Disqus - Latest Comments for Scott

Re: The Year Affiliates Saved Christmas, Really?

Scott — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 02:53:50 -0000

Good post Scott, lots of points that are normally overlooked in the industry. It's important to look at these decisions and statistics critically.

Re: New social shopping network: ShoppingWords.com

Scott — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 13:11:18 -0000

I found this site searching Google news for "social shopping" and was very unimpressed. Not only is the usage very unclear, but there is no way to shop. I checked a couple product pages and there were no merchant links, only AdSense. I agree the AdSense is overdone and that's just going to hurt them. I doubt this will ever get off the ground.

Re: Web 2.0 Business Strategies

Scott — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 17:08:05 -0000

I'm not so sure about ISP's bundling services. When I signed up to Yahoo DSL they included this whole software package that I simply ignored. I didn't even install it. I just want the internet access. They use it as a selling point, yes, but most customers aren't buying access for these selling points. I'm not sure how well Earthlink did with their free popup blocker software, but I haven't heard about it lately. Did that do well for them? Not sure.. Personally, I wouldn't choose one ISP over another because of a bundled application. I'm just looking for the fastest service at the lowest price.

Re: Update: Stylefeeder Responds and Gets Banned

Scott — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 17:28:23 -0000

There is nothing wrong with a 302 redirect if used properly. If it's an affiliate link then it's very necessary for tracking of sid's and clicks. A way to avoid any confusion is to block search engine spiders from the redirect script. You can put it in your robots.txt, .htaccess, nofollow and in your redirect code itself. There are several ways to prevent spiders from following the link. Using a 302 in this case is necessary because a 301 would transfer PageRank and Google doesn't allow PR transfers on paid links.

Re: Update: Stylefeeder Responds and Gets Banned

Scott — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:13:04 -0000

So maybe the ideal solution is to use a 302 and a nofollow on a paid link and a 301 on a non-paid link?

Re: Update: Stylefeeder Responds and Gets Banned

Scott — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 15:35:33 -0000

But without any redirect there is no way to track how many clicks the link got. From a statistical standpoint this solution isn't very ideal.

Re: Update: Stylefeeder Responds and Gets Banned

Scott — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 02:29:44 -0000

Maybe to compare to the paid links. If a non-paid link is getting a lot of clicks maybe it can be brought to the administrator's attention and converted to a paid link.

Re: Facebook Live Feed Kills Twitter & FriendFeed

Scott — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:13:39 -0000

I do like the new feature, but I would love to see a feed of new group posts. I rarely click all my groups to keep up on the new posts.

Re: 2006/04/07/informcom-still-failing/

Scott — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 20:33:01 -0000

I agree that to get started you need to think simple and focus on a specific need. But over time it certainly is possible to build a solid and thriving hybrid. Just look at Google and Yahoo. Once you've built a brand for yourself you can go wild with it. It's just solidifying your brand name and becoming an everyday thing for your visitors that's important.

Also, I agree that Pete should introduce a "Where are they now?" feature. I have been noticing quite a few Web 2.0 sites that started with a bang who are failing miserably. It's really interesting to see how all these new sites are progressing. It's the sites that really get down to the meat of the issue and provide a solid resource that are doing well.

Re: 2006/04/24/new-memedigger-blogmemes/

Scott — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 01:33:48 -0000

pete,

Let's not forget Friendster and MySpace. Friendster was the first major social network and was doing extremely well until MySpace came into the picture. I'm sure there's a great deal of space left for memediggers to move into. I'm just waiting for the MySpace of Digg to come around.

- Scott

Re: 2006/07/05/bluedot-launches-myspace-meets-delicious/

Scott — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 22:34:55 -0000

I couldn't find a way to sort the links by popularity. Also, how do I know how many people dotted something? It doesn't seem to include any of the features that I enjoy from del.icio.us.

Re: 2006/07/07/autospies-relaunches-as-car-themed-digg-clone/

Scott — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 03:35:40 -0000

Where are the best voted items listed? I see that you can "Boost" a variety of articles, but shouldn't we be able to see the most popular? It seems everything is sorted by date, but there is no other sort option. To me this doesn't feel like a complete Digg due to the lack of an intelligent sorting algorithm.

Re: 2006/08/13/browster-20-makes-myspace-suck-less/

Scott — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 13:36:15 -0000

I don't think it's a good idea to build a tool around a site like MySpace when they're actively prohibiting these types of tools. MySpace won't like this because Browster is essentially eliminating clicks and ad impressions for MySpace. Instead of users clicking on friend lists or photos they'll be using this plugin which diverts MySpace's traffic.

If you're going to be building a tool around a site like MySpace you need to consider it from their point of view. Will this tool help MySpace's bottom line or will it hurt it? IMO this tool will hurt it.

Also, Browster is lacking Mac support.

Re: 2006/08/29/badderadder-myspace-friends-adder-bot/

Scott — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 19:30:18 -0000

This disgusts me.

Re: 2006/08/28/kaboodle-gets-widgetized/

Scott — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 01:43:00 -0000

Great comment Terrence! I completely agree with you. I just don't see consumers adopting shopping bookmark sites as shopping destinations. The competition is just too fierce with companies like Epinions, Shopzilla and Pricegrabber dominating the scene. This is a market that's not easily won over by innovation. Shoppers demand so much more.

Re: 2006/11/30/amazon-upspun-launches-digg-for-lists/

Scott — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 21:28:36 -0000

I couldn't find a way to add a new item to any existing list. How does this leverage the community if only the list creator can edit their list? This just causes people to create their own lists to compete with the existing lists.

Re: Social Networking Awards - Nominations Open!

Scott — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 04:51:04 -0000

Hawkee.com - Technology Social Network & Social Shopping

Re: 2006/12/21/social-shopping/

Scott — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 04:09:47 -0000

Vote: Hawkee

Re: 2007/02/05/superbowl-ads-myspace/

Scott — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 11:45:52 -0000

Couldn't find a link to the YouTube Super Bowl section on either of your blog posts Pete. Can you link it up?

Re: 2007/03/14/photobucket/

Scott — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 23:46:59 -0000

Yet Photobucket still doesn't let you sort the search results by most recent. When are they going to learn?

Re: 2007/04/16/dodgeball/

Scott — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 15:36:28 -0000

Google sure dropped the ball on this one. Amazing how fast Twitter has grown in just the past couple months.

Re: 2007/05/03/testfreaks/

Scott — Fri, 04 May 2007 02:00:58 -0000

I'm not very impressed. They don't have any product photos, no product filters and there doesn't seem to be a search. There isn't much of a design to speak of and the only thing that shows promise is their worldwide support and spidering. I really think they should have waited longer before trying to garner some press. Maybe they just wanted to show off their funding.

Re: 2007/05/09/wii-web2/

Scott — Thu, 10 May 2007 16:38:53 -0000

I love the web browser. The newer version is much improved and it's great for watching online video. I don't see any distortion.

Re: 2007/07/17/e-commerce-toolbox/

Scott — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:09:47 -0000

I'm very disappointed to see ebates in this list. For those who don't know they are nothing but thieves. They encourage users to install their toolbar to overwrites affiliate cookies and steal commissions. Not only that, but they make it very difficult to remove the toolbar. So for example suppose you have the toolbar installed and you visit an established coupon site. You click the link on the coupon site and you proceed to make the purchase. The affiliate running the coupon site should earn the commission, but ebates will automatically overwrite the cookie and steal the commission with the toolbar. Ebates is not any better than the thousands of other parasites on the net.

Re: 2007/11/29/open-web-awards-social-shopping/

Scott — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 02:00:12 -0000

NOMINATE: Mallicious.com

Mallicious is a Social Shopping Mall that's fully integrated into Facebook. It features coupons, deals and price comparison across many online stores. Users can "Clip" products or deals to vote them up to the front page and share them with their friends. The front page displays the most recently popular deals based on a combination of clips and clicks. Users are encouraged to browse the recent price drops for new deals to vote up to the front page and share with their friends.

Users can watch an aggregated list of deals from their friends via the "Social Deals" section inside the Facebook spp.

Re: 2007/12/21/open-web-awards-winners/

Scott — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 19:29:58 -0000

IMO Zlio and Woot aren't Social Shopping sites. Neither allow users to post products or deals or include any sort of social bookmarking mechanism. I think over the past couple years this has become the overall consensus on the definition of social shopping. These awards are going against this definition.

Re: 2008/09/10/win-a-pass-to-next-weeks-web-20-expo-ny/

Scott — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:44:05 -0000

I'd love to attend for the Development track. We currently run a social network for developers, so this is right up our alley. What particularly intrigues me is the OAuth session. We're currently working on implementing OpenSocial and would love to understand the inner workings of OAuth to better understand the platform and the RESTful API. Currently the PHP version of Shindig (OpenSocial) doesn't support OpenSocial 0.8 because the OAuth component isn't complete. Maybe I can complete this component to further the Shindig project. Not to mention all the other sessions in this track that will help us improve our network in terms of scalability and relevance.

Re: 2008/09/23/google-g1/

Scott — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:24:50 -0000

Android still has a way to go in terms of market share. For now I think I'll build an iPhone app and simply port it over to Android when the time is right. Google shouldn't be underestimated though because when you compare OpenSocial to Facebook's fbOpen, Google is the clear leader. fbOpen still won't install on most operating systems, yet OpenSocial is already ported completely to PHP and Java with many more languages coming.

Re: 2008/09/24/blogworldexpo-recap/

Scott — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 03:28:49 -0000

This was my 2nd Blogworld and I had a great time. What's next? It looks like lots and lots of comments and twitters. The web is speeding up and we want updates on everything every minute of the day. We're passing blog comments to Twitter and getting them duplicated on Facebook because of FriendFeed. We're building lists and lists of friends and followers on all the social networks and syndicating our every move online and off. If anything Blogworld gave us all a slap in the face about really how fast the internet is evolving.

Re: 2008/09/29/social-media-consultant/

Scott — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:04:26 -0000

I certainly agree with your comment about Twitter. I've been to conferences where sessions about leveraging social media to improve conversions ends up being a huge advertisement for Twitter. Sure, it's a very useful tool, but there are many more tools than just Twitter. And in the end it comes down to the value you provide on your own site and the methods you use to engage your community on-site.

Re: 2008/09/29/vysr-opensocial/

Scott — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:12:09 -0000

This is a pretty neat tool. I love the fact that they use OpenSocial. The platform has come a long way since it was announced last year. It's becoming very stable and the developer community is growing quickly. I'm not too sure how this is better than simply going to Twitter or Flickr in a new browser tab though, but it does have its charm.

Re: 2008/09/29/social-media-consultant/

Scott — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:54:21 -0000

Jason, any consultant who has had any success should know that its not them who's going to make it happen. Its really the product that drives the campaign. I'd be more wary of consultants who take on a new client with no concern over the quality of the product. Without a good product social media just won't work for you. I'd keep my eye on the consultants who are picky about their clients.

Re: 2008/09/29/hey-youre-not-supposed-to-do-that/

Scott — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 01:49:20 -0000

Yep, unintended uses. I think that was part of the original "web 2.0" definition. But what's so great about it is that you don't have to own an app or website to make it work for you. You can simply use the current online offering and possibly even create a brand for yourself. The hard part is just coming up with that twist to set yourself apart from all the noise.

Re: 2008/10/02/port-facebook-apps-to-friendster/

Scott — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:20:34 -0000

I was waiting for somebody to do this. Unfortunately fbOpen is in very poor shape for mass adoption. Last time I checked you needed to collect all the dependencies to compile Firefox just in order to mod Apache to parse FBML. Its still not compatible with many operating systems and is a beast to get running. I'm surprised Friendster was able to get it running properly.

Re: 2008/10/04/facebook-bugs/

Scott — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 15:38:00 -0000

I still can't use the Facebook chat. Since I'm on OS X Camino they've classified my browser as unsupported thus no chat. Only just the other day did the bar at the bottom appear that showed my Applications link. I had been using it on top until it disappeared. I wondered why they'd just remove the Applications link completely.

Re: 2008/10/20/myfavz/

Scott — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:11:30 -0000

It's nice to see these types of sites being reviewed. Sometimes tech blogs can get too distracted by corporate funding and drama. This is what makes them interesting though, new companies coming up with new ideas. This particular site is interesting for gift giving but I do agree that the design looks a little outdated. It also seems like it could use some work in terms of interfacing with social networks like Facebook to pre-populate friends. Definitely a notable effort in terms of building a site that fills a need and is directly profitable.

Re: A Crash Course in Comments

Scott — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 02:29:55 -0000

Good post, I agree the most with "give to get" and "Reply as often as you can". If I can carry on a conversation with a commenter I know my job was done. Also, for those sites that require registration to post or comment Facebook Connect is a wonderful option. It reduces the barrier to entry and gets people involved with a single click. Pretty soon I suspect nobody will be willing to register anywhere to post, they'll just want to use their Facebook or Google login.

Re: A Crash Course in Comments

Scott — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 02:32:37 -0000

Wow, maybe you should add "think fast and type faster" because when I started writing my comment above there weren't any yet. After I posted there were 6 ahead of me!