Steve Rubel at MicroPersuasion thinks trackbacks are dying. He cites tests of news trackback features at CNET and Yahoo that didn’t last as indicators that enthusiasm about trackback is waning.
Mar 292007
Mar 282007
Big corporations hire public relations firms to ensure that their message gets out as intended, to avoid embarrassing gaffes by staffers unaccustomed to dealing with the press, and so on. So, imagine how thrilled Microsoft must have been when their PR firm, Waggener Edstrom, inadvertently sent Wired Contributing Editor Fred Vogelstein his own secret file. (No doubt, Redmond staffers immediately began securing chairs and other loose objects in Steve Ballmer’s office.) [Clarification: the file was prepared by Waggner Edstrom, but the inadvertent release was apparently by a Microsoft employee.] The contents of the reporter’s file didn’t include any bombshells, but said things like, “It takes him a bit to get his point across so try to be patient” and “He is digging for tension where it does not exist. We have to be hard core on this point and communicate in no uncertain terms the level of executive commitment and support for Channel 9 and 10.″ (Via TechCrunch and Wired.)
Mar 272007
Rob Lovitt, MSNBC.com’s Travel Writer, has discovered another flaw in the wonderful world of Web 2.0: user reviews are sometimes inaccurate and contradictory: “The beds are soft, but firm; the parking is free, yet ridiculously expensive; and the chain’s signature cookies are very good, no better than Mrs. Fields and hardly ever available.” This isn’t really breaking news to community building professionals – the issue of reliability of information posted by anonymous individuals affects just about every Web 2.0 site, from Wikipedia down to the local restaurant’s blog. Remember the term, “link monkey,” which referred to a low-paid drone who cranked out link requests? Certainly a catalog of Internet jobs for the early 21st century will soon include “review monkey,” someone who specializies in posting favorable or unfavorable reviews of hotels, MP3 players, and any other product or service reviewed on the Web.
Mar 232007
The firms I talk to about community building seem to fall into two categories – those that want a Web community right now, and those that question the very value of communities. The latter group is skeptical for a variety of reasons, ranging from, “If we let our customers post on our website, they may say bad things about our products!” to “Can you really justify the ongoing time and money for administration and moderation? Our people are already really busy, and we don’t have a budget for outsourcing.” These are legitimate concerns, but of course we’ve got good answers for both of them. While working on a post over on Neuromarketing about branding and customer engagement, I dropped by Kathy Sierra’s Creating Passionate Users blog. While there, I found that Kathy’s post, User Community and ROI, provides a slightly different but excellent answer to the “value of community” question.
Mar 212007
Google has grown by doing things differently than the status quo, and if they do introduce a phone they may buck current practice there, too. Continue reading »
Mar 192007
Google has filed a patent application for ranking blogs using measures of quality, and Bill Slawski at SEO by the Sea has an excellent summary of the key factors. The quality factors fall into both positive and negative categories:
Mar 182007
The Web seems to spawn an array of weird lawsuits, but the one described in Colorado Woman Sues To Hold Web Crawlers To Contracts is surely one of the more bizarre ones. Continue reading »
Mar 152007
Web marketers face special challenges when they are writing headlines and copy – not only do they have to deal with all of the concerns that print writers contend with in trying to create copy that sells, but they have to worry about search performance, too. In order to maximize site traffic, or sometimes just to be found at all, web copy writers must uses words and phrases that people interested in their product might type into Google. A print writer can use creative substitutions and clever turns of phrase, while web writers often must use popular, lowest-common-denominator terms.
Mar 132007
Viacom has sued Google’s YouTube for $1 billion, alleging copyright infringement by the video hosting site. MSNBC’s John Schoen notes in Media world eyes Viacom-YouTube slugfest,
Wikipedia has been in the news lately, and much of the press has been related to editor misdeeds. Not long after it was disclosed that Microsoft had paid a consultant to “make corrections” in their entries, a Wikipedia “arbitrator” (sort of a super-editor) who claimed to have a PhD in theology turned out to be a college dropout. Now, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says that editors claiming to have specific credentials will need to prove they have them. The AP’s Brian Bergstein describes the new approach in After flap over phony academic credentials, Wikipedia to ask some writers to share real names.