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Beanstalk's SEO News Blog

At Beanstalk Search Engine Optimization we know that knowledge is power. That's the reason we started this SEO blog. We know that the better informed our visitors are, the better the decisions they will make for their websites and their online businesses. We hope you enjoy your stay and find the SEO news contained within this blog useful.

July 26, 2012

SOPA Friends: Internet League of America

The recording industry, agents, and vendors of music aren’t the only ones spending way too much of their profits on lobbying the government. Major internet companies that see the harm of bills like SOPA/PIPA are spending the time and money to fight back against this lobbying.

Not to be confused with SuperFriends..

This organization is less about crime and more about reasonable expenses for making sure government is making informed decisions.

Google alone spent $3.9million in the second quarter of 2012, and $5.4million in 2012 total so far trying to help government see the internet as more than just a ‘series of tubes’.

Google isn’t alone in fighting for your rights, Amazon’s spending between Jan 2012 and June 2012 was pegged at $1.34million, EBay spent nearly as much at $827k, and Facebook also jumped into the fight for $650k of lobbying.

It stands to reason then that if they all had the same message a lot of time and money could be saved by joining forces, and this is how the Internet Association has come to be.

With Google, Amazon, EBay and Facebook already signed into the Internet Association it’s already huge and it’s still in the ‘coming soon’ phase of setting up.

This new group should not be confused with existing organizations like The Internet Defense League which are seeking other solutions to keeping people informed as to threats to online access/freedom.

A few sites (RIAA partners?) are panning this as ‘evil‘ and un-Google for companies to work together to support a shared message to the government, but I think anyone who knows the extent of SOPA/PIPA and other bills will see that spin for what it really is, fear and loathing of anything that stands in the way of an easy profit.

Google Fiber

Remember us writing about Kansas City dark fiber, Google’s plans to light it up, and the various media/recording industry fears/objections?

While I was composing this article on the new Internet Association I managed to eavesdrop on the details coming from the live broadcast at the launch of Google Fiber in Kansas this morning.

Here’s what I caught (again this was just details I overheard and not officially published):

Google Fiber is run right to your house
A fiber-conversion firewall appliance converts the optical signal
The Google fiber-wall has built in WiFi and 4 gigabit RJ45 ports
The WiFi radio is very fast (no specs given) and features a guest portal system
Google Fiber offers TV boxes that act as WiFi boosters
The TV boxes stream Netflix/Youtube in HD quality with more options to follow
Google’s TV boxes work with Bluetooth headphones and can be controlled by Bluetooth devices
Currently purchasing a TV box will including a free Nexus 7 Tablet that acts as a remote control for the TV box.
$300 is mentioned as the ‘construction fee’ to send a Google rep to your home to install the fiber cable.
$120/mth for the TV and Gigabit Internet package (on 2 year contracts the $300 fee is waived)
$70/mth for just Gigabit fibre internet (no install fee for 1yr contracts)
$Free/mth 5mbps down, 1mbps up, of capped fiber access to anyone who wants to pay the $300 install fee
The free service option is guaranteed for anyone in the service area for 7 years
You can pay the $300 fee off over time if you wish as an incentive to connect everyone regardless of income levels
1TB of Google Drive storage (directly linked to the Fibre) comes with the $70/mth and up packages
No mention of monthly data use caps, but they would need to be fairly generous

Apparently they are deciding which homes get fiber first by running a lobbying contest where they reward the communities that lobby other communities the most. The speaker tried to sell this as ‘doing it for Kansas’ and ‘spreading the word about what fiber really means’, but of all the announcements, there was no applause for
this.

Clearly most of Kansas is tired of waiting for Google Fiber and would like to start actually using it vs. running around ‘competing’ with other communities for the first chance to get hooked up.

It’s an odd move for Google but you have to respect that they had to find a fair way to select the first communities to get connected.

UPDATE: They have published the official Google Fiber data plans and yes, there’s NO DATA CAPS. Wow.

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 11:25 am

July 20, 2012

Gearing Up for Social Media Marketing

Image: freedigitalphotos.net

Different demographics are using different social media channels. Reaching the right audience with social media is about using the right channels and voice to connect with and engage your followers. Different sites as well as online marketing and analysis techniques can help you connect with the audience you’ve been trying to reach. Below is information about common social media networks and their audiences so you can gear each channel towards the demographic and sectors of your potential audience that uses it most.

Facebook

There are a number of infographics and articles online with information about who is using Facebook. Knowing that the average person visits the site 40 times per month may not be the information. Here is breakdown of who is using Facebook and how to connect with them:

People from the ages of 18-44 are using Facebook the most. This means you’re information needs to be broad enough to reach and connect with most of your audience, but not so broad that no one takes interest. Posting information about news topics related to your field and asking open-ended questions are two of the best ways to do this.
Though the 20- and 30-somethings are some of the most active on Facebook, people over the age of 45 are becoming more frequent users. If your products relate to the older demographic, share information they can relate to. If your services are for those in their early 20’s, share that.
Because the Facebook audience is so broad, use Facebook Insights to see who is on your page and talking about your company. Gaining knowledge of your key demographics can help you provide content that will encourage more interaction and engagement.

Twitter

Like Facebook, Twitter had a wide range of users. Men and women use the site pretty equally, though a large majority of Twitter users include African Americans and Hispanics. People are more likely to buy from a company the follow on Twitter than from one they don’t so reaching your audience on Twitter is an important factor for both online engagement and overall sales.

Most Twitter users live in urban areas. If your business is based in a well-populated city, turn your Tweets to reaching those in the same city and other urban areas.
Because Twitter now has targeted promoted tweets, you can reach a specific audience. You aren’t tweeting to all your followers, unless you choose to do so. You are instead, placing the tweet in front of the audience you want to reach.
Programs like SocialBro provide insight into who your audience is and when they are online. Knowing the material that will relate most to your audience as well as the right times will help you refine your Twitter strategies to reach new people.
Many tweets are now coming from smartphones and 1 in 5 smartphone owners use Twitter on their phones. Sharing and tweeting comments that can be viewed quickly via a smartphone could increase your Twitter traction.

Pinterest

Pinterest, at the moment, has a more focused audience. Composed mostly of women, top interests of this image-driven site include crafts, gifts, hobbies, interior design and fashion. Brands based in these areas should be devoting a decent amount of time to their Pinterest efforts. Even if your business doesn’t seem to be a fit, your company’s Pinterest can succeed.

A top geographical location of Pinterest users is the East South Central United States, which includes Mississippi, Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee. Posting images that people of this region can relate to and take interest can lead to more engagement on your Pinterest boards.
Women compose nearly 80% of Pinterest account holders. Regardless of your brand, gearing images toward women is a great tactic.
See what’s trending and consider how your business can relate. Because Pinterest is open to a wide variety of images and information, focusing on what the users are pinning at the moment can gear your boards and pins in the right direction.

Tumblr

Tumblr combines blogging and image-sharing to create a unique site that’s perfect for social bloggers. Men and women use the site pretty equally. One of the most surprising demographics is the age. According to an infographic from Mashable, over half the site’s users are under the age of 34, with 18% of the total users being under the age of 18. Fitting your company into Tumblr means targeting content to a younger audience.

Because the age group is so young, gearing content to trending topics and information a person around the age of 20 can relate to is a great way to gain a following. Use common tags and popular images to increase traffic.
Some of the most tagged terms on Tumblr include gif, “LOL” and fashion, though art and vintage are other common tags. Use these as they relate to your business and content to gain new followers.
See which of your posts, reblogs and other content receive the most traction. What tags lead to followers? What content generates the most buzz? Measure your progress so you can easily make adjustments.

All social media sites are about connecting. On Facebook, you can connect with people of all ages and from all backgrounds. Twitter is used by people in urban areas who want a quick and constant stream of information. Pinterest appeals to women and Tumblr to a younger demographic. With each social media site, research who likes and follows your company to see which audience is the most engaged with your company on that channel. As you figure out what your audience is on each channel, you can gear the content towards them for more successful social media campaigns.

Author:
Erica Bell is a small business writer who focuses on topics such as telemarketing and social media trends. She is a web content writer for Business.com.

SEO news blog post by guestpost @ 11:08 am

Categories: Facebook,LinkedIn,social media,Twitter
Tags: Erica Bell, facebook, pinterest, social media, tumblr, twitter —

July 4, 2012

Understanding Open Graph Protocol

I have been asked several times recently about "what is an Open Graph?" and "How do I use it?" Not having a clear answer, I decided to educate myself so I could share the knowledge.

The Open Graph protocol is widely implemented by Google and Facebook and in use on large websites such as IMDb, Microsoft, NHL, Time, Yelp and an increasing multitude of other sites. The Open Graph protocol was originally created at Facebook and is inspired by Dublin Core, link-rel canonical, Microformats, and RDFa.

The Open Graph is a protocol that enables any web page to become a rich object in a social graph. At the center of Facebook’s core is a technology called the Social Graph, which Facebook uses to allow any web page to have the same functionality as any other object on Facebook.

Although there are many other technologies, protocols and schemas that exist that could have been adopted to accomplish a similar technique, there is no single technology that provides enough information to richly represent any web page within the social graph. The Open Graph protocol effectively brings these existing technologies together to offer a unified, simple and powerful way to turn web pages into graph objects.

Facebook’s Graph API allows web sites to draw information from a variety of sources including photos, events, pages and even their relationship between each other. This allows the social graph concept to envelop more than just relationships between individuals to include virtual non-human objects between individual as well.

Making use of the open graph requires the developer to place four basic meta data in the section of the webpage’s html source code:

og:title – The title of your object as it should appear within the graph, e.g., “The Rock”.
og:type – The type of your object, e.g., “video.movie”. Depending on the type you specify, other properties may also be required.
og:image – An image URL which should represent your object within the graph.
og:url – The canonical URL of your object that will be used as its permanent ID in the graph, e.g., “http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117500/”.

As an example, the following code is used by IMDB.com for the movie "The Rock"





<html prefix="og: http://ogp.me/ns#">

<head>

<title>The Rock (1996)</title>

<meta property="og:title" content="The Rock" />

<meta property="og:type" content="video.movie" />

<meta property="og:url" content="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117500/" />

<meta property="og:image" content="http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/rock.jpg" />

...

</head>

...

</html>

The Open Graph protocol enables you to integrate your web pages into the social graph. It is currently designed for web pages representing profiles of real-world things — things like movies, sports teams, celebrities, and restaurants. Once your pages become objects in the graph, users can establish connections to your pages as they do with Facebook Pages. Based on the structured data you provide via the Open Graph protocol, your pages show up richly across Facebook: in user profiles, within search results and in News Feed.

SEO news blog post by guestpost @ 12:22 pm

Categories: Facebook,web design
Tags: open graph protocol, social graph —

June 7, 2012

Gaming The Facebook IPO Game

I like numbers and I like stats. I suppose that’s what attracts me to SEO and that whole “algorithm thing” so much. Our regular blog readers will remember my rant on May 18th on the Facebook IPO over-valuation where I compare Facebook’s stock prices vs revenue with Ford, valuing Ford at well over $2 trillion dollar if they got the same kind of multiples as Facebook does. Unfortunately Ford has to exist in the real world where they’re expected to base their company worth on revenue. What a novel concept. But that rants done so on to a fun game …

As I’m sure you can all imagine I’ve been watching Facebook’s share prices regularly (dare I say … hourly). I definitely feel sorry for investors but there is part of me that feels a bit better about the state of the economy knowing that Facebook’s stock is dropping to perhaps what it should be. It’s still got a ways to go there though. That said, watching the stock has revealed some interesting insight that I might even jump on if I had a risk-tolerance high enough to view my capital as Monopoly money. Because I don’t really understand the stock market and just like playing with numbers however I’m not about to do that, but thought I’d share an interesting bit of data.

Facebook stock is following (generally) a trend, or at least has been for the past week. Let’s say you like to day trade and you have $10,000 to play with. If you buy each day at 2PM and sell each day at 3PM it would result in (note: I’m assuming a $0 transaction fee as those vary):

May 31st (start of day – $10,000)
At 2PM you’d buy 370 shares at $27.02 costing $9,997.40
At 3PM you’d sell for $28.20 for $10,434.00

June 1 (start of day – $10,436.70)
At 2PM you’d buy 376 shares at $27.75 costing $10,434.00
At 3PM you’d sell for $27.84 for $10,467.84

June 4 (start of day – $10,863.75)
At 2PM you’d buy 407 shares at $26.67 costing $10,854.69
At 3PM you’d sell for $27.22 for $11,078.54

June 5 (start of day – $11,087.60)
At 2PM you’d buy 419 shares at $26.41 costing $11,065.79
At 3PM you’d sell for $26.17 for $10,965.23

June 6 (start of day – $10,987.04)
At 2PM you’d buy 420 shares at $26.11 costing $10,966.20
At 3PM you’d sell for $26.79 for $11,251.80

At the end of the week your investment of $10,000 would have you sitting at $11,272.64. Not bad – over 11% return in a week.

I noticed this while having a chat with a friend of mine (my WebmasterRadio.fm co-host Jim Hedger) when Facebook had dropped further at around 11am one day and I said it’s a good time to buy as it’ll go up by the end of the day. I decided to actually look at the trends as my thought was based just on an instinct at what I’d seen without paying attention. Turns out I’d have been wrong that day and I was muddling my data from casual glances but if you actually look at the flow of value, there is one. Some days you’ll come out behind but overall – you’ll come out over 11% richer. had you bought at the lowest and sold at the highest points in a day of course you’d have made more but saying that is like saying drinking water will keep you hydrated.

I have to note this is just a fun analysis and not meant to be taken as any kind of advice. I’m not buying shares nor do I plan to. I expect the stock price to fall overall in the coming months and either way, I’m not a stock investor. I say this so you won’t take this as any type of advice or think, “hey, I’m going to do that”. Doing so would be akin to taking the advice of an SEO on how to win the Tour de France, I’m sure I could come up with statistical tips for you there to but a knowledgeable trainer is always better so if you’re thinking of investing in Facebook, get the advice of a qualified professional. If you ask me – as a long term investment it’ll only be good for a loss in your books.

Follow Up:

To see if things progress along the same path, I’ve decided to track that $10,000 through the week after this post. Each day I will be updating this post with the 2PM buy and 3:00 sell metrics.

June 7 (start of day – $11,272.64)
You’d buy 421 shares at $26.72 costing $11,249.12
At 3PM you’d sell for $27.07 for $11,396.47

June 8 (start of day – $11,419.99)
You’d buy 422 shares at $27.05 costing $11,415.10
At 3PM you’d sell for $27.02 for $11,402.44
* interesting note – last Friday it picked up around 3:15 too but I don’t want to change my numbers for Friday’s so we’ll stick with the 2PM to 3PM strategy as the numbers below continue.

June 11 (start of day – $11,407.33)
You’d buy 411 shares at $27.70 costing $11,384.70
At 3PM you’d sell for $27.30 for $11,220.30

Interesting to note – it appears that the first day of the week Facebook spikes first thing in the morning and then drops through the day. If I continue monitoring this one after this week is up I may well adjust the numbers to just a buy at 3PM with a sale at 9:30 the following day. Not quite as slick at the 2PM to 3Pm standard but we’ll see how that works through this week.

June 12 (start of day – $11,242.93)
You’d buy 415 shares at $27.05 costing $11,225.75
At 3PM you’d sell for $27.21 for $11,292.15

June 13 (start of day – $11,309.33)
You’d buy 411 shares at $27.45 costing $11,281.95
At 3PM you’d sell for $27.16 for $11,162.76

So – if you followed my ill-conceived advice you’d have made $1,272.64 in week one. In week two you’d have lost $109.88.

For the next 5 business days we’re going to go with the same 2 to 3 buy/sell pattern but I’m going to take the leap and say, “It happened twice so it’s a pattern” and on Monday I’ll be tracking the buy at 3PM instead of two and hold on until Tuesday at 9:30. I’ll then track the buy again on Tuesday at 2 for a sale at 3.

It’s interesting to note that after 2 weeks we’d have a 11.16% gain in revenue. Had we simple purchased once at 2PM on May 31st (the first day in this example) and sold at 3PM on June 13th you’d have gained 0.05%.

So stay tuned for more bad advice.

Week Three:

Because I started monitoring this on the 31st of May (a Thursday) this is the first day of week three. This week I’m sticking to the 2PM buy and 3PM sell rate I’ve been using thus far with one minor adjustment, on the first day of the week I’ll be buying at 3PM and won’t sell until 9:30AM the next day. So on the second day of the week there will actually be two sales.

June 14 (start of day – $11,190.33)
You’d buy 403 shares at $27.73 costing $11,175.19
At 3PM you’d sell for $27.71 for $11,167.13

June 15 (start of day – $11,182.27)
You’d buy 386 shares at $28.90 costing $11,155.40
At 3PM you’d sell for $29.21 for $11,275.06

June 18 (start of day – $11,301.93)
You’d buy 357 shares at $31.65 costing $11,299.05
On the 19th at 9:30am you’d sell for $31.53 for $11,256.21.

June 19 (start of buying – $11,259.09)
You’d buy 353 shares at $31.89 costing $11,257.17
At 3PM you’d sell for $31.76 for $11,211.28

I’m going to stop now as here’s what’s clear … you shouldn’t follow my advice on investing. My insistence on watching trends and keeping a toe-hold in reality makes me ill equipped to be an investor.

Had you invested $11,272.64 on June 7th at 2PM you’d have purchased 421 shares at $26.72. If you followed my advice that would have turned into $11,213.20 losing you $59.44. If you just sold at 3PM today you’d have turned that $11,272.64 into $13,370.96. So in essence, if you’d followed my advice you’d have lost $2,157.76.

And that’s why it’s a better idea to leave things to the experts.

SEO news blog post by Dave Davies, CEO @ 7:10 am

Categories: Facebook,IPO
Tags: facebook, facebook ipo, Facebook Shares —

June 5, 2012

Google Advisor: Where have you been all my life?

Admittedly, when I read the announcement that Google Advisor was here to help me manage my money the first thoughts were about privacy and that last bastion of private information Google hasn’t touched yet: Banking.

Gloved hand that is reaching for banking and credit info

Being wrong never felt so good!

Google Advisor is not (at the moment) a way to suck more private information from you, it’s actually more of a consulting service for comparing bank accounts, credit cards, certificates of deposit, and more.

As someone who’s setup review sites for various services/offerings I can tell you how handy/popular it is to break down competing services so the consumer can select something that meets their exact needs.

Google Advisor claims that the information it’s showing is based on my data, but a 0% intro rate on transfers for 18months? If that’s really available to me I’m going to have to send Google some chocolates.

Google bought QuickOffice

Google bought the mobile office suite ‘QuickOffice‘ which allows ‘App-Level’ access to office documents for mobile devices based on Android/iOS/Symbian.

This move seems redundant with Google’s ‘Docs’ suite offering even more connectivity to your documents/spreadsheets/presentations, but that is just a cloud service, not an ‘App’ and you can have more offline control of your work if you have an ‘App’ vs. a cloud service.

Plus you can’t argue with the users, they want ‘Apps’ and will pay for them.

Google bought Meebo

I’m not sure if this was related to Yahoo’s ‘Axis’ bar plugin that came and went with zero fanfare, but it’s an interesting purchase for SEO interests.

Meebo is a handy social media tool with some great options for ad placement and on-line marketing. SEOs not already dabbling with the tool should take a look, like yesterday.

If you’ve been managing your Twitter, Google+, Facebook, etc.., profiles without a management tool, aggregation sites like Meebo are really what you’ve been missing out on.

We know that Google owned properties have more relevance and trust on the web than similar services/products. After all, if you can’t trust yourself, who can you trust?

So if you were using some other social aggregation tool, and were doing it solely for SEO awareness, you can safely assume it’s worth the effort to try out Meebo for a potentially improved result/relevance from your efforts.

We will be doing some testing (as we always do) and will blog about our results to further expand on what the service offers over others. This may even warrant an article or two?

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 12:42 pm

Categories: backlinks,Deals,Facebook,Google,Google,Google+,Internet Law,link building,Privacy,Rankings,Search Engine News,seo articles,SEO Tips,social media,Technology,Twitter
Tags: Google Advisor, Meebo, QuickOffice —

June 1, 2012

May 31, 2012

It’s all coming up Google?

When it’s my turn to tackle the SEO news for our blog I first look specifically at ‘technology’ news headlines for relevance, and then I usually filter it out a bit to nail a topic that our readers can relate to/find useful.

Today’s news feed looks like I just went to Google’s news blog and did a copy/pasta, yet in reality Google WAS the news this morning.

Here’s the list of headlines:

Google places is gone and now merged with Google+ Local
Google Plus places now features Zagat review information (Kyle mentioned this in yesterday’s blog post)
Facebook drops Google chrome as a recommended browser (and then removes the whole page)
Google’s new ChromeOS Chromebox is available for purchase
Google’s not yet available ’5-core’ Nexus 7 tablet makes a sneaky appearance a few days early on a benchmarking website
And a new Google World of Wonders video from Japan:

Google+ Places

First impression?

“Pretty cool, and very personalized information about locations in my area.”

Right off the bat it told me where Dave likes to eat..

Which was funny because he’s recommending a restaurant that’s famous for either utterly ruining every aspect of the dinning experience or totally nailing it.

Dave must be lucky.

So like anything on-line:
Zagat reviews aren’t perfect.
Everyone has an opinion.
People have unique interests.

At least this is Google, so we know that it’s trying as hard as it can to learn and suggest things to ‘me’ based on personalization.

So if the first visit doesn’t introduce you to your new favourite restaurant/pub/coffee shop, I wouldn’t write it off, just try it again later.

Stock isn’t the only thing dropping over at Facebook

This image has been popping up in Google/Technology news all morning:

Since Chrome and Safari both share the ‘webkit’ engine, there’s almost zero possibility that Facebook is dropping support for Chrome.

In fact I would say this is more about making Opera stand out vs. dropping support for Chrome. Especially since the FB developer page used to recommend Chrome!

Given that FB pulled this link down completely, I’m going to venture a guess that this was even possibly a mistake.

Chromebox for Sale

The Chromebox is a cute little SFF (small form factor) PC from Samsung with the ChromeOS preloaded and ready to go.

You can pick one up today for $329.. However if you don’t want some extra hardware, or wait for something to ship, you can download and install ChromeOS on an old laptop, or inside a virtual PC, to give it a try and see what’s good/bad about it before investing.

Thanks for going open source Google, we love you, again.

Google Nexus 7 Tablet?

June is on my calendar for a ton of reasons, one of which is that it’s ’6 months’ from the date that Google said they were planning to launch a tablet ‘in six months’.

Asus is apparently the manufacturer, so the tablet will be sturdy.
NVidia’s ’5 core’ Tegra 3 Processor will be doing the thinking, so it will be fast and power smart.
NVidia also supplied the ULP GeForce graphics processor, so 3d graphics/games are supported.

Beyond those stats we’re really guessing based on this leaked info:
The unit that popped up on the benchmarks was running Android 4.1 JRN51B, at 1280×768 resolution, had 1GB of RAM installed, and 16GB of local storage.

So for now this is just a huge teaser and we’ll have to wait for a more official announcement.

Last day for Beanstalk Minecraft Map Submissions!

LAST DAY TO ENTER!

If you didn’t already know, we’ve been running a Minecraft Map Contest for the last two months and this is the final day for entries!

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 12:56 pm

May 29, 2012

Facebook going to the Opera?

With all that IPO cash in hand Facebook could really have a night on the town, perhaps even watch the fat lady sing?

Given the bad press over their profit reports and legal actions from investors, I’d be tempted to do anything that’s a change of topic from ‘stock prices’.

Why buy Opera?

That’s actually not too hard to answer as a nerd or as an investor.

Opera is real technology and has actual value. Something FB needs to be snatching up.

The main reason: Opera has always provided some of the best mobile browser software. My first experience with Opera Mobile (5.1?) was back in 2006 on an HTC Apache (X6700).

I remember installing Opera on my Windows Mobile phone and back then the 1x connection speeds were barely better than dial-up and data prices were just unthinkably bad. Opera Mobile not only pre-compressed the data for me, it would compress data my phone couldn’t render, like simple Flash video/animations and even let me painfully navigate Flash based menus.

That’s right, I was able to interact with Flash based content on a mobile phone before the iPhone was a twinkle in Apple’s.. erm.. eye. That’s how long Opera’s been providing must-have solutions to the mobile market.

Opera is more than just a very popular/powerful mobile browser with unique features… Opera is one of the most complete browsers available on the PC today.

SEO TIP:The turbo feature acts as a proxy to avoid identity issues on most sites.

Unless you are on a secure site or a site that you’ve configured specifically to pass your identity, Opera’s Turbo mode will send requests to Opera’s proxy server instead of the website you are on. The responses come back to Opera, get heavily compressed, and then it’s sent back to you. This means that Opera’s proxy IP is making the requests, not your computer’s IP. Handy dandy!

The IRC client is great and requires almost zero setup/knowledge to jump into discussions with really nerdy (and often brilliant) people.

I used to be a die hard user of mIRC, I even used it to author some scripts to create the first DOS network (SuperKill) myself and my nerdy friends from around the world had ever heard of. Today I happily use Opera’s IRC client because it’s zero hassle and it’s built into a product I already use.

Opera’s HTML5 Date Picker

Opera also has some of the most complete HTML5 implementations of any desktop browser.

It makes sense that if you have to to know how to render/handle HTML5 tags for mobile use, it’s not hard to extend that support to your desktop users.

An input element with a type value of ‘date’ should illicit a date selection box, but of all the major browsers on the market, Opera is the only one that recognizes and supports these elements by default.

Opera’s other features are just as thorough and well developed as it’s core functions. Opera’s application page allows you to turn your Opera browser into a media player/streaming host, file sharing hub, webcam server, private photo shares, web proxy, messenger, etc..

If Opera had been made in Sweden vs. Norway we’d have to dub it the ‘swiss army knife’ of browsers, but for now we’ll have to look at it as the ‘concert of awesome’ for those times when you want one program to do everything.

Why NOT buy Opera?

Price. Plain and simple.

Google is a major partner in Opera, and is the default search engine for the Opera browser. If there’s a bidding war to purchase Opera, Google’s not going to let FB buy it cheap, nor will the other competitors in this arena of mobile/social web dominance.

Right now top financial teams from banks like Norway’s DNB have speculatively estimated Opera at a value of between $1 billion – $1.35 billion.

This is a value based on Opera share prices, and the stock was on a 17.2% rise this morning and hasn’t stopped climbing, with Google finance putting it up at 30.23% currently!

In fact, if you want my personal opinion, at this stage of the game, with FB’s intentions very clear, I’d say the whole deal will hinge on price alone since it’s a sound decision to buy, but only if the value holds.

I’d say you could take that to the bank, but I’m neither rich nor financially skilled, I’m just a nerd that’s been around for a long time.

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 11:54 am

Categories: Browsers,Facebook,Google,html 5,IPO,Opera,SEO Tips,SEO Tools,social media,Technology

May 22, 2012

FB stock drops as SpaceX soars to success!

There were so many interesting technology/internet developments between Friday and now today that I can’t really pick which one to focus on?

Sliding FB stock prices, Google finally taking over what was the mobility division of Motorola, SpaceX reaching the ISS, Wiki-leaks’ social media platform, and the Google Knowledge Graph.. and more!

If we looked at them from an SEO standpoint I would still have to struggle a bit to pick the most interesting/focused story, but it’s a great way to dive in so lets take a look at the weekends headlines from an SEO aspect.

Facepalm – FB IPO = Uh Oh

Dave’s nailed this one really well on Friday in this post:
Facebook IPO vs Ford (real world) Valuation Comparison

The image of money flushing down the toilet was very ‘apt’ since that’s exactly where I see the stock price going:
https://www.google.ca/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AFB

The current ‘low’ appears to be $31/share at the moment, with the price currently dancing around $32.50/share as I write this.

Google Mobility

Google already makes some cool hardware for their servers and other projects, but most people I know wouldn’t think of them as a manufacturer.

And yet here we are today, watching history unfold, as the mobile division of one of the worlds best handset manufacturers changes hands with a company that is at the head of the Android software alliance.

Google does a lot of things for free, even at a loss, because they see value in things that others would squander and ignore. Now that they have a hardware division to support this bad habit things are going to get very interesting.

We already know from looking through project glass’s details that Google will be needing a very skilled manufacturer with assets in micro mobility and wireless. HTC has always been very willing to participate with Google’s projects, but they are a vastly successful hardware manufacturer with no visible brand loyalty.

I personally had Android running on a HTC Windows Mobile so why can’t I run Windows Mobile on a Google subsidized Android HTC phone? I probably could, which is why it’d be very silly for Google to subsidize HTC hardware.

If Google can produce the hardware and find ways to keep 90%+ of the owners using Google services, it’s a much safer bet, and it appears to be exactly what they are doing. Heck if they make the hardware they might not even care what OS you use if they are allowed to sniff the data and still learn about users from the data they are using.

The only part of the puzzle that’s missing is deployment of Google owned, Motorola equipped, cell-towers so that Google can offer hardware, software, and services on their terms, in a model that makes sense to them, which would likely mean no caps on network use for Google products?

Yeah I could be dreaming but if I was a competitive cellular provider I’d be strongly considering opening my arms to Google before it’s an arms race against Google.

Google Knowledge Graph

While the bearing on SEO for this news item is rather debatable and curious. The feature itself is incredibly handy and something Google has the unique opportunity to provide.

By taking key points of knowledge and building some hard links to relate that knowledge to other data points Google has developed a Wikipedia of it’s own design.

Knowing the struggles that Wikipedia has faced in terms of moderation and updating content, it will be anyone’s guess how Google is going to maintain it’s knowledge graph without someone manipulating the results, but kudos to Google for trying?

Right now the coverage on this is going to be all the same because the content in Google KG is still being built up, but you can expect further discussion as the service grows.

FoWL – Wiki-Leaks’ Social Media Service

Since this service claims to be private and encrypted, it would be very foul of me to really spend much of your time discussing it.

As it can’t be officially crawled by Google it’s probably going to have a very low effect on SEO and rankings in general. The only real bearing I could see it having is using it as a traffic tool for sites that are in-line with the Wiki-leaks mantra of public information. So if you can pretend that your services are so good the FBI doesn’t want you talking about them..??

SpaceX reaches ISS

This isn’t search engine related at all. I suppose you could point to the success of Google vs. government run indexes, and then point to the success of SpaceX vs. NASA with a bunch of startling similarities, but that’s some serious reaching.

At the same time, posting this on the same day the first private effort has docked with the International Space Station? I am obligated as a nerd to at least tuck this into the tail of the post. It’s pretty cool!

9 Days Left!

9 DAYS LEFT!

We still have 9 days left in our Beanstalk Minecraft Map Competition! Check it out and even if you’re not entering, please let others know it’s coming to a close and we need all submissions by the 31st!

Good Luck!

SEO news blog post by Ryan Morben @ 12:01 pm

Categories: Facebook,Google,Internet Law,internet security,IPO,Net Neutrality,Rankings,social media,Technology
Tags: FoWL, Google Mobility, ISS, Knowledge Graph, minecraft contest, motorola, SpaceX, wikileaks —

May 18, 2012

Facebook IPO vs Ford (real world) Valuation Comparison

About 10 minutes ago (as I start writing this blog post at least) investors were able to buy into Facebook. At opening the price was estimated at $38/share which gives Facebook an overall value of $107 billion. Wait … let me say that again. That’s one hundred and seven BILLION dollars (insert into your brains if you will an image of Dr. Evil laughing).

So, what’s obvious is that money in the real world has no connection to money in the tech realm. Here’s just a few statistics about Facebook:

Q1 revenue – $1.058 billion
Q1 net earnings – $205 million
Members – 835,525,280

So let’s think about this for just a second. This means that each member is worth $128.06 if things go Facebook’s way and the value at the end of the day reaches $107 billion. Now if we look at what they earned from their members in Q1 (and I’m talking about profit here, not revenue) they earned $0.25 off each one in the quarter. Essentially this means that at the current rate they’ll make roughly $1 off each user per year so simple math tells us that the company is being valued at 128 years of profit. That’s right … 128 years.

Now let’s take a different approach in valuation and look at it from revenue instead of profit. You shouldn’t … but lets. If Facebook’s Q1 earnings hold through the rest of the year that would give them an annual revenue of $4.232 billion but let’s be nice, let’s say that over Q3 and 4 their revenue spikes for the holidays and they earn a cool $5 billion; they’re still being valued at 21.4 years of revenue. Not profit … revenue.

The Real World

So let’s put this in real world terms. Let’s look at the valuation of a brick-and-mortar company, a little company called Ford. Here’s their statistics:

Q1 revenue – $30.5 billion
Q1 net earnings – $1.4 billion
Members – NA

So, with the math noted above on Facebook’s evaluation Ford is worth 2.6108 trillion dollars (note: this is higher than the total US deficit for 2011).

So what is Ford worth? $38.34 billion. You heard me … the value of a company that shows over a billion dollars in real-world profit each quarter and generates $30.5 billion in revenue in a single quarter is valued at 1.257 times quarterly revenue or 27.39 times quarterly net earnings.

Let’s Do Some Math

As an SEO I love math so I won’t make you do it. Let’s look at what Facebook should be valued at if the tech world was ruled by the same general laws of reality that the real world is.

If we base Facebook’s valuation on their Q1 revenue and subscribed to the notion that a company should be valued by some reasonable measure of what they earn (it’s crazy I know) and used Ford as the benchmark they would be valued at $1.33 billion dollars (that’s about $0.48 per share). If we go the route of valuing them based on net earnings and use Ford again, they would be valued at $5.615 billion, a healthier $2.05 per share.

But Investors Are Apparently Detached …

from reality. During just the time of my writing this blog post (about 30 minutes) share prices have gone from $38.00 (a low after opening at $45) back up to $41.16 valuing the company at $112.73 billion dollars.

Can anyone else see the pin coming that’s going to pop this bubble?

</rant>

Update: 3 Hours Later …

Poor Facebook, back down at $38.01. personally I think it’s not dropping below $38 simply because there’s noone who’ll sell for less right now. Don’t worry, if you want to grab a deal on FB stocks just wait … they will go down once people get beaten down.

Other social media properties have been tanking throughout the day. Some speculate that’s due to investors pulling their money out to buy Facebook shares. Zynga (game maker, you’re probably familiar with many of their products … I for one am addicted to Words With Friends) dropped 16.2% as of the time of this writing. But let’s take a look at their financials:

Q1 revenue – $321 million
Q1 net earnings – $47 million
Members – NA

Their company value is currently $1.425 billion. If we assume Q1 revenue will continue (which is unlikely – Zynga is likely to increase in revenue in Q3 and Q4) their annual revenue would be $1.284 billion. So what I’m seeing is investors valuing Facebook at over 21 times yearly revenue and bailing on Zynga to the point where the stock was frozen earlier today based on a multiplier of a virtually 1 to 1 annual revenue vs company valuation. I think I’ll just go scratch my head and wonder at the state of the economy for a while. While I’m doing that you can wonder at why companies like Zynga and LinkedIn are tanking. Groupon is too (down 6.57% as of this writing) but that just makes sense to me as I viewed it as over-valued and then there’s that issue of unusually heavy trading just hours before a favorable earnings announcement (just a titch suspicious – you can read more on that on the Wall street Journal at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303879604577410503063634984.html). Not so favorable (in my opinion) as to warrant their market value of over $7 billion ($559.3 million in Q1).

Note: I may find it overvalued however I do think their pricing is far more realistic than … say … Facebook. But then, they actually provide a real-world deliverable so they can’t be worth as much right?

SEO news blog post by Dave Davies, CEO @ 9:48 am

Categories: Facebook,IPO
Tags: facebook, facebook ipo —

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