web visitors – Maroon Interactive

May 18, 2011

Face Recognition Software; From Creepy to Facebook

How Facebook used the rules of customer engagement to get users to embrace technology once regarded as creepy.

If you upload a series of photos to your Facebook profile, you’ll notice that some of them are pre-tagged with your friends’ names. This is because Facebook now uses face recognition technology and software to help reduce the time users spend tagging their uploaded pictures.

So how was Facebook able to deploy this technology once regarded as “creepy” with minimal outcry? They followed two cardinal rules of customer engagement –

1. Meet your customers’ needs: provide relevant enhancements.
When Facebook redesigned their users’ profile layout earlier this year, the photo gallery that now forms a banner at the top of user profiles made it easier to for users browse their friend’s photos – and encouraged users to upload their own. Face recognition technology became relevant to Facebook users because it simplified the image tagging process for users uploading lots of photos. As users accept or reject Facebook’s recommendations of pre-tagged images, they also help to refine the accuracy of the technology.

2. Honesty: allow customers to choose to engage your product enhancements.
Tricking your customers into using products and services they might otherwise decline is not cool. So Facebook allowed users to opt in – or out of being pre-tagged in their friend’s photos via the company’s face recognition technology*. If you are introducing an enhanced service that might compromise your customers’ privacy or raise damaging concerns, always allow customers to decline or embrace your services and honor their wishes.

Visit us next time to learn how face recognition technology can help boost the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.

*Opt out of image pre-tagging via face recognition on Facebook by going to account –> privacy settings –> scroll down to “Things others share” –> Suggest photos of me to friends –> click [Edit Settings] –> Disable.

March 9, 2011

Google Search Algorithm Updates-What’s New

If you’ve got a Website or any type of Web presence, search engine rankings should be important to you. Last week Google made some dramatic changes to their search algorithm which is changing the way search results are generated – and affecting companies that invest heavily in staying on top of rankings. According to the company –

Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible. This requires constant tuning of our algorithms, as new content—both good and bad—comes online all the time.
–Google

Here’s what’s in and what’s out with Google Search algorithm changes:

1. Websites with “better quality content” will move to the top of search rankings.
There is much contention about what constitutes “better quality content” or a “high-quality” Website. Google is describing this as original content and information such as research, in-depth reports and thoughtful analysis.

2. Users will get the “most relevant” answers to queries.
The most noticeable updates here are location-based results, and the increasing inclusion of “Real Time” results picked up from social media Websites such as Twitter and YouTube. Also, if you have the type of name that typically deliver porn sites when Googled, those types of results will now be pushed back to 2nd or 3rd page of results – bad news for those type of Websites, good news for you (if you are not in that type of business).

3. “Low quality sites” will be suppressed in search results.
This has caused uproar in the Web development and business community because Google used information from “Personal Blocklist “, a tool that works with their Chrome browser. This tool allowed Chrome users to rank and block sites they found sub-par or sites that promoted content they didn’t agree with. Although Google say they don’t rely totally on the results from Personal Blocklist, it’s still a factor in rankings.

4. Hacked Websites and domains responsible for spam are being eliminated from results.
‘SPAM’ in this instance means repeated “spammy words “, automated content, and Web sites with too many comments that originated from content authors. ‘Content farm’ Websites are taking the biggest hit with this update. According to CNN “..sites like Mahalo.com, Wisegeek.com, Ezinearticles.com… [are] among the biggest losers in the algorithm tweak. Google-generated traffic to each dropped more than 75%…” The bad news is that Google has not clarified why a hacked Website should be punished or how the site can get off the blacklist.

5. Copy-cat Websites will move to the bottom of the search results pile.
If you steal, borrow, take, liberate or copy content from other Websites – stop. Hire a copy writer and start over if you care about your Website’s place in search results. New changes to Google’s search algorithm are not kind to Websites mirror the content of other sites. See #1.

So what does this all mean? Content, my friends, is about to become king again!

January 24, 2011

Yahoo! Embraces the Power of Facebook and Google

After much testing Yahoo! made a bold move last week to allow all users to log into their Yahoo! accounts with their Facebook or Google IDs. According to company executives, this is a move to consolidate usernames and passwords and make it easier for new users to manage their Yahoo! account.

Businesses and organizations can learn three things from Yahoo!’s move –
1. If you cant beat ’em, join ’em. Google has long outpaced Yahoo! in the search business, and with over 500 million users, Facebook is the go-to place on the Web. Making space for the competition will boost Yahoo!’s relevance.

2. Shared login or OpenID authentication is a great idea. If your business or organization require members to log in to access content, this feature is a great way to share content and user activity in a wider network — and if your members are sharing something good, you may even recruit new members.

3. Embracing the competition can keep you in the game. Yahoo! may have lost it’s search engine crown to Google but it still has a popular and successful email product. Associating Yahoo!’s brand with Google and Facebook is also a good way to make users feel they can have all products with just one log-in — yeah for interoperability!

December 28, 2010

The Truth about Twitter, Trending Topics and Your Business

Are Twitter trends fixed? — Twitter Trends - fixed?

The wikileaks fiasco has revealed an ugly truth about social media marketing via Twitter – their top trends may not be ‘the top trends‘ after all. Marketers assumed that top tweets and trending topics were based on actual Twitter user activity, but according to Twitter – this is not true. When users raised questions about the omission of tweets about wikileaks in Twitter’s list of trending topics and top tweets, the company was forced to admit that “Twitter favors novelty over popularity…” and that the company is in full control of what topics make their lists. Continue reading “The Truth about Twitter, Trending Topics and Your Business”

October 21, 2010

What’s Next for Facebook? Games!

How do Facebook’s 500 million users spend over 700 billion minutes each month in that social network? The typical drill is that they log in, skim the ‘latest updates’, browse their friends’ profiles, read emails and follow up on a few leads from people and businesses they ‘like’, then interact with one or more of over 550,000 active applications currently on the platform – i.e. mostly to play games. Continue reading “What’s Next for Facebook? Games!”

October 30, 2009

How Much Time Should Visitors Spend on Your Website?

Recently one of my clients called expressing much frustration that visitors to her Website were not staying long enough. Business was going well and most of her customers came to her through her Website but still the average time on site was less than 3 minutes per visitor. What was she doing wrong? Why weren’t her visitors staying longer?

Rather than worry about how much time people are spending on your Website, here are two questions you should be answering Continue reading “How Much Time Should Visitors Spend on Your Website?”