Apple has released their brand new operating system, packed full of features old and new that are, in theory, revolutionary.

The new updates go throughout all features, including: Notifications, iMessages, Newsstand, Reminders, Twitter, Camera, Photos, Safari, PC Free, Mail, Game Centre, Wi-Fi Sync, Multitasking (iPad), AirPlay Mirroring, and Accessibility. Apple has really gone all out on their new OS and has done their best to improve the whole system.

Notification Centre

All notifications can now be found in one place, the notification centre. Not only are all updates conveniently in one place, they also do not interrupt any apps anymore. A notification bar pops up at the top of your screen and whatever app you are on continues to run as per normal.

iMessage

iMessage is a great new service that has only been done similarly by Blackberry with their infamous BBM app. Now Apple has released something that could be considered better as iMessage works for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. All that is required is Wi-Fi or 3G connection. Hopefully they will not go as far as Blackberry do and continue to keep their services running.

Newsstand

Newsstand is a new app that organizes all of your news and magazines into one Newsstand. It also automatically updates each subscription as and when it happens. There is a dedicated section in the app store to purchase news and magazine subscriptions.

Reminders

Reminders are your mobile to do list. You can type in any activity you need to remember or just have as a safety precaution in case you forget. You can make a Reminder by time or location, if you are leaving or going somewhere.

Twitter

Twitter is increasing in popularity and Apple has integrated the social network directly into the iPhone and iPad. You can now tweet directly from apps, they have also made adding media and your location even easier.

Camera

The previous OS had a terrible camera system, you had to hold the iPhone at an awkward angle. Now you can use the volume button to take a picture, you can also go straight to the camera from the lock screen.

Photos

You can now edit your photos directly from the Apple device. Features include cropping, auto enhance and red eye.

Safari

Safari is the only web browser that is usable on Apple products, excluding the Mac. But now Safari has been made faster and has a few more added features: tabbed browsing, reading list, and reader.

PC Free

Once you are on iOS 5, you will no longer need to connect to a computer to set your device up, you don’t even need a computer to use any other Apple products. You can download iOS updates and backup your apps, music and photos.

Mail

You can now format your emails, including bold, italics and underline. You can even create and delete your mailbox folders.

Game Centre

The Game Centre comes with some new changes. You can add a display picture to your profile and you can now purchase apps directly from the games centre.

Wi-Fi Sync

You can sync your Apple product to a Mac or PC on a shared Wi-Fi network. Whenever you connect your iOS gadget to charge, it syncs itself automatically.

Multitasking (iPad)

The iPad can now multitask, pinch the screen with four fingers and the multitasking bar is revealed. Now getting around the iPad is even easier!

AirPlay

Airplay is only available for the iPad2 and iPhone4S and it requires an Apple TV. Airplay allows its users do display what is onscreen on their iPhone or iPad on screen to a larger audience, ideal for presentations and so on.

Conclusion

Apple seems to have really pulled out all the stops with this one! They have focused on making their devices more accessible and innovative than ever. I will be writing a review of the new OS tomorrow so stay tuned!

Google + is the social network that just keeps expanding at a rapid rate. the last figure that was released told us that the site currently has a user base of 50 million, which is an astonishing statistic. It must be mentioned that G+’s rival, Facebook, has acquired more than 800 million users in its lifetime. Nevertheless, Google + is rocketing in terms of how active it is becoming. If Plus does become the dominant network, then businesses will be flocking across to join, so I am going to show you how to optimize your business profile so you can show up in high positions for key terms.

I have created a brand new profile for SEO Positive as an example. This profile has only a display picture, the profile contains no content (for example media or posts). I have also checked all of our keywords and we do not rank for any of them. Now I will do some optimization in the appropriate sections and see what difference it makes.

It may also be noteworthy that I have created another brand new profile with absolutely no history to measure the rankings in a completely unbiased way.

Introduction

I started off with the introduction section of the profile, not necessarily keyword stuffing, but I put in what I considered enough and made the box legible and of a proper standard of English. The introduction is as follows:

“SEO Positive is the award winning SEO Company based in the UK. SEO Positive offers ethical SEO Services that are guaranteed to show brilliant results in SEO. For more information on SEO Positive, go to http://www.seopositiveltd.com or follow their blog or even their Twitter profile.”

Now before I added this section we did not rank at all, as soon I had made changes to the profile, the rankings had changed too

Just by adding this one box you can see the SEO Positive profile has shot right up, and although it isn’t ranking for everything, it is ranking for some key terms. Obviously the term “SEO” will be the hardest to rank for but we will add another section and see what happens.

Bragging Rights

In the next section, “bragging rights” I tend to write something similar to the introduction but put in some achievements to make it fit the context of the section. So my submission to bragging rights is “SEO Positive has won multiple awards as an SEO Company, we provide our SEO Services to a wide range of businesses all over the world, including the UK, which is where SEO Positive is based.”

Now that this section has been added, we will look at the difference:

From this evidence, it is safe to say that there are no “bragging rights” here. This section may have some effect but it is clear that it is miniscule and hardly worth the time.

Occupation

Now I am going to try and add the appropriate occupation and see what effect that has: ‘SEO Services’.

Adding the occupation seems to have had a mixed set of results. The bonus is that nothing has fallen but some positions have stayed put. ‘SEO’ has raised and is now on the listings, yet ‘SEO Services’ is holding its ground.

Employment

We now approach the section of Employment. I have added the name of the company (SEO Positive) and for occupation I entered SEO Services. SEO Services is the keyword that the SEO Positive profile is not ranking for; this keyword also fits the context of the field quite well.

The employment section has had a surprising impact. Everything is now ranking, most search terms are rising, ‘SEO company’ fell by 1 rank but this could be due to competitors or other uncontrollable reasons. All in all the completion of the employment section has had a great effect.

Other Names

Education comes next but I want to take the white hat method in optimizing my Google+ profile, so I will leave this blank as it is irrelevant. Then comes the phone number, so I have entered SEO Positive’s office number. The ‘relationship’ and ‘looking for’ are also immaterial so the next field that can be used for SEO will be the ‘other names’ section. I am going to put all keywords in this section.

Adding this other names section seems to have had a negative effect, my thoughts of this decline in positions is because Google has to index all of these changes, which resulted in massive jumps in positions, especially for ‘SEO’ and ‘SEO Services’. Adding the other name would appear to have had a positive effect on ‘SEO Company’ but the 1 position increase doesn’t make up for the rest of the losses.

Nicknames

As the end of optimization approaches, we come to the ‘nicknames’ section. I have set it as ‘SEO Services’ because again, this is a term that hasn’t ranked.

Just adding the nickname section has had a great effect on the rankings, I think it is safe to say that ‘SEO’ and ‘SEO Services’ are going to be very competitive, like in the real Google SERP’s.

Profiles, Links and Contributions

There is only one more thing that can be done in terms of the profile, which is adding other profiles – websites that you contribute to and recommended links. I will add all of these at the same time as it is far too fiddly to do them one by one, also I will link to only SEO Positives’ profiles, the site and all blogs associated.

From these results we can see that no difference had been made by adding links or profiles. It seems that these parts of the profile are purely for the user.

Conclusion

All of these factors have had different levels of impact, but based on the differences that have been displayed, here is a list of each factor and the severity of their importance:

Introduction                                       -                                              *****

Bragging Rights                                 -                                              *

Occupation                                         -                                              **

Employment                                      -                                              ****

Other Names                                     -                                              *

Nicknames                                          -                                              ****

Profiles Links Contributions         -                                              *

So I can conclude that the most important sections of the Google Plus profile are the Introduction, Employment and the Nicknames. However I would not advise leaving the other parts out as it may result in weaker positions; also it lowers how useful your profile will be to users viewing it.

As a revision of all of the positions, I want to check the positions once more as the positions would have had time to settle and we can take all of the optimization efforts and put them together.

If we look back to where we started before we even optimized the profile, SEO Positive has raised a substantial amount. Taking into account that this profile is brand new and has no posts or media, it has acquired great positions. The only way to increase the ranking is to keep the profile active and consciously include the correct keywords in posts. As time goes on we should definitely see an even bigger rise in positions.

In the early October Google released Google Analytics update which will allow to see Google search data in Google Analytics reports. Google search data is gathered from Google Webmaster account.

To start monitoring Google Webmaster stats in Google Analytics you have to link your Google webmaster account with Google Analytics. To do so, go to the new version of Google Analytics, click  on “My Site” – > Reports -> Traffic Sources -> “Search Engine Optimisation” and the  select “Queries” . Then you will see the window as displayed below:

Click on “Set up Webmaster Tools data sharing” and you will be directed to Google Analytics “Web Property Settings” page where you’ll have to link your analytics with webmaster tools. To link them together you have to click on “edit” as showed below.

Google Analytics search queries report contains three different reports:

• Queries (Number of impressions, Clicks, Average Position, Click Through Rate (CTR))
• Landing pages (Number of impressions, Clicks, Average Position, Click Through Rate (CTR))
• Geographical Summary  (Number of impressions, Clicks,  Click Through Rate (CTR))

In a social networking site like Facebook, with its half a billion users (a number growing each day), it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to gauge that it could be the perfect marketing tool, the best place to promote your goods and services to potential customers, and their friends, and their friends of friends….get the drift? This could work miracles for your business, allowing it to grow from strength to strength.

Facebook is arguably the world’s largest social network. Ever since its inception, it has gradually upgraded itself to surpass the status of a website that tells you what your friends are doing, and become a website that determines what you watch, hear, read and buy. It has immense potential as a consumer generating tool…when you hear that your friend has worn Nike shoes or is planning to purchase the next Mac, your purchase decisions are also shaped, directly or indirectly. In a way, thus, Facebook is a website which not just records your life offline, but one which influences, shapes and changes the course of your life.

To begin with, here are a few quick tips if you’re planning to market your wares on Facebook. You must think of ways to attract users. The best way to do it is to push yourself not as a brand, but as a representative as a community, a group of people with a common love for the product that you are marketing.  Your Facebook profile should be one that’s attractive, interesting, but also representative of the product you’re trying to sell.

For aspiring marketers, here’s good news. Facebook also plans to change the way you find what you want online, giving stiff competition to search giants like Google. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is trying to wean you away from impersonal search engines, and encouraging you to increasingly rely on your friends to find out what movies they are watching, what music they are listening to, what games they are playing. So Facebook is all set to become a media hub, a conduit where music, cinema, literature and new can be found and shared.

In fact, Facebook has tied up with firms like Netflix and The Washington Post, and a number of other food, travel, and other retail brands which will give Facebook a new commercial edge. A new feature is also being planned, aptly titled Timeline. This will let users write and share their own personal histories, including milestones like prom, wedding, childbirth, vacations, etc.

Facebook has also devised a very unique advertising strategy, in which not the company, but the user will have the power to encourage the growth of a product. The users will soon be able to share with their friends, not just what they are thinking but a host of other sundry information – what brand of clothes, shoes you are wearing, where you are eating, what movies or music you are enjoying. This in turn will help the Facebook thinktank to evaluate what brands are most popular among their users. This unique method will help them keep a finger firmly on the pulse of the tastes and habits of the users.

Once they make these evaluations, they will sell advertising accordingly, so that users have access to brands that are gaining popularity among their peer group.

Do you find yourself constantly having to switch between languages as you interact via Facebook? Bi-linguists and international businesses everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief as the network launches its brand new translation feature, as powered by Bing Translator.

Users can now select the ‘Translate’ option from underneath a post, located in the same position as the ‘Share’ and ‘Comment’ buttons and also beneath each individual comment. Although the feature only supports a handful of languages (Russian, Japanese, Spanish, Korean, Taiwanese and Chinese) there is promise that Bing will expand upon this list in the near future, since the Translator already supports 37 languages.

Facebook have made the feature as flexible as possible by allowing users to alter the machine-driven translations if they feel they can do a better job. If enough users leave positive feedback about the human translation, it will replace the machine translation for that particular post on the network. The account owner can also modify their individual page settings to receive translations depending on their personal preferences.

Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox both offer extensions that allow Web developers to utilize common SEO tools from within their Web browser. Using these extensions will save SEO experts and Webmasters tons of time in their analysis by automatically cross-referencing all of the different tracking and analysis services, from Google PageRank to Alexa.

Popular Chrome Apps

The following Apps offer solid tools for enhancing your SEO marketing efforts from within your browser.

#1: SEO for Chrome

SEO for Chrome provides access to Competitive Analysis, Backlink Checking, PageRank Checking, and Keyword Research. With SEO for Chrome, you can find out how much of a site’s traffic comes from organic Google search results and see how much they spend on PPC traffic. You can also analyze a site’s social media presence, including the number of Facebook likes, Twitter tweets, Delicious bookmarks, Digg digs, and StumbleUpon stumbles.

It offers a full feature set and was able to inform me of everything I wanted to know in one place. Since I prefer Chrome over other browsers, this is my go-to SEO tool.

Pros: SEO for Chrome is the only extension on this list that offers full social media statistics, making it vital for anyone who is focusing their efforts on social media marketing.

Cons: SEO for Chrome is not perfect and has a few bugs. It sometimes errors makes Chrome significantly slower to load.

#2: SEO SERP Workbench

The SEO SERP Workbench addon allows you to compare your search engine result placement with your competitors for different keywords you may be targeting.

For simply seeing how your SEO is influencing your search engine results, this App can’t be beat. Unfortunately, since this is the only functionality it offers, it takes second place to the more fully-featured SEO Tools for Chrome.

Pros: SEO SERP Workbench does one job, but it does it very well.

Cons: SEO SERP Workbench doesn’t offer as much customizability as SEO Tools for Chrome.

Popular Firefox Extensions

I am a huge fan of the following Firefox extensions for SEO analysis.

#1: SEO Quake

Simply the best SEO extension in Firefox. SEO Quake offers a range of functionality for analyzing search engine optimization and seeing how well your keywords are doing. Using the SEO Quake toolbar, you can check the PageRank of your current page, how many pages on the site are indexed (it should be all of them), the number of backlinks pointing to your current page, and other miscellaneous details.

SEO Quake is embedded in your search engine results. You can click on one of the embedded results to be redirected to the page, and you can sort your results by any of the parameters.

Pros: SEO Quake is powerful and extremely customizable.

Cons: SEO Quake offers a lot of information by default, and it places itself in your browser in three separate places. It takes some configuring to make this less obtrusive.

#2: SearchStatus

The reason I sometimes prefer SearchStatus over SEO Quake is the intrusiveness of SEO Quake. It does seem to put itself all over your browsing experience. SearchStatus offers the same information, but places it at the bottom of the page, on your status bar.

SearchStatus is particularly useful for quickly checking keyword densities and noticing when links are marked nofollow.

Pros: SearchStatus offers all of the relevant information, Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, and Compete.com ranks, but does so unobtrusively. It can also break down the analysis to focus only on title tags and header tags, important SEO metrics.

Cons: SearchStatus does not offer as much information as SEO Quake or SEO Tools for Chrome.

Posted by Greg Henderson, an Internet Marketer and SEO Associate an email search site and free public records site: RecordsProject & MyFreeEmailSearch.

Facebooks’ news feed now consists of two sections, ever since the update. The most recent news, and of course the top news feed. Now there are two ways a social media marketer could go with this, to constantly remain in the most recent news feed, or keep one of their posts in the top news feed. The obvious problem with staying in the most recent is spam. Eventually, your friends or fans are going to cotton on to what you’re doing and choose the option to not see any of your updates, or in the worst case, unlike you and never receive another update from you again. I know it sounds a little drastic but when representing a company via social media, you need to create the best possible image, which is why it is essential to get into the top news feed. The real question is how?… How does Facebook decide how important something is? By using an algorithm, which can appear to be quite complicated however nowhere near as complex as the mighty Googles’, but if we break down the algorithm, we can decipher what needs to be done to enter the top news feed.

The image displayed above shows everything that the algorithm consists of. Looking at the big picture, in this case, is not the best way forward is to look at each section in great detail.

U

U is at the top of the list, not necessarily meaning that is of the most importance. U says “Affinity score between viewing user and edge creator” Affinity means how strong a relationship is, in particular the relationship between the poster and the viewer. If the posts are regularly commented on, then it will have a higher affinity and be seen more because Facebook thinks that user will be interested. On the other hand a bad relationship resulting in a low amount of interaction will also result in post going under the radar. The only way that you can increase your affinity score is by engaging all members of your audience as much as possible, but there is only so much you can do to control this factor.

W

W translates to edge weight. There are not a set of rules to follow with this factor, but there are areas which are safe to assume. An example of one of the “heaviest” posts, tend to be media related, such as: videos, pictures and links. So if you had a very important message you wanted your fans to desperately see, the best practice would be to attach some form of media, most likely a link but if it is relevant a video or picture would do nicely. In addition, there are more things that add to the weight of the post, engagement also heavily affects the post. So if there are a lot of: likes, shares and comments… then the post will be heavier and more likely to show in the top news. To increase your weight you should first like the post yourself, also you need to create discussion by asking for opinions or answers.

D

D is a fairly simple element of the algorithm, even more so when it is compared to the others. D represents the age of the post; the general rule of thumb is that the older the post, the less interesting the news is. Posts tend to not be shown if they are older than two days, but this isn’t an impossible occurrence, as U and W may be so great that they counter the D. The best way to combat this factor is by posting regularly, I suggest roughly three times a day.

Conclusion

Facebooks algorithm can be quite tricky, even if you do understand it, the crux of the matter is that it is very difficult to control because the majority is down to your fans. The best way is to take each letter, U W and D, as separate challenges and treat them as such. All fan pages will have a different technique, you will also need to develop your own technique. You must keep in mind that social networks, especially Facebook, are constantly changing and naturally, so will your methods. Keep an open mind and try to develop with the network, instead of against it.

Yesterday, many of us awoke to the dreadful news of Steve Jobs and that he passed away. But I think we should be focusing on what he achieved in his life and how much he affected others with his astonishing achievements.

1955 -

Steve Jobs was born, February, 24^th

1972 -

Steve joined Reed College, Portland,  he dropped out after a semester.

1974 -

Stephen was employed by Atari, who created the classic arcade game, SPACE INVADORS! He also attended meetings with the Homebrew Computer Club accompanied by an old friend from high school, Steve Wozniak.

1975 -

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak continued attending their Homebrew Computer Club gatherings.

1976 -

The first Apple computer was created on April fool’s day, which was a few days after Steve Jobs and Wozniak created a circuit board in their garage, located in Silicon Valley. Ron Wayne, who was the third co-founder Apple, left the company, after 2 weeks, the first ever Apple computer then went on the shelves for $666.66 ready for the summer.

1977 -

A second model of the Apple computer was revealed; the first personal computer to have colour graphics, Apples’ income reached $1 billion.

1978 -

Steve Jobs become the father to his daughter, Lisa; the mother was Chrissan Brennan who was Stephens’ girlfriend.

1979 -

Steve went to PARC (Xerox Pala Alto Research Centre) and was motivated by a Personal Computer that had a user interface which was graphical.

1980 -

Apple sells its products to the public; they earned around $110 million in what could be one of the biggest public offerings to this day.

1982 -

Yearly income totals at $1 billion.

1983 -

The Lisa PC was available to buy. Steve employed John Sculley as CEO of Apple

1984 -

The Macintosh advert was aired at half time of the Super Bowl, the Macintosh was then available in stores.

1985 -

Steve and Sculley argued, causing Steve leave Apple. Wozniak resigned Apple later in that year.

1986 -

Steve Jobs began his corporation called Next Inc., which was a new computer manufacturing and development company, creating PC’s for universities. He also purchased Pixar off of George Lucas, who we all know today as the creator of Star Wars.

1989 -

The first computer from Next Inc., was put on the shelves for a total of $6, 500

1991 -

Apple announce a new partnership with IBM to create new PC software and microprocessors; Apple releases portable Macs named PowerBook’s which were developed into the Macbooks that we know today.

1993 -

Apple unveils the Newton, a pen controlled, hand held computer. Apple lost $188 million in the quarter of that year. John Sculley was replaced with Michael Spindler who was promoted to the CEO of Apple. Sculley resigned as chairman. Steve Jobs wants to focus to be on developing software, as opposed to computers.

1994 -

Apple releases the Power Macintosh, which was created around the PowerPC chip that IBM and Motorola helped to develop, Apple then licensed its OS, which allowed, competing companies to clone Mac software.

1995 -

The first Mac clones were sold. Pixars’ animated film, Toy Story, was released in theatres which caused Pixar to go to Wall Street with a 140 Million IPO.

1996 -

Apple stated they wanted to buy Next Inc. for a total of $430 million, to become the owners of the OS Steve and his team had created. Steve then became the official advisor of Apple. Spindler was replaced with Gil Amelio as CEO of Apple.

1997 -

Steve was then promoted to the short-term CEO of Apple after Amelio was let go; he created an ingenious marketing opportunity by calling to himself the iCEO of Apple. Steve then put a stop to the Mac copy cats.

1998 -

Apple starts to make a profit, once again. Apple releases a candy coloured iMac which greatly changed the personal computing trade. The handheld Newton was also take off of the shelves.

2000 -

Steve Jobs became the permanent iCEO of Apple

2001 -

The first ever iPod was sold. Macs with a new operating system (OS X) were also released as well as the music software known as iTunes.

2003 -

Apple launches the iTunes online music store, with an estimated 200,000 songs that were priced at 99 cents each. 1 million songs had been purchased in the first week of iTunes being released.

2004 -

Jobs undertook surgical treatment for a curable case of pancreatic cancer; Apple released this information after his treatment.

2005 -

Apple produces different forms of the iPod, containing the iPod Nano, also an iPod that can play videos. Macs that were to be released at a later date were proclaimed to use Intel chips.

2006 -

Disney bought Pixar animations from Steve Jobs for a price of $7.4 billion, making him Disney’s largest shareholder.

2007 -

Apple unveils their first smart phone, the iPhone; customers camped overnight to be the first to get their very own.

2008 -

Steve Jobs seems to be ill because of his extreme loss of weight. In Apples’ event, September, he said that the rumours of his death are overstated.

2009 -

Steve clarifies that his weight loss is down to a hormone imbalance and he will be continuing to run Apple. Just a few days after this, he announced he will be on medical leave; he had a liver transplant and came back to the company in June.

2010 -

Apple sold 15 million iPads within only 9 months of its’ release.

January 17th 2011 -

Steve Jobs declared another medical leave to his employees by memo. Cook then took Steves’ position and ran Apples’ projects however; Jobs kept his title as CEO and was still a big part of important decisions.

August 24^th 2011 -

Steve Jobs resigned from Apple, Cook then took the position of CEO and Jobs is titled as the chairman of Apple.

October 5^th 2011 -

Steve Jobs died at 56 years old. Apple announced his death without giving a COD.

We have lost a fantastic person, even if we did not have the privilege to meet Steve ourselves, we cannot deny that he has changed every humans life, whether they know it or not. By pushing the human race to develop and realise that the limits are the ones we set. RIP Steve Jobs.

This tutorial will show how to create a simple, attractive form effect in photoshop to appear as though the fields are indented like that shown below.

Open a new file in Photoshop and add a nice background of your choice, in the example I have used #595959. Now create a white box like that shown using either the ‘Rectangular Tool’ or the ‘Rectangular Marquee Tool’ and fill in solid white.

Duplicate this box and put below like shown in the image, then duplicate again and put below for the button layer. Double click on this third box, select gradient overlay and click on the gradient colour. Now select a nice colour for your button and blend into a lighter version of that colour, the example uses #e27822 into #e88f47 like shown in the box below:

Now we just need to create the background of the boxes to make the indent. Create a new layer below all the previous layers and CTRL + click on the first box layer to select its outline. Now go to Select > Modify > Expand, enter 2 pixels and hit OK. Fill the selection with any solid colour as we are now adding a gradient.

Press CTRL + D to deselect and then double click the new layer, select gradient overlay as before and click on the gradient. Now leaving the bars where they are, double click the left colour and colour pick the main background of your image then drag the colour accross to a slightly lighter version of the background, my example uses #7c7c7c. Press OK and do the same for the right side colour but make slightly darker, my example uses: #3e3e3e.

Now like before simply copy theses background graidents twice so that sit under each of the boxes and button like in the example. Simply add your text for the fileds and the button and you are done.

Twitter, once easily dismissed in its early days by critics who didn’t see past users posting what they had for lunch, has become a worldwide phenomenon, and one of the most useful cornerstones of social networking.

Twitter does take some getting used to, because the postings, called tweets, are all very short, limited to 140 characters per tweet, and there are some conventions that can look odd to the uninitiated. For example, the @ sign refers to the account name, the # tag is how you can follow topics.

Tweets can keep you up to the minute with your friends, your family and the community at large. Follow a favorite celebrity, or keep an eye out on local politics or events. It’s also one of the best things for instantaneous news during big events like earthquakes — it’s like on the spot reporting from anybody who can get online or has a phone. If there’s a fire in your neighborhood, there’s a good chance someone will be tweeting information about it within minutes, and sometimes with pictures.

Beyond keeping up with what your friends are up to, Twitter can make it easy to keep updated with things beyond your social circle. Sometimes, large companies will keep an eye out for customer service issues from people who tweet about them, and can be one of the easiest ways to get problems resolved. Twitter users are often the first to know about upcoming concerts and other popular events. If there’s a local issue you need to keep up with, see if your local newspaper’s website is posting Twitter feeds from a knowledgeable reporter, who can offer real-time updates and insight that would be difficult to find anywhere else.

You can simply access the Twitter website in your browser, but there are tools such as TweetDeck or HootSuite that can make following people and topics easier, in addition to helping with your own tweets. You can read and post tweets using your computer, a tablet or your cellular phone.

If you are completely new to Twitter, simply sign up for an account, and look for some interesting people to follow, whether it’s someone you know personally, or a famous figure you would enjoy following. See who they follow, what topics they’re interested in, and soon you’ll find yourself deeply immersed in the world of Twitter. Twitter is social networking at its best, bringing the people and topics you care about to you whenever you like.

Mark Gregory is writing on behalf of Marketing By Web; an online marketing company specialising in adwords company and google adwords ppc management