The next North Shore Web Geek Meetup is happening this Thursday night, April 17, in Newburyport, MA. Here are the details: Date: Thursday, April 17, 2008 Place: The Grog (see map) Start: ~6-7pm Ends: ~9-10pm See the Facebook group or Upcoming page. By the way, at this meeting we’ll be setting the date for the […]

Continue Reading: North Shore Web Geek Meetup: April 17th at the Grog

That’s because I’m currently not being indexed by Google. Two weeks ago Google dropped this site from their search results because of the number of spam links I had on my pages. I did not put them there, of course, and I tried multiple times to get rid of them, but hackers kept coming back […]

Continue Reading: You didn’t come here from Google

For those interested in online identity-related matters, I would like to turn your attention to a new blog on the subject: Own Your Identity I’m writing this blog along with web-maven Brian Oberkirch and polar explorer turned web revolutionary Tony Haile. We’re just getting started, but our goal is to lead a discussion on the […]

Continue Reading: Own Your Identity, the Blog

On March 13th I had the pleasure of speaking at the Markup & Style Society in Boston. Since then I’ve been traveling and extremely busy…but I’m finally getting around to posting my slide deck and writeup now. The Society, if you’re not familiar, is run by Dan Cederholm and Ethan Marcotte, two Boston-area web designers […]

Continue Reading: Markup & Style Society Talk

Hey folks, I’ve been so busy lately I haven’t had time to announce the next North Shore Web Geeks meetup, happening tomorrow night in Newburyport, MA. Notice The meetup has been moved to the Rockfish, only a stone’s throw away from the Grog. See Map below Here are the details: Date: Thursday, March 20, 2008 […]

Continue Reading: Last Minute Notice: Newburyport Meetup Tomorrow Night

If there is one word to describe SXSW, it’s social. This is, afterall, the most social of events, as there are so many people from so many disciplines within the web world. There is no other conference like it. It’s hard to take a step without saying “Wow…there’s another person who I know online that […]

Continue Reading: Getting aboard the Cluetrain at SXSW

I’m honored to be speaking on the Social Design Strategies panel this year at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas on Sunday, March 9. My co-panelists are awesome designers: Emily Chang and Max Keisler of Ideacodes, and Daniel Burka, creative director at Digg. Thank you Emily for organizing the panel! This is the official description of […]

Continue Reading: Social Design Strategy at SXSW

I was reading a blog today and found this recommendation:

“leverage social tools to create buzz and demand for your product”.

I don’t know exactly what was meant by this, but it sounds like causation: that if you use social tools to talk to your customers then you’ll increase buzz and demand.

I’ve seen other recommendations like this by people calling themselves “social media marketers”. These folks are hired to use social tools to improve relationships with customers. I know some really good social media marketers, but still this claim seems to be creeping into the conventional wisdom of the field.

But people who are considering hiring social media marketers need to know that there is more to it than this.

Giving people a platform for expression doesn’t necessarily create buzz and demand. It only amplifies what the opinion was in the first place…

Continue Reading: The Problem with Social Media Marketing

Continue Reading: Comic: Consumption

There’s been lots of talk recently about the ineffectiveness of advertisements in social media properties like MySpace and Facebook. During their recent quarterly earnings results, Google explained that they are not making as much money from ads on social network sites as they had predicted. Even though this was a blip on an otherwise stellar quarter, Google’s stock took a serious beating.

Why is this so? Why is it that Google monetizes so well on Search while having a hard time on social properties? Given an equal amount of views on Google vs. MySpace, shouldn’t they be able to get about the same number of click-throughs and thus ad revenue?

The difference, of course, is that when people go to Google, they’re actively looking for something. That something isn’t on Google. They are performing a search activity. Thus their task will be to click on a link that seems to promise what it is they’re looking for. It may be the organic results, or it may be an ad that seems close to what they want.

When people are on MySpace, the activity they’re doing isn’t search. It’s something akin to “hanging out” or “networking”. Their task is almost the opposite of search. They are already on the site they want to be on. They don’t need to click on links to take them where they want to go.

In other words, the context is entirely different. When you’re in search mode, you are playing by different rules.

Social ads don’t work as well because people are being social, not searching for something.

Continue Reading: Why Social Ads Don’t Work