Google, the Internet giant launched yet another social network, the Google+. After failures of Orkut, Wave and Buzz, Google has now come up with a new glamorous Google+ which to a most people is a combination of the twitter and facebook.

The other day I saw this picture on the Internet and in reality, Google has got it all.

I am not here to boast about the Google supremacy over the Internet, but to consider and examine that what it is that it has still missed and how it aims to achieve it, monetarily and in terms of its command over the Internet.

At the moment a Google+ profile looks cleaner than any of our other social networks, but so did any one of them when they started. So it is just like the honey comb as it grows and grows the fruit is going to be as much. It is quite clear that wherever the users go, the marketers would follow.

Google probably has access to any data that is needed to deduce market insights, business futures or any other estimation or analysis needed for any business to progress in the right direction. But it is the new more interactive and engaging social media data that is driving business decisions these days. What people are saying? What they are propagating? What do they think? What do they want? How do they want it? All these questions are answered directly by the new engaging social media.

At the moment there is not much on the Google+ that looks specifically like Facebook Pages or any other social media platform. So how is Google going to make people answer these questions? Firstly the +1 button the equivalent of “Facebook likes” is already catching up, providing valuable data.

Secondly Google has confirmed the launch of Google+ business in near future. One of the attractive features of Google+ is that businesses can segment customers using Circles, irrespective of whether they have their e mails or not. This works vice- versa as well, when customers or the common user would create their personal circles like “restaurants” much like the twitter list.

Also one could vaguely predict that how this seamless segmentation data can collate with Google Places. The most beneficial can be the small and medium businesses that struggle to feature in the search engine rankings page. Google+ provides another feature called the Spark, which can provide Google + with handy data to penetrate more into the local search. I believe, in big evolving markets like India and Brazil this can boost E commerce on a local level creating new revenue generating options for Google.

Another very important thing that will affect E commerce is the fact that the whole purchase funnel would process through Google platforms. From potential buyers getting awareness on their Google+ pages, considering it by measuring the +1 from their circles on the SERP to landing on the product page through display adds or organic search. In reality you would only be navigating around the new online Google toolbar. So is G Commerce here to stay and battle it out with F Commerce? Only time will tell.

Systemtek Technologies offers Social Media Experts that are constantly researching state-of-the-art techniques to enhance businesses’ online social media marketing.  If you are interested in learning more about Social Media outlets for your business feel free to contact us anytime.

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Users with a webcam on their computer will have to install a special plug-in before they can make calls using Facebook from inside their web browser. Callers will be able to see and hear the recipient, and vice-versa. With the group chat feature, users can talk with several other Facebook friends at the same time using only text.

“We think this is going to be something that’s really valuable,” Zuckerberg said. “A lot of people have asked for it.”

Group video calling is not yet supported and it was not clear how the feature would be available to mobile users. Zuckerberg said the new tools “are mostly web features.” The design changes are aimed to make it easier for users to see a list of friends they can chat with, while taking advantage of widescreen computer displays. Wednesday’s announcement from Facebook comes almost a week after Google launched its latest social network, Google+.

Google+ is accessible on an invite-only basis, but the company is keen to get a foothold in the social networking sector. The new service has been received with mostly positive reviews, earning praise for its Circles and Hangouts features. Circles lets users easily drag-and-drop contacts into groupings with customizable security and privacy settings. Hangouts, meanwhile, lets users chat and collaborate in realtime using webcams. Users may also collectively watch videos on YouTube.

Before the Facebook announcement today, analysts speculated the deal between Facebook and Skype could be a reaction by Facebook to try and quickly add the features it’s currently missing when compared to Google+. With all these new reasons to use social media it a plus for business.

If more and more users find it easier to use certain social media outlets, like Facebook or with the new addition Google+, it will be easier for business to reach a larger market. Through social media outlets businesses can get the word out about their product for a lower cost to a large market. Companies can take advantage of social media networks by hiring Web Marketing companies, like Systemtek Technologies.

Systemtek Technologies offers Social Media Experts that strive to obtain the most up to date knowledge about social media outlets. With the knowledge that these Social Media Experts obtain they can implement the latest strategies to market your online marketing campaign. If you are interested in Social Media Marketing please feel free to contact our industry professionals.

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Facebook introduced a program Thursday that offers consumers a financial incentive to watch ads on the site.

Facebook will now reward users who watch certain ads with Facebook Credits, which can be redeemed to purchase goods on Facebook Deals and is accepted as payment in around 350 apps from 150 developers, including 22 of the top 25 Facebook games. Credits are used for more than 70% of all virtual goods bought and sold on Facebook. The company’s new Groupon-like daily deals service. The incentive, however, is not huge. Initially, the average ad will yield one credit, which is equivalent to 10 cents.

The ads will mostly be in games. CrowdStar, Digital Chocolate and Zynga are among the participating game publishers. Facebook is working with Sharethrough, SocialVibe, Epic Media and SupersonicAds to serve ads on the program as well as TrialPay, which will provide analytics.

Dan Greenberg, CEO of Sharethrough, says Facebook’s move represents “a step away from interruptive advertising.” Greenberg, whose clients include Microsoft and Nestle, says his network won’t deliver traditional advertising but rather branded entertainment, which consumers will want to watch and share with friends.

Incentivizing consumers to watch ads is one solution for Facebook’s low banner click-through rates. The move comes after Facebook expanded its Credits program last week to let consumers use the Credits to buy real-world goods advertised in Deals. Previously, the credits, which were awarded for consumers who signed up for various programs (like magazine subscriptions) or bought outright could only buy virtual goods.

Systemtek Technologies now offers Social Media Marketing. With such a big step forward in Internet marketing it is important to consider how you can utilize these new aspects of online marketing.  If you are interested in using or learning more about how you can profit from Social Media Marketing feel free to contact our Industry Professionals.

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It’s not every day that the closing down of a web design company makes headlines, but the case of HIT Web Design involved the stranding of both thousands of customers and hundreds of employees—including some waiting on substantial backpay.

Until fairly recently, Provo, Utah-based HIT ranked as high as No. 22 on the Inc. 500, which indexes fast-growing private companies. The company’s success could largely be attributed to a marketing strategy that involved offering impossibly inexpensive web design packages that would later “hit” contracted clients with large and largely inescapable additional fees, all buried in the terms of service.

Some were not surprised to hear of HIT’s liquidation. Particularly in the last year, the company’s reputation has been riddled with complaints, with almost 1000 grievances filed at the Utah Better Business Bureau; that said, it is unclear whether customer dissatisfaction directly contributed to HIT’s shutting down. Regardless, reports indicate that the stranded web design customers have been relegated to hosting company Fibernet, which has posted a Q&A (with contact information) for these transferred clients.

In light of this situation, if you are a former HIT Web Design customer, Systemtek is now offering to transfer your website to another hosting provider at no charge. Please give us a call at (630)701-6163 or contact us through our website if you have any questions.

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In the last few weeks, several large corporations—J.C. Penney, Forbes, and Overstock.com—have discovered that when it comes to trying to improve your website’s search engine ranking, Google has an astute sense for sniffing out what it qualifies as “cheating.” They’ve also found out that Google has a pretty mean bite when it comes to penalizing these cheating strategies, and it usually comes in the form of a significantly lowered page ranking.

The unintended benefit that the rest of us have received from these big-corp crackdowns is a solid lesson in how not to improve your website’s ranking on sites like Google and Bing, which is normally a both legitimate and encouraged practice also known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Better yet, each of these companies provoked Google’s wrath in a somewhat different way; that is, Google confronted each for using one or more distinct strategies to artificially boost their website ranking.

J. C. Penney

The case of J. C. Penney was prominently documented by The New York Times, which explained that for a number of months (including the most recent holiday season), a link scheme involving thousands of bogus links pointing to the J. C. Penney website successfully boosted the retailer’s web search rankings for a wide range of terms, such as “bedding,” “dresses,” “area rugs,” or even “Samsonite carry on luggage.”

Links from other websites are one way for Google to measure how popular your website is, but those links should come from legitimate web pages—and they weren’t. While the J. C. Penney spokesperson denied authorization or involvement of this search scheme, the company became subject to “corrective action” from Google as a result. Within days, the retailer’s website sunk from No. 1 in search results for terms like “living room furniture” to being buried at No. 68.

J. C. Penney quickly fired its search engine consulting firm, SearchDex, and is back to slowly repairing its search rapport using legitimate methods, also known as “organic” or “white-hat” SEO.

Forbes

Publishing and media company Forbes was caught doing a related but somewhat different Google-wrong last week, when the search engine giant found a section of their website containing links to other websites that most likely purchased the space in order to boost their search ranking (this is all understandably confusing). This practice, also called “link spamming,” essentially capitalizes on the fact that being linked to by a big website like Forbes boosts the search reputation of your website, which is kind of an inverse of the J. C. Penney case.

Selling links is definitely a Google no-no (though none of these “black-hat” SEO techniques are actually illegal), and accordingly, Forbes was the recipient of some “corrective action.”

Overstock.com Inc.

Our final example is that of online retailer Overstock.com Inc., which encouraged university and college websites to post specific links to Overstock pages that advertised a special discount for faculty and student users. Much like how links from large websites are more valuable than those from small ones, .edu links are also extra effective, and this program managed to very effectively boost Overstock’s search results for phrases like “vacuum cleaners” and “laptop computers.” Needless to say, this is no longer the case (go ahead and give it a try); Overstock’s rankings have been quietly knocked down.

What We Can Learn From All This

Our goal in this article is not to suggest that one should not try to boost your website’s rankings with Google—by no means! Rather, each of these corporations was reprimanded for misappropriating the system that search engines have in place in order to help users find what they’re looking for. If you can boost your website for search terms such that this is the case, then Google is more than happy to legitimately increase your rankings for those keywords. It’s that simple.

Of course, there a lot of specific ways in which website owners can help search engines “read” or index their websites. For example, being linked to from other sites is wonderfully beneficial for search ranking if it is done right, through the creation of quality content (such as through a blog), and by helping the world know that that content exists (e.g. using social media or a newsletter). Google calls this organic link building.

Interestingly enough, Google is often portrayed as a cryptic entity that declines to comment on the fundamentals of how its search engine works. However, it actually provides a variety of tools to help webmasters understand how best to cooperate with Google search, such as the SEO Starter Guide that they offer. Some of the recommended practices are really simple, such as offering quality content, promotions, and services.  By consistently treating your website as a long-term investment, putting time and thought into creating excellent content, you can personally make your website shine more among readers and search engines alike.

Others are more complex, and require a little bit of techie know-how, whether it’s effective meta work, optimizing images and site structure, or making sure you know how to deal with site crawling “robots.” For example, simply by converting embedded flash links to plain text links, you can make it much easier for Google to navigate your website and understand what kind of information you have to share with the world. Don’t get caught with “black-hat” SEO techniques, or in any of those other artificial link schemes. Let the cautionary tales of the last few weeks show that when it comes to search, short-term gain doesn’t pay.

Systemtek Technologies is your personal source for tech news and web development advice. If you think you might be interested in learning more about good Search Engine Optimization and how we can use “white-hat” techniques to benefit your website’s search rankings, don’t hesitate to contact us and see what our team of professionals can do for you.

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Now you can follow one of our designers on Twitter. Check it out and follow us to get cool design tips, website samples and connect with a lot of other great people too!

Want to connect with us on other sites? Systemtek is on Youtube, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook as well.

Social Media is a great way to keep up with all the latest news and meet lots of new people. Hope to see you out there!

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Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White wrote to congratulate the launch of Chinajournalus.com, a brand-new comprehensive web site  for Chinese Community in the Chicago Area.

“Your efforts in implementing this website”,  he commented, “will provide and greatly enhance news service and furnish quality and instructive information to the Chinese community in Chicago area and through out the United States and abroad.”

Chinajournalus.com is the web site initiated by China Journal, the US nation wide Chinese Newspaper and developed by Systemtek, the Chicago web design company

Click below to see the letter:

secretary-of-state-jesse-white-letter

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By: Systemtek

Videos today are pretty common all over the Internet. Most of them are converted into flash on websites though for maximum accessibility. But wait a second, you don’t have the Adobe flash plug-in installed in your browser? Sorry….. Same expert proclaim that “it is time to break down those walls.”

The Mozilla team is expected to complete build 2 of Firefox 3.5 Release Candidate 1 in the next 24 hours but it may not see the light of day.

Firefox 3.5, which is now a very stable beta, is faster than earlier versions, and most importantly, it embraces open-source video standards and treats videos like web pages (you can’t do any of that with Flash). If this takes off, Flash video could become history.

Built into the Firefox 3.5 browser is a video player based on the open-source video formats Ogg Vorbis and Theora. The video player supports HTML5, which means that links and other interactive elements can easily be placed inside videos. Ogg Vorbis format makes video programmable.

You can now download the latest version of Firefox 3.5 Beta4 here: download

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