..and I shall shed my light over dark evil.
For the dark things cannot stand the light,
The light of the Green Lantern!
Yep – I took the Super Hero quiz and it turns out I am the Green Lantern:
You are Green Lantern
|
Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination.  |
Thanks to Bill Slawski’s excellent reasons for convincing me to do this.
This quiz is an excellent example of a good idea spreading based solely on the fact that it’s a cool/fun idea. The page itself is as plain as you can get and is slathered with AdSense:
But the idea is fun and viral which equals success. The code to slap on your website is easy and the link back to them is plain to pass on the link love. You can even move it if you want – like this:
Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz
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Last week blogger Ryan Tomayko wrote a post about Internet Explorer testing with Parrallels (a software program for Intel Macs). Someone then submitted this story to Digg. At some point on December 26th – the story hit the Digg homepage and was subsequently buried. Ryan went to the page on Digg and got a strange feeling from the comments:
The comments over there are pretty much unanimously in favor of having me drug out into the street and shot.
Ryan echoes the feelings of many people recently when he says that he’s not writing a “story” for Digg Corporation and has very little interest in changing his writing style to serve the Digg “community”.
So what did Ryan decide to do about it? He setup a 403 Forbidden response to serve to someone when the server detects someone coming from digg. So if you surfed in from Digg you wouldn’t get the page you were looking for but instead would get a message like this:
403 Go Away! The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it because you’re coming from digg.com and the proprieter of this system is frankly terrified by you people. Authorization will not help and the request SHOULD NOT be repeated.
Interesting approach Ryan. Perhaps instead of blocking them why not redirect that traffic to another website (I am sure that there are plenty of people who would be willing to take it)? I also wouldn’t be terrified by Digg users at all. They are normal everyday people and the majority are good people too. It’s just that somehow along the line snarkiness and “hating” become more acceptable for commenting then common sense and probably saying what you truly think.
When I covered the domains banned by Digg, Shawn Hogan the owner of Digital Point was thankful that his domain was banned by Digg:
Personally, I think the ban of my domain (digitalpoint.com) is a good thing. Keeps people from posting idiotic threads just so they can submit it to Digg. I never asked to get it unbanned, and in truth if Digg did unban it on it’s own, I would ask them to reban it.
But Ryan’s case is one of the first instances of someone blocking Digg due to not liking the culture and community. People are usually clamoring to get on Digg due to the traffic, exposure and ultimately links that it will bring to your site. Has this been so ingrained in Digg user’s minds that they think everything is written with that specific purpose in mind (as Ryan seems to think)? Has the feeling of power (being able to bury a story) and relative anonymity (that allows people to say things they wouldn’t say face to face) created this culture? Is it a case of a few rotten apples spoiling the bunch or is this the majority of users? I would think it’s the former because how else could you explain the outpouring of help/prayers/sympathy with the James Kim tragedy?
But in a case like Ryan’s when his blog is simply a hodge podge of information thrown together by Ryan Tomayko in the spirit of a weblog – with what seems to be no commercial motivation – why would he want to be ridiculed and have his intelligence constantly called into question?
Not the internet’s fault this guy is an idiot.
On the other side – his blog is in the public domain. It’s open to feedback – good or bad – just probably not used to (bad) feedback on such a large scale before. This leads to a new question. Should Digg implement some type of opt-out policy? For example – something that would be the equivalent adding Digg to your Robots.txt file as ‘disallowed’ then someone would not be able to submit a story from your site. As Digg continues to grow these issues will continue to arise and how they deal with them will ultimately lead to their success or downfall.
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Back in June, BetUS.com came up with a great idea – Put Your Money Where Your Blog Is in which people were able to place bets on who they thought would end the year at the top of Technorati’s Top 100 List. This was a brilliant peice of viral marketing that resulted in a lot of buzz and a lot of really good links. The beauty of this went beyond the links because it got a lot of new people to sign up and bet on something that they could relate to. It went beyond link bait for the sake of links.
When this contest started:
Technorati.com (a blog search engine) says that there are over 37.3 million blogs in the blog universe (or blogosphere as it’s collectively known as).
Currently they are tracking over 63.2 million blogs.
Here were the original odds:
A bet on Matt Cutts would have won you $600 on a $100 wager. Unfortunately for you (and Matt) – you would have lost (unless Matt gives away the secrets to Google’s algorithm between now and Sunday causing thousands of webmasters around the globe start linking to it) since he won’t even be in the Top 100 when 2007 arrives. So who is in the running? At this point it is basically between Engadget and BoingBoing (with engadget holding a very comfortable lead).
Here’s the current top 5:
So if you put a sizeable bet on BoingBoing now would be the time to start spamming blogs to get thousands of quick links counting your losses because it looks like Engadget has this one in the bag.
I will update this post once the winner is announced – BTW BetUS wouldn’t let me place a bet on this today – I even tried calling 
Update : As expected – Engadget won handily…
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Last night Michael Arrington reported that sponsored blog review network PayPerPost would be acquiring Performancing, a blog advertising network. Arrington also noted that:
The popular Performancing Firefox blog editing plugin is not being acquired, and will be spun off into a new brand.
This set off quite a bit of talk in the blogosphere especially due to Performancing’s close ties to ReviewMe (Patrick Gavin is a co-founder of both companies). Leading to comments like this:
Why would the parent company of ReviewMe sell a large blogging network to their rival PayPerPost? Seems like an idiot move.
This morning Performancing founder, Nick Wilson, made some short statements to lend a bit of clarity. First on Tony Hung’s blog:
I wont be staying on Tony. We’ll be moving our ad network and blog editor to new domains and rebranding them as seperate entities.
Then on Threadwatch (which Nick also started and later sold):
more news to follow but the short story is that i’ll be rebranding the partners ad network and the blog editor in the new year and have one more idea im working on (i say working on, i mean trying to work out who’ll fund it heh!)
Perhaps Nick’s own statement in his part of the 5 things meme is most telling as to why:
I have a very short attention span for projects. I get bored very easily and have found the only way to do anythng past a year, is to keep rolling out ’sub projects’ to keep my interest level up.
While I was typing this I see that Nick has also posted an update on his own blog where he reiterates the statements above and states:
We’re all very excited about the deal. It gives Metrics a chance to truly flourish, and the community an opportunity to grow and continue to discuss the business of blogging.
To Nick and the rest of Performancing best of luck and congrats. We all look forward to see what you do next!
Update : PayPerPost has issued a press release on their blog with some further details and one interesting proposition:
Bookmark this post:In the spirit of maximizing value for existing Performancing members, PayPerPost has created an ad opportunity at PayPerPost.com specifically for existing Performancing Metrics members to review the Performancing Metrics and Performancing Exchange platforms on their blogs and get paid for doing so.
The first thing that you will do when you read this list is say “This list isn’t just about search!” And you will be right. 2006 was a year that saw the definition of search expand. Search to me has become an all-encompassing word. Search is information. Search is media. Search is social interaction. Search is life.
MySpace, YouTube and Wikipedia made their way into the conversations of housewives in Indiana and CEOs on Wall Street. Google’s mantra of “Do No Evil” was questioned over and over. Microsoft and Ask begged to be noticed. Yahoo! just begged for the year to end and 2007 to arrive.
Successful marketers adapted to the ever-changing landscape and saw search as more than algorithms. They embraced social networks and looked to capitalize on their surging popularity. SEO’s cousin SMO was born.
2006 was an event-filled year to say the least..
101. Google offers domain registrations (12/14)
100. Ms. Dewey puts the sexy back in search
99. A proliferation of new, free tools led by SEO for Firefox, SEOmoz’s Page Strength Tool and Performancing for Bloggers
98. Google opens larger New York City office (10/3)
97. Stephen Colbert vs. Wikipedia (8/2)
96. Tom Brady vs. Yahoo! (12/7)
95. Google vs. Belgium Newspapers
94. Google Pack released (1/6) but Trillian is dumped (5/19)
93. Secret to getting billions of pages indexed in Google revealed (6/17)
92. Google Reader users can share their feeds (3/24)
91. Google Base Accepts Payments (2/27), and eBay Express follows
90. Google shows off new toys: Google Page Creator and Google Notebook
89. CarPhone Warehouse purchases AOL UK (10/11)
88. Google and Dell create personalized homepage (1/7)
87. Amazon launches their own CPC program ClickRiver Ads (11/5)
86. Yahoo & IBM team up on corporate search (12/13)
85. Adam Lasnik is hired by Google as Search Evangelist (5/12) which was predicted over a year ago
84. Yahoo! and Ask embark on huge traditional ad campaigns but still remain at 2 & 4 respectively in searchers
83. RH Donnelley buys Local Launch (9/7), MediaWhiz acquires Text Link Ads (11/7)
82. Lycos Teams with Ask for Ads (11/1)
81. DMOZ editor corruption exposed (publicly) (8/18)
80. Google Buys dMarc Radio Advertising (1/17), then launches Partnership Initiative with Newspapers (11/6) and Radio (11/7)
79. Yahoo partners with newspapers to offer job marketing content (11/20)
78. UTube sues YouTube (11/1) and then begins selling ringtone, poker and sex ads (12/13)
77. SEO is put down by Jason Calacanis, Ted Leonsis and Bill Pasternak/Kevin Lee – leading to some interesting contests and fact-based retorts about the Half-Truths of Talking Frogs
76. Web reaches 100,000,000 site milestone (11/1)
75. Start-ups score big names: Robert Scoble Leaves Microsoft for PodTech (6/10) and Tim Converse leaves Yahoo for Powerset (12/18)
74. Orkut’s Brazilian Popularity Soars (4/10)
73. The revolving door at SearchEngineWatch – Gary Price leaves SearchEngineWatch for Ask (2/9) and Barry Schwartz takes his place (2/9) but then leaves with Danny to Search Engine Land (11/20)
72. Corporate search engine personnel moves – Steve Berkowitz leaves Ask for MSN (4/22), Udi Manber Leaves Amazon for Google (2/8) and the Microsoft “Brain Drain” has Managers Leaving to Google (7/1)
71. Corporate moves in the SEO world – Todd Malicoat leaves WeBuildPages (3/30), Andy Beal leaves Fortune Interactive (8/4), Mike Grehan leaves MarketSmart (8/3) followed by Garrett French (10/30) and Jake Baillie Leaves TrueLocal (12/22)
70. Florida spammer is fined $11 billion dollars
69. Google launches Book Search (8/30)
68. Google acquires Writely (3/6) and then JotSpot (10/31)
67. Microsoft launches Live Spaces social network (8/3)
66. Yahoo! launches new Video site (5/31)
65. Microsoft announces plans for July 2008 transitioning out of Bill Gates (6/15)
64. Google Sitemaps becomes Webmaster Central (8/8)
63. Conde Nast acquires Reddit
62. Wal-Mart (10/9) and Sony (12/12) learn that the blogosphere is very transparent
61. Google acquires Measure Map blog analytics software (2/15)
60. Microsoft acquires web analytics firm DeepMetrix (5/3)
59. Google opens Online Video Store (1/7)
58. Tracking Memes – led by Techmeme, Tailrank & Megite
57. Though Shall Not Google – Google is declared a verb (7/6) but Google doesn’t like it (12/26)
56. Yahoo acquires Bix.com (11/16)
55. Google announces Google Checkout (6/29), competes with eBay-owned Paypal (7/6)
54. Yahoo settles click fraud suit (6/28)
53. Google launches Docs & Spreadsheets (10/10)
52. Sponsored blog posting services ReviewMe, PayPerPost & Blogvertise make a splash and lead to the FTC ‘encouraging’ disclosures from bloggers (12/20)
51. Google agrees to censor results in China (1/24)
50. Microsoft Small Business Directory stops accepting new submissions (11/15)
49. Australia suggests that permission be granted to index web pages (11/2)
48. Google Bombing as a political tactic (7/19)
47. Foreign search engines threaten Google’s international presence: Baidu in China and Japan (12/4), Quaero in France and Theseus in Germany (12/21)
46. Wikipedia founder announces plans to launch search engine (12/23)
45. Google launches Google Trends (5/10)
44. Google News Comes out of Beta (1/23)
43. Netscape launches Digg-like site (6/14), Jason Calacanis lures users with money (7/18) but leaves Netscape shortly thereafter (11/17) for a position at Sequoia Capital (12/5)
42. Yahoo and eBay join to fight the Google and Microsoft giants (5/26)
41. Yahoo launches Search Builder (8/7)
40. Google CSE (Custom Search Engine) announced (10/23)
39. Google begins notifying webmasters of penalties (4/26)
38. Socially-governed video search sites launched: StumbleVideo (12/13), Digg (12/18), Megite (12/26), and Tailrank (12/26)
37. Microsoft launches Internet Explorer 7 (10/18) and Mozilla launches Firefox 2 (10/24)
36. Yahoo focuses on integrating social components in brand websites (12/1)
35. Time Magazine names YOU ‘Person of the Year‘
34. AskCity Launches (12/4)
33. The rise of Internet Celebrities: LonelyGirl15, Christine Dolce, and Ze Frank proving that sometimes you don’t have to even be real to be famous online
32. Microsoft signs ad deal with Facebook (8/23) but perhaps the bigger story is the non-acquisition of Facebook by Yahoo! (9/21)
31. The Arbitrage Debate Rages
30. KinderStart sues Google over PageRank and traffic (3/18) but the lawsuit is dismissed (7/13)
29. Google will not give in to the DOJ’s search request out of privacy concerns (2/18) but the DOJ says it is not a privacy issue (2/27). Google is forced to give up data (3/14), but not all of it (3/17)
28. AOL leaks user search data (8/7) leading us to AOL Searcher No. 4417749 (8/9)
27. 90% of all email now spam
26. Microsoft launches adCenter and drops Yahoo! Search Marketing ads (5/4)
25. Social networks are the most searched for terms of the year on Google, followed by wikis and video, together totaling 60% of the Top 10 (12/18)
24. MySpace auctions off search business (6/14) and Google wins the auction – resulting in a 3-year $1-billion dollar deal (8/7)
23. Widgets take off – led by YouTube and MyBlogLog
22. AOL goes free (8/2) and begins to focus on SEO (11/3)
21. Google shuts down Answers (11/28) while Yahoo! integrates their own Answers into the SERPs (a rare up moment in Yahoo’s year)
20. Yahoo announces Panama Search Advertising System (4/6), which is delayed and results in profit dips for Yahoo but it then launches in October (10/19)
19. Google tops $500 a share (11/21)
18. Local search continues to gain momentum (9/28)
17. Click fraud findings are addressed (7/21) and online giants join the fight (8/4) but does click fraud threaten the foundation of online ads? (10/21)
16. Google says click fraud worries are overblown (8/9) despite the $90 million click fraud settlement (7/28) and Google’s claim that their click fraud rate is less than 2% (12/11)
15. Microsoft introduces new search engine (3/8) and then redirects search.msn.com to Live.com (9/14)
14. MySpace traffic tops Yahoo’s in November (12/19)
13. The Butler is Dead – AskJeeves rebrands itself to Ask.com (2/20)
12. Link Baiting and what Paris Hilton can teach us
11. Two Words – Quality Score
10. nofollow concerns (7/7) leads to some high profile sites changing their no-follow policies
9. Digg updates their algorithm (9/8), changes their look (12/18) and bans lots of legit sites in the process (12/21)
8. Google’s ‘minus thirty’ penalty
7. Congress bans Internet gambling (10/2)
6. The Peanut Butter Manifesto (11/18) and Yahoo reorganizing its operations (12/5)
5. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft support Universal Sitemaps Standard (11/16)
4. Google rolls out BigDaddy (1/4)
3. Social Media Optimization and its dark side
2. Danny Sullivan leaves Search Engine Watch (8/29) launches Search Engine Land (12/11) and the Search Marketing Expo conference and Search Marketing Now webcasts (12/5)
And the biggest story of the year? Well I was going to pull a Time Magazine and say that you were the biggest story of the year but I changed my mind in about two seconds flat on that. So unless you are Chad Hurley or Steve Chen – you’ll have to wait until 2007…
1. Google Buys YouTube for $1.65 Billion (10/9)
A big thanks to Tamar and Patrick for their contributions to this list.
Allow me to share with you some exciting sales statistics for 2006.
According to comScore, online non-travel holiday spending between November and December went up 25% to $24.6 billion dollars for 2006, up from $19.6 billion a year ago.
What does this mean? There is increased consumer trust in online marketplaces, and as more and more consumers continue to value the convenience of online shopping, more and more consumers will buy. 2007 will likely see a greater increase too.
Here are some more interesting facts:
$457.4 billion – 2006 holiday sales, both online and offline
$435.6 billion – 2005 holiday sales, both online and offline
51.7 million – people who shopped online from work for holiday gifts in 2005 (see what I mean about convenience?)
$791 – Amount each consumer is expected to spend this year.
$451.34 – Will be spent on family.
$99.22 – On himself or herself.
$85.60 – On friends.
$22.40 – On co-workers.
$44.52 – On people like clergy, teachers, and baby sitters.
$30.57 – On greeting cards and postage.
[via Gizmodo via Christmas Spirit]
Here’s hoping that all you retailers did a great job in 2006. And given that 2007 is just a few days away, make sure to optimize those sites for the upcoming holiday season!
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MyBlogLog’s Impact on the Blogging Scene, and How You Can Get Your Avatar Straightened Out
Dec 22, 2006 by Tamar Weinberg | Blogging, Social Networks
Yesterday, I installed the MyBlogLog widget on this blog. The response on this blog itself has been overwhelming and after looking into it further on other blogs and how it’s currently being used across the board, I’m quite impressed by the potential of the service offerings. Even though the service is pretty much in its infancy, it is doing quite well right now, and I expect the popularity to increase into 2007.
So what exactly does the MyBlogLog widget do, and why use it?
MyBlogLog is service whose core resides in little graphical widget that you can customize and put on your site to show you who reads your blog(s). Your blog may already have that personal touch from an author’s perspective, but that graphical designation from a reader’s perspective lets you get to know the kinds of visitors your blog (or another blog) gets. Essentially, it creates a community, and that’s exactly what it is.
Beyond the widget, MyBlogLog is an extensive network of blog readers. You can join “blog readership” communities (such as ours) based on your friends’ habits and you can meet new friends through similar blog community bonds. Furthermore, unlike other social networks, MyBlogLog encourages communication beyond the service, and with a profile that lets you fill out a ton of personal information, including LinkedIn URL, MySpace ID, Friendster ID, or Facebook name, you’re bound to find someone who shares one (or many) additional social networks with you.
MyBlogLog’s popularity, of course, has a lot to do with its widget that links back to its site. Consequently, they have a lot of results, which is pretty darn good for a site that launched its community features in May of this year. This goes to show that if you offer a great tool with link back to your site, your traffic will soar as the tool’s popularity increases.
From using the service myself, I noticed one small “bug” in the service that really isn’t a bug after all, and I wanted to help clear up some misconceptions since the discussion still is on the confused side.
Awhile ago, I posted a comment on MarketingPilgrim, and my head didn’t show up:
Now I know we look like we could be the same person because we both post on this blog, but that simply wasn’t the case. Initially, it appeared that MyBlogLog didn’t support multiple authors, and when I tried to claim that I also authored this blog, it said that I couldn’t because another author (Chris) already did.
After doing some digging, the very helpful MyBlogLog support told me that Chris would have to click on the “Add an Author” link on the 10e20 community page. Now I have a unique head again.
All in all, I have been enjoying MyBlogLog and recommend that all blog authors do sign up to monitor their blogs too. This social blogging network is proving to be a necessity in the blogosphere.
(Is it any surprise that Yahoo, which is trying to broaden its social media outreach, is in possible acquisition discussions with MyBlogLog?)
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And the List of Domains Ditched by Digg Keeps Growing
Dec 21, 2006 by Chris Winfield | Social Networks
Yesterday, Lee Odden posted about his blog being banned from Digg. A few of his stories were submitted and his domain was basically labeled as spam. The result? A lifetime banning from Digg. Don’t pass Go, don’t collect $200 – go straight to the Digg Jail. This hit home because Lee’s site is an excellent resource and you would be hard-pressed to find someone who would ever view it as spam. It is a site that focuses on SEO and social marketing.
Digg URL bannings have occurred for awhile but it was usually sites that were MFA (Made For AdSense) or some guy submitting every page from his Viagra “resource” site to try and build links. But there have been other sites that have been banned unjustly IMO. Here’s a list of the ones that I came up with:
Lee Odden’s Online Marketing Blog – explained above
John Chow - one of the highest profile bannings that really caught fire
Digital Point - yep, the entire forum is banned
Squidoo - no Lens for you or for anyone else for that matter
Text Link Ads - people were submitting stories with their affiliate IDs in the URL, as a result TLA is banned
SEO News Blog – having the letters SEO in your URL can’t be good. More from Todd on that here
ecademy - a social networking site with over 100,000 users isn’t allowed to submit any stories either
SearchBliss - a webmaster resource site
Connected Internet - this owner never even got the standard response from Digg regarding his ban
Real Estate Webmasters - the owner of the site figured out why they were banned
Rock My Monkey - their ‘Digg of the Day’ inadvertently got them banned
Paul Stamatiou - Paul hasn’t published any info about this but he confirmed his banning to Tamar via email
Paula Mooney – Paula is not sure if it was her Digg button or her cracks about Democrats
Can they come back? The Mu Life points out that Digg partners Revision3 (Diggnation) were at one point banned but somehow overcame this, despite this statement:
When submitted stories are consistently reported as spam and users complain via our feedback email about submission spam, we ban the domain. The domain will not be unbanned.
So, Digg can obviously un-ban a domain especially if they have close ties to them.
Graywolf had a great post this week called How to be a Dirty Digger where he lays out some simple steps to get basically any site you want banned in Digg. The sad thing is that this is basically true at this point. Can you imagine if it was this easy on the search engines?
As Digg continues to grow in popularity this will become an even bigger problem. I was thinking about it and my first thought was ‘They should have a reinclusion process like Google‘. That would be a start and be good for the Real Estate Webmaster guy who knows specifically why he was banned. But what about someone like Lee Odden – who has no clue as to the reason why he was banned? Shouldn’t Digg have policies for reincluding sites? Manual reviews? I know that this would increase support costs and perhaps decrease “Democracy in Action” but isn’t strong user generated content what drives Digg? The stories I Digg are equally split between big sites and blogs (yes – including SEO blogs). If they were to ban all SEO blogs they would be losing a strong part of the community that helped make Digg the site it is today.
The URL list above is by no means complete but just some of the ones that I know about and were able to find info on. If you have others – please feel free to add them.
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France and Germany Split to Create Competing National Search Engines
Dec 21, 2006 by Tamar Weinberg | Google, Search Engines
It may be impractical to start a search engine in the US with Google’s stronghold within the country, but other countries are aspiring to become national search powers, with French President Jacques Chirac’s acknowledgment that “We must take up the challenge posed by the American giants Google and Yahoo.” Initially dubbed as a “European search engine,” Germany and France are parting ways to create their own search engines. Germany will have a search engine called “Theseus,” and France’s search engine will be called “Quaero.”
The year 2007 will be interesting to follow with these competing engines, especially in light of China and Japan doing the same. Has Google already reached its peak? I’d say so.
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Google says that you can’t confuse your site’s visitors. In a recent blog post about placement of graphics near ads, the Google Adsense team has addressed concerns about the possibly misleading representation of images when placed next to ads, causing your site visitors to click on them and make you more money under the false premise that users “may click the ad expecting to find something that isn’t actually being offered” which in turn is “not a good experience for users or advertisers.”
In the image below, which the Google Adsense policy team uses as an example as a prohibited strategy, the images look to be clearly related to the ads, when they are in fact not.
Anyone who violates this policy can have their AdSense accounts banned, so it’s best to avoid any possible connections to your ads by putting your images elsewhere.
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