Google Adsense

Now Available in Real Time: Spam!

Written on March 15, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

Yep, now you can have spam delivered in real time to your search results on Google or Twitter. This is just why we all clapped for joy when Bing and Google hooked up with Twitter for real time results, isn’t it?

Oh, no? Hm. I guess we’re not the only ones. Search Engine Roundtable noted a Webmaster World forum thread complaining about the spam in real time search results. In the SER poll, 78% (as of the time of this screenshot) felt the real time results in Google are either somewhat or very spammy:

However, this may just be their perceptions: it may be less that the results themselves are spam and more than they’re merely unwanted, and therefore we consider them spam (like commercial emails that we really did sign up for but really don’t want to get anymore—except we didn’t get the choice to sign up for this addition to the SERPs).

Twitter, meanwhile, is doing what it can about spam on its site. The “trust and safety” unit at the company now employs 22 people, making it the largest division at the company. But it’s not just the blatant tag spam and mock-celebrity accounts they’re looking at. According to Ad Age:

The dirty secret of Twitter’s war on spam? A significant amount of it emanates from clumsy marketers that just don’t know any better.

So what do they flag as spam? They have automatic filters to catch accounts that follow a large number of Tweeple, unfollow them all, and then add more followers. (Follower spam.) They also have recently set up technology to filter links and check for phishing attempts. The team also handles hacking attacks and copyright/brand claims.

But even legit accounts can devolve into spammy practices, like keyword-based autoreplies. The rule of thumb? “[E]ngage the people you are trying to sell stuff to. If you are creating a dialogue with people and not just touting things because you want to make a buck, you are going to have a network of people that value your input,” says the trust & safety unit director Del Harvey. She says they’re constantly working on algorithmic improvements to catch more spammers and reduce false positives—sound familiar?

What do you think? Is Twitter doing enough to reduce spam—including the spam that filters into Google search results? Do you think Google’s real time results are spammy—or just unwanted?

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Now Available in Real Time: Spam!

A Proven Time-tested Effective Technique For Reducing Your Income

Written on March 15, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, seo

When Transparency is Valuable

If you are selling a site which you just want to get rid of and lack passion for then there is nothing wrong with being fairly transparent and shopping it for the maximum amount you can get at an auction or such. And if you have high growth and contact an investment banker to get a bidding war going then limited transparency can help then. But if you have a high growth site in a high growth field and there is only one company trying to buy your site then transparency is the opposite of leverage. It can only work against you.

Scam Website Purchase Offers: How They Work

Over the last couple days a company made a pretty fair offer for one of our websites. He did so knowing that I wasn’t going to give up our analytics data UNTIL the cash was in my bank account, and that he could infer a lot of the data from the search results. This was like the 5th time they tried buying the website and these points were made to them on every attempt.

The guy said “if that sounds good to you I will get a Letter of Intent over to you.” I said sure, and in return they were like “ok now we need access to all your stats for our due diligence document to fill out the LOI.”

And that is a big pain point / problem.

WHY?

Data is Valuable

Data is valuable. Anyone who has the money to buy one of your best websites and has people scouring the web trying to make such deals probably has other sites in the same vertical. It is a near certainty. If you give all your data to someone *in an attempt to sell* what you may end up with is a weaker site and no buyer.

And if you know they already have other sites in the same space, well then you just shorted your own company’s stock in exchange for nothing but a clown outfit.

Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

The people who ask you to give up all your business data, and want exclusivity on a deal while they mull it over and debate it and re-price it, while pillaging your analytics data are actually telling you “we think you are an ignorant jackass and lack respect for you.”

The sequence goes like: hello how about I buy that from you for $xx. Sound good? Here now give me all your data and I will give you a shady low ball offer of $y and then go buy a similar site from a more ignorant seller. We only buy at far below market rates! Don’t worry. We *WILL* use your data against you!

If they make and offer they make an offer. If they want to steal you data they want to steal you data. But if they already make an offer based on their observations there is no need to grab all the data to reposition the offer - in short it is a scam.

Business Reciprocity 101

A slimy business person doesn’t trust other people because they think everyone else is just as slimy as they are. So here is the test to use on such offers: tell them “sure you can have all my analytics data right after you give me all of their analytics data.” If they say you are being unreasonable then tell them to look in the mirror.

We have made quick page title change suggestions on a client website that have literally immediately brought in millions of Dollars for their business (and as consultants we only got crumbs for the value add), BUT if you have a competitor who is considering buying your site they can look for the areas where you are strong that they missed and simply clone them. If their domain is far more authoritative they just took a chunk of your traffic. And you gave it to them - free of charge.

We have had competitors clone some of our strategy in some areas, but on numerous occasions they have picked the wrong keyword variations or the wrong modifiers. If you just give them the data for free there is no guesswork. They WILL use their capital to steamroll over you.

Why NDA Contracts Are Garbage

Sure some such companies claim to be professional and that their NDA has some value. But does it? Do you actually have the capital sitting around to do a legal battle with a billion Dollar company with more in-house lawyers than you have total staff? What kind of ROI would such litigation earn IF you won it? What are the odds of you winning? Can you actually prove how the used your data? How much time, effort, and stress would go into such a battle?

Why Do People Purchase Websites?

If people are coming you to buy your site they are coming to you for a reason. There is some strategic value, or some level of synergy to where they feel they can add value to your position. As an example, a big company like Yahoo! or eBay or Amazon.com or Google or BankRate or Monster.com or WebMD could…

• use a purchase as a public relations opportunity to make the purchased website stronger
• integrate it into their network to own more of the market and have better control over pricing
• cross promote it on their network
• cross promote other options in their network to that site’s audience
• use it as a wedge to influence markets in way they don’t want connected with their core brand
• expand their market breadth without diluting their brand
• etc etc etc

The point being very few people buy a business based on thinking they can/will keep it exactly the same. Rarely do you buy a raw domain name based on its earnings…you buy it based on the potential for what you can develop on it, and the growth + opportunity you see in that market.

Is there risk in the growth? Absolutely. What successful investor hasn’t lost money? But that risk is discounted in the price of the site…after all, the future market growth and site growth are not passed onto the seller after the site has already been sold.

Have I lost money on some website purchases? Absolutely, but on average we have come out ahead. You don’t need perfect data to make a purchase so long as you have some good ideas on how to add value. You can have a few duds and come out ok so long as you have some winners and ride the winners hard.

What Data Discounts: It is Backwards Looking

Any attempt to get the exact earnings AND all the keyword data for a website for free is simply exploitative. It gives the buyer leverage while placing the seller in a vulnerable situation. It moves the purchase away from strategic value to some b/s multiples of revenue which rarely accounts for *why* the purchase is being made.

Is it a defensive purchase? Is it a purchase where there is an instant synergy and strategic value add? Do they have more data than you and do they see strong market growth in the near future?

Strategic purchases like YouTube don’t sell for over a Billion dollars based on a backward multiple of earnings. When companies buy important websites they don’t insult the owner with a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 year multiple. The S&P 500 has historically traded around a 15 or 16 multiple, so even a 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 year multiple is not great if you have some strong strategies to increase organic search traffic, build new revenue streams, and improve conversion rates.

If a company trading at a 30x P/E multiple offers to buy your site for an 6x multiple, then they get a higher revenue cut due to their market position suddenly they have purchased your website for something like a 3x multiple… about 1/10th of what the market is valuing their enterprise at.

If they hold back some of the payout for a year then they are paying for a portion of the site out of future earnings, and the real multiple being paid is even less - maybe only 2!!!!

This quote from maximillianos at WMW explains why the give us all your data and we will give you some crappy multiple approach sucks for the prospective seller:

I opted to keep the site and put it on auto-pilot. That was about 9 years ago. Today the site makes more money in a month than what I almost sold it for back then. So maybe the sale falling through is not a bad thing.

In the search game increasing your rank by a few positions can cause a sharp increase in traffic.

Who wants to sell a site that is growing 100% every few months for some *stupid* multiple of backwards revenues? They would have to be an idiot. Certainly the public companies with a 30x P/E ratio are not trading at a 30x multiple because investors are looking backwards.

When you sell a site you must assume that they have more market data than you do. And they probably have more capital. Give them all your site specific data and you just diminish the value of your property while leaving you with no leverage.

Learning From Past Mistakes

But lots of people are stupid enough to give up the data. In the past I was one of them. A person who I mistook as a friend in our industry named a price for a partnership on one project, got as much data as he could, and then pulled out of the deal *at the price he named*!!! They claimed they lacked liquid capital, but at the same time they went on to make offers for other sites we owned (without knowing who owned them). Without even naming who the person was and only stating the above, in our forums another member guessed who it was *because the scumbag had done the exact same thing to him*

The guy was also snooping around one of my friend’s sites a few years back. And so that guy asked a friend of the snooper if the snooper was legit, and the response was “we are friends, but don’t trust that guy.” Too bad I didn’t hear that until after the guy screwed me over. But hopefully this post helps prevent you from getting screwed by fake investors and shady parties not actually interested in your properties.

Do They Eat Their Own Dog Food?

If someone tries to tell you that looting your data is part of their due diligence or purchase process send them a link to this post & tell them Aaron says hi.

Ask them how they disagree with it. And if they don’t disagree with anything in this post, then tell them to give you all their business data. Fair is fair.

And if they won’t share their business information with you then tell them to do the right thing…

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A Proven Time-tested Effective Technique For Reducing Your Income

Google Surprised Rest of World Not Like the GooglePlex

Written on March 14, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: chat, marketing

Google really created quite a buzz around Buzz when it was rolled out in February. The first wave of buzz (pun intended although the whole Wave thing is another story altogether) for Buzz was reasonable and was more about “What do I do with it?” than anything else. That was soon followed by the privacy outcry that became deafening and forced Google to admit that it had committed a major privacy faux pas.

Well, it appears that Buzz is still creating a stir this time at SXSW when a panel of Gmail and Buzz Googlers had to face the music, so to speak. TechCrunch reports

Google Product Manager Todd Jackson said that Google had learned a lot from the incident, acknowledging that Google was in error when it made the assumption that users wanted to move their email and chat contacts over to their Buzz social graph, and auto-followed them. To make sure that kind of blunder doesn’t happen again, he revealed that Google may start pre-releasing new Buzz features to small subsets of users.

Certainly a pretty big error for sure but things seems to be calming down a bit around that furor (or is that just because less people care about Buzz and decided to not talk about it anymore…I don’t know). Google is trying to do the right thing now by talking like they may actually test some stuff before they cram it down our throat roll it out. Awful sporting of them, wouldn’t you say?

It appears as if the internal testing that took place in Google itself produced results that were not representative of what the real world would do. The folks at the GooglePlex were thus perplexed when the real world users didn’t react the same way as Googlers did on their jobs. Really?!?!?! I wouldn’t have seen that one coming either would you?

So why exactly did Google Buzz launch with some key social features missing? Jackson said that while Google employees were testing out the product internally, they never had much desire to mute any of their coworkers, and that their email contact list closely matched the people they wanted to follow on Buzz. Obviously, that wasn’t true for most people once the product was released outside of the Googleplex. Which is why Google is considering pre-releasing new Buzz features to a few thousand opt-in users long before they’re rolled out to the public.

This whole admission makes me wonder just how disconnected Google actually is from real world experience of their products in general. If this is any indication then it’s a red flag of sorts because anyone who had their Google thinking cap on should realize that they are not living in the real world at the home office. They created it to be that way so Googlers would have a unique experience, right? How then could you assume that what happens on that campus has anything to do with the real world?

It seems like every company no matter how big and powerful and cool eventually jumps the shark. I’m not saying Google is there yet but it sounds like they may be ready to make a run at the shark tank that would make the Fonz proud!

Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Google Surprised Rest of World Not Like the GooglePlex

Data Visualization Techniques

Written on March 14, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, seo

Posted by willcritchlow

Rob and Duncan are currently in Seattle, with this week full of interviews of SEO consultants for our US office. Since the announcement in February, we have been working flat out with a bunch of new clients and dealing endlessly with the US immigration service. With people on the ground, I

Crafting SEO Landing Pages

Written on March 12, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing, seo

The landing page, in terms of SEO, went out of fashion.

Landing pages, which tended to be mass-generated, near identical pages pointing to one money page, became a target for the search engine spam filters.

However, the type of landing page we should take a closer look at is the type of landing page used in PPC - a page carefully crafted to lead a visitor to desired action. SEOs can benefit from applying the same techniques used for creating effective PPC landing pages to their organic pages. After all, we all want visitors to arrive at our pages, and take a desired action.

All Search Is About Connecting With People

Our pages may rank well, but if the visitor doesn’t do something that ultimately leads to more money in our pockets, our sites won’t last long.

In the past, ranking well has led to a pre-occupation with factors like keyword density i.e. repeating keyword phrases often.

However, the search engine algorithm’s are no longer quite so stupid. The need to slavishly repeat keyword phrases in order to rank pales in comparison to other factors. It’s no longer necessary to forsake good copy writing in order to please machine algorithms.

To make our rankings work for us, we must connect with people. This means our pages must talk their language and focus on solving their problems.

A fail in SEO is not missing out on the #1 ranking. A fail in SEO is a visitor clicking back. Do everything to avoid the back click.

Talking People’s Language

People couldn’t care less about you or your company.

People care about themselves.

Take a look at your pages. Do they talk about you, or do they talk about your audience? For a page to work well, it must connect with your audience, and the easiest way to do this is to talk about their wants and desires. If a page doesn’t grab a visitors attention, they won’t persevere, they will click back. What’s a #1 ranking worth if visitors click back?

Here are a few guidelines on how to grab a visitors attention:

Title Tag Text Should Match Your First Headline Or if not matching the phrase exactly, it should be close to it in terms of topic. This reassures to the searcher they are in the right place.

A Search Is Invariably A Question Keyword terms often aren’t phrased as questions, but they are all questions. When people type “buy DVD online”, they’re really saying “where can I buy a DVD online”. Try to determine searcher intent. Decide what the visitors question is, repeat it, then answer it.

Create A Clear Call To Action - what is it you want the searcher to do next? Sign-up? Buy something? Click on Adsense? Make that action clear and obvious.

People Scan - Use big headings. Often. If you’re vague about visitor intent, you can use a number of different headlines, or images, that grab people’s attention in case your lead hook fails.

Use The Word “You” A Lot - it’s all about them. Their problems, their sense of self, their language, their wants and needs. Relegate all the stuff about you, unless they specifically ask for it, or you’re using testimonials.

Every Page On Your Site Is A Landing Page

Every page on your site has potential to pull in visitors.

Even if a page only receives one visit a month, it’s still a landing page. Given that SEO strategy involves building a lot of content, it’s easy to think of “junk” pages low down in your domain structure as unimportant.

However, if people land on those pages, then that’s half the battle won. Those pages will be winners if they lead people to the pages you want them to see. Therefore, every page on your site should contain a clear call to action - leading visitors to the one thing you want people to do.

The Difference Between SEO Landing Pages & PPC Landing Pages

In PPC, the page must be tightly controlled, stay on message and lead a visitor to desired action. Failure to do so means blowing through money.

With SEO, we have more leeway. We can include a variety of text content on pages, as it increases the likelihood of catching long tail phrases. This casts a wider net, and at negligible cost. However, we still need to structure the page well enough so people a) won’t click back and b) will take the desired action.

It’s a good idea to structure a page so - rather obviously - the most important stuff comes first. Make the call to action, wherever it is placed, clear. Relegate superfluous text, which targets long tail variations, below the fold and/or into side links.

Most likely, a few pages on your domain will be doing the gruntwork. Most of your visitors will come in on your home page, or a small collection of well linked pages on your site. Pay careful attention to these pages. They should be as crafted as tightly as a PPC landing page in terms of language and call to action.

Test these pages. Are they converting? What is the abandonment rate? Whilst it can take a while to test and alter SEO pages, it’s worth doing, as incremental gains on a few pages can lead to huge changes when rolled out over an entire site.

What happens if you make a heading bigger? Paragraphs shorter? Reposition page elements? Change the language and pitch? You can also test these variables using a short PPC campaign, of course, and then roll your findings into your SEO strategy. Once you’ve got a winning formula, you can roll it out to every page (landing) page you create.

The rest is here:
Crafting SEO Landing Pages

Learning SEO: It Can Get Noisy

Written on March 4, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Object, book, chat, marketing, seo

There is obviously no shortage of information on SEO.

But thanks for turning up here

The sheer avalanche of SEO information can be overwhelming, for beginners and experts alike. Who do you know who to listen to? What information do you need to know, and what information is filler?

Why should you even listen to SEOBook?

1. Most Information Published On SEO Is Filler

You can learn 80% of what you need to know about SEO pretty quickly. You don’t need the additional 20% in order to achieve, unless you’re a masochist - otherwise known as an SEO professional

Most of the information you’ll come across on the topic of SEO is written by, and for, a professional/enthusiast crowd. There is a massive echo chamber of opinion, constantly replenished, produced using publishing tools based on the notion of communicating something, often.

It can result in a lot of noise, and not much in the way of signal, especially when you’re learning. If you’re starting out, and want to focus on learning SEO, it’s a good idea to tune the industry chatter out. It’s more likely to confuse than help in the early stages.

2. Understand The Business Of Search

Search engines aren’t your friend. At best, they tolerate SEO, but only when it aligns with company goals.

The search engines have a business to run, and their goals aren’t the same as yours. Whilst search engine reps often come across as helpful and friendly, because they typically are helpful and friendly people, keep in mind that what they are saying serves their company first and foremost. Any advice they give you is, quite rightly, designed to further company goals.

That’s their job.

Chances are, your goals and the search engines goals will be aligned in many areas, but take their advice with a grain of salt. They don’t care if your site succeeds or not, as there are plenty of other sites to index.

3. Define Goals

Before you undertake SEO, define your website goals. Do you want to make more money? Get more attention? Get more leads?

The purpose of SEO is to get your site seen in the search engines. Your aim is to attract the visitors that help you achieve your goals. A high ranking for a certain keyword won’t necessarily help you achieve your goals unless your site matches visitor intent.

Think about the web from a visitors point of view. What do they want to find? What content will they engage with? What will they spend their money on?

There’s little point ranking well if the content you provide doesn’t make you money and/or gain audience. It’s getting increasingly difficult to rank pages that aren’t closely aligned with the searchers intent. So, the more you understand your audience, and the more content that matches their intent, the more you’ll get out of SEO.

4. Get A Credible, Well Organized Course

Like SEOBook’s course for example

This isn’t a sales pitch. There are a number of great courses out there. Choose one or two that suit your budget and objectives, and dive in. Chances are, you will need to shell out some money, but the cost of a decent, well structured course is nothing compared to the wasted effort spent heading in the wrong direction.

In a nutshell, SEO is about about publishing content people want to engage with, and linking. You need to create content that matches visitor intent, you need to be crawlable, and you need to have inbound links. Good SEO courses will have this message at their core.

Did I mention links enough?

5. Connect With People

It’s natural to want the secret sauce - those secret dark techniques that result in number one rankings.

Whilst this was characteristic of SEO years ago, it’s less true now. These days, SEO is more a holistic, strategic process aimed at connecting with people, as opposed to a dark, technical art aimed at tricking machines.

Focus on making connections with people. That means understanding what people want. You can do this by undertaking basic market research, using the search engines themselves!

6. Test

Don’t listen to me. Well, maybe just a bit. Don’t listen to the repeaters in forums.

Test and measure for yourself. It’s one of the best SEO courses you can do. It’s ongoing, and it’s free.

Start with a simple, focused well constructed site. What is a well constructed site in terms of SEO?

With every change you make, every new SEO strategy you adopt, test the results. Did the change help you achieve your website goals? Did you get more traffic? Better quality traffic? If your rankings improved, did this result in more/better traffic? It can be difficult to isolate variables at the best of times, but there is no chance of doing so if you try too many techniques all at once.

Make changes one step at a time. Test and measure repeat. Become at expert at measuring SEO against your goals.

Build up your own private knowledge base of SEO in your niche. Your niche may require different strategies to other niches, which is why well-meaning advice in forums and on blogs can hinder you. You’ll also become a better judge of who is offering you good advice, and who is just repeating something they heard.

Originally posted here:
Learning SEO: It Can Get Noisy

Ballmer, Sitelinks & Other Favorites from SMX West Day 1

Written on March 3, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, seo

Posted by jennita

SMX West 2010 kicked off with quite a bang (or was that a yell?). Since Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer was the keynote, people arrived early to ensure good seats. The music playing before it started was amazing, it helped to create an excitement in the room that I really had never felt before a keynote before. I had attempted to save a seat for someone up front, but there was just too much demand and had to give it up. That’s the sort of thing that happens at a great concert, not a conference keynote.

There were quite a few live blogs of the event, but I had a few favorites from the interview that I wanted to call out.

1. He made it very clear that Microsoft is focused on the big picture and not just immediate goals. He spoke about continuing to move forward with a positive momentum and a differentiated point of view.
2. When the question came up of “Can you be #1 in the U.S.?” he essentially said “YES!” [and yes he said it with that exclamation] However he made it clear that it was a tricky question. If you say yes, you sound arrogant but if you say no you sound unsure of yourself. You don’t do things to come in second!
3. Danny asked “Is Yahoo! going to survive as a search player? You want to beat them aren’t you just going to kill them?” Ballmer could really only answer one way “No.” He stated that they wanted Yahoo! to do a good job, that there was lots of flexibility written into their contract and there was advantage to having the power of 2 as opposed to the power of 1.
4. When asked whether he was going to get on Twitter he said “I’m more of a webpage than a bunch of short tweets.” But then acknowledged that he did have a stealth Twitter account however only the people in his neighborhood followed him.
5. His favorite thing on Bing are the Bing maps. [completely agree here... the maps are amazing!]
6. What he thinks is the biggest opportunity in search: to “Help people get done what they’re trying to get done.”
7. Oh! And he gave us all his personal email account. You’ll have to watch the video to get that though.

All in all it was quite enjoyable to watch, although I was a bit unprepared (although perhaps I shouldn’t have been) for the yelling. Ok, I don’t think in his mind he was yelling, he was just talking VERY LOUDLY. But sitting right up front, I think we all sat back in our chairs a bit when he got excited and started to get louder. You can see the full video of the keynote below.

Google’s Personalized Search Revolution

Now that personalization has become an opt-out rather than an opt-in, I was really interested in what this session had to offer. The only speaker, Brian Horling who works in Personalized Search at Google, first gave a very informative presentation, then fielded quite a few questions from the audience. I really enjoyed having just one speaker who was focused on the topic at hand. The top takeaways that I got were some of the differences between a logged out user who gets personalized search versus a logged in user. Let me break it down a bit.

First of all, both types of users are thought of as two different identities to Google. Let’s say you’re logged in, and then log out, they don’t view you as the same logged in person. At that point they do look at the cookies set on your computer which tell gives them information on what you’ve searched for previously, which results you’ve clicked on, etc. For signed in accounts, your web history is saved indefinitely, but your non-logged in identity is only saved for 180 days.

Every user using search has the potential of seeing personalized search in some way whether it’s geo-location, web history, social search, etc. Personalization occurs about 1 in 5 queries for a user and the changes tend to be restricted to only a few results.

How can you control the personalization of your searches?

• Use search details
• Disable it by appending &pws=0 on searchs (you can find the bookmarklet to do that here)
• Edit or disable your web history

If you haven’t looked at the “view customizations” link I highlight above before, you should definitely check it out. Pretty interesting what’s going on there.

One thing that came up in this session was how do you explain to a client that the results they’re seeing aren’t the same as what everyone else sees. Although in some cases that would probably be a good thing since they’re seeing better rankings since they search and click on their sites more often than the average user.

How do you feel about personalized search? After this presentation I found that I was much more open to the idea than I was previously. I think because I felt like I finally understood a bit better where the data was coming from and how to turn it off. But what about you?

And so on…

The other session I really loved was “Supercharging Your Descriptions With Sitelinks” but as I was putting this post together I realized that should really a be a post in and of itself. It was great to hear from a Google rep about how certain sitelinks show up and ways you can enhance your site to ensure proper sitelinks. I have tons of screenshots and examples, so I’ll put them into a full post. Plus I’d really like to get Jerry Dischler (the Google guy) to answer a few of my questions. So watch for that one!

The best swag of the conference goes to Yahoo! for not only giving away these awesome coffee mugs, but for setting up a full-on coffee shop with baristas to make us our much needed lattes!

I really wanted to show the videos from the SMX Ignite as that was one of my favorite parts of the day. But unfortunately the videos aren’t live yet. Here’s a link to where they should be. Maile Ohye’s “DateRank: PageRank for singles” was my personal favorite, although all the speakers were exceptional.

Dana Lookadoo and I interviewed a number of people in sort of a Jay Leno “man on the street” sort of way. We hope to have the interviews up tomorrow.

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Ballmer, Sitelinks & Other Favorites from SMX West Day 1

Cup of Joe: I Am a Heartless B@st@rd on Twitter

Written on February 13, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing

If you are following me on Twitter or a friend on Facebook you might already be aware that I am a heartless b@st@rd. OK so maybe that’s a bit extreme but the truth is, I think a lot of what mainstream social media users take part in is a waste of time. For example I don’t thank people for retweets, I don’t participate in follow Friday, and I don’t join every Facebook fan page that comes along. Why don’t I do all of these things? Because quite honestly they do very little to help promote my ideas and the people I believe in. And more importantly they add more noise to a medium that is already saturated to the rim with useless content.

In the video above Wanda Sykes talks about why (at the time) she isn’t a member of Facebook. She ask the question “since when did we get so social?” I think that’s a very important question to consider. 5 or 6 years ago if you wanted to connect with a family member or an old friend you might call them or send them a letter. Doesn’t that seem like a more genuine connection than taking a few seconds to approve a friend request on Facebook?

As new media marketers we are expected to bring new ideas and techniques to the table. So much so that I think some times we forget to stop and ask ourselves “is this a good idea?” A lot of marketers will say well what harm can we be doing? It’s just Twitter! The worst possible scenario for any social media marketer is to take a strong brand and make it irrelevant and annoying. Here’s the way I look at it. If you don’t have a clear strategy on how to add value to your brand in social media, they stay out of it! Otherwise you run the risk of adding to the noise and coming a across as ingenuous.

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Cup of Joe: I Am a Heartless B@st@rd on Twitter

Google Blinks on Buzz—But Still Could Be Better

Written on February 12, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, chat, marketing

We’ve seen it happen a hundred times: popular website launches new feature, people either hate change or see it as an invasion of privacy, popular website blinks. Usually it’s Facebook (*cough*Beacon*cough*privacy changes*cough*), but this week it’s Google. Launched on Tuesday, Google Buzz became an opt-out feature in all Gmail accounts. Not a huge problem—until people realized that, by default, Google was publishing the list of people you email and chat with most frequently, with real-life implications.

Last night, Google took a step back and listened to the complaints. Yes, people could eventually opt out of sharing those lists—if they knew where to look for a single obscure checkbox. But now Google’s making it easy to keep your friend lists more private by default:

The first time you create a post or comment in Buzz, we ask you to create a limited public profile (at a minimum it’s just your first and last names). We do this so we’ll know what name to display next to your posts — and so the people you follow know who you are. As you do this, we notify you that the lists of people you follow and the people following you will be displayed on your public profile. You can view, edit, and even hide these lists. The lists of your followers/people you follow are not made public on your profile until after you go through this profile creation step.

They’re also listening to complaints about the old checkbox buried on the Edit Google Profile page, accessible through your Google profile itself (quick quiz: how do you get to your profile itself? Yeah, 90+% of us don’t know.). The old option is still in place, but Google has added a new opt-out during the set up process, making the option more prominent.

To further enhance your privacy settings, Google’s also making it easier to block anyone who follows you (before you could only block them after they’d created a public profile), and they’re also making a clearer distinction between the followers who will appear on your profile (those who’ve already created a public profile) and those who won’t—so your dear old auntie you email twice a month won’t show up in your public lists unless she creates a Google Profile.

Google says they have a number of improvements for Buzz in the works (which makes us wonder why they pushed it out now, then). While these privacy improvements are better, they still may not be enough for less-savvy web users. Google needs to make sure that even those of us who’ve already started using Buzz or created public profiles can easily find the option to hide or display our lists from within Buzz, not just when we use it the first time.

And if they could somehow 1.) make it stop double posting stories every time someone I’m following on Google Reader shares something (I don’t need to read it in Buzz and Reader) and other overlap issues, and 2.) actually make it useful, that’d be great.

Oh, and just as a side note, dear Popular Websites: Stop. Test new features with real users. Ask for feedback. Don’t force crap on us—let us opt in, and if we like it, we’ll encourage others to opt in, too. And think about the implications before you get the negative ink and/or lawsuits, for once.

What do you think? Is this Google’s equivalent to Facebook’s Beacon? Are the privacy updates enough? Will popular websites ever learn, or will they continue to force “features” on us that we really don’t want?

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Google Blinks on Buzz—But Still Could Be Better

Google Buzz Publishes Who You Email

Written on February 11, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, chat, marketing

Ah, Google Buzz. At last we see the chinks in your armor (well, aside from the fact that it looks a little useless)—the opt-out feature appears to automatically publish your contact list, which is compiled from the people you email and chat with the most.

As if it wasn’t annoying enough to be told you have dozens of new “Buzz” only to check and see the same message four times and twenty-odd retweets of an acquaintance’s old tweet, or to have to try to separate your work and your personal news.

Now, there are a few warnings: the standard light-gray-on-white text that states: “Your profile includes your name, photo, people you follow, and people who follow you.” Although it tells you you’re creating a public profile, it doesn’t clarify how they assign you people to follow. On a later page in the process, Buzz does specify that “You’re already set up to follow the people you email and chat with the most.”

As the Business Insider says:

A Google spokesperson tells us the followers lists are public by default so that people can quickly find new people to follow. Obviously, that’s a good thing for Google, which is hoping to get as many people using Google Buzz as soon as possible. It’s also meant to be helpful for users. And for those who are unconcerned with telling the world who they email most, it is. But for everyone else, it’s terrible.

It gets to a deeper problem with Google Buzz: It’s built on email, which is a very different Internet application than a social network.

I absolutely agree. Email is a whole different level of privacy than a social network—even with passwords and walled gardens, social networks are public, and far more public than email.

TBI has a solution: “We believe Google could and should simply make this feature ‘opt-in’ so that people know what they’re doing.” Agreed. Although Google has long been an opt-out only kind of guy, one of these days they’re going to have that turn around and hurt them. You know, kind of like what’s happened with Facebook . . . repeatedly.

Want to opt out of sharing your list? Read Write Web tells how in five easy steps:

1. Sign into your Google account via Gmail (or any other Google service)
2. Go to your Google profile here: http://google.com/profiles/me
3. Click the link at the top-right of the screen that reads “Edit Profile”
4. Here, you’ll see a checkbox that reads “Display the list of people I’m following and people following me.” To make this info private, just uncheck that box.
5. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the “Save changes” button

Or you could opt out of Buzz entirely. After all, who’s really found it useful so far? (We can turn it off, can’t we, Google?)

What do you think? Will Google learn their lesson? Or are they already too big to beat down?

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Google Buzz Publishes Who You Email