Curation – The latest in internet buzz

I unfortunately was not able to attend Affiliate Summit West (ASW). I did however watch a lot of the videos, see the pictures and read the blog posts. Thanks so much to those who provided coverage of the event. It seems like a great event!

ASW all kicked off with a somewhat controversial keynote speech by Jason Calacanis on Affiliate Spam. Pretty brave at an affiliate marketing conference.

The gist of it
His major point was that most affiliate marketers were creating low quality but very high SEO value websites which were dominating search results. These sites were merely funnels pushing people towards buying products in order for the marketer to earn a commission. Jason essentially called affiliate marketers out for spamming search results pages reducing their quality and value for the end user. This is short sighted. The phrases Jason used to describe this practice were poisoning the well and polluting the river where the well and the river are the internet that we all need and use on such a regular basis.

This is a very good point and the industry’s lack of a governing body or any real guidelines have let marketers to plague search engines with their landing pages. In an ideal world, marketers would all focus on creating quality resources which add value. At the minute the focus of many is on so called thin affiliate sites which are simple the aforementioned landing pages funneling people towards the point of sale.

The problem
The problem is that this is not an ideal world. Much like the paid back link situation, if you don’t do it, someone else will. If you stop creating thin affiliate sites and start working on larger quality projects, someone else will be cashing in on those affiliate offers.

The result of the continued growth in affiliates pushing low quality sites with no goal other than to convert paid traffic into sales into search engine results pages will be of ever decreasing value. Affiliate marketers are some of the cleverest and hardest working people out there. Their knowledge of SEO is pretty much unbeatable. Eventually a Google search of something will yield nothing but affiliate landing pages. This makes it useless. Jason makes this point, and compares it to the decline of Usenet and sites such as Squidoo which suffered from being spammed to death.

The solution can be summarised into one word: Curation.

What is curation?
Curation essentially means maintaining, curing, healing and that type of thing. How does this apply to search engines? Well in the case of Mahalo – a new search engines owned by Calacanis, it means human processing of every page. This is the only true way of filtering out all spammy websites and making sure only the most important and relevant websites rank. This way when you search for hotels in Paris you will get great resources regarding hotels in Paris, as opposed to hundreds of travel sites packed with spammy offers and not giving you any real information such as contact numbers.

Other examples include the move from MySpace where loads of profiles can be created and it is full of spam to the likes of Facebook (though the rapid increase in numbers of applications has made it more spammy) and LinkedIn, where only real profiles are allowed. Here spam is reduced as people are held accountable.

Does this digital curation make business sense?
Well we shall have to see. It looks to me like it will. Jason Calacanis made a direct comparison to the move in food production from almost industrial mass production techniques to the free range and organic methods. In this case it has been proven, people are willing to pay the premium for a better quality product and a clearer conscience.

My conclusion
As bloggers we always talk about “adding value”. There is no reason why business should not be done with a clear conscience. The emphasis on being social is evolving into doing things for the greater good. There will always be someone out for a quick buck though.

Unless Google can find a way to keep on top of things then I can see the likes of Mahalo increasing in popularity. A human powered search engine is going to severely struggle to process the sheer volume of content the internet produces, so their functionality is going to be very limited for the majority of users for the foreseeable future.

Accountability for ones actions is something I can see developing very strongly. Anonymity affects peoples judgements, and when money is involved, the effects are rarely positive. At the same time, this will be countered by those who want privacy and are totally against a big brother type society.

Links and credits
Listen to Jason’s keynote speech at WebmasterRadio.FM or download it

Jason’s follow up on his blog

Photo by affiliatesummit (From left to right, Missy Ward, Jason Calacanis, Shawn Collins)

Your thoughts
There is no doubt there is a lot of food for thought there. How do you feel about curation? Is it the direction we are heading in?

Do you know what people are saying about your brand?

Between blogs, forums and review sites the public have plenty of options when it comes to expressing their opinion about a companies brand. Freedom of speech allows them to do this. This in itself is no massive problem right? The problem occurs when a straight Google search for your companies or brands name reveals pages of negative comments – a terrible first impression I think you will agree.

How can you see what is being said about your brand?
Well the simplest thing to do is just search for your brand name. If you are doing your job right you should get your company website up first then a bunch of great reviews and comments after that. Unfortunately for many this is not the case. If your results do look good you should not just be satisfied with that. As mentioned on CK’s blog try typing in your brand name followed by the word “sucks” or something less American if your a British company and then see what happens. This is a way to find out what negative feedback you are getting.

Google provide a free service called Google Alerts. Here you can set up custom alerts which will send you regular emails showing the latest results based on your chosen query. It is important to know what people are saying about you. You can set up many alerts to keep you informed not only about your brand, but also key members or staff, competitors and industry news.

There are paid services such as Trackur which are similar to Google Alerts but search through many search engines, not just Google.

What next?
The first thing you should do once you have set up your alerts is monitor them. You need to understand the problem and how widespread it is. Have you recently had a product call back? This could be backlash from a problem that has already been sorted. Once you understand the nature of the negative feedback you can think about dealing with it.

People generally respond well when companies join in blog or forum discussions. This shows humanity and breaks down the image of a faceless corporation. You are also able to address individual needs more easily. Those who complain like to feel they have received personal attention from those with the power to do something about it. By satisfying the one noisy complainer, you could convert it into a great review. This is of course the best possible outcome and a win win for both parties. A new breed of business consultants are also popping up for online reputation management services.

A blogger who has complained about you, and had their problem dealt with in person is likely to blog again about you. A few of these and you will soon dominate the search results for your company with positive reviews. This feedback from customers is something you can really use to help develop and grow your business. You have to remember though, prevention is much more effective than curing. Negative publicity tends to go viral much more so than positive publicity. It is the nature of the beast.

Does your business has a system for monitoring public opinion? What tools do you use to help monitor? Do you join in the discussion?

Facebook Suffers its First Drop in Unique Monthly Visitors

All through 2007 we heard an awful lot about the social networking site Facebook. It shot out of obscurity and into super stardom when it changed its registration policy to allow anyone to register. What followed was a year where everyone talked about Facebook non stop. Workers all over the country compulsively checked their accounts throughout the day. Those on the move soon discovered they could use their phones to check the latest comments on their wall. All the mainstream press reported on this phenomenon and now you can see little share this buttons at the bottom of every article alongside those from Digg and Del.icio.us.

January saw the first drop in monthly unique visitors for the site. Reports show a drop of around 5% from 8.9 million to 8.5 million (Forbes, Times). Are we bored of social networking? Or is it just we are bored of Facebook?

What has changed?

Following the buzz as always, marketers and public relations firms have invaded the blue and white pages once reserved for university students. Businesses have made Facebook user groups and adverts have appeared. There has even been some high publicity issues where adverts which were deemed inappropriate were appearing.

As if this was no bad enough, politicians are making profiles and using Facebook as a way of connecting with the younger more tech savvy potential voters. The cool factor suffers severely when Tory MPs are on a social networking site. The honesty and transparency social networks strive to create in the first place is lost when marketers and PR firms are creating and managing profiles.

The never ending creation of new applications since Facebook opened up the code to developers may also be a factor. Profiles have moved from being nicely designed, sleek, easy to use layouts to being cluttered and messy, filled with these applications, most of which offer little extra value. Examples of these include: petrolhead, likeness, vampires, werewolves, compare, growing gift, superpoke, hatching gift, pirate, mood, movies and many many more.

An interesting point to add is that as Facebook usage in the US continued to grow in January, Europe’s usage fell in line with that of the UK. The three main social networks in the UK are MySpace, Facebook and Bebo. Facebook has attracted the most users but most of those are aged 25 and over. Bebo has been the one to market most prominently to the younger demographic. Perhaps this focus on an older age group and the spread of these applications has put off Facebook users.

As far as I am concerned

We all knew Facebook would be in the news this year and the chances of it all being positive were slim. I am still a Facebook user. I know no better way of keeping in contact with friends who are scattered all over the world. I like only ever being a few clicks away from sending a message to someone even if I have not seen them for ten years. I must also admit the novelty has worn off. I do not check Facebook anywhere near as much as I used to.

Looking to the future

As the world goes online more and more there has been a focus towards catering for niches. There are many niche social networking sites such as Linked In for business networking, WAYN for those interested in travelling. One size does not fit all – but we all need a central hub with which we can maintain contact with people who do not share our interests.

Will Facebook go the way of Friends Reunited and other networks which had the buzz then lost it? Is this just a minor blip? Anyone know what the next Facebook will be? Or will Facebook make a comeback?

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