Alex Dumitru / Sandossu

Every day I meet people who complain their businesses go bankrupt, websites and businesses revenues decrease day by day and they don’t understand why, though the explanation is very simple. People usually get to a comfort level and believe they have everything they need, and it might be true, but there’s a problem. Reaching this comfort level keeps them from trying more, researching and evolving, which does kill a business. Let’s take Microsoft for example. Windows XP had something around 95% market share so they could just stop there, because people wouldn’t need anything more, right ? No, because the times are evolving and the other operating systems would grab their piece of the market share, because times are evolving, internet is evolving and technology is evolving too, so we always need better tools to make our life easier.

So starting from the hypothesis that you are in Microsoft’s place, would you just lay off all your employees and stay with the Windows XP or try to make a much better operating system so you can grab more money from your current customers and even reach more of them ? This is the question you have to ask yourself if your business is successful and have reached the comfort zone. Even if you don’t have to work as much as you worked in the beginning, you still have to evolve and you need to do it fast, because nowadays times are changing at lightning speed, so you could wake up next morning being out of business, because you didn’t pay enough attention to some vital signs.

Right now I consider myself in the comfort zone, because I earn much more than I predicted one or two years ago, I have everything I need, but I’m aware this is not going to end well if I stop evolving, researching and trying to build a better business. Why did I reach the comfort zone faster than predicted ? Because I learned a lot and tested a lot, which lead me to a few ways of surpassing my competition, especially due to the harsh times we’ve been living in the last years and some other changes they haven’t been able to make profit of and I did. So, like I’ve said before, I’ve reached my comfort level, but there are a lot of huge competitor who have hundreds of times my budget, so I could be dust if I don’t keep up with it.

Even if you don’t agree with me, at least take a few minutes and think about it, maybe you’ll find some areas your business is not like it was anymore and this should make you think again. Right now, another example came to my mind. Let’s say you’ve been an audio cassette maker, would you still produce audio cassettes right now ? Yeah sure, not even my grandma buys audio cassettes in 2010.

Please let me know what you think about it !

It seems like Twitter really wants to earn money this year and they’ve already started with the Google and Microsoft deals, but now they will take the business into another direction, announcing the release of their own ad platform. Last year they’ve hired a CFO and now they are preparing their ad platform which will probably be all-different from all the current ad platforms we know, because Twitter has always done things the other way. Also their users aren’t used with ads, so they have to be careful, because people leave when they see ads and some may even begin revolts against Twitter, like there weren’t enough already.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams has a scheduled keynote at the South by Southwest conference in March and he should let us know more about the ad network at that time. Also according to GigaOm it seems like Twitter has some major partners around who help them with the ad platform.

Fortunately for them, there already are some ad networks focused on Twitter, like Ad.ly and Izea, which I’m pretty sure Twitter analyzed and will use their experience. According to Twitter, their ads will be relevant and people won’t even think of them as being ads, but that’s what they all say, so it’s probably not the case.

Currently, they said nothing about the ads format, though it’s possible they might promote desktop clients though Twitter’s sidebar and sponsored tweets won’t be missing also, because they have to reach users who don’t use the website.

We shall wait and see what they’re up to.

photo credit: nytimes

Twitter became one of the most popular social networking websites around and people are crazy to get as many followers as possible, which may sound right, because everyone wants to be heard and have his tweets read, though Twitter is not just about the numbers.

If you’ve been using Twitter, then you should know how it works. The more people follow you, the more see what you’re tweeting, though the most important thing is how many of them care and how many really see your tweets. If you’re tweeting about flowers and one of your followers is interested in wines, but does have absolutely no interest in flowers, then he will simply ignore your tweets and not even read them. Also if one of your followers follows thousands of people what are the odds to read your tweets ? They’re really low, because he definitely can’t read all the tweets and those users mostly read only replies and direct messages, which also doesn’t offer you any advantage.

So the important thing on Twitter doesn’t have anything to do with the numbers, but with relevance. You need interested followers that choose wisely who they follow. If you manage to reach those users, then you can consider yourself successful.

How should you manage to do that ? It’s easy. Use the search feature and find people by keywords related to your activity or hobby, follow them or add them to a list, then start interacting with them. You will see the results pretty fast, though don’t expect to become the #1 user by followers, because that won’t happen, as not each and every twitter used is interested in your activity.

After you’ll get a decent amount will followers to which you will interact regularly you will see your followers base growing day by day, because new users will find you on your followers profile when they reply to you or retweet your tweets.

If you want to make a test and see how relevant your followers are to you, then try and ask them something about your interests 3 or 4 times in a day to be sure your tweets get to all of them, due to the different time zones and work schedules. If you only get a few replies, then you should start thinking if you’ve used the wrong promotion method and try what I’ve been saying in this article.

If you’ve listened to my advice and tried the method, then please let me know what was the result.

Google Buzz

Google has released Buzz recently and, like everything that gets out of Google’s labs, it got a lot of, exactly, buzz. In my opinion they’ve screwed it big time with it, being a service that has absolutely no usability and it seems like it got a lot of people mad by integrating it with Gmail.

Google Buzz has almost to no features, except you can “like” and comment to the links shared by the ones you follow, but it’s hard to track and also really cluttered. Of course it can’t be perfect right from the beginning, but this one is not even useful and I wonder if it does bring any traffic to the links shared. I don’t know that because I tested only a bit, as I can’t stand for it.

Other social media and social networking websites let you understand what are them about and offer you some features to help you use them, but Google Buzz does exactly the opposite. It’s just a Gmail page where you can see your followers, the one you follow and a timeline of shared links. Also I started to receive some emails from Google Buzz and I’m glad I didn’t comment to many stories because I believe that’s the reason for the emails. Need I say it’s really frustrating to receive an email for every comment posted after mine on the story ? I guess not.

If I wouldn’t have read so many negative comments about it, I thought it was just me, but it seems like barely nobody embraces Google’s new service.

Please let me know if you disagree and let me know why is that, because I really don’t understand why people use it. Anyway I hope it will improve and will try to use it a few more days, maybe I change my mind. If you’re into it you could follow me, though I might not post too much.

Bing Fail

The URL shortening craze started once Twitter began using TinyUrl.com to shorten all the url in tweets. When people noticed there’s going to be a lot of traffic headed to the URL shorteners, everybody made one, because it’s extremely simple. Like always, the ones who provided better services, advertised better and had more connections earned a bigger piece of the market share, and Bit.ly even took TinyUrl.com’s place and became Twitter’s default URL shortener.

Lately, some of the biggest websites out there set up URL shortening services for their own websites, like StumbleUpon ( su.pr ), Google ( goo.gl ), Youtube ( youtu.be ), and many more. Of course Microsoft couldn’t stay out of it and, of course, they failed at it. A few days ago they announced their own URL shortening for Bing, which is actually 1 character LONGER than Bing.com. Their new “URL shortener” is Binged.it and it might do a great job at making their URLs longer.

I’ve been thinking for the last few years how can Microsoft fail so many times, considering it’s one of the biggest corporations in the world and theoretically it has hundreds or even thousands of professionals in its domain of activity. I sincerely can’t find a reasonable answer to my question. All I can think of is they really don’t care about the company they work for and they do their job only to be done and for the salary.

Of course this is not one big mistake, but it’s a really funny one.

What do you think about it ?

image credit: Dynamoo

Probably the biggest question after Twitter got some exposure was how would it monetize without disturbing its users. After this questions, lots of answers came, though none of them was even close to the real answer, at least none I’m aware of. Bloomberg just announced that Twitter did make profit this year from its partnership with Google and Microsoft, cashing in about $25 million. What did Twitter have to do for the $25 million ? Nothing that could really disturb its users. According to me, Twitter made one of the best deals I’ve ever heard of. They allowed Bing and Google include Twitter’s updates in their search results, which can only mean more traffic and exposure.

Twitter money

I’m an entrepreneur, webmaster and internet marketer, all at the same time and if someone would pay me to allow him bring me exposure, I wouldn’t be able to refuse him. And that’s exactly what Twitter did. In my opinion, I don’t think this will be Twitter’s biggest income stream, because from this deal, at least, it didn’t make a huge amount, but it’s been an excellent deal.

I’ve always admired Twitter’s founders for what they did and for making an application that looked stupid to be used by so many people. They managed to get people’s trust even if thousands of people were pointing at their application as being stupid and totally useless.

image credit: Halfway Nerdy

Google launched Image Search back in 2001 and since then it has been much easier for people to find all images that interest them. Now, Google has just launched the all-new Image Swirl, which is practically a Wonder Wheel for images.

Image Swirl Romania

Thanks to the new feature, you can search an image that interests you and see 12 thumbs related to your search so you can find exactly what interests you much easier.

Currently, Image Swirl only works for around 200,000 queries, but many more will be soon included. Fortunately, an auto-complete is also available, just like Google Suggest, which will make it even more easier for you to search images, based on what people search the most.

Google has first unveiled Caffeine, the search engine’s new version, back in August, and now they are preparing to release it. Until now it has been available to test at a special page that it’s no longer available, as Google will start using the improved algorithms widely, starting with one datacenter.

Google Caffeine

Caffeine doesn’t bring huge changes to the algorithm, though it will index pages faster and treat spam more severely.

Unfortunately, the exact release date wasn’t disclosed and neither the datacenter it will go live on, though it shouldn’t be too hard to figure it out. Stay put and I’ll let you know as soon as I find out !

Google has just added search suggestions to Image Search and it doesn’t seem to be the same as for the web version. They are trying to make suggestions relevant, but there are always issues, unfortunately, especially that they are based on users behavior. You might find adult or irrelevant suggestions, but if you want to get rid of them at all, go to preferences and check “Do not provide query suggestions in the search box.”

Google changed the Favicon again, after they already changed it in June, last year. The new favicon is very colorful and I really don’t like it.

What do you think about it ?

Google Favicon