Can Facebook and Twitter Help a Startup Company Succeed?

Toronto, ON (Vocus/PRWEB ) June 1, 2009 -- ShipGooder, Inc. today announced that it has officially launched pages on Facebook and Twitter, the social networking websites that are both experiencing explosive growth by leveraging community-based interaction.

Image via CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

The term "Social Networking" has been gaining notoriety over the past few years. As of today, Facebook has over 200 million active users, while Twitter already has 17 million registered users in the U.S., up 3,000 percent from a year ago. Although Facebook and Twitter are primarily focused on individuals rather than corporate entities, both websites offer tremendous advantages for startup companies to bring their message to the masses.

Facebook provides businesses with a page that includes an overview, announcements, photo galleries and discussions. Users on Facebook become "fans" of the business, and are kept up to date on what the company is doing. When an individual becomes a fan, their friends on Facebook are presented with a "fan" notification; the friends then can become fans as well. The viral effect of friends announcing their "fandom" to other friends can lead to hundreds of thousands of followers for a company. The Starbucks coffee company alone currently has close to 1.8 million fans on Facebook.

Twitter is an announcement system, where users post a short message called a "tweet". The tweet can be a simple description of what they are eating, where they are going, website links and photos. Users "follow" other users on Twitter and receive a real-time stream of announcements. As each user follows a new user, they can "tweet" their new following, again creating a viral effect. Companies are using Twitter to post news and announcements, using the medium to promote their marketing messages.

"Facebook and Twitter provide ShipGooder.com with powerful communication channels for our customers, website visitors, and new visitors who may not be aware of the exceptional free services that ShipGooder offers," said Nancy Chafee, VP of Sales and Marketing for ShipGooder, Inc. "We're using both of these services to augment our existing sales and marketing efforts, promoting our brand, and our primary message that ShipGooder.com provides instant shipping rate quotes from FedEx, DHL, the U.S. Postal Service alongside quotes from regional and local courier companies," she added.

"ShipGooder.com is the 'search engine for shipping rates', offering its services free of charge, with no advertising and no visitor registration required," said Franc Vodopivec, President of ShipGooder, Inc. "Our proprietary Rapid Rate Search system allows smaller couriers and messengers to compete directly with large national carriers, and we're going to continue to promote this message through the mediums that prove to be the most effective," he added.

ShipGooder has used Facebook and Twitter to announce their new Courier Directory of carriers from across the U.S. and Canada, as well as announcing the recent addition of international rate quotes. Can social networking help achieve success to an innovative startup? The question was best answered by Nancy Chafee, who stated, "Word of mouth about ShipGooder is our most powerful promotional vehicle. We are delighted that 'word of mouth' is evolving into new, creative and exciting mediums."

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New SEO Friendly Search Engine Captures Niche Market

Search Engine SEOENG(R) and other small tech startups break new ground in Search - carving out the visionary niche markets of the future, while Search Giants enhance their current industry-dominating Search solutions by increasing Search 'intelligence'.

Bradenton, FL (PRWEB) - A new storm is brewing in Search 2009, and Search Engine SEOENG(R) is rapidly gaining traction in a highly saturated industry with its unique SEO Friendly Search Engine. This technology startup has developed a Search Engine with a transparent and navigable interface where users can, for the first time, see precisely how a Search Engine analyzes and ranks a Website. SEOENG(R) is taking Search in a new direction, by opening its arms to the very industry that Search Giants have fought so hard to keep at arm's length. A new market for Search, directed at Website Owners, Web Designers, and SEO Experts is proving to be a prosperous and exciting venture for this tech company.

Competition is alive and well in the Search Industry, as top Search Engine Google(TM) recently announced its new Google Labs project, which according to the Official Google Blog, is called 'Google Squared', and is Google's attempt at delivering a more structured result to a user's question. Search Giant Yahoo!(R) is also talking about its new vision of Search, which is called 'WOO' (Web of Objects). WOO is Yahoo's take on the next generation of Search, which some believe involves a graph of 'things', not just Webpages. And finally, Microsoft(R) is rumored to be releasing 'Bing(TM)' (formerly Kumo), which according to the Website is a new version of a Search Engine called a 'Decision Engine'.

After more than a decade of rule by Search Giants, SEOENG(R) and other small startups have staked new land in the World of Search. According to Search Engine SEOENG(R), "We are entering a historic time that is very different from the past ten years, because no longer is the competition about delivering the best '10 blue links'. It's all about the 'Next Generation of Search' and the many niche markets that Search is now exposing due to the rapid decrease in costs of infrastructure."

The largest of these niche markets appears to be Semantic Search. Semantics is the study of meaning, and in Search this means not only delivering relevant results, but attempting to infer the 'reason' behind the user's question. Because computer hardware is much less expensive these days, Semantic Search and other new niche markets do not require large investments in infrastructure upfront, and some smaller Search Engine startups, including SEOENG(R), are entering the race and reinstating that spark of creativity and competition that some might say has been lacking for some time.

In addition to SEOENG(R), Wolfram Alpha(TM), is a new Search Engine startup whose Website promises '...an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone.' Wolfram Alpha, created by Stephen Wolfram (the inventor of the famous technical and scientific tool suite Mathematica(R)), may have found its niche as the next premiere research tool for scientists and engineers. Other niche markets in Search also exist, and companies are quickly starting to take claim.

SEOENG(R) Co-Founder and President, Marketing & Operations, Maura Stouffer, recently stated that "One only has to look at our tiny startup SEOENG(R) , an acronym for 'Search Engine Optimization Engine(R)', to see the potential available in new Search technologies. We have created what none of the Search Giants have even considered - an honest attempt at being 'friendly' to Webmasters and SEOs. Sure, there were Google's Webmaster Tools and Yahoo's Site Explorer, but did Google and Yahoo! really let users in to their Search Engines to see how things were working? How things could be improved?" SEOENG(R) is the creation of talented individuals from Carnegie Mellon and Cornell University, and promises to be the first SEO Friendly Search Engine for Webmasters, SEOs, and basically anyone who owns a Website. A Search Engine that shows the World how it ranks a Website by disclosing where the internal penalties and deficiencies lie, and how they can be fixed to improve placement on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). As more and more innovation begins to take place, new ideas will bring new direction to Search, and that can only mean one thing: In Search, good times are ahead for both businesses and end-users!

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Aiden Davies' Online Reach

11 year old Aiden Davies has given the best performance of the series in tonight's episode of Britain's Got Talent. And having been blown away by his solo dancing piece, I found myself online within minutes to rerun the video for some of the younger members of my family - And then it hit me... I wonder what impact his performance will have within the online space?

According to the current stats from Google, Aiden does not appear to be in much demand, with a miniscule 16 searches as a monthly average for the term "aiden davies", and only 7 mentions within Twitter.

But with the exposure he has just received, through which all of a sudden his skills have been aired to millions of viewers, I'm in no doubt that Aiden's online popularity will see a huge surge over the next few weeks as he sails his way through the rounds for this year's opportunity to perform in front of her majesty.


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SEO and social media join up : DirectNews

Image via Wikipedia

Businesses are increasingly looking to join up their social media and search engine optimisation(SEO) strategies, it has been suggested.


According to PRWeek, Volvo has surprised the PR sector by using a media agency rather than a PR specialist to manage its social media campaigns.

Duncan Forrester, head of PR for Volvo UK, said that the company had decided to do this because it believed traditional PR agencies are less able to incorporate SEO into their work than media buying organisations.

"It is very clear that social media actually feeds into the SEO side of the business. Can a PR agency do SEO as well? I think there are question marks around that," he commented.

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Twitter Integrates Search

For a while now, Twitter has been making use of the technology they acquired when they bought Summized back in July 2008, but until now this had only been available under a separate website.


The integration has taken a few months, but it appears to have finally made it through to the main site, as per the visions sketched during the discussions surrounding the partnership.

Since the early days, search has been an important element of Twitter:

"There is an undeniable need to search, filter, and otherwise interact with the volumes of news and information being transmitted to Twitter every second. We will be adding search and its related features to the core offering of Twitter in the very near future."

And it looks like the future has arrived, what's more, as well as being able to find who's Twitting about a particular topic, you're now even able to save your searches to return to them at a later date.

Give it a try!

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Web tool 'as important as Google' : BBC NEWS

A web tool that 'could be as important as Google', according to some experts, has been shown off to the public.


Wolfram Alpha is the brainchild of British-born physicist Stephen Wolfram.

The free program aims to answer questions directly, rather than display web pages in response to a query like a search engine.

The "computational knowledge engine", as the technology is known, will be available to the public from the middle of May this year.

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Study reveals impact of SEO from leading brands on flight searches : Travolution

UK-based research from Greenlight Search into the most visible sites in Google natural search has revealed a clean sweep for cheapflights.co.uk in the flights category.


The study found that a selection of 3,200 generic and destination-specific key terms generated 5.5 million searches in March. The rankings are based on a site’s presence on the first page of Google for the term.

Cheapflights achieved 100% visibility across all categories of key-terms – generic, domestic, short- and long-haul terms. Skyscanner.net and travelsupermarket.com achieved 80%+ visibility and comprise the top three.

Lastminute.com was the most visible online agent at 59%. Dealchecker.co.uk is the only other site to be visible on more than half the 5.5m searches.

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