Search engine optimization is an online marketing strategy to place a web site at the top of the search engines.

As you may know having a web site these days is a must. However, what good does a website provide if nobody is able to find it online? You can have the best web site in the world but, if nobody can find it , your money just goes down the drain.

Our goal is to place your web site under the natural results of the major search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN. What are natural Results? There are two kinds of search engine results you get when searching for a product or a service in the major search engines. One is a sponsor result and one is a natural result. The sponsor results are usually located on the very top of the page and on the right side of the page. In order to be at those spots you need to open an account with the search engine and you will pay per click. The natural results are located in the body of the page. Our aim is to place your site’s relevant keywords on the first page of the natural results. I can explain with details if you contact me.

We have two packages to offer:

1) Light optimization - $300

I will add important tags and titles and will optimize up to 30 pages within your site so they can be more search engine friendly. Furthermore, I will instruct on how to optimize the content (text) of your web site so you will get better results. This is a one time fee and there is not guarantee to place you on the top of the search engines. However, it can happen that after one month your web site starts appearing on the top results of the search engines for one or more keywords.

2) Heavy optimization – On a monthly basis (Depends on the keywords)

This process takes time but we guarantee our work. We will do the Light optimization package, plus we help you choose 10 top keywords and we will do a contract for 6 months. In these six months we will work on optimizing your site to the top of the search engines. We guarantee 2 top keywords on the top of the major search engines in 6 months. If you are satisfied with our work you may continue with our services until we achieve 5 or more keywords in one year. If we do not achieve 5 or more top keywords in 2 different search engines, in one year. We will work for free until we achieve the results! Plus, if you are not satisfied at any point in time, you may cancel the contract with 2 months in advance.

Our specialties include but are not limited to:

• Web site submissions manually with consistent results, year after year
• Search engine placement and positioning determined personally
• Online web advertising consultations and suggestions
• Search engine marketing strategy and proper registration
• Internet marketing consultants added as an extension to your business
• Targeted web site traffic from the types of customers you want, not from
  those free for all pages or link farm
  listing that many other submission services place your site into
• Search engine listings report at the end of the submission
• Web site optimization prior to the submission
• Meta tag creation with copyrighted and researched targeted industry related phrases
• Consistent web site rankings from the top search engines for the same targeted search terms
• Targeted submissions by industry, location on a national, local or international basis

AllFacebook has discovered that Facebook is now testing showing all liked news articles in its search results. This would obviously be a significant move as the company competes with Google. Nick O'Neill writes:

Apple's Ping Draws a Great Deal of Criticism

Apple's Ping social network, which the company launched as part of the new iTunes 10, has drawn a big mix of excitement and criticism. While most seem to agree that the concept beind Ping is a pretty good idea (social network-meets-music-buying) it's not exactly the seamless experience one might hope for.

 

Let's take a look at some points made around the Blogosphere.

 

Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch says, "The biggest problem I have with Ping is that it lives in iTunes. Not only does it live in iTunes, it is isolated there. iTunes is not social. It is not even on the Web. And Ping doesn’t communicate with any other social networks. I can’t see people’s iTunes Pings in Twitter, Facebook, or anywhere else. While Ping does make iTunes itself more social, the problem is that I don’t live in iTunes. It is a store. I go in to buy stuff and get out as fast as I can. I am not sure Ping is going to make me want to hang out there more."

 

WebProNews blog partner Bruce Houghton, who writes for the blog HypeBot, says, "Say what you will about iTune's new social network Ping, but it's going to be a great place to market music.  So imagine the frustration of the many indie artists - many of who are selling music on iTunes - when they learned  that there was  no obvious way to create an an artist profile in Ping."

 

"We asked Apple to explain and just heard back from a spokesperson that 'artist profiles were launched by invitation, but we'll keep adding more and more.'  No information was provided on who is handing invites or what criteria they are using," he adds.

 

Mashable founder Pete Cashmore says in a CNN piece, "iTunes Ping is a worthy concept: By adding social interaction to the music-buying experience, Apple could see a significant increase in sales, and artists could form a more direct connection to their fans. But until the majority of artists are able to create official accounts, iTunes Ping merely benefits the privileged few."

 

Wade Roush at Xconomy has some interesting ideas about Ping: "It's easy to see how Apple might expand Ping beyond music to facilitate conversations around media of all sorts, including movies, books, and mobile apps...Adding a social networking interface, on top of all of iTunes’ other functions, is like grafting another limb to the forehead of an octopus. It’s just too much."

 

Robert Scoble says, "By the way, if I were @loic I'd be PISSED that Apple infringed his ping.fm trademark." @loic, would be Loic Le Meur, founder of Seesmic, who also has a service called Ping.fm, for updating multiple social networks. 

 

The best commentary I've seen about Ping so far has to be Paul Carr's take though. He says, "Ping ping ping ping. Ping. And yet and yet...Ping?"

 

Apart from all of the opinions and criticism, Ping is already facing a more concrete problem of spam. Chester Wisniewski of security company Sophos has a post up describing the comment spam that's already flooding the iTunes social network.

Google should be launching a music service in time for the holidays if reports are accurate. 

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How Will Bit.ly Work with Twitter's Link Wrapping?

09/03/2010 14:28

Besides hinting at new features and talking about user stats, Twitter also made a couple announcements this week. One is that all Twitter apps use OAuth. The other is that it will start tracking every t.co link users click. This is Twitter's own default URL-shortener. 

Twitter sent an email to users saying, "In the coming weeks, we will be expanding the roll-out of our link wrapping service t.co, which wraps links in Tweets with a new, simplified link... When this happens, all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co URL."

"When you click on these links from Twitter.com or a Twitter application, Twitter will log that click. We hope to use this data to provide better and more relevant content to you over time."

This may be a good thing for users from a security standpoint. Symantec says that short URL spam and phishing attacks are rising sharply. "With the announcement that Twitter will be rolling-out its own short URL service, many malicious attacks through this route will be thwarted," says Amanda Grady, Senior Analyst at Symantec. "Through Twitter's added analysis, they will be able to check if the short URL is directing users towards a site with malware and alert them in advance. This should reduce phishing attacks on Twitter accounts and prevent criminals from directing users to infected websites.

 What about other URL-shortening services? Well, Bit.ly Twitter's old favorite, has posted an update on the matter. "Following this week's OAuth and apps announcements, some of our users have inquired about how bit.ly will work with Twitter's new link-wrapping service," says Bit.ly's Matt LeMay. "Link-wrapping will enable Twitter to collect traffic data and block spam, but it will not interfere with bit.ly analytics, bit.ly Pro custom domains, or bit.ly Enterprise usage — you will be able to shorten, share and track links with bit.ly exactly as you do now."
 

"Many of our partners are already using their bit.ly Pro short links with t.co, since all links shared via the Twitter Tweet Button have been wrapped in t.co since the button launched last month," he adds. "Link-wrapping will happen automatically and invisibly in the background."

Bit.ly says its been working closely with Twitter and other social media platforms to continue improvements across the web.

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Is Google Really As Evil As This Video Suggests?

09/03/2010 13:18

Consumer Watchdog has created a new anti-Google video portraying Google CEO Eric Schmidt has some kind of evil ice cream man. The video is a commentary on what the group perceives to be Google's lack of regard for consumer privacy. 

Google and Facebook are two of the biggest companies on the web, whatever you think about the privacy practices of either company, both have received a great deal of criticism in this area (though some think the concern about Facebook has been sensationalized by the media). Which do you trust more - Google or Facebook? Comment here.

Specifically, the video draws on an infamous quote from Schmidt in which he said that if you have something you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. Here's the video:

 

 

Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court writes on the organization's InsideGoogle blog:

 

Do you want Google or any other online company looking over your shoulder and tracking your every move online just so it can increase its profits? Consumers have a right to privacy. They should control how their information is gathered and what it is used for.

 

This avatar-style animation video was created to draw attention to Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s lack of regard for our online privacy. 

 

Some have dismissed Consumer Watchdog as being "out there" or "crazy". Others have similar views about Google as the organization.  Update: As a reader pointed out, Silicon Alley Insider has discovered that Consumer Watchdog is doing a little tracking of its own. 

Google has actually updated its privacy policies. Though it has not actually changed any of its practices, it has made adjustments to make the policies easier to understand. 

 

This isn't the first time Eric Schmidt has been portrayed as evil in animated form. Don't forget about this recent net neutrality-related Taiwanese video:

 

 

Court says it is promoting the video 36 times per say on a jumbotron in Times Square. The main message of the video is to get people to tell congress that they want a "Do Not Track Me" list similar to the "Do Not Call" list.

Do you think there should be a "Do Not Track Me" list? Do you think Consumer Watchdog's video went overboard? Share your thoughts.

 

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Google Adds Multiple Addresses to Mobile Ads with Location Extensions

09/03/2010 12:52

Google announced that mobile advertisers can now use multiple addresses in local extensions This way, customers can get the right address for businesses with multiple locations. 

 

The feature is available on Google Maps for Mobile versions 4.4 and above on Android devices. 

 

"Featuring your business location alongside your mobile ad is a powerful method to drive foot traffic and in store sales," says Google Mobile Ads Product Manager Surojit Chatterjee. "For instance, if a potential customer is looking for a wireless communications store like Sprint, an ad within GMM can display all Sprint locations near them. This not only delivers a relevant search experience, but also enables customers to visit the closest and most convenient Sprint store location.

 

 

AdWords will display a clickable banner to users with the option to show all locations for the business. This is based on the user's search and location signals. When they click "show all", the map will display just the locations of the business. Some businesses will be able to use their logo as their icon. 

 

When a user clicks a location, they'll get more details about the business, like ad text, directions, click to call, and a link to the site. 

 

As an advertiser, to use the feature, you must be a primary business owner and enable location extensions in Google Places. Campaigns must target iPhone and other "high-end" mobile devices with full mobile browsers. You'll be charged when users click on the website URL or the phone icon.

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AP Updates Attribution Guidelines, Links Not Mentioned

09/03/2010 12:05

The Associated Press has revealed some new guidelines for its reporters with regards to credit and attribution. The guidelines come in the form of a letter from AP Senior Managing Editor Mike Oreskes.

Is the AP asking its reporters to do what it has frowned upon in the past? Share your thoughts.

The guidelines apply to AP reports in print, broadcast, and online news, and stress the importance of giving proper attribution to other publications that break stories.

"We should provide attribution whether the other organization is a newspaper, website, broadcaster or blog; whether or not it's U.S. based; and whether or not it's an AP member or subscriber," writes Oreskes. "This policy applies to all reports in all media, from short pieces, such as NewsNows and initial broadcast reports, to longer pieces aimed at print publication."

Oreskes says attribution doesn't have to be at the beginning of a story, and that sometimes it can be two or three paragraphs down.

"If some information comes from another organization and some is ours, we should credit ourselves for what's ours and the other organization for what's theirs," he writes, adding that if material from another source turns out to be wrong, that will be cited in corrections later. (emphasis added)

The AP is one organization that has famously expressed disdain with blogs in the past (ones that quoted AP stories and gave credit), and was cited among various other publications earlier this year by Danny Sullivan as one that failed to credit where it got its information (most likely his article, at least somewhere in the chain) about a particular story.

It is interesting however that these guidelines appear to suggest that its reporters can freely do what the AP has in the past complained about others doing - using snippets of content. Now, the guidelines don't exactly say anything about using "snippets", but it's either that, rewriting, or regurgitating something that's already been discussed elsewhere (even with some additional original content added). Am I wrong? It's a matter of fair use, and the AP's stance on fair use in the past has basically been that there isn't any when it comes to the AP's content. Is it a double standard? Clearly, this is admission that the AP has participated in this same type of reporting.

It's good to know that they're recognizing that this is just part of how it works in this age of online news, but you still have to wonder what side of the fence they come down on with regards to their own content. I guess we'll see if AP reporters abide by these guidelines and whether or not the AP attacks anybody for using the same methods with AP content.

The whole thing is very related to the AP's stance on search engines and aggregators as well. These sites do, after all, provide snippets, links, and credit to the sources. The AP just reignited a deal with Google, by the way. 

While stressing the importance of attribution, Oreskes does also make a note of telling reporters not to use other sources so much that it appears they're "free riding" on another organization's work, and stresses matching or further development of the story. 

What is not mentioned once in the guidelines is the word "link". There is no mention of linking whatsoever. It is unclear whether linking is included it in the proper attribution described or whether they deem simple credit to be sufficient. While obviously you can't link in print or broadcast (one reason why online content is more valuable to readers), linking has become commonly looked upon as necessary to attribution in online news, so those who deserve credit for breaking a story can in turn get traffic to that story.

The letter does say that it will continue to use "information from" lines with URLs, but that attribution should be in the body of the story as well. However, it is unclear whether or not this attribution will actually include links.

It will be interesting to see how the AP proceeds in this regard. Without links, the organization is setting itself up for a great deal of criticism.

Thoughts on the AP's guidelines? Let's hear them. 

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Google Updates Privacy Policies

09/03/2010 11:20

Google announced that it is updating its privacy policies to make them simpler. They don't appear to have any changes involving CEO Eric Schmidt driving around neighborhoods in an ice cream truck, luckily.

Google isn't actually changing any of its privacy practices. It's just trying to make the language more understandable. Google Associate General Counsel Mike Yang outlines the updates:

1. Most of our products and services are covered by our main Google Privacy Policy. Some, however, also have their own supplementary individual policies. Since there is a lot of repetition, we are deleting 12 of these product-specific policies. These changes are also in line with the way information is used between certain products—for example, since contacts are shared between services like Gmail, Talk, Calendar and Docs, it makes sense for those services to be governed by one privacy policy as well.
2. We’re also simplifying our main Google Privacy Policy to make it more user-friendly by cutting down the parts that are redundant and rewriting the more legalistic bits so people can understand them more easily. For example, we’re deleting a sentence that reads, “The affiliated sites through which our services are offered may have different privacy practices and we encourage you to read their privacy policies,” since it seems obvious that sites not owned by Google might have their own privacy policies.
   
   In addition, we’re adding:
   

• More content to some of our product Help Centers so people will be able to find information about protecting their privacy more easily; and
• A new privacy tools page to the Google Privacy Center. This will mean that our most popular privacy tools are now all in one place.

Google says the updates will take effect on October 3. The company's main privacy policy can be found here. There is also an FAQ here. We'll see what Consumer Watchdog, who is running the above satircal video in Times Square, has to say about it.

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Location-Based Advertising To Reach $1.8 Billion

09/03/2010 11:17

Location-based advertising is still in its early stages, but according to ABI Research, businesses will spend $1.8 billion on it in 2015 as part of their overall mobile marketing budgets.

“It’s still early days and there’s no single ‘right’ approach to location-based advertising,” says practice director Neil Strother. “This remains a very fragmented market that is full of experimentation.”

Location-based ads are enabled by three sets of technologies: GPS, Wi-Fi, and Cell-ID (location determined relative to mobile phone transmitters.) The most successful campaigns, according to ABI, use a mix of some or all of these, depending on the product or service, the region, the consumers, and the location accuracy required.

New location-based services are springing up, catering to mobile shoppers. Some are “check-in” services such as Loopt, Gowalla, Foursquare, and Facebook with its Places, for consumers who are willing to “self-identify.” Others, such as Shopkick, use an iPhone app to reward shoppers just for visiting certain stores.

“Some might be put off by the ‘Big Brother’ aspects of this,” says Strother, “but it’s really about the value-exchange: if you care about getting discounts or being rewarded for shopping, is the value-exchange high enough so that you’ll accept having your whereabouts known to these companies in return for the benefits?”
 

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Google Open Sources More of Wave So Developers Can Take Advantage

09/03/2010 10:48

Google has given an update on its immediate plans for Google Wave. As you probably know, the company recently announced that it would be shutting down Google Wave as a standalone product, thought Google said it would preserve the technology behind Wave for future use and integration with other Google products.

Google announced that it will expand upon the 200,000 lines of code that it has open sourced already, to "flesh out the existing example Wave server and web client into a more complete applicatino or 'Wave in a Box'".

The project will include:

• an application bundle including a server and web client supporting real-time collaboration using the same structured conversations as the Google Wave system
• a fast and fully-featured wave panel in the web client with complete support for threaded conversations
• a persistent wave store and search implementation for the server (building on contributed patches to implement a MongoDB store)
• refinements to the client-server protocols
• gadget, robot and data API support
• support for importing wave data from wave.google.com
• the ability to federate across other Wave in a Box instances, with some additional configuration

Google stresses that the project won't have full Google Wave functionality, but it will give developers and users a way to run Wave servers and host waves on their own hardware. This should please some IT departments.

It still remains to be seen what other Google products Wave technology will appear in.

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Bedbugs Found At Google New York

09/03/2010 10:31

It seems that bedbugs can be found everywhere these days, and the New York office of a certain search giant is no exception.  Late yesterday, a Googler reportedly tweeted that her workplace had been invaded.

According to Nicholas Carlson, the pammy5 Twitter account belonging to "a Googler in marketing" just sent the message, "jeepers i am not immune from the bedbug epidemic.  bedbugs have been found at work."

Now the account - which a small amount of detective work connected to Pamela Eng, a product marketing manager previously employed by DoubleClick - seems to have been deleted, and Google's not volunteering many details.

This doesn't exactly count as a PR win for the company.  There's a definite stigma associated with bedbugs, and it may be that no amount of free food and fun artwork will convince would-be recruits to risk getting bitten.

To be fair, though, it's not known whether 20 or 2,000 of the creatures were found.  And as we acknowledged in the first sentence, lots of other places in New York, including the Empire State Building, a Times Square movie theater, and the Time Warner Center, have been affected.

Good luck to all Google employees who work at the New York office.

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Google Plans To Launch New Music Service

09/03/2010 09:19

Google is planning to launch a mobile music download service that would allow users to access songs wherever they have access to an Internet connection.

According to Reuters, Google has been in discussions with the major labels about reaching licensing agreements.  Google has not yet signed any licensing deals but the major labels are reportedly interested in seeing a competitor to Apple’s iTunes launch.

"Finally here's an entity with the reach, resources and wherewithal to take on iTunes as a formidable competitor by tying it into search and Android mobile platform," said a label executive who asked not to be identified.

"What you'll have is a very powerful player in the market that's good for the music business."

Andy Rubin, Google vice president of engineering hopes to have the music service launched by Christmas, according to “people familiar with the matter.”

“We're cautiously optimistic because Google has great scale and reach but doesn't have a track record in selling stuff," said another label executive who declined to be named as the talks are still ongoing.
 

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Twitter CEO Talks Stats, Ecosystem, Hints at New Features

09/03/2010 08:52

Twitter CEO Evan Williams revealed some numbers about Twitter usage on the company blog, while talking about how the Twitter ecosystem (of third-party developers and apps) continues to play an important role in the company's success. Twitter has over 145 million registered users, he says.

 

Not that this is a surprise by any means, but mobile is also playing an increasingly important role. "Total mobile users has jumped 62 percent since mid-April, and, remarkably, 16 percent of all new users to Twitter start on mobile now, as opposed to the five percent before we launched our first Twitter-branded mobile client," says Williams. "As we had hoped in April, these clients are bringing more people into Twitter, and, even better, they are attracting and retaining active users. Indeed, 46 percent of active users make mobile a regular part of their Twitter experience."

 

Speaking of mobile, it has been confirmed that Twitter is testing push notifications for its iPhone app. MG Siegler shares a statement from the company: We've been testing push notifications internally. When we launched Twitter for iPad, there was a configuration error that caused us to offer push messages to a small set of users. We've stopped sending push messages, but users may see an option to turn on push until we release an updated version of the app. So, push isn't ready yet but we look forward to rolling this out soon.

 

Williams provided the following chart of applications showing how people are actually using Twitter:

 

 

"And, while the percentage of overall users drops off pretty sharply after the few listed here, there are a tremendous number of other apps that people are using, not necessarily as their main Twitter client, but as an alternative way to create or view Tweets," Williams says. "The number of registered OAuth applications is now at almost 300,000—this number has nearly tripled since Chirp. (This can include multiple instances of the same software.)"

 

Willimas spoke last night in San Francisco. Liz Gannes has a summary of what he had to say, which was mostly about how Twitter is diferent than email and Google, but Willimas also hinted at some upcoming features. 

 

Gannes reports, "Williams also said to expect forthcoming products that would help filter relevant tweets around events, similar to what it’s doing with location. This would go beyond the user-developed convention of hashtags, he said, though he didn’t elaborate."

 

The biggest thing Twitter has done to reduce noise since its launch has been the launch of lists. This has helped significantly, but I think Twitter users will gladly accept other ways to accomplish this.

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Yahoo Scores Deal With Europe's Largest TV Maker

09/03/2010 08:51

After wisely letting the air clear following the big Apple TV announcement (and all the comparisons to Google TV), Yahoo's stepped forward to remind everyone that it also intends to compete in the connected TV space.  Yahoo announced a partnership with a major TV manufacturer this morning.

Vestel, the TV manufacturer in question, is Europe's largest.  It claims to produce 16 percent of LCD TVs made on the continent, and 25 percent of digital set-top boxes, too.

That gives the organization quite a reach, and Yahoo will benefit from it in an obvious way: Vestel plans to ship Yahoo Connected TV to consumers in over 40 countries.

Rich Riley, the senior vice president and managing director of Yahoo EMEA, stated as a result, "Yahoo! is transforming the television experience for millions of consumers around the world.  Vestel's innovative consumer electronics products combined with Yahoo!'s industry-leading Connected TV platform allow consumers to experience the Internet and television together in ways they never have before.  This is the future of television."

Turan Erdogan, a board member and the president of sales, marketing, and R&D at the Vestel Group, also said, "Through this partnership, we provide customers with a high-quality, easy to use, well-known platform for delivering Internet apps directly to our connected products."

Shipments of the joint Yahoo/Vestel products are scheduled to begin early next year.

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Facebook Tests Subscriptions, Will Launch Remote Log-Out

09/03/2010 07:56

Facebook is testing a feature that lets users "subscribe" to other users. Nick O'Neill at AllFacebook shares an official statement from Facebook: "This feature is being tested with a small percent of users. It lets people subscribe to friends and pages to receive notifications whenever the person they've subscribed to updates their status or posts new content (photos, videos, links, or notes)."

This could make Facebook more attractive as a news reader, a way Facebook has encouraged users to use the service in the past, and a functionality that is probably more often associated with Twitter, though the capabilities are clearly both there with either service. Notifications of updates would only enhance Facebook for this purpose. 

O'Neill shows a screenshot, which shows a simple link to subscribe to a user under their profile picture, and an update from that person appearing in the notifications along with all the other ones. 

 

Keep in mind, this is just a feature they're testing, and it's possible that it won't ever become available, but I can't see too many downsides to it as long as users have to opt in to subscriptions. 

 

Would you find this feature useful? Share your thoughts. 

 

Facebook also announced that users will soon have a new way to control their accounts, with a remote log-out feature (pictured above). Users will be about to log out of any Facebook session from another computer or device. More on that here.

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Just How Concerned with Privacy Are Facebook Users?

09/02/2010 16:17

PeopleBrowsr shared a rather interesting report with us this week, looking at privacy related tweets during the center of this year's Facebook "privacy storm." The firm studied the public's reaction to Facebook's open graph-related announcements that set off the majority of the Facebook privacy controversy back in April.

Are you concerned for your privacy as a Facebook user? Let us know.

The report specifically compares the general public's (or at least the portion that uses Twitter) thoughts about Facebook privacy with the media sensationalism around the story. The firm studied tweets with references to privacy, along with other keywords like Facebook, Open Graph, Zuckerberg, and Google.

"We are the last generation to know privacy as it was," says Brian Solis, Chief Data Analyst for PeopleBrowsr. "As Facebook moves human connections and society into a more public spotlight, people and the press will push back. But this will move things forward collaboratively. Over time I believe the debate will evolve into a series of productive forums and memes that explore the risks of living in public and the rewards for participation."





Some of PeopleBrowsr's findings from the study:

- Prior to the F8 conference on April 24, privacy tweets hovered between 1,000-3,000 references per day, then spiked to 9,000 on the day of F8

- On April 25 (day after the conference), privacy-related tweets fell to 3,500 – then surged to 7,500 when politicians joined the fray. Around May 25, privacy discussions hit the ceiling in this study with 20,000 unique discussions.

- In terms of context, Facebook dominated the landscape for mentions of #privacy

- Conversations followed media reports

"We see that even on the day when privacy took center stage, the media sensationalized the topic. But the public, at least those on Twitter, did not flood the streets with 140 character picket signs. 9,000 tweets does not seem to account for the millions of Twitter users or the 500 million people who have Facebook accounts," says Solis.

That last statement is true on a couple of different levels. For Solis' purpose it does not appear to indicate that the majority of Facebook users were that concerned. However, it is also worth noting that the majority of Facebook users are not necessarily active Twitter users. Facebook has over 500 million people. It's not a flawless argument, and the findings should be taken with a grain of salt like any such study. That said, Twitter is generally viewed as a good indication of public opinion, as trending topics often reflect pop culture and news at large. If there is something significant happening, you can generally find people talking about it on Twitter.

Besides, Facebook's numbers continued to grow. Diaspora (the "Facebook alternative") will be here soon. I'm willing to bet that will have little impact on Facebook's growth as well.

Do you think the privacy discussion around Facebook was overblown? Share your thoughts.

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