Digital Business Strategy Marketing Management » Reputation

ASW08 Looking Back at My New Friends at Affiliate Marketing Summit West

David Dalka — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 21:50:23 +0000

Apologies for the lack of posts during the conference. My Dell Inspiron, as well as several other people’s, could not connect to the Affiliate Summit Internet signals. This is Dell’s fault, not Affiliate Summit’s. On that note, Dell needs to finally take responsibility for the many flawed drivers and poorly designed hinges in these machines and do a complete and total recall. I’m gathering horror stories for a future post since Dell is not taking these problems seriously and correcting them fully and globally. If you have a Dell Inspiron horror story please drop me a note.

OK, back to my highlights of Affiliate Summit West 2008!

- On Saturday meeting Ned Farra from Zappo’s, Patrice Kaddatz from Scrapbook.tv, Heather Paulson, Chris Graham from Syntrx and Carsten Cumbrowski was great! Learned some great things.

- On Sunday at the Meet Market I had tons of great conversations! I met John Chow for the first time and he wasn’t anything like I expected him to be! He was amazingly down to earth and easy to talk to. I ran into Kevin Lee from Did-it, we had a nice catch up chat. I met Dominic Sofia from DGM, Richard Forster from Buy.at and George Hansen from Digital River about their quality offerings – really awesome people I’m glad to now call friends. Also had a great talk with Geofferson Marcy at Advaliant about how they uniquely manage publishers.

- Meeting Shawn Collins on Monday during Jason Calacanis’ speech. Shawn complimented me which was quite unexpected but a nice surprise. As you know I attend alot of Internet conference however this was my first time at Affiliate Summit. I was immediately struck at how difficult this conference community is to manage and program due to it’s highly fragmented and unstandardized nature. The accomplishment of not only satisfying this community but growing it in the way that they have is something that both Missy Ward and Shawn Collins should pause to appreciate. The use of Twitter in a group manner as they did at the conference is also brilliant (note to self – I need to get instructions on how to set up a group Twitter like that – maybe Shawn will point me in the right direction!). I look forward to building an outstanding long term relationship with Shawn and Missy over time.

- Speaking of Jason Calacanis and Mahalo, you see me asking a question of Jason in this photo after his speech. Regardless of whether you love and/or hate Jason, I’d highly urge anyone to listen to his speech in the Webmaster Radio link (on Affiliate Tip). It was highly thought provoking talk that replaced the word seo with affiliate spam. So what did you ask him Dave? Let me set some background first. Since meeting Jason Calacanis in December, 2006, he sent Linkedin invites to his whole address book while an entrepreneur in residence at Sequoia and then did not participate in the ecosystem there, he’s sent me dozens of Facebook invites, yet last year when I was in Santa Monica and gave him a jingle and he didn’t call me back. Jason has stated that Digg was “Brilliant” yet Digg is causing content to be recycled and stolen from small blogs and pushed to the lazy masses. Mahalo also has the Alexa toolbar installed on all of the machines at Mahalo, which games Mahalo’s Alexa rating.

So Jason what is your role in creating and contributing to Internet spam? You are certainly not a totally white clean angel virgin here. Listening back to the recording today though, I admit you acknowledged and didn’t deny anything I said when I stated and asked my question. I gotta respect that. I’m left mildly confused if that is the blogger in you that is taught to engage the one that questions you or whether it is truly how you feel. I’m conflicted. To me a friend means going beyond the surface level, I’m still not convinced you are fully capable of it. I’d love nothing more than for you to prove me wrong. I’d also like to thank the dozens of people who came up to me during the rest of the conference and stated that they appreciated my bringing up relevant examples of how Jason (and everyone else) participates in polluting the web, some are more guilty than others of course but nobody is completely innocent.

I’ll ask you another question Jason, “You mentioned how you you have ego alerts during your speech, then you attacked Seth Godin and Squidoo. How can you reconcile how you are urging the creation of content with your ego alerts and how that is terribly different than your personal views on Seth Godin’s creation?”

Alright enough about what I think, here are the other posts on Jason’s talk:

Mahalo’s Missing DNA back at you Jason Calcanis

Affiliate Summit West Thank You

Calacanis is and the Real Hurdles for Affiliate Marketing

Live Blogging the Jason Calacanis Keynote at Affiliate Summit

Jason Calacanis Urges Affiliates to Think Big, Stop Holding Up Checks

Message board discussion of the keynote

“Don’t pollute the river”, affiliates told.

Jason Calacanis Keynote Recap (Affiliate Summit)

-Other people I met on Monday include Jamie Birch from Converseon, Mark Kirschner from Linkshare, Krissy Mitchell a Northwestern University Kellogg alum who works at Avon in New York City. Also met Gary Vaynerchuk from Wine Library TV who will be speaking at the TECHcoktail conference in May. Dan Murray at Ravenwood Marketing and Steve Schaffer from Vertive gave an truly educational talk about how to manage affiliate managers.

- Affiliate Bash – WOW!!! Daron Babin and Brandy really outdid themselves at this one! The Blue Man Group performance during party was amazing. The venue was awesome! Special thanks to Kris Jones at Pepperjam for being the primary sponsor of this event.

- On Tuesday, I sat at a table and there was a talk about WordPress with Karen Jackie and Dana Rockel from Content Robot. Fun folks who know their WordPress.

Attending Affiliate Summit was an outstanding experience, if you attend many other Internet conferences you’d benefit highly by attending the next Affiliate Summit and seeing how these folks fit into your existing web strategy – irregardless if you are a search or a brand marketer. See you in Boston in August! If you met me at Affiliate Summit, please feel free to add me on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin. See you soon.

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Andy Sernovitz: “It’s good to have a goofy name”

David Dalka — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 14:59:41 +0000

He’s right that having a distinct name online can be extremely helpful. It has plenty of search engine results implications. Not enough people think about this issue when naming a company or product.

This is a really smart tip.

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Lee Odden’s Top Ten Online Marketing Tactics for 2008 Survey

David Dalka — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 04:21:40 +0000

Lee Odden has posted the results of his online marketing survey. The blog result is likely directionally correct, but is likely skewed on the high side a bit due to the survey being on a blog. Go figure.

Blogging (25%)
Search engine optimization (14%)
Email marketing (12%)
Pay per click (8%)
Blogger relations (6%)
Online public relations (5%)
Viral marketing (5%)
Corporate web site (4%)
Social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn) (4%)
Webinars/Teleconference (3%)

Lee is also a friend to all, I can think of the many times we’ve shared drinks and meals together in various places fondly and we’ll always be stopped by someone saying hello. Here’s a picture of Lee, myself, Chris Boggs and Tamar Weinberg.

Lee is speaking at Search Engine Strategies London (SES panels on News Search Optimization, Blog and RSS Search Optimization and Online Reputation Management – all good stuff!) . Even more amazing is that the busier he gets, it doesn’t change him, I still hear from him in emails regularly. Keep up the hard work Lee, it shows!

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SES Chicago 2007 : Troubleshooting Dynamic Website

David Dalka — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:23:28 +0000

Moderator:
Anne Kennedy, Manager, Managing Partner, Beyond Ink
Marketing Speakers:
Laura Thieme, President and Founder, Bizresearch
Matt Bailey, President, SiteLogic

Begin Your Research Project:

URL Structure
Search Engine Indices
Current Rankings
Spider Activity (Net tracker gives great spider research…)
Determine Target Terms
Overcome technology, resource and/or political challenges
Index, Optimize
Monitor improvements

Your Page Titles: Are they Really Optimized?

Example: Wine racks (Pier 1)

Page title – is it right?

Dynamic versus static – do they need to be static? No.

Basic Optimization Tactics – keyword embedding

Home page title matters – a lot!!!

Relevant Page Title page, Footer – best first quick steps

Are pages titles enough? H1, H2, Intro optimized, URL optimized, page rank updated.

Hierarchy of a website – URL, how deep and often is the crawl?

What We Found

- We found minimum of 3 issues

- Additional reports and trending are important

When that isn’t enough?

Universal Search?

Update the robots.txt file to remove things.

Canonical issues, soft 404’s get it right!

301 redirects – are they still in place?

Matt Bailey, Sitelogic

IT for marketers

IT and marketing need to work together.

Robot.txt is the welcome mat to your house…

Redirects.

Use Webbug

Architecture – if you using JavaScript, it will not work properly

Duplicate content – avoid it!

Cannibalization problems

Legacy spam – invisible text links…

When Google finds pages though natural crawling, its’ better – Using Webmaster Central helps…

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SES Chicago 2007 – Digital Shelf – The Search Marketing Opportunity for Packaged Goods (CPG)

David Dalka — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:37:57 +0000

Moderator:
Kevin Ryan, Vice President, Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch
Marketing Speakers:
Matt Wilburn, Senior Category Director, CPG, Yahoo!
James Lamberti, Senior Vice President, Search and Media, comScore, Inc
Dana Todd, Board of Directors, SEMPO
Randy Peterson, Search Marketing Innovation Manager, Procter and Gamble

****************************************************************************

Everyone on this panel clearly put a lot of long, hard work into the concepts, thought and research into this panel and this blog post won’t do the great conversation the justice it deserves. It’s bleeding edge, this is fun and interesting stuff that will eventually transform the way consumers chose products and discover need brands that specifically meet their needs.

****************************************************************************

Does search help CPG? Comscore and Yahoo! provided the data for the SEMPO study.

James Lamberti, Comscore

The search marketing opportunity…100 million unique visitors in food alone, and babies

Who are these searchers? Average income, dramatically higher, 80% female

They enjoy cooking and entertaining.

Allergy sufferers are a prime underserved demographic. The opportunity to build brands via presences made through educational experiences.

Matt Wilburn, Yahoo!

Order of importance to searchers

- Information & Help

- Purchase Decision

- Promotion

- Company Website

Content matters more than a direct navigation. (I see a pattern developing here)

Consumers expect a digital shelf to be similar to a store shelf.

Out of stock, hard to find are issues.

Are you visible in paid and organic? Are you creating a nice impression?

Dana Todd, Sitelab

This is a compelling proposition. We believe in the promise of search for branding issues.

We need to think outside ROI. Back away from the spreadsheet. You need to get people thinking outside direct acquisition.

The first brand for cheese is on page three of the Google organic listings. Why?

Chinese toothpaste issue was a counter reaction to the ingredients article in Wired.

Develop problem and solution content.

If searchers are special, treat them as such!!!

End of session comments…

67% of searchers found a brand they weren’t aware of… (Kevin Ryan)

The term PPC is useless outdated and should be changed – Digital Point of Purchase? (Dana Todd).

Question by me in Chicago: Dana brought up the cheese in PPC and no brand organic terms, to use the Liz Strauss conversational blogging element, there are actually 10 posts on toilet paper on Technorati today, shouldn’t brand managers be engaging this, not only for the SEO benefits, but the innovation road map as well?

(all panel heads nod in agreement) Using the data during the planning process is the next frontier after this issue (which is still in the early days)…

This is certainly an area where the conversation will continue and evolve, it’s a challenging area due to the issues of massive change.

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HR Technology Conference : Lehman Brothers Leverages Recruiting Beyond Talent Acquisition

David Dalka — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 12:08:14 +0000

Heather Redderson, VP, Global Talent Technologies, Lehman Brothers
Derek Mercer, CEO, Vurv Technologies

When I saw this description I knew I had to attend this session…

The HR systems at Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest investment bank in the world, have traditionally been siloed, probably just like yours. But, competing with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, VP Heather Redderson knew she had to integrate them all so her 27,000 employees could collaborate around their careers and new opportunities for internal mobility. She’ll tell you how she aligns and compensates them and tries to leverage best practices, and fill you in on the internal community she’s created for employees with new tools and competitive intelligence on those other, bigger guys.

When Heather arrived, Lehman Brothers systems appeared disorganized. How disorganized? A Summer intern gets to give a presentation to a C-level team during the first month she is there. The intern’s presentation? Two slides. One basically system mapped out the systems Lehman has. The second with all demonstrating how many don’t talk to each other. The intern stated that “this was a problem that needed to be fixed” and then sat down.

I don’t know if the intern got a full time job at Lehman upon graduation. If they didn’t I’d love to hire this person at the next company I work at. Why? People who can point out the root cause of problems and say this is what needs to be fixed are all too rare. The intern likely created the vital executive sponsorship for the magnitude of the changes that Heather is now making.

In reference to internal mobility, internal employees were frustrated as they were applying and never got hired. Hiring managers were frustrated with volumes of people applying for roles at the wrong level. Employees were frustrated with lack of execution.

Using Vurv and Congos there is now rule driven reports and drivers. They now focus on the relevancy of resumes and are trying to add other data elements to the mix.

$12 million dollar savings in just four months by reducing outside contingency recruiter fees! Put all new initiatives for 2008 on hold and reallocated budget money. Focused on utilizing what we have better.

Discovered that there were many people in roles with job descriptions that didn’t match. Fixing that through transparent conversations is occurring at a rapid rate.

Lehman HR mantra:
To recruit talent
To protect our employees
To gage our landscape

They are also creating an alumni site. (I wish that BlackRock would create an Alumni site, it would bring me joy in so many ways.

It’s clear that Heather’s efforts are not only transforming HR, they are transforming the process and way the whole organization operates. That’s what it’s all about effective execution with what you have. Develop a data strategy and process then iterate and improvement. I’ve always loved Lehman Brothers scrappy style when I worked on Wall Street, it’s good to see them laying a foundation for future transformation and differentiation.

More on this when I have time to elaborate on an element I saw that fascinates me. Soon.

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Jason Alba Author – I’m on LinkedIn — Now What???

David Dalka — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 14:53:38 +0000

Recently I blogged about how retained recruiting firm executive search activity on Linkedin was rising. Maybe they got an advance of Jason Alba‘s new book, I’m on LinkedIn — Now What???, and started putting the concepts to immediate good use! I had this to say about the book:

“Jason has written a highly practical guide to Linkedin that will quickly allow a new user to understand and utilize Linkedin. It’s also a great guide to the Linkedin’s hidden gems – finding high quality people through endorsements and off Linkedin content such as groups and identifying thought leaders through blogs linked from profiles.”

I’m honored to have been asked by Jason to contribute ideas to the book as well as some Linkedin best practices at the end of some of the chapters. Jason is one of the people I’ve met via Linkedin and I know my life is much better for that as he always makes himself available to talk and help my goals in any way he can.

While certainly any Linkedin novice would benefit, Jason’s book most needs to be read by c-level executives, all HR executives and recruiters who don’t yet understand how to fully utilize Linkedin. There tools on Linkedin besides last company worked at and job title – the community would function better if people learned to use the community more wisely and this can happen quickly if people read Jason’s book.

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SES San 2007 Jose Day 1 – Universal & Blended Vertical Search

David Dalka — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 13:59:22 +0000

Moderator:
Chris Sherman, Co-Chair, SES San Jose
Search Engine Marketing Speakers:
Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder, SEO-PR
Sherwood Stranieri, Search Marketing Director, Catalyst online
Bill Slawski, seobythesea.com
Erik Collier, Director of Product Management, Ask.com
David Bailey, Engineer, Google
Tim Mayer, Vice President of Product Management, Yahoo! Search

Quite likely the busiest session of the day to the fullest house. One can’t help but notice that if Greg Jarboe had gone to Google and designed Universal Search himself he likely couldn’t have designed it to play into his strength areas in news and pr related issues. The implications and transformation for universal search are still evolving, but they are clearly changing the landscape. One other thing that became clear from this event was that Ask is becoming a serious contender in this marketplace.

Greg Jarboe –

Universal search is the biggest event since “Florida” update. 70% of what I used to know is now obsolete. The patterns are not yet clear in personalization.

News results ranked #4 if you searched for the term iPhone on June 29

In the #8 position, was a Youtube video. We don’t know if it was done on purpose.

July 17, Rupert Murdoch – news with image – brings up a whole new reputation management – be prepared to optimize images.

Early chapters of Henry Potter were leaked, the blog results are on page one of results

Investor relations now is moving to the front page of Countrywide. Few companies have complete control of their brands now on Google.

Unflattering images of Hillary Clinton and that vast right wing conspiracy is building links to unflattering results.

Blogs on Hurricane Dean already on front page. Images will likely come next.

All of the rules have been rewritten – how do I research this? Focus on the upper left links. News seems to be on the top left all the time. Search remains #1 way journalist find information about a company.

Newsknife and Google News Report – be checking this. Your PR people aren’t ready for that yet. If you are not giving a jpg file in a release, start now.

Google News right now doesn’t do video news. Likely to create that.

Social mapping tools can help identify most influential bloggers. In certain categories they show up.

A couple of years ago there was vertical creep session here at SES – I now rank for that term. Not a good thing.

You can’t afford to ignore Universal Search Today

Google is making specialized or vertical content more visible through Universal Search

Sherwwod Stranieri, Catalyst Online

This throws a lot of curves into the theme. Ask 3D and Google cut new paths.

Conventional web pages that once rank well are going to move around maybe down. Other things will move updates.

Number of videos is significant in the Youtube world. Are the search engines using comments as an indicator?

We are looking at it as search marketers. Showed client example.

How to look at it: Google PR, Y! Page links, keyword phrases in tags.

Videos ranking correspond well with views, comments, etc.

Bill Slawski

Why does news, images and video show up there.

I’m not sure I see this all as a revolutionary concept. How do we get out content into our results.

Showed examples of screen prints from each engine for the word spider.

Showed the Google patent, oddly looks quite different than Google’s universal search does now.

Google acquired several Infoseek patents.

Discussed Onebox and log file data.

Ranking in Vertical databases – how do you rank for that vertical?

User behavior – key value pairs, be certain definition and being defined. Questions and Answers work the same way. Html formatting may play a role.

Enhancing the user experiences.

David Bailey – Google
Technical lead for the vertical search.

What are our goals?

Make google.com the search box of first resort.

Display special features for special results

Keep it fast. Keep it simple. Above all, keep it relevant.

Showed example: origami crane

This will continually improve and extend to more result types.

It’s still about the web.

But: think about creating quality content in other forms. Expect similar SEO guidelines to apply.

Create quality content, describe it well and we’ll see what happens.

Tim Mayer, VP Product Management

We are transitioning to a better optimized user experience

Freshness and user intent became relevancy issues.

News, local and other verticals – the possibilities are infinite. Federation plays a role.

Some implantation examples:

Music Artist Shortcut

Movie Shortcut

Hotel Shortcut Inline

Consumer Electronics Shortcut

As we go forward, it’s going t be more about the intent of the searchers.

Eric Collier, Director of Product Management

“We are the scrappy innovator of search.”

Ask.com 3D: SERP Design

We moved the content up top and removed the top links.

Large jumps in user satisfaction seen in both the site analytics and surveys

Increase in vertical channel usage

Starting to see a reduction of multiple query sessions around the same keyword term.

Expect to see a larger percentage of SERPs with blended results

User location will play a larger roles in SERPs

Expect to see fewer web results in SERPs

Blogs, Images and Video results will take online reputation into account when ranking

Pay attention to other search drivers

Other coverage of this important session:

RB Digital Boots

Rustybrick

AIM Clear Blog

Lee Odden’s Toprankblog

Bonus coverage:

Lee Odden interviews Tim Mayer

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Is Google Starting to Change Recruiting Methods?

David Dalka — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 15:44:26 +0000

Those of you who have read this blog for a long time know that I’ve been critical of Google VP of People, Laszlo Bock, due to lack of execution in the past. Things like placing an ad in a magazine and forgetting to launch the microsite or worse ignoring employee referrals that were highly relevant frustrating employees and creating brand damage externally.

Google held an event with several senior executives last night in Chicago. Eric Olson told me about the event, I recently spent a fun day serving as a volunteer website judge with Eric at the annual FBLA-PBL convention – you can read those details here.

I was told by one source that they wish to personalize the recruiting process more and make it less about numbers, keywords and passive candidate recruiting and more about soft skills, knowledge and passion. Time will tell if they succeed in this attempt at change but even stating this shows that they are listening to numerous types of stakeholder feedback and innovating from that. It’s a positive sign. So I have to acknowledge these communicated goals as they suggest that change is a priority.

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NRA Show Danny Meyer of Union Square Cafe NYC on Enlightened Hospitality

David Dalka — Sat, 19 May 2007 20:00:38 +0000

During my time in the New York City area, few things outside the financial services industry affected me more than the restuarants. Of those, few bring back fonder memories than my time in NYC than the Union Square Cafe and the restuarants that followed. These include the Grammercy Tavern, Eleven Madison Park, Tabla (my second favorite after Union Square Cafe), Blue Smoke & Jazz Standard, Shake Shack, The Modern and Hudson Yards Catering. The newsletter they send, a blog in paper form before there were blogs play a special role in building that bond.

What follows are the raw notes of Danny Meyer’s speech at the National Restaurant Association in Chicago on May 19, 2007. There are amazing insights in his speech and new book, Setting the Table, in regards to separating the concepts of service and hospitality, recruiting and how to life to it’s fullest. All lessons that can be applied to web 2.0 or any business in need of refined and high performance culture. Please note that the notes are raw and from his voice:

He let everyone know that it was his first time speaking at an NRA show. However, he attended the 1985 NRA convention. I wanted to learn about a POS system. We got a big presentation on it. I gathered the courage to ask a question. Is it really feasible to give a rolled thermal check instead of a proper check? If you give them good food at a fair price you can give them a check on toilet paper and they will come back someone chimed in.

Something dawned on me about five years ago. We focus on mistakes more than what is going right. My grandmother was proud of her garden. She taught me to garden at the age of 6. Ignore the weeds water the flowers. It dawned on me many years later that is what we should do in real life. A lot of things were going right.

Opening my restaurant was a passion. The strongest business decision I ever made was to fire myself as chef. In a city that has 22,000 restaurants, we have 6 in the top 42 Zagat Favorite Restaurants. People who are highly institutive make poor analysts. I do things that are intuitive. I employ over 1,500 now.

What does it mean to be my favorite (restaurant)? When you put those words in front of anything it is the highest compliment that can be paid. If I could figure out the secret sauce, Id have something. Location has ceased to be a critical fashion. The other 95% of the people say its’ service and not location, location, location. We needed a service economy. The car rental company didn’t have the convertible you wanted, the bank didn’t do what you wanted, etc. The Internet changed the rules. If you wanted to rise to the level of my favorite, you did if via performance. Performance used to be the thing that did it for you. I’ve always made a practice of asking why. You guys make the best roast chicken, you seat us on time, etc. We stopped hearing that when people started using the Internet. If you wanted to set yourself apart you could do things to differentiate, but replication happens much sooner now. Performance is a lot like air conditioning. Nobody has ever walked into the Grammercy Tavern and said this is great air conditioning, but if it doesn’t work, they don’t come back. Performance is now a lose proposition, it is not a win proposition. Nobody defined how hospitality is different than service. Did the waiter clear the table timely? Hospitality defines how you make someone feel. You have made them feel like you are on your side. Hospitality only occurs as we see it. Service is the technical delivery of product. You can write a manual to define the service and we have a different manual for hospitality. If you do something, do it consistently. Hospitality is not a monologue it’s a dialogue. The preposition for is involved in hospitality and the preposition to is there when you do something to somebody. It takes certain technical skills to open up a bottle of wine. We had been focusing 49% of skills training for technical skills. We spent the other 51% hiring for hospitality.

Hospitality IQ is the companies which are successful are the most successful in hiring the right hospitality. We need to hire people who derive pleasure from giving pleasure. What occurred to me is that you can’t teach it.

Kind, Intelligent and Curious, a high work ethic and integrity. These people were people with a high degree of empathy. Integrity is more than honesty. It is the judgment to do the right thing. More often than not they are life choices. Talked about leadership and the relationship to being a captain on a team. You get to be in a business of setting rules. Every single organization in the world have the exact same five stakeholders – customers, investors, community, employees and suppliers. We created a virtuous cycle of events. But if you believe in virtuous cycles, you can make more money by putting ourselves first, employees trust and put investors last. If I could raise my Hospitality IQ when hiring we’d be better. We put our community and suppliers ahead of investors to. Why would we have a community investment department? Why not help fix the park across the street. A rising tide lifts all boats. You might succeed at that. You can invest in the tide. Do your competitors go up with you? The niche of BBQ goes with the tide. Table is another example. We needed to create a new tide. We have been working to build community. In the same way that a championship horse is born with the DNA, it still needs to be trained. Make sure your staff needs to have the heart muscle worked hard. Birds of a feather flock together. The staff wants other people to work with that have a high hospitality quotient. People who have the same emotional need to learn pleasure. If you teach me more than the next guy, I’ll stay here. The biggest thing, please listen to my aspirations. We always want people to be part of a new opening of a new restaurant.

49% of a swans body mass is below water, 51% of the swan is above water doing the graceful stuff. My favorite chapter is the road to success is paved with mistakes well traveled. Waves are like mistakes, there is another one just behind it. My biggest mistake was back in 2002 and I found it hard to find the type of people. It took 35 minutes to get a drink on opening night at Blue Smoke. When I learned the swan theory, I never knew. Eye contact, a mile a hug and some pretty darn good food.

Question: Questions about putting staff ahead of customer.

What I’m saying is exactly that. If you have the best recipe, it’s not good if you don’t have good ingredients. Our hospitality will never rise to a higher level. The two things I look for in any business are focused on their work and enjoying each others company, I know it will work.

Question: When you were hiring for HQ, how do you train your managers.

Since you derive pleasure for making people for feeling comfortable, you can be blind to it. Have others help you. The prospect drops out that can be frustrating. I’ll ask someone, “Tell me how you used heart in your last job.” We tell people there are the skills that matter for you.

Question: Can you talk about the importance of the quarterly newsletter?

Listening is as important as expression. The fact that you think it’s quarterly when it’s twice a year is a testament to its’ effectiveness.

End.

It was a pleasure to listen to Danny speak. I’m glad I took the time to listen and learn from his wisdom about life and hospitality.

UPDATE: He had a book signing to go to at 2PM. At 4:45PM, I still saw him standing there with a line of people with books. Nothing short of amazing!

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Facebook Spamming Your Identity To Drive Their Traffic

David Dalka — Fri, 18 May 2007 10:34:51 +0000

The other day I was highly surprised to learn that my Facebook profile was showing up in the top 10 for Google when you Google my name. In my opinion, turning on a feature like this without informing your users of the change to drive traffic using users’ identity to their social network via search engines is rather sleazy. After looking through their 89 zillion privacy options, I could not find a way to do it without excluding current community users which I did not want to do. This was their response to my question on how to do want I wanted.

Hi David,
I’m afraid there is currently no way to prevent your Facebook
account from appearing in a Google search. However, please
keep in mind that only users that are currently able to view
your profile will be able to view your listing in a Google search.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to let me
know.
Thanks for contacting Facebook

Let’s ignore the factual inaccuracies of that statement and just say that Facebook clearly doesn’t get it here. Or purposely chooses not to. I do want everyone who sees Facebook as a valuable tool and who has signed up to be able to search on me and find me. What I don’t want is for people outside this community, who often have misperceptions about these communities to see it when they do a search on me in Google or another search engine. What I don’t get is why it’s not already possible within the confines of the 89 zillion privacy options Facebook already has:

So Facebook, please give this user (and the thousands of others like me) what they want. Immediately add a noindex option for my profile so that community users can fully see and search my profile when inside the community while not allowing outside search engines to index it. I look forward to your prompt action and resolution of this request. Thanks.

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Google Meets The Axis of Evil Comedy

David Dalka — Mon, 14 May 2007 03:21:32 +0000

Last week, I heard a comedian named Ahmed Ahmed, who is touring on the “Axis of Evil Comedy Tour”, via a radio interview in which he was asked what it was like having the same first and last name. Much to my surprise, he started talking about how a guy on the FBI’s most wanted list – Ahmed Mohanned Hamed Ali – shows up right next to his when you type – Ahmed Ahmed – into Google…notice the first and second entries in the first of the two photos below. Ahmed has a point when he states that when typing in Ahmed Ahmed twice he doesn’t find the result relevant as I don’t either. But the oddity of this doesn’t stop here…

At present if one types simply – Ahmed – into Google, Ahmed Mohanned Hamed Ali does not show up at all in the top ten results! Even more bizarre is that there are other Ahmed’s that show up prior to him Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah (page 4) and Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan (page 6).

So I’d like to ask Matt Cutts and Adam Lasnik, search evangelists at Google, just why does Ahmed Mohanned Hamed Ali show up for a search for Ahmed Ahmed and not Ahmed?

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Google Disasterous with the Letter D

David Dalka — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:32:30 +0000

Apparently Google has considerable trouble in regards to the letter D.

First the Dmarc founders left Google.

Now http://www.dodgeball.com/ (dead link 11/2010) founders, Dens Crowley and Alex Rainert (please drop me a note if you read this guys), not only have left Google but they posed for a thumbs down photo that they have posted on Flickr, a Yahoo! property. The photo already has over 26,000 views and appears to have a viral element based on the view count growth, the interesting comments on the Flickr photo and a lot of blogosphere reaction. I’m trying to imagine how frustrated someone must be to post of photo of this nature, announce new project associations and state that they are throwing a party “to celebrate our escape”.

Putting my investment management hat on, I’d like for independent analysts to be allowed on the earning call this Thursday. If allowed to do so, I’d like to ask the following question, “Why is Google having such a hard time with HR and staffing issues, whether it is regarding hiring new employees, retaining pre-IPO employees (see podcast) or integrating acquisitions? Has Laszlo Bock’s background proven not to be the right style of leadership and is it time for a change?” The “all big companies are always ineffective” is a major cop out as there are big companies that are admired and in fact some cases adored.

Ideas on what to do with Dodgeball are everywhere you look. The comments on the Flickr photo are fascinating to read. P.S. When searching for these entries on Google Blog Search I found considerable splog/spam (MFA Made for Adsense) sites – Google should work to solve that issue.

Dodgeball Founder Departure – April, 2007 post

http://www.blogator.com/g/2833510 (dead post 11/2010)

Dodgeball Founder Departure – April, 2007 post

http://www.electrolicious.com/archives/2007/04/did_twitter_kill_it.html (dead post 11/2010)

Dodgeball Founder Departure – April, 2007 post

http://mcmanus.typepad.com/grind/2007/04/two_dodgeball_f.html (dead link 11/2010)

“http://topicstop.blogspot.com/2007/04/google-alert-google_1007.html (dead link 11/2010)

Dodgeball Founder Departure – April, 2007 post

“http://ipfreaks.com/dreamscene/?p=2258″ (dead post 11/2010)

Dodgeball Founder Departure – April, 2007 post

“http://www.tmesolutions.co.uk/web_design_kent/Marketing+News/2007-04-16/Google+dumped+by+Dodgeball+founders/3800849030″ (dead link 11/2010)

Dodgeball Founder Departure – April, 2007 post

http://yummy.vermontconnect.com/cool/dodgeball-founders-leave-google-and-that-leaves-dodgeball-probably-dead/ (dead link 11/2010)

Dodgeball Founder Departure – April, 2007 post

http://www.teknolife.com/tech-news/disgruntled-dodgeball-founders-leave-google-infoworld/ post removed

Dodgeball Founder Departure – April, 2007 post

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My Yahoo! Suggestion Board Launched

David Dalka — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 14:34:25 +0000

Techcrunch reported today that Yahoo! launched a suggestions site.

If Yahoo! builds the appropriate mechanisms to utilize and respond to this feedback, it could easily be the most important thing they do all year. If Yahoo! does this, Peter Drucker would have been proud of it. I hope they do as this is would be a good way to build a customer focused organization. I like that the interface allows an anonymous entry, it could allow for people who are shy or don’t like making their name public to participate. I made my first wish regarding Yahoo Mail! in this manner just to test it, better email spam filtering! Please support the cause by giving it your vote!

As you know, I have made several suggestions in the past for improving e-mail.

Good luck with the Suggestion Board, Yahoo! This should be your moment to drive innovation and shine.

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Sociable 2.0 Plugin Release Interview: Peter Harkins

David Dalka — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 02:36:19 +0000

Please bookmark as “Sociable 2.0 Interview” – Thanks!

I first met Peter Harkins in person at Barcamp Chicago in the Summer of 2006. As I’ve gotten to know him, he knows far more than just coding, as he appreciates and participates constructively in conversations about business strategy and monetization. It’s a winning combination.

The response has been incredible to the Sociable plugin, so you’ve been slammed with inquiries…

Peter: I’ve gotten dozens of mails about Sociable in the last week, from sites wanting to be included, users testing it out in unusual situations and last-minute feature requests. I’ve promised to get 2.0 out by Midnight February 1, so it’s been a race to the wire to get in new features.

Peter: I’ve added 26 sites at last count in this version. Just this morning a Hungarian programmer sent me at least a few more, so I may have as many as 60 sites in the next version.

You’ve add new language translations with this version, that is exciting…

Peter: Yes. It looks like this version will have support for Spanish, Czech, Italian, German and French with more to come. Before 2.0, interested users were just picking it up, translating it, and offering it for download on their blogs. It was a bit frustrating to track bug fixes between different branches of Sociable. Now we’ll have a unified project to share resources and drive development faster, I want to have releases at least every other month in 2007.

You keep the installation and interface pretty simple…

Peter: Deliberately, so, yes. As a programmer, it’s really easy to think of the UI as “that last bit I have to add so people can use my beautiful code” instead of what it truly is: the most important part of the application. So I spent a lot of time making sure that you can install Sociable just by unzipping and uploading it, rather than try to provide complicated install instructions. I spent time on a feature most people never see: when you install Sociable, it checks a manifest of files to make sure it was uploaded right, and it tells you what files go where if it’s not perfect. It provides help right when you need it most, and plainly enough that you understand it.

Peter: The drag-and-drop in the admin interface is just a delight to use, and deliberately so. I want blog owners to feel safe playing around with the different options to see what works on their site. So I’ve spent most of my time on making the UI really nice as well as fixing up the insides.

So you also reprogrammed the internals of the Sociable application for future development and expansion beyond WordPress?

Peter: I want to start porting Sociable over to work on other blog engines like TypePad, Movable Type, Mephisto, and more. So I’ve cleaned up the internals of 2.0, laying the groundwork for 2.1 or 2.2 to support more engines. It’s also going to start doing a little stat reporting when it checks for updates. I know there are roughly 10,000 blogs out there using it, but I’d like to know more exactly and maybe cross-reference to traffic rating services to find out what kind of positive effect it has.

You have an alert system for updating?

Peter: Yes, Sociable checks for new versions when folks view the admin console and notifies the blog owner to go download it. Without it there’d still be people using Sociable 1.2 in five years, hopefully with it everyone will be upgraded in a month or two.

In the past you mentioned that there are three different types of users of Sociable…

Peter: First up, there’s beginning bloggers. They’ve just started a blog, and they’ve got stars in their eyes of being the next BoingBoing or something. Sociable is a tool they’ll use to get the word out about their new blogs, and I’m really glad to help out. As much trouble as some have had spelling “Sociable”, it’s been most rewarding to talk to them because they’re new to blogging and are so happy to be able to easily drop in Sociable.

Peter: Then there are the established bloggers. They’ve got an audience and they want to start leveraging it. Sociable makes it easy for their audience to start getting the word out and growing the blog. I get most of my feature requests from this group, and they’re the people who send me the code to add their favorite bookmarking site.

Peter: I get a lot of links from the SEO crowd, who really put the word out about Sociable. They’ve found Sociable to be a useful tool, so they turn around and install it for their clients. Oddly they’re group I hear the least from, they almost never mail me. But they’ll be the most unusual mails sometimes.

So how are the SEO emails unusual?

Peter: I’ve gotten a really bizarre feature requests like – “You should make Sociable automatically submit each blog post to every bookmarking site! And then vote it up!” – or other crazy schemes! It’s frustrating, Sociable is a tool to help blog owners by reminding readers to bookmark good content. “Sociable should make other blogs using Sociable link to mine with the link text I fill in!” Ugh! I should mention that this is a tiny minority of the SEO folks, I’ve only gotten a half-dozen “Help me spam!” mails.

Sounds like we could monetize a Sociable SEO Pro version together?

Peter: There are definitely a few customers waiting, but I’ve got plenty of other projects ahead of it.

Like what?

Peter: I just recently launched NearbyGamers, a social site for tabletop gamers to find other folks to play card, board, and role-playing games with. It’s been a real blast, but my to do list is as long as my arm so it’s eating up my free time. And I’ve been trying to keep updating my own blog with web coding tips but it’s easy to slip out of the habit.

Sociable has created great networking for you. What are some of the better stories?

Peter: I ended up doing CrunchBoard for TechCrunch because I met a guy via a guy via a guy who used Sociable, and that was a real fun project.

What are some of the underused or misunderstood features of the tool?

Peter: One minor frustration has been writing CSS for Sociable that can deal with all the odd things different blog themes do. I’ve had dozens of people mail me asking (sometimes quite forcefully) why Sociable doesn’t look right on their blog, and so far none have thought it’s their own site doing it.

What else should the people know about Peter Harkins?

Peter: You should never ask him to sing anything…

Good luck with the release Peter!

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Good Tips for Building Blog Readership

David Dalka — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 14:05:44 +0000

This post gives some great tips!

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Comcasted

David Dalka — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 18:01:07 +0000

The following is a first ever guest post by mother, Gloria Dalka, who recently had Comcast waste her time, miss numerous appointments and experienced other inconveniences. The largest of these involved a contract tech that visited the house to install a cable modem, said “he’d return later” (yet never did), then reported the job and cable modem installed (apparently to get paid). Comcast stated via phone that they wanted cable modem back (which she does not have due to the apparent fraudulent work order the tech input) and after numerous calls there is considerable concern the refund will not be properly processed and that the US Mail was used to send unauthorized bills which constitutes mail fraud.

Start guest blog post
******************************
12/13/06
At this time, we had Comcast for cable TV, 2 lines of phone service and we had a 56K Internet service provider (much to our son’s dismay when he visited).

An uninvited Comcast sales rep, Mike, personally visits us late in the day, telling us that Comcast will not be able to support the technology that we are using for telephone services for much longer. He offers us unlimited phone @ $30 per month, high speed broadband internet @ $20 per month and leaving the existing Cable TV package unchanged. We signed a conditional contract accepting those services pending completed installation. Mike calls his office and sets up an installation for Dec 20th between noon and 4pm.

12/20/06
Service tech arrives in an unmarked vehicle at 3:15pm. He comes into our home with his clipboard and walks through the house looking at what we have both upstairs in the room where we keep the computer and in our basement to see what kind of box we have there. He checks our backyard and comes in saying that we have all old technology and that he doesn’t have what he needs to do the installation with him. He states that he will return first thing the following morning. My husband asked what time he’d arrive. Tech states that he leaves Palatine @ 7:00; my husband says we’ll expect you 7:30 to 7:40; the tech nods affirmatively and leaves. No equipment was brought into or installed in our home. No document was signed accepting any services or equipment.

12/21/06
No tech arrives. We are nervous and start calling Comcast.
8:45AM – Call 866-594-1234 to find out what’s going on since no tech has arrived and was told that we’re on the schedule for 8am to noon.
12:15PM – Call the above # again and Scott told us that someone will check and get back to us within 2 hours. Given reference # 899206. And no one calls back.
2:35PM – Spoke to Christine at X6321 at the Schaumburg center who said that someone would check and get back to us within an hour. Given reference # 427066. And no one calls back.
3:40PM – Called again, spoke to someone named OJ who said that he’d write it up and have someone get back to us. No ticket # given. OJ was anxious to leave since his shift ended @ 4:00. And no one calls back.
3:50PM – Called Mike, the sales rep from 12/13/06, who was at home with his kids. He said he’d check and get back to us.
3:55PM – Mike calls back and says he has seen how many times we called and that he couldn’t do anything, but that he’d have his supervisor call us. We did not get a call back from Mike’s supervisor or anyone else at Comcast.

We took the innocent viewpoint that everyone had the holidays on their minds and decided to wait until after the holidays to pursue the issue again.

1/2/07
Called Mike, our sales rep and told him how things had gone and that we were extremely unhappy with the way we had been treated. He again deferred to his supervisor asking what day would be all right for installation. I suggested Jan 5th or Jan 9th as the install date and told him that I would not allow a third party installer into my home. He said we would get a call back and, again, no one calls back.

1/8/07
10:00AM – Decided that Comcast didn’t care about retaining a customer that they had for many years and called AT & T to set up installation of services for phone, internet and DISH network satellite television. Installation date was to be Jan 17th.
10:45AM – Patrick Ellisworth, Mike’s supervisor, called to say that installation would be on the next day. I told him that it would not, that his failure to call in a timelier manner resulted in my choosing a different provider.

1/12/07
I received a call from AT& T saying that they had contacted Comcast and that Comcast said that they couldn’t make the change until after the 23rd. It did not seem strange at the time, I now wonder if they did this to attempt to fraudulently get past the 30 day satisfaction refund warranty.

1/19/07
Received a bill in the mail from Comcast showing that I had digital voice and high speed internet. Since no high speed Internet had been installed this now becomes mail fraud.

Called 866-594-1234 to contest that I had the services shown on the billing.
Initially I spoke to Neesha in billing who said that she needed to verify that I didn’t have the services; transferred Pan in technical services who transferred me to Brad in retention, who transferred me to Drake in retention who put me on hold while he conferred with someone and then came back to tell me I needed to speak to someone in a different department. I believe that he put me back in the queue and then the call was disconnected. So, after spending almost one hour telling the truth I was till being told that, no, I had the installation and had the services as well as their modem.

1/22/07
Called 866-594-1234 asking for a supervisor and got Sonia X6077 of the
Schaumburg, IL office. She stated that there was no problem since there is a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. She claims that a credit would be issued in the amount of $75.38, I told her that they needed to get after the tech that marked our install order as completed since he had probably entered a serial # to “verify” the completion. He either had it or sold it.

1/26/07
Called Comcast to cancel the second phone line; the primary line was handled by AT&T on the 24th. Internet is up and running so we are no longer using the second line which we had used exclusively as our internet line. They still think we have their service and modem. I’m tired of being called a liar by them

So, Comcast still asserts that we owe for services not received and Comcast believes that they completed the install and that I have a modem that they supplied.

My requests of Comcast:
- Refund of all high speed internet charges for services not received.
- A letter verifying voidance of the contract (requested on 1/12/2007) and refund for all services (phone & cable) provided past the date AT&T requested transfer.
- Compensation for the numerous missed visits and a formal apology.
- Issuance of the refund check that my son David is owed when he changed to RCN earlier after hearing about our recent Comcast experience and other service problems.

End Guest Blog post
******************************
For me this is a frustrating example of a poor customer experience that is driven by management desire to cut costs by using contractors. This often does not take into cost of lack of execution, lack of process accountability and customer dissatisfaction.

Selling via a house visit to upsell due to a technology change is an aggressive tactic, was the fact this occurred so close to year end meaningful and an attempt to “cook books”?

It’s my second run in with the modem issue. When Comcast bought AT&T’s cable system, I owned my own modem. After moving to a non-Comcast area, it took over a year and calls from a collection agency to fix the error.

Why does Comcast outsource things with a poorly defined process that leads to a bad customer experience?

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What if Wikipedia Added Noindex tags?

David Dalka — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 17:21:50 +0000

The Wikipedia controversy keeps raging. David Ogletree has an thought provoking post calling for Google to remove Wikipedia from it’s index.

It might be interesting to think about it from the other direction. What if Wikipedia added noindex tags? With the amount of traffic it gets now, does Wikipedia need to be indexed in Google to survive? Does Google need it more as an index the way it uses DMOZ? If Wikipedia added noindex and Google ignored it, would that be evil?

So many interesting and controversial things to be worked out in the next few years. I wonder what Matt Cutts is thinking on this issue.

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Cisco’s iPhone Trademark Post

David Dalka — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 15:38:50 +0000

If what they are saying is true, that this was not about money but an attempt to parter, Apple’s actions are surprising. Why would you launch a product publicly without having an issue like this resolved?

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Props to Cisco for posting about this in non-lawyer speak.

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Banana Republic

David Dalka — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 11:31:19 +0000

I recently had an issue with an experience with Banana Republic (a division of the Gap). While they were nice enough to send me a gift card for my inconvenience, I was surprised that the letter sent with it wasn’t personalized describing the measures they would be taking to prevent it from occurring with another Banana Republic customer in the future.

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Happy Memorial Day 2007

How to Forge a New American Mandate Via Social Media Political Revolution

David Dalka — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 14:52:22 +0000

Robert Scoble’s political journey with John Edwards recently bought back memories of when I once worked on a Presidential primary campaign in 1992. It’s hard and one of the most tiring things you could ever volunteer to be a part of! Regardless of your political beliefs (I’m generally a politically interested independent issues driven voter), you can’t help but gain respect for anyone willing to put themselves through the grueling election process once you’ve seen it up close. Scoble’s posts made me think how can we truly integrate social media into campaigns(and after the election). John Edwards said in his interview with Scoble that we need “a bottom up democracy.” It’s an amazing challenge requiring change in our government not seen in over a generation. The campaigns for President of John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Tom Vilsack, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Newt Gingrinch, Frank Keating, Chuck Hagel, Mike Huckabee, George Pataki, Mitt Romney and Tommy Thompson would be wise not to adopt this as a tactic but as a way to redesign government’s interaction with our citizens. Democrat or Republican is not the issue here. Oddly it came at a time where another conversation begged to be mashed up with it, so here it goes:

Robert Scoble stated: “As for how bloggers can play in this process? I think we just are going to come up short in coverage of campaigns when compared to the mainstream press.” I agree with almost all of what Robert did on the trip (based on what I’ve seen so far). That said, I think Robert had his PodTech/video blogging hat on a little too tightly here when making this statement that covered his listening ears!
Seperately, Karl Long in his debunking of “Social Media is Dead” stated: “To me the difference between social media and “the media” or “big media” is control and influence. Social media is primarily controlled by the participants, by the viewers, readers, listeners etc. where as traditional media is primarily controlled by an organization with a narrower agenda like a corporation, or a political party.”

So how do we build a mandate to create government listening via social media to take election control out of the hands of money and the media elite? Likely through a series of incremental steps towards a social media society. Call it “average Joe accountability politics” (Open to better names if you’d like).

In Paul Tsongas’ 1992 campaign book, “A Call to Economic Arms: Forging A New American Mandate”, a pre-Internet era publication, still stands as one of the most comprehensive documents a Presidential candidate has ever published about what they would actually try to achieve after being elected. I urge you to familiarize yourself with this document as it A) is amazingly relevant after 15 years (many of the problems remain) and B) Paul argues in the document that a mandate is necessary for a new President to press through a change agenda.

The end of that 72 page document contained the following which serves as a platform for empowering the masses to have their voice heard. It serves as a blueprint for innovation minus the blogs and social media tools of today:

We will be what our culture empowers us to be.

To strengthen our common culture must be our common mission. Recognition of, and dedication to, that mission is the mandate of our leadership. It doesn’t lend itself to ten point programs and quarterly reviews. It will be a discussion that will never end. It should never end. The journey to renew America’s spiritual base will take us back through our history to harvest the wisdom of that history.

We will revisit our ancestors’ thinking and learn once again to pay homage to the basic values that made America. Those values, long since articulated, will then serve as our safe passage to the future.

In our collective veins flows the blood of those who crossed the Bering Land bridge. Of those who endured deprivation during the winter in Plymouth. Of those who suffered in the holds of slave ships and on the decks of immigrant ships. Vietnamese boat people. Hungarian freedom fighters. Salvadoran refugees. On and on.

Above all, there flows the blood of those who died for America. For our freedom. Not so we could be cynical, or uncaring or second best. But in the belief that we would be worthy of their sacrifice in how we lived our lives and how we honored our country. This is the New American Mandate.

VII. Return to Purpose

Adversity tests the character of individuals. It also tests the character of a people. We are now being challenged by outside forces that seek to erode our standard of living and by others that portend environmental and energy cataclysm. In addition, we are challenged by internal forces that are undermining the fabric of our social order.

What would our ancestors have done? Simple. They would have accepted the challenges and pushed ahead secure in the knowledge that their destiny was within their control. Avoidance was not what they were all about.

So it must be with us.

Facing our challenges forthrightly is how we honor the labors of our forebears. It is our moral imperative.

But, more importantly, it is the source of our hope. We are a blessed America. It is our will and determination that will deliver us. Let us, again, unleash the spirit of the American people and again secure our future and the future of our descendents.

Let us return to purpose.

This is a post on how to use social media to improve accountability in political campaign. As such I’d like to learn which Presidential campaigns are actively monitoring the blogosphere. Please leave a comment if you have an official association with one of these candidates and feel free to discuss this post in your own communities. Thanks!

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Best Blog Post of 2006 (non-search engine related)

David Dalka — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 03:59:25 +0000

On October 9th, I wrote this about Kathy Sierra’s “Knocking the Exuberance Out of Employees”.

It’s a great post and it relates to a lot of problems in the business world in terms of having innovative customer service. Let’s hope her post prompted some people to realize that operating in this manner is a mistake.

Congrats!

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Great Last Minute Gift Ideas

David Dalka — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 00:52:16 +0000

The Never Eat Alone Blog (Keith Ferrazzi’s blog) has numerous good ideas for networkers.

I’ll add one of my own: Give the gift of your personal time to offer to help someone achieve their goals – that gift is priceless!

Networking tip regarding the Cardscan gift idea: When designing a new business card always check to see that it would work well in a card scanning device before printing them. Seems obvious, but you’d be amazed how many people do not consider this!

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An Example of the World’s Data Crisis

David Dalka — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 21:31:08 +0000

The World Trade Center had one zip code, 10048. Five years later after their destruction, mail of all kinds arrives there daily! It’s an all too sad and vivid reminder of the crisis in our society with businesses not putting priority on cleaning data. This happens every day with catalogs sent to people who have moved or are now deceased.

In this case it’s inexcusable because it’s all one zip code that would be easy to surpress: 10048.

Whether it’s mail, e-mail, web pages, web 2.0 social networks and/or social media, the value creation foundation starts with data integrity. To build the superior ideas of the future, this area will play a pivotal role. Unfortunately, all too many people do not properly value data integrity or value not been blessed enough to be immersed in a culture who is obsessed with it as I have been in the past.

Consider whether you have a good enterprise data strategy before you launch your next project!

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Forrester Consumer Conference – NASCAR Presentation

David Dalka — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 19:18:16 +0000

Mike Helton, President of NASCAR, was a fascinating marketing keynote speaker. He talked about many things that as someone who was a big NASCAR fan as a kid, I was never even aware of that were amazing to learn. Two things stand out:

1. NASCAR is intensely focused on relationships and partnerships.

2. NASCAR has always been focused on customers.

It’s no wonder that they are so successful!

The thirty-one degree banking at Daytona built with customer experience in mind – being able to see the whole track at once! I never thought about it before, maybe the best customer experience involves things you don’t even notice.

NASCAR is now the #2 sport on TV only behind only the NFL, 75 million viewers

Mr. Helton believes that access to the drivers is critical piece of the success.

Recently opened a new LA office, NYC office, creating opportunities of NASCAR drivers to be in everyday life and making appearances in show business.

All of the sponsors work closely with licensing and headquarters. Sponsors are critical not only to underwriting the costs, but to other aspects of the sport as well.

NASCAR has always taken advantage of technology. (what a great mantra and it’s true)

NASCAR has racetracks, car owners and drivers who are independent – Mr. Helton expressed amazement that it all works sometimes.

All in all, when I saw Mr. Helton on the agenda, I truly had no idea what to expect, I saw a new side of NASCAR, one that made me appreciate the other side of NASCAR.

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Questionable Google Ads For Splog Creation

David Dalka — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 16:59:52 +0000

Mass Blog Creator on a domain called Googlenizer http://googlenizer.com/wmi/? Make thousands of dollars each month? This can only mean one thing, splogs. Why does Google allow advertising for tools known to be creating the duplicate content problems?

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Costco (COST) – Needs Customer Focused Perspective – Post #2

David Dalka — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 18:52:17 +0000

On my last trip to Costco, September 3rd, I discussed some problems and things needing change.

My return visit today showed that they still haven’t changed any of the items mentioned, in fact some were worse today.

Neither the New York Style Texas Garlic Toast nor the Palmiers had been restocked.

The romaine lettuce all had expiration dates two days from today. Being in a single person household, I don’t mind buying the six stalks, but I expect there to be stock that has expiration dates of at least a week from today at all times, I mean I’m not buying wilted lettuce from a half price store.

The cashier experience was again disappointing. Somebody in front of me had a paper check (why do they even still allow that at all?). The cashier then forgot to ring up the juice in my cart. Worse, there were long lines *again* due to not enough cashiers being open, yet there was an army of folks at the manager’s station. I mean every week this place acts surprised and like it’s a new experience to have customers come up the registers ten minutes after the store opens.

This store continues to be the most disorganized Costco I’ve ever visited, I wonder why they aren’t taking the customer feedback more seriously.

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Chicago GSB, Generation X and Some Changes Needed in Online Recruiting

David Dalka — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 19:06:16 +0000

As part of my ongoing discussions regarding the coming transformations in online recruiting, I will need to discuss the growing obsolescence and misleading nature of college and campus recruiting programs (The education is great, the actual access to certain career paths is not - I can say this as an alumni of the University of Chicago GSB MBA program). These serve to create artificial and inefficient job markets that work primarily to serve the future acquisition of students than it does to have corporations acquire the best talent available on the market. As a society we are not using all of our best resources efficiently due to these outdated recruiting programs and lack of full utilization of Generation X, many have not been redeployed full from the 2000-2003 downturn. This is a major part of the many coming transformations necessary when the baby boomers retire and ones that most organizations are unprepared for.

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British Airways – Outrageous Decision to Fly On

David Dalka — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 17:11:33 +0000

Simply Shocking!!! The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a British Airways jet lost an engine due to fire on takeoff from LAX and decided to continue onward with the flight to London!!!

“The Los Angeles air-traffic-control tapes, obtained by The Wall Street Journal under the Freedom of Information Act, show that controllers who saw the fiery engine failure with the jet just 296 feet in the air were immediately concerned about the flight and ready to guide it back to the airport. But the decision to return or keep flying rested with the captain and the airline. Ever since, pilots and aviation regulators have debated the decision of the pilots and British Airways. Their questions: Even if the plane was capable of reaching its destination, and perhaps legal to fly, was it smart to try? And was it safe?”

The incident raises extremely serious questions about British Airways choosing economics over safety of human life due to the reduced margin for error. The LAX tower deleted flight 268′s flight plan beceause they were certain that they would return to the airport.

“Flight 268′s decision clearly surprised Los Angeles air-traffic controllers. The flight took off at about 9:24 p.m. on Feb. 20, 2005. Trouble was soon visible, as evident in radio discussions of “Speedbird 268 heavy.” (“Speedbird” is aviation’s call sign for British Airways; 268 was the flight number; “heavy” refers to jumbo jets.)
“Remember that Speedbird I told you about?” the controller asked a colleague.
“Yeah.”
“He’s engine-out — No. 2 engine out. He’s going to continue to his destination or as far as he can get,” the departure controller said.
“OK. I have no flight plan on him.” The tapes show the controllers had assumed the pilot wasn’t going to London, so they deleted the flight plan from the computer. To reconstruct it, the departure controller called the tower.
“Is he going?” the tower controller who had seen the engine flames asked.
“He’s going,” was the answer.
“If you would have saw what we saw out the window, you’d be amazed at that,” said the tower controller.”

This decision (An emergency landing would have required dumping $30,000 of fuel, and the airline might have owed $275,000 in compensation to passengers under European Union rules if the flight was more than five hours late) wasn’t customer focused and creates serious questions about the difference between US and UK law on the issues involved.

I mean could you imagine being a passenger on that flight, seeing flames in an engine and then continue onward for a transatlantic flight of several hours? I have trouble grasping it.

British Airways should be transparant here, admit this was not wise and communicate exactly how they will act differently in the future instead of quietly communicating with the FAA.

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Jeremiah Owyang on Social Media at Ragan PR Conference

David Dalka — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 20:35:01 +0000

I arrived to the session late….

Corporate bloggers must have thick skin.

Community Manager – gather sources and send them away…they will come back.

How do I get all employees involved?

Community marketing allows engagement.

Responding to complaints:
- Engage the blogger – “we hear you”

Blogger relationships – treat them with respect and analyst.

Bloggers are egotistical.

I’m not in PR.

Prospects trust other customers than anything else. Embrace and use your current customers.

Let go, to gain more.

Do not over structure corporate blogs for product announcements.

Blogoshpere conversation benchmark tools are important.

Rift between corporate communications and web – often exists.

You should educate people to overcome that rift. Social Media consultant.

Just do it . The tools will evolve.

Give to the community and they will give back.

You need to trust and love your employers. IBM built it’s blogging policy with a Wiki.

Vivid examples given about how to use Myspace.

Wells Fargo has a blog, teaching credit. Useful content build trust.

Links, activity, forum and stickyness.

C-level blogs can save time as the future meetings are framed.

Sun, says C-level leader is to communicate.

“Social media is gray.”

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Ragan PR Pre-Conference Media Training

David Dalka — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 18:50:00 +0000

Scoble and company will be at Gino’s 930 North Rush sometime this evening.

The session was led by Gerard Braun, former Journalist, training media courses for 2 decades. Has seen the business from both sides. Good marketing and social media speaker with vivid examples.

How do you make executives care?

“If you could attach a dollar to every word that comes out of your mouth, would you make money, or would you lose money?”

If you attach the training to impact on the bottom line, they will listen.

An interview is an opportunity. It is as important as a business deal.

Make your quotes logical. That is going to going to make them “bullet proof”.

What do reporters want?
- They want a hot story.
- They want to make a name for themselves.
- They want to be recognized among their peers for having the lead story.
- They want a story that will help them advance their careers.
- Their producers and news directors want them to have stories that will draw viewers to their newscast or readers to their publications.

Gerard interviewed a member of the audience.

Tell me about yourself, really means “tell me about your organization and why should I care?”

Pause to allow editing.

Focus on the question, not the next question.

You need to lead the interview in the direction that you select.

Avoid jargon!!!

Elements of a bad PR message:
- Too mush PR-BS
- Contains jargon
- Fails to be quotable
- Long lists
- Cluttered with facts and figures
- Contains too many qualifying explanations
- Legalized sterilization
- “Please everyone” syndrome

Practice! Practice! Practice!
He had a lot of other interesting tips in his handout, but he ran long and didn’t get through some of the material.

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Vlogs Ain’t Blogs

David Dalka — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 01:57:15 +0000

Alec Saunders has a nice post on why he thinks vlogs ain’t blogs. Brian Sullivan does the same. They saved me the time of doing this.

Then again, I myself posted video content in the past week (see unedited “loud announcement of Macy’s boycott” in my Marshall Field’s post). In my case it showed an angry mob and was in fact useful for this purpose. I wouldn’t want a whole blog filled with posts like that, but it served a purspose here for getting the passion across. Yet way more people viewed the text post than the Youtube video at this point though, maybe it’s because they too don’t find it compelling enough to click through?

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Marshall Field’s – Always Alive in Our Hearts

David Dalka — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 03:20:49 +0000

Though the name Marshall Field’s survived 154 years, two major fires and one flood of it’s basement, those heartless people at Federated Department stores have already killed Marshall Field’s and it’s web site - a full day early! OK, for those of you not in Chicago, some “branding geniuses” thought changing the name of Marshall Field’s after 154 years to Macy’s was a good idea, but it’s isn’t, wasn’t and never will be. You can see the hatred in Chicago blogs. See the outpouring of emotion on this issue here and here and well you get the idea already.

Please join us to witness anger, tears and protest at 9AM Saturday in front of the Marshall Field’s State Street store!

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Jim Stroud Gives Me Shelter

David Dalka — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 19:41:25 +0000

I stepped into the Recruiter’s Lounge with Jim Stroud, he interviewed me briefly about my experience with Intellext and my attendance next week at the Online Recruiting Conference here in Chicago.

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Costco (COST) – Needs Customer Focused Perspective

David Dalka — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 17:36:23 +0000

Before attending yesterday’s Chicago Cubs game upon a surprise invitation from my friend Pat Cunningham, I went to Costco. Before I talk about that though, the Cubs played the San Francisco Giants and Barry Bonds hit his 728th home run, he is now only 27 shy of Hank Arron’s record. You will notice that the ball thrown back on the field was not the actual home run ball per this ESPN Video, you wouldn’t have noticed it if you were at the game though.

During this Costco visit, they had recently redesigned the store layout, so much so that I simply gave up on a few of the items I was trying to find. As I waited in the checkout line I wondered if my actions were signing the death warrant for these items I skipped because all the buyers for Costco never look at these issues when they make their decisions. It’s clear that the company is moving away from its’ roots, providing excellent value. Every time I turn around something is being replaced with a “superior image product” that costs significantly more. The membership isn’t as valuable to me as it once was due to this continuous series of actions. The constant brand swapping can drive any serious food lover to near insanity when they find a brand they really like and then it’s replaced by an inferior brand by Costco’s buyers.

Two examples: 1. Earlier this year the Costco Lincoln Park Chicago location had these awesome Palmiers (somewhat like these) for several months, they moved them around the store no less than four times and they are no longer stocked – I firmly believe this was due to the movement factor affecting sales.

2. For what seems like forever, Costco carried New York Style Texas Garlic Toast in large economy sized boxes. Then a few months ago it stopped and replaced with a package of garlic bread in loaf form, not useful for sandwiches that was a fraction of the size and cost more! OK, one this one it’s clear the buyers have no clue how and why they choose certain products.

On my way out the door, I stopped and talked with the store manager, Brian. We talked about how the Customer’s viewpoint is never taken into account by the buyers. In fact, I showed him sympathy because he isn’t empowered to fix these issues or even experiment with such things as express checkout.

Costco is an example of an organization that would benefit greatly from blogging, but blogs should be the last and not the first step I now believe. The first step is to change the organizational focus so that customer’s voices are heard as loud if not louder than Wall Street’s voices. Without this dramatic top-down culture change of action, not words in regards to customer focus, then they would be a great blogging candidate to put the effort on steroids. I pitched to Brian the idea of having the buyers come into his store on a Saturday to actually listen to customers for a full day preceded by a 4-week period of pre-announcement – I told him that the store would likely have its’ busiest day ever and that this would be a very eye opening event for the buyers. I asked him to escalate my request for such an event internally so that this could occur and offered to e-mail him my blog post to save him time in explaining and communicating the idea during our brainstorming discussion. Maybe one day Costco might even create the role of Chief Customer Officer, I would love that!

Good Luck on creating that buyer visiting day, Brian. The blogosphere and customer champions everywhere will be routing for you.

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Danny Sullivan to leave SES and SEW

David Dalka — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 19:07:25 +0000

Yes, it’s sad, for now…Danny Sullivan is leaving SES and SEW.

The rumors that he is leaving to build the world’s largest design firm of flash web sites are unfounded!

Please do a blogroll lesson here and update your blogrolls to daggle.com, many people change primary blogs and the blogrollers don’t follow. For example Robert Scoble’s old blog still ranks above his new blog in Google…

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dellbatteryprogram.com = poor customer service

David Dalka — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 14:29:53 +0000

Shel Israel says Dell warned customers about the Sony hot battery problem. However, I’ve got to say not good enough here. In fact my Dell laptop does run hot. When I got a recall notice on my car once, they mailed me a letter and notified me directly. What a concept actual communication to the affected customer.

Dell has the data to inform the customers themselves directly. Instead they are sending people to a lame web site asking customers to do their work for them. If you are Dell you have service codes, you have email addresses in other words you have all the data necessary to contact these people…yourself. You didn’t need to spread panic in this manner. You could have issued a statement saying “We contacted all the parties with the batteries under recall and will immediately be shipping them the new batteries after we have verified their current address.”

Dell, you can and should do better here. I want you to tell me whether I’m affected. Even if I’m not, my laptop still runs hot, why is that?

Speaking of Dell, the Dell blog has still never acknowledged my post about USB shortcomings in my new Dell desktop. Will they ever innovate from customers?

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My Next Big Gig

David Dalka — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 18:59:30 +0000

Lots of people ask me for details of what my next leadership role would look like. They want to know my ideas for using traditional sales, marketing and business development in conjuction with strategies to build passionate users and use attendance of events, networking with influencers and blogging about the events themselves to put focus on these issues. So I was challenged to put that together by someone. **I want to be clear that this a corporate and not an agency or consulting perspective!** I’m happy to customize a spec once we have a discussion, please ask!

CUSTOMER EVANGELIST

POSITION
As Customer Evangelist, you will contribute to lowering customer acquisition costs and increasing the frequency of acquisition, remove objections to usage and adoption, drive continuous innovation from customer and partner listening and increase usage frequency. Customers whose lives you touch will be transformed into passionate spokespeople to create positive word of mouth and make YOUR COMPANY the most adored brand in the world leading to high user adoption rates of your product and feature introductions.

This individual is a leader and rainmaker capable of seeing the big picture as well as the finer details. This is a roll up your sleeves, dig in and get it done role. The CEO strives to create a participative and progressive culture and is committed to executive sponsorship of the customer evangelist’s transformational activities to meet priority goals through resource allocation as necessary.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Role will likely be about 50% (depending on the organization) mix of traditional brand shaping, partnering creation, sales, marketing, viral marketing, data metric and reporting invention, business development and you are always seeking ways to do things differently and better using new technologies and/or techniques like search engine optimization. Create viral acquisition.
Travels to networking events and conferences targeting early adopters, influencers and generation to listen to customers, potential strategic partners and expand brand awareness. Strive to develop speaking engagements and evangelize YOUR COMPANY’S BRAND AND PRODUCTS as the preferred product distribution channel and consumer’s destination of choice for local purchases.
Identifies new partnership and distribution opportunities as they arise in networking and communicate them to other team members for analysis of brand implications and then participate in execution.
Be a critical voice of YOUR COMPANY’s new customer experience blog. This blog profiles unique product usage by customers as well as blogging about conferences attended by Customer Evangelist where you build strong networking relationships. This blog also creates transparency and trust by listening to blogosphere feedback to prioritize feedback for introducing new features and initiatives.
Participates in blogosphere brand monitoring, conversation and shaping as well as competitive landscape with YOUR COMPANY’s team to build the world’s most responsive and adored brand.
Places periodic feedback phone calls to existing partners leaders to ask “How are we doing?” and “What can we do better together?”
Monitors new disruptive technologies (like mobile and location based services), through networking events and other research, in order that they can be embraced. In some countries, PC ownership is low and mobile devices rule, we need an individual to be open to that changing in North America and making our platform flexible and relevant in eventual foreign markets.
Coordinate with other “voices of the customer” touch points throughout the company to integrate the feedback into the continuous innovation research and scope expansion.

QUALIFICATIONS

An understanding that flexibility in what your role may periodically require from you, especially in terms of extensive travel, is critical.
A clear passion for satisfying and listening to customers, disruptive technology, simplifying processes and relationship building through both traditional and new age communications tools. It is required to do the customer profiles that you have had experience bringing out why people do what they do.
Communicates well with both C-level executives and other groups within and outside the organization. Understands that different types of communication are necessary. Respects the importance of each individual in driving both change and customer satisfaction.
Previous experience in a hyper growth company which utilized technology to transform customer experiences in a learning, innovation and highly collaborative, rapidly changing culture.
Possess a clear passion for networking, search, process simplification, online marketing and customer relationship management.
Superior command of data models and appreciates the importance of tying together disparate data sources to create value for both customers and the organization while appreciating personal privacy. Previous experience working with Phd’s or heavy engineering types is welcomed and is a definite plus.
Candidate will have an existing blog with a growing readership of A-list readers.
B.S., Top 10 MBA strongly desired.

Again, this is a draft document that is a foundation of postition customization (if you are a small startup this would be appropriate to do!) My ability to network and use event attendance in a unique way is one of my emerging and potentially most valuable assets when mixed with my strong strategy and data abilities.

Please read my bio further if this is your first time here.

Thanks!

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7 Reasons Crazy Egg Will Be Successful

David Dalka — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 15:17:40 +0000

The eagerly anticipated launch of Crazy Egg (or do you say Crazyegg?) is here!

Crazy Egg allows you to “Visualize Your Visitors” and gives you a clear picture of where your visitors are clicking and allows you to enhance your site’s results. By inserting a simple few lines of code, Crazy Egg allows you to see where people are clicking on your site and generate reports via overlay, list and heatmaps. The product has already been used on sites at leading ecommerce retailers who have given it a big thumbs up. For my blog, Crazy Egg during helped me learn to rearrange and eliminate non-performing categories for a cleaner and more useful look, thanks Crazy Egg!

To see an example of the types of reports available – they have a demo that nicely cross promotes Pronet Advertising.

Crazy Egg will also likely one day make a great Harvard Business Case study on how to launch a web property for the following 7 reasons:

1) They have always been transparent since day 1, public and open about their idea and primary vision – no NDA talk EVER! (I hope everyone learns from this?)

2) They used case studies that focused on client’s needs of early adoptors in the blogosphere to tout the products benefits. This made the value proposition more clear to people.

3) The above two items enabled viral marketing to occur organically. I can’t say enough about the importance of this.

4) They sought out critical influencers to try the product and then asked for feedback.

5) Crazy Egg actively used this feedback in a timely manner to innovate and improve the product in numerous ways. This laser sharp focus on customer listening was critical.

6) The product is amazingly simple to install and activate and this reduces the barriers to adoption and usage. Many web products skip this important step.

7) Upon launch, a refined, non-beta product was delievered giving an optimal customer experience. Interesting and all too rare a concept these days.

Congrats to Hiten Shah, Neil Patel and the rest of the Crazy Egg team, they’ve worked tremendously hard to make this product a success and I’m certain this hard work will pay off.

Start improving your web site now!

Digg this post.

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Catch Up – Interesting Posts Recently

David Dalka — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 12:53:08 +0000

Danny Sullivan has a nice summary post this morning…always in his funny and light-hearted way. Danny is the glue that holds a fragmented community together.

Google Blogoscoped linked to posted video of Danny Sullivan’s interview of Eric Schmidt at SES and Danny also posted full press conference transcript that Google posted - wish I would have known that this was out there – it would have been helpful to me and I’ve bookmarked the page – props to David Krane and his PR team Google for posting that including the retracted comment portion – in other words if you read this please read the whole thing! I would urge him to change the segmentation of this information however as this transcript was not sent out via the normal Google ~~product promotion~~ press release channels like email.

RustyBrick points out an article suggesting that Google has hit the “topping point“.

Easton Ellsworth discusses a few of his favorite blogging promotion concepts.

This includes Andy Hagan’s and Aaron Wall‘s recent 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006.

Steve Rubel is challenging marketers to think like Venture Capitalists.

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SES San Jose Day 4 – API (new session)

David Dalka — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 03:10:00 +0000

Rustybrick wrote an amazing post on the new SES API session – my PC was in dead battery mode and no plug available mode during this session. Please enjoy his post. He did mis Erynn B. Petersen’s of Microsoft because they accidently went to questions before she gave her speech, which was an awkward moment that she handled amazingly well. I had a nice chat with her afterwards, she is one of the people who really gets what this is all about and for that I appreciate her.

This is a great session that reminds me of how much search is like financial services, where there are a number of vendors that provide mission critical API’s – the fact that API’s are just starting to become transparent to the masses is a sign of how early in all of this we truly are.

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SES San Jose Day 3 – Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, Press Conference

David Dalka — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 02:14:53 +0000

After Eric Schmidt was interviewed by Danny Sullivan, he held a press conference.

But first Eric stopped in the restroom and shook my hand shortly thereafter without washing his hands per reports of an SES attendee (it’s weird learning things like that 2 days later).

Learnings from this experience: Bring your business card, ask a specific and short question or risk having the tough parts missed.

The most surprising thing to me is that he only really holds press conferences about once a quarter. Think about that one of the busiest, hectic and arguably most controversial companies of our time that generates more news in a week than many companies used to generate in a year only has a press conference once a quarter. I wonder what Don Tapscott would think? Hmm, I just checked and actually Eric was quoted on the sleeve of Don’s 2003 book, the Naked Corporation! Think of how much the world has changed in those three years. Wow!

Below is my summary of the finer points of this rapid fire interaction (wish I could type faster) – minus the one area where he retracted a statement after continued pushback. It was very odd because in one way I felt sorry for him for being pounded on in a harsh way and in another way I felt he wasn’t being fully forthright and maybe even somewhat evil… I guess I’m trying to get across that the scene was very tense, terse and emotional.

Reporter: Can you say more on partnerships, Google as the affiliated partner, etc.

Eric: Dmarc is going to go well. Viacom/MTV suggested that taking content and putting video advertising at the beginning. Finding a way to monetize them is the hard part. We are doing well in search and content. Radio is coming out soon. The other two are starting now.

Reporter: Can you discuss the economics…

Eric: The forward commitments are much, much larger.

Reporter: Regarding the Kinderstart lawsuit.

Eric: It’s probably is best that I not comment on that.

Reporter: The AOL thing, how can it be impossible to happen at Google?

Eric: We have very specific plans about it. I’d rather not divulge them. (awkward silence in the room)

Reporter: Many people, do not know the difference between paid and natural search. Could you do more?

Eric: Yes certainly we could although I think most people know. (I’d like to hear more elaboration on this issue as would the reporter that asked it)

Reporter: Can you update us on Adsense policy?

Eric: Sites sometimes don’t follow the guidelines due to third parties. We have been tightening our guidelines.

Reporter: Update on Microsoft…

Eric: General Counsel made some claims. We’ll see where it happens. Google is more efficient, more scientific, etc. We will get more – $12 Billion of a $500 Million industry.

Reporter: Can you discuss video pricing model and cultural trends.

Eric: We will use an Adwords model. Development of social networks as lifetime models eventually. Myspace, it’s of the scale of instant messaging.

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Introducing nextgoogleceo.com 3.0

David Dalka — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 01:34:07 +0000

Lately, Google has been showing that is it participating in customer listening. This is good! I hope it continues.

Since I’ve started studying search engine marketing these past full months full time, I’ve been applying to Google – even with employee referrals of former co-workers and people I’ve met at Search Engine Strategies, etc. with out the applications executed in a way I consider appropriate – that is the politest way I can say it. I’d like to see that change, I’m presently seeking post-MBA level leadership roles within your Search Services/ Syndication, Advertising Sales, Marketing or other leading areas driving customer satisfaction and impacting revenue as you grow new product lines. Ideally I’d love to work within local, dMarc or mobile. I resubmitted (again) today for numerous post-MBA leadership positions.

So I launched nextgoogleceo.com which is a cute take of HR microsites (and discusses how next Microsoft is obsolete now that google is a common verb in our language), except that I’ve changed the wording a bit to demonstrate my increasingly dynamic understanding of both search and viral marketing and the future thereof. As soon as I hit send, I’m leaving for Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2006 and look forward to meeting your wonderful business unit leaders speak once again.

I would of course invite aspiring competitors or “next google’s” to come up and talk to me about their ideas as well. I look forward to learning and adding to my large and growing list of amazing people that are making the Internet a special place.

I look forward to seeing all of my fabulous friends at SES San Jose. It’s going to be both great fun and great learning. It’s the 3rd or 4th time I’ll be seeing some of you and I feel like I’m going on a trip to visit family…that is because that is exactly what it is! I look forward to meeting many new folks to and learning many new and great things. Thank you and please travel safely. See you in San Jose!

I leave you with this parting thought: In the book, Creating Customer Evangelists, the chapters on Mark Cuban stand out in regards to the hiring of Matt Fitzgerald as Chief Marketing Maverick: “Instead of selecting a marketing person from the NBA or the sports industry, Mark consciously made a decision to hire someone from outside the industry,” Fitzgerald says. “He believed the NBA marketing community was too in-bred so [Cuban] was looking for a marketing person with a fresh perspective and ideas.”

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Yahoo Concerns About It’s “Corporate Blog”

David Dalka — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 15:01:00 +0000

I have always loved Yahoo! I want them to succeed. I love that Yahoo! launched a corporate blog! There are a few areas of concern from my future vantage point as a Chief Customer Officer of an innovative and creative organization though that I’d like to work to iron out.

Top 10 9 Questions the Yahoo! Corporate Blog Raises (and I’d like to see discussed in the next 30 days there):

1) Of most importance, in the video in the first post there is a purple cow to the right of the door as you enter. It looks a like a cow from the Chicago Cows on Parade a few years ago. However, to my recollection, there were no purple cows in the original herd. Could you please take some still pictures of this cow, post them and research it’s travels, paintings and history? I’d like to know. Thanks for your time. Does Seth Godin play any role? I would l like to know whether people see a piece of Chicago everyday as they walk in!!!

2) I’m sure Nicki Dugan, Senior Director of Corporate Communications, is real cool Yahoo! and all but an official corporate blog in a large corporation should be the brainchild and steward of the C-level suite with numerous other blogs throughout the organization available to micro-audiences. The PR department is just one blog of many in the corporation of the future.

Why? In the coming customer listening revolution, the C-level suite needs to be doing more customer listening and this involves massive amounts of change management to change from primarily strategy driven initiative thinking. Regardless of the business, this requires understanding, responsiveness and executive sponsorship and accountability for change management from C-level leaders. Peter Drucker said many brilliant things in his lifetime, among them was “Businesses are not paid to reform customers. They are paid to satisfy customers.”

3) I need your help as your new blog confuses me a bit in terms of Yahoo’s branding. At the Internet Retailer conference a senior Yahoo! executive told me that the corporate colors were now purple and white only, no longer yellow. Yet the video and your blog have the old yellow on it. Could you please clarify this issue, communicate it publicly and change your blog theme appropriately if necessary? Thanks.

4) Yahoo owns a blog product called Yahoo! 360, a blogging service. The Yahoo! “corporate blog” uses WordPress, the Yahoo Search blog uses Typepad. I find it a bit odd that Yahoo! isn’t using this product or discussing why it isn’t. Could you dig into a discussion of this issue?

5) Nicki, where is your contact info on the blog? You said you read Naked Conversations, putting your contact info on your blog was an important point in the book.

6) From a risk management and business continuity standpoint, it would seem that having Yahoo!’s network operations center in Sunnyvale might not be the best location due to the earthquake risks. A place like Chicago, Cleveland or even North Dakota might make more sense for this function? Will my Yahoo! Mail and experience be disrupted when the next big quake hits? If not, please prove it to me, I’d like to know and understand this better as I’m sure many net citizens would.

7) Speaking of Yahoo! Mail, lately my spam filtering hasn’t been so hot. Many messages that aren’t spam are categorized as such while significant amounts of real spam get through. What is the plan to remedy this and improve that experience? As Mail is one of Yahoo!’s primary retention tools, I would love more transparency and communication than has been provided so far on this important issue.

When will del.icio.us results be integrated into the search functionality for relevance? I’m excited about this possibility, but will it even be executed?

9) Could you please enable the trackback functionality on your blog?

I forgot what that 10th item was, please forgive me. Several of these topics are ideal for guest bloggers by the way. Thanks for participating and listening, I hope Terry Semel and some other great Yahoo!’s join in the conversation. I look forward to a dialougue on these issues with the rest of the blogosphere.

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Wall Street Journal Says Google “Stumbles” in Video

David Dalka — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 11:57:50 +0000

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an awesome article about Video ads and discusses MSN’s early dominance. The article states:

“MSN’s early success positions the portal to benefit from the explosion in online video advertising now under way. It also raises questions about Google Inc.’s ability to maintain its stranglehold on Internet advertising.”

“Advertisers say there aren’t enough ad spots to go around. A June study by McKinsey & Co. estimates that 80% of video inventory was soaked up in 2005 and that demand is likely to rise five-fold next year, outstripping current supplies. “Whenever we create more inventory, the sales force can sell it instantly,” says Rob Bennett, general manager of MSN Video. “There’s a tremendous demand.”"

“Jason Zajac, general manager of social media at Yahoo, says Yahoo currently runs banner ads only on the home page of video.yahoo.com, Yahoo’s page for homemade videos, which are vetted by Yahoo editors. Mr. Zajac says that Yahoo hopes to be able to offer 15- to 30-second ads inside user-created videos soon.”

“At the same time, portals are keeping an eye on Google. The search giant stumbled in an effort to move into video early last year.”

It’s interesting to see people questioning Google’s potential in this area so early in the game. Just like mobile marketing, the premise that Google will dominate is being questioned very early here.

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Yes.com Tells You the Song on the Radio

David Dalka — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 16:22:39 +0000

It would have been so cool if they had things like this when I was a kid. I know what some of you are saying, “Dave, they do have stuff like this and you still are a big kid!” Well my youthful appearance aside, the concept of yes.com is certainly neat. Hear a song and know the time it was played and don’t know what it is? No problem. Just go to yes.com within 24 hours and you can look it up, rate it and even buy it from Itunes if it’s available. You’ve got to like that. The rating is potentially a great example of customer listening if the feedback were to reach a critical mass.

I would have done one thing differently in launching the site however. While it was a smart more to put the radio station access panel on a different site(many sites with two audiences fail to do this and blur their value proposition), yes.net (now redirected), to segment the customer base, they only got it partially right. The yes.com site is nowhere in the top ten for the phrase “find song on radio” and the yes.net site shows up with out a description tag. They should have launched a “coming soon” e-mail collection page for yes.com and developed a linking campaign to it as it should be the #1 Google result for the term.

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Making Search Even More Efficient! Increasing Your Search Ranking Via PR and Search as a Branding Mechanism

David Dalka — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 04:48:49 +0000

Frederick Marckini, iProspect

You tube is a search engine you can search using keywords.

Estimates Youtube is getting more reach than Myspace, estimated to be worth $600 Million

How we search where we click. There is no paid or natural.

Tabs are pre-empting search. You need to be in all of the tabs. 4x the reach with number one ranking. What is the number one ranking now though?

72% organic and 28% ads Google

Yahoo 40% organic 60%

All search is meta search. Invisible tabs – content pre-empts search results.

4x improvement from 2-9 to #1 in Google.

Tactics: pay-per-call, 92% of people conversion activity occurs offline -survey customers offline to find ideas.

Offline affects conversion rates and lowers CPA.

Yahoo! And Google News tabs are important. They can show up either in the news tab or in search results forever.

Keyword research – different audiences use different vocabulary ”Swirl marks” – paint “Lending” - GPS vs global conversation

“Prior learning” – educational learning – “get into the language of your customer” longer the query – the higher the conversion rate. – but 88% comes with 1 or 2 words.

Search Funnel is a myth. There is no funnel. Broad search, then destination retailer.

Header term, General Term, Specific (branded), Destination/Retailer Search

How to spot an SEO savvy web site. Web site must have text and links to be found. Keyword prominence, frequency, placement, link quantity, link quality, link context, title tag is now your meta tag, domain name, use text, don’t use pictures for text.

Allison Kane, Atlas Search –
Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution, to the complex symbol leading to changes in brand image.

Brand Location – Are you easy to find? 40% of brand keyword and URL search clicks are first time visitors. 60% are repeat purchasers. Make sure you are first in natural search results. Measure your brand terms separately.

Brand Building – When they are between brands, building the brand. Lexus and performance. Search is not full of branders, there are more people with a direct marketing background. Where is search leading your clients to?

Brand Experience – Do you use search to deliver positive brand experience. What about existing customers, should I be thinking about them? Example – “Nordstrom returns” search. Very few brands are utilizing customer experience keywords.

“Branding online comes from experience not the exposure” – Jakob Nielsen

Greg Jarboe – SEO-PR
(crowd gets extremely attentive for Greg’s speech)
75% of journalists search the Internet for previous stories on their subject.

Yahoo News is number two in online news. New York Times is number nine.

A “Consumer” magazine “reports” Press releases can often outrank the news stories.

Knowledge workers are increasingly turning to press releases due to lack of others.

Superpages.com – Replaced sex for gender. Save your client for being found for the wrong term.

Romantic dining got ranked number 2 in Yahoo News and number 5 in Google News.

Morningstar.com is running press releases.

Tivo for search. Tracking links.

3,229 visits generated 2,715 clickthroughs – a 84% conversion rate!!!

It’s not just the press release. Track the publicity.

Can a press release increase your branding? Yes!

Where to submit – used to use PR Web – has become your own link farm. All Wire Services are not equal. Conduct tests.

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ad:tech Chicago 2006 – Disruptive Technology for Fun and Profit, Sponsored by Avenue A | Razorfish

David Dalka — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 04:26:52 +0000

Moderated by Dave Friedman, president, Avenue A | Razorfish Central region

Denise Chudy, Google

Marc Stephens, Michael Miller, Bruce Woolsey – Avenue A | Razorfish

This session was awesome in that they just took questions from the get go and it was a confident and free flowing session with a lot of progressive thought and positive energy in the room!

Mark – Apple, Ipod, Itunes

Denise Chudy – Automotive – now Consumer Package Goods – General Motors is taking risks.

Michael Miller – Online properties of ATT – ATT/SBC – through Word of Mouth

Bruce Woolsey – New Media – Buzzmetrics – algorithms of data analysis – leveraging data of combinations Gatorade – Buddy TV – interactive – 125,000 friend on myspace from simpler. People are still cautious with banners.

Denise – Use Google Video

Michael – how to you measure the value of the something on myspace. Using myspace is a delicate balance.

Mark – It will continue to evolve.

Michael – Dremel – don’t try to replace fragmented discussions.

Bruce – Get over the fear. It’s done. More ways to engage with consumers!

Denise – build the niche audience. Movie studios are getting word out quickly.

Audience – How do I make fragmentation my friend?

Bruce – Mobile media. You don’t need to be yet. 18 months from now, it is going to be different. Do some test marketing with Mobile.

Audience – Where do you see marketing going?
Bruce – Evolution. People are in control. Do you really want to copy TV? (as it is dying).

Mark – Higher level of accountability points to the digital side leading it.

Michael – Percentage wise – are less than 5%

Audience – How do you see mobile marketing transforming and developing in the US?

Denise – Click to call – relevancy – short messages – testing it in Japan – Google Maps. When they are looking – not push.

Mark – Largest platform. Can’t blast things out. The industry needs to self-police this issue. Mobile is going to be powerful. Ad supported content.

Dave Friedman – Could there be ad supported content model for mobile?

Bruce – Video is going to be interesting. Advertainment. Branded applications. I can download running routes.

What disruptive technologies are getting ready to launch and create adoption?

Denise – API adoption in consumer brands.

Mark – Google Video and Youtube are game changers.

Michael – The existing forms are getting better and better.

Bruce – Advertising approaches where the consumer is in demand. Interactive video is the most powerful medium we’ve ever had to use. How does one chose that?

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Sales and Marketing Evangelism – Chart of Changing Ways

David Dalka — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 17:29:42 +0000

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Dell Opens a “Blog”

David Dalka — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 02:24:34 +0000

Dell opened a “blog”. I put blog in quotes because: It has moderated comments, no trackback ability and has numerous posts that are product pushes.

Here is what they should have done, one post admitting to mistakes of the past, saying we want to change, we want to listen and left it alone for like at least a week and let comments roll in. Then let those comments dictate what gets talked about next. Corporate blogging is about listening not PR. You must hire extremely senior, dynamic, highly skilled and understanding people with diverse experiences in life and a passion and understanding of process refinement for these roles. That would have gotten respect from the blogosphere. Rick Klau has a nice post on the topic of feedback.

Late last month, I purchased a new Dell, here is my unbiased review of it so far. It was written a week ago as a public service to both Dell and the blogoshpere. Maybe blog search engines need to reward those types of posts more, what do you think?

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Googling Google

David Dalka — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 15:08:28 +0000

It’s interesting to note that you currently have to go to page 4 of the search results before you find non-Google domain sites which are Stanford and Wikipedia. Good reputation management!

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Chicago Sun-Times, Where are the Trackbacks?

David Dalka — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 17:33:05 +0000

The Chicago Sun-Times has launched some blogs this year that allow both comments. BRAVO!!! I’ll reward them by joining their conversations:

Most Dissapointing Cub – Dusty Baker

Edit: Actually, the trackback feature seems not to work even though it is displayed and I changed the title of this post. This is most unfortunate. They should open the entire online edition to both comments and trackbacks.

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IABC Poll Results and Worse Data

David Dalka — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 05:56:57 +0000

Shel Israel just posted an interesting poll that says many IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) members believe angry bloggers should be ignored.

While I don’t believe polls are always accurate or should be used in lieu of actual discussion, I do believe in the power of data to indicate facts.

If you visit the IABC Jobs section(I prefer the term careers because it at least implies actual development) you will see that it currently has 271 open listings. I don’t think Shel will be too happy to learn that if you apply the word “blog” as a filter you end up with only 3 listings or a mere 1.1% of the roles listed (at the time of this posting) even include the word blog as any part of the job description, monitoring or doing it, let alone a critical part of it. My research was funded by nobody and took far less time than their poll.

Effective and progressive culture starts with the hiring process, knowing what you truly want, being open to new ways of approaching problems and why you need it. If people doing the wrong things hire people based on the wrong objectives the cycle sadly continues. It is time for a new era of C-level leadership in corporate America, one who is experienced in change and customer experience management, has an appreciation of diversity of opinion, understands that new metrics must be developed and 21st Century communications tools. The fact that Tom Peters wrote the foreword to “Naked Conversations” speaks volumes on my hypothesis. I can’t wait to join one of those companies in the 1.1%. Is the 1.1% the new 53,561? Maybe.

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My New Dell PC User Experience – Not Enough USB Ports

David Dalka — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 02:09:20 +0000

My Dell Dimension 8200 died last month – dead fan after 4.5 years – RIP – you can buy it’s old memory a valuable and rare RDRAM type here (sold it on ebay). I ordered a new Dell Dimension 9150, I wanted to summarize my thoughts both good and bad:

The Good:
- PC arrived in less than one week from the time I ordered it.
- PC came with a factory installed quiet and wonderful Western Digital hard drive.
- Sturdy case compared to some other brands I’ve seen recently.
- Tall tower with more internal expansion ports.
- New fan system is entirely different and whisper quiet now!
- New PC is much, much lighter.

The not so good, but not exactly ugly:
-     Dell got rid of the parallel port connection for printers so I had to buy a new cable from newegg.com – ironically they had a cable for $7 delivered. The ”best” Best Buy price for any printer cable was $30+, who needs a Gold plated printer cable? Not me sounds like Best Buy isn’t focusing on the customers needs but on profit instead.  Fortunately I saw this in the design and ordered it and it got here first – this not only caused me to buy an unnecessary new cable, but it caused me to utilize another USB port.
-     Dell removed the old keyboard and mouse connectors such that they needed, you guessed it, two more USB ports.
-     I used up a PCI port to put in my USB 2.0 card from my old PC because I needed to, it’s sad that a new PC doesn’t come standard with enough USB ports. Please add more USB ports in the future models stock. How do you miss such a simple -3 plus nothing equals problem?
-     Silver is the new black apparently. But then why is the new monitor black when the new desktop is silver? I guess they didn’t get the memo in that division.
-     The express service code tag is way to small and white ink on a clear label on silver is not exactly the type of transparency I’m looking for from Dell.
-     The unit was shipped without the audio line in jacks set to on – this led to an hour of wasted time – both Dell’s and mine on an unnecessary phone call.
-     It was delivered via UPS, I can not think of company that has a lesser understanding of who the true customer is – the person on the receiving end paying the driver’s salary by paying for the shipping in the first place! This organization would do well to hire a Chief Customer Experience Officer that monitored the blogs for ideas (if they need help with candidate selection for the retained executive search, please let me know). If I had time, I might make this a Jeff Jarvis type blog about UPS, but I’m too busy with many more much more exciting things right now.

Any other questions? Please comment.

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Being Able to Trust…Even Without Disclosure

David Dalka — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 21:36:20 +0000

I recently read Robert Scoble’s and Shel Israel’s book “Naked Conversations”. It’s a great book. In fact I’m currently writing a positive review for it for a publication due to it being well researched and fascinating in terms of its’ leadership and change management implications. It earned my respect due to the extensive research that went into the book. For the record, Robert didn’t send me a copy of the book and I got it at a public library.

But Robert made this post yesterday about disclosure in relation to payperpost that Richard Brownell, Chris Brennan and David Krug make some extremely interesting points that people should consider in the comments of Robert’s post. I think Robert is not recognizing that creating buzz is in itself advertising whether you keep the product or not – so either you should take what is given to you and be discreet about it or return the items as they arrive if you care about potential ethics issues.

In Robert’s July 2nd, 2006 post you say that you’ve “never really given Sonos a review before”. Yet in his April 8th, 2006 post , Robert stated the following:

“This is much much more cooler than I thought,” says Buzz Bruggeman.

What’s he talking about? The Sonos music system.

First, a disclaimer. They sent me this so I could try it out. It’s one of the things that arrived before I said “no more free stuff.”

I have to admit this is pretty cool. It lets you put a controller in each room in your home.

And you control it over Wifi.

This rocks. We’re playing my iTunes stuff right now.”

Then later in the post Robert says:

“Tomorrow Chris Pirillo and Ponzi is coming over for brunch. It’ll be interesting to see what they think. (Chris always has the coolest stuff before I do, so if it impresses him it’ll impress everyone).”

Let’s compare some statements in this post with the July 2nd post:
1) Robert talks about Sonos (with an outbound link to the product no less) in the April 8th post. You then use the terms “I have to admit this is pretty cool” and “This Rocks” to describe it. Then on July 2nd Robert says, “Well, I never really gave them a review until today.” If alongside an outbound link to the product it’s stated that something is “pretty cool” and that “this rocks” isn’t a review, I don’t know what is.
2) In that post it says that “First, a disclaimer. They sent me this so I could try it out. It’s one of the things that arrived before I said “no more free stuff.”” In the July 2nd post it talks about a new Nokia phone that just arrived. If the “no more free stuff” was truly operational you’d send it back to the shipper immediately or refuse delivery. Which is the true policy?
3) Does one not get value out of something for using it for a few months? In the car industry it’s a called a lease and there are payments involved. Did you pay Sonos or Nokia for value received during usage of these products for a period of time? If not, would you not admit that you got some value out of them?
4) In your April 8th post you said the Sonos might impress Chris Pirillo and go on to say that if it impresses him it will impress everyone. Does one gain any personal value out of impressing people with new gadgets that were sent to you?

Regardless of whether you gave the items away after a few months or not, Robert did talk about them on his blog and if they had not been sent to you likely would not have talked about them. You then gave Sonos even more buzz again by giving it away at Gnomedex as “hundreds of people witnessed it”. Why did Robert choose this high profile place to give away this item instead of quietly giving it to charity anonymously? So regardless of whether you reviewed the product on April 8th, you gave it buzz on your blog twice and in front of an entire conference. That my friend has value to certain people with your increasing public profile in terms of buzz for Sonos. Disclosure or not Robert created significant positive PR here for Sonos by discussing it in his blog – when it arrived and again after giving it away as “hundreds of people witnessed it” at Gnomedex.

While the data from yesterday’s mention is not in yet, I would suggest that this Alexa (yes I know Alexa has flaws) graph showing the spike in traffic in April around the 8th suggests the buzz impact of this mention or review quite well:

As I discussed previously in e-mail with Robert a few weeks back, “Naked Conversations” is about trust (and how certain actions enable trust to occur). If someone were to purposely write something misleading about a Nokia phone and someone bought it and it sucked, that individual would call that person out on it. In other words, the trust is self-policing even without disclosure. I therefore don’t need to be told like a child each time that you got these items for free, as I believe that you would not do something so foolish as to blog positively about a product that you thought sucked. Just lile the “Claire” blog at Vichy, people figured out what was and wasn’t real on their own – without any disclosure.

To summarize, while I certainly can’t speak for the whole blogoshpere, I trust that you are wise enough to not write something positive that you don’t truly believe to be true about a product regardless of whether you disclose that you got something for free or not. Aren’t you worthy of this trust Robert?

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Comcast Tech Tells Story

David Dalka — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 14:59:39 +0000

Most of you by now have no heard about the video of the Comcast tech who fell asleep while waiting for the customer service representative. Comcast fired the tech in the video this week.

Did this really cure the root cause of the customer experience problem though?

This morning a Comcast tech came to my residence to fix a problem with my cable. He was actually very nice and knew what he was doing. I asked him about his thoughts about the incident. He said that “Oh, yeah we had a whole long meeting on that one. We were told not to sit, lean or anything.” The tech, not the first one to do so, stated that nothing is ever the fault of the customer service or dispatch area.

This is a really interesting point. If the call center cost center wasn’t understaffed, this whole incident never would have taken place. Perhaps it’s the Comcast SVP of the tech call center who should be on the unemployment line, not the tech. Comcast’s response to fire the tech shows that they just don’t get it. A better response would have been an announcement that Comcast would hire more customer service reps across the board to address the true root cause of the problem (call hold wait time) and would make the call cold wait times publicly transparent.

This whole incident demonstrates the importance of a customer focused culture that places a premium on learning, innovating and improving the client experience.

Prediction: Comcast will have another incident similar to this again because they didn’t address the true issue.

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Google Reputation Management Issue

David Dalka — Tue, 30 May 2006 00:48:59 +0000

Before I begin, I want to be perfectly clear that I appreciate Google for it’s recent efforts to integrate blog comments into search results. It is both interesting and not something that can be perfected quickly.

However, I’d like to illustrate fully an example of where this is a concern for me and others whom may not even know about it until it creates a problem. This issue revolves around blog comments not made by an individual that show up in the description fields when Googling one’s name. Please review the following example web page that explains the ‘Google Reputation Management Issue’ before reading further. It’s important that you visualize what I’m saying both proceeding.

These days, it is now common practice for people to search for information about individuals on a search engine before a business discussion or a job interview. Due to the nature of these searches and the types of important decisions being made off of them, it is critical that they be accurate. If it isn’t, miscommunication or even disaster can strike. Due to this search engines have an ethical responsibility to present search results that are an accurate presentation of reality.

Let’s examine my case, on May 16th, I posted a comment in response to Josh Kopelman’s Blog entry regarding “53,651″. The following is what I posted in response to his post: “Great post that reminds us of the importance of true customers and looking past your inner circle.” (please see screen shot on other web page)

However, the Google description tag reads: “Posted by: David Dalka | May 16m 2006 at 11:29AM. Hey Josh, you said it! As one of your first investors in Infonautics wasn’t that the pre-www? …” (please see screen shot on other web page)

At present, I’m neither a investor of this level nor a millionaire. What if someone did not click through to read the real web page? Would they have likely formed the impression that I was an investor in Infonautics? The possibility certainly exists. Where this would be a larger concern is if the post after mine was not professional or even worse contained hate or spam links to porn sites. This would not be good.

So I’d like to please ask all web companies, not just Google, to take extra care in the future before putting releases in the live environment that could affect an individual’s reputation due to inaccurate presentation. Stated another way, “beta software” usage which only hinders an individual is OK, while the public release of “beta results” is discouraged as it can cause significant reputation damage. Thank you for your attention and support of this important issue and making the Internet a more accurate place.

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