Friday, August 1st, 2008
Of all the great news and views from this past week, by far our favorite is the announcement of Brendan Picha (from Squareoak) joining the Collective Thoughts team (welcome aboard Brendan)… Beyond that we have funnies, tri-dimensional conversations and hyper-connectivity to keep the head spinning and the belly aching. Also new this week is Tim’s idea that we each pass along some thoughts for the week… we hope they find you well.
Enjoy your weekend!!
Brian’s picks
Thought for the week; It’s always amusing to see the criticism of social media. Funny thing is, it usually comes from people that proudly display a few flashy badges that link to their social accounts. Upon further inspection, the critics are barely using social media.
Tim’s picks
Thought for the week: Social Media is much like my leaky roofer, great when it’s sunny but totally useless in the rain…
Shana’s picks
Thought for the week; Social Media can be very confusing and even intimidating for the Webmaster or Small Business Owner new to Web 2.0. My suggestion would be to start with one Social Networking site/activity and start to know the community. Once you have done that you will be amazed how helpful the Community will be.
Dave’s picks
Thought for the week; I wanted to pass on the words of Chuang Tzu -
The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten.
The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten.
The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten.
Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.
Brendan’s picks
Thought for the week; It’s really, really easy to get caught-up in routine. Many end-up reading the same blogs, talking with the same people, watching the same news channels. From a creative and educational standpoint it’s very important to make breaking your routine a routine in and of itself. Try making unusual connections like how understanding the dynamics of an ant colony can help you understand social voting or if economic trends augment social behavior online. Inspiration for such thinking can come from reading a book you’d never pick up, watching a documentary you wouldn’t normally watch, or attending a lecture you’d never attend. Routine can have the ability to suck the life right out of you so make sure you get out there and embrace the unknown!
Mark’s Picks
Thought for the week; Expanding your social graph to include peers you would not normally meet in an offline world may offer pleasant results. I have expanded my networking from social connections made online to solidifying offline at various MeetUps and conferences. If you are in the Miami area this weekend I will be attending both Social Media Camp and the Mashable party.
Posted in Collective links | 1 Comment »
Friday, July 18th, 2008
It was an interesting week with plenty of drama, humor and even an engagement. We even managed to get nepotistic; who knew we actually read each other’s stuff? There are a few post for the Diggers, SEO types and even some analytics mixxed in for good measure. All in all plenty of good reading for those you you that simply can’t get enough!
Enjoy your weekend!!
Brian’s picks
Andy’s pick
Tim’s picks
Dave’s picks
Mark’s picks
Shana’s picks
Tad’s picks
…until next week remember;
A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. – Oliver Wendell Holmes
Posted in Collective links | 2 Comments »
Saturday, January 19th, 2008
Do you use Google? Do you think they are nice and friendly? Do you assume that what is good for Google is good for humanity as a whole? I don’t. Here is why: The top 12 reasons to distrust Google.
- Google supports and implements censorship measures in nondemocratic countries like China
- Google search is almost a monopoly in some countries, it already is one in others (in Germany more than 90% market share)
- Google records and collects all your personal and private data about you and your interests, you might think twice what you search for in future
- Google earns huge money off splogs (Spam blogs) and MFA (made for Adsense) sites with no real content
- Google employs students to manually clean up the search results, they will kick out sites they might deem spammy even if they’re not
- Google is literally a black box company and accountable to nobody, we simply don’t know how exactly they manage our most precious asset: the knowledge of humanity
- Google does not communicate it’s most controversial policy officially but via the private blog of a cat lover
- Google owns one of the biggest US SEO companies, now isn’t that a conflict of interest?
- Google will disclose your private data or IP to identify you even to authorities of non-democratic countries or in cases where people are guilty of free speech
- Google is one of the biggest multinational corporations along with the likes of WalMart and Exxon, it’s owners are two of the richest capitalist on earth
- Google discontinues services like Google Answers or the Google API without prior notice to it’s employees who are then laid off
- Google uses the same rhetoric as the Bush administration: We’re not evil, (the other are)
Now think twice if you as a netizen and/or webmaster want to rely solely on Google products and traffic. Why not instead look out for some alternatives? People, let’s unite for a more social and democratic media. Don’t trust robots, trust humans.
I am Tad Chef and I will enable you to venture beyond Google on my SEO 2.0 blog.
Posted in Rants | 24 Comments »
Friday, November 16th, 2007
Steampunk laptop by Datamancer.net
Some people are hopelessly late. Are you one of them? Many people still think that
- search engine submission
- meta tag optimization
- keyword stuffing
- PageRank
- link exchange
and similar SEO anachronisms straight out of the nineteenth century will get them website traffic and make it an authority. Wake up, you have been asleep for more than a century. Stop practicing steampunk SEO tactics and start dealing with the future or rather the current web, web 2.0
In web 2.0 we also speak of the social web. The social web is not a web of spiders anymore, it’s a web of humans. Yes, people like you and me. Webmasters, bloggers, social media users, readers, people who seemingly do not contribute anything but click.
Something radically changed. And you were asleep. You didn’t notice it while you were exchanging links in your footer, watching your pagerank bar and adding three different synonyms of the same word into your page title.
Maybe you have been on Digg, Flickr or YouTube already and you read some blogs like Boing Boing.
If you want to succeed in todays web memorize some more of these names:
- WordPress, Drupal
- MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog
- StumbleUpon, Yoono
- BlogRush, CLIQ
- Mixx, BloggingZoom
- Facebook, LinkedIn
- Twitter, Pownce
Just to name some of my favorites and some sites you just can’t ignore anymore…
But it’s not just about the sites, the brands, the latest hypes.
It’s about you. But it’s not only about you. It’s also about your peers, about your neighbours, your friends or even your competitors!
While you depended on the new deity, Google, the world has moved on.
While you removed links to other sites so that you do not loose PageRank others have been linking generously. While you did not sleep at night watching your PageRank bar in anxiety others uninstalled the Google toolbar. While you were determining the ideal keyword density others were socializing with their peers. They were creating relationships, building up power profiles, connecting with their colleagues around the globe.
They rank in Google above you, as a side effect, some of them do not even have PageRank but they not only outrank you but their traffic is ten or hundred times bigger than yours. They even link their own competition as you call it. Either you do it too or you’ll be forgotten and marginalized. Start now. Read on. It’s not too late yet. Be friendly to your peers. You depend on them.
Posted in Social Media | 30 Comments »
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