Of all topics, this is one of the perennials. People want more traffic, more attention, more awareness to their blog. It’s fair. We work hard on our blogs. We want more attention and traffic. If your business depends on volume, this is especially important (for instance, if you’re using ads). Getting traffic is a tricky business, and it requires a lot of experimentation. I’ll tell you what’s worked for me, so far, and I’ll tell you what you might try. Maybe others will educate us both in the comments on their best methods.

Great Titles Help

The first few seconds of someone’s attention are the hardest to pass. If you have a lame blog post title, no one’s going to want to read the post. For whatever reason, we react to “how to,” we react to “7 great,” we react to all kinds of things. Not sure where to look? I stole this advice from Brian Clark years ago: go to the grocery store, buy some ladies’ magazines like Cosmopolitan, and learn how THEY write headlines on the front page.

Graphics Don’t Hurt

This entire series (and most of my blog posts) use graphics to catch your eye. It’s an easy way to get one’s attention. Screen captures help. Video helps. There are tons of ways to get people into a receptive space with your material, and graphics are just the easiest one.

Now that we’ve got a decent title, decent graphics, let’s be quick about your content.

Brevity Is the Game

Keep your posts brief (unless you want tons and tons of bookmarks). People don’t have all day to read. If you can keep your posts between 250-500 words, that’s in alignment with most people’s attention spans. Hey, you’re welcome to write whatever length you want. You asked me how to grow traffic to your blog. I can only give you results that I’ve tested. When I write a super long piece, I get much less involvement with it.

Share Your Blog

I’ve written about making shareability a priority. If you don’t have easy-to-share buttons on your blog, you’re missing the easiest way for people to see your stuff on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, and all the other sites where it would matter. Sharing out is a great way to make some more traffic happen. I also automatically push my posts into Facebook with their notes feature. I have an automated post into twitter via @broganmedia, but don’t do this same effect on my primary @chrisbrogan account.

Subscriptions or No?

In my case, subscriptions to my blog matter. I want people to subscribe, because I don’t necessarily survive on ad revenue. If you’re trying to monetize via ad revenue, and if your ads are in the header and the sidebar, a subscription really won’t help you get more traffic. If for whatever reason you want people to come to your website directly instead of via your RSS feed, you might want to obfuscate where you put your subscription information.

If you’re like me, you ask for the subscription all the time. In fact, I’ll ask now. You’re not yet subscribed? Enter your email (I respect your privacy):

Guest Posts

Over in the Third Tribe, we talk about guest posts quite often as a great traffic-builder to your blog. Find someone who has a very similar kind of blog topic to yours (not sure where to start? Check out Alltop), and offer a guest blog post. Oh, and then actually follow through. I have heard recently from my friends who accept guest posts that often, people ask for something, get approval, and then don’t take an action. That doesn’t sound like a good plan. Just FYI.

Consistency

This is one of those points where people disagree. I blog daily. Truth be told, I’m up to 2x a day most days. Why? Because the more I blog, the more people subscribe. I learned it from some of the larger blogger sites out there.

Lots of people justify once a week, or once every two weeks. That’s fine. But if you want to grow traffic to your blog, that’s a very long slow crawl towards that growth. That said, no matter which frequency you’ve chosen, stick to it. The moment you drop off the map, people who haven’t yet subscribed to you lose sight and move on.

Market Your Blog

You can always market your blog the good old fashioned way. I’ve had people hand me business cards at events that had a compelling question or interesting graphic, and then a URL to their blog. More often than not, I’ll at least check out the post. You might make postcards and bring them to the places where your prospective readers might congregate. For instance, if you write a restaurant blog, why not have a business card tray by the mints? Make an offer, just like you do with any other kind of marketing.

Often times, we sit around inside the fishbowl of social media and hope people from outside will find us. Here’s a hint, hero: the people you need are out there wondering what they can do to learn more about the thing you’re talking about. Go get ‘em, tiger.

How Do You Grow Traffic To Your Blog?

I’m a big fan of the basics: write about what they need, make sure they see that you wrote about it, make it easy to carry on the relationship, make it easy for them to promote you to others.

Seems like a simple formula, and yet, we go through all kinds of hoops to come up with trickier methods. Try this one first. What do you say?

Part of the new iTunes 10 software, announced and launched yesterday, is a significant new social networking feature for iTunes called Ping. It allows you to comment on music, 'like' it a la Facebook, or rate it. Ping is also very similar to Twitter, in that you can 'follow' people and music stars. All of this happens inside of the iTunes application, either on your computer, iPhone or iPod Touch.

We took the new feature for a spin and came away intrigued, despite some initial flaws. We do however wonder at the overly commercial focus of Ping. Is this really about social networking, or mostly for Apple and artists to sell more music?

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How to Get Ping

To access Ping, you first need to download iTunes 10 onto your computer. You'll need to also download 300+ MB worth of iPhone Software Update, to get it on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

On the computer, once you've downloaded iTunes 10 click the iTunes Store link in the sidebar. You'll see a "Get Started" link in the top right of that page (also 'Ping' appears as a menu option in the sidebar). You'll need to turn on the Ping feature and agree to Apple's privacy policy. After that, create a profile.

Note that you may encounter issues with uploading a profile photo and connecting to Facebook. If you wait for about 10 minutes, eventually your photo will upload. However Facebook Connect appears to be broken at this stage. We assume these are technical teething issues.

Once you have your profile set up, you're invited to follow other people and also stars like Lady Gaga and U2. This is very similar to how Twitter works, except that it's all happening inside of iTunes (on your computer or on your iPhone or iPod Touch).

Social Networking, or Prodding You to The Cash Register?

Ping isn't entirely intuitive. It took some head scratching to figure out that to actually post content, you need to be in the iTunes Store. You can't create new content from within Ping itself, although you can comment on what others have added.

To add new content to your Ping stream, go to the iTunes Store and either comment on an album, 'like' it or give it a star rating.

The fact that you need to be inside the iTunes Store to create new content or like something, seems a rather cynical move to encourage people to buy more music. Why not let users search inside Ping for a song or album? Or, even better, let them right-click and comment, like or rate music from within the iTunes player?

Follow The Stars

To track - and optionally comment on - what others are doing, click on the Recent Activity feed in Ping.

Ping places more focus on feature accounts than Twitter, inviting you to "set your inner groupie free by following your favorite artists on Ping." The service comes pre-loaded with accounts for some leading pop, rock and other music acts.

These accounts don't offer much more than what the stars can already do on Facebook and Twitter. The main difference is that it's within an application where people can buy the music.

I'll Follow You (If You Share My Music Tastes)

Overall, I can see Ping being useful for following friends who have similar tastes in music to me. In those cases, if they 'like' a new album then it's a great recommendation - and yes, I'm more likely to buy it. Also the ability to see which concerts they plan to go to is a useful feature.

However, Ping is probably not going to be very useful for following friends who don't share my music tastes. That could be most of them. You may be a mate of mine on Facebook, but if you listen to electronica then sorry I'm not very interested in the content you're liking (you probably feel the same way about the alternative music I tend to favor).

Have you tested out Ping yet? Let us know your verdict in the comments!

Discuss

Régulièrement, j’effectue des missions de conseil, d’accompagnement, de formation aux réseaux sociaux. Et régulièrement on me demande si je peux me charger du « Community Management », ce que je refuse. La plupart de mes interlocuteurs ne comprennent pas, de prime abord, mon refus. Après quelques explications sur les implications liées au community management, ils finissent par [...]

As the fugitive businessman Asil Nadir flew back to Britain from his North Cyprus bolt-hole last week, Sean O'Neill, the crime editor of The Times, scooped Fleet Street by being the only print journalist on the plane. Yet those searching Google for the latest on the breaking story that morning would have found no sign of O'Neill's exclusive – only follow-up stories by rival news organisations such as The Guardian and ITN.

[Updated at 1:05 p.m.] Mariner Energy, owner of the production platform, said in a press release that no hydrocarbon spill has been reported after an initial flyover of the incident.

"Mariner has notified and is working with regulatory authorities in response to this incident," the statement said. "The cause is not known, and an investigation will be undertaken. During the last week of August 2010, production from this facility averaged approximately 9.2 million cubic feet of natural gas per day and 1,400 barrels of oil and condensate."

The company also said no injuries have been reported.

[Updated at 12:48 p.m.] David Reed, a paramedic on board the Rowan Gorilla II oil rig located 14 miles from the platform that exploded told submitted an iReport saying he saw all thirteen workers rescued from the water.

“We were up here in the radio room and all of sudden we saw a whole bunch of smoke coming from the platform," Reed said. "Shortly after all the radios started lighting up like a Christmas tree. They called any helicopters in the area, any boats in the area to respond, they were saying there were people in the water. There were multiple people in the water.”

See Reed's iReport of what he witnessed

WWL: Coast Guard reporting production platform incident

WDSU: Production platform explodes in Gulf

iReport: Did you see the explosion? Share images

[Updated at 12:32 p.m.] White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday that the federal government has "assets ready" to respond to any environmental problems resulting from the explosion of an oil platform off the coast of Louisiana.

[Updated at 12:31 p.m.] All thirteen people aboard a production platform that exploded in the Gulf are accounted for and safely on a commercial vessel according to initial information, the U.S. Coast Guard said in a statement.

"We continue to gather information as we respond with full force, and have oil spill response assets ready for immediate deployment should we receive any reports of pollution," the statement said.

[Updated at 11:53 a.m.] U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Bill Colclough tells CNN that 12 people from the production platform are in water immersion suits as they await rescue.

Colclough told CNN there are reports the production platform, which is for both oil and natural gas, is still on fire.

"We don't know what caused the rig to catch on fire," he told CNN, noting the incident is under investigation.

Asked about concerns regarding oil leaks or pollution, Colclough said "there are reports the rig was not actively producing any product, so we don't know if there's any risk of pollution."

Mariner Energy is a leading independent oil and gas exploration and production company in the Gulf of Mexico. About 85 percent of the company's production comes from offshore assets, with a growing share of that coming from deepwater developments.

The explosion comes nearly five months after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20, killing 11 people and causing oil to gush into
the Gulf of Mexico, leading to one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.

[Updated at 11:43 a.m.] U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Bill Colclough tells CNN that all 13 workers involved in the production platform explosion are accounted for, but one person is injured.

Coast Guard Choppers are on the way to the site 80 miles south of Vermilion Bay.

[Posted at 11:33 a.m.] An oil production platform has exploded 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana, with 12 people overboard and one missing, the Coast Guard said Thursday morning.

Rescue attempts are under way for at least 12 people, Coast Guard spokesman John Edwards told CNN. 13 people were on board the production platform total, Edwards said, noting 12 have been accounted for, but one person was missing.

The accident took place 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana on the Vermilion Oil production platform 380, which is owned by Houston-based Mariner Energy.

The Coast Guard has multiple helicopters, an airplane and several Coast Guard cutters en route. It's unknown if there are any injuries.

Ever since it became stable enough to use on a day-to-day basis on a Mac last year, Google Chrome has been my browser of choice. Other browsers have been adding some nice features — but Chrome keeps adding them faster. And today on its second birthday, that rate of change isn’t slowing down.

Google has officially rolled out Chrome 6 as the latest stable version of the browser today. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone using the dev or beta builds of the browser, but it’s nonetheless an important mark as it means it’s stable enough for mass consumption.

Remember that it was just two years ago when Google surprised the world by announcing a new browser (a little early) via a comic. The next day, we got the first shots of what the browser would look like — and it was released as a beta for Windows users. It actually looks pretty much the same today, but it’s now much, much faster (and when it launched it was already faster than most browsers out there).

Google says that Chrome today is a full three times faster when it comes to JavaScript performance versus Chrome circa 2008. The rapid speed increases have also undoubtedly pushed rival browsers to become faster, so we’ve all benefited.

Arguably more important to me is that despite adding all the new features – and extensions — Chrome still seems lightweight today. I fondly remember the good old days of 2004 when I first started using Firefox as my main browser and thinking how fresh and lightweight it felt compared to the atrocity that was IE. Firefox, sadly, got bloated over the years. So far, Chrome hasn’t put on the same weight. Here’s hoping it never does.

As I said, Chrome is also showing no signs of slowing down from a development standpoint. The browser is already in the process of morphing into version 7 as well. Chromium, the open source browser that Chrome is based on, has been hit version 7 a couple weeks ago — and the dev build of Chrome just went 7 as well. Google has said they hope to iterate every six weeks going forward.

These next few months are going to be arguably the most interesting times for the browser yet. The Chrome Web Store will soon open, bringing tightly integrated web-based apps into the browser. And then, of course, Chrome OS is due before the end of the year.

Happy birthday Chrome.

Chrome then:

Chrome now:

Excited about your new Facebook page but don’t know what’s next?  What does a truly advanced company look like in social business?  They can say yes to seven or more of these ten criteria.

We’ve been interviewing the most sophisticated brands in the world when it comes to social business for our upcoming report on “Enterprise Social Strategists Role”.  We’ve come to learn which companies are advanced and why.  Secondly, I meet a variety of companies who tell me they are “Very advanced, having done this for a few years, and have dozens of Facebook efforts” but when I ask them some specific questions on their sophistication, they often retract their statement.

How to tell if your Company is Advanced: 10 Criteria Of Social Business Maturity.
Corporations that have these and other following elements in place, may truly be sophisticated when it comes to social business:

1. Clear understanding of their customers socialgraphics. Clear understanding of how their customers use social media by knowing the socialgraphics of your customers.  Granular knowledge of where their customers are, which behaviors they use, who they trust for information, and how they influence their peers in the context of their own products.
   The true test? Your company can adjust budgets of your integrated social strategy based on data –not gut feel.
2. Your organization is in Hub and Spoke, Dandelion, or Holistic formation. Social technologies enable all employees that want to talk to customers to do so.  This means a massive change inside of your organization to get ready.  Your company is sophisticated if you’ve organized in the Hub and Spoke, Dandelion, or Holistic and all employees clearly know their role, process, and contact points.
   The true test? A product crises has emerged on YouTube on a Friday evening before a three day weekend and you can sleep peacefully.
3. Corporate website integration: Social sign on. When customers come to the corporate site, they can see which one of their friends uses which product, and what they think about it.  Common technologies would include OpenID, Facebook Connect, and other social sign on technologies.
   The true test? You can disable your corporate registration page and use social logins instead.
4. Personalized corporate website based on social data. When a prospect (someone who’s never logged into you website before) arrives to your corporate website, they receive a customized experience based on their social IDs.  This would be based on Social CRM infrastructure, social sign on technology and a large inventory of personalized content.
   The true test? The voices of the consumers real world friends emerge above that of the brand right on the corporate website, see Levi’s foray.
5. Thriving advocacy program: customers are actively selling on your behalf. The sophisticated marketing program isn’t really the company talking much at all, instead they’ve a thriving advocacy program and word of mouth program that encourages customers to recruit prospects for them –all unpaid.  Learn how to do this, by reading this piece on Forbes.
   The true test? most leads are coming in through existing customers –not your sales team.
6. A community of customers supports each other, reducing support center calls. A company that has a thriving branded community where customers are self-supporting each other with little aid from the brand or the support team is a sign of a sophisticated social support program.
   The true test? A majority of customer support issues are resolved by community faster, with greater satisfaction than your dedicated support team.
7. Anticipation of prospects and customers using Social CRM technology.  Brands can anticipate before a customer has a problem, or grab leads “right out of the air” by using brand monitoring software, intelligent keyword monitoring and responding to be faster than real time using Social CRM strategies.
   The true test? sales and marketing are getting leads before the consideration phase, and the support team reduces inbound calls by triggering the community to resolve a potential issue before it’s escalated.
8. Innovation of new products with customers using web collaboration.  Companies that use these same tools to glean input from customers (ethnographic data collection) or create private communities, or use collaboration and innovation tools like Ideastorm or Uservoice and build new products and services demonstrate true sophistication.
   The true test? faster time to market on products because consumers have dictated the specifications, and less inventory as the product is built on spec.
9. Supply chain is influenced by social data in real time. Social media isn’t just about marketing and support, but is very valuable in listening to customer signals then to anticipate which products, services, and teams should be when and where.
   The true test? Your company is sophisticated if you’re using social data to adjust your supply chain in real time based on customer signals from checkins, tweets, and plancasts.
10. Real time reporting of revenues, costs and efficiency:  I’ve met with some of the most advanced teams, and they have clear reporting and can measure the increased revenues (over the total cost of the program) to tell their executives the true ROI of their business program.
    The true test? Real time dashboard measures the health of all social channels revenues, CSAT, sentiment and overall program costs.

We’ve done research on the roadmap for companies to reach these 10 levels of nirvana, but have found few companies that have done a few, or even a majority of them. If you know of any companies that have achieved five out of ten of these criteria, we’d love to know, please leave a comment.

HI MATEO, WHO ARE YOU? AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

My main job is to be a film maker. I direct feature films. This was my main activity for 10 years. Originally I’m from France, Paris, and moved to Canada 8 years ago. Now I’m exercising my job in a larger skill in North America. I wouldn’t say I’m a Steven Spielberg but at the same time in last few years I was able to get a little bit of recognition that helped me to become more established and to do more films.

HOW DID YOU DISCOVER THE MOBILE PHOTOGRAPHER IN YOU?

Film is like photography: It’s very difficult, isn’t it? There are so many film makers, so many photographers. But at the same time there is a very small room for people to have a chance to be on the spotlight and to reach people. It’s overcomplicated and difficult. You have to work very hard, learn tenacity and hang on it whatever happens. You need to have the chance, be lucky and meet the right people at the right place at the right moment. It’s a mix of a lot of stuff.

But in my case, 4 years ago, I was invited to participate in a work shop at the Toronto International Film Festival with one of my short films. Motorola asked all participants to do a little movie with a cell phone. I did a piece called “Labour day”. After that I was getting more and more attention and the Motorola people asked me if I would like to keep working with a cell phone and do something with them. I thought that the concept was very interesting.

The funny thing is that I didn’t use the cell phone before. As an artist I can be confident and at the same time very unconfident, in this case I thought: ‘No, I cannot be a photographer’. People who are photographers start to do photos when they are 12 years old. Me, I never took in particular any pictures but I was making films. But I didn’t realize that it is the same thing because I was using my eyes and my emotions to capture life and reality.

Because as film maker I was like a painter and basically I recognized, that I was very precise and articulative, very into framing and putting elements in a frame. I focused on the light. Etc. So I realized that my work as a film maker was very close to what photographers do. And funny enough the same reason why people were enjoying my work as a film maker was the reason why people were enjoying my work as a photographer.

WHY IS MOBILE PHOTOGRAPHY INTERESTING FOR YOU?

If you look at cellphones today and try to find a definition of what the use of a cell phone is, you find many things: It’s a way to communicate so you can talk through the cell phone. Or you can have a video conference, so you can talk and see each other. But at the same time you can do pictures or you can film. It’s such a very small tool that can stay in your pocket. I just heard there are more than five billion cell phone which where built in the last few years. Just for you to realize how cell phones become day by day a routine. Everybody has cell phone today. It’s just as normal as to have underwear or a fork to eat. It’s almost weird to not have a cell phone today.

I use to say it’s an extension of your body. So in a way it’s very interesting because it’s so small, and it becomes something so vulgar that you can be everywhere with your cell phone and you’re not going to catch any attention. For a photographer it’s amazing because in any kind of environment, location or situation you can still be discrete and play with your cell phone. The people of the situation that you try to capture stay very normal.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN YOUR WORK WITH A CAMERA AND A MOBILE PHONE?

First of all I need to describe myself when I was child: I always wanted to be a war reporter, who you know from the movies in the 70th’s, as Salvatore. Just where you see a binge of war reporters in the middle of chaos, taking pictures and trying to send them to the other side of the world to be witnessed what’s happening. I always had a huge admiration for these people but I don’t think I’m brave enough to do this kind of stuff. This is why I became a film maker on the set. But I imagine the way I take pictures with my cell phone is almost like a war reporter. This is why I like the cell phones. It’s so small, quick and discrete that I can take pictures anytime anywhere without thinking but with being very instinctive.

When you make a movie it’s much more complicated: Before you shoot a scene you have to find a location, bring a crew together, find actors, to select some lights, etc. It’s a huge organization. But with a cell phone it’s very instinctive, fast and furious, you just catch the moment, if it’s ugly or beautiful. I like the idea that because of the pixel there’s something not perfect.

I would say that my work as a film maker is much more organized, complicated and needs much more preparation. My work as a photographer with my little iPhone is like I’m a citizen of the war, I’m a war reporter. Everywhere I am I just end up with my cell phone, boom, capturing something.

WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU FORGET YOUR MOBILE PHONE?

I can’t! Because my phone is always in my pockets. And because it’s almost a drug addiction, for example I take pictures, I film, check my emails, pass phone calls or use the internet. It became part of me. It’s like how can you forget your head?! Or how can you forget to wear clothes before you go out?! You don’t go out naked …

HOW CAN WE IMAGE YOU WORKING ON YOUR FEATURE FILM “OFF WORLD”?

I was shooting my feature film “Off World” for 14 weeks in a slum called Smokey Mountain, where thousands of people are living next to garbage. It’s a very rich and heavy place in terms of visual. Of course I knew that even I was making a film with a big crew and hundreds of people there will be moments to escape and to photograph something. So it was very easy for me, but a nightmare to my crew because sometimes I disappeared for 4-5 minutes because something caught my attention. I was running with my cell phone, boom, taking pictures and coming back to the set.

WHEN YOU WERE A LITTLE BOY YOU PREFERRED STAYING HOME, WATCHING MOVIES AND GETTING INSPIRED BY THEM INSTEAD OF GOING TO SCHOOL. SO WHICH MOVIES DID INSPIRE YOU THOSE DAYS AND NOWADAYS?

I spent years watching every kind of movie, from a big block buster to small indie films, coming from Asia, East Europe or Italy. And of course the French movies from 50th’S, 60th’s and 70th’s. Also I was always very attracted by new emerging film makers from countries which are not able to make movies because they are under caesura. So for example if you look at China: the way Chinese provide movies is incredible. They have access to freedom. Or look at South America or East Europe. There you have some film makers who are longing to be so because they needed to express themselves and it was something vital and organic. So they have that strong desire like “we have to make a movie or  we’re going to  die. I was always very attracted by those people for whom making a movie is the last step before they die. It becomes something so important and essential. There are so many people all over the world who are living in difficult countries where they are oppressed because of their sexual orientation, political statement or  choice how to live their lives. At the end they go against the law and create beautiful movies.

But also I like blockbusters. Just last weekend I saw “inception”. Honestly I’m a big fan of Christopher Nolan. His best movie ever was “Memento” But “inception” is just a pale copy of “Memento”. I love the new movie but it will not stay in my mind as “Memento” did. For my new projects I’m watching right now more movies about dogma.

ON YOUR BLOG YOU SAY YOU ARE “THE KIND OF HUMAN BEING WHO HAS TO BE IN A RISKY SITUATION TO FEEL ALIVE – TO FEEL THAT THERE IS A PURPOSE FOR LIVING – AND TO PRODUCE ART.” YOU’VE BEEN TO SMOKEY MOUNTAIN, ISRAEL AND OTHER PLACES. WHAT ARE YOUR DREAMS TO GO NEXT TO?

This is exactly the essence of I am a human being and an artist. Before I was speaking about the war reporter, I believe they always need to be in risky and heavy situations to feel alive and to capture life. This is why I feel like them because I have the same emotions. And so, once again, the cell phone is an amazing tool for someone like me. In an interview someone said it’s the prolongation of my heart, so the cell phone is like the end of my body. And I think it truly became part of me.

So for the future I’m brainstorming and collecting a few ideas. I’m always more excited and attracted by extreme or crazy adventures and journeys. I don’t like to go  where things are too settled, too busy or too soft.

One of my future projects follows the dogma concept. The idea is to do a workshop with a few actors for a few weeks, creating a story and to develop some web-episodes, to film them but also to ask them to film themselves with cell phones. Just trying something around that. It’s going to be very experimental and risky but at the same time it allows me to be a film maker, but also to use my cell phone and work with actors to capture something with different devices. It’s going to be interesting.

DO YOURSELF A BIG FAVOR AND CHECK OUT MATEO’S WORK!

Mateo on EYE’EM!

His Blog

Off World

Google is celebrating the second anniversary of its Google Chrome browser with the release of new stable and beta versions, bringing and even cleaner and simpler user interface and increased speed and performance.

As the Google Chrome Blog points out, Chrome 6 is years beyond where most imagined browser technology when it was first introduced just two years ago.

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The Google Chrome Blog takes a retrospective look at how much browsers have changed over the past two years, remarking that when Chrome was first introduced in August of 2008, "JavaScript was 10 times slower, HTML5 support wasn't yet an essential feature in modern browsers, and the idea of a sandboxed, multi-process browser was only a research project."

In addition to some cosmetic changes, the new version of Chrome brings form autofill features, making it so you don't have to type in again and again that ridiculously long email address you now regret choosing. It also brings extension and autofill synchronization, meaning that your autofill data will remain the same from desktop to laptop to netbook.

Among the myriad features, the user interface seems to have an impact in the browser market. The soon-to-be-released Internet Explorer 9 looks like it stole a page from Chrome, adopting the clean and simple design that lets the browser step out of the way. Chrome's design manages to portray what we find most appealing about Chrome (which replaced Firefox as the default browser months ago now) - its lightweight operation. Just as it steps out of the way of the page, in terms of design, the browser manages to step out of the way of other programs, managing to run well (even on a netbook) without hogging all of the processing power.

If you haven't yet, we highly recommend giving Chrome a spin.

Discuss

A picture is worth a thousand words. But if you include an entire database, make it interactive, and add filtering options, the word-to-picture exchange rate is even better.

Infographics at their best are more than just pictures — they can provide new understandings, succinct summaries, or just plain old fun.

In that respect, reading newspaper archives isn’t the only way to get a deeper understanding of current events. Infographics can help us get a better grasp on what’s going on.

Check out these 10 visualizations to learn more about the news with a quick look.

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1. Google’s Appetite for Acquisition

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Last month alone, Google acquired social-search service Angstro, visual shopping search engine like.com, and social currency company Jambool. Google has been on an acquisition binge for some time, and it’s getting tricky to keep track of its appetite.

This graphic shows a timeline of Google’s activity in three categories: “Building Revenue Streams,” “Cutting Competition,” or “A Little of Both.”

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2. Gay Marriage Chronology

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The campaign for gay marriage has passed a multitude of milestones over the last decade. Unfortunately for those trying to keep track of them, the victories and setbacks vary drastically by state. Decisions are reversed and in some cases overturned by higher courts, which makes progress hard to track.

This map from the LA Times shows the status of gay marriage in each state by month. Click on a state for its most recent ruling or watch the country change from being legally similar in its treatment of same-sex couples in 2000 to sharply divided in 2010.

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3. IED Attacks from Wikileaks’ Afghanistan War Logs

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The frequency and fatality of IEDs (homemade bombs) in Afghanistan was highlighted when WikiLeaks published more than 90,000 secret documents about the Afghan war. Anti-war activists published this illustrative video that includes all of the incidents reported in these leaked documents.

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4. Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

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On April 20, an explosion on a BP drilling rig started what has become the largest accidental oil spill in history. Despite numerous strategies that were deployed to plug the leak, it wasn’t capped until July 15.

This video graphic by New Orleans online newspaper NOLA wraps timeline, graphic, and cumulative damage data into one easy-to-digest piece of media.

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5. CIA World Factbook Dashboard

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The CIA World Factbook has always been a great resource for putting news stories into the context of their geographic location. But now it’s also easy to get the information at a glance.

The World Factbook Dashboard allows you to color code the countries of the world by population, population growth, infant mortality, agricultural GDP, industry GDP, services GDP, total GDP, GDP/inhabitant, or inflation. Clicking on a country zooms in for more information.

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6. Geography of a Recession

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This map from The New York Times illustrates not only which areas suffered the highest unemployment rate after the recession, but also offers the option to filter data by metropolitan areas, areas with housing bubbles, rural areas, and manufacturing centers.

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7. Afghanistan and Pakistan Regional Violence Map

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The Wall Street Journal updates this map constantly with violent conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan. If you want to learn about the day-to-day details of the war or understand its scope, there’s no better visual resource.

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8. What Does the Health Care Bill Mean to Me?

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Even if you read through every health care bill article, it could be hard to exactly pick out what the law would change about your insurance coverage and taxes. The Washington Post made it easy by providing this nifty tool. Input whether you have insurance coverage, your family size, your income, and your marital status, and it will tell you how health care reform will impact your life.

For the broader picture on healthcare reform, see this subway-style map from GOOD Magazine.

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9. Obama’s $787 Billion Economic Stimulus Plan

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The government is still busy spending much of the $787 billion it allotted for the economic stimulus in February of last year. This infographic effectively illustrates how that huge chunk of change is being distributed.

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10. American Casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Beyond

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This chilling interactive graphic from USA Today simply illustrates the deaths in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Information seekers can search deaths by personal factors like name, age, gender, race, or home town as well as by military service details, date, cause, or place.

CNN has a more elaborate version here.

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More Graphics Resources from Mashable:

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- 5 Fab Twitter Follower Visualization Tools
- 10 Beautiful Social Media Infographics
- 5 Amazing Infographics for the Health Conscious
- 10 Essential Free E-Books for Web Designers
- 12 Beginner Tutorials for Getting Started With Photoshop

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Reviews: Google

More About: afghanistan, bp, current events, gay rights, graphics, healthcare reform, infographics, iraq, News, oil-spill, stimulus, visualizations, wikileaks

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It’s the Holy Grail of interactive marketing: getting “social media influencers”—the ones with the voice and the reach, the ones to whom everyone else listens—to endorse and promote what you’re doing.

Recently, my company managed to inspire 60 such influencers to participate in our event, called The Influencer Project, and they even took it upon themselves to help spread the word.

People like Social Media Examiner’s own Michael Stelzner, Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble, Gary Vaynerchuk, David Meerman Scott, and others all signed on. We were grateful beyond belief.

Why’d they come on board? And how’d we do it?

First Things First: No-one Cares About Your Brand

Many of us who are new to the social media space want influencers to “get behind” our brands, products and special events.

We think we can just reach out to them, and if we have a great thing going on, they’ll naturally want to endorse what we’re doing.

It’s an honest mistake, usually, but it does backfire—or at least, it won’t get you the results you’re looking for.

Of course, if you have deep reserves of cash, you may be able to afford paying handsomely for a big name to review your product—although, to be sure, that can get into very tricky ethical territory and is a delicate issue.

But for the rest of us—for those who don’t have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend on “influencer outreach”—we have to be a little more creative.

In fact, we have to get rid of the very idea of “trying” to “get” a social media influencer to “back” our brand.

Instead, we need to create innovative ways to inspire not only well-known influencers, but also large numbers of participants, to join a project, a cause, an initiative. And that takes a different kind of thinking—one that I’ll explain below.

How to Inspire a Social Media Influencer

The thing is, no-one wants to be your salesperson—unless they are, of course, being paid to sell your products. But everyone—social media influencers included—wants to be part of something that’s bigger than them, that’s creative and that brings new ideas into the world.

So, without any further ado, here are my 5 creative ways for inspiring web celebrities to come on board with what you’re doing:

#1: Don’t Ask for an Endorsement

Don’t ask them to endorse a product or site. Instead, create a project—related to, but independent of, your brand—that they can get behind. Think about the “Yes We Can” video that will.i.am created for Barack Obama’s campaign.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsV2O4fCgjk

Regardless of your political leaning, there’s a lesson here. Yes, will.i.am’s a celebrity. And yes, Hollywood is known for bringing other celebrities on board political campaigns. But that’s not the fundamental point. The point is that there was a cause, an initiative, a project that people wanted to get behind, that inspired them to act—and they did.

This is what you need. You want to create something that many people will join. A cause, a vision.

#2: Make it “Memetic”

Memetic means that it has a meme-like quality. Well, what’s a meme, you ask? In its simplest definition, a meme is an idea that spreads from person to person, one that’s so “catchy” that people almost can’t help but to spread it.

“Yes We Can” was a meme.

A meme is bigger than a brand. Just Do It is a meme. No Fear is a meme. The Red Bull Flugtag is a meme. It’s something that people can identify with, make their own and share with others. If you’re simply trying to strong-arm a social media influencer into singing your brand’s praises, good luck. But if you have a project that has memetic quality, then you’re on the right track.

#3: But Make it Values-Driven, too

A meme unto itself isn’t enough. Sure, you could get lots of YouTube video views by trying to replicate something like a funny hamster, but you won’t be enrolling people in a vision.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8Kyi0WNg40

In other words, you won’t be providing extraordinary value—to the end user or to the influencer.

On the other hand, if your project provides overwhelming value and is memetic, then you’re not only sure to inspire people, you’ll also be making the world a better place.

It makes business sense, too. Simply trying to make a campaign “go viral” for the sake of going viral is far riskier than creating a project that offers tremendous benefit. In our case, we provided users with more than 60 helpful tips that they could use to increase their digital influence in 60 minutes. They heard from luminaries they respected.

Everyone won. There was no attempt to manipulate people to act on our behalf for a hollow goal. It was values-driven all the way around.

#4: Reduce the Barriers to Entry

There are two things all of us have an increasingly short supply of: time and attention. Unless you’re Apple or Microsoft and you’re offering a blogger a sneak peek at your new product, asking someone to write a whole blog post about you—or, for example, do an hour-long webinar to your not-quite-robust-enough-yet list of subscribers—is going to make getting a “yes” a lot harder.

In our case, we only asked for 60 seconds of the speaker’s time. The proposition was often met with enthusiasm. “Sure, I’d love to do a 60-second interview!” It was fun, short and interesting. There’s no way we would have gotten 60 busy people to do full-hour interviews each right off the bat. So we made it radically easy for them to say “yes.”

But that’s only part of the picture: we also made it incredibly easy for the audience to say “yes.” For only an hour of their time, we were going to give them 60 tips from 60 experts. Not a bad deal. And that’s exactly what we heard from participants: it was completely manageable and reasonable to take one hour to learn from so many people.

So don’t just reduce the barriers for those you want to headline your campaign, also make it easy for your intended audience to participate.

#5: Be Creative, but Err on the Side of Accessibility

When describing his company’s financial practices, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff said that while his software-as-a-service platform may have been revolutionary, his bookkeeping methods were as traditional as they get.

Similarly, I believe that it’s important to let your creativity and imagination run wild, and to create something new—for example, to take a conventional idea (say, marketing conference) and challenge it (the shortest marketing conference ever). But I see far too many campaigns that feature weird, wild and avant-garde stuff without making it accessible to the end users.

The “60-in-60″ idea was new. But it wasn’t “43-in-68.” We didn’t ask them to speak for 10 seconds. We didn’t request that they sing, dance or rap. In other words, it all made sense—both to them and to the audience. “60 tips” is still an attractive value proposition, and participants felt that they truly benefited from the advice.

But the other side of completely inaccessible and avant-garde is utter banality. Think of the typical webinar, conference or jargon-ridden special report. Sure, those can be great as ongoing lead-generation sources, but not as a way to get noticed and build digital influence rapidly.

So even though I’d recommend erring on the side of accessibility, I still want to challenge and encourage you to come up with something innovative.

Now the Ball’s in Your Court

Hopefully, these tips have given your creative faculties some juice to explore what you can do to inspire social media influencers—and your target audience—to join your cause.

What do you think? Have you had success recruiting influencers? Put your comments in the box below.

Thanks to a partnership with Vlingo, owners of Android 2.0 or higher-equipped phones can now check in to Foursquare and update their status on Facebook and Twitter simply by speaking into their phones.

To try it out, download the free Vlingo app to your Android handset.

Using your voice, you can then update your location status on Foursquare by saying “check into Logan Airport”, locate your friends with commands like “where are my friends?” and “who’s nearby?” as well as send shout-outs to your buddies (e.g. “shout at Logan Airport waiting to board a plane to San Francisco”).

That’s not all though. The latest version of the Vlingo app also lets users share the service with their friends with the click of a button and also update their status on Facebook, Twitter and/or Foursquare at the same time by saying “social update” and speaking the message.

Previous Vlingo features remain, too: you can still use the app to send text and email messages, search the web, use Google maps and more.

As for BlackBerry, iPhone and Nokia S60 users – they’ll have to be patient for a while before they can start updating their status and locations with their voice.

Vlingo says it plans to roll out this functionality to other supported platforms in a future release but didn’t mention specific dates.

Do you consider voice-driven applications to be an ideal way to interact with mobile apps on your phone? Why (not)?

Extra photos for bloggers: 1, 2, 3

We love hanging out with our friends, and we’ve had a great summer full of lunches in the park, guests from around the globe, and days off at the beach.

With summer winding down, we have a lot less beach days in our future, and no out-of-town guests scheduled to sleep on our couch.

…That’s a problem for us.

Naturally, we tried to fix the problem with photos.

Were we successful? Of course!

Our solution is a fun project that you can make with anyone you choose, whether they share a dorm room with you or live halfway across the world.

p.s. We heard Facebook is a good place to make friends (and stare at each other’s faces). Sooo…“Like” us!
(...)
Read the rest of Double Exposures: A DIY Project That Brings Friends Together With Photos! (947 words)

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People are increasingly sharing different types of information on Twitter. For example, Tweets point to web pages, photos, videos, hashtags, people, check-ins, and more. Exploring Tweets is a great way to discover new and interesting information. And with devices of all shapes and sizes connecting to the Internet, we’re constantly looking for new ways to make this easier. To date, we’ve created applications for a variety of mobile phones, giving you instant access to Tweets and great content when you’re on the go.

Today we are bringing Tweets to a device that really lets content shine - the iPad. Twitter for iPad takes advantage of the iPad’s fluid touch interface, letting you move lots of information around smoothly and quickly – without needing to open and close windows or click buttons. There are a few things we want to point out that make this app a really fast and fun way to read real-time content.

Panes: Tapping on a Tweet opens a pane to the right. Depending on the content in that Tweet, you’ll see a video or photo, or maybe a news story, or perhaps another Tweet. You can continue tapping on Tweets, opening new panes, and getting new content as long as you’d like to. And, it’s really easy to move between panes by swiping to the right or left.


Media: When you tap a video link or open a web page with an embedded video, you can play that video inline. And, let’s be honest, video is great but sometimes it can take some time to load. The panes in Twitter for iPad let you look through your timeline while a video is loading, and then you can just swipe back to the video when it’s ready to play. You can also pinch on a video to watch it fullscreen.

Gestures: You can pinch on a Tweet to quickly view details about the author and to take actions on a Tweet, such as reply or retweet. Put two fingers together and pull down on a Tweet to peek at the replies, showing the entire conversation leading to that Tweet.

When he was introducing Ping, Steve Jobs mentioned that it will immediately reach a user base of 160 million people in 23 countries. Sounds impressive, until you remember that 23 countries actually isn’t that big of a number; and if you’re in a country such as Chile, the Czech Republic, Croatia, or India, then Ping – just like the music store component of iTunes – is simply not available.

The users in most countries around the world are used to products and features not being available to them – receiving money through PayPal or buying music through iTunes doesn’t work for me, for example – but Ping is different. It’s supposed to be a social network; its competitors, Last.FM and MySpace, are available in most countries in the world. Users expect it to just work, but in my version of iTunes, Ping simply doesn’t exist.

Here’s a thread from Apple’s support forums, in which users from all around the world complain that they can’t find Ping. After Apple’s big announcement, most of them don’t even consider the possibility that this great new social network is not available in their country: they think they’re doing something wrong. But Apple hasn’t said a word about availability in other countries, so it might be a long wait for all these users.

From Apple’s point of view, it’s understandable it chose to tie Ping closely to the music store. One feature Steve Jobs had highlighted is buying a song directly from a status update; something you obviously cannot do if you don’t have access to the store. But the social networking part of Ping will suffer for it.

For an example of how being available only in a small number of countries can hurt Ping, consider one of its most important features: concert listings. This is where Last.FM shines; go to any place in the world, and you’ll be able to see which concerts are available, when, at what clubs and who’s attending. But if residents of a certain country cannot access Ping, then the concert listings for that particular country will be a sad and empty sight.

Facebook, which hasn’t really focused on music so far, is also available in most countries in the world; it’s the de facto standard for social networking, and it has half a billion active users. Yes, Ping is directly tied to music, but users aren’t used to network from iTunes. Should Facebook introduce some features similar to those Ping has, it would automatically have a huge advantage simply because it would work for all users, not just the select few. If Apple has any serious aspirations to grow Ping into a global social networking powerhouse, it should strongly consider making it available everywhere.

We’ve contacted Apple to find out when (and if) Ping might become available in countries other than the initial 23, and are still awaiting their response.

More About: apple, itunes, Ping

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Afin de renforcer son équipe à Genève, McCann Erickson cherche un(e) Junior Account Executive ultra-motivé(e) avec entrée en fonction idéalement au 1er novembre 2010. Votre mission : Suivi des clients dans le cadre de la gestion opérationnelle des projets Coordination interne des projets en collaboration avec les différents départements internes et partenaires externes Participation à l’élaboration de veilles concurrentielles et d’analyses [...]

Cette citation de Victor Hugo s'applique selon Götz Werner au "Revenu de Base" qui a le vent en poupe en Allemagne. C'est Olivier Auber, créateur du concept (génial) de "perspective numérique", et germanophile enthousiaste qui nous a twitté ce matin un lien vers une traduction d'une interview , publiée sur Médiapart de cet entrepreneur Allemand à succès fondateur de la chaîne de magasins "DM".

Je dois dire ici que les arguments développés dans cet interview sont totalement compatibles avec ceux que j'ai développés ici, et je me sens parfaitement en phase avec tout ce que nous dit Götz Werner (y compris concernant sa vision de l'entreprenariat). Je pourrais reprendre ici toute l'interview, mais comme c'est déjà disponible ailleurs, j'ai choisi d'en citer les perles les plus brillantes :

" (le revenu de base) réduirait la bureaucratie liée aux aides sociales de façon spectaculaire"

"Le problème de financement ne se pose pas. Nous ne vivons pas d’argent, mais de marchandises"

"Le partage est un terme inapproprié, contaminé par le vocabulaire socialiste"

"Ce qui était dans le passé un bout de terre, est aujourd'hui un revenu de base, soit l'équivalent d'hommes libres sur un lopin de terre libre"

"Des centaines de milliers de citoyens ont tellement de revenus (location, capital…), qu'ils n'auraient pas besoin de travailler …  et pourtant ils travaillent, et souvent dur"

" «Être libre, c’est pouvoir faire ce que nous croyons devoir faire sans en être empêchée par rien ni personne» – cette phrase de Rousseau devient la nouvelle règle"

"Imaginez ce sentiment sublime: vous vous promenez dans les rues et vous ne voyez autour de vous que des gens faire quelque chose parce qu’ils ont envie de le faire"

"Si je n'ai pas à me soucier de ma subsistance, je peux tester de nouvelles idées.Tous les deux nous pouvons nous lancer en tant que musiciens ou pour monter une start-up en informatique, le revenu de base nous donne la liberté d'essayer. Ainsi, nous prenons des risques, développons notre esprit d'entreprise"

"Quand vous forcez les gens à travailler, ils ne font rien de bon"

"L'homme a toujours tendance à vouloir aller au-delà de lui-même. Cette initiative sera renforcee grace au revenu de base"

"La paresse est une maladie. Sinon on pourrait simplement dire : « s’il est si paresseux, il n’a qu’a mourir de faim »"

"Il est évident que les bénéficiaires de Hartz IV (NDLR l'équivalent du RSA en France) perdent une partie des droits de l’homme... Hartz IV est contraire à plusieurs articles de la Loi fondamentale: le travail forcé est y interdit, le libre choix de l'emploi y est garanti, ainsi que la liberté d'établissement et de logement, ce qui n’est pas vrai avec Hartz IV, tout comme dans une prison ouverte"

"En outre, on oublie toujours que les bénéficiaires de Hartz IV reçoivent moins de subventions étatiques que les membres des classes moyennes et supérieures: Si vous allez deux fois par mois avec votre femme a l'opéra (fortement subventionné), vous recevrez de la communauté plus d’argent que la plupart des bénéficiaires de Hartz IV"

"Après que la Cour constitutionnelle a reconnu (il y a quelques semaines) qu’un minimum mensuel est nécessaire si l’on veut avoir une vie digne, il n'y a plus qu'un petit pas a faire pour arriver au revenu de base"

"Les hommes politiques sont guidés par le vent qui souffle de la société – et je travaille à renforcer ce vent. Quand nous aurons changé les mentalités, alors les politiques réagiront. Ce sont les mots de Victor Hugo: « rien n'est plus puissant qu'une idée dont l'heure est venue »"

Dans l'un des carnets intimes du photographe François-Marie Banier, qui ont été saisis par la police, le protégé de Liliane Bettencourt mentionne une confidence faite par la milliardaire, au printemps 2007. Liliane Bettencourt aurait évoqué devant lui la remise d'argent à Nicolas Sarkozy, au moment de l'élection présidentielle. «Elle ne m'a pas dit si c'était pour Neuilly, pour sa campagne ou pour autre chose», ajoute le photographe. Révélations.