Category: Blogging

Blogging, Blog, Blogger, New Media, Social Media

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New Techmeme Leaderboard Lauches

I like it! Gabe talks about his concerns about it here that. And to Gabe I say this, don’t worry about the criticism, you’re clearly the leading service out there and any conversation will only lead to new things. The thing Techmeme does best is eliminate the obsolete imaginary lines that some people still imagine between news and blogs.

My only wish is that the leaderboard went deeper a few hundred more blogs and more highly factored in those that provided commentary on the breaking news (that’s what I click on when I visit Techmeme) – the overfocus on a few mega blogs is ultimately not healthy – not Gabe’s fault but a problem area.

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WordPress 2.3 Beta 1

Wow, WordPress 2.3 Beta! Small problem I’ve still not migrated to 2.2 due to plugin incompatibility / instability – especially podpress. As I’ve stated before, I hope that many of these more complex plugins functionality gets integrated into the core of WordPress, reducing this painful upgrading issue.

So my question is this, does WordPress 2.3 work flawlessly with the following plugins? If not, when will if be incorporated into the main code or the plugin made compatible before release of WordPress 2.3?

Add Meta Tags 1.2
Akismet 2.0
Dagon Design Sitemap Generator 3.06
Feedburner Feed Replacement 2.2
Google Sitemaps 2.7.1
podPress 7.9 I’ve never upgraded to Podpress 8.2 or from WordPress 2.1.3 yet due to the problems reported

Recent Comments 2.1.1 beta
Related Posts
ST Add Related Posts to Feed .02
Subscribe To Comments 2.1.1
Trackback Validator 0.7.1
Wordpress PDA 1.0

Thank you for your attention to this important issue, I appreciate it deeply.

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Bloglines Version 3.0 Beta Launched

Bloglines has relaunched with with a quicker and cleaner interface based on my short period of new usage this morning. I’m checking it out more right now. Gary Price has a nice summary of the new features at Resourceshelf and there is the official Bloglines announcement.

On a related topic, you may have noticed that I’ve relaunched my blog’s RSS feed using Feedburner’s Mybrand feature, I’ll be writing a more detailed post someday when I wrap up some last loose ends and have time.  The correct RSS feed that you should please switch to is now: http://feeds.daviddalka.com/DavidDalka

If you have a Bloglines account, please add my new feed to Bloglines. If you don’t, I’d ask that you please test out your new Bloglines account with my new feed as your test run.

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SES San Jose Day 4 – Buzz Monitoring

Moderator:
Chris Sherman, Co-Chair, SES San Jose
Search Engine Marketing Speakers:
Rob Key, CEO, Converseon
Andy Beal, Consultant, Editor, Author, MarketingPilgrim.com
Jonathan Ashton, Director of SEO, Agency.com

Rob Key

Consumers trust each other the most

Social media rapidly gaining SERP Predominance and are now intertwined.

You no longer own your brand. Your brand is a conversation.

What is below the waterline of this iceberg?

You are losing control.

Conversation Mining (Buzz Monitoring)

This conversation is replacing traditional market research.

Are you listening to consumer generated media? You should be….

How do we engage this into a social media strategy.

Go across all and many forms.

It’s amazing how the conversation leads will occur.

Conversation mining provides many, many benefits.

Is this person a reasonable or determined detractor – how you treat them differently.

Andy Beal

Editor – Marketingpilgrim.com

Writing a book on this subject

Company name, executives, customers, press releases, partners, reviews, etc.

Potential Tools to Use:
Moreover.com – industry
news.google.com
Digg.com
Technorati.com
Co.mments.com
Blogpulse.com/conversation
Blogpulse.com/trend
Flickr (other photo sharing sites)
video.google.com – now a true search engine
keotag.com
wikipedia.org
oodle.com
google.brand.edgar-online.com
upcoming.yahoo.com
amazon.com/tag/iphone
google.com/trends/
searchanalytics.compete.com
copernic.com
pipes.yahoo.com

Jonathan Ashton, Director, Agency.com

Search engines magnify smaller voices.

Buzz Management now equals Brand Management

Remove top down approach to brand management

Powerful impact of consumer comment sites

Blog as a soapbox – existing entry, comment added.

Co-opetition is a key to mitigation

Maximize Your Own Site to Run Interface

Orkin has a Wikipedia page and Terminix does not.

Again, creative thinking and co-opetition.

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SES San 2007 Jose Day 1 – Universal & Blended Vertical Search

Moderator:
Chris Sherman, Co-Chair, SES San Jose
Search Engine Marketing Speakers:
Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder, SEO-PR
Sherwood Stranieri, Search Marketing Director, Catalyst online
Bill Slawski, seobythesea.com
Erik Collier, Director of Product Management, Ask.com
David Bailey, Engineer, Google
Tim Mayer, Vice President of Product Management, Yahoo! Search

Quite likely the busiest session of the day to the fullest house. One can’t help but notice that if Greg Jarboe had gone to Google and designed Universal Search himself he likely couldn’t have designed it to play into his strength areas in news and pr related issues. The implications and transformation for universal search are still evolving, but they are clearly changing the landscape. One other thing that became clear from this event was that Ask is becoming a serious contender in this marketplace.

Greg Jarboe –

Universal search is the biggest event since “Florida” update. 70% of what I used to know is now obsolete. The patterns are not yet clear in personalization.

News results ranked #4 if you searched for the term iPhone on June 29

In the #8 position, was a Youtube video. We don’t know if it was done on purpose.

July 17, Rupert Murdoch – news with image – brings up a whole new reputation management – be prepared to optimize images.

Early chapters of Henry Potter were leaked, the blog results are on page one of results

Investor relations now is moving to the front page of Countrywide. Few companies have complete control of their brands now on Google.

Unflattering images of Hillary Clinton and that vast right wing conspiracy is building links to unflattering results.

Blogs on Hurricane Dean already on front page. Images will likely come next.

All of the rules have been rewritten – how do I research this? Focus on the upper left links. News seems to be on the top left all the time. Search remains #1 way journalist find information about a company.

Newsknife and Google News Report – be checking this. Your PR people aren’t ready for that yet. If you are not giving a jpg file in a release, start now.

Google News right now doesn’t do video news. Likely to create that.

Social mapping tools can help identify most influential bloggers. In certain categories they show up.

A couple of years ago there was vertical creep session here at SES – I now rank for that term. Not a good thing.

You can’t afford to ignore Universal Search Today

Google is making specialized or vertical content more visible through Universal Search

Sherwwod Stranieri, Catalyst Online

This throws a lot of  curves into the theme. Ask 3D and Google cut new paths.

Conventional web pages that once rank well are going to move around maybe down. Other things will move updates.

Number of videos is significant in the Youtube world. Are the search engines using comments as an indicator?

We are looking at it as search marketers. Showed client example.

How to look at it: Google PR, Y! Page links, keyword phrases in tags.

Videos ranking correspond well with views, comments, etc.

Bill Slawski

Why does news, images and video show up there.

I’m not sure I see this all as a revolutionary concept. How do we get out content into our results.

Showed examples of screen prints from each engine for the word spider.

Showed the Google patent, oddly looks quite different than Google’s universal search does now.

Google acquired several Infoseek patents.

Discussed Onebox and log file data.

Ranking in Vertical databases – how do you rank for that vertical?

User behavior – key value pairs, be certain definition and being defined. Questions and Answers work the same way. Html formatting may play a role.

Enhancing the user experiences.

David Bailey – Google
Technical lead for the vertical search.

What are our goals?

Make google.com the search box of first resort.

Display special features for special results

Keep it fast. Keep it simple. Above all, keep it relevant.

Showed example: origami crane

This will continually improve and extend to more result types.

It’s still about the web.

But: think about creating quality content in other forms. Expect similar SEO guidelines to apply.

Create quality content, describe it well and we’ll see what happens.

Tim Mayer, VP Product Management

We are transitioning to a better optimized user experience

Freshness and user intent became relevancy issues.

News, local and other verticals – the possibilities are infinite. Federation plays a role.

Some implantation examples:

Music Artist Shortcut

Movie Shortcut

Hotel Shortcut Inline

Consumer Electronics Shortcut

As we go forward, it’s going t be more about the intent of the searchers.

Eric Collier, Director of Product Management

“We are the scrappy innovator of search.”

Ask.com 3D: SERP Design

We moved the content up top and removed the top links.

Large jumps in user satisfaction seen in both the site analytics and surveys

Increase in vertical channel usage

Starting to see a reduction of multiple query sessions around the same keyword term.

Expect to see a larger percentage of SERPs with blended results

User location will play a larger roles in SERPs

Expect to see fewer web results in SERPs

Blogs, Images and Video results will take online reputation into account when ranking

Pay attention to other search drivers

Other coverage of this important session:

RB Digital Boots

Rustybrick

AIM Clear Blog

Lee Odden’s Toprankblog

Bonus coverage:

Lee Odden interviews Tim Mayer

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Death of Blog Search Part 2 – Sifry Leaves Technorati

Techcrunch, Alarm clock and even Jason Calacanis weighed in on David Sifry’s departure. Jason extrapolated into some things that I don’t agree with completely, except with his suggestion that Web 2.0 companies try to make a profit, but I’ll leave that alone for now.

David Sifry today announced that he has stepped down as CEO of Technorati. While the search for a new CEO continues, Teresa Malo (CFO), Dorion Carroll (VP-Engineering), and Derek Gordon (VP-Marketing), will manage the day-to-day operations of the company. Sifry will become “Chairman of Technorati’s board”. What does it ultimately prove? It again clearly demonstrates that Internet experience is not the primary indicator of Internet executive future success.

Hello people. Technorati did a redesign that refocused on mainstream media as I noted in my earlier post the death of blog search. Then Technorati used tags to grow traffic from other search properties. As Arrington asked in early June “When will the Technorati traffic party end?” Apparently Google and others took notice of this and the party ended in July based on Alexa data – I’m surprised Michael did not discuss this at length today in his post actually. This dip exposed the payday to payday advertising dollar budgeting leading to the departure of Sifry and 8 others. It should be noted that this followed the dismissal of several other employees during the July 4th holiday.

Looking at a May 9th Mashable post, it seems that around $1 million was raised when it expanded a round of funding from 10.52 Million to 11.52 Million. It appears that Technorati was spending more cash than it was taking in, even before the traffic decline in July, based on the early July layoffs. The traffic decline in July only made that situation worse.

This leaves Technorati in the unenviable position of needing to generate new advertising dollars at a time when the engineering needs an overhaul it can’t afford. Repairs such as Typepad blog overcounting, flawed link metrics and many other flaws can not occur at this time.

In fact, someone suggested to me in a phone conversation today that perhaps they should shut Technorati off completely now and just sell it’s likely most valuable asset – a 301 redirect of the Technorati domain. The talk of taking Technorati public via IPO will likely be nothing more than that talk in David Sifry’s previous blog posts.(URL REMOVED)

So where is a blog searcher to go now?

Ask – They have recently revamped their offering dramatically and comment search is now combined with post search. It is an offering that is available directly on their front page.

Google – They should move blog search to the front page as I suggested previously and ideally should build and option to show it mixed with news sites.

Other players like Topix, if they were to index the blogosphere fully, could also emerge as an alternative that would properly mix news and blogs together demonstrating that most news is being lifted from blogs by the mainstream media.

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8 Random Things About Me

I was tagged by Bena Roberts to write 8 Random Things About Me from Paul Ruppert’s original meme. Let’s get to it!

– I love scientific wonders! In Arizona there are many that are well known, like the Grand Canyon or Sedona. But I prefer the unlimited prickly pear lemonade, cactus and scenic beauty of Tuscon, Arizona Highways or my personal overlooked favorite Sunset Crater National Monument! Whale watching in Bar Harbor, Maine is awesome. In Alberta, Drumheller and Lake Louise/Banff are just gorgeous to experience. The west coast surrounding Seattle, northern California and elsewhere is also great, I hope to experience Alaska someday, it’s one of the 14 states I’ve not yet visited.

impressionists I love art, most often that is Impressionist art! When I was younger this meant Claude Monet exclusively. Then I saw Camille Pissaro’s exhibition of “The Impressionist in the City”, a tight cluster of paintings all about the city all from the 1890’s. I was blown away by it! Since then I’ve learned about how he was a collaborator among his peers and frequently experimented and innovated a bit from the efforts of each style. He was poor almost all his life, but always pursued what he loved to do! Pissarro is highly inspirational to me and I try to draw from his philosophies in my start up activities. You should check out some of his print galleries here and here. Also, there is currently an exhibition in Milwaukee “Pissarro: Creating the Impressionist Landscape” until September 9th, 2007. The exhibition then moves onto to the Brooks Museum in Memphis.

– I’m a fan of the Chicago Bears, Chicago BlackHawks and Chicago Cubs. Yes, two out of three of those is kinda depressing sometimes. Well OK it’s downright sad! Bright spots in there include many memories of Walter Payton, Steve Larmer (you belong in the Hockey Hall of Fame!) and Ryne Sandberg. I miss Chicago Stadium (should have been an untouchable landmark)) but still have Wrigley Field.

– I’ve presently lived in three different North American metropolitan areas: Chicago, Cleveland and New York City. I love traveling and living in different cities as it opens your mind to different ways of thinking about life and approaching the world. I hope to one day live in other cities to gain even more perspectives perhaps even internationally!

– When I lived in New York City, I worked for BlackRock during it’s 80 to 800 person growth phase, this is why I covet being part of highly entrepreneurial environment, whether that is a start up or a highly innovative division of larger company. On BlackRock, I think most people still don’t fully understand how revolutionary this company was from a technical architecture, data redesign, customer service innovation and revenue diversification standpoint. I’ve often said I’d trade my MBA before I’d trade that amazing work experience and I truly mean it. I look forward to being a critical piece of a company like BlackRock again someday!

– I’m fascinated with history, both from a business, innovation and society perspective. There are many great lessons of the past that can be utilized in new situations to make wiser decisions. Peter Drucker is an idol of mine from an innovation and customer listening standpoint. The Chief Marketing Officer of the future will combine many new elements with traditional elements to create first in class experiences.

– I love meteorology! I almost studied full-time when I was in college. I think that weather events will play a critical role in some of the trigger point variables in the coming era of mobile search marketing and mobile advertising and it is one of the many key relevancy factors I’ve identified that can make a big difference. I’m quite excited by this convergence.

– I love to find the best grub around. Whether it’s fine dining like New York’s Union Square Cafe, pizza, ribs, a kick ass burger or things unique to a place like Italian Beef in Chicago or corned beef in Cleveland. You can be sure that if the food is top notch you can likely attract me there to chat!

I’ll tag:

Cshel

Jason Bartholme

Barry Schwartz – Cartoon Barry

Mike Maddaloni

Kristy Sammis

Not tagged? Feel free to join in anyway!