This week I have been exploring new social media site Pinterest and getting to grips with what it offers over other social sites. Whereas Facebook revolves around creating a personal profile and connecting with friends and Twitter is a microblogging service for text based posts, Pinterest is a visual ‘pin board’ that you add your favourite sites to. You can create multiple boards covering different interests and when you pin a webpage, you choose an image which will then appear on your board. Other users can browse your boards and re-pin your items to their own which is a great way for people to share sites relating to an area that they are interested in and discover new things.

A good example of how Pinterest can be a useful tool is for when planning a wedding. The planning and preparation can be a time consuming and stressful time as you browse the Internet looking for inspiration for everything from venues, flowers, dresses and wedding cakes. Using Pinterest, you can create a wedding pin board and as you are browsing sites and come across something you like, you ‘pin it’. You could create boards for each different area of your wedding planning and then friends and family can see your ideas and help with comments and opinions. The visual nature of the site makes browsing for ideas a very easy process. Have a look at my wedding Pinterest board to see the site in action.

So is this going to be the ‘next big thing’ and will the ‘pin it’ button be a common sight sitting alongside the Facebook ‘Like’ and Twitter ‘Tweet’ buttons on all sites? Well if the stats from America are anything to go by the answer will be yes. Last month the site had 11.7 million unique visitors per month in the US and interest in Pinterest is growing in the UK too with many news and blogging sites discussing the benefits, flaws and potential of the pin board site. There has been one high profile user already making use of pins and pin boards with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg setting up his own set of boards covering topics such as movies, what building inspires you, overwhelmingly spectacular and for my mouth. You have to wonder though whether he is using the site for personal reasons or having a look at what a competing social media site is offering, ready to plan something similar for Facebook.

The simplicity of creating an online collage away from ‘status updates’ and ‘checking-in’ is a very simple yet enjoyable time-consuming activity. Whether it’s a pin board of your favourite bands, the best cooking recipes for beef based dishes or your portfolio of digital work from across the web, the potential of Pinterest is clear to see.

HeadRed’s social media and SEO Coventry team will be keeping an eye on Pinterest to see what, if any, benefits ‘pinning’ will have with regards to search engine optimisation over the coming weeks. So if you like it, why not try sticking a pin in it?

An unlikely new contender in the search engine market emerged this week with the news that the hammer pants wearing rapper MC Hammer is to launch his own search engine. The rapper, most famous for his 1990′s hit “U Can’t Touch This”, was at a Web 2.0 summit in America this week and announced his new search engine – WireDoo.

Now this may come as surprising news to anyone who is only aware of Mr. Hammer for his baggy pants, dance moves and the fact that his music will hit you so hard, it will make you say oh my Lord, but he has also been involved in many successful online business ventures. MC Hammer, real name Stanley Kirk Burrell, has been sharing his passion for social media for many years now and in 2008 launched his own social media website, DanceJam.com, which is a web community where hip hop dancers can watch, share and learn dance skills and techniques. Since then he was been working on WireDoo which is currently in pre-Beta stage.

Mr. Burrell obviously has a keen interest in the web and social media but can he really enter a market that’s dominated by Google and already has other alternatives such as Bing trying to claw their own share of the search engine market? The selling point of WireDoo is that it is aiming for ‘deep searches’ which will return results that are “about relationships beyond just the keywords”. The example Hammer used related to cars and that if you searched on Wiredoo, instead of just cars coming up in the results, you would also see results relating to mileage, price and car dealerships.

He further explained that searches should be amount “more than just keywords and those ten blue links” and that the aim of the new search engine is to provide results that are not just related to one keyword. Another example used was that if you enter the post code for Beverly Hills, 90210, you will actually receive many links relating to the popular TV show of the same name instead of sites relating to the city in Los Angeles. WireDoo aims to bring up several searches for different topics and showing many related topics at once. This is described as a ‘vertical’ search whereas Google is ‘linear’.

Whilst this sounds like an interesting idea that could provide a better search experience for users, can anyone really topple or even make a dent in the control that Google has in the search engine market? The phrase ‘Google it’ is synonymous with searching on the Internet and we can’t see that changing anytime soon but competitors are always needed to encourage companies to provide better services to consumers. It will be interesting to see if Google responds to the threat of MC Hammer and WireDoo, although no release date has yet been announced for the project.

So we’ve made it this far without mentioning any real MC Hammer/search engine related jokes so how about changing “Stop! Hammer Time!” to “Stop! Search time” for the WireDoo slogan or how about when users search for inappropriate content they could be met with a “U Can’t Search This” warning?

Sorry, we couldn’t resist.

There are many e-commerce sites throughout the Internet selling all kinds of items and sometimes it can be hard to decide which site to purchase from. Do you favour the cheapest price over a trusted site or are you happy to use a new site that you haven’t used before? Google has now announced its own way of giving sites its stamp of approval with ‘Google Trusted Stores‘.

The aim of this new program is to help shoppers in finding online stores that offer a compelling shopping experience by awarding them with a Google Trusted Store Badge. To qualify for the award, sites have to have a proven track record of reliable service, shipping products on-time and excellent customer service. To partake in this program, sites have to apply to become a Google Trusted Store and have to share shipping and customer service data with Google and meet the standards set out by the program.

So what are the benefits for customers? As well as knowing which sites have been given a trusted award from one of the biggest companies on the Internet, the program is there to help shoppers feel confident in their purchases and offers shoppers help if they have any problems with their online order. Purchase protection means that you can get help from Google in the case of any disputes that arise from your order and they will assist you in working with the store to solve the issue. This can only be a benefit to consumers since they have the knowledge that they can get outside assistance in dealing with complaints when dealing with sites they haven’t used before.

There are a number of stores that are testing the program to see whether it has the intended outcome of improving and promoting shopping and Google will be looking to extend the program over the coming months. It will be interesting to see what effect this could have to some online stores and whether customers will only shop on sites that feature the Google Trusted Store Badge when the program is fully launched. Could it also have any effect on SEO for online shops?

We will be keeping an eye on the Google Trusted Store program over the coming months and monitoring whether it will be beneficial for our clients to apply for the badge and any kind of effect it may have on our Coventry search engine optimisation clients.

Today has been dominated by news and excitement surrounding Google Wave, Google’s new real-time communication platform that will launch to the public on September 30th.

Google Wave is a real-time communication platform. It combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client. You can bring a group of friends or business partners together to discuss how your day has been or share files.

Mashable.com have put together a comprehensive guide to Google Wave and all the exciting features it will possess.

Read it now at: http://mashable.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-guide/