I would like to introduce everyone to FeedMagnet. FeedMagnet is a great new social media startup that is trying to help leading business to keep up with their social media chat and activity across the web. FeedMagnet already has clients such as AOL, Sundance Channel, Logitech, Kendall-Jackson, WE tv, and many more.
By creating embedded widgets, social press rooms, microsites, and brand fan pages that can be used on the web, displayed at events, or shared via mobile devices, FeedMagnet allows companies to capture the best social content about their brand and integrate social proof into their marketing program.
The Morgans Hotel Group uses FeedMagnet to aggregate content from all of the social sites they manage, trending news stories, and buzz from local events (like Fashion Week) and display it all in an attractive layout that is displayed on iPads in every room. For AutoNation we developed branded screens that pull in everyone talking about (and checking in at) AutoNation’s hundreds of dealerships around the U.S., as well as posts from their own social media team.
FeedMagnet has a lot of unique opportunities for companies looking to control and have more access of their brands on social media sites. Take a look at FeedMagnet and see if their range of services fits in with your needs.
It seems as though PopCap Games has just created a new studio to push out fast to market games. 4th & Battery, the new “experimental” studio is made up of current PopCap developers who want to “create smaller, simpler, and sometimes edgier games,” the company said.
PopCap Games is a very big player in the gaming industry with a huge amount of popular games, but it does take them a while to develop some of their gaming titles.
“4th & Battery is a purely experimental, creative label with none of the typical concerns like schedules, profitability, or even target audience,” PopCap’s CEO Jason Kapalka said in a statement. “It’s kind of the video game equivalent of B-sides or short films. Expect weirdness.”
PopCap’s executive vice president.
“4th & Battery gives us a way to quickly try really strange or marginal ideas, and to give our designers a safe area to hone their chops,” PopCap Executive Vice President Ed Allard said in a statement.
PopCap said that future 4th & Battery titles will be made available on Facebook, PCs, and iOS-based devices.
It seems as though Myspace is trying to get their music product back on track and at the center of this is a new product called Wildfire. Myspace are testing their new Wildfire product, which aims to help bands control all of their social networks.
MySpace Music vice president of Product Roberto Fisher, who shared preliminary details at a meeting held Saturday by the Music & Entertainment Industry Educators Association (MEIEA) in Los Angeles. ”Are you aware of the people that are most valuable to you in social media marketing, to help amplify what you do?” Fisher posed. ”Wildfire is designed to help you understand the tree of engagement that happens in the time that someone does something. So, we can pinpoint in any tree of distribution the people that gave you the most reach when they heard something and re-amplified it.”
So, it’s “where in the trees you should invest,” instead of burning the whole tree with a blowtorch, according to Fisher, which sounds like a refreshingly targeted idea. But this involves a lot of close observation, on a massive scale. Accordingly, MySpace is essentially ‘wiring every single action’ that happens in the social networking sphere as it relates to artists, and then assigning scores to the most valuable ‘branches of the tree.’ ”You can score it all,” Fisher described. ”I can tell you if user A is more valuable than user B. And when you did X, these are the things that caused Y to happen.”
Once you’ve set up your website the next most important thing to do is to start to build links. SEO link building is just as important as website optimization and is an ongoing process that needs to become part of your weekly routine in order to make your site the best it can be. To make matters more difficult, long gone are the days when you could just farm out link building to a company and buy hundreds or thousands of inbound links for your site. With Google having recently adjusted their algorithm to ensure that quality trumps quantity, it seems that SEO and link building will become more and more about quality over the coming months and years. With this in mind here are five tips to get the SEO and link building strategy of your site just right:
(1) Quality Content. It seems ridiculous to have to even have to suggest that quality content is important but most people think about content last. But read through most sites dedicated to SEO or Blogging and the concept of good quality writing is always treated as an afterthought. However Google’s change of algorithm makes this issue even more acute as it is their aim that original, good quality writing should be further up the search results and not hidden in a mass of terrible, keyword-obsessed, scraped content. Good quality writing will naturally create good backlinks and will bring more users to your site. What’s more, they will want to keep coming back. If the content is good, people will naturally link to you and recommend it to other people.
(2) Research Backlinks. When planning your SEO strategy & backlinks always go to your competitor’s website first to check which sites are providing them with backlinks. This is a great way to get your SEO campaign under way – anyone that is linking to your competitors will probably own a site that will link well with yours too. Then all you need to do is offer content that is better than your competitor. There are all kinds of tools out there to help you find these backlinks, from SEO Back Link Analyzer to SEO Spyglass.
(3) Quality Backlinks Only – Where possible, try to only go for higher quality backlinks. SEO links that are higher value will obviously bring greater link value to your site. Look for sites with a high PR rating, (at least PR 2 and above where possible) are a few years old, are not link farms or article farms. Also, ensure that your anchor text is of benefit – link on a search phrase relevant to your site, and not on ‘click here.’ Lastly, try to choose sites where there will not be numerous other links on the same page, as these will dilute the value and link juice of your link.
(4) Directory Submission – Though not as important as it used to be, there are still advantages to be gained by submitting your site to as many directories as possible. You can either submit your site yourself to directories you consider to be reputable or you can use a directory submission service that will automatically handle the submission process for you to more than 100 directories. Bear in mind that the most popular directories will not normally accept automatic submissions however.
(5) Local Directory Submission – Just as important as the global internet directories are local or national based directories of businesses which will help you appear in regional searches, improve your search ranking and also give you more specific and higher quality links.
Guest Blog by: Alex Simmonds is a copywriter and freelance journalist based in the UK. He can currently be found writing a daily financial blog on everything from mortgages to umbrella companies
There have been a lot of rumours about the upcoming relaunch of MobileMe. Here at Crenk we have discussed the possibilities of MobileMe launching in April and it still looks on the cards. However, a new report claims that the new MobileMe shall have a new feature dubbed “locker” and shall cost users $20 per year.
Apple is reportedly pushing hard to re-launch their new and improved MobileMe service this April, but what hasn’t been mentioned is that they’re pressuring major record labels to have all of the music licenses in place for the long rumored locker service planned for launch at the same time.
Informed sources say that Apple has sealed its deal with Warner and has been using that agreement to leverage the other labels to get the deals done in time for the April launch. The locker service will reportedly have somewhere around a $20 annual price tag.
Would you be willing to pay $20 per year for a full music locker service? It definitely seems to be on the cards that the Lala acquisition is finally going to come into play.
My Blog Guest is a great new service that allows bloggers and content publishers to communicated in a free guest blog marketplace. Guest blogging is great for writers, because they can have their content published on some of the words most read sites, while at the same time gaining new readers and followers. Blog owners like guest blogs, because its great original content that can enhance their readership.
MyBlogGuest has been started by Ann Smarty, a fairly well-known weblogger and social media user. She’s been guest blogging and building relationships in the blogosphere long enough to understand the power of a guest post – and that’s what she wants to share via her little cozy web community.
My Blog Guest is a unique community that is based on one simple principle: if you provide quality, you don’t need to pay to be heard. It unites bloggers who are interested in connecting to other bloggers, journalists and other content creators in any niche and publish their high-quality articles on their blogs.
What is a guest post?
A guest post is a piece of content the author and the blogger arrange to publish on the blogger’s site for free. The guest post belongs to the author and is attributed to him. It is up to the author which sites to link to within the post and it is up to the blog owner to accept/reject the contribution.
Here is a bit of an old list that we had archived. This list outlines the best social news websites in specific niche’s.
General Social News Websites
1. Reddit: Popular social news website with a large user base. Covers a wide range of news. Includes several topical sections called subreddits, which focus on specific topics like programming, science, politics and business.
2. Digg: The largest and most popular social news website on the internet. Covers all topics including politics, entertainment, technology and general news. Includes a separate video and image section.
3. Propeller: A social news site that covers all topics from technology to politics and entertainment. Operates in a similar fashion to Digg.
4. Fark: A community news site which allows users to comment on news articles. User submitted links will be posted on the main page once they are approved by the administrators.
5. Slashdot: Primarily a tech news site, Slashdot also covers topics like books, games, politics and entertainment. Users can submit stories and they may be published after editors approve it. A popular site that can send a large amount of traffic.
6. Metafilter: A community weblog which allows users to share links and discuss interesting websites/topics. Moderation is done through editors as well as peer pressure in order to prevent gaming.
7. I am bored: Covers general topics with a strong focus on weird and offbeat news. You can submit a link which may be posted after the editors approve it.
8. Mixx: A general social news sites which has a category for all types of news. Topics covered include business, entertainment, sports, health and tech. Includes the ability to create groups to share news with other users.
9. Shoutwire: General news site that is well populated with a loyal group of users. Topics covered include technology, politics, entertainment, lifestyle and sports.
10. Newsvine: A website consisting of community-driven news stories and opinions. Users have their own blogs and can write articles, save links to external content and vote/comment on other user stories.
11. IndianPad: A general social news site that with a large indian userbase. Topics covered include entertainment, sports, videos and tamil news.
12. Linkfilter: Covers all sorts of news. All links are posted and moderated by users. Links can be ranked on several levels: clicks, votes, age, or a combination of all three called points.
13. NewsCloud: A general social site with a focus on news in all topics. Similar to Newsvine, each user has their own blogs and can publish content to be voted up by other users.
14. Hugg: Hugg is a social news site with a strong focus on environmental issues. Also includes other categories like politics, science, fashion and technology.
15. Plime: A general news site which features a wide variety of topics ranging from religion and sports to technology or business. Odd news performs best in this community.
16. C2NN: An active social news site with a variety of topics including environment issues, business, politics, animals and offbeat. Similar to Hugg in focus but much more populated and active.
17. Kirsty: A general news site with a focus on fashion, entertainment and design on top of other topics like technology and food. Has a strong female user base.
18. Nowpublic: A participatory news network which focuses on citizen journalism. Each user has their own individual profile blog/page and can upload videos, images and news stories.
19. Stirrdup: General social news site with four broad categories: politics, technology, news and entertainment.
20. Searchles: A hybrid social news sites which covers all topics. Includes a video section and offers personalized filtering features and the option of joining groups made up of other users with similar interests.
21. Linkinn: A social news site that specializes in pictures and video. Covers a broad range of topics, particular offbeat and weird content.
22. Earthfrisk: Covers topics like humor, politics, entertainment and business. Combines a social network and group features with digg-style news voting.
23. Truemors: A social rumor news site which focuses on the publication of “true rumors that are relevant, informative, and interesting.” Users can post links anonymously via text, voicemail, web or email. Editors moderate content.
24. StumbleUpon: A social network and browser toolbar which allows users to channel surf the internet. Technically not 100% a social news site, although users can submit webpages to be rated by other users. Here is a guide to StumbleUpon.
25. Linkswarm: Covers a wide range of topics from celebrity gossip to funny media, science and politics. Focuses on pop culture and bizarre news as well.
Niche Social News Websites
Here are social websites which focus on a specific niche. For best results, only submit to them when your site falls within the same niche or covers the same topics. Or else you’re likely to be marked as spam.
26. Sphinn: Sphinn is a social site for search and interactive marketers. It’s designed to allow you to share and discover news stories, read and take part in discussions, discover events of interest and network with others.
27. Dzone: DZone is a free link-sharing community for developers. Other topics commonly featured include web design and programming.
28. Tweako: A user-powered site and social network with a focus on guides and tutorials in all categories like computing, technology, and the Internet.
29. Autospies: A social site that focuses on automotive news, car reviews, auto show photos and videos.
30. Design Float: A social news site for design-related content. Topics covered include business, freelancing, advertising, digital art and branding.
31. Ball Hype: A site that aggregates content from thousands of sports blogs. Users can submit stories and votes will determine if they make it to home page.
32. YCombinator Hacker News: A news site that focuses on technology, startups, business and entrepreneurship.
33. SWiK: A community driven resource for people who use open source software.
34. Buzzflash: A user driven progressive political news website that allows you to submit political stories.
35. DNHour: DNHour.com is a user-powered news portal built specially for the domain name industry. Most members are generally from the domain name industry, which includes domain name owners, companies or professionals.
36. PlugIM: PlugIM is a user driven internet marketing community. Topics covered include search engine optimization, products, business and marketing.
37.Showhype: Operates in a similar way to Ballhype. Stories come from two sources — users and aggregated content. Users can also submit a link to a story that they’ve found or write their own article on ShowHype.
38. Small Business Brief: A niche social site which focuses on small business news. Topics covered include marketing and sales, website development, management and entrepreneurship.
39. Hypediss: Social news site with a focus on design, fashion, urban culture and art.
40. Chictini: Product-oriented social site which a focus on new trends and styles. It’s possible to submit news stories although most of the submissions feature products from online retailers.
41. DotNetKicks: DotNetKicks.com is a community based news site that focuses on topics like NET development techniques, technologies and tools including ASP.NET, C#, VB.NET, C++ and Visual Studio.
42. Lipstick: Reddit-style social news site for celebrity gossip.
43. Hubspot: Social news site for marketers, entrepreneurs and business professionals.
44. Winelifetoday: A niche social site for wine lovers. Topics covered included news and opinion articles to do with wine.
45. iliketotallyloveit.com: Allows users to publish and share products with the broader public which they find cool, innovative, exceptionally beautiful, or just weird. Included with every item is a link to an online shop where it can be purchased.
46. Wordsy: A niche social news site for people who love reading and books. Topics covered include small presses, fiction writing, authors, book awards and poetry. (Note: Wordsy has suspended its site since Dec 2008)
47. Value Investing News: A niche social news site that covers stocks and investment news. A small but active community.
48. Teenwag: Focus on celebrity gossip. A hybrid social network with digg-style voting. Users can submit links to be voted up by other users.
49. Muti: Muti is a social bookmarking site inspired by reddit and Digg but dedicated to content of interest to Africans or those interested in Africa.
50. Tip’d: A social media site for finance, investing, and business topics. Tip’d users vote on stories they like by clicking the ‘Tip it’ button that appears next to each story, and then can comment by pressing the ‘Discuss’ link below the story.
This list is a work in progress and there are a few sites that have been either launched or hit the deadpool. We will be updating this very soon!
