So why would you want to start a social network?
In addition to adding coolness and generating additional traffic for your site. Branded social networks help build your brand by creating a community for your users and fans. The users connect with other like-minded people and while bonding with each other… they emotionally bond with the brand… that turns users into fans and fans into brand evangelists.

Let’s not forget that a social network also creates additional ranking opportunities for your site. More content, more potential spots to occupy on the SERPs.

So why is Lovd so special?
Lovd is a) really cool looking and fully featured right out of the box, b) FREE, c) open source, and d) supposedly very easy to install and run — if you’re familiar with Ruby On Rails. I say supposedly only because I am absolutely NOT familiar with RoR, and will have to defer to Steve’s expert opinion on that topic.

If you’re interested in adding a unique facet to your site, and you (or a geek you love) are familiar with Ruby on Rails, go check out Lovd — check the system requirements, demo, features, etc — then download it and give it a spin. It’s open source and you can’t beat the price :)

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
SEO 101: Starting Your Own Social Network

There’s apparently some big financial scandal going on in Paris. According to a story that appeared today on FT.com, the police searched a broker’s desk, confiscated his computer and detained him… because he’s listed as a friend of a co-worker (Jérôme Kerviel, CFA — guy at the center of the scandal) on Facebook.

Seriously.

Mr Zabraniecki is understood to work as a cash equities broker at SG Securities, part of the corporate investment division, executing trades for the equities derivatives desk, where Jérôme Kerviel, the man at the centre of the scandal, worked.

Police also searched Mr Zabraniecki’s desk and confiscated his computer and some documents.

Mr Zabraniecki was among Mr Kerviel’s friends listed on Facebook, the social network website. He is 29 years old and joined SocGen in March 2002, according to social network websites.

Note to self: Be a little more picky about which friend requests I accept from now on.

Since when is it relevant to report when people are friends on Facebook? I suppose it is relevant when it’s really the only incriminating thing the police could use as an excuse to go searching your place of business and arresting you… which begs the question… since when does being friends on Facebook equal guilt by association?

I mean, if I’m friended by someone who gets popped in California for carrying a personal consumption quantity of weed in his car, does our Facebook association then give the police probable cause to come to Illinois and search my car and home?

Just crazy. Glad I don’t live in France.

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
Friends on Facebook equals guilt by association?

Rush Hour

Side note from the MySpace discussion… Since we’re all (and by “we’re all” I mean people who are reading this) pretty savvy, and most online ads don’t “work” on us, it’s often hard (at least for me) to remember that there are tools people out there who believe EVERYTHING they read online. If you ever feel like readjusting your sense of scale, get a few 11-13 year olds in a room with a few laptops and wireless and just see how they use the web. Everything you know not to do online… they totally do it. If I didn’t think it would be ethically questionable, I’d secretly video my daughter and her bff cruising MySpace just to show how many of the ads they click on and what types of things incite them to follow links. On the one hand it’s really interesting from a behavioral point of view. On the other hand, it makes my head hurt and forces me to have to completely reinstall the operating system every so often to clean off all the crap they download. :)

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
Rush Hour Recap for Wednesday, May 23rd

(We also reminded everyone that this Sunday is Mother’s Day, so don’t forget to get a card and put it in the mail if necessary!)

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
Recap of the May 9th Rush Hour

So yesterday, Cameron and I (sans Neil due to a schedule conflict) discussed:

• the Great DiggNation Revolt
• other social media services/sites worth adding to one’s arsenal and tips and advice for exploiting leveraging them
• my adventure last week getting to the front page of Digg for the first time
• a little MySpace and YouTube
• Twitter (You can follow me on Twitter if you’d like… Cameron doesn’t twit)
• and then finally, Brent Csutoras called in for the last segment and chatted for a bit.

Overall, I thought this broadcast went more smoothly for me than last week, even despite the WMR chatroom’s attempts to make me laugh and lose my train of thought. (Yeah, you guys thought I missed that, didn’t you? See, I was paying attention… I just chose to *pretend* I didn’t see it. So nyah.)

Anyway, listen to the 11th episode of Rush Hour on podcast if you missed the live show, and if you’d like to hang out in the chatroom for the next live show, visit WebmasterRadio.fm and install the desktop app to chat. Then just make sure you’re logged in at 4p Eastern/1p Pacific on Wednesdays.

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
Rush Hour Recap for Wednesday, May 2

Me: How do you know there’s a 31 year old man trying to pick her up?

Him: He’s in her contact list as her “friend”. He’s 31. She’s a teenager. What else could he possibly want to talk to her for? Knitting lessons?

Me: It seems odd that some random dude would ask her to be his friend like that. Did she put up a risque picture of herself or something?

Him: No, she doesn’t have any pictures up there yet.

Me: K. That’s really odd then. Maybe it’s a bot?

Him: It’s some guy named Tom, and his profile says he’s 31.

Me: Tom? Tom with 174 million friends?

So it turns out Tom is just Tom and not some pervy, old dude looking to score with a little high school girl. After I explained the function of the default friend, he was no longer wanting to strangle poor Tom.

What struck me about this conversation wasn’t so much that the protective parent was worried about some creepy man trying to put the moves on his daughter, but more that this protective parent works in computers and had never heard of Tom, nor was he familiar with how social media in general works. With as much coverage as Web 2.0 gets, and as often as MySpace and Facebook make the headlines in the news, both business and otherwise, you would think that everyone in America would be able to explain what those services are, how they work, or at least what the point of the whole thing is… but they can’t.

The general public only vaguely recognizes those brand names, and couldn’t begin to tell you what the heck they are or what their function is. (Example: Tried to tell my family about installing Pligg over Christmas break… What’s Pligg? It’s a Digg clone. What’s Digg? Um, you haven’t heard of Digg? No. Really?)

Sadly, I think it’s just going to take time for this new wave of Internet “stuff” to become completely mainstream. When I was running an ISP way, way, way back in 1995, I remember being so frustrated with my family for not getting why I was bothering with this Internet thing at all because “it’s just full of perverts and porn” and wasn’t going to last anyway.

The unconverted are saying the same things about social media right now, and I think (I hope) at some point, they’ll begin to grok the utility and non-perverse nature of these types of services.

Until then, though, perhaps “Tom” should make more of an effort to clarify that he’s not friending little girls so he can put the moves on them. ;)

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
MySpace Tom mistaken for Internet Pervert

Today, we recapped SES NY, discussed the rumors about the StumbleUpon acquisition by Ebay, talked about leveraging Del.icio.us, Neil was surprisingly quiet and Cameron went on a bit of a rant about Michael “Graywolf” Gray encouraging conference attendees to practice ethically questionable social media tactics. I’m very eagerly awaiting Graywolf’s response, I’m sure it will be fun :)

You can listen to the podcast of the 10th episode of Rush Hour here.

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
First official appearance on Rush Hour

It was an interesting conversation because I don’t think, in general, there would be tons of interest in the goings on in Greater Lafayette, Indiana… at least not amongst the diggers and whatnot. A lot of the suggestions to get digg attention that were thrown out involved manufacturing titillating or sensational news items — generally involving drugs and jackassery — and that’s just really not something I have the option of dabbling in. I don’t want to do anything that might jeopardize the nice in-links I have built up.

Here’s a summary of the advice for my site (lots of local content, relatively dry and un-diggable):

• Integrate as much opportunity as possible for users to contribute content or help evangelize the site (include social media buttons, comment areas, user submitted photos, etc.)
• Diggers are attracted to infantile or somewhat immature subject matter (e.g. drug use, videos of delinquent-type behavior, hot chicks, etc) so when possible or permissible, write headlines and news items with a sensational angle.
• If the naturally occuring news doesn’t have enough zest to qualify as linkbait, spend time researching and creating reports and stories that are buzz worthy. (Think more John Stossel than NPR)

Listen to the whole show here. The Lafayette Online segment is maybe the last ten minutes. The first parts of the show cover the Jason Calacanis SEO Challenge, some Digg/StumbleUpon discussion, Neil’s trip to Shoemoney’s Elite Retreat, and YouTube/Google Videos.

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
Cshel on Webmaster Radio’s Rush Hour

That being said, it is fun to tell people I’ve been “twittering” most of the day. It’s hard to say it without smiling. So I definitely give them an A+ for picking a cute domain name that can be easily used as a verb.

Also, I think I might be more into the whole thing if I were having update txts sent to my phone. Getting txt updates on what my friends are doing while I’m in eternal meeting hell or otherwise not by my computer and bored would make my day more entertaining. (I don’t have an unlimited txt plan with my phone, otherwise I’d try it.)

Anyway, if you’d like to see what I’m doing (or currently kvetching about), please feel free to come be my friend over on Twitter.

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
Not exactly twitterpated with Twitter

1) I took the SATs the summer before I started 7th grade. Yes, it was the real SAT and no, they didn’t modify the grading scale. There was a program that found kids who scored in the 99th percentile on their state-mandated standardized tests throughout grade school, and then had us take the SAT with the high school kids. They were using the info for some kind of study, though I never did bother finding out what the study was exactly or what the findings were.  My scores were pretty good, so I went ahead and applied for admission to Purdue at the beginning of my freshman year of high school and was accepted. This, of course, made me feel a little too cool for school…. which leads us into item #2

2) I flunked English my junior year of high school, but not because I didn’t do my work or because I had a poor grasp of the concepts. Noooo….. I failed because I pointed out to my teacher that I thought he was an imbecile.

In my defense, he totally started it. I don’t know why he decided he didn’t like me, but he didn’t and it was clear. I maybe might have accidentally rolled my eyes at him once or twice, but that shouldn’t have started WWIII. I was a 16 year old punk kid, and he should have been able to write the snarkiness off as such. In his defense and though he DID start it, I most definitely took great pleasure in the escalation.

The final nail in my English Lit coffin was hammered in when he submitted a comment to the school newspaper regarding his displeasure with a commentary that ran the month previous. As the opinions editor, I was responsible for running the piece and his criticisms of the writers were unwarranted and simply not accurate.

The fun part about his pointless rant was the letter he submitted — to ME — was riddled with grammar mistakes and improper word usage. So here I am with a 500 word, poorly written letter from the person who is my most favorite person in the universe to mock… what to do, what to do? Why…. I corrected it! I got out my handy-dandy red editing pen and I corrected the crap out of that letter, and then I might have taped a copy of the corrected letter to his classroom door… and maybe taped one to his lectern… and I might have distributed copies to a few people.  :-)

3) I sold my first business at 20. During the three years I was involved with the ISP, we went through a bitter break-up of the original partnership which resulted in a year and a half of court mandated receivership. We survived receivership (something that normally doesn’t happen because receivership tends to be the predecessor of bankruptcy court) and then went on to have explosive growth, only to get word that the cable company was going to be launching broadband service that would make dial-ups obsolete. We got out at a good time, and the amount of business experience I gained during those three years could last me three lifetimes. The ulcers have since healed, and I still sometimes wish I could go back to 1995 and do some things differently (or at least hang onto all those 3 letter .coms I had).

4) I used to dress like a lumberjack, and I thought it was okay. Now that I’ve seen the light though, I look back on those days and just cringe. Seriously, if you had picked up an Eddie Bauer catalog like 6 years ago and shaken it, I would have fallen out from between the pages. You know it’s a Bad Thing when your own mother makes derisive comments about your plaid shirts and hiking boots. I’m not exactly sure what made me go hyper-girly, but I can proudly say that I have NO hiking boots in my closet and the boots I do own don’t have heels shorter than 3.5 inches.

5) I’m a girl, and I MUD. MUDs are text based (yeah I said TEXT) RPGs and were around loooooong before stupid WoW or EverCrack. My main character is Audris, Guildmaster of the Thieves (Lvl 60).

I haven’t played regularly in a while, but when I feel the urge to kill some gnomes, I play at Daybreak Ridge which is a derivative of DarkeMud and is all about player killing.  There’s something enormously enjoyable about some punk kid crying to his buddies that his corpse just got dumped in the ocean and all of his equipment was looted by some mean chick. Ah…. good times.

So why don’t I play WoW or EverCrack? Partially because I don’t want to pay for it, but aside from that I feel like there is no point to the game. Solving quests… woooo… bfd. You spend hours upon endless hours watching the backside of your character running all over hell’s half acre and for what? The pk is so limited, and even if you whack somebody, you can’t loot their corpse anyway. What is the point in playing a thief if I can’t roll people for their custom eq and money? I mean seriously?

My list of Tagees:

1. Caydel
2. PlanetAndrea
3. NevDull
4. Ogletree
5. Jason Bartholme of ArticleOnRamp.com

This post is courtesy of CSHEL Chicago SEO
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