Archive for October 2010

A few weeks ago we brought you new of Google’s decision to shelve Google Wave. For a highly successful company Google actually fails quite frequently. It’s a testament to their sheer pace of development – they’ve launched 264 new products in the last year alone – that they can shut down so many and still continue to grow.

To remind us all that even the mighty Google makes mistakes, here’s a list of Google’s recent failures.

Google SearchWiki (closed March 2010)

The SearchWiki let you reorder the search results manually, pushing some sites higher and even deleting certain ones.

Google Audio Ads (Closed February 2009)

Google planned to allow AdWords advertisers to bid for placements on radio. In reality, they couldn’t give advertisers any measurability of the results, nor could they boost the revenues of radio stations.

Google Video (closed January 2009)

Google Video was what Google came up with before they bought YouTube. To start with, it just re-broadcast TV shows and made them searchable. Google then started to allow users to upload. And then the TV-show bit was dropped. They then bought YouTube and turned Google Video into an online video rental service, which they shut a few months later.

Dodgeball (closed January 2009)

This was Google’s early location check-in service, similar to what Foursquare is today. It was perhaps ahead of its time – there were far fewer smartphone users out there.

Jaiku (closed January 2009)

Jaiku is a microblogging service that Google bought in 2007 and for some reason has done nothing with since. It still exists, but is unsupported.

Google Notebook (Closed January 2009)

This was a tool that allowed you to cut and paste images, text and search results and paste them into an online notebook that you could share with others.

Google Catalogs (Closed January 2009)

This was supposed to be a smart way that you could search through consumer catalogues.

Google Print Ads (Closed January 2009)

As with Google Audio, Google print ads failed because it couldn’t give advertisers the measurability that search and online ads were good at.

Google Page Creator (Closed August 2008)

This was Google’s very own WYSIWYG website builder. It was always a bit clunky, and shut up shop two years ago…

Google Answers (Closed November 2006)

Never quite up to the other Q&A offerings out there – particularly Yahoo Answers – this service closed down in 2006. And that might have been due to cost – Google paid people to answer questions, rather than relying on crowd-sourced input like other services.

That’s it for now

Google launches so many new products that some of them are bound to fail. We’ve all tried out website ideas, only to lose enthusiasm as the project continues. But Google is a good role model – it doesn’t cry over spilt milk, but tries to learn something and use that information in the next idea.

Have you tried and failed, and learned something new? Leave us a comment below.

It’s been a long time since we gave you a product update – in fact our last major release was the new control panel back in July – so I wanted to let you know what the developers had been up to here at WebEden.

Blogging is coming

For the past 12 months we’ve been working towards a new blog tool. Our current blog tool was designed back in 2003 and the plain fact of the matter is that it’s out of date. Few of you use it. And others who want a blog have signed up with free services like blogger and then integrated that with your WebEden website.

Blogging has come a long way since those days, and there are now some great tools available to publish blog content in a recognisable, systematic format. The problem we had is that WebEden is a design tool that allows you to create great visual free form designs. You can create, drag and drop any object around the page. The challenge was: how do we turn all of that content and design and translate it into a regular, systematic blog.

Nevertheless the white-coated ones have come up with a very cool solution to blogging, and we’ll be adding it to the WebEden website builder in just a few weeks. The new blog will have its own special place inside the control panel. You’ll still get all the cool design-led stuff, but you’ll be able to add a great blog too.

Ecommerce is coming

Luckily enough, ecommerce data needs to be ordered and system–a-tised in a similar way to Blog data, so the blogging tool will be shortly followed by our long awaited ecommerce too. Honest. Not much longer to wait for that one. We’re aiming for this year.

Good mobile version is coming

The rise of the iPhone and iPad, and Apple deciding to not support Flash on either iPad or iPhone has created a ‘Flash war’. Many websites require flash in order to be able to work. This means that they don’t work correctly on those devices.

Your WebEden website gets published in both Flash and HTML. We originally did an HTML version to make all your sites W3C compliant, and to give them very good SEO qualities. The challenge now is to make this HTML look right on Smartphone screens.

To this end, we’re almost ready to release a new version of WebEden which produces a phone-screen optimised single column layout mobile website. It’s been tough. But it’ll be worth it. This will definitely be live by the end of this year.

That’s it for now

We’re really excited about these new updates, so we wanted to let you know what they were all about. Much of our development comes from suggestions you make. So keep them coming in, and we’ll keep developing!

We’re often going on (and on) about using social media to help market your website.

We’ve integrated the WebEden Website Builder with Facebook and Twitter. It’s possible to put a Twitter feed on your website. Thanks to some handy tricks you can put a Facebook ‘Like’ button on your website. We’ve even developed our own Facebook application so you can build a website from within Facebook.

As opposed to Pay per click or other traditional marketing methods, its hard to put a value on your social media efforts. Social media for brands and websites is about engaging with your audience in an environment that suits them.

But now there’s a handy little tool that attempts to do put a ‘value’ on your actual Facebook page.

SocialPageEvaluator tries to come up with a notional ‘value’ of your Facebook page by looking at factors such as the number of Fans; the frequency with which you update your page; the number of visits your fan page has; and the number of times your fans interact with your fan page content.

All you need to do is enter the URL of any Facebook page and SocialPageEvaluator does the rest.

So to test it out, how does it get on with the WebEden Facebok page?

Here goes… and the result?

Social Page Evaluator is saying that the current ‘value’ of the WebEden facebook page is $418, but with improved social media techniques it could reach a value of $3,132. Interestingly enough, it has come up with the advice that we’re not posting enough to our Facebook Page.

It’s important to remember that this is just one system’s attempt to assess value, and is therefore more useful as a comparison tool to find out how you’re doing against competitors.

Try it out and let us know how your Facebook Page gets on!

http://evaluator.vitrue.com

Recent months have seen an explosion of location based social networking services, such as Foursquare, Gowalla and MyTown. More popular in the US than the UK, these services let you share where you are and what you’re.

As we mentioned previously, Twitter has updated their location settings to allow you to say where you are.

Facebook Places

Facebook has eyed this growth with envy, and have now jumped into location based services with ‘Facebook Places’.

Available initially just in the US, the service allows you to check into places in a similar way to Foursquare. Places can be created by anyone, but are often cafes, shops, restaurants, parks or tourist attractions.

Businesses can claim their locations, and reward users for visiting. This might take the form of badges, points, or mayor-ships; or could even be discounts on products.

Users can also tag others that are in the location too, and others in that location can be viewed using ‘People here now’.

Initially your location can only be view by your friends; and you’re able to easily disable the feature.

From the horses mouth

The Facebook product manager responsible said “You may want to share your check-in information with third-party applications that build interesting experiences around location, such as travel planning. Applications you use must receive your permission before getting this information. Your friends will be able to share your check-ins with the applications they use to help create new social experiences based on location. If you don’t want to share your check-ins with your friends’ applications, just uncheck the box in your Privacy Settings under Applications and Websites.”

What about you?

Have you tried Foursquare or other location based social media? Are you concerned about the privacy issues of revealing where you are (so a burglar knows you’re away from home)? Leave us a comment below.

A couple of months ago we told you about Rupert Murdoch’s plan to charge access to The Times websites. With the newspaper group losing more money each day than most of us earn in a lifetime, he needed to make a big and bold change.

Traffic plunge

Following the change, the inevitable happened: Traffic to The Times plummeted. Although Murdoch himself claims the service is doing alright, the fact of the matter is that visitor numbers are just a fraction of what they used to be.

Content should be free!

The problem of course is that in the Internet age most people think that content – information – should be free. Newspapers have lost their paid gateway to what’s going on in the world. Much of the traffic to the Times came from Google, as it indexed The Times news stories and reproduced them in the Search Results.

But with a paywall blocking their access, Google can no longer see that content, so they can’t list The Times in the search results. So not only is no-one willing to subscribe to the content, none of us knows what they’re writing about anyway!

Here comes ‘Newspass’

Now it’s time for a drumroll. Google are riding to the rescue of The Times – and other newspapers who want to charge users for access to content – with a new micropayment platform called Newspass.

Based on Google checkout, this would allow users to make small payments to websites in order to access specific stories or content. The really great feature of Newspass is that it would allow Google to continue to index all of the newspapers content that would normally sit behind the paywall. This means they could continue to show up in the Search Results, and would therefore continue to get traffic. Google would indicate that the content would be paid-for with a small paywall icon beside the snippet in the search results.

Google say that they are “uniquely positioned to help publishers create a scalable ecommerce system via our Checkout product and also enable users to find this content via search, even if it’s behind a paywall”.

So Google is the Newspaper Saviour

So might Google rescue The Times in the end? Would you be willing to pay to access news stories? Is this also good news for website builders, who might be able to charg in future for access to their content?

Leave us a comment below.

Last year we excitedly brought you news of the latest Google product, Wave. Google aficionados and industry experts agreed: Google wave was set to revolutionise the way we communicated online.

Email is Outmoded

The basic idea – according to Google – was that email was outmoded. It was inefficient, Google said, to send emails from person to person and to cc other interested parties.

Ride the Wave

Far better – they reckoned – to have an opening, rolling real-time conversation which anyone could contribute to: a stream of thoughts that ran down a web page in a never ending… Wave?

Use was initially by invitation only – and people were desperate to make it in. But less than a year into the project, Google has decided to put the stoppers on Wave, with it likely to disappear next year.

No Adoption

Google is knocking it on the head because it has “not seen the user adoption we would have liked”. On the blog they expanded with “We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through to the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects.”

With typical Google-like stoicism, they’re saying that the project hasn’t been wasted effort, and are making much of the source code available to external developers.

It may be that Google are clearing the way for their latest social experiment ‘Google me‘.

I for one quite liked wave, but never really found a reason to use it, and certainly never made use of the range of apps developed to enhance each wave.

Did you try Wave as a website builder? Like it? No? Leave us a comment below.

Well the last one was so good that we left it up there for not 1 week but 2. But now its time for another Website of the week.

Here’s jewellery-storeonline.co.uk, a newly established Internet-only outfit who aim to bring you ‘the best products at amazing prices’! The website is easy to navigate and clearly laid out, and shows that an ecommerce site doesn’t have to be complicated.

Website Address:

www.jewellery-storeonline.co.uk

When did you build your website?

I started building my website roughly 3 – 4 weeks ago and I am now advertising on google hoping to drive potential customers in!

Why did you build a website?

I created my website as i researched the market and found that there was a gap in the market for low and high cost jewellery making accessories all on one site.

What do you like best about your website?

The thing i like best about my site is that i built it my self and everything is in fully working order. because i created it myself i can make alterations any time i want to.

What is your best website building tip?

My best website building tip would be that if your not happy with something change it, and also if you think of adding anything WRITE IT DOWN SO YOU DON’T FORGET!!!!!

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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!

A Twitter user experienced Twitter meltdown last month as a result of being followed by rap star Kanye West.

Kanye only decided to join Twitter last month, and has already amassed over a million followers. Getting to grips with the service, he posted a Twitpic of his diamond tooth. In response, Coventry Based Steven Holmes – who tweets as ste_101 – asked him whether he used Colgate or polish to clean them.

Kanye immediately followed Steven back – the only person at that point that Kanye decided to follow.

From that point, Mr Holmes has been swamped with messages to such an extent that his Twitter account went into ‘melt down’.

Commenting on how he had managed to catch the attention of Kanye, Mr Holmes tweeted

“I just told a joke. Humour is the key” and “I guess a witty joke was all it took”.

Apparently Holmes has had a lot of abuse from others, which he has then tweeted about. Kanye urged him to “Tweet strong young man, tweet strong”.

For his part Kanye described Holmes as “the chosen one”.

And what is Kanye up to on Twitter? Well here’s something he posted last Saturday:  “Being nice is the s**t … working on being a doper person #ITSAPROCESS”.

Pearls of wisdom there.

So now you. Forget all the advice we give you about marketing your site online. All you need to do to boost your follower numbers is to catch the attention of a celebrity…

Had any success hob-nobbing with the stars? Leave us a comment below.

Well the votes are in and counted, and the judges can reveal that…of course Ed Miliband is the new Labour leader. It was a hotly fought battle, with the two brothers Ed and David  dominating the race to the line.

Commentators, bookies and speculators found it a hard one to call. But they would have done well to look at who was the most searched for online.

Research from online traffic measurement service Hitwise has revealed that there were almost twice as many searches for Ed Miliband than for David during the final stages of the Labour leadership race.

In the two weeks prior to the election around 33% of all ‘miliband’ related searches included ‘Ed’ compared to just 17% for David.

And then in the week before, searches for ‘Ed Miliband’ spiked 785%, compared to just 233% for ‘David Miliband’.

As an amusing aside, the search term ‘David Miliband banana’ was 7th most popular, refering to David’s photo holding a banana.

The data also revealed a spike in visits to political blogs, although surprisingly the conservative party’s homepage jumped to no.3, whilst Labour was languishing in 15th.

Are you a fan of Ed or David? Did you search for information about either online? As a website builder did you write about the contest, and gain extra visitors as a result of interest from users? Leave us a comment below

A few weeks ago Twitter saw its 20 billionth Tweet. The micro blogging service took almost four years to reach its 10 billionth – in March this year – and just 5 months to double it.

Twitter marked the occasion by highlighting the 20 billionth tweet to the world. It was sent at 3.45pm on Saturday the 31st by GGGGGGo_Lets_Go, a graphic designer for an advertising agency in Tokyo.

The tweet was apparently part of a larger conversation which, roughly translated means “So that means the barrage might come back later all at once.”

Having been highlighted by Twitter, the user was then swamped by a Twitterverse of congratulations.

He responded with “Looks like I posted the 20 billionth tweet. I’m getting replies from people all over the world. It’s scary. What are the chances? Maybe I’m going to die.

“Is it more amazing than winning the lottery? I thought it was a joke.”

Japan is the second biggest market for Twitter (behind just the US), representing 12% of all Tweets.

So, anyone want to lay bets on how fast the next 10bn will be racked up? Are you following WebEden on Twitter (shameless plug…).