“feel free to invite others to this room – as long as they are bloggers and/or are interested in the ProBlogger type topic I’m happy for anyone and everyone to join. I’ve invited all my contacts on FF. Pity there’s no list of public groups for people to join.”

Whilst there isn’t a public list, in many ways Google with a site search query these days provides a very real alternative.

Here is the query I used:-

http://www.google.com/search?q=%3Asite%3Afriendfeed.com+inurl%3Afriendfeed.com%2Frooms%2F&pws=0&gl=US&num=100

Here is a clickable search link for Friendfeed Rooms in Google

You can always add an extra keyword term to the search to find rooms related to specific niche’s or maybe rooms where specific people have interacted.

In other Friendfeed news, it seems Steve Gilmor doesn’t like Friendfeed much, and I love this line:-

Nowhere in this debate (most of it mercifully hidden forever behind the FriendFeed black hole where conversations go to die)

this seems to be the weekend bitchmeme so I thought I would at least add something useful.

I thought it would be worth writing a few tips, just as I did for Gooruze as there are a few gotchas, and ways to increase your benefit of using and contributing to the new Fast company site.

This isn’t a site that would interest many niche bloggers, though I dare say many of my readers who blog in related niches such as social media, technology or various forms of online marketing might benefit from using it. Think of it very much as a niched LinkedIn.

Adding Your Blog

There is the opportunity to add your blog to their list of optional feeds to include in their feed reader and have listed on profile pages.

Whatever you do, take your time when creating the description, as it supports HTML, and there doesn’t seem to be a method of editing it afterwards, at least I haven’t found one.

The first 2 or 3 lines seem to show up in general feed subscription areas, so make sure there is enough information to encourage a few clicks from potential interested users.

In addition you should include an extended profile with a few links ;) This is important because a full description is displayed on the profile page of any person who decides to display it and sign up to your feed within Fastcompany.

From what I can see those links are search engine friendly, as you will see on my Andy Beard – Niche Marketing profile page.

You will also notice that feed descriptions are viral – everyone who adds you will also provide links from their profiles.

Fastcompany Bio and Profile

There is plenty of opportunity to get creative with your bios on Fastcompany and an opportunity for highly relevant links.

Links with anchor text can be added in the Bio section, a link without anchor text to a personal website, and even a link with anchor text to any company that you have worked for, using the company name.

Blogging Opportunity

Aaron Wall has just joined as well, not sure whether that was via an invite from Lee, or if Aaron invited Lee, and has taken the opportunity to test out the blogging system which uses Drupal.

Apparently there is the opportunity to have content promoted to the front page, though I am not sure whether that applies to the front page of “beta” or the front page of Fast Company itself.

Is there an opportunity in this?

Possibly – guest blogging has benefits if you are writing on a blog in the same or similar niche, and Fastcompany has a lot of subscribers if your content gets promoted to the front page and their RSS feeds. This might be worthwhile if you cover a particular topic in great depth on your own blog, and wish to also introduce the topic with a lighter post to a slightly wider audience.

Groups

Fastcompany has groups – to be honest doesn’t everywhere? Unless they provide an easy way to track group discussions, I am just going to ignore it for now, just like I generally end up not taking part in Facebook groups as much as I should… or maybe shouldn’t, again that is a time factor and opportunity cost.

The Scoble Effect

With Robert Scoble now working for Fastcompany, you can be sure that the site will attract a little more attention, though he will be concentrating on video content.

Fast Company Beta Conclusions

For me creating a FastCompany profile was worth a couple of hours work, and may bring some benefits in the future. I will probably add a few blog posts of a more general marketing or technology nature and see what benefit can be gained.

I am not sure if it is invite only, but if you want an invite, just ask in the comments and make sure you comment with an email address suitable for the invite to be received.

I would like to emphasise not abusing Fast Company with lots of spam links, I am sure they have some moderation in place and most of these tips will have little use if your blog doesn’t represent content they think the Fast Company readership will enjoy.

Update

Thanks to Jim from Seo Wrench as he has confirmed you can sign up without an invite

The current 28 blogging partners (increasing daily) have been provided with a list of categories to accept nominations for, and it is down to each blog to decide how to proceed with collecting nominations, whether to make individual posts for each category, or to handle things from a single post.

Voting will take place in a much more refined manner.

1. Mainstream and Large Scale Networks
2. Applications and Widgets
3. Social News and Social Bookmarking
4. Social Search
5. Sports and Fitness
6. Photo Sharing
7. Video Sharing
8. Start Pages
9. Places and Events
10. Music
11. Social Shopping
12. Mobile
13. Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks

As I loosely focus on niche marketing, with an emphasis on WordPress, Blogging and SEO I am hoping that we can get some nominations for some of the more niche players.

Blog widgets for instance unfortunately haven’t got their own category, and the same is true of more niche services for blogging such as for comment presentation and monitoring.

It has been suggested to me that those services will most likely fit under widgets or the niche services.
Widgets is likely to be dominated by Facebook applications from many of the mainstream blogs, so this is really your chance to help some of more blogging related widgets gain some exposure.

I am not sure where monetization widgets fit in, probably in the same categories, even though some social shopping widgets allow you to add an Amazon or Commisson Junction ID.

How To Nominate

We are going to make this easy to avoid multiple comments

I am going to allow up to 3 nominations for each category, just add an additional line with a nomination if you want to nominate say more that one widget or niche social network.

Just because someone else has already nominated a site doesn’t mean you shouldn’t also nominate it. If they end up with nominations for 100s of different widgets, I am sure there will have to be some filtering, so your additional votes will be important.

<b>My Nominations</b>
Name of Service - URL - (Applications and Widgets)
Name of Service - URL - (Applications and Widgets)
Name of Service - URL - (Social News and Social Bookmarking)
Name of Service - URL - (Social Search)
Name of Service - URL - (Sports and Fitness)
Name of Service - URL - (Photo Sharing)
Name of Service - URL - (Video Sharing)
Name of Service - URL - (Start Pages)
Name of Service - URL - (Places and Events)
Name of Service - URL - (Music)
Name of Service - URL - (Social Shopping)
Name of Service - URL - (Mobile)
Name of Service - URL - (Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks)
Name of Service - URL - (Niche and Miscellaneous Social Networks)

I have made it easy to copy and paste the code, and even included an extra line for both widgets and the niche social networks.

If you don’t want to nominate a service for a particular category, then just delete the line.

We will also be looking for nominations over on Collective Thoughts soon, and I expect my colleagues will say a few words to slant voting in different directions.

Update 5th December

Comments Are Now Closed so I can send nominations through to the guys at Mashable

It updates live, in a similar way to Truemors.com and various widgets such as the one for Netscape.com

Topics are split between Entertainment, Technology, Politics, Sports, Business, and Life and apparently blogs have been selected based upon Technorati Authority, frequency of posting, use of relevant tags, links to related subject matter and general topicality.

In theory some of my content might appear within both the Technology and Business sections, but that remains to be seen.

Is Technorati Topics Useful?

In theory it is spam free but it is also elitist, though the bar hasn’t been set insanely high for entry. I suppose it might bring additional readers to sites who wouldn’t otherwise get noticed.
I have seen one blog with an authority of 65 appearing in the results already.

Technorati Bugs Fixed?

The Technorati Popular page is fairly broken

Apparently Guy Kawasaki has a twin, in fact he is not the only one…

I actually took these screen shots a week ago, and nothing has really changed

Automattic is now a top rated blog… huh?

Lets have a look at the quality of the posts in the feed on the Automattic blog

There are other discrepancies too, but it is really not my place to snitch on anyone. Technorati are allowed to interpret and hand edit the results just as much or maybe more than Google are, especially as they don’t have a monopoly and 10,000+ employees.

The errors I have pointed out here are the most obvious ones.

I did check to see if they have fixed the Technorati favorites for those with more than 200 – they haven’t so I can’t add or remove any.

Important Milestone For Technorati

Recently Technorati have had quite a few shake ups, with Dave Sifry dropping his CEO role (but remaining Chairman) and 8 people were also let go.
Prior to that in July Adam Hertz, Tantek Celik and Liz Dunn left whilst hiring promoting Dorion Carroll.
Corrected – see comment by Dorion in comments

By my reckoning, Technorati probably still have around 40 staff and have still to show how they are going to integrate Personal Bee which they previously acquired.

Hopefully we will start to see either existing systems fixed, or more ways we can interact and explore our favorite blogs, and make use of what is still one of the best implementations of OPML.

Sherman has launched an excellent Beginners Guide To Mastering Web Basics group on Facebook

Unlike most Facebook groups, Sherman has already uploaded some real juicy video content.

Aug 30, 2007 Thurs: Uploaded 15 Videos (Web Publishing Basics:601 Series)
Tip: Look for this starting video: “Web Publishing | 601.1 – Quickstart | 03’15″

Aug 28, 2007 Tues: Uploaded 9 Videos (Graphics Basics:501 Series)
Tip: Look for this starting video: “Graphics Basics | 501.1 – Quickstart | 01’27″

Aug 24, 2007 Fri: Uploaded 8 Videos (Sourcing Stock Photography: 401 Series)
Tip: Look for this starting video: “Stock Photography | 401.1 – Quickstart | 00’47″

Aug 23, 2007 Thurs: Uploaded 10 Videos (FTP: 301 Series)
Tip: Look for this starting video: “FTP | 301.1 – Quickstart | 01’11″

Aug 22, 2007 Wed: Uploaded 14 Videos (Hosting: 201 Series)
Tip: Look for this starting video: “Hosting | 201.1 – Quickstart | 02’14″

Aug 21, 2007 Tues: Uploaded 7 Videos (Domain Registration: 101 Series)
Tip: Look for this starting video: “Domain Registration | 101.1 – Quickstart | 01’01″

We have videos on these topics:
- Domain Registration
- Hosting
- Transferring Files (FTP: File Transfer Protocol)
- Sourcing Stock Photography
- Editing Graphics with Macromedia Fireworks
- Creating Simple Web Pages with Macromedia Dreamweaver
- Locating creative, graphics and templates
- Setting up your first WordPress blog
and many more…

Tinu recently has also launched a group on “sharing”

Name:
Open For Web Business
Type:
Internet & Technology – Websites
Description:
Let’s commit to more sharing of resources, links, and contacts for the benefit of all. Teach or learn the science of web traffic through sharing. Be Collaborative, Open, Transparent, Social – and Celebrate it!

A few days ago I was chatting to Tinu about her new ebook “The Complete Facebook UnHyped Networking for Traffic PDF Guide” and she offered to setup a special offer for my readers, as she is a regular herself.
I actually declined, not because I didn’t feel the book would be a valuable resource to many of my readers struggling to work out what all the fuss is about Facebook, and how to go about profiting from it, but because it takes a fair amount of work to setup a special landing page, and I didn’t think sales would justify the effort.

Tinu is constantly researching and networking on Facebook, and has had some reasonable results, and made some great contacts. Whilst you might not think it is important, the ebook places a great emphasis on applications – not the ones that annoy the hell out of you when every one of your friends invites you to join, but the ones that will help drive traffic back to your primary website, preferably a blog.

Currently at 82 pages, it is a solid read for beginners, and there are a couple of tips in there for more experienced users that they might have missed, plus a useful contact for a discount on Facebook application development (yes, Tinu has been doing some effective networking)

She also gives good reasons why you might not want to jump on the Facebook application bandwagon too soon.

The most valuable benefit of the package is most certainly one of the bonuses, consulting time with Tinu.
Part of Tinu’s business has been analysing web traffic methods for years and you get to pick her brain.

The ebook might not contain a huge amount of information for well networked, Web2.0, social media marketing experts, but then again most of the “social media marketing experts” are not internet marketing trained.

One of the problems with most articles about Social Media Marketing is that the practitioners have very little experience with traffic funnels, so whilst they might know how to get traffic from Digg, they might not have experience in converting that traffic into subscribers and customers.

I think Tinu’s lifetime updates to her ebook are going to be interesting, because she looks on social media as a way to generate subscribers and money, not just a few links.

The backdoor discount ;)

Sherman is building up a notification list for Facebook Marketing information which will be well worth signing up for and as a special incentive he has a special offer available on Tinu’s new ebook for those that sign up.

I am not making any money at all linking through to Sherman’s new email list, or his excellent Facebook group, and neither Sherman or myself are making any money from Tinu’s ebook.

I have benefited from both Sherman’s and Tinu’s information in the past, and want you to benefit as well.

Donations are going to be made (if possible) in large chunks of $100

This poll will not work correctly in feed readers and email

[poll=3]

Voting will be open until sometime during the morning of Friday 4th May (EST) – hopefully that will give the winner some nice additional beer money for the weekend.

Earnings to date for paid reviews: $30 + $75 + $98 + $130 = $333

The one review I did during April was for iBegin Source Business Information, so they are effectively sponsoring this round of donations.

I am covering the shortfall this time around as I know I have 2 reviews in the kitty to do this week.

That means the second giveaway will be for $100 this Friday

As discussed in the comments of the previous poll, I am carrying forward half the value of votes from the previous round, rounded up, so that votes from the previous round are not looked on as wasted votes, but still giving new plugins a chance.

For new nominations, please refer to the Best WordPress Plugins nominations page.

Admittedly I have been a little lax with my donations to other authors, though I have invested money in plugin development, only to publish the plugins myself under a GPL license, thus in my own way giving to the community.

What I have decided to do is to donate some of the income I receive from writing paid reviews back to the WordPress community.
I currently receive $130 for a paid review, and it is my aim to give 50% of my paid review earnings to plugin authors, probably on a monthly basis.

To ensure that credit is given where credit is due, I am only going to start the ball rolling with 2 of my own personal favourites. All other suggestions are subject to an “open mike”.

Only one suggestion per person is allowed, and you are not allowed to suggest your own plugin.
Once the list reaches 20 plugins, I will open a new post for this months voting.

Each month the list will be rolled over with new suggestions added. Though we will see how workable it is to include all the suggestions in each month’s list, I reserve the right to only include a certain number from the top of the list, or to bump plugins up the list if I personally feel they are worthy of being included sooner.

There is always a variation in how much I receive for writing a review, but my aim is to make each payout “visible” – more than just beer money, so typically around $100 seems suitable.

Technorati simply can’t cope with new forms of blogging and RSS feed generation. I am not talking about splogs, which seem to still be rampant, and reblogs, likewise, but totally legitimate alternative unique content sources that are effectively blogs.

coComment

Not too long ago, coComment introduced the ability to be able to claim your coComment feed on Technorati, and went to the trouble of creating a very integrated claim wizard.

Within a few days, the very legitimate coComment feeds full of unique content were filling up Technorati links pages. It seems Technorati swiftly took action and decided that coComments feeds were not blogs, and silently nerfed them.

coComment feeds are not splogs, they are a record of activity all over the web that contain content directly linked to individual people, and real discussions.
Technorati could use coComment as a way to filter out splogs, because blogs that don’t get comments might be a good indication of splogs and reblogs.

Twitter

Twitter allows you to post a Technorati claim. I have claimed my Twitter feed, and so have a couple of my friends. Update: Paul has written about doing so here now.

Twitter also has a blogroll of sorts. There are links on the sidebar to the people you are following which are links Technorati can see.

The result if people claim their Twitter account in Technorati and their friends do the same is clear to see.

Now what happens if you are a Twitter user like Robert Scoble with 100s, actually over 1000 followers.

Not all of Robert’s followers have claimed their feeds, and Technorati hasn’t found them all, but that won’t take long.

Technorati Can’t Cope

coComment is very legitimate user generated content – if I fed my coComment feed into a blog, it would be looked on by Technorati as legitimate, so why negate it’s effects only days after it was introduced?

Twitter is actually less legitimate than coComment – you are limited to very few characters unlike blog comments which can often be longer than many blog posts.
Twitter has a Blog Roll of sorts, that is providing cross linking, and soon Robert Scobles Twitter might enter the Technorati Top 100 – you only need 3300 blogs linking to a blog to hit the Technorati 100 currently, Robert already has 1000 followers and I am sure he will easily clock up more very quickly.
The problem for Technorati is that Robert’s Twitter feed is legitimate content on a different platform, and that people are choosing to link to him from their “Twitter Rolls”

Blog Rolls

One of the reasons blogs that are part of blog networks gain Technorati rankings fast is their sitewide links to other blogs in the network.
As I pointed out recently when defending 2000 Bloggers, there are blogs that are part of blog networks that haven’t posted for more than a year, but due to blogrolls have very high Technorati ranks, without any links from within the content.

Widgets, Plugins and Themes

Various members of the WordPress development team used to dominate the Technorati Top 100 because of the default blogroll links. Nothing wrong with the links which are well deserved, everything wrong for Technorati counting them.

Currently the best way to game Technorati is to create widgets and themes with links to the author. Technorati picks them up as links from the blog.
Some of the widgets can do this in quite a collective way, such as community blogroll widgets that add 100s of cross links to all members of the community. Then again they are only doing the same as “legitimate” blog networks.

How to Fix Technorati

Technorati have to change the way they look on links completely, and only count links within content. That may mean their spiders have to start working in a totally different way, and current link totals will twist real results for 6 months.

Technorati should be counting alternative blogging platforms such as coComment and Twitter, but again, they should only count links from within the content.

Twitter is dominating Techmeme today.

I love Pete Cashmore’s timeline of blogging, Marshall Kirkpatrick did a “sitting on the fence” roundup, (i.e. unbiased reporting), and Brian Alvey put a unique perspective on things, (he should be thinking of adding a Twitter widget to Blogsmith for a USP).

Just added a new toolbar button to my toolbar buttons site for Twitter addicts.

There has been so much talk about Freebase.com, but Twitter.com seriously should have some kind of health warning – so many people are becoming addicted.

Twitter Google Toolbar Button

There is currently a case running in the Danish courts that will effectively decide the law in Denmark for linking to a page other than a home page, typically known as deep linking.
We are not talking about hot-linking, pulling an image or video off someone else’s server into the middle of your own content, but linking as you might to this blog article, using the permalink.

There is a mapping company in Denmark that creates web pages based on other people’s data, such as a company address, and provides maps on how to get there.
They then bury deep within their terms and conditions a link to another page that states that they will charge you money if you link to one of their map pages without permission.

I suppose that is similar to me adding a terms and conditions page, and from that a linking page stating that anyone who links to my blog has to pay me $1000.

Sounds like a lot of money doesn’t it?

Krak.dk only charge $940

Krak.dk have been forced / encouraged by their previous outing on Digg’s front page to not charge a blogger for linking to a map, as long as they are not for profit, and providing they ask permission first. As of this writing however I am led to believe they haven’t changed their official paperwork on their site, or improved their notification on the content pages that you could be charged $1000 linking to information about themselves.

Business sites however are not in the clear, and one is currently fighting “the just cause” for the rest of internet users, but is having their plight ignored.

Paul O’Flahery recently wrote:-

The court case between Gauguin (an auctioneer house) and Krak.dk is now well underway and I’m eagerly awaiting the outcome of this. The case is getting good coverage in the Danish blogosphere (just check out Overskrift), and well it should as the outcome of this case could affect us all.

Unfortunately this hasn’t been picked up by any major Search Engine news site, or A – List Blogger.

The consequences of Krak winning this court battle, and maybe for the ruling to have a knock on effect across Europe are extremely serious, and could damage the way the internet works.

Websites would again become insular, not linking where credit is due simply because noone has time to search for hidden terms and conditions requiring you to pay $1000 just to link to a page.

I did my own analysis of all the links currently going to Krak.dk internal pages – their sugar trap will possibly net them $6m if they win.

Here is the current statement of the rules from Krak AFTER all the coverage from the last 2 weeks.

Official Krak answer:
Every blogger in the world is welcome to use deep links to Krak maps for free. But please ask us.
When it comes to commercial use, Krak has the same policy as Google and others. You cannot use our copyrighted maps without asking.
Krak alone decides whether the use is commercial or not.
In the actual case, the site by nature looks like a blog, but may in fact be a business, so we decided he had to pay.
If we were wrong, and if the blogger in question in fact is not selling anything (no animals or accessories), we will reconsider.

Best regards,

Poul Moeller
Kraks Forlag A/S

• This is more serious than a small tweak to a search engine’s algorithm
• A change in the terms for Google Adsense is insignificant compared
• The latest start-up from “Demo” is inconsequential
• Hell this is bigger news than Robert Scoble talking at a new PayPerPost gig (and for the record I respect Robert for doing so, and for his disclosure)
• And for search, no matter how important people might think Wikipedia is, I guarantee the ability to freely link to any web page is of much higher consequence.
• I am not sure how this compares with Britney Spears or Paris Hilton up the skirt pics, but imagine you couldn’t link to the site that just listed them?
• I am not sure how this compares in importance for global warming – hell if people couldn’t link to each other, maybe the internet would become less attractive, and we would all plant more trees.
• Windows Vista? Well you can always read an opinion on Paul’s blog about how his better half liked it (a non-geek)

Maybe I should spend the next hour checking every page of Paul’s blog in Denmark just in case he has a hidden charge for linking to his. I don’t have to do that because he is a normal sane person running a normal legitimate business and doesn’t need to trap people into paying him money.

Seriously, this story need some main-stream international press coverage.