Digital Strategy

• The myth of “the myth of SEO”

  Despite what you may have been told, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is not a complete waste of time. Despire what you may have been told, SEO is not a panacea. The “SEO gurus” would have you believe SEO is a magic tonic, and they are lying. The anti-guru-contrarian-pundits we know and love insist the secret to Google success is “just being as awesome as you can be, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a corporate douchebag. Any good advice they do happen to have should have been obvious to you in the first place”.

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• What’s wrong with Yelp (and how to fix it)

  I think I finally put my finger on it. I used to hate Yelp because the reviewers are so often unreasonably whiney. But hey, all reviewers are like that, right? Now I’ve come around. Yelp is a great resource. By digging into the reviews and using my judgment to filter out the jerks, I’ve found some great places: Ethiopian food, LASIK, and a decent haircut. But I still don’t like the whiny jerks. And now I know why. I used to work in food service, and I can tell you this: in the five years I waited tables, I was the worst server you could ever get, and also the best server you’ve ever had. Sometimes even both on the same day. It’s hard, it’s unpredictable, and sometimes: shit goes wrong.
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• “Totally Awesomebot” is made up of 67 robots

  Eat your heart out, Voltron. Today I discovered Totally Awesomebot, a shirt-based “super robot” made up of 67 crowd-sourced robots. And while it is officially unrelated to the “real” 67 Robots, that doesn’t make it any less Totallyawesome, nor diminish the extent to which I desire one to adorn my own, fleshy torso.
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• The tempest in a teapot effect of Twitter

  At any given moment, Twitter broadcasts what millions of people are most inclined to comment on. It does not broadcast what is most important to us. It does not broadcast what is most “worth” commentary. It does not filter or curate. If I walk into a room full of people and sound an air horn, it will suddenly become the most popular topic of conversation, at least for a few seconds. That doesn’t mean anyone cares passionately about air horns. Nor does it mean people will still be talking about the air horn a week later.
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• On Google’s web, the user is #1, Google is #0

  A partnership with Adobe will make Flash objects search-indexable, but only by Google and Yahoo. By participating in this exclusive program, Google implicitly sanctions an anti-user reality. This runs counter to their motto “Don’t Be Evil,” as well as the spirit of their stance on Net Neutrality. The Net Neutrality issue is typically framed as an indictment of broadband providers, but let’s be real, here: search has become nearly as fundamental to the internet experience as packet exchange. Google’s Net Neutrality page describes it as “the principle that Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet.”
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