DISQUS

That looks really cool. Thanks for posting this. It's getting pretty exciting how easy it's becoming to stay connected with iphone/facebook/etc.

I swear by mydropbox. If you want an invite, drop me an email. I think it might be the perfect solution for you.

Well put, Nick.

Great post and great advice.

We all create too much stress for ourselves - 90% is self induced.

Twitter is meant to be more personal and human - that's its appeal.

Anyone who gets too "professional" or spams me will be off my list.

@JX: Facebook CPC was higher than Google's not lower (Adwords was 16 cents, Facebook was 22 cents). FB was wildly inconsistent in how often it showed ads. I needed to increase the cost per click to get more impressions.

Plus in about 21 days Adwords received 688 clicks. Facebook only got 178 clicks over a 2 month span (even at a 22 cent average).

Also, conversion in this case only meant that they clicked out, not purchased anything.

While it's true that those particular ads were probably not very compelling, I've tested a number of laser-targeted ads for very specific demographics - they haven't fared much better.

And these are just CTR rates - we're not even getting to conversions.

Good tip. I haven't even thought of that. Sphunn.

PR is and has been a BS measurement metric for a while now. Yeah, companies still use it in top x blogs rankings, but they also use Alexa and other (often) grossly innacurate metrics.

I wonder how many people will look at this and take Google's spin at face value.

I guess we'll have to wait and see what effect this will end up having, but at first glance it comes across as purely profit-centric on G's part.

I completely agree that Mahalo has taken a long departure from a "search engine".

At some level I respect what Jason started to do, but now it seems like the entire model has shifted dramatically. I don't know if it's a lack of focus, a lack of good management, or what - but it seems like an ever-shifting project.

Thanks for the overview. It's interesting to see how the techniques of a successful app evolve as this application space matures.

I appreciate the irony of this post.
It's ok though, I'll forget it by Monday.

Do you any estimates on the amount of time you spent blogging? Just to make a fairer breakdown of the real costs incurred.

We all know how much the 30-50 crowd loves phonetic misspellings in their web apps. Might as well have called it socialoizr.com

Microsoft is so backwards. Beta regression seems to be their newfound hobby.

Yeah, you might want to get in good with the Zillow people before they take over the world ;)

I second Jay's sentiment.

No, they won't. They will become a platform. Resistance is futile.

What's the point of spending large amounts of money to go after a rapidly shrinking market base?

Some real estate brokers are really looking at their numbers and stepping up to say "this is the reality of the market, we're wasting our and our clients money if we don't adjust."

The reason they rank for all of that is not because of some nefarious scheme or SEO "secret". It's actually very simple. They provided something extraordinary so lots of people linked to it and refered to it as "home appraisal" in their link text or nearby copy. It's pure link love on a massive scale. (267,000 links can't be wrong)

The only thing the meta tag is good for is sometimes it displays in the search engine results under the link. Meta tags have little to zero value for ranking these days.

"Has Zillow.com spiked the search engines with their 'home appraisal' metatag and other SEO secret sauce"

Sour grapes mixed with complete ignorance (of SEO).

The video editing and graphics are great. I'll give it that. Why would anyone watch this on YouTube? (Unless YouTube presents it as an ad before something else that you might WANT to watch)

I found it sort of patronizing but then again it wasn't targeted to me.

Nothing makes a user happier then when you throw all his efforts into the dumpster. What about all those profiles that people setup? "Sorry, that was just a promotion - here buy some of our crap" (automatic refresh)

Of course trolls like like anon do not link to their website in the comments. Who really gets enjoyment at spewing hatred all over the web like this?