Twitter has introduced their new Twitter Ad Model. It’s going to be a way for twitter to make money and I expect over the next few months they will just continue to add more and more ads to the service. I hope in the future they allow for GEO Targeted ads as I see a big positive marketing niche there. Also, I am excited to see how the ads will be formated and to see the stats on the CTR’s. This could just become like FaceBook and Myspace ads are and just blend right in.

YouTube has come out with their YouTube Rental Store that allows you to rent movies and watch them right from YouTube. The movies range anywhere in price from .99cents to $3.99 per movie. I wonder how traditional movie houses are going to keep up in the future. With sites like YouTube, NetFlix and Hulu how are stores like Blockbuster and Hollywood video going to adjust their streams to keep up with the market change? Personally I don’t think YouTube’s Rental Store will be something I will ever use. I prefer to watch movies on my actual TV and for that I already have a NetFlix account which gives me nearly any movie I want that streams through my Xbox360 or BluRay Player.
With movies becoming more and more easily available the cost of actually producing your own independent film and distributing them is becoming easier and easier. I think this is going to continue to open up doors for aspiring directors and actors and ultimately us as end users will be able to see the cream of the crop a lot easier.

The FaceBook Bomb Shell
You can watch the actual F8 conference that was recorded on the F8 FaceBook Page. I found the 10 minute mark to the 20 minute mark to be the only parts really worth watching.

If you want my take on how to use FaceBook for your marketing and why this is important I will be writing a full article about it on my blog.

Not everyone is grooving on FaceBooks new change though…Matt Cutts and many other coders over at Google have actually put their FaceBook accounts on Hold/Standby. Matt Cutts, who works for Google, actually tweeted about how to do the same. Google could very well be making a statement against FaceBook but I believe the real reason is concerns about privacy.

If your a really big financial nerd, like I often am, then you can head on over to Google’s Financial Statement to read about how they preformed on their first quarter.

If you are in the recipe or cooking niche then this one is for you! Google has just came out with something very slick you need to be taking advantage of to put you ahead of your competitors. Google announced a new supported rich snippet markup format for recipes. This can include such things as user ratings, recipe type, a picture and much more. You can be utilizing this technique to help you take even more spots on page 1 of Google! To find out more you can visit their direct article here: Google Recipe’s

Google becoming more transparent. I really like the move that Google is making to become more and more transparent. I think transparency in any business is the best policy. Heck one of the reasons our American President won the election was by promising more transparency. Now Google has a website up where you can go and actually see the requests each government is making of Google. Governments are constantly contacting Google requesting for data to be changed or deleted, etc. Go check it out if your interested.

Google Places. If you own a business with an actual office then get on over to Google Places and mark your location! I am not 100% sure it works in all countries, but I do know it works in some parts of Europe for sure so I assume it works all over. Google Places used to be called Google Local Business center and got a fresh new name along with some new features. You can check out the full list of new features Google Places got at their press release. Also, if you don’t own a business and are just doing the online thing…there is still an opportunity for you! The average business owner knows nearly nothing about internet marketing and this actually presents a nice little opportunity for you. You can simply add this to one of the SEO services you offer to local business. I imagine you could easily charge a keen $25-50 per business to place them in Google Places and it would only take you roughly 5 minutes. Not too shabby? I just did this for a local company in Bend Oregon.

Google is often times a leader in innovation and technology but this time they are bringing it back old school. They hired a local farmer to come in with their border collie and help heard a bunch of goats across the Google Campus to cut down the grass. Google said the cost is about the same, but the goats are less noisy, fertilize the grass and are better for the environment than hiring mowers. In all there were about 200 goats!

That’s it for this weeks internet news!

Thanks for tuning in and be sure to subscribe to either my RSS feed of the blog or my YouTube channel to be sure to catch some of the
SEO video’s I am releasing over the next two weeks. The team and I have been doing lots of research and we will be releasing the results shortly!

Michael R Roberts

Though I am about 95% sure Caffein didn’t get renamed by google to Kaffein I can’t verify this quite yet. However, it is no joke that this update is quite possibly live everywhere which will change some SEO factors. I will keep you posted on my findings! Dang Google for making this time of year so difficult! ;)

Hope you enjoy the vid!

Wolfram Alpha: http://www.wolframalpha.com/

(This search engine thingy for my iphone is pretty dang cool. You can use it more like a reference or quick information guide for searches. If there is a specific piece of information you need this tool will be faster than loading safari an doing a search on Google. Also it’s affordable now since it dropped from like $49 to $2. If you already purchased this along time ago for the full price ask for a refund to the cheaper price as they are honoring that!)

Apple builds their own search engine in the next 5 years?: http://www.businessinsider.com/70-chance-apple-builds-its-own-search-engine-in-the-next-five-years-2010-3

See my new training video of the new YouTube layout:

FourSquare set to hit 1 million users! Check it out: http://foursquare.com/

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LIST OF APRIL FOOLS JOKES

Google Docs let’s you upload anything, really, anything you want, including your sofa
Google AJAX let’s you define evil API requests from legit ones with the &evil=true parameter
Google Maps Australia does Australian speaking directions
Google Maps does 3D street views. Go to the maps, and go down to a street level and you will be able to see the man with 3D glasses.
Google AdSense adds wingdings font to the ads
YouTube lets you watch videos in text only mode.
Google building a nuclear project according to TechCrunch
Google Books go 3D
Google gets into building jails for municipalities
Google launches Google Translate for Animals
Google voice does standard voicemail capabilities
Google’s search results summary bar shows results in something else then seconds (try it with any Google search)
Google launched Google Romance
Google Reader’s ReaderAdvantage miles program
Picasa’s life size image view
Google Chrome extension to unmute the web
Gmail vowel outage

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On April 1st Google honored Topeka Kansas and changed their name to Topeka for a day. During Google’s “Super Fast Internet” contest Topeka Kansas tried to get the attention of Google and renamed their city for an entire month to Google Kansas. This really got the attention of Google and on April 1st 2010 Google returned the favor and officially renamed them selves to Topkea for a day!

Topeka Kansas now Google Kansas

Topeka Google

Doing something crazy like this can really get the attention of those big fish that you want to attract. If you are in a position with a really good product but are finding your self lacking any connections do something BIG to stand out among the crowd! I am not huge fish in the midst of all the big corporations out there but even I get people coming to me day in and day out wanting to sell me something, get me to sell something or help them! I try my best to sort through the rift and help all I can but it is difficult. Doing something large can really help you stand out and get a guru’s attention or potential business partner.

Below is a wallpaper I designed back in 2008. Sure I had to spend time designing it and then spend a few hundred bucks to have a nice artist put it all together…but the end result was me throwing that in every forum I could find and eventually one of the guru’s in the picture contacted me. It formed a relationship that took my career to new heights. Doing something like this can help you stand out in your niche, but not only that it let’s the guru’s know you mean business and that you have the income and persistence to be serious and are quite possibly worth listening too! ;)

Funny Wallpaper of the 30dc crew

Catch you next week with the next internet news video!

Be sure to subscribe to this blogs RSS feed and connect with me on Facebook and Twitter!

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MichaelRobertsSEO

Twitter: http://twitter.com/MichaelRRoberts

Keep posted though as I am working on some pretty cool stuff I want to share with you guys in the next few weeks!

-3D movies I talked about were Captian Eo produced by Epcot and Michael Jackson and Alice in Wonderland which just came out in 3D and is in theaters at the date of this post.

-For more information about Google’s competition they held for fast internet visit Google’s Competition.

- To see South Carolina’s YouTube vid they did to attract google you can see it here: Google & South Carolina

- **Recommended** Check out Google Apps new channel. They put up a new YouTube channel and I think it is a worthy subscribe so you can easily stay on top of new apps. Google YouTube App Channel

- I imagine this site will eventually dissppear, but for now I will provide the link anyway so you can check Google’s status in China. Google’s Services Offered In China

I will be producing some new training and tips videos in the next few days. Right now is a super busy schedule as I am working on something secret! Shhh! I will alert you guys soon as I can about this.

Michael Roberts

Link Resources:
Yelp Being Sued

Viacom V.S. YouTube

Founders of YouTube sold out at the right time?
You Tube Founders

Google News

Google Leaving China?

Google Maps being tested in Australia

What I didn’t cover in the video:

One of the founders of Facebook, Chris Hughes, who left Facebook to help campaign for the presidency of Barrack Obama has now moved
onto a new venture. He is creating a charity site called JUMO which will help charities use the internet for networking and reaching more donations.

I am putting together this lawsuit document of best practices so you can easily follow along to be on the safe side! It’s never a bad idea to protect your assets! However, this lawyer is expensive and slow. I can get him to be faster but that just equals more expensive and a little faster. So this document will be up in probably 10-15 days.

Subscribe to my blog or YouTube channel to be sure to catch this when it is released!
( MIKE ROBERTS YOUTUBE CHANNEL )
Thanks,

Michael Roberts

Oscars Over the Internet

With the feud between cable vision and ABC/Disney nearly 3.1 million people had trouble watching the Oscars. While these companies struggle to provide reliable source of TV the internet continues to make strides forward into providing TV/Movies streaming over the internet. Below is a list of a few of the places I found you could have watched the Oscars live on the internet!

1. Livestream
2. AP Livestream
3. Oscar.com
4. UStream TV
5. Webcastr
6. TV.com
7. TVGuide
8. YouTube /Oscars Channel
9. APLive Facebook page
10. Associated Press Channel
11. ATDHE

(Note I did not name all the places that carried the Oscars Live for free nor did I check all these resources to verify they actually wound up carrying the Oscars. Yes, I will admit it I don’t watch the Oscars myself :P)

Google Maps V.S. Bing Maps

Bing has seen a small decrese in it’s numbers of search shares while Google has recently seen a spike. However, Bing shows no signs of slowing down in their progress on developing a solid search engine. Just recently they have released the largest update to their maps to date. While using Bing I noticed I had an easier time locating my house than when I used Google Maps however their over all quality in my area was a bit worse. Here are the comparisons for my house.

Google Map of my house:

Bing Map of my house: (Note the circle fence in the bottom left corner is nearly missing and in the top right hand corner the truck and blue tarp are just a blur.)

Google Expands

Just recently Google has acquired two new online business. Picnik and Doc Verse. Both are awesome little services and you can check them out at the links below.

Picnik – This service allows you to edit your photos right form your web browser.

DocVerse – Real time sharing and group editing of Word, Excel and Power Point files.

YouTube News

YouTube has changed the default size for embedded videos. By default they’re getting bigger at either 480×385 for a 4:3 video, or 640×385 for a 16:9 video. YouTube says it went with these sizes, because they will give most viewers the best viewing experience because they better match current video encoding sizes.

Also as promised here are the secret photos of YouTube’s new UI they are testing in random people’s accounts. Also, notice how there aren’t multiple stars anymore…It’s sheerly Like or Don’t Like.

WIERD! Look at that share picture of YouTube’s new UI. I am really surprised they have not already included Google Buzz into the new UI’s share feature!?

Question of the Day

Do you think it’s a good idea or a dumb idea to have a computer at a treadmill?
Tell me your thoughts!

-More pictures of treadmill desks at Stumble Upon

-And in case you wanted to build your own here is a site to help you! :P http://buildatreadmilldesk.com/

Lastly, I will be shooting a screenflow video shortly with tips on how you can increase your page load speed!

Thanks for watching and reading!

Michael R Roberts

In the future I will be posting more detailed information to accompany the video right here on my website.  For now however I am just posting the video!  Thanks everyone!