All Things Cahill

Category: Web 2.0

  • A New Forum User Experience?

    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…

  • The Advent of the Micro-Celebrity

    Admit it...you want to be the object of attention!
    Admit it…you want to be the object of attention!

    Welcome to our brave new world…it is a place in which style triumphs substance, and appearance supercedes truth.  A place where the personal myths we create become truth, and are rechristened as “personal branding.”

    We are in the age of the micro-celebrity. The era in which we don’t need to be fully rounded individuals, where simply being the “thought leader”, guru or expert in a certain online niche is enough.  Warhol was right, we indeed will all have our 15 minutes of fame.

    Deep down, we all really want to be the Paris Hilton of our own personal fiefdom.  We’d all like to have red carpets rolled out for us, to have a tribe of fauning syncopants to “me too” our every post.  We want everyone to realize what utter geniuses we really are.

    The problem is that in online communities, like sewerage treatment plants, it is not only cream that floats the the top.  It is easy, at least for a time, for the poseur to assume a position of stature within a community.  The good news is that over time, and as the community matures, the fraud is generally identified, the true experts eventually become evident.

    So how do we become that micro-celebrity in our online community?

    • Be a good citizen – it’s not all about getting involved in the latest falderall.  Take the time to welcome newbies, answer the simple questions, and generally be available.
    • Correct The Incorrect – I see oh so many “accepted truths” that are absolutely incorrect.  Perhaps they fit for one situation, but not for the one in question.  Don’t let it pass, but do so in a way that builds the corpus scientia, without starting a flame war.
    • Discuss and Accept –  We don’t know everything…and we’re learning all the time.
    • Give Credit – It’s easy to do, and everyone likes to be appreciated.

    I’m tempted to add a list of what not to do, but instead I just offer this advice: before you are the teacher, you must first be the student.

  • News Has Always Been Free…

    Image couresy of WSJ.com

    I read an interesting post this morning by Michael Hickins on The Faster Times that posit that “Internet Isn’t Killing Papers, We Are“.  His basic premise: that the tech industry, and the web in particular with with the dotbomb era and sky high salaries and insane stock packages, inflated journalist salaries well beyond their regular levels.

    Why? Because salaries had to be adjusted for the stock options that artificially inflated the potential compensation packages offered by the dot-com start-ups. How could Walgreen’s compete against Drugstore.com without compensating for the stock options that could make someone an instant millionaire? They couldn’t. The dot-com bubble burst threw some people out of work for a short period of time, but did nothing to bring salaries back into line.

    So all of a sudden, in 2001, I went from making $45,000 for the print publication to $60,000 per year for the online version while working for the same publisher, Conde Nast. Not that I complained. At my last full-time position, I made $90,000 per year working as an editor at Ziff Davis Enterprise – and had reporters working for me who earned well above that. It’s public knowledge that Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal earns over $1 million per year.

    I posted the link via Twitter and was quickly reminded by Stephen Hadley that “…Most of my reporter friends who are losing their jobs aren’t overpaid. It’s just that the papers they work for no longer are able to sell advertising to support their staffs. Ad dollars are moving.”

    That, to my mind is the crux of the matter. You will definitely spot other problems throughout the newspaper industry, but the real problem right now is ad revenue going away.  This doesn’t mean that there aren’t a myriad of other compounding issues here, such as circulation declines, outdated technology, Jurassic management, etc., and certainly those are all factors.  But the real problem comes down simply to a matter of dollars not coming in the doors.

    Brian Carr pointed me towards the AnnArbor.com launch – a Michigan newspaper opened a new site, using 54  staff members. (according to their site masthead)  Ponder this: 54 newspaper folk took a couple months to launch a site using what appears to be a bog standard MoveableType installation.  Frankly, given part of a weekend and a 12 pack of Mountain Dew, I could have outdone them.  Seriously…

    The big problem for journalists is this: even though Hickins may tell us that the web got us big salaries back in the day, the sad truth is this: the prevailing thought on the Internet today is that content is free.  As content originators, that means our work isn’t under valued, if FLAT OUT ISN’T VALUED.

    Back in the day, I got $500 for a blog post.  Granted, those were some excellent blog posts, but right now I do basically the same thing for free.

    Look at the fiasco a few weeks back when Chris Anderson, of Long Tail fame, and EIC of Wired Magazine lifted huge sections of wikipedia articles for his new book “Free: the Past and  Future of a Radical Price” (and yes, he’s talking about free content…). If a Wired Magazine editor can’t even manage to properly cite Wikipedia, what does that say for his view of the value of content?  Oh, right, I guess we should re-read the title of that book…

    The real problem inherent in all of this is that after we’re done killing off all the reliable primary news sources, such as newspapers, television news, or even magazines, is that we’ll find we’re left with a gaping void.  The thought is that blogs will take over.  unfortunately, while blogs are generally interesting sources of commentary and opinion, I see very few that provide anything like news, and when and where they do it, they generally do not do it reliably.  You can’t count on today’s source to have good info, or any info, tomorrow, and you definitely should not expect extensive enough general coverage that will allow you to get a good picture of the world, or any small part of it for that particular piece of time.

    Okay, I’m sure one of you is thinking now about the Iranian Election a few weeks ago, and how it broke on Twitter.  In fact, it would have broken on major news outlets as well, but it got bumped for the MJ Media Circus.  Even so, Twitter may be many things, but it’s not a reliable primary news source.  Yes, it may provide a lead here or there, but any good journalist knows, that’s just where the story starts…not where it ends.

    Getting back to the original theme here, I think now that we can see that news generation was a loss leader for newspapers.  It took a lot of effort to do it right, but it was something they could monetize through ad revenue.  Today, we need to forget about how content gets delivered, and remember that content generation is still a valuable and necessary product.  When we rediscover a proper way to monetize it, the world for journalist and everyone will be a better place.

    Because none of us wants to work for free…

  • 5 Lessons from a Social Media Campaign Gone Horribly Wrong

    Jim Louderback of Revision3.com has a great article up at JackMyers.com entitled “Murphy-Goode Wines Social Media Campaign Goes Horribly Wrong” about the companies recent trip to the Internet woodshed over their handling of I-celeb Martin Sargent during a recent online spokesperson ballot.

    While the specifics are generally quite funny…Jim gives us an excellent list of 5 takeaways that any of us who might consider a Social Media campaign ought to commit to heart:

    Respect the Wisdom of the Crowds: If you’re going to solicit entries from the internet, and then ask people to vote, then you need to at least pretend to abide by their selection. Murphy-Goode built a framework that would have let them finesse this. All they had to do was put the top ten vote getters into their top 50. Even if they had zero intention of ever giving Martin or the other nine a job, they should have – at a minimum – given them some recognition for winning the popular vote.

    Know Your Web Stars: You may have never heard of Martin Sargent. But he’s an extremely powerful web celebrity – both because of his own following, and his influential friends. If John Stewart, Tom Brady or Britney Spears had entered – or even Wine Spectator editor James Laube — you can be sure they would have been treated with kid gloves. Martin got snubbed and snubbing sucks. But Martin was powerful enough to get a (well deserved) revenge.

    Monitor Constantly: While running a social media campaign, keep a close eye on what the social-sphere is saying about your brand. Use Twitter search tools, Tweet Deck, Trendrr, backtype – among others – to keep track of how your campaign is doing. And when you notice something going awry…

    Fix it Fast: As soon as “Martin-Gate” began to spread around the web, Murphy-Goode should have jumped in and fixed it. Perhaps they could have added a 51st finalist to the list. Or maybe they could have expanded the competition to end up with two winners, a winery choice and a people’s choice. Rapid action could have saved this campaign. Even an apology and am “I’m Sorry” would have gone a long way to repairing the winery’s reputation. Instead, company representatives responded with lame platitudes like “You’re too famous” and called Martin overqualified for the job. That just served to fan the flames – particularly because one of the top ten finalists was Rachel Reenstra, former Animal Planet and HGTV show host.

    Don’t be half-assed: But here’s the biggest slap to the face of everyone who created, watched, voted and even paid attention to this online kerfuffle. As the story got out, it turned out that some of the candidates for the temporary position were actually sourced by recruiters, who told them that “the online votes were relatively unimportant.” That’s the worst thing that ever could have gotten out. Today’s engaged social network users are no less passionate than the millions of Iranians that flooded the street when their votes were ignored. And they’re far more connected as well. Be honest, be authentic and be real. Murphy-Goode, alas, tried to pull a fast one. But on the internet, it’s extremely hard to be opaque.

    I think the big thing here is this: if you’re going to do a campaign that is designed to look and feel “democratic” you better be prepared to accept whatever the results from the people are.  Otherwise you’re going to have a lot of people feeling very disenfranchised, and in the end, that’s worse than not having done the campaign at all.

  • Social Networking for Tween Girls

    It was utterly inevitable…via CruchGear and Matt Brodeur:

    So this seems like a good enough idea. It’s called MySecretCircle and it’s basically it’s a closed social network for girls. You and your buds buy a USB key that acts as your login. It autoruns under Windows and OS X and brings up a photo and journal sharing system that only allows certain people access to your daughter’s personal info.

    In theory and in practice this is great. It ensures your tween doesn’t connect with creeps like me. Kids can only connect with friends that have their private key – no one else exists in the site except for Sabrina Circle, the Tom of this candy-pink MySpace.

    Social networking and tweeners is a match made in heaven for them, and hell for us parents.  Can’t you just hear it “Daddy, she flamed me…”

    It sounds like a great idea, but I think they’ve missed something in the realm of parental control.  I’ll have a good look soon, and if it works, I’m sure I’ll have two little beta testers pounding the keys before you know it.

  • Social Media Community Building 101 – The Right Domain Name

    <This is part 3 in my series on Social Media Community Building.  You will find all of my pieces on this subject by checking out this tag: Social Media 101. Disclosure: this post is about selecting and buying domain names.  I work for a company that owns the largest aftermarket domain name listing service in the world, Namemedia, although that is not what I do for them. >

    One of the key points you need to consider when you are building your Social Media Community is the domain name.  The right name can make your site, while the wrong one brings with it more baggage than you could possibly imagine.  The general list of considerations:

    • The shorter the better – If I were building a community for septic tank cleaning professionals, I’d look for something like “septicpros.com” rather than “septic-pro-media-forums.com”  – on the face of it, less letters to type.
    • Make the name a Search  Keyword that you’d expect someone to enter into Google to find you.  Hence “Blatz.com” wouldn’t be as desirable as “tennisbuddies.com” when you’re doing a Tennis social media site.  Plus, the domain name is one of the things Google gives you points for in their alrogithm.  Hence, given identical content and in bound links, TennisBuddy.com will do better than the nonsensical blatz.com.
    • Try to Avoid the Alternate Top Level Domains – .Com is the gold standard here.  .Net is acceptable, and .Mobi is fine for your Iphone stuff.  I don’t use .us, or any of the other alternates.  Why?  Because they don’t get direct type in traffic, and its really easy to build your site up, only to have someone sharp that owns the .Com TLD siphon off your traffic by constructing a similar site.  How do they get your traffic?  Most of your users will inevitably type .Com instead of .FooBar or whatever you have at some point.  Too big a business risk in my estimation.
    • Avoid Misspelling Problems – If it’s hard to type, you’re going to have people ending up at the wrong place.  Once again, keep it simple.

    Have  people found success doing the opposite of my suggestions?  Sure, probably the best example was http://del.icio.us – but even they have now given in, having bought delicious.com and directing their primary traffic through that domain instead.

    Okay, so your next thought is this:  “Nice advice, but all the good domain names were bought up years ago.  We’re gonna have to go with http://xtrptser.com because it’s the only one left.”

    Not so…there is the domain aftermarket.  My employer, Namemedia Inc. owns over 900,000 domain names, which can be bought via BuyDomains.com or at Afternic.com – which is  a “Multiple Listing Service for Domain Names.”  Together with our partners, we list something in the area of 2 million domain names (don’t quote me directly on that, it’s a rough estimate, not exact).  They’ve also got plenty of trained domain professionals who can help you through the purchase and transfer process.

    So now you can get access to a whole lot of excellent domain names, which should make your new Social Media Website a winner.

    My view on domains is this: they are a very important business asset for any business. In the case of niche social media sites, they may be one of your most important assets.  Thus buying the right one is of utter importance.  There are many places in the building of your site where you will be able to cut a few corners, but this is not a place to do that.

  • Does Twitter Dilute Media Brands?

    For the past couple weeks I’ve been tweeting for the Reel-Time.com site under the Twitter handle “Reel_Time” and I’ve found some very interesting trends.  Most disturbing is that Twitter doesn’t really appear to be an extension of the conversations that start on my site, it appears to be something wholly different.  Similar conversations in a place where I don’t get any ad revenue.

    As of yet, I’m not seeing this as increasing the value of the Reel-time.com brand.  Of course, while twitter may be hitting the mainstream, I suspect we’re still on the bleeding edge of Twitter in the saltwater fly fishing niche.  It just seems that where my readers used to find me, I am now trying to find them.  A horribly upside down delivery model it is when you’re starting out!

    The Bad, or Not So Good:

    • Spammers – they apparently target new accounts – a good number of my initial followers apparently thought I wanted to pay for the “secrets of making millions via twitter”.  For the record, I don’t think there is anyone out there making THOUSANDS yet.
    • Mostly Shops, Guides and Website Owners – in a lot of ways its me and my competitors talking.  Honestly, that makes me want to share…less.
    • Haphazard Marketing – I’ve seen several shops or guides who don’t have a website or haven’t updated that website in over a year.  Yet they have time to tweet on a regular basis.  Tweeting is nice, but take care of your marketing 101 basics first.

    The Good:

    • Fishing Reports – while my forum users macerate on the implications of posting fishing reports via Twitter, its already happening and there are enough respected industry names doing it that I can say with certainty, fishing reports via twitter are here to stay.
    • Immediacy – I’m a big fan of  “right the heck now.”  I hate to wait.  Twitter means I won’t have to wait.
    • New Enough That We Can Make This What We Want – I suspect the real gold here is in the hashtagging of reports.  If we develop a way of tagging that makes regional sense (most New Englander’s don’t need reports from Maryland) then we’ll all win.  I generally hate protocols, but this may just be what we need.  Something like #SWF-BOS for Boston area reports…then fight to keep it from becoming another Usenet.

    The trial continues…

  • The Rules for Twitter

    Rules to be obeyed:

    • Twitter Rule #1 No Hawaiian Shirt avatars until after Memorial Day.
    • Twitter Rule #2 – Only religion, social media marketing, politics or other mundane topics allowed.
    • Twitter Rule #3 – Mandatory lunch tweets – eating a cheese sandwich? We MUST be told.
    • Twitter Rule #4 – When in doubt, Retweet. The truth is overrated…
    • Twitter Rule #5 – Retweet your own blog posts at least every hour. Someone somewhere might have missed it.
    • Twitter Rule #6 – NO NUDE TWEETING!

  • Twitter, Hashtags, Baseball and a Dose of Spam

    For about a year, I’ve been using twitter and hashtags to tweet with fellow Red Sox fans about our favorite topic, the Red Sox.  Over that time, I’ve seen a big change how it works.

    First, a definition from Twitter Wiki:

    Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.

    When I started about a year ago, there were a handful of folks that were tweeting with the #redsox hashtag during the games.  DougH, AdamCohen, AaronStrout and Fairminder would pretty much be the list.  Most of them aren’t really seen tweeting about the games anymore, and it doesn’t surprise me.

    Early adopters really hate a crowd, deep down, and the numbers of folks that use the hashtag now have soared.  Even Jerry Remy (and his assistant John) are using the hashtag to tweet during games.  However, with the popularity, there are problems:

    1. Spamming –  I’m now seeing people using the hashtag to advertise stuff that has nothing to do with the Red Sox.  Last night DaveAndelmann tweeted an ad for his Phantom Gourmet tv show which would air after the game.  Boo hiss, Dave!  If everyone does this, it becomes unuseable.   The problem is that everyone seems to think that Twitter is their own private advertising medium.  Really, c’mon, admit it…

    2. ReTweetBots – I really hate seeing accounts (not really people) like Redsoxgame or Yankeesgame or RedSoxTweets mindlessly retweeting scores and articles with the #redsox tag.  The problem is, if the original was already tagged, we’ve seen it before. With these retweetbots, we’re destined to see each article about 6 times.  Stupid…

    3. Red Sox Tweets Turn Off My Other Followers – Yup, not everyone wants to hear it.  Since I’ve tagged my tweets, you can filter them in Tweetdeck, (go to the bottom of your friends column and find the filter icon – then select text – #redsox and they’ll be gone.  But most people won’t take the time to do this.

    Either we find fixes for these problems, or the noble effort that was live game tweeting will crash and burn.  I predict unregulated this will go the way of Usenet possibly by the All Star break but certainly by September.

    I suspect in the long term, the real solution is that live game microblogging needs to be done under the auspices of a website where someone can actually police things help maintain a quality experience.  Perhaps if Jerry Remy were to put a Laconica install on his site, that’d be the place.  Or perhaps the crew at SurvivingGrady.com could upgrade from their current comments system…

  • Reel-Time.com Updated

    rt_sshot1Over the past couple months, I’ve been working nights and weekends to get Reel-time.com updated and running on WordPress.  The project, while far from complete, reached critical mass this week and I was able to go live Tuesday night.

    This site has been around since 1995, and frankly, if you knew where to look, it was showing it’s age.  The homepage was left justified, which is something designers haven’t been doing since around 2001.

    There were a lot of challenges.  First off, a lot of the content was gnarly hand-coded html of varying quality, which for the most part has had to be moved by hand.  That task will no doubt continue for a while.  Secondly, I didn’t have call on a designer.  As such, what design work had to be done, was done by me…and if you could see how I dress, you’d understand humor in that. A few of the high points:

    • WordPress is my CMS – Yes, I’ve been running a number of sites on a version we’ve customized at Namemedia, Inc., but this is the first time I’ve gone with an out of the box installation.  All customization for the site is done by plugin or theme.  Absolutely no changes to WordPress code whatsoever.
    • Comments, Sharing, etc. – Reel-Time never had comments on articles before, so now it does.  A small change, but actually one that will help to extend the community from the forum out into the  site.
    • Syndicated News Feeds – In the past, we always avoided sharing the link love.  No longer – we’re running feeds of pertinent content on our landing pages which gives us more great content from around the globe and shares our link juice, being top in Saltwater Fly fishing rankings.
    • Landing Pages – We’ve started doing pages by article category, so now we can present a dense, targeted page on any topic in our vast arsenal of content.  Add to that feeds of content similarly tagged from our forum, and the syndicated feeds, and you’ve got tons of content on any particular subject.  I only have a handful of these pages up, but rest assured, if it swims in saltwater and fishermen like to catch it, it will eventually have its own page.
    • A Standard Theme – I went with a base theme from the WordPress Theme Gallery then customized.  It saved time, and honestly, without it, I doubt this project ever would have happened.
    • A Classified Ad System – I’ve thought this was one of the big missing functions on the site for a long time.  Now we have one.  The question is, are we late to the game?
    • Vimeo Videos presented in high definition – Everybody has small videos, so I went with really LARGE video presentation.  It looks great, although I need to get more ads on the page.
    • New Content – for the first time in a long time, we’ve got new articles coming in.  I have no budget for this stuff, so I asked our community.  They have responded.
    • More Social – I put in links to our Facebook Group, Facebook Fan Page and to the Reel_Time twitter account.  Again, there is a lot more to do here.

    I still have a lot of stuff to do.  If you read this blog closely, you’ll know that I had a quandry about what to do with our fishing reports section.  I think I have a solution to that, which I’ll be working on next.  Also on my list:

    • Develop a Content Team – me working 30 hours a week won’t happen anymore.  The work must be spread around the community.
    • Import All the Content – about 50 stories remain to be imported.  From there I have old fishing reports with valueable intro sections by some of the best writers in our sport (many started out writing for us).
    • Get More Community Happening – I’ll hold this one close to the vest for new.  I’m well aware that this blog is read by some that participate in my niche, so no need to tip my hat here.

    Remember, one of the salient points here is that this was a nights and weekends project, only a 2 days of actual “work” time went into it.  Also, the an important round of thanks to the moderators for the site, Bob Parsons, Sam Riley, Ray Avitable and Shaun Ruge who were of immense assistance in the planning and as always, in providing a firm sounding board for potential ideas.  Without them, the site, I fear, would crumble to dust.

    Okay, there was one other MAJOR change and no one has commented on it.  Can you?