It seems lately that Facebook has been adding a lot more features such as the subscribe button and the change in the news feed. The simplicity of the 'old' Facebook is being lost and the simple platform is as I noticed last night made some people turn to alternatives such as Twitter and Google+.
I imagine now that Google+ having added that blue chalk looking arrow pointing for people to "join" their new social network and the text below the search box suggesting the same thing to the hundreds of millions of visitors they get a day has helped their cause.
I even had someone tell me that they were moving to Google+ because Facebook was getting to complicated, they still haven't though and I suppose that's the effect Facebook has with people - to many people to leave.
Eventbrite is website for anyone planning or attending an event and was founded in 2006. They have since sold over 36 million tickets and raised almost $80 million in funding according to CrunchBase.
The service provides event organisers with a number of features to sell tickets;
Publish - Set up an event page, specify the different ticket types, let attendant buy tickets, embed widget on your own website.
Promote - Automatically get listed on search engines/ other event sites, build contact list from those registered, integration with social media, offer affiliate link payouts, integrate with Mailchimp and embed custom calendar to keep website users up to date.
Manage - You can track attendees through charts and graphs plus Set up a single page to manage multiple dates, let attendees pay through Paypal or Google checkout & collect data from potential buyers even when tickets have ran out so you are able to offer tickets to them if they become available. Also generate customised name badges and receive a check-in list. You can organise accepting donations for tickets too, so you don't have to charge a fixed price.
Sell Out - Set up collecting money at the door, pass the service charges of Eventbrite on to your attendees and many of the other features also mentioned previously.
Today brand holders and those with registered trademarks will have 50 days to pay a one time fee of around $200 to get their .xxx domain name. After the 50 days there will be a further 17 days for those in the adult industry to buy exclusively their domains. The sTLD or sponsored top-level domain has been designed for the adult entertainment industry.
The domains were implemented in order to encourage responsibility from website operators but also it enables sexually explicit material to be blocked easier. According to the ICM website ".XXX domain is scanned daily by McAfee for Malware"
There has recently been approval for domain which can have any suffix such as '.snak' or '.piggy' and so on. They won't be cheap and applications will start being accepted next year.
Klout measures your online influence and gives you a score from 1-100 with 100 being the maximum you can reach. You can sign in with Twitter or Facebook and then add a number of different networks to get a more accurate score - other networks you can add such as Tumblr, Blogger, YouTube, Linkkedin & even Instagram plus a few more. Klout will then tell you what area's your influential about "in everything from barbecue to tech gadgets to gardening".
Klout currently scores over 80 million people and brands use Klout to run campaigns with the people which have the most influence among their chosen market. Doug Clark the GM of Social Media & Customer Engagement at Audi of America said "We identified Klout as a skilled partner to help us recognize and identify our Facebook fans with followings and influence". You only need to visit their perks page to see some of the large companies they have done work for and look at some case studies of the work Klout have done. The fact on that page for businesses sums up the work they do perfectly;
"90% of consumers trust peer recommendations, only 33% trust ads".
Their are many tools that we can use with our social media accounts and twitter has one million registered twitter applications. Twiends is a tool that allows you to increase your following quickly which can be helpful for many reasons such as getting people to trust you. Using the tool will require
Every time you follow someone on Twiends you receive seeds which you then use to gain followers, because every time that someone follows you, they take your seeds - you set how many. Their is also the option to purchase seeds in bulk which means you won't need to spend loads of time following people.
The service is very strict on "follower churning" and they work to stop people from following people and then unfollows shortly after they say that " when certain thresholds are hit you may not find any new friends to follow".
