users worldwide, quite an impressive number for a new site!  On the other hand, gmail has 38 million users in the United States alone!  This means that Google Buzz will have more users than Twitter once it is made live for the world!  Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites should be worried!

Since the release, there have been 160,000 new posts per hour!  This is something to fear if you are involved in the social media sphere, mainly Facebook and Twitter.

Many Microsoft Windows 7 users have started to notice a decline in their batteries longevity.  At first they were confused thinking it was the BIOS drivers that needed to be upgraded, but then began to notice that others who installed Microsoft Windows 7 had the same problem. 

The problem is not prone to desktops, but laptops and notebooks as well.  Even a brand new battery does not stand a chance with Windows 7 operating system.

There may be a class action suit taking place soon so be on the lookout if you have encountered this problem already.  Be sure to take necessary precautions, like making sure it is not your computer causing the problems.  Take your computer down to your local shop to get it inspected to see what the culprit is.  More than likely, it will be windows 7.

There is a new feature soon to be released for Google AdWords Pay Per Click Advertising allowing advertisers to place a phone number below their ad. This will be an additional line, to the already overcrowded space. This means ads will have a headline, 2 descriptions, and a display URL. Optionally there will be Google checkout, Google checkout save $__, image results, and now a phone number.

What does all this mean to advertisers on the Google AdWords PPC accounts? There will be less space for the first page results, thus driving up cost per click.

With the beta feature there can only be 5 PPC campaigns per account set up with Google beta generated phone numbers. These numbers will be different for each campaign to better track results. Hopefully soon this will expand to individual ad groups within campaigns, keywords, and ad text. This is all something that will need to be implemented soon after the beta phases.

The phone numbers generated by Google will redirect to a company chosen phone number. This will track conversions, but how? That is a good question. Is Google only going to track conversions that lead to a phone call? If so this is inaccurate as a phone call does not always lead to a sale or conversion. I will be waiting for a response from Google to this question.

Currently there are two phases of the phone number tracking conversions being releases. Phase 1 has your phone number listed under your ad. People can call the number by reading your ad, but cannot call by clicking into your website. Phase 2 is where a user clicks your ad and is lead to a landing page with the specific Google generated phone number.

So if your company already has phone numbers set up for tracking PPC conversions then you should go with phase 1 (if you are privileged to take place in this beta testing)