Analyze and Enhance Your Facebook Experience with Wisdom

If you’re still active on your Facebook account and looking for a great way to stay on top of things with your friends, you’ll love Wisdom. Just like the name implies, the app gives you in-depth “wisdom” about yourself and your friends. It’s kind of like an analytics tool for your Facebook account because you get to see statistics and insights that you won’t find anywhere else. Also it lets you sort through all of the junk (like game notifications, videos, images, etc) and get to what is really important – the actual things that your friends are saying via status updates.

So if you want to know more about what your friends are saying and what they’re interested in, try out Wisdom!

The feed is where you can see all status updates at a glance and then filter them by popularity and type (based on what they’re referring to). This way you can see what kind of mood people are in, who’s in love, what’s going on with the health of your friends, who’s traveling, and more! You can also see the date posted, number of comments, and number of likes. Each status will have a corresponding icon such as a star (as pictured above), smiley face, heart, briefcase, etc – based on the topic.

Unfortunately, I was unable to really experience the rest of the app since it takes 24 hours to complete the reports needed for these areas. However, I can give a general idea of what each section is for.

Image Source: http://wisdom.com/what-is-wisdom/

This section gives you a great overview of who you’re friends with on Facebook. Wisdom gives you a list of all of your friends along with their last status updates. This gives you a chance to quickly see what each of your friends is up to. You can also filter this section by age, gender, relationship status, and location. Lastly, each friend will have a rating based on their Facebook activity, popularity, communication, influence, and cheer.

If you’re interested in what others are saying to your friends, then you’ll love this section. You can basically see everything that your friends are chatting about with others from a single location (it’s almost like spying). “That is, everything except repetitive ‘happy birthday’ posts.”

Image Source: http://wisdom.com/what-is-wisdom/

Wisdom uses your friends’ “likes” to show you the most popular and trending interests across sports, entertainment, and nightlife. So you can see things like what artists your friends like the most, the best places to hangout, the most popular movies among your friends, etc.

Here you’ll be able to see the most popular check-in locations and the top cities and hometowns among your friends. You’ll also get demographic information for each place listed.

Image Source: http://wisdom.com/what-is-wisdom/

As expected, you can see all of the events that your friends are attending and see how many others will be there too. Wisdom will also recommend events to you based on the number of friends attending.

Finally, we have the about me section will will, of course, show you information about yourself and track your communications across Facebook.

Wisdom is currently available via Facebook.com as well as an iOS app available for both the iPhone/iPod Touch and the iPad. The only downside is that you have to wait 24 hours to see any other section besides the news feed. From the description and screenshots on the Wisdom website, it definitely looks promising; so let’s hope that those sections do not disappoint once they are available.

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An Interesting Way Of Losing Subscribers

In order to find the latest and great themes and plugins for my blog WordPress Mods, I spend a lot of time reading announcements from theme and plugin developers.

Whilst reading a review of a plugin today I saw a comment from someone promoting their own website called WP Power Plugins. Whenever I find a new plugin developers website I check out all of their plugins to see if any are worth testing and reviewing on my blog. Unfortunately, the blog owner made it difficult to do so.

For some reason the blog owner has placed a box that requests a vote via Facebook or Twitter before you can proceed. It doesn’t work like the newsletter pop ups you see on many blogs, which can be closed easily by clicking away from the ad. Instead, the blog owner has stopped everyone from viewing their website unless they register a vote via Facebook or Twitter.

This has to be one of the stupidest thing I have ever see a blog owner do. It’s obtrusive, counter productive and will drive away existing and potential subscribers. All bloggers strive for more subscribers and social media votes however there is a right way and wrong way of doing things. We need to encourage visitors to subscribe to your blog or Facebook page; we shouldn’t force them.

Remember, don’t take your readers for granted. Even the most loyal readers will unsubscribe and stop visiting your blog if you start frustrating them by forcing them to increase social media votes.

Have you come across any other techniques like this from a blogger?

Kevin

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Bring New Readers To Your Blog By Comment Posting in Early Days

The adage of “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t always hold up online. Though great content is a necessity for any blog that wants to succeed, it simply isn’t enough by itself.

However, getting new readers to your site can feel like an exercise in frustration. To get a lot of targeted visitors, you need to have a good search engine presence. To get that, you need to have a lot of inbound links. That, in turn, requires a lot of people come by your site and like it enough to link to it.

This can make starting a blog feel hopeless, as if there is no way to get it off the ground.

But there is one technique that is often-overlooked, blog commenting, as it can be a simple, powerful way to attract targeted readers to your site and slowly build up your link presence. This, in the long run, can help you drive organic traffic to your site and cause your readership to start snowballing.

Best of all, it’s very simple to do and only requires a few minutes out of your day to make it work.

Use Twitter blog search tools to find people who are talking about topics related to your blog. Though the content doesn’t have to be “new” to be worth commenting on, new posts are usually better to target as comments on such posts are more likely to be read, both by the site’s owner and by its readers.

A good topic is one where anyone who is interested in reading that post will likely enjoy your site as well. Either something related to your topic or something you have different information on usually works best.

What isn’t very important is the traffic of the site. Though higher traffic is better, it might actually work against you, causing your comment to get lost. Sometimes a well-timed comment on a smaller site is much better than a lone comment in a swarm on a larger one.

Once you post a comment, keep track of it. If people are interested in what you have to say and begin to reply to your comment, engage with them and keep the conversation going. The only thing better than one good comment is several more good comments.

Best of all, the people you meet this way often become your first fans and a foundation that you can build the rest of your site’s traffic on.

In the end, when you first start out a site, especially if you don’t have a popular platform to launch it from, you will need to work hard for your first view visitors, often times working for hours just to get a small handful of people to come by.

However, all of that clawing to move the hit counter pays off in the long run as you develop a loyal reader base that eventually helps spread the word for you and helps you build search engine trust.

Posting blog comments is a great way to get to that point.

This guest post is written by Lior Levin, a marketing consultant for a psd to html service company which provides psd to html formatting conversions.  Lior also consults for the international MA in political science department at the Tel Aviv University.

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Google might have place in a Yahoo takeover bid, Syria cracking down with US technology

Worried about monopolies? Here’s one of the bigger ones in the making that you might want to mull over a bit. A recent report in the Wall Street Journal is saying that Google might have a part to play in an emerging takeover bid for Yahoo.

Still, it’s important to keep in mind that sources were not named although the report is pretty specific about the facts that at least two companies have talked with Google about getting some assistance in buying the beleaguered Yahoo. This all comes on the heels of reports that Yahoo will in fact sell that have also driven the stock prices up. All the usual signs that something is lurking on the horizon with the company.

Here’s some more news about repression and how it all works in spite of the fact that the Internet is changing the way dictators inevitably lose their power and die. New reports are saying that Syria is using American software to censor the Internet. At the center of the storm is California’s Blue Coat Systems since at least some of their technology is being used to crack down on the dissidents in Syria that have been protesting against President Bashar al-Assad for months now. The American company is denying any allegations they sold to the Syrians willingly, but there are experts from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London that are saying many firms don’t always ask the right questions to avoid persecution for selling to places like Syria.

In other news, The Canada Centre for Global Security Studies at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs is saying that broadcasters that want to get information into countries that restrict access to the Internet need to tailor their approaches to each individual location. The recent study suggests that just having a wider all inclusive web isn’t necessarily the answer since each repressive regime often has a different way of suppressing information. The study looked at two years of BBC information and how it was censored by the Chinese and Iranian authorities.

We all need to keep an eye on the big names in censorship like the ones mentioned above and even the more sly wolves in sheep’s clothing like the Russian Interior Minister who has proposed a limit on the Internet. Dmitry Medvedev says he only wants to find ways to preserve the Russian culture and protect it from illegal activities like child porn, but there are fears that supporters of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are looking for more strict control like the one that the Chinese impose. Does anyone remember the Cold War? It seems likely that an ex-KGB officer who happens to be in charge is pining for the good old days.

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Bad Content Finding Its Way Into Mobile Apps and RIM Owes Big

There’s always a good side to things and a bad side and that includes the ever-expanding world of mobile apps. A recent news article in the Washington Post talks about inappropriate content finding its way into mobile apps that are geared towards children. Violent and suggestive content are the culprits here and parents are complaining they don’t have any real way to monitor what their kids are exposed to.

The Federal Communications Commission keeps an eye on more traditional forms of media but as far as mobile apps are concerned, developers are still in charge of giving themselves ratings. More fodder for those who say it’s the parent’s responsibility to stay on top of what their children see and do.

As you might expect, recent reports are saying that RIM could owe tons of cash to right the fallout from their recent outages. The recent numbers are $100 million US in lost revenues and there’s more to it than that, none of which is good for the Canadian company that was the biggest hope that country had since the Avro Arrow.

Making the problem worse for RIM is the fact that wireless carriers worldwide have promised to compensate their users for the downtime. The whole mess couldn’t have come at a worse time for the beleaguered company and worst case scenarios for the estimated 70 million users worldwide put refunds to 35 million as the number bantered.

The whole Blackberry mess has some interesting spinoffs when it comes to how people deal with even the temporary loss of this kind of technology. Consider a recent article from a New Jersey professional who writes that people should know someone they can call in their office to check emails on their computer there when the BlackBerry network goes down. The article goes on to point out the obvious fact that you can send a text, but I think something even more relevant is being missed here.

Maybe the whole idea of having a Blackberry is overkill and being constantly hooked up to emails 24/7 from a device that you carry around with you is a case of too much technology. I mean, how many people can really do anything about even the most urgent email until they get back to the office anyway? I’m not talking out of school here because I have one and I find myself constantly looking for the little red light that tells me I’ve got mail like one of Pavlov’s dogs. I have to admit too, I did get a little nervous when my emails weren’t getting through regularly but I’ve still got to wonder if we all don’t need some kind of safe zone away from all of these things once in a while.

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Get Product Recommendations and Help Other Shoppers on Get.com

Have you ever needed a new product, but didn’t know where to start looking; maybe you knew the type of product you needed, but didn’t know which exact one/type to choose? It always helps when you can get recommendations from others who are more knowledgeable about that specific category of products. That’s where Get.com comes in handy.

“Get.com is a Q&A platform that helps you get product recommendations quickly from thousands of people.” It’s as simple as that. First you connect your Facebook and/or Twitter accounts. Next you setup your profile. Lastly you can ask your questions or help others who have asked questions.

From the home page you can see recent questions from all categories. You can also navigate to other categories (via the header links), ask your own question, click to view the leaderboard, view the top helpers, and see recent visitors to the site. This is the best place to find questions that you can jump into and give your input.

You’ll also notice that there are often a few odd-ball questions mixed into the bunch.

The main purpose of Get.com is to get product recommendations and help others who need suggestions. Sometimes you’ll find questions that are looking for a straightforward answer, while others may ask you to suggest your own product.

In the screenshot below you’ll see that some users have suggested headphones that the user might like. Other users can then go in and vote for one of the suggestions or add their own to the mix.

There are also ways to share and follow questions that interest you. Additionally, you can see related questions along with your personally history (recently viewed questions) in the sidebar.

Asking your own question is quite simple as well. First click on the yellow “Ask Question” link in the top header of the site. You can then type in your questions along with additional details (if needed), budget, and topic (electronics, automotive, photography, makeup & beauty, parenting).

Lastly, you can choose whether or not you’d like to get product suggestions (like pictured above).

Finally, there is the settings area. Here you can ad a picture, choose a display name (full name or first name and last initial), add a mini bio and about info, add your website, and customize your email notifications.

Unfortunately, you can’t actually change your display name. For instance, I signed up using Facebook and now it is using my full name as my display name. Personally, I’d rather use a screen name or at least a name that most people know me by, not my legal full name.

Do you feel there is a need for a service like Get.com? It is something that you plan to use yourself?

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Profiting with Content

Content helps drive traffic, boosts credibility and authority, and helps you build a community of followers. It can also help you increase your search engine ranking, and should provide valuable information for readers.

Content can also have an impact on your cash flow if done properly. Here are some simple ways you can profit with content.

1. Write reviews.

You can use content to generate affiliate commissions by writing good reviews on the products you’re promoting as an affiliate. Many people search online for quality reviews before they purchase a product. It helps them make an informed decision about the quality of the product and if it will be useful to them.

When people are reading reviews, they are already in a buying mode. They simply need compelling information to help them complete the sale. If you write a detailed review, from your personal perspective, they are more likely to purchase the product. Include your affiliate link so they can click through to buy the product.

There are several things to keep in mind when writing reviews. First of all, always be honest in your assessment of the product. Describe who the product is for, who it will benefit and also cover who it may not benefit. Also remember to mention anything negative about the product, things you didn’t like. Many people think that giving some negative points will hurt their review, but in truth it makes your review stronger. It shows you are being honest. The things you didn’t like may not even apply to the prospective buyer.

2. List Building.

Use email marketing as another avenue of making money. Give out a free report, an incentive for people to join your list. Make sure it is directly related to your content and the things you share and promote. This gives you another way to reach them and another way to promote affiliate products or your own products.

Never bombard your list with useless promotions or daily promotions. Only send out important content that you think they may find useful and valuable. However, you still need to be consistent with contacting your list. You can send out weekly tips or articles that you write specifically for your list. You do not need to attempt a sale in every email, but you do need to stay in touch with them. Show them you care and over deliver with valuable content.

When you do this, they are more likely to buy from you when you promote quality products.

3. Sell Ad Space

You can sell ad space on your blog or even in your newsletter. If you have a large list of followers, some advertisers will pay you so that they can reach your audience every week.

Make sure the ads are relevant to your list and your content. If you don’t have advertisers you can start with a Google ad and remove those as other sites start purchasing those ad slots.

4. Use Article Directories.

If you have your own product or service, you can use articles posted at directories to drive traffic to your sales page. Use the article as pre-sell material so when the prospect clicks the call to action in your bio, they are already wanting more information. This can increase your conversations from those click throughs.

5. Establish Authority with eBooks.

Ebooks are a great way to establish authority in your niche. If you’re extremely knowledgeable in a certain area, you can write an ebook for people to purchase.

You can sell your ebook from your own website, through Clickbank or you can even have it published on Kindle. This allows you to reach more people in your field.

Sales from ebooks not only boosts your income, but it can also increase traffic to your site which can give you future income,  more prospects to reach out to and help you profit with content.

There are many ways to use content as a means to increase sales. Implementing just a few of them can increase your popularity, your bottom line and establish your credibility. Try some of these methods, give them time to work and see if they don’t increase your income.

Another great thing about content is it can work for you for many years. You do the work once and it keeps working for you.

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