Media

Socialfactory, the company known for providing best Social Media Applications has been working hard to satisfy its customers at the best. This can be evident by the fact that SocialFactory has done three projects in the month of July. To give customers true picture of the progress of work, it has updated the Facebook Application portfolio section. So now the new customer can get the idea of the Facebook Application diversity and quality of work done by SocialFactory.
Customers can visit the portfolio page of the Socialfactory to find more about the nature of projects and can contact through phone or email .The team at Social Factory is ready to provide quality services 24/7.

For more news and updates about SocialFactory, visit www.socialfactory.net

Opening Night featured 3D submissions and festival activities included panels where “old media” and “new media” converged to share the best of ideas and submissions with expert panels Live streamed and festival prizes totaling over $30,000 in all categories.

The New Media Film Festival (NMFF) announced the winners of this year’s festival, the acceptance of submissions for the November Festival and that the 3rd Annual New Media Film Festival Los Angeles taking place in May 2012 will have a pre-to-post production prize package worth $22,000.00. The festival founder and director, Susan Johnston, also announced two new categories for the Audience Choice online voting: Trailers and Live Streaming.

For photos, videos and more info please visit: www.minglemediatv.com/NMFFLosAngelesMay2011.html.

Varazo, a full and software service marketing agency, releases its newest pay-per-click (PPC) marketing strategy. Unique, Varazo’s brand PPC approach uses forms of contextual and search marketing to bolster brand and industry image. Varazo structures its PPC branding accounts by reinforcing highly relevant goal keywords and using its proprietary PPC management software (ClickSweeper) to bring highly Analytics-qualified traffic. Because of its unique visibility and quality aimed structure, Varazo’s new approach is primarily marketed towards B2B and specialized brands.

To download, the full white paper, please visit Varazo at: http://varazo.com/branding-ppc.html

About Varazo:
Varazo defines, executes and measures PPC marketing campaigns, and is the creator of ClickSweeper (PPC Management Software). Varazo partners with customers to define both specific and directed strategies. Varazo’s team of Google and MSN certified professionals assist clients across all segments of development and fulfillment relating to PPC advertising. The company was established in 2004 and is located in Santa Clara, California.

EIN Events & Conferences (http://events.einnews.com) has been launched as a World Trade Exhibitians & Business Conferences Directory provided by EIN News. It not only offers a platform to list trade shows, business conferences or other events online – event promoters will also be located within a network that reaches more than 12 million people each year. Thousands of decision-makers, leading journalists and industry professionals rely on EIN News as an indispensable source of breaking news.

This free listing service provided by EIN News is positioning itself as the leading world-wide portal dedicated to event listings covering both key industries as well as all the world’s countries and regions. David Rothstein, CEO of EIN News, says that its leading news position will greatly advance the exposure of conferences and exhibitions.

Mr. Rothstein adds, “When SEO marketers, event promoters and organizers of exhibitions submit event listings through EIN Events, they will also be located in a prominent position on EIN News industry publications, syndicated via RSS, picked up by other leading search engines, distributed via email to EIN News Alert subscribers, may run banner ads at no cost, and are tweeted http://twitter.com/EINNewsEvents.

About EIN News

EIN News has developed one of the world’s leading real time news indexing services. Its systems continuously scan the web, indexing news from thousands of worldwide sources. The data is then filtered according to specific needs, and the processes are supervised by a team of professional news editors.

Thousands of industry, government and private institutions rely on EIN News for their media monitoring needs. Combining both intelligent search technologies and the human element, EIN News delivers the most efficient, yet personalized media monitoring, news aggregation and syndication services on the market.

Oliver Reichenstein. writing on Informationarchitects has posted a very interesting article “Business Class: Freemium for News?”

“I had a perspective changing talk on the subject of pay walls with the chief executive of a big publishing company (no, I can’t tell you who). He asked me what I think about pay walls. I told him what I always say: The main currency of news sites is attention and not dollars and that I believe that it is his job, as a publisher, to turn that attention into money to keep the attention machine running. He nodded and made the following, astonishing statement”:

:If you’ve been designing online newspapers as well, of course, you know that designers cannot solve this problem by themselves. Newspapers need to make money. And most newspapers look the way they look because the design briefings are the way they are. The following comparison demonstrates how much space and attention that marketing strategy needs to pay for the product, and how small the space is for actual content:

“I can’t see pay walls working out either. But we need to do something before we lose all of our current subscribers. Sure. It’s a tough business environment, but… But the flight industry is a tough environment too, and they found ways. So tell me: Why do people fly Business Class? In the end, an airplane brings me to the same place regardless of whether I fly Economy or Business Class and the massive price-increase I pay doesn’t compare the difference in value.”

Image, Informationarchitects

“There is no information shortage online—if I can’t read this article, I’ll read another.

Pay walls weaken the main attractor (content) of your site and complicates the user experience (login on different platforms). Some leave social media back doors for pro users, but that’s not a good long term strategy either, as more and more people are using social media to find content.

Often pay walled news sites feature the same amount of marketing noise as free sites. Paying customers of course are more attractive clientele, but… Paying for news and then dealing with a silly blinking bonanza while reading doesn’t seem like a fair deal.”

Read full article at: http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/business-class-news/

Why Every News Site Should Focus On Being First Class All The Time:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110504/17110014149/why-every-news-site-should-focus-being-first-class-all-time.shtml

Amzini announced today that they are making their extensive tools to explore and compare social networks freely available for public use. Amzini’s detailed information and multiple search options make over 900 of the best social and collaborative communities accessible. This resource provides people with a means to discover where others like them are spending their time online and provides businesses with immediate access to highly active and targeted communities of potential customers.

Social communities on Amzini are suggested by the community and are each evaluated on criteria for quality, popularity, and interaction before being accepted for inclusion. With a combination of wiki-aspects and quality control, Amzini is able to keep its service up-to-date as the social landscape constantly evolves. As a result, their users can efficiently sift through social networks without getting stuck in clutter, dead links, and signup pages. The 900 social networks featured on Amzini are visited over 7 billion times per month by over 900 million unique visitors (Compete.com), and each network leverages social media to benefit its target audience.

Amzini’s core services include:

* Categorical Search – Social Networks are arranged into 160+ categories to easily narrow your area of interest
* Keyword Search – Search across all networks by keyword
* Keyword Filters – Limit search results by category, feature, or minimum user ratings
* Top 10 Lists – View 6 top ten lists based on popularity and user ratings
* Detailed Site Information – Complete feature set, popularity, company information, relevant articles, and demographics
* User Ratings and Reviews
* Create and Share Favorites Lists
* Relevant News and Resources
* Personalized Recommendations – based on your information and interaction on the site
* Amzini Blog (http://www.amzini.com/blog) – A blog leveraging Amzini’s research to create data-driven reports, guides, and social commentary

http://www.amzini.com

Journalists Are Aggregators Too (And That’s A Good Thing) reports Techdirt.

“A bunch of folks have passed along this blog post from the Zunguzungu blog, which notes that journalists are aggregating too. I don’t like the use of the word “thieves” here, as I believe (yet again) that it’s a misleading and wrong use of the term, but I believe the usage here is in comparing the claims of some journalists that aggregators are “thieves.”

The real problem, however, is that journalists are, by their nature, thieves of words. You can call it what you like; you can say “Possibly I am old-fashioned,” and talk about how “actual journalists are laboring at actual history, covering the fever of democracy in Arab capitals and the fever of austerity in American capitals” (Keller) or you can brag about the “148 full-time editors, writers, and reporters engaged in the serious, old-fashioned work of traditional journalism” (Huffington), but all this “old fashioned” stuff is just a way of covering over something really basic about what “actual” journalists “traditionally” do, all the time: write down what other people say. They can exercise editorial discretion in how they integrate and harmonize the various quotes they’ve aggregated. They can confirm, they can contextualize, and they can (very rarely) manage to witness something with their own two eyes. They can produce collages out of stolen scraps. And they should do these things. But at the core of the journalistic process is the act, inescapably, of taking other people’s texts, weaving them together, and then placing them under your byline (with appropriate citation) and profiting from the activity.”

Read more: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110408/14381713831/journalists-are-aggregators-too-thats-good-thing.shtml

Facebook have announced the Open Compute Project, an initiative to share the custom-engineered technology in its first dedicated data center in Prineville, Oregon. This advanced technology delivered a 38 percent increase in energy efficiency at 24 percent lower cost for Facebook, and the specifications and best practices behind those gains will now be available to companies across the industry.

“Facebook and our development partners have invested tens of millions of dollars over the past two years to build upon industry specifications to create the most efficient computing infrastructure possible” said Jonathan Heiliger, vice president of technical operations at Facebook. “These advancements are good for Facebook, but we think they could benefit all companies. Today we’re launching the Open Compute Project, a user-led forum, to share our designs and collaborate with anyone interested in highly efficient server and data center designs. We think it’s time to demystify the biggest capital expense of an online business — the infrastructure”

Inspired by the success of open source software, Facebook is publishing technical specifications and mechanical CAD files for the Prineville data center’s servers, power supplies, server racks, battery backup systems and building design. This technology enabled the data center to achieve an initial power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratio of 1.07, compared with 1.5 for our existing facilities, which fall into the “best practice” category as defined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency*. Established by the Green Grid in 2007, PUE is an indicator of data center energy efficiency, and the lower the number, the better.

Facebook is releasing these designs as open hardware, aiming to encourage industry-wide collaboration around best practices for data center and server technology.

Advanced Micro Devices, Dell, HP and Intel are among the companies that co-developed technology with Facebook. In addition, Dell’s Data Center Solutions business will design and build servers based on the Open Compute Project specification. Synnex Corporation will also serve as a vendor for Open Compute Project servers, offering fully integrated and tested solutions based on customers’ specifications.

More information about the project, specifications and CAD files are available at http://opencompute.org/ Facebook Engineering page at http://www.facebook.com/Engineering

Artists are using Facebook and other social media to connect and market their work according to an article on USA Today.

“Many artists say they value the beauty of Web surfing and discovering a gem of a painting, the pleasure of meeting other creative souls they might otherwise never have known, and debating critics and bloggers. But they also see the limitations of the virtual world and grapple with how much time to spend online away from their studios.”

Full article: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-03-17-facebookartists17_CV_N.htm

AOL announced that it has closed its $315 million acquisition of The Huffington Post, an American news website and content aggregating blog with over 27 million unique monthly US visitors.

AOL said it will integrate The Huffington Post with all AOL Media and AOL Local properties to create the Huffington Post Media Group. Arianna Huffington will be the President and Editor-in-Chief.new group. The deal was originally announced last month.

With the increasing demand for social interaction and engagement in the blogging community, so too has the demand increased for sites to accommodate this interaction. Facebook, MySpace, and other social media / networking sites have by all means covered the territory for social interaction, sharing, and generally keeping in touch with friends and family. Blog Interact was developed as a platform for this form of engagement between bloggers.

By sharing post “excerpts” and commenting and casting votes on what registered users deem to be “popular posts”, bloggers are able to get a feel for what other blogger’s perspective is on a particular subject or category. Comments can be made on-site, or a simple casting of a vote can be made.

Unlike some other similar sites, Blog Interact will be a more all-inclusive site, covering an enormously wide range of categories and topics. From every form of media, to science and technology, to politics, there is sure to be a category for inclusion of posts by bloggers all over the world.

Registered users will also be able to follow other registered users, whether they are in their particular niche or not. Group creation will be available, furthering the availability for bloggers to interact and engage with each other. Users can follow each other, send instant messages, photo share, video stream, and much more.

Additionally, users will be able to depart the site by taking with them their own customized “interact” buttons for their blogsite. These will be available in various forms and in the java script language, with one simple line of code. This can easily be added to your custom side-bar voting widget, right alongside Twitter, Google Buzz, and Facebook.

Mid Carolina Freelance would like to give a special thanks to the web designer / developer of the site, Michal Wilkosinski. Michal is a U.K. based web programmer and site developer with super skills. He is the owner of StudioMW, and we highly recommend utilizing his services for your next web development ideas.

We strongly encourage all bloggers,writers, and readers looking for the best available content on the web to get involved in Blog Interact. Registration is free, and all links back to your site or the site you are posting from are “do follow”. The site will prove to be a powerful tool for bloggers, writers, and readers to promote themselves and drive more traffic to their site. All aboard!

Mid Carolina Freelance is the umbrella company and owner of numerous popular websites. We specialize in several aspects of internet marketing, including SEO/SEM, writing, and much more. We are product distributors and mobile app developers as well.

midcarolinafreelance.com

AOL Inc. announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire The Huffington Post, the influential and rapidly growing news, analysis, and lifestyle website founded in 2005, which now counts nearly 25 million unique monthly visitors*.

The transaction will create a premier global, national, local, and hyper-local content group for the digital age – leveraged across online, mobile, tablet, and video platforms. The combination of AOL’s infrastructure and scale with The Huffington Post’s pioneering approach to news and innovative community building among a broad and sophisticated audience will mark a seminal moment in the evolution of digital journalism and online engagement.

The new group will have a combined base of 117 million unique visitors a month in the United States and 270 million around the world**. Following the close of this transaction, AOL will accelerate its strategy to deliver a scaled and differentiated array of premium news, analysis, and entertainment produced by thousands of writers, editors, reporters, and videographers around the globe.