Google’s Larry Page, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg among TIME 100 List of most influential people in the world

Time has published the TIME 100 list of most influential people in the world in 2011. Google founder Larry Page and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the two most influential persons in search have made their place in the 2011 TIME 100.

The first position is honored by Wael Ghonim, former Google executive, that became one of the primary faces of the recent Egyptian revolution.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Indian cricket team captain also made is place in TIME 100 list.

Discontinuation of Yahoo! Buzz - Bye Bye Buzzing

Yahoo Buzz team announced to discontinue Yahoo Buzz from 21st April 2011. The team mentions that this step will help them focus on their core strengths and new innovations.
Introduced in 2008, Yahoo Buzz was cited as a new way for users to tell the world what they think is cool. The idea was to present a list of the most-Buzzed items (by users) on a dedicated site. Yahoo Buzz was sort of similar to Facebook Like, and Digg wherein any website/article is rated on the basis of user engagement.

Yahoo Buzz's effort could not led better results because the social arena is already captured by Facebook and Twitter and to some extent by Digg/Reddit.

Rick Liebling, director of digital strategy at Coyne PR, says Yahoo initially had a chance to make Buzz a standard, but its undoing came from its lack of innovation. “I frequently used Buzz when it was first introduced, but as other services with similar features were introduced, Yahoo Buzz never seemed to develop into something more/different,” Liebling says. “We’ve seen now that constant iteration is the key to success.”

Custom QR Codes – Make your QR Codes More Beautiful

QR Codes: Brief Introduction - A QR Code (Quick Response Code) is a two dimensional bar-code which is easily readable by dedicated QR code readers and smart-phones. These QR codes can carry plethora of information like text, URL, Telephone number, message and much more.

The QR code technology has seen a large uptake in Japan and South Korea. However, in the West there has been a far slower adoption of QR codes.

Although earlier it was used for tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing, QR codes are now used in a much broader context. With the proliferation of smart-phones it has become easy to use these codes. Users with a camera phone equipped with the QR code reader application can scan the image of the QR code to display text, contact information, or open a web page in the phone's browser.

In short QR codes are the best way to connect the offline world with the online world.

Creating Custom QR Codes – Have you thought about making these QR codes more attractive, colorful? Won’t it look more compelling if your QR code reflects your company’s color and theme?

1. Add Colors to QR Codes: It is not necessary to have your QR codes in conventional black and white pattern; you can add color of your choice in order to add branding power to your QR code.

Just consider one major point that code color must be dark with a light colored background; however the reverse is not advisable.

2. Add a Logo in your QR Code: Tweak the traditional black and white QR code and add your logo to give more branding power.

3. Make Soft Edges: You can round up some of the corners of your QR code and make it friendlier and good looking.

QR Codes are great way to connect your offline efforts with online efforts. As the QR codes have lots of marketing potential, knowledge of technology, design, and their implementation in the right way for your business, will help you to keep your brand on the cutting edge of marketing and technology.

Wordpress Servers Face Security Breach

Automattic and WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg has reported on his blog "There had a low-level (root) break-in to several of our servers, and potentially anything on those servers could have been revealed."

The company is reviewing its data logs and records to figure out the extent of the information exposed.

Matt stated that "We presume our source code was exposed and copied. While much of our code is Open Source, there are sensitive bits of our and our partners’ code. Beyond that, however, it appears information disclosed was limited."

Matt suggested users to stick to the security fundamental and also they are taking comprehensive steps to prevent an incident like this from occurring again.

Right Time Righ Approach-Increased Engagement on Your Facebook Page

Providing quality information and regular updates are also not able to increase the user engagement on your Facebook page. What's gone wrong? Your updates are for your customers/FB Users then these must be at their convenience...Are you thinking about the suitable timing of adding post to your Facebook page? Which day you need to avoid? Are you targeting your targeted audience in their business hours?

Are you pondering over these question and trying to find out suitable answers?
BuddyMedia a social media marketing firm has conducted a research on its client pages and came up with exciting findings related to all the above mentioned questions.

Best Time to Post : Post When People are Listening

The research suggested that the posts which were published outside business hours have 20% higher engagement rate as compared to the post which were published during business hours.


The research also revealed that 86% of posts are published between Monday through Friday, wherein the user engagement on these posts increases on Thursday and Friday. The report revealed that engagement rates on Thursday and Friday are 18% higher than other days of the week.



However these results differ from industry to industry.

The research covered various industries and findings are as follows:

Entertainment Industry
For entertainment industry Friday through Sunday have high engagement rates. So take advantage of Weekend and post content in order to attract more audience and increase the engagement rate.

Media Industry
Except Monday all other weekdays are fairing well with better performance on Weekends. Beware of Monday Blues!

Retail Industry
In retail industry the fan engagement increases heavily on Sunday. Fan engagement on Friday and Saturday is significantly below average.

Automotive Industry
Engagement rates spike significantly for posts made on Sunday.

Business and Finance Industry
The engagement increase in midweek. The trend increase from Wednesday to Thursday and drops sharply on Weekends.

Fashion Industry
Despite of the fact that brands are active on Friday and weekends, user engagement shows a significant increase on Thursday.

Food and Beverage Industry
Among all the aforesaid industries, Food and Beverage Industry is very active on weekends but interestingly the user engagement rates peaked on Tuesday and Wednesday and again on Saturday.

Healthcare and Beauty Industry
Engagement rates increased on Thursday, therefore its advisable for them to concentrate on posting content on Thursday.

Sports Industry
Sports industry needs to concentrate on Sunday in order to gain most from the increased user engagement.

Travel and Hospitality Industry
The weekends and Wednesday has seen lowest user engagement rates but higher engagement on Thursday and Friday.

Although the engagement rate and level differ by industry, brands need to keep things simple and in line with their fans' needs.

Yahoo Search Clues - Compare Trending Information for Search Terms with Visualization

In November 2010 Yahoo launched Yahoo Clues which helped the users to discover and compare trending information for search terms.

I tried my hand on this tool and found it amazing in terms of results being displayed. Yahoo Clues shows trending information in variety of forms and visualization, which helps to comprehend the data more easily and interestingly.

The following categories of information are available in Yahoo! Clues:

•Searches Over Time – This chart provides search volume trends over time, and corresponds to the Time filter selection under the "Find Trends" box.


• By Demographic – This section provides a demographic breakdown of Age, Gender, or a combined Both view (default) for your search term.


• By Income – This section provides a breakdown of income distribution for your search term.
o Yahoo! Clues calculates this category using anonymous aggregated zip code information from Yahoo! Search matched against per capita income data from the US Census Bureau.



• By Location – This map shows where the greatest concentrations of searches originated. Currently, only Yahoo! Search information originating from the United States is available.



• Search Flow – This section provides a list of the most probable previous and next user searches from an analysis of aggregated search patterns across Yahoo! Search. The top item under "Previous Queries" represents the most probable search term people tried before your search term. Similarly, the top item under "Next Queries" represents the most probable search term people tried after your search term.



• Related Searches – This section provides a list of the most common related search terms across Yahoo! Search and is not limited to the user search patterns displayed in "Search Flow". Click the links to update the information displayed in the Yahoo! Clues information cards.

So check out Yahoo Search Clue and enjoy its exciting features.

Music One Box - Google Says Bye-Bye to Music Search

In a recent update Google has announced to take off its Music Search One Box feature. The Music Search feature was introduced in 2009 to give a new user experience to music freaks.

Background of Music Search One Box Feature:
In order to give a better user experience Google launched this feature which enabled the users to enjoy the music direct from SERP. So when a user searched for the name of artist, album or song, Google music search used to display a set of four songs that are chosen algorithmically by the partner music site, not by Google.

Google Music One Box Now and Then:


Although Google suggest that this feature is not completely dead...Lets hope it will come back again with more features.


*Image Credit: Search Engine Land