Francois Harris - South Africa Web dude

Cape Town Guy posted a photo:

Visit www.zippingzebra.com

Cape Town Guy posted a photo:

Visit www.zippingzebra.com

Cape Town Guy posted a photo:

Visit www.zippingzebra.com

Cape Town Guy posted a photo:

Visit www.zippingzebra.com

Cape Town Guy posted a photo:

Visit www.zippingzebra.com

Cape Town Guy posted a photo:

Visit www.zippingzebra.com

Cape Town Guy posted a photo:

Visit www.zippingzebra.com

Cape Town Guy posted a photo:

Visit www.zippingzebra.com

Cape Town Guy posted a photo:

Visit www.zippingzebra.com

Cape Town Guy posted a photo:

Visit www.zippingzebra.com

Cape Town Guy posted a photo:

Visit www.zippingzebra.com

Cape Town Guy posted a photo:

Visit www.zippingzebra.com

Cape Town Guy posted a photo:

Visit www.zippingzebra.com

Cape Town Guy posted a photo:

Visit www.zippingzebra.com

Today (Starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13) Facebook usernames became active. What this means, is that if you want to give out the address to your profile page to someone, you can now give them an easy to remember name, rather than the old profile ID.

You only get to choose your username once, and it cant be changed or transferred, so you MUST choose wisely.

On the Facebook blog:

Username selection is now live at http://www.facebook.com/username/. Remember, choosing a username is optional and will give you a distinct Web address for your profile. It will not change the name that appears on your profile, in search or elsewhere on the site.

Facebook go on to say:

Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google

This is pretty interesting, as FB is a really powerful domain name, it could be great to have a keyword or phrase as your username for one of your Facebook pages, or even your own username. Surely it will display a URL from Facebook in the search results for that term somewhere, and any little bit helps right. Even if the username pages are not any help for google searches, time will tell if it will help with internal searches on Facebook, and hey, if you give out your profile to clients, wouldnt it be cool if they could see your product/services etc in the name, more professional I think.

Usernames allow public entities to easily promote your presence on Facebook with a short URL (http://www.facebook.com/companyname). This username can be used in your marketing communications, company website and business cards.

I was able to get: facebook.com/searchengine.optimization.expert for myself, so I can now give that out for my personal profile. I also have loads of Facebook pages, and tried securing names for them, but was not able to for all. At the moment, FB knows there are going to be loads of people trying to secure names for their pages, so they have set limits.

The limits are temporary, and are to allow pages with more than 1000 fans, that were created before 31 May 2009, to get first dibs.

Check out the rules here: http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=900

If you are new to Facebook, you will only be able to choose a username for yourself on or after June the 9th, 2009.

So….get cracking! Go out and secure your names, using the keywords that you want to be found with….let me know what you choose.

I have been needing to shorten my URL’s quite a bit lately, while at the same time keep track of how many clicks they get with some sort of statistics. I previously wrote a post about a website called ClickAudit.com (Hiding and tracking affiliate links), which has since stopped offering this very service, and think I need to just update you on what I am using now as my Clickaudit.com alternative.

I use websites like Twitter all the time, and see loads of shortened URL’s being used, and every time I see one I dont recognize, I go check out the website, to see what they have to offer. Some of the websites simply create a shortened URL, that redirects to your website link, these ones sometimes expire after a certain amount of time, so beware!

I absolutely hate tinyurl.com, and think the only reason it has been so popular, is because it was one of the first, and because it was super simple to instantly shorten a url, no login or account required.

That being said, one that I have come to really like is called Trim (http://tr.im), and is one of those ‘no hassle’ websites we all like. Its possible to sign up for free, and be using their services in no time whatsoever.

What I like about their service, is that you have a record of all your shortened URL’s, and can see stats on them at any time.  Another great feature, is the option to automatically tweet your links as you make them, which is pretty sweet. For me though, the icing on the cake is the ability to custom make your url! Yep, you heard me, you can customize your URL, eg http://tr.im/FrancoisHarris will take you through to this blog!

Another really good one is http://bit.ly, which seems to have the same functionality as http://tr.im, also allowing you to also create a custom URL, and track the click through stats, as well as giving you the option to tweet your shortened URL. It also seems that bit.ly and twitter are good friends too, as twitter is using them for url shortening now.

One downfall Trim and Bitly both seem to have, is that I am not able to edit the destination URL AFTER it has been created.

I would like to be able to use affiliate links for instance, so that they are shortened and I can track the clicks, but what happens if I want to change the destination URL to a different provider, but keep the custom URL I have created? It would be far better to edit the destination URL, than to go through all my old websites, changing all the shortened URL’s. ClickAudit was able to do this, and it was one of their great features.

I do realize that these services are designed primarily for shortening the length of a URL, and NOT for tracking affiliate clicks, but why cant they be used for both?

I would love to hear what services you are all using, and what makes them so special, please feel free to post a comment.

Cheers for now

Cape Town Guy posted a photo:

Dark chcolate spiral wedding cake with assorted berries.
Visit www.emmascakes.co.za

Cape Town Guy posted a photo:

White chcolate cigar wedding cake with white chocolate truffles.
Visit www.emmascakes.co.za

Cape Town Guy posted a photo:

Dark chcolate spiral wedding cake with assorted berries.
Visit www.emmascakes.co.za

Cape Town Guy posted a photo:

Road map of Namibia. A high res version of this map is available for download free at the CABS Car hire website. (http://www.cabs.co.za)