Online social networking has been all the rage for the last couple of years – some people practically live on Facebook and Twitter now.

But what about those of us who still like to make connections in the “real” world?  I am often traveling to one city or another – and have many friends that are frequent travelers as well – and frequently think that it would be nice if I had a service that let all of my friends know where I was going to be so that we could connect if they happen to be in the same city.

I found a site the other day – Plancast – that does just that.

Plancast integrates with my major social networking accounts – like Facebook – and allows me to publish events I am attending and places I will be to subscribers of my account.  I have full ability to block people that want to follow me and determine where and when I want to share my plans, so privacy is pretty much a non-issue.

I’m just getting started with the service, but I think it’s got some really interesting potential.  Services that connect the online world to the offline world have cool opportunities for individuals and small businesses to make new connections and nurture current ones.

Check it out!

Mike

Under the agreement, Microsoft’s search technology will power all the core functionality of Yahoo! Search for a period of 10 years.

What does this mean for you? It all depends on what sort of search marketing you do.

The biggest direct change to search marketers is that all PPC advertising for both Yahoo! and Bing will now be managed via Microsoft adCenter (the previous control panel for Bing PPC). So whereas you used to have to manage paid search campaigns across 3 tools, you’ll now be able to reach 95% of the global search market via Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter.

Yahoo!’s search blog has more details on how the merger affects your PPC efforts.

As of now, we still don’t know what this will mean for local search on both Yahoo! and Bing. We’ll be watching to see any new developments.

Meanwhile, Yahoo! and Microsoft have set up a SearchAlliance website where you can get more info.

Kipp Chambers
Sr. Internet Marketing Specialist