Quick Online Tips

Free Encyclopedia Britannica Subscription for Airtel Broadband Users
What is a LinkedIn LION?
Google MayDay Algorithm May Crash Your Long Tail Traffic
New Digg v4.0 Gets More Social for Good [Video]

Free Encyclopedia Britannica Subscription for Airtel Broadband Users

Posted: 29 May 2010 02:07 AM PDT

Now all Airtel Broadband customers in India can get a 2 year free subscription to Encyclopedia Britannica (worth Rs.6575). EB is a undoubtedly the biggest authoritative resource of information with over 100 million users.

In a press release, Jorge Cauz, President Encyclopaedia Britannica says

“Britannica Online contains rich information along with rich multimedia, and that makes it an excellent match for Bharti Airtel’s broadband service. India is one of the largest English speaking markets and is an important market to EB’s expansion plans in the Asia Pacific. We believe the Indian broadband users will enjoy EB’s rich, up-to-date and accurate information and we welcome their active participation as part of our growing community. As broadband become more widely available in India, we hope that more families can enjoy EB’s various online services and share the knowledge we are committed to provide more than 240 years. This agreement is an important step in that direction.”

Airtel users can simply visit www.eb.com and log in to premium content without the need for a username or password. As I visit Encyclopedia Britannica from my Airtel connection, it seems Airtel got a good deal as they managed to take over the EB page by displaying 2 huge ad banners over the fold on their websites and one below the fold.

airtel britannica ads

As I browsed through the articles, each EB article was overpowered by as many as 8 Airtel ads per page, depending on the length of the article/page. I don’t expect non-Airtel users to see these banners (or are you also seeing them?)

Either way, enjoy Airtel users can now enjoy the free Encyclopedia Britannica content. My kid is super excited about this.

Original article: Free Encyclopedia Britannica Subscription for Airtel Broadband Users
Copyright 2010. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

What is a LinkedIn LION?

Posted: 29 May 2010 12:28 AM PDT

Guest post by Patrick Curl.
What is a LinkedIn LION? I’ve been in social media for quite awhile, so it’s quite funny that as often as I’ve logged into the social networking site LinkedIn – I’ve never bothered to ask the question regarding what a “Lion” is. Lion can be found in the descriptions for hundreds if not thousands of users on the social networking site.

What does LION mean on LinkedIn?

Lion simply means: LinkedIn Open Networker. It’s basically a philosophy, that if you connect with me, I’ll connect with you and together we can help each other gain wider reach.

It’s similar to twitter programs that auto-follow users, and directories like ifollowback.com where users can follow people who autofollow other people. I think with Twitter it definitely can be limiting if you follow too many people, after all a lot of pointless noise is created by following so many people. Yet, that’s the nature of twitter – it’s a noise machine.

Linkedin on the other hand is about networking with business owners, CEO’s, entrepreneurs, and professionals from all walks of life. Each connection via LinkedIn could be said to have more substance. For one thing, professionals tend to think before they post content, and only say something when it’s important to their audience or prospects.

How to become a LinkedIn LION?

Simple: Just throw LION in your description or username – so when people search for ‘lions’ they can find you. Also be open to accepting connections with perfect strangers. Think of it this way – these strangers could be your future boss, coworkers, sales, or business partners.

In business every relationship is valuable, it’s good etiquette as a LION to not report people who connect with you, and to not choose ‘I don’t know’ when you get a connection notification. These can sometimes hinder people who are looking to connect, and cause problems for them – if you don’t want to connect with someone just ignore the connection instead of responding with IDK.

There’s also a number of groups on linked in devoted to being a LION. Feel free to join these to chat with others who share this philosophy of open networking. Two popular ones are: TopLinked.com (Open Networkers), and The New Lions. Whether you decide to become a LION or not – at least now you will know what it means to be a LION, next time you’re browsing the people directory on LinkedIN.

Guest author Patrick Curl is a proud LION(Open Networker), social media consultant, entrepreneur, and blogger. Feel free to connect with him on Linkedin – and don’t worry he accepts ALL connections! Image credits to fanz under CC license. You can also write guest posts and share your LinkedIn tips.

Original article: What is a LinkedIn LION?
Copyright 2010. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

Google MayDay Algorithm May Crash Your Long Tail Traffic

Posted: 28 May 2010 11:48 PM PDT

Google MayDay update significantly changed the Google algorithm and is affecting long tail traffic of major websites, as Google attempts for “higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries“.

Caught by the Google MayDay buzz at WebmasterWorld with crashing traffic reports by webmasters, Google’s Vanessa Fox writes -

This change seems to have primarily impacted very large sites with "item" pages that don't have many individual links into them, might be several clicks from the home page, and may not have substantial unique and value-added content on them. For instance, ecommerce sites often have this structure. The individual product pages are unlikely to attract external links and the majority of the content may be imported from a manufacturer database. Of course, as with any change that results in a traffic hit for some sites, other sites experience the opposite. Based on Matt's comment at Google I/O, the pages that are now ranking well for these long tail queries are from "higher quality" sites (or perhaps are "higher quality" pages).

This is a major change in Google ranking strategy which will definitely change the search engine ranking of many sites. Create good unique content and present it as a good site architecture Google via sitemaps, robots.txt and META tags, and you should be fine.

Did the Google MayDay algorithm update affect your Google search traffic?

Original article: Google MayDay Algorithm May Crash Your Long Tail Traffic
Copyright 2010. Quick Online Tips. All Rights Reserved.

New Digg v4.0 Gets More Social for Good [Video]

Posted: 28 May 2010 11:14 PM PDT

The new upcoming Digg version 4.0 promises to get more social integration and change the way stories are promoted to the Digg homepage, becoming more like other social link sharing services, but now your story may actually hit your Digg front page.

See the sneak preview video of the new Digg 4.

Your new Digg homepage is called MyNewsand will show links from people and publishers you follow. Import your social graphs from Facebook, Twitter and then if a user diggs a story, all followers of that user will then see it in their feed, and this viral chain reaction can drive huge Digg traffic. So Top Diggers will have lesser control in getting your story on the Digg home page.

Now you don’t get banned, spammed and frowned upon by submitting all your stories to Digg and cheating Digg get tougher everytime. Just like Twitter, Buzz and Facebook pages, you can now auto-publish all your new articles via RSS feeds to Digg, removing the need to submit to Digg, so actually all stories will start with 1 Digg. Even if someone wants to add your link to Digg, it is much simpler than before – Add URL and Digg will autogenerate an image, title and summary!

You hardly see any Digg buttons on websites and blogs, being replaced by retweet and facebook like buttons. While we could expect a good article to hit Digg front page a few years back, now it is nearly impossible to hit the Digg homepage and we have not been on Digg for the last few years. I really hope this makes Digg better.

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2010/05/29