Hypocritical Love Affair with My Android / G1

December 23, 2008 · Filed Under Local Search, Odds and Ends, Social Media Links · 1 Comment 

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I hate Google. I mean, really, really hate them. They’re effectively big brother bursting off the pages of George Orwell’s 1984 and monitoring everything I say, do and think. Everything. Including what you’re doing right now. (Seriously, this blog is tagged with GA)T-Mobile G1

I’ve expressed my displeasure for Google on a number of occasions, from my panel at SMX East discussing SiteLinks to my most recent post on SEJ. In short, I don’t trust Google. Particularly now that they’ve become publicly controlled. They’re a necessary evil in our industry, sure.

But evil nonetheless.

A couple weeks ago my temper got the best of me. I tossed my BlackBerry 8700g over my shoulder and into the kitchen with a little more force than I perhaps should have.

Shattered.

The screen on it was in as many pieces as my heart was when my 8th grade girlfriend told me she was dating me because she really liked my brother. I never forgave her for that. Or her. Just as my broken 8700g will never forgive me… from the bottom of a trash heap in some Rhode Island landfill.

I opted to go phoneless for a couple days and it turned out to be a remarkably great. You’d be surprised how little stress and annoyance creeps up on you when you’re isolated from the outside world. I even chose to telecommute one of those days which really killed any social interaction.

When I went into the T-Mobile store a couple days later to get a new phone, I was hoping to find a BlackBerry that would wow me. The Curve is nice, but the trackball was a deal breaker. It always feels flimsy when I use someone else’s and I find I miss the click wheel from my old 8700.

I kept joking about the G1 never thinking I’d buy one. I played with a pre-release of one the week of SMX East when I was hanging out with a Google rep, but never thought much about it until recently. But I did. And I felt giddy about it. Annoyingly so. I know this because more than a few people told me as much.

Fast forward a couple weeks and I’ve found that I actually like the device. And, while it has a couple of quirks, I find myself using it productively. The keyboard slows me down when compared to an 8700 but I’m getting much better with it.

At first I went over to the Android Marketplace and downloaded everything I thought seemed like it’d be fun. Truth is, most of what’s out there is relatively boring or comes with a limited shelf life. Apps that I’ve found particularly useful would include ShopSavvy, Twidroid, The Weather Channel App, Budget Droid and Shazam. Out of the box, it’s an impressive little device.

I also like that it serves as a handy flash drive whenever I need it too. I’ve already played around with a Linux CLI, but so far haven’t been able to get into too much trouble.

So, I’m a G1 owner. And that scares the hell out of me given the fact that I couldn’t even setup the device without an active GMail account. So I’m quite sure that I’ve either begun drinking the Google Kool-Aid or I’m simply the world’s biggest hypocrite.

You decide.

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Protect Digg, StumbleUpon & Propeller from uSocial.net’s Spammers

November 25, 2008 · Filed Under Odds and Ends · 23 Comments 

I hate that I’m writing this post, but I’ll be damned if this service goes unnoticed by any of the 13 readers of my blog. I’m lying. I actually love that I’m writing this. Passion like this doesn’t come frequently to me, so when it’s here - I’m tapping it.

As the post title suggests I’m talking about uSocial. Specifically, uSocial.net. I’m not sure what they prefer to go by and we won’t know too much more until they launch on December 1st. When I hope you choose not to do business with them.

Emails from Serena Adamson at uSocial.net

I was contacted early Monday by Serena Adamson, the Publicity & Marketing Manager for uSocial.net. She emailed me about a joint venture opportunity where I would effectively pimp uSocial.net in exchange for some affiliate commissions.

It makes sense, provided that you didn’t take time to learn about me before pitching me. It was just last week that I ranted on ethics and social conversations, right?

Okay, fine.

So I took the bait looking to hear more about this wonderful proposal. The response I got back was both appauling and frustrating. Social Media Marketing is for some reason seen as a relative to Search Engine Marketing. I don’t buy that other than for the value of link generation - but that’s another topic for another time.

Rather than post Serena’s entire reply, here are two parts I want to highlight. The emphasis placed on certain sections are all my doing.

uSocial.net is a traffic generation company who provides our clients with high-quality traffic at a cost that cannot be compared with PPC, banner advertising and most other forms of traditional paid traffic generation. We manipulate social bookmarking sites like Digg and provide our client’s content on these sites with paid votes, enabling them to quickly and easily reach the front page of these sites and in turn, receive a flood of traffic. On average with our clients in testing, we have been able to provide over 100,000 unique visitors in 24 hours with an investment which upon launch will cost clients between $200-$300 USD with Digg, and around $100-$150 with StumbleUpon and Propeller. However, we have experienced up to 220,000 unique visitors in 24 hours. And unlike cheap paid hits sites, this is all quality, unique traffic coming from social bookmarking sites.

…

While most people can see the extreme value in investing in votes for sites like Digg, many are apprehensive about using such services as in the past it has resulted in their social bookmarking accounts being closed, or their site being banned from these sites. With uSocial this is a thing of the past for clients as we submit their content for them as well as place paid votes on it, meaning the risks involved in such practices are now a thing of the past.

Normally I would just fire off an irate reply, but I decided to see how far I could get Serena to go here. I asked her openly if I could blog about uSocial.net here on my blog with the intentions of raising awareness to the service, the launch of it, and its impact on the space. Word for word, that was my request.

Serena was all for it.

What About Ethics?

It’s no secret that Digg (and other communities) have taken strong stands against those in violation of the terms of service. Accounts have been banned. Sites have been effectively excluded. While some can rightfully get upset about how they’ve gone about doing that, Kevin Rose and the rest of Digg are trying to make the entire community a better place.

Enter the topic of ethics.

Don’t get me wrong. I could use some extra money just as much as the next guy. I’ll still favor ethics over a quick buck any day.

But these guys have a trademarked tag line of Get votes. Get traffic. Get Paid.

It sounds like one of those “Get Listing in 3,457,286 Search Engines -GUARANTEED” claims of bullshit.

Whatever happened to transparency? Why can’t they just say with no degree of uncertainty - that they’re spamming the shit out of social networks, polluting the user communities and gaming what is shown as the most popular stories?

Another thing. On their About Us Page they display their email addresses as an image with the following disclaimer:

You won’t be able to click the addresses above as we’ve made it an image to prevent those naughty spam-bots getting a hold of it, so we ask that you simply type it manually into whatever email program you currently use.

Right, because you’re all about the reduction of spam on the ‘net. I hope no one posts your email addresses of contact@usocial.net or affiliates@usocial.net anywhere else for those bots to find.

Sorry, it’s just unethical. I may not care if they didn’t try to dismiss the “risks involved” to site owners. You and I both know that someone will hire them in an flash and pay up for their services, and eventually get burned.

Secretive Social Bookmarking Ninjas

In the link building and search engine marketing space, ninja has become synonymous with Jim Boykin’s firm, We Build Pages, an organization that has Jim fighting to preserve their image in the honor of ethical marketing.

uSocial.net claims to have “Secretive Social Bookmarking Ninjas”. As if ninjas alone conjures up images of massive, fumbling thugs who do nothing but stand out like a sore thumb.

When you decide to use uSocial to generate traffic for your website, sales page or product, we use our extensive network of secretive Social Bookmarking Ninjas to generate as many votes as you’d like for your website or content on social bookmarking sites Digg, StumbleUpon and Propeller. This will result in your website or page being shown on the much sought after front  page of these social networking portals and inevitably lead to a flood of traffic to your site…

More on the ninjas can be seen in their FAQ section:

Who votes for my submission on the social bookmarking sites?
We have our own network of Social Bookmarking Ninjas who are all employees of uSocial. Whereas our competitors rely on other Internet users to vote on content for them, which is not only unreliable but can result in some disgruntled social bookmarking site users giving negative votes, our worldwide employees are all screened and their voting monitored to ensure that the greatest possible amount of your votes are delivered to you, as well as being delivered on-time.

Flaunting Their Success in the FAQs

One visit to their FAQ page reveals that they’re openly gaming Digg and others. Remember the whole account deletion subject? Check this FAQ out:

Am I doing something illegal when using your vote-buying service?
No. While social bookmarking sites don’t like people buying votes on their sites, there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing it. Sites like Digg forbid you buying votes as part of their terms and service and they can close your account as a result of you purchasing votes, though we have already served tens of thousands of votes and as yet, not one of our users has reported to us their account has been closed.

They then go on to casually address the risk they’ve already sold you against:

Is is possible my social bookmarking account could be banned if I buy uSocial votes? Unfortunately yes, this is possible as several of the sites we use forbid it as part of their terms of service, however we have already tested thousands of votes over dozens of accounts and as yet, no account has been closed due to the secretive and advanced methods of vote generation we use.

Protect Social Communities

The great thing about social communities online is that they tend to police themselves pretty well. I hope if nothing else, some of the more conscious members of these networks can help spread the word about uSocial and be on the lookout for their continued spamming when the company officially launches on December 1st.

If you happen across something you think is suspect, keep an eye on it and those involved with the item’s promotion. It’s pretty clear that uSocial has a network of ninjas into the hundreds.

Parting Shots

uSocial.net also touts their incredible charity program saying that they want to have a positive impact on the world they’re polluting. Awesome. It’s time to use their own words against them. “..thank you for supporting us and in turn, supporting a positive change in this world. Do your part — help us make a change!”

Help me make a change here. Let’s rid quality sites and communities of these slimy characters.

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I’m Back on Twitter with @ericlander

November 21, 2008 · Filed Under Social Media Links · 2 Comments 

While attending the SEMNE event that featured Nick Gerner of SEOmoz, I got caught up talking Twitter with Jill Whalen (who passed on some good info from Pauline Jakober) and Jim Spencer. We discussed some pros and cons of the site, how you can be perceived by your followers - and some things to be careful of.

Rather than using Twitter to rant and rave as an  emotionally charged kumquat, I’m back online with Twitter and will be using it primarily as a professional resource. [Sorry to those extended family members who stalk me there looking for juicy life details...]

Apologies to my former followers who have to once again go in there and choose to follow me. I know I became a PITA with that over the last few months.

Props to the Twitter Support team too. I don’t know who Caroline is, but I’d like to buy her something nice. She totally scored bonus points for Twitter by going in and unlocking the only username I felt comfortable with…. @ericlander

So - please follow me. Please tweet all your friends too and let them know I’m back… That is, if you think I’ll be a decent resource for them.

Again, some special thanks to @jillwhalen and @fairminder for enlightening me a bit with their opinions on it all. Follow them if you’re not already doing so.

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Free Analytics and User Demographics from Quantcast

November 19, 2008 · Filed Under Analytics, Links & Resources · Comment 

If you’re looking for a free way to learn more about your visitors’ demographics, I’ve got a pretty simple (and free) solution for you. Quantcast. And while this isn’t a new tool at all, it was new to me a couple months back when I began testing it out.

Around 2 months or so and I was checking out the Advertising Page on BBGeeks. Shortly thereafter, I saw that Sugarrae had the Quantcast code on her blog, too.


I thought it was really cool how BBGeeks presented their demographics as well as a link for a complete website profile. There were slick graphs, solid targeting information for potential advertisers and an overview of traffic growth over time.

I wrongly assumed the data came from a purchased analytics package of sorts. But, it’s all free and you can sign up for the same data if you’d like to capture it for your site.

That’s what I’ve been doing since having signed up. If you’re willing to tag your site, here’s some of the information you can acquire and provide…

Demographics

You can have Quantcast record user data for all of the visitors on your site. You can choose any combination of the following (selected via checkbox) when you’re managing your site profiles:

  • Age
  • Children
  • Gender
  • Education
  • Income
  • Ethnicity

Showing Traffic Information

When visitors access your site profile they can also view traffic information should you want them to. My blog is lucky if it is read by more than a dozen people a day, so I figured I didn’t have much to lose.

Here’s what my graph looks like:

And… Here’s what a kick ass graph looks like (from bbgeeks):

These graphs are obviously available to anyone should you opt to allow them to display.

You can get a deeper breakdown of traffic data too.  Here’s an example of what I’m referring to with the stats for my site:

Check out those weekly numbers! See, blogging nonsense like I have been for the past week seriously pays off.

Lifestyle & Audience Data

Since my site’s traffic is that of a small Amish Pennsylvania town, there’s no good lifestyle data available for me. Other sites that do receive some sort of traffic will show three cool reports… What the site’s Audience Also Likes in terms of categories (like “technology”, “auto industry”, “politics” etc.), what the Audience Also Visits in terms of other domains, and finally, what keywords the Audience Also Searches For.

All pretty cool stuff. Nothing Earth shattering, but cool.

Demographics & Visitor Classification

The actual demographics that you can pull are much more interesting to me. Since my site has a limited audience, I’m sure these graphics are skewed a bit, but check out the breakdown available:

The Quantcast Media Planner

Finally, once you’re a verified account holder and have the code on your site you can opt to include your site in the Quantcast Media Planner which showcases sites and allows readers and advertisers to drill down using demographics to locate potential advertising partners.

In other words, if you’re open to selling some ad space… This can be a great money making opportunity too.

As always, play around with this and see what you can get out of it. So far I’ve been more than impressed considering it took seconds to setup and hasn’t cost me a dime yet. :)

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Blogroll Changes Completed… Finally.

November 19, 2008 · Filed Under Odds and Ends · 1 Comment 

It only took about a week, but I got off my arse and moved the blogroll out of the sidebar and onto a dedicated page that’s accessible in the header navigation.

Please check through and see if any links need updates or anchor text modified… Within reason. :)

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