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If you have any questions about an item please call (510)
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Name: LucyPhone

Quick Pitch: LucyPhone is a free web-based solution and newiPhone app [iTunes link] that helps users avoid waiting on hold.

Genius Idea: LucyPhone saves you from painful on-hold music by waiting in the customer-service queue for you and automatically calling your phone back when an actual human being picks up and is ready to talk.

I always dread having a problem with the cable or Internet or seeing some sort of error on my bank statement because I know that, in addition to the usual hassle of having to get those situations fixed, I’m going to be stuck on hold waiting for a customer service agent listening to some terrible Muzak, or even worse an FM radio station that keeps cutting in and out.

That’s where LucyPhone comes in. Here is how it works:

1. Using the app or the website, enter the number you want to dial, or in the case of the iPhone app, select from a list of 1,000+ businesses that are already populated.

2. Give LucyPhone the number you want to be called back at. Go through the phone menu system and when you get put on hold, press **. At this point, your phone call will end but LucyPhone will continue to monitor the call.

3. When the operator comes back, your phone will ring and you can start your conversation. Get put on hold again? Just press ** and you can go about your business.

This video shows off the service:

LucyPhone from Decogram Corporation on Vimeo.

We love this concept. Not only is it a time saver, it’s a sanity saver. There’s no more keeping the phone on speaker so you can roam around trying to do something else, no more killing your phone battery because your estimated wait time is 45 minutes and you don’t have a charger handy, and no more Michael Bolton over a bad connection.

While the app can be used from your web browser (you’ll get a phone call connecting you to the number you want to reach), we love using the iPhone app because it has a built-in directory of phone numbers. From banks to insurance companies to consumer electronics vendors, you can select from the list of numbers rather than trying to scour the Internet or your product manuals.

You can use the service without an account, but if you sign-up for one (they’re free), you can track your hold-time minutes and add your own numbers to the app.

LucyPhone is only available in the U.S. and Canada currently, but the guys who founded the company plan on bringing it to the rest of the world. We think this app is a winner.

By Nicholas Christakis: The hidden influence of social networks

Facebook (From their statistics page which is regularly updated)

• More than 400 million active users
• 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• More than 35 million users update their status each day
• More than 60 million status updates posted each day
• More than 3 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
• More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
• More than 3.5 million events created each month
• More than 3 million active Pages on Facebook
• More than 1.5 million local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
• More than 20 million people become fans of Pages each day
• Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans

Facebook Mobile

• There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.

Twitter

“Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second.”  Twitter Blog

LinkedIn

“As of early this morning, LinkedIn has 50 million users worldwide and we’re growing that figure at roughly one new member per second.  When LinkedIn launched in 2003, it took 477 days — almost a year and four months — to reach our first million members. This last million took only 12 days.”  LinkedIn Blog

YouTube (direct from their fact sheet)

People are watching hundreds of millions of videos a day on YouTube and uploading hundreds of thousands of videos daily. In fact, every minute, 20 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.

Our user base is broad in age range, 18-55, evenly divided between males and females, and spanning all geographies. Fifty-one percent of our users go to YouTube weekly or more often, and 52 percent of 18-34 year-olds share videos often with friends and colleagues. With such a large and diverse user base, YouTube offers something for everyone.

You’ll have to go to the main page for creating a fan page. When beginning a fan page, you’re given the basics, which make it look like a glorified profile page.  A raw fan page includes a wall, feed, photos, videos and list of fans.  Although this can suffice, if you really want to attract fans who don’t justconsist of your circle of friends, you’ll want to make some upgrades to your page.

Facebook allows you to upload a logo or photo for your fan page, but that just isn’t enough. Give your page some flare. Put a sharp graphic linking to your website or a flashy banner along the side bar that promotes a contest. Doing something like this offers fans and potential fans a reason to not only visit your fan page often, but to also visit your company’s website or blog.

Go ahead try creating a Facebook fan page; it doesn’t cost anything and you can reap the benefits for yourself or business. Build off your page, keeping it fresh and new, so that your fans have a reason to come back to it.

By adding Google Maps to your website increases your SEO rankings?

This is a great opportunity for smaller companies, as they may be able to rank for keywords they never could before. Optimizing for such listings is known as Local SEO or Google Maps Optimization

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has certainly generated more than its share of buzz regarding its plans to get deeper into social media. On Tuesday, the search giant revealed those plans: Google Buzz, which takes a big step into Facebook and Twitter territory while keeping one foot firmly planted on its Gmail foundation.

While the initial version of Buzz released during a press conference and demonstration at the company’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters focused on consumer-friendly uses — status updates, comments, link and media-sharing, either at a desktop or via smartphone — Google made it clear that there will also be a future place for Buzz in its enterprise goals.

“I think a lot of past services have focused on just friends and entertainment,” Google cofounder Sergey Brin told the audience. “I found personally a huge amount of productivity in using Google Buzz internally, and therefore I think the bridging of those worlds is very powerful.”

Corporate-centric versions of Buzz would be coming soon, added Google Vice President for Product Management Bradley Horowitz. “We’ve been testing Buzz in the context of our enterprise products,” Horowitz said. “We found it invaluable, and it changed the way we communicate.”

Consumers who are on Gmail will get the first shot at the new features over the next few days.

Source: Tech News World

Have you tried Buzz Yet ?

I’am a big fan of using LinkedIN to establish new networking relationships for business. I don’t stick to the rule of knowing the other people deeply and personally before reaching out.

I’ve noticed that not all profiles are created equal. Some lack easy ways to connect to the person. Others are really incomplete. Here’s what I think you might consider doing and why (*note: if for some reason any of this violates LinkedIN’s terms of service, I’m not aware of it- so feel free to correct me):

• Add your email address to your last name- For someone to connect to you without directly knowing you, they need to present your first and last name, as well as a valid email address. Make it easier by turning the last name field of your profile into your last name and then your email address (example: Sarkis(linkedin@myemail.com)). This gives folks an easier path to connecting.
• Fill out your profile- First, some people search profiles for keywords, so make sure the words you hope people are seeking when they think of you exist inside your profile. Use real captivating words up front, not like a resume or CV, but instead, like an advertisement for you, because that’s what LinkedIN is!
• Solicit colleagues and friends for recommendations- People love to read reviews. We do it for books at Amazon. We do it for movies . Make sure you’ve got some great recommendations for the world you’ve performed. Don’t be afraid to solicit recommendations. I’ve run little campaigns where I offer a recommendation in return for every one written about me. That stacked up fast. The trick is: write what you truly feel about the person in the nicest possible terms, and never oversell someone you don’t recommend. That can come back to bite you.
• Add plenty of passion- People who are going to bother to read your profile want to know what makes you tick. If you merely put down that you’re an operations manager at a mid-tier tech company, that’s all they have in their minds about you. Add that you’re passionate about Greek wines and that you take Improv class weekly in Dubai. Make sure people know about YOU, not just your job history.
• Ask and answer questions- Using the Answers feature brings your name and profile around to people you’re not exposed to directly. This means more opportunities for someone to recognize your authority in some field, and to reach out and contact you for something further. It means sharing the fruits of your networking with others, and potentially connecting 3rd parties to each other for something bigger. This comes in handy when it becomes obvious that you’re also a good connector.

The trick of it all is that you get out of LinkedIN what you put in. If you throw up a profile that roughly covers the details, and barely populates the profile with much of interest, you’ll likely not get connections beyond former coworkers looking to hitch their debris to yours. Should you be seeking to cast a net, develop relationships, and eventually find other opportunities through LinkedIN, you’ll want to put a little more effort into the site.

Do you need help in creating your profile on linkedin. This is what I do I can help.

Service zoom Louis Sarkis
Internet Marketing, Social Media Marketing, SEO
Brentwood, CA 94513
(408)210-4121 
lsservicezoom@gmail.com web: www.servicezoom.biz