Here at Kontera we’re so sure we have the smartest and coolest publishers, that we’re willing to put our money where our mouth is.

We’re giving our Publishers a forum to show off that swagger on the wall of our Facebook page, where twice a month you can win a $75 gift certificate and other cool prizes!

Here’s how it works:

• Every other week we’re going to ask you two questions on Kontera’s Facebook wall.
  1. One question that’s industry related- about the world of blogging, Kontera, and web monetization.
  2. The other question will tackle an even more serious topic: YOU. We want to learn a little more about your interests, like what’s your favorite scary movie or what horribly annoying pop song is currently infecting your head .
• You can leave your answers as a comment on our Facebook wall – and put it to the vote of the Kontera Fans.
• The publisher whose comment receives the most “Likes” from their fellow Publishers and Facebook friends will be awarded the first place prize of a $75 Amazon Gift Certificate.
• Additionally, two runner-ups will get a $50 gift certificate each, and the next two runner-ups will receive a $25 voucher each.

So basically, every couple of weeks five happy winners will enjoy some online spending money – just for sharing their opinion! It’s fun, it’s easy, and best of all… it’s virtually impossible to give a wrong answer.

So what are you waiting for..
Find out this week’s questions – Start now »

* While all comments are welcome, and everyone can vote for the best answer (by “Liking” the comment), only current Kontera Publishers are eligible for the prizes. If the winner with the most “Like”s is not a current publisher in good standing with Kontera, the winning will be passed on to the next runner up.

Are you up to speed with the latest count: Facebook recently announced that over 350,000 websites  worldwide are now using Facebook’s social plugins introduced last April – the most familiar of which is the ‘Like‘ button.

This piece of information ties in to another “fun fact”: Nearly 65 million users ‘Like’ something through Facebook every single day.

Clearly, people like to ‘Like’, and thousands of publishers already reap the benefits – sharing their news and content via the popular social network site.

The reason the ‘Like’ button has been so effective for so many website owners isn’t exactly a secret. With one mouse click, a link to your latest post or article will instantly appear in the News Feed of your friends’ Facebook accounts. It’s a great way to grow traffic and create a buzz around your website: For every additional person that hits the ‘Like’ button on one of your website pages (including yourself ); an exponential amount of their friends will see what you’ve been raving about.

With over 500 million active users each month (and counting!), and with each user having, on average, 130 friends – there’s a vast audience for the right content to go viral.

As a publisher, you’re naturally interested in increasing your website traffic. If you haven’t already done so, you might want to consider adding the ‘Like’ functionality to your website or blog. If you’d like to get the Facebook ‘Like’ plugin for Wordpress, you can do so here, or for Blogger here. And if you’d like to learn more about implementation in general, here’s the Facebook Like Button Page.

Also, don’t forget to ‘Like’ this post. As you can see below, Kontera most definitely practices what it preaches

Last week at Kontera’s Israel office, we celebrated Purim; a holiday observed in Israel with customs somewhat similar to those of Halloween in America.  We celebrated with a party at the office, that included a costume contest, food, music, and lots of laughs.

Take a look at our Purim Photo Album on Facebook, to see some of the people behind Kontera in their best (and strangest) attire.

It’s exciting to see how fast new search and social media technologies become integrated in the www landscape.  As online explorers and consumers we are always thirsty for more innovation and for ways to improve and add interest to our ways of interaction.  Companies and Governments are utilizing these new technologies for their benefit and the motion of the web accelerates, no one wants to get left behind.  This week, we’ve come across some interesting stories on the topic that we’d like to share.

Bing grabs 10 percent of search market

According to a recently released Nielsen report, Bing search service is the fastest-growing U.S. search engine among the top 10!  Google, of course, stays on top with 64.6% share and other players in the top 10 included AOL Search in fourth place with 3.1% share and Ask.com Search with 1.7% share.  We also hear that Microsoft is planning to launch Bing 2.0, releasing even more new features.

Read Full article on cnet>>


Facebook, Twitter and Social Media Marketing

In recession-stricken times companies are increasingly (some say aggressively) pursuing social media marketing efforts. Social media is proving to be a more affordable way to promote products and services compared to traditional advertising.

Not surprisingly, Facebook and Twitter see the highest adoption rate in social media marketing while customer reviews rank No. 1 for increasing sales and customer engagement, according to a study released this week.
Read full article on Internetnews>>

Why the White House is Hiring a Social Media Archivist

These days, as White House communication extends into areas of social media, and new challenges arise having to do with archiving this information.  Things like blog postings, Twitter messages, YouTube videos and even blog comments, cannot go unrecorded. Last month, the Federal Business Opportunities web site posted a notice seeking bid-proposals from and outside contractor do  just that.
Read full article on Mashable>>

We often tour the web to seek for interesting and exciting current stories. Traveling around our favorite online hangouts, we try to stay tuned with the latest buzz.  This week, we’d like to present a few stories that have sparked our interest.

WordPress Plugin Competition

Being WordPress fans and users ourselves, we’re always interested to hear about plugins and features released.  This time we’re excited to read about new plugins announced for the 2009 competition.  Some of these include:

Exploring the World of Google Search

As the Google and Bing battle progresses, Google has recently made its diverse search options even more accessible to online users by dedicating a page where it details a selection of 16 different search features.

Read full story on Mashable

Free People Search Engines

It’s a well known fact that in this closely linked web world, you can now connect with anyone you know or have known, in some distant past.  Care to reconnect?  FinderMind has aggregated a list of 25 Free People Search Engines to find Anyone in the World.

Entertainment & Art

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland will be released in 2010, but we already got a glimpse at the wonder through some incredible pics that leave us craving for more…  It’s a shame we could not present all the images here, but we encourage you to pay a visit to Huffingtonpost and get a full view.