The Real Currency of Social Media

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Mark Cahill

“It’s people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They’re making our food out of people. Next thing they’ll be breeding us like cattle for food. You’ve gotta tell them. You’ve gotta tell them!” Soylent Green – 1973

So what is the real commodity of social media? It’s people. You and me, and all our friends. Period.

Over the past few weeks, this as really started to steam roller. Let’s take a look at a few examples:

Fake Steve Jobs (Real Dan Lyons) slams NY Times for their failure to report both sides of Zynga/Farmville
Jason Calacanis lashes out at Facebook’s slimy new “privacy” settings which in most cases remove all privacy in his post “Is Facebook unethical, cluelessor unlucky?“
The ACLU proves that Facebook Quizzes bypass all privacy settings for you AND YOUR FRIENDS *with tacit approval from Facebook*
Google CEO Eric Schmidt opines “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place, but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it’s important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act.”

Read all the links then think about it. Basically the fine folks at Facebook, Google, etc. are selling us, and not even to the highest bidder. They’re selling us to any bidder that comes down the pike.

For the record, if you use ANY Facebook Apps, like Farmville or do Facebook quizzes, I consider it mandatory for you to take the ACLU quiz.

I’ve made the decision a few years ago to leave somewhat transparently on the web, but most of you actually believe you have some level of privacy. That level of privacy is, unfortunately, illusory.

Expect this to become a huge fight in the coming year. It won’t go away, and I suspect few of you will accept such cavalier attitudes towards your privacy.

It’s Time to Rethink the Permalink

Posted on November 30, 2009 by Mark Cahill

The permalink – nothing could be more core to the concept of blogging, and indeed, content management. In it’s early inception, it was the one link to rule all others. The problem is that with the advent of microblogging systems like Twitter, the permalink has been devalued and now faces possible extinction.

From Wikipedia:

A permalink, or permanent link, is a URL that points to a specific blog or forum entry after it has passed from the front page to the archives. Because a permalink remains unchanged indefinitely, it is less susceptible to link rot. Most modern weblogging and content-syndication software systems support such links. Other types of websites use the term permanent links, but the term permalink is most common within the blogosphere. Permalink is a portmanteau word made from permanent link. Permalinks are often simply stated so as to be human-readable.

Here’s the problem: while the permalink once was the one true way to identify our content, it’s now going more or less unused, as people instead link to shortened urls, using services like Bit.ly or others which provide character economy in the links that are used around the web. Hence, with shortened urls in use, it becomes much harder, if not impossible to find mentions and, in fact, discussions, surrounding our content.

I’ve decried over the past year the ongoing diaspora of blog comments. The discussion continues, but for many bloggers, its moving out of the confines of their blog, into the realm of Twitter, Google Sidewiki, and in the semi-walled garden of Facebook.

It was one thing when there were reliable Trackbacks, but the spammers have all but killed that for us. Hence the discussion continues, but it often continues without us, the folks that wrote the content in the first place.

So here’s the thought: perhaps it’s time we rethought permalinks. Instead of existing as a single link, there probably ought to be both a long form (the old permalink) and a short form (shortened url) with the shortened url using the service of the bloggers choice. Hence the blog software would have knowledge of both the long form (which would be used mostly internally) and the short form, that which would allow us to actually track where our content goes online. This would further enable us to pull the discussions surrounding our content back into our pages where it ought to be…

Hence a blog which currently might have comments and trackbacks separately identified, might actually list the origin of a comment, such as “Via Twitter” or “Via Facebook” and actually thread the follow ups, and potentially direct replies from our blog to those comments back to the platform they came from as well.

The key concept here is that the blogger must control the initial shortened url, because the url shortening service becomes utterly key to our solution. That service, like so many today, could provide us with an aggregated comment feed via rss, analytics data about where our shortened url was used, by who and also combine the data with the usage of our long form permalink.

What are your thoughts?

Money for Nothing and Your Chicks for Free…

Posted on November 4, 2009 by Mark Cahill

(Disclosures: I work for Namemedia, who is technically a competitor of Internet Brands, owners of vBulletin. I also run several sites that use vBulletin and spend a significant part of my work week working in vBulletin code…)

Over the past month, there’s been a slowly erupting feud in the vBulletin community over the new pricing structure that was announced for vBulletin 4.0 by Internet Brands.

You see, back in the day, the original vBulletin license cost $185 (originally $160 I think) and could be renewed for a yearly fee of $60. With the new version of the software (which has not been released yet) they are moving to a license per major level release, rather than what might be best described as a yearly fee structure. New licenses will cost $195.

I’m going to say right here, right now, that I don’t get why people are so up in arms about this. We want Internet Brands to be able to develop excellent software, right? We want to use the best, right?

Well that won’t happen if they don’t get paid for their software. Ford does not upgrade your car for free. Microsoft did not upgrade your Vista operating system to Windows 7 for free, so why the expectation that Internet Brands will offer perpetual free upgrades?

I know part of the complaint is that it’s going to get expensive if you have a bunch of vBulletin sites. My answer is this: if your sites don’t earn enough to pay for the license upgrade, then perhaps you shouldn’t be running so many sites! If it isn’t earning then by all means you ought to be running open source software.

The plain truth is this: many of us would pay MORE for vBulletin if we could get an enterprise level support agreement. Those of us who have mission critical vBulletin installations would love to be able to get preferred support from them. So perhaps some level of tiering in pricing might work.

The bottom line is this: I have no problem paying good money for good product. I don’t expect free, and neither should you. There are plenty of free open source bulletin board solutions out there, if you can’t pay, I suggest you try using one of them.

Sad to say, but the world of vBulletin has far too much drama about it. Perhaps we will be better off without the complainers…

Forget Disclosure and Transparency – We Crave Honesty

Posted on November 3, 2009 by Mark Cahill

That’s right you heard it here first …the darling of the noveau marketing is “transparency” and unfortunately, it’s the wrong answer. Transparency and disclosure simply aren’t enough. For some crimes, Mea Culpa simply won’t cut it.

Yes, if you are accepting payment from outside entities in return for writing that blog post or tweeting that little tweet, you need to disclose. For me, all the “disclosure” in the world isn’t going to absolve you if you’re writing a disingenous post about some product that you wouldn’t have reviewed otherwise. But hey, if you want to use your blog or twitter account to become the online version of “Headset Vinnie” that’s up to you.

It’s time we brought back an old custom: Shunning. Wikipedia defines it as:

Shunning is the act of deliberately avoiding association with, and habitually keeping away from an individual or group. It is a sanction against association often associated with religious groups and other tightly-knit organizations and communities.

One of the big tenets of Social Media is that it is almost universally “opt in” which means we have to invite you in, otherwise we’re not going to see you. By the same token, if you’re using your various accounts to shill for pay, then we’re going to just as easily opt out. As the line from the rock opera ‘ Tommy’ goes, “Let’s forget you better still!” and that is exactly what we’ll do.

Eventually, we’ll all have our Google Profile or something similar and we’ll be filtering what we see through the groups we’re associated with. These groups will consist of our friends and peers and in that, there will be an implied level of trust. Just as you might have an issue with your cousin if he sent the Kirby Vaccuum guy your way, we’ll be darned annoyed at people that are themselves trying to make cash by becoming the Kirby Vaccuum guy.

Frequent readers here will know that I’m not a big proponent of “personal branding” but I will say this: using your personal brand to pitch for pay, as our friends who use Izea are doing is a recipe for disaster. Take my cue and shun anyone who’s posting for pay.

When we get right down to it, we’re not really interested in transparency or disclosure; we really want honesty. We expect our friends to not put their access to us up for sale to the highest bidder. We expect that our friends will do the right thing…and that is what honesty is all about.

A few WordPress sites you might not have seen…

Posted on October 21, 2009 by Mark Cahill

I’ve had a few launches recently and a few of them are worth mentioning.

The Afternic Domainer’s Advantage – this is a knowledge center for use by Domainers, which is fully integrated with the AfternicDLS.com site. For those who aren’t aware, Afternic is the world’s largest premium domain marketplace with over three million domains available for sale. The Domainer’s Advantage site is a fairly standard WordPress installation that makes use of several fairly standard plugins. Special features:
- Integrated news feed of domain news
- Slide Share integration
- Homepage featured content block
- Single sign on integration with Afternic
- Full design integration with the parent site
- Design by Mark Hentschel – a real design rock star.
Blog.Photo.Net – photo.net is a site for serious photographers to connect with other photographers, explore photo galleries, discuss photography, share and critique photos, and learn about photography. The blog is maintained by Josh Root, the community director for the site, and is used to provide a taste of the vast content available around the site as well as to post industry news, events, etc.
- Full design integration with the photo.net site
- Standard WordPress installation
- Twitter feed

What is the next Wave?

Posted on September 30, 2009 by Mark Cahill

Google Wave - a chance for us to rethink Social Media?

For some time, I’ve been looking for the next compelling thing in social media sites. For that next development that transforms the way we interact, that re-envisions forums, chat, photo galleries, articles, etc; in fact a redefinition of the way in which we communicate online altogether.

For the past couple years, I’ve watch as vBulletin, my favorite forum software, basically did minor incremental releases, remaining essentially the way it was in 2001. Wordpress has done better, yet still, the fundamental blog/cmslite experience remains pretty much as it was 4 years ago. Photo gallery software, chat, etc. all remain pretty much as they were when they burst on the scene.

The user experience on most sites now is very segmented. Comments are in one spot, while forum posts over here. Most sites don’t integrate chat, as it tends to remove us from the page view model on which our revenue streams are so often based.

We’ve patched together separate systems, and in virtually all cases, the seams are showing. Clear lines of demarcation block logical points of information transfer. Most of what happens isn’t real time, or anything close to it. It’s a post then wait and click refresh experience for most of what we do.

That’s the point of entry for Google Wave, the new open source project that launched in private beta today. It has real time communications, chat has both private/public components, that can take on the threaded view of a forum with real time updates, that can be presented as a forum, or a blog, or whatever you imagine.

You see the important thing here for a developer is that they’ve built the basic tools, but we can add whatever we want via their api. To demonstrate this, they added Google maps integration. Yet that bit could be a video, or even better a live video stream or a recorded application view (think Webex presentation), live photo gallery, or all of them. All of which can be manipulated and edited real time by multiple users.

So what is this Google Wave, really? It’s opportunity for us to FINALLY break out of the box, to really do something new and different, to for once rethink the way we do our sites.

I can’t wait…

Check out the abridged version of the video from the I/O conference to get a taste of what I’m talking about.

Google Sidewiki – Because we haven’t made your life hard enough yet…

Posted on September 29, 2009 by Mark Cahill

Let’s say you own a business. It’s a small business, and you’ve tried very, very hard to build it into something. Along the way, like most businesses, there have been bumps, but for the most part, you’ve got a bunch of customers who love you. Then one day, right in front of your door, someone puts up a huge billboard, and on it, they will allow anyone with anything to say about your business to put up whatever they want. All of a sudden you’ve got some really nasty comments about your business hanging there where any potential customer will see them.

Sounds, far fetched, huh? No one could get away with that, right?

Enter Google Sidewiki…an add on product to the Google Toolbar which opens a sidebar when you are visiting sites that allows you to comment about sites as you visit them. So now, instead of commenting on my blog, you could leave comments on Google Sidewiki, where I am unable to moderate them. Hence that troll who’s been stalking me, that one I banned from one of my sites, is now free to flame away, and the only recourse I have is to report him to big brother Google.

There’s no opt out here, no metadata I can add to my site to keep them from doing this. And frankly, because it’s Google, I’d really think long and hard before using it if there were, because one could reasonably expect at somepoint, they’ll find a way to make Sidewiki comments a component of my overall score in the Google algorithm. So opting out might make me liable to lose search position.

I spend enough of my time trying to work with Google, either watching my analytics position, or managing things in Google Webmaster, or working with Adsense. I don’t need yet another way for them to monetize me. How about, for a change, they make my life easier, not harder?

A New Forum User Experience?

Posted on August 3, 2009 by Mark Cahill

I’ve been a huge fan of vBulletin forum software since I first installed it on Reel-Time.com in 2001. In the intervening years, I’ve seen software come and software go, but vBulletin continues to chug along.

Over the past 10 months, I’ve spent a lot of time working on a massive vBulletin site, http://www.splitcoaststampers.com and I’ve got to admit, I’m finding the vBulletin experience somewhat lacking. Perhaps it’s just that so many of the same old foibles remain in the core product, but truthfully, I’m looking for a more satisfying experience in forum software.

Let me be clear, the software works great and continues to chug away. My issue is that some of the things I’d like to be able to do with the software that should be easy, aren’t.

My main grudge is this: the software is still table based. Tons and tons of nested tables, all of them making it a nightmare to style. Each of the pages reuses a common header, but due to tons of <div> tags with no id or class, you have to get very creative to make any changes. Even worse, those divs are reused throughout the software, in different roles, so often, you will want to make a change on one page and you’ll end up affecting others. So you write a conditional (if this, then that) which is page specific. However, soon you find you’ve got a header file that is hundreds of lines of code, as it must account for a multitude of variables.

The vBulletin folks are in the process of a rewrite, which will be released in the fall as version 4.0. This version will supposedly get rid of all the tables and move to a fully css driven design, but frankly, I’m hearing rumblings now that, well, it might be mostly css, or worse.

My general list of stuff that’s got to be fixed:

Search doesn’t scale - one of the systems perennial Achille’s Heels, and a constant source of pain for site owners.
Tables, bloody tables - yeah, I mentioned it before, but it’s got to be mentioned before.
Template debugging – the vBulletin template system consumes errors. Testing of templates and plugins is an utter nightmare, because it doesn’t allow you to see even PHP’s most mundane error message.
Nesting of Conditional Statements - we’ve got a pretty good model in PHP for how an if then statement ought to work. However vBulletin conditional statements for some reason don’t follow that logic. They’re powerful, don’t get me wrong, but they’re hard to keep straight when you have a need for a good “else if” which currently requires nesting.

So I’m now thinking: is there any other software out that that isn’t table based that is both scalable and provides a top notch user experience? I’m interested in your suggestions…

All Things Cahill

The online home for Mark Cahill, and indeed, all things Cahill!

Category Archives: Web 2.0

A few WordPress sites you might not have seen…