Pleasanton Web Design

What kind of social networking activity do you need to do to achieve top ranking on Google? To begin to answer that question I employed a tool called Shared Count http://sharedcount.com, which displays the number of social networking “shares,” “likes” or other positive signals pointing to any URL you enter into the box.

For instance, how much social networking activity would you need to rank number one for an ultra-competitive phrase like “social media marketing?” Here’s the data I got:

That’s a lot of activity! Keep in mind to that this is a quick and dirty test, and doesn’t take into account the more traditional signals of quality in search engine algorithms, like backlinks, linking domains, etc.

One think you may also notice is zero Stumbles. Either the StumbleUpon part of this tool is broken, or StumbleUpon is dead. I expect the former is probably the case.

For the next test I chose an article on a blog written and I’m assuming promoted by some guys who know what they are doing with regards to social media.

Again we see zero Stumbles and only one Digg. Does this mean Digg is dead? This might confirm your previous suspicions.

What conclusions can we draw from this quick and dirty test? People who know what they are doing with regards to social media are presumable promoting a lot of activity on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and to a lesser extent, Google Buzz. Maybe you should look into doing the same!

Taking advantage of the current trends in social networking doesn’t have to be difficult or time consuming. You don’t need a social networking “guru” to get you set up. Here are the basic elements I recommend to get started.

1. Start a blog. This is the core of your social networking strategy. The overall goal should be to drive traffic and increase search engine authority of your website. The bottom line is that if you have value to add to the Internet, your website blog is your forum to do so.

After everything is set up, your blog will be the only thing you need to spend time on regularly. Everything else will be automatic.

2. Get Social. Create a Facebook profile, and create a Facebook Page for your business. Open a Twitter account. Create a LinkedIn personal profile and a Company profile.

3. Add your Twitter account to your LinkedIn profile. You’ll need to uncheck the box that says “Share only tweets that contain #in”. This is a way to specify that only certain Twitter posts are displayed in your LinkedIn profile. Since your posts will be automatically fed to Twitter from your blog, you won’t have this control.

4. Twitterfeed. Go to http://www.twitterfeed.com and open an account. You will need to enter the URL for your blog’s RSS feed. This will differ depending on your blogging software.

The next step is to set up Twitter feed to publish your blog posts automatically to Twitter, as well as your Facebook profile, or business Page. Once this is done, your blog posts will automatically show up on Twitter and Facebook, and through Twitter, on your LinkedIn profile. All  you have to do is write the post!

The best open source social networking script I’ve found by far is Elgg. Developed as sort of a “myspace for academics,” Elgg is a powerful social networking solution for any organization. Reasonably easy to install and customize, I’d recommend Elgg for any company or organization that wants to get up and running quickly and inexpensively.

When I say “reasonably easy to install” I mean, not as easy to install as open source web applications like Drupal, Joomla or Oscommerce, but with a little bit of server setting knowledge, and root access to your server, you should have few problems. Installation on a shared server could be a different story. Here are some posts describing some problems, solutions, and addtional info:
Adding Google Analytics to an ELGG Installation
ELGG Social Networking on Shared Hosting

I have a demo up here at http://www.fanclubhelper.com. Feel free to join, set up a community, customize your homepage, and generally test it out.

I’m currently testing out some open source social networking web applications that compare to Myspace. The most promising at the moment seems to be Elgg (don’t ask me what it means). AroundMe looks good too, but I read a comment on their blog that it wasn’t quite ready yet.

Elgg is a little more difficult to install than other open source applications out there. That is, if you are installing it on a shared hosting account. There are two obstacles you will need to overcome. First of all .htaccess is probably not enabled for your account, and when the Elgg .htaccess starts trying to do things, your server will choke with a 500 Server Error. So you need to have your hosting support person enable .htaccess for the directories you will install Elgg in.

That’s not all though. My host (hostmysite.com) didn’t like the following in the Elgg .htaccess file:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on

These are mod_rewrite directives. They had me comment them out and added the statements to their own special configuration file. My current .htaccess just has the Rewrite rules listed.

I found a lot of posts from people looking for installation support for this issue, and what a lot of the well intentioned developers trying to help didn’t understand (or didn’t communicate) is that these seemingly simple settings can become complex on shared hosts. For security, processes can be disabled, or configuration can be more complex than if you own your own box.

Hopefully this helps anyone having 500 server errors when installing Elgg on a shared host.

Check out my Elgg installation at Fan Club Helper

This event was hosted by Silicon Valley Web Builder and was held at Hurricane Electric.

Moderator:

Jeremiah Owyang, Director of Corporate Media Strategy at Podtech.net.

Speakers:

1. Sean Ness, Co-Founder at STIRR.net and Business Development Manager at Institute for the Future
2. Dmitriy Kruglyak, CEO & Community Steward, Trusted.MD (watch out – site has some zany fly-out and roll-over action!)
3. Harry McCracken, Vice President/Editor in Chief at PC WORLD

Each speaker was asked to present on two topics:

1. Top 10 predictions for Web 2.0 in the next year.
2. Top 10 predictions for Web 2.0 in the next five to ten years.

The first to speak was Sean Ness. He stressed that his predictions were his own personal opinions and weren’t necessarily derived from his work at Institute for the Future.

Here are his Top Ten predictions for Web 2.0 in the next year:

10. Focus on WAP (cellphones) and forget the $100 laptop. The number of people who use lap tops is virtually insignificant to the number of people who use cell phones globally.

9. “Reputation” will grow in importance.

8. OpenID – Web 2.0 or social networking sites all require user names and passwords. The need for a mechanism for logging into all sites with a single username/password will be fulfilled.

7. Twitter and other SMS (Short Message Service) applications used with cell phones will grow in popularity.

6. Mobile “walled gardens” (non-compatibility of cellular systems) persist.

5. Red Herring Magazine dies (it’s too slow). Immediatness of news from the Internets wins out.

4. The internet will crash.

3. Second Life (having a pretend life on the Internet through social networking sites) will die.

2. A scandal will be propelled by Web 2.0.

1. Apple iPhone will flop.

And now Sean Ness’ predictions for Web 2.o over the next 5 to 10 years.

10. The end of cyberspace. It will just meld into everyday life as another layer.

9. Looking for a career? Data mining will be the growth industry, so study math and physics so you can write the algorithms of the future. Learning some Mandarin wouldn’t hurt either.

8. RFID (radio frequency identification) will make tracking physical objects so much easier.

7. Ambient displays will be everywhere.

6. Broadband will be everywhere, like water and electricity are now.

5. Microsensors will be everywhere.

4. Rise of proactive and context-aware computing.

3. Sense-making (making sense of data) replaces sensing of data.

2. Open mobile ecosystems. No more worrying about cell phone signal unless you are in a cave.

1. Simulation literacy replaces computer literacy. Example: Dayjet.

Tomorrow: Dmitriy Kruglyak, CEO & Community Steward, Trusted.MD