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Bookmarks for January 8th

Seth Goldstein — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:00:42 +0000

These are my links for January 8th:

Google Toilet Paper : Optimize Your Wipe | Search Engine Journal – Here’s a fun Friday post about what could be easily mistaken for a new Google product launch to accompany the Nexus One and other new Google products : Google Toilet Paper (which gives a new meaning to “just Google it”).
MediaPost – news and directories for media, marketing and online advertising professionals – If you were on vacation, similar to me, during the end of December you might have missed Twitter's big announcement. The company acquired Mixer Labs, the creator of GeoAPI, which provides developers with the ability to query data. That data can come from about 16 million businesses and thousands of points of interest. The technology also offers developers a layer on which to handle complex geographical queries and location-based services.
National Weather Service: Twitter Storm Reports – GeoTagging is the act of associating geographical information with something, and Twitter has recently added the capability GeoTagging individual Tweets. This allows the NWS to correlate each Tweet to your location when it was sent. This capability will help to enhance and increase timely & accurate online weather reporting and communications between the public and their local weather forecast offices.
Wanted: Your Weather Reports, Geotagged and Tweeted – If your natural reflex when the weather gets rough is to tweet about it, that reflex can now help the National Weather Service do its job better thanks to a new Twitter storm reporting program.
Social Media Today | Social Media Policies of 113 Organizations – With companies searching for and developing standards for social media usage, many of them have come up with social media policies of their own.
Top CMOs on Twitter – These are the top 63 Chief Marketing Officers around the world who 1) provide useful content and consistently engage with their followers on Twitter, 2) truly "get it" when it comes to the best ways to use Twitter and other forms of social media, and 3) were active on Twitter as of January 7, 2010. Please let me know if I have missed any CMOs who have 500 or more followers. After the review and confirmation process, he/she may be added to this list, which is updated regularly.
The Dawn of Facebook’s People-organized Web – GigaOM – In 2010, Facebook is setting out to structure a social layer of the web, indexing web pages and objects by harnessing what its users say about them, including whether those users like them or not, and what they tag within them.
Apple And Verizon: Are Two Star-Crossed Lovers Ready To Consummate? – Apple and Verizon. Two star-crossed lovers.
A few years ago, when Apple originally set out with the idea of giving the iPhone to one carrier exclusively in the U.S., they first went to Verizon. But the network balked at some of Apple’s demands, which at the time of complete and utter carrier dominance in this country, must have seemed like a joke. So instead, Apple with with AT&T, and the rest is history.
Anxious Yahoo BOSS Developers To Speak With DOJ About Microsoft Deal – In July 2008, Yahoo announced a radical new product called BOSS, or “Build Your Own Search Service” that lets developers tap into Yahoo’s core search index with an unprecedented amount of flexibility. Now, in light of the Microsoft/Yahoo search deal that was announced last summer, the future of BOSS is uncertain. That’s bad news for the many developers who have built projects on the BOSS APIs, some of whom are building businesses off of the service. Now, after being met with months of silence and uncertainty, some BOSS developers are taking action: they’ve scheduled a conference call with the Department of Justice to discuss their concerns.

Bookmarks for January 7th

Seth Goldstein — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 01:00:44 +0000

These are my links for January 7th:

Social Media Collective Wisdom | Who’s Blogging What (Special Edition) Jan 7, 2010 – Some expert thinking on five social media questions as we enter the first decade
Facebook Just Got Its Own VitaminWater Flavor: “Connect”. Seriously. – Here’s a first. VitaminWater has just announced that its newest flavor will be called “Connect”, complete with a Facebook logo and a full paragraph description loaded with references to untagging, friend requests, and photo stalking. It’s black cherry-lime flavored, with caffeine and “eight key nutrients”. And it’s coming to stores nationwide in March.
Ask Me, Ask Me: Tumblr Adds a New Query Feature – Good news for anyone who loves interacting with a particular Tumblr: The blogging platform has added an Ask feature that allows you to directly ask a blogger questions.
Ford SYNC Will Soon Stream Pandora Radio – 2010 is shaping up to be the year Ford SYNC forever alters how we experience digital content in our vehicles. Today, the automotive company is breaking even more ground with the news that the next evolution of SYNC will support third-party mobile applications. Get ready to stream Pandora and tweet hands-free in your Ford.
Have a Nexus One? Good, Now Tear it Down – Geeks can usually be divided into two categories: those who are perfectly happy with merely using their gadgets, and the more radical type, who simply have to tear them down to see what’s inside

Bookmarks for December 23rd through December 24th

Seth Goldstein — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 22:00:01 +0000

These are my links for December 23rd through December 24th:

Why B2B companies should be using social media | Socialmedia.biz – Many B2B companies ask me whether social media is right for them. This post is all about why social media and B2B go hand in hand.
Social media & startups: It’s a different ballgame | Socialmedia.biz – I get asked a lot: “How do I make money off social media?” Uhmm, well, you use the magic wand of online web awesomeness, obviously. Or maybe not. We have all read a million articles pointing us toward tools we should be using, things we should be considering, and the best practices we shouldn’t ignore. We get it: Social media is valuable. I think by now we all understand the importance of social media as a visibility engine and viral message maker. It can be used to enable conversations, announce information, put out fires, and so on.
It can do a lot. But it has limits. Ohhh buzz kill.
7 tips to increase your online media literacy | Socialmedia.biz – t’s become a truism that we’re all media creators now, from bloggers and podcasters to the most wet-behind-the-feathers Twitterer.
5 ways to increase the reach of your blog or RSS feed | Socialmedia.biz – You may be losing out on opportunities to improve the reach of your RSS feed or blo
DDoS Attack Takes Down Amazon, Wal-Mart – If you’ve been doing some last-minute Amazon holiday shopping on Wednesday evening, you’ve probably noticed that Amazon’s website was sluggish and, at times, completely down. The same fate greeted Wal-Mart, Expedia and a number of smaller sites. The reason? A severe DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack on the servers of Neustar, the company that offers DNS services to many major companies under the name UltraDNS.
The Pirate Bay Goes Retro for Christmas – Remember how one of the most popular torrent sharing sites, The Pirate Bay, looked back in 2003? Today, you have a chance to refresh your memory, because the pirates have gone retro, changing the layout of the site to the way it looked back then, when the Internet was innocent and there was no pile of lawsuits on The Pirate Bay’s desk.
Fun Stats: 28% Of Sites Use Google Analytics; 5% Have Facebook Or Twitter Links – # 28% of sites have Google Analytics on them
# 12% of sites have AdSense
# 5% of sites have EITHER a Twitter or Facebook link but…
# 2% of sites have BOTH a Twitter or Facebook link
Disney Wants Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg On Its Board – GigaOM – Disney’s board today nominated Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg to be its thirteenth member. It’ll be put to shareholder vote at the next Disney annual meeting, scheduled to be held March 10, 2010.
Add Clickable Links In YouTube Videos Without Using Annotations – While it is possible to add hyperlinks on YouTube videos via the built-in annotations feature, the only problem is that you cannot link to external websites from YouTube videos – that links should either point to a video hosted on YouTube or to a video search page that’s again on YouTube.
2010: Year of digital distraction? – CNN.com – The "real-time Web" is booming. From Twitter to Facebook to new search engines that discover information posted just seconds ago, it seems the 2010 Web will be fueled by our desire for instant gratification.
Mall of America Tweets Holiday Parking Updates – It may not be rocket science, but it is pretty cool: The Mall of America is using Twitter to tweet parking info for last-minute holiday shoppers hoping to avoid the ever-annoying quest for a space.
Marketing in 2010: It’s All About the Data –
Digg’s Top 10 Most Popular Stories of 2009 – It’s the end of the year, traditionally a time for self-reflection. While many of us are making our New Year’s resolutions and looking back on what we accomplished, a lot of social media companies are sifting through their data and sharing what was hot in 2009.
FTC Inquiry Hinders Google’s Acquisition of AdMob – When Google formally announced their plans to acquire mobile ad network AdMob for $750 million, they didn’t expect any regulatory interference to impede upon the processing of the deal. Unfortunately they were wrong.
3 Powerful Social Good Trends in 2010 – 2009 saw a proliferation of online charity events, competitions, and “friendraisers” that spilled across Twitter and Facebook and filled email inboxes everywhere with more requests for money than any Nigerian prince could ever hope to make. And while it’s hard to argue that this is a bad thing — anytime someone gives money to feed the hungry instead of buying another digital potato seed in Farmville, global karma rises, if even just by a little — this focus on using the web as an ever-more elaborate means of getting people to fork over cash misses the much bigger opportunities just over the horizon.
BREAKING: Twitter Buys Mixer Labs to Boost Location Features – Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams has just announced on the company’s blog that they have acquired Mixer Labs, creator of the GeoAPI.
Is Hiring a Ghostblogger a Bad Thing? – At any given time, there is usually an ongoing debate in some blogging circle about whether ghostblogging is a good or bad thing. I say it depends on how you’re using the term, and how you are using your ghostblogger.
Google News Will Not Accept Single Author Blogs – I put in an application to submit our blog to Google news, but it seems Google news will not include sites that are written and maintained by one individual!

Link Report for November 5th through November 7th

The Link Report — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:00:00 +0000

This is the Link Report for November 5th through November 7th:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at

YouTube Gives Partners More Control Over Video Blocking – Basically, there are two new buttons in the interface for partners. One says ‘Block by Country’ and provides content partners with the ability to geo-block a single video rather than an entire account, an oft-requested feature that allows partners to restrict the geographical rights for specific videos.

Do Follow – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – Most blogs are "No Follow" meaning no link juice is passed from the blog to the linked site. But some blogs are "Do Follow" read more to find out more.

Link Report for October 31st through November 2nd

The Link Report — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:00:00 +0000

This is the Link Report for October 31st through November 2nd:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at
SEOmoz | Third-Party Affiliate Programs: Roll Your Own Instead – One of the best ways to build inbound links is to create an affiliate program. It's also a great way to drive real customer traffic from related sites.

Google’s Eric Schmidt on What the Web Will Look Like in 5 Years – Google CEO Eric Schmidt envisions a radically changed internet five years from now: dominated by Chinese-language and social media content, delivered over super-fast bandwidth in real time. Figuring out how to rank real-time social content is "the great challenge of the age," Schmidt said in an interview in front of thousands of CIOs and IT Directors at last week's Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Orlando 2009.

Video SEO Tips – Getting Started – Online Marketing Blog – If you’re attempting to improve search rankings for your web pages, these days it’s no longer an option not to optimize digital assets. With search engines incorporating video, images and news into standard search results, marketers have the opportunity to achieve increased visibility by implementing video SEO principles.

Link Report for September 30th through October 29th

The Link Report — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:23:33 +0000

This is the Link Report for September 30th through October 29th:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at
Mobile And Social Platforms Want To Be The King Of Local Search – The study shows that the web generally, but in particular mobile and social network search, are increasingly factors fueling growth in the overall search market. This grew to 21.9 billion total US searches in June 2009, a year-on-year increase of 31%.

10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips – Begin by outlining clear goals for your social media marketing efforts and figuring out how you’ll measure success. Once you’ve outlined your goals, let’s look at 10 great ways you can begin to leverage social media for your marketing efforts.

Why Branding Matters to Small Businesses – Search Engine Guide Blog – The power of branding and why branding is key to success.

How to Earn Respect in Social Media – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – Just because you sell a product or a service that is the top selling or highest rated in the industry doesn't mean people will listen to you when you arrive. Announcing your arrival doesn't gain you immediate respect. You won't suddenly have a band of followers once you strike up a conversation or answer a question or two on a topic.

Facebook’s ‘Reconnect’ Strategy is Brilliant – Recently, in addition to giving you suggestions to which friends you might add to your profile, Facebook also started enticing users to reconnect and engage less active users. The campaign has partly backfired, as some of the recommendations were dead people and ex-lovers, but I still think it’s brilliant, and a good sign that Facebook has a clear strategy laid out for the future.

Similar Images Search Graduates from Google Labs – Back in April, Google launched a new search feature in Labs that allowed users to find similar images.
Initially rolled out for select images only, the capability is now being rolled out for what seems to be the majority of images in Google image search. This is particularly useful when search terms include homonyms, we think; and we applaud Google for removing a major pain point in our searches for pics of Tesla the band as opposed to Tesla the scientist or Tesla the automotive brand.

BuddyPress.org – BuddyPress is a suite of WordPress plugins and themes, each adding a distinct new feature. BuddyPress contains all the features you’d expect from WordPress but aims to let members socially interact.

Retort to Leo Laporte on SEO and it's value

Seth Goldstein — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:37:55 +0000

So I was listening to Leo Laporte’s show This Week in Google, for which I’m a huge fan (of all of his shows actually). I was rather disturbed by his blatant accusation that there is no need for SEO, Search Engine Optimization. He was citing Derek Powazek’s bashing of SEO and Danny Sullivan’s response in defense of SEO.

Leo, really doesn’t have to worry about SEO, like us non-tech celebrities do. He has such a loyal and large following (myself included) that he is making millions in advertising dollars. But Leo, those small mom & pop shops who have tons of competition do need SEO. They need to be competitive in their space both online and in life in general. Take it from someone who is in a very saturated marketing. I’m a Web designer in Philadelphia and I rank really well for some topics and not so well for other topics. The latter are improving because of my efforts in SEO.

Many of my clients ask me to explain what SEO is. I tell them that it isn’t some type of voodoo or anything dishonest (though some tactics if used the wrong way can get you in trouble. SEO is, when you boil right down to it, simply helping the search engines, whether it be Google, Yahoo, Bing or any others, index and rank your site better.

Leo mentioned that all most people need to do is a few things and they will rank well. It’s not that easy. And what bothers me most is that Leo, who had a big following is spreading this wrong information.

When you learn SEO, however long it takes (after all it’s constantly evolving), you’ll learn it’s more about marketing than spamming the system. And in marketing you sometimes have to take creative approaches to find a solution and this is a big part of SEO. It’s not just changing meta tags and file names. Heck, I wish it were that easy, but it’s not.

Yes there are bad people in the industry that take advantage of the less knowledgeable, but the majority of SEOs are honest hard working people.

I wouldn’t blindly take sides in this debate especially when you carry so much clout.

Danny Sullivan says this in response to Derek’s attack:

Let me be clear. I totally agree with your core advice. Build a site for visitors. Have great content. These are the keys to success, not just with SEO but with anything you want to do. In fact, we just had an article on our site here reinforcing this.

Still, sometimes people have problems. And the stuff that you think isnt rocket science that anyone knows is indeed a mystery to others. They want help, and sometimes they cant find that web developer who also understands SEO issues. In the same way, you sometimes dont find web developers who are also designers. Or designers who understand conversion issues. Or conversion experts who understand web development.

With my company, Goldstein Media, I am lucky to work with some really intelligent people in the SEO space and in the Design space and I can tell you right now, that they aren’t dishonest, snake-oil salesmen that you and Derek have made them out to be.

Now I’m sure Leo’s gotten a fair amount of response to what you said. And like I said before I’m a huge fan of his and will continue to be, but he really shouldn’t belittle a whole industry just because you don’t need it or one person makes a damning case against it.

Google's Maile Ohye answers some important SEO Google Questions

Seth Goldstein — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 23:10:21 +0000

SEOMoz caught up with Maile Ohye from Google and asked her some good questions about SEO and how Google indexes and ranks Websites. Take a look:

Link Report for September 28th through September 29th

The Link Report — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 03:01:42 +0000

This is the Link Report for September 28th through September 29th:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

Google Wave Invites: How To Get Them – The web is buzzing with excitement and anticipation. In less than 24 hours, Google Wave will launch to 100,000 early adopters. The real-time communication platform has been making headlines ever since it was announced back in May as a result of its potentially game-changing features.

Create Your Own Building for the Biggest Monopoly Game Ever – Play Monopoly using Google Maps! Neato!

Dropbox Meets The iPhone; Access Files On The Go – Dropbox, the easy to use file access manager which syncs your files across all your computers and the web, has introduced an iPhone application to make it even easier to access your files anywhere in the world. After almost 7 weeks of waiting, Apple has finally approved the application. With this new iPhone app, users will get access to all their Dropbox documents, PDF’s, pictures, videos and much more. Dropbox also introduced offline viewing in the iPhone app, with “Favorites.” If you add a file to your ‘Favorites’, they’ll be accessible at any time. To do so, just hit the star at the bottom of any file, and it’ll be added. Otherwise, your files stay in the cloud.

Sean Parker Joins Yammer’s Board Of Directors – Sean Parker is no stranger to Internet success. He’s 28 years old and has already helped start four very well-known services on the web: Napster, Plaxo, Causes, and of course, Facebook. And now he’s taking his impressive resume to Yammer, where he is joining the enterprise microblogging service’s Board of Directors.

FCC’s Broadband Plan: A Need for (Actual) Speed – U.S. broadband policy must take into account real network speeds, which lag advertised speeds by at least 50 percent, according to the FCC task force charged with helping to develop a national broadband plan. But just how policy should address the differences between the two is far from clear.

Metered Broadband Is the Future: Verizon CTO – Verizon Chief Technology Officer Dick Lynch said today that in the coming years, wired broadband will likely be sold in packages based on the amount of data a person wants to consume, much like wireless broadband is sold today. In comments made to press at the 2009 Fiber to the Home Conference Expo in Houston, Lynch stressed that he wasn’t announcing a shift in pricing for Verizon, but that: “We’re going to have to consider pricing structures that allow us to sell packages of bytes, and at the end of the day the concept of a flat-rate infinitely expandable service is unachievable.”

STUDY: 80% of Twitter Users Are All About Me – Rutgers University Professors Mor Naaman and Jeffrey Boase set out to analyze the content and characteristics of social media activity. They dubbed communications systems like Facebook and Twitter, “social awareness streams,” and then took to examining user behavior.

SEOmoz | Design Trends: The Single Purpose Homepage – This post focuses on a design style that's both retro (it's been around a long time) and emerging (the popularity, at least to me, feels like it's on the rise) – the single-purpose homepage.

Twitter Tips to Help Brands Stay Authentic and Transparent – Online Marketing Blog – Any marketer who’s successfully made the move to social media will tell you the rules of traditional marketing have to be reexamined. That’s particularly true with Twitter, where brands have just 140 characters to inform, evoke emotion and inspire action. One of the most basic and critical rules for brands on Twitter? Be authentic and transparent in all you do.

Five Search Marketing Tips For The Holidays – What is unique for holiday season 2009 are the specific strategies online retailers must take this year to reap the most sales possible. With lessons learned from last year’s bloated inventories and fire-sale prices, many retailers this year are restricting inventories and fine-tuning merchandising in an attempt to lure shoppers to purchase earlier and at higher prices. And, of course, the best way to get potential shoppers to your site is via search engine marketing. 82% of holiday shoppers polled by Google said they find search engines “extremely or very useful” in making their purchases.

Link Report for September 25th through September 28th

The Link Report — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:00:45 +0000

This is the Link Report for September 25th through September 28th:

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

The Easiest Way To Explain the Marketing Process | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing –

4g Wireless Evolution : What is WiMAX? – Consider the existing Internet opportunities for Internet connectivity today — broadband wireline, WiFi, and even dial-up. There are issues with each one: broadband service can be expensive, depending on the provider, and it certainly isn’t available in many rural areas; WiFi has very limited range, again limiting coverage, and dial-up is simply slow and can’t come close to meeting requirements for today’s applications.

An Important Analytics Distinction: Bounce vs Exit – Bounce rate can be an incredibly helpful metric, particularly when trying to not only drive more traffic to your website but trying to get more of that traffic to convert. However, it’s vitally important to understand what bounce rate is, how it differs from percent exit, and where you can potentially misunderstand the data.

Link Building Outreach: 5 Steps To Maximize The Value Of Every Opportunity – Extensive backlink prospecting and qualification, even with automated research processes and crawlers, can take days. Creating highly-linkable content can take even longer. Because of this significant investment, we often recommend conducting your organic link building outreach in a way that maximizes conversion rates, grows relationships with both linkers and link decliners, and ensures that any future link building campaigns are faster, easier and more effective.

6 steps to KILLING long tail keywords for SEOs & Content writers – When you are fortunate enough to be blessed by the Search Gods, you need to maximize that blessing, one strategy most of us probably don’t take full advantage of is blowing out the long tail keywords when we already are getting signals from the search engines that they like our site for head or short tail keywords.

Good Call-To-Action Buttons | UX Booth – The call-to-action button is an important tool in the user experience designer’s box of tricks. In this article I’ll give you a few pointers on providing effective ones.

Official Google Blog: Jump to the information you want right from the search snippets – For most search results, Google shows you a few lines of text to give you an idea of what the page is about — we call this a "search snippet." Recently, we've enhanced the search snippet with two new features that make it easier to find information buried deep within a page.

Web Development Project Estimator – The Web Development Project Estimator is a simple tool that allows web designers and site developers to quickly and thoroughly estimate the time and materials required for a proposed web project.

SEOmoz | Why Linkbait is a Tactic the Search Engines Will Always Value – There have been more than a few debates and suppositions over the years about the potential value of linkbait/viral content strategies and whether search engines will always reward these practices.

China Blocks TwitPic After Explosion Images Go Viral – China is now blocking TwitPic in the hope of stopping the flow of information.