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| By Jenna,on December 3rd,2011 Earlier this week a Journalist Program Manager at Facebook (Vadim Lavrusik) posted a significant change to how much you can type in your status updates on Facebook. They decided to raise the character limit from 5,000 to 63,206. 
Why 63,206?? Well,Bob Baldwin,one of Facebook’s software engineers explained it on his wall this way:“I set the exact limit to something nerdy,for now. Facebook …Face Boo K …hex(FACE) –K …64206 –1000 = 63206” Aren’t you sorry you asked? Personally I think this is a ridiculous amount,however they might have been feeling pressure from Google + limit of 100,000 characters! To try to gain some perspective on how much 63k characters is,I’ve found that the average word count for modern American novels is 90k,which would be roughly 585k characters. So basically you can write the great American novel on Facebook in just 10 posts (or just 6 posts on G+)! Now I really wonder why they did this. Yes I think part of it is in the spirit of competition with Google Plus,however there has been a growing trend with Facebook to give you fewer reasons to ever leave this social networking platform. YouTube videos can be played right within the site,as can games and even full blockbuster movies. You can also chat with friends or talk with them live over video (who needs Skype now?). And businesses love it because they can collect emails right through opt-in boxes on their pages and sell their products all without ever having to click over to an external website. It’s pretty genius actually. So am I the only one who thinks this is an effort to replace the need to even do external blogging? I still 100% think all businesses should have their own blog they control on their own host and don’t leave everything to the whim of a 3rd party social networking site,but that doesn’t mean Facebook wouldn’t want everyone to convert over. I just hope my Facebook home page doesn’t become filled with one gigantic post that blocks out the fun of scrolling through all my friends updates! So are you excited about the thought of being able to write more to your friends,are you annoyed by this,or do you really just not care?? P.S. This post contains 2,254 characters;not a drop in the bucket of what is allowed! By Jenna,on November 16th,2011 Some got a peak at a social network that Microsoft is working on called Socl. If you try to go to the site now you won’t come across anything,but in an effort to sneak a peak myself I pulled up the cached site and this is what I found: Thanks for stopping by.
Socl.com is an internal design project from a team in Microsoft Research which was mistakenly published to the web.
We didn’t mean to,honest. So it doesn’t seem like they are close to rolling out any real test on this site,if they ever do. However,The Verge was able to get in a play around with it this week. They have a great write up and screenshots on what they found,so I won’t regurgitate everything here,but in short it does not seem like a fully fleshed out social network that would rival the likes of Facebook…or Google+.  Some of the highlight features include Tagging (topics,not people),Video Party (watch YouTube clips with your friends) and Social Search.
The Social Search seems to be the big definer between this and other social networking sites. The default posting is “What are you searching for?” You can also change this to be a status update instead of a search,however entering a search string will bring up a list of results that then your friends will be able to comment on,like or tag. All posts are made available and searchable by your friends,however there is no other more meaningful communication beyond this. They have not set up any way to private message,reply or limit who among your friend sees the post. Making searches more social could have some interesting implications;I mean who doesn’t ask on Twitter ad Facebook already what a good date night restaurant in your section of town is? You can check out The Verge article for more info. I’ll be interested to see if they continue to develop this site and actually release it for public consumption. Do you think they stand a chance against the current leaders? By Jenna,on November 15th,2011  Google,known for making more than 500 algorithm changes each year (most minor that you wouldn’t really care about),has unleashed more updates. Probably due to recent investigations,they have become a lot more forthcoming about how their algorithm works. On their blog this week Google outlined 10 new algorithm changes.
Unless you are are uniquely interested in changes for searches done in Afrikaans or Malay or predictive results in Russian,most on this list aren’t going to impact your life. However,there are a couple updates you should be aware of as they could effect how you rank! - They are refining how they detect “official” sites to give them preferential treatment and to rank them at the top of the list. This can be good and bad news for you. If for some reason one of your big competitors is a highly authoritative “official” site,then you won’t ever reach #1. However,your rankings could be dramatically increased if you are able to get a backlink form these sites.
- As an add-on to the earlier Caffeine release (an algorithm update in 2010 that allowed for faster indexing of sites for quicker results) they are now heavily favoring fresh and recent results:“Search results,like warm cookies right out of the oven or cool refreshing fruit on a hot summer’s day,are best when they’re fresh. Even if you don’t specify it in your search,you probably want search results that are relevant and recent.” This is estimated to affect 1/3 of all searches! So as a business,this means that if your subject matter is fluid and people will want to know what is current on the topic instead of what was relevant 5 years ago,you will want to make sure your site stays fresh and relevant. This is the beauty of incorporating blogs on your site. It easily allows you to update your audience with the latest news and information and will now help keep you afloat in the crazy Google seas!
Do you think this will be a big impact on your business? For me,this is yet another encouragement for me to continue posting news and information on a frequent basis. I feel it’s better to play nice with the Google gods.  By Jenna,on November 14th,2011  Ok,I’ll admit it. I have fallen victim to the exact thing that seems to plague most of my clients…posting on a consistent basis! I used to do so well,posting little bits of news and information every single day during the week and then something happened a few months ago that interrupted my schedule and I made everything but this a priority.
I know most people think,“well,who cares,I can always pick it back up at any point.” However,I now have seen first hand the detriment this causes your site…and your followers. I have seen as my posts dwindle,so has the number of site visits I’ve been getting. So this now means I have to work twice as hard to build back up my credibility to my followers and get them to continue to come back. In addition to letting my followers down,I have also hurt my rankings with the search engines. They LOVE sites that are constantly generating fresh,new content. So,I used to get quite a few new viewers coming over from organic searches. However,this too has been damaged and I once again have to prove to the mighty Google gods that I am worthy of being found. It is quit a mess really and a huge pain to start basically from scratch again. Therefore I really hope you will learn from my mistake and make the little effort to be consistent with posting on your site,because the payoff is huge and the consequence turns into a time wasting nightmare! I would love to know if you have ever made this same mistake and what your biggest roadblock is to being consistent with your posts. Leave a comment below and let me know….yes,I want to know I’m not the only one out there.  By Jenna,on November 7th,2011 I know a LOT of people have been waiting for this…and a lot of us might have to wait a little longer. I know,it is a big tease,but like most launches with Google,the business pages are not  being made available to everyone yet. However,it is great news that they have started rolling it out! If you are one of the lucky ones to now have access to create a business page,you will find it a lot like creating your personal + account. G+ allows businesses to utilize Circles,Hangouts and the Mobile App just like everyone does. Here are some key differences: - You can ONLY add someone to your circle if they have added your page to one of their circles. So that means no unsolicited messages…which like Facebook Pages means you’ll have to drive traffic to your page through personal profiles and offsite promotion/advertising. (There is no way currently to pay for advertising in G+ to drive traffic to your page).
- In addition to the “Add to Circles” button,which will add a page to your circles (and thus give them permission to communicate with you),there is a confusing placement of a +1 button just below the page profile pic. Clicking the +1 DOES NOT connect you with that page.
- The integration of the +1 button on pages hasn’t fully been fleshed out,however it should soon be linked to the +1 button on your website,which means that if someone +1’s your G+ page they are also +1ing you website. It’s yet to be seen what kind of effect this might have on SEO.
- Google has made it VERY easy to find your G+ page in searches. A few months ago they did away with the “+” in Google searches to find terms with that exact term. Now you can use it to take you directly to your G+ page right. If you want to see how this works Toyota is already on top of it…try typing “+Toyota” or “+YouTube” into a google search.
Though I don’t know when the full roll out for users will be,it has already supposedly started for some. To check to see if you made the cut check out the Google+ Page Creator. If you don’t yet have access you will see a page like this: 
I’m going through the steps to create my own page right now and will report back on it’s ease and more indepth functionality when I get in and play around!
Google plus launched just over 100 days ago and now has over 40 million users. I still think they have an uphill battle against Facebook,but I think there have some pluses on their side (yes pun intended,sorry,I couldn’t help myself!!). I think the integration in to the top search engine along with Google Analytics could really give a huge advantage for businesses. I am actually looking forward to setting up my own page and start playing around;what do you think? Are you excited about the business potential? Think it’s doomed to failure? Waiting to see what everyone else does first? | Connect with me on Facebook!
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