Traditional search engines are having a tough time keeping pace with social media. Of course, a number of tools have emerged to fill the gap, offering real-time search results for Twitter, Digg, and the likes.

Three notable mentions are OneRiot, Tweetmeme, and the latest contender, CrowdEye.   The idea behind all three being web search engines (like Google and Yahoo) can only tell you what people are – technically, were – searching for.   Social media search engines can tell you what people are talking about now – and what they are willingly promoting.  From a viral marketing perspective, this measure of influence is often the missing ingredient.   But I digress, let me give you a quick rundown of these services:

OneRiot crawls the links people share on Twitter, Digg, and other social sharing sites.  Search results reveal a bevy of information, like the exact date/time in which a tweet or bookmark was shared, who shared it (links to their profile), the number of times it was forwarded, and the link provided.  There’s also a sidebar for “Most Shared Items Today” and a trending topics tag cloud.

Tweetmeme is the most link-centric offering of the three, focusing solely on Twitter tweets.   You can run a basic search, check out the most popular tweeted links, view a live activity stream, or narrow down your focus by channel (e.g. Iran or Swine Flu Outbreak).  You can also browse by categories like Comedy, Gaming, Sports, etc.

CrowdEye offers a straight-forward dashboard view of Twitter activity.   You can view popular links and tweets, as well as a graph of your term’s Twitter saturation over the past few days.  Clicking on a related term in the tag cloud filters those results further.   CrowdEye also throws in a Top Hashtags and Top Searches feature.

A great case example of how to use one, if not all, of these products is the recent SquareSpace Twitter promotion.   SquareSpace is a simple website solution (and feed growth! topic).  To drum up visibility for their product, SquareSpace is giving away 30 iPhones in 30 days (06/08/09-07/07/09).  Participants need only include the #SquareSpace hashtag in any of their tweets to qualify.  Since the contest launch, SquareSpace has gone from negligible mentions on Twitter to over 12,000 tweets a day.  The #SquareSpace hashtag is now a top “trending topic”, and the company is receiving the type of publicity most social media strategists would salivate over.

We’re curious to see how many new signups SquareSpace generates off this promotion (feel free to share with the class); that’s the true litmus test.  Still, social search engines like OneRiot, Tweetmeme, and CrowdEye are providing play-by-play action of this marketing tactic, and if the numbers are any indicator, SquareSpace should do nicely.

They say it’s the simple things in life that make you happy.  For tech geeks like us, it’s the simple web app with killer functionality and endless possibilities, like EtherPad.

EtherPad is a real-time, collaborative document editor.  Sure, there are similar products on the market,  but unlike, say, Google Docs or the eagerly anticipated Google Wave, EtherPad is the only “real time” editor available now.  Changes are instantly reflected on every participant’s screen (Google Docs has a pesky 5-15 second delay) and thanks to color-coded text, you can actually see who is making what changes.

EtherPad is a completely autonomous word processing platform, which means no sign-ups, no accounts, no permissions.   You can invite anyone to participate by sending them the URL.   It’s worth noting that there is an email invite feature, but it’s not required.   As users populate the “pad”, they see a common editing screen, where they can type directly or import a document, as well as a list of current editors and a group chat window.  EtherPad offers an infinite undo history and easy access to document revisions.   The editing functions are pretty limited (bold, italics), but you can export the final product in plain text, HTML, MS Word, or PDF, and style it further.  Your document and its multiple revisions will remain on your pad forever, however, since there are no accounts, the only way to access your work is through your EtherPad URL – lose that, and you could be in trouble.

The idea here, plain and simple, is collaboration on demand.  You can connect team members, clients, or any other outside party as they work on a creative concept; augment a team meeting or teleconference with shared notes that participants can take with them; hold a large brainstorming session; or just edit documents simultaneously.   The list goes on and on.

With so many media types – webpages, audio, video, etc. – why is presentation software so behind the curve?   Why show a screengrab when you can show the actual webpage?  Why explain with drab text when you can layer a voice recording over your presentation?

That’s the idea behind Flowgram, an interactive presentation software that lets you incorporate a little bit of everything and mix-master it from a web-based interface.   Here’s the quick run down of what you can include in your presentations:

•    Webpages
•    Photos
•    Background Audio
•    RSS
•    Photos from Flickr, Facebook, & Picassa
•    Recorded Narration
•    Microsoft docs, including PowerPoint

You upload each as an element of your presentation, arranging and editing as you go.  You can create custom pages to fill in the holes or create transitions, as well as highlight text in documents or on webpages to draw the viewers eye to an important selection.  When you’re done, just tell Flowgram how you intend to share your presentation – you can make it a public document on Flowgram, embed it in your website, email it, upload to YouTube, or publish it directly to your blogging or social platform of choice. Whew.

Check out the Flowgram we created to demo the new version 1.5 of the Mission Zero iPhone App:

If you’ve ever sat through a boring PowerPoint presentation or lackluster demo, then you understand that a little rich media can go a long way.  If webpages are an integral part of your presentation, this is the tool for you.

We want to thank everyone who participated last Thursday for January’s Atlanta Digital Marketing Meetup, where the topic was the Top Ten E-Commerce Platforms and Tools. For those of you who could not make it, we’re providing a recap of our discussion below.

It should come at no surprise that e-commerce is on the rise – it offers low overhead and flexibility in a difficult economy. The real eye opener here are the resources at your disposal and just how easy they have made online selling. There is literally a tool for every e-commerce need, ranging from the small, single product shop to the full-blown e-commerce operation with multiple stores and thousands of products.

Our staff has put together the short list of e-commerce platforms worth investigating. We have a healthy mix of low-cost and no-cost solutions – most we have worked with and can vouch for.

If you’re looking to launch an online store or want to sell products from your website, we invite you to review our list and weigh the pros and cons of each, which can be found under after the jump.

Besides, it doesn’t hurt to shop your options.

Drumroll…

The Top E-Commerce Platforms and Tools (in no particular order as no one tool is right for everyone):

• Magento
• Prestashop
• Drupal with Ubercart
• Joomla! with VirtueMart
• NetSuite
• OFBiz E-Commerce
• Volusion
• Shopify
• FoxyCart
• Paypal, Google Checkout, and Amazon Checkout
• ShopVisible

We publish our “weekly” monthly” and give you 11 options on a Top Ten List… that’s how we roll. Click on “more” to see the details.

(more…)

Sometimes you just need a small solution to get a job done. If online selling is secondary to your core business, maybe you’re looking to distribute a tutorial or turn a profit on market research, too many features can just get in the way.

Think about Big Cartel instead. This platform was designed with the do-it-yourselfer or small shopkeeper in mind and offers the bare minimum of features required to sell a product or service online, such as:

• A straightforward user interface that lets you create and manage your store, including inventory controls and sales stats
• Pre-stocked store templates and page designs (or create your own)
• The ability to charge sales tax and shipping and/or offer discount codes
• Free Big Cartel domain or use your own
• Convenient PayPal checkout – no need to setup or pay for credit card processing

Check out the store we threw together in 3 minutes (granted, that shows):

Big Cartel offers a free account that comes with 5 product slots and hosting. The Diamond package, which is about $20/month, comes with 100 product slots, full customization, inventory tracking, product reviews, and visitor stats.

There’s no need to pay for a lot of extras you don’t need. Here’s a hassle-free solution for selling just about anything online.