Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Get Listed In Real-Time Searches

Real-time search is still an emerging concept. At this point, using a real-time search engine will bring you results by time/date. This doesn't always cater to relevancy, which is why there is still a lot of work to be done in this field.

Do you see traffic coming from real-time searches? Comment here.

So, if real-time results are based upon time/date, and the user's query, it stands to reason that time and those queries are the most important components in getting your content found in these types of searches.

1. Use Keywords

This seems obvious, but use keywords in not only your content, but in your titles, and your updates. If you're writing an article, you have to consider what people are going to include in their updates if they share it on a social network, whether this be Facebook, Twitter, or anything else.

More often than not, they are going to include the title. If the right keywords are in the title, then those keywords are also more likely to appear in any ensuing tweets, Facebook updates, etc. If someone searches for those keywords, they will be more likely to find your content in a real-time search.

The same goes for your own Tweets/status updates. Even if you are not sharing an article, if you want your update to be found, use relevant keywords. Again, obvious, but true.

http://images.ientrymail.com/webpronews/article_pics/realtime-update.jpg


2. Talk About Timely Events

Simply mentioning events that are current will put you directly into the results for any searches having to do with that topic, provided the right keywords are in play. This is a method that could and (surely is) being exploited by spammers, but that doesn't mean you can't provide legitimate conversation and simply put yourself on more people's radars, without throwing links at them every time.

http://images.ientrymail.com/webpronews/article_pics/mj-status-update.jpg

3. Have a Lot of Followers

If you have a lot of followers or friends on social networks, or even just readers of your blog, you are going to get more people sharing your content. The more people sharing your content, the more impressions of your content will be making their way into real time searches.

There is no easy way to instantly get a bunch of legitimate readers/followers. It will take some promotion. Provide useful content that people will link to and it will spread virally. Provide clear ways for them to follow you (like links to Facebook pages and Twitter accounts on your blog).

4. Promote Conversation

Whether on your blog or on a social network, spark conversations. Talk about topics that people are interested in. This is tied to number 2. The more conversations you are involved with, the more retweets (and equivalents on other networks) you are likely to get. And again, this means more impressions in real times searches.

5. Include Calls to Engagement

Retweet button from Tweetmeme I recently talked about why there is more to retweeting than meets the eye for businesses. I mentioned the use of buttons like Tweetmeme's and Digg's. These are buttons you can put on articles that show the amount of retweets/diggs that article has. They kind of act as a meter for engagement.

These buttons are certainly not all-encompassing. They only represent the conversation on 2 channels, and not the web in general. I'm sure there are other buttons that can be used in addition.

More importantly though, they provide a "call to action" to share the content. People can digg or retweet a story with a simple click, and you're one step closer to being found in somebody's real-time search.

Wrapping Up

Real-time search is much more basic (at least so far) than say, Google Search. You're not ranking for relevancy. Really, you could hardly call it ranking it all. It's about visibility. That means, you have to get people talking about your content/updates.

Social media by nature is viral. Real-time search is nothing more than putting things in chronological order. You have to keep people talking to stay relevant to "right now."



Source : webpronews.com

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Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Facebook Just Became More Important to Search

Launches Real Time Search After FriendFeed Acquisition

Facebook has begun rolling out a new version of its search feature, which it began testing with a select few last month. Of course, this would be real-time search, in the company's latest effort to move into Twitter territory.

Of course the announcement of Facebook's real-time search comes hot off the heels of their big announcement about the acquisition of FriendFeed, which comes with a pretty nifty real-time search engine of its own. But that's a different story.

With regards to Facebook's own search, the company's Akhil Wable says, "You now will be able to search the last 30 days of your News Feed for status updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared by your friends and the Facebook Pages of which you're a fan. If people have chosen to make their content available to everyone, you also will be able to search for their status updates, links and notes, regardless of whether or not you are friends. Search results will continue to include people's profiles as well as relevant Facebook Pages, groups and applications."

Just search like normal, and then use the filters on the left side of the screen (on the results page) to adjust your results to view by people, pages, groups, apps, events, your own friends, etc.


http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs132.snc1/5653_149767661728_20531316728_3274124_4821619_n.jpg


I would speculate that at some point, this real-time search functionality would incorporate more of what FriendFeed brings to the table. Searching FriendFeed gives you access to real-time results from all kinds of social networks - whatever the service's users are sharing.

http://images.ientrymail.com/webpronews/article_pics/friendfeed-services.jpg

Facebook could bring masses of people into the mix on that front, and make it far more useful as an all-encompassing real time search engine. We don't know what they're going to do with that yet though. Facebook does say that FriendFeed will continue to operate independently, but it will no doubt become integrated into Facebook in some capacity.

As far as Facebook's new search feature, the company reminds users that if they don't want their stuff to show up in other people's search results, they can adjust thier privacy settings accordingly. They're still in the process of rolling the feature out, so you may not be able to use it just yet, but rest assured, it's on the way.



Source : webpronews.com

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Saturday, June 27, 2009

Facebook Calls Out Intel, AMD

Facebook has more than 200 million active users, and as you might imagine, keeping all of their information available (never mind the stuff pertaining to less involved people) requires some serious hardware. Yet according to the company's vice president of technical operations, certain manufacturers are falling short of the mark.

Jonathan Heiliger was interviewed onstage during GigaOm's Structure 09 conference, and in response to a question about unexpected problems, said, "The biggest thing (that) surprised us is . . . less-than-anticipated performance gains from new microarchitectures -- so, new CPUs from guys like Intel and AMD. The performance gains they're touting in the press, we're not seeing in our applications."

Stephen Lawson reports that Heiliger also stated, "Google has done a great job designing and building its own servers for this kind of use."

So we seem to have Facebook either really lighting a fire under its suppliers, or perhaps leaning towards the DIY route. And of course, both alternatives could lead to improved performance for less money.

Finally, a third possibility would involve some sort of lawsuit, but it sounds like Facebook is more at a stage of identifying issues than seeking reparation.




Source : www.webpronews.com

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