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Have You Heard of Pheed Yet?

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pheed

Think of it as an eclectic mixture of Twitter, Vine, YouTube, Instagram, and your voice memo service all in one.  This new social networking website and mobile app is gaining traction, especially among the teenage and hipster generation. States website Inquistir.com, “Is Pheed just another new social media network to add to the seemingly ever growing list, or is the new social sharing platform really about to give Facebook and Twitter a run for their money? That’s the question social media commentators have been asking all week a Pheed takes over the number one spot as the most downloaded free social media app in iTunes, and holds the position for over a week.”

Pheed, an obvious pun on the word feed that Twitter and Facebook both use, is fairly easy to use, especially because its main features– upload a video/photo/audio recording, share someone’s content, follow someone, and more– has already been made intuitive by regular, daily use of other social networking websites and apps.

So what makes Pheed stand out among all other social networks? Claims the Huffington Post, “The catchphrase for Pheed, which launched in October 2012, is, ‘A new way to express yourself.’ Whether you want to do so in text, photos, videos, audio, voice or live broadcast, Pheed offers all of that functionality. Other social networks offer some of that, but not all of it.”

A quick sign up of a new profile (which allows you to use your existing Facebook or Twitter login information) shows no glaring glitches or confusion navigation paths. In fact, the only problem that a user may find with Pheed is that not enough of their friends and favorite celebrities are on it yet. Some celebrities– such as Kim Zolciak-Biermann from The Real Housewives of Atlanta and Jamie Foxx– are on and active on the site, but many of us who are in our twenties, thirties, and beyond may have a hard time finding other friends who are using the site.

Even though teenagers are seeming to be driving the growth of Pheed and other new social apps, it shouldn’t be ignored. The #1 downloaded app in the iTunes app store should never be ignored. However, Pheed is still less than six months old, so there is no telling how big (or small) it may be a year from now. While Twitter-owned 6 second video sharing app Vine continues to get attention, Pheed may be the next social networking site that you should be paying attention to.

The Contracts You Sign to Run a Site

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Contract ImageThough running a website might seem like a solitary endeavor at times, the truth is that pretty much nobody does it alone. You’re dependent on other companies to provide you the services you need to get your site online and keep it going.

However, those services are never truly free. Even if you don’t pay for them with cash, you still have to surrender various rights and privileges in order to make those services work. Even a company with no nefarious intentions, legally, needs guarantees and permissions from you to function.

These permissions and promises are handled in the form of terms of services (TOSes) that these companies get you to agree to before registering. These TOSes, though rarely read, are fundamentally contracts that you can and will be held accountable to.

But so few webmasters think twice before accepting the TOS on a new service and even fewer think about just how many they’ve agreed to just to keep their site online.

So, rather than going through and trying to highlight every thing you’ve surrendered with a click on a TOS, I’m going to go over some of the more common types of services that people register for when building a site and what the TOSes for those services routinely include. The idea isn’t to tell you what you have done, but what you might have done and what you need to look for when reviewing a site’s terms.

1. Web Hosting

Of all the contracts you have to sign, the agreement with your Web host is probably the most important for your site itself. Your Web host is what gets your site online and makes it visible to the world.

However, to do that, your host needs a broad range of rights in your work, including your text, photos and other content you upload to the service. From a copyright standpoint, this includes a right to display, modify (create derivative works) and, if the host is a commercial one that will be displaying their ads along with your content, commercial rights to your work.

Nearly all hosts take these rights on a non-exclusive basis, meaning that you can post it elsewhere, but when these rights terminate (and the host can no longer use the work) is often a thorny issue as sometimes deleting a work is not enough.

Perhaps more worrisome than the copyright issues is indemnification, where you agree to pay any legal expenses that the host may incur for your actions. This can include any legal damages and attorney’s fees if your host is sued but also any other losses they suffer.

Generally, this is limited to anything you do in violation of their TOS, but some hosts broaden it to anything, meaning that even legal activity that the host gets sued for could force you to pay their legal bills.

Always remember that your host has to protect its interests and is going to do everything it can to protect itself from any legal issues that could arise from your account.

2. CMS/Blogging Platform

Unless you use a host that has a built-in platform, such as Blogger or Tumblr, you likely had to download and install your own blogging platform or other CMS, such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc.

Most major platforms are licensed under the GPL or a different open source license. These actually grant you a lot of rights to use the work, including for commercial purposes, for free and gives you freedom to modify it as you see fit.

However, you also make several sacrifices as well. For one, if something goes wrong and the software harms you in a way (losing your data, etc.) there’s no legal recourse. This is common in nearly all software licenses, not just open source ones. Also, if you make changes to the platform and distribute them, you, depending on the exact license, will likely have to distribute the source code of your changes and license them under the same terms.

These might be small prices to pay for a robust, blogging platform but they are still issues to consider.

3. Media Host

If you use a media host to store and display multimedia content, such as YouTube, Soundcloud, Blip.TV, etc. they have largely the same set of requirements as a traditional host (including copyright and indemnification). However, expect to give up more copyrights in the work as the more involved service needs greater permission to convert your work into a format that can be seen online. Likewise, they’re going to want more broad commercial rights to display ads.

However, you’re also going to have greater and greater limitations with what you can do with the service. Though all hosts will prohibit you from putting up illegal content (for obvious reasons), media hosts are generally more interested in preserving community standards, such as YouTube’s community guidelines. Failure to follow these guidelines can result in videos being removed, accounts shuttered and, if you were earning money from views, lost revenue.

With media hosts, especially those that are paying you, expect a lot more oversight into what you’re doing, both in terms of what their TOS allows and in their enforcement of it.

4. Social Networking

Social networking sites have many of the same issues of copyright and indemnification that other kinds of hosts have. This makes sense because it basically is another Web host with social elements.

However, with social networking comes a whole new slate of concerns related to privacy. There are serious questions with these services regarding how much of your data they have, who they can share it with and when and the issues aren’t going away any time soon.

Of particular interest is what social networks can share with third parties, including advertisers, who may be interested in the data for the purpose of delivering better-targeted ads. However, since most social networks maintain a presence across the Web, that issue does not end when you leave the site and, if you embed social networking elements on your site, could involve your domain.

As a result, with social networking, it’s not enough to think about your interests, but also the interest and privacy of your visitors as well.

Bottom Line

As overwhelming as all of this might seem, it’s important to remember that these are just a small part of the much bigger picture. In addition to these services, you also likely use email, instant messaging, play games, video chat, VOIP and more, all with different contracts to look at and agree to.

This is why it’s important to read through a TOS before hitting “accept”. Otherwise, you’ll have no idea what you are agreeing to and what implications that might have for you down the road. While these contracts are necessary for companies to be able to host and display your content, they’re also an opportunity for overreaching, either out of fear or malice.

You need to protect your interests and the interests of your readers when you’re registering for services because these companies will not do it for you. Their contracts are written to protect them, not you, and it’s important to never forget that.

Failure to do so could wind up being very costly and put you in a very difficult situation later on.

Four Ways to Make Your Company Stand Out on LinkedIn

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linkedin-company-profile-tipsThere are several social media sites that companies need to keep updated, in order to have a good all-around social media presence. This can get overwhelming if not scheduled or delegated correctly, but fortunately, planning ahead of doing a lot of work proactively when profiles are created can make the process much easier. One profile that should be set up completely initial is a company’s LinkedIn page. Filling out certain fields of a LinkedIn company profile can make it stand out more when compared to competitors or other company profiles.

Basic Information

These basic information fields, including the company website URL, the locations, and the main industry, are what should be filled out first. Because the URL is hyperlinked automatically, this is especially crucial, because it both gives the company website a link and encourages LinkedIn users and visitors to visit the site.

Company Description

Because it is placed at the top of company profile, this field is very important. The company description is a large text field that can hold a large amount of information. It does cut off after 4 lines or 2 sentences (depending on length), calling for readers to “read more”. Because many users may not click the “read more”, put the most important information in these beginning lines.  Information that can be placed in this field includes services offered, mission statement, and main overview summary.

Company Blog RSS Feedlinkedin-company-profiles

This is an easy field to fill out, if you know the company’s blog RSS feed URL. For many blogs, the address is usually http://www.companyblog.com/rss/ or http://www.companyblog.com/feed/. This field is important because LinkedIn will automatically populate the company’s latest blog post, thus driving more traffic to the company website.

Company Specialties

Because users can search for specific keywords in fields like these, filling out the specialties field can help the company profile be found on LinkedIn. Be sure to use succinct keywords that are search terms that people may be searching for on the website. For instance, an internet marketing company should have “social media marketing” in the field instead of “We do Facebook and Twitter for clients!”. This makes the profile much easier to both read and be searched.

 

These are just some of the fields that are important when filling out a LinkedIn company profile. Filling out the entire profile can further increase the likelihood of attracting potential employees and customers.

20 Reasons to Switch to Google Plus

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Google Plus’ 100 million users may pale considerably in comparison to Facebook’s 800 million (!) but, as is illustrated by this infographic design by Infographic Labs, there are plenty of reasons to check out what could be the next big thing in social networking.

The most compelling reason would be for those who use other Google products to have seamless services. Our previous infographic about Google outlined the development of the company from it’s humble beginnings to the corporate giant it is today.

Will the New Digg 4.0 Bring Back Bloggers?

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Digg used to be one of the foremost ways to promote Web content, though after a series of changes in algorithm, many users who were bloggers, publishers, or SEOs fled. While it may not be used as much for content promotion as in the past, at least amongst my blogging and Web publishing colleagues, it still has some life in it yet. There’s a brand new version around the corner, Digg 4.0, and it has a number of new features, including several that tend to the social. But is it enough Will it bring back all the lost power users? Can it gain ground over the volume of content sharing done through social networks such as Facebook and Twitter? Or is it too late?

How Digg Used to Factor in Blog Content Promotion

As someone who used to write 3-5 anonymous linkbaits per week a few years ago, Digg was crucial to the success of my work; if my content didn’t get the home page, I’d be in less demand. As soon as people started gaming Digg, and Digg reacted to that by changing their algorithms, there was a domino effect. Many smaller publishers and bloggers felt that they were getting cheated while certain sites still got their content on the Digg homepage, even if a lesser known site had a better post on the same topic. Incidents of domain banning also seemed to go up.

In other words, things had just gotten worse for some bloggers and publishers. So why use Digg for promoting content, wasting time, money, effort?  My own services became less and less in demand, at least at the rates that I used to get, because publishers were not willing to spend money on campaigns that might fail on Digg. That ushered in cheap linkbaits cranked out with little quality (though some still do well thanks to voting networks). I in turn stopped using Digg regularly, as did many of my colleagues. I’m not bitter; I just don’t use Digg all that much anymore unless someone asks me.

A typical approach a few years ago, to promote content, might be to use some combination of Digg, Reddit, Mixx, Propeller, Stumbleupon, Delicious and other social voting/ bookmarking sites, depending on the niche. Regardless of the combination and the sequence of submission, Digg was often a crucial part of the promotion for some publishers, and it wasn’t working for them anymore.

How Blog Content Gets Promoted Now

Meanwhile, those who discovered the power of Facebook and Twitter for content sharing went that route. These two social networks (yes, Twitter is one, not just a microblogging service) have potentially greater power for creating viral content than social voting and bookmarking sites. Why? Because of a number of reasons:

  1. Trust factor. With Facebook at least, your social network tends to be comprised of people who know you, even if only online. That isn’t always the case with a voting site, even if it allows for “friending,” because Facebook allows for conversation that helps you get to know someone better. Obviously, you’re more likely to re-share web content posted by someone you know than to vote up content submitted on Digg by someone you might know not very well, if at all. Digg did have limited interaction through their “shout” feature, though I think that was dropped a while back. But it wasn’t the same as conversation. The “conversation” is on Facebook, and to a lesser degree, on Twitter.
  2. Wider audience. With 400M+ users, Facebook has a broad range of users, and ultimately, we’re all much more connected than on voting sites. I’m definitely more connected to other users on Twitter than I ever was on Digg or other social voting and bookmarking sites.
  3. Ease of sharing. It’s easy to share content from a range of topics and have someone re-share it, on both Twitter and Facebook. Facebook even gives you a nice little snapshot of what to expect. That means more people are likely to share interesting content.With voting sites, before voting buttons were available for placing on blogs, if you wanted votes, you had to convince someone to sign up for one or more social voting/ bookmarking sites. The probability of success was low then and I’m not even sure it’s that great now, even with the availability of voting buttons. Now, even if friends did sign up, getting them to spend time daily checking on Digg to see if you needed a vote or ten was an uphill battle. If you voted too fast as a group, or if the same people voted en masse, or if you frowned at Digg the wrong way, Digg might punish you — unless you were one of maybe 10-15 sites that seemed untouchable.
  4. Better viral infrastructure. Facebook doesn’t the restrictions Digg imposed, when it comes to sharing content, nor does Twitter. As such, interesting content can go viral sooner, and having the shortest viral loop is crucial for content to become viral. Even just a half-dozen retweets in short order of shared content can help bring in Web traffic and thus be a more valuable approach than using a voting site full of rules. If you cross-promote on Twitter and Facebook, without managing to p*ss off your friends/ followers, the potential for the success of Web content is even higher.

The Return of Digg?

But Digg has been reinvented. Founder Kevin Rose is at the helm again, and there are a slew of new features, many of which are “social.” I’m not going to get into all of them, but the relevant stuff is that you can import your social graphs from Facebook and Twitter. You can also log in with your Facebook profile, though I believe that was there before Digg 4.0’s release. You can also import contacts from GMail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and AOL, though I don’t know when these features were added. The other features of Digg 4.0 (which by the way is not live yet) are described in a recent Techcrunch post, but as many people are saying, they seem to be copying some of the better features of Twitter and Facebook?

Will these features be enough to bring lost users, especially bloggers, to Digg? I’m willing to keep an open mind, though don’t have the time to invest again. But before completing this post, I thought I’d synchronize my original Digg account with my Facebook account, in preparation for Digg 4.0 going live. Unfortunately after going through three or four registration screens, I got a “Yikes, we just had an error.”

The voting/ bookmarking flavors of Social Media can still work, provided you follow some simple tips, but I’m not sure Digg will be in my arsenal anymore. Me, I’m sticking to Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon, Delicious and a few others. Still, if you ask me to Digg and I like the content, I probably will. You can add me on Facebook; just remember to make a mention of why you’re adding in the message area or I’ll ignore the add.

The Pros and Cons of Auto Tweeting Blog Posts

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Back when I first started using Twitter in 2007, I had become fond of tweeting updates whenever I had a new post on my personal blog. I also tweeted everytime I made a post on several network blogs I edited and contributed to. After a while, it became tedious, and I decided to use one of those WordPress plugins that automatically updates your Twitter status when you had a new blog post.

The concept is pretty simple–the updates could actually go both ways. The plugin will automatically tweet the blog post title as soon as you hit the publish button. You also have the option of consolidating your tweets for a day, and publishing these as a blog post (which I personally find tacky).

For a while, I thought having these updates on auto-pilot seemed good. But when I realized I, myself, ignored automatic update notifications from my Twitter friends most of the time. Unless you run a Twitter account solely to provide updates to your readers about new posts, you most likely run your Twitter account to communicate and connect. And I think it’s best to use this to really talk engage with your readers, rather than blindly update them when you have posts elsewhere.

I guess it’s similar to how I’m not so cool with the idea of cross-posting between Twitter and other microblogging services, such as Plurk. It gives the perception that you’re not actively engaging with your Twitter friends and contacts. It makes it seem they’re not important enough to spend a minute copying and pasting (and shortening) URLs, and typing a few words to introduce your text. It makes them wonder whether you’re actually logged into your Twitter account to read replies and messages, if anyone wants to respond.

Manually posting Twitter updates when you have a new blog post is better, in that you can personalize the message that comes with the link. Sometimes, a blog post’s title is not self-explanatory enough, unless you’re an expert at writing headlines. You can get readers more interested in your blog post if you include a catchy tagline or blurb using your own words, or as an excerpt from the blog post.

Furthermore, when you write about the new post in your own words, it makes it more conversational, and it helps you connect better. For instance, rather than just tweet:

The Pros and Cons of Auto Tweeting Blog Posts – http://shortenedurlhere

I can perhaps say:

What do you think of automatic tweeting blog post updates? – http://shortenedurlhere

By asking a question, my friends and followers can pitch in. Or perhaps I can write something more retweet-worthy, so both my tweet and blog post get better traction.

People easily get tired of automatic tweets. But if you make your Twitter followers feel important by personalizing your tweet, then that helps in winning them over. Instead of getting a lot of zombies to read your posts, you get real people liking and loving what you write, reacting to these, and possibly helping spread the word.

When you’re in a network environment, with dozens and dozens of blogs and contributors, it can get unwieldy. In these cases, it might be easier to do automatic updates, but only if you intend the Twitter account as an update mechanism to alert readers of new updates to the network or to that particular blog. Otherwise, you can perhaps ask each contributor to be active in linking to their posts on their own Twitter accounts.

Have you tried auto-tweeting plugins? What has your experience been, so far?