WebConnoisseur

It appears that Digg is finally closer to being purchased. The leading candidates are Google and Microsoft. While the final owner won’t be known for probably another month, the future of Digg is known:

If Google buys Digg, it will become Gigg.

Rather than trusting pesky humans to digg news stories, Google will implement an algorithm developed by a team of PhDs based on previous digg analytics data. The new algorithm will look something like this:

if (headline ((pro-Microsoft, -50, anti-Microsoft, +50) (“Apple”, +100) (any game title, +35)) + if (content contains (Scantily clad women, +85, -25) (“Hack”, +35, -5) (displays ads, -20)…

If Microsoft buys Digg, it will quickly become Dugg.

Dugg will be the result of the dust that quickly develops on Digg as it suddenly becomes uncool. To make matters worse, Microsoft will implement content restrictions like no Microsoft bashing, no discussions of Apple or Google, and all gaming diggs must be Microsoft-created games only. Within weeks, Dugg will be the wayback machine of the social news site once known as Digg.

Ask will build a competing product to Microsoft Dugg called “Doug” to add a human element to the archive, but you will have to search news stories with questions like, “What male celebrity is a little bitch?”

As I mentioned earlier, I’ll be speaking at Searchfest on Monday. Unfortunately, I probably won’t be around for pre & post event networking because my wife is due March 21st, so I’ll be keeping the trip as short as possible.

For those attending, do remember to set your clock forward this weekend or you’ll be an hour late to everything!

For those thinking about attending, I’ve been given a speaker discount that I can pass along to your for $40 off the listed price: Searchfest signup (use discount code: SEMBD)

See you there!

I started playing around with the Google Sites which are definitely part of the Google Apps product suite. I suspect most individual non-corporate wiki creators will quickly be turned off by being forced to provide business information like # of employees (with 10 being the minimum example), business phone #, etc.

As I was reading through Google Sites terms and conditions, I noticed that I wouldn’t be allowed to write about the terms and conditions again as part of the agreement (so I am writing now before I even think about signing up):

“Customer agrees not to issue any public announcement regarding the existence or content of this Agreement without Google’s prior written approval.”

I’m not a big fan of reading terms and conditions, but I decided to read through them and have a feeling these will be deal breakers for many of the potential Google Sites corporate customers:

“3.2.2 Disclaimer Regarding Additional Content. Additional Content may be provided by third parties and may be modified or removed by Google at any time, including at the request of those third parties. Third party providers of Additional Content may include financial exchanges and may be delayed as specified by such financial exchanges or Google’s data providers…Customer agrees not to copy, modify, reformat, download, store, reproduce, reprocess or redistribute any data or information from the Additional Content or use any such data or information in a commercial enterprise without obtaining prior written consent. A broker or financial representative should be consulted to verify pricing before executing any trade. Either Google or its third party data or content providers have exclusive proprietary rights in the data and information provided.”

I’m having trouble understanding who the financial exchange partners are and what they have to do with content, especially considering Google Sites don’t include any revenue share.

Here’s the part that will probably bother most companies & non-company users them most:

“Ownership; Restricted Use. Google and its licensors shall own all right, title and interest, including without limitation all Intellectual Property Rights (as defined below) relating to the Service (and any derivative works or enhancements thereof), including but not limited to, all software, technology, information, content, materials, guidelines, and documentation. Customer shall not acquire any right, title, or interest therein, except for the limited use rights expressly set forth in the Agreement. Any rights not expressly granted herein are deemed withheld. “Intellectual Property Rights” means any and all rights existing from time to time under patent law, copyright law, semiconductor chip protection law, moral rights law, trade secret law, trademark law, unfair competition law, publicity rights law, privacy rights law, and any and all other proprietary rights, and any and all applications, renewals, extensions and restorations thereof, now or hereafter in force and effect worldwide.”

Sounds like you won’t own your own content, though this part provides a little hope:

“Google does not own third party content used as part of the Service, including the content of communications appearing on the Service. Title, ownership rights, and Intellectual Property Rights in and to the content accessed through the Service are the property of the applicable content owner and may be protected by applicable copyright or other law.”

Strange. Third party content thus far sounded like Google partner or “financial exchange” partner content, but maybe they mean content from site members or participants. I wish they were more clear because I feel like most corporate customers are going to want to own their own content that the write themselves, and want to be able to move it elsewhere, if desired.

Being essentially a wiki, you’d think the Google Sites terms of service would spend more time discussing copyrights, collective content, creative commons license, user submissions, user contributions, and other content creation activity.

If you have a similar or different read on the Google Sites terms of service, do comment with your thoughts.

Never thought I’d see the day that Microsoft would make a bid for Yahoo. There’s so much overlap and the difficulties of becoming to big of a company just got bigger. I’m happy to see Google get stiffer competition, but I’m not sure how it will play out other than Microsoft immediately getting a larger share of search.

For the best coverage of the Microsoft bid for Yahoo, hop on over to Search Engine Land.

I’ll be speaking at SEMpdx on March 10th at the Portland Zoo. Still trying to figure out if it is really a ploy to lock me up with the animals. “Oh… look at the cute SEO flicking boogars at the crowd.”

You can catch me at the links session with another Seattlite, SEOMoz’s Rebecca Kelley. You can also take a look at my Searchfest mini-interview with Todd Mintz where I answer these questions:

• 1) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living?
• 2) If a newbie ask you to describe the importance of link-building, what would you tell them?
• 3) Do you see stocks backed by domain names as their principal assets (e.g. Marchex) as good investments short & long term?

Websites everywhere let their copyright footers go out of date, but you don’t expect it of the bigger, more sophisticated sites that could easily justify the 5 minutes it would take to create an automated solution. Especially search engines which crawl, index and rank billions upon billions of web pages with some of the most advanced technology in the world, built by some of the most sophisticated teams of researchers, PhDs, and programmers seen to man. So here it is, January 2nd, 2008 and all five of the top engines still think it is 2007:

Click on the search engine images to see if they’ve updated their site yet, then add a comment when they do so we can document which engines fix it first.

Look out super multi-taskers. As of January 1st, texting while driving is illegal - at least in my home state (Washington). According to the Washington State Department of Transportation, cell phone distractions are responsible for less than one percent of the collisions.

The good news: it’s only a secondary violation, meaning you have to get pulled over first.

The bad news: the greater than 99% causes of collisions are still out there.

The worst news: starting July 1st, talking on your cell phone at all while driving will be illegal unless you use a hands-free device. Hands-free device providers must be excited. Bluetooth even use “Seattle” as the code name for their next generation of hands-free devices.

These new laws will become confusing when the lines between technology begin to blur. What happens when people can receive texts on built-in dashboard LCDs, using voice recognition software to send texts, or even right now when a person uses the speaker function on their cell phone instead of a hands-free device? Judges and officers will also have to define what exactly is texting. What about sending or taking pics with your cell phone, or checking your phone for the time or sending pre-drafted or templated messages that require just one or two clicks?

Personally, I think texting while driving is a bit dangerous, though a quick glance to read an incoming text in Seattle’s typical stop-and-go traffic is not a big deal (no worse then loading in a new cd, checking a map, a crying back-seat baby, or a talkative passenger).

I feel the hands-free law is probably over the line. True, it is safer, but I believe the ability to drive while on the cell phone is up to the drivers ability then anything else. If we want to we want to create blanket laws for all drivers, they might as well outlaw drinking coffee, listening to the radio, talking to a passenger, doing make-up (actually, this one should be a law), picking noses, and reading billboards or bumper stickers while driving.

Online reputation management is increasingly important as more and more friends, family and employers search your name. Even if you are always on your best behavior online or you have a fairly unique name, as the population swells and more people become creators of content on the web, there’s a great chance that people will mistake others activity online as your own!

Controlling or managing search rank for your own name is fairly easy for an SEO (search engine optimizer), but what can the average person do? Below I outline a number of free, quick, easy and effective ways to populate the first page of results for your name. I highly recommend people start creating content for their name now as it will be much more difficult after waiting for someone else with your name to muddy the search results to spur you to action.

1) Create a Blog
Even if you build just a one-page site using your name on a free blog network, you can quickly use your blog to create pages about yourself and link to other pages you are going to create on this list. Use your name in the blog name.
Estimated time to complete: 10 minutes
Free Options: Blogger (blogspot), Wordpress, LiveJournal

2) Create a Wiki
Several wiki platforms have done a great job of creating publishing tools that are even easier to use than most blog technology. Though wikis are best suited for group collaboration, the will also work well helping you link to your blog and other pages. Use your name in the wiki name.
Estimated time to complete: 10 minutes
Free Options: Wetpaint*, Wikia

3) Register your domain
If you are lucky enough to have [insertyourname].com (or .net, .org, .info) available, snatch them up. The $8 a year fee is well worth it even if you don’t actively build a site using it because, at the very least, you are preventing your competition (other people with your name, or people who don’t like you) from ranking high for your name. Even better, use your domain for the site or wiki you are going to create.
Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes
Cheap Options: GoDaddy, Yahoo,1&1

4) LinkedIn
Set up a LinkedIn profile and make it publicly available. Add background info like education, employment history, awards or certification (or anything else you are proud of). Add links to your other sites/pages.
Estimated time to complete: 5-10 minutes

5) Jobster
Some people are a little shocked when they find out their Jobster profile shows up in search. Not you, because you want it to! Create a jobster account, allow it to be publicly available, fill out a little employment info, answer a couple questions, but write it keeping in mind that your current employer could come across it.
Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes

6) Myspace
Myspace pages tend to show up in search as well. Though Myspace has probably ruined more people’s reputations than helped, you will create a clean Myspace page for your name and, if you feel the urge, put the racy stuff on a different profile.
Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes

7) Flickr
Flickr accounts and images have a great chance of showing up in the engines, especially for image searches. Creat an account, upload a few photos you like and label them with your name.
Estimated time to complete: 10 minutes

8) Comment on Popular Post
Sometimes I see a commenter’s name show up in search. Find a popular blogger site or newspaper site that allows comments, and find a post that you feel comfortable commenting on. Use your real name for the name field. Try this on a couple sites.
Estimated time to complete: 5 minutes

9) Employer Site
If your employer features profiles on their website, ask them to add one for you. If not, talk them into it or author a post on their blog (if they have one).
Estimated time to complete: 5-30 minutes, depending on your company

10) Join a Forum
Do a search for a forum that you might want to participate on. For example, if you are into guitar, you should search for “guitar forum.” If it looks like a place where it would be easy for you to make five or six posts, then sign up and use your name for your profile name. Make your five posts and fill out your profile page with information about you and use your name at least once in the profile description.
Estimated time to complete: 15 minutes

*Disclosure: I work for Wetpaint, but honestly believe their wiki solution is the best option

In the future, Facebook might also be an option. They recently allowed profiles set to public to be crawled, but they are showing logged-out status of your profile, which is basically your name and picture right now. Eventually, I believe, Facebook will open it up to show your full public profile (probably in ‘08).

Keep in mind, Google usually only shows two results for any one site. That’s why I have you contributing on multiple sites. A couple more tips:

• If you ever receive a great interview or bio online, link to it from your sites.
• For online activity that you don’t want to be associated with your name, use a nickname or “handle” that is completely different from your real name.
• If you have stiffer competition for your name, you may need to spend more time building out and linking to the various options I list above.

As some of you may know, I’m a Judge for the Webby Awards (think Oscars for the Internet). As a judge, I’m encouraged to submit nominations for sites that I’m not affiliated with. I do a pretty good job on keeping up on many of the best websites, but with the growing plethora of great sites on the Web, there’s a good chance I might miss some.

If you have any favorite websites that I may not be aware of, feel free to comment on this post for possible inclusion. Here’s a list of categories to help you think of recommendations. I’ll review every site commented except porn & spam and determine whether or not I find them worthy of a nomination. It’s a great opportunity for a site to get massive exposure in, undoubtedly, the most prestigous award available to websites.

Don’t worrry, I’m not quoting John Wayne. I’m simply stating that one of the search marketing blogs I read is Marketing Pilgrim. Andy is having a little “readership survey” that pays survey takers with a free link, plus a free entry to win $500 cash (hopefully USD). I figure I have a 1 in 50 chance in winning. It also means Andy is paying about $10 per survey taker.

The reason I use MarketingPilgrim.com is because they tend to cover stories quickly and deviate just the right amount from your standard search marketing publication. If I look at my feeds related to search, I have about 5 that are what I’d call news filters and Marketing Pilgrim is one of them. I love these news filters because it saves me a lot of time (much better than reading through hundreds of blogs and pubications).