Blogging News

Twitter All Kinds of Popular

Twitter, the micro-blogging site that allows users to post updates in 140 characters or less, has garnered a ton of attention lately due to rumors of acquisition talks by the search giant Google. With it’s impressive user base and over 8 million visits per month, Twitter has some serious bargaining chips, especially when it comes to real-time search. This may be where Google has interest in Twitter, due to the potential real-time search tools Twitter offers and what this could mean to the future of search. Basically, indexing the feed of updates would allow engines like Google to tap into the collective conscious of Twitter users, and therefor a microcosm of the web’s user base, with instant results. Although all the talk has been speculation, and it’s been downplayed by Twitter to just a conversation about products and search, the service is certainly on the block.
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XML Sitemaps and Search Engine Marketing

I’ve always held the belief that XML sitemaps are an important technical aspect to an effective marketing campaign, especially when it comes to blog and search engine marketing. However, this belief was only supported in theory. Sure, every piece of marketing advice and documentation pointed to why XML sitemaps were beneficial, but there wasn’t any data to back up that claim. It was a search engine optimization assumption, in that because this technology was supported by Google and all the other major engines, it made sense to include it in a comprehensive marketing campaign. The question is, does this actually help the engines index your site better or faster? Or is this just a myth pushed by myself and the rest of the SEO community to justify the addition? Couldn’t search engines find and index your site or blog easily on their own?
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A Giant Leap for Blogging Kind

When Barack Obama promised the American people change, not that many imagined he meant change within and through media channels. But on February 9, 2009, Obama held his first press conference, and there were definitely hints of change in the proceedings.

Taking questions started out in the most traditional way possible. Obama called on 88-year-old dean of the White House press corps, Helen Thomas. A prominent and longstanding figure in the media world, Obama became the tenth U.S. president to field her questions. Obama quipped, “All right, Helen, this is my inaugural moment here,” thus acknowledging the very tradition which he was furthering. All business, Thomas asked a traditionally pointed question about Afghan safe havens for potential terrorists and the existence or nonexistence of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Still keeping within political tradition, Obama spoke without truly answering the question.

He didn’t break tradition until the next question, which was taken from Sam Stein of the Huffington Post, a news-centered blog and self-proclaimed internet newspaper. Stein asked a similarly pointed question regarding the potential prosecution of officials within the Bush administration, which Obama pointedly and elegantly sidestepped.
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Worst Blog Offenders

Blogs have finally reached that point where they are practically a staple in our daily internet cruising. With such diversity available, blogs end up serving many different purposes. Whether you’re surfing the extensive repertoire of blogs for fashion, celebrity gossip, sports, or metaphysical enlightenment, the basic goal of any good blog is to inform and entertain.

But with blogs being free and easy to set up, there are sure to be many that fail to meet this simple goal. Today we salute some of the most atrociously awful blogs. In fact, these blogs don’t just fail—they represent the absolute dregs of the blogosphere.

Worst Marketing Blog

Jack in the Box has always had slightly different advertising tactics (why exactly is their mascot a half man/half antenna ball, and why isn’t that feat of genetic science being studied?) But their blog takes the talking car accessory a bit too seriously. In fact, this forum is supposed to be the official MySpace page of one “Jack Box.” Displaying fabricated interests, place of birth, and children (you guessed it, Jack Jr.), I can’t help but feeling bad for the intern who had to spend an afternoon coming up with these inane pieces of fake trivia.
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Twitter User Falls from Sky

When Continental Flight 104 careened off the runway at the Denver international airport, it resulted in a broken fuselage, burning flames, torn away landing gear and engine, and temperatures so high that the interior compartments actually began to melt. The crash left thirty-eight injured and no deaths.

For software engineer and plane crash survivor Mike Wilson, there was little doubt about what to do in the wake of this traumatic event. Call home to let everyone know he’s okay? No, not quite. Check the other passengers and assess for injuries? Not exactly.
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Stop (Blogging), In the Name of the Law

In the world of printed writing, there are many established laws concerning what can and can’t be done. The boundaries are generally clear, and these laws are widely known by those who take up a pen. But once those written blurbs move online, the law becomes a little bit fuzzier. Just ask Stephen Hogge, owner and operator of the blog HogOnIce.com.

Hogge found himself the center of a sticky legal situation after posting a blog that labeled an (allegedly) ex-girlfriend “a mentally ill alcoholic prostitute.” Apparently them’s more than fightin’ words. Them’s grounds for a lawsuit.

The woman in question, California resident Fatima dos Santos Fahmy, took issue with the maligning remarks. A graduate of Miami School of Law, Fahmy hauled Hogge into court. But the question quickly presented itself—where does one file a lawsuit of this kind?
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Thanks For WordPress 2.7

Happy Thanksgiving from iePlexus! In the spirit of giving thanks, and as a bit of an early Christmas present, I thought I’d give a little sneak peek into something that’s been a long time coming. Our favorite blog development platform, WordPress, is on the verge of releasing the most recent upgrade, WordPress 2.7. This version includes some serious improvements to the open-source application that has quickly dominated the blog development community and continues to grow its market share. More than ever, WordPress has transformed from a simple publishing platform into a dynamic, powerful content management system.
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Learning From Blog Predecessors

If you’re looking to start a successful blog, you might find yourself a bit discouraged. Confronted with so many established blogs, an internet presence can seem like a difficult thing to establish among such stiff competition.

But before you get too down on yourself, let’s remember that there are a lot of ways to gauge the success of a blog. You can label yourself a success when you’ve secured an impressive list of subscriptions, a healthy amount of inlinks, or perhaps even the ability to follow trends within your niche topic.

Whatever benchmark you’re using to gauge success, don’t forget that every established blog has piggybacked and improved upon the blogs that have come before. With that in mind, here are a few tips and pointers to glean from trends among today’s most successful blogs.
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Blog Directories and Communities

There are many benefits to implementing a business blog for your online business. The additional credibility and visibility that comes as a result of consistent blogging can often eclipse that of traditional marketing efforts. If the business blog is setup to enable communication and posting to social networking and social bookmarking applications, the exposure potential is even greater, as these are some of the most popular destinations for people online. Having your business integrated into these new standards of Web 2.0 marketing can result in impressive returns. These are important steps to take when starting a business blog campaign, but when it comes to marketing, you aren’t finished yet…

Beyond the setup of your business blog and integration into social media advertising, you need to consider the blog community, or blogosphere. It’s vital that other bloggers are aware of your spot on the web, as they are probably the most active and knowledgeable online community when it comes to better search engine rankings and interactive marketing. Participation on your blog is necessary to start building a readership and making some waves within the community, not to mention the process of building relationships with people who can have quite a significant impact on your business success. Bloggers must remember that no blog is an island, and the real goal here is to create as many bridges in the blogosphere as possible.
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He Blogged, She Blogged

When it comes to men and women, who blogs better? Moreover, how do men and women approach blogging? People all have their reasons for engaging in social interaction, and when it comes down to it women are more likely to blog for social and emotional interaction than men.

A recent Entrepreneur.com article mentioned a study that found more than 36 million women blog every week. Almost 50 percent of those women said that blogs influenced their buying habits. Some women even said they were so committed to blogging that they would give up PDAs and alcohol to continue doing so.

More than half of all bloggers in North America are women. These women tend to write more and longer than their male counterparts. Strangely enough a recent study out of Great Britain noted that the most influential bloggers tend to be white American males. This study also found that women were more interested in the social aspects of blogging, while men care more about new information and opinion.
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