Top 5 in 10 - Weekly Social Media Relevance Rundown

Technology Goddess Radio’s weekly Podcast covering the Top 5 Social Media stories of the week in around 10 minutes, Russell Wright of ThemeZoom and I also rate each story at the end of the show for your Business Relevance. Is it important to your business, or is it just another shiny new thing?

Show Sept. 9, 2008 Show Notes: Read more

Facebook Opens Public Listings to Search Engines - Plans to Integrate Microsoft Search

Last night Facebook quietly opened it’s public Groups, Wall Posts, Events and Discussion topics to search engines for indexing purposes. This move converts Facebook’s consumer-generated treasure of categorized content into a search engine optimization source and Facebook expects it to increase traffic from organic search. Read more

Justice Dept. Hires Lawyer for Possible Anti-Trust Suit Against Google

The Justice Department has hired a well-known litigator, former Walt Disney Co. vice chairman Sanford Litvack to prepare for a possible antitrust challenge against Google.  Google’s advertising partnership with Yahoo has raised eyebrows as the two companies market share accounts for more than 80% of search-advertising.

Although the Justice Dept. has been interviewing witnesses and issuing subpoenas for weeks investigating the claim, this does not mean an actual case will be filed.

Read more in-depth insight into this story at the Wall Street Journal

Erika, Technology Goddess

Esquire Magazine’s Electronic Ink Digital Cover

To commemorate Esquire’s 75th Anniversary, they have published a cover that will go down in history, an electronic ink (or e-ink) cover that features digital moving words and flashing images. Beaming the words “The 21st Century Begins NOW” the magazine cover bridges the gap between digital media and print media, and the buzz is all about the technology underneath the cover.

Think it was a pricey move?  The e-ink cover reportedly only cost Esquire an additional $2.00 per magazine to produce. The pr-marketing effect? Priceless.

Let’s take a look at the tech behind the digital media animation: a programming header, 5-pin ISP, a Microchip PIC 12f629 which is flash programmable, 8 pin, 6 lithium coin cell CR2016s, 3 volts each, and 2 e-ink screens. The Cover is available in most large cities today but has not reached many smaller towns yet.

Here is a sneak peek at hacking the cover, to see what is going on… is it REALLY electronic ink? No, it’s actually an extremely thin and flexible screen:

Open the front cover and you’ll find an animated digital ad on the inside as well:

Esquire has released a short video of the animation, along with a nice bit of tutorial for Hackers interested in reprogramming the digital screen for their own amusements, and how to recycle the cover at Esquire:

Visit Mashable for another great article, photos and more information on Esquire’s digital ink cover.

Advertisers Protest to Justice Dept. On Google-Yahoo Partnership

The Association of National Advertisers, representing 400 companies and whose board counts executives from some of the biggest companies, announced a written objection was sent to the Justice Department to protest the proposed Google-Yahoo search advertising partnership. Read more

SEO Maven Russell Wright Goes On The Record About The Future Of SEO

Russell Wright, the co-founder of ThemeZoom, goes “On The Record Online” about the future of SEO and Market Intelligence. ThemeZoom is an online marketing intelligence platform that takes a radical approach to search engine optimizing online content. Wright, who is better known as “the keyword guy,” is a search engine optimization auditor and is well-known as an expert in finding profitable keywords and market intelligence. Read more

Will Chrome’s ‘Incognito’ Inflate Unique Visitor Statistics?

The numbers are rolling in on the success of Google’s Chrome browser launched in early beta this week. The browser has managed to seize a decent market share within 72 hours of launch, and it’s impact is being felt in the market catagory. IE browser use after Chrome launch this week fell from 31 percent to 24 percent

Looking at analytics gives ua a better idea of what’s happening, TechCrunch reports that 6% of it’s users arrived in a Chrome browser, which tech sites that are associated with marketing and serch or SEO reported even higher numbers; Search Engine Land reports 10 percent of it users were using Chrome. Technology sites that reported on the browser launch reported even higher figures.

Non tech-oriented sites (retail, womens, sports) are showing less interest with figures coming in at less than 1 percent.

The incognito made on Chrome allows users to browse under cover, however analytics are potentially effected with this feature, because they will be counted as a new (unique) visitor every time they visit the a site, even if the visit is a repeat one. This will ikely impact technology sits more than others, because of the higher use of Chrome right out of the gate. Marketing Vox reports that admins can expect to see larger “unique visitor” numbers, increasing the data gap between ISP data logs and Google Analytics records.

For More information, Visit Marketing Vox.

Erika, Technology Goddess