From: Dana Dahl
Subject: White Hat SEO

Message Body:
We can increase rankings of your website in search engines. Please reply back for more details.

No thank you.

I just read (well, skimmed some of it since it’s so long) this article in the New York Times titled “The Web Means the End of Forgetting” as a result of this Tweet by Christine Amorose.

One quote fairly early in the article that’s somewhat scary is this:

It’s often said that we live in a permissive era, one with infinite second chances. But the truth is that for a great many people, the permanent memory bank of the Web increasingly means there are no second chances — no opportunities to escape a scarlet letter in your digital past. Now the worst thing you’ve done is often the first thing everyone knows about you.

I live a very public life; most of what I do is “out there” and I’m fine with that. Luckily, the worst thing I’ve ever done — which I’m not going to get into — is not the first thing people knows about me. But part of that being the case is because it happened when I was young before the rise of Facebook and a web where everything resides in a permanent state for eternity. But if I did something really bad again, there is a good likelihood it would somehow end up online and very public — likely somewhere in my Facebook status feed as wall posts from friends or acquaintances. It it could spread to my entire network within hours. Maybe the worst thing you’ve done is the first thing people learn about you in future. That sucks, but we all have to be willing to accept the consequences of our mistakes.

I guess the lesson is that we should all never do anything bad again. Of course, I strive to only do good in this world — but mistakes can happen to the best of us. One last thing I will say on this topic — the fact of the matter is that part of what keeps me inline on a day to day basis IS the fact that everything I do (for the most part) is public. I’d be more likely to go off the deep end and do something crazy, horrible, or stupid if everything wasn’t public; I guess that’s both a good thing and a bad thing depending on how you look at it.

I would absolutely LOVE IT if someone would build an application that put all my Facebook status updates since I joined the site in the beginning (2004-ish?) into an audio file I could listen to. The format would be super simple:

“Date, Time, [Facebook status update]”

Repeat thousands and thousands of times.

Maybe really spice it up by adding the comment thread on each status update to the audio file.

I’m guessing Facebook itself is the only company that could actually build this since they have access to all the historical data. If someone – whether it be Facebook or another company — built this, I would absolutely be willing to spend some money for it. Alternatively, I could simply go through the tedious tedious process of reading all my Facebook status updates for the past 6 years — but that would take ages and ages and doesn’t sound like very much fun. Somehow, repeatedly hitting “Older Posts” at the bottom of my profile page and waiting for them to load doesn’t sound like a fun Saturday.

Any takers?

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

This was some keywords used to land on Geek Estate Blog that I looked at today. The 2nd one was someone searching for “get high seo quickly”. Good luck with that one.

I get asked quite often WHY I use Foursquare, so I thought I’d answer the question publicly. I wrote the post over at Virtual Results Blog, so take a look if you’re curious – and especially if you are one of the people that have asked me!

Andrew Mattie of Diverse Solutions helped me a bit this evening with thinking through the next version of SeaMO this evening and we spent a bit of time experimenting with Pods (a plugin for WordPress) as part of that process.

Pods sits on top of WordPress and allows you to add and display your own content types and I have to say it’s an awesome piece of technology (from my understanding) that can accomplish a wide range of things. My coding skills are not quite good enough to know how to build something cool with it at the moment, but you can be certain I’ll be thinking about what that something cool may be over the coming days and weeks. Though I’m drawing a blank at the moment, I’m sure a cool real estate specific feature will pop into my head at some point soon. If you are a WordPress techie reading this, have you built anything awesome with Pods yet? If so, what did you build? If not, get busy!!

…please read this post by Charlie O’Donnell. It’ll be well worth your time.

I thought it was pretty funny when I saw the news that Yahoo bought the OMG.com domain for $80,000. Given how many people are starting to use the “OMG” phrase — it’s probably worth it (and they can now resolve OMG.com to their OMG blog currently at omg.yahoo.com).

Big news today that Myspace and CitySearch are teaming up to create “myspace local”. I know, I know — you (and I) can’t believe I’m writing about myspace again after my a recent post. But this is big news in the local space. Here is a demo if you’re interested in digging in. Yelp has 20 million UUs and CitySearch only 25 million UUs, even though they have a 10 year head start. So, is this a bit of Yelp envy? Absolutely. However, you’ve got to ask – will this help myspace catch up to facebook in the social networking space? I have to say no on that one since it likely won’t result in many NEW users, which, to me, means its not a partnership that myspace should be spending boatloads of resources on. But, that said, I have no doubt its a partnership that will be lucrative for both parties in the long run (no idea what the rev share deal looks like). Having local business content is a natural starting point for the myspace sales team to tap into that advertiser base. All in all, good move by both companies for striking this deal.

As a side note – I just logged into citysearch with my facebook username and password. Love it. No e-mail confirmation, no captcha, no user name to remember, no hassle. There’s a 98% chance I never would have went to citysearch without their facebook connect integration. But there’s a very low barrier to adding content to their site. Anyone know what the largest sites are that have enabled facebook connect? Do you think it will be a growing trend? What does someone give up strategically by doing that? How does e-mail marketing to those users work?

They released a toolbar today….but is there anyone out there who still uses Myspace anymore to care? I’m skeptical the toolbar will get much adoption…but I could be wrong. All I hear about now is Facebook, Facebook, and Facebook some more; for instance, the number of users 35+ in the US has doubled in the last 60 days on FB. I’m just sayin…

Of course the answer is yes…but the real answer is “yes and no”. The degree to which a web company listens to their users is something every website views slightly differently — it’s a fine line between trying to please your users and doing what’s best for your business at the same time. For the most part, those two things align very well; particularly for media companies that make their money from advertising. The more happy users — the more uniques, ad impressions to serve, positive word of mouth, etc. But just because there are a ton of users who revolt over a specific feature or major design change does not mean its bad for your business. Quite the contrary actually (in many, but not all, cases). Look at the facebook newsfeed. Regardless of all the criticism they took, anyone that tells you the feature was a stupid move for their business is clearly not thinking straight or smoking something. Sometimes we forget all these web 2.0 companies are exactly that — companies. As much as we might like to think otherwise, Yelp, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, Teachstreet, etc were not created strictly to solve our problems and react to our every demand. They are businesses trying to make money WHILE helping us solve real world problems. If at the end of the day, they can’t pay the bills and build value for their investors, they aren’t going to be around over the long run.

Many users get used to the look and feel of a website and just don’t want to see it change, no matter what the reasoning. Or a specific user may feel that a specific process on a website is clunky and should be reworked. Before spending any development effort, the company has to ask itself: “will spending the development resources to fix or build a particular  feature add anything to the bottom line?” If not, then it’s likely that the work will be put in the queue of work items, but not with any sort of priority. Being on the front lines and constantly interacting with Zillow customers, I naturally always want to help Zillow users get their suggestions and bugs acted on as quickly as possible. But sometimes, there’s just not a business case to be made. A feature that’s only relevant to 1 or 2% of users is probably not worth the development time when you consider other items impacting 90% of users that could be worked on instead. Unfortunately, no web shop has unlimited resources to build and fix everything. Zillow, my employer, is no different in this regard.

Doing a good job of product development prioritization is absolutely critical to any web business that wants to end up on top. I agree with Scoble that Facebook and Zuckerberg are smart to not always listen to their users. Trendsetters and disruptors don’t do what others tell them to do – they find & create their own path regardless of the skeptics and haters. And that’s what Facebook is doing.

Congrats to all the websites that made Time’s 50 Best Websites 2008. And I’m particularly happy to see Kiva.org, one of my favorite sites, on the list!!

[via myKRO]

There’s an event next week that I wanted to share with any Seattle techies/entrepreneurs who read this blog. The fact that the proceeds of the event are being donated to a local seattle non-profit in the microfinance field called Vittana just makes the event even more appealing to me. Dave Schappell at TeachStreet gave me the heads up earlier this week, so I wanted to pass along the message:

• Beers and Boulder with Brad
• Wed, Feb 25, 6pm-8:30pm
• $5 entry fee
• Further Details – http://beersboulderbrad.eventbrite.com/

Brad Feld is coming to town and we are having an entrepreneur party. If you don’t know of Brad, he writes the popular blog Feld Thoughts (www.feld.com) and is a managing director at Foundry Group (www.foundrygroup.com). He’s been an investor in a number of Seattle-based companies over the years including AdReady, Smith & Tinker, Shelfari, and Judy’s Book, and is currently on the board of Impinj. Brad’s is also a co-founder of TechStars (www.techstars.org), a great startup program based in Boulder that has helped create a number of interesting companies, including SocialThing (acquired by AOL), Intense Debate (acquired by Automattic/WordPress), and Brightkite.

Brad’s going to spend the evening talking about his views on entrepreneurship, especially around early stage companies in today’s environment. He’ll give us a detailed view of TechStars and why it’s been working, along with an explanation about how he thinks about early stage VC investing. The evening with be heavily Q&A oriented – Brad’s open to any questions about anything.

NOTE: $5 fee will be donated to Seattle-based Vittana (www.vittana.org), an early-stage non-profit building the next step in microfinance — education microfinance.

SPONSORS: Event cost is being kept to a minimum thanks to the generous support of:

• Beacon Law Advisors (www.beaconlawadvisors.com) – Beacon works with startups — end of story. We’re a Seattle-based boutique firm of seasoned corporate, transactional, and technology attorneys who also have significant operating, in-house and entrepreneurial experience. Current clients include: MindBloom, TeachStreet, Vittana, and many more.
• The Microsoft Strategic & Emerging Business Team (SEBT) supports early stage and established software startups developing on the Microsoft platform. SEBT helps develop and grow local software economies worldwide through programs like Microsoft BizSpark, a global program for startups that provides fast, easy access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools and production licenses with no upfront costs and minimal requirements. To learn more visit www.microsoftstartupzone.com.
• Square 1 Bank specializes in providing financial services to entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. We help growing companies and their investors navigate financial obstacles by providing access to funds and expertise. Our customized product offerings and unrivaled team of venture banking specialists provide a banking experience designed exclusively for you. We are entrepreneurs serving entrepreneurs. To learn more visit www.square1financial.com

I just watched the brief demo of Yahoo Search Pad, and I think the new feature is pretty slick. Is this enough to break my Google habit? Probably not, but it’s a good start.

So I logged onto twitter tonight after work and came to a realization — my boss David Gibbons is a twitteraholic.

Here is my google analytics traffic graph over the past few months:

If you’re like me, you probably notice that big drop in early August. Right about then, my blog stopped ranking #1 in Google for my name (it’s now my Zillow profile). I think my domain was down for a few days near that time as a result of me forgetting to renew it with Dreamhost — would Google crawling a blank domain put me in the penalty box like this? Is there any way to get out of it?

This came into my inbox a week ago:

Hello,

I recently visited http://www.drewmeyersinsights.com/ page and
I want to suggest a new site in the [Other Links] section

Title: CoreIndex.com
URL: http://www.coreindex.com/
Description :CoreIndex.com is a trade portal, market place and trade point for exporters, manufacturers, importers and all others related to export import trade. It has helped thousands of buyers and sellers to transact business directly without middleman.

Thank you very much,
Diana Parker

ummm….no thank you. Seriously Diana, please figure out a legitimate way to build links.

Note: I no-followed the coreindex link above.

If not, I think the data in this Publishing 2.0 article a few months ago (which I just came across from this article) will show you it makes zero sense to not link out to others.

http://windowshop.com/

What do you think?

[via Arjun]

Facebook announced the 25 recipients of their fbFund who received $25k grants today — BarTab was on the list and the description caught my attention:

Send a drink to a friend, with Facebook! BarTab allows users to send real drinks to each other for only $1. Drinks are redeemed through the user’s cell phone at partnered bars and restaurants.

I think a lot of pieces will have to fall into place for this to work, but there is potential for this application to both improve drinking for the 21-30 crowd and increase overall sales at bars & resaurants. Here are a few challenges they’ll need to overcome:

• critical mass of bar goers
• awareness with bar owners
• technology inside of bars to enable someone to redeem tickets/credits with a mobile phone

Which gets me thinking — Yelp should buy this application, or build this same functionality themselves. They’ve already got two of the three pieces to the puzzle.