This is the Link Report for September 23rd through September 25th:

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

• WARNING: Facebook Worm Spreading via News Feed – Malware and spam are finding new ways to spread across social media. A few days ago, a nasty Twitter Worm spread through DMs. Today, we have received multiple reports that a new worm is spreading via Facebook wall posts and status updates.
• Google Hits Back At AT&T Over New Google Voice FCC Complaint – Ironically AT&T is using the very controls put on them by the FCC against Google Voice. Ironic? Only a little
• We Hold Twitter Ransom For $100 Billion Dollars – 37signals founder Jason Fried probably had the post of the day today mocking Twitter’s $1 billion valuation on its latest rumored round of funding. The post, titled “PRESS RELEASE: 37SIGNALS VALUATION TOPS $100 BILLION AFTER BOLD VC INVESTMENT” is very funny. But it’s also disingenuous.
• Dropbox Reaches 2 Million Users; Continues to Grow – Dropbox, the impressive file sharing service which makes it easy to sync your files across multiple computers and the web, has announced that it has reached two million registered users, just four months after reaching one million users. Of those, Dropbox has almost one million users that are active.
• Video: Symantec Shows The Danger Of Shortened Twitter Links – While there is often a lot of talk about the downside of URL shorteners being that if they go down, they take your links with them, the much more obvious and real problem is that they very easily mask potentially bad sites. We’ve been seeing this more and more in both public tweets and DMs, but luckily so far most of those have just been worms meant to replicate themselves, rather than really bad viruses. But security software company Symantec released a video today to show some very bad links in action.
• Place Pages: Google Launches Rival to Yelp – Just moments ago, Google announced that they are adding information on businesses, restaurants, points of interest, neighborhoods, and more on separate web pages within Google Maps. The project, Place Pages for Google Maps, replaces those expanded info bubbles that used to be part of Google Maps. Yelp had better watch out.
• PostRank Combines Google Analytics With Social Media Stats – As conversations surrounding blog posts start to take in place other places (Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed (FriendFeed), etc.) and people use tumble blogs like Tumblr (Tumblr) and Posterous (Posterous) to quickly comment and share helpful information, tracking that data and its correlation to overall traffic numbers can become really, really helpful.
• Seven Easy Ways to Integrate Your Google Apps – Google Apps – Lifehacker – The information you keep in Google apps like Gmail, GCal, Reader, and Voice doesn't just live in one place. Check out a few easy but non-obvious ways to plug different Google apps together and share their data and features.
• How To Measure The Value Of A Fan Or Follower In Social Media – It’s hard to justify the time spent on social media account management. But there are ways to measure the real value (monetary or otherwise) of fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter. These top two social media websites offer free advertising, an open customer service and communication platform and a demographics database all wrapped up in one, so knowing the value of fans and followers can be a big help when deciding how much time should be allotted to social media efforts. Here are some of the ways to measure how much Facebook and Twitter users are really worth.
• Will Social Media Drive a Web Without Walls? – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – A key question that remains to be answered in the social media battle is the interconnectivity of all the pieces. Carmakers don't use the same supplier for all of their various parts; rather, they select a specialized manufacturer for each component (e.g., headlights, sun roof, seats). Similarly, social media providers can't be the best at every functionality (social network, social bookmarks, wikis, video sharing, photo sharing, etc.).

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).