HostGator's Biggest February Discount - 35% OFF!

Disclosure

It's our third continuous happy year since 2011 when we first hosted all sites of our network under the protection of this blue alligator. The reason what makes HostGator folks special is their great discount offers on special occasions. The coupon code that we received this month will give all MBT readers a straight 35% OFF on all shared hosting, reseller and dedicated server plans. To make it more simple, a 3 year standard registration of a hatchling plan will grant you a discount of over $62, $100 for baby plan and amazingly $163 discount for Business Pan. Registering directly from elsewhere would give you only 20% discount, therefore you still have over a week left to utilize this great opportunity to kick start a new online venture.

Note: Offer Expires on 28 FEB 00.00 US Time. 

Please first choose a plan that best suits your requirements before using the coupon. Click here 

How to Grab this Coupon?

This EPIC sale starts today and will end by the end of Feb i.e. 28th February. The sale is publically available for both US and non-US citizens. In order to successfully insert the coupon code and get your proper share of concession, Copy the coupon code below and then Click the link "Grab it" to land on the promo discount page directly. Enjoy this best sale!

FEB35

Grab it!

PS: This discount applies to new customers only. If you are already a hostGator customer then this discount wont apply to you. If you have not yet signed up with hostGator then you are fortunate enough to kick start your online business today.

Why HostGator?

I have shared several great stories of our experience with hostGator and I must assure you that HostGator has never embarrassed us or any of our clients so far. More than dozens of our readers are already enjoying running their online business without worrying about any technical troubles thanks to the free 24/7 Live Chat Support and unlimited bandwidth and uptime servers.

To explore why we recommend hostGator with confidence to all our readers each month, please read it for yourself:

• Read: Why HostGator is slowly becoming the best Web Hosting Company?


• Read: Why we migrated this blogger blog to hostgator?

In times of great technical trouble, great customer support is what that counts more. They have always helped us with any technical or SEO problem arising in our sites and amazingly their help has always won my heart. Its indeed their great server speed, fair affordable service charges, unlimited bandwidth and excellent customer service that has won HostGator several awards for consecutive 10 years. You can see the long list on their homepage

What can I create with HostGator?

You can create almost anything using the friendly user interface of HostGator's control Panel (Cpanel) with just a click of a mouse.

Some examples include:

1. 
   Blog Software  eg: Wordpress, LifeType   
   
   


2. 
   Forum Software
   
   


3. 
   Gallery Software
   
   


4. 
   Guestbook Software
   
   


5. 
   Website Builder
   
   


6. 
   Mail Software  eg: xyz@mybloggertricks.com
   
   


7. 
   Social Networking Software   eg: Facebook, mySpace
   
   


8. 
   Wiki Software
   
   


9. 
   Survey Software
   
   


10. 
    Billing Software
    
    


11. 
    Chat Software
    
    


12. 
    Directory Software
    
    


13. 
    eCommerce Software
    
    


14. 
    Our Blog and all its pages is a live example!
    
    


15. 
    So on...
    
    

How Will it Effect my Site Ranking?

Please visit and read: Best Hosting Plans if you have the following questions in mind:

1. 
   I am using Free Blogger, How would it effect me?
   
   


2. 
   I am using Free Wordpress, How would it effect me?
   
   


3. 
   I want to transfer my Domain to Hostgator, Will Domain Migration Effect my Ranking or Traffic? Read tutorial here
   
   

HostGator Best Hosting Plans

There are three webhosting plans that HostGator offers which are:

1. Hatchling Pan

• Single Domain


• UNLIMITED Disk Space


• UNLIMITED Bandwidth


• Shared SSL Certificate


• Starting at $3.96/month | With 35% discount it would cost just $1.39/mon

2. Baby Plan  (The plan that we use)

• UNLIMITED Domains


• UNLIMITED Disk Space


• UNLIMITED Bandwidth


• Shared SSL Certificate


• Starting at $6.36/month  |  With 35% discount it would cost just $2.23/mon

3. Business Plan  (Obviously Not for bloggers)

• UNLIMITED Domains


• UNLIMITED Disk Space


• UNLIMITED Bandwidth


• FREE Private SSL & IP FREE Toll Free Number


• Starting at $10.36/mon    |  With 35% discount it would cost just $3.63/mon

Which plan to use?

Use Hatchling if you want to run just one Domain

Use Baby if you are planning to open more domains in future. We use this plan to host all our websites at hostGator.

Use Business Plan if you want to run several domains on a single account for a corporate firm.

How Many Years Should You Register for?

Small Age domains are treated more as spam webpages and never attract robots to its full potential. Therefore to gain respect in they eyes of search engines like Google/Yahoo/Bing then you must Register your domain for no less than 3 years.

Questions?

If you have any query in mind and need any help related to choosing a plan for your business then feel free to post your queries in the comment box below. I will release the Kitchen recipe for webhosting next week where you will receive 24/7 free technical consultancy related to your webhosting and domain hosting problems. I am sure it would be a great help for all those who want serious help related to DNS settings, servers errors and related issues. 

If in case you are only interested in buying a domain and don't want a storage space then you can do so by reading the following post:

• Why buy domain and how to get one?

Google Explains How To Use Search Queries in Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools is a great friend to bloggers and webmasters. It hosts a great many features, and provides a lot of help to both beginner, as well as advanced users. For example, the URL parameter customization tool helps optimize your URLs, you can use Google Webmaster Tools to get advanced index reporting, and so on. The list of features is long and distinguished. Have you ever wondered about what the Search Queries feature under 'Traffic' did in Webmaster Tools? You can use some of the information provided to improve your site. We'll talk about this Search Queries feature in today's post.

In a typical search engine environment, there are three phases. Crawling, Indexing, and Ranking. The ranking includes putting pages on top of search results etc. Search queries have more to do with ranking than anything else. Even though ranking is important, you must keep in mind that it isn't only part of the process. There are a lot of other factors too that contribute towards conversion. With that in mind, let's look at this video from Google, and then talk about Search Queries in Webmaster Tools as discussed by Google.

Search Queries terminology

For beginners, it is important that they know some of the basic terminology so often used in the field. A Query refers to a search word or term that the user enters in the search bar. If your website comes up in the search results visible to the user, then it counts as an Impression. If the user clicks on your site after seeing its impression, then it considered as a Click. Now you must have often heard about CTR, or Click-Through-Rate. This is the ratio of your Clicks versus your Impressions. A low CTR would mean that users see your website, but don't actually open it, since it's not appealing to them.

Another term often used is Qualified Traffic.This refers to the users who clicked on your website, and actually found your content useful. This could be shown by the number of conversions you are getting, such as ad-clicks, sign-ups, subscriptions, and so on.

Investigating Search queries

Understanding your audience

This should be the key focus of any business, online or otherwise. You can use Search Queries, and then go to Filter to see the breakdown of your audience. By default, the filter is set to 'the web'. If you click on it, you will see how your audience is divided. You can then use this information to tailor your content for specific audience. For example, if most of your audience is from the U.S, you could do a special feature that applies to people living there.

Common questions you could ask yourself while targeting your audience are; who is your audience? Where are they located? What age group are they? What are their interests? How do they browse the web? Does your content match up with the queries they enter?

Check your Top Queries

When you go to Search Queries, you'll see a tab labelled 'Top Queries'. Open it, and then Sort by Clicks. This is a nice little feature that will let you know what your top queries have been for a defined time period. You could then create more content based on those queries, and introduce new ones like them.

Another good approach for investigating queries would be to take a notice of the changes that occur to your queries over different periods of time. For example, some businesses might see an increase in traffic near holiday seasons. Currently, you can only see history for three months. We'd recommend you download your data every three months to keep track for longer periods of time.

If you sort your queries by CTR, you will be able to see where your website is making an impression on users, and where it isn't. A low CTR would mean you need to work on those specific queries, whereas a high CTR means you need to learn and apply from the better performing queries.

Checking your top pages

You also have a 'Top Pages' tab in Search Queries on your Webmaster Tools dashboard. You can apply sorts over here as well. Sorting by clicks will let you see what pages have gained traction, and which have stalled. A strategy can then be set up to improve upon the pages who have very few clicks.

With the top queries, we used sorting based on clicks and CTR. But with your top pages, sorting with clicks and impressions sounds more relevant. Now impressions might not always bring in clicks, but the user does go through their abstract, or at least looks at its heading. Pages with the most impressions are usually the highest ranked for certain search queries. So once you know what your most valuable pages are, you can pivot their potential, and use them to feature your other pages that re low ranked, but maintain quality and are related to the high-ranked pages.

Sounds reasonable? You can use these simple approaches to take your business out of the middle lane, and onto the fast one, because that is the aim of every business out there. If you liked these tips, then do share them with others. Also tell us what approaches you are using. All the best :)

Display Post Views Count in Blogger - New!

Yes you heard it right, all BlogSpot blogs will now be able to display a dynamic count for individual pageviews. We can now easily create this  post view counter without worrying about servers or server code. With a free service like Firebase you can now create dynamic and data-driven plugins for blogger without worrying about backend development. Firebase was launched in April 2012 and since then it had been the hub for developers. Amazingly this free plan gives you 10GB Free bandwidth and 5GB Free storage. Which in our case is more than required! We had been lucky to utilize this free service for blogger platform and create some amazing scripts with the help of our developer Ahmed Nasir. Today's tutorial will help you to install a dynamic script that will automatically increment its initial count value when a visitor views your blog posts. The counter data will be stored on a free database provided by Firebase. Lets first see a demo!

UPDATE: Unfortunately firebase is no more free now, its Hacker free plan allows only 50 Max Connections which means it will work for small blogs with just less than 100 visitors per day

 

Demo

Note: The postviews count wont change when you refresh the blog homepage but it will change only when you visit individual posts.

1. Create your Firebase Account

In order to gain access to a free database and be able to keep a backup of your postviews counter data, you must sign up for a free account at Firebase.

• Click here to sign up now!

Fill up the easy steps sensibly and then once your account has been activated, you must create your first Firebase database.

2. Create a Firebase Database

You can create 2 firebases. At present just create one, we will guide you later in coming posts about amazing things you can play with this free service.

1. Towards the bottom right side of your account, you will find the following submit box.

  2.   Inside this box input your website name. In my case I inserted mybloggertricks and this generated the following firebase URL: https://mybloggertricks.firebaseio.com

  3.   Finally hit the create button and note down your firebase URL because we would need it later in this tutorial.

3. Installing Postviews Plugin

1. Go To Blogger > Template
2. Backup your template
3. Click Edit HTML
4. Tick the box "Expand widget Templates"
5. Search for ]]></b:skin>
6. Just above it paste the following CSS code:

/*-------- Post Views  ----------*/
#views-container {
width: 85px;
float: right;
}

.mbtloading {
background: url('https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVe4OP1u0jhzDCPsOkt0CfvTXTTKtkbuOF4HmEQmqDFz7yIU6nuptqgAUAyolURpwHYSOA25JwR9e9ynxSXxFvQQ4gW5Q58hR__370wXet-FkX56jidtMew9-seXwmryvrfRJHVd0d7wG9/s320/mbtloading.gif') no-repeat left center;
width: 16px;
height: 16px;
}

.viewscount {
float: right;
color: #EE5D06;
font: bold italic 14px arial;
}

.views-text {
float: left;
font: bold 12px arial;
color: #333;
}

.views-icon{
background: url('https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMZRZrjtUUBbaTOhHXBSC9Lyd0RbHYiIIG4dm0TG-akK9Vdgcg14vbC-ReziKdh6uAzcw6nCshWS1xNEfQC6-6WGdmqooWfj9Gzus98e-XAyQEMeX-HOh7IE59vg7CQbz3uDVRHt9yJePl/s1600/postviews.png') no-repeat left;
border: 0px;
display: block;
width: 16px;
height: 16px;
float: left;
padding: 0px 2px;
}

    Customizations:

• To change the text color of the numeric count, edit #EE5D06
• To change the plugin alignment, change right to left.

   7.  Next search for </body>  and just above it paste the following JavaScript code:

<!-- Post Views Script by MBT -->
<script type='text/javascript'>
    window.setTimeout(function() {
        document.body.className = document.body.className.replace(&#39;loading&#39;, &#39;&#39;);
      }, 10);
  </script>
<script src='https://cdn.firebase.com/v0/firebase.js' type='text/javascript'/>
<script>
$.each($(&#39;a[name]&#39;), function(i, e) {
var elem = $(e).parent().find(&#39;#postviews&#39;).addClass(&#39;mbtloading&#39;);
var blogStats = new Firebase(&quot;https://mybloggertricks.firebaseio.com/pages/id/&quot; + $(e).attr(&#39;name&#39;));
blogStats.once(&#39;value&#39;, function(snapshot) {
var data = snapshot.val();
var isnew = false;
if(data == null) {
data= {};
data.value = 0;
data.url = window.location.href;
data.id = $(e).attr(&#39;name&#39;);
isnew = true;
}
elem.removeClass(&#39;mbtloading&#39;).text(data.value);
data.value++;
if(window.location.pathname!=&#39;/&#39;)
{
if(isnew)
blogStats.set(data);
else
blogStats.child(&#39;value&#39;).set(data.value);
}
});
});
</script>

Make this change:

• Replace the highlighted brown line with your firebase URL (Step#2). Make sure you replace it correctly by taking care of forward slash (/)

    8.  Now one last step. Find this code:

   <data:post.body/>

Note: If you are finding multi occurrences of the same code then choose the first occurrence.   

   9. Just above it paste the following HTML,

<!-- Post Views Counter by MBT-->
<div id='views-container'><span class='views-icon'/><div class='views-text'>Views:</div> <div class='mbtloading viewscount' id='postviews'/></div>

You can replace views: with any text you like.

 

    10.  Now the final step, paste the following jquery link just below <head>

<script src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js' type='text/javascript'></script>

 

    11.  Hit save and you are all done!

Visit your blog and press F5 (refresh page) to see the counts dancing just perfectly! :)

Copyrights

Developers and niche bloggers are most welcome to share this  Plugin with their readers and friends. Please attribute the credits back to MBT blog as the only favor in return. It takes hours of efforts to write and debug these scripts. This plugin comes under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Need help?

We just hope this plugin adds new fuel to your blogger powered blogs. We tried best to keep it working as efficient as possible. You wont run out of bandwidth as long as you create your own Firebase accounts and not use ours (our firebase url). 

This plugin will display views only once pages are visited. It is not synchronized with your Google analytics stats data, therefore it will only display correct views for the new posts that you publish.

Let me know if you needed any help. We have some more interesting scripts coming up this week. Stay tuned! Peace and blessings buddies :)

Don't forget to try:

• Custom URL redirection in Blogger!

Who is a Premium AdSense Publisher?

In any business institution or organization, people who bring in good value are usually rewarded. Like many online companies, Google relies upon ads for its business. The more ad-clicks you get on your website, the better it is for Google, because Google ultimately gets a portion of its AdWords share. Just like most companies, Google has an incentive program with which it rewards AdSense publishers who bring in lots of click, and effectively help Google as well. This incentive program is dubbed "Google Premium AdSense Publishers". Many of our readers have had some confusion regarding Premium AdSense Publisher accounts. So that shall be our point of focus in this post today.

How to become a Premium AdSense Publisher?

A Premium AdSense Publisher (PAP) is a special publisher who gets premium services as mentioned above. PAPs have a huge traffic, and a high CTR, which is the reason why they stand out from normal publishers.

To become a PAP, you first have to pass a loyalty test. Not everyone can participate in this program. There's a minimum threshold that needs to be met first. You have to have at least one of the following;

• A minimum of 1 Million pageviews per month - In other words you must have a daily traffic of at least 10-20 thousand pageviews.


• At least 100K-150K search queries per month - This approximates to around 5 thousand search queries per day.

As you can see, both these figures are pretty high, which is why it is very difficult to become a PAP. PAPs have a high CTR - more than 100 clicks per day - which is why Google is interested in them.

You can't apply to become a premium publisher. Google will induct you automatically if it believes you deserve it. AdSense will monitor your traffic for a long time, so you have to be above the threshold consistently. It might take a long time, maybe years, to become a publisher. It took Mohammad 2 years to become a premium publisher. So even if you have met the threshold, you need to wait it out until AdSense finally decides to give you PAP privileges. The wait is long, yes. But the rewards are well worth the effort!

Perks of being a premium publisher

There are many benefits of being a PAP, some of which are;

Extra ad units - You can display more than three ad-units per page! Normal publishers can only add three content ads per page. But premium publishers can add more! These extra ad units have a special ID which differentiates them from normal ads. Check out the following post to learn about this.

• Display Four AdSense Content Units per Page

Third-party ad-serving - Premium publishers can serve third-party ads using their Doubleclick For Publishers account. Find out more about joining DFP for small businesses.

• Should you join DFP small businesses to display AdSense ads?

Special monthly consultations - This is probably one of the most valuable perks PAPs get - they get all the support they need! A special consulting agent contacts PAPs, and sets up a meeting on Google Calendar. You can get the support you want. Mohammad just had his consultation for January, so it's not something Google only advertises. They do contact you personally if you're a PAP.

These agents provide suggestions related to ad-placements, and tips on increasing revenue. PAPs also get invitations for AdSense seminars/webinars and workshops.

Ad-customization - Normal publishers can't change AdSense ad codes to make them look different, because they run the risk of getting their accounts banned. But premium publishers have no such limitation. They can change size, format, text color, background color, theme, and a lot more! They can also remove the 'Ads by Google' label on ads to make them look more professional.

Negotiable terms - Premium AdSense Publishers can also negotiate terms of their contract with AdSense. Normal publishers have to go with the fixed AdSense rates. But premium publishers can negotiate, and adjust their rates with AdSense, which is quite a huge benefit.

Besides all these features (and more), premium publishers also enjoy all the benefits normal publishers have. So what are you waiting for? Start working on your traffic, and start making a full-time passive income from your blog! Wish you all the best :)

How to Host Web Content on Google Drive?

Google Drive, as you might know, is one of the more recent cloud storage services. For starters, it offers some functionality that makes it better than its closest competitors, i.e. SkyDrive and DropBox. One such feature is the seamless integration with other Google products, and the story doesn't end there. Google Drive will also let you host static web content, so that you can run a simple website right on your drive! This sort of functionality was only offered by DropBox before. Now, it's Google's turn to establish its superiority. In this post, we'll talk about hosting your own web content on Google Drive.

Cloud storage is a great way to host web pages. For one, it lets web developers get a feel of how their websites would actually look on the web. Besides, it could be used to share photos, videos, and other information with friends and family, without fear of people from the outside hacking into your system, or spamming your website etc. It is also a great way for freelancers to show their work to their clients.

Hosting web content on Google Drive

Now you can't host dynamic websites on Google Drive. Nothing that requires server-end computing. Technologies like PHP, ASP etc require back-end processing, so they can't run. You can only host simple, static websites that are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript driven.

Now you could use this just like you'd use GooglePages or code.google.com for a similar purpose. But GooglePages has been replaces with Google Sites, and no longer supports direct uploading, which is kind of a let-down, because we need to directly upload webpages in order to test them on Google Drive. Google Code, on the other hand, has bandwidth issues. Hence, Google Drive is the best option you have for hosting your static website.

How to host a website on Google Drive?

To host a website on your Drive, log into your Google Drive account from a web browser, and create a folder. This folder can be inside the main Google Drive folder, or inside another private directory. The path isn't of concern. What's important is the permission you set on that directory. This directory will host your web files, so it needs to be shared with the public, or else, no one will be able to see it.

Now that you've created a folder to hos your files, it's time to put the files in. Upload all your web files in this folder. Now, you need to share it with the public. To do this, right click on the folder, and then click on Share >> Share.....

Now, look under the "Who has access" section, and change the setting from Private to "Public on the web". Then, copy the link given on top. You'll need it for the next step.

Now, you need to get your hosting link. You can do this manually. The URL you just copied is the link to your shared file, and not to the hosting. There's a slight adjustment you need to make in the URL. The link you copied will go something like this: https://docs.google.com/folder/d/link-to-your-site. You have to change it to https://googledrive.com/host/link-to-your-site. Notice that the 'link-to-your-site' part remains the same.

Now, you can give this link to whoever you like! It'll take them to your hosted website. Cool, right? You can see Google's instructions on hosting a website on Google Drive. And believe it or not, they've hosted the instructions on Google Drive itself! You can view the instructions here. You can use any JavaScript files on your own site.

Hope you enjoyed this post. Try this out with your own Drive, and let us know if you have any problems. Peace :)

Top 10 Google Drive Tips for Advanced Users

Google, as you know is the leader when it comes to web technology. It launched its cloud storage services around two years ago, which is an infant age when compared to other closest competitors from the crowd, such as SkyDrive and DropBox. Some people might have some reservations against Google Drive, but a lost of people, especially avid Google users love it, probably because integrates so well with other Google products such as Docs etc. If you're one of these people, you might like to check out some of the top 10 Google Drive tips for more effective usage.

1. Photo sharing on Google Plus

As I just said, probably one of the best things about Google Drive is its integration with other Google products. You can use Google Drive to share photos on Google Plus. If you have some pictures on Google Drive you want to share on Google Plus, you can easily do that without uploading that photo to Google Plus. To do this, you just need to click on the photo icon on Google Plus, and hover over that little arrow. You'll see an option to upload "From Google Drive".

2. Adding attachments

While adding attachments to Gmail, you can once again rely on Google Drive to have your files ready at hand. Now, you don't need to upload and send people files through email. You can just add files from your Google Drive, and the other party can simply download that file from your public shared link.

3. Add 'Send to Drive' option to your computer

When you right click on a file on your computer (windows), you can see a 'Send To' option, which lists options like Send to Desktop, Documents, Bluetooth device, and so on. You can add Google Drive to these options as well.

To do this, simply copy your Google Drive icon (shortcut). Now, open Windows explorer, and enter the environment variable %appdata% in the path on the top bar. You can write this in the start menu as well. A window will open. Now, navigate to Microsoft >> Windows >> SendTo, and paste the Google Drive shortcut there.

4. Recover deleted files

Usually, when you delete a file from your computer (and the Recycle Bin as well), it's probably the last time you'll see it. Not with Google Drive though. You can recover your deleted files from Google Drive. Just open Google Drive on your browser, and click on the More button on the left. Now, open your Trash, and right-click on our deleted files to restore them back.

5. Add to Library

Some of you might not know this, but you can set your libraries, such as My Documents, My Music etc to fetch content from multiple locations (Windows Vista and higher). You can do the same with Google Drive. Open your Documents from the Start menu, and you�ll see a link saying �Includes: 2 locations� at the top just below the title. If you click on it, you will see what locations that library is fetching content from. To add your Google Drive content into your Documents, simple click on Add, and then browse for the Google Drive folder. Add the folder, and you�ll see all your Google Drive files and folders in your Documents library.

6. Shortcut keys

You can use some shortcut keys for Google Drive on your browser.

• Shift + A = Select All


• Shift + N = Deselect All


• Shift + S = New spreadsheet


• Shift + D = New drawing


• Shift + F = New folder


• Shift + T = New Document


• Shift + P = New Presentation


• Ctrl + Alt+ G = Revision history for a file


• Up/Down arrow key = Select previous/next item in list


• Shift + Up/Down arrow key = Select multiple previous/next items in list


• J or K = Go to previous or next item in list without selecting it


• X = Select/deselect currently highlighted item


• S = Stat/de-star currently highlighted item

7. File revisions

As mentioned above, you can see a file's revision history (Ctrl + Alt + G). You can restore previous versions of your files you made changes to, such as documents. Simply click on More on the left side, and click on activity. Now, you'll see a list of all the files you made edits to. Right-click on any one, and click on Manage Revisions. Now, you can restore any previous versions stored.

8. Editing Videos

Pixorial Video is a great plug-in for Google Chrome. It allows you to view your Google Drive videos online. And in Google Drive, it will also let you do small bits of video editing, such as cutting clips, adding clips, add music, and so on.

9. Google Drive app for Chrome

While we're on the subject of Chrome extensions, there are a lot of other Chrome extensions that work great with Google Drive. Check out this app collection for find apps that you like.

10. Tags

Previously, in Google Docs, you could tag a file with more than one tag so it could be in multiple collections at the same time. You can do that in Google Drive. Create separate folders for each tag you want to make. Now, select a file, and click on Organize. Hold down Ctrl, and select all the folders you want that file to appear in. This way, you can have one file in multiple folders at the same time.

Liked these tips? Share this post with friends to let them know too! And do share your own best tips with us. Peace :)

Facebook's Location Tracking - Are We Ready For This?

With a stalling stock, and tough competition from peers, it seems Facebook is now getting a bit more than it bargained for. This probably explains why they're hard at work improving their service, and introducing more features such as Graph Search, video and voice calling, and some brand new marketing features, the list is long, but doesn't end there. Facebook is introducing a new location tracking feature, which will help Facebook friends who are nearby to connect to each other. Additionally, businesses will be able to reach out to customers and promote offers to users based on their location. Apparently, this is a big change. But are we ready for this kind of thing?

The evolution of the social media user

Back in the days Facebook was born, there wasn't really much concept of a social media where people could connect and get together to form private circles, share life events etc. Back then, Facebook was one of the very few social tools for connecting. Fast forward now, and you'll see a plethora of such services waiting to be checked out. The social media user is no longer restricted to a few means of communication. There are so many other tools that directly (Google+, Twitter etc) or indirectly (Skype, WhatsApp, Instagram) compete with Facebook. Hence, the competition may be too much for Facebook to handle in the long run.

Another trend that's been on the rise for the past few years is that of users going mobile. More and more people are now using mobile devices to surf the web. And an even higher percentage of social users use their mobile devices for socialising. According to Facebook's latest 10-K report, about half of its monthly active users are mobile users. This clearly points to the eventuality that Facebook will have to find mobile revenue streams as well, such as mobile ads, since around 85% of its income comes from advertisements. 

Facebook also seems to have lost some of its charm. According to a study, around 21% of its regular users are now too busy to log in as much. 10% think it's a waste of time, whereas another 10% have deleted or deactivated their accounts for long periods in the last year. This goes on to show that users are less and less interested in Facebook with the coming days - all the more reason for Facebook to enhance its features and bring life to itself.

Location tracking

With the world going mobile, it's no wonder Facebook has decided to do the same with its location tracking feature. It bought a location tracking setup in the form of a social media known as Glances last year. And the year before that, Facebook acquired Gowalla, another location-based social media. Now, combining the efforts, Facebook has launched its own location tracking feature that is based on the push technology. Push notifications will tell Facebook when a user is at some place, and when his friends are nearby.

Great mobile feature? Probably. But breach of privacy? Totally! Users were already agitated on the photo tag suggestion feature. So this new feature might just send the paranoid user into a frenzy. People don't want their location to be tracked, and their whereabouts be disclosed to a company that's made up its own little world out there? Besides, this new feature would be a heaven for stalkers, which I am sure none of us sane people want, do we?

What do you think of these new features Facebook is so intent upon introducing? Would you like to be tracked socially? Answer with a yes or no in the comments below, along with a remark to let us know how the majority of you feels about this. Cheers :)