Internet Marketing
March 6, 2009
Friday Recap: SEO Babies Edition
 Buy your tickets now! |
It’s Friday and this is gonna be a tush kickin’ recap, so on your marks, get set, party!
If you’re going to be at SES New York, be sure to get your tickets to the Internet Marketers Charity Party. It’s going down at the Heartland Brewery in Union Square Monday night and proceeds benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. By the way, if you haven’t bought your tickets for SES New York yet, the code 20BRU will get you 20 percent off the cost of a conference passport or one-day pass. P.S. I’ll be liveblogging the conference and BCI will be teaching an additional one-day SEO training course. Good stuff all around!
Skittles caused a commotion this week when it turned its home page into a Twitter Search for the candy’s name. Marketing win or flop? You decide. [All I know is that I kept craving Skittles all week. Lent fail. --Susan]
Certainly, the success of Skittles social media branding campaign was up for debate — and so was the power of personal brands. On the Outspoken Media blog, Lisa Barone stirred up a discussion over how actions can be overlooked in favor of personal branding. You don’t want to walk away from that post without reading the comments, where heated deliberation grew within hours.
Following up on the issue, Kim Krause Berg asked if fans or finances are the reward of a personal brand. I’ll piggy back on her outside the mold approach, but without the wrinkled hot dog part if possible. 
No conversation about branding would be complete without an update on Google’s algo update, er, change. After Aaron Wall noticed a shift in rankings based on what he determined to be a preference for brands, Matt responded that the change, one of hundreds made a year, is meant to give weight to trust, authority and reputation. David Harry has put together a transcript and some thoughts, as well.
Next stop, Twitterville. Never one to shy away from controversy, Jon Stewart’s assessment of micro-blogging platform Twitter was met with a laugh by even the most committed twitterati.
Whereas, Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s comments that Twitter was a “poor man’s email system” received noticeably more flack. If it sounds whiny and defensive, the fact that Twitter could become the new Google may have something to do with that.
It looks like Twitter is rolling out an integrated search and trends box. Could a business model be on the horizon? With Twitter appearing more and more like a drug every day, you’d think they could figure out the financial angle. Gary Trudeau has noticed this addictive quality, featuring the micro-blogging site this week in a can’t-miss Doonesbury series. I also found it interesting that the draw of Twitter may be lost on the young.
Over at Facebook, the social networking site got a makeover. We learned what ever happened to Friendster. And the White House appears to have moved away from YouTube to try out new ways to distribute the president’s weekly video address.
Live Search is now highlighting local search results with a prominent onebox-like feature. Jason Calacanis explained why he doesn’t regret hiring a felon to work at Mahalo. And in unrelated legal news, Amazon quashed the default text-to-speech feature on its e-book reader Kindle 2 in response to publishers’ copyright concerns.
At Search Engine Roundtable, Barry Schwartz wants to know if SEMs are seeing fewer sales coming from search ads. Large ecommerce sites got a few SEO tips from Adam Audette. Mashable brought us the 20 best Web comics. And social media expert Brent Csutoras’s wee one donned a darling onsie getup from Reddit. All together now: awww!
We also want to offer our congratulations to the next entrant in the adorable SEM baby parade. Chris Winfield and his wife, Danielle, announced that they’re having a little girl in July. [Yay for babies! --Susan]
Sans segue, UK band the Mentalists showed everyone just how talented they are. iPhone musical performance in three, two…
Things I learned from Boing Boing this week:
- Is organic the way to go? Ask this rodent scientists.
- Answers to your questions on all things cool. Why couldn’t I have found this years ago?
- This tricky triangle hurts my head.
- Gourmet cooking: you’re doing it wrong.
- Mythical pink dolphins do exist!
Related posts:
- Friday Recap: Under the Sea Edition
- Friday Recap because I promised.
- Friday Recap: Putting the Good Back in Friday Edition
- Friday Recap
- Friday Recap: A Buggy Edition
Scary to think what comes into my head when I write, eh? (wrinkled hotdogs, for starters.)