Archive for August 2010

You may have noticed a new item in the main ‘account’ menu in Facebook. It looks like this:

This is Facebook’s attempt to launch its own virtual currency. To start with Facebook credits are targeted at virtual goods such as games, but Facebook hope that it will eventually be used to buy anything online.

Good for Website Builders

For those with a Facebook page AND a physical website elsewhere, this is a potentially exciting opportunity to offer transactions within the actual Facebook environment.

And it has even bigger implications: Thanks to Facebook connect – which lets you log into other sites using your Facebook login – and Facebook open graph – which allows any site to be ‘liked’, the online currency could eventually flourish not just within Facebook but on the wide web too.

How much?

The potential downside for retailers and consumers is that Facebook plan to take a whopping 30% of every transaction. That goes way beyond the 2% that most credit card companies take.

Beanz

This isn’t the first time an online currency has been tried. Those of us who remember the heady days of the web in the 90s will recall a startup currency called ‘beanz’, which was the first play for a universal way to pay online. Beanz – like so many early dotcoms – foundered because it wasn’t widely adopted. But with 500m global users Facebook definitely has the reach to make this work.

Frictionless transactcions

Experts are saying that despite the healthy commissions, Facebook credits could provide a very easy and frictionless way to pay online. And when friction goes down, sales go up.

What do you think?

Do you think that a Facebook currency could work? How would you feel about buying – or selling – for Facebook credits rather than hard cash? Has Facebook overstepped the mark, is it becoming too big, too much a part of everyone’s lives?

Leave us a comment below.

I’m on top of this thing now: here’s another Website of the Week.

What is it with paranormal investigators? I’m happy to say that they like building websites with WebEden! Here is VectisInvestigations.com, a team based in the beautiful Isle of Wight (I think Vectis is Latin for Isle of Wight, isn’t it?).

This site is content rich, well themed, and uses lots of tricks – from YouTube to Widgetbox widgets and share buttons. The subject might not be your cup of team, but the site has already racked up 25,000 visitors – a healthy number in anyone’s book!

Website Address:

www.vectisinvestigations.com

When did you build your website?

January 2009 roughly

Why did you build a website?

This website shows all our hard work in trying to prove the paranormal exist’s and creating a place where everyone can share in all the Investigations we have and are still to achieve.

What do you like best about your website?

We love HTML’s wish there was more social widgets, we also love the fact that we have our own videos and its all our own work.

What is your best website building tip?

Never quit, keep on going. We have been going near 18 months and I still find new and exciting ways to make the website easier for all to use.

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If you want to be featured as our Website of the week, and get exposure to thousands of readers of the WebEden blog, visit the forum now!

I’ve written quite a bit on this blog about online privacy. When it comes to advertising, last year there was a lot of media attention given to behavioural targeting – where advertisers reach you based on your online behaviour. Advertising firm Phorm was at the centre of that furor, and they exited the UK late last year.

Then of course there was Google Street View, and the fear that it was invading personal privacies (and helping thieves to boot!). Last year we advised you all to add a privacy policy to your website, to make it clear what information you were collecting about visitors.

New Code of Practice

Well now it looks like Websites will have to stick to a new code of practice put in place by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The whole point is to make sure that your website visitor’s information is kept secure and private.

The Personal Information Online Code of Practice simply firms up the advice we gave with regard to having privacy policy. Websites need to make their privacy settings clear and store data securely. There are 8 principles for looking after personal information, but what it boils down to is that only specific, relevant data can be gathered, if a website doesn’t needs the personal information, then it must not hold onto it longer than necessary.

For example, if a company no longer needs your email address or credit card details, they’re obliged to delete them.

If you have a log in to your site, the privacy settings must be well highlighted.

A representative of the ICO said: “Organisations must be transparent so that consumers can make online privacy choices and see how their information will be used.”

“Individuals can take control by checking their privacy settings and being careful about the amount of personal details they post to social-networking sites and elsewhere online,” he continued.

If websites fail to abide by the code, they could be forced to do so by the ICO.

What about you?

Have you put a privacy policy on your site? Do you think that fears over online privacy are overblown? Leave us a comment below.

In the mid ’90s, early adopters started to rave about – and then get obsessed with – a fantastic new way to communicate. It was like sending a letter, but the letter went from your computer to another one. Email had arrived.

The problem with email, of course, was that whilst you could send your entire letter instantly, you couldn’t guarantee that it was read instantly. It might sit on the recipient’s computer for days, without being read responded to. So whilst email saved the hassle of envelopes and stamps, in many cases the process of communication was no faster.

Although it existed before, around the year 2,000 another form of communication arrived on the scene, called instant messaging (IM). With IM what you were writing was instantly viewed by the recipient, and was instantly responded to. It really was like a conversation that was written down. It was widely tipped to replace e-mail and to become the default way to communicate online. Microsoft’s MSN Messenger was the best known, but there were many alternatives including Skype.

But according to a recent survey, it seems that we Brits have fallen out of love with IM. Back in 2007, 14% of time online was spent on IM. This has now fallen to just 5%. By contrast, email continues to thrive -it represents fully 75% of way we communicate online.

So what’s happened to IM?

Its immediate, its novel, and its straightforward – why don’t we like it anymore?

Here’s a few of my thoughts. To start with, use of IM was usually carried out in our leisure time, and is a social activity. And these days there are so many other interesting social activities we can do online. Aside from Facebook, Twitter, Myspace etc., many websites also have a social and interactive element to them. We’ve only go so much spare time

Next, IM is mainly a one-to-one communication tool. These days communicating online through social media is often more about one-to-many. You want to give someone a message, but you also don’t mind that message being public.

Also, IM has lost its novelty. When new crazes get adopted, it’s often because it’s an exciting new thing to do. After a while the novelty wears off, and we are no longer attracted by the innovation.

And last of all, maybe one weakness of IM is that it is, well, instant. If someone sends you a message on IM, you’re almost obligated to stop what you’re doing and respond to them. Many people like to respond in their own time, and don’t want to be hassled.

Do you use IM? Are you less interested than you used to be? Do you think it will survive as a way to communicate? Leave us a comment below.

Earlier this year we covered a story about the decline of Internet Explorer. And last year I went on about why Firefox is my favorite browser.

But the latest Internet stats show that I might have been a bit premature in predicting the demise of Internet Explorer (IE).

Against the trends, IE market share actually grew in June 2010 for the first time in a year, to back over 60%. The growth was less than 1%, but it’s against a background of constant and significant declines.

The figures were compiled by Statistics from Net Applications, who have attributed the growth to recent advertising campaigns for the latest version of the browser, IE8.

Despite this growth, IE has a lot to do to regain previous highs. As recently as July 2008 it was being used by over 75% of Internet users.

The re-growth of IE was at the expense of my favorite browser Firefox, which dropped from 24% to 23%.

Another loser was niche browser Opera, which dropped a fraction of a % to just over 2%. Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari were up slightly too.

Have you seen the ads for IE? Have you switched back to IE? Have you ever left IE?! What’s the best browser for a website builder? Leave us a comment below.

Just when the pundits were indicating that UK Internet access had pretty much hit saturation, new research says that it has grown by 5% in the last year.

The UKOM data indicates that there are nearly 2 million more people online in the UK this year. And whilst youngsters were the early adopters, much of this growth comes from the over 50s.

This graph from Nielsen shows it all:

The total number of people online in the UK stands at 38.8m, up from 36.9m 12 months ago. The over-50s account for 31% of that group.

38% of these new users were men over 50, and another 15% were women in the same age bracket. 14% were women between 12 and 34, whilst 12% were girls between 12 and 20.

What are the over 50s looking at online? It turns out that health, online video and community websites are the big attraction.

Alex Burmaster from UKOM said “This age group have a wide appetite when it comes to the types of sites they are using to supplement the interests and needs they have in the daily lives.

“Consequently, a number of brands across a range of industries, particularly travel, are showing the rest what a valuable medium online is when it comes to reaching a desired audience who haven’t grown up with the Internet.”

And what about those building websites? We don’t survey WebEden’s user ages but anecdotal evidence from the forum and Twitter show that many of our best website builders are 50+.

Do you fall into the 50+ bracket? Have you been online for years, or just arrived? Does your online interests different from your peer group? Leave us a comment below.

OK OK, gimme a BREAK! The last Website of the Week should have been called ‘Website of 2 Weeks’ as my hols interrupted the flow somewhat! But here we are, back with another one.

This week it’s pure-elegance-weddings.co.uk. Many websites go too far: they try to do too many different things, use too many styles, encorporate too many ideas. This website sticks to a design and remains consistent. As a consequence it’s easy to navigate and gain information from. Far better to have a simple, consistent design than to cram too much in.

Website Address:

http://www.pure-elegance-weddings.co.uk

When did you build your website?

September 2009

Why did you build a website?

I am a disabled woman who wanted to start up my own business, after doing some research I realized that there were no Wedding Planners who specialized in disabled weddings.

So I found a home learning school who offered the course in wedding planning. I took the course and passed. Once I passed, I needed a website to advertise my business and expertise, already having a couple of sites with webeden, who better to go with for my business site.

What do you like best about your website?

I love how easy it was to create my site from scratch. As I obviously need to stand out from other wedding planner sites, I like the templates supplied but I wanted something different and unique. The price is also incredible considering you get 5 sites included. Also how easy it is too if you wish to change something as the tool bar is very easy to use.

What is your best website building tip?

I love the photo gallery options and how you can have your picture enlarged when clicked upon.

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If you want to be featured as our Website of the week, and get exposure to thousands of readers of the WebEden blog, visit the forum now!

Recently we’ve shown you how the hot weather, the world cup, and an erupting volcano changed what we search for. This time, research from online monitoring firm Hitwise has shown how the emergency budget has had an impact on search topics.

The Emergency Budget

Following the new announcements, there was a huge surge in research based search queries as people tried to learn more about how the changes would impact them.

In the UK on the 22nd June, 21 of the top 1,000 search terms were budget related, comprising 1 in every 179 searches. The highest ranker was ‘budget 2010′, the 25th most searched for term on budget day. ‘Budget’ was 29th overall (which beat even ‘world cup 2010′ into 32nd place).

The next highest ranking budget search terms were ‘capital gains tax’ followed by tax credits, child benefit, VAT and the disability living allowance. All were in the top 1,000. To coincide with the budget, George Osborne was the most searched for politician, followed by Harriet Harman.

BBC News and Sky News both experienced a surge in traffic. Telegraph Blogs also did well (an increase of 87% from 21/06/10 to 22/06/10), as did Telegraph Shares (85%), Yahoo! Finance (74%) and MSN Money (60%).

What does this mean for you?

What’s interesting if you’re a website builder is that the content on your website makes it possible to pick up traffic from search engines related to external events. If you have budget or finance related information you might well have seen a boost in traffic that day, as a result of the boost in searches.

It’s possible to capitalise on this interest by adding content relating to known events in your market. Got a football site? Why not include coverage of local or national football competitions in order to grab some of that search traffic?

Did you research the budget online? Do you have any budget related content on your site – did you get more visitors that day? Leave us a comment below.

As you now sit and stare at your keyboard, do you ever wonder where where this keyboard layout came from?

It is imprinted into millions of peoples brains and fingers but not many of them know the history of the keyboard layout. It has pretty much not change sine the 1870′s when a Milwaukee port official named Christopher Sholes created a new type of typewriter.

His first attempts failed as many keys crashed together due to their formation of certain characters. Sholes -worked tirelessly until he discovered the perfect formation, with Q-W-E-R-T-Y as the first 6 characters. Sholes entered into many competitions with his typewriter where typists would battle it out to achieve the highest word counts (well had to entertain themselves somehow).

In 1873 Remington decided to adopt the typewriter and quickly used all over the US and Europe and the rest is history.

In the 1930′s August Dvorak introduced a new type of keyboard layout which may have spelled (no pun intended) the end of the QWERTY layout if it was not for the fact that the QWERTY layout had already been adopted by many offices over the US and Europe.

So is the Facebook vs Google war going to end up with just one winner let us know and comment or tweet us @webeden

The biggest rumour circulating through social media and search engine circles is that Google are about to launch a fully fledged social network called ‘Google Me’

Nothing Official

Although there’s no official (or unofficial) news from Google HQ, several insiders have said that Google are planning a social networking service very similar to Facebook.

Former Facebook employee Adam D’Angelo, who now runs Q&A site Quora, posted a thread on his site that said Google Me was “a real project and not just rumour”.

He also added a question thread saying “They [Google] had assumed that Facebook’s growth would slow as it grew, and that Facebook wouldn’t be able to have too much leverage over them, but then it just didn’t stop, and now they are really scared.”

He added “They [Google] realized that Buzz wasn’t enough and that they need to build out a full, first-class social network. They are modeling it off of Facebook. Unlike previous attempts (before Buzz at least), this is a high-priority project within Google.”

Not the first time…

Google have of course tried to break into social networking before. First there was Orkut, which became popular but only in South America. And then last year we had Google Buzz, which had all sorts of privacy issues and has since been going nowhere fast.

Kevin Rose, Digg’s CEO tweeted on Monday “Ok, umm, huge rumour: Google to launch facebook competitor very soon ‘Google Me’, very reliable source.”

At some point since the tweet has been deleted.

Are you ready for yet another social networking site? Have Facebook got social networking all tied up? Should Google stick to search – what they know best? Leave us a comment below.