DISQUS

Heh 2600 meetings in June of 1987 ... that was a good time for me. I was being born :D (in June of that year, not at a hacker meeting!)

Or perhaps they were convicted because they aid and abet copyright infringement, if we're gonna be honest with ourselves about this. I've used them, so I'm no saint either, just saying that the conviction isn't bc the judge is biased.

This has proven effective repeatedly over the years. When I first sought links from the bigshots in SEO, I got nowhere. When I became friends with a bunch of folks outside the A list, the A list took note and linked to me. It's kind of strange, but that's how it works. I guess the bigshots want to see social proof before they'll pay attention to you.

I'd add some tips from personal experience.

1) Video is good for those things that are sensory, in particular. Hence food videos are good, mousepad videos... not so much.

2) " Evaluate tools <-- add possibilities+function here " Make that, "evaluate existing tools" and search for synonymous descriptions of what you want on google (e.g. try the words 'script' 'clone' 'program' 'software' 'download' 'tool' and plural versions of those, in combination with problem keywords, solution keywords etc.

I've skipped this step before or only done a cursory search, which has led me to spend $1000s on custom programming, when the $30 out-of-the-box script could probably be customized for $100...

Congrats man - can't think of a more deserving guy!

It probably makes leaving comments encouraging horizontal-dance products more difficult. You need to think like a jedi, master Luke ;). Notice how I cleverly avoided tripping your filters with the word sex? Aw fuck.

The second is actually a parody of bubble 2.0, which itself made fun of the web 2.0 trends. Great video to watch!

This kind of calls other people clueless because they don't behave the same way you do. Or clueless because of other people's actions. That's like saying the Canadiens will lose the Stanley Cup because of debates in the German Parliament - totally irrelevant. I think that's a pretty arbitrary statement, Brett, and I personally disagree.

For instance, if i want to use Twitter for personal interaction with known acquaintances, why should I bother following miscellaneous people who want to be my friends?

Facebook scales. Easier to make ads than apps.

Started off a bit generic/slow, but really enjoyed the case studies.

My take on measuring social media is that, since social is about relationships/conversation, measure the #/strength of relationships you build over time, using it.

I'd now refine that using your idea of demographics/target audience to: # of business-relevant relationships/conversations you've had. The flip side is that socializing just cuz u hope to "use" or 'get a benefit' from the relationship will turn people off/be less effective. So this would need to be targeted in a general way, e.g. networking within certain communities/sites, but not down to the user level. I.e. engaging with Sphinn to make internet marketing connections, but not with any given person for what internet marketing help they may provide you.

Same idea as attending networking cocktails within your industry, really.

If you click my name, you can find my post on measuring social media

You say that's modern communication - 10 years ago couldn't they have called you on the phone and solved this? I mean the update would not be seen by 100% of the people who saw the criticism, but then the reach being about the same with the update, you might arguably still do them good for thse reading how Nova is a good egg etc.

What do you think?

Excellent point about people who are already passionate being turned into brand advocates.

I'd argue it's a question of self-respect/dignity - people can't be made to feel as if they've been conned. That's why my intro to marketing course in CEGEP taught us that after a purchase, people talk about it with friends/family to validate their decision and be comfortable with what they did - they're seeking reassurance that it was a good buy (compliments on how nice the car is matter too, but that's besides the point). That's why folks are OK with paid reps, so long as the relationship is disclosed - they feel they can make an informed decision, and avoid being taken advantage of. Perhaps more than self-respect, it's an instinct of self-preservation?

Fascinating the depth of comments you get here.

How about scanning your signature into an image file and then adding it to contracts, then sending it back as a read-only file?

If you saw the interview with Marcus Frind in Inc magazine, you'd perhaps get the Yahoo mindset. He made Plenty of Fish, an online dating site w/ 10M year in revenues and 3 employees besides himself. He ignores feature requests from his users, arguing that they are mostly made by a fringe and teh mainstream don't care for this.

I'd say those two groups map well to geek early tech adopters and the rest of the world. Yahoo may be trying to go direct to the mainstream.

Of course, they are screwing up by introducing friction into the process as you noted so well.

Interesting post!

Wrote about this recently in my analytics category: One thing I like to do with analytics is check out how SEO savvy my readers are. One way to do that is looking at the search referral parameters to see if they have personalized search turned off and/or whether they're browsing for another country's search results.

You can also tell loyalty/branding if people search the exact name of a post you wrote (assuming the title wasn't generic, like "what is SEO").

One thing no one seems to have mentioned is the advertiser's perspective.

These ads and variations on them (in color/size/shape, but textually the same and with the same idea of 4 levels of credit) are extremely effective. Otherwise you wouldn't see such ads running everywhere.

Compare that to 'Powered by mosso' (What is powered by mosso? Search? Hosting? Something else? I know it's hosting, but that's not the point?) or the barely legible Thesis ad you have here. Guarantee you the ROI is higher on the credit ad.

Now if the NYT were really smart, they'd cut out the middlemen and work with the credit companies directly to place ads like these.

Oh I get it now. I like the platform metaphor :). Just hadn't gotten it at first cuz I thought it was platform in the software sense.

I don't see which one - Platform or Commons would be 'what i had for breakfast' messages and what would be 'top 10 tips for twitter' type messages. Platform has a generic 'everyone on the [train] platform hears this' sound just like commons suggests a common ground.

Can you clarify which is which?

I'm more of the opinion that Twitter is ubiquitous for some people, rather than it being a 'ubiquitous computing brand,' which would imply that:

a. It's on everyone's computers - being on the web doesn't count bc then everything is ubiquitous. Most people aren't using Twitter.
b. It's a computing brand - it's a communication brand.

My friend Rachel spends hours of her free time reading articles on Wikipedia.

Funny thing is I've been meaning to write a post like this about the domaining side of things. Time to get around to it. Like your post btw, but it seems you've also likely not done this yourself. Most of these searches are informational and not very interested in ads, in my experience. Of course, if you can do ppc-to-cpm arbitrage (look for my youmoz post on that) then you're in the money on every click. But that's a tough game to play.

Funny thing is I've been meaning to write a post like this about the domaining side of things. Time to get around to it. Like your post btw, but it seems you've also likely not done this yourself. Most of these searches are informational and not very interested in ads, in my experience. Of course, if you can do ppc-to-cpm arbitrage (look for my youmoz post on that) then you're in the money on every click. But that's a tough game to play.

Fascinating idea Chewie. I find the never gonna give you up bit quite amusing. Write an update if he does pull the 301 a few months down the road.

@Rob - My pleasure, that's a badass tool you've got.
@Tom - That's one that falls on the unethical side. But then, I doubt if BHs are doing this rather than generating stuff fully. Just seems like unethical whitehats stealing your content.

@Charles - OK, let me rephrase that - to tamper with algorithms or falsify them for personal gain is not unethical. That's like saying tweaking your own code is unethical - obviously not the case.