Gasta to Utilise Twitter in Search Results

While many still struggle to find a purpose for using Twitter, and Twitter ceases to generate revenue for itself (though it's coming sooner or later), the social network continues to take the world by storm. Naturally there are plenty of opportunities there or businesses to capitalize on.


There are a variety of ways business owners and marketing professionals can use Twitter to benefit their businesses. Twitters' search feature alone has some potential for attracting new customers. The first article in this newsletter discusses this. The second article looks at how Twitter can be used for building natural, organic links, despite Twitter links being nofollowed and shortened. If you have some ideas about how Twitter can benefit businesses, we'd love to hear them. Share them here. If you have tips or comments specifically about link building with Twitter, please share those here.

Before we get into that though, let's look at some research and statistics regarding Twitter. Let's get a feeling for just what we're dealing with this popular communication tool.

The Twitter Explosion

New data from comScore indicates that Twitter approached 10 million users in February. That's a growth of over 700% from February 2008. On top of that, worldwide visitors climbed over 5 million more. Just in the US, visitors climbed over 1000% in a year's time.
The Twitter Audience

The two largest age demographics on Twitter are the 45-54 crowd, and the 25-34 crowd. Interestingly, the youngsters (12-17) are the smallest demographic as comScore notes, referencing info from Alexei Oreskovic of Reuters.
What are Twitterers Searching for Though?

Well, it's mostly the usual kind of queries you would expect to find on other search engines. Entertainment searches dominate. No surprise there. Hitwise looks at top searches for the week ending March 21.

A nice convenient way to see what people are interested in right now, however, is to simply look at the right column of your Twitter home page and look at the "Trending Topics" section. That will pretty much lay it out there for you.

You can take that list for what it's worth and do with it what you will. The big draw to using Twitter search and trends is that it is real-time, and you can get involved with what people are talking about at the moment. This makes engaging with potential customers on topics that are interesting to them that much easier.

Gasta News: EU warns Internet companies to 'protect information'

The European Union has told internet companies to make better efforts to protect information they are given by consumers, or face tougher regulation.
Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva told leading e-commerce and internet search firms that standards of privacy are "not satisfactory".
"Basic consumer rights in terms of transparency, control and risk are being violated," she said.
Internet firms say they have recently taken action to protect users' data.
Consumer rights
The technology used by internet companies to profile customers is becoming so sophisticated that more confidential personal information is being recorded than consumer watchdogs believe is necessary.
In a speech on Tuesday, Ms Kuneva warned internet giants such as Microsoft and Google that "the current situation with regard to privacy, profiling and targeting is not satisfactory".
The EU is concerned that consumers are being pressured into handing over personal data to subscribe to internet services, and that confidential information is then abused to create a profile to target the customer for sales.
Last month, the social networking site Facebook was forced to abandon a plan to change its policy towards privacy after a backlash by users.
The EU cites this as evidence that the regulators need to intervene to protect consumers.
Brussels recognises that keeping data that tracks customers' preferences is useful for marketing, but insists that consumer rights must be protected.
Ms Kuneva warned online businesses that if the EU fails to "see an adequate response", the regulator will not "shy away" from its duty to protect consumers.
"We must establish the principles of transparency, clear language, opt-in or opt-out options that are meaningful and easy to use," she said.

Gasta News: Bebo expands into more of Europe

Social networking site Bebo has made the leap into Europe, teaming with
local media partners to gain a foothold in France, Germany, Italy, Spain
and the Netherlands markets in which Facebook, MySpace and Netlog are
already active players.

AOLs People Networks division announced yesterday that the site will use
IP-based geo-targetting to provide services in the users first language.
This brings to six the number of language options it offers, including
English and Polish.

Bebos Open Media platform is now open to established and emerging media
brands AlloCiné, Clipfish, Telecom Italia owned Yalp!, Diagonal View and
Preview Networks’ Filmtrailer who will get a Share on Bebo button that
will allow users to share media content via status updates to their Bebo
Lifestream.

Our TechCrunch colleague-across-the-pond Robin Wauters rightly points out
that while Bebo is taking the smart approach to rolling out services across
Europe by partnering with local media organisations, they are likely to
find the competition from entrenched big media companies as well as local
players to be pretty stiff.

Gasta , Fidel Castro "Globalisation:the new atomic bomb"

In an interview with The New Yorker magazine in 1999 Fidel Castro said that "Globalisation was the new atomic bomb" we here at Gasta HQ had a debate at the time about what that he could mean, we thought it might be a statement about the enviroment or an isolationist nightmare, but what is now apparent is that Fidel Castro was talking about the big bang of communication. Information is now spread so fast across the globe that a blip on the economic markets in Asia/Europe or one of the other 'emerging markets', can cause a nerve jangling pulse in the market worldwide, everybody is watching everything! We in Belfast are famous for our corner boy politics, now we have our corner boy economists and doomsayers! The recent credit cruch is a typical example of the 'rush to fear'; financial journalists and the media as a whole have been quick to deny any cause and effect of their reports, but every force has an opposite and althought the media may not have meant to start a run on the Northern Rock, they did! Is this the new atomic bomb that Castro predicated? Can modern communication cause widespread panic and fear at such a fast pace that the shockwave hits us all at once?