AdamCovati.com

How url shorteners work and how they affect SEO

Adam — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:28:48 +0000

As I have mentioned before, I run idek.net, which is a url shortener. These are great for places where characters are at a premium. Some people have asked me how the url redirects work and how they affect SEO. This quick video gives a basic overview of 301 redirects which is what idek.net uses to get your from a short url to a long one.

WPvideo 1.10

Download!

Other Resources:

URL redirection on Wikipedia
An example analytics page from idek.net

I love analogies, they’re like…

Adam — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:55:58 +0000

Yea, I love analogies. They are a great way to get your point across. I started using them heavily when I managed a small team of developers and had to settle a number of disputes between particularly stubborn developers.

Ever since then I’ve employed them quite often, when I can really. In terms of conversations, especially with complex ideas they are a must, here are a few reasons why:

Analogies simplify the problem
In stead of worry about every little detail we can get down to the real nitty gritty of the problem. We are allowing for a distilling of the issue.
Analogies provide an alternative viewpoint
An analogy allows you to present a different story, often from a different point of view, this can allow people to see another side more easily.
Analogies remove emotional investment
Along the same lines as #2, when we are talking about something else entirely we remove the emotional investment some one may have in the original discussion point.
Analogies are a point of reference
Often times the biggest reason to use an analogy is to show that this problem has already been argued or solved in a slightly different case.
Analogies often times provide new insights
I’m often surprised by conclusions I draw from an analogy I created when I push the boundaries of the comparison.
They’re fun!
I love a good analogy. They’re just fun to talk about, and you’ll be surprised how far you can push one if you try.

Analogies aren’t just powerhouses in conversations, they have a lot of value when trying to explain concepts in software as well. So whether I want to get some one on board to a new pricing paradigm, or I want to show a user how to use a new widget, I’m always trucking these bad boys out.

How do you use analogies?

Shoot for the roof, stars are too far away

Adam — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 02:23:51 +0000

I have been working on http://idek.net for a little while now (it’s a url shortener with great stats, useful for twitter). It’s something I’ve been doing on the side because I love to create apps. Like many friends I have who are programmers I have had many side projects that never made it. So why did idek.net get launched?

Well, the answer is easy, I aimed small. I took a good bit of one cloudy weekend and wrote a useable app and launched it. Once it was live I slowly started adding to it. It now has most of the features of the competitors, and a few more great ones planned.

I was able to gain momentum and keep it by not taking on any huge tasks that would get stuck in the mud.

Don’t want to take my word for it? Here’s some one who went into a bit more detail on why shooting for attainable goals builds momentum.

Of course, if I could follow that philosophy more closely then I’d probably post here more often!

Google SearchWiki - Digg for Google?

Adam — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:47:55 +0000

Google has just launched SearchWiki within their search results. This toolset allows users to alter the results that they receive from google. They can move results up or down, add new results, or even remove them from the results. You can also add comments to search results.

Now, I should make it clear that this does not affect page rank, or even the results that other people see when doing searches. However, other people who are logged into google can see, via the SearchWiki icons, what users are doing with results. This allows the SearchWiki community to function much like reddit or Digg.

We’ve always said that the best search engine is the one that understands what the individual user wants … SearchWiki really puts that in action: this is an even deeper level of customisation than we’ve offered before, because people know best what search results they are looking for.

Juergen Galler, director of product management at Google

This is a great step forward for google. Rather than entirely trying to mathematically determine optimal search results they are actually able to incorporate opinions from people who are doing the searches. So while this won’t have an affect on most googlers, it does allow them to start to harness the massive community of people out there who want to work together to find better results.

I can only hope that this is a start of something that will provide more power to the social networks of users who are depending on google every day. Moving google a bit more towards the digg/reddit model could help to make results more relevant and also drive more involvement. Of course reddit and digg are also gameable, often times political or underhanded forces take advantage of this to bias results on the front pages of these site. Google is no where near prepared to give their rankings or results over to the mob. This method does seem like a safe way to allow those crowds to have their say without jeopardizing Google’s standing as the best way to search. Learn more about Google SearchWiki:

Peter Shankman at TIMA

Adam — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 05:06:48 +0000

Today I had the pleasure of listening to Peter Shankman (@skydiver) talk social media at the Triangle Interactive Marketing Association monthly luncheon. This was one of the best social media talks I’ve heard, as @DjWaldow pointed out, it was on par with @GaryVee.

I tried to take notes on his big points, I’m dumping them here with a little bit of formatting. My thoughts are in italics. Please feel free to ping me for clarification.

You can’t make something viral, but you can make something good but it helps if you enable it

Talking about Where The Hell Is Matt (showed the video)- You forward this because you want to, not because he asked you to. You’re gonna go home and find it and send it to all of your friends. You’ll be 4 months late, and a bit of a loser, but that’s cool. I love this guy - he’s hilarious

In ‘96 people though the internet was AOL, people would say “I use AOL to DL pics of Pamela Anderson, how could you do something for business with that.

In order for something to become viral 10-15 years ago it had to be really good. You couldn’t just copy and paste it, you had to work to spread it on. this goes back to what I said, it’s about enabling

No one said, “Hey, let’s create a social net where everyone can microblog to everyone else that is important. They said “Hey, can we a network where people can exchange info.” This stuff takes off when people find it useful. Think, twitter wasn’t really started as what it is today. Neither was paypal — google that one.

As a society we are changing massively, due to a confluence of tech. Until recently old white men have just run the country. What’s happened? Things like tyco, worldcom, enron, etc. That’s what happens when old white guys run the country and say “We’ll tell you what you can know, we’ll decide what it is” Younger people have watched all these companies implode.

Now that old white guys are dying, cause that’s what they do, and young people are taking over. The people coming in are saying “We’re not going to do that. We saw what happened last time. We’re going to make this transparent.”

Prediction: Press releases will be dead in 36 months. You will put info out there in better faster ways
I’ve seen marketwire looking to come up with new media avenues for press info

Here are the top three things:

Transparency
Relevance
Brevity
(there’s a fourth, but we’ll get there later)

This isn’t all too different from what I often recommend for email communications, it just makes sense

Transparency - If people can’t get that from you then they will go away and get it from somewhere else.
Brevity - The way people want their info is how you have to give it to them.
Relevency - MTV Generation, had 3 min attention span due to music video, now people have 140 character attention span.

If you can’t say something in 140 chars then you need to fix it. distill it Peter says this to his clients. (Doesn’t work so well with someone you are dating though!) Obama chose his running mate in 56 chars.

The three items on this list together are very powerful - tell a story the way people want, quickly, and in a way that is relevant to that person WIN

Press releases are going away, the concept of pro and personal profile is going away. In the next 12 months, there will just be you. bye-bye linked in.

It’s about interaction, it’s not about connections. If you don’t interact with them they shouldn’t be in your life stream. Technology is now simple, and it is ubiquitous, so now its being shared and made part of everything. Talking about the flip cameras, how amazing they are.

Right now people are scared of facebook, because they may be unjustly tagged. Within 12 months, facebook will make tagging proactive - where you have approve tags of you. People don’t want their stupid friend screwing them up. We will start to re-evaluate what we consider a friend. We will rate people in terms of the info and advice they provide.

The fourth word in that list above, ok it’s not a word but a phrase:

Top of Mind Presence

e.g. Barry Miller - was head of paramount, then HSN and USAnetworks, now some interactive thing. He would pull 10 random business cards a day and call them. He would just say hello and getting to top of mind presence. Within 3-4 months he would go through his book. So 3-4 times a year you’d hear from him. ALWAYS TOP OF MIND.
He was able to do this before facebook, outlook, friendster, etc.

The story of the Will It Blend. The Marketing PR guy caught the CEO trying to blend a rake. He was all WTF?! Then he had an epiphany and brought in a flip camera the next day, got it on the web You know the story, if you don’t, then you have a lot of catching up to do…

The job of PR is to drive revenue. Will it blend: did it drive Revenue? Yes, sales up over 500%, it’s not just for kids. Adults are saying, “Well if it can blend a rake…” SOLD

Use social/viral media so it not only benefits you, you need to benefit others. In our society we expect to be treated like crap. When we order diet coke, we expect to get a coke. If you treat your customers one level above crap, not even good, then they will become fans. Treat them well, they will become raving fans and do your PR for you.

Social media is simply a way for you to create raving fans (btw, read the book Raving Fans). You want people to be able to go out and preach your gospel. Social media is the ability to get people to tell your story.

Agency in NY that did not ‘get’ twitter. He types in a client name of this Agency in twitter.search. Saw some one talk about how awesome it is. You should track this person down and send them tons of free stuff. Free shirts, sticker, another game. She will twitter that, it will drive excitement.

We love to make people miserable with our good fortune. If you give some one something free they will talk about it. Makes others jealous, they want it too.

We’ve never had more of an opp to turn people onto evangelists. Twitter is a free focus group, realtime observation, fantastic! great point!

If you pay some one for the PR you have to make that clear, cause you will get found out. Talks about the walmarting across America blunder.

All in all, this was fantastic. If you have a chance to see Peter speak, do it, you’ll love it.

Howto Twitter II: Twitter Add-on Application

Adam — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:05:29 +0000

As a follow up to my previous article, Howto Twitter, I’ve written up a bit about the mass of applications that are now available as supplements to Twitter.
Follow this link to see the article:

HowTo Twitter - Web Tools

There are, of course, too many to mention them all, but I have selected a few that I find the most useful, even on a day-to-day basis. For anyone getting started in Twitter, this list will help bring you up to speed a bit faster. For those who twitter everyday you may learn something new, and if not, let me know which apps I left out which should be listed here.

Celebrity Twitterers

Adam — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:19:46 +0000

Gary Vaynerchuk recently posted a couple of videos giving first Britanny Spears, then Barack Obama a hard time for how they are managing their twitter accounts. As always Gary has some great points, this guy owns the social space.

I completely agree - if Barack or Britanny are trying to own the space.

But what if they are just trying to provide another avenue for info about what they are up to. Isn’t that was twitter was started for? “What are you doing?” is the question, right?

Everything has its purpose. I follow a few news feedcasting twitterers because I like to get the news updates sprinkled in there. I actually don’t want a relationship, just straight news. So sometimes, having that info in twitter form is useful.

Now, if you carry on a pretense of actually being from person x, but the tweets come from a team, then yes, that’s not genuine, and not the right path in the long run. However, for celebrities this is nothing new, we expect it. We are *sometimes* looking for something a little different when we follow a celebrity or a brand. Often times this is just a different part of their mix.

Does everyone have to own the twitter space? No, most don’t have the time or inclination. But that doesn’t mean that they have to ignore it. Each person, each brand, needs to find out how they are going to address it, set expectations, and follow through.

What’s your social media strategy? Are you following through?

Social Engineering in Twitter Spam

Adam — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:33:57 +0000

NB: I hope that this doesn’t lead to an uptick of this type of twitter spam. But I think educating the non-spammers is more important.

Ok, I thought I’d write a new bloggeries about using social engineering to game twitter. Let’s start to covering some basics that many of you know. The best people to follow on twitter often have more followers than those they are following.

It’s basic economics, unless you’re a superstar like @WayneSutton or @GaryVee, you just can’t handle all the noise it generates. Even though reciprocation is the nice thing to do, I can understand when a big name doesn’t follow me. This leads to easily identifiable patterns, spammers are often following 1000s of people and have followers numbering in the 10s or low 100s. When I get followed by one of these chaps I quickly block them. Update:@EmailKarma pointed out that I should just go with d spam @spammer.

Now when I get a follow from some one who has 734 followers, yet only follows 65 people, then it would seem that this is some one that people are happy to follow, even if she isn’t reciprocating. So to me, this is an early sign that this person is good. And let’s be honest, it strokes your ego a bit. Here is some one that many people follow, but who clearly is more selective in their following, and she chose me!

But here’s the rub, if I look at the tweets, it looks a bit spammy. Hmm. Click on the following link and they look like reputable people, I even recognize a few. Now just wait a few minutes and reload the page. Now an entirely new crop of people are in there.

The trick here is that they are using the API to follow people, then slowly unfollow them after a period of time. Since twitter sends follow notices, but no unfollow notices, you don’t realize they are no longer following you. This is a fantastic way to socially game people as well as avoid the spammy ratio that makes you look like an obvious spammer.

Pretty smart, and pretty annoying. This is something that I’m not entirely sure I’ve run into in the wild, but if I haven’t, I’m sure I will soon.

Make it easy, Make it win

Adam — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 04:22:15 +0000

Good products serve a need and serve it well. A crucial piece of solving problems is good workflow. And to truly have good workflow you need to understand the entire environment people are experiencing during and around the time of the problem you are addressing.

Lately I’ve been spending a good bit of time trying to think through the workflow for idek.net as well as twitwit.us. These two sites integrate with other services, and as such, I need to consider where people will be and what they’ll be doing when the use these apps.

Why do you care? Well, you always need to remember to attack every problem from multiple angles, because your users aren’t just coming at it from one place. They may have different goals and different needs that you may not have considered.

Once you’ve gotten all the variables better understood you can try to devise a workflow and solution that will efficient and enjoyable for your users.

A Quick Howto for Twitter

Adam — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:56:26 +0000

I pulled together a quick primer for twitter over the weekend. It all came from a few tweets that I saw @TheRab make for some new comers that were following him. I figured that a Twitter Howto was due.

Check out HowTo Twitter

Please feel free to drop me a comment with anything that you think it missing. This is meant to to be a primer, not a complete walk through of everything twitter.