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Tag: Internet
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Intwition: tracking links on Twitter
Intwition tracks what people are linking to and talking about on Twitter. The site allows you to enter any domain, and will generate a report on which pages in that domain have been linked to, how many times, and by whom. It works by scanning Twitter’s public feed for posts with links, while resolving any shortened urls (such as tinyurl). What to do with Intwition? Find whose twittering about your website!
The truth is people don’t read very much, often scanning text instead of really reading it. On the average Web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely. This is at least what recent eyetracking studies showed.
In the study, the authors instrumented 25 users’ browsers and recorded extended information about everything they did as they went about their normal Web activities.
Among other things, the authors found that the Back button is now only the 3rd most-used feature on the Web. Clicking hypertext links remains the most-used feature, but clicking buttons (on the page) has now overtaken Back to become the second-most used feature. The reason for this change is the increased prevalence of applications and feature-rich Web pages that require users to click page buttons to access their functionality.
So, what do people really see on a page? Eyetracking visualizations show that users often read Web pages in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe.
Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F’s top bar.
Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F’s lower bar.
Finally, users scan the content’s left side in a vertical movement. Sometimes this is a fairly slow and systematic scan that appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. Other times users move faster, creating a spottier heatmap. This last element forms the F’s stem.
Click here for full results survey results about the F-shaped pattern.
Other interesting results:
Banner ad blindness: Users rarely look at display advertisements on websites. Of the four design elements that do attract a few ad fixations, one is unethical and reduces the value of advertising networks.
Fancy formatting is ignored: One site did most things right, but still had a miserable 14% success rate for its most important task. The reason? Users ignored a key area because it resembled a promotion.
Numbers are better then letter: It’s better to use “23” than “twenty-three” to catch users’ eyes when they scan Web pages for facts, according to eyetracking data.
Talking heads are boring: Eyetracking data show that users are easily distracted when watching video on websites, especially when the video shows a talking head and is optimized for broadcast rather than online viewing.
Looking for apps for Windows, OSX or Linux? Want to pimp your iPhone, Myspace or Facebook? Here is a selection of the top 10 resources:
- Chris Pirillo’s Blog – a selection of hundreds of Mac apps
- Mashable – Facebook apps
- Myspace Apps
- ITsecurity – security tools for Windows, Mac and Linux
- MakeUseOf – apps for USB sticks
- Old Apps – well, the name says it all
- Tiny Apps – hundreds of various apps
- Linux Online – all Linux applications
- Google Apps
- appSafari – apps for iPhone and iPod Touch
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The Future Of The Internet
Ten pivotal personalities involved with the evolving of the Internet weigh in on the last fifteen years and the future. Here are some excerpts:
SIR TIM BERNERS LEE:
…What’s exciting is that people are building new social systems, new systems of review, new systems of governance. My hope is that those will produce… new ways of working together effectively and fairly which we can use globally to manage ourselves as a planet.
PROFESSOR NIGEL SHADBOLT:
…The future is the Semantic web, or web 3.0. Rather than at the moment what you have to do is do some smart searching, and integrate through a lot of documents that are offered up to you, Web 3.0 will be able to do a lot of that information brokering for you.
PROFESSOR WENDY HALL:
…Everything is going mobile. And I think the big issue about access was you need a computer at the moment to access it properly. Well in the next two or three years that’s not going to be the case. You will be able to access it. The technology and the interfaces will change so that it’s much more accessible on a mobile device.
KAI-FU LEE:
…To we make sure the web continues to properly, democratically capture what most people believe we tune into the wisdom of the crowd, rather than being manipulated by fewer number who may have louder voices.
DR DAVID BELANGER:
…I think that the big challenge that the web has, much as the internet has faced before and is still facing, is the sheer diversity of the number of types of applications that want to run on it.
MITCHELL BAKER:
…In 15 years the web will be everywhere; in ways we don’t know. The web in that sense will be informational and the presentation of information will be in a way “we” like it.
MARK BERNSTEIN:
…It’s is going to become a very refined electronic community and a set of communities that will operate at many different levels; individual interests as well as broad social efforts.
ROBERT CAILLIAU:
…In much less than 15 years I think we need to figure out what the social impact is going to be of the Semantic web. I am not sure this is a good thing. I don’t know who is controlling it. And because it works by ontologies, who decides on what basis I am going to see things?
ROBERT SCOBLE:
…Everything is moving so fast. If you look at what I am doing with my cell phone now, transmitting live video around the world, that’s really different from just five months ago.
TIM O’REILLY:
…We are connected now to this network of devices and computers and they augment our intelligence and our ability to share, to communicate, and we as a culture are changing as a result. It’s the most profound change since the advent of literacy. And it’s bigger than the industrial revolution. We are on the front of a new renaissance; and that doesn’t mean all good things, there could be a lot of bad things there too.
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VisualRank – Google Image Search
On its Google Research blog, the company has offered a brief introduction to VisualRank, a system that sorts out images by means of visual cues rather than by text associated with the images.
The VisualRank system is not yet live, and Google intimated that the image search technology would not become more widely available anytime soon. It did say that “in the coming months” it would offer more details on an “approach that has an easy integration with both text and visual clues.”
Is Microsoft Google’s biggest threat? Nope. Is it Yahoo? Think again… Ben Kunz at Business Week wrote a very good article about how Google is actually its own biggest threat.
Google makes money by having ads displayed on your screen, whether when you’re doing a search on Google (these ads at the very top and on the side) but also on “affiliate” websites that use Adsense, Google’s advertising platform for publishers. For those of you who don’t know, publishers can make money from Google when they display Google ads on their site. Some people make really good money! Anyways.
This month’s Internet Trends Report by Morgan Stanley is mainly focused on social applications. The report shows us that 6 out of the 10 top Internet sites are social (youtube, live.com, facebook, hi5, wikipedia, orkut). For the information, none were on the list in 2005! Is email about to die???
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Top 100 websites
Alexa.com has this rating system where they give websites a rank. The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and data obtained from other, diverse traffic data sources, and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). While it’s not as relevant as Google Page Rank system, I think it gives a good trend about what’s happening. Alexa also compiles lists of the Top 100 / 500 websites, per country and per language. Looking at the Top 100 websites for the US, I realized that 6 of them are porn sites. We sure like porn in the States…
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The basics of SEO
I can’t get enough of these “basics of SEO” type of posts. I know everything about it but every time I read them it gives me new ideas.
Danny Dover posted on SEOmoz a great entry called “the beginner’s checklist for small business SEO”.
It’s not a goldmine of information but it definitely can help in your local SEO efforts.
Click here for full article.