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Google Analytics Introduces Flow Visualization

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This morning, at the Web 2.0 Summit, Phil Mui and Susan Wojcicki unveiled Flow Visualization for Google Analytics. After listening to feedback from their users, the analytics team took into consideration their tools didn’t sensibly group related visitor paths and pages, or track how visitors were flowing through a site.

Flow Visualization helps Google Analytics users better analyze the way visitors flow through their sites. The team announced starting this week, “Visitors Flow” and “Goal Flow” will be rolling out to all accounts.

Here’s a look at Visitors Flow.

The Visitors Flow view provides a graphical representation of visitors’ flow through the site by traffic source (or any other dimensions) so you can see their journey, as well as where they dropped off. You’ll find this visualizer on the left hand navigation menu, where you’ll see a new “Visitors Flow” link under the Visitors section.

And here’s a look at Goal Flow.

Goal Flow provides a graphical representation for how visitors flow through your goal steps and where they dropped off. Because the goal steps are defined by the site owner, they should reflect the important steps and page groups of interest to the site. In this first iteration, we’re supporting only URL goals, but we’ll soon be adding events and possibly other goal types.

Both of these new tools seem extremely useful for people (like me) who rely on Google Analytics for the success of their sites. To be able to see visitors’ journey through your site, as well as if your goals for where they end up are being met, makes this Analytics user very happy.

Do you see the value in these new features Google Analytics unveiled?

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Bitly Launches Reputation Monitoring, More Services to Come

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Most likely you know bitly for their URL shortening services. The company says they shorten around 80 million URLs a day and track 8 billion clicks a month.

The company announced yesterday they’ve been working on real-time search powered by bitly data for quite awhile. Their first launch is “reputation monitoring”, which will help brands track trending news about their company, as well as social engagement.

The first, launching today, is called “reputation monitoring.” What it lacks in catchy naming, it makes up for in awesomeness: given a search term, it will alert you when there is a sudden change in engagement and/or sentiment around content involving that term. Because these alerts are built on bitly’s realtime social data, you can find this content long before you see it on a search engine based on crawling web pages, and probably long before you see it on a news site.

bitly created a few interesting topics for you to monitor if you would like to do so. They live off the real-time data, which they say “on average lead major search engines by 12 hours or more.”

In order to monitor any term you would like, you need a bitly Enterprise account for $995 a month.

Let me leave you with this quote from Andrew Cohen, bitly’s general manager: “What we’ve built is a conversation search. For any given topic, it returns the most viral and engaging content being shared on social media. And we’re seeing breaking news — protest videos from Iran and Tunisia, corporate controversies, political scoops — being shared on bitly long before it is pointed to by major news organizations or indexed by large search engines.”

Thoughts? Can bitly see the future?

46 Brilliant Bloggers Talk About Triberr

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Brilliant Bloggers is a weekly series here at BlogWorld where we look at the best posts from around the web all surrounding a specific topic. Every week, we’ll feature three of the most brilliant bloggers out there, along with a huge list of more resources where you can learn about the topic. You can see more Brilliant Blogger posts or learn how to submit your link for an upcoming edition here.

This Week’s Topic: Triberr

I want to dislike Triberr. I really do. When it comes to social media, the a-word – automation – is worse than any four-letter word out there. But everything I’ve read about this service really impresses me! The concept is simple – you join a tribe with bloggers you like and everyone in the tribe tweets out everyone else’s links. What makes me really like this concept is that not only do you have control over what tribes you join, ensuring that you aren’t promoting bloggers you don’t want to promote, but you also have the option to moderate the links you tweet out. So, even though it’s automation, it’s automation with a lot of moderation…and I like that.

Without a doubt, there are people who don’t like Triberr. As with everything, there are people going to take advantage of the tool, trying to game it for their own benefits. There’s also the social media “noise” factor. Those who don’t like Triberr definitely make some good points.

I don’t personally belong to Triberr…yet. Right now, as far as I can tell, it’s still invite-only. But it’s a really great concept and I’m starting to see more and more bloggers signing up to at least give it a try. Luckily, members are also starting to talk about their experiences with Triberr on their blogs as well, so today, I wanted to share with you some of the brilliant posts I’ve read about Triberr.

Advice from Brilliant Bloggers:

4 Things Triberr Reminded Me About Twitter by Neal Schaffer

In this post, Neal talks about his experiences with Triberr in a more traditional type of review, but then he goes on to talk in depth about some things using Triberr has taught him about the way people use Twitter. There are good and bad aspects of every social media tool, and I think Neal does a great job talking about both the good and bad of Triberr. Check it out and then find Neal on Twitter @NealSchaffer.

A Leap of Faith that Brought a Metric-Ton of Traffic by Robert Dempsey

I think this post by Robert Dempsey does a great job of giving readers a little overview of Triberr, but what I really like is seeing his stats and how Triberr has affected his traffic. Robder sums up his experience in three words: holy monkey butt. Check out the post to find out why and then follow him on Twitter @rdempsey.

How Triberr Achieved Massive Success by Beny Schonfeld

This is an awesome video interview with Dino, one of the co-founders of Triberr. He talks about what Triberr is and why is has become so successful, and as an added bonus, if you’re willing to send out a tweet about it, you can download a free ap success guide with all the lessons you can learn from Triberr’s success. After watching the video, check out Beny on Twitter @appeando.

BONUS: With so many posts about Triberr, it was hard to pick just three to highlight. If you’re on the fence about checking out this social media tool, the post you definitely should read is Review of Triberr: The Twitter Promotion Powerhouse by Ben Barden (@benbarden). This has detailed lists of pros and cons of Triberr and is, in my opinion, one of the best posts out there on this topic!

Even More Brilliant Advice:

Did I miss your post or a post by someone you know about Triberr? Unintentional! Help me out by leaving a comment below with the link!

Next Week’s Topic: Finding Post Ideas

I’d love to include a link to your post next week – and if you head to the Brilliant Bloggers Schedule, you can see even more upcoming posts. We all have something to learn from one another, so please don’t be shy! Head to the schedule today to learn how to submit your post so I won’t miss it.

Firefox May Be Getting a More Modern Look

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Mozilla designer Stephen Horlander posted a set of screenshots, which he calls “really early mockups”, for what might be some new design possibilities. These new designs were part of an internal meeting and were up for discussion to talk about different designs. Some are out of date, but some could possibly be the future of Firefox. You can see the entire set here.

Although there’s no word when or if the design will change, according to TechCrunch, we could see these changes sometime in the near future.

Here’s a run down of some of the changes that are noticeable from the mockups:

  • No more search bar
  • Full screen mode
  • More room for content
  • Tabs have a rounder curve
  • Only active tabs have the round curve, which identifies what is currently open easier
  • New menu which includes tasks like copy, paste, new tab and more

So far, I like what I see and I think Firefox is due for a change. What kinds of features would you like to see in a new Firefox design?

Google Wants You to Give Your Friends an “Email Intervention”

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If you use Google‘s email system Gmail, I am sure you have seen the “Email Intervention” video at the bottom of the screen as you logged on yesterday. I did, but I didn’t have time to check it out. Come to find out, it’s a new campaign by Google designed to “Save your friends from outdated email”.

The site Email Intervention, guides you through the steps of “saving” your friends from using archaic email systems. Just below the “Start the Intervention” Button it reads: “You’ve probably already improved the lives of your friends and family members by helping them switch to Gmail, but what about that one friend who still hasn’t made the switch? It’s time to take a stand and stage an intervention. Don’t worry. We’ll help you out.”

In only three simple steps you can come to the rescue of your friends who are using “those other” email companies and help them make the switch.

Here’s the video. Enjoy.

Did you receive or try to give an email intervention?

Wajam Adds Google+ Social Search

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Wajam, a browser extension that lets you access your friends’ knowledge when you need it, has added Google+ to its social search. Before, you could see results from your Facebook friends and Twitter followers. Now you can add to that list your Google+ circles.

Here’s what you can do as of today with Wajam and Google+ as listed on their blog:

  • Connect your Google+ profile to Wajam and store the links that your friends have shared
  • View Google+ content directly in your favorite search engine like Google or Bing
  • View relevant search results wherever you go online, such as popular sites like Amazon, Wikipedia, TripAdvisor with the Wajam Everywhere tool bar.

You can now see  posts, links, photos and videos that your Google+ circles share and right when you need it. To start using Google+ social search, simply connect your Google+ account here.

 

The Google Calendar Gets a New Look

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If you’ve opened up your Google Calendar today, then most likely you noticed a new look.  I use my calendar for scheduling blog posts, meetings, phone calls and life in general- but that’s for another post.

This is the first in a series of changes that you’ll see over time. Why the change? Google says it’s in order “to make our products more consistent and intuitive so your experience is more enjoyable and productive.”

None of the changes have affected the way the calendar works. They’re all just cosmetic changes. Here’s a quick summary of the changes:

  • The Quick add function is now under the down arrow next to the Create button
  • Calendars selected for viewing in your My calendars and Other calendars lists will no longer display with a colored background; instead, only the arrows next to them will be colored.
  • The Print and Refresh buttons are now icons rather than text links. The Print button shows a printer, and the Refresh icon is a circular arrow.
  • Visual indicator icons (alarm clock icon for events with reminders, person icon for events with guests, etc.) will only show when the event is hovered over.
  • The My calendars and Other calendars lists on the left are now collapsed by default and may be expanded using the small gray arrow. Once expanded, they will remain expanded on refresh or open.
  • The mini month view calendar under the Create button is collapsible using the small gray arrow.
  • The Save and Discard buttons and Back to calendar link are only available at the top of the event page, not the bottom.

Google wants to provide us with “a more seamless and consistent online experience” and is founded on three key design principles: Focus, Elasticity and Effortlessness.

If you have anything to share about the changes, they have provided a feedback form.

It looks like Google is preparing us for the Google+ Project. Thoughts?

5 Tips I Learned From a Security Breach on My Blog

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I’m writing this post from an offline blog writer because my blog is being restored back to it’s most recent backup by my hosting company. My FTP password was compromised and someone went in and deleted my entire blog. Everything that they could delete, they did. Fortunately, my hosting company has a backup from 3 days before so I won’t lose everything.

Please learn from my experience and take a few precautions.

1. Backup many times. Don’t rely solely on your hosting company, although do check with them to be sure they do backup and how often. I also did a daily backup through WordPress, but I made one mistake. I have the backups saved in a folder in WordPress. That is gone now too. Have the backups emailed to you. Set up a separate email account just for your backups.

2. Change your FTP password often. I have never changed mine because if I did, I’d forget it. I will be changing mine more often now.

3. Delete FTP accounts you don’t need. I’m not sure how they got into my FTP. My main account that I use has a very secure password, although I never change it. But I didn’t realize that I had 15 other FTP accounts set up. Each time I set up a new email, a new FTP was created. I never thought to do anything with those. They were very old and probably didn’t have secure passwords. I deleted all of them.

4. Use an offline blog writer as another backup. I use Quamana on my Mac and Windows Live Writer on my PC. I don’t always write offline, but I go in weekly and sync the blog posts so I have another backup of my work. This is also helpful if you do not have Internet access and you want to work.

5. Use very secure passwords. Use a password that looks more like this, iue*#3]2Eki6 than like this, momblogger26. I know that the first password is harder to remember, but the second one is way too easy to figure out. You need to use a combination of letter, symbols, numbers and both small and capital letters. I do have mine all written down in a notebook and I also use Last Pass to store passwords online so I only have to remember one secure password to get into Last Pass.

These are 5 things I learned in the last few days after going through a security breach on my blog. What other tips do you have for making your blog secure?

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