So apparently the MyBlogLog flap between Andy Beal and Jeremy Zawodny has pretty much run it’s course. Jeremy has edited his original title - which accused Andy Beal of spamming MyBlogLog, to now read “I overreact sometimes…”. In the edited blog Jeremy has more or less come off of his original supposition that Andy was using MyBlogLog for spamming.

Of course, after Scott Rafer of MyBlogLog actually entered the thread and said: “I don’t think that the Zune promotion is spam, and I’m personally thrilled when people get more creative than using the screenshot default.” It really didn’t leave Jeremy with a whole lot to stand on.

The controversy, as outlined in Chris’ previous post, stemmed from Andy’s use of his MyBlogLog avatar to promote some sort of contest where participants could win a Zune.

Thankfully for us all, the ugliness is all over and amelioratory emails have been exchanged, the blogosphere can carry on. It’s probably worth pointing out though that Jeremy wasn’t the only one making edits last night. Andy has also edited his hotly debated MyBlogLog avatar.

His new one?

Touche.

…According to YSM. In case you missed it, there were some reports going around that Yahoo nixed the popular Overture keyword tool. Because of the perceived actions on their part, Yahoo was ripped by some bloggers, the most notable being Aaron Wall.

Now, thanks to a post from SearchEngineJournal’s Loren Baker, it appears as if the reports of the Overture keyword tool’s demise were premature. Evidently, the keyword tool has become so popular; the webpage it’s located on is prone to timing out. A quote from Loren’t post reveals more:

Unfortunately, the responsiveness of this free tool is diminished due to the sheer volume of hits it receives each day, therefore browsers may time out and error pages may appear but it doesn’t mean that this tool has been removed.

The YSM team goes on to indicate they plan on keeping the tool active until they can come up with one that outperforms the current installment.

Whenever noted bloggers have at each other, it’s really hard not to notice… and the heavier the hitter, the more publicity the situation is bound to receive (guilty). So when you hear Andy Beal and Jeremy Zawodny - two of the more famous bloggers out there - are at odds with one another, you can’t ignore it.

The virtual fracas started when Zawodny called Beal’s MyBlogLog avatar into question at his blog, saying he believes using it is a spammy tactic. Beal’s reaction was clear and concise: he didn’t believe Zawodny’s initial reaction; he didn’t appreciate being called out in that manner (perhaps email should’ve been used instead of the blogosphere) and he no longer plans on using the MyBlogLog service.

Zawodny’s move is kind of surprising considering the fact Beal has never openly endorsed any spammy promotional techniques. While the use of the avatar in question is perhaps dubious at best, in his entry addressing the situation Beal expresses MBL’s Scott Rafer approved the initial contest to begin with.

So here’s where we stand - two heavy hitters within the blog/search marketing community are at odds for what appears to be a misunderstanding. Hopefully, this will have a peaceful solution.

Evidently, last year’s GoDaddy Super Bowl commercials have left quite an impression on other members of the Internet community… so much so that infamous adult search engine Booble has offered $50 million to CBS for the opportunity to run a commercial during one of the most watched sporting events in the world.

In case you aren’t familiar with Booble, here’s a little refresher - Booble was developed and marketed as the best adult search engine.  During the development process, the Booble designers thought it would be a good idea to mimic the Google homepage, something the boys at Mountain View did not appreciate. Because of Google’s intervention, Booble changed the look and feel of their site, which now mimics Yahoo to a degree.

Fast-forward to 2007 - Booble has asked CBS to run an ad that would undoubtedly cause all kinds of uproar, a fact CBS is undoubtedly aware of.  Needless to say, CBS declined Booble’s $50 million (they actually have this much money to spend on TV ads????).  There’s been no word as to whether or not Booble will show the intended commercials on their site, much like GoDaddy does.

Hat-tip to Andy Beal.

A lot happened in the search/marketing blogosphere this weekend and a number of posts were valuable enough to gain legitimate linkbait status.

First off, there was a well-made Google TV hoax that caused quite a stir. Thanks to some elaborate faux videos, some suspected Google was in the process of launching an online television service. There was even a tv.google.com domain listed that also turned out to be a fake.

One of the videos actually shows users how to log in to Google’s double-secret probation beta test for Google’s “TV service” (a beta test that doesn’t exist) by going through Gmail. TechCrunch takes a good look at the hoax.

It seems Dave Pasternack wants a piece of Threadwatch’s competition (hey, $1000 is still $1000) and has started optimizing his “about me” page located at Did-it.com. Needless to say, bloggers like IncrediBILL (who actually changed the name of his blog to “Dave Pasternack News and IncrediBILL’s Random Rants”) and Graywolf took Pasternack to task for his apparent display of double talk concerning search engine optimization.

According screenshots at both blogs, Pasternack has included links to himself on his about page while pumping up the related keyword usage in his biography text. That’s a decent amount of work for someone who doesn’t think SEO is anything substantial. Is Pasternack shooting for the Threadwatch reward or are these changes merely coincidental?

Speaking of linkbait, the crowned prince of all things related to this method of promotion, Chris Hooley, has been interviewed… by himself. In true Chris Hooley fashion, the interview provides some good insight into what makes the man behind Drinkbait tick. Because the interviewer was working with firsthand knowledge of his subject, the readers are presented with an insight not normally found in these types of articles.

An excerpt demonstrates the skill:

Sorry. I mean how do you get the DUDES to link to you?
I drink a lotta beer with them and tell fart jokes at classy restaurants.

That works?
Sometimes. Once or twice. Ok not yet but I believe in the system.

Cool. This is going well.
Hell yeah it is. I just made like 14 bucks on adsense beyatch!

Since we started this interview?
No since November.

From my perspective, I haven’t seen such a skilled interview since Mike Wallace patrolled the 60 Minutes sidelines. To pull this type of information out of your query takes years of training and practice… Thank you Chris for taking on such a tough interview. We are all better off because of it.

In all seriousness, Hooley’s post is a great example of linkbait. I, like a ton of other bloggers, have linked to this because of the quality and humor on display. If you are fighting with the quality content stigma, consider going against the norm in a way Hooley has (but be original, don’t copy his work like others have done).

Other items of note: YouTube is starting a revenue sharing program with producers of original videos. Check out our write-up over at WebProNews and get that unique video content ready. There’s gold in them there vids…

eMarketer released a report discussing how mobile technology - mainly the mobile phone explosion - affects social media. While there’s no denying the affect the mobile industry has had on social media (check out Mike Sachoff’s WebProNews write-up), is the mobile technology medium going to change the way users interact with these social media hubs?

Will these robust little phone devices eliminate the middleman (being the home PC) when it comes to posting social content? If a recent Threadwatch musing is any indication, mobile technology may very well change the social media landscape as we know it, especially once the teen users come of age.

But before that, it should be known that eMarketer’s report indicates these mobile social users use mobile technology to upload images and videos to sites like MySpace and Facebook. It doesn’t address the questions Threadwatch posed - will these devices essentially eliminate the Internet as THE method of social media interaction in favor of the networks these teenage users have established through extensive use of their mobile networks (Who’s In Your 5)?

The gist of the Threadwatch post is that teens are beginning to ignore the Internet in favor of their mobile devices. In turn, instead of being apart of the standard Internet social networks like MySpace and Digg, their social network becomes the friends they have constant mobile contact with:

Their ’social network’ is real, and when they aren’t together in ‘real life’ they stay connected with their cell phones. They aren’t using Digg, Netscape, Facebook or “Web 2.0″. Even the few that have blogs might post once or twice a month and even the self-admitted ‘geeks’ said that the Web is like a big commercial.

A few of them shop on the Web, but it’s word of mouth advertising that influence their purchases, not ads on Myspace or blogs, unless one of their friends happen to blog about something. All of them said they use cell phones and text messaging much more than they surf the Web or use messengers.

So if the younger generation is in fact reducing the amount of time they spend on the Internet via PC or Mac, how will their behavior affect social media as a whole - especially as they start to mature into taxable commodities? How do you create positive buzz if a big portion of your target audience is eschewing the web in favor of mobile technology and the people they connect to using it? How do you reach a demographic that may not embrace the delivery vehicle of choice?

As the Threadwatch post indicates, these younger users respond quite well to the word-of-mouth approach to marketing, but how do you expose a mobile audience to your message? Perhaps text message-based advertising is in order, but this medium has incredible spam potential, severely reducing the effectiveness of such a campaign.

It seems the best to attract the type of audience I’ve been describing is through viral messages. If you can generate enough “cool” buzz for your product, it will eventually filter down to your audience, provided they are active within their established network of friends and other mobile users.

There’s news going around that Google has or introduced a new algorithm designed to eliminate Googlebombs (or linkbombs as they should be called).

In case you are not familiar, a linkbomb is an attempt to influence search rankings by pointing a contextual phrase - like “miserable failure” - to a site you want associated with that phrase. The goal is to get enough links using the chosen contextual phrase pointing to the targeted destination site. The more of these links you have, the higher the probability search results would adjust their results accordingly.

The most popular of these linkbombs was probably the “miserable failure” campaign, which resulted in current US President George Bush’s biography page receiving the top search result for the phrase in question. With the introduction of Google’s new anti-linkbomb algorithm, results for the “miserable failure” query have changed: a BBC article discussing the original “miserable failure” linkbomb is now the first position result.

Furthermore, President Bush II’s biography page is no longer on the first page results.

The question I’ve been asking is, “will Google’s new anti-linkbomb algorithm affect current and future SEO competitions?” The reason I ask is because most SEO competitions ask the contestants to rank highly for a chosen phrase and the most effective to do so is with contextual backlinks. For instance, if you want a site to rank highly for the phrase “awesome site,” you point as many links containing the phrase to the site as possible.

Now because of the new Google algorithm designed to combat linkbombs, there are a couple of SEO contests that may have a difficult time achieving the desired results:

First, Threadwatch is having a competition to see who can get the first position for the phrase “Dave Pasternack”. The webmaster doing so by noon on March 1st will win $1000. Will the new Google algo allow Threadwatch’s competition to reach its full potential or will it render these efforts as wasted? If Google “ignores” linkbomb campaigns, winning an SEO contest is even harder.

Another competition that may be affected by Google’s decision is the 2007 SEO World Championship - who is essentially having the same type of contest as Threadwatch. The keyword phrase to rank for is “GlobalWarming Awareness2007″. However, because the competition includes Yahoo and MSN as well (not just Google), participants may still be able to employ their linkbombs… just don’t expect big changes in Google’s SERPs.

Dave Pasternack has decided to rile up the SEO followers again, and this time they are determined to return the favor… at least from a SERP point of view. Pasternack conducted an interview with DMNews titled Is SEO Rocket Science, which pretty much opened the metaphorical floor up to thorough blasting of the growng industry.

This time, however, there appears to be some repercussions Pasternack is going to have to face extending beyond mere blog post responses. Threadwatch, by the behest of Aaron Wall, is holding an SEO contest to see who rank the highest for the keyword set of “Dave Pasternack” (oddly enough, his about me page from Did-it.com didn’t even make the first page of Google… and that’s before the Threadwatch competition).

Concerning the competition, the webmaster for the who ranks in the first position at 12pm EST on March 1st wins $1000. Not content to stop there, Threadwatch will also reward $100 to whoever has “the most interesting” PPC ad for the same keyword set. Gentleman (and ladies) start your SEO engines.

Speaking of blog post responses, IncrediBILL has posted a scathing response to Pasternack’s DMNews article. In his post, Bill takes a look at the keyphrases Did-it should be targeting and checks to see where they rank in Google. The results, from an SEO perspective, were quite poor:

It appears Did-it wants to be known for “search engine marketing news and resources” yet isn’t anywhere to be seen in the top 100, then using quotes you only get sites not even related to Did-it. The shorter version “search engine marketing” does show up in the top 100 when you slap quotes around the phrase and it’s down in the 80’s. Now they are in the top 10 for “paid search optimization” which is in their title, but take out the word paid and they vanish.

Apparently, the lesson here is, “don’t make outlandish claims if your own work doesn’t remotely back them up”. We’ll keep you posted on who wins the Threadwatch competition.

I came across a thread in WebProWorld discussing two different types of blog posting styles - making a lot of posts in a given day (around 30) or making a much smaller number of longer, more researched posts. The idea behind making such a large amount of blog posts in a given day - much like the Hollywood gossip rag blogs do - is attracting a larger audience.

The thinking is if you were to frequently update a blog that much, the blog would attract a number of new readers because the content would always be fresh. The subsequent discussion contained some interesting responses with good information I’d like to pass on.

The first thing I noticed when I looked at the thread this morning was this post by Anita Campbell, who says:

according to the Technorati State of the Blogosphere report from October 2006, there is a definite connection between posting frequency and authority of a blog. The top-ranked blogs in Technorati averaged about 2 posts per day (53 per month)…

Now, if you went solely by the Technorati report, then the answer is clear - you would make 2 or 3 quality posts on a daily basis. However, the initial poster’s perspective was validated by this nugget of information:

Take a look at PerezHilton here is a guy that started with nothing but has become very popular due to his blog and he makes around 30 post per day.

Of course, making 30 daily bullet posts about the Britney Spears upskirt shots or where Lindsey Lohan was last night isn’t all that difficult. Also, securing a healthy audience - one that has long expressed a desire for “news” related to the Hollywood industry (see Enquirer, The National and Magazine, People) - is probably not your first concern, especially when industry “insiders” leverage technology like camera and video phones (if you post a picture of it, they will come).

However, can a non-focused-on-useless-actresses blog actually sustain such a rate of posting, especially if the content is expected to be quality? Without contributors, it would be a monumental, if not impossible task. If you continue reading the WPW thread, you notice the consensus forms around making a few quality posts as opposed to the PerezHilton-like 20-30 a day.

Besides, you have to ask yourself if the subject you are targeting (in the poster’s case, Internet marketing) actually has enough potential content to support that many daily posts. If it does not, you run the risk of posting the style of content that makes Greg Boser cringe… or, as poster dburdon put it:

This could kill the whole credibility of blogs. I’m sure with such high output quality falls. In the end, when everyone has a blog, all that they will write about is other peoples blogs.

Apparently, bickering about semantics, titles and descriptions is a popular past time once again… either that or some bloggers have too much time on their hands. In case you missed it, a number of bloggers launched a crusade against the use of the word “social” - as in “social media” - to describe this method of Internet interaction.

Before we go forward, Dictionary.com has about 13 various definitions for the word in question, most of which actually apply to this particular medium:

1. pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly companionship or relations: a social club.

2. seeking or enjoying the companionship of others; friendly; sociable; gregarious.

10. Zoology. living habitually together in communities, as bees or ants.

As you can see, even the zoological definition is applicable in reference to this growing Internet phenomenon, especially when you consider Diggers, Farkers, bloggers and other I’m-not-calling-it-social media users and their habitual use of these sites and services (just check any Fark discussion for 24 and you’ll see what I mean).

Now before I travel further down this semantic slope, let me just say I don’t care what you call it, just as long as you use this medium your advantage. The benefits of a successful viral media (is this acceptable?) marketing campaign can do wonders when it comes to promoting your product AND from an SEO perspective.

And if you don’t believe in the effectiveness of a well-planned social media (heh, sorry… force of habit) campaign, just ask Rand Fishkin and eMarketer. They’ll tell you all you need to know about the potential benefits of viral and/or word-of-mouth marketing.

Semantic arguments and witty Breakfast Club references aside, it really shouldn’t matter what this particular medium is called. Whether it’s viral, linkbait, WOM, Web2.0 or social media (you say po-tay-to and I’ll say po-tah-to), you shouldn’t get caught up trying to find a descriptor that fits your idea.

Instead, the focus should be on ways to leverage these viral campaigns to your product’s advantage and the benefits of doing so.