Archive for September, 2009

Google goes Super Sized!

September 10th, 2009 | Posted by Sahil Arora

Our day starts with offering prayers to the Google God (pun intended), Just as our systems powers up, the browser takes us to the Google homepage. And Voila! What we see today is either a dejavu or perhaps some browser UI settings at work. Well, not really, but what is it actually? Alright, here it is:

 

Google Search Box Prior to 9/9/09

Google Search Box Prior to 9/9/09

 
Here’s the Latest Version:
 
Google Homepage and New Search Box as on 10/9/09

Google Homepage and New Search Box as on 10/9/09

 

Just as you can easily see the difference, the search box has gone even bigger, bigger than the logo itself. And no, it doesn’t ends here, type something into the box and that is plus sized too!

At first we mistook it as a browser setting and started to fiddle with the CTRL+Scroll Wheel Movements to adjust it to solace, but somehow things remained unaltered. Then was the time for us to think that “It’s the time for change!”

Who else other than the Horse himself could clear it up? We heard it right from the Horses mouth:
Google’s Official Blog posts about the recent changes.

Google’s very own Marissa Mayer said:

“For us, search has always been our focus. And, starting today, you’ll notice on our homepage and on our search results pages, our search box is growing in size. Although this is a very simple idea and an even simpler change, we’re excited about it — because it symbolizes our focus on search and because it makes our clean, minimalist homepage even easier and more fun to use.”

And that’s not the first time Google has made such changes, History holds it all and you can check out the evolution right here:
Google’s Homepage Evolution

And since all these statements are quiet plausible, what happens when it comes to Image, Video Search?

Although the change is evident when we search the Web Results at google, but nothing is yet implemented at the Images and Videos page. Nor it has been to Map, News, or shopping either.

 

Old Format of Boxes and Text for Google Image Search

Old Format of Boxes and Text for Google Image Search

 

The video search page suffers from the same Old format:

Old Format of Search Box and Text for Google Video Search

Old Format of Search Box and Text for Google Video Search

 

Are they not a part of Search? Or may be they are just out of focus at the moment.  Enough said!

Just a mop up: If you’re reading this Google, fix it up! We are looking forward to the changes to show up on other channels too! Let the usability revolution begin and spread into the whole search world of Google!

Worth mentioning, we did not miss a chance to notice the special logo coming up yesterday, 9/09/09 at the special time of 09:09:09. Worth a glance:

Googles Doodle for 09/09/09

Google's Doodle for 09/09/09

 A phenomenal doodle for a phenomenal event, Kudos!!

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5 Fabulous Twitter Tools to help you analyze Tweets

September 4th, 2009 | Posted by Sahil Arora

Social Media Monetization is an important set of words for business sector, trying to analyze social media sites like Twitter. And for monetization of these social networking websites, media measurement tools are employed. These tools are basically tweet analyzing software that assists a company with various kind of analysis including sentiment and behavioral analysis. Monitoring tweeting habits and tweet content helps in keeping a tab on tweeps posing as a benefit for business prospective.

Corporate sectors planning to make use of social media marketing for online popularity cannot overrule the importance of twitter monetization today. Twitter tools assess and measure tweet fluctuations, make a data of hash-tag frequency, quantify regular twitter activities like profile and status update, and chart count of followers and more. Social media through twitter is undoubtedly a major marketing tool, considering the heavy competition among brands trying to attract netizens today.

We bring to you 5 extraordinarily useful twitter tools that will support your aim of social media measurement by analyzing tweets and the brains behind them. Divided into categories like sentiment analysis, behavioral and opinion analysis, these tweet software basically work by breaking down the tweet data and content to assess them and present them statistically.
We’ll show you how to make apt use of these tools to explore the inside out of Tweets and get the maximum benefit by analyzing them to your business’s favor.

Sentiment analysis

Purpose of using social media websites, by corporate industry, is to track the popularity and image of the company or its product in the online circle of prospective clientele. But, tweeting alone will not help in keeping a check on things being said or the sentiments of tweetizens.
Sentiment analysis is designed to provide you with statistical data of negative and positive sentiments about your brand, services and products being launched. Two remarkable Twitter sentiment analysis tools are Twendz and Viral Heat.

Twendz

Twendz is a fabulous tweet analyzing tool that works by focusing on tracking sentiment based analysis. This tool gives you the real insight picture of your brand’s image or product’s ranking by breaking down a collection of relevant tweets and scrutinizes them through categories like negative, neutral and positive, each one represented by a color like red, white and green respectively.

 

 
Viral Heat

Viral Heat is also a great sentiment analysis tool that supports your social media measurement, by dividing tweets into categories like positive, negative and neutral along with percentages. But, apart from giving you the analysis based on good and bad tweets, Viral Heat does lot more.
This tweet analyzing tool goes deeper into the tweet dissection and offers information like active tweeters, percentage of tweets including URLs, websites and videos being shared among tweetizens, and more.
Viral Heat is quite useful for corporate industries looking forward to keep a check on the performance of their marketing campaign on internet.

 

 

Opinion analysis

Opinion analysis is done by comparing a selection of tweets against more number of tweets on the same topic. This kind of analysis helps in understanding nature of tweets as well as how they stand against other tweets. Opinion analysis is the easiest way to understand general consensus to support a media campaign for business purpose. One such amazing twitter opinion analysis tools is crimson hexagon.

Crimson hexagon (VoxTrot Opinion Monitor)

One of the most powerful social media monetization tool, Crimson Hexagon consist of a superb opinion tracking system called VoxTrot Opinion Monitor. Using its powerful opinion tracking system, crimson hexagon supports the tweet analysis by tracking tweets based on predefined subject. It tracks tweets, divides them in categories according to the tweet content and finally develops a statistical data based on breaking down of the content.
For example, this tool breakdowns content of subject defined tweets and offer opinion characteristics, for example, ‘Who Cares’,’ Nice Service’, ‘Bad Company’ and more.

 

Twitter Behavioral Analysis

When all you want is to track the tweeting pattern and tweet behavior of tweetizens who could affect your business campaign, you need a remarkable twitter behavioral analysis tools like TweetPsych and Twitoaster.

TweetPsych

Social media monitoring tool of behavioral analysis, like TweetPsych (built by Dan Zarrella), work mostly by analyzing and monitoring linguistic characteristics of group of related tweets. TweetPsych measures number of tweets and create a psychological profile to explain the tweeting pattern, which helps a social media campaign in judging the kind of response to expect from tweetizens.

 

 

Twitoaster

Twitoaster works the same way by analyzing the tweeting activities and creating a statistic based data that makes it easy to understand the tweeting behavior. Twitoaster analyzes the tweet activity by threading tighter various tweet conversations on web. This surely helps a social media campaign by giving the tweeting style, conversation characteristics, as well as tweet and replies count per hour, week and day.

 

 
Twitter analysis tools or software are basically social media monetization or measurement tools that support a business concept by measuring tweets on opinion or behavioral pattern, to help a company in strategizing its Twitter marketing campaign.
Because in the Social Media Marketing world, the more you know about the people you wish to deal with and how they react to your marketing approach, brand awareness or blog posts, the better it would be for your business online.

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Corporate marketing gets social with Twitter and Facebook

September 1st, 2009 | Posted by Sahil Arora

What started as a revolutionary concept of creating social networking online has now become a super marketing tool, for modern business sector. And Twitter and Facebook are an active part of the resulting excessive competition and race to make online social networking the next best thing, but even the creators of these modern programming based websites had not much clue back then, of their actual potential to attract business industry.

In order to get the idea of their marketing and selling potential and ability, it is important that one should know what these social networking sites do and why thousands and thousands of people all around the world are going crazy over them.

Facebook

With the purpose of a social networking site being a connective bridge between people from different parts of world, Facebook has surely made an impact among netizens who are enjoying the birth of internet, emails, chat messengers, and video sharing sites like YouTube.
Facebook today has become a planet in its own, with people from almost every country residing and enjoying themselves in it. Mostly, this online platform is used by many to stay connected to their friends and family members across the globe. People with lots of time and craze towards making online friends, emailing, personal chats, sharing pictures and more are also the ones who survive on Facebook and its existence.

Facebook and Marketing

Since Facebook means hundred and thousands of people connected to each other, from different groups and communities, the scope of marketing through a Facebook profile is quite an advantage for companies looking forward to spread awareness on their services and products, through their blog posts and, most importantly, their presence on web.
Facebook is more about having a personal platform to stay connected with online customers by communicating with them, sharing links to website or blog posts, uploading pictures, and starting forums.

It is easy marketing, which might not sell something on the spot, but definitely makes you a known Brand and gets you followers! Corporate sector has started using Facebook to get an insight on their market value, their image, feedback from customers. Because of the rapidly increasing and growing user base on Facebook, business companies get a platform to promote and present itself to their prospective customers.
But when marketing through Facebook, one has to keep in mind that it only works when enough time is invested.

Twitter

Although, they both arise from the evolving digital technology, Twitter is not Facebook’s twin. In fact, Twitter is little more complicated, but more effective in many ways.
Twitter is like a fusion of a messenger and a Blog, which has the ability to reach beyond known circle of people. That’s why it’s better known as a Micro Blogging platform today!
Twitter, like Facebook, too has a potential of social networking, but is yet to attract as much people as Facebook.

Since Twitter has less personal element with absence of facilities like video and picture sharing, not many people (with the liking to upload personal pictures, with captions, and collection of videos) enjoy indulging much with this latest avatar of social networking.

Twitter and Marketing

Twitter might not be as popular among netizens as compared to Facebook, but it has surely made a big impression among corporate industry. Tweeting is ‘next big thing’ for many companies, as it allows them a small podium to present themselves to a mass and puts them in spotlight.
Since Tweets are small and go straight to every follower, companies and brand owners get to send one good message to everyone, all at once. It lets them send news, updates and information online with help of a tiny but very valuable tweet.

While some business firms use Tweeting as a mode of getting Feedbacks from customers, others end up using it to research on their consumers and stay in the competition.
Twitter, having the ability to generate online search engine traffic, is also a major tool for websites that need visitors. Promotional tweets often consist of an information message and the link to a website or blog article. In short, Twitter has the right promotional skills required by online marketers and bloggers.

Who is the winner?

Twitter and Facebook are both massive social networking tools that can be used for advertising, marketing, researching and communicating. Each one has its own benefits for marketing seekers, thus branding the best one is not the right question, as the usability and benefit varies depending largely on the companies and their purpose for entering the social networking world.

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