feed hat blog

Are you in the mood for some videos? My collection of odds and ends from surveying the Web this week came up heavy on the videos. Nevermind the stats that people have been viewing fewer videos online lately, according to comScore. I bet we can edge that number back up with this blog post alone!

At SMX West last week, Jennifer Lopez of SEOmoz and Dana Lookadoo of Yo! Yo! SEO interviewed a handful of attendees with a series of five questions. I was honored to be asked to join in, though completely petrified at the prospect of being stumped on camera. Note the visible sigh of relief as I answer each question. Otherwise, it’s super entertaining to hear these notable Internet marketers’ answers!

One of the featured interviewees in the video above is Ian Lurie, who, among other things, is the blogger at Conversation Marketing. On his blog, Ian takes a cue from Lindsay Lohan, who is suing E-Trade for using a character named Lindsay in their Super Bowl commercial. To avoid Ian’s litigious wrath, avoid all words that contain the letters “I”, “A” and “N” in succession. Thankfully, my name squeezes through the censors by a hair!

Ready for another video? Bruce sat down with WebProNews while at SMX West to talk about everything SEO under the sun. Attracting links, driving conversions with social media, the inner workings of local search, the effect of page speed, and optimizing for personalized search are all on the agenda in this 20 minute interview. If you’ve ever wanted to pick Bruce’s veteran SEO brain, watching this interview may just scratch that itch.

Microsoft Advertising released a whitepaper on the effectiveness of digital advertising for brand campaigns. Microsoft’s research proves a connection between the amount of time a user spends with an online ad and that user’s interaction with the brand, including visits to a site, pages viewed and time spent on-site. Not bad to have this research at your disposal when a client wants to know “Why SEM?”

While we’re on the subject of ads, Huffington Post has compiled a gallery of Google ads that bring on the lolz. Looks like eBay’s the market leader for auctions on virgins, lost children, and wives. I believe it. (Susan thinks this issue was addressed years ago, but stay on the lookout for AdWords oddities!)

Next video! What is the state of the Internet, you ask?

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.

After weeks of hyping an upcoming product that would revolutionize the Internet forever, Cisco announced it was upgrading its routing system to “CRS-3″. SiliconANGLE gives us a recap of industry analysis, and from the look of it, no one’s all that impressed.

The jet packs are here! The jet packs are here! Thanks to Martin Aircraft’s persistence, for just $86,000 you may soon be able to have your own personal flying device. Just a matter of time before hover crafts and sky highways, I tell you! [Yay, we're finally in the future! --Susan]

If you lost your iPhone, would you consider it a tragedy? Ever cuddle up with your iPhone before bed time? According to a survey of 200 students, 75 percent of iPhone owners have an inappropriate relationship with their phone. That’s crazy talk. I mean, just the other day my iPhone and I were at lunch and you’d never believe what we saw a Nexus One and its owner doing! In public!

Susan’s posted her SES New York liveblogging schedule and we’re both excited to hear what the day 3 session Spotlight on Fashion: Blogging for Style will reveal. Here’s one real-world example of fashionable tech: a Vivan Tam designed digital clutch. It matches so well with my pretty, nifty things aesthetic.

As does IdeaPaint. Talk about nifty! IdeaPaint is paint that lets you dry erase. Make every surface in your home or office your creative drawing board — literally! I’ve ordered up the free sample and will let you know once I try it out!

Here’s another special offer worth sharing around. Search & Social Spring Summit is coming up in Tampa, Florida on May 3 and 4. Susan attended last year and found the intimate event to be one of the best search marketing conferences she’s ever attended. The team at Search & Social wants everyone to be able to enjoy this high-quality educational experience, so they’re offering a 15 percent discount on the conference pass when you use the discount code for Search Engine Journal readers. I guarantee every penny is worth it.

If that wasn’t enough, it just so happens that Tampa is #44 on The Daily Beast’s list of America’s craziest cities! Did your city make the cut?

After you’ve found the answer to that question, take a moment to answer a few more in the name of feeding the hungry? FreeRice asks you questions, and for every one you get right, 10 grains of rice go to the World Food Programme. You can even pick your category: art, chemistry, English, geography, languages and math. To be honest, it’s so much fun you might actually forget it’s for a good cause. [The language options are good to see how much high school French you remember. Surprisingly, I can still tell my ils from my nous. --Susan]

Here’s another warm and fuzzy. As Susan noted when she shared this with me: zombie elephant! The elephant baby that zoo staff believed had died in its momma’s womb made a surprisingly lively entrance into the world this week. May you grow humongous and prosper, little pachyderm!

And for your final video I present a little story we can all relate to:

Where the heck did that come from?! Have a great weekend!

Friday Recap: Pop-Up Video Edition was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO tools provider.

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Friday Recap: Pop-Up Video Edition

Viral marketing is the art of getting others to spread your message for free. Whether it’s a tell a friend script or some kind of contest, viral marketing is something every blogger should learn. When done correctly, it’s one of the best ways to generate traffic and sales. Someone who can help you with viral marketing is Glen Allsopp of ViperChill.com.

Who Is Glen Allsopp?

Glen is a 20 year old successful blogger and affiliate marketer but spend as much time as he can genuinely helping people to make a living online. He built the 10th biggest personal development blog online in just 12 months and recently sold it for mid five-figures. Glen has also worked as the social media manager for companies like Land Rover and Hewlett Packard. Right now, Glen is living the Dot Com Lifestyle by traveling the globe and making five-figure monthly income from his affiliate websites.

Glen In The Guardian Newspaper

ViperChill – Great Blog That Makes No Money

Glen’s blog, ViperChill, is unique in two ways. The first is the blog makes no money. Now, you might be asking, “What’s so unique about that? My blog makes no money!” This by choice and not by design. ViperChill has nearly 5,000 RSS readers and each post has over 50 comments in them. The blog gets enough traffic to make thousands per month but Glen has chosen to not monetize it.

Welcome to ViperChill. I’m Glen – one of the few people who makes a living online without doing it by teaching you how to make a living online. Because of that, you’ll find no ads and no affiliate links here. It’s all about the content and helping you as much as possible. As it should be.

The second thing that make ViperChill unique is the size of Glen’s blog posts. Most articles are 2,000 to 3,000 words in length and extremely detailed. Because of the size of the posts, Glen updates ViperChill only one or two times per week. Some of the more noteworthy posts include:

• How I Really Build a Blog with 6,500 Subscribers
• Cloud Jacking: 7 Steps to Dominate Your Niche
• How I Wrote a $30,000 eBook (And You Can Too)
• 7 Life Lessons I Apply to Internet Marketing
• Guest Blogging: The Ultimate Guide
• 28 Resources from my Internet Marketing Toolbox
• Building a $1,000,000 Website in 12 Months

Living In The Cloud

Want to live in the cloud like Glen? You can start by reading all his post from the ViperChill Base. If that doesn’t get your juices flowing and you want more step-by-step instructions, then you can buy Glen’s eBook, Cloud Living (It’s the eBook he made $30,000 with).

Cloud Living includes a 176-page eBook, six video tutorials, a free affiliate website template, 8-page documentation guide and free email support from Glen. Not a bad deal for $37. You can find out more about Cloud Living here.

It’s OK To Make Money

While I don’t have a problem with Glen not monetizing ViperChill, I feel it’s a poor use of resources. I was making money online long before John Chow dot Com came along. The main reason I monetized the blog was to show money can be made by blogging, but another reason was I don’t like seeing sites that could be making a ton of money not making it.

Yes, it sounds good to say you’re not making money off the blog because you want to provide pure information. However, from a business point of view, leaving money on the table isn’t so smart. If Glen doesn’t need any income from ViperChill, I think he can actually increase his brand by monetizing the blog and giving the money away to charity. What sounds better? I don’t make money from this blog or I donate every dollar this blog makes? Whether Glen makes money from ViperChill or not, I’ll still be reading it.

ViperChill : Viral Marketing

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Learn Viral Marketing with ViperChill

They always say that blogging is already saturated. Saturated especially if you are going to use blogging to target a wide audience and then make money. I’m always observing the blogosphere and while I can’t argue that there are so many blogs out there on a certain topic, I think it’s not enough to call it saturated yet. Not even close if you ask me.

I always classify bloggers into three. There are those who we call professional bloggers, the medium caps bloggers and the average bloggers. Pro bloggers are those who are considered the experts, the famous ones or simply “web celebrities”. Mid cap bloggers are the ones who I describe as bloggers who do things right but not as popular as probloggers are yet. And obviously average bloggers are the pollutants, they are the majority of what comprise the entire blogosphere.

Ok, I understand that pollutants is a bit of a harsh term but unfortunately, most people don’t realize that they just fall into this category. In this post I will give a list of 10 signs why you are just an average blogger. Without further ado, here they are.

1 .You don’t have a goal (and specific goals)

Goal Setting is a very important part of every business. And blogging is an internet business, so you need to set one as well. When I ask people what is their goal, their usual response is to make money. David Risley recently made a very good post on how people should get things done. In that post, he outlined that most people just put a long haul general goal and the problem is that almost all of the times, it’s not attained.

Setting goals, targeting specific tasks and outlining subtasks are important for online success so make sure you’re not neglecting this one.

2. You don’t build a list

I used to think that list building was for spammers only. But as I’ve observed how famous people use list to their advantage, I realized that it’s really a must-have for all serious bloggers. My blog has been up for 2+ years and its just last year that I started building a customer’s list.

Remember each and every of your readers is your potential customers. They build your business for you and it’s really imperative to collect them.

3. You think of making money too much

Most bloggers get into this mistake. They start a blog then put some content, market it a bit and then go full force into making money. Most of the times they do it by plastering ads to their site or by simply switching from giving good value to their readers by having the obvious intention of making money.

Listen, do you really just want to waste all the effort you exerted by forcing your monetization tactic? It’s hard to build a loyal base of audience and once they start clicking that unsubscribe button, it’s gonna be hard for you to make them come back.

4. You have a crappy design

The problem with this is that usually people really don’t realize their blog design sucks! Just because you think it’s cool it doesn’t mean it’s great in the eyes of the majority as well. The thing is you really need to follow the majority. If they think it sucks, then ditch it!

One of my tips is to actually just make use of forum review sites. Most people think its sole purpose is for quick traffic but the use of it is still to provide reviews. Most forum lurkers are pretty straightforward so you’re going to expect some great suggestions there. People always say content is king, but isn’t it that design is part of the content?

5. You don’t utilize social media

Social Media represents Web 2.0. I’ve seen some bloggers who skyrocketed their profiles in their blogs by just maximizing its use of social media. If you’re new to social media then please consider taking some time on reading about it, understanding it more.

When I was in my early stages I even studied how each of the social sites work, built relationship with reputed people and just invested an ample part of my time. If you’re not into social media as one of the tactics in your blog then you’re missing out a lot.

6. You think blog commenting is the best marketing tactic

Blog commenting is cool especially if you just started a new blog. It’s a pretty great way to say “hey I exist!” But one thing I see most bloggers do is use it as their no.1 marketing ploy. Sure there’s nothing wrong in commenting but just doing that will bring you nowhere!

Consider who’s going to gain more traction between the two. The first blogger comments on 150 blogs everyday while the second blogger do guest posts at least thrice a week. Who’s going to get more traffic and readers at the end of one week? You judge!

7. You don’t do Guest Postings

Reading the previous one, it’s obvious that we’re going to head into this topic. Guest Posting is probably the quickest way to spit your brand out there and get noticed in a very wide scale of audience. I bet all of you guys reading this article know it but I doubt you put this into work.

Writing guest articles is not just doing it three times, four times or eight times. Man, you have to do it in bulks! You can easily notice as well that even popular bloggers do guest posting. That’s because of the unending search for a new audience that would turn into a loyal customer. Guest Posting is probably the most cost-conscious method that you can use to drive great traffic to your blog.

8. You spread yourself too thin

This is the common mistake that most bloggers make. They believe they already know the recipe for success and as a result, they create multiple blogs. In order for anyone to be successful in blogging, it takes a lot of hard work and dedication. In short, you need to spend a considerable amount of time in your blog to make good progress. Don’t fall for this common mistake, don’t spread yourself thin.

9. You mass market your blog

There is nothing anything worse than seeing someone create a thread in popular forums only to say “hey check out my blog, its cool”. Or going to a high traffic social site like BlogCatalog only to spam your link out there. This is another crucial mistake that most bloggers are still doing! They think that by letting as much people as possible see their blog, they’re going to convert well.

It’s really a huge mistake not only because you get to annoy people there who cause them not to even look at your site, but more importantly you’re most likely targeting the wrong demographics. Remember, quality is more important than quantity.

10. Your content doesn’t make sense

OK, assuming everything is in line now. You now have that good design, have done a ton of really great guest posts, have an awesome list, you focus only on one blog and stuffs. In the end it all boils down to this last point, writing good content.

This has been rehashed probably a million times already but obviously everything that you’ve done is useless if you don’t write good content. Just imagine, you managed to guest post on several authority blogs, people love what you wrote and as a result they are clicking to your link. What if what they saw in your site is post about your cat? Or how ugly is your enemy? Or how you loathe you Math teacher?

In the end it all goes to waste. You see, it’s really a tough pill to swallow isn’t it? How do you write good content then? By sticking to your niche. I discuss a lot how professional blogging isn’t about having perfect grammar, superb fluency and being boring. And writing good content doesn’t have to be like that. As long as you think you’re connecting well with your readers, you’re fulfilling their needs; you’re doing your job.

Conclusion

So to end this one, I would leave it all to you. If you have been blogging and you think you’re exerting some effort and still not growing, then maybe it’s time to re-evaluate, time to jot down notes on things that you are working hard with, yet are not producing good results for you. Remember those average bloggers never evaluate things. Just by doing your job now will put you way ahead of most bloggers.

Melvin is a young blogger and entrepreneur who blogs at MelvinBlog Dot Com. He has also created a report for his readers entitled Blog Marketing for Fame which is available for download.

Discover the SECRETS I’ve Learned to go from zero a month to over $40,000 a month from blogging. Download Make Money Online with John Chow dot Com for FREE!

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10 Signs Why You Are Just An Average Blogger

When your blog or website becomes successful and starts to get traffic, if you don’t make direct sales yourself or commissions via affiliate traffic, you almost always look for other revenue streams. The most common revenue stream is CPM based advertising or something like adsense. However, once many publishers start down that path, they almost always end up chasing off topic traffic. Let’s look at two of the flagship websites of the technology space, Techcrunch and Mashable.

This week, Techcrunch posted a story about how so many valley entrepenuers in the Valley are now having babies. I’ll take a quote from the article which shows exactly how silly this type of posting is:

To anywhere else in the US, this may sound “So what? People have babies all the time.” But in the Valley, this is a staggering injection of work-life balance into the 24/7 Web space.

This is not tech news. In fact it barely qualifies as a “slice of life” piece about life in the Valley. ZOMG I mean you people in the valley finally realize that 99% of the rest of the population in the US struggles with work-life balance issues… I mean–WOW. Congratulations on peeping your head out of your narcissistic incestuous self centered bubble for nine months and, you know, actually getting  a life. This piece was written to be nothing more than a polarizing, emotionally-charged bit of linkbait designed to drive up page views.

Don’t worry, Mashable. You’re just as guilty as Techcrunch of chasing off topic subjects. Just look at how many Tiger Woods posts you have. And after victims of the recent earthquake tragedy in Chili posted pictures to twitpic, how long did it take your writers to create their articles?  Just because an issue arises doesn’t mean you should start writing about off topic subjects.

Let’s be honest here. You aren’t being responsible journalists. You’re becoming ambulance chasers, hoping to make some page views and few dollars off of a time sensitive spike in search terms. Don’t get me wrong: there’s nothing wrong with being a traffic whore. But you can’t act like a traffic whore then turn around and claim you’re a journalist. It just doesn’t work that way.

As a publisher, how do you decide what to cover and what not to cover? Ask yourself this question and answer honestly. Am I writing about this subject because it’s part of my industry or because it’s kinda connected and there is a lot of traffic? Every so often there comes a story that is too good to pass up. But remember that, every time you bite into that juicy little bit, you sell out just a little.

Nobody ever sells out all once. They do it slowly over time until, eventually, there’s nothing left…

Decide which side of the fence you want to be on. Every time you cross from one side to the other, you lose the respect of your peers and your readers.

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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.

Are You Chasing Off Topic Traffic

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I love competition. I compete against just about anyone, at just about anything. For the last few years, competitive webmastering has been my focus. I like to start a site in a small to medium sized niche, and outrank everyone. There are two niches that I hold the top 5 spots for, and it’s exciting. Let me give you a few secrets that you can implement right now to help you outrank your competition.

1. Do what they do.

The first step is to try to get all of the links that your competition has. If they’re linked in Wikipedia, you should try to get linked. If they pay $299 for a Yahoo Directory link you should too. If they put out a little cash for regional web directories like WoW Directory and Ezilon Web Directory, so should you. The point is that in order to beat your competition you need to have everything they do, and more.

2. Grab the easy links they don’t have.

There are generally two sides to the linkbuilding argument. One side says to focus on quality links, the other says to focus on large quantities of links. I agree with both. Since it’s easy to get junk links from sites like Twitter, blog comments, forum profiles, wikis, etc, go get those links! When you’re burnt out with those junk links, move on to the next step. Don’t discount quantity, I have sites that rank #1 with mass junk links.

3. Start getting the difficult links.

For the last couple years I’ve been following viagra SERPs. If you browse the top 20 sites for “buy viagra” you’ll see interesting trends. Right now I see a site that is 6 months old with 4k links, PR 2 ranked #4. Below it is a 2 year old site with 29k links, PR 6 ranked #9. Why does that new site outrank that older better linked site? Link quality. This site went the extra mile to get links.

4. Make the quality links if you can’t find them.

I’ve got burnt out on buying links. Instead, I’ve been making quality websites with the purpose of linking them back to my money site. These sites are generally built on existing WPMU domains (like these). I build links to these blogs and seed them with some generic spun content. Once they start getting some age and trust I link them to my money pages. This enables me to have good old blogs linking to my money pages without paying for those links. It does take extra time, but I can continue using the same blogs for additional projects after I get my #1 rankings.

In order to outrank the competition you have to go above and beyond what they are doing!

Over the last 5 years, Brandon Hopkins owns over 150 content-rich websites. When not building links to his own websites he does linkbuilding for clients as well as Fresno website design. Brandon can also be found blogging (rarely) at Brandon-Hopkins.com as well on about 5 different webmaster forums, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and most other social networking sites.
photo credit: ianmunroe

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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.

Outrank Your Competition By Taking One More Step

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Outrank Your Competition By Taking One More Step

I’m learning to belly dance.

Okay, that’s totally overstating it. I’m wiggling to music in what is labeled a belly dancing class.

I’ve found that I enjoy the constant movement, manipulating my limbs and taking any excuse I can to be silly. But more fun than the belly dancing is the instructor.

She loves this stuff. Her eyes light up when she enters the room, her voice changes pitch, and she hops around throwing out euphemisms that make even the bravest people blush. She’s a complete fruit loop. And she’s loved for it. It’s her schtick.

Or, in marketing terms, it’s her personal brand.

Oh no, not another post about personal branding

We’ve been hearing about personal brands ad nauseum for the past year. Even if you’re not sure why you need one, you’re certain that you do. It’s like a 401k. Or a spouse.

The trouble is, most personal brands make everybody else want to jab forks straight into their eyes. They’re based on egos, false promises, and personalities so obnoxious that you’d never be friends with this person in real life.

But as my belly dancing instructor has taught me, you don’t have to build a personal brand on being an egomaniac. You can build your brand on simply being human. Or better yet, you can build your brand on being your favorite version of yourself.

How do you create a personal brand that will garner attention instead of hate? Here are some tips I’ve picked up from my experience on the Web.

And belly dancing.

Claim your niche

My belly dancing instructor doesn’t teach the hip hop class that takes place after her session. Nor does she teach the weekend kickboxing class. She’s limited herself to belly dancing because she knows that’s where she can offer the greatest value.

Trying to teach everything would undermine what she’s about and the tribe she’s looking to attract. She sticks to what she does better than anyone else.

Think niche. You can’t be known for everything. Pick what’s most important to what you do, break it down to its simplest core, and be it.

While Copyblogger has established itself as one of the Web’s top resources on content, Brian Clark has branded himself the master of headlines. It’s a tiny microcosm of the whole content creation space that he owns. It’s where he’s untouchable.

Create your character

Like I said, my instructor is a fruit loop. The moment you think you’ve seen everything, she ups the ridiculousness.

She tears her sweats so you can watch her legs curl, and refers to body parts in ways you wish you could erase from your mind. She knows who she needs to be to attract the right audience, and she plays up her quirks to do so. She builds a tribe that falls in love not only with her class, but with her. It becomes so that the class and brand are so intertwined that you can’t tell them apart.

Lots of people will tell you to “be yourself” in social media. I’d advise creating a persona that mixes who you are and who you want to be. This heightened version of yourself allows you to lose the performance anxiety and magnify the personality traits needed to attract the right people.

We fall in love with those who are brave enough to do what we think we can’t. As long as you’re basing your character off who you really are, you’ll be able to keep it authentic and still look great naked.

Treat people like humans

My instructor has been dancing for longer than I’ve been an adult. She’s trained in moves and styles that my stiff body can’t even comprehend.

But you wouldn’t know that by talking to her. She’s unassuming and talks to you like you’re old friends meeting up for coffee. And she keeps that tone even when instruction has begun. There’s no jargon to confuse us, no making things complicated so we feel dumb and she wouldn’t dare call herself an “expert” or a “guru.” She’s just someone who loves belly dancing and is excited about the opportunity to share it with us.

Finding your voice and using it to be relatable is what will make or break your personal brand. It’s what separates the brands we love from the brands we wish would die.

It’s all about your ability to talk to people in a genuine way and show them that you’re one of them. This is where most people get tripped up. We elevate ourselves thinking that it makes us more impressive and authoritative and that our audience will trust us more. Truthfully, all this does is alienate you from the people you’re trying to connect with.

Figure out what the real you sounds like, and then use that voice to be real with others. You can’t fake this.

Make your brand accessible

My instructor shows up to class early. She stays late. She takes questions in the middle of instruction and will show and re-show certain movements until you’ve nailed them. Her email address is publicly available so that students can email her with questions. She has an email newsletter to help us stay in contact with not only her, but one another.

She’s not teaching a class, she’s creating a community.

When you make your brand accessible, you help it grow beyond your niche. Become part of your community. Answer questions. Lift up those who are doing well. Share trusted information. Look for ways to extend your brand through blogging, guest postings [cough], email newsletters, and direct mail.

Everything that you put out should incorporate and promote your personal brand. The more people see you and your tribe, the more they’ll gravitate toward it. It’s social proof.

Your personal brand is you. It’s who you are, what you believe, and what you want to put out there to others.

Use the social tools available to be you as loudly as you can, while always offering a benefit to those around you. Your personal brand may be all about you, but it’s also about how you make others feel.

It’s emotional DNA, and what separates the personal brands we love from those we love to tear apart.

About the Author: Lisa Barone has the totally pompous title of Chief Branding Officer at SEO consulting firm Outspoken Media. She tries to make up for the title by blogging Important Stuff on the Outspoken Media blog and being amusing on Twitter at @lisabarone.

Originally posted here:
What Belly Dancing Taught Me about Personal Branding

MIssed this when it came out a week or so ago, but it’s worth posting about after the fact a bit. The Small Business Success Index reports that social media adoption among small businesses has doubled from 12% to 24% in the past year. From reading the release, I gather that “adoption” means a business is actively using social media, as opposed to just having a placeholder profile page.

Here are some of the other findings:

Small business owners use social media to attract new customers:

• 75% surveyed have a company page on a social networking site
• 61% use social media for identifying and attracting new customers
• 57% have built a network through a site like LinkedIn
• 45% expect social media to be profitable in the next twelve months

Small business owners still have concerns with social media:

• 50% of small business social media users say it takes more time than expected
• 17% express that social media gives people a chance to criticize their business on the Internet
• Only 6% feel that social media use has hurt the image of the business more than helped it

The study is sponsored by Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland Smith School of Business.

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This is a post from Matt McGee’s blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

More Small Businesses Using Social Media

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More Small Businesses Using Social Media

It’s been a crazy week. I moved desks and now I have a great view out the window. We had a BBQ feast for lunch today. And Christopher and Shannon have been in town, hanging out at SEOToolSet training. Don’t you just love family reunions?

We’ve made it to Friday and it’s time to let off a little steam. So you know the drill on Fridays: news of the (search) world and news of the weird. Away we go!

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

I tweeted about this on Monday (hat tip to Susan) and a few peeps liked it so I’m compelled to use it as my opener. I present to you CRABZILLA! I’m told on good authority that Mega Shark is Crabzilla’s only plausible nemesis. I wouldn’t want to take part in that battle. Well, until it’s over, at which point I’ll be there with my fork, butter and maybe a slice of lemon for garnish self-defense.

Are you ready for Google Caffeine? It’s up for debate whether or not the infrastructure update that the search engine said would begin rolling out in the new year has been fully implemented. Still, it’s good to have some guidelines in mind when optimizing a Caffeine-ready site.

A few weeks back the makers of the quintessential doll Barbie asked fans what Barbie’s next job should be. The result is a sign of the techie times we live in. Barbie is a computer engineer! A little in-depth analysis by the BBC suggests some flaws with the way IT Barbie came together, but I’m a fan of the technically minded and feminine woman Barbie’s representing. [Me too. It's IT Barbie-style. —Susan]

Location updates have always posed a danger, and one site highlighting this fact was circulating the Web this week. Please Rob Me aggregates Foursquare updates with a dose of humor, keying in on the fact that people find it trendy to update the world about their empty homes.

Yes, there’s much to be cautious of on the social Web, which is why the demand for online reputation management has rocketed upwards. If you’re looking for innovative ways to defeat unflattering content on the Web, Bury Negative Publicity With New Pages on the Same Domain is a must-read, including tips for sites like Digg, Wikipedia, blogs, and even police blotters.

Photoshop celebrates its 20th anniversary today! What would we ever do without that fabulous photo editing suite? Gotta love the interactive timeline Adobe’s put together. Li’l guy’s come a long way!

A massive botnet, called the Kneber botnet, was uncovered by security analysts. The infected network included more than 74,000 personal, corporate and government computers, yet the botnet was recognized by less than 10 percent of antivirus software. It’s being attributed to two criminal gangs that have been cooperating with each other.

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

What’s a girl to do when even a wholesome place like the Internet is corrupted by criminal gangs? Play with a virtual kaleidoscope, of course! That toy right there is hours of fun, and it’s shared with love, care of Mrs. Esparza! [Hi, Mom! —Susan]

Of course, the Internet has facilitated sharing across the world, and social media is a big part of that. But which social network is really driving shared content? According to data from widgets company Gigya, Facebook is responsible for 44 percent of content shared via social networks. Twitter’s next with 29 percent, followed by Yahoo! at 18 percent. As a whole, social media sites account for 75 percent of all content shared online.

Susan got giddy when she shared this story in the Skype chat this week. It looks like in a couple years, one terabyte solid state hard drives the size of a postage stamp will be a reality. I believe her comment was along the lines of: “Imagine having a terabyte flash drive. You could carry your whole life around. Perhaps on a fashionable necklace.” Now that’s a girl who’s thinking of the possibilities! [It's no more geeky than the hashtag necklace I got this week. —Susan]

On a related note, it was interesting to learn that we’re facing a worldwide shortage of flash memory chips thanks to the iPhone and other Apple devices. Apparently the iPhone consumes 30 percent of the world’s supply of NAND flash chips.

If you had to describe the average player of Farmville or Mafia Wars or another game on a social networking site, what would you say? Are you picturing a 43-year-old woman, by any chance? If so, you’d be right! According to a survey in the U.S. and U.K., most social gamers are females between 30 and 59 who work full time. [This research is supported by anecdote. I have seven aunts and they all play Farmville like it's their job. —Susan]

And finally, as soon as I read a tweet from instantly popular @sh*tmydadsays account on Twitter, I was a follower. So it is with great joy and anticipation that I spread the rumor that William Shatner will play dad on the TV series pilot based on the Twitter account. This could just be the best show of the 21st century. No pressure.

Friday Recap: The Week in a Jiff Edition was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

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Friday Recap: The Week in a Jiff Edition

Microsoft have a pretty interesting white paper on social media on their Adcenter Blog right now. Actually, they call it a white paper but it’s more of an account of how Microsoft have approached the social media sphere and their own experiences. It’s pretty interesting reading – and if you still think that ’social media’ [...]

Social Media Whitepaper is a post from: Dave Naylor’s SEO Blog.

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Social Media Whitepaper