Ok, so I met Jason Calacanis briefly at SES New York, he’s a lot shorter than I thought he was going to be, maybe that’s his issue :)

Anyway he accused me of No-following links to mahalo so there you Go Jason a clean link…

Anyway I was a little bit miffed that I was leaving Tuesday I actually wanted to see Jason speak, I hate it when I hear things second hand so to speak..

so Jason announced the new MyMahalo I guess from what I reading a another social site / friends thingy ..oh hum

The new MyMahalo will make social graph features more prominent on the Mahalo search results. Page will show pictures of friends that have shown an interest in a specific topic. Reviews will be imported directly onto the page (with user permission). It’s giving users the chance to leverage all of their data into one spot.

From Lisa Barone the meanest Blog on the block

One More Thing:

what is a little worrying was the Mahalo Toolbar, from what I have heard is very close to spyware, so I tried to install on Firefox but it crashed, Not Jason’s Fault my Firefox has been acting up so I will a more in depth look at both after the week when I can reinstall FF

anyway Jason see No no-follow and chill out I know loads of short people it’s not an Issue.

DaveN

what’s the going rate at the moment and how do you measure the success rate, I mean Social Media it’s so easy to game and yet again it’s so easy to mess up.

Is Social Media easy to measure, recently I had a client that had over a million extra visitors due to a social media campaign that cost us 50,000usd in fairness the client was happy with the traffic, but I wanted to know a little more, after all I get bonus on profit, so once the cost of the consultancy, production and implementation we are done 15K, and know after the campaign has ended we have 5 more back links, and sales have gone back to pretty much what they where before we started the whole social media game…

client still happy and thinks it was still a worth while punt, but won’t be doing it again anytime soon.

DaveN

Well we all know that you can make your own video productions on YouTube: (Thanks Ollie and Chip)

What about a site that’s like YouTube but with the twist of ringtones? There are so many social networking sites popping up it’s difficult to keep up with the pace. Keep your eyes open for Cellware though. The business idea is great offering free ringtones but sneakily putting banner ads on the website you are using to download the tones.The other way they are advertising is to use SMS messaging when you download. The site will actively encourage people to upload their own ringtone compositions with the added advantage of gaining revenue from advertising.

What does this mean for search we ask ourselves? Major companies may well contribute there own ring tone identifier which could be used to promote their brands further. Search will at some stage be forced to focus on mobile technology, even more so than it is now.

Dan Horton

Looking at recent news it appears the focus is still on social networking. MySpace now gains its spotlight on showcasing music and selling performance videos.  Facebook struggles with privacy issues ( or does it, think of the publicity the site has gained in recent weeks) Ebay are trying to crack Japan.

Companies will soon be asking for an entire presence on social networking sites and will realise the huge target audiences of ebay.

The whole shape of SEO is set to change and search is bound to be more and more social. Personally, I welcome the forthcoming changes. This should also shake up the worryingly high number of so-called internet marketing companies appearing on the web who offer little more than expensive review services and out of date SEO methodology.

Dan Horton

The likes of Facebook and Myspace are well known but not always the first port of call for SEO clients seeking a wider web audience, this is surprising when you consider the likes of Microsoft, Coca -Cola and Sony invest millions if not billions of pounds in advertising on these sites.

Websites that promote sociability and actively incorporate it in their core are the way forward. Consumers tend to be social creatures and such networking sites can make brand presence enormous.

Sites which build on connections and friendship have the power to market products more effectively than ever previously thought possible. Large corporations are now going beyond demographic information to secure their target audience, trends and characteristics of users are all very well but brand leaders are certain to want much more information from their consumers for a highly personalised and on-target approach.

Dan Horton SEO

Gaming the search engines. The transference of social community power to your website can be more effective than gathering large numbers of back links from relevant authority sites.

How so ?
Like a high velocity directional electron beam targeted at your site a social networking laser beam can then trigger a catalytic reaction of traffic from other sources. News travels fast within the social communities like a particle accelerator with great amounts of kinetic energy.

Imagine the following all bundled up: Stumbleupon, Digg, Myspace and Facebook in your laser gun and it’s ultimate ability to power you up the Serps.

More and more focus will be on the social networks in months to come. I see Stumbleupon has opened itself up and Myspace is actively encouraging development with its open source.