Twitter is cracking down on spam. (Check out the awesome graph in this ReadWriteWeb article!) Twitter reported a week ago that the percentage of spam tweets per day is currently 1% or less. That’s great news for anyone trying to search Twitter for information or marketing leads.
Facebook also announced stricter rules for its two-year-old advertising service. The company is now using a “part human, part automated” system of assessing its engagement ads. Viewers can now approve or disapprove of the ad and say why. The system will reject ads that use “arbitrary profile-based copy” or false incentives to attract clicks.
This has two effects:
For the business- Click through rates are going to drop. CPM’s for mid-sized companies trying to get some headway are going to obviously suffer- at least in the short term.
For the consumer- Good news. You’ll get less of those spammy “try viagra”, ”flatten those abs” ads targeted towards you because of age or gender.
Remember in the early days of SEO when companies gamed the Google search algorithims by stuff their site full of keywords, tags, and metatags? Google smartened up and changed their search algorithims. Facebook is now smartening up too after seeing their ad platform get abused by spammers. This time they’re letting technology and the users help redefine appropriate advertisements.
So, this makes me want to throw out three statements for general consumption:
- What will spammers target next- will it be FourSquare or Flickr?
- Since Facebook’s 400 million plus members have the ability to rate/assess advertisements, will Google try to do the same thing with Buzz or something similar?
- Will the newly empowered users of the social media universe be able to eradicate spam all together?!!
Content is considered the “currency” of social media. Content is made by you, your company, you favorite blogger, news outlet and more..
Now, how do you/they make the content easier to find? Read on.
The algorithms that have made Google famous may be replaced in the near future with a new indexing system that will be better for web publishers out there. According to ReadWriteWeb, the system “will enable web publishers of any size to automatically submit new content to Google for indexing within seconds of that content being published.” Sounds good right?
The system is called PubSubHubbub (PuSH), and that article explains it better than I could; you can find more technical information here, and a great explanatory video here. The kicker is that anyone can use this method of distributing content; it is entirely free code. And people are taking advantage: WordPress has already adopted it so now, all your new content will get sent within a matter of seconds to those who subscribed to receive it.
Besides being a more efficient for Google to catalog everything, now, it won’t be just your tweets getting out to your readers in real time, but your blog posts as soon as you write them. The Web is moving to real time more and more every day, which is good news for marketers. Looking to break the latest story, lead the dialogue? Then you need your content available in real time. Stephen at Impact Media (which also reported on the PuSH announcement from Google) makes a good case that this sort of cataloguing won’t topple the search algorithims of today, but I think more people are interested in what’s happening right now than Stephen suggests and the faster you get your content into the search engines and their news feeds, the more likely they’ll see it.
Let’s talk more about Google Buzz. I mentioned this a few weeks ago giving you my general impressions of the new platform, and it seems the general consensus on the web bounces between “I HATE IT!” (which tends to be the gut reaction whenever a major player releases a new feature) and “let’s give it more time.”
I attribute the two reactions to two things: First, Buzz was automatically integrated with everyone’s Gmail. You had to click “accept” on a pop up menu – before you even got a chance to see what it was like! Second, it’s value is not immediately apparent.
Although Google automatically linked you to all your Gmail accounts, the learning curve to get the most out of it is pretty steep. I ‘m still trying to figure out how to integrate Buzz with of my other social media tools because the services it provides are already filled by Twitter and Facebook. In fact, Mashable readers ranked it third behind these two older platforms.
I t’s not an intuitive program. If you’re looking for some basic guides to using Buzz, check here and here and here , and of course, Google itself. Just the presence of so many “how-to” guides is telling; there are lots of guides for Twitter, but those talk about the nuances of tweeting, not how to adjust settings, or worse, disable it. This is a big challenge for Google. Couple that with the multiple concerns about privacy, and no wonder people are upset.
However, Buzz is gaining some traction.
- A significant number of businesses are developing Buzz profiles and getting active. Here are some big businesses I was able to find using Buzz: Samsung USA, Vizio, Verizon, CNN, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and more. (It took me a while to find where to search for profiles, just use the search bar at the bottom of this page.)
- WordPress has already implemented a “Buzz This” feature for the blogs it hosts and HuffPost and TechCrunch have added “Buzz This” icons alongside Facebook and Twitter sharing icons
- The Washington Post reported last week that, according to AddThis, sharing via Google Reader has increased by 35% since Buzz launched. Still small potatoes compared to sharing on Facebook and retweeting, but presumably there will be more to come.
The bottom line is that these major organizations are paying attention. So as annoying as it may seem right now, you probably should too.
