Have you been to Twellow recently? If so, you would have noticed that a new tab has been added under its banner. This new feature is called Suggested Users and was launched last week to help you find people that matter according to your interests, just like TwellowHood helps you find people that matter according to your region.

If you are unsure of what service this is that I am talking about, Twellow is a Twitter user directory that is owned by the iEntry Network, which also owns WebProNews.

The new Suggested Users feature is available to all registered Twellow users, and it also provides results of users that share the same common categories that you have listed in your Twellow Profile. To see a comprehensive list list of all of the available categories, check out Twellow’s “All Categories” Page.

The various qualities and benefits of this new feature have been provided below:

• Displays up to 500 profiles relating to your categories.
• Follow interesting users directly from Twellow.
• Ignore and hide user listings that you do not think are relevant or good matches so that they do not appear in your “suggested” list again.
• Click on a user’s “More Info” link to display the categories that they belong to. The categories that you belong to will be marked with a green star.

This is a great way to find Twitter users that matter to you, just like how our directory helps you find resources for your business.

More on this new feature can be found on Twellow’s Blog and the WebProNews article that previous WebProNews eBusiness Directory editor Chris Crum has published.

To find other great tools and resources for finding people and resources around the net, please feel free to browse our Online Search Tools category:

Happy Searching!

I thought it would be appropriate that since we are now living in an age of social networking, that I would bring our directory’s category of social networks to your attention.

Social networking, along with social media, are becoming such an integral, powerful, and useful tool in the world of online business today. These methods are a great way to interact with customers, along with promoting new products and ideas from your company. Even though sites like Facebook and Twitter dominate the social networking world, there are actually other social networks out there to help boost the visibility of your business online and to keep up with user/customer relations.

With this in mind, the WebProNews eBusiness Directory has comprehensive listings of these user-submitted social networks within our Social Networks category that is located under our Social Media category, which can be found on our directory’s front page.

If you have a social network that you would like to see visible in our social networking listings, please feel free to submit its URL via our quick-and-easy submission form. Inclusion of your social network into our directory is free of charge with thanks to advertising, and once your social networking site has become live in our directory, you will recieve a prompt notification of its location.

Do you have any comments/suggestions/inquries regarding our social networking category or any of our other categories on our quality directory? Please contact me via our contact form and I will gladly take attention to any questions that you may have.

Happy Surfing!

This past week, the WebProNews eBusiness Directory was mentioned in two different newsletters. One of these newsletters was Jayde Listing Notes, a publication that is sent out by iEntry’s well-known B2B search engine Jayde.com, and also Directory Listing Notes, a publication that is sent out to all iEntry directory participants. So, you could say that our directory has had some excellent exposure.

Along with the various submissions that have been submitted lately, I have been noticing a trend of erroneous submissions, so I thought I would share some tips that would better your inclusion in our quality directory.

• Be eBusiness Specific – Try and keep your submissions as close to our directory’s categories as possible. I have been seeing some submissions about jewelry and fashion stores, and unfortunately our directory does not have any related categories specific to that niche and have to reject them. Please submit sites relating to eBusiness content or anything that is talked about on our parent site WebProNews. If your site is eBusiness related, and you do not see a category in our directory that would best fit your website, please feel free to contact me with your business’ category suggestion.
• Your Site is Live – I have been seeing submissions where the website is either under construction or a landing page. With this in mind, I am unable to successfully pinpoint the product and/or company that you want to advertise. This will also be frustrating to people browsing our directory and want to view your company and can find nothing there. This helps keep the WebProNews eBusiness Directory filled with quality site listings.
• No Shortened URLs – There have been several URLs submitted lately that have been shortened with a random URL generator, such as TinyURL.com or Bit.Ly that redirects the person viewing the website to a longer URL. From an SEO standpoint, this will not help the visiblity of your website in search engines and directories because of the hidden and permanent redirect; therefore, I am unable to accept these URLs. These types of URLs also do not look attractive in directory listings because the URL does not fully describe the company or the product advertised.
• Meta Description Tags – A while back, I mentioned the use of meta tags prior to the submission of your site to our directory. This helps me compile the description of your listing to help better describe your site within our directory.

If you have any questions regarding your directory listing, please feel free to contact me via our directory’s contact form, or if you have account on the iEntry Directory Portal Forum, I can be contacted there as well.

Happy Submitting!

This past week, Chris Crum, the previous directory editor of the WebProNews eBusiness Directory, wrote an article on WebProNews on how web-video giant YouTube is moving up to the next level and is offering new tiers to the site dedicated to television shows and movies. This lets competition emerge with the well-known, full-length movie site Hulu.com which has specialized in this area for a long time. You can read the full-length article of this story here.

The reason why I mention this is because I would bring your attention to the WebProNews eBusiness Directory’s Video Sharing Sites subcategory (found here) under the Social Media category. This category is dedicated to listing sites such as YouTube.com and Hulu.com.

If you are the owner of a video-sharing site and would like to have it indexed within our directory listings, please feel free to use our quick-and-easy submission form. All you have to do is to provide the URL of the video-sharing site that you would like listed with us, along with your e-mail address for notification, and your video-sharing site will be be submitted for pending inclusion into our directory listings.

Happy Surfing!

I have been observing that more and more people are submitting their own directories to the
WebProNews eBusiness Directory’s “Web Directories” section under Search > Search Engines. With this in mind, I would like to bring the following site to the attention of the various directory owners out there.

This site is phpLDMe.com — a great blog-based resource that relates to a very common directory software named phpLD (PHP Link Directory). This directory software is what our very own WebProNews Business Directory is based on. It is a great site for:

• Staying current with various PHP Link Directory announcements and updates!
• Viewing great templates for download to give your directory a theme!

If you have a web/niche or bidding directory that you would like to see visible in the WebProNews Business Directory, please feel free to submit your directory for inclusion on our quick-and-easy submission page. All that you have to do is to provide the URL of your directory, your e-mail address, and choose the Web Directories from the category list. Once this has been done, your site will be processed for review to be included in our quality directory.

Happy Surfing!

We’re all aware that the economy at the moment is in ruins, and I would like to take this opportunity to introduce the Financial category to you. This category offers plenty of resources to help you through this economic strain. These resources are organized by their respective categories:

• Accounting Services – Accounting and bookkeeping services to keep your
  finances in order.
• Accounting Software – Browse this selection of resources for software to suit your accounting needs.
• Banks – A listing of banks for both your online and offline banking needs.
• Financial News – News sites and blogs covering trading and the stock market.
• Online Tax Services – Find online software, tools, and services to help you get your taxes filed online.
• Online Trading – Sites such as E*Trade and Schwab.com for online trading and investing.
• Retirement Planning – Find information and tools to help you plan for your retirement.
• Student Financial Aid – Find scholarships and student loan sources to help you further your education.
• Tax Software – Find software applications to aid you in filing your income taxes.

Also, if you have a financial business that can contribute to any of the categories listed above, please feel free to submit your business’ website(s) for free inclusion in our directory. We would be glad to list your financial business for you!

This is yet another way the WebProNews eBusiness Directory can help benefit today’s world!

Have you been to the iEntry Directory Portal Forum lately? Chris Crum (the previous WPN directory editor) mentioned it a while back, but I thought I would bring this great directory discussion site to your attention again.

This forum is a great place for support regarding the WebProNews eBusiness Directory. If you have any questions regarding your site listing, please feel free ask them in our thread dedicated to our quality directory.

There are also other subforum categories dedicated to directory-related topics:

• Popular Directories – Discussion area where users can discuss and ask questions about other directories around the web (e.g. Dmoz, Yahoo, etc.)
• Directory Submitters – Do you have any questions regarding directory submission software or websites? This is a great place to ask to gain knowledge and feedback in relation to these services.
• Directory Software – Wanting to set up a directory of your own and have questions about which software to use? Or having issues installing directory software? This is the place to ask.
• Directory Announcements – Do you have a free-listing directory that you would like to advertise? Feel free to post your directory’s credentials in this subforum.

Also, you are always welcome to stop by and introduce yourself in the Introduction section of the forum.

Happy Submitting!

Chat With Other WebProNews Directory Submitters

Are you into forums? This week, to help get to know you better, and to get acquainted with our directory submitters involved with the WebProNews eBusiness Directory, I have created a thread on the iEntry Directory Portal Forum dedicated solely for this purpose.

The iEntry Directory Portal is a place to get in-the-know about various happenings of the directories within the iEntry network (which includes Directory.WebProNews).

The two questions that I have posted are:

How has the WebProNews eBusiness Directory helped your business’s website(s)?

and

What would you like to see added to the WebProNews eBusiness Directory to help better serve you?

If you have any answers to these questions, please do not hestitate to participate in this thread. I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

The WebProNews eBusiness Directory is currently experiencing some minor technical difficulties at this time (Sunday, January 18th of 2009).

On behalf of iEntry, I would like to apologize for any inconvenience this is causing. Our tech team is working diligently to restore all functions, so please keep trying to utilize our quality directory.

First of all, I hope that all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. iEntry (WebProNews’ publisher) had its Thanksgiving luncheon two days before Thanksgiving Day, so in a way, the iEntry Staff had two Thanksgivings.

There were a lot of websites submitted to our eBusiness Directory during the Thanksgiving break, and I am making it a priority to get all submissions into their respective categories.

With the Christmas season fast approaching, it is the best time to include your business’ website in our directory. Directories are a great way to get your business publicized (along with your Christmas/holiday specials), and you are more than welcome to submit your eBusiness website to our quality, human-edited directory.

Here are a few quick reminders that I would like to share with you prior to your submission:

• Make sure your site is live - There have been a few submissions that I have seen that have not made the cut, because either it is a blank page or the URL does not exist. Chris’ post on ‘Is Your Site Ready for Prime Time?‘ elaborates on this premise in greater detail.
• Meta tags - Please make sure that you have meta tags (including description and/or keywords) within the HTML code of your site. If you do not have access to the code of your business’ website, you may want to ask your website administrator if this can be added if not present.
• Choose your category/subcategory carefully - On the directory’s submit page, please be sure to select the best, narrowed-down category or subcategory that fits your business’ website content. This will help me to promptly place your website in the right area on our directory. If you do not see a category that best fits or describes your business, please contact me, and I will recommend a well-suited category for your website.

Happy Submitting!