Sometimes the best way to enhance the user experience of a website's service is to integrate it with another site's content. At least, this seems to be the case with the new collaboration between Kayak, a hotel search website, and TripAdvisor, a site that allows users to submit their own reviews of hotels and other accommodations they have stayed in while travelling.

If you're old enough to remember, some prime-time television stars (Roseanne Barr) were credited using only their first names.  I'm not really sure how one 'officially' reached such plateaus of stardom regarding 80's television, but if you're exceptionally 'down' in today's pop culture and social media world, Facebook will dial-up your account asking you to confirm your 'alternate' identity (a nickname, brand name, well-known moniker or otherwise).

Kenneth Wisnefski discusses “Image Jacking” with Richmond Morning News.  Hear more

Facebook's new deal with Bango shows its efforts to make some money on those who use Facebook on their mobile devices. Webimax founder and CEO Kenneth Wisnefski joins Alisa Parenti in Money, Markets and More.  Hear more

Operations become more dynamic when they expand into international markets, complete with new and different structures and regulations. I touched on this over the last two days regarding Google Maps in France and the Street View functionality in Germany. Essentially, nothing stays the exact same from country to country and Google, maybe more than any other company in the tech industry, is experiencing this in a big way. Just recently, the Korean Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) made weighty accusations against Google alleging they interfered with the commission's antitrust investigation regarding potential limiting of access to local search engines on Android. Moving beyond this tension, Google engineer Matt Cutts made a presentation to roughly 80 South Korean government officials, lawyers, webmasters, and journalists in an appeal to allow Google's bots to crawl prominent government websites.

Cinderella

As I discussed in my last post, Twitter is quickly becoming an essential tool in SEO marketing campaigns. A new service, Chirpify, only serves to validate that, and takes the advertising – and selling – of a business's products or services to the next level.

A new website with a very off-color description of Mitt Romney could create a serious image problem for the Republican presidential candidate. Reputation management experts call it “image-jacking” -- and Google says it's out of the company's hands.  Read more

The New York Knicks' young point guard has nearly melted search engines and Twitter over the past week despite other big stories, such as a possible war with Iran, the struggling economy, U.S. presidential election and Tuesday's release of the 2012 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.  Read more

When Boxer Floyd Mayweather wrote on his Twitter account Monday that ‘Jeremy Lin is a good player but all the hype is because he’s Asian,’ and then later followed up with a tweet saying, ‘I’m speaking my mind on behalf of other NBA players. They are programmed to be politically correct and will be penalized if they speak up,’ I thought it made sense to ask some of the 76ers what they felt about Mayweather’s comments rather than let him speak for them.  Read more

In the wake of talented singer Whitney Houston's tragic passing the night of February 11th, 2012, there is one thing stood out conspicuously: the use of social media in spreading the news of her death, and in allowing fans from all over the world to express their condolences.

Happy Valentine's Day, valued WebiMax readers.  Are your customers headed, straight as an arrow, toward your site's services and products, not just today, but each day of the year?  Search engine optimization facilitates a love connection and the endless search for brand attention.  Brands engineer goods and services to meet the needs of valued customers.  Online marketing helps align and spark brand-consumer connections.

Innovation can lead to profitable small and medium business (SMB) growth starting in 2012. This year can be a rebound year for SMBs if business owners commit to innovating and focusing more on client-retention. The key problem is that most business owners are reluctant to move forward due to pressing economic concerns including the financial markets, credit ratings and unemployment; however, it’s the lack of focus on key internal areas that are keeping them in a hover pattern.  Read more

In yesterday's post, I described how the initial resistance of Google's Street View in Germany could, at least in part, be attributed to the country's more private culture. Looking at its acceptance, the raising of concerns by Google Maps' audience had a considerable positive impact. Engagement to some degree did occur, according to the Time Magazine/Worldcrunch article, or at least Germans opposing the service had a vehicle to show their opposition made possible by the head of Hamburg's Data Protection Authority (DPA). In the article, the head of this authority stated that giving people the opportunity to disapprove "diffused the situation and helped Street View gain acceptance." Thus, creating a forum which allows people to voice concerns is sometimes all that is needed.

How's your brand getting attention today?  There are in-house and external ways to beckon attention.  Seek search engine optimization information; vendors offer an array of choices, addressing technical, social, and copywriting needs.  Do you want ongoing commerce from customers once you have their immediate attention?  While SEO offers opportunities to drive traffic to your site, your company has the power to make your brand a 'regular hangout,' enjoying endless attention.  That's what you want, right?

When Google was introducing the Street View feature of its Maps platform in Germany, culture was at the root of its initial resistance. This is yet another example of technology and the internet challenging cultural norms and existing laws in new ways. German culture largely tends to be more private than others, particularly US culture. This can be seen throughout society, but most applicable for tech companies and search engine optimization experts is how it impacts their online activity. As such, Germans had one of the lowest adoption rates of social networking sites in Europe during the initial years of their existence. But in time, Germans have joined social sites in great numbers, once the technology and its impact on privacy was understood and accepted it appears.

Happy weekend, search fans!  You have some time this weekend.  Catch-up on your online marketing/search engine optimization reading.  I've read, synopsized, and delivered links to informative tidbits from around the world of search.  Take a gander at what I've gathered:

Happy Friday!  It's time to put in a day of work and then dine on the fruits of our labor.  Everybody's working for the weekend, right?  Pull some cash out of your account and take a ride on the weekend's ferris wheel.  If you bank with Citibank, you may have recently gotten confused by the numbers.  Sometimes that happens – getting confused about numbers that is, not how much cash is in your account; the latter is a scary thought.

When Facebook filed for its IPO last week, CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the company generated $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011, 85 percent of it stemming from advertising. Currently, Facebook solely hosts ads on the standard version of its social media platform. However, the company recently inked a deal with Bango that will bring ads and mobile payments to Facebook mobile versions beginning in March.  Read more

Facebook reportedly revealed this week that more than 60 million users have engaged with third-party apps via its mobile Web site or native apps that integrate with the Bango service. With its mobile use growing, monetizing mobile is crucial for the company if it wants to continue driving overall revenue growth, and a new agreement with Bango for payment services could be one way the company is looking to do so.  Read more

Bango, a U.K. mobile payments services company, announced Wednesday that it has signed an agreement with Facebook, launching a spate of rumors that Facebook's 425 million mobile app users will soon see ads. Bango's announcement came in the form of a two-paragraph release, which says it's "too early in the relationship to accurately forecast the level of business which it may generate.”  Read more

Have you seen Google in the news?  Do you use Google's services to get your news?  As Greg Sterling of Search Engine Land reports, a lot of people use Google across multiple verticals.

The Internet is abuzz with the word that you might soon be able to buy a new Kindle at an actual Amazon (AMZN) Store. The e-commerce giant is reportedly opening its first pilot store in Seattle, something of a boutique operation that will feature Amazon exclusives like the Kindle e-reader, Kindle Fire tablet and its proprietary e-books. So why might Amazon -- which has become the nation's biggest online merchant, in part, by avoiding the overhead costs of operating stores and deftly skirting state sales tax laws to offer shoppers super-low prices -- start flirting with bricks-and-mortar retailing?  Read more

There’s been a lot of activity on the Web and in our industry in the last week and I thought it might be fun to try and tie at least some of it together.  Much of it in one way or another involves Facebook—or FB as the proposed ticker symbol suggests.  Read more

There's been a lot of activity on the Web and in our industry in the last week, and I thought it might be fun to try and tie at least some of it together. Much of it in one way or another involves Facebook -- or "FB," as the proposed ticker symbol suggests.  Read more

Facebook is still learning how to make money off of all it knows about you. And it will probably be learning for years, just as Google has evolved over time.  Read more

Facebook officially filed for their IPO last week with an expected offering to take place in May. At that time, Facebook will be valued somewhere between $75 billion to $100 billion. Also announced were the company's 2011 financials, showing $3.7 billion in revenue. As strong as this figure looks at first, investors should look further into key data to see how Facebook generates so much of their revenue.  Read more

With a projected valuation of as much as $100 billion, Facebook’s imminent IPO may portend great things for social media. But many planners feel less bullish about its prospects for delivering investment returns.  Read more

Mark Zuckerberg and crew may have just dialed-in some hefty numbers associated with Facebook's past-Wednesday IPO.  According to the numbers, things are going swimmingly for the social media giant.  However, as sources tell the New York Times, "We do not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to do so successfully is unproven."

Some people lose face as a result of dropping out of school but Mark Zuckerberg transcends the mold of some; he's the CEO of Facebook, a company that filed for $5 billion (with a 'b') IPO on Wednesday.  While he's distinguishable from most 'dropouts,' he's also distinguishable from most CEOs and 'business-minded' company figureheads; for instance, Zuckerberg has been known (especially in Facebook's beginnings) to forego immediate revenue for control.