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Assess Social Media Performance with Wildfire Monitor

jhay — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 00:00:24 +0000

The increase in social media usage has gone along with a rise in the number of tools to monitor and track that usage. Web users have plenty of choice here, but one tool that’s worth watching is WildFire Monitor. This is one of a range of useful tools from Wildfire Interactive, a technology company that aims to help organizations engage their social media communities. The key question that Wildfire Monitor asks is ‘who’s winning in social?’

Check Facebook and Twitter

The main WildFire Monitor page allows you to type in three Facebook page URLs and three Twitter usernames. Then you hit the compare button to compare how those pages and profiles have performed over time. One of the nicest things about WildFire Monitor is the easy stats view via a color coded chart. You can track weekly, monthly, quarterly or all stats, checking the number of fans or followers. This could be particularly useful for organizations who are trying to see how their social media efforts match up against those of their competitors, measured in simple numbers. If you want to know whether your fan base is increasing or whether your competitors are gaining the edge, then this is the perfect tool.

Get Social Media Alerts

What’s more the daily trend tracking can be combined with weekly alerts which allow you to receive these key metrics in your inbox and WildFire soon plans to add another feature, providing customized social media guidance based on your key metrics. This will be a great feature for those just starting out in social media, and even for those who want to refine the techniques they are using to gain fans and followers.

Build Social Media Campaigns

Signup for this tool is free at the moment, but you’ll have to pay to use WildFire’s other award winning tool, the campaign builder. This is how you can attract and engage your customers. This tool allows you to create branded campaigns such as contests, giveaways, sweepstakes, surveys and so on and publish them both on your website and on your chosen social networks. Interactivity will draw your customers in and keep them loyal – and you’ll be able to track the growth in your fanbase with WildFire Monitor.

Other Users

Who else could use the monitoring tool? Well, it’s not just corporations who can benefit from this type of campaign and monitoring. All kinds of organizations can improve their social media performance this way – non-profits, small businesses, agencies – and even individual bloggers looking to gain some social media traction. Only you can decide whether to use WildFire Monitor as a stand alone tool – and peek on what your fellow bloggers are doing – or to go for the full suite of tools and launch an interactive campaign. Pricing for the campaigns starts at $5 apiece plus $0.99 per day and goes all the way up to customized white label solutions.

WildFire Monitor is a nice addition to the range of social media monitoring tools already available – check it out!

This post is written by Lior Levine, a marketing consultant for a web hosting company that lists the top 10 website hosting companies. Lior also advises for a company that specializes in personalized oncology services.

Review: HTC ChaCha

jhay — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 01:06:39 +0000

Smart representatives told us that the HTC ChaCha is being targeted by HTC to high school students or the young at heart mainly because it is the unofficial Facebook phone thanks to the dedicated ‘Facebook button’ on the handset.

Yep, this device comes with a full QWERTY keypad and a 2.6 inch Gorilla Glass display with touch capabilities. Yes, that’s a touch screen and a physical QWERTY keypad in one nifty device.

Before we proceed, here’s a quick run down of the phones specifications:

HTC ChaCha in silver

Display Size: 480×320, 2.6 inch Gorilla Glass display.
Internal Memory: 512MB ROM, 512MB RAM
CPU: 800 MHz processor
Primary Camera: 5MP LED Flash
Video Capture: Yes
Secondary Camera: Yes, VGA
Colors: Black, White, Purple

The ChaCha’s build is solid and comfortably fits the palm of your hands. It might be cumbersome for folks like me who have large thumbs to master speed typing on the keypad without making a grammatical and spelling disaster on your posts and messages, but you can get used to it in a short time.

The touch screen capabilities complement the physical keypad well as you can easily navigate the HTC Sense UI with it. Though I found it a bit confusing at first because I’ve never encountered a phone with both touch and physical keypad capabilities before.

So there were times that I trying to navigate using the keypad’s direction keys while trying to type a message on the screen which should have been the other way around.

The HTC ChaCha runs on the latest Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS sporting the exceptional HTC Sense 3.0 UI so it’s a good package altogether. It gives a clear display with crisp and vivid colors you could easily appreciate the 5MP camera that comes with it.

The 2.6inch 480×320 display may feel a bit cramped but it serves the phone’s primary purpose, allowing the user to easily update his or her Facebook wall status or check in to places you’ve just arrived at. All of these made possible because of the dedicated Facebook button which allows you to post photos, videos, music or status updates instantly without having to open the Facebook app itself.

The only downside I found with the HTC ChaCha, well on the test unit loaned to me, was that the p and @ keypad wasn’t working. Hopefully it’s not a bug of one all ChaCha phones as it could seriously turn away users who are looking for a capable phone with great mobile Internet features.

The HTC ChaCha is available exclusively from SMART and it’s free on their Smart Data Plan 1000 or the UNLIMITED Data Plan 1500. You get 100 free sms, free 40 minutes of calls and 100MB of data volume which is enough to let you enjoy updating your Facebook account while on the go.

Note: This review has been reconstructed from the original post that seems to have never been published because of a database error that struck this blog. Visitors coming from RSS readers may get confused so I apologize for the mishap.

Finally, integrated Facebook & Twitter Login to WordPress comments

jhay — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 04:13:31 +0000

Some view it as WordPress’ challenge to the Facebook Comment Box I on the other hand see it as a positive response to a need of WordPress users; allowing readers to easily add comments using their Facebook or Twitter credentials without the need for a third-party plugin.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against those third-party plugins that do just that, but seeing how this feature has become so common nowadays, it has become a de facto must-have for blogs. So it makes perfect sense that Facebook and Twitter login options be integrated into the WordPress comment widget.

It saves us bloggers from the hassle of finding the right plugin that does this job, it saves us from the trouble of resolving plugin conflicts if it arises, it saves us from the other trouble of messing around with theme files in order to make the plugin work the way we want it. Ultimately, one less plugin running under the hood makes a WordPress blog more secure and stable.

For now this feature is available to WordPress.com users and would soon be released for those self-hosted WordPress users like me via a plugin or as part of a future version of Jetpack.

Kudos to the WordPress team for this wonderful update!

Winners of the Pizza Hut Cheesy Summer Giveaway!

jhay — Sun, 15 May 2011 01:56:05 +0000

Finally, the long wait is over and the winners have been chosen. The little contest, sponsored by Pizza Hut Philippines started last April 15, 2011.

Up for grabs were 3,000.00 worth of Pizza Hut Gift Certificates. Three winners were chosen so that’s 1k worth of Pizza Hut GC for each.

So without further adieu, here are the lucky three winners of the Pizza Hut Cheesy Summer Giveaway!

Cindy Giduquio-Fabe
Josephine Soliman Gregorio
James Dv

Congratulations to all of you! I’ve already gotten in touch via Facebook to facilitate the claiming of your Pizza Hut GCs.

How the winners were chosen:

1) Entries were numbered according to the date of their entries as posted of the Four-eyed Journal’s Fan page.
2) Random.org’s Random Sequence Generator was used to generate a random sequence of numbers.
3) The first 3 numbers were then chosen as the winners.

Check out this blog’s Facebook Fan Page for details about the draw.

Once more, major, major thanks to all those who joined in the contest and especially to Pizza Hut Philippines!

Sony launches Internet TV in the Philippines

jhay — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 07:00:03 +0000

Just got word a few days back about SONY Philippines’ launch of its new line of Internet TV that range from the 32″ models up to 60″ models featuring Full HD 1080p display.

Some units in the new Bravia Internet TV 2011 line are also 3D TV like the KDL-HX925, KDL-NX720 and KDL-EX720.

Just as the name says, these Bravia Internet TVs come with widgets that allows you to connect to popular social networking sites like Facebook, YouTube and update your Twitter account right from the TV via a WiFi connection.

Some models like the KDL-CX520 even support Skype right out-of-the-box. Check out the prices of some models below:

KDL-CX520 (Full HD 1080 TV)
46” – Php99,999
40” – Php66,999
32” – Php39,999

KDL-EX520 (Full HD 1080 TV)
46” – Php133,999
40” – Php81,999
32” – Php52,999

Sony Philippines also released new connected Blu-ray Disc players, the BDP-S380 and BDP-S485 and a new Sony 3D Blu-Ray Disc Home Theater optimized for 2D or 3D entertainment experiences.

If you’re looking for a new HD TV with Internet capabalities, these new Sony Internet TV models are worth taking a serious look at.