That’s why they’ve just introduced hashtags on their discover page.

“Over time, we’ve noticed certain themes and trends running through the projects on Kickstarter — some for a week, some for years. Tags give us a new way to share these patterns with everyone.

Tags aren’t tethered to a specific category. Instead they reflect a common philosophy (#Civic), shared subject matter (#Science), themes (#Zombies), accolades (#Sundance), and a bunch of other stuff too. We’ll be adding and rotating tags constantly as new trends pop up throughout the site. These will be listed in the sidebar of the Discover page,” says Kickstarter.

So these tags are different, and in a way much more specific than categories like “music” “film” or “games.”

You can check out the trending #tags on the Kickstarter Discover page. People looking to browse projects can now do so by location, category, tag, and other groupings like “recently launched” and “most funded.”

Kickstarter says that you can help make the #tags better. If you see a type of project that’s trending or want your project that you just launched to be tagged, just send them a tweet.

Today, they’re announcing another feature that shipped with that update. Now, you can tag Facebook friends in your check-in updates even if they aren’t on Foursquare using the “add friend” icon at the bottom left corner of the text box.

“With Monday’s iOS update, you can now mention Facebook friends who aren’t on Foursquare in your check-ins. Just tap the add friend icon when you’re checking in and scroll down to find them. Your friends will get a notification on Facebook, and will be tagged in the Facebook post if you choose to share it there,” says Foursquare.

This function is currently only available on iOS, but Foursquare says that the Android update is on its way.

Foursquare has been busy retooling the user experience to go “beyond the check-in” and to cater to non-members. Last month they opened up Foursuqare.com’s explore feature to non-users, and last week they debuted that functionality on mobile.

Much like the “nofollow” tag, the “standout” tag belongs to the HTML rel category, and much like it suggests, it’s intended for the most pop-worthy content, although, there’s nothing to stop people from putting the rel=”standout” tag on all of their content. One would guess Google is prepared for standout tag spam, and the inclusion of the tag doesn’t guarantee first page status on Google News. According to the Google News blog, the tag exists as a suggestion:

If you put the tag in the HTML header of one of your articles, Google News may show [emphasis added] the article with a ‘Featured’ label on the Google News homepage and News Search results.

The blog entry also suggests using the standout tag — which looks like this: — while linking to content being referenced as well as on your own:

Standout Content tags work best when news publishers recognize not just their own quality content, but also the original journalistic contributions of others when your stories draw from the standout efforts of other publications. Linking out to other sites is well recognized as a best practice on the web, and we believe that citing others’ standout content is important for earning trust as you also promote your own standout work.

While that stanza contains a “we believe” in reference to trust-earning, it’s clear Google is relying on this trust when it comes to picking which content is actually standout worthy. If you run a content spam site, one that survived the Panda purge, and you’re making liberal use of the standout tag, it’s doubtful it will make much of a difference in how the content is perceived, especially as Google refines the weight it gives links containing the tag in question.

In what looks like an effort to proactively address standout tag spam, Google suggests news organization only use the tag once per day:

At this point, we ask news organizations to use the Standout tag to cite their own content at most seven times in each calendar week. If a site exceeds that limit, it may find that its tags are less recognized, or ignored altogether. A news organization may cite standout stories from other news sources any number of times each week.

In other words, don’t spam with the standout tag, otherwise, we’ll ignore you; but please, use it when you’re linking to quality content.

Pretty simple, right?

With that in mind, how long will it be before we see the first “Standout Tag Spam on Google News” article? Before the end of the coming week? Once again, for those who may have missed it, the syntax for the standout tag is as follows:

link rel=”standout” href=”http://www.example.com/scoop_article_2.html”

Thoughts on the standout tag? Let us know in the comments.

But the problem with mentions is that they can feel clunky, and can unnecessarily lengthen a post.  Nobody wants to produce a clunky, long post – much less read one.  I have plenty of friends with long names, or those who use their middle names, or those that make up middle names (you know who you are).  No offense, but if I want to mention you in my status update, I don’t want “Jessica Danger Womanofyourdreams Johnson” taking up real estate in my post.

To that end, Facebook is now allowing the shortening of @ mentions within posts.  My long named friend above can be shortened to “Jessica Johnson” or even “Jessica.”  They will still be tagged in the post, linked, and notified.  Here’s how it works in practice:

Any friend’s name can be shortened to names that are adjacent, meaning my good friend “Karl Thomas Wetzel” above could be shortened to “Karl,” “Wetzel,” “Karl Thomas,” or “Thomas Wetzel,” but not “Karl Wetzel.”  You can also only shorten friend’s tags, not events, groups, pages etc.  Unfortunately, that means that every time I feel like @RIDING IN ON A UNICORN AND STABBING SOMEONE IN THE FACE, it’s going to be a long post.

Another @ mention feature that was being tested is now rolling out live for everyone.  You don’t need to use the @ sign to tag friends.  If you start typing a friends name with a capital letter, Facebook will drop down the tag menu after 5 letters for a person’s name longer than 5 letters, and after the completion of their name for those with less characters.

Like I’ve said before, it’s the little things, Facebook.  And this will help to shorten and de-clunkify tagged posts.  And anytime we can de-clunkify Facebook, that’s a good thing.

Hat tip to Google+Reader”>Inside Facebook

Google talked a little about how local search ranking works today in a blog post on its Lat Long Blog, which included the below video of Google Product Manager Jeremy Sussman discussing the basics. 

"Say you’re in Union Square in New York City, and you want to find a nearby coffee shop, so you go to Google and type in ‘coffee shops in Union Square, NYC’. You’ll find a list of just what you typed in – local coffee shops near Union Square with all the basic information you would expect to find, such as name, address, and phone number, and if they exist, you’ll also find reviews, ratings, and links to other relevant resources," he explains. "These organic listings are free to both the user and the business. We give you the best results we can find."

"Now, there are a variety of relevance factors Google uses to match or answer your search query, in this case, locating coffee shops near Union Square. Three of the key factors are: relevance, prominence, and distance," he continues. "Relevance is showing you only coffee shops and not unrelated businesses such as retailers, dry cleaners, and so on. Prominence is determined by how well known or prominent certain coffee shops are, based on sources across the web. Distance is easy. We calculate how far each coffee shop is from Union Square. And if you don’t specify Union Square in your search, we’ll show you coffee shops based on your general location."

Google recently launched Hotp

ot, a social recommendation engine for local search. You can read more about that here. Hotpot listings can show up anywhere business listings show up in Google search results. 

"Do the Hotpot ratings and review impact order and ranking of the local businesses you see on Google? Absolutely," says Sussman. "That’s the whole point…if you signed in to post ratings and reviews and to receive personalized recommendations in your search results. We do this to deliver more relevant search results and provide a more tailored experience based on your preferences."

In case you were wondering whether or not claiming a page will influence ranking, Sussman says, "A business claiming a Place Page does not result in preferential treatment. Of course more detailed information about your business helps us do a better job connecting people to the businesses they’re searching for."

Finally, he makes it clear that neither Tags nor Boost (a couple of Google’s local advertising options) influence local search ranking or where listings appear in Google or Google Maps results. Google does say, however, that the ranking of Boost ads in the ‘Ads’ section of the Google.com and Google Maps results pages is based on relevance and quality factors.

In a discussion with Robert Scoble recently, I suggested that Twitter also consider hiring a digital anthropologist or sociologist, to not only analyze and comprehend data, but also effectively observe cultures and shifts within this burgeoning online society in order to participate in and ultimately shape its transformation.

As shared in Twitter’s post announcing this year’s top trends:

Twitter’s Trending Topics helped us understand what was happening around the world showing us that people everywhere can be united in concern around important events; excited about a new movie; or geek-out about a major new technology.

Twitter is indeed a human seismograph, a reflection of current events as well as a real-time indicator of our focus and attention. Whether we agree or align with Twitter’s trending topics, they do in fact represent popular interest at any given time. In 2009, Twitter’s data concentrated on one particular topic that also demonstrated how diversified cultures, societies, beliefs, and politics can converge into one global community.

Among all the keywords, hashtags, and phrases that proliferated throughout the year, one topic surfaced repeatedly. Twitter users found the Iranian elections the most engaging topic of the year. The terms #iranelection, Iran and Tehran were all in the top-21 of Trending Topics, and #iranelection finished in a close second behind the regular weekly favorite #musicmonday.

If for but a moment, through services such as Twitter, we become one…

As a seismograph detects and records the intensity, direction, and duration of a movement, Twitter captures the activity and reaction of people around events as they happen. In practically every instance, a spark triggered a social tsunami of tweets and retweets that echoed into history books of socialized media.

Twitter Trends of 2009

News Events

1. #iranelection
2. Swine Flu
3. Gaza
4. Iran
5. Tehran
6. #swineflu
7. AIG
8. #uksnow
9. Earth Hour
10. #inaug09

People

1. Michael Jackson
2. Susan Boyle
3. Adam Lambert
4. Kobe (Bryant)
5. Chris Brown
6. Chuck Norris
7. Joe Wilson
8. Tiger Woods
9. Christian Bale
10. A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez)

Movies

1. Harry Potter
2. New Moon
3. District 9
4. Paranormal Activity
5. Star Trek
6. True Blood
7. Transformers 2
8. Watchmen
9. Slumdog Millionaire
10. G.I. Joe

TV Shows

1. American Idol
2. Glee
3. Teen Choice Awards
4. SNL (Saturday Night Live)
5. Dollhouse
6. Grey’s Anatomy
7. VMAS (Video Music Awards)
8. #bsg (Battlestar Galatica)
9. BET Awards
10. Lost

Sports (Teams, Events, Leagues)

1. Super Bowl
2. Lakers
3. Wimbledon
4. Cavs (Cleveland Cavaliers)
5. Superbowl
6. Chelsea
7. NFL
8. UFC 100
9. Yankees
10. Liverpool

Technology

1. Google Wave
2. Snow Leopard
3. Tweetdeck
4. Windows 7
5. CES
6. Palm Pre
7. Google Latitude
8. #E3
9. #amazonfail
10. Macworld

Hash Tags

1. #musicmonday
2. #iranelection
3. #sxsw
4. #swineflu
5. #nevertrust
6. #mm
7. #rememberwhen
8. #3drunkwords
9. #unacceptable
10. #iwish

Google+Reader”>Comments

Should English to English page translations inherit domain authority from another domain? I don’t want to out anybody, but I see way too many tag pages ranking in Yahoo!’s search results. The easiest way they can improve their search results is to simply delist any page with tag in the URL.

If they continue down this path inside a few months they will link to nothing but internal site search / tag pages on other sites. Where is the value, innovation, or thought process in that? What percent of Yahoo! searchers want to see WordPress.com tags pages and how many Yahoo! Pipes pages are tagged with a brand name? What does a searcher do when they land on a page like this?

If you are going to trust user generated content on authority sites, expect a lot of users to create content just for Yahoo!.

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John Mueller placed a useful post from Zurich on the Webmaster Central blog at Google, where he delves into the issue of meta tags. Back in the day, meta tags like ‘keywords’ helped webmasters get their sites indexed appropriately.

It took next to no time for spammers to start clogging ‘keywords’ to the point where they became useless. As Mueller reminded everyone in an answer to a comment, Google isn’t looking at them for indexing purposes:

(W)e generally ignore the contents of the "keywords" meta tag. As with other possible meta tags, feel free to place it on your pages if you can use it for other purposes – it won’t count against you.

Plenty of tags do work favorably for pages, as do Sitemaps, which enjoy support from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Meta tags can control robot behavior, or in the case of an individual crawler like Google’s Googlebot, affect a single robot’s actions with certain directives like meta name=robots or name=googlebot:

Google understands the following values (when specifying multiple values, separate them with a comma):

noindex: prevents the page from being indexed (see "Block or remove pages using meta tags")

nofollow: don't follow links from this page when looking for new pages to crawl (also see "Block or remove pages using meta tags")

nosnippet: don't show a snippet of this page when displaying it in the search results (see "Prevent or remove snippets")

noodp: don't use text from ODP (The Open Directory Project a.k.a. dmoz.org) to generate a title or snippet for this page (see "How do I change my site's title and description?")

noarchive: don't display a "Cached" link for this page in the search results (see "Prevent or remove cached pages")

unavailable_after:[date]: remove this page from the search results after the specified date and time (see "Robots Exclusion Protocol: now with even more flexibility")

Mueller noted the default rule is "index, follow" when this meta tag is not in place on a page, or if it is not targeted to the visiting spider when it arrives.

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In my SEO blog reading yesterday, I first found a post by Danny Sullivan about meta tags. Then just this morning I read a post by Matt McGee also about meta tags and he makes the same point:

The Keywords meta tag is useless, except for misspellings.

If your page has a product, service, or keyword that can be misspelled, instead of intentionally misspelling the word in your text, use your keywords meta tag. It won’t get you page 1 placement necessarily, but it definitely makes a difference.

If I had say in the Googlerithm, I would tie the spelling functions with the search functions, and if a page ranked well for a certain phrase, but the user misspelled the phrase, I would certainly give more relevance to a page that had the misspelling on it (albeit in a keyword meta tag).

With that said, I would certainly not focus much time at all working on the keywords meta tag, but while you’re under the hood making changes to your site, it wouldn’t hurt.

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