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Haven’t done  a news & views roundup in a while, so time to check my RSS reader folders and link to some good webmasters reading material.

Search Engine News

Bing’s Stefan Weitz: Where Is Search Going? Weitz provides some interesting insights about the future of search engine development, and no, social media is not the main topic he discusses here.

The Buzz Not Quite Dying Out

But it’s taken an interesting turn over the past week, as more people got upset with the perceived breach of their privacy. Google Getting Wrong Kind Of Buzz:

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleging that Google’s new social networking service Buzz violates federal consumer protection law.

Of course, it didn’t take long for this headline to show up: Class Action Complaint Filed Over Google Buzz

Google responded by saying  “With Buzz We Failed To Appreciate That Users Have Differing Privacy Expectations”

Pete Cashmore provided a nice overview of Buzz, taking into account both the privacy issues, in his CNN column:

Google Buzz: What is it good for?

Still mad at Google? You may like this article published on Gizmodo:

How To: Escape From Google’s Clutches, Once and For All

Facebook

I enjoy Facebook as much as the next person, and apparently both me and the next person have been complaining about it being slow and at times unreliable. Looks like Facebook was listening:

How Facebook Became Twice as Fast (But Still Not Fast Enough)

Can’t have the good without the bad. That annoying Farmville game seems to be going stronger:

FarmVille Wins Social Networking Game of the Year Award

FarmVille Surpasses 80 Million Users

I really hate Farmville. It’s not just the annoying messages in my stream, but the very nature of this game displaying the false idyllic facade of farms, when in reality, the food production industry is a big-money cruel machine of mass production at the expense of animal welfare.

If you dislike Farmville for this or any other reason, you may need this -

HOW TO: Block FarmVille on Facebook

Other Stuff

Google Maps Adds Businesses in 30 African Countries

Ok, you may not be visiting Africa anytime soon (or maybe you will be), but I appreciate the fact that Google is taking the time and effort to do this. Google Earth/Google Maps were invaluable to me on our last big family trip in the US. It just feels good to know that the same kind of information is available elsewhere as well.

It’s time for the loosely termed “weekly web news roundup” here. I love my Google Reader but there’s just so many sources I’ve subscribed to, that I can’t realistically as much as skim over more than 2-3 days worth of headlines.

Speaking of which, Google Reader now lets you subscribe to pages that don’t have RSS feeds. Just enter any URL and it will keep track of the page for you and report any changes. Pretty cool, I think.

Online Advertising News

WebmastersWorld is undoubtedly a great resource and arguably the best webmasters board around. It’s often too busy, so I like to keep track of it by following the seroundtable.com site. This week they review an interesting thread about the things that bother Google Adsense Publishers. Well worth a read.

Still on Google advertising, browsing from your phone, you can actually click on a Google ad and it will connect you to the advertiser via the phone. It’s an interesting twist that could potentially effect affiliate marketing because, once on the phone, referring sites have no way of tracking sales. You can read more about this new feature here:  Google Introduces Click-To-Call Numbers In Ads.

The iPad. Sigh.

Sigh – because it’s was ALL OVER the RSS feeds this week. iPad this and iPad that. Everybody seems to have something to say about iPad, don’t they? Well, I think Hitler summed it up best in The Meme That Will Never Die: Hitler Debunks The iPad.

And on a Lighter Note

I just LOVED this one:

Travel Site Kayak Sells Seats On Lost’s Oceanic Flight 815

Search Kayak for flights from Sydney’s SYD airport to Los Angeles’s LAX and you’ll see that Oceanic Flight 815 — the very one that crashed on the mysterious island in the first episode of Lost — is one of your options.

What a brilliant publicity stunt for Lost. I tried finding the flight myself on Kayak but failed. If you can find it, let me know.

I finally got around to checking the RSS reader, so sharing some articles and posts here today.

The Haiti Disaster was and unfortunately still is major headlines. Google not only donated $1M but also helped assess damages using their extensive damages. Here’s a post showing before and after satellite imagery, and a link to Google’s Haiti page.

As with the Iranian Elections, Twitter and other social media were central to sending in news and pictures right from the scene and Mashable covered this aspect in this piece.  There is also a downside to this, as Twitter and Facebook were used for related hoaxes and worse: SCUM: Haiti Disaster Attracts Hoaxes and Scammers.

Twitter News

The Twitter Flatline: Why Doesn’t Twitter Grow? [STATS] seems to have provoked quite a few responses, the consensus being that Mashable’s Ben Parr got it wrong by ignoring the fact that many Tweeps do not use the Twitter website, opting for desktop application such as Tweetdeck instead. Robert Scoble talks about that and also offers more advice on growing Twitter here: Twitter’s traffic in trouble?

Useful Stuff

Some cool tools that I am definitely going to explore some more:

18 Online Productivity Tools for Your Business

And Other Stuff

I really enjoyed this futuristic piece of prose, describing our future life under Google’s (benevolent?) rule:

Built By Google

It almost seems poetic that Google – considered to be a global worldwide giant of a corporation involved with nearly every aspect of our online lives – would butt heads with the world’s new leading superpower.

Google’s decision back in 2006 to play by the Chinese government’s rules and apply censorship to Google.cn was heavily criticized at the time. Google justified it by saying “the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results”.

Well, what do you know, China may have let Google get a hold in its fast emerging online arena, but the leopard has not changed its spots one bit. Looks like the Chinese government had no qualms in launching a full 0ut digital attack on Google’s servers in an effort to hunt down Chinese human rights activists using Gmail accounts.

So now Google has decided to stop censoring search results on Google.cn, which they admit will probably mean shutting down Google.cn and moving out of the Chinese market altogether.

The implications are huge. Here are just a few that come to mind -

1. Google may be walking out of what might be the largest online market in the future.
2. Chinese people may be even further cut off from the main Internet hubs. That means online marketers will not have as good an access to this market and Chinese webmasters will be even more limited in their operations outside of China.
3. Google may regain some of the credibility they lost over surrendering to the Chinese government’s demands in the first place.
4. Gmail has proved to be a secure service. Only two accounts are said to have been hacked into by means other than phishing and malware installments. This is about much more than email security – our Gmail logins are now used for so many services it can be scary.

Just went over the latest headlines in my RSS Reader, as I try to do once a week, and share some of the gems with you here. This time proved to be more difficult than others: way way too many “Happy New Year” lines, way too many compilations of “xx Best yy of 2009″ and “xx best yy of the decade”. Bleh! It’s just a date, folks, get over it.

Not that all of them sucked terribly. Some were interesting, some were funny, some even important. I’ve mentioned some of them in the last News and Reviews post.  From this week’s crop, here are a couple about 2009 -

Tweetup and Hashtag Make the List of Top 2009 Words

TenYears: The Biggest Product Flops of the Decade

And two more, these are even more interesting, as they try to predict future trends:

Facebook: 5 Predictions for 2010

Google’s 2009: A Glimpse of the Web’s Next Decade – a mix of 2009 summary and some predictions.

I have to say, there wasn’t much else going on this week, in terms of exciting web news. I mean, even John Mayer’s call for digital cleansing, which even Google’s Matt Cutts joined, was about only cutting off Twitter and social media. Blogs and websites weren’t supposed to be included. I guess maybe it’s just this kind of a week, where most people struggle between digesting huge amount of holiday turkey and dealing with New Year’s after-party effects?

Well, I guess I’ll just join in today with a belated Happy TwentyTen!

I can’t believe it’s taken me over a week to get back to my RSS reader and go over the latest headlines and bylines.

2009 Reports and Summaries

It’s December, the end of 2009 and some interesting end of year reports have been published.

Facebook published its list of trending topics this year. Rather than just showing trending keywords, they actually grouped some keywords together to reflect a trending topic. So, for example, “celebrity deaths” at number four reflects Michael Jackson, Patrick Swayze and Billy Mays.

Another interesting, and if I may say so, rather upsetting list, was published by Norton. It’s their list of the top 100 searches made by kids, based on data collected by their software across millions of homes. I can only hope people simply don’t know how to use their software properly, so that the data also includes searches made by adults. Otherwise, the results scare me, with porn being at #4 for kids aged 7 and under!

To end the lists with something nicer, if you’re a Mom Blogger, you should check Mashable’s latest feature: The Top 2009 Social Media Trends for Moms.

SEO Highlights

As always, lots of SEO related news on the web. I found these to be particularly interesting:

Randfish from SEOMoz reviews how personalized search results could effect your site’s traffic in his How Personalized Search Changes SEO (and Doesn’t). He predicts that big brands are going to get an even bigger slice of the pie and competition for those long-end phrases will become harder.

Bill Slawski discusses the use of synonyms in Google’s algorithm. Basing his post on quotes from the actual algorithm patent, he analyzes some examples to show you Google may or may not be implementing this in the SERP’s.  How Google May Expand Searches Using Synonyms for Words in Queries – well worth a read.

On a more practical note, I found this piece by Julie Joyce useful: 8 Steps To Avoid Link Analysis Paralysis.

And Some More

Jason Kincaid from Tech Crunch discusses a feature of Chrome which I really like: Google Browser Size Helps Keep Your Content Above The Fold. It’s so true. When I first tried Chrome, my initial reaction was, “There’s so much space on my screen now!” For marketers, this is a relevant issue and Jason provides a very neat link there, to Google Labs Browser Size Page.

Speaking of Google, this one piece here on Mashable discusses Google Wave’s Massive Potential for Business Users. Given Wave has been given a lot of bad rap lately, it provides a refreshing look at what’s supposed to be the ultimate social application of the future.

Last, (and maybe least), is this piece in Mashable again: HOW TO: Outsmart Phishers. The writers have disclaimers all over the place about this being a humorous article, yet  it is exactly what they do at 419 Eater. I’d never do it myself, but it sure is funny.

Wow, has been a busy week for me here. It’s a holiday here as well (Hannuka in Israel). With the kids at home, I just don’t have enough time to do everything that I need to be doing. Still, having dedicated a couple of hours this morning to going over the webmasters headlines service (aka my Google Reader), I’ll try and share some of the more important ones here.

Facebook To Publish User Updates To Twitter This Week – After trying to get users to get more of their info open to the public, Facebook now wants to help you tweet your updates.

URL Shorteners Come To Google & Facebook – Google now has its own URL shortening service called Goo.gl. It currently works only from the Google toolbar and through Feedburner. Looks like Facebook is going to launch a similar service of its own real soon.

Google Wants You To Give Chrome For Christmas – a neat little application by Google that lets you virtually wrap a link to download Chrome. Of course, Chrome is free, so basically, a cute marketing trick and not much more. Still, I think it’s cute enough for me to use.

Predictions For The Changing Local Search Landscape In 2010 – I really suck at operating crystal balls, but I like reading other people’s predictions. This one is by Neg Norton, President of the Yellow Pages Association (YPA), a trade association that advocates on behalf of a print and electronic Yellow Pages industry.

Post to WordPress from Tweetie and Other Twitter Apps – Haven’t tried Tweetie myself but heard a lot of good things about it from people who use it regularly. What I find interesting is that people are encouraged to post tweet-long messages on their blogs. I wonder if it’ll catch up?

Ad policies — the year in review – I haven’t used adwords in years, but I thought this article might be of interest to those who do – so including it in this roundup.

Two new features enhance search beyond the results page – this could effect the way your Google traffic sees your page and where it gets to. Worth a read, especially if you’re doing affiliate marketing.

Brace yourself for the real-time Web – a very good concise review of real time web searches – why and how.

That’s it for today – hope you find it useful and if you do – give me a thumbs up on Blog Engage, will ya?

I’ll be resuming normal blogging, hopefully, next week when this holiday is over. Happy Holidays everyone!

I try to make this part of my daily routine (not always successfully): going over the latest headlines for webmasters. To do that, I subscribe to feeds I like and those I think are important (such as Tech Crunch and Mashable). Going over them today, I figured I’d share some of the gems here. May or may not become a regular feature – let me know if you like the concept.

Some thoughts on SEO – blogger Chris Dixon shares some thoughts about SEO. An interesting debate follows in the comment section about content vs. promotion with some good SEO tips thrown around for good measure.

A million stamps licked … and counting – Google Wave’s official blog reports the one million invites landmark. My biggest problem with Wave when I signed up was having no one to wave with. Things have changed and it’s quite noticeable when I log into wave. Still need a Google Wave invite by the way? I have a bunch of them available here.

Some more Google News – Matt Cutts provides a quick overview of some of Google’s latest updates including Google Goggles and the new real-time search feature.

Report: Bing Searchers Still More Click-Happy Than Google Searchers When It Comes To Ads – Tech Crunch reminds us that when it comes to Internet marketing traffic from Bing, Yahoo and AOL can be much more valuable than tech-savvy Google traffic.

Google Now Personalizes Everyone’s Search Results – Danny Sullivan covers the new personalized search results in Google in great detail, including screenshots. You should also take a look at what the webmasters community is saying about it in the SEORoundTable’s summary of forum responses.

Mashable’s Social Media Guide for Small Businesses – this welcome summary is an awesome link to have. Know someone who needs a hand with Social Media marketing? Just send them this link.

This is it for now. Hope you enjoy the links – leave me a note with your thoughts.