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Webitz - Checking out the Web from an amateur's point of view
September 25th 2009 08:12
Seth Godin tells companies that if their brand gets talked about negatively on the Net, there's nothing they can do about it.
Well, he doesn't quite say 'nothing,' but says that if they want to counteract the negativity, they can't insist that the negative stuff gets removed, they have to actually do the reverse: go positive - using the same social media (Twitter, Facebook and so on) - and also speak sensibly and seriously to the gainsayers.
And to help them, he and his mates at Squidoo (a word I can never remember how to spell - is it 'oo' at the end or 'u?', which rather gives the lie to some of his other marketing
wisdom) are offering pages to brands to help their focus the good and bad publicity.
He writes: Squidoo has built several hundred pages, each one about a major brand. (Here are some examples). More are on the way. We'll keep going until we have thousands of important brands, each on its own page (and we'll happily add one for you if you like). Each page collects tweets, blog posts, news stories, images, videos and comments about a brand. All of these feeds are algorithmic... the good and the bad show up, all collated and easy to find.
The next paragraph says that if the brands want to use these it'll cost them US$400 a month. On the other hand, when you see what Squidoo is providing it's probably worth it. In a way, the $400 is rather like the right kind of life insurance rates. Don't pay, and you'll get all the feedback but you won't be able to respond for good or ill; pay and you'll be as free as the rest of the world to put your case. And hopefully, since you're the crew who know most about the subject, you'll be able to state your case wisely and well.
(Seth makes this point in another post - always know your subject. He writes: If you want to challenge the conventional wisdom.....please do! It'll make the final outcome better. But if you choose to do that, it's essential that you know more about it than everyone else, not less. Certainly not zero. Be skeptical, but be informed (about everything important, not just this issue, of course).
Squidoo wallpaper by Corey Brown, COO at Squidoo
September 16th 2009 08:41
I hadn't known until today that there was a site that records - down to the last 'follower' - the twits who have the largest following on Twitter.com at any time. It's called Twitterholic.com, which is fairly appropriate, and it shows that celebrities - as you might guess - are amongst the top-ranking Twits on the Net.
Oprah, rather surprisingly, has dropped quite a few notches, and Ashton Kutcher comes at the top. Well, to put it more exact, he's number one, but there's a number nought above him. That would be rather annoying, I'd think, especially as the particular Twitter doesn't actually have that many followers. It's emurse.com (jobsearch) and it has - at this moment - 3,929 followers. Kutcher has 3,573,121, which, according to my maths, is actually a little higher - by three and a half million at least.
I have no idea why emurse is sitting at the top of the screen. Some quirk of the site, perhaps. Or else it was really, really the top and took some weight loss supplements and has lost its real first place. Maybe it's only there because it's been there a long time - 30 months, supposedly. It's a genuine site, so there's nothing quirky there. Who knows.
Anyway, Ellen DeGeneres is in second place, and Britney Spears is third. (Plainly I follow the wrong sort of people - and the wrong sort of people follow me...) These top three are all in the 3 million league, but the fourth place goes to a 2 million leaguer: CNN News. Twitter itself comes 5th (which might also be a bit of a surprise) and someone called Kim Kardashian comes next. I'm sure there are people in the world who know her, but I don't, and her site didn't entice me to get to know her any further.
The same applies to Ryan Seacrest, who's apparently a radio host, and more. Obviously the continental limitations of Twitter are coming into play here. A couple more steps down and we've reached Oprah, and then - wait for it - some bloke called Barack Obama.
After that it's a free for all, with Mrs Kutcher coming in next and Lance Armstrong not far behind. Cold Play gets in line, along with the New York Times, which has finally understood that things are no longer just about print, and then we're into a mix of news, celebrities, and more people I've never heard of.
When I put my own Twitter name in, Twitterholic claims I'm ranked 571,565th on Twitterholic! by followers, and 518th in their location on Twitterholic! by followers in 'New Zealand.' That's not actually too bad, though what it really means is that there are only 517 people in NZ who twit more than me, and 571, 564 in the world. Maybe I really am creeping up the list!
Seemingly my stats were last done in April this year, when I had 13 followers, 9 friends (that is, people I'm following), and 38 updates. As of today I have 44 followers, 25 friends, and 286 updates. By the time this post goes to press that'll be 288 (I've just tweeted my stats!). It's interesting that more people follow me than I follow myself.
Well, this has been an interesting exercise - I think!
September 10th 2009 08:36
I had an interesting experience this last week. I'm always on the lookout for ways to 'monetize' my blogs and writing on the Net - it's what I'd be doing if I was publishing in the old hard copy magazine/newspaper world, so I can't see that it's any different. (I've got a book on my shelves with a title along the lines of how to sell more than 75% of your freelance writing , and the basic premise is that you don't spend time writing lots and lots of new material; you spend time writing something good and repackaging it for other outlets....which is basically what people who make money on the Net do all the time.)
Anyway, back to my 'interesting experience.' I'd read in an article on the Triond site about using the Craigslist forums as a place to link back to blogs and articles you already have on the Net. Well, I thought I'd give it a try. What a place!
I started a couple of brief discussions on the Religion forum relating to book reviews I'd done of Christian titles. Wham! within minutes I got email responses that were venomous and full of garbage. (I'd noticed that many of the threads on this particular part of the forum seemed to be full of foul language, but had assumed that must have been a particular thread.)
Fortunately the garbage makers burned themselves out very quickly and presumably went off somewhere else. There was a moment there when I thought I might have to apply for social security disability the heat seemed to be on so high! Fortunately, the one discussion I left on the reading section proved less stressful, but after the experience of the other site I thought, I can't be bothered with this, and have given it away. In fact, I've gone back to MyLot, where the discussions in general are a lot more reasonable, and people get black marks against them (from other users) if they use too much foul language, or if they flame people for no great reason.
I'd read up on Craigslist before I went there, and pretty much everything that the article said was true: the site looks amateurish; hasn't been updated since about 1982; is cluttered, and pretty much unmoderated.
I've written about Kiva elsewhere, and just want to mention it again, here.
It's a particularly Internet-based charity scheme. Whereas World Vision and Oxfam and the innumerable other helping groups all began their lives before the Internet arrived, Kiva is connected to the Net in more ways than one
[ Click here to read more ]
The problem of copyright on the Net continues - as least from the New Zealand point of view.
The latest episode in the saga is that a three-stage process is being considered. This would allow copyright holders to purse those who are in breach of copyright. The last time something was considered regarding Internet copyright, ISPs refused to go along with the plan, as it had a draconian aspect to it.
[ Click here to read more ]
There was a time when the Dick Smith chain was mainly known for electronics. I can remember buying my son a book on basic electronics stuff, many years ago.
Nowadays, of course, Dick Smith has grown with the times and works in all manner of techno areas. And they're still providing pretty good prices on most items
[ Click here to read more ]
I can remember getting to the last twenty minutes of the third film in Peter Jackson's trilogy of The Lord of the Rings, and wondering whether I could hold out until it finished. I did wait till the end but I was so desperate to go to the toilet by that time I could barely move.
Films these days don't make any allowances for people with weak bladders (although I must say that since I had my prostate op I have much less trouble than I used to have), and monsters like Titanic and others must have done some real damage to people's bladders over the years. It's not so bad once you know how long the movie is going to play (as those who, incredibly, went back to see Titanic again and again), but when you're left guessing as to whether it's just about to finish or has another chunk of time to go, it can turn into a disaster
[ Click here to read more ]
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wisdom) are offering pages to brands to help their focus the good and bad publicity. 
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