Posts by Chris Hutchison

For those unfamiliar with hash tags, they were made popular by the Twitter service. Users of Twitter can “tag” their tweets, or messages, with a word that categories them.

For example, if I tweeted about a brand new car and added the hash tag “#cars”, then this will allow other Twitter users to search for messages relating to cars. This can be open to abuse, mostly due to hash tag spamming, however the good tweets normal greatly outweigh the bad.

This now leads on to YouTube and other services which have recently started to adopt the feature.

By allowing users to add a tag to their video comments, YouTube visitors can now add hash tags to their search which will display all videos containing comments with the relevant tags.

A good example of this can be seen below, where we search for videos branded “#omg”.

This is good for us, as visitors, to be able to use familiar social media tools on all the websites we use every day. The more websites that adapt to popular systems or short hands, we will be able to get information we want much quicker and be able to share with more people who have similar interests.

Chris Hutchison
Web Developer / Designer

Google Local Business Centre has now become Google Places. The rebranding also comes with a number of new additions including the introduction of a sponsored feature to business listings.

For those of you that are new to Google Places, it’s a free service in which Google caters to the small business world by allowing local listings to show up in regular Google search listings. These listings also populate Google Earth and Maps, with an additional business information page tied to them with opening hours and business pictures including Street View photos (if available) and other information.

The new feature extends this information even further by allowing a sponsored ‘link’ style box to be drawn below the local listings. This box then contains one of the following, which Google plans to charge roughly $25 a month for:

• photos
• website
• menu
• reservations
• coupons
• videos
• directions

You will be allowed only one; however the system will allow you to rotate which one you display, possibly costing extra fees to do so.

In summary, the new feature doesn’t sound like much, however, in a competitive business, having a small advantage over another with one of the above featured links will not only allow the visitor to gather more information on your company but also provide your listing with extra eye candy and most likely improve your click-through rates.

Chris Hutchison
Web Developer / Designer