Yesterday, Iranian authorities enacted a ban on Gmail, saying they’d introduce a government-sponsored (and presumably government-monitored) email service to replace it.  Now, as YouTube’s seeing an influx of protest videos, Google’s taken a moment to mark the Iranian government’s lack of control.

To be clear: these videos are not all specifically related to the Gmail development.  Some Iranians are instead using today, which is the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Republic, to protest the presidential election and the subsequent crackdowns on free speech.

Google just helped to put a spotlight on the clips and the deteriorating situation.  Olivia Ma wrote on the YouTube Blog, "[T]hese extraordinary videos provide an exclusive window into what’s taking place on the ground, as foreign press have been banned from the country.  YouTube remains blocked in Iran, but dissidents are passing videos to friends out of the country and using Internet circumvention technologies to post the footage, according to news reports and correspondence with those on the ground."

She then added, "We’re tracking the videos on Citizentube . . . .  A playlist can be found here."

Free speech advocates will no doubt find it reassuring that Google hasn’t tried to make nice with Iran’s government following the Gmail ban.

Between Y Combinator’s Startup School, the influx of seed fund incubators, the list of legendary mentors and investors and the dotcom bust’s school of hard knocks, is there really any reason to go to grad school? At ReadWriteWeb we’re supportive of lifelong learning and universities that coach entrepreneurs, but a recent post by Venture Hacks founder Naval Ravikant has us wondering, “What is the value in grad school?”

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Ravikant suggests that incubators and accelerators like YCombinator and Techstars are the new grad school.

He writes, “In some ways, it’s better,” and that unlike business schools, YCombinator pays entrepreneurs, which allows founders to be their own boss and encourages original work.

In addition to Ravikant’s points, the fact that every incubator participant is connected to advisors through a financial agreement means the group may be motivated to maintain their network and share contacts. Nevertheless, before dismissing the idea of grad school altogether, it’s good to remember many of the top entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley are MIT, Harvard and CalTech grads (including some of the Venture Hacks team). Perhaps the argument here is not so much about incubators over traditional institutions, but in the value of good mentors that have a stake in your success and do not rest on the laurels of a tenured position.

As a startup entrepreneur, what is the best lesson you’ve ever been taught and who taught it to you?

Photo Credit: Duncan Hull

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American startups are not alone when it comes to the well of venture funding drying up. A recent report by the Israel Venture Capital Research Center has found that funding in Israel fell drastically to $1.12 billion in 2009, nearly half the amount from the previous year. The 46% decrease marks the lowest funding numbers since 2003 and ends Israel’s streak of three consecutive years with increasing number of companies and funding dollars.

The numbers are a sign of the worldwide economic stress that is affecting countries large and small across the globe. While funding plummeted between 2008 and 2009, the number of companies funded only fell roughly 7% from 483 to 447, which means less money is being given to each company. In the fourth quarter of 2009, the average financing round was just $2.2 million, down from $3.61 million during the same period in 2008.

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By sector, life sciences saw the most growth took the lion’s share of the money up from 15% in 2008 to 24% in 2009. Semiconductors in Israel continued a downward trend, falling from 15% of the funding in 2008 to just 8% in 2009, its lowest share since 2001. The internet and communications sectors held steady at 13% and 20% respectively, but they are nowhere near their numbers from 2000 when they combined for almost 70% of the total funding.

As reflected in the report, Israeli venture firms tend to favor mid-stage funding over seed funding by a great margin. In the fourth quarter of 2009, mid-stage companies accounted for over half of the funding, while seed companies gained just 4% of the total.

We recently reported that the fourth quarter showed hope for American startups, both in mergers and acquisitions and venture funding. For comparison, the United States saw over $20 billion in venture funding for 2461 deals in 2009, an average of nearly $8.5 million per deal.

With venture funding seemingly drying up in Israel, the United States could see an influx of foreign entrepreneurs coming to American for venture funds. Of course, this could be expedited by the creation of a startup visa program, a topic we wrote about earlier this month.

Photo by Flickr user .

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Exactly one week after the announcement of its nook eBook reader, Barnes & Noble today announced that it will also sell the Plastic Logic QUE proReader. The QUE will be sold next to the the bookseller’s own nook on BN.com and in B&N’s stores. Earlier this year, B&N and Plastic Logic announced that B&N would power the QUE reader’s online store. The proReader is scheduled to premiere on January 7. For the crucial holiday season, this means that B&N will only be able to sell its own eReader in its stores, though a B&N-powered iRex eReader will soon be available in Best Buy stores as well.

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Is B&N Partnering With Too Many eReader Manufacturers?

In September, after the successful launch of the B&N eBook store, we couldn’t help but wonder if B&N’s eBook brand was hurt by the fact that it didn’t offer any compatible readers yet. Now it looks like B&N is going in the opposite direction – the company will offer so many compatible readers that consumers might actually be confused by this large selection. Amazon, which offers two very similar readers under the Kindle brand, doesn’t have this problem.

In the perfect world, every eReader would be able to read every eBook from every store. You could buy a book in the Amazon Kindle store and read it on your B&N nook. Real books don’t have any restrictions, after all. Many new users will assume that eBook readers work just like regular books or MP3 players and music stores, which have now mostly given up on offering DRMed files. With the new influx of devices, B&N and its partners will have to make sure that they educate new users about compatibility issues between different devices and stores.

Why B&N Needs Its Partners

It will be interesting to see how these other devices will sell next to B&N’s own nook. The nook is closely linked to the B&N brand while Plastic Logic and iRex aren’t household name for most consumers. This is why B&N had to launch its own eReader and partner with other companies. In order to beat Amazon, B&N couldn’t just copy Amazon’s device strategy with the nook. The company also had to go beyond this and offer partnerships to other device manufacturers to hedge its bets and to open up its store to a larger audience.

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Despite our best predictions with SEO, you can never pin-point with accuracy which keywords from a title tag, meta description or combined occurrence of a keyword on a page search engines will use to return a relevant query.

This is why it is imperative to promote as many relevant shingles as possible for returning a page as a relevant hit for a “specific” or “broad match” search queries through using succinct titles, naming conventions or meta descriptions.

We can create all of the multiple layers in advance, but each metric will be scrutinized for trust, depth and popularity and authority, and depending on how it fares from these algorithmic litmus tests determines what degree of visibility the page receives.

Typically one of two things occurs (1) it flies to the top 10 unchallenged, feels its way out and is assessed by metric such as click-throughs and relevance (sort of like a test to see if it belongs there) or (2) the ranking crawls its way up over time and in a few months finds its home in the top 10 if combined with other pages via internal linking or get a few deep links from other pages.

What I can tell you is that the signals gleaned from (a) the volume of content in your site about each of the topics / keywords in the title and (b) how well they are linked together or have an influx of deep links do affect the buoyancy of any related page.

Both phases (the initial spike) and the buoyant balloon effect should be predicted and anticipated.

Depending on the barrier to entry (how much competition is saturating the keywords in question) will determine just how much traction a new page gets out of the gate.

Much like a wave form, there is often a burst of SERP (search engine result page) positioning that occurs as the new page/content acts like a beacon to release the pressure of relevance that percolates under the surface.

It is like a concentrated topical fulcrum that serves to propel the newly released content into a favorable trajectory and then based on search volume, click-appeal and what other pages are challenging that page for relevant supremacy determine the extent of its exposure.

The more competitive the root or key phrase, the longer it typically takes to reach the top of a more competitive keyword combination.

Although a page can rank for multiple variations (depending on the authority of the root domain), it is better to assign a pecking order to the page to emphasize which keywords you would like it to be found for or settling into as the primary path for relevant traffic.

For example, if I create a new page and use a relevant title and meta description such as:

SEO Business Consulting Services

Business consulting services by “company x”, provides SEO [keyword 1], service [keyword 2], and summary [plural usage of alternative keywords combined]…

This page could rank for any portion of any of  the relevant keywords contained/presented in this crucial / summary.

This is your first line of coherence for each page, structure this well and you can ensure that search engines take heed and will often use this as the default snippet/description to promote click-throughs from interested parties.

The description tag should always support the title, ( a slight bit of redundancy/relevance) doesn’t hurt, but it should also contain your secondary keyword or a few alternatives as well to promote “cross pollination” of keywords which occurs naturally when a page gains age, support from other pages (via internal or external links).

A degree of transference is anticipated, so, the meta description allows you to steer that process into a conversion objective by sculpting the aggregate ranking factors and giving them stability as a heading for search engines to adhere.

Going back to the example above and filling in the blanks for the sake of continuity:

SEO Business Consulting Services

Business consulting services by “marketing solutions”, provides SEO, landing page optimization, internal link optimization and link building services for search engine optimization.

If you then had headings on the page for the topics mentioned:

SEO, Landing Page Optimization, Internal Link Optimization and Link Building Services then this page would be a self fulfilling prophecy and rank across any keyword combination over time.

For example, search engine queries such as:

Landing Page Consulting
Search Engine Optimization Consulting
Business Optimization Services
Landing Page Optimization
Internal Link Optimization
Business Consulting Services

Would all be “a relevant hit” as part of the root phrases/shingles implied by the title and meta descriptions.

If you add enough internal links from any of the keyword combinations above from other pages (that already have relevance for those keywords) and you will create a dynamo of keyword stemming that can pass along ranking factor to the new target page.

For example 10 links internally from the keyword “Search Engine Optimization Consulting” from a page that ranks already for some shingle in the keyword combined with 15 deep links (links from other sites) would provide enough transference to put this page on the map for that keyword.

If it appears in the top 100 from not in the top 1000, then you know you have crossed the tipping point for some of the most crucial metrics.

From there, you need to (1) reinforce it over time with additional internal or external links and (2) give it enough time to stem and settle into its purpose as a designated landing page and gain on page authority.

In other words, a page can rank from 1 or two words on the target page, if (a) there is enough internal links to support the transference of link weight and authority and (2) if the page is groomed as a relevant candidate from the continuity between the content, title and reputation that page has within the hierarchy of your website.

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Jeffrey Smith is an active internet marketing optimization strategist, consultant and the founder of Seo Design Solutions Seo Company http://www.seodesignsolutions.com. He has actively been involved in internet marketing since 1995 and brings a wealth of collective experiences and fresh marketing strategies to individuals involved in online business.

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Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

%%Optimizing Meta Titles and Descriptions%%

Optimizing Meta Titles and Descriptions

Last night we told you about the launch of Twitter’s new homepage. The revamped design sports a sleek look that is pretty easy on the eye. But, once you get past the pleasing aesthetics, you’ll also see that Twitter has added a search capability and popular topics, which in turn could mean an influx of Twitterers.

It should be noted that most Twitterers won’t ever see the new homepage, unless they logout of course. But, the new layout isn’t for the "everyday Twitter user", it’s meant for the non-tweeting crowd, or those that don’t see the use for it. Recently, WebProNews featured an article, "The Average American Still Unfamiliar With Twitter", which discussed this very topic. It seems as though Twitter hopes the new homepage will help herd in some of the non-Twitter users.

Do you think the new homepage will help get new users? Tell us.

Twitter Search – Is Twitter competing with search engines now?

With Twitter’s inclusion of search, on the homepage, they’ve now made Twitter useful… even for those who refuse to tweet. WebProNews’ Chris Crum wrote an article about this very topic, and here’s his take on what might happen with Twitter search:

"When a new user comes along to discover Twitter for the first (or even second or third) time, they’ll see that search box. They’ll say to themselves, "What is this? I thought Twitter was just some pointless way to tell people what I am having for breakfast. It’s a search engine now?" Then they will start to understand that there is more to gain from Twitter than what they previously thought."

You might be asking, "What is the big advantage to a Twitter search versus, let’s say Google?" The answer is simple. With Twitter, you get real-time results (which is the next big thing in search). Twitter even highlights this aspect on the new homepage with the following header:

But, don’t think for a second that Google doesn’t know they’re late to the party, in regards to real-time search. Google’s own Larry Page has even stated:

"I have always thought we needed to index the web every second to allow real-time search.  At first, my team laughed and did not believe me.  With Twitter, now they know they have to do it.  Not everybody needs sub-second indexing but people are getting pretty excited about real-time."

Will Twitter be able to lure some searchers away from Google? Let us know what you think.

Trending Topics… umm… I mean Popular Topics

By now you’ve probably noticed that Twitter has added "popular topics" to the homepage. But, these aren’t your everyday, profile page, trending topics. With these you can now see what’s popular right now, today and this week.

If you’re still unclear what the popular topics are about, Twitter offers the following description :

"Twitter looks at every incoming tweet, then ranks the popularity of certain words or phrases in real time. Click any of the popular topics below to see what people are saying about them right now."

The new popular topics, coupled with search, seems to be a strategy that Twitter is employing hoping it leads to new users. @Biz had the following to say about this on the Twitter blog:

"…demonstrating the power of Twitter as a discovery engine for what is happening right now through our Search and Trends often awakens a sense of wonder which inevitably leads to a much more compelling question, "How do I get involved?""

What are your thoughts about the new "Popular Topics"? Tell us.

Popular Topics / Search Results Pages

Let’s say you want to see why "Apple Claims New" is a popular topic, so you click it. You’re then taken to a re-vamped results page, with an added element. Twitter now displays a description of why the topic is popular.

This new description will come in very handy when those odd terms creep up into the popular topics. Below, you can read Twitter’s description of this new addition:

"Twitter looks at every incoming tweet, then ranks the popularity of certain words or phrases in real time. Click any of the popular topics below to see what people are saying about them right now. Some topic descriptions are sourced from What The Trend."

Besides the new description, the results pages are pretty much the same… but they do sport the new updated design. I do wish Twitter would’ve incorporated the FriendFeed sort of ajax auto-refreshing thing they do, that could be turned off and on, of course. (It should be noted that the search results pages look identical.)

Do you find the new descriptions helpful, or distracting? Let us know.

Twitter’s New Search Tips

Upon clicking a popular topic, or doing a search, you’ll notice a new feature in the column, a "Search Tip". Sure, these tips aren’t anything to write home about, but they do highlight some of the underused search operators. I’ve included a few examples of them below:

"Use source: immediately before a particular Twitter source (like a desktop or mobile app) to find tweets posted via that client. Example: weather source:tweetie will find tweets containing "weather" and entered via Tweetie."

"Use to find tweets with a positive attitude. Example: movie will find tweets containing "movie" with a positive attitude".

"Use until: immediately before a specific date to find tweets sent before and until that date. Example: ftw until:2009-07-16 will find tweets containing "ftw" and sent until date "2009-07-16" (year-month-day)."

Do you currently use any Twitter search operators? Tell us.

Twitter’s Sign up Page

Twitter’s sign up page is probably my biggest complaint with the new design. Why didn’t Twitter update the sign up page with the new look? Isn’t this page the most important to them? It’s the one that brings in the new users.

The sign up page seems very dull and boring when you compare it with the new look. They could’ve at least changed the color scheme to match, but maybe since this page is working well for them, they didn’t want to change it. Personally for me, it feels very disconnected from the new modern look they got going on.

Should Twitter update the design of the sign up page? Tell us.

More Work Ahead

Even though the new Twitter homepage looks great, @Biz is quick to add that they still have a lot of work to do:

"We have a lot of work to do when it comes to the quality of our search results and trend analysis but repositioning the product to focus more on discovery is an important first step in presenting Twitter to a wider audience of folks around the world who are eager to start engaging with new people, ideas, opinions, events, and sources of information.

We’ll likely continue to make changes to the Twitter home page as we respond to feedback and ideas. We’re eager to see if encouraging a sense of wonder and discovery leads to a better first impression of Twitter."

What are some changes you would recommend for the Twitter homepage? Let us know.