The Marketing Technology Blog

I haven’t ever done a ‘head to head’ comparison of a blog post written with a date and one without a displayed date. Over at DoshDosh, I noticed that they have dates on comments, but the date is no where to be found in the post itself. I believe this is a better approach than my blog, where I have the date very evident in both the URL and with a date graphic. I just can’t turn the clock back now without doing a lot of work!

Business and technology moves at such a rapid speed that a blog post that is one year old may no longer be applicable today. If I see a few blog posts on a topic, I’ll often select the freshest date in the pack and ignore the others.

Page Freshness and Search Engines

Surely there are many others that are doing this as well, which I believe is evidenced in search results. Search Google Blogsearch and the results are sorted in reverse chronological order. Even within Google, I often notice that newer articles are nearer the top of the results. I’ve also noticed other bloggers who often ‘republish’ content - 2 articles almost exactly the same but one published recently. Although the content is nearly identical, the newer article appears near the top!

Page Freshness due to Commenting

I can not believe it’s a coincidence that my most popular posts on my blog are ones that have a consistent chain of comments. User generated content, like comments, ‘refresh’ a blog post by causing a content change that the search engines then reindex. In short, comments keep your content ‘fresh’ to both readers and to the search engines.

Commenting Services kill your Freshness

There’s quite a buzz on the few commenting services out on the market that are making quite an impact. Understanding these technologies is important, though!

Notice that when a User makes a request for your page (B), the user’s browser makes a request for the page content and then an additional request for the comment content. It’s pretty seamless. In fact, if you’ve got a large conversation, it’s quite nice since the comments load after the page via JavaScript (aka client-side). The browser puts the pieces together!

The problem is that a Search Bot, the programmatic engines of the search engines, is not a browser! The Search Bot will make the request (D) for your page and that’s where it stops. Regardless of how much great content or fresh content is being added via the comments, the Search Engine is oblivious since it never requests that information. Your page is stale and forgotten.

There is Hope!

These services are incredibly robust and fun to use, so I’m not knocking them altogether. Personally, I simply don’t believe that the features of these systems outweigh the benefits of user-generated content and search engine optimization. The fix is to develop server-side Application Programming Interfaces for these services (F). This way, my web server can still display the comments for a user OR search engine and my site will benefit from it.

With a handful of these services on the market already, you have to ask yourself:

how do you control and manage the ton of your content that they own?

If they go out of business, how do you recover that information? If you decide to leave their service how do you recover that content? It could get ugly!

I’m a Software as a Service professional, so I do believe in the benefits of third party applications like this for managing processes more efficiently. In this case, I want to ensure that I benefit fully from comments made on my blog, though! If they go server-side, I may give switching over some thought, but until then I’m steering clear.

This afternoon I had a presentation with a regional law firm on Social Media. It was great to see an organization that had the foresight to expose its employees to new media. The world is definitely changing but there’s still a misnomer out there that social media is ‘what the young folks are doing’ and it’s still not getting taken seriously.

The Newspaper Industry - Missed Opportunities

A decade ago, I worked with newspapers and watched them silently watch eBay and Craigslist. They thought it was for geeks and young people as well… until the billion dollar rug was yanked out from under them. In fact, it wasn’t really yanked, it was gently pulled.

Many newspapers wrote in awe of the growth of these technologies, unfazed that it would chip away at their own industry. Many newspapers had their toes in the Online Industry (InfiNet was one that my parent company worked with) but they failed to pull the trigger when they could have to make the necessary investment… even when they knew there was still time to do so. The corporate profitability lines had been drawn, and no manager was going to take 50% off the margins to go after this new world.

Newspapers had the coverage and the monetary resources to battle the losses. They even had the advantage of a regionally trusted brand. Rather than adapt, though, they pointed fingers and swapped one manager who didn’t understand with the next that didn’t understand.

In the decade I was at the newspaper, I don’t ever remember a session where someone came in and discussed the new technologies and asked or discussed how they could be leveraged to improve efficiency or maximize profitability.

It was refreshing today to see a local firm with a different outlook!

The Burj Dubai - a Solid Foundation

One of the slides in my presentation is a great photo of the Burj Dubai, a building under construction in the United Arab Emirates that will tower above all other buildings. It’s scheduled for completion by the end of next year and is currently estimated to have 162 stories.

162 stories is the latest estimate, though. It’s rumored that the goal has changed over the years, partly due to possible engineering estimates that underscored the strength of the foundation and how tall the building could be raised to.

One look at the building and you can begin to understand why. The foundation of the Burj Dubai is absolutely mammoth, and the spire thins as it goes up.

Social Media - A Foundation in Business

Social Media is your company’s opportunity to begin building a foundation for incredible growth over the next decade. Establishing an online brand through social media and social networks lays the groundwork for established connectivity.

Much like a web, starting today will provide you with a huge net to capture a huge volume of business in upcoming years. The landscape is changing. Search engines - even Google - will lose some of their grip on how we navigate the web as micro networks continue to rise and flourish.

The earlier your company adapts to these technologies, the better positioned it will be when your livelihood depends on it. The firm I spoke to today has exceptional opportunities. They have talent that has established authority and results in burgeoning cases like non-compete clauses and patent law.

If their staff were sharing those experiences online today and establishing online authority, especially geographically, it will provide them with the networks to grow their business tomorrow. It’s an exciting time for this firm in particular - they’re a firm that is open-minded, large enough to have an impact, but small enough to maneuver and adapt in this space quickly.

I hope they take advantage and recognize the opportunity that a few of them identified right there in the room!

Sorry.

This slide most likely produces moans and groans when I display it in front of my fellow techies. I have to show it, though. There have been very discreet movements on the web in the past. We had Web 0.0 which was basically text and bulletin boards. Remember those days? Waiting for the image to load line by line with your 1200 baud modem! (Yes, I know I’m old!)

Web History

Web 1.0 really became the hoard and control era. AOL (remember ‘enter keyword CHEVY) had a great grip on the net and more and more gateway sites appeared on the Internet. If you wanted someone to find you, it cost you dearly with a banner ad on a regional website.

Web 2.0 is still a control era - but now the Search Engines, namely Google, own the web traffic. We’re still in Web 2.0 today - if your site is going to be found, you better get it in a search result. The social web is now beginning to emerge, though. Folks are assembling and sharing bookmarks through micro-blogging applications and social bookmarking.

Web 2.0 saw the decline of peer-to-peer file sharing as well. Napster was toppled and the hackers, crackers and thieves had to go underground. Anonymous proxy servers and torrents through The Pirate Bay have jumped into the forefront as ‘free’ remains the price of the Internet.

Web 3.0 = Declining Search Dominance

Web 3.0 is next, and I believe it could be the Wild West all over again! Search engines beware as the people organize themselves, share their content through syndication (Semantic Web), micro networks, and hybrid applications that run on and offline and incorporate mobile usage.

Web 3.0 = Piracy

My vote is that piracy will make a HUGE leap as true peer-to-peer processing becomes common through IP addresses that are becoming more static across high-bandwidth home networks. In the days of Napster, peer-to-peer really meant peer-to-Napster-to-peer. Napster was the gateway for all communications. My bet is on micro-networks where you can link up your applications with trusted friends and send files without any server (outside of your ISP) knowing. The files themselves will be unrecognizable, though, through some cool encryption methods.

In other words, the common sharing of CDs and music drives between students today will move to applications that allow sharing without anyone in between. The pressure from the Music and Movie industry on the government will be HUGE to be able to spy on our home networks to try to track and punish this new wave of pirates. Good luck!

Web 3.0 = Direct Advertising

Along with the decline of search engine dominance, the advent of ’self-managed’ advertising will also grow. No longer will Google be skimming off the transaction between advertisers and publishers, new technologies will allow Advertisers to manage their own ads across the publishers they wish - and the publishers will be paid directly.