John Reese wrote a great post today in response to an attack on him by a couple of bloggers regarding twitter. Basically what happened is John sent out an email to his email list encouraging them to follow him on Twitter. A blogger who received the email predicted that this was a “Pending Sign of the Twitter Apocalypse“. Another blogger over at Mashable responded to the first post by speculating whether Twitter was vulnerable to marketer attacks. Both posts implied that John was some sort of sleazy “ebook salesman” who was looking to exploit or “attack” twitter by spamming links to his products and that by encouraging other to do the same he would be responsible for introducing a lot of pollution to twitter, which could lead to its demise.
John Reese then responded with a post of his own defending himself and other internet marketers. Before I go on, I want to distinguish between the types of internet marketers I’m talking about, because the label “Internet Marketer” can be applied to many different groups although many people may fall into several different groups. The internet marketers I’m referring to belong to the type of marketers that teach internet marketing to others, have huge opt-in email lists, usually use squeeze pages and long sales pages to sell their products, but actually sell legitimate products that have provided real value to their customers. Some of them sell ebooks, but some of them don’t. Also included in this group could be those who have learned from these gurus or use the same strategies but have made their money in other niches.
I do find it somewhat amusing that it has only been fairly recently (within the last year or so) that many of these internet marketing guru types have really started to look into the whole social media thing, although many of the top social media sites have been around for several years already. My guess is it’s because they were busy making money while the early adapters of these social media sites were building the community around these sites. It is only now that these social media sites are going more mainstream and the value of the networks on these sites are rapidly growing that these internet marketers have taken notice. Since the industry is a pretty close knit one word has been spreading.
I don’t think this is cause for alarm, however. The nature of social media lends itself well to the idea of permission marketing. Those who are interested in a given topic or are looking for a certain product or service actually want to be marketed to, because they want to find a solution to their needs and wants. But users have the option to opt-in or opt-out of any given marketing message. As John stated in his post:
Last Time I Checked Twitter Used A ‘Voluntary’ Messaging System
And completely aside from the points I just made, Twitter works by having users opt to follow other users — and they only see their tweets after they have voluntarily chosen to follow that person.
Marketers who are too pushy or spammy will mostly be ignored and in the long run will not succeed. Internet marketers who market their products to the social networks online actually add value to the networks, because they are offering solutions. These internet marketers are coming not to spam the networks but to participate and add value.
These internet marketing gurus know the permission marketing game well. Many have been successful with email marketing, which is the epitome of permission marketing. Prospects must first give permission to be marketed to by providing their email. If the marketer creates too much noise and not enough value, subscribers will opt-out. Social media is different than email marketing in many ways, but the idea that you have to provide real value in order to be listened to for any extended period of time still applies, and the smart marketers know this.
Social media is too big for any serious internet marketer to ignore. I believe that its rise in popularity will encourage more transparency among internet marketers and will ultimately be good for both the internet marketing industry and the social media websites they use. Marketers who just hide behind a sales page won’t be as successful as those that engage and interact with their audience and build real relationships with their customers and prospects. The honest internet marketers who have helped thousands of people with their online business will continue to succeed by leveraging social media. The scammers and spammers won’t last because there will be an easily accessible public record of their dishonesty. As more of these internet marketing gurus begin to use social media more often, through participation on the social media sites, blogging, live web casts, and other similar social activities a public record will be created for anyone to evaluate and it will become more clear who has real value to offer and who is just hyping up a bunch of B.S.
It is unfortunate that John, who is one of the honest ones, got misclassified, but this whole story is a great example of the power of social media. Since John was actively involved in both Twitter and blogging he was able to defend his reputation and make a statement. I think we can all look forward to more public discourse from John and many other of the top internet marketing gurus.
Earlier this week I noticed a little box in the bottom right corner of my Facebook window telling me about Facebook chat, but I didn’t end up trying it out until just today. Although it seemed slow a couple times, I really like this new feature.
Facebook chat reminds me a lot of Gmails built in chat feature, which has become my most often used form of IMing. One thing I really like about Gmail’s build it chat is that I am able to catch a lot of friends who don’t usually log into IM clients. I will probably catch a lot more friends now through the Facebook chat feature. Facebook has already replaced email as my primary form of communicating with friends online. This new chat feature will likely take that a step further.If you’re on Facebook let’s chat sometime. I like to keep in touch with friends and love to meet new people. If you aren’t my friend yet, send me a friend request.
I am now blocking all Facebook apps to which I am invited. The reason for this is that I was getting way more invites than I cared to deal with, most of which I was rejecting anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge fan of Facebook’s open platform, and still use many facebook apps on a daily basis. What I have a problem with is the amount of inviting that is going on.
The Problem
Too many applications seem to push users into inviting their friends in order to gain access to certain areas or to receive incentives. The problem with this is that too many people are inviting their friends to apps for the wrong reasons, just for bonuses. The real reason people should be inviting friends is because they genuinely want to share an app either because they think it is interesting or it would somehow benefit the friend being invited.
When Facebook first launched their open platform and the first apps began showing up, I tried to be selective in what application invites I sent out. I didn’t ever want my friends to feel like I was “spamming” them with invites. I only sent out invites because I thought a certain friend may enjoy a certain app. I believe many other people probably felt the same way, which I think is the way it should be. In the early days of Facebook applications I felt like each application invite was worth something. Nowadays, that is not the case. There is now so much noise that I almost felt forced to block out ALL invites, which is a shame because I am sure there are a few of those invites that maybe I would have accepted and enjoyed. There is just too much clutter, however, for me to justify the time and effort it would require to sift through all the crap invites I get, most of which were probably just sent out so someone could get an extra five armies, or gain access to an exclusive members area reserved for only the most diligent Facebook app invite spammers.
Who is to blame for this mess? Is it Facebook for allowing such a system to exist? Is it application developers for exploiting the system? or is it Facebook users themselves for being suckered into a manipulative invite system? Regardless of who is to blame I believe the system can be improved to the point where applications invites will mean something agian.
Solutions
There are many solutions to this problem, which I hope become a reality in the near future. First, even if the system were to stay the same, if there were more of a stigma attached to over-zealously inviting, people would at least think before inviting a ton of their friends to a given app. I hope to accomplish this to an extent, even if just among my own friends, through this blog post. If you are one of my Facebook friends please stop sending me app invites unless you know it is something in which I would be interested.
In order for a more widespread and permanent reduction of the app invite noise to take place, however, Facebook needs to make changes. They have taken a step in the right direction with their recent addition of the ignore all button. This only helps you get rid of all the invites currently listed in your account, though, it doesn’t actually decrease the amount of invites you will continue to receive. I would much rather just receive less invites(so I can actually look at them to see if any seem interesting) than have to click on the ignore all button every few days. Facebook’s goal should be to create an environment were users are only receiving invites to applications which they are actually interested in. I understand that isn’t completely possible but it should be the ideal to be aimed for.
A few ideas I have that if implemented may help reduce the invite noise are:
Prohibit application developers from forcing users to invite friends in order to gain full access to the application or view results.
Prohibit applications developers from offering incentives for inviting friends
Allow users to block app invites from particular friends
Place a limit on the total invites a user can send per day
Place a limit on the total invites a user can receive per day (allow users to adjust this number)
Combinations of the above, such as allowing users to place limits on the amount of invites they receive from particular friends.
Despite my frustration with the amount amount of app invite spam I receive, I am still a huge fan of Facebook. Ever since I joined Facebook a few years ago I have been telling friends that I like Facebook because they tend keep their site orderly and functional(as opposed to MySpace which looks like a mess and tends to have a lot of bugs), and they are always improving the site. I hope that the issue of the app invite noise will be remedied soon.
I just got the following e-mail informing me I can no longer listing to Pandora while in the Philippines:
Dear Pandora listener,
Today we have some extremely disappointing news to share with you. Due to international licensing constraints, we are deeply, deeply sorry to say that we must begin proactively preventing access to Pandora’s streaming service for most countries outside of the U.S.
It is difficult to convey just how disappointing this is for us. Our vision remains to eventually make Pandora a truly global service, but for the time being, we can no longer continue as we have been. As a small company, the best chance we have of realizing our dream of Pandora all around the world is to grow as the licensing landscape allows.
We show your IP address is ‘202.175.234.58‘, which indicates you are listening from Philippines. If you believe you are seeing this by mistake, we offer our sincere apologies and ask that you please reply to this email.
Delivery of Pandora is based on proper licensing from the people who created the music - we have always believed in honoring the guidelines as determined by legislators and regulators, artists and songwriters, and the labels and publishers they work with. In the U.S. there is a federal statute that provides this license for all the music streamed on Pandora. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent license outside the U.S. and there is no global licensing organization to enable us to legitimately offer Pandora around the world. Other than in the U.K., we have not yet been able to make significant progress in our efforts to obtain a sufficient number of international licenses at terms that would enable us to run a viable business. The volume of listening on Pandora makes it a very expensive service to run. Streaming costs are very high, and since our inception, we have been making publishing and performance royalty payments for every song we play.
Until now, we have not been able to tell where a listener is based, relying only on zip code information provided upon registration. We are now able to recognize a listener’s country of origin based on the IP address from which they are accessing the service. Consequently, on May 3rd, we will begin blocking access to Pandora to listeners from your country. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.
We will be posting updates on our blog regarding our ongoing effort to launch in other countries, so please stay in touch. We will keep a record of your existing stations and bookmarked artists and songs, so that when we are able to launch in your country, they will be waiting for you. We deeply share your sense of disappointment and greatly appreciate your understanding.Â
My blog community on MyBlogLog just reached 400 members today, thanks to to Scott Bradley. Although I am assuming that most of those members never actually read my blog I think it is still a milestone to be proud of, and it is in my opinion a good form of social proof. The 50th largest MyBlogCommunity currently has 527 members, so I am not too far off from getting into the top 50 communities. If you haven’t joined my community yet could you please do me a favor and join here.
Adiscussiongoing onon severalblogs about whether Digg should be included in Google’s search results has got me thinking about the value that Digg provides to internet users outside of the Digg community. To my understanding the basic argument against Digg being listed in Google’s search results is that Digg provides no new content (except for discussion) and therefore should not be listed above the original articles that are linked to on Digg.
First of all, I don’t think Digg’s prevalence in search engine results will change, but the question still remains as to whether Digg really deserves to rank higher than some of the articles it links to. After all Digg is just acting as a middleman to the actual content that searchers are looking for. Shouldn’t the original articles be the ones to be listed instead of a Digg page that just provides a brief summary of the article and requires users to click once more to actually read the article? Digg provides a valuable service to its users by pointing users to quality content ranked by their voting system, but Does Digg provide any real value to outsiders who stumble across Digg while searching on Google or to publishers whose articles may receive less Quality Traffic Supply because Digg may have “stolen” their spot in the SERPs?
I actually do believe that Digg provides value to both Google searchers and publishers when Digg acts as a middleman when it is listed in the SERPs. If it weren’t for Digg many good articles would go unnoticed to search engine users because the articles come from sites with a relatively low authority in Google’s eyes. Such good articles could be submitted to Digg, reach the homepage if it were interesting enough, and receive several links to both the Digg story page and the original article. It is likely that the Digg story page would rank higher in the SERPs even when the original article does not rank at all. So all the traffic from Google that goes first to that Digg page then to the article is traffic that the publisher would not have received otherwise. At the same time users who click through to the Digg page can see a brief summary of the article as well as a some discussion of the article which can help them better judge whether it is worth their time to read the actual article. So in a way Digg acts as a voice of authority which vouches for the quality of less authoritative sites.
While keeping informed and up to date about what is being written about Digg over the past several months I have come across a lot of information that really isn’t that insightful or in some cases is even just plain wrong. So to help anyone interested in learning more about Digg sort through the jungle of information out there I have created the following list of bloggers who in my eyes have proved through their writings on the subject that they really know what they are talking about. These guys have established themselves as authorities on the subject of Digg. So here is the list of the Digg experts along with a few links to what they have written about Digg. I am sure there are others experts out there but these are the ones that I have found to be the most insightful. If you know of anyone else who deserves to be on this list please list them in the comments.
I just wrote an article at my marketing blog, about the gaming element of Digg, and my take on the fact that a select group of top Digg users have a disproportionate amount of power on the site. In brief I believe that the fact that Digg provides a ranked public record of user’s contributions creates a sort of game out of Digg. This game environment actually improves the quality of content on Digg because users are given an incentive to contribute quality content. If you want to read more please check out the article. Please let me know what you think and share the article if you like it.
The story was buried soon after it made it to the home page, which is too bad because in my opinion it was pretty interesting. In my own defense I would like to say that I didn’t even submit either of the two stories that I have had make it to the homepage, and in neither case did I have the intention of profiting from the Digg exposure. I did have adsense on each post at one time or another but removed it as soon as I saw the stories had been dugg, for the very reason of not appearing like a spammer.
It has been said that on social media sites such as Digg the rule of 80-19-1 describes what percentage of users consume, participate, and contribute actively to the community. Eighty percent of the users are just passive consumers, they just visit the site to get the latest news or links. Nineteen percent of users actually participate in the community. However, it is just one percent of users that do most of the contribution of the content that gets consumed.
Rand at SEOmoz wrote a little while back about the phenomena of top users having a disproportionate amount of influence. I believe the influence and power that these top users have is merited. It takes a lot of work to become one of these top users and they deserve to have the power they have. I speak from experience. Although I am not a top 20 or even top 100 user on Digg (at least not yet) I have recently made into the elite group of the top 1,000 users (number 711 as of this writing to be exact), and with a few stories near the homepage right now I should be in the 300 to 400 range by weeks end. So if we assume that there are at least 71,100 users at Digg, which I think is very likely, I am one of the top 1 percent.
