Ylliks

Due to the great Askimet plugin most of the spam I get on this blog (I’m guessing it catches about 99% of it; the odd one gets through) never gets displayed. Usually I don’t care much about those spam comments; I’ll scroll through them every once in a while to see if something that isn’t spam got caught (this happened maybe once in all the years I’ve run a WordPress blog) and if that’s not the case I’ll delete them. That’s about it. When I did the same a couple of weeks ago I noticed something strange: this post gets by far the most spamming comments.

Because I was a bit curious about this, I did a little bit of research. Over the last 3 weeks I got 328 spam comments. 204 of them (62%) were on the aforementioned post. I think that’s a lot for a small post that consists of just 35 words. I’m guessing (and I’m in no way a SEO-guru) this is because it has the word puppies in it (because, let’s be honest, who doesn’t like puppies? (Well, maybe not this guy)) which according to a keyword tool gets about 5 million searches each month. I can understand that if you’re a spammer you want to put your “message” into a post or article that has keywords in it that have a high search rate. But why do it on a small personal blog like my own which, let’s be honest here, is not one of the high flying ones out there?

Spammers probably have a whole lot of their activities automated and probably aren’t even aware where their comments are posted, nor do they care as long as some of their links are clicked and they get paid. Here’s hoping you won’t have to encounter one of those links as long as you visit this blog.

As I’ve mentioned before I already have a Facebook account, but I hadn’t been using it at all until recently. I couldn’t see the appeal of it. But in order to see some of the holiday pictures a friend of mine made, I had to befriend her. This lead to a couple of friend requests from people who know the both of us and that started the ball rolling and I looked into it more. And the thing is, I start to get the appeal of it.

First thing of course is the fact that it’s fun to know what your friends or just people you know are up to and what they find interesting enough to share (which I believe tells you more about a person than anything else). Then there’s the change to reconnect with people you fell a bit out of touch with, because despite the reasons on why that happened, it’s just sending a little friend request to get in touch again.

Then there’s the tech possibilities where you can use a whole lot of applications which makes the experience (I have to rely on what others told me on this) even more worth while. Also it integrates with the application I use for my Twitter account which, in theory, would make it easier for me to work with it.

The biggest drawback on starting to use Facebook on a regular basis is that it’s another potential big time waster. Even though I haven’t used it alot since getting those friends request, you quickly lose time by checking what people are up to and seeing what kind of fun things you can do. And that’s time you could use for doing other (maybe more useful) stuff.

I’m still on the limb when it comes to Facebook and haven’t decided yet if I’ll jump in full time. I do believe I can get some value out of it and understand the appeal, but I also think it can be a huge time waster. I’m planning to talk to some people who use it on a daily basis (for instance Graham is running sort of an experiment on it) and see if they get certain things out of it which I missed (which could be the case since I haven’t really gave it a shot). And I’m sure I’ll be checking out some things as well myself. But as said, I’m still not convinced to give it a real try.

To be honest though: I am intrigued by it.

LinkedIn. Flickr. Twitter. StumbleUpon. Google Reader. As you can see in my blogroll, those are the 5 social media sites that I use (well, I do have a Facebook account, but it’s dormant). When you’re a business and you want me to buy or buy again from you, there’s a good change you can reach me there. For a business the possibilities to choose from are almost endless. And your choice depends on what kind of business you run.

Let’s say your a musician. Before yesterday Myspace Music was the best choice. Sure, they may have lost the battle with Facebook when it comes to total users, but when playing music was your job, they were a safe bet. But with the addition of Ping by Apple, which is tightly integrated with their iTunes business, you might want to jump into that as well. When you’re a multi-national having a presence on Facebook is never a bad idea. But what do you do with your customers in Brazil (where Orkut is the largest) or the Netherlands (where Hyves has the biggest presence)?

And it’s not just the number of social network/media sites you can choose from, it’s also a matter of whether your actions lead to generating leads or sales. Just getting into social media because “everybody is doing it” is not a sound business strategy. You want to reap the benefits of your efforts. So it’s no surprise that consultancy in social media is growing as a business.

Most businesses have realized that they should have a social presence but don’t know how to go about it. And with the ever growing aditions in social media, making the right decision isn’t getting any easier.

I suggest a new standard for blogs: custom RSS feeds. As far as I know this hasn’t been implemented anywhere in the way I’ll suggest it. I know that coming from me, a more tech-curious than tech savvy guy, a new technical web standard is sort of a weird thing, but bare with me.

Here’s the idea: the most popular/professional blogs all have categories. Some of those categories appeal more to certain readers than others. But when it comes to feeds most of the time the only thing you can get is the full feed. My idea is that when you hit the “get updates through RSS”-button you’re directed to a web-page where you can select the updates on the categories you want to receive (of course the full feed is still an option) by just checking them off. After hitting a “Done”-button you’ll get a customized RSS-feed.

I came to this while visiting CHUD.com (a movie website I enjoy tremendously). They have what they call a Master RSS list where you can select the categories you want to receive updates from. But if say you want to follow the news, DVD and film reviews you have to c/p three feeds into you RSS reader. Wouldn’t it be more convenient to check of the categories you want in a sort of web form and have the feed created for you?

I think this sort of customization can come in real handy for readers, plus it makes it easier for content creators to serve readers with targeted ads per category. Here’s hoping that this can be turned into a standard. And if this really is a revolutionary, never before thought-up idea, any company interested (I’m looking at you Feedburner) will be happy to learn that my idea-fees are very reasonable! Because remember: you read it here first…or..I think/hope you did.