Patrick Swayze and Facebook Status Tagging

Its 3:30am in the morning and I’m awoken by my blackberry's piercingly ringing away (serves me right for not switching off to a new profile before going to bed). In my heavily lethargic state, I fumble around to switch the profile but inadvertently glanced at the news alert headline stating the unfortunate passing of the start of the movies "Dirty Dancing" and "GHOS star - Patrick Swayze. Utterly gutted by this as I remember that my mum's a huge fan (she still has the GHOST VHS tape somewhere in the living room - even though we have the DVD).


Now unable to get back to sleep, I find myself going online read up on the latest news as well as share the news on Patrick Swayze on Twitter & Facebook . Looking at the various status update on Facebook at that ungodly hour I find a few friends in Los Angeles already have their status with condolences of Patrick Swayze. In adding to the already amassing sense of remorse I update my status and accidentally come across a green drop down within the facebook publisher window asking me to tag the name Patrick Swayze. Slightly confused by this for 2 reasons 1) I’m pretty sure Patrick Swayze is not on my friends list and 2) I've never come across the green drop down menu before, Realising this I naturally think Facebook might be having some technical issues. I refresh the page and try again - No Green drop down menu but I realise something within Facebook must has changed. Looking at other news feed, spotted Nick Burcher's status mentions the "Facebook status tagging feature".

Reading on, it appears that you can now you can tag your friends as well as other "things" (according to Facebook help) you’re connected to in your Facebook status and other posts. This feature works with the Publisher box that appears on your home page and profile page. Below is an example of my test:

"Hello Test to @nickburcher and @raphaelzier "

To use this feature all you need to do is type the "@" symbol in the your status window followed by any part of the name you would like to tag. A new drop-down menu will appear with all matching entries. You can tag friends, Pages, groups, events and applications. Once tagged the item will change to blue - allowing anyone to click to the profile of that tag. You need to note that the privacy rules still apply.


There are obvious clear similarities to Twitter links with the use of the @ linking to a profile and I think it certainly something to watch out for when looking at the ongoing development of these two companies in future.

In the mean time if anyone comes across the elusive "green drop down box" please let me know.

Google Wonka Bars, People Search and Addictions

In life, there are a few sure things that you can be sure of e.g. death, taxes, paying bills, a bad haircut, bad relationships and an unending cynical but yet comfortable knowledge that history does indeed repeat itself. When it comes to “History repeating itself” - This has never been truer especially when it comes to Search Marketing evolution. Looking at Google, it always strikes me that all new Google products are appear to be products/services that have been created in the past but re-hashed with a Google badge and voila! a new product is born. Then again, Google is a business, and if it is improving past services who I'm I to judge.






The latest news of the New Google Profile results (launched yesterday) got me thinking about how much Google has evolved and how addicitve Google has become. Now, to the readers of my blog (all 4 of them) who know about Google Profile search either through reading this blog or having recently read the breaking news elsewhere, might be getting either a little excited, eager to find out what new toy the guys from Mountain View have created. To them I would advise and say hold your horses, don’t get too excited just yet. This is one toy which you first have to ask if you really need it.

I am, as any other digital marketing geek out there, loves trying out any new tools in the market, but with Google it’s a little different. Google, to me, has become our New Willy Wonka - with their range of classic and new Google Sweets such as Google Search, Google Latitude, Google StreetView and now Google Profile Search?.. These all sound like new Wonka Bars to me. Questions is, are they new? or just simply differnet Chocolate bars/ swets with Wonka packaging?



So what is Google Profile Search? Google Profile search (or is that PEOPLE Search?) is a new service from Google whereby you can search Google profiles to find people who entered some information about themselves in their public pages. Great if Facebook or LinkedIn isn't enough for looking for someone. Nice feature, but is it worth it?


Firstly I need to point out that not everyone is searchable on Google Profile. To do this Google recommends that you add information about yourself to your Google account profile. For more information on how to do this you need to go to the Google account Help. You need to know that Google will make your profile visible to supporting engines and search engine results page.

You can get access to Google Profile search by clicking here

However, Just because its there does that mean we have to use it? Well, No, you don’t have to. Not that different from Willy Wonka in that he made lots of chocolate bars, and you know if you eat too much you will get fat. But it’s made and it’s in shops, but you don’t have to buy it do you – albeit as tempting as it is.


Back in the mid 90's profile search or people search , call it what you will, was an important feature to have on the web, especially for directories and search engines such as Yell and the late "Lycos". However these turned out to be fads and now the web has evolved and has become widely part of our everyday use, it makes me wonder how Google Profile will match up this time round?







In an effort by Google to make search a little more personal, efficient, unique to the searcher and Improving Google search results in general - a Gargantuan feat I might add, it appears that we may have to give a little bit of our own selves, identity, personal space to Google and search engines alike to obtain this. But is this the only way to achieve this or is there something else? How many more Wonka type tempting chocolates/sweets can we expect from Google? and just how addictive will this become? well, if you think about it, its already here.

In a quote used in Willy Wonka & the choclate factory(1971 version - thank you very much) - "its TV Dinner, No, Its WonkaVision" reminds me that Google isnt that far from this...Google Vision soon maybe?