Spotify is launching a streaming chart list of the most highly-shared songs on its platform today. Dubbed the Spotify 50 and Social 50, this feature is similar to the Billboard Hot 100 Charts, which already includes data from Spotify and Rdio. But according to the Wall Street Journal, Spotify is looking to break out on its own here with charts that can be easily embedded on other websites, while allowing users to stream the music listed. These charts will also contain data from past weeks, with an update each Monday around noon EST.
 

Top 50 Streaming Charts

Spotify thinks this new data on top of charts could prove valuable by exposing new bands to users. Its head of operations in the US Ken Parks, said that information about people's listening habits and social media sharing has already pointed the company toward discovering some interesting new artists that it hopes to "break" in the near future. Spotify has also been rumored to be interested in actually producing its own music content, however these rumors have been denied by CEO Daniel Ek. But regardless, today is another major step in curating and providing more insight behind the type of music listened too by its 24 million users. "Data is our secret sauce," said Parks. “What’s so powerful about the streaming charts is they let you hear what people are really listening to, right now, and not just what they’re buying,” explains Steve Savoca, Head of Content at Spotify.
 

Play Counts

Also according to The Next Web, Spotify has also announced play counts for all tracks, a week after the feature started to appear for some user. So for any artist, you can now see their total number of global plays since the Spotify service was launched in October of 2008.

This feature is launching initially for the desktop client only, and if you're not seeing it show up yet in your account, it will soon in the coming weeks!

“We want to be the best artist promotional platform in the world and showing play counts is a clear step in that direction,” adds Savoca. “Now artists can get immediate feedback from their fans on how their music is performing on Spotify.”
 
Are you on Spotify yet? What do you think about these new features?

Yahoo has just rolled out a major face-lift for Flickr, its photo sharing service, making it much bigger and grandiose. This marks a historic 24-hour period for Yahoo which also just put the finishing touches on a deal to buy the popular social networking platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion! And in the Flickr and Tumblr tradition of dropping the final vowel or 'e', comes new features labeled as biggr, spectaculr, wherevr and doublr. Currently, Flickr has 89 million users who have uploaded more than 8 billion photographs!
 

Biggr: A free terabyte of space

Flickr now allows users to upload images in full resolution (and videos) for free, with up to 1 terabyte of space. How large is 1 terabyte actually? Well according to Flickr, "you could take a photo every hour for forty years without filling one." At the press event to announce the new features, Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer also said, "You can take all the pictures ever taken and upload them to Flickr... and there would [still be room]." She also mentioned, "Flickr was once awesome, and it languished... now we want it to be awesome again."
 

Spectaculr: A new and beautiful experience for your photos

Flickr has revealed a brand new design that looks to put photos at the heart of your Flickr experience. Your new homepage is a portal into everything you care about including all the photos Flickr has to offer. The new activity Feed shows your friends' recent uploads, as well as activity on your photos, combined into one Instagram-like design.

Activity Feed

Your Photostream

The new grid-like Photostream displays your photos via a seamless layout giving you room to express yourself with a customizable cover photo and high-res profile picture.

Your Photo Sets

Flickr provides you powerful tools to organize your favorite photos into Sets. The new photo experience displays images in full resolution, showing as many pixels as possible, while providing you all the context to engage conversation around each picture. Flickr has also released a new 'slideshow mode' that will showcase photos automatically, without you even having to click through.
 

Flickr Video

Flickr also wanted to give everyone room for longer videos, whether that be a beautiful time-lapse or just catching a friend off guard at a party. You can now upload as many videos as you like (within 1 terabyte) supporting up to a full 3 minutes per video at 1080p HD quality.
 

Wherevr: Flickr photos anywhere

Flickr has also unveiled a new streamlined Android app to go along with its iPhone app released last December.
 

Doublr

Flickr is also introducing a way to remove on site advertisements for $50, and for the serious photography professional, a $499.99 'Doublr' package to essentially double your storage space to two terabytes per year, or roughly 400,000 photos.

Flickr said this about the new release:

None of this would have been possible without you, the Flickr community. Much of what you see here started as ideas we've heard from you over the years. We are all truly excited to deliver the home your photos deserve, whether you’re sharing them with your friends, your family, or the world.

In my opinion it's nice to see them give the free users more space, but their doublr package might be a hefty charge to incur compared to other photo sharing communities like 500px or SmugMug. Besides given most users are used to the freemium model of uploading unlimited pics to Facebook or Instagram already, will this be enough to make Flickr cool again? Or are they relying to heavily on ad revenue to sustain itself at the expense of some users' happiness?

Either way, you can visit the Flickr forum to chime in with your ideas and feedback. Also, be sure to check out some funny reactions to Yahoo's other major announcement, the purchase of Tumblr!

So what do you think about the new Flickr?

Say you have a business that relies on a local customer base, you want to rank high in search engines for local users, right? SEO is going to be integral to making that happen and, by implementing the following steps, you will be well on your way to being more visible to your local customers.

Local SEO isn’t about gaming the system; it’s more about convincing a robot (a search engine) that your site is the most relevant for users in a certain location who may want your products or services. Local SEO is a series of signposts that allow the robots to understand where you are in the world and what you're providing. It allows them to better rank your site according to the search terms the user enters.

In designing your site, you will still want to follow general SEO practices, for example, conducting keyword research into the most relevant search terms. On a technical level, your site will still need to meet best practices for crawls. But, to target a local audience, you will need to go even further.

1. Titles

Every page on a site should have a title whether or not SEO is your goal. It just makes sense to have one. In terms of using <title> tags to create local relevance, you should consider the following:

•  Include your brand name within the title.
• Include the actual title of the page that was derived from effective keyword research for relevancy to the page and search demand.
• Include the location where you are based or the area in which you operate.

And accomplish all that in 70 characters or less! Easy, isn’t it?! Below is an example from a search for “Servicing Horndean”

2. Meta Descriptions

As with titles, a Meta description isn’t something you should have only for Local SEO; it’s something every page on a site should have. After all, it not only offers a search engine a little more insight into what the page is about, it also appears in the search results as a mini advert or snippet to entice the user to click on your page over a competitor's. To create the right Meta description you should consider the following:

•  Include the brand name.
• Include relevant information about the page.
• Include your targeted keyword.
• Include your location or area of operation.

Try not to force all of these elements into your description as it could seem cramped, read roughly, or appear ‘spammy’ to the user or search engine. In order to fit entirely within the search results page, the description should not exceed 155 characters. Personally, I try not to go over 148 just to be safe. Using the example from above, you can see how the description was written to include these elements.

3. Schema

Schema works in a similar way to the Meta Geo tags in that they can hold up another location signpost to a search engine. However, instead of working behind the scenes to show a search engine where you are, Schema helps to embed visual structured data into a web page and allow a search engine to gain more of an idea of the important information you are marking up. In this instance, location! For an example of how you can implement Schema into your business address take a look here.

4. Address In The Footer

Since it is always a good idea to have your business address in the footer of your site across all pages, why not use Schema to make your base even more obvious? While adding your business address, you should, if possible, include a local area telephone number.

5. Site Content 

This one is pretty obvious, right? To make sure your site is as relevant to an area as possible you should include references to the location within the content of the pages. Be careful, though, to avoid stuffing references to the area you are targeting in the site copy; just add it where it fits naturally. Consider referencing your location in the same way you would reference your targeted keywords, not too much to be considered ‘stuffing,’ but enough to ensure the page is relevant to the term/location.

6. Geographic Targeting In Webmaster Tools and TLD’s

If you want to target a specific country there are some very easy and obvious things you should do. Firstly you should run your site on a TLD that is based in that country. For example www.mysite.co.uk if you are based in the UK. You can also go into your webmaster tools account and change your preferred geographic target as shown below:

7. Local Profiles 

Setting up local profiles will work wonders for your Local SEO efforts. They provide a relevant link to your link profile, referral opportunities from a locally optimized site/page, and added context for search engines as to the location of your business. At a minimum, you should set up the following profiles:

• Google+ Local
• Bing Places
• Yahoo Local (Provided by Infoserve)

These profiles will obviously be favored by the respective search engines so they make the most sense to secure first. The list of local profile sites is almost endless with profile sites likely dedicated to your city or business niche.

8. Embedded Maps

Embedding a map of your business address from Google Maps (showing your Google+ Local profile) on your site's "Contact Us" page is another way to both help the user and help your site's Local SEO rankings! The map will give more context as to your location and will also help users find your business if they want to visit you in person.

9. Reviews 

Ensuring you have a presence on review sites like yelp and qype offers further location relevance for your site through the links and location information in the profile. They also offer a great opportunity for users to become advocates for your business. If users are looking online for a local business, they will be more likely to take their business to you or your site if they see other users have rated you well. Google+ Local, which outranks other review sites, is a good place to push for customer reviews.

Some great review sites are:

• www.yelp.co.uk / www.yelp.com/
• www.qype.co.uk
• www.tipped.co.uk
• www.reviewcentre.com

These are what I consider to be the most important elements for Local SEO for a site. There are other things that can be done, too, and I’m sure there are some good opinions out there from personal experience so please feel free to share your views or ask any questions in the comments below.

One great Local SEO resource can be found here, and I highly recommend that you download it for future reference. Mobile is becoming more and more important in SEO and this is especially true for Local SEO. Take a look at one of my whiteboard videos which covers a few mobile SEO considerations that you should also incorporate into your Local SEO strategy.

I hope you've enjoyed reading and have taken something useful away from this post. Feel free to connect with me on the social platforms below and get in touch if you have any questions.

When the surprising news of the $1.1 billion Yahoo-Tumblr deal broke yesterday, Tumblr users set into a mild panic. With no update from their favorite blogging platform, users took to their Tumblrs to express their fear and make requests of David Karp, Tumblr founder and CEO:

Some users were so worried they began flocking to other blogging platforms. WordPress’ Co-Founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg blogged last night that WordPress was seeing a vast increase in the number of Tumblr imports into their site. Though WordPress normally sees between 400 and 600 Tumblr imports an hour, during the last hour on Sunday 72,000 Tumblrs were imported. That's quite a spike.

Other users tried to look on the bright side:

Today Yahoo and Tumblr tried to ease worried fans. David Karp, Tumblr Founder and CEO, finally updated the Tumblr staff blog Monday morning, writing:

"We’re not turning purple. Our headquarters isn’t moving. Our team isn’t changing. Our roadmap isn’t changing. And our mission–to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve–certainly isn’t changing"

But what about ads? Tumblr is known for integrating only unobtrusive, relevant ads. With Yahoo's acquisition, how might this practice chagne? Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer assured users that ads on Tumblr will remain relevant. "We are committed to continuing the experience the Tumblr community loves," Mayer said, "where the ads are aspirational, where the ads are great content on themselves."

Some users have already made requests of Yahoo and David Karp:

Twitter Reacts

On Twitter the conversation has been more incredulous than worried. Many tweeted their doubts while pointing out the niche uses of Tumblr, wondering how Yahoo could possibly profit from acquiring the blogging site:

Yahoo not only bought Tumblr but also invented the time machine coz now it's 1998 and something yahoo did is news.

— Tanmay Bhat (@thetanmay) May 20, 2013

Somebody just paid 1.1 billion for pictures of my dog sitting in a freezer. #tumblr

— Jenny Mollen (@jennyandteets) May 20, 2013

LOL Yahoo just paid 1.1 billion $ for the world's largest collection of Doctor Who gifs and pictures of Benedict Cumberbatch #Tumblr

— Melanie Rowland (@MelRows) May 19, 2013

I wonder if @marissamayer and Yahoo had properly reviewed #tumblr as a company dependent on pornography to drive views #notinstagram #noads

— Eugene Hsu (@heuge) May 19, 2013

GIF Reactions

via Esma

via The Frogman

via Ruined Childhood

via Yaffle

via Tumblr

Moving On

For now it seems that Tumblr users have no choice but to trust that Yahoo has the integrity to preserve the clutter-free, close-knit community on Tumblr and perhaps bask in some future improvements. Matt Mullenweg made a great statement on his blog last night regarding the potential for Tumblr to grow through Yahoo:

"News like this, whether from a friend or a competitor, is always bittersweet: I’m curious to see what the creative folks behind Tumblr do with their new resources, both personal and corporate, but I’m more interested to know what they would have done over the next 5-10 years as an independent company. I think we’re at the cusp of understanding the ultimate value of web publishing platforms, particularly ones that work cross-domain, and while Yahoo’s all-cash deal by some metrics, like revenue, is very generous, I think it’s a tenth of the value that will be created in these platforms over the coming years."

As Tumblr users, what do you think Yahoo has in store for Tumblr? Will they turn the platform into an evil advertising machine or will they make Tumblr an even better place to blog?

Facebook is reportedly testing out a new video feature for Instagram, its photo sharing service, that will be similar to Twitter's Vine. According to Mathew Keys from The Desk, the new service is being tested out internally, and would allow a user to upload anywhere between 5 to 10 seconds of video from their mobile device to Instagram and essentially Facebook. What's not clear is when this new app could be rolled out, if ever, to the 100 million active users on Instagram, or if Instagram's hip filters would be applicable too.

This move makes sense for Facebook who is surely looking to venture out into the video market cornered by Vine and potentially one day YouTube. Vine allows users to upload six second looping videos with audio, which they can share to Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. Vine is said to be the "Instagram of video" but those day may be numbered now.
 
Do you think a potential 10 second video feature via Facebook would untangle Vine for good?

Today Pinterest goes beyond a place to pin pretty pictures. Now our favorite site for collecting recipes and planning design projects allows brands to insert useful information into their pins. Here's what's new:

• Movies: View Netflix's latest pin of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and you'll see information on content ratings, cast members, and more
• Recipes: Find an enticing recipe on Martha Stewart Living? Now you can follow a recipe from her boards without ever leaving Pinterest
• Products: Find a candle set you want to buy on Target's boards and you'll see information on pricing, availability, and where to buy–all updated daily

To bring you this new experience Pinterest has partnered with a ton of brands, including Antropologie, eBay, Etsy, ModCloth, Better Homes and Garden, Epicurious, Flixter, Rotten Tomatoes, and more.

Note: To enable this feature make sure you enable the new look by clicking "Get it now" at the top of your home feed. You can tell when a pin has more information when an associated icon appears below the picture. Pinterest also mentioned it will update all of your old pins retroactively, so they're more useful, too.

Now Pin from Mobile Apps

Besides making their site even more addicting, Pinterest has also made it easier to pin from mobile. The Pin It button is now available in certain mobile apps, including Behance, Brit+Co, Etsy, Fotopedia, Jetsetter, Modcloth, Snapguide, TED, The North Face, and Zulily. According to Pinterest, this is just the beginning, "we hope to make all pins more useful in the coming months."

How do you see yourself taking advantage of these new features on Pinterest? What other types of pins would you like to see improved?

The real surprise about the Yahoo acquisition of Tumblr...

via pcweenies

Fly me to Manhattan

Fly me to Manhattan by Chema Ocaña

New York

NEW YORK by Calvin Hollywood by Calvin Hollywood

Land of blood and honey

Land of blood and honey by regis boileau

A Cloudy Morning

A Cloudy Morning by Matthias Haker

The edge of the world

The edge of the world by Alex Rykov

New York City Aerial #04

New York City Aerial #04 by Tim Sklyarov

Manhattan

Manhattan by NoaDigital - Miguel Martinez

I love social media. And, like any healthy relationship, mine with social media has its ups and downs. I care so much about my social media profiles that I put up with some quirks and flaws of character that nearly drive me crazy. But instead of looking for other fish in the sea, I'm going to talk this out therapy-style and see if our dynamic improves.

StumbleUpon

via trialanderrorcreativity
I really love StumbleUpon. With the site's new Pinterest-like interface, you can quickly browse through interesting material and, of course, stumble on new stuff. Whenever I find interesting new webpages or post a new article I always look to share it with fellow stumblers—wherein lies the problem. Whenever I try to stumble or submit a new page, a popup opens with a hellishly long dropdown menu of topics. First StumbleUpon prompts you for whether or not the link is safe for work. Then It asks you to identify the language you're using to write your post, as if the words you just typed didn't already reveal that. Next StumbleUpon asks you to complete an optional comments section and, if you can still type at this point, to submit optional tags. Worst of all, the autofill tries to save you from having to scroll through a few thousand topics only to jump the gun on your selections. I can't tell you how many times I started typing in 'technology,' only to end up with 'techno.' Really, StumbleUpon, you had to slide 'techno' in, didn't you?
 

Pinterest

via trialanderrorcreativity
Pinterest has capitalized on StumbleUpon's quirky interface by creating a much more intuitive way for users to bookmark pages. Instead of sifting through every topic ever conceived, you can create and organize your own topic boards. Pinterest has an easy-to-use bookmarklet, and the beautiful visual layout has helped the site become the go-to in social bookmarking with 40 million active users. But with lots of traffic comes more scrupulous characters, aka spammmers. Now the new form of spamming on Pinterest, besides ill-advised status updates, is to include people in collaborative Pinterest boards (most likely without their knowledge); then Pinterest will automatically start sending the unwitting members emails for every update to the group board. I normally turn off all notifications from social networks since they are of negligible value yet add up quickly. But Pinterest makes it really hard to find your group board settings to stop notifications or remove yourself from the group spam board.
 

Twitter

via pandawhale
I can launch into an hour-long rant about Direct Message spam filled with nonsense and phishing scams, but then that would suggest I've actually read a DM in the last few years. Instead, I'm going to focus on what irks me about people's actual tweets that come across as spam. Countless times a day, someone mentions DashBurst in a tweet with a link to the sender's spam website or social media profile. When I go look at the profile I see, as suspected, its owner has sent out the same tweet hundreds of times mentioning a new person each time. This isn't at all effective and looks completely ingenuous. You should never mention someone you don't know with a link attached; it's a sure-fire way to get yourself reported and unfollowed.
 

LinkedIn

via sclohosocial
LinkedIn is the best professional networking community that exists. You can take advantage of having a profile by joining groups and adding a page for your company and products, wherein lies the problem. The LinkedIn sharing button lets you post to you personal page or any group you're affiliated with but not your business page! To post anything on your company page, you have to grab the link and squeeze it into the hard-to-find link entry form on your business profile. With LinkedIn rolling out a "follow company" button for your website, you would think company integration into the sharing button would come next . There is a workaround for this in IFTTT now, where you can automatically send your blog posts as updates to your company page. I would highly recommend doing this given the current situation.
 

Google+

via memeburn
Google+ is also a major social network with virtually no support for sharing to your company page. The tech giant rolled out access to its API to Hootsuite and a few other major social media dashboard which were all looking to charge you an arm and a leg to use it. I can only remember how hard I laughed when a Hootsuite salesman tried to pitch me this functionality for over $1,000/month. Since then Hootsuite has added this feature to its dashboard as part of the normal pro package.

Also this doesn't have anything to do with Google+ but while we're airing out our dirty Google laundry, what's up with Google Chrome always crashing? Tons of Apple Mac users can't even use Chrome for 2 minutes before crashing, and lets just say I'm not shocked anymore to see the inevitable Shockwave fail, whatever the hell that is.
 

Empire Avenue

Empire Avenue is a great place for small businesses and startups to reach new audiences and gain traction. But with the good comes the bad. The site is also a haven for what I like to call amateur spammers. These are basically the same as pro spammers except, since no one pays any attention to them or clicks on any of their links, they don't make any money. You know who these people are. Dropping eight links in your new mission or profile board after a purchase of two of your shares. Getting messages on Facebook from people to do their lame missions also irks me. Empire Avenue can be great for your business but you'll need to dodge a few unsavory characters along the way.
 

Instagram

via goinggeeknews
Instagram is a viral social network for photos and hipsters alike with cool vintage filters that can be applied to pictures. As you've heard, Instagram is the next big thing and an important site for your brand to be on. The only thing is you can't actually share article links on the site. So if your business model thrives on virtually no referral traffic, then Instagram might be the place for you. Relax, hipsters, I'm not suggesting Instagram isn't cool, but businesses need to stop touting it as the next big thing when they've never generated one sale or lead from the site. But don't worry, businesses, since Facebook bought Instagram it's only a matter of time before the corporation takes over.
 

YouTube

via urbinator17
When watching a video on YouTube you used to be able to subscribe to the channel of the creator as well as get email updates. You can still subscribe now, but YouTube has buried the option to receive email updates. After you subscribe to the channel, you have to go into your subscription manager options, sift all your subscriptions to find the new one, and then enable the 'email with new uploads' option. Being that most people are likely to see their emails vs. checking their activity feed on YouTube, this is a pretty curious move by YouTube. Maybe now that Google is trying to kill RSS, YouTube figures email is next up on the chopping block. But as someone who curates content, it pains me to have to jump through hoops to get updates from a person's YouTube channel. And what's up with YouTube videos being unsharedable on Facebook? In our need to compete, have we forgotten the open and connected place the Internet was intended to be? Blocking sharing is, of course, on Facebook, but as a user you experience the annoyance while on YouTube's site.
 

Facebook

via b2c
Speaking of Facebook, people have plenty of reasons to be tired of social networks, but the biggest source of annoyance has to be the post updates from friends you can't really stand. I've went to great lengths to try and help people immediately stop their trifling Facebook behavior. But it turns out I missed a few key pointers. There is a new fad on Facebook: people are starting to treat the site like their personal business journal and itinerary. It's awesome that you had a great meeting with some potential new clients or are headed off to Applebees for dinner, but I don't really care and neither do any of your other friends. I'm not sure if it's an effort to seem more important, busy or somehow relevant, but it just needs to stop. Also with the new setup for personal profiles, there is a prompt at the top of the 'About' section in the left-hand column to add cities people "say you live in" or jobs people "say you work together" in. Look Facebook, we are all perfectly capable of highlighting our own place of living or work if we want too. We don't need to rely on supposed friends to remind us. What really ends up happening here is spammers basically tag you as working with them via their business pages and Facebook perpetuates the problem because even when you dismiss the popups, they reappear every time you go to your profile page.
 
Your turn: What other social media fails ruffle your feathers?

The Yahoo! Tumblr acquisition rumors appear to have come to fruition, as the Wall Street Journal has reported that the Yahoo board has approved the colossal $1.1 billion deal to buy out Tumblr. Sources close to the deal also indicate that the vote was a foregone conclusion and was approved unanimously by Yahoo's executive board.

Breaking: The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for the blogging site Tumblr. wsj.com

— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) May 19, 2013

Recently some outlets like TechCrunch have suggested that Tumblr may look to hold out for a few more bucks, however, given that Tumblr has a quickly depleting stockpile of cash left in the reserves, this may have forced their hand to sell.

 
So what do you think about Tumblr's new fortunes and future?