The Mobile App Trends Series is supported by Sourcebits, a leading product developer for mobile platforms. Sourcebits offers design and development services for iOS, Android, Mobile and Web platforms. Follow Sourcebits on Twitter for recent news and updates.

Figuring out how much to charge for an app is not easy. It’s all about finding the right balance between what it costs to produce and maintain the application, and how much users are willing to pay for it. Other factors to take into account are revenue from in-app purchases and in-app advertising.

The average selling price for applications — across all platforms — continues to decline. Some of that decrease has to do with increased competition. But another big part of the decrease in app retail prices is the availability of alternative revenue streams for developers. Rather than charge a flat, up-front fee for an application, app creators are beginning to spread revenue generation across the entire app experience, particularly in-app purchases and in-app advertising.

So what should you charge for your app? Here’s a rundown of three options.

1. Freemium or Lite

Freemium is the concept of giving away free version of a product or service while charging for a more advanced version with increased functionality (hence the portmanteau of “free” and “premium”). The idea is that users will love the free version so much, they’ll be more than willing to pony up for an even better, paid version.

But that’s not always how it works out. The popular Instapaper app famously dropped its free version earlier this year. When Marco Arment removed the free version of Instapaper from the app store, he found that sales of the paid version actually increased. The free app has other drawbacks, too. It might create an “image problem” whereby users don’t even realize that the app they’re using is limited compared to the full version.

It’s easier to build a strong case for freemium when it comes to gaming. Users start out at a very basic level and then evolve and grow their game skills from there. It makes sense that they’d start with the early free version, and then graduate on to the paid version once they’re ready to. The use case for gamers is more linear, and the paid version is just another step in the game’s path.

According to a study by app marketing consultant Distimo, the average selling price of games in major app stores declined 28% over the last year, while the revenue generated by the most successful freemium (or “lite”) games increased tenfold during this period in the Apple App Store for iPhone.

2. In-App Purchases

During this same period, Distimo found that in-app purchases within games have exploded. Last year, 8% of top-grossing games relied on in-app purchases. But this year, the number has skyrocketed to a whopping 52% of top-grossing apps using in-app purchases as a significant part of their revenue model. That helped propel top-grossing games to a 79% increase in total revenue.

3. Advertising

In-app advertising is a great way to generate ongoing revenue for your application. You’ll only get paid once for an app download, but you can continue getting paid through in-app advertising. There is a huge range of advertising opportunities — everything from small banners to intrusive pop-overs. The key is to find a balance and manage user expectations for how annoying and invasive the ads will be. Users generally realize and expect that free versions of paid apps will have more intense ads.

The Great Debate: Free vs. Paid

Charging upfront for an app is clearly not the only way to generate revenue. Many applications are free because they promote or support some other paid service (e.g. Netflix’s app). But there are still plenty of apps that are directly aimed at generating revenue but are free. The idea is that giving an app away for free but loading it up with advertising can generate more revenue than a paid app because many more users will download the free app.

One easy way for developers to get attention is to temporarily reduce the price of their app to free. It’s not unheard of for apps to drop from $9.99 to free for a “limited time only.” When an app goes from paid to free, the blogosphere usually pays attention. People love getting things for free, and apps are no exception. When users realize they need to act fast to get the app for free, it can create a small whirlwind of buzz. There are even a number of websites that specialize in tracking app price drops, such as 148Apps and AppShopper.

The upside for developers is that their apps get attention and expand their userbase. The downside is that they aren’t making much money from it. One hope is that by giving the app away for free for a short time, the “sale” will still draw users to the app even after the price returns to normal. Another reason for dropping the price and attempting to attract a rush of new users is the hope of an app making its way onto bestseller lists. However, data from one researcher shows that the correlation between making an app free and breaking into bestseller lists is dubious at best.

What To Charge?

There are a number of factors that should help you determine what to charge for your app. The first step in determining your app’s price is to do some competitive analysis. What’s the going rate for similar apps, and what are prices of apps in similar categories? Undercutting competitors on price is an easy way to gain traction and attention, but if your app is significantly more complex or advanced, you should still be able to charge more for your superior offering.

The key to app pricing is setting user expectations. Users expect simple apps to be either free or 99 cents. More complex utilities often sell for between $2.99 and $4.99. Apps in the $4.99+ range need to have an expansive feature set and lots of polish. That is, they need to look good and provide a great deal of value for the user. While users won’t know if they got their money’s worth until they install the app, users will be quick to leave negative feedback if they feel they’ve been ripped off, which will likely turn off future customers.

The highest app price allowed in the Apple app store is $999.99, and at least one app — BarMax CA, a prep course for the California bar exam — is currently listed at that price.

Experiment

App prices aren’t fixed. Leverage the ease with which prices can be changed to experiment with various price points. Try releasing the app with a slightly higher price and then lowering it over time. Keep in mind, however, that initial release is the best time to attract attention for your app, so don’t squander the good will you build with the blogosphere by charging an outrageous price.

Where Do Your Users Live?

App developers must take into account their target audience and market. For example, that same study by Distimo found that users in Asia are significantly less inclined to download paid apps than their Western counterparts. In-app purchases also tend to be less robust in the Asian market. Thus, developers often rely on in-app advertising as a primary revenue source in that region.

Commissions & Refunds

One last thing to remember is that some app stores will take a cut of app sales and in-app purchases. Apple, for example, famously takes a 30% commission on app sales and in-app purchases. (You can read John Gruber’s rant about the “Dirty Percent,” as he calls it.) When calculating your app’s price, make sure you include the app store’s cut, including any processing fees.

One last thing to remember is the app store return policy. Pricing your app too high might result in a lot of returns once users see the quality and basic functionality. The Android Marketplace allows users to return apps within 15 minutes of purchase. The Apple App Store allows Taiwanese customers seven days to return apps. While Apple’s refund policy in Taiwan is such to comply with local law, it’s possible that Apple will eventually expand a similar trial and/or refund process to their App Stores in other countries.

Conclusion

The key to pricing your app is finding a balance between functionality and what users will find reasonable. If they aren’t happy, they’ll tell make it known via comments and ratings. Experiment with different price ranges, and most importantly, don’t rely on the app’s initial sale price to drive revenue. Rather, think of the app’s price as part of a wider revenue mix of in-app purchases and advertising.

The Mobile App Trends Series is sponsored by Sourcebits, a leading developer of applications and games for all major mobile platforms. Sourcebits has engineered over 200 apps to date, with plenty more to come. Sourcebits offers design and development services for iPhone, Android and more. Please feel free to get in touch with us to find out how we can help your app stand apart in a crowded marketplace. Follow Sourcebits on Twitter and Facebook for recent news and updates.

More Mobile Resources from Mashable:

- 5 Innovative Mobile Marketing Campaigns to Learn From
- Native App vs. Web App: Which Is Better for Mobile Commerce?
- The 3 Most Effective Approaches to In-App Advertising
- 5 Mobile App Trends You Can’t Ignore
- How HTML5 Is Aiding in Cross-Platform Development

More About: Android Market, apple app store, Mobile App Trends Series, mobile apps

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Kenneth Cole, who seemed to shy away from social media after a well-publicized Twitter flap earlier this year, is courting controversy anew with a website that asks consumers to weigh in on abortion, gun control and gay rights.

The new site — wheredoyoustand.com — is divided in two. “What You Stand In” features information and advice about clothing for men and women. “What You Stand For,” meanwhile, asks consumers to post their thoughts about those hot-button topics and posts links to relevant Twitter feeds under the heading “Feeding the Debate.” Those conversations also continue on the brand’s Facebook Page.

The site also maintains the brand’s edgy — some would say tasteless — method of conflating serious topics with sales pitches. A video under the heading “Should the government have the right to choose?” shows a woman who seems to be agonizing over a decision, which turns out to be which handbag to purchase. “Shouldn’t it be a woman’s right to choose?” a message on the wall behind her reads, “…if she’s the one who’s carrying it? — Kenneth Cole.”

Cole raised public ire on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 by noting, “Important moments like this are time to reflect. To remind us, sometimes, that it’s not only important what you wear, but it’s also important to be aware.”

In the video gallery below, Cole explains the reasoning behind the outreach, which is to use his brand platform to “raise awareness about important social issues.”

What do you think? Is this clever marketing or exploitation? Let us know in the comments.

Antisocial Media

Kenneth Cole explains his rationale for the new web site, to use his brand platform to “”raise awareness about important social issues.”

Pro-Choice

A woman is shown agonizing over a decision, which turns out to be which handbag to buy. Shouldn’t it be a woman’s right to choose?” a message on the wall behind her reads, “…if she’s the one who’s carrying it?”

Guns

Two guys face off in what looks like a gunfight, but they’re actually just making gun shapes with their fingers. “Is the person most at risk the one with the gun?” asks some writing on the wall behind them.

Gay Rights

A man and a woman begin kissing. Then a jump cut shows two women kissing. Then two men. A message on the wall reads, “Those against same-sex marriage aren’t thinking straight (or are they)?”

War

A man and a woman are screaming in protest. Then the screaming stops, the woman leaves and the man is left by himself. “In war, is it who’s right or who’s left?” a message reads.

More About: facebook, kenneth-cole, MARKETING, twitter

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The first issue of the magazine is out today. Publisher Cool Blue Company announced its availability at the Barnes and Noble bookstore chain in the U.S., as well as distribution in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.

Sponsor

Hopefully, the print version is more elegant and effective than the magazine’s online presence. Stumbling around the Geocities-inspired web site I made the signal error of clicking “Check In.” My browser crashed and my computer froze. So, there’s that.

The publication is also available as a “standalone flash digital e-zine” and an iTunes app.

The debut issue’s cover was designed by Yiying Lu, known for her design of Twitter’s fail whale.

Robert Fine, the founder of Cool Blue, says advance orders of the second issue are up 20% over the launch issue. Single issues are on sale for $4.99 for a print copy and $2.99 for the digital version. A year’s subscription runs $29.99 and comes with digital access. There is no information on how many copies of the first issue have sold.

It seems that, after a long period of expansion, with many products offered for free, we have now entered a period of contraction. Earlier today we wrote about the movement away from free online television content and maybe this magazine’s approach is an expression of that same trend.

The articles in the first issue do not seem particularly compelling to me. (See graphic below.) But you may feel differently. Let us know in the comments.

More generally, I personally I love the printed page. But I’m unsure of its utility when it comes to the topic of social media. What do you think? Is there a reason for a print magazine on an essentially paperless topic?

Discuss

Go to Source

The first issue of the magazine is out today. Publisher Cool Blue Company announced its availability at the Barnes and Noble bookstore chain in the U.S., as well as distribution in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.

Sponsor

Hopefully, the print version is more elegant and effective than the magazine’s online presence. Stumbling around the Geocities-inspired web site I made the signal error of clicking “Check In.” My browser crashed and my computer froze. So, there’s that.

The publication is also available as a “standalone flash digital e-zine” and an iTunes app.

The debut issue’s cover was designed by Yiying Lu, known for her design of Twitter’s fail whale.

Robert Fine, the founder of Cool Blue, says advance orders of the second issue are up 20% over the launch issue. Single issues are on sale for $4.99 for a print copy and $2.99 for the digital version. A year’s subscription runs $29.99 and comes with digital access. There is no information on how many copies of the first issue have sold.

It seems that, after a long period of expansion, with many products offered for free, we have now entered a period of contraction. Earlier today we wrote about the movement away from free online television content and maybe this magazine’s approach is an expression of that same trend.

The articles in the first issue do not seem particularly compelling to me. (See graphic below.) But you may feel differently. Let us know in the comments.

More generally, I personally I love the printed page. But I’m unsure of its utility when it comes to the topic of social media. What do you think? Is there a reason for a print magazine on an essentially paperless topic?

Discuss

Go to Source

The first issue of the magazine is out today. Publisher Cool Blue Company announced its availability at the Barnes and Noble bookstore chain in the U.S., as well as distribution in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.

Sponsor

Hopefully, the print version is more elegant and effective than the magazine’s online presence. Stumbling around the Geocities-inspired web site I made the signal error of clicking “Check In.” My browser crashed and my computer froze. So, there’s that.

The publication is also available as a “standalone flash digital e-zine” and an iTunes app.

The debut issue’s cover was designed by Yiying Lu, known for her design of Twitter’s fail whale.

Robert Fine, the founder of Cool Blue, says advance orders of the second issue are up 20% over the launch issue. Single issues are on sale for $4.99 for a print copy and $2.99 for the digital version. A year’s subscription runs $29.99 and comes with digital access. There is no information on how many copies of the first issue have sold.

It seems that, after a long period of expansion, with many products offered for free, we have now entered a period of contraction. Earlier today we wrote about the movement away from free online television content and maybe this magazine’s approach is an expression of that same trend.

The articles in the first issue do not seem particularly compelling to me. (See graphic below.) But you may feel differently. Let us know in the comments.

More generally, I personally I love the printed page. But I’m unsure of its utility when it comes to the topic of social media. What do you think? Is there a reason for a print magazine on an essentially paperless topic?

Discuss

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You answered, and we culled your responses from Google Plus, Twitter and Facebook, and used Storify to present it all back to you. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

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View “How do you feel about the 20th anniversary of Linux?” on Storify

Discuss

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You answered, and we culled your responses from Google Plus, Twitter and Facebook, and used Storify to present it all back to you. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

Sponsor

View “How do you feel about the 20th anniversary of Linux?” on Storify

Discuss

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You answered, and we culled your responses from Google Plus, Twitter and Facebook, and used Storify to present it all back to you. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

Sponsor

View “How do you feel about the 20th anniversary of Linux?” on Storify

Discuss

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If you and your non-profit have steered clear of Google+ during its “people only” phase, now is a good time to reconsider. Yes, your Facebook and Twitter presences are still important — and will continue to be — but the new social network in town has lots of great features you can take advantage of right now.

While Google publicly announced that group and business pages are imminent, non-profits should not wait to wet their feet. Non-profit social media consultant Beth Kanter recommends communications staff spend 15 minutes each day dabbling in the new network.

We asked non-profit staff for their best practices experimenting with Google+ and their hopes for the future of the new social network. Here are four ways non-profits can make the most of the growing network.

1. Host Exclusive Hangouts

Looking for a great way to reward your major donors or dedicated volunteers? Use Hangouts, Google+’s video conferencing feature, to host a hangout with a celebrity or major player in your organization. Your supporters will love the individualized attention of a small hangout that rewards their commitment.

Tammy Gordon, AARP‘s director of social communication and strategy, hopes to kick off their 9/11 day of service with an inspiring speech from a celebrity ambassador in a hangout. “It will be a great way to connect with key volunteers,” says Gordon.

The host of the hangout should create a circle for the event’s participants, such as “9/11 day of service volunteers.”

The AARP team is nervous about using a particular staff member’s personal account to host a large-scale hangout. This concern is probably shared by many organizations longing for the launch of group and business pages.

One way to overcome these worries is to have the speaker host the hangout. If the host is a part of your non-profit’s team, consider the hangout an opportunity for your volunteers to maintain a human contact at your organization.

2. Cater to Your Circles

Circles are a great way to target key messengers, rather than bombard non-interested parties. Try organizing circles by unique interests, geographical location or donation history.

Danielle Brigida, National Wildlife Federation’s social media outreach chair, organizes her circles by their interests. Her circles include policy professionals, wildlife enthusiasts and photographers. She emphasizes that followers can be in multiple circles, so arrange circles with greater precision.

Carefully curated circles are a great way to crowdsource ideas from your valued followers. You can ask your volunteers what types of events they would like to see, or ask your donors for upcoming campaign ideas. Spark conversations among people with shared interests.

Gordon hopes that business pages will include opt-in circles so followers can select the type of information to receive. The AARP plans to offer circles on health, social security, consumer entertainment and politics.

3. Huddle or Hangout with Your Coworkers

The Worldreader team jokes that it got a lot done during its “turbo-hangouts,” says Susan Moody, director of communications. With an international team that spans continents and time zones, Worldreader can use Google+’s new option for easy conferencing.

Similarly, AARP’s communications team is planning a hangout this Wednesday for its first Google+ webinar.

While Google+ is not the first platform to host group video conferencing, many companies have long paid for the service. Now, impromptu group calls can simplify and streamline collaborative brainstorming among coworkers.

Huddles are another way teams can stay in touch. Running late for a presentation? Have a brilliant idea to share during off hours? You can share updates with a group by name, email address or circle using the group texting feature of Google+’s iPhone app. Your huddle history is stored in the app, making it easy to connect with your team.

4. Unite Volunteers in a Huddle

If you’re putting on a major event, streamline communications for your volunteers via huddle. Just add the names of everyone who has signed up to a circle and let the messaging begin!

This can be especially helpful if you’re organizing highly coordinated or quickly changing events such as parades, rallies or protests.

Huddles may also be the perfect solution for sharing information with people on different email servers or mailing lists. The groups have no administrators, so people can easily add new volunteers to the conversation. If a volunteer drops out, he can easily remove himself from the list.

While Brigida has participated in some trial huddles among non-profit staff members, she hasn’t fully explored the potential of the Google+ group texting platform. However, its speed and ease will hopefully encourage ample implementation by non-profits.

Still Not Convinced?

Still confused about how your organization can maximize its Google+ experience, where group pages are currently forbidden? Think of it this way: People come to social networks to connect with other people. While each non-profit has a unique voice, it’s really you — the individuals behind the logo and mission statement — who are the heart and soul of your non-profit. Even if most of your audience is not the early adopter, tech-loving crew, Google’s latest brainchild can work wonders for your organization’s internal operations.

Have you and your non-profit tried Google+? Let us know in the comments about your experiments and successes.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, GiorgioMagini

More About: Google, Google Plus, non-profits, social good

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Lew Cirne is founder and CEO of New Relic, the leading SaaS-based web application performance management company supporting 10,000 customers including companies from Comcast to Zynga.

Twitter generates about eight terabytes of data a day. That’s a hell of a lot of data for one application. Some SaaS companies might look at that number and think that they’ll never need to handle that much data, or if they did, it would take far more infrastructure and server hardware than they could afford to maintain.

In both cases, they might be wrong.

Any SaaS business can handle as much data as Twitter and many can do it on only a handful of servers. It’s all a matter of understanding your data and planning your technology investments to be as scalable as possible. Sounds easy enough. So where do you begin?

1. Plan to Scale, Even in the Beginning

It may sound like premature optimization, but planning to scale is really just basic business strategy. Ask a few of these questions: How many people will realistically use the application in the next 6 to 12 months? What kind of data do you plan on creating or storing on their behalf? How long can all your customers “fit” on one server? What can you do when you have more customers or more data than that?

Take into account past growth patterns and expected growth rate and begin to determine the potential technological limits you’ll encounter. It’s also important to have mechanisms in place for unexpected growth. Think of it like an accounting process: When will infrastructure expenses outweigh the income? Planning to scale isn’t just about building the technology to accommodate growth. It’s also about informing business decisions.

Having a rough strategy for future growth will help you design your application and the infrastructure to operate it. You don’t need to build out all scaling capability at the start, but also don’t assume that the cloud will just scale by itself. You should keep some practicable ideas in the back of your mind for when the times comes.

2. Understand Your Data

Many fast growing SaaS companies feel like they’re just moments away from being buried under a mountain of data streaming in from their customers. There are so many ways to provide access to data, but you’re not quite sure how to weed through it all.

The key is to pay close attention to how users are actually accessing the data. For the majority of popular use cases, there is probably a much smaller set of data to care about. Understanding the most likely use cases for your application makes it easier to create and optimize a data handling strategy that will allow you scale.

3. Keep it Simple

Technology fads come and go. Every few months you hear about some new type of database or application framework that promises to magically shorten your development time or increase your scalability. The best technology, however, is the one you already know.

While many of these new tools offer great speed and functionality, they often lack experience with some of the more “boring” aspects of data handling such as redundancy, replication or failover, for instance. By keeping things simple and using technologies that you know, it becomes easier to respond to changes in the business and new demands on the application.

At the heart of planning for scale is understanding where you are in the arc of your business. Business growth goes hand-in-hand with technology growth. The more tuned in you are to demands on your business, the easier it will be to adjust and scale your application.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, kemie

More About: dev & design, how to, SaaS, scalability

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We’ve teamed up with Fanurio, a time tracking and billing desktop app for freelancers, to give out 10 licenses (worth $59 each) to this awesome tool. Read on to learn how you can win one of the licenses.

About Fanurio

Fanurio is a desktop time tracking and billing software application, highly appreciated by freelancers for its intuitive interface, flexible timer and ability to produce detailed invoices.

Whether you need to round time, use multiple currencies or create invoices with your own layout (HTML, Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Document), Fanurio has the right tools to help you get paid.

Fanurio is licensed per user and not per computer. This means that the licensed user can install and run the application on one, two or more computers or platforms at no extra cost.

Fanurio runs on Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7 and older, Mac OS X, Linux and other flavors of Unix.

Fanurio only costs $59 and it doesn’t require a monthly subscription.

For more details about Fanurio, you may want to browse the software’s Features page, see the complete list of Fanurio features and read what their users have to say about the app.

Connect with Fanurio on Twitter and Facebook as well as check out their company blog for news on Fanurio.

Try Fanurio for Free!

Interested in giving Fanurio a whirl? Go to their Download page and grab their 15-day trial version.

How to Win a Fanurio License

For a chance to win a license to Fanurio, simply answer the following question in the comments:

• How will you use Fanurio?

Giveaway Details

This giveaway ends on Tuesday, August 23, 2011 after which the comments section on this post will be closed and you will no longer be able to leave a comment. Please leave a valid email address when filling out the comment form so that we can contact you if you’ve won. Please only comment once. The winners will be randomly selected using the same method as previous Six Revisions giveaways. The winners will be announced on a separate post and you’re advised to subscribe to our RSS feed so that you can be quickly notified when the winners announcement post has been published. Please note that comments are moderated and so your comment may not show up right away. Please also note that comments that do not follow the instructions on how to participate (described above) may not be published, or may be removed later on.

Related Content

• Ideas for Expanding Your Web Design Business
• 8 Things They Don’t Tell You About Being a Web Designer
• 7 Common Project Management Problems (And How to Solve Them)
• Related categories: Project Management and Tools

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and also a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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Advertise here with BSA

We’ve teamed up with Fanurio, a time tracking and billing desktop app for freelancers, to give out 10 licenses (worth $59 each) to this awesome tool. Read on to learn how you can win one of the licenses.

About Fanurio

Fanurio is a desktop time tracking and billing software application, highly appreciated by freelancers for its intuitive interface, flexible timer and ability to produce detailed invoices.

Whether you need to round time, use multiple currencies or create invoices with your own layout (HTML, Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Document), Fanurio has the right tools to help you get paid.

Fanurio is licensed per user and not per computer. This means that the licensed user can install and run the application on one, two or more computers or platforms at no extra cost.

Fanurio runs on Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7 and older, Mac OS X, Linux and other flavors of Unix.

Fanurio only costs $59 and it doesn’t require a monthly subscription.

For more details about Fanurio, you may want to browse the software’s Features page, see the complete list of Fanurio features and read what their users have to say about the app.

Connect with Fanurio on Twitter and Facebook as well as check out their company blog for news on Fanurio.

Try Fanurio for Free!

Interested in giving Fanurio a whirl? Go to their Download page and grab their 15-day trial version.

How to Win a Fanurio License

For a chance to win a license to Fanurio, simply answer the following question in the comments:

• How will you use Fanurio?

Giveaway Details

This giveaway ends on Tuesday, August 23, 2011 after which the comments section on this post will be closed and you will no longer be able to leave a comment. Please leave a valid email address when filling out the comment form so that we can contact you if you’ve won. Please only comment once. The winners will be randomly selected using the same method as previous Six Revisions giveaways. The winners will be announced on a separate post and you’re advised to subscribe to our RSS feed so that you can be quickly notified when the winners announcement post has been published. Please note that comments are moderated and so your comment may not show up right away. Please also note that comments that do not follow the instructions on how to participate (described above) may not be published, or may be removed later on.

Related Content

• Ideas for Expanding Your Web Design Business
• 8 Things They Don’t Tell You About Being a Web Designer
• 7 Common Project Management Problems (And How to Solve Them)
• Related categories: Project Management and Tools

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and also a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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When you are aiming to build your business part time, you are required to pick and choose what to think about to get the most targeted visitors to your site. Do you spend your time on Facebook and Twitter or do you spend your time with SEO? Is one of these marketing tools more valuable than the other? Which one of these marketing tools will
get you where you should be the fastest? Will utilizing only one of these tools help you make more money?

Let’s dive into both of these tools to work out what would be best.

SEO – What Should This Marketing Tactic do for Your Business?

SEO or Search Engine Marketing, when done properly, could possibly get you the number one spot on Google, Yahoo and Bing. How important is this to your website and your bottom line? – absolutely huge! A number one ranking, even a page one ranking will bring you a large amount of traffic.

However, how easy is this for you to accomplish? Do you possess the expertise to get your site on the first page of Google? Just how much time will that take? When you are working on your business part time, you may not have enough time and energy to make SEO give you the results you want. If you have the money, you can have an SEO expert do that part for you.

SEO is a long-term strategy for your business. It also takes a lot more effort than social media and you don’t know if it will work. There are so many different keyword phrases to focus on, and so much content to get written.

Social Media – Would This Strategy Work for Your Business?

Social Media/Facebook/Twitter will bring you faster results. It will be much easier for you to manage and it won’t take so very long for you to receive the kind of traffic that you are looking for. Another vote for social media is the fact that it truly is free. You don’t need to pay anyone to create your Facebook page or your group. You can do that yourself and it won’t take that long.

However, even though you could get a lot of traffic faster from social media, it isn’t precisely the same kind of traffic. Social media prominence is not identical to a #1 listing on Google. If you are concentrating on social media, you really are actually building your reputation.

Social media will benefit your business when you can provide something that your fans will want on a consistent basis. If they’re in need of how-to information, you need to provide that on a daily or weekly basis. If you provide video type products, you have to provide videos on a consistent basis. The key to social media is consistently communicating with your audience.

So which is the best route, social media or SEO?

For me personally, you should employ the two tactics together. As you can see from Google results, many of the top results come from Facebook likes and material you post on your Facebook page. The search engines are using SEO along with what is going on in the social media arena.

And when you really examine the two, social media and SEO, you will see how you actually need to do precisely the same things for both. If you want high rankings in the search engines, provide great content on your Facebook page on a consistent basis based on what people are looking for and you will cover both at the same time. So, is social media more powerful than SEO? No, they’re both powerful. Consider using them together and you will have success with both.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Is Social Media Marketing More Powerful Than SEO

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The big question is – how do you make life easy for your site visitors so that they can easily share your content across various social sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Stumbleupon and so on?

One of the best ways to encourage social sharing of your website’s pages is to use blog widgets and buttons. Almost every social network has it’s own widgets page where you can grab some code and embed it on your website’s design template. The widgets and buttons go to work out of the box but there are a couple of disadvantages of using too many widgets and buttons from different social sites.

First, these buttons don’t blend well enough with your site’s design and in some way, they increase visual noise and clutter. Facebook like buttons are blue, Twitter’s retweet buttons are shallow green while Digg’s thumbs up button is grey. When you arrange buttons and widgets from 6 different social networks below your content, they look really bad and knocked out. It’s a general rule that common users don’t like ugly buttons which don’t complement each other

Second, these buttons are fetched from different sites which will eventually slow down your site’s overall loading time and usability.

Third, there is no easy way to integrate these default widgets as an “always on” toolbar which would stay visible, regardless of whether your readers are scrolling all the way bottom to read the content.

Bumpin Social Bar – Ensure Easier Social Sharing of your content

This is why I highly recommend using Bumpin social bar.

Bumpin offers a range of social engagement widgets which are easy to customize and embed on any website or blog, irrespective of the content management system being used to manage it. Bumpin provides a social toolbar and a shoutbox for your website which can be customized with Facebook “Like” button, a Twitter “retweet” button, a visitor chat widget, a site specific search box and lots of other goodies which you can’t afford to miss.

Let’s quickly learn all the features of Bumpin social bar and how you can use this free service to add a lot of social sharing goodness on your site within 5 minutes:

Site Search widget:  On the far left of Bumpin’s social bar, you can choose to include a simple site specific search box which can be used by your site visitors to search for content within your site. This is a great way to let your readers find the content they are looking for. The search box remains visible even if a user has scrolled all the way down to read something, so Bumpin’s search widget clearly holds an upper hand – when compared to regular search boxes.

Facebook and Twitter Integration: Another neat thing regarding Bumpin’s social bar is it’s deeper Facebook integration without any clutter and waste of valuable space. The “Like” button, “activity stream” and “Facebook suggestions” are aligned horizontally and they are revealed only when a user clicks them.

And here is how your Twitter feed and mentions will look like:

Hence, there is no need to hunt down all the codes for Facebook social plugin or Twitter widgets and further tweak them to go with your site. Bumpin takes care of all the hassles and integrates Facebook social plugins and Twitter widgets on your site in a matter of few mouse clicks.

Inline Language Translation of your content: Do you get a lot of readers from different countries and have always wanted a better alternative of Google Translate, which offers no branding whatsoever.

Enter Bumpin’s inline language translation widget – a simple magic button which lets your site readers translate a page in any international language of their choice. The translate button performs inline language translation of your content so your site visitors would never feel the need of a third party translation service. The clear advantage here is that Bumpin’s translate widget makes your site more “sticky” and globally acceptable.

Complete Social sharing:  All other social sharing buttons are organized under a sleek on-click drop down menu. This is more visually appealing and never harms your site’s design template with tons of buttons and independent widgets floating around like anything.

Customization and branding: The social bar can be fully customized to match with your site’s current design and brand. You can choose a skin or theme and define a preferred placement, size or position for the social bar. The bar can be used to look like Facebook-style chat tab to a full horizontal bar with applications and widgets you have chosen.

Rising posts, Random topics and announcements: This is yet another superb feature most social bar providers lack.

Bumpin displays the hottest content on your website as well as random topics from the social bar itself. This helps your readers discover popular content directly from the social bar, without having to search them manually. No customizations are required – it works out of the box.

Bumpin Shoutbox:

Do you have a forum and you want all the registered users or members to be able to chat with each other, without leaving your site? Apart from the social bar, Bumpin also offers a very useful chatbox and shoutbox widget, adding which will allow your site visitors perform a one on one instant messaging chat, without having to leave your site. You do not need to install anything or write any code to enable a shoutbox or chatbox on your site, simply customize your chatbox from Bumpin’s web interface and copy a few lines of codes in your site’s design template. It’s that easy and simple.

The best thing regarding Bumpin is that their social bar and visitor chatbox is super easy to add to any blogging or CMS platform, with drop-in plugins available for WordPress, Blogger, Joomla, Drupal, Movable type, Tumblr and more content management systems.

Overall, Bumpin is a really cool and useful tool for bloggers, webmasters and anyone who wants to add a layer of interactivity on his site. There are no lengthy registrations or paid signups, Bumpin is completely free to use and you can customize a unique social bar for any number of sites you have.

That’s right, Bumpin’s price tag is $0.

Get a BumpIn ShoutBox or Get a BumpIn Social Bar

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Zyma.com is one of the fastest growing web hosting companies in the UK. Their industry leading web hosting package offers the most attractive and comprehensive features for one the best prices on the internet. With their low cost web hosting package, You can host your website on superfast hi-speed servers, supporting over 70+ scripts and technologies.

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This contest will run from August 08, 2011 to August 13, 2011 and we will select the winners randomly by running MySQL query. Result can be announced any day before August 18, 2011 so keep visiting here or subscribe to our rss feed to get the latest updates. To participate in the contest and win Web Hosting from Zyma, All you have to do is :

1. Just leave a comment.

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3. Make sure that you are following @SmashingApps and @Zyma_Hosting on twitter and subscribe our rss feed to track this contest and for future updates.

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So, what are you waiting for now? Let’s participate in the contest and good luck!

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You are welcome if you want to share more web applications that our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at  SmashingApps.com, just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and follow us on Digg as well to get updated.

LayerStyles

LayerStyles v 0.1 is just like your favorite graphics editor but in your browser. You can use it to create css code of the special effect you would like to give on your web design.

The Web Font Combinator

This tool was created in order to preview web font combinations. There have been various printed collections of font examples that the reader can combine in order to see how a header and body font work together.

Grid Calculator And Generator

GridCalc is a easy to use grid calculator. Just enter the desired width of your page and an aproximate range for your column and gutter width and the calculator will give you all the possible combinations within the limits you entered. You get a nice visual representation of the results, click preview on a result and you get a better presentation of how the grid can be used. When you have decided which grid configuration you want to use you can download the configuration as a css file to use in your project.

CSS3 Shapes

This is a very simple css3 snippets resource site from where you can find css3 code of different and unique shapes.

FontFont Subsetter

FontFont Subsetter is a tool for optimizing and customizing Web FontFonts in three easy steps. The free service lets you significantly reduce file sizes of your Web FontFonts to reduce bandwidth costs and make your websites faster.

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This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it, also use “Daily Inspiration” in the subject, and don’t forget to send your Abduzeedo username; or via Twitter sending to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo

If possible use the HTML code: <p class="imgC"><a href="Link to the page you found the image"><img src="Link to the Image" /></a></p>

Do you want to see all images from all Daily Inspirations? Check out http://daily.abduzeedo.com

adam

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Expand your limits from aturtur on Vimeo.

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In the four weeks since the social protests have begun in Israel, hundreds of have been killed, dozens of women have reportedly been raped, a number of children tortured, and countless districts have been looted. The authorities have imposed a complete lock-down on all cellular networks. All access to Facebook and Twitter has been blocked. Little information is going in, or out.

Except the absolute, complete opposite.

The social protests in Israel began 4 weeks ago with a national outcry over the rising price of basics such as cottage cheese. They then snowballed into a full-blown national movement by way of a simple act by a then unknown young woman. The act? Striking a tent in Tel-Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard in protest of high apartment rental costs.

A single tent became the heart and soul of the movement whose main gripe is that the middle-class is bearing the brunt of an imbalanced budgetary spend. “The People Demand Social Justice” is the key chant.

The protests are local, scattered all across Israel, drawing hundreds to hundreds of thousands. Big name musicians volunteer to headline these protests. Barricades and PA systems, all donated. People talk about the movement at every cafe, over every lunch, at every business meeting, at every family dinner.

There have been a few skirmishes with the law. Small stuff though… For example, small groups of protesters were arrested by the police for blocking roads and were released without charges within a day.

Small potatoes aside, it’s been four weeks and zero acts of the barbaric, non-discriminatory violence we’ve seen across the middle east, and even in the UK. No shots fired. No stores looted. No form of communication has been shut down. In fact, not only have the Israeli police and army not taken any role other than safeguarding the protests themselves, they have even been applauded, literally, by hundreds of thousands for their efforts.

While in neighboring countries regimes are slaughtering the opposition, in Israel we have complete free speech to criticize our politicians and leaders. As I’m typing this, on the TV is Israel’s version of SNL doing a parody skit of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mishandling of the situation (they have him wearing a red t-shirt with Che Guevara on it). YouTube mashups featuring the PM’s soundbites? Posted below for your scrolling convenience. Professional-level videos advertising the protests? Also, posted below.

Sorry Shervin, no need for your curation and retweeting on this one, the Israeli people are doing A-OK. Really, look:

The backbone of the movement has unquestionably been Facebook, via pages, and events, and of course Twitter, via the #j14 hashtag. A revolution needs a site, right? Right.

At this point there’s no guessing which people will next rise-up and demand political and social change. The world is not what it used to be before Tahrir. I wonder though how many of these future civil disobedience movements will be modeled upon Israel, where technology and love trumped violence.

Photo Credits: Itai Bachar

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The wallpaper of this week is an image created by Joey Ellis for the Raygun52 project. Joey is an Illustrator based in Charlotte, NC. He enjoys drawing silly and fun characters, cars, robots, and monsters.

For more information visit http://www.joeyellis.com/

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The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — waxed and waned about the latest in social media buildout. Most notable was Twitter’s new Activities and @mention views, which rolled up not only your @mentions but follow and favoriting signals in a realtime notification stream. Activity view did the same thing for those you follow, with an aggregate stream of their attention.

Yes, it’s the Attention and Gestures meme finally coming home to roost, and with it a fascinating series of political pebbles being skipped across the realtime stream. @borthwick remains juried out on the PlusPlex, while @scobleizer and @kevinmarks debate not if, but when, + will resolve its lack of search, filtering, and realnamification. @jtaschek is heard but not seen as he returns for a brief cameo before Comcast pulls the plug, but at least he’s back in the clubhouse.

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The world’s largest social network is getting nostalgic. Facebook has quietly rolled out a new feature that displays status updates you posted exactly one or two years ago.

The feature appears as a small box in the right-hand column above the advertising, either titled “On This Day in 2010″ or “On This Day in 2009.” We’ve typically found that the “On This Day” box appears while you’re browsing a photo album. This is how I found out, for example, that I had a terrible day on August 13, 2010.

You can also click the “Show More” button to see more status updates from exactly one or two years ago, if you posted multiple status updates on those days. The feature only seems to go back to 2009. That makes sense — Facebook just didn’t have a lot of users in 2008 or 2007.

Based on a search of public Facebook and Twitter status updates, we believe the feature began rolling out in a limited test on August 11. More and more users started noticing in the last twelve hours, though. This isn’t the first time Facebook has tried to help uses discover their past activity on Facebook. It also has a feature for surfacing photos from your past.

We’re not sure if Facebook thinks of these nostalgic features as just fun little additions to the product, or whether they serve a purpose. Perhaps Facebook wants to remind its users that they have invested years of their lives into their product, so perhaps they shouldn’t switch to something new. Or perhaps its just another one of Facebook’s many product engagement tools.

Has Facebook been reminding you of status updates from your past? Let us know what you’ve been seeing in the comments.

More About: facebook, On This Day In, trending

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Jonathan Stark’s feel-good social experiment mutated after entrepreneur Sam Odio repurposed $625 from Jonathan’s Card onto a Starbucks Card of his own that he’s selling in the name of charity.

Odio, fielding both criticism and support from commenters on Mashable, Hacker News and other sites, is now offering to return the money if Stark believes his actions constitute theft.

“It was my impression that Jonathan was interested in seeing how the card was used, regardless of the purpose,” Odio tells Mashable. “If Jonathan believes I stole money off his card I’d gladly return it — after all, it’s his property. However I’d then consider this social experiment over.”

Odio made a similar statement, directed at Stark, on Twitter. Stark did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Stark launched Jonathan’s Card on July 14 as a social adaption of the “take a penny, leave a penny” concept. The card has since taken on a life of its own. Earlier Friday, Odio revealed that he had created a script to transfer donated money off Jonathan’s Card and on to other cards.

Odio then listed a $625 Starbucks Card on eBay with the intention of donating proceeds from the auction to charity. The listing was later removed by eBay because it exceeded the maximum limit of $500 for a gift card. Odio now plans to list two separate cards to meet eBay’s criteria.

There’s one more odd twist to the saga. Odio’s older brother Daniel, also an entrepreneur, has been donating to Jonathan’s Card since August 7 — the same date Sam started repurposing funds. Daniel has added back exactly $625 over the past few days; he shared a screenshot of his transactions with Mashable to prove his claim.

Daniel Odio, who fully supports his younger brother’s actions, hopes to promote his own startup Socialize through his donations. “Either someone is hacking the card or using the card,” he tells Mashable. “Either way, it’s probably the developer audience Socialize is interested in reaching.”

Jonathan’s Card continues to fluctuate in balance. As of 6:05 p.m. ET, the account was out of money for the third time in 10 minutes. Does this mean the experiment is drawing to a close? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Update: At 7 p.m. PT Friday, Starbucks shut down Jonathan’s Card.

More About: Jonathan’s Card, social media, starbucks

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These responses are from Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook and our own on-site comments, and we’ve used Storify to present them in a clear and easy to follow manner. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

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These responses are from Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook and our own on-site comments, and we’ve used Storify to present them in a clear and easy to follow manner. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

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These responses are from Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook and our own on-site comments, and we’ve used Storify to present them in a clear and easy to follow manner. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

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João Lauro Fonte is a Brazilian graphic artist currently based in London. His portfolio is filled with fun, playful, and colorful illustrations all with an undeniable level of wit and humor, of course…my favorite!

Swing on over to his portfolio for more and let me know what you think via twitter.

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Sure, social music service Turntable.fm is addictive and fun. But after a while, watching all those avatars bobbing their heads can get a little dull. Isn’t there anything else we could do in a chatroom together, besides listen to five DJs?

Enter Chill, a new service that allows you to watch videos with friends and strangers.

Chill comes from the founders of Ad.ly and Namesake, and is very similar to Turntable.fm in style and execution. You must have a Facebook friend already on Chill in order to join. Once you choose an avatar, you can either create a room or join one that already exists (there aren’t too many options at present, as the site just launched Wednesday). Rooms can be shared on Twitter or via email.

Once in the room, you can load up your VJ queue with videos — you can search for videos on YouTube or Vimeo within the site, or add a direct URL to any other online video. You then get up on the VJ stage and start spinning videos. Other users vote on whether they like your vids are not (thumbs up, or thumbs down), which garners you points. Right now, however, those points don’t score you cooler avatars, as on Turntable.fm. But those are coming soon, we gather.

The site’s interface is rather lovely — if a bit cheesy — and we could really see the idea taking off, especially with bands looking to premiere music videos. Sure, it’s not a wholly original idea (remember YouTubeSocial?), but it’s coming at a time when people are already interested in social listening and viewing.

Would you watch videos in a chat room on Chill? Let us know in the comments.

[via Mrdocrock]

More About: Chill, music, startup, turntable.fm, video, Vimeo, youtube

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In the name of swift and public justice, the Greater Manchester Police has begun tweeting the identities of people convicted of criminal damage and disorder during riots this week in Manchester and Salford.

The department is also requesting the public’s help in identifying suspects via photos and videos posted to its website and Flickr account.

Wednesday, the Greater Manchester Police notified its Twitter followers that criminals were going through the courts and would soon be “named and shamed.” Thursday, the Twitter account began rattling off the names, births dates, addresses and sentences for those convicted.

“We promised we’d name all those convicted for their roles in the disorder – here we go …” the @gmpolice account tweeted.

At least 12 convicted of riot-related crimes have been shamed via Twitter so far. The department is also updating its Facebook Page.

The police force is seeing some push-back from Twitter followers who are questioning the decision to publicly out culprits.

“And are @gmpolice *really* tweeting the names of people convicted? And 8 months for stealing clothes? What f*cking century are we living in?” Manchester resident Julian Yon said in one of many tweets directed at the department’s Twitter account.

Some have rallied to defend the department. “@gmpolice ignore @julianyon you are doing a great job these thugs deserve to be out there after the trouble they have caused well done GMP,” @DaveWard121 tweeted.

Others are put off by the level of detail shared. “@gmpolice fully agree with naming and shaming those who did wrong but addresses is a step to far what if it causes more uproar in the towns,” @donnasheedy tweeted.

In an immediate response, Greater Manchester Police tweeted, “@donnasheedy legally bound to publish address and dates of birth so no-one of the same name can be misidentified as the culprit.”

The debate continues about the ethics of these Twitter tactics. Share your thoughts in the comments.

More About: london riots, twitter

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

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In the name of swift and public justice, the Greater Manchester Police has begun tweeting the identities of people convicted of criminal damage and disorder during riots this week in Manchester and Salford.

The department is also requesting the public’s help in identifying suspects via photos and videos posted to its website and Flickr account.

Wednesday, the Greater Manchester Police notified its Twitter followers that criminals were going through the courts and would soon be “named and shamed.” Thursday, the Twitter account began rattling off the names, births dates, addresses and sentences for those convicted.

“We promised we’d name all those convicted for their roles in the disorder – here we go …” the @gmpolice account tweeted.

At least 12 convicted of riot-related crimes have been shamed via Twitter so far. The department is also updating its Facebook Page.

The police force is seeing some push-back from Twitter followers who are questioning the decision to publicly out culprits.

“And are @gmpolice *really* tweeting the names of people convicted? And 8 months for stealing clothes? What f*cking century are we living in?” Manchester resident Julian Yon said in one of many tweets directed at the department’s Twitter account.

Some have rallied to defend the department. “@gmpolice ignore @julianyon you are doing a great job these thugs deserve to be out there after the trouble they have caused well done GMP,” @DaveWard121 tweeted.

Others are put off by the level of detail shared. “@gmpolice fully agree with naming and shaming those who did wrong but addresses is a step to far what if it causes more uproar in the towns,” @donnasheedy tweeted.

In an immediate response, Greater Manchester Police tweeted, “@donnasheedy legally bound to publish address and dates of birth so no-one of the same name can be misidentified as the culprit.”

The debate continues about the ethics of these Twitter tactics. Share your thoughts in the comments.

More About: london riots, twitter

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

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Twtrland is a new service that converts Twitter streams into detailed profiles to try and make it easier to decide whom to follow.

Simply plug in the Twitter handle you want to analyze, and Twtrland will build a profile for you. (See mine above.) The profile includes info like how often the user is retweeted, how many times she or he tweets per day, a breakdown of tweet content (plain tweets, pictures, @replies, etc.), most-retweeted tweets (Famous Words), top followers and a sampling of tweets.

According to the service’s site, one of the main problems Twtrland is trying to solve is: “Deciding if someone is follow-worthy. These are not your real life friends, but people that are supposed to interest you. Hard to decide based on last 10-15 tweets, avatar and description. We go deep in his history, and sum it all up to the simplest profile we could think of to help you decide in a glimpse. to follow or not to follow.”

Although the service isn’t the most visually stunning at present, it is a neat way to lay out a user’s info, and analyze your own Twitter activity — as well as satisfy that burning desire to reflect on one’s own musings.

More About: trending, twitter, Twtrland

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
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Last week, we asked for your questions to put to our Future of Web Apps London speakers. We’re going to publish a series of bite sized articles with a featured speaker each week starting with MG Siegler, a senior writer for technology blog, TechCrunch. He covers the web, mobile, social, big companies, small companies… pretty much everything. Here’s what MG had to say when we asked him a few of your questions:

The web is the most powerful creative platform in the known universe, in my opinion. There are so many applications for using it to further science, arts, research and much more yet the “be all and end all” of the web seems to be “social networking” (which generally equates to sharing media). 

Do you ever get disappointed that it is generally just used as an aid to business, or for online games? What would you like to see it used for? (@benjambles)

“I think the web is in the midst of a natural progression. Right now, the focus is largely on social networking, but eventually I suspect that will just be an underlying layer to everything done on the web. We’re also starting to see some of these social tools used for larger purposes — Twitter and Facebook as communication platforms in revolutions, for example — I think we’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg there.”

How should I proceed when I get an idea which I think it’s good and it could be a successful startup, but I’m alone as a web designer/front-end developer, no business experience and with no developer friends or connections?  (@pipozoft)

“I would suggest using the web to establish as many connections as you can with like-minded people. I’m not sure that advertising you’re looking for a co-founder is the best way to go about it, but perhaps you could talk a bit about the idea generally and see if anyone out there bites, and strikes you as a good match. 

Networking in real life is great for this too. You’d be surprised how many folks at tech events are in the same boat. Maybe you’ll connect with someone that can help you start with your idea.”
 
 
Do you think there is a connection between how much money you earn, compared to how happy you are in your job, and if so, how close a relationship do you feel this is? (@liamjay66)

“It depends on a few factors. Generally, I’d say that yes, being fairly compensated is important for happiness in a job. But if you’re doing a bootstrapped startup, you have to recognize that not making a lot of money is a part of a necessary sacrifice.  
Ultimately, you should worry less about the money and more about if you really love what you’re doing. If you do, you tend to do better work, and money tends to come as a result of that. That’s not always the case, obviously, but doing what you love can’t hurt.”

Big thanks to MG! Next week we’ll be putting your questions to Sam Stephenson, a programmer at 37signals.

Don’t forget, if you’d like to join us at FOWA London, we currently have a flash sale giving you a 10% discount on our 2 day conference passes. Simply visit the site, enter the promo code FLASH and book today.  

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You’ve heard it before, here and probably elsewhere: Social media is about much more than exposure or coverage. Simply putting a friend request out and amassing a ton of retweets is not enough to achieve genuine social impact.

Now there’s some additional evidence that bears this argument out:

Does Google Use Data from Social Sites in Ranking?

In short, Google officials have said that while the search engine giant does use Facebook and Twitter as part of the input in determining a site’s SEO ranking, it is a very small, low-key part. It’s more of a modifier of other data than it is an actual contributor in and of itself.

But before you go slashing the budget to your social media marketing department, hear out these few issues that explain why this means more attention, not less, should be paid to social media efforts.

It’s Social, not Digital

Despite being in the online realm (insert all the stereotypes about the cold, impersonal Internet here), social media is all about the first word. Social interactions are about relationships, conversations and, above all, respect and trust. Violate a trust or fail to provide respect, and you gain nothing at all. You could even find yourself blackballed as your reputation flies out of control online.

There is no magic formula to social media success, just as there is no magic formula to being socially acceptable and friendly. It involves politeness, attentiveness to the interests and needs of others (not just your own) and participation in the social scene as a whole. That’s it – hard work, performed with an attitude of courtesy. It isn’t complicated, just slow and requiring attention.

But Why Bother?

After all, it doesn’t correspond to SEO, so why sink more effort into social media?

Because social media is the key motivating factor in whether a video, advertisement, or even random picture goes viral. The average user on Facebook has dozens of friends, and not all of those friends are the same. Say you have three people who are friends, each having 10 other friends. Only six of these friends are mutual friends among the three, which means there are 24 more people to reach. If each of them has the same ratio of friends…you get the picture.

So yes, adapting to social media does mean changing your perceptions of how marketing works. People can ignore it… they can block you online like they can’t block most commercials on television. You have to engage with them directly, converse in intelligent fashion and have the respect not to bombard them with your product nonstop. You have to know when to provide helpful input about your material, and when simply to listen. But the value of it, the potential return of genuine word-of-mouth rather than abstracted “website performance” metrics, is something worth fighting for and investing the additional time and money in.

Why Does It Work?

People like to be talked to. We are social animals, by and large, and having the ability to discuss topics with others is of vital importance to us instinctively, even if not consciously.

Additionally, people can see through fakes. Everyone has a customer service story where they’re told, “We appreciate your input,” and realize they’re just being read a line while their input is filed in the circular file. People respond far better to an honest comment, like, “We understand what you are saying, but for the following reasons we’re going to do what we feel works,” rather than being given the runaround. A genuine response reminds them there is another human being with their own restrictions and worries on the other side of the screen, and honesty gets a branding campaign point. Responsiveness and actual replies to commentary rather than rote recitations is also important, showing them you are listening and engaged, not just copypasting.

Indirect SEO

Believe it or not, engaging in good practices on social media sites while representing your brand will result in improved SEO for the brand whether Google directly ranks your Facebook performance in searches or not.

Word-of-mouth is still the strongest motivating factor in advertising. It’s the coveted Holy Grail. As you engage with others in social media, you are harnessing this power for your purposes. People who think highly of you will be more inclined to check out your website, and tell others to do so as well. Someone to whom you provide an answer to a particular issue that your brand covers might respond favorably to a request to link to you on his site. Traffic will build in the background, enhancing your standing. A conversation might lead to an interview with an online publication, or an advertising spot with a site whose owner you’ve had chats with.

They key is to understand the value of delayed benefits that result from being a nice, reasonable person. Gain a reputation as someone who is worthwhile to talk to, and people will want to talk to AND about you. The effort is extensive and the value is delayed; however, it will result in long-term support to your reputation that will allow your short-term advertising campaigns to go further, with more weight and endurance than if they were performed alone.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Social Media Management: Quality Social Experiences

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An online cookbook that allows you to convert your old recipe collection into one that is online and full of features.

Basically Taysti is a recipe website with an awesome social spin. Rather than just being another library full of recipes from chefs and companies, taysti.com allows the users to convert their paper recipe collection they may have at home into something electronic, as well as have their recipes shared with other users in the community. The users’ recipes can then be rated, commented on, recommended to other users, shared on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, and added to your own “Cookbook”.

We also just released our iPhone app too, you can find it here:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/taysti/id448516144?mt=8

We think this makes it even more awesome because you can use the app to get to your recipes wherever you are. We also have a coupon listing system which allows local business owners (grocery stores, restaurants, bars etc) to list their coupons, which we geo-target using the iPhones GPS. While we are still brand new, it’s free for the businesses to list them too.

We also plan on adding an online marketplace for users to sell their own goods to other users on the site.

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Twitter quietly added a prompt to post a public reply to any user whose profile page you visit today; it’s a small but logical step to take and one that makes the interface all the more supportive of social interaction. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey replied to user @jSammy17 and said the feature was new today – that appears to be the company’s only public statement about it so far.

Activity streams, photo uploaders and media galleries, now changes to the posting interface – with all these changes made in one week you’d think there was a hot new social network that had just launched and that was challenging Twitter for its users. When will a Twitter Games Platform launch, I wonder?

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The call to action to send a public @ reply to a user whose profile page you’re on is pretty straightforward. You could always send a private Direct Message to someone when you visited their page if they were following you. Now whether they are following you or not, you can initiate a conversation.

Above, finance blogger and post-industrial renaissance woman Sarah Gilbert is a great person to follow. Now you can send her, or anyone else, public replies whether she follows you back or not.

As always, you can find the ReadWriteWeb team on Twitter here.

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Twitter quietly added a prompt to post a public reply to any user whose profile page you visit today; it’s a small but logical step to take and one that makes the interface all the more supportive of social interaction. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey replied to user @jSammy17 and said the feature was new today – that appears to be the company’s only public statement about it so far.

Activity streams, photo uploaders and media galleries, now changes to the posting interface – with all these changes made in one week you’d think there was a hot new social network that had just launched and that was challenging Twitter for its users. When will a Twitter Games Platform launch, I wonder?

Sponsor

The call to action to send a public @ reply to a user whose profile page you’re on is pretty straightforward. You could always send a private Direct Message to someone when you visited their page if they were following you. Now whether they are following you or not, you can initiate a conversation.

Above, finance blogger and post-industrial renaissance woman Sarah Gilbert is a great person to follow. Now you can send her, or anyone else, public replies whether she follows you back or not.

As always, you can find the ReadWriteWeb team on Twitter here.

Discuss

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Twitter quietly added a prompt to post a public reply to any user whose profile page you visit today; it’s a small but logical step to take and one that makes the interface all the more supportive of social interaction. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey replied to user @jSammy17 and said the feature was new today – that appears to be the company’s only public statement about it so far.

Activity streams, photo uploaders and media galleries, now changes to the posting interface – with all these changes made in one week you’d think there was a hot new social network that had just launched and that was challenging Twitter for its users. When will a Twitter Games Platform launch, I wonder?

Sponsor

The call to action to send a public @ reply to a user whose profile page you’re on is pretty straightforward. You could always send a private Direct Message to someone when you visited their page if they were following you. Now whether they are following you or not, you can initiate a conversation.

Above, finance blogger and post-industrial renaissance woman Sarah Gilbert is a great person to follow. Now you can send her, or anyone else, public replies whether she follows you back or not.

As always, you can find the ReadWriteWeb team on Twitter here.

Discuss

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Video Inspiration is a weekly(ish) post where we either feature a specific artist or show a sort of “best of” list of videos we’ve discovered during the week. Everything here may not be brand new, but we felt it worth sharing with the community. If you have good finds that you’d like to share, please feel free to send your links to nathan@abduzeedo.com with “video inspiration” in the subject line.

This week I’ve tried to collect a varied line-up of videos for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think!

Summadayze Colourfornia from Nick Thompson on Vimeo.

Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared from This Is It on Vimeo.

YEAR ZERO TRAILER from GLOBE on Vimeo.

Loose Fit – Table Beggar music video from Abbie stephens on Vimeo.

Dutch Wife from Jesse Kanda on Vimeo.

Teebs “Moments” from Paul Trillo on Vimeo.

Han Kjøbenhavn short film from Han Kjobenhavn on Vimeo.

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Worldwide Photography is a series of posts where every week we’re going to show a city or location around the globe bringing the coolest photography samples of it. The photographs authors are all credited right above their pictures. Today feature: Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

For the next week we’re going to feature Athens, Greece so if you want to send your submissions for the next Worldwide Photography, please tweet the tag #wwphoto and the link of the photo(s) on twitter. I’ll be wainting for your submissions

oznasia

Electricity Mule

GwennieKung

Jonas Kroyer Photography

Electricity Mule

CrazyMonkeyHouse

NewportPreacher

afterw0rdz

flydime

lovely day3

Elmerson1981

Elmerson1981

cookiesound

Elmerson1981

lordsheppy

parsonsparisn

.ran.

lynhdan

DHCM2

ChristineFerdinand

Quinn Ryan Mattingly

stephafrei

Yubai K

parsonsparisn

Jon in Thailand

aWorldTourer

Jon in Thailand

kepje

waex99

taipans

Rugerdier

Rob Kroenert (Wiggum03)

Sandvand

Maciej Dakowicz

michel recan

Blake John

uncorneredmarket

Pigalle

Adam Jones, Ph.D.

Swiatoslaw Wojtkowiak

Mr.RJ-M

mke1963

Adam Cathro

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That, says Jeff Hardy, is why Google and Microsoft really want your email. Not because of the numbers, per se, but because of what the numbers represent.

Hardy, vice president of SmarterTools, says that Microsoft wants email because it’s profitable – and wants to convince companies that email is expensive to provide. Google, on the other hand, presents email as free, because it wants the information that comes with. And Facebook is trying to get into the email game because it’s the only way to continue its growth in the face of flattening usage.

Other companies should be competing for that business, says Hardy, and that email is dirt cheap to provide. According to his presentation for HostingCon 2011, Hardy says that you can get full enterprise-class email for less than $0.04 per mailbox, or Exchange replacement mailboxes for less than $0.39 per mailbox. But he says that each account is worth up to 10 people on average, and providers get to market their products and services to all of those users. Passing up email is passing up an opportunity to create loyalty.

Hardy seems to have a good point. Two, actually. One is that email gets overlooked compared to the new hotness(es) like Twitter or Facebook. But we still do much, much more via email. Perhaps too much, but that’s a topic for another post. The other is that companies that offer hosting (his audience at HostingCon 2011) should be focused on providing email and getting it right. There’s plenty of room, even today, for solid email hosting plans and for companies to wrangle email into much more business.

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That, says Jeff Hardy, is why Google and Microsoft really want your email. Not because of the numbers, per se, but because of what the numbers represent.

Hardy, vice president of SmarterTools, says that Microsoft wants email because it’s profitable – and wants to convince companies that email is expensive to provide. Google, on the other hand, presents email as free, because it wants the information that comes with. And Facebook is trying to get into the email game because it’s the only way to continue its growth in the face of flattening usage.

Other companies should be competing for that business, says Hardy, and that email is dirt cheap to provide. According to his presentation for HostingCon 2011, Hardy says that you can get full enterprise-class email for less than $0.04 per mailbox, or Exchange replacement mailboxes for less than $0.39 per mailbox. But he says that each account is worth up to 10 people on average, and providers get to market their products and services to all of those users. Passing up email is passing up an opportunity to create loyalty.

Hardy seems to have a good point. Two, actually. One is that email gets overlooked compared to the new hotness(es) like Twitter or Facebook. But we still do much, much more via email. Perhaps too much, but that’s a topic for another post. The other is that companies that offer hosting (his audience at HostingCon 2011) should be focused on providing email and getting it right. There’s plenty of room, even today, for solid email hosting plans and for companies to wrangle email into much more business.

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You get a user name with an @ sign, and you @ mention people. Just like on Twitter, you can choose your basic design and set a background image. Instead of tweets, you post pings. They’re 140 characters long. You have the option to share them to Twitter or Facebook. You can add a photo, which the posted ping will display as an awkwardly cropped version inside the post. You don’t follow. You listen. Listeners, not followers. Get it? And it really has Twitter beat on this one: Instead of the awkward word retweet, on Heello, you echo. You can also have a private conversation with an individual or a group. The group conversations are the one feature that Twitter doesn’t have. But is that reason enough to launch a service that’s otherwise essentially the same?

When Everett first talked about Heello, it sounded like it would be something new. Last August, a year ago tomorrow, Everett told the New York Times Heello was “tackling communications with groups, … building services that help bring teams together online.” Group DMs are the only feature in Heello as it launched today that would seem to address that problem, and it’s not exactly a novel idea (see Facebook and Google Plus).

So what gives? Where is Heello going with this?

On August first, the Heello Twitter account posted this ambiguous message:

The “new Heello” sure looks like the old Twitter.

It’s worth remarking that the launch of this Twitter clone coincides with Twitter’s launch of its native photo-sharing service. Everett’s other company, TwitPic, has been a default option for uploading photos from many Twitter apps, including official ones, but now Twitter’s in-house photo uploads will threaten that status. In exchange for Twitter building in TwitPic’s functionality, Everett has released an app that copies Twitter. Everett tells VentureBeat that this was “a complete coincidence,” but he’s “glad the timing happened that way.” He goes on in that interview to hint at some upcoming features, all of which sound Twitter-like. Instead of lists, for example, Heello will have channels.

Currently, it’s a Web-only app, which is limiting. The homepage says mobile apps are “coming soon.” The main stream has three tabs: your pings, which is the feed of the people to whom you are listening, your replies, and a tab called “What’s Happening?”, which apparently streams all pings live. It tends to lag rather far behind, but right now, it’s a good way to discover people to follow. I mean listen to.

Why does this exist? It’s hard to say right now. Currently, it’s a giant land grab, with people indiscriminately snatching up user names left and right. There’s no way to tell, except by intuition, whether someone is really who they say they are on Heello, and all the juicy user names are probably taken by now. Fake @GooglePlus, fake @MarkZuckerberg, fake @YouTube, all of them have been claimed. You might as well go get yours in the event that Heello makes a name for itself. And hey, for all we know, Twitter could become an ad-riddled mess, and we’ll all be glad to have Heello when that happens.

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