Cshel Chicago SEO, PR and Web Development

SEO 101: Starting Your Own Social Network

Posted on 31. Mar, 2008 by Carolyn Shelby.

Special guests Rhea Drysdale and Steve Bristol from LessEverything.com join me, Brian and Ne0 on SEO 101 to discuss the benefits and advantages of running your very own social network… Completely coincidentally, they’re also pimping LessEverything’s recently released open source social network platform, Lovd.

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 :)

Popularity: 100% [?]

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Friends on Facebook equals guilt by association?

Posted on 12. Mar, 2008 by Carolyn Shelby.

Okay, this is a really coarse summary of this article because I’m not terribly familiar with the scandal in question… here goes:

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.

Popularity: 61% [?]

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Rush Hour Recap for Wednesday, May 23rd

Posted on 24. May, 2007 by Carolyn Shelby.

Yesterday on Rush Hour, Cameron, Neil and I talked about Google’s confirmed acquisition of Feedburner, the Technorati redesign, a really good segment (middle 15 minutes-ish) where Cameron and Neil shared some great tips for legitimately building your Digg profile and getting your stories to the front page, and we also discussed ways some people are making big bank with MySpace. We closed the show with a brief discussion about to what extent a site owner is liable for user contributed content — discussion prompted by some interesting conversations I’ve had over the past couple weeks with some local restaurateurs.

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. :)

Popularity: 26% [?]

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