Oh Look, Twitter Has A Business Strategy

Since its inception four years ago and its rise to fame, we’ve always wondered what Twitter ’s business model is. Or if it even has one.
It seems that with the sheer number of individuals and companies gaining popularity and indirectly making money through its real-time platform, the microblogging giant should naturally have at least a [...]

Since its inception four years ago and its rise to fame, we’ve always wondered what Twitter ’s business model is. Or if it even has one.

It seems that with the sheer number of individuals and companies gaining popularity and indirectly making money through its real-time platform, the microblogging giant should naturally have at least a piece of the action. But it felt more like Twitter was taking its sweet time, prompting many to consider its possible fate of being a victim of its own success. That era of a slow and thoughtful approach to monetization, however, ends now as the company unveiled this week what it calls “Promoted Tweets.”

According to the official announcement posted by the microblog’s co-founder Biz Stone on the Twitter Blog , Promoted Tweets are ordinary tweets that businesses and organizations want to highlight to a wider group of users. These will first appear as ordinary tweets visible only to the followers of that specific brand. If the tweet is from an advertising partner, it will eventually upgrade to Promoted status and will now appear at the top of some of Twitter.com’s search results pages. It will still retain regular tweet functionality like replying, Retweeting and favoriting.

“Since all Promoted Tweets are organic Tweets, there is not a single “ad” in our Promoted Tweets platform that isn’t already an organic part of Twitter.” Stone clarifies. “This is distinct from both traditional search advertising and more recent social advertising.”

As of writing, Twitter lists international brands such as Red Bull , Sony Pictures and Starbucks , along with Best Buy and Virgin America , as the first wave of advertising partners.

Apparently, this is merely phase one of the program and is has only been rolled out to give the Twitter an understanding of the resonance of Promoted Tweets, user experience response and gauge advertiser value. Stone adds that as it matures, they plan allow it to be displayed by third party Twitter clients and “expand beyond Twitter search, including displaying relevant Promoted Tweets in your timelines in a way that is useful to you.”

Twitter also believes that Promoted Tweets will be useful for its users since they will be relevant with their search queries. We tested this by searching for Red Bull and it indeed yielded Promoted Tweets but didn’t do so when we searched for tweets about the band Weezer . If it retains this unobtrusive yet useful nature, Twitter can expect continuous support from its users while seeing more and more brands signing up in the coming months.

“This announcement is a long time coming and we’re thrilled to finally be able to share it with you. As this project matures, there will be more to talk about. We will learn a lot as the program grows.” Stone, furthermore, said.

Saturday Link Round Up (03-13-10)

In the continuing battle for strong online presence, Twitter is by far the most important weapon in your social media arsenal. More than half the world uses the social media platform. To be able to successfully tap into that community can make all the difference for your brand or business. For this week’s Saturday Link [...]

In the continuing battle for strong online presence, Twitter is by far the most important weapon in your social media arsenal. More than half the world uses the social media platform. To be able to successfully tap into that community can make all the difference for your brand or business. For this week’s Saturday Link Round Up, we’ve assembled a list of great articles that can help your get Twitter working for you, from the best way to compose your tweets to proper use of hashtags .

How to Write the Perfect Tweet

Remember that Twitter is still considered more as a personal microblogging platform than as marketing medium. Send off the wrong vibes and you just might end up being ignored, even rejected, rather than followed. Twitterism provides some great advice on how to write the perfect tweet.

How to Retweet: A Simple Guide

Retweets and @replies breathe life into your Twitter. They make your account more personal and approachable. In excess, however, they reflect the opposite image. AJ Vaynerchuk’s tips, though old are not outdated. Except maybe, “RT” is more practical to use than “Retweet:” as a label.

HOW TO: Use Twitter Hashtags for Business

Mashable has always been one of our favorite sources for social media news and wisdom. Here, Mashable contributor Josh Catone sheds some light on the popular function known as hashtags and how they can be utilized to build your business.

How to Use Twitter “Follow Friday” Effectively

One hashtag twitter trend that has turned into an entity all its own is #FollowFriday. Michaelé Harrington presents how participating in the cult trend can help boost your online presence.

To Schedule Tweets or No? Two Reasons You Should.

There are pros and cons in scheduling tweets. The cons only show up when you exploit the function too much. Here, Kiesha Easley shares here solution for scheduling tweets without the risk of losing followers.

Seesmic for Blackberry – Google Map, Picture Preview and ReTweet

Experience Twitter on your Blackberry with searches, lists, retweets, picture preview, Google maps geo-location and other powerful features. Point your blackberry to http://m.seesmic.com to get Seesmic within minutes.
Dedicated to listening to our community of users, we are happy to share that we have incorporated a set of features in the newest version of our Blackberry [...]

Seesmic

Experience Twitter on your Blackberry with searches, lists, retweets, picture preview, Google maps geo-location and other powerful features. Point your blackberry to http://m.seesmic.com to get Seesmic within minutes.

Dedicated to listening to our community of users, we are happy to share that we have incorporated a set of features in the newest version of our Blackberry application that will make your Twitter experience easier and helpful. Thanks to our user’s feedback and suggestions, we updated Seesmic for Blackberry with the following features:

ReTweets and Quote function
Seesmic for Blackberry has the new Twitter Retweet (RT) function, which allows you to officially RT a message. Apart from ReTweeting and viewing RTs in your timeline, you can see who ReTweeted you, which RTs you have done and which RTs were sent to you. If you also want to retweet, but also maintain the original message to edit, you can opt for the Quote feature, which integrates the quoted user at the end of the tweet.

ReTweets function

Picture Preview
We are excited to share that you can now see picture previews for image services within your timeline. Also, the same feature is included in the actual tweet Details view.

Google Map Location
Seesmic for BlackBerry users will now be able to see a detailed Google Map Location in their tweets. This feature reads the location as set in Twitter Geo location. Users can just go to tweet details and a precise Google Map of the place it was sent from, will appear.

Google Map Location

BIS-B Connection
Seesmic BlackBerry now becomes available to all mobile users, regardless of their Internet connection. Users who are using BIS-B mobile Internet network, will now be able to do so and enjoy Seesmic’s feature.

These integrated updates of Seesmic for BlackBerry maintain the appeal and functionality of the application. With your help and support, we willl continue to add features and improvements to make Seesmic the best application for mobile, web and desktop!

SocialTwist Tell-a-Friend



Want To Rank High in Google’s Real Time Search? Get More Twitter Followers

A month ago, Google added real-time search results in the form of Tweets from Twitter and other real-time search related sources. Yesterday at Search Engine Land I covered an interview with Amit Singhal of Google via Technology Review. The interview explains how Google ranks those real-time search results – on some level.

Want to rank high in those Google real-time results? It seems like all you need is a lot of followers and you should be set.

From the interview:

“One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation,” Singhal says. “As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well.”

Obviously, Google needs to figure out the value of the followers of followers, but that shouldn’t be too hard in this equation.

Another interesting point was in regards to the use of hashtags in Tweets. The interview wrote that hashtags may “serve as red flags to lower tweet quality and attract spam-like content.”

Of course, this does not mean anything you Tweet will show up in Google’s search results. For that, they need to be trending topics, and a good way to see what is trending is to look at Google Trends.

Honestly, there are some interesting thoughts in the comments on my post at Search Engine Land.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorldand Google Web Search Help.


A month ago, Google added real-time search results in the form of Tweets from Twitter and other real-time search related sources. Yesterday at Search Engine Land I covered an interview with Amit Singhal of Google via Technology Review. The interview explains how Google ranks those real-time search results – on some level.

Want to rank high in those Google real-time results? It seems like all you need is a lot of followers and you should be set.

From the interview:

“One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation,” Singhal says. “As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well.”

Obviously, Google needs to figure out the value of the followers of followers, but that shouldn’t be too hard in this equation.

Another interesting point was in regards to the use of hashtags in Tweets. The interview wrote that hashtags may “serve as red flags to lower tweet quality and attract spam-like content.”

Of course, this does not mean anything you Tweet will show up in Google’s search results. For that, they need to be trending topics, and a good way to see what is trending is to look at Google Trends.

Honestly, there are some interesting thoughts in the comments on my post at Search Engine Land.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorldand Google Web Search Help.



Doing the “Digital Cleanse”: no Twitter for a week

John Mayer had a good post about a “digital cleanse.” The idea is to step away from the busy, buzzy world for a week. John mentioned four ideas, but I’m going to try just one: “no use of Twitter or any other social networking site”.
That’s right, I’m going Twitter-free for a week. I don’t really [...]

John Mayer had a good post about a “digital cleanse.” The idea is to step away from the busy, buzzy world for a week. John mentioned four ideas, but I’m going to try just one: “no use of Twitter or any other social networking site”.

That’s right, I’m going Twitter-free for a week. I don’t really use Facebook, so that’s not a problem. The only other social networking website I use is FriendFeed, so I’m cutting that out too. To keep me on track this week, here’s what I did:

  • Tweeted that I was doing the digital cleanse and changed my Bio line to mention that I was doing the digital cleanse.
  • Removed all Twitter apps from my mobile phone.
  • Removed the Twitter and FriendFeed shortcuts from Chrome’s new tab page.
  • Hard-coded a bunch of websites so that I can’t even access them. In Linux, you can type “sudo vi /etc/hosts” and add the following lines:

    127.0.0.1 twitter.com
    127.0.0.1 www.twitter.com
    127.0.0.1 facebook.com
    127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
    127.0.0.1 friendfeed.com
    127.0.0.1 www.friendfeed.com

    What these lines say is “Computer, when you try to use the domain name system (DNS) to resolve twitter.com to an IP address, hard-code the IP address to be 127.0.0.1.” Note that 127.0.0.1 is a special IP address that corresponds to your own computer. In essence, these entries make it impossible to browse to Twitter, Facebook, or FriendFeed. You might need to reboot your computer too for the settings to take effect.

I’m thinking that I might blog a little more now that I’ve stopped tweeting for a week, so I’m doing one extra step–I’m linking my blog in Feedburner so that when I publish a blog post, it will tweet a link to that blog post. Here’s how to do it:
1. Log in to http://feedburner.google.com/ and click on your blog’s feed.
2. Click on the “Publicize” tab and then the “Socialize” service on the left.
3. Add your Twitter account and select the options you want. Here’s how it looks:

Tweeting from FeedBurner

Then click “Save” and that’s all you need to do.

So far, I’ve been Twitter-free for twelve hours. In that time, I’ve
- worked out
- taken down our Christmas tree, chopped it into sections and put it out on the street
- typed in three months’ worth of data for a project that I’m working on
- taken down our Christmas lights and packed them away
- stored all our various Christmas decorations
- run a couple loads of laundry
- put out the trash
- gone shopping and had a couple meals with my wife
Oh, and written a blog post. We’ll see how the digital cleanse works for the rest of the week. :)

Free Christmas and New Year’s Eve WordPress Theme


  

In this post we release our last freebie for the Christmas and the New Year season: a beautiful Christmas and New Year’s Eve WordPress Theme, designed by Site5.com and released for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The theme is decorated using Smashing Christmas Icon Set and its main goal is to give a blog a very festive, snowy, New Year’s atmosphere. The theme has no particular requirements, except that the WordPress 2.8.5+ should be installed. As usual, the theme is free to use in private and commerical projects.

Download the theme for free! The theme is released under GPL. You can use it for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. Please link to this article if you want to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish.

width="650">
width="650"> style="width:650px;"> src="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/static/smashing-magazine-advertisement.gif" alt="Smashing-magazine-advertisement in Free Christmas and New Years Eve WordPress Theme" border="0" /> /> href="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/www/delivery/ck.php?zoneid=56" > src="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=56" border="0" alt=" in Free Christmas and New Years Eve WordPress Theme" />  href="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/www/delivery/ck.php?zoneid=63" > src="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=63" border="0" alt=" in Free Christmas and New Years Eve WordPress Theme" />  href="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/www/delivery/ck.php?zoneid=64" > src="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=64" border="0" alt=" in Free Christmas and New Years Eve WordPress Theme" />

src="http://imp.constantcontact.com/imp/cmp.jsp?impcc=IMP_DIMPBPRSMASHRSS&o=http://img.constantcontact.com/lp/images/standard/spacer.gif" alt="Spacer in Free Christmas and New Years Eve WordPress Theme" border="0" width="1" height="1" />

In this post we release our last freebie for the Christmas and the New Year season: a beautiful Christmas and New Year’s Eve WordPress Theme, designed by href="http://www.site5.com">Site5 and released for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The theme is decorated using href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/08/free-smashing-christmas-icon-set/">Smashing Christmas Icon Set and its main goal is to give a blog a very festive, snowy, New Year’s atmosphere. The theme has no particular requirements, except that the WordPress 2.8.5+ should be installed. As usual, the theme is free to use in private and commerical projects.

href="http://wordpress.site5.net/xmas/" title="Visit the demo"> src="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/release-image-christmas.jpg" width="500" height="525" alt="Release-image-christmas in Free Christmas and New Years Eve WordPress Theme" />

Download the theme for free!

The theme is released under GPL. You can use it for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. Please link to this article if you want to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish.

href="http://wordpress.site5.net/xmas/"> src="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/fulltheme-preview.jpg" width="550" height="637" alt="Fulltheme-preview in Free Christmas and New Years Eve WordPress Theme" />

  • href="http://wordpress.site5.net/xmas/">live demo
  • href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/full-preview-christmas.jpg">large preview (.jpg, 0.6 Mb)
  • href="http://wordpress.site5.net/xmas/doc/">installation guide and documentation
  • href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/christmas-theme/christmas-new-years-eve-wp-theme.zip">download the .zip-package (.zip, 0.4 Mb, including instructions)
  • href="http://www.site5.com/wordpress-themes">release on Site 5

Features

Here are some of the features of the theme:

  • CSS-based layout,
  • 2 columns of fixed width,
  • widget-ready,
  • XHTML 1.0 Transitional valid,
  • multi-browser compatibility: tested on Firefox, Safari , IE7, IE8, Chrome,
  • easy to setup, theme options page,
  • JQuery Lightbox,
  • AJAX-based based contact form,
  • Live form e-mail validation.

href="http://wordpress.site5.net/xmas/" title="Visit the demo"> src="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/large-sidebar-christmas.jpg" width="500" height="718" alt="Large-sidebar-christmas in Free Christmas and New Years Eve WordPress Theme" /> />Sidebar

href="http://wordpress.site5.net/xmas/" title="Visit the demo"> src="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/footer-christmas.jpg" width="500" height="516" alt="Footer-christmas in Free Christmas and New Years Eve WordPress Theme" /> />Footer

Thank you, Gabi. We appreciate your work and your good intentions. And Merry Christmas, folks!

/>

© Smashing Editorial for href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com">Smashing Magazine, 2009. | href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/21/free-christmas-and-new-year-s-eve-wordpress-theme/">Permalink | href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/21/free-christmas-and-new-year-s-eve-wordpress-theme/#comments">38 comments | title="Bookmark in del.icio.us" href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/21/free-christmas-and-new-year-s-eve-wordpress-theme/&title=Free%20Christmas%20and%20New%20Year’s%20Eve%20WordPress%20Theme">Add to del.icio.us | title="Bookmark in Digg" href="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/21/free-christmas-and-new-year-s-eve-wordpress-theme/">Digg this | title="Stumble on StumbleUpon" href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/21/free-christmas-and-new-year-s-eve-wordpress-theme/">Stumble on StumbleUpon! | title="Tweet us!" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=@tweetmeme%20@smashingmag%20Reading%20'Free%20Christmas%20and%20New%20Year’s%20Eve%20WordPress%20Theme'%20http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/21/free-christmas-and-new-year-s-eve-wordpress-theme/">Tweet it! | title="Bookmark in Reddit" href="http://reddit.com/submit?url=http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/21/free-christmas-and-new-year-s-eve-wordpress-theme/">Submit to Reddit | href="http://forum.smashingmagazine.com/">Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/tag/christmas/" rel="tag">christmas, href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/tag/freebies/" rel="tag">Freebies, href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/tag/new-year/" rel="tag">new year, href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/tag/wordpress/" rel="tag">wordpress

Free Christmas Stock Photos


  

The Christmas is coming and Christmas decorations are being prepared. However, it’s not only time to spice up your living environment: your designs could use a bit of the Christmas spirit as well. A week ago our readers asked us to release a set of Christmas-related stock photos; so when a couple of days later Min Thu dropped us an e-mail suggesting to provide us with some Christmas stock photos, we just had to do it.

Christmas Set

So, as requested, in this post we are glad to release Christmas Stock Photos Set, a set of 60 original Christmas-related photos in JPG in the resolution 2500×1666px. This set was created by Min Thu especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

width="650">
width="650"> style="width:650px;"> src="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/static/smashing-magazine-advertisement.gif" alt="Smashing-magazine-advertisement in Free Christmas Stock Photos" border="0" /> /> href="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/www/delivery/ck.php?zoneid=56" > src="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=56" border="0" alt=" in Free Christmas Stock Photos" />  href="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/www/delivery/ck.php?zoneid=63" > src="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=63" border="0" alt=" in Free Christmas Stock Photos" />  href="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/www/delivery/ck.php?zoneid=64" > src="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=64" border="0" alt=" in Free Christmas Stock Photos" />

src="http://imp.constantcontact.com/imp/cmp.jsp?impcc=IMP_DIMPBPRSMASHRSS&o=http://img.constantcontact.com/lp/images/standard/spacer.gif" alt="Spacer in Free Christmas Stock Photos" border="0" width="1" height="1" /> /> The Christmas is coming and Christmas decorations are being prepared. However, it’s not only time to spice up your living environment: your designs could use a bit of the Christmas spirit as well. A week ago our readers asked us to release a set of Christmas-related stock photos; so when a couple of days later href="http://www.flashmo.com">Min Thu dropped us an e-mail suggesting to provide us with some Christmas stock photos, we just had to do it.

So, as requested, in this post we are glad to release Christmas Stock Photos Set, a set of 60 original Christmas-related photos in JPG in the resolution 2500×1666px. This set was created by Min Thu especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/christmas-set/full_preview1.jpg"> src="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/img_2530-christmas.jpg" alt="Img 2530-christmas in Free Christmas Stock Photos" width="500" height="333" />

Preview

href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/img_2289.jpg"> src="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/img_2289-christmas.jpg" width="500" height="333" alt="Img 2289-christmas in Free Christmas Stock Photos" /> /> href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/img_2272.jpg"> src="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/img_2272-christmas.jpg" width="500" height="333" alt="Img 2272-christmas in Free Christmas Stock Photos" /> /> href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/img_2506.jpg"> src="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/img_2506-christmas.jpg" width="500" height="333" alt="Img 2506-christmas in Free Christmas Stock Photos" /> /> href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/img_2168.jpg"> src="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/img_2168-christmas.jpg" width="500" height="333" alt="Img 2168-christmas in Free Christmas Stock Photos" /> /> href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/img_2113.jpg"> src="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/img_2113-christmas.jpg" width="500" height="333" alt="Img 2113-christmas in Free Christmas Stock Photos" /> /> href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/img_2270.jpg"> src="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/img_2270-christmas.jpg" width="500" height="333" alt="Img 2270-christmas in Free Christmas Stock Photos" />

Download the photos for free!

You can use the set for all of your projects for free and without any restrictions. You can freely use it for both your private and commercial projects, including software, online services, templates and themes. The set may not be resold, sublicensed or otherwise made available for download. Please link to this article if you want to spread the word.

  • href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/christmas-set/full_preview1.jpg">large preview
  • href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/christmas-set/christmas-free-stock-photos-1.zip">download part 1 (.zip, 11 Mb, 26 files)
  • href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/christmas-set/christmas-free-stock-photos-2.zip">download part 2 (.zip, 12 Mb, 34 files)

Thank you very much, Min! We appreciate your efforts.

Related posts

You may be interested in the following related posts:

  • href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/08/free-smashing-christmas-icon-set/">Free Smashing Christmas Icon Set
  • href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/12/17/smashing-christmas-icon-sets/">Smashing Christmas Icon Sets
/>

© Smashing Editorial for href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com">Smashing Magazine, 2009. | href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/20/free-christmas-stock-photos/">Permalink | href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/20/free-christmas-stock-photos/#comments">23 comments | title="Bookmark in del.icio.us" href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/20/free-christmas-stock-photos/&title=Free%20Christmas%20Stock%20Photos">Add to del.icio.us | title="Bookmark in Digg" href="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/20/free-christmas-stock-photos/">Digg this | title="Stumble on StumbleUpon" href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/20/free-christmas-stock-photos/">Stumble on StumbleUpon! | title="Tweet us!" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=@tweetmeme%20@smashingmag%20Reading%20'Free%20Christmas%20Stock%20Photos'%20http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/20/free-christmas-stock-photos/">Tweet it! | title="Bookmark in Reddit" href="http://reddit.com/submit?url=http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/20/free-christmas-stock-photos/">Submit to Reddit | href="http://forum.smashingmagazine.com/">Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/tag/freebies/" rel="tag">Freebies

Google Does Real Time Search : See It For Popeye

Google announced a dozen things yesterday, but one of those announcements was on real time search in the search results. Google teamed up with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca to make these real time search results possible.

In short, Google sticks another “universal result” in the search results when they feel a real time result makes sense. For example, a search for popeye, which is currently trending due to the Google Doodle Popeye logo, shows this real time result:

Google Popeye on Real Time Results

Yes, that is my tweet showing a link to this site. In fact, it also shows other Tweeting links to my story. Here is a link to the real time landing page results.

Here is a video explaining this in more detail:

We have threads on this announcement at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums. The consensus in the threads are that this clutters up the search results even more and do not provide a simple interface for people to find relevant results. Of course, most SEOs don’t want their web results pushed down in the search results page – but SEOs will adapt and use Twitter, Facebook and so on to make sure their results do show up in that area when applicable.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.



Google announced a dozen things yesterday, but one of those announcements was on real time search in the search results. Google teamed up with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca to make these real time search results possible.

In short, Google sticks another “universal result” in the search results when they feel a real time result makes sense. For example, a search for popeye, which is currently trending due to the Google Doodle Popeye logo, shows this real time result:

Google Popeye on Real Time Results

Yes, that is my tweet showing a link to this site. In fact, it also shows other Tweeting links to my story. Here is a link to the real time landing page results.

Here is a video explaining this in more detail:

We have threads on this announcement at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums. The consensus in the threads are that this clutters up the search results even more and do not provide a simple interface for people to find relevant results. Of course, most SEOs don’t want their web results pushed down in the search results page – but SEOs will adapt and use Twitter, Facebook and so on to make sure their results do show up in that area when applicable.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.



Free High-Quality Magento Theme: Sigyn SM


  

We love our readers. We respect the hard work of designers and developers across the globe. And we do our best to make the web design community stronger and the Web a little bit prettier. Therefore we work with talented artists and creative professionals to showcase their skills and release something unique and beautiful as a gift to the community. And in the end truly impressive works see the light of day.

Magento Theme

Today we are glad to release Sigyn SM — a free high-quality Magento theme created by Silverthemes.com especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The theme has a unique grungy design that stands out and can serve as a good baseline for your Magento-powered online shops.

width="650">
width="650"> style="width:650px;"> src="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/static/smashing-magazine-advertisement.gif" alt="Smashing-magazine-advertisement in Free High-Quality Magento Theme: Sigyn SM" border="0" /> /> href="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/www/delivery/ck.php?zoneid=56" > src="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=56" border="0" alt=" in Free High-Quality Magento Theme: Sigyn SM" />  href="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/www/delivery/ck.php?zoneid=63" > src="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=63" border="0" alt=" in Free High-Quality Magento Theme: Sigyn SM" />  href="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/www/delivery/ck.php?zoneid=64" > src="http://creatives.commindo-media.de/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=64" border="0" alt=" in Free High-Quality Magento Theme: Sigyn SM" />

src="http://imp.constantcontact.com/imp/cmp.jsp?impcc=IMP_DIMPBPRSMASHRSS&o=http://img.constantcontact.com/lp/images/standard/spacer.gif" alt="Spacer in Free High-Quality Magento Theme: Sigyn SM" border="0" width="1" height="1" />

We love our readers. We respect the hard work of designers and developers across the globe. And we do our best to make the web design community stronger and the Web a little bit prettier. Therefore we work with talented artists and creative professionals to showcase their skills and release something unique and beautiful as a gift to the community. And in the end truly impressive works see the light of day.

Today we are glad to release Sigyn SM — a free high-quality Magento theme created by href="http://www.silverthemes.com">Silverthemes.com especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The theme has a unique grungy design that stands out and can serve as a good baseline for your Magento-powered online shops.

Download the Magento theme for free!

The theme is released under GPL. You can use it for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. Please link to this article if you would like to spread the word. You may modify the theme as you wish.

href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/magento-free-theme/promo-full.jpg" title="Visit the demo"> src="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/magento-free-theme/magento-free-theme.jpg" width="446" height="392" alt="Magento-free-theme in Free High-Quality Magento Theme: Sigyn SM" />

  • href="http://demo.silverthemes.com/sigynsm">live demo (currently offline)
  • href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/magento-free-theme/promo-full.jpg">large preview 1
  • href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/magento-free-theme/categories-full.jpg">large preview 2
  • href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/magento-free-theme/product-full.jpg">large preview 3
  • href="http://www.silverthemes.com/wiki/doku.php?id=sigynsm">installation and configuration guide
  • href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/magento-free-theme/SigynSM-magento-theme.zip">download the theme (0.2 Mb)

Screenshots

Below you’ll find more screenshots of the theme. You can click on an image to see the enlarge version.

Promo area

href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/magento-free-theme/promo-full.jpg"> src="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/magento-free-theme/promo.jpg" width="526" height="421" alt="Promo in Free High-Quality Magento Theme: Sigyn SM" />

Checkout page

href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/magento-free-theme/checkout-full.jpg"> src="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/magento-free-theme/checkout.jpg" width="500" height="430" alt="Checkout in Free High-Quality Magento Theme: Sigyn SM" />

Product page

href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/magento-free-theme/product-full.jpg"> src="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/magento-free-theme/htc.jpg" width="500" height="425" alt="Htc in Free High-Quality Magento Theme: Sigyn SM" />

Categories page

href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/magento-free-theme/categories-full.jpg"> src="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/magento-free-theme/categories-small.jpg" width="500" height="533" alt="Categories-small in Free High-Quality Magento Theme: Sigyn SM" />

Search bar

href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/magento-free-theme/product-full.jpg"> src="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/magento-free-theme/searchbar.jpg" width="434" height="104" alt="Searchbar in Free High-Quality Magento Theme: Sigyn SM" />

Tabs

href="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/magento-free-theme/product-full.jpg"> src="http://media.smashingmagazine.com/cdn_smash/wp-content/uploads/images/magento-free-theme/tabs.jpg" width="500" height="240" alt="Tabs in Free High-Quality Magento Theme: Sigyn SM" />

Thank you, guys! We appreciate your work and your good intentions.

Last but not least…

We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists. You may not know it yet, but we might feature you in one of our upcoming posts.

If you would like to release a high-quality free font, a WordPress-theme, some wallpapers or an icon-set please href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/contact/index.php/form">contact us — we would like to support you with the broad coverage on Smashing Magazine.

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Post tags: href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/tag/freebies/" rel="tag">Freebies, href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/tag/magento/" rel="tag">magento

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