So, as Ashley is on holiday this week it would seem I’m guest blogging sooner than I expected after my last post. Join me as I ponder the latest news from Google, shutting down the interwebs, micro-donations at festivals, as well as mourning the loss of Cotweet…

The Great Google Convergence:

Last week Google announced the launch of Search, plus your world as it strives towards its dream “to have technology enable everyone to experience the richness of all their information and people around them.” ‘Search, plus your world’ in a nutshell means personalised search results for you, as Google promises to give you “a result page only you can see.” What interests us the most is the impact this will have on SEO. In our 2012 predictions post, we suggested that Google+ will have a higher uptake with regards to brands and business marketing due to the importance Google has placed on brand pages to affect search rankings. Well, we look what we have here… Google will be using G+ profile pages to source ‘high confidence’ data to determine the highest ranking pages in search. This means charities will need to build a stronger profile to ensure its results appear higher in page rank. Similarly, +1 will become more important for promoting incoming links to your website that count towards your Google rank. If you’re still debating whether to add +1 buttons to your site then now might be the time to act.

How are you getting on with Google+? Will this latest development mean you’ll consider investing more time on this platform? Let us know what you’ll be doing in the comments below.

The internet strikes back: 

It would be quite wrong to let today go past without mentioning the #wikipediablackout, or, more accurately, the campaign against SOPA. To summarise, SOPA is a U.S. bill designed to block access to sites containing unauthorised copyright material. Copyright law has yet to catch up with the labyrinth that is the internet and, although steps may need to be taken against online piracy, SOPA is surely not the answer. Wikipedia, amongst other sites, is protesting by blacking out its homepage firmly bringing the debate to the fore.

Although a U.S. bill, if this controversial bill was passed, it could seriously affect your organisation and any content it produces. For example, if you’re a charity with branches in the U.S. your site could be shut down if someone made a complaint against you, or even worse, sued for being in breach of copyright law. I shudder to think the impact this might have on charity resources across the pond, let alone what would happen if the charity was actually sued. Similarly, if content was shared across social networks by hundreds or thousands of people, would this mean Facebook, Twitter and other social networks could be shut down?

Have you been following the campaign? What are your thoughts about how this could impact your organisation?

Microchipped ID wrist bands:

So, this isn’t usual beautiful bytes territory but this new technology caught my eye this week as plans were announced to have microchipped ID wrist bands at festivals. Apparently the chips will store information about event participants to avoid ticket touting and combat fraud. More interestingly, I thought, there is the potential to top up the wrist bands with credit to pay for things during events. I was struck by the possibility of how easy this might make collecting charity micro-donations at these sort of events. Although festivals aren’t the traditional target market for some, it’s still an interesting development. The idea still seems to be in its infancy but it’s one I’ll be following with interest.

Cotweet:

So, I received an email this morning informing me ‘ExactTarget will sunset the free edition of its CoTweet software’. Beyond my irritation that they couldn’t just simply say they’re getting rid of it (FYI a sunset is not romantic if you’re telling me bad news!) I was genuinely disappointed by this news. Cotweet tweeted that it ‘isn’t going away – it’s just evolving’ although I would have appreciated a more direct response instead of PR fluff. Rachel consoled me, recognising that you should have to expect to pay for quality, on which I wholeheartedly agree. Sadly, however, for most charities a paid version of the platform isn’t likely to be an option (although costs haven’t been announced). I tweeted to ask if there was an alternative for charities  but haven’t heard back as yet.

Do you use Cotweet? Were you as disappointed as me? (I had to eat a croissant to recover from the shock) And what are you going to use come February 15th when Cotweet is no more? I already use Tweetdeck but would love to hear recommendations for an alternative platform.

Ash will be back in the office next week so until next time, whenever that may be

Teri

Tags: beautiful bytes, Cotweet, Google, SEO, technology