Blogging has become an important part our life, and it is also a simple and faster way for updating everyone about the latest happenings. You can enjoy blogging for a number of reasons, from which one can be helping you for keeping a record of your day-to-day activities in life. There are many interesting things, may be small or large, which you are to be remembered in details and by creating a personal blog update you are able to check and reminisce. This is also a fun way for keeping everyone updated, when you do not have a chance to meet him or her regularly.

You can use your own blogging site for tracking social events, too. You can track other blogs that you follow regularly, and due to this, they are able to read your updates. With using the “following” tools that are inbuilt in most of the free blogs, you are able to track through sites such as Google or Facebook and other social networking sites providing web-hosting services. When one updates some blog, signing up can get you information automatically.

Besides having personal use, the blogging sites come to use for tracking small businesses also. For a business, the benefit you can avail is that the site has free nature providing web-hosting services and you can reach an increased audience. You can carry on your research, surveys at low cost, and find out information about how your product stands in the market.

SEO seems like a big mystery to some, and like the Holy Grail to others. Truly, it’s an important aspect of any website’s organization, especially if the owner of that website aims to monetize their efforts as best as possible. However, many companies can’t afford to perform their own SEO, and web designers are notoriously bad when it comes to applying proper SEO to their own work (for the most part). This gives a perfect opportunity to those of you who think they’re familiar enough with the subject to earn a few extra bucks by providing a service that’s become invaluable.

However, even though it can be a very attractive option to work as a freelance SEO consultant, it can also be very challenging to start. One of the main problems that the job has when compared to other types of freelancing jobs, is the lack of a portfolio to show to your clients – you can’t really display your skills in a coherent, compressed manner – this makes it important to be as persuasive as possible when talking to potential clients.

Always make sure you specify your skills from A to Z and don’t omit any details – even if they don’t seem that important to you. You never know if your potential client is looking for something tightly specific, and the best way to find out is by asking (and of course, talking about yourself). You can approach the owners of poorly optimized websites as potential clients if you want – you’d be surprised how often that actually works.

It’s always been an unending quest of mine, the search for the perfect Twitter client. You see, for some reason, I’ve been averse to using the default Twitter web interface. For some reason it never really appealed to me. I’ve used a bunch of Tumblr desktop clients before, with various results. I’m still searching for that perfect Twitter client that will make me use the social networking site more efficiently, and if you know what it is don’t hesitate to point it my way. Maybe we can submit it to an Australia Business Directory or something. In the meantime, here’s the various Twitter clients I’ve used before.

 Snitter - this was the first Twitter client I used and also my first exposure to Adobe Air. It worked pretty well back when Twitter clients didn’t have any features at all, and actually, all I wanted then was the toaster pop-ups that would show up on the bottom right of the screen.

 Twhirl - this is the Twitter client I used after a update Snitter broke. It doesn’t offer anything different from Snitter, and I actually stopped using this after a while.

 TweetDeck – this is sort of the ultimate Twitter client. We have multiple columns and all sort of features that anyone would ever ask from their Twitter client. Heck, it even has Facebook integration and all. However, I’m not a fan of the UI (it’s… UGLY) and I switched to Hootsuite after.

 DestroyTwitter – despite the name, this awfullly light desktop client is not out to destroy Twitter. This is actually stripped-down compared to other clients, but in return it’s very snappy. Also, I can’t get enough of their filtering feature, which lets me hide people and tweets I don’t care about without actually unfollowing them.

Heck, if I can, I’d make my own web-based client with all of the features I’d need and use, but you know, it’s kind of hard to come up with the perfect name for it. There’s a lot of great domains to choose from.

Twitter has continued to enjoy success, and with the “new Twitter,” it might even exceed expectations. Now we cannot ignore the fact that not everyone is happy about the new design, but it could just be a case of having to get used to change. In any case, while Twitter is enjoying its popularity and widespread use, statistics are showing something else in terms of quality.

According to Sysomos, around 7 out of 10 tweets are ignored by users of the microblogging platform. The social media analytics company conducted a study over the last two months wherein they took a look at 1.2 billion tweets. Of this total number, only 29% of the tweets attracted attention – measured by replies. Of this 29%, 19.3% were retweets, while the rest were replies to the original tweet.

What does this mean? Basically, the opinion that Twitter is full of mundane things that may be of interest to a limited number of people in one’s circle just might be true. Then again, this study cannot be considered the end all be all. Even the spokesperson of Sysomos says that what should be remembered is that while Twitter is a microblogging platform, content is still of prime importance. Going back to a cliche: content is still king.

Just because there is a lot of noise on Twitter, it does not mean that it cannot be a useful tool for people and companies who have specific aims to market a product or a service. What this means, in essence, is that you ought to make sure that you have a message and that you tweet it in an engaging way.

I feel for the Phildelphia bloggers who were subjected to anxiety attacks this week. On Monday, rumors spread that Philly is in dire need of an infusion of cash and that bloggers are going to be taxed. Of course, this kind of news affected not only those located in Philadelphia but bloggers everywhere. The thought in every blogger’s mind: “If this is happening in Philly now, who knows when it will happen in my area as well?”

NY Daily News is one of the sites that published the story about bloggers being taxed in Philly:

How does a financially strapped city with a shrinking manufacturing base and rising unemployment attempt to make a little extra cash?

Tax the bloggers.

Philadelphia is demanding that bloggers pay $300 for a business license, whether or not the blog brings in a fraction of that amount in profit, according to the Philadelphia City Paper.

$300 for a business license??? That is atrocious, to say the least. Even if you didn’t catch the news early this week, you can easily understand why it stirred up the hornet’s nest.

Here’s the good news, though: the rumor is just that – a rumor and nothing else. Interestingly, the news that doused the fires came from The Guardian. Yesterday, they published a story that put the facts straight: there is NO blog tax in Philly. The $300 tax mentioned is actually a lifetime business license fee for anyone who is doing business and making money. This fee can be broken down yearly – $50 annually.

Classic case of people jumping to conclusions. Bloggers, rest easy and please read more carefully next time.

Photo credit : Phillip

It may be a relatively unknown blogging platform, but for sure, the users of Blogetery.com were not happy when they got shut down earlier this month. There were apparently more than 70,000 blogs in the platform when they were denied service by their web hosting company, Burst.net.

As was expected, the sudden shutdown created a bit of noise online. Why did they do it? Why the harsh reaction? There were many speculations, and wasn’t till last week that the real reasons came out.

Apparently, the FBI did have a hand in it, as many were speculating. However, the government agency did not request for the shutting down of the blogging platform. The information that they gave Burst.net was that there were links to al-Qaeda material found on Blogetery’s servers. More so, it seems that there were also assassination lists – with American citizens in them. Aside from that, they also found messages from Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders, as well as bomb-making tips.

Upon receiving the information, Burst.net decided to terminate the access of Blogetery on its own. That’s the official announcement. Legally speaking, the information discovered can be classified as a violation of the web hosting company’s terms of service, and they had the right to suspend access. More so, it is said that the owner of Blogetery has had received multiple warnings since December, prompting the suspension of his account. No details have been released as to the identification of the owner.

On another note, another service called Ipbfree.com has also been suspended – a mere few days after the Blogetery shutdown. No information has been released regarding this.

Make love, not war. That’s what I would like to tell the guys at Posterous. Then again, that’s just me. This may be a brilliant tactic to gain more users – who knows?

Anyway, if you haven’t already heard, Posterous recently launched an “attack” on rival Tumblr. It seems that they are taking on a more aggressive stance, and posted something in their blog:

Tumblr is a pretty cool service. They offer easy set up, loads of funky themes and super-simple reblogging.

But blogging on Tumblr is sort of like being in high school. But you know deep-down that you can’t be in high school forever. Eventually, you have to move on.

It’s the same with blogging. After you get your feet wet, you need comments and the ability to moderate them.* You need to add different media types to each post. Your sharing needs are more complex, and your site needs to grow with you.

Face it. You need to leave Tumblr behind and graduate to Posterous.

If those aren’t fighting words, then I don’t know what to say! However, the claims that Posterous is making seem to be unfounded. If Mark Milian of the LA Times is correct, Posterous is NOT ahead of Tumblr in terms of growth. Also, it seems to me that Tumblr has more features that are easily usable as compared to Posterous.

On the other hand, some people think that Posterous really is better than its rival. Nick Saint from SF Gate, for example, thinks that the move is excellent. Then again, he says outright that he favors such tactics.

How about you guys out there? Which platform do you use more? Why? Which is better? And, most importantly, what do you think of Posterous taking this aggressive stance?

Image courtesy of http://static.arstechnica.com

There’s money in micro-blogging. Twitter has made an astounding $25 million (roughly about 15.5 million pounds) just from deals made with Google and Microsoft.

More than half of it is from Google ($15 million), says BusinessWeek, which interviewed two insiders who are familiar with Twitter’s finances — and apparently, the deals made in the boardroom. “The deals were huge,” one says, of the contract signed just two months ago, in October.

And if the numbers are to be believed, he wasn’t exaggerating. With $25 million in just two months it will be interesting how much revenue the company will rake in 2010. Especially since, as Twitter co-founder Biz Stone one said, things are just starting to come together. He’s put a team dedicated to finetuning the site’s “search and discovery perspective.”

The success of Twitter is how it’s turned micro-blogs into an instant feedback system. “Twitter is earning a reputation for delivering real-time results to queries about things that are happening right now.”

Too bad the execs won’t be Twittering if the revenue results are true. The company’s had prior financial struggles, and as recently as November Stone mentioned in his blog that it may use stocks to raise funds.

It was a good idea — but apparently, Yahoo! didn’t think it was worth keeping. The social networking widget My BlogLog will be shutting down by January 2010. The service was actually innovative. It allowed bloggers and readers to “meet” their blog visitors, by letting them view user information and even profile pics. For many bloggers it was a chance to really study their fanbase and even connect to them on a personal level. It also had the potential to be a really powerful marketing and research tool.

Yahoo! first acquired the technology for this 5 years ago, when it bought it for $10 million. Unfortunately it did not invest in MyBlogLog any further, considering the rich potential in it. There’s only one word for that — STUPID. Marketers spend millions trying to get a hold on their consumer’s demographic and psychographic information. The data becomes even more and more crucial now, considering how crowded the market is with websites competing for people’s attention. Be relevant or be forgotten is the blogger’s motto. MyBlogLog helped them stay relevant, without having t spend millions on some nationwide survey.

Yahoo! had a great tool (possibly one ahead of its time) but instead of nurturing its profit potential (we assume that money is the reason for its cancellation) they kill it. DUH. No, double-duh. That’s like slaughtering the golden goose because you don’t have money to buy it food.

The news is bound to have bloggers up in arms, or at least, slapping their foreheads in disgust. Yahoo, what are you thinking?

It’s not unheard of for a person to gain notoriety for writing a blog. There’s just so many examples all over the world that you can probably name one yourself. Most of these “notorious” bloggers have parlayed it to fame and popularity. But not everyone enjoys popularity and obscurity at the same time.

One of these people was the blogger who hid under the pseudonym Belle du Jour. Her titillating blog, Belle de Jour: Diary of a London Call Girl, chronicled her experiences working as a call girl. It was such a huge success, the blog was collected and published in two books, and was even turned into a hit TV series “Secret Diary of a Call Girl”. But for years, no one knew who she was, which even led others to doubt if her blog was just a work of fiction.

But after years of speculation, Belle du Jour finally outed herself. Dr. Brooke Magnanti, a research scientist, finally revealed that she was the woman under the nom de plume. She revealed that it feels better not having to hide and tell lies to her family anymore.

I think it’s a brave move on her part to reveal her true identity considering how polarizing her journal is. It does make you wonder why she decided to reveal her true identity at this stage. But then it’s her life. She’s been non-apologetic about her past, why should she start doing so now?