Digital Marketing Specialist, Social Media Consultant,
and Tech Geek at Heart

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Social Media

The Downside of Social Media (Or Why it Sucks to be on Top)

September 12, 2007

You might think it’s all fun and games when you become a top submitter on a social news site. However, that’s not exactly the case. The more popular you get you get, the harder it is. It’s a natural progression of what some people might consider “celebrity” status: once you hit fame, you’re also scrutinized a lot more closely. You’re no longer really sailing smoothly, and the critics abound.

I learned a lot after writing my open letter to Kevin Rose. I learned that six months ago, I was a different type of Digg user. I learned that there are people who are merely spectators. Some of these people seek out discussion. Some of these people look to simply vote on stories and use Digg as a bookmarking tool, which is primarily where I started when I first signed up to use Digg. Then there are others who primarily focus on contributing content to Digg.

Six months ago, I wouldn’t have liked myself as I use Digg today. There’s no real way to explain that except to say that it’s not easy to jump into the head of someone who submits heavily to Digg unless you’re one of those people. It’s a completely different mindset and one that, for me, took months of study. I can have this discussion on Digg for hours, but nobody will be able to relate unless they’ve been there.

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Digg Story Gets Promoted 7 Days After Submission

July 25, 2007

Wow, this totally came as a shock… I submitted this 7 days ago and thought it died. There was an incredible response to the article I submitted but I thought the story expired to the land of the forgotten.

Digg Craziness: Story gets promoted 7 days after submission

Then, I saw the popular stories in my feed reader, and I’m astonished. Here’s the Digg story so you can see it with your own eyes.

I guess the Digg algorithm is getting harder and harder to nail.

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Some of my Favorite Free SEO and Social Networking (Blog Rank) Tools

November 16, 2006

Some of the best things in life are free. I am thankful to those who have shared wonderful tools with me and I would like to share them with others too.

A few of these are new tools. Some are old and well-known. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. :)

SEO Tools

  • SEO for Firefox: An excellent Firefox addon that provides users market data from Google and Yahoo search results, including PR, age of domain, links from external pages (and types), type of domain, Technorati data, Alexa ranking, DMOZ listing, number of cached pages, Bloglines subscriptions, Yahoo directory listing, and whois information.
  • Page Strength SEO Tool: This SEOmoz offering calculates the value and visibility of your page and incorporates links pointing to the URL/domain, Google search results position, age of domain, links from .edu and .gov sites, Alexa rank, number of results in Google that include the domain, internal link percentage, Technorati links, del.icio.us links, DMOZ listing, Wikipedia reference, and Google PR.
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Will SEO Ever Die?

October 10, 2006

There has been a lot of controversy in terms of SEO lately. First, there’s this scathing article by Daniel Dessinger about the SEO industry, which prompted a lot of questions, many of whom are wondering if Daniel is on the money, or at least close, but others who have tried to invalidate the claim. I give Rand another thumbs up in terms of his excellent refutation, but I can’t help but wonder from the standpoint of a SEO newbie (if I’ve even made it there yet): with more people like me who have the interest in SEO, will the market get oversaturated?

Let me rephrase the question. As more and more people become more educated with what makes a good SEO, we can face two dilemmas:

  1. There will be more Aaron Walls, Barry Schwartzes, Danny Sullivans, and Rand Fishkins in the world. Will the industry be able to handle them all? Better yet, is there even room for newcomers to move up?
  2. Is the current industry too competitive? Will more and more people get better at SEO, forcing it to collapse entirely? Will the exposure of more and more individuals to correct SEO strategies ultimately cause the SEO as we know it to change — possibly to even eliminate it?
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Craigslist Founder Refuses to Sell

September 28, 2006

Today, the founder of the famous craigslist website, an almost entirely free classifieds and social networking site, announced that he has no desire to sell his site. This came shortly after MySpace was estimated to have a value of $15 billion by a Wall Street analyst.

Craig Newmark, the brains behind Craigslist, was quoted as saying:

Who needs the money? We don’t really care.

Craigslist has been hugely popular among enthusiasts because it is easy to post and no signup is required (but is optional; I admit that I have an account). Furthermore, the postings are very clean and contain no ads. If you seek the something, you can search and hundreds of results will come up. The cloaking of your email address for your protection (if you opt-in) is also very desirable for those who hope to maintain their anonymity.

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