Social Media Optimization

Describing Twitter to people that haven't used it isn't particularly easy. So I thought I'd take a stab at helping people understand what's it's like by comparing it to every day things. And with that, Twitter is like...

Patrict Altoft's reaction to the new Diggbar is that it has killed linkbait because the URL that bloggers are now likely to grab is one that points to Digg.com. However, I'm pretty sure a simple frame buster like the one available as a WordPress plugin would set things back to the way they were. Anyone want to try it out?

So I've been catching up with posts in my feed reader and there are a plethora of requests from SEMMY nominees to vote for their articles. Many of those requesting votes link directly to the voting form where there is no link to the actual article. Oversight? I don't know.

I just got through updating the Social Media for Firefox add-on to work properly in Firefox 3.0. This latest version of the add-on is backwards compatible with Firefox 2.x as well. For details and download links, please see my original post about the re-release of the Social Media for Firefox add-on.

If you like this add-on and have a Mozilla account, please provide a rating. I'd like to get the add-on out of Mozilla's sandbox and ratings will help me do that. Thanks!

Back in 2007 the folks from 97th Floor released a promising Firefox add-on to help facilitate cross-submissions between social bookmarking sites. Unfortunately, development on this add-on stopped in October 2007 and it wasn't long before the add-on itself became non-functional.

Proponents of Twitter would have you believe that it is a useful tool. You'd be smart to listen to the opinions of these folks as they've proven time and time again that they know what they're doing in the online space. The message has been so loud and clear that even those that were initially skeptical have jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. And yet despite my efforts to convince myself that I should use Twitter, I find myself more and more inclined to shut down Twhirl and move on.

If you're a famous search engine marketer or social media user, you can ignore this post as I'm sure you don't have this problem. For the rest of you, read on...

One of the things I don't like about Sphinn is that if a post fails to go hot within a couple of days of being submitted, it will NEVER go hot. I'm not arguing that the system isn't fair, I'm just saying I don't like it. And part of the reason I don't like it is that a site can, over time, become riddled with Sphinn buttons with depressing single digit counts. Do I need to advertise to visitors that a post failed to reach critical mass? Nope.

A recent post on statistics I gleaned from looking at 2,500+ Sphinns resulted in a request for me to look at one area I had missed. Jeff Quipp of Search Engine People wanted to know which sites had their posts go hot most often. I'm not sure why I didn't look at those counts the first time around so thanks to Jeff for suggesting it. Anyway, I finally got around to pulling that information together.

Ever ask yourself what day of the week generates the most front-page Sphinns? Or after how many days a Sphinn submission has a next to zero chance of going hot? How about the question of just how much influence an elite few have on Sphinn content? I'm going to answer such questions using data on over 2,500 front-page Sphinns dating back to Sphinn.com's launch back in July 2007.

One of the things I don't like about Michelle MacPhearson's otherwise great Sphinn plugin for WordPress is that it shows a Sphinn button for all posts on my home page and in category pages. While I understand that the button may encourange people to Sphinn an article by making it easier for them to do so, having a bunch of Sphinn It! (i.e. 0 Sphinns) buttons gives the impression of desperation. Instead, I'd rather have the button show only AFTER the first Sphinn. And looking at the comments on Michelle's blog, I'm not the only one that wants this behavior.

I was reminded this weekend of how procrastination can lead undesirable situations. And this lesson came from someone I didn't know and had never interacted with before -- Marios Tziortzis. Who is Marios Tziortzis? As far as I can tell he's a pleasant fellow who, like me, has a blog, an interest in the web, and likes photography. But the most important similarity is that we share the same first name.

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz recently coined a new term: wiki-hacking. I've decided that I too want to create a new term and I've settled on ego spam. The good thing about making up words is that you get to define them too. So here goes!

I'm sure I'm not the only one to notice this, but it seems that BlogRush has replaced MyBlogLog as the defacto blog widget. Sure, I still see MyBlogLog widgets on various sites, but I think the number is on the decline. Those that remain are probably there because, like me, the site owners just haven't thought about it for a while.

Earlier this week I poked fun at SEO vendor that posted rankings that weren't particularly impressive and were, in my opinion, downright funny. I'm must be in a sour mood because now I'm going to poke fun at a company that seems to be trying to generate buzz and presumably links, but has made a pathetic attempt at it.

Hopefully this is the turning point in the social bookmarking. First reported (to me, anyway) by the good folks at TechCrunch. If we can just get the list down to 3 or 4 that would make life easier, wouldn't it?

Hey there! Thanks for proving that people will click on anything

If you haven't heard of social bookmarking sites, you're missing out on a new web phenomenon. In a nutshell, social bookmarking sites allow you to store links to web pages you like on a publicly accessible web site where others can see them. The benefit of this sharing is that you expose others to content that they may not have encountered. Similarly, you may see content from others that you wouldn't normally have come across.