Engage Web May 2009 - Engage Web

MySpace to wage war on Facebook

Posted on May 31, 2009

The world of online marketing moves so fast that if you stand still, someone will pass you by. Failure to react to this could see you left far behind as your competitors build an unassailable lead over you. It has happened to many businesses over the years, big and small. It has also happened to some of the largest online businesses as well, such as MySpace.

MySpace used to be the place to go for community, interaction and entertainment for the young. It offered a voice for those who felt they weren’t being heard and a chance for people to interact in a way they couldn’t do in the real world.

Then came Facebook. Originally just for the elite, but then opened up for everyone, Facebook overtook MySpace like an Enzo Ferrari passing a Vauxhall Corsa. It had a crisp, clean design. It had widgets. It had a sublime photo gallery system (which has since put Flickr to the sword as well) and it was opened up to developers to create addons for the platform, meaning everyone could have a truly unique space of their own online (without the awful music and stylesheets that dogged MySpace).

Facebook was the new king, and MySpace was left reeling.

Not anymore though, as MySpace’s bosses at News Corp have announced changes are afoot, and changes that will (more…)

Posted by Cheryl Mathews

Iran is back on Facebook

Posted on May 30, 2009

If you’re one of those people who practically lives on Facebook, you’ll know how frustrating it is when you don’t have access to it. Maybe your Internet has gone down, your phone doesn’t have signal or your place of work has banned it (heaven forbid!).

Imagine then that your entire country had banned access to Facebook and nowhere you could go would allow you to log on and check what photos you’d been tagged in and what your friends were up to.

That’s just what happened in Iran this last week, as access to Facebook from inside Iran was suspended from last Saturday through to the latter part of the week.

Even worse is that there doesn’t appear to be a (more…)

Posted by Matt Jones

Microsoft – Yahoo deal back on again?

Posted on May 29, 2009

First it was on, then it was off, then it was dead and buried. Just what is going with the Microsoft / Yahoo deal?

This week news emerged from the US that the deal could be back on the table, as the new Yahoo CEO said that she was prepared to discuss the acquisition by Microsoft if the deal were sweet enough.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz stated on stage at the All Things D conference on Wednesday, in California:

If there’s boatloads of money and the right technology involved, we’d do a deal, sure. It’s that simple.

When Microsoft first made a move to buy Yahoo, it offered (more…)

Posted by Carl Hopkinson

Why backdating content is bad

Posted on May 28, 2009

WordPress has a wonderful little function that allows you schedule content ahead in time, so that it goes live when you’re not there. This allows your website to be updated and appear fresh when you’re too busy to actually to do it; perhaps you’re in a meeting, on holiday or it’s Christmas Day for example?

While the schedule works well for setting content to go live in the future, it also has a dark, sinister use in that you can travel back in time and fill up gaps in your posts. This makes your website seem as though it’s had content regularly to the average user, but of course you can’t fool Google this way.

Google doesn’t go off the date stamp on your posts, Google works off the time it first indexes the content, which with WordPress is usually helped via the ‘ping’ facility, as WordPress pings Google with updates.

So, if you write five posts in one hour session, and backdate them all to the last few months, your users will see posts that have been listed as being older posts whereas Google will see them as being added all at once.

You can’t fool Google, so don’t try!

Posted by Matt Jones

Learn to make money online for FREE

Posted on May 28, 2009

Everyone wants to know how to make money over the Internet, it’s the perfect dream. You can stay at home while the money rolls in via your computer. However, the reality is a little more difficult as earning money online isn’t as easy as it seems, and most people who try to do it end up failing.

Luckily, US Internet entrepreneur ‘ShoeMoney’ (real name Jeremy Shoemaker) is offering a free 12 week course in just that: Making money online.

For those who don’t know, ShoeMoney is one of the leading Internet experts on making money online and has his finger in more pies than John Prescott. ShoeMoney offers advice to people who are looking to follow in his footsteps (more…)

Posted by Cheryl Mathews

Facebook purges fake names, and some real ones

Posted on May 27, 2009

Facebook has been recently purging its database of obviously ‘fake’ users who have signed up with fake names. The idea is that Facebook wants to keep its database of users pure, so that only real people exist, with real identities (something has plagued MySpace for many years).

However, the good intentions Facebook has have fallen short as some unfortunate real people have suffered Facebook’s deletion policy. One woman, Alicia Istanbul, found her account deleted after Facebook deemed her name ‘fake’ and thus her Facebook account fake, despite the fact that she is real, has been on Facebook since 2007 and has over 300 friends.

Istanbul understands what Facebook has tried to do but is angry that she (more…)

Posted by Cheryl Mathews

Yahoo to pay CFO $1.8 million when he leaves position

Posted on May 26, 2009

Yahoo! has revealed that they’re going to pay their chief financial officer $1.8 million in severance when he departs his position with the firm later this year. The departing CFO, Blake Jorgensen, is also to receive paid medical insurance from Yahoo for up to 12 months.

Six weeks after Carol Bartz became the chief executive of Yahoo, the decision was announced to replace Jorgensen. Jorgensen is expected to depart Yahoo by the end of June, if a (more…)

Posted by Matt Jones

How do I increase my PageRank?

Posted on May 25, 2009

How can you increase your PageRank? The subject of Google PageRank is something we’ve written about many times before, usually to dismiss its importance as your PageRank really doesn’t matter.

However, despite this a great many people are still obsessed with their little green bar, their Toolbar PageRank, and how they can get it a little bit greener.

The fact that your PageRank, your visible PageRank, isn’t the real ranking of your page is the first thing you should realise. Google updates the Toolbar PR very infrequently, usually around once every three months, but your real PageRank is being recalculated constantly, except you don’t know what it is and Google isn’t telling!

When Google does update the Toolbar PR it usually sparks a wave of blog posts and forum threads on who has had what sites increase to what PageRank, and who has seen (more…)

Posted by Matt Jones

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