Rapid Web News

While promoting your website via search engine optimisation techniques and Internet advertising campaigns, it is important not to forget the power of the social web for website promotion. The social web consists of blogs (or ‘web logs’), social networking, social bookmarking websites and micro-blogging services.

So, what are all of these social web elements? Let me explain.

• Blog – A blog, also called a ‘web log’ is a series of articles called posts, which are written and published over a period of time to the web. Most blogs are provided in the format of many pages in which the posts are displayed in reverse chronological order, and are categorised and tagging by the topic or topics of the individual posts. Blogs can be informative, such as tips and ‘how-to’ guides, personal, in the format of a journal/diary, or corporate, giving information and news around a specific topic or range of topics. What you are reading now is an example of informational, corporate blog post.
• Social Networking – You may already be using a social networking website already without realising it. Examples of very popular social networking websites are Facebook, MySpace and Orkut. Social networking websites allow you to keep it contact with your friends, family, acquittance and colleagues. Many are open to various advertising and marketing campaigns, commonly targeted to users via their age range, gender, location or interests.
• Social Bookmarking – Social bookmarking websites, or social news websites, allow users to post links to other web content and share it with other users of the website. Examples of social bookmarking websites include Reddit, Digg and StumbleUpon. These social bookmarking websites are the perfect opportunity to promote engaging and viral content includes articles, images and videos to a large number of users at once.
• Micro Blogging – Just like social networking, you may already be using a micro blogging website but not have heard of the social media terminology. Examples of micro blogging websites include Twitter, FriendFeed and identi.ca. Micro blogging is the same general idea as a blog, a reverse chronological listing of posts. The difference with micro blogging is in the name – the posts are deliberately small in size, generally under 140 characters. Micro blogging sites are used frequently, like social bookmarking websites, to share content via links to webpages or video clips, so are, again, a great social media website promotion tool.

If you want some help promoting your website via search engine optimisation techniques or social media, we offer quite a few great services to promote your website. Feel free to contact us about them!

Facebook, one of the largest and most well known PHP powered social networking websites has made significant changes to its web design. Facebook have taken a more minimalistic web design approach in many respects, removing most of the bottom application and instant messaging bar, and moving to a left hand side bar. From a technical perspective, Facebook have increased their use of many web technologies such as JavaScript and AJAX in an effort to increase the speed of website loading and make improve the overall user experience. This certainly increases speed but can cause issues on intermittent or unreliable Internet connections, or on browsers with no or poor JavaScript support. However, Facebook has full support for Internet Explorer 7, 8, Firefox 3, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera.

The left sidebar of the new web design now features links to the news feed, friends, messages, friends and Facebook applications. These applications include both built-in Facebook applications such as Photos and custom made applications such as Rapid Wish List (in the Facebook screenshot above). The sidebar also includes direct links to the top online friends in your Facebook instant messaging, providing you are signed into Facebook’s chat system, which is not the case in the screenshot shown above.

Hopefully you enjoy the new web design Facebook has adopted, but as always there are many Facebook groups which heavily dislike the new changes to the Facebook web design. This is always the case with Facebook design changes it seems. What do you think? Do you like the changes or find that they make the website more difficult to use?

If you’re interested in a new web design for your website, whether minimalist like Facebook’s new design, or much bigger and bolder, please feel free to contact us. We do web design, web development, the creation of dynamic PHP-powered web applications and search engine optimisation and much more. Take a look at some of our other work.

So with all the rumours flying around about Apples new offering what do we know for sure? Well we know it’s one of the most hyped devices since the combustion engine for a start. There’s no actual confirmation as to its real name, some are calling it the iSlate someone else referred to it as the iHype which is somewhat fitting. There are other claims that it will be very similar to a large screened iPod. How have Apple been able to keep this under wraps? Almost everything gets leaked onto the net weeks before release. With Ebook readers becoming ever more popular are Apple making a supremo version while the iron is hot? Imagine never having to queue for the morning papers, pre ordering best sellers and not waiting for midnight releases outside supermarkets, the still ever increasingly popular Twitter and Facebook linked directly to headlines “crikey, check this out’ you post on Twitter at five to eight on Monday morning. But is this all another step to becoming somewhat lazy or is it genuinely saving us time? I can see its merits from a paper saving view though.

Then we have the entertainment side of things, for one (I assume) you’ll have a portable TV, DVD player and jukebox (provided you’re willing to spend a small fortune with iTunes) which you can take anywhere. I can imagine a hot summers day, picnic in the local park, maybe a coolbox with a cheeky bottle of wine in there and suddenly your peace is shattered by Noel Edmonds “Are you ready for the question…” like the chavs on the bus with tinny sounding phones playing r n’ b – sometimes it’s just nice to leave all that at home…

Do we really need another all singing all dancing device that we can’t wait to show people? Don’t get me wrong, I love tech but I also like leaving it at home and going out and about. It’s quite liberating to leave your mobile phone on the kitchen table and go out for lunch, try it you might like it

Join me on a little flight of fancy. So you manage to break out of prison, evade capture from the police and go virtually unnoticed for quite some time, would you think yourself lucky and keep your head down? Maybe head somewhere remote for a while to allow things to cool off? Or would you plaster yourself all over one of the biggest social networking sites on the web? Well I guess it comes down to; what would the smart guy do? Surely not the latter…

You’d think not but Craig Lynch seems to actually be enjoying taunting the police. ‘You’ll have a laugh with me, but it will end in tears. It always does.” As his Facebook profile describes. Along with other comments such as: “Just nearly wrote my motor off again, ice everywhere I went round the corner and ended up halfway on someone’s driveway!!”, “Sticking the sunbed on as an extra heater . . . felt like the Caribbean in the bedroom ha ha” and one of my personal favourites “Enjoying a 12lb venison steak mmm roasted veg and chips, bangin meal” (although I feel he may mean a 12oz as 12lb is like eating your own thigh) well as long as things aren’t too uncomfortable for you Craig.

Craig Lynch is an escaped burglar doing a 7 year stretch (which, apparently he was almost at the end of) in Hollesley Bay open prison until he escaped in September last year. Since then he has enjoyed freedom and has openly bragged about various different things he’s been up to. Making himself famous is going to cut his winter holiday short I feel and give him a somewhat longer visit At Her Majesty’s Pleasure.

Social networking supremo Facebook is under fire this week for increasing the divorce rate all over the world. “I was really surprised to see 20 per cent of all the petitions containing references to Facebook.” Stated Mark Keenan, MD of Divorce Online. I’m assuming the temptation to cheat due to meeting old flames or an even new and possibly more interesting person is rife in the social networking community. Personally I use it to keep in touch with friends not cruise for a partner.

350 million people use Facebook so I guess the odds of re-kindling old ties are quite strong. Does this suggest an increase in boredom? Why are these people not injecting some extra pizazz into their current relationships? Surely if you’re prepared to marry your partner you must see good qualities in them? So is it boredom or just plain laziness? All good question sadly with no answers.

“The most common reason seemed to be people having inappropriate sexual chats with people they were not supposed to.” Mark Keenan Added. So does this mean it’s the ‘thrill of the chase’ feeling? It’s very puzzling to me. Turn your PC’s off people and go out for a nice meal or get away for the weekend, heck it’s even the season to go for an awesome snowy walk!