Social Media:Open Licensing

Find an indepth description of open licensing at http://opendefinition.org/guide/

    As stated on the website, open licensing is

"is a document that specifies what can and cannot be done with a work (whether sound, text, image or multimedia). It grants permissions and states restrictions. Broadly speaking, an open license is one which grants permission to access, re-use and redistribute a work with few or no restrictions.

...a piece of writing on a website made available under an open license would be free for anyone to:

• print out and share,
• publish on another website or in print,
• make alterations or additions,
• incorporate, in part or in whole, into another piece of writing,
• use as the basis for a work in another medium – such as an audio recording or a film,
• and do many other things …

Openly licensed works are hence free to be shared, improved and built upon!"


So why wouldn't you open license your work? Are controlled creative content a hinderance to the progression of creativity?

Social Media- Apps

http://www.psfk.com/2010/07/infographic-the-history-of-apps.html

http://socialtimes.com/social-media-marketing-apps_b24026

Search Engine Optimization

The following is a tutorial provided by Google to optimize the searchability of your website:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

Yahoo offers a similar guideline for their search engine here:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/basics/basics-18.html


  The New York Times published a story in Febuary of this year concerning a huge SEO no-no.
JC Penny had become the number one search result for hundreds of search terms like “Samsonite carry on luggage,” "skinny jeans,"home decor,” “comforter sets,” “furniture," the list goes on and on.

   After investigations of the strange search engine resulting, it was found that JC Penny had found a new niche to the online dark-side to market their company. Google sorts their results in accordance with many factors, one of those being the number of outside links that filter into any given site. It had been found that Penny had tagged 2,015 sites with a direct link to their site. The vast majority of their tagged websites were out of use, serving the sole purpose of boosting JC Penny's search ranking.

New York Times reported that tags were found off topic sites:
"The phrase “black dresses” and a Penney link were tacked to the bottom of a site called nuclear.engineeringaddict.com. “Evening dresses” appeared on a site called casino-focus.com. “Cocktail dresses” showed up on bulgariapropertyportal.com. ”Casual dresses” was on a site called elistofbanks.com. “Semi-formal dresses” was pasted, rather incongruously, on usclettermen.org. There are links to JCPenney.com’s dresses page on sites about diseases, cameras, cars, dogs, aluminum sheets, travel, snoring, diamond drills, bathroom tiles, hotel furniture, online games, commodities, fishing, Adobe Flash, glass shower doors, jokes and dentists — and the list goes on."          

Both Google and JC Penny found wrong in the actions taken and worked to take down the links. The immediate effects of the removal of the links highlight just how effective their scheme was.

"At 7 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, J. C. Penney was still the No. 1 result for “Samsonite carry on luggage.”
Two hours later, it was at No. 71."


Read full story at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1