Open Letter to Wired and Ars - Reddit Sponsors

Dear staff at Wired and Ars,

Long time reader, love your stuff, its all good. Been reading you guys for a very long time, arstechnica since 1999. I along with others submit Your(meaning Ars and Wired's) stories on Social Bookmarking sites.

For example:

• Samsung Fields Green, Ultra-Slim LCD TVs (Wired | Digg Front Pager | Made popular 9 days ago 424 Diggs) PR 4
• Ars Cracks TV Fringe Code (Ars - Digg Front Pager | Made popular Apr 8, 2009 | PR 4 | 726 Diggs)
• Avant-Garde Cellist Zeo Keating (Wired | not a Front Pager but a solid showing of votes)
• Ma.gnolia Suffers Major Data Loss, Site Taken Offline (Wired | Made popular Jan 31, 2009 | 514 Diggs)
  

However I have to let You (meaning Ars and Wired) know whats going on over at one of these Social Bookmarking sites: Reddit. Reddit just recently banned a bunch of users on their social media site. No reasons were given, no warnings were issued. I guess My Grammar needs to improve( a joke from Ben's post about this issue, see below). Now I tried (Unsuccessfully) to contact reddit about this issue and received no response. This leaves me no recourse but to get in touch with You, Reddit's sponsors aka "Sister Sites".

You are going to rectify this situation. You are going to explain to Reddit just how the internet, community and social media work. You are going to teach them how to play fairly and nicely. And most importantly how to build a community. Reddit is going to restore accounts, apologize and send us Hoodies (if they don't have hoodies explain to Reddit why people on the net like them) and Schwag (and I want LOTS of Schwag, maybe an Ars and Wired Hoodie XXL).

This is going onto Digg and Twitter, so I am certain you will find this VERY quickly. The lesson here is not to mess with the Social Media Elite. By that I mean people that are Digg Elites and "Twitterati" who used to Digg your stuff and Tweet your stuff to 1000s of friends and in some cases 10,000s of friends. Consider this a very clear and transparent message. I am turning the tables on you. But unlike Reddit, I am letting You know that You are now black balled.

As "Sister Sites" of Reddit, I am certain you will quickly resolve this issue. I am sure my schwag; Hoodies (XXL remember?), Wired Subscription, T-Shirts, Wired Subscription, Mugs, Wired Subscription, hats, Wired Subscription, and Red Swingline Stapler are already in the snail mail.

Yours Truly,
The Dude Dean

PS Style, Epicurious, Concierge you guys are next.
PPS Digg and Mixx crew, Don't sub these two sites, I am declaring a "No-Fly Zone", if you see noobs subbing from these domains please Bury until reddit, wired and Ars make this right to G-Man, Ben, myself and all the others that were unfairly banned.

Useful Twitter Tools

In this post I am going to round up some useful twitter tools for either the twitter noob or the twitter elite (twitterati) to use. These twitter tools are just informational, analytical and in some cases slightly funny. Instead of giving you a massive list of all the sites that are about twitter, I am giving you a useful list that you can use to help you with Twitter SMO.

Twitter Grader - This one gives a stab at giving you the secret twitter ranking (not 100% accurate but pretty close). It lacks any charts or graphs, but gives you; a tweet cloud, a top ten list of likeminded users and lets you search by city. Example tweet: @TheDudeDean got a Twitter Grade of 99.7/100 The first time I ranked myself I was a 93

TweetStats - This Twitter tool is just raw stats with the best charts and graphs and a tweet cloud.

Follow Cost - This Twitter tool is very useful, it tells you how often your new twitter follower tweets broken down in milliscobles This is a very handy for spotting those extra chatty tweople. They also break down follow cost by putting "follow cost, @aholic follow cost (my current level), nuclear follow cost" on top of the user profile page so you clearly know what you are getting into. Follow Cost also breaks down Political Tweets and Replies. Example tweet @TheDudeDean has a follow cost of 349.95 milliscobles.

Retweetist - This Twitter tool gives you a bar graph of the last 30 days worth of your retweets. Using this tool can reveal how much social influence a user has or doesn't have.

Friend or Follow - This Twitter tool lets you know who you are following, but they're not following back and it has a list of your "fans" that you chose not to follow.

Twinfluence - Twitter Influence Analyzer - This twitter tool measures your twitter rank (like grader, its a best guess), your Twitter Reach, Velocity, Social Capital and Centralization

Example: TheDudeDean's Rank: #1,157 (96%), Velocity: 4,610 second-order followers/day, Social Capital: 2,337.1 +1.3 High, Centralization: 9.98% / +0.2 Average - Resilient

Twitturly - This Twitter tool lets you see what links your prospective twitter follower is tweeting.

Twitter Counter - This Twitter tool is analytics for your follower count. Twitter Counter also lets you compare three users. Twitter Counter also has a top 100 list.

Google Has Major Malfunction

It's a rare day when you can honestly say Google messed up. Today is that day. If you click through on a SERP today and get; "Warning - visiting this web site may harm your computer!", don't worry about it. All results are getting this Malware warning.





There is no word about this issue on the official Google blog yet so stay tuned. I will update this post with more info.

This issue seems to be resolved and Google admits its human. #Googlemayharm

The Bush Legacy - Miserable Failure 2.0

Why am I blogging about George W. Bush and The Bush Legacy on my humble little blog about SEO and SMO? I am bring back Miserable Failure to the internet. Miserable Failure is the real Bush Legacy.

Today Barak Obama was sworn into office as the 44th President of the United States of America. As PotUS44 he has a brand spanking new White House web page. As a patriotic American, I was looking at the new site while watching the Inauguartion and I went browsing for GW's bio page on the new site and got first Digg on his page and for good measure, I also put it on Newsvine, Reddit, Mixx, and Current.

The terms; "Miserable Failure", "The Bush Legacy", and "worst President ever" do not appear on this page. The opportunity cost on all these social media sites, for the most part, they only let you post a link if you do it first. So let's all bring back Miserable Failure to George W. Bush. He deserves it. Spread the word and give him a vote on your favorite social media site. While you are at it give it a retweet as well:

RT @TheDudeDean: Let's send Bush off in style. Please digg, fave and RT http://tinyurl.com/82p2ns #miserablefailure2.0

The Busy Brain Twitter Debacle

Did you get a bunch of followers on the 20th? Wonder where your new twitter followers came from? Thank The Busy Brain.

The story begins for me when I posted my Twitter Grade. Then last Sunday (Oct 19th, 12:45AM), I get the following email in my twitter filter in Gmail, TheBusyBrain is now following you on Twitter! I check him out, profile looks good, friends are pretty even, I think nothing of it. I follow him back.

The next day(Oct 20th) it hits the fan. I get around 40 new follow requests on twitter in one day. Most of them are very spammy accounts and all mostly fresh meat looking noobs. I was wondering what the hell was going on and I caught a tweet linking to my new Pal, The Busy Brain's Blog and I quickly figured out where the twitter noobs were coming from.

The Busy Brain spent some time and figured out how to game the twitter system a bit. He found some Tweople that some might be considered "Twitterati", people that are active on twitter, that read their email alerts and have a high chance of following back. So he did do some homework on his little Social Media Optimization Experiment.

The Busy Brain failed in at least two ways with his Social Media Optimization Experiment. First he didn't let the victims know what they were in for. If you are going to have a Social Media Love in, it is only fair that everyone knows they are going to be participating in the Social Media Love in. Secondly the space monkeys he got were all random people in addition to being noobs on twitter and a few of them were down right spammy. The idea behind Social Media Marketing (SMM) is to NOT be spammy, your goal should be to engage people that want to hear about your brand, your products or your ideas. The goal should be to get people to follow you for your content or insight.

The Busy Brain ended up seeing the error of his ways in less than a day and apologized. Next time you get followed on twitter, maybe you should sleep on it instead of following back right away. Now I have some extra pruning to do on my twitter list this week.

SEO Advice - The Horse Pill

The other night I had a lady ask me how to solve a tricky SEO problem she was having with a competitor and she asked me because a friend of mine told her I am an SEO Consultant.

She told me her SEO problems and I gave her a solution that was a bit outside of the box and she didn't understand that it was the solution to her SEO problem. She kept on saying here is the problem, here it is and I told her just to remove it. Sometimes you have to let go. But above all, sometimes you have to listen, then you understand.

When you know your competitor is your superior at SEO or worse yet is a SEO Consultant with far superior SEO knowledge, SEO Experience and link energy than you possess. It is time for you to get your own SEO Consultant and then LISTEN to him. Sometimes the answer is going to be a horse pill you aren't willing to swallow, but like a rip tide, if you fight it the wrong way you are always going to lose. So if your way clearly isn't working and you have wasted two years doing it your way. Listen to good SEO advice when you ask for it and try it another way for six months. What do you have to lose when you have already lost? Nothing, right?

Legend of the SEO Champion

Last Thursday I was at the August Presentation Style South Florida SEO Social Meetup and I got to hear about the SEO Champion at SES, basically a crazy guy that showed up at SES, crashed a private Microsoft event and caused all sorts of mayhem.

The SEO Champion's legend (infamy?) is spreading like wild fire around the blogosphere and some people even think the SEO Champion is legit.

I have some tips for The SEO Champion's next event:

1. Don't go drunk
2. If you are on meds, take them
3. Don't start any fights
4. Don't wear a chicken suit
5. Don't try to sell SEO Services at SES to legitimate SEO Consultants. (that is just like selling snow, ice and a refrigerator to an Eskimo)
   

Anyways this guy is sort of smart because he is being linked and talked about quite a bit. Maybe all the crazy clients will find him.