Thus they are most likely targeting me with the message using some kind of IP delivery – looking at which country or region my IP address originates in, and as I use a Polish ISP, they sometimes give me information in Polish.

After you switch display language, it looks a little like this

Facebook was translated using crowd sourcing – to be honest I am not sure it is the best option – it is certainly the cheap option, and gives users some additional sense of ownership which can encourage brand loyalty, but I am not convinced it is the best option.

I am not a native Pole, in fact my linguistic skills are a source of constant frustration for my Polish wife and her family.

Whilst Facebook clearly state the translations are for information purposes only, I shouldn’t be able to pick up glaring translation flaws in a matter of minutes, within headlines… just scanning pages.
Note:- whilst in the games industry one of the roles I performed was coordinating the localization of over 100 SKUs from English to Polish, and occasionally translation Polish > English but that was often more like rewriting the manuals

Here is an example from the terms and conditions

Hmm, definitions and constructions… referring to grammatical definitions and constructions

Unfortunately “Remonty” in Polish means “Renovation” and unlike other similar words, is never used for anything to do with grammar.

The following alternatives would be suitable.

Definicje i Konstrukcje
Definicje i Budowa (zdań)

Google Translate Does It Better

Plugging the same phrase into Google Translate, which recently added support for Polish gives much better results than were achieved using crowd sourcing.

Google Translate isn’t perfect by any means, it needs to expand the dictionary considerably, and probably include specific thematic dictionaries, but recently I have used it to translate from Polish to English for friends and family with reasonable success.

I expect such blunders from professionals translating from their native language into a foreign language, but from such a huge company using crowd sourcing on a large scale, with professional management, I expected much better.

There are other bugs, along with a sense that they didn’t include a solution to take into consideration gender.

Facebook isn’t an open source project with limited resources.

“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.

Due to my moving and connectivity problems I wasn’t able to promote the voting phases but I did vote on the judges choice awards – it is interesting how voting differed between the two.

In some of the more competitive categories such as Widgets and Niche Social Networks, for both the short list of entries into the voting phase, and the final voting, community support was a vital factor, along with the services taking an active role in promoting their nomination.

The final award ceremony will take place at the Open Web Awards live event on January 10th at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

Congratulations to all the winners

I claim it as a review, even though I hadn’t actually seen the product. I had one major problem with it which wouldn’t have worried many of my readers, but was a significant problem for me – it was a physical product.

Part of my old job in the computer games and software industry here in Poland used to be import/export. I have been through living hell with Polish customs so many times the very thought of having to handle what is now minor import paperwork, and then only sometimes, just gives me the shivers.

For a physical product it was damn cheap, $169 Flat Rate (including shipping) = no brainer?

Social Power Linking Membership Site

Social Power Linking is now a membership site, and as such Jack has the ability to continually add new content. A huge amount of new content has been added since it was first launch with tons of new strategy guides, tools and an awesome buzz network to help you promote your content ethically.

It is now EVEN CHEAPER

Jack is really going for the mass market with this site, $29.95 per month, which compared to most training membership sites in the niche is an absolute steal.

Despite my internet connectivity problems with are an ongoing thorn in my productivity, I have already downloaded most of the course material, along with Jack’s Web2.0 Submitter software.

If you are struggling to get traffic, or want to pick up a few extra tips, or just increase your leverage using the buzz group of 500+ social media marketers, Social Power Linking offers tremendous value.

p.s. as Jack noted in the comments on my last review I have been ranking first in Google for Social Power Linking since it launched, with Jack currently holding a solid 2nd and 3rd slot.
We have used many of the same strategies for ranking websites over the last 2 years, and both Jack and Peter are excellent at teaching marketing to others, having done so extensively with their other membership sites such as Content Desk and Authority Site Centre.

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

That is why I was pleased to accept playing a role in both promoting and judging their Open Web Awards, though full details are not yet available of exactly what that will entail.

Selected Partners

Techdirt
/Message
Blognation
Andy Beard
Collective Thoughts
Gadgetell
Watch Mojo
How to Split an Atom

Luca Filigheddu.com
Marketing Pilgrim
Pulse 2.0

Sponsor or Join In

Mashable are looking for sponsors and more blog partners

The Open Web Awards will be a co-production between Mashable and Cohn & Wolfe

1. To say thanks, great post
2. To test stumbleupon algorithm
3. To be the first to discover a new site
4. To build up the strength of a page linking to them
5. To gain traffic both short and long term from the 3rd party
6. To benefit from multiple tier referral programs
7. To bookmark a future resource
8. To build up content
9. To strengthen good relationships with a power user
10. To repair bad relationships
11. Because you stroked their ego
12. For reputation management and branding
13. To share it because it is good content
14. To build awareness in an issue
15. To get them to come and visit their site (linked from profile)
16. Because they are a client
17. To build up followers
18. To get a stumble or Digg on -!- an important story -!-
19. Because someone asked
20. Because they are just being nice
21. To make a comment because they force you to register (just hope it is good)
22. To Get Their Attention
23. because they are polite
24. Because they are just being funny
25. They have auto stumble switched on, and it is just as fast as clicking Stumble

Please note:- this is just a list, and I am not advocating anyone does all, or even any of the above.

All links point to an assortment of quality articles from my recent browsing and stumbling for your enjoyment.

Blog bling, blog community and blog traffic widgets are becoming quite a conjested marketplace, so what makes Blogrush, the newest contender something to take note of?

John Reese

I have a lot of respect for John Reese. People talk about The Digg effect, John Reese can send Digg like traffic to a site just by sending an email, and what is more important is that he sends qualified traffic, buying traffic.

Funding

I am fairly sure Blogrush won’t have any need for immediate funding. They have launched on a cluster of 8 servers for scalability, there is no intention of starting this off small.
John has a team of programmers working for him, and established support personnel. Blogrush is apparently just one small piece in the puzzle which is Income.com, which he has been building up to for over a year.

Viral Concept

Blogrush is designed to encourage people to promote it with a 10 tier referral program. It hasn’t been specified how the breakdown works on each tier, but the benefit of viral referrals will be substantial for early adopters.

That will be one of the keys as with any program of this type. To get maximum benefit from Blogrush, you are going to have to sign up early and promote it… hence why this is going to explode.

The Blogrush Widget

The Blogrush widget looks par for the course, as they have lots of competitors. It is lacking a lot of the technology of similar widgets. Many widgets for instance have built in browsers for RSS feeds or to stumble through content that is being displayed.

What John claims is that Blogrush has advanced technology to match what is displayed on the widget with your blog content… that it is in some way contextual rather than just category based.

This hopefully will make a significant difference with click-through rate, though as far as I know traffic ratios are based upon impressions rather than clicks.

Hopefully we will see improvements in the future.

Free Traffic Potential?

If you look on your screen real estate as a way to generate more traffic by various means, Blogrush is going to be of interest. I believe it has more potential than many similar widgets, simply because it will gain so much attention over this launch period.

Get people signed up early to benefit from the viral effect.

If you have a lot of traffic already, then that will be leveraged into more traffic on the network.

If your screen real-estate carries high value advertising, you might have to think differently, either about including the widget at all, or positioning both now, and when it is more mature (harder to get new users)

I wouldn’t expect to get a 1% CTR from other sites displaying your content, it is going to be far less based upon what I have seen from competing widgets of this type.

There isn’t a community feature which might encourage repeat visits when someone bookmarks your content, thus you have to value the widget based upon its one click traffic potential.

You are going to have to test and track to see if the amount of traffic you receive is enough to justify the space the widget takes up. Initially you will benefit from viral referrals, but long-term you might be better using the space to generate revenue, and then investing that revenue in other traffic.

Lets Get Viral

Despite my long-term reservations, as it has just launched just hours ago, now is the opportune moment to sign up and promote it. It will grow exponentially for a few weeks.

Test and track, if you are gaining possibly 10 new visitors for every 1000 times the widget is displayed, that might be looked on as a reasonable return on screen real estate unless you have very effective monetization, or cheap methods to generate traffic.

Think about traffic arbitrage – I believe there is going to be a way to specify which sites benefit from your traffic credits. Get cheap traffic on one site, use the traffic credits to promote a better monetized site. You might be able to turn Digg and Stumbleupon traffic into higher quality traffic from another site – well, unless it turns out traffic credits are based upon clicks, but even then some headlines are going to generate more clicks than others ;)

Bugs

There were a few problems in the first hour of launch, but they are working around them quickly. Email delivery for registration was the biggest problem.
I had a problem registering with a .eu TLD (top level domain) so I had to use another URL which redirects here with a 301 redirect. That resulted in me not winning a free copy of Traffic Secrets 2 on launch – I would have won it.. honest.

John is promising some more launch competitions over the next few days, and I am sure they will be well worth entering.

My suggestion is to sign up, add the widget to your blog, and give it a little promotion. test and track and see if it works for you. That is what I am going to be doing.

Update – Full List of Categories

To avoid confusion, this is not just a widget particular to one niche such as blogging or internet marketing, it is hopefully suitable for all niches giving relevant content, and delivering your content to relevant blogs – I suppose if you have the only blog in existence on a particular subject, it is only going to be traffic based upon the categories.

Anyway, here are the available catagories

• Automotive
• Business Career & Jobs
• Celebrity
• Computers & Internet
• Education
• Entertainment
• Environment
• Finance & Investing
• Food & Drink
• Health & Medicine
• History
• Hobbies
• Home & Garden
• Humor
• Law & Legal
• Lifestyle
• Marketing
• Music
• News & Media
• Parenting & Family
• Personal
• Diary
• Pets
• Philosophy
• Photography
• Politics
• Real
• Estate
• Religion & Spirituality
• Sports
• Technology
• Travel
• Writing & Literature
• Video Games

Update 2 – Power Tip – Filtering

If people are reading a review you have just written about a product, you might not want them to click through to read someone else’s review, no matter which niche you are in.

Now in the case of this review, I want people to click through to read the site and sign up, not click to someone else’s site writing about Blogrush.

Blogrush provides a useful filtering mechanism based on either keywords or URLs, or both if you are that way inclined.

Yes, I am blocking the keyword Blogrush at least for now – it seem to be case insensitive.

This might seem a litle mean, but if you are writing good content, and then someone clicks away to a very poor review, but then buys a product using their affiliate link, that isn’t rewarding you for creating good content.

I would advise blocking keywords if they present a leak, though if you are running a golf blog, you might not want to block a keyword as broad as “golf” as then the widget wouldn’t offer any useful content for your readers.

Disclosure: I do some minor consulting with one of the blog community widget sites, Blogcatalog, for which I might receive some monetary compensation if they ever manage to flip the site. I try hard not to let that involvement affect my judgement of other similar sites

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.

Its Not The Quality Of The Product

I have experienced some of Jacks training in the past, and it is always phenomenal, he gives so much valuable information and presents it in a way that is easy for anyone to understand.
I have absolutely no doubt that Social Power Linking will be no exception to the rule.

It Is Not Philosophical

Jack and myself currently have the same philosophical approach to building websites, and in fact I am fairly sure with his Authority Site Centre that he built and promotes with his partners he uses many of the same plugins as I do on a regular basis, only his team sets up the blogs for you on their own servers.

It Is Certainly Not Price

This is a physical product that will be shipped to your door

• 6 Hours of Video on 8 DVDs
• PDFs of the Slides
• PDF Fast Start Guide
• 3 CD of the same material to listen to in your car

Now most “online gurus”, most of which have half, or even less, of Jack’s 10 years of online experience (and often propose some shady tactics) would start off with a short term promotion of their product for $497 or more, and quickly raise the price to the best part of $1000

Now don’t get me wrong, some of those more expensive packages are worth their weight in gold, because they come from people with a similar level of experience to Jack, and honestly I am sure Jack’s latest offering is worth far more than the measly price he is charging.

Quite often these days you would be expecting to pay $67 for an ebook, with the price raising to $97 within a few days for something that might take you 1hr to read. Sometimes again that is worth it, if you already have a successful business, and one tip could make an existing traffic funnel profitable, or allow you to use a new one and make a profit.

This is a steal for only $149 plus $20 for shipping anywhere in the world… yes even to the Far east, Australia, or to me in Poland.

Take a look at Social Power Linking for yourself

I Don’t Know All Jack’s Strategies

Whilst Jack has a very similar philosophy for site building, I am sure I would pick up a few tricks that would make a total cost of $169 worthwhile.

It Not The Sales Letter

Jack has been known to have some pretty long sales letters in the past, but this one is only about 4 or 5 pages, tells you exactly what you get in Social Power Linking for such a small purchase price, and gives a quick overview of the contents of each CD.

There is not a testimonial in sight

Why? Jack honestly doesn’t need them, he has been in the business so long and is so highly respected. He is also quite sure that his offer is so compelling combined with the feedback his affiliates will give him in reviews such as this that any testimonials will just be unnecessary fluff that will scare away potential customers.

Jack knows full well that in some niches PPC is just not a viable consideration unless you have massive profit margins only suitable for those who have already learnt how to play Google’s Adword’s fiddle to perfection.
Fortunately there are ways to capture free traffic from search engines, and Jack is a master at not only gaining traffic, but teaching others how to do it in whatever niche they are in.

No Problems With Payment

There was a time that many residents of far-flung countries didn’t have the possibility to pay for products using Paypal but times are changing. Paypal makes it easy and if you haven’t got an account then there is always a credit card.

(note: in the past Jack used 2checkout for one of his programs I was a member, and I had some problems – Paypal really does make a difference for me)

Guarantee – You Had Better Believe It!

Not only do you get your money back, they will also pay you a little on top, though actually this is a little confusing.

They don’t refund the $20 shipping charge, but they do pay you $22 on top of the purchase price of the goods. You would only actually gain $2.

On top of that you would also have to pay for the goods to be shipped back, so if you do feel compelled to ask for a refund, you might actually be a few dollars poorer, but that is the same with any product you purchase mail order or over the internet.

So Why Am I Not Buying?

No it is not what you are thinking, I am not looking to get a free copy, I really would part with my cash right now.

I am an unusual rare case, and even if Jack offered it to me for free, including free shipping I would refuse.

Part of my old job in the computer games and software industry here in Poland used to be import/export. I have been through living hell with Polish customs so many times the very thought of having to handle what is now minor import paperwork, and then only sometimes, just gives me the shivers.

When I started my online business, one of the primary reasons was to get away from some of the mundane and sometimes highly stressful aspects of international trade.
My wife working for her father’s apparel business still goes through this almost daily and although things have greatly improved since Poland joined the European Community, I still have what I can only look on as “import phobia”

Thus I am only interested in digital products

Don’t Let My Reservations Stop You

Honestly, my phobia is my problem, not yours.

Physical products are shipped around the world daily, and if they are for personal use they most often sail straight through without having any customs paperwork or charges even here in Poland, well unless you are buying an $80,000 car, a motor cruiser or $4000 hifi system (yeah I still get requests from family friends to help with such purchases, and more often than not I avoid it, even though it would pay well just to make a few phone calls)

$169 Flat Rate (including shipping) = no brainer?

For some people yes, for others who are not making any money online and things are a little tight financially back at home, Social Power Linking is not for you. I would in that case suggest you read Jack’s Authority Black book, and Michelle’s Web 2.0 Traffic guide that I mentioned just a few hours ago.

I actually deliberately wrote about the free alternatives first so that I could link through to them in this post.

I deliberately wrote this as a separate post because just like Jack, I know a little bit about traffic generation and how well I can rank for products that I discuss that I believe are of value to my readers.

Hopefully I can persuade Jack to make a digital version on Social Linking Power available for fellow “import phobia” sufferers as I am sure I will learn something new.

Yes, I did deliberately use “Social Linking Power” instead of Social Power Linking” and I suppose I should also mention Socialpowerlinking.com – there are currently around 2000 references to this product in Google, I wonder how I will rank in the SERPs for “Social Power Linking“