BlogWorld Expo Highlights

I just got back from BlogWorld Expo and am still decompressing. I’m not going to try to list everyone here, but suffice it to say I met loads of cool people, Liz being my usual partner in crime, as always, Wendy and Christina joining in when possible.

I was planning on vandalizing the BlogCatalog booth, but instead I just waited until they left and made myself at home in their booth. I went and talked to them as we were leaving the show one night and they were really cool. I really was overwhelmed at how really nice they were. Here’s the picture of my misdeed. When I told them about it they thought it was hilarious. I love people with a good sense of humor!

Community Manager For MyBlogLog Hangs Out At BlogCatalog Booth

I got to meet some heros of mine, including Matt Mullenweg, Jeremy Pepper and more. Coolest was that I got to give the Weblog Award to Leo Laporte for best podcast (thanks Kevin!). While on stage he actually said, “Oh, I didn’t realize you were with MyBlogLog. I’m a big fan of MyBlogLog”. I think I should have stopped the show there and got him to say that in the mic. 😉

Leo Laporte, Robyn Tippins

Tris was nice enough to introduce me to Leo before the ceremony. He seems like such a cool guy. Leo, I mean. I already knew Tris was the coolest person evah.

Anyhoo, I’m back in the saddle again and I can’t wait to get back to work. Yeah, I’m serious, but then I’m really, really weird.

All Photos By Tris Hussey

Mybloglog Tips For Social Networking World Domination

Lee Odden, unarguably an expert in online marketing, has posted a community-built MyBlogLog tips post that is a must read.

Here’s my tip (a just recently admitted one, by the way):

Duzins Duzins
We made tags searchable a few months ago, with one caveat: 3 people have to tag something in order for it to be included. In other words, say you tag your own community ’seo’. Until 2 other people agree by clicking the green plus button, that tag doesn’t get into the search results. The more times someone does this, they higher up in the results you are going to show. 🙂 A good example is sexyseo (username). She ranks number one for SEO.
[Note from Lee. Before you go and get tempted to abuse this, understand that it’s pretty easy to spot abuse and suffer the consequences. ]

So, go take a look at all the member-submitted tips over there on TopRankBlog, and note also that I rank highest for ‘sexy’. Me thinks some people are kissing up. Remember, tag-flattery will get you everywhere.

LinkedIN Answers Works

Check out the responses, already, after 12 hours, to my question. I came from my blog post and the rest all came from my 200-ish LinkedIN contacts.

Is that typical?  Do people normally get this large of an answer to a question or is it that this was just a great question that lots of people wanted to answer?

Either way, very cool.  This will help me a great deal in my talk.

LinkedIN Questions

Building Communities In a Web 2.0 World

I’m preparing now for an upcoming presentation at Webcom-Montreal (note: site in French) mid-November. While I have my outline done, I am looking for a few great examples of community. I’d love to hear what you think about this.

Who is doing community right? Who sucks at community?

Quechup Invites Are Still Bombarding Me

I’m still surprised at the number of Quechup invites I’m getting from friends, business acquaintances and mailing lists. I thought that when Quechup saw the enormous flack they were taking for spamming their users’ address books, they’d fix this obviously broken invite system. However, I got another 5 invites today. At least it seems to be slowing down as more and more users are deciding to steer clear of the new social network. I suppose 30 email invites, plus at least 20 apology emails with an angry report of what had been done to them by Quechup, is a small price to pay for being well warned not to come anywhere near the site. But, the lack of response from the site’s owners is deafening.

I’m at more than 30 invites so far, most from people I have only exchanged one email with the in the past. What about you? How many spam Quechup invites have you gotten? Were you a victim of the site’s spam-friend invite?

Yahoo! Acquires Bluelithium

It never ceases to amaze me how important metrics are to a company. Is Facebook important because people are on it, or more likely, because of the wealth of data that Facebook has collected about each and every user and because of the super-easy way you can target ads directly to that user, theoretically? Well, I suppose it’s a bit of both… You want a network to be full of hyper-interested persons, but you also want to catch them at their most vulnerable (while decompressing with friends) and you want to be able to tightly target ads to them at the same time.

With that intro, I would like to let you know that Jerry Yang, our Chief Yahoo, sent us an email this eve with the announcement that Yahoo! was buying Bluelithium. I can’t say I’m surprised, considering what they do:

With more than 100 employees, including computer scientists and researchers, BlueLithium is known for providing powerful data analytics to help customers get the most out of their campaigns as well as impressive behavioral targeting capabilities. They provide the dashboards and insights our performance customers have been asking for — capabilities that have been a bit of an Achilles heel for us.

Bluelithium is the fifth largest advertising network in the US and the second largest in the UK, according to PaidContent. The purchase price, again says PaidContent, was in the neighborhood of $300M. It appears that Bluelithium, if it is truly what it is hyped to be, can help Y! deliver much more relevant ads, and can more specifically allow advertisers to target specific segments of users to make their advertising dollars more meaningful.

I’ve said this before, if most web-savvy users do not click ads, and more and more users are being classified as ‘savvy’ then we have to turn the current model on it’s ear. We have to deliver better ads; more targeted; more useful; more succinct. Advertising shouldn’t be about removing borders and adding images to TRICK people to click ads. Ads should be so damn useful, that they are a HELP to the user and not something we have to fool them into using. When ads become user-focused, and not advertiser focused, we all see increased clicks and increased sales. Customers are happy because they found what they were looking to buy and advertisers are happy because their sales have gone through the roof. Let’s stop looking at what used to work and look at what SHOULD work.

Now, though advertising is a passion of mine, that’s definitely NOT what I am involved in at Yahoo! I’m a customer-facing, community nerd with advertising only entering my radar in knowing that it makes my paycheck possible. However, I can’t help but think, especially after the RightMedia acquisition, that Yahoo! is making a concerted effort at challenging the big G at their own game of dominating advertising online.

Of course, depending on the guys/gals at the top, that remains to be seen, but I do think that today is a good day for Y!

Zazzle Is Searching For A Community Manager

I met with Josh Elman last week and this guy really ‘gets’ community. If I weren’t so darn happy here at MyBlogLog I would have jumped at the chance to work with this team, and Zazzle. Zazzle is really, really cool.

However, I wouldn’t be doing Josh and the team at Zazzle justice if I didn’t let you guys know that they were looking for a cracker jack community manager. They are looking for someone on site (Redwood City, CA), that wants to help them grow and nurture their community (which is really thriving already). So, if you have experience in Community and want to work with a great bunch of people, shoot me an email at robyn at sleepyblogger.com and I’ll pass your resume on to Josh. Good luck!

Elvis Has Left The Building

It’s with a heavy heart that I point you to Eric’s post about why he’s leaving MyBlogLog. I can’t imagine what it will be like to go to work without his inspiration and leadership.

It has been an honor working for you for the last two years. I’ve done some things that I’m really proud of and some things that make me want to hide under the bed. But these have been two of the best years of my life and I’m glad that I got to spend it with you.

Facebook Meets eHarmony

This spoof is a dead-on inside look at how college students are using Facebook. Of course, if you aren’t a user, you probably aren’t going to get terms like ‘poke’, ‘write on wall’, and the different ‘status’ levels of the people involved. Either way, it’s a funny video and for marketers, it’s eye-opening.