Did Google find the lost city of Atlantis? A British aeronautical engineer was playing around recently with the new Google Earth 5.0 and has accidentally stumbled upon what might be the lost city of Atlantis 600 miles off the coast of Africa. The street like grid closely resembles a city like type of outline in the sea floor of this picture below. The power of social marketing has made this story spread like wildfire.

Years ago something like this would take much longer to make it around. it would most likely starts as an email campaign which would then turn into hundreds of thousands of forwards. Now with communication vehicles like blogs and social bookmarking websites it has allowed news like this to travel quicker than it ever has before. Google has since shut down the theory stating it is just the path the boat takes who collect the sonar graphs but I don’t know. I don’t really believe it 100%. I’m not saying that is an ancient old city down there but it might be worth to have a team of scuba divers drop into the water and take a look around. When this story first published earlier this week it received so much attention, attention that was incomprehensible 10 years ago. If a story is true or not does the power of social marketing take it to a level that is almost impossible to fix if it is false? Social marketing has allowed news to travel at lightning speed and we have only seen the beginning.

Social networking and social marketing has become a very important aspect of not only peoples lives but day to day business interaction as well. Many experts say that this is only the beginning of social media marketing and I’m going to venture out and say they are probably correct. As the social media marketing industry only grows in power and strength it will be even more crucial for companies to be able to keep a close eye on what some of the various networks are saying about them, especially websites like Twitter where news can travel very quickly through the online community. Often times so fast the amount of time required to actually fix the problem can be overwhelming. StepRep offers a tool that allows you to not only monitor your online reputation but also act and make corrections right from your account.

StepRep allows you to use your Google log in information to access your account ensuring that all Google results are identified either positive or negative. In today’s world your online reputation is very important to the survival and growth of your business. As generations grow more and more of that voice will be spread through out the internet in many different areas. If you do not monitor that voice to ensure that no negative press has found its way online it could require a great deal of effort to clean up down the road if not taken care of right away. More and more potential clients and customers are doing their due dilligence online before they make any purchase decisions so it is important to have a squeaky clean reputation before you start loosing business for your negative online publicity.

For more information on how StepRep can help you monitor your online reputation come sign up and have StepRep monitor what people are saying about you or your business.

It has come to our attention that after a few years of building up a generous portfolio of users Twitter is actively brainstorming monetization methods of their social marketing platform which might be implemented very shortly. I mean it was bound to happen sooner or later. With this much use and attention how has it been so difficult for Twitter to make some money.

Twitter has realized just how important their little social marketing and micro blogging tool has become to many growing businesses. Maybe they have decided to finally make some money off the people that are making money on their platform. It ironic that their users are making a profit and growing businesses and organizations on Twitter but Twitter itself does not yet have a solid business plan on how it will make money. I’m glad to see the people at Twitter are starting to spin their wheels and figure out how to navigate from the red over to the riches of the green.

This is a great step but much more will be needed to become a cash generating monster. How long will investors keep coughing up bags of dough to keep their servers chugging? How would they figure out costs for commercial accounts? Also how about the thousands of consultants that leave cheeky responses and trickle in bits of self promotion here and there? How do you charge them? Do you only charge to the big guys? This is great step for Twitter but i’m sure there are loads of revisions that will take place before this makes it live.

How man of you have ever heard of Hulu? Hulu allows you to watch all your favorite TV shows right from your computer. Some say Hulu will change the way television is viewed especially with younger generations already doing everything on the computer. With giants like YouTube and Hulu will the playing field of video broadcast change for good? YouTube has already become a social media marketing anomaly with many copy cat websites growing in power each and every single day. Hulu stores full episodes of some of your favorite TV shows ready for you to watch at your pace and your time. Social media marketing is quickly changing the way communication and interaction occur. We all new television would eventually make to our computers but nobody really knew how long it would take. We have only seen the beginning of this powerful new online medium.