Category — Social networking
A plea to Facebook… Stop the decline… You’ve forgotten about making friends
Has anyone noticed that their friends aren’t using Facebook as much now? I don’t know if it’s just me, but the number of messages with update I get from friends has dropped dramatically. When you log in and check, the updates they’ve been making has dropped dramatically too.
It’s a strange phenomena. The theory behind Facebook is superb. Let you and your friends share everything. Put photos up, let them and their friends know they’re in it. Set up events and groups that they might be interested in. Bring them all together in one place. Send your friends messages and videos from sources such as YouTube.
And the way the user interface has been built is a true demonstration of form and function giving you the best user experience of almost any site. The User interface is so polished and simple. It does what it needs to do, and it does it well. There’s no excessive Ajax calls. You see what you need, when you need it, and it’s quick and clean. The essence of Web 2.0.
You can find groups about just about anything. People that walk slowly, how cute cats are, my favourite drink, bring back Firefly. All valid groups and all things we might be interested in. We should be subscribing to them and sharing our opinions.
Then there’s a the Facebook Applications. A brilliant idea! Open up your service to keen people, let them share their ideas and their passion. Bring the people who love similar things together. Let them take quizzes and see which character from the Simpsons or Family Guy you are. All great fun.
I know there was a time when I was very active on Facebook, joining groups left right and centre. Installing applications for fun. But then, recently, I suddenly decided to remove all those applications. Un-subscribe from those groups. But why? I couldn’t figure it out initially.
Then I started looking and talking to other people, and they’ve done the same. Then I started thinking about why. Why did I feel the need to remove all those Applications that once interested me? Because, to be honest, they were fun once, and the fact that every time one of my friends uses the Application, I get told - repeatedly.
I haven’t removed all of the Applications though. Some are still there, like the places I’ve been one, and Wiliam’s RSS feed reader. They seem genuinely useful to me, and something my friends can use to find out useful things about me and keep in touch with me.
So what am I trying to say? Facebook, please, please, please, don’t ruin the brilliant idea you’ve built! Focus on what it did so well originally! Connecting friends and people with similar interests, and not watering down the experience.
It’s hard to put your finger on exactly what’s gone wrong, but if it’s not fixed soon, one of the best websites of recent years will lose the people that it most appealed to originally and end up like MySpace.
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February 2, 2008 No Comments
All about Brine. An SEO blog on the name and substance known as Brine
Ok, so part of the aim of building my website originally, other than so my friends could keep track of my travels, was to try and get my name in lights on Google. By this, I mean that I wanted my surname, Brine, to rank near the top of Google, if not the top, then very near it. This is made difficult by the amount of PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising that takes up the first 9 results., to rank near the top of Google, if not the top, then very near it. This is made difficult by the amount of (Pay Per Click) advertising that takes up the first 9 results., to rank near the top of Google, if not the top, then very near it. This is made difficult by the amount of (Pay Per Click) advertising that takes up the first 9 results., to rank near the top of Google, if not the top, then very near it. This is made difficult by the amount of (Pay Per Click) advertising that takes up the first 9 results., to rank near the top of Google, if not the top, then very near it. This is made difficult by the amount of (Pay Per Click) advertising that takes up the first 9 results., to rank near the top of Google, if not the top, then very near it. This is made difficult by the amount of (Pay Per Click) advertising that takes up the first 9 results.. By this, I mean that I wanted my surname, , to rank near the top of Google, if not the top, then very near it. This is made difficult by the amount of (Pay Per Click) advertising that takes up the first 9 results.Running a search on the 3 major search engines, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live Search, you can see that my site struggles to get a good search position. In fact, the best position I managed is page 8 on Google - which isn’t too bad, but I want higher.So, what can I do about this? Well, the first thing to do is lookup what sites do appear for Brine. It’s clear to see that being such a common substance, the primary results are not as clearcut as you would expect. The mix includes definitions from sites such as Wikipedia and the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia. This kind of makes sense, as a lot of sites will link to these, and they provide a good dense usage of Brine in their content.
Next up comes the cookery sites, with some great cooking tips from Cooking For Engineers and Ochef on the process of Brining. Behind that comes some of the more obscure things, such as Brines Sporting Goods, and Water flows on Mars, by the BBC. There’s also sites on treating water with Brine, such as Brine tanks by the Clack Corporation.
But, in amongst all this are the personal sites. How some of these get here is a mystery! One example that I’ve never worked out is chrisgregory.com. How that site stays in the index is beyond me, as it’s not been updated since May 2005. But, then there’s the genuine ones, such as the American singer, Mark Brine.
So, what am I doing to try and change this. Well, this blog is a start. The idea being that I’ve made good use of my keywords, Brine and Brining, ensuring that they’re used a suffecient amount - but not too much - and where possible, linked either back to this site or to external sites, such as Wikipedia that talk about Brine. There’s also the social tags I’ve used. Obviously, the main ones are Brine and Brining, along with my usual tags. I’ll be posting the page around a few websites, and relying on the RSS Syndication to work it’s magic. Then, hopefully in a week or so, I’ll start to see to a difference for that keyword…
The true measure of this SEO test will be whether or not using Brine in this way will make a difference. I’ll keep you posted…
February 8, 2007 No Comments
Website passes the 10,000 mark
For the first time this month, my website’s had more than 10,000 visitors in a month. Actually, it passed 12,000 too (If anyone cares for precision, it was 12,478). Ok, so all my friends are now groaning, but to me, that’s a pretty impressive number for a personal website that’s not selling anything.
So why do i think this happened? Partly due to re-writing the code of the site to be more search engine friendly. Partly re-writing the content to be more relevant - and to those who keep pointing it out, one day I will fill in the gaps. Posting articles and comments on forums and news sites around the web. And I’ve been updating the site a lot more regularly. Writing blogs, uploading images, just trying to keep the site fresh and interesting to those that follow, and perhaps a few out there just randomly wandering the web.
So, what’s next for www.gregorybrine.com? Well, when I get time, I’m starting to re-write it in Microsoft’s Asp .NET. As part of that, the galleries are getting an overhaul, and some friends are interested in combining sites - that could be interesting and fun. Oh, and I might move it to new, cheaper hosting… We’ll see. It’s all about having time, and a desire to finish at work, then sit in front of a computer doing more of the same… Hmmm… Let me think about that… I think I just heard the pub calling….
January 3, 2007 No Comments
In The News: Rules of Social Media Optimization
I started reading an article on Rohit Bhargava’s Influential Interactive Marketing site about changing our approach to SEO, so that it works better with Social Networks. The original post has since been added to, and the finally summary of the 16 rules can be found on the work the influence these networks will be having in the future, especially as they can really help to build brand awareness and loyalty, and as sites like Wikipedia start to lose their influence within search engines as their algorithms are updated and PageRanks recalculated.