With Twitter has come a whole new language, beyond the LOLs and MHOs and so on. The “Tweetup” is a somewhat new phenomenon, and an old one. The new part being that you let folks know about it via Twitter, and the old part is that it is any kind of get-together, whether it be friends meeting for drinks, or a networking event. If you’d like to hold a Tweetup of your own, TKG has some great pointers on the “dos” and “don’ts” of the Tweetup!
Tweetups can be just for fun, or friends, or fans, too. Celebrities have been known to cause accidental tweetups when tweeting about where they are headed for dinner. Tweetups happen in every city, just Google your city’s name and “tweetup” and choose your tweetup!
TKG has hosted several Tweetups, and it has been a great way to get a little “face time” with folks you Tweet with, but have not met, or don’t see often. As always, with anything Web related, be careful about where you are going, just watch out for yourself, and always Tweetup with strangers in a public place.
If you have a blog, especially one that is monetized, you may want to pay attention. We all know that municipalities are cash strapped and looking for any way to make some money. Philadelphia is no different. The city is sending bloggers $300 bills, which is the cost of a business privilege license. What amazes me about this is… who is digging around trying to find out who has a blog with monetization? Does the very small amount of money a blogger makes really warrant some city official spending time researching to see from whom they can get 300 bucks? Apparently there is a small number of bloggers who have made a very tiny amount on their blogs and reported it who are now receiving these letters saying they have to pay for this “business privilege license” plus pay taxes on whatever small amount of money they earned.
I get that we are supposed to pay our taxes, I do. However this seems to be extreme. Most bloggers don’t make enough money on their blogs to even consider the paperwork that this would require. If we were talking federal standards, you can make up to $600 before you have to claim it on a return.
Municipalities all have their own rules and tax laws, but this is reaching so far into people’s pockets that it seems just plain money grubbing. And it feels like an invasion of sorts. Big Brother – we knew you were lurking around somewhere – who knew he reads blogs?
As the new taxes roll in in 2011 I think we can expect to see more and more of this nonsense. If you sit on a city council somewhere and have a say, please try to use a little common sense about this kind of thing. If someone makes $15 a year on a blog, I think a business license is a little over the top. I pay my babysitters way more than that. Crap. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that out loud. Now the government it gonna want me to 1099 the 13 year old nieces I pay to watch my kids once in a while so they can send them a tax bill and a request for a purchase of a business license. Sorry, Kenzie and Katie.
Cities, politicians and the federal government have all been trying to find ways to tax the web. Because we are a service based company, we don’t pay a sales tax on what we sell. Instead we have to pay a commercial activity tax. We have all heard how the FTC and FCC would like to try and regulate the web, and I am sure part of the reason is to find ways to tax. Taxing bloggers, right now seems to me to be coming out of the realization that some of them do make money on their blogs. SOME. The vast majority don’t make one thin dime. Some even pay to have their blog up, so then they are operating at a loss. This just doesn’t make sense.
Do you have a blog? Would you continue with it if you knew you would have to buy a business license and pay taxes on it? Does this make any sense to you?
More information about the Philadelphia Blogger Story can be found at the Washington Examiner.
You see them all the time, right? Articles or blog posts with lists of the 10 Best Hot Dogs in NYC, or the 24 Most Important Web Apps, or the 101 Most Fab places to shop in Downtown Chicago. Or whatever. These are usually informative, mostly entertaining, and sometimes even funny. They are called Linkbait, as they often invite links back to the site that posted the item. Matt Cutts defines link bait as anything interesting enough to link to.
So, how do you go about creating link bait? If you have an e-commerce or other business site, start with a list of questions your customers ask all the time. Not anything that can be answered on the FAQ page – you know – interesting stuff. Maybe the 10 Condiments to Serve on your favorite hot dog, or the 52 ways your customers like to use your wonder mop. How about the most popular pizza toppings from all over the world? You get where I am going with this, right? It may not be specifically about your particular business, it needs to relate, but the purpose is to spark some interest. If people find your post interesting, entertaining, or useful in someway, they are more likely to link to it, or send your link to their friends.
So try it out and let me know how it goes. Maybe I’ll try it. What should I write about? My 10 favorite things about the Web? 15 Reasons Why I love Small Business? Or how about this one: “The 101 Reasons I can’t wait for November”? Yeah…I think I might start there.
Cool new mobile Geo-Location application by Facebook just went live the other night. It’s called Facebook Places. Places allows you to create a place for your business. The hope would be that when one of your customers arrives, they will post about where they are, giving your “Place” some exposure.
For the average person, this is a fun application that will allow users to see if any other friends are at the same location or alert their friends to their location.
For advertisers, this is similar to other “check in” applications. The Places application will pop up when someone posts about your place. Included is a link to your Facebook page where you of course have information on your products or services and contact information, hours of operation and what have you.
It will have a word of mouth effect in that the customers who use it will let their friends know where they’ve been through it. Hopefully it will always be positive, but you know how that goes. It’ll likely have it’s share of negative feedback. I can just see it “I’m at {insert Place} and they have the worst service tonight!” Not great, but I am sure there will be plenty of the positive variety as well.
Information on implementing and using the app can be found on Facebook’s Help Page.
This is of course the buzz of many social media blogs. A couple that have a good review are: TechCrunch and Mashable.
The The Facebook Blog also has a discussion going, with some helpful tips.
FoxBusiness has a video that explains it all for ya. Check it out:
In the end, this will just be one more small step in the social media mix, but when it comes to free advertising, every little bit counts, right?
America is the land of opportunity, right? Well, it turns out that the Web can help turn up the dial on that opportunity, big time! Check this out, an 18 year old kid starts a Web based logo design business with $62 in his pocket. Now, six years later, he has 30,000 clients all over the world, some of them Fortune 500 companies. The Logo Loft, such a simple idea, and now a thriving business. Just goes to show you what the power of the Web can really do.
