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June 12, 2009

Twitter Launches Verified Account Program

Twitter Verified Account Beta

Wow! This is a pretty awesome week for social websites. Just 2 days after Facebook announced custom usernames and vanity URLs, Twitter has announced Twitter Verified Account (Beta):

What is a verified account?
To prevent identity confusion, Twitter is experimenting (beta testing) with a ‘Verified Account’ feature. We’re working to establish authenticity with people who deal with impersonation or identity confusion on a regular basis.

Great! Twitter is going to let me verify my account, so people know that it’s really me? Oh wait a minute. Crap. It’s not going to work for common folk like me. In their words, the Twitter Verified account program is for “well-known accounts that have had problems with impersonation or identity confusion. (For example, well-known artists, athletes, actors, public officials, and public agencies).” Oh awesome. Celebrities get even more privileges. What about us commoners, huh? What about us?

In all seriousness, this program is probably a great way to start dealing with the impersonation problems inherent in Twitter. Twitter is a kinda like the Myspace of micro-blogging. It’s so cool, and you can get a ton of followers/friends, many of whom you might not even know. But the bad part is that you really have no idea if the account is legitimately owned, managed and/or updated by the person you think it is. I mean, is that really Britney’s Twitter account? Really? How can you even tell? And then it starts feeling kinda slimy when some dude you don’t even know starts to follow your updates. It’s not as bad as Myspace, but it could be. And hopefully it won’t be. Because MySpace is soooo 2007.

Hopefully, the Twitter Verified Account program will begin to clean up Twitter’s impersonation issues. And then maybe Twitter can address all of the username squatters in a constructive manner. Or maybe they can address the recent study that shows 90% of tweets are made by 10% of Twitter users (link). Or maybe they can begin to address the reason behind roughly 80% of Twitter users only posting 0-9 times and then never returning(link). Just saying is all…

The Twitter Verified Account page goes on to clarify that, at this time, the Twitter verification service is not available for businesses. Well that sucks. I have big name clients who would love to verify their site. Customers want to know that they are dealing with the official Twitter page for Brand X. Why not open this Verified Account service up to brands? Oh yeah. Admittedly, it’s a time and resource issue (FYI: Twitter only has 58 employees right now).

Honestly, I’m just happy they created this service at all. Hopefully it’s the start of a glorious campaign to verify user accounts and corporate/brand accounts. I know there are a ton of brand on Twitter, doing their best to actively use Twitter to market their products. So c’mon, Twitter. I applaud Verified Account initiative, but please give us some brand support soon.

Be sure to check out the official Twitter Verified Account page for more details.

June 9, 2009

Facebook Usernames & Custom Vanity URLs: Landrush Begins June 13th at 12:01am

Facebook Usernames for Custom Vanity URLs Begins Saturday, June 13th at 12:01am

According to this post on AllFacebook, Facebook.com will finally be launching custom usernames for vanity URLs for Facebook accounts on Friday at Midnight (well, technically it’s Saturday, June 13 at 12:01am). What this means for you – go grab your name, your brands’ names, and several other names that you think might be valuable. Of course, you may need to create several accounts in order to have multiple URLs, but such is the life of a grayhat.

The guidelines for Facebook username URLs:

Usernames must be at least five characters long.
Usernames can only contain letters, numbers, or periods.
Usernames will only be available in Roman characters at launch.

Here are some links that verify and describe the details at Facebook. Check them out:

official post on the Facebook Platform page
official blog post on the Facebook Developers Blog
Facebook.com’s countdown page (this page is the best!)

Uh oh. It looks like Facebook has gone and done something to mess up our plans of vanity URL world domination. According to this post on InsideFacebook.com:

Facebook isn’t allowing transfers in order to undercut the rampant squatter market that would otherwise develop – although there will still definitely be cases of abuse. Facebook says that generic words like “flowers” or “pizza” will not be available as usernames, though we’re not sure how exactly those rules will work.

Facebook says that if you signed up for a Facebook Page after May 31 or a user profile after today at 3 p.m. EDT, you “may not be able to sign up for a username immediately because of steps we’ve taken to prevent abuse or ’squatting’ on names.”

Well, crap. That’s not going to be fun for you who were planning on creating multiple accounts between now and Friday. However, if you are an SEO who has already been planning for this, you probably already have several Facebook accounts. 😉

While this may not be as crazy as the landrush for Twitter usernames over the past few months, it’s going to be fun to watch. I wonder who will find a way around the rules. I wonder who will get some of these awesome names (or if anyone will find a way around the 5-character minimum and/or the restriction around highly generic keywords):

facebook.com/viagra
facebook.com/phentermine
facebook.com/seo
facebook.com/tech
facebook.com/shoes
facebook.com/realestate
facebook.com/london
facebook.com/hotels
facebook.com/tickets
facebook.com/travel
facebook.com/auto
I could go on…

Well, good luck everyone. Let’s play fair. Or at least let’s pretend to. 🙂

Update: I found some more links that you might find interesting and/or useful, especially if you are working with clients who have protected brand names:

Help Center: Usernames
Help Center: Usernames (Eligibility)
Help Center: Facebook Pages (Guidelines & rules for companies)
Notice of Intellectual Property Infringement (Non-Copyright Claim)
Preventing the Registration of a Username (link)

June 8, 2009

Like a Fat Kid Playing Halfback in Soccer, Bing.com Tries Really Hard to Keep Up

Tom Smykowski: It's a Jump To Conclusions Mat

Bing.com, the new search engine from Microsoft, launched last week. And at the end of the week everybody was jumping to conclusions about Bing overtaking Yahoo as the #2 ranked search engine in the world. And that would have been pretty cool. I guess. Everyone in the SEO world would love to see Microsoft have a great product. And maybe it would have been cool if just for one week, Bing.com could have jumped over Yahoo. It would have proven that you can throw out a new product and a lot of marketing and have a tremendous opening. But alas, Danny Sullivan is reporting that it wasn’t a Cinderella story after all.

Like many other search marketers, I was waiting for Nielson, comScore, Compete and Hitwise to weigh in with Bing vs. Yahoo data. Please check out Danny’s post at searchengineland.com for more detail. But here’s the message:

What these data collectively show — and we’ll update if/when we get more — is that Bing has received a potentially significant traffic bump compared to Live Search/MSN since launch and rollout of the marketing campaign on TV and online. However Bing has (so far) not surpassed Yahoo for the number two spot.

Well, good luck, Bing! And on a side note, maybe you could answer the claim that Bing.com is switching title tags with search queries to increase clickthru (here). I mean, that would be crazy. Replacing the title tag from a page with the exact search query – only to increase clickthru? Well, that is definitely grey area. It makes me kinda happy in a way, but my clients are not going to like it. Just sayin’ is all…

Also, remember that scene from Groundhog Day, where Ned Ryerson yells “Bing!” about 100 times in 60 seconds? Why isn’t Microsoft using that video as the official marketing video for Bing.com? It could have gone viral. Just ask Rand. He’d agree. Well, probably not. But I seriously would not be surprised if this scene from Groundhog Day did not play a role in naming the new Microsoft search engine. I mean, everyone loves Ned Ryerson. Why not use his quote as the name for a search engine? Check out the video and see for yourself:

May 29, 2009

Google Wave: The Future of Real-Time Internets & Web Communication

Google Wave Logo

Holy radio waves, Batman! The folks over at Google Wave made a huge splash yesterday. Led by Lars Rasmussen, Jens Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon, Google Wave is a real-time collection of chat, IM, and other real-time apps, and it’s quickly moving to integrate with Google Docs and Gmail. As for the nerdy details, Google Wave is built on the Google Web Toolkit, using HTML 5, and it is interoperable. Furthermore, Google plans to launch the Wave code as open source. Here’s a screenshot released by the Google Wave Dev Team:

Google Wave Combines Chat, IM, Friendfeed, Docs, Pictures, etc...

Fun fact: Lars and Jens are brothers from Denmark. They founded Where2, a mapping company that was acquired by Google and is now known as Google Maps. From the way that Lars and Jens describe Google Wave, it’s almost like they are discussing the email of the future. It totally reminds me of those kitchens from the 1950’s, where they would advertise “The Kitchen of Tomorrow – Today!”

I think if email was invented today, it would be like Google Wave. It’s like dragging email and chat into real time., so you can do both at the same time within the same tool. Both Yahoo and Google have tried to merge chat with their email services. And I think I have even seen the same thing in my Hotmail account. But matching chat and email has not been a seemless experience to date. Google Wave goes way beyond the current methods of shoe-horning chat into email platforms. Everything in Google Wave is real-time. From the look of it, Wave is more like Facebook in nature. There are pictures, links and docs, and everyone can comment on any given element.

I guess the big question is: Will Google Wave ultimately kill other Google products like Gmail, Google, Talk, Picasa, Google Docs, and Blogger? Also, will Google Wave kill Twitter, Friendfeed, IM, Chat, and other real-time apps or services? The answer: probably not. I’m fairly certain that Google engineers could go after any service and effectively design a better wheel if they wanted to, but the factor that will make Google Wave so compelling is not it’s ability to destroy any current real-time services. Rather, the thing that makes the future capabilities Google Wave so intriguing is the fact that they are opening up the protocols from the beginning. [Note: In the long run, they plan to release a “lion share” of the source code, and they are going to open up a ton of the code early on.] Furthermore, if I know Google well enough, they are probably thinking more about integrating with other currently-popular services, like Twitter, rather than aiming to destroy them.

The Google Wave team has created a platform that can be taken and used by third parties. Unlike Twitter, data does not have to be stored on a Google server. Because of this, hundreds or thousands of third parties may create Wave systems, and just imagine the possibilities for apps and extensions! No matter where you create a Wave account, you should be able to communicate with other Wave users. Or if a team of developers wants to create and run a Wave server for private use within their company, that is possible to. The data will remain on their Wave server and never be seen outside of their corporate network. And to add to the excitement, Google Wave offers people the opportunity to collaborate on projects. Did I mention the open architecture and APIs? Wow. What didn’t they think of?

While everyone is still digesting the capabilities and possibilities of Google Wave, it’s clear that the concept has the chance to revolutionize the way we communicate on the web. Wave is a gigantic undertaking. It’s like the Swiss Army knife of popular internet services, and that is going to make it an interesting Google product to watch. Google expects to keep Wave limited to a developer preview product for several more months. I know they have invited people to sign up for updates. If you want a shot at early access, I suggest you sign up, too. You never know. You just might get lucky enough to have another internet-based social distraction. But that’s what we live for, right? 🙂

PS. How will Yahoo and MSN respond to this? What about Facebook, MySpace and Twitter? I’m definitely interested in their responses. Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, has made Google Wave one of the projects he is putting his time into. So unlike other Google products that whither and die due to lack of support, Google Wave has the support and attention of the co-founder of Google. Me thinks he won’t let this product fail. It’s too good of an idea. In the spirit of friendly competition, I hope Yahoo and MSN are working on something to compete with Google Wave. Good luck to all competitors. I think you’ll need it.

Here is the video of the 80-minute presentation from yesterday at Google I/O:

May 27, 2009

Google PageRank Update May 27, 2009

Google updated the toolbar PR today. I just saw that my PageRank stayed at a PR4. Awesome. Yay. Let’s go have a beer or something.

Update 05-28-2009: PageRank Update Fail – I dropped to a PR3. Dammit. Oh well. I’m still going to have a beer.

May 19, 2009

QuitRank: Google Algorithm Predicts When Employees Will Quit

Oh my goodness. According to this WSJ article (here), Google has developed an algorithm to determine which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to quit:

The Internet search giant recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula Google says can identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to quit.

Apparently, Google’s newest algorithm is using data from employee reviews, promotion histories and pay scale histories in the mathematical analysis. But much like its PageRank search algorithm, don’t expect anyone at Google to disclose any details on this algorithm:

Google officials are reluctant to share details of the formula, which is still being tested. The inputs include information from surveys and peer reviews, and Google says the algorithm already has identified employees who felt underused, a key complaint among those who contemplate leaving.

I wonder what they are going to name this algorithm. I’m suggesting PeopleRank or QuitRank or FireThemBeforeTheyQuitRank.

It’s not very surprising that Google is worried about people leaving. They have lost a lot of big names in the past few months (Tim Armstrong, David Rosenblatt, Santosh Jayaram). Google has grown so much over the past several years. 20,000 employees already? I’m thinking that Google is not as attractive as it once was.

When attractive start-ups grow too big, the romantic appeal fades. And quickly. The ladder gets taller, and it can become tougher to get things done. And it can feel more like you’re part of a machine rather than a person who can affect the machine’s design and success. Furthermore, some former employees speak of little to no training and an impersonal HR department. Check out some of the reviews that were leaked here. [Note: After reading those reviews, I realized that no matter where you work, you will complain about it. It’s just human nature.]

On one hand, I hope Google succeeds with this algorithm. They are treating people as data, and maybe humans are predictable. Maybe not. On the other hand, if this helps Google address employee concerns, more power to them. I guess. I’m conflicted on this one.

Google has found a way into most of our internet lives in some way or another. I really hope they don’t lose any more of those brilliant minds. But I’m selfish. I want more/better products from Google in the future.

May 18, 2009

SEO Fail: WolframAlpha.com Not Loading without WWW

To be clear, I’m excited about Wolfram|Alpha and its potential as a game changer for the internet and the search industry. WolframAlpha.com is a fun concept, and I think it will catch on over time. I laughed when I typed in hello, and it responded with Hello, human.

Despite the fact that I really like this website, I still have to call them out for one thing: a network timeout when users don’t type in the www for wolframalpha.com. If you directly navigate by typing in www.wolframalpha.com, the site loads correctly. However, if you simply type in wolframalpha.com, you get a network timeout error:

The SamSpade header status checker reports a Socket Error when trying to retrieve http://wolframalpha.com:

SamSpade returns a Socket Error for http://wolframalpha.com

I see this error a lot for retail websites. Most marketers are typically unaware of this error because they are more concerned with search and display links malfunctioning. But what if people direct navigate to your site and see a network timeout screen? It’s terrible for user experience. It confuses customers. From an SEO standpoint it’s awful because the non-www version of your homepage usually has a ton of links and a relatively high Google PageRank. The worst part is that this error is typically caused because some box didn’t get checked or unchecked in the server settings. It’s a damn shame is what it is. It’s like you are throwing away all of those inbound links and some direct navigation traffic. This type of thing makes me sad, so go forth and make sure it’s not happening on your site!

UPDATE: A few minutes after this post was published, the error was resolved. Coincidence? Definitely. I mean, seriously, who reads this blogs anyways?

May 13, 2009

Twitter is Down for Maintenance, Call in the Caterpillar and the Icecream Cone

Twitter is down for maintenance. This happens sometimes. I enjoy the caterpillar and the icecream cone.

Twitter Caterpillar & Icecream Cone Maintenance Guy

Whenever my site is down, I wish I could use a caterpillar and an icecream cone image. “It’s cool. I can chill. Hurry up.” That makes me laugh.

May 7, 2009

Wolfram Alpha Up, Now Down

Well, I got word that WolframAlpha went live today. But now it’s down. Uh oh. Did they have some problems? Hopefully they didn’t pull the plug on it like the superduper collider where it worked for an hour and now it’s out of commission for a year. Godspeed, WolframAlpha.

May 3, 2009

The Wolfram Alpha Search Engine, an Internet Revolution for the Next Generation

Wolfram Alpha Computational Knowledge Engine

You may not know this, but Wolfram|Alpha is launching in May 2009. What is Wolfram|Alpha? For starters, it’s a new software that will give tailored answers to specific questions. In the grand scheme of things, WolframAlpha is predicted to revolutionize the internet and how we search for stuff.

From an SEO standpoint, the site already has a PageRank 7. When was the last time you saw a PR7 site that had not even launched? Yahoo is currently reporting 12,000+ backlinks. PR7 is pretty surprising until you realize that WolframApha.com has an awesome link distribution from many sites with PR6 and up. Also, if you go to StephanWolfram.com, you’ll notice his site has been live since 1995. It’s also a PR7. This guy doesn’t even need our links, and I’m definitely not the first one to report on this website. That’s for sure!

WolframAlpha was developed by US-based physicist, Stephen Wolfram and his company Wolfram Research. [Note: The Wolfram Research site looks like it is full of amazing stuff. To me, the company looks like it is straight out of LOST, the TV show. There is just something magical about the stuff on that site, and I really don’t know why I think that. Maybe I’m just enamored by physics and math.] WolframAlpha will only provide answers to questions that have factual answers. I suppose if you asked it “Why are we here?” – you might not get an answer. But if you asked it “How far is it from Earth to Mars?” – WolframAlpha will likely have an answer for you. And what’s even cooler is that for some questions, the engine will graphs and charts to provide visuals. For people who like pictures and graphs, it’s going to be awesome!

Furthermore, it sounds like these guys hate Wikipedia and all the mis-information on the Wikipedia site. With WolframAlpha, information is first looked over by a team of experts. The entire system is based on the Mathematica software, software that apparently holds the key to life, love and the universe. But I jest. Stephen Wolfram knows what he is doing. The guy has a PhD in Particle Physics! I’m not going to doubt him. But if he turns out to be Richard Alpert, Charles Widmore or Benjamin Linus, and his “team of experts” are the Others, well, I’m going to be pissed. Okay. I am finished with the LOST references.

For more on Wolfram|Alpha:
http://www.wolfram.com/
http://www.wolframalpha.com/
http://www.stephenwolfram.com/