Look beyond basic listings
Of course it would naive to ignore the search engine completely but there are ways of appearing high on the listings without being at the mercy of changing algorithms. Many, if not all, search engines have sponsored listings and PPC (Pay Per Click) options where good performance can be achieved, at a cost.

In addition to this though, there are services like Google Places which often feed search results. These tend to be centred around locality and could certainly drive traffic should your business operate at a local level.

Social Media
The usual suspects (Facebook, Twittier and Linkedin) can be used to drive traffic to your site. Both Facebook and Linkedin have advertising streams so you can target specific users but you also have the opportunity to engage with customers who are already interested in your product or service. Actively engaging with potential and existing customers gives you the opportunity to offer tailored advice or put right any issues that would have otherwise gone unresolved. Also, don’t forget – their network can see what is going on and with each Facebook user having on average 130 friends, that’s a lot of exposure.

Blogging
Try to share your knowledge with your customers. You will know your industry more than most, so try to position yourself as an authoritative source on it and be the go to site for such information. Make it so people bookmark your page and if they don’t want your products or services now, there will come a time when they do. A well-written and relevant blog post will encourage sharing and a wider range of people will find you.

Traditional Marketing
Get offline! Traditional media still has a part to play. Letters, posters and flyers can push a large amount of traffic and if targeted correctly it ensure so that your marketing material gets under the noses of the correct people. It also allows you to reach non-techy people and they can get physically passed around and filed.

If you have any more ideas taht you would like to share please levae your comments below.

Overall

There are over 1.9 billion people Internet users around the World which equates to 5 million terabytes of data on the Internet (one terabyte is roughly 333,333 songs) and even though Google has indexed 200TB of that data it still only equates to 0.004% of the total size.

Facebook

Facebook uses 60,000 servers to keep the sites’ 500 Million active users poking, updating and posting with limited interruption. The population of Facebook is way above that of the USA and if it was a country would sit only behind China and India and it stands to reason that it would keep growing and growing.

YouTube
The figure head of the Web2.0 revolution was arguably YouTube and it is still mind-bogglinly popular today, it can maybe even be blamed for the rise of Justin Bieber as one of his songs attracted 344, 194, 152 views. Every minute of every day sees 24 hours of video uploaded and over 2 billion videos are viewed on the daily. If you view these figures as full-length films it equates to 60, 000 being uploaded every week.

Twitter
Despite being the new kid on the block, Twitter still has over 106 million users and those users send 55 million tweets per day. This means that on average, 640 tweets are sent every second – that’s a lot of inspirtaional quotes and lunch break updates.

The future

The Internet is has undoubtedly changed the way we learn, love, rest and play for ever and it will continue to do that.

Relationships
One out of every five couples, and three in five gay couple meet online – this is counteracted somewhat by reports that one in five divorces are blamed on Facebook!

Education
In 2009, a US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction.

Getting a job
80% of companies use social media for recruitment, of which 95% of those use Linkedin.

Google AdWords

Google AdWords was launched in 2000 and allowed any person or business to access a new advertising space. By creating a self-service advertisement platform companies could target their customers very precisely and tweak and update adverts as and when they see fit along with an easy way to manage their advertising expenditure to boot.

Files sharing copy written materials

This issue seems to be as old as the Internet itself but Napster was sued in December 1999 by the RIAA for technically allowing the transfer of copy written material between its users and it shut down in July 2001.

In the years following many file sharing sites have gone a similar way, one of the most controversial being The Pirate Bay. The servers that run the site have been raided and in recent months, former owners have appeared in court and told to remove links, even though they no longer own the site after selling it in 2006. Prior to this the owners were found guilty of breaking copyright law and given a prison sentence along with a hefty fine. The site however has gathered much support and now a political party named after the site is the third-largest in Sweden.

Blogger Fired

Heather Armstrong was working as a Web designer in Los Angeles when she started writing about her company and co-workers in her blog, Dooce.com. When discovered by her bosses she was fired in 2002, possibly the first person to be fired for blogging.

You would think that people would learn from the mistake made by one person, but apparently not.

The Great Firewall of China

Many countries have been accused of censoring Internet content, the latest being Australia. However, it is China who have perhaps been the most notorious with Barack Obama openly criticising the so called “Great Firewall of China”.

Much of the censorship was uncovered around the time of the 2008 Summer Olympics and banned content includes news sources that include articles about police brutality and freedom of speech. The political and cultural debates are, as you would expect, for too vast to go into here but there is plenty of information on the subject and I would urge you to find out more:

• BBC Article
• greatfirewallofchina.org
• Wiki Article

Google Street View

Google Street View allows users to see a 360 degree photo of streets and they can navigate along them within the Google Maps functionality – but this caused worries over privacy.

In order to collect the images various cars with mounted cameras were driven around taking pictures, I even saw one in Scarborough! Within just two days it was alleged that many shady goings on were captured (not in Scarborough I must add) including “pedestrians picking their noses, police attending a fatality, a man climbing into an apartment block and a possible drug deal”.

Google tried to subdue concerns by explaining they have made it easy to flag inappropriate content and stated that they approached organisation such as drug treatment facilities and shelters before taking the images.

It must be noted that Google can remove or edit images though – as detailed in this article. Can’t think why though

Net Neutrality debate

Again another issue that we haven’t got the opportunity to go fully into here but Net Neutrality basically “prevents Internet providers from blocking, speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination”.

It will affect everyday users as ISPs could effectively give preferential treatment to one website or service over another. For instance, people who regularly use bandwidth hungry websites such as YouTube could suffer as their bandwidth is reduced to service other customers. This ability to restrict traffic could also arguably hit competition as ISPs limit sites and services offered by competitors in order to promote their own.

For more information please visit – savetheinternet.com

Rage Against The Machine score Christmas number one

Social media prevails! Fed-up with X Factor’s dominance in the Christmas charts Rage Factor was set-up in order to get Rage Against The Machine’s track “Killing in the name of” to the top-spot at Christmas. On one level it was refreshing to see a genuine race for the top spot and see some original and controversial music prevail but I think it does much more than that. Various Social Media campaigns were set-up, firstly Facebook and then Twitter where people campaigned tirelessly and ultimately made it happen. It shows that the Web is truly staring to take on traditional media. Also don’t forget it was the first download-only number one…..hopefully the CD isn’t dead.

Google Books indexes copy written material

Sure as eggs is eggs every time a new medium starts to take off copyright rears its head as Google found out when it tied to index books and publications that were still under copyright. In 2005 a group of publishers and authors , including giants such as Penguin, tried to sue Google. Finally an agreement was reached that allows out of print books to be accessed digitally through Google or selected universities and libraries.

Facebook change Privacy Policy

For those of us who view such sites with suspicion and understand the damage they can do it was interesting to learn that early in 2009 Facebook updated their “Terms of Service”. The Terms of Service effectively allowed them to retain any content posted by users and ultimately claim ownership of it once it was posted – even if the account and content was deleted. After an outcry from their users, Facebook elected to revert back to their original Terms of Service but they have started to face fresh criticism. They are facing allegations of tricking users into sharing information with the wider web and search engines.

Iran and Twitter

There are more and more examples of social media sites such as Twitter enabling people to promote or change issues they feel strongly about. The internet users of Iran turned to the likes of Twitter to organise themselves and gather support for their views after the 2009 election.

The campaign reached beyond their supporters and moved into mainstream media all over the world – promoting the US Government to ask Twitter to put off a system upgrade to keep the service running.

In summary then it has been an interesting decade with plenty of talking points. As the Internet comes more and more into our everyday lives privacy and freedom of speech will continue to play a major role.

Oh and you can bank on Google to be at the centre of more storms in the next decade.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from everyone at Save9!

Google – Launched 2001

The beauty of Google is the simplicity of its design and the understanding that users want access to information quickly and easily. The design is very simple but deliberate, although recognisable, this example shows that simple changes, such as fonts can make all the difference to your design.

FaceBook – Launched 2004

FaceBook or Thefacebook is one of the successes of recent times. What we can learn though is that it is important to have a clear target audience in mind. Thefacebook was designed to connect people at colleges but it has taken over work places, schools and social settings. Meet your core user’s needs and then expand!

MySpace – Launched 2003

MySpace may have fallen behind FaceBook in recent times but I think this one is very interesting. The design looks very corporate but they must have realised that this design wouldn’t appeal to the people who were using the site. If a web designer mis-judges the users of a site it is important to change tact and keep them interested.

Twitter – Launched 2006

Few sites have polarised opinion like Twitter has. That is a whole new debate for another time but this image clearly shows what its original intent was…..”What are you doing?”

BBC news – Launched 1997

Finally I have included the BBC website. This design was way back in 1997 and it reminds us what we often forget. When we are thinking about just when to cut the gradient off, whether the icons are understandable or should we use rounded corners or not, as that is so last year, always remember this…content is king!

There you have it. If you want to see more read the article or use the Wayback Machine and if you find any good ones, let us know.