I found this list of twitter shortcuts in the twitter help section. These are great to know whether you use twitter in the browser, a computer application or on your mobile phone. These shortcuts will save you time.

• @username + message
  

directs a twitter at another person, and causes your twitter to save in their “replies” tab.
Example: @meangrape I love that song too!

• D username + message

sends a person a private message that goes to their device, and saves in their web archive.
Example: d krissy want to pick a Jamba Juice for me while you’re there?

• WHOIS username

retrieves the profile information for any public user on Twitter.
Example: whois jack

• GET username

retrieves the latest Twitter update posted by the person.
Example: get goldman

• NUDGE username

reminds a friend to update by asking what they’re doing on your behalf.
Example: nudge biz

• FAV username

marks a person’s last twitter as a favorite. (hint: reply to any update
with FAV to mark it as a favorite if you’re receiving it in real time)
Example: fav al3x

• STATS

this command returns your number of followers, how many people you’re following, and your bio information.

• INVITE phone number
  

will send an SMS invite to a friend’s mobile phone.
Example: Invite 415 555 1212

Compete.com only tracks the United States traffic to websites. We have worked for many companies assisting them with determining the discrepancies between multiple tracking services. Most everyone uses the free services such as Alexa, Compete, Quantcast, and of course paid services such as Comscore. Typically these four services are compared to a websites statistics provided by a service such as Google Analytics.

When comparing actual site analytics to these free services you are bound to see discrepancies. By actual we mean tracking of every page as opposed to statistical sampling which then infers the amount of web traffic or pages viewed to a site.

I wanted to point out that Compete only provides web traffic data from users in the United States. Just knowing that will answer most of the initial questions regarding discrepancy in compete data with your own.

You should also know Compete’s methodology for determining web traffic to a particular website. While Google analytics provides code to put on every page of your website in an attempt to obtain actual data, Compete uses a panel of 2 million individuals. The panel is a cross section of Internet users in the United States and they obtain click stream data from ASP’s and ISPs. They also obtain data from widgets, applications, and their toolbar.

You can read more about the Compete panel and projections on their website. It is important to know the differences between the methodologies of each of the tracking companies. Not only do you need to know the methodologies but you also need to know the nomenclature as each one of them has different definitions. To properly compare one to the other it is important to know what each data point means and how it is defined. In other words how do they define a visitor, a visit, do they use cookies etc.

As an attorney having obviously been through law school I am very familiar with what is known as the “Moot Court”. Today I received a comment from Rob Meyer (thanks Rob) that pointed me to the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin “Moot Corp” competition.

From their site, here is an explanation of the competition and how it all began:

In the early 1980’s, two Texas MBA students yearned for a business school activity as challenging and prestigious as “moot court” in law school. They envisioned a competition in which MBAs working in teams would conceive an idea for a new business, develop the idea in a written business plan, and present the plan to a panel of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, accountants and lawyers.

In 1984 this vision was fulfilled when the Graduate School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin held its inaugural Moot Corp Competition. It was the first competition of its kind for MBA students and is still considered the most prestigious in the world. The Moot Corp Competition has been crowned “the Super Bowl of world business plan competition.”

What a great idea, I never knew this existed but apparently has been going on for quite some time. Back in the 90’s when I raised my first round of venture capital I would have loved to have had a process like this to learn from. I personally learned a lot from two mentors, both impressive CEOs for public companies and startups alike, it is from those experiences you can learn the most. A moot court is just that, learning from others that have been there before.

Here are some links to learn more and watch videos. I think I just spent an hour reading and watching myself. Take a look if this is something you may be interested in.

Links

• Moot Corp Competition
• McCombs School of Business Blog

Mobile statistics and analytics are not easy to find. However AdMob’s monthly reports are excellent. Not only do the provide insight into the mobile advertising market but also into the mobile market and users behaviour.

Sample Size
Note that the report is put out by AdMob and based on data from their network. With that caveat in mind, their April reports states they now serve ads for more than 7,000 mobile Web sites and 1,600 applications around the world. That is an impressive sample size.

Free Reports
You cannot beat their free monthly reports. Great insight and information, the April report was 19 pages. You can go to AdMob here , or straight to their metrics page here

Mobile Metrics
They provide information such as:

• Smartphone Market Share - such as iPhone with 43% of Mobile Web and App Usage
• Ad Requests - by Country / Region
• Handset Data - Worldwide and by particular countries
• more…

AdMob is an excellent source of data for the mobile market, it’s worth subscribing to their blog and obtaining their monthly reports.

A better quality advertisement on Yahoo can allow you to obtain higher rankings in their pay per click search marketing without increasing your cost per click.

Yahoo Quality Index
Much like the Google Quality Score that I wrote about recently Yahoo has their version which they call the Yahoo Quality Index. Essentially they are trying to determine if you have a relevant advertisement. They wish to present quality advertisements to visitors of their site. The better your Quality Index of your advertisement, the more likely you will achieve a high ranking position in relation to other ads and spend less money than others that have a lower Quality Index score.

How is the Quality Index Computed
To compute the Quality Index Yahoo looks at your advertisement, the keywords in the ad, the keywords you are targeting, how many clicks you receive and how you compare to others that are your competition.

What is Good and What is Bad
When reading the Google Quality Score a 1 is bad and a 10 is best. For Yahoo Quality Index they show a bar with 1 to 5 bars, 1 is bad and 5 is best.

How to Increase Your Quality Score
To increase your quality score you need to micro manage your advertisements and campaigns. Create ads that incorporate your keywords, either hard code them by typing the word in the ad or use their “insert keyword” function. [Note: When using the insert keyword be careful to check that inserting a keyword will make sense when the full ad is being read by a user]. Therefore the more relevant your keywords to your ads the more likely your score will be higher.

Also, although Google and Yahoo have not said this (at least I cannot find it) I firmly believe from experience that the correlation between the keywords, the advertisement, and the landing page the advertisement is sending the individual to, makes a difference as well. So make sure your landing page correlates to the keywords you are using and the advertisement.

Conclusion
Manage your Yahoo ads much like you would your Google ads, optimize keywords - ads - and landing pages for the higher score, higher rank, and cheaper overall cost when compared to your competitors.