Search & Social Media Weekly News (23rd April)
April 23, 2010 Author: Adam Lee
Searching for episodes of your favourite TV series?
It’s been another fast news week in the world of search engines with Google grabbing some more headlines for their latest innovations, not least of which is an enhancement to their video search engine service.
The official Google Blog boasts that when you search for a favourite TV series (they used the US version of The Office as an example on their pasted web-page) you should be able to see a chronological list of episodes which you can browse through on the left-hand side of the screen.
Sadly this wasn’t the case when I tried it, and all I was confronted with was a jumbled mess of episodes with no opportunity to put them in order. Perhaps the news was a David Brent-style wind-up but more likely it just hasn’t been implemented yet and is a case of watch this space.
Tips on impressing at SEO interviews
On a more professional note, Ben McKay of Search Engine Journal has this week been sharing tips on how to prepare for an interview if you are looking for work in the field of SEO.
Ben revealed that one of his favourite questions as an interviewer is to ask candidates if there’s anything they have prepared for before the interview which hasn’t come up. It’s a way of testing how thoroughly a job applicant has prepared. Sneaky!
New Facebook Recommendation Plug-in recommended
Facebook announced some new features that big-wig Mark Zuckerberg has unveiled before a starry-eyed audience in San Francisco this week.
The developments are aimed at making Facebook even more relevant to time-poor social networkers (as if that’s possible!).
One such enhancement which catches the eye is a Recommendation plug-in clever enough to monitor your Facebook activities and interactions to identify all your favourite things, and even the interests of your friends, to recommend things that you might “like”.
Sound a bit like YouTube’s Recommended function to us and, as the song says, these enhancements are bound to become “some of our favourite things” very soon.
We’ve written a post on how to implement the Facebook ‘like’ button if you want more information.
Justin Bieber and Gordon Brown rock the Twitter Trends chart
Justin Bieber and Gordon Brown – separately, we hasten to add - are two of the public figures getting twitterers all-a-twitter in this week’s Twitter Trends Chart.
Pubescent poster boy singer Bieber was predictably number one in the chart with Follow Friday (where users recommend other Twitterers to follow) a distant second.
The UK Parliament was a surprise entry at number five, reflecting how the televised leaders’ debates have put the sexy back into British politics.
Twitter itself was number ten in the run-down, with a Mashable article about using Twitter for business provoking much interest.
YouTube: a big tool for small businesses
Speaking of Mashable, they’ve just posted a useful article on how small businesses can use YouTube for ways other than whiling away down-time when business is slack.
Mashable warns that small businesses shouldn’t become a YouTube island but should interact with people viewing content relating to its products.
Other tips include posting subtitles so that hard-of-hearing YouTube users can engage fully.
If all else fails, small businesses could always heed rule number 7 and regularly weed out offensive comments about their company/product.
Leave a comment