Microsoft, Canon shake on patent licensing agreement

The two companies will share intellectual property on a "broad range of products and services," including those for certain digital imaging and mobile consumer products.

Here's a novel idea: Instead of suing for patent infringement, why not just share the intellectual property?

This is exactly what Microsoft and Canon have decided to do. The two companies announced Wednesday that they've signed a patent cross-licensing agreement, which gives them the right to use the intellectual property on some of each other's products.

"This collaborative approach with Canon allows us to deliver inventive technologies that benefit consumers around the world," Microsoft IP Licensing general manager Nick Psyhogeos said in astatement. "Microsoft believes cooperative licensing is an effective way to accelerate innovation while reducing patent disputes."

Patent cross-licensing agreements are nothing new. In fact, a lot of tech companies over the years have made such deals with their colleagues and even their competitors. For example, earlier this year Samsung entered into three separate patent cross-licensing agreements with Google, Cisco Systems, and Ericsson.Microsoft and Canon did not disclose the terms of the deal or say exactly what types of patents they'll be sharing. But, they did say the agreement "covers a broad range of products and services" and applied to their "growing patent portfolios." The companies said that certain digital imaging and mobile consumer products have been included in the agreement.

As for Microsoft, since it launched its IP licensing program in 2003, it has entered into more than 1,100 licensing agreements with various companies.

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Microsoft flips switch on new webmail encryption

Microsoft has pulled back the curtain on its implementation of tougher encryption standardsfor Web-based email and some cloud services, the company announced Tuesday.

In the works for more than six months, Microsoft has now activated Transport Layer Security encryption (TLS) for its webmail services at Outlook.com, Hotmail.com, Live.com, and MSN.com. This means it will be significantly harder for email originating from and being sent to a Microsoft account to be spied on, as long as the connecting email service also uses TLS.

Matt Thomlinson, vice president of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing division, said that this work is part of a "comprehensive engineering effort to strengthen encryption."

"This effort also helps us reinforce that governments use appropriate legal processes, not technical brute force, if they want access to that data," he said.

Although Thomlinson didn't specify the origins of this work, Microsoft's heightened encryption efforts follow an October 2013 report that the NSA had been spying on Internet giants in a program called Muscular. The report was based on documents leaked by one-time National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Microsoft's move also comes just a few weeks after a well-publicized Google webmail report that painted Redmond in less than flattering colors. Google scored Microsoft, along with Comcast and Apple, as webmail providers with inadequate levels of encryption to protect their users' email.

Comcast and Microsoft representatives told CNET at the time of Google's report that their companies were in the process of implementing TLS for their webmail services. Apple did not return a request for comment.

Microsoft also has activated Perfect Forward Secrecy encryption (PFS) for its cloud storage service OneDrive. The OneDrive website, OneDrive mobile apps, and OneDrive syncing tools will now all use the tougher PFS encryption standard, which protects user confidentiality even when an third-party is eavesdropping on the network.

Finally, Microsoft has opened a "transparency center" at its headquarters in Redmond, Wash., where governments can review Microsoft source code for "key products" to confirm that no hidden backdoors have been added to the software. Microsoft has not revealed which of its products will be available for review.

CNET

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The Crucial Difference Between Building a Blog and Building a Business

Are you building a blog or building a business?

Do you think of yourself — and perhaps describe yourself — as a “blogger”?

Or are you a freelancer, entrepreneur, consultant, ebook author, or similar?

When I got started in blogging, I was really excited by the idea of building a blog that made money. But I didn’t initially see myself as someone who was in business.

As a result, it took me months to start making any money. It wasn’t until I accidentally fell into freelancing (the first blog I guest posted for invited me to become a paid writer) that I began to think in a more business-like way.

So what’s the difference?

If you’re building a blog and you want to make money, then you’re focusing on the wrong thing.

If you’re building a business, you might not be making money yet, but at least you’re moving in the right direction.

Here’s something important to remember: your blog itself is not your business. Your blog is a marketing tool for your business.

What Numbers Are You Focusing On?

When I started blogging, I obsessed about a lot of different numbers, like:

• How many subscribers I had
• How much traffic I was getting
• How many Twitter followers I had

… and so on.

These days, I often don’t remember to check my stats — because I’m focused on the business metric that really matters: how much money am I making?

That might sound a bit cold and profit-focused to you. If your main motivation for blogging is to have an audience for your ideas, then you may not care about making money (though you might want to run a few ads or take donations to cover your hosting costs). That’s fine.

But if you want your blog to be something more than a hobby — potentially a full-time living — then you really need to think beyond your blog itself.

That means figuring out how exactly you’re going to make money. What does your business provide — what service or product do you offer?

That could be:

• You sell ebooks (or print books, or ecourses) on a particular topic, and you blog about the same topic — though in less detail.
• You sell coaching or consulting and your blog is aimed at your clients, covering the sorts of topics they want to know about.
• You run in-person workshops or classes, and your blog covers similar topics, with a focus on your geographical area.
• You offer a particular service, like freelance writing or design, and your blog is aimed at your clients.

Of course, many bloggers use a combination of these, and that can be a great way to use your blog to maximum effect. For instance, you might offer a particular service but also sell a “do-it-yourself” ebook.

Note: Some large blogs run lots of ads and make money that way. This requires a big audience, though, and it’s not a business strategy that I’d recommend to new bloggers: there are much easier ways to build a successful business.

Many successful entrepreneurs in the blogging world started out just like you. They may well have launched a blog without much of a plan in mind, or without a clear idea of how they’d make it profitable.

But somewhere along the way, they all, without exception, turned their blog into a genuine business. And you can do the same.

Your Next Steps

If your current business plan looks something like “grow my blog and monetize it”, figure out exactly what you’re going to do (starting right now) to bring in money.

What service can you offer, or what product could you sell? How could you get started by offering that service or product for free, so you can get some testimonials?

Tell us about your business ideas, or about your thoughts on blogs vs businesses, in the comments below.

Quick reminder: If you’re yet to start your blog, don’t forget that our courseGet Blogging is open for new members until Friday 13th June.

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6 Ways to Speed Up Your Site

The load time of websites is one of the most important factors affecting its usability; most Internet users will just skip a site altogether if it fails to load within a couple of seconds. Below you will find the summary of the “Speed Up Your Site” series. Those are simple yet effective ways to make sure that your website is running fast. You can click on each point to read the article with comments from the readers.

1. Optimize Images: always use the “Save for the web” feature included on image editing software. Images represent the heavier load on virtually any website so make sure you are optimizing them. Alternatively you can also turn to an online image optimizer.
2. Image Formats: apart from optimizing images it is important that you choose the right format. JPEG format is suitable for photographs or true-color images. The GIF format should be used with flat-color images like logos or buttons. PNG works very similar to GIF but it supports more colors.
3. Optimize Your CSS: most websites are designed with CSS nowadays. Make sure to aggregate and clean your CSS. CleanCSS is an online tool that will merge similar selectors, remove useless properties and remove the whitespace from your code.
4. Use a Slash on Your Links: when a user opens a link on the form “http://www.domain.com/about” the server will need to figure what kind of file or page is contained on that address. If you include a slash (/) at the end of the link the server will already know that this is a directory page, reducing the load time of the site.
5. Use the Height and Width Tags: many people forget to add the Height and Width tags on image codes. Those tags will make sure that the browser knows the size of the image before loading it. The result is that it will reserve a spot for the images while loading the rest of the page, speeding up the whole process.
6. Reduce the HTTP Requests: when opening a web page every object (images, scripts and the line) will require a round trip to the server. This latency can add several seconds to the load time of your site. Make sure to reduce the number of objects and to combine CSS files and scripts together.a

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Social Networks: Should You Go for Quantity or Quality?

If you’ve launched a blog, you’ve got plenty of work to do already – writing regular posts, moderating comments, reading and commenting on other people’s blogs, sending out guest post pitches …

… so how can you find the time to join every social media site going?

My answer is that you probably can’t – and shouldn’t.

Although every network has a slightly different audience, and different possibilities, it’s definitely best not to spread yourself too thin.

Focus on One or Two Networks

There’s no rule that says, as a blogger, you need to have a presence on every single network. Of course there’s nothing stopping you – but you’ll probably find yourself struggling to keep up with them all.

(Yes, there are tools you can use to update and/or manage several social networks from one place, but think about it this way: is anyone going to want to follow you on Facebook and Google+ if you post the exact same things to both networks?)

I’d suggest picking one or two networks to concentrate on. Think about:

• Where your target audience hang out. What networks are most familiar to them, and where do they tend to engage? If you’re writing for techy 20-somethings, Google+ might be a good choice. If you’re writing for women aged 40 – 60, Facebook will be a better bet.
• Which networks you personally prefer. Some bloggers love the relative simplicity and to-the-point nature of Twitter; others enjoy using Facebook to connect with family and friends.

By concentrating your efforts on one or two networks that are popular with your audience, you’ll have more time to craft really good updates, build a following, and engage with your readers.

But … Register an Account on Other Networks

It’s a good idea to secure your name (or blog / brand name) on networks that you don’t plan to use regularly. You could register on Twitter, for instance, and put up a single tweet directing people to your website.

That way, you’ve got a good account if you do want to use Twitter in the future – and if someone searches for you on Twitter, they can still find you. This doesn’t just apply to Twitter, of course; you can do the same with other networks.

Google+ is a special case here, as you need an account to activate Google Authorship (which we strongly recommend). This adds your name and photo alongside any results from your blog in Google. If you’ve got a Gmail address, you automatically have a Google+ account.

So that’s my advice: establish a strong presence on one or two networks, but secure your name or brand on major networks that you’re not yet using. Agree? Disagree? Let us know in the comments.

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Facebook Likes, Shares Don't Impact Google Search Rankings

Eric Enge, president of Stone Temple Consulting, has done a groundbreakingstudy on the impact of Facebook Likes and Shares on SEO, specifically Google, as well as what role profiles play on content shared via status updates.

While there has been a lot of speculation over the years about whether Facebook activity is a factor in Google's rankings, there's been no real hard evidence either way. Enge's new study changes that.

Enge did two separate studies on the impact of Facebook. The first dealt specifically with Likes while the second dealt with Shares.

Facebook Likes 'Not in the Picture'

After creating two different web pages on three different domains, he had friends and Fiverr users drive likes to each of the pages. Despite each of those pages being liked nearly 900 times each, Google never crawled are indexed any of the six pages. So Google clearly is not using Facebook likes to discover or index new content.

There are couple reasons why Google doesn't seem to be using Facebook Likes when it comes to discovery and indexing. While Googlebot can execute the Facebook Like script, it has no idea which people Liked it. When looking at links, for example, Google is able to assign trust to the links based on who is doing the linking. But when it comes to Likes, Google is unable to assign a similar kind of "score" based on who is doing the liking because it simply doesn't know. Therefore it can't determine that one page may be liked by very influential people while a second page is liked by only fake Facebook profiles.

"Likes are simply not in the picture," Enge said. "The only data Google can possibly get is the number of Likes on a page if the page has a Like widget on it, but they have no idea as to who has Liked the page. For that reason there is no value to that information to them. I think it is pretty conclusive that they don't use it for discovery, indexing, or ranking."

Facebook Shares 'Inconclusive'

Google indexing based on Facebook shares was also tested. They asked over 50 people to share different sets of pages, however each page only ended up being shared about 10 times each, although some of the shares were made by fairly high profile people in the industry, people you would expect would have a bit more influence for ranking factors.

Again, although the sample size was fairly small in terms of the number of shares, Google didn't crawl or index the shared pages either. However, the results could possibly have been different with a larger sample size.

"The data on Facebook shares is less conclusive," Enge said. "It suggests that Google does not use it for discovery, indexing, or ranking. I believe that this is in fact true, but others can choose to point out that we don't have a comprehensive data set here, and they would be right. However, our conclusion (that they don't use shares) is also consistent with what Google says about Facebook signals as a ranking factor."

Crawling & Indexing of Facebook Profile Pages

Profile pages are also looked at for potential ranking factors. Google has the ability to crawl public profiles and see who your friends are when crawling the mobile version of Facebook.

To get more Friends shown, you need to scroll the page down, and when you do that, Javascript executes that pulls some additional Friends up and displays them. As you scroll down more, more and more Friends are loaded. It is possible for Google to get the entire Friends list in an automated way, but they probably don't because of the nature of the Javascript. There is no separate version of the page for users without javascript.

However, on the mobile version of the Facebook site, there is a clean link on the Friends page to "show more friends". This is a simple text link and it is not scrolling dependent. We can't conclusively decide that Google is pulling this data, but clearly if they are motivated to get this data they can. For that reason, for purposes of this article, we will assume that they do!

While there's no clear-cut evidence whether Google is or isn't doing this, the opportunity is there, which also means that it is potentially beneficial for users to be friends with high profile users, and those with strong profile pages in Facebook.

One interesting thing was that Enge also discovered that Google has indexed a large number of Facebook posts – 1.87 billion to be exact. So next they looked at those with high PageRank profile pages, from people linking to their profile page, to determine the frequency that those higher authority users saw their post content indexed. However, while the results showed that some of their posts were being indexed, the percentage of content indexed from the profile page was in the neighborhood of 60 to 70 percent, depending on the age of the post.

On those profile pages, images seem to be the least likely by far to be indexed by Google, while links and text did very well. Videos vary depending on the age of the post, and while they were ahead of images, they were far behind to both link and text. But even for these prominent profile pages, Google doesn't seem to be crawling every single thing on the page and indexing it, but there doesn't seem to be a specific reason for the inconsistency.

All the data collected was made available publicly for full disclosure purposes and can be viewed in the spreadsheets here.

Conclusion

While Google has the ability to use Facebook influence in their algorithm, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that Google is using it to discover, index, or rank any content on the web at this time.

This shouldn't dissuade people from using Facebook for marketing purposes, because shares and updates clearly can deliver traffic and exposure.

But from an SEO perspective, you don't need to worry that you need to share every new piece of content on Facebook in hopes you rank higher. Of course, Google being Google, they could change the role of Facebook in the algorithm at any time, but right now there is no influence by using Facebook strictly for SEO value.

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SEO Tools

Check your blog page load time, Google Page Rank, Alexa rank, backlinks, broken links, reciprocal link and meta tags right here on Blogger Sentral. Just enter your domain or your web page URL in the appropriate text box and click Check! button. Results will be displayed below the text box.

All SEO tools below are provided and hosted by iWEBTOOL, except for Google Page Rank checker.

1. Speed tester

Check web page size and load time.

Your domain/web page: (eg. www.bloggersentral.com)

For a more detailed page analysis, try Pingdom.

2. Rank checker

Check Google Page Rank of your domain or web page. Result will be shown in a new window.

Your domain/web page:
	This page rank checker is powered by Page Rank Checker

3. Backlink checker

Check backlinks to your domain or web page.

Your domain/web page: (eg. www.bloggersentral.com)

4. Reciprocal link checker

Check whether your link partner is still linking back to your site.

Your domain: (You must include http://) Your partner's URL:

5. Broken link checker

Check for broken links in your web page.

Your web page URL: (eg. http://www.bloggersentral.com/2010/05/my-web-page.html)

6. Meta tag checker

Extract your web page's meta information and tags.

Your web page: http:// (eg. www.bloggersentral.com/2010/05/my-web-page.html)

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Sell More With The Right Look For Your Website

To sell products online, you need to have a good looking ecommerce website. Even if you have never set up a website before, you can still have the kind of web design which will bring in the kind of attention you are looking for. Just make sure you include in your website design pictures of your products, a shopping cart and an about us section.

If you are in the business of selling t-shirts, a good looking website coupled with all the above elements, it is possible for you to sell even more t-shirts than you might have thought possible. After all, there are quite a few people who purchase t-shirts over the Internet.

Add Pictures of Your T-Shirts

The majority of people who are going to your site would like to see all of your products, and they can only do this if you have pictures posted on your site. No good retail site design would be complete without pictures of the merchandise. Make sure you take them in HD quality so the visitors to the site will be able to zoom in and see every detail of the shirts. Keep in mind, they cannot touch or feel the shirts, so giving them the ability to see as much detail as possible is the only way you can get them to buy.

Add a Shopping Cart

Another element your tshirt design website template should have is a shopping cart. This way, as people are looking at all of the shirts, they can simply click on the shirt and it will drop into the cart. This may cost you a little extra to include on your site, but it will pay for itself when the orders start rolling in. Additionally, this is the kind of thing most consumers are looking for when they are visiting a retail site. If you do not have this on your site, people may not feel comfortable buying from you. It has the appearance of a site set up to fool people, rather than a real website set up to sell shirts.

Add an About Us Section

Your site also needs an about us section in the website design. This is the section where people can learn about your business and the people behind the business. After all, people like to buy from people. If they can see you are real people who care about the kinds of shirts you are selling, you will have a much better chance or selling more shirts. There should be a tab on the main page visitors can click on to navigate to the about us page. From the about us page, visitors should have the option to follow one of the other tabs to learn more about the company, or to start buying some shirts.

If you follow these instructions, your website will help you to make more money and be more successful. After all, small businesses have a better advantage than ever before thanks to the ability to the Internet, according to Forbes.

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The Do's and Don'ts On Growing Your Twitter Following

Many businesses have discovered the power of Twitter due to its low cost, immediacy and viral nature. However, it's not easy to develop a following. The idea is not the number of people that follow you but how many are relevant. Having over 20,000 followers who do not respond to your Tweets is like playing a guitar to a herd of goats. Here are some things you need to do or avoid to create an engaging audience.

Start with a profile picture and make sure it's your photo

The picture has to be big enough and in high resolutions because many people will check your profile before they follow you. After your house is in order, find and follow relevant people. Search for these people from the many Twitter directories out there. Ensure that you find people who are in your area of interest or have followers you intend to target. You can leverage other people's twitter lists.

Tweet interesting stuff

This is easier said than done. To get interesting content try the Google Alerts by signing up for updates about concepts that interest audiences in your field. Share media by posting photos and videos so that you page gets click through and comments. Read what your audience is writing about and comment often.

Interesting subject within a perfectly composed tweet will grab attention and maximize exposure.

Engage your audience all the time

Even if a follower did not comment back on your Tweet does not mean you cannot engage them again. Get involved with chats by using hash-tags. By joining appropriate chat forums is a quick way to build a following. You may schedule your chats so that you can reach a wider audience across the world. Note when people respond to your tweets when scheduling your chats and use a time saving tools when scheduling. Follow people that follow your comments or Tweets.

Promote your Twitter account by using other sources and channels

Put a Twitter follow button or Twitter updates widget in your website or blogs,  and include your Twitter handle in emails. You can also promote in social media outposts. To keep people engaged, try and multitask by Tweeting when in the bus, during commercials when watching your favourite program or when watching a match.

3 Don'ts When Using Hash-tags

• Don't include too many hash-tags because people don't like that kind of self-promotion. Overcrowded tweet looks spammy and may deter readers.
• Don't be too specific because many follows will not see your Tweets according to the search engine. Instead used more general terms like blogging or social media for the engine to place your Tweet on higher priority (hash-tag the terms). 
• A bad habit is in filling in your article with hash-tags. This makes your Tweets unreadable and followers will get bored reading your stuff. The content of your article must be relevant to your niche and catchy enough to arouse a response. 

While you build and grow your followers, Twitter notices you and recommends other accounts to you. Guest blogging is another popular link building strategy that can increase followers. This is a process where your articles get published in high ranking sites and makes your presence known by potential Tweet followers.

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9,000 Uniques in One Day: A Viral Marketing Case Study

One of the most popularised examples of viral marketing is that of Microsoft's Hotmail (now Outlook Online) email service. Every single email sent using the site came attached with a small signature which read "Get your free e-mail at Hotmail." Doug Rushoff was one of the first people to use the phrase viral marketing online, and likened the concept to someone who is susceptible to an idea being infected by another, and then sharing it with others, in turn "infecting" them.

The Hotmail example fits this ideology perfectly, and helped propel the service to a point where it was adding in excess of 270,000 new users every single day.

The concept of something going viral doesn't just apply to the internet of course. Another phrase associated with the idea—word of mouth—is definitely more relevant to the offline world. It may be watching a TV show and going into work to talk about it, reaching more people who then watch the show and tell even more people. It may be having a great experience at a restaurant and telling a friend, who visits that very restaurant and then tells even more people to go.

The end result is that one person can help something spread to far more people than themselves. The internet has simply made it much easier for one person to reach a huge audience with a message that's worth sharing. In the last 10 years, the number of people using the Internet has gone from being measured in millions to being measured in billions.

This was a version of the planned introduction for the book Viral Marketing for Dummies which Wiley asked me to publish a little over a year ago.

Though I actually quit my contract and stopped working on the book (long story), I've still been involved in various viral marketing campaigns. The one I would like to share with you right now was built purely to show that the ideas I was sharing in the book actually had merit.

Join a story rather than creating a new one

Though it's certainly not impossible to create your own viral category to get some buzz, it makes your job much, much easier if someone is already talking about a topic that you can leverage for your own gain.

Lyndon Antcliff, most notable for fooling the world's media into thinking that a teenager stole his Dad's credit card to play Xbox with a hooker, is very good at this. He often tweets the latest viral trends and helps his clients to capitalise on hot topics of the moment.

Again, you don't have to only take advantage of what people are saying now. When Monster Slippers wanted their slipper company to go viral, they created an elaborate story to say that a Chinese manufacturing incident left one customer with a size 1,450 shoe, almost as big as a car.

The story was picked up by multiple news outlets, all linking to Monster Slippers as they were the one to break the story. That was until they all figured out the customer who received the unusually large footwear actually looked identical to a staff member of Monster Slippers.

I didn't have anything I actually wanted to promote in my example, besides a cause that I believed strongly in, so decided to pick up on a news event that a lot of people were talking about: The demise of Google Reader and, potentially, Feedburner too.

Stick to one core theme

"What did the fox say?" just wouldn't be the same if we also wanted to know what the eagle, walrus, and piranha say too.

The Old Spice videos featuring actor Bruce Cambpell basically ran as an idea that you couldn't be Bruce with his great physique and confidence, but you could at least smell like him. They didn't run with this theme just once, but used it in multiple highly successful commercials.

Old Spice is a smell. It doesn't necessarily make you smell better than any other product. There's nothing inherently amazing about it. Yet after those commercials ran, you couldn't walk into a supermarket and find it on shelves very easily. They found one theme and stuck with it, even creating unique videos for Redditors in an AMA format.

Another reason for sticking to one core theme is that you really have to give sharing a purpose (next section). If there's no clear message that you want to spread, it's hard for people to get behind the idea and want to share it with others, whatever it may be.

I've already mentioned that I wanted my idea to focus on the news events surrounding the demise of Google Reader as well as the potential demise of Google's Feedburner product. I think it was much better for me to pick one of these rather than try to get the message across about both.

You couldn't save Google Reader after it was announced to be shut down, but Feedburner still has some legs (for now) and that's the one I care about the most.

Make it easy to share, and give sharing a purpose (!)

This is possibility the most overused advice when it comes to teaching people how to get ideas to go viral but it is still relevant. Of course, you can't just stick social media buttons onto a site and expect something to instantly spread across the social stratosphere (that's what we're calling it these days, right?).

Not only did I put sharing buttons on my site, but I also decided to actually give people the text they could use on sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Going back to my earlier point about purpose, people had to believe that they would actually get a response and that sharing would do something productive. Whether that's positioning themselves as someone who is intelligent and in on the latest news (whether it's movies, the next viral video, etc.) or, like me, they wanted to rally behind a cause.

One of my good blogger friends actually tweeted the story without knowing about it.

Thanks Steve!

Execute properly

Though I had no real idea if the Feedburner minisite would actually take off, it was worth a try. I wasn't actually promoting anything besides having a case study for the book I was writing, but even still, I wanted to at least make it look semi-professional and not just like a random blog post on a website.

I thought about not only the big details—like why Feedburner might actually shut down—but also the small details, like having an upside-down Feedburner logo as the website favicon. I also decided to take a comic strip style approach and use my limited skills in Photoshop to put together something hopefully, as least slightly, humorous.

There was even a comment that said I ripped off the style of the Oatmeal which I'll take as a compliment judging by Matt's huge success after working here at Moz.

Finally, I also enlisted the help of three others to throw in the ever-important cat pictures with the hashtag #pleasedontkillfeedburner. Thanks to Ramsay and Chris for kindly sharing pictures of their cats which I could also use in the comic.

To put together the theme of the site, I simply headed over to my usual design haunt, ThemeForest, and picked up a template. Then I got to work in Photoshop without caring too much for standards or usability. I viewed the project as time-sensitive, so I wanted to get something up as quickly as possible.

Just be careful which font you use...

Funny; that's not even Comic Sans.

The end result

Just to clarify, the only piece of promotion I did for this was around two personal tweets and I emailed no more than six people about the idea. If you consider that a tweet of mine would only get a few dozen clicks, I was quite surprised by what happened when I woke up the next day: The site made the homepage of Hacker News.

Here are the stats for the first week of the site going live:

To give even more transparency, here's a list of some of the sources which sent traffic. Notice that a lot of the tweets sent a surprising amount of people to the page:

There are a lot more but that screenshot was getting long enough as it is. Here are a few other results from this campaign:

• The site has between 300-500 backlinks (!) depending on which link checker you use
• The domain is now a PR 4
• It has been shared on social media over 1,400 times
• The entire website was built in less than one day

Some people might argue that I'm fortunate that the article went viral on Hacker News (I didn't submit it, and don't know who did). If you're one of those people, well I'll just say that I'm also "fortunate" to have the idea for the site, to register the domain, to contact people for cat photos, to spend a day in Photoshop and to actually execute my idea.

Of course, not everything you create with the idea of 'going viral' is going to be a hit. But if you keep focusing on creating content that follows this outline (relevant to hot topics, gives people a reason to share, execute the idea properly) then no doubt that something you create is going to get a lot of attention.

Even with this campaign there were a few mistakes I made:

• The site looks terrible on mobile devices. Seriously, don't bother opening it in your iPad
• I lost the account access to the email used in the graphic so I have no idea if Google responded after the initial buzz (duh!)
• Ideally this would have been a campaign I could have linked to other web properties after the traffic burst subsided

Though in recent months I've been a very public advocate on the ViperChill blog that, quite simply, quality content doesn't rank as well as it should, I still believe in it. Every time I've showed terrible websites ranking highly in Google, I've always stated that I would love for the opposite to be the case.

If you would like to hear more about this topic (I wrote 20,000+ words for the book before scrapping the idea) then please let me know in the comments, and I'll see what I can do. There is a lot more to cover, but hopefully this post gave you a bit of inspiration about taking action on those random ideas I'm sure you have from time to time.

As a final plug, I've actually just started a brand new niche site case study (introduction post here) where 3 people will be tackling the same niche from three different angles. One of us is using only SEO, I'm relying purely on creating great content and the third contributor is a total beginner to creating sites who has all options available to him.

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7 Big Facebook Changes You Should Know About for a Better Facebook Strategy

Facebook changes so fast, I often miss new features or updates to existing ones. Since there have been a few changes recently, I thought it would be helpful to do a bit of a wrap-up of what Facebook’s been up to.

1. Images are now bigger and wider – Here are the right sizes to use

Some recent changes to how Facebook displays thumbnail images mean that we need to be more aware of the size and aspect ration of any pictures we post. Because Facebook will automatically resize images that don’t match its specifications, we really need to remember these details for our images to look right.

The aspect ratio is very specific: image widths need to be 1.91 times the height. This will mean the image scales perfectly in both the desktop News Feed and on mobile. Images are now larger when shown in the News Feed, so keeping the aspect ratio right will make sure your images look great wherever the user sees them.

Recommended image sizes have also changed for Facebook’s desktop News Feed and mobile views. For the News Feed, Facebook recommends thumbnail images of 400×209 pixels. Images that are smaller than these dimensions will be resized to either 154×154 or 90×90 pixels.

Jon Loomer made some amazing graphics to show you what the right, new sizes are:

On mobile, Facebook’s recommended image size is 560×292. Images smaller than this will be resized to 100×100 pixels.

It seems strange that mobile images are expected to be larger than thumbnails for the desktop News Feed, but Jon Loomer suggests this could be due to the lack of a sidebar on mobile, leaving more space for large images, and the increased usage of tablets with larger screens than smartphones.

2. News Feed ranking is now smarter, including 100,000 individual weights

Not so long ago I wrote about how Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm works to determine which posts show up in a user’s News Feed. The algorithm has been developing alongside Facebook’s overall growth, and now uses up to 100,000 individual weights to determine which posts appear in the News Feed.

The latest iteration of the algorithm could be compared to the growth of search engines like Google and Bing. Both use complicated algorithms with many signals included, such as social and personalization, to determine which search results to show a user. Facebook’s algorithm has become more sophisticated over time in a similar way.

When Facebook launched the News Feed in 2006, it was designed to show users the most important content from their friends all in one place. The tricky part is deciding what’s important to each user:

Facebook says that the typical user has about 1,500 stories that could show in the News Feed on every visit.

What shows up on a user’s News Feed is determined by measuring signals that show how close a user is to friends or Pages, as well as global interaction signals:

For example, if we show an update to 100 users, but only a couple of them interact with it, we may not show it in your News Feed. But if a lot of people are interacting with it, we might decide to show it to you, too.

The way users access Facebook affects what they see, as well. The algorithm takes into account that some types of content don’t perform as well on particular devices—for instance, some content is impossible to show on old feature phones.

It’s even smart enough to recognize when a user has a slow Internet connection, and show more text updates that load quickly.

Facebook recently announced a series of blog posts called News Feed FYI that will “highlight major updates to News Feed and explain the thinking behind them.” If you want to stay on top of changes to the News Feed algorithm, this is a good place to start.

3. There are new and improved Page insights

Facebook’s insights for Pages recently got an update that makes them more useful for marketers.

The new insights view includes graphs of Page likes growth, post reach and engagement. It also includes a post clicks section which shows how many times a post received a “stealth click”—i.e. a click that doesn’t result in a story.

You can add benchmarks to your insights now, to test how well your Page performs over certain time periods. This could be really helpful in testing different post types, times or lengths over short periods.

Engagement statistics are now broken down to make them more useful—showing negative feedback, and the breakdown between likes, comments and shares.

If you’ve read up about optimal times to share on Facebook, you’ll know that it can be tricky to nail down. Optimal timing can differ for each individual Page depending on the audience, so it’s best to figure out what works for you specifically. Thankfully, the new Facebook insights make this easier than ever before. You can now see how many of your fans are spending time on Facebook (in general, not just on your Page) on each day of the week.

You can also drill down by a specific day to see how the timing changes.

 

Lastly, you can break down your engagement insights to see how much engagement is coming from users who already like your Page vs. those who don’t. This can be really useful in working towards posting content that your fans will like.

4. Finally, you can now edit already published posts

A really recent change Facebook made is the introduction of an “edit” feature on posts. The feature is being rolled gradually out to web and Android users first, with iOS still on the way.

This is the first time we’ve had the ability to change posts rather than simply deleting them when we realize we’ve made a mistake too late.

As well as editing a post after publishing, the new feature will let users keep a history of changes they’ve made.

5. You can now Auto-play videos

A lesser-known feature that’s only in a testing phase right now is auto-play for videos in the News Feed:

Now when you see a video in News Feed, it comes to life and starts playing. Videos initially play silently, and if you want you can tap to play with sound in full screen. Scroll past if you don’t want to watch.

Initially, only videos from personal profiles, verified Pages, and Pages of bands and musicians will auto-play.

To start with, this feature is only being tested on Facebook for mobile, and should be rolling out over the next few weeks.

6. Public Feed API and Keyword Insights API

In an effort to make Facebook discussions part of the global conversations around trending topics, Facebook recently opened up two new APIs to selected news partners like CNN, Buzzfeed and Slate.

The Public Feed API will display a “real-time feed of public posts for a specific word.” Only posts that are public (i.e. from Pages or profiles with the “follow” option turned on) will become part of this feed. This will allow news partners to display a feed of Facebook posts about breaking news alongside their coverage.

The Keyword Insights API uses data from all Facebook users, and pulls out anonymous insights about the number of mentions of a specific term. This can also include demographic breakdowns, such as gender, age and location.

So far these tools are exclusive to a small group of Facebook news partners while they’re tested and improved. This is definitely an area to keep an eye on, though. With so much of our data in its hands, it will be interesting to see how Facebook puts it to use.

7. You can embed Facebook posts – Get more likes and follows

At the end of July Facebook announced that posts would be embeddable on other sites. Public Facebook posts from profiles and Page (not groups or comments) including all types of media can be embedded.

Users can engage with posts that are embedded on other sites by liking Pages, following users, liking or commenting on posts and watching video posts.

Kristi Hines makes some great points on Social Media Examiner about how to use embedded posts well, including replacing screenshots with embedded posts so that users can engage with your examples and using embedded posts to share photos or videos to encourage more interaction on your Facebook Page. Kristi also points out how useful this can be for increasing likes on your Page:

While you can’t always like or comment on the embedded post itself without being taken to Facebook, you can click on the button at the top right of the embedded post to like the page.

This means any embedded posts you use from your page could help boost your number of fans!

To see that in reality, here is a recent Buffer facebook post embedded for you:

Did I miss anything? Have you got thoughts to add on any of these new features? Let us know in the comments.

Image credits: Jon Loomer, NBC News, Facebook 1 and 2, Inside Facebook

P.S. If you liked this post, you might also like 7 Powerful Facebook statistics you should know for a more engaging Facebook page and A scientific guide to posting Tweets, Facebook posts, Emails and Blog posts at the best time.

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