Paid Search Accountability
Posted by chris on September 29, 2006 at 12:03 PM
Let me ask you this: would you pay your telephone bill if at the end of the month the bill just contained a total number of calls along with the amount due?
I didn't think so!
You would want to be able to verify that the bill consisted of calls you made at the times you made them to the number you called.
So why can't the paid engines do the same? They are charging based on clicks but don't want to divulge the IP address, user-agent, and time that clicked on a given ad. Having this information would allow the bill to be reconciled with the server logs.
What gives? Why aren't we given this information? Privacy claims?
What privacy would that be? We already have this info in our logs.
I can't think of any good reason for not sharing this information. Oh wait, that's right it would hold the paid engines a little more accountable!
Blizzard Warning!
Posted by vern on September 28, 2006 at 04:59 PM
With winter fast approaching and hockey season underway I've been waxing nostalgic for the backyard ice rink my brothers and I constructed every winter.
Mind you, this was no ordinary backyard rink. Where I grew up, in the Keewenaw Peninsula of Michigan, a total snowfall for a single winter could top 400".
Just clearing the snow off the ice was a full time job. But our efforts didn't end there. We erected light poles, built our own nets from 2x4's and chicken wire and remodeled an out-of-commission outhouse for a penalty box. We added side and end boards (just to reduce the number of lost pucks in the 5' deep drifts) and maintained an ice path from our back door to the rink for easy access.
This was our winter version of the sandlot baseball fields our urban counterparts labored over on the spring.
In addition to growing up as a hockey player, I also took advantage of all that snow and a six month season to become a pretty darn good snowboarder.
Well, a funny thing happened to me while doing keyword research on power generation for a client of ours.
I was searching on the keyword phrase "snowmaking compressors" expecting to see listings for huge industrial strength power generation systems. Yes, those listings were on the SERP, but in the paid listings was an ad for something called the Backyard Blizzard.
I couldn't resist clicking on the ad and what I found warmed my heart. Here was the 21st century winter version of the "sandlot" for all those 8 year old snowboarders aspiring to be an X-Games champion someday.
With an ordinary garden hose and home power supply, the Backyard Blizzard can transform your backyard into a snowboard paradise. It's one of those inventions that's been right in front of our noses - a power washer with a nozzle to create a mist fine enough to make man-made snow. Pure genius!
Just imagine - a snowboard terrain garden in every backyard and how that would make the Olympic snowboarding gold medal a lock for the USA for generations to come. Now we may have to sacrifice a peaceful night's sleep while all those backyard snowguns whine away. Not to mention the precipitous drop in water pressure.
But all that's a small price to pay to get our kids off the couch and doing rail rides off the swing set and tail grabs off the lip of the swimming pool in January. Gnarly!
Go Google, Go Google, It’s Your Birthday, You’re a Rockstar!
Posted by on September 27, 2006 at 03:54 PM
Today, Google turns eight. I’m sure that the folks in Mountain View are (as I type) gathered around a cake frosted in bold, primary colored icing and waiting patiently to blow out the candles.
Now there’s debate over which day exactly should serve as Google’s birthday. For a number of years the occasion was celebrated on the 7th of September. According to Google, "Google opened its doors in September 1998. The exact date when we celebrate our birthday has moved around over the years, depending on when people feel like having cake".
Those zany Googlers!
In all seriousness, the company’s history is a great story of entrepreneurial might. And let’s face it, where would we be today without Google?
There’s no discounting the amazing success or the global impact of this company of meager beginnings in a garage in Menlo Park, California.
My colleagues and I use Google every day, and are intimately familiar with the parts of this mighty company that, well, might fall a little shy of their own "do no evil" mantra. But I try to remind myself that I am far from a typical searcher using Google to get NASCAR stats and directions to Wal-Mart. By and large Google does a great job at what it does. Period.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, everybody deserves a toast on their birthday, so let’s all raise a glass to Google.
Tags
google birthday
Blogging - It's All About You
Posted by anne on September 26, 2006 at 01:38 PM
About ten years ago, a new way of communication emerged that allowed individuals to send messages to one another instantaneously, and if you had any regrets, you could recall that same message successfully without any apology necessary.
What emerged from e-mail were some guidelines regarding its usage and its content; employees who normally exchanged kind phone conversations were found sending scathing responses to fellow coworkers as a result of capitalized red fonts!
While e-mail proved to be a useful business communication tool, the temperament of an employee misinterpreting a sent message was more common than most would imagine. For example, capitalization meant "screaming" where the color red meant "immediacy or anger".
So let’s fast forward a few years; a new form of communication emerges known as blogging. Most blogs are personal in nature and designed to promote communication and interaction, they are fresh and fast, and normally written in a casual lighthearted tone that promotes smooth conversation.
The fact that the writer has a point of view and the information is much more fun and useful than the traditional corporate website is certainly inviting. The voice of blogs tends to be more human in nature, not a marketing speaker’s voice. The composer has a point of view and the information is much more informative and intriguing, absent from industry jargon and easily understood by the most common reader.
Sound pretty safe so far? Think again. Blogging has the potential to hurt fellow coworkers. Numerous cases have started appearing in the news in which bloggers find themselves answering to others for blog posts written on their own time; to be specific, those posts are about their jobs, company and/or coworkers.
If you’re sailing along the editorial mindset and decide to post your latest opinions on how you REALLY feel about your company and/or boss, keep in mind that your blog may reach the individual cited in your blog whether it be your cubicle mate or supervisor/boss. And in the morning, be ready to defend your position or suffer the consequences. Think about it, did you really want your fellow coworker to know that you think he has the brain of a six-year old orangutan.
Something that most people do not know about blogging is that it can also prevent someone from being hired. A job candidate’s blog is easily accessible and readable via any computer with a connection. A blog may appear as a harmless outlet but its content is widely available to those who choose to search, so make sure it is an accurate reflection of you.
Personally, writing a blog once a month ignites a splash of anticipation in me because it allows me an opportunity to share a topic or exchange views with another in a more whimsical sense.
The best way to learn about blogging is to seek out and read blogs that peak your interests. Start with the search engines, read the posts, follow the links and comment on what you see. It’s a great avenue to share your knowledge, get noticed by your peers and increase your own knowledge.
There is one key element to remember though, your blog reflects you and its information is not delivered to only a selected user group; it is disseminated world wide. Readers instantly learn about the blogger and about the people who post comments on his or her blog. Blogging can be purposeful and useful but a few poor sports could ruin the quality of the virtual conversation.
The number of blogs is growing by leaps and bounds. In September 2004, 4 million blogs were on the Internet; a year later, that number jumped to 17 million, according to Technorati, a search engine for blogs. Eight percent of internet users, or about 12 million American adults, keep a blog. 39 percent of internet users, or about 57 million American adults, read blogs – a significant increase since the fall of 2005.
Hopefully, I’ve peaked your interest. So don’t wait, find your favorite subject and blog aboard. But don't be surprised if you're not alone.
The Blog, the Critic & the Company
Posted by on September 25, 2006 at 01:36 PM
I'm the working mother of a three-year-old intellectual. Recently, the three-year-old and I found ourselves at a dinner party, out-classed and under-read.
The room included a humorist, a political cartoonist, a marketing maven and a gentleman farmer slash film producer. During the evening of references that went over my head, someone mentioned The New Republic, citing it as an adjective of a personality.
The following morning, while trying to keep up with the poignant part of my world, the NYTimes Technology section offered David Carr's insight into the current travails of The New Republic and its recent blog scandal. (Scandal? The guy invented a sock puppet to be his editorial "puppet" and plead on his behalf. If you want to belong to a real scandal, apparently you need to get a seat on HP's board.)
Aside from the uncommon synchronicity of dinner party references colliding with the next day’s reading, I'm struck by the idea that today's blogger would need a sock puppet to come to his own defense.
Yes, in our tech-driven world, acerbic remarks have bullet-train speed. And if one's delicate ego needs to, one can invent a sock puppet to fire back with equal toxicity while pretending to have third-party support.
But doesn't that defeat the purpose? Can't the puppet's comments be part of the jousting, attributed to the original blogger? Isn't that what popular, successful print columnists did weekly, for decades? And what about Op-ed pages? I believe that only the timing has changed: internet versus telephone wire versus snail mail.
Isn't the purpose of the editorial blog to generate conversation from opposing points of view? Shock-jocks, Rush Limbaugh and, if I'm to believe my dinner party experts, The New Republic dating back to 1914, have relied on controversy and the battle of wits to attract onlookers. BtoB Magazine recently pulled out the Dell case study, where Dell's attentive, overt and obvious responses in blogs helped it win over skeptics.
The point is to have conversations - to inspire them. Don't be afraid of controversy, be afraid of silence. You can't learn anything from silence. But you can learn a lot by listening to intelligent dinner conversation.
Tags
blog scandal
editorial blog
From Soapbox to Zune, Creativity is Overrated
Posted by dave on September 22, 2006 at 04:35 PM
The advances that technology has made in just the last few years are astonishing. From receiving a personalized monthly diagnostic e-mail from your car, to reading about a military coup as it is occurring, there seems to be almost no limits to where creativity and technology can take us.
Unfortunately, instead of taking this "The Sky's the Limit" approach to technology, many companies are deciding to go the way of the Lemming.
The perfect example of this "follow the success" mentality is Microsoft. If we look at what Microsoft has been working on, we find the Zune, an iPod rip-off, Soapbox, a spiffed up version of YouTube, and their newest venture to bring Microsoft Works online, a blatant attempt to compete with Google Spreadsheets and Writely.
Although this wait and react approach to marketing and product development will undoubtedly result in profits for Microsoft, the end result is a market diluted with a handful of similar products with few or no discernable differences or added benefits to users.
So, let's all forget about creativity and just see how many versions of the same product we can produce.
On a side note, I will be reprinting this article again next month, but this time I will make the text blue.
Do Personalized Search Engines Limit the Web Experience?
Posted by chip on September 21, 2006 at 01:59 PM
Lately there has been a lot of hype around the personalized search experience. In a world where we want everything from our cars to our martinis custom tailored to our personal preferences, is customizing the search engine taking things just a little too far?
After all, isn't the whole purpose of a search engine to help us find stuff? If we limit a search engine's results, aren't we really limiting our web experience and potentially blocking ourselves off from a world of valuable resources?
Nevertheless, several companies are making moves to incorporate our tendency to prefer things that are custom tailored to our liking into the search engine market.
A few of the front runners include PSS!, Eurekster's Swicki and Rollyo.
PSS! or Personal Search Syndication is currently a free service that allows you to create and customize personalized search engines that are tailored to a specific subject matter. Basically, once you setup an engine for your topic of interest, you create your own database of documents pertaining to this interest. From there, you and others who may share an interest in this topic, can search for information among the documents you have pre-selected, up to 1,000 total documents maximum.
Swiki takes this concept a little further by incorporating the community aspect of the Wiki. You still create a custom search engine around a particular topic of interest, but from there your entire community gets involved in controlling the results and creating a "cloud" of wisdom and popular search queries around that topic. The level of community involvement, as with all wikis is determined by the creator and the amount of control they are willing to grant others, and truly holds the key to the strength of Swiki results.
Rollyo, another free service, is slightly different in that it allows you to create a "search roll" which consists of up to 25 different sites that you pre select as being especially relevant or authoritative on a particular topic. Fed by Yahoo! search results, your search queries are then limited to the sites you have previously established (there is an option that will allow Rollyo to go beyond your list of sites if you opt for this) bringing you the most relevant sponsored, news and general web results. The flexibility of Rollyo is that once you have created a custom search roll, you can then share it with others by incorporating it into your site or blog.
Don't get me wrong, I can see the benefit of all of these services. And I wouldn't have included them in this blog post if I didn't; they deserve some credit for what they are doing. But if there is one thing I can always count on, it is that my nature will force me to ask what lurks beneath the surface.
When it comes to personalized search engines, I have to ask myself a few questions right away.
- Do they limit our web experience by regurgitating the old standby sources that we have a natural tendency to go to first anyways?
- Do they keep us from broadening our horizons by limiting the likelihood that we will explore the world of resources we are not already familiar with?
- Does interest in personalized search services and their current success somehow speak to the perception of traditional search engine's relevancy?
These are all questions that I have not fully explored for myself yet.
What are your thoughts?
Tags
personalized search
customized search engine
Website Usability - You Can't Get There From Here
Posted by on September 20, 2006 at 02:58 PM
As a member of the Search Marketing team at Oneupweb, one topic that often comes up is website usability and its effect on positive return on investment.
Usability can encompass many different facets. How easy is it to navigate through the website? Are search engine crawlers able to successfully find and index site pages? What paths do you want customers to take through the site? How up-to-date is content?
Some of these questions seem very obvious, but it is amazing how many sites miss out on conversions because they lack a few things that could make them so much more competitive.
I have visited sites that were so out-dated that "What's Hot" happened over a year ago or the homepage is still advertising a sale that ended last month. If I am supposed to fill out a form to get more information or request a catalog, how do I know if they plan to check their e-mail anytime soon? Chances are I will move on to a competitor who appears to be more on top of their game. If you are interested in repeat customers, eliminate the "dusty content" and keep it up-to-date.
Let's say I click on a site with good positioning and fresh content. I start to fill out a request for more information and one form leads to another and then a request for credit card information, even though I'm not buying anything yet. Sorry, I'm out of there. It's unfortunate, but many websites make it way too much work for the customer. Consumers can only be pushed so far before they look elsewhere. Pushy sales people are harder to get rid of in person. On the web it's simple. Click. They're gone.
I've visited sites where, if you take a wrong turn, there is no way to get back home, save the back arrow. Even having to scroll down to the very bottom of the page to find a homepage link makes it more difficult for the user.
Shopping carts can also pose usability concerns. Avoid making the check-out process too complex or time consuming. Keep the cart simple and secure. Much that needs to be done is common sense. It may be a stretch, but imagine that you are a first time visitor. How do things look to you now?
In addition to being user friendly to customers, a website also needs to be friendly to search engine web crawlers. Is your content actual text or is it part of an image? Can a web crawler easily access every site page regardless of the landing page?
You can't get there from here you say? Check things over. Keep the site up-to-date and easy to use. Work with your web designer and SEO company. Evaluate and test your conversion process frequently. When your customers can get there from here, they will come back again and again.
Tags
website usability
user friendly website
MySpace Rolls Out the Black Carpet for Borat
Posted by Christopher on September 19, 2006 at 12:16 PM
I have to admit this first thing: I'm a geek, and I'm completely unashamed. Were there a geek army, I'd enlist.
I've taken my nauseating high school angst and every beating-induced neurosis and turned it all into a shimmering pride. Even geeks think I'm a geek.
This is why I celebrate every geek victory as if it were my own. And Fox Interactive Media's premiering Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan on MySpace is a geek victory, my friends.
The only way you can figure out where to see the film, and when, is through your computer. You have to be a Black Carpet friend. Ha ha. Geeks win.
Why does this affect me so? Why am I celebrating this event?
Number one: Sasha Baron Cohen is freaking hilarious, and I'd bet my entire collection of European techno CDs that he is, or was, a geek. I don't know his personal history, but you don't go through school anywhere with a name like "Sasha" and not get the crap kicked out of you.
Number two: IMHO, his comedy is the product of geek rage. Anybody who can create and live through situations that are almost too humiliating to watch from the safety of my own sofa has, first, been humiliated and, second, enjoys visiting humiliation upon others while further humiliating himself. That's geek rage, right there.
Buy why am I celebrating this as a geek victory? Who's the bully?
OK, I don't know about you, but when I think of Hollywood I instantly get a bad, brown-Necco-wafer taste in my mouth.
I picture people endlessly greenlighting sequels to movies that were too bad to exist in the first place; I picture stars pampered and catered to in ways you and I can only imagine, demanding salaries twice the size of most third-world countries' GNPs and phoning in performances; I picture the incessant strip-mining of my childhood (poor, poor Fat Albert); I picture the Mr. Show skit (oh, Mr. Show, I miss you so much!) in which a group of Hollywood executives sue the American public for not seeing "Coupon: The Movie" and win ("we'll sue their pants off, and then we'll sell them pants!"). I see, with a few shining exceptions, bullies sublimating geeks.
MySpace's Black Carpet is, in my mind, a way to subvert the Hollywood bully paradigm. Connecting, through MySpace, with a bunch of other geeks, and giving them the gift of seeing the film before it hits the theaters to compete with whatever J to tha Lo is in (is she even in stuff anymore?) is a nod to the networked proletariat. It's an Internet marketing coup. And it makes perfect sense.
It's a revolution. Join the geek army!
Tags
myspace black carpet
borat
Help Google Help You with Image Labeler
Posted by drew on September 18, 2006 at 10:49 AM
"Google Image Labeler is a fun way to help us organize all the images on the Web!"
Simply. Google Image Labeler is a new game that Google has launched. You enter into competition with possibly millions of other people who have nothing better to do with their time than help Google do its own work by labeling images from its database.
It's like back in high school when that popular kid came up to you asking for help, and you decide to take time out of your own busy schedule to do so. Sure, it's a nice thing to do but this is a business, not some kid who might fail Algebra II if you don't explain a few concepts.
For those unfamiliar with the Google Image Labeler interface, you are matched up with a partner and shown the same image. You then begin typing in descriptive terms for the image in hope that they match your partner's terms, which are not visible to you. Once a term is matched, you are given 100 points and you move on to the next image. You have 90 seconds to complete as many images as possible. Passing an image is also allowed if your partner agrees to it.
I've played the game a few times and it is fun. It's especially nice when you and a partner can match up pretty well, which isn't often it seems. Other times, it's hard to understand why someone wouldn't describe it the way you are.
"Well, of course that is a tree. What else is it? Nature? Future paper products?"
Sadly, the majority of words I was matching with people were simple, one-word describers. I can't imagine this being very good for an image description database. By using short words, people are able to move through more images and rack up a higher score. Has competition taken over the learning and helpful aspect? Don't people care whether they're labeling the images correctly or if they're learning anything about the person they're matching with? Just get the score up and thump your chest, please.
Thankfully, Google has a refining process for all of these simple descriptions. Google has designated "off-limits" terms that cannot be used by the current participants. These terms were already matched by a pair of labelers for that same image. By reusing images with these rules, Google forces users to become more descriptive if the first matched label was a simple one word term.
With the Image Labeler, it seems that Google has covered most of the loop holes, as usual. We'll just have to get in there and have our fun to see if it will really be successful in the end.
Microformats - What are They?
Posted by on September 15, 2006 at 01:03 PM
A few weeks ago, I got an email from a friend who is developing a super-top-secret-something (even I don't know what it is). He informed me that as an SEO, I would be interested to know that they were going to incorporate microformats into all of their coding.
Huh? I admit it - I wasn't even exactly sure what microformats were, so I set out to do some research.
Rather than giving you some vague statement like "a microformat is a new way of organizing information on the web" (double huh), here's an example: the Nofollow attribute:
rel="nofollow"
Insert this attribute into a link reference:
<a href="http://www.outsidepage.com" rel="nofollow">
and then Google will know not to assign any value to it. This protects webmasters from having outbound links dilute their Google page rank.
So, a microformat is a snippet (or snippets, plural) of code that can be embedded into existing HTML to provide additional information to visiting spiders. Yeah, they're like little... microformats!
There are a myriad of other microformats currently in use, such as rel-tag for tagging keywords and content (currently used by Technorati, among others) and the hCard microformat for outlining contact information. Some other amusing stats for you: Steve Martin and Brown University are among the many adopters of the hCard microformat- and Yahoo! local is also one of the first search engines to support hCard.
Recent articles have noted that microformats have had a faster adoption than other web technologies like RSS. And Jeremy Zawodny recently wrote in his blog, "Microformats are slowly but surely going to create a whole new web of data, ripe for mining, indexing, and exploring."
When talking about microformats in a recent meeting, comments from fellow SEOs ranged from "Interesting" to "How can we get people to STOP using microformats?" to "Ripe for mining? You mean ripe for SPAM!".
But seriously - as an SEO, I love the concept of setting standards for making information universally accessible via the web. I must sound like a broken record to many of my clients, advising them over and over to take their text out of images, to take their navigation out of JavaScript. Microformats are a simple way to say to web crawlers, "Hey look at me, the information you want is right here!".
However, some will argue that it's one thing to make information easy to spider and index - and another thing to make it perhaps *too* open to dissemination through the web (such as with the hReview tag), leading to duplicate content issues and other site-scraping nightmares. And I'm sure some devious minds will also see possibilities for abuse and spam.
Well folks, it's still early in the game, so we'll just have to see how it all plays out.
Tags
microformats
Wedding Advice: A Tribute to Forums
Posted by steve on September 14, 2006 at 04:02 PM
This is my final post as a bachelor. Next Saturday, I'm tying the knot, as they say. The knot that has been slowly forming over the past 10 months, since the day I proposed. I've been given a lot of advice along the way, and if I followed some of it, you wouldn't be reading this today. The majority has been helpful, though, and much of it has had to do with the easiest and most efficient way to bring everything together for the big day. Who knew there was so much that went into a wedding?
Everybody but me, apparently.
I utilized those around me for advice on several occasions, but I also made use of, what else, the Internet. That's why I want to dedicate this post to not only my family, friends and colleagues who helped out, but also to the many volunteers out there who gave up time to donate some of their knowledge and experience to the World Wide Web.
While there are certainly drawbacks to the Social Web and its vast array of dubious content, these are the types of situations when it proves most useful. When you don't necessarily need facts, but a range of ideas and opinions from a variety of individuals. Where would I be right now without open forums? Probably on my way toward giving my groomsmen a block of cheese instead of a customary engraved gift.
So thanks to everyone out there who has made these past few months a little less stressful, and please, keep on contributing your thoughts and ideas for others to enjoy and take advantage of. Speaking of thoughts and ideas, the wedding is still a week away, so if you have any that you would like to share, please feel free, but hurry!
NFC North Website Showdown - Site Searching Google
Posted by duncan on September 13, 2006 at 11:37 AM
In my tenure at Oneupweb I have talked to nearly 3,000 different companies about their natural/organic search engine marketing situation. Some of the conversations bloomed and turned into multi year business engagements. Other conversations were a mere 5 minutes of hellos and thank yous. The latter group and I quickly established that we weren't a good fit at the time.
In any case, during these thousands of calls I tried to assess what the company actually knew about search marketing and their current standings in the search engines. I have discovered that few of the folks that reach out to us know more than whether or not they show up for their top keyword. It is very rare for them to even know how many pages of their site are indexed by each major search engine.
Today I want to share a very simple technique that can empower anyone concerned with their site's status in the natural search results. It's often referred to as a site search. At Google, type and search the following:
site:mydomain.com
(Substitute mydomain with your own site's name)
The results that appear are Google's knowledge of your website. Does Google say you have 9,000 pages? How about 10 pages? Maybe one or none? This is it folks. These pages are the sum total of your hope at ranking well in Google.
Let us take a look at an example: DetroitLions.com.
At Google we type: site:detroitlions.com (Note that there is no space between the word site, the colon, and the domain name. If you ad spaces you will not get the right results).
At the time of this posting, Google tells us that it has 9,960 pages indexed for the Lion's official site. Only the Lion's webmaster knows if the site is really this size. Perhaps it is much larger but Google can't spider the whole thing because of technical road blocks. Perhaps it is right on with regard to size, but is the site similar in size to its competition? Hey, wait, you can do the same search at Google and learn about the size of your competitor's site? Yes. Yes, you can. Now you are getting the picture.
Google can tell you what it knows about your site and what it knows about your competitors' sites. Here is how all of the NFC North websites fare on the Google site search:
Packers.com - 47,600 pages
DetroitLions.com - 9,960 pages
ChicagoBears.com - 7,250 pages
Vikings.com - 911 pages
Wow, it looks like the Packers ran away with this one, at least on overall site size in Google. How does your site stack up against the competition?
I should note that the next major step is to start digging through the long list of results to pull more information about how thoroughly the site is optimized to perform well in the search engines. These results tell us SEO folks a great deal, but the whole story can't possible fit into one blog post.
For the purposes of brevity I've used Google as my single search engine to demonstrate this simple technique. I'll inform you that each search engine has a similar way of revealing its knowledge of your website. I encourage you to go to the other major search engines and learn how they display similar results to those we've discussed above. I bet you'll be surprised at what you find.
Yes, this is a bit of SEO 101, but as I mentioned, most people outside of our industry have no idea they can get this information so easily.
Tags
site search
search engine indexing
Get Lost, Web 2.0
Posted by on September 12, 2006 at 01:13 PM
It's been a fun ride the last few years. Watching the web blossom from a markup-centric child to a functionally-heavy adult, I can't help but feel like a proud parent on graduation day. The web has finally proven itself to its worst critics, and anyone who still feels contrary to the idea of the web as a viable stream of content and revenue is out of their mind.
That being said, it's time for Web 2.0 to leave.
But why usher the departure of such a wonderful paradigm shift? Why hate something so utopian? Why banish the newly-branded web?
Why? Because the blogosphere becomes trite when everyone recursively copies the content of others; because online democracy fails when most site traffic is too young to vote; because advertisers and marketers have caught up and buried their hooks deep into digital culture; and because jelly buttons just aren't that cool.
Content theft is king
In a rush to generate fresh content for the masses, bloggers have turned to plagiarism. Here's how it works: Blogger #1 reads an article on The New York Times and writes about it; Blogger #2 sees Blogger #1's post, lifts the copy and writes a two-line response; Blogger #3 sees Blogger #2's post and writes a response. This cycle continues indefinitely until a new story appears, and you can bet that CNN will pick it up for broadcast around Blogger #4 and sell it as what's going on in the blogosphere.These bloggers are polluting the world with amazing amounts of duplicate content and giving the news a biased twist. This is not collaboration within the blogosphere; it's lazy site administration. But it doesn't matter as long as your PPC ads get clicked on, right?
Please send diapers
Online democracy is proving to be about as successful as real-world democracy. And just as in real-world democracy the problem lies not with the governing system — which is usually pretty well-suited for the job — but with the dolts who comprise the majority.Take Digg: once a competitor to Slashdot, now just a democratic mess. The same age group that popularized social networking sites is the same group who is now taking over and destroying Digg. All Digg had to do was drop their original focus of technology, and now we have massively popular links about pandas getting scared while they're eating.
Shouldn't you kids be playing outside?
You socialize, we advertise
Love it or hate it, MySpace was a great idea. But now movie studios create profiles for each and every character in their upcoming blockbuster. Bands spam your message inbox with requests for support, and page layout is being driven by a drunken ad-monkey. How is this a space for me?The real secret to MySpace is that it was not written or created by anybody named Tom. It was the brainchild of Web 1.0 spammer eUniverse (read about that here).
Now what?
It's time for people to get past the notion that Web 2.0 even exists. There is nothing in this neatly-packaged new web that didn't already exist almost a decade ago. Let's pull back on the marketing reigns and just leave it as the "web"; you can't slap a version number on millions of users utilizing thousands of sites.I'm glad the "Web 2.0" label got people talking about the internet again, but it's time to move past it. Making the web sound like a fad brings the wrong crowds and dooms it for post-consumptive failure.
Trends fade; the internet isn't going anywhere. Keep your jargon to yourself.
Searching for Patriot Day
Posted by keirsun on September 11, 2006 at 04:03 PM
Being a television news producer on September 11, 2001, it was impossible to wake up this morning and not realize the date. All weekend I could feel this day approaching, even without tuning into news coverage of the 5th anniversary.
But out of morning habit, I checked the calendar on my fridge while chomping Cheerios and noticed today is a national holiday - Patriot Day.
I felt surprised that I had forgotten the President had given this date an actual name, a name that carries as much weight as Memorial Day or Labor Day.
I decided this would make an interesting blog topic. I knew Wikipedia would detail the specifics of observing Patriot Day, Technorati would have some interesting blog posts tagged "patriot day", and some blogger would have a screen shot of Google on 9/11/2001.
I thought all of these pieces would enable me to put together a worthwhile blog post. But on the drive to work, my plans suddenly dissolved beneath the voice of Frank Miller.
In a spoken word essay on NPR, Frank Miller, a well-known comic book writer and artist, expressed his thoughts on patriotism and how September 11th changed those thoughts.
If I do as little as link to Mr. Miller's essay, I will feel as though I've done my part to observe this day.
MSN and Facebook
Posted by tim on September 08, 2006 at 04:12 PM
You'd think Microsoft has the cash to buy a break.
In the world of social networking sites, Facebook is one of the bigger destinations on the web, especially for college students. After having fallen on its "face" this week though, Facebook is going to have a hard time keeping its users around and socializing.
A host of new "features" that were released have gotten users up in arms. To the point they are organizing petitions and planning protests.
What has all of this got to do with MSN? Well, just prior to a feature enhancement blowing up in their faces, Facebook agreed to a deal with MSN that gets Adcenter PPC ads showing on Facebook pages. This should have been a huge victory for MSN. This opens a channel for advertisers directly into the college market, a prized demographic.
Instead, the number of facebook users may drop significantly over the next weeks and months. Not good news when advertisers are clamoring for more inventory.
Microsoft would have loved to make a lot more noise about this partnership, I'm sure, but instead they have to wait for the storm to pass and hope there are still strong numbers for advertisers when the dust settles.
Windows Live beta: Who Doesn't Like New Stuff?
Posted by teal on September 07, 2006 at 02:19 PM
I like new stuff: new shoes, new car, new jeans, new hair-do, new softball bat, shoot, I even enjoy a new toothbrush. There's something about picking out the features you need, or want, and selecting a product or item that fulfills these criteria.
When looking for a new product to satisfy a need there's a fair amount of research that comes along with choosing this new item. The final product must satisfy a majority, if not all, of your criteria, and when you bring it home and use it, you must feel satisfied that you made the right choice.
Now, there are times that we settle, or become comfortable with our "old familiars" - that comfortable old pair of shoes, old jeans, old boyfriend, old toothbrush, or even old search engine.
MSN has been around for a long time. For awhile, it was the old familiar that people returned to because it was their pre-set default homepage when they began their internet browsing. Having been outdone by Google and Yahoo! in past years, MSN is currently making an attempt to really get back in the game.
Windows Live is the new search engine that will very soon be replacing MSN search. Still in beta, this new tool offers users a whole new set of features that are intended to improve their users' experience and MSN's current standings in the search engine war.
Not being one to be overly critical of people or companies trying to break out of their current rut, I will simply say that some of the new features are familiar:
- Windows Live Local
- Windows Live Search
- Windows Live Messenger
- Windows Live Mail
- Windows Live Spaces
The new dashboard and architecture of Windows Live gives users some new features to interact with, breaking away from MSN's time-tested interface and tool box. While many of the features are currently available to test out in the beta version, Microsoft does have plans for Windows Live. According to George Moore, the General Manager for the Windows Live Developer Platform, we have a lot to look forward to in Windows Live.
I am curious how this new tool will be accepted and how users will feel about the new-ish features offered here. If you have anything to say about the features, usability, or tools of Windows Live, please post your comments.
Tags
windows live beta
windows live opinions
windows live comparison
windows live transition
Straight Up Site of Interest - Local Search
Posted by keirsun on September 06, 2006 at 03:08 PM
It's time once again to rotate the tires and go for a spin in the Straight Up Site of Interest. This monthly post focuses on forward-thinking internet technologies and the websites that drive them. After taking in the view, you'll have another answer to this very important question: "How can I market my website?"
This month's topic: Local Search (and more specifically, a local search engine)
Straight Up Site of Interest: TrueLocal
In Their Own Words: "At TrueLocal, we want you to get off of the internet, turn off your computer, get in your car, and go buy something! After all, our mission is to drive online users to offline businesses."
First Impression:
Following a recent post I wrote that criticized local businesses for not utilizing local search opportunities, I received a comment from Colin at TrueLocal. He pointed out the important role that Local Search providers also need to play in bringing accurate, local data to online consumers.
I followed the link he left to TrueLocal and was immediately impressed with the easy-to-use interface and helpful features such as on-page maps, related searches, advanced search options, and a local weather report (very nice touch).
But most notable were the wealth of results. Here were all the local businesses that failed to appear in my earlier searches using Google Local. And best of all, there aren't any non-local businesses in the primary results. While the Sponsored National Listings partitioned off to the side surely help pay the bills, TrueLocal has made a point of limiting its results to "real" local businesses.
Although I have yet to experience TrueLocal as an advertiser, their listing options are pretty straightforward and very reasonably priced.
Hopefully, TrueLocal gets the user and advertiser traffic it deserves.
Don't forget to read about August's Straight Up Site of Interest for Podcast Production & Tracking.
Tags
local search
local search engine
Google Explores the Outer Limits of Radio
Posted by on September 05, 2006 at 09:01 AM
"There is nothing wrong with your radio. Do not attempt to adjust the station. We are in control of the transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will turn up the volume. If we want it softer, we will turn it down. We know where you are. We know what you're looking at. For the next millennium, we will control all that you see and hear. Believe me, there is nothing wrong with your radio, your electronic gadgetry or your spinning head. You are about to take an adventure. You are about to experience the awe which is associated with a journey to - Google Without Limits."
If Google has its way, you will never log off their world. They already place their Google AdWord ads in your face just about anywhere you go on your computer; you see them on your internet-enabled phone or other handheld device and now in print magazines due to their recent bulk ad space acquisitions. They may manage your next eBay search or be your long distance phone company. And they certainly generate enough public relations to fill your newspapers and cable news networks with stories about their next world conquest. In tightly targeted markets they will even offer "Google-Air": Googlized "Free" Wi-Fi zones.
In this brave new Google world, some of us rebels cherish our shrinking Google-free moments commuting in the car. Here we can un-goog a bit, tuning in some ancient technology - the radio. There it is: the yak, the repetitive electronically programmed music selections, the optically challenged news readers, the Ouija board weather guy, and those lame, lame commercials, punctuated by an occasionally entertaining one that sends me reminiscing about the days I wrote and sold some of those things.
For those who wish even a more pristine, commercial free existence, there's syndicated satellite radio - all reggae, all the time... or whatever your preference. Your satellite radio dial can be a time-machine of sorts linking you to some nationally (even world) syndicated shows originating from another place and time in your life - a virtual audio commute down memory lane. This route, unfortunately, may include commercials.
Well, before you get too comfortable in your bucket seat to yesterday, listen to what Googliath has planned for you. Earlier this year, Google purchased dMark Broadcasting, a "digital solutions provider for the radio broadcast industry." Google is going to package and sell radio commercials for their AdWords clients. No big deal, right? Think again.
On June 15th of this year at a luncheon with a group of publishing executives in New York City, Head Googie Eric Schmidt, shared his vision for how in the future Googlized radio ads would stream into your life and your auto sanctum.
Here's how he envisions it: you're driving in your car listening to your favorite GPS enabled satellite radio station when a radio ad comes on specially "personalized to your needs" (sic). For example, he suggests while driving past a clothing store, a radio ad should remind you that you "need" (sicker still) a pair of pants. Your radio - your car, for all intents and purposes - instructs you to take the next left turn and proceed to an upcoming clothing store. That store, of course, has paid for the privilege of fulfilling this highly vital (way sick) "need."
These and other radio opportunities would be, according to the fine folk at dMarc, "a broad suite of digital broadcast options" available to AdWords advertisers.
As a colleague and I sat envisioning these "options", we pictured that after the trip to get those "needed" pants, your radio would tell you that you're hungry and pass on the location of the nearest fast food sponsor who is offering free French fries with your next order of fried chicken stubble. Imagine a young family with children in the back seat yelling in unison, "there it is Mom, there it is, free fries, free fries! The car says, they're free!"
And when the next generation of "smart cars" comes along preprogrammed to a destination and doing the driving for you -- what then?
"Hal, this isn't the way home. Hal, this is a drive-in window. Hal, I'm on a diet. Hal..."
"Sorry Dave, but I think you need French fries. Should I order, Dave? Or will you?"
If any of this scares you, and it should, send your concerns to Herr Schmitt. He can be reached around the Google, or is that Apple, boardroom these days, or maybe, ah... oh, just do a Google search. He'll probably show up on one of the first five or ten pages. Don't you think?