The first few weeks of college can shock your system. Many students are living away from their parents for the first time and their roommates are strangers. They may have visited the campus only once or twice before school started, are eating unidentifiable residence hall meals with the terror of gaining the “Freshman 15″ and they are entirely responsible for their own well being. And whether just starting college in a traditional campus setting or opting for the convenience of online education classes, there are ways to cope with the education transition.

Compared to high school classes, college courses require more independence. Students need to study more on their own than they did in high school, and assignments may come with less guidance from the instructor. Students are expected not only to answer the questions, but also to figure out, without necessarily being told by the professor, where to find their information. Suddenly, you’re supposed to be an expert researcher.

That may seem like a formidable request, but the good news is that it’s feasible. Even better, your transformation into a true researcher can be quick and fun. Your participation in social media can be excellent training for collaborating with your classmates to develop college-level research skills.

Common Research Difficulties

Many students are not even aware that their research techniques are inappropriate, or that they are not coming up with the most reliable information. Many students may not be using Google properly. They may not use the proper search filters or keywords, and search results are limited or from paid or unreliable sources. Students are also unfamiliar with academic databases.

Hard versus Soft Research

A great trick to help you figure out what research approaches to use is to determine whether you need soft research, hard research or both. Soft research is what you probably already do all the time when you need to look up a general idea. It is also appropriate when you need to write about people’s opinions that you might get from blog posts. In college, assignments often require hard research. Facts need to be specific, and you need to be able to point to a credible source for each fact that you include in your work.

Where to Turn

Librarians, online or on-campus writing centers and professors are all good resources for help with research. Students can also use social media to help each other improve research skills. They can create web-based files, such as in Google Docs, to compile helpful tips, resources and links to share with each other. Video chats and instant messaging let them brainstorm for resource ideas before starting their assignments.

Don’t let the thought of intimidating assignments prevent you from enrolling in college. If you’re already in college and you feel like you’re struggling, don’t get discouraged. Plenty of options are available to help you master the research skills you need, and one of your weapons can be to join forces with your classmates using your experience in social media programs.

One of the goals of every business is to make money. Sometimes turning a profit is a secondary or tertiary goal, but it’s always there and is always a motivating factor in every decision made by the people who run the company. How do you increase your profits, though? You can do it by cutting costs, certainly, but that can result in poor support or inferior products. Many companies would have a hard time remaining ethical and cutting costs, too.

If you run a business selling wheelchair accessible vans, you don’t want to potentially sacrifice any quality in order to make more money. What other options do you have if you’re a company that provides mobility to the disabled? You can increase your visibility and consumer awareness. By making your advertising efforts more focused and efficient, you can essentially cut down on the money you have to spend making potential customers aware of your existence.

Branding is the key issue here and everything from email newsletters to billboards and even search engine optimization (SEO) are used to support this single issue. It may seem odd to say that SEO is primarily concerned with branding, but it’s true. Even when you’re not engaging in keyword branding, you’re still working to build brand awareness and reputation. Once you realize that SEO is part of the branding process, you can form a more focused, driven SEO strategy that will aid you in the process and help you achieve your desired result: higher levels of consumer awareness.

Why Brand?

Your brand is how consumers identify your company, service and product. It’s encompassed by your logo, motto, name and the relations those aspects have to your customers and anyone else associated with your company. Regardless of what you do, you have a brand. If you don’t care to manage it, then you have no control over whether your brand is positively or negatively regarded. By developing a specific strategy for branding you can help guide consumers’ awareness of your brand and ensure that people associate it with a positive experience and an excellent product.

What Does SEO Do?

When you develop an SEO strategy, you’re also working on your branding. When searchers see your website consistently ranking at a high level in Google for their searches, they’ll begin associating you as a knowledgeable, quality company. Their trust in Google’s ability to weed out inferior products and companies is near absolute, which is why most searchers click on the first three search results.

How Do You Brand?

By utilizing branding keywords and gearing your SEO toward service-oriented keywords, you can ensure your business’s name stays at the top of results and that consumers begin to draw an unconscious correlation between your industry and your company specifically. By focusing your keyword choices on only the ones that will strengthen your brand in your niche, you reduce the potential keyword pool and make it easier to rank. Once you begin ranking on your chosen branding keyword you can branch out into supporting phrases with the strength of your brand driving your SEO tactics the entire way.

With 2011 drawing to a close and 2012 just around the corner, businesses may be a little worried about what the New Year holds for them. Indeed, many are predicting that 2012 will be a difficult year. Due to the ongoing economic crisis in Europe and ongoing worries about a double-dip recession, it should be obvious that these worries are well-founded. However, with a little preparation and understanding of successful business and marketing strategies, you will weather 2012 like a champ, and you may even flourish a little.

So what can I do?

The first thing to remember is to not, under any circumstances, freak out about these predictions. This may lead to a decrease in spending and fewer new hires, which will play right into these naysayers’ diabolical plans. Indeed, a recently released report by a group of University of Massachusetts economists suggests the current unemployment crisis could be solved if America’s largest banks and non-financial companies would cough up some of the $3.6 trillion in cash that they have been hoarding over the last few years.

“There is no reason that the US needs to remain stuck in a long-term unemployment crisis, Robert Pollin, lead author of the report and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute, said in a statement. “Getting the banks and corporations to move their hoards into productive investments and job creation requires carrots and sticks—policies such as a new round of government spending stimulus as well as taxes on the banks’ excess reserves—that can both strengthen overall market demand and unlock credit markets for small businesses.”

Okay, what next?

After you are able to breathe a sigh of relief and stop worrying about things over which you have no control, it’s time to focus on the things that you do have control over, in order to strengthen your company and ensure that your year is productive and profitable.

Like it or not, the Internet is here to stay. The stats from this past Cyber Monday only serve to prove that this medium is not only highly effective for marketing, but that it can literally make the difference between a successful year and one that is not-so-successful. Learn to use every aspect of the Internet, in order to gain a toehold in the virtual marketplace.

And how exactly do I go about doing that?

Here are five places on the Internet where you should focus your attention in order to have a stellar 2012.

1. Social media sites, which were originally dismissed as being a frivolous waste of time, have really helped small businesses. Not only do they offer consumers a way of spreading the word about your business in a new-fangled word-of-mouth manner, but some sites like Facebook now offer advertising. If you were going to plan a weekend trip to the Windy City and were looking at Chicago hotels and events for your itinerary, would you choose one that you had never heard of, or go with the one that your Great Aunt Rhoda raved about on her Twitter account? You get my point.
2. Blogs are important, whether they are your own or someone else’s. By starting your own blog, you give consumers an insight into your business, and also open the floor for discussion and/or constructive criticism about what’s working and what’s not. By reading others’ blogs—particularly “mommy blogs” and those sites geared toward consumers—you are able to hear what consumers are saying, in their own words, and can strategize accordingly.
3. Google is more than just a way to pass the time or find directions to the theatre. By using white hat SEO tactics, you can increase your site’s visibility and brand recognition; this is done by raising you in the search results, which equates to more revenue for your company. The key is to learn everything there is to know about white-hat SEO and Google’s various algorithmic updates, in order to avoid angering the Google gods (hint: think relevant, quality content over spammy junk).
4. As I previously mentioned, Google and Facebook now offer advertising that is affordable and far more efficient than traditional advertising methods. In addition, email marketing is the new way of targeting consumers that doesn’t involve wasted paper, expensive postage, and annoyed consumers. Each of these methods is better able to target the specific demographic that you desire than previous methods.

Learn everything you can about web design and HTML code. This way, you can create an aesthetically-pleasing, intuitive site that will lure customers in and keep them there. There are multiple guides on the Internet for doing this, or you can hire a professional. Whatever your choice, be sure that your site is always at its best.

It’s been more than four years since Apple introduced the iPhone at the end of June, 2007. iPhone wasn’t the world’s first smartphone, but it totally flipped the mobile industry upside down. Since then, smartphones have evolved from an expensive luxury to a common tool. After iPhone, Google’s Android came and powered other manufacturers against Apple and has helped smartphone market grow. But as much as the mobile industry has grown and changed since then, it’s just getting started. In 2011, the mobile space saw profound growth and a vast array of new wireless innovations and services emerge.

Nielsen’s “State of the Media: The Mobile Media Report” provides a snapshot of the current mobile media landscape and audiences in the U.S. and highlights the potential power of mobile commerce in the near future. So what’s coming? Matt Galligan, co-founder of SimpleGeo says “In my opinion, the ‘future of mobile’ is the ‘future of everything’ “ .

Key findings From The Report:

• The majority of 25-34 and 18-24 year olds now own smartphones (64% and 53% respectively);
• The majority of smartphone owners (62%) have downloaded apps on their devices and games are the top application category used in the past 30 days;
• The number of smartphone subscribers using the mobile Internet has grown 45 percent since 2010;
• 87 percent of app downloaders (those who have downloaded an app in the past 30 days) have used deal-of-the-day websites like Groupon or Living Social;
• Younger groups text the most. In Q3, teens 13-17 sent and received the most text messages (an average of 3,417 each month).

In my opinion, the future of mobile will largely be defined by creative entrepreneurs and companies that leverage the device capabilities in new and interesting ways. The next few years will be about thinking of the phone as a networked sensor. New technologies like NFC and GPS on phones and applications like Foursquare and Square will shape the future of Mobile.

We expect to see huge growth in the Smartphone and Mobile markets in the next years. Since then, I suggest Internet entrepreneurs to consider Mobile and Smartphones markets seriously to invest in time and money.

Here’s one more surprise from Google to celebrate holiday season. Type ‘let it snow’ in Google search, and you’ll see snowflakes falling down the page. Don’t miss out the opportunity to write your name in the frost. Enjoy and have a good holiday season

Whether you’re designing a website for personal use or to help build your business, you undoubtedly understand the importance of showing up in search results—the higher, the better. Whereas this was once accomplished with “black hat” tactics like keyword stuffing and spammy links, Google has made most of these tactics ineffectual at best.

Google’s Panda Update was unofficially aimed at “content farms”: “We’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content. […] As ‘pure webspam’ has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to ‘content farms,’ which are sites with shallow or low-quality content.”

In essence, Google can now read at a 10^th grade level and is able to differentiate original, quality content from poorly written content with irrelevant links. When you add to this the newest algorithm update, tentatively called the Google Fresh Update, which rates pages based upon how fresh and up-to-date the content is, along with how often the page is updated, it becomes apparent that having your page rank highly in Google is no easy feat.

So what can be done to improve your site’s chances of success?

The first step to creating an effective website is to be sure your page is aesthetically pleasing, and that the words flow well. The best way to do this is to create a rapid prototype of sorts of your page, in order to be sure that it is easy to navigate and that all of the links are in working order.

By “rapid prototype”, I mean a tangible recreation of your page that can be seen from all angles, and moved around if necessary, without having to constantly rewrite code. Some do this with charts or graphs, while others prefer the more rudimentary Post-It notes on a whiteboard. Whatever your choice, by viewing your page in this manner, you will be able to spot flaws that may drive potential consumers away.

Once you are certain your site has met these standards, then it’s time to start taking the various Google algorithm updates into account. Is your content well-written and error-free? If there are links that have been placed in your text, are they relevant, or might they be construed by Google as spam, thus lowering your standing in rankings? If your forte is not writing, then it might behoove you to find someone to write your on-page content for you, in order to ensure maximum success with Google.

In addition to that, have you had the same page design and on-page content since your site first went up in 2005? The Fresh Update will demote your page for this! Take the time to re-do your page whenever you start to feel the itch for something new. Also, stay up-to-date with news that is related to your product or page, and add fresh, relevant content whenever you can, in order to rank as highly as possible.

Finally, once you are certain your page is at its best, request that Google recrawl your page in order to have the changes you have made noted accordingly. This way, you don’t have to wait to start seeing the fruit of your labor (even though this is a slow process that requires patience).  Over time, you will start to notice that your site is gaining traffic and rising in search results.

Could future vacation advertisements one day read: “Plan your next family vacation for the dark side of the moon!” or maybe, “Now offering an intergalactic tour featuring Mars, Neptune, Jupiter and the Estranged Pluto! Book today and save 20%.”

No, way. Right?

Maybe not. According to recent information the first ever commercial space port in New Mexico is nearing completion. Yes, commercial. As in, commercial airlines. That means it will transport Average Joes like you to the moon and back.

But, for most, space is still a big giant unknown. We’ve all seen the Alien movies and obscure episodes of Star Trek. Few people are willingly trying to butt heads with Klingons. Will travel marketing ever be able to convince earthlings to book a flight to a beautiful Venusian resort over the more traditional route of moving into new Panama City Beach condos? Maybe. But, if they could, how would they do it?

Tactic #1: All Your Friends Are Doing It!

If marketers are going to be able to convince you to take your family to the moon, the Internet (social media, to be precise) will most likely be their vehicle.

Social Media has a way of convincing its users to do whatever their friends are doing, or vice versa. If your friends are wining and dining at The Corner Restaurant after work, you’ll probably be there, too. Likewise, if you’re headed out to The Neighborhood Bar for a drink, posting it on Facebook will entice friends to do the same.

Sites like Facebook are becoming nearly overrun with advertisements. Companies and businesses can take to social media to promote themselves for free or with paid ads. Search re-targeting also lets Google know that you’ve been curious about Venus vacation packages, have given it a quick Google and will likely bombard you with pay-per-click ads, even if you change your mind and decide to search for Panama City Beach condos instead.

In a similar fashion, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) continues to evolve daily, meaning that by the time space travel is a legitimate option in 2013 and after, SEO will know exactly how to give you the results you want with little to no hassle.

Social media is an excellent form of advertisement and could be used to ease the fears and uncertainties associated with space travel. If the Wilson family is posting pictures to Facebook and tweeting about their Venusian vacation, you may soon feel the need to book one of your own.

Tactic #2: It’s Easy and Affordable!

The Internet also has a way of making things, especially travel, affordable for just about anyone. We’ve all heard about the amazing flight and hotel combo packages through sites like Orbitz, Kayak and Priceline and about the amazing coupons offered through sites like Groupon. With this type of money-saving technology expanding as the future unfolds, you could reasonably expect to see flight deals if New Mexico’s space port really takes off. No pun intended.

And, with mobile apps like Foursquare, you can earn points for checking into different locations and occasionally coupons and discounts depending on the business. With enough check-ins, you could be mayor of the moon or earn a free ice cream cone at the Uranus Creamery. Foursquare is basically all about free advertisement for businesses–a clever way for travel marketers to get the word out there about space vacations.

Tactic #3: It’s Safe, see for yourself!

 Viral videos never get old. From the first moon landing to Charlie the Unicorn, we always love a good video and the second we see it, we’re going to share it. Much of the unease surrounding space travel is the simple fact that we’re always seeing videos of space adventures gone wrong. Apollo 13? Exactly.

But, what if marketers began using videos of successful space travel? The video of a group of Spring Breakers landing safely on Mars or taking a spin around the rings of Saturn could go viral in an instant. Or, it could be used as clever marketing to get travelers to step a bit out of their comfort zones and shell out the bucks for a ticket to Jupiter.

The Future of Travel Marketing

 Clever marketing can get consumers to try just about anything—even space travel. And, while it’s still a long way off, when done correctly, we could soon wish to forego visiting Panama City Beach, London or Cabo San Lucas in lieu of Mars. It’s a long way off, but who knows? Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

This guest post was contributed by Joseph Baker.

Joseph Baker’s business experience in management spans more than 15 years. A leader of development and management teams, he also implemented budget reductions professionally and as an independent contractor. Joseph led strategic planning and systems of implementation for nine organizations, public and private, and worked extensively with small businesses.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management.

 As the world’s most popular search engine, Google has access to massive amounts of user data. Add to that the popularity of Gmail, Google’s email service, and the growth of Google’s social network, Google+, and it becomes clear that Google knows more about its users than nearly any other service in the world. Google uses this information to serve ads based on location, the content of email messages or the context of the page being visited.

Another action taken by Google based on its user knowledge is the tailoring of search results pages to specific users. Someone who has frequented the Klipsch website, for instance, will be more likely to have it return as a high result when searching for “home audio system.” Google+ is starting to have an effect on search results also. If someone’s friend shares a link to the Klipsch website, that fact will show up in a search engine results page for “floorstanding speakers.” Google knows that users are more likely to follow a link they have previously visited or was recommended by a friend.

Google+
Facebook’s ad network enabled businesses to target specific demographics, something that has not been available to Google because of its lack of pertinent user information. But the rollout of Google+ could mean big changes in advertising. With the phenomenal growth of Google’s social network, the search giant’s pool of data in its users is growing exponentially. Advertisers on Google’s network can already target specific keywords, but when users are signed into their Google accounts, they may soon be able to target specific users as well.

Search Results
In a TED talk in March 2011, Eli Parser gave a talk about online filter bubbles in which he pointed out that Google looks at over 50 different cues to determine what results to display. Even if a user is not signed into their Google account, their location, browser, computer and other information will be used to tailor search results to meet what Google feels they want. When a user is logged in, this allows Google to go even further in their SERP tailoring. A user who has recently purchased home entertainment equipment via Google Shopping will receive a different set of results when searching for “low distortion speakers” than someone who regularly searches for information on professional audio equipment or someone who has never made that kind of search before.
The potential information that Google can collect on its users is staggering and the ways it uses that information are mind-boggling. The future applications of the company’s ever-expanding reach are incredible. All of the uses can be a little frightening and give rise to many concerns. How much information should users be giving to one of the largest technology companies in the world, the gatekeeper of the Internet? What if Google’s database was compromised somehow? Though Google’s intentions seem to be to provide a wealth of useful, free services to users, the potential for something darker is always there.

Building a brand requires time, dedication and a lot of hard work. Consumers have to trust and be engaged by the company trying to build or maintain its reputation. Ensuring that keywords chosen for a link or campaign are relevant to the business is key, as is ensuring the relevance to any site a link is posted on. Keyword stuffing, the process of loading a page down with links and “relevant” keywords, is not tolerated anymore. Sites that use such tactics face being ignored, down-ranked, or banned, all of which will result in varying levels of traffic loss.

Keyword Relevance

The keywords pointing to a site have to be relevant to the content on both the page the link is placed and to the site linked. Co-occurrence terms are important for the page, too. For instance, in order to rank for a phrase like “laptop battery”, a company might try to get a link that looks as follows:

As a university student, my laptop battery always seemed to be going dead. I hadn’t bought my Dell laptop brand new, but I did make sure to recharge my computer regularly. I ended up purchasing a new battery for my notebook computer in order to keep it running on battery power for more than 30 minutes.

The link relates to the content surrounding it and to the site linked. Further, other related phrases are used throughout, such as a major brand and the terms “recharge”, “computer” and “notebook”.

The Detriments of Keyword Stuffing

Matt Cutts, Google’s SEO guidelines enforcer, urges website owners not to take part in keyword stuffing (source: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/avoid-keyword-stuffing/). Users who attempt to artificially insert keywords into their web pages are severely penalized by Google’s algorithm. Those who try to hide their stuffing from users or present a different web page to users and crawlers are either penalized or, in some cases, removed from search results entirely, effectively cutting them off from the web community.

Content is King

In February 2011, Google unleashed its Panda algorithm update to quash low quality sites. The purpose of Panda is to find sites that don’t offer original, valuable content to readers and then reduce their value in search results (source: http://searchengineland.com/why-google-panda-is-more-a-ranking-factor-than-algorithm-update-82564). The engineers at Google have attempted to make Panda match a human’s reading habits, in order to determine whether certain content is relevant and actually coherent. There are many sites on the web that post long articles which begin normally enough, but, shortly after the fold, devolve into machine-generated nonsense. Panda’s purpose, among others, is to rid results of those poorly constructed pages.

Google’s Panda update changed the way that businesses do SEO and branding. They can’t get away with dropping keywords in places that make no sense or overloading pages with every co-occurrence term possible. Those who do stuff keywords into their pages are quickly hit with penalties, resulting in their site being down-ranked or even removed from search results completely, depending on the severity of the infraction. Content has to be purposeful, valuable, unique and of high quality for Google to allow it to rank well in a search results page.

This guest post was contributed by Joseph Baker.

Joseph Baker’s business experience in management spans more than 15 years. A leader of development and management teams, he also implemented budget reductions professionally and as an independent contractor. Joseph led strategic planning and systems of implementation for nine organizations, public and private, and worked extensively with small businesses.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management.

A freelance illustrator Beatriz Torres, best known as Zirta has drawn the ongoing competition between Google+ and FaceBook in a funny way.

I think the most ironic part of the illustration is MySpace Founder Tom Anderson’s advice for Mark Zuckerberg to sell FaceBook before it’s too late. Tom Anderson actually  shared this comic and his thoughts about  the question of “when to sell” on his Google+ account :)

Social Media has completely changed how we as a culture communicate and interact with one another.  Myspace, Facebook, and YouTube allowed anyone to create a website that is all about themselves and their ideas.   These social media outlets allow us to express our selves in a completely different way than what we ever could before.  But, there is a darker side to social media and companies tracking our behaviors.  Like all forms of technology, social media is constantly changing and coming up with new ways for people to express them selves.

• Interactive broad casts: Ustream is the new YouTube, by allowing people to stream live video of events online.  Even politicians are using Ustream to allow a larger population of voters to speak out and ask questions.  This allowed the political candidates to answer the questions in a timely manner.  More and more people are watching internet broadcasting and this trend is not going away anytime soon.
• Review Sites:  Sites such as angie’s list are taking on a strong presence in the social media landscape.  Consumers not only want to know about products before they buy, they also want their opinions, on the product, to be heard after the purchase.  These websites are forcing companies to respond to both the positive and negative reviews.  All it takes is for one person to write a negative review to spark others who have had similar experiences to jump on the band wagon.  Review sites such as Angie’s List definitely make it a buyers’ market; which is beneficial to those looking.
• Location check in:  So you go to your favorite lunch spot on Wednesday and you want all of your friends to know about it.  Instead of just updating your status on Facebook you can now utilize Facebook places or foursquare.  This allows you to check in to places you go throughout the day on your smart phone.  The apps award points and sometimes the stores you check into award you coupons or discounts on your next purchase.  This is great advertising for the companies because when people check into a location it prompts their friends to come to that location too.  It also allows users to interact with their environment by using their mobile devices.

With all of these new and growing social media trends it crazy to think about all of the information about us is known by companies.  But by someone taking part in these different medias they are giving companies permission to use the information.  Use these services for their advantages, but be aware of all the stipulations.

This guest post was contributed by Joseph Baker.

Joseph Baker’s business experience in management spans more than 15 years. A leader of development and management teams, he also implemented budget reductions professionally and as an independent contractor. Joseph led strategic planning and systems of implementation for nine organizations, public and private, and worked extensively with small businesses.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management.

Refers to the late 1990s during which countless Internet companies were riding an enormous wave of enthusiasm that pushed their stock valuations into the stratosphere even though they never made a penny. Billions in venture capital were given to entrepreneurs with little or no experience to fund ideas that were ludicrous. It was a crazy time, and people were very excited. With all of the nonsense, many dot-coms did survive, and countless concepts and techniques were developed that continue today.

In these days, professionals from tech and media industries repeat all together that social media companies are over-valuıed and we are “in the middle of a social media bubble”. Some experts think that these social networking sites will never figure out a workable business model because there may not be one.

Mashable shared this Infographic prepared by social media site G+ about top-valuations of  social media sites.

People have many alternatives to sign in around the web. Users have existing online IDs and they don’t want any more accounts to sign-in. Internet developers need to determine which providers to let their users how to login.

The Infographic below from Gigya shows what online people are using the most to sign in around the web. Here are some statistics from the research.

• Across All Sites: 46% of people prefer FaceBook, 17% Google and 14% Twitter…
• Entertainment Sites: 52% percent prefer FaceBook to sign-in entertainment sites, 15% Twitter and 14% MySpace…
• News Sites: Twitter is preferred 45% to sign-in News Sites, 25% FaceBook and 16% Google…
• B2B Sites: 37% FaceBook, 19%Google and 18% Yahoo…

These statistics show us FaceBook is above all other alternatives to sign in online. I think this Infographic will be very helpful for developers to decide which online IDs are most important for their websites.
Which online ID do you use the most?

The Internet has come a long way since Tim Berners-Lee created the first website way back in 1991.  The World Wide Web is 20 years old and this infographic from KISSmetrics shows the evolution of web design from text-based pages with hyperlinks to HTML 5. I remember Flash, CSS and frames as important milestones of web design evolution. I also can’t forget how GeoCities democratized the Web and let all of us have “FREE” web pages. Today we all have blogs, Twitter accounts and Facebook pages but before all of these, there was GeoCities

Image courtesy of KISSmetrics .

What can happen in one day? If you are talking social media, the answer is a lot. DBA Worldwide has made a cool video for the impressive stats of social media. For example 700,000 new users register on FaceBook every day…

A Day in the Life of Social Media from DBA Worldwide on Vimeo.

Google releases new products or features frequently. As we listed before, Google has more than 101 services and every month, at least one new service is added to the list. Most of the serious Internet users even don’t know half of the Google’s products and Google didn’t have a page for their new products or features.

At last, Google has rolled out a new feature to keep you updated with everything new that’s coming from Google, aptly named Google New. With Google New, you’ll easily keep track of all the changes to your favorite Google services. You can also filter the new products or new features of existing products by filtering out your area of interest or a specific product name.

The Internet Internet traffic is increasing very rapidly, close to doubling each year since 1997.    Jesse Thomas collected remarkable stats on the Internet in one video. As the social network sites and YouTube like media-sharing sites take much more time in our lives, People-Powered Internet grows up. Some of the amazing figures about people-powered  Internet shared in the video:

• - Facebook gets more than 260 billios pageviews per month.
• - YouTube serves 1 billion videos in one day.
• - The average Internet user in the USA watches 182 online videos in a month.
• - There are 1.4 billions email users worldwide.

Thanks Jesse Thomas for combining and animating these stats. You can watch the video below:

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

Google primarily provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers many  tools and platforms including its more popular products.

There are more than a hundred Google services & products and some useful ones are little-known. We prepared a guide for Google’s services and products to show you how big giant Google is. If you want to add a Google service or product that  doesn’t exist in this list, please feel free to comment.

We arranged Google’s services and products (only 130 of them!) into  10+1 categories:

Search, Advertising, Location, Communication&Publishing, Online Shopping, Personal Productivity, Business Solutions, Mobile, Development, Social Responsibility and Other.

All the Google Logos, trademarks, graphics and other material related to Google are properties of Google™.

This Site Is Not affiliated with Google™ .

References:

1. Google Company Profile on CrunchBase
2. Official Google Help Pages
3. List of Google products article on Wikipedia
4. Jooit’s Google Index

In a funny, rapid-fire 4 minutes, Reddit Founder & Entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian tells the real-life fable of one humpback whale’s rise to Web stardom at TedIndia 2009 Event. The lesson of Mister Splashy Pants is a shoo-in classic for meme-makers and marketers in the Facebook age. A great story to show how social media can effect a change in the real World. If you want to watch the video, go ahead.

Alexis Ohanian co-founded Reddit, a social-voting news website with geek allegiances, a small-town feel and a penchant for lighting up the memes your friends IM you about next week. Reddit was founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005, both 22-year-old graduates of the University of Virginia. It received its initial funding from Y Combinator. Condé Nast Publications, owner of Wired, acquired Reddit on October 31, 2006. Ohanian left Reddit in his official capacity in 2009, but continues to be involved with the site’s direction as a sort of godfather, dispensing friendly wisdom (and t-shirts) from his user account, kn0thing. Of late, he’s focusing on Breadpig, a hub for geeky books and merchandise.

Did you know, monkeys have 12 hairs at any one time

Aaron Patzer’s personal finance manager Mint is one of the best examples for building a successful company from nothing. Aaron Patzer started Mint.com when he was 25. Mint launched in September 2007 at TechCrunch40 and in September 2009, Mint is acquired by Intuit for $170m. Mint.com has reached over 1.5 million users and helped them of people pay debt, manage job loss in the downturn. Aaron has packed a lot of experience in a very short time and shared his experiences and advices on several platforms.

Aaron Patzer isn’t only a successful Internet entrepreneur, but he also likes to help others about Internet business development. In the embedded video below, he  tells the story of Mint and gives incredibly useful advices for Internet entrepreneurs at a startup competition event called Juice Pitcher on the Microsoft campus.