Hi everyone! Hope you all had a great week. This week, one of the most noteworthy buzz is that from Twitter. As reported by MarketingLand.com, “Twitter says a group of “extremely sophisticated” hackers may have recently accessed limited user information for about 250,000 users accounts, prompting the company to reset the passwords associated with those accounts and remind all of its users to create a stronger password.” So, in case you receive an email from Twitter, you may want to head over your account to check if it was affected.
On a different note, Google is reportedly testing a new animated ad format for AdSense. These ads start to “animate” when a user hovers over them. At this point, Google is apparently only on test mode, but I’m curious to see if they will eventually roll it out. What do you think? Here’s a video that shows you how it looks like.
Finally, and as “content generation” becomes more and more a precious commodity, Rand shares his tips on entering the content arms race and what you can do to come out victorious in your space. Content marketers, to your battle stations!
As usual, in no particular order:
Online Marketing/SEO
- Using Google Analytics to Power an Effective Q&A Strategy
- 30 Bite-Sized Writing Tips From 30 Great Bloggers
- 101 Experts Share Their Tips for Online Success
- How to Optimize Contact Forms for Conversions
Small Business Bites/Social
- Using Google Analytics to Power an Effective Q&A Strategy
- Whether You Like it Or Not You Need Klout
- 4 Storytelling Techniques That Can Help You Increase Your Sales
- Are Your Social Friends Infecting You With Malware?
- Your antivirus software probably won’t prevent a cyberattack
More Cool Stuff and Other Roundups
- My Blog Was Hacked & What You Can Learn From It (not cool, but important lesson)
- Cheatsheet: #HOWTO Pick a Worthy Blog for Your Guest Article
- SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 1, 2013
That’s it! Enjoy, have a great weekend!
George
I did not get any email from twitter. I guess i am safe. But a couple of days earlier i’d get this message like look what people are saying about you as direct messages. Never clicked on them though
larry
Hello, I wonder if the new adsense animated ad format will be a hit or miss? or will it even really come into play. I guess we will just have to wait and see. thanks for sharing…
Sarah Park
Thanks for the updates. I didn’t get any email on Twitter either. Anyway, having strong password in all your accounts is really a must.
What do you think of how Facebook recently claimed that it’s removed 33% of all it’s fake users? Do you really think it’s possible to eliminate all these “hackers” that are just meddling with social networks?
On another note, google’s animated ads sound interesting. I can see how they can get annoying, but as long as the sound only plays when you click on the ad, I could see them being quite powerful advertising tools.
Mauro D'Andrea
Francisco, thank you very much for including my post between these valuable resources!
Welcome Mauro. That post is great 🙂 Keep them coming..
Suresh Khanal
Great round up Francisco!
I saw the animated Adsense Ads a couple of times in my blog as well. Though they look more interesting, I doubt if it will earn more. The ads display only the title and it reveals after the title is hovered.
I’m experiencing that the plain old text ads with little description always worked great for me. As ads are growing more flashy and animated, the income dropped. Might be different for others, but its what I’m experiencing.
Hi Suresh. I hear you on that. I also think that the animated ads may not be as good as it sounds to be. I have not yet seen it on my sites, but then again, I really don’t look 🙂 I’ll probably start hovering on them just to see. I agree with you though, it may be somewhat annoying. Thanks for stopping by