WATFive: Twitter & FB Embrace Location Features, TweetMeme Enters Advertising, Google Will Now Don A Sidebar, WATVille Coming Soon!

Twitter Opens up Geo-tagging features

Twitter will now support tweets with Geo-tagging, opening up gates for location based Twitter search. The feature is now live on its API and will shortly be introduced on Web (Twitter.com), however users need to activate the feature in their settings as it is not enabled by default. To activate go to —-> Settings page —-> Accounts and click on “Enable Geotagging” below ‘Location’ form.

This simply means Twitter will let others know where you are tweeting from so as to filter the search results and possibly making way for numerous other application mash-ups. Seesmic is already providing support for Geo-tag API by giving out map previews for tweets.

For Twitter it really makes sense to open up Geo-tagging in a big way as location based social networks and advertising is gaining prominence. This feature when launched for its search will allow users to filter and crawl through the tweet stream efficiently.

(Via ReadWriteWeb)

Facebook Launch Location & Language Targeting for Facebook pages

It seems location based features are really getting attention from social behemoths. Facebook has provided a new tool for marketeers to exploit by adding location & language based targeting. A feature which Twitter will surely want to ape in future.

The new feature will allow a owner of highly subscribed facebook page to send updates based on the location of its followers. So now Facebook pages for celebrities could easily send out invites to fans residing in a country where the artist is going to perform and many other marketing tricks to lure the followers base.

This will help brands to really reach out to their audience as getting million followers does not make sense unless they can properly segment their fan base.

(Via Venturebeat)

TweetMeme launches re-tweetable advertising buttons

TweetMeme surely is on a space grabbing drive as after cornering a vast market through its retweet button on blogs and online media it is now headed to serve advertisers.

TweetMeme has tied-up with federated media to launch a retweet button for advertisers to allow ad viewers to share compelling & beneficial advertisements with their followers on Twitter. This development is significant as it puts social media hype to the core of online advertising.

We have seen other social media ad innovations from social bookmarking services in past but is yet to witness major thrust on social media advertising from online behemoths like Google. Federated media could garner higher rates for advertisements through this little innovation but TweetMeme will hardly gain anything in monetary terms from this tie-up unless they launch their own ad network as just making a retweet button is not a big technology break-through!

(Via Venturebeat)

Get ready for permanent Search Sidebar in Google

The sidebar which you see in search results is going to become a permanent feature on Google powered search pages. It has already started the practice by rejuvenating the search options given in the sidebar.

Sidebar in the past has seen many additional features to allow better filtering of search content. I even find myself using the sidebar more often to cut through the noise in search results. Although Google is expected to add many other features in sidebar before making it default in search pages.

The implication of this sidebar on Google’s ad revenues would be in both directions. First the sidebar will allow users to get their desired search results easily so resulting into less accidental clicks. It could also increase ad revenues as page views per search increases due to absence of ajax feature resulting in higher probability of Ad clicks.

(Via Search-Engine-land)

After FarmVille, FishVille, ScamVille comes PetVille

If you are thinking that I have mistaken ScamVille as a social game, then you are wrong as it was just to shed light on recent developments surrounding the Scammy Ad offers on social games.

Zynga certainly doesn’t want to end the ‘Ville’ hype just yet as they are rumored to launch a new game named ‘PetVille’. This game will certainly be based on pets and also no prizes to guess will be incredibly successful in pet loving audiences.

The action is slowly but surely shifting on to social gaming as even console makers are seen bundling social networks on their game boxes. Social gaming is now more than a billion dollar industry and is on a constant innovation drive to lure all the social network audiences to its fold and SNS aren’t complaining either. Hope they make it easy to launch a white label social game so we can name it WATVille!

(Via Mashable)