1. You + Long Tail + Making Money = Nonsense…
   "You can make money on the long tail but not in the long tail."
   – There’s No Money In The Long Tail of the Blogosphere, Alex Iskold, Read/Write Web
2. … but being rare is good…
   "When you try to maximize anything, you work to be efficient, to fit in, to appeal to the average person, since that’s where the numbers are. […] Most embraces systems and policies that make sense. But most rarely succeeds."
   – That Doesn’t Make Sense, Seth Godin

Dear Mr. Rose,

I posted a blog a few days ago Some Digg Functionality is Broken … Ohhhh It Hurts highlighting some of the issues I was having with Digg. The intent as you’ll note was not to bash Digg in any way, only to highlight problems I was having with the site, and the solution I had found to work around the issues until such time that they were corrected.

Image courtesy Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

“… it’s really not a matter IF the mobile phone will become the dominant internet platform any more but WHEN…” - Yahoo! analyst Russell Beattie

With 15 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers accessing news and information via the mobile browser, mobile search represents a huge growth opportunity for SEO’s. The Kelsey Group recently revealed that nearly half of mobile users will be looking for a mobile phone with better Internet capability when they make their next mobile phone purchase.

It is with great pride that I get to announce another Canadian first (to the best of our knowledge) for Search Engine People. We are the newest addition to the list of Microsoft adExcellence accredited companies.

Due to the determined effort of a certain SEP paid search director, and you know who you are, we are the first Canadian company to become adExcellence approved.

In short, Search Engine People is a triple threat company. Yahoo! Ambassadors, the first Canadian Google Adwords Qualified Company, and now the first Canadian Microsoft adExcellence company.

We recently had a Digg submission go Hot. This is the first one that I was personally involved with. Given that I didn’t have anything better to do on a Sunday afternoon, I thought that it might be fun to Chart the # of Diggs and resulting traffic to see if we could draw any interesting conclusions.

Here is what I saw…

A friend submitted the Digg article. It got a few Diggs however I didn’t really pay too much attention. I knew that it was really good content but I didn’t want to get my hopes up.

photo © Darren Hester for openphoto.net

Google SiteMatch Ads

If you’re not using Google SiteMatch Ads as part of you Pay Per Click campaign yet, you may be missing out on a significant amount of high quality, targeted, and most importantly, low cost traffic. Assuming you know your niche and industry like the back of your hand, using the SiteMatch or Placement Targeting options in Google Adwords can help gain great Brand Visibility and Goal Conversions for your website or online service.

Its true … some of Digg’s functionality appears broken at the moment. Fortunately, its not critical functionality, so we will survive. It is a pain however.

Accordingly, in the remainder of this post, I’ll identify the problem, show the symptoms, discuss the implications, and propose a solution … much like an old boss said to me once; “don’t come to me with problems, come to me with solutions!”. I still live by that motto to this day!

To answer the question "why should I use Twitter / Facebook / Flickr / Digg / Sphinn / Jaiku / <insert Web 2.0-ish site>?" you have to rephrase it:

Why should I settle for less attention?

Having a blog is just the start.

"Your" audience isn’t hanging on to your every word: they’re leading their own online lives.

The only way to catch their attention is to be where they are.

The more places you and your audience share, the more of their attention you have.

It’s the participation economy, stupid!

I am really pleased to announce that we here at SEP are launching our First Annual Search and Social Media Jokes Contest, beginning today, and ending December 15, 2007. After all the fun and success we had with our first contest (the SEO Lyrics Contest), how could we not follow up with another?

I came across the Neilson Net Ratings for the top U.S. social networking sites. It shows that MySpace had 49.5 million unique visitors in October 2007, growing 19 percent over October 2006. While their growth percentage lags behind Facebook’s 125% and LinkedIn’s 189%, MySpace is still the giant, with an 80% overall market share.

This week I look at MySpace, by the numbers:

The Beginning: