SOMEWHAT FRANK

SEO of Technorati Tags and Flickr Photos

Technorati, the blog search engine, has made some changes to the way that they have optimized portions for search find-ability (SEO) in web search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com. Steve Rubel's recent post pointed out the new title being used by Technorati to catch the attention of a searcher and potentially draw them into the wonderful world of the blogosphere. Here is an example of what the old and new titles would look like in a search result for Technology:

OLD TITLE:  Technorati Tag: Technology

NEW TITLE:  Technology - See what people are saying right now on Technorati.

Obviously, the new title is more catchy and intuitive since the mainstream searcher may not know what Technorati or a Tag is. In performing the search for Technology on Google, I found that the Google has yet to index the page with the new title format. However, it is only a matter of time and I think it is a super improvement.

Flickr, the online photo sharing repository site, has a similar SEO (search engine optimization) strategy that places the user generated title of a photo as the title tags for search engines to index. I noticed this last week so I am unsure as to how long Flickr has been optimizing its photos based on user generated titles but I would not be surprised if this has been the case since its creation. To better explain the SEO of Flickr I performed a search on "My New Coffee Mug" on Google since I know I have a photo in my Flickr account that has a similar title. In performing the search I found a Flickr photo from my account as the first item that appears in the search results since my search keywords are in the title of the photo on Flickr.

So if you want your Flickr photos appropriately indexed by search engines you should be sure to create a descriptive title that search engines can index. However, if you do not want your photos not to be found you should make them private or make sure to not title your photos - most likely the search engines will then ignore your photos.

Baidu Attacking Chinese Blog Space

Baidu, the Chinese search engine which Google sold its stake in just last Friday (June 23, 2006), will soon be launching a blog product called "Baidu Space" (targeting July 13). The service is said to combine search thus offering bloggers the ability to easily find additional content through the platform. Since Baidu is the leading Chinese search engine "Baidu Space" could grow very quickly like MySpace and mirror that of Google's Blogger platform.

Pete Cashmore makes some excellent points about the potential for "Baidu Space" and the Chinese blog market in general by saying:

"The world’s most popular blog (according to Technorati) is also Chinese - it’s written by Chinese movie star Xu Jing Lei. The blog attracts over 1000 comments per post (!). What’s more, China is the second-biggest Internet market overall, with 100 million citizens online. And Baidu itself ranks as the fourth most popular site in the world, behind Yahoo, MSN and Google. With that in mind, it’s no wonder that Technorati is keen to roll out localized versions of its blog search."

Wow, 1000 comments per post! I wonder what kind of movies Xu Jing Lei is in?

Shopify: e-Commerce Made Easy

Shopify is an e-commerce platform that enables anyone to set-up online shop in moments. It launched in early June to bring easy e-commerce to the masses. It incorporates RSS feeds for tracking and also has integrated tagging capabilities to help identify, group and sort through a number of items on a site. Shopify also eloquently handles your reporting and payment needs by integrating PayPal and credit card processing functionality.

The administration interface for Shopify is very intuitive. I just completed setting up a store in a few moments. To check it out visit: http://somewhatfrank.myshopify.com

Shopify was built with Ruby on Rails by the Ottawa, Canada-based company Jaded Pixel lead by Scott Lake and Tobi Lutke. For more on Jaded Pixel check out its weblog. Also if you are in the Ottawa area July 14, 2006, Jaded Pixel is having a Shopify post-launch party.

Somewhat Frank Turns One

With the two posts today, numbers 567 and 568 respectively, the Somewhat Frank blog has turned one year 0ld - and what a year it has been. It has been a wonderful adventure through the blogosphere which started with a simple business trip to attend a (pre-Katrina) New Orleans conference. Upon returning home from a conference which featured blogging and podcasting seminars, curiosity got the best of me and Somewhat Frank was born to offer my candid perspective and knowledge to the blogosphere in the areas of technology, business and life.

Starting a blog is one of the best things I have ever done. I have shared and debated ideas with people across the globe (see last 100 visitors mapped above).  The network of contacts and friends I have made through blogging is quite unbelievable. Thank you to all of that have read, linked to, mentioned, commented or interacted with me via Somewhat Frank. I look forward to the conversations in the year ahead.   

Scoble's Home: For Sale By Blogger

Robert Scoble, the author of Naked Conversations and longtime Microsoft employee and blogger is selling his house online via his blog with a post titled, Buy Our House. Robert recently decided to leave Microsoft for greener pastures with PodTech and is moving to Silicon Valley thus needs to sell his three bedroom/2.5 bathroom home in Bothell, Washington.

The idea of selling items on your blog is still fairly fresh since edgeio launched looking to leverage blog tagging to aggregate blog items into one search-able location. Too bad Robert did not tag it as a listing  -  edgeio may still find it regardless.

WordPress Gets Enterprise Support

Automattic, the company that has created WordPress which powers many of the weblogs in the blogosphere today, has just launched a level of enterprise called the Automattic Support Network. According to a recent blog post on Toni Schneider’s blog the support level is in response to customer demand.

I think this is excellent news for companies looking for a blogging platform option with enterprise support - especially since Six Apart also offers a similar support level. However, the blogosphere definitely has room for a few solid blog platform options  to coexist in blogospheric harmony.

Thanks to Brian Oberkirch over at Weblog Works for pointing the the WordPress change out. TechCrunch has also posted about the new level of support.

Ning Improves With Sidebar Removal

Ning, the online application development toolkit, according to a recent TechCrunch report has made:

"...a significant change to their application interface on Friday, removing the mandatory sidebar on applications and replacing it with a fully customizable javascript bar across the top of the page."

As creator of the Team Sports Bars Ning application, the removal of the formerly manadatory sidebar is a great improvement to the overall presentation of the application platform. Collapsing the javascript bar across the top of the page takes up less online real estate; expanding it adds utilites that promote and market other Ning applications based on the new viewing statistics on application populatity. Ning has come a long way since I previously reviewed it on Somewhat Frank.

A Laid Back Friday in SF

After a long Thursday at the Supernova 2006 conference and a spirit-filled evening with Gabe Rivera, creator of Techmeme, Mike Arrington, Tantek Celik, Jennifer Allen of Eurekster and a number of others I decided to ease into Friday.

I visited the breakfast buffet at the Palace Hotel, mingled in the Supernova hallway a bit and then decided to walk a few blocks to CNet Network Headquarters, the location of BloggerCon IV organized by Dave Winer and company. I sat in a session lead by Chris Pirillo that focused on the user experience. I noticed Niall Kennedy, Steve Gillmor, Dan Farber, Doc Searls and Lisa Stone were all participating as well. Jeremiah Owyang was also sitting front and center and we chatted briefly. But staying with the low key theme of the day, I decided to duck out of BloggerCon with Jennifer Allen of Eurekster.

We grabbed a quick snack and headed to the Eurekster office where I met CEO Steven Marder. He was gracious enough to let me use the conference room for a few hours of catching up (I am still a little behind on emails). Though Jenn and I were both signed up for the BloggerCon dinners, we played it low key and rolled to the TechCrunch Casa for a little while. Upon arriving we were greeted by a sunburned Mike Arrington, Richard MacManus and the happy, tail-wagging Laguna. It was great to meet Richard -- I am a fan of his work but had never met him in person.

It was a very laid-back, pleasant evening filled with pizza, tunes and conversation. I appreciate the hospitality by all.

Innovators Showcased at Supernova

The Supernova conference concluded day one yesterday with spectacular demonstrations by twelve innovative companies. The Connected Innovators Showcase was presented by Yahoo! co-hosted by TechCrunch. The companies included in the showcase were:

Sharpcast
Webaroo
PostApp
vPod.tv
Ether
attap/Lifeio
GearOn/Protomobl
Soonr
Zixxo
Attensa
Netvibes
StumbleUpon

Mike Arrington of TechCrunch has highlighted the showcase in more detail.

tagged: supernova2006

Power to the People Panel at Supernova

I just observed a wonderful strategic discussion pertaining to the ins and outs of community building and consumer generated content at Supernova 2006. I have highlighted some of the points made by the panel which consisted of the following participants:

Craig Newmark (Founder of Craigslist)
Saul Klein (VP of Marketing at Skype)
Tina Sharkey (Senior VP of Network & Community Programming at AOL)
Mena Trott (Co-founder Six Apart)
Gil Penchina (CEO of Wikia)

Tina Sharkley pointed out that AOL has been doing communities for a very long time and based on her experiences she believes that people want to be a part of a smaller community (i.e. a AIM contact list is an example of a smaller community). She also talked about a new product called AIM Phoneline that will give users another way to communication online but this time with voice. Tina went on to say:

“The user is at the center of everything we (AOL) do.”

She went on highlight how with AIM Pages they are looking to open up the API’s for the open web to help build the product.

Gil Penchina explained how Wikia, the sister site to the popular wiki site Wikipedia, is trying to bring people together. They feel the larger and more inspirational the topic the easier it is to do that. Gil believes that people are generally good but that a few very well organized bad people. So Wikia lets anyone contribute and then monitors the wiki to squash the evil doings of the bad ones.

In a similar fashion to Wikia, Craig Newmark said that Craigslist is letting the community form the community. They have created the site and now they get out of the way. Craig mentioned the Katrina disaster situation as a prime example of that as the New Orleans Craigslist site created a life of its own after the Katrina disaster. Craig said they do not to anything to reach anyone relying on word of mouth.

Mena Trott of Six Apart says that she likes to observe but doesn’t always participate in large communities. She says it is the auditorium vs. the living room fee l and prefers the living room. She also explained that using the product is as important as what you are doing when developing the participatory product. Additionally, Mena explained how she is "not personally a big podcast fan" but believes that audio and video are adding a personal touch to blogging.

Saul Klein of Skype explained that Skype is still in the early stages of understanding how voice plays its part on the web. SkypeCasts are a new way for people to engage in conversations online with 100 people or less. He is excited about the fact that Skype has released an API that is available for people to take and help push the development of the product to new heights. Craig Newmark also showed excitement by sharing a fantasy which included having the ability to add a "click to call" feature to classified advertisement on Craigslist but says that in doing so they do not want to distract the user from their sole function for finding what they are looking for. Interestingly, eBay (which owns Skype) just introduced a similar feature last week.

For additional details on the panel check out this post on the Supernova blog.

Gearing Up For Supernova 2006

It’s the first day of summer and I have just arrived in sunny San Francisco where I will be attending Supernova 2006 at the Palace Hotel. The conference is hosted by Kevin Werbach and produced in partnership with The Wharton School of Business. The conference has an all-star cast of speakers and panelists. Here are just a few people who are participating (and there are a lot more!):

    Craig Newmark (Craigslist)
    Jonathan Schwartz (Sun Microsystems)
    Saul Klein (Skype)
    Mena Trott (Six Apart)
    Gil Penchina (Wikia)
    David Sifry (Technorati)
    Mary Hodder (Dabble)
    Mike Arrington (TechCrunch)
    Om Malik (GigaOm)
    Seth Goldstein (Root Markets)
    David Weinberger (JOHO)
    Dan Gilmor (Center of Citizen Media)
    Jeff Clavier (SoftTech VC)
    Robert Scoble (PodTech)
    Tantek Celik (Technorati)

Not to mention, TechCrunch is co-hosting the Connected Innovators Showcase on Thursday evening (June 22, 2006). Also the showcase presentation will be streamed into Second Life which was developed by Linden Lab. This means that players of Second Life will get to watch and interact with the Showcase. Attensa will be one of the companies showcased and have posted additional details on their blog. Sounds pretty innovative to me. It should be a super(nova) week - I am looking forward to it.

For additional information about the conference be sure to tune into the Supernova blog.

Waxxi 2.0 To Include Arrington and Parekh

Waxxi, the interactive podcast event company which launched its first cast featuring the Naked Conversations in May 2006 has announced that its second interactive podcast (or Waxxi 2.0 for those of you infatuated with the 2.0 thing) will feature TechCrunch pal Mike Arrington and Internet pioneer Michael Parekh.

It is taking place on Thursday, June 29, 2006 from 10:30AM - 12:00PM PDT. Mark your online calendars because it should be another interesting conversation. Be sure to visit Waxxi to register.

Craigslist Adds Cities and Tweaks Layout

Craigslist, the popular free classified advertisements web site created by Craig Newmark, has changed portions of its plain and simple layout to add more cities. The changes were highlighted in a weekend piece in the Wall Street Journal which interviewed, Craigslist CEO, Jim Buckmaster, explained how the new layout categorizes USA locations by state and international locations by country. The article is an interesting read and offers old media newspapers some hints on how to be successful in the online space. According to the article, Jim Buckmaster they include:

“…newspapers would be better off being more Craigslist-like: Go Private, eschew Wall Street’s demands for continually “goosing profitability” and give your readers what they want.”

It sounds so simple: Give your users what they want. Shouldn’t that be the goal of any company? However, it is easier said than done with companies that have been experiencing profit increases year after year for a century. In order for a Craigslist-like strategy to really work you need to change and have TOTAL BUYIN for that change from all parties involved with the company (top executives, product development, and shareholders alike).

Happy Father's Day From Tiger and Nike

Nike launched a moving commercial today both online and on television sending happy Father's Day wishes to Dads everywhere. The advertisement features home video footage of a young Tiger Woods with his father who recently passed. The New York Times reported it as tribute to Tiger's dad.

To view the commercial check out the NikeGolf.com.

Happy Father's Day!

Rojo Gets A Facelift, More Blue

Rojo, the San Francisco-based online feed reader, just launched with a new look which incorporates more blue and easier navigation. I would say they just spruced up the site a bit. Of course the "more blue" could be attributed to watching too much of the movie Old School - and Blue is their boy! I am only speculating.

I actually noticed the redesign a few days ago as a Rojo staging server appeared in my metric reports. I emailed Rojo to find out details on the redesign upon discovering the server but unfortunately no one from Rojo replied to my email. Also check out Mashable* for more details.

UPDATE (6/19/06): Rojo CEO, Chris Alden DID get back to me immediately via email but it got flagged as spam and I was unable to get through my sea of 14,000 spam emails to find his. I have since made sure his email address is flagged as "not spam." I apologize Rojo for not being able to realize it sooner - keep up the good work and excellent customer service!