The Google+ visits jumped up to almost 15 million in U.S. visits in the week ended September 24, compared to 1.1 million the previous week, according to the report. Before last week, the service was in a test phase, and users were invited to join the platform.

Google is known for being the world’s biggest Internet-search company and is attempting to gain more dominance over social media users. Google+ also added new features to the social networking platform when it opened its service to the general public last week. Such new features were adding new search capabilities and making it easier to locate family and friends posts.

The new changes increased the number of Google+ features to 100. Some folks are speculating that Google is trying to provide good reasons to leave Facebook, which currently has more than 750 million members. I don’t know if Google+ will pull Facebook users over to their turf or not. But, it’s good to see the competition.

Google rose $6.38, or 1.2 percent, to $531.89 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading on Monday; however, the overall shares of the company have declined 10 percent this year. I wonder if Google’s stock prices will continue to rise and recover lost value.

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Check them out!

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Check it out! While it is still FREE.

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I previously wrote about unwritten rules for social media. Today, I want to write about the unwritten rules for being heard on social media. There are a lot of voices online. Don’t complain about the noise, design your strategy to amplify your signal in the face of this noise. Here are seven more to consider rules to consider when it comes to being heard:

1. You have to pay the price to win the prize

This golden rule of life applies well to social media, but it’s easy to forget when you are busy engaging in it. There is a temptation to take shortcuts, to find tips and tricks to get ahead fast. The promise seems to be a broad reach for seemingly no cost.

When you see someone on a social media site who made it instantly, pause for a minute and think if they really made it instantly or did they pay a big price way before they even entered the social media game. It’s easy to think if they can do it, you can do it too. The wisdom lies in changing that statement to: If they can do it by paying that price, you can do it by paying a price too.

2. You can copy the tactics but you can’t copy the foundation

Social media is mostly about amplification. While social media welcomes everyone with open arms, people with stronger foundations and meaningful accomplishments have a hugely unfair advantage.

Why? Because while everyone can talk freely, not everyone is worth listening to. We all know that people have a limited bandwidth to listen to conversations and they will gravitate towards listening to people with meaningful accomplishments (and stronger foundations.) From the outside, it would seem like all you have to do is to copy everything that someone successful on social media is employing and you really can do that.

Unfortunately, you can’t replicate the accomplishments or the foundation that other person has built for himself or herself. The key is in distinguishing yourself by making meaningful contributions and amplifying them.

3. Social media is not egalitarian

There are some exclusive clubs where they have a big barrier to entry but once you are in they are completely egalitarian. Social media is different. Anybody can setup a Facebook fan page for free and millions have created them already—77 percent of those pages have less than 1,000 fans. Ninety-nine percent of them have less than 10,000 fans. You can neither ask for equality nor for entitlement in social media. Everything needs to be earned. (Please read: What can you do when you don’t belong to a club?)

4. Not all buzz is created equal

There is one school of thought that says any kind of PR is good PR. People try odd things on social media based on that belief. Think about it:

• Being funny is not the same as being witty
• Criticizing is not the same as creating
• Confrontation is not the same as engaging in a healthy debate
• Pontification is not the same as enrichment

In any of the above cases, there is a possibility of creating buzz. But all that buzz is not created same. There is good buzz and there is bad buzz. The Internet has infinite memory and it rarely forgets. Bad buzz comes back and haunts you again and again as you are only one search query away from being exposed. (Please read: Are you creating the right kind of buzz?)

5. Being of use to someone trumps trying to use someone

If you have been on social media and have built a reasonable influence, you would have faced this situation—someone reaches out to you on a social network and almost instantly makes a request that is meaningful to him or her but almost meaningless to you. Decline the request and they disappear completely—mostly because they get busy trying to find someone else that they can use.

Think about it—nobody likes to be used. You don’t like to be used, I don’t like to be used. The ease of access because of social media might get some people carried away. But, in the long run, trying to use will never work. The alternate option is the directly opposite one—to be someone who is useful and allow the power of reciprocation to produce the results.

6. Actions matter and intentions matter more

For anything to happen on social media (and in many parts of life) you need to take action. No brownie points for just thinking about something—actions are what get rewarded. That is in no way bringing down the value of how you think about the actions you are taking—in other words, the intentions behind those actions matter a lot.

Why? Because however crafty your actions are, the intentions behind them will get revealed sooner than later. If they are not honorable, you are slowly alienated, moved to end of the inner circle and finally kicked out of the playing field. Just because one can engage in social media from behind a keyboard, nobody is genius enough to hide their true intentions for engaging with social media over a long period of time.

7. The larger the noise, the stronger the signal

The noise level on social media is high. The reasons for that include low barrier to entry, mindset that activity is productivity, the need to engage even if it means sharing mediocre content, etc. This seems like bad news but it’s really good news. For the consumers, there are filtering tools to reduce the noise levels and get the signals. As a producer, you immediately get an unfair advantage if you are sending the signals. The larger the noise, the stronger your signals.

Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. He also creates and sells limited-edition prints at Sparktastic. You can follow him on Twitter at @rajsetty.

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1. You can double-click a word to highlight it in any document, e-mail or Web page.

2. You can enlarge the text on any Web page. In Windows, press Ctrl and the plus or minus keys (for bigger or smaller fonts); on the Mac, it’s the Command key and plus or minus.

3. You can also enlarge the entire Web page or document by pressing the Control key as you turn the wheel on top of your mouse. On the Mac, this enlarges the entire screen image.

4.  On most cellphones, press the Send key to open up a list of recent calls. Instead of manually dialing, you can return a call by highlighting one of these calls and pressing Send again.

5.  You can tap the Space bar to scroll down on a Web page one screenful. Add the Shift key to scroll back up.

6.  When you’re filling in the boxes on a Web page (like City, State, Zip), you can press the Tab key to jump from box to box, rather than clicking. Add the Shift key to jump through the boxes backwards.

7.  You can adjust the size and position of any window on your computer. Drag the top strip to move it; drag the lower- right corner (Mac) or any edge (Windows) to resize it.

8.  You can use Google to do math for you. Just type the equation, like 23*7+15/3=, and hit Enter.

9.  You can open the Start menu by tapping the key with the Windows logo on it.

10. You can switch from one open program to the next by pressing Alt+Tab (Windows) or Command-Tab (Mac).

Hope this helps!

Marketing 101 Tips

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Virginia De Leon, correspondent for The Spokesman-Review

Sexting. Cyberbullying. Predators lurking on MySpace. The threats are scary enough to make a parent want to block text messaging on cell phones or even unplug the computer.

But instead of being suspicious of technology or banning it from the home altogether, members of Wired Moms want to harness its innovations and influence in order to better connect with their children.

Technology can help you become a better parent, says Mary Heston, a North Idaho mother of four and the national director of Wired Moms.

“It’s part of our children’s lives, so the more comfortable parents are with using technology, the better it is for the family,” she says.

“We don’t want moms to cut their kids off from technology but to participate together.”

Wired Moms was launched this year as an outgrowth of WiredSafety.org, a nonprofit that focuses on educating people of all ages about safe and responsible Internet use.

Both groups were established by Parry Aftab, a New York mother of two and an attorney whose expertise includes security, privacy and cyberspace issues.

While WiredSafety.org and Aftab’s other Web site, WiredKids.com, are directed at young people, educators, law enforcement and others, Wired Moms is a site created specifically for parents – both the tech-savvy and those who have little experience with the Internet and want to learn more.

“We are dedicated to helping families connect with each other through technology and to empowering other moms to parent through technology,” according to the Wired Moms Web site.

Since Wired Moms was created in March, the group has united mothers across the country, says Heston. About 6,000 moms have been participating via Facebook and the Web site, she says, and about 20,000 people follow the group through Twitter.

On Nov. 6, the first Wired Moms Summit is scheduled on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Wash. Space is limited at the free all-day event, but those who can’t make it to the Seattle area can participate via Tweeter and by watching the webcast.

Heston, who lives in Kellogg, became involved with Internet issues about 15 years ago. She was a stay-at-home mom who was busy with her household and children, but wanted to keep in touch with other mothers in the same boat. They ended up starting an online book club.

One of the books they read was Aftab’s “A Parents’ Guide to the Internet and How to Protect Your Children in Cyberspace,” which was first published in 1998.

Since she was active online and her children were showing an interest in the Internet and technology, Heston decided to contact the author, who was one of the first attorneys to explore issues involving cyberlaw and safety.

Their online conversations led them to work together on some projects. Since Aftab’s focus was on training children about responsible Internet use, she asked Heston to lead the efforts to help mothers.

In a 2007 survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Media and Health Project, nearly three out of four parents said they knew “a lot” about what their kids were doing online.

More than 80 percent said they review their children’s profiles on social networking sites; 87 percent check their kids’ Instant Messaging “buddy lists”; and 76 percent look to see what Web sites their children have visited.

But not all parents are tech-savvy, experts point out. Nor do they have a realistic view of what their kids are doing online.

Common Sense Media – a watchdog group that examines children’s media exposure – conducted an online survey this year and found that there is a disconnect between kids’ online activity and their parents’ perceptions.

For instance, while 22 percent of teens check social network sites more than 10 times a day, only 4 percent of their moms and dads believe their children do so.

Most of the moms that Heston has talked to – whether they work at home or go to an office – are usually exhausted by the end of the day and don’t have the time or energy to monitor their children’s Internet use.

“They say, ‘I trust my kid, he’s a good kid,’ but good kids can still get in trouble,” Heston says. “We need to stay up-to-date and help provide that kind of guidance.”

Heston, whose children are 11, 13 18 and 20, first became concerned about Internet safety when she realized that although her kids could be safe inside the house, they still have the ability to connect with strangers outside.

When her oldest was in his early teens and started distinguishing between his friends online and “IRL – In Real Life,” Heston knew she had to learn more about the technology – not just to stay in touch with her children, but to also be aware of the potential hazards of the Internet.

To help her kids stay safe online, Heston put the computer in a central room where she and her husband could always monitor what they were doing.

They had restricted hours and Heston checked out the sites they visited. She also provided them copies of Aftab’s book as a resource.

“You have to talk to kids about the Internet,” she says. “They go to friends’ homes and they may or may not have the same rules about using the computer. So we set up guidelines.”

One piece of advice that Aftab offers to children on WiredSafety.org is “to stop, block and tell” whenever they come across inappropriate content on the Internet. They kids are instructed to stop, block the site and then tell a parent.

On the Wired Moms Web site, Heston blogs about all sorts of topics involving technology, from social networking sites and “friending” your children on Facebook to privacy issues and possible radiation exposure from cell phones.

She’s a big fan of technology, she says – not just because the gadgets and innovations are fun, but because they also help bring her family closer.

For instance, Heston has always played video games together with her children. The activity gives her kids the opportunity to open up, talk about their day and share what’s on their minds.

Lately, she and her kids have participated in a three-minute challenge available on a Web site called GetGameSmart.com. The quiz is a way for parents to learn about their child’s interest in video games through a series of questions that kids and adults ask each other.

The questions include: What’s your kid’s favorite video game? Why does he/she like it? What’s the plot/theme? How do you win?

“We’re better off when we understand the technology,” Heston says. “There’s a lot of exciting things that are very positive. Wired Moms is a way for us to talk about what’s age-appropriate. …

“Even though we’re dealing with a new technology, we can still help our kids make grown-up, mature decisions.”

Despite all the high-tech gadgets and tools out there – from IPhones and the Internet to Xbox, Wii and Nintendo DS – Heston says her children don’t actually spend that much time in front of a screen or texting on their phones.

“With school starting, they have homework and chores to do,” she says. “My kids like to read. … You have to have balance.”

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