DISQUS

Ahh, okay, I get it now. Thanks for the clarification.

I'm a little bit confused by these statements:

1) Then social media blasted on the scene a couple of years back. People took their SEO tactics, and laid them on top of social media, completely missing the point of social media.

2) The content generated by users of social media began to rank highly in search engines, because it was RELEVANT. Because it had VALUE. Because it was TIMELY. Because it was REAL.

3) Suddenly, all the SEO experts also became Social Media Experts, as social media marketing became the hot new thing. And, being resistent to change, as most industries are, SEOs just removed the word “search engine” from their tactics, and replaced it with “social media.”

4) With the net result being social networks and user generated content that is full of useless, noisy, crap.

Is 2 the "point of social media" mentioned in 1 that the SEO folks missed? As for 4, how did these newly-rebranded Social Media Experts influence the user-generated content? An SEO/SME can tell you to make pretty, RESTful URLs, and how to structure your content, but how can they cause your users to generate crap content?

Next is this statement: "Second, select a CMS framework (I recommend WordPress), that supports solid SEO principles. With WordPress, install two plugins: All-In-One SEO and XML sitemaps. Thats it for SEO."

That's probably very sound advice for the folks that are running sites that could be powered by WordPress or another CMS. But what about all of the web applications out there that cannot?

Thanks, Micah

I have read your words. I was responding - perhaps unfairly - more to things you said on Twitter than here. "It was not satire, it was racist and stupid."

That doesn't sound to me like separating intent from execution, it sounds quite dismissive. Granted, you can't say a ton in the 140 characters Twitter allows. But even here, you declare your decision never to read the Colorado Daily again, thanks to their take on the matter. Their take appears to be "The kid was trying to write satire and blew it." (As they also point out, no one's noticing that he was far more down on whites than Asians in the piece.)

Since the first part of that seems to be quite in agreement with what you're now saying (good intention, poor execution), why is it exactly that you're never reading them again?

I am reading your words. This comment reply is the first time I've seen you mention his intent separately from what he wrote.

I am reading your words. I have no idea what your note about diversity has to do with any of this. Did Max Karson speak out against diversity? Did I? To whom are you responding, besides those who have asked you in the past why a diversity committee is needed? To bring that up here, when there seems to be no appropriate context for it, looks like posturing.

I am reading your words. Yes, the point as you've stated in your comment is simple, but I still don't see where you state it prior. I certainly don't see anywhere where you've called his intent "good", or noted that he intended to foster communication. Noting that he needs to take more writing classes sounds more like insult than insight.

I think your comment in response to mine has offered far greater insight into what you're trying to say than your blog post did, and your remarks on Twitter seemed exactly contrary. If what you say in your comment is what you really meant, then we are largely in agreement. But until you posted it, it didn't seem like that at all.

One last point: I assume that when you say you've "experienced both sides of this conversation personally" you don't mean that you've been racist, but rather that you've been the target of discrimination. Do you really think there are many among us who have not? I regret that you felt offended, but don't think that you carry some membership card that gives you insight into the matter that is not shared by many.

I've been following your twitter messages about this. I don't know how you can insist that anyone else "take a moment . . . and think" when you're clearly not. Railing against anything that mentions race or racism as if it were itself racist does not give you the facade of being hip and enlightened that you so desire. It isn't independent thought, it's mob mentality. There are millions like you, who think they "get it", and by "get it" they mean they've figured out "racism, bad. Mention of racism, also bad. I'll look sympathetic if I always speak out against racism any time it comes up. There, that was easy." You end up contributing to the problem, because the moment anyone brings up the topic it triggers you and those like you to immediately shout them down, like robots: "Racist, bad! Racist, bad! Whew, that was a close one! Good thing we were here, someone nearly had a thought."

I'll grant that the CU column by Karson was poorly executed. It wasn't very funny, and it was a bit more stinging than it probably needed to be. But it couldn't be more obvious that he was aiming for satire. If you insist that he wasn't, then you have to believe he was actually planning to round up Asians with butterfly nets.

You're not *that* dumb, are you?

I don't know that it was strictly necessary to mention in the write-up (yet again) your notion that WGS would best be used for dating; we all got that when we watched the interview and heard you mention it several times. I'm not sure why you felt compelled to call attention to it again in the write-up, unless you just had nothing else to say. But why would you call it a fact when it's clearly your opinion? You're re-defining what WGS has built, even though you were clearly told that's not what it is.

Intentionally or not, you're implying that WGS has built yet another dating app, except that they don't even know they have.

If it were my product, I think I'd be a little bit put off.

-Bill