Have you heard the news? Yahoo has officially bought the photo-sharing startup Xoopit.

Yahoo! acquires Xoopit.

Xoopit is joining Yahoo! to make the world’s best email even better.

Yahoo! will be integrating both our photo sharing applications and our content indexing and discovery technology into Yahoo! Mail and other services over the coming months.

Xoopit has emerged as a leader in mail applications, indexing and content discovery. Yahoo! has recognized that Xoopit’s technology elevates photos to the forefront of people’s everyday email experiences. Mail is the original online photo sharing experience, and combining these two products results in an evolved inbox experience. Yahoo! Mail users can expect to see their mail become even more efficient, social and fun!

The Xoopit team would like to thank our users for all the support and guidance in developing a service that people love. We would also like to thank our angels and venture investors, Charles Moldow from Foundation Capital and Theresia Gouw Ranzetta from Accel Partners for wisdom and commitment along the way!

This is an interesting purchase from the search company, especially since they already own a very robust photo-sharing site, that some might remember, Flickr.

Why Yahoo hasn’t been able to really monetize Flickr, your guess is as good as mine. But with this latest purchase, Yahoo seems to have Gmail, search-giant and arch-rival Google’s email client, in its sights. It’ll be interesting how the companies merge.

What I don’t understand is why Yahoo hasn’t integrated Flickr into Yahoo Mail? Why buy another photo-sharing product? What are your thoughts? Post them in the comments.

Demo of what Xoopit is all about:

Seth Goldstein.Net — Thoughts on Social Media, Social Media Marketing and thought who call themselves experts from Seth Goldstein on Vimeo.

Okay, now I am a fan of John C. Dvorak. I’m a big fan of Cranky Geeks and TWIT and his blog. But I do think he is a bit full of cow poop sometimes. Especially when he decides from one bad experience withe “SEO” that SEO and those practicing it are a bunch of crackpots. Now I respect his opinion, but I really think Dvorak is shooting from the hip here with no real aim. Now I have to admit that he is a bit of an aquired taste, and though many might think he’s a total jerk and crank, I feel that he’s just a bit off with this accusation. Mark Jackson over at Search Engine Watch has a great column responding to Dvorak’s crankyness. Here’s a excerpt:

An article in a major publication last week disparaged SEO, calling it “snake oil” once again. How did the columnist decide SEO doesn’t work, and that its practitioners are a bunch of snake oil salesmen? Well, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (I hasten to give him any attention, as that’s what he and his editor are after) had rewritten his URLs to make them search engine friendly, but lost traffic in his efforts.

Here’s his exact quote:

Search engine optimization (SEO) has turned into a big business, and from what I can tell it’s the modern version of snake oil. The unproven nonsense spewed by so-called “SEO Experts” simply doesn’t work. And worse, it’s screwing up the elegance of the Web.

Ugh. Here we go again.

First off, dear readers, I exchanged e-mails with his editor-in-chief, and even offered to rebuke this column in a column of my own on his Web site. I just can’t let false claims such as his stand uncontested. When people write columns like this, it affects our industry.

We, as an industry, accept that many people have jumped on the SEO bandwagon, calling themselves SEOs when they have a difficult time even writing compelling title tags. We know that some people will quickly respond to RFPs, get a prospect to cut a few checks, and deliver little in return. Then, there are those of us who have studied for years to understand what good SEO is and worked hours helping our clients achieve measurable results.

OK, time to respond to the column. Begrudgingly, I’ll link to it so you can read it for yourself. At least we can discuss something that works for SEO: good URL structure.

Optimizing URL Structure

The columnist refers to the “fact” that long URLs don’t work. Here’s what he wrote:

My blog had typical, efficient WordPress default URLs, such as http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=3100 or some such thing. Now on my current blog, that particular URL — which used the simple story ID number to access the post — has been supposedly SEO-optimized behind this URL: http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2005/10/20/hollywood-unions-want-cut-of-itunes-pie/.

From what I can tell, this guy did at least one thing wrong — and possibly two — with this one element of proper SEO. I wish I could speak with him directly to confirm my suspicions, and perhaps even teach him a thing or two about what real SEO involves (much more than just one thing).

First, there’s really nothing “wrong” with his original URL structure (/blog/?p=3100). There are only two trailing backslashes.

So what if the URL has a couple of dynamic characters in it (the question mark and equals sign are referred to as “dynamic” characters). Search engines nowadays do fine indexing and ranking these. So long as you’re keeping your content as close to the root as you can, you should be in good shape.

However, it’s not “optimal.” How do we make this optimal? We “optimize.”

via Ignorance: The Trouble with People Who Claim SEO is Snake Oil – Search Engine Watch (SEW).

So SEOMoz has another great Whiteboard Friday video post on when to and when not to track your ranking in the search engines. Enjoy!

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – When to Track Rankings from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Image Credit: Junta42.com

There is an interesting term circulating on the Web lately. The term is Social Media Marketing and it has become the newest hip thing to offer clients. Many marketers are touting the skill. Is this wrong? No. Is it wrong to boast a skill that you really don’t have? Yes. That’s exactly the problem. Many are saying they offer it but don’t have a clue how to leverage it for business purposes.

I know that when I decided to offer “Social Media Marketing” as a service to my clients, I decided I needed to know as much about the inner workings of these social media sites as possible so that I could explain them to my clients in simple terms that they could understand. I immediately went to Amazon and bought as many books on services like Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter as well as books on the philosophy behind social media and how use it to grow your business. After all this reading was I ready to offer the service to my clients? No. I still had to test it out on my own brand first to make sure I was able to do it. Have I found success? Yes and no. Social Media Marketing isn’t an overnight task. Like Search Engine Optimization, it takes time to grow a community around yourself and your brand and gain their trust.

A good example of how I’ve slowly built up my brand and myself in social media is on Twitter. I’ve been a member of the microblogging service since September 2007. When I first signed up, it was merely to see what it was all about. I didn’t quite understand the power of it. Honestly, most didn’t at that time. Slowly I began to gain friends on the service and build relationships. About a year and a few months later I have 550+ followers and I’m slowly seeing the effects of my hardwork.

I’ve started to do some social media work for my clients and before I start I always tell them that it takes time. They won’t see results overnight and they need to be patient and actively participate in the discussions and discourse on these services. Honestly, if any “social media marketing guru” tells a client that they can do it overnight, show them the door.

I think “Social Media Marketing” is becoming a buzz term that is popular because it has a good ring to it. What bugs me is those Twitter users or Facebook users that say they’re social media gurus but have no website with examples of how they’ve applied it to their own company. Why would you hire someone to grow your company if they haven’t even tried to do it for themselves first.

The best test-subject is yourself. Before you go to market with a product try it out on yourself first. Iron out the bugs and figure out how you can apply it to other people. Only then do you market it to others. Not before.

Even with the growth of this new industry, people are going to continue to claim skills that they don’t really have. It’s up to the customers to find the ones that really are the real deal.

I want to hear your views on this. Please post your comments below!