• Apr292009

    Twitter is a Search Engine

    Posted by Gene in Twitter, Search Engine Marketing

    I was talking with Jay the other day about Twitter possibly beginning to out perform Google in the search arena, specifically about searching at-the-moment relevant content. While doing research about search and twitter like i’m always doing I came across this quote about Twitter as a search engine service:

    “Twitter is a search engine that indexes conversations about content.” - Kevin Ryan

    I thought this just summed up the Twitter search experience very nicely.

  • Apr202009

    Gene and Jay on the AIGA Web Design Panel

    Posted by Gene in Design, Period Three News

    http://southcarolina.aiga.org

    Come check us out this month, Gene & Jay will be taking part in the AIGA SC chapter’s Web Design Panel.

    Join several South Carolina web design professionals as they discuss how they got into web design, what it takes to make it in the industry, tools of the trade, some of the current trends affecting the industry, and what the future may hold. Moderated discussion with Q&A to follow.

    There’s some really great web designers/developers that we’ll be talking with on the 23rd, I have much respect and admiration for everyone sitting on the panel so it’s going to be really insightful.

    April 23 AIGA SC Web Design Panel will be at USC, McMaster, Rm 214
    5:30 - Social Hour, 6:30 - Panel

    http://southcarolina.aiga.org/events/2009/04/29644238

  • Apr162009

    The TRUTH will always win in social media

    Posted by Gene in Business, Marketing, Branding, Social Web

    Social MediaThe thing about social media is that it will expose you. If you are an awesome person who truly wants to help people or run a really great business it will show through. On the other hand if you are not so good at what you do, are unethical or make some mistakes you get exposed just the same. We have to take the good with the bad and learn to deal with it. Here are a couple of really recent examples of how this all works:

    Amazon.com fails in customer communication
    A seemingly harmless change to Amazon.com’s cataloging software caused “gay and lesbian themed books” to be lowered in ranking relevancy thus causing them to disappear from the website - which of course cries of censorship ensued. Instead of taking the problem in hand, responding clearly and concisely online. Amazon only offered “there was a glitch in our systems” as a response and then a full day later announced in a statement that it planned “to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.” That’s pretty much all we get on this from Amazon… It is amazing to me that Amazon would not take this opportunity to control the conversation online, they are leaders on the web after all. See #amazonfail for more on how this is progressing.

    Even after it explained the scope of the problem, Amazon continued to face criticism for its slow and limited response to the online blowup, particularly at a time when sites like Twitter can so easily accelerate and amplify a public outcry.

    “Frankly, it’s surprising to hear that Amazon, which was a pioneer in the digital space, would miss this opportunity to react in real time and to manage this crisis better than they did,” said Gene Grabowski, chairman of the crisis and litigation practice at Levick Strategic Communications in Washington.

    Read the full NY Times article where I get most of this from.

    The DiggBar Hullaballoo
    Digg.com recently released their DiggBar, I wrote a quick post about it on the P3 Blog here.

    The DiggBar enables you to Digg, read comments, find related content, and share stuff from any page on the Web. And it’s presented in a short URL format, making it easy to share in emails, on Twitter, and via other services. - from Digg.com

    It seems like a good idea to me. Though there have been very loud cries of outrage at the Diggbar and how to kill it. Digg has largely been forced to make changes that effect the way DiggBar works and i’m sure goes against their original strategy for it. This one is still playing out, people will not relent on this one, especially when there is a perceived danger to harming their website’s link authority in search engines. I know i’ll be waiting to see how Digg handles themselves and recovers from it.

    Domino’s gets punk’d
    Domino’s was blindsided by “Two idiots with a webcam and an internet connection” just a couple days ago (even though they said it wasn’t real). The two perpetrators have been fired and criminal charges have been filed. But like some have called for Domino’s needed to get active outside of just dealing the the “crime” itself. It looks as if they have posted a video from the CEO and in the past 24 hours have signed up for a twitter account @dpzinfo.

    According to an article in AdAge when talking to Domino’s there’s “only so much a marketer can do” here was the prevailing attitude at first.

    He [Dominos spokesman Tim McIntyre] said the company decided not to issue a press release or post a statement online. After all, he said, the company can deal with tens of thousands of impressions, but a strong response from Domino’s would alert more consumers to the embarrassment.

    Mr. McIntyre, however, said the company decided that such a response would be akin to “putting out a candle with a fire hose.”

    We’ve seen Domino’s turn around on this and start getting involved in consumer conversation on the web. Using Twitter is a great start, but the issue is cultural to big business (yes in IMHO any Domino’s chain is a part of a very big business…) Why should you be invulnerable to a customer not being happy just because you have hundreds of thousands of them. Does my opinion not matter to you? Thanks to social networking apps like twitter and facebook my singular opinion can now effect you - get ready big business!

    The point is that as a business you have to be where your customers are, you have to listen to them in the way they want to talk to you. It’s hard to do that, but you have to do that. The bigger your business is the more you have to listen. The internet will only expose you for the truth of how your business operates, it can’t do anything otherwise because even more so today than ever the internet is powered by consumers - and it is only going to grow more in that direction.

  • Apr142009

    Jay and Gene discuss FOWA Miami at ColumbiaRefresh

    Posted by Gene in Business, Web Development, Period Three News

    As you may know Jay and I were able to attend Future of Web Apps in Miami this past February. We recently did a presentation covering what we got from the conference to the RefreshColumbia group.

  • Apr092009

    The DiggBar

    Posted by Gene in Social Web

    DiggDigg’s recent launch of their DiggBar service could be one of the best things they’ve done since they started.

    Primarily the DiggBar is a short url service like Bitly or tinyurl, but at the same time will submit your site to Digg.com. The “bar” itself is pretty unobtrusive and actually looks good. You simply add digg.com/ before your url and blam it makes the short url and positions your site for submission. You can also share it across several other social network sites like facebook, etc… This is all a reaction to twitter, which Kevin Rose is one of the top power tweeters there is @kevinrose. In fact most of the top guys at Digg have fairly large amounts of followers, see: @joestump & @dburka.


    DiggBar from Kevin Rose on Vimeo.

    The short URL marketing is pretty hot right now and is highly contested (bitly is reportedly worth $8 million), there are quite a few different services you can choose from but what makes Digg’s offering so nice is the Digg.com site behind it, something the other services lack. So think about it if you are choosing which short URL service to use when sharing a link on twitter which one will you pick? I’m going with the one that lets me submit or Digg the site i’m linking.

  • Apr062009

    North Charleston Coliseum Logo Contest is Bunk!

    Posted by Gene in Design, Branding

    I HATE design contests. I hate them because I am a designer and “contests” like this North Charleston Coliseum & Performing Arts Center Logo Contest hurt our profession. It hurts it because it means that they do not value the work we do as designers. They don’t even think what we do deserves compensation outside of 2 tickets and a $50 gift certificate, maybe a grand total of $150 (and that’s probably generous on my part.)

    Ask yourself, would you offer a spec contest for legal advice, tax services, computer services, building repair, or any other professional service? No, you wouldn’t. Because their time has value. The same as ours. (taken directly from the NOSPEC contest protest letter.)

    Below are the details of their contest. Hey, it’s 3 logos by the way, not just one. Holy cow! Does the winner also get kicked in he head too?

    North Charleston Coliseum & Performing Arts Center Logo Contest

    WHO: The North Charleston Coliseum & Performing Arts Center

    WHAT: We need three new logos: one for the Coliseum, one for the Performing Arts Center, and a combined logo for both facilities.

    WHEN: Monday, March 30th-Friday, April 17th (A winner will be announced the week of April 20th.)

    WHERE: Please send all entries to logo@coliseumpac.com

    WHY: We are in need of a fresh, new logo.


    Here’s the link to the full page: http://www.coliseumpac.com/contest.php

    @BlueIon had linked up to a great letter to the North Charleston Coliseum & Performing Arts Center, you can read what they posted here. I am sending one myself, i’m going to use the NOSPEC contest protest template, I encourage anyone of you who is a designer to do the same as soon as you can.

    If you are confused about speculative (SPEC) work, here’s a great explanation.

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