March 10, 2010
How important is your domain name to you brand? Most online businesses would probably consider it to be quite important, and with good reason. Sometimes before searching, customers may simply opt to go to the "yourbrandhere.com" URL simply because it makes sense. Now, sometimes that URL is already taken, and for start-ups, that's something to consider in itself. As Monte Cahn, Founder and President of Moniker mentioned in a recent interview with WebProNews, it's a good idea to make sure the domain name is available when coming up with a name for your brand, or at least make sure that you are able to acquire it. Products have their own brands, and this way of thinking can also be applied to them in many cases. Cahn notes that even the big companies make mistakes in this area. For example, you would expect Apple to own iPad.com, considering the huge announcement about the device the company made this year, but someone else has that domain.
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September 25, 2009
Google has released a new product called the Google Docs Viewer. This is a way to display PDFs, Powerpoints and TIFF documents directly in a web browser without requiring a download. "Last year, we added PDF upload and view to Google Docs, and the 'View' link for PDF attachments in Gmail," says Google software engineer Jesse Kinkead. "We also added support for viewing PowerPoint and TIFF files in Gmail this April. Feedback on these features has been very positive - viewing files right in your browser is fast, and it keeps your downloads folder clean. Plus, it spares you the hassle of saving your files to the machine you're using, which could be a shared or public computer." To use the Google Docs Viewer, simply go to the site and provide Google with the URL to your file. You can also include optional link text. You can also generate code for an embedded viewer like the one below.
Box.net users can use the service to view documents stored within their Boxes, by adding the Google Docs Viewer OpenBox Service to their account.
August 28, 2009
TweetMeme has been quite busy since rival Retweet.com launched last week. After explaining why it is a more trusted brand and announcing analytics, TweetMeme has kept busy making some improvements and additions to its offerings. TweetMeme introduced a new URL-shortening service. These things are popping up frequently, but with TweetMeme behind it, this one stands as good a chance as many other others in terms of actual use. The service, called Retwt.me, was created to provide three basic functions:
1. Shorten a link 2. Share the link on your favorite sites 3. Provide simple and easy to understand analytics
Tweetmeme has no plans to extend the service beyond those three items, but it will be used within TweetMeme to shorten comment links.
Not long after introducing Retwt.me, TweetMeme responded to user feedback and created a bookmarklet to go along with it. This allows the user to shorten links from wherever they're at on the web. All the user has to do is drag a bookmarklet to the browser address bar, then click the link whenever they want to shorten a page's URL. Now TweetMeme itself is in the process of undergoing an upgrade. This is why if you use TweetMeme buttons on your content, you may be seeing a little wrench icon with the word "upgrading." "First of all, all webpages at TweetMeme.com will display a holding page until the upgrade is complete," says TweetMeme's Sarah Blow. "The API will also also be down, but will still return a failure message in the requested format. Buttons displayed on websites will exhibit one of a number of behaviours, so please examine these carefully before you ask for support for a broken button." TweetMeme will attempt to restore the last known retweet count to users' buttons after the upgrade is complete. TweetMeme is keeping a live blog going throughout the upgrade process. This can be viewed here.
August 19, 2009
First Twitter ignited the URL-shortening service fire, and now a similar phenomenon appears to be happening with "retweeting" services. Retweet.com is reportedly set to launch today. First of all, if you are not a Twitterer, you may be unfamiliar with the concept of retweeting. Basically, when someone updates their status on Twitter, that is called a tweet. When someone likes that status and wants to share it with others, they will at "RT" (for ReTweet) and the user's name typically and post the same update. This is usually done with Tweets containing links, so naturally it provides a good, viral means of link exposure. So far, a service called Tweetmeme has pretty much ruled this area of content sharing. What it does is supply content providers with a button that users can easily click to share that content on Twitter. The button then provides an ongoing count of how many times an article has been retweeted. You can see one at the top of this very WebProNews article.
Retweet.com is now swooping in to try and capture this market dominated by Tweetmeme. In fact, Mesiab Labs, who is launching Retweet.com even called out Tweetmeme by name. Not only does Retweet.com make for a powerfully branded domain for such a service, but the company is also launching with a $10,000 contest to inspire people to use its service. The really interesting part of this story to me though, is the timing of this launch. Just last week, Twitter itself announced an initiative called "Project Retweet," in which the company plans to bring the concept of retweeting right to Twitter.com and the Twitter API. This means that people using Twitter on the web should be able to easily retweet something from their stream, and apps all over the web will start incorporating retweeting into their interfaces. At this point, it's hard to say how relevant services like Tweetmeme and Retweet.com will remain. Considering that they offer services for content publishers themselves, they will probably still have a place. They may even be helped by Project Retweet just because it will put the concept of retweeting even more into the spotlight. And don't be surprised if you start seeing a lot more of these retweeting services popping up in the near future. Everybody and their grandma will likely be offering one by the end of the year. It will be very much like the URL-shortener. Some will have different spins, and may entice different groups of users, but Tweetmeme has an established presence going for it, and Retweet.com has that powerful brand name. These two should have the upper hands. According to Mashable, Retweet.com should be going live around 12pm Eastern Time today.
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