Foursquare may be helpful for seeing what your friends are up to, but the act of checking in — standing in a bar, face buried in your phone’s screen as you hunt for the right venue — is anything but social. Now, hot on the heels of its partnership with the New England Patriots, location-based gaming service SCVNGR is announcing a nifty new feature that could go a long way toward resolving this issue (and we’ll probably see other services copy it). If you’ve tried Bump, it will sound very familiar: a social check-in involves getting a group of friends to physically tap their phones together at the same time (it’s more fun than it sounds).

So why would anyone actually want to do this? First, it’s more fun than your standard check-in — I could see this working as a decent, albeit nerdy, icebreaker at bars. And it’s probable that the Patriots will be trying it out during a game as part of a stadium-wide social checkin. SCVNGR is also incenting users to do this by offering in-game bonuses that make social check-ins worth significantly more than most other actions.

SCVNGR CEO Seth Priebatsch says that he initially hoped to implement the feature using Bump’s API, but found that that service couldn’t properly handle multiple phone taps at once — he says it’s designed for 1-to-1 transfers of contacts and other media. So SCVNGR designed a system that would allow many (even thousands) of people to tap their phones together in order to achieve a group checkin.

Of course, physically hitting devices that cost upwards of $500 isn’t always the best idea, especially when you’re trying to get a bunch of people to do it at once (some of whom may not be especially sober). Fortunately there’s an alternative: Priebatsch says that some well-timed phone shaking when you’re in the vicinity of your friends will work just fine.

(Via TechCrunch.)

Facebook is a fun place to be.  You can call anyone from your closest relative to some acquaintance you knew way back in high school a ‘friend’ and not feel awkward because of it.  Friends on Facebook are basically people you know and Facebook is a fun place to either get to know people better or just to keep up with the family.

Notice that I mentioned the word ‘fun’ a few times in the previous paragraph.  It is true that Facebook is a place to network and to keep up with people.  However, it can also be a fun place to play around with your friends.

No, I am not talking about those stupid little games like throwing sheep around or pretending you know anything about farming.  I’m talking about just plain old having fun at your friends’ expense.  If you are creative enough, you can find all kinds of ways to have fun with each other without selling your soul to any of those applications.

I can come up with a few.  Try them out and see if you can pull them off in the spirit of fun without making enemies.  Without further adieu, here’s how to go out of your way to annoy friends on Facebook.

1.  Go Through Their Profile Pictures, Add Stupid Comments In Speech Balloons & Tag Them.

A friend of mine did this to his sister and the result was hilarious!  The idea is to choose a picture where you can see their faces.  If they are doing something funny, it’s even better.  Go to the page with the picture, right-click and click and save the image.  Open it in your favorite image editing program, and add some mad cool text.  Use a speech balloon if you’ve got the skills.

Don’t forget to tag them or else what would be the fun?

2. Make Annoying Comments On Their Updates.

Try to be creative in your annoyance here.  You could try repeating everything they say (ever done the ‘copying’ game as a kid… or coworker?).  This game becomes easier with a tool like Facebook because you can always copy and paste.  Indubitably they’ll respond with ‘Stop copying me!’ and that conversation could become endless.  You could also respond to every update with something like ‘That’s stupid.’  You may get lucky and have them respond with ‘Why?’

3. Create A Fanpage For A Friend & See How Long It Takes Him To Notice.

Fan pages are fun, but not as much fun as making one for a friend!  Make sure you make up lots of goofy stuff that people will know is not true.  Share with the world all of their super powers and the type of stuff they like to eat.  Just make it totally annoying and you’ll have succeeded.

When the fan page is done, start inviting mutual friends and see how long it takes for the friend to notice.  I suppose you could either communicate on his behalf in an annoying manner or just speak about him in the third person.

4. Tell The World Every Single Thing You Are Doing Throughout The Whole Day.

OK, I know this one hits too close to home for a few of you but for the sake of being annoying, take it to a whole new extreme.  Don’t just say that you brushed your teeth, but describe it for us.  Find every detail of your life that day and describe it.

If you want to make life easier, guess as close as possible how your day is going to be, and what you are going to be doing, and use a tool like HootSuite to schedule posts ahead of time.  Schedule them every couple of minutes or even once an hour.  Just enough to really get under your friends’ skin.

5. Paste Random Bits Of Code Into Your Status Updates.

Not sure why you’d want to do this, but random bits of code will be sure to annoy your friends.  It could also show your techier side at the same time.

You could either use it in conjunction with actually saying something.

or just by itself.

6. Become Infatuated With CAPS Lock.

Ever since the internet began to be popular, the CAPS lock has always meant you are yelling.  Start updating using all caps.  It’ll really get people’s attention.  You may get annoying responses telling you to keep it down as if their ears are actually hurting.

Be careful as you do some of these.  You don’t want to bombard your friends with so much annoying garbage that you start losing them.  Oh and these are just a few ways to get on the nerves of your lovely friends on Facebook.  I know for sure that there are more so share your favorites in the comments, would you?

(Via MakeUseOf.com.)

Are you a Twitter addict who owns an Apple device? If yes, then undoubtedly you regularly use Twitter’s official iPhone app. You will be glad to know that the app now has a wonderful new improvement.

Currently the app has a number of cool features which facilitate Twitter usage on the iPhone. Some of the app’s standard features include real-time search, top Tweets, trending topics, and maps that show whatever is currently happening nearby and everywhere else.

All these features, while great, have not left the Twitter developers complacent. In order to keep their app on top, they need to regularly update it to take advantage of the new OS’s abilities. They have done exactly this to integrate iOS’s most important feature, multitasking, in their app.

Multitasking lets you use multiple applications simultaneously. Twitter was smart enough to update their app in order for it to support multitasking on iOS 4. This new version of the app is compatible with iPod Touch, iPhone, and the iPad; the OS requirement is iOS 3.0 or later. These requirements let any modern Apple device owners take advantage of the app and all its great features, including multitasking.

Check out the official Twitter iPhone app  HERE

(Via Free and Useful Online Resources for Designers and Developers.)

Whether or not you agree with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s assertion that the age of privacy is over, you can likely agree on one thing – Facebook privacy settings are not easily deciphered.

If you’re not sure whether you’ve sufficiently protected what you share on Facebook, then ReclaimPrivacy.org has a bookmarklet to help you be as private as you’d like.

The bookmarklet (essentially a snippet of Javascript that executes from your browser bar) assesses your Facebook settings in a number of different areas. It looks at personal information, contact information, friends, tags and connections, known applications that leak personal information and whether or not your friends can accidentally share your information. It also checks whether or not you’re currently sharing information via the controversial “Instant Personalization” that was unveiled last month at f8.

The site and bookmarklet are the creation of software engineer Matt Pizzimenti and is completely open-source and hosted on GitHub. According to the website, ReclaimPrivacy.org will “never see your Facebook data” and will “never share your personal information”. The scanner operates entirely on the client side in the user’s browser, it says.

To run the bookmarklet and see how private you may or may not be on Facebook, simply follow these directions:

1. Drag this link to your web browser bookmarks bar: Scan for Privacy
2. Log in to facebook.com and then click that bookmarklet
3. You will see a series of privacy scans that inspect your privacy settings and warn you about settings that might be unexpectedly public.

You can also become a fan of Reclaim Privacy on Facebook. The site, which is hosted on Google’s App Engine, was down earlier today because it had used up all of its bandwidth, so Pizzimenti has added a donation box to help cover bandwidth costs.

(Via Read Write Web)

Between Twitter, Facebook, and Googles new social networking tool, Buzz, its hard to turn a corner without running into another social network. But how do you know which networking tool fits you best? Were here—with big charts and all—to help.

Last week Google Buzz made us ask ourselves what we wanted out of social networking. To answer that question, we charted what we liked and disliked about setup, privacy, usability, and other aspects of Buzz, Twitter, and Facebook. Here’s the result.

This chart doesn’t cover everything about every network out there. MySpace is (seemingly) on the decline or, at best, re-purposing itself. LinkedIn is really a business contact pool, FourSquare a geo-location game, and other networks generally too niche to be compared in the same aspects and categories.

For the simple read, here’s the full chart of our Buzz, Twitter, and Facebook comparison. We color-coded each answer to give a context of where it stood, in comparison to what we know is possible and what a smart user would like to see. Red means that you can’t rely on this network for this feature. Yellow indicates that the network offers it or makes due, but could definitely be better. Green means something works, and can be considered a selling point.

Click on the chart for a bigger view, or right-click to download the full-resolution file.

There’s a lot of text there already to parse through, but it’s obviously segmented and specific to each function. Having dug into the settings of each network and debated it with my fellow editors, I’ll try to offer up a concise take on how I’d explain each network to someone completely new to any of them. I hope it might spur some thought about which network you’re using now, too, and why.

Facebook

Facebook‘s strongest feature, as it stands now, is that it’s relatively easy to figure out who your ‘friends’ are. You can pull them from your webmail address book, sure, but you have to check off those you want to be a friend with, and they have to reciprocate. After that, you start seeing their status updates, photos, and other activities on Facebook.com, right when you log in. Simple enough, right? Not exactly.

You cant, or at least shouldnt, create two separate Facebook accounts for personal friends and work contacts/co-workers/casual acquaintances, all of whom are likely to hit you up on Facebook sooner or later. So its up to the user to create groups of friends, set what those different friends can see. Also, your Facebook identity is tied to certain ‘networks’—an employer, a school, a location—that you have to remember to set controls for, too. Dig around and youll almost certainly find the very fine-grain controls you might need. But then, every few months, Facebook changes up their offerings, for better or worse, and it’s up to the user to notice and re-learn how to decide what’s private, to whom, and, in a much more worrisome way, what’s being made public and search-able on the web.

Facebook does have a pretty great iPhone app, and offers a good amount of access to third-party clients like Brizzly and TweetDeck. But they’re still limited in some ways meant to drive you to the web site, and their non-iPhone mobile apps and sites are tough to love.

Twitter

What’s easy to like about Twitter is the simplicity. You get an account, you see a suggested list of famous users that you can feel free to ignore, and then you’re asked to write 140 characters about something, anything. It will be made public, search-able, and able to be re-broadcast by other users, unless you’ve decided to lock your entire account and require your permission to view it. You can follow other people, block the occasional jerk from following you, reply to others’ posts, message other users privately (if you both follow each other), and, over time, you’ll learn about third-party apps and context tricks that make the service make more sense. I started using Twitter one day into my first SXSW, and I had it mostly figured within one or two over-eager days.

That simplicity, and reliance on third-party sites and apps for picture posting, link shortening, and the like can be confusing to newcomers that aren’t into digging around, for sure. And the speed and volume of the main stream can be overwhelming and off-putting. But Twitter has grown slowly into a network that adapts to users’ needs, whether by force or through user innovation. If you don’t like how noisy and fast your main feed is, creating a list of high-priority friends and thinkers will do the trick. As you figure out what you like and don’t like about Twitter, you’ll be able to find third-party apps and interfaces that cater to those interests. We’d love to see expanded features here or there (for discovering who’s following you, and perhaps hiding certain posts from all but a few close followers, for example), but Twitter is a pretty novel solution for those who like to share short updates with the web at large.

Buzz

Whatever we write about Buzz will be slightly inaccurate in a week’s time, most likely. Buzz is brand new, and already it announced an apology and upcoming ‘fixes.’ From what weve seen, though, it seems like it wants to be the solution that FriendFeed never was to tracking your friends and contacts multi-varied interests. Some friends change their IM status to say whats up, while others post on Flickr, Twitter, their own blog, and other places. Rather than making you head to each site, or make those friends become endless self-promoters, Buzz aims to connect you to everything your friends are doing from a place youre already familiar with—your Gmail and Google contacts.

And that, of course, is where the uproar started. Buzz showed up, suddenly, inside Gmail, and when asking users to sign up, assumed too much that they’d like to turn their email contacts into people they ‘follow,’ and maybe make that following status public. If Google could reassure Buzz users that what they did on the network was only among their followers they’ve individually approved, it would be more appealing. The service also needs a dedicated home, instead of being spread across mobile sites, Gmail, Google Maps, and elsewhere, and gain better controls for how much ‘buzz’ flies at you. But it’s promising, still, because it’s not a public-type Twitter, or a walled-off Facebook, but something else entirely.

Which Social Network Fits You Best?(survey software)

How would you revamp our chart of social network strengths and weaknesses? What did we get right, wrong, and miss entirely? We’re open to your ideas, suggestions, and links, in the comments.

(Via Lifehacker.)

The Social Analyst is a weekly column by Mashable Co-Editor Ben Parr, where he digs into social media trends and how they are affecting companies in the space.

Google may have finally figured out social media, even if there have been some major slip-ups in the way. The implications of that realization could dramatically change social media as a tool and as an industry.

On Tuesday, February 9th, Google launched Buzz for Gmail, a service for sharing thoughts, multimedia, and your social media feeds with your friends utilizing Gmail as the conduit. The result: over 160,000 Google Buzz posts and comments per hour.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that Google didn’t launch a small addition to Gmail — no, it has dropped a nuclear bomb whose fallout will permanently alter the social media landscape. I could never have predicted that it would become so popular so fast when I first learned about it.

Why? Why has it grown so rapidly? Why has it riled up such strong emotions on both sides? Are the privacy issues going to permanently damage Google? And most of all, what does Google Buzz mean for Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of the social media world?

I’m going to tackle all of these questions and more in this week’s in-depth column.

Google Buzz’s Skyrocketing Usage

Google has only released two numbers so far: there have been over 9 million posts and comments in about 56 hours, amounting to around 160,000 posts and comments per hour. That’s even more impressive if you consider the fact that most users didn’t get Buzz until Wednesday the 10th.

The other number: over 200 mobile check-ins per minute, nearly 300,000 mobile check-ins per day.

Those numbers are simply stellar.

Why Have Users Embraced Buzz?

It’s a question that has both simple and complex answers: why has Google Buzz taken off as a service (thus far) in ways that Orkut, Google Friend Connect, and Google’s other attempts at social media did not?

Let’s start with the most obvious one, and one I think was a brilliant move, despite the privacy issues: it’s wired directly into Gmail. With a flip of a switch, Buzz gained tens of millions of users. With the Buzz tab just directly under ‘Inbox,’ the service creating its own unread count, and Buzz emails flooding inboxes, how could people not try it out?

The embrace goes deeper than that, though. I asked the Mashable Buzz community the following:

‘Why do think Google Buzz has gained traction so quickly? What’s the #1 reason you find yourself using Buzz?’

Here are some of the responses we received that I believe really sum up Buzz’s popularity:

- Adrian Eden: Ease of use and simple interface

- Eyal Herlin – it just works for me. i like the zero effort setup and the making of connections easy

- Sheldon Steiger – #1? It’s embedded into Gmail. After that, it seems to be exposing me to people and subjects that were not readily visible in the other networks.

- Roy Ruhling – On a scale of 1-10 for ‘socialness’ of social networks Twitter is about a 3, Facebook is about a 4 and Buzz is about a 9. It honestly and truly connects people from all over the world instantaneously

- Daniel L – The main reason buzz is growing so quickly is because it is easily accessible to Gmail’s large and already established user base. Normally, Gmail is the one site i always have open because it has my calendar, my to do list, and my chat all in one window. Because of this, i always see when i have new Buzz, and i will tend to check it and respond. This is the #1 reason i use it — convenience.

Summary: Easy to use, accessible, convenient, closer social circle, moves in real-time, engaging…

Google’s got a monster on its hands.

Addressing the Privacy Issue

One of the obstacles to Google Buzz’s growth — and a major point of criticism — has been the privacy issue. Since it’s linked directly into Gmail, people can figure out your email address. Since it auto-followed your most emailed friends, people could figure out your email habits.

All of these issues are legitimate, but here’s the thing: Google is responding with lightning speed. Yesterday the search giant made some serious privacy tweaks, making auto-follow into auto-suggest and giving you the ability to completely kill Buzz if you so choose.

In a few months, few will remember these privacy snafus. Just as people have forgotten about the Facebook News Feed fiasco and other Facebook disasters, people will forgive and forget about Buzz’s initial privacy concerns.

In that sense, Google will get the best of both worlds: it has seeded Google Buzz with people and content via the auto-follow and automatic opt-in features, but it won’t feel the heat for privacy issues due to the recent changes to both. It may have been unintended, but it was savvy.

The Potential Impact on Twitter and Facebook

If Google Buzz is here to stay, what does that mean for the two kingpins of social media, Twitter and Facebook?

If you don’t think both companies haven’t had constant meetings over the potential impact of Buzz, then you are kidding yourselves. There’s no way both companies don’t have people analyzing scenarios and Google’s plan for its social media wunderkind.

To analyze the potential impact of Buzz on both services, lets look at the key questions for Twitter and Facebook, and some possible answers:

Q: Will Buzz Kill either Facebook or Twitter?
A: No. There’s probably nothing that could kill either service. The user bases are too large and passionate for that to happen.

Q: Could Buzz slow down the growth of Fb/Twitter?
A: Absolutely. Imagine that 15 million people are spending 15 more minutes in their Gmail inbox because of Buzz, whether that’s browsing what their friends are saying or creating their own posts. There are only 24 hours in a day, so that time has to be taken from somewhere.

Yes, part of that time is being taken away from tweeting and facebooking. Even if it just means one less status update per person per day, that adds up to millions of updates lost to Buzz.

The effect could be a lot worse. We just can’t know yet.

Q: Could Buzz become bigger than Twitter?
A: It already is:

While we can’t pinpoint an exact number, Twitter has probably around 18-25 million users worldwide. Heck, let’s say there are 30 million to be generous. Gmail has over 38 million uniques in the U.S., and that was back in September 2009. Worldwide, that number is simply larger.

Yes, there are far more tweets than comments/posts on Buzz right now, but beating those engagement numbers isn’t out of the question for Buzz.

Q: Could advertisers and brands switch some of their dollars and focus from Facebook and Twitter to Buzz?
A: With millions of people using Buzz, how could they not?

Buzz is already taking a chunk out of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media services. That’ll only grow as brands and advertisers better understand what they can do with Buzz and its millions of users. Buzz is equivalent to throwing a giant super magnet into a room filled with nails.

Predicting How Google Buzz Will Play Out

Not only can you expect Facebook and Twitter to respond with their own features and partnerships, but you can expect developers to shift their focus as well. Remember last year when there was a Twitter app gold rush? I do — as the service skyrocketed, countless developers embraced Twitter’s API and built amazing apps on top of it. Facebook had the same experience when its platform first launched.

Now it’s Google’s turn. Buzz is an open platform, meaning that developers will soon be able to create new apps for Buzz — everything from iPhone apps to analytical services will be built on top of it.

Now if Google wanted to really shake up the developer ecosystem, it could offer ad revenue share for Buzz apps and its own app store. Gmail advertising is already well developed, and if you haven’t noticed yet, Buzz already has Google ads being placed against it. Offering apps the ability to quickly and easily monetize within Google Buzz could really take away from development resources being placed towards Twitter, Facebook, and mobile platforms.

If Buzz can keep up the momentum, everyone from publishers (like ourselves) to developers to Fortune 500 companies will have to pay attention to the conversations happening on Buzz. If this thing can drive traffic or put a big brand on its toes because of a buzz that goes viral, then there’s no telling how far it will go. Oh, and Google’s only just begun with this thing — more killer features are in its immediate future.

The social media landscape has been permanently altered. To ignore Buzz would be a costly mistake, because Google has finally created the definition of a game-changer.

(Via Mashable!.)

Factors on Generating Traffic to Your Blog: “

Over the last few weeks I’ve had three conversations with readers regarding different sources of traffic.

In each case I had a number of email exchanges with each blogger (all on the same day) and ended up laughing to myself at the common theme but extremely different opinions being expressed by each of the bloggers.

In each case the bloggers had strong opinions (and experiences to back those opinions up) on what type of traffic was ‘best’ and how to get it.

1. In one case the conversation started with a blogger telling me that I focus too much upon social media traffic and not enough on traffic from search engines. Their niche didn’t work with social traffic but with search traffic they did best.
2. In another case the blogger told me that they’d been told to forget about search traffic in their niche and work more on building traffic from other sites and to convert it into ongoing traffic with newsletters.
3. In the last case a blogger told me that in their opinion the best type of traffic was social media traffic and they didn’t see the point in newsletters.

I was reminded through these conversations just how many different valid approaches there are to blogging. I also came away with a few thoughts that I thought I’d jot down here on the topic of driving traffic to blogs.

1. There are Many Valid Sources of Traffic

The above chart shows just 8 of many sources of traffic to a blog. As I write this others are already springing to mind (for example some bloggers run paid advertising to drive traffic to their blog – others get it from banner exchange programs). The reality is that there are many potential sources of traffic.

2. The ‘Best’ Source of Traffic Varies from Niche to Niche

As I thought about the 3 bloggers I was chatting to above it struck me that each had found great sources of traffic but that they were each operating in very different niches.

The first blogger who had written off social media was in a niche that people were simply not using social media for (I won’t reveal the niche as I don’t have their permission but it was a very very niche focused blog). Perhaps they could have driven a tiny bit of traffic with social media but for them Search was a much better place for them to invest their time.

3. Different Sources of Traffic Will monetize differently

Another important factor to consider is that some sources of traffic will monetize ALOT better than others. I’ve found that search traffic can work very well with AdSense for example (it depends upon the niche and intent of the reader). People arrive on your site searching for specific information, read your content, see an ad that relates to their search term and click on it.

RSS readers on the other hand don’t tend to convert for AdSense as they tend to be loyal readers and many don’t even click through to your site to read your content. RSS readers (and social media traffic) however can convert really well for affiliate promotions or selling your own products to.

4. Traffic Patterns Change over the life cycle of a blog

As a blog matures its sources of traffic often quite naturally change.

There’s no typical one size fits all pattern to this but at first the traffic might mainly come from other blogs or forums where you comment – or blogs where you guest post – or articles that you write. In time you might start to see more traffic from RSS or newsletters as a few people subscribe. Perhaps then some traffic will come from other sites who link to you (people who subscribe via RSS might have their own blogs) and from social media. After a while your search engine ranking might kick in as a result of the links from other sites and your guest posting and article writing and you might start seeing Google traffic. Once your blog is more established you might start seeing social bookmarking viral events that spike your traffic.

Again – this is not going to be the pattern for all blogs but in time traffic will naturally start to come from different places – the key is to try to leverage it for ongoing good (trying to get your blog to be sticky rather than just having one time visitors) and to work out how to convert that traffic for the goals you have.

5. Bloggers should be open to different approaches

While each of the three bloggers had discovered great lessons and good sources of traffic for their niches and the life cycles of their blogs – I was left wondering in each case whether the bloggers were being a little too closed off to different sources of traffic that perhaps could have added to the overall mix of traffic.

I see a lot of SEO type bloggers write about the worthlessness of social traffic for instance. One common comment that I get from some SEOs (definitely not all) is that social media traffic can’t be monetized. The reality could not be further from the truth. It won’t always convert but it certainly can. For example I know in each of the E-book launches that I’ve done in two niches that I’ve seen significant conversions from Twitter traffic.

On the flip side of things I hear some social media focused bloggers write off SEO and say that it works itself out and you don’t need to optimise your blog for search if you just produce good content. While there is some truth in that (good content does tend to generate natural incoming links to some extent) with a basic understanding of principles of SEO and a few minor tweaks a blog can rank much better in search engines without compromising the integrity of the content.

I guess what I’m getting at is that if you get exclusive about the type of traffic you are after you could actually be limiting the potential of your blog’s incoming traffic.

6. Too many Eggs in One Basket Can Be Dangerous

I used to be very focused upon search traffic in my early days of blogging. I worked hard to optimise my first blogs for search and got to a point where I was making a full time living from the ad revenue I was getting almost exclusively from Google. As a result I got a little lazy in some of the other areas – I didn’t work to convert readers to be loyal with newsletters or with prominent calls to subscribe to RSS, I didn’t build too many relationships with other bloggers to generate referral traffic and I was very inactive in social media (although it was much more limited back then).

As a result when Google decided to adjust their algorithm one day and my rankings dropped (and almost completely disappeared) in their results I lost almost all of my traffic – and as a result almost all of my income.

I was lucky in that Google readjusted their algorithm a couple of months later and I regained a lot of (but not all) of that traffic but in the mean time I looked for and found a ‘real job’ – and more importantly learned an important lesson about the power of having more than one source of traffic.

That experience was the beginning of me doing a few things that included working harder on capturing readers as subscribers (email and RSS), networking more with other bloggers in my niche and getting more involved in promoting my blog in other places (mainstream media, social media etc). My hope in doing all of this was to build up other sources of traffic so that if Google ever switched off my traffic again (temporarily or permanently) I’d at least have enough traffic to survive.

Google still does send me around 40-50% of my traffic (it varies a little from blog to blog) but I’m in a position now where I could survive for an extended period if it all disappeared (not that I’d like for that to happen).

7. The Importance of Personality and Being Yourself

I’m sure there are other factors that are at play that might be worth considering when looking at traffic. One of these (that I’m yet to fully think through) is personality type.

For example a lot of my my technically thinking friends seem to enjoy the challenge of SEO a little more. They love experimenting with and testing what happens when they make small tweaks to different aspects of their blogs. They’re constantly testing different setups and do quite well from it. I am not technically minded and find their attention to detail very very unusual (and so far from where that I’m at that I feel like I’m from another planet).

Other friends are perhaps a little more social by nature and as a result seem to do well on Twitter.

Others seem to do better by applying their freakish ability to write blog posts that get tonnes of links from other sites and which do brilliantly on social bookmarking sites..

Others are networkers and spend a lot of time interacting with other bloggers and site owners and tend to get links and traffic that way.

Others just seem to be brilliant at building community on their blog and as a result retain almost everyone who ever comments and build new readers from those people telling their friends.

I guess the lesson here is to be yourself and work with your strengths. Of course you don’t want to let your strengths dominate so much that you ignore or become lazy in areas that you’re not as strong in – but do follow your natural abilities and leverage them as much as you can.

Remember that there is no wrong or right way to generate traffic for a blog. If you were analyze the sources of traffic on many top blogs you’d find quite different factors at play!

(Via ProBlogger Blog Tips.)

WordPress is arguably the most popular and the best blogging platform out there. You might have installed WordPress on your site, but you might be scared to experiment with WordPress worrying that you could break your site and WordPress.

Experimenting is one of the best way to learn new things and if you break your site, you probably might not want your visitors to see the fault as it might leave a bad impression. So, it is necessary to have the ability to learn WordPress and try new themes, plugins and other items without putting it online where people can see.

So, the best solution is to install WordPress locally on your computer. It will save you quite a bit of time since you can just put your files inside your WordPress folder without having to upload it to FTP. You can do anything you want with WordPress without a worry which surrounds you when you put it online. The possibilities are endless. Here is a step-by-step instruction on how to install WordPress in localhost using XAMPP. I hope it will become a great use to you.

1. Go to the official XAMPP website. We are going to use XAMPP as it is one of the best Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. It is very easy to install and use.

2. Select your operating system and which format you want to download. You can either choose a zip or a exe format. I would recommend the .exe file. There are also portable version such as XAMPP lite, but using XAMPP is just fine for what we need. There are also add-ons available such as Tomcat, but it but they’re not necessary for our use, may be something you want to experiment with at a later date though!

3. Open the installation file and you will be presented with a window. In, the destination folder, choose your destination. ‘C:\’ is recommended. Click install to start the installation (Won’t take more than a minute or two!)

4. When the installation is almost done, an MS-DOS window opens, You might think you have to type a bunch of codes, but that’s not the case. This window just helps you set your preferences. The answers are just yes and no.

First question it will ask you is whether you should add a desktop shortcut. Type ‘y’ for yes and ‘n’ for no.

5. The second question it will ask you is whether you want to locate the XAMPP paths correctly. Type ‘y’ for yes. I would recommend saying yes because XAMPP usually locates the paths correctly for you, much easier!

6. The third and last question it will ask you is whether you want to make XAMPP portable or not. You can choose which ever one you want, but i would recommend saying no if you aren’t going to be making use of the portable functionality (We won’t be in this tutorial) because it makes it easy for us to see the path such as C:\ and easier in the browser.

7. After this is done, XAMPP starts configuring and you will see this appear in the window. Press Enter and XAMPP will have been correctly installed in your computer.

8. Go the the destination folder you gave (such as C:\) and look for ‘xampp-control’ and open it. Now that XAMPP installation is complete, it is time for us to start using it.

9. You should see this open up. This helps us specify which services we want to start.

10. Click start on ‘Apache’ and MySQL. They are services required for running WordPress. XAMPP uses port 80 as a default port, so if you have any issues, try making sure no other programs are using the port (Skype occasionally tries it). It will say ‘Running’ next to the modules if they are started. The others don’t need to be started.

11. To check if XAMPP is working, open your browser and type ‘http://localhost/’ and you should see this. Yes! we are good so far. Choose your language for the list.

12. After that, you should see a page saying that you have successfully installed XAMPP on your system. Hoora!

13. Now that we have successfully installed XAMPP, it is time to get WordPress. Go to wordpress.org and download WordPress. Extract the folder.

14. Now, the steps get critical. Make sure that you do these steps carefully or the installation of WordPress probably won’t work. Go back to XAMPP folder (C:\xampp) and go inside a folder called ‘htdocs’.

15. This is where we are going to put the WordPress folder. Copy the wordpress folder that you extracted and put it inside the ‘htdocs’ folder. Note: Make sure that when you copy the WordPress folder, not the folder above it such as ‘wordpress-2.9.1″

16. We need a database for WordPress so that we can install it in our computer. Go to your browser and go to localhost (http://localhost/) and click on phpMyAdmin and you should see a page like this.

17. We need to create a new database for WordPress. Look for the ‘MySQL localhost’ section and you should see some boxes, and on top it says ‘Create new database’. That is what we need.

18. On the box on the left, your will enter a database name. You can name it whatever you want. I will call it ‘wordpress_test’. Then, on the next box, your will see a list of options. Scroll to the end and select ‘utf8_unicode_ci’. We are going to use this option because it supports expansions and ligatures. Click Create.

19. You will be notified that the database ‘wordpress_test’ has been created.

20. Now, go inside xampp/htdocs/wordpress (for example C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress) . Then, we need to setup up wp-config. This is to configure wordpress to fit our database, username etc. Many people are familiar with this step.

22. Rename the ‘wp-config-sample.php’ to ‘wp-config.php’ so WordPress will recognize your config file (Depending on how you’ve set up Windows, the .php may or may not be displayed. If wp-config-sample doesn’t show it visibly, don’t add it on to the wp-config when you rename it). Open the file you have just renamed (wp-config) with your favorite text editor (e.g. Notepad, not Microsoft Word!).

23. Now you will need to change these parts of the wp-config.

24. So, inside the DB_NAME to the right you will see ‘putyourdbnamehere’. That is where we will put our database name. Delete the putyournamehere (without deleting the apostrophe) and put ‘wordpress_test’ (remember that is what we called our database in phpMyAdmin).

In the same way, put ‘root’ in the DB_USER part. Then on the next part (database password), leave it blank, since we haven’t set a root password for our MySQL.

We will also not change any part of the DB_HOST because localhost is what we want and it is already localhost. This is just a test site, so no other configuration is needed here. Now, we are done with the configuring. It will be easier to understand what I am saying by the illustration below.

25. Save and close the file (wp-config.php). Next, open your browser and go to ‘http://localhost/wordpress/’. Hooray! It worked. You will see this screen and once again, many people are pretty familiar with this process. Put your blog title and email and click ‘Install WordPress’

26. Success! You will be notified that WordPress has been installed. You will get your username and random password. Copy the password and click ‘Log in’.

27. You are now in the login page. The username is admin and paste the password. Don’t worry about memorizing the password as we will change it.

28. Success again! We are in the wordpress dashboard. The very first thing you might want to do is change the password. On the red bar, click on the ‘Yes, Take me to my profile page’.

29. Scroll down and change your password, then update profile.

30. Yes, now you are all set. When you go to http://localhost/wordpress. You should see your blog with the default theme Kubrik.

31. You are done. There are a few other things I would like to remind you. In the XAMPP Control Panel , Apache and MySQL have to be running. You don’t need FTP to change stuff in wordpress. Just go inside xampp\htdocs\wordpress and change everything there. For example, if you want to add themes, just go inside wordpress\wp-content\themes and put your themes there.

32. There you go. That wasn’t too hard. You can now master WordPress without worrying about breaking your website and you will also save some valuable time. Go celebrate!

Then, come back and you are free to experiment with WordPress any way you like. Try out new posts, themes, plugins and explore the wonderful world of WordPress.

If you have any problems or want to ask a question, feel free to comment below. I will try my best to answer your questions.

I would also appreciate it if you commented what you are going to use WordPress in localhost for. I hope you enjoyed this post!

(Via Pro Blog Design.)

Looking to turn your PC into a live video production studio? Ustream has just launched a new desktop application to help make that happen. Today, the company is launching a new desktop client called Ustream Producer that boasts high video quality and editing tools that can help give your streams an added layer of polish. The application is available for both Mac and PC, and you can grab it here.

Now, you’ve always been able to broadcast to Ustream via your web browser, which uses Flash to access you PC’s webcam. But Ustream says that the desktop client offers both increased video quality (you can stream in HD and H.264), and perhaps more importantly, it allows you to create broadcasts that can be far more complex than just a single stream from your webcam. The application includes support for Picture In Picture, which means you simultaneously show two streams at the same time. The premium version of the app lets you use multiple cameras from the same setup, while the free version lets you include additional Ustream streams that are being broadcast from other computers. You can also integrate previously recorded video, and share your desktop screen.

Ustream is offering a free version of the producer, which includes more than enough features for casual broadcasters. But if you’re looking to make your broadcasts look more professional, complete with graphic overlays and multiple camera angles, you’ll want the premium version, which costs $199.

This isn’t the only way to broadcast live video from your desktop, though. Competitor LiveStream has offered a similar production tool called Procaster since last April. And there are third party applications like Wirecast that allow you to stream to multiple livestreaming services, like Justin.tv, Livestream.com, and Ustream.

If you’re looking to get a feel for what can be done with the new software, the company says that Trace Cyrus and Mason Musso will be using it to broadcast a new song from the Alice in Wonderland soundtrack tomorrow at 4PM here.

(Via TechCrunch.)

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

We’ve already talked about using RSS as a business intelligence tool, but how do you choose the right software to get maximum benefit out of your news reading? With a number of options and myriad features on multiple platforms, it can be a daunting task to even get started.

In this article we’ll take a look at some of what you might consider when shopping for a news reader. Do you need cutting edge, up to the second information at your fingertips? You might want to look at ‘ticker’ style applications that scroll new headlines continuously. Or maybe you need to monitor a large number of feeds but are primarily interested in a subset of specific keywords or topics. In that case, you’d want to look for an RSS reader that supports a Smart Folders or Saved Searches feature.

If you need to keep news feeds in sync across multiple platforms, from Mac to Windows or from the web to a desktop or mobile clients, there are solutions out there for you too. Many of these readers also help you share individual articles and posts with your colleagues and collaborators as well. Let’s take a look at some of the options available online, on your desktop and on your phone.

Online

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The reigning king of online newsreaders is currently Google Reader. One of the advantages of an online RSS reader over a desktop version is accessibility: you can use it from any web browser, even if it’s not your primary computer, and all your feeds will be exactly the way you left them. Of course, one of the disadvantages of a web-based newsreader is that you typically need an active internet connection to make use of them, whereas a desktop client can download feed items you can later read offline.

One of the areas Google Reader excels, however, is in its ability to also sync with various desktop and mobile clients. Not only does that give you some measure of offline access to your feeds (as does installing and enabling Google Gears), but it prevents you from having to sort through some of the feeds you’ve already read elsewhere when you switch from your computer to your phone, or even from web to desktop client. We’ll look at some of the desktop and mobile clients Google Reader syncs with in the next two sections.

Another potential option in this category is NetVibes. Though it’s officially classified as a Start Page moreso than an RSS reader, it can import and monitor news feeds along with a number of other apps or widgets designed to bring various types of information into one at-a-glance interface. NetVibes offers far more flexibility and customizability than a straight up RSS reader, but the downside is it’s not the best solution to monitoring a large volume of feeds. Google also has a similar product dubbed iGoogle worth checking out as well.

Desktop

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If keeping news feeds in sync between a Macintosh and a Windows computer is part of your requirements, you’ll want to take a look at two industry-leading news readers on their respective platforms: NetNewsWire and FeedDemon. Both of these readers sync with Google Reader, making cross-platform feed reading a lot more painless. Even if you don’t need cross-platform compatibility, both readers are full-featured and worthy contenders for your desktop feed reading needs. Both offer the ability to watch for specific keywords or set up saved searches that automatically bring up important topics in your niche to the forefront of your news reading sessions.

Another worthy option on the Mac is Shrook a free RSS reader that syncs back to the web to keep your feeds in line whether you’re reading from your Mac, iPhone, or any computer with an internet connection. On Windows, take a look at the free and open source RSSOwl.

For a news ticker type experience on either the Mac or PC, check out Snackr, an Adobe AIR client that continually scrolls headlines from your feeds across your desktop. This type of news reader can be handy for those who want to be able to see stories at a glance without having to switch back and forth between applications or browser tabs.

Mobile

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On the iPhone, Reeder is a solid mobile client that syncs with Google Reader. Newsstand is another iPhone client that does so, along with the ability to easily export or send stories to a number of external sources like email, Twitter, delicious and more. There’s also a special iPhone-formatted version of Google Reader you can simply use in the Safari mobile browser that works quite well.

On the Android platform, FeedR is a great option for reading feeds, with a free demo version and a reasonable $0.99 version that removes certain intermediary dialog boxes. You can import feeds from an OPML file and even cache feeds for offline reading as well. For a solid client that syncs with Google Reader, check out NewsRob.

Palm webOS users might want to see if the iPhone-formatted Google Reader works for your needs; it’s not specifically customized for Palm devices yet still tends to work rather well. BlackBerry users can also access Google Reader in the phone browser, or check out FreeRange or Viigo. Windows Mobile users can also use the browser method to access Google Reader, or try the free NewsBreak Lite or YoMoMedia, which syncs with its own web-based feed reading client as well.

Shop Around

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Don’t hesitate to spend some time shopping around and trying several clients before settling on your feed reader of choice — or even continuing to use more than one at a time. Thanks to the OPML standard, it should be a relatively simple process to export and import your feeds from one client to another. This means that building a master list of news feeds in one client is highly worthwhile, since it can travel with you even if you move to a new RSS reader down the road.

(Via Mashable!.)