Google has officially released AdWords Keyword Planner which is a new tool that combines the outgoing Keyword Tool & Traffic Estimator. So far digital marketers have heavily relied on Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator to identify new keyword opportunities but Google seems to have listened to user feedback and have recognized the needs to have a “all in one” tool for keyword research.

Keyword Planner can be used to find new keyword and ad group ideas, get performance estimates for them and to estimate the bid and budget for AdWords campaigns.

Keyword Opportunities

• To find new keyword and ad group ideas, use Keyword Planner just like you would the Keyword Tool.
• You can search for ideas related to a keyword, your website, or a category.
• Keyword Planner also allows you to ‘multiply’ keywords, or combine two or more keyword lists to generate new keywords.

Geolocal Opportunities

With the soon to be retired Keyword Tool we cold only target countries. The great thing about Keyword Planner is the ability to target individual cities and regions within a country. This is a great addition that could really prove useful for small local businesses.

Keyword Tool vs. Keyword Planner

Keyword tool used to show statistics for broad match by default with the ability to get statistics for other match types, like phrase and exact match. With Keyword Planner, you can get historical statistics only for exact match.

Furthermore, the local and global monthly search columns have been replaced by the “Average monthly searches” column. This process has been simplified, now the average monthly search volume is specific to your targeting settings, and you can get data for an entire country or individual cities and regions within a country – this is a fantastic change that will be appreciated by the majority of users.

Here at RocketMill, we build the majority of our websites in WordPress; and though we offer one to one training for each of our clients it can sometimes be difficult to remember everything. So I propose to do a series of posts to help you with the basics the basics.

This post is about how to add a new page and will cover the following:

1. Adding a new page
2. Deciding on, and adding a title
3. Setting page attributes
4. Adding content
5. Adding an image to the content
6. Setting a featured image
7. Saving your changes and preview
8. Publishing your creation
9. Including the page in the site navigation

1. Adding a new page

The first thing to do is log into the back end of your website. Once you’ve reached the dashboard you’ll see the WordPress navigation bar over on the left hand side, hover or click on Pages and a sub-menu will appear, click Add New.

2. Deciding on, and adding a title

Once you’ve arrived on the page editing screen, the first thing you need to do it choose a title. The title should be short, concise and contain a keyword if possible. Above all it must say what the page is about.

3. Setting page attributes

The page attributes are situated on the right hand side.

Parent – You can arrange your pages in hierarchies. For example, you could have an “About” page that has “Life Story” and “My Dog” pages under it. There are no limits to how many levels you can nest pages.

Template- Some themes have custom templates you can use for certain pages that might have additional features or custom layouts. If so, you’ll see them in this dropdown menu.

Order – Pages are usually ordered alphabetically, but you can choose your own order by entering a number (1 for first, etc.) in this field.

4. Adding Content

This is the key part of creating your new page. You can simple write directly into the content box, or you can copy and paste the text from Word (or similar word processing software). Note that images won’t copy across from Microsoft Word, however, if you are using 2010 version and above, you can save the image into a folder by right-clicking it in Word and selecting ‘Save as Picture’. Following this, you can import the image into WordPress.

5. Adding an image to the content

Place your mouse cursor at the beginning of the paragraph where you wish to place the image, then click Add Media.

You can now simply drag your image from your computer straight into WordPress.

Make sure the image you wish to insert is selected.

On the right hand side you have number of settings that you can modify.

Caption – You can add a caption to your image.  This will normally appear just below the picture.

Alt Text – Alt text should be a short description of the image. This will appear if for some reason, the image is unable to display. Also if a user is using a screen reader to access your site then it will read out the Alt text.

Alignment – You can align the photo left, right or center. Aligning left will place the image over to the left of the page and the text will flow around it on the right (vice versa when you align the image to the right).

Link To – This will make the image clickable. I normally set it to none but you can use custom url to link to another site or media file to link to the full size image.

Size – Here you can choose the size of the image. I normally go for medium when including the image within the main body of the content.

Now just click the blue Insert into page button.

If you wish, you can go back and edit the image by clicking on the image and then clicking the landscape icon.

Delete image by clicking the delete icon.

6. Setting a featured image

Depending on how your WordPress theme is set up you may be able to set a featured image. If this feature is compatible with your theme then it will most often be used to set a banner image for your page.

Add a featured image by clicking Set featured image

As in step 5 you can either drag in a new image or select one that is already in your media library. Then just click the blue Set featured image button, bottom right.

7. Saving your changes and preview

While creating your page you may need to take a break in order to go to the loo or attend other important business meetings. Just before you go, click the Save Draft button. This will create your page in WordPress but not publish it. You can come back at a later stage to edit it further.

Also before publishing you can see what the page looks like by clicking the Preview button.

8. Publishing your creation

Right, now you are happy with your lovely page and raring to publish it. Simply click the blue Publish button. This will make your page live so that anyone one can see it. However, depending on how your WordPress system is set up, you may have to include your new page in the navigation, if you wish people to find it.

9.  Including the page in the site navigation

To add your new page into the website navigation, with your mouse go to Appearance then Menus

Your new page will be the top one in the Pages box.

Tick it and then click Add to Menu. It will now appear at the bottom of the list on the right hand side.

Simply use your mouse to drag the page into the desired order. Dragging it to the right until it indents will make the page a child of the next page, without indentation, above.

This will now appear in a drop down menu of the parent page on the front-end of your website.

The most common design for the navigation on a website is for it to run horizontally across the top of the site. So be aware when you are adding your page to the top level (not in a dropdown), that you have enough space. You can try shortening the page label by clicking on the down arrow next to the page name and editing the Navigation Label.

Don’t forget, when working with the menu, that you must always click the blue Save Menu button after making any changes.

Conclusion

That’s it you have created a new page.

This is the first post in a series of WordPress tutorials that I hope you will find beneficial. This tutorial has been carried out on WordPress version 3.5.1. If you have any questions about adding a new page to WordPress then please leave a comment.

Unless you have been lost and wondering in the Australian outback for the last few years without any mobile signal or broadband, you will know about Google Plus. What I want to look at today is not Google plus but rather the effect that this nifty social network can have on your business. Further to this, I will not be discussing how to use it to further your business, but rather as something that you as a business owner should be aware of.

There has never been a time when business is more accountable to their customers. The balance of power has shifted. In order to get in the local listings you need a Google plus page (for Google places). People who use the platform can now leave reviews about your products and services. They are there for other people to read – plain and clear to anyone who comes across it. Studies have shown that people will be far more trusting of reviews that are given by their peers then the ones you have on your site.

Unless you have an old and trusted site, the reviews on your site will not make much impact on someone’s choice.  Reviews on Google Plus and other social media sites will have a big impact – fact.

If you provide a good service or product you will stand to win, if you don’t you will lose and lose horribly. Most people will only take the time to write a review if they feel passionate about something. Good products and service will attract it share of positive reviews if the business pushed for this. A bad product or service will need no encouraging – we all know that people are quick to complain and slow to praise.

So the good news is that if you get reviews on social media sites these are gold for your business, If you have reviews on your Google Plus then this will show up in your Local listings if your business is there (have a look at this post to give you an idea on what I am talking about); these will boost business one way or another.

The bad news is that bad reviews will work in the opposite way and people finding your local listings (or reviews on other Social media platforms). It is a well-known fact that reviews from other customers tend to hold more sway with potential customers for your business (just think about how you might buy something online). This process has put the boot firmly on the consumer’s foot.

If you are willing to work a little you can change the situation around, responding to these reviews can turn the situation around, (offering returns etc.)  these public conversations will help you build you trust as well. We all know companies make mistakes – it is how they respond to these mistakes that will make the difference.

What does this mean for you?  It means that you as a business owner are more accountable for what you do. You have a greater responsibility to your community and your actions (both positive and negative) will have an impact on this community and on your business. If you are willing you can grab this new opportunity and make it work for you then the world (well your community at least). If you choose to ignore this, you might be like the dinosaurs – unable to adapt and no longer here. Knowledge is power and this sits firmly with the consumer now. The only question is – how is your company dealing with this new challenge?

Search Engine Optimisation comes in many forms ranging from quality content marketing to outright spam and everything in between. It can be tempting to fall for marketing persuasive rhetoric such as “get to the top of Google in 1 day”. So, how can you tell a good SEO agency from a bad one?

The difference between white hat SEO (good marketing) and black hat SEO (bad marketing) is a simple distinction to make, but can sometimes be difficult to classify from the sale pitch of your chosen company.

Back to basics

To improve the position of your web page in search engine results pages (SERP), you have to know how search engines work. Search engines categorize web pages based on keywords, which are important terms that are relevant to the content of the page. Search engines such as Google use keywords to associate your website with a niche market and rank sites with higher relevancy to the market in question.

Trying to trick search engines can lead to great short term success but it never lasts and can even get you banned from appearing at all in the most extreme cases!

What is Black hat SEO?

• Automated spam
• Scammers and hackers
• Sneaky and hidden links or keywords
• Delivering different content to users and search engines

Black hat SEO usually provides limited short term success and can have a severely negative affect on your website.

What is White hat SEO?

White hat SEO provides the most reliable long term success.

Does it really matter?

Black hat SEO engineers often make claims that may seem unrealistic and usually are as they tend to care little about business relationships. The focus tends to be on short term profits before moving on to another domain or changing the company name and starting the process again.

White hat SEO engineers tend to get involved with their client’s industry online to help build a presence and brand influence. The focus usually tends to be on the natural way in which a business profile may grow.

In short: if it sounds to good to be true, it usually is.

Using structured data is a useful way for search engines to understand what your website is about. The code not only provides context but when implemented correctly can also make your website stand out in the results via displaying Rich Snippets.

Marking up particular sections of your pages using Schemas from Schema.org (the plural of schema is schemas, not schemata, as far as Schema.org are concerned) is particular good for SEO because it is recognised by the major Search engines – Google, Bing, Yahoo and Yandex and can help with increased click through rates from the snippets visually standing out.

Implementing Schemas can seem daunting at first but it is relatively easy once you get into it. For example, if you have a section on a page which is related to a geographic location, you can add a few extra lines of code to each element that relates to a Schema that tells search engines that it is a location.

Below is example HTML of the LocalBusiness Schema giving a business address for a particular location (with the Schema attributes bolded):

As you can see the from the highlighted Schema attributes above they provide a context for search engines to understand from the content contained within the element.

A good way to preview (or test) rich snippets is by using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. From there you can paste in a URL and see what parts are extracted from a particular page and preview the results as Rich Snippets.

Below are the main types of Schemas you can use to improve results, particularly for a marketing perspective:

Location

Using Schemas to describe a location, especially for businesses, is great for local search. For setting a location for a company/business the Schema to use would be Organization.

You can also use subset Schemas of the Organization schema that provide more detail such as Local Business – Which is good for organisations with branches/offices such as banks or restaurants. You can also find Schemas related by industry such as RealEstateAgent, SelfStorage, even an InternetCafe or a type of FurnitureStore.

Breadcrumbs

These are great for displaying mini site links in search results. A very simple one to implement, add itemprop=”breadcrumb” to the HTML containing the collection of URLs. Like so:

Reviews & Reviews

Visitors seeing the Ratings Rich Snippet (particularly if the ratings are good) can influence click through rates. See the example Review Schema below for rating an individual thing/item/product/place:

For aggregating reviews together you can use the Schema for AggregateRating which looks like:

Products

Updating your product page’s HTML with an appropriate Schema for products is a great way of providing up-to-date information to be displayed in the search results; displaying info such as the price, availability, and like above, reviews & ratings, etc. Again, increasing click through rates. Below is a sample portion of code using the schema Product accompanied with Aggregated Ratings and a Review:

In Summary

The best way to learn about using Schemas is to practice on a personal webpage that you have created yourself and use Google’s Structured Data Tool to see what it picks up. Once employed enjoy the many benefits they can bring!

The Internet has been going Infographic-crazy for a while, so I thought it might be useful to re-pin a few of my favourite Adwords Infographics…
I have been collecting a few for a while as they can be useful when explaining concepts to clients, and act as revision notes for my own work! I hope you’ll find them as helpful as I do, and if you have any favourites of your own, please feel free to add a link in the comment section below!

The History of Google Adwords

These first two favourites are good overviews of Google Adwords. On the left is James Burchill’s graphic on the history of Google Adwords and how Google made it’s millions.. On the right is an infographic by Pulpmedia Online Marketing that simply explains the Adwords auction system.

Optimising PPC

This Infographic is based on PPC optimisation provided by Invesp. Unfortunately, it does not go into specifics, but it could be a useful checklist if you are really stuck on a campaign.

Adwords Advert Optimisation

These two Infographics give the best advice on Split Testing your adverts (that I had come across). The one on the left from Avalaunch is possibly my favourite because I like the yeti graphics, but the content is worth remembering /bookmarking and holds a lot of value. The one on the right via Onboardly is more related to display campaigns across PPC mediums such as Facebook and the GDN, but equally as useful.

Landing Page Optimisation

So often this is the forgotten part of PPC. Delivering clicks and high click through rates means nothing without delivering improvements in sales and interaction with your company! This will only improve if you are suiting your adverts well to landing pages, and landing pages are well organised to deliver results. A well organised and effective campaign can be won or lost on the strength of the landing pages and the only way to make the partnership work is via close collaboration between the advertiser and the seller. This Infographic produced by Unbounce highlights some techniques we are testing.

So, you have pushed an incorrect commit message?

Let’s admit it we have all pushed a bad or incorrect commit message, it happens to the best of us.

Try the following:

git commit --amend -m "New commit message"

That command should be used whenever you want to amend the tip of the current branch. The commit you create replaces the current tip — if it was a merge, it will have the parents of the current tip as parents — so the current top commit is discarded. It is a rough equivalent for the following, but can be used to amend a merge commit.

$ git reset --soft HEAD^
$ ... do something else to come up with the right tree ...
$ git commit -c ORIG_HEAD

Can I use this to edit the commit message on Github?

Nope. The command highlighted above does not work on Github website as this is not directly possible. The hash for every Git commit is also calculated based on the commit message. When you change the commit message, you change the commit hash. If you want to push that commit, you have to force that push (git push -f). But if already someone pulled your old commit and started a work based on that commit, he would have to rebase his work onto your new commit.

Steps to edit a git commit message and also have it show up to Githb:

1. To edit your last commit message use:

git commit -amend

2. Edit your message and push to Github:

git push

At this stage you might get an error message like:

$ git push
To git@github.com:your/repo.git
 ! [rejected]        master -> master (non-fast-forward)
error: failed to push some refs to 'git@github.com:your/repo.git'
To prevent you from losing history, non-fast-forward updates were rejected
Merge the remote changes (e.g. 'git pull') before pushing again.  See the
'Note about fast-forwards' section of 'git push --help' for details.

If you get that message you should use –force:

git push --force

This article is continuation of my previous post explaining general principles of sessions between a server and users.

I will try to cover some basic security rules and methods of taking over someone else’s session.

What does it actually mean to hijack a session?

As the SessionID (stored on the user’s side) is the main indicator in a server side authentication process, to possess someone’s session means basically to possess its SessionID value. An obvious way to gain someone’s SessionID is to steal it. This can be stolen directly from a victim’s computer files system, from the link address or by eavesdropping on user’s request to the server. Essentially, the attacker tries to steal the value of the session identifier and then utilizes it to gain access to server’s session data. Sketch below presents that method:

A more sophisticated way of possessing victim’s session is called “session fixation”. In this case, the attacker doesn’t need to steal anything. Furthermore, the attacker’s strategy is reversed (well, sort of). He tries to inject the given SessionID into victim’s browser. Once the SessionID is fixed on user’s computer, the attacker tries to force user to authenticate on the server (for example by encouraging him to click on a link containing the SessionID). Later, if the victim has authenticated using an injected session identifier, the attacker can use the same SessionID to access private data on the server. A sketch describing that manner is attached below:

How to prevent session hijacking?

Unfortunately there is no golden remedy that would prevent a users SessionID from being stolen; or prevent the server from accepting an attacker’s malicious requests. But there are some good practices which used may mitigate the risk.

On server’s side:

• keep the user’s IP and browser agent in a session, then check if it’s not changing during the same session
• store SessionID in HttpOnly cookie (it’s much harder to steal the value of such a cookie)
• require user re-login to access sensitive areas
• regenerate the SessionID after successful login over SSL
• use SSL over the whole site

On the user’s side:

• don’t authenticate to sites with sensitive data using public WiFi networks
• don’t click on suspicious link’s
• make sure no one has remote access to your computer and cannot access your cookies directly in your files system (installing anti-virus software may be beneficial)
• logout from services like facebok/gmail/e-banking once you’ve finished using them (it destroys your session on the server)

I hope you have found this post constructive, comments are always welcome and appreciated.

Creating great ideas is hard. Really hard. If it wasn’t then the whole world would be flooded with brilliant, technological solutions to mankind’s every problem and you’d never have to read a blog post meticulously recounting someone’s uneventful trip to the shops again. But sadly, inspiration remains a problem that afflicts even the most imaginative dreamers of us on occasion so what can you do if you ever find yourself completely stumped?

Look at what works.

Chances are, unless you’re a trail blazing pioneer in the blogging field of dinosaur space basketball (and possibly even still then, this is the internet after all), there will be competitors in your niche who have created decent content at some point that’s brought them some measure of success. Start by casting your eye over any particularly great pieces that they’ve come up with and really get stuck in to analysing what made it so successful.

There are a couple of ways to investigate what content is really taking off for other competitors, firstly by calling on the infinitely useful wizardry of Social Crawlytics. By providing Social Crawlytics with a URL you can drill down into a vast array of interesting metrics fuelled by how much content from the specified URL has been shared through social channels but, most relevantly for this post, you can also check out which are the best performing pages. This is the content that has already proven that it works! Take inspiration from these pages (don’t just plagiarise them word for word – that’s not going to end well for anyone) – they’re already showing you how it’s done. Try to think of an interesting spin you could put on their content to make it your own or a conflicting point of view perhaps. The idea at the heart of the piece is what you’ll be looking to take inspiration from here.

The results of an example crawl on SEOMoz

The second way to analyse the best performing areas of a site is a bit more lengthy and taxing, but it’s one I (as a complete slave to data and statistics) am a big fan of. By calling on yet another selection of brilliant tools, this time SEO Tools for Excel combining with SEO Quake and Majestic SEO, we can break down each page of a targeted website in our search for a glorious font of inspiration!

So let’s start off my getting Google to do the legwork for us. Search for all the pages of a site by using the “site:” operator in Google (I forgot to mention this might be quite an ordeal if it’s a large site!) then extract the data using the lovely handy “Show as CSV” button in the SEO Quake menu at the top of the search engine results page.

Now that we’ve stolen all this juicy data we need to convert it into some sort of digestible state so throw it into Excel. Now it’s just the same horrible, impenetrable mess, but now in Excel. But we’re almost there! So now highlight the entirety of the horrible data abomination and click on the “Data” tab at the top of Excel and then the “Text to Columns” button.

This should bring up this handy little “Convert Text to Columns Wizard”. Whilst admittedly, this grey box is at first a pretty disappointing manifestation of a “wizard” (no sweet hat or anything) he’s about to get his Excel magic on in a way that would give Harry Potter an aneurysm. Choose the “Delimited” option on step 1 of 3 then click “Next”. On to Step 2, now make sure that “Semicolon” is selected as a “Delimiter” then click finish.

Success! (I hope). Neatly organised data. Up yours Potter. So this on its own is a pretty solid slice of data for you to sink your analytical molars into but we can still improve it further. I’m going to presume you’ve already got SEO Tools for Excel up and running for the purpose of simplicity (it’s not very difficult to get – and they’ve covered installation flawlessly already over at their site so head over if you need a hand) so click on that tab at the top of Excel then on the “Majestic SEO” button then log in and follow the prompts. Now highlight all of the data in the freshly created “URL” column on your spread sheet and copy it into the “Url(s)” box of the Majestic SEO tab on the left hand side. You’re now free to scroll down through the “Fields” menu of the Majestic SEO tab and include any stats you’d like from the dizzying list of available options provided by Majestic. I tend to just opt for AC Rank and then augment it with TrustFlow and CitationFlow if I’m feeling a bit crazy.

Finally click back onto your spread sheet into a suitable location to receive the oncoming deluge of data then click on the “Insert” button at the bottom of the Majestic SEO tab and just like that – it’s raining stats.

If you sort the data using your metric of choice you’ll get a list of pages ordered by whatever criteria you’d like to target. Any page displaying at or near the top of these lists has achieved some sort of popularity so feel free to start discovering why!

Stream of Consciousness

From clever Excel trickery lets hit the total opposite end of the technical spectrum. Pulling out a pen and paper is an invaluable tool in your arsenal when it comes to breaking free from imagination stifling monotony. Obviously this is a process which can be attempted equally successfully by noting down ideas on a computer but, personally, I find it much more effective to turn away from the screen and get out a pen.

Focus on the content you’re trying to create and just begin writing down everything you can come up with. It’s important to write down everything, no matter how far-fetched or ridiculous it might initially seem, until you’ve got a satisfyingly massive page of ideas. Often once you’ve managed to get one or two things down on a page, the creative juices really start flowing and that’s when the really terrific ideas start to come out. Now go back and cast an eye over all your ideas and consider them honestly whilst trying to improve or further focus them. You’ll be surprised how often an idea you initially considered terrible can be fostered into something you’re really excited to start producing.

Put yourself in your audiences shoes

Consider your website from the point of view of the audience that you’re trying to target. If you’re a member of your target demographic, would you want to read your content? If you would, ask yourself what it is about it that makes it appealing then try to magnify that in your next piece. If you wouldn’t, then consider why not. What about it makes it unappealing?

Once you’ve gone through this short analysis you’ll be in a much better position to understand what sort of thing you should be trying to produce with your next piece of content. Try to think of what you as a member of your audience would want to read. What would entice you? Then make it.

Take a break

There is definitely some merit in the theory of working too hard and burning out. I can’t think of many things more morale crushing than the steady blink of the Microsoft Word cursor on a blank page and a looming deadline. It simply isn’t a productive environment to foster innovation. Depression and stress are hardly the catalysts for inspiration! So remove those obstacles from your creative process – get up and go somewhere. Walk down the hall to a quiet area and see how that goes, go for a walk, anything to break the monotony. Remove yourself from the pressure cooker you create for yourself at your desk and ideas will begin to flow much more freely.

Get inspired by current events

There’s little need to take on the necessary stress and burden of thinking up an earth shatteringly great idea for content when the world will do it for you. On any given day there are a number or headlines emblazoned across news websites and blogs around the world. There’s also a calendar chock full of events that capture the imagination of the global population and the best part is that you can predict exactly when they’ll take place. Literally all of the headlines on any major website are potential ideas for content as is every religious festival, anniversary and sporting event that you can think of!

Reacting to news is an easily actionable idea. You have to be nimble with your creation process and ensure that the content is up and running as quickly as possible in order to benefit from the zeitgeist of a big news story. Make sure that you’re wary of your subject matter when using this approach however; news headlines are often particularly divisive and encourage opinion like few other topics. Whilst this might be great for the initial buzz of your content, remember that some may take offense to the mention or discussion of particular topics.

When targeting major scheduled events (such as major holidays; Easter, Christmas, New Year; sporting events; the Super Bowl, the World Cup, the World Series; or other significant dates) preparation and timing are key. As you’re lucky enough to know exactly when these events will happen there’s no excuse not to be prepared. Get your content created and finished as far in advance as possible giving you time to identify a strategy and relevant channels for distribution. Attempt to predict the time when excitement and interest will be at its highest – then unleash your content slightly before that so it’s ready and waiting when the hordes of hungry traffic appear. The beautiful aspect of these ideas is that you know that people will be interested in their subject matter, so half the battle is already won!

By the way, that is a picture of an actual flying car created by Terrafugia

We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.

Some of you might recognize the previous line, I guess now is a good time to reflect how much of an impact 140 characters can have in today’s world.

Associated Press’s Twitter account was hacked. The attackers posted a fake tweet claiming that the White House was hit by two explosions and that single tweet sent shock waves through the markets. A single tweet caused the Dow Jones industrial average to fall by more than 150 points and obviously the price of crude oil was affected too. So there you have it, a fake tweet wiped $136 billion from the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index in about two minutes highlighted the risks of the computerized trading that dominates the $18 trillion market.

The attack on AP’s Twitter account and the AP Mobile Twitter account was preceded by phishing attempts on AP’s corporate network. AP hasn’t clarified what exactly they mean by “phishing attack” but something tells me social engineering played a big role in this process.

This is absolutely ridiculous! How can we allow such sources to have the power of such impact? I think are two really important questions that need to be asked.

1. Does this incident indicate the influence of Associated Press on markets?

or

2. Does this incident indicate the influence of Twitter on markets?

Doesn’t matter how you answer those questions, the end result is the fact that we have created a bubble that can easily be burst by trivial elements.

How did we come to this? How did we end up using such easy to manipulate sources of information to have so much influence in our high frequency trading algorithms?

Obviously there will be some that would blame Twitter for its poor security but that shouldn’t be the central focus of the debate. The people who should really be held accountable are the decision makers that allow such relatively unreliable sources to have such a huge influence in their systems.

Mayor Bloomberg should really learn a lesson from this incident, integrating Twitter in your system is not a good decision but equally allowing a single news organization to have such an influence is not a good decision either.

“When news is received, Verify its source & authenticity. Only then should the news be passed on to another.”

Here is one of my favorite comments from HN on this post:

On June 18th, 74,000 French troops led by Napoleon, sizing up to meet 67,000 British and other European Troops 200 miles NE of Paris.

Nathan Rothschild knowing that information is power stationed his trusted agent named Rothworth near the battlefield. As soon as the battle was over Rothworth quickly returned to London, delivering the news to Rothschild 24 hours ahead of Wellington’s courier. A victory by Napoleon would have devastated Britain’s financial system.

Nathan stationed himself in his usual place next to an ancient pillar in the stock market. Knowing he would be observed he hung his head and began openly to sell huge numbers of British Government Bonds. Believing this to mean that Napoleon must have won, everyone started to sell their British Bonds as well. The bottom fell out of the market. Rothschild had his agents buying up all the hugely devalued bonds.

Please leave your opinion in the comments. We will publish them.