Did you know you can now host your videos on Flick? Flickr have incorporated video streaming onto their site and you can now save up to 90 seconds of video per file. In other updates the storage capacity for each photo has been increased to 20 mb for pro members and 10 mb for free members. [ source ]'.you know that Flickr is all about sharing photos that you yourself have taken. Video will be no different and so what quickly bubbled up was the idea of "long photos,

I was discussing all things web related with a friend and his wife yesterday and one of the topics that came up related to her interaction on the web. Now she spends as much time as I do online, however she has a very small number of activities and sites she visits. Her partner has a small blog that relates to parenting issues. One of the sites she does spend a lot of time on is a parenting forum type site. On this site she has a lot of authority ranking in the sites top 20.

Social marketing has become an important aspect of general web promotion activities and the first question most people ask is 'where do I start'. The answer is easier said than done. Research is the key to any social marketing campaign. You need to spend time visiting the various social sites in an attempt to determine where your potential customers/readers/visitors hang out. Once you identify those sites and the areas within those sites,

I notice many individuals, when they first decide to try social networking or social marketing, simply trying to hard . The end result is that they lose all credibility before they have even started. Sometimes, a little reverse psychology can work wonders. Some social networking sites thrive on interaction as do forums.

Podcasting has rapidly become an integral part of the internet with many companies using the technology to deliver the same message to thousands of people. One of the features of a podcast is that it can be created and delivered automatically. Many users sign up to receive podcasts automatically from their favorite site. Give them a reason to listen to yours and they may well sign up to receive it. Podcasting your products is not going to win admirers,

YouTube is one of many multi media social content sites that can be leveraged to increase traffic to your web site. These sites provide space to store multi media files like video clips and photos. It is simply a matter of knowing how to use these sites to increase your traffic. If you sell products through your web pages, have you thought of developing short videos or taking photos of your products. Videos can be on any subject,

It appears many of the top online marketing people do. And its not only the marketing guru's that twitter. From news stories it seem that UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown was in the habit of 'twittering' whilst on his recent trip to the US - perhaps not Gordon Brown personally, but certainly members of his entourage. Twitter has not appealed to me to date, perhaps because I haven't had the time to sit down and really look at it. From what I heard,

If you are a frequent user of YouTube you will know that they have some fairly strict conditions related to what you can and cannot do on the site. It seems that some of these restrictions are being eased. Apart from copyright violations )that never expire(, YouTube is giving most offenders a clean bill of health as of 16 April 2008. In the past, three violations in a 12 month period would see you suffer a YouTube sin binning.

To stay on top in the social marketing game you have to know what is going on around you. The best way to do that is by subscribing to those who are recognized as leaders, authorities and news makers within the social marketing niche. You can subscribe to wither newsletters or RSS feeds through either the later arriving either by email or RSS reader.

Plug Your Business! Marketing on MySpace, YouTube, blogs and podcasts and other Web 2.0 social networks by Steve Weber is the perfect book for anyone looking to market their business via the newest mediums on the internet. Many people are dropping the traditional forms of advertising offline and looking to the newer outlets as they generate more "buzz" quicker, easier, cheaper and more effectively. The book teaches you how to connect with customers,

Social networking is all about getting into some of the social networking sites then meeting and interacting with other users. If you use several different sites then you may find yourself having exactly the same conversation with the same 'friend', but on another site. It can get embarrassing if you don't watch what you say. Taking care of what you say is obviously one way to ensure you don't get yourself into too much hot water. Even better,

The latest release from Facebook may be of interest to those involved in social marketing. Facebook have released a new feature called Facebook Lexicon which is similar to Google Trends. Facebook Lexicon lets you see which words and phrases on popular on Facebook Walls. You are able to compare up to five different words or two-word phrases. The results are made available in the form of graph. Unfortunately you cannot get any deep data such as graphical or demographics,

There has been a lot of discussion recently revolving around the concept of tracking a users movement on the net and then targeting them with advertising based on their activities. Most of the chatter seems to indicate that consumers are not appreciating this target advertising. It then raises the question surrounding social marketing through the various social bookmarking sites. One some forums however,

"Unleashing Web 2.0: From Concepts to Creativity" by Gottfried Vossen is the perfect book when it comes to learning the emergence of Web 2.0 and exactly what it can do for individuals and companies alike. While this is more of a technical book geared towards developers, other web-savvy folks can get a good read out of it as well since it is quite thorough in its descriptions and information regarding Web 2.

Do you have an area of expertise? If so, then your expertise could be used to to bring traffic to your web site, not in an overnight rush, but over a sustained period of time. The online world is hungry for information. There are many web site owners, particularly in the blogging world, who are keen to publish that information. Their problem is not having the time, expertise or money or either create or buy the material needed on their sites.

Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites at present with millions of pages created by dedicated users. If you have a presence on Facebook you may want to broadcast that to your website visitors. Facebook makes that easy with badges that you can add to your website. However, there are pretty tight conditions attached to any promotion of your pages. You are not allowed to use any logos or banners from Facebook apart from the approved badges. You can, however,

Web 2.0 is well and truly entrenched and talk now centers around the where-to-from-here concepts. Web 3.0 or is it going to be web 2.5 - hang on, I am still trying to get used to web 2.0 and the philosophy that drives it. Whenever we talk about web 2.0 and the flood of social bookmarking sites, the one theme creeps up every time: provide value to your list of social buddies. This leads me to wonder. What is driving web 2.0?

Today's article is actually inspired by an off line event that shows the unintended consequences of a single action and the effect it has had on reputation, social networking and marketing in general. You may have heard the story on the news or in a newspaper reporting the New York landscape gardener who stumbled across a cool $140,000 in $20 notes. After giving the matter some thought, he decided to hand the money over to the police who eventually found the owner.

Do you use Google Reader as part of your social blogging. It can be a very handy tool to have in your pocket, particularly as you travel the web keeping an eye on what your competitors are up to. As part of my social blogging I subscribe to a various feeds using Google reader. As you visit new sites you can quickly add anything of interest to your feed list. It can also be a handy little bookmark tool.

Sometimes as a writer you find yourself unable to find that spark to fire up the fingers and produce the kind of content that your readers come to expect each day. Writers block! The bane of any writer, and yet, in a small way it can add power to your social marketing strategies. If you are a regular reader of those in your social marketing circle, I am sure they have written articles that you have found not only interesting, but useful as well.