Archive for March, 2008

Should Twitter Be Used For Serious Stuff?

Stan Schroeder wrote a piece on Mashable questioning whether the popular micro-blogging service, Twitter should be used for anything important. He writes, “Here’s a simple rule: if it’s important, don’t say it on Twitter. If it requires a response, don’t say it on Twitter. If you actually care whether anyone will see what you’ve just written, don’t say it on Twitter. Twitter, however fun it may be, simply isn’t designed for it.” Sorry, I don’t agree.

SEO Using Thematic Search Modifiers & Other Daily Finds for March 10, 2008

Here are some great and newsworthy posts I came across today including a post on how to improve organic search rankings using thematic search modifiers, a new TopRank poll looking for top reason why people attend marketing conferences, and brand awareness may be more valuable than paid search marketing.

SMX West 2008 Photos Up on Flickr

I finally got my photos from the SMX West conference in Santa Clara up on Flickr. Sorry it has taken so long but last week I spent the majority of time digging out and keeping up with blogs and social media stuff. There is just under 90 photos there, some of which were taken from the sessions I live blogged while others are more related to the night life and people we hung out with all week.

Sometimes Fixing a Site Means Breaking It First & Other Daily Finds for March 7th 2008

Here are some great and newsworthy posts I came across today including a post from friend Stoney deGeyter pointing out the fact that sometimes fixing a site with SEO means breaking it first, Google and Microsoft prepare to battle to see who will acquire Digg, Matt McGee provides an update to the 2009 SEMMY Awards site and asks for some help form the community in making it happen, and finally, page load time is confirmed as part of AdWords quality score.

10 Adobe Air Apps Worth A Look & Other Daily Finds for March 6th 2008

Here are some great and newsworthy posts I came across today including Mashable recommends 10 Adobe AIR applications for your desktop, Yahoo Maps adds more data and other improvements, despite the rumors and wide-spread speculation, Ask clarifies that they will stay committed to search, SEOmoz launched their own analytics product.

Is Ask Giving Up Battle for Search or Staying the Course? Which is True?

Lot’s of talk related to search engine Ask lately. First there were rumors that Ask would be laying off some of its workforce and abandoning the Teoma technology they had worked so hard on the last few years. Then Ask responds and calls the rumors false. Those of us who are cheering Ask on in the battle for search market share breathed a sign of relief… but not for long. The next day a story breaks reporting that Ask has laid off 8% of their workforce (40 jobs) and that they were changing the strategy of the search engine to “focus to better answering search queries posed as questions.” This was followed by a report that Ask would become a search engine geared towards married women.

If that wasn’t enough drama, today we hear from Ask once again claiming that despite all the rumors and speculation, they remain committed to search. Are you confused? I know I am.

Build Authority by Using Social Media & Other Daily Finds for March 5th 2008

Here are some great and newsworthy posts I came across today including Jeff Quipp from Search Engine people shows us how you can use social media to build authority, Ask gives up race for search market share and will become a site geared towards married women, AOL and Yahoo! are considering a merger (again), and finally, a study into whether paid search or paid content ads are better for actual site conversions.

I Am Now a Super Mixxer! What Is That?

I love the fairly new social news site, Mixx and find myself spending time there each day, adding stories and voting on others. While viewing my profile today, I see a “Super Mixxer” badge next to my name. Cool, but what does it mean? According to the Mixx FAQ page, “A Super Mixxer is a user on Mixx, who, through a combination of Karma points, high quality, diverse submissions and comments, and being a model Mixxer for at least 30 days, has access to special feature enhancements.”

3 Tools to Quickly Submit Your Sites to Web Directories & Other Daily Finds for March 4, 2008

Here are some great and newsworthy posts I came across today including 3 tools that will allow you to quickly submit your sites to directories, Microsoft Office Live Workspace now available to everyone, The SMX West Scwag Awards and Danny Sullivan is video interviewed by Michael McDonald of WebProNews.

Housekeeping: Replacing Weekly Rap-up With Daily Finds

While I do not attempt to recap all the news that happens in the industry of search and social media here on this blog mostly due to the fact that there are many others that do it quite well, I have published a Weekly Rap-up for some time now. It has been a good way to highlight some of the top stories and blog posts that are put out each week. Now we are doing away with the Weekly Rap-up and in its place will publish a “Daily Finds in the World of Search & Social Media.”

6 Gadgets That Are Sure To Enhance the Twitter Experience

For you Twitteraholics, I’d like to point out some gadgets that may help to simplify and enhance the experience of using Twitter. They range from browser plug-ins, desktop applications and even mash-ups that turn the Twitter experience into a three dimensional geographical event.