Twitter Announces Changes to Header, No More 3rd Party Image Apps

Twitter made some changes this week that were met with less-than-enthusiastic fanfare from its estimated 140 million active users. The big news is the new profile, which allows you to update your header photo above your tweets with a Facebook Timeline-like image. A recent post by Marketing Land gives a step- by-step tutorial on updating your Twitter header. In addition, a photo stream will now appear below a user’s most recent tweets on iPhone, Android and iPad.

The changes seem to be mostly aimed at mobile users, and as one twitter user pointed out, “who uses the web interface anyway?” According to Twitter’s blog, your background image on Twitter.com will still be present, but the new header is supposed to enhance the user experience, and supports simplicity and consistency on iPhone, Android and iPad, which seems to be a goal of Twitter and leads us to the next big change.

At the same time the new header announcement was made, Twitter dropped its thrid party image hosts from its official apps and launched new versions of its own iOS and Android apps. This has left a bad taste for many users who feel that Twitter is turning its back on those companies that helped make the platform bigger and better, as evidenced by the comments below this Mashable article.

Have you updated your Twitter header? Send us a link to your profile and tell us what you think of the changes. 

@TodayShow updated its header in time for Twitter's big announcement, which was made on their show Tuesday morning

The Intersection of Search and Social Media

Last night I attended the South Florida Interactive Marketing Association's monthly meeting event. The speaker was Brett Tabke who is the founder and CEO of Webmaster World and Chairman of PubCon. What a wonderful opportunity to hear first-hand commentary from one of the web's most well-respected contributors. Here are just a few snippets I found interesting:

Google Places: With the resurgence of small to medium sized business investing in online marketing, a Google Places listing is carrying more weight in SEO. Location data is important to Google.

Sentiment: Positive sentiment has meaning. Earlier this year Google purchased sentiment analysis start-up fflick and we're seeing the results on the SERP. Popular sites with positive sentiment are reaping the rewards.

Purchase Data: 90% of all purchases are made within a 90-mile radius of the consumer's home. This means only 10% of all purchases are made online. If we're researching online and buying in brick and mortar stores then as online marketers, we've only scratched the surface with a 10% market penetration.

Google Factoid: The search engine knows A LOT about you. Consider that over 70% of business are using Google Analytics and you know the Google data collection is incredible. How incredible? Google can even detect your level of education just by the typing speed of your search query says Tabke.

Social Graph: We've seen the launch of Google+1 and we know Klout scores have an impact. Targeting your results to your personal social graph is smart since 78% of us trust recommendations from friends vs advertisers.

Tablet Boom: 1 in 3 people use a tablet more than they watch TV. No wonder Time-Warner is launching an app to make it easier to watch TV on your iPad. Tabke reports that 28% of people say their tablet is their primary computer. They are so easy to use they are making huge strides in the senior market. The power of tablets lies in the apps. Tabke's prediction? Look for tablet apps to encroach on web use and users to search for information within the walls of an app. How does that impact YOUR search strategy?

This is only a small sample of Tabke's presentation. I think I just may need to attend Pubcon this year.

Advertising on iPads

With the recent release of Apple’s iPad, one may wonder how to ensure their pay per click ads will show on this device. Since it is indeed a mobile device, your pay per click campaigns must be set to run on mobile devices, rather just on desktop or laptop computers. In Google Adwords, this can be set in the “Settings” tab of each of your campaigns.

The current problem, however, is that if you are running ads on an iPad, you will also be running your ads on mobile phones. The issue with mobile phones is that since the screens are so small, pay per click ads are often clicked by mistake, therefore costing you money.

Google intends to resolve this issue, however, by including an option to run ads specifically on iPads, rather than all mobile devices. So for now, if you want your ads to show on an iPad, set your ads to display on “All mobile devices” in the Adwords settings. If you don’t want to take the risk of running ads on phones, however, you may want to wait until Google updates the settings.

iPad Lessons for Marketers - My First Take

Like most tech geeks I had to get my hands on the new iPad today, launch day April 3, 2010.

When I first held the iPad it was a bit heavier than I expected. Even though I had heard it was heavier than a Kindle it looks so much like an iPhone it feels heavy when you first pick it up.

Apple always amazes with their marketing, which is exciting given that we have been thrilled by them so many times in the recent past. The lines at the store were well organized and the store itself had a nice new clean fresh look. These iPad signs (below) are remarkably simple, yet incredibly clean and communicative. Apple hired four new employees for this store to manage iPad demand, I was very excited to see our summer intern started his first day at the Apple Store! Congrats @Zobey

The 1st lesson for marketers - launch new products with a bang! Make it special. Make it exciting. Make it a big deal!

Lesson #2 - think through the executional details. How are you going to handle lines, calls to your customer service department, FAQ's on your website. Apple hired new employees and set up speacial bootcamp training well in advance of launch. The 'Genius' who handled our purchase was well versed in iPad and familiar with the options and gave us a great demo.




















The 3rd lesson for Marketers - look at your site on the iPad. When I looked at Ten Golden Rules (below) I found out that our Flash intro did not show up - oh yeah I heard that iPad doesn't run Flash -doh! (Note to self - create an iPad friendly version of intro.)

If your site doesn't work perfectly check out this Apple page getting Sites Ready for iPad.



The 4th lesson for marketers is that a lot of people might use the iPad vertically. Most of us trying it in the store start out this way. Why? Well you hold an 8 1/2 x 11 page vertically. You hold an iPhone vertically. The screen is incredibly crisp and clear and our site read very clearly. But we design most websites for a vertical layout. This may change for iPad users.








The 5th Lesson for marketers - think of everything. Apple has learned their lessons the hard way. The early iPods scratched a lot, now they launch with a full slate of accessories. The store was well stocked with cases, Bluetooth keyboards, and stands that double as chargers. The ingenious case also can hold your iPad in two angled positions one for typing and one for watching movies.



Lesson #6 - Be prepared to tie in to big events. The iPad launch is a big event for marketers. YouTube recognized this and launched movie rentals about ten days ago. iTunes Store also features movies very prominently. What can you do with iPad? Can you develop a cool App to bring your product to your prospects? How can you make it easy or fun to do business with you?

More thoughts to follow once I listen to our Internet Marketing Podcast and play with some Apps :)