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.

Sociologists must find these to be fascinating times to live in.  History is being made while the world we live in is rapidly turning into a digitally connected environment. It is a wonder to see the impact web 2.0 has on events that determine the course of our lives.

Provided you’ve been hooked on your RSS feed properly over the past few weeks, you’ve seen the latest accounts on the effects of social networking and blogs on the US Presidential Election Campaign:

In an interesting article in PCWorld.com author Cyndy Aleo-Carreira points out that President-elect Obama’s campaign “reach across social networking was enormous in scope, with a presence on every conceivable social network, from Twitter to Facebook, and MySpace to LinkedIn.” She then concludes her analysis by stating that “the era of the Internet campaign has begun.”  ZDNet quotes interesting elections related FaceBook figures supporting this conclusion:

• President-elect Obama is the most popular page on Facebook, with 2.5 million supporters. Michael Phelps is second with 1.6 million.
• Overall activity on the site on Election Day was up 20 percent.
• More than 5.44 million people clicked the “I voted” button on Facebook to tell their friends they voted.

Presiden-elect Obama didn’t abandon the internet after the campaign’s victorious outcome but rather, he now brings the web into his administration. The Obama administration decided to broadcast the weekly presidential addresses to YouTube and has already began to post videos on Obama’s transition Web site, Change.gov.

The Washington Post reveals that in addition to regularly videotaping the address, officials at the transition office say the Obama White House will also conduct online Q&As and video interviews. The goal, officials say, is to put a face on government.
Being somewhat addicted to social media ourselves, it’s exciting to discover and re-discover how influential online interaction has become.

- Check out our YouTube channel
- Follow me on Twitter

Have you ever tried to Google your own name? How about the name of that old college friend… I wonder where he is today…

Though I haven’t seen any research figures, I’m sure at this day and age it’s not an uncommon practice- if for no other reason than sheer curiosity.  Google seems to be everywhere, just wondering- do I rank?

I often scout the web using the name “Kontera”, but not only on Google.   I love social networks and I often look around to see what interesting things people have to say. In a most recent such venture through YouTube, I ran into a great video that was made several months ago and submitted to Kontera’s Video Testimonial Contest.  I think it deserves more attention than it received and so I’ve decided to post it on our blog.

By Vered Avrahami

Surfing the web with the aim of finding a standard definition for the term “Web 2.0” produces an abundance of information revolving around this issue. The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that this is the “User Generated Content” era. Blogs have a devoted readership, Forums have become a trustworthy resource for necessary advice, and users often spend as much time interacting in their Online Communities as they do with their friends. People spend longer hours online and this time is utilized for consuming information of personal value and interest. Our Internet experience has become personalized.

Publishers devote a great deal of time and effort to meet this trend. A great deal of attention is invested in the various aspects of managing a successful web site or a blog. These aspects include constant production of interesting new content, creation and maintenance of eye-catching design, traffic building and more. All this time and effort should rightfully be translated into income and therefore publishers usually divide their web-page real-estate between content and advertising. All this considered, has online advertising evolved to suit the market demand of the web 2.0 era? We believe that ContnetLink™ has.

The online advertising ecosystem is comprised of advertisers, publishers and users and ContentLink™ has proven beneficial to them all. Our technology enables advertisers to maximize their ROI while ensuring a high level of relevancy between keywords, ads, content and the user’s frame of mind. ContentLink™ provides users with information that is relevant to what they were searching thus enriching their user-experience. ContentLinks™ unique attributes enable it to achieve all the above while preserving publishers’ complete control over their sites. ContentLink™ simultaneously addresses the needs of all the members of the online advertising ecosystem – isn’t that the very essence of a Web 2.0 ad platform?

Read More on ContentLinks™ from Behind the Scenes>>