Adam's Female Parts/Lifelogging

Ok, perhaps I should not be posting this on a blog that I promote as an extension of what I do for living (interactive marketing).


Eh, who cares, right!


We cannot be all business all the time. If a client sees a photo of me like this what I hope they would say is,



"he does a great job for us and he knows how to party...so long as he keeps doing a great job for us who cares...and maybe we can party together"



This brings up the notion of lifelogging. I am not really sure of it's origin but I have heard Mark Wallace, Jerry Paffendorf and many others talk about this idea. The essence of lifelogging, in my estimation is equivocal to your digital identity. While in it's early stages lifelogging may be something that takes a concerted effort  (i.e.. Four Eyed Monsters) but as the younger generation grows up in a digital society, naturally employing all the digital tools we are still getting used to, lifelogging while happen, to a certain degree, under the radar.


 As for me, I am still looking for the perfect aggregator that will help with my lifelogging efforts so I do not have to login to Flickr, my blog, Second Life, Twitter, etc. etc. separately. I am waiting for that  moment of digital convergence. Mark Wallace refers to such tools as identity-information aggregators


I did a search for lifelogging and much to my surprise there is not even an entry in Wikipedia. For now I would say turn to luminaries like Mark and Jerry for some more information (what are you guys waiting for, get on Wikipedia).


Photo By TheDivaRockin



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SES NYC The Search Landscape (raw notes)

What's the most popular search engine? The most used search engine? What vertical areas of search are growing? Are people using search toolbars more or less? Representatives from major ratings and traffic analysis services share stats and info on topics such as these, in this session.


Moderator:




Speakers:



Bill Tancer



  • Google continues to grow at a rate 18.7% compared to april 2006

  • Yahoo and MSN have been relatively flat in terms of market share of visits

  • The top 3 engines captured 78% of all searches

  • Google is up to 64%, Yahoo 22.5%, MSN, 11.8%, Ask 3.5%


  • Google

    • 70% done on google.com

    • 10% You Tube

    • 8% Google Image search

    • 5% Gmail

    • 1.4% Google Video



  • Yahoo is the dominant player in terms of email services

  • Myspace hold 33% of emails service search market

  • Gmail only hold 2.79% of email search market share


  • Prediction- Pay Attention to Google Base

    • still very small

    • has to have critical mass of buyers and sellers

    • Coldwell Banker and other realtors uploaded a significant amount of content to Google Base

    • Top two site as downstream sites from Google base are real estate

    • Traffic from Google base 14.7% employment, 12% real estate, 10.3% auto




Kenneth Cassar- (metrics are from Nielsen Netrating)



  • Google 55%, Yahoo 21%, MSN 10%, Ask 2%, AOL 5%, Other 7%

  • Google share up about 8%


  • Search is the dominant means of referral to retailers

    • Search 19%, 67% direct to site, comparison shopping 2%, 12% traditional online ads

    • conversion traffic is Direct to site 82%, search 8%



  • Google drove 54% or transactional search, yahoo 17%, MSN 14%, Ask 6%


James M. Lamberti



  • The qSearch Landscape

  • Importance of monitoring latent transactions

  • 6.9 billion queries in january 2007

  • more people searching month over month

  • heavy searchers are 20% of the searching community and are searching more and more often

  • Google 46%, Yahoo 27% MSN 11%, AOL 5%


  • Why?

    • Brand Equity

    • Distribution

    • Performance in key vertical markets



  • Consumers are overwhelming satisfactory with search results, no matter which engine they use

  • Google users are 49% loyal as opposes to Yahoo 33%, MSN 24% Ask 24%


  • Clicks

    • 38% growth

    • Pay attention to SEO, it commands most search clicks

    • Sponsors clicks up 11% jan to feb 07




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SES NYC SMO: Social Media Optimization (raw notes)

Community-built web sites, the popular Wikipedia and new sites allowing content being shared through "tagging" can be a great way to tap into links and search-driven traffic. This session looks at some social media services and strategies to tap into them in an appropriate manner.


Moderator:




Speakers:





  • Social Media Optimization


Rand Fishkin



  • Show the community that you are a participant

  • Build traffic from alternative sources

  • Influence Traditional Media

  • SEO= Perceived as spam in the social sphere

  • Control your brand before others do

  • mention of the McCain debacle on MySpace


Neil Patel



  • Leveraging Digg and StumbleUpon

  • "Picture of the craziest urinals around the world"

  • Be sure to stay away from obvious self promotion

  • Best time to submit 11 am pst?


Andy Hagans



  • Titling is half the battle...can it be on a magazine cover

  • you need to win people in 3 seconds or lose them

  • Link out generously


Overall a way less than inspiring session. Aside from telling me a lot of what I already know (which I understand, there are different skill levels at these things) some very bad practices were covered.


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I Have Seen No Sheep at SES NYC and They Are, In My Mind, The Hottest Thing In Search Today

I am at the Search Engine Strategies conference in NYC all week listening to people talk about, for the most part...well, things they spoke about last year. Sure there are some new ideas (I am not knocking anyone but sometime I feel like I am being sold something at these things) but I have not heard anything that I felt was a game changer.


As the world of content grows exponentially how will we find everything? As virtual worlds grow we are faced with the same issues. Leave it to the Sheep to help figure this issue out!



Giff Constable's post goes into more depth


I love the fact that they have called their crawler the Grid Shepard



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SES NYC: Sitemaps & URL Submission

 The major search engines have recently united around a common "sitemaps" standard to provide them with bulk URL submissions. This session looks at how sitemaps works, along with other submission options.


Moderator:




Speakers:




Priyank Garg



  • Yahoo- Sitemaps

  • XML Schema and a protocol to publish you sites urls to search crawlers

  • Adopted by all major engines

  • Sitemaps are expected to be valid XML

  • All URLS must be entity escaped

  • Sitemaps can take 50,000 urls each

  • You can point to RSS feeds from your XML file


  • How do you get a sitemap to engine----

    • Auto discovery of sitemaps via robots.txt (yahoo, Ask is joining as well)

    • A new robots directive called "sitemap"



  • Yahoo Site explorer out of beta

  • you can track multiple sites in Yahoo explorer

  • Site explorer now accepts mobile files

  • Authentication via key file or meta tags

  • Report Spam Inlinks -Automate the reporting of spam


Maile Ohya



  • Maximize exposure to search engines

  • More crawled content

  • Commonly formatted as TXT, RSS/ATOM as well as XML

  • One of the primary reason for using sitemaps is helps Google (engines) improve index freshness, increase efficiency

  • Google News Sitemaps recently released in Beta

  • 2 ways of entering search ranking ...WWW and Sitemaps

  • Always include the the URLS full path

  • The protocol and hostname od the the listed URLS must match the sitemaps location

  • Syndication Feed Sitemap

  • Google Sitemap generator ...Similar to Python

  • Autodiscovery with with Sitemaps.org


Vivek Pathic



  • Moving into another stage now that they have added the ability to submit sitemaps


Nathan Buggia



  • Excited that all the major search engines have come together with sitemaps

  • Should help innovation and competition


Eric Papczun




  • How can we make the sitemaps tool actionable/how can you compare and contrast to other sites?

    • Sitemaps usually picked up in one or two days

    • Crawl within a week or two

    • Small sites with low PageRank take longer



  • Don't forget about the importance of a native sitemap

  • Make sure that redundant content is excluded

  • Use preferred domain tool to tell Google if you want www.domain.com or domain.com

  • Sitemaps have forced people think about URL management

  • Use tool to reduce redundancies

  • Link Report, New Feature


Todd Friesen



  • Search Submit Pro


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SES NYC- Keynote Conversation with Steve Berkowitz (raw notes)

 Steve Berkowitz is the Senior Vice President of Microsoft's Online Services Group, which includes MSN and Windows Live. He talks with conference chair Danny Sullivan about Microsoft's moves and ambitions in search



  • Ex-CEO of Ask.com

  • Figuring out how to unlock the potential of MSN products that have yet to be tapped into

  • Focus on Navigation/Search

  • MSN= Technology Provider/Audience Aggregator

  • Unified search and ad platform

  • "The Ad Platform and search are reverse engineering of each other"

  • "You need to have a simple delivery platform"

  • Windows Live Value Proposition...You can take your digital identity with you- extension of Windows onto the net

  • Much more social content into MSN

  • More current events and UGC


  • What will make Live Search Pop?


    • "No it's never ever satisfactory not to be number one"

      • Destination driven search

      • Convenient search- mail, messenger





  • Innovative ways to delivery search in the experience you are in as opposed to mere destination search

  • Creative new ways to deliver search will be the key to gaining market share

  • "Does it have to be a slugfest every time you want to get on the desktop?" Sullivan in reference to deal with Lenovo

  • "I want the consumer to get pissed off that someone has decided to force it on them" Berkowitz in reference to the battle for the desktop

  • "Its about buying developing and earning" in reference to desktop


Ok, Mrs. Dewey makes a guest appearance in a ridiculous show of cheap marketing....wrong venue, wrong time and not that funny. Which makes me think of the debacle I saw outside of the hotel put on by Looksmart. I will certainly write about that garbage later but, what is going on here? Give me good search and I will work with you. I don't care about the brand. I don't care about gimmicks. I just want good search and value. Sheesh!!!!




  • Danny: What puts you ahead of Google and Yahoo?

    • "Where people do better than we do is engagement"

    • you are going to see search better integrated in the MSN platform

    • Microsoft has the advantage of maturity

    • We are going to be a great partner to advertisers and publishers

    • I use Live 90% of the time -Berkowitz

    • "We are more than search"...it is about integration



  • How do we bring Rich Media into search

  • "We are moving fast, we are just not where we need to be yet"


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Lauren Driver and I Rock The Metaverse Marketing Scene

I have a new writing partner. I am sure that all of you who have read my stuff before will notice a marked difference in everything from grammar to wit. Well, that is due to the co-author of my latest article in iMediaconnection, Lauren Driver.


We had a lot of fun exploring different segments of the social metaverse and the result is quite positive. I would love to here some feedback so feel free to comment or shoot me and email.


Ads In A Quality Score World

More and more, ranking well in paid search listings is less about how much you pay and more about the "quality" of your ad campaign. But what goes into making up your quality score? In this panel, a closer look at quality factors and tips on increasing the perceived relevancy of your campaigns.


Moderator:




Speakers:




Q&A Speakers:




Gord Hotchkiss



  • Quality scoring is becoming more and more of a reality

  • Quality scoring is "Win, Win, Win


Joshua Stylman



  • Quality score is a way that search engines ranks search based on various relevancy ranking

  • A bit of history, Goto.com "ebay for keywords" revolutionized search marketing

  • 2005- google began to take more into consideration, landing page etc.

  • Search represents a conversation between a marketer and a user

  • Quality Score, Better User experience

  • Engines define "quality" , is this a good thing?

  • Changes affect quality score- Testing is penalized


  • Impact of Panama on Branded Terms

    • Companies buying their own brands have seen a drop in CPC

    • Unonwed brands (macys etc.) are being penalized




Andrew Goodman



  • Quality elements in paid search bidding: a third-generation auction

  • Version 1, static, CPM

  • Adwords 2.0 Max bid X CTR

  • QS and Keyword Status, Predictive or Historical CTR

  • Other relevancy factors- keyword, ad, landing pages

  • Certain keywords potentially lend themselves to low quality scores

  • QS has helping in getting rid of Amazon and ebay bidding on everything

  • Garbitrage, nearbitrage


Jonathan Mendez



  • Improving the quality of the adds is making the engines more money

  • Ignore the score

  • Ads are the bridge of relevance

  • Multivariate test to find the best optimal ad

  • Posits the description in line one is more important that the title

  • Bridging the moment of recognition with reinforcement

  • Message to the needs of users, not yours


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Video Search Optimization

Producing video content? There are video search engines that specialize in gathering up your video and making it available to searchers seeking such content. This session looks at how to make your video more visible in these specialized services.


Moderator:




  • Chris Sherman, Conference Programming Director, SES events series



Speakers:






  • More and more focus on video search this year, exponentially moreseo then years past

  • Video search is still really poor as it still relies largely on metadata



Sherwood Stranieri



  • Buzz and viral video are a large  part of the conversation today

  • Volume of audience well into "television territory"

  • How does this all translate to search?

  • Secondary conduits create a new life for video- people begin to write about the video

  • Post and links become an asset, residual value=traffic+ink reputation=search benefit

  • How do you drive lasting value?

  • Teaser Strategy driving to homebase

  • It is not enough to just be famous on You Tube


  • Make sure to consider the effects of building an all in one aggregate player

    • If it is flash, engines cannot get in and crawl all of the video



  • "Scarlett Johannson" on Google retrieves a a video on page one


Eric Papczun



  • 7 billion videos served a month

  • 72% watched news online

  • 76% help drive the viral chain

  • More and more people searching for video, beginning to rival audio

  • Lack of simple consistent taxonomy for producers

  • Search way to dependent on text around the video itself

  • Employ one video to url approach

  • Used "Kramer" debacle" as an example

  • Use plenty of HTML around video

  • Employ Video Site Maps

  • Use of the word video over and over again (within reason)

  • File tagging, scene tagging, comments on video are good new strategies

  • Scene tags on Click TV...tagging segments of the video

  • In format Metadata

  • Keep Video Files in one directory

  • MRSS Feed

  • Crosslink to Videos using Keywords in anchor text


Gregory Markel



  • Why is it so important? It's free

  • More guys search for video than females

  • more people search for video than news love and religion

  • viral social community addition to most video sites


  • 3 main submission types

    • metadata or crawled video data

    • Upload video search engines- Most important keywords at the front of sentences

    • RSS Based/Media RSS- Keyword infused keywords in titles and descriptions



  • Use a test based reinforcement on the first frame of the video

  • Use the last frame as a call to action

  • Check Out SEOWIKI  www.seowiki.com/blinx


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Podcamp, You Came and Went Like A Shooting Star

What a great weekend!

I have to admit that had the conference been cancelled, the experience of helping organize the event would have still been worthwhile. The show did however go on and while I only attended three sessions (which includes my own, I was running around helping much of the day) I feel that I came away with a real sense of community, new friends and a bunch of knowledge. I wish I had time to do a better recap of the event alas, I am on to my next project, Virtualive.tv as well as a month of conferences and speaking engagements. Also, my new article in iMediaconnection is slated to come out tomorrow so keep your eyes our for that.


Here are just a couple of highlights:


CNET


Eric Skiff


BUY SOME SHIRTS


Watch The Videos


Hear The Audio


Lynette Radio


Greg Verdino


The New York Times


I am pretty deep in thought here!


Jaffe did not get his morning coffee!


C.C. Chapman is a true inspiration!



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Calling All PodcampNYC Sponsors, Extend Your Experience

Are you Experienced?


Ok, that was lame but we all love Hendrix.


How far do you want to take your sponsorship of Podcampnyc? I know that our great sponsors are in it for the community and not simply as an act that will result in some type of ROI, but why not extend your brands conversation in world @ the PodcampNYC build in Second Life.


The build is now open for co-creation and we welcome all of you to come and take part. Provided our sim remains uncluttered (and ungriefed) we are more than happy to leave the build up for a few weeks and let you all create and converse at will. Those who are not sponsors and want to create, please talk to me first. I want this to be a community affair and I don't want to block any content however, I want to make sure those who contributed to the event get the spotlight. That being said, this is a community of passionate individuals and I love to see passion at work!



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The Persistent Conversation

Lifelogging, digital identity, social media convergence and many other concepts have swept over me as of late like so many strands of soft straw pushing me towards new ways to communicate (talk about stupid metaphors, or should I say simile J ) and think about the role that everyone plays in the social media sphere, whether they like it or not.


With all the various social media outlets I feel that some of us are in a state of schizophrenia, struggling to meld our various “digital selves” into one overarching being that is ultimately a true representation of who we are. Others are paving the way the help solidify a common structure in which we create one digital persona and simply port it from technology to technology, conversation to conversation.


If we look at Second Life we find many who are trying to create an alternate digital identity. While I feel that there is a certain cathartic element to a creation of this sort, as Bob Marley once said:


“You’re running and you’re running away, but you can’t run away from yourself”


The conversation must go on!


Check out Joseph Jaffe’s ATS #74. It is a hyper mashup of conversation that leverages Twitter, Podcasting, Skype and lets us not forget the original social media, conversation. Jaffe is back on top (not that he ever went to the bottom, he has just been busy I suppose…great to have him back in full force though).


In this episode Jaffe shows us the power of cross media conversation. He (along with C.C Chapman, Christopher Penn and Jay Moonah) also gives a shout out to Podcamp NYC (which is totally cool).


I am very excited for Podcamp NYC this week. Not because I helped organize, not because I am speaking and not because it is around the corner from where I live (well, that is a plus). I am excited because I feel as though many social worlds are colliding. We have renowned Second Lifers like Frans Charming, Rhiannon Chatnoir, John Swords and Mark Wallace (who are all members of the Twitterati, two of whom are podcasters) as well as the podcasting rockstars mentioned above (who are also members of the Twitterati and are all podcasters).


The common thread is that all of us have something to say and are not afraid to say it. Maybe one day the revolution that is social media will make all of us feel empowered to put ourselves out there in the ether and speak our minds. Right now we are just at the beginning!


Sorry for the meandering in this post. I hope you enjoyed it though.


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Pontiac Second Life Case Study/RAW NOTES

Leo Burnett Detroit helped its Pontiac client launch a presence in Second Life in November. Pontiac’s launch of its six-region land mass called Motorati Island began with a twist--an offer of free “land” for Second Lifers to create a vibrant car culture within the community. Staying true to the spirit of Second Life, which empowers members to build the community, Pontiac has provided parcels of land around Motorati Island to Second Life entrepreneurs and artists who wish to create their own projects devoted to car culture. This session will give attendees an inside glimpse of how Motorati Island came to be, and key learnings from being a major marketer in Second Life.
Tor Myhren, Executive Vice President, Executive Creative Director,  Leo Burnett Detroit



  • "You can't sell a fuck you to a client"

  • There was some car stuff but not much....

  • Gave away land to users who were interested in car culture but people had to submit proposals

  • Let people do what they want to do

  • Co Create Island- Fusion Marketing

  • The only thing that was prefabricated  was the dealership and the racetrack

  • No one knows where it will go are what will happen

  • Total Cost= one commercial production cost




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Virtual Worlds as Interactive Television/Raw Notes

With the advent of virtual worlds networks, individual channels and individual shows can now create interactive versions of their franchises and engage fans directly, immersing them into the environment. Find out how to successfully extend a television brand, including measuring audience participation and extending the advertising business model.
- Sibley Verbeck, CEO, The Electric Sheep Company



  • There haven't been too many interactive TV experiences that have take off but I think that is what we already have

  • The real interaction is amongst the people, between each other. Here we have a new communication medium they allow people in different places to feel like they are in the same place

  • They can interact with each other as well as the environment

  • What is going to get mass audiences into virtual worlds is entertainment

  • The mass audience does not care about virtual worlds, what they care about are thing in their lives such as entertainment

  • That is the engine that is going to drive the ecosystem

  • More than half the content is the people

  • (talking about the virtual MLB Home Run Derby)

  • Multiplying the value of the content

  • How do you bring your audience in, in a way that works for them (this is key)

  • What are you going to do for your customers and audience that drives value

  • Experimentation

  • Ongoing Engagement

  • It is not about the platform but how you are going to reach your audience


  • What VW will need to reach critical mass

    • ease of importing assets into virtual worlds

    • full scripting language

    • Video with DRM

    • interoperability

    • events

    • ease of use, UI

    • customization

    • openness

    • search

    • landmarking




  • Virtual Worlds and the Mobile Platform- Idean

    • Mobile is your avatar in real life

    • Mobile enables deeper social avatars




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Integrated Marketing - Merging Virtual Activities with Real World Activities/RAW NOTES


Never before have there been so many new outlets for marketing. Find out from leading experts how to create a virtual worlds presence that integrates and complements your existing marketing activities.


Joel Greenberg, Sr. Planner, GSD&M
Greg Verdino, VP/Director of Emerging Channels, DIGITAS (moderator)
Roger Holzberg, Vice President - Creative Director / Walt Disney Parks
and, Resorts Online
Randal Moss, Manager of Futuring and Innovation Center,
American Cancer Society
Paul Hemp, Senior Editor, Harvard Business Review


Roger




  • Virtual Magic Kingdom

    • 50th celebration of Disneyland

    • The wedding of virtual with real

    • Seeking a way to build brand loyalty with the Tween audience

    • Just casting the net out there is not necessarily going to reel em in

    • Walt Disney sent out maps out Disneyland before it would even built. If he could envision it in his mind it could become a reality

    • In Virtual Worlds there has to be some level of entertainment before UGC comes in

    • Virtual Worlds Are Marketing that require marketing




Randall



  • Relay for life ( :) )

  • A hearty thanks to the in world volunteers

  • "You want ROI, here's your ROI numbers"

  • Future United- SLCC


Paul



  • Predicts growth of 3D aspects being attached to 2d sites

  • Association of a brand with an immersive online experience

  • VW going to fundamentally change e-commerce

  • Shopping as a social experience

  • E-Tailing 2.0 (I call it 3.Commerce)

  • Dissolving the boundaries between real and virtual worlds, it is important to look at not just bring real into virtual but virtual into real worlds

  • How can you use your brand as a social experience?

  • Do you target the flesh and blood consumer or the avatar?

  • Is an avatar some sort of a prism the refracts a marketing message? We are changed when we step into our avatar


Verdino- "In various virtual worlds I range from a teenage boy to a middle aged women. It is virtually meaningless to not try and understand the person behind the avatar"


Joel



  • What is the value of someone spending an hour in my place in a virtual world

  • It is fairly easily conceptually to bring real world fan base into virtual worlds

  • Recommends Convergence Culture, Fourth Turning (journey??)


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