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SEO News

ABC Opens New Online Store With CafePress

ABC and CafePress have introduced a new ABC Online Store where of fans of the TV networks shows will be able to buy official merchandise along with merchandise designed by other fans.

CafePress technology will allow visitors to the site to design their own t-shirts, posters, water bottles and other custom products. These fan-designed products will live alongside official merchandise in the ABC Online Store.

ABC-CafePress

“In keeping with ABC’s ongoing commitment to technological innovation, we sought a merchandising solution that would fully leverage the power of the internet to significantly enhance and deepen our relationship with the ABC viewer,” said Mia Rondinella, VP of Business Planning & Development at ABCEG.

“Embracing the voices and enthusiasm of our fans is very important to us. Of equal importance to us was the ability to incorporate the latest in supply chain optimization technologies to enable us to more nimbly execute our retail strategy,” “We selected CafePress based on its proven experience engaging and monetizing mass consumer audiences online.”

This new arrangement expands upon a licensing agreement announced earlier this year which allowed fans of selected ABC television shows to design and sell authorized show merchandise on CafePress.com.
 

 

Facebook Testing Feature That Would Make it More Valuable for Search

AllFacebook has discovered that Facebook is now testing showing all liked news articles in its search results. This would obviously be a significant move as the company competes with Google. Nick O'Neill writes:

Additionally, the results for searches now shows the results from all around the web based on two things: the number of likes and the number of friends who liked that object, most likely leveraging some of the technology shown in their recently approved patent. We first received reports of these search results showing up earlier yesterday.
 
The search results have now become dramatically more relevant with the inclusion of recent news articles, something that previously wasn’t accessible via Facebook’s open graph search results. Currently, the search results only appear within the drop down from Facebook’s search box, however I’d assume that this will eventually shift to Facebook’s search area, which has yet to undergo a significant overhaul.
 
Facebook has a lot going on as usual. It was also discovered that the company is testing a subscription feature. This could end up being another key element. The feature would provide alerts to users when someone they are subscribed to makes an update. This could make Facebook infinitely more valuable as a news tool. 
 
If Facebook can improve its search on top of that, it's going to do something for its search market share. Nobody's saying it's going to overtake Google in search, but we could start to see it take away some of the searches that would otherwise have gone to Google (or another search engine), simply based on how much time people are already spending on Facebook. 
 
It's something to keep an eye on, at the very least. What do you think? Comment here. 

Apple's Ping Draws a Great Deal of Criticism

Apple's Ping social network, which the company launched as part of the new iTunes 10, has drawn a big mix of excitement and criticism. While most seem to agree that the concept beind Ping is a pretty good idea (social network-meets-music-buying) it's not exactly the seamless experience one might hope for.
 
Let's take a look at some points made around the Blogosphere.
 
Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch says, "The biggest problem I have with Ping is that it lives in iTunes. Not only does it live in iTunes, it is isolated there. iTunes is not social. It is not even on the Web. And Ping doesn’t communicate with any other social networks. I can’t see people’s iTunes Pings in Twitter, Facebook, or anywhere else. While Ping does make iTunes itself more social, the problem is that I don’t live in iTunes. It is a store. I go in to buy stuff and get out as fast as I can. I am not sure Ping is going to make me want to hang out there more."
 
WebProNews blog partner Bruce Houghton, who writes for the blog HypeBot, says, "Say what you will about iTune's new social network Ping, but it's going to be a great place to market music.  So imagine the frustration of the many indie artists - many of who are selling music on iTunes - when they learned  that there was  no obvious way to create an an artist profile in Ping."
 
"We asked Apple to explain and just heard back from a spokesperson that 'artist profiles were launched by invitation, but we'll keep adding more and more.'  No information was provided on who is handing invites or what criteria they are using," he adds.
 
Mashable founder Pete Cashmore says in a CNN piece, "iTunes Ping is a worthy concept: By adding social interaction to the music-buying experience, Apple could see a significant increase in sales, and artists could form a more direct connection to their fans. But until the majority of artists are able to create official accounts, iTunes Ping merely benefits the privileged few."

iTunes 10
 
Wade Roush at Xconomy has some interesting ideas about Ping: "It's easy to see how Apple might expand Ping beyond music to facilitate conversations around media of all sorts, including movies, books, and mobile apps...Adding a social networking interface, on top of all of iTunes’ other functions, is like grafting another limb to the forehead of an octopus. It’s just too much."
 
Robert Scoble says, "By the way, if I were @loic I'd be PISSED that Apple infringed his ping.fm trademark." @loic, would be Loic Le Meur, founder of Seesmic, who also has a service called Ping.fm, for updating multiple social networks. 
 
The best commentary I've seen about Ping so far has to be Paul Carr's take though. He says, "Ping ping ping ping. Ping. And yet and yet...Ping?"
 
Apart from all of the opinions and criticism, Ping is already facing a more concrete problem of spam. Chester Wisniewski of security company Sophos has a post up describing the comment spam that's already flooding the iTunes social network.

Google should be launching a music service in time for the holidays if reports are accurate. 

How Will Bit.ly Work with Twitter's Link Wrapping?

Besides hinting at new features and talking about user stats, Twitter also made a couple announcements this week. One is that all Twitter apps use OAuth. The other is that it will start tracking every t.co link users click. This is Twitter's own default URL-shortener. 

Twitter sent an email to users saying, "In the coming weeks, we will be expanding the roll-out of our link wrapping service t.co, which wraps links in Tweets with a new, simplified link... When this happens, all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co URL."

"When you click on these links from Twitter.com or a Twitter application, Twitter will log that click. We hope to use this data to provide better and more relevant content to you over time."

This may be a good thing for users from a security standpoint. Symantec says that short URL spam and phishing attacks are rising sharply. "With the announcement that Twitter will be rolling-out its own short URL service, many malicious attacks through this route will be thwarted," says Amanda Grady, Senior Analyst at Symantec. "Through Twitter's added analysis, they will be able to check if the short URL is directing users towards a site with malware and alert them in advance. This should reduce phishing attacks on Twitter accounts and prevent criminals from directing users to infected websites.

 What about other URL-shortening services? Well, Bit.ly Twitter's old favorite, has posted an update on the matter. "Following this week's OAuth and apps announcements, some of our users have inquired about how bit.ly will work with Twitter's new link-wrapping service," says Bit.ly's Matt LeMay. "Link-wrapping will enable Twitter to collect traffic data and block spam, but it will not interfere with bit.ly analytics, bit.ly Pro custom domains, or bit.ly Enterprise usage — you will be able to shorten, share and track links with bit.ly exactly as you do now."
 

Bit.ly custom domain

"Many of our partners are already using their bit.ly Pro short links with t.co, since all links shared via the Twitter Tweet Button have been wrapped in t.co since the button launched last month," he adds. "Link-wrapping will happen automatically and invisibly in the background."

Bit.ly says its been working closely with Twitter and other social media platforms to continue improvements across the web.