It’s amazing who’s an expert SEO on Twitter. They’re popping up by the day – I guess you just add water and stir!
But sometimes things don’t seem to actually add up … as in this case:
Is it really likely that a true SEO expert – and a true PR expert – would have 16 followers on Twitter? Not very! Here’s how a true expert would do it …
First, take the time to build a decent network – a couple of hundred followers at least. Have the credentials to back it up … like the website, the work, the results.
Then announce yourself.
The problem is, of course, all these things take time. Community isn’t instant, and success seldom is too. The harsh reality is that a “quick fix” is usually only half accurate.
The quick half, that is.
When things are mashable, they will be mashed. Unfortunately, that means that users sometimes have mashed potatoes instead of baked.
Which isn’t a problem, of course, if you like mashed. But sometimes – and this is an example – mashed leads to issues. Notice the multiple duplicate posts:
I like Friendfeed, but mostly feed it on autopilot from Twitter and other services.. So, apparently, do others. When multiple services have the same information, and they’re all reporting it in … there’s a problem. I’ve seen the same problem on FaceBook … multiple feeds of the same event, leading to a low signal-to-noise ratio.
Social networks are going to need to be more careful about what they consume as feeds and inputs. Some kind of duplication filter would be an excellent idea. Obviously, the trick would be not getting any false positives and deleting important data.
The reality of the social media landscape today is that there are hundreds of networks, many interconnected in complex ways via APIs, RSS, and other protocols. While there will be some degree of consolidation in social networks, people are going to continue to join multiple networks in an attempt to be where the action is.
Networks like Friendfeed and Facebook, therefore, will have to find ways to filter the duplicates.
Tonight I failed the husband geek-test: fixing something electronic for your wife.
“But it’s not my fault,” I told my wife. “It’s Apple’s fault – WiFi is buggy on the iPhone.” And I think that’s more than a excuse. I think it’s true.
Here’s the deal: we have a wireless network. My iPhone connects to it when I’m home, as does her iPhone. No fuss, no muss: fast free connection to the internet.
But when Teresa puts her phone in Airplane mode at night (as do I) and then wakes it back up again in the morning, turning Airplane mode off … WiFi never comes back automatically.
On my iPhone, turning Airplane mode off returns the phone to the state it was in when Airplane mode was first activated. On my wife’s, it changes the state to something different. In other words, it does not fully undo Airplane mode.
Now, before you ask:
- same phone (iPhone 3G)
- same firmware (latest updates from Apple)
- same settings (General, network, WiFi, you name it)
- OK, hers is black and mine is white
So what gives? In doing some googling, I notice that someone has the exact opposite problem. Others, on Apple’s support forums, have the same problem. Some can fix it by resetting network settings, some can’t. (You can put us in the can’t category.)
Very, very, very odd.
Here’s a visual overview of the problem in a slideshow:
If you don’t really want people communicating on your site … you don’t really want feedback on your articles … you do really want to spam people … you do really want to “monetize eyeballs” … and you don’t really care that your brand is in the toilet …
Then you act very web 1.0 and have a comment registration form like ZDNet’s:
I wanted to comment on Michael Krigsman’s latest pay-attention-to-me-I’m-relevant flamebait article, only to be met by that monstrosity of a sign in form. And it’s only part one!
Note that all fields are required. Odd, for some reason they’re not asking for your credit card too! Perhaps a copy of your fingerprints or DNA would be appreciated.
Nothing says “we don’t care about our users” like a sign-in form that is so completely, so obviously, and so unashamedely commercial and self-serving.
How very web 1.0.
I’m listening to Dale Mugford at WordCamp Whistler who works for BraveNewCode.
They put out a WordPress plugin, WPtouch, which transforms your blog to a very quick and friendly “application” for iPhone, iPod Touch, and any Android phones.
I just installed it here while listening, then tested on my iPhone.
Very cool – check it out yourself!
I’m currently (10:35 Saturday January 24th) at WordCamp Whistler and the whole room is tapping on keyboard while listing to speakers.
This is not a live-blog of WordCamp Whistler, but it is a little memo-pad of things I’m learning hearing.
- Title tags
Use title tags in all links for SEO purposes … I don’t do this, and haven’t in this post either. It seems like a lot of overhead for no real (personal) benefit. If you feel differently, pls let me know!
- CoLT
CoLT Firefox extension – copies a link as HTML … so all the text and the URL is copied at once.
- WPtouch
WPtouch is a cool way to make your WordPress blog run faster on mobile devices like iPhone, iPod touch, and Android phones. Very cool – trying it now.
- The Streisand Effect
The more you try to take things off the web, the more copies of it are spread around.
- FAlbum
FAlbum is a Wordpress plugin to pull all your Flickr photos into your blog.
UPDATE:
I had to cut this post short … I got very sick partly through the day and had to leave WCW09 just after noon. That was a real disappointment, as I had been enjoying the day immensely, but hey … what can you do?
I had to drive home from Whistler (3 hours) and stopped twice for not-quite-rest breaks. Not fun at all!
BTW, here’s a list of people that I’m meeting at Whistler.
It’s 9:43 on Saturday morning and I’m at WordCamp Whistler right now. Tons of cool people here, and I want to be able to remember and connect with them, so here goes:
- Fran Chelico
Nice Moo cards!
- Caroline MacGillivray of beautynight
Founder of a charity doing makeovers for abused/neglected women
- Karen Hamilton, of tinybites
Very tiny, and very dynamic!
- Morten Rand-Hendrikson of Pink & Yellow
Morten does production for TSN’s Sportsnet as well as freelance web development. He’s also speaking today, and is married to …
- Angela Chih of Dabbler.ca
Married to Morten, and a producer for CBC.ca, and an online videographer.
- Jeremy Latham, of Latham Communications
Free-lance web development
- Kenya, a Master’s student from Brazil … WITH NO WEBSITE! Ghastly.
- Lorelle VanFossen is speaking now
- Rebecca Bollwit, better known as Miss 604
Rebecca is live-blogging the wordcamp here. For those who are not from Vancouver … 604 is our local telephone area code.
- Kathy at MommyMotivation.me and DesperatelySeekingWordpress
- Dale Mugford of BraveNewCode
- Martin Wong and Saleh of SmartNet
An Alberta and BC ISP
- Andrew Smith, of SOMENICE
A freelance developer who lives here in Whistler – lucky guy!
- John Biehler of JohnBiehler.com
- Kris Krug
Photographer, blogger, designer, developer.
UPDATE:
I had to cut this post short … I got very sick partly through the day and had to leave WCW09 just after noon. That was a real disappointment, as I had been enjoying the day immensely, but hey … what can you do?
I had to drive home from Whistler (3 hours) and stopped twice for not-quite-rest breaks. Not fun at all!
If there’s anyone else who was there and wants to be on this list, just add a comment and I’ll add you to the body of the post.
Those of use know live and contribute online know what captchas are and what their purpose is. And we all, uniformly, hate them with a passion usually reserved for Nazi war criminals or past US presidents.
But, generally we accept that to keep blogs and other social spaces on the web free of spam, we’ll submit to the hassle of typing in some nonsense word that purports to communicate that we are, in fact, human and not Martian.
But this captcha is not just annoying. It’s pure, unadulterated evil. In fact, you can almost see the vitriolic green acid oozing out:
It stands to reason, therefore, that this is a captcha from Google, the company whose founders have famously promised to do no evil.
Somebody call Sergei and show him this!
Robert Scoble knows who I am! He cares about what I do! He wants to know when I’m in the office, and when I go to Starbucks, and when I have an ingrown toenail! He’s following me on Twitter! I matter!
Or not.
This is obviously a fake Robert Scoble on Twitter … with about 50,000 fewer followers, and 20,000 fewer following than the very similar-looking real deal.
Here’s the real Robert Scoble on Twitter. I think he’s following me too.
But if anybody thinks that actually matters, I’ve got some beachfront property in Alaska for you. It’ll be great in 300 years, when global warming finally kicks in.
My iPhone is currently paired with my iMac, and I want it paired with my MacBook. So I go to synchronize it and this is the message iTunes gives me:
“Are you sure you want to sync applications? All existing applications and their data on the iPhone “John Koetsier’s iPhone” will be replaced with applications from this iTunes library.”
Interesting.
To me, synchronization means that two or more applications have a little chat. They find out what each other knows, and update each other to include any data that each individually has, and the most current version of any shared data.
Anything else – such as this iTunes “sync” – is just export and import.
Which means that in this case, iTunes synchronization is at best a white lie, and at worst deceptive.
I’ve been using Twitter for probably over a year. But I’ve really only being using Twitter for perhaps 3 months.
In that time, there’s a few things that I think would add huge value to Twitter:
- Context
Yeah I know it’s a river. But some rivers have tributaries, channels, and eddies. Some of them are even dammed. And it’d be nice to have some context for your latest tweet: “Need help with my current project.”
- Categories
Look, there are some people we follow because we know them. Some we follow because we think they’re interesting and make us smarter. Some we follow because they’re famous, and everyone else is doing it anyways. And some we follow just because they followed us.
I’d like to be able to categorize followers – and people I’m following. Better yet, do it for me: geographically, by industry … and let me tag them.
- Space for URLs
Every single web address on every single profile is cut off. When it’s ubiquitous, you know you’re doing something wrong.
- Quoted messages for DMs
I know I already have context down, but it’s a particular problem for direct messaging. When someone says “I have a new red door,” and I DM 2 hours later “Interesting, how big is it?” … how on earth do they know what I’m talking about?
- Searchable following/followers
Right now, I want to send a message to a Twitter feed I’m following for a conference. I know it starts with W … but I don’t remember the exact name. How can I find it today? Only by tediously paging through lists of result pages. And they’re not even alphabetical! So I have to do a search of ALL Twitter users to find the one I want … and it’s only even possible because I happen to know most of the username.
I think I’d even settle for sortable following/follower lists …
I’m not in the make-Twitter-do-everything camp. It’s simple, and that’s great. But would just a few more features to improve the signal-to-noise ratio be so bad?
BTW, here I am on Twitter. Follow me!
Chinook school district in southern Saskatchewan just doled out $200K worth of payola to the Business Software Alliance.
The problem? Some drafting software that was accidentally copied on to all computers in a lab during an upgrade.
The BSA came calling – rather like the RIAA – and demanded more than twice the MSRP … almost $650,000. It’s almost like the local “business protection association” run by burly men with bent noses and Italian accents.
But here’s the kicker:
Because the incident was not a budgeted item, the school division has to identify areas of cost savings in its system. In particular, Choo-Foo said the division is looking at some of its licensing agreements. “We’re moving more into the direction of freeware and shareware that’s available, and finding products that still meet our needs.”
The BSA won this battle. But it’s likely going to lose the war …
Great post on Wired on the mobile geo-available lifestyle.
Letting everyone know where you are whenever you are there, however, might have a few hazards. Everything, after all, is now mashable:
And location info gets around. The first time I saw my home address on Facebook, I jumped—because I never posted it there. Then I realized it was because I had signed up for Whrrl. Like many other geosocial applications, Whrrl lets you cross-post to the microblogging platform Twitter. Twitter, in turn, gets piped to all sorts of other places. So when I updated my location in Whrrl, the message leaped first to Twitter and then to Facebook and FriendFeed before landing on my blog, where Google indexed it. By updating one small app on my iPhone, I had left a giant geotagged footprint across the Web.
Funny – and concerning.
OK, this is seriously funny. The latest Dilbert strips have been focused on Dilbert’s second job: DilbertFiles.
Funny, good, enjoyable … but just a comic. Or not?
Wondering a little – because I’ve read Scott Adams‘ books and know how smart he is in spite of his constant and nearly-successful attempts to hide it – I decided to check out dilbertfiles.com.
Lo and behold … there’s an actual website there:
And an actual business, to all intents and purposes. Now, because Scott Adams is congenitally disinclined to anything approaching actual work, he must have simply struck a deal with a file transfer company to re-brand their solution for him. As if the guy doesn’t have enough money already.
Life imitating art, huh? Actually, in more ways than you might notice.
As completely appropriate for our favorite corporate drone, DilbertFiles’ uploader software only supports Windows!
It’s the cherry on the cake, obviously.
I finally decided to go to WordCamp Whistler today.
It’s on Saturday January 24th, and I just made the registration deadline by about 9 hours.
Anyone else going that I know? If so, get in touch and maybe we can drive up from New West or Vancouver together …
Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology and social media.
