Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category
Digital Piracy Vs. The Music Industry [Infographic]
5 Ways To Upset Your Online Users In 2012
[photo by dee gee]
Most New Years resolutions are familiar ones: lose weight, eat healthy, read a few books, stop smoking, etc. These are all excellent goals for 2012, but perhaps you want to do something a little more sinister before the world comes to an end in December.
2011 brought us a bunch of a examples of how to make people angry, so much so that it is even being called the Year of the Troll. In the online world, there were plenty of examples of companies infamously trolling their own users and losing traffic, customers and money.
If your 2012 goals include upsetting your customers, making people angry and probably losing a ton of money, here are 5 easy ways to do it online:
1. Force them to connect with Facebook or Twitter
Logging in to a site or web service through a social network is handy for users of those networks, but not everybody has a Facebook and/or Twitter account. Others don’t want to connect them with a site they’ve never used before. 2011 saw a large increase in sites using OAuth to connect with new users. Facebook’s comments system also became prevalent on 3rd party sites.
I’m in the minority, but I don’t have Facebook and I’m typically not comfortable connecting my Twitter account. Since I can’t connect to Facebook, I can no longer comment on Techcrunch posts and lost all of my Spotify contacts. But at least I don’t have to worry about Facebook’s massive collection of data about me growing even larger.
I wrote a post in the spring about the value of anonymity online and how connecting everything with Facebook — logins, comments, etc — would be a total disaster and ruin the equality of the web.
2. Hold data hostage
This is a big problem for freemium and subscription-based businesses. Flickr is the first example that comes to mind. I signed up for Flickr’s Pro account at a very reasonable $25/year some time ago. I ended up not renewing the account, though, and Flickr responded by stealing away some of my photos. Free accounts are limited to 200 photo upload. I had uploaded around 225 while I was a Pro member and, after my membership expired, Flickr hid 25 of my photos and wouldn’t let me access them until I either paid for a Pro account or deleted 25 of the other photos.
I’m sure this is all fair game under some user agreement that I admittedly never read, but this is a terrible practice. Those are my photos and holding them hostage has only encouraged me to never again pay a dime to them. Yahoo! needs to at least allow users with expiring Pro accounts a chance to download their pictures before hiding them away for good. Michael Arrington summed it up after encountering the same problem: they’re my photos, Yahoo. Not yours.
3. Come out in support of SOPA
SOPA is downright scary. It will ruin the Internet and the vast majority of Internet power users are very much against it. If you support SOPA, that is one thing but to publicly come out and say that is a surefire way to make people angry.
GoDaddy wrote a letter to the House of Representatives commending their efforts in creating the bill. GoDaddy users were furious. Boycotts were created, Move Your Domain Day was born and some 80,000+ domains were moved off of their service.
Fair or unfair, Internet users are quick to judge and condemn when they are angry. Careful management of your brand and public messages is more important than ever. One slip up could anger your entire customer base.
4. Violate your own guidelines
One surefire way to upset your users is to establish an uneven playing field. A perfect example of this is Google violating their own guidelines by buying links for themselves. A controversial video marketing campaign by Google included some sponsored blog posts and paid links pointing back to Google Chrome. Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan hit the nail on the head:
The head of Google’s web spam team, Matt Cutts, has been quite vocal that sponsored posts shouldn’t be a way for people to gain links in response for payment, that any links in such posts should use the nofollow attribute to prevent them from passing credit to Google’s ranking algorithm.
And yet here, we see one of Google’s sponsored post doing exactly that.
Kudos to Google who has remarkably penalized themselves after being outed, but the incident has confirmed to many search marketers that there is one standard for Google-owned properties and a separate one for everybody else.
5. Ignore mobile traffic
Perhaps the easiest way to frustrate your users in a hurry this year is to ignore mobile traffic and point them to your flash-based homepage that is inaccessible on a lot of mobile browsers. There’s nothing quite like trying to find out a restaurant’s hours or contact information for a business while traveling and being greeted with a website optimized for desktops only. Over 90 million people in the US alone own a smartphone. Pretending they don’t exist is going to raise a few tempers along the way.
WebpageFX Weekly: Our top 10 blog posts of 2011
2011 was an awesome year for WebpageFX! We added new talent, were named one of the 50 Fastest Growing Companies in PA, received an Entrepreneur of the Year Award and were named the #1 SEO Agency by Heardable!
It was also an exciting year on our blog. 2011 brought more visitors than any other year to WebpageFX Weekly and our posts were featured on PC Mag, Search Engine Land, Sphinn and Web Pro News.
The above graph shows total visitors for our 10 most popular posts published in 2011. More info on each (including a link) is below. If you are in need of some good reading over the holiday, look no further than our top 10 blog post 0f 2011:
#10: 6 Pressing Google+ Questions Answered
In my opinion, to ensure Google+ doesn’t become defunct, 750 million people need to jump on the bandwagon. That means 750 million people need to abandon their comfortable Facebook personas and habits and learn an entirely new interface, albeit very similar to Facebook. They need to download a new app, add all of their friends and start +1-ing all the content they previously “liked”. These are some major hurdles to ask of people before they know whether or not it’s here to stay.
#9: Employee Awards
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.
#8: SEO Alignment Chart
I have been obsessed with alignment for the past few months. I never played Dungeons & Dragons growing up (in fact the first time I saw it played was in this season’s awesome Community episode), but the concept of alignment has fascinated me since I learned about it. Which characters personify each alignment? Where do I fall? Where do my friends fit in? I have a long commute so I have a ton of time to think 
. So in the spirit of obsession, here is my stab at an alignment chart for the SEO community. Notes, embed code, a detailed explanation of alignment, and references follow below.
#7: Google Plus Widget
Today, we released version 1.0 of our Google Plus Widget for WordPress! This plugin allows you to add a Google+ profile badge to your WordPress blog or website. Once installed, users can add you to their Google Plus network and you, in turn, can show off the number of followers in your circle.
#6: How We Increased Facebook Fans by 43% in 23 Days
Hands down, the most common question we get is “How do we increase our Facebook fans?” There are a million and a half ways to do this, but we’ve come up with a few specific methods that generate lots of quality fans without breaking the bank. Below are a few specific examples from one of the Facebook pages that we manage.
#5: 10 Things Users Need To Know About Facebook Timeline
Timeline marks the biggest update to Facebook’s design ever and considering the backlash the Facebook team receives for even the smallest of changes, I won’t be surprised if the reaction to Timeline reaches never-before-seen levels of vitriol. Already, their blog post announcing Timeline has been trolled to oblivion and the introduction video already has over 2,000 dislikes on YouTube.
#4: How To Study SEO in College
There is no such thing as an SEO degree. You can Google it and see some mostly shady results, but — as far as I know — nobody is walking around with a B.A. in SEO. That doesn’t mean that you can’t go to college and study SEO, though. You just have to get a little creative. My degree reads “B.A. Communication Arts with a focus in journalism,” but I studied and learned Internet marketing during my 4 years in school. How did I do it? I hustled. I was curious. I tried a bunch of different things and usually failed spectacularly. But I learned a ton.
#3: Notorious SEO: 10 Crack Commandments of Link Building
One of The Notorious B.I.G.’s greatest hits was “Ten Crack Commandments,” released in 1997. As the title suggests, Biggie rapped through his 10 commandments for selling crack in the 90s. I have no clue how ‘effective’ his tips were for his chosen trade, but it turns out they work pretty well when applied to link building.
#2: SPAM: More than an annoyance? (Infographic)
We discovered that a certain amount of Spam emails is actually the equivalent to the level of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions released from driving 3 feet. Discover how far the number of 2010 spam emails can take you across the world! You’ll be shocked! We also highlight the nations most responsible for the furthered adverse impact of Spam’s GHG emissions on our environment. Our hope is that awareness may create change. And a great start to doing your part is by personally installing a spam filter on you’re own email account, forwarding spam emails to spam@uce.gov, as well as informing others!
#1: App Store Wars (Infographic)
We compared the Apple App Store, Android Market, Blackberry App World, and the Nokia, Palm and Windows Phone 7 application directories. Statistics include OS distribution, percentage of paid vs. free apps in each directory, average apps downloaded by device, average app cost, and total 2010 revenue from all apps sold.
http://www.webpagefx.com/blog/general/how-we-increased-facebook-fans-by-43-percent-in-23-days/
Internet Blacklist Legislation: A Threat to the Economy and our Liberty
Image provided by Martin Willms
Over the past couple of years, the U.S. economy has been on a rollercoaster of turbulent, unpredictable times. In 2008, a global recession attacked our markets. Due to a rising volatility from securitization of subprime mortgages, explosive inflation and an unhindered commodity boom, our nation was left dreaming of the glamorous days of growth that we experienced in the 90’s. However, despite the losses being published across headlines, our nation had one glimmer of hope left in its arsenal. That spark of optimism came in the form of the tech industry, with the internet as the motor that could propel start-ups, innovation, and progress. While many other sectors were falling apart at the seams, the technology industry retained its ability to report growth.
But now, in what feels like mutiny from a democracy that has relied so much on the success of its tech figureheads, Congress has developed legislation that attempts to devalue its star player — a technology industry that has been a selfless contributor for freedom of speech, innovation, entrepreneurship and job creation.
This triumvirate of Bills, known as the SOPA/E-PARASITE/PROTECT IP, are being discussed by the House of Representatives and the Senate and propose to pass censorship power of the internet to the entertainment industry.
The new legislation provides room for heightened censorship and abuse of power. Here are the implications that it carries:
- Private companies have the power to shut down unauthorized sites where we download movies, music, and TV shows.
- Government can force internet providers to block infringing domain names. The effect of this power could mean the deglobalization of the internet, as domains outside the U.S. border will almost exclusively be blocked.
- Any personal blog, site or forum with a link to one of these infringing domain names is liable to legal action taken by the government. So what may have been a simple recommendation to a site that could have provided other users a benefit may actually cost you time in court. Even worse, offenders could face being blacklisted as an infringing site and forever be blocked from internet users across America.
- Eliminates jobs established by the entrepreneurship of the internet
- Allows corporations and the government joint ability to cut any funds a site can earn by imposing that any payment service or advertiser cancel an account if they perceive a website to be infringing on these new laws.
- Gives the power to large, already established corporations to sue any site that they feel is not filtering their content to match its standards. As a result, this will drastically inhibit new start-ups who could face becoming bankrupt due to overwhelming lawsuits from competitors. The crime lies in giving the power to corporations to eliminate almost all of their competition and stifle innovation as very few start-ups will be able to enter a competitive arena.
However, the worst implication revolves around the ability of the government to limit our constitutional rights for freedom of speech and individual expression.
Under this new legislation, the internet’s most beloved sites are now subject to the control of our government. Sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Youtube and Twitter have become our largest method of self-expression and are subject to the rigors of the government’s new censorship program. Sites where everyday users share opinions, news and daily activity are highly vulnerable because their users also often share videos, TV snippets and copyrighted music. For instance, as a very frequent Facebook user, I am constantly sharing videos of my favorite TV show moments. But according to these new censorship laws, Facebook is required to either censor me or risk being shut down for they are liable for anything that their users post.
With the enacting of this legislation, individuals who even so much as post a video of themselves singing along to a Nicki Minaj song on YouTube could face up to 5 years in prison.
This has caused some of the internet’s biggest players like Tumblr to fight back. The blogging platform has replaced its user’s dashboards with censorship blocks and a link prompting it’s users to learn more about the law that could be censoring the internet.
Image provided by Thomas L. Raukamp
Other companies have actively opposed these bills by addressing the issue on their homepage. Among them is Reddit, an online community that largely relies on freedom of speech, and the renowned search engine, Firefox.
Congress aims to pass a bill with a transparent goal of eliminating piracy on the internet to make consumers buy more movies and TV shows. Therefore, our government is showing favoritism towards an industry, ranked 51st most lucrative in 2008 by CNN, at the expense of its 2nd most profitable industry, Internet Services (CNN Money).
With that in mind, can we rely on the government and private corporations not to abuse their power? Even if we can, other nations may adopt a similar approach to the internet and their governing bodies may not be as ethical in their decision against abuse of power. This domino effect would adversely affect the integrity of the internet, and the technology industry overall.
As a recent graduate and an employee at a company composed almost entirely of Millennials, I have personally witnessed the value that the technology sector provides our economy, in providing growth, and a future for graduates, who face an otherwise bleak job market.
The SOPA/E-PARASITE/PROTECT IP bills are fast-tracked to be approved by Senate for Christmas. Please help stop them by learning more about them at http://americancensorship.org/. Also, please do your part by spreading the word, and joining the cause. If you own a website, you can paste a small code on your site that helps people to write to congress.
This legislation presents disastrous implications for our own personal freedom of expression and insinuates a halt of innovation. It could do permanent damage to the American dream of success that our nation was founded upon. Jay Gatsby would hardly approve.
Please share your feelings by commenting, or if you’d like to continue the discussion, you can find me on Twitter at Shane Jones.
Save Squats for the Gym, Not the Internet
No, I’m not implying that there is a way to work out while surfing the web, but that would be pretty cool (and a goldmine for late night infomercials). I am referring to the practice of cybersquatting, which is a far cry from the strength-training, muscle-building, leg-aching exercises you see at the gym.
Cybersquatting refers to the bad faith practice of purchasing domain names with the intent to profit from the goodwill of a preexisting personality. Specifically, cybersquatters buy up domain names that incorporate references to existing businesses, celebrities, athletes, and political figures with the purpose of selling the domain names to those parties for a hefty profit.
Note: For the safety of all parties, cybersquatting should not happen at the gym. And if Amy Winehouse’s father, the White House, Madonna and countless other personalities and businesses losing millions from squatting had their way, it wouldn’t happen on the internet either.
After the sudden death of his daughter just last month, Mitch Winehouse—father of the late Amy Winehouse—planned to start “The Amy Winehouse Foundation” to help young people suffering from substance abuse. However, just hours after announcing his charitable intentions at her funeral, Winehouse’s plans were halted. Even if he created the foundation, he would not be able to have an online presence because almost any relevant domain names were already purchased.
With the desire to make a quick buck, only mere hours after Mr. Winehouse’s announcement, Martin McCann purchased several domain names incorporating variations of “The Amy Winehouse Foundation.” McCann ultimately offered to sell the domain names to the grieving father for an inflated amount. (One can only assume that Mr. Winehouse responded to the offer of sale with a resounding “No! No! No!”) On account of McCann’s cybersquatting, Mr. Winehouse sees no option but to delay pursuing his philanthropic mission and return the generous checks he received after announcing his plans for The Amy Winehouse Foundation. McCann remains unapologetic and justifies his actions by saying people should “detach from emotions and think business.” As of now, the memory of Amy Winehouse will live on only through her music.
Unlike McCann, many cybersquatters are successful in extorting millions from their targets. For example, WallStreet.com, AltaVista.com, and Business.com were all snatched up by cybersquatters and later sold for upwards of $1 million. In fact, Business.com was repurchased for over $7.5 million. Panasonic, Fry’s Electronics, Hertz and Avon are a few other notable targets of cybersquatters. Madonna, the White House, PETA and Jethro Tull are just a few examples of cybersquatting victims were successful in “evicting” the cybersquatters from their domain sites through legal action.
Similar to cybersquatting, typosquatting involves the practice of purchasing domain names that are common misspellings of existing high-traffic websites. The typosquatter hopes to capitalize on inattentive and careless internet users who make typographical errors while inputting a website’s address. The three most popular websites, Google.com, Facebook.com, and YouTube.com have all faced problems with typosquatting. Notably, Facebook recently sued over twenty defendants for such practices. Facebook’s theory is that websites such as Facebok.com and Faecbook.com infringe on their well-established trademark and harm their goodwill.
So what remedy is available to victims of cybersquatting? In 1999, the United States enacted the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) which contains a clause aimed at combating cybersquatting and typosquatting. Pursuant to ACPA, a trademark owner or personality can sue to obtain the right to use the domain name—and possibly secure monetary damages in the process. Foreign parties can also initiate arbitration under the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and win the name back without the expense of a lawsuit or an attorney. Despite the fact that these and other trademark laws offer some protection, cybersquatter victims often find it cheaper to buy the domain name directly from the cybersquatter because litigation is extremely expensive and comes with no guarantee.
Businesses should also think of taking preventative measures before cybersquatting and typosquatting become an issue. They can easily do this by registering basic variations of the company name. After all, as Ben Franklin once said, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” If only it were that easy to lose pounds at the gym.