OverRoll.com

Web analytics is of immeasurable importance to anyone who works in any Internet based profession, but it could also be something fun for any Internet user to play with and understand.

So whenever I find a new web analytics tool, I am all over it…

And recently I just came across a website that analyzes data from one of my most visited sites on the web, Digg.com, so now I’m really excited!

The site is quite robust and features a lot of useful and interesting information, as well as all sorts of options for sorting and displaying the statistical data on Digg and its Dugg sites.

The website is called Dugg Analyzer, so check it out.

Also, post any interesting/useful information you may find regarding Digg as comments to this post.

I just recently came across some interesting information that I thought I’d share with everyone.

According to the Internet research and trend analysis website, eMarketer.com, ad spending on social networking sites is anticipated to grow 75% next year and ad revenue for niche communities is expected to grow to 10% from 8.2% in 2007.

This is good news for social networking as a whole since it continues to build on the fact that social networking communities are here to stay and aren’t simply Internet fads or “bubbles” that is building to burst.

And since several advertisers are still to see social networks as a platform for advertising, it’s good to see growth in this area and hopefully this will prompt others to see the valuable in having a presence in such communities and also test the waters.

It has just come to my attention that a very shady FaceBook application has been going around that can cause some real damage to your computer.

This may not seem like anything new, since there are many FaceBook applications with hidden agendas that perform devious actions.

Except, according to security solutions provider, Fortinet, this application called “Secret Crush” has the ability to download and install the Zango spyware software on your computer.

Check out this page for more information on the shady application.

My tips to anyone using FaceBook is to really pay attention and to do some research on any and all applications you are thinking of installing; it’s a bad idea to just install something simply on the fact that a friend has it.

And if in fact you find a questionable application make sure to report it to FaceBook by going to the applications main page, so we can keep FaceBook good, clean, and fun.

Facebook’s ability for users and companies to make and distribute applications within its social network has been a rather unstoppable force within the Web 2.0 world. And it has been exciting seeing all the applications that have been developed and all the companies that have jumped on board to build their presence on Facebook. But until now, the only people that could actually make applications for Facebook were people with the ability to code- leaving all us non-coders out of the fun.

Therefore, WidgetBox.com has published a web-based tool that allows anyone to create an application for Facebook.

The application creation tool is one we’ve all been waiting for, and one many people and businesses can benefit from a great deal. For instance, small businesses can now setup a basic application to help promote their business and users can make tools to share with friends- all at no cost at all or having to learn any programming language.

Truthfully, I see this as just another indication that Facebook will one day be the biggest and best social network on the web.

From Mashable, among others, we find that Facebook will soon be listing profiles in search engined like Google, MSN and Yahoo. So if you have a Facebook profile and you have not set it to private, I can “Google” you and find your Facebook page.

To be more accurate, the full profiles will not return in search results, just something that looks like this (from the Facebook blog) :

So your full listing will not appear, but people will certainly be able to get to it provided that they login (or join).

What does this mean? Well, ultimately it will certainly mean more page views and traffic for Facebook, along with more users signing up for their service. Imagine if you’re looking for your old high school friend. Well, you probably do what many people do and just “Google” that friend and voila! - you spot their picture and profile on Facebook. But then how to get in touch with that person? Join Facebook, of course. Considering the number of name searches that probably take place on Google on a daily basis, this should turn out pretty well for Facebook. To be accurate, other social networks, including LinkedIn, have a similar functionality. If you Google your friend who has a LinkedIn profile, it will likely return fairly high in the search results. The page is a shortened version with only some information but also a neat invitation to join LinkedIn so you can see everything about that person.

For Google, it’s more information to index, which is good for them in their quest to index, well, everything. Knowing that you can find friends and old co-workers and the like using Google only makes it a more attractive search engine for users, which of course makes it more profitable for Google.

For the average user, it will open up their profile to more people. That’s either good or bad, depending on your preference and feelings about privacy. Other than name, I don’t believe there is any more information that Facebook will pull from your profile for now. It’s in Facebook’s best interest to get your profile showing up in search more, but from your standpoint you might not want that. Perhaps down the line there will be more opportunities to pull some other information that could help locate someone. For instance, if I don’t remember that person’s last name but I know our High School name then could I find his Facebook profile using Yahoo?

Of course, any Facebook user can control what information is out there in these searches. You can now uncheck a box on your settings page that removes your profile from search engine results. You have about a month to do that, so if you’re worried about privacy you have some time.

Another thing to consider in this development (and in others from similar sites) is how you manage your online reputation, a point brought up here. As more information about you is available to others in search engines, you need to be conscious of what is out there and what people can find. You wouldn’t want your prospective employer (or your current employer for that matter), for example, finding your profile if it had some compromising photos or rants.

That time is once again among us. The time when parents rejoice and children cringe: Back to School!

I’ve compiled a list of Web 2.0 websites sure to help you with any school related matters! So whether you’re going to college for your first year or returning yet again, this list is sure to help you out!

Facebook.com – If you have not yet created a Facebook account, there is no better time than now. Use Facebook to meet new people, learn about new activities (whatever they may be), and stay in contact with other students and friends.

RateMyProfessors.com – This one can help you GREATLY! With RMP you can find information about teachers or even add your own. Use this before you start to make your schedule to learn more about particular teachers.

Ebay.com & Craigslist.org – Use both websites to get good deals on text books and school supplies! But why these two when there are many others dedicated to solely school matters? Well with Ebay and Craiglist you can buy almost ANYTHING else too!

Yelp.com – If you’re going to school in a new location, you will need to know all the not-so-hot and HOT spots. Yelp is a review site where all reviews are user submitted, so you can learn about places before you check them out- right from other students.

Stu.dicio.us – There is nothing worse than losing notes or just leaving them somewhere. With Stu.dicio.us you can take/save/share notes, todos lists, documents, and even connect with Facebook friends, and have everything available from any computer with Internet access.

Citationmachine.net – MLA, APA- WHAT? Still having trouble writing citations? Use this website to correctly structure your citations for your papers by simply filling out a form.

Books.Google.com – Need to check out a book, but have no time to get to a real library (who still goes to those places anyway?), just try doing a search in this Google tool. You will find hundreds of books completely digitized by Google. Though, they do not have as big a selection as some libraries, it is still a good start.

All of the mentioned sites have helped me in school, but I am sure there are many other great ones out there. So if you have any not on the list, just add them to the comments section.

Good luck!

Google has formally announced that it will begin trying ads on select YouTube videos. The way this will work, according to the announcement, is by having a short ad rise up from the bottom 20% of the video. The ad will have an X for you to close it out if you wish, and if not it will go away after it has played.

If you click on the ad, it will pause the video playing and play another short video in the middle of your video player. Once it has finished (or before if you don’t like what you see) you go back to your video. Clicking onto the ad video will also launch a new destination page for the advertiser, if you so choose. See some screen shots from the Linkin Park video below for an example:

On Click:

You can also see another example HERE - this one sheds a little more light on the relevancy factor, illustrating when these ads will actually show up. Of course with audio-to-text still not very good, relevancy will continue to be a question.

There are, of course, many people not too excited and a quick look at the comments on the blog post indicate that Youtube users are not really looking forward to this at all. But it will probably be a little longer before we see truly how everyone feels. The ads will only show up on YouTube content partners’ content for now (approximately 1,000 partners or so) and I’m sure won’t be rolled out entirely at once. But once users start to see them more, we’ll certainly see things showing up in the blogosphere about it.

I think it’s a step in the right direction. Others have been trying it - VideoEgg, for example, has tried something similar, as some have noted. However in YouTube this will certainly be the big stage for this all to play out on. In the Linkin Park example above, for instance, as the video is letterboxed the ad doesn’t actually interfere with any of the video’s content at all. Even in the Hairspray example, I’m really not bothered. And as someone who generally despises the approach of traditional advertising, I think that’s pretty impressive.

It’s understandable that your average YouTube user will not be too appreciative of the overall situation. While it is the truth, many folks probably won’t be thinking about the fact that Google put $1.6 billion dollars of investment into something that wasn’t making money and needs to find a way to change that. In fact, even though it is the almighty Google and they have a decent amount of cash to spare, if they cannot find acceptable ways to monetize YouTube it might not be long for this world. So while people may complain for now, I think “YouTube with ads” will be better for most than “no YouTube at all.” And this isn’t just for YouTube, it’s for all video sharing sites. There’s an awful lot of bandwidth being used up and someone has to pay for it.

Something has to be done in this space, so here we go. For me, the biggest questions will revolve around revenue sharing, copyright issues around ads and relevancy. I’m excited, should be interesting…

Here’s your chance to vent some stress and be in one of the most popular video game franchises ever!

Rockstar Games is currently giving anyone who calls their “WKTT Radio Hotline” a chance to express their feelings about whats wrong with their health, the world, America, or themselves.

This is such a great idea… It gives fans the opportunity to be part of the game, it gives Rockstar free content, and it creates a chance to sell more games. In fact, here is a perfect chance to harness the power of social media. For instance, they could produce and provide HTML badges to the lucky chosen “talent” that announce their “guest appearance” in the new GTA, so they would be able to post it on the web for others to see.

As well, I hope other video game developers get inspired by this and start implementing similar ideas in their game development.

Just imagine being able to to send in your photo and having a chance to be chosen as a character the next Tom Clancy game or sending in your own drawings/paintings and having them appear as scenery items in the next Resident Evil. In fact, the possibilities are endless, so it will be cool to see what is to come of all this.

Nevertheless, if your interested in the chance to brag to your friend about being in the new Grand Theft Auto. Just follow the link below…

WKTTradio.com

There have been some recent revelations (see article) on Whole Foods CEO John Mackey (aka “rahodeb”) who, from 1999 to 2006, made several anonymous postings on financial forums and sites putting down his company’s rival competitor Wild Oats. Among other postings, Mackey wrote that Wild Oates’ management “clearly doesn’t know what it is doing” and that the company “has no value and no future.” Oddly enough, Whole Foods announced this past February that they were buying Wild Oates for $565 million - perhaps the tofu-organic equivalent of “no value.”

According to the article, Whole Foods is saying 1) that many of Mackey’s comment, in that they were written over the course of many years across the web, are being taken out of context and 2) that the comments were Mackey’s personal comments and not those of the company. Uhhh, sure. Semantically, that may be true. But if this is the person who runs said company, might there be some cross over? I think maybe.

To be realistic here, I highly doubt that any of Mackey’s anonymous comments had any effect on stock price or investors’ handling of their Wild Oats stocks. Nonetheless, it’s still bad PR and it reflects poorly on the company and its leader.

Recently Mackey has been blasting the FTC on the Whole Foods’ blog about their desire to block his company’s purchase of Wild Oats because of anti-trust concerns. While this may be raising eyebrows in some corners of the business world, from a social media standpoint this is certainly more proper behavior. We know who you are, we know who you work for and you can say whatever you want.

There have certainly been several examples of companies misbehaving in the social media space, often pretending NOT to be who they are to be more credible. (The irony being, of course, that once they are discovered the company’s credibility is shot.) This will likely continue until the end of time. In the same way that person to person interaction requires some feeling out before you start taking stock tips or buying a new sneaker brand, people in online spheres are pretty savvy and know not to believe every post in every forum. But not everyone knows…Ask me if my mom would know how to spot something online that might be a solicitation from an anonymous marketer and I’d say no. To her, and to many, the internet is where the information is…and it’s all right.

Surely people will continue to get fooled (not just my mom, mind you - me, you and everyone else…and multiple times). For small companies or individuals with no reputation at stake, aside from integrity there’s just not much stopping them from lying to people online. It really will be incumbent upon all of us online, just as in person, to pay attention to what information we’re taking in. But for large companies, it’s just not smart business to handle social media in this way. Don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want my company’s CEO pretending to be someone else online and talking stock tips about my company and its competitors. Mackey and Whole Foods lose credibility online instantly.

…on the bright side, however, if no respect from the investor community he did score himself some more female fans with comment like this - “I like Mackey’s haircut,” “Rahodeb” said. “I think he looks cute!” (See full WSJ Article)

Since Facebook officially launched the “Facebook Platform” in May, it has become more popular than ever. In fact, InsideFacebook.com has reported 65 million apps added by users in the first month alone.

The added functionality has no doubt been a shot of life for Facebook. So much that just the other day Facebook reported hitting thirty million active members on the site!

This got me thinking however: what exactly determines an “active” member within social networks?!

• If a member signs in once every two months to check their page: is that an active member?

• Is the active member number based on the amount of unique members signing in for the past month?

There is great debate as to what exactly is an active user. And until there is a standard definition for “active user” established… I guess MySpace can call a user that signed in once in the past 11 months an active user or whatsoever they please.

Nevertheless, this is very troubling; something both users and online marketers need to keep an eye out for. When social networks have the ability to use the word “active user” as they please, we all must be little hesitant when believing such news.

Oh… and don’t forget the countless number of robot operated spam pages on MySpace; they count as active users too!