Technology of the Future

For Internet marketers, there are a lot of advantages you can get from social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Of course, to maximize the benefits, you need to learn how to use it properly. One of the best options is by adding Facebook LIKES to your site.

Facebook is now considered a social media giant. It has millions of users and upgrades as well as additions are always being incorporated into it. To understand the benefits you may get from adding Facebook likes to your website, you need to take time to check the technology behind the Open Graph of Facebook.

Technically speaking, Facebook makes use of widgets called Social Plug-ins. You use these plug-ins to a web page to become more Facebook friendly. Some to expect are:

a LIKE button

an Activity Stream widget shows the simplified version of the personal Facebook newsfeed of a visitor

a Recommendations widget shows the other pages the friends of users are reading

a Facebook Bar – toolbar site which owners float at the end part of the screen serving all of the above at once

Through Open Graph widgets, users can incorporate some of the key social interaction features of Facebook into any web page. For Internet marketers, one of the most useful and beneficial Social Plug-in is the LIKE button. When you put this on your page, users can visit your site and just click on it. Through this, a link to your web page gets added to these users activity stream. When their friends see this link, they may click on it and of course, they’ll be led to your web page directly.

As soon as your second visitor comes, the LIKE button is already personalized for them. It will show how many or who among their friends have clicked on it. So when they click on it, there will be another link to your web page getting added into their stream; so on and so forth.

Looking closely, there are two versions of this Facebook LIKE button. These are:

JavaScript – more complicated version of the button and makes use of two bits of Facebook technology – JavaScript SDK and XFBM. It is similar to i-frame when it comes to personalization. This means, every user who visits your site will see which of your friends have already clicked the LIKE button. Then there is a link to your site that will get shared on their social graph. It is also possible to tweak the parameters.

It is also worth knowing that this JavaScript version has some extras. Aside from seeing the profile pictures of friends who have clicked LIKE, it also allows your visitors to give comments on the link once they click the LIKE button.

For cases when the user isn’t logged in to Facebook upon visiting your site, you are able to automatically authenticate them through Auth 2.0.

i-frame ñan be generated for any URL through a Facebook tool found at the developer’s site of Facebook. With this, you can detect if the user is logged in or is not using a cookie. For those who are logged in to Facebook, those in i-frame are already personalized for them. i-frame shows the list of friends who also liked the page. However, if they aren’t logged in, they’ll either be prompted to log-in or join Facebook.

Every time a user likes your page, it is not just passing your link around, it is also building up your site. You can also add Open Graph meta tags to your page. This way, Facebook will know what you are.

The Facebook LIKE button is actually an improved version of the sharing buttons we’ve been used to seeing on the Net for years. It is very different from Twitter’s and Digg’s that only display a blind count of clicks from all of the people in the social network. Adding Facebook LIKES to your website can actually show how your friends interact with the page you are on.

Alex is a freelance technology blogger and journalist. He loves to write articles about SEO or Apple mac products and currently writes a media blog covering everything from mobile phones to Virgin Media Discount Codes .

Google+ is a recently released social network launched by Google. It was released last June with a private beta. Google’s SVP of social, Vic Gundotra is the one leading this project.

Rivaling Facebook, this social network features a collection of various social products. Below are some of them.

Sparks recommendation engine
Stream newsfeed
Huddle group texting service
Hangouts video chat service
Photos
Circles friend management service
Games & Questions to follow soon

As many of us know, Google has had its ups and downs in terms of social media. From its two famous flops, Google Buzz and Google Wave, it also experienced its share of success through YouTube and Orkut. As for Google+, many have already speculated that it will soon be one of the hottest social networks on the block, following the footsteps of Facebook and Twitter.

The Reason behind the Name Google+

Google+ was named such because Google wants this social network site to be an extension of Google. According to Gundotra, it is actually designed as an improved version to all of Google. For this reason, Google decided to change the navigation bar of Google and have a link to the users Google+ profile. They also added a new icon which displays the number of notifications a user receives. Sure enough, if you’re familiar with Facebook, you won’t have a hard time getting used to Google+.

How to Join Google+

To join Google+, you need to get an invite from a friend through your Gmail account. It is important to have a Gmail account in order to sign up and access Google+. Though Google Apps accounts are still not supported, Google mentioned that they plan to add support for this soon.

After accepting the invite, you will be taken to a page where you’ll be asked to make your public Google Profile. Of course, you need to fill up the information sheet with your name, birthday, etc. Afterwards, you’ll be taken to Google+.

The features of Google+ are basically easy to understand; however, it is also best to get to know the basic commands as well as the syntax of Google+. This is where a Google cheat sheet may become handy. It includes information like how you can mention your friend/s in your posts or how you can bold your text.

Your Google+ Profile
After setting up your Google+ account and filling in your user profile, you will also be asked to enter some details like your:

Tagline and brief description of self
Employment status
Educational attainment
Introduction
Places lived
Bragging rights
Relationship status
Looking for
And more

You can also change your privacy settings. You can even allow people to send you emails from a link on your profile. It is up to you to set it to private, public or only to your Google+ Circles.Your profile will also display people in your circles as well as those who have added you into their circles. To change the privacy settings, you can just click public or private on your profile’s left-hand side.

Google+ is definitely an exciting addition to social media. Being a product of Google, many of us seem to have high expectations regarding the quality of service we will receive.

Alex is a freelance technology blogger and journalist. He loves to write articles about SEO and Apple mac products and currently writes a technical blog for a Phone number search company.

Google+ is one of the hottest new social networking sites around. Being a product of Google, many see it as another successful follow through from Google’s YouTube and Orkut. However, for Internet marketers who take advantage of social media to succeed in their business, many are asking how Google+ will affect SEO?Since it is not really crystal clear at the moment how Google+ can affect search engine results, there are key areas you may need to take a careful look at.

The Search Results
Last July 4, Google suspended its Realtime Search. This search feature that displays real time Twitter feeds was turned off by Google for the reason that its contract with Twitter expired. It seems that there is no hope for the contract to be renewed because Google expressed its plans to include their own Google+ live feeds into the searches instead of using Twitter’s. This meant that you may need to anticipate some iteration of the live feeds of Google+ being displayed with the search results very soon.

The URLs
For those of us who have Facebook, it will be a disappointment to know that as of now, you still can’t claim your URL in Google+. This actually has a lot to do with Google not rolling out brand pages yet. However, after some time, it is highly likely that you’ll be able to print your Google+ URLs on your business cards.

The Brand Pages
According to Google, their social network is still unable to support profiles or brand pages at the moment. Since this is the case, Google needs to work on this and offer brands for communicating with followers or else, they don’t stand a chance on rivaling Facebook. For the kind of platform Google+ has up its sleeve, it is yet to be seen.

The Sparks Rankings
For those who don’t know Sparks, it is the personalized content aggregator of Google+. Through it, you can pick themes and you can have some content streamed over to the profiles.At the moment, the SEO community is still trying to determine how one can increase their chance of getting content into Sparks. Google has mentioned that Sparks is still in the process of being expanded and tuned.

The Posts
With Google indexing public posts from Google+, it has made it available in the search results (whether youíre logged in or out of Google+). As for private posts, these wonít show up in Google search. Furthermore, Google+ indexes all the comments made on public posts to hold substantial weight.

To conclude, Google+ affects SEO through its users when they share content and increase rank. Though it is not based on link and keyword seeking robots, its built-in content aggregators known as Sparks can help Google+ users further understand how this social media instrument will be centered on relationships and not on content.
Alex is a technology blogger and journalist. He loves writing articles about SEO or Apple mac products and currently writes a technical blog for a UK phone number company.