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Google Upsets Google+ Power User Wil Wheaton Again, What About You?

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Geek celebrity Wil Wheaton is what you might call a Google+ power user. He’s actively engaged on Google’s social network, and has amassed 1,373,118 followers to date. That’s a lot for Google+. Google, however, keeps doing things with Google+ that are pissing Wheaton off, and if they’re pissing Wheaton off, there’s a good chance they’re pissing off other users.

The sources of frustration have mainly stemmed from Google forcing Google+ down people’s throats (as some see it), and blasting out features with usability issues. The shift to Google+ for local search has certainly irritated some users as well, even if Google’s grand plan may warrant such changes. Are you happy with the way Google has pushed Google+ thus far? Let us know in the comments.

Last month, Wheaton fumed about a feature Google was testing on YouTube, which placed a Google+ like button in the spot where the YouTube thumbs up button would normally be. It would prompt users to upgrade to Google+ when not signed in. Wheaton was worried about losing YouTube upvotes, though Google told a us a very small number of users were actually seeing this test feature, which may never see the light of day.

We had a lengthy conversation with Wheaton about whether Google is forcing Google+ down people’s throats. Read our whole interview with him here.

So why is Wheaton upset this time? It has to do with Google’s rollout of Events on Google+. At Google I/O, Google announced the feature, and it soon went live. Here’s Google’s promo video about it:

The rollout, however, apparently did not go exactly as planned. Here’s what Wheaton had to say on Google+:

Wil Wheaton1 day ago

Did G+ roll out some new “invite everyone you follow to an event” thing? My feed is completely overwhelmed with “everyone’s invited to XXXXX event” notices, and I’m having a hard time actually seeing posts from people I’m following.

Oh, and the spammer scumbags have figured out that they can make an invite to an event that’s nothing but spam.

Is there a way to opt-out of event invites from people I don’t follow or have circled? Is this yet another thing Google rolled out without thinking it through clearly?
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Some of the events Wheaton was getting invite spam for included things like: “Something in Columbia, Not Giving a Fuck Friday,” and “The Guild Wars 2 Release Date”.

Wheaton followed that up with a post on his blog, where he added, “I swear to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, it’s like Google has learned nothing from Buzz…and is actually doing this sort of thing on purpose.”

In case you don’t get the Buzz reference, Google pissed a lot of other people off when it first launched the now defunct Google Buzz in people’s Gmail inboxes, due to some privacy issues that resulted in lawsuits.

Wheaton posted a follow up post on Google+, where he talked about the new Events feature more. “It’s too bad that I’ll never use it, and will kill it with fire, because Google has, yet again, made a product that may be useful and cool, but forced it upon users without giving users any control over how invasive it is.”

He later added, “As a result, G+ is useless to me today, and for as long as it takes the company to actually fix this, assuming they ever do. Yeah, it’s a first world problem for me, but it’s also a problem for Google, because even if 1% of G+ users feel the same way I do, that’s a lot of people Google has unnecessarily pissed of and possibly alienated.”

Finally, Wheaton updated his blog post, saying:

It appears that Google engineers are actively working on a way to fix this thing, and that it may not have been intentional. I sincerely hope that that’s the case, and will just point out that, if Google didn’t have a pattern of social network behaviour to the contrary, I’d be way more willing to give Google the benefit of the doubt.

And it isn’t lost on me that my G+ experience is likely quite different from most people’s, I get that. If my opinion on this is somehow distressing to you because your experience is different, and you feel a need to be really shitty to me about it, I suggest you save us both the headache and keep it to yourself. Nobody is forcing you to listen to me.

In yet another Google+ post, Wheaton provides a response from Google’s Vic Gundotra:

+Vic Gundotra says “We are doing exactly what you requested. We should have contemplated and anticipated how people would abuse this and how painful this could be for celebrities with large followings.

We have pushed a number of fixes yesterday (some were bug fixes that showed up at scale). Expect more fixes today. Sorry for the trouble Will.”

Google+ Events could ultimately be a very important feature for Google+. After all, this is a feature Facebook has offered for a long time, and this means one less thing that Facebook can do that Google+ can’t. Google also has the benefits of Android, Google Calendar and Gmail and all of their users, to make this a very integrated, and usable tool. At Google I/O, Google announced that 400 million Android devices have been activated, with 12 new ones activated every second of every day. Google also announced that Gmail has 425 million unique users a month.

It’s going to be interesting to see if the feature turns out to be a big part of the user’s everyday Google experience. My guess is that it will play into Google’s future search plans. Google also announced Google Now at Google I/O. This appears to be Google’s way of decreasing your dependence on search, while still keeping you within the Google universe, by pushing information to you before you need to search.

Source: http://www.webpronews.com/google-pisses-off-google-power-user-wil-wheaton-again-2012-06

What Most Webmasters Don’t Know About Their Failing Website Content

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Imagine your website content was so effective that every targeted visitor wanted to find out more information about your business.

Now wake up, because sadly, this is often not the case, even though it is entirely achievable.

How do I know this? I encounter dozens of websites on a weekly basis that not only fail to meet my standards, but also turn people away upon first visit.

“Why is my content so bad?”

If you are at all concerned that your website content isn’t up to par, you may want to continue reading.

Here are some reasons why webmasters have low-performing website content:
Design First

Most marketers spend the majority of their time and resources on website design. While design is an integral component of gaining leads and selling more products, if accompanied by poor-performing website content, the design is a waste. Design and content go hand-in-hand.
Lack of Knowledge

Many webmasters are not even aware that solid website copy is one of the components to successful marketing. Some are new to the internet marketing game and others never put two and two together. Your website content is the messaging that leads your visitors to take a desired action. It can make or break your online business.
Good Writing, Poor Content

If you write novels for a living, this doesn’t automatically translate into writing great website content. While grammar and word usage are one part of the formula, website content is completely different from other forms of prose.

If you write your website content with a novel-like approach, you will lose visitors within the first few seconds. They need their attention captivated fast!

Proper formatting of your website content is crucial for high conversions. Short paragraphs, bulleted lists, bolded emphasis and more, are essential to keeping visitors interested.
Purposeless Content

Even the best formatted content won’t keep visitors unless it speaks directly to them. Your website content is not a place to shout out how wonderful you think your products are. Your goal is to simply get users to take the next step, whether it to visit your product page, contact you, or opt in to your email list.

Each page has a specific purpose and must be targeted effectively. For brevity, I will target just the home page and list some common mistakes:

The home page is the most important because it is your first impression and where visitors will decide whether they want to leave or stay. Most webmasters fail to engage visitors on this page.

Some problems I encounter:

Trying to sell the farm – The goal of your home page is not the finish line unless you are writing content for a landing page. Your content should wet your visitors’ appetite enough so they desire to continue searching through your site. Just sell them on the next step, not the entire “kit and kaboodle.”

Target Audience – If you don’t know your exact market, you will never grab their attention. Before you write your home page content, identify the answers to these questions:

What are the main desires of your target audience as it relates to your industry?
What are their pain points?
What solutions do they need?
How can your product/services solve their problems?
What are their ages, income levels, status?

Too much content – In an attempt to squeeze in as much information as possible, webmasters clutter their home pages with excess content. Even if it is formatted correctly, it is still too much for visitors to take in. Resist the urge to add more and more. Less is more with website content.

Work on making what you already have MORE effective before adding any more content.

Quality trumps quality!
Where to Start?

If you notice any of these mistakes on your own website content, rectify them immediately!

In future articles I will discuss website content writing in more detail with detailed tips you can apply to your website right away. If you have some specific questions about your website content, feel free to list them in the comments below.

Happy Writing!

Source: http://site-reference.com/articles/what-most-webmasters-dont-know-about-their-failing-website-content/

The Influence of Speed on Online Advertising – A SEO-News Exclusive

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Internet advertising is big business. The latest reports from the Interactive Advertising Bureau in conjunction with PricewaterhouseCoopers show that in the US alone the industry was worth an astonishing $31 billion in 2011 – an increase of 22 per cent on 2010.

Search engine-based advertising alone represents nearly half of that total figure, with the rest being made up of contextual, banner, video and display advertising. Mobile is also becoming an increasingly important market; more than doubling in revenue a year previously.

However, where there is a market, there is competition.

This competition mainly comes in the form of advertising and Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), in addition to search engines. The difference between which advertiser wins in this crowded marketplace and which one loses can come down to a concept which all of us are familiar with on the internet. It’s one which we all collectively live by and are controlled by – speed.

The effect that speed has on internet advertising shouldn’t be underestimated. There are no fewer than three parties that stand to win or lose, purely on the basis of how quickly a site and its on-page elements load – the user, the search engine and the business itself.

For the user, studies suggest that the average person has little time for delays on a website. Even if an advertising platform benefits from being separated from the main site on dedicated servers, a user will expect all on-page content to appear at the same time. This is because users trust speed; sometimes using it as a measure of authority. Those who cannot deliver their on-page content within milliseconds therefore may instantly lose a user’s trust and potentially their custom as a result.

Improving the time a website and its third party content takes to load not only benefits users but also search engine rankings. Google – the world’s biggest search engine – for one, confirmed several years ago that loading speeds now make up a small part of its ranking factor. It did so on the basis that “faster sites create happy users.”

As if improving a user’s experience while also satisfying the search engines wasn’t enough, a business stands to benefit from faster advertising in very straightforward cash terms.

Following a link could lead to revenues from affiliate networks, which offer a share of any revenue that is generated by the merchant from visitors to the publisher’s site – providing the user follows through with an appropriate action (e.g. making a purchase, requesting a quote). Therefore ensuring that these advertisements load in a very fast manner is key to the user respecting the ad, as well as the site; leading to them potentially following their visit through.

Speed is also a key concern for advertisers because of the changing nature in how ads are manifesting themselves on the web. While it might only take milliseconds to load textual or display advertising, the onset of video and even in-game advertising is pushing online advertising’s technological requirements to the max. It is now only with the fastest of connections that an advertiser can hope to have any influence in gaining a user’s extremely valuable and potentially profitable trust.

Source: http://www.seo-news.com/the-influence-of-speed-on-online-advertising-a-seo-news-exclusive/ 

Negative SEO, The Penguin Guillotine and Google’s…

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For the last few weeks, I have been exploring the whole concept of negative SEO and how it can “supposedly” affect your search engine rankings, especially in Google. Lately, since the arrival of Penguin, negative SEO (nickname – Google Bowling) has been discussed much more often.

Google’s Penguin Update examines the whole SEO layout of your site, including your incoming links and the anchor text in those links. If Google via Penguin feels you’re over “optimizing” your site to influence their index or rankings, your site will be slapped with a penalty which is severe and crippling – in other words – Google will simply wipe your site from its index.

Penguin is judging your complete link profile, which includes all internal and external links, and decides if it fits a “natural” or “unnatural” linking structure. Your link profile is no doubt compared to the normal or standard readings – if you have too many links with the exact commercial keywords in the anchor text pointing to interior pages on your site, this will show up as unnatural or inorganic. A red flag goes up and down comes the Penguin Guillotine, chopping your site’s Google rankings next to nil.

In addition, if you have many sites giving you “site-wide” links or more than one or two links, these will appear as “inorganic links” flowing to your site. Down comes the Penguin guillotine.

Since you basically have no control of who links to your site, in the past Google has stated these links can’t hurt your site. However, now with the introduction of the Penguin Update, links coming into your site can definitely harm your rankings, at least in Google.

Your ruthless competitors can now build or buy countless “spammy links” from sites around the web to trigger one of Penguin’s red flags – down comes the guillotine and it’s game over.

Now some argue that “negative SEO” doesn’t really work and no one can harm your site, Penguin or no Penguin. While this may be true for many big brand authority sites with well established reputations in Google, for a struggling site or domain, the picture is not so rosy or clear-cut. A ruthless competitor can build or buy shady links and point them all at your site. How is Penguin or Google to know it is NOT you building or buying those links?

Google probably realizes this problem and has promised a “disavow link tool” in GWT (Google Webmaster Tools) in the very near future so that a site can’t be held hostage by a ruthless competitor who simply won’t remove the offending links. A site owner can now just disavow or dismiss these links when their site is being ranked in Google.

Such a tool would also prove very helpful for older sites, which may have a very extensive list of link partners or just sites displaying their links. Removal of any of those links can be impossible, so such a tool would allow webmasters to dismiss any links coming from bad neighborhoods.

Everyone is just hoping Google does introduce this “disavow” tool in GWT because it could potentially go a long way in leveling the playing field when it comes to your incoming links, which you really don’t have any control over. Such a tool would put that control back into the site owner’s hands and would be a welcome tool for fighting any negative SEO.

Source: http://www.seo-news.com/negative-seo-the-penguin-guillotine-and-googles-possible-disavow-tool/ 

7 Must Have SEO Chrome Browser Extensions

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Whether you are a small business website owner or SEO professional, you’re always on the lookout for tools to ease the responsibilities of managing your search engine rankings. With the search engines on a warpath to increase the quality of their search results, there are endless changes to their search algorithms that keep you on your toes. This is where browser extensions can be of assistance. These are simply extra features you can add to your Internet browser to make life easier. While they are by no means as comprehensive as SEO software on the market, they help you more efficiently manage important tasks.

Choosing between the many extensions can be overwhelming, so we’ve done the hard part for you. Today, we’ll look at the best SEO browser extensions available in the Chrome store.

SEO For Chrome

This extension was better known as Chrome SEO until Google requested that they change the name. This is currently the most popular SEO Chrome extension available. It’s all about providing you with the statistics you need to help guide your search strategy. This quick and easy extension notifies you of your Google PageRank increases and decreases, the number of backlinks to your site, your social media share improvement, and a whole lot more. It’s also a personal favorite of mine so I would definitely recommend you check it out.

SEO Site Tools

Another handy analytics browser extension SEO Site Tools, focuses on gathering statistics about your website from a whole range of sources so you can quickly monitor your website’s strength and weaknesses. The best part is it filters this information into 6 key sections:

1) External page data
2) Page elements
3) Social media
4) Page terms and tools
5) Domain information
6) Suggestions for your site

SEO SERP Workbench

The flood of updates to search engine algorithms fluctuating the search engine rankings and positions of websites means SEO SERP workbench should be a staple browser extension for all webmasters. This tool lets you quickly check the position of targeted keywords for your website and your competitor’s websites. Although it is a simple extension, being able to constantly and easily monitor targeted keywords can be a godsend for webmasters relying on Google to bring in traffic to their websites.

SEO Quake

Unlike the previous two browser extensions, the SEO Quake browser extension gathers intelligence on all 3 major search engines Google, Yahoo and Bing, as opposed to just Google. This is one of the more advanced tools, quickly sorting through and revealing your PageRank, Alexa rank, nofollow links, keyword density analysis, and web archive age. Of course, it being a comprehensive tool means more effort on your part. If you don’t currently use comprehensive paid SEO software, it is definitely worthwhile checking out this browser extension.

SiteTrail

This tool lets you monitor any website of your choosing and also provides the site’s estimated value and revenue. I find that the most handy statistic it provides is a website’s estimated page views. Unlike most browser extensions that have a permanent home on your browser bar, you simply need to visit a website, right click anywhere on the site, and then select “SiteTrail” to generate the statistics.

Check My Links

This extension offers you a quick way to check the health of website links. You can check webpages for broken links or errors, identify where the link is and what error message it gives you. Not only is this a great way to check for broken links on your website, but you can also identify broken links on other websites and offer to have them replaced with a link to you instead (only if you are an appropriate replacement, of course).

Sorezki SEO Plus

This little gem upgrades Google Webmaster Tools & Yahoo and Google Analytics by offering additional social activity statistics, on-page results, social media information, PageRank and search engine ranking, as well as Yahoo, Bing and Google search engines with geo-location search tools, advanced metrics, anchor/ PageRank scanners and so on.

There you have it – a list of what I believe are the best SEO Chrome browser extensions based on my own experience and evaluation. However, you need to keep in mind the fact that as handy as these extensions are, you do not have to install all of them (and you shouldn’t!). They do take up space on your browser so installing too many will most likely slow down webpage loading speed. Most companies stick to 2 or 3 SEO browser extensions to use alongside their more comprehensive paid SEO software. Your best bet is to simply try out one at a time and uninstall any that aren’t helpful to you. You’ll quickly figure out which are the most useful for managing your company’s specific SEO needs.

Source: http://www.seo-news.com/7-must-have-seo-chrome-browser-extensions/

Top 5 Tools for Analyzing Your Backlink Profile — A SPN Exclusive

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Link-Building is difficult at the best of times, but Google has made it even harder for us as SEO’ers to build quality, high authority links after the infamous Penguin and Panda updates (I call this Penganda!). Many low quality link sources were completely obliterated by Google during Penguin resulting in lost link value for a lot of sites engaging in low quality directory submissions and blog network linking.

I have seen a lot of comments recently of people complaining that their sites have suddenly dropped and competitors starting to outrank them on their main terms. Panic seems to have set in a lot of people when they see these shifts after a notorious Google algorithm update. My advice would be to not panic, but delve into the data and discover exactly why these changes have occurred and develop a strategy to remedy the solution based on hard data. The first place to start looking is your overall link profile, and that’s what I’m here to discuss.

For seasoned SEO’ers analyzing link profiles comes naturally, although for the less experienced or those not in the know it can be a daunting to determine where to start and how to go about it. There are some great tools out there, some free, some not, but nonetheless all specifically designed to give you insightful data about your website’s backlink data.

In order of preference, my personal top five tools for analyzing backlink profiles are:

1. Google
Google?! I hear you say? Yes Google! Google should be the first place you start to analyze your link profile. Why? Well first it’s free, and secondly it’s Google that takes notice of your link profile and ranks you so the data they give you probably has some significance!

Google doesn’t offer some fancy dashboard or enable you to download massive excel sheets, but it does give you a quick and dirty picture of what sites are linking to your site. Simply go to Google and type link:”www.mydomain.com” -site:www.mydomain.com into the search box. This will give a quick set of results of sites linking to your site. This data is not infallible. I rarely find it showing every link – but I do find some of the results interesting that other tools don’t pick up. It’s a good start, it’s free and it’s easy. What more do you want?

Google also gives us numerous other free tools to help us analyze our link profiles. Google Webmaster Tools is one of them. Again, not always 100% accurate in it’s data, but it is a good indication of the links that Google can “see” and values. You need to have your website set up in Google Webmaster Tools first before you can start seeing link data.

2. MajesticSEO
MajesticSEO is by far my favorite go-to tool for link building data. The data it provides is by far – in my opinion – the most advanced from any tool currently on the market. Majestic offers both free and paid versions of the tool. If you are simply trying to analyze your own website’s link data, then a free account will suffice, otherwise, if you’re an agency or deal with multiple clients, you will probably require a paid subscription, although I guarantee it is completely worth the minimal monthly fee for the data it provides!

So what is so good about Majestic? Well simply enter your domain into Majestic and out comes a wealth of data regarding links pointing at your site. They have also implemented a trust/citation flow metric which in layman’s terms simply tells you how well that link coming to your website is trusted and whether it is passing useful keyword anchor text relevance back to your site.

The vast amount of reports and data you can retrieve from Majestic can seem overwhelming, although there are ways to quickly visualize this data for maximum impact which I am going to soon discuss in another article on my blog.

3. Open Site Explorer
It was hard to choose between Majestic and Open Site Explorer and I would have probably listed OSE as number two if it provided cool trust/citation flow graphs. However OSE is an industry standard link explorer tool from the awesome guys at SEOMoz. The tool offers a free limited account, although this only lets you see the first five results. I would highly recommend getting a paid account at SEOMoz. The data that OSE provides can be invaluable not only at finding links pointing at your site, but also links pointing at your competitors, allowing you to compare your own site against theirs.

I also believe that OSE has the best metric system – mozRank and mozTrust are two widely accepted industry measurements that can quickly show how you compare to other sites.

4. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is another tool similar to Majestic. It has some features that are pretty cool and which the other tools do not. One of the best and most notable features of this tool is it’s “lost link” feature. This data allows you to view what links have been recently lost to your site and also new links. Ahrefs is probably the best tool for finding problems in your link profile, especially if you have suddenly lost a large number of links, although it is again a paid tool.

5. Blekko
Relatively unknown, Blekko is a brilliant little free search engine with multiple uses. A simple search engine that allows you to use paramaters at the end of searches. Go to Blekko.com and try searching for www.mydomain.com/seo. This handy little tool gives you a nice, quick visualization of your inbound links as well as some other useful statistics such as the neighborhood on shared hosts or the latency of your site.

Well these are the tools I generally use on a day-to-day basis for analyzing link profiles of sites. Anyone with a bit of time and a little knowledge of how links work can have a shot at these tools and find some insightful information about the kind of sites linking to them and the quality of those sites. What you can do with all this information is a topic for another day!

Don’t Stop Writing Articles Because of Google Penguin

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The Google Penguin algorithm update is nothing to worry about if you continue writing articles naturally, and without endless keyword repetition. The update has been designed to catch out those relying on ‘black hat’ web-spamming techniques to boost their rankings, and not those that have gained their ranking position fairly and honestly.

A search engine’s clients are those using it to find information, and Google is only trying to improve that service for its customers – and by assisting the search engine to achieve this you can take a big step towards a good ranking. Google is not particularly targeting poor quality content here, although you will suffer if your page text is full of unnecessary instances of your keywords. What concerns Google is the source of the links back to your website, and the anchor text you use that people click onto reach your individual web pages.

So that’s it basically – how to keep the Google Penguin algorithm update happy. To be more specific:

Your Web Page Content

Keep writing articles, but keep it natural and avoid keyword spamming. The Google Penguin update has been designed to detect what is known as webspam, a component of which is keyword stuffing – trying to influence spider algorithms by excessive use of a keyword in an article or web page content.

You should work to a maximum of around 1% keyword density. The more discerning article directories apply a keyword limit to your submitted articles. Ezine Articles for example applies a 2% limit – that includes similar terms, such as ‘article writing,’ ‘writing articles,’ and ‘write articles’ all being regarded as the same keyword; even ‘articles’ would be read as a keyword.

I would suggest using a keyword density of no more than 1%, if that. 2% should be regarded as a top figure.

Taking ‘golf balls’ as an example of a keyword you are using on a page in a golfing site, you would use the word ‘golf’ in terms such as ‘golf shoes,’ ‘golf apparel’ and many others. The algorithm has no idea of your intended keyword, so it will list what it believes appropriate from the semantics of your page. It will take ‘golf’ as a keyword and, if that exceeds a certain figure (nobody but Google knows what that is), your page is liable to be dropped a few places in the rankings for any of its keywords.

So write naturally and don’t worry about keyword density, other than to keep it low, although not so low that the main topic is lost. Forget numbers in your article writing, and write naturally and sensibly – as if you were speaking to the person reading your article.

Your Anchor Text

Many people use the same anchor text in their links time after time. Mix it up: when you are writing your resource, box or creating in-text links that readers can click, it makes sense to use your primary keyword or phrase as the anchor text (the text that is highlighted as a link). Avoid the use of the same keyword or phrase all the time. If your website focuses on article writing or article marketing, avoid the temptation to keep repeating the word ‘article’ in the text.

You can employ a number of alternative words, such as dissertation, essay, passage, content, copy and so on.’ Synonyms can often be difficult to find, particularly those meaning exactly the same in the same context, so if you are stuck for alternatives, check out an online thesaurus such as Thesaurus.com and you will find a whole host of them. You may lose the benefit of links back to your web pages if Google Penguin calculates your links as being over-repetitive (an algorithm is a mathematical formula and hence does not use human values).

Your Linking Strategy

The Google Penguin update looks for a diverse source for the links leading back to your web pages. Your search engine listing position will suffer if large numbers of backlinks come from the same website or from a recognized links farm. The same is true if your links are predominantly from poor quality web pages and pages not directly connected with the topic of those to which they link.

Mix your links between different sources, and also different types of source. For example, don’t have all your articles published on the same article directory. Make as sure as you can that the links leading back to your website (backlinks) are not all from the same source – or even similar sources, but are mixed between different article and web directories, Squidoo lenses, forums, blogs, private web pages, etc.. Make sure your links come from multiple sources.

So, if you avoid excessive keyword repetition, vary your anchor text and mix the source of your backlinks up, you can kick the penguin in the rear end and tell it to get lost. Google’s purpose is to provide its clients with a good search experience – the search engine is not particularly trying to punish you – and the Google Penguin update is how it is achieving that. So keep writing
articles!

Source: http://www.sitepronews.com/2012/06/26/dont-stop-writing-articles-because-of-google-penguin/

Would You Trust Facebook With Your Money In The Real World?

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These days, brick and mortar businesses displaying some kind of signage saying “Like us on Facebook,” are nearly as common as those displaying Visa and MasterCard logos. That’s worth considering, when you think about using Faceabook as a way to pay for goods and services in the physical world.

Of course, Facebook users have developed some trust issues with the site over the years. It would be quite interesting to see if a PayPal-like service from Facebook would be widely adopted. It’s one thing to trust a third party with your status updates and photos. It’s another to trust them with your money.

Would you trust Facebook to handle your money? Let us know in the comments.

Last week, Facebook announced that it is getting rid of Facebook Credits, in favor of real money. Users will start paying for virtual goods using their native currencies: Dollars, Pounds, Yen, etc. This represents the beginning of users being able to treat their Facebook account like a bank account, or at least like a PayPal account. I’m not sure if Facebook is FDIC insured.

While Facebook did not say anything about using currency to pay for things in the physical world, one can simply connect the dots. For one, Facebook has over 900 million users. Many of them carry it around in their pocket all day long. Now, consider that Facebook recently acquired Tagtile, described as “your universal loyalty card,” for which you can “visit local stores, tag the Tagtile Cube with your phone, and get rewarded for being an awesome customer.”

 

 

If Facebook is going to offer a digital loyalty card to use at stores, and Facebook is going to have user account balances based on actual money, it seems only logical that users will simply be able to pay with their Facebook accounts, as long as businesses adopt the technology.

Of course it would give Facebook yet another way to compete directly with Google.

Plink co-founder Peter Vogel wrote at TechCrunch, “Last year, 15 million people bought Facebook Credits, according to their S-1 filing, so it’s assumed Facebook has close to 15 million credit cards on file. By the end of this year, once paid apps are added to Facebook’s App Center, it wouldn’t be surprising if 50 million people, or about five percent of Facebook’s users are purchasing apps and other digital good, like movies, music and TV episodes, which means Facebook would have a pool of 50 million people who have entrusted it with their credit card information.”

“At that point it’s a very short distance to a ‘Pay with Facebook’ blue box showing up every time you make an online purchase (on web sites everywhere, not just on Facebook),” he adds. “Why re-enter your credit card number when you already trust Facebook to handle the transaction and bill your card? For users this could be seen as more convenient and safer than entering their credit card number on multiple sites. Facebook is PayPal on steroids, with the strength of a billion members.”

That’s an incredibly good point. Think about how the Facebook sign-in option already works for many sites in the web (and especially from mobile devices). It is so much more convenient to simply tap the button to sign in with Facebook than having to enter a whole other account name or email address and password. Paying this way could save a lot of time and hassle.

This already exists, you know:

Pay with Facebook

If Facebook can get people paying for things online regularly, people may start putting more of their money into Facebook accounts, which will make them a lot more likely to pay for things offline.

 

The Trust Factor

That trust factor could be a major obstacle for Facebook, however. Privacy issues have been rampant with the the social network’s dealings for years. Last year, as the result of a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, regarding privacy, Facebook had to agree to regular third-party audits to make sure it remains in compliance. This all came after Facebook was found to have not kept its promises, by not warning users of privacy changes or getting their approval in advance. Essentially, changes were made an an opt out basis, rather than users opting in.

Just this week, the company switched default email addresses of users to Facebook email addresses without warning. This isn’t exactly a privacy issue, but it’s another change being made to users’ personal accounts for them. Things like this tend to irk users, and don’t do much to make users more comfortable with how the company is handling their accounts. A Lifehacker article even goes into all the reasons why the switch to a Facebook email address is less than beneficial.

Another big Facebook story this week is about a feature that Facebook rolled out called “Find Friends Nearby,” which was quickly pulled after the CEO of Friendthem claimed Facebook has stole their idea, and threatened to sue. If you’ve seen The Social Network or read book it was based on, you’ll know that Facebook has a long history of being accused of such things. That’s not to say whether or not these things have merit, but public perception is a valuable thing. Some people already have a hard enough time trusting banks with their money.

Side note: It’s unclear, by the way, if the Friendthem situation was directly related to Facebook pulling the feature. The company claims it was only a test, and not a formal roll-out anyway. It does appear to be based on the company’s acquisition of social discovery app Glancee.

We asked our Facebook fans about trusting Facebook with their money. Here is the overwhelmingly negative response we got in just a half hour’s time:

Facebook Fans Don't Trust Facebook With Their Money

Another question worth considering is whether or not people want one company to have so much control over their lives. Do you want to keep so much personal information, photos, videos, and money all under one Internet-based account. There are major hacking stories in the news frequently these days, and many may be hesitant based on that very fact.

This month, another prominent social network, LinkedIn, fell victim to a password leak. LulzSec hackers managed to gain access to 10,000 Twitter accounts via a vulnerability in a third-party app. Consider how many third-party apps are connected to Facebook. According to the company, as of March, over 9 million apps and websites were integrated with Facebook. How much bigger of a target would Facebook be with more people keeping their money tied up in their accounts.

Of course, people are already keeping some amount of money tied up in Facebook, on a much smaller scale than what the future may very well hold.

“People can store their payment information on Facebook in a trusted environment and then make purchases across a range of apps – without having to re-enter their payment information in each app,” Facebook says about its current Payments offering. “Payment options include credit and debit cards, PayPal, mobile payments, gift cards and numerous local payment options around the world.”

If Facebook makes a significant transition to the offline, non-app world (like its peers are also trying to do), will you make the transition along with them? Will you use your Facebook account to buy burgers, gas or other every day items?

Source: http://www.webpronews.com/you-may-soon-be-paying-for-burgers-and-gas-with-facebook-2012-06

Google Fueling Nonprofits with Free Technology

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Google has been working with the HandsOn Network to help U.S. nonprofits partner up with tech savvy individuals who are interested in supporting a cause.

HandsOn Tech is an initiative focused on helping nonprofit groups make a difference. Working with members of AmeriCorps VISTA, Google and the HandsOn Network will be placing twenty-eight workers in eight cities across the United States in order to help technology serve charitable organizations better.

Google comments on their work with nonprofits on their blog site:

Last year, we funded 24 full-time AmeriCorps VISTA positions. These VISTA members provided technology training to more than 1,300 small, poverty-focused nonprofits nationwide. Further, these VISTA participants engaged skilled volunteers, including lots of Googlers, to assist nearly 200 nonprofits in creating individualized, comprehensive tech plans that will help them to work more efficiently.

The program has been so successful that we’re expanding—it will now include one additional city and 28 new VISTA positions, with the goal of reaching even more nonprofits. The new HandsOnTech VISTAs will start in August with a one week training at our campus in Mountain View, Calif., where they’ll learn about cloud-based tools from a variety of technology companies including the Google For Nonprofits suite that allows many nonprofits to use free online advertising, Google Apps and YouTube channels. Once they are armed with tech know-how they’ll spend the rest of the year in two and three-person teams serving nonprofits in the Bay Area, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, New York City, Pittsburgh and Seattle.

Last Year the projects Included the following:

* Migrating Dreams for Kids, a Chicago nonprofit empowering at-risk and disabled youth, to Google Apps—enabling them to more efficiently and effectively collaborate without the restriction of limited office space.

* Building a dynamic website and social media strategy for Doing Art Together, a NYC-based nonprofit providing hands-on programming and GED prep for under-resourced youth.

* Using Google Maps and Fusion Tables to help Atlanta’s The Drake House create a map that helps staff better visualize the local homeless population in order to more effectively distribute their services.

Google and HandsOn Tech are presently working on getting volunteers and coordinating the projects, they will actually be accepting applications until the 27th of June. We’ll keep you up to date on any new information coming out of the partnership. It’s a great way to give back to the community and get technology into the hands of organization who wouldn’t normally be able to afford it.

Source: http://www.webpronews.com/google-fueling-nonprofits-with-free-technology-2012-06