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Anyone who’s been involved in web development for any length of time has likely encountered the Developers VS Users situation. It’s a mistake that can often lead to expensive problems down the road. So what exactly is the problem? And how can you spot it–and solve it–before it derails you project and causes you to make a costly mistake? Here’s how…

Most developers became developers because they want to work on and build cool stuff. Like everyone, they want to build things that gain the respect of their peers. This aspiration is where the problems get started. Unless you happen to develop for an extremely technical audience, users don’t want cool stuff. They just want stuff that works and makes their life easier. For example, let’s say a developer wants to build a weather dashboard with real time satellite video feeds, an AJAX module that show the latest temperature, barometric pressure and wind speed/direction, the sunrise/sunset times, and tidal data. A regular user, on the other hand, just wants to know “is it going to be sunny or cloudy and do I need a jacket or umbrella today?”

We’ve seen several examples of this played out in public in our little tech-bubble-blogosphere in the past year:

• Google Wave: Google wave is cool. It doesn’t solve any problems that any real people have but it does a lot of great things that developers get excited about. It includes embedded video, sound, and chat from multiple users that a user can enable playback from… Yeah, I was saying just last week how I wished I could do that. The only useful thing I’ve ever seen done with Google wave is the Pulp Fiction movie (1000% NSFW).
• iPad: When the IPad first came out, I (like many others) complained that it was an oversized iphone with less functionality. However what we missed was that it really wasn’t for us. The iPad is for regular users, not developers or techno weenies. In other words, people–in fact, most people– want an internet appliance that just works. They don’t want to have to deal with nonsense like registries, print drivers, patches, updates, and so on. Why does everyone have a refrigerator in their house? Because it’s easy to to use! You plug it in and go. Imagine for a minute if you had to play with the evaporator driver or download and install a thermometer patch update every week. Your refrigerator “works” because 99% of the time it just does its job without any fiddling.
• Google Buzz: Google assumed that everyone wanted to share all of the stuff they are doing, reading, and looking at with people they talk to. Because many Googlers have become victims of their own hubris, they assumed everyone is like them, wants to be like them, or should be like them. However when the realities of everyday life entered the equation, in the shape of something like an abusive ex-husband, it was a condition that didn’t exist in the artificial utopia of the Googleplex. Google failed to test the program in the real world and instead relied on the developer’s vision of what the users wanted. The result? Failure.

So how do you recognize when you are in this situation? If you, your developer, or anyone on your team makes these kind of statements, chances are strong that you are on the wrong path:

• Can’t the users open their eyes and just read? The answer is right there in front of them.
• The users need to use a little common sense. We can’t keep dumbing down the world for them or we’ll end up like (insert tv/movie/pop culture reference for stupid people here).
• They use the term UX to mean user experience or UI to mean user interface in common everyday speech and would feel comfortable using it when speaking to the CEO or board of directors.

What can you do to prevent this kind of mistake from ruining your project? Here are some ideas:

• In most cases, developers don’t make good team/project leaders. They carry with them the bias of wanting to be cool, respected developers. If you have or can find a developer who has a proven track record of placing user needs above cool programming features, ignore this recommendation.
• User testing: find someone who is not involved in the project or, even better, get a NIF (non internet friend) to try out your website. Put them on the homepage and ask them to try and do what your primary goal is, whether that’s to create a gift registry, put something in a cart and checkout, find a specific piece of information, or something else. Whatever it is, ask them try and do it. If you can video tape them, that’s great; otherwise, watch without interacting and take notes.
• Test different options. Use services like Crazyegg or Google multi variant testing to try out different options. See where users are and aren’t clicking then make adjustments based on data not on intuition. (disclosure: Crazyegg is an advertiser here)
• Don’t make changes because they are cool, neat, interesting, or stroke the ego of your developers. Make changes that solve problems people have. This is one of the biggest complaints I have with Wordpress as a platform. They coddle developer’s whims instead of addressing real problems like security.

At the end of the day, you and everyone involved needs to understand that, for your project to succeed, it needs to solve a problem users have first and foremost. Stroking the ego of the CEO, making the marketing department look clever, or making a developer feel stimulated are not real goals.

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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Developers VS Users

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Developers VS Users

Last night’s SMX After Dark party was kickin’ — thanks Bing!

Oh, and get this. I left my iPhone at the BCI booth and they locked up the expo hall before I realized it. So last night I was feeling a little concerned. You know how it is when A) you don’t have your phone, and B) you think you know where it is, but you’re not sure, so you realize maybe you’re putting your hope in the wrong thing when really you should be looking elsewhere. Ugh!

Luckily the awesome SMX team worked some of their lovely magic and got the convention center security to let me in to get my phone. Thanks so much, Michelle Robbins, Karen DeWeese, and Santa Clara Convention Center Security! This is one happy, mobile-ready blogger!

Now on to the keynote! Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, is beyond impressive. He’s a search pioneer, an author, a rocket scientist and was an “adult partier” in the Nutcracker. And that isn’t even half of the accomplishments moderator Chris Sherman just rattled off. Google and their geniuses.

Peter will start by presenting a number of Google’s research projects:

1. Person Finder: really useful after natural disasters
2. PowerMeter
3. Earth Engine: shows deforestation of rain forests
4. Trike and Snowmobile StreetView: taking StreetView to new frontiers
5. User Photos in StreetView
6. Image Swirl: see images related to each other
7. Web-Scale Image Annotation
8. Image Rotation Captcha: Instead of swirly, hard to read words, they’re experimenting with having users turn an upside-down picture, right-side up.
9. Goggles: take a picture and get info on it
10. Discontinuous Video Scene-Carving
11. Sharing Cluster Data
12. App Inventor for Android: introductory program development
13. Speed Recognition
14. Punctuation/Capitalization in Transcribed Speech
15. Translating Phone: translate text, Web pages and documents
16. Low-Resource MT: Yiddish: Some languages don’t have much written text examples, but they used languages that share attributes with Yiddish and were able to figure out translation
17. Sound Understanding
18. Google Squared
19. Clustering
20. Attribute Extraction
21. Browser Size

“You can observe a lot just by watching.” -Yogi Berra

Now Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman will be throwing out questions.

Q: What’s the biggest thing that came out of the 20 percent project?

One story is that both Gmail and Adsense were built by a Googler because he was frustrated he couldn’t search his e-mail. Machine translation is similar. And speech recognition has come so far since its original iteration.

Q: How hands-on are Google’s founders in 20 percent projects?

They’re still involved, but we don’t see them around as much. I don’t think they have their own 20 percent project because their jobs are pretty much 100 percent.

Q: Are your research facilities around the world separated by project or is it you just can’t fit everyone in Mountain View?

It’s both. Some projects you need to have people that are living in the language and culture. Also, sometimes we need more engineers and we can’t hire everyone from the same pool.

Q: What’s the most hyped technology development?

I think the emphasis is on the right place right now. Mobile emphasis is appropriate. Are we going to have hand-curated tags or be able to machine read the content? That’s going to be messy but I don’t think it’s overhyped any more.

PageRank is one thing that’s overhyped. Yes, the PageRank computation is important, but it’s just one of many things. It’s got the catchy name and the name recognition, but we’ve always looked at all the available data. The infrastructure that we built

Q: Is there a difference between core search vs. ads vs. other projects?

Yeah, in some sense there’s a separation of the house, just like at a newspaper they don’t let the ad department effect the editorial department.

Q: If you want to grow up to be a search engineer, how does someone do that? There’s no school for search engineering.

In other industries you can get trained at school and then step into the field quickly. When people are doing information retrieval in college and then come to Google, after a few months they’ll say, wow this is a whole different world than what I did in school. The books coming out now are getting better now, expanding from library science to search.

Q: What’s the training to become a Googler?

There’s a course they start with, then they get put on a starter project. They get experience and lots of help as they get their feet wet.

Q: Do people move around a lot at Google?

We encourage moving around. We try to keep projects short, three or six months. And you find that people will come up with a new idea as they’re working on a project that they want to develop once it’s over. The infrastructure of departments is parallel, which makes it easy to move around.

Q: Anything you’d like to know from our attendees?

How are we doing?

[The audience applauds!]

…I didn’t do this session justice. So much good stuff and my fingers aren’t awake yet or something. Thankfully there’s a whole slew of bloggers covering this session:

• Rob Hof’s coverage (I don’t know Rob but he’s sitting next to me and it looks like he’s caught stuff I missed.)
• Search Engine Land’s coverage
• Outspoken Media’s coverage

Keynote: Peter Norvig, Google was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

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Keynote: Peter Norvig, Google

The revolution will be liveblogged. Bryan Horling, a software engineer for Google Personalized Search, is in the house, as is the man, Danny Sullivan. Danny says that personalized search was a revolution because it happened whether people were logged in or not. It changed search at a fundamental level. That scared some SEOs who didn’t know how their clients were ranking.

Bryan’s the only speaker at this session because he’s the only one who volunteers to speak on the topic. To some degree there isn’t a whole lot that can be done to influence them as a marketer — other than have really good content. A lot of people can’t get their head around it. Hopefully this session helps.

What should Google show for the query [SMX]? Most in the room would agree it’s searchmarketingexpo.com. But SMX means different things depending on the location. In the UK, SMX is a motorcross club. In Santa Maria, CA, SMX is the airport code.

Or if a user’s previous search was [xb], the result Honda.co.jp/s-mx, a similar car, might show up.

Search queries are frequently imprecise. Personalization can help fill in the gaps:

• Geography
• Topicality
• Preference
• Pattern
• Social

This must be done in a privacy-sensitive way:

• Transparency: notice of how and where info is being used
• Control: give users ways to manage their info

Country Localization

A search for [taxes] will bring up different results for the UK than the US, based on the organization in charge of taxes in the country.

Regional Localization

A search for [bus schedule] will focus on the city a searcher is in, such as the MBTA for Boston, but it will also include results that are broader, like Greyhound, that services more than one area.

More Search Details

When results are personalized for a logged-in user, they can customize the search preferences. You can change your location when a location specific result is served. This can also be specified in Google Maps.

Search Nearby Tool

There are additional search options for search today. You can specify results nearby as well as a custom location.

Signed-In Web History

In the top right corner of search results, signed-in users will see a link to Web History. From the Web History page, a user can remove or pause items on the list, or wipe out the entire history. Data is retained forever, or until removed.

Signed-Out Personalized Search

Non-signed in users, tracked by browser cookies, will see personalization of search results. Under the hood it works a lot the same way as a signed-in user. However, a user can’t manage their Web history and can’t see the items being used. A user can turn the signed-out Web history on or off. Data is retained for 180 days.

Long-Term History Disambiguation

For most people, the search [vector] is for vector graphics or to find a company named Vector. But for programmers with a long-term history of programming related searches, the query [vector] is a navigational query to a C++ resource.

The Web History Tool exposes information about Web history. For instance, you can see only visited pages or not-yet-visited pages.

Social Search

These results surface content from your social circle. This is another way search results are being personalized for the individual. The intuition behind this is that if you were to see two results on the same topic by someone you know and someone you don’t know, the result from someone you know may have more meaning in the context of knowing the author. Results served in social search will have a link to your social circle as well as your social content. You can search from a single social contact.

• Your social circle come from:
  • Google contacts (chat, friends, family, coworkers, followees)
  • Your Google profile
  • All contacts extended with Social Graph API
• Content that your contacts see about you comes from:
  • Your Google profile extended with Social Graph API
• Content that you see about your contacts comes from:
  • Extended Google profiles of your contacts
  • Your Google reader subscriptions
• Only public content is shown

How much has changed?

• Affects all users, but in different ways
• Changes made to about 1 in 5 queries
• Changes tend to be restricted to a few results

What’s an SEO to do?

• It isn’t just about ranking well. It’s about ranking well for the likely users of your service.
• You will be less likely to compete with the whole world, and more likely to compete with sites in your area. You’re also less likely to get visitors from search that aren’t looking for what you offer
  • [taxi]: just the taxi services in your geographic area
  • [boost]: just the energy drink, not the C++ library
• Create compelling and interesting content
• Appeal to users, not search engines
• You can control personalization for your searches
  • Use search details
  • Disable it by appending &pws=0 to searchers
  • Firefox extension, greasemonkey script
  • Edit or disable web history
  • Edit or clear location
  • Edit your contacts and profile

Google’s Personalized Search Revolution was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

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Google’s Personalized Search Revolution

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics is well under way and the city is just buzzing with activities. Even if you don’t take in a single Olympic event, there is just so much to see and do right now. Here’s a few more videos and photos from around downtown Vancouver.

The first video was taken at the Royal Canadian Mint Pavilion. You already saw the pictures of the $1 million coin. Now you can watch the video. The second video shows the Olympic cauldron. I have a great view of the cauldron from my house in West Vancouver. However, the flame looks even better when you’re only 100 feet from it. The BBC was filming at the cauldron when we got there and it seems I got on some BBC news broadcast (I was filming them while they were filming me).

The lantern display on Granville Street. The street was sealed off from cars.

The world’s biggest Canada flag. It draped two sides of a 12 stories building.

The line up to get into the Royal Canadian Mint Pavilion was over two hours long.

Sally Chow dancing inside the Royal Canadian Mint Pavilion.

The Olympic cauldron looks a lot like Superman’s fortress of solitude.

Sally and her Grandparents in front of the cauldron. You can see the BBC doing their news broadcast from behind the fence.

The Olympic cauldron from my home in West Vancouver. I have the best view in the world!

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More Sights and Sounds of Vancouver 2010

After the riot in the streets of downtown Vancouver yesterday, it was nice to see a new type of mob hit the Olympics. Vancouver Improv Anywhere got 1,500 people together to perform an epic rendition of Dancing In The Street. Now this is more of what the Olympic Games are all about. Imagine walking along Granville and then suddenly 1,500 people all around you just starting dancing! Well, it happened today and I’m sure this won’t the last flash mob we’ll be seeing during the games.

If you live in Vancouver and haven’t checked out the sites and sounds yet, come on out! The city is on fire with excitement right now and it’s one big party. There are tons of stuff to see and do (as long as you don’t mind multi-hour long line ups). People on the street are extremely friendly (those rioters were from out of town) and easy to talk to.

The Olympic View From My House

It’s pretty hard for me to not be in an Olympic mood. I just have to look out my window to see the Olympic torch and rings. Had a great view of the opening fireworks too!

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Flash Mob Hits The Olympics With Dancing On Robson Street

Oh happy, glorious, liberating Friday. We’re so glad you’ve come back! What’s in store for the recap today? Truth be told, I don’t even know. We must read on to find out!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

The biggest, brightest full moon of the year happens tonight. Tonight’s full moon also happens to be the first of the year, an event known as the wolf moon. If you’ve got clear skies, celebrate by snatching your three wolf moon shirt from the closet and check out this celestial beauty.

Before voting closes tonight, take a minute to vote for your favorite finalists of the SEMMY Awards. The SEMMYS honors the best Internet marketing blog posts of the year as chosen by the community. Congrats to all the finalists on this distinction! If you’re not really one to pick favorites, you’ll still enjoy the SEMMYS for pulling together and categorizing a ton of incredible posts from the last year.

Inc., publishers of the annual Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies in the U.S., is predicting the best performing and worst performing industries for the decade ahead. Several tech industries, including search engines and VoIP providers, made the top of the list, while many manufacturing industries were found in the bottom.

Survey results are in! What did the participants of a poll say about the role of blogging in overall marketing goals? Check out TopRank Blog’s analysis of the report. What? You don’t want me to spoil the ending, do you?

Now I never thought I’d say this, but there is such a thing as too much bacon. For instance, here we see bacon to the crazy degree:

[10:26:15 AM] BCI-Susan Esparza: http://www.geekologie.com/2010/01/i_must_live_there_bacony_foods.php
[10:26:20 AM] BCI-Susan Esparza: Creepy

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dongkwan/ CC BY 2.0

This one’s probably had marketers scratching their heads ever since those counterintuitive commercials started rolling out. The pizza chain Domino’s is in the middle of an image re-vamp campaign where they admit to passing off cardboard for pizza all these years. Risky move, but could it work? Domino’s CMO shares his insight into the campaign in a revealing interview. Smart move or suicide — what do you think? [My roommate is unhappy. She actually liked the old recipe. …she's very odd. --Susan]

Next week in Spokane, Washington, the first Local University event will be held. The half-day workshop will teach area businesses about locally focused Internet marketing. I didn’t hear about this event in time to include it in our SEO Newsletter’s Shindigs this month, so spread the word to your friends in Washington state!

Pope Benedict XVI has been involved in social media in the five years since he became pope and he’s now encouraging priests to blog, be active on Facebook, and publish YouTube videos. The pope understands marketing and is, like, hip. Color me impressed.

Social-media-interested Businesses, individuals and priests will all appreciate these tips for how to write better tweets and how to better engage Facebook fan page fans. Don’t forget to check your Facebook privacy settings while you’re at it!

Google Earth was updated with a GeoEye layer that provides high-resolution satellite images.

[1:55:17 PM] BCI-Paula Allen: Google set up a GeoEye Featured Imagery layer in Google Earth for satellite photos http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/01/25/google-adds-geoeye-layer-to-earth-zoo-to-maps
[1:56:30 PM] BCI-Paula Allen: Internal images, too (my nightmare scenario is coming closer!) On a somewhat related note, Google is also now mapping interiors of places. Before you get too worked up, don’t worry, they’re not coming into your house), but they do have imagery up from within the San Diego Zoo
[1:57:14 PM] BCI-Paula Allen: I want to trademark a new term: “Google potato”

Brilliant idea! Both clever and original! Unlike China’s newest search engine, Goojje. Google’s sister? More like Google’s identity stealing clone.

Apple finally announced its touchscreen tablet, the iPad, this week. I wrote about the Apple hype machine yesterday, and by now you’ve probably read all there is to know about the device. But I can’t in good conscience write an end-of-week recap without mentioning the iPad, so here:

[1:52:45 PM] BCI-Virginia Nussey: http://www.buzzfeed.com/dinoi/a-comparative-chart-between-two-tablets-dj0
[1:52:54 PM] BCI-Virginia Nussey: how do you multi task with a stone?
[1:53:01 PM] BCI-Virginia Nussey: you can bash people in the head with it?
[1:53:05 PM] BCI-Virginia Nussey: you can do that with the ipad too!

Other acceptable answers the writers discussed: lap warmer, lap desk and something you can simultaneously read and write on. Who says the iPad can’t multi task? [It can be a paperweight too. Which is probably the best use for it. --Susan]

Things I learned from Boing Boing this week:

• Who says New Yorkers are cold and isolated? They’ll willingly carry a stranger on their back!
• I’ve never felt sympathy for a robot before… Keep your spirits high, little Spirit!
• You know those gorgeous, iridescent blue butterflies? Turns out they’re quite the deceivers.
• Forget jet-setting in a giant suite. I’d much rather get a ticket in cuddle class!
• The world’s largest island on a lake, on an island, on a lake, on an island…

Friday Recap: Wolf Moon Edition was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

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Friday Recap: Wolf Moon Edition

Recently, I was reading a post about sponsored Tweets, which sparked debate in both the comment section and on Twitter. The debate boiled down to whether or not a sponsored Tweet, or any sponsored content for that matter, is ethical.

Social media has a long history of being uncomfortable with making a profit. People believe there is some noble benefit to be gained from “taking the high road” and giving everything away for free.

If you’ve read Copyblogger for any length of time, you’ll notice that they talk a lot about content marketing. In essence, how to build an audience and gain trust and authority by giving content away.

It should be obvious that the goal of that process is to actually make a sale and pay your bills. But for some reason, that’s the part that people struggle with.

Is making money bad?

There is a certain percentage of the population that views any business pursuit (outside of the 9-5 workday, mind you), as a case of profiteering and being greedy.

In the conversation I mentioned above, some people have declared that they’ll stop following the “guilty” party. Some have said that they are completely turned off by all affiliate marketers. And others have stated that all the profits from this venture should be donated to charity.

Of course there’s more to life than making money. But I’m also not opposed to making a profit. If I have something of value to contribute, why should my family live in a van down by the river?

Money is useful for a lot of things, including charitable work and finding the cure for cancer. Like it or not, it makes the world go around. And there’s nothing particularly noble about relying on someone else’s money to lift us up.

Are social media spaces sacred?

What is it that makes one place acceptable for commerce, and another “sacred”?

Why is it now considered OK to monetize a blog, but not OK to monetize a Tweet?

And why does being generous with free content lead so many people to get angry when we try to monetize?

I’ll give you two examples.

Example 1

Chris Brogan has given away a ton of fantastic free content for 11 years. In fact, his primary audience isn’t even a consumer of what he’s selling.

But that doesn’t matter . . . he still gives, freely and generously, every single day.

When he asked his readers to reciprocate and support his book, Trust Agents, (for a whopping 15 bucks), what happened?

His audience put his book on the bestseller lists, yes. But there was also a considerable backlash. Apparently, a vocal minority thought he was supposed to give for free forever, and never ask for anything in return.

Example 2

Gary Vaynerchuk gave free content to his Wine Library TV viewers for years before he asked anyone to buy anything. Sure, he offered wines for sale, but he never pushed them. He consistently cared much more about his audience than he did about making a sale. In fact, I’ve never met someone more passionate about community than Gary V. You can hear it in the way he talks . . . it’s in his blood.

But when he launched his book, Crush It, people all over Twitter begged him to shut up about it. They wanted him to tone it down and relax. (Like Gary V. is ever going to do either of those things.)

These two men gave generously for years before asking for anything in return. And when they did, it was small change compared to what people spend on beer, coffee, movies, or video games. And even smaller change compared to what people make for their companies as 9-5 employees.

For some reason, it’s OK to make money at a day job. Don’t ask any questions, just sit in your cube and do what you’re told.

But when a passionate entrepreneur uses social media to create relationships and ask for money, that’s over the line. I guess the line of thinking is: I can’t make any money on my blog, so why should he?

I realize I’m preaching to the choir here, but there’s a reason for that. It’s simple really:

We need to stand up for our livelihoods

Our dream is under attack. The way of life that many of us are working toward is under siege by people who don’t have the courage, desire, or dedication to make it happen.

How can we let someone come into our house and talk smack? How can we not stand up for what’s right?

Making money, whether with affiliate links, sponsored content, or creating products, is not evil. It’s simply a byproduct of our desire for self-actualization. The world is better because of entrepreneurs, not worse, and it’s time we made that known.

So, are you with me?

About the Author: Nathan Hangen writes about web entrepreneurship at NathanHangen.com, and about how to use social media to fuel your brand at Making It Social. Follow him on Twitter @nhangen.

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Your Dream is Under Attack

Motomachi Shokudo is a ramen restaurant located on Denman street, just one block from the famous Kintaro Tonkotsu Ramen House. It turns out that the owner of Kintaro also owns Motomachi. However, the two stores are not clones of each other. Where as Kintaro serves traditional ramen like you get in Japan, the ramen at Motomachi is more new age and aimed at health aware diners.

In terms of popularity, Kintaro is the busier place as there is always a line up. I guess when it comes to ramen, healthy eating isn’t as big a deal. The main difference between Motomachi and Kintaro is the soup base. Where Kintaro can make your soup with enough fat to make your stomach shut down, the soup base at Motomachi is very light with hardly any fat in it. The pork at Motomachi is leaner than Kintaro and the eggs and chicken are organic.

Motomachi is a very small restaurant. There is enough seating for only 20 people – 4 at the bar, 6 at three small tables along the wall and window and 10 at a common area table. Don’t expect any privacy and be prepared to move as the wait staff can shuffle diners around to best accommodate everyone.

I ordered the extra pork ramen with a pork based soup with natural sea salt. The dish contain the best tasting organic egg that I’ve ever consume. The yolk was simple amazing. I found the dish very tasty and extremely refreshing.

Sarah ordered the spicy miso ramen with organic chicken. She enjoyed it a lot and found the spiciness at just the right level – not so hot that you can’t taste the miso anymore but not so mild that there was no more kick.

As for which restaurant is better, it really depends on your taste. If you want to taste true ramen like you get in Japan, then Kintero is your choice. However, if you’re more of a health nut, then you’ll want to try Motomachi. Either way, you can’t go wrong as both restaurants make some amazingly good ramen.

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Lunch At Motomachi Shokudo Ramen House

You didn’t think we’d close out the year without a “Best of 2009” post, did you? Well, you’re not getting off that easy.

Here’s the best Copyblogger content of the year, based on your enthusiasm via comments, links, retweets, and gratuitous offerings of produce-based holiday deserts. We thank you all for your continued support (even though we threw out the fruitcake. Sorry).

Let’s get started.

• The First Rule of Copyblogger – It’s a wonderful thing to wake up one morning, check the blog, and see that your Senior Editor has made a Fight Club reference that also establishes the underlying theme of the entire publication. Her name is Sonia Simone, her name is Sonia Simone . . . .
• The Winnie the Pooh Guide to Blogging – Adding to a Copyblogger portfolio that includes drag queens, cross-dressing and what women really want, James Chartrand kicked off the year with blogging lessons from everyone’s favorite Pooh bear. And you were shocked that he is really a she? Really?
• 5 Steps to Going Viral on Twitter – Want traffic from Twitter? Read this post. Want the most possible traffic from Twitter? Post about Twitter.
• How Twitter Makes You A Better Writer – In the most counterintuitive post of the year, Jennifer Blanchard makes the case that being confined to 140 characters improves your writing skills. Coming in 2010 – How Beer Makes You a Better Driver.
• The Art of Writing Great Twitter Headlines – Twitter reinforces the single most important component to attracting online attention — the headline. Well, that and fake celebrity deaths. Better to stick with the headline skills.
• 10 Secrets to More Magnetic Copy – First-time guest writer Jason Cohen knocks it out of the park with these quick and witty copy tips. He also forces us to retire the magnetism metaphors indefinitely.
• How to Turn Affiliate Marketing Disclosure Into a Selling Point – Everyone seemed surprised that the FTC said compensation disclosure laws apply to bloggers and social media just like other forms of media. I could say I told you so back in 2006, but I won’t. Even though I did. Not that I’d mention that.
• The Eminem Guide to Becoming a Writing and Marketing Machine – All you other Slim Shadys are just imitating, but you could do worse. Sean Platt lays down what Marshall Mathers III can teach you about taking your online game to the next level (without getting picketed).
• The 7 Harsh Realities of Social Media Marketing – Did you notice all the “make money quick and easy with social media” hucksters that slithered out from under a rock (and then disappeared just as quickly) in 2009? This one’s for those guys, and anyone who considered following their lame advice.
• How to Write With a Knife – Check out this post if you want to improve one of the most important aspects of any type of writing — tight editing. Or if you want to see a cool picture of a blonde with a samurai sword. Whichever.
• Since When Are Blogs Not Social Media? – Social networking went mainstream in 2009, prompting some who hopped on board in late 2008 to say they were giving up social media for blogging. What?
• Blogging is Dead (Again) – The “blogging is dead” meme comes up at least once a year, but I only feel the need to respond every other year. I feel the same way about voice mail.
• The 7 Deadly Sins of Blogging – Sonia reveals the seven sins that will cause you to fail faster online than hiring Robert Scoble.
• Is Commenting on Blogs a Smart Traffic Strategy? – This was a rant in disguise after I’d had enough watching the less-than-smart strategies of some bloggers who left comments. Ironically, the post got 270 comments (and counting), but lame comments on Copyblogger subsequently decreased by 270% (or something).
• Why You’re Too Qualified and Respectful to Produce Great Content – This post is an absolute must read for everyone, unless of course you already know you should write assertively, or if you’re busy doing something else, or just don’t feel like it. Maybe later.
• Seven Bad Writing Habits You Learned in School – Sonia and I would have liked to qualify this post a bit, but I’d like to see you try that with Jon Morrow when he’s got a head of steam. So, a few English teachers got a bit upset, but we placated them with bouquets of gerunds.
• Why Content is No Longer King (And Who’s Taking His Place) – The content marketing revolution demonstrates that mere content is no longer king, and this post tells you who’s taking over. No, it’s not Elvis, nor is it a prime minister appointed by the Queen as Lord of Parliament and majority leader of the House of Commons.
• The #1 Conversion Killer in Your Copy (And How to Beat It) – What do trolls, sea monkeys, shady carnival barkers and chronic halitosis have to do with online conversion? And what was Tiger Woods thinking? (Tiger’s not in the post, I just really want to know).
• 9 Proven Headline Formulas That Sell Like Crazy – Dean Rieck resurrects an old Copyblogger standard with these insanely effective headline templates. But please go sell crazy someplace else . . . we’re all stocked up here.
• Why You Can’t Make Money Blogging – Poor Fake Steve Jobs discovers he’s better suited for day jobs. Read this post to learn why “I want to make money on the Internet” is not a business model.
• Is Your Tribe Holding You Down? – The post that defined the Third Tribe was inspired by a challenging email from Seth Godin and our refusal to switch to decaf. What does it all mean? You’ll see in early 2010.
• On Dying, Mothers, and Fighting for Your Ideas – No joke here, simply the post of the year. Thanks Jon, for sharing with and inspiring us all.

There you have it . . . the best of Copyblogger for 2009. Can we top it in 2010?

We’ll try pretty hard. Hope you’re along for the ride.

Happy New Year!

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of DIY Themes, creator of the innovative Thesis Theme for WordPress. Get more from Brian on Twitter.

Continued here:
The Best of Copyblogger 2009