New Niche Social Network ‘Tipd.com’ Officially Launches Today
Nov 18, 2008 by Shannon Bowden | Social Networks
At 10e20, we like to keep on top of things happening in the Internet world and we’ve been keenly watching Tipd.com since its beta launch a few weeks ago. Today, they officially launch Tip’d 1.0. Tip’d is a hot new social media site for financing, investing and business topics. Given the current financial state of the world, we think that Tip’d will quickly become your number one choice for learning about all things financial.
To help ensure that Tip’d always features the latest and the best financial news and content, they’ve been building relationships with publishers in the niche. These connections have help them get engaging, interesting and factual content.
Based on feedback from their beta launch from community members, they’ve been working feverishly to make changes and improvements. Here are just a few of the major ones:
• They’ve added two new categories that were in high demand: business and entrepreneurship.
• The ‘topple’ functionality has been overhauled and is more robust.
• Stories now show time made popular along with the time submitted.
• You can subscribe to published stories via email in addition to RSS.
• They’ve made site navigation simpler and breadcrumbs are implemented site wide.
• Upcoming stories can be sorted in chronological order as well as by popularity.
• Duplicated story handling changed. Users are redirected to the existing submission (the original to their duplicate).
• Overall, there are many general usability and functionality fixes as well as improved spam handling.
Those working hard at Tipd.com say they aren’t stopping there. They are currently working on creating a private messaging system as well as a Facebook application. And, they are working on more tools for power users and publishers.
Tip’d looks like a pretty active site and if you are interested in financial topics, you’ll find some great info. It’s somewhat similar to Digg, so if you use Digg at all, you won’t have any trouble navigating around Tip’d. Check it out!
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Using Video Annotations to Raise Awareness and Website Traffic
Nov 17, 2008 by Jake Matthews | Video
One of the easiest ways to raise the visibility of your site with video on YouTube is to use video “annotations”. Annotations are short textual notes that you can post in the video player and publish to your videos. And while annotations don’t yet allow you to link OUT of YouTube, they do allow you type in a URL in text form without linking, which is 1 step in the right direction to tying your great video content back to your site/brand name.
There are currently 3 useful types of annotations:
- notes
- speech bubbles
- spotlights
What do annotations and speech bubbles look like? This video has a brief example of both.
Why are annotations useful?
- Write in your domain name or
- Write in further information about your brand or products.
- Write in addresses, locations, names.
- If you close sales over the phone, write in a PHONE NUMBER.
- Expand the commentary on the content that’s in the video.
- While you cannot link outside of YouTube, you can raise visibility to other video searches and pages within YouTube.
- Make specific statements at specific times within the videos.
- If the reality of what was filmed in your video is ever changed, revised, or disputed, EDIT the video to and make annotations to improve the accuracy of what the video portrays.
- Link to other areas of YouTube to show other content – cross promote your products, services and content on the site.
- Think about how often good YouTube videos get embedded on blogs and other sites. This is an opportunity to have a full on endorsement and make your statement elsewhere, right in the video content.
We’ve seen annotations cause a rise in traffic for websites, both in specific domain name and URL type-ins and in “BRAND NAME” searches, causing them to rise on Google and other search engines.
Annotations can be found under your video editing options. They are really EASY to work with.
Incidentally, YouTube is also offering closed captions and subtitles which can come in handy for hearing impaired viewers and for multiple language situations. These too can be really useful tools for your videos.
Annotations give you a lot more flexibility within your videos to raise awareness of your site, products, services and brand. Right now they are free to use, so why not use them on your video content?
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