Is WordPress a Superior Publishing Platform?

March 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Yes.

If you’re a regular at BlogCraving, you know that we are huge WordPress fans. Guilty as charged.

However, we are constantly reminded why it is a superior publishing platform.

wordpress vip logo Is Wordpress a Superior Publishing Platform?For example, 15% of the top 1 million sites on the web are powered by the WordPress platform.  At first glance, that sounds like a big fluffy number.  Stop for a second and take a look at the caliber of publishers using the platform, and you will see it is not all fluff.

Publishers using WordPress: NBC Sports, CNN, TED, TechCrunch (AOL), Time, Wall Street Journal, CBS Radio, CBS Local, and the LA Times…just to name a few.

Recently, WordPress also announced its Partners program for companies that want to build WordPress ready versions of their products into the WP platform.  The WordPress team then certifies these vendors as “partners” basically saying that the code is compliant with the WP core.

The fact that other digital and web companies are building specific instances of their products for the WordPress community says something about the scale and quality of WP.

Getting to Partner status with WordPress is no joke either.  Their developers run through every single line of code to make sure that there is nothing being committed that could endanger the health of a WP site.

WordPress FTW.

Filed Under: News, Wordpress Tagged With: ,

Facebook Timeline Coming to ‘Pages’ on March 30th

March 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment
facebook timeline pages businesses 240x293 Facebook Timeline Coming to Pages on March 30th

Source: Facebook.com

You officially have 29 days to prep your business’ Facebook page for the conversion to Timeline.  That’s right, Facebook has officially announced that current Pages will be converted to “Timeline” mode on March 30th.  No, the change is not optional.

Timeline has been controversial.  Ironically, there is a Facebook Page called “Facebook Timeline Sucks.”  Little do they know how goofy that will look in 4 weeks.

If you have a Facebook page for your blog, you have until the end of the month to preview, prepare, end edit your page for Timeline deployment.  If you are ready to go, you can even push it live ahead of time.  However, after March 30th, it will automatically switch to Timeline mode forever.

Love it or hate it, Timeline does offer Page owners some handy new features.

You will now be able to take advantage of the large “Cover Photo” across the top of the page that you see in personal profiles using Timeline today.

Messaging is finally coming to Pages.  In the current (old) version of Pages, users were unable to send the brand a private message like you can to real people.  Now, users will be able to communicate directly and privately with the Page/Brand. [Read more...]

Filed Under: News, Strategy Tagged With:

Apple iPad 3 Announcement is Official

February 29, 2012 By 1 Comment
ipad3 event invitation 480x398 Apple iPad 3 Announcement is Official

A copy of the invitation sent by Apple to industry journalists teasing the release of the iPad 3.

Can you even stand the excitement?  I know while you found out about this at work, you wanted to run up and down the streets screaming with joy.  Well my friend, next week can’t come soon enough.  It is finally here.  The iPad 3 is officially on its way.

[sarcasm end]

After an especially lenghty round or rumor manufacturing, the buzz finally reached full speed today as Apple sent out invitations to join them in San Francisco on March 7th. Looking at the invitation, it looks like we can expect to see a hot new iPad for sure.

Also, the line in the invitation might double as 2012′s pickup line of the year.

We have something you really have to see.  And touch.

Apple’s will be new CEO Tim Cook’s first major product release since the passing of Steve Jobs.  The pressure will be high for Cook as everyone will naturally begin comparing his performance to the legendary Jobs.

Luckily, Apple has started to make a few moves to put a tiny bit of comfortable distance between that era of Apple and the future.  For example, Apple’s recent “Text Book” announcement happened in New York City instead of the greater Palo Alto area.

This very announcement was rumored to also occur in NYC (but will be in San Francisco).

Cook has proven that he has no problem handling the pressure, but it must be something to know that you are always going to be compared to the greatest pitchman technology has ever seen.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: ,

What is the Future for TechCrunch?

February 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Who knew that back in 2005, Michael Arrington’s geeky tech blog would become what it is today. Err…what it was yesterday?

Today’s departure of Editor in Chief, Erick Schonfeld has been just one of a stream of top talent.

Earlier this week, popular blogger and TechCrunch TV host Jason Kincaid also announced his departure.

Paul Carr openly threatened to quit at one point. And then he did so in a blog post on TechCrunch. Erick then accepted his resignation in a followup blog post.

TechCrunch CEO, Heather Harde bailed out in December.

And then there was this big guy. Michael Arrington’s infamous public exit saga.

There are still a handful of talented, interesting bloggers at TechCrunch. However, the herd is much thinner now. I would expect it only to get thinner as the remaining crew is tempted with outside offers.

I think most would agree that the idea of an old school company like AOL buying a wildly independent site like TechCrunch was a mistake. They have no business owning a property like that. Consequently, the reasons why have shown themselves in the continued exodus.

Filed Under: News Tagged With:

The Day of SOPA / PIPA Protest Begins

January 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Google and Wikipedia have  begun their protests of the proposed SOPA and PIPA legislation before Congress.

Wikipedia has taken their own site down and offered a landing page that enables users to lookup contact information for their elected officials. [Read more...]

Filed Under: News Tagged With: , ,

Twitter’s @anywhere Service Officially Announced

March 15, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Twitter CEO Evan Williams (@eV) finally announced the new @anywhere service today at SXSW during his keynote.

Will this become a game changer in the social media world?  If you are Twitter, hell yes.

The Twitter “At Anywhere” concept is simple, logical, and easy which is why it will probably be a huge success.  By just dropping some simple javascript code onto your website, Twitter will automatically link names of individuals or brands with their Twitter accounts.

Twitter has already signed a hearty bunch of major publishers to sign on at launch, not the least of which include the New York Times, YouTube, Huffington Post, Amazon, Bing, Digg, and eBay.

The proposed functions will work something like this.  Let’s say a New York Times columnist has a story posted on the NYTimes.com.  The byline in the article will automatically contain a link from the columnist’s name to the columnist’s Twitter profile.  Additionally, the people and companies (brands) that are mentioned in the article will also contain auto generated links to the Twitter profiles of those folks.

Upon hovering over the link, a small “info card” will come up showing you some details about the individual or brand’s profile.  From there, you can easily choose to follow the person.

The idea is to allow you to discover more Twitter profiles and interact with them without the need to leave the publisher’s website.

Historically, looking up a writer or blogger’s Twitter page was somewhat of a manual process.  You would have to search for that person’s twitter account, verify it is actually them, and then follow them.

This will serve to limit the amount of work required by each user to interact with these Twitter users.

As for Twitter’s potential growth, this will expose hundreds of thousands of Twitter profiles to the unsuspecting masses.  You might not know that your elected official has a Twitter account, or that a certain celebrity is a regular Tweeter.

The coming @anywhere system will streamline the discovery of new Twitter content for current and non-Twitter users.

Filed Under: News