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Google Analytics API Now Available To Developers

Google recently announced that the Google Analytics Data Export API which was in beta is now currently available to all developers. The API provides read-only access to your analytics data. On top of that, any data which is available through the standard analytics interface is available through this API meaning you could create your own desktop application to monitor your site versus using your browser. Now that the API is available to all, it will be interesting to see various widgets, gadgets, and applications spring up which allow you to easily keep tabs on your data in not so traditional ways.

For more information check out the official analytics blog post.

Are You Filtering TinyURLs?

With only 140 characters to get your point across on Twitter, thank goodness for services that create TinyURLs. However, I’m starting to notice at least on my blog that commenter’s are linking to things using these types of links. While TinyURL.com does allow you to create a special URL which contains the ability to preview where the link is going to go before you arrive their, all it takes these days to have your PC compromised is one click. I’ve started to remove those URLs from the comments made on my blog. Have you noticed the same trend? If so, are you allowing TinyURLs to be published on your blog or are you removing them?

Will Twitter names and accounts become commodities?

It used to be that good domains sold for a premium. Now, with celebrities getting on the Twitter bandwagon, they’re getting much attention from us lesser mortals. @aplusk, for instance (which is Ashton Kutcher) has broken the 1 Million follower mark. Other celebrities, have significant followings, too, such as @oprah with 500 thousand plus, and even @mrskutcher, with 700 thousand plus.

Arguably, the number of followers is not as significant as the quality. But then again, this only goes to show that on Twitter, branding would come in important at one time or another. And this means that like domains, Twitter usernames or accounts are probably going to be the next big commodity for domainers to buy, hoard, and potentially sell later on.

Good .COM domains sell for top dollar. Sure, regular ones sell for a little over six bucks, but premium ones can go for millions, like business.com, sex.com, casino.com, and other short, identifiable domains. Big blogs have been known to be sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

How about Twitter names? Will twitter name squatting be an issue? Twitter’s terms of service does stipulate that they reserve the right to reclaim usernames on behalf of businesses or individuals that hold legal claim or trademark on those usernames.

How about Twitter accounts? Can you build up a good Twitter stream and then sell it after a few months or years? Or will microblogging lose its magic now that it’s no longer a niche thing, but something mainstream?

Jonathan Bailey Launches CopyrightFail.com

Jonathan Bailey who has been a longtime contributor to Performancing.com, especially within the Legal section of the Performancing forums has launched a brand new sister site called CopyrightFail.com. The site aims to be a collection of links, quotes, images, and other tidbits of information showcasing copyright stupidity from across the web. Jonathan does a great job with PlagiarismToday.com and I expect his CopyrightFail blog to be a success considering the amount of stupidity that exists around the subject.

On the topic of copyrighting, be sure to check out our own Copyright Management Service.

Content scraping is one of the biggest headaches a blogger faces. Once you hit that publish button, your articles are prone to automatic copying and republishing by not-so-trustworthy websites who do not link back. Some of these scrapers even earn from your hard work by slapping on some advertisements, text links or affiliate links on their own sites, as if it were their own.

The Performancing Copyright Management Service does the hard work for you. Our copyright experts will track down websites, blogs, forums and other sites that infringe on your rights as a publisher. We will then give you a comprehensive report with suggested courses of action. If you choose to, we can also act on these violations on your behalf, by initiating takedown notices and making sure your original content stays where it should–on your blog! Price includes initial consultation, tracking, initial report and appropriate action on three (3) infringing sites.

Get Started Now For $300

Brian Clark Releases Outsourcing Report

Brian Clark who operates Copyblogger.com released a report he calls The Outsourcing Conspiracy. While much has been said regarding Tim Ferris and his 4-hour work week, the other side of the story doesn’t seem to have had much attention. Too many people believe that you can do very little and just outsource the rest but thanks to this report, you get a down to earth reality check regarding the costs involved with outsourcing, legal ramifications, how to get FREE help, the myths involved with outsourcing, and finally, how people like Brian Clark and others got started without outsourcing.

The report is free and you don’t need to give them an email address to download it. Make sure you have a PDF viewer installed on your computer as the report is in PDF format.

Is Twitter’s thousand-per-day follower limit really a problem?

I must admit to being a little perplexed by some of the reactions to Twitter imposing a thousand-per-day limit on the number of people users can follow.

Perhaps that suggests that I’m not a power user, and it certainly means that I’m not employing any celebrity or monetary tactics to improve my count (though if a charity benefits, I won’t complain much).

I do get that it’s something else that’s causing an issue for Twitter developers, particularly those involved with auto-follow apps. Thing is, I don’t really agree with auto-following people. To me, that implies that the Twitter users are blindly reciprocating just because they feel they ought to.

Now, I have recently subscribed to the viewpoint that it is good to reciprocate follows – however I do so manually. Granted, I only get a handful of new followers each day at present so it’s no great problem, but it does mean I have a better chance at weeding out spammers from the outset.

I just can’t get my head around the concept that anyone getting over one thousand follows per day can possibly keep up following them all back. There must come a point where reciprocating becomes meaningless?

I don’t really have an answer to this (there probably isn’t one) but I’d be interested to hear your views.

As a closing note, though, I do find it all rather daft when I read certain users calling Twitter’s actions “corrupt” and likening them to the Iranian government. It’s definitely time to tweet less about Twitter and more about life itself.

Keep On Top Of Trends With TrendPedia

With everything that takes place on the web, keeping track of trends can be a tough process. Although Google provides a Trend search of their own, TrendPedia looks to have its place in the trend search market. The front page of TrendPedia showcases the hottest trends from the previous month as well as popular trends from the previous week.

At the top of the site, you are provided three text fields which will add combine all three trend searches into a comparable graph chart. In my test drive, I compared MovableType, WordPress, and LiveJournal.

For whatever reason, I could not get any trend results for MovableType. For LiveJournal and WordPress, the chart showcases WordPress in the lead with 68% of articles around WordPress with 32% dedicated to LiveJournal. Search results for each trend are shown in their own tab at the bottom of the site and consists mostly of blog posts. This means you can use TrendPedia to get a grasp on blogs staying abreast of the latest trends.

I think Google Trends has a nicer interface and a cleaner way of presenting the information but I find TrendPedia cool because of the mentions of blog post in the search results. At any rate, it’s nice to have more than one site in this market.

Is your blog authentic?

Hi, happy weekend! I’d like to share with you a little thought that borders on being a devil’s advocate when it comes to the new media industry. I wanted to zero in on the talk about “authenticity” — and ask you to reflect on these questions:

Is your money making blog authentic, or is it a fake Problogger.net?

Is your entertainment blog authentic, or is it just a fake Perez Hilton?

Is your tech blog authentic, or is it a fake Engadget?

With thousands of blogs created everyday, what makes yours authentic? In the book Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, authors James Gilmore and Joe Pine expressed how at times we create products that try too hard to emulate the good practices of something superior, it ends up becoming an inferior copycat.

When we were young, we were brought up to think that we were the unique child that filled mom and dad with love and joy. As we grew older we realized that we needed to fit in a social group lest we suffer the social consequences of being called an outcast. The same applies to when we worked for a company and the attitudes, values and business acumen were passed down enabling us to behave in a certain way. When we entered the blogging industry, we learned that there were certain rules to finding great keywords. We learned how the big sites accumulated traffic. We learned link baiting, keyword research, template design optimization and many more.

Do the hundreds of thousands of blog templates truly emanate who we are? Do we sacrifice our writing style for optimizing our blog post for keyword search? Do we write about topics that contextually yield more money than our true passions?

These are general questions, and wise guys can easily contest most of these. But I must drive my point down — in today’s blogs, how do we know that something is authentic?