Nov
16
2009
by mckyton
When we started the #socialmedia Tuesday discussions there really wasn’t a whole lot of use of the #socialmedia hashtag on twitter. As we and others used it more and more, spammers have jumped in and now the #socialmedia hashtag is flooded with #socialmedia tweets
Since March 23rd 2009 we have been capturing every #socialmedia tweet to that has been tweeted. You can see in the graph below that the general use of #socialmedia has grown substantially. No longer just a little spike on Tuesdays, all week long there is #socialmedia activity.
So far we have captured 271, 500 #socialmedia tweets. However the pace of tweets is increasing quickly and we have capture over 50,000 #socialmedia tweets in just the last 30 days.
All of these tweets have been made by a total of 46,781 twitterers
As a result the hashtagsocialmedia.com website has gained more attention and you can see the increase in unique IPs in the graph below.
To be fair, our system has capture tweets on days when twitter users have been hacked/hijacked as well as days when the Twitter API failed to produce results. So considering these anomalies we have a pretty accurate picture of the use of #socialmedia.com.
I wonder if there are any other hashtags on twitter used as much and for so many months consistently as #socialmedia.
no comments | tags: hashtagsocialmedia.com, LinkedIn, social media, stats | posted in Reporting, Web 2.0, websites
Nov
16
2009
by mckyton
Over the past few months we have made a lot of changes to the hashtagsocialmedia.com website: A New Design, tweet directly on the live page directly, exposed some of the traffic and tweet counts and of course we have had some incredible moderators. As a result we have seen more and more traffic and participation. I’ll be revealing more of the stats on the use of the #socialmedia hashtag shortly.
Over the weekend we added a few more updates. We updated the home page with a little bit of interactivity that will allow you to browse the head-shots of our moderators, review the topics they discussed and quickly access to archive of that event. We also added a little more detail to the event pages: properly calling out the topic and the main questions asked. We have more to do on these event pages but it is a start.
There are more features coming soon.
no comments | tags: #socialmedia, LinkedIn, social, twitter, website | posted in Web 2.0, websites
Mar
27
2009
by mckyton
I have spent the last week working with the twitter search API. I have to say that I think it is a very accessible API. I was able to pick it up and start developing within the hour. In fact I will be announcing a new twitter app/site in partnership with @marc_meyer and @jasonbreed. So look for that announcement later today.
All in all I have to say I am amazed by how much demand twitter supports. The API allows us to query twitter aggressively. Many people complain when twitter goes down but considering how much they are delivery through their site and API I am surprised it does not go down more often.
no comments | tags: api, LinkedIn, photoblog, search, twitter
Mar
18
2009
by mckyton
This year, one of my projects was named a finalist for the SxSW interactive web awards.
The project was www.lynnMarieSmith.net
I Iwas fortunate enough to get the chance to attend a few days of SxSW as well as the Award Ceremony.
The award Ceremony perfect. An excellent emcee, Baratunde Thurston, kept the event light, intelligent, entertaining and and fast paced. No one likes a 5 hour drawn out award ceremony. If you do not know Baratunde Thurston, get to know him here: http://baratunde.com/blog/ . It is worth the effort.
Unfortunately www.LynnMarieSmith.net was not a winner this year. www.Alifelski.com took home the award for the personal portfolio category. I was pretty sure that if we did not win, she would. And vice versa. Her design is original, well thought out and overall pleasing.
So Congrats Ali!
no comments | tags: interactive award, LinkedIn, photoblog, sxsw, twitter | posted in Awards
Mar
4
2009
by mckyton
This site is worth a few minutes of your time to day. www.thefwa.com has named it the site of the day.
The video interface and music comes together ro create a fairly seemless and immersive experience.
no comments | tags: aquarium, fwa, LinkedIn, photoblog, twitter | posted in websites
Feb
17
2009
by mckyton
The People’s Choice award voting has opened for SxSW. Please head over to https://secure.sxsw.com/peoples_choice/ and vote for www.lynnmariesmith.net You can vote daily. So please vote early and vote often!
no comments | tags: award, LinkedIn, photoblog, sxsw, twitter | posted in Awards
Feb
16
2009
by mckyton
Google Yahoo and MSN are coming together again to enforce a new standard in search engine optimization. People have been talking about canonical links and the importance of addressing them through cleaning up site architecture, navigation and permanent redirects.
Definition:
Canonical is quite simply the the duplication of URLs that link top the same page. Here is an example. All of the links below link to the same page of content. The Search engines could index each one of these links. So the question for the search engines have to “guess” which one is important and which one isn’t.
http://www.mckyton.com
http://mckyyon.com
http://www.mckyton.com/index.php
http://mckyton.com/index.php
http://mckyton.com/index.php?content=home
Up until it has been the responsibility of the search marketers to be aware of this issue and address it through careful crafting of website architecture and 301 redirects. Well it still is the responsibility of the Search engine marketer but now there is real unified guidance on how to address this issue through a new tag attribute rel=”canonical”
Here are the announcements from the search engines:
http://ysearchblog.com/2009/02/12/fighting-duplication-adding-more-arrows-to-your-quiver/
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
http://blogs.msdn.com/webmaster/archive/2009/02/12/partnering-to-help-solve-duplicate-content-issues.aspx
So What?
Well the simple answer is that this will better organize your website information in the search engines. Whether this will actually improve your SEO/SEM efforts is the real question.
It has been my experience in the past that you are not always rewarded when playing by new rules right away. For example implementing clean URLs on an established site and seeing traffic decrease in the short term. When clean URLs and xml sitemaps were in their infancy you could actually damage money making search engine positions. This would occur because, quite frankly, no one really knows exactly how the search engines will react to drastic/newly supported changes on your site. When your are very indexed in the search engines and playing the long-tail key-term game you don’t even know everywhere you show up in the search engines. In other words if you make important changes to the structure or architecture to your site you can inadvertently negatively affect your site positions. No matter how knowledgeable or experienced you are until the search engines publish the exact method of ranking, indexing, algorithm changes, etc… All of this is a crap-shoot. Their are general rules you stand by but the rest of SEO/SEM is a constant game of Plan Do Check Act . In other words lots of elbow grease.
Ignorance is Bliss
It has been my experience that sloppy url architecture can actually be a blessing in disguise for small static websites. Essentially, accidental traffic from search engines. If you start following this new recommendation right now you may be negatively effected.
What you should do?
Wait. Organized links are good for search engines but not necessarily you…yet.Don’t make any drastic changes to your site or linking methods yet. Just sit tight and wait until the benefits are proven. Wait until it is proven that organized, canonical URLs offer more benefit than your acciental traffic. Eventually it will happen. That sweet spot will open up where you can move to this method with out inadvertantly breaking anyhting and you won’t be too far behind the curve that you lose out from inaction
no comments | tags: canonical, google, LinkedIn, msn, yahoo | posted in Search Engine Marketing
Feb
12
2009
by mckyton
no comments | tags: award, LinkedIn, photoblog, sxsw | posted in Awards, websites
