Ciaran Norris' Blog

Micro-blogging service Twitter launched back in March of 2006 and was thought by many to have 'tipped' at last year's SXSW tech conference in Austin, Texas.

But a slew of recent articles, including one in today's Guardian, suggests that it might be about to tip again. And this is why you should care.

In a world where I can keep in touch with friends & peers via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and numerous other online networks, travelling to meet them in person seems rather strange.

And yet, as a trip to Sydney last week showed, there's still nothing to beat physical contact.

When talking about reputation management, many companies will explain the importance of utilising SEO to ensure that negative comments do not rank highly for searches against a brand.

But when dealing with negative PR, it's important to consider multimedia & paid search as well.

Many in the SEO world joke that if an agency or consultant starts talking about title or meta tags to potential clients, they should be ignored as this sort of thing is now considered very basic and suggests that the SEO doesn't know what they're talking about.

But looking at the websites of some pretty major brands, it's clear that for many people, SEO 101 is still pretty advanced.

Barely a day goes past without online commentators complaining about how the music industry is doomed because it doesn't 'get' the web.

Yet recent actions suggest this may be changing, which is more than can be said for the promoters of the national game.

A recent study has shown that a lot of traditional publishing companies have struggled to implement and make the most of user-generated content (UGC), with costs and efficiency listed as the main reasons.

But those that worry that enough people aren't submitting UGC may be missing out on the much larger numbers who interact with it.

When scanning search results, the only things that users have to decide which one to click on is its position in the rankings, the text of the link and the snippet of text displayed.

You wouldn't let the Royal Mail decide on the text of a piece of direct marketing so why let Google decide what text to display on these critical three lines?

Using print advertising to drive traffic to online properties is a great example of integrated marketing.

Except when the consumers can't access the site.

Commentators have been predicting the explosion of the mobile web for years now, but a couple of factors suggest that this year they may be right.