Facebook Earns Patent for New Targeted Search Algorithm

With thousands of companies vying to be the next internet success story, protecting new software, algorithms and other proprietary information is always a concern. Companies are constantly fighting to prevent competitors from taking advantage of their innovations, and like most other industries, the best way to get legal protection is by filing for a patent.

Searches are one of the most lucrative and widely used aspects of the internet, as is evidenced by the massive success and ubiquitous nature of Google. On numerous occasions we’vediscussed how searches are becoming increasingly personalized, leading to more targeted and effective marketing campaigns. Capitalizing on this trend is obviously a top priority for internet companies, and Facebook has just established itself as the leader in this race thanks to a patent on a new search algorithm.

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Social Media: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Social media is everywhere nowadays. It finds you in the morning during your commute to work, sneaking its way into a promotional radio announcement for concert tickets – learn more about this music spectacular via the station’s Twitter account. It’s embedded in the e-mail we read; Vanessa tagged a photo of you on Facebook and Nathan wrote on your wall. It’s even incorporated into the TV programs we cherish – visit Fox.com/Glee to follow us on MySpace, check out video extras and learn more about the cast.

With each passing day, social media becomes more institutionalized within our culture, and our ability to separate social media from ordinary life becomes opaque and jaded. Such a transformation – social media into the norm of everyday life – also encourages the public to use social media as a gateway for sharing of every kind of information without thinking twice.

Below you’ll find real-life examples of how society has embraced social media to portray the good, the bad and the ugly.

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Privacy-Promoting Social Network Provides Alternative to Cautious Facebook Users

Are you one of many social media addicts who have been disappointed by the seemingly unjust privacy violations implemented by Facebook? Are you exhausted from worry of what might happen to your personal data with the topsy-turvy regulations set to protect your information? Would you like to rest assured that your social interactions on the web won’t come back to haunt you several years down the road?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you’ll want to pay close attention to a new social media platform that’s garnering favorability among social media consumers – and it hasn’t even been launched yet.

Diaspora, which has been coined a Facebook alternative by many, is an interactive online platform designed to grant social media users the privacy they demand matched with the social activity they crave. In fact, the social network’s founders – Daniel Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer and Ilya Zhitomirskiy – say it best in the following video clip.

Diaspora: Personally Controlled, Do-It-All, Distributed Open-Source Social Network from daniel grippi on Vimeo.

Set to launch September 15, 2010, Diaspora developed an interim, promotional website to deliver an overview, that’s both creative and concrete, of what social media users can expect along with a platform for the inevitable, frequently asked questions. The website describes the soon-to-be-launched social network in saying:

“We are 140-character ideas. We are the pictures of your cat. We are blog posts about the economy. We are the collective knowledge that is Wikipedia. The internet is a canvas – of which, we paint broad and fine strokes of our lives with. It is a forward extension of our physical lives; a meta-self comprised of ones and zeros. We are all that is digital: If we weren’t, the internet wouldn’t either.”

To stay current with Diaspora news and events in the final days before its launch, visit the social platform’s blog and KickStarter page.

Top 5 Tools for Successful Twitter Marketing

If you’re having trouble deciding which is more important – the quantity of your Twitter following or the depth of your relationships with your followers – rest assured that both are of equal value.

Now that your mind is uncluttered and free of question, it’s best to concentrate on how you can enhance both aspects of your Twitter account to ensure the most oomph for your efforts.

Below you’ll find five indispensible resources to establish successful Twitter marketing, thanks to SocialMediaExaminer.com, which zoom in on the following key areas:

• Generating new followers
• Managing your newly established following surplus
• Transforming shallow relationships into deeper, more connected ones

 1. Blast Follow
A must-have Twitter application, Blast Follow is a remarkable resource for e-commerce entrepreneurs who could use a helping hand in accomplishing the necessary grunt work to locate others in their industry. With just a single click, users can generate a seemingly endless list of followers.

So, how can such a near impossible task become so simplified? Quite easily in fact. The concept is based on a societal norm – the law of reciprocity – which states that it’s in the nature of humans to desire reciprocation (whether a friend or stranger) of actions.

This concept takes on a ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ appeal and, in this case, Twitter users seem to adhere to a loyalty to that says ‘you follow me; it’s only fair that I follow you.’

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5 Social Media Trends to Smile About

It’s nearly impossible to turn on the TV, tune in to the radio or surf the web these days without encountering the social media craze that continues to intertwine with all aspects of our daily lives.

The buzz question of a once reluctant, yet curious, populace is no longer ‘Why should I become active in social media?’ Instead, the hot-button issue of inquisition in recent days has become ‘How can social media benefit me?’

Therefore, we’ve comprised a list of five social media trends, thanks to Mashabale.com, that provide consumers with a variety of perks and rewards, in addition to the in-demand essence of social media itself.

1. Social Scanning
The development of the Smartphone has granted users instant access to a magnitude of informational and social resources online. Most recently, these newage applications have yielded the convenience of comparison shopping to Smartphone users through barcode scanning technology.

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