Category Archives: blogs

Scoble: Facebook, Techmeme, Mahalo (!) will depose Google

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Scoble’s provocatively suggesting that Google should fear Facebook, Techmeme, and Mahalo.   I think his key assumption is that these social media environments are resistant to spammy SEO tricks and therefore will do a better job of delivering relevancy over time than Google which will continue to be weighed down by junky content and spamming.

But … I think he’s wrong.   Google could be deposed by a better search tool, but I don’t think that will come from any of these three.    Techmeme is great and I think will gradually scale into a powerful blog tool, Facebook is already on it’s way to co-dominance (with myspace) as the social network of choice for many.    I’m skeptical Mahalo will gain much traction.   I have not been following it all that closely but Mahalo’s “top of mind” prominence seems to be more from Jason’s amazingly aggressive promotional efforts than from a natural rise in the ranks.    But depose Google?   Nope, not gonna happen from these players.

Public Speaking Tips from Brett

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Brett Tabke is the excellent owner and “last stop” moderator of WebmasterWorld, the largest forum in the world dealing with Search Strategies and SEO. “PubCon” is the WMW conference and is held annually in Las Vegas and at other cities during the year.

The PubCon blog has Brett’s excellent article that is suggesting detailed tips on Public Speaking and preparing a good presentation.

Unfortunately for all of us even good advice goes largely unheeded by speakers for reasons I’ve never understood. Part of the problem is that self-confident, smart folks often are poorly prepared, thinking they can “wing it” because they’ve seen other self-confident smart folks *look like* they wing presentations when in fact really good talks are usually canned and focused more on entertainment than education. I often want to gag when I hear people rave about an entertaining talk as if they learned something, only to 1) note that the talk probably was not really about anything of much substance and 2) watch the raver’s future behaviors change NOT A WIT.

I’ve given several travel technology presentations and I’ve sat through *a lot* of conference presentations over the past ten years or so and it’s pretty clear to me that speakers are more born than made, and they are entertainers not educators. Real learning can be fun but it takes brain work most conference folks simply don’t want to do. This is why the unconference is so effective.  I noted that my “popular” talks tended to deal very simply with complex topics and not go very deep, which just confused people.  Also I’d throw in fun or intriguing items to keep people interested.  Unfortunately this made it tough to really “dig in” and talk about the intricacies of the topic.

For every Guy Kawasaki there are a hundred regular folks and another hundred lousy speakers. Guy is a superb speaker with – I think – a lot of canned presentations that “feel” spontaneous. He injects some anecdotes to shake it up a little, but the one time I heard him talk it was just too polished to be “real”, and I was told after that somebody had seen the same talk before – I think more than once!

Blog SEO from Matt Cutts

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Matt Cutts, of Google fame, recently spoke at WordCamp gathering for WordPress blog enthusiasts (like Matt himself, who blogs with WordPress rather than Google’s excellent blogging product “Blogger”).

This blog post points to Matt’s PowerPoint and several other sources for summaries of this presentation.

Matt’s view on SEO is important because most experts would suggest that he’s probably the most knowlegeable search expert *in the world* and is one of the few search engineers who is privy to basically all of Google’s Algorithmic secrets. Also, in my opinion Matt is honest and straightforward with advice, and therefore if he’s suggesting an SEO approach you are well advised to take it. I should note though that this view is not shared by some of the elite SEO people who seem to think Matt will sometimes “misdirect” people to protect the precious Google Algorithm.

My comment over there was:

Excellent post and links here Matt.
However I have a “beef” with the emphasis on linkbaiting and basic SEO as good ways to rise in the ranks (they ARE, but should not be).   I’d argue that in an ideal search environment SEO would have effectively *zero* effect on ranks (because it’s communicating with the bot not the user), and linkbaiting things would have only a minor effect unless they were highly relevant to the query.
We now see a lot of SERPS where you see a bunch of sites, all similar, ranked more according to how their SEO, history, links, structure match Google’s expectations rather than how a user would view them. Google generally argues that these are essentially the same but they are probably only roughly correlated.
The fix for this would be greater transparency in the ranking process combined with greater penalties for being deceptive.  If Google is going to aggressively defend the integrity of the algorithm the ranking process should be more accessible, especially to mom and pops who will increasingly flirt with disaster as they try to find ranking advantages.

Google Phone coming in 2008

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Computer World says that Google may market an iPhonesque mobile device next year.  I bet it’ll be great.    I wrote an article over at the TechDirt Insight Community about this a few months ago (before the news from Computerworld – I didn’t realize Google had a phone project in the hopper already).

Here’s what I wrote over there in response to an insight community issue:

Google is in a spectacular position to launch a mobile device for many reasons, here are three:

1) Branding power.   Google is already verb “to search online” and could become a noun with the “Google” handheld broadband/phone/pda.

2) Speed of development due to corporate structure.

3) Existing prototype.
Apple’s iPhone already exists as a new standard for this type of device, effectively saving years of prototyping.   The Google device will have all this functionality PLUS better web integration (thanks to Google’s greater familiarity with online systems and also will have a LARGER touchscreen, which will ultimately determine the winner in this category because browsing ease is the greatest appeal of these devices.

Apple has hyped and branded this type of device already.   However, it will have poor initial adoption due to cost and competition from inferior but similar devices.     Google can subsidize the devices in part by letting this device Google’s mobile advertising platforms, undercutting Apple’s cost by hundreds of dollars per device.

Features and functionality:  Much like the Apple iPhone, the device would have a relatively large touchscreen interface (but larger than iPhone –  a key marketing point for the Google).  Flexible web browsing without mobile programming required for sites.   The device will provide a quality phone, high quality camera, and have PDA functionality.   Pictures, voice, and PDA functions will automatically integrate with an online control panel the user can access from the device or from any computer.   Google mail and Calendar online entries would synch with the device to allow offline mailing and calendar access.   This feature would also serve to enhance Google’s existing Calendar and mail which suffer from “only available online” challenges.

What would you do to make it a valuable addition to the Google product portfolio?

Mobile advertising is an explosive market, and without hardware control Google may lose market share to companies that have hardware advantages.   Also, for reasons stated above Google could create a superior device, thus winning both as a hardware and as an advertising provider.

Good luck Google.   As a stockholder in Yahoo I sure wish they would create this type of thing but I fear … they won’t or can’t.   Google can.

 

 

David Berlind’s dumb and dumber hypothesis is right on

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David Berlind is a very insightful writer over at ZDNET and I loved yesterday’s post. David observes that those who think we should not complain about computer problems are *dumb*. He also notes that even dumber are those that think their ability to solve computer problems means that others are idiots.

I’ve fixed my share of problems and as any regular computer user *must* note, many times the fixes are counter intuitive or lucky. Generally the problems that are easiest are those you spent many hours suffering with at some previous time. There’s nothing more annoying than wannabe pseudo-expert PC-hardware-hack jerks who make others feel bad after they stumble on a solution rather than noting that computers still suck in many respects. They’ve come a long way and it’s not reasonable to suggest it’s easy to redesign things to work seamlessly, but it’s downright ridiculous to suggest we should not try. Things are improving but they have a long way to go, so I agree with David and say:

Keep on complaining!

(just keep it polite – that will work better anyway)

Dvorak – 2.0 bubble to burst for sure. ?

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The normally perceptive John Dvorak may be showing signs of his “old computer” and “old media” roots by predicting that Web 2.0 will be collapsing for sure. He’s certainly correct that things *might* collapse but everybody knows this. New massive economies – be they the online economy or China’s exploding economy – are inherently somewhat unstable as they rapidly change and flex to meet new demands and bring in new ideas.

However I think John’s missing the fact that the online economy is now well established enough that although players – even big ones like Google – may fall or stumble it is very unlikely we’ll see the widespread systemic meltdown of the late 1990’s. The most important reason is that online advertising is more effective than offline advertising. Ads are the mother’s milk of online business. Google revenues, for example, are about 99% advertising. Can this market collapse? Unlikely unless because it’s delivering superior ROI to advertisers even as those advertisers continue to spend on less effective offline media, which is still the lion’s share of total ad spending.

In the 1990’s the PE ratios for companies were often off the charts, where now we see Yahoo, MS, and Google all well within the historic ranges for technology companies. The names may change but it’s very unlikely that the revenue base – advertising – will dry up anytime soon. Ergo, the web will continue to grow and evolve and continue to replace traditional media with …. better stuff.

Sorry John – time to write that screenplay?

Don Dodge has this right – Old media influence, not Web 2.0 media, is what John should be fretting about.

Caveat:   As I’ve noted before many times the new paradigm for Web 2.0 companies is an evolutionary model.   As with species we are going to see that most of the Web 2.0 companies will fail and die.  But this is NOT at all a ‘collapse’ because the system as a whole will continue to expand and thrive.    We are seeing high numbers of low capitalized companies  with VC funders of those few that get money simply hoping for a few winners.  This is, in some ways, analogous to the way nature kills off most gene mutations, leaving the most successful animals to thrive and be copied (aka reproduce).   This is not an old business model but it’s a perfectly reasonable one … unless you get killed by it in which case it’s still perfectly reasonable, you just won’t like it.

Fred’s not really bankrupt. In fact he’s right on.

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I’m beginning to think the VC folks are some of the clearest thinkers out there and Fred’s latest post shows some of that practical no-nonsense thinking about two topics I’m very interested in: Blog comments and Facebook.

Fred correctly suggests to Jason Calcanis that turning off his comment section is premature. Sure Jason is busy working on lots of projects and sure he’s sick and tired of pruning stupid comments from idiots but … hey! What about MY comments dude? “Comments off” misses much of the point of blogging, which is not just to talk but to *listen* and get the conversation going.

I’m not an “A list blogger” like Jason but for me the most rewarding posts have had a lot of comments and discussion surrounding them. It’s especially neat when you become an observer rather than a participant as often happened to me when I was blogging the Kim family search in December. Sure I had trolls and a lot of administrative challenges but this is what the new big conversation is all about.

I really enjoyed the great insights over at Marc Andreesen’s blog, but when he turned off the comments I felt personally insulted. Hey, I’d left some good ones there. In fact I don’t read Marc much now even though he’s got great stuff to say. Irrational of me? I don’t think so. Blogging is one-sided enough when you can post things – even the best of comments are relegated to “second class” status on the blog.

The least a blogger can do is give others the time of day. Without comments a blog is just a ranting rag. There are lots of good rants out there but if I cannot participate in your conversation with other interested and interesting folks I don’t want to hang around anyway.

Fred’s also right about Facebook. Here is the comment I left over there because I could:

Excellent post Fred. I’d suggest that it is now up to Facebook to rise to this occasion of their great prominence and keep making it easier for other sites and aps to integrate with Facebook, and perhaps as importantly make money from doing this.

If Facebook succeeds and we can all start using Facebook as our Social networking tool without sacrificing *any functionality* on other sites then they deserve the huge rewards this would bring them

Hey, I just read Jason Calcanis ‘ reply to Fred, which is very thoughtful and I have to say does a good job of defending himself against the elitist tag I’m painting Jason with above for not allowing comments. Frankly, I love his idea where *everybody* gets a blog and then we have a bunch of pinging going on rather than commenting. This would help with the blog revolution because we’d all be reading a lot of new blogs, rather than just comments, in the course of following A list discussions.

The rumors of PodTech’s death may not be greatly exaggerated?

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Update:   As far as I know PodTech is doing fine as of December 2007, and the rumors back in July were bogus or exaggerated.   Just heard from John Furrier that PodTech will again host a “bloghaus” at CES, one of the neatest “social tech” ideas last year in my opinion.    I’m a big fan of all that Robert Scoble has done to evangelize quality corporate blogging and really wish PodTech the best.

——————–

Mike Arrington is reporting that PodTech is in trouble. I think this is consistent with the idea that content is no longer king – it’s a pawn in the big game to leverage the flood of free content and social networking activity, a game where the winners will NOT be the product of doing the “right thing”, rather winners will be the survivors of the evolutionary process that drives our rapidly changing digital ecosystem. Biological evolution works *away from failure* rather than towards success, and it seems clear to me this is also how internet company evolution works.

Mike suggests that PodTech might survive in modified form by scaling back and lowering their “burn rate” and focusing almost exclusively as a production and advertising house focusing on their own clients. I wrote over there:

Good insight as usual Dr. Mike.

“… get their burn rate very low” ummmm – can you cite any examples of a companies that did this in time to survive?

I enjoy Robert’s perspectives and consider him a real blogging leader and a digital inspiratation to the rest of us, but I don’t have the time to invest in his videos or PodTech’s other rich content. (just the facts please!)

Producing quality content is now playing with pawns rather than kings, and for some time it will be the companies that leverage the flood of free content or help people process the maelstrom of content that will win. e.g Facebook, Google, and your personal favorite winner, TechCrunch!

The painful thing if PodTech dies is that they did so many thing exactly “right”. They saw video and blogging as sweeping new online paradigms, they hired Robert Scoble who is nothing short of a digital inspiration to bloggers and video folks – he’s one of the elite onliners who puts his blog, money, reputation where his mouth is and actually engages non-elites regularly and with gusto and stays about as Web 2.0 connected as you can without exploding. Also, PodTech sponsored what looked to me like CES’s best new idea – the Bloghaus.

But planning and quality don’t necessarily breed success in biology or business, and PodTech may be just one more example of the harsh new evolutionary realities facing any digital animal.

As Paul K infectiously notes business plans are overrated. Twitter’s lack of a business plan may be the flip side of the evolutionary challenges – disorganization won’t hurt them and might even be part of the reasons it’s looking like Twitter will be …. hugely successful.

Forbes “Tech Boom, Media Bust”

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Brian Caufield has written a great Forbes piece about the impact of new media on … old media. He notes the rise of GigaOm and TechCrunch and the demise of Red Herring and CNET.

My take on much of the new game is that *keeping expenses low* is far more important than *generating big revenues*. We may be seeing a 180 degree turnaround in many industries where we return to small business, entrepreneurial modes of production that use the internet as the mechanism to cheaply scale from small to large. Scaling up in media industries used to take substantial capital but now it takes almost nothing. Info based industries have only begun to reel from the coming changes.

Blogging Philadelphia ?

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Wow, I’m here in Philadelphia enjoying the Hilton Hospitality with good free WIFI, but didn’t realize until tonight that the Blog Philadelphia UNconference is going on today and tomorrow.   Looks like a great and sold out event, and it’s great to see blogging conferences sprouting up outside of Silicon Valley.  I’ll miss meeting other bloggers which would have been fun, but I will plan to enjoy history and cheessteaks with the family as we explore this spectacularly historical American Masterpiece – Philly!

U-S History is one of our Online Highways websites with great history info.

Pennsylvania Travel at Online Highways

Gophila.com is a great information resource but has some serious navigation challenges.  For example the drop down menus are annoying and complex, and most crazy is the flash photo montage at the index page which almost immediately wipes out the intro screen that has the navigation a user needs.   The pix are OK, but don’t do the history justice.   I think local folks don’t realize that people don’t come to Philadelphia to see a pretty garden or Christmas light display.     They come here to see Independence Hall, Liberty Bell, Ben Franklin’s house, and the cradle of American Liberty.     I guess those things just aren’t stylish enough for the Philly web design crowd?   Sillies!