December 2009

Amazon Not To Open Brick And Motar Store

Over the weekend, news swirled that Amazon.com,  the largest marketplace in the world was in the process of secretly searching to create a few actual brick and motar stores in the UK.  The news broke by the British newspaper, The Sunday Times stated:

Property landlords said that the American company, which has a market value of $59.1 billion (£35.6 billion), had launched a secret search for bricks-and-mortar stores to support its rapidly growing website. It is understood to be scouring the country for high-profile sites just as the Borders book chain is shutting up shop. (more…)

Twitter Working Harder For Online Businesses

In hopes to get off the Twitter growth plateau, the microblogging company is expanding it’s services to help online stores connect with their customers even more.  It seems nearly all online businesses have links encouraging you to follow the company on their social networking sites.

Twitter is launching a new API, which will allow anyone to sign up for a Twitter account from a third party application or website.  The new feature will allow anyone to watch Twitter conversations between the company and customers in real time on their sites.  (more…)

A New Way To Explore With Google

Right now, I’m in the midst of my Christmas shopping, while getting adjusted to living in a new city.  I’m trying to learn the in’s and out’s along with trying to find the little hidden secrets of Seattle.  Personally, I’m an explorer, so whether I’m in the mountains of Peru, on the streets of Paris, or walking down Main Street USA, one of my life goals is to experience and see as much as possible.  I love doing everything from the touristy things, to randomly picking a street to walk down, not knowing what lies ahead.  (more…)

YouTube Video Targeting Launches

Advertising on YouTube is becoming a common marketing strategy.  And why shouldn’t it?  With a billion video views a day, it’s a great way to connect with millions of people world wide.

This year YouTube has had some pretty amazing viral video.  From 7 year old David wondering if he was in “real life” after a trip to the dentists office, to the JK Wedding Entrance, and even helping the worldwide sensation of Susan Boyleafter her audition on Britain’s Got Talent.  Just the three videos above have more than 150 million views together.  While those were some of the most watched videos of 2009, viral marketing will be making a larger impact in 2010. Wouldn’t it be great if you could get your advertisements on those videos reaching millions of people? (more…)

This Week In Social Media: December 4, 2009

This Week In Social Media: iePlexus Dec. 4, 2009 from iePlexus on Vimeo.

From Cyber Monday shopping statistics to this year’s most popular word, here’s a look at what happened “This Week in Social Media.” (more…)

China Not Fond of Microblogging

While many of us can’t imagine living without things “made in China,” the Chinese don’t seem very impressed with some of things coming out of the good ole USA. I’m most specifically talking about microblogging.  Sites like Twitter have swept America by storm this year.  In fact, a report from Sysomos earlier this year said that only 0.49% of Twitter users were from China, while 62.14% of Twitter’s population were Americans.  The British make up the second biggest amount of users on Twitter, but they are far behind America since they only account for 7.97% of Twitterers. 

While it seems no other microblogging site could beat Twitter at this time, Microsoft has launched a new microblogging service in China, hoping to beat Twitter’s success in a different country.  The new service is known as MSN Juku, which Microsoft is calling a “local innovation developed by MSN China.” (more…)

Yahoo Connects With Facebook To Gain Users

Yahoo, the second most popular search engine behind Google, is trying to gain some momentum.  Yahoo announced today that the company would be integrating  the popular social networking site, Facebook to the search engine. 

Yahoo has rolled out Facebook Connect on a number of its sites in hopes more Facebook users will use Yahoo to share items with the 350 million other users on the networking site.  Facebook is also likely to see an increase in users with the new integration.  Yahoo Mail, News, Sports, along with several other Yahoo sections, will connect with Facebook, allowing users to leave comment, share stories, and check out what their friends are posting from their news feed.  (more…)

Social Media News Brief: December 2, 2009

Social Media News Brief: iePlexus Inc. December 2, 2009 from iePlexus on Vimeo.

Social Media News Brief: iePlexus Inc. December 2, 2009 from iePlexus on Vimeo.

This week has been full of news from the social media world.  Here’s a look at some of the headlines happening in the social media world. (more…)

Facebook Passes 350 Million Users, Big Changes Coming

Just the other week, we told that if Facebook were a nation, it’s population would be much larger than the United States.  While that remains true, Facebook’s population seems to be exploding.  Late last night, Facebook CEO & Founder Mark Zuckerberg had sent out an open letter to all of it’s users.  While we reported less than a month ago, that Facebook had 325 million users, Zuckerberg officially announced the site has more than 350 million users.  That is a tremendous increase just within the past month alone. 

Facebook has seen it’s number’s grow drastically this year, more than doubling in population.  Taking a look back, in August of 2008, the popular social networking site had just 100 million users.  It then took nearly 5 months for Facebook to gain 50 million users.  Since then, the site has grown on average 50 million users every 3-4 months.  This year alone, Facebook has gained 200 million users, and there are no signs of slowing down. (more…)

Bit.ly To Help Reduce Amount of Spammers

Scams and spam could be soon off the Internet.  Well, maybe not anytime soon, but at least bit.ly, a service that shorten URL’s, is working on changing that.  With websites like Twitter, where you are only allowed to type 140 characters, shorten URL services are becoming more common and a target for spam.  The problem with shortened URL services is that you can’t see where that link is going to take you.  It just helps reduce the number of characters in a longer link that you’d like to send. 

The company announced that within the next few weeks they will be integrating 3 new software systems within their service which will ideally offer stronger spam and malware protection.  (more…)