In 09 we have made 2 very cool updates to Social Media for Firefox. In Feb we added Twitter, Sphinn and Mixx . This lets you hit the manual button on any URL you are on and see how many Tweets it has had. In other words it lets you see how many people have posted your link on Twitter. )There are a million short url services and we are working frantically to add the most prominent in so numbers might be a little off until then( Today I'm announcing that we have added Bit.

Aside from 97th Floor , I co-own an action sports news site called 5ones and a live analytics company called BLVD Status. This week 5ones launched a very cool project that we have been working on for a very long time )initial idea Jul 08(. It is called, "5ones Earth" and it is an interactive Google Maps mashup that organizes all of the worlds Surf Spots, Skate Spots, Ski/Snowboard Resorts, Pro Shops and Company Headquarters.

This is a guest post written by Vince Blackham over at Primary Affect . Holla! Follow him on Twitter With social media reaching near its peak, more and more people and businesses are realizing its importance. Unfortunately for most, they get their ideas from a "bag-and-tag" blog post that claims it has the end-all result to reaching viral success. There's especially been a lot of chatter on Twitter about people being so called "social media experts/gurus" and,

I will be the first to admit while it didn't take me a long time to sign up and start networking with friends on Twitter, it has taken me a long time to understand the true power of the website. When I first started using it I saw it as a networking and communication tool. The more I come to use it and the more I watch people from all walks of life using it I am starting to see why Twitter may possibly be the most important website since Google.

Almost 2 years ago we launched Social Media for FireFox and it has been downloaded over 200,000 times and helped thousands of people build powerful social media accounts on Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon. We finally finished a new version that is awesome, we added some sites and functionality and do some stuff with Twitter that I am super excited about. New Sites: It now includes Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon )review and thumbs up counts(, Del.icio.us, Mixx, Tip'd,

I am stoked to be speaking at SMX West 2009 in Feb. I will presenting on the "Whats new in Social Media" panel and also the "Productivity Tips for Search Marketers" panel. Mat is speaking this year too on the "Image Search" panel and he has some killer case studies for that. If you are considering going to SMX West I would highly recommend that you do. The weather is good the content is great and Danny and Chris put on killer shows.

Chris and I just want to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. We look forward to an amazing year in 2009, and hope we can keep bringing you up to date and informative articles, case studies and ideas in the SEO industry. Again - here's hoping everyone has an amazing 2009 and thanks for a great 2008!

I love swimming, and I practically live in the pool from May - Nov. so when i was asked by my friends at Presidential Pools what kind of things their local Arizona swimming pool company could do to go viral - I had some great ideas! I am in the process of finishing up my landscaping and everything around my pool, so I have been looking at design after design and trying to come up with something amazing. While doing all that - I have come across some pretty amazing pools,

For today's viral marketing idea Friday post I am answering a viral question from a reader. I think there is much potential with this one. Here is the question: Hi Matt, I'm opening a new company with a friend of mine, and I am pretty sure its the oldest and most boring business ever, plus its advertising is abused all the way' Limo services. Its based in Stamford CT, and I'm putting some ideas together along with a web site. Do you think this business deserves a post?

I am sorry that its been a few Fridays since the last post, but things )as always( have been crazy hectic. I am sorry because that is no excuse, but its a real one. A few weeks ago I ran into a friend that just launched a chandler house cleaning business and we got to talking about different things she could do online to drive more traffic to her website and of course viral marketing came up!

I wrote this a year ago and never got around to posting it, and now that is is almost a year later and a lot of my friends and perspective clients are caring less about Digg and social media links and getting back to the O.G. way of ranking sites I figured might as well post it. Via: flickr Old School: Internal Links It seems that Nov-Jan are always insane with people wanting to prepare their site to dominate for the next year. This year is crazier then ever,

Last week, I got this viral marketing question in the form of a comment - I am building a new web application that sends reminders in the form of text messages, emails and voice messages to subscribers. The idea originated from my wife's situation, being a soccer mom and everything, and having four kids, its hard sometimes to keep track with all the practices and games' so she either carry a notebook with her all the time, or she checks her emails. To make a story short,

Luckily I have never lost any info inside any of my blogs, but I also credit my technology background and understanding that websites need to be backed up )and backing all mine up( to never losing any info. But what about the people who are less technical and using blogging software from websites like Blogger, or Wordpress for family blogs? If this is you, and you did lose your blog, or these companies go out of business, how much of your life would you be saying goodbye to?

This week it seems like I have had so many conversations with people about the simple things they can do to their website to make it social media optimized, and because of that I wanted to take that approach with today's viral media post. Has anyone )other Internet marketers( else noticed how good CNN is doing lately with embracing social media and trying to connect with the users of it? You can follow them on Twitter , Facebook and more.

There are so many "geeky" technology )type( websites out there that provide some amazing information that people use everyday, but many of these blogs do not have the exposure they deserve. Many of the geeks I know that love to code and share about their world of technology have no clue about social media sites, let alone micro-blogging sites like Twitter or Plurk . They may have heard about Digg, used it once,

I got asked this question in the form of a comment today - if I had any viral marketing ideas for a hearing aid clinic? At first it stumped me, I have to admit. Had I finally found an industry that is to boring for viral marketing? I have not had a lot of time to think about this, but all of a sudden the first thing that popped into my head was this "The 10 Greatest Health Related Technology Advances" and research out,

I was not going to post rant about this, but after reading Matt Mcgee's latest post about Google giving love to Yahoo Answers )which is worth looking at( I had to say something. It is just to good not to, well I think anyway. I have been using my Yahoo Answers account more recently, after a period of inactivity I wanted to give it a shot again and build up my account. I was doing it for pure fun )maybe a little testing( and had no marketing intentions with it )honestly(.

As I downloaded yet more of Metallica yesterday from iTunes )the new stuff freaking rocks btw( it got me thinking of how some bands are embracing social communities and growing bigger because of them. Also, bands like Metallica are finally starting to figure out the power of the Internet, and embrace its users more to grow their fan base )and maybe win back some fans in their case(. What can a no name band do to get its name out there more with social media?

I have been seeing some pretty interesting picnic and outdoor related blog posts and articles show up online lately, and I wanted to share some more ideas on the industry of picnic baskets and share how I think this industry could do really well in the social communities. Now picnic baskets themselves are pretty boring )in my opinion( but when you can put them side by side with the reasons we use them )food, tailgating parties, outdoor romance( they get a lot more interesting,

I thought I would get a few variations of searches, but I had no idea what kind of ideas would pop into my head after asking this simple question today. I wanted to share a very important lesson taught by students of mine )ironically enough( today, during a webinar presentation on Social Media Marketing that I was giving. Most people that I run into have no clue how to properly research out keywords, and they just want me to do it for them. If that is the case with you,