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Robert Scoble
Robert Scoble
Who has the best SEO/SEM info? Post URLs here:
April 19 - Comment - Share
Google webmaster blog is well-known as reputable: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/ - Matt Cutts
73 more comments
Live has a good webmaster blog too: http://blogs.msdn.com/webmast... Their most recent post about getting out of the penalty box is quite good. - Matt Cutts
It is important to get back to the basics once in awhile and I am rebuilding my blog from the foundation up, which is why I am asking. - Robert Scoble
Is SEO/SEM still relevant? - Mona Nomura
Google also just started a video channel for webmasters: http://www.youtube.com/GoogleW... Over 30+ videos already up to answer common questions. - Matt Cutts
I'm a big fan on http://www.seobook.com (Aaron Wall) and http://highrankings.com (Jill Whalen) - Jason Kane
Thanks Matt! Does anyone have a good checklist? - Robert Scoble
The Yahoo equivalent is the Yahoo! Search blog: http://ysearchblog.com/ - Matt Cutts
I am not shocked that a Google employee was the first to answer this, by the way. - Robert Scoble
@Mona: ...can you expand on your question? What has made optimizing content and Web sites for search engines less relevant? - .LAG liked that
The only SEO that has been able to show me actual results is http://NowSourcing.com - MarkCarras
SEOmoz for sure. - mjc
Mona: yes. Techcrunch tells me 60% of it's traffic comes from search. - Robert Scoble
This post will open the floodgates. Another vote for SEOMoz here however - Mo Kargas
Let's see. There's my blog of course: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ . For search news, Search Engine Land is quite comprehensive: http://searchengineland.com/ . I often check Google Blogoscoped http://blogoscoped.com/ or Google Operating System http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/ for other interesting news. - Matt Cutts
Robert -- while not a one place checklist, visit http://forums.digitalpoint.com/. I've implemented some of their recommendations thus far and I feel like it's already making a difference. - Aanarav Sareen
I've recently heard Google changed their algorithm, plus with aggregating sites indexing for us (FriendFeed, Facebook, Twitter), there are many outlets and methods of people reaching our media -- that is, if we remember to segregate to keep various audiences interested. ie: staying away from ping.fm like services. - Mona Nomura
And then there's the HTML documentation that we offer for webmasters: http://google.com/support... plus our help forum http://www.google.com/support... - Matt Cutts
Thanks, Robert. - Mona Nomura
I'll let other folks suggest additional outside info. There's everything from Eric Goldman who talks about legal aspects of search http://blog.ericgoldman.org/ to SEO by the Sea http://www.seobythesea.com/ which talks about patents related to SEO/SEM/search. It's a really broad field. It's almost like asking "What are some good sources for information about blogging?" :) - Matt Cutts
What a timely question Robert :) I'm just studying up on this whole subject for my own site, and didn't really know where to start. Nice - guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Yes, another vote for SEOmoz here. This checklist is pretty comprehensive: http://www.seomoz.org/dp... - Craig Bailey
"Does anyone have a good checklist?" We wrote an SEO beginner's guide at http://googlewebmastercentral.... that I proofread before it went live. You can also do searches like [wordpress seo guide] and there are several good resources in the search results. - Matt Cutts
Mona, Yes. something like 90% of all traffic starts with a search engine, so unless you are a destination site ,you rely on search to send your traffice. There are times when RSS Subs can be more valuable, like when you are doing loyalty building, but generally NEW users are finding you through a social media or through search. More people are in search than social media..Ergo its still relevant - Brandon Wirtz
Aanarav, I would recommend some caution regarding Digital Point. Some of the more aggressive stuff that gets pitched in corners of DP can get you in trouble. - Matt Cutts
I am a fan of Search Engine Guide http://www.searchengineguide.com Great advice and solid writers. - Ross Dunn
The sites listed here are (mostly) excellent for sure. I'm also kinda partial to the SEO Success Pyramid (since I wrote it). http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/the-seo... - Matt McGee
I'm adding all these to http://delicious.com/jayneff... thanks! :) - Jay Neff
This is a MUST read in my opinion: SEOMoz http://www.seomoz.org/article... - Doug Lawrence
Of course Google is going to be the Dali Lama of SEO but there are many gurus of interest: http://www.searchengineacademysc.com - Laurel Phelps LaFlamme
Not that I'm biased, but LinkMoses http://www.ericward.com/article... and the Link Building Best Practices QandA http://www.ericward.com/bestpra... are on my must read list. - Eric Ward
@seomoz great docs, great tools, and a fun and informative blog & community - Julie Bovee Hill
Interesting how few SEOs seem to hang out on FF. On Twitter this would be a massive swarm of link dropping. - Matt Cutts
For WordPress I recommend http://www.yoast.com - Erno Hannink
Matt: this went to Twitter too. I have good PR's on both friendfeed and Twitter. - Robert Scoble
What about excellent content? Is that still important? I mean, useful material for human beings? Shouldn't that be well ranked by search engines? And of course, a usable and web standards compliant site. - Alexis Bellido
me - chaz2b
Thanks Scoble! I've been looking for this info myself, actually. - Adam C.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog for technical specs on SEO and http://www.seobook.com/blog for business insights in relation to SEO - Dave Fuentes
Thanks for this list. It finally showed me that value of FriendFeed over Twitter and Facebook. Good answers. Rock on. :-) - Martin Seibert
I just want to mark this for building43 which I just did with this comment. Oh, I wish I had invisible comments to add metadata/metatags to items like this. - Robert Scoble
Leather: I never liked delicious. It isn't setup to have a conversation like what happened here. - Robert Scoble
Leather: when I search friendfeed for building43 I want this post to come up. Here, take a look: http://beta.friendfeed.com/search... No need to create another item in delicious. - Robert Scoble
www.SEOmoz.org, www.SEObook.com , www.SEOquake.com and also www.webpagefx.com is quite useful. - Hayk H.
As Alexis Bellido says, "a usable and web standards compliant site." I recommend http://www.w3.org for brushing up on the compliance side of things (even if it gets a bit technical). It's the standards by which the web runs, from the horses mouth, so to speak. - David August
You may want to try #Neil_Patel & his #Quick_Sprout outfit http://www.quicksprout.com/about... See his post: "How to Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines" http://bit.ly/JeXq1 - informative & good free advice. I've been digging into this subject myself for the benefit of a product one of my companies is incubating and this chap and his firm keeps rising to the top of my list. I am also fairly certain that he will advise you for free in return for a good word to your "subjects" ;) @AAinslie - Alexander Ainslie
This post and more importanly the timeline of the replies are in and of themselves useful as a measure of which SEO/SEOm firms are paying attention online. Not that this is an automatic measure of capability or quality, but you gotta question how good any site is that doesn't link drop on this particular post, be it a self drop or otherwise, given who the author was/is. I*'m, amazed there haven't been more. This might be tell us a thing or two about FF and the SEO community. - Eric Ward
Just a comment regarding Digital Point, they commonly recommend greyhat/blackhat techniques, and offer lots of stupid stuff for a price. The same advice can be had for free on BlackHatWorld.com. Information wants to be free. ;) - Lee Ingram
http://www.seobook.com with Aaron I rate highly, digital-point is probably a good place for short term success on splogs but nothing sustainable long term for a proper business. - Mark Edmondson
If this is about your blog vs SEO in general, that's a bit different. For blog SEO you might try Aaron's lengthy article on SEO for bloggers, http://www.seobook.com/blogger... Joost DeValk's Blog http://www.yoast.com or Matt Cutts favorite commentator: http://www.wolf-howl.com - Lee Odden
Some of my favorite WordPress SEO recommendations are from Yoast: http://yoast.com/article... - and this is an outstanding presentation on WordPress Blog SEO: http://wordpress.tv/2009... - Don Campbell
Eric, thanks for your offerings. I think that maybe the lack of SEO people here may be down to the fact that we are all working hard implementing all these techniques for our clients. There are plenty of SEO companies who merely do the work, rather than write down what they are doing and share with the rest. http://dragonsearchmarketing.com/blog... , the shop I work at part time is running really hard right now, with 3 new hires in the last 2 months. - Mark Zip
As to the reflection on the Ff community, perhaps that is because FF is bleeding edge and most work in the trenches of SEO is being done short of the bleeding edge, where there are more "regular" folks. - Mark Zip
Just joined StomperNet . Not a plug as I am still new with them (1 Week) http://stomping2.com/ and would like to know how others view them. They provide very detailed info through video. Seem to have an impressive staff on board. They are a paid subscription but think it is worth it so far. Would especially like to hear what Matt Cutts has to say about them. Should I cancel my subsription or not? - Jonathan
Jonathan: I know some of the StomperNet folks, they are very smart. - Robert Scoble
It does feel special to be using this service and be so connected in such a varitey of topics. Just tried the similar search (after reading comments on Matt Cutts ff) and did my usual search to see how a system works. http://similar-images.googlelabs.com/images... Need to get more non naked pics going :) - Jonathan
Jonathan, that would be a longer conversation than the FF textbox has room for. - Matt Cutts
Confidential SEO Secrets Book (down to earth and real). ;-) http://www.allenharkleroad.com/Home... - Allen Harkleroad
Matt Cutts, should i use them or not? Are they doing harm? I am trying to learn but not move into the black hat. - Jonathan
Various guys: Seobook, seomoz, www.searchandsocial.com - gareth【ツ】
Black hat is an attitude. - gareth【ツ】
Killer SEO / SEM info for Small Businesses http://www.flowtown.com/blog :p - Ethan Bloch
SEOMoz is good, Seobook is good, I would also recommend WebmasterWorld as well. Supporters area on WebmasterWorld has some of the best minds hanging out there... - Bill Hartzer
Robert - The most recent article I did on free SEO resources is here: http://anzman.blogspot.com/2009... Hope it helps! Charlie - Charlie Anzman
I found http://www.waferscale.com as the best website which provides meaningful and easy to understand articles on SEO - Xelios
now if you have a CIALS site the above would be like a fart in a Gail,not much of an impression. - tomartomartini
Uri Nizan
Uri Nizan
YouTube - Jon Stewart Shakes His Fist At Twitter - http://www.youtube.com/watch...
YouTube - Jon Stewart Shakes His Fist At Twitter
Play
March 3 from Google Reader - Comment - Share
Robert Scoble
Robert Scoble
RIP @factoryjoe - http://factoryjoe.com/blog...
March 3 from Backtype - Comment - Share
"Wow, welcome to the web where everyone knows you real name." - Robert Scoble
Deb Kolaras
Deb Kolaras
@BillTamminga not a big fan of .ning, but am a huge fan of WP's BuddyPress...way more flexible.
March 2 from Twitter - Comment - Share
Robert Scoble
Robert Scoble
More in my series of how advertising is changing. Here's CEO of Widgetbucks showing how:
March 2 - Comment - Share
Robert Scoble
Robert Scoble
@loic: Twitter is broken and we all know it. But we muddle along anyway. Bring us better tools so we can view groups we care about.
February 23 from Twitter - Comment - Share
It would be nice if people with influence, like yourself, could get everyone to drop twitter in favor of Friendfeed. Of course we'd need to get the app developers to move as well to create a Friendfeed app ecosystem. - KyleHase from twhirl
41 more comments
And of course first you'd have to turn Friendfeed into an app that could actually function as a direct replacement for Twitter. - Ken Sheppardson
The "feature" that FF is missing that twitter has is reduced feature set and limits in the face of performance issues. - Andy Bakun
FriendFeed should buy Twitter and move all Twitter users to FriendFeed. FF is far better than Twitter - Waldemar Schott
Twitter is probably worth alot more than FF at this point, especially with the recent explosion in users. - Matyjas
Maybe Twitter should buy FF, throw their site away and put FF on twitter.com - Waldemar Schott
Is twitter broken ? No - it is saturated because it was overhyped. When people stop looking for the next big thing and realize that all of these tools that come along are just another nice thing to have in our toolbox the hype will die down. Until then people are going to keep racing to see who has the most followers. - Patrick Allmond
Patrick: Twitter is broken in many ways. The community there no longer has integrity. Why does Veronica have 115,000 followers, most of whom are spam, while her boyfriend, RyanBlock has 13,000 followers (Ryan used to run Engadget and should have way more followers than Veronica should). I'll tell you why: the system is corrupted and broken. And we won't even go near the fail whale problem. - Robert Scoble
Maciej: well, are we counting all the fake users in the explosion, or real ones? I'm not sure anymore. I can demonstrate that new accounts lately are heavily fake. Twitter's executives seem not to care about this issue. - Robert Scoble
I don't think Twitter is broken, but I do think it is reaching the end of its life. I wrote about it more sensibly: http://blog.jamesmarshall.org.uk/2009... - James Marshall
I think "broken" is a strong word...changing yes. - John Flynn
John: Twitter is broken, it's just that you haven't seen the damage. I've shown it off on other threads if you care. - Robert Scoble
James : you joined Twitter in Nov08, have done almost nothing on it (like follow lots of cool people) and yet somehow you seem to think you know a lot about twitter. strange. - Alensa
Alensa: +100 - Robert Scoble
+1, Alensa! (oh, Robert beat me, and by two orders of magnitude. Too slow on the draw! *grin*) - Ken Kennedy
Robert, Social media is "broken". Not only twitter... And until the web sees and understands efforts of people like Chris Saad, Ashley Angell, Messina, Tantek... (and very humbly mines) it will remain broken. I mean it's not a "technological" issue, it's a design one. - directeur
directeur: innovators get rewarded often in other non-credit ways. But I agree with you. By the way, the fact that you know all those people demonstrates that they are getting SOME credit. I follow all of them and share anything remarkable that they do, by the way. - Robert Scoble
directeur: some social media is more broken than others. Twitter takes the easy coding route out of problems and it costs us all. That's why you see the fail whale so often (more than 10,000 times more often than I see it here on friendfeed) and why they have corrupted their communities through poorly-thought-out features. @ev does this, though. He spends "just enough" to make a service highly profitable. Did that with Blogger too. I can't blame him for taking the low road. It pays off. - Robert Scoble
Robert, I agree, they're getting "some" credits and they deserve it A LOT. Maybe, you and me, know them because of our common and particular interest in these subjects... But, trust me, most people don't know yet what "attention" or "microformats" are, thus those efforts remain invisible to the masses. And since startups success is first about getting the "average user's" satisfaction, people who manage these startups don't really care about innovation and innovators :( - directeur
Robert, I agree also about the "low road", and that's what I'm saying in my precedent comment too. I've worked with a highly successful marketer and one thing he thougt me is: Don't try to be smart, just sell! - directeur
directeur: I think smart does sell eventually. Word gets around that one system has integrity, another is corrupted. It does matter in the long run. In the short run, though, Twitter will make lots of profit, just like Blogger did. Blogger never worked well for me. Always was slow, both before Google bought it and after. And always had lots of spam. Sounds a lot like Twitter, doesn't it? - Robert Scoble
The only thing I would add to Robert and directeur's conversation (which I agree with in whole) is that "groups" is a flawed concept. It relies on you adding people to your social graph... then grouping them out into contexts. I would argue that the context (subject, topic, event) comes FIRST - conversation comes second and adding the person to your social graph comes last. The challenge with Twitter (and to a lesser degree FF) is that the social graph is the only way to discover content (and people)... - Brian Roy
Robert, you just nailed it! Smart sell "eventually" and in the long run. Let's hope that FriendFeed -which still lacks some more smartness like: Attention Profiling- will be to twitter what Wordpress is to Blogger :) - directeur
@Robert why you keep talking to someone delete you in one clic and forgot when he need you're help for promote his business ?? - Yann from twhirl
Brian: friendfeed is a friend discovery system. Here, try it out. If you "like" a friend's item that I've never seen before all of a sudden that item and your friend is put into my view. But I agree with where you're going. We need even better systems. Search is one way, but we still need more ways to find the really great content out there. - Robert Scoble
Robert, one word and I know people hate me because I'm repeating it a lot: APML :) Seriously, we've discussed this a lot, you and me, and I know that you do care. Brian is right. This is what FriendFeed lacks. Sharing, rating, finding people AND content with "interests" (Personal interests) is the way to go. I've tried with Feedego (remember, you tweeted it) NoiseRiver, and now SocialWhois. But ironically one NEEDS "popularity" to get "attention" on ATTENTION :) - directeur
No, we don't need to complexify Twitter. Just make alts and have some of them with a very small group to reduce clutter and others to surf the noise. - Prokofy Neva
directeur: you should put URLs to all of your projects. I just never took to your stuff for some reason. But, yes, you're right. Attention breeds attention. :-) - Robert Scoble
directeur - Enable popular contexts (like I'm trying to do with Peter Himmelman's Furious World http://furiousworld.com). People interested in the context will aggregate there, discover one another, and the power of the social graph actually gets utilized to add more interested people to the context. Sorry (but not really) for the shameless plug. - Brian Roy
Robert - I agree - FF has better discovery tools than Twitter. But is certainly doesn't make context based discovery easy. This isn't about search... it is about participating in real time conversations about topics you are interested in. - Brian Roy
Brian, I totally agree on both suggestions! Kuddos to your efforts on the furiousworld project too! I'm getting some nice and kind noise about it and wish you a great success with it! Please let me know if I can help in any way! I'm a bit overwhelmed lately but i'll very gladly work with you on these subjects :) - directeur
Brian: give me an example of what you want to do. I have lost the context and need to understand more about what you're thinking of. - Robert Scoble
Robert - There are two live examples today - One at http://ushealthcrisis.com and one a http://furiousworld.com - These are destinations about specific topics. Tools to "tune" Social Media (Twitter/FF) so that on that site you get JUST stuff about that topic (signal) and can engage in conversation with other interested people. The magic is it is still public... so my social graph sees that I'm talking about - for example HIPPA, and can come join the conversation... - Brian Roy
I get to discover new interesting people talking about subjects I find interesting... the site owner gets more traffic by leveraging my social graph... we all get rich conversation centered on specific topics (contexts). - Brian Roy
In order for Twitter to be broken do you have to believe that, at some point, Twitter worked perfectly? - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
We're conditioned to use software that is broken. The thing is, Twitter works well enough for the people who use it. - Victor Ganata
Mark: it worked better before February 6, yes. And at least I could trust the follower numbers as lame and petty as they might have been. But your point is a good one. Twitter has always been busted and yet we still use it. - Robert Scoble
So, here's my prediction: As happens so frequently in web apps, there will be (is) a competitor that will be the successful one, and Twitter will be looked at as another IM service. - MVB (Curmudgeon of FF)
Twitter runs my life. - © b e e n s w a n k
I think the fact that twitter is "broken" inherently leads to more innovation as groups and individuals find their own ways to use the pure raw potential that's there. - Amie Gillingham
The beauty of FF is that every person can create his own view of the content and people. Like Robert said, some people see FF as a friend discovery system but for me it's primarily a content agregator. Everybody can choose how they create and consume content. I don't follow too many people but on the other hand I love the friend-of-friend concept. Follow, unfollow, share, comment, like... more... - Tapio Kulmala
In the spirit of Mark's prediction - The SM aggregator/network that does the best job engaging the developer community to extend/add value to the offering will "win". None of them are doing a great job today (FF is best... Twitter is becoming openly hostile to DEVs, Facebook is only interested in getting content INTO FB). - Brian Roy
It's ridiculous to think of SM as a zero-sum game. I bet there are a quite a few of us who use FB, Twitter, and FF all on a daily basis. I doubt any of us who do want any of them to disappear. You use the right tool for the right task, and for the right audience. - Victor Ganata
Kol Tregaskes
Kol Tregaskes
What are you essential WordPress plugins?
February 22 - Comment - Share
For example, what pluings to do you use for Flickr, caching, SEO/meta tags, Google Analytics/Sitemaps, Twitter and FriendFeed? - Kol Tregaskes
24 more comments
I'm not a big Flickr user, but for some of the others - All In One SEO, Super Cache, Ultimate Google Analytics, Google XML Sitemaps, Akismet for spam of course, WPTouch for iPhone friendly theme, Tweet This, Subscribe Remind (reminder to RSS subscribe for new visitors), Subscribe to Comments - Patrick Jordan
Patrick, I have most of those listed, yes very important. - Kol Tregaskes
Here's what I use: Disqus, All In One SEO, Clicky Web Analytics, FeedBurner FeedSmith, Google Analytics for WordPress, Google XML Sitemaps, MediaRSS, Redirection, WP-Cache, FriendFeed Comments - Michael Hocter
Ready? Cuz this is a huge list: Akismet, All In One SEO, Category Images, Clean Archives Reloaded, Disquis, Feedburner Feedsmith, Friendfeed Comments, Google XML Sitemaps, MediaRSS, PingPressFM, Visual Recent Posts, Wordpress.com Stats, WP Postratings, WP-PostViews, WP-Stats, WP Movie Ratings, Yet Another Related Posts Plugin - Haggis (Sean Loyless)
Sean, some new ones there for me, sill check them out. Thanks, Michael. - Kol Tregaskes
Disqus/Intense Debate (different blogs), Zemanta, FriendFeed Comments, FlickrRSS, Feedburner, SEO All-In-One, Most Tweeted Commented, Most Recently Tweeted. Not sure about the names of the Twitter plugins. - Shevonne
Oh yeah Akismet - Shevonne
Sociable, Disqus, MediaRSS (for posting to FF!), the rest are built in now. Akismet (comes with) is necessary. - anna sauce
I'm glad it comes with Akismet now, makes sense. - Kol Tregaskes
disqus/intense debate, ff comments,media rss, platinum seo, feedburner feedsmith, wp cache, YARPP, askimet - Amber, Random Time Lord
Amber, FF comments for me too... once I get it working. ;-) - Kol Tregaskes
did you ever get it running? - Amber, Random Time Lord
there might be an issue where if you update to FF too fast it confuses it. You may have to manually associate it with a FF thread, sometimes mine does that - Amber, Random Time Lord
Amber, never got it working. I was actually very quite on FF this weekend as I worked on my sites for most of it. Posted a few things here and there not much. Ah well, I'll stick to FF until I can get that working. - Kol Tregaskes
i think BudyPress is one of the most innovative plugins . possibly the future of the 'fluid social web' http://cli.gs/Yqh6Gv - Alensa
Akismet. Too much spam otherwise. What else do I use? The Stats plugin is useful. Google sitemaps generator. Reply-to-comments so that emails go out when there are replies to a comment someone subscribed to. I'd like to use the FriendFeed plugin, but my posts don't get discussed on FriendFeed (more on Twitter, which isn't really great for discussion) - Colin Charles from twhirl
I'll try to only include ones I didn't see above...Add to Any, flickrRSS, Ozh' Who Sees Ads, WP Post Ratings, WP-Simple Viewer, pageMash, Social Homes - Justin Korn
Zong is also a great plugin if you are into monetizing premium content - Alensa
Kol, do you use the WP interface to create posts? - Amber, Random Time Lord
AVH Amazon, cforms II, flickrRSS, Math Comment Spam Protection, Netflix-X2, Picasa Photos, Publish To Facebook, Search Everything, Sticky Menu, TwitterCounter, Twitter for Wordpress, WP-EMail, WP-Print - Patty Bradley
I use All in one SEO pack, Google XML Sitemaps, Sociable, Tweetroll, No Ping Wait, among others included. - Carlos Lorenzo
Akismet, All in One SEO Pack, Google XML Sitemaps, FriendFeed Comments, Dagon Design Sitemap Generator, and a few others - Tamar Weinberg
Add to Any Share/Save/Bookmark Button http://tinyurl.com/wp-a2a-... - Pat
Pat, I saw that while browsing yesterday. I'm currently using ShareThis which I think covers similar services. - Kol Tregaskes
I would have to agree Akismet sits up there pretty high. - Sean
Robert Scoble
Robert Scoble
Epocrates CEO shows me how his company's app is improving the world (video here): - http://www.fastcompany.tv/video...
Epocrates CEO shows me how his company's app is improving the world (video here):
Play
February 18 - Comment - Share
This is a great company and shows that technology can indeed improve the world for both rich and poor. - Robert Scoble
6 more comments
http://www.epocrates.com/ is a medical app that helps doctors get the latest information about the diseases, drugs, and other things they need to give you a solid diagnosis. It also checks to make sure the doctor isn't prescribing you drugs that could dangerously interact. - Robert Scoble
yeah Web2.0 Apps + Social Networks can Change the World for the Better!! ;)) Rock On Robert!! Peace* - Billy Warhol
This is an awesome iphone app.Useful when away from the computer to check interactions. - rob
I have had Epocrates on my iPhone since I got the first iPhone. I love it - Francine Hardaway
I wonder when would all this technology become commonplace in Asian nations like India. - Arvind
Arvind: I have a second video coming that discusses that. There are a group of doctors who are bringing mobile devices with Epocrates on them to poor nations and giving them to doctors. That's why this technology is saving huge numbers of lives. - Robert Scoble
1 in 4 is an amazing number ! - Alensa
Robert Scoble
Robert Scoble
Who is doing the best job at helping people build best-of-breed business web sites? Discuss here:
February 15 - Comment - Share
Amazon? - Varun Mahajan
55 more comments
I ask because last night I asked a question for Printing for Less CEO about how to use social media to get business and Altan Khendup posted this site http://www.ignitingtherevolution.com/ which I checked out and liked a lot for marketing inspiration. Need the same kind of thing for web site inspiration. - Robert Scoble
Amazon, CafePress, Ebay? - Live Crunch Blog from twhirl
Varun: Amazon's web services would certainly be discussed on such a site, but is Amazon the best place to go and learn how to build a better web site? I don't think so. For instance, would Amazon teach you how to use the Google Keyword Lookup tool at https://adwords.google.com/select... ? or would it be the best place to learn how to use Facebook Connect in the best possible way? - Robert Scoble
http://stackoverflow.com is very close to what I want, although it's aimed at developers only. I want a site that is a bit higher level than that. That shows a little code, but also gives lots of case studies and demos and SEO info and marketing info and eye track results and AB testing results, etc. - Robert Scoble
ignitingtherevolution.com layout is broken with Safari, I get punched in the face with some google ads with some weird layout - Jaanus Kase
I've worked with a couple of usability experts but these guys really make a difference when helping determine best-of-breed sites: http://www.bunnyfoot.com/ although they're mostly UK they just opened an office in Hong Kong - Colin
Well, back in the day, it used to be Siegal, the guy that wrote "Creating Killer Websites". Veen teaches the "art and science of" but I don't know of any off hand that deal with aiming for business right now (including standards for SM use) - Melanie Reed
Colin: yeah, I'm looking for sites that will help for free, not just pitch me on their paid services. - Robert Scoble
Melanie: yeah, I remember Siegal's site. Veen is a good guy, I should interview him. - Robert Scoble
Robert: You might give Adaptive Path a try. Veen used to work there and was one of the founding fathers: http://adaptivepath.com/ Of course the site screams high end not free. :( - Melanie Reed
Melanie: Adaptive Path is doing the work I'm looking for, but they don't share their knowledge on their site that I can tell. - Robert Scoble
http://www.marketingexperiments.com/, http://www.marketingsherpa.com -- neither deals exclusively with websites, but include the tons of case studies, demos, A/B, eye-tracking stuff for marketing best practices across email, web, social, mobile, etc. - Dale Larson
http://www.alistapart.com/ does some of what I'm looking for, but isn't really focused on building bleeding edge business sites that join social networks, java script components, media, and cloud computing technologies together in a fun way that is aimed at building better business sites. - Robert Scoble
Robert, I use a bunch of different sites for building client websites, my list is here: http://itafroma.tumblr.com/post... Absolute must-reads for any web developer/designer are emphasized. - Mark Trapp
Ahh ok - I guess I could point you in the direction of company sites that spend serious cash ensuring targetted users feel like they are looking at and finding exactly what they want? May not be ideal for you though, inevitably they are sites for mass audience and online retailers... - Colin
Dale: those are ingredients in the meal, thanks! - Robert Scoble
Uhm, Joshua Porter? http://www.bokardo.com - Kurai (ff)
Robert: Yeah, thought it might be. No, they don't share. I'll keep on lookout in my cyber-travels and shoot anything to you if it crosses my path. blessings on your search. - Melanie Reed
Colin: no, these things don't necessarily need to be very expensive. Building Facebook Connect isn't something that's very expensive to do, but is anyone out there showing how to do it right? Along with other things like talking about new cloud computing techniques like cloud bursting? (12seconds.tv uses that, if a file gets popular on its service they move it over to Amazon's web services and redirect all the traffic there). - Robert Scoble
http://2advanced.com/ - they do a lot of rich media sites, but can engineer anything. - David Gosse
The UI resources on Yahoo! are really good too. Maybe not all you're looking for, but it's a start :) - Kurai (ff)
Federico: bing! Yes, that's very close to what I'm looking for. Not quite in the form I was hoping to see, but it's the closest I've seen yet. - Robert Scoble
This post came at an interesting time for me. I'm trying to build a website for my wife's museum that is a Non-Profit organization. I want to build a site that takes advantage of social media to get the word out about the museum. I also want to design a site that will help build a community online. Any suggestions? Build with straight HTML or use a CMS package like joomla? Their current site is http://amset.org - Bryan Lee
web monkeys back and better than ever with a wiki at its heart and anyone can contribute http://www.webmonkey.com/ Also, um Google and Yahoo have done a great job with their product specific blogs and YUI. Google also has something called Google Doctype http://code.google.com/doctype... for web developers. It includes articles on web security, JavaScript DOM manipulation, CSS tips and... more... - mal
David: that site is ugly. I +hate+ all Flash sites. That's not the web I want. - Robert Scoble
As I said Robert, they can engineer anything - look at their portfolio before you become a hater. Their site is not the way they design all client sites. Very surprised you had not heard of their portfolio of work. - David Gosse
mal: more ingredients in the meal. Wow, I totally forgot about web monkey. This thread is EXACTLY why I like friendfeed. Where else on the web would I have learned about Bokardo and be reminded of web monkey? - Robert Scoble
My company, 9, does a pretty good job of this. We're new but I have a high tech background with 9 years of user interface experience and know a lot of the UI tricks to keep users sticky to the site, etc. We reduce a lot of costs for clients because of our developer relationships. www.whatis9.com - Patricia
Robert: Joshua Porter's book is great also. You should check it out. - Kurai (ff)
David: I'm sure of that, but to put that up as their calling card sends the wrong message about where the web is going and demonstrates the kind of stuff they probably want to build for their clients. This is how Las Vegas Casinos end up with unusable, but beautiful, web sites that have no human interaction. - Robert Scoble
Patricia: whenever you put a URL onto the web you should ALWAYS include http:// so that it builds a link like this http://www.whatis9.com -- thanks! - Robert Scoble
Yep, Mal, good jog! We used to use webmonkey all the time. I'm still using surveymonkey for some stuff. - Melanie Reed
Well ... depends on scale but WP and Drupal come to mind. Great building blocks. The UI ... well, that's highly distributed and often conflicting in nature. Ion Interactive versus RAMP Digital versus Get Elastic versus Grok Dot Com etc. etc. etc. Plenty of flavors. - AJ Kohn
AJ: exactly. Those are the building blocks of the modern site. What this tells me is that there's a need for information for business people on how to build a modern web site. - Robert Scoble
I think SitePoint deserves some mention as a hybrid-free web design resource. They make their revenue off book sales but you can get enough free-stuff to satisfy. http://www.sitepoint.com/ - Melanie Reed
Robert: do you know http://nettuts.com ? They're articles cover some basic stuff, but some advanced things as well. Might want to check out they're site network too. - Bruno
Robert. This is exactly what I am looking for as well. Great discussion! - Bryan Lee
@Robert, thank you! My company also saw the need for how to build a modern web site. We don't just do that, but also help clients figure out what makes sense to them, so if they have community, it's the right format, etc. There's a definite need for it. - Patricia
Bruno, no, didn't know that one. Thanks! - Robert Scoble
Patricia: I bet you are losing a ton of business because you don't demonstrate what a modern web site looks like. You should build a demonstration site for a fake business (or your own business) and then explain how your designers/engineers will help me build the same thing for my business. - Robert Scoble
@Robert, the site for 9 is part of our branding strategy - it's sort of all tied into a specific asthetic that makes sense if you know our brand. Your site should absolutely tie into your brand and make sense to the look/feel you're trying to create. 9 is not a development shop or an internet company. It's a cross platform consulting and content production comany - our work varies from... more... - Patricia
What makes a best-of-breed business web site? Is it feeds? Widgets? Community? Or just compelling copy. http://friendfeed.com/e... - Peter Warnock
Peter: all the above, that's why I want to find a site that discusses all this stuff holistically. - Robert Scoble
@Peter, relevancy - to its audience/user base, to their needs and how they interact, to the company and what it's vision is. The features are only important to how they're used, if they're used at all, etc. - Patricia
@Robert, if you are interested in learning, I'd direct you over to ecommerce. During web 1.0, companies in that category conducted a ton of research to find what users do and how to keep them sticky to sites. Compelling stuff. If you notice all the top ecommerce sites are very similar. It's not by accident. - Patricia
Patricia, Your concept, as Robert brings out, sounds VERY intriguing! But he's right. You could benefit from a gallery site that gives your user an idea of what to expect. Take them on a visual "tour" of the process for a few example sites and then sell them with your last comment to Robert. - Melanie Reed
@Melanie, thank you! For 9, the corporate strategy and how we work doesn't really rely heavily on leads online. It's all offline, relationship based, recommendations, etc. When a prospective client comes in, we have a deck that shows our work, etc, but for us, the focus is different. I know it's an unusual approach, but that was the fun part. 9's just different. - Patricia
@Patricia thanks for being so gracious. I kind of thought that's how you marketed. But maybe 9 will consider the online market more heavily in the future and that would be great! :) - Melanie Reed
this tweet shows kind of shows the way site design is ideally moving.. sort of on the fly, loose pieces tightly joined... RT @timoreilly: RT @yishaym Want to change the world? learn Python http://is.gd/jv6d | interesting site/tech http://stimuluswatch.org/ - mal
@Patricia, kudos for being different, but I think you'll find through experience, that you only capture the low-hanging fruit this way. In my opinion, a good business web site, at minimum, delivers a powerful "elevator speech". - Peter Warnock
@peter, i don't agree, but i do understand your point. none of our client leads come by way of the web, unless you count email. if the type of clients we're attracting are low hanging fruit, i'm sticking with the plan. :) i realize that it's hard to convince a tech crowd that business can be done this way, but this is kind of why we exist - because not all businesses can or should... more... - Patricia
@Peter not by any chance a Scot, are you? Looks like your icon is a familiar crest. :) Very similar to the McCleod crest - Melanie Reed
@Scoble I am also a big fan of stackoverflow.com - Varun Mahajan
Google has a blog that's a little of what I'm looking for here: http://googlesocialweb.blogspot.com/ - Robert Scoble
lots of unconnected bloggers are the best resource for consulting businesses on how to build cutting edge sites. businesses can easily find this information if they try. - Alensa
Great question. Well worth a thorough discussion and thread! Mashing it up imho is a big part of it. And how do you keep it unbiased? - Rob Schieber
Seth Lesky
Seth Lesky
Angelsoft | The ecosystem for early-stage investing - https://www.angelsoft.net/
August 30, 2008 from Google Reader - Comment - Share
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