Buzzflikr Blogs: Dan’s Pollen Count

** updates below

It has been a tough week for buzzflikr.com … problems have arisen (some of which are publicly viewable on the website) and i’m deep in the trenches trying to work this all out.

Over the course of the weekend I’ll be fixing the big issues and update as I can.

Thank you.

* UPDATES *

5/12/09 - after a long weekend and lots of troubleshooting, it came down to a web server misconfiguration. Issues resolved as of now. Thanks for your patience.

hi all,

A few odd issues have arisen in the hive today. One affecting the load times of certain pages, specifically the homepage. I was able to find out part of the problem was the way RSS feeds were being pulled in. So for the time being a few things are disabled as I work out why it happened in the first place.

There is also a few other issues to attend to, but nothing critical.

If you see anything, it would be very helpful to shoot me an email - Thanks!

On a lighter note, its cinco de mayo! Celebracion! I missed blogging all through April, sorry about that! More tech updates coming…

A few stories broke this week concerning the rapid growth of both Twitter and Facebook. The latest figures put Twitter growing at over 1,300 %… can you believe that!? Facebook has been growing steadily as well and continues to reporting 149% growth in February alone. (as compared to Feb. 2008)

Now, how does this affect you - the brand, marketer, or whatever you may be? GO TO WHERE THE PEOPLE ARE! It make sense right? You want to gain or keep more customers, and social networking reaches out to an active audience that has a higher chance of seeing you than other traditional methods. Creating a Facebook Page [such as fb.buzzflikr.com] taps into the huge audience (175 million active users) that you can constantly reach out to. On the other side, Twitter [tweet.buzzflikr.com] is the micro-blogging revolution that allows ‘followers’ to subscribe to your updates… which turns into X amount of viewers instantaneously.

What I’m trying to say here in so few words is that social networking is a huge new resource to tap into. Twitter and Facebook are just two examples with incredible growth and opportunity right now, but there is a plethora of ways to ‘connect’ in this exciting ‘web 2.0.’ I’ll go over more in future posts.

Don’t know what’s going on here? Contact Buzzflikr and we can help take your PR efforts to the next level. Or just dive right in and get started! Here’s some info on the incredibly helpful Wikipedia: Facebook, Twitter.

Dan @ Buzzflikr
Twitter | Facebook

Hi everybody! Apologies for the silence but don’t worry, that is all over now! As I’m getting back into high gear blogging… starting with deleting wayyyy too many spam comments I thought I’d let you know about a couple other ways to be a part of the ever expanding Buzzflikr colony.

We have setup a Facebook Page to keep you informed about everything Buzzflikr… including trends, our newsletters and even special FB exclusive content! I also just started up our Buzzflikr Twitter! Now you can follow us and get up to the minute updates in less than 140 characters. If you aren’t on Facebook or Twitter yet, why not join now?

Thanks!

Become a Fan of Buzzflikr on Facebook! http://fb.buzzflikr.com

Follow Buzzflikr on Twitter - http://tweet.buzzflikr.com

We’ve been working on the next version of our site since… well pretty much since I launched the first version. Thats just the way it goes in these extremely fast times. We are definately at the point of needing a fresh face to the website.

We are looking for graphic designers who would like to provide mockups of a new version of Buzzflikr.com. Specifically we would like a layered Photoshop file that can be turned over to a coder. [If you code templates for CMS's then by all means there is a bonus for that]

We are prepared to work with you on any method of ‘payment,’ whether it be monetary or otherwise. We are a team of professionals in the fashion, PR, and technical industries and have alot to offer if you are looking for something other than cash.

If you are interested please contact me, Daniel Scally at daniel AT buzzflikr.com

Thanks!

I wanted to let you all know that you can now become a fan of our page on Facebook! If you aren’t on Facebook, nows a perfect time to join! We’re still working on everything constantly so become a friend and our fan now!

I’ve inadvertently moved my numbers update to every month so here we go. Check out the November and September numbers. I accidentally missed October.

• Google - “buzzflikr”
  Results: 1,430
  (up 719 from 711)
• Google Page Rank
  PR Results: 3/10
  (no change)
• Alexa Ranking - buzzflikr.com
  Results: 2,967,590
  (up 1,536,916 from 3,666,956)
• November Buzzflikr.com stats
  Unique Visitors: 959 Page Views: 4,311
  (up from 284 unique visitors, 1,263 page views)
  

As you can see we have some growth and action under our heels. We have seen exciting growth all across the board - a doubling in google search results, our Alexa ranking up over 1.5 million, and triple the amount of unique visitors!

November was a great month with Siana on board and we’re still picking up the pace! I will be making a dedicated effort to more blog posting because there is lots always going on in the background.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving holiday… now on to Christmas and New Year!

As the day we all fill ourselves with delicious food approaches I’ve been working on buzzflikr with a drool…

I wanted to bring a few things to your attention.

• The Stingers menu at the top has been modified so you can view Style Stingers (our public monthly newsletter) and Bee Stings (our weekly Colonist newsletter) separately.
• It is no easier to sign up for Style Stingers - sign up here - http://www.buzzflikr.com/subscribe
• Some links that were broken are now fixed
• Added the initial version of our Frequently Asked Questions, which I will be updating more later.
• Check out some of our feedback in the Buzzflikr Praise section in Our Buzz

More to come… and I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving!

Its been awhile since my last numbers update so lets get caught up.

• Google - 711 Results (up 207)
• Google Page Rank -3/10 (up 1)
• Alexa Ranking - 3,666,956 details (down 850,744 from Sept: 4,517,700)
• October Buzzflikr.com stats - 284 unique visitors 1,263 page views (we’re working on getting out there!)

These numbers should be changing hopefully very soon as we are now aggresively in business. We welcomed our new Director of Public Relation and Marketing - Siana Brennick last week and we are thrilled to have her.

If you’ve dropped by buzzflikr.com recently and noticed something weird going on… well I apologize. I’ve been working on the backend functionality of the site the past week. I have been trying to optimize as much as possible to make the experience for you all alot faster and easy.

Any suggestions and comments are welcome!

As of today our stylish blogger, CC has now launched seebycc.com. “See by CC” is dubbed ‘the chic fix for savvy editors,’ and we aim to do just that.

On the technical side of things, I would like to improve in a variety of areas, yet this is a great start. We’re running Wordpress to keep everything easy and in order. There are many tools out there to utilize in the blogosphere, and I’ll get us on board as soon as possible. The most valuable part of a weblog is always its content, and CC will be blogging like mad now that she’s all setup.

Make sure to head over to SeeByCC.com to check it out.

The email migration project I announced on this post has been completed.

Buzzflikr email is now back up and running.

Thank you for your patience.

MAINTENANCE ANNOUCEMENT:

I am performing maintenance on out Buzzflikr email system in order to upgrade to a better system.

I anticipate no more downtime than 24 - 36 hours.

All emails sent to any @buzzflikr.com email address may not reach its intended recipient. We apologize for the inconvenience, yet this had to be done in order accomplish our plans for the future.

I will post an update when the migration has been completed.

Google has released its own web browser by the name of Google Chrome. Its being released to the world for free to compete with the likes of Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox…. along with a slew of other web browsers. Its my job to know about the many different web browsers that are out there and how the websites I manage and create look and function while using those browsers. Its a pleasure to say that Buzzflikr works mighty fast in Google Chrome. 

Try it out for yourself… Buzzflikr.com home page

Catch ya on the flipside!

-Dan

Apologies for the lack of posts… I’ve been trying to stay busy. I’m still working on items I mentioned in my last post… turned into more than I had anticipated. (As these types of things usually do)

Since I don’t have an update on what I’m working on right now.. how about we play the numbers game real quick.

• Google - 504 Results
• Google Page Rank - 2
• Alexa Ranking -  4,517,700
• July Buzzflikr.com stats - 220 unique visitors 1015 page views

Obviously there is some work to be done yet I’m full steam ahead! Catch ya all later.

- Dan