Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category
Facebook Deals reach Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain and Canada
Tuesday, February 1st, 2011
Facebook Deals & Places
Facebook, the social network, is introducing its Places Deals service in several key European countries and Canada, allowing marketers to send tailored offers to mobile phone users. Places Deals, being launched in Canada, Germany, Italy, France, Spain and the UK, promotes discounts and incentives from retailers, restaurants and similar outlets to nearby Facebook members using wireless handsets.
It was unveiled in the US during November 2010, attracting organisations like H&M, Macy’s and Gap, and is accessible via iPhone, iTunes and Android apps. “The wisdom of friends has taken over from the wisdom of crowds, through a highly personal experience in the real world,” Emily White, Facebook’s director of local, told the Guardian.
“Facebook local enables users to take that Facebook identity out and about … Places is the ‘where’ to ‘what am I doing’ and ‘who am I with’. And it allows businesses to start joining the conversation.”
“Doing Deals does drive ‘liking’ of pages. Over time that relationship will become more explicit.”
In Germany leveraging this opportunity – which is currently available to clients for free – are Cinemaxx, Vapiano, Esprit, Benetton, Douglas, Gravis and the soccer club Bayern Munich. Benetton will donate €2 for every check-in to a technology center in Kenya.
According to Ian Maude, head of internet at research firm Enders Analysis, Facebook’s strategy should prove particularly profitable, as it merges the benefits of popular alternative properties. “This move is a no brainer for Facebook. Places Deals is a combination of Foursquare meets Groupon,” he said. “It is the company’s first major move into mobile, discounts and location based advertising. I think this has the potential to be a smash hit for them.”
But White suggested Facebook’s latest package is set to occupy an untapped position in the market. “I don’t think this will kill Groupon,” she said. “It is very different from Groupon’s offering today and takes advantage of the unique platform Facebook has. “We don’t want to kill Groupon, they have been an amazing partner on a number of fronts.”
The localisation of Facebook’s marketing services may also heighten its rivalry with Google, which has effectively monetised the long tail of advertising over recent years via search ads.
Link Directory for WordPress
Monday, January 31st, 2011
WordPress offers the possibility to save links and sort by category. These links can be shown at the blog using widgets. For most blogs, however, after a time it will more and more links one like to save permanently and use for future reference. From a certain number, however, many links remain in secret, if one uses the widget display only.
Link Library is a plugin for WordPress, which helps to display the collected links in a link directory. The plugin offers a number of administrative tools, to determine content and appearance of the directory. The link directory in this Weblog has been created with the plugin.
It is also possible to let visitors of the blog enter link suggestions through the plugin if one wish for.
Do you like to use this plugin on your blog? It’s easy:
- Download the latest version
- Unzip the package
- Upload the files via FTP to the plugin directory
- Activate the plugin in the admin panel of the blog
- Do the settings in the admin area of Link Library
- Create a new page and insert the short codes of your Link Library
Examples of using the plugin and also help you find at the author’s website Yannick Lefebvre
Trackback – What is it?
Friday, January 28th, 2011
The world of the bloggers is big. There are many weblogs for all topics: private, hobby and business. There we have for example Maria. Her hobby is cooking, and so it’s all about in her blog around this topic. Every day she publish a new tip for the kitchen and lots of her own recipes. Maria also has many fans who visit her blog. Often, they also leave comments. This possibility can be found at the end of each article. So once you have read a post and would like to praise it, leave suggestions or critics, just type name, e-mail address (if you have a home page or a blog, the URL) and the comment in the provided form at the end of article and then click “Send”.
Today, Maria has tried a new pizza recipe and of course, immediately published an article on her blog. Peter has his own pizzeria. He finds the new pizza creation of Maria on their blog and tried it out hisself. Peter then writes an article in his blog about Pizza and offers suggestions on how this new pizza can be even more delicious. It has links in his article to that of Maria, because there he had found the new recipe.
In order to let Maria know and her blog readers too that he has tips for the refinement of the pizza on his blog, Peter set a trackback. Peter goes to the article on Maria’s blog and find there a trackback link. He copy this link and goes back to the draft article on his blog. Before he published the article, he adds the trackback in the “Send trackbacks to” field.
Then Peter publish his article. Automatically appears below the post on Mary’s blog a comment with the link to Peter’s blog. Now Mary and her visitors see that there are tips on refining the recipe at Peter’s blog.
Trackback
Instead of a comment below a post on another blog one write an article on its own block and then set a Trackback to
- to publish own opinions on the topic or/and
- to offer own tips or more information
A nice trackback tutorial can be found at optiniche
Trackback-Spam
Some bloggers try to get many trackbacks, because maybe they show paid advertising on their blogs. They hope to gain many new visitors in return of many trackbacks and so to make more money.
Therefore, they share trackbacks on articles that do not fit the theme and alson not include a link to the article. This method is called “Trackback Spam “. But one do not face this spam helpless. A useful guide to protect a blog from unwanted trackback spam, can be found at Dragon Blogger
Note: Trackbacks can be sent only if it is a related article and a link to the original article is included, otherwise one is an unwanted spammer.
