This morning at 9:30 am Central Time Google Alerts picked up on my new usernamed Facebobok page http://www.facebook.com/dohman. I view Google Alerts in Google Reader and below is a screen grab of how it appeared. I created my FB username page as soon as the doors opened Friday night 11:00pm Central Time.

First thing I did when I saw the alert I did a Google search for facebook dohman to find my raman amplifiernew usernamed FB page is not yet showing up in the first 20 results for that. Then I did a Google info search of info:http://www.facebook.com/dohman and found it is indexed.

After that I checked to see if http://www.facebook.com/dohman was cached yet by Google. It was not as of 3:00 pm Central Time. I checked Shoemoney’s FB page and Google did have it cached already. Makes sense….

No really big breaking news here except documenting the timing of how Google alerts, index and cache is consuming the new Facebook pages. If you have anything interesting to share I’m all ears.

Tonight for the first time I saw a bar appear at the top of my Twitter page called “Hot Political Topics Election2008″. The bar had the following links; Kati Couric, GOP, Alaska, Bush, R’s, CNN, Dems, Russia, CBS, Hillary.

The links go to Twitter’s Election2008 sub-domain where you will basically find Summize/Twitter Search tweet results appearing for the election term of your choice. It’s packaged in a smooth red, white and blue U.S. election theme.

Twiter has this statement posted on the page:

What’s this?

We’re filtering hundreds of Twitter updates per minute to create a new source for gathering public opinion about the presidential election and a new way for you to share your thoughts.

With Election2008 Twitter is packaging it’s content in such a way that will draw attention from folks outside of the typical Twitterer. For the Twitter regulars this is old hat stuff we are used to viewing through what what was Summize and is now Twitter Search. But overall I think it will be a home run for Twitter because it will get main stream media attention. Get ready for another jump in Twitter use. Will we be seeing the whale being carried off to never never land again even more?

This also raises more questions.

• What other topics is Twitter going to package up?
• Are they going to create a whole news site like page full of all the hot topics?
• When will the actual search box and results be integrated into your primary Twitter page?
• What’s the next feature coming around the corner?

I tried to sign up for Google’s new Friend Connect this morning but encountered an error or “something bad” as Google calls it. Here is a screen capture of the error I received and below that is the sign-up page.

I’d like to hear if you have tried signing up for Google’s Friend Connect and if you were able to do it with success or if you received an error like I did….. or at least……something bad….

———UPDATE———

I tried signing up again for Friend Connect with successful form submit. Google is now looking for more site information upon site submission including info such as:

• Full name:
• Email address:
• Type of interest:
• URL of my site (for site owners):
• Site Description
• Additional information: Any info regarding your intended use of this service is appreciated!
• Page Views Per Day
• Unique Users
• How Would Your Site Use Friend Connect Please be as descriptive as possible

I haven’t had this site real active so don’t have much for stats but I am really interested to see how I can use Friend Connect in my current projects launch this summer. I wonder if they are interested in small potatoes and will let me in to this beta preview release.

Look close, do you see the light blue back ground behind the Ask Sponsored Results text? Well I just had my eyes checked today and have 20/20 vision, but looking at my notebook screen from various reasonable angles the blue (or is it green?) background is next to invisible.

I believe this hidden background along with the diminutive Sponsored Results text label is likely to increase the click through rate of the sponsored listings and Ask’s income. This would be good for the advertiser since ads should be relevant and traffic still converting, but it’s a bit deceiving for the average search user and most likely hurting the organic results click through rate.

Ask does one other thing I think is a bit sneaky. The Sponsored Results text label in the upper right corner will click through to the sponsor’s site who is in the number one paid position. If you ask me, I would click on this text thinking I would get an explanation of what Sponsored Results are, not a sponsor’s site. I would not want to be charged for those clicks if I was in the number one sponsor spot. Yahoo actually does click you through to an explanation of what sponsored results are. Neither Google nor Live have their sponsored text label linked, but Live is close to doing that with the very near surrounding area clicking through to the sponsored listings.

Ask also has all open space with the sponsor background color click through to the sponsor sites. Live does this as well. To me this seems like they are trying to collect a few extra unintentional clicks. Neither Ask nor Live have the open space next to organic results click through, just the blue underlined titles. Google only has the blue underlined titles linked for sponsored and organic results, Yahoo has all sponsored text (blue underlined titles and description) as a link but only blue and underlined titles click through in the organic results.

So you tell me, do you think these tactics are a bit disingenuous?