In recent weeks, the new online social networking site Google+ has come under scrutiny because of its adoption of a real names policy that disallows people to use pseudonyms, even when those pseudonyms are well established. Earlier this week, Eric Schmidt addressed the issue at the Edinburgh International TV Festival.</p> <p>According to Schmidt, the purpose behind the real names policy is to encourage people to ?stand for something? and be ?willing to express themselves?. He also says that if using a real name poses danger to an individual, then Google+ is the wrong platform for them.</p> <p>"In fact, many many people want to get in, if you don't want to use it, you don't have to," he says.</p> <p>Schmidt went on to explain that, at least in the Western world, people should be identified by a real name. </p> <p>The core of Schmidt?s message is quite clear: if you do not want to use your real identity, then Google+ is not the right venue for you.</p> <p>So what does this mean to internet content and how we use and disperse it? People often assume they are accessing content in complete anonymity. Then they share and discuss that content safely from behind online avatars and fake names. Google+ is intent on changing that. Yes, this is an optional platform, but is it setting a trend? Fake identities have been a key part of internet use for a long time. Is this about to change for good? </p> <p>What do you think about having your real name associated with what you read, share, do, and say online?<br />

Recent research released about people?s internet habits has uncovered some interesting, yet not entirely unsurprising findings. The study concluded that the most popular activities performed online are searching and e-mail. Although a wide variety of demographics were covered, taking into account the age, race, economic background, and class of respondent, the results were the same for each group.</p> <p>Search Engines Still Key</p> <p>The research has confirmed that search engines remain a key part of our online lives, more so it seems than social networking sites. Although the social networking sites have gained a great deal of momentum since their spectacular emergence on the scene, especially with certain sectors and age groups, the common denominator is the search engine. </p> <p>Effective Marketing</p> <p>In order to drive the most traffic to your website, people need to be finding it in search engines. In order to optimise your search engine ranking, and see your site on the first page, well written and relevant content is required. Google?s latest algorithm for ranking sites, Panda, is punishing sites that flood their web pages with acres of meaningless keyword phrases and excessive hyperlinks by demoting them down the rankings.</p> <p>A Solution is at Hand</p> <p>The solution to Google Panda?s harsh stance is to ensure all content on your site is relevant, regularly updated, and of the highest quality. If your company does not have the resources to dedicate to writing articles for your site, Pure Content can help. Their freelance writing team can create relevant and regular content for your site, keeping it on the right side of the Panda algorithm.<br />

Glamour magazine, a publication owned by Conde? Nast, is introducing a social way for their readers to consume content via their mobile phones.</p> <p>Using mobile codes, the popular woman?s magazine will add interactive logos that, when scanned with a mobile phone, will lead the reader to more information about whatever they are reading or viewing.</p> <p>For instance, in September?s issue featuring pop singer Rihanna, readers can use their mobiles to interact with the Facebook logo featured on the cover to be taken to a video of the star answering questions about life as a pop star. Other logos, located throughout the issue, can be interacted with in a similar way ? providing information about contests, giveaways, and offers from various advertisers.</p> <p>On Facebook, readers can also ?Like? the magazine or advertisers and have deals delivered straight to their mobiles.</p> <p>?Our theme is social networking across the board,? Glamour creative service director Jenny Bowman told the New York Times. ?Social is so huge that we wanted to take it to the next step and make it seamless for our audience.?</p> <p>While other publications have experimented with mobile quick response ideas before, Glamour?s Facebook-enabled September issue is a first of its kind, using Spyder Lynk Social Snap Tags rather than barcodes.<br /> Allure magazine, which is also owned by Conde? Nast published, a ?Free Stuff? issue in August using Microsoft tags. According to an Allure representative, their magazine has drawn over 400,000 interactions so far this year.<br />

In an eight-minute video posted on YouTube, futurists and media experts Ross Dawson and Gerd Leonhard discuss the possibility of a future TNN ? Twitter News Network.</p> <p>According to recently released data from ComScore, 32.8 million users were active on Twitter last month, sending hundreds of billions of tweets linking to digital content in various formats. That is a lot of information to sift through.<br /> To help with the information overload, the idea of TNN has been bandied around by a few people, including co-founder Biz Stone. In an interview last year, Stone told Reuters, ?I think a Twitter news service would be something that would be very open and shared with many different news organisations around the world.?</p> <p>However, the idea remains just that; there is no visible evidence that Twitter has actively pursued the idea of an open newswire.</p> <p>In the video, the futurists discuss several things, including what makes Twitter attractive as a news feed: speed. News hits Twitter in seconds whereas traditional news outlets take minutes to report. However, there is a reason for this, and this is the Twitter downside: lack of editing and verification. Twitter news ? via content writing, video production, and audio ? is produced by the masses. Therefore, the reader must be able to mentally filter out invalid and inaccurate information.</p> <p>In a world where information is king and there is often too much of it, Twitter is an incredibly useful source ? if you know how to use it. These experts believe that a Twitter News Network would build on that.</p>

According to recent figures published at wordpress.org, the popular open source publishing platform has seen substantial growth over the past year ? now serving as the power behind 14.7% of the world?s top one million websites. This is in comparison to 8.5% from last year.<br /> The released data also shows that out of every 100 new active domains in the United States, 22 of them are running WordPress. A recent user and developer survey of over 18,000 people also showed that the approximate 6,800 self-employed designers responsible for over 170,000 WordPress sites have a median income of $50 US per hour; generating $29.5 million worth of work (based on three hours per site). This is good news in a time of economic downturn.<br /> Initially released in 2003 as a fork of b2/cafelog, today WordPress is the most popular CMS (content management system) on the internet. Features include a web template system where widgets can be arranged and rearranged without the need to edit PHP or HTML, themes with advanced customisation capabilities, and an integrated link management system. A clean permalink structure that is search-engine friendly and ability to assign nested multiple category designations to content are part of what make the program so attractive. Track backs and ping backs are supported and articles can be tagged and automatic filters help to keep formatting standardised ? for instance, converting regular quotes to smart quotes. WordPress also supports native applications for most mobile platforms, including iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry, and Android.<br /> Here at Purecontent, over 50% of our clients use WordPress.

Adobe has just released the new beta form of their newest of web design software, which has been simplified to cater to users unfamiliar with HTML. Code named ?Muse?, the software is currently free to users wanting to participate in beta testing.</p> <p>When the program is opened, users are greeted with a site familiar in Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign; a blank page waiting to be filled. From there, they can proceed to add and arrange the varying elements desired for their new web page: links, blocks of text, images, and so forth. </p> <p>The key attraction to the software is that there is no need to know or even understand HTML coding. Users are guided through a series of site maps and master pages using the familiar Adobe design palette. Interactivity options include automatically generated navigation, widgets, image overlays, mouse over features, anchors, and slideshows. </p> <p>Once the website is created, Muse takes the user through the steps of publishing their new site to the web; with offers of a trial site for testing, web hosting services, HTML export, and multiple browser compatibility.<br /> When compared to Adobe Dreamweaver, Muse seems to be more simplistic and easier to use program, but at the sacrifice of at least some functionality. </p> <p>Currently, Muse is available free for download in beta form. Official release is anticipated for the early part of 2012. It is anticipated that the cost upon official release will be in the arena of $180 US, or approximately </p>

The popular cosmetics company Avon and domestic violence charity Refuge have joined together to launch a Facebook campaign with the intention of highlighting the fact that one in four women are likely to become victim of some sort of domestic abuse.</p> <p>The campaign, which is called 1in4women, includes a Facebook application that uses the one-in-four statistic to calculate how many of the friends someone has may have experienced domestic violence at some point in their lives. Once calculated, a personalised message highlighting the statistic is posted to the user?s wall and news feeds.</p> <p>According to Sandra Horley, CEO at Refuge, how well the campaign does will depend upon how seriously people take it. If women respond well to the message, there is hope that it will encourage others to come forward.<br /> ?Domestic violence cuts through all social barriers - it can happen to any woman,? Horley says. ?The Facebook app will bring the reality of the numbers of women likely to be affected by domestic violence to the forefront of people?s minds and generate much needed support for victims.?</p> <p>In addition to Facebook, the 1in4women campaign will also access Avon?s own social media platform, called Avon Connects. Angela Tucker, a national sales director for Avon UK says, ?Harnessing Avon?s unprecedented woman-to-woman network of representatives and the significant reach of social media, we are determined to confront this issue.?</p> <p>The support of a cause through content and social media is one of the many strategies companies can use to increase brand awareness and loyalty, while giving something back to the community.<br />

Google has announced that they have just purchased Motorola Mobility, an announcement that has the potential to complete change the landscape in the mobile arena.<br /> With the addition of Motorola, Google is not only gaining access to over 17,000 patents, it is expanding its horizons to include hardware; making it possible for Google to build the perfect platform for its already popular Android OS.</p> <p>In truth, the only thing that has held Google back from being the pure competition Apple has always lacked is the inability to create that perfect synergy between hardware and software. With this acquisition, this is no longer the case. In addition, the acquisition puts Google in a good position to defend itself in the ongoing patent wars. Moreover, of course, the move also makes those very strange bids from Google regarding the Nortel patents make more sense. Seriously, bidding the distance from the earth to the sun? Surely, somewhere inside, Apple and others had to be thinking that something was up.</p> <p>For Google, this is the biggest acquisition in its history. For Silicon Valley, it is the largest since 2008. For the consumer, it means that competition stays strong and heated; just the way we need it to be. For the online business that uses content, custom news feeds, and video production as part of their marketing strategy, it means continued major improvements to the way users consume their articles and content on their mobiles and tablets. It also means that Google+ is looking more and more important as an addition to a social media strategy.

Conservative MP Louise Mensch has spoken out via her Twitter account to back Prime Minister David Cameron?s suggestion that social networking sites be shut down during times of crisis, as with the recent riots in London and elsewhere.</p> <p>In her tweets, Mensch forwarded the idea that a ?brief temporary shutdown? of social networking sites such as Facebook, Google+, and Twitter would aid in preventing false rumours from spreading. ?Common sense?, she tweets. ?If riot info and fear is spreading by Facebook & Twitter, shut them off for an hour or two, then restore. World won?t implode.?</p> <p>Later, she was seen tweeting to John Prescott regarding the issue: ?Limited interrupt of Twitter, briefly & during a national emergency IF needed, is hardly the end of the world. We survive maintenance.?</p> <p>The discussions of banning social media in times of national crisis to prevent people from communicating in order to form riot groups has resulted in people on some social networking sites to make comparisons between the United Kingdom and China, where social media censorship is a daily fact of life.</p> <p>At some point this week, representatives from Facebook, Twitter and Research in Motion, whose BlackBerry Messenger was used to organise some of the riots, will be meeting with Home Secretary Theresa May to discuss the issue. Facebook for one has shown a desire to cooperate, stating that it has already removed ?credible threats of violence? from its site in recent days. Twitter?s only comment has been, ?We?d be happy to listen.?<br />

Despite a general outcry from its users, Google?s new social networking platform G+ has decided to disallow the use of nicknames and pseudonyms in the place of real names. However, unlike its first sweep, which saw users having their accounts deleted without warning, Google promises that they will issue a warning before suspending an account.</p> <p>The purpose of the Common Names Policy is simple: using real names encourages people to behave better, putting Google in a better position to combat spam content and the creation of fake profiles for trolling purposes.</p> <p>While this is all well and good for the majority of users; there are some who will be adversely affected by the Common Names Policy: people who rely upon commonly-known pseudonyms rather than their real names to communicate with their audience and people who are in positions where to publish their real name could place them in the way of harm serve as two examples.</p> <p>Still, according to Product Manager Saurabh Sharma, Google+ is about facilitating connection with people on the web in the same way you connect with people in real life; therefore, real names are necessary.</p> <p>Profiles that are deemed to be using a name that breaches the Common Names Policy will be issued a warning and be given four days to address the issue. During the grace period, users under warning can continue to publish and interact with Google+ as usual. If the name is not corrected at the end of the four days, the profile will be suspended.<br />