What does a team of award-winning web designers, brilliant (and I do mean brilliant) web developers, Google Certified PPC managers, seasoned SEO analysts, social media gurus and link building geniuses do when they’re not busy enhancing and optimizing websites, increasing web traffic and search engine rankings or making websites look absolutely stellar? Reward ourselves for all of our hard work of course … with awards to frame and hang up in our cubicles.

Photo Courtesy of our very own Kristen Poole (she went the extra mile and took this photo for us) From Left to Right: (Back Row): Leona Griffin, Xander Becket, Saurav Rimal, Curt Meeson, Kyle Helder, Kristen Poole (Front Row): Jared Wenerd, Mary Mattar, Al Baldassarre (Other Winner Not Pictured): Bill Craig (our President is super busy)

At the recent celebration of our impressive new office, we voted on the following superlatives so we could finally find out what our co-workers truly think of us.

Drum roll please…

The Megaphone Award (Because we can hear every conversation he has over the phone) – And the award for the loudest person in our office is our very own president, Mr. William Craig. No one on the other line (or across the room) ever complains about not being able to hear him or understand what he’s saying. No wonder he makes such a great leader.

The Chris Rock Award (For having the best sense of humor) – This one was a tie (sorry you have to share your coveted award). But the funniest individuals in our office are clearly Al Baldassarre and Saurav Rimal. Ask either one of them to hear a joke. They love telling them. What’s ironic is Al is only here 2 days a week and Saurav just hopped on board to the WebpageFX team; they’re obviously twice as funny as the rest of us. This sense of humor is much appreciated by their co-workers.

The Busy Bee Award (For never leaving his desk) – Kyle Helder. Kyle really is always at his desk. Yet, when you need the help of his expert eye in making a website look even better, this talented web designer is right there to help (because he’s just an instant message away). But really, it’s just because he’s such a hard worker and loves what he does (not to mention is great at it).

The Extra Mile Award (For always giving 110%) – Kristen Poole. She’s one excellent Project Manager, and she really does excel at every project she takes on. Her extra effort is admired and obviously appreciated by her clients and co-workers.

The Dolce & Gabbana Award (For being the best dressed in the office) – Yours truly. Maybe it was the fact I minored in fashion in college, maybe it’s just my extreme appreciation for clothing or perhaps it’s my acute attention to detail. Either way … I’m meticulous and thorough; that’s probably why my co-workers love to have me proof their web copy.

The Doodle Pad Award (For never paying attention during meetings) – Curt Meeson. So it’s not that he doesn’t pay attention in meetings (for the most part) as he continues to sketch – it’s the artist in him. No wonder our web design is top-notch and companies large and small love our website redesign services; our lead web designer never stops drawing! He’s an artist by day … and an artist by night.

The Caffeine Cuckoo Award (For drinking the most coffee on a daily basis) – And once again, yours truly. I know what you’re thinking … I’m not ashamed. It keeps me awake and alert to focus on the task at hand. I’m a firm believer in the fact that the coffee machine I had the privilege of picking out allows us all to be more productive and twice as efficient.

The Pom Pom Award (For having the most office spirit) – Ms. Leona Griffin sure is lively and always in great spirits. Her zeal is contagious (I can personally testify to this) and she has a knack for motivating the rest of us (even before I’ve had my coffee…)

The Zootopia Award (For staying calm while the rest of the team goes crazy) – Jared Wenerd. He’s a brilliant (and I do mean brilliant) programmer. Enough said? I for one don’t even understand what zootopia means … Jared’s probably the only one who does. That’s probably why he was a shoe-in for this award.

The Drinking the Water in Mexico Award (For biggest risk taker) – Xander Becket. Anyone who knows Xander knows he’s willing to take a risk for the greater good. Not sure if he’d be willing to actually drink the water in Mexico, that may be a bit of a stretch, then again … I can’t speak for him. To me though, it just makes him an even better Internet marketer. No wonder he’s known for doubling ROI for PPC management campaigns.

At WebpageFX we recognize our individual personalities and talents, and our management appreciates our unique tendencies because they’re what make us great at what we do. Speaking for all of the winners, we’d like to thank our co-workers for acknowledging and appreciating our inimitable quirks.

Facebook undergoes a lot of criticism and handles tons of complaints whenever a new feature is implemented. Whether it’s something relatively small or very large, with millions of users across the web, Facebook has their work cut out for them in trying to please everyone.

What Happened?

On February 10, Facebook rolled out a new, optional layout for Facebook Pages and Facebook Profiles. The most significant change was removing Tabs from Pages and replacing them with a bar of photos. The bar of photos was added to Facebook Profiles as well.
However, another change was put into place that was a little less noticeable, but quickly became extremely unpopular. Instead of showing Facebook posts in chronological order on Pages’ walls, posts were shown based on popularity using an algorithm.

How the Change Created Issues

Facebook began deciding which comments were the most relevant or “top” posts in order to cut down on spam and general “noise” on the walls. As a Facebook Page Admin, this sounds great, but there were a few major issues:

1. How do I see which posts to respond to first?
2. How will newcomers get the information they need if it gets buried beneath a “popular” post?
3. Why should we coordinate the posts to the calendar and what is happening in “real-time” if it isn’t shown that way?

Facebook believed issue #1 was taken care of by an “Admin View” option where posts were shown in chronological order. One small hitch: it only worked when you were logged in as an Administrator, and as Administrators, we care more about what the Fans see.

Additionally, the algorithm was a complete mystery. In terms of popularity, one would assume the posts with the greatest number of “likes” or comments would surface to the top, but not so. Perhaps multimedia like photos and videos would be “top” — nope. The “Top Posts” option appeared to be completely random.

Then, on the morning of Wednesday, March 2nd, Facebook did something they rarely did in the past…

Facebook listened.

They created an option on Facebook Pages that had been strongly suggested by many of these outspoken administrators: the choice to see the most recent posts. Through this timely compromise, Facebook kept the option to display the “top posts” as well.

What If?

The backlash after the change was certainly overwhelming, but I can only imagine what would have happened if this “feature” had been implemented on personal Facebook profiles. I am reminded of the many status updates, groups and threads created when Facebook brought out even the smallest changes in the past. Remember the creation of the Wall? A large percentage of my Facebook friends disliked it. “Bring the old Facebook back!” is posted everywhere when a Facebook change occurs. It’s almost as if Facebook is performing a social experiment to measure and understand people’s reluctance to change. In a few weeks, everyone is over it –and most of the time people end up actually liking the change.

The Importance of Order

I don’t think that could have happened in this case though. It is vital for administrators to be able to see their fans’ responses, questions and other posts in chronological order. This has become as important as responding to client E-mails in the order they were received.

The “Top Posts” option is now only shown as the default for Facebook users who have never viewed the page before, or anyone who is not logged into Facebook and accesses the page via a URL.
However social it may be, Facebook is a business and businesses use Facebook as an important outlet for client service, expression and promotion. Administrators have Facebook ad budgets and contribute to the use of Facebook for business. Based on Facebook’s market value, it’s not a great idea to frustrate the people who continue to fuel that value.

Maybe that’s the reason Facebook listened this time. Whatever it may be, many admins out there were quite glad Facebook took their own clients’ feedback seriously.

We’re still putting some finishing touches together, but we couldn’t wait any longer to show you guys some photos of our new office space. We’ve spent the past couple of months scrubbing, painting, building and cleaning and we’re pretty proud of the space we’ve created.

The new office has two main sections: a ‘phone room’ for our project managers, SEO specialists and other members of our team who are on the phone frequently and a more open ‘stage’ area for the rest of our staff including designers and programmers. We’ve also got plenty of whiteboards, couches and tables for collaboration.

Thanks to The Patriot-News for taking some of these shots to accompany a recent article about WebpageFX.

Infographics have taken the web by storm. No matter the topic, you can probably find a graphical representation of it floating around somewhere online. Infographics provide a great way to learn, especially for visual people like myself. It is easy to write and say something is $4 trillion dollars, for example,  but a number like that is often  hard to actually gauge without some sort of graphic.

Mint has done a great job at using infographics to educate and drive traffic to their blog. They’ve illustrated tons of financial topics and their infographics have been found all over high-traffic blogs and social websites. I’ve always found them fascinating to look at, both as a case study in Internet marketing and simply for personal enrichment.

Here’s 10 of the most popular infographics by Mint for inspiration and education.

1. No Funds Left: The Rising Cost of Being and NFL Fan

2. Visualizing One Trillion Dollars

3. Financial Fallout in the Gulf: The Economic Aftermath of the BP Oil Spill

4. Graduating from IOU: Student Loans in America

5. Where’s the Money in America?

6. Nowhere Near LeBron: Soccer’s Slim Salaries

7. Top 10 Cities to Buy vs Rent

8. The Rip

9. Student Loans by the Numbers

10. India vs the US: A Visual Comparison

As infinite as the web seems most of the time, we’re dangerously close to finding out just how finite it really is.

The web is quickly running out of IPv4 addresses, which could potentially be a huge problem. Every computer and server needs a unique IP address and there are “only” 4,294,967,296 possible combinations using IPv4, the most common Internet protocol. With sharp rises in broadband access and mobile computing, these IPv4 addresses have been used up to the point that less than 10 percent of them are still available. Estimations by experts vary a bit, but the consensus is that we are only around 11 months from crossing off the last available IPv4 address.

Thankfully, people have been aware of this coming doomsday for decades and a new protocol, IPv6, has been the “standard” IP for years.  Whereas an IPv4 address was only 32-bit, the new IPv6 addresses will be 128-bit, providing 340 trillion trillion trillion new addresses. That is equivalent to 50 thousand trillion trillion addresses per person, according to Cisco’s chief technologist Dave Evans.

Here’s an example of a current IPv4 address: 192.168.0.1

Here’s the new IPv6 address: 2001:0618:71A3:08D3:1319:8A2E:0370:7017

As important as the switch to IPv6 as to the future of the Internet and day-to-day life in the 21st century, the switch has been painfully slow and we’re all running out of time. The process is both complicated and costly and some ISPs haven’t been eager to make the switch.  Comcast and Verizon have began offering IPv6 “trials” this year at least.  And even if the ISPs don’t get around to making IPv6 the standard before the IPv4 addresses run out, there are other work-arounds like network address translation (NAT).

But why take the risk? If the process of widespread IPv6 implementation hits a snag, the consequences could be massive. Many experts fear the forced sharing of IP addresses or the development of a black market for the few remaining IPv4 addresses left. New websites could be forced to pay vast sums of money to some shady IP broker to implement a globally accessible site.

After witnessing all of the hoopla surrounding Y2K, I would hope that the public could produce at least some semblance of an outcry when the Internet is less than a year away from being broken…but I haven’t heard too much about IPv6 outside of the tech world.

I guess everybody is too busy preparing for 2012 doomsday.

Resources
In-depth explanation of IPv6 address structuring
Photo by DanW