You have the same perception of “social” sites that I did. A lot time spent flittering with no real benefit and little knowledge gain. At least if I participate in forums, I learn “stuff”.

Don Crowther’s Stompernet video is an eye-opener for a number of reasons other than just the MySpace, FaceBook and Bebo traffic. The fact that there are
large numbers of “real people”, not just teenie-boppers, using these sites was a total surprise.

Don also highlighted a number of sites that are useful and can make a marketer more efficient. These sites can help manage Web 2.0 bookmark sites, make research easier, and provide access to quality content.

Regards,

Gus

That is a great video and it complements well alot of what Rich Schefren has been talking about for awhile. And Social Marketing may be just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how the Internet is evoving.

I have one thing to say about “SEO” on the optimization end, is that if people were paying attn to Jeremy Palmer in his book when he talked about the Black, Gray and White Seo tactics: White hat focus is on quality… can’t drill that in to peoples heads enough. If you get quality on the seo front and quality on the content front, as you advocate, thereis a pretty great combination . And, no, people shouldn’t concentrate uniquely on paid search. But getting folks to pay attention to the right people is always difficult.

I had a lot of time off from a job in 2004, and I had looked at the Internet for exactly this kind of information at that time. Pretty much all I found back then was the endless stream of ” Get your url submitted to 100′s of se’s, sites with seemingly endless ads to sign up for everything, and lots of virus. I left to do the work for someone else rut and finally got to the end of my tolerance. I am quite pleased to find a great change in the enviroment. And, Thank You, for providing a lot of great information and for playing the part of someone who will question what the herd is doing when it’s not making sense.

I didn’t mean to go on so here. About the video. I have to watch it again because a part of the 3rd tactic isn’t ringing the right bells in my head. The Social bookmarking topic and using a ( Social Marker) tool that will bookmark things automatically was discussed toward the end of that section. I may not have understood what Don said or I’m just seeing how people will get blasted by Google.Making it available for people to bookmark you is one thing, but automatically bookmarking yourself is another. Do those links have any value other than the fact that peole know how and where to find your urls?

Hum… I’ll watch the video again. I may have had a short brain nap and now I’m missing the point . Please comment if you have a moment and thank you, again.

Ayn Elise

Quickly viewed my Important Emails this morning ( yes yours are included ) and came across your mention of the Stompernet Video. When I saw that it was about 55mins, thought no – cant spare the time.
Anyhow changed my mind and did view and pleased I did.

Great to be sent some useful info.

Certainly got my gray matter spinning!! Thanks.

Regards

Rodney

Since I watched the video, I have increased my use of social bookmarking and now more than 30 of the top 100 results link back to one of my articles, blogs or Squidoo lenses.