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From the monthly archives:

December 2006

The Power of Blogging and its Extension to Real Media

December 8, 2006

The story, at first, was worrisome and frightening, but everyone wished for the best. James Kim and his family went missing. As I read the first bit of news on the evening of November 30th, I was hopeful — we all were. Throughout the blogosphere, bloggers began to express their feelings, to unite on a common front hoping for the best for James Kim, his wife Kati, and their two daughters, and to communicate with others, hoping that maybe someone else would know of the Kim’s whereabouts.

Unfortunately, James Kim was taken from this world after succumbing to hypothermia.

The power of blogging is taking me by awe.

Today, I got home and opened my mailbox to see one of the magazines I subscribe to, the celebrity-focused People magazine.

I was shocked at the cover, which usually displays photos of celebrities (and to a lesser extent, large news stories such as terrorist attacks):

James Kim on the cover of People

I don’t think that this exposure would have been possible if there was not a presence of a voice in the blogosphere, which to me is amazing. As journalists look through traditional media for news, there is an obvious extension and emphasis on the blogging voice as we all continued to talk about it and get the word out. It is apparent that the power of our voices could make a true difference outside of the blogosphere.

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Successful Verbal Link Bait from the Mouth of Jason Calacanis

December 6, 2006

Jason CalacanisSEOs worldwide were shocked by the Search Engine Strategies Chicago Keynote of earlier today given by Jason Calacanis, who said “SEO is BS, if you generate a web page with good content Google will rank the page properly.”

Despite the fact that many SEOs did get offended, I’m beginning to wonder if Calacanis had other intentions by making that statement. Really, the content of his speech was worth “linking to” and discussing. His name is getting out there. He essentially is “attacking link attention with controversy” (thanks, Rand) and giving himself a lot of publicity as a result. I think Graywolf is really proving the point.

If you have “good content” or something that’s worth talking about, people will refer to you. People will talk about you. That’s how you build reputation. On the Internet, that may very well be called SEO. And I bet that Calacanis cleverly orchestrated his speech with this exact intention.

I wonder how many searches in Google/blogsearch will yield an exact result for Calacanis’s quote. I bet there are quite a few thus far.

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A WordPress Plugin for Developers to Avoid: WP-Cache

December 5, 2006

While a great concept and one that is lauded by many individuals, including Andy Beal and folks who like Matt Cutts, any blog that is always being tweaked on a regular basis should not be using WP-Cache.

If you know your blog is in perfect shape and never will be modified, then sure, this is a nice tool for you.

But I don’t like it.

I’ve been working on optimizing one of the blogs I maintain. For some reason there was an error on one of the pages and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what was up with it. I removed the entire code snippet and refreshed a bunch of times. I even tried a different browser and then two different computers and four more browsers. And the code snippet was still there.

I realized that the error of my ways was this “faster WordPress plugin.” The files are all stored on the server and not processed locally, and the cache hadn’t expired. Therefore, I wasn’t seeing the newest updates; I was seeing a cached update — and there was nothing that I could do within my browser to change that. Still, the plugin is practical, but it just doesn’t cut it for folks who like to try out other plugins, new CSS styles, or make small edits.

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Going Above And Beyond Your Call of Duty

December 2, 2006

There are thousands of competing businesses. Each can say they offer so-and-so, but there’s going to have to be something that differentiates Company A from Company B.

I’ve been observing company behavior and recognize that an important differentiation is when you go above and beyond what is required of your job description and show extreme dedication to an individual’s needs.

Seth Godin wrote about this aspect earlier this week. I wholeheartedly agree. As a customer, I feel more inclined to send praise to a manager when I see a representative go above what is necessary to make sure I am satisfied. I am more inclined to continue my business with this company again. I am more inclined to recommend other people to this business.

Doing the bare minimum is still probably good enough.

But following up, doing work beyond the minimum — that is what ultimately establishes a personal connection between you and and your clients.

Working late nights and long hours and taking that 5 minute period out of your lunch break to make sure that your customer is happy with your work is an important element of strengthening your business relationship. Further, it lets your customers see you in a more positive light because you are doing something that you may not necessarily be getting paid extra for. It shows your customers that you care and that their happiness is important to you.

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College Statistics 2006: MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Google!

December 1, 2006

According to the 2006 GenX2Z Anderson Analytics survey (PDF link), the top five websites of choice by college students are:

Googleplex Hotness

  1. MySpace (13% of visits, a 258% increase from 2005)
  2. facebook.com (11.5%, a 41% increase from 2005)
  3. youtube.com (4.5%, with no data from 2005 recorded)
  4. collegehumor.com (3.7%, a 61% decrease from 2005)
  5. Google.com (3.7%, a 13% decrease from 2005)

That puts Google, Inc. in two of the top ten spots, making any community-oriented website envious of the search engine that also seems to be faring quite well in social networking too.

Does it come as any surprise that Google is the employer of choice by college students? According to another recent survey on CollegeGrad.com, almost half — 49% — of students would rather work at Google than Microsoft (29%) or Yahoo (12%).

Could they score a job? Maybe, if Google really is getting easier on hiring.

So — why do college students want to work at Google?Google Ping-Pong

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