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Mar
8
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After my last post on Midwest people and social networks I contacted 7 of my friends from “back home” (1 girl, 5 guys and one couple that I count as 1 person for those interested in demographics) and nearly begged them to get on Facebook. I received one reply to the email from one of the guys:
“I didn’t think anyone wanted to see my hairy white dingleberry ass w/ a fruit bowl background online… Guess I was wrong. Somebody needs a “shocker.” Anyone remember my white dingleberry inquiry?? I now think it’s boxer lint gathering upon the dingleberry resulting in the infamous white dingleberry… Either that or old shit turns white like Matt hypothesized…”
Yes, that’s a fairly good representation of my friends from South Dakota and I love them for it. But, even when I responded and said we would love to see his hairy white ass online my friend still couldn’t manage to sign up. And no one else has even managed a response to the email.
One guy, who has always been a little ahead of that crowd when it comes to utilizing the internet (because he “went away” to college I presume) did find me on Facebook so I am now only +1 in the quest to recruit late 20’s/early 30’s Midwest folks into social networking. But I won’t give up that easy.
Feb
24
Twitter Trivia Game
Filed Under Twitter | Leave a Comment
As you know I am a fan of Twitter, but I have yet to find a Twitter group participation thing - Frozen Peas, Twitter Dating (no seriously it exists), etc. - that I was in to. Until now that is…Dan Perry is launching Twitter Trivia. Dan will tweet trivia questions and tally points for the 3 first correct responses. At the end of March he will announce the winners and maybe even have some prizes. If Twitter Trivia takes off, Dan will potentially offer more features like a leader board, “I know more useless crap than you” badges and more. I love trivia and competing for pointless titles so follow FunTrivia to play and help ensure Twitter Trivia will be a success.
If you want to see my pathetic attempts at answers, follow me too.
For those of you who haven’t warmed up to Twitter yet, this might be a great time for you to try it out and connect with people who share a common interest in knowing what the Knights Who Say Ni demanded King Arthur bring them*. And above all, have some fun!
*The answer is a shrubbery of course
Feb
16
In a recent article called If You Can’t Let Go, Twitter, author Michelle Slatalla recounts her failed attempts to get her family to use Twitter to communicate more efficiently. Slatalla tried to recruit her husband and three daughters - 18, 16 and 10 years old. Of the four recruits, her husband was the only person that managed to slightly grasp the concept. Her 18 year old was quoted saying “It’s too complicated” and her 16 year old said the site was “confusing”. Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, responded saying “We do have a lot of work to do to make it simpler and clearer to use”.
Confusing? Too complicated? Make it simpler and clearer to use? What could be simpler than typing 160 characters (or less) and hitting update? Twitter doesn’t suffer from feature bloat or an over complicated UI. I understand people not “getting” Twitter if they’ve never used it. I even understand people not liking it once they try it. But not even being able to figure out how to use it is just asinine.
I imagine that Slatalla’s children are not as dense as this article makes them seem. Instead, I assume her children were not interested in Twitter because their mother wanted them to use it. If my mom had suggested we text each other when I was 16 I may have reacted like her children did to Twitter. In a month they will probably be twittering away to their friends and acting like they discovered Twitter all on their own. That should provide Slatalla with some material for another article.
Feb
13
Information is so readily available that it is incredibly frustrating when I can’t find something I am looking for online. That doesn’t happen too frequently, but last night was a great example. I was watching an episode of Bravo’s Make Me A Supermodel (MMAS going forward) in which the model-wannabes had to walk for a designer at New York Fashion Week. 
I fell in love with the dress shown here and wanted to know where I could get it. I knew the designers name (FORM), that they were based in New York and that they had been featured on the show. That should be enough to find their website right? Wrong.
I searched numerous combinations of FORM, clothing line, New York, Make Me A Supermodel, clothes and designer to no avail. I did find many blogs mentioning the label being on the show, but none of them linked to the FORM website. Probably because they couldn’t find it either. So I dug through the MMAS website and found that the full name of the label is FORM by Terry Jam, but still no link to their website. First and foremost they should have negotiated a link from Bravo to their site. How many people do you think went to Bravo’s site after they watched the show so they could check out FORM’s clothes and dead ended there?
Searching for “Form by Terry Jam” got me to their websites, jerrytam.com and formnewyork.com. Unfortunately the websites are basically useless on many levels. First, from an optimization standpoint, the sites blew my mind…or just blew. Just about everything they could possibly make an image, they did. Even the bio text is an image. Most of their page titles consist of one word such as “information” or even worse their abbreviations for the collections such as “FWO8INTRO”. FORM is apparently affiliated with scatolaus.com, an entirely Flash site. Maybe they got advice from Scatolaus on how to develop websites so exclusive no one can find them, like LA bars in Swingers.
I could go on for days about all the things wrong with the site from an optimization angle but you get my point. The sites also couldn’t be harder for a consumer to navigate if blind monkeys developed them. In order to find the dress I apparently have to know what collection it’s in. I understand the designer’s need and want to have the collections viewable as a whole. But for usability sake, it would also make sense to tag each item by type (dress, pants, scarf) and color so people find the style of items they are interested in through a simple search. Maybe this will happen when they launch their online store this month (doubtful) “with newest online e commerce site“.
Obviously I found the dress on the site, so why am I still so annoyed (other than the fact I couldn’t buy it)? Because FORM probably paid good money to have those sites made. And they probably have no idea their sites blow or that they are missing out on potential customers. Now, while I believe that anyone that is purchasing a website for their business should do their due diligence and research what they are buying, I also believe that creating a website as carelessly as these ones were is negligent. I’m not saying you have to optimize a site for a client that isn’t paying for it, but you shouldn’t build a site that is just a painting hung in a dark hall of the internet. If even for your own pride and reputation, you should create sites that have a baseline standard for quality and usability (as I have said before). Creating a site that does nothing for your client won’t likely get them to return when it’s time to upgrade. However, if the site you create gives them a taste of what they could get, they may come begging for more.
Feb
5
Two of My Favorite Things About Twitter
Filed Under Twitter, Video | 8 Comments
Jan
30
Google Web Activity Calendar
Filed Under Google | 2 Comments
David Dellanave did a post today titled How Much Would You Pay To Use Google where he showed his Google Web Activity Calendar for January in an attempt to show how valuable Google is to him. However, that calendar is a representation of all web activity while logged into your Google account, not just a representation of your search activity, as shown below.
Here is my web activity calendar for January:
As you can see, the 29th falls in the 51-100 group. Looking at my web history, I had just over 90 items. Of these 90, only 12 were searches (which are designated in your history with “Searched For” and then the phrase you searched). For those that need proof, see my web history for the 29th here. And yes, I did search “send shit” and “send elephant shit”.
If the Calendar was only representative of the searches I did in a day, the 29th would fall in the 1-25 group and would be more of a light 70’s appliances green than the darker green it is now (Google obviously doesn’t care about the red/green color blind folks out there, eh?). So, that and the fact that the calendar is titled Web Activity, not Search Activity leads me to believe that the calendar shows overall web usage. Therefore, in order to really prove how valuable Google is in this sense, we’d need to analyze actual search volume, not overall activity. I think that having the option to just display search activity on the calendar would be a great addition and great way for people to see the value of Google in their daily lives.
Jan
1
I started writing a follow up to this How I Network on Social Sites post when a noticed a trend with my social networking contacts that is in contrast with most people I know online. I have accounts on numerous networking sites, including niche sites for foodies and various other vices. On those niche sites I friend everyone except people that are overtly creepy. But, I am much more selective on “the majors”. I only add people I actually know in person, or have friends in common with. Let’s just take Facebook and MySpace for instance.
With a quick glance at my Facebook graph you’ll see that it’s mostly industry people, colleagues…overall it’s people in a professional capacity, even if they are also friends.
MySpace is clearly less professional for me, as it is for most. You can see a higher percentage of friends, a category for Entertainment which includes famous people, bands, TV shows, and whatnot that I am a fan of. And yes you can even see that I have a few animals as friends.
Now what I discovered while doing this exercise is the lack of contacts that I have from school as compared to many other people I know. This is not because I don’t keep in contact with people from school. In fact, I am still quite close with many of them. The difference is that I grew up, and went to college, in square states.
I think that on the coasts, and in our industry, we take for granted that everyone is online to the extent that we are. However, a large majority of the people from the Midwest in my generation still only use the internet for email, basic information gathering and of course porn. I know it is different for the generation after mine since I see them all in the groups for my schools. But the late 20’s to late 30’s crowd is severely underrepresented.
It’s not for lack of trying or lack of information that my fellow square staters aren’t on social media sites. I invite them on a regular basis. Some have even joined but only logged in a few times. I think they are just in a different mindset. Many of them *gasp* don’t even have jobs where they are on a computer all day long! I’m going to kick up my efforts to get them online and report my success, or lack thereof, in a few months.
Dec
21
Should You Always Design With SEO In Mind?
Filed Under Online Marketing, SEO, Video | 3 Comments
And a quickie version for those of you sitting in cubes who can’t watch because you’re pretending your working:
This video is in response to a post by Jill Whalen on Search Engine Land this week following up on a debate in the High Rankings Forum about whether SEO is an extra skill or a prerequisite to being a website designer or developer. A lot of the conversation seems to center around what is best for the client or what the designers responsibility is to educate the client about SEO. I would argue however that the focus of the conversation should be what is best for your business as a web designer or developer. If you are not already offering SEO, you will be in the future. If you already offer SEO services but the client chooses not to invest in SEO at the time you design their site, they probably will invest in it later. If you were good at what you did for your client, they will most likely return to you for their future web services so you should make it easier on yourself when they do want SEO.
When you are designing and coding any new site, you should already be keeping basic principles of conversion, usability and code standards in mind anyway. So if you develop the site properly from the start, whether they are your SEO client or not, if they do become your SEO client you’ll have an easier time doing the optimization. And even if they do go to another company for their SEO services, you will want that company to see that you provided a top notch product to your client or you may quickly get a name for being a poor web designer. Anyway you look at it, keeping SEO in mind when developing websites for clients is a good idea for you and for your business.
Dec
19
Last week Yahoo! announced the release of the Shortcuts Plug-in for Wordpress which will automatically offer relevant popups to Yahoo related resources such as maps, Yahoo! Shopping and Flickr among others. As the publisher, you have the ability to choose which links you use and which you don’t. I can see this being helpful in some cases, such as linking to information on a company’s stock, an obscure location or a word you think you’re audience doesn’t know.
However, I don’t think that truly creative bloggers who frequently link out from their posts should use this tool much, if at all. One of my favorite things about Lisa Barone’s posts, other than her writing style of course, is her creative linking. If I don’t have time to read her entire post I like to scan her link text for a laugh or two. People using the Yahoo! Shortcuts tool may get lazy and resort to referencing exactly what the other gazillion people who inevitably typed the same word referenced.
Naturally, my question is when advertisers will be able to start paying for placement on keywords of their choice in Shortcuts or buy advertising inside the Shortcuts popups, making this another way to monetize your blog.
I will probably download the plug-in to test and keep an eye on it, but since I prefer writers who put a little thought into their links, I can only return the favor by not taking too many “Shortcuts”.
Dec
13
Facebook Drops the “is” Again
Filed Under Social Networking | Leave a Comment
Back in November, we saw the “is” disappear from the Facebook status for a very short period of time. This morning it is gone again and it seems to be official. Most people had resigned to just ignoring the is or being creative with their status messages to accommodate it. Now we have one less thing to bitch about today. But I bet we’ll find something new soon enough.