via:mashable

Facebook has admitted hiring a PR firm to raise concerns about Google’s privacy practices. The campaign backfired though when an agent from the firm was caught trying to “help” a prominent blogger write a critical piece on one of Google’s services, according to The Daily Beast.

The PR firm is Burson-Marsteller. The blogger is Chris Soghoian. A Burson agent approached him to write a piece on Google’s Social Circle, a network of social connections that Google uses to deliver relevant search results. The Burson rep even offered to help write the piece and approached other news organizations, including USA Today, with similar offers.

Soghoian declined and instead decided to publish some of the emails from Burson. (They’re available here.) In one email, the Burson rep directly attacks Google, saying, “Google, as you know, has a well-known history of infringing on the privacy rights of America’s Internet users. Not a year has gone by since the founding of the company where it has not been the focus of front-page news detailing its zealous approach to gathering information -– in many cases private and identifiable information — about online users.”

The email goes on to describe Google’s service as the “latest tool designed to scrape private data and build deeply personal dossiers on millions of users –- in a direct and flagrant violation of its agreement with the FTC.”

When Soghoian asked who was paying for this campaign, the Burson representative refused to name the firm’s client. A Facebook representative confirmed to The Daily Beast‘s Dan Lyons that the company hired Burson for two reasons: “First, because it believes Google is doing some things in social networking that raise privacy concerns; second, and perhaps more important, because Facebook resents Google’s attempts to use Facebook data in its own social-networking service.”

It’s one thing to publicly voice your concern about another company’s privacy practices — Microsoft, Google and Facebook have been throwing jabs at each other for some time now — but hiring a PR agent to try to influence bloggers to write negative press about a competitor — that’s a PR catastrophe of the highest degree.

Plenty of people throughout history have made careers of pushing others’ buttons (see Mark Twain), but the Internet gave birth to a new type of rabble-rousing big-mouth: the blogger. The most successful writers to harness this medium have been the ones to realize—in the tradition of Matt Drudge, the godfather of dotcom provocateurism—the Internet’s unique power to enrage people. Armed with snark, a keyboard, and a gift for attracting Web traffic, the following instigators are some of the most notorious (and often successful) in the business.

  

A onetime editor of the Drudge Report, Andrew Breitbart has created his own popular online persona by mastering the art of confrontation. From government agencies to major news outlets, no institution is safe from the wrath he and his contributors hurl from Breitbart’s conservative blogs, including BigGovernment.com and BigJournalism.com. He’s become a celebrity among the Tea Party crowd, casting himself online as a populist crusader—but that role can have its drawbacks. He recently found himself at the center of the Shirley Sherrod controversy when it was revealed that a video he posted of Sherrod had been heavily edited to make it appear as though the USDA worker was making racist comments. (Breitbart says he didn’t know the video had been edited in a misleading way.)

 

  

Pick a celebrity scandal from the past two years, and you can bet Mario Armando Lavandeira (better known as Perez Hilton) was either writing about it or directly involved. Ever since the syndicated TV show The Insider dubbed Hilton’s blog Hollywood’s “most hated website,” the gossip extraordinaire has been making headlines as often as he writes them. He’s the one who asked Carrie Prejean whether she believed every state should legalize same-sex marriage, prompting the Miss USA contestant’s controversial answer and later allegations that she lost the competition because of her socially conservative views. He’s also the one who Tweeted an upskirt photo that apparently showed underage singer Miley Cyrus without underpants. When the blogosphere began buzzing with speculation that Hilton could face child-pornography charges for posting the photo, he quickly deleted it, adding that the singer was, in fact, sporting underwear. Of course, in true Perez-style, the blogger milked the controversy for days, posting a video mocking his critics along with additional scandalous pictures of Cyrus.

  

Andrew Sullivan has a way of making everyone crazy. Even the stock prefixes regularly attached to his name sound paradoxical: openly gay, conservative, devout Catholic. On his blog for The Atlantic, The Daily Dish, he savages liberal pieties and advocates limited government, theoretically aligning him with the right. Yet he has been one of the fiercest critics of the GOP in recent years, railing against the conservative take on issues from gay marriage to the war on terror (which he initially supported, but now says was a mistake). He has called Glenn Beck a “nutjob,” and Michelle Malkin has labeled him “a rhetorical lynch mob leader.” Sullivan has been more than willing to fight back. On his blog he created The Malkin Award, “for shrill, hyperbolic, divisive and intemperate right-wing rhetoric” (Ann Coulter is ineligible, he says, “to give others a chance”). He has a similar award for left-wing bluster named for filmmaker Michael Moore. So whose side is he on, anyway? Sullivan says no one’s—the tagline of his blog reads “Of no party or clique.”

 

Sandra Rose blogs on everything from politics to fashion, but riling up the hip-hop world is her bread and butter. For example, Rose recently posted an article titled “How the Mighty Have Fallen: Jermaine Dupri Rebounds,” which chronicled the rapper-producer’s recent career failures and claimed that he was “in denial” regarding his breakup with Janet Jackson. It wasn’t long before gossip blogs began reporting that Dupri had called and threatened the blogger. So far, Dupri has declined media requests for comment, but Rose has already apparently moved on to her next target. Regarding Halle Berry’s September Vogue cover, Rose wrote, “I’ve never met a strikingly beautiful chick who didn’t have subtle or overt mental issues.” Ouch.

  

In 2008, Michael Wolff participated in a panel on the future of news, where he told NEWSWEEK senior writer Johnnie L. Roberts, “If Newsweek is around in five years, I’ll buy you dinner.” Of course, NEWSWEEK isn't the only one targeted by Vanity Fair’s media blogger. Wolff has made a career out of antagonizing journalists, keenly understanding that if you make your media peers mad enough, they’ll eventually respond—most likely with a link to your blog. Speaking of which, here’s one of Wolff’s many recent articles on NEWSWEEK. Thanks for the advice, Michael. Your business savvy has, after all, been well documented.

  

Michelle Malkin seems to have a unnatural ability to agitate people, especially liberals. The conservative blogger and founder of hotair.com has inspired so much vitriol that when liberal Web sites posted her home address, Malkin got so many harassing calls from crazed detractors that she and her family moved. Critics have tagged her a “fascist” and a “Nazi,” in part for her backing of racial profiling as a tool to fight terrorism and for her hard-line views on illegal immigration. But as much as she has come under attack, she’s just as often the one making incendiary statements, like calling members of the NAACP “race hustlers” and labeling Michelle Obama the “First Crony.” Malkin has even targeted the GOP, criticizing former President George W. Bush for not being conservative enough. On her blog, she wrote, “I don’t miss having a corporate socialist Republican in the White House any more than I like having a corporate socialist Democrat in the White House now.”

  

A 2007 Wired article described TechCrunch founder and blogger Michael Arrington as a “persona somewhere between an aging linebacker and Tony Soprano—a large man always on the verge of losing his cool.” It sounds unkind, but Arrington, one of the most powerful tech writers in the business, has never denied that he has big opinions and a habit of blowing a fuse, often mowing down friends and enemies alike. But that’s part of what happens when you’re Silicon Valley’s current kingmaker—a good TechCrunch review is like a seal of approval—and Arrington won’t just dish out good reviews for any old startup. In fact, in the same Wired article, he told writer Fred Vogelstein, “One of my friends, Tom Ball, is mad at me because I just trashed his startup, Jigsaw. He’ll get over it—I hope.”

  

Daily Kos founder and publisher Markos Moulitsas has taken on some of the biggest conservatives in the game, from Sarah Palin to Tom Tancredo, and bruised his fair share of egos along the way. His most recent adversary: media personality Joe Scarborough, of MSNBC’s Morning Joe. It started on Twitter, where Scarborough commented on allegations of a White House job offer extended to Rep. Joe Sestak if he dropped out of his primary challenge to Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania’s Senate race. Scarborough tweeted, “Luckily for the White House, the media has been negligent on this story since Day 1.” Moulitsas, who argued that it was a nonstory, fired back with a reference to Scarborough’s employee Lori Klausutis, who was found dead in his district office when Scarborough was a congressman. In a blog post, Moulitsas explained that what he meant was that if Scarborough had been a Democrat (like former U.S. Rep. Gary Condit, who was once suspected of having been involved in the killing of intern Chandra Levy), such an incident would have been front-page news. Moulitsas argued that the situation was an example of a media double standard. The back and forth continued and degenerated into a hatefest that resulted in Moulitsas being temporarily banned from appearing on MSNBC. Moulitsas blogged about that, too, saying he found it noteworthy that he was “booted from the network because of a Scarborough temper tantrum.”

We’ve gathered 20+ sites that will help you with getting your press release out in the world for free. 

24-7PressRelease.com – Free release distribution with ad-support

1888PressRelease.com – Free distribution, paid services gives you better placement and permanent archiving.

ClickPress.com – Distributs to sites like Google News and Topix.net, Gold level will also get you to sites like LexisNexis.

EcommWire.com – Focuses on ecommerece and requires you include an image, 3 keywords and links.

Express-Press-Release.com – Free distribution company with offices in 12 states.

Free-Press-Release.com – Easy press release distribution for free, more features for paid accounts.

Free-Press-Release-Center.info – Distributes your release, offers a web page with one keyword link to your site. Pro upgrade will give you three links, permanent archiving and more.

I-Newswire.com – Allows for free distribution to sites and search engines, premium membership differs only slightly in adding in graphics.

NewswireToday.com – All the usual free distribution tools, premium service includes logo, product picture and more.

PR.com – Not only will they distribute your press releases, but you can also set up a full company profile.

PR9.net – Ad supported press distribution site.

PR-Inside.com – European-based free press release distribution site.

PRBuzz.com – Completely free distribution to search engines, news sites, and blogs.

PRCompass.com – Distribute your press release with a free or paid version, others can vote it up ala Digg style.

PRUrgent.com – Not only distributes your release, but attempts to teach you how to write one, and even offers downloadbale samples for you to work with.

Press-Base.com – Submit your release for free and get on their front page and the category of your choice.

PressAbout.com – A free press release service formatted as a blog.

PressMethod.com – Free press release distribution no matter what, but extra services based on the size of your contribution.

PRLeap.com – Free distribution to search engines, newswires, and RSS feeds. Fee based bumps get you better placement.

PRLog.org – Free distribution to Google News and other other search engines.

TheOpenPress.com – Gives free distribution for plain formatted releases, fees for HTML-coded releases.

By: Sarah Evans

On an average business day, more than 2,000 press releases are distributed by the five leading wire services in the United States – Business Wire, Marketwire, PrimeNewswire, PR Newswire, and PRWeb. What can you do to set your press release apart from the pack and allow your target audience to find you? Implement the use of search engine optimization, or SEO.

To put it simply, when someone Googles you or your company, where do you show up in the search results?

SEO allows you to:

• Garner media coverage
• Create quality keyword anchor backlinks for your website. (Check out: Creating Website Backlinks and Anchor Texts)
• Rank in Google and Yahoo News for your keywords
• Bring content to your audience

While the use of SEO leads to increased visibility and ultimately more views of press releases, it is imperative to remember that you write first and foremost for YOUR AUDIENCE – the most important “traffic” of all. It is too easy to forget the individual consumer and begin to write for the general masses. The tips below are meant to ease you into the world of SEO, but not take you away from what matters most—see #10.

1. Don’t use jargon!

Regardless of SEO, you need to tell your story for your customers. Find out how your audience is searching for you and your competitors via search engines. Use these terms in your release.

Tip: Can’t stop the jargon train? Try the old fashioned way—ask someone outside of your industry to proof your release. If they don’t understand it, change it.

2. Use key words

This is especially important in your headlines. An example of what I deem a great headline—Google Big Daddy Searchquake About to Rock Your Ranking? Go ahead and type this headline in Google, it comes up as the top ranking and makes for an easy search. (Important keywords: Google, Big Daddy and ranking) While there are many tools out there, try using a keyword search tool to make your life a little easier. (Know your keywords before you write even one word of your release!)

TIP: While a difficult task, ensure that keywords are not too far apart from one another in the headline.

3. Hotlink and bold critical words (and phrases)

A simple, but extremely useful habit. Just as important as using keywords, bold other critical (or secondary) words and phrases in the release and include a link to additional information. Hotlinks are useful for both consumers and journalists. Links offer the reader a choice to explore for additional information.

TIP: Another simple best practice. ALWAYS include the http:// portion of the URLs in your release or the link will not be clickable when published.

4. Research free SEO tools

I don’t know about you, but I’m still learning about SEO. Therefore, I rely heavily on trusted experts and free tools to learn more. Try out these SEO tools (if you don’t like them, try a search of your own and share what you learn in the comments, below).

5. Use anchor links

Include anchor text links with your keywords. Using anchor links increases your chance of driving viewers back to your Web site.

TIP: Make sure at least one of the keywords links to a page on your Web site other than the homepage.

6. Optimize first 250 words

The first 250 words of your release are essential to both your overall search results and it’s also about the time you will lose a reader if your content is not interesting. You want your release to be “clickable”—meaning someone wants to click on the release to read more. Practice the basics of press release writing. Make sure tips 1-5 are incorporated into the first 250 words!

TIP: Always write your releases in third-person perspective.

7. Patience

If you’re reading this my bet is that you haven’t mastered SEO tactics. That’s okay. I must often remind myself that writing is an evolving skill. Just as it took time to hone your press release writing skills, so too will it take time to learn SEO.

TIP: Set up a learning schedule for yourself. I currently read one new article about SEO each day.

8. Engage customers, journalists and bloggers

Do you rely heavily on behind the scenes, third party or Internet-based research? Try something new (or old) and take it to the streets. Ask your customers, industry bloggers and beat reporters what they search for. Not only does it give you credible feedback, but reminds your community that you value their feedback.  

TIP: Send out a personal email or call your favorite customers, journalists and/or bloggers to get their opinions. It’s an investment in your future (and theirs).

9. Write great copy

As a PR professional, incorporating the use of SEO only forces me to be a stronger writer and improves my overall content. Brush up on your writing. You’ll thank me.

TIP: Don’t include a date in your release. It makes your information seem outdated and ultimately hurts your credibility.

10. Be newsworthy

Be the content that intests your audience NOT that which interrupts them. I can’t stress this point enough, if you don’t have a good story to tell, no amount of SEO will help you.  What is the impact of your information? What is your news angle? WHY DOES IT MATTER TO ME?

TIP: Ask yourself before writing the release, “why would my mother, brother or aunt care about this?”

Since most would-be readers use search engines to find blog posts, you need to make sure that Google ranks your site highly when those readers search for terms related to your business and the content you're writing.

You could spend thousands of dollars to have a search marketing firm optimize your business's blog for search engines, but chances are that you can learn a lot of the fundamentals yourself, saving yourself a lot of money as long as you have the interest and the time. Here's a basic primer on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your company's blog.

1. Always Include Search Terms In Your Post's Title

When Google reads a website to index it, it reads the code directly, not the snazzy presentation that humans see. The way most blogging platforms are built, the headline or title of your blog post is among the first things Google sees, and Google generally assumes the words that appear earliest are the most important. That's why the title is the most important part of your blog post when it comes to SEO.

Think about who you want to reach with this blog post, and what that person might be searching for when looking for your business's goods or services, then include critical words from that hypothetical search in the title. The most important terms should appear as quickly as you can reasonably fit them in. Just be careful not to make the title unreadable or awkward to human readers — that SEO effort will have been for naught if the reader is immediately turned off by the content once he or she finds it.

Here's a pro tip: You're not likely to win strong ranking for more than one or two search terms at once, so minimalism is a virtue here. Don't get over-ambitious. Focus on one potential search term, then if you want to rank for a second term, write a separate and unique post specifically with it in mind.

2. Link Important Words to Earlier Blog Posts

Search engines generally assume that a blog post that has been linked to has more authority than one that has not. They also consider exactly what word or phrase linked to the post; a blog post about the iPhone is going to be more likely to show up in Google searches on the subject if another page links the word "iPhone" to the post.

You'll get the most value from external links from sites that Google or other search engines already consider to be an authority of the subject (if the top blog about iPhones links the word to your post, you'll get a huge boost), but all incoming links will still pass rank to your page, even those from elsewhere on your site.

So be sure and link important keywords to other pages or previous posts on your blog to gain some credibility and search rank. It will make a big difference. Just don't overdo it; not only do human readers hate reading blogs so filled with links that they might accidentally click on something, Google may penalize you if you go overboard, too.

3. Hit the Tagging Sweet Spot

Most blogging platforms let you apply tags to your posts. Tags help organize your blog so both humans and search engines can find what they're looking for. They're terms like "consulting," "local" or "technology" that reflect the topics and content of the post.

Google tries to recognize tags and use them to prioritize your site in its search ranking for those terms. The tags are usually links to other pages on your blog (usually a backlog of other posts with the same tag), and like we said earlier, linking search terms to other pages on your site helps too.

So by all means, add pertinent tags to your blog post, but be warned that Google and other search engines are wary of sites that try to game this system. They will penalize you in the search rankings if you use so many tags that the web indexing bots suspect you might be attempting to associate your content with unrelated topics just to score extra traffic.

The method for determining this is arcane, but a good rule of thumb from a pro blogger is that five to 10 appropriate tags are usually right in the sweet spot.

4. Use Google Insights to Find the Best Search Terms

You don't have to play a guessing game about the best tags or search terms to link or put in your post's title. Since Google is the most popular search engine, it makes sense to focus your efforts there. Whenever you're not sure which terms to go with, hit up Google Insights, a web-based tool that compares the popularity of any search terms you want to know about.

For example, if your business is a coffee shop but you're not sure whether would-be customers are more likely to search for "café" or "coffee shop," Insights can tell you which one is more popular.

Philadelphia: 'Proclaim LIBERTY throughout the land,' by Tony the Misfit/flickr. Used gratefully via a Creative Commons license

The city of Philadelphia has been under fire on the web for what’s been called a “blogging tax,” a new business tax under which several local bloggers have been billed on business revenue earned on their sites. As a blogger who lives in Philadelphia — and the newest member of the Wired.com team — I feel I have to dispel some myths guiding the “WTF?” reaction many writers had to this story.

But I also want to point to some larger problems beneath the surface. This problem is much bigger than blogs in my city.

A roundup of blog coverage at The Atlantic Wire nicely condenses and distills many of these myths:

The city of Philadelphia is now requiring bloggers who sell ad space to register for a $300 “business privilege license” to continue working in the city. The move to bolster the city’s finances — first reported by the Philadelphia City Paper – was greeted with deep skepticism.

Let’s take these one at a time.

Myth #1: Philadelphia has a new blogging tax.

Truth: The tax isn’t new, and it isn’t for bloggers. It covers any business in the city of Philadelphia, whether you’re a multinational oil company or (in principle) a kid running a lemonade stand. In particular, it falls hard on freelancers, or anyone working for anything that doesn’t fall under a traditional payroll wage.

Like many people who do freelance work, I claimed federal income last year on a 1099. In my case, it wasn’t for writing, but for tutoring SAT students in the Philadelphia suburbs. I worked for a company, but I was technically a freelancer.

Then I got a letter from the city of Philadelphia, where I live, announcing that I qualified for its tax amnesty program. The federal government had shared some or all of my tax return with the city’s revenue department, and the city wanted to tax that income. I had to register my “business,” pay either a $300 lifetime fee or $50 just for that particular year, and calculate both my gross receipts and net profits, both of which fell under the city’s business privilege tax. (And before you ask, oh yes, we make fun of that name here in Philadelphia.) If I came forward to voluntarily pay up before June, I wouldn’t be assessed penalties. If I didn’t, the city would report me to credit agencies, hire collectors, and/or sue me to get their wanted revenue.

My position had been that since all my tutoring had been in the suburbs, I didn’t have a business presence in the city of Philadelphia and didn’t fall under the tax. But on my return, I’d claimed my travel expenses as a business expense against my tutoring income. That meant (according to them) that since I lived here, I did in fact do business in the city. I imagine even bloggers aware of the possibility that they might have to pay the BPT had the same confusion. Online retailers have resisted states’ efforts to collect sales tax. Where is a blog located? Where are the revenues paid?

But it’s not just bloggers who’ve been surprised by this tax, or the city’s ramped-up efforts to collect it. It’s anyone whose contract employer files a 1099 or who voluntarily claims non-wage income on their federal return. (If you claim wage income, the city has a tax for that too.) That’s a lot of people.

Myth #2: The tax is for bloggers who sell ads on their sites.

Truth: The tax would cover any kind of income. Do you use Google AdSense? Are you an affiliate of Amazon or other retail sites? Do you sell shirts, mugs, prints, or posters? Sell anything on eBay or Etsy? Collect donations via PayPal?

PayPal/eBay doesn’t provide 1099s at all, except for interest on PayPal’s money market account. Amazon Associates and Google AdSense accounts with revenues greater than $600 get a 1099, which is the minimum amount required by federal law.

None of these sites provide any guidance on payment of state and local taxes. All of them have resisted efforts from local governments to collect sales tax, claiming that their websites don’t constitute a business/retail presence.

So if your neighbor buys something from Amazon through your site, they don’t pay sales tax on it. Neither does Amazon. But you could be billed for helping to sell it.

Myth #3: The blogging tax is unique to Philadelphia.

Many cities have local taxes on wages, income, business revenue, and gross receipts. New York City charges a commercial rent tax, a general corporation tax, and an unincorporated business tax, which would probably fall on any income-generating blog or other website. New York, however, exempts the first $3400 of tax liability. (Technically, they provide a credit.) Philadelphia doesn’t, which is why we have the specter of bloggers being billed upwards of $300 for earnings less than $20. New York also has a website that’s easy to understand. Do you know what your city’s tax policy is?

Myth #4: This is just about business revenue.

Cities can easily make exemptions not just for the amount of money earned, but for the kind of activity as well. Philadelphia has a sales tax exemption for clothing, to encourage commuters and residents to shop in-town. As NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen told wired.com: “In New York City, the law says if you’re a street vendor you have to get a license, which costs money, but there’s an exception if you’re selling books.  No license needed. That would be a smart thing for Philly to do with bloggers who have small incomes. A First Amendment exception.”

Bloggers who pay business taxes have the same responsibilities to the government as newspapers or other established media outlets, without always receiving the same journalistic courtesies and protections under the law. Newspaper chains can also take advantage of a common tactic to large businesses, arranging their books so that none of their profits (but most of their overhead) falls under the jurisdiction of a municipal tax. Sole-proprietor resident-bloggers can’t do that.

The city’s largest paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, was remarkably dismissive of the bloggers’ position, more concerned that the city had been made “the subject of head-scratching and ridicule”:

On BuzzFeed, a popular website for stories, photos, and video competing to go viral, “Philadelphia Blogger’s License: $300″ was in the running, in between videos of a bored cat having a birthday party and Lady Gaga dancing at a Kiss concert…

Well, some bloggers who make a few dollars from Web ads were informed recently that they had to obtain a license. Not because they were bloggers, the city says. But because they made money.

Something about small-time bloggers getting hit up for money by the government got a lot of blog writers and readers fired up.

Actually, most of us were fired up about the cat’s birthday party. Getting threatened with lawsuits and debt collectors raises a lot of emotions, but “fired up” isn’t one of them.

There’s another first amendment issue at work here. Because cities have tremendous latitude as to how far to go in pursuing a blogger’s taxes — offering amnesty for some, lawsuits for others — they can potentially use revenue collection as a means to punish dissenting, unfriendly, or unconnected voices. Philadelphia isn’t the only American city with a long history of selective taxation and enforcement, favors to friends, or pay-to-play.

Myth #5: Philadelphia is collecting this tax because they’re strapped for cash.

Now, let me be clear: the city, like many other local governments, is absolutely facing shortfalls, partly from the economic crisis, mostly from long-term problems in the city’s budget. They’re charging businesses for trash collection, which always fell under property tax before. The water department is charging property owners with a special fee for water collected in the city’s storm drains. The revenue department has been nothing if not innovative.

But the city isn’t pursuing this tax because of the money. They’re doing it because, like many other governments, their tax structures haven’t kept pace with a changing economy, and the political and bureaucratic structures have been unable to do anything about that apart from tinker around the edges.

Last year, the local City Paper (the same one who initially broadcast the blogging tax to the world) highlighted a new Philadelphia institution called Independents Hall. Just a few blocks from Independence Hall, it’s a co-working office for freelancers and folks who work outside the office: “designers, developers, writers, artists, entrepreneurs, scientists, educators, small business owners, telecommuters, marketers, videographers, game developers, and more.” For $275/month, you get  24/7 access, a dedicated desk, and a place to store your stuff. For less, you can get a day or a monthly part-time pass. Last year, memberships and reservations spiked:

It’s too early to know whether self-employment has been trending upward in Philly since the recession hit (between 2002 and 2005 — the last time data on entrepreneurship was collected — it rose from 13.5 percent to 15 percent). Meg Shope-Koppel, director of research at the Philadelphia Workforce Investment Board, says that “as recessions begin, some industries start using more contractual workers,” though “it’s not going to be a huge spike, because in some areas, businesses are failing.”

Most of the people at IndyHall knew about the BPT and had already paid their lifetime passes. They talk with each other about how to structure their finances so they don’t get walloped with a huge bill. They help each other set up LLCs and register their businesses as nonprofits (who are completely exempt from the tax).

They stick together. They have to. They’re the only ones who know. Nobody else knows anything.

“140-character status updates to a network of followers.” That makes Twitter sound simple. But in fact, the social information platform has grown to be much more complex than its 140 character-limit suggests. The site not only connects people, but has also become an intricate information resource for everything from news to shopping deals.

Yet in many ways, the site’s actual functionality hasn’t exactly kept up with user interactions. Twitter’s interface has remained simple, which is why a lot of tweets take place through third-party sites and applications that make the experience more useful.

We’ve compiled a list of the top 20 third-party websites for making your Twitter experience more useful and easier to manage. Although this does not include the many desktop or mobile applications that are available for Twitter, we hope that it will make your browsing experience more enjoyable as you dive into the Twittersphere. Also, as a one-stop shop for Twitter apps, check out OneForty. We’d love to hear what’s missing from this list, including sites that you find useful in the comments.

Web Applications: HootSuite and Brizzly

With its recent update and HTML5 support, social media dashboard HootSuite has become one of the most useful Twitter web applications not only for individual users, but teams managing several accounts. In some ways, HootSuite has the look and feel of TweetDeck with the big differentiator of it being a web-based application, not requiring any downloads.

HootSuite enables you to update to multiple accounts at once, and supports Twitter, Facebook profiles and pages, LinkedIn, Ping.fm, WordPress, MySpace and Foursquare. Similar to TweetDeck, these features make the application useful for maintaining your overall social presence. Moreover, you can allow other users to jointly update an account, integrate Google Analytics for your stats and schedule tweets and updates ahead of time.

The HTML5 interface enables you to easily include an image or file with your update by simply dragging it from the desktop into the message box, which will automatically upload the file with an “Ow.ly” shortener for sharing. The fast loading of the dashboard is perhaps one of the most notable improvements, making the site more usable for users who manage dozens of accounts. If you don’t like Hootsuite, you should also check out Seesmic, which has a lot of similar features, but a different interface.

Brizzly has a different functionality from Hootsuite, but may be more appealing because of its simple interface. Brizzly is specifically focused on Twitter and no other networks, which makes the experience somewhat less distracting. It also includes subtle, but worthy features like automatically expanded URLs, which shows you exactly where you are going if you click, and displays replies and direct messages in a threaded form, making it easier to follow the conversation.

Filtering Through the Noise: TwitterTimes and Paper.li

After you log in with your Twitter username, The Twitter Tim.es creates a page that displays stories by filtering through what the people you follow have tweeted the most in a more presentable stream that is updated regularly. Though the design of the interface isn’t the best, The Twitter Times is effective in showing you who has tweeted the story along with the story headline and blurb to give you an idea of what it’s about. In some cases, the site shows you the full text of the post. It also gives you options to view popular stories on Twitter from media sources and Twitter Lists.

The site helps you filter through the noise and keep up with what is trending among the people you follow. If you’ve been off the grid for a couple hours, you can get a sense of what people are sharing and the news that is important among your Twitter community at any given moment.

Paper.li has similar functions but a different presentation. Users can create their own “newspaper” based on who they follow. Users can also create newspapers based on a Twitter hash tag or a Twitter list. Instead of a stream, Paper.li presents content by creating a custom homepage that separates content based on popularity and topics. The site does a great job of making the content visually appealing by including thumbnails, YouTube videos and blurbs.

Trends: TweetMeme and Trendistic

TweetMeme is best recognized for its bright green buttons on websites (like this one), enabling users to easily tweet the article they’re reading. All of the information is collected at TweetMeme from across the web, giving a good sense as to what is trending on Twitter. The site enables you to filter by categories and topics (entertainment, gaming, etc.) and to showcase the most retweeted links. You also get a brief blurb from the link being shared and are able to filter by news articles, images and videos.

Trendistic also works well, but specifically for bigger Twitter trends and how they have performed over time. The site gives you an idea of current trends and presents them in a graphic format, showing you the percentage that the trends account for at any give time. For example, on July 8, “heat” accounted for 1.8% of all tweets at 9 p.m. during LeBron James’ big announcement that he would be joining the Miami Heat. You can also sort the trend based on timeframe, and get a code to embed the chart on your site.

Twitter Lists: Tlists and PubliTweet

Tlists is a Twitter Lists directory where you can search by list topic, view popular lists, and create your own lists. Users can also apply to join a list, and the creator is then notified and can approve them to join the list depending on whether they are a good fit. Lists are a great curating tool in rounding up like-minded tweeters in one place. It functions not only as a directory, but also as a stream of useful information around a specific subject. But after you have that list, how can you make it more presentable?

PubliTweet takes your Twitter Lists and makes them a lot more useful. It does this by providing a nice embed code that presents the lists in a handy stream that includes the text of the tweet, headline, thumbnail and blurb of the article they are sharing. You can take the code and plant the list anywhere on your site. Not only does PubliTweet make your Twitter Lists more useful visually, the tweets are also more shareable through convenient Twitter, Facebook and e-mail share buttons.

Hashtag Stats: TwapperKeeper

TwapperKeeper and Trendistic are great tools for getting some basic stats on how much a specific hashtag on Twitter is performing. Though there are several other sites that give you more options (often for a price), these two sites are simple to use in getting a general overview. TwapperKeeper lets you create an archive for tracking a specific hashtag, keyword, or username and collects the data and the number of mentions. If you’re interested in getting a sense for how many times a specific hashtag was tweeted, it gives you a total number, along with the ability to search precisely through the archive that you created, listing the recent tweets that have been tracked. The beautiful part is that you can also export the data and analyze it to your liking.

Embedding Tweets: QuoteURL

Though Twitter released a script that allows interactive tweet embedding, the code has had some issues and isn’t always ideal. QuoteURL seems to be the best option for creating embedable tweets. The app enables you to add multiple tweet URLs and embed them into a post. You can also embed an individual one, but if you want to get a stream of tweets to embed, this is the tool to use.

The application gives you a nice, clean embed such that users can see the text of the tweet, but it also preserves the interactivity of being able to reply, click on the username, or any links within the tweet. Essentially, it mirrors the experience a user has engaging with individual tweets on Twitter. This makes your tweets a bit more useful than just a screenshot, however, many sites and blogs have yet to adopt it because the embed doesn’t show up in blogger’s RSS feeds.

Location: MapMash.in and Monitter

Though Twitter has launched its own location feature with Twitter Places, which will likely be expanded in the future, there are several other sites that showcase location-based tweets. Local Twitter Trends displays trends in major cities and allows you to click on the keywords to see what people are talking about. It’s very simple and to the point, giving you an easy way to track the conversation in a specific place.

However, if you want to track news on specific topics, monitter might be the better choice. This site allows you to not only search for a specific location, it also lets you track three specific searches within that area — in real time — and displays the results in an easy-to-view, three-column format. You can also adjust the radius of the area that you’re searching.

Discovery: WeFollow and Twellow

WeFollow is a Twitter directory from Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, that emphasizes topics that users associate themselves with. Anyone can easily add themselves to the directory by simply tweeting out the hashtags that will make their usernames searchable in the directory. The site is great for discovering new users that you might share common interests with. It also enables you to view the top users in each category.

Twellow’s tagline is the “Twitter Yellow Pages,” and aims to be the directory to search for Twitter users based on industries and topics like biotechnology, food, home and garden, etc. In a lot of ways it is the ultimate directory for Twitter, also enabling you to search for users based on area. It also offers a very useful search engine.

Influence: Klout and TwitterCounter

Type a username into Klout and you can get a sense for how influential that user is on Twitter and their behavior. Klout gives you a score out of 100 based on reach, amplification and network after being compiled from numbers like the total retweets, message reach, unique mentions, retweeters, and more. The cool feature is the influence matrix, which defines the user and gives you a brief description of their behavior on Twitter. Klout also tells you who the user influences and is influenced by, as well as a topic summary of their tweets.

TwitterCounter tracks the top accounts and lists on Twitter based on how many followers they have and gives you some more basic numbers of influence based on growth and rank of the user’s account. The site provides some basic graphs tracking the number of the follower, following, and tweet growth over time, even setting a predicting number for where you will be in the future based on your average growth. It also enables you to easily compare several accounts at once, and build a handy widget for your site that tracks and displays recent Twitter visitors to your site.

Photos and Videos: TwitPic and yfrog

Among the first sites to make sharing photos on Twitter easy and popular, Twitpic is still one of the best. It’s also useful to browse through the public timeline of photos uploaded, and now you can even tie location to the photos you upload. It also lets you group photos into events, which is great for organization.

Yfrog lets you not only upload photos, but videos as well. The site is also extremely useful and easy to navigate. One simple Yfrog feature that Twitpic fails to include is a site search. Yfrog allows you to sort videos and pictures based on popularity, and showcases top search trends on the site. You can also easily share the photos across platforms and get an embed code for the image. Here’s an example of Glee star Mark Salling’s Yfrog post about a recent big catch:

Polls: PollDaddy and TwtPoll

PollDaddy has an easy integration for creating a quick poll that can be easily distributed on Twitter. The setup is easy. You create a poll question, select the answers (multiple choice, etc.) and the order you want them to appear, enter your username and post it to Twitter. The site sends a nice clean tweet with a link to the poll where users can vote. After setting the poll up, it is also quite easy to embed the poll into a post. It’s also worth mentioning PollDaddy has a great WordPress plugin that enables you to easily create polls within the content management system.

TwtPoll is similar to PollDaddy but has a different interface and allows users to answer questions through different formats, such as text, images or videos, Twitter handles or addresses.