Digital Marketing Specialist, Social Media Consultant,
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Content Aggregators are Killing Content Creators

September 23, 2009

This is a guest post from Josh Schnell, founder of Macgasm.net and web developer.

Somewhere down the line, an exploitation has to occur in order for a financial profit to be realized. This is no less true for the world of social networks. Networks like Digg, FriendFeed, and Facebook are seeing huge growths in value, but the little guys, the ones actually providing the meat and potatoes for those operations, rarely see a nickel.

Let’s be honest for a second here. The major “Web 2.0″ and social networking technologies that have been created in the last several years have been a major boon for consumers and web users. They’ve aggregated the entire Internet into what’s cool and what’s not so cool. When searching for new and interesting websites, it is much preferable to visit a website on a friend’s recommendation than it is to use classic search engines. I’m not disputing the relevancy or success of these technologies to the average internet user. The problem as I see it is from a content creator paradigm, where the content creators are the ones footing the bills for bandwidth usage, paying the writers, and putting tears and sweat into their content so that it becomes sellable.

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How Spying On Your Friends Causes Reevaluation of Endorsed Content

May 1, 2008

Last month, I wrote about the ease of FriendFeed to spy on your friends. In other words, I can check someone’s Friendfeed page and get any information I want about them, including when they are actively engaged in social media activities and how much of a priority social media is to them in their online habits and information consumption.

While users can opt to have private feeds, I strive for transparency and don’t mind if my content is public. I don’t mind keeping the door to my interests open and allowing people to get to know me or to know about the content that interests me.

However, in the past few months, I’ve been running into content that doesn’t necessarily fit in with my interests. Is it misleading to endorse content that someone pitches to you when you don’t necessarily agree with it (or have no interest in it) and then have it publicly available on your feed for all to see? Now that Friendfeed aggregates every social site you use (for the most part — they’re still missing some), anyone can see that you’ve just thumbed up that article on how to find porn behind a WebSense firewall even though you may have done it as a favor to your friend. (Or maybe not.)

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A Good Headline Alone Can Drive Serious Traffic, Even if the Content Sucks

January 31, 2007

Brian Clark said it so many times. The headline can do everything.

Today, as I checked out what’s hot in Digg, I found a disturbing entry on the top 10 in Technology: 10 Most Misspelled Words in Blogs. The writer says that there are ten misused words “in blogs” that cannot be picked up by spellchecking. These ten words are:

  1. Your/You’reSeated Writer
  2. Then/Than
  3. Its/it’s
  4. To/two/too
  5. Were/where/we’re
  6. There/their/they’re
  7. A/an/and
  8. Off/of
  9. Here/Hear
  10. Lose/Loose

Hello, is anybody home? Is this an issue specific to the blogosphere? Absolutely not! Seriously, these are 10 most commonly misused words in writing (period). Perhaps, if we wanted to get picky, these are the ten most misspelled words in informal writing (since second-person is not used in formal writing), though there really is no statistical evidence to even support the author’s claims.

So why did this blog get Dugg? Personally, I don’t think the post itself adds any value for me. But obviously, the writer did something right. In the most specific case, the writer used a list post. The “attention-grabbing power” of this particular headline worked because, as Brian says, “Any headline that lists a number of reasons, secrets, types, or ways will work because, once again, it makes a very specific promise of what’s in store for the reader.” Second, adding “in Blogs” to apply these misspellings to something that’s popular today helped attract user’s attention. Apparently, writing about blogs does pretty well in social media.

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Crappy Site Design, Great Content: Is This Poor Social Media Optimization?

January 9, 2007

Really Ugly DogThe phrase “don’t judge a book by its cover” has been brought to a brand new level on the World Wide Web.

Consider the mindset of your users. A penetratingly ugly website design can negatively impact your site and visitors, despite the fact that there may be great content — and especially if you’re a relatively new player in Internet Marketing.

I’ve encountered a few sites, including those of family members, that have been begging for a good Internet Marketing campaign. And I’d like to help. However, I personally feel that these sites don’t necessarily only call for good marketing. Many of these sites need something else. Upon looking at website design and usability, I realize how these two important elements truly go hand-in-hand with a successful campaign that can really translate traffic into results. In today’s day and age, a successful website needs incoming links, the ability for people to want to talk about your site — and to be acknowledged among peers.

Cameron recently discussed how social media optimization focuses on more of an “on-page” effort which entails “improving the design and usability of the website so that it becomes more compelling to users” [emphasis is mine]. A relatively new site needs more than just good content to be compelling. Design and usability are key.

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Online Dating: Content isn’t Everything

December 12, 2006

Online DatingHere’s a little known present-day fact about me: when I was 15, I had an “AOL boyfriend.” (My parents, had they known, would have freaked.) In my high school yearbook, I was voted most likely to have an online wedding.

Back then, it was strange for people to grasp the potential of online networking. It was geeky. (I never minded.)

Fast forward 11 years. I’ve been married for nearly two years. My husband and I met the old-fashioned way. “AOL boyfriends” are not so abnormal. Online relationships are flourishing and people going great lengths to meet their dream dates that they met online.

Online dating communities are very active and people often make their own assessments of an individual based on an online profile followed by a few email exchanges and maybe a phone call or two.

I’ve seen successes and failures with this model. I’ve had a friend from Falls Church, VA meet his “AOL girlfriend” who lived in Seattle — after meeting, they decided they were meant for each other. I believe they’re on their 7th or 8th year of marriage now.

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