Pakistan Takes on Facebook, YouTube and the Internet

A good reminder that the definition of the “World Wide Web” can change, depending on the country you’re living in: The Pakistani government is trying to block some of the planet’s most popular Web sites, including Facebook, Google’s (GOOG) YouTube, Yahoo’s (YHOO) Flickr, and Wikipedia. Twitter is still okay–for now, apparently. Associated Press: The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority... 

More Money for Twitter Apps: TweetDeck Raises Another $3 Million

Remember last month, when everyone was convinced that Twitter was going to cut off the oxygen to all the start-ups that had built up around the service? I talked to TweetDeck CEO Iain Dodsworth at the time, and he seemed reasonably confident that Twitter wasn’t going to crush his small app company into pulp. His argument: We serve a specific niche of Twitter users, and Twitter is happy to let us... 

With AdMob Out of the Way, Is Google Set to Buy Invite Media?

Now that Google has wrapped up its AdMob deal, what’s next on its shopping list? One good bet: Ad tech start-up Invite Media. Industry sources believe Google (GOOG) is close to a deal for Invite, a three-year-old “demand side platform” designed to help buyers navigate high-volume display-advertising exchanges–like the one Google launched last year. A deal has supposedly been in the works for... 

Google Opens the Black Box a Bit

One of the longstanding gripes about Google’s AdSense platform: Publishers have no idea how much money the search giant is generating from the ads it displays on their sites. That’s going to start changing, Google announced this morning. The company is laying out the revenue splits for both its content and search partners: Publishers will receive 68 percent and 51 percent of revenue, respectively.... 

We (Sort Of) Warned You: Twitter Boots Rival Ad Networks From Its Stream

Does your business plan involve running ads in Twitter’s stream? Think again: Twitter appears to have shut out all rival ad networks from its service. The relevant quote from a Twitter blog post today: “We will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API.” We sort of saw this coming. When Twitter launched its own ad system last... 

Twitter’s Free Love Era Comes to an End: Time for Developers and Publishers to Pay Up

Twitter isn’t just booting other ad networks out of its stream. It now plans to tax some start-ups and publishers that are making money from the service. That’s a pretty significant change for the company, which has previously allowed anyone to do just about anything with its data, without asking for a cent. But that’s over, based on the new terms of service the company released today. The relevant... 

Facebook’s Simplified Privacy Controls Will Start Appearing Tomorrow

On stage today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York City, Facebook’s vice president of product Chris Cox announced that starting tomorrow, Facebook will be rolling out “drastically simplified” and improved privacy controls. He didn’t give any details, but did suggest that they should alleviate some of the recent privacy problems Facebook has faced. Ever since the recent wave of privacy backlash... 

Yelp Reveals Details of Small Business Advisory Council

Yelp is sending out emails inviting small business owners to apply for a spot on its new, Yelp Small Business Advisory Council (YSBAC) — the group that Yelp announced last week in the small print of its bigger announcement about the end of Featured Reviews as an advertising feature. A small business owner forwarded me the email today, and it reveals more about what the advisory council is and how... 

Been to Hyperlocal Blogger Lately

It’s been exactly a month since I last posted a roundup of what’s been happening over on my other blog, Hyperlocal Blogger. Trust me, that’s pure coincidence. I’m not that organized about these roundups! But, there are a few posts over there you may want to check out if you’re not already reading the blog regularly. Here you go… Read More  Read More →

The Importance of Backlinks

If you’ve read anything about or studied Search Engine Optimization, you’ve come across the term “backlink” at least once. For those of you new to SEO, you may be wondering what a backlink is, and why they are important. Backlinks have become so important to the scope of Search Engine Optimization, that they have become some of the main building blocks to good SEO. In this article,...