As 2010 comes to an end, it's time to look back at the media year that was. 2010 was full of surprising media scandals, technological developments, and a few major mergers. CLICK HERE to review the year in media and vote on what you think were the biggest media stories of the year.

The end of the year 2010 is near. The world is looking forward to everything they hope 2011 will bring. As far as the World Wide Web goes, the one unanimous prediction is that SEO will wrangle its way through to each and every website and search engine. If you want to be reckoned with, SEO has to be on your list of priorities and there is one firm that should on your speed dial for this purpose, it is a internet marketing agency.

The use of social media and online resources like broadcast emails to market products and services looks like it is in the need of some serious uplifting. The use of email has characterized the marketing solutions of most companies. 2011 ought to be interesting as the use of SEO services and email marketing needs to get more personalized and specific to succeed. This involves some delicate and crafty work, only a Florida advertising agency can grasp the gravity of this situation.

Broadly sending out bulk emails to each and every client irrespective of their history with the company may be working in a detrimental fashion proving the business to be an automated nuisance. This is certainly not what Times Ten Creative does or is about. Rather, they are a powerful automated asset. Furthermore, on the other end of the spectrum, giants like Google also believe that search engines need to be more personalized.

The age old marketing adage “If it does not strike a personal chord in me, it is not for me” will be proven true all over again. Reaching out to a target audience is easy but ensuring that each client is dealt with in a manner pertaining specifically to their usage and interests is the hard part. This hurdle needs to be solved and the way to do this in 2011 is to put behavioral monitoring technology to use. This technology will help Google to launch a default personalized search option which will hold the personal preferences of each user. Marketing too will undergo a dramatic change by paying cognizance to the needs and interests of each consumer so that only the most relevant offers and information is sent out to them.

How simple does this sound? It may sound simple but it is difficult and complex to initiate and employ. Hitting a Cliff Lee fastball may sound simple but it most certainly is not. If your car’s transmission needs to be repaired, would you hire someone or attempt to tackle this issue in your garage with your own ratchet set? Lary Arnett, Director of Marketing, Times Ten Creative, located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida hopes it is the former and so does your own employees.

YouTube has announced that its users have uploaded more than 13 million hours of video content to its servers in the last 12 months, resulting in more than 700 billion YouTube video views.

If you do the math, it means that YouTube’s users have uploaded 850,000 minutes of video and watched 1.9 billion videos per day in the past year. In March, the Google-owned video site announced that its users were uploading more than 24 hours of video per minute. In May, YouTube revealed that it had surpassed 2 billion video views per day.

The company also disclosed that it now has around 15,000 partners creating millions of minutes of content. “We’re privileged to work with the most passionate and talented partners in the world, who produce and upload videos that inspire us, make us laugh and move us — and, most importantly, change the way we look at the world,” Tom Pickett, YouTube’s director of content operations and online creators, said in a blog post.

To celebrate, the video service is giving some of its most successful partners funds to help them create more original content. Five hundred top partners will receive $1,000 credits at B&H Photo in order to help them buy the equipment they need to improve their content’s quality. Some of the selected partners include Mystery Guitar Man, Shay Carl, and one of our favorites, musician Kina Grannis.

The whole point of the program is to bring more premium content to the pages of YouTube. Google is reportedly contemplating an acquisition of Next New Networks and has hired Malik Ducard, formerly a senior VP at Paramount. It’s an orchestrated effort to move away from funny cat videos to high-quality content that can be monetized.

For information on how YouTube can be used in conjunction with other media to promote your business and increase your internet traffic, contact Times Ten Creative, Inc. today.

Wildfire, a startup focused on creating interactive promotions on Facebook and Twitter, has launched Social Media Monitor, a new tool that tracks and compares how brands are performing on Facebook and Twitter.

Wildfire describes Social Media Monitor as “a Compete.com for the social world.” It’s a rather straightforward tool that lets you compare the social performance of different websites, companies or brands on Facebook and Twitter. Say you want to compare Facebook fan growth between Target and Walmart; all you need to do is enter both names into Wildfire and, voila, you are shown a month-by-month comparison of Facebook fan growth. In the case of Target vs. Walmart, Target is the clear winner.

Social Media Monitor is also shareable — any specific analysis or page can be tweeted, “liked,” or shared with friends. You can set up weekly alerts for brands you’re tracking, and add or subtract different brands to your analysis in order to compare their growth against new contenders. Finally, you can embed these graphs onto your website, although they will likely fail to fit your site’s formatting because they have a width of 684px (the maximum for many sites is 640px, the standard for an HD YouTube video).

There are applications like Social Media Monitor on the market today like TwitterCounter, but none that we know of that combine Facebook and Twitter tracking like Wildfire has done. It’s a rather simple tool that provides useful social data at a glance.

For more information about beginning your own social media marketing campaign, contact Times Ten Creative. The team at Times Ten specializes in social media and internet marketing and can develop a strategic plan to suit the needs of your business.

Lipton’s Brisk Tea has rolled out a program with Stickybits that celebrates urban artists with interactive murals.

Four street murals — two in Los Angeles and two in New York — are based on various artists’ interpretations of new 24 oz. Lipton Brisk cans. The effort follows the launch of cans sporting artwork from Tristan Eaton, Sopa and McFaul Studio earlier this year.

In an interactive twist, each mural contains a scannable Stickybits barcode, which, when scanned with the Stickybits app [iTunes link], serves up a time-lapse video of the mural’s creation. After that, users are prompted to scan a Lipton Brisk can to enter to win an Xbox 360.

That’s not the only mobile push for Lipton Brisk right now. The brand also has a program running in Hess convenience stores where consumers can check in to get a special deal and enter to win free gas for a year.

For more information on how to start a creative marketing campaign, contact Times Ten Creative, Inc. with your questions. Times Ten Creative specializes in creative marketing solutions to help build your business and expose your brand.

Google has just soft-launched its latest browser experiment, the Google Body Browser, which is basically Google Earth for the human body.

Think of it as a three-dimensional, multi-layered browser version of those Visible Man/Woman model kits. Or a virtualized version of Slim Goodbody, if you will.

Google showed off the app at the WebGL Camp. WebGL is a cross-platform low-level 3D graphics API that is designed to bring plugin-free 3D to the web. It uses the HTML5 Canvas element and does not require Flash, Java or other graphical plugins to run.

If you visit bodybrowser.googlelabs.com in a supported web browser, you’ll get a three-dimensional layered model of the human anatomy that you can zoom in on, rotate and search.

WebGL support hasn’t hit mainstream browsers, but the beta versions of Google Chrome, Safari and Firefox all support it.

Once you’ve got a compatible browser, visiting the Body Browser home page shows off the human body. You can adjust the various layers of skin, muscles, tissues and the skeletal system.

What’s really cool is that if you type in an organ or bone or ventricle system, you are taken directly to that area in the anatomy, zoomed in. You can turn labels on or off and the app supports multitouch so users of trackpads (Magic or otherwise) or multi-touch mice can zoom in with ease.

This is a pretty cool display of new web technologies. Presumably the use case is for the healthcare industry, but educators and students can benefit from this kind of demonstration too.

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

When you think of online destinations for professional purposes, social networking sites tailored toward business users — like LinkedIn — probably come to mind.

Savvy small business professionals will find, however, that a crop of new startups offer them access to fresh technologies that help with professional networking, research, influence and community building.

While you’ve likely never heard of the startups listed below, each is gaining traction from early adopter audiences and is building consumer-facing products easily applied to common small business tasks. Some, especially Stipple and Marginize, could even help improve traffic to your site and engage visitors longer with more compelling reasons to stay put.

1. Hashable

If you’re looking for a new way to stay networked in today’s digital world, check out Hashable. The private beta startup offers a unique and potentially time-saving approach to professional networking, allowing users to document and track their real-world connections on site, through e-mail or via Twitter () with hashtags.

Say you had a coffee meeting with a new business connection — you could tell Hashable to track the relationship with a simple tweet such as: “#justmet @jbruin and look forward to her response cc @hashable.” The same logic applies for introductions, so if you want to formally introduce people on Twitter, your tweet would read something like: “#intro @friend1 meet @friend2. you guys should connect to discuss biz opps cc @hashable.”

You can use Hashable to document any and all types of real-world exchanges with hashtags such as #meeting, #breakfast, #lunch, #dinner, #drinks, #coffee, #golf, #tennis, #brunch and #thanks.

The startup is currently in invitation-only mode. Should you follow Hashable on Twitter, the team will likely give you immediate access.

2. Stipple

You can use Stipple to add people, place or product tags to the photos you publish on your site. The idea is to give site owners the tools to add relevant and contextual information and ultimately create an interactive layer on top of photos.

Small businesses can install a WordPress () plugin or add a bit of code to their websites to begin tagging photos. Merchants should be especially keen on the tool as it presents a way for them to use their blog to highlight merchandise, stores or employees on photo mouse-over.

At the very least, Stipple offers you a way to engage website visitors and customers with fun and interesting photo information.

3. Qwiki

Qwiki transforms static information from multiple data sources into a cohesive, interactive video narrative. The startup aims to reinvent the way people experience information, and the product makes an excellent alternative online research tool for professionals.

Qwiki is also working on additions for social media users and small businesses. Soon you’ll be able to create your own video Qwikis for two distinct purposes: a personal Qwiki that merges your social media data into an embeddable video profile or a merchant Qwiki that aggregates reviews on your business from third-party sites like Yelp ().

The startup is coming out of private alpha in mid-December. If you’re not a member already, you’ll definitely want to take a look at Qwiki once the startup opens it doors to the public.

4. Storify

New private beta startup Storify allows users to pull together content from Facebook (), Twitter, YouTube (), Flickr () and other social networks to build an interactive story. The idea is to give users the tools to create and curate cohesive narratives from the social web.

For the small business professional, Storify represents a quick and easy way to piece together social content to tell the story of your business or event. For example, Klout, the site that measures Twitter and Facebook user influence, uses Storify to highlight results from Klout’s Twitter contests or recap event happenings in story form.

Storify could also help you enhance your own brand and influencer status. The curation aspect makes it a convenient tool for adding social commentary to important news stories or compiling status updates from fellow professionals in your field.

This is one of those startups with endless applications only limited by your imagination. To request an invite, send an e-mail to info@storify.com.

5. Marginize

Marginize builds tools to let users check in to websites to view existing social content and add comments that can also be shared with social networks. Marginize’s site checkins are very much like the checkin features of location-based mobile applications — users are even awarded badges for their behaviors — but applied to websites instead of venues.

Anyone can download Marginize’s browser extension, login via Facebook, Twitter or Google Buzz () and check in to any website or add social commentary to the mix. The appeal for small business professionals, however, is that the startup offers a publisher tool for website owners to make Marginize features native on their site — the Marginize tab will appear to all users whether they’ve installed the browser plugin or not. Publishers can also incentivize checkins with rewards.

The parallels between location checkins and site checkins are obvious. Marginize, and competitors like Badgeville, could facilitate a new social frontier for small businesses, helping them drive traffic and better engage the users that stop by their sites. Small businesses should certainly explore site checkins — this is a growing trend that’s bound to pick up even more steam in the coming months.

For more information on marketing and advertising techniques for your small business, contact Times Ten Creative, Inc. today. At times ten, we specialize in targeted marketing of your small business directly to those who who need your products or services via internet marketing services such as social media, search engine optimization and search engine marketing.

Visit our website at www.TimesTenCreative.com for more information and a free website evaluation to determine the productivity and efficiency of your website design.

Once upon a time, Twitter (do you remember when it was called twttr?) was just a simple tool that enabled users to say what was on their minds. Now, having experienced tremendous growth over the past couple of years, and being embraced by celebrities, government organizations and PR companies around the world, it’s much more than that, and it’s clearly visible in Twitter’s list of the most powerful tweets of the year.

Among Twitter’s choices, some tweets really made a change, such as Leigh Fazzina’s cry for help after a biking accident, and Ann Curry’s plea for the U.S. Air Force to let Doctors Without Borders planes land in Haiti.

Some were a sign of the times, such as the White House welcoming Russian President Medvedev to Twitter, or Jonathan Schwartz announcing his last day as the CEO of Sun on the microblogging service.

However, we feel that what really showed the power of Twitter weren’t individual tweets, but rather avalanches of messages showing that the public really cares about some topics, like the Haiti earthquake and the Gulf oil spill and — perhaps more importantly — that it has opinions that cannot easily be swayed by PR departments and soothing TV statements.

Check out the full list of the most powerful tweets of 2010

1.  After the massive 7.0 earthquake in Haiti, Doctors Without Borders flew in a team of physicians to assist the wounded, but they were unable to get clearance to land the plane. Reporter Ann Curry used Twitter to convince the U.S. Air Force to allow the flight to land.

The Tweet: Ann Curry - find a way to let Doctors without Borders planes land in Haiti: http://bit.ly/8hYZOK THE most effective at this.

2.  When Russian President joined Twitter, the White House immediately reached out to welcome him to the Twitterverse. Obama’s quote: Red phones no longer required.

The Tweet: The White House - "Welcome to @twitter President Medvedev!" RT @KremlinRussia_E: "Hello everyone! I'm on Twitter, and this is my first tweet."

3.  Twitter to the rescue! When she crashed her bike in a forest with no cell phone reception, a gravely injured triathlete saved her own life when she tweeted out a desperate call for help.

The Tweet: Leigh Fazzina - "I've had a serious injury and NEED Help! Can somone please call Winding Trails in Farmington, CT tell them I'm stuck bike crash in woods."

4.  After the Deepwater Horizon oil platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, causing one of the largest in oil spills in history, it was a parody account, not BP’s official Twitter account, that defined the discussion--spoofing the company’s attempts to improve its public image. “Gulf Oil Spill” was the #1 Trend on Twitter in 2010.

The Tweet: BP Public Relations - "Catastrophe is a strong word, let's all agree to call it a whoopsie daisy."

5.  In a royal first, Clarence House, the Prince of Wales’ private office, created a Twitter account to announce Prince William’s engagement to Kate Middleton. Not how Henry VIII did it.

The Tweet: Clarence House - "tThe Prince of Wales is delighted to announce the engagement of Prince William to Miss Catherine Middleton - www.princeofwales.gov.uk

Almost anything can become powerful with the correct use of social media platforms such a twitter - and that includes exposure for your business. For more information on developing an effective and productive social media marketing campaign, visit Times Ten Creative, Inc. At Times Ten we employ social media experts who can get the attention your business is craving. Click HERE for a free consultation and website evaluation.

Next year, 80% of companies with 100 or more employees are expected to use social-media tools for marketing, up from 73% in 2010 and nearly double the usage rate in 2008, according to eMarketer. Surely that means big budget increases for next year, right? 

In some cases the answer is yes. But for a lot of marketers, the budgeting question is getting harder to answer, not easier. If there's one thing I learned from researching my new report on "Social Media in the Marketing Mix," it's that many marketers have no idea how much they're budgeting on social -- or no good way to tabulate it. Here's why: 

Too many cooks. As marketers continue to ramp up their social-media efforts, they are still using multiple resources, both internal and external, to create Facebook pages, manage Twitter feeds, develop viral videos and, of course, measure the impact. 

Businesses remain torn over whether the best strategy is to manage social media through their corporate communications group, their marketing department, or a separate social-media group. Adding to the complexity: marketers are inundated with pitches from ad agencies, PR agencies and social-media vendors -- all hungry for new projects for 2011. 

Social media is free, right? In some business sectors, the thinking still holds that social media is free, or nearly free. Although earned media -- the value that companies get when their marketing messages spread virally -- is indeed free publicity, there is almost always a cost associated with it, whether it be staffing, creative development or monitoring the results. 

The good news is most marketers say they are increasing social-media spending next year. But the actual dollar amounts are all over the map. 

In a worldwide survey by SEOmoz, a search-marketing company, more than half of the 9,000 respondents said their budget for outsourced social-media marketing was zero. Only 2.9% said they spent more than $5,000 per month. 

On the other end of the spectrum is Altimeter Group, which surveyed 140 social-media strategists at major businesses for a report on the corporate social-media strategist function. One-third of respondents indicated that their company was spending between $100,000 to $500,000 in 2010, and 23% had a budget of $500,000 or more. These companies can be considered among the leading adopters of social media. 

There are few benchmarks. Marketers don't agree on how much of their marketing budgets they should spend on social media. Surveys indicate that marketers spend 4% to 11% of their online marketing budgets on social media. This wide divergence is indicative of the fact that social-media marketing budgets are spread across multiple departments and groups, and that some types of companies and industries are more advanced than others. 

What does this mean? Even if companies find it impossible to set a specific budget for social media, they can still take a holistic approach, incorporating it into their marketing planning from the start. At General Motors, budgets for social media next year will come from the brand marketing groups, according to social media chief Christopher Barger. 

That means GM will do a better job of aligning its social strategy with the rest of its marketing strategy. And by shifting management to the brand groups, it does something more important: it gives social media a place at the adults' dinner table, not the kids' table. 

That, in the end, may be a better strategy. Maybe marketers should worry less about how much they are spending on social media, or whether there should be a separate budget, and more about whether those dollars are working as hard as they can, producing real, quantifiable results.

For more information on Social media and internet marketing or to begin your own campaign, contact the experts at Times Ten Creative, Inc. We specialize in creating the extra web traffic and exposure that you need to remain competitive. For a free website evaluation, visit us HERE today.

While facebook dominates the world of social media its development team has been busy preparing for the release of Titan, a new all-in-one messaging and email service that will provide users with a @facebook.com email address.

Titan is said to be a next-generation messaging platform which combines traditional email with instant messaging and SMS messaging capabilities, yet yahoo mail has been providing those same capabilities for years now.  Titans capabilities as well as its convenience will remain unclear until the service is made public, at which point users themselves will be able to weigh the pros and cons.

Titan has been in the works for over a year now dubbed as “Project Titan”, while just recently facebook made the official announcement that it would be released in the near future, likely only a few months from now.

While some say it could be the death of gmail, others hold steady opinions that switching to Titan will be nothing more than a matter of personal preference. Surely, the benefits to new facebook users may be intruiging, but it’s unlikely that Titan will be so amazing that the majority will drop their current email providers in favor of the new service. While Google retains nearly 2/3 of the market share it’s very unlikely that the release of Titan will pose a threat to the internet giant, however it should raise their awareness. A recent poll indicates that 28% of facebook users said they’d use it, but many are less than optimistic about Titan ushering in a new era of online messaging.

One major concern that has been brought to attention by many experts is the willingness of people to combine all of their information into a single controlled area. We all know of the privacy issues that have been the buzz in recent months surrounding facebook, and allowing even more personal information to rest in the hands of facebook may prove to be an unattractive option for those who are skeptical. Facebook, as large as it is, doesn’t even get close to the amount of revenue brought in by Google or Yahoo, and Titan may be nothing more than a hyped up email service allowing for the presence of more ads to generate larger profits. On the other hand, the popularity of facebook with its 500 million users shouldn’t be underestimated, as the success of Titan will lay in the hands of facebook users more than anything else. For more information on social media and how it can be used to supplement your internet marketing and increase your sales, visit www.timestencreative.com today.