Tracer helps you protect your website

These days, piracy is a hot topic both online and off. While music and software remain the most pirated, your website can be copied just as easily, if not easier. But with the many millions of websites and blogs in existence you couldn’t possibly keep tabs on all of them. Enter Tracer, a service that helps you track what’s being copied directly from your website.

How does it work? (from Tracer’s FAQ)
Tracer does a couple of interesting things: it tracks user engagement on your site by tracking copy and paste activity and automatically adds a link back to your content when it is pasted somewhere else.

By adding some simple javascript code, you’ll be on your way to protecting your content. It’s actually pretty easy to set up and use. To help you, Tracer gives you step-by-step directions for some of the most widely used blogging platforms including Blogger, Ning, TypePad, and WordPress.

Here’s a video that walks you through how Tracer works and what it can do for you:

Extreme Microblogging

Many people have written about how great Twitter is, and more so, how addicting and consuming it can become. We seem to have an addiction to all things tiny: tinyurl, twitter, 12seconds, and now… we’ve taken our microblogging fascination to the extreme. Enter Flutter, the microblogging platform with a maximum of 26 characters per update.

MySpace Gets “Married”

MySpace recently announced its new venture into reality TV by way of its web-based reality show, “Married on MySpace.” The show will follow one couple’s experience leading right up to their wedding day. What makes this show unique, however, is that MySpace members will be in control of the decision making and planning of the event.

Couples can submit their own video where users can vote on who they would like to be featured on the show. From there, users will vote on various other details of the show and the event like location, when and where to celebrate bachelor and bachelorette parties, what everyone will wear, etc. MySpace is planning 13 total episodes to air exclusively on the site.

For a social networking site that has recently fallen behind the rankings when compared to giants like Facebook, anything they can do to engage their community is a step in the right direction. We’ll be following the development of this project and we’ll keep you updated. For now, here’s a look at the trailer:

Spending your Time Wisely

I had the privilege of speaking at a New Media Seminar this week in Richmond, VA. I met a lot of nice people and got to share a little bit about choosing the right social networks and some basic social media Dos and Don’ts. My co-presenter and host of the event, Dave Saunders brought up a good point: If you don’t have anything to blog about, don’t have a blog. Although using social media to connect with consumers is free, the time it takes to pull it off is often an afterthought. Here are some tips on managing your time…

1. Identify your goals (video views, location-based awareness, networking, sales leads etc.)
2. Choose only networks that help you reach your goals (i.e. LinkedIn for professional networking)
3. If you don’t have anything to blog about, don’t blog (don’t do something just to do it, there should be a purpose in everything you do or else you are just wasting time and money)
4. Search for guides to help you use networks better (rather than taking the time to discover it on your own)
5. Look for current trends and see if you can leverage them for additional awareness for you or your brand

How “social” are we?

Today I hopped on Twitter to catch up with friends and contacts that I haven’t spoken to this busy weekend. Upon logging in, I noticed a bunch of new followers. Yay! Sort of… Here’s a shot of the Direct Message inbox:

Some of these people are users that have followed me and then, this is the message I received when i followed back. With robotic auto-reply messages like these, how “social” are we, really? Twitter is a great place to connect with others like yourself or others you hope to form relationships with. Auto-messaging may hinder that by feeling like a piece of direct mail rather than a hand shake.

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to receive a message from every person i follow; I just hope its genuine.

This is important to keep in mind when building a new or a current Twitter account. People know when they are being “sold” something, so take a second to learn a little bit about someone you’re reaching out to. After all, this is social media.

Having said that, I also understand that it can be hard to reach all your followers, especially if you’ve got thousands. Unfortunately, Twitter has sort of become an arms race to the most followers, but the number of followers isn’t as important as the relationships you make. For a great guide on what NOT to do, check out @PRsarahevans‘ post on how NOT to build your Twitter account.