SEO Werkt!

The deal-a-day concept has proven successful for the worlds of nightlife and dating, so it was only a matter of time before we saw a combination of the two. Hailing from New York City, Coffee Meets Bagel offers users one potential match each day and, if they accept, a discount at a local date venue.

Users can begin by registering and uploading a profile with all of the usual information expected on a dating site. Coffee Meets Bagel then connects two users with similar tastes and gives them one day to choose to ‘like’ or ‘pass’. Once the time limit is up, another potential match is automatically delivered. If both users click ‘like’ within the 24 hour period, the site then also offers one of its deals of the day, which are designed to be used on the date. Deals include complimentary food or drink at a New York venue that the site has deemed a good date spot.

In a world of fleeting opportunities, Coffee Meets Bagel encourages residents of the Big Apple to grab them while they can. One to replicate in your part of the world?

Website: www.coffeemeetsbagel.com
Contact: support@coffeemeetsbagel.com

Lindsay Stanford is a Director of Client Engagement, Content and Community at Social Media Group. Follow @lindsaystanford

Have you ever created a song or digital art that you thought might be worth something, but were so discouraged with complex e-commerce sites to even think about selling it? Well you can rejoice because a new startup has come to save you from that fate! Gumroad, a social-centric site makes selling your stuff online super simple, much cheaper than competitive sites and lets you share links of your goods through your social platforms.

Sahil Lavingia, the 19-year-old brain child behind Gumroad and former Pinterest employee, dropped out of college to pursue his dreams of running his own company and creating a service that allows people to sell anything they can share. Gumroad even has a cool feature that allows the buyer to pay what they think the product is worth, love that idea!

I think Gumroad will be extremely successful. They have taken away the complication and created a space where in a matter of minutes an item can be uploaded, shared and bought. I’m not the only one who believes it will take off. Monday it was announced that Gumroad received 7 million in funding. For a company who only takes a 5% cut of sales plus $0.25 per transaction, it is just a matter of time before they are making a profit and possibly forcing the competition to lower their rates.

Check out the video below and if you’re not the creative type pass along Gumroad to those who are. You never know, you could end up buying something from one of them.

Pinterest is not only a search tool for inspiration, it’s also a place to establish yourself as a tastemaker. Now that the virtual pinboard is the third most popular social network in the U.S., it was only a matter of time before someone tried to buy their way to the top.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

It was only a matter of time before Google+ improved their current share button offering.  While the company did make the +1 button available for use, there was not an easy, stylish way to include a Google+ share button on your blog.  Google has fixed that as they announced Tuesday on the Google+ blog, by introducing the new Google+ Share button.  Will this increase Google+’s viral spread?

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

It was only yesterday that AT&T announced its Watson Speech API, meant to let developers of any kind provide products with real-time translation baked right in.

I got the chance to speak with Mazin Gilbert, AT&T’s AVP of Technical Research, about what this could mean over the next few months and years, and it sounds like useful, seamless translation might finally be in the pipeline.

We’ve seen real-time translation efforts again and again, but no one has ever really nailed it. By opening up an API to developers, AT&T has the numbers on its side, and it’s only a matter of time until someone breaks down the language barrier entirely.

Besides English, six languages are supported including Italian, French, German, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese. All the languages are in different stages of development.

The hope is that, eventually, I’ll be able to make a call to China and speak with someone as comfortably and clearly as I would if I was calling someone in the U.S.

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Facebook Offers Rollout Begins, Delivers Local Deals Direct to Your News Feed (The Verge)
The system allows local businesses to use their Facebook pages to promote themselves direct to their customers, sending freebies and promotions straight to users’ news feeds. Gizmodo Following the huge success of services like Groupon and LivingSocial, it was only a matter of time before Facebook got into the business of deals. AllFacebook If anything, the greater novelty isn’t the rollout of offers, but rather the acquisition of Tagtile. Inside Facebook According to Tagtile’s website, its service “helps local businesses identify and engage their customers to increase revenue.” continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

I started my Internet Marketing career as an SEO trainee quite some years ago, it was the time when e-commerce was a fairly new concept, and businesses were starting to fathom the power of Internet. It was only a matter of time that webmasters realized, that getting on the top of results in popular search [...]

Sprint has been spending the past few weeks quietly pumping out software updates that remove Carrier IQ from affected devices, and now it looks like Sprint’s flagship Android device (for now) will be able to run wild and free.

Thanks to an update that started making the rounds yesterday, Samsung’s Galaxy S II variant the Epic 4G Touch joins a handful of Sprint devices to get the Carrier IQ cleanup treatment.

Aside from giving Carrier IQ the boot (which Sprint refers to as a “security update”), the new build also includes updated modems and a fix for an issue involving multiple calendar alerts. The only other notable addition in the new update is support for the Commercial Mobile Alert System, which allows Sprint to push out critical public safety updates to customers in the event of an emergency.

While this release is the first official one that removes Carrier IQ from Sprint’s Galaxy S II, Samsung has been working on a clean build for some time now. To wit, a Carrier IQ-free software build for the Epic 4G Touch was leaked one day prior to Sprint’s announcement that they would discontinue use of the oft-maligned diagnostics tool.

If your Epic 4G Touch hasn’t yet been graced with the update, it’s only a matter of time — according to Sprint, the OTA rollout will should be complete within 10 days. Of course, if you’re really impatient, you could always load up a flashy new custom ROM and be done with Carrier IQ for good.

You’ve probably seen the new Facebook cover header on the profile pages in the Facebook Timeline format. It’s a big banner photo above a two column timeline. 

As an individual, you are NOT supposed to use the banner for anything commercial (like promoting your company.)  In fact, you’re not supposed to be using a profile page for a company anything.  It’s against Facebook’s terms of service. 

But I wonder about the smaller businesses where the person is the company.  It becomes such a part of you and your life.  I’ve seen some of my friends on Facebook make a collage of photos about their life for their banner and include their company logo in the collage.  That makes sense to me. 

If you’re running a small business and talk about your business in your personal Facebook profile page, you should definitely create a Facebook Fan page for your business.  But, since timelines aren’t here yet, you may want to consider adding something to your banner that includes your company too, right?

Makes sense to me if you are the company’s owner right? If you haven’t updated your banner yet, consider:

• Beth Kanter ‘s thoughts about using the Facebook Timeline Covers as a way to promote your brand Is a Good Idea or Not
• How Converstations Mike Sansone’s worked his logo into his cover banner.
• What the “queen of facebook” Mari Smith suggests for your Facebook banner and how she interpret’s Facebook’s rules concerning promotion of your company, product or service.

It’s just a matter of time before people get comfortable with banners and then Facebook will bring the banner feature out for the Facebook Fan pages.  Maybe sooner, who knows. 

Get Ready to Rebrand your Facebook Fan Page

Meanwhile, if you’re timeline cover and banner challenged, here are a couple of sites that will help:

• Big Huge Labs - a neat site that provides tools to make your photos more interesting
• Sign generator – another site with tools to give more interest to a photo
• Banner maker - a site that allows you to upload your own background and then some individual photos to make a collage.

Let me know what other sites you have found to help to adjust to the new Facebook Timeline.  It’s just a matter of time until the Facebook Fan Pages will be making the change.

Lenovo has been busy at CES 2012 with debuts for smart TVs and laptops, but its coolest device may be the upcoming IdeaPad Yoga, a laptop that can bend over backwards and turn into a Windows 8 tablet.

With laptops beginning to model tablets much more frequently in terms of thinness and lightness, it was only a matter of time before we began to see a model that blurs the line further by essentially being both. The IdeaPad Yoga is an Intel-powered thin-and-light Ultrabook laptop that mimics the MacBook Air when it is positioned like a laptop and mimics the iPad when it is set up like a tablet.

We were intrigued enough by this concept that we simply had to see it in action. Lenovo product ambassader Ashley Perry walked us through the motions and showed us how the device’s hinges allow it to bend backwards and transform into a tablet. In a way, this takes after the dock-able IdeaPad S2 tablet, except it takes it further by being a combo device. Having the machine run Windows 8 also adds allure, because it’s still only available to developers.

I also got my hands on the device briefly and it was as cool as I expected it to be. The machine’s 13.3-inch screen with 10-finger touch was entertaining to try. The form factor itself is fun to play with too, but it was a little too heavy to use frequently as a tablet. The iPad is 1.5 pounds while this thing is more than double that.

Lenovo expects the IdeaPad Yoga to ship when Windows 8 is available commercially, which should be in the third or fourth quarter of this year. The company expects the device to run for less than $1,200.

Watch the full IdeaPad Yoga hands on video below:

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