In an attempt to make the user experience more secure, Facebook has started testing on a new tool called Trusted Friends. It allows a user to designate between three to five friends on his contact list who they can count on to pass along a special code in the event that the user may get locked out of their own account.

It’s basically another way to access to your Facebook account if you forget your password. Over the next few weeks, the option to specify your Trusted Friends will appear under the settings page for some of Facebook’s users as the feature does a gradual roll-out the way its new features have been introduced in the past.

When someone who has enabled the feature is unable to login, they can click “forgot my password” and request that codes be sent to their specified friends via Facebook message. The user must then retrieve all the codes and enter them into fields on Facebook’s password-recovery page to log back in. This makes the process rather lengthy, but will likely be a deterrent to anyone wanting to access someone else’s Facebook account.

This is a great move for Facebook, and good news for marketers who may handle from a few, to dozens of client pages on the social network. Knowing that your clients’ data is more secure is a big thing, and you’ll be able to assure your clients of this fact as well. With so many new online threats, it’s good to know that this is one less you’ll have to worry about. Facebook has clearly been rethinking security measures for users and marketers alike.

The Trusted Friends feature will not be mandatory, but may be useful for those who wish to further secure their accounts and the data contained within. In line with this, Facebook has also begun testing another security feature that will allow users to set different passwords for each third-party site that uses your Facebook account to login or register.

Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. It can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks, e-mail marketing and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents.

Integrated with AdWords, users can review online campaigns by tracking landing page quality and conversions (goals). Goals might include sales, lead generation, viewing a specific page, or downloading a particular file. These can also be monetized. By using Analytics, marketers can determine which ads are performing, and which are not, providing the information to optimize or cull campaigns.

That’s a lot of powerful tracking right at your fingertips, but sometimes the data presented can become overwhelming, especially to new users. That’s why we’re pleased to tell all you website owners and marketers out there about the good news regarding Google Analytics. If you’re already using Google Analytics to track your website stats, you’re going to love the new enhancements coming your way soon. And if you aren’t using it yet, here are a few reasons why you should consider making use of this free tool.

Google Analytics is about to get a lot more visual. Through the new interface that Google is calling the Flow Visualization, webmasters and marketers will be able to view visitors grouped together based on browser, location and so on. The new graphical representation will enable website owners to get detailed information on how particular groups of users go through the site, without the hassle of having to follow them one by one.

For now, Google is launching with two types of Flow Visualizations, the Visitors Flow and the Goal Flow. There are plans to launch more types in the short term future. Watch out for the new Flow Visualization coming to your Analytics dashboard, very soon.

Many of the new features that Facebook is set to roll out (the new Timeline and the newly overhauled Open Graph) have users in a tizzy. Many are all for these new changes, and an equal number seem to be clamoring for the world’s largest social network to remain the same. But above and beyond all this, not much has been said about how these changes may alter the way people interact with rest of the web and how websites and businesses can utilize these new features to their advantage. If your business still doesn’t have a social media strategy, here are a few solid reasons why you should rethink that decision.

The Open Graph Protocol and Sharing

According to Facebook, “The Open Graph Protocol enables you to integrate your Web pages into the social graph. It is currently designed for Web pages representing profiles of real-world things — things like movies, sports teams, celebrities, and restaurants. Including Open Graph tags on your Web page, makes your page equivalent to a Facebook Page. This means when a user clicks a Like button on your page, a connection is made between your page and the user. Your page will appear in the “Likes and Interests” section of the user’s profile, and you have the ability to publish updates to the user. Your page will show up in the same places that Facebook pages show up around the site (e.g. search), and you can target ads to people who like your content. The structured data you provide via the Open Graph Protocol defines how your page will be represented on Facebook.”

In a nutshell, marketers may add the Open Graph Protocol to their client’s website/s as a way to engage existing and potential customers to share their content on Facebook itself. Shared content will be visible to friends and contacts of the user, and may reach an even wider audience as the content is shared over and over again. The trick here is to develop content for your site that Facebook users will want to recommend to friends and acquaintances; but truly, the possibilities for greater visibility are staggering.

Timelines, and How Your Business Could Benefit

Facebook Co-Founder Mark Zuckerberg announced a complete re-design of the Facebook Profile page. This new profile will be called the Timeline. And while many users are resistant to the idea of a new GUI (Graphical User Interface), this redesign could be big for not only big brand names, but for small and medium enterprises that currently utilize Facebook Fan Pages.

The Timeline will feature a large horizontal banner at the top of the page. Facebook is calling this the profile Cover. Users will be able to upload their own graphics to this space. So, why is this a big deal? Think of the possibilities. For businesses, there’s more control over online branding. Marketers and companies will be able to customize the look of their Pages and even change out their Cover graphics to coincide with promos, events, and much more.

One thing is certain, Facebook is a force to be reckoned with, and those who ignore its far-reaching grasp on the web may be doomed to internet failure. Social media is the future of online marketing, and Facebook plays that game ever so well.

Last week saw a whole slew of changes to Facebook that will put more strain on marketers to create compelling advertising material in order to catch the attention of consumers and users, as industry analysts are predicting that the “Like” button will no longer have such an integral role to play in social media marketing. A major change to the Facebook news feed has given the user the option to unmark a top story in the feed. Facebook will then collect these statistics, and use the analysis of this data to automatically edit the feeds and determine what types of stories users want to see. Companies and businesses with lackluster status updates and content will hence run the risk of suffering from lower visibility.

Another major change to the entire Facebook graphical user interface (GUI) is set to roll out to users over the next few weeks, and already, there’s a lot of hype surrounding the eventual cut-over. Facebook will be introducing profile Timelines (already available as an FB Developer release) that will change the way people share. Already there are mixed emotions regarding the new GUI, but what does this mean for Internet Marketers and advertisers?

The stress on building timelines as opposed to using Facebook to broadcast a message means that apps will become more of a means for branding. The trick here is that, companies and businesses need to give Facebook users a reason to interact more with their posts and content. Otherwise, they may be pushed so far down in the threads that people won’t even know they’re there.

The change will require a paradigm shift from marketers who had been attempting to merely amass as many fans and “Likes” as possible. In short, it’s given marketers a lot to think about and reconsider when mapping out social media branding strategies. Best to be rethinking your strategy own now, while Timelines are still rolling out slowly.

On Wednesday, Facebook launched its new Subscribe button. This new feature allows users to subscribe to and follow public updates. This may be a big thing for journalists, media folk, politicians, and musicians. Not to mention a whole slew of other groups that may want to get their thoughts and ideas out to large numbers of people.

You may have also noticed the new customizable News Feed and increased privacy settings that FB users have long been clamoring for. In the launch, however, so many new features were introduced that it may take some time for users to fully comprehend all the changes and make decisions on what they may find useful or not.

Unlike “friending” someone, users can subscribe to others without enabling others to subscribe to them. This means that public figures can allow people to follow their public updates without giving them more access to more personal information.

Before the Subscribe button launch, it was either all or nothing when blocking a person’s updates from your News Feed. Now you can control what types of updates you see from a person and how often. Which means you can skip out on the game updates if that isn’t what floats your boat. Instead, you can focus on more meaningful updates from family and friends. In addition, the Close Friends list Facebook rolled out on Tuesday makes the updates from your strongest relationships more prominent in your News Feed, and you can enable notifications specifically from friends in this list.

With the number of new social networking sites, Facebook is making major changes to stay competitive. More importantly, it’s a good thing to know that user data is kept more secure with all these new security measures put in place. Now it’s up to the user to decide which of these features they want to start utilizing.

Business Owners can easily add $3,000 in Net Profit per month by using a simple Internet Marketing Recipe. Traffic generates Leads, which generates Customers. Converting a website to a lead capture machine is easy. Just provide valuable content in exchange for a name, email address and phone number. Examples of content are downloadable reports, video tutorials, etc. It’s easy to create valuable content from your knowledge of your business.

Once we have the leads, we can market to them over time. The follow up is where the money is in converting leads to paying customers. The follow up is an ongoing process.

Generating traffic is pretty simple, once we look closely at the resources available to us. They include search, video, social media, and email among the many. If you are doing just a few things to generate traffic, you are doing more than most business owners.

All the tasks associated with acquiring leads and following up with them is a simple process. You can outsource all these tasks and still generate an additional $3,000 per month for your business. Watch the video below to learn how.

Google+ has gained a whopping 10 million users in the two weeks since the launch. When compared to Facebook’s 750 million users worldwide, it’s a tiny number, however this is a rapid rise in users for the new social network considering that it isn’t yet open to the general public while they remain in their “limited” trial phase.

Google CEO Larry Page has reported that there are over a billion items shared on Google+ each day. The +1 button that we’ve been seeing on Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are now starting to make more sense, as we see now how +1s affect search results with friend recommendations.

It’s obvious that search will be redefined as Google+ users add +1′s to web content. The search results one person sees may be different from what another person sees depending on the number of contacts they have who have +1’d that bit of web content, even though they use the same search terms. This brings the game of SEO to a whole new level, as it is clearly no longer just a matter of targeting the right keywords any more for search. Search has become “social” and the lines are being blurred even as we speak.

What will be interesting to watch is, the way people will respond to this new social network. There have been mixed responses from the lucky few who have been able to get into the limited field trial. Many people love the drag-and-drop interface and the clean quality to the general UI. Many are pleased with the amount of control they have over who gets to see what they share. Others are of a different mind, however, and are thoroughly confused by the Twitter-esque  “Circles” feature of Google+. So, it’s partly like Facebook, partly like Twitter, and to top that all off, there’s the feeling of the “micro-blog” built in to it as well, which is reminiscent of Tumblr’s digital-salon culture.

Which begs the question: What is this mishmash really supposed to be? As of yet, the whole Google+ network feels rather formless, but perhaps, that’s what Google has intended – for the whole network to be molded as users express what they love, and don’t love about it. What’s certain is, it’s definitely a refreshing change from the whole social media monster that Facebook has become, and it does look like Google+ will change how the world sees social networks.

On Wednesday, Facebook announced a partnership with Skype that will add video calls to the popular social networking website. The new video call feature will be accessible via an on site call button that will be placed in a prominent position at the top of user profile pages.

Two users may use the video call feature as long as both parties have webcams. The roll-out of this new feature began on Wednesday and is expected to reach more users over time.

It is interesting to note the timing for the launch of this new feature, as it comes barely a week after the launch of Google+ (a new social network developed by Google) which also has a video call feature.

The new video call feature on Facebook will only be available for one on one calls at the present time. Group calls, or conference calling is not yet available, but there are plans to add this feature at a later date along with other services that will allow Facebook users to call land-line phones for a fee.

The partnership between Facebook and Skype has been apparent for quite some time now, as Skype users may have already noticed Facebook integration within the Skype desktop client. And since Skype is currently being acquired by Microsoft (a Facebook partner), it is not surprising that Skype integration to the social networking site was the next step taken.

It may benefit Social Media Marketers and Online Marketers greatly, since having the ability to stay in touch with clients, co-workers, and employees on Facebook without having to leave the social networking environment, may prove useful in time-management initiatives.

Like most browser based video call services, users will have to install a plugin for the Facebook-based calling feature to work.

On Tuesday, Facebook announced big changes to how users tag uploaded photos of friends. In the next few weeks, Facebook will start scanning all photos uploaded to Facebook and will make suggestions of contacts that may appear in the pictures. These facial-recognition features are not as new to Facebook as many may think, since last year, Facebook started rolling out this new feature to test groups.

If you’re worried about privacy, the good news is, that users will still be able to “turn off” this auto-suggest feature by going to their privacy settings and searching for the “suggest photos of me to friends” option. Once turned off, Facebook’s facial-recognition system will still scan for possible photos of you, but will no longer make suggestions to contacts and friends. Take note that your contacts will still be able to tag you manually if they wish to.

In comparison, Google recently decided not to release an application developed that would allow a person to take a picture of a someone’s face to find out who the person is. This is most likely the very first time Google completed a project and decided against it for privacy reasons. And although systems like these are still very limited and hence, not very accurate, it brings this question to the forefront: How much are we willing to share online, and will it be safe?

According to a statement from Facebook, over 100 million photos are uploaded to the social networking every day. With numbers like that, the databases on FB users are steadily growing, and people might want to think about what they upload before they do it.

It’s been little over a decade since Twitter first made an appearance on the World Wide Web, and since then, it has steadily grown in popularity with an estimated 200 million users at the present date. Many users, over the years, have voiced out their wish for an integrated photo sharing system within the social network. These users no longer have to wait, as Twitter is launching its own image-hosting service over the next few weeks. For this undertaking, Twitter has teamed up with Photobucket, one of the most popular image hosting sites.

This is exciting news, as “in-system” image sharing will allow users to post image content more easily to their networks and contacts. Although there are many third-party photo services for Twitter, such as Twitpic, users who may be less than tech-savvy may find the built-in system much more user-friendly.

At present, photo-sharing will be available only on the desktop environment, but Twitter is already making plans for mobile apps that will enable photo-sharing for their mobile users as well.

Looks like the future is bright for mobile search, which in turn spells an ever brighter future for mobile marketing. In a recent study, figures show that Google Maps installations on mobile devices have passed the 200 million mark. Of these installations, users access the service a whopping 40% of the time. And the percentages even rise over weekends when people have free time to spend.

When you really think about it, it does make complete sense that more and more people are turning to mobile search, when the majority of people like having the convenience of information access. And though it’s something that’s been a long time in coming, this sudden shift from desktop to mobile may certainly spread to more and more users in a pretty rapid way over the coming months.

With many of the smartphones out there having GPS (global positioning system) functionality, it also makes a good amount of sense that users will want to know what places of interest they may find that are relevant to their current location. This kind of customized and personalized user-experience also contributes greatly to how people share their activities online. With such a handy way to “check in” at Google Maps locations, local search has also gotten more social.

Given that more and more users are turning to location based services such as Google Maps, it makes perfect sense for local businesses to claim or create Google Place pages. There are so many possibilities for mobile search, that getting with the program today will only help boost your online visibility, whether it be on the desktop environment, or on mobile.

As many of you may recall, Google shook things up in a major way when they launched their +1 button. This signaled the beginning of social media impacting SERPs, or Search Engine Results Pages. In an attempt to keep up with Google in this respect, Microsoft has announced the inclusion of Facebook data to MSN Bing’s search results. With the advent of a more “social search”, the search engine wars have never been as heated as they are today.

MSN Bing will incorporate data from Facebook such as the now famous “Likes” and “Shares”. For instance, a person who is logged in to Facebook and may be reading up on current events on Bing may see links to articles that friends may have “Liked”. And it doesn’t stop there. A user may also see search results with the most number of “Likes” among the entire Facebook community, thereby further defining the future of online search.

In other words, it’s no longer just a game of search engine optimization. With social recommendations thrown into the mix when it comes to search algorithms, the online marketing playing field will change in a tremendous way. Strategies will have to be built carefully, with so many of the rules quickly changing in this fast-paced industry.

Facebook — the world’s largest social network — will be launching a new feature on Wednesday: the ability to tag Pages in photos. Soon, users will be able to tag their favorite Brands, Products, and even Local Businesses that have existing FB Pages.

This is a big thing for social media marketing, as this will mean more exposure brands and businesses. The great thing about this new update is that Facebook users will be able to tag a Page even if they haven’t “Liked” it.

The tagged photos will be visible on the Photos Tab of the Page tagged. Page administrators will then be able to moderate these tags, to keep or “untag” as they see fit.

Of course, every time a user tags a page, this action shows up in his or her friend/contact newsfeeds as well, so that’s massive free advertising right there. This is definitely something to watch out for, and it’s coming to Facebook soon!

Facebook has once again made what promises to be a big move toward the future of social media sharing by launching the new “Send” button, and by doing so has further extended its reach and presence across the web. And we’re not merely talking about its impact on social networks. The new Send button may be a big step since the major difference between the now familiar Like button and the Send button is that people will now be able to share content with a select group of people instead of your entire social graph.

Upon first inspection, users may not think that the new feature is a significant one however, it’s good to point out that on first launch, the Like button didn’t seem like that big of a deal either; but today, we see the Like button scattered across millions of websites and online content, and it has grown to the point where “Likes” are even beginning to influence search engine results. The big question here is this: Will the new Send button go the same way and prove to be a major force behind how people share content across the web?

What makes the Send and Like buttons so powerful, is the potency behind personal recommendations. Think about it. Would you be more likely purchase something online, read an article or check out a video that a friend has recommended? There’s where the influence lies, and I see big things happening for the Send button in the future.

You’ll be able to read more about the Send button on the Facebook developer site. Also, if you’re planning to get your own Send button for your website, all you have to do is visit this page for all the instructions you need to get started. The great thing is, you’ll be able to add the Send button to just about any piece of online content, and you’ll even be able to customize it further by selecting a combination Send+Like button, if you so desire. Big things are happening on the social webs, and you don’t want to get left behind. Go and get your Send button today!