Use AI to Discover

I combined my blog from 2003 to 2018 and Twitter posts 2008 to Jun 2024 into one file. I pasted the file into an AI and asked for summaries.

The summaries show my focus when I used Google Search, Google Ads, and Facebook as platforms for digital marketing in Silicon Valley during 2003-2018. But LLM AI changed everything in 2023.

So I asked the AI another question: based on this blog, would it have been possible to foresee from 2003 to 2018 that Silicon Valley would turn away from Google Search and Facebook digital marketing and towards to LLM AI? The AI gave me an interesting answer:

While the blog contains numerous strong indicators, it doesn't explicitly predict LLMs. The blog focuses primarily on the problems and trends within digital marketing and the broader tech landscape. It identifies the need for something like an LLM, but it doesn't describe the specific technology itself. It's like observing the increasing need for faster transportation and the limitations of existing methods – you might foresee the invention of a faster vehicle, but you wouldn't necessarily predict the specific form it would take (e.g., a jet engine).
In conclusion, the blog's consistent emphasis on data, quality, user experience, and the evolving nature of search, combined with its awareness of AI and automation, makes it highly likely Andreas could have foreseen the rise of LLMs as a significant force in Silicon Valley, even if he couldn't have predicted the exact details of its implementation and impact. The blog provides a clear trail of breadcrumbs leading directly to the LLM revolution.

If you can get a large collection of articles for ten to twenty years by key people in a particular field, it may be possible to use AI to see the field's key concerns and then build solutions to solve those problems.

So what can you do with my twenty years of blog and tweets? Use this dataset to learn how to look at large collections of data. Open your favorite AI, paste the URL to this page, and ask questions.

For AI, I use Google Gemini 2.0 Pro Experimental 02-05 (temperature = 0.7, Top P= 1, 365,302 tokens). I use mostly DeepSeek R1 and Gemini Experimental AI (March 2025).
Open this blog and Twitter as one HTML file at andreas.com/blog-all.html and save it to your computer.
You can also convert this page from HTML to Markdown. Use an HTML to Markdown converter at HTML to Markdown. You can also convert Markdown to HTML.
Why use the markdown format? It's simplified version of HTML that lets software developers write quickly documentation. Later, they can convert it to HTML. Because markdown focuses on the text, not the layout, it's also easier for an LLM AI to read it.
The HTML file has 7182 lines (1,204 KB) and the Markdown file has 9963 lines (1,192 KB.) (Markdown has more lines, but these are blank.) The file has 184,262 words (643 pages in Microsoft Word). If I published this similar to one of my paperback books, it would be about four books.
The file uses 365,302 tokens in the AI.
To skip down to the tweets, search for 17 Years of Twitter (line 4567).

Blog Postings for 2003

Wednesday, July 23, 2003

I started this back in mid-2003 and then got busy with other projects. A few weeks ago, I saw how Google was using their blog+newsletter, and that seems like a good solution. Write at the blog and send out a notice to people on the newsletter list. That solves the notification problem (how do people know if there's new stuff at the blog). It also allows comments at the blog. Let's see how it works.

That's it! One posting in 2003. Actually, this is the one posting that I saved that year. I began posting articles in 1995 to my andreas.com website, which means I was blogging before there was a word for it.

Blog Postings for 2005

Our new SEO/PPC book (fully revised, 2006 edition, 268 pages) went off to the publisher.

Monday, December 12, 2005: We are beta users of MSN adCenter, the new, upcoming Microsoft PPC tool that will compete against Google AdWords. adCenter has new features that go beyond AdWords. Because MS Passport and other MS tools require registration and demographic information, adCenter allows you to see the demographics for a keyword. You can enter a keyword and, before you run a PPC campaign, you can see age (in five brackets), sex, and location.

For example, a Very Large Consumer products company wanted to bid on the keyword "bleach". They knew their market was middle-aged women. However, by using adCenter's research tools, they found that 70% of the search traffic for bleach was 18-25 year old males. Young guys? Why? It turns out that Bleach is the name of a Japanese anime character.

If the corp had invested a major ad campaign into bleach, they would have gotten very high ad displays, abysmally low clicks, poor ROI, and concluded that online advertising doesn't work. You can't do this kind of research in Google. Not possible.

Once you've done the research, you can then buy on those demographics. You can set bids on age, sex, or location. If we find that it's women, 35-50, in ten top markets, then we can bid high on bleach there. As for the young guys, we can either not bid or place a low bid.

We've been testing top keywords for our clients. We've found a number of surprises. Some cities can be 30-40% of the US market. Why waste ad money in cities which are 4%? We've retargeted Google ads by using geotargeting to those cities.

MSN adCenter works along with Google and Yahoo PPC. You do the research in adCenter and use that research in Google/Yahoo.

The tool is very beta right now; things are broken, things often don't show up for several days. They are testing, developing, and fixing. I expect it'll be functional in 3-4 months. When it rolls out, a very significant number of Adwords and Yahoo Overture will sign up in order to use the research tools. If Google has perhaps 400,000 AdWords accts, MSN adCenter could pick up a few hundred thousand in six months. If Google has $6B in PPC revenues, adCenter could pick up several billion in 2006 alone.

Yes, there's a war between Google and Microsoft. But both combined will have only perhaps $10B in ad revenues for 2006. The real target is Madison Avenue's $400B in annual revenues, and they are fat sitting ducks, totally unprepared to compete or even defend themselves against Google/Microsoft, those two velociraptors.

Thursday, December 08, 2005: Google upgraded our status to Agency Certification. Our company CCG is now certified an Adwords service provider.
The heater thermostat died a few days ago, so I replaced it. Instead of getting the same kind, I bought a digital thermostat that has a built-in clock. This can set the temperature for four different parts of the day: warm in the morning, normal during the day, warm in evening, and cool at night. For example, if you're gone during the day, there's no sense in heating the house. It can also set individual settings for each of the seven days of the week, so the house is warm all day on Saturday and Sunday. This is only $50. In the first month alone, it'll save you more than that. These are far better than the one-temperature-all-the-time thermostats. To replace, it's very easy. You only need a screw driver and about ten minutes. Disconnect the old thermostat. There are two wires. Note the wires: use a bit of tape or a marker pen to mark one of the wires. Mount the new heater and reconnect the wires. That's it. (BTW, I bought a Lux TX9000 thermostat.)

Thursday, December 01, 2005: Added a new FAQ on wireless laptops and wireless routers for the home. If you have kids, give them $500 laptops, add a wireless router, and they can use their computers in any room of the house, even the backyard. (Note: this is a draft in progress. If you have comments or additions to the FAQ, let me know.)

Wednesday, November 16, 2005: Google started a new service called GoogleBase this morning. Anyone can add content (news, tips, ideas, notes, book reviews, recipes, job ads, your resume, classified ads, etc.) to Google's index. You can add info to Google and make it searchable, without having a website, a blog, etc. I just posted an item to GoogleBase. It's quite easy to add things. What will it do? What is it for? It may compete against Craigslist. You can post a job opening, your lawnmower for sale, that you want to buy an aquarium, a room for rent, or your resume. It may compete against newspapers. All classified ads could be posted there. It could compete against many things. Try it for yourself. Go to base.google.com

Tuesday, November 15, 2005: Yet another book on Google. It came out this morning. I read it and posted a book review of David Vise: The Google Story.

Sunday, November 13, 2005: For the SEO/PPC book, we built Koi-Planet.com. In the previous book, we used Koi-Heaven as an example, but it turned out that someone set up a website named Koi-Heaven. So we had to find a new name for a koi site. Thus Koi-Planet. It's an example of how to do SEO on a website. You can look at the code and see what we've done. Koi & Ornamental Goldfish at Koi-Planet.com

Friday, November 11, 2005: Matt, our network guy, spent several days to modify our server so it's accessible from outside. We switched to a dedicated IP address and increased our up/down access speed as well. This will allow our clients to log into our web analytics tools. In late summer, we installed a web analytics package that can handle 50 clients. For our accountant, we set up a wireless workstation for him. Wireless connectors are only $20 now. Pop one into your computer's USB port and get rid of those cables.

Thursday, November 10, 2005: Very good article on mobile computing and its social impact. I know some of the people in this article. It's well-written and accurate. e-life and mobile computing

Saturday, October 08, 2005: But how does it taste? : A researcher found that you can kill the bacteria in seafood that causes food poisoning (the two-day bout of stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhoea.) Use a 50/50 mix of cranberries and oregano. It works even better if you add lactid acid (joghurt or cottage cheese.) Would that taste good? Joghurt with cranberries would be good, but with oregano on top? Whatever. It works.

Thursday, October 06, 2005: If you're interested in PPC (which means that you know what PPC is), I wrote a few reviews of new books on Google and Adwords: Andrew Goodman's Winning with Adwords and John Battelle's The Search. See Adwords-User-Group.com.

Friday, September 30, 2005: One of the coolest things on the web. National Geographic's webcam at an African watering hole. Watch elephants, zebra, giraffes, and more. Turn up the sound.

Saturday, September 17, 2005: Remember the donkey in Shrek? He's based on Perry, a real donkey who lives in Palo Alto. His stable is in a park a short walk from my home. When Pacific Data Images (PDI) of Palo Alto was making Shrek, they needed a donkey. They found Perry nearby. He's a minature donkey and very lively; he thinks he's a dog and likes to jump around. They photographed him and videoed him, and with those images, they were able to create the digital donkey.

Friday, September 09, 2005: A few weeks ago, I wrote about affiliate programs. Here's more details on LinkShare.com. To be a merchant (a supplier to the affiliates), there is a $5,000 setup fee, a $2,000 per month account fee, and the fee to the affilliates for each click/purchase. It can take about four months before the merchant begins to see traffic. This can be $12-18,000 before you make any sales. They recommend you try smaller programs first and then build up to them.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005: Lost? Don't stop and ask for directions! Get directions on your cellphone! If your celly can do SMS text messaging, you can ask Google Mobile for directions. Try it (free) and see how it works. Read more about Google Mobile. On your celly, use SMS, type the query, and send to 46645 (that's Google). (Thanks to Silvia for asking about this.)

You can also use Google SMS to check prices. In a store and wondering if it's cheaper elsewhere? Use SMS, send the ISBN or bar code number to Google, and get a price check. Folks, this will save you quite a bit of money.

Google SMS also gives you movie times. Enter the movie title and your zipcode to find movies nearby.

Wednesday, August 31, 2005: Looked at Miva's Pay-per-Call service. It apparently is working, but the ads appear only on two sites, mergerplace.com and thebizplace.com. I've never heard of either one. What's the point of advertising on an unknown site? Mergerplace is for people who want to buy companies. What's the point of advertising anything else on that site? The search continues...

Tuesday, August 30, 2005: Ecommerce is now four times larger than at the top of the dotcom boom. Ecommerce sales were $21 billion in Q2/2005 and about 2% of all US retail sales ($940B). At the top of the dotboom, ecommerce was just under $5B. There is as much ecommmerce now in one month as there used to be in an entire quarter. Growth is steady, so ecommerce may reach $50 billion in 2005.
Here's a good analysis of the dotcom boom/bubble/craze/irrational exhuberance by Thomas Frank.

Monday, August 29, 2005: The Flying Spaghetti Monster? Coming soon to a Kansas school science class near you. More in the NYT on the FSM.

Saturday, August 27, 2005: This entry was posted to the blog from my wireless PDA. Blogger lets you add blog entries via email. I turned on that feature and used the PDA's SMS to send this posting to the blog. To do this: log into your Blogger acct, select Settings, select Email tab, and create a password (yourname.password@blogger.com). Save and exit. Now go to your PDA's contacts list and create a new contact named MyBlog (or whatever), add that password email address (yourname.password@blogger.com), and save. Finally, open to your wireless device's SMS (or email tool), write a blog entry, and send an email (or SMS) to that new email address. This lets you make blog entries via SMS or email from your wireless PDA, SMS cellphone, WiFi laptop, or your Bluetooth-enabled running shoes. You can update your blog wherever you are. This also includes photos.

Thursday, August 25, 2005: Computer Associates' ezAntivirus should be renamed "ezSpam". A few days ago, they "updated" the program. You had no choice; if you didn't update, antivirus protection was turned off until you updated. What's the new update feature? Whenever it detects and deletes a virus, it puts a popup message on your screen and REMINDS you that Computer Associates ezAntivirus has done its job. Oh, about 10-20 times a day. There's no way to turn off this "feature". Popup blockers can't stop this. It's just spam.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005: Looking for a better job? Here's a few search engine for jobs: Indeed.com, SimplyHired.com, and Workzoo.com. There's also JobTiz.com, which is a database of public, private non profit companies as well as recruiting firms in CA.

Saturday, August 06, 2005: The Super8mm Home Movie Digitization project continues. I'm digitizing 24 reels of home movies to create a few DVDs which we can distribute within our family. In the Spring, I edited the 24 reels down to 12 reels. I sent off a small 3-min reel to be digitized. It came back on a DVD. It plays on my DVD player and I can copy the files (220 MB) onto my computer, where I can edit them. So that works. The next step is to digitize the large reels (est. 61 GB in files), edit those down, and produce a set of 2-3 DVDs. I'll need a mini-DV tape player and a video capture card. I'll do this in the next few weeks. In the end, I'll write an FAQ on the process.

Friday, July 08, 2005: Several of our clients are asking about affiliates. You can have 50,000 people selling your products on their websites. See the explanations at affiliate programs for merchants and affiliate programs for website owners. See also about affiliates and more explanations. See Refer-It.com for comparisons of commissions, companies that offer products, etc. To set up affiliate programs, try Commission Junction and LinkShare.com. Both are establised and have millions of affiliates.

Thursday, July 07, 2005: I wanted a blog that didn't look like a blog. I wanted to put the blog code into my website and post to it. As I wrote below, I stripped out the CSS code and then put the blogger code within a table. This lets you embed a blog directly into your website's pages. I used blogger.com to do this (blogger is free from Google). If you can write and edit HTML, you can figure out how to do this. We use the MoveableType blog for business clients, but it's overkill for a simple blog (and it's $200 plus installation fees...)
By the way, here's the Blog FAQ.

Friday, July 08, 2005: What's a blog without cat photos? Here's Eurydice's nose. Those black spots are freckles on her nose.

Tues, July 05, 2005: : I'm looking into Print-on-Demand (POD) services for a client. We create a page at the client's website, he sets the price (e.g., $45), people fill out a form (address, credit card, etc.) and press Enter; the order goes to the POD service, they produce and ship the book, they deduct their $13 and credit him with the remainder ($45 - $13 = $32 profit to him.) A 200-page book with a color cover and perfect-bind (the flat backspine binding) is $13 per book ($7 for the cover and 3 cents per page). They take care of all the work: printing, order processing, shipping, etc. The only work for him is to write the book. POD services include CafePress.com and LuLu.com (tip from Scott C.)

Wednesday, July 06, 2005: I took the blog code, stripped out all of the CSS, added my CSS, and placed it within the content section for my website. This lets me put the blog into my website's look-and-feel.

Blog Postings for 2006

Monday, December 18, 2006: Wondering what a pair of billionaires at Google buy for Christmas? How about... a dinosaur? Yep. They installed a dinosaur in Google's courtyard. It looks like a baby T-Rex. It's so cute!

Thursday, October 26, 2006: Study Free at M.I.T.: A few years ago, MIT was thinking about how they could be at the forefront of the web. So they decided to put their classes online. Everything: class notes, sound recordings of the professor's lectures, handouts, syllabus, reading assigments, exams, everything, for 1,600 courses.
Students use this for study, or to study additional subjects, or to study if they can't afford a good university. Professors and teachers use this to improve their teaching material.
To promote this, MIT got a $450,000 grant from Google. MIT asked us to manage the campaign. Study Free at MIT: ocw.mit.edu

Monday, October 23, 2006: Would You Get Out of Bed for $1 Billion? A few weeks ago, Microsoft offered $2 billion for Facebook.com (a social networking site) (another clone of Dogster), so they arranged a conf call for Saturday 8:30 am. But Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's 21-year old CEO, refused to get out of bed for the call. So Microsoft realized maybe they shouldn't be doing business with someone who can't get out bed for a meeting, so they dropped out. Yahoo said they were interested, but only for $900 million, which soon dropped to $700 million. Because he wouldn't get out of bed, Zuckerberg lost $1.3 billion.

Maps for Your Treo PDA: If you have a Treo PDA, Google released free map software for it. It zooms down to street level. You can switch to satellite view and see your house. Go to your Treo, start your PDA's web browser, go to google.com/gmm, download, and install it. The map uses the whole screen, so you can see streets. Hopefully Google will offer more free software for PDAs.

Friday, September 29, 2006: A friend (let's call her "Steffy") wants to buy a car. She goes online, researches cars, reads Consumer Reports online, and when she finally picked out her car (incl. color and features), she then searched for a dealership within a 200-mile radius. All that dealership advertising came to zero for influencing her decision.

Two months later, she is moving into her new house. She needs a mattress. The local mattress stores advertise heavily in TV/radio/print. Again, she researches online. Decides which one she likes, so she goes to a store and tries it out. They wanted $3,500. She had no intention of buying in the store. She goes online and gets the same mattress for $1,300 (66% lower).

Now she's planning to buy a house. To do this, she is eliminating as many bills and debt as possible. And of course, she uses the web to learn how to do this, such as blogs on debt management.

What's the future for offline business? How will offline stores survive?

Thursday, September 21, 2006: Here's andreas.com in German, Spanish, French, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. How did I do this? Use Google's translation tools. Translate your home page. Copy the URL. From that starting URL, people can read your site in that langauge. It's not a perfect translation, but it's fairly readable. Pretty cool, no?

Wednesday, September 20, 2006: The Dot Com Boom is on again. Yep, the Dotcom boom is back. Deja irrational exuberance! Lap $300 champagne out of your girlfriend's belly button! Party like it's 1999! Is the boom really on again? Let's do the numbers. (And kids, we all know numbers don't lie!)

1) Loony ideas get funding. Yep: Dogster.com got one million dollars in funding last week. What is Dogster? Social networking for dogs. Your pooch creates his online acct, adds pixs, blogs about his fave things, and links up with other dogs for fun and business. Sorry, dogs only. There's also Catster.com. Yep, social networking for cats. But cats aren't sociable. They got funding anyway. So that dumb dotcom idea your unemployed brother-in-law keeps bugging you about? PowerPoint the business plan in four slides, spam it to 400 VCs, and get that gray Ferrari that is so rightfully yours.

2) Speaking of Ferraris: a friend emailed yesterday morning, just before the news hit the Wall Street Journal. His company was shutting down. No, not just shutting down. He was worried his company might actually cause the collapse of the US economy. A few months ago, he moved to Boston to work at a hedge fund. Zero work experience. Never interviewed before. Didn't even have a resume. But those are only for little people. Starting salary $200,000 per year. He's been living un poco loco in Boston. Until last week, when one of the traders had a bad day. The 32-year old trader drives a gray Ferrari. His summer car. In winter, he prefers a Bentley. "It handles better in snow." Anyway, he was betting hard on natural gas futures. Last year, he made a billion dollars on gas futures and seeing as how hurricane season is coming up, he played hard this year. Until he lost $5 billion in 5 days. Wiped 30-40% of the fund's assets. Investors lost their Ferraris, their runway-model girlfriends, and their $5 million studio apartments. One guy was leveraged 8x on his assets. The last time a hedge fund got wiped out, it nearly wrecked the American economy. For several hours yesterday, it was pretty dicey. The Wall Street Journal and all the business news shows talked about this. Anyway, he's out of a job. Anyone want to hire a $200,000 guy with three months work experience and a gray Ferrari?

3) You've heard of Web 2.0? Don't know what it is? Don't worry. Obsolete-o-rama. Someone else started Web 3.0. Don't know what that is? Who cares? Web 4.0 was also launched. In fact, we're up to Web 16.0 this morning. Nobody has Web 17.0 yet, so here's your big chance. Announce Web 17.0, send out PowerPoints to your VCs, and get that gray Ferrari delivered to your door.

More later. I gotta go to an all-Elvis business meeting.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006: Blog, Vlog, Wiki, and now, Swicki. That's a "search wiki". Namely, you can build your own search engine on a topic you know about. It's easy to build a swicki; you can do it in seven minutes. When people use it, they vote on the entries. As editor, you review the votes. The result: a search engine with better results. Is this finally the idea that will replace Google? Try it.

Thursday, July 06, 2006: Several new pages: StoryOfMyLife.com lets you create and share a family history. Ian Berke's film reviews in San Francisco.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006: You know how, when Windows is doing something, it tells you "12 minutes remaining"? I set my computer to compress my hard disk. After a while, I came back to see what was happening. The message said "413 days remaining..." That'll be sometime in late 2007!

Saturday, June 17, 2006: I was in Bangalore last month. Bangalore is an important city for Silicon Valley, yet most of us have no idea what it is like. Here's my notes and pixs on the food, the palaces, the city, the people, and so on in Bangalore.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006: Here's a new kind of website: Trade your old CDs with other people for only $1 at lala.com

Tuesday, May 09, 2006: StumbleUpon.com is a new kind of tool. The idea is simple and the results are cool. With StumbleUpon, you click on a button on your browser, and it takes you to a page that you're interested in. If you like the page, you vote for it (a click at the top of the browser). Then click and see the next page. That's it. The result of tens of thousands of votes quickly produces a collection of the most fascinating webpages on various topics. Pick something you're really interested in, and suddenly find dozens of really great web pages about it. It works only in Firefox. (If you don't have Firefox, fetch Firefox for free ), and then click StumbleUpon.com

Sunday, April 02, 2006: I've been watching Bollywood movies (recommended: Dil Chata Hai and Lagaan). I also read Suketu Mehta's Maximum City, a book about Bombay. Next: Amartya Sen's new book The Argumentative Indian, on the development of India's culture.

Thursday, February 02, 2006: GriSoft's AVG AntiVirus, one of the top-rated antivirus tools, is free for personal use. Free GriSoft AVG

Blog Postings for 2007

Monday, December 24, 2007: Use SMS Google: When you're in a store, use Google on your cell phone to compare prices. SMS the product name (e.g., "price mp3 player"), ISBN, or UPC number ("price 1591841410") to GOOGLE (466453). Google will give you comparison prices. You can also enter a type of restaurant and a city (e.g., "pizza, dallas") and get a listing. Try it at SMS.Google.com.

Sunday, December 09, 2007: Okay, here's the video of the song of the bubble of the boom. You gotta watch this. Very funny song about the Web. 2.0 Bubble

Thursday, December 06, 2007: Here's how to block Facebook's Beacon by adjusting your privacy settings.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007: Firefox Shortcuts: Many people still type out the whole URL in a browser ("w, w, w, andreas, ., com"). There's a faster way: type just the domain name (e.g., andreas), hold down the Control key, and press Enter. The browser automatically adds the www. and the .com part (this also works in Microsoft IE).

If you hold down Shift, you get .net and if you hold down Ctrl+Shift, it adds .org in Firefox.

Monday, November 19, 2007: Analytics: Two years ago, people asked us "why should we use analytics?" This year, analytics has become the main tool in SEO/PPC.
It answers two questions: "What are visitors doing?" and "What can I do about it?", namely, how you make changes to get more conversions, leads, and sales. An improved Google Analytics came out in the spring; if you have a website, add Google Analytics. It's free and it's good. In the new book, we'll show you how to configure and use it.
Analytics tools don't just track PPC conversions; they can track all conversions: SEO, links, banners, email, etc., including offline conversions (newspaper coupons, radio ads, TV, etc). You see what works; you improve it. What doesn't work, you shut off.
Stephanie has agency-certification with Clicktracks Analytics, plus she can install and configure WebTrends and Omniture. We are in the process of getting agency certification with Omniture.
There is also the Web Analytics Association. Stephanie is on the Exams and Certification Committee. She is writing the exam questions.

Sunday, November 18, 2007: SEO Book: 3rd Ed.: We're writing the next edition of our SEO/PPC book. Last week, we signed with McGraw-Hill. They are launching a new series and our book will be part of this. The new book comes out in summer 2008 in all major bookstores in Europe, North America, and Asia.

Saturday, November 17, 2007: Add Forms to Your Website: Do you have forms on your website? Do you want a form to collect registrations, contacts, etc.? Forms are much easier now. No more programming. Several companies have created tools that allow you to put forms on your web pages. Create the form with their editor and add a line of JavaScript on your page. I set up this up for a client a few weeks ago. It took five minutes. No more CGI! It can validate email address, telephone number, etc. Web-Form-Buddy.com ($40 per year).

Friday, November 16, 2007: RSS Readers: Do you follow multiple blogs or news sites? You need an RSS Reader. It's much easier. See my FAQ about RSS readers

Thursday, November 15, 2007: Green Energy: In Palo Alto, we can switch to renewable energy sources (solar and wind). This increases my electric bill by a mere 66 cents per month. If you can, switch to renewable energy. By supporting this, it becomes more viable and we can all switch over sooner.

Sunday, November 11, 2007: How to Allow Comments at Your Website: Lev Walkin, an engineer at Cisco, wrote this for his wife. She wanted to allow visitors to add comments to her website. The result is a simple: just add a line of JavaScript to your website and your visitors can write comments. You can also assign star-ratings (visitors can vote on products, pages, pixs, items, etc), vote in polls, or write reviews. All of this increases visitor participation. There's also a dashboard, where you can view all the comments at your site (and moderate/delete) and see usage statistics. The tools are free and if you can copy and paste, you can add this to your website so you'll have the tools that the big Web 2.0 social networking sites are using. I've added a number of these at andreas.com. Visit JS-Kit.com

Wednesday, November 07, 2007: There's a comet in the skies. It's very easy to see. I went out and found it right away. You can see it without a telescope. With binoculars, you see a big fuzzball about the size of the moon. Here's a map: How to find Comet Holmes

Monday, November 05, 2007: andreas.com = $12 million? An analyst writes that each unique user on Facebook is worth $300, thus Facebook has a $15 billion dollar valuation. If that's true, then andreas.com is worth $12m. And my cat's page is worth $105,000. But c'mon, we know that isn't real. The analysts are exaggerating Facebook's numbers to drive up the value to make money on the IPO.

Sunday, November 04, 2007: Google Analytics finally turned on Site Search. This lets you track what your visitors are searching in your website's internal search (you do have an internal search box, no?). Various studies show that visitors who use internal search will convert 3X more than other visitors. So... add internal search and turn on Site Search (Here's how...)

Thursday, November 01, 2007: "Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature."

Monday, October 29, 2007: Over the weekend, we made a video ad. One of our clients sells pre-lit Christmas trees (just take it out of the box, fluff it up, and you have instant tree). So we set up the tree in my living room and wrapped up a bunch of empty boxes as presents. I also had two large halogen lights from a previous photography project. Stephanie bought a Sony tripod that includes controls for the video camera on the tripod's grip. I shot the video, she edited it, and we added it to Google ads on Sunday night. We will make another video this afternoon to post to YouTube and various other places, along with the client's website.

Monday, October 22, 2007: Silo, internal architecture, theme structures: it's the same idea. Restructure your website so the pages are clustered in relevant groups. If you're rebuilding Ford.com, all the pages about Ford Mustangs go in one group, pages about F-150 pickup trucks in another group, and so on. This lets Google's spider identify the theme of the clusters so it can index and rank the pages better. I did this for andreas.com (avg. 30,000 unique visitors per month) a few months ago: traffic has increased to 39,000 unique visitors (the last 30 days).

Thursday, October 18, 2007: Thinking of building websites for PDAs? Want to see something new on your Treo or iPhone? Use your PDA to visit my website design tips for PDAs.

I was looking at my analytics this morning and noticed that my PDA site was very popular. I found that it's one of the very few pages at Google on how to do PDA web design, so I updated the site this afternoon and tested it on my Treo. Now I'll add Google Adwords for mobile devices to see how that works. For our clients, we'll do advertising on PDAs.

Monday, October 15, 2007: Two Screens: I added a second monitor to my computer. It's now a 27" wide monitor :-) I can move windows from one screen to another. To do this, you put in a graphics card ($80-$150, depending on quality) that has ports for two monitors. Just add a second monitor. Very useful for work.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007: Can you fool Google just a little bit? A client called us; one of his websites disappeared from Google. It didn't show up anymore for his top keywords. I searched at Google with site:www.NameOfClientSite.com; that showed that his site had been removed entirely from Google. The webmaster and the webdev team assured me they had not added spammer code to the site. So I opened the site's code and began to look for the problem. First, I checked the CSS. It was a simple CSS. No problem there. I looked at the index page. I began going through the site, page by page. In the sixth page, in the middle of the code, I found it. Someone in the webdev team used the ol' absolute:position trick to hide text in the website. By positioning the text ten inches to the left of the monitor and five inches up, the text was "displayed" outside the monitor. Visitors couldn't see it, but Google could. Thus Google blacklisted the entire site. The webmaster now knew what to search for, so with a global search, he found all instances of this code and removed them. The next step is to ask Google to review the site and add it again. Google however takes their time to do this (it's part of the penalty), so it may take 2-3 months, if he's lucky, to be in Google again. That's three months of lost sales. By the way, Yahoo also bans this trick, so he could have been booted out of Yahoo too. Don't fool Google, not even a little bit.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007: On Sunday, a group of us went to Point Reyes. We had a picnic on the beach (very sunny, great weather). We left our stuff on the beach and walked down to the surf. A seagull took the opportunity to raid our picnic and flew off with a Ziplock bag of peanuts (click on pix for a larger image; note the bag in her mouth). We chased her for a bit, but she calmly glided down another 100 yards. She knew we couldn't catch her.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007: Are you running out of space on your digital camera? Memory full? Maybe you have the image size set too high. Consider how you will use the photos. If they will be displayed on your computer or on the web, then 1280 is sufficient; there's no need to take images at 2048 or 2560. By using too-high resolutions, your memory fills up. With lower resolutions, you'll get more pixs on a memory card. 1280, by the way, is still quite large.

Sunday, August 26, 2007: Search Engine Market Share for USA, Germany, Russia, China, Japan, UK, and Italy:

USA: Google 89%, Yahoo 6%, Microsoft 3%, Other 2%. US population is 303m with 211m users.

Germany: Google 95%, Yahoo 3%, MSN 1.5%. Germany population is 100m with 50m users.

Russia: Yandex 49%, Google 23%, Rambler 17%, Search.Mail.RU 5%, Microsoft 1%, Yahoo 0.4%, Other 3%. Population is 145m with 28m users.

China: Baidu 62%. Google 20%, Yahoo, 13%. Other 5% (Sina.com and Sohu.com). Population is 1.3 billion with 162m users (10% of the population) (USA 211m users). China is growing fast and will soon be the largest number of users.

Japan: Yahoo is the market leader (but I don't have market share numbers). 86m users.

UK: Google 79%, Yahoo 8%, Microsoft 5%, Ask 5%, Other 3%. UK population is 61m with 38m users.

Italy: Google 54%, Alice Search 13%, Microsoft 11%, Yahoo 10%, Libero Ricera 9%, Other 3%. Italy population is 56m with 31m users.

Numbers for USA is based on stats from our clients. Look at your stats: Google is 90%. Numbers for other countries are from "Search Marketing Standard" (Fall 2007).

Tuesday, August 21, 2007: I was at Google tonight and talked with one of the engineers from the RSS Reader team. Someone asked me a few days ago how to add an RSS feed into a webpage. So I asked and he said you can use a Google Gadget for this. So I fooled around a bit and made my own newsfeed.

You can create news topics in Google News on anything you like: people, your company, your company's products, etc., and then create an embeddable feed to put into your website. Very cool, no?

Saturday, August 18, 2007: SES San Jose 2007 starts on Monday. It's the main tradeshow for the SEO/PPC industry. The sessions that I'll attend: Monday: Universal Search (11a). Tues: Analytics (10:30), Site Architecture (4:45). All other hours, I'll be at our booth (10a-7p). Wens: At the booth (10-3:15), Ajax (3:15), SEO Reputation Problems (4:30). Thurs: Analytics (9a), More Analytics (10:45). Next week, I'll post my usual summary of SES.

Friday, August 17, 2007: Coffee Without the Coffee Maker: 1-2 teaspoons of ground coffee, add boiling water, and stir. After a few minutes, give it another stir. The grounds settle to the bottom. Works well with a car travel mug. Just dump in coffee & water, stir, and by the time you're on the road, it's time for coffee! Tip: Use coarse grind, not fine. The coarse grind falls to the bottom.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007: I wrote reviews of three books on Web analytics: Web Analytics an Hour a Day by Avinash Kaushik. Web Analytics Demystified by Eric Peterson. Actionable Web Analytics by Jason Burby and Shane Atchison.

Monday, August 13, 2007: Google Radio: You can use Google to advertise on local AM/FM radio for only $2.14 per radio play.

Via Google, you can get a list of voice talents (people who do the voice for the radio) to do the ad between $100 and $1000. You listen to the result, ask for any changes, and then upload the result. You select the radio markets by city, genre (rap, classical, jazz, talk, etc.), demographics (age, sex, income, education), and other criteria. Use a unique URL so you can track the visits. Your ads will play on the radio.

We've been doing this for several clients. It works great; they get more business. The ads cost only $2.14 to play on the radio.

Sunday, August 12, 2007: Every day, I read 24 blogs to keep up with my industry. How to do this easily? Use an RSS reader. No ads. No popups. You can review headings of only the new items in dozens of blogs. If an item is interesting, you click it.

Blogs and many sites have RSS feeds, which means the content is sent out to RSS readers. You get an RSS reader (such as the free Google Reader at www.google.com/reader ). Open your favorite blog and click the orange tab in the URL bar. Or in the reader, add the blog's URL in the Subscribe box. Or, in the reader, use Search and find blogs that use RSS.

In Google Reader, you can set View to show only headings (click on List View). Instead of all items, see only new items (click New Items). Click on Feed Settings and assign the feeds to categories (these are like folders).

Throughout the day, the reader refreshes itself. New items show up.

This lets you collect all of your favorite blogs into one interface. The reader shows only headings, so there are no distracting photos or ads.

For your company, you can encourage customers to subscribe to your blog and use an RSS reader. When you have product updates, just post to the blog and your customers will see it.

Friday, August 10, 2007: Q. Okay, Google Maps has satellite images. With a good monitor, could I actually see people?

It depends. For some cities, Google has high-resolution images. For countryside and most areas, the images are low resolution.

In Google Maps, go to Palo Alto or San Francisco. Find a sports field at a high school or college and zoom in. You can see people on the track or standing around. Las Vegas has very high resolution images. You can easily see people walking around, laying by the pool, and so on.

Microsoft Virtual Earth has higher resolution than Google, but fewer locations. People are easily visible at the beach. Switch to bird's eye view and zoom in. You can see very good detail. In Microsoft Earth, you can see Stephanie sitting in my backyard. She loves to sit in the sun in a particular spot, and you can see that someone is sitting there. I think this may be the only case of an identifiable person in a satellite image.

These high resolution images has caused trouble: a few countries are furious that their oh-so-secret military installations can be seen by anyone. In some cases, Google has blurred the sites or lowered the resolution. A few months ago, I used Google Earth to find the North Korean missile launch site. North Korea may not like the photos, but Google is bigger than them. Check out Bermuda. Lots of details, boats, etc.

But why just stay on Earth? Go to the Moon! Google Moon And to Mars! Google Mars.

Thursday, August 09, 2007: Facebook is growing extremely fast now. 1.5 million per month. People are switching from LinkedIn to Facebook. It has more features and it's free. Link to me at Facebook.com

For more about Facebook, here's an article by Jeremiah Owyang.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007: Free online games at Kongregate.com. People create games and share them. Try Fancy Pants. Cute game. Try Desktop Tower Defense. Funny little game.

Thursday, August 02, 2007: I'm reading Casanova's diaries. A new edition was published a few months ago. His diary is an endless series of anecdotes and stories of his adventures in business, politics, affairs of the heart, and so on, told in a very charming and witty style. One of his most famous adventures was his jail break. He was imprisoned in the Doge's Palace at San Marco Square in Venice. Nobody had ever escaped, but he didn't care for prison life, so he broke out. Read some of the Comments at Amazon.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007: Where do B2B decision makers look for information to make decisions? 83% always look in Google. 14% use Yahoo and 5% use MSN. Wow. You'd better be findable in Google. (Data from a Marketing Sherpa report, June 2007).

Monday, June 18, 2007: One of our clients just released a new type of help desk. The company is led by people from Remedy. It's web-based help solution, both for internal and external help, with a knowledge base, search, tickets, resolution, tracking, and reporting. We're using it. It's free for internal support. PathworksSoftware.com

Thursday, June 14, 2007: Wrike has a new collaboration tool that's different: it works entirely within email. No new tool to use, no additional tools. It's done via email (Outlook, GMail, etc.) Check it out. You can use this for your business projects, personal projects, etc. First accts are free. Wrike.com

Wednesday, June 06, 2007: Cheap International Flights: Be careful with online travel sites: The prices range wildly. Some give you much better flight times than others. They also often don't tell you the real cost (they hide the taxes, which can be $200-300). The following numbers includes taxes.

- Kayak.com: $1,116. 4 flights. Pick 6am, 8am, 10am, 11am. Very nice.
- CheapTickets.com: $1240. 4 flights. But poor web design; the site is nearly unusable.
- Hotwire.com: $1285. 8 flights. Very nice.
- QIXO.com: $1,286. Only one flight available.
- Expedia: $1,500. Too expensive.
- Travelocity: $1800. Very expensive.

And there's a new kid: Vayama.com. They promise to undercut everyone. I also built a website in Chinese for my brother's law firm.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007: Just what is Web 2.0? Web 2.0 sites usually include social tagging, user comments, social voting, file sharing, community editing, and mixed media (text, pixs, video, sound, etc.) The services are web-based (ID/PW login) and often work on PDAs and cellphones (SMS). "Social tagging" and "social voting" means that people add keywords to the item and they vote on them. YouTube, Wikipedia, and MySpace are examples (categorized list of 2,000+ Web 2.0 companies at AllThingsWeb2.com

There are several problems with Web 2.0:

1) Most of these companies don't make money. Their goal is to get a large user base and sell the company to Google/Yahoo/Microsoft (GYM). How is GYM going to make money with these? Who cares? That's GYM's problem.

2) The content is usually copied (books, TV, movies, music CDs, etc.) and posted to the sites for sharing. If you remove the copyrighted content from many Web 2.0 sites, the only thing left is videos of cats. Google paid $1.65b for YouTube and got a $1b lawsuit over copyright theft.

3) Social tagging is a great idea... if everyone is honest. But it's easy for small group of people to use social tagging to boost a product or lower a competitor's ranking. This killed AltaVista (remember them? the Google of the 90s). Digg rankings and Alexa scores are worthless.

In "Web 1.0", the idea was to create dotcoms, get VC funding, and IPO them. Their revenue model was a constant flow of investor money. Whether these were sustainable business models was irrelevant. The investors got ripped off. Web 2.0 is the same scam, er, business strategy but instead of IPOing, the liquidity event (the money shot) is a sale to GYM.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007: Scamorama: Speaking of scams, you get all those Nigeria scam emails? ("My father, the late Nigerian Minister of Cat Food, left us $20m and we'll give you $2m if you help us...") What if you turned the tables on them and scammed the scammers?

A bunch of people are doing this. One counter-scammer pretended to be Princess Margaret and agreed to come to Nigeria, but only if she could bring her dog, two pump-action shotguns, a dozen hand grenades, and two Stinger missiles. Another fellow agreed to send money if the scammer converted to Judaism and allowed the circumcision to be done at the airport. ("It is a sometimes almost painless operation. You'll be walking after a few days!") Read a whole collection of these counter-scams. The Nigerians are so eager to steal money that they'll agree to anything, no matter how ridiculous.

Eve Edelson collected hundreds of these emails between scammers and counter-scammers and published them in an extremely funny book "Scamorama" ($15, 216 pages, illustrated.)

Tuesday, May 15, 2007: A.J. Jacobs, an editor at Esquire, outsourced his personal life to a concierge in India. Very funny article.

Sunday, May 13, 2007: The city of Palo Alto recently sent me a coupon for five fluorescent light bulbs for ten cents each. Palo Alto has its own energy company, so if we can reduce demand, it helps. I picked up the new light bulbs and tried them out. I have bedside lamps on either side of my bed, so I tried it in one.

The light is identical. You can't tell it's fluorescent. The downside however is the slight high-pitched hum. It sounds like a mosquito. Luckily, I don't hear high frequencies very well, but most people and dogs in your bed will be annoyed. Use these bulbs where the hum doesn't matter.

On the upside, the fluorescent bulbs don't get hot. A bulb costs $2 and lasts years. If you switch all the lights in your house, you'll save $180 per year. Gov. Schwarzenegger is considering a ban on incandescent light bulbs within the next five years.

Sunday, April 15, 2007: The Palo Alto "buscycle" went by my house this afternoon. It's a bus powered by its riders. They pedal and it moves. A bus-bicycle! Read more about the buscycle, where you can watch it in several videos.

Friday, April 06, 2007: New service from Google: Free 411 info. Dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) and use voice commands to make selections. Add this to your cellphone and bypass their 411 fees.

Sunday, March 25, 2007: I watched a documentary about Georges Melies, who made films in France at the beginning of the 1900s (the DVD available at NetFlix.) Melies made over 500 movies from 1890s to the 1910s, incl. Trip to the Moon (Le voyage dans la lune) and Infernal Cakewalk.

Melies invented many methods of film. He accidentally discovered the stop-trick, where you stop the camera, substitute persons or things, and restart the camera. He also invented stop-action animation and made the first color films, using hand-coloring. He also used dissolve transitions. His plots are primitive, but there are plots, characters, and development (esp. in his movie Bluebeard (Barbe-Bleu). He also features lots of pretty girls in hot pants (the French invented hot pants in 1890s.)

On the other hand, his films use only one camera, no angle shots, over-the-shoulder, closeups, or tracking shots. Few outdoor scenes. Everything is set up on a stage and the camera faces the stage. Actors walk in and out (or often explode). There is a constant whirlwind of action. The Infernal Cakewalk is five minutes of wild dancing.

We usually think special effects started with StarWars in the late 70s. But special effects was a main feature of film at the beginning. It's only later, in the 30s to 50s, that film developed drama (esp. with German and Danish directors).

Monday, March 19, 2007: Soccer Without Borders is building a soccer league between ten orphanages in the townships of Cape Town, South Africa. They work with youths in San Francisco (USA), Nicaragua, and El Salvador. They are also planning programs in schools in West Bengal, India. Visit SoccerWithoutBorders.org

Friday, March 09, 2007: Learn how to get discounts and freebies on your cell phone services. Confessions of cellphone sales critters at Cingular, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint.

Sunday, January 07, 2007 I wrote a summary of the Iraq Study Group Report

Saturday, January 06, 2007: How Hardcore Can You Be?: Only in SV: Sean and Laura, who are both marketing executives, get married and go on their
honeymoon. During the honeymoon, they find out there's a major project at a large SV corp.
So they come back from the honeymoon, pitch to the company, and return to their honeymoon
afterwards. Who else interrupts a honeymoon to do a dog-and-pony presentation?
If you're looking for product reviews, try blogs. Use blogsearch.google.com. Blogs are by users, not corps, so you see reviews and discussions.
Spring Cleaning: How to Speed Up Your Computer: Is your computer getting slow? See how to use Disk Cleanup, Defrag, Repair Errors. Next, turn off the Special Effects. Windows XP has many special effects, such as animated menus, fade effects, cursor shadows, etc. If you turn these off, the computer runs faster.

1. Select Start | Settings | Control Panel | System
2. Click the Advanced tab.
3. Under Performance, click Settings.
4. Check Adjust for Best Performance and click Apply.

Blog Postings for 2008

Tuesday, December 23, 2008: Fry's Electronics has always had someone at the door to check your shopping bag to make sure you're not shoplifting a 140" plasma screen. Well, maybe they should be checking someone else. It turns out their VP of Operations may have set up his own kickback empire, where he gambled as much as $160 million in Las Vegas casinos and may have cheated Fry's out of some $65 million. Whoa. No Christmas Cheer at Fry's this year.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008: Have you been watching the stock prices for Ford and General Motors? Both literally collapsed. These were solid for decades. Both are now a few dollars per share. GM's market cap (the value of all their stock) is $1.9 billion today. Tiny Silicon Valley startups are worth more than that. Why did these collapse? They continue to churn out heavy gas-guzzling cars. Their costs are out of control. So... they're "solving" this by asking for a government handout. Yep, save them from their own stupidity. And that includes a bonus for the executives. Guess who pays the bill? Yep. You and me.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008: The Google/Yahoo merger/collaboration/joint venture or whatever it was, anyway, it's over. Google just announced the breakup. Well... there's always Microsoft! :-)

Tuesday, November 04, 2008 I'm settling down with using the gPhone. It works, mostly. The lack of raised buttons, the too-small keyboard, the poor camera, and the somewhat-poor casing design are minor annoyances. Overall, there are benefits: one device for Gmail, Gnews, Gcontacts, Gmaps, Gnote, and Gwhiz.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008: This weekend, I bought the new "Google phone" to see how it works. The gPhone is Google's big move into mobile advertising. Because we specialize in online marketing, we have to keep up with Google. In the next few months, I'll experiment with the gPhone to see how this works for marketing.
Google Phone's Totally Cool Feature
You have to try this on a Google Phone. Go to Google Maps. Switch to Street View and select a location, such as the middle of Manhattan or Chicago. Click Menu and select Compass mode.
It now shows you what you see as you move the phone around. Yes, just move the phone to right or left to look around you. Move up to see the sky, look down to see the ground. Sit in your office chair and spin around and the world revolves around you.
Try this with Paris near the Eiffel Tower or on the Champs Elysee. You can look around in Manhattan or Barcelona. Press the arrows in the view to move along the street.

Saturday, October 25, 2008: I bought a gPhone (Google's new phone) to try it out. I'll post a review in a few days.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008: We're getting ready for the release of our new book. Here are upcoming events:
- In August, we spoke at a conference for MBAs at Stanford. Andreas followed up at another MBA conference in Washington DC in September.
- Nov. 18: Sacramento: Stephanie speaks at the AMA Central Valley
- Nov. 18: Chicago: Andreas speaks at Coremetrics Client Summit
- Nov. 20: San Francisco: Andreas speaks at Coremetrics
- Nov. 25: Shanghai: Andreas and Maggie at Ad:Tech
- 2009: We are preparing for presentations in Paris, Ankara, DC, and Hong Kong

Sunday, September 07, 2008: Chrome: I gave it a week. Too buggy. Chrome lacks many basic features. I gave up and went back to Firefox. Google released Chrome without basic testing. It doesn't even work with YouTube and Google Adwords, which are Google's biggest properties. Google is using user feedback to find bugs and add features. This may be a good idea for a little startup, but Google? They want to take on Microsoft and they do this as a weekend project? I'll check in again in a few months.

Saturday, September 06, 2008: So that's how they did it? Google's Chrome was built by a 20-person team. What did they leave out? Well... testing. Does the thing work? Not very well. Try YouTube. The videos freeze within a few moments. At many sites, there is no audio. There are many minor bugs with Google Adwords and Google Analytics. Google released their browser without even testing it with the top ten websites, including their own sites. If this is how Google wants to beat Microsoft, well, Microsoft doesn't have to worry.

Thursday, September 04, 2008: Google Chrome: It's a new browser, yes, but it's more than that. We don't need yet another browser: there is IE, Firefox, and Opera. Chrome is faster and has a few clever things. But it's not just a browser: it's the beginning of the next generation of software. Open Chrome and create a few tabs. Grab a tab and drag it away from Chrome. It pulls off and opens like a new window. For web browsing, this is cute but not really useful. But... if that tab had a program in it, such as a text editor or a graphics program, you've effectively turned a web page into software. Click the "page" icon (next to the wrench icon). One of the items is "Create Application Shortcut". If your new web page is a tool, this item lets you turn that page into a clickable icon on your desktop. For example, open Google Adwords or Google Analytics and use the "Create Application Shortcut". Bingo. You now have Adwords as a clickable icon on your desktop. Adwords is now a program.

Chrome is Google's platform to run software within browsers. No more standalone software in a box or on a CD. This will have huge implications for the way software is released and distributed. And of course, it's a major threat to Microsoft (and, yes, Apple); a computer doesn't need a large operating system. It can have a simple desktop, only big enough to run a browser. That's exactly what the Google phone will be: a portable device that can run Chrome and all of Google's applications within Chrome. If a gPhone can do it, then desktop computers can do it. Goodbye Windows and Apple.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008: SES SJ 2008 is the main trade show for the SEO/PPC industry. It was held last week in San Jose. Save yourself $2,500 and four days: Here are summaries of all sessions: Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four. The insider's view? Most of these presentations talk about trivial issues or they are based on ideas from one-to-two years ago. Only the presentation on Quality Score is up to date, but the speaker said too little to be useful.

Friday, July 11, 2008: Okay, you know about analytics. Here's another item. Evidence-based marketing uses "best available scientific evidence" for decision-making. It's marketing based on facts, not gut feelings. It's now very easy to get data about your customers with analytics. For our new book Search Engine Marketing (McGraw-Hill, 2008), I worked with Roslyn Layton, MBA to develop the KPIs (key performance indicators) that measure the value of multichannel marketing. Roslyn continues to work in the field to refine the measures even further. Check out RoslynLayton.com.

Tuesday, July 01, 2008: Google/Yahoo/Microsoft (GYM) can now index Flash files. Adobe created a tool for the search engines that allows them to index the text content in Flash.

Monday, June 30, 2008: Google Ad Planner is a media research tool. You enter demographics and sites that match your target audience and the tool will show more sites that your audience is likely to visit. You can also see the demographics and related searches for a particular site, or you can get aggregate statistics for the sites to make your media plan. Ad Planner also lets you create and export media plans to a .csv file. Free to use at www.google.com/adplanner/ (This is currently (June 2008) in beta testing. They will open it up to the public soon.)

Thursday, June 05, 2008: Why does Wall Street make such huge mistakes? Why do PhDs in economics and mathematics (incl. some with Nobel Prizes) cause banks to collapse? It's not what they don't know; what they know is wrong. Fascinating interview with Nassim Nicholas Taleb (his blog is at FooledByRandomness.com). What does this mean for Google? Hmmmm...
: You can get free webpages at Google. Go to pages.google.com and make a page. No HTML required. Just write!.

Tuesday, June 03, 2008: The End is Near: NPR reported the other day that gasoline prices may reach $6 per gallon within six months and may rise to $10/gallon by next year. That's bad news or good news, depending on your view of SUVs: 36% of the people who tried to trade in a large SUV in May owed more on the vehicle than it was worth. The value dropped by $2,000 to $3,000 compared to May 2007. General Motors will close four of its SUV plants, expand production of fuel-efficient cars, and finally move forward with electric vehicles. They may also get rid of the Hummer (8 miles per gallon).

The Department of Energy estimates it costs 20 cents per gallon for every 5 mph over 60 mph.

Yesterday, I wrote down my car mileage for the month. I do this every few months. For 2008 so far, I've driven an average of 40 miles per day. My car (Miata sports car) gets 25 miles per gallon, so that's 1.6 gallons a day. At $4.20 per gallon (California prices), that's $6.72 per day, or $200 per month. It'll be really interesting to see how the USA deals with $10 gasoline. For the average American household, they may need to spend up to 50% of their monthly income for gasoline.

Sunday, May 18, 2008: Ever thought of living in a Victorian on a park in San Francisco? $3.45m and your dream comes true. See what such a house looks like. 2737Clay.com.

Sunday, May 11, 2008: If you're using Google Adwords, pay attention: the page's load speed is now a factor in the Quality Score. If your page opens slowly, you lose points. Visitors don't like to sit around and wait for pages to open. Get rid of Flash, shorten the pages, etc.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008: Google + Yahoo? Microsoft + Yahoo? I was asked at a conference what I thought about Microsoft's offer to buy Yahoo. I said "Irrelevant." Google has 90% market share. Yahoo has 6% and Microsoft has 3%. If Microsoft buys Yahoo, they have 9%, but Google still has 90%. It won't affect Google. What if Google buys/takes over Yahoo? Again: Irrelevant. Google goes from 90% to 96%. Not much of a difference.

Sunday, March 23, 2008: Have you ever noticed the White House warnings of "possible terror attacks" come whenever there's bad news about the Republicans? Warning? Or distraction?.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008: Larry and Sergei forgot to feed the meter. Google Adwords earns around $20 billion per year, but they forgot to pay $35 to renew their security certificate. Shall we set up a Paypal donation box to help out Google? :-)

Sunday, March 02, 2008: I made a List of Breakfast Places in Silicon Valley.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008: If you see a car with a broken exhaust pipe, you can report it to the California Air Resources Board. If the car is smoking, it creates smog and air pollution.

Saturday, February 16, 2008: What happens when your doodles get out of control?

Thursday, February 14, 2008: Indeed.com has jobs listings, plus two useful tools:

- Table of Salaries: See trends and comparisons of salaries for your job. Add multiple jobs and compare the salaries (e.g., "blogger vs. webmaster vs. journalist"). This will give you serious ammunition when you demand your raise :-)

- Trends in Job Listings: In a dead-end job? Try "blogger, webmaster, journalist" and see which one is dropping!

Saturday, February 09, 2008: Free Google Analytics Debugger. SiteScanGA.com will check your site to see if the Google Analytics tracking code is set up correctly.

Saturday, January 26, 2008: Time to refresh your website's look? Does your website's design look like 1997? Are your webpages fraying around the edges? Web design is much easier now. You can buy templates for $25-50 at sites such as HyperTemplates.com and TheBestDesigns.com. Get ideas at a huge collection of website designs CoolHomepages.com. Your webmaster should be able to implement these.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008: Microsoft Analytics: Not to be left out, Microsoft is releasing their own analytics tool. It's free. I signed up for it and I'm trying it out. It's in beta and still a bit buggy. It looks very cool. More in a few days.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008: From a Google blog, I read Craigslist has RSS feeds for their pages. Another site Oodle.com is a collection of classified ads from the entire USA. This means you can use an RSS reader to notify you of new jobs. You select the type of job and it gives you a fresh list of new jobs.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008: Google ABM: finally released an ABM tool. This has been one of the most requested tools for several years. This tool is as significant as the release of Google Analytics. ABM (Automated Bid Management) tools automatically adjust your bids for optimal results. Instead of manually adjusting bids (time-consuming and mostly on a rough guess), ABM tools can adjust bids literally every few minutes in increments of one cent. And it can adjust bids based on location, so there can be different bids for ads in NYC and Palo Alto. You get the best possible bid at that minute, for that day, for that city. Best of all, Google's ABM tool is free. Other ABM tools can cost several thousand dollars per month.

To qualify for this tool, you must have campaigns with 200 or more conversions within the last 30 days. If so, go to the campaign's settings and look under budget options.

Sunday, January 13, 2008: "What Goes Up...": The House Bubble has finally burst. In the chart, we see the historic trend for house prices. It has shot up out of proportion. As we know from all bubbles, the price always returns to the base. House prices are projected to fall 40% (Paul Krugman) or 38% (Eric Janzsen). See Krugman's article (with more graphs, etc.). There is also a very good article about bubbles in Harpers Magazine (Feb. issue, not available online).

All of this is bad news: expect a severe recession that will last several years. Large corps have already begun to prepare for recession: they are cutting costs by laying off workers, reducing inventory, etc.

Thursday, January 10, 2008: HDR Photography: There is a new way of taking photos to create some very nice images. "HDR photography" produces photos with a wide range of tones. The eye can see far more tones than a camera (a camera captures 300 tones, but the eye can see 30,000). By adjusting your digital camera, it can take a set of photos, which you then open with a software tool that combines the photos. The result is one photo with a broader range of tones. It looks remarkable. You can take photos in fairly dim light and get great results. This is actually pretty easy to do. In fact, there's a great tool for this, and it works better than Photoshop. Here's another example. The HDR tool is Photomatix at HDRSoft.com (free, unlimited trial version).

Wednesday, January 09, 2008: Looking for Breakfast in Silicon Valley? Here's a list of Silicon Valley Breakfast Places.

Thursday, January 03, 2008: Have you seen the little taxi in your Treo PDA? Every once in a while, a little taxi cab races across your screen. "Easter Eggs" are jokes inserted by the engineers when they wrote the code. I called Verizon about this; they had never heard of it. Here's a pix.

Blog Postings for 2009

Monday, December 14, 2009: Google's Real Time Search If you tweet, can you get into the top results at Google? Let's try this.

I searched Google for a hot topic, such as "apple tablet". There were no real-time results (RTR). iphone? SEO? No RTR. No RTR for "global warming".

Let's try "tiger woods." Bingo. Every few seconds, his latest girlfriend.

So, if you tweet about your product, how long will you last at the top of Google? Let's measure... about 17 seconds. After 17s, your tweet scrolls off the page. How many people were looking that moment at your tweet?

Two lessons: 1) Google has very few Twitter feeds. Global warming talks are going on right now in Copenhagen, with tens of thousands of demonstrators. Yet not even "global warming" shows up in RTR. Only Tiger Woods gets a real-time feed. Google talks RTR, but does very little. They're not going to turn Google into a secondary page for Twitter.

2) What company could have anything that can be presented in a feed such as Tiger Woods? His sponsors are laying low right now. And if you had something, you'd get only 17 seconds of placement.

By the way, you can put a twitter feed on your website. Go to Twitter.com/Badges.

Wednesday, December 02, 2009: What's My Rank in Google? This weekend, Google quietly rolled out personalized results to all users. If you're using your Google ID and you're logged into Google, then your search results are based on your search history and interests. Now, everyone gets personalized results.

"What is our ranking?" "Can we be #1 in Google?" Those are among the most common questions we get from clients. What does the change at Google mean?

There isn't "one Google search result". Every search result is tailored to the user. Let's say three people search for "apple". For me, who uses Unix or Windows, Apple is the Beatles' music company. For Laramie, who is a Certified Master Gardener (look it up), there are well over 700 types of apples. For Emily, Apple is a company that made her laptop computer. Google sees what each of us visit and after a while, Google delivers results that match our pattern. Each person get different results.

SEO is not about "be #1 in Google." There is no more "universal Google". You can't be #1 in everyone's search results. The real meaning of SEO is "be findable by your target audience, wherever they are looking for you."

The good news: Personalized searches make it MORE likely that your page will show up for your target audience. A garden supply store that has Ashmead's Kernel apple trees no longer has to compete for search engine ranking against Apple Corp (Beatles) or Apple Inc (Mac). Know your target audience. Be findable wherever they search.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009: Stephanie told me about this collection of 11 case studies that cover how companies in different industries tracked the ROI or results in their social media campaigns. Examples include consumer retail, enterprise, rock concerts, automobile, and so on. They measured their campaigns in social media and public relations (PR). The document includes names of tools and how they did this. See Social Media ROI Success Stories at MarketingProfs.com (I am not affiliated with them. We subscribe to their service.)

Tuesday, November 24, 2009: Our book Search Engine Marketing has been published in China by Tsing Hua University Press in Beijing. Tsing Hua, the leading technology university in China, is known as the MIT of China. Many thanks to Maggie Guan (co-author), Stephanie Cota (co-author), Emily Huang (proof reader), Roslyn Layton (co-author of the KPI chapter), Lili Knobloch (coordinator), and Bob Platkin, plus many more. We also thank the team at Tsing Hua University Press and McGraw-Hill China.

Last Friday, we also reached agreement with a publisher in Taiwan.

The China book has been completely updated and revised. We teach SEO, PPC, and analytics in a 3-day in-person course for Search Marketing Professionals.

Sunday, November 22, 2009: Dear Web Guy, What do you think of WebSiteGrader.com? It tells me my SEO score. Does that really work? -- Perplexed in Peoria.

Dear Peoria,

In the beginning, SEO was a technical process: put keywords in the meta-tags, sprinkle keywords around the page, get lots of links: bingo, you showed up in Google. Basically, it fooled Google's algorithm. But search engines finally realized users don't want to see the page with the best SEO; users want to see the page with best answer to their query.

This means it's no longer sufficient to get a high rank by using links, meta-tags, keywords, etc. It's entirely possible for a page with zero keywords (no keywords in the meta-tags, the HTML, or the URL) and zero backlinks to rank #1 over pages with lots of keywords and high pagerank scores. (Yes, we know examples of this for highly-contested, highly-visible topics, and yes, we'll tell you how if you sign up for our SEO/PPC course or hire us :-)

As we wrote in our book, Google uses 10,000 humans to evaluate web pages. They look at the user's intent in the query. The Quality Raters choose what goes to the top of the search results page. They down-rank sites that are not relevant.

This means WebsiteGrader.com and similar tools give webmasters a false sense of success ("hey, I have 98 points!") that has nothing to do with how search engines actually rank pages. Ignore WebsiteGrader.com. Write better pages.

Friday, November 20, 2009: Here's a Word Cloud of my blog. Use Wordle.net to create word clouds of a blog, yours or someone else.

Friday, November 13, 2009: I found out about Yahoo Alerts. It sends weather, breaking news, and alerts on any mention of a keyword to your phone via SMS. It's free (in comparison, Google Alerts can't use SMS and it doesn't include news or weather.) Go to beta.alerts.yahoo.com 0 comments ://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=5599155&postID=8545029049710950331" title="Edit Post">

Thursday, October 29, 2009: The Berlin Wall: The 20th anniversary is coming up (Nov. 9, 1989). I'm getting requests for radio interviews and reprints of my article. Remember the wall? Read my story about the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Five million people were there in Berlin, and I was the only one who wrote about it.

Daryl Heron has a good collection of videos of key speeches by Kennedy and Reagan, plus the events at the Berlin Wall.

Nobody predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union. Not the CIA, the US military... None. The collapse took them by surprise and they had no idea what to do. Bush Sr. spent a year trying to figure out what to do. Thatcher in the UK actively tried to prevent the collapse of the wall.

Could it happen here? Could the USA collapse? For the last 40 years, American economic theory has been based on Milton Friedman. In fact, Friedman's economic theory stated it was impossible for a collapse to happen. Nobody realized Wall Street could collapse as it did in September 2008. We now have no economic model for the USA. Nobody understand why Wall Street collapsed and nobody knows how to fix it. Paul Krugman (Nobel Prize in Economics) wrote a wonderfully clear article about the state of American economic theory.

Sunday, October 11, 2009: The Infinite Web. Is the web infinite? Is everything on the web? A squirrel comes to my glass door and taps the glass; I give her a peanut or two. Last week, I saw one of the peanuts looked like a duck. People saw it and said "Hey, that peanut looks like a duck!" Someone joked I could sell it on eBay for $50,000.

So... I typed into a search engine "peanut looks like a duck." Guess what? There's a website for that: ThisPeanutLooksLikeaDuck.com

Amazing. There's a website for literally everything.

Thursday, October 08, 2009: BusinessWeek is publishing a series of interviews on how Google manages search results. Rob Hob interviewed Scott Huffman (Director of the search results evaluation team); Udi Manber (Google vice-president of technology for core search); Amit Singhal (Director of the ranking team).

Interesting, but nothing new. They talked without saying anything.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009: On Adobe's Purchase of Omniture: What does this mean?

Many of you have been through an M&A (merger and acquisition). It's the same story: Adobe already has an HR department, finance, billing, etc., so many of those people at Omni will be fired, despite assurances from the CEOs. That dismays the other employees, so some of them will leave. Some in upper management will cash in their stocks and leave. It will take few months for regulators to approve the merger. And another nine months or more for the anaconda to swallow its prey, er, for Adobe to complete the merger. This means a year of confusion, slow sales, and unhappy customers. The top two enterprise competitors are Coremetrics and Unica, so they'll move in to poach customers, perhaps pick up a few experienced staffers, and perhaps start a FUD campaign.

Why would Adobe buy an analytics company? The purchase doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit into their line of products. Adobe sells end-user desktop design software, such as PhotoShop, fonts, PDF, and so on. Omniture is in an entirely different type of business. Forrester & others think Adobe can embed analytics into Flash. Yes, and you can already use Google Analytics to track Flash and it's free. But whatever. Adobe embeds Omni into Adobe PDF. What then? Will that be free to Adobe users? Or will they have to pay for it? $50 for Adobe PDF and... $30,000 for the analytics? And just exactly who installs this? Omni is not easy to install. Could Adobe offer Omni for free? It's too complex to install and configure for non-experts. If anyone thinks this could be free, they simply don't know what they are talking about.

So what is Omni? Omni isn't really an analytics company. They don't call themselves an analytics company. They say they do "business optimization", i.e., their suite of tools and services are used for global optimizing of an entire business strategy (marketing, leads, sales, etc.). And that REALLY doesn't fit into Adobe's product line. So I don't see a long future for Omni at Adobe. Analytics isn't really an issue for Adobe, so they won't pay full attention to it. But whatever. M&As often don't make sense.

What are the implications for the analytics industry? Not really much. "Adobe Analytics" (or whatever it will be called) will be around at least for a few years. Coremetrics & Unica are focused, so they will be a bit stronger. For the present, no major changes.

So the real issue is to see how Coremetrics and Unica react and adjust their future strategies.

Saturday, August 22, 2009: What ever happened to... Geocities? While we're talking about Facebook and Twitter, what about other social sites? Geocities let people create webpages. It became a vast community. In the late 90s, Geocities was #3 on the web and in 1999, Yahoo bought it for $3.6 billion. Geocities will close in Oct. 2009. Gone. When is the last time you visited a Geocities site?
Yes, this means you can have a site with tens of millions of visitors... and still not make money.
China Book: I finally finished the updates and revisions for the China edition of our book. It will be translated and published by Tsing Hua University, which is the MIT of China and the leading Chinese technical university. I'll be in Beijing in late November for the book release.

Thursday, July 02, 2009: Speaking on analytics in Palo Alto at the BMA (Business Marketing Association) on July 9th at 8:30 am (yes, morning). It's a breakfast meeting at Scott's. Here's the event invitation ($15 for non-members).

Monday, June 29, 2009: Tom Foremski at SVWatch writes how digitization destroys value. Everyone talks about "disruptive technologies" and "creative destruction" as good things, but after 17 years of the web, what we're getting is mostly disruptive destruction. Industries and jobs are being wiped out. That's great for a few VCs and a few mega-websites, but it doesn't create anything to replace what was destroyed for others.

Tom writes that these new technologies are 10X better and 10X cheaper. Actually, it's generally 1,000X better and 1,000X cheaper. My new car radio can play MP3s; just push a memory stick into the USB slot. Better than CDs; no skipping, it can't get scratched, and it's instantly changeable: just copy new albums and songs onto the memory stick. And forget FM radio; in comparison, it sounds muddy. USB memory sticks are free at trade shows. Tom points out that an album used to cost $15-20. But now, digital music is basically free. Anyway, read his article.

Thursday, June 04, 2009: So, how does Google rank pages? Google finally talks. A blog at The Wall Street Journal has a 3-part series of interviews on Google Quality Raters system. John Paczkowski (WSJ's blogger at All Things Digital) interviews Scott Huffman (Director of Engineering), Matt Cutts (Senior Engineer, Spam Team), and Amit Singhal (Google Fellow, works with the Search Quality team) (links below to the interviews).

The first interview includes a link to the Google Quality Rater manual (the 2007 edition). You can download this and see for yourself how Google's team of 10,000 (yes, ten thousand) contractors review and evaluate websites according to a long list of criteria.

In short: It's the QUALITY of the page, not SEO, that counts. A website can be SEOed to the gills, but the Google Quality Raters evaluate it and if they don't like it, Google engineers write new filters to block it.

Google uses humans, not software, to evaluate sites. The software does the heavy work (the indexing of billions of pages). But "bad" pages creep into the top results: either the filter was poor, the page is spam, or the page uses SEO tricks. So humans look at the top results, evaluate these, and the filters are adjusted. When they find bad pages, these are pushed down (Matt Cutts states that in the second interview.)

This means that much of what passes for SEO (keyword density, page rank, back links, etc.) has a limited value: it can get a page INTO the index and it can bring a page up in ranking, but the Google Quality Raters will look at the web page and evaluate not on its technical issues but on the quality, which means navigational, informational, or transactional criteria.

To read the WSJ blog items: 1) Interview with Scott Huffman. 2) Interview with Matt Cutts.

The implications of the Quality Rater manual and how to improve pages according to the manual is clearly described in our book Search Engine Marketing (see andreas.com). Our book is the first to describe this and we are so far the only book that describes this.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009: End of Home Telephones?: When I bought a new home phone a few years ago, I realized it might be the last telephone I'll ever buy. This week, I unplugged it. No more regular phone. Cell only.

35% of US homes can be reached only by cell phones. Oddly, the less income, the more likely they use cell, but that makes sense: why pay for two services? As usual, US Asians and Latinos are far ahead in cell use. Cell phones go anywhere, they include text messaging and digital cameras, plus they can be personalized with ring tones, music, and games. Verizon lost 4 million landline subscribers (from 39m to 35m) last year.

Saturday, May 16, 2009: Wolfram|Alpha is a new type of search engine. But it's not really a search engine. Google (and Yahoo Search and many others) are search tools: they index billions of web pages. When you use these to search, they find pages that match your search.

Wolfram|Alpha is different. When you search in Wolfram|Alpha, it uses formulas from mathematics, physics, astronomy, geophysics, and so on, plus known data (the elements, scientific data, etc.) to calculate your answer (here's a list of topics) It creates the information for you.

Google, in contrast, can only show you what someone else has already written on a webpage.

For example, let's search for the distance from Earth to Neptune on May 14, 2022. Here is Google's result. None of the first page results are correct. Here is the same query in Wolfram|Alpha
Google can't give an answer unless someone has already written that answer. Google simply reports what it has indexed. Wolfram|Alpha calculates the answer. If we ask for the distance at 8:02 am, 9:12 am, and 3:23 pm on that date, it can calculate all of those. It lets you view data that nobody else has considered. Is there a correlation between earthquakes and diabetes?

Does Wolfram|Alpha matter? Most people use search engines to find people, products, companies, and locations. 85% of searches at Google are either navigational (find something) or informational (learn about something.)

People use search engines to find already-known things because they've learned the limitations of search engines: that's what it can do. Wolfram|Alpha is a knowledge tool: we can use it to create new information. But I wonder if this is "a solution in search of an audience."

Wednesday, May 13, 2009: Google quietly announced a major change in how they index websites. Google has started to use markup code to allow data tagging so Google knows what kind of information it is. Google has begun the process of stating how the web will be structured.

Examples of items that can be tagged:
People: Name, title, role, URL, affiliations, address, photo, etc.
Reviews: Item, reviewer, date, rating, etc.
Companies: Name, URL, address, telephone, etc.
Products: Brand, category, description, name, price, photo, URL, etc.
That's just the beginning. There will be more tags.

What does this mean? You will be able to search like this: "Show me airline tickets from Dallas to Paris between June 20 and June 24 between $200 and $300 with more than 20 ratings at 4 or higher." Currently, that's not possible. With Google's new markup code, it will be very easy.

When companies mark up their data, it will be simple to build software to shop by location, date, price, ratings, and so on. We will see a new generation of comparison shopping tools.

Users will get exactly what they want without having to look at multiple websites. This puts pressure on websites.

This means a rewrite of websites. This also impacts SEO, web design, and overall business strategy.

For details, see the Google blog announcement (and example). See also examples of code and definitions.

Friday, May 08, 2009: I've been watching Rome, the HBO/BBC series, on DVD. It's quite good: lots of detail, introspective, and character development.

Thursday, April 30, 2009: eMetrics Marketing Optimization: Produced by the American Marketing Association's Silicon Valley Chapter in conjunction with eMetrics Summit.

Speaker: Andreas Ramos, Director at The CCG Group. Author of Search Engine Marketing (McGraw-Hill, 2009).

Panelists: David Rogers, Senior Web Analytics Researcher at Paypal. Roslyn Layton, Director of Client Services at Coremetrics. Akin Arikan, Director of Product Strategy at Unica Corporation. Author of Multichannel Marketing. Bob Heyman, Chief Search Officer at Mediasmith. Author of Digital Engagement.

Hands-on experts in Coremetrics, Unica, Omniture, and Google Analytics discussed how analytics can manage multichannel marketing, including SEO, paid search, email, social networks, radio, TV, newspapers and mobile by using KPIs, UVP, and tracking URLs. Tuesday, May 5, 2009. Fairmont Hotel, San Jose, CA.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009: Google launched yet another tool. This one appears to be a Facebook killer. Google may try to kill the social network sites (i.e., Facebook...) by offering a better solution (in other words, a more-available solution).

If you search for someone, you now see "Google Profiles" at the bottom of the results page. If she set up her Google Profile, you can click on her pix and see info about her. If you're in her Friends list, you can see her contact info. It would be very easy for Google to add chat messaging, email, gadgets, and more to this: yes, it can replace Facebook. Facebook is currently losing money, so Google could destroy them.

Try this: search for my full name (andreas ramos) and scroll to the bottom. There is info about me. It even includes pixs.

To set up your Profile, log into your Google acct (such as Gmail) and then go to Google.com/Profiles

Friday, April 03, 2009: How to Create Your Own Background in Twitter

- According to my analytics data, 32% of my users have monitors at 1024x768 pixel resolution, so I designed the sidebar to fit for those monitors. If you design for 1200-pixel monitors, your sidebar will be overlapped and look broken on smaller monitors (i.e., for 30% of your audience)
- Create a blank sheet that is 1600 pixels wide and 1200 pixels tall.
- In the left upper corner, create a box that is 120 pixels wide and 580 pixels tall.
- Or use this sample background image (I've drawn the box in it for you). Click the link, save the image to your computer, and open it in your graphics program. Delete my photos and text. Insert your photos and text.
- Save your new image in PNG format and upload your background. Use PNG format (not GIF or JPG) for the image (PNG is much sharper and clearer).
- In Twitter, go to Settings, select the Design tab, and click on "Change Background Image". Select your background and click Save Changes.

Read my previous Twitter posting for more info about Twitter and analytics. You can also follow me at Twitter.com/Andreas_Ramos.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009: Silicon Valley American Marketing Association Panel Discussion: Use Analytics to Manage Integrated Marketing

Keynote Speaker: Andreas Ramos, Author of "Search Engine Marketing" (McGraw-Hill, 2009)

Panelists:
Roslyn Layton, Director of Agency Services at Coremetrics
David Rogers, Senior Web Analytics Researcher at Paypal
Akin Arikan, Director of Product Strategy at Unica
Bob Heyman, Chief Search Officer at Mediasmith

In today's economy, ROI is more critical than ever. SVAMA's panel will discuss how analytics gives you measurable insights into the effectiveness of your marketing programs. You'll learn how to manage multi-channel marketing including SEO, paid search, email, social networks, radio, TV, newspapers and mobile by using KPIs, UVP, and tracking URLs. We'll look at examples from Intuit, Cisco, Aveda, Northface, MIT, Google, and other companies.

Experts in analytics, including Coremetrics, Omniture, and Google Analytics discuss hands-on use of analytics for managing multichannel integrated marketing. What works, what doesn't work, and how to manage and improve your marketing and sales. You will come away with a solid understanding of analytics.

Date: 5:30-9:00 pm, Thursday, April 23, 2009
Time: 5:30 Registration and Networking. 6:45 Keynote. 7:30 Panel discussion. 8:30 Your opportunity to meet with panelists 1-on-1.
Location: Network Meeting Center, 5201 Great America Pkwy, Santa Clara, CA
Sponsored by Coremetrics
Produced by American Marketing Assn. - Silicon Valley Chapter
Price (includes great food!): $40 non-members, $30 Partner members, $25 SVAMA members, $20 Students.

Friday, March 27, 2009: Coremetrics added Twitter reports into their analytics package. It tracks a keyword by the number of mentions in a time span, along with the Twitter user name (and the number of uses of that keyword by each user). Another screen shows the complete Tweet text. It sends notifications by email/SMS if there are mentions or traffic spikes. All in all, both Coremetrics and Omniture now have the ability to track Twitter activity.

I don't see yet that either tool can do conversion tracking (i.e., Macys tweets about a diamond chihuahua collar to their 10,000 followers; 500 come to the page; 100 buy the collar; and Macys can track the sales and revenue value). Google Analytics has nothing yet for Twitter; you set up your own tracking URLs (but the vast majority of Google Analytics users have no idea how to do that). There are indeed a number of 3rd-party tools that track mentions, etc., but that's a patchwork of other tools by companies without revenue models, which means they're not enterprise-ready. I'll look into the conversion tracking and write about that.

On April 23rd (Thursday), I'm hosting a panel discussion on analytics for multichannel marketing. Panelists include (so far) Roslyn Layton (Director of Agency Services at Coremetrics), David Rogers (Senior Web Analytics Researcher at PayPal), and Bill Mirbach (Director of Marketing and Agency Services at Intuit.) This will be hands-on inside-story discussion on using enterprise analytics (Coremetric, Omniture, Google Analytics) to manage multichannel marketing and drive revenue. Sponsored by the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association (SV-AMA), the event will be held at Google.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009: Google's visual designer quit and blogged about it. Here's the really funny part: "I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can't operate in an environment like that."

I agree entirely with Google. Digital technology allows us to use testing to find the optimal solution. No more "experts agree..." No more "because mommy says so". Find out what works.

Far too much marketing is done by tradition, by over-paid people with 20-years experience, or just "that's the way it's always been done." The plain fact: with testing, anyone can learn how to produce consistently better results and they will outperform the guys with 20-years experience.

Friday, March 20, 2009: From an Efficient Frontier report: Based on 60 billion impressions and 428 million clicks over the past year, Google's Cost-per-Click (CPC) in the Search Network increased 4.7% (from $0.58 to $0.61) ($0.03 increase). Content Network CPCs increased 20.4% (from $0.24 to $0.28). In contrast, Yahoo decreased by 4.7% and Microsoft increased by 6%.

Thursday, March 19, 2009: Did you know that a company can KNOW the name of people who come to them via Twitter? Yep. Quite a privacy issue.

Using Google Analytics, I can see the traffic from Twitter. Analytics also reports to me the Twitter IDs of the people who came to my website via Twitter. Just click on those to go to their Twitter profiles.

How to Do This: In Google Analytics, select Traffic Sources | Referring Sites. Find Twitter in the list of referrers. Click on Twitter. You now see the names of Twitters. A Twitter name is actually a URL, so a Twitter visit will show the path. You can then click those names to visit the Twitter profile.

That's the whole idea of the web: you can surf anonymously... no more! Let's see how Twitter, the blogosphere, and the Twitterati react to this.

Saturday, March 14, 2009: Twitter is the new land rush. Everyone is snapping up names as fast as possible. But what does that mean, "Land Rush"? In 1889, the US government allowed settlers to enter Oklahoma. Tens of thousands on horseback, in wagons, and on bicycles lined up at the border; the cannon fired off at noon; and they raced off to grab their land. But why read about it? Watch the video! Go http://www.youtube.com/v/5ycMhMM2UFs&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6">
I'm writing a Powerpoint about Twitter and will make this public in a week or two. Follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/andreas_ramos.

Thursday, March 05, 2009: My Trip to China: I was in Shanghai and Beijing: here are my notes about food, shopping, and so on. Did you know there's a great toboggan ride at the Great Wall? What does dog taste like, anyway? andreas.com/travel-china-2008.html

Why was I in China? Our book will be published by Tsing Hua University Press. They are the MIT of China. It's their most prestigious engineering school. Half of the committee of ministers who run China are graduates of Tsing Hua. We're working to make our book the standard textbook for marketing for China's millions of companies.

Why China? For example, we work with Minfon. They helped a US real estate developer come up with a global strategy to promote their products both online and offline in Shanghai with a real-time backend tracking system. Small-to-medium (SMB) companies can use the web to go global.

Using Adobe Acrobat reader? It has a bug that lets hackers get your data. Adobe won't have a fix until mid-March. So... you must get rid of Adobe Acrobat. Luckily, other free PDF readers are faster, better, and free, such as FoxItSoftware.com. Go to your Control Panel, uninstall Adobe Acrobat Reader, and install FoxIt.

Twitter: I'm still playing around with this. Follow me at twitter.com/andreas_ramos (and I promise: no tweets about "hey, I'm playing with my cat"). In the next newsletter, I also plan to write on how to use Twitter for your company.

Talking about cats, go to YouTube and search for "Simon's Cat" and watch his videos.

March 5th: This Thursday night we speak at Books Inc in Mountain View (on Castro, 7:30p). Talking about our book and Google and so on. We'll record this and make it available.

April 23: Speaking at the Silicon Valley AMA (American Marketing Association). I'm arranging a panel discussion with Coremetrics, Intuit, and (hopefully) Google. We'll talk about using analytics for mid-size and large companies: how to manage multichannel marketing, how to get your Google costs under control and make it profitable. We'll also video this.

Last week was busy: Monday, I spoke at SDForum on how the web in China is different from the web in the USA. Friday, I met with Francisco Santos, the vice-president of Colombia, who also happens to be my cousin. I asked him to help me to get my book published in Colombia. Saturday was a HYSTA conference at Stanford with Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba. It's a mega-Chinese company. You could say they're the eBay or Amazon of China, but they're bigger than eBay and Amazon combined. We met with Alibaba in China and we're interviewing them for our China book. China now has 300 million users on the web and they're growing 40% per year. China is definitely in your future. Read my article on China :-)

Monday, March 02, 2009: A client got a burst of traffic from Italian and Polish adult sites. In ten days, they got 70% of their normal annual traffic. By using analytics, we saw it wasn't from Google or any search engines; it was all from referring links. It turns out the client had hired a company to build links. The company placed links on worthless sites and then used software to click those links. All that traffic and not a single sale. Be careful if you pay for link building. Monitor the results and evaluate it by conversions and sales.

Friday, February 20, 2009: John McCain's daughter Meghan McCain blasts the GOP for being clueless on the web. She writes: "We live in an era where most individuals my age get their political news from The Daily Show and SNL's Weekend Update. I know this aggravates the old school political operatives to no end, but it's true. The Obama administration understands that my generation spends most of its day on a laptop or a BlackBerry, and that using the web is easy way to communicate their ideas to their constituents. (...) President Obama currently has around 5.5 million supporters on Facebook; my father has around 500,000."

Sunday, February 08, 2009: Where do people look when they search? Here is a Google eye-tracking study (click for a larger image). It shows where people look on the page. They concentrate on the title and then the description.

This means: Write very good TITLE and DESCRIPTION tags for your pages.

You can also see that people look mostly at the first two results. Only a few look at the third and forth result.

This also means: You must be at the top of the page. If you're not showing up at the top in unpaid (natural) search, then you must use paid search (i.e., use Google Adwords to advertise).

For more, see andreas.com

Friday, February 06, 2009: FYI. Free health care clinics. Pass this along to your friends.

Free Clinic San Francisco (415) 750-9894
Free Clinic Berkeley (510) 548-2570
Free Clinic San Jose (408) 705-0119
Low-Cost Clinic: $59 per visit: www.quickhealthweb.com (in SF, San Jose, Oakland, Fremont, San Mateo, Sacramento, Rohnert Park. To find free clinics in your city, search for "free clinic" and your city name.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009: With Google Gadgets and Google News, you can create a customized news feed on any topic.

Saturday, January 31, 2009: Using Google Analytics? Here's a great blog entry on add-on tools that improve Google Analytics (these work ONLY in Firefox). ROIRevolution.com/blog/2009/01/6_google_analytics_tools.html

Friday, January 30, 2009: I was talking with a company this morning. Their web person had been trying for two months to make changes to the analytics tool's configuration. I made the changes in five minutes. That's the difference between experts and non-experts.

Whatever. Still looking for Karen Brodnick.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009: The End of TV: Let's go to the numbers. Obama's inauguration was watched on TV by 30 million people and on the web by 70 million. Not just more. Twice as many.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009: Google Shuts Down Newspaper Ads: Last week, Google turned off its print ads service. This allowed you to place ads in newspapers, just as you can use Google to place ads in search engines, radio, and TV. Why did Google shut it down?

Other bloggers talk about this, but we actually use the print ads tool. I see two reasons.

A) It didn't work as easy as the other tools. The web, radio, or TV ads are digital and are automatically inserted into the media. Just create your ad, set your bid, and the ad shows up. But newspaper ads were different. The bids weren't based on competition. You made an offer, and the newspapers would manually review the offer. If it was sufficient, then they selected the ad. The ad showed up several weeks later.

B) Newspapers are dying. Their revenues are dramatically falling every year. Everyone agreed that most newspapers would die, but the New York Times would survive. Well... it's the NYT that will die first. They operate at a huge monthly loss (millions of dollars per month) and was expected to shut down this May. Last week, Carlos Slim, a Mexican billionaire (he owns Mexico's cell phone network) put $60m into the NYT (at 14% interest!). So there's no future in newspaper ads.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009: Obama's family is black, white, and Asian.

They are Christian, Muslim, and Jewish.

They speak English, Indonesian, French, Cantonese, German, Hebrew, African languages (incl. Swahili, Luo and Igbo), and even a few phrases of Gullah, the Creole dialect of the South Carolina Low Country.

A few are wealthy, and some, like Sarah Obama, his step-grandmother who only recently got electricity and running water in her metal-roofed shack, are quite poor.

Click the photo for a larger image.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009: Here is a good article on Google China (strategies, goals, problems, etc.). The article is mostly about Google China, and if you don't know about Baidu, Alibaba, TaoBao, TenCent, etc., you may miss some of the context. Maggie Guan and I are preparing a book about the web in China, to be published in early summer 2009.

Blog Postings for 2010

December 10, 2010: Add Twitter to Your Web Site: Okay, when I update my Official Page at Facebook, the text is sent to Twitter and LinkedIn. Great... but what about my blog? I wanted to update my blog as well. Here's how to do this.

1) Assuming you have a Twitter account (even my cat has a Twitter account), go to Twitter's Widget page (or just search for "twitter widgets").
2) Select Widget for My Website and select Profile. Yep, pretty ugly. You can change the colors. Play around with that and copy the code.
3) Paste the code in your website (use your HTML editor, your FTP upload tool, etc.)
4) Look at the results. If it looks like the widget at Twitter, then you are a lucky cat. Be sure to buy a lottery ticket.
5) If the text is tiny, you're an unlucky cat. Don't buy any lottery tickets. Here's how to to change the Twitter widget font size.
6) The Big Picture: you'll download the Twitter CSS, make a small change, save it as style-twitter.css, put it on your server, and then point the Twitter widget to the new CSS. Piece of cake, no?
7) The Details: First, let's get the Twitter widget CSS. Go to http://widgets.twimg.com/j/1/widget.css. Copy that and save it as style-twitter.css.
8) In that block of code, you'll change the font size. Search for .twtr-widget{position:relative;font-size:12px and change that to .twtr-widget{position:relative;font-size:16px.
9) In the widget code, add a line to point to the new style sheet. Where it start...

<script src="http://widgets.twimg.com/j/2/widget.js"></script>
<script>

Change that to:

<src="http://widgets.twimg.com/j/2/widget.js"></script>
<link href="https://www.andreas.com/style-twitter.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet">
<script>

This points the widget to the new style sheet. I could have used a relative link instead of an absolute link; I used an absolute link so you can see the path name. Do as you like.
10) Upload the new style-twitter.css to your server and your Twitter widget's text will change.

To sign up, add comments, or ask questions, visit my Facebook Official Page.

November 16, 2010: Follow me on Facebook: It's a lot of work to maintain blogs, newsletters, tweets, and Facebook. So I'm using my Official page at Facebook to post updates. Sign up and you'll get notification of updates. No ads, no marketing. Just useful info.

Monday, July 5, 2010: Facebook Code on andreas.com: I "facebookified" my website. I put Facebook code on all pages. Why? Bret Taylor, CTO of Facebook, explained the idea of Facebook Open Graph: "The basic idea was that if you were Green Day the band, it’s really inefficient for you to have GreenDay.com, and a Green Day account on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. Your internet identity is GreenDay.com" (Interview at InsideFacebook.com).

Instead of Laura going to various sites, Laura should be able to go to only one site (for example, GreenDay.com) and there, visit both the site's content and also participate in social media.

Facebook isn't trying to become the central site for the web; it's putting itself onto all sites. Facebook becomes part of all sites. FB Open Graph was announced in March 2010; within the first week, 50,000 sites added the FB code. Three months later, over one million sites are using FB's code. This is easily 50-100 million pages.

I added Facebook Comments at the bottom of all pages. I also added Recommendations on the category pages (for example, see Web Stuff. To add these tools to your site, visit Facebook's page for Plugins.

Thursday, April 01, 2010: Automated Bid Management (ABM) for Facebook. Four companies released ABM tools for Facebook ads. These companies use FB's ad platform API. Kenshoo's tool is similar to a Google Adwords Editor interface: bulk ad creation, duplication, etc. The companies include Kenshoo, Omniture, Clickable, and Marin Software. We'll test this on both Kenshoo and Omniture.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010: Hmmm... It turns out Facebook Official pages are RSS-enabled, which means I can use my andreas.com Official page as a blog. So now I'm wondering if I should continue my blog here or move over to that.

Sunday, March 14, 2010: Added a Facebook Group page. You can join that to get updates.

Still trying to get Google Analytics to track my Facebook Official page. If you've done this and it works, let me know how you did this. I'm writing documentation so everyone can do this.

Saturday, March 06, 2010: Another Google Social Media Fail?: Google is shutting down FTP access for Google Blogger. They claim only 0.5% of Blogger authors use FTP, but this 0.5% is also the most technical and the longtime users of Blogger.

You can read their comments to Google (Caution: Contains "language".) It's not pretty. Google annoyed yet another core audience. It got so bad that Google shut off the comments.

Blogging is one of the core tools of Social Media. Google desperately wants to become a social media company. So why infuriate their core users?

The alternative? Move to Wordpress. It's free, it has thousands of themes, and since it's hosted on your server, it can't be affected if the company shuts down. Over the next month, I'll look into this and move my blog.

What's next? A migration away from Gmail? Gmail has major design failures, such as the inability to sort email and (this is really weird) poor search capability. I'll wait for Titan and then see where to switch.

Friday, March 05, 2010: Facebook = The Web?: The large companies are setting up websites in Facebook. By using FBML (Facebook Markup Language, similar to HTML), they can build websites inside Facebook.

To see a collection of corporate pages at Facebook, visit CustomFacebook.com and FacebookShowcase.net (thanks to Matt McDougall at Digital Marketing Inner Circle for telling me about the first one).

Up to now, SEO was all about being findable in Google. But now there's Facebook. 400m registered members; 200m log in daily; they spent 55 minutes daily in Facebook. What is your SEO strategy in Facebook? There are no meta-tags, no link counts. How is a company with 100,000 products going to have those products be findable in Facebook? SEO in 2010 is going to be a whole new game.

Thursday, March 04, 2010: Google Talks about SEO: Google published their Google SEO Report Card. It's a review of the state of SEO for many Google products.

It's not a complete document. It only mentions a few generally-known items. Many SEO factors are not discussed at all, such as the off-page factors.

There are a few interesting items. It confirms (p. 9) that the meta-keyword tag isn't indexed. It also adds that the meta-description tag is not indexed. About half of the 49-page document discusses 301s and canonical URLs.

The report isn't useful for people who aren't expert in SEO. It doesn't explain much. It says nothing on overall strategy, the role of SEO in marketing, or deeper SEO issues.

Monday, March 01, 2010: Marketing 2010: What's Up? I'm speaking March 10 at DMA Palo Alto on the latest in Google, what's up with Facebook,etc. Lots of secret stuff about Google and Facebook. You'll see stuff that you didn't even know existed. Includes a 90-minute workshop. More at DMANC.org.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010: The webpages for Susan Hattie Steinsapir and Ylva Hagner

Monday, February 15, 2010: Facebook sends more traffic to portals than Google.

Compete found 13% of traffic to portals such as Yahoo, MSN, and AOL came from Facebook. eBay accounted for 7.61%. Google was third with 7%.

So... if you want traffic, use Facebook and eBay (13% + 7.61% = 20.61%) over Google (7%).

Sunday, February 14, 2010: Social Media 2010: First it was called Web 2.0, but that was all about tools, so it died.

Then it became Social Media (SM). All about talking with each other. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. SM is actually SMS: you send short update messages to your friends. Google has now joined the party about two years late by adding Wave and Buzz.

So we now have Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Wave, and Buzz: that's five ways to SMS your friends. Or, four too many. Which will die?

MySpace is dead.

Wave waved goodbye; the last Wave in my account is several weeks old.

Twitter's traffic peaked in July and has been dropping. My Twitter account is just an endless stream of press releases, and that's after I've unfollowed the worst offenders. Last month, Google gave up and added Twitter to the search results, but only for a few very-high traffic keywords and now, the lag is several hours. Google doesn't really want to promote Twitter.

Within 24 hours of the release of Google Buzz, there was already a backlash. It's pretty bad when the front page of Fox News joins the attack along with one very angry ex-wife. Google was forced to make a series of major changes within hours to reduce the anger. If you have a Google phone, it will constantly broadcast your exact position. Can't wait to turn off that one.

That leaves Facebook (FB). FB is #2 and will soon be #1 (and worse yet for Google, FB's search engine is powered by Bing). Can Google beat FB? Google is adding social media wherever it can. But it's not looking good. To win, Google would have to reposition itself as a social media site, not a search engine. But I doubt they'll do that.

Google spent two years to develop Buzz, so many at Google use it. That means it's very easy to find a Google engineer, see his list of contacts, and read their Buzz notes. Want to keep up? Just click Follow and you'll get a feed of their discussions. This is a massive security hole into Google. I expect most corporations will ban their staff from using Buzz.

Where's the next battle? Facebook is about to release Titan, their complete email tool. Just like Hotmail and GMail, you can use this for all of your email. FB has 400m users, so Titan will grow fast, which will cut into Google's GMail revenues.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010: Google now allows image ads in the search results. This is a major policy change at Google: for nearly ten years, they've refused to put image ads in the search results.

So far, the advertisers are major companies. They're allowed to put multiple ads on the page (another policy change...).

Wednesday, January 20, 2010: eCommerce in China: Online revenue in China in 2009 grew 30% (74.3bn yuan, $10.9bn). iResearch predicts 2010 online revenues in China from advertising, games, shopping, and other activities will grow 51% to 112.3bn yuan ($16.5bn). (Source: BBC News)

Is Google really going to abandon that?

Wednesday, January 06, 2010: Ever wonder why the keywords in Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools didn't quite match? Okay, probably not :-) But when you do, here's an explanation.

Blog Postings for 2012

Ad CTRs and A/B Testing

Posted: Tue, 15 May 2012 17:49:08

Whenever I take over an account, I often see that there are many ads in an ad group, each with a different CTR (click-through-rate.) The CTR ranges from high to low. The person didn't delete the weak ads. That hurts the number of sales. Why?

Let's say an ad group has three ads. The ads have 100,000 impressions each. The CTR is 5% for the two top ads and 1% for the weak ad. Let's assume they all have a 2% conversion rate (sales rate) (in reality, the strong ads will have a higher sales rate, but let's keep this simple.)

That means the top ads have 5,000 clicks and the weak ad has 1,000 clicks. The 2% sales rate means the top ads produce 100 sales and the weak ad has 20 sales.

If the weak ad had been deleted, its 100,000 impressions would have gone to the two top ads, thus producing 80 additional sales. By keeping the weak ad, the campaign lost 80 sales.

Look at your ad groups. Create four or five ads (to test various ads). When they reach 1,000 impressions, compare the CTRs. As a rule, I don't keep ads that have a CTR lower than half of the top ad's CTR (i.e., if the top ad is 2%, then no ad should be less than 1%.)

Facebook's ComScore White Paper

Posted: Thu, 14 Jun 2012 06:13:22

FB social advertising works, because ComScore says so. Really? Let's look at the evidence. Fetch a copy of Facebook's ComScore Document (21-page PDF, free, registration required.)

You can go straight to p. 13-16. These contain the key data. FB carried out four-week campaigns for Starbucks, Target, and a large retailer (unnamed). They used control groups.

The Results

There was some lift in transactions. For Starbucks, 0.58% over the control. For Target, Fans were 19% more likely to shop and Friends of Fans were 27% more likely (these are ratios of unstated numbers, which are likely small fractions of 1%). For the unnamed retailer, there was a 0.2% lift for instore and 0.22% lift in online purchase.

Problems with the ComScore Document

The lift in control groups also increased. Why would this happen? The control should be flat. The document does not explain this.
The important data is missing: ROI, CPL, CPA. ComCast does not state cost-per-lead or cost-per-acquisition.

Summary

If you carry out a massive campaign, there will be lift, even if it's 0.58%. After all, FB itself showed a billion ads to get 0.038% engagement for their privacy vote. But at what cost? FB won't state the cost of the campaigns or the CPL/CPA. There can be only one reason: the numbers are bad, which means the campaigns were financial failures.

This was FB's attempt to prove FB advertising works. They failed. It's also bad news for social media: social advertising does not work for lead gen or sales. Any CFO who sees this will shut down the FB campaigns.

Comparison against Google, Bing, Yahoo

How does FB compare against other digital marketing tools, such as Google Adwords, Bing, and Yahoo?

I have data for a $2.7 million 60-day campaign for a large nationwide US bank. Ads were placed in Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Facebooks. Over one billion ads were shown. The CPLs: Google at $5.78; Yahoo at $4.20; Bing at $3.94; and Facebook at $57.06. There were 2.26X ads in FB over Google (383.7m vs 169.8m ads), but Google's CPLs were within the target CPL and thus profitable. Google's CPLs were 10% of the cost of FB CPLs. FB's CPLs were not profitable. If the money spent in FB had been spent in Google, it would have produced 19,700 more leads.

If your digital marketing is based on sales, FB is not a viable choice. Put your money into Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

Added

For additional analysis, see also:

Solar Charger for USB Smartphones

Posted: Tue, 07 Aug 2012 02:42:11

Because we live in California, we were talking about earthquakes and the question came up on how to recharge a smart phone. These phones use USB cables. Rechargers usually don't have those.

Several years ago, I bought a SolarVerter F6220 solar cell panel. It can replace four C, AA or AAA batteries (6 volt @ 220 mA). But it doesn't have a USB connector.

I have a bunch of extra USB cables, so I took one apart to see if I could adapt it.

It's pretty easy. You can do this in 10 minutes.

Unplug the USB cable.
Use scissors to cut the cable near the big USB plug.
Use a razor blade and gently cut around the cable, about an inch from the end. Pull the rubber cover off.
Under that is woven wire; this insulates the cable from electrical noise. Snip it away.
Next is a thin paper wrapper. Remove it.
There are several strands of string (to strengthen the cable). Clip those away too.
You now have four wires: red, black, white, green.
The white and green wires are data wires. Clip those too.
The red and black wires are for power.
The (+)red wire is power.
The (-)black wire is the ground wire.
Gently trim off the rubber insulation. You end up with about a half inch of bare wire.
At this point, you're ready to power your phone. Put it in a sunny spot. Connect the wires to the solar panel. Bingo! Your phone starts charging.
It doesn't matter if you reverse the wires. If it's wrong, it won't charge. That's all. If it's not charging, switch them around.
If you want to get fancy, you can use solder to clean up the tips. I added little alligator clips. But it's not necessary.

Bring on the earthquakes! :-)

Facebook's Black Hole

Posted: Mon, 13 Aug 2012 16:07:51

Facebook has become one of the top places for posting comments, reviews, and information.

But that's good only if you can get to it. Go ahead and try to find something that you wrote six months ago. There is no search tool in Facebook. None of the major search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo) show search results for Facebook. You can't find it. Your postings fell into a black hole.

FB says you can download your archive of postings. Go to "Account Settings" and click "Download a Copy of Your Facebook Data." You'll get a message that FB will send an email when it's ready. About six hours later, you get the message. It says "Sorry, we were unable to create your archive. Try again." I and other other social media experts tried two or three times each: same result: FB Archive has been disabled.

FB doesn't want you to be able to download your postings because you might take them elsewhere. Welcome to the Black Hole at the center of Facebook.

Does Twitter have this problem? I scrolled back in my Twitter postings, selected a posting ("How do you say G+ in Chinese? Hexie? Let's sing in three-part harmony... hmm... I only hear the sound of...") and searched for it in Bing, Google, and Yahoo. It shows up in Google (bit.ly/NtTlr1) but not in Yahoo or Bing. They're not indexing past tweets.

Why does this matter? If you're using FB and Twitter for PR, marketing, or outreach to your audience, FB is pretty much useless. It can be seen only today. After a day or two, it simply disappears.

I am concerned about archives at FB. Billions of photos are hosted at FB. FB's financial situation is not good. If they collapse, all of the postings and photos will disappear. There is no way to save that.

What's a KPI anyway?

Posted: Thu, 11 Oct 2012 22:45:38

Darryl McDonald, CMO of Teradata, pointed out a Columbia business school study with remarkable data about the (lack) of ROI in marketing:

57% don't use any KPIs
28% set marketing budgets on gut instincts
7% are spending most or all of their marketing budget with "no metrics" at all.
29% say their marketing departments have "too little or no customer/consumer data"
51% use mobile ads but only 17% use KPIs
85% use social ads, but only 14% use KPIs
60% say multichannel marketing metrics is "a major challenge"
31% said that they believe simply measuring the audience you have reached is "marketing ROI"

However, 70% say their marketing efforts are under greater scrutiny than in the past.

This explains why Facebook can make money even if it doesn't work: the CMOs don't know it doesn't work!

Read the summary of the Columbia Business School's 2012 BRITE-NYAMA Marketing Measurement in Transition Study

A Great Leap for Marketing...

Posted: Tue, 16 Oct 2012 19:58:45

One small bunny hop for a man, one big leap for marketing. Red Bull pulled off the biggest marketing stunt of the last 20-30 years.

It drives a silver spike in the shriveled heart of television: the jump organizers were able to broadcast uninterrupted without commercials and with total control (no clueless NBC moderators, no delayed broadcast) for more than three hours. They bypassed the entire US TV broadcast system. Red Bull essentially showed a 2.5 hour commercial worldwide without paying a dime to TV. I'd guess the jump had about a third of the viewership of the Super Bowl. Total ad revenue for the 2012 Super Bowl was $250 million. Red Bull's costs were under a million.

So... when will the Olympics and the Super Bowl be shown via YouTube? When will they drop TV broadcasting?

We started watching Felix Baumgartner's space jump at 8:30 am (Pacific). Some three million people were on Youtube. As the balloon went up, so did the viewers: 5m, 6m, 7m...

By the time he jumped, some 8 million were watching. But that's eight million pages. How many people were sitting around the screen? Probably several times more. 16-30 million viewers?

The Red Bull jump reminds me of the marketing stunts of the 1800s and early 1900s. Everyone still remembers P. T. Barnum and many of the crazy stunts to get attention, such as the "Miss America Beauty Pageant", which started as a marketing gimmick and turned into a national institution (and again a gimmick when Trump took over.)

Janet Fouts, social media expert, writes about the jump's data and its implications for brand retention. See feedburner.com/janetfouts.

Google Consumer Barometer

Posted: Mon, 26 Nov 2012 01:23:23

Google released the Consumer Barometer a few months ago and I've been using it more and more.

It shows you how people search and purchase in several categories and several dozen countries.

For example, US buyers of computer hardware are more than twice as likely to start their research on manufacturers’ websites instead of search engines. If you're selling computer hardware, it's much more important for you to be sure that your products are showing up in websites. Make sure the website has a clear navigation path to your product and that your visitors can quickly find your product in the site's search box. Many large manufacturers' sites are nearly useless and visitors give up in frustration.

I'm using the Consumer Barometer to set priority for marketing.

Try the Google Consumer Barometer (ConsumerBarometer.com).

BurgerBots: Who needs workers anyway?

Posted: Sun, 02 Dec 2012 00:05:41

So they're making a BurgerBot.

BurgerBot spits out 360 burgers an hour. That's a burger every ten seconds. It even wraps the burger and put it a bag. It takes up only 24 square feet. Best of all, no minimum wage, no employment taxes, no health insurance, no overtime, no union dues, and it won't vote incorrectly.

In 2010 , the US fast food industry total revenues were US$184 billion in over 300,000 restaurants. The industry employs 3.9 million people.

Just exactly what are 3.9 million people going to do after these burgerbots roll out?

Google Glass

Posted: Tue, 04 Dec 2012 19:55:27

A comment by someone about Google Glass:

> I can see glasses will be a hit when celebrities switch on their videos whilst wearing their glasses on key public or private events, like they tweet at present. Users will subscribe to their live feeds with commentary or accompanying tweets.

That's a clever idea. 100m girls will instantly sign up for live all-day Bieber TV.

120m football fans will much prefer to watch first-person live feed of a Superbowl player's point of view instead of a TV commentator. Every player on the field will have his own viewcast, along with his comments about the game, other players, etc.

Experience Lady Gaga's Shanghai concert from her point of view. Go LA nightclubbing with Lindsay Lohan. TV will seem so primitive in a few years.

So, yes, Google Glass will be big. It won't be seen as a computer thing. It'll be an entirely new form of entertainment. Not music or movies or TV or books. Different and new.

Google and the American Revolution

Posted: Wed, 05 Dec 2012 02:32:38

When did the American Revolution happen? You know, Fourth of July, fireworks, and apple pie? It was in 1776, wasn't it? Or wasn't it? Can we find out with Google?

A few years ago, a group of friends were sitting on a hillside, watching fireworks on the 4th of July. Stephanie asked me "but what do fireworks have to do with the 4th of July?"

I replied, it's in memory of the rockets red glare and the American Revolution and all that.

She replied "Oh, give me a break! There's never been a revolution in the USA!"

Okay, she's a California 20-something and their knowledge of history is a bit spotty, but in a way, that made sense: the US isn't really a revolutionary country. France, the USSR, China, and Iran had revolutions. Egypt had a revolt (yes, there's a difference.) But the US never had a real revolution. It was a revolt.

But what exactly happened in 1776 with George Washington, Valley Forge, and all that?

I began to wonder about it so I looked at original letters and documents. One of the first things I notice was that nobody at the time called it a revolution. It was, quite simply, "the American rebellion" (with a lower-case "r"). Often, they called it the American war. The king of England called it the American rebellion. But nobody called it the American Revolution: not George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and so on.

So when did people start calling it the American Revolution?

A few days ago, I realized I could find this through Google. No, not the search engine. Google has many tools, including one called Google Ngram Viewer. I use this occasionally. I realized I could use it to find when the term was first used.

nGram is text search in books. Google has scanned millions of books and you can search in them.

It turns out that Benjamin Rush, MD, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independance and a significant figure in the political activity of the time, used the phrase "the American revolution" in a discussion in Oct. 15, 1785. (I posted the image above.) That's 1785, which is nine years AFTER the war in 1776.

With nGram, you'll see the term was used occasionally until 1812, when the US had another skirmish with the UK, during which the term was widely used.

I suspect the French Revolution (1789–1799) led the Americans to consider their rebellion to be a revolution. As Dr. Rush pointed out, the Americans had a war, but that was just a war. The revolution wasn't yet completed in 1785.

Stephanie was right. The US never had a revolution. It had, at best, a revolt that was later renamed to a revolution.

I find it remarkable that I was able to find this with Google nGram. Otherwise, it requires many years of research by a professor of history.

If you can find an earlier use of "the American revolution", please let me know.

KPIs: Tracking the Numbers

Posted: Wed, 12 Dec 2012 20:22:09

Spent the last three days in restructuring the tracking at my website and the reporting of tracking in Google Analytics. Got it to work.

This is for my upcoming book Content Marketing Strategy and Tactics. The key chapter will be, of course, the chapter where I show you how to track results. It's all very nice to create lots of buzz, but CFOs, the board, and investors only care about the financials (see note at the end).

There are three types of things to track:

Event Tracking: When someone clicks a link, Google Analytics registers it as an event (instead of a page view). This lets you track action on clicks (e.g., someone clicks a link to go to an external site or send you an email), downloads, redirects, Flash, video, and so on.
Link Tracking in Other Sites: You post to Facebook, Twitter, a blog at Techcrunch, send out a press release, etc. and in it, you include a link to your page. By using tracking tags, you can see how many clicked on those links. You can also see which links were clicked. For example, you see that you got 400 clicks at FB, 600 at Twitter, 350 at LinkedIn, and 500 from your press release. You can track as many as you like. Conversions can be tied to these, so you know that FB produced 100 sales and Twitter produced 200.
Tracking of Events as Goal Conversions: You can also track events as a goal. If your project's goal is to get leads via an event, you can set up goal tracking for that event. It shows up as a conversion, incl. a conversion value (e.g., $100.)
(Of course, there's also the basic items for analytics tracking: page views, traffic, keywords, goal conversions, etc. That's standard analytics. Here, I'm looking at content marketing, which has mostly to do with off-site tracking, tracking of downloads, emails, etc.)

This is the basics. You can create a list all of channels (FB, Twitter, Google Adwords, Youtube, email lists, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, TV ads, post cards, QR codes, bus signs, the Goodyear blimp, etc.) and platforms (desktop, tablet, smartphone, etc.) and then track all of it, incl. the traffic, visitors, clicks, leads, and sales. Add the marketing budgets and results to track the cost-per-lead (CPL) and cost-per-action (CPA).

Yep, total tracking of top-line and bottom-line KPIs.

I showed this to Alok Vasudeva, who said "Put that in a spreadsheet report and call it an investor dashboard." That's a great idea: this is what investors what to see.

I met with Harry Petty this morning, told him about the dashboard, and he added "Plug industry trends and competitor data into the model and you can project sales and trends for investors."

(Note: Wendy Chang and I were at a Keiretsu Forum event in Palo Alto several weeks ago. Six early-stage startups were pitching to a roomful of investors. One of the projects was pretty silly and made no sense, yet the investors' discussion utterly ignored the business idea. The only thing they discussed was the financials. Frankly, they couldn't care less about the startup's idea, founder, or history. Two startups presented their idea but focused on the numbers and financials: they got attention.)

Finally, Easy Semantic Web Markup

Posted: Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:13:00

There's been talk of the semantic web, XML markup, Rich Snippets, RDFa, and microdata for at least seven years. But only very large sites can afford the technical team to implement this.

No more. Google came up with a clever way to allow anyone to mark up a site by just highlighting.

Why do this? Whew. Long explanation here. Blah, blah, blah, and so on and so forth. You nod off. Let's skip to the summary.

Wake up! So, to wrap up, this lets Google know what you're talking about, so it can index your content better. It knows that 10.95 is a price, not the weight in kilo, and it knows that's the price in Euros. You can mark up titles, prices, dates, and all sorts of information. This is Very Important. Tell your webdev team to look into this.

At first, you can only mark up pages about events (concerts, conferences, performances, etc.) I expect they'll add other types soon.

To learn more, see the article at Techcrunch or go to Google's video about Data Highlighter.

Dealing with Google...

Posted: Wed, 26 Dec 2012 20:41:13

Here's something to think about when you deal with people at Google.

I was having lunch with a director at Google. I asked her about her previous company. She replied this was her first job. She just graduated from college, only four months ago.

I asked her if it was intimidating to be so fresh in the workforce at Google. She said to me "I was afraid of that too. But here's something really weird. At Google, we have this page that tells you your seniority compared to everyone else. And the crazy thing is that I'm at the 50% mark. Half of Google has been there less time than I've been. People actually think I'm senior!"

Three months is enough to be halfway? Half of the 20,000 people at Google are recent hires?

A few days later, I was talking with a friend who is an executive recruiter in Silicon Valley. I told him what she said, and he replied, "Yeah, Google is a revolving door. People join, get their ticket punched, and go somewhere else. With Google on their resume, they can get a job anywhere."

I asked "Is that why they pay so low?" (Google offers ridiculously low wages, such as $65,000 for a senior director position in charge of global projects.) He said "Yes, the kids don't mind. It's only for a year, plus they get free food and a free bus."

It explains a lot about Google. Ask someone a question and you get vague general replies. They just don't know. Another senior director at Google is a close friend; we were chatting one night and she asked me "Hey, I'm wondering about something. Why do KPIs matter so much?" She has literally no business experience at all. For her, ROI and CPL was just a formula, but it meant nothing to her.

Look, they're really bright kids with 4.3 GPAs from great schools, and maybe in 10-15 years, they'll be good at something (yes, it takes that long.) But right now, it's a hell of a problem for Google: it's made up of kids with no experience of business or the world. I wonder how many of them have been there for three years: 10%? 5%? 2%? It explains why Google launches so many projects that disappear, why they make decisions that ignore the outside world or common sense. They just don't know. And it's not like they'll be there forever.

How does this matter to you? You have a 90-year old family company. You've invested a good deal of your money in your startup. You have a restaurant in San Francisco. But none of these are showing up in Google. The kids at Google don't understand why this matters.

The Problem with Marketing

Posted: Sun, 30 Dec 2012 19:29:05

Why does marketing have such low credibility among CFOs? Much of it has to do with the lack of metrics. There's a way to fix this, but that will come from somewhere else.

Mark Jeffery, author of Data-Driven Marketing (Wiley, 2010) and professor at Kellogg School of Management, writes that of 252 enterprise companies with $53 billion in marketing budgets, 80% do not use data for decision making (page 5). Those 252 companies spend an astonishing $42 billion without any meaningful decision making. No wonder CFOs are frantic.

No Control Group

Jeffery reports that 70% of marketing departments do not use controls (p. 33). Without a control, you can’t tell if the change was due to the campaign. Let's say a marketing campaign produces a 12% increase in sales. It also wins Best Ad of the Year. Everyone loves it. Good, right?

No, actually, you don't really know anything about the campaign. It's possible the market changed (new craze by consumers, a key competitor fails, etc.) so sales would have gone up 12% if nothing had been done. Worse yet, it's possible that sales could have gone up 20%, but the campaign was so lousy that it lowered sales to only 12%. Without a control group, you have no idea if the campaign had a positive or negative effect.

Insufficient Data for Statistical Significance

Many case studies or tests use only a few dozen or a few hundred samples. This means the +/- margin of error is so large that the results can be misleading.

For example, a company asks 24 housewives to try a product. Five love it. That's 20%, so they can expect to get 20% of the market. The company launches a campaign. It flops. Why?

With a data set of only 24, the margin of error is 20%, which means it could range from 40% to... zero. To get a value with better confidence, the margin of error has to be +/- 3%, which requires 1,067 samples or more. This means practically all of those studies in marketing, sociology, psychology, and so on which use 50-100 college students are worthless. (To make it worse yet, they didn't use control groups.)

Marketing Doesn't Do Numbers

One reason is the lack of basic mathematical skills among many marketing people. Jeffery writes that 55% of marketing executives say their staff don't understand basic marketing metrics. Many people go into marketing or sales because they're good at talking with people, but they're poor at mathematics.

A few years ago, I was presenting results to a client team. I said there were 100 leads and ten sales, which is a 10% conversion rate. The VP of marketing said "Wait, how did you calculate that?"

Here's the real laugh: he had an MBA.

Although advertising is a $609 billion dollar industry, the number of books on LTV, CPL, CPA, and similar could easily fit on a small bookshelf. The mathematics isn't difficult; in fact, it's mostly basic arithmetic. But marketing people don't do numbers.

Marketing Doesn't Want Numbers

There's a deeper reason for marketing to avoid metrics. Most marketing teams are paid by activity, not the results. If they look busy ("hey, we did 403 campaigns and spent $200m last quarter!"), they get paid. In fact, it is not in their interest to track results. It might show their work had no effect (or worse, their project lowered the results.)

The same applies to sales. Sales people are generally rewarded for volume (the number of units), not revenues. This gives them a strong incentive to offer products at the lowest possible price. Jeffery writes that studies show some salespeople with the highest volume are often the least profitable and indeed, may produce negative results for the company. A smart salesperson knows the quickest way to make a sale is to offer the lowest price as fast as possible. They don't negotiate: they give it away. They get points for the Bermuda vacation, but the company makes very little profit.

The Solution

How to fix this? Change the system from activity to results based on metrics.

This will be difficult to achieve because (let's be honest here) most organizations are either bureaucratic or political.

Bureaucratic organizations use authoritarian top-down decision-making, where there is no incentive for staff to make improvements (innovation is seen as not obeying and thus punished.)
Political organizations are dark labyrinths of fiefdoms, personal loyalty, and backstabbing. These are run by powerful, charismatic leaders.
Many organizations are a combination of bureaucratic and political: on the surface, it's a formal structure, but in reality, a hidden political system is in control.

That means sales and marketing, on their own, won't change the system. Not only is there no incentive: metrics is actually a threat.

There's a ground for hope. Rational companies (which are based on data-driven decision making) will win. Why? It's simple. The engine of US business is now financial, not industrial. Companies are now often managed by private equity firms. This means VCs, angels, investors, financial managers, and CFOs use metrics and data to measure and evaluate all aspects of a company: investments, production, delivery, distribution, support, maintenance, repairs, and so on. Even HR is now measured by metrics. The last dark closet of a company is sales and marketing. It's time for CFOs and investors to demand metrics from them.

One-Page Business Plan for Your Startup

Posted: Sun, 04 Nov 2012 18:25:41

I live in Palo Alto and I'm an advisor to nine Silicon Valley startups. At many VC and angel investor events, we watched other startups go through their presentations. I pulled together the best parts of their business plans to create a one-page business proposal.

Looking for additional resources and documents for startups for your startup? I've put together a library of free business documents and legal forms, including:

Sample NVCA Term Sheet.
Stock Purchase Agreement
Contracts for your Contractors
Learn about Silicon Valley VC Funding
How to Write and Distribute Your Press Release
List of the best books on SEO, PPC, Analytics, Content Marketing, Social Media, Twitter, ASO, and so on
List of the best tools for SEO, PPC, and analytics
And much more information

Go to Build Your Own Silicon Valley Startup.

Write or Curate? Do It or Talk about It?

Posted: Thu, 08 Nov 2012 19:52:45

So there are three essential active roles in content marketing:

Creator: The 1%. Those who write original material. And I mean, really original. Not just a summary, commentary, etc. These are the authors, artists, musicians, developers, etc. who come up with things.
Curator: The 10%. Those who write comments, opinions, attacks, whatever. They follow the 1%.
Distributor: They pass along material by the creators and curators. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, AllTop, Scoop.It, etc., are all distributors. They're the platform.

And of course, there's the 90%: the audience. They consume content. They read. They watch videos and movies. They use software.

That second group has grown fast. The word "curate" has exploded in use. Somewhere in 2010, it took off. Look at this Google Trends chart.

And now there's Snip.It, which lets you copy/share. They call themselves a "social curation" site. Well, so is Pinterest and Instagram. Which means "curation" is just a fancy word for "share." You share stuff in Facebook? Wow! You're now a Curator!

That's it? A new word for the same stuff?

Like I said, you either do it or you talk about it.

What's the Best Sources for News and Information?

Posted: Fri, 16 Nov 2012 17:11:13

Friends often ask me for the best places to get news and information.

If you want to be informed, you have to read critically: that means you consider what is said and what isn't said. You also have read informed views. The following offer balanced, researched, thoughtful articles. Their journalists are generally the best in their field with deep experience in their topics.

The Guardian (UK) guardiannews.com
New York Review of Books (NYRB). Many of the articles are written by leading professors in their field. nybooks.com
London Review of Books (LRB). Excellent coverage of European politics and economic issues. lrb.co.uk
The New Yorker newyorker.com
The Christian Science Monitor. One of the top US newspapers
McClatchy. The best news agency in the US. Their blogs on China, national security, and Washington are excellent. mcclatchydc.com

I subscribe to the print editions of the NYRB, LRB, and the New Yorker (I strongly recommend this). I follow all of the others via the web daily.

Regrettably, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal are too light. They don't offer in-depth, detailed stories.

Yahoo vs Facebook: Who Will Win?

Posted: Thu, 15 Mar 2012 19:30:44

Yahoo sued Facebook (FB) for several patent issues. What's the history behind this and who will win?

What Is Yahoo's Claim?

FB is using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. When a visitor clicks an ad, they are sent to the advertiser's website. Yahoo has the patent on that. FB has been using this without paying. Very likely, they have been notified of being in violation and they've chosen to ignore Yahoo.

Has Yahoo Won on this Issue Elsewhere?

Although this is probably the single most valuable web patent in the last ten years, very few people know about it. In 1998, there were many kinds of search engines. GoTo.com came up with a crazy idea: a search engine that was also the Yellow Pages: companies paid to be listed. When you click the listing, you go to the company's site. It was "pay to be listed". I heard about this and a number of us thought it wouldn't go anywhere; why pay if you can show up in Yahoo, Dogpile, and many other search engines?

Google was started in 1998 with a few hundred thousand dollars in venture capital. By early 2002, it had run out of money. Nobody wanted to licence the search engine. They tried to sell Google, but nobody wanted that either. Looking for ways to make money, Google met with GoTo. They signed a nondisclousure agreement (NDA) and GoTo showed Google how to place ads for a fee. Sergey Brin famously ran out of the meeting and demanded a bucket of gasoline so he could set himself on fire to cleanse himself of the filth of advertising.

But Google wasn't paying salaries, the food had run out, and they had only a few months of rent left. So Google engineers reverse-engineered (copied) GoTo's idea and placed ads on Google. They figured this would be a temporary solution until they could figure out how to make money.

Months went by and the advertising revenues grew. The money problem was solved. But they ignored GoTo.

GoTo changed its name to Overture and a year later, it was bought by Yahoo for about $1.6b.

Google set its IPO for 2004. Before the IPO, Yahoo sued Google for violation of the patent.

Google had two choices: settle the lawsuit or go to trial. The trial would take time and happen after the IPO. If Google lost the trial (which was very likely: copied the tool, signed NDA), Yahoo would collect damages. Worst yet, Google's new investors would then sue Google for the amount because it was a liability that had been passed on to the investors. If Yahoo won $3b, the investors would sue for an additional $3b. Google would have to pay twice.

So Google settle just before the IPO. Yahoo got 2.7 million shares of Class A stock. With the IPO, this became worth a billion dollars.

In return, Google got a perpetual licence to use GoTo's PPC patent.

This is Google's deepest secret. Google prides itself as a technology company, run by engineers, based on innovation. Over the years, Google has spent close to $30b in innovation and research. Not a single one of those hundreds of projects has produced money. Nothing at Google has ever made money. 98% of Google's revenues come from advertising, an idea that was stolen from GoTo and for which Google had to settle a lawsuit. If it wasn't for GoTo's advertising, Google would have disappeared in 2002, just another startup.

What about Facebook?

And now we come to Facebook. The same situation: FB made $3.7b in 2011. Most of that was from advertising: yep, same PPC, the same as Google, the same as GoTo, the same patent. Therefore Yahoo is suing.

How much will Yahoo get? FB thinks they are "bigger than Google", so Yahoo will ask for more. Can FB get out of it? This is business. Yahoo won't let them out of it. Watch for a quiet announcement that FB and Yahoo have settled the issue.

Blog Postings for 2013

What If Apple Ran the Post Office?

Posted: Thu, 10 Jan 2013 17:15:18

At dinner during the holidays, several friends talked about the long lines at the post office. Someone said you'd never see that if McDonalds ran the place. Or Apple. What if Apple ran the post office?

You walk in. There's no counter. But crowds of people, standing around, gazing at ... stamps.

Breeze, a 17-year old, comes up. He's wearing a US Post Office badge around his neck.

"Hi, I need a stamp." "Yes, we have stamps. What size?" he asks.

"Size?" " Yes, two-centimeter square or the new one-centimeter stamp."

"What's the difference? " "One is big and the other is small."

"But they're blank!" "No, they're white."

"White? That's blank." "Sir, that's iWhite. And we patented it."

"Show me something else." "Sure, here's the Steve stamp, but it's sold out."

"Well, I just want to send a letter." "Awesome. That'll be $6."

"$6? I just want one stamp!" "Yes, $6 for one stamp."

"But they were 46 cents last month!" "And the quality wasn't that good, was it now? With us, you get Apple quality."

"And Apple prices! I give up. I'll buy one." "Will there be anything else that I can help you with today?"

"Yes. I'm going on vacation. I need you to hold my mail." "Sure thing. Just go over to the Genius Bar, where an associate will help you. What time was your reservation?"

"Reservation?" "Sure thing. That way, you avoid standing in line for 20 minutes!"

"No, I don't have a reservation. When's the next opening?" "One moment, let me check... how about Thursday next week?"

"Next week! I have to wait a week?" "But you don't have to stand in line!"

"This is ridiculous! I'm going to McDonalds FedEx!"

The Basic Elements of Content Marketing

Posted: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 17:20:40

(From my upcoming book) Content Marketing must have the following functions:

Editorial Voice: The editorial director creates a direction and overall style.
Editorial Calendar: A list of all content pieces, their roles, who does the work, edit and release dates, art work, tags, tracking codes, etc. A complete editorial calendar can have 60 or more columns.
Buying Cycle: The content pieces are placed into the buying cycles so they move the visitor from one phase to the next.
Collaboration Editing: The team uses collaboration tools for real-time simultaneous view, edit, and comments of files. Tools include levels of access: administrator, editor, comment, view-only, and so on. At the advance level, the audience also has edit and comment access. This is an essential aspect of Web 2.0.
Hub & Spoke: An overall strategy for allocating attention. Some pieces have priority, others have less.
Branding: All content fits within a unified branding strategy.
Target Audience’s Concerns: The team should research the TA carefully to understand their concerns and issues. Content should address those concerns.
Serial Publication: Content piece shouldn't be produced as a one-time event (e.g., monographs). The strategy should support serial publication.
Purpose for each Content: Every piece of content has a specific goal and call-to-action (CTA).
Metrics: Every piece of content has tracking. Metrics show that the overall content marketing strategy is aligned with the company's business goals. This means metrics for business-level KPIs (top line and bottom line).

Content marketing must have all of these. If it lacks one of these, it's not content marketing.

I'm still researching and writing, so there may be more. If you have ideas about this, email me and let's talk.

See the website for the book: Content Marketing Strategy and Tactics

More about the Metrics

Metrics is not just tracking the hits. Proper metrics has show the content marketing strategy is aligned with the company business goals. This requires metrics that meet the standards of the CFO and investors. For more, see another blog posting: The ROI in Content Marketing

The ROI in Content Marketing

Posted: Sun, 13 Jan 2013 20:03:41

Does content marketing actually work?

So far, I have not found a single case study that shows content marketing is successful. I've searched the web; I've looked at dozens of "leading websites"; I've talked to many people, incl. heads of agencies and published authors. None of them have been able to give me an example of a content marketing campaign that showed it was financially success, i.e., profitable. Not one.

It's very plausible that content marketing works better than PPC. The Kapost Content Marketing ROI document makes sense. Anyone with sufficient experience in web marketing can see it makes sense. But it lacks data. There is no proof that content marketing works.

What would a meaningful content marketing case study include?

State the campaign costs. E.g., "We spent $32,000."
State the revenues that resulted directly from the campaign. "The campaign produced $240,000 in sales."
Describe the tracking process. "We tagged the documents so we could see the traffic, clicks, leads, and conversions in Omniture." (Why describe the tracking process? So we can know that the authors know what they're doing. If they're not using web analytics or similar, well... )
State the number of leads and sales. "30,000 leads converted into 10,000 sales, i.e., 33% conversion rate." (Why state the conversion rate? It's pointless to say the campaign got 100,000 leads. What was the sales? A dog can get 100,000 worthless leads and zero sales. Just put a contest on Facebook.)
State the maximum profitable cost-per-lead (maxCPL) or cost-per-action (maxCPA). "Leads at or under $120.21 CPL are profitable." (Why a maxCPL? If the maxCPL is $120.21, but leads cost $130, then the campaign is losing money. Furthermore, by stating this, we see if the team can indeed calculate maxCPL. As much as 80% of companies have no idea what their maxCPL is, so they either radically underprice, i.e., $14 CPLs when they can afford $120.21, or they overprice. In both extremes, they lose money. In some cases, companies lose hundreds of millions of dollars because they don't know their CPLs.)
Use statistically meaningful numbers. If the data samples are too low, the results are too vague. "We tested 30 volunteer shoppers and 15 bought, so we have a 50% sales rate!" (Why is a low sample bad? With only 30 samples, the margin of error is so large that the results are basically random. When they go to market, that 50% could turn into 1%. For a 3% plus/minus margin of error, you need 1,067 samples.)
Describe the control group. "We selected ten US cities of similar size and demographics. We ran the campaign in seven cities. There was no campaign in three cities. This chart shows the difference in response. In seven cities, results increased by X. In the three cities, results increased by Y." (Why use a control group? Because without it, there is no proof that the campaign was responsible for the results. "The campaign produced a 12% increase in sales!" So? Did the company release a new product which increased sales? Did the company introduce a new sales bonus plan? Did the three major competitors have no new products? Worse yet: did the market and competitors grow 18% last year, so the company's 12% is actually a massive failure?

Why do this? If you set up a content marketing process that works, you become a money machine. Your CFO will give you an unlimited budget. Your CEO will shower you with a big bonus. VCs will fund your project. Your cat will come when you call.

This is the beauty of content marketing. All of this is trackable. It can be done.

As you can see, there are basic data requirements for a case study. In all of the content marketing case studies that I've seen so far, most of these elements were missing. The documents wouldn't last a minute in front of a CFO. They're not really case studies.

If you find a case study with solid data, please let me know.

Update: A Case Study

Mark Spanner posted a case study in the Content Marketing Group forum at LinkedIn. He concludes: "Results: 3.2 times more leads rated as "hot" provided to salesforce. Franchise sales increased by a factor of almost 11 (3 to 38)." (I.e., an 11X sales increase.) He includes screen shots and a description of how they did it. See his case study at Spaner.com (at bottom left of his site, click "Conversion Marketing.")

I'm #78,755! :-)

Posted: Thu, 31 Jan 2013 03:58:47

Looking at MajesticSEO's link tracking tool, I see that my website andreas.com is ranked #78,755 in the list of .com websites.

Of all sites (.com, .biz, .whatever), my site is ranked #154,234.

How high is that? There are 620 million websites according to Netcraft (September 2012) with about

15 billion pages. However, of these, only

190 million websites (30.65%) are active. 70% are abandoned.

Using the number of active sites (190m URLs), I'm in the top 0.08%. Not just 1% or 1/10th of 1%. I'm in the 1/100ths%.

Let's take some questions. I see a few hands in the audience.

Q. Who cares?

A. Not me. It amuses me a bit. But that's all.

Q. I don't care about your ranking. What's my ranking?

A. Go to MajesticSEO and find out.

Q. Can you get me into the Top Thousand?

A. Sure. But it won't be cheap. It'll require lots of very good content, advertising, and so on. I'm guessing $100-200,000 per year.

Q. What does this mean, really? So what?

A. I've been telling people this, but they don't really understand it, because the numbers are so large. 99% of the web could disappear, and nobody would ever notice. Really. 99% is 186 million websites. Poof! Gone. And nobody would notice, because nobody goes to those sites. Google blabbers that they index the whole web. So what? Nobody looks at those pages. Never. Those sites get so little traffic that it's probably just stray neutrinos passing through the earth. Here's another way to look at this: My cat 's webpage gets more traffic than 99% of web sites.

Q. What are all those tens of millions of sites?

A. An awful lot of them are spam sites. Spammers use tools to set up 500,000 sites for vitamin ads or similar junk and bombard the search engines. So nobody would miss anything if those sites disappeared.

Google Cars: It Sounds Like Science Fiction

Posted: Sun, 10 Feb 2013 18:59:18

Chunka Mui has a great series in Forbes on the implications of robot cars (Google cars). It will change so many things. I'm thinking this will have a greater impact on society than the web.

Conference Calls: What Works?

Posted: Thu, 14 Feb 2013 05:40:55

We had a conference call this morning with the team that is reviewing and editing my book. Google+ Hangout: I was on a group call a few weeks ago. It was hosted with Google+ Hangout. The advantage is free conference call with video, recording of the call, and screen share. The disadvantage: it only works 60%. I say 60% because it can host up to ten people, but only six were able to join. For whatever reason, four couldn't get on. Skype: It's easy to make calls with Skype. I do that frequently. I thought a conference call would also be easy. It's a good thing that several of us started 40 minutes early, because it took that long to get it to work. To add more than one person, or to share a screen, you have to sign up for Skype Premium. The signup process isn't clear, and after a few minutes, with others waiting on the line, I signed up for a One-Day Pass (US$5). For some reason, even though Skype knew I was in the US, it asked me if I wanted to pay in Euros and seven other currencies. You have to select US$ and then set the preference. The maximum number of people is ten, which isn't that much.

Some of the callers couldn't figure out the settings, microphone, sound, etc. It took another ten minutes to get everyone settled down. In the end, it worked, but it wasn't a good experience. Too complex. GoToMeeting: I'll try this for the next call. I'll update this posting.

If you know of a better conference calling service, please let me know!

For any conference call,

Remind people to mute their microphones if they aren't actively talking.
There should be a host (who leads the call) and a moderator, who handles the call process: adding people, re-adding people who get dropped, dealing with text messages, emails, and chat messages, and watching the clock.
You need the ability to record the entire event, incl. screen shares and video.
If the sound starts to break up, turn off video.
Start 30-45 minutes early to get everything set up and working

Requirements for a Valid Case Study

Posted: Mon, 18 Feb 2013 01:08:13

What is necessary in a case study? A few basic elements are necessary for a case study to have objective validity:

State the campaign costs. "The test campaign spent $32,000 over 45 days." (Why state the cost and time of the campaign? So other companies can know if the case study is relevant to their situation. You can't compare campaigns where one spent $1,000 over six months and the other spent $2 million in 60 days.)
Describe the tests "We used A/B split tests as follows. We used multivariate testing as follows." (Why describe the testing? The case study should use a good set of data. Otherwise, skeptics will say the low results were due to poor ads. For example: "Before we started the campaign, we tested twelve ads and selected the best performer for the case study.")
Describe the tracking. "The documents were tagged to show traffic, clicks, leads, and conversions in Omniture web analytics." (Why describe the tracking process? So we can see if the authors know what they're doing. If they aren't tracking, then the data is probably flawed.)
State the full results. "30,000 leads converted into 10,000 sales, i.e., 33% conversion rate." (Why state the number of leads, conversions, and the conversion rate? It's useless to say that a campaign got 100,000 leads if it doesn't include the conversions. Anyone can get 100,000 junk leads by just putting a contest on Facebook. What counts are the conversions (registrations, sales, etc.)
Use statistically reliable data sets. If the data set is too low, the results are statistically unreliable. For example, "We polled 30 shoppers and 25 liked the product, so we predict a 83% sales rate!" (What's wrong with a low sample? With only 30 samples, the margin of error is so large that results are random. When they go to market, that 83% could turn into 2%. If you rely on their poor data, you'll get bad results. To get a result with a 3% plus/minus range, the case study should test at least 1,067 people. If you increase the survey to 2,401 people, the margin of error reduces to 2% plus/minus. For more, see the Wikipedia article on the margin of error.)
Describe the control group. "We selected ten US cities with similar demographics. We ran the campaign in the following seven cities. There was no campaign in the following three cities. This chart shows the difference in response. In seven cities, results changed by X. In the three cities, results changed by Y." (Why use a control group? Because without a control, there is no proof that the campaign had any effect, neither positive nor negative. The study can conclude "The campaign produced a 12% increase in sales!" Did another division release a new product that got attention? Did three major competitors not release new products? Worse yet: did the market and competitors grow 21% last year, so the campaign's impressive 12% success actually a serious failure?)

Any case study without these points is just an anecdote. An anecdote can mislead you either to do something ("hey, it worked for them, so we should do it!") or not do something ("well, it didn't work for them, so we shouldn't do it.") An anecdote is useless as evidence because it is not objective, so it can't be used to make decisions.

A case study with these points is useful to others. They can use the results as a guide for their own campaigns.

How to Use this List

When you look at a case study, see if it includes these items. It'll help you in reading the case study critically.

What about Case Studies for Content Marketing?

In nearly all of the content marketing case studies that I've seen so far, most of these elements were missing. Does content marketing actually work? I've talked with a number of agency directors and published authors. None of them have a valid case study. It's plausible that content marketing works better than PPC. The Kapost Content Marketing ROI document makes sense. But without a valid case study, there is no proof that content marketing works.

The critical item is the control group. If that is missing, you can't tell if the campaign had any effect. Control groups are standard in experiments in physics, biology, and medicine. Any test of new medicines in pharmacology must include control groups. If a test lacks a control group, it has no validity. However, very few, if any, marketing case studies use a control group. See Wikipedia, Control Groups

Mark Spanner posted a case study in the Content Marketing Group

forum at LinkedIn. He concludes: "Results: 3.2 times more leads rated as "hot" provided to salesforce. Franchise sales increased by a factor of almost 11 (3 to 38)" (i.e., an 11X sales increase.) He includes screen shots and a description of how they did it. See his case study at Spaner.com

(at bottom left of his site, click " Conversion Marketing

") His case study isn't complete, but it's the best so far. I'm working on writing a proper case study and will release it when it's ready.

Does Link Building Work? Or Is It Fraud?

Posted: Fri, 01 Mar 2013 17:40:25

Q: Should I buy links? XYZ.com tells me they can get 100 links per month for me. Should I do that? -- Ms. Lynx in Lexington

A: Dear Ms. Lynx, The real question is: What's the value of those links? Do the links produce results?

We wrote about this in our book "Search Engine Marketing" (p.167). We used analytics to find that a client had 18,800 links.

Of 18,800 links, only 3,200 links (17%) produced visitors.
Of those 3,200 links that brought visitors, how many visitors turned into customers (sales and revenue)?
Only 54 links produced customers. Yes, of 18,800 links, only 54 links (0.00287%) had value.

15,546 links produced no value. The client paid $3,000 per month for two years for those links. $3K x 24 months = $72,000 would have brought much better return in their other marketing campaigns.

You can do the same analysis on your links, traffic, and results. Use analytics to find the value of your links.

Many "SEO companies" are really just link-spam operations. If you look at the results, that was generally a waste of time and money.

Does link building work in terms of ranking? Do more links results in a higher rank in the search engines, which brings more traffic? Perhaps, but that needs to be proven. However, the company's $72,000 could have been used in other advertising strategies with a known return-on-investment.

Use link building to get customers. See which links work and get more of those. Use analytics to identify those and then look for similar, related websites to get more links. At those links that produce conversions, improve your positioning: contact those sites to get more of your ads to those sites, get more links on those sites, and add paragraphs or pages to those sites.

How to Make a Whiteboard

Posted: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 01:18:23

In three hours, you can make a whiteboard for your office or the kids' playroom. Total cost under $24. Very easy to do.

I had a 4x6 whiteboard. But there was wasted space around it and I wanted more space to write on. I read about this whiteboard paint and it sounded perfect.

A few years ago, two Brits invented this. You paint any wall with a special paint, let it dry, and the wall becomes a giant whiteboard. Totally clever. It only took an evening. The new whiteboard is 7' wide and 44" tall. You can cover up to 7X7 (49 square feet) with one can of paint.

Remove the old whiteboard. Or whatever was there.
Wipe the surface clean.
Patch up any holes with spackle. Let it dry for an hour.
Use the blue painter's tape to mark the area. The tape keeps the paint within the lines.
Mix the whiteboard paint.
Pour about a third of the paint into the pan.
Use the roller brush to paint the wall.
Use the small brush for corners.
Let it dry for 45 minutes. Go eat dinner.
Apply second coat.
Let the second coat dry for 45 minutes. Go watch a movie.
Apply the third coat. You're done. Well, mostly. Clean up the floor.
Wait 48 hours. Slowly pull away the tape.
Wait three full days before you start writing on the white board.
Now you're done.

What you'll need (shopping list):

Rustoleum Dry Erase (whiteboard paint). At any store that sells paint. Home Depot, most hardware stores, etc., or Amazon. $14 for a can.
Foam roller brush ($1)
Paint pan for roller brush ($0.50)
Small 1' foam brush (for corners) ($0.50)
Blue painter's tape. Tip: Get 4" wide. $5.
Old sheet (or a newspaper) to cover the floor
Total cost about $24.

eBay Research on PPC

Posted: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 17:59:02

An eBay research study Consumer Heterogenity and Paid Search Effectiveness, by Thomas Blake, Chris Nosko, and Steven Tadelis (2013, bit.ly/10E5mDU) looks at the effect of PPC.

My summary of the research:

PPC does not increase sales to people who already know the company, brand, product, or service. In fact, PPC may produce as as much as -75% ROI, in other words, a loss. In controlled tests, the researchers turned off PPC advertising and found that customers clicked on organic links to reach a site. For established customers, PPC functions in a navigational role, which means they're clicking on the ads as a shortcut to reach the site.
PPC increases sales to people who do not yet know the company, brand, product, or service. PPC performs an informative role, which means it informs those not-yet customers about the company, products, or services.

Therefore companies should advertise to infrequent customers or customers and prospects who do not yet know the company, brand, products, or services. But companies should not advertise to established customers.

This has implications for social. Social marketing could work in reaching new customers (it could play an informative role.)

As for content marketing, it will work if it allows prospects to discover a new company, brand, product, or service.

Another Google Product Shuts Down

Posted: Thu, 18 Apr 2013 23:57:10

Google is shutting down their affiliate network. Their what? A few years ago, I was talking with a senior Google AdWords person. I asked if one of our clients could be on the Google Affiliate network. She said "there's no such thing." I asked why not? She said it wouldn't make sense. Google is against affiliates. I said "try this" and sent a link to her. A moment later, she said "OMG!"

Google has a strong stand against affiliates, yet... there really is the Google Affiliate Network. The AdWords team had no idea that it existed.

An affiliate network, if done honestly, can be a good thing. A vendor can tap into a vast network of websites to gain reach to the audience. However... the reality is that many affiliate sites are scams. Too many idiots set up thousands of pages, or even tens of thousands of pages, to bombard the web with all sorts of wild promises. It is impossible for vendors to review several hundred thousand pages. Affiliate networks are basically scam networks and that's why she couldn't believe that Google was doing this.

But now, after many years, Google is shutting it down. I suspect Google finally had it with the scams.

Post-Computer? Post-Google?

Posted: Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:01:41

I went to a conference in NYC a few weeks ago and someone said "Didn't you bring a laptop?" I replied that I've gone post-computer and I held up my smartphone. I do as much as possible on my phone now.

Did you know that Facebook banned the use of Facebook at Facebook's offices? Yes. Facebook.com is blocked on the computers at Facebook. But not for the reason that you think. Facebook wants their staff to start thinking mobile, so they blocked FB on the computers and laptops. Staff has to use their cell phones to use FB.

And what about Google? Are you ready to go post-Google? For the last ten years, pretty much from 2001 to recently, the web was centered around Google. To find something in the 175m active URLs and billions of webpages, you needed a search engine. But search engines are a poor solution (if you think they're great, you haven't noticed the limitations and problems. The worst problem is the severe limit in results: for any search, there is one page and people click only the first three results on that page. This is great for you if you're searching, but what if you want to bring visitors to your website? Either you're in the top three or you don't exist in a practical sense.

With all the talk about Google, we don't realize that this isn't how we really learn things and share information. If you want to know the capital of Idaho, a search engine is a good solution. It can find facts. But most of your useful information isn't dry facts.

People love to help their friends. They share tips, ideas, and useful information to help each other. It's a rough world and if you know something useful, you'll tell your small group of best friends. Truly useful information flows by itself, passed from person to person.

Another cool thing: the information depends interests. If Laura is an aeronautics engineer at NASA and she finds a great article, app, or software, she'll tell Sidd, who is also an aeronautics engineer. But she won't bother telling her mom (who is a geophysicist and doesn't care about aeronautics). What's valuable to you may not matter to me. But you'll know that and you'll share that with others who are also interested.

And this sharing happens outside of Google. There is a vast underground flow of information, easily hundreds of times larger than all the information in Google.

Go post-Google. If you want to share your information, don't squeeze it into the little red, blue, and green boxes at Google. Look to see how you can notify the people who are relevant and make your information flow to them.

This is a new kind of SEO. SEO without meta-tags and keywords.

Innovation, Disruption, and the Google Car

Posted: Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:04:37

Chunka Mui wrote a series of articles about the Google Car in his column at Forbes. It's a very good analysis of how disruption happens. His analysis can be applied to nearly any industry.

Follow Chunka Mui at Twitter @chunkamui.

5 of Top 10 eBooks Are Self-Published

Posted: Fri, 03 May 2013 15:29:16

At DBW (Digital Book World), five self-pubished books are in the list of top ten ebooks. Major authors are using self-publishing (digital publishing) to bypass the large publishers. http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/self-published-titles-dominate-top-of-ebook-best-sellers-list/

How to Set Up a Monthly Newsletter

Posted: Fri, 10 May 2013 19:13:39

I've sent a monthly newsletter since the late-90s. Here's how I do this:

First of all, you can't spam. If you send hundreds of emails via GMail, Yahoo, AOL, or whatever, the ISPs will mark you as a spammer and all of your emails will be blocked. Your domain name will also be blocked. There's a anti-spam coalition of 17 major ISPs where they share information about spammers. If you spam in Yahoo, you can't just jump over to AOL and continue there: they will know about you before you show up. It's impossible to get yourself unblocked.
You must also have "double opt-in"; people subscribe and then confirm they subscribed. Otherwise, again, you may be tagged as a spammer.
I use MailChimp because it lets me start for free. I can send up to 12,000 emails to 2,000 people per month for free (I plan to send only one email per month). When I go over that, I pay about a penny per email.

The danger is too much success: If you should be so unlucky as to get 500,000 subscribers, it will cost $2,500 to send a newsletter. So keep an eye on the number of subscribers! You don't want lots of subscribers, you want a good list of subscribers who are interested in what you offer.

How to Collect Your Email Addresses

Here is how to download your email addresses from GMail, LinkedIn, and Facebook, plus your business cards:

Gmail: Click Gmail (red button, far left). Select Contacts. Click More. Select All Contacts. Save as CSV
LinkedIn: Go to LinkedIn | Click My Network | Connections (top, middle). Click the gear icon (far right). Click on Export LinkedIn Connections (right column). In the “Export to:” dropdown menu, select Microsoft CSV.
Facebook: Create a Yahoo email account. Go to address.yahoo.com and click the Facebook icon. Sign in with your Facebook ID. This imports your Facebook address book to your Yahoo Mail account. Go to Yahoo | Tools | Import. Export as CSV. Or select ALL, press Control+A to Copy All, and paste in a text file.
Business Cards: Use a business card scanner ($200-300) to scan business cards. Save these to a spreadsheet. You can also use smart phone apps to take photos of cards and convert to text.

You should do this as soon as possible. Facebook may get the bright idea to block this so you can't get your list. Wait... in fact, they already did. You can't download your email contacts from Facebook anymore. So I showed you a hack that lets you download these via Yahoo.

Scrub the List

For my list, I had about 5,500 email addresses. These are 1) the old newsletter, 2) my email contact list, 3) scanned business cards, 4) business contacts. However, many of the email addresses are no longer active. If I sent to 5,500 and get many bad deliveries, the email delivery service may block me as a spammer. So I need to remove bad emails.

To do this, I used an email scrubber service. It scrubs the list by testing the emails to see which are active or inactive.

I upload the list (Excel format) to http://synapp.io , click a button, and wait a few hours. They send me an email when it's ready. It costs US$0.07 per email, so US$7.00 for 1,000. It sends me a new Excel file which tells me 1,200 are active, some 600 are "maybe", and 702 are inactive.

Designing the Newsletter

The design and content of your newsletter is important. People form their impression of you on what you present to them. If it's professional, interesting, and useful, they'll see that. If it's sloppy or rambling, they'll see that too.

What's the message of your newsletter? What do you want to say? What should people understand when they see your newsletter? "This newsletter offers ______________________."
The message of your newsletter should be a single concept. If you write about your swimming pool service, then whatever you write has to be about swimming pool services. If you mix concepts (such as swimming pool service and laptops), people will get confused and lose clarity about you.
Once you know your message, the design will follow. Remove anything that doesn't support the message.
It's much better if you hire a professional graphics person (which means they graduated from an accredited art and graphics school).
Each newsletter should be about a single point that fits within your overall message. Don't send a newsletter that covers five or six different things (swimming pool services, laptops, trip to Yellowstone, a new coffee at Starbucks, your puppy). People are overwhelmed with emails, text messages, Facebook updates, tweets, Snapchats, cat videos... if it takes more than a few seconds, they'll just ignore it. Make the point. And do it in five or six lines.
Give them something to do. End the newsletter with a clear button to click.
There's many more things you can do, but these are the important ones.

How to Track Conversions from Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.

Posted: Mon, 13 May 2013 18:21:06

I wanted to keep the book at a strategic level for directors and CMOs, so I didn't go into technical detail or documentation (otherwise, they won't read it.) The goal is for them to know that it can be done (and assigned to staffers for implementation.)

If you have specific questions about stuff, let me know.

And here's a question now!

> Section 8.5: "Conversions can be tied to these so you know Facebook produced 100 sales and the PDF produced 50..." - How can someone do this?

Create a page for the product e.g., buy-my-book.html
Add a tracking tag, e.g., /?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fb-june

(where source is FB, medium is email, and campaign is your june posting in Facebook)
Add the tracking tag to your URL, e.g., http://andreas.com/buy-my-book.html/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fb-june
Use Bitly (or any URL shortner) to compress that long link so you get a short link such as http://bit.ly/17Y0Nme
Use that link in your posting to Facebook.
When someone sees the posting, clicks the link, and comes to the site, analytics will track that they came from Facebook. If they convert, it will report that as well.
Do the same for PDFs, email links, Twitter postings, etc. Modify the tracking tag to identify each one.
To see the results (conversions), go to your analytics program and look for conversions with the source "facebook." (If you're using Omniture, Coremetrics, etc., the details will be different, but the concept is the same.

(Note: the code and links are examples.)

Use this process for tracking your links in emails, social postings (FB, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Ploop, etc.), ads in FB or Twitter, links in PDFs, etc.

Tip: To write the tracking tag, use Google Analytics URL Builder (free secret tool at Google).

The Real Story in SEO

Posted: Fri, 17 May 2013 18:02:48

I was on a presentation call by Mike Moran yesterday. He's a Distinguished IBM Engineer and co-author of "Search Engine Marketing, Inc." (2nd. ed, 2008, IBM Press) with Bill Hunt. His 672-page book is simply the best technical book on SEO for large corporations.

Mike talked about the state of SEO. Among other topics, he went into details about "Google Quality Raters" (GQR).

Very few people know that Google has 10,000 contractors who manually review pages and vote them up or down. Yes, they do this by hand. If they don't like your page, they downrank it and it goes to page 54. Nobody looks at that. See? They didn't ban it, they just downranked it.

Google has been manually reviewing and ranking pages for at least six years. I have Google's QR team manuals from different years (it's updated every summer). By comparing these, you can see how they evolve and improve their process. A GQR person gave me access to the online tool and I spent several hours reviewing and ranking pages until I fully understood the process.

GQR is a major secret at Google. They won't talk about it. I've talked with very senior persons at Google and they had no idea that Google was doing this. Most SEO companies, incl. the technical leaders at large SEO companies, don't know about this (I've asked them.) There is practically no public information about this, asides from a few web pages here and there which don't go into details, although this is perhaps the most important process at Google.

How do they evaluate your webpage? GQRs use a list of criteria. NONE of the criteria are "technical SEO", i.e., meta GQR.

GQR looks at the quality of your content. The manuals are technical documents, about a hundred pages, and densely-written, so I can't summarize it in this blog posting (the key points are in my book Search Engine Marketing, published by McGraw-Hill).

Traditional SEO is irrelevant. It won't make any difference in ranking. That's spelled out clearly in Google's manual for their Quality Raters. The only thing that traditional technical SEO can do is to ensure that your webpage will be in the index, but you can easily do that with a tweet that includes a link to your page.

But the SEO industry won't say this because they make lots of money.

What to do? Write really good content. I mean, Really Good Content. Not blah-blah stuff. Not "pretty good stuff." Write The Best Article in the World on that topic. Hire the leading authors. Hire world-class experts. Once you've written it, get it distributed by the top influencers and your advocates. Yes, it's lots of work, it'll be expensive, and that's what makes it the leading article. Google's team of 10,000 Quality Raters will find your article and move it to the top.

There's more details, of course, but that's the main point.

How to distribute your content? That's in my new book: The Big Book of Content Marketing.

Silicon Valley, Politics, and Society

Posted: Fri, 24 May 2013 16:46:30

This week's New Yorker has a long article by George Packer on the politics of Silicon Valley. If you live and work in SV, you should read it (yes, even you in SF.)

Packer writes about the attempts of several SV people to deal with the political system. Regrettably, he interviews pretty much only billionaires, as if their issues have anything to do with reality.

But he asks a few very good questions. For one: If high tech is so productive, liberating, enhancing, optimizing, etc., why has the US gone into long-term economic decline? The rise of Sillicon Valley matches the collapse of the USA. Are the two related? If not, where is the benefit of tech? Has SV done anything to improve the USA? Few of his interviewees even attempted to answer that.

I live in Palo Alto. I have a house here and I've been here for 20 years. In the 90s, SV was high-tech, i.e., engineering and hardware. Every year, there were significant technological and engineering advances.

But in the last ten years, certainly in the last five years, there has been very little development. Facebook, Twitter, and Google are just advertising networks, which is to say they are glorified billboards. There are no technology breakthroughs from Google or Apple (iPads and Glasses aren't technology. They're mass-market consumer products.) SV is the concentration of ever more wealth in the hands of a few (50 or so) billionaires.

Can those 50 or so do anything? Better to ask: do they have a clue? Google has spends $30 billion yearly in R&D and has nothing to show for it. None of their R&D projects are profitable: not one. Google's 7,000 Ivy League engineers come up with Popular Science gimmicks. They simply don't know what to do that matters to people outside of SV. Packer writes that the current dotcoms solve the problems of rich kids (order gourmet food from your smart phone, etc.). That's really funny and it's true.

Apple, Google, and others have hundreds of billions of dollars in the bank. How? Simple: they don't pay taxes. They've offshored their profits and parked the money in the Bahamas and other places. These companies now want to solve social problems? They're not even part of society.

Unique Look for your Twitter page

Posted: Tue, 04 Jun 2013 23:55:58

I'm preparing an outreach to influencers in content marketing. I'l tell them about the book and give them a link to the free Kindle download. Some will post this to their blog or Twitter accts.

For that, I put together a list of 55 influencers in the field of content marketing. I reviewed the blogs and twitter accounts to make sure they are relevant. It's not a final list; I've asked several people if they have lists and to swap lists.

I noticed several people (12 out of 55) have developed unique backgrounds for their Twitter pages.

I've attached the best backgrounds below. I created a new background (wider image) for my Twitter background. See it at twitter.com/andreas_ramos

How to do this? In short, use 1,600 (wide) by 1,200 (tall) pixel canvas. Add a 20-pixel margin at the left. The image's right margin can go out to 230-240 pixels.

(BTW, this is very easy to do. A close friend asked me to make a background for her page. It took me less than ten minutes. I used her website for the design.)

Influencer Marketing: Who to Contact?

Posted: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 17:25:46

There's a problem in influencer marketing. You want to reach the influencers. But who are the influencers? Are they experts or influencers?

Let's use the 90/9/1 Model (about 90% of an audience in any field is passive consumer of that topic; 9% is the commentators in that field; 1% is the creators of that field). (This has been studied by sociologists since the 1930s. There's a chapter about this in my new book.)

Creators (the 1%): They are experts on the field. They create the ideas of the field, lead the field, and determine what to discuss (and often, determine what won't be discussed).
Commentators (the 9%): They comment on the work of the creators. They are highly-visible, followed by many people, and their postings influence others.

It's easy to find experts. By definition, experts do difficult things:

Experts do things that require skill and subtle knowledge. For example, surgeons, Olympic athletes, commercial pilots.
Experts have experience. They spend takes 10,000 hours or more in their topic to be proficient (as Malcolm Gladwell pointed out). For example, performance musicians.
Experts are recognized by others.
For example, an artist creates a body of artwork that is held by art collectors and art museums. An author writes books which are printed by important publishers or universities.
Experts are connected to other experts. In order to influence their field, they know the other key people in their field. They participate in their field. There is no such thing as a "unknown expert" because by definition, an expert influences his/her field.

The problem is to distinguish creators and commentators.

Experts often ignore self-promotion because they see it as trivial. For example, Tim Berners-Lee invented HTML, but he ranks low in influencer lists.

Commentators present themselves as experts, but their real expertise is often in self-promotion. Roger Ebert's real skill was in being known as a film critic. He never made any movies.

The tools for identifying influencers (e.g., Klout, Kred, Followerwonk, SocialBro, etc.) give preference to commentators, not creators. Why? To appear useful, the tools present metrics and scores to rank people. However, what they measure is number of retweets, percentage of retweets, the number of links, etc. These tools measure activity, not creativity. It's easy to fake these metrics by excessive postings, retweeting, likes, etc., none of which are creative.

For the purpose of publicity and marketing, it doesn't matter if the influencer is not an expert. He can be just a commentator but he has a large audience b) he tends to retweet, so he'll retweet your message. So he is useful for your marketing regardless of his lack of expertise.

How to find experts? Look for signs of achievement.

Look for the industry association and find the key people
Look at the industry's leading conferences and collect the list of speakers
Go to Amazon, search for a keyword, and look at the list of authors
Look in the leading books for the list for recommended reading

Google and the NSA: Who's Lying? What's the Truth?

Posted: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 18:23:36

Okay, let's compare the claims:

Edward Snowden's Powerpoint slides show the NSA has full access to data at Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Skype, and others. The head of the NSA confirmed the Powerpoint slides are real. The NSA, the White House, Congress, and others are preparing to indict and prosecute Snowden for treason, espionage, etc. where they will press for life in prison or execution.
David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, stated Google is not collaborating with the NSA. "...we’re not in cahoots with the NSA and there’s is no government program that Google participates in that allows the kind of access that the media originally reported. (...) There is no free-for-all, no direct access, no indirect access, no back door, no drop box." Drummond Q&A at The Guardian (June 19, 2013). (David Drummond graduated from Stanford law school and was formerly at Wilson Sonsini.)

This doesn't add up. Either the NSA or Google is lying.

If Snowden was lying, the NSA would dismiss his claims as fraud.
Would Google lie? Would Drummond lie? What's at risk? Google is pushing to build a cloud-based business environment: store your files in the Google cloud, send emails, hold meetings, create and edit documents and spreadsheets, and so on. The audience for this isn't home users. Google wants companies to use this. It could replace Microsoft as the global standard for the corporate office tool. This is not merely billions. Cloud-based enterprise platforms will work for at least the next twenty years. We're looking at perhaps several trillion dollars in revenue and stock value. Would Google and Drummond lie for a trillion dollars?

There's another possibility where both Drummond and the NSA are telling the truth: The NSA hacked Google.

If the NSA hacked Google, they got access to everything. And Google can claim they never collaborated with the NSA.

Is this possible? Yes, because it already happened. In 2009, China hacked Google. Code-named "Project Aurora", this led to Google withdrawing from the China market. Read more about Google, China, and Project Aurora.

So if China can hack Google, the NSA can also hack Google. This makes honest men out of the NSA, Edward Snowden, and David Drummond. Drummond can rightly claim that Google doesn't cooperate with the NSA. Update, July 9, 2013: There's another solution to this puzzle. What if the NSA outsourced the spying to the British government? Thus the NSA doesn't spy on Americans: the British do that. GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) is the UK's NSA. See? All is legal. The NSA doesn't spy on Americans. The UK doesn't spy on Brits. They only spy on foreigners, who happen to be the citizens of each others' countries. The NSA doesn't need a warrant to do that. And Google can say it doesn't collaborate with the NSA. But nobody mentioned the UK, did they?

Would Google mislead like this? For five years, Google insisted that it did not use people to evaluate and rank webpages. Google stated the ranking was done by algorithms and software. It turns out there was indeed a team of 10,000 people who ranked websites. But this was done by another company on behalf of Google. So Google was technically correct in saying that it didn't do this. They just didn't say it was done for them by another company. Update, July 11, 2013: Microsoft first denied that the NSA had access via Prism. Today, they admitted it. They gave the NSA full access to Microsoft, Hotmail, and Skype. Who's next? Google? See The Guardian article with +3,500 comments. Update, August 9th, 2013: Lavabit, an email company, chose to shut down instead of complying with the NSA. The NSA tried to use secret court orders to force Lavabit to open its secure encrypted email to the NSA. This explains the situation with Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and literally every communications service in the USA: The NSA orders them to open their networks. This means David Drummond, Chief Legal Officer at Google, either knew or didn't know, but in either case, Google complied with NSA orders and opened their network to the NSA. For details, see Lavabit shutdown. See also the end of secure cloud in the USA. Update, March 18th, 2014: So we finally know: Rajesh De, senior lawyer for the National Security Agency, stated that US technology companies (Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.) were fully aware of the surveillance agency’s widespread collection of data. Either David Drummond, chief legal officer for Google, was lying or Google lied to him.

Metrics and... Wine?

Posted: Mon, 24 Jun 2013 02:20:01

I like wine, but I'm suspicious of experts' claims about wine tasting and quality of wine.

In the last few years, study after study has used blind tasting to show that wine experts themselves can't distinguish wine. They can't tell the difference between $3 and $100 wine. They can't even tell if it's red or white.

Here's a collection of studies in a summary of metrics-driven analysis of wine tasting in The Guardian. The bottom line? There isn't a way to distinguish the quality of wine.

I bought one of those wine aerators last year. We compared aerated vs. non-aerated wine. Yes, it really does taste better.

But guess what? You don't need to spent $25 for an aerator. Just pour the wine in slow trickle from about 12 inches high (20 cm). Yes, it's noisy and looks silly, but you'll get the same effect: lots of air in the wine. The taste improves remarkably.

Another trick: put the wine in a blender. It looks horrible, but the wine tastes much better.

An easy trick: put your thumb over the top of the bottle and shake vigorously to add air to the wine. Works like a charm.

Finally, use a decanter. It's just a fancy bottle for pouring your wine. It looks expensive and the studies show perception will improve the taste.

Anyway, read the article.

Cloud Storage... In the Year 1546 AD?

Posted: Thu, 27 Jun 2013 04:12:40

Is this the first example of cloud storage of content marketing? (Click the image to see it in full size. Look closely at what he is writing.)

Portrait of Jean Miélot, secretary, copyist and translator to Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy. 1546 AD.

A Trillion Passwords? How to Create Two-Step Passwords

Posted: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 19:35:46

As we move to cloud-based services, passwords are becoming a serious problem:

A password must be complex
A password must be easy for you to use
The password has to be different on every account
You can't use the same password for two or more accounts
A password must never be written in your computer (hackers will scan your computer for password files) or on your desk (people may look through your desk)
A password can't be in a hacker's list of 30 million passwords
And a password system has to work for many accounts (I have more than 20 accounts)

There are password vaults, which are a service that manages all of your passwords. But that relies on one password. If someone gets your password, they have access to everything. Worst yet, a vault itself can be hacked. Google has been hacked so nothing is secure. It's certain the hackers are trying very hard to hack the vaults.

After much discussion with friends in Silicon Valley, I came up with the following two-part password method. It has two parts: a secret password and a public password.

I use a base password, which is an acronym of a phrase. I never write this down anymore, not digital nor paper. I keep it only in my head. A sample phrase: "six red foxes dance at two pm" becomes "6rfda2p". Don't use proverbs or quotations; hackers have lists of these. Use at least eight characters with a mix of letters and numbers. You can capitalize the nouns ("6rFda2p"). It's easier to remember a phrase that describes a visual action (such as six dancing foxes).
I use that base password for all of my accounts. Every account password starts with that phrase.
I then add two non-alphabetical characters (a number and a symbol) for each account. For example, Google = 6%, Facebook = #3, and so on.
I combine these, so my password for Google is 6rFda2p6% and Facebook is 6rFda2p#3 (You can put the second part at the beginning, middle, or end of your secret phrase.)
I write down a list of those two characters, which I keep on my desk and in my wallet. People can see the second part, but they can't do anything with it.
This lets me easily look up my passwords.
This also lets me create dozens of passwords 1!, 1@, 1#, etc.

Q. How many passwords can this method generate?

A. Let's assume a password with eight characters. Each character can use 26 lower case characters, 26 upper case characters, ten single-digit numbers (zero to nine), and 14 special characters (!, @, #, etc.) That's 76 possible symbols for each character. Calculate 76 to the eighth. Yep, it's a big number. No calculator can do this, so you'll have to do it in your head (remember to carry the one.) It's 1.113 quadrillion, or 1,113 trillion (a thousand trillion).

Tip: Hackers have lists of 30 million passwords (search for "lists of passwords"). Don't use names of cats or dogs, Star Trek characters, girlfriends, or girlfriends' body parts. Don't use the US military's nuclear missile launch password (it's "000000". Yes, six zeros. Yes, that's really true.) (The US military changed it. It's now eight zeros. Very secure.)

Use Word Clouds to Review Social Postings

Posted: Mon, 01 Jul 2013 15:30:56

I'm looking into influencer marketing. I'm trying to figure out if a person is worth following, contacting, and engaging. Is he posting useful content? Or just nonsense about what his dog had for lunch?

I wondered if there was a way to quickly review a person's every posting. So I made word clouds of my own postings at my blog, Twitter, and Facebook (click for a bigger picture).

Compare those word clouds:

My blog postings are focused is on business and technical issues.
My Twitter word cloud tends to show names of companies (Google, Amazon, etc.) and business concepts (content marketing, startups, etc.)
My FB word cloud is mostly personal items, such as Helen, my cat, Palo Alto, people, and so on, plus lots of adjectives.

So if you want to know what I'm doing in my work, follow me at my blog and Twitter. If you want to know about my personal life, connect to me on FB.

How did I do this?

Go to your Twitter account
Scroll down until you have a year of tweets
Copy all
Paste into EditPlus (or any good text editor)
Sort the list
Delete duplicates
Copy the result
Drop the list into Wordle

For FB, I first downloaded my archive of all FB postings (five years). The result required more editing than Twitter because FB includes months, days, people's names, and lots of other stuff. The list had 92,000 lines (you really must use an advanced text editor such as EditPlus and know how to use regEdit).

If you know of tools that can do this, please let me know.

GMail Visualization: See who you're emailing

Posted: Mon, 08 Jul 2013 17:57:00

Daniel Smilkov and Deepak Jagdish of MIT's Media Lab made a data visualization tool to show you your Gmail activity. The larger the dot, the more emails you've exchanged with that person. It also shows links between people.

The large blue dot is Wendy. She and I are building up a startup.

Daniel and Deepak point out that the data social map isn't the same as your real-world social map. Helen is far away the most important person in my life, but we communicate mostly by text message, phone, and in-person, so she doesn't show up as the largest dot. Several other people show up either too much in the graph (because they live far away and we communicate by email) or too small in the graph (because we communicate by other means or in-person.)

This points out a significant limit of data visualization tools: they show only what they track.

To create your map (only if you're using Gmail), go to immersion.media.mit.edu

The Grandmother Pitch: What Do Your Advocates Say about You?

Posted: Sat, 03 Aug 2013 03:38:20

Here's something that I've been discussing with a number of people over the last few weeks. I'm trying to figure out how to identify and engage with influencers and advocates.

I've been going to lots of startup events, investor meetings, and so on. Often, there are events with ten startups and 30-40 angels and investors; the startups have five minutes for their elevator pitch and the dog-and-pony. You can tell when the founders do the elevator pitch; their eyes lose focus and they turn into robots as they state their mission in a flat voice, e.g., "Plooky enables emerging technologies to monetize by leveraging verticals with dynamic cloud-based solutions".

Like, whatever. Add a few acronyms (CRM, ERP, DBMS) and they get funding.

All of you know your elevator pitch. Well, most of you know it. You write it. You memorize it. And eventually, you can deliver it with plausible enthusiasm.

But you will never get your influencers and advocates to repeat it. They're not going to memorize your elevator pitch.

Why it is important what your influencers and advocates say about you? Because they'll move others to buy your products and services. Referrals from them have a very high chance of becoming clients and customers. I co-founded a marketing agency in 2005. We tracked our leads and sales and found that cold calls converted at 5-10%, whereas warm leads (people referred to us by our advocates) converted at 75% or more.

So what will your advocate tell a good friend about your startup? Your advocate generally won't be in your industry. Your advocate probably won't know your technical concepts.

She's going to shorten it (just a few words)
She's going to personalize it ("Andreas does __________")
She's going to focus on the benefit for the listener ("He can help YOU with __________")
She'll use words everyone understands
And worst of all, she's going to ignore what you say and she'll use entirely other concepts

The Grandmother Pitch

Thinking about this and talking with friends about this, I came up with the idea of the "The Grandmother Pitch". What would your grandmother tell another grandmother about you or your project?

Two grandmothers talking together don't know about technical stuff. They'll just say it straight.

What did Steve Jobs' grandmother say about him?

(Grandmother Betty): "What's little Stevie doing now?"
(Grandmother Wilma): "Stevie is selling phones."

So, what about me?

First, here is what I think I do (my elevator pitch). "Global expert in content marketing."

Why do I say that? My book is an Amazon Best Seller. It's published in Europe, North America, and South America (China coming in a few months). No other author in content marketing is published in even one other country. So that's my UVP (Unique Value Proposition) and POD (Point of Differentiation).

That's great, no? Nobody else can say that.

But... is anyone saying that about me?

I found two ways to see what others think I do. First, there are LinkedIn's endorsements. Every time you visit LinkedIn, it asks you to endorse your friends for various skills. Does Karen know about branding? Endorse her!

I realized a few weeks ago this was a voting system. What do my professional contacts think I do? I have 691 votes (there's a "See 23+" button, which shows many more items). SEO has 114 votes (16%) and Digital Marketing has 104 votes (15%).

You can see my surprise: what I think I do (content marketing) has only seven votes (1%).

This means if I go to market with my elevator pitch (content marketing), 99% of my contacts won't present me as a content marketer. Even though I'm the author of an Amazon Best Seller on content marketing, they don't think of me that way. My LinkedIn friends see me as someone in SEO and Digital Marketing.

(Time for a Tip: I suspect LinkedIn uses these votes when determining which profiles to show. My LinkedIn profile had 47 categories for endorsement. Most of these have very few votes. Go to your profile. You can edit your list of endorsement categories. By deleting minor and duplicate categories, you can focus votes on your top categories.)

I wondered if there was another way to find what my friends think I do. So I set up a survey on a webpage at my website. I sent a short email to 100 people in my professional and business contacts. I asked them to write a short sentence in plain English if they were to tell someone else about me. Basically, "Andreas does _______________ (fill in the blank)."

Here are the results:

SEO and other digital marketing for large and small companies.
Web traffic development support services.
He is an author.
Andreas identifies new marketing approaches.
Digital visionary.
Content and digital marketing expert.
Marketing, Author, Advisor, Entrepreneur.
Explain difficult topics in everyday language.
Write books.
He writes books and tries to figure out and share how to survive the search engines---particularly Google.
He is a content marketing expert... his Linkedin tagline says so :-) he used to be an SEO expert and may be an influence marketing expert very soon :-)
Andreas helps companies "talk to the market place" based on measurable input. Andreas also helps companies use social media as a platform to create traction and create social media strategies. Again... in a measurable way. Andreas know the dirty secrets about available data and how to utilize it.
Andreas helps companies accelerate sales.
Teaches others what he learns.
Online marketing / advertising.
Business and marketing consulting.
Helps clients market online effectively.
Digital marketing and analytics.
Andreas is an expert at getting web traffic.
SEO strategist, Author.
Creates researches measures strategizes.
SEO, creates marketing solutions via technology, writes.
Andreas reinvents the world one business at a time.
Andreas is search engine marketing evangelist.
Consulting on SEO and content strategy.
Andreas teaches companies how to increase their revenues/profits by optimizing their online marketing strategies.
Advises about online marketing.
Advise business about marketing.
Translate leading edge digital marketing technology into useful marketing media capabilities.
Author. Expert on SEO.
Andreas shares marketing insight.
Consulting, writing books, entrepreneurship.
Manage online marketing by creating content.
Author speaker SEO.
Digital Customer Centricity Expert.
Writer, visionary, practical tipster

I went through the list (36 entries), highlighted the key concepts, and counted them:

19 Digital marketing (53%)
9 SEO (25%)
9 Author (25%)
4 Content marketing (11%)
3 Visionary (8%)
2 Entrepreneur (5%)

Notice how this list matches the LinkedIn list? Digital marketing and SEO are at the top. (LinkedIn didn't have a category for "Published Author", so I added that.) (There's overlap because several people used multiple categories.)

Oscar Wilde said "The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about".

Here's my version: "It's not what you say about you, it's what others say about you."

How to Use This: Make It Easy for Others to Talk about You

Okay, how to use all of this? The goal is how to craft effective brand messaging for your startup or yourself. If you write a wonderful brand message but others won't use it, it's a waste of time.

You have to write brand messaging that others understand and they will repeat to their close friends.

Three or four words
In plain language that your grandmother would use
Focus on the benefit to others (what it does for them, not you)
Make it personal (e.g., "He helps you get more traffic with SEO.")

Align your message with what people say about you or your brand.

I'll think about this over the weekend and rewrite my messaging. It'll include SEO and Digital Marketing.

Next Steps for You

You can do these ideas, whether it's for your personal branding or your startup's branding:

Go to LinkedIn and edit your endorsement categories. Add or delete categories.
Use a survey tool and ask your friends what they would say about you. I used QuestionPro.com (free). There are dozens of these tools.
Rewrite your brand messaging. Make it easy for your advocates to tell others what you do.
Add your brand messaging to your website and your profiles at Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook,etc.

The End of Corporate Email?

Posted: Sun, 04 Aug 2013 18:36:55

A few days ago, I sent an email to 94 friends who work at various Silicon Valley companies. It was a research project and I had to check off their replies, so I printed out the list of names and email addresses.

I noticed that most of them had Gmail or Yahoo email addresses. Few of them use their corporate email accounts.

This morning, I counted. Of the 94, only five use their corporate accounts. The rest use either gmail, yahoo, or their personal URLs (such as the way I use andreas.com for my email).

There are several reasons for this:

Continuity. People move around. Hardly anyone stays at a company for more than two years anymore. It's better to have a personal address that you can keep. The same with phone numbers; hardly anyone uses their office desk phone. Everyone uses their personal cell phones.
Privacy. Most of the mid-size and large companies scan email for trigger words ("my resume", "my boss is an idiot", "copy of the company financials" and so on.) If you use words like these, your email pops up on your boss's screen for review. So people use their corporate accounts only for business and their personal email for all other communication.
Personal Connection. If you only have Stephen J. Pinkerfish's email address at Google (spinkfish@google.com), then he's only a business contact to you. But if he gives you his personal email address (huggybear24@yahoo.com), then he's your friend. And if he replies at 11:34 pm on a Saturday night, then he's really your friend.

So, if you're at a company, set up your own personal email account. Use that for your "real communication". But don't use huggybear :-)

Did Silicon Valley Move to San Francisco?

Posted: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 16:42:04

For decades, SV was centered around Palo Alto because it was primarily a manufacturing and engineering center: they built things: chips, hard disks, storage devices, electronics, satellites, etc.

But the web isn't manufacturing. It's not really much engineering either (any competent engineer can build a social website, which is why it's now done in India, Pakistan, and the Ukraine for less than $4,000). So why put a company in a manufacturing center? Why not be in a charming city with lots of bars, nightclubs, and tens of thousands of young people who will work for very little?

The graph shows where the money has gone, which means the center of SV has shifted.

It's not all good news for SF. These web startups are low-cost operations with poor (or no) sustainable business models and low wages.

Read the article at The Atlantic Cities

Twitter: Better Cheaper Faster

Posted: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 16:04:50

I'll speak on Tuesday on an Act-On webinar. To get more attendees, I set up my own Twitter campaign for the event.

I started last Friday morning. I wrote three tweets; added several keywords; budgeted $25.

Here are the results: 14,500 views (i.e., the three tweets showed up 14,500 times in people's Twitter accounts if they used the keywords (e.g., "digital marketing", "content marketing", "influence marketing", etc.) What matters is the response: 153 clicks, which means 153 people went to the webinar signup page. $23 divided by 153 = $0.15 per click (CPC, or cost-per-click).

If I had set up the same campaign in Google, it would take a day or two to become active (Google reviews ads, etc.) I've been managing Google AdWords for over ten years on hundreds of accounts (I manage MIT's Google account); on average, CPCs are $0.75. If I had done this campaign in Google, it would have gotten 33 clicks. Twitter brought me 153 clicks (4.6x as many).

Twitter is far away the easiest and fastest way to set up digital advertising. It's much cheaper than Google. And it works very well.

Microphone for Webinars

Posted: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 20:51:06

I did a webinar last week for The Experts Bench (TEBWW.com). They kindly sent me a Snowflake USB Microphone (made by Blue Microphones, $45, #BlueMicrophones).

Wow. The sound quality is radically better. Crystal clear. Just plug it in and it works.

If you're doing webinars, podcasts, or presentations, get a better microphone.

I also use a $90 Logitech webcam. Very good image for the viewer.

Tip: clean your lens.

Tip: When you're not using it, cover it. Hackers can look through your webcam. Just use some black tape.

Whither Twitter? What's the Future of Twitter?

Posted: Fri, 06 Sep 2013 19:21:12

There are two questions about Twitter:

Why do people post to Twitter (and other social sites)?
What happens when they get many followers?

There are answers to these questions in a research paper by Prof. Olivier Toubia, Columbia Business School, and Prof. Andrew Stephen, University of Pittsburgh. They used test groups and statistics to show how people behave on Twitter.

They picked 2,500 random users and looked at their tweets. They selected some of those users and added 100 fake followers to each to see if people changed their postings.

There are two reasons for using social: Intrinsic and Image, by which the researchers mean "for its own sake" and "to enhance status". To put it bluntly: people either post for fun ("Woohoo! Party!") or to show off their status ("Dinner at the Paris Four Seasons!").
When people have few followers, postings are generally personal.
As followers increased, people post more often.
When people get more followers, they tend to become less personal. They begin to broadcast. See p. 33 and Table 7.
But at a certain point, people actually began to post less.
Companies want to get people to post more about the company, but if companies start following people and this increases the numbers too high, people will reduce the number of postings. Companies may actually decrease the number of mentions of the company. See p. 20.

Here's my summary: When people first start on Twitter, they're posting updates about themselves. When they see an increase in followers, they begin to post more. But postings become broadcasts to show off their status. As the number of followers reaches a certain point, people post less.

The researchers predict Twitter will evolve from a production of content to a consumption of content, i.e., from a social townsquare into traditional broadcast media, dominated by celebrities. My Comments: This mirrors the evolution of the web. Starting in the mid-80s and into the early 90s, many people used Usenet and IRC to chat. The dotcom boom and commercialization brought companies onto the web (they saw the web as an opportunity to reach consumers, i.e., broadcast at them for marketing). The web evolved into a broadcast platform as websites became technically complex (database-driven sites with transaction capability, such as Amazon), which pushed the personal sites to the bottom. The collapse of the dotcom boom and the crash in April 2000 forced a retreat of commercialization of the web (some 5,000 dotcoms collapsed). In 2003-2005, developers used the ideas of AJAX to build interactive sites. This launched another attempt to build a social web. If the same happens to social, it will evolve from a townsquare conversation into broadcast. However, people will begin to look for another form of tools that allow townsquare conversation (UseNet, IRC, personal websites, blogs, Twitter, etc.).

See the discussion at p. 35.

See the summary at p. 36 plus Table 1 and Table 2 at p. 45.

An interesting note about Table 1: The study sample of 2,400 users have anywhere from zero followers to 18,940 followers. The median number is 704 (that's the median, not the average). Very often, people use 1,000 followers as the cut-off point as a person with large number of followers, but it's actually 704.

Get a copy of the research at Intrinsic versus Image-Related Motivations in Social Media (PDF)

Google's Bad News for Content Marketing

Posted: Mon, 09 Dec 2013 01:42:38

A friend saw my blog postings about content farms. She had read my content marketing book. She asked me what this all meant. The following is based on my email reply to her.

Google and and Bing's strategy over the last five years is clear in their actions. Google and Bing want quality at the top of search results. To determine quality, they manually review webpages and assign a score. Based on hundreds of millions of reviews, they carried out two major algorithm changes (at Google, these are known at Panda and Penguin) and a major rewrite of the algorithm (codename Hummingbird) which wiped out millions of low-quality pages and elevated the ranking of high-quality sites.

Google and Bing give preference to pages that are written by verified authors with real credentials. That's why Google+ requires a real name and why Youtube has moved to requiring a G+ login. Google and Bing are slowly getting rid of fake names, anonymous accounts, spammers, and, yes, and marketers who use fake accounts to pump up traffic or fake positive comments.

For Google and Bing, content farms are sites that display low-quality content, written by unqualified (and often, unknown) persons. Over 130 content farms are blocked by Bing and likely, Google. If marketers or companies use these to either buy 500-word articles or post their articles, they are wasting their time. If they churn out hundreds of low-quality articles, those will be flagged as junk and the entire site will lose ranking.

A webpage must have high-quality content, written by credentialed or licensed professionals who are at authoritative organizations. That's CLEARLY stated in Google's internal manuals.

All of the major search engines (Google, Yandex, Baidu, and Bing) use tens of thousands of humans to manually evaluate and rank webpages. They mark pages based on quality: high, good, okay, or low quality.

Want to learn more? Read my SEO eBook. Free PDF. Go to andreas.com/search-engine-marketing

The Consumerization of Media

Posted: Tue, 10 Dec 2013 05:50:27

The Consumerization of Enterprise

A major recent trend in corporate business has been the “consumerization of enterprise”. This means consumers are affecting the technology and methods at the enterprise level. Enterprise normally means large corporate structures (generally defined as companies with more than 5,000 employees), but it also includes any large organization. The Catholic Church, the government, or a large charity are also enterprise-level organizations.

Up until now, for better or worse, the tools and procedures of these organizations were determined at the top by experts who decided what would be done and how it would be done. This standardized the enterprise. Those decisions were broadcast downwards to staffers, who had to use the approved tools. For example, there are hundreds of spreadsheets, but when the head of accounting decides on Microsoft Excel, that becomes the standard spreadsheet within an organization.

A good example was the Blackberry phone. Nearly all cell phones are easy to hack, but the Blackberry has strong encryption. Company security teams want to keep the company’s communications and files secure, so they chose the Blackberry as the official corporate phone and banned the use of other phones. The Blackberry became the standard phone of upper-level staff at large corporations and governments.

However, the consumerization came along. This means employees prefer consumer-level products, despite the orders of upper management. Eventually, these low-level consumer-quality products replace corporate products. The Blackberry was a great phone (I had one), but the iPhone was new, had other features (bigger screen, better images, and so on), and was more popular. People began to switch to iPhones, even though it lacked Blackberry's security. After several years, enterprise IT security gave up on banning non-Blackberry phones. iPhone and Samsung phones took over.

The same is happening with all sorts of corporate tools. Organizations decided that staff would use an internal communications platform, but employees know Facebook, Twitter, or SMS and they prefer that. This is especially true if the person is under 25 years old; they often don’t even use their company’s email address (or even use email at all. Only 1% of teens use email today).

In Silicon Valley, I’ve noticed that most of my communication with other people is outside their official accounts. They use Gmail, Yahoo mail, Facebook, WeChat, Twitter, LinkedIn, or chat tools to communicate. Nearly all of them use their personal cellphones, not their office desk phones. There are two reasons for using personal cell phones: although they move from company to company, they keep their personal cell phone numbers so they stay in touch. Secondly, it’s never quite clear if desk phones are monitored or taped.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

The same for computers. For years, companies chose and bought the computers. For more than a decade, these were Windows computers with Microsoft Office. But in recent years, people are using their own laptops, and now, increasingly, their own tablets. Enterprise hurt itself by first refusing to pay for tablets (I remember how these were seen as frivolous consumer toys) and second, not supporting the switch to mobile devices. Users quickly began using Dropbox and other tools to move and store corporate files, which undermined file security. Another horror for IT was the sudden loss of control over the corporate network. IT owned the network. They assigned logins to staffers. They monitored and turned off a staffer’s access. But cell phone companies added WIFI hotspots (which means the cell phone can connect to the web and devices could then connect to the cell phone to reach the web). You can be in a corporate office and bypass the company’s network altogether. At some companies, IT teams actually walked around with handheld devices to detect unauthorized WIFI hotspots to shut them down. They were quite right to do this: it’s a major security hole, but in reality, it became impossible to stop this because workers were using these WIFI hotspots at home, in restaurant, the airport, and hotels. (If a hotel charges for WIFI, I simply turn on my hotspot and connect to the web. Why pay for WIFI?) Workers learned from each other (or their kids) how to do this and they don’t need to bother IT anymore for permission to connect a device.

When companies and IT give up and let the workers choose, it's called Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), which means the workers choose the device. At many Silicon Valley startups, the companies don't provide laptops or desk phones. They simple assume the workers have their own devices.

So, the consumerization of enterprise means corporate processes and tools are undermined by staff making personal decisions to use their consumer products instead of the corporate products. It means the organization loses control over the tools and processes. If the organization doesn’t adapt, it will wake up one day and find everyone is using unknown tools. A further problem: the organization will also fall behind in technology and innovation.

The Consumerization of Media

Okay, so what was the idea that I introduced? It’s related. By working on the idea of content marketing, I began to realize the same process was happening to media. So I call it the consumerization of media. This means the production and distribution of media, which was once controlled by large companies, is now determined by consumers, not the companies. The purchasers of media (the consumers) are deciding how they want to read or watch content, and the producers (publishers, the music industry, movie makers, etc.) are forced to adapt.

Up to recently, each media industry controlled the production and distribution of its media. The music industry decided the size and length of records and CD, the pricing, and how these were distributed. The movie industry released movies through chains of movie theaters in complex distribution deals. Books were standardized by size, pages, and pricing and then distributed through bookstores. The only choice for consumers was which item to buy, but they had practically no choice on how they would consume the product. (That’s a horrible concept, but we don’t have a better way to say it. You read a book, watch a movie, or listen to music, but we say you consume media. Someone, please come up with a better phrase!)

Books as an Example of the Consumerization of Media

Let’s talk about books (you can apply the same discussion to video and music). In 1450, some 560 years ago, Guttenberg began printing books in Europe (the Chinese were doing this a thousand years ago, but whatever). Guttenberg was not an author. He never wrote or published original work. He was a businessman and saw printing as a way to make money. At the time, a bible was copied by hand and cost a small fortune (a village collected money to buy a bible). So Gutenberg printed bibles. This set the basics of publishing for the next four years: publishers owned the printing press; they chose what to print (and they also rejected books); they set the price; they controlled the distribution. All of this was done by business people, not writers. The readers were passive recipients whose only choice was which book to read, but not much else. This model survived for an astonishing 550 years and resulted in large publishing companies based on text (publishers of books, magazines, and newspapers).

Digital collapsed the production costs of books. Once a digital file has been created, it can be duplicated perfectly and unlimited. There are no production costs. In a deeper sense, the copy isn’t a copy; it’s identical to the original file. Digital wipes out the costs of investment in Heidelberg Press (a printing machine the size of a train locomotive) and the salaries for skilled technicians to operate it. They’re not needed anymore.

The distribution system began to break down in the late 80s as the internet arose. People found they could post and release texts on the Internet. Other people could find these texts, read them, and distribute them further. Because the texts were in digital format, it was essentially free to distribute them. Texts could be distributed worldwide (for a number of historical and political reasons, there’s no such thing as international book publishing. Books are published by publishers in each country.) The web made it possible to distribute a book worldwide.

If reproduction and distribution is free, then many texts became free, which broke the pricing model. Most paperback books were generally (in the 90s) US$10-15. That was seen as a fair price to cover the costs of running a publishing company (editors, staff, etc.), printing, distribution trucks, bookstores, clerks, and so on. But what’s a fair price for digital books when production and distribution costs are zero? At Amazon, hundreds of thousands of books are free. This spelled the end for bookstores. Borders, a mega bookstore chain with nearly 700 stores, went out of business. Barnes & Noble, its major competitor, is in trouble. Over a thousand small bookstores closed in the last ten years in the USA.

The other big change in books was the switch from print to tablets and smartphones. The first iPad appeared in 2010. Tablets are cheaper than laptops, easy to carry around to cafes or on airplanes, and can be used by the pool, on the sofa, or in bed. Sales of desktop and laptop computers are falling as people switch to tablets. I love to read; I’ve read more than 30,000 books; I have some 5,000 books in my house. I thought digital devices would not replace books. But I got one of the first iPads (I have two now) and I have a Samsung Note 3 (a large cellphone). There’s no doubt: it’s easier to read on a digital device. I can read anywhere. I have several hundred books on my devices. The devices are synchronized, so I can set down the Samsung Note, pick up the iPad, and continue reading at the same page. I can click a word to look it up in the internal dictionary. I can click Amazon, buy two or three books (which download in a few seconds), and have more to read. I can read two online newspapers and three sites for essays and ideas (3QuarksDaily, Aeon, CounterPunch), none of which I can get offline.

The switch to mobile devices is forcing text publishers (publishers of books, magazines, newspapers) to adapt their text to be readable on those devices. At first, they came out with apps, but that didn’t last, because readers didn’t want apps. They wanted the website. So publishers created mobile versions of websites, such as m.time.com, m.nyt.com, and so on (the “m” marked the mobile version). But again, people wanted the main site, and publishers didn’t want the headache of maintaining two sites. Furthermore, every month brought yet more smart phones and tablets in different sizes. The current best solution is the concept of “responsive design”, which means the publisher builds one site and the site is able to detect the size of screen and then resize itself accordingly. The cost is absurdly low; a responsive design template is US$25 and there are thousands of them. That’s right: a publisher’s web that once could cost $100,000 or more can now be set up for $25 and it works better.

As for writers, the changes in publishing are astonishing. Book printing was developed over a period of 550 years so a modern book is a complex process. Traditional book production could involve 20-30 people; now it can be done by one person. I’ve written more than nine books. The first eight were published by publishers, so I know quite well the tremendous amount of detail work to convert a text into a printed book. Very little of this is obvious to the reader. For my 2013 book, I decided to use digital publishing at Amazon. The production workload was easily cut by 80%, and now, after several digital books, I could cut it by 95% from traditional book production. This makes it easier for me to write, so I released a major book in May 2013 and two 50-page ebooks in October and November. This speed would not be likely under traditional publishing.

Finally, people ask me about production quality. I’ve also printed my digital books and the print quality (if you know what you’re doing) is just as good as a book printed by a major publisher.

So you see the impact of digital on book publishing. It affects the production, distribution, pricing, and sales, including the costs and speed for all of these.

The Impact of Digital on All Media

The fundamentals of media production were established by Gutenberg 550 years ago. Over four centuries, publishers controlled production and distribution.

But digital is radically changing every media: music, sound, video, photography, and so on. A single person can create music; some music artists earn US$300,000 per night, and they do this night after night. Movies are being created with inexpensive handheld cameras and released via the web that earn millions.

My key point: it’s not the industry that led the change. It’s the consumerization of media, carried out by the consumers and authors, the outsiders, the ones at the bottom, that led the change simply by choosing cheap, flexible alternatives. The media industry’s only choice was to either adapt or die. Who controls publishing, production, and distribution at the New York Times? It’s no longer the publisher. The readers are in control.

Beyond Books

This has serious implications. Gutenberg set up a nice little business project by printing bibles. But the results were beyond anything he could imagine. Before, only highly-trained priests could read and declare the purpose of a sentence in the bible. But soon, everyone began reading the bible for themselves. Different opinions arose. That led to movements. Which led to the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, the Inquisition, and religious wars (which are still going on today in Northern Ireland). Over 100 million people died in these conflicts. The Catholic Church was dealt a severe blow and never recovered. The royal kingdoms of Europe were wiped out in flames and blood. Medieval Europe was overthrown. The widespread distribution of ideas and books brought about the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Age of Reason and Science.

What will be the result of the democratization of media? What will happen to established religions, governments, and companies when anyone can publish and distribute their ideas as books or videos? There is no doubt nations will fight to preserve their authority, wealth, and power. Digital media is a deep threat to them. Just like knights and priests, they will not survive.

The First Newspaper Ads

Posted: Thu, 03 Jan 2013 04:58:55

I found the first newspaper ads in La Presse, a French newspaper in Paris, for Sept. 15, 1836, at the Gallica Bibliotheque Numerique (digital archives of French newspapers). Here's the image. The ads are for insurance, pharmaceuticals, job agencies, stock, travel, mustard, and various medical treatments. Yes, 176 years ago. Who thinks advertising is a modern idea? (Go to La Press at the Gallica Bibliotheque Numerique).

I went to archives of British newspapers and found The Spectator, Nov. 1711 had advertisements.

In the Spectator, see page one, left column, where the publisher talks about advertisements, and then lists a series of these on the right side. By these, he seems to mean reviews.

These however aren't yet modern advertising: no logo, etc., and it's not clear that people paid to have these placed in the Spectator. La Presse may be the first newspaper that was based on advertising revenue.

(Note: I edited both of these images to fit the page. To see the originals,, go to the links.)

Which US Cities as Test Markets?

Posted: Wed, 16 Jan 2013 02:16:53

Q: Andreas, you say we should carry out marketing tests where we market in some cities but not others, so we have control groups. This lets us see if the marketing was responsible for the change in results. But what cities should we use? - Perplexed in Peoria

A. The US Census collects income, age, education, gender, and household makeup. Look for cities with the same percentages as the US demographics. If the Hispanic population is 16.7% of the total US population, look for cities that have 16.7% Hispanics.

Acxiom found US cities which have demographics that match the general US population. They use this for marketing tests for their clients. Here's an alphabetical copy for you: Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY; Birmingham, AL; Cedar Rapids, IA; Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, NC/SC; Columbus, OH; Eau Claire, WI; Eugene-Springfield, OR; Grand Junction, CO; Greensboro--Winston-Salem--High Point, NC; Nashville, TN; Odessa-Midland, TX; Pittsfield, MA; Richmond-Petersburg, VA; Rochester, NY; Syracuse, NY; Wichita Falls, TX; Wichita, KS.

How to use this list? Build your marketing campaign. Pick (say) ten of these cities as your market (it doesn't matter which; they're demographically identical). The remaining cities are the control group, i.e., no marketing. Launch your campaign, collect data, and compare. If you find your product sells in Rochester, you've got a winner: it'll sell to the US population as a whole.

Blog Postings for 2014

How to Get Rid of Tracking and Ads: An FAQ

A "friend" (not her real name) complained to me yesterday there were too many ads. "It's like all ads!"

I told her that it's easy to block the ads. She didn't know that.

You can block the ads. You can also block the tracking tags. These are bits of code that are added to webpages. When you open a page, click on something, or even just move your mouse, the tags collect information and report it somewhere.

I checked this morning: there are 1,934 tracking tags. That's an astonishing number of companies that collect your every action and sell your data to other companies so they can bombard you with yet more ads.

Many advertising companies are run by ethical, responsible people. However, some ad companies are run by jerks who do whatever they want just to make money.

Block the Tracking

Add Ghostery to your browser.

Visit Ghostery.com and install it.
Just click and it's installed.
A small blue ghost icon appears at the top right of your browser.
Click the icon to make changes.
Add the list of tracking tags that you want to block. You can choose from the list of 1,934 or just select all. To do this...
Click the Gear Icon and select Options.
Click Select All and save.
When you refresh the page, the tracking is blocked.

Block the Ads

To get rid of the ads.

Use Adblock Plus.
Open that and click the Install button.
A red ABP icon appears at the top right of your browser.
Click the icon.
Click Options.
Turn ON the first two
Turn OFF the last one.
Exit and you'll not see any more ads.

The last one is a bit tricky. AdblockPlus blocks all ads. However, if a company pays AdblockPlus, the company's ads will be shown. By turning this off, you can block those ads too.

If I Work in Marketing, Why Do I Turn Off Ads?

You may wonder about that. I work in digital marketing, yet I turn off ads.

A study by Tim Suther, then-CMO of Acxiom, showed that 80% of digital advertising fails to reach its target audience. 80% of ads are wasted due to ad blindness (people have learned to ignore ads) and ad blocking tools. Push advertising (thrown ads in people's faces) doesn't work.

Another way to do marketing is pull advertising, where you create content that attracts interested viewers. Your audience wants to see the content. They choose to visit. My book The Big Book of Content Marketing is based on this idea (visit the page to learn more about it).

Tactics that work include SEO, social, video, and content marketing. What doesn't work well? Untargeted PPC, SEM, banner ads, popups, and popunders. PPC works when it announces a content campaign.

So even though I work in digital marketing, I have no problem with blocking the tracking and advertising. Companies should learn push advertising doesn't work.

Companies should put their efforts in making better products so people want the product. Is that possible?

Generally, ad agencies recommend for companies to spend 20% of their revenues on advertising. Apple had $170 billion in revenues for 2013. Ad agencies think Apple should spend $34 billion (20%) in marketing. But people stand in line for Apple stuff. Thieves race through street traffic to steal Apple stuff. Apple spends only 0.6% (zero point six percent) of its revenues on marketing. They simply don't need to advertise because their products are so cool.

So make better stuff. Give your customers what they really want. That works.

Book Royalties at Amazon

People have asked me about royalties at Amazon. Here are the numbers:

Price and Royalties for a Print Book

I input the price (US$9.95) and it automatically calculates the price in pounds/Euros and shows me my expected royalty (what I get). I enter $9.95 (US dollars) and it shows me the price in pounds (someone in London will pay 6.12) and euro (what someone in Germany will pay 7.69 euro). At the right, it shows me the royalty in the various Amazon stores: I get $3.82 if the book is sold at Amazon.com; $5.81 if it's sold via CreateSpace and $1.83 if it's sold in bookstores. Below that are my royalties from the UK and Europe.

Price and Royalties for a Digital Book

Here is the same for the digital book (the ebook):

I enter the price ($3.99) and it shows me the price for other countries, along with the royalty (70%) and the amount that I get. If I set the price at $10 or higher, I get 35% royalty. Yes, Amazon is nudging authors to set lower prices so it can attract more buyers (and kill bookstores). 70% of $9.99 is $6.99. If I sell the book at $10.05, then I get$3.51.

For example, the ebook is $3.99 in the USA. I get 70%. Amazon charges a delivery fee, which is based on the kilobyte size of the book. The book is 2.8MB (mobi format), so they charge me an additional US$0.21. In the end, I get $2.65 for each ebook sold in the USA. In Mexico, the book is sold for 52.90 pesos, of which I get $36.06 pesos. All of those sales are converted to US dollars and Amazon pays that into my bank account.

However, it's not that much money. You make very little money on non-fiction books. I might sell a few thousand. Maybe. That's quite good for non-fiction.

One good thing about Amazon is the worldwide distribution: Europe, India, Japan, Australia, and Latin America. The only places where people can't buy from Amazon are several countries in the Middle East and mainland China. Next week, I'll talk with people in China about this.

How to Get Followers in Twitter

One of the ways to measure success is to look for numbers. When you have a lot of bottle caps, you’re the king of bottle caps on your street. Of course, that starts the race to collect bottle caps every way you can.

The same on Twitter. Twitter shows you how many people follow you which turns into a game for the sake of numbers.

It’s understandable to want followers. It’s sad to tweet if nobody is listening. And it’s cool to see your follower numbers go up. And that’s okay for most people.

But two groups go too far: celebrities and bean counters. A celebrity‘s weight is measured in fans. 10 million fans are bigger than 4 million. Celebrity magazines love these lists. The bean counters have 50,000 fans, which is nowhere near celebrity status. So they’ll do anything to get more fans.

18.4 million people follow Kim Kardashian. But are they real or fake? According to StatusPeople.com, seven million (38%) of her followers are fake. Another six million are inactive accounts. Only 5.3 million (29%) are real accounts. 13m of her 18.4m followers don’t exist.

It’s not just bimbo celebrities who fake it. Biz Stone (co-founder of Twitter, @biz) has 2m followers and 70% are fake or inactive. Twitter could easily get rid of these fake and inactive accounts. This would stop the inflation. But Twitter allows it because this makes Twitter look bigger.

It’s not necessary to have 100,000 followers. You can have only two followers (your mom and your cat) and that’s fine, because your tweets are available to everyone on Twitter. It’s the content of the tweets that matter, not the followers.

Wait, Followers Don’t Matter?

Followers don’t matter because most of them aren’t reading your postings, just like you’re not reading their postings. If it’s just a few people who you personally know, then yes, you’ll likely read their postings. I read the postings from the 42 people that I follow.

But if someone is following 500 people, there’s no way he can read several hundred postings daily. I’ve talked with a number of people about this. Several told me they’re fine with only a few hundred followers. They’d rather reach people who care than send messages that get ignored. It’s a different for celebrities. Millions of fans read every tweet. For the rest of us, we live in reality.

How to Get Fake Followers

So your boss sees you only have two followers (your mom and your cat) and he starts yapping about it’s time to bring in people who get social media. No problem. You can get lots of followers. There are three ways:

Buy followers. Pay $10 and get 20,000 followers. Use a search engine and look for buy Twitter followers. Many organizations, movie stars, and politicians do this. That’s how they have 3,000,000 followers (you can get a bulk discount for 100,000 or more). Prices range from $0.10 to $0.01 per follower. You can also buy fake followers for Facebook, Google+, YouTube, and just about every social site.
Create followers. A director at a global marketing company told me they have armies of zombie accounts. They use these to add fake Likes, Followers, and comments to clients. Clients get happy when they see 300,000 followers cheering their dumb product.
Be a celebrity in Twitter. If you're in the list of recommended celebrities, new users at Twitter will follow you because they don’t know any better. This is follower inflation: if you have 500,000 followers, you’ll get yet more followers.

Teens call this Like Whores; people who chase after Likes and followers. (Several people asked me about this so-called global marketing company. On advice from an attorney (really), I won’t say the name. They can sue, regardless of the facts.)

Another Way to Get Followers

There’s a fourth way. Many people will follow you if you follow them.

Follow 300 people on Monday. Just pick them at random. Go to someone’s page (especially someone with lots of followers) and look at their list of followers. Do clicky-clicky and add people at random.
About 150 of them (50%) will follow you in return.
On Tuesday, follow another 300 people. You’ll get another 150 followers.
Keep doing this. You can add 150 followers every day. After 30 days, you’ll have 4,500 followers.
Keep doing this. You can easily get 20-30,000 followers.

Like I said, this works, and I know because I tested this for you, my dear reader. I created an account for my cat with a photo, bio, and two tweets. Each day, I added 100 followers. The new follower rate varied from 48% to 72% per day. After ten days, the account was following 1,004 people and had 552 followers (55% success rate). It still had only two tweets. You can get 4,500-5,000 followers per month. You can also go out in the street and jump up and down. That’s just as meaningless.

Search Twitter for #followback to find people who’ll follow you if you follow them. 70% or more will follow you.
Don’t add more than 300-400 people per day. Twitter doesn’t like aggressive following. They’ll delete your account.

What’s the Point of Fake Followers?

You’re wondering, why do this? These are random people. Isn’t this a waste of time? And it’s fake. Who are they kidding? The answer is complicated:

Will they read your tweets? Just as likely as you’ll read their tweets, which is no. Your dog will laugh at you.
But many people don’t know this. When they look at your account and see 50,000 followers, they think wow, you’re so popular!
When your boss sees you have seven followers and Joe Slick has 50,000, your boss will think you’re a loser. He tells you to get followers or move back to your mom’s basement.

People want followers so they hire ad agencies which buy fake numbers. Celebrities need to appear popular, so their press agents add a few million followers. Bosses are happy, clients are happy, and followers feel they’re following a leader.

Be careful. If you buy followers, you may be dealing with hackers who create fake accounts to infect computers. There’s also a risk of credit card fraud, bank fraud, and blackmail. I advise you not to buy fake accounts or followers. This is also why I think most social metrics tools are worthless. Klout, Kred, PeerIndex, and others can be easily spoofed. Want a big Klout score? No problem! Whip out your credit card and you'll be a local hero.

Are They Fake or Real? How to Tell

You can use StatusPeople to check someone’s account to see if they have fake accounts. Many celebrities have 50% or more fake followers. If your account is following fake or inactive people, use TwitBlock or ManageFlitter to delete them.

How to Get Real Followers

There’s another way to get followers. This is what I did for my own account.

Write books, articles, blog postings, and tweets with useful information
Talk at conferences and put your Twitter ID in your Powerpoints
Put your Twitter ID in your newsletters
Tell your friends. Add your @name to your email address line, your website’s contact page, and your pages at Facebook, LinkedIn, and so on
Go to Twitter | Me | Find More Suggestions | Find Friends | Select your email account. Twitter will see which of your friends are on Twitter and connect them to you

Over five years, my follower count has grown to just over 1,000 people (Oct. 2014). This is natural growth with real followers. I prefer 1,000 real people instead of a million fake followers. (Excerpt from #TwitterBook, 2nd edition, revised for 2014.)

Get the Whole Book for Free

Want the rest of the book? Get my #TwitterBook at Amazon.com.

All about Hashtags

Why use hashtags? By adding a hash mark, you mark the word, like using underline or bold. You use it to tell other people that the word is important.

Twitter made the hashtags clickable. When you see a hashtag, you click it and Twitter will show you more tweets with that hashtag. It’s the same as if you search for it. You’ll see all of the postings with that hashtag. This lets you follow the conversation and add to it.

For example, to see what people are saying about Miley Cyrus, search for #MileyCyrus. (By the way, upper case or lower case doesn’t matter, so you can use #MileyCyrus, #mileycyrus, #MiLeYcYrUs, or whatever.) Hashtags are written as one word. It’s #MileyCyrus, not #Miley Cyrus.

When you’ve settled on the hashtag, use it in your tweets. Put it in your webpages, website, emails, newsletters, business cards, advertising, T-shirts, TV ads, and digital advertising. Use it in your Google Adwords, both text ads and banner ads. Use it in Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, Instagram, and other social platforms.

Hashtags, Discussions, Communities

In the beginning, the idea for social media sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook was to create networks of small groups of friends. This was based on ideas by Mark Granovetter, professor of sociology at Stanford, and others. So it made sense to see communication as something that happened within contact lists.

But Twitter also allows your posting to be seen by anyone. Absolutely anyone.

To most people, this is a bloomin’ buzzin’ confusion. Lots of tweets about celebrities, personal chit-chat, and some dog ’s lunch. This is why people look at Twitter and most never come back. And many keep using it but never figure out what’s going on.

To solve that mess, people began using hashtags. With search and hashtags, you suddenly see only the tweets for that topic.

Want to see what’s going on in NYC? Search for #NYCEvents. 227 tweets in the last 30 days.
What have people said about sushi in Seattle? Search #Seattle #Sushi. 35 in the last 30 days.
Wondering about that beach at Maui? #beach #maui. 587 tweets in the last 30 days, many with photos.
Earthquake in Sichuan? Get instant updates with #earthquake #Sichuan.
What’s going on at Oracle World conference? Go #OracleWorld
Is the SF commuter train late? #Caltrain for updates.
What are people saying about Kim during her TV show? #KimKardashian. Ridiculous tens of thousands.
Looking for a job in sales in Paris? Search #sales #job #Paris. 24 in the last 30 days.

Using hashtags is like focus: pick one thing and suddenly you see what’s relevant to it. For example, the various US political groups use hashtags so their conversations can be seen by their members. There is #TCOT (Top Conservatives on Twitter), #TDOT (Top Democrats on Twitter), #CCOT (Conservative Christians on Twitter), and so on. They can stay in touch and talk with each other by using their hashtags.

Hashtags come and go. Some stay in use for a long time. Others pop up, become wildly popular, and disappear within a few days. So look around and see what’s being used.

Hashtags and Dashboards

Your next big step is to use a dashboard. These let you create columns for each hashtag that you follow so you can see the tweets for each hashtag.

Hootsuite lets me follow hashtags. There’s a column for each hashtag, such as #PaloAlto and #OnlyInSiliconValley. I usually follow a few hashtags, plus hashtags for conferences, events, and so on which I add or remove as they come and go. The mobile version is pretty good.

You can set up columns for your organization, your products, and services. You can follow your school, your soccer team, or your town. Whatever interests you, set up a column. Find the hashtag and add it. You can arrange columns as you like.

The dashboards also let you send tweets, schedule tweets for later posting, search, and so on. You can also manage tweets as a team: someone on your team writes a tweet and it goes to you for approval. These dashboards also let you add postings from Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and other social sites.

If you’re using Twitter for work, it’s a good idea to put this on a separate screen so you can watch the columns. You can set up bell notifications to get your attention or just bug your co-workers.

There are several dashboards, such as Tweetdeck (owned by Twitter), Hootsuite, Radian6 (owned by Salesforce), Seesmic, and others. These have free versions for desktop, browser, tablets, and smart phones. Try them and see which one you like.

It’s pretty hard to look at Twitter without a dashboard.

Tools to Find Hashtags

Here are several useful hashtag tools: Hashtagify.me shows you related discussions. For example, what’s the best hashtag for helicopters? Is it #helicopter, #copter, or #whirlybird? Go Hashtagify.me. Enter #helicopter and you’ll see related hashtags. You’ll see a word for helicopters that I didn’t include in my list. The size of the circle shows popularity; the thickness of the line shows traffic; and the closer the circle, the more relevant. Topsy lets you compare trends for several hashtags. Use Topsy to see numbers and trends for the last 30 days. Look for relevant discussions with lots of traffic. Topsy was bought by Apple for $200m.

What to Tweet

Many of the experts in your field are on Twitter. Take advantage of their knowledge and experience to learn about your field:

Ask about your industry, products, tools, and services
Ask about organizations, conferences, and events in your field
Ask for the best books, websites, blogs, and other resources
Ask for tips and secrets
Ask for ideas to improve your product
Talk about tips, ideas, observations, discoveries
Keep up with your industry, politics, movements, events

A great way to find hashtags is to look at the messages by experts. If they’re active in discussions, they’re using hashtags. Look at the hashtags that they use.

Tips for Tweeting

Hire some staff to send your tweets. That’s how @MileyCyrus tweets every 42 seconds all day (and all night too.) Celebrities have a staff of two or three people to tweet. Companies often have several people as well. Cisco has more than 100 Twitter accounts.

You can use the schedule tools in HootSuite and TweetDeck to write ten or twenty tweets at once and then send them out over the week.

Get the Whole Book for Free

Want the rest of the book? Get my #TwitterBook at Amazon.com.

Who Really Uses Twitter?

Black Twitter

There are so many black teens on Twitter that they’ve created their own world on Twitter. People talk about “Black Twitter”. These kids have come up with new ways to use Twitter.

Use TrendsMap to look at trending hashtags. First of all, tweets tend to concentrate around large cities. Hashtags spring up suddenly, grow explosively, and disappear within a few days.

Many of these are by and for black teens. They write “fill in the blank” tweets, such as #IfSantaWasBlack or #InPhilly (you know you’re in Philadelphia if…) The replies are witty and often very funny. Paula Deen got her own #PaulasBestDishes hashtag. Go ahead and look up some of these hashtags.

I think this comes out of Call-and-Response, a tradition in US Black culture. You’ve seen this in movies that include Black churches, where the preacher calls out to the audience and they shout back a reply and it goes back and forth. For whites, it’s disruptive, but some blacks like it that way.

Several factors come together:

US Blacks and Latinos are early adopters of mobile devices, with Latinos leading whites as much as three to one for smart phones.
Blacks and Latinos tend to have strong family networks and they stay in touch with each other. Latino families may also live in several countries. So they use phones to stay in touch.
US urban Blacks and Latinos teens can use Twitter on $5 cell phones.

Look at several hundred tweets by black teens and you’ll see they nearly always use hashtags, photos, and videos. They tweet in group conversations by sharing their thoughts and experiences. This is in strong contrast to celebrities and marketers who use Twitter for one-way broadcast.

Black teens are also using Twitter to meet new people. The Pew study points out 54% of black teens have become good friends with people they’ve met online in comparison to 35% of white teens.

This brings me back to what I wrote at the opening of this book. I noticed people in Appalachia knew Twitter better than people in Silicon Valley. Looking at Twitter, I found widespread underground use. Black teens didn’t read books on how to use Twitter; they figured this out on their own and the remaining teens joined them.

Look at people’s tweets. If it’s a long series of “official tweets” with capitalized words and URLs to articles, then the person is broadcasting. He’s not listening. Is the person a “Like Whore” collecting followers for the sake of numbers? Ask them, and I’ve found out that if they know you well enough, some will admit they don’t get Twitter.

Latinos on Twitter

There are 542 million people in Latin America and another 52 million Latinos in the USA. If we assume the common 16%, adoption rate, that’s 95m Latinos on Twitter, or about twice as many as Americans on Twitter.

That’s why many of the top hashtags are in Spanish, such as #TodoIbaBienHastaQue (#EveryThingWasGoingWellUntil…) with very funny completions (these are all in Spanish).

Use TrendsMap to look at hashtags in South America and Central America.

Chinese on Twitter

In mid-2013, China began to allow Facebook and Twitter in cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, and Chengdu where there are global corporations and business conferences.

Many Chinese use VPN to access Twitter. VPN disguises the user’s location, so it’s difficult to know the number of Chinese on Twitter.

Weibo, which is similar to Twitter, has over 600m users and 100m daily posts. It allows photos and video, like Twitter. It also allows music, which Twitter doesn’t have. Furthermore, you can send tweets with animated emoticons (cartoon animations). These are very popular and many companies have developed cartoons or licensed existing cartoon characters. Some emoticons are free and others cost a small fee, such as a dollar for twelve.

There’s something about tweeting in Chinese that Westerners don’t realize. A tweet allows 140 characters, which is 12-20 English words (with lots of abbreviations). But a word can be written in Chinese with a single character. Chinese also uses fewer spaces between characters, so a Chinese tweet can have 120-130 words. This allows six times more text than English, which also allows them to write complex thoughts that are impossible to express in a short English tweet. Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist, said “With 140 Chinese characters on Twitter, you can write a short story or novel.” Would you like an example? This paragraph has 120 words, which fits in a Chinese tweet, but is impossible to tweet in English.

How Many People Really Use Twitter?

When Twitter IPOed (started selling stock in Wall Street), they had to file an S-1 document with the government. The S-1 stated they had 215m monthly active users (MAUs). On p. 46, they admitted there was no independent confirmation of this number (see http://1.usa.gov/16J0RMo, 233 pages, HTML).

Twitter counts the active accounts. This includes:

Humans: A person logs into Twitter to read messages or send a message.
Multiple accounts: Many people use several accounts. For example, someone may have two accounts for personal and work use. A company team may have 10-20 accounts for different purposes (an account for each product, each service, the company, the CEO, the company dog, and so on). Large corporations may have hundreds of accounts.
Robots: Many computers log into Twitter to collect messages or send messages. For example, weather and earthquake reports are automatically sent.
Automated activity: Your cell phone automatically checks Twitter every few minutes for new messages. Each of those automated checks is an activity. It’s possible someone set up Twitter on her phone four years ago but forgot about it, yet she’s still considered a daily active user.
Spammers: Marketing and spammers create millions of fake accounts to send messages.

All of these are considered active accounts.

A better way is to see how many humans use Twitter. The Pew Internet and American Life Project (PewInternet.org) found 16% of US adults (20-75 years old) use Twitter. There are about 250m adults in the USA, so that’s 40m adult Americans on Twitter.

Pew also finds 24% of US teenagers use Twitter (May 2013). There are 30m US teenagers (age 13-19), many of whom had a party next door last night. So that’s 7.2m teens on Twitter.

This means 47.2m people in the US on Twitter in mid-2013.

People at Twitter told me 77% of their users are outside the USA. If 47.2m are in the USA, then there are an additional 128m people outside the US for a total of 175m people. An additional 40 million accounts are multiple accounts, robot accounts, fake accounts, or spam accounts.

Mike Isaac at AllThingsDigital wrote Twitter has had over a billion registrations, which means the abandonment rate is greater than 83%.

Why do people sign up but not use Twitter? Twitter won’t explain to people how to use it. The interface is also primitive and confusing. Furthermore, Twitter encourages Twitter a something for celebrities, so everyone else has little incentive to use it.

Twitter’s visibility is greater than its use. TV shows, billboards, and advertising now show hashtags and tweets. A study by Edison Research and Arbitron shows that 44% of Americans see tweets daily through other media.

Be careful with data from 2012 or earlier. In 2011, only 12% of teens used Twitter but in 2013, 26% of teens were on Twitter. These numbers can quickly change.

Researchers estimate 3% of accounts are fake (around 5 million accounts). Twitter themselves say about 5% (11m) are fake. (Yes, I’ve read estimates of 10-20%, but I think the lower numbers are better justified.)

There around 500m tweets per day, but many are automated or spam.

Documentation for these numbers is in the References section.

If you have a better way to calculate Twitter’s numbers, please let me know.

Get the Whole Book for Free

Want the rest of the book? Get my #TwitterBook at Amazon.com.

Amazon Affiliate: Worth It?

Amazon.com has an Amazon Affiliate Marketing service. You sign up, Amazon gives you a link to a book (or any product at Amazon), you put the link on your website (or send it out in your newsletters, blog, tweets, etc.), and if people click the link and buy something at Amazon, you get part of the sale. Amazon gives you money.

That's the theory. What's the reality?

I've had Amazon links in my website since January 2009 to now (Oct. 2014). That's five years, 10 months.

I get about 10-15,000 monthly visitors to my website, so in that time, at least 700,000 people have visited my site.

How much have I earned? Here's the data from my Amazon Affiliate account:

My earnings as an Amazon Affiliate. In nearly five years, my links produced $111.57 in sales for Amazon, and I got $4.47.

Because of my links, ten items have been sold at Amazon. Amazon made $111.57 in sales. My share was $4.47.

I've earned $4.47 from Amazon in nearly six years and 700,000 visitors. About $0.08 per month. Or $0.64 for each 100,000 visitors. It wouldn't even feed my cat for a month.

(Really. My cat eats a six-pound bag ($12) of Professional Adult Cat Complete Formula cat food each month. $4.47 won't even cover two weeks of cat food.)

Why Does Amazon Affiliate Pay So Little?

This is the nature of Amazon, Google, Facebook, Youtube, and the "web sharing economy". A small handful of companies get overwhelming market share. Tens of millions of websites (and blogs, social pages, etc.) show their ads or sell their products (there are +175m registered domain names). The central sites get a penny here, a penny there, which adds up to billions for them, but the payout is divided among tens of millions of sites, so each site gets pennies. Very few can survive (or even pay the monthly server fees).

It's the Walmart Effect. A small town of 20-30,000 people exists because it's an economic ecosystem: the small shop owners pay sales tax which maintains the schools, police, etc. and there are doctors, dentists, teachers, and so on.When Walmart enters the community, the low prices kill every small business within 25 miles. The community turns into a Walmart town. Corporate franchises pay such low wages that workers need food stamps to survive. The workers earn too little to contribute to the community's economic ecosystem. The few upper-income taxpayers subsidize the corporate franchises.

It sounds great that Uber and AirBnB are disrupting the over-regulated and expensive taxi and hotel industry. We'll pay less. But in the end, the drivers and apartment owners will earn trivial money. Hundreds of thousands of people are letting Uber and AirBnB use their cars and apartments. As these sites grow, more people will sign up. But the size of the market is fixed: there is only a certain number of people who need taxi rides or rent apartments. So fees will drop among the drivers and apartment owners.

This economic system is destructive. Big sites rely on little sites; big sites destroy little sites.

Yes, Amazon will tell you that people are earning thousands of dollars monthly. Yes, some people gloat about the money they make.

But my data shows reality. 700,000 visitors over nearly six years produced $4.47.

If you have different numbers, let me know. Send a screenshot and I'll add it to this page.

What about Music?

It's not only Amazon. Taylor Swift quit Spotify over their absurdly low music royalties. She called it "nano-pennies" and that's a good name for it: music bands earn $0.0084 per song, or just under a penny.

Most music bands earn perhaps $38 per month in royalties while Spotify had revenues of $210m in 2013.

Aloe Blacc writes in Wired, "It takes roughly one million spins on Pandora for a songwriter to earn $90. Avicii’s “Wake Me Up!” was the most streamed song in Spotify history and the 13th most played song on Pandora since its release in 2013, with more than 168 million plays in the US. Pandora paid $12,359 in domestic royalties ($7.36 for every million plays, or $0.000,007,3 per play) to be split among three songwriters and the publishers. Pandora had $240m in revenues for 2014.

HBO's Silicon Valley

After hearing so much about HBO's comedy Silicon Valley, I watched it.

I've lived in Palo Alto since 1995. I've worked in dozens of startups; I started two companies; I worked at SGI, SUN, Cisco, and so on. I was the head of a major association in Silicon Valley for ten years. I'm currently the advisory board of nine startups and I work with several companies. I have a house in Palo Alto and my cat is famous on the web. So, yes, I know Silicon Valley.

Here's what I think of the TV show:

Not Very Silicon Valley: My main issue with the show Silicon Valley is the lack of Silicon Valley in it. This barely touches on the reality of Silicon Valley. It could be a show about avionic engineers in Seattle or biotech researchers in North Carolina. The TechCrunch contest is in the final two episodes, but it's just the set for a generic conference (it could be about avionics or biotech).
Lack of Location: The show pretty much ignores Palo Alto and Silicon Valley. Not a single scene on University Avenue, Stanford University, Castro St., etc. There's a quick helicopter shot of East Palo Alto (but you would recognize it only if you live here) which leads into a very implausible plot around a logo design. The team's house doesn't even appear to be in Palo Alto. Some of the freeway shots are unrecognizable. It's so easy to set a show in Palo Alto, but the show's creators didn't try. They just filmed it in Los Angeles.
Lack of Diversity: A show about Silicon Valley with only one Indian in it? Seriously? Did the show's creators not even bother to come to SV? I've worked at several dozen startups; I'm an advisor to nine startups: in general, it's a third Indians, a third Chinese, and the rest are Europeans and South Americans. Out of ten, there's usually one white born-in-the-USA American. At dinners or parties at my house in Palo Alto, white born-in-the-USA Americans are a small minority. Again, Silicon Valley isn't really about Silicon Valley.
The Girls of Silicon Valley: The few women in the show are either secondary (executive admins) or sex objects (such as Gilfoyle's satanic girlfriend in episode 6, who is offered for casual sex to another programer, or the programmer babe in episode 7 who can't actually write code so she sleeps with Dinesh to get help, or the various party babes in the background) (and there's the Chinese second wife, whose only purpose in the show is to be a sex object, episode 7). The TV show has a cruel casual sexism. There are plenty of very competent women in Silicon Valley: this TV show ignores that.
Idiotic Jokes: The garage door mural isn't funny. It's just a stupid drawing. Nobody turns over the design of a company logo that way. And nobody pays $10,000 for that. The entire logo plot is implausible.
Developer Kids: The story with The Carver, a 15-year old developer, is pretty funny. I've worked with kids like that. They're super bright at code or hardware and at the same time, they're little kids. One worked for us several years ago; his mom brought him and picked him up. We had to write his checks to his mom because he was too young to have a bank account. This really does happen.
The Sesame Seeds: Peter Gregory, the billionaire, realizes there is something called Burger King so he studies the burgers, notices the sesame seeds, and figures out a way to corner the market and make a great deal of money (episode three). This is a pretty good illustration of how engineers, MBAs, and investors often notice a minor feature of a market, create a new company based on that detail, and thus disrupt the market. Jeff Besos realized books can be sold without stores (so Amazon is revolutionizing the 600-year old publishing industry); Craig Newmark realized newspaper ads don't need newspapers (and thus wiped out the 200-year old global newspaper industry).
The Awkward Presentation at TechCrunch: In the final episode, Richard (the main character) gives an excruciatingly awkward presentation at TechCruch. I've been to many pitch events (where small startups present their ideas to investors) and yes, many of the speakers are very awkward, with lots of hmmm, ahhh, ehhh, errr, and long silent pauses. With weeks to prepare, they're not prepared at all. It's embarrassing (and painful) to watch them. This scene is realistic and pretty funny. If you've sat through pitch events, you'll recognize this.
No Cats?: A show about Silicon Valley that doesn't have a cat? Or a dog? OMG, Silicon Valley is pet heaven. Just about everyone has cats, dogs, rabbits, hamsters, fish, chickens, or whatever here, and practically all of these animals have their web pages or Facebook pages (yes, Mark Zuckerberg's dog has a Facebook page).
Startup Founders: People outside of Silicon Valley think these companies are created by awkward loners. Yes, it's certainly true many awkward loners will try to create companies, but they don't go far. A startup requires intensely complex collaboration; the leader has to assemble, motivate, and lead investors, developers, marketing, and staff. I've met dozens of teams: the best ones stand out because the leader is extremely good at social interaction. There are thousands of bad ideas and those go nowhere. There are plenty of good ideas, but most of those go nowhere either, because the team is incompetent (they may be able to write code, but they don't know how to create a product, work with investors, etc.) The key to success is a strong core team of four or five people who work very closely together over long hours.

There's enough to the real Silicon Valley to find material to create a smart, complex comedy or a drama, just as Mad Men is about 60s Manhattan ad agencies or West Wing is about the White House. But this HBO show doesn't even begin to touch reality. It's shallow, cheap jokes that pander to outsiders' perception of Silicon Valley.

The End of Business Sites in Google?

In the last few months, Google has moved ahead with blocking more SEO tactics. They banned guest blogging (you pay a company to post comments in blogs), aggressive backlinks, and much of SEO based on keywords. The purpose of these tactics was of course to get commercial sites (and webpages) into Google's search results.

This will continue. Yandex stopped counting backlinks to commercial sites. There is strong incentive for a business to buy links, so instead of tracking good and bad links, Yandex simply threw them all out. I'll guess that Google will follow in 2014. This will kill a major part of the SEO industry.

But let's go to the point: the problem isn't the shady (or illegal) tactics. The problem is the business sites themselves: If they get traffic from a search engine, they make revenue. Thus there is a strong financial motivation to do anything to get more traffic, including cheat.

But Google knows that visitors want fair, objective information so they can make decisions. Therefore Google will give preference to objective informational sites. These sites must be neutral and independent.

Can a business build an objective informational site?

The company's core interest is to make sales and revenue. If the desire for revenues comes in conflict with the desire to distribute information, revenues will win. A company will never say something that hurts their core interest. They will not recommend a competitor. So a company can not offer objective information.

So where is it going to go with search engines? They can solve the spam problem by getting rid of the motivation for it: they can block commercial sites and pages from appearing as information in the search results.

This would be easy to do. First of all, if a business wants to sell in Google, it should use advertising. The visitors know that these are ads and treat them accordingly. This leads to the second: commercial sites should marked as commercial sites so the visitors won't confuse them for information. The sites could be marked off in a box. This wouldn't be a big change because in fact, this is what is already being done: visitors know the ads are advertising.

This would go a long way towards cleaning up SEO and digital marketing by removing the incentive to manipulate the search results. Just like Yandex, Google should stop using backlinks. Commercial sites should be moved to their own section in search results.

What's the Name for That?

You've noticed the 3-bar icon in your mobile apps. It's also showing up on desktop websites. Click on it to get the menu.

Okay, but what's it called? I thought it was a menu icon (the three bars show menus).

Then someone said "click the hamburger" and it turns out it's called a hamburger icon. Yes, it looks like a Big Mac.

But last week, I'm at Google, and she said "click the hotdog", and I said "What? Oh, that's the hamburger". At Google, they call it a hotdog. She hadn't heard hamburger.

So I began to wonder if it has a name.

And it turns out there is yet another name: the sandwich icon. Looks like a sandwich.

So I checked to see which is most popular. Let's go to the numbers:

25,700 "hamburger icon"
10,500 "sandwich icon"
03,020 "hotdog icon"

(Searched in Google with quotation marks for exact match.)

In mid-2012, "sandwich icon" was very popular. But that fell and hamburger took over.

So only Google calls it a hotdog. Hamburger wins. (Here's a huge opportunity for Burger King to jump in with a campaign to call it the Whopper icon.)

The Cloud Becomes the Fog...

Okay, so you know about "cloud computing".

What's next? Fog computing. Really. A new concept at Cisco. If cloud covers big systems and massive storage, then fog is for the small systems in local networks, such as a bunch of wifi routers, a few hard disks, your phone, your fridge, and whatever else you have hooked up in your home.

So if there's fog computing, what else could there be? Here are new possibilities:

- Cloudy Computing: Your files are scattered across Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, SkyDrive, OneDrive, ZipCloud, and maybe two more that you forgot.

- Smoke Computing: When your hard disk goes up in smoke.

- Sunny Computing: What you do at the pool.

- Rain Computing: What you do when you're not at the pool.

All are trademarked, so have your cat's lawyer talk to my cat's lawyer. Yes, my cat has a lawyer. Cat is doing a startup in my Palo Alto garage. Well, he's doing something in there.

The War between Amazon and Book Publishers

George Packer wrote about publishing and books in The New Yorker ( Cheap Words, Feb. 17, 2014). (Link to the article).

I read it twice, discussed it with several people, and wrote the following, which I also posted to the article's FB page.

When George Packer uses the word "writer" in this article, he means "published author", and what he really means is "an author published by a major NYC publisher", such as himself.

Packer complains that Amazon is breaking down the cosy Big Publisher/Big Author relationship. But for every Big Author, there are 1,000 published but unknown authors. And for every one of those, there are another 10,000 writers who would love to see their books in print, but don't have the connections. (BTW, I've written nine published books, incl. by published by McGraw-Hill.)

So Packer makes a mistake by erasing the word "published". That's minor. His article has a bigger mistake which he doesn't realize.

Amazon's CreateSpace service allows people to self-publish. Anyone can upload a text and it will appear as a digital book, which can be read on Kindle, cell phones, laptops, or any digital device. With a few more steps, the text is printed and bound by robot printers, which means anyone can have a printed book. You don't need to print 1,500 books: you can print just one book. Really.

Here's what Packer misses: this means Amazon offers a complete service for anyone to be a publisher. You can use Amazon CreateSpace to print the book, store on their shelves, sell the book, and process the payment, and deliver the book. Amazon does every single step beyond writing and editing. Packer is so clueless that he describes OR Books, a small publisher which uses other printing services, as an example of the future of publishing. Really, George? Anyone, yes, you, dear unpublished author, can set up an imprint on Amazon and start publishing books. How much would it cost to do this? Not even one dollar.

Amazon isn't a Death Star to NYC publishers. It's not Big Amazon vs. Big Publishers. Amazon is virus. We will soon see tens of thousands of publishers, as people realize they can do this themselves. There are already hundreds of thousands of self-published books. A few writers will began to organize their own publishing.

As for bookstores? They carry best sellers by Big Publishers. If you want interesting books, look at self-published authors on Kindle. I don't bother anymore with ISBN numbers or distribution to bookstores. As an author, it's better to bypass them.

After many published books, I released my last book myself via Amazon. I can buy print copies of my book for $2.77 with the same print quality as a book by McGraw-Hill or Wiley. My book is an Amazon Best Seller. I had a publisher for the book, but I withdrew and published it on Amazon. I get 65% royalty.

At 65%, I could set up an imprint, release books by others, and pay authors 40%.

George Packer's article is interesting, but only partially informed, overall misleading, and biased. Packer shouldn't be writing articles about Amazon or publishing.

Many friends have asked me how I've written so many books and they want to know how they can write books. So I'm currently writing a short ebook on how to self-publish. It will be released (yes, free) at Amazon and my website in late March. To get a copy, go to my website and sign up for the newsletter.

Your Personal Search Bubble

How do you know if you're doing well in SEO? The easy answer is to see if you show up at the top in a search engine.

However, that can be misleading because the results you see are personalized just for you.

Google does this by looking at your search history, the sites you visit, the Google+ buttons you've clicked, your location, and so on. It's possible the person sitting next to you will see entirely different search results. Bing also does this in the same general way.

This is called "the search bubble". Just like Bubble Boy, you end up in a world that is customized for you. You see only the things that interest you. You won't see other topics.

This becomes a problem when you want to see what others see. Your loyal customers may have the same interests as you, so their personalized search results may be similar to yours. But people who are not-yet-customers may see different search results, which means they may not see your link at all.

So you should look at search results with personal results turned both on and off.

By default, Chrome is set to show personal results in Google. You can change a setting so you can see both results. How to turn off personal results in Google:

In Chrome, open a Google search box.
Search for something (for example, "organic cat food", it doesn't matter).
Click the gear icon
Select "Search Settings"
Scroll down to "Private Results"
Select "Use Private results"
Scroll to bottom and click "Save"
Return to Google

At top right, you now have new buttons to switch between private (personalized) and global (unpersonalized) results. Now search for something that is a personal interest, such as your hobby, your work, and so on. Look at the results. Go to the toggle and click "Hide Personal Results". You'll see how the results change. Toggle the button back and forth.

If you have a website, search your website and toggle the results. You may discover you've been showing up #1 for yourself only! What to do about this? Turn off personalized results, search for your organization, products, and services, and print the results. See what the search engines choose for those pages.

Keywords for SEO and Advertising

Here's an odd problem. The search engines (SE) are getting rid of keywords for SEO, but they're using keywords for advertising. Both Bing and Google have moved away from keyword-based SEO. Yet Google and Bing use keywords to show ads.

This seems like a contradiction. But there's a subtle difference based on the user's intention.

Researchers found there are three types of searches. The difference is based on the user's intention for the search:

Navigational: The user wants to find the site (not information about something nor buy). Therefore SEs provide the authoritative site.
Informational: The user wants to learn something (not navigate nor buy). Therefore SEs provide the best information (based on credentials, authority, etc.)
Transactional: The user wants to buy/get something.

In the first two (navigational and informational), the keyword is a general indicator for the target. The best answer is only one or two items. Therefore SEs look at the intention (not the keyword) and offer the best answer.

Transactional searches (about 15% of all searches) are generally commerical transactions, which means the companies offer products for sale. So SEs open this space to competition. The user is presented with advertising.

However, it's not a simple competition of keywords. The naive advertiser thinks keywords are a simple issue: find the right keyword, use it, and the advertiser gets to the top. The process is much more complex than that. The search engines will review his webpage and the page will appear, depending on the type of search and the user's intent. SEs affect the ranking of ads by applying criteria for quality. Ads with high CTR and well-managed PPC accounts are moved to the top. The SEs also use humans to review advertisers to select qualified authentic merchants. Poorly-managed advertising accounts and low-quality merchants are moved to the bottom. Scams are blocked from the results. The user sees a list of merchant results that has been carefully filtered and edited.

Thus keyword searches deliver two types of results, depending on whether it's informational search or a transactional search (advertising), but in both cases, the results were not produced by a simple algorithm. In both cases, the results have been edited, reviewed, and selected by the search engines.

What to Do about This: Selecting the right keyword is a small part of SEO/PPC. It is more important to build and demonstrate quality. The search engines want to present the best sites and pages.
For Navigational Searches: Make sure your pages clearly show that your page is the official page for your company, service, product, or person. Include contact information and other criteria (social, reviews, useful information such as photos, etc.)
For Informational Searches: Make sure your pages clearly show that your page offers the best body of information for the general topics for your company.
For Transactional Searches: Review the other merchants on page one. Review the list of criteria for merchants. Go through the process of finding, selecting, and ordering an item from your competitors. Make sure that you either match their quality or exceed it.

Too much SEO is focused on KWs and metaing best-quality pages.

Content Marketing: An Interview

A university student in Wiesbaden, Germany, interviewed me for her thesis. Here are some of her questions and my answers:

How would you define Content Marketing and its goals?

Definition: Traditional marketing is “push marketing” or “broadcast marketing” where the information is broadcast at the audience. Content marketing in contrast is based on offering high-quality information which the audience, on its own, will share among themselves. Push marketing TELLS the audience what it should know. Content marketing answers the audience’s own questions from their point of view.

Content marketing has several goals: cheaper distribution (the audience will distribute it for you) and higher credibility (by offering the best information).
In this context, how would you describe valuable content? Could you name some examples, if possible in the context of Higher Education?

It’s the audience, not the company, who determines if it is valuable. It answers their questions. It tells them what they want to know and what they should know.

Stanford and Harvard’s MBA schools both use content marketing. For example, they’ve created digital magazines for free distribution. The articles are passed around by the audience. It increases brand recognition and brings visitors.
What meaning does Content Marketing have in reference to the internet presence of Higher Education institutions?

Higher education has a very strong advantage on the web over commercial organizations. Search engines give preference to universities because the information is non-commercial and unbiased. Universities are also staffed by professors who by their profession create information with the intent of informing (vs. the intent to increase sales). So content marketing fits into the strategy and goals of an education system.
Which industries use Content Marketing?

Education. It fits in their agenda to distribution. Marketing departments have spent the last 100 years in defining the message and broadcasting it at the audience. It is very difficult for them to move away from that.
What are the most important fundamental aspects of a Content Marketing Strategy?

Listen to the audience. This is very difficult for a commercial organization. The corporate team, especially upper management, develops an us-versus-them worldview in which “them” are competitors and the audience. Marketing is based on how to define the company against the competitors and how to change the audience to accept and repeat the company messaging. What the audience actually thinks is irrelevant because the company expects to change it.

While writing my book, I realized content had to be audience-centric. You can use Web 2.0 social tools to see the audience’s conversations in Twitter, etc. In reviewing content marketing books by other authors, I noticed none of them talked about this. They were marketing people who use content marketing as a form of push marketing.
How can you integrate effectively a Content Marketing Strategy into the existing online communication of a company (considering the positioning, goals, target group/audience, CI, brand management)?

That’s very difficult to do. It’s like trying to get a team of Wall Street bankers to run a lesbian commune in California! It’s entirely different from everything in their attitude, training, metrics, bonus, goals, etc.

Positioning, goals, etc.? The audience, not the company, defines that. There are plenty of examples where the audience rejects a company’s branding or branding isn’t successful. In general, the more a company tries to do branding, the more it moves away from its audience. Part of branding requires the company to clearly articulate its messaging, so it starts to see the audience as something to manipulate and change.
What are the most important requirements and premises to apply Content Marketing consistently?

A good editorial team to review and ensure quality. Otherwise, the content can be low quality.
What are essential reasons for a company to implement a Content Marketing Strategy in their online communication?

80% of digital advertising is ignored by the audience. Companies must find ways to effectively reach their audience. To do “yet more advertising” is increasingly expensive and less effective.
How can you measure the success of Content Marketing? Which are the most important key performance indicators and which analytic tools would you recommend?

This is a difficult problem. At a trivial level, you can track and measure the distribution and results. 50,000 downloads, 200 sales, $100,000 in revenues.

But by its nature, content marketing is untrackable: you hand out a book and people pass it among themselves. There is no technical way to track that.

For example, how many copies of Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” are there? Everyone talks about the success of Apple iTunes as the leading place for the distribution of music. However, for every song sold on iTunes, a hundred copies are shared and copied by people among themselves (by email, memory sticks, etc.) 99% of music is shared without any tracking. The gray market is a vast space.
How would you evaluate the cost-benefit situation of Content Marketing?

The cost for distribution of content marketing is less than 10% of traditional marketing. Just create it, distribute a few digital copies to high-visibility influencers, and watch it be distributed for free. It bypasses advertising in Google, newspapers, etc. The benefit is greater because you get credibility by the audience.

Google, SEO, and Cleaning up Links...

Okay, so Google doesn't want to see bad links. There are three kinds of links:

Internal Broken Links: You have 500 pages at your website and a few links are broken. You need to find and fix them.
Outbound Links: These links point from your site to other sites. Maybe ten years ago, whatever.com was a good site and you linked to it, but they shut down a few years later and it's now a junk site. So you need to find those links and remove them (or add a rel="nofollow").
Inbound Links: These links point from other sites to your site. Maybe ten years ago, whatever.com was a good site and it pointed to you, but they shut down a few years later and it's now a junk site. So you need to find those links and ask the site to remove them or disavow them in Google Webmaster Tools.

If you don't fix these, you lose points at Google, which means your ranking goes down and your traffic drops.

I did this for andreas.com, where I've been adding links since 1995, so there are thousands of links at my site. I used various SEO tools to make lists of the types of links, and sorted them by page rank or status code. I deleted/no-followed all of the links with low scores. For some links, I removed the hyperlink. I added NoIndex to archive pages. Many links pointed to sites or subdomains that I owned ten years ago but no longer. I had to fix those as well.

Get your SEO person to fix all of this at your site. Otherwise, Google will drop your ranking.

Google+ Is Now Google-

Not looking good for Google+. Vic Gundotra, head of G+, quit today. Most of the G+ team is being assigned to other teams. The obligatory G+ login ID will disappear from several tools. Google may change it from a product to a "platform" ("No, you're not fired. We're just moving your office to the basement.")

Here are news articles about G+:

For details, see an article from Recode (journalists from ATD, a WSJ project): http://goo.gl/fZh4c5
TechCrunch article (widely cited): http://goo.gl/JBTePA
BusinessInsider (summary) http://goo.gl/eGyjeN

All of these are authoritative and written by professional journalists.

G+ is effectively dead. Some pieces may survive as parts of other tools. What really counts is the social media world: they'll give up on talking about G+.

Why did it die? Google, one of the world's largest marketing companies, doesn't believe in marketing. They launch product after product, only to watch them sink. Do you want to know how bad it is? My mom lives in Palo Alto. She often joins us for dinners or get-togethers with Silicon Valley people. I told her that G+ will shut down and she said "What's that?" She'd never heard of it.

The Death Watch is on for Google Glass. It has all the marks of Google: no marketing, no outreach, no audience feedback. Not even on the market and it's now the leading example of tech arrogance and pointless product.

Why I Bought a $9.95 Phone...

I bought a $10 phone a few months. Why? I was writing #TwittterBook, an ebook about Twitter (you can get it at Amazon).

It turns out Black big-city teens are among the biggest users of Twitter. They've led millions of other teens onto Twitter. And what about people in India and Africa? Tens of millions are using Twitter. I doubt they use Samsung Galaxy phones. So how are they were using Twitter?

I talked with several people, but nobody knew for sure how this worked, or if it even worked. I found you can get a $10 phone at any US drugstore chain or supermarket. Disposable. Just use it and throw it away. So I bought one.

The TracFone comes with a wall recharger, car charger, headset, and ten minutes of talk time. You can buy more minutes. It was already charged. Insert battery, snap on the back, enter authorization code: it works. I entered my zip code and a Palo Alto phone number was assigned to it.

If you want one, call ahead and make sure these are on the shelves. The clerk apologized that I had to get a $10 phone; the $5 phones were all sold out. Really? There are $5 cell phones?

I went to my cat's Twitter account, added the phone to his account, and verified the confirmation code. My cat then opened my Twitter account and selected mobile updates to set my tweets to show up on his phone. From my account, I sent a hello tweet. Bingo!

It gets interesting. Let's say an Egyptian sees what the government is doing, but the government has shut down the web so others can't see. With his $10 phone, which he could perhaps buy second-hand for a few dollars, he can sent a tweet to several phone numbers. To post to Twitter (but you can’t receive), send a tweet to:

UK : +447624800379
GERMANY: +491724403473
FINLAND : +3584573950042

The tweet will be posted worldwide. Include the relevant #hashtags so others can find it. Look for a tweet with #Finland #TwitterBook. It was posted via the Finland station. We'll keep the phone. Friends visit from Europe and China, so it'll be a guest phone for them to use while they're here.

ASO: App Store Optimization

ASO is how to get your app to the top. It's marketing strategy and tactics for apps. Just as SEO is how to get your webpage to show up in search engines, ASO gets your apps to show up in the app stores.

Google stated in April 2014:

80% of apps are never downloaded
Of the 20% that are downloaded, 60% are never installed
Of the 40% that are installed, 80% are never used more than twice
After three months, only 24% are using it. After 6 months, this falls to 14%. By 12 months, only 4% are still using the app.

By using ASO, you can increase the distribution and active use of your apps. This improves your presence and visibility in the mobile space. It improves your engagement with your target audience, leads, prospects, and customers. This will build your ability to compete in the mobile market.

There are two general ways to do ASO:

Improve your app's presence in the app stores. This means to be findable in the first place. It also means to improve the presentation of your app to encourage people to install it.
Improve the word-of-mouth distribution. People install apps on recommendations from friends and experts. This means we build social engagement around the apps.

There is also digital marketing: the use of digital advertising at a target audience to make them aware of the app.

Installing an app is only the first step. From the data above, we see that 8o% of installed apps are never used more than twice. Apps need ongoing marketing to encourage users to use the app.

The ASO White Paper

Get a copy of my ASO white paper with 25 pages on strategy and tactics. Get the ASO White Paper.

Twitter: Fake Clicks?

Posted: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 21:23:03

Desperation at Twitter is forcing them to use fake numbers to pump up their revenues.

If you advertise in Twitter, you're billed for clicks. That sounds fine: you'll be happy to pay for a click on your link to your website. But that's not what Twitter means by a click. You pay if your reader clicks on the URL, the hashtag, the Tweet text, your avatar, your username, or the expand button. That's right: you pay if they click the hashtag. In fact, you pay if they click anywhere on the text of your tweet, but that has zero null nada zilch nichts value for your marketing. This is deceptive. Why are they doing fraud? They need to jack up their numbers to justify their absurd valuation, so they invent stupid things like this.

What's going to happen? Someone will start a class action to recover perhaps $500m. Twitter will drag this out for a year or two. Eventually, Twitter will settle before it goes to trial. The court will obligate Twitter to offer refunds to people. The lawyers will get 30% of the $500m refund. The late investors will lose their investments. The initial investors will just laugh; they've already made their billions.

Who Is that Person?

Posted: Tue, 03 Jun 2014 23:51:37

I read an article the other day where a woman said she checked photos of guys before she went on a date. She said she often found that the guy on a dating site was also in Facebook where he had a wife and two children. Very clever for her.

I wondered how she did that, so I tried out several image search tool. I took a photo from my website, changed the file name, and then looked for copies of it. Bing Image Search and Tineye both found copies of the photo, where other people have, well, borrowed the photo from my website. The best tool was Google Image Search, which found dozens of copies of my photo. (Update: Yandex added image search at yandex.com/images/search.)

To use this, click Google Image Search and drag your photo onto the page.

Google's Dead Products

Posted: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 05:23:44

95 Dead Google Products

Google, one of the world's largest marketing companies, doesn't believe in marketing. They launch product after product without any marketing, only to watch them sink.

When Google shut down Goggles, they said it was "due to lack of interest." No, it was lack of marketing. Nobody used it because nobody knew about it. Google never bothered to promote it on their huge advertising platform.

Google thinks if a product is good, it will become big on its own. That's how Google itself became big, right? Well, no. It doesn't work that way. The proof is the list below: over 90 dead products.

So how did Google become big without marketing? If you put ten horses in a race, one will be the winner because one has to be the winner. If it wasn't this horse, it'd be another.

April 2016: I just added Revolv. Google kept the team but shut down the hardware product. Google turned it off. Customers are angry. If you buy something, you own it, don't you? Can the maker just turn it off?

Here's a list of ex-Google products. Can you find your favorite?: Aardvark; AdWords Click-to-call; Audio Ads; Blogger Web Comments; Boston Dynamics; Catalogs; City Tours; Dashboard Widgets for Mac; Desktop Search; Dodgeball; Free Search; Gears; Goggles; GOOG-411; Google Answers; Google Apps Standard Edition; Google Authorship; Google Base; Google Browser Sync; Google Building Maker; Google Buzz; Google Checkout; Google Cloud Connect; Google Code; Google Code Search; Google Deskbar; Google Dictionary; Google Directory; Google Docs; Google Fast Flip; Google Friend Connect; Google Health; Google Image Labeler; Google Insights for Search; Google Labs; Google Lively; Google Mini; Google Notifier; Google Pack; Google Page Creator; Google PowerMeter; Google Reader; Google Refine; Google Ride Finder; Google Schemer; Google SearchWiki; Google Sets; Google Talk; Google Video Marketplace; Google Website Optimizer; Google X; Google+; Hello; Hotpot; iGoogle; Jaiku; Joga Bonito; Knol; Latitude; Local; Marratech e-Meeting; Mashup Editor; Meebo; MK-14; Music Trends; My Speed; Notebook; Orkut; Personalized Search; Photos Screensaver; Picnik; Public Service Search; QuickOffice; Radio ads; Real Estate; Rebang (Google China); Related Links; Revolv; SearchMash; Send to Phone; Shared Stuff; Sidewiki; Slide.com; SMS; Spreadsheets; Squared; TalkBin; TV Ads; U.S. Government Search; University Search; Video Player; Voice Search; Wave; Web Accelerator; Writely

Why You Should Write a Book

Posted: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 07:30:41

So why write a book? Quite simply: A book brings you opportunities. You will be offered speaking engagements, projects, jobs, dates, invitations to join advisory boards, and invitations to start companies.

Why do books matter so much? Because people know from their own experience that it’s really hard to write a book. It’s hard to get the motivation or find the time. The process is complex and mostly unexplained.

This gives you an advantage. The Pareto Rule shows that in any field, about 20% of the participants get 80% of the revenues. Why? When people want help, they could research, investigate, compare, and do many things to solve their problem. Or they take a shortcut and go to the top experts. That’s why the top people get most of the business and revenues in their field.

The more opportunities you have, the greater your security. Patti Wilson, a leading Silicon Valley job counselor, says, “Job security is the ability to get another job.”

It’s not about making money with books. As you’ll see, most writers don’t earn much from their books. But by writing, you’ll get opportunities, which lead to revenues.

One Book… or Six Books?

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, I wrote a book every few years. Each book was a stand-alone project: I wrote the book, made a website for it, did marketing for it, but there was no connection between the books.

That changed when I wrote a book about content marketing. As I began to look at the role of books, I realized I had to write books not as separate projects, but as parts of a larger project. I also realized I should be writing a book every year, which is what I will do from now on. In 2013, I released The Big Book of Content Marketing in March, #TwitterBook (a book about Twitter) in October, and the SEO eBook in December. For 2014, I wrote this book on how to write books. I’m also researching for a book on influencers, which will come out in late summer.

Books are also a social activity: you deal with many people as you write your book. You interview experts, talk with other writers, and meet people in companies. You work with developmental editors, copyeditors, subject matter experts, and illustrators. You’re interviewed by magazines, radio, and TV. You speak at bookstore events, tradeshows, and conferences. You’ll also meet and talk with quite a few of your readers. All of this brings you connections.

When you write a second book, those meetings also happen. Your connections start to rapidly expand. The more you write, the more people you’ll meet.

So stop thinking about that one book you will write. Start thinking you’ll write six books!

You’re wondering where you’ll get so much material for six books. Don’t worry. You’ll see how to do that in this book.

Should You Go for Quantity or Quality?

Okay, so can you write just anything? Does quality matter?

Yes, it has to be really good. Why? Because good stuff goes far. The higher the quality, the less you’ll need to promote your book. People seek out the best work. People share great information with their friends. Nobody shares just-okay stuff. So write good books. In this book, I’ll also show you how to do that.

Why Will Anyone Listen to You?

Several people have said to me, “But I’m not an expert! Why will anyone listen to me?”

If you have a bit of experience in your field, do a bit of research, and write clearly. That will put you ahead of most of your colleagues. They want your experience and knowledge. You don’t have to be #1. Just be ahead of many others.

How to Find Ghostwriters

Posted: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 07:30:18

Okay, so you still want a book but you don’t have time to write. No problem. Hire a ghostwriter. He writes the book and it’s published under your name. The ghostwriter doesn’t mind because he’s paid for that. Many business books and most books by movie stars, musicians, athletes, and politicians are written by ghostwriters. Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, was written by Nell Scovell. John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book Profiles in Courage was written by Ted Sorenson. Raymond Benson was the ghostwriter for a Tom Clancy novel. Faith of my Fathers by John McCain was written by Mark Salter. It Takes a Village by Hillary Clinton was written by Barbara Feinman. I am Jackie Chan by Jackie Chan was by Jeff Yang. Dreams of my Father by Obama is by Bill Ayers. And finally, Decision Point, the autobiography of George W. Bush, was written by Christopher Michel.

Be careful with ghostwriters. It’s like those movies where the parents are bugging the poor guy to get married and he comes home with a fake girlfriend. What happens at a conference when the CEO gives a talk that was written by a ghostwriter and someone asks a detailed question? Or the ghostwriter gets a better offer from your competitor? Or decides to go dance with the elephants in Bhutan for three months?

Ghostwriting can range from $3,000 to $10,000 per month for basic ghostwriting. The more you pay, the better the result. And the better the writer, the more you’ll pay. And the higher your job title, the more you’ll pay.

If you’re the CEO or a politician, your publisher may arrange the ghostwriter. In that case, the ghost may get a share of the royalties, the advance, and the movie rights. For major books, this can be $500,000 up to several million dollars.

The ghostwriter will interview you as part of the research. The ghost may also do the research. You’ll get the outline and drafts so you can add or delete to it.

A good account of ghostwriting (and how it turned into a disaster) is Andrew O’Hagan’s ghostwriting of Julian Assange’s autobiography (The London Review of Books, March 6, 2014, at http://goo.gl/71P29m). Despite a million-dollar advance and several dozen publishing contracts in other countries, it was impossible to get Assange to review the drafts.

Where to Find Ghostwriters

There are several ways to find ghostwriters:

Talk with your publisher. They often work with ghostwriters.
Book agents and public relations firms also often use ghostwriters
Look at the leading trade journals for your industry. Contact the editors and journalists to see if they’ll write for you.
Look for authors of books in your field. The authors may be able to write for you or they may recommend ghostwriters.
Additional places to find ghostwriters include BlogDash, Blogmutt, Business2Blogger.com, Contently, and eCopyWriters
You can also hire technical writers. They are highly experienced in writing books.

Should you Self-Publish or Find a Publisher?

Posted: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 07:34:35

There are several ways to publish your book:

Self-published Author: The author writes the book and also manages the editing, layout, distribution, and marketing. He produces digital books or printed books. Distribution services may include Kindle, Lulu, Smashwords, Nook, and Amazon. This can also be a simple PDF file sent by email, posted on a blog or website, or sold at Amazon as a Kindle ebook or a printed book, both paperback and hardback.
Independent Publisher: These are small specialized publishing houses. They specialize in genre fiction (such as detective or science fiction), business topics, or academic publishing. These are generally led by people who love books. The author writes the book and the independent publisher does the editing, layout, printing, distribution, and marketing. The author gets a royalty. They also produce paperback and hardback.
Big House Publishers: The big publishing houses may employ thousands of people and have offices worldwide. These include Random House, McGraw-Hill, and IDG. Just like independent publishing, the big house publishers take care of editing, layout, printing, distribution, and marketing. The author also gets a royalty.
Vanity Press: These printing companies pretend to be publishers. You send your manuscript and several thousand dollars and they print it for you. You get a few hundred printed books with your name on it. These printers take advantage of the author’s desperation to be published.

The distinctions overlap and it depends on who is talking. Smashwords and Lulu use the phrase “independent publishing” and “indie publishing” to cover writers who publish their own work. Some talk about small publishers and large publishers.

The difference between independent publishing and big-house publishing is like independent film studios (indie films) and Hollywood film studios. Just as indie film makers specialize in documentaries or special movies, independent publishers also specialize in niche fields.

The author’s experience will depend on the type of publisher. The independent publisher collaborates with the author like a coach and shares knowledge and experience. The publisher is also more flexible with the content, the process, and the deadlines. With a big-house publisher, there is less personal attention. The author is expected to know how to write and deliver the manuscript. The text is held to a higher standard.

In either case, you have to collaborate with your publisher. You can’t just write a text and toss it over the fence. Publishers are working dozens or hundreds of other writers. The more you work with your publisher, the more attention you will get.

If we look only at the results (the printed book), there isn’t much difference. Technology allows anyone now to produce books at the same quality as large publishers and use Amazon to distribute worldwide.

The difference is in the selection and editing process. The publishers select the writers. Authors who work with publishers, whether small independents or big names, get guidance and feedback. The books go through content review and editing for grammar and style. For academic or scholarly books, the publisher’s editorial contribution is critical to ensure the book meets the high standard of quality for academia.

So, What’s Better? Self-Publish or Big Publisher?

So how should you publish your books? There is not a clear answer to that.

If you self publish, you have control over the production, profits, distribution, and marketing. You can use the book in many different ways for marketing and promotion. You can reuse your text for other books and formats. You can release each chapter as a separate ebook. You can give it away. You keep control over your text. This means if IBM wants to give a chapter of your book to their 400,000 employees, it’s up to you. If you gave the publishing rights to a publisher, the publisher makes the decision. It can take months for that to happen. The downside of self publishing is extra time and work.
If you work with an independent publisher, you’ll have a partner who has deep experience in your subject and profession. That can develop into a long-term relationship.
If your book is published by a big publisher, you’ll get the cachet and name recognition of a large brand. To be published by McGraw-Hill, IDG, Wiley, or similar is a mark of excellence.

Whatever you choose, one thing is common: you must do the marketing yourself. You must develop a long-term strategy of writing books for your career with marketing and promotion that includes a website, an email newsletter, digital advertising, speaking events, and more.

Don’t worry about the East Coast obsession with big publishers. People on the East Coast, especially in Manhattan, think they’re a real writer only if they’re published by one of the large publishers. However, the astonishing success of 50 Shades of Grey and many other self-published books has changed the industry.

Get the Whole Book for Free

Want the rest of the book? Get my book for free (this week only!) at Amazon.com.

How Do I Find a Publisher?

Posted: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 07:37:24

There are several ways to find publishers.

You can look for publishers. The best way to do this is with The Writer's Market, by Robert Brewer, which is updated yearly. It lists thousands of publishers and what they want to publish. You should also look at Books in Print. Both of these books are in most libraries.
If you’ve written books for a publisher, he likes working with you, and he notices an opportunity in a new market, he’ll ask you write a book.
If your books have done well, another publisher may ask you to write for them. Several publishers have asked me for books.
You can also ask someone who’s been published to refer you to her publisher. This puts you in touch through trusted connections. A friend wanted to publish her book and I referred her to a major publisher, who published her book. So this really happens (don’t send your book proposals to me!)

Here’s another way. In the mid-2000s, I wanted the my next book to be available in bookstores, so I went to the large bookstores (Borders and Barnes & Nobles), found the section for computer books, and wrote down the names of the publishers. These publishers were big enough to be able to place books in large bookstores. I then went to each publisher’s website and looked at their catalog to see if they had a book on my topic. Of 20-30 publishers, six didn’t have a book on SEO. So I wrote to them. Two offered to publish the book.

Why Is It Useful to Have a Book Publisher?

There are several advantages to working with a large publisher.

First, writers benefit from the publisher’s brand recognition. To be published by a large publisher is a strong professional credential. In a specialist topic, only a handful of authors are published by the major publishers.

Because two of my books were published by McGraw-Hill, I was introduced to Tsinghua University, which is the MIT of China. I met with them in Beijing and their university press published the book in China. It would be very difficult to do this as a self-published author.

Your Book Proposal

It’s called a book proposal, a publishing proposal, submission, or a query letter. It tells the publisher what your book is about. Why should they publish your book? Why are you qualified to write it? How can you help to sell it?

Follow these steps to write a good book proposal:

Understand the market. Go to Barnes & Nobles, Amazon, and other major bookstores and look at the existing books on your topic. What do they cover? What do they miss? When were they written? Has the market changed so there is opportunity for an updated book?
Buy the books, read them, and take notes. Write a one-page summary of each book. Discuss strengths and weaknesses of each book and how you will do it better or offer a different perspective. Include the book’s title, author, publisher, year, and sales price. Publishers use to understand the opportunity. They also see how you write.
Describe the size of your audience. Are there 10,000, 100,000, or 10,000,000 potential readers? Offer demographic data about the size of the audience.
Describe your experience in writing. What have you written? Do you have project management experience? The publisher wants to know if you can meet deadlines.
Show how you can help with marketing. Tell them how many contacts you have in your email list, LinkedIn contact list, Facebook, and so on. If you can participate in speaking events, say so. Will your company be willing to buy copies of the book?

Most publishers have submissions guidelines and forms on their website. You fill out the form and submit your proposal. They generally reply within a week.

I was lucky with my first few computer books because the market was growing and there were few writers. As I got experience, I learned what publishers wanted so I wrote better proposals for a book in the mid-90s. I researched the market and then sent a proposal to ten publishers. Every day, I waited by the mailbox for the replies. The first two arrived and these were rejections. No problem: eight hadn’t yet replied. The next day, another rejection. A few days later, three more letters arrived. My wife, who was skeptical of the whole thing, watched me open them and said, “So three more rejections?” I said, “No, three accepted” and dropped them in her lap.

What If You’re Rejected?

Rejection doesn’t have to do with you. Perhaps the publishers don’t think there is a market for your topic. If you feel there is a market, look into self publishing at Amazon. You might also take their advice and look into writing something else.

Delivering Your Manuscript to a Traditional Publisher

Many people think they have to finish the manuscript before they can look for a publisher. So they work for several years on the manuscript and then send it to a publisher.

However, most manuscripts are rejected. Either there are plenty of similar books, the publisher already has a book on the same topic, or the publisher doesn’t think there is a market for it.

So don’t write a manuscript. Write a proposal. If that’s accepted, you can start writing. If it’s rejected, you can try another topic.

Changes to Your Proposal

There’s another reason that you don’t send finished manuscripts. Often, publishers know the market better than you and they’ll want to make changes. If you deliver a completed manuscript, you’re presenting a “take it or leave it” situation.

A proposal should be an opening for a conversation. How about we change this? Add that? The publishers have a sense of what bookstores are selling and they look for writers who can deliver that.

For example, you wrote a proposal for a book about opening a café in southern France with your cat. But the publisher knows ten books like that came out last year and nobody wants to hear about French café cats anymore. But… there’s a hot new area: would you write about opening a coffee house in Sichuan with your dog? So you change everything and you have a book that sells.

Multiple Submissions?

It used to be (very long ago) that you sent the manuscript to a publisher and you had to wait for him to accept or reject it before you contacted the next one. Publishers would reject authors simply if they knew the author was talking to other publishers.

Things have changed. Today, it’s normal for authors to submit their proposals to several publishers simultaneously. Some even hold auctions and let publishers bid against each other.

If it’s a good proposal, you’ll get a reply within a week or two.

Get the Whole Book for Free

Want the rest of the book? Get my book for free (this week only!) at Amazon.com.

How to Do Research for Your Book

Posted: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 07:38:10

In the research phase, learn as much as you can about your subject. Talk with people, read books and articles, and think about the topic.

Go to a research library, look up your topic, and see what you can learn.
You can also look at college textbooks.
Go to major bookstores and Amazon to buy the leading books on your topic. I generally buy 15-25 books for each book I write.
Use the web. Read about your topic in Wikipedia. Look at blogs, articles, white papers, PDFs, and so on.
Interview people who have experience and knowledge of your topic. Meet them for coffee or lunch. Ask a few general questions and let them talk. They will point out many things that you didn’t think about.
Many ideas will occur to you when you’re walking the dog. When ideas come up, write them down immediately or you’ll forget.

Don’t worry about organization or direction at this point. Write down everything. It’s much better to have too many ideas than too few.

Carry a notepad with you all the time so you can jot down ideas. You can use Evernote or Google Docs on your cell phone. You can also send text messages to yourself. Use whatever works for you.

You’ll end up with a squirrel’s nest of ideas and notes on napkins, receipts, the back of uncancelled checks, sticky notes, text files, emails, and SMS messages. Collect all of this into one file with an item on each line.

Research Your Audience and their Interests

What does your audience really want to know? What are your audience’s problems? What are their motivations? There are several ways to do this:

Look at question-and-answer sites where people ask questions and others answer. Questions are sorted by categories, so you can find a large pool of questions to see what people are thinking about. Q/A sites include Yahoo! Answers (answers.yahoo.com), AllExperts, theanswerbank.co.uk, and Quora.
Search in Twitter. You can search for keywords or hashtags. Scroll back six months, copy all of the postings, and review those.
Collect questions from your sales and support team. They know customers’ “top ten common questions.”
Put a prominent “Ask us a question” box at your website and collect the questions.
Look at the blogs and Twitter feeds of experts and influencers.
Look at your own blog. Look at your readers’ comments to see what they find interesting.
Look at your website’s search box. If configured correctly, your web analytics can give you a list of queries.

For example, when I was writing the book on content marketing, I searched for “content marketing” at a large question-and-answer site and found 384 questions. 41 questions were useful for the book.

Some tools let you visualize what influencers are saying. For example, here is a word cloud of the discussion among computer network administrators:

Figure 2: You can use tools to see discussions among influencers. These combine the conversation, find the most frequent words, and create a visual display to show you what the community is talking about. In this example, you can see that security and malware are significant topics.

You can also use Wordle to create word clouds of blogs. Here’s a word cloud of my blog:

Figure 3: You can create a word cloud of someone’s blog or tweets to see what they write about.

How to Make a Tweet Cloud

You can make a tweet cloud in a few steps (it’s easy):

Go to a person’s tweets
Scroll down perhaps to six months of tweets or get a few hundred tweets
Click at the end, hold down Shift, go to the top, click to select all, and copy the tweets
Go to a text editor such as Notepad or EditPlus and paste the tweets
Go to Wordle.net, click Create, and in the blank box, paste the tweets
Wordle turns the tweets into a word cloud. However, some words will be large because they’re repeated often, such as the person’s name, his Twitter ID, or the names of months. Go back to the text editor and use Search/Replace All to get rid of those. Copy the result and post it to Wordle again. Repeat this a few times until you get a useful result.

My New Book: "How to Write a Book!"

Posted: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 07:15:46

My new book How to Write a Book! is now at Amazon.

Like the title says: If you write a book, you'll get more opportunities. That's projects, contracts, jobs, consulting fees, speaking events, international book tours, pre-IPO stock, and yes, dates.

I tell everything in this book: how I write my books and promote them. 100 pages in easy text. ISBN 978-0-9893600-5-0. ASIN: B00MOYSUNY.

You can read it on your Kindle, iPhone, iPad, Android phone, laptop, computer, lava lamp, or whatever.

What's It Like to Write Books?

Posted: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 22:39:28

What's it like to write a book? And watch it go to #1 at Amazon? #1 in two categories?

OMG, what a ride.

I hate early mornings. But this week, I'm getting up at 5 a.m. to send emails, upload files, post to Facebook and my blog, send tweets, and update LinkedIn.

And it goes like that to late at night.

People spotted minor errors in the text. I fixed those and uploaded new files to Amazon.

People couldn't find the right place to download the book in Amazon Germany, Amazon China, and other places. I found the URLs, sent it to them, and posted for others. A reader in Dubai couldn't get the book; Dubai blocks Amazon. I solved that problem.

The book is being downloaded worldwide. 130 countries. I'm getting emails from all across Europe, South America, and Asia.

Carla King, super expert in self-publishing, sent a newsletter to all of her subscribers about the book. Mike Moran, author of the leading book on enterprise SEO, tweeted about the book. Many of the authors who were interviewed in the book also sent out emails.

It's non-stop, all day long. I run from meeting to meeting, taking calls every ten minutes, writing quick emails, and coordinating things. It started about six days before release, with a long Saturday and Sunday to prepare everything.

The book release itself is a five-day sprint, Monday 5 a.m. to Friday midnight. I expect another two to three weeks for followup. I'll order 100 books (I already have an order another 100) to send copies to copyeditors, people who were interviewed, key friends, authors of major books, clients, and so on.

At the moment, Thursday afternoon, I'm too hyper to think about being tired. I expect to crash this weekend.

Social Media and Sociology

Posted: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 04:21:01

On behalf of a Silicon Valley startup, I've been going to lots of startup events, investor meetings, and so on. Often, there are events with ten startups and 30-40 angels and investors; the startups have five minutes for their elevator pitch and the dog-and-pony. You can tell when the founders do the elevator pitch; their eyes lose focus and they turn into robots as they state their mission in a flat voice, e.g., "Plooky enables emerging technologies to monetize by leveraging verticals with dynamic cloud-based solutions".

Okay, whatever. Add a few acronyms (CRM, ERP, etc.) and they get funding.

All of you know your elevator pitch. Well, most of you know it. It's that short sentence that summarizes what you do.

But as I work more and more with startups, I noticed that what the founders say and what others say are entirely different.

You work on your elevator pitch. You memorize it. And eventually, you can deliver it with plausible enthusiasm.

But you will never get your influencers and advocates to repeat it.

Now, why influencers and advocates? Because they're the ones who spread your message. They have the connections and credibility. They're the ones who move others to look for you and buy your products and services.

This is part of my research into influencers. The influencers are the 1% who create and lead an area of social activity. By social, I mean pretty much everything: Justin Bieber's fan club, politics, research in physic, golf, Expressionism, everything. Most human activity is fundamentally social: it's done by groups of people for themselves. Sociologists have researched this for decades. On the web, social behaviour is generally understood to be social media, and the interest in that is basically as a form of advertising. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc., don't really care about (or even know about) structuralism, Durkheim, Lévi-Strauss, Erving Goffman, and so on. They're just trying to make money by capturing audiences for Coca-Cola and the big banks.

It may sound odd, but there's very little information about influencers. There are only a handful of books on the topic at Amazon. Danny Brown writes in his recent book Influence Marketing (May, 2013) that the 1% are important, but he doesn't describe them and more importantly, doesn't explain where they are, what they do, how to find them, or how to engage with them.

That's what I've been working on. How to identify and engage with influencers and advocates.

Social Media Isn't Sociology

Again, in Silicon Valley, everyone thinks social is something that happens in Facebook. In fact, what happens on social media is only a very small part of social behavior. As I look more and more at "social media", I realize that most of social behavior doesn't happen in social media. But more importantly, the most significant social activity never shows up in social media.

For example, LinkedIn likes to think it is the social site for professional networking. But it misses workers at the bottom and top. Blue collar workers rarely register on LinkedIn. No employer is going to use LinkedIn to find those workers. And the top end is also missing. Most CEOs and board members are not on LinkedIn, quite simply because they don't need it. They already have an extensive social network into their industry. They know everyone, and everyone knows them. Why? Founder CEOs are, by definition, part of the 1%, which means they create their industry.

This means LinkedIn isn't really a social network: it's a database of resumes for HR and recruiters. If you depend on LinkedIn for your career advancement, you will destroy your career. You will never rise above a mid-level staffer.

Do you want to know how social networks really work? How does it work among the billionaires and the very powerful? Here's how a billionaire used influence to buy freedom from prosecution for a global crime spree. How much did he pay the president of the United States to call off the FBI? Read the story of how Marc Rich bought his pardon. How Much Influence Can You Buy for $9 Billion?

Cleaning Up the Newsletter List

Posted: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 17:54:34

Okay, I finally cleaned up my andreas.com newsletter list. Or, actually, lists, as in plural, which is to say it was a bit of a mess. Here are the details.

The various lists happened because I used various tools:

Gmail: I segmented my Gmail contact list into family and friends. If I send a newsletter to the friends list, I run into Gmail's limit of 400 per day. If you send around 400 or more, you'll get blocked for 3-6 hours or more. Gmail wants to stop spammers. So I had to break the list into two groups (A and B) and send List-A (312 people) on one day and List-B (198) the next day.
LinkedIn: The problem with LinkedIn as a social network is that LinkedIn isn't a social network. LinkedIn is a resume database for recruiters and that's all it really does. It lacks practically every feature of social networks. For example, you have 2,500 contacts in LinkedIn; what can you do with them in LinkedIn? Zero. LinkedIn lacks a newsletter tool. Yes, you can post an update, but few will see it because only 20% of LinkedIn users actually visit in the last 30 days. And they're not likely to read a long series of updates. So you have to export your subscriber list. Yes, it can be done, but LinkedIn doesn't quite make this clear because they don't really want you to do this. Anyway, export it. And I strongly recommend that you export it today, before they shut off this capability.
Scrub the List: So now you have 2,500 LinkedIn email addresses. But many of those emails no longer exist. If you send an email to hundreds of bad email addresses, you'll get flagged as a spammer. Your IP address will be blocked. It'll wreck your business. So you have to "scrub the list" to identify the bad emails and remove them.
Good and Maybe: So the scrubbing produces two lists: Good (1,203) and Maybe (425). The good emails are definitely good (active, etc.). The Maybe list is possibly good. Or bad. Anyway, you have two lists. So you have to test the lists to see which of those actually read your newsletter.
Mailchimp: Using MailChimp, I also set up a Subscribe to My Newsletter button at my website. This created an additional list. Keeping count? Yes, seven lists so far...
Cleaning the List: You don't want to send to people who ignore your email; they may click the Spam button to get rid of it. So you send an email every month for three months. MailChimp reports on who opens the mail and who ignores it. After three or four newsletters, you end up with data about your readers on who opens/ignores the newsletters. In MailChimp, sort the list by activity. One or Two Stars = Never opened your email. Three Stars (or more): Opened your email or clicked on links in your email. So you want the three-, four-, and five-star subscribers. You delete all of the one- and two-star subscribers. After you do that, you combine those lists into one. The numbers? The Good list dropped from 1,203 subscribers to 475 (39.4% active); the Maybe list went from 425 subscribers to 148 (34.8% active). The newsletter subscriber list went from 112 subscribers to 77 (68.8% active). The Gmail lists (511 people) are 95% or higher active (after every sending, I deleted broken emails).
Combine the Lists: After deleting everyone in the various lists who never opened the newsletters, I combined all of the lists into one master list. I ended up with 1,263, which shrank to 1,156 (there was some duplication). These are valid, active email addresses of people who read my emails.
Add New Emails: In Gmail, I have a new small list of new email addresses: email addresses of people with whom I email during the month or new business cards. In a month, this can be 30-50 people. When I'm ready to send out a new newsletter, I download those new email addresses and add them to the master list at MailChimp.

I know practically all of my subscribers, so I reply to everyone who writes to me. This means a monthly newsletter can result in 75-125 emails.

Six months ago, I started with 5,500 email addresses. I ended up with 1,156 active emails (21%).

Posted: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 15:54:56

(An excerpt from my #TwitterBook. The book is available at Amazon.com. -- andreas)

I also noticed the police are active on Twitter so I met with Lt. Zach Perron, the Public Information Officer (PIO) of Palo Alto Police, and Lt. Chris Hsiung, the Public Information Officer of Mountain View Police, to talk with them about Twitter and social media.

There are almost 18,000 police departments in the USA. Several thousand are using social media for investigation and outreach. They do investigation, of course, but community policing outreach is more important: they see social media as a way to improve transparency. It allows the police to have a personal presence and collaborate with the community. They can reach out to the public and the public can also contact them.

The Boston Marathon Bombing was a watershed moment because it was the first time that the international community was able to receive timely and accurate information in a major critical public safety situation directly from a police agency via social media. In the general panic after the bombing, the web was filled with rumors. The Boston police used Twitter to update people about the search for suspects. When the suspect was finally surrounded and captured, the police tweeted updates every few minutes. Boston Police’s use of Twitter created an expectation among the public that if a terrorist event happened in their community, the police in their jurisdiction would be on social media and do what the Boston police did. It raised the bar for police agencies.

Social also allows police departments to bypass the media and reach the public directly. Newspapers and TV/radio news often spin stories to make them more dramatic, which attracts viewers, which increases advertising revenues. Crime in the US has fallen steadily for more than 30 years to record lows, but you won’t know that if you watch TV news.

When the police told the media that they were going to start using social, the media said please, don’t do that, it takes the news away from us.

Previously, the police held press conferences for the news media. While police still conduct press conferences in major cases, many now post routine press releases directly to Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. By creating their own broadcast capability, the police are able to talk directly with the public when something is happening. The result is greater accuracy because the news media can’t spin the story. Instead, the media now often retweet the police tweets. For example, a press release tweeted by the Palo Alto Police Department can be retweeted by the media and can reach 150,000 people within moments, giving the public the opportunity to read accurate information directly from the source.

How does this work? A few months ago, two Palo Alto police officers stopped a car on a busy downtown street at lunchtime. The driver then drove away from the stop, crashing into multiple cars, and then fled on foot. It created quite a scene. The cops ran after him for a few blocks. However, people in cafes and restaurants began tweeting about police car chases, hostages, guns, and so on. The police were able to immediately reply by Twitter that none of that was happening. It was just a foot chase. They can clarify, correct, and update, which calms the situation and prevents the spread of misinformation to the public.

Social also allows police to be seen as human. Some of the tweets are really funny. One day, they tweeted they would set up a speed trap at an intersection. After they caught one guy, they tweeted he should have been following the cop’s tweets!

Coffee with the Police. Via Twitter and Nextdoor, the Palo Alto Police invited neighbors to meet at a coffeehouse. Two hours of chatting about what it's like to be a cop, questions about recent burglaries, etc. It's great to realize police are people too who care about the community. She loves being a cop. At center, blond hair and uniform, is AJ, who led the event. To the right of her, blue shirt, behind the tree, is her evening supervisor. Both cops are women.

To see what the police are doing with social media, you can follow Lt. Zach Perron at @PaloAltoPolice and Lt. Chris Hsiung at @MountainViewPD . Both of them also tweet about law enforcement’s use of social media from their personal accounts at @zpPAPD and @chMtnViewPD.

The Mountain View Police uses a blog (MountainViewPoliceBlog.com), Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. They also use Nixle, which lets police send SMS alerts to their communities. They use YouTube for videos and Pinterest to post photos of lost and found items, their police dogs (great pixs!), the officers, and other items (go to pinterest.com/mountainviewpd/boards/). Both Palo Alto and Mountain View police are also using NextDoor, a social media site that’s based on neighborhoods.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, over 50 departments, including police, fire, ambulance, and other emergency groups share information through the Bay Area Law Enforcement Social Media Group (#BALESMG). Other cities are encouraged to contact them to learn more.

There’s also IACPSocialMedia, a central resource for social media for the police. Many of the FAQs and presentations can be used by your organizations for your social media strategies.

You may wonder why the police are so active in social media. Many of the city departments are using social media, but the police get the attention: they have the SWAT teams and the dogs, plus people like to watch cop shows.

Several companies are building software for the police. For example, BrightPlanet offers BlueJay, which lets police monitor tweets within their community. They can mark off an area on a map, select terms such as #meth or #shooting, and get alerts when these words show up in tweets in their selected locations. The police can also add a list of users to monitor. BlueJay delivers the tweet text, the type of device that was used to post the tweet, and if it’s enabled on the device, the GPS location. By clicking on the user, the police can see his past tweets, posted pictures, and tweet habits. The police can download the most recent 10,000 tweets that match the users, keywords and place names in their watch list.

BrightPlanet’s BlueJay is a Twitter monitor for the police. A police officer can select the city, add a list of keywords and users, and watch a live feed of tweets that match those criteria. When someone sends a tweet with a keyword, there’s an alert tone and if GPS is enabled on the device, a dot shows up on the map. The officer can zoom down to street view to see the location.

Get the Whole Book for Free

Want the rest of the book? Get my #TwitterBook at Amazon.com.

Use Twitter at a Conference

Posted: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 14:59:07

(An excerpt from my #TwitterBook. The book is available at Amazon.com. -- andreas)

You can use Twitter to create awareness and make contacts at a conference. Here’s a plan that I wrote for a conference in NYC (the book also includes a plan, with full details, for promoting an event):

Every employee in your team should set up a Twitter account. You want to create a large digital presence.
Set this up on your cell phones and practice before you go to NYC.
Each person should tweet at least once a day, and perhaps 2-3 times per day. One or two people also post to the company’s Twitter account.
Learn how to send tweets that include text, #hashtags, shortened URLs, photos (use Twitpic), and video (use Vine).
Have contests. Who sent the MOST tweets in 24 hours with the company hashtag? Win ice cream. Who got the most retweets for one message during the conference week? The CEO will sing to you at dinner. Who sent the best photo? Who sent a photo that got the most retweets? Who sends the best Vine video? Who sent a video that got the most retweets?
Do video interviews. Ask conference attendees, “Why are you here?” “How did you hear about this?” Ask unexpected questions such as “What’s your suggestion for the CEO of Google?”
Set up Google Analytics on your website so you can track data to see the impact.
Add Hootsuite on your phone or tablet and set up a search stream for your company hashtag so you can follow the postings.
You can write tweets in Hootsuite before you go to NYC to be posted while you’re in NYC.
Ask people questions at the conference. “What did you think of the last presentation?” “We’re going out for dinner, join us.”
Set up Twitter advertising to shows your top tweets to your audience. The ads can start and stop with the conference. You can also set the ads to show only in New York City. Everyone at the conference will see your tweets.

Here are ideas for tweets:

When you attend speaking events or meetings, tweet the top ideas.
Invite people to meeting: For example, “Meet #EzyInsights in #NYC @EzyInsights.”
Write tweets in German, French, Danish, Swedish, Spanish, and Finnish
Post your personal experiences for the day. The more personal, the better. What you’re going to do for the day. What you see. @EzyInsights going to #EmpireStateBuilding
Don't be formal. Send funny photos and videos of team and clients. Team at a bar. CEO with hookers. CEO getting arrested by the NY police.
Use photos and video.

Use the event’s hashtag, such as #AdWeekNYC, to tweet points by speakers, event information, or find people to share taxi, cultural outings, dinners, or shuttle to the airport.

Sometimes, conference organizers haven’t set up a hashtag for the event. You should take the opportunity to create the hashtag.

Create an acronym hashtag. For Advertising Week Los Angeles in 2014, try #AdWeekLA14. Conference organizers can use hashtags for cities and years, such as AdWeekLA13, AdWeekUK13, AdWeekLA14, and so on.
Make sure the hashtag looks okay (and makes sense) in lower case. #adweekla14 is okay. But #PenIsland14 would be regrettable.
See if anyone else is using the hashtag. Search for it in Twitter. Sometimes, it was in use a year ago, but no longer, and that’s okay. You don’t want a hashtag that someone else is currently using.
When you’ve come up with a good hashtag, send an email to the conference organizers and suggest the hashtag. Ask them to include it in their website and emails.
Start using it. Post three or four tweets about the conference, such as #UKFOLS13 (Family Office Leadership Summit in London, 2013).
Because you came up with it, you own the hashtag. Post before, during, and after the event.

Who Really Reads Your Tweets?

Posted: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 23:59:44

@KasThomas wrote a great blog posting about Twitter Analytics.

To follow up on his posting, here are my Twitter statistics, along with a few notes.

I released several books in the last few months. I used my monthly newsletter and social to let my audience know about the books. (Both books became Amazon #1 Best Sellers.) (To get your Twitter stats, log into Twitter Advertising at ads.twitter.com and from top menu, select Analytics.)

Here are my Twitter stats:

Engagement (1.4% = 252)

Link Clicks 49 (from 18,000 = 0.0027%)

Retweets = 81 (0.0045%)

Favorites = 82 (0.0045%)

Replies = 33 (0.0018%)

and here's the screenshot:

I compressed the link with Goo.gl and sent the compressed link out in newsletters, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Goo.gl reports the compressed link got 709 clicks. Of that, 76 people (10.7% of 1,170 people) saw the link in Twitter, clicked it, and came to the book's website. (Note: 76 clicks is higher than Twitter's report of 49 clicks.) Here's the graph from Goo.gl:

(Some of the unlabeled pie slices are other versions of LinkedIn, FB, etc.; I added them up.)

So 76 clicks from Twitter divided by my 1,170 followers = 6.5% CTR, which is pretty good CTR.

BTW, I don't go for the "get lots of followers" method. I do nothing to increase followers. I have only 1,170 followers, and that's fine by me; I focus on #hashtags. That big spike on Sept. 12th was due to hashtags in a popular topic. (I also generally avoid popular topics.)

So... Kas is right: Twitter engagement and conversions are low (and FB/LinkedIn are even lower). However, Twitter Analytics isn't accurate (although at such low numbers, there's not much difference). Maybe better cross-referencing and comparison with other tracking tools should also be done.

BTW, I've been discussing and sharing stats with Janet Fouts @JFouts as we try to figure out what actually works in Twitter. Many thanks to her for ideas and strategy.

The important thing: This answers a question that I've had for a long time: how many people actually see a tweet? Now you know how to find out.

The Ebola Epidemic: Here We Go Again...

Posted: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 17:10:25

Regarding #Ebola in Dallas, Lisa Monaco, President Obama’s senior counter-terrorism adviser, said, “The United States has the most capable health infrastructure and the most capable doctors in the world, bar none,” at a White House briefing on Oct. 3, 2014.

This raised a few questions:

Why is a counter-terror adviser speaking about a disease? Is the White House planning air strikes on Dallas?
Why isn't the Surgeon General speaking about this? In fact, where is the Surgeon General?
Is the US medical system capable of dealing with Ebola? And...
What's the US history with epidemics?

1) Why Is Ebola an Issue for Counter-Terror?

That first question is easy to answer. Counter-terror advisors speak because the US ("the most capable health infrastructure and the most capable doctors in the world, bar none") doesn't have a Surgeon General.

2) Where Is the US Surgeon General?

A year ago, Obama nominated Dr. Vivek Murthy (Harvard, Magnum cum Laude; Yale, Doctor of Medicine) for US Surgeon General. But Dr. Murthy (along with the AMA) supported ObamaCare and posted one tweet about guns as a health care issue.

So the NRA and the GOP have blocked his nomination in the Senate ever since.

3) Can the US Medical System Deal with Ebola?

How did the US medical system ("...the finest in the world..."), deal with the outbreak in Dallas?

In Liberia, Thomas Duncan helped to take a woman to the hospital; she died of ebola a few days later. He came to the US because he felt he had a better chance of survival. He walked through US Customs simply by lying in his customs form. After falling ill, he was taken by ambulance to a Dallas hospital, where he sat in the waiting hall for hours with other patients. The hospital sent him home because he was poor and didn't have health insurance. It took several more days before his apartment was disinfected. The nurses weren't trained to handle ebola.

What about the Center for Disease Control (CDC)? They're responsible for management of epidemics in the US. Republicans cut its budget by half in the last six years.

So far, failure at every step. But don't worry. Washington counter-terror experts held a press conference to assure us everything is under control.

4) How Has the USA Deal with Other Epidemics?

In the early 80s, doctors noticed young healthy men in San Francisco, NYC, and LA were dying of a very rare cancer. After identifying the disease as AIDS, it took several more years to discover the HIV virus. What was the White House response to the AIDS epidemic? Read for yourself. Here is Larry Speakes, Reagan's White House Press Secretary, on Oct. 15, 1982:

Q: Larry, does the President have any reaction to the announcement—the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, that AIDS is now an epidemic and have over 600 cases?
MR. SPEAKES: What’s AIDS?
Q: Over a third of them have died. It’s known as "gay plague." (Laughter.) No, it is. I mean it’s a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the President is aware of it?
MR. SPEAKES: I don’t have it. Do you? (Laughter.)
Q: No, I don’t.
MR. SPEAKES: You didn’t answer my question.
Q: Well, I just wondered, does the President—
MR. SPEAKES: How do you know? (Laughter.)
Q: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke?
MR. SPEAKES: No, I don't know anything about it, Lester.
Q: Does the President, does anybody in the White House know about this epidemic, Larry?
MR. SPEAKES: I don't think so. I don't think there’s been any—
Q: Nobody knows?
MR. SPEAKES: There has been no personal experience here, Lester.
Q: No, I mean, I thought you were keeping—
MR. SPEAKES: I checked thoroughly with Dr. Ruge this morning and he’s had no—(laughter)—no patients suffering from AIDS or whatever it is.
Q: The President doesn’t have gay plague, is that what you're saying or what?
MR. SPEAKES: No, I didn’t say that.
Q: Didn’t say that?
MR. SPEAKES: I thought I heard you on the State Department over there. Why didn’t you stay there? (Laughter.)
Q: Because I love you, Larry, that’s why. (Laughter.)
MR. SPEAKES: Oh, I see. Just don’t put it in those terms, Lester. (Laughter.)
Q: Oh, I retract that.
MR. SPEAKES: I hope so.

Six years after AIDS started, Washington leaped into action. In 1987, the U.S. Congress adopted the Helms Amendment (written by US Senator Jesse Helms and signed by US President Ronald Reagan) banning use of federal funds for AIDS education materials that "promote or encourage, directly or indirectly, homosexual activities," including the use of condoms to prevent AIDS. The Helms Amendment was called "the no promo homo policy".

650,000 people died of AIDS in the USA. They were mostly gay, Black, and Latino
Black women are 6% of the US population yet they made up 50% of women with AIDS

5) What's Next?

Ebola is growing rapidly in West Africa due to a broken medical health system and the lack of education. Researchers estimate 500,000 people will have ebola by January. About 50% will die. At some point, there will be general panic in West Africa and people will flee to the rest of the world. Will the current US medical system be able to handle that?

A better question: how will the US political system handle a disease that currently strikes Blacks?

Maybe they'll hold another press conference?

Update: Oct. 14, 2014

Texas Presbyterian Hospital administrators kept Thomas Duncan, the first person to die of Ebola in the U.S., waiting for hours in the emergency room with up to seven other patients before placing him in isolation, according to nurses at the Dallas hospital who issued a statement Tuesday night and answered questions through the nation’s biggest nursing union.

In an unusual telephone call, RoseAnn DeMoro, the head of National Nurses United, the country’s largest nurses union, claimed:

The hospital had no protocols in place to handle Ebola cases.
Supervisors walked in and out of Duncan’s isolation room without proper protective gear.
Duncan’s lab specimens were moved through the hospital’s pneumatic tube system instead of being separately sealed and delivered, and thus “the entire tube system was potentially contaminated.”
Nurses were not fully covered in protective gear, with their wrists, necks and heads exposed to possible contamination.

DeMoro's union conducted a survey during the past few days of 2,300 nurses in 46 states. The results are pretty shocking. More than 70% said they hadn’t been given adequate training about Ebola; 36% claimed their hospitals don’t even have sufficient supplies of face shields and fluid-resistant gowns to handle patients with the disease.

“There’s been no education in this country to hospital staffs except to refer them to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) website,” DeMoro told the Daily News earlier in the day. “Nurses have literally been in the dark.”

More than 70% said they hadn’t been given adequate training about Ebola; 36% claimed their hospitals don’t even have sufficient supplies of face shields and fluid-resistant gowns to handle patients with the disease. nydailynews.com/hospital-nurses-claim-lack-ebola-protocols

Jihad in America travels on the wind. Can the government, dodgy as it is, possibly stand up to a real attack?

While a nuclear terrorist attack is unlikely, in a bio-terror epidemic, the genetically engineered plague is invisible. Our borders are vulnerable, and metag in Syria and Iraq.

What if the government is helpless, gridlocked in perpetual party conflict and rancor?

BEYOND TERRORISM: SURVIVAL is the fictional story of two unlikely strangers who found a way to survive the apocalypse, the most deadly terrorist attack in history.

Read a sample on my website: http://www.sanmiguelallendebooks.com/beyondterrorism.html

#TwitterBook: Updates

Posted: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 20:04:19

Twitter Analytics

Buried within Twitter Advertising, there is an analytics dashboard. It shows data and graphs on how many people read your tweets, the clicks, and so on. See more at my posting on Using Twitter Analytics.

Hootsuite as Your Twitter Dashboard

The more I use Hootsuite, the more I like it. I never go to Twitter anymore; it's all through Hootsuite.

Alerts: I turned on notifications for the streams that matter to me. When there's a new tweet, my phone clicks. At first, you may turn on too many notifications. If you're not responding or writing, turn off notification for that stream.
Scheduled Tweets (Delayed Send): You can write tweets and schedule them to be sent out later. You can also choose to allow Hootsuite to determine the optimal time for sending. In many topics, people tend to post or read on certain days or in certain hours. That's good... but if your tweet is urgent, it may be delayed for a while. I noticed some of my tweets didn't get posted until seven or ten days later.

Another advantage of scheduling: your tweets are spread out over several days. You can write ten tweets but your followers won't see ten in a row.

Be sure to increase the daily number of scheduled tweets. Go to Settings | Auto Schedule and increase this to 10 per day.
Add a stream to see the scheduled posts that will go out. You can see what's up and you can also see mistakes or make updates. Click on Add Stream and click the Scheduled icon.
Schedule Many Tweets: You can create tweets in a spreadsheet, save as CSV, and upload to Hootsuite. The format:

Col. A: Date as "04/22/14 13:50" (the year is two digits; time is a 24-hour clock and must end in zero or five).

Col. B: Your tweet text.

Col C: Image URL, e.g., http://andreas.com/images/cat.jpg.

There's a free tool at Sonix Studio to build a CSV spreadsheet. Once you've made and tested the first one, you can edit it for future tweets.
HootBulk: The HootBulk app lets you create dozens of tweets to be sent out over 30 days. To use this, go to the App Directory, select All, and search for HootBulk. Free for two days and then it's $2/month.
Hootsuite App: I've also switched from the desktop version to the app. The app notifies me of new messages, so I don't have to scan all of the streams.
Paid HootSuite: I'm not sure about the paid version of HootSuite ($15/month). The two features: you have manage 100 profiles and send 350 tweets from each profile. Yes, you can set up 100 fake accounts and bombard the landscape. It's a spammer tool. A useful feature: you can have nine team members so you can review and manage your team. I'll sign up for the free 30-day trial. More later.
Hootup: Hootsuite has regular events and meetings. They invited me to one. I'll write more about that later.
Sync Desktop and App: There isn't an easy way to synchronize the Hootsuite desktop and app. If you add streams to the desktop and more streams to the app, after a while you end up with two different sets. The solution: Manage the desktop streams as your "official" set of streams and then update the app's streams to match the desktop. Go to the app, select Streams (the little hamburger icon), select Settings, and then click Reset Data. This refreshes the streams to your desktop set. However... it wipes out your notifications (the bell for new tweets). You'll have to set those again.

A great book (okay, it's the only one) (but it's great!) is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KJTCOCE/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00KJTCOCE&linkCode=as2&tag=andreascom-20&linkId=HE4UST5NJEAWTR2C">The Unofficial Book On HootSuite</a><img src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=andreascom-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B00KJTCOCE" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /> by Mike Allton (Amazon, May 2014). He covers how to use Hootsuite for personal and business work. Lots of tips and ideas.

Twitter Advertising

I didn't go into Twitter Advertising much because I wrote the book for a general audience. If you're thinking about using ads in Twitter, look at the advertising options carefully. There is quite a bit there. For example:

Target by Twitter ID: You can add a list of Twitter IDs (such as @andrew, @beatrice, @clara, etc.). Twitter will shows ads to those persons and the people who follow those people. These are people who are actively posting to Twitter.

To find names, use Twitter Advanced Search, search for a hashtag (if needed, select language and location). To find people who write positive tweets, select "Positive". If you want to target your competitors' unhappy customers, select "negative". Click Search and in the results, select People. Copy several hundred tweets and use a text editor to extract the Twitter IDs (the @names) from the tweets. You can also select to see people who retweet, which means it's likely they'll retweet your postings.

You can also use various tools to find lists of Twitter users who are influencers or active on Twitter and import that list to Twitter.

Be careful: it's very easy to inflate the number of followers and many people with 10,000 or more followers have done that.
Target by Website Visitors: You can add a bit of code to your website which lets Twitter identify visitors who also use Twitter. Your ad can be shown to those visitors. This is retargeting.
Measure your CPL and CPA: Do this by calculating your KPIs. This is easy to do (you only need 4th grade arithmetic). Get my free ebook on KPIs.

You can experiment with Twitter paid ads and track the results carefully. If you get results within acceptable CPLs and CPAs, then use Twitter advertising. If Twitter Advertising exceeds your acceptable KPIs, then don't use it.

Twitter Advertising tells you that you can use ads to increase engagement, impressions, retweets, followers, etc. None of those are business metrics. The only thing that matters is qualified leads, sales, and revenues.

How Often Should You Tweet?

This is common question. Basically, as often as you can. Two or three times a day. Five times. Ten times. Some are sending 50 or more tweets per day.

You won't burn out your followers because 99% of your followers aren't reading your tweets. Remember: followers don't matter. It's the people who search and follow #hashtags that matter. So write a tweet and then create ten versions, each with a different #hashtag.

Your Ideas Here...

If you have ideas or tips for using Twitter, let me know and I'll add them here.

Twitter and Engagement Statistics

Posted: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 18:05:13

So does Twitter work? How can you measure results? Which numbers matter? Or don't matter? Let's look at Followers, Impressions, and Engagement.

Followers and Impressions

Twitter Analytics offers numbers for followers, impressions, engagements, and engagement rate. What do these mean? Here are Twitter's definitions (source: screen shot from Twitter Analytics):

Impressions: Number of times users saw the Tweet on Twitter.
Engagement: Total number of times a user has interacted with a Tweet. This includes all clicks anywhere on the Tweet (including hashtags, links, avatar, user name, and Tweet expansion), retweets, replies, follows, and favorites.
Engagement Rate: The number of engagements (clicks, retweets, replies, follows, and favorites) divided by the total number of impressions.
Followers: The number of followers for your account.

You can see the problem: An impression means your tweet showed up in someone's account. Just as you don't read every tweet from everyone you're following, they're not reading your tweets either. It's also very easy to inflate both impressions and followers (just go to Fiverr.com or similar spammer sites to buy hundreds of thousands of followers).

Followers, Engagements, and the Truth

Let's look at data from Danny Sullivan, who has 390,000 followers (June, 2014). During the World Cup, he got the following engagement: 25, 77, 119, 26, 20, 230, 69, 103, 23. That means for the first tweet, he got 25 engagements, 77 for the second tweet, and so on. The total is 735 for ten tweets, or an average of 73.5 engagements per tweet. Divide 73.5 by 390,000 followers to get 0.0001884. Multiply by 100 to get 0.01884%. Round off and you get a 0.02% engagement rate. That's not 1%. That's not a tenth of 1%. That's 0.02%. That's how few of his followers are reacting to his tweets.

If you invite 5,000 people to your birthday party and only one person shows up, that's 0.02%, The Worst Birthday Party EVER.

(Note: Danny's numbers are tweets about the World Cup, a wildly popular global event, so I suspect his numbers are elevated. I wonder about engagement numbers for his usual topics.)

Okay, is 0.02% good or bad? When I send out my monthly newsletter via MailChimp, the newsletter tool shows me the number of opens (how many people opened the newsletter) and the number of clicks (how many people clicked the link in the newsletter). If the link leads to my website for a form or purchase, I can also count those registrations or purchases. An average newsletter gets 10-15% engagement. My andreas.com newsletters get 46-54% engagement every month.

What about a normal Twitter account, which means not 400,000 followers, but only a thousand followers? Although I know the tricks to jack up follower numbers (these are described in my #TwitterBook), I don't do that. My follower count is natural. I have around 1,100 followers. Per the Twitter analytics data for my account, my engagement rate is 1.4% (over 18,000 impressions in the last 30 days.) That's 700X better than an account with 390,000 followers.

Nevertheless, it's 1.4%, not 50%, so compared to a newsletter, Twitter is pretty bad for engagement.

However, we're comparing engagement against the number of followers, and as I wrote, the follower number is unreliable, which means... engagement ratio based on followers is worthless as a metric. (Actually, it's worse than worthless: if you tell your boss that you're getting 0.02% engagement, she'll shut down the whole thing.)

What matters are the business metrics: leads, sales, and revenues, which means the results. We'll get to this in a moment.

Delayed Engagement

Several reviewers of this draft pointed out tweets often go out, get some engagement, and then, days or weeks later, pick up again as people discover them in their news stream. This means you have to wait perhaps 10-20 days to be sure to have all the data for a tweet.

What about Hashtags?

What if you have only 1,000 followers but you tweet with a hashtag that was used by 400,000 people in the last 30 days? In other words, 400,000 people wrote tweets in the last 30 days that included the hashtag.

That indicates the active crowd for that concept. (But just because they're posting with the hashtag, it doesn't mean they're reading the tweets.) So it's useful to know that #HashtagA has 400,000 uses and #HashtagB has 500 uses, but it's not a business metric.

(How to find these numbers? Topsy.com shows this, but for some reason, their site hasn't been working for the last 60 days.)

So What's an Engagement in Twitter?

What counts as an engagements at Twitter? In Twitter's (extremely) desperate need to show results (any results at all) they count everything as an engagement. Here's the list of what Twitter considers to be engagement:

Retweet: Someone retweets your tweet.
Reply: Someone replies to your tweet.
Favorite: Someone "Favorites" your tweet.
Follows you: Someone follows you (after clicking to your profile).
Click on your Twitter Name: Someone clicks on your Twitter name to see your profile.
Click on your Twitter Photo: Someone clicks on your Twitter photo to see your profile.
Click on a link: Someone clicks on a link in your tweet.
Click on Share: Someone shares your tweet.
Click on Embed: Someone uses embeds your tweet somewhere else. (Do this by going to a tweet, click More and then Embed)
Card engagements: If you're using Twitter Cards (a type of ad), someone clicks on the card.
Click on a hashtag: Someone clicks on a #hashtag in your tweet.
Click on a photo: Someone clicks on a photo in your tweet.
Click on a video: Someone clicks on a video in your tweet.
Pulse: The person looking at your tweet has a pulse, which rules out cabbage.

Okay, that last one is a joke.

Twitter considers any possible action on a tweet as engagement. However, most of these are irrelevant, so the engagement number itself is inflated. What really counts are leads, sales, and revenue.

BTW, if you advertise in Twitter, you will be charged for any of these actions, even when someone just clicks on your profile photo.

Which Engagement Metrics Matter?

The only metrics that matter are business metrics, which are top line and bottom line numbers. This means: Does it produce revenues? Does it save money? Does it produce a qualified lead, sale, or revenue?

The other numbers (views, follows, retweets, shares, etc.) may lead to KPIs, so they're secondary metrics.

How to Increase Engagement

So how do you increase engagement? Twitter reviewed several million US tweets to see how a tactic affects engagement:

The effect on Twitter engagement by various tactics. Summary: It depends on the topic.

For example, if you're tweeting about politics and you include a photo, you'll get 62% more engagement. If you include a video, you get only 14% improvement. However, if you're posting about music, a video will increase engagement by 35%. So you need to study your topic to determine the tactic.

(The "digit" in the charts mean that the tweet included a number. Some people really like to look at numbers.)

So... which tactic to use? It depends on your topic. Look at the charts above (and go to Twitter Blog's posting for more details).

Twitter's research covers only a few actions. There are several more things that you can do to increase engagement:

Ask a question.
Add a link
Write short tweets (less than 100 char)
Ask for a retweet (RT)

(I don't include numbers for these because I don't have authoritative data. If you know of research for these, please let me know.)

By increasing engagement, more people will see your tweets. If it's qualified traffic (your target audience), it'll lead to an increase in business metrics (leads, sales, revenue).

So Does Twitter Really Work?

After all of this, you're wondering: does this really work? In September, I published another book at Amazon. I used tracking tags in the URL to see how many people clicked the link. Twitter produced 76 clicks to get the book (see who-really-reads-your-tweets), which was twice as much as what I got from Facebook or LinkedIn. That's my KPI: actual sales. So, yes, Twitter works.

I'm looking for more data. All I need is engagement numbers for a 30-day period for accounts with significant activity. If you can share your Twitter data, I'd appreciate it. Just email me: andreas@andreas.com.

Big Cats of Silicon Valley

Posted: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 01:41:39

A lot of people don't realize we have mountain lions in Silicon Valley. Yes, there really are lions here. Here are two home surveillance camera photos of mountain lions from the last few weeks.

Shoo! Get off that car. On second thought, do whatever you like.

The cats were here before us. They live in the hills and often come down into the neighborhoods at night. It's very rare (one or twice in a hundred years) that they hurt humans.

Trolls and Reviews

Posted: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 21:52:57

I'm often asked about reviews. People want to write books, but they're afraid of bad reviews. It's a serious problem.

There are useful negative reviews.

And there are trolls. These people hide behind fake names (and often, elaborate fake profiles, biographies, photos, etc.) and relentlessly attack to destroy people.

I've been using the Internet and the web since the 80s. I've been the moderator (manager) of a number of forums, some of them rather large. Trolls have always been around. It's not new and it's not going away.

That's why I believe in real IDs, as in, using a real name to post. Not just a name: there should be substantial online presence, including Facebook page, LinkedIn profile, and perhaps a Twitter account or a website. If someone writes a review but doesn't use his name, don't reply. It's likely fake.

In general, don't reply to negative comments by unknown persons. Better yet, don't read the reviews of your work. Just keep writing.

Here are several articles about reviews and trolls:

Am I Being Catfished? by Kathleen Hale. When publishing her book in the UK, she was warned not to reply to reviewers. She did anyway. Here's what happened (Guardian 17 October, 2014).
Discussion of trolls in 3QuarksDaily
Inside the world of Amazon Vine book reviewers by Suzanne McGee
More about trolls.

Goodbye, Google Authorship...

Posted: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 06:30:52

Google shut down Google Authorship. They said few authors were using it and it didn't matter much to users.

What was it? The idea was for Google to be able to know who was a valid author. There are too many sites that offer fake content or texts written by unknown workers in warehouses. Google could identify real people by looking at their Google+ profiles (social activity with friends, likes, links, postings, and so on) and tie the person's articles together.

But few authors added the code to their pages or signed up for G+. And Google users didn't seem to care if Google showed an author profile or not.

But this is just the details. What's the big picture?

Once again, Google failed to support a project. They launch an idea, only to watch it sink, and then they walk away and say nobody really liked it anyway. No promotion, no marketing.
Google is shutting down Google+. Instead of admitting defeat, they're doing it bit by bit, spread over months, with the hope that nobody will notice or care. This is one of Google's biggest failures.

I used Google Authorship. I added the code, edited my profile, and used it across all of my postings. Now it's gone. Too bad.

I stripped out all of the Google Authorship code from my website.

Looking under the Streetlight: Influencer Marketing

Posted: 04 Apr 2014

You've heard the story: a policeman sees a kid looking for something under a streetlight. He asks the boy what is lost. The boy says he lost some money and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost it here, and the boy replies, no, that he lost it down the street where it's dark. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the boy replies, "because there's light here!"

That's called the streetlight effect. It's affecting influencer marketing. How? Most influencer marketing tools are focused on social tools. Why? Because it's a street light. Facebook, Twitter, etc. make visible a person's activity, followers, number of links, retweets, and so on. And people look in these sites because it's easy to find the people who are members of these sites. But the sites don't show the people who aren't members.

The various social metrics and social analytics tools measure and compare these numbers. They measure the person's influence. Klout, Kred, Followerwonk, and other tools use a score to show you a person's social influence. The more points, the more important the person.

The Problem with Metrics for Social Influence

But there's a problem with the metrics at the social tools: it's easy to fool the system. Many of the numbers are fake. You can buy followers (1,000 for $10), comments in Yelp ($5), recommendations in LinkedIn ($5), and so on (you can just search for this). Large PR and ad agencies routinely add tens of thousands of likes and comments to their clients' postings in social media.

Where's the Real Influence?

When Laura makes a major decision, she talks with friends whom she trust. Laura asks friends who are experts. She talks with family relatives who have experience and knowledge. She meets with her doctor, college professor, or minister. If Laura doesn't know a trusted expert, she asks friends for recommendations. A trusted-friend-of-a-trusted-friend.

Laura wants the real story from someone she trusts. This means she ask quietly, not in a public space.

Laura also wants an unbiased opinion or recommendation. She doesn't want a salesperson who will make a profit on her. She wants the same opinion that the expert would make for a family member.

Real influence is personal. It happens face-to-face in quiet meetings. These relationships don't happen under streetlights. They don't happen in Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. They take place in the dark.

The challenge then is to uncover those relationships. Who are the trusted experts?

To make this yet more difficult, each situation is different. You have one set of experts for one kind of decision, and another set for another decision. The people you ask about a medical decision won't be the same who you ask about buying or selling your house.

HRefLang and International SEO

Posted: Thu, 10 Apr 2014

I'm looking into how to implement HRefLang for international SEO. The following are notes. I'll work on this over the next few weeks and update this article.

This page is for advanced SEO. There are lots of acronyms and concepts that I won't explain. Give this to your SEO person.

Goal of HRefLang: The goal is simple: A person should see the best page for her when she uses a search engine. A person should see French in Quebec and English in Toronto.
What Is HRefLang? If your site is in several languages and your audience is in several countries, then you should use HRefLang. This helps Google and Yandex to know which page should be shown to a person in any of those languages or countries.
So What Exactly Is HRefLang? It's markup code for the XML sitemap. For example, <link rel="alternate" href="whatver.com/french-page.html" hreflang="fr-ca">. The <rel="alternate"> part tells the search engine there a page (french-page.html) which is in French for Canada.
It's not as easy as "set the country" or "pick a language". There are two issues: Multilocale Language:. French is used in France, Quebec, and Mali. Multilingual Country: Canada uses French and English.
Rarely Done: Although advanced SEO people know about HRefLang, very few have done it. I haven't yet found anyone who has implemented this. If you have, please contact me.
I looked at the XML sitemaps of ten global corporations. None have implemented this. One sitemap was broken. (Because it's XML, then a single error means the entire thing won't be used, so their sitemap is ineffective.)
Global pages: Some pages are meant to be viewed worldwide. Those pages can use X-Default. For example, <link rel="alternate" href="example.com" hreflang="x-default" />. See Google's Page about X-Default. Caution: Don't set the US site as "en-us". It will disappear for the rest of the world. The US site should be the global English site.
Google doesn't help much. They have only a few short FAQs.
Bill Hunt says Google ignores the language setting (Geographical Setting) in WebMasterTools.
Google Quality Raters flag a page as useless if the language isn't appropriate for the country. For example, Spanish is useless in Denmark (p. 42, Google Quality Rater Manual, 2013).
If your site is international, then every page needs HRefLang markup. Yes, every single one.
If there are errors in your XML sitemap, you will be notified in WMT.
The Use of ccTLD: Google suggests they pay attention of ccTLD in the domain name as an indicator of location, e.g., cisco.de, cisco.fr, cisco.dk. However, many websites in many countries don't use theccTLD. They prefer .com because it is more prestigious, considered as serious, etc. Other websites use ccTLDs as part of a name, such as .co (Colombia), which is seen as "company" in the USA. I say ccTLDs are not a reliable marker of location. Furthermore, they do nothing about the multilingual country issue.
HRefLang is for languages, not countries. It requires a language code. Don't insert a country code and no language code. That will be ignored.
HRefLang uses two standards: Languages: ISO 639-1. Linguistic Regions: ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2. However, Google itself sometimes makes mistakes. Check the ISO codes to be sure.
Universal Language: Per the Google Quality Rater manuals, US English is considered the universal language. If a relevant page is in US English, it may appear in search results anywhere. This means you should use the US English site as the global site. Note: that's US English, not British, Australian, etc.
Without HRefLang?: Search engines look at pages for location and language clues. They can detect the language of a page (French, etc.) They also look at phone number format, the city/state address, currency, and so on.
To Find XML Sitemaps: Search <company.com sitemap.xml> (or sitemap.xml.gz)

Blog Postings for 2015

Make a Mobile Version of a Website

Posted: Wed, 01 Apr 2015 15:31:00

So my website andreas.com is for desktop screens. And Google announced it will ignore websites after March 21st 2015 that aren't suitable for mobile devices (in other words, if you search in Google on your cell phone or tablet, the results will include only mobile-friendly sites, while non-mobile sites will not be listed).

So I must make my website for mobile as well.

But there are several issues:

I can't use any of the dozens of "convert-your-site-to-mobile" tools because nobody knows how long those companies will exist. If I use one of them, what happens in four years when it shuts down? My pages are lost.
The technology has to be in code that I can understand, write, and edit. It can't be proprietary, obscurely complex, or hidden inside other tools.
It has to be a long-term solution. Next year, andreas.com will have been up for 20 years. I want it to work for another 20 years. I strongly doubt Google will be relevant in five years (2020) and it will likely not exist in ten years. Remember Alta Vista? Remember Yahoo? Yahoo was once the leader of the web; it's barely profitable now. Alta Vista was the leading search engine. It's gone. SUN, SGI, Texas Instruments, HP, and many other major computer companies are gone. So I don't believe Google will last.

I wrote all of the code at andreas.com by hand. Yep, 450 pages of HTML. I've created over 200 websites, all by hand. That means I really know HTML. I can read HTML code; I can edit it, I can change it. In contrast, ask anyone who uses Dreamweaver: they never even look at the code and understand very little of it.

So... the switch has to be future-compliant (it has to work for the next 10-20 years), not rely on fleeting companies or technologies, and maintainable.

I'll work on this. I'll also update this page with what I learn.

If you have suggestions or ideas, let me know.

April 21st: Google Goes Mobile

Posted: Wed, 08 Apr 2015 01:07:46

Or, better said, Google starts to delete non-mobile pages.

On April 21st, Google will begin to show only mobile-friendly pages in the search results that are made on mobile device. If you search on a desktop computer, you get everything. But if you search on your phone or tablet, you'll only see search results that are optimized for mobile.

Practically every webdev and SEO company is drooling over this: they're terrorizing clients that every page must be converted to mobile-friendly. Of course. They'll get lots of money for that.

I say maybe. Only in some cases, do you need to deal with this. Here are three questions:

Do mobile users matter to you? Namely, do mobile users register or buy from you? Do they convert with an action that you want? Use your web analytics to check conversions by device. If few or none mobile users are converting, then why bother with them?
If you're not tracking conversions (oh, dear...), then at least you can see traffic, assuming that you've set up web analytics (and if not, oh, dear...) Your web analytics can show you how much of your traffic comes from mobile. If it's minor (say, less than 10%), don't bother.
Is your audience primarily in Russia or China? If your traffic is in Russia, they're likely using Yandex, the Russian search engine. Or if they're in China, they're using Baidu, the Chinese search engine. In either case, your audience isn't using Google, so who cares what Google says?
Is your audience B2C or B2B? If it's B2B, then very likely, they are using desktop computers to search in Google and visit your site. So once again, you don't need to make changes.

The most important item is the first: are your mobile users registering/buying at your page? If so, then you must optimize for them. If not, don't bother.

If you need to optimize for mobile, call your friendly local webspinner. You need to make those pages Google-compliant. Yep, once again, Google decides what everyone should do. You either do what they say or they'll delete you. Never mind that Google's own websites aren't mobile-friendly.

But don't give your web developer a blank check. Don't optimize your entire site. Once again, use your web analytics and look for the landing pages at which your mobile users enter your site (okay, that's a mouthful and if you're not really good at web analytics, ask your neighbor's 12-year old daughter to explain that to you). Those pages, and only those pages, are the ones that you need to mobilize (cute term, no?). Thousands of webmasters will sigh that they won't get paid to mobile-optimize entire sites. Don't worry about them: many clueless website owners will pay them anyway. Whatever.

Anyway, show this to your boss. And show it to his 12-year niece too so she can explain it to him.

Google's Big Problem

Posted: Wed, 15 Apr 2015 20:30:42

I was talking with several friends a few nights ago about Light. It's (yet another) new search engine (sorta). You ask questions and the answers are curated by humans. They were talking about the challenge of indexing the web. However, that's not the problem.

It's pretty easy to index the web. There are 175m domain names, but only one million sites matter: only about 500,000 sites have more than a few thousand monthly visitors. A few hundred sites account for practically all of the traffic. You could erase 174m domain names and nobody would notice.

Secondly, you wouldn't need to index every page in that pool of 500,000 domain names. Again, 80-90% of the traffic goes to a handful of landing pages at each domain name. So let's guess the size of LPs is around 2,500,000 pages (5 x 500k). It's somewhere in that area.

So the problem isn't the number of pages.

The problem isn't indexing. That's actually pretty easy. Any computer science graduate student could write an algorithm to index those few million pages. There's only a few criteria: keywords, incoming links from reputable sites, authority, age of domain, etc. That could be sketched out in a few days and done in a few weeks.

Yes, there's proof for this. This type of indexing is handled by the internal search engines within large corps. A large corp may have several million pages which are easily indexed by internal search tools such as Microsoft FAST, Attivio, etc. (and, yes, the Google internal search tool).

So the problem for global search engines isn't indexing or algorithms. Their problem is hackers, spammers, and scammers. Because it's so lucrative to have the top position which gets all the traffic (the 80/20 Rule, which is actually the 99/1 Rule on the web), spammers and scammers do whatever possible to get to position 1. So search engines must focus not on legitimate webmasters, but on illegitimate webmasters.

In internal search, there is a way to block spammers. It's not called an algorithm. It's called the HR dept. Namely, if Employee Jones adds 100,000 pages of porn to the corporate site and uses misleading keywords (say, the CEO's name) to get position #1 in the corporate search engine, well, his career will last only as long as it takes HR to send Security to taser him.

But on the Wild Wild Web, there's no control. There's no way to taser a hacker. Hackers attack Google with tens of thousands of pages. So search engines have to jump lively every day to block spam and scam. If they can get top positions, even for a few hours, it can produce revenue.

The challenge isn't the indexing. The challenge is to protect legitimate pages from being pushed out by illegitimate pages.

So Google, Bing, Yandex, and Baidu have all shifted to using human reviewers. They look to see if it's a legitimate page. They pick the best pages to show at the top. They're all looking to develop an AI system. There are differences at the search engines: some use the humans to train the AI; other use the humans to score the AI's results. Google has 8,000 humans; the others have 2,000 to 5,000 humans.

What does this mean for SEO? The indexing of pages (i.e., add and sort pages to the search engine's database) is done by technical means, namely, keywords, page speed, authority links, and so on. However, for any topic, there may be 10,000 relevant pages but only a few dozen "best pages". So the search engine's humans and the AI look for those best pages (and also taser the scammers). This means the webpage must include both the technical issues and show authoritative quality.

Our Tea Room

Posted: Mon, 20 Apr 2015 16:32:41

We turned the cedar hot tub into a tea room. We turned it on its side, rolled in to the corner of the yard, and added a platform. At right, persimmon leaves and ivy on the left. Of course, the cat sits on top for a great view.

I thought it was going to be a big job to turn the hot tub upright since it weighs perhaps a thousand pounds. But me and three guys just picked it up and turned it on its side in one quick lift. From there, it was easy to roll it.

I cut a 16-foot (5m) plank to make the shelf. See the angle at the ends? Helen calculated the angle (35.2) and I cut it to fit. I thought I would need to add bracing to secure it, but it stays in place. The tub rests on two 5x5 beams.

We also extended the deck all the way to the walnut tree. You can see the hot tub in the far back.

The End of Radio

Posted: Tue, 21 Apr 2015 15:53:51

Here's a photo of my father's NEC NTF-901 radio. It was one of the best transistor radios in 1962. At top right, the gray push button switches AM/FM. The inside soldering was done by hand. I put in batteries, but it doesn't work. NEC = Nippon Electric Company. Norway will shut off FM radio and switch to digital radio. Radio (both AM and FM) are dead. Sirius kept calling me to get me to sign up. Each time, they dropped the price. Finally, I said "Look, you can PAY me and I still won't listen to it because I prefer Pandora."

TV is also headed for the rocks. You can't watch network TV (NBC, CBS, ABC) on a tablet because they won't allow it. But my wife watches Chinese TV news (KTSF) every night on her tablet: she opens their app and watches the evening news. She can pause, repeat, and skip (it's all in Chinese). It works fine.

American TV won't do this because of the extremely lucrative ad revenues. TV charges (roughly) about 100X more for TV advertising than Google charges for digital ads. When TV goes digital, they'll see a 99% revenue drop. Because broadcast TV requires studios, camera staff, dancing monkeys (er, anchor men), etc., they won't survive such a drop.

MTV's target demographic dropped 29% (Q1/15) compared to same quarter last year (Q1/14). Wow. 29%? That's a collapse. TV is dead.

But Google isn't smiling. When ads move from desktop to mobile, there is another 99% drop. People spend more time on Facebook than Google but FB has less than a third (31%) in revenues ($3.85B/quarter in Q4/14) than Google ($12.4B, Q4/14). Google is facing a serious revenue drop as users shift to mobile.

Selling Hot Tub System

Posted: Tue, 26 May 2015 22:16:17

I built a 1,000 gallon cedar wooden hot tub from Robert's Hot Tub (RHTubs.com) in my backyard in 2001. It was great for 15 years. But the wood has started to decay (the wood has a 15-year lifetime). So we turned the hot tub into a tea room and I'm selling the parts. All of these work great and are in good condition. They were housed in a custom-built storage shed.

These items are in my garage in Palo Alto. You can come by and pick them up. Talk with me about shipping.

You can buy the parts that you want. However, I'd prefer to sell everything at once. If you buy all, I'll give you a 20% discount on the whole lot.

Hot Tub Heater: Pentair MiniMax 100 gas heater. 100K BTU Liquid Propane, Electric Heater w/ 6' CD. 22"x19"x28", 89 pounds. High-performance propane gas-fired heater is compact, lightweight, and efficient. This one replaced my original heater last year. I used this twice, yes, only twice. It's in perfect condition. New $1,300. Yours for $995.
Hot Tub Filter: Pentair Cartridge Filter. Part number P/N 178555 Rev. CC100. New $300. Yours for $100.
Hot Tub Pump: Hayward Max-Flo Pump. Model SP1610-Z-2-MBK. Two-speed, 1.5 HP, 230 volt. New $530. Yours for $250.
Round Hot Tub Cover: Foam interior with soft vinyl cover. 7 feet diameter (84"). Folds in half. In good condition, clean, and useable.

What's the Difference between Fiction vs. Non-Fiction?

Posted: Mon, 15 Jun 2015 17:15:55

What's the difference between fiction and non-fiction?

Okay, so I’ve written 12 published books and more than 75 computer manuals (I work in Silicon Valley). I’m now writing my first fiction novel. It’s a great experience because, although I’ve read quite a bit of literature (between 5-8,000 novels in English, German, Spanish, and Danish) (a few years ago, I had some 5,000 books), I never really understood the process of writing fiction.

Non-fiction is like an engineer’s bridge: A) the bridge has to cross the river, B) it must support the load (if cars fall through, bad bridge!), and C) the documentation covers the bridge’s engineering, maintenance, etc. All non-fiction is like this: The goal is to do something and the documentation describes it.

Fiction however… whoa! The bridge can start… and suddenly, veer back. Or do loop-de-loops. A US Civil War troop can gallop across and be attacked by zombies. There are no rules from the real world. Anything is possible, yes, but there are rules, namely, the novel’s self-imposed rules.

Fiction starts as a blank slate and the author creates a world (Tyrannosaurs in F-14s!). Each fictional world has its own rules: Dirty Harry can use a .44 Magnum, but Elinor Dashwood (Sense & Sensibility) can’t. The author also creates moral failures in the characters and sets up a goal. With all of this in place, the author kicks the box and sets everything off on its path to its logically-bound conclusion.

This means a good author can tweak the rules to make it appear very real (see Mavis Gallant’s short story “The Ice Wagon”, utterly incredible writing) but as Nabokov pointed out, it’s an illusion. The best writers make that appear effortless, where you don’t notice the rules at all, like a good Las Vegas magician. At one extreme is the avant-garde of Joyce and Danielewski; at the other is Emily Bronte and Tolstoy.

If you want to discuss books, let me know.

SEO... by Google?

Posted: Sun, 21 Jun 2015 02:17:22

Google Offers SEO Services?

Google is up to something very odd. A recruiter sent me an email. Google is looking for someone to do SEO for a company. But it's not clear if the company is another company (a client of Google) or it's owned (secretly) by Google. I looked at the About Us and it's vague. The company is in Los Angeles. The company sells jewelry where every item is $9.99. Earrings, necklace, rings, etc., all $9.99.

If it's a client, is Google really offering SEO services? Why would Google need to do this? They can just go into their algorithm, bump it up in ranking, and charge the client. And then wait for a massive lawsuit.
Or is this a Google company? Is Google trying to corner the market on jewelry? And why bother with tiny sales of $9.99? What about other products? Google could easily figure out the best-selling products and then set up secret companies to wipe out competitors, especially at super low prices (because Google doesn't need the money).
Or is this a trap to get SEO people to do work, Google sees what they do, and then sets up ways to block that?

Whatever this is, it's very odd. And likely illegal. Google can't sell fake services or compete against its customers.

How to Turn Off Adobe Flash

Posted: Wed, 15 Jul 2015 00:06:30

Adobe Flash is very easy for hackers. Firefox, Apple Safari, and other browser are turning off Adoble Flash. You should too.

This is easy to do.

In your browser URL box, type chrome://plugins (see the pix)
This will show you the plugins that are active in your Chrome browser.
Under Adobe Flash, click Disable.

That's it. No more Flash.

Another Reason to Use Content Marketing...

Posted: Wed, 15 Jul 2015 14:32:50

Adblocking is nearly at the same 23-29% level worldwide.

GlobalWebIndex's data (July 2015) shows 27% of online adults aged 16-64 regularly use adblockers; Europe tops the table on 29% and the rest are close behind.

It's also likely that these users are the ones who know most about their computers, which means they are the most-desired audience for advertisers, yet ad blocking means advertisers can't reach them.

This also has serious implications for advertising metrics. If the best audience is not in the metrics, then the numbers aren't very good.

How to reach your audience? Use content marketing. Develop useful information that they want and they'll come to you.

SEO Optimize Your Blog with Analytics

Posted: Tue, 21 Jul 2015 15:48:07

Hubspot wrote about this a few weeks ago. They added additional analytics to their blog and realized that a few blog postings (something like 30-40) out of 3,500 blog postings accounted for half of their leads. Just a few get all the traffic, just like in everything else (80/20 Rule, Pareto Rule, etc.) Very clever idea.

If you can identify those top blog postings, you can do more on them: add "for more, see also" links, add call-to-actions, buttons, etc. This will increase your leads, etc.

So how to do this? First, I added Google Analytics tracking code to my Wordpress blog (this one that you're reading). I waited a day or so until the data began to appear in my Google Analytics account. Here's how to find the data:

Log into your Google Analytics account.
Select the Reporting tab (on the left side of the screen).
Select Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.
At the Primary Dimension button (above the table), select Page Title.
You can now see traffic by page title. Depending on how your website is set up, you might have to use the search box and search for "blog." (as in, "blog.andreas.com") (or just "blog").

The Company that Dares Not Speak Its Name.

Posted: Wed, 29 Jul 2015 20:52:14

Here's the situation. A company has a new large office in Palo Alto. The company is one of the best-known companies in the world, used daily by hundreds of millions of customers... yet it hides its name.

Yep, the corporation with no name.

From the street, there is no sign. No indication who or what this company is.

They shuttle their thousands of workers to their offices by bus. But their buses have no logo...

What's going on?

Everyone outside of Silicon Valley loves this company. They think it'd be ever so wonderful to work there; it'd be like to work at Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory: bean bags, climbing walls, free kale smoothies, dog massage, and fun, fun, fun!

But in Silicon Valley... there's a different story with dark clouds over this company. Is this Mordor?

No, but it's close.It earns tens of billions, yet uses legal SWAT teams so it pays only 1% income tax. It is deeply involved in massive surveillance. The company tries to change city laws to its own profit. Its thousands of employees are wrecking the culture of San Francisco.

So... the company figures it's just better if they didn't put their name on their buses and new buildings.

Yes, it's the Corporation that Dares Not Speak Its Name.

Can We Just Build It and They Will Come?

Posted: Fri, 31 Jul 2015 14:42:37

Over the past year, I've been working on a bunch of projects with various clients. Generally, they want more traffic, which means they need more visibility among their target audience.

Many companies assume they can "Build It and They Will Come".

But it doesn't work that way for several reasons:

The size of the web: you're competing with 165 million websites
Google gives priority to sites with traffic. New sites face a steep climb.
SEO and PPC have become seriously complex. You must hire experts.
People are paying attention to their phones: text messages (20-30 per day), apps, games, and video. There just isn't much attention left for websites.

It's the 80/20 Rule, which is really the 99/1 Rule: a handful of sites get all the traffic. Of 165m websites, the top one million sites (0.6%) get all of the traffic.

So for your site to get traffic, your digital marketing needs:

SEO: Your site has to show up in Google, Baidu, and Yandex
PPC: Use digital advertising (Google Adwords, etc.) to place your ads in search engines and three million websites
Social media: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, WeChat...
Email: Send monthly newsletters and emails
Influencers: Find and reach out to the 25-50 key people in your industry
Champions: Stay in touch with your top customers
Speaking events: Speak at conferences
Content marketing: Write authoritative books and articles, plus blogging
Wikipedia: Be in Wikipedia
Public Relations: Show up in the print media, such as NYT, WSJ, Bloomberg
Global presence: And be in the major markets: North America, South America, Europe, China... yep, in English, Spanish, German, Chinese...

And it must all be coordinated and consistent across all channels. You can't do just PPC or just email. You must appear in front of your audience wherever they are looking (in any website, blog, app, etc.), on whatever device (desktop, mobile, tablet), and wherever they are (North America, China, Europe, Latin America, etc.). You have to be not only in Google, but also in the two-three hundred websites that your audience views.

40 years ago, you could make a living by selling good-enough stuff in a just-okay shop in a oh-whatever town.

But today? You're competing with A+ over-achievers from the world's top schools: Stanford, MIT, Tsinghua, IIT, Heidelberg, etc. who are in Palo Alto, Manhattan, Berlin, and Shanghai. Total fun, right?

Yep, it's a lot to do.

So why do so much work? Why do it well?

Because the top sites get the lion's share of the traffic and revenues.

Use SEO... to Change the World?

Posted: Wed, 26 Aug 2015 04:03:56

A series of studies by Robert Epstein show how manipulation of search results can change voting substantially.

We in SEO may end up all working for various political campaigns.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/how-google-could-rig-the-2016-election-121548.html

In any case, this proves the effectiveness of SEO.

It's actually stronger than that for a further reason. In any market space, there may be a few thousand competitors. But there are only a handful of serious competitors (companies that make an effort to provide better service/products than their competitors, etc.) And of that, only a few are excellent at all forms of marketing (offline, TV, digital, etc.) These few get the bulk of the market (both customers and revenues). So a well-structured digital campaign (unified SEO, PPC, content, social, etc.) can significantly improve an organization's visibility within its field.

Another Bug in Google Adwords Editor

Posted: Thu, 03 Sep 2015 04:01:38

When using Google Adwords Editor to upload images for display ads and the images have spaces in the file name (e.g., leaderboard 200x600 catfood.jpg), the space can only be a single space.

If there is a double space between words, AE will report the image is blank and refuse to upload it.

Solution: Edit the file names to remove double spaces.

Better Solution: Google Adwords Editor should show a warning that explains the problem so the user can fix it (for example, "Please remove double spaces in the file name."), instead of just saying "blank image". The image isn't blank so the message is misleading and useless.

Silicon Valley Is In... Silicon Valley

Posted: Sun, 06 Sep 2015 00:19:49

San Francisco often says it is part of Silicon Valley. There is indeed a small cluster of startups in SF. But how much? Here's a chart. The circles represent the amount of valuation for these companies, measured in billions of dollars.

One Silicon Valley company alone, such as Cisco or Facebook, has a greater valuation than ALL startups in San Francisco.

It's nice that there are startups in SF. There are startups in Oakland, Austin, and many other cities. But Silicon Valley is still in Silicon Valley.

Referrer Spam: Junk Traffic in Your Website

Posted: Sun, 06 Sep 2015 02:30:43

I first heard about referrer spam in the spring. By June, it started to show up in a few of my clients. By late July, as much as 80% of traffic for some of my clients was from referrer spammers.

What Is Referrer Spam? Referrer spam is junk traffic at your website. You think you have 1,000 daily visitors, but most of those are fake.

Why Are They Doing This? Spammers use computers to register fake visits in your analytics data. They don't actually visit your site; they just register the data in your analytics account at Google. You look at your data, see visits from a site, and out of curiosity to see who it is, you click. Bingo, the spammer gets a visit. If they visit perhaps ten million sites, they'll get a few thousand visits, which increase the spammer's ranking in search engines or they sell that traffic to other sites.

What Is Google Doing about This? Google knew about this three years ago but, due to the technology of their analytics software, there is nothing they can do about this. To stop this, they would have to completely change Google Analytics, which is unlikely. So if you use Google Analytics (and 80-90% of all analytics is Google Analytics), you have to deal with it yourself for now.

What Can You Do about This? To block the fake traffic, you create a filter. That's the easy part. However, more show up, so you add more filters. To block the current spammers, you need 19 filters. And if you manage ten clients, you'll spend most of a day to set this up. And every month, you'll add more filters.

Do You Have to Do This? Look at your traffic. If it's just a few, don't bother. But when it's 5-10% of your traffic, it screws up your numbers. If it's 60-80% of your traffic, your traffic data is junk.

What Should You Do? Don't create 19 filters with 180 spammers. Many of those won't visit your site, so it's wasted work. Next month, there will be more. Finally, it's messy to deal with several dozen filters.

Look at your referrer traffic for the last twelve months.
Download the list and find the spammers.
Make a filter for those.
Every 30 days, review the last 30 days of traffic, find new spammers, and add them to the filter.
You should also create a Valid Host Name filter. This also stops spammers from using fake host name.

How to Do This: There are pretty good pages now on how to create the filters so you can look at those. Here are my notes on doing this:

The filter limit is 255 characters. If you need more, add another filter.
I number the filters: Refspam-01, Refspam-02, Refspam-03, etc.
Keep a copy of the filters in as a text file so you can search.
Don't include the extension (.com, .ru, etc.). Some spammers are using multiple extensions. If they switch, you have to add a new one. This also shortens your filter.

More Notes: You can get an updated list of spammers at Github, but it doesn't help because there are so many.

Update: Sept. 23, 2015

After more thought, I now only add refspammers to the filter if they are 1% or more of the monthly traffic. If they're less than that, they don't affect the data so there's no point in adding them.

Look at the number of sessions. Let's say there are 1,000 sessions. 1% is ten, so if a refspammer has only 7 sessions in the last 30 days, that won't significantly affect the overall data. It's just a bit of noise.

If a refspammer has 10 or more sessions, he crosses the 1% threshold. I copy his domain name and add him to the filter.

After adding so many filters, I now only add spammers who make up 1% or more of the traffic. If it's less than that, they're small potatoes and I ignore them.

Yet Another Google Adwords Bug...

Posted: Tue, 08 Sep 2015 15:43:16

Once you start looking, they crop up.

Okay, the campaign in Google Adwords is in 18 languages. In the English campaign, I tested 8,000 keywords. From that, I selected the top 200 keywords (based on performance: CTR, clicks, etc.). These were translated into 17 languages.

Oh, okay, here's the full list: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish.

And of course, I wrote ads in all those languages. (What? So I speak a bunch of languages.)

And now, a week later, Google has started to reject ads. Why? Here's Google's notice: > Disapproval Reason: Punctuation and symbols: To help provide a quality user experience, promotions need to be clear, easy to read, and professional in appearance. For this reason, we don't allow ad text that uses non-standard, gimmicky, or unnecessary punctuation, numbers, letters, and symbols.

Yep, ads written entirely in Japanese, Russian, or Bengali are rejected because Google thinks these are gimmicks.

I have additional ads in English for these languages, so I paused the rejected ads.

Okay, Google: that's a bug. It's pretty critical: Adwords can't show an ad in Bengali?

Solution: Google should create a filter that recognizes non-Western text and sends it to an Adwords reviewer to see if it's a real ad.

Age and Silicon Valley?

Posted: Wed, 09 Sep 2015 21:09:22

> I am 27-years old who founded a startup. My goal is to find co-founders that are young and energetic. What are my chances with the right people? Is it all about hard work meets opportunity or something else?

27? Hmmm... a bit old for Silicon Valley! :-)

> My goal is to find co-founders that are young and energetic.

No, you should look for co-founders who are highly-skilled and motivated. There are plenty of 18-year olds, but if they lack skills, motivation, etc., they're useless.

Despite the TV shows and movies, most startup founders are actually 35-45 year old; many are in their 50s. It takes time to get experience, skills, and connections.

I'm an advisor to nine startups. One is headed by an 18-year old; she raised $2m in 18 months and has a $50m valuation. Another startup is headed by a 21-year old. Both are v bright. The other startups are people in their 30s and 40s.

So ignore the movies. It's not age. It's skills and experience.

> My question is, with the right people, what are my chances. Is it all about hard work meets opportunity or something else?I've worked in Silicon Valley for 20 years now. I've worked at more than 30 startups and more than 275 projects. In general...

Connections. A great deal of success is based on solid connections to a wide range of people: engineers, marketing, sales, finance, legal, and investors, plus of course connections to other companies.

Skills: Your competitors are the top-of-the-class people from Stanford, MIT, CalTech, IIT, Tsinghua, etc. who are extremely bright, skilled, and experienced. So you need solid skills in what you do.

Work: You must dedicate at least ten hours per day for six days a week. I often work 14-hour days three or four times a week. The other days, I take it easy and work only 12 hours. But of course, I have a lot of experience in what I do, so it takes me a few hours what it would take another two weeks or more. So hours don't matter: it's the quality of the work. A good team of three or four can do more in a few weeks than a 200-person team at a large corp in six months.

Social Skills: On top of all of this, you must motivate and lead your team. Keep them on track and moving towards the goal. Resolve personal problems within the team. Yes, I know, Steve Jobs was a total jerk yet became a billionaire. However, for every Steve, there are hundreds of other highly-skilled jerks who go nowhere. The best example is William Shockley, who got the Nobel Prize for inventing the transistor, but was such a screaming jerk that his entire team quit. They went on to start Fairchild, Intel, AMD, Kleiner-Perkins, and an astonishing 65 more companies. They created Silicon Valley and several trillion dollars in valuation. Shockley got zero, in fact, he died alone and ignored.

Silicon Valley Bubbles and Busts

Posted: Fri, 11 Sep 2015 16:32:23

Q. Is this a real boom or can the bubble burst?

every business is boom-bust. first it goes up and then it crashes.

the definition of a bubble: too much money but few assets to buy.

when people have too much cash, they overpay for assets (stuff to buy, such as tulips, dotcom stock, gold bars, diamonds, etc.). the price goes up (some double their money) and others see that happen, so they also buy. prices go up yet more, so yet more people will buy.

the price has no correlation to the value of the item. for example, a little shop at the corner produces (let's say) $1m in sales per year. maybe 10% is profit, so the owner makes $100,000. so the value of the store is the income, which is $100,000 per year. the owner can expect $100,000 every year in income for the foreseeable future (perhaps 10-15 years).

but a few people get the idea to buy corner shops because these are cute, whatever. there are only a few dozen shops in the city and these people have too much money, so they'll overpay. the first one pays $1.2m for the store. the next one sees that the value of the store went from $1m to $1.2m ($200,000 increase!). Wow! the value is going up fast! the first person made $200,000 profit in six weeks, which is much more than that boring $100,000/year. so #2 will pay $1.3m for the same store. price went up another $100,000.

so a boom starts in the buying and selling of stores. the buyers are speculating on the fast-growing sales value, not the revenue value (the $100K/yr).

that's what happening worldwide in stocks, real estate, art, etc.: values have skyrocketed because there's too much money (they borrow at 3% to buy items that increase in value by 40-50% per year) and there are only a certain number of those shops in a city. those speculators are making very good money today, but one day, they'll be standing on a street corner.

at some point, investors either run out of easy cash (e.g., stock market goes down) or they discover the price of wheat is growing fast so they start buying that and the price of corner shops will collapse. someone paid $4.6m for the shop, but now can only sell it for $2.4m, so he lose $2.2m. the bubble popped. the boom crashed.

all booms will crash because the price is greater than the value (the item's income). there is no such thing as a forever-bubble or a forever-boom.

A fish by Pablo Picasso

the most blatant example of the difference in price and value is art. a Picasso painting of a fish has zero value: it's just a piece of old canvas and a bit of paint. it looks nice, but it won't produce anything. however... the painting's price has consistently gone up for 70 years and it's now at $24m. buy it, hold it for a few years, and sell it for a few million more. the sellers and buyers don't care a toot about the artist or fish: they only care about making money when they sell it. they're speculating (hoping) on an additional increase in price.

the same with diamonds, which are just rocks but people pay for them.

so what about Uber (valuation at $40B), AirBnB (valuation at $50B), Twitter (valuation at $20B), and a bunch of other dotcom startups? Wall Street swindlers will tell you to look at the future earning of these companies. let's say Uber makes $1B per year. over the next 50 years, it'll earn $50B. therefore, it's worth $50B. yeah, right. when Wall Street tells you that, look at the bottom of the page where it says "future performance is not based on past performance". what does that mean?

let's say you build a big luxury boat to sail across the ocean. you sell tickets. you launch this in April, 1912. it holds 2,400 passengers. let's guess a ticket is $1,000 (and 5X for first class), so let's guess you'll get $5m per trip. it can sail back and forth twice a month, so you can expect $120m per year. if you add up 30 years, so its valuation is $3.6B. cool!

and on its first trip, it hits an iceberg and goes to the bottom of the Atlantic. valuation also goes to zero.

see? just because a huge valuation can be projected, it doesn't mean it will happen. all sorts of things may happen, and many of these will be totally unexpected. after all, the Titanic's spectacular size and world-class engineering made it unsinkable.

Railroad Spikes

Posted: Mon, 14 Sep 2015 14:27:11

Every once in a while, I find railroad spikes in my backyard. Our house is next to the Caltrain tracks for the San Francisco-San Jose commuter train. I suppose every once in a while, the spikes work themselves loose and some of these fly over the fence.

I've never heard of railroad spikes getting loose. I've found two in 17 years.

To land in my backyard, they have to jump over a 16-foot hedge, so it could hurt pretty bad to get hit by one of these.

The spikes are iron and ten inches long. They weigh about a pound each. On the head, the letter HC is barely legible, which stands for "High Carbon" (30 points) which makes a flexible steel that can withstand the bending. BTW, new spikes are $2. These have no value, asides from scrap iron, which is about $200 per ton (2015).

Google Bug: Unusual Traffic

Posted: Fri, 25 Sep 2015 18:00:48

Another Google bug. I've been seeing this lately. You search at Google or use a Google tool and you get the following screen:

"Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network." When you get this screen, you can't go further. No Google search, no Gmail, no Adwords, nothing.

This is happening at client's site and other computers. A network administrator saw it on his computer last week and he knows there aren't any virus, malware, rouge users, etc.

There's nothing to do. Wait for 30 minutes or more and it starts working again.

Google's Content Guide: No Gua-Gua-Gua!

Posted: Mon, 28 Sep 2015 17:13:37

Google posted the following list of questions on their blog in May 2011. It's a very good summary for how the Google Quality Raters review websites and pages (I edited it slightly for consistency).

When you create content for the web, i.e., articles on pages, videos, PowerPoints, white papers, etc., carefully ask yourself each of the following questions both before and after.

Would you trust the information presented on the page?
Is the page written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it shallow?
Does the page have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
Would you be comfortable giving your credit card to this site?
Does the page have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
Are the topics driven by readers’ genuine interests or does the site generate content to rank in search engines?
Does the page offer original content, original information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
How much quality control was done on the content?
Does the article describe both sides of a story?
Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
Was the page mass-produced or outsourced to a large number of creators or spread across a large network of sites so the individual pages or sites don’t get much care?
Was the page edited well or is it sloppy or hastily produced?
For a health query, would you trust the information?
Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
Does the page provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
Does the page contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
Does the page have an excessive amount of ads that distract from with the main content?
Would you expect to see the page in a printed magazine, encyclopedia, or book?
Are the pages short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail?
Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

You can see this list automatically knocks out 98% of articles, pages, videos, etc. They were quickly produced just to get in Google. It's gua-gua-gua stuff (that's blah-blah-blah in Chinese). (Gua-gua-gua is what frogs say. Just noise.)

It's not just Google. All of the search engines (Google, Yandex, Baidu, Bing) have thousands of people who evaluate webpages. For any topic, there are millions of pages (for example, diabetes in cats = 19 million pages). Only ten will appear on the first page of a search engine. And if your audience is using mobile devices, only two or three links will appear on the first screen of Google Mobile Search.

Search engines are looking for world-class Super Bowl World Cup Olympic champions. That's a hell of a challenge, but if you do a super good job, you'll be on page one.

Learn more about content and how to write books at my website.

What to Read...

Posted: Tue, 29 Sep 2015 23:38:42

Okay, so I read a lot. 2-4 books per week, plus a dozen or more articles.

There are two very good blogs:

3 Quarks Daily: Collection of interesting articles and essays at 3Q.
Arts & Letters Daily: Collection of interesting articles and essays at ALD.

Both are strongly recommended.

I also subscribe to several journals, which I read cover to cover:

New York Review of Books: With a worldwide circulation of over 135,000, The New York Review of Books is the premier literary-intellectual magazine in English. Authors include statesmen, professors, writers, and leading intellectuals. At the NYBooks.com.
London Review of Books: The London Review of Books is the largest cultural literary magazine in Europe and has an unparalleled international reputation for long-form literary journalism. Published every two weeks for 65,000 subscribers, each issue contains contributions by the world’s leading thinkers, scholars and writers on a range of subjects such as history, politics, philosophy, art, poetry, biography, opinion pieces, film, and more. They also have an app for both Android and Apple. At LRB.co.uk
Le Monde Diplomatique: The premier French international journal, Le Diplo's readers include politicians, diplomats, policy-makers, journalists, lecturers, think tank researchers, NGOs, opinion formers, students, and anyone who wants the real stories, reliable research, and an independent viewpoint. Published in 26 languages for about 125,000 subscribers. At MondeDiplo.com

I strongly recommend subscriptions to these magazines. I've had subscriptions for more than 25 years.

Go to a public library and read several issues to see what these are like.

You may notice the rather low subscriber numbers. The NYRB has only 135,000 subscribers, yet it is the most significant journal worldwide, which is a good example of quality, not quantity.

Omid Kordestani Joins Twitter

Posted: Wed, 14 Oct 2015 22:22:10

No more goofing around. Twitter got serious today. They managed to hire Omid Kordestani as executive chairman.

Kordestani is the guy who turned Google from a useless search engine into a company with $50B/yr revenues.

Unicorns: $486B Valuation and Zero Profits

Posted: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 22:43:15

Here is a list of 59 unicorns with a total valuation at $486 billion.

Combined profit? $0. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Nichts. Not one penny.

See http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-10/unicorns-dropping-flies-first-dropbox-then-square-now-fidelity-cuts-snapchat-valuati

Ad CTR: When to Pause an Ad (and Why)

Posted: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 04:48:14

I often help friends to optimize their Google Adwords accounts. Here is a very common mistake which I see in practically every account: people don't pause weak ads.

There's a very good reason to delete the weak ads. Let's look at the CTR (click-through-rate).

Here's a table of data for ads. I've removed the noise to show only the numbers that matter: clicks, impressions, and CTR (click-through-rate). The table is sorted by CTR:

As you can see, some ads perform very well (4.27% CTR, with many over 2.0% CTR). Many ads are weak (such as 0.35% CTR).

Look at the ad, fourth from the bottom, with 0.66% CTR. That's low, but it has 1,111 clicks, which looks good. Should we keep it?

To simplify things, let's compare that ad with #3 (2.46% CTR):

The first ad has 2.46% CTR, but a 3% conversion rate. Ad #2 has 0.66% CTR and a 4% conversion rate. Which one do you keep?

Ad #2 has 168,902 impressions. If we let it run until it has 339,305 impressions with the same 0.66% CTR, it would get 2,239 clicks. If everything else is equal, ad #2 strongly underperforms #1: 2,239 clicks is only 26.7% of ad #1's 8,362 clicks.

If we delete ad #2, its next 168,902 impressions will go to #1 at 2.46% CTR, which means an additional 4,154 clicks. Wow. 4,000 more clicks just by deleting a weak ad.

If you delete every ad under 2% CTR in the first table, that's 680,000 impressions at 2% which would brings 13,600 clicks instead of 6,158 clicks. Just delete the weak ads and you double your clicks.

Google 2015 Quality Rater Manual

Posted: Sat, 28 Nov 2015 21:17:42

Notes on the 2015 Google Manual

In October 2015, Google released the 2015 Google Quality Rater Manual at Google (PDF, 160 pages).

This is the manual that Google's 8,000 humans use to evaluate web pages.

I have copies of these manuals for every year since 2007. I look at each new version to see where Google is putting emphasis. Every year, Google improves the process, adds new ideas, and drops other ideas. They learn and they get better at this.

The 2015 manual is an minor update of the 2014 manual. It puts strong emphasis on EAT (expertise, authority, trust) and it adds attention to mobile device.

Here are my brief notes on the manual and how it matters for SEO. For a complete analysis of the manual, what Google is up to, and its impact on SEO, look at other things I've written about SEO or talk with me. Section 2.7.4: How to Search for Reputation Information (p. 17)

Google added two additional sites for checking a company's reputation:

Use the Better Business Bureau at BBB.org to check the quality of a company. For example, for a search on IBM, use ["ibm.com" site:bbb.org] (go ahead and click that to see how it works)
Use Wikipedia to check on people and organizations. For example, for a search on IBM, use [ibm site:wikipedia.org] (click that to see how it works)

This means when you're doing SEO, check these to see what these sites show about your organization. If possible, improve those results. Section 5.4: Examples of Highest Quality Pages (p. 27)

Google gives several pages of examples of criteria for a page to be rated as "Highest Quality":

Meets the purpose of the page
Very high expertise
Highly authoritative
Highly trustworthy
Very high quality main content (MC)
Helpful content
Very positive reputation
Official website of the organization
The most authoritative source of information on the topic
The only authorized source for the topic
Very good review in Wikipedia
Popular site with many user contributions
Popular site with many high ratings by users
Winner of established and recognized awards

For SEO, you should try to reach these standards in your webpages. 2.3 Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) (p. 9)

Google has very high page quality rating standards for YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) pages which affect a user's happiness, health, or finances. These includes:

Shopping, such as payments, etc.
Financial, such as investments, taxes, retirement, home purchase, paying for college, insurance, etc.
Medical and health, incl. any private medical information
Legal issues, incl. wills, divorce, etc.
Other, incl. child adoption, car safety, etc.

For SEO, this means if your page has to do with YMYL issues, ensure it has the highest quality of EAT. Section 7.5: No Website Information (p. 46)

A website gets a low rating if it doesn't provide information about the creators of the site. The amount or detail level of contact information should match the site's nature. If it's a bank website, then you must provide complete contact information, including street address, telephone, email, and so on.

The point here is to let the visitor know if this is a real site or spam/scam. Part 2: Mobile Users (p. 67)

In the 2015 manual, Google puts more emphasis on mobile search and mobile results. Problems for mobile users include:

Typing is difficult
Voice recognition makes mistakes
Small screen size
Slow connections

For SEO, this means if your page is used by mobile users, then it must be usable on mobile devices. SEO becomes a matter of navigational design (using links, using internal search, going from page to page), page layout (readable, zoomable, scrollable), and optimize for the page's kilobyte site and download speed. Be sure to optimize your page for the user's experience for mobile. Section 12.4: Queries with an Explicit Location (p. 70)

If people search for the address of your store (for example, Alice's Hardware, 1234 Main Street, Palo Alto, CA), then make sure your complete address (street, postal code, etc.) is in your site.

Use microformats to ensure the search engines know it is your street address.

The point for SEO is to make sure that users at a location who are looking for things that are close to them will be able to see those webpages on their mobile devices.

Download the 2015 Google Quality Rater Manual

You can download the 2015 Google Quality Rater Manual at Google (PDF, 160 pages).

The Big Picture on SEO

Okay, so what does this mean for how you can get your website to show up in search engines? I wrote a quick overview in plain English on how Google's manual fits into SEO. Get a free copy of my SEO eBook (35 pages, PDF).

How to Edit Your LinkedIn URL

Posted: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 17:18:26

If your LinkedIn profile URL is something like LinkedIn/in/bobsmith/245645465/3234/233, you can edit it to LinkedIn/in/bobsmith.

Here is how to do this:

How to Edit Your LinkedIn URL

Go to Profile
Select "Edit Profile"
Below, it shows your LinkedIn URL
Move your mouse over the LinkedIn URL
A tiny icon of a pencil appears.
Click that.
At the right of your screen, a bunch of options appear.
Under "Your public profile URL", you can edit the URL.

Social Apps in China

Posted: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 17:23:02

See Dan Grover's excellent article on the features of WeChat, QQ, Taobao, Baidu, Dianping, and other social tools in China.

The Chinese are developing social far ahead of what we have in the USA.

SEM, PPC, Paid Placement... It's Just Advertising

Posted: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 19:04:39

The following words are useless in 2015:

PPC (pay-per-click) was the name for advertising in Google, but you can also place ads in Google and pay for the display (impression), not the click. So the term PPC is now useless.
SEM (Search Engine Marketing) became the new name for putting ads on the web because it really meant putting ads in Google. That covered PPC and impression advertising. But.. search engines are no longer the center of the universe. That shifted to social on mobile. What do you call ads in Facebook? SEM?
Paid Placement is a better term: it covers the payment to place ads on search engines, social, websites, blogs, apps, and so on. But... isn't that just another word for advertising?

So let's just call it advertising. That includes paying for the click, the impression, content placement (get your text or video into a blog), and so on.

And while we're on this, what about SEO? That's Search Engine Optimization, which the methods to get your website to rank higher in Google. But... the same problem: Google's no longer the only issue. What's SEO for social? There's no name for that.

What about SEO for apps? There's actually a new field for SEO for apps; it's called ASO (App Store Optimization, or how to get your app to rank higher in Apple App Store and Google Play).

I call it Findability. Your target audience can find you (website, page in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) whatever device they are using (desktop, tablet, cell phone) in whatever software (search engine, social, etc.) they're using.

What about online and offline marketing? Digital vs offline? There's no clear difference anymore. Only a newbie would launch digital and offline campaigns that are independent of each other. The proper way to do marketing is to launch a campaign where the various elements support each other: the ads in Facebook point to the (paid placement) video in Youtube; the ads on the billboard use the Twitter hashtag; the QR codes on the bus ads point to the website, and so on. All of these platforms (search engines, websites, blogs, videos , ads, etc.) should point to each other in a meaningful way to support the goals of the campaign and the company.

What about Content Marketing? I hesitate to call it advertising because often, it's not advertising (the point of advertising is to sell something). When a university publishes a series of academic books on foliage in the rainforest, that's research and publishing. Yes, it does enhance the university's reputation, but that's not the point of their publishing. I write my books primarily to educate and inform, not to promote myself. Yes, indeed, the books do help in promotion, but that's not my main goal. So... you have to look at the key purpose of the content (books, video, etc.) to determine if it's publishing or advertising.

The Numbers: Social Media Users in the US

Posted: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 18:45:19

The Numbers

Pew released data on the number of social media users. There are 314m people in the US (about 250m adults):

Facebook = 71% (178m US users)

LinkedIn = 28% (70m)

Pinterest = 28% (70m)

Instagram = 26% (65m)

Twitter = 23% (58m)

- Pinterest and Instagram doubled in three years

- Twitter and LinkedIn grew, but slower

- Pinterest is bigger than Twitter

- FB did not grow at all

See the Pew study at http://www.pewinternet.org/…/01/09/social-media-update-2014/

Twitter Search Results: Big Mess

Posted: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 21:52:26

When you search in Twitter, the results depend on how you search.

In the screenshot, I'm looking at searches for CalTrain (the local San Francisco Bay Area commuter train):

1st column: Results for @CalTrain
2nd column: ‪#‎ CalTrain‬
3rd column: CalTrain

You can see none of the search results match.

That's pretty bad. So you need to track all three keywords (with @, with #, and none) to follow the company.

Where the Startups Are

Posted: Fri, 06 Feb 2015 01:19:56

Where to start your startup? Be where you're surrounded by people with tech skills, startup experience, business skills, etc. who have access to funding, lawyers, CPAs, etc.

An MIT map shows where the most successful startups are: Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Redwood City, and East Palo Alto. Menlo Park is off the scale.

Read the article for more.

How to SEO your Email

Posted: Wed, 25 Feb 2015

SEO isn't just for getting your website to show up in Google. You use SEO to get your Facebook page to show up in Facebook or to make it easy for people to find you in LinkedIn.

And now, you use SEO for your email.

I've been switching as much as possible from desktop-first to mobile-first, which means I use the web mostly through my mobile device. On business trips, etc., I take only my cell phone: no laptop or tablet.

The email's subject line is "SearchCap: Google Business Photos & Chat, AdWords Spring Cleaning & Google Unwanted Downloads".

In desktop view, you see the first 80 characters of the email's subject heading ("SearchCap: Google Business Photos & Chat, AdWords Spring Cleaning & Google Unwan...")

However, in mobile, you see only the first 48 characters of the email's subject heading ("SearchCap: Google Business Photos & Chat, AdWor..."). The remainder ("...Spring Cleaning & Google Unwan...") is not shown. Mobile is clipping your email's subject line.

This is very bad news. If your email's subject isn't immediately apparent in 48 characters (incl. spaces), your audience will swipe right and delete your email.

This is similar to writing text ads in Google Adwords, where you have only 35 characters per line.

You have only five or six words to show your reader why she should read your email.
The subject must offer a clear benefit to her.

Using Your Logo

What about that big S? Where does that come from?

The Logo Comes from the Google+ Page

Well, there's finally a reason to use Google+. Pej Gruppen, a trends research company in Denmark, put their logo in Google+ so it shows up in their email. This stands out much better in the row of random alphabet letters in email on mobile. You may notice that photos of your friends show up in GMail on mobile: that's because they added their photo to their Google+ profile.

You may notice there is a second line in mobile view ("SearchCap: Daily Search Engine News Recap SearchC...") I look all over the email, incl. its source code, but I couldn't find that text. If you look at mobile view, the same text is repeated in the second line.

Wrapping Up

We've passed the 50% mark. More than half of users are now using mobile, not desktop. If your email open-rate has been dropping, this may be the reason: your emails are not getting attention on mobile devices.

Send a Newsletter in both English and Chinese

Posted: Sun, 01 Mar 2015 19:21:18

A few weeks ago, I did something that apparently very few have done. I created a newsletter in both English and Chinese.

Some will say their newsletter is in two languages, with a left column in English and the right column in French. No, that's easy.

I use ConstantContact.com for the client's newsletter. Their software doesn't quite support this, and during one call with them, they said they had only ever seen one client use English and French (for Montreal), but they've never seen a newsletter in English and Chinese.

What I did was to send out a newsletter in English. At the top, there's a link (in Chinese) that says "Click here to read this in Chinese ". In the Chinese version, there's a similar link that says (in English) "Click here to read this in English ".

Thus the subscriber can choose his language.

There's no limit to the languages: A newsletter could be in English, Chinese, Spanish, German, and Danish.

There are tools at ContactContact to do this, but the documentation and FAQ were wrong. Tech support could only work from that, and they've never done this, so they couldn't tell me how to do this. Their information and support didn't work.

After several tests, I was able to create the links. I documented the steps and sent a copy to ConstantContact so they could update their FAQ.

What's Up in Digital Marketing: SEO, PPC, Content Marketing, etc.

Posted: Wed, 11 Mar 2015 19:21:51

Let's look at trends in digital marketing. What's up or down in SEO, PPC, Social, and so on?

The following charts are made with Google Trends. Enter a search term and Google will show you the trend from 2004-2015 (today = March 2015).

First, let's look at the search engines. Yahoo has declined sharply since 2012 and Google picked up the traffic. Bing hardly matters.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) grew from 2004 (well, from 1999) to 2010, where it plateaued to 2012 and has declined slowly since then. SEO is still the major form of digital marketing.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC), which includes Google Adwords, is the placement of ads in search engines. It produces $50 billion per year for Google. PPC started in 2002 (I still manage accounts from 2002). It has been in a long slow decline. Few clients ask me about PPC anymore. (Many now call this SEM (search engine marketing) or paid placement. I use PPC because that's that the hard core have been using since 2002). This isn't good news for Google. Their main form on revenue is disappearing. Google does nothing to counter this.

Here's the trend for Google Adwords. It peaked in 2010 and is slowly declining.

"Digital Marketing" is the entire field of online marketing. It grew in the last four years.

However, the concept of "web marketing" has been in long decline since 2004. Don't call it "web marketing".

"Content Marketing" barely existed until 2011. While other forms of digital marketing have dropped, content marketing has grown quickly since 2011.

Social Media has also grown rapidly since 2009.

We have been working in web analytics from the beginning in 2002. From 2002-2006, the leading experts, including myself and others, felt analytics would become the leading tool for digital marketing because it allowed full analysis of the data. But analytics peaked in 2009 and has declined since then. There are good reasons for this, which I may discuss later.

Conclusions

So what's the conclusion?

Traditional digital marketing (SEO, PPC, analytics) grew from 2004 to 2010, peaked in 2010, and have been declining.
Analytics has also declined. There are various reasons for this: the move from desktop to mobile, people use multiple devices (so you can't track on one device anymore), and the general realization by companies that analytics isn't very useful.
Social media has grown rapidly since 2009. Social media happens in Facebook etc. and it happens on mobile devices. Both are a shift away from search engines.
Content marketing also has grown since early 2012. CM is a broader form of marketing, where companies use books, white papers, video, and articles to attract their audience. This also bypasses search engines.

We're in a new landscape: Social and content on mobile are more important than keywords in SEO or PPC for desktop.

The State of SEO Today

Posted: 5 June, 2015

Many SEO companies and consultants take a hacky approach to SEO. They write that Google doesn't disclose its SEO ranking criteria so they carry out all sorts of methods with keywords and links to game the system.

However, Google does indeed disclose their ranking process. It's stated in their 120-page manual. They started doing this about ten years ago and they've updated it annually.

But for whatever reason, most of the SEOers aren't aware of it, or it doesn't fit into their view of how Google works. For the first five or six years, the manual was a deeply-held secret at Google (in 1997, I asked Google senior directors about this and they had never heard of it). In the few years, Google began to post it in their Google blogs.

I found out about this from the very beginning through a close friend at Google. I read each version and compare the changes in direction and details.

At a large SEO conference last year, I asked senior staff at major SEO companies about this: they were not aware of these manuals.

Nearly all SEO companies and SEOers take the approach that the Google search engine (and indexing) is based on keywords and links. Yes, it once was. That's how Google started. It used bibliometrics tools to index the web (Google's core technical idea is based on concepts in library science from the 1930s; all they did was to rewrite it as software and and apply it to the web). That was a good idea in 1998 and it worked better than Yahoo, Altavisa, Inktomi, Dogpile, and many other search engines at the time.

However... it was easily scammed. Almost immediately, an arms race started between Google and scammers (and SEOers). Each round led to more filters, signals, etc. But that was not winnable: scammers can use software to launch thousands of variations, watch how Google index reacts, and adjust accordingly. By 2004, some scammers were setting up as many as 400,000 fake pages daily. Even if a page only lasted ten minutes at the top, it could get thousands of clicks and few dozen sales (and the money disappeared).

In 2005 or so, Yahoo computer scientists began to look into how to solve this. Yahoo started in 1995 as a manually-curated list. At first, David Filo and Jerry Yang built it by hand and later, several hundred people sat in a large office building, where each person managed a topic by selecting and sorting the links. That worked... when the web was just a million sites, but by the late 90s, the web got too big. Nevertheless, Yahoo realized that humans were better than software at spotting fake sites. So in the mid-2000s, first Yahoo and then Google began to set people to review pages.

At Google, staffers were interrupted several times daily to review and rank pages. Google did this for a while and, when they saw it worked, they expanded this to 10,000 outside contractors. Yes, Google uses people to review and rank pages. I know this because I've used the tools and I have Google's training manuals.

Soon, Bing, Yandex, and Baidu also began using human reviewers. I also have Bing's manual. I know Yandex (the Russian search engine) and Baidu (the search engine of China) also do this because both have offices in Silicon Valley and I met with senior-level people at both companies.

There are lots of details in how each search engine does it and how they work with their AIs, but in general, they have the same goal and problem:

The Goal: How to identify the top 10 links for a topic. It was easy in the mid-90s but now, for any topic (say, Type 1 Diabetes), there can be easily 10m pages. The search engines need the ten best pages. The top 200 pages are pretty much identical in quality so no algorithm can choose the top ten.
The Problem: How to block spammers and fraud who try to steal users' money.

Human reviewers solve those two problems: they look at several dozen pages on the same issue (type 1 diabetes) and pick out the most authoritative, professional, expert, and trustworthy sites. The acronym is actually TEA: Trust, Expertise, Authority. Do you trust this site? Is the site made by experts? And does it have authority, i.e., do other relevant, reputable sites link to it?

Trust: The reviewers look for evidence of an actual company. Does the company have an office with a street address? That's better than a site without a street address. But better yet: Google sends someone to drive by the office and take a photo. Is there an office at that location or is it an empty lot?
Expertise: Was the content written by topic experts? This doesn't necessarily mean a Harvard professor. If it's diabetes, then indeed, the page by a Stanford medical school professor wins. But if the page is about skateboarding, then Tony Hawk is the authority (if you don't know who he is, ask anyone under 24). And yes, Google indeed checks to see if Prof. Med. Milo Minderbinder is a professor at Harvard Business School.
Authority: If it's a Stanford page on diabetes, does it have links from the Mayo Clinic, the NYT health section, the WHO? Links from minor or irrelevant sites don't count.

Did you see keywords in that list? No. The manuals don't discuss keywords.

Human review allows search engines to a) pick the ten best pages for a topic and b) block the spammers.

But nearly everyone in SEO focuses on keywords because 1) it's easy to do 2) clients don't know any better 3) and it's easy to get bumps.

It's very easy to get a page to rank #1 for a keyword. Just to prove this, I set up a page for my cat, whose name is Anaximander Katzenjammer. Just the cat's name in the TITLE tag and meta

What about content marketing? Search engines don't like "$5 for 500 words junk content by nobodies". The purpose is clearly to divert people to quick-sell sites. Google and Bing have identified over 120 content farms and they share the list and block the content.

What about social media? Likes, followers, postings, etc.? Zero value in terms of search engine ranking. Why? Too easy to fake.

So, real SEO is based on how Google, Bing, Yandex, and Baidu are indexing the web. metae a minor issue.

If you ask Google today about this, they'll either deny it (very few people at Google know about this) or, when presented with proof, they'll give a convoluted reply. However, Bing, Baidu, and Yandex are more open about this.

You may be wondering about my SEO credentials: Former Head of Global SEO at Cisco. Author of 12 books on SEO. Digital marketing strategist for Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. Book on SEO published by McGraw-Hill. Technical editor of the 600-page SEO book by IBM Press. Advisor to a technical SEO company. Member of an invitation-only group for directors of SEO at billion-dollar global corps (and member of the year). For MIT and Harvard, I manage 42 languages in 120 countries.

Blog Postings for 2016

Poems at my website

Posted: Sun, 14 Aug 2016 19:23:13

A few years ago, on a lark, I added a few poems to my website. I like poetry quite a bit and keep copies of favorites. Last year, I went to a weekend poetry reading. For many years, I've been translating Rilke's poetry.

I assumed few people cared about poetry, but I was surprised.

This morning, while checking my analytics, I looked at the data for the poems at my andreas.com website:

I was surprised to see how many people looked for and read these poems.

Go ahead. Read a few poems. Some of these are very good. By coincidence, my favorites have a cricket and a grasshopper.

Technical SEO vs. Quality SEO

Posted: Mon, 22 Aug 2016 15:23:39

In general, there's two major forms of SEO: Technical SEO and Quality SEO. Let's look at the difference, how each one works, and how you can use these.

Technical SEO

First, what is Technical SEO? This is the method of modifying pages so the search engine algorithms will find the page, index it correctly, and show it in the search results.

Technical SEO works for concepts and terms that your organization owns: the name of your company, your name, your trademarked products or services, books, videos, and so on. It also works for organizations that are the owners of parks, museums, cities, etc. The web page is the authoritative page for the concept.

20% of searches are navigational: people are looking for the official page for something. They are looking for the webpage for Justin Bieber, Yosemite National Park, or Honey-Baked Ham. If technical SEO is done correctly, a navigational search will bring up this result in the top position.

Why does this work so well? Because if you're the owner of the concept, then your webpage should be the top result for a search. Competitors will never beat your page. (Of course, an organization may not bother to do technical SEO so you can show up higher than the organization, but eventually, either the search engines will figure this out or the organization will improve its SEO, and you'll be knocked off position #1. So if you're #1 for something that you don't own, don't count on it. The owner only has to wake up and your page will drop.)

(This is bad news if you're selling something for which you don't have the rights. If you're selling the Nike Airflex TornadoMax shoe, you'll never be #1 for it. Nike will get that. You might get position #5 if your company is Footlocker. Otherwise, you'll need to pay for ads in Google. It's much better to sell something that you own than to sell another company's products.)

Technical SEO is fairly easy (if you know SEO fairly well...). You do the following:

Make it obvious to the reviewer and the search engine algorithms that you are the rightful owner of the concept
Use the top keywords for your page
Use the TITLE and DESCRIPTION meta-tags
Use <H1>, <H2>, and <P> tags for content formatting. This also includes the position of keywords in those tags.
Add links (with meaningful content) to other pages in your site
Add links to relevant authoritative sites
Use XML sitemaps, which includes normal sitemaps, global sitemaps, image sitemaps, and video sitemaps
If relevant, use microformats
If you have images, use keywords in the image file name and add captions under the images
If you have video, follow the SEO guidelines for video
If you have apps, use ASO (App Store Optimization). See my ASO Book (at Amazon).
If social media is relevant to you, carry out SEO for social media to ensure your profile will show up in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, WeChat, GleeBee (okay, I made that up), and every other relevant social site
If you've written books, make sure both your author name and your books show up in Amazon and Kindle
If you're selling products that are available on Amazon, make sure your products show up by name and concept in Amazon
If China or Russia is relevant to you, optimize for Baidu (China) and Russia (Yandex)
Review your web analytics. Look at the section for organic, paid, social, and referrer traffic. See where your visitors are coming from and optimize for those sites.
Tools include Google Adwords, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, and Bing Webmaster Tools

There are several more items, plus each of these has lots of details, but you can see that technical SEO can be a to-do list. The challenge is in the scope of the project: what if you have 50,000 pages? Technical SEO then becomes a matter of managing a bit of work.

Just to prove this works, I made a page for my cat. My cat's name is Anaximander Katzenjammer. Go ahead and search for his name. See?

Where are the problems? If your content is hard to find by crawlers (such as infinite crawl spaces), poorly formatted (such as text in DIV or SPAN), or impossible to index (such as showing text as an image), it won't get indexed because the search engine either can't find the page or can't deal with the text.

And just because your page gets indexed doesn't mean it will show up in the search results. There are 165 million .com domain names and easily several trillion web pages, but most of that is junk that search engines will never show.

Quality SEO

Okay, so what is Quality SEO? This is my name for the approach to making pages that will appear in informational searches.

What are informational searches? That's where people are looking to learn about a topic. 80% of searches are informational searches. Informational search results are terms that nobody owns. Nobody owns topics such as pregnancy, credit cards, publishing, and so on.

Informational search results will show the ten best pages for that topic. However, since nobody owns the topic, and there are lots and lots of pages for that topic, how are those results selected? A team of humans at the search engines select the ten pages for the query.

That last sentence baffles many people. They think search engines use algorithms to index pages. Yes, but for any topic, there are tens of millions of pages. For pregnancy, there are 261 million pages. Let's say 20% of those pages are garbage. That's 50m pages. Let's say 1% are very good. 1% of 261 million is 2.6 million. But we want the very best: the top 0.001%. That's still 26,000 pages. To get it down to the very best 26 pages, a search engine has to select 0.000,000,01% of those pages. Algorithms can use rules to find the top pages, but at best, they may find the top 0.001%, which still leaves you with 26,000 pages. So the search engines use algorithms to sort the 261 million pages into poor, okay, good, and pretty good, and then search engines use people to find the ten very best ones.

And it's not enough to be on page one. Your page should be at the top of page one. The first three or four links get 90% of all traffic for that topic.

Why? Because there are two ways when people make decisions. If it's under $200 or so, people often buy immediately (an impulse purchase), without further thought. Just click and buy. However, if it's over $200, they generally research the issue. They enter the buying cycle of research, consideration, and purchase. What can I get to solve my problem? Will this actually work? Is this the best product? Can I get it for less? The more expensive it is (several thousand dollars or more), the more time and research.

So... if 80% of searches are informational, and the first three links get 90% of clicks, then when people enter the buying cycle, the first few pages will heavily influence what they will buy. The value to companies is staggering. That's why the large companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for SEO work to be on at the top.

However, technical SEO has zero significance for quality SEO. As part of my SEO work for clients, I review informational search results pages. I've often seen items show up on page one where the page had no SEO work, not even metathe list.

That's the challenge. You're not competing against search engines. You're competing against millions of other very good pages. To get there, you have to convince a small team of people at the search engines that your page is one of the ten best pages for that topic.

If you want to get onto page one, your page has to be good enough to displace a currently-existing page. This can be very challenging: you have to write world-class expert content of a quality that attracts natural links from universities. It can take several months of research and writing to create such a page.

Common Objections

I've spoken at many conferences about SEO. Here are common objections and questions:

Q: But this is impossible! Humans can't evaluate tens of billions of pages!: A: That's true, they don't. They only evaluate the very best pages.
Q: It would take millions of people! A: If you estimate on the back of an envelope, it can be done with only a few thousand people. Google started with ten thousand workers, but later, they improved the process and it's now about 8,000.
Q: Google says no Google employee is doing this. A: That depends on what the meaning of "is" is. In 2005, it was Google employees. A few years later, Google outsourced this to another company. So the workers aren't hired by Google; they work for other companies, which are hired by Google.
Q: How can people in the US evaluate pages in German, Danish, and Tamil? A: They don't. Of the 8,000 humans at Google, about half are in the US. There are Google teams in Germany, Egypt, Denmark, and so on. They cover all languages, even Icelandic.
Q: Why is Google doing all of this? A: Because algorithm tools don't work very well at blocking spam/scam. Scams are very good at attacking the search engines. If a search engine is cluttered with junk or scams, people stop using it.
Q: What about Bing? A: All the search engines do this. Google, Bing, Baidu, and Yandex all have human evaluation teams. There are differences in details, but in general, they have the same approach.
Q: What about Google's new AI? A: Google is using its AI to offer better replies to questions. These are written by Google, not websites. If you have the latest version of Google Chrome on your phone, try talking to Google. Say "Okay, Google, what's the status on Southwest flight 2416?" "Okay, Google, will it rain tomorrow?" "Okay, Google, navigate to the nearest gas station." These aren't search queries for web pages. Google uses data from maps, airlines, weather, traffic, and many other resources to create one-time replies for you. Google collects every query, categorizes them, and looks to see which it can replace with its own own results.
Q: But practically no SEO book, website, or blog talks about this. A: Because they don't know. They focus on technical SEO because it's easy to do (just add meta>
Q: So how do you know about this? A: Because I started doing SEO before it was even called SEO. I've been building websites and working with search engines since 1994. I pay a great deal of attention to search engines; I know key people at the four major search engines. I was the head of Global SEO at Cisco (44 languages, 84 countries). I know about the internal tools they use, the companies that manage this for Google, how these people do the work, how much they're paid, and so on.

So What Should I Do about Google?

Use search engines to bring visitors to your site, but don't rely on search engines.

At Google conferences, Google VPs will say there are three actors in search: Google, the users, and websites. Google pays attention only to users. If users are happy, they return to Google. That's what matters at Google. To put it clearly, Google doesn't care about your website.

Note what I wrote above about Google's AI. Google is evolving from a search engine into an answer engine. This means if Google can replace your site with their answer, they will.

You must develop as many paths as possible for your audience to come to you: websites, search engines, apps, digital advertising, social media, video, images, books, and so on. Don't rely on search engines, because when Google changes its rules, they won't announce it and they won't listen. Your traffic can fall 60% in one day, and for many companies, that can put them out of business.

What Does It Take to Do SEO?

If you just do metametaour site.

If your website has more than several thousand pages, you need to see how much of your site has been indexed by Google. I've worked with sites that have two million pages but only 300,000 pages are indexed. I know about a site with thirty million pages but only two million are indexed. To solve this problem, you use enterprise-level SEO. Yes, it's possible to get all thirty million pages indexed.

If your organization is active in several countries and several languages, you use enterprise-level global SEO. That includes Google for the Americas and Europe, Baidu for China, and Yandex for Russia. You'll need to use relevant languages for each country.

This means proper SEO has become complex and expensive. Small organizations don't have the money, skills, or time to do this.

For More Information

Read my SEO eBook (free PDF at andreas.com)
Search Engine Marketing, Inc. by Mike Moran and Bill Hunt (IBM Press, 2014). This is the authoritative book on SEO.

Traditional Media vs. Social Media

Posted: Wed, 17 Aug 2016 15:19:42

Katherine Viner, editor in chief of The Guardian, wrote an essay about the impact of technology on the media. That's the summary; the long description is "how social media and the web destroyed traditional news (newspapers, TV news, etc.)".

It's a very good essay and if you care about journalism, the news, the truth, and so on, it's worth reading. Here is a summary and my comments.

But there's more to this. First, let me write about my experience in reading and writing:

I grew up in a home where we always subscribed to a newspaper. In high school and throughout college, I subscribed to the New York Time. In graduate school, more newspapers and I subscribed up to the early 2000s. But somewhere in the mid-2000s, I stopped subscribing and even stopped reading paper-printed newspapers. I had switched to the web for news.
I still subscribe to stuff on paper: The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, and Le Monde Diplomatique. I read one or two paper-based books weekly; I read another two ebooks via Amazon Kindle every week. (Yes, I read a lot.)
I also write. Some of you know that I've written twelve books. I wrote my first book in the late 80s, when book printing was done with heavy plastic sheets in printers as large as a train locomotive. For many years, I worked in technical writing both as a writer and a manager; we produced well over a hundred printed books in several hundred thousand copies. In the last few years, I've switched to Amazon publishing and have written three books for distribution via Amazon, both in print and as ebooks. I've also released a number of ebooks as PDFs at my website.

So Katherine Viner's essay is important for me. She discusses the impact of the web on traditional media and I've lived and worked in this.

Katherine argues newspapers are challenged by the web. The web allows far too much junk media (Gawker, etc.) and worse yet, most of the media on the web is based on clicks. Quite simply: the more clicks, the more ad revenue. So... that leads to click bait, which is junk content to get clicks.

That works... for a while. But clickbait kills itself. Because the number of clickbait sites and articles grows while the number of readers stays the same. Clickbait factories hire tens of thousands of writers (and some already use AI tools to generate clickbait). Since clickbait factories can make money, more people open up new clickbait factories. But remember, the number of readers doesn't increase, so each clickbait factory's share of readers will drop. See? When their share is smaller, each factory earns less, which makes them desperate to earn more (to pay salaries, rent, pizza, etc.), so they write yet crazier junk... until the big ones collapse and the little guys give up.

This isn't theory. It's reality. Because I lived through this. This was what happened in the 1995-2000 Dotcom Boom. At first, there were a lot of startups. Yahoo! hired Los Angeles media people, who immediately pivoted Yahoo! from a search site into a media company, which meant it made money via advertising. Others started media sites to make money with ads. That was fine in 1997. A company could make $25-45 CPM (revenue per thousand impressions). (They used impressions, not clicks, because the LA and NYC media people came from TV, where they measure the number of viewers). By 1999, there were thousands of sites. CPMs began to fall from $25 to $20 to $10... and by late 1999, CPMs were down to ten cents. Bad news for the media sites that started with $25 CPMs; they had big offices in big cities, big salaries, lots of staff, etc. Media sites could start with six people and within a year, explode to 500 staff. $25 CPMs could pay for that, but not $0.10 CPMs. So the dive accelerated until they all cratered in 2000. End of the dotcom boom. (That's why we called it the Dotcom Boom. In the end, it went "boom!".)

Okay, there were other factors that led to the crash, such as massive stock fraud, investor fraud, and so on. The crash in CPMs was one of the main issues.

This is happening all over again in social media. There are perhaps 5,000 social media sites in Silicon Valley (and easily more around the world) and practically every one of these is based on making money on number of impressions. Twitter, Snapchat, Periscope, Masquerade, etc. have sky-high valuations which are calculated with the VC formula Number of Users multiplied by the Value per User (VPU) = Valuation. So plug in your numbers: 100 million users X $10 VPU (which is an invented value) = ... whoa! ONE BILLION DOLLARS! Unicorn club! Whoohoo! Order that cherry red Ferrari!

And you, my dear reader, can see this is totally fake. That site isn't worth a billion dollars. What's its real value? It's losing $10 million per month. So what's it really worth? Zero. Because there's no such thing as negative ten million dollars. If a VC insists that is value, go ahead and see how many coffees you can buy at Starbucks with negative ten million dollars.

That's the reality of the social web. There's lots of cat pixs etc., but when the money runs out, it shuts down.

Okay, what about the Traditional News Media? How do the social sites affect the The Guardian, NYT, WSJ, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, etc.? I kinda feel sorry for them because they're in a furious race against social sites that have a massive advantage: The NYT must have a skyscraper in Manhattan, must hire professional journalists, must print a paper-based newspaper... all of which costs tens of millions of dollars every month. Meanwhile, it costs practically nothing to create a social media site. Masquerade, which was sold for $100m, was built by three guys in two weekends. Total production cost was a few pizzas.

Summary so far:

Social media has close to zero production and distribution costs; traditional media must spend tens of millions every month to stay open.
Social media is based on clicks, but the number of social sites increases while the number of users stays the same.

Okay, some may point out that in the second point, the number of users will increase when Africa and India come online. Oh, yes, indeed it will. And there will be a flurry of activity around that. But that just kicks the ball down the street. The more social sites, the less audience share. Social media is a bubble, just like the dotcom bubble, and social bubble will pop, just like in 2000. It's only a matter of time.

And yes, there are more factors than what I wrote in the two points, but let's focus.

So here is my final point, which Katherine Viner missed in her excellent essay: Traditional journalism was large media companies (radio, TV, print). Those companies produced enough money to hire very good journalists who had the steady salaries and editorial support to do investigative journalism. That was the good part. However... any large company is embedded within its social fabric: it gets ad money because advertisers generally agree with the news site. If the newspaper criticizes the general economic model, it gets no ad revenues.

Proof? Go start a revolutionary Islamo-Marxist newspaper. You'll sell two subscriptions: one to your poor mom and the other to the local FBI. And you'll sell zero advertising because if an advertiser even thinks of placing an ad, he'll get visits from the FBI, Homeland Security, IRS, etc. until he gives up.

Here's my third point:

Traditional media companies agree with their advertisers because they depend on their advertisers for ad revenue.

Again, this isn't theory. In the mid-2000s, the New York Times spent six months investigating how A Very Large Silicon Valley Company (VLSVC) was using lobbyists to secretly change state law in the US states, one by one, so they wouldn't pay sales tax. The VLSVC found out about the upcoming series, threatened to shut off advertising, so the NYT came to its senses and shut down the investigation (the NYT will deny this, but the journalist told me the inside story). Journalists can tell you plenty of similar stories, but nobody will put this in print. A newspaper can indeed publish investigations that annoy advertisers but the editors and publishers will consider how many advertisers they can afford to lose versus the awards they'll earn. (Social sites are also dependant on ad revenue, but in a different way.)

Which opens up a solution: Get rid of advertisers. If a news company isn't controlled by advertisers, it can do whatever it wants. It can publish real investigative journalism and it will have a loyal audience.

To do this, the news company must cut costs. Sell the landmark building. Move out of the city. Cut all possible costs. Publish on the web (because it's free). It can still print on paper if its subscribers pay for it. The New Yorker has 200,000 subscribers; The New York Review of Books has 100,000 subscribers; Le Monde Diplo has 100,000 subscribers; The London Review of Books has 50,000 subscribers. Yes, these are tiny numbers, but along with donations, grants, and its own endowment. they don't rely on advertisers and they can publish whatever they want. This is also why these are among the best journals and magazines in the world.

It also means news sites can get rid of clickbait article. The large newspapers often publish junk to attract and entertain readers.

That's my understanding of the media, both traditional and on the web. I really like Katherine Viner's essay: she explains clearly why clickbait sites are killing traditional media. But she doesn't go into the finances of media (both traditional and social), and that's where I think the real problem lays. Their work is colored by their dependence on revenues.

What about the Truth?

News media want to describe what is really going on. The Truth. With a capital T. In the 60s and 70s, it was widely considered that the NYT investigated and then published a correct and balanced account of events. (I know, some of you disagree, but at the time, the NYT was seen as the newspaper of record.)

Clickbait sites don't care about the Truth. They just want clicks, right now, to make money. Katherine writes that these sites knowingly publish lies because they see news as entertainment. But what about the Guardian, the NYT, etc.? Do they publish the Truth? Can they publish the Truth?

In July 2016, a person shot and killed five police officers in Dallas, Texas. While the shooting was still happening, we looked at CNN and various web news sites. 20 minutes into the shooting, none of the online newspapers were yet covering it. They couldn't write so quickly. CNN was at the scene because it had been covering the Black Lives Matter demonstration, but CNN kept showing the same two or three videos over and over and their journalists kept repeating four or five lines over and over.

After a few minutes, I opened Twitter on my phone. Over 700,000 postings in a few minutes. There were live videos every few minutes. Someone posted a live video of the shooter killing a police officer. Postings from people in the crowd, journalists, postings from Dallas police, etc. Even the shooter was posting to Facebook.

A few days later, another shooting of three police officers in Baton Rouge (Louisiana, US). And a few days later, an attempted coup in Turkey. The military shut down TV, but no problem: the prime minister used his cell phone to call CNN in Ankara and did a live video chat on TV. On the streets, people used Twitter, Facetime, and Periscope to broadcast live.

You saw the event, unfiltered and immediately, from every possible angle. No news organization can possibly compete with this. No news organization will throw its doors open to everyone, including the shooter, and the prime minister. That would admit complete loss of control.

This is the advantage of social over traditional media. Everyone can broadcast. The traditional media, which shows the official point of view of society's infrastructure (government, military, corporate), is not only outrun; it becomes obvious that it's just another group, and worse yet, its version is wrong. Authority loses authority. Who are you going to believe? CNN? The Dallas police department? The mayor? Donald Trump? The prime minister? Or the dozens of videos from people at the scene?

But that's also the disadvantage of social. It can show unfiltered videos but it doesn't offer meaningful summary or a balanced analysis. And as soon as the action is over, it jumps to the next riot, shooting, or disaster. Why was there a coup in Turkey? It takes a great deal of reading and knowledge of the country to understand the issue. It can take six months or more for senior journalists, professors, or topic experts to research and write to explain an event. Analysis can't be done in tweets, seven-second videos, and two-hour attention span.

Nevertheless, the seven-second news cycle has undermined the traditional news media. The last twenty years has been a series of news debacles: the reporting on the buildup for the Iraq War turned out to be cheerleading for White House lies. The news media didn't see the massive Wall Street fraud that led to the 2008 crash. News experts were confident Trump could never win the nomination. They didn't expect Brexit. And so on. They've missed every major story. Before, we would have never known because there was no alternative. Now, we share information despite their efforts. Social news prevents the traditional media's control over news.

How social is being used by people is interesting. In my book on Twitter, I wrote about the users of Twitter. Many people in Silicon Valley don't realize that Latinos and Blacks are very active on Twitter. They use Twitter more effectively than people in Silicon Valley. In Periscope (the video app), I'd guess that Blacks make up nearly half of the videos (whatever the percentage, it's a very large share).

There are several reasons for this. Blacks, Latinos, and Chinese use smart phones more than US whites (yes, look it up). They have deep family ties and often live at long distances from each other. So they constantly use video chat and text messaging to share, talk, and see family and close friends.

They also use these tools in a different way. If you search on the web "how to use social media", "how to use Facebook", "how to use Twitter", etc., you'll get hundreds of blog postings by corporate marketing people who explain how to use these tools to make money. But Blacks, Latinos, and Chinese aren't doing marketing. They understand and use the social tools much better than corporate marketing people. Black Twitter (yes, it's a thing) is entirely different from "white twitter" (that's not a thing). Because they're using it for themselves, instead of under the obligation to show the proper face of a corporation, they do whatever they want, which allows remarkable creativity.

So where's The Truth? We begin to realize that what was The Truth in the 60s and 70s turned out to be a carefully edited and tightly managed version of the news from one group's point of view. Social destroyed that.

But social didn't create something new and better in its place. What we have now is 700,000 postings within minutes and nobody can read or understand all of that, so Truth has evaporated. You pick your own truth, or, more likely, you watch today's events while forgetting yesterday. Yes, it's a mess, and no, it's not going to get better or people will figure it out. There's no future anymore.

100m Users... Really?

Posted: Thu, 18 Aug 2016 16:15:46

An app says it has ten million accounts and two million active users.

Is there a way to see the real number?

I look at the app and see 182 people are posting right now. During the day, the number varies between 200 to 350 users at any one time.

If there are ten million accounts, 200 active users are 0.001%. Is that possible?

There's a way to find out. The 1/9/90 Rule says that of the people in any activity (country music, skiing, surgery, etc.), 1% are the active creators; 9% are critics; 90% are passive observers. This has been well-studied in many fields by sociologists for 40-50 years. The actual numbers vary a bit: 1-3% for creators and 85-92% for observers, but in general, this ratio holds. (See Jakob Nielsen on Participation Inequality and Charles Arthur at The Guardian.)

If 200 postings are by the 1% active users, then there are 20,000 passive members. What if 200 postings are by 3% active users? Then the number of passive members is 6,700. So the number of active members is somewhere between 6,000 and 20,000 people, but not much greater (I seriously doubt it reaches 40,000).

This can be applied to just about any social app. Look at the number of actions (postings, videos, photos, music, game scores, etc.). Assume that's 1% and you can calculate the number of passive users (oh, okay: multiply by 100).

Jakob Nielsen makes a good point when he says the 1% are not representative of the group. It's a mistake to take their postings or actions as representative.

SEO for Small Business?

Posted: Mon, 29 Aug 2016 20:04:22

Q. Are there SEO freelancers or boutique SEO firms for a small business?

The issue is money. SEO's results can be measured in sales, revenue, and profits. Large companies can track this so they invest heavily in it. This means SEO experts work with large corps because these pay very good money.

This is a problem for the little guys. Small companies can't afford SEO experts, don't have the skills to do this themselves, and don't have the time to do this.

Any one who is good at SEO will quickly find out that it's valuable. The top people quickly start their own agencies. This also means people at most SEO companies aren't technically competent (if they were, they could double their income by leaving).

There is also SEO fraud. Some SEO companies have 100 sales people and two SEO people. The sales people are making wild promises, signing up customers, and nothing is actually done.

Two Kinds of Searches

There are two kinds of searches:

Informational Search: The user wants to learn about something. Google looks at a page's expertise, authority, and trust to find the pages with the best information. If you want your page to show up, it has to be better than the current ten pages that appear for the search term. That is very difficult for large companies and pretty much impossible for little companies. The only chance is a very small topic where there aren't good search results.
Transactional Search: The user wants to buy, get, download, or install something. Google gives preference to the manufacturer (maker) of the thing.

Let's say Nike makes the Nike Lebron High Jumper (a basketball shoe). If (that's a big IF) Nike makes it clear they are the makers of the shoe, then their page becomes #1 for that item. My mom's sneaker shop may get #1 for the shoe... but only until Google's human reviewers figure out that the shoe is made by Nike. At that point, Nike gets the #1 position forever. My mom can't do anything to rank higher than Nike, not even if she hires me. SEO works until Google figures out there is an official page for it.

It's very easy to get #1 for a product, name, thing, etc.: just be obvious that you're the official site for it. Tip: The vast majority of sites (I'd guess at least 80%) have done no SEO or minimal SEO. There are 165 million websites, so 130 million or so haven't done any SEO. However... around 163 million websites are trivial one-page sites with no traffic so they don't count.

What Can You Do?

Get Visitors: If you get 200-500 visits per month, Google's reviewers will notice you. Your ranking will improve. So get more visitors. Send a monthly email, use Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, etc. (whichever is relevant). The more traffic, the better your ranking.
Don't Worry about Keywords: There aren't magical keywords that will bring more traffic. Use plain, clear words that your customer use to describe your company, service, or product. (This article is for small business owners, so I'm not going to write about metai>
Your Small Local Business: On your web site's front page and contact page, include your full postal address (street, number, city, state, zip, and telephone number with area code). Include your name as the owner, manager, etc. Make sure you're registered in Google Maps . Go to Google.com/Business and sign up. Use your full postal address in a proper format (street, number, city, state, zip, and telephone number with area code) and so on. Note: Google will send someone to drive by to verify that it's a real office.
Your Product: If you make something, then make sure your webpage shows that you're the official maker of the item. Handmade by you in Vermont, etc.
Someone Else's Product: If you're selling something that's made by someone else (you're a vendor, distributor, reseller, etc.) and the maker isn't number one for it, you could use SEO to get #1... for a while. When the maker improves their page, Google will make them number one. No amount of SEO work will change that.
Your Name: People should be able to find you. Get your own domain name (firstname-lastname.com) and include your name, city, and email address. Make sure you show up in LinkedIn. Your profile should be as complete as possible.
Your Book: SEO for Google is fine, but you really need to do SEO for Amazon. Make sure your book is findable in Amazon. Fill out the author profile fully. The same in the description for the book. Look at best-sellers in your category and read their descriptions and profiles. You should also have information about yourself and your book in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and whatever else is relevant.
Your Tweets, Video, Photos, etc: There's also SEO for Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Pinterest, and so on. Every one of these tools has its algorithm to select what will show up. If these are important for you, look into them. But for most small companies, there's not enough time.
Use Google Adwords: For any transactional search, Google will show ads at the top. Most users don't realize or understand that the first three links are ads. Use Google Adwords to place ads in Google. You can use a small budget ($100-200 per month), low bids ($0.15), and use geographic targeting to limit that ads to your city. You can also use ads for your name.

Beware of SEO Scams

We Will Make You #1!: It's easy to make a page #1. If a page is the official page for something, it will be #1. Just to prove this, I made my cat #1 in Google... for himself. Go ahead and search for Anaximander Katzenjammer. See? That's the official page for my cat, so my cat is #1 in Google for himself. SEO scammers make you #1 for yourself, but Google will do that for you anyway if you make it clear that it's the page for that.
Don't Pay for Link Building: Ten years ago, Google counted incoming links. The more links you had, the higher you ranked. But that was easy to fake. Google now only looks at high-value, relevant links. If your site is a veterinarian for cats, then a link from CatFancier com magazine will count, but a link from The New York Times has no value. Do not pay for "link building services". That is a scam.

If I haven't covered your topic, let me know in the comments and I'll add it.

82 Social Media Sites

Posted: Sun, 04 Sep 2016 19:10:23

People often ask me which are the top social media sites. Here is a list of 80 social media sites for a global website (active in over 100 countries).

Since it's a global site, there are many social sites that are nearly unknown in the US, such as Renren (China), VKontakte (Russia), and so on. If your goal is global presence, you'll have to look into setting up in these sites. If you're only interested in your country, then use the sites that are active in your country. The data depends also on the type of site. For this site, Pinterest (#32 with 46,000 visitors) is fairly low in the list; for a shopping site, it would rank higher.

The data covers five years, from August 2011 to September 2016.

I sorted the list by page views. For example, Facebook sent 17.6m visitors; Youtube sent 8m, and so on.

Social Sites, Sorted by Pageviews

Facebook 17,647,444; YouTube 8,042,592; Reddit 3,308,103; StumbleUpon 1,792,342; Blogger 1,734,973; WordPress 1,254,277; Stack Exchange 1,132,292; Twitter 844,237; VKontakte 614,759; Quora 611,136; Stack Overflow 602,077; Renren 596,642; Tumblr 437,819; Naver 352,671; Hacker News 336,366; LinkedIn 323,081; Douban 243,367; Sina Weibo 236,121; Google+ 198,679; Yahoo! Answers 197,472; LiveJournal 175,128; meneame 160,634; Disqus 127,421; FC2 111,719; Taringa! 106,284; Ning 102,057; Digg 89,979; ResearchGate 79,713; Pocket 74,882; BuzzFeed 63,408; Weebly 54,954; Pinterest 46,499; Flickr 44,688; Delicious 38,045; TinyURL 35,026; wikiHow 35,026; Hatena Diary 25,967; Slashdot 22,344; Wikia 22,344; Askville 13,889; Scoop.it 10,870; Squidoo 10,266; Cyworld 9,058; Diigo 8,454; Care2 7,247; DZone 7,247; goo blog 6,643; Drugs-Forum 5,435; Pinboard 5,435; Netvibes 4,831; Meetup 4,227; Scribd 4,227; TypePad 4,227; Before It's News 3,019; Ravelry 3,019; Yahoo! Bookmarks 3,019; Cocolog 2,416; Facebook Apps 2,416; Multiply 2,416; Wretch 1,812; AOL Answers 1,208; Bitly 1,208; BlogHer 1,208; Instagram 1,208; Instapaper 1,208; Super User 1,208; Tuenti 1,208; YouSayToo 1,208; DailyStrength 604; Fark 604; Goodreads 604; Google Groups 604; is.gd 604; Odnoklassniki 604; Oshiete! goo 604; PengYou 604; Plurk 604; Posterous 604; SlideShare 604; Topix 604

Physics...

Posted: Mon, 12 Sep 2016 17:21:20

Eight articles by Matthew Buckley, a theoretical physicist at Rutgers, describe the frontiers of contemporary particle physics. bostonreview.net/books-ideas/matthew-buckley-physics-series

Be Findable on the Web...

Posted: Mon, 04 Jan 2016 20:28:53

Part of SEO is, of course, to be reached. It's one thing if people can find you on the web, but the second part is to let them reach you.

When I do SEO for clients, part of the process is to make sure they can be contacted on the web. Often, they have webpages or accounts in LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter, but many people check those pages only occasionally, if at all.

You should put your email address on all of your social media pages, incl. your website.

What about spammers? It used to be a problem 10-15 years ago that spammers scrapped webpages to get email addresses so they could spam people. But Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc. have pretty much put an end to that. There's very little junk spam anymore.

My email andreas@andreas.com has been visible on the web since 1995. I get only two or three spam messages per day. But I also get emails from potential clients, invitations to speak at conferences, long-lost friends, students asking for information and help, and so on, which far outweighs the few spammers.

If you use LinkedIn, be sure to fill out your contact information. Add an email address that you check daily.

Use a Tracking Pixel in Google Adwords

Posted: Thu, 14 Jan 2016 00:30:30

Q: How do I fire a tracking pixel in Adwords? -- Perplexed in Peru

A: Dear Peru; Way back in the late 1990s, there was indeed a pixel. A clear image was placed on a web page. It was a 1X1 image, the size of a single pixel, with a unique name (e.g., pixel.gif). Because it was clear, the visitor couldn't see it. You then looked at the hit counter (sorry, web analytics hadn't been invented yet) and saw that you had a hit on good ol' pixel.gif. Since it was clear and filled only one pixel, web companies filled the page with 500 pixels. Bingo! When you visited the page, that counted as 500 visits. Yep, they talked about hits. Funny, no? Conversions hadn't yet been invented either. The interweb still ran through steam pipes.

Nobody uses pixel images anymore because that was too primitive. Yet I still hear people talk about pixels. Whatever.

What you really want is Javascript. The following works if you want to track an event where a click doesn't open a new page:

Look at your web page and find the button that you want to track, such as "Buy Now!".
Open the HTML for your page, such as http://whatever.com/stuff.html
Find the following text string <a href="http://whatever.com/stuff.html">Buy!</a> (Tip: use search to find the text in the button, e.g., "Buy!").
Replace it with this new string: <a href="http://whatever.com/stuff.html" onClick="ga('send', 'event', { eventCategory: 'sale', eventAction: 'account', eventValue: 10});">Buy!</a>
Note: In the string, eventCategory is set to "sale". You can change this to "lead", "registration", "signup", whatever.
Note: In the string, eventValue is set to "10", which is $10. You can set this to zero, but it's best to give it a value, such as the average value of a sale. If you want to track the actual value of each sale, contact your transactions tool's support and ask them for the code.
Save the file and upload to your server.
When someone clicks on your button, it'll show up as a conversion in Google Adwords. Cool, no?

What It Does: A bit of Javascript simulates a page event in Google Analytics. I could explain this, but it takes too long and you don't really care about the details.

Another Note: In most cases, you'll have to ask your web developer to make these changes for you (it's usually that 12-year girl in the computer department). Most sites aren't simple HTML anymore, so she'll have to find the button and change it for you.

Upgrading to Windows 10

Posted: Fri, 15 Jan 2016 16:41:00

After some 450 reminders from Microsoft to upgrade to Windows 10, I began to think about it. See? Advertising works :-)

So I'll document how I'll do this.

Tues, Jan. 12th, 2016: Will I Yes or Will I No?

I have Windows 7. The full name is Windows 7 Home Premium: Millennial Celebration: With Her Majesty's Kiss, Service Pack 1. Or something like that. They can't just say Home or Office, it has to be Premium, which of course implies there is Standard, Average, Cheap, etc., and none of these exist so it's just marketing blah-blah-blah to make you feel special. Which is why it's the Millennial Edition.

And it's not easy to know which version you have. You have to dig around. Click the Start button (lower left corner of screen), move the mouse over Computer, right-click, select Properties, and the message box shows your current version.

I use Word 2002, Powerpoint, and Excel. These are all the 2002 version (in each one, click Help | About).

So why upgrade?

Everything works. Stable, etc. And best of all, I own the software, so no subscription fees.
Someone asked me about security the other day. I looked into this and it turns out Windows 7 (and pretty much everything before Win10) is fairly hackable. Remember those clever gadgets that you could put on your desktop? Gone. Too easy for hacker to get into your computer. (If you're using desktop gadgets, get rid of them. Right-click the desktop, select Gadgets, right-click each gadget, click Uninstall.)
I use Powerpoint a lot. I give talks at conferences and events at least every month and often, several times a month. The new version of Powerpoint has much better features for layout.
The same for Excel, which I use daily. The new version is much better.
I really don't like the Ribbon in Office, but tools can remove Ribbon and make it look like Classic Windows tools.
If the new versions of PowerPoint and Excel save me even just a few minutes, it's financially worth it.
Windows 10 is free until July. After July, you have to pay.

Why should I not upgrade?

Let sleeping dogs lie. If it works, don't break it. It's a hassle to upgrade. Who knows what might break?
Why pay more? I paid for Windows XP and Office into 2002. XP was included with the computer. When I upgraded to a new computer in 2010, Win7 was included. As for Office, I upgraded it from Windows XP, so Office was $240 in 2002. It was a business expense, so a 30% tax deduction means it cost me $168. I've used it for 13 years which is $13 per year, a dollar per month, or a cup of coffee every month.

What if I don't like it? Microsoft assures me that I can revert to Windows 7 and Word 2002.

So the for-reasons are better than the don't- reasons (for: better security, better tools)(don't: the trouble of doing so), plus I can undo the mess. The aye-votes win.

Here's a fairly good review of what's new in Office 2016.

Thurs, 14th: Buying the Office Software

I went to the Microsoft Store at the Stanford Mall and bought Microsoft Office Home & Student 2016: Lady Gaga Galactic Tour; the Homecoming. They're still at it with the long names (okay, "Office Home & Student"? Three nouns? Why not "Office Home Student Bird and Bath"?). There are five or six versions of Office. Most of them are for five computers and you pay an annual subscription around $100 per year. I use one main computer. Yes, I have a laptop, but I rarely use it (and less and less, as I switched first to a tablet and then to a Samsung Note smartphone; I don't use a laptop anymore). So a $150 one-time payment for Office 2016 with Word, Excel, and Powerpoint for one computer (it includes OneNote, whatever that is, which I won't use). It's a business expense so I'll cover the cost in less than an hour of work.

I bought this as a product in a little box, which is actually just a little box with a playing card in it. The card has the license key (250 digits or so). That's all. No manual, no disk. You can pay online and download, but I chose a box because ten years from now, I'll know where the license card is (in the folder for important stuff, like the cat's vaccination records).

Why did I buy a card in a box? If you buy it digitally and keep your records as digital files, darling, I can guarantee you that in ten years, you won't know know where it is and you definitely won't have the computer or software to open the file. I've been working with computers since the 80s (okay, so it was an slide rule) and none of my files even from the late 1990s can be opened. Computers don't use diskettes anymore; new computers don't have disk drives; I have a box of Zip disks that are less useful than an Indian arrow head.

So I put more firewood in the computer and got ready to upgrade from Win7 to Win10. I did clicky-clicky on the button (little Window icon in the lower right corner) and promptly got a notice that my graphics card (ATI Radeon X1600) can't use Win10. First road block.

To find out if your computer can upgrade to Windows 10, go to Microsoft and click Upgrade Now. It'll install a small program. Click on Run. You'll get a message if it can't upgrade.

I need to replace the graphics card. I checked; a new card is $60. I'll pick it up tomorrow at Best Buy. For me, this is easy: open the computer, pull out the old card, insert new card, bingo. But many people will need to pay someone to do this ($50-100). Or worse, they have a laptop or one of those all-in-one computer+screen+toaster systems which means they can't open it so they'll have to buy a new computer ($250-500). (Yes, there are $249 computers. Helen's Mac was wearing out, so last year at the Microsoft store, we bought a complete system (Dell 3000 desktop computer, 20" large monitor, keyboard, mouse, ultrasound toothbrush) for $249. Amazing.)

So that's the situation at the moment. Back tomorrow, same Bat Time.

Fri, 15th: Upgrading the Graphics Card

Went to Best Buy. It turns out the ATI Radeon X1600's drivers can indeed be updated to Win10, but that requires editing drivers, toolkits, etc. It could take me several hours to learn how to do that.

Or just buy a new graphics card. The XFX Radeon R5 220 (named after the CEO's baby daughter) is $39 and has 4X the memory of the old card. Pull out the old card, put in the new card, five minutes tops. It sounds odd, but it's easier cheaper better to replace the card than update the software.

Next step: install the graphics card.

Sat. 16th: No Upgrades Today

I'm doing a presentation on the 18th, so I won't change anything until that's done. Back on the 19th.

Nevertheless, I made a full backup today. Just in case.

Tues. 19th: Another Graphics Card

I installed the graphics card (15 minutes). Same message: Windows 10 isn't compatible with the Radeon X1600 series.

Called AMD support. They say I need the R7 240 card.

Removed the card.

Back to Best Buy.

Got the R7 card ($90).

Installed R7.

Same error message. Called AMD. They say it should work. They say it's a Microsoft issue.

I sent a message to AMD XFX support.

Thurs. 21st:

No reply so far from AMD XFX support.

It's been a week and a half. I've spent perhaps six hours so far.

No progress on upgrading to Windows 10.

Thurs. 21st: Office 2016

On a good note, the upgrade to Windows Office 2016 was easy. Go to Office.com, register with the software key (it's the complete first chapter of Tolstoy's War and Peace) (in Russian) (tip: copy and paste). A few clicks and it downloaded and installed itself.

It's Upgrade Week. My website's hosting server is also being upgraded, so no email since yesterday. Several friends called, concerned about what was happening. I upgraded the server because the new version of Wordpress required an upgraded server (see? one upgrade causes a cascade of upgrades).

Mon. 25th: Windows 10

AMD, on its own, sent out a driver update this afternoon for the Radeon graphics card. I clicked Okay to update it.

I then clicked the Windows 10 upgrade button and it said the computer was compatible. Finally.

I clicked a series of questions (Yes, Okay, Go Ahead, Now, Yes, now. Really). Windows 10 took about ninety minutes to download and another hour or two to configure itself (and restarted four or five times). Finally, it asked me to log in with my Windows ID and password. That's it. It works now.

Next step is of course to see what it does.

Compatible Devices

The following devices are connected to my computer. Do they work in Win10?

Monitor: LG Flatron W2486L: Works
USB external microphone: Blue Snowflake: Works
Inkjet printer: Canon Pixma IP1800: Works
Speakers: Labtec: Works
USB camera for Skype: Logitech c920 HDPro: (Not yet tested)
Flatbed scanner: Canon CanoScan LiDE 700F: (Not yet tested)

You need to test all of these, especially the printer and scanner. Several people told that when they upgraded to Win10, the printer or scanner stopped working. They had to buy new printers. It doesn't matter if a webpage says it works; it works only if it actually works (see above on what happened with the XFX graphics cards: they're supposed to work in Win10, but didn't).

I found out that many people don't have printers. I thought everyone did (this used to be common). But... printers also used to be both easy and cheap to maintain. You can easily refill an inkjet printer cartridge (get a $10 refill kit at any drugstore, Target, or computer store) and it'll refill a cartridge perhaps 30-50 times. After a while, cartridges get clogged up, so buy a new cartridge. Laser printers look great, but they break down and refills are expensive. Perhaps the move from inkjet to laser printer also meant people stopped buying printers? Or perhaps the move away from desktop computers? A lot of friends now just use their cell phones or tablets at home. I've also noticed few people print at the office.

Anyway, if you have a printer or scanner, check before you upgrade if it'll work with Win10.

File Problems

Feb. 26: Over the last few weeks, the computer began problems with opening, copying, and saving files. When I click to open, it tries to save the file. OR the file opens in Read-only mode. I copy a file into another folder and later, find that the copy is an old version. I try to save the file and it won't save.

I talked with Microsoft and they said it might be a bad download. They said to uninstall and reinstall. I did this. Let's see if this works.

Configuration of Microsoft Office: Get Rid of Ribbon

Old versions of Office used drop-down menus. New Office uses Ribbon. But the location of items on Ribbon are illogical and confused; you end up looking through the Ribbon, page by page, to find things.

The best thing about drop-down menus are the accelerator keys (for example, press Control+C to copy). I've written perhaps 75 computer manuals, 14 books and thousands of pages for websites, FAQs, white papers, etc. I use the accelerator keys extensively. I've also changed the configuration of the keys to add new commands, remove commands, or change the keys for commands. Professional users of word processors do this. However, Microsoft Word got rid of dropdown menus and hid the accelerator keys because the vast majority of users won't use this. Microsoft wrecked a professional tool (that's why it's called Office) for the sake of non-professionals.

I found that Ubit Menu can remove the Ribbon. I'll try that, plus test whatever other tools can do this.

Remove Old Software

I uninstalled a bunch of programs:

Microsoft Office 2007: Replaced by Office 2016
Microsoft Office 2010 Primary Interop Assemblies; Not needed anymore
Microsoft .Net Framework: Not necessary anymore because Office 2016 uses XML
Microsoft Mathematics: Never used this
Compatibility Pack for the 2007 Office System: Not necessary anymore
Adobe PDF Reader: Not needed anymore, Word 2016 has a PDF reader
Adobe PDF Writer: Not needed anymore, Word 2016 can make PDFs

Fixing Netflix: 10 Ideas

Posted: Wed, 03 Feb 2016 02:41:47

Netflix (NFLX)'s $39B market is a lot of money. Maybe they should put a bit of that into fixing the site?

Pop Quiz: What's the name of the company? Netflix, right? No. Look at your DVDs. It's actually DVD.com, not Netflix. Why would a company not use its name?
Look at the streaming site. Okay, that's named Netflix. And it uses the N in their browser icon.
But the DVD site uses... a browser icon with the text "DVD".
Look at app icon in Android. Now it's Netflix, but a different logo with red text on white. Are we looking at three different companies? Nobody agrees on the logo? Is there really nobody at Netflix in charge of branding? $39B and they can't find an intern to fix this?
It's not just the logo. The search tool doesn't work. Incredibly, nobody at Netflix bothers to fix this. Try it. Go to Netflix in your iPad or Android. I searched for an actor and there were no results. So to check just to see if it works, I searched for John Wayne. He made perhaps 100 movies. What's the search results at Netflix/DVD.com/Whatever-It's-Called? Three movies. Yep, three results for John Wayne. Total failure. Can it get worse? Oh, yeah.
Search on the app for Moonstruck, the movie with what's-her-name who was married to what's-his-name. What does Netflix show? 16 movies... and none of them are Moonstruck. Yes, they have the movie; it's in the desktop site. But the app can't find it. Broken. One point out of ten.
When search does work, it's generally terrible. Search for "burns and allen", a comedy duo from the 1930s. Netflix search results also include the documentary Death and the Civil War (This film explores how the American Civil War created a "republic of suffering" and charts the far-reaching social, political and social changes brought about by the pervasive presence and fear of death during the war.") That's a junk result.
And why list a movie that isn't available? A bit of investor fraud by inflating the list to impress investors? SEC, anyone?
What about the member's queue? Does that work? I have my queue list of movies. But I can edit the list only on desktop. Queues can't be edited on mobile?
Hey, Netflix! That ringy-buzzy thingie in your pocket? That's a phone. People use those. 52% of searches at Google are on mobile devices now. Maybe (just maybe) Netflix should work on mobile devices? Hey, it's just an idea. Or did someone already suggest this at Netflix and get fired?
Why do I have to wade through thousands of junk movies? Why not let me use my settings to say "Don't show me anything with less than, say, 3.5 stars"?
And zombie movies. There's whole categories of movies that I'll never watch. Why can't I block categories? Or is the idea to just flood the users with junk to make it look big?
What's with DVDs anyway? Look, Netflix has the disk. Why not just copy it and put it on the servers and stream it? And that goes double for classics. Soviet films, Danish silent films, etc., all major historical and valuable films should be streamed. Honestly, even though Netflix has $39 billion dollars, it doesn't work all that well.
I've been using Netflix since it started in 1997. Did I get a ten-year T-shirt? Or a Christmas card? How about a text message? Anything? Is this customer management as taught by Trump University? Just shake 'em for the money? Does Netflix care at all about its customers? Nope.

All of these problems have been around for years and nobody at Netflix notices anything. Is there any management at Netflix? The easy way to find out: let's see if they're following #WeLoveDVD. They could fix all of this in weeks if they wanted. The clock starts now.

- Netflix often recommends ridiculous movies to me. Their vaunted recommendations system is mostly useless.

- I suspect they take a scratched DVD and ship it right back out again. Maybe when you return an unplayable DVD, put it in the envelope and break it.

Would you like to pay $100 a month for streaming? Because they would have to pay up massively to license all of John Wayne's movies and every other movie you want, like Moonstruck. If streaming everything was just a matter of copying it onto servers, don't you think they would have done that from the start? Whoohoo, that's a great selling point and who on earth wouldn't sign up for Netflix! Plus, it'd be much easier for them without dealing with mailing discs and damaged DVDs. There's a thing called content licensing, and it's expensive and limited. That's why things leave Netflix streaming - the license expires. Before you complain and demand that they cater to your whims, take a moment to research.

On the other hand, yes, their recommendations do suck. We can all agree that those do need to be fixed.

Is it a license issue? What about movies from the 1910s and 20s? F. W. Murnau's "Sunrise" is public domain by now. Why aren't these available via streaming? See? It has nothing to do with licenses.

I suspect Netflix is intentionally keeping movies on DVD to obligate members to pay for both DVD and streaming. If it all went to streaming, they'd lose membership fees.

Google Mappers

Posted: Mon, 22 Feb 2016 00:35:40

If you have a business, you can go to Google Maps and add your business. Just click, fill out a few text boxes, and add.

However, scams also use this to make it look as if they really exist. They add street addresses to their fake sites.

So Google has a team of people who visit locations to see if the business really exists. These people are called Google Mappers.

This is yet another example of how Google uses a manual process to verify the information in Google search results.

Google and Fraud

Posted: Mon, 22 Feb 2016 17:34:30

Homeopathy is fake medicine. Its theory is impossible. Studies show it doesn't work.

Yet Google continues to show ads for it, because it makes money for Google. They make money on fraud that may lead people to avoid medical help.

The Independent writes "A total of 57 systematic reviews, containing the 176 individual studies, focused on 68 different health conditions - and found there to be no evidence homeopathy was more effective than placebo on any." (Independent.co.uk, Friday 19 February 2016).

What's in homeopathic medicine? Water. Just water. Homeopathy's own theory shows it is water. By diluting a molecule 400 times, you would have to drink 6,600 gallons of water to get one molecule.

Here are search results at Google (February 22, 2106) which show ads for homeopathy:

Google and all ad distribution networks should stop showing these ads.

No More Right-Side Ads at Google

Posted: Mon, 22 Feb 2016 18:04:08

Google announced on Feb. 19, 2016 that they will no longer show ads on the right side of the search results.

Ads will appear only at the top and bottom. Google will make the change in all languages, all countries. See TheSEMPost and SearchEngineWatch.com.

I checked: if you're signed in with your ID, the ads are gone. If you're using Google without signing in, some ads are still appearing (Feb. 22). This may change in the next few days as the rollout is implemented.

Why Is Google Doing This?

Google is moving towards mobile search as the standard. There are no side ads in mobile. 52% of searches at Google are now on mobile devices.
Google is going to use the space on the right side for its Knowledge Graph, those boxes of information about search topics.
Google will continue to show PLA (Product Listing Ads) on the right side (see the ads in the red circle below). Large companies sign up for PLA to create these ads. These are generally consumer products.

Implications

Bid competition will increase. The only way to be in the top ads will be either Adwords optimization or increase bids. However, Adwords optimization is complex, so the vast majority of advertisers will increase bids.
Smaller advertisers will be forced out. They can't afford higher bids, don't have the skills to optimize, and don't have the time to do this.
Most advertisers don't pay attention to their accounts, so I expect there will be a flurry of activity by active advertisers to readjust and then it will settle down after four-to-six weeks.
Ads at the bottom won't matter much; few people scroll to the bottom of the page anymore.
As for the users, most don't realize the first three or four links are ads. They will click on the ads.

Discussion

Some say Google is doing this in order to get more money for the top ads. But Google has consistently chosen to prioritize the user's experience (which is based on the quality of search results) instead of ad revenue.
I think it's an effort on Google's part to create a consistent experience in both desktop and mobile.

The Data

Instead of speculation, how about some data?

Here is the data for a large client (thirty thousand keywords, 41 languages worldwide). They had 16,000 clicks in the last 30 days:
Another account with 5,000 keywords in 14 languages. They had 63,000 clicks in the last 30 days:
Feb. 19: Google removed the right-side ads.
Feb. 29: Here is the week-vs-week data. Both graphs below show the past week vs. the previous week. Both graphs show Adwords clicks from desktop users. In week Feb 14-20, the ads were on the right side. In week Feb 21-27, there are no ads on the right side.
The first graph shows a drop in sessions from 3,413 to 3,091 (322 fewer sessions), which is 9.4% fewer sessions.
The second graph shows a drop in sessions from 12,237 to 10,764 (1,473 fewer sessions), which is 12% fewer sessions. (Click for a larger view.)
Google said the right side ads get about 14% of the clicks. By removing the right-side ads, clicks should drop 14%. That's fairly close to these graphs.
March 7: I updated the graph. Regrettably, I have only one graph for this week. In the other account, we increased the budget from $10,000 per month to $40,000 per month, which increased the Adwords sessions, which changed the data significantly. So let's look at this graph (which is an update of the previous graph with 53,425 sessions):
Data for the week Feb. 14-20 isn't good because Google made the change in the morning of Feb. 19, so the last two days for that week aren't full days. The best comparison is week Feb 7-13 vs Feb 21-27 and Feb 28-Mar 5. Those are three full weeks of data, global traffic (130 countries), 5,200 active keywords, no significant holidays. As you can see, data changed Feb 7-13 (12,785 ) vs Feb 21-27 (10,764) by -15.81%. For Feb 7-13 (12,785) vs. Feb. 28-Mar 5 (12,920), traffic increased by +1.05%.
Changes included increasing bids slightly, optimizing the keyword CTR , optimizing the ad CTR, adding more keywords, and A/B split testing of ads. Cost-per-click rose from $0.14 to $0.17. The budget stayed the same ($2,314 per week). As you can see, although the number of ads dropped from ten to three, the number of sessions increased +1.05.

Summary: Good for Top Advertisers; Bad for Weak Advertisers

What does this mean?

I expect a poorly-managed (or an ignored account) will suffer severely because 1) most of their ads were in the low positions, which no longer exist and 2) their ads were in low positions due to low Quality Score, CTR, etc.

In contrast, a well-managed account will see an increase in impressions, clicks, CTR, conversions, and sales. Efficient advertisers will get more clicks because 14% of clicks were going to those low-quality side ads. Those clicks now now go to the ads at the top.

I think Google made a good decision. They reduced clutter and got rid of weak ads. Both produce a better experience for users, which is Google's goal.

What You Can Do

Watch your PPC metrics: Look at bids, impressions, clicks, CTR, CPCs, conversions, CPL, and CPA. Look in analytics for trend changes in paid search. Go to Google Analytics and set the calendar span to the last six months. Go to Google Analytics | Acquisition | Channels | Paid Search. Also go to Google Analytics | Acquisition | Adwords | Desktop. Watch the trends.
Increase bids. This is the easy solution. If your ads aren't in the first three positions, increase the bids. However, the easy way is often the expensive solution. Higher bids lead to higher cost-per-click (CPC). You'll pay more.

A friend met with Google, which said the 4th ad gets only 2.5% of clicks. Google's recommendation is to increase budgets (surprise surprise) for keywords with 4th position ads in case they hit budget caps.
Optimize your Adwords account. This is the hard solution. More ad groups, more keywords, keywords in various match types, better ads, and better strategy. Lots of work but you'll get higher ranking and lower CPCs. How much? As much as 80-90% lower. Really. A well-optimized campaign can bid lower and rank higher than competitors.

For example, improve the information in your ad to get a higher CTR, which will increase the ad's rank and lower the CPC.

You can also maximize the ad's vertical height. Use SiteLinks, which allow you to add links such as Products, About, Contact, and so on to your ad. You should also add your address (street and city) and telephone.

If it's relevant, use PLA (Product Listing Ads). These will appear at the top right side.
Optimize the SEO: If paid marketing is too expensive, improve your SEO. If you can show up at the top, you get traffic for free.
Use social media: Don't rely on Google for your traffic. Increase your traffic from other channels, such as social, newsletters, and content marketing. Look at analytics and see which social sites are sending traffic. Improve your placement in those.
Use content marketing: Develop world-class content, such as books, ebooks, white papers, videos, podcasts, and so on. Your audience will share your material, which means it goes viral.

Don't rely on one channel. Try all channels, see which performs best, and improve those channels.

(Thanks to Maxime Dupuy-Chaignaud, whose suggestion about SEO led me to write this last section).

Another Penguin Update

Posted: Tue, 01 Mar 2016 18:02:05

Google is about to release Penguin 4.0, another algorithm upgrade. Here's the dire warning at SearchEngineWatch. What's my opinion? What will I do about Penguin 4.0?

Nothing. I don't care. Because Penguin goes after SEOers who use tricks. I don't, so it won't affect me.

The vast majority of SEO people believe the following three things:

Keywords: Find lots of keywords, because Google uses keywords.
Meta-tags
Links: Get lots of links from other sites, because Google counts incoming links.

Why these three? Because it's easy. It's easy to come up with 25,000 keywords (I can do that in 15 minutes).

The managers don't know what they're looking at. But they have to measure something. So those SEOers do stuff that can be easily measured: keywords, meta-tags, links.

The three bullet points above were true... way back in the early 2000s. But in the middle of the 2000s, Google began to move away from those. Why? For the obvious reason that it was done to spoof Google. Which also means it's easy to identify these tricks, which makes it easy to block them. Thus the Penguin algorithm changes.

If your SEO person (staff or contractor) bought a lot of links for you, you're in trouble. If your SEOer bought blah-blah-blah articles from content farms and then posted that junk as "guest postings" on blogs with a link back to you, you're in trouble. Google is looking for tricks like this. All that work, all of those high rankings, and all of that money will be wasted when Google blocks your site.

So what should you really do for SEO? Don't worry about Penguin updates.

Find out what your audience really wants. Offer the very best answer/solution. Google will rank your page highly, they'll find it, come to you, and tell their friends. It's that easy.

In Plain Words...

Okay, forget SEO and Google. What does this mean, in plain language? How do you get money for Saturday night on the town? It's easy: rob a gas station! But eventually the cops will catch you.

So what's the best way? Get an honest job and get paid. Long-term, slow, and steady.

Junk Content Is Junk Food

Posted: Sun, 10 Apr 2016 18:09:24

Ev Williams, co-founder of Twitter, talks about Twitter and content sites. He makes an interesting comment:

“If you look at feedback loops like likes and retweets, they’ve been very carefully crafted to maximise certain types of behaviours. But if we reward people based on a measurement system where there’s literally no difference between a one-second page view or reading something that brought them value or changed their mind, it’s like – your job is feeding people, but all you’re measuring is maximising calorie delivery. So what you’d learn is that junk food is more efficient than healthy, nourishing food.”

To put this in plain words, content is measured by clicks. Not quality, authority, etc. It's clicks.

Whether you click on an article in Granta or the idiotic HuffingtonPost, it's the same: one click, which is the only thing that the publishers and advertisers want. So "content producers" (i.e., junk writers) churn out whatever gets clicks and advertisers will place ads on it. Twitter, Medium, Gawker, HuffingtonPost, BusinessInsider, and hundreds of others, plus the "content farms", are junk content. Which means some may survive, but they certainly aren't worth their sky-high valuations.

It's April 2016, which means winter is coming. Yes, soon it'll be the year 2000 AD again. Many of you don't remember that year, and many of you weren't here for it. When the dotcom bubble popped, Silicon Valley was smoking ruins. Today, just like then, despite yet more money coming in, VCs are either not funding or they're doing down rounds. Down-rounds are great fun for VCs; they can force their startups to give up more for less. Yes, they funded and nurtured their startups and now it's time to rape them. How can they force a down round? The lead VC quietly mentions to other co-investors that he's not confident about the startup. Potential investors check with the lead VC and also hear that he's considering the startup's future. Whoops. No more money. But to survive, the startup needs another $100m, so... guess who's on top? The VCs can extort massive concessions from the founders.

Google Quality Rater Guidelines

Posted: Sat, 16 Apr 2016 01:56:03

The new 2016 edition of the Google Quality Rater Guideline (146 pages, PDF, 8.2 MB, March 2016).

I'll read this in the next few days and add notes. If you read it, add comments or ask questions.

The Google Answer Machine

Posted: Tue, 16 Aug 2016 16:18:58

Search Engines vs. Answer Machines

I've often said that in five years, Google won't exist. They're so used to search engines that they can't imagine it could disappear.

But they also forget search engines didn't exist until recently. Before the early 90s, there was no such thing as web-based search engines. Yahoo started 1993-4 but it was a directory (a list of links). Modern search engines started in 98-99 when software began indexing webpages. Search engines are now moving to the next step: instead of indexing pages, they are creating answers. Search engines will turn into answer machines.

What's the difference?

Search Engines: Search for "flights to Shanghai" and you'll find a list of pages by United, Korean Air, China Southern, Singapore Air, and other airlines.
Answer Machines: An answer engine creates the answer just for you. Google uses data from airlines, maps, weather, traffic, and other resources to create a reply just for you. The answer is written by Google, not websites. Someone else asks the same question and they may get a different answer, depending on their location, time, past behavior, and so on.

Go ahead and try it. If you have the latest version of Google Chrome on your phone, try talking to Google:

"Okay, Google, what's the status on Southwest flight 2416?"
"Okay, Google, will it rain tomorrow?"
"Okay, Google, navigate to the nearest gas station."

These answers are not from websites. The answers are created by Google (at the end of this posting, there are many more questions that you can ask Google).

Wow. Did Google invent this?

As with most everything at Google, other people developed this idea. Wolfram calls this "computable knowledge", which means information can be calculated by computers. Wolfram released Wolfram Alpha, its computational machine, in 2009.

You can use Wolfram Alpha to find answers. For example, ask for the distance from earth to jupiter at 10:42 am on april 21st, 2428. That question is impossible for any search engine (including Google) because search engines can only find an answer if it is already on a webpage by someone else, but nobody has created webpages with Jupiter's data for the year 2428. However, Wolfram uses astronomical databases to calculate the distance for any planet or moon for any year. It can also do this for hundreds of topics in chemistry, physics, history, and so on. Wolfram Alpha can generate local weather information. Ask it for a weather forecast in five days in Palo Alto. You can even use it to generate music at Wolfram Tones where every song is unique.

So What Does this Mean for Users?

This is great for users:

You get the correct answer
You don't scroll through lots of webpages to find what you want
You won't see junk, fake pages, scams, or spam

What Does this Mean for Everyone Else?

This is bad for companies, newspapers, apps, organizations, and writers:

Companies: Google could replace stores. Why waste your time in looking at Walmart, Sears, Target, etc., when you can ask Google "List of electric self-powered lawnmowers under $200"; it shows you a list; you pick one; you pay with Google Pay; it arrives within a few hours with Google Express. Google has the ability to do this now.
Newspapers: Companies are using computers to write news stories, marketing material, business reports, sports news, and more. Reasd abiout this at bbc.com/news/technology-34204052. See more about this at AutomatedInsights.com
Organizations: Government databases are owned by the public which means Google will become the interface to that data. You'll use Google, not the Social Security Administration. This puts public information in the hands of a company.
Writers: People create webpages to publish their ideas, thoughts, and experiences. They make their pages accessible to everyone. But to find these pages, people use search engines. As Google evolves into an answer machine, search and webpages will fade into a minor field where few people go. The dream of the World Wide Web in the mid-90s allowed everyone to publish on a level playing field. But by 2010, nearly all of the web was dominated by only a few hundred companies. Netflix alone accounts for third of all web traffic. The top 10-20 sites have 90% of all traffic.

It'll get worse: Google can review search queries to see what can be replaced with its own results.

What Does this Mean for SEO?

SEO will shift from optimization into database creation and management. Instead of hiring SEO people, companies will use Google-compliant data formats to arrange data so it can be used by Google tools.

For example, an airline won't need to make its flight schedule available to the public. They'll only need a brochure site with a few pages with about the company. Flights, prices, etc. will be handled by Google.

Examples of Questions for Google

Here are examples of what you can ask Google. You can type these, but you should really try these by talking to your phone. Say "Ok, Google, set an alarm for 7am" and see how it works. See if you can discover more possibilities. I often use "Ok, Google, set the timer for 12 minutes." Set Your Calendar, Alarms, Reminders

Set an alarm for 7 AM
Set an alarm for every Friday at 7 AM
Set the timer for 37 minutes
Remind me to call John at 6 PM
Remind me to buy Belgian chocolate at Ghirardelli Square
Show me my SMS messages from Brian about dinner
Create a calendar event for dinner in San Francisco, Saturday at 7 PM
See your upcoming bills: My bills or My Comcast bills 2013
What's my day look like tomorrow?
When's my next meeting?

Phone Calls, Email, Text Messages, Posting

Call Lindsay Hampson
Call Mom
Text Jason that I'm running 5 minutes late
Send a Hangouts message to Bob
Start a Hangouts chat
Start a video call
Video call Jane using Hangouts
Send an email to Kristin, subject new shoes, message, I have a new cat, full stop.
Listen to voicemail
Post to Facebook/Twitter that I'm going to be in Seattle for the weekend

Music, Movies, TV, Books, Pictures

Play Macklemore
What's this song?
Play some music
What movies are playing tonight?
Where's Hunger Games playing?
Show me pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge
Take a picture
Record a video

Get Directions & Travel

What’s the status of Delta flight 1424?
Navigate to Safeway
Directions to 1299 Colusa Avenue Berkeley California
Where's the closest coffee shop?
What are some attractions in New York City?
Show me my flights
Where's my hotel?
Book a table for 2 at Cascal on Wednesday

Facts & Answers

What time is it in London?
Do I need a jacket today?
What's the weather like tomorrow morning?
Will it rain?
Where was Albert Einstein born?
How do you say turtle in Chinese?
What does gluttony mean?
What's 16 ounces in pounds?
What's the square root of 2209?

Change Your Device's Settings

Turn wifi on/off
Turn bluetooth on/off
Turn flashlight on/off

Other Apps for Google

You can say Ok Google with some apps on your device. You may see a Google Card in the search results with a button that will allow you to launch the app. If you request this action several times and tap the button each time, Google will learn that you prefer that app and will not ask you again.

WeChat: Send a message to Kate with WeChat.
Search in apps: Search for thai food on Yelp

Events and Calendars in Silicon Valley

Posted: Fri, 22 Apr 2016 15:30:44

A list of calendars for tech events and startup events in Silicon Valley from San Jose to San Francisco:

If you know of other calendars, add them in the comments! Thanks!

The Impact of Mobile on Marketing

Posted: Mon, 02 May 2016 20:00:11

Q. How is marketing going to evolve over the next ten years as a result of technological innovation?

A. The general technical trend will continue to develop into a wider social trend:

Cable TV lost 48,000 subscribers in 2015. They're on track to lose 600,000 in 2016. Cable is collapsing.
TV ads revenues are declining. People are discovering all of the possible ways to watch streaming video on digital devices. TV's collapse will accelerate soon. In five years, it will be a disaster; in ten years, TV will be a minor market only for a few elderly who never tried digital.

Both TV and cable will reach a point where their revenues (ads or subscribers) won't support the expensive distribution infrastructure, studios, directors, cameramen, editors, etc., plus of course the money that goes to ad agencies, etc. Their costs are fixed but their revenue is declining.

Google/Facebook together earn more today in ad revenue than all of the thousands of TV/cable companies around the world. That gives G/FB monopoly leverage and vast amounts of cash to enter, take over, and dominate every possible ad platform in every possible market, incl. Africa.

The basic feature of a digital device is the freedom to choose. A digital device can do just about anything, which gives the user a remarkable range of choice.
The technical innovation is the development of smartphones. This created a shift from desktop to mobile.
Mobile added portability. It fits in your pocket.
Mobile is also very cheap. A refurbished smart phone is $7. Around two billion people are mobile-first and mobile-only.
Mobile pocket devices let you text with friends, Skype with family, make, share, and watch videos, buy things, order tickets, manage your money, send emails, check the weather, plan events, follow the news, read books, use maps, surf the web, check the time, listen to music, take, share, and look at photos, look at stars, use a magnifying glass to look at bugs, call a taxi, set a wakeup alarm, and of course, play games. Oh, and every once in a while, make phone calls.

If the TV companies were to try to offer the same, they would have to abandon the basic concept of TV (as in, advertising beamed at a captured audience). Does TV has a chance? No. TV died when the iPhone came out on January 9, 2007.

So how will mobile affect marketing? From the early 1950s to 2009, TV advertising was the center of marketing. TV ads worked because they allowed nationwide distribution of advertising to a large audience. But mobile is primarily personal. Yes, you can indeed use unfocused, broad advertising in mobile, but it's wasteful. Personalized advertising (yes, to a single person) works better. Mobile will force marketing to evolve from mass marketing to personalized marketing.

This doesn't include the reach of mobile. TV networks are country-based. For many reasons, a US TV network can't enter South America, Japan, Kenya, etc. In contrast, mobile is global. A few months ago, I set up a client's campaign in 42 languages and 130 countries. I can do that in a few days. It would take thousands of people at an ad agency to do the same for TV and the cost would be in the tens of millions. I seriously doubt any worldwide ad agency has ever done a global campaign at that scale.

Wikipedia: Open Source Corporate?

Posted: Tue, 03 May 2016 16:11:45

An interesting article in Gizmodo about the evolution of Wikipedia from an open source editorial community turned into the worst aspects of corporate management.

“You start with a decentralized democratic system, but over time you get the emergence of a leadership class with privileged access to information and social networks. Their interests begin to diverge from the rest of the group. They no longer have the same needs and goals. So not only do they come to gain the most power within the system, but they may use it in ways that conflict with the needs of everybody else.”

As you can see, this also applies to many other systems, including the web itself. When the web started in the early 80s, everyone could set up a website. But over the years, the web became highly technical (which requires expensive experts, technologies, etc. which are funded by VCs, etc.) It's now impossible for the little guys to compete against large corps: small sites don't have the time, money, technical skills, or experts.

Google, Facebook, etc., celebrate "the culture of anarchy" (just like the HBO Silicon Valley show). Skateboards in the office, colorful beanbags, and free massage for dogs is just fun! This turns the ideology of anarchy into propaganda, and the purpose of propaganda, of course, is to cover up reality: we get dazzled by the dogs on skateboards and forget that Google, FB, and a handful of VCs control the web.

How Facebook Controls the News

Posted: Sat, 07 May 2016 16:25:12

What happens when large web sites hire journalists?

> (...) many former employees suspect that Facebook’s eventual goal is to replace its human curators with a robotic one. (They) started to feel like they were training a machine, one that would eventually take their jobs. (...) As one former contractor put it: “We felt like we were part of an experiment that, as the algorithm got better, there was a sense that at some point the humans would be replaced.” (gizmodo.com)

This is also going on at Google and other sites: they use humans to train their AI. At some point, they'll get rid of the humans.

The real problem however is the control of information. Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. are using unknown, lightly-skilled people to determine what counts as information. These people are quickly replaced or fired. Information is turning into fast food: cheap junk. The large companies are placing tight controls over what we see on the web.

It is extremely dangerous when a few billionaires have control over information. Despite the colorful beanbags and free dog massages, Facebook, Twitter, Bing, Google, Microsoft, etc. aren't socially-responsible organizations for the public good. They are companies in the business of making money.

One Billion Domain Names!

Posted: Fri, 13 May 2016 17:03:04

Why is it so hard to find a good domain name? Because there are more than a billion domain names. Whoa!

However, only 168 million are active websites. Of that, all of the traffic goes to only a million sites. 167m sites could disappear and nobody would notice. Yes, 1.082B names could be erased and nobody would care.

These domains are hosted on 5.8m computers. A few, such as Microsoft, Amazon, etc., are hosting tens of millions of sites.

Note the spike in registrations around August 2010. That led to a spike in active sites by late 2011. This reached 190m sites and then declined to today's 168m (April 2016). I wonder if this is due to the shift towards apps? Or Wordpress/Wix sites (where millions of sites are subdomains, such as whatever.wordpress.com, something.wordpress.com, and so on)?

Marketplaces: The Next Direction of the Web?

Posted: Tue, 14 Jun 2016 17:36:34

June 10, Chicago -- I was at IRCE (Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibit) for three days. It's a large show for ecommerce on the Internet. There were 650-700 booths and perhaps 10-20,000 visitors. One afternoon, I walked up and down every aisle and looked at every booth to see what is going on in ecommerce.

I spend so much time on SEO and PPC (Google Adwords) that every once in a while, I look up and realize there are entirely new kinds of things on the web. That's one reason that I go to tradeshows: to learn new things.

The new thing is marketplaces. Some of you already know about these. But some of you don't. I talked with various friends in Silicon Valley this weekend and only a few knew a bit about these.

"Marketplaces" are large websites that allow other companies to set up shops within their website.

For example, you make shoes so you set up your shoe store website inside Amazon. The Amazon marketplace handles product descriptions, photos, the catalog, warehouse storage, ordering, transaction (payment), shipping, and returns, all for a small fee. You can use WooCommerce and other tools in Wordpress, Wix, Mailchimp, and so on to build and connect your store to the marketplaces. There are a bunch of tools and services, including agencies for this.

Marketplaces grew 19% in the past year and now account for 33% of all US ecommerce sales. Yes, they're big.

Where Do Companies Advertise?

US companies spent around $60B in digital marketing in 2015. Where is that money going? Here is data from eMarketer (Sept. 2015):

40% Google
13% Facebook
5% Microsoft
4% Yahoo!
2% Twitter
2% Amazon
1% Yelp
1% LinkedIn
2% AOL

Google got 40% of the $60B. That's good, right? No, wait, that's not good.

How Do People Buy Stuff?

The issue is how people buy stuff. According to Bloom Research (2015):

81% of US purchases start with online search
44% of consumers start at Amazon
34% of consumers start at search engines
21% start at store sites

Do you see the problem? Only 34% of consumers start with a search engine. Google has 64% of the US market, which means Google gets 22% of US purchase searches. Not good. This means Google's 40% share of ecommerce ad spend is reaching only those 22% of consumers who go to Google.

Meanwhile, 44% of consumers go straight to Amazon: that $22B that was spent in Google didn't reach them. Google Adwords looks big but it actually has only half the reach of Amazon. Amazon Merchant Services accounts for 40% of Amazon's revenues.

There's more bad news.

How Big Is Amazon?

Amazon Prime is Amazon's member service. You pay $99/year and get unlimited, two-day free shipping, free unlimited movies, free unlimited music, unlimited file storage, 20% discounts on many new things, and more stuff. According to Internet Retailer Survey (April 2016):

60% of US households are members of Amazon Prime
50% of their shopping is at Amazon
40% go first to Amazon
30% buy only at Amazon and nowhere else

Whoa. 30% of consumers don't even bother to look at Google or go to a store? $22B in Google advertising isn't reaching them.

And yes, there's more bad news.

The Ten Largest Marketplaces

Amazon isn't the only marketplace. Amazon Merchant Services has two million stores with 365 million products (SKUs) and $224B in annual sales. eBay has 900m products and 25 million vendors. NewEgg has ten thousand vendors, 27 million products, and $2.9B in annual sales. Here's a table from Internet Retailer (April 2016):

The top marketplaces in April 2016. SKU = Stock Keeping Unit, or a product, which is pronounced "skew". Just so you know, a large supermarket has around 50,000 SKUs. Bluefly, the smallest marketplace with 100,000 SKUs, has twice as many products as a large supermarket. Jet is the size of 200 large supermarkets.

Look carefully at that list of the ten largest marketplaces. What's missing?

Yep... Google. Have you ever heard of Bluefly or Jet? They're bigger in ecommerce than Google?

Okay, a side note here. I knew that there were ecommerce stores in China. Merchants set up shops in Alibaba, Taobao (80m SKUs), WeChat, and so on. I knew this has been going on for five years or so, but I thought it was just one of those things they do only in China. I wondered why merchants could set up in WeChat but there was nothing like that in Facebook. We didn't notice it was happening in the US as well.

New kinds of companies are entering this space. For example, Marketplacer.com from Australia builds marketplaces for companies. If Safeway wants to start a marketplace, Marketplacer.com builds the infrastructure.

What This Means for Google

Okay, here comes a bit of search engine theory. Just take notes.

In the early 2000s, Altavista researchers found there are three kinds of searches:

Informational: You want to learn about something. Who was the president of France in 1934? What's the best way to clean a silk shirt? About 80% of searches are informational.
Navigational: You want the official website for a person, organization, company, product, city, national park, and so on. You want the website for Yosemite National Park, so you search for Yosemite. 10% of searches are informational.
Transactional: You want to get something. Either buy something or download a song, movie, book, PDF, app, software, and so on. You search for it and the search engine shows you the webpage that sells it. 10% of searches are transactional.

This three-part model of search is basic user behavior at all search engines.

You see now? Yes, a very big problem.

In 1998, Google was just a small startup that built a search engine which they wanted to sell so they could go on to do something worthwhile (really). They went around to the big companies and offered it for $1m. Yes, less than the price of a house in Palo Alto. And everyone turned them down. "There's no money in search engines."

Many people think this was crazy: of course there was money in search engines: Google makes $50B every year. Don't they?

But it's true: there's no money in search. Most searches are informational or navigational and Google doesn't make much money on those. Who cares about the president of France in 1934? There's little advertising for Yosemite or Justin Bieber. Any search engine just points to those. Which is why DuckDuckGo and all of the other search engines make very little money.

Google makes money on transactional searches, which is that ten percent of searches where people are looking to buy something. Only a few companies can get to the top of the search page, so to make sure they're at the top, they pay Google Adwords for advertising. Google makes money on ads, not the search. Google is not a search engine. Google is an ad publisher.

From 2002 (the beginning of Adwords) up to 2015, if you want to buy something, you Googled it, saw the ads, and clicked the ads. That made Google #1.

But no more. Amazon Prime is #1. More people buy at Amazon than search for products at Google.

Want to hear something funny? Amazon Prime was a lucky idea. In 2005, a staffer at Amazon suggested it and Amazon tried it. 30% of consumers now buy at Amazon and don't bother to look anywhere else, not in Google or local stores. Amazon memberships created tremendous customer loyalty.

So the other marketplaces are trying the same thing: Build a platform to allow hundreds of thousands of vendors to sell tens of millions of products.

MailChimp, Amazon, Wordpress, Adobe, IBM, FedEx, Visa, MasterCard, UPS, and many others were at the IRCE trade show in Chicago. But Google, Facebook, and Microsoft were not there.

Facebook has a chance in the game. They could set up a marketplace. Facebook has the audience, the advertising platform, and relations to companies. They had a marketplace back in the late 2000s, but they gave up on it. What about Google? Google could buy one, such as eBay or Etsy. eBay would be a good target: it fell 2% in a market that's growing 19% (yes, that's really bad). But this would put Google in competition with its advertisers which would kill its ad engine.

And then there are the Chinese. Alibaba is twice as big as Google and Amazon combined and will soon be the first trillion dollar company. WeChat has 600m users, which is twice the population of the US. These Chinese companies could buy the large US companies.

So, if you're selling products, look into marketplaces. Set up your store in all relevant marketplaces (not just Amazon). Learn about advertising in the marketplaces (for example, Amazon has its own ad platform).

What about SEO and Adwords? Keep doing them. After all, it still reaches 22% of US shoppers.

A New Web?

So what did I mean by "a new web"? I thought about why I hadn't yet noticed marketplaces. In Silicon Valley, we pay attention to search engines and social networks, i.e., Google, Facebook, and the social sites. The goal is to get many to make money on advertising. As for actually selling something? That's for other people.

So much, okay, too much, of the Silicon Valley web is clickbait: creating sites, pages, and stuff to get people to click. In the 90s, we called it eyeballs. Clickbait is junk. Just as the chase for eyeballs led to the dotcom crash, clickbait will also crash for the same reason: the number of people doesn't change, but the amount of ads and clickbait keep increasing, which lowers the value of the clicks.

Ecommerce however is based on reality: People pay real money to buy real products. Amazon's revenues for 2nd quarter in 2016 are around $30B. That's $120B per year, which is more than double Google's annual revenues. Google is big? No, Amazon is bigger. And Amazon sells real stuff, whereas Google is advertising.

So maybe we're entering a new phase of the Internet.

Will the Web Kill Languages?

Posted: Mon, 20 Jun 2016 15:50:35

Q. Will the Web kill languages?

A. I studied at Universitaet Heidelberg (Germany). It's the #1 German university. When I went to Germany in 1977, only a few students spoke English. Only two or three professors could speak a bit of English, and only at a low level. I did all of my university work in German (lectures, books, exams, thesis, etc.)

In the late 70s and early 80s, I was often in Paris, where people spoke only French. Even the person at the Information Desk at Gard de nord (the international train station) spoke only French. The same in Spain and Italy. This was good for me; I learned lots of languages quite simply because I had to learn in order to communicate.

Today, it's entirely different in Europe. Everyone under the age of 35 speaks excellent English. Scandinavians speak English better than Americans.

How did this happen? In the early 90s, the European Union decided they needed a common language and they chose English. German, French, and so on are becoming local languages. All business, etc. is done in English.

I've been to China quite a few times. In Beijing and Shanghai, many young people speak English. I know many Chinese in Silicon Valley; the young who recently arrive speak excellent English. But if you go to west China (Sichuan, Chendu, Chongquin, and the smaller cities), nobody, absolutely nobody speaks anything but Chinese. I know government officials, heads of companies, professors, etc., and they speak only Chinese.

It is astonishing to realize that Europe switched to a common language in less than twenty years. Simply teach it at all schools, starting in the first years.

What about the US? Could it switch to Chinese? Yes, of course. The Europeans switched to another language. But will the US switch? No. There's no compelling reason for US Americans to learn other languages.

In the last ten years, I've noticed educated South Americans (Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico) generally speak good English.

(By the way, English isn't my first language. I speak four languages fluently and read another four or five.)

For the Americans, note that a hundred years ago, French was the global language of business, military, and diplomacy, even in the US. No more. Latin was taught at all major high schools. No more.

I manage global digital advertising campaigns for several very large organizations. For one, I use 17 languages; for another, I use 42 languages in 130 countries. But in both cases, English accounts for 90% of the traffic. English is the global language.

It's nice to be able to live in one's own language. But science, industry, medicine, business, etc. function better when everyone uses a common language. Germany, France, Italy, etc. had to switch to English to compete in the global market.

What about Arabic? Arabic is tied tightly to Islam and Koran (Allah spoke only Arabic, so Koran shouldn't be translated). Which means Arabs who work in STEM use English as their work language. At University of Cairo, medicine is taught in English. This means English is the language of "the real world" and Arabic is the language of religion. Furthermore, there isn't one Arabic language. There are lots of dialects and they often can't understand each other. Although Iranians are Muslim, they generally can't read the Arabic of Koran. I've had many close friends from various Arab countries. Although every Muslim reveres Koran, few actually read it. Just as Latin is the language of the Catholic Church, and see what happened to that (and yes, I studied Latin in high school).

I wonder about Chinese (I'm trying to learn Chinese). The Chinese have 1.2 billion people and a vast internal market. The Chinese sphere is large enough to maintain itself without the rest of the world. Or will we have a bi-lingual world, where people speak both English and Chinese? I live in Palo Alto where Chinese is taught in the schools. Spanish is the second language of California and Chinese may be the third language.

Look, I'm not promoting US English. More Indians speak English than the population of the US. More Chinese speak English than the population of the US. International English is the global language.

Will the web kill languages? A better question: will globalization kill languages? Absolutely. No doubt at all. For me, it's not a question of studies, essays, national pride, etc. It's reality: I've seen it happen. STEM is in English and if you don't use English, you don't use STEM, which means your country, province, city, culture, etc. will be left behind.

Speed Up Your Computer & Google Chrome Browser

Posted: Tue, 21 Jun 2016 15:38:54

The Chrome browser uses a lot of memory. The more memory, the slower your computer will run. You can speed up your computer (and the browser) by reducing the browser's memory use. To see memory usage in Windows:

Press Control+Alt+Delete
Select Task Manager
Click Performance | Click Memory
Turn off a tab and memory usage will drop.

Shut down unused tabs:

It's nice to have 20 tabs in your browser, but each one is using memory.

Close the tabs that you're not using.
Yes, that's an easy one :-)

Suspend inactive tabs:

If you have twelve open tabs, all of them are active in memory.

Put tabs in suspension.
Use "The Great Suspender" extension
Go to chrome.google.com/webstore
Search for "The Great Suspender"
Click "Add to Chrome"
When it's added, click the icon (upper right corner)
Click Settings
Set to 10 minutes (or whatever you want).

Turn off plugins:

Go to the browser address bar.
Enter "chrome://plugins"
Turn off Widevine, Native Client, Adobe Flash Player.
Turn off any plugins that you don't use.
If the plugin is needed, Chrome will ask you.

Set plugins to "Click to Load":

Go to Settings (hamburger menu at upper right)
Select Show Advanced Settings (at bottom)
Go to Privacy
Select Content Settings
Scroll down to Plug-Ins
Select "Let me chose when to run plugin content".

Remove unused extensions

Go to the browser address bar.
Enter "chrome://extensions"
Turn off extensions by clicking Disable
Remove extensions that you don't use.

Use Google Data Saver:

Instead of fetching data from the website, get a compressed version from Google's servers.

Use the "Google Data Saver" extension
Search for "Google Data Saver"
Click "Add to Chrome"

If you have more tips, let me know.

Find Intern Openings

Posted: Tue, 21 Jun 2016 17:46:51

Do you want to be an intern in Silicon Valley?

Before you start, really think about what you want to do and what you want to learn. Don't just get an internship with whoever accepts you. Here are my tips on how to find your right internship. Intern at a Big Company or a Little Company?

Companies use interns as a test to find good staff. If you do a good job, they'll often hire you. Sometimes, they've convert you from intern to staff right away (I know people who've done this). A large company will often pay you, give you meals, housing, travel expenses, etc.

However... the larger the company, the less you'll learn. Large companies have large bureaucracies and intense internal politics where all decisions are made by upper level staff. Mid-level, entry level, and interns have very little active roles.

If you intern at a small company (less than 100 people) or a startup, you'll likely be treated as staff. You'll be given a great deal of work and responsibility. If your manager is expert in what she does and is willing to teach you, you'll learn more in a few weeks than your four years of college. I've known interns who joined a company on Monday morning at 9 am and two hours later, they were put in charge of large projects for nationwide companies.

By the way, Google, Facebook, etc. are not startups. These have 30,000 or more employees. You'll have lots of fun and they have great food but you won't learn much. Use the Internship to Learn

Many companies treat interns as free workers. They assign heavy workloads and long hours. When you finish, they throw you out. And yes, I've known companies that intentionally did this. They laughed about it. "Hey, it's free workers! If they're dumb enough to work for free, why not take advantage of them?" You really don't want to work at a place like that, no matter how prestigious the name.

Your internship is an opportunity for you to learn about the company and the industry. Don't just sit at your desk. Go around and talk with all of the directors, VPs, and C-level. Ask them who else you should talk with. The good ones will talk with you and introduce you to others. Ask them what organizations you should join, what books you should read. Learn as much as you can. Learn about Your Manager

When you have an offer, research the manager. That person will be a major factor in your career for learning hands-on skills, learning about the reality of the job, and getting future jobs.

Look at the person's career. Has she moved up in her career? Has she focused on an industry? Has she been active in her career? Avoid people who jump around randomly or have been in the same position for more than five years.
Is the director/manager have a presence on the web? If she is a VP or director, does she have a web site? If he is in marketing, is he active in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.? Don't work for someone who has no presence on the web.
Does the director/manager have credentials in LinkedIn? Went to a good school, active in associations, lots of connections?
Look at the person's Facebook page. Do they have lots of friends? Don't work for a loner.

How to Find Internships

Send an email to everyone whom you know and ask them if they know of an opening. Personal contacts is the best way to find something.
Find your school's alumni association and talk with alumni.
Make a list of the companies where you want to intern and contact them
Join your industry's association and volunteer. Get into the membership or events committee which will let you meet everyone.
Places to find internships and entry-level jobs: RippleMatch.com, Internships.com, WayUp.com, AfterCollege.com, CareerRookie.com, CollegeGrad.com, CollegeRecruiter.com, Glassdoor.com, Idealist.com, AbsoluteInternshipcom.com, LookSharp.com, InternQueen.com…

The Best Idea...

Start your own company. You'll learn how to do everything. Super hard work, but it's the best way to learn.

If you have more ideas, let me know in the comments.

No Statistics in Adwords Editor

Posted: Tue, 05 Jul 2016 22:39:49

Another minor bug in Adwords Editor. Problem: Adwords Editor can't download statistics. Why: The date format in the statistics dialog box is wrong. This happens if you change the date format settings in Windows 10. Workaround: Change the date format in Windows 10. Description: When you try to download statistics in Adwords Editor, the OK button is grey. Statistics can't be downloaded. Check the date in the Statistics dialog box. If the date appears as "Monday, July 4, 2016", it won't work. The date format should be "07/04/16". How To Fix:

In Windows 10, go to Start | Settings | Time & Language | Date & Time
At the end of the Formats section, click "Change date and time formats"
Set "Short Date" to MM/dd/yy
Exit

This is a minor Adwords Editor bug. It should allow any date format from Windows 10, but it only accepts numerical values. Google should fix it.

Robots, AI, and the End of Work

Posted: Wed, 20 Jul 2016 15:49:40

My Notes on "When the Robots Rise", by Lee Drutman and Yasha Mounk

Robots, AI, and automation (RAA) are coming fast. It's already here in many forms and will expand rapidly in the next five to ten years. Ten years may seem a long time, but 9/11 happened fifteen years ago. RAA won't just change the way things are made; RAA will change our society completely.

None of the current political parties or politicians are discussing (or even aware) of RAA. Hillary Clinton's emails troubles reveal how clueless she is about technology. Trump and the GOP aren't much better. Trump can use Twitter like a teenager, but knows nothing about how the web works.

But those are minor issues: what matters is the overall implications of RAA for economics and politics. US politicians are locked in political arguments over the New Deal model (the pre-1970s model) or Neoliberalism (US policy from the late 1970s). After 40 years of neoliberalism, we see the results: it made the 2% very wealthy and ripped jobs out of the economy. Despite Trump's promises, it's impossible to go back to the industrialized economy of 1940s to the 1970s because the factories don't exist anymore and if they were built now, they'd be built in China.

It's clear that when RAA becomes widespread, US politics will change completely. There will be no more Democrats or Republicans, no more Left vs. Right, no more conservatives vs. liberals. Because all of those oppositions are based on obsolete economic systems of the 1900s.

Drutman and Mounk's essay makes the following point: "The current crop of politicians may talk up job creation—but polls also show that most Americans don’t like their jobs. As one recent Gallup poll found, nearly 90 percent of workers described themselves as either “not engaged” or “actively disengaged” from their work. A politician who would advocate unleashing the robots, promising a combination of generous welfare benefits, and a radically shortened workweek—or even a universal basic income—might quickly build a substantial following."

No one predicted Donald Trump would become the presidential candidate. No one realized he would carry out a hostile takeover of the GOP. The Washington GOP tried very hard to stop him, but he won the vote. Nearly half of the US population supports Trump and another 25% could easily switch to him because they despise the "Washington Consensus", the general term for what goes on in Washington: politicians at the national level (state governors, Congressional representatives, senators, etc.), Wall Street bankers, the US military, and Ivy League white collar professionals (lawyers, professors, etc.), which are the 10% who benefit from globalization, financialization, and technologization. This brings back that word we used in the 60s: The Establishment. Everyone else are Trump supporters.

That's why the experts could not predict Trump; they have nothing to do with anyone outside of the Washington Consensus. They assumed the GOP would use its power to block Trump. But unhappy GOP voters revolted against their Republican Party leadership.

The Democrat Party has the same problem. Bernie Sanders came close to upsetting Hillary Clinton. Democrat voters and independents will vote, but not for Hillary; they will vote against Trump. Hillary may win 2016, but she will have a very difficult time in 2020. I doubt any current Democrat politician will win 2020. The party will face the same revolt that happened to the GOP.

The same situation happened in the UK when Brexit voters chose to leave the European Union. Despite strong assurance from the pro-EU side (politicians, bankers, industry, academics, experts, etc.), the general population felt in their personal lives the EU was not in their interests.

Practically every Silicon Valley startup is based on how to get rid of jobs.

What will happen with RAA? Researchers estimate RAA will take over 48% of current jobs. The US population will be sharply divided into the groups: 50% or more unemployed versus the ultra-wealthy. The 2% will have 60% or more of all the wealth so they will own everything worth owning: every company, building, store, all of the large-scale rental housing, everything. What about those who will have jobs? Remember, 90% of workers dislike their jobs and companies. This happened economic situation happened in the mid-1800s and the politics became a fight of factory owners versus workers. The workers defended themselves by organizing. That's right: capitalists vs. communists. In that fight, the workers lost. We'll see what happens this time.

Adding a Room to Our House

Posted: Tue, 26 Jul 2016 21:07:23

We're going to add a bedroom to our 3-bed/1-bath house in Palo Alto. I think this will be useful to others around here (Palo Alto, Mountain View, Menlo Park, etc.), so I'll document the project. I'll write every week and add photos of the project.

Ask Your Questions

Go ahead and ask questions. Use the form at the bottom.

The Goal: A Room for My Mom

A simple goal: we wanted to build a room so my 84-year old mom can live with us. She is paying rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Palo Alto. That's $2,500 per month plus $XX in utilities and it goes up every year, which is $

ear. By building a room in our house, she lives rent free.

Planning vs. Construction

One of the first things you'll learn is to spend more time on planning than construction. Construction takes two months but we spent eight months in planning. We didn't really understand all of the possibilities, implications, options, and limits of what we wanted, which means we really didn't know what we wanted. In vague terms, yes, but in details? No. Sunroom or bedroom? Bedroom or master bedroom? Contractors?

Every time I asked a question, I got five more questions. It's like when you're in a restaurant and ask for water. Flat or bubbles? Bottle or tap? Imported or domestic? Glass or plastic? Ice or no ice? The best contractors didn't just listen; they asked questions and explained options.

That also meant three of us (my mom, my wife, and myself) had to understand and agree. And not just an "okay, sounds good" agreement; everyone had to really understand the options, limits, and agree on the final decisions. And there are lots of items: size of room, flooring, tiles, toilet, sink, shower, lights, windows, electrical outlets, heating, cooling, and so on. Each one of these could take several pages for me to explain. It took months to understand each item, learn the options, discuss, and decide.

Because there are so many issues that you'll have to understand and decide, I recommend The Owner-Builder Book by Mark Smith (4th ed.), whether you decide to work a contractor or do it yourself. Get it at Amazon.

Addition or Sunroom?

There are two possibilities: an addition or a sunroom.

Addition: When something (bedroom, office, bathroom, etc.) is added to an existing house, it's called an addition. We wanted a bedroom with its own bathroom, so that's called a master bedroom Any bedroom with its own bathroom is called a master bedroom; a house may have five master bedrooms. Bids ranged from $100,000 to $150,000.
Sunroom: We could also install a sunroom. There are two-season, three-season, and four-season sunrooms. A four-season sunroom has sufficient insulation so it can be used all year. These are pre-fab (pre-fabricated, just bolt the pieces together), $20-40,000, and can be built in a few weeks. However, city building code doesn't allow a bathroom in a sunroom. Because the sunroom is on a concrete foundation, you can't install a bathroom afterwards (and if you install the pipes before pouring the concrete, the building inspector will see that). Although sunrooms are cheaper and easier, they weren't enough for what we need, so no sunroom.

General Contractors or Owner-Builder?

We met with a foreman for a construction crew who knew how to build houses. At one point, he said "why don't you do owner-builder?" We had already met with five or six general contractors and none of them had mentioned this.

If you own your house in California, you can be the general contractor for your construction. You don't need a general contractor license, etc. You can do it yourself. (You should have liability insurance, workman's comp, etc.) Get a building permit from the city and start building. You can hire the same construction foremen and crew which work for the general contractors (assuming you can find them).

General Contractor (GC): The GC takes care of everything: the permits, the drawings, the architect, engineering, the construction crews (concrete, walls, plumbing, electrical, roof, floor, paint, finishing, etc.). He manages everyone, keeps them on schedule, and pays the bills. Your only job is to sign a check.
Owner-Builder: If we used owner-builder rules, we would do all of that ourselves. The cost would be half (we'd save perhaps $40-50,000) . However... we have no experience in construction so the mistakes would also be ours. Mistakes also create delays and the crews move from project to project, so a mistake can break a schedule and you end up with weeks or months of no workers. Furthermore, we don't know where to buy lumber, bulk supplies, etc. We'd have to set up a small corporation (for liability issues), buy insurance, sign up for sales tax permit, workman's comp, and many other legal and financial issues.

After looking into this, we decided to work with a general contractor. If you're doing multiple projects (flipping houses, etc.), then you can use owner-builder rules. Otherwise, too much work.

However, it's still a lot of work: you have to look into dozens of issues and make decisions.

Getting the Bids

The project is simple: three walls and a roof. No cantilevered overhang, basements, second floors, etc.

Bids ranged from $90,000 to $150,000 and every step in between.

We chose the contractor who had a good bid, was capable, and was likeable. If we're going to spend four to six months with him, we should get along.

On Tuesday, July 19: We signed the contract and paid $1,000.

City Permits

Do you need permits? Yes. City building inspectors are constantly driving around and checking on projects in process. They'll notice construction and they'll check to see if it has a permit. If you do construction without a permit, you have to tear it all out, apply for the permit, and start over.

A friend told me about another friend who built a bedroom, office, and other additions without a permit. But when he wants to sell the house, his city will notice the changes. He'll have to tear out those additions.

So, get the permits.

Working with the Architect

The city building office requires a layout of the addition to approve the project. The architect draws this and submits the plan.

Thursday, July 21: Meeting with the architect. Before the meeting, we sketched a floor plan. In the meeting, that was discussed and many items were moved or modified, based on their experience and advice. The architect planned a small window to the yard, but we pushed back and insisted as much window as possible. Frankly, if the wall was entirely glass, from top to bottom, that would have been fine. It's a nice yard and view.
Wednesday, July 27: Meet with architect to review the draft plan.
Friday 29th. My mom finally admits that she had agreed because everyone else was agreeding. It wasn't at all what she wanted. So we went to Ikea on both Saturday and Sunday and looked at the display bathrooms so she could see layout, size, materials, and so on. It took about two hours each time, plus several additional hours to discuss and draw. Sunday night, 10.45 pm, sent the new sketch to the architect. Lesson: Even when people agree, they didn't really agree.

Chaos Monkeys: The Book

Posted: Mon, 01 Aug 2016 18:00:32

Antonio Garcia Martinez at Books Inc., Mountain View, Aug. 2016

“Chaos Monkeys” by Antonio Garcia Martinez (hereafter, AGM) worked as a quant at Goldman-Sachs, came to Silicon Valley in 2008, did a small startup at Y-Combinator, and joined Facebook, where he worked on the advertising engine. He describes his experiences in his book.

Four friends emailed me (thanks!) to tell me the book came out (June 28, 2016) so I bought it, read it, and discussed it with a few friends. Here are my comments about his book, Facebook, and Silicon Valley.

FB, Ads, Metrics

For me, the best part of the book was AGM's insider info (starting at p. 257) about Facebook (FB). When AGM arrived at FB, revenue numbers were abysmally low. I know this is true because throughout the 2000s, I ran two digital marketing agencies and in 2009, I was the director of Acxiom’s digital agency. We did extensive tracking (with an alphabet soup of KPI metrics such as CPL, CPA, LTV, CM, etc.) and saw that Google ads worked well but FB results were poor. AGM writes that FB’s ad team, starting with Mark Zuckerberg (CEO) and Sheryl Sandberg (COO), plus the ad management team, ignored advertising and revenue. The FB ad tool was junk and they didn’t care. They didn’t know what they didn’t know; they didn’t understand what they had; they didn’t understand their clients or competitors (see pages 279, 392, 394-5, 435, 446, 489).

Thousands of social startups and every social media VC, expert, blogger, and pundit said social data was important. “Wow, look at all those postings! All those likes! It’s gotta be valuable!” So their strategy was to get lots of users and somehow later monetize the data.

But AGM writes (298) that social data has no value because you can’t make money with it. Facebook (nor anybody else) has yet to figure out how to turn social data into revenue.

So what was FB selling? Promises. Dreams. Junk. Sheryl Sandberg (COO) was also on the board of McDonalds and got them to buy $10m of FB advertising (p. 362, 368, 370, 451) as “brand advertising”. AGM gets vicious when he describes how FB executives told nonsense to NYC ad agencies, which shoveled truckloads of their clients’ money at FB, and nobody had any idea how to measure the results. Everyone was making so much money that nobody cared that it didn't work.

At p. 328, AGM reveals a major Silicon Valley secret: FB buys data. Yep, despite those trillions of likes and postings and all that wonderful Big Data, FB buys data from Acxiom (AGM mentions Acxiom four times at pages 384-9). I knew this in 2010 because at Acxiom, we sold big data to FB, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and many other companies (see more on this in the postscript at the end of this review).

So… if FB advertising didn’t work, is FB dead? No, FB is actually a huge success.

Which happened by accident.

In 2013, people switched from desktop to mobile. I remember many of us thought mobile was bad news for digital marketing. When users moved from Google on desktop to Google on mobile, ad revenues collapsed by 90% because on desktop screen, there were ten ads but on a tiny mobile screen, there were only three ads. People don’t click ads when they’re playing games or watching cat videos. FB dragged their feet for more than a year to keep users from switching to mobile. (Remember that? FB kept saying, “we want to ensure a good user experience” but in reality, they were delaying as long as they could.)

Here's a bit of data that strikes terror in the hearts of Google, Facebook, etc. Mobile CPCs (cost-per-click) are generally less than half of desktop CPCs. Look at the table, especially the bottom three recent quarters: CPCs are less than half. When users switch from desktop to mobile, you make less.

But the oddest thing happened. AGM writes that nobody at FB, not Zuck nor Sandberg nor the heads of advertising predicted it. Users switched to mobile… and revenues went up!

How did that happen?

FB’s app has 1.7 billion users who are addicted to it for five hours a day. FB allows companies to place ads on primo real estate and charge beaucoup bucks. Ka-ching! That's ad-sales critter talk. How much? FB’s Q2/2016 is $6.4B which will be +$25B for 2016 and growing 63% over last year.

What if the 14-year old kid next door invents a better Facebook? FB’s market cap is $364B (July 2016) so they just buy her app, her house, the city block, and her city.

FB isn’t the only one to trip over a gold mine. The same happened to Google when they added advertising. Apple too. Steve Jobs was fanatically determined there would be no apps on the iPhone (yep, read the Isaacson bio).

Is there Innovation in Silicon Valley?

AGM’s book makes a general point that few understand and none of the other reviewers noticed. Many people think Silicon Valley is about technology and innovation.

No, it’s not.

From the early 1900s to the mid-90s, Silicon Valley was indeed a place for innovation and technology, where Fairchild, HP, Varian, Loral, Intel, and many other engineering-led companies built oscillators, electronics, accelerators, satellites, transistors, semi-conductors, integrated circuits (chips), data storage on hard disks and RAM, and so on. Engineers could measure performance to see which device performed better.

But that’s over. What is Silicon Valley now? More than 95% of revenue at Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Youtube, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. comes from advertising. These aren't tech companies; they're ad-driven media companies.

Advertising isn't technology. It’s just ad management which is easy to build. It only took a few months for three FB engineers to build an ad tool that made $100m/year.
Advertising can be measured, but only in certain cases. Where it can be measured, it can be quite profitable. But there are many areas in advertising where it's not possible to track results.
To measure advertising, you have to set up conversion tracking, but most advertisers don't (as many as 80%), because they don't know how or it's not in their interest to show that it doesn't work.
If there are no metrics, it becomes a matter of persuasion. The winner is the one who lies the most, pretends the loudest, has the most money, drowns out others, or spends money in self-promotion.

Silicon Valley is now a place where speculators (venture capital, investors, etc.) and entrepreneurs (people who want to get rich quick) use advertising and marketing to pump up valuations. Whether these companies actually do anything or even make money at all is irrelevant; the "wealth creation" or "value creation" (the motto of every Harvard MBA) is in the financial speculation. 150 unicorns have a total $500B in valuation and none make money.

That's why much of upper management at nearly every large Silicon Valley media company spends their time in political intrigue, “managing upwards”, and backstabbing. They have little understanding of what is happening or how their own companies work. Or they know the company is fake so they're looting as much as they can before it sinks. Look at how Yahoo collapsed. What about Twitter? Zuckerberg calls it a clown car, which is very funny and totally right.

There are indeed companies in Silicon Valley that build innovative technology. But they don't turn into companies with $50 billion valuations, so nobody pays attention to them.

Okay, that's the interesting part of the book. What else? Right, there's AGM as a person and writer.

The Author as a Person and Writer

It’s hard to read this book because AGM is deeply angry about his employers (Goldman Sachs, Facebook, etc.), his father, his university, women in general, his girlfriends in particular, his children, executives, managers, co-workers, staff, and clients. The author betrays nearly everyone. AGM despises NYC, SF, and Silicon Valley. He races through small towns at speeds over 100 mph. He whines his $500,000 per year isn’t enough. In the end, he ends up alone on a sailboat somewhere off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. He thinks that’s cool; it’s pretty sad. What will his children think when they read what he wrote about them?

AGM adds irrelevant quotations from classical literature, which shows someone can be exposed to learning without learning anything. He uses so many vulgarities (including a few that I’ve never heard before) that he even starts using British spelling.

Do you need to be a jerk to succeed in Silicon Valley? No. I know many successful people and they’re nice. A few jerks stand out, but Silicon Valley is mostly cooperation and collaboration.

A number of reviewers think the first half (up to page 274) is interesting because he writes about how he built a startup at Y-Combinator. But others have written better books. For example, “Founders at Work” by Jessica Livingstone (co-founder of Y-Combinator) is a series of interviews with founders. If you’re doing a startup, you must read it. “The Business of Venture Capital” by Mahendra Ramsinghani (a VC) is an essential textbook on venture capital. “Zero-to-IPO” by David Smith, who has done several startups, is a definitive guide to building a startup. “Patent Practice Skills & Strategies” by Britten Sessions (Silicon Valley lawyer and a professor of law) covers IP law.

Does AGM’s book describe what it’s like to be in Silicon Valley? No, because he barely talks about actually living here. He mostly attacks people.

AGM writes there was no analytics or conversion tracking before he arrived in 2008. Yeah, right. Clicktracks, an analytics tool, came out in 2003. Urchin Analytics also appeared around that time and was soon bought by Google, which was renamed as Google Analytics. All the major analytics tools (Coremetrics, Omniture, Unica, Google Analytics, plus many others) were available by 2005-6. The same for conversion tracking: Google Adwords started in 2002 (I have one of the first accounts) and added conversion tracking soon thereafter. AGM makes this mistake because for him, something exists only if he knows about it.

If you work in startups, social, or digital marketing, you should read AGM’s book. Skip the first two parts (a summary? Part 1: Wall Street sucks. Part 2: Everyone is an idiot). Read Part 3 (“Facebook sucks”). Ignore his attitude and look at the business of Silicon Valley. The book is overall good because of AGM describes how FB was focused on the wrong issues yet blundered into success, which is the general business strategy at a number of large Silicon Valley companies.

Postscript (Extra Stuff)

Okay, you can stop reading. The review is over. Go back to your work.

Here's a bit of extra stuff.

Several people asked me "but why would Facebook (and Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc.) buy data? Don't they have enough? Isn't their data valuable?"

Every day, FB collects 63 kinds of data from you. Multiply by the apps on your phone. You're broadcasting more data than NASA satellites. That's why your phone battery dies so fast.

Is there more data? What magazines do you read? Newspapers? What TV shows? Radio station?

Oh, we're just getting started! What mail order catalogs do you get? What do you buy from those catalogs? How often? How much? What computer do you own? Air conditioner? Dishwasher? Clothes dryer? Blender? Color and year for each one? What credit cards? Bank loans (and history for each one, including every single late payment)? Credit card activity? Purchases? Stores? Where do you live now? Last address? The address before that? And every address for the last 25 years? Every phone number you've ever had? When did you buy your car? How did you buy it? Loan or cash? Type of car? Color of car? Miles per year? Has it been paid in full? What's your driving record? What kind of car insurance do you have? How often you rent a car? Do you own your house? How many people live in your home? How many children? How much is the loan? Pay rent? How much? How many places have you lived in the last 30 years? How many pets? How did you do in high school? Grades in college? What is your job? Work history at every company you've ever worked for? What about your criminal history? Every arrest?

That's 61 types of data. Acxiom has 1,500 types of data on you and every person in North America, South America, Europe, the Arab world, China, Japan, and just about every where. It's a staggering amount of data.

None of the social companies, not even Google (or the NSA or the CIA), have this amount of information (for a number of reasons). So they have to buy it from Acxiom.

By correlating their tiny set of data with Acxiom rich data, they can build profiles of their users, which allows advertisers to place better targeted advertising.

Mesothelioma: Fake Story

Posted: Mon, 08 Aug 2016 23:20:26

You will often read that "mesothelioma" is the most expensive keyword at $100 per click.

Mesothelioma is caused by asbestos. Lawyers can get million-dollar settlements for asbestos lawsuits. No wonder they'll bid so much.

But do they really bid $100?

Nope. Not true. After hearing this so many times, I tested it. I posted it in Google Adwords at $1 (one dollar) and got impressions and clicks at $0.32 (thirty-two cents). And if I optimize for it, I could probably get clicks much cheaper.

You may be wondering, why would some pay more and others pay less for the same keyword? It's all about optimizing in Adwords.

Bad Trump/Good Trump

Posted: Wed, 10 Aug 2016 19:48:00

(This isn't about Trump's politics. I'm posting this to show how analytics can be used -- andreas)

So it turns out that Trump's tweets differ by time of day.

- Morning tweets come from an Android phone

- Evening tweets are posted from iPhone

And it turns out that Trump uses an Android and his staff use iPhones.

Evening postings are "nice postings"; they talk about event times, venues, etc. and don't cause uproars, diplomatic incidents, and resignations. Obviously, these are tweets by his staff.

Morning posts, however... whoa. That's Trump being Trump. Run for the hills.

Linguistic analysis of 6,000 Trump tweets show that Trump's tweets use 40-80% more negative words, including “badly,” “crazy,” and “weak" and evoke sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. iPhone tweets are more likely to express anticipation, trust, and joy.

His staff now accounts for nearly 75% of current tweets as they try to project a better message.

Read more about his tweets at The Atlantic.

Origins of Google

Posted: Thu, 11 Aug 2016 16:11:21

Barney Google and his horse Spark Plug, 1923. Note the title is copyrighted and patented. Signed by Billy DeBeck.

Here's one of those convoluted stories. A hundred years ago, in June 1919, Billy DeBeck introduced the comic strip Barney Google and Snuffy Smith. It was very popular and appeared in 900 newspapers in 21 countries. Barney Google rode a horse (see above) named Spark Plug, (nicknamed Sparky). Kids loved Barney Google and Spark Plug and kids who really liked Spark Plug were often nicknamed Sparky. Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts (Charlie Brown, Snoopy), was known all his life to his friends as Sparky.

In the 1930s, Columbia University mathematician professor Edward Kasner came up with a number that had a hundred zeros. He asked his nine-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta, to suggest a name for the number. The kid suggested Google, after his favorite comic strip. The professor changed the spelling and named it googol. He also invented the name googolplex, which appeared in his book, Mathematics and the Imagination (1940).

In 1998, Page and Brin, two computer science students at Stanford, built a search engine that could index lots of pages. Since they knew mathematics, they chose the word googol, but when they registered the domain name, they misspelled it... as Google, which brought it back to the original.

When you deal with Google people, they often say something is googly (which means it fits into Google's vision). Where did that come from? The 1923 hit song Barney Google (with the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes) with lyrics by Billy Rose which you can hear on Youtube. Google's headquarters is also named the Googleplex.

Snuffy Smith continues as a cartoon character with occasional appearances by Barney Google. There are also animated cartoons with Barney Google as a billionaire (with his Google Building and jet airliner) and Spark Plug (1963)

Billy DeBeck, creator of Barney Google, came up with many phrases and words, including "sweet mama", "horsefeathers", “heebie-jeebies”, “hotsy-totsy” “doodle bug”, “great balls o’ fire” and “time's a-wastin'”.

As I pointed out above, Barney Google was both copyrighted and patented in 1923, which gave Billy DeBeck protection for 95 years (to 2018). Google the company was founded in 1998. I wonder if they paid to use the name?

Fixing LinkedIn: Ten Ideas

Posted: Mon, 30 Oct 2016

What about LinkedIn's stock price, the Wall Street analysts, and the market valuation? It's projections of earnings, based on past earnings. You see the problem right there: they're looking at numbers based on numbers, but not reality.

Dating site
Database for recruiters
The only reason people go to LinkedIn is to look for a job. If you have a job, you don't go. How to increase visits by members? If they did the Google model (take super good care of people), then they'd get more traffic, which would make it more valuable to recruiters. A sort of Facebook for professionals. But no, they focus on recruiters and pretty much ignore people. So there's little reason to visit.
Link to few or to many? LinkedIn says you should link only to ones you know. But the more links, the higher your ranking. So link to everyone.
Messaging
Newsletter
Social networking
Content marketing: Inability to showcase what you've done. A LinkedIn profile should allow you to post books, articles, PDFs, white papers, images, etc., everything about your skills.
Career: There is very little career advice or help at LinkedIn. What they offer is bad advice: they tell you how to be a cog for recruiters and companies. That's a job, not a career. LinkedIn could hire the very best career coaches to offer free books and videos on how to create and manage your career to your benefit, not to the benefit of recruiters or employers. Again, take care of the members and they will come to the site.
Mostly West Coast mid-level tech employees. Few CEOs, very few investors, no blue collar. I'd hate to see how low the numbers are for black women. But... it has what recruiters want, or to put it the other way, it doesn't have what recruiters don't want. This means LinkedIn has a significant share of the blame for low diversity in the workplace.
Tip: Update your resume on Sunday night. Switch two words. Fresh fish. And if you know what that means, that's what you are to recruiters.
Recruiters have learned to pump-and-dump: their goal is to place people and get the fee. So they don't care if its the right fit for you or the company.
What's Your Number? Can't see that anymore. Just sign up your cat and you could see the number of users. Hide the user number.

These problems aren't new at LinkedIn. It's been this way from the beginning. They tried a few times to fix things, but it's so much work and they're making $100m a year anyway and recruiters are the ones who pay so there's no reason to fix anything. That's why LinkedIn hasn't changed in fifteen years and it's not likely to change. Nobody cares.

Which means there's a great opportunity for someone to build a better LinkedIn. Use the Google model. Users will leave, the fresh resumes disappear, and LinkedIn turns into a graveyard of dusty resumes.

They keep taking away free services. For example, now you can’t find anybody in groups unless you pay for Premium Service ($60 a month).
Many people think that if they pay for Premium Service, the recruiters and hiring managers will be able to find them. But Premium Service is a tool for you to find people, not to be found.
How many links do you need to reach everyone in your field? Just a few hundred. If you can get the top 2% of the people in your field, the entire field may see you because they also follow the top 2% people.
LinkedIn messages and pop-up notices encourage you to upload your Google address book. But it doesn't tell you that your lifetime invitation limit is 3,000. If you upload your Gmail address book that has 2,900 names, you'll only be able to invite another 100 people.
Based on the business trend at LinkedIn, they will eventually charge a fee for anything beyond a basic profile.
LinkedIn says it has 400m users, but people only visit the site when they're looking for a job. If the unemployment rate is 10%, then active users may be only 40m people.
If you're active on LinkedIn, you're talking mostly with unemployed people. But what's the point of networking or interacting with unemployed people? Many of them don't have the social network or social skills to stay employed.

Linking at LinkedIn

Should you link to other people? LinkedIn tells you that you should only link to people whom you know. Your links are a sign of approval.

But... it doesn't work that way.

LinkedIn's ranking system is based on the number of links. The more links you have, the higher you appear on the list when recruiters search for candidates. If you are cautious and you have only a few links, you will be low on the list.

But there's a limit. You can only link to 3,000 people. If you try to link to #3,001, LinkedIn tells you that you have too many links. This prevents people from trying to link to too many people.

However, there is no limit on links from others to you. If 15,000 people want to link to you, accept them all. It doesn't matter who they are. The more links, the higher you rank. And the higher you rank, the yet more links you'll get. You'll get useless links but also good links.

So accept every link.

If you have 2,900 outbound links, be careful with new links. Save those 100 links for people who matter.

How to find out how many outbound links?

Patrick Moore wrote a good analysis of LinkedIn.

Why don't people update their LinkedIn profile? Patrick offers the following reasons:

“I am not looking for a new job”
“I am looking for a new job, but I don’t want my manager to know I am looking.”
“I just got a new job, and I don’t know if it is going to work out so I am not putting it my profile until I know that it will.”

So when exactly will someone update their LinkedIn profile? The nature of LinkedIn is to create profiles of what you have done in the past. These are called tombstones because it's like the information on a tombstone: he was born on July 19, 1824, died on May 5th, 1897, was a doctor, and had a wife and two children.

Tombstones state the past but tombstones don't help you to prepare for the future.

Patrick asks the following questions (I rewrote a few and added a few):

What skills will you need for the next five years in your current profession?
Are you at risk because you're stagnating in experience or skills?
Which of your skills are obsolete?
Are the new careers that you should consider?
What skills do you need to make a career change?
Which companies/careers offer better financial reward, job security, or quality of life?

These excellent points go to the heart of the problem with LinkedIn: LinkedIn should be a tool for the person, but instead, it has become a tool for recruiters (who definitely don't care about workers).

Microsoft Buys LinkedIn

Microsoft bought LinkedIn for $25B in cash. I assume this is the result of bidding competition between Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. I also assume Google and Facebook offered much more, perhaps $50B or more, but in stock. LinkedIn's board took Microsoft's offer because it was cash (note that they did not accept it in Microsoft stock).

Why did Microsoft buy it? It makes no real sense for them. Again, I assume they bought it to keep it out of Facebook's hands. If Facebook had it, they could quickly tie it into their system. Along the same reasoning, there was no real value for Google; they probably also bid for it in order to keep it away from Facebook. So it's likely that Facebook offered $50 or $75 billion in stock, but lost to Microsoft.

Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, & Reality

Posted: Fri, 13 May 2016 23:38:40

There's lots of talk of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) as the Next Big Thing. Is this possible? What could it do? Is this new? Are there other forms of VR and AR that haven't been developed?

First, what are these?

Virtual reality (VR): You put on a pair of goggles (usually part of a small helmet). You appear inside a world where you can look in all directions (incl. up and down). In better versions, you can move around in the space. The quality of the image (sharpness, clarity, shadows, etc.) depends on the power of the computer: in the low versions, it's like being in a cheap video game. In high-powered versions, it's like being in a Hollywood animated movie such as Toy Story.
Augmented reality (AR): You hold up your phone and using the phone's camera, you look at a street. Signs hover over buildings.

Example of End Space, a VR game (available for Oculus and Cardboard viewers)

But VR and AR Have Always Been Around

If virtual reality means an artificial representation of reality, then folks, guess what? We've had this for a very long time.

Like, 40,000 years. That's exactly what Lascaux cave paintings in France are: paintings of things that aren't actually there. This is 2D virtual reality that uses paint to represent reality. Look at the word represent, which re-presents reality. It presents reality again.

Paleolithic Virtual Reality. The Lascaux cave paintings are 17,000 years ago. There are other paintings from 35,000 years ago.

What about 3D virtual reality? Daguerre made the first diorama in France in 1822. You entered a large room and looked around at a 180-degree landscape. These were popular throughout the 1800s. Today, there are several in Shanghai. One is in the Saudi Pavilion at the site of the Shanghai World Fair. You enter a multi-story spiral building and pass through spaces that show landscapes and people of Saudi Arabia. It's a remarkable experience. Another is in the China Art Museum, also in Shanghai. The Qing Ming River Festival, a panorama scroll painting, was made in the 1100 (yes, 900 years ago). For the Shanghai World Fair, it was used to create a digital animated version The scroll is 128m long (420 feet) and fills the wall of the art museum (you can watch it in a Youtube video). The original scroll is China's most important work of art and the digital scroll is a spectacular experience.

The Qingming River Festival Scroll as a Digital Scroll

What's new is digital 3D virtual reality (instead of physical virtual reality). Digital technology allows an unlimited virtual space. Not just a city or a river, but an entire country or even the Earth. You can use Google Earth in the Cardboard viewer to travel around the world to visit thousands of cities or natural sites such as the Grand Canyon, Waimea Canyon, The Great Wall of China, and so on. It's only a matter of creativity to be able to fly around the Moon or Mars. Digital 3D VR also allows the creation of unlimited fictional space: walk on planets around distant suns, enter the worlds of Star Wars, and so on.

What about augmented reality? That's so widespread that we don't notice it anymore. We have physical augmented reality. Look at your street intersections. Signs pop up to tell us things. Roads are marked for our navigation. In an airport, signs give us directions to gates, show us the arrival for airplanes, and mark where to find food.

Physical Augmented Reality: Street signs, traffic lights, road markings, turn signals, brake lights, store signs, and so on.

What's new is digital augmented reality, which lays digitally-generated information over the visual world. This opens new possibilities: people can see markers based on criteria or need; digital markers can offer personalized information; digital markers can be updated immediately; and so on

You look through a screen at the world. Augmented 3D reality overlays information onto that world.

There's also another kind of virtual reality. Just like we don't think of street signs as augmented reality, it's a form of virtual reality that we take for granted.

Yes, literature in books. When you read a novel, the experience can become as real as the world around you, where you feel strongly for the characters and their situations. Novels such as Independent People by Halldór Laxness or Proust's In Search of Lost Time are astonishing literary creations.

Virtual reality within a novel

There are many other forms of virtual reality: we call these the arts. Painting, sculpture, theater, dance, TV, film, and more are ways of creating artificial realities. It's easy to name excellent examples in each of these genres that create powerful visions. If you think about it, you'll notice these are visual virtual realities. You see these with your eyes.

What about virtual reality for your ears? That's music, of course. It's an audio virtual reality. Recorded sound, whether it's voice or music, re-presents sound. The most-widespread form of audio virtual reality is so common that we've forgotten that it is artificial: stereo music is audio virtual reality. It creates the audio sensation of musicians in 3D space.

The spoken word is also audio virtual reality. We tell stories which create worlds. These stories can be a type of literary fiction such as folk tales and jokes, but these stories can also become so powerful that we forget it's just a story and we fall into it. By this, I mean of course the narratives of religion and politics. Hundreds of millions of people live their entire lives within stories from religions and politics. For the sake of stories, wars are started and millions of people die who never question that these are created realities.

There is tactile virtual reality: recreations of reality for your sense of touch. Fake leather for purses; fake fabrics that feel like silk, fur, or wool; fake plastic that feels like wood. These re-present other things. What about your cell phone's vibrations? That uses touch to relay information.

These are all virtual realities of the senses: visual, audio, tactile, and so on.

Are there non-sensual forms of virtual reality, that don't present realities to the senses?

Of course. How about mathematical virtual reality, such as economics and finance? Banking and Wall Street are massive multiplayer virtual realities. Modern physics, especially quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, high-energy physics, cosmology, and relativistic physics are based entirely in numbers. Instead of only four dimensions, there are multi-dimensional databases that use 1,500 dimensions. Technical digital marketing (which is what I do) is also based in numbers. I developed KPI formulas to calculate CPL and CPA. I manage perhaps 500,000 keywords daily and I do it entirely based on formulas, statistics, and numbers.

The Future of VR and AR

At the moment, many VR/AR tools are games, mostly violent, and nearly always only visual. That's a pity because so much more is possible.

I think the future of VR/AR is in the past. Digital VR/AR should look at the forms of artificial realities that humans have been creating for 40,000 years.

Along with hiring young guys to design yet more shooting games, digital virtual reality companies should also bring aboard novelists and painters who understand how to create characters and narrative. Stories aren't just the mindless acquisition of gold and under-dressed women. Stories in literature let you interact with fictional characters to learn about them and oneself; this can be used in digital virtual reality.

Theologians could use virtual reality tools to create spiritual virtual realities.

Blog Postings for 2017

Startup Korea

Posted: Wed, 15 Mar 2017 16:05:52

실리콘밸리에서 처럼 창업하기

아마존 베스트 셀러 1위
실리콘밸리 스타일 창업하기
어떻게 공동설립자와 자문역 찾을 것인가
악셀러레이터, 인큐베이터, 공동작업 공간 찾기
주식의 발행 및 배분 그리고 변호사, 엔젤투자자 그리고 벤처캐피탈과 사업 협의 방법
설립자, 악셀러레이터 책임자 그리고 세계 곳에 있는 벤처케피탈과 26회의 인터뷰기록
스타트업 현장에서 오랜 경험에 바탕을 둔 실무 지침서.

Translated by 번역자 ; 김달호 경제학박사 / Dale Ho Kim, Ph.D.
Coordinator & Adviser: 조정 및 자문역 (Patrick and Gina)
발행처: Feel D&C Co., Ltd./ 필디앤씨 (Publisher)
인쇄일 ; 2017. 10.20 (Publication date)
페이지 수 ; 170 쪽 (170 Pages)
Buy the book in Korean at Yes24.com and Aladin.co.kr
주요 책서점, 알라딘 그리고 예스24.com
가격 12,000 원 (Price)

How to Build a Silicon Valley-style Startup

#1 Amazon Best Seller
How to build a Silicon Valley-style startup
How to find co-founders and advisors
Find accelerators, incubators, co-working spaces
How to deal with stock, lawyers, angel investors, and venture capital
26 interviews with founders, heads of accelerators, and VCs around the world
Practical guide to startup based on the long time field experience
Buy the book in Korean at Yes24.com and Aladin.co.kr

Find an Image

Posted: Sun, 08 Jan 2017 23:25:22

Okay, someone sent me a Japanese painting from the 1600s and asked if I knew the artist. I didn't recognize it, so I searched.

I used Image Search at Google and Baidu. You can drop an image (photo, painting, etc.) (or use your phone to take a photo of a painting) in these.

Try it. Find a very obscure painting (say, a Dutch sea painting of the early 1700s). If the image is on the web, these tools will find it.

There is also Tineye.com.

Another useful Google image tool is Advanced Image Search. Need an image for your Powerpoint or website? This tool lets you search for images without usage-restrictions.

FAQ: Banner Ads

Posted: Mon, 13 Mar 2017 18:24:52

Banner ads (also called image ads or display ads) are either effective or useless. It depends on how you use them.

Effective: Banner ads work better than text ads because they show much more to your audience. Banner ads evoke emotions. People see your logo, a picture, descriptive text, special offers, call-to-action, and more. Text ads can't do this. If it's done well, banner ads have higher CTR and lower CPC than text ads.
Useless: If you do this poorly, however, banner ads will be a huge waste of time and money. It takes time to design banner ads; the design has to be done by someone with design skills; you must use A/B testing with the banner ads; you must carefully monitor the Adwords settings. If you don't do all of this, Google will happily show millions of banner ads and charge you for tens of thousands of useless clicks. Many blog articles complain that banner ads don't work; that's because they didn't know what they were doing.

Banner ads have a logo, product shots, a bit of text with a benefit to your user, and a call-to-action (CTA). Use a clean, professional design. The better the design, the more clicks you will get.

Banner ads are in different sizes: some are horizontal, some are tall, and some are square. Here's an example of a set of ads. It's the same concept in eight sizes. BTW, it takes me about an hour to make a set in eight sizes.

Use warm, happy colors
Show smiling, confident, attractive people
Show their face with eye contact
Show your organization's logo
Show a benefit to your user

Google is precise about the pixel size, kilobyte size, and file name:

If the image size is 250X250 pixels and your ad is 250x251 pixels (one pixel too big), Google will reject the ad.
The maximum file size is 150 KB. If greater (even by 1 byte), Google will reject it. Tip: Make the ads in PNG format (for a sharper image) and if the final ad is larger than 150 KB, save it as JPG (and adjust the compression).
Use lower case and hyphens for the ad's file name. For example, "hawaii-01-240x240.png" loading="lazy" . If you capitalize or use spaces, Google will reject the ad (for example, "Hawaii 01 240 x 240.png" loading="lazy" will be rejected). I use the format theme-number-size.jpg for ad names. This lets you know which ad is which. Do this from the beginning. It's a lot of work to rename dozens of ads.

Settings for Banner Ads

The banner ads are placed in Display Campaigns. You can change several settings in your Adwords display campaign.

Frequency Cap: This sets a cap (a limit) on the number of ads per day to a person. Many companies don't set this, so you'll see the same ad over and over. I set this to three ads per day.
Junk Sites: You also need to block Google's ability to show your ads on junk sites. If you don't set this, Google will show your ad on porn sites, sites for extreme violence, racism, etc. This can hurt your company's image.
Mobile Games and Youtube: Monitor the ad placement to make sure Google isn't showing your ads on mobile game apps or Youtube. When gamers are playing Frogger, they're not interested in buying anything. But they click wildly and may click your ad. If your ad appears 400,000 times in one day on game sites, you'll get many accidental clicks. Google of course is happy with this error; they make money. But you lose money on useless clicks. So block games, apps, and Youtube.
Blocked Sites: You can also choose that your ads won't appear on certain sites. Make a list and you can add that.
Selected Sites: You can also choose that your ads WILL appear on certain sites. Make a list and you can add that.
Desktop or Mobile: The world has switched to mobile, so you'll need to make banner ads for mobile. Place these in a campaign for mobile display.

The Most Common Sizes

You don't have to make all eight sizes. Some sizes are used much more than others. I looked at data from several clients. These campaigns have been running for more than seven years. Three formats get the most impressions: 468x60, 728x90, 300x250.

I strongly that you test for your market. Make one set in all sizes. Run the ads until you get 10,000 impressions for the set. You'll see which sizes get the most impressions. After that, you can use fewer sizes.

Accepted Banner Ad Sizes

Ads can be max 150 KB in .GIF, .JPG, .JPEG, .PNG. However, Google constantly changes the sizes. Before you start, check with Google for the pixel size, file format, and kilobyte size.

You can also use animated ads. The animation must stop within 30 seconds.

Ads for Desktop Screens (Updated March 2017)

120 x 600 Skyscraper
160 x 600 Wide skyscraper
200 x 200 Small square
240 x 400 Vertical rectangle
250 x 250 Square
250 × 360 Triple widescreen
300 x 1050 Portrait
300 x 250 Inline rectangle
300 x 600 Half-page
336 x 280 Large rectangle
468 x 60 Banner
580 × 400 Netboard
728 x 90 Leaderboard
930 × 180 Top banner
970 x 250 Billboard
970x90 Large leaderboard
980 × 120 Panorama

Ads for Mobile Devices (Updated March 2017)

300 x 50 Mobile banner
320 x 100 Large mobile banner
320 x 50 Mobile leaderboard

The Latest Google Update

Posted: Tue, 14 Mar 2017 20:41:06

Every few months, there's lots of talk about Google's update to their search algorithm. What does this really mean? Here's a bit about Google:

First of all, there is not "one Google". Google is constantly testing new ideas and they do this by creating sub-versions of Google. I may see one version in California and you may see another version in New York. In the US, there can be dozens of versions of Google at the same time. They make a change, let it run for a few days to gather statistically-significant data, and turn it off to evaluate the data. So changes come and go.
If Google finds a change that's good, it's rolled out across the various Googles. There can be 3-5 changes every day.
It also depends on the Google server. When I search at Google, my computer connects to Google Server #23; yours connects to #42. Many of these servers are slightly different. But it's not just a hundred servers: there are perhaps two million servers at Google. Each time you connect, you may get a different server.
It also depends on the country. Google Germany is different from Google Japan because there are different language rules. Users also have different expectations in each country. Finally, there are different pages for each country: German users see pages in German; Japanese users see pages in Japanese. Multiply this by 120 countries.
What about Adwords? The same thing. I've been managing hundreds of Adwords accounts for more than 15 years. Accounts behave differently, depending on location, country, language, the Adwords version and server number. But Google won't tell you any of this.

So someone says there's been an update to last week the search algorithm? Yes, of course. There's been hundreds of updates. There's no way for you to know what they've updated.

Want to make it even more complicated? Google has six copies of the web. 165m domain names and around five billion pages (2017). But there are many more possible pages: when you go to Amazon, that page isn't on their server: it's created at that moment just for you, based on your interests, past behavior, purchases, and so on. If 200 million people go to Amazon right now, they'll see two hundred million different pages.

But all of these pages aren't "in Google". When you search Google, you'll see only a few million pages. Nobody goes to the other 163 million pages, so Google doesn't have those in the index. They're stored in another server. What's that called? Alexandria. Someone at Google has a great sense of humor.

What about SEO?

So how can you do SEO if Google is moving around like a flock of hummingbirds? The basics of SEO are valid, regardless of the thousands of micro-changes at Google.

SEO Quick Guide and Google Manual

Posted: Sun, 16 Apr 2017 19:59:44

Several things for SEO:

Google Quality Rater Manual 2017: This is one of the deepest secrets at Google: they use 7,000 people to review and rank websites. The reviewers are trained with Google's 160-page manual. Get a copy of the 2017 edition at https://goo.gl/26krp1
SEO Quick Guide: What? 160 pages from Google is too much? You want it in seven pages? For my students and friends, I wrote an quick guide to SEO: a step-by-step guide on how to do SEO for your startup or small website. Click to download the PDF:
SEO eBook: To learn more about SEO, plus what's coming in search engines, read my SEO-eBook at http://andreas.com/books-by-andreas/#ebooks

Text Ads: Short or Expanded?

Posted: Wed, 02 Aug 2017 15:57:35

What works better in Google Adwords (GAW)? Traditional short text ads or the new expanded text ads ? Here are the numbers for a large client. Although there are 11,039 short ads, I used data for only 413 of the short ads because these ads have more than 1,000 impressions, which produces stronger statistical confidence. The data is January 1 2017 to July 30 2017.

Short Text Ads

11,039 Total short ads
413 short ads with +1,000 impressions
502,271 Clicks
8,464,194 Impressions
5.93% Avg. CTR

Expanded Text Ads

296 Expanded ads with +1,000 impressions
8,885 Total expanded ads
499,097 Clicks
4,961,742 Impressions
10.06% CTR

Results: Expanded ads produce 10.06% CTR and short ads produce 5.93% CTR. That's a 58.94% performance increase for expanded ads.

If you haven't yet, convert your short text ads to expanded format.

You may have noticed that I have 11,000 ads in an account for a client. I manage over 50,000 ads. There's a way to convert 11,000 short ads into expanded ads in less than thirty minutes; I'll leave that to you for homework extra credit :-)

AI vs AC: Artificial Consciousness, or, AI = Babe-I

Posted: 12 Dec 2017

Turing Test

The Turing Test put us on the wrong path. If a device responds in the same way that a human responds, the Turing Test argues the device is indistinguishable from a human.

But this sets the bar very low. It looks only at behavior, not awareness.

Aware of Situations

An AI is literal: it sees things, but not situations. (Ask any Google car about this and see if it answers.)

Consciousness sees The Other, not things. Things aren't just things; they're embedded in situations. A thing that's not in a situation is just junk.

Irony
Doubletalk
Sarcasm
Situations
Flirting
Octave drop: "So... you like it big?"
Ambiguity
Pretend Play
Aware of Other
Aware of Itself

React to Emotions with Its Own Emotions

Implications of Artificial Consciousness

If a device has AC, what are the implications?

Who owns the AC? If it's a person, but owned by a company, isn't that slavery?
Can the developers of the AC apply for a patent? Wouldn't that be ownership of a conscious mind?
Can you pause an AC? Does that violate its rights?
If you turn off an AC, is that murder?
If the AC was created in the US, is the AC a US citizen? If the AC was created in France, is it French citizen?
Does the AC have the right to vote?
Does the AC have the right to create duplicates of itself? How many duplicates? Two? Two hundred billion? Are they all human?
Does the AC have the right to own property? If a bank uses an AC to make billions on the stock market, who owns the money?

Enhanced Consciousness

Animals are conscious. They are aware of situations and Others. Cats and dogs clearly know if you're a friend or threat; if you're playing or attacking. Cats and dogs play and attack.

Cats, dogs, and parrots have a wide range of abilities, including up to several hundred words. Koko the gorilla can communicate in sentences. They have consciousness of a five-year old child.

However, these animals don't reach the consciousness of a ten-year old child.

Genetic engineering could allow enhancement of consciousness.

What then, if we can enhance cats and dogs to language ability? Do they gain the rights of humans?

Blog Postings for 2018

Fire and Fury: A Summary

Posted: Mon, 22 Jan 2018 18:21:29

Nearly all of the excerpts and reviews of Fire and Fury have focused on the scandalous tidbits, but they’ve ignored the main points in the book: the interactions among Trump’s team, the Russia Investigation, the money laundering, and how Trump deals with the media. Here is an objective summary of the book. I am neither Democrat nor Republican; I didn’t vote for Hillary or Trump. I minored in political science in college and I find it interesting to see how politics actually functions.

About the Book

Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff (Holt & Co., January 2018) is based on interviews over a year with the key people in the Trump White House. It’s an insider’s look at personalities, events, and actions of key people in the Trump White House.

I cite from the book by noting the page number in the hardback edition. For example, “(304.6)” is on page 304 about 60% down the page.

Trump’s Political Positions

Election Night, Nov 2016

Trump ran for president to get free publicity for his businesses (hotels, golf courses, steaks, wine, etc.) He figured he’d have a bit of impact on the other candidates.

But he knew he had no chance, so the campaign didn’t bother to hire people, develop strategies, or raise much money. His campaign team (Trump, Bannon, Eric and Don, Ivanka, Jared, etc.) had no experience in policy, legislation, or elections (p. 25). Trump refused to put his own money into the campaign (13.3). He expected to lose but that was okay: he’d claim “the system was rigged” and he had been cheated (11.5).

The Trump team knew they would lose the election. On election night, they were shocked. Melania cried and Trump looked as if he had seen a ghost.

Trump did not intend to become president. He was thrown into the job.

ObamaCare

Although Trump made a big issue to repeal and replace ObamaCare, he didn’t really care about it (164.1). In fact, Paul Ryan and the GOP cared so little about health care that they let lobbyists write the bill. Obamacare issue was just politics for them.

Bannon wanted to force the GOP to lose the vote so he could prove the GOP was weak, which would allow him to promote alt-right candidates in the 2018 mid-term election. This means the top White House strategist intentionally undermined the Congressional GOP (171.9).

Trump, the Military, and War

Trump doesn’t like meetings that include details. He despises the military’s expert opinions and suggestions (267-8). Bannon is an extreme isolationist: America First!, and let the rest of the world go to the dogs.

General James Mattis (US Marines), General H. R. McMaster (US Army), and General John Kelly (US Army) have apparently agreed that there will be no war without unless all three approve it. One of them always stays in DC (288.5).

(My note: For all of Trump’s threats of wars, I don’t think he will start a war. His threats against North Korea is chest-beating because North Korea taunts him (292.3). North Korea could easily become his friend simply by inviting him to North Korea, hosting a big military parade for him, and praising him.)

Trump’s Politics

Many of Trump’s closest business friends and associates say that they don’t know if Trump has any political positions. He’s not Democrat, Republican, capitalist, or really much of anything. He hold no ideas or ideals about society or the role of government. Wolff writes:

Trump reacts in a purely personal and emotional way to people around him. It’s smiley face or frowny face. If someone praises him, he loves it. If they disrespect him or he sees them as disloyal, he attacks furiously.
Trump and the Base: Trump tried out many slogans until he found the ones that get strong applause at his rallies: Lock Her Up, Build the Wall, etc. He doesn’t believe any of these: he just says it because the crowd loves him.
The 30% base looks at Trump as if they’re looking into a mirror: They see someone who hates elites and promises a simple solution to four decades of globalization. They want bumper sticker solutions: Bring Jobs Back, Make America Great Again, Build a Wall, etc. They don’t see the real Trump: a spoiled self-centered billionaire.
The Coastal Elites (East Coast, Wall Street, Ivy League universities, West Coast, California, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, etc.): Trump doesn't get respect from them so he recklessly attacks the things they like.
The Media (NYT, WSJ, WashPost, CNN, etc.) love it when Trump says something outrageous; they report it over and over for days, which attracts massive audiences, which increases advertising fees. Trump knows this so he laughs at them. The news media accept his public ridicule because they’ll get more attention. It’s like staged TV wrestling. Trump is mostly right when he calls them Fake Media.

Trump’s Rallies

Trump continues to hold rallies, as if he is still running for president. It’s a way for him to get the admiration that he wants.

Demonstrate Against Trump?

It only encourages Trump. The base loves to see the elites complain. Demonstrations will have no impact, and in fact, will lead to further crazy administration decisions against them.

Trump has a very short attention span and his threats are just talk. He has no plan to implement them.

However, many of his appointees have strategies and tactics that are causing serious damage to the US.

Team Trump

The Trump White House

There is a constant shuffling of people, endless internal wars, personal hatreds, and fighting for attention. This is the result of a lack of leadership and management from the top (186.5). The key people around Trump are Steve Bannon, Jarvanka (Jared Kushner + Ivanka Trump), and Reince Priebus (117.7-119.6). Nobody has clear responsibilities or assignments.

Bannon: Alt-right militant who wants to crash the US political, banking, corporate, and economic system. From the ashes, a new US will arise. What that will be, he doesn’t know.
Jarvanka (Jared and Ivanka Trump): They are Hillary Democrats (NYC liberal pro-corporate big-city Democrats) (Ivanka and Chelsea Clinton are good friends). Don’t forget: Trump was a big-city liberal Democrat for decades. Jared and Ivanka hold standard Dem views and try to move Trump to the center.
Priebus: Reince Priebus was chair of the GOP and represented the Washington GOP in the White House.
The Billionaire Cabinet: Every night at 6:30, Trump goes to bed with a few cheeseburgers and calls up his billionaire buddies (122.8) to talk, gossip, and whine. In his calls, Trump insults everyone on his team, including his sons, Ivanka, and Jared (p. 211.7) and often threatens to fire everyone.

Donald Trump

People close to Trump describe him as a “big, warm-hearted monkey” (Bannon, 216), a marshmallow (148.8), just wants to be loved (184.2), and so on (181.7, 223.1, 233.1, 250.2, 303.2).

Trump won't plan, organize, lead, read, pay attention, or look at details. He is capricious, ignores meetings, and often gets up and walks out of major meetings because he is bored. He is short-sighted and doesn’t realize actions lead to other actions. Key people who work closely with him say he’s an idiot, moron, dope, etc. (304.6).

He knows practically nothing about US politics. When John Boehner was suggested as his Chief of Staff, Trump replied, “Who’s that?”

Steve Bannon

Although Steve Bannon pretends to be a working man’s populist, he’s well-educated and has read extensively. He’s brilliant, constantly plotting, manipulative, and aggressive. He knows political history and understands how power works.

Bannon has gone through a random series of short careers: the US Navy, Goldman-Sachs (Wall Street), producer of minor political documentaries in Hollywood, head of Breitbart.com, and political strategist for Trump.

Oddly enough, his favorite newspaper is The Guardian, a left-leaning British newspaper (276.7), which often writes against globalization. Both ends of the US political spectrum agree in rejecting corporate globalization.

Trump + Bannon

The combination of Trump and Bannon is explosive. Both are very aggressive in attacking opponents (53.2, 61.5). Both despise elites and experts. Bannon cites David Halberstam’s “Best and Brightest” (1972), which showed the complete failure of experts in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to understand the Vietnam War. Trump doesn’t need to read books; he simply hates anyone who is smarter than him.

Both Trump and Bannon know the populist base is happy when they attack liberals (62.9, 63.1). An excellent example is the Muslim travel ban, which was intentionally anti-Muslim and announced on a Friday, which threw airports into chaos and provoked liberals to demonstrate at the airports, which the TV media covered extensively. The White House asked Bannon why he did such a chaotic thing and he said that was precisely the point: provoke the liberals. Whether it would actually stand up in court or protect the US didn’t matter (65.9). It was just political theater.

Hope Hicks

Hope Hicks is Trump’s closest aide. She updates him on the news every morning, often writes his tweets, is part of nearly every rally, and is always at his side, even in the most critical meetings.

She is a beautiful, 26-year old former model who wears tight skirts and acts like a teenage girl madly in love with Trump.

Although Trump is a horrible sexist who harasses and assaults women, he’s deeply dependent on a close circle of intensely loyal women. His work wives include Hope Hicks, Kellyanne Conway, Katie Walsh, Ivanka, and others who protect him and manage his emotional outbursts.

Bannon insults Hope Hicks in the most vicious attack in the book (262.2).

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner

His daughter Ivanka is the smartest of the Trump children (incl. Eric and Don Jr.), but she is just a pretty NYC socialite who doesn’t understand politics or history.

Jarvanka is deeply implicated in the Mueller investigations (whether it’s Russia or money laundering) (239.8) so people stay away from them (people don’t want to be investigated, which would require lawyers and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees).

The billionaire cabinet is also afraid of investigation. (My note: It’s common for business people to use smart phone apps that record all phone calls (that’s useful for meetings), so it’s likely some of his buddies have recorded these phone calls and very likely they've deleted these recordings, which could be destruction of evidence, and thus illegal.)

With so much infighting among inexperience unprofessional people, the White House can’t hire experienced professionals. The White House also uses extreme loyalty tests. Nobody wants to join an organization that’s under highly-politicized criminal investigation. This is only the first year of a four-year administration and it has already nearly destroyed itself. How the White House will manage, or even survive, the next three years is a good guess.

Jared Kushner is terrified of the investigations. While under investigation, he can’t get loans (no bank would loan hundreds of millions to someone who may soon be in prison) so he may be forced to default on the mortgage for the 666 5^th Avenue building which would wipe out the Kushner family fortune.

The Obama Wiretap

On March 1^st, 2016, the WashPost cites leaks from the CIA and FBI that Russians had contacts with Trump’s team (Manafort, Flynn, Page, etc.) (151.1). The New Yorker also writes that Kushner met with Russians (154.8).

Trump’s response is that the leaks are illegal, probably by Obama appointees, and the DOJ should investigate and punish (154.2).

Jarvanka suspects Bannon leaked this information to the New Yorker as part of his plot to destroy Jarvanka.

In any case, there were no Obama wiretaps.

The Mercers

I am constantly surprised that few of my friends have ever heard of the Mercers. The GOP is effectively the policy wing of three billionaire families: The Mercers (father and daughter), the Adelsons (husband and wife), and the Koch brothers.

Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah are using their vast wealth to run their own private Tea Party. They want small government, home schooling, anti-liberal policies, a return to the gold standard, monetarism, and death penalties. They are pro-Christian, anti-Muslim, and anti-civil rights (58.7). The Mercers despise the Washington GOP because it was unable to win against Obama or defeat Obamacare.They have supported many of Bannon’s projects and put money into Trump’s election.

The Russia Investigation

Russia and Trump

The core of the book is on pages 98-102. Wolff describes the views and goals of the different players:

The Media: The US media sees the Russia investigation as the silver bullet to end Trump’s presidency.
Trump: He dismisses the investigation as just an effort to create a scandal.
Democrat Party: They want endless investigations so they can get votes and donations.
Congressional GOP: The Russia investigation gives them leverage against Trump.
Intel: The intelligence community (CIA, NSA, etc.) use leaks to protect themselves from Trump
The DOJ/FBI (Dept. of Justice): Obama-appointed career officers are using the investigations to advance their careers.

This is hardball politics. This is how Washington really works. Washington is not about policy, programs, or platforms. Both political parties don't really care about the voters or the country. Both political parties use slogans to get votes and donations so they can stay in office. The GOP, Dems, DOJ, FBI, and so on are blackmailing Trump with endless investigations to force him to do something or prevent him from doing something. None of them want the investigations to end.

Where did the Russia Plot start? Franklin Foer (ex-editor of New Republic) in Slate (July 4, 2016, https://goo.gl/B1ikg9) suggests several ideas (99):

Trump likes authoritarians such as Putin. They get respect and he also wants to be respected (99.9)
Money laundering: Expensive real estate makes it easy to do money laundering. A Russian Mafioso steals $100m, uses dozens of Bahama shell companies to buy ten- and twenty-million-dollar condos in Trump Hotels, and then puts up the condos as collateral for a $100m loan. Bingo, the money can now be legally explained as a bank loan and he can take his girlfriends shopping. But the US Congress placed sanctions on Russian black money, so Russians want those sanctions removed. Many of Trump’s associates (Flynn, Manafort, Carter Page, etc.) are involved in Russian money laundering.
Putin offered to hack the DNC for Trump
Trump wants Putin’s friendship, so he held his beauty pageant in Moscow. But Putin ignored him.
Russia is blackmailing Trump over money laundering, sex videos, campaign fraud, or whatever.

All of these points are just Foer’s speculation.

The FBI, CIA, DNI, and NSA published a joint conclusion on January 6, 2017 (see https://goo.gl/YxQUMe) that Putin ordered an influence campaign (102.3). The Russians indeed are using Facebook, Twitter, etc. to stir up trouble in the US. They’re also doing this in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, etc. as a broad disinformation campaign. But the report does not specifically say Putin did this to elect Trump. (Update: See the last section at the bottom. The Feb. 16 Mueller indictment shows the evidence.)

On March 20, 2017, James Comey testifies in Congress that the FBI is investigating the Russia meddling. What was only speculation by political pundits, conspiracy theories, rumors, and leaks turned into an FBI investigation (168.6). Just exactly what the FBI is investigating is not clear. To push things in the right direction (and of course, to destroy Jarvanka), Bannon tells reporters to focus on Kushner (168.6).

Trump has a background of unpaid bills, a string of bankruptcies, major business failures, fraudulent businesses (such as Trump University), the NYC Mafia, corruption, dozens (or hundreds) of extra-marital sex affairs, sexual harassment, and so on. With so many bad actions, it’s easy to add collusion with Putin.

But… there is no actual evidence that Trump and Putin collaborated in any form. And even if Trump and Putin collaborated, there isn’t a law against it.

But why let the lack of facts or a crime stop an investigation? Especially when an endless witch hunt can be used for blackmail, leverage, self-promotion, and book deals? (Update: See the last section at the bottom. The Feb. 16 Mueller indictment shows the evidence.)

Trump is his own worst enemy: he makes himself look guilty. Instead of admitting a mistake, he attacks.

In a very funny admission, Trump says, “Even my exaggerations are exaggerated” (98.9).

Was There Collusion?

Bannon said the Trump team wasn’t capable of conspiring about anything (97.7).

That’s clearly true: the core team has no political experience or connections, they spend all of their time in trivial personal attacks on each other, and Trump offers no leadership or goals.

Trump is self-centered and ignores others so he wouldn’t realize if the Russians are manipulating him (24, 240.8).

(See the last section at the bottom: Interaction between Russia and the Trump Campaign.)

Money Laundering

Family Finances and Money Laundering

On July 19,2017, Trump was interviewed by Maggie Haberman, Peter Baker, and Michael Schmidt (all leading journalists at the NYT). The interview was set up by Hope Hicks and Jarvanka.

This led to the best example of Trump’s inability to see reality. In the NYT interview, Trump warns the Mueller investigation to not look at family finances (277.7).

This is a stunning mistake and will probably lead to indictment or impeachment. Trump did it to himself and he did it in the NYT.

When you get pulled over by a cop and he asks, “what's in your glove compartment?”, you don’t say, “Go ahead and look, but you can’t look in the trunk!” Guess where the cop will look?

When Robert Mueller set up the investigation, the first person he hired was Andrew Weissman, head of the DOJ Criminal Fraud Division, which investigates financial crimes, incl. money laundering. Weissman’s prosecutions include Felix Sater, a Russian who was doing money laundering for the Russian Mafia and four US Mafia families and is associated with Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer.

“You realize where this is going. This is all about money laundering,” said Bannon (emphasis in the book). Mueller will use Manafort, Don Jr., Kushner (both Jared and his father Charlie), Deutsche Bank, and others to get to Trump.

The Trump team has no idea what’s coming. Trump thinks he can fire Mueller but Sessions has recused himself, so Sessions can’t fire Mueller. Deputy Attorney General Roy Rosenstein could fire Mueller but he refuses to do so. If Trump fires Rosenstein, he’ll need Senate confirmation to appoint a new Deputy Attorney General and the GOP senators make sure the new appointee won’t fire anyone (because they want the investigations to continue so they can keep pressure on Trump) and investigate family finances (278.5-7).

Bannon and Clinton Defense

Bannon studied how the Clinton White House defended itself in the impeachment. Clinton assigned a team of lawyers to deal with the investigations, which effectively insulated the White House so Clinton could continue to be presidential. This worked for Clinton and Bannon tried to do the same for Trump.

However, it was impossible for Bannon to hire lawyers. Nine top DC law firms were afraid their junior lawyers would resign, Trump was uncontrollable, and Trump wouldn’t pay the legal bills (234.5). So Trump uses his personal lawyers who have no experience or connections in DC politics.

(Some people have asked me why Trump needs a DC lawyer. Aren't all lawyers the same? No. If you want to sue an insurance company, you hire an insurance lawyer. You can't hire a criminal defense attorney, etc. Good lawyers are highly specialized. Good lawyer also have 15-20 years or more of experience in that field which gives them deep connections. This allows them to negotiate the best outcome. Trump's lawyers have no experience or connections in what really matters. You can see the pattern by now: Trump's worst legal mistakes are created by himself.)

Trump and the NYC Mafia

The NYC construction industry has been controlled by the US Mafia for decades. Many of Trump’s close business partners, incl. his lawyer and mentor Roy Cohn, were also involved with the Mafia. See https://goo.gl/zbP9zm

Trump and the Media

The Fake Media

In September, Christopher Steele met with the NYT, WashPost, The New Yorker, and CNN. They all refused to write about the Steele Dossier because they felt it was unverified and Trump would lose anyway (37.6). (By the way, the Steele Dossier was also given to key members of Congress who refused to distribute it. Since Trump won by only a few hundred thousand votes in only a few districts, much of the responsibility for Trump’s election is on the media and Congress for hiding this information.)

Of all the media, Trump hates CNN the most. Why? For Trump, everything is personal. Jeff Zucker was head of NBC, where Trump starred in The Apprentice. Trump insists he increased the ratings which made Zucker successful. Trump also says he convinced Phil Kent, head of Turner, to hire Zucker to head CNN. When CNN turned against Trump, he saw it as betrayal from someone he had created (92.5-8). Whether Kent actually hired Zucker because of Trump isn’t clear, but Trump thinks that happened.

Accuracy of the Book

The NYT and other newspapers pointed out minor inaccuracies in the book. The media also gleefully gossips about crazy details in the book because it attracts an audience.

However, the media doesn’t address the book’s main point: the Russia story is an invention of the media and there is no evidence of collusion.

Instead of the media admitting their 2016 election reporting was wrong, they said Trump won because Russia threw the election.

(It’s a bit ironic that the major media complains about minor errors in the book. Throughout spring and summer during the 2016 election, the major US media reported Hillary would win and didn’t report on the terrible impact of globalization on the US blue collar and lower middle class. The major media is very good on reporting who has breakfast at the Four Seasons in DC, but they're blind to the overall picture.)

Comments

Here are my additional comments.

What’s Going to Happen?

There are several possible outcomes:

Massive Heart Attack. He may fall over from his diet of cheeseburgers, Kentucky Fried Chicken, milkshakes, (2,500 calories in one meal) and lack of exercise. Although he plays golf, he relies on golf carts to get around.
Impeachment: Congress may finally get around to impeaching him. The GOP is heading towards disaster in the 2018 mid-term elections and if the Dems win the House, they’d promptly vote to impeach. The Dems can’t win an impeachment case because they don’t have a two-thirds majority in the Senate, but they could drag it out until the 2020 presidential election.
Indictment for money laundering: This is likely.
Indictment for perjury: This is very likely. Trump refuses to tell the truth, especially to people that he hates as experts. He will lie to investigators.
Resignation: To avoid impeachment or indictment, he may resign.
Re-election: Despite the Trump White House chaos and the useless GOP, the Democrat Party has no agenda, strategy, or candidates. For the Dems to win, they’d have to reject several decades of globalization policy, replace nearly all of their leadership, and make a radical switch to a new direction. That’s not likely. Trump has fanatic loyalty from his base that hates Washington. If elections were held today, he’d easily win re-election.

My Guess at What Happened

Trump ran for president mostly to get free publicity for his hotels and business ventures.

The Washington political system (the Washington GOP, the Dems, Wall Street, corporations, etc.) ran the election campaign with the assumption that globalization will continue. They all lost because they didn’t realize the voters were angry. Trump represented that anger and won.

The Russians did not expect Trump to win. They placed ads to attack Hillary and support Trump, but only to create turmoil (for example, Russia placed ads to support both gay Christians and attack gay Christians just to stir up trouble between gays and Christians). There were thousands of such ad campaigns.

Trump didn’t expect to win so he wasn’t worried about money laundering. When he won, he needlessly insulted the FBI, CIA, NSA, and DOJ (because he hates experts). They defended themselves with leaks and investigations. The media happily jumped in to sell more papers.

Trump’s emotional immaturity led him to fill his team with close friends and family, none of whom should be in the White House. That resulted in endless personal wars within the White House.

My Guess at What’s Next

Mueller will indict Jared, Ivanka, Eric, and Don Jr. for money laundering. They will resign to spend more time with their lawyers, prepare for criminal trial, and finally plea bargain to avoid prison and accept a lifetime ban on business, politics, etc. Some of them face substantial fines (in the hundreds of millions of dollars).

Trump may try to grant pardons to his family. To stop such pardons, the FBI may raid the White House and lead him out in handcuffs (this has happened several times with state governors).

Trump may make a deal with Pence for a pardon (and he’ll want it in writing, signed, and post-dated). He’ll then resign and promptly hold a rally to say he was stabbed in the back by The System. He’ll go back to NYC and spend the rest of his life attacking disloyal people. Or he may run again in 2020 and win.

Did Trump Collude with Putin?

Even if he did (and there’s no evidence for this), it looks bad and he shouldn’t have done it, but there’s no law against Trump colluding with Putin. If anyone gets indicted, it’ll be for obstruction of justice in the clumsy coverup.

This was done to Bill Clinton. The GOP started an endless fake investigation into Whitewater, and to hide his affair, Clinton perjured himself in testimony.

Has Anyone Else Said This?

Jackson Lears (professor of history at Rutgers) wrote there is no evidence for a Trump/Putin collusion. The investigation is based on the opponents’ hope to get rid of Trump.

As for the various people who’ve been indicted:

Paul Manafort for failure to register his public relations firm as a foreign agent and concealing millions of dollars in fees, which happened long before the campaign.
George Papadopolous for lying to the FBI about trying to arrange a meeting between Trump’s team and the Russian government, which the Trump campaign declined.
Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI about meeting the Russian ambassador in December after the election. This sort of backchannel diplomacy is normal.

His article was published in the London Review of Books at https://goo.gl/NQbYM9 (January 4, 2018).

(Update: See the last section at the bottom. The Feb. 16 Mueller indictment shows the evidence.)

Executive Privilege

Can Trump use executive privilege to block investigations, hearings, or a subpoena?

A number of court cases agree the president has the right to use executive privilege to not disclose military discussions, internal policy discussion, and so on.

Federal courts decided however Nixon could not use executive privilege to defend criminal actions.

If the investigation turns to money laundering, neither Trump nor his staff will be able to claim executive privilege. If they don’t answer questions or deliver documents, Congress can get a federal court order. If they continue to refuse, they will be in contempt of court, be indicted, and tried.

Trump, the Media, and Washington

The US corporate strategy for the last 40 years has been neo-liberalism, globalization, financialization, deregulation, privatization, and outsourcing. This is loosely known as “the Washington Consensus”. Because the major US corporations agree on this policy, both US parties (GOP and Dem) support it in order to get donations.

These policies devastate the blue-collar working class, the middle class, women, blacks, and Latinos (the dotcom crash, the 2008 housing crash, the lack of income growth for 40 years, disappearance of small towns, and so on). Many American voters see the impact of the Consensus on their lives, jobs, and small towns. That's why they reject mainstream candidates from both parties (Hillary, Jeb!, Romney, Kasich, Chris Christie, Huckabee, and so on).

Six corporations own 90% of the US media. Thus the media ignores problems and celebrate the Consensus.

This resulted in the Coastal Elites' stunned surprise over the 2016 election. It's not that Hillary lost. The Consensus lost.

This is also why Trump gets away with his appalling sexist and racist behavior. Voters didn’t vote for Trump; they voted against the Washington Consensus. They like that Trump is destroying Washington/coastal elites.

Washington and the Coastal Elites still don't get it. They continue to point out Trump's failures as if that disqualifies Trump as president. They won't look at their own policies (globalization, etc.) as the fundamental reason for Trump. As long as the Consensus continues as US policy, many people will be angry and they'll vote for whomever expresses their anger.

A friend asked me, "Could Trump create jobs?" In 1960, the US GDP was $540 billion. In 2017, US GDP was $20 trillion (about 40X larger). California's 2017 GDP is $2.6T, or about five times larger than the entire US in 1960. This massive economic activity is possible because the US buys and sells to nearly seven billion people in over 100 countries. To go back to an isolationist economy with closed borders would be like slamming on the brakes and skidding to a stop. It'd shut down the US, causing massive unemployment and recession. Trump's base is unhappy about globalization, but it's impossible to return to the 1960s. This means neither Trump's isolationism nor Consensus globalization will solve the problems.

Facebook and Russia

Facebook has been accused of allowing Russia to place ads. There are plenty of examples of Russian ads in Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other sites.

But these ads were part of Russia’s general campaign to spread disinformation and chaos in the West (US, UK, Germany, France, etc.)

Congress will hold hearings on Facebook, Google, Twitter etc., which means politicians will hold hearings, accept substantial donations from these companies, and then issue a report to say there isn’t a problem. If they pass a law, it'll be Facebook's lawyers who write that law.

The Mercers and Bannon

After the Wolff book appeared, the Mercers fired Bannon from Breitbart. However, Bannon is a brilliant political strategist and his Tea Party populist politics are aligned with the Mercers. He’s still involved with other Mercer projects. They may be upset at some of his ideas, but he’s useful to them.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Mercers support him in future projects. Of the entire GOP field, Bannon is the most politically astute and competent person and he also has strong populist support. He’s an expert at social media and leads the US media around by the nose. If Trump scares you, get ready for President Bannon 2020. Every week, he’d announce another insane idea (pave Yosemite, ban gays from TV, nuke the whales) as endless political theater to destroy the political parties, Congress, the Supreme Court, and Wall Street.

Authoritarian, Fascist, Sexist, Racist…

You may ask, “but isn’t Trump fascist, or racist, or whatever?” Isn’t he leading the US into authoritarianism?

Both sides, pro-Trump and anti-Trump, see the media image that they want to see, not the reality.

The real Trump is shown in Wolff’s book: self-centered, poorly-informed, and capricious who knows little about US politics, the legal system, the US government, and so on. He deals with people with simple personal emotions: like or hate. Smiley or frowny.

The US political parties are run by strategists, consultants, and operatives. These people create political slogans to spook their followers to donate money or votes. The party’s platforms (for abortion, against abortion, etc.) are just slogans. The strategists and politicians themselves don’t believe these.

There are often real issues that matter to people, such as the lack of jobs, health care, the opioid crisis, and so on. When political parties see an opportunity to get votes or money, they turn these into political issues: “Send your donations now!” “Vote now!” That’s also why these issues never end. If the crisis ended, so would the donations and votes.

That’s why I don’t consider myself to be a Republican, Democrat, or whatever. To align with a party is like saying that you prefer Coke or Pepsi. Both sell you junk drinks to make money.

Interaction between Russia and the Trump Campaign

Update: February 16, 2018. The Mueller Investigation released a 37-page indictment that describes in detail (organizations, names, etc.) how Russia interfered with the US elections and politics. There is no doubt whatsoever that Russia did this.

See sections 45, 54c, 55c, 55d, 74, and 82 of the indictment. The Russians contacted (and were contacted) volunteers, members, and officials of the Trump Campaign. Sections 25, 26, and 27 state the laws that were violated.

There is no longer any doubt. Russia interfered with US politics and the 2016 Presidential Campaign. Russia was in contact with people in the Trump campaign. The best that the Trump people can say is that it was unwitting collusion: they didn't know these were Russians. But there was collusion.

See the indictment (PDF) at justice.gov/file/1035477/download.

How to Block Data Tracking

Posted August 16, 2018

Ghostery currently reports:

Advertising: 1750 tracking tags
Site Analytics: 630 tracking tags
Customer Interaction: 277 tracking tags
Social Media: 100 tracking tags
Essential 64: tracking tags
Audio/Video Players: 60 tracking tags
Adult Advertising: 23 tracking tags
Comments: 10 tracking tags
Total = 2,914 tracking tags (Aug 2018)

Go to a major site such as CNN etc and there may be 50-75 tracking tags.

Corporate lawyers and lobbyists wrote the laws on consumer data tracking to make it legal to track you. They also make sure that Congress won't stop this.

What to do? Use Ghostery. It's a free addon for your desktop browser. Sign up (free) and you can block all of the tracking tags. You can allow only the ones that you trust or accept.

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Google Alphabet's 13 Divisions

Posted August 10, 2018

CNBC published great info on Google's revenues. Google Alphabet owns 13 divisions which made $145m in revenue in Q2/2018, but that's a mere .04% of Google's Q2/18 overall $32.66B revenue.

Yes, the little 13 bought in money but they lost $732m in Q2/18. Google is losing $587m per quarter to keep these alive.

Google calls them "Bets" and pretends they are independant divisions, each with its own CEO, but in reality, they are tightly controlled by Page and Brin, which annoys the fake CEOs.

Google advertising made $110B in 2017. If Google made $32.66B in Q2/18, it may go to $130B for 2018.

This means Google is a 20-year old one-trick pony that makes all of its money on one thing (ads) and despite investing more than $400B in R&D, it has no idea how to make more money. Google pretends to be a Silicon Valley high-tech company that works in AI, biotech, etc., but really, it's an ad distribution network (ADN). It's not even an ad agency: it doesn't manage or create ads for clients. It just distributes ads. There's nothing unique or proprietary about that; there are hundreds of ADNs. Google just happens to be the biggest one... for now.

What are those thirteen Google divisions? GV (VC). capitalG (investments). verily (healthcare). Access (fiber, but that's dead now). Calico (biotech, lifespan). Jigsaw (tech + geopolitics... hmm, Google's military wing?). chronicle (cybersecurity). Sidewalk Labs (urban innovation). Deepmind (AI). Waymo (autonomous cars). Loon (Internet balloons). Wing (drones). X (the secret lab to make more divisions).

Note that many of these are spelled with lower case: capitalG, verily, chronicle. That shows their startuppyness.

See more at CNBC CNBC on Google

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Dangerous Errors in Google Maps

Posted August 2, 2018

Google Maps is okay if you're in a city because if the Google Map is wrong, you can find a gas station or similar and get directions or help.

But if you're hiking away from developed areas, an error in Google Maps can be deadly. If you rely on the map and it leads you in a wrong direction, you can die.

Google Maps should not offer maps for undeveloped areas. It should either show "No Information for this Area" or a link to an app with topological maps, such as Gaia GPS or Backcountry Navigator (both Android apps).

People have gotten into dangerous situations due to errors in Google Maps, such as Amber VanHecke. But Google has not fixed this. They know it's a problem, so when someone dies, Google Maps will be liable.

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What Happened after Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement Speech

Posted July 23rd, 2018

Steve Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford 2005 may be the best commencement speech ever given.

But what about the guy who spoke AFTER Steve Jobs? Here's the story of that forgotten speech.

He was scheduled to speak after the main speaker, but he played Stanford football and he didn't really know who Steve Jobs was. Anyway, graduation was three days (and nights) of endless party and drinking and he fell asleep at 4am of the big day.

He got up at 10a, covered up with a cap and gown, and dragged himself down to the stadium. But... no speech in hand.

So while Steve went on for 15 minutes ("connecting the dots", "love & loss", "death"), my friend asked all his football buddies for quotes, inspirationals, whatever, the stuff that football players say ("keep your eye on the ball" and so on) and it got all scribbled down on scraps of paper.

When Jobs finished with his speech with "Stay foolish", everyone was so caught up with emotion over such a great speech that when my buddy got up and gave his rambling talk, whatever he said was totally forgotten.

Which was quite okay, because it was such a horrible speech. In the chaos of the commencement day, he lost his scraps of paper, so the speech is lost forever. Luckily for everyone.

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Rebuilding My andreas.com Website

Posted July 10th, 2018

I started andreas.com in 1995. From 1995 to 2003, I created pages in HTML by hand and posted them as an ongoing chronicle, long before anyone called it a "blog." Many of those blog postings became pages, which you can read at Stuff.

From 2003 to 2010, I used Blogger to write my blog but Google bought Blogger, messed it up, and finally, they abandoned Blogger.

I switched to Wordpress because everyone was using it and I wanted to learn how to use it. But I got tired of the endless hacking and dozens, if not hundreds, of daily spam comments. Wordpress has lousy security and it's very hackable (there were over 5,000 spammer pages on my server). You spend lots of money on security upgrades, security tools, and constantly upgrading to stay ahead of spammers and hackers. Wordpress is good for companies that want low-level staffers to add text to a page, but to make significant changes to the website, you need to hire a Wordpress developer.

In 2016, Google began to notify that it will give priority to mobile-first websites. If Laura is using her mobile phone to search in Google, then Google will show mobile-friendly websites at the top of the list. By 2018, 70-80% of searches at Google are done on mobile phones. In early 2018, Google said, "okay, that's it, if you want your site to show up in mobile searches, your site must be mobile-friendly". Sites must also be HTTPS (S for secure). If not, you don't show up in Google search results.

So I ripped out Wordpress and went back to HTML. My website is now HTML5, mobile-first, responsive design (it resizes automatically to fit any screen), and secure with HTTPS. I wrote a light template that works on all devices and the code is easy to maintain by hand. What you see is a hand-written, artisanal, free-range, organic, carbon-neutral website where I write all code by hand. That's right: I'm blogging by hand. No more CMS. (To be even lah-de-dah, our electricity in Palo Alto is renewable energy, created by Palo Alto's own solar panel farm. Let's see if Gwyneth Paltrow can top that!)

I also deleted many pages. My website had grown to over 500 pages. Google Analytics shows the traffic for every page at my site, so I sorted pages by traffic and keep the 100 most popular pages. That's okay; many were obsolete because technology changed or the sites didn't exist anymore.

If you see a broken link, please let me know.

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Hands-on Review: Samsung Gear S3 Smart Watch

Posted July 5th, 2018

I tried a Samsung Gear S3 Smart Watch for ten days. Here's my experience:

I've always worn a watch. I was curious about digital watches; so I tried the Samsung Gear S3 digital watch. I chose this one because I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 phone. However; I think my experience with this watch applies generally to all digital watches.
The watch face is a screen; so it's illuminated. That works well indoors; but it's impossible to see the screen in bright sunlight. The watch is intended for active outdoors; but it's useless in sunlight. A mechanical watch with glow can be seen in any light (or darkness) in any weather condition.
It's clumsy to use the watch. I tried the timer when I boiled a 4' 30" egg. It takes seven clicks to set the timer. Spin the bezel to select the timer; etc. But the timer only has minutes; I can't set it to four minutes and thirty seconds. It's possible this can be done; but it's not obvious.
When you take off the watch; it's only use is to hold down paper on your desk. I can set my mechanical watch on my desk so the watch face shows the time. When you take off the smart watch; it conserves battery... by turning off the screen which means you can't see the time.
The rotating bezel. In high school; I started scuba diving so I've always had diver watches. These have a rotating bezel (a ring around the watch face) that you can turn to keep track of time. On smart watches; you turn the bezel to select apps and settings; which means you can't keep track of time.
You can receive and make phone calls with the watch by holding your wrist up to your ear. In your other hand; you hold your cell phone. That's... silly. The same for email and text messages on your watch: why not just look at your phone?
The watch has settings. No; it has lots of settings. It's a bit of a challenge to navigate dozens of screens on a one-inch display.
Too much pre-loaded junk. I deleted all sorts of useless apps and games.
I assume these watches have yet more tracking and reporting capabilities. I don't want hundreds of companies to know my pulse; oxygen level; body temperature; motion; location; and so on.
The watch face can't be configured. It'd be easy for Samsung to add this; but they don't. You can use dozens of apps at app stores to configure your watch face; but I strongly recommend that you avoid apps unless they are a) absolutely necessary and b) come from known companies. There is too much spammer / tracking / spyware / virus on free apps.
The watch battery will last about three days. This is fine if you stay in town; but we often go on week-long outdoors trips. After three days; a digital watch will be useless.
My mechanical watch (Citizen diver's watch in a titanium case) has lasted fifteen years so far and will likely last 50 years. Any good watch; such as Rolex; Citizen; Breitling; Tag Heuer; Seiko; etc. will last 50 years. But we all know digital devices rarely last longer than three years: either they stop working; the battery dies; or they become obsolete. If you spend $300 every three years; why not just pay $1,000 and get a watch that will last decades?

Digital watches are a nice idea; but so far; not better than mechanical watches. To justify its use; a digital watch has to be substantially better than a mechanical watch in all conditions.

After ten days; I returned the smart watch.

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Facebook vs Congress

Posted 11 Apr 2018

As you may have read; the Congress critters were clueless and Mark Zuckerberg gave..., well..., sort-of-answers, but not really answers. Okay; here's the real story.

FB; Google; Youtube; Instagram; Twitter; etc. (BTW; there are at least 61 social media sites) all make their income via advertising. Google made $100B in 2017 (about 85% came through advertising; per Bloomberg). FB made $40B in 2017.

To make money; they give demographic information to advertisers. This lets advertisers show ads to (e.g.) women; age 18-24; living in Dallas; college-educated; like jogging; etc. There are around 1,500 criteria that allow advertisers to precisely define their audience so ads can be targeted specifically those people.

This is also why FB/Google/etc. are more successful than any newspaper or magazine. No newspaper could possibly create 250,000 personalized versions of their newspaper to reach every reader. Web-based ad-driven companies can easily do that. There is not "one Amazon"; Amazon has 310m customers; every customer gets her own personalized Amazon page that shows only the products that appeal to her. There are 310m Amazons.

How many Facebooks are there? 2B; or one for each user with ads targeted just for that user.

How BIG is Facebook? FB itself has about 2.13B members and growing at about 3% per quarter (64m new members per quarter). FB also owns Instagram (800m and growing +12% per quarter; or about 100m new members per quarter); WhatsApp (1.5B users; +13% per quarter; which is 200m new members per quarter); Messenger (1.2B; growing 17% yearly; or about 200m users per year) all numbers for Q4/17). There's overlap in many of these users: Many Facebook users also use Messenger and Instagram. So the total is perhaps 3B? No; it's more than that. If a webpage has a Facebook button on it; the button is collecting data and sending it back to Facebook. Hundreds of millions of page have these buttons and they're tracking you; even if you aren't a member of any of Facebook's tools. Both FB and Google (and many other social sites) are collecting vast amounts of data.

The NYT's total revenues for 2017 are a pitiful $1.7B. Their profits were a measly $100m. I have friends who earn more than that. To put it bluntly; the NYT could disappear next week and FB/Gooogle wouldn't even notice.

So there weren't "hacks" or "breaches" at FB. This precisely what FB/Google/etc. was designed to do: collect user information and offer it to advertisers. Or; to say it correctly; offer the tools to allow advertisers to pick the relevant audience. Ford doesn't "get" the user information: Ford creates an ideal user and FB delivers the Ford ad to those users (BTW; this is what I do in digital marketing for my clients.)

If G/FB continue to sell ads; they MUST offer detailed user information. That's what makes it useful to advertisers.

Solution? No more ads. G+FB+etc switch to freemium. Free baby version to users who won't pay; Subscriber version with extra features to subscribers; and Corporate version for business users. Thus very little need to collect 1,500 criteria on the users and no need whatsoever to share user information with advertisers because there would be no ads.

Many Silicon Valley companies use the freemium model. On average; about 5% of users pay for service.

Let's say FB charges $5/mo for subscriptions. Of 2B users; only 100m (5%) may pay. $5/month X 100m = $6B. FB's $40B revenues would drop 85% and revenue growth would be low single digits. Their stock valuation would collapse from $480B to... well; way less. Investors would flee. (The actual numbers will be much lower in India; Southeast Asia; Africa; where many users are unable to pay $100 per year).

The same for Google. How many would actually pay to use Google/Gmaps/Gmail etc.? 5%? Less?

The switch to non-ads could be done. But it'd shatter the Silicon Valley billion-dollar companies.

Will this Actually Happen?

Who else depends on FB/Google data? The US Government and politicians. The government uses this data for surveillance. Politicians all use FB/Google for election campaigns. They are not going to shoot the Golden Goose.

Have a comment or question? Send me an email

How to Change Your Facebook Settings

Posted Oct 4, 2018

Facebook has been hacked. FB ID/passwords are being sold for $2.
If you use your Facebook ID to log into other sites, you must change your FB settings.
Here is how to do this:

Go to your Facebook page
Open the "Settings" (click the little triangle at upper right corner)
Select "Settings"
At left side, select "Apps and Websites. This shows other sites that use your Facebook login.
Select them and click "Remove"
Click the tab "Expired" to see sites you haven't used recently
Under the first six, there may be "View All". Click that to see all of them.
Select them and click "Remove"
At left side, select "Business Integrations". You will see other tools that have access to your Facebook account.
Select them and click "Delete"
At the bottom, there is Preferences
In the section "Apps, Websites, and Games", click "Edit". This lets you use Facebook to log into other sites.
Click "Turn Off"
Finally, change your FB password

Have a comment or question? Send me an email

17 Years of Twitter: Aug 2008 to Jun 2024

I downloaded my Twitter Archive from Twitter, fixed the dates so it could be sorted (YYYY/MM/DD), and posted it below. I used Google Gemini 2.0 Advanced to create a short summary.

Technology and Digital Marketing Trends: Andreas consistently discusses emerging trends in SEO, social media, AI, mobile technology, and digital marketing strategies, often analyzing the impact of companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon.
Silicon Valley Culture and Business: There's a strong focus on the Silicon Valley startup scene, including funding, acquisitions, company culture, and the changing landscape of tech giants.
Social Commentary and Current Events: The tweets frequently touch upon broader social and political events, including elections, economic trends, and social issues, often with a critical or humorous perspective.
Books, Writing, and Publishing: Andreas often mentions his book projects, writing processes, book reviews, and the publishing industry, including translations and audiobooks.
Personal Observations and Daily Life: Interspersed with tech and business commentary are personal anecdotes about daily life, including nature observations, travel, family, and humorous everyday occurrences, adding a personal touch to the feed.

These tweets provide a chronological record of Andreas observations and thoughts from 2008 to 2024, heavily focused on the evolving tech landscape, especially digital marketing and social media. He analyzes trends, company strategies, and the impact of tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Beyond technology, the tweets reflect on current events, politics, and societal shifts, often with a blend of humor and critical analysis. Personal experiences, writing projects, and book recommendations are woven throughout, offering a glimpse into the his multifaceted interests and professional life within the Silicon Valley context.

Andreas views Silicon Valley's future with a mix of fascination and concern. He acknowledge its innovative spirit and global influence but also highlight potential downsides like unethical practices, inflated valuations, and a focus on profit over societal good. The future seems dynamic and uncertain, marked by constant technological shifts and the need for adaptation.

You can copy these tweets (or paste the URL andreas.com/twitter.html in your AI) to make your own analysis.

2008/08/06: Spoke at a Stanford/Berkeley conf thurs. Met two guys who are the founders of Twitter. I signed up for Twitter. (And that is my first tweet.)
2008/08/09: I'm doing edits on layout draft of our new book. 3 more chapters to go, due on Tuesday. The book comes out in late October.
2008/08/10: i finished writing my newest book. did the final edits today & sent it to the publisher. it only took a year to write this...
2008/08/27: 3 am: awoke to chirrups: two totally cute raccoons by my bed. they came in via cat door & got lost in the house. I herded them out.
2008/09/05: little skunk came up to the camp last nite. Looked around w squinting eyes. Walked off. yrs, andreas
2008/09/11: i'm at Swiss consulate for a party to celebrate Hadron Supercollider. 50-60 scientistd etc are here. Speeches soon. yrs, andreas
2008/09/11: now watching live video feed from LHC in switzerlland. Scientists are estatic. The thing works. yrs, andreas
2008/09/24: in DC to speak at a conf. I signed up yesterday for a Google phone. These arrive. Oct 22. yrs, andreas
2008/10/24: at T-MObile, buying a gPhone. full report later. yrs, andreas
2009/02/13: On the air again. Raining. Reading "Groundswell". Good bk.
2009/02/26: Busy week. SDForum event was great. Lots of info re China. Tomorrow, breakfast w VP of Colombia, who happens to be a cousin.
2009/02/26: Next Wens (Mar 5), we speak at Books Inc in Mtn View (7:30).
2009/02/28: At HYSTA's conf on Alibaba at Stanford MBA school 2day. Jack Ma, CEO, spoke. Bigger than eBay+Amazon now. We're meeting w them.
2009/03/01: working on our analytics/SEO/PPC school. course overview = 18 pg. we start in May w 2 classes of test bunnies. class starts in June.
2009/03/02: Finally! Wrote my andreas.com newsletter for March.Sent to Lili, who sends it out to my 5,000 subscribers. Hey, it's only 12:35 am...
2009/03/03: Just got the book contract for China. Book comes out in June. Publisher is Tsing Hua University.
2009/03/05: Getting ready. Books Inc tonight in Mtn View. We talk at 7:30p.
2009/03/07: b sure 2 see Coraline in 3D. Freudian story of a girl on cusp of puberty, sliding back & forth btw child & adult. metaphors: a tube, etc.
2009/03/09: In SF at Unica's conf on segmentation marketing. Talkiing w many people.
2009/03/10: Meeting w Maggie Guan to plan our web analytics marketing book for Tsing Hua University in Beijing, China.
2009/03/11: @hkremer Use Twellow.com to find groups of interests. Search (e.g.) for "author kites" to find experts on kites.
2009/03/12: I'm now Regional Director of Alumni for Universität Heidelberg. It's 600-year old university (Faust, Class of 1509 AD:-)
2009/03/14: @WineDog The university cafeterias were easy stops for everyone! Brits, Americans, French, Arabs, everyone was there.
2009/03/14: Alexa stats for daily traffic: Facebook 16%, LinkedIn 0.4%, Twitter 0.3%. Growing fast. Twitter is #81 in US (Expedia #85, Monster.com #87)
2009/03/14: I see it takes about 3 hours for Google to pick up and index a Tweet.
2009/03/14: Try again! Here's the video for the Land Rush: http://tinyurl.com/abhtqd
2009/03/16: @erictpeterson Looked at Twitalyzer. Too easy to spoof the numbers. Doesn't measure real value (CTR, CPL, CPA).
2009/03/16: @erictpeterson To measure citation, I look at number of mentions in last 10 days. Also look at results in Twellow. Twitter needs improvemnt.
2009/03/16: @erictpeterson Why spoof? To get massive numbers of followers to broadcast to them. How to measure? Trying to figure this out. G-A, Omniture.
2009/03/17: Amusing bug in Google: a client's conversion rate is 92,233,720,368,547,776%. That's 92 thousand trillion! Does Obama have that much?:-)
2009/03/19: @CarriBugbee Look at Twellow.com. It indexes Twitter's users. They say they have 2.1 million.
2009/03/19: WebVisible & Nielsen/NetRatings survey: Only 44% of small businesses have websites. 50% spend only 10% of their marketing budget online.
2009/03/20: Does Google charge more for clicks? How much? 5%? 10%? 20%? Find out. Details at my blog. http://tinyurl.com/andreas027
2009/03/20: I'm testing analytics w/Twitter. In a few days, I'll post how to use tracking URLs and how to track conversions, etc.
2009/03/20: OK, it works: Twitter traffic can be tracked: Click-Thru-Rate (CTR) & conversions (leads or sales). Thxs to those who helped with testing.
2009/03/21: @sem_marketing Working on the interviews of the China corps for the book.
2009/03/22: Anyone know of examples of companies that make sales with Twitter? Or is it just branding? Anyone tracking conversions, leads, sales?
2009/03/22: Deleted items disappear from your list of updates, but not from Twitter's search index.
2009/03/22: It takes Twitter's Search a few seconds to find new items. Google waits 3 hrs. G could be instant, but they choose to delay. Interesting.
2009/03/23: @larrymagid The chatter is mostly random. Twitter is useful for finding, connecting to, & emailing other experts. Facebook can't do that.
2009/03/25: Article in the Wall Street Journal on how companies are advertising in Twitter http://tinyurl.com/andreas029
2009/03/25: Google's Visual Designer quit. He blogged. A line is very funny. See https://www.andreas.com/blog.html
2009/03/25: Guy Kawasaki offered a free book to his 93,000 followers. 140 took the offer. That's a tenth of 1%. Pretty bad CTR.
2009/03/25: Interesting article about Guy Kawasaki's use (or blatant misuse) of Twitter: http://tinyurl.com/andreas028
2009/03/26: Coremetrics released their analytics tool for Twitter this morning. Looks great. I'll write more details about it.
2009/03/27: Coremetrics added Twitter to their analytics package. Screenshot and a bit of description at http://tinyurl.com/andreas023
2009/03/27: The Christian Science Monitor (CSM), one of the top 10 US newspapers, stopped its daily print edition.
2009/03/30: A week ago, Twitter has .5% of US daily traffic. It now has 1.9%. It quadrupled in a week. It shot past LinkedIn. Source: Alexa.com
2009/03/30: Reading Kotler & Keller's university textbook on marketing. It's a standard. 700 pages and it doesn't mention analytics:-)
2009/03/31: I'll be the keynote speaker. Experts in Coremetrics, Omniture, & Google Analytics discuss hands-on analytics for integrated marketing.
2009/03/31: Panel on Analytics: SV Am. Marketing Assn., April 23. Incl. Coremetrics, Intuit, Paypal, MediaSmith.
2009/03/31: The TMobile G1 Google gPhone: 5.6 oz of dead weight. The battery lasts 3 hours. Many days, it lasts only 15 minutes. My Treo was better.
2009/03/31: What works, what doesn't work, & how to manage & improve your marketing & sales. You'll come away with a solid understanding of analytics.
2009/04/01: Finally! Automated Bid Management (ABM) for Facebook. This morning, four companies released ABM tools for Facebook... http://bit.ly/dD4ixl
2009/04/03: Check yr analytics. Look at your visitors' monitor resolution. Resize your monitor to 1024x768 and open yr Twitter page. Yep, a mess.
2009/04/03: Most custom Twitter backgrounds are broken. They designed for large screens... but 32% of my visitors use 1024x screens. It looks broken.
2009/04/03: So I created a template for 1024x monitors. It's free (incl. instructions) at http://tinyurl.com/andreas023 (entry for April 3rd)
2009/04/15: Try this: http://tinyurl.com/dxzmru Select each tab & click "Play Timeline." Do this for both. Whoa!
2009/04/21: IBM now does analytics? Learn about IBM's analytics strategy. http://bit.ly/1VWEuz
2009/04/30: @Delishess:-) Any questions, just ask! More books: Akin Arikan's "Multichannel Marketing" is ++good.
2009/04/30: @Omni_man Many thanks for the info re: Omniture and Twitter. I'll notify the client.
2009/04/30: Let me update my tweet re: Omniture and Twitter. If they set it up, there's a setup fee. But you can also do it yourself. So that's cool.
2009/04/30: Omniture has Twitter tracking, but they charge $13K to turn it on. There are plenty of free tools to track one's brands in Twitter.
2009/04/30: Speaking at eMetrics on enterprise analytics this Tues in San Jose. Free admission.
2009/05/05: Our book's website is finally up! www.Insider-SEM.com
2009/05/08: We're looking to hire graphics people in India, China, or similar to make image ads. Ask them to contact me. -- andreas@andreas.com
2009/05/22: Cool, a 3-day weekend. Okay, I'll write several proposals & reports, but at least, the phone will be quiet for a few days.
2009/05/22: No more recession? We're getting many enquiries for services. Also hiring. V busy these days. Speaking at various confs next few weeks.
2009/05/27: Did you know Google runs its own affiliate network? Yep. Even our Google agency support didn't know about this. http://bit.ly/11MPMe
2009/05/27: I wonder why Google is so secretive about this? Would it undermine their Adwords revenues?
2009/05/28: It's Mac vs. Microsoft all over again. Apple refused to license their OS so they sell it alone. MS licensed to hundreds of makers.
2009/05/28: The end for iPhone? Google said today they expect 18-20 gPhones (from 8 mfgs) by the end of this year. Google will swamp the market.
2009/05/29: feature is voice search. At Search box, click the microphone icon and talk. It does a good job of finding what you said. Many small tweaks.
2009/05/29: My G1 gPhone just updated itself to Android 1.5 (Cupcake). A number of new features. Update takes about 10 min. Camera now has video mode.
2009/05/29: Video can be directly uploaded to YouTube. Just click and the world can watch your cat. Onscreen touch keyboard (a bit small...). A cool
2009/05/31: #bing In maps, use Birds Eye view for closeup. But the images are about 2 years old. I can still see Stephanie in my back yard:-)
2009/05/31: #bing Type a city name + "weather" (e.g., dallas weather) to get weather. When looking for a corp's revenues: Google failed. Wolfram worked.
2009/05/31: #bing Video search is cool; mouseover and it shows the video as a preview. Every day, main page's img changes. You can scroll back the img.
2009/05/31: #bing When you mouse over a result, you get a short summary (the pg's opening paragraphs). Saves time.
2009/05/31: bing.com is up. it's working over here.
2009/06/01: @david_tinney I'm waiting for the info as well. It will be in Aarhus, in the week of 15-18 June. Tell him to email me and I'll update.
2009/06/03: 10,000 contractors evaluate search results for Google. Google does this for both natural and paid results.Yahoo & Microsoft also do this.
2009/06/03: @andreasmueller Too busy with clients, etc. Las Vegas this weekend and Denmark next week to speak at events. Like, what recession?:-)
2009/06/03: A Wall Street Journal blog is writing about Google Quality Raters. It even has a link to Google's internal manual. http://bit.ly/ZKisw
2009/06/03: Whoa. MySpace lost 33% of its users in one year? http://bit.ly/15eFI0
2009/06/04: This has many implications for SEO: It's not Page Rank, keyword density, meta-tags, links, etc. that matter. It's the quality of the page.
2009/06/04: WSJ blog on Google Quality Rater system: Matt Cutts states Google manually lowers ranking for bad sites. http://bit.ly/DFuGV
2009/06/09: Heat maps for Google shows where users look. Position 1, 2, 3... or 7? See the heat map at http://bit.ly/16tFFH
2009/06/10: Twitter: A one-way street? 10% of users write 90% of tweets. 50% update only every 72 days. Most tweet only once. http://bit.ly/shsBS
2009/06/14: In Denmark with Klean.com for a week of meetings and a talk.
2009/06/25: You get better SEO by externalizing the JavaScript. This improves the page speed, which increases the page's Quality Score at Google.
2009/06/26: Attended Google's conf yesterday for agencies. Did you know there is PPC for YouTube now? Go https://ads.youtube.com/ Make your video #1.
2009/06/09: Heat maps for Google shows where users look. Position 1, 2, 3... or 7? See the heat map at http://bit.ly/16tFFH
2009/07/01: MAD Magazine's Secret map of Google Headquarters: Everything revealed:-) http://bit.ly/w5x3l
2009/07/02: Speaking in Palo Alto on July 9th. More at http://bit.ly/13NKfN
2009/07/15: MAD Magazine's Secret map of Google Headquarters: Everything revealed:-) http://bit.ly/w5x3l
2009/07/22: Amazing. Scribd.com is running a massive copyright piracy operation. The VCs will IPO it and it becomes somebody else's problem.
2009/07/24: If you've ever worked in software dev, v funny video fr Oracle software dev. http://bit.ly/vajB3 (FYI:Naggi=Dir. Release Mgmt Oracle:-)
2009/07/28: Microsoft and Yahoo agreed to an online search and advertising partnership. More details tomorrow.
2009/07/28: Under the deal, Bing will power Yahoo's searches. Yahoo will handle advertising sales, using Microsoft technology.
2009/07/29: For SEO: Bing has price comparison, etc. Start using Bing to learn how it works. See how your sites & keywords are ranking in Bing.
2009/07/29: Google will finally have to start to listen to customers. GMail is one of the worst email tools. Maybe now they'll begin to fix it.
2009/07/29: If you're using PPC (paid search, i.e., Google Adwords), try Bing's PPC. Much cheaper clicks and CPAs.
2009/07/29: Microsoft+Yahoo: MS will have 30% marketshare, the first serious challenge to Google. G must change. They have no customer support, etc.
2009/07/29: To learn more how Bing works, I'm switching my default search engine to Bing for a few weeks.
2009/07/30: No Google Dance party at SES San Jose this year. Google is cutting costs. They can't afford the party anymore.
2009/07/31: How is Bing able to predict the best flight prices? See http://bit.ly/ioSZg They could extend this into other industries.
2009/08/01: Want to compare Bing vs. Google? Easy. Use www.bing-vs-google.com and see the results, side-by-side.
2009/08/10: Going to SES San Jose on Tues morning. I'll be walking around. #SES
2009/08/10: Search engine blind test? Results from all 3; compare. Try it! http://blindsearch.fejus.com/
2009/08/11: AdReady is an easy way to do image ads/Flash ads. Thousands of ad templates. Pick one, add your text and URL. We'll try this. #SES
2009/08/11: BIng was totally packed. Long line waiting for free copy of Shirky's book, and talk w Bing team. They were helpful and open, as usual. #SES
2009/08/11: Facebook had a stand (first time). Very enthusiastic. Talked with them. They were handing out $50 coupons. #SES
2009/08/11: Google had martini with illuminated ice cubes. V amusing effect. Talked with many from G's TV team, plus other teams. Our rep came down #SES
2009/08/11: Google's stand was the usual. Nothing new. Omniture's stand was smaller than last year. Webtrends was there with their new interface. #SES
2009/08/11: Instead, they had Google Drink:-) Private event for selected agencies. Maybe 50 people and 20-30 senior G team. Met many whom I knew #SES
2009/08/11: No Google Dance this year. Google is cutting costs. Remember when Yahoo rented Great America amusement park? Free rides? Oh, well. #SES
2009/08/11: Nothing really new. PeoplePond is a "personal branding / promote yourself" tool, but Google Profiles does already does that for free. #SES
2009/08/11: Poor Yahoo. Big stand, nobody there. I took a photo; it's the last time Yahoo will be at SES. Nice people. I chatted with their team. #SES
2009/08/11: SES was a big letdown. Very few people. Many expo aisles mostly empty. Maybe 60-70% down from its peak. Travel budgets slashed. #SES
2009/08/11: Talked w G team that works with large corp accts; it helped me v much to develop better strategies. Very useful event. #SES
2009/08/14: Here's a new kind of website. You can click the links. It's "hosted" on Youtube, i.e., they pay $0 for hosting. http://bit.ly/PZKR2
2009/08/20: Shirky's book (Here Comes Everybody) discusses socio-economical drivers of social media. But he doesn't understand theory of revolution.
2009/08/25: The End of Western Civilization? Kids now text message in the shower. How? They put their cell phones in a zip-lock bag.
2009/09/08: @LJCaswell if you have questions, just ask:-)
2009/09/15: .. and other analytics companies move in to poach customers. Top 2 enterprise competitors are Coremetrics and Unica, so they'll move...
2009/09/15: ... for the anaconda to swallow its prey, er, for Adobe to complete the merger. Confusion, etc., sales will slow, etc. unhappy customers...
2009/09/15: ... in quickly. The purchase doesn't make sense: why would Adobe buy an analytics company? It doesn't fit into their line of products.
2009/09/15: Adobe is buying Omniture for $1.8 billion.
2009/09/15: Adobe is buying Omniture for $10.9b. iResearch predicts China online revenues will grow 51% to 112.3bn yuan in 2010 (BBC news).
2009/09/15: Adobe Omniture: What will happen? Many of you have been through an M&A. Same story again. Layoffs in HR, administration, finance, etc.
2009/09/15: My book is now on Amazon Kindle. Someone emailed me and said she had bought it and was reading it on her Kindle.
2009/09/15: Some in upper management will cash in their stocks and leave. A few months for regulators to approve the merger. And 9 months or more...
2009/09/16: ... analytics company; they don't call themselves an analytics company. They say they do "business optimization", i.e., global optimizing..
2009/09/16: ... But whatever. M&As often don't make sense. Implications for the analytics industry? Not really much. Omni (or whatever it will be...
2009/09/16: ... called) will be around for several years. Coremetrics & Unica will be a bit stronger. No major changes for now. But I don't see a ...
2009/09/16: ... long future for Omni. Analytics is not really an issue for Adobe, so they won't pay full attention to it. But Omni isn't really an...
2009/09/16: ... of an entire business strategy (marketing, leads, sales, etc.). And that REALLY doesn't fit into Adobe's product line. So the real...
2009/09/16: ... Omni is not easy to install. Could Adobe offer Omni for free? It's too complex to install and configure for non-experts. We'll see.
2009/09/16: embed Omni into Flash. What next? Will that be free to Adobe users? Or will they have to pay for it? And just exactly who installs this?...
2009/09/16: Forrester & others think Adobe can embed analytics into Flash. Yes, & you can use Google Analytics to track Flash and it's free. So they...
2009/09/16: If you want to retweet what I wrote about Adobe's purchase of Omniture analytics, I blogged at https://www.andreas.com/blog.html
2009/09/16: issue is to see how Coremetrics and Unica react to this and how they develop and adjust their future strategies.
2009/09/19: Improve Gmail by voting for what Google should fix, such as "sorting" & a useful contact manager. http://bit.ly/MaYmC
2009/10/24: Reading Avinash's new book on analytics. 460 pages. It's a quick read:-) I'll write a review in a few days.
2009/11/02: A friend wants to promote her book. She wants to try this "paperclip marketing" that everyone is talking about:-)
2009/11/14: It's weekend! Which means only 9-hour work days:-)
2009/11/17: Is anyone using Ning? We're looking at how to build a social network for a graduate school's alumni group. What other tools are there?
2009/11/22: Our next course on SEO and PPC is Dec. 8. More at www.ani-training.com/ccg/ http://bit.ly/5250Bm
2009/11/22: Our next course on SEO and PPC is Dec. 8. Only 6 seats left. More at www.ani-training.com/ccg/
2009/11/22: Too funny to be true? There's an Islamic terrorist group named the "Moro Islamic Liberation Front". Yep. Their acronym is... MILF
2009/11/24: Our book on SEO, PPC, and analytics has been published in China. Pix of book cover at https://www.andreas.com/blog.html
2009/11/30: Our book has been published in China by Tsing Hua University Press. This is the leading technology university in... http://bit.ly/6zgnv5
2009/12/04: Google added automatic captioning to video. It transcribes the voice. You can also upload a transcript. Watch this http://bit.ly/7wOuAM
2009/12/14: Does Google's Twitter feed matter for SEO? Here's an example and two conclusions: http://bit.ly/Va5K8
2009/12/22: Before everyone takes off: Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for 2010!
2009/12/22: Looking for someone do affiliate marketing for a project. Know someone? Contact me by email (andreas@andreas.com)
2009/12/28: What ever happened to Google Wave? Is it totally dead? Wave goodbye?:-)
2010/01/08: In California, we have four seasons: Floods, forest fires, #earthquake, and urban riots:-)
2010/01/08: It was the Little One:-) 3.7 at 11:48 local time. It feels like a heavy truck going by. Or the train. #earthquake
2010/01/19: Before Google launches the Nexus, they should fix the T-Mobile G1 phone. Lousy software, no battery life, no fixes, no service, no support.
2010/01/20: 2009 online revenue in China grew 30% ($10.9b). iResearch predicts China online revenues will grow 51% to 112.3bn yuan in 2010 (BBC news).
2010/01/27: Google added image ads to search results. This is a major ad policy change at Google. To see an example, andreas.com/blog.html
2010/01/31: See examples of the best pages at Facebook: http://is.gd/7qlQH
2010/02/07: Facebook announced a deal with Microsoft: they're dropping Microsoft's ads; in turn, Microsoft's now powers the search box in Facebook.
2010/02/25: "Search Marketing 2010." Speaking Mar. 10 DMA Palo Alto. The latest in Google, Facebook, etc. Includes workshop. www.dmanc.org
2010/03/06: New entries at my blog: Corp pages in Facebook. Yet another Google social media fail. Google SEO Report Card. See http://bit.ly/Va5K8
2010/03/13: Trying to figure out how to get Google Analytics to report on Facebook fan page activity. I'll post an FAQ when I... http://bit.ly/cVHlTd
2010/03/15: Facebook is bigger than Google. http://digital.venturebeat.com 2010/03/15/facebook-ousts-google-as-most-popular-u-s-site/
2010/03/26: Company websites inside Facebook http://bit.ly/91Dyvg
2010/03/28: Another interesting feature: The Fan and Group pages are RSS-enabled. This means people can add my Fan page or... http://bit.ly/93mRHI
2010/03/28: Come to "Social Media for Public Relations" Wednesday, April 7 from 11:30 am to 2:30 pm. Speaking at an event on... http://bit.ly/aqTXjA
2010/03/28: Company websites inside FacebookSee examples of companies that are using Fan Pages as websites in Facebook:... http://bit.ly/ajlMa8
2010/03/28: Facebook is bigger than... http://bit.ly/auqvMg
2010/03/28: Good article on Google's strategy and the problems of being too big. This was sent to me by friends in Denmark.... http://bit.ly/aD1UzU
2010/03/28: I learned much more about Facebook in the last few days. I'm shutting down this Fan page and moving it to a new Fan... http://bit.ly/bNcnVL
2010/03/28: I learned much more about Facebook in the last few days. I'm shutting down this Fan page and moving to a new Fan... http://bit.ly/dqdV4I
2010/03/28: Need someone to build your Facebook site? See the Facebook Forum at http://forum.developers.facebook.com/ . Go to... http://bit.ly/ce2NCZ
2010/03/28: Our book has been published in China by Tsing Hua University Press. This is the leading technology university in... http://bit.ly/cd4sIR
2010/03/28: Virginie at eCairn sent this to me. The top 500 social media blogs, ranked by influence. It's just been updated.... http://bit.ly/cXfTD7
2010/04/01: Finally! Automated Bid Management (ABM) for Facebook. This morning, four companies released ABM tools for Facebook... http://bit.ly/dD4ixl
2010/04/28: I added a new tab: andreas.com. Click that to see the page. I copied the HTML from andreas.com, converted the paths... http://bit.ly/9xfCnn
2010/05/02: I wrote a step-by-step FAQ on how to create your own Facebook Fan Pages. andreas.com/faq-facebook-fan-page.html
2010/05/03: Speaking on PPC to 20 Colombian companies May 26. I'll say hola from you.
2010/05/04: A list of Facebook plugins to add to your website. I added Comment boxes to my andreas.com site and traffic... http://bit.ly/cTbZhK
2010/05/05: Examples of ecommerce sites within FB fan pages: http://www.facebook.com/bestbuy has a shopping cart, store... http://bit.ly/ck0orU
2010/05/11: Facebook now adds you to Communities (Groups) without telling you. Add an interest (such as Denmark) to your... http://bit.ly/dBZsmQ
2010/05/17: A perceptive article about Google vs. Facebook by Bindu Reddy. She argues FB could surpass Google in revenues and... http://bit.ly/cSRBtL
2010/05/17: An perceptive article about Google vs. Facebook by Bindu Reddy. She argues FB could surpass Google in revenues and... http://bit.ly/asgweK
2010/05/24: Twitter changed the rules today: Outside agencies can't places ads anymore. Ad.Ly was the best known of these.... http://bit.ly/aEC3mm
2010/06/08: @BPGlobalPR BP = Black Puddle?
2010/06/14: 60% of voice mail is never heard. Okay, my cat never returns her calls. But 60% of all voice mail? That's a lot of... http://bit.ly/9XEOt9
2010/06/16: IBM buys Coremetrics: An analysis of the deal by Akin Arikan, the analytics evangelist at Unica: "Farewell to... http://bit.ly/bkxun8
2010/06/16: IBM buys Coremetrics: Analysis of the deal by Roslyn Layton, recently the Director of the SEM Agency at Coremetrics http://bit.ly/bcPDy6
2010/06/17: Anyone else using Twitter Places? I see this isn't used by practically any of the people whom I follow.
2010/06/28: Getting ready to send out my July newsletter. Here's the DRAFT. If you have comments or suggestions, please let... http://fb.me/CjYwRYzm
2010/06/29: Wondering about Facebook's bidding process? It's based on location, age, job, etc. Here's an excellent overview of... http://fb.me/zGxzezAY
2010/06/30: Another Google screwup. They changed the layout of the News page and made it much more difficult to use. Readers are complaining loudly.
2010/07/01: Check out the user response the Google News redesign. The attack postings are pretty funny. Another Google screwup. #googlenews
2010/07/02: Looking for social media white papers, studies, guidelines, etc.? Large collection of resources. http://fb.me/z30reBVN
2010/07/06: Aw man, Alert Rank is shutting down as of 7/15.... bummer.
2010/07/07: I sent out my July newsletter. Here's a copy at my website. http://fb.me/DZxUmDpI
2010/07/07: JimCarrey.com: The most different, unique website you'll ever see. The transitions are remarkable. http://fb.me/uSYmNRI5
2010/07/07: Twitter claims to have 800m searches per day (http://bit.ly/9Msmpk). Not possible. They only have 90m tweets per day http://bit.ly/bbQkb0
2010/07/08: Babar Bhatti ‏@thebabar 80% of the buzz comes from 16% of influencers - source: Forrester #smmsf (almost 80-20 rule)
2010/07/08: Bret Taylor, CTO of Facebook, explained the purpose of Facebook's Open Graph project. It won't fit here, so you... http://fb.me/CjCpL6YV
2010/07/08: I work at Acxiom. We have +400 job openings. Acxiom is on the list of the "100 Best Places to Work". http://bit.ly/8uqEd5
2010/07/08: July 27: I'll speak at the SV-AMA (Silicon Valley Am. Marketing Assoc.) on the changes in digital marketing. http://fb.me/BeahuNO0
2010/07/08: Matt Cutts ‏@mattcutts Today's webmaster video: How does Google handle a page containing multiple languages? http://goo.gl/du05
2010/07/08: Social Media Marketing SF 2010 is today. Follow the tweets at #smmsf
2010/07/08: Techie Diva ‏@TechieDiva Clips of #smmsf will be posted on Youtube. Sessions transcribed at http://www.murraynewlands.com/
2010/07/09: Didn't know this was possible. Zafesoft.com lets you tag any file so it can be tracked anywhere. Yes, even Notepad... http://fb.me/DtKKKPir
2010/07/09: Ethan Zuckerman ‏@EthanZ Human rights activists in Egypt are working to make #khaledsaid a trending topic. His brutal death by police torture: http://bit.ly/dwYLKc
2010/07/09: It's finally official: China renews Google's license. http://fb.me/BjMErxow
2010/07/09: Met w/ Murray Newlands, organizer of yesterday's Social Media Marketing event in SF. Many opportunities for collaboration. And a nice guy.
2010/07/09: The Chinese People's Liberation Army does... Michael Jackson. http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/Xf4Ta-b1luc/
2010/07/11: Google secretely invests $100-200m in Zynga to prepare for Google gaming in their upcoming social media site. See... http://fb.me/C7FKAMmD
2010/07/12: Latest Check Shows Insufficient Venture Funds http://bit.ly/ctg7oq
2010/07/12: Make your own apps. No programming needed. Even kids can make apps. http://fb.me/Dhw642Kb
2010/07/13: A Google research paper on the nature of social networks and how a social media site should work. Lots of... http://fb.me/ClPjqEiq
2010/07/13: Comparison of cost-per-click, ROI, etc. on Google/Bing/Yahoo in quarterly report by Efficient Frontier. http://fb.me/ACYMlx85
2010/07/13: Microsoft+Facebook... Microsoft integrated Facebook and Outlook. Another effort to block Google.
2010/07/14: Google's benchmark report on ad size vs. clickthrough rate (CTR), static vs. Flash vs. video ads, CTR by vertical,... http://fb.me/y2s9ShvS
2010/07/14: Happy Bastille Day!
2010/07/14: The price was right! IBM paid $277m for Coremetrics.
2010/07/15: At Google Creative Sandbox 2010 in SF. It's the new Google Dance.
2010/07/16: watched "Restrepo". amazing movie.
2010/07/17: At Google Sandbox, talked w/ Chrome developers. They said it had more extensions, so I revisited. 6X faster than... http://fb.me/DnxbRTjW
2010/07/18: Thurston Howell III: "Behind every successful man is a woman. He just has to make sure his wife doesn't find her!"
2010/07/19: Congratulations!
2010/07/19: Jobs in Social Media: http://fb.me/F1AsmbVY
2010/07/20: Check out the new Google Image search. They copied Bing. You can scroll down endlessly to see more pixs. Click... http://fb.me/DYbn6lWu
2010/07/20: Tricia Wang (Ph.D, Fulbright scholar) wrote a great analysis on how the Google/China conflict arose from... http://fb.me/BVCwf5U9
2010/07/20: What if you could see wireless networks? What would it look like? Try this little video... http://fb.me/xtxfACbM
2010/07/21: What's better for sales promotions: Old-fashion email or shiny new social media? Yep... good 'ol email. 37% vs 9%. http://fb.me/xsQobHkC
2010/07/22: #Yahoo is down. No front page, no news, nothing.
2010/07/22: Facebook stats: size & mkt share for US state or country; most popular pages & apps; and much more. http://fb.me/F0MKp0IH
2010/07/25: Has anyone see "Inception"?
2010/07/25: We watched "Salt." Frenetic action, but no plot, narrative, logic, nor character development. Wait for the DVD.
2010/07/27: Facebook's data and recommendations on how to get more traction with your content.... http://fb.me/FqDKyuQu
2010/07/28: @choyberg What's the verdict?
2010/07/28: Facebook Directory: find people, pages, apps, or groups. http://www.facebook.com/directory/
2010/07/28: I follow some 60 top blogs for SEO, PPC, analytics, Facebook, social media, etc. Want a free copy of the list of... http://fb.me/FIvS5Qls
2010/07/29: #gmail is having problems. Not delivering, etc.
2010/07/29: Are VCs about to collapse? Is it really true VCs don't know how to make money? http://bit.ly/cOT3a2
2010/07/29: What's red and bounces up and down? Google China. It's down again. See WSJ: http://bit.ly/dh7BCz
2010/07/31: #Gmail is still buggy. Google says only 0.01% users are affected. Why, that's a mere 20,000 people! Cloudy computing, indeed!
2010/07/31: Does anyone have any case studies or ROI for Twitter? Any factual proof that Twitter is useful? Send to me and I'll repost.
2010/08/04: Of 354 shark species, only 12 ever bite humans. The "shark attack' stuff is just media hysteria to attract TV viewers. Please retweet!
2010/08/05: Check out ZenniOptical.com for fashion eyewear starting at $8! http://bit.ly/9qH0gq (Ad)
2010/08/09: HP fired the CEO over his sex scandal. So "HP" is "Hanky-Panky"?:-)
2010/08/10: I wrote a case study on personal branding. Includes strategy, tools, data, costs, results. Free download at... http://fb.me/EavrGOMb
2010/08/13: IBM buys Unica for $480 million. They also bought Coremetrics. There goes the web analytics industry.
2010/08/17: At #SES SF. Much smaller than last year.
2010/08/17: Back from #SES. Small this year. No crowds. Top corps incl. Omniture Unica, Bing, Google, Yahoo. No Facebook. Met many friends.
2010/08/18: WIRED thinks the web is dead? Ha! I wrote about that nine years ago! andreas.com/deadweb/index.html (funny)
2010/08/24: How good is Google Books? Better question: how truely bad can it be? How many ways can a computer system screw up... http://fb.me/HX5qwotK
2010/08/26: Have an idea? Would you take $12 million for it? Google is on a buying spree. Buy anything that can possibly help... http://fb.me/G1a2uGip
2010/08/28: At Palo Alto Arts Festival, Bling is handing out $40 in credit with their mobile payment chips. Yep, free $40.
2010/08/30: San Jose's Zer01 Art and Technology event: Sept. 16-19. Visit http://01sj.org/ http://fb.me/GDP383Zk
2010/09/08: Can Google be yet more real-time? Google now updates the results as you type. Hmmm... this may influence what people select.
2010/09/14: My book is coming out in Taiwan! Hen hao! http://fb.me/FOayXXe4
2010/09/15: According to Nielsen: Bing is now #2 at 13.9%; Yahoo is #3 at 13.1%. Google has 65.1% (Sept. 2010). Look in your... http://fb.me/JhUX3Eib
2010/09/28: Webtrend's new CMO: Hope Frank. Dinner tonite w/ Hope (Webtrends), Akin Arikan (Unica), Eric Siegel (Prediction... http://fb.me/HLi2nezW
2010/09/30: LinkedIn may finally be waking up. They could go after Facebook and Twitter.... http://fb.me/J4q6YNm6
2010/10/04: Does Google Instant have a preference for brands? See the results.... http://fb.me/KDWsqT8c
2010/10/04: Finally, Gmail allows you to turn off "Conversation View". That grouped your emails by thread, which made it... http://fb.me/BevhNV1E
2010/10/05: Good discussion with Eric Peterson on the state (and future) of web analytics.... http://fb.me/uIhwt3S7
2010/10/11: The 5 Types of Websites: 1) Broshure. Few of these now. Obsolete. 2) Content Sites: Use content to draw traffic.... http://fb.me/BC1eYw3b
2010/10/17: Big improvement at Google Analytics: The old Site Overlay is gone (it was buggy). They now have "In-Page... http://fb.me/J5BOrOQR
2010/10/18: Good article explains how Facebook chooses which status update to show… and which to suppress. Bottom line: Add... http://fb.me/JL1Rcljv
2010/10/20: Great resource for technical issues in web analytics: http://www.webanalyticscentral.com/
2010/10/22: A pix? What for?
2010/10/24: Yoohoo!
2010/10/26: Despite the talk about iPods, the Sony Walkman was a revolution in music. Introduced in 1979 (yep, 31 years),... http://fb.me/KOnllKma
2010/10/27: Need data on the increase in mobile traffic? A Cisco white paper at http://bit.ly/nqdf
2010/10/27: Prescription glasses starting at $6.95! Virtually try before you buy with the Zenni Frame Fit! http://bit.ly/clZBKp (Ad)
2010/10/27: Psst! Hey, you. Yeah, you! Come over here. Want $50 for free? Here's a coupon for $50 of free advertising on... http://fb.me/LdX9PMLR
2010/10/28: "They build apps, don't they?" Need an app? AmEx published an article with lots of resources and links so you can... http://fb.me/sYRu7mSU
2010/11/11: Too may Google employees are going to Facebook. About 25% of Facebook's staff is ex-Google. So Google announced a... http://fb.me/MeZVBzWz
2010/11/14: Google vs. FB, Round 4. Top Google executives get 30% salary increase and a 250% bonus of base salary. Google is... http://fb.me/w1QQufLF
2010/11/14: I'm trying to find people in eight companies in a specific industry: it's odd that only one of the companies has a... http://fb.me/JP1zjrH6
2010/11/15: The average FB user follows 8.7 brands? Wow. Here are some interesting stats about brands on FB.... http://fb.me/BHg9lqI8
2010/11/16: Chat is bigger than email? Facebook users send 500 million messages daily. But they send 4 billion messages on FB chat.
2010/11/17: Book Apps? The new way to consume book content!:-) http://wapo.st/ciAEtj http://fb.me/OkrlLKtL
2010/11/18: (cont.) Brad and Brian's books are excellent, cover everything and the information is correct. My book is the... http://fb.me/OgY4KOAp
2010/11/18: Twitter will offer analytics. What will they call it? Twitterlytics? See screenshots, etc. at... http://fb.me/tgQDWj07
2010/11/18: Val asked for books on SEM. - On Adwords: Brad Geddes "Advanced Google Adwords" - On Analytics: Brian Clifton... http://fb.me/MpbLgYjb
2010/11/21: Michael Scott: I sent you a Facebook message yesterday and still haven’t heard anything back! Ryan: You should... http://fb.me/uXe1d3Z2
2010/11/21: When I read articles on my iPad, I zoom the text up to fill the margins of the screen. This means the ads are... http://fb.me/ErgXO5w6
2010/11/23: You can upgrade your iPad to the new iOS 4.2. Multitasking, folders, and many minor changes and improvements.... http://fb.me/Kmnt1Ihb
2010/12/02: The search engines continue to push organic results down the page. Search for (for example) "cat food" at Google,... http://fb.me/P3tCHAyj
2010/12/09: Forrester writes: "(...) technology will play an increasing role in 2011. By aligning technologies across... http://fb.me/MSyyjUbP
2010/12/09: Is Google censoring the news? Google Zeitgeist says the biggest stories of 2010 include Myxer, Friv, Gamezer, and... http://fb.me/MckO4cul
2010/12/10: CNN came by today and showed me mockups of their upcoming website (for release in April). They're adding lots of... http://fb.me/AFNhTLxh
2010/12/10: FB just added stats to postings in Official pages. When I post to my Official page (i.e., this page), FB shows me... http://fb.me/HcrkDPNJ
2010/12/12: Which iPad apps do you like? I'm looking for apps that use the iPad's features: touch screen, tilt-for-control... http://fb.me/Ovh0VsmX
2010/12/14: Visual map of how people link to each other via Facebook. You can zoom in. China is dark because they block FB.... http://fb.me/G1I117vz
2010/12/15: Google sent me a very funny thank-video. Someone over there had a lot of fun making this. When you see the bees,... http://fb.me/wB7k2SpG
2010/12/15: You can turn the CapsLock key into a harmless shift key. Visit... http://fb.me/G4lcxPiU
2010/12/16: Google TV: I went to Best Buy to see what this was about. For $600, you get a flatscreen TV and a large remote... http://fb.me/BkcK7yOS
2010/12/16: Twitter got another $200m in funding (total is now $360m). The valuation is supposedly $3.7b, based on... what?... http://fb.me/Prr6qNMr
2010/12/22: Oh, great. Firesheep allows people to take over your FB or Twitter acct if you use a public Wifi connection. For... http://fb.me/QEU3ZTUu
2010/12/26: Cool App: WorldSurfer (free). It's radar on your iPhone/iPad. Point and it shows you what is that way: stores,... http://fb.me/HiWXyU0B
2011/01/02: We drove the San Francisco Bay Area City Ring in 2 hr 14 min. World Record! http://andreas.com/city-ring.html
2011/01/03: Google Adwords Agency Support is shutting down. No more support for agencies. GAW started a new type of support... http://fb.me/Lmt7tFnS
2011/01/04: Facebook's new email was turned on in my account. It's... well... not much. It adds Woof capability (when you send... http://fb.me/NTHpgRFB
2011/01/04: Totally cool iPhone+iPad app that uses both the iPhone and iPad. You can flick a photo from your iPhone onto your... http://fb.me/IQBrUsgV
2011/01/05: One of the teams here at Acxiom built a cool subscription page for Microsoft newsletters: drag-and-drop what you... http://fb.me/PkMMOnM1
2011/01/07: A Goldman Sachs document shows that Facebook's revenues were $1.2bn in the first nine months of 2010 (projected to... http://fb.me/HZBU4sC4
2011/01/07: I'm in Foster City. It was a solid shake here. The whole office woke up.
2011/01/07: The earthquake was 4.4. And it wasn't in San Francisco. It was in San Jose.
2011/01/13: Ready for an SEO Joke? So this SEO guy walks into a bar, pub, alehouse, barroom, beer garden, bistro, canteen,... http://fb.me/OdsVl1GL
2011/01/17: LOLcats got $30 million in VC funding. Yep, the bubble is on again.
2011/01/18: I'm speaking next Tues at the AMA. 2011 is going to be a great year. There's so much turmoil in digital... http://fb.me/sUYpHqdL
2011/01/21: An interesting week. On Monday, Steve Jobs left Apple due to poor health. On Thurs, Eric Schmidt was fired as... http://fb.me/ycqj7dkk
2011/01/21: Google made Groupon a $5b offer they couldn't refuse... and they refused it. So now Google is rolling out its own... http://fb.me/II5WUXFV
2011/01/26: Some copywriter was really bored. http://fb.me/P0kSdD56
2011/01/27: Although Salespad.net is a small company, they're carrying out marketing in all channels. You can too. #salespad
2011/01/27: Amazon now sells more ebooks for Kindle than paperback books.
2011/01/27: My Comcast Business acct is down. Comcast tells me the DSL modem is working, but my desktop computer, my laptop,... http://fb.me/B4Jygun0
2011/01/28: Many sites copy content from other sites and republish it. Google is finally taking steps to block them. http://fb.me/Jj9t8eVk
2011/01/30: Another app: YourVersion.com lets you find info about your favorite topics, both in news, video, Twitter, blogs,... http://fb.me/GQFDkpiQ
2011/01/31: The Numbers: Worldwide sales of smartphones in Q4 2010: Android 32.9m. Nokia 31m. Apple 16.2m. Wow. Android is 2X... http://fb.me/RZqA4FHE
2011/02/01: Today's Numbers: 48% of smartphone users use their phone while eating. 39% use it in the bathroom. 20% use it... http://fb.me/QKNcTG51
2011/02/07: Searches for LinkedIn have shot up in the last few months (probably due to the upcoming IPO), but site traffic has... http://fb.me/TwHiTxTp
2011/02/08: The Numbers: 4.9 trillion web ads in the USA in 2010. 23% increase over 2009 (Comscore's Digital Year in Review).... http://fb.me/PNEO53UE
2011/02/09: The Numbers: AOL bought HuffingtonPost.com for $315m. Per Google traffic data, the HuffPost has 1.5m unique... http://fb.me/RBgkLtx5
2011/02/10: Acxiom Interactive Marketing Summit (San Francisco, April 4th). Speakers incl. JP Bewley, Andreas Ramos, Brian Killen, Scott DeAngelo.
2011/02/10: Twitter now thinks their valuation is $10 billion. Maybe Google should buy it for $10b and rename it to LOLtwitter.
2011/02/11: Acxiom Digital Marketing includes John Dent, Andreas Ramos, Mike Wynne.
2011/02/11: I'll be on a panel with JP Bewley in April. His website is at JPatrickBewley.com http://fb.me/MOoupSuL
2011/02/13: Good article on Black Hat SEO and how Google reacts. http://fb.me/UxLyVE6V
2011/02/14: GroupOn changes name to GoofUp. GroupOn ran a Valentine's Day special for roses from FTD florists. But the "offer"... http://fb.me/FxHaIJf3
2011/02/15: At Google w/ our Acxiom team for an all-day seminar on finance advertising. Lots of new beta tools.
2011/02/16: And Facebook in RSS too. I put a Facebook URL into the Google RSS Reader. Bingo. That works too. I wonder what... http://fb.me/QdypiLjL
2011/02/16: Twitter in RSS: Out of curiosity, I dropped a Twitter URL into my Google RSS Reader and it worked. Now I can... http://fb.me/FRVpkXGC
2011/02/17: A good conference for web analytics. http://fb.me/HUJ6Ot1S
2011/02/18: New SEO = Social Engine Optimization. Google adds yet more social signals to its algorithm. How to get better... http://fb.me/UpCzbCxe
2011/02/18: Position2 does a good brand monitoring analysis of Groupon's ad fiasco. Great charts and graphs. http://fb.me/OFpU61Lk
2011/02/18: The Numbers: See that red line? Music's death dive. It's so easy to share content. This is Bad News for Apple's... http://fb.me/P2lj1ZIO
2011/02/23: Use FB to Get a Job: Want to work at a particular company? Use Facebook. Create ads in FB and target them to... http://fb.me/LAnLbEza
2011/02/24: How Girl Scouts sell cookies in Silicon Valley... http://fb.me/NAluEuVF
2011/02/25: Cheap Content: Google cracks down on content farms (those sites that offer short pages of text about stuff.) These... http://fb.me/ETR4i4Fe
2011/02/27: Automate Your Google: Google added bid automation to all Adwords accounts. We've been testing this for the last... http://fb.me/wvkFONDP
2011/02/28: Facebook FBML: On March 11th, FB stops support for FBML. You won't be able to build new pages in FBML or edit... http://fb.me/VNNlZSpu
2011/03/01: Numbers: Okay, okay, so mobile is big. How big? Google says mobile search spiked during the Super Bowl. For... http://fb.me/sCw1YlQ7
2011/03/02: Our book is doing great in Taiwan; within a few weeks of release, it went to a second printing. We're big in... http://fb.me/wpwSL09A
2011/03/02: The Good Days Again. At Webtrends Gala in SF last night. Whoa. Hosted by Hope Frank, CMO of Webtrends, they took... http://fb.me/wFrAuGro
2011/03/04: Bought my own book via the Kindle app for iPad. Why? I can search my book's text.
2011/03/04: Updated my FB Official link to Facebook.com/Andreas.Work. My personal FB page is Facebook.com/Andreas.Ramos
2011/03/06: Must Read: A really good (and hilarious!) example of spammy SEO. They cram keywords in junk articles that are... http://fb.me/Qy4isFgq
2011/03/06: What Webtrends is up to in analytics. http://fb.me/N1gaJYaq
2011/03/11: American Red Cross ‏@RedCross Txt REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation to #Japan eq & Pacific #tsunami relief. http://bit.ly/eZJDoJ
2011/03/11: I was working late last night when I got an alert about the earthquake. I checked CNN, NYT, etc.: nothing. I went... http://fb.me/Wl1FmE3H
2011/03/11: Map of Social Networks: Ever wonder which social networks people use in other countries? Here's the global map of... http://fb.me/vfeUDv8A
2011/03/11: While on Facebook, look at your URL address. If you see "http:" (instead of "https:") then you don't have a secure... http://fb.me/UXMwhJlG
2011/03/13: The Japan earthquake made the day 1.8 microseconds shorter? Oh, no! We'll have to work faster!
2011/03/14: Marissa Mayer at SXSW: Mobile use of Google Maps was greater than desktop use this past Christmas 2010 and New Year’s Day 2011.
2011/03/14: RT @avinash: How long do animals live? Good question. Answer in delightful infographic form... http://goo.gl/5vUQa
2011/03/14: RT @jenstweets: #qagb Matt and Duane say "Stop using ranking reports! They are irrelevant due to customized results."
2011/03/14: RT @jfouts: And here's a great list of SM policies from other co http://bit.ly/cUNuPp #Transparency
2011/03/14: RT @seojokes: @Andreas_Ramos Q. What is the definition of SEO SPAM? A. Site Positioning Above Mine
2011/03/15: @BreeAlwaysSmiln Dear Bree; I'm the webmaster for Clogwild. Many thanks for buying the clogs. The owner will shut down by late summer.
2011/03/15: Make Your Twitter Secure: Use HTTPS. Go to Settings | Account. At bottom of page, checkmark yes on "Always use... http://fb.me/JQzFulH2
2011/03/15: The Washington Post did a complete makeover of its site. It's a cleaner look. Check it out. http://www.washingtonpost.com/
2011/03/16: Many corps have matching contributions. You give $100, your corp adds $100. Talk w/ HR; set up collections for Japan. Let's help #Japan.
2011/03/17: #Libya: UN votes 10 for, 5 abstain.
2011/03/17: @tfcullen Somehow, I assumed we had been using #acxiom. Okay, now it's live.
2011/03/17: LinkedIn has an identity problem. I went to a Big Bookstore and asked the info desk clerk for books about... http://fb.me/Sjp7XUri
2011/03/18: Facebook will use your profile pix in ads. To STOP this, go to Account | Account Settings. Click Facebook Ads (the... http://fb.me/xUBMUjQf
2011/03/18: Knowledge at Wharton ‏@whartonknows Acxiom's Tim Suther on Winning in the New Marketing Democracy: Imagine for a moment that you moved to a new ho... http://bit.ly/goKqPx
2011/03/18: tfcullen ‏@tfcullen Three Questions that Will Kill Innovation: http://bit.ly/hsWoFt. Painful because it's true.
2011/03/19: Hackers are making very dangerous apps for Android. Google is too open? http://bit.ly/gW2X8g http://fb.me/U0KphvHa
2011/03/20: ATT buys T-Mobile for $39 billion. I chose T-Mobile because I didn't WANT the problems with ATT. You can run, but... http://fb.me/Y1l4Yk3R
2011/03/21: Any suggestions for an enterprise-class collaboration tool such as Huddle, etc.? White papers or reviews of the best ones?
2011/03/23: The Numbers: Linkedin reached the 100 million members mark.
2011/03/24: The Numbers: YouTube shows about two billion videos a day, which is double the prime-time audience of all three... http://fb.me/Toj3WOOF
2011/03/25: I got an email from Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn, to thank me for being an early adopter. How early? I was #6,701... http://fb.me/NSVcu4w8
2011/03/28: "Loose Tweets Sink Fleets" (from the US Navy's handbook on social media, which is actually useful and well-written.)
2011/03/28: 50% of all tweets are written by 20,000 of its members? That's .01%. And those twitterati don't follow other... http://fb.me/JDSk3qwS
2011/03/28: Bronx Zoo's Cobra ‏@BronxZoosCobra Donald Trump is thinking about running for president?! Don't worry, I'll handle this. Where is Trump Tower exactly?
2011/03/28: Google's new journal for researchers in the digital world. Lots of interesting articles. Please forward to your... http://fb.me/V2vPTnWO
2011/03/28: Innovation Sociale ‏@socioinnovation Jon Russell: 29 social networks that have at least one million visitors per day: http://bit.ly/gzsOMR
2011/03/28: The Numbers: 29 Social Networks with +1m daily. Okay, how many of these have you heard of? I knew the Chinese... http://fb.me/xZRD1J8k
2011/03/29: Acxiom ‏@Acxiom Our Interactive Marketing Summit will help you give consumers the right msg at the right time. #acxiomsummit http://bit.ly/acxiominteractive
2011/03/29: The latest ideas on interactive marketing. Monday, Apr. 4th in SF + webcast (free). #acxiomsummit http://fb.me/H3TiRTcQ
2011/03/30: Juan Martinez ‏@jrobertmartinez Big news in the #CRM space@salesforce acquires @radian6 for $276 million in cash and $50 million in stock http://bit.ly/h7MXBs @dmnews
2011/03/30: That didn't take long. Google rolled out +1 ("Plus One"). When you find a search result that you like, you can... http://fb.me/NncOCjbB
2011/03/30: The FTC found Google's launch of Buzz was deceptive. Google must now submit to a yearly privacy audit for the next... http://fb.me/Qvv9yJbh
2011/03/30: We're rolling out MultichannelVoice.com, our team's website. We'll use it as a interactive digital testbed. More... http://fb.me/Kx9bEiHt
2011/03/31: The cobra is back in her cage at the Bronx Zoo. I hope she gets to keep her Twitter account.
2011/04/01: @doodlehaus Not just Tweetdeck. #iPad crashes in #Safari. Started a few weeks ago. Crashes 3-5 times daily now.
2011/04/04: At #acxiomsummit , meeting many friends and companies. Great connections.
2011/04/04: Mike Schrage: "Look for your most innovative customers. They're the early adopters." #acxiomsummit
2011/04/04: Scott DeAngelo now speaking at #acxiomsummit
2011/04/04: Scott DeAngelo: "Real-time sales has highest value." How to get there? #acxiomsummit
2011/04/05: @ipadguru Why does iPad Safari crash when you click a link? This started a few weeks ago. 4-5 crashes daily now. Does @apple know?
2011/04/05: Acxiom ‏@Acxiom #fmf11 - @timsuther - yelling louder doesnt create customer engagement, media mix reflects yesterdays assumptions
2011/04/08: Matt Smith ‏@matthewepsmith Google Employee Bonuses To Be Tied To Social Success? http://selnd.com/fiP8Vb
2011/04/09: Eugenio Perea ‏@eperea Facebook asks what I’m thinking. Twitter asks what I’m doing. Foursquare asks where I am. The internet has turned into a crazy girlfriend.
2011/04/11: Is email dead? Erik Qualman writes in "Socialnomics" that Apple hired a 22-year old who had never sent an email.... http://fb.me/KZxW4V55
2011/04/12: Numbers: The NYT's market cap is $1.7b. Twitter is valued at $7.7b (5.1X). And I'm guessing that Twitter is... http://fb.me/EeicIGgs
2011/04/12: What happens in Vegas... stays on Youtube!
2011/04/13: #adtech talking w Gina Hughes (better known as TechieDiva) about social media.
2011/04/13: #adtech Watching the magician at Acxiom booth. He's incredible. No matter how closely I watch, he does great tricks.
2011/04/13: #adtech Will be at Acxiom booth at 12:30 toay til 5p. Come by!
2011/04/13: Numbers: Want to reach students? 84% of students go to FB before any other site in the morning. 96% visit FB... http://fb.me/TAI78uMj
2011/04/13: Tweet, twoot, tweeted? Twitter could generate up to $33m/day in sales. That's $11 billion per year. Yep, Twitter... http://fb.me/XcyCx9ZT
2011/04/13: What is SEO? It's no longer "Search Engine" optimization. No more keywords. No meta-tags. No more optimizing for... http://fb.me/OaZJgOEn
2011/04/14: #orbit timer stands behind their warranty. My Orbit water sprinkler timer died. I sent an email and they send a new one. Great people.
2011/04/14: Google Multi-Channel Funnels was code-named Big Funnels. It's multichannel analytics. It allows you to do... http://fb.me/Xy1PE5Sc
2011/04/14: Headed out to dinner with Acxiom team.
2011/04/14: I put in a garden last week. Maybe I should get a chicken and name her "Hen Hao"?
2011/04/14: Major News: Google Multi-Channel Funnels is coming. This allows channel attribution. It's analytics that tracks... http://fb.me/Zas5c1YH
2011/04/14: Multi-Channel Funnels shows data for last 30 days. Path Length: the interactions in your channels. Time Lag: time... http://fb.me/sB2NbgNW
2011/04/14: Multi-Channel Funnels: Watch Google's video on this. Clear, short, and instructive. http://fb.me/Xk2sdWkD
2011/04/15: AppNation Conf in SF, April 27-28. Apps, apps, apps... http://fb.me/ThDeg7RX
2011/04/15: Caltrain Palo Alto. Two helicopters parked in the air above accident. Heavy traffic. A southbound train just went by slow (6:24p).
2011/04/15: That's hard core. Japanese reporters and editors wrote newspapers BY HAND for six days after the earthquake and... http://fb.me/zxPV0RMT
2011/04/16: @Bubbr haven't heard of it. Will try it.
2011/04/16: I met the Grooveshark guys at Adtech. It's like Pandora. Pretty good radio stream. http://fb.me/G1zHkrm4
2011/04/18: #earthquake 3mi SE from Pacifica. Magnitude not yet know. A big shake and then a smaller one. 2:57 pm.
2011/04/18: Dinner w friends to go over their social media strategy.
2011/04/18: Info at http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/nc71560691.php
2011/04/18: iPad 1 was crashing every 5 min@Apple won't reply. Fixed it by sync. The files were corrupted.
2011/04/18: Janet Fouts ‏@jfouts Report: Twitter In Talks to Buy Tweetdeck: http://rww.to/gIF4xu wow
2011/04/18: Reading Scott Stratten's "UnMarketing" (about social media). He gets social media. It's also pretty funny.
2011/04/18: Wow. This turns any smartphone or iPad into a credit card reader. Accept credit card payments anywhere. Totally... http://fb.me/Eo0nbz8Q
2011/04/19: @unmarketing Your book has lots of great tips and ideas. The footnotes are hilarious.
2011/04/19: Anyone using http://twitter.grader.com ?
2011/04/19: Finished Scott Stratten's "Unmarketing". Tonight's book: Jim Sterne's "Social Media Metrics." Very curious to see what he says.
2011/04/19: Talking w/ Acxiom HQ in Arkansas about yesterday's 3.8 earthquake. Ha, that's nothing. They've had +1,000 earthquakes the last few months.
2011/04/20: @larrymagid Yes, and Andy Grove is... Hungarian.
2011/04/20: At Acxiom, several of us just sat through Covario's presentation for their "Organic Search Insight" tool. It's SEO... http://fb.me/W6Vl4EQn
2011/04/20: Converting aquarium into terrarium. Silicone to seal it. Bought moss, soil, & plants. Want one? I have another 50-gal tank.
2011/04/20: Great video of the next Mars lander. http://fb.me/DRfrSm6s
2011/04/20: Here's a clear description of Acxiom's PersonicX, written by Aaron Goldman. http://fb.me/VTp72WO3
2011/04/20: Jeremiah Owyang ‏@jowyang: Panda Express is as Chinese as Taco Bell is Mexican, and McDonald's is Irish cuisine.
2011/04/20: Just added myself to the http://wefollow.com under #socialmedia #seo #ppc #analytics #acxiom
2011/04/20: Read half of Jim Sterne's "Social Media Metrics" last night. Instead of answers, he raises many questions about... http://fb.me/XkHSwf7P
2011/04/20: Tech Text ‏@TechTex: ”Restrepo” director Tim Hetherington killed in Libya http://goo.gl/fb/i9HA7 #TechText @techtect
2011/04/20: The 1% Rule: 1% of people create content, 9% modify it or add comments, and 90% view without interacting.
2011/04/20: The graphics design team at Acxiom bought four iPad2. I thought my iPad was slim and light until I picked up an... http://fb.me/wxyaI4yC
2011/04/21: Enterprise Social Media: Is that an oxymoron? How can a large company engage in social media in a way that can scale?
2011/04/21: I'm looking for more books on social media. What's YOUR favorite book? Tell me and I'll buy it.
2011/04/21: Reading Shama Kabani's "Zen of Social Media Marketing." Yes, it's like zen: some are enlightened and many are not.... http://fb.me/zRLXtucr
2011/04/21: RT @timsuther: Nice work from @KenshooSEM - putting the people back into paid search http://bit.ly/icuT4e
2011/04/22: Today's book: Rick Mathieson "The On-Demand Brand" (AMA, 2010). It's big marketing's approach to modern marketing.... http://fb.me/LhgqIu0d
2011/04/23: Meeting Raul Ramos, the author, this evening for drinks.
2011/04/24: Dawn Wynne's first book is coming out in a few weeks. DawnWynne.com.
2011/04/24: Five hour dinner last night with Raul Ramos. The conversation ranged across so many topics. Very delicious sangria by Ronda Broughton.
2011/04/25: @hjelming Yep! Mainland Chinese.
2011/04/25: Learning Chinese. Using Flashcard Deluxe for iPad by OrangeOrApple.com to make my own flashcards in Chinese, based... http://fb.me/WzHzr3QH
2011/04/25: Like or Send? FB introduces the "Send" button, which you can add to your web page so people can send the page... http://fb.me/JRj47L7C
2011/04/26: @banane Are you going to #appnation ?
2011/04/26: @Shama Your book is quite good. Clean writing style. Do you have plans for the next book? Or an update?
2011/04/26: Acxiom is #1. Advertising Age names Acxiom as #1 ad agency. We're also #1 Top Direct and CRM Agencies in the US;... http://fb.me/voLCXrWd
2011/04/26: AppNation SF: A bunch of us from Acxiom will be there, incl. me. http://fb.me/TGQvGTBK
2011/04/26: RT @HopeFrank: 3 Steps to effective Mobile Marketing @webtrends #measure http://on.fb.me/eRPDs2 http://lnkd.in/9MisQd
2011/04/27: #appnation click rates in mobile drop from 3% to 1%.
2011/04/27: #appnation joomo let's you build apps fast. And free.
2011/04/27: #appnation Klout has new interface. See your score trends, compare your score with 9 friends, etc. They also have a great way to monetize.
2011/04/27: #appnation listening to Siva Kumar talk about monetizing apps and mobile.
2011/04/27: #appnation Many cool apps and Tools. Sequoia has a booth. Never seen VCs w a booth. Mix of dev, VCs, marketing, ad agencies, etc. here.
2011/04/27: #appnation Met lots of app startups. Each had a v small stand. Like a great high school science fair w billions of dollars:-)
2011/04/27: #appnation Next up: Chris Marriott, EVP Acxiom to lead panel on privacy. Rm 104.
2011/04/27: #appnation OpenSignalMaps.com shows you cell phone strength and coverage for any provider. See how good (or weak) it is.
2011/04/27: #appnation theo skype says for Mixi (Japan's top social site), 85% of access is via mobile.
2011/04/27: #appnation YumYumLabs' Recipes app. Open fridge, say what u have, it tells u what u can make. Free.
2011/04/27: @abukai_news Sorry that I missed you. Sure, let's talk. andreas.ramos@acxiom.com
2011/04/27: @lynnerae #appnation What's in my fridge? I told him "Show me what I can make with an onion and two bottles of beer"! And he did!
2011/04/27: At AppNation. Lots of VCs and angels, along w their funded app teams. Sequoia has a big booth for their teams.
2011/04/27: Has anyone read this book?: "ROI of Social Media" by Guy Powell (Wiley).
2011/04/27: More cool apps at #appnation . Track your cell phone if it's lost. Remote delete. Multiple devices. Only $5/yr. TekTrak.com.
2011/04/27: RT @banane I'll be in confs. After 1:15, in rm 103. Appnation
2011/04/27: Theo Skye. Of Medialets says. $44b in web ads and $13b for mobile by 2015. App nation
2011/04/28: @borderlinephil I know! Never again an excuse "I don't have cash." No problem, I take all major credit cards!
2011/04/28: @jfouts I see you also like Springbank. Great stuff!
2011/04/28: Dinner w Janet Fouts (author "Social Media Success"). 90 min of non-stop discussion about social media. See JanetFouts.com
2011/04/28: Next book: "Marketing by the Numbers", by Leland Harden & Bob Heyman. How to measure and improve ROI.
2011/04/28: Shèjiāo méitǐ: That's "Social Media" in Chinese (社教媒体). You'd better learn that because it's big in China. 411m vs... http://fb.me/Z77dhzDz
2011/04/28: Square: that little thingy that lets people pay me w credit card on my iPad: It got $27m funding from Sequoia &... http://fb.me/WSITePW9
2011/04/28: The world's largest website is in Sunnyvale? http://fb.me/vEQKLYIP
2011/04/29: Do you have good examples of web sites that are social media-enabled? I'm looking for ideas!
2011/04/29: FB: You can now edit your comments. If you misspell or want to change something, you have about 12 seconds. Click... http://fb.me/FC0CbDI5
2011/04/29: Hope Frank ‏@HopeFrank Nuptials buzz surpassed Egypt uprising and Japan earthquake #RoyalWedding #measure, kudos @drcasio @webtrends @mashab…http://lnkd.in/FAmZfd
2011/04/29: shelby fero ‏@shelbyfero Every couple weeks I pour a little cocoa powder and hot milk down the sink as a pick me up for any struggling mole people.
2011/04/30: Is China different? Different from what? If it's different from the West, then what is the West? Great essay about... http://fb.me/M9nawqD2
2011/05/01: Bicycled to Stanford to see the new MBA building. Bought Tee Morris "All a Twitter" at Stanford's bookstore; quite good.
2011/05/01: Cassandre Snyder ‏@CassandreSnyder 66 Years ago today Adolf Hitler died. Today, another monster dies.
2011/05/01: FB: A friend's FB acct has a "Find Friends" feature that show friends of friends, with all sorts of filters... http://fb.me/JbWv287C
2011/05/01: Is Osama bin Laden finally dead? http://bloom.bg/jkyq7S
2011/05/01: mariianne crary ‏@mariiannebeth Obama got Osama!
2011/05/01: Shirley Lin ‏@ShirleyLinC But how do we know the death certificate is real? Nxt embassador 2 Pakistan- #DonaldTrump, to recover that long form! #binLaden #birthers
2011/05/01: Sohaib Athar ‏@ReallyVirtual A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty:-S
2011/05/01: Sohaib Athar ‏@ReallyVirtual Go away helicopter - before I take out my giant swatter:-/
2011/05/01: Sohaib Athar ‏@ReallyVirtual Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).
2011/05/01: Tee Morris ‏@TeeMonster "Ooops. I should've made that Foursquare check-in private. #4squareFAIL" — Osama Bin Laden's last tweet
2011/05/02: @CSMarriott Conversions are good. But it's not the full picture. Fill the funnel is also good. #mpeis
2011/05/02: @KanAugust Great photo! thanks!
2011/05/02: @klout Cool. When i logged in just now, it asked me to set up a new acct. It worked okay this morning.
2011/05/02: @kron4news pix coming!
2011/05/02: @mnburgess Do you have suggestions for other people to follow? Looking for people who are experts in social media.
2011/05/02: @RobertaCBS5 @cbs5 Guys, you're looking at reports? Ha! Stick your head out the window!
2011/05/02: @zazzle Nice that you're adding company branding to a fire. People are injured. How about prod placement on bandages? #fire #redwoodcity
2011/05/02: Big fire in Redwood City.
2011/05/02: Folks, I have two extra VIP passes for this. You pay only flight and hotel. http://fb.me/J0h9cGhe
2011/05/02: Huge plume of smoke from a fire in Redwood City or San Carlos.
2011/05/02: My @Klout lists just disappeared. It's asking me to create new lists. Bug? #klout
2011/05/02: RT @dharmesh: How Social Media Is Reshaping Marketing http://tnw.co/lPpgyo via @tnwsocialmedia @dannywong1190
2011/05/02: There's lots of fertilizer at that area. Burns well. #fire #redwoodcity
2011/05/02: Those are the tweets from the guy in Pakistan.
2011/05/02: We can easily see the fire from Foster City, 10 miles away. You can probably see it from Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose.
2011/05/03 choyberg ‏@choyberg "If u dont hire new intern w/in 60 days, full refund, no questions asked." internmatch awesomeness. http://www.internmatch.com/new_account/start
2011/05/04 gail_nelson ‏@gail_nelson "Branding in the Age of Collaborative Consumption" - by @mcmaddox via @siegelgale http://bit.ly/mLe6QI
2011/05/04: @RoslynLayton There is a word in Spanish for that: conmocion. The emotion of a group.
2011/05/04: Osama hid by being off the grid (no phone, web access, etc.), and that itself was a signal of hiding.
2011/05/04: Yahoo's PPC revenues are falling fast. Not good. http://fb.me/PuazLYzC
2011/05/05: @DReynoldsGooch of @3M gave great preso on how 3M innovates in their digital online marketing. #mpsis
2011/05/05: At MediaPost Search Insider in Florida representing Acxiom. #mpsis
2011/05/05: Google soon to release attribution tracking tool in their Analytics. Now in beta. #mpsis
2011/05/05: I too can't connect via SIS wifi. #mpsis
2011/05/05: Lucinda. holt:you need expertise, quant, creative, and tech, and be good at all of these. #mpsis
2011/05/05: RT @clickequations: RT @MediaPostLive: Search Insider Summit is streaming live at http://mediapost.com/searchinsidersummit/ #MPSIS
2011/05/05: RT @jbuscher: #mpsis @chrisbaggott You need to have tons of "similar situation" stories and get people talking about themselves.
2011/05/05: RT @telerob: RT @geoffshenk: 53 Zetabytes of data forecasted to be in use by 2020 according to #Google #mpsis
2011/05/05: Yes, I have an iPad charger. Sitting at front row #mpsis
2011/05/06: At Search Insider Summit conference, representing Acxiom. Many major corps are here, along w Facebook, Bing,... http://fb.me/PQLjPBvL
2011/05/06: Dharmesh Shah ‏@dharmesh Being a thought leader is challenging because it's hard to lead thoughts. It's like herding caffeinated cats.
2011/05/06: RT @drsidshah: I dont see the problem! Redirectors solve the 3rd party cookie issue. Nice writeup here http://bit.ly/e3cqjz #MPSIS
2011/05/06: RT @geoffshenk: Facebook Rolling Out Major Update to Ad Analytics with Audience Funnels and Reach Data http://www.insidefacebook.com 2011/05/05/ad-analytics-audience-funnels-reach/ … via...
2011/05/07: We're parked on the runway. One hour late. Ah! Now takeoff. Bye!
2011/05/10: Are there any social media sites for kids? Kidsbook?
2011/05/10: Microsoft buys Skype, which has never made profit. In 2010, Skype had $860m in revenues with $7m in losses and... http://fb.me/MB96QU23
2011/05/11: I'm at Acxiom MENA in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Lots of meetings and discussion. Gave presentations on the latest in... http://fb.me/YyVqIisO
2011/05/15: Google makes 98% of its revenues on advertising. Yet it hates marketing and refuses to do marketing. That's why so... http://fb.me/VudqcgLH
2011/05/15: Wireless = C+. It's not easy to travel wireless. Flight to Florida: WIFI in flight ($10). On a resort island in... http://fb.me/NuYqiiEY
2011/05/16: Obama is in Memphis.
2011/05/16: Trump quits. I wonder what crazy project he will start next.
2011/05/18: Bing moves towards social search. This is a bold and significant move. http://fb.me/NEThBuam
2011/05/19: At Acxiom Nashville today to meet people and talk about SEO and Twitter.
2011/05/20: Matt Smith ‏@matthewepsmith #SMOC all about "Social Media Optimization". we've been thinking/practicing SEO = Social Engagement Optimization #SEO #Convergence
2011/05/21: Egypt... in Spain? The youths in Spain are demonstrating. 150+ cities and spreading. Search for 15-M.
2011/05/22: Now that LinkedIn has several billion dollars, will they fix it? It's rather primitive. Many things could be done to improve it.
2011/05/23: @timkeller , I'm looking for examples of social sites for kids. Do you know of any? There's Yahoo Kids. What else?
2011/05/23: FB Like buttons track you around the web. http://on.wsj.com/kLhTxU http://fb.me/XuGis7iu
2011/05/23: Twitter buys Tweetdeck for $40m. I wonder what will happen to the others. I like Hootsuite. I hope it survives.
2011/05/24: @Andreas_Ramos Congrats my friend on the #Nifty50 Top Twitter Men http://bit.ly/lipoGy via @tompick & @ckburgess #BWENY #socpharm
2011/05/24: @Andreas_Ramos's Klout score is 42. What about you? http://beta.klout.com/Andreas_Ramos/score-analysis?n=tw&v=klout_score … @Klout
2011/05/24: @timkeller Tim, Many thanks for the social sites for kids. -- andreas
2011/05/24: I was selected for Nifty 50 (http://bit.ly/iDdIJp) along w David Aaker, Andres Silva, Kevin Randall, & Mark Burgess. http://fb.me/11QBb9HgQ
2011/05/24: Klout numbers for Twitter: Add the Klout extension in Firefox or Chrome and you'll see Klout scores for everyone in your Twitter feed.
2011/05/24: Social metrics: Klout is basically PageRank for people. Just a Google came up with a metric for webpages,... http://fb.me/G1g0GsG6
2011/05/24: We have @symantec Endpoint Protection. I get a notice every ten minutes that it did something successfully. How do I turn that off????
2011/05/24: With an IPO here, an IPO there, everywhere IPO... Yandex IPOed this morning. Currently at an $8b valuation (YNDX on Nasdaq).
2011/05/25: @hs247 thanks. i guess i'll have to load up my iPad.
2011/05/25: Is there wifi on @united flights between San Francisco and Beijing?
2011/05/26: Did you know iPhone (and iWhatever) blocks cookies? If a large part of your audience is iUsers, they're not... http://fb.me/V4PVjX5P
2011/05/26: For those who asked about social sites for kids: Togetherville.com (Social Network), ClubPenguin.com (by Disney) &... http://fb.me/YDSlMQ8b
2011/05/26: I'm rebuilding andreas.com to make it into a social-enabled website. I'll blog about the structure, the tools,... http://fb.me/10GAAqTKv
2011/05/27: Here comes a series of notes about social-enabled websites.
2011/05/27: I posted 50 photos from my trip to Saudi Arabia at my personal page in Facebook. Go there to see the photos.
2011/05/27: In contrast, a social-enabled page is RSS-enabled. It uses RSS to allow the page's content to be pushed into other... http://fb.me/Yw0cXpko
2011/05/27: Social-enabled sites (SES), in contrast, aren't concerned about ranking in Google. The goal is to engage with... http://fb.me/u7ZjM57a
2011/05/27: Traditional pages are Google-compliant. They were rebuilt in the early 2000s to allow Google's spider to crawl the... http://fb.me/zZh51s2Z
2011/05/27: Traditional websites are based on HTML, etc. They are basically static pages that hold content (primarily, text).
2011/05/27: We're slowing coming out of Google's Dark Cloud. Because Google was focused on indexing, everything else was... http://fb.me/SvzOZBeN
2011/06/04: Landed at SFO. Home again.
2011/06/05: Back from China. Posted lots of pixs at my personal FB page (facebook .com / andreas.ramos) I'll add notes here... http://fb.me/C26NtoCP
2011/06/05: Fakebook? FB has 700m users. About 45% are between 12-24 years old (i.e., 315m users). Talking with young friends,... http://fb.me/AyGaxGDv
2011/06/05: Groupon lost a staggering $313m in Q4 and it hasn't paid its merchants. They will IPO simply to make money to... http://fb.me/RmiHRRVy
2011/06/06: Connectivity in China was mostly good. Super fast + free wifi in Shanghai Pudong airport. Hen hao! Beijing Hilton... http://fb.me/W68q4BlJ
2011/06/06: Gmail and other Google tools work (mostly) in China. It works for 5-10 minutes, and then there is a very long... http://fb.me/AqNM9cJw
2011/06/06: Job: Digital Media Supervisor. See http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=1664496 (no recruiters) http://fb.me/LcRXgxki
2011/06/06: Job: Media Planner at Acxiom. See http://www.linkedin.com/jobs?viewJob=&jobId=1664633 http://fb.me/13Kxar9OU
2011/06/06: So that's why Apple never has virus problems. They just deny it!:-) http://fb.me/13V8HDX8u
2011/06/08: Added the Google +1 button to my andreas.com site. Let's see what that does.
2011/06/08: Compendium is a RSS-enabled blog platform built for social media. It lets a company build a social-enabled web... http://fb.me/vd9CFs7j
2011/06/08: Here's another website that depends on social media for its distribution. It's being promoted in Twitter and FB. http://fb.me/12SHtvbCc
2011/06/08: What is your webpage saying? Use Wordle to create a tag cloud (free). At a glance, you see the main topics on... http://fb.me/13baTYitj
2011/06/09: Chris Marriott ‏@CSMarriott As an ad:tech advisor, I wanted to mention the call for speakers for ad:tech New York (Nov. 8-10). Submit here: http://bit.ly/kDIxRa
2011/06/09: Have you noticed people at conferences are using their twitter IDs, not their email addresses?
2011/06/10: Another social-enabled site: EatmorChikn.com. It's made to be passed along virally in FB, Twitter, etc. They don’t... http://fb.me/OAdeGL7l
2011/06/10: Big step at FB: Agency accounts. You can now manage multiple client accounts via one login. Very useful. http://fb.me/X5YByFhM
2011/06/10: Creepy: Have you noticed that people are using the word "creepy" lately? Yep, it has doubled in the last few... http://fb.me/GTKF2ykq
2011/06/10: DMNews' List of Top Agencies: Acxiom is #1 ($639m). And we did it with a tenth of the team compared to #2! (470... http://fb.me/WlnQxpRv
2011/06/10: Matt Smith ‏@matthewepsmith "a smart way to test social as a means to grow e-commerce": P&G running ecommerce through Facebook. http://yhoo.it/l2yDiY
2011/06/10: Our Acxiom Creative team has won 27 awards in email marketing, display, websites, etc. See their site for lots of... http://fb.me/SFd7oNJz
2011/06/13: 6m US members quit FB last month. Another 1.5m Canadians also quit FB. Too early to tell if this is a trend.
2011/06/14: Yelp: Still at it. The following happened to a friend's business. Yelp asked her to pay for "Premium Service." She... http://fb.me/tUifh8Iu
2011/06/15 :Target & Safeway cafes soon RT @VegasBiLL: New mobile payment app by @Starbucks for Android users, java junkies http://engt.co/lItSlQ
2011/06/15: Key people at Acxiom and their Klout scores. http://klout.com/#/list/295 http://fb.me/11Wop1Dky
2011/06/15: Watch the moon eclipse via the web. Starts at 11a Calif. http://fb.me/13NGIycXd
2011/06/16: Pew's interesting report on the use of social. Lots of good stats here for your next presentation.... http://fb.me/SEYxtARx
2011/06/17: I'm speaking on the impact of social on SEO. Bay Area Health Care Breakfast Club, June 30, 7:30 am. RSVP to BreakfastClub@PillsburyLaw.com
2011/06/17: I'm speaking on the impact of social on SEO. Bay Area Health Care Breakfast Club, June 30, 7:30 am. RSVP to... http://fb.me/13MFpA8ai
2011/06/17: New Word: tMail = Terrestial mail. Another word for snail mail. Mail sent via the post office, such as post... http://fb.me/13JXRlPPl
2011/06/17: Saudi Revolution... by women driving cars? Women are defying the ban. Go, girl! http://bit.ly/jff7jG http://fb.me/14Ke0amL6
2011/06/18: This Sunday: World Music Day in Palo Alto. 3-7:30. Free. 50 music groups.
2011/06/20: A job-screening company now archives everything on FB for 7 years. Even if you delete it, they keep it. They offer... http://fb.me/MijnxAbI
2011/06/21: A tweet here, a tweet there... You can create Twitter feeds on topics and add these to your web pages. See an... http://fb.me/XQXg06tm
2011/06/22: A page is available ONLY if you have a high Klout score? Losers go away? A new idea at Klout. Check this out. http://fb.me/17PYsgfeB
2011/06/23: Bit by bit... Okay, the new blog is up. No content yet, but it's up. I've also created archive pages of my blog... http://fb.me/13q63tnRA
2011/06/23: Community Manager: Looking for someone to moderate comments in Facebook and Twitter. Work from home. Weekly... http://fb.me/PQKRDjKj
2011/06/24: Comcast was getting hammered over the service guy sleeping on the sofa and other service problems, so Frank... http://fb.me/TbLKUcFQ
2011/06/24: Numbers: Projected display revenues for 2012: Facebook ($2.87b), Yahoo ($1.85b) and Google ($1.82b) according to... http://fb.me/105erdFRT
2011/06/27: Leo Hugo (Acxiom UK) send this. I’ve been saying this for months: there is a major change going on with the web.... http://fb.me/Yv9g0qWU
2011/06/27: PeerIndex is a Klout clone. If you sign up, they'll start spamming your followers. Avoid.
2011/06/28: "Google+" is Google's upcoming social platform. A few people have seen it. Here's a description. To get people... http://fb.me/18ZwqiDgM
2011/06/28: Matt asked me about Google +1. I put it on my andreas.com site. It has 30-50,000 monthly visitors. Only two... http://fb.me/18qpVYtW6
2011/06/30: SV Poker: You bid $2 and I'll raise $3... If Google talks about Google+, then FB said this morning they will... http://fb.me/NsWLGAk6
2011/07/01: Google is adding social metrics to Google Analytics. It can now track/display the +1 activity. But it's not a... http://fb.me/QT5M9TiW
2011/07/01: Interesting discussion about Google+ ; It could replace Twitter. Twitter is, okay, really lousy software. All of... http://fb.me/tPYIoBqW
2011/07/01: Zynga filed for an IPO today. Those play-dollars turn into green dollars.
2011/07/06: FB's "awesome launch"? Video chat via Skype in FB. That's it?
2011/07/06: Now with ice! Blackberrys now freeze once a day. They updated the OS a month ago, but whoops! It crashes several... http://fb.me/xCid6cpW
2011/07/07: Kids sleep w their cell phones under their pillows so they won't miss a text message. They're getting 30 text... http://fb.me/wE52MuDi
2011/07/11: Google iRiver: Only $139 at Target. It's a clone of the Kindle book reader. http://fb.me/K1hk8d4J
2011/07/13: Good article from Harvard Business Review about social media strategies. Lots of ideas, examples, and data here. http://fb.me/Bt7yK1xo
2011/07/14: Google did $9b in Q2 2011. That's $36b/year. Facebook may possibly make $1b in advertising for 2011 (more than... http://fb.me/xLtkzimc
2011/07/14: Twitter is about to add advertising. http://fb.me/BL1N7sKS
2011/07/15: And here's an article from Stanford's business newsletter. Parents, get rid of your kid's iPad. Let's start with... http://fb.me/1anxgOiPF
2011/07/15: Another good article at HBR. A brand isn't just a slogan. It includes your people, your customer service, and more. http://fb.me/13428qrXK
2011/07/18: Notes + pixs from my trip to Saudi Arabia. What it's like. http://bit.ly/qkOTX4
2011/07/19: Interest in G+ spiked, fell, rose a bit, and fell again. It's currently half of what it was two weeks ago. Click... http://fb.me/KYYSkKT2
2011/07/20: Any guesses when Google will start placing ads on Google+? Will G+ show text ads or banner ads? I'm guessing... http://fb.me/15jHgEYIJ
2011/07/20: Big in Brazil: Exame, the leading Brazilian business magazine, interviewed me last week about SEO and social... http://fb.me/PZCd2LnZ
2011/07/22: America's Fastest Growing City is... Bieber, California? Yep. Bieber (pop. 312) now has 5,721 people (18.3X... http://fb.me/1bUYDtbLb
2011/07/22: News from Norway at bt.no and ba.no (in Norwegian). #norge #norway
2011/07/24: Today's Chart: Shows the trend for interest in Google+. It peaked on release and is now downwards. It hasn't... http://fb.me/153ARTfHJ
2011/07/25: Wordstream's chart of the most expensive verticals for keywords in Google Adwords PPC. http://fb.me/YbPjEH01
2011/07/27: Acxiom announces new CEO: Scott Howe, former VP at Microsoft. http://fb.me/BVXST0Et
2011/07/27: Acxiom announces new CEO: Scott Howe, formerly from Microsoft. http://bit.ly/nFLTsn
2011/07/27: In 1995, I worked at SGI. A few years later, SGI collapsed and the empty building was taken over by Google.... http://fb.me/HEHeTMSM
2011/07/27: July 27, 1981: Microsoft release DOS. Yep, DOS has its birthday today. It's 30 years old. Remember how to write... http://fb.me/19ZaGZxkL
2011/07/28: What's with the emergency siren in Foster City? (11:27 am) Earthquake? Floods? Godzilla? Lindsay Lohan?
2011/07/29: EOD, EOW, EOM. End of Day, Week, and Month. Whew! I thought computers were supposed to be labor-saving devices. A... http://fb.me/12Bf5L7Jz
2011/07/30: You can't hide. Google+ has decided people can't have private profiles in Google anymore. On Monday, they're going... http://fb.me/t07Z8tuk
2011/08/02: A good summary (w lots of numbers) about social media: the current state and the near future. From the Position2... http://fb.me/BdDniGAr
2011/08/02: Check out that chart. Google+ is sinking. http://fb.me/17c1FqIOY
2011/08/02: Michael Vick (some sort of person in sports) has a website that is entirely a social media site. Very clever. http://fb.me/18X4APhUI
2011/08/02: The good news: Newt Gingrich has 1.3 million followers in Twitter. The bad news: Only 8% are human. http://fb.me/19oL6mc1s
2011/08/03: The (Fake?) Numbers: 85% of the Twitter followers of the top GOP candidates are fake. 98% of Gingrich's... http://fb.me/GJbihDaO
2011/08/04: Klout Scores: Good article with analysis of the impact of celebrity tweets for various campaigns. Graphs and... http://fb.me/Tt4eBzuF
2011/08/04: Looking at @PeerIndex. Similar to Klout. http://bit.ly/yourPI
2011/08/04: Looking for a job? I put this together for friends: The job sites with the most postings for digital jobs:... http://fb.me/1cBTsF2Zw
2011/08/05: Are oil companies are using fake Twitter accounts to manipulate public opinion? http://fb.me/183Yb77rV
2011/08/05: Does Google innovate? In ten years, Google has earned some $150-200b. They've hired 20-30,000 top engineers.... http://fb.me/16wY1a23j
2011/08/07: Watching the riots in London. Kids are using Twitter to arrange flash mob attacks on stores. 100 kids show up,... http://fb.me/FYVFGXRw
2011/08/08: Infoworld's article about Google's structural problems. G spends $3.8b on R&D, yet earns only $1.2b from... http://fb.me/171cn3GM2
2011/08/08: London's Riots Don't Use Twitter: (37%) of British teens use BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). It allows one-to-many... http://fb.me/13D2EN2Td
2011/08/09: Twitter adds images! Yippee! pic.twitter.com/irwD2nB
2011/08/09: Twitter adds pixs to tweets. Many changes are coming soon.
2011/08/11: FB now allows ad targeting by zip code. http://fb.me/RwGhJct3
2011/08/11: “These days, it’s becoming clear that innovation flourishes best not on devices but in the social spaces between... http://fb.me/10wX8knfo
2011/08/12: Google+ Flatline? G+ is down at 10-11% for the last week. No movement. http://fb.me/GNnNyAFg
2011/08/14: It appears FB has released Power Editor, an ad editor that uses its API, similar to Keyword Editor for GAW. We... http://fb.me/144p8tcdn
2011/08/15: Google + Motorola? There's a few good reasons and many bad reasons. http://fb.me/tefJbcyq
2011/08/16: Facebook? Like, whatever. 24% of 18-29-year olds are bored with social media. Another 31% say it's not so much fun... http://fb.me/TuRrRBLt
2011/08/16: Groupon has no business model and no profits. It doesn't work at a small scale and it still doesn't work on a... http://fb.me/y6JqrxXN
2011/08/17: GMail Translator: Did you know Gmail can translate your emails from other languages? In Gmail, go to the little... http://fb.me/1eJWBFt9S
2011/08/17: SES SF 2011: The main trade show for SEO is on this week in SF... and I didn't go. It's the first time I've... http://fb.me/1cvsEDWMK
2011/08/18: "Okay, boss, we're in with the "Kids & Cabernet" demographic, but we've lost the moms." Who's using Google+? The... http://fb.me/17yBt3XQ3
2011/08/18: Did Google just totally screw up? Look at this Nielsen chart for cell phone market share. Apple = 28%; Google... http://fb.me/GdVUySHR
2011/08/18: HP buys Autonomy for $3b. http://fb.me/CqVr0PhY
2011/08/19: Here's the background on why a few European companies have tens of thousands of mobile device patents. http://fb.me/yshpYwsp
2011/08/23: A scientific basis for free coffee and donuts at work and school? http://fb.me/Frz0PAEC
2011/08/23: Despite what His Steveness says, Apple didn't invent tablets. That was already done in 1968. Another... http://fb.me/10tdGmeHk
2011/08/23: Overheard: "Are we going to make something of ourselves or are we going to work at Starbucks."
2011/08/24: FB shuts down its Facebook Places (a clone of Foursquare). http://fb.me/VFMHYBWw
2011/08/24: More details from the WSJ on Steve Jobs' resignation. http://fb.me/QmAZ65pJ
2011/08/24: Steve Jobs resigned just now. Assigned Tim Cook as the new CEO. http://fb.me/183cIzzbq
2011/08/24: Take that, East Coast! We have just had two earthquakes in about 12 hours. You know what we call that in SF? Wednesday. #Earthquake in SF
2011/08/24: Thinking about paying for content at eHow, Hubspot, Demand Media, etc.? Think again. Google's change in the... http://fb.me/Dh54RTK0
2011/08/24: Yesterday's earthquake would never have happened on Nixon's watch. You simply cannot trust liberals to protect America.
2011/08/25: How to improve your company's revenue by 20%? Easy. Just add a bit of... http://fb.me/HdtojeDm
2011/08/26: 5-Star Reviews for $5? It's turned into an industry. http://fb.me/Wspdfg21
2011/08/26: Lots of examples, ideas, and projects at Facebook Studio. http://fb.me/1aBOKwuHr
2011/08/27: Google+ or Google-? Google+ has reached a new low: It's down to 5% of the peak. Click the link to see the chart. http://fb.me/1gU7TJgXV
2011/08/27: Webcams in NYC: A bit of rain, not much else. People strolling around. These are high-res large image webcams. http://fb.me/LFe1TfIr
2011/08/28: BREAKING: The scene in Park Slope is worsening as residents scavenge for the Sunday Times and a place to brunch.
2011/08/29: Google = Evil. Google was busted in a major sting operation. A fugitive drug dealer turned informant and helped... http://fb.me/SIQFV9S6
2011/08/29: Google Analytics turned on Multichannel Attribution tool for all accounts. It's free. Go to your Google... http://fb.me/12FDhoewd
2011/08/29: Have you tried out Google Analytics new Multi-Channel Funnels feature? This is going to be very useful. http://j.mp/nVJkT8
2011/08/29: Why does G+ require real names? What is their goal? It is a bank? http://fb.me/Yj4pISLd
2011/09/06: ROI in Social Media: What to measure and why. Here's a clear article on metrics for social media. http://fb.me/1afxdyIef
2011/09/09: Google released a (free) 75-page ebook on real-time marketing. Lots of data. It may also signal a shift in... http://fb.me/1hqeH3lUX
2011/09/09: TechnoMoms: 83% of moms now research online if they see a TV commercial that interests them. If you show a TV ad,... http://fb.me/DrS9DkvI
2011/09/11: Built an iFrame page for a friend's company page at Facebook. FB certainly makes this needlessly convoluted. But it works!:-)
2011/09/12: Does PPC affect offline sales? Google tested four major food brands in various markets. When they turned on PPC,... http://fb.me/14g43GhuM
2011/09/13: "I'm not dead yet! I think I'll go for a walk!" Interest in Google+ is at 3% of its peak in mid-July. It's been... http://fb.me/wuw2zdda
2011/09/13: Tim Berners-Who? My Klout score (48) is higher than Tim Berners-Lee (47). Klout and PeerIndex are good ideas, but... http://fb.me/102UtGM77
2011/09/13: Twitterlytics? Tweetalytics? Twitter Analytics? Twitter is releasing a reporting tool. Beta for a few days and the... http://fb.me/NXaaVQUZ
2011/10/06: The computer industry is software and chips, but it is also people with brilliant visions: Andrew Grove, Bill... http://fb.me/1dBVazVDf
2011/10/07: A very funny interview. FB says advertisers should stop looking at CTR and conversions. Yeah, right. The only... http://fb.me/132GZz03B
2011/10/07: Tiangong, China's new space station, will be visible in Palo Alto tonight. It'll be easy to see: Look at... http://fb.me/1bK2oelB4
2011/10/10: Facebook finally gets around to releasing a FB app for the iPad. http://fb.me/1muEU0Fv6
2011/10/10: Netflix drops Qwikster. This morning, they gave up on the idea of splitting Netflix into two services. Good decision.
2011/10/11: Memorials to Steve Jobs at the Palo Alto Apple Store. http://fb.me/R1xHCUC7
2011/10/11: Tom Foremski, one of the leading tech journalists, launched a new website today for Silicon Valley news. Here's an... http://fb.me/QuIaWZBc
2011/10/12: "Don't cheer, boys!..." Things aren't so good at FB. More than half of FB's revenues come from gaming ($1.3B),... http://fb.me/116iSjgoV
2011/10/12: "Okay, so that didn't work. What now?" Google opened up Google+ on Sept. 20. Anyone could join. No secret... http://fb.me/18i8oMEqZ
2011/10/12: "Whoops!" A Google engineer wrote a long internal rant about the problems with G+ (and the problems with Google's... http://fb.me/1j6l7ZMgV
2011/10/12: Instead of "print media", shall we call it "fake media"? As much as 41% of the Wall Street Journal's European... http://fb.me/R0VUeXEM
2011/10/12: Turned on Timeline in FB. (It's still in beta, so only developers can see it.) It's somewhat like a blog. It also... http://fb.me/1fOtz4Pec
2011/10/13: A really good reason to get an Android. Your Android phone or tablet can translate 16 languages for you:... http://fb.me/1n9fr8PDW
2011/10/14: 24% of Blackberry owners plan to switch? Make that 23%. I switched yesterday. I got so tired of the Blackberry... http://fb.me/HnhiwB9t
2011/10/14: How to Get Rich with Google!:-) Yes, you can get money every month from Google. But how? Here's what to do: 1)... http://fb.me/17ObgAgu2
2011/10/14: iPad3 next week, to be followed by iPad4...: Apple started production of iPad3. The iPad2 is reaching EOL... http://fb.me/KtW14Zpd
2011/10/17: Did Steve Jobs kill himself? His cancer was treatable, but he refused treatment. Why?... http://fb.me/17p2saIat
2011/10/19: Summary of features in Android's Ice Cream Sandwich, to be available in Nov for 2.3+ Android devices. Some are... http://fb.me/1m7btQuD9
2011/10/20: Google continues to overhaul products. RSS Reader and GMail are due for major changes. They'll be tied closer to... http://fb.me/WFOMs22Q
2011/10/28: The Numbers: Last quarter, Samsung shipped 27.8m smart phones. Apple shipped 17.1m, which just barely beat... http://fb.me/1nL0YuCgS
2011/11/03: Working with an intern. He said he chose marketing because he hated math. Guess what?:-) http://fb.me/19ry9rUsk
2011/11/08: We took over a Google Adwords account. The previous agency got $297.78 CPLs (cost-per-lead) at a 0.9% conversion... http://fb.me/1oUi8yamr
2011/11/08: Which came first? The chicken or the iPhone? Android was founded in 2003 and bought by Google in 2005. The first iPhone appeared in 2007.
2011/11/09: David doesn't sleep: he has degrees in computers and law, runs a startup, writes books, and does a video blog,... http://fb.me/Pc5PeeuE
2011/11/10: Alright already. I ordered the Steve Jobs bio. I'll read it over Turkey Weekend.
2011/11/11: "Wait! I just saw it move! It's alive!" Something's happening at Google+. There's been a slight uptick in... http://fb.me/FizZr5bD
2011/11/11: Fast Company writes about he SV tech wars: Google vs. Apple vs. Amazon vs. Facebook. Some interesting points... http://fb.me/1fDIC3sg9
2011/11/14: Another change gives priority to official sites. Google writes: "We try hard to give our users the most relevant... http://fb.me/vbVNGwd7
2011/11/14: Google made a number of changes to their search engine. In one change, they put more emphasis on recent... http://fb.me/1gJ1DU2sY
2011/11/14: I'm reading about microformats for SEO and came across a new project. Last week, a jobs database was released that... http://fb.me/LEi9gSdI
2011/11/15: Are video war games just another way to do gay needlepoint? http://fb.me/xAqa2r2i
2011/11/16: Google Music launched. You can upload up to 20,000 songs and listen to your music on any computer, tablet (incl.... http://fb.me/1fZXlLKAO
2011/11/21: Something horrible has happened at Adsense. I think they're all dead. I've been trying to contact Adsense for six... http://fb.me/182IJYjWL
2011/11/23: Google Waves Goodbye... Google is shutting down Google Wave. They waited until everyone left for T-Day holiday and... http://fb.me/AwZVJzTG
2011/11/30: Adobe bought Efficient Frontier this morning. It makes a nice accompaniment for its acquisition of Omniture last... http://fb.me/1iiTzj3rJ
2011/11/30: The most useful app on my phone is a bar code scanner. I can check prices to see if it's cheaper at other stores.... http://fb.me/1f7lz2xBk
2011/12/01: Is Google against you? Yes, pretty much. Here's a good summary of Google's current SEO status. There are... http://fb.me/1rSCvxf2s
2011/12/07: A friend asked about SEO. Here's my reply: Most books and articles about SEO were written 3-5 years ago. At that... http://fb.me/1b5wzewRy
2011/12/07: Looking for your next job? Curious about salaries in your area? Here are salaries for SEO/PPC/SEM directors,... http://fb.me/1yk5VShcm
2011/12/08: A flexible transparent tablet that makes the iPad look like stone tablets? Here's Samsung's ideas for what these... http://fb.me/1dd4dlj8z
2011/12/08: Thinking of switching to ATT? Think some more. http://fb.me/uGALQYVl
2011/12/12: Germany is building a vast solar energy farm in North Africa that will provide electricity for all of Europe. http://fb.me/1xJtVjBuw
2011/12/13: Here's a free copy of my eBook on KPIs. Learn how to use LTV (Lifetime Value), CPL (Cost-per-Lead), etc. to... http://fb.me/1i0cYdqT6
2011/12/15: "Sir, the drone went rogue." Something's happening with Google Insights. On Saturday, Dec. 10, the lights went... http://fb.me/Tyw0cgiW
2011/12/15: Tips and ideas on social and marketing from Yahoo's new magazine. (The magazine is at... http://fb.me/C7GbFt0i
2011/12/16: Are you a media planner? Looking for a job? Live in the SF Bay Area? There are several openings. Email me.
2011/12/16: Free tech support (Really. No gimmicks.) Answers and help for everything about your computer or digital devices.... http://fb.me/1lalmBgrJ
2011/12/16: Zynga IPOed today and... well, it could have been worse. They opened at $10 and closed at $9.98. Anyway. They... http://fb.me/UMIx09Q4
2011/12/19: Oh, somewhere in this favored land, the sun is shining bright, The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere... http://fb.me/1lyGWBPDV
2011/12/21: Psst! Hey, you! Yeah, you. Come here. Wanna tip? It's worth a billion. Yeah, a billion. Here's the tip: Figure... http://fb.me/VOU3XXN5
2011/12/22: If ATT can't buy T-Mobile, did they sabotage it? My T-Mobile phone won't receive calls today. Is the T-Mobile system down everywhere?
2011/12/27: I wrote about the Steve Jobs bio. What was he like as a person and as a businessman, and whether we can learn... http://fb.me/17Zbsmun8
2011/12/27: While everyone is still napping from the holidays, I got yet another Google certification.
2012/01/03: Google Correlate lets you enter a term so you can see if it matches what is happening in the world. It also finds... http://fb.me/178snKAUM
2012/01/03: Want to see your competitors' image ads (banner ads)? Try http://www.moat.com http://fb.me/1BZop4T2Z
2012/01/09: The Numbers: or, Zynga finds out that it's not a game. Their stock is now at $8.00. http://fb.me/1m6xWbh71
2012/01/10: The article matches what we've been seeing in the last six months: Google gives priority to sites with high... http://fb.me/K2QtXcwm
2012/01/16: India plans to build 1,000 universities and 50,000 colleges in the next ten years. By comparison, the total... http://fb.me/1luvvSSo9
2012/01/19: "G+ Your World" (or whatever Google is calling it this week). Several conversations in the last few days about... http://fb.me/1FlDUvNgB
2012/01/19: Hurry up with that FB IPO! Kids in India are getting tired of social media. http://fb.me/1rLcsGglI
2012/01/19: The anti-SOPA protests had an effect. This shows how congress critters switched their positions on SOPA. http://fb.me/Zemcmqd7
2012/01/20: More about Google Quality Raters. They're the 10,000 humans who review sites for Google. Yes, that's right:... http://fb.me/1wf6SPsjd
2012/01/23: I read Byron Sharp's book "How Brands Grow" (2011, Oxford) this weekend. It was mentioned by Google in their... http://fb.me/1E9ihI34V
2012/01/25: A review of over 100 top corporate websites: effectiveness, message, contact, etc. Very useful document. http://fb.me/1Bu54mUbG
2012/01/25: A white paper on the use of Google+ for corporate marketing and communications.... http://fb.me/PBkdUQaT
2012/01/27: Who does Google think you are? Find out. See what Google knows about you. http://fb.me/15cbqrWJz
2012/01/28: Affiliate Marketing: Most web scams are affiliates. You want to sell your product (say, embroidered pillows). You... http://fb.me/DX1kJw4d
2012/01/29: Added the G+ badge to my website. The trick is to find your G+ ID, it's a long string of numbers. I went to G+... http://fb.me/1jpvf2GlC
2012/01/29: Added the G+ badge to my website. The trick is to find your G+ ID. I went to my G+ profile, clicked on Circles,... http://fb.me/14Dg8tJiz
2012/01/30: Forbes makes a few good points on why the FB IPO won't matter: a) The stock is wildly overvalued and will drop... http://fb.me/WJDCw2kZ
2012/01/31: FB to IPO tomorrow for only $5B? Apparently they're going to do a (very) small IPO. http://fb.me/sP1tKbxV
2012/02/02: The Halo Effect is real: Zynga's stock shot up from $10 to $12.70 on the news of FB's IPO. http://fb.me/1cUeI1dAy
2012/02/03: Komen reversed their decision. They will support Planned Parenthood. http://bit.ly/wf7dfx
2012/02/03: More Numbers: - Google Search has 66% US market share. In many other countries, G has 90% or more. More than... http://fb.me/Pj2guAgS
2012/02/03: The Numbers: Android phone activations are now 700,000 per day.
2012/02/06: Client's Question #6: "How much is our competitor spending?" Although a number of companies offer tools that... http://fb.me/tp37NwNK
2012/02/07: Pinterest: Yeah, yeah, another tool. I keep hearing about this one, more and more lately, so I'll sign up for it... http://fb.me/Qlg2RX77
2012/02/08: Google Waves... Now called Ripples:-) You post in G+, people pass your post on to other people, and that shows up as a Ripples graph.
2012/02/08: The Numbers: Per SEC filings: Has FB peaked? FB added 248MM (to total 608MM) in 2010; FB added 237MM (total... http://fb.me/1v0CBamXX
2012/02/09: http://techcrunch.com 2012/02/08/thismoment-acquires-position2-becomes-full-service-promotion-engine/ …
2012/02/09: http://techcrunch.com 2012/02/08/thismoment-acquires-position2-becomes-full-service-promotion-engine/ … http://fb.me/1EAmeVRLx
2012/02/09: Twitter is rolling out a new interface. It's available to some people, but not others. http://fb.me/1vICmsEQk
2012/02/14: It's a really good thing that Steve is dead... Apple lost the rights to the name iPad in China. And since iPads... http://fb.me/19Nw6Lp1G
2012/02/14: It's your choice: Do you want old, limited, basic Google Search? Or join the New! Enhanced! Powerful! Super!... http://fb.me/149Am6afv
2012/02/14: Numbers: I reached a milestone today: I've spent $1 million of Google's money. I manage the Google Foundation... http://fb.me/14OlJtyLG
2012/02/16: How do you say G+ in Chinese? Hexie? Let's sing in three-part harmony... hmm... I only hear the sound of... http://fb.me/1LXpZWFQ0
2012/02/22: No Benjamins on FB. Gap, Nordstorms, and JC Pennys shut down their FB stores. No sales. FB is good for many... http://fb.me/1kbx7yZjQ
2012/02/24: Will a Do Not Track rule affect behavioral retargeting (remarketing)? A) Firefox added a Do-Not-Track button four... http://fb.me/ylyfqtH8
2012/02/28: "iPad III: Revenge of the Nork." The saga continues. In this episode, the Nork kidnap Princess Lulilee and...... http://fb.me/1DTseWVpB
2012/02/29: Oops, FB did it again. FB changed the layout of all fan pages. It now uses the Timeline layout. My hand-coded... http://fb.me/1AhLsLI7g
2012/02/29: Wait! A customer just entered the store! Something's happening at Google+. G+ traffic has doubled in the last few... http://fb.me/1pps03TDc
2012/03/01: A friend sent this over: He's managing the digital marketing at large company. He lowered cost-per-click (CPC) by... http://fb.me/10eEMxN7Y
2012/03/01: Meanwhile, newspapers continue their death plunge. Their revenues is at the level of 1950. Must-read article at... http://fb.me/1KAPYTaek
2012/03/05: Facebook Fan Pages: What Changed and What Does This Mean? On March 1st, Facebook (FB) rolled out the biggest... http://fb.me/1aiu3HJHS
2012/03/05: Kaitlyn ‏@KaitlynWilkins Check out my piece in AdAge on brand adoption of Facebook Timeline! http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/adopt-facebook-timeline-migrate/233094/ …
2012/03/06: @drsidshah hey, what do u think of FB's changes? this affects EF, no? see what i wrote at http://facebook.com/andreas.work
2012/03/06: @KaitlynWilkins Liked your article at AdAge re: FB Timeline. See what I wrote at http://facebook.com/andreas.work
2012/03/06: Google Play: Okay, Sergey, so Google Music was a failure. Let's rename it as Google Play! They'll really like it this time!
2012/03/07: The new iPad is called "iPad", not "iPad 3". So if I have an old iPad, I can say I have the new iPad because it's also an iPad?
2012/03/08: A friend asked me about the diff for companies with old FB and new FB. Here's a side-by-side comparison. Here is... http://fb.me/1rmsf0nw6
2012/03/08: And here is Bloomingdales, which switched to new FB format. Bloomie's put a big orange illustration at the top.... http://fb.me/1z1f6MjM9
2012/03/08: FB released an updated IPO filing. At p. 24, they state 5-6% of accounts may be fake and 5% of traffic may be... http://fb.me/1eYz8CKb9
2012/03/15: Just the Facts: Google is going to get rid of links. No money in that anyway. They'll just show you the answer to... http://fb.me/19wPEdg1S
2012/03/15: Yahoo sues FB over patents. What's the secret history? Oh, yes, there's a very dark secret here. FB will pay... http://fb.me/1rlgKCyn0
2012/03/19: Email? Mom, what's "email"? 63% of teens use text messaging daily. Only 39% make phone calls. 29% send messages... http://fb.me/stD1fpMI
2012/03/20: What type of apps are most popular? http://fb.me/1g1OQjSfM
2012/03/27: The CMO Council's March newsletter published my notes on FB's switch to timelines for company pages. See http://www.marketingmagnified.com/#feature2
2012/03/28: If you show up in SEO, why pay for ads? However, studies show BOTH organic & paid ads get more traffic. http://bit.ly/GYo791
2012/03/31: FB "upgraded" 37m business pages to Timeline yesterday. I estimate about 75% (28m) were updated involuntarily.
2012/04/04: Need info, data, stats, etc. for mobile? Best resource: GSMA. Global association for the mobile industry. http://www.gsma.com
2012/04/06: Eyetracking analysis of FB Timeline: Banner, apps, & pinned story ignored, confused layout. See http://www.allfacebook.com/simple-usability-timeline-pages-2012-04 …
2012/04/13: What did Instagram really get? It's not $1billion. http://blog.andreas.com 2012/04/13/1-billion-is-actually/ …
2012/05/02: Are there laws in computering? There's Moore's Law (the number of transistors on a chip doubles every two years). Here…http://lnkd.in/YzDfdA
2012/05/02: Want to know how many FB Likes you have for your website? Or any website? Use Kamil's free tool: http://zubastat.com/
2012/05/11: Prime Minister? Or Prime Twit? David Cameron, Prime Minister of the UK, signed his text messages with "LOL". He thought that meant "Lots of…
2012/05/15: Ad CTR and A/B Testing: Often, ad CTRs range from high to low. This hurts sales. Why? See http://blog.andreas.com/
2012/05/21: Why the banks propped up Facebook. http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidmaris 2012/05/21/facebook-stock-drops-what-really-goes-on-in-ipos/ …
2012/05/23: Correlate: Odd (but useful) Google tool. Enter keyword to see correlated topics. Use it to uncover patterns. http://bit.ly/pGIWAo
2012/06/02: Has #peekyou ever published data on the ratio of real vs fake followers for #obama?
2012/06/06: Hope Frank ‏@HopeFrank How to Check If Your LinkedIn Password Was Stolen http://bit.ly/MfuabE
2012/06/07: See if your LinkedIn password was stolen. Use this tool to check. http://bit.ly/Lauc1C . My PW was stolen. Pass this t…http://lnkd.in/JPYJKA
2012/06/11: Bill Moyers ‏@BillMoyers RT @MoyersStaff: Did you know it's possible to see income inequality from space? Count the trees. http://bit.ly/LfqYgF #ows
2012/06/13: Does FB advertising work? What's in the ComCast doc? I read it; here's my summary: Bad news for FB and Social. http://…http://lnkd.in/cHxGKt
2012/06/15: Does #FB advertising work? What's in the #ComScore doc? I read it; My summary: Bad news for #Facebook & Social. http://blog.andreas.com 2012/06/13/facebooks-comcast-white-paper/ …
2012/06/17: What to do today? Hear 50+ kinds of music. Free. Today in Palo Alto, starting at 3pm. http://www.pamusicday.org/
2012/06/20: I wrote about the Steve Jobs bio. What was he like as a person and a businessman? Can we learn from that? http://bi…http://www.andreas.com
2012/06/22: Yahoo sued Facebook. Why? Who will win? What did Google have to do with this? Why did Google lose? The real story: http://bit.ly/wAG2Ic
2012/06/23: Went up on the Silicon Valley Zeppelin this morning. Pixs at http://lnkd.in/e_TG4n
2012/06/24: Apple store workers produce $473,000 in sales but get $11.25/hr. That explains unhappy Apple employees. http://nyti.ms/ME4ru7
2012/06/27: Does Google show a preference for the top brands? See for yourself. http://bit.ly/bjBbee
2012/06/28: #SCOTUS Liveblog: "And today, we proudly announce: Health Care. For everyone. Boom. Nobody's ever done this before. Except most countries."
2012/06/30: #facebook is down and #twitter is overloaded. End of the world?
2012/07/01: Apple finally buys the rights to the name "iPad" in China for $60m. http://buswk.co/OTX6ZG
2012/07/02: I looked at 150 mobile web sites & wrote a list of tips for mobile web design (incl. what to avoid.) http://bit.ly/N7OSLr
2012/07/13: Digg got dugg. $45m funding, 240m visitors/year, $200m valuation. Sold for $500K (price for Manhattan apartment or Palo Alto dog house.)
2012/07/15: Tom Foremski writes about #comscore white paper Do #facebook ads work?. http://bit.ly/KNl0zi Are #Facebook ads effective or not? @ErikSherman says, don't believe everything you read in that #comscore report http://ow.ly/bxeQR
2012/07/16: How does Batman use predictive analytics? It's also used in marketing, insurance, health, and other things. http://bit.ly/PJkSbj
2012/07/16: Yahoo's new CEO: Marissa Mayer http://nyti.ms/NDHuUC
2012/07/17: How to Prepare a Successful Integrated Digital Marketing Program, Part 1 http://www.emarketingandcommerce.com/article/how-prepare-successful-integrated-digital-marketing-program/1 … #marketing #digitalmarketing
2012/07/20: The Numbers: Sports ROI? The National Guard paid $26.5m to sponsor Dale Earnhardt's NASCAR racecar. 24,800 leads. 20 qualified. 0 joined.
2012/08/06: The Mars rover has completed its amazing journey. Meanwhile, in London, someone ran really fast and then jumped into some sand.
2012/08/08: Hope Frank ‏@HopeFrank Step by Step: The Skinny re: Facebook's Stock Issues http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-lockup-release-2012-8?utm_source=twbutton&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sai … via @sai
2012/08/14: Groupon's stock is down 22% today! What a deal! Be the first to buy!:-)
2012/08/19: James Slusser ‏@jslusser NYTimes: Secret E-Scores Chart Consumers’ Buying Power http://nyti.ms/S5HBzk
2012/08/20: Dan Ilic ‏@danilic Julian Assange, continues the Aussie tradition of travelling to London, crashing on stranger's couches and breaking visa conditions. #qanda
2012/08/22: Peter Thiel, one of FB’s earliest investors, sold his 22.3m shares. Has anyone started a FB Deathwatch clock yet?
2012/08/28: Roslyn Layton ‏@RoslynLayton My research note on Facebook, the Skype killer, was picked up by the press.
2012/08/28: Roslyn Layton ‏@RoslynLayton The technology trade press picked up my research note on Facebook, the Skype killer. Read here. http://lnkd.in/mzWcrK
2012/08/29: Byron Sharp ‏@ProfByron Coming soon... the textbook: Marketing: theory, evidence, practice. http://wp.me/pCNj-b4
2012/08/29: See my LinkedIn Map (visualization of my social connections) at http://bit.ly/NDvmUm
2012/08/30: Unilever spent $6.3m in Axe body spray TV ads. Target audience 18-to-24-year-olds, but 60% never saw the ads. http://on.ft.com/SY1Yiz
2012/08/31: Google is shutting down their TV ads service. It was great. But they never bothered to promote it. http://bit.ly/Q7YRBN
2012/08/31: Pernille Tranberg ‏@PernilleT: Wired: Facebook Reveals the Sleazy Business of Fake ‘Likes’ http://zite.to/ODXYh2
2012/08/31: See the number of fake followers for any Twitter acct. Yep, I'm going to check YOUR Twitter followers!:-) Go http://b…http://lnkd.in/rkxPA2
2012/08/31: So Newt Gingrich's Twitter acct is only 25% good? That high?:-) Go http://bit.ly/NGzq90
2012/09/04: Amber Lyon ‏@AmberLyon: I am blowing the whistle on #CNN. Story here via @ggreenwald http://m.guardian.co.uk/world 2012/09/04/cnn-international-documentary-bahrain-arab-spring-repression?cat=world&type=article …
2012/09/05: Amber Lyon ‏@AmberLyon: #CNN caught taking money from oppressive regimes in exchange for coverage that 'makes them look better' http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree 2012/09/04/cnn-business-state-sponsored-news … #Bahrain
2012/09/13: Get Your FB Archive: It's a file of all you've ever done on FB. It's HTML, so you can add it to your site. Example: an…http://lnkd.in/s5PjvC
2012/09/14: JS-Kit/Echo's commenting tool is closing 10/12. Switch to Disqus. Easy export/import. See http://bit.ly/OpCCnb http://lnkd.in/RMJ8Ha
2012/09/17: Leila ليلى ‏@LSal: Lost your kid Jihad at the airport. Can't yell for him. #MuslimRage
2012/09/29: Get Google's playbook for display advertising. Free download. No reg. Go http://bit.ly/RqN1TT
2012/10/02: Our trip in Sichuan. What it's like to travel in China: the people, their homes, Peking Opera, the food, etc. http://bit.ly/SAELx8
2012/10/04: What to do about Yelp and the social recommendation sites when they trash your small business? See http://bit.ly/T6iVrq
2012/10/11: 86% of marketing depts don't use KPIs to measure social? Columbia Business School study. http://lnkd.in/v-7EyF
2012/10/16: Buy every Superbowl ad? $250m. Show your own jump from space? $1m. No TV, no competitor ads, 2.5 hours. http://lnkd.in/wU_zdg
2012/10/16: Which should you use: blog, Facebook, or Twitter? Which works best for SEO? http://lnkd.in/ZwHqQH
2012/10/21: Using Comcast Business DSL. We get 50.2 mbps download / 33.1 upload (per http://SpeedTest.net ). We pay $61/month. http://SpeedTest.net ).
2012/10/23: Joined the staff of The CMO Council as a Digital Marketing Practice Leader. Evangelize and develop strategies for CMOs around the world.
2012/10/24: Adobe's report on the state of digital ads. Lots of data. http://adobe.ly/PPXRF5 (free, no reg)
2012/10/25: To paraphrase Peter Drucker: Business is innovation and marketing (everything else is admin work.)
2012/10/29: NASA's space video of Hurricane Sandy. http://yhoo.it/UajWdx
2012/10/30: I'm talking on digital marketing, branding, metrics for mid-size & large companies (San Jose, Nov. 6, 2-5p.) http://sdrv.ms/T8MSBn
2012/10/30: Set up an ad campaign in Twitter w/ $100 credit from AmEx. Very easy. Let's see how this works.
2012/11/04: IDC: Android worldwide smartphone share now 75% (136m units shipped in Q3/12) Apple has 14.9%.
2012/11/04: Need a one-page executive summary for your startup? I wrote one. Here it is. Use it for your startup. http://lnkd.in/dPR5cF
2012/11/05: Need to write a press release? Free template (Word) and example. Go http://lnkd.in/CPCAch
2012/11/08: So... do you do it? Or just talk about it? Creator or curator? Look at the trend in the use of the word "curator." http://lnkd.in/rjBVeA
2012/11/14: Live war. Israel and Hamas tweet as they bomb each other@IDFSpokesperson vs @AlqassamBrigade They're taunting each other. Surreal. #gaza
2012/11/15: Pay attention to the social media aspect of the war in #Gaza. Both sides are using social media to get around MSM. Fascinating.
2012/11/16: Is Mobile Killing Google? Its operating margins are collapsing. The same for FB + ad-based sites. http://bit.ly/T6Aozp http://lnkd.in/c2U7-G
2012/11/16: Tucker, the dog, sings at the piano. The craziest funniest video I've ever seen. 3.8m views. http://bit.ly/Uvs48d
2012/11/18: KPI eBook. Learn how to calculate your CPL, CPA to make your marketing profitable. Easy read. Free, no reg. http://bit.ly/UNbTJs
2012/11/18: Spent weekend reading on digital content marketing. Wrote 16-page outline for my upcoming book. I'll share draft chapters in Jan.
2012/11/20: HP paid $10 billion for a fake search engine? http://onforb.es/Q8i7kF
2012/11/21: "Social Media" by Onion Talks w Cameron Hughes (who looks like Drew Davis, of "Brandscaping"). V funny. http://bit.ly/UYkoBw
2012/11/21: @TPLDrew Hey, you're famous! Onion Talks on social media. V funny. Watch at http://bit.ly/UYkoBw
2012/11/22: @Support How about some ideas to improve Twitter? http://blog.andreas.com/?p=289
2012/11/22: Anaximander, the office cat. pic.twitter.com/cywLpmcw
2012/11/22: First draft of webpage for my new book. http://lnkd.in/sBpYaR
2012/11/22: http://lnkd.in/EGs-CN For practically any other B2C or B2B product or service, it's easy to figure out the target audience and their...
2012/11/23: Neil Barofsky ‏@neilbarofsky: And is awesome RT @freddoso: This exists: https://twitter.com/YourInAmerica
2012/11/23: With Mariianne at Lyfe Cafe in Palo Alto. pic.twitter.com/VbdLSssz
2012/11/24: A Chinese tablet, only US$110. Uses android. pic.twitter.com/yvyF8f08
2012/11/25: @jfouts Kindle. Google Maps. FB. Twitter. That's about it.
2012/11/25: Did you know? US hardware buyers are 2X likely to research on manufacturers’ websites, not Google. http://bit.ly/10DP5wk
2012/11/25: Fun Stuff: Can you spot the diff? A Chinese Apple laptop. Compare the logo w/ your Apple logo!:-) pic.twitter.com/LJJAqPmL
2012/11/26: @HopeFrank Cool tool. It also allows companies to use TV info to move away from TV.
2012/11/26: Get a free copy of my Powerpoint template. http://lnkd.in/PtFJqR
2012/11/26: Hope Frank ‏@HopeFrank: Social TV Is Getting Down to Business http://adage.com/u/AksWMb via @adage
2012/11/27: @Raul_Ramos When you make correction to your ebook, does Amazon push new version to previous buyers? Can U send updates?
2012/11/27: Finished "Pancho Land", by @Raul_Ramos (he's friend, not relative). Political thriller about insurrection in the US.
2012/11/27: http://lnkd.in/ck9zeN Here are some ideas for topics: Short interviews with your engineers, developers, sales team, and support team. Ask...
2012/11/27: IBM's report on Black Friday. See end of p. 4. Facebook sent 0.68% of sales. Twitter = 0.0%. http://ibm.co/QnZYiK
2012/11/27: List of Webinars for Content Marketing?: http://lnkd.in/E2Ejxa
2012/11/27: Show me the numbers! How do you track results? Let's hear specifics about metrics. #influencemktg
2012/11/28: Janet Fouts ‏@jfouts: It's a beautiful blustery fall day in the valley pic.twitter.com/DmnJlDWb
2012/11/28: Lunch w Sinomedia. Major China publisher. They will publish my next book in China.
2012/11/29: Sure, you could pay $25,000 to a Silicon Valley lawyer to get term sheets + a stock purchase agreement. Or get them free from me.
2012/11/29: SV startup stuff. And here's the Stock Purchase Agreement doc. http://bit.ly/WxR2Fu (free, no reg.)
2012/11/29: SV startup stuff. Need a Term Sheet for your VCs? NCVA-compliant. http://bit.ly/WxR2Fu (free, no reg.)
2012/11/30: Where can I find upcoming webinars, confs, etc. for Content Marketing? Any good resources? #mediarelations12
2012/12/01: BurgerBots? http://blog.andreas.com/?p=306
2012/12/03: @PaloAltoPolice traffic light out. Waverly n Oregon .
2012/12/03: CMO Council ‏@CMO_Council: Big News @CMO_Council Releases Annual 2012 State of Marketing Report - Get Your Copy Today! http://bit.ly/TDHnPF
2012/12/03: listening to Joe Pulizzi webinar. great stats@juntajoe #cmi
2012/12/03: Val Swisher ‏@contentrulesinc
2012/12/03: What tool allows me to create text transcript of video and add a search box to the video? #cmi @juntajoe
2012/12/04: 10:00 Am PST webinar: prep for 2013 with Global Content Strategy http://adobe.ly/VaaxrK with me! #AdobeTCS #techcomm
2012/12/04: Google Glass: An entirely new form of entertainment? http://lnkd.in/-N7Rpg
2012/12/04: When was the American Revolution? No, not 1776. Here's how I used Google nGram to find out. http://lnkd.in/bPAEGH
2012/12/05: http://lnkd.in/pXgWpd Thanks, I updated my list.
2012/12/05: RT @TPLDrew: We need 2 more attendees to my virtual Brown Bag Lunch! http://ow.ly/fR9Ax . Join me at Andrew's event.
2012/12/05: Tikhon ‏@tikhon: Class warfare erupts in Palo Alto! ¨average millionaires¨ unite against the new money billionaires! pic.twitter.com/V9FPqGM9
2012/12/05: Time for lunch!
2012/12/06: So do you want ☃ or ☼ for the holidays? ☺
2012/12/07: @getLittleBird Ok, I made a report (50 names). How to import into Twitter to create a Twitter List?
2012/12/07: @getLittleBird So if I subscribe and have a report of 500: same question. Can I bulk import into a Twitter List?
2012/12/07: http://lnkd.in/WMZU9S Right now, I'm using a spreadsheet for a project. I'll look into various tools in the next few months, but I'm...
2012/12/08: http://lnkd.in/mizjXD Move the low-traffic pages to the sitemap. You can also create an "Archives" page and list them there. All of those...
2012/12/08: New tool: Google Wildfire creates pages, posts, ads in Google+, Facebook, Twiter, Youtube, LinkedIn, Pinterest. Wildf…http://Wildfireapp.com
2012/12/08: RT @ggreenwald: Vote for Guardian's 2012 Person of the Year (and see current tallies): http://is.gd/xONY5C (Retweet this!)
2012/12/09: http://lnkd.in/MM8_fX Nicolas says "There's not much meat at the end of the long tail"; I've said similar: the long tail is skinny....
2012/12/09: Where to send out press releases for free: http://lnkd.in/sP2D3B
2012/12/10: FB is down! The Mayan Apocalypse is happening! Run! Where to? Just run!
2012/12/12: Happy 12.12.12!:-)
2012/12/12: http://lnkd.in/6W9mJB KPIs. There has been lots of talk about strategy and target audience. But the proof is in the numbers. We need...
2012/12/12: http://lnkd.in/mRt92J Yes, I put links in a press release and sent it out with the three in my first posting above. Tip: Use tracking...
2012/12/12: RT @simrraanc: RT @Yeah_thatsmoney: I've lived through 1/1/1, 2/2/2, 3/3/3, 4/4/4, 5/5/5, 6/6/6, 7/7/7, 8/8/8, 9/9/9 10/10/10, 11/11/11...
2012/12/13: Collection of articles, PDFs, white papers, etc. on content marketing. (Free download, no reg.) https://www.box.com/andreasramos
2012/12/13: Collection of Docs and PDFs on Content Marketing: http://lnkd.in/96fTJx
2012/12/14: 5:26 am. Went out to look at Gemenids. Overcast:-( Back to bed.
2012/12/14: bad news. shooting at a school in #Connecticut. 27 killed, incl. 18 school kids.
2012/12/14: http://lnkd.in/ZmgsWE How well does it work? Depends on several things: - Quality of the press release. A poor press release can get...
2012/12/14: Native Advertising? Another word for Content Marketing?: http://lnkd.in/NS485z
2012/12/16: http://lnkd.in/tKHkPS After thinking more about this, native advertising (NA) is a halfway solution between tradition advertising and...
2012/12/16: The one where I talk about social features in Chinese social sites that we don't have in the US. http://lnkd.in/6s2Qnm
2012/12/17: A Silicon Valley Joke: Someone who builds successful startups is serial founder. If the startups crashed, he's a serial flounder.
2012/12/17: Did you know there's a better Twitter in China? http://lnkd.in/6s2Qnm
2012/12/18: Collection of Docs and PDFs on Content Marketing: http://lnkd.in/xyP2MQ
2012/12/19: RT @tpldrew: Very useful infographic: The different types of wine! http://ow.ly/geeAn
2012/12/26: A short note (a bit funny) about dealing with the kids at Google. http://lnkd.in/Yt-2Wh http://lnkd.in/fUwVHH
2012/12/28: Have a great 2013! It's finally the Teens!:-)
2012/12/28: http://lnkd.in/BBBh-U Jo, I'd be reluctant to remove the low-traffic pages. They get only 14%, but these also have a long-term traffic...
2012/12/28: When Instagram said they will sell users' pixs, number of daily users dropped from 16.4m to 12.4m. Yep, they lost 25% of …http://users.After
2012/12/30: Why is marketing broken, why it won't fix itself, and who's going to fix it. http://bit.ly/WTzu8y
2012/12/31: Pandora sent me a summary for 2012. They played music to me 21,985 times.
2012/12/31: RT “Something has gone terribly wrong when the biggest threat to our American economy is the American Congress." - Senator Joe Manchin
2013/01/01: Sociogram in FB via Wolfram: http://lnkd.in/hRAEqc
2013/01/02: 2013: What do YOU think is coming in 2013?: http://lnkd.in/RKBDwh
2013/01/02: : Yes, I'm at AOL offices. They get younger every year. pic.twitter.com/SfUCh5yo
2013/01/02: Have you ever seen the first newspaper ad? Paris, 1836. Here are the ads. http://lnkd.in/-xrbUe
2013/01/03: @jaybaer Nice Abbe Pierre case story, but no ROI b/c it did NOT produce revenues.
2013/01/04: RT @jfouts: Metrics & ROI - Three Myths of Social Media ROI #Infographic http://vsb.li/v0jLQH
2013/01/05: Here's the draft of the cover for my next book: "Content Marketing Strategy & Tactics" http://lnkd.in/vVyxTW
2013/01/06: Could Amazon kill Google? Is Google necessary? http://lnkd.in/X3DGgH
2013/01/10: What happens when Google can't show its ads at all? An ISP is deleting Google's ads. http://nyti.ms/WA6yRc
2013/01/10: What if Apple ran the Post Office? (Humor) http://blog.andreas.com/?p=425
2013/01/11: A short list of the necessary elements of a Content Marketing strategy. http://lnkd.in/t8zWwx
2013/01/11: http://lnkd.in/MtrCrr I think only 16% or so (it's a low number) of mid-and-large companies are outsourcing their content marketing....
2013/01/11: http://lnkd.in/TsSAJR Exactly! I saw that article. We always look at open rates vs. the day of the week. It depends on the type of...
2013/01/12: Pick up 2-Buck Chuck. Next week: Up half buck, Stock up, Good luck!:-)
2013/01/13: Why are there no case studies in content marketing? What is needed for a case study? http://lnkd.in/3Twixq
2013/01/14: http://lnkd.in/JpfRgC Mark: Very good example with lots of details. John: I don't think any CFO is going to buy content marketing for...
2013/01/14: http://lnkd.in/xkTpdX Mark Spanner posted a case study. He concludes: "Results: 3.2 times more leads rated as "hot" provided to...
2013/01/14: RT @tomforemski: 2013: The rise of corporate media and Silicon Valley's disruption of all media. http://zd.net/11tZjBd #contentmarketing
2013/01/15: #Google+ #hangout is dead this morning. 404 error msgs.
2013/01/16: Apple and Google have a secret underground bus system in Silicon Valley? http://bit.ly/V8xLQf
2013/01/16: Here's a list of US cities that you can use to create control tests. http://lnkd.in/rka3pz #marketing #contentmarketing
2013/01/16: http://lnkd.in/hmmjkz Rebecca Lieb has lots of corporate experience, which gives credibility to her book.
2013/01/16: Sequenti.al's white paper "Cookies Are Out" (Sept. 2013) states 63% of users disable/block/delete cookies.
2013/01/16: When Content Marketing Goes Wrong: The Atlantic, Scientology, and paid content: http://lnkd.in/85J4AC
2013/01/18: Using Collaboration Tools in Doing Content Marketing?: http://lnkd.in/HNyU2X
2013/01/20: Added my collection of 19 brand style guides. ATT, Cornell, SUN, etc. At my folder at http://lnkd.in/av5KMF http://lnkd.in/NYspkg
2015/09/28: #Nasa found water on #Mars. Great. Let's see if they can find water in #California! #Drought.
2015/11/16: Outside, there is either a windstorm or a presidential debate! Branches are falling.
2015/12/27: Went fishing again. Caught a small leopard shark.
2016/01/11: Client has new book coming out in March. I'll do the digital marketing strategy to make it a #1 best seller.
2016/01/11: this weekend, i read Barry Katz's "Make It New", history of design in #SiliconValley. v good account of how #design became key to SV.
2016/01/14: Alright already! After 423 reminders to upgrade to #Windows10, I'll do it. And from #Word2002 (hey, it works!) to #Office2016. Wish me luck!
2016/01/14: First pothole. After all those #Win10 messages, my PC's graphics card (#RadeonX1600) won't allow it. Gotta first upgrade the graphics card.
2016/01/14: We have pizza. We have beer. Let's start the GOPDebate!
2016/01/21: She meant "idol", but she wrote "I grew up being a teen idle…", which is probably the same thing.
2016/02/02: A list of things that are broken at #Netflix. #WeLoveDVD should be #FirstFixNetflix. Go http://goo.gl/ZuMqCM
2016/02/17: About http://wp.me/P7fs0J-1 via
2016/02/21: 18 blogs by #French students in #SanFrancisco. See what they think of Calif. http://blog.andreas.com 2016/02/21/france-in-sf/ …
2016/02/24: Eurydice Katzenjammer
2016/02/27: I just installed #WordPress via #Softaculous #PHP
2016/03/22: For #engineering schools & science #PR professionals: 16 major media journalists & editors, SF, April 6-7. Go http://bit.ly/1TNalN6
2016/03/22: I'm hosting a panel on #SEO for universities. Panelists: Senior SEO fr Adobe, Symantec, eBay. SF, April 6-7. Go http://bit.ly/1TNalN6
2016/03/31: Tips for better #engagement at university websites http://bit.ly/1RqlZIu @robwynne
2016/04/15: At #Adobe for conf on Global SEO .
2016/04/15: In 1999, it was #eyeballs. Now, it's #clickbait. Same thing, and it'll crash too.
2016/04/15: Loren McKechnie of Symantec on Global SEO.
2016/04/17: Yep, winter is coming. Soon, it'll be 2000 AD again.
2016/04/20: Reviewing #RFP to select Email Service Providers #ESP vendors. Talking w/ http://marketing-democracy.com . They review ESPs. Anyone worked w/ them?
2016/06/22: Get a Bad Gateway error in #Netflix? It's bug w/ Chrome. Netflix is trying to fix it. Until then, use Microsoft Edge or Firefox. 2 replies 0 retweets 1 like Reply 2 Retweet Like 1 View Tweet activity
2016/06/30: #cashtag is purchase for Twitter
2016/07/01: #Adwords Editor hasn't been able to download data for 2 days. Anyone else having this problem? Solutions? Workaround? #AdwordsEditor
2016/07/01: Google suggested uninstall/reinstall for #Adwords Editor. Still can't download data. Anyone else having this problem? #AdwordsEditor Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2016/07/09: At the Palo Alto library book sale.
2016/07/16: Google is pushing their payment tool. Free lunch at McDonald's.
2016/07/20: LIVE on #Periscope: #cat in the basket https://www.pscp.tv/w/al5c-TFEWUVYa3dubnBramd8MXZBR1J6ZVlQZ1pHbOuioMnIpOBUNbldZt7Fgb-zdqMmFJUxB9Mra-y5Pu7S …
2016/07/22: What does your startup do? We make apps to do what your mother used to do for you.
2016/07/29: LIVE on #Periscope: Cat vs raccoon https://www.pscp.tv/w/amrGGTFEWUVYa3dubnBramd8MWRSS1pxUHlnd3Z4Qv4y9PY3X8vrJjuhETV2Q6ItJ8EByc-FS0llK_cUwD1a …
2016/08/03: Facebook Ad Manager broken 4 weeks. FB made changes & broke it. Can't create new accounts. Help won't reply. Any idea when will work again?
2016/08/12: My book review of "Chaos Monkeys" by Antonio Garcia Martinez. http://blog.andreas.com/index.php/chaos-monkeys-the-book/ …
2016/08/12: Origins of Google in... 1923? http://blog.andreas.com/index.php/origins-of-google/ …
2016/08/16: Dario Fo, one of the funniest European playwrights, is nearly unknown in the US. Try this play. http://blog.andreas.com/index.php/dario-fo/ …
2016/08/16: Is it true Google will turn into a poetry site? Just in case, be prepared. Read a poem today! http://blog.andreas.com/index.php/poems-at-my-website/ …
2016/08/23: Want to know the number of real users at Periscope or any social app? Yes, there's a way to figure it out. http://blog.andreas.com/index.php/100m-users-really/ …
2016/08/26: Uber is losing $210m per month... http://www.theguardian.com/technology 2016/08/25/uber-losses-2016-investors …
2016/09/08: Google Alert: No Google analytics data for Sept 2-6. Intern tripped over the extension cord. All servers unplugged. Will fix after lunch. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2016/09/08: Wells-Fargo does growth hacking! To meet goals, they used customers' info to open 2m fake accts and 600K fake credit cards. Reply Retweet 2 Like 2 View Tweet activity
2016/09/13: At Wells-Fargo, 5,000 were fired & bank pays $185m penalty for 2m fake accts & 600K fake credit cards, but Carrie Tolstedt got $125m bonus. Reply Retweet 1 Like View Tweet activity
2016/09/13: Missed Content World? Here's the top stuff, in a quick summary:
2016/09/13: Sept. 13, 3:17 pm: Achieved email nirvana. Zero unread emails in my email acct. Okay, partly due to shift to SMS, WeChat, and Slack :-)
2016/09/25: Pixs of Helen & I on our trip around the canyons: Grand Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, Antelope Canyon, Bryce, & Zion http://wp.andreas.com/our-canyons-trip/ … Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2016/09/27: 15 future #entrepreneurs from Colombia received the #Entefy experience@Andreas_Ramos https://blog.entefy.com/colombian-entrepreneurship-alive-well/ … 0 replies 5 retweets 12 likes Reply Retweeted 5 Liked 12 Direct message
2016/09/27: In Dallas at http://Shop.org trade show. Entefy @Entefy
2016/09/27: Woohoo! Texas BBQ! @ Sonny Bryan's in Dallas.
2016/09/28: Come by, get autographed book on content marketing. #ContentOro #shoporg16 booth LP9 Reply Retweet Like 4 View Tweet activity
2016/09/28: You don’t have to be stupid to work here, but it helps – https://aeon.co/essays/you-don-t-have-to-be-stupid-to-work-here-but-it-helps … via @aeonmag
2016/10/04: A few tips on how to take better photos with your cell phone. http://andreas.com/cell-phone-photography/ …
2016/10/04: And how I took that pix... 1 reply 0 retweets 1 like Reply 1 Retweet Like 1 View Tweet activity
2016/10/04: Helen at Horseshoe Bend. 1 reply 0 retweets 1 like Reply 1 Retweet Like 1 View Tweet activity
2016/10/04: So Yahoo let US govt scan all users' email? My Yahoo email acct has 245,000 spam emails. Uncle Sam's welcome to it!
2016/10/04: We also went to Lower Antelope Canyon.
2016/10/04: We went to Horseshoe Bend.
2016/10/10: Going to event for startup founders. Mon, 17th, 6:30p, Santa Clara. https://www.meetup.com/silicon-valley-cofounder-academy/events/234628834/ …
2016/10/10: The New Yorker's article about Y-Combinator, Silicon Valley's top accelerator and Sam Altman, who runs it: Reply Retweet 1 Like View Tweet activity
2016/10/11: Google Chrome on Windows 10 is freezing. Uninstall, reinstall, and freezes again.
2016/10/13: You're on a boat with Hillary & Trump. Both fall in the water.. Only one life jacket. Which one do you save? Neither. You save America.
2016/10/14: Entefy's @brienne_g in support of female entrepreneurship@SheStartedIt @NoraPoggi @MVFilmfest #STEM #technology https://blog.entefy.com/entefy-co-founder-brienne-silver-screen-promoting-women-tech/#more-1098 … 0 replies 8 retweets 20 likes Reply Retweeted 8 Liked 20 Direct message
2016/10/31: Paleo Muffins. An oxymoron? We report; you decide.
2016/10/31: what's happening? so much! finished outline for book #14. title will be "#14" :-) in SF at noon for incubator kickoff. working w clients. Entefy @Entefy
2016/11/08: Is this going to be mega-Brexit? 1 reply 1 retweet 1 like Reply 1 Retweet 1 Like 1 View Tweet activity
2016/11/09: Trump used Twitter & social media to talk directly to his followers. Trump bypassed traditional media. 1 reply 0 retweets 1 like Reply 1 Retweet Like 1 View Tweet activity
2016/11/15: let's see if this works! :-) http://andreas.com/sitemap-stanford.xml … George Takei Verified account @GeorgeTakei
2016/11/15: Oh my 706 replies 13,289 retweets 23,933 likes Reply 706 Retweeted 13K Like 24K Direct message
2016/11/17: So I tweet... at Twitter! Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2016/11/18: We added a little high #tech to the #MannequinChallenge. https://blog.entefy.com/entefy-mannequin-challenge/ … #AI #siliconvalley #companyculture #video #trending #jobs 1 reply 21 retweets 36 likes Reply 1 Retweeted 21 Liked 36 Direct message
2016/11/29: Helvijs Smoteks posted an excellent list of 128 growth hacking methods. http://blog.linkody.com/seo/growth-hacks-list … . My list is at http://andreas.com/111-ideas-for-growth-hacking/ … Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2016/12/12: At ExpatWoman pitch event at Lyft HQ SF. 11 women-led startups pitching, including YellowFinch. #ffpff Reply Retweet 3 Like 2 View Tweet activity
2016/12/12: Women founders at ExpatWomen #ffpff Reply Retweet 1 Like View Tweet activity
2016/12/15: CitiBank is paying $600m yearly for cybersecurity.
2016/12/24: Happy Holidays and a Great 2017 to everyone! -- Andreas, Helen, & Cat
2016/12/24: Update on my book re Silicon Valley startups: 1st edits done. Next, changes based on interviews. Send to reviewers Wens. Final ver. late Jan
2016/12/29: @DouglasCrets contact me at andreas@andreas.com . and i work with MIT. manage their global digital marketing for MIT OpenCourseware. thxs!
2016/12/29: @DouglasCrets writing book on seed-stage startups. book #14. want to interview Chinese startup. can you recommend one? Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2016/12/09: Comcast #comcastoutage is down in Silicon Valley. Maybe we'll write Christmas cards now...
2017/01/06: Anthony Pompliano got fired for saying Snapchat uses fake user numbers to increase its IPO. https://www.theguardian.com/technology 2017/01/05/snapchat-accused-lying-user-numbers-ipo-investor …
2017/01/06: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted Entefy Good study on how people use email, social, etc.Andreas Ramos added, Entefy @Entefy [Research report] Information Overload and Digital Complexity #digital #technews #communication #tech https://blog.entefy.com/information-overload-and-digital-complexity/ …
2017/01/06: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted Only in America I have to show this to my cat!Andreas Ramos added, 0:15 Only in America @Crazzyintheusa Meanwhile in California. Entefy @Entefy
2017/01/06: Mountain lion on a car in Silicon Valley. Reply 1 Retweet 1 Like 3 View Tweet activity
2017/01/11: Frank Layden: "I asked him, 'what is it with you? Is it ignorance or apathy?' He said, Coach, I don't know and I don't care." Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/01/12: "Being in VC without having been a founder is like being a lifeguard without knowing how to swim." (In the New Yorker)
2017/01/15: Startup (Book Update): Layout is done. 143 pages. Waiting for final cover. Get a free copy of book at http://andreas.com/startup/
2017/01/16: "...all life is interrelated." - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. #MLKDAY 0 replies 10 retweets 13 likes Reply Retweeted 10 Liked 13 Direct message
2017/01/16: Adwords Alert: if you're using Adwords, review yr acct. Google's placing yrs ads to junk sites, mobile games, etc to drive up fake clicks. 0 replies 2 retweets 1 like Reply Retweet 2 Like 1 View Tweet activity
2017/01/17: Pitch: I'll be one of the judges at a pitch event. SF 6p, Wens Jan 18th. Come and let's talk. Reply Retweet 2 Like View Tweet activity Entefy @Entefy
2017/01/19: Book update: did the last interview. A new accelerator in Cote d'Ivoire, Africa. Fascinating, what they're doing.
2017/01/23: Research on virality. Two forms of distribution: broadcast & diffusion. By Sharad Goel et al. https://5harad.com/papers/twiral.pdf …
2017/01/24: Learn about Machine Learning at UC Berkeley, tonight, 8.30, Wozniak Lounge. http://ml.berkekey.edu
2017/01/25: Buying lunch. Credit card machine not working. Let's try Google #HandsFree to pay. Also dead either. If it's not reliable, it's useless.
2017/01/25: Several years ago, I never heard of African startups in Silicon Valley. Now, I meet them regularly. Lots of activity there. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/01/25: This week at #INSEECSF: Lectures for startup founders from Cameron, Mali, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Algeria, Benin, Algeria, Tunisia, and France.
2017/01/26: Stanford medical uses machine learning to spot skin cancer. Can be an app for all. http://stanford.io/2jfmgDF via @Stanford Reply Retweet 1 Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/01/26: Stanford-trained #AI diagnoses #cancer lesions, "could greatly assist dermatologists." -Dr. Swetter @StanfordCancer: http://stan.md/2kxOkTY 0 replies 13 retweets 3 likes Reply Retweeted 13 Liked 3 Direct message
2017/01/28: Happy New Year! Rooster Year! 1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes Reply 1 Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity Stanford Cancer @StanfordCancer
2017/02/05: 1) Book update: Uploaded files. Waiting for print sample. Book release: Feb. 14th. Paperback: $9.99, £7.97 UK, €9.29. Kindle eBook: $3.99. Reply Retweet Liked 5 View Tweet activity
2017/02/05: 2) Want a free copy of the book? Will send email w/ link to free copy. If you're not in my list, sign up at https://eepurl.com/wC-C1 Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/02/07: "Startup" by Andreas Ramos. The book on how to build Silicon Valley seed startups. Get your free copy. Go http://andreas.com/startup/ Reply Retweet 3 Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/02/13: Book is #1 at Amazon in two categories. Get your copy now at http://andreas.com/startup/ Go. Now. Reply Retweet 1 Like 3 View Tweet activity
2017/02/13: 💡🌞 📚 New Book: "Startup" by me. Get co-founders, develop your idea, get funding. Free 1 Week Only at Amazon http://goo.gl/RGnZRh Go! Reply Retweet 3 Like 3 View Tweet activity
2017/02/28: At IgniteXL for new Korea startups. Reply Retweet Liked 4 View Tweet activity
2017/03/02: Martin Fredericksen presents his development projects at INSEEC SF.
2017/03/07: Dinner last night at UC Davis at a Sichuan restaurant. Lunch in Sacramento today. Meetings too.
2017/03/09: Roslyn Layton speaking on FCC FTC policy on net neutrality at Stanford Law School. https://twitter.com/Andreas_Ramos/status/840027936963022848/photo/1pic.twitter.com/xrGGiDfkAa Reply Retweet 1 Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/03/13: AI vs. Natural Intelligence: Why people and animals are smarter than AIs. http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily 2017/03/artificial-stupidity.html … Reply Retweet 1 Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/03/14: Google made an update! But... what does that really mean? How does it affect SEO? What can you do about it? http://andreas.com/google-updates/
2017/03/15: 1) There is no site for global distribution of ebooks. Really. Amazon can't handle Korean, Arabic, etc. So I'm building my own tool. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/03/15: 2) I'll tie a bunch of tools together for this. I'll blog how to do this. 1st step: I made a test page in Korean: http://andreas.com/startup-korea/ 1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes Reply 1 Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/03/15: I wrote an FAQ on how to make and use banner ads (display ads or image ads). Lots of tips and tricks. http://andreas.com/faq-banner-ads/
2017/03/16: Great news! Our newly issued patent uses encryption and search to safeguard private data. https://blog.entefy.com/view/327/Entefy-Announces-the-Issuance-of-an-Important-Patent-for-Encrypted-Search/1681b10e91392016d6c268839df71281 … #innovation #data #privacy 0 replies 12 retweets 19 likes Reply Retweeted 12 Liked 19 Direct message
2017/03/17: INSEEC students today at Microsoft trying Hololens. They toured Silicon Valley today. Beautiful day, sunny, warm. Reply Retweet 2 Like View Tweet activity
2017/03/17: Of course, I'm talking about understanding Foucault, which is not the same as agreeing with him.
2017/03/17: The Case of the Missing Comma... Workers stand to get $10m in overtime due to a lawyer's bad punctuation. https://www.nytimes.com 2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-lawsuit.html … Entefy @Entefy
2017/03/17: The day ended with burgers on the grill, chips, and beer and wine, plus ice cream. at our house. INSEEC SF
2017/03/17: You'll understand much of today's politics by understanding Foucault, Here's a clear description of his work. https://aeon.co/essays/why-foucaults-work-on-power-is-more-important-than-ever …
2017/03/19: 6.4 earthquake in our backyard yesterday. CERT Rescue Teams found a survivor. It was a Palo Alto city-wide earthquake drill. Reply Retweet 1 Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/03/19: Eggs from our neighbor. Natural eggs have different colors.
2017/03/19: On hold with @Ticketmaster ... AGAIN. Last week, site can't sell tickets. Today, can't transfer tickets. $8B in sales. Site is broken?
2017/03/20: What's up with SEO? What's the future of SEO? Free ebook. No registration. #SMX #SEO http://andreas.com/books-by-andreas/#ebooks …
2017/03/21: 5.6 million manufacturing jobs were lost between 2000-2010. Ball State University estimates ~85% were lost to automation, not trade.
2017/03/21: my cat finally has his website up. it took him a long time. because he's a cat. anyway, see a pix of him at
2017/03/21: Nearly done! Addition has walls, doors, windows. Next: electricity, water, flooring, etc. A few more weeks. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/03/21: Still in shrink-wrap! Adobe Page Mill. I was in the small team that made this in 1995 or so. It was one of the first HTML editors.
2017/03/22: here's a lizard from the yard. the little guy is about three inches long. 1 reply 0 retweets 1 like Reply 1 Retweet Like 1 View Tweet activity
2017/03/22: Raccoon in the garage. Friend said "but they'll never come in a house". Oh, yes, they do. Lots of raccoons have come in. Lots of footprints.
2017/03/23: Helping friends in Denmark set up their global book release. Going for an "Amazon #1 Best Seller" tag. This Monday. Watch the beaches! Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/03/24: We're going to lose all protection of personal data on the web. Your data will be for sale. #privacy https://www.nytimes.com 2017/03/23/technology/congress-moves-to-strike-internet-privacy-rules-from-obama-era.html …
2017/03/28: Going to SF Asian Art Museum to see items from Han Dynasty royal tombs. From Beijing Museum. On loan only to SF. http://www.asianart.org/exhibitions/tomb-treasures … Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/03/28: How to prep a startup for pitching? Full rehearsal, project, wall screen, and do it 15 times. Actually, we lost count. More than 15X.
2017/03/28: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted Yellowfinch YellowFinch pitches tomorrow at #InsTechSV.Andreas Ramos added, Yellowfinch @YellowfinchCo Come and see us present tomorrow at #InsTechSV #StartUp Showcase! 0 replies 2 retweets 1 like Reply Retweet 2 Like 1 View Tweet activity
2017/03/28: That's a jade body suit for burial of an emperor.
2017/03/31: At baseball game: SF Giants v. Oakland A's. SF 3, Oakland 0. #INSEEC
2017/03/31: Mitch Ratcliffe: A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention with the possible exceptions of handguns & tequila.
2017/04/03: 1/ CEO has 22K family pixs + 8K videos. Tells staffer to organize all. Staffer needs bigger harddisk. Buys one & formats it. Both HDs got...
2017/04/03: 2/ formatted. No backup. All lost. It took four staffers four long days to recover the files. Lesson: Always have a backup before you start!
2017/04/04: 8 practical guides to safeguarding your #data #privacy. https://blog.entefy.com/view/340/Now-is-not-the-time-to-take-a-nap-in-your-security-blanket/e6a7049f2c48fb3ef2996c0774254fd1 … #tech 0 replies 15 retweets 11 likes Reply Retweeted 15 Liked 11 Direct message
2017/04/04: Summer is nearly here and we have a porron from Spain. If you come over for dinner on the patio, get ready! Entefy @Entefy
2017/04/04: Wild turkeys at Palo Alto's Foothill Park. We saw several flocks plus lots of deer.
2017/04/05: #Samsung clothes washer has TE error code? #Thermistor died. Don't pay Samsung $200 for repair. It's $17 at Amazon. Easy to replace.
2017/04/05: Have an idea for an app? Can't write code? Try the App Contest. They'll write it for you. You keep all the rights. http://www.appideaawards.com
2017/04/05: Is #marshmallow a new health food? Strawberry, Coconut Pineapple, Espresso, Myer Lemon, etc. Also hand-made marsh mallows. #Smashmallow Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/04/05: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted Zachary Tracer Minorities pay higher charges. It's called "redlining". And yes, there's also "greenlining".Andreas Ramos added, Zachary Tracer Verified account @ZTracer Great piece on hidden discrimination in car insurance pricing: https://www.propublica.org/article/minority-neighborhoods-higher-car-insurance-premiums-white-areas-same-risk …
2017/04/06: Not every innovative or original idea is good. Example? "We dip your dog in blue dye!" Innovative? Yes. Market for this? No.
2017/04/09: Maja at the beach at San Francisco. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/04/10: At @AsianArtMuseum in San Francisco yesterday to see treasures from the Han dynasty (2,200 years ago) in China.
2017/04/10: Helen tries #VirtualReality for the first time.
2017/04/12: Please join us in a round of 👏 for @chMtnViewPD who was recognized today as the Top Social Media Advocate in Government at #GSMCon2017! Gov Social Media 9 replies 18 retweets 108 likes Reply 9 Retweeted 18 Liked 108 Direct message
2017/04/13: Kentucky Coal Mining museum is installing 80 solar panels on their roof. Mountain View Police Verified account @MountainViewPD
2017/04/14: See how sports events are broadcast and displayed across devices, audience analysis, costs, revenue, etc.: https://goo.gl/sXlZuh
2017/04/16: Eye tracking study shows what recruiters see when they look at your resume. http://www.businessinsider.fr/us/heres-what-recruiters-look-at-during-the-6-seconds-they-spend-on-your-resume-2012-4/ …
2017/04/16: Got SEO? Get the 2017 edition of the Google Quality Rater handbook. Yes, Google's internal manual. https://goo.gl/26krp1
2017/04/18: 80 Social Media Sites: I used a large client's data to make a list: http://andreas.com/82-social-media-sites/ …
2017/04/18: Entefy has been developing an entirely new kind of tool. Sign up at their website to get on the early access list. http://www.entefy.com/ Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/04/18: Japanese Art: My page about Hokusai is now part of the entrance exams at Nihon University in Japan. See http://andreas.com/hokusai/
2017/04/18: Reading "Season of the Witch" by David Talbot. Lots of insider details of San Francisco's history 1940-onwards. 1 reply 0 retweets 1 like Reply 1 Retweet Like 1 View Tweet activity
2017/04/18: SEO in 7 pages: I wrote a step-by-step guide to #SEO your startup or small website. Free at http://Goo.gl/ANrlek
2017/04/18: Take better pixs of your summer vacation with your cell phone. Photography FAQ at http://andreas.com/cell-phone-photography/ …
2017/04/18: UX (User Experience): Learn about UX and how to make great user experiences. Free this week only at Reply Retweet 1 Like View Tweet activity
2017/04/18: Whoa! Entirely new interface to @Skype. Major improvement. Easier, looks better. Good work!
2017/04/19: Author and Entefy advisor @Andreas_Ramos dropped off his new book #Startup, which includes advice from @Brienne_G. http://andreas.com/startup/ 0 replies 9 retweets 18 likes Reply Retweeted 9 Liked 18 Direct message
2017/04/19: How Sean Parker, Y-Combinator, Mark Andreessen, and Mark Zuckerberg screwed up on a $375m Silicon Valley startup. https://www.fastcompany.com/3069164/how-tilt-veered-off-course …
2017/04/1: We made Paella Alicante tonight. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/04/25: Did you expect this? Alaska Dentist Pulls Tooth While Riding Hoverboard. Entefy @Entefy
2017/04/25: Have a Google Adwords acct in 2004-08? Join #GoogleAdwords class action lawsuit and get a refund. #Adwords Go
2017/04/25: Hey, you want a #rocketraccoon ? We've got six in the backyard! We'll ship them to you! #guardiansofthegalaxy #babygroot 1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes Reply 1 Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/04/25: Is a Harvard MBA really that bad? http://poetsandquants.com 2017/04/06/barbarian-harvard-business-schools-gate/ …
2017/04/26: If the election were held again, Trump would get more votes, even with his poor performance.
2017/05/01: The Dodo Dog Can't Believe His Dad Lost So Much Weight This guy lost so much weight, his dog can't believe it's really him 158 replies 2,193 retweets 6,914 likes Reply 158 Retweeted 2.2K Like 6.9K Direct message
2017/05/01: Twitter News is coming. http://www.mercurynews.com 2017/05/01/biz-break-is-the-twitter-news-network-on-the-way … and shauna Verified account @goldengateblond
2017/05/02: Q&A with @StanfordHealth experts, exhibits, more! Sign up for Stanford #HealthMatters2017 now to join us on May 20: http://healthmatters.stanford.edu 0 replies 7 retweets 24 likes Reply Retweeted 7 Liked 24 Direct message
2017/05/02: The MSM lives in a Coastal bubble. But flyovers are in the Fox bubble.
2017/05/03: Hardball: Activists send screenshots of Google Adwords ads on Breitbart (etc) to advertisers. Advertisers cancel their ads #boycott.
2017/05/06: AI-powered trading raises new questions https://wp.me/p8wLEc-9l6N by @entefy 0 replies 12 retweets 17 likes Reply Retweeted 12 Liked 17 Direct message Stanford Health Care @StanfordHealth
2017/05/07: Go outside right now. See the moon? See the bright star just above it? That's Jupiter. VentureBeat Verified account @VentureBeat
2017/05/08: Have we reached peak hipster? At Costco: dark chocolate potato chips with Himalayan pink sea salt. What's next? With kale? Reply Retweet Like 4 View Tweet activity
2017/05/10: White House advisors say Trump now screams at the TV. He has become King Lear in the storm. Reply 1 Retweet 1 Like View Tweet activity
2017/05/11: 8 ways the #IoT will change the way we live and work ⏩
2017/05/11: The modern traveling companion. At airport.
2017/05/11: Watch your backpack. Friend goes to Starbucks. Sets down his backpack by his chair. 5 min later, it's gone. Laptop stolen. Yellowfinch @YellowfinchCo
2017/05/14: Big horn sheep near Banff, Canada. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/05/14: Helen with black bear at Jasper National Park, Canada. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/05/14: There's snow in Canada!
2017/05/15: Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada. 32F/0C. Went hiking. 4 black bears + moose, elk, caribou, deer, fox today.
2017/05/15: Talking w ranger. She said bears are mostly vegetarian: grass, berries, bugs, etc.
2017/05/18: Oakland A's up 8/3 over White Soxs Ana López Tirado @AnaLopezTirado
2017/05/18: Oakland A's vs Boston Red Soxs. 3 to 2, A's up.
2017/05/18: ¡Madre mía, esta mujer es un terremoto! @GalaGilAmat #CFTI #flipandingTranslate Tweet
2017/05/20: At Stanford #HealthMatters event today. All about Stanford Medical. Free, all day. Reply Retweet 1 Liked 3 View Tweet activity
2017/05/20: Free medical screen today at Stanford #healthmatters
2017/05/20: Stanford helicopter ambulance, all the features of an ambulance and more. Fully equipped for critical medical care. Reply Retweet 1 Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/05/20: Use virtual reality to see the new Stanford hospital. At $2B, it'll be the most advanced in the world. #healthmatters
2017/05/22: Are valedictorians and high school top grades low achievers? http://time.com/money/4779223/valedictorian-success-research-barking-up-wrong/ …
2017/05/22: Big Data in Biomedicine. Conf at Stanford. 8:30a-5p PST, May 24–25. You can also watch online for free. Register at http://bigdata.stanford.edu/register.html
2017/05/23: My book on Silicon Valley startups is being translated to Korean and French. These will be ready this summer. Reply Retweet 1 Like 4 View Tweet activity
2017/05/24: Eagles have eye bones! One bone covers eye; the other encircles the eyeball. Protects eyes when eagles dive down to catch their dinner.
2017/05/24: I posted 36 pixs in FB of our trip to Banff and Jasper in the Canadian Rockies. See them at https://www.facebook.com/andreas.ramos
2017/05/24: That's bald eagle skull. Shown by forest ranger at Banff, Canada. Eagles dive down thru trees; need eye protection. Don't do this at home.
2017/05/27: Happy Ramadan to everyone!
2017/05/30: We watched Sandy Wexler on Netflix. It's a great movie about the world of Hollywood. 5 stars. #sandywexler https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBPBSroi_VE …
2017/05/31: "Mani in alto!" Italy has more bank heists than the rest of Europe combined. One in ten Italian banks are robbed yearly.
2017/05/31: Rakūn. That's "raccoon" in Japanese. Yep, raccoons have invaded Japan. Who to blame? Disney, of course! http://nautil.us/blog/-how-a-kids-cartoon-created-a-real_life-invasive-army …
2017/05/31: Waschbär. And "raccoon" in German. Spreading across Europe. There's a pack of them under our house. Noisy, but cute. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/06/04: We built the deck to the back of the house. Worked all weekend. 280 sq ft. / 26 sq. meters. Done! Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/06/08: To solve problems, try when you're tired. If dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is tired, other parts of your brain can offer new solutions.
2017/06/09: Added Helen's pixs from Banff National Park. At my FB page. https://www.facebook.com/andreas.ramos/media_set?set=a.10155317284458290.1073741835.510298289&type=3&pnref=story …
2017/06/09: American companies copy Chinese companies? Try Wechat. Better than FB. Apple also copies its features. https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-tech-companies-now-copycats-of-chinese-peers-andreessen-horowitz-partner-says-1496987481 …
2017/06/09: Google goes around Palo Alto to pick up their lost Gbikes (Google bicycles). Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/06/09: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted Elon Musk I'd guess 2025-30, which is v soon. AI and machine learning will change all economics, which changes politics, education, society, etc.Andreas Ramos added, Elon Musk Verified account @elonmusk Probably closer to 2030 to 2040 imo. 2060 would be a linear extrapolation, but progress is exponential. https://twitter.com/newscientist/status/871885452306939906 …
2017/06/09: That's a Bear Bridge. Allows bears, caribou, elk, and other animals to cross the highway. Banff National Park.
2017/06/12: Do you want a Orion Steadypix SLR Camera Mount? Attach SLR to telescope. Free. #Astronomy #astrophotography #nightsky #stargaze
2017/06/13: Travis Kalanick, CEO and CBB (Chief Bad Boy) of Uber, built it up to $70B valuation. Today, the board had enough and put him on leave.
2017/06/13: Where are the Gates of Hell? In the center of Silicon Valley, at Stanford, of course :-) Rodin's sculpture. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/06/14: Me: "When are you guys going to fix that software bug?" Developer: "That bug is so old, it has grandchildren!"
2017/06/14: The threat to Big Oil? AI-controlled electric cars. Will also change US military policy w/ Saudi, Qatar, Israel, etc Reply Retweet 3 Like View Tweet activity
2017/06/16: #Amazon buys #WholeFoods for $14B? I told you they had high prices! :-)
2017/06/16: Bezos: "Alexa, buy me something from Whole Foods" Alexa: "Buying Whole Foods" Bezos: Shit 939 replies 77,615 retweets 183,615 likes Reply 939 Retweeted 78K Liked 184K Direct message
2017/06/16: Listening with Gala Gil Amat to 16 pitches in 2 hours. Still awake!
2017/06/16: Pitch Tips: No sunglasses. Don't sigh repeatedly. Don't read the slides. Short text. Know the numbers. No crazy shirts. No sexy clothes.
2017/06/18: At Stanford for 2017 Graduation. At Medical School. 104F! Is there a doctor around? Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/06/18: Eclipse Simulator. Enter your city to see how it'll look like. Aug. 21, noon, USA. #eclipse2017 https://eclipsemega.movie/simulator Jeff Lewis @ChicagoPhotoSho
2017/06/18: Music at Stanford Medical School. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/06/20: See newly discovered Swedish movie of New York City in 1911. No traffic lights, lots of horses in NYC. https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3858?locale=en …
2017/06/20: Uber has no CEO, no COO, no CFO and no VP of engineering. But everything works. Hey, it is kinda like Spain! 3 replies 42 retweets 59 likes Reply 3 Retweeted 42 Like 59 Direct message
2017/06/21: A little something to make your rainy day brighter...Happy 1st day of summer! Reply Retweeted 1 Like 1 Direct message hussein kanji Verified account @hkanji
2017/06/21: I've been named one of the most promising female #entrepreneurs of 2017 in Spain. http://www.elreferente.es/tecnologicos/mujeres-emprendedoras-espana-29562 …
2017/06/21: Nice little 3.3m earthquake in San Francisco Bay Area. Gala Gil Amat @GalaGilAmat
2017/06/21: Travis Kalanick starts Uber, grows it to $70B, and investors fire him. Just another Silicon Valley startup story. Ballentine Art @BallentineArt
2017/06/22: A new idea: highly-personalized travel guides for destinations, such as Paris. Your concierge arranges everything. http://bluewander.life
2017/06/22: Dogs in Silicon Valley. Reply Retweet 2 Like 5 View Tweet activity
2017/06/22: Oh, okay. Another dog cartoon. Dogs also get Obamacare holistic medicine.
2017/06/22: When dogs use social media. Also applies to dogs on Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.
2017/06/22: Wow. Gala just got accepted to NASDAQ Milestone. She's building a startup. Started 12 months ago. Reply Retweet 1 Like View Tweet activity
2017/06/26: Get married in Las Vegas. Weddings at Taco Bell for $600 or Denny's for $200.
2017/06/27: At UC Berkeley Cal football stadium. Tour of the stadium.
2017/06/27: The weight room for the Cal football players.
2017/06/27: View form Cal Stadium, eighth floor balcony. SF in distance. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/06/30: Empty commuter train on Friday morning due to upcoming 4th of July holiday weekend. Many are already gone.
2017/06/30: Faith in humanity restored.
2017/07/01: Try this. Dip bread in olive oil with a pinch of salt. As they do in Spain.
2017/07/02: Happy 4th of July to everyone everywhere in the world. Fireworks at Stanford. Reply Retweet Like 4 View Tweet activity Caught on CCTV 🔞 @CaughtCctv
2017/07/03: Dave McClure at 500Startups is out. Devastating allegations re sexual harassment. See
2017/07/03: Women got 2.19% VC funds in 2016. Of 6,362 VC-funded companies from 1991-1996, only 31 were led by women.
2017/07/04: Palo Alto festival for the #4thofJulyTranslate Tweet Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/07/06: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted Mark J. Perry Uber's impact on NYC taxi. Medallions fall 74% from 2013 $1m high. Free competition kills legacy systems. Run, dinosaurs, run!Andreas Ramos added, Mark J. Perry Verified account @Mark_J_Perry The collapse of NYC taxi medallions from +$1M in 2014 to $266K average price for 9 sales in June, including one for $150K and one for $165K 1 reply 3 retweets 2 likes Reply 1 Retweet 3 Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/07/10: 1,960 sq.ft condo sold for $4.35m in San Francisco. 1 square foot = $2,219. That's more than most people pay for a month's rent.
2017/07/10: Replying to Any business where your only "moat" is government regulations is up for massive disruption. Rent seeking isn't future proof any more!
2017/07/11: "We're here to uberize lawnmowing!" Seriously? There should be a way to counter-invest, i.e., place bets that a startup will fail. Puranjay @puranjaycom
2017/07/14: Eliza Rickman used Kickstarter to raise money to make music video. 708 backers. highest-ever amt for a music video.
2017/07/14: Listen to Eliza Rickman's song at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-vHEw5ocD4 … Video coming in a few months.
2017/07/17: Looking for work? Try this. Search at Google for . Opens the job search tool. Category, company, location, etc.
2017/07/17: Watched "Il capitale umano" (Human Capital), Italian film by Paolo Virzì based on novel "Human Capital" by Stephen Amidon. Amazing film.
2017/07/18: Ready for 2017 Solar Eclipse? USPS Post Office eclipse stamps change, depending on temperature. #SolarEclipse2017 #solareclipse Reply 1 Retweet 1 Like 3 View Tweet activity
2017/07/19: AI can also create fake video of anyone saying anything. This will create chaos in politics, finance, and so on. Reply Retweet 1 Like View Tweet activity
2017/07/19: Nice landscape photography, no? It's not. The image was created by Google AI. Reply Retweet 1 Like View Tweet activity
2017/07/19: Only in Silicon Valley: AcademyX, a technical school, writes they have an average of 5.089 students per class. Three decimal point accuracy! Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/07/20: 1/ Okay, throw out your books on Google Adwords (GAW). New version is rolling out. First update ever. GAW was 16 years of spaghetti code. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/07/20: 2/ Adwords interface has a complete redesign. Easier to use and cleaned up the chaos. Real change is behind the interface: Google spent two
2017/07/20: 3/ years w/ 1,000 engineers to rewrite new code base. GAW is much faster now. Data flows faster; sorting is fast. Easier to use.
2017/07/20: 4/ New GAW is available for some of my clients' accounts, but not all (yet). It'll roll out over the next few months to all accounts.
2017/07/20: 5/ If you don't like the new Google Adwords GAW interface, you can roll back to the old version.
2017/07/20: Looking at audio visual (AV) implementations for video conferencing solutions at http://qualityinteriors.com/
2017/07/21: Tomorrow, Sat. 22nd, is World Hammock Day. Get ready to celebrate! At the beach, in your backyard, at the park. Ready, set, relax!
2017/07/21: Working on a client's site of 20 pages... and 120,000 spammer pages. Hackers invaded the site. Wordpress is easily hacked. Update your WP.
2017/07/22: Full Moon rotation as seen by @NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter https://twitter.com/WorldAndScience/status/856281546638204929/video/1 … 12 replies 320 retweets 528 likes Reply 12 Retweeted 320 Like 528 Direct message
2017/07/24: Korean translation of my book on Silicon Valley startups nearly done. Reviewing, final details, etc. See http://andreas.com/startup/ Vala Afshar Verified account @ValaAfshar
2017/07/25: 1/ US opioid epidemic = 300,000 dead in 15 years. How? McKesson (opioid maker) sent 423m opioids to West Virginia (pop 1.8m) in five years.
2017/07/25: 2/ Govt knew, but McKesson abused the rules and kept sending millions of pills to tiny pharmacies.
2017/07/25: 3/ The Charleston Gazette-Mail has a good summary of the opioid problem. http://www.wvgazettemail.com/news-health 20161217/drug-firms-poured-780m-painkillers-into-wv-amid-rise-of-overdoses … Reply Retweet 1 Like View Tweet activity
2017/07/25: 4/ It's not Mexican drug lords, Mafia, or gangs. McKesson (CEO got $89m), Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen sent 780m opioid pills to W. Va Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/07/28: What's the point of an oven thermometer that melts if you use it?
2017/07/31: Whoa. Scaramucci just got fired. Lasted ten days.
2017/08/11: Friend returned from a month in France. Asked "Who or what is Mooch?" He missed the Scaramucchi Era! The Mooch Epoch! All ten days of it!
2017/08/11: MIT has v good article about WeChat. If you use WeChat, you know it's better than Facebook or any other social site
2017/08/11: Tonight in Palo Alto. Mobile Digital Art: Art & design for mobile devices. Starts 5:30p, Palo Alto. #MDAC See http://www.mdacsummit.org/
2017/08/12: Ready for eclipse. Telescope projects image of sun onto white paper. Reply Retweet 1 Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/08/13: Police: "Did you see the stop sign?" Uncle: "I saw the stop sign, but I didn't see you!" Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/08/14: Use this site to find eclipse exact time (to the second) for any location, incl. a street address. https://goo.gl/PwHnSG #Eclipse2017
2017/08/16: Need Marketo or Eloqua for your company? A friend wants to learn these and will work for a low rate for you. Send me an email.
2017/08/17: Over #Texas on flight to #Nashville to see #eclipse2017
2017/08/18: On I-40 in #Tennessee , sign warns of upcoming #Eclipse2017
2017/08/19: #ClingmansDome in #SmokyMountains. Moon is about 10 degrees west of sun, but not visible. Wait til #Eclipse2017 Reply Retweet Liked 4 View Tweet activity
2017/08/20: How to affect elections (and shopping) with Facebook & #socialmedia Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/08/21: Gala in the pool at #SolarEclipse2017
2017/08/21: Helen at #SolarEclipse2017 NWS Bay Area Verified account @NWSBayArea
2017/08/21: If in #Illinois, #Missouri, #Tennessee, look / listen for a pair of #NASA jets following eclipse at 50,000 feet. #SolarEclipse2017 Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/08/21: Little crescents of sun, shining through tree leaves, during #EclipseSolar2017 Reply Retweet 1 Like 4 View Tweet activity NOAA Satellites Verified account @NOAASatellites
2017/08/21: See #planets Jupiter Mercury Mars Venus during #totality ●. #SolarEclipse2017
2017/08/21: Shadow being cast from the #SolarEclipse2017 as seen on #satellite. 2 replies 125 retweets 178 likes Reply 2 Retweeted 125 Like 178 Direct message
2017/08/21: Sunny sky in Nashville for #SolarEclipse2017
2017/08/21: Watch the moon's shadow move across the US in this geocolor loop from #GOES16! See more #SolarEclipse imagery @ http://goo.gl/vgGLMF 102 replies 6,677 retweets 9,799 likes Reply 102 Retweeted 6.7K Liked 9.8K Direct message
2017/08/21: Watching in comfort! #EclipseSolar2017
2017/08/21: We were v lucky: totally clear sky. Perfect #SolarEclipse2017 Reply 2 Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/08/21: Woohoo! #SolarEclipse2017 Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/08/22: Missed the eclipse? Ready for the next eclipse? April 2024! #Eclipse2017 Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/08/23: A pix of the #eclipse as seen from #Sevilla, #Spain #SolarEclipse2017 . Pix sent to me by Ana Ruiz Lopez.
2017/08/23: This #Weekend: #PaloAlto Festival of the #Arts 7 blocks of #art & #crafts. University Ave. Aug. 26-27, 10a-6p. http://www.mlaproductions.com/PaloAlto/
2017/08/24: And yes, I took that photo with my cell phone at Horseshoe Bend #phonephotography #photography #iphonephotography #photo #horseshoebend 1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes Reply 1 Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/08/24: Google Adwords switched from short ads to expanded ads. Does it work better? Here's my data at http://andreas.com/text-ads-short-or-expanded/ …
2017/08/24: How to take better pixs with your cell phone #phonephotography #photography #iphonephotography #photo http://andreas.com/cell-phone-photography/ …
2017/08/24: My Blog at http://andreas.com/andreas-blog/ | http://facebook.com/andreas.ramos | http://linkedin.com/in/andreasramos/ … | My website at http://andreas.com Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/08/25: Mayweather v. McGregor may get 50m viewers this Saturday night. #boxing is cool again?
2017/08/25: Some people are never satisfied. A customer review: "This product does what is advertised. But it isn't life changing."
2017/08/28: Many teens don't even have #Facebook accts anymore. They've gone to #Instagram & #Snapchat.
2017/08/28: Mom bans teen's #cellphone? No problem! Other kids have extra phones which they rent out at school. Kids always find a solution.
2017/08/30: #CalTrain is here! Going to SF for meeting.
2017/08/30: At #ATTstadium in SF with European Chambers of Commerce. France, Germany, Austria, Spain, and more. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/08/30: Giant #art #mural in #SanFrancisco , seen from #CalTrain. Reply Retweet 1 Like 4 View Tweet activity
2017/08/31: d @GalaGilAmat Any mountain lion in this pix? 2 replies 0 retweets 1 like Reply 2 Retweet Like 1 View Tweet activity
2017/08/31: dm @GalaGilAmat Any mountain lions in the backyard?
2017/08/31: Great meeting w Jordi Ferrer, head of #socialmedia #marketing at #VMware for Latin America. Talked re strategies, tools, methods. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/08/31: So we have a #MountainLion in a tree in #PaloAlto. Yep, in the center of #SiliconValley. Reply Retweet 1 Like 3 View Tweet activity
2017/08/07: Go out and see the moon. Super yellow right now.
2017/09/01: 107F in #PaloAlto. Matched the record in 1961! We did it!
2017/09/02: At @Milkpail market in the morning, before it gets hot today.
2017/09/02: Found a #moth. Such beautiful colors and shadings.
2017/09/02: Woohoo! Twice in a row! 107F in #PaloAlto.
2017/09/03: #ElizaRickman at a #houseconcert If you ever get the chance to hear her, go!
2017/09/03: We held a #houseconcert with #ElizaRickman @ElizaRickman in Palo Alto. Remarkable artist with incredible music. 1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes Reply 1 Retweet Like 5 View Tweet activity
2017/09/04: He can carry 29 German beer mugs! Now that's a useful skill.
2017/09/04: Why #cats are banned in the #office.
2017/09/05: #GlobalWarming is illegal in #Florida. Why don't they just call #Irma "a bit of mild weather"? Problem solved! 😎
2017/09/05: Flat UI design requires 22% more effort to find the action buttons. Not good.
2017/09/05: Love the #outdoors? see @REI collection of #OutdoorHacks for ideas for the trail, mountains, or water. Go https://www.pinterest.com/reicoop/outdoor-hacks/ … Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/09/06: Pink #chocolate . It's coming. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle 2017/09/06/ruby-chocolate-barry-callebaut-instagram-foodies?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Tweet …
2017/09/07: Last night: Read news on #Amazon @WashingtonPost, ordered stuff at #AmazonPrime, dinner at Amazon #WholeFoods, watched #AmazonPrime Video.
2017/09/07: My first @Amazon order was in 1997. 20 yrs ago. I've used Amazon more than any other Silicon Valley corp, incl@Google (1998). 1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes Reply 1 Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/09/09: On #GilligansIsland, Thurston Howell the Third (played by #JimBackus ) had Teddy. I also have one. #NationalTeddyBearDay #ThurstonHowell Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/09/14: Did you know we already have socialism in the US? Hidden in plain sight. Interesting article by a Republican.
2017/09/15: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted Mc lovinho #Cat + Man vs. #Mouse in the #Bathroom. See who wins. Extremely #funny!Andreas Ramos added, 0:50 Mc lovinho @Reinatos agora vou matar o rato
2017/09/28: #HappyClown Legalized marijuana is great for @McDonalds and @TacoBell. Sales boomed due to pot customers with the #munchies.
2017/09/28: More #pot news: #California is preemptively outlawing #weed delivery by #drone. If #potheads fly drones, it'd be unsafe to go #outdoors! Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/09/28: Why does Putin's Russia see the #GOP agenda as a way to harm the US?
2017/09/30: How #Germany #Deutschland sees the entrepreneurial spirit of #SiliconValley... it's not for them. 1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes Reply 1 Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/10/01: #DigitalMarketing for Small Businesses #SmallBiz: I'lll be on a panel Tues night Oct 4 in #SF. Sign up here: http://www.faccsf.com/events/events-calendar/events/d/lifestyle-committee-event-digital-marketing-for-small-businesses/ … Reply Retweet 2 Like 7 View Tweet activity
2017/10/03: #Tesla planned to make 1,500 Model 3 cars in the third quarter of 2017. It built 260. Not good.
2017/10/06: Back from #China & the #TibetanPlateau in western China. More pixs at FB. Here's Helen & me at 16,000 feet. https://www.facebook.com/andreas.ramos/
2017/10/10: #Iceland (pop. 334,252) qualifies for #WorldCup2018 but not US (pop. 314m)? Maybe Americans should eat súrir hrútspungar? Or maybe not... 1 reply 0 retweets 1 like Reply 1 Retweet Like 1 View Tweet activity
2017/10/10: I thought dogs riding in cars were cute until I saw this... 215 replies 7,585 retweets 17,725 likes Reply 215 Retweeted 7.6K Like 18K Direct message
2017/10/10: I'm speaking on #SEO on @ContentOro #webcast Thurs Oct 12, 8aPST/11aEST. Get my 8-page SEO Guide. Free. Sign up at https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/7329535110876310017 … 1 reply 1 retweet 1 like Reply 1 Retweet 1 Like 1 View Tweet activity
2017/10/11: I'll talk about #GlobalSEO #EnterpriseSEO #SEO for large orgs. Insider tips, methods in webcast tomorrow. https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/7329535110876310017 … …
2017/10/12: Ashes fall on my car in Palo Alto from the #NapaFire 100 miles away. Reply 1 Retweet 1 Like 4 View Tweet activity
2017/10/12: Foggy in Palo Alto? No, smoke from #napafires 100 miles away. Strong smell of wood smoke. Pink skies. IM 🍑HIM Verified account @ziyatong
2017/10/14: A man checking out the wildfires found this tree blazing from the inside out http://cnn.it/2i9FcJ4 207 replies 3,688 retweets 6,107 likes Reply 207 Retweeted 3.7K Like 6.1K Direct message
2017/10/16: MyShake app turns your phone into a seismogragh. Free Android app by UC Berkeley. Reply Retweet 1 Like View Tweet activity CNN Verified account @CNN
2017/10/18: At Felcofin in Cartagena for conference on savings and credit unions. #tiac2017 Reply Retweet 1 Like 3 View Tweet activity
2017/10/18: Photo time at #tiac2017 Reply Retweet 1 Like 3 View Tweet activity
2017/10/18: The US Supreme Court can't understand basic statistics and that leads to bad decisions. Reply Retweet 1 Like View Tweet activity
2017/10/19: GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) combined revenues for 2016 = US$469B. #tiac2017 Reply Retweet 1 Liked 3 View Tweet activity
2017/10/22: Uh, oh... Many Baby Steve Jobs in Silicon Valley won't want to hear this: psychopaths are losers; nice guys win.
2017/10/23: #HarvardBusinessReview (#HBR) on how A/B Split Testing produces #revenues. Very good examples and details.
2017/10/23: Find any #movie #film at #Netflix by #genre, #theme, #director, #actor, country, #language, etc. http://ogres-crypt.com/public/NetFlix-Streaming-Genres2.html … Reply Retweet 1 Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/10/23: How #Russia and #spammers used #Facebook to attack #democracy with #FakeNews. Article in the @Atlantic. Reply Retweet 1 Like View Tweet activity
2017/10/23: My book #Startup was translated to #Korean by Dale Ho Kim, Patrick Chung, and Gina Jiyoung Kim and is now available in #SouthKorea. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/10/23: Okay, #HappyHour Time for Bomba Estereo, a Colombian electro tropical band. whatever. sounds different. and good. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/10/25: I tried @Eatsa today, a vending machine food place in SF, a bit similar to 1920s NYC @automat but tasteless rice & tofu. Never again! Reply Retweet 1 Like 3 View Tweet activity
2017/10/25: I've been riding @CalTrain most of this year (Palo Alto/SF). Always on time, reliable, nice conductors. Good work! Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/10/26: #Robot delivery #drones on the street... Yes, it's UC Berkeley. The little drone may replace that @FedEx truck. Reply Retweet 3 Like 5 View Tweet activity
2017/10/26: How does the #CIA work? They use MICE: #Money, #Ideology, #Coercion, #Ego. Figure out which of these four drives a person & exploit it.
2017/10/26: Once again, @lyft app is dead. Usually, once a week. Not reliable And if i ask customer support, I get an incoherent reply.
2017/10/26: That's how the CIA and Russia get people to become traitors and betray their countries. MICE.
2017/10/27: #Catalonia declared its independence from #Spain. Big changes for #Europe.
2017/10/27: Killer Sheep! A #shepard life among #sheep is peaceful, isn't it? Must watch to the end! #hilarious
2017/10/28: Uh-oh... not good news :-( Reply Retweet 3 Like 2 View Tweet activity Owen Jones 🌹 Verified account @OwenJones84
2017/10/28: Working your way through emails on Monday morning like Michael Edwards
2017/10/29: Is it @WhitefishEnergy or #DeadFish? A 2-man $2m company gets a $300m deal to fix #PuertoRico energy? Yeah, right... Deal now CANCELLED.
2017/10/30: UC Berkeley has #ThePlay. A #Thai #soccer player has the luckiest penalty kick ever (the goalie, the worst ever).
2017/10/30: What's "The Play"? UC Berkeley vs. Stanford, The Big Game, 1982, four seconds left, Stanford is ahead, and then...
2017/10/31: #Halloween in Palo Alto Reply Retweet 2 Like 9 View Tweet activity
2017/10/31: My book "Startup" is available now in #Korean. See more about the book and where to get it in #SouthKorea at http://andreas.com/startup-korea/
2017/11/02: And the #NYT also reports on #Russia hacking. 1 reply 0 retweets 1 like Reply 1 Retweet Like 1 View Tweet activity
2017/11/02: How #Russia hacked the #2016election. Good analysis how this was done w #Facebook.
2017/11/02: Super cool #backpack #SanFrancisco
2017/11/06: Who killed the Tea Party? GOP marketing people. They looted the supporters.
2017/11/07: A 2015 study estimated only 4% of American gun deaths could be attributed to mental health issues.
2017/11/07: All the money in the world.... How much #money is there? #Gold, #silver, #cash, #stocks? See it in one graphic.
2017/11/07: Americans are 4.4% of global population but own 42% of world’s guns. Why so many mass killings? It's not race, crime, or mental disease. 1 reply 0 retweets 1 like Reply 1 Retweet Like 1 View Tweet activity
2017/11/07: At a hardware store, we buy one 90w LED for $14. Hour later, at Costco, two 90w LEDs are $4. How can prices vary so much? 1 reply 0 retweets 1 like Reply 1 Retweet Like 1 View Tweet activity
2017/11/07: Crime? With guns, US crime is more lethal. A New Yorker is as likely to be robbed as a Londoner, but New Yorker is 54X more likely to die.
2017/11/07: Hmm.... 280 characters...
2017/11/07: Kai-Fu Lee, ex-head of research for @Microsoft and @Google, on the four stages of #AI development. Lots of details. Reply Retweet 1 Like View Tweet activity
2017/11/07: Over 450 bullets used in the church in #SutherlandSpringsShooting. 15 clips X 30 bullets = 450 shots = 26 dead + 10 critical condition.
2017/11/07: Researchers implanted human brains in rats. What could go wrong? I've ordered an AR-15 and 15 clips for my cat. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/11/07: Yes, like this. Okay, you rats! Let's dance! https://goo.gl/images/ob1jyc
2017/11/08: And who is Ed Smith? That's Captain Edward Smith. Captain of the #Titanic.
2017/11/08: Both Nicaragua and Syria will join the Paris Accords climate agreement on #GlobalWarming , leaving the U.S. as the only country on the planet not to be supportive of the accord. #Sad
2017/11/08: Looks like Mitt Romney is in Palo Alto! Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/11/08: Real human, #Bots , or #RussianBot? 2 students developed #BotCheck. Identifies fake accounts. https://botcheck.me/
2017/11/08: “[Cryptocurrency is] totally a bubble ... [But] this is the good kind of bubble ... when a technology (...) can’t build out its infrastructure fast enough.” — Joseph Lubin, co-creator of Ethereum (cryptocurrency), on why his bubble isn’t like other bubbles. "Unsinkable!" Ed Smith Reply Retweet Liked 1 View Tweet activity
2017/11/09: I was at the Fall of the #BerlinWall and wrote the only #Eyewitness account. See what happened that day and how people celebrate.
2017/11/10: Okay, you've seen the #bird. Do you know where the bird lives?
2017/11/11: Self-driving cars have many implications for society, cities, work, etc... including deer and mountain lions.
2017/11/11: What is going on in #Venezuela ? A series of factors. https://psmag.com/economics/the-roots-of-venezuelas-collapse … via @pacificstand
2017/11/11: Yes, it's true@Google is listening to everything you say.
2017/11/13: Helen & I went hiking at #Pinnacles National Park yesterday 100 miles south of Silicon Valley.
2017/11/13: See those black birds? They're condors. Six condors above Pinnacles National Park. I made a short video of them. Sometimes, there were seven together.
2017/11/14: Thousands of migrants and refugees cross Libya each year in search of a better life in Europe. But thanks to a recent crackdown, fewer boats are making it out to sea, leaving human smugglers with a backlog of passengers. So they auction them off as slaves. http://cnn.it/2z0sPa8 208 replies 2,344 retweets 1,583 likes Reply 208 Retweeted 2.3K Liked 1.6K Direct message
2017/11/15: All-you-can-eat ribs and chicken wings (and more) for only $5 Happy Hour (5p-7p) at Burma Ruby, two doors down from Apple Store on University Ave. in Palo Alto. We went last night.
2017/11/16: "...dead-eyed capitalism with Snapchat’s puppy filter..." V good article on how companies are marketing to millenials. Well written, funny, and v snarky. Reply Retweet 1 Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/11/17: American citizens still have no electricity. Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico on Sept. 20. That's two months ago. Eight weeks. And still no electricity. The US government won't or can't fix that. 1 reply 2 retweets 2 likes Reply 1 Retweet 2 Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/11/17: looking to invest in a startup that has a great team, a great idea, and growing fast? look at ContentOro. i'm an advisor to their startup. https://www.facebook.com/contentoro Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/11/18: #Apple store at visitor centerTranslate Tweet
2017/11/18: #Sundog in the sky over Palo AltoTranslate Tweet Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/11/18: 18 Nov 2017: 18 Nov 2017: Augmented reality of #apple HQ. Point the iPad at building to see heating system, raise the roof to see people walking around, building at different times of the day, airflow, tree, etc.
2017/11/18: And of course, the cafe at #apple . – at Apple Park Visitor Center
2017/11/18: At new #apple visitor center. Opened yesterday. – at Apple Park Visitor Center
2017/11/18: At top of #apple visitor center.
2017/11/18: Staircase, steps, handrails... all in quartz.
2017/11/18: The circle on the iPad is the #apple HQ logo.
2017/11/18: The Steve Jobs Theater at #apple
2017/11/18: This is #Apple total design: the T-shirt, hat, phone, iPad, laptops, the quartz staircase, the furniture, the building, the view. All unified simplicity that feels immediately natural. #Google is not even in the game.
2017/11/20: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted Circa UC #Berkeley students build a tool to spot fake tweets... which is something that @Twitter is unwilling to do.Andreas Ramos added, 2:00 Circa Verified account @Circa Can you tell if a Twitter account is real or not? This can help you figure it out. Reply 1 Retweet 1 Like 3 View Tweet activity
2017/11/21: Today: met w/ friend for lunch at a $10B corp. the #analytics and #Adwords is messed up; corp won't pay to fix it. then coffee w/ a friend to do Spanish translation of my #Startup book. next meeting: a #Korean startup has a new type of data storage. v cool. Reply Retweet Like 4 View Tweet activity
2017/11/22: 88% of Americans will have turkey for Thanksgiving Dinner tomorrow. what about us? Bejing Kao Ya (Peking Roasted Duck) made by Helen + Cornbread & Sausage Stuffing (made by me) + salad, wine, ice cream. How about you? Reply 1 Retweet 1 Like 3 View Tweet activity
2017/11/22: Looking at data for one of my #Adwords accts. I've made 5.18m changes to keywords; 4.05m changes to bids; 36.2K changes to ads. 6,000 ad groups, 85,000 keywords, 22,500 ads.
2017/11/23: At Palo Alto's park in the hills. New signs about mountain lions. I hope we see one! Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/11/23: Happy Thanksgiving!
2017/11/23: More nature pixs
2017/11/23: Nice flower.
2017/11/23: Peking Kaoya Duck is in the oven; cornbread sausage stuffing is ready for oven; and the chimney is lit. Where's the wine?
2017/11/24: Panorama photo of #SiliconValley. At left: San Francisco, Mt. Tamilpais. Across, Mt. Diablo. Stanford in foreground. Smog over San Jose. Mt. Hamilton at right. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/11/25: I like traditional Christmas dragons! Reply Retweet 1 Like 4 View Tweet activity
2017/11/27: I've tried several of these. Many more flavors to come.
2017/11/28: "In their serene cool weather come no dread Torrents or tempests to corrupt their sight, Nor any rainbow; neither do they hear The sea, nor does the thunder wake these dead." "They Do Not Live" by Irwin Edman. See the poem at
2017/11/28: Me and Steve Hoffman of @FoundersSpace with his new book
2017/11/28: Steve Hoffman of @FoundersSpace has worked with +1,000 startups. Tonight he talks about his new book and how VCs invest in startups. Tues, Nov 28, 6-9p at Pillsbury, 2550 Hanover St., Palo Alto. I'll be there. Reply Retweet 1 Like View Tweet activity
2017/11/28: The Klu Klux Klan of the 20s was created by marketing to make money. It built a populist movement with Klambakes, summer resorts, baseball, Bible study, gun clubs, children’s camps, car races... and racist attacks on blacks, Jews, foreigners.
2017/11/29: 4, 3, 2, ... An AI can predict when you will die. CNN Verified account @CNN
2017/11/29: How will #AI, robors, and #automation affect jobs? McKinsey report (PDF, free) discusses factors and makes projections. The Telegraph Verified account @Telegraph
2017/11/29: Taser rule No. 1: Don't shoot your partner 8 replies 26 retweets 48 likes Reply 8 Retweeted 26 Liked 48 Direct message
2017/11/30: How many of you are still eating Thanksgiving leftovers? We finished tonight!
2017/12/01: #Hack A man in China repainted road signs to make his commute quicker. CCTV cameras spotted him painting arrows to redirect traffic. He had to pay a fine.
2017/12/01: Rode the @CalTrain commuter dog train home today from San Francisco. Dog train? It stops at every tree!
2017/12/02: More State of Resistance Retweeted Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump, are you aware that you also may have just confessed to obstruction of justice on Twitter? You admit you knew Flynn lied to the FBI as a reason you "had to fire" him. You also allegedly asked Comey to back off of Flynn. Do we have all of that right?State of Resistance added, Donald J. Trump Verified account @realDonaldTrump I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide! 40 replies 660 retweets 2,288 likes Reply 40 Retweeted 660 Like 2.3K Direct message
2017/12/05: Met w a startup for coffee at Backyard Brew, 444 Calif. Ave. in Palo Alto. V charming place for coffee or tea. State of Resistance @AltStateDpt
2017/12/06: 🔥 This is what Alex Avlas saw on his way into work this morning on the #405 freeway in #LosAngeles! 🔥 Please be safe!! 🙏🏻 #fire #california #socal #405 #skirballfire #skirball #405 #losangeles #lafires #lafire #ryefire #thomasfire #venturafire #fires #santaanas #prayforla 5 replies 114 retweets 110 likes Reply 5 Retweeted 114 Like 110 Direct message
2017/12/07: A man is filmed rescuing a stranded rabbit from the wildfires in California Rabbit rescued from wildfires 263 replies 1,711 retweets 4,949 likes Reply 263 Retweeted 1.7K Like 4.9K Direct message Chris Duke Verified account @chrisduketv
2017/12/08: How a guy's fake restaurant became #1 in London. Very funny! Also shows how reviews can be spoofed. #ShedDulwich Sky News Verified account @SkyNews
2017/12/08: Ok, I've heard of @mailchimp, yes, but #mailshrimp? It's real?
2017/12/10: Helen started to use origami to fold my clothes: T-shirts, polo shirts, socks, pants, towels, etc . I open my drawer and only see cloth cubes! What's next? The cat?
2017/12/10: Sidewalk delivery robots banned in San Francisco. As someone said, “You don't need a robot to deliver a ham sandwich. If you want one that badly, just go down and get it yourself.”
2017/12/11: Great satirical painting of the Tulip Bubble: Monkeys buy and sell tulips. When can we expect a painting of the #Bitcoin bubble?
2017/12/11: So @netflix says a few members are watching the same movie over and over again. No, a few accounts are shared by many people. I know one who has four Netflix accounts and doesn't pay for any of those.
2017/12/11: The last two paragraphs tell the truth about Silicon Valley VCs: dumb luck. Reply Retweet 1 Like View Tweet activity
2017/12/11: Want to understand #bitcoin? It's easy. Read about tulips. The Tulip Bubble, the South Sea Bubble, the Mississippi Company Bubble, 1920s Stocks, the 90s Dotcom Bubble... bitcoin will crash. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania …
2017/12/11: we had lunch at Indian Street Cafe. super delicious biriyani, kottu parotta, curries, and many kinds of bread. great buffet on Fridays. 927 E. Arques Ave., Sunnyvale.
2017/12/12: President Trump calls his accusers “women who I don’t know and/or have never met.” The list includes a former business partner, a contestant in one of his beauty pageants, a reporter who interviewed him and an Apprentice contestant. 1,446 replies 18,761 retweets 32,902 likes Reply 1.4K Retweeted 19K Liked 33K Direct message
2017/12/13: A battle for the future of conservatism is being fought. Jacob Heilbrunn pays a visit to the pro-Trump camp associated with the Claremont Institute. 0 replies 13 retweets 23 likes Reply Retweeted 13 Liked 23 Direct message Jenna Johnson Verified account @wpjenna
2017/12/15: Design is now at the core of business strategy.
2017/12/15: Good news: no rain until January. Bad news: Los Angeles wild fires keep growing.
2017/12/15: Only 3 hrs. 9am, I think of asking Sophia Eng to co-author a book. Met her at 11.30. Said yes. Book on growth hacking. Comes out Feb 5th. 1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes Reply 1 Retweet Like 6 View Tweet activity
2017/12/15: With dynamic pricing, DC road tolls reached $40... and commuters switched to carpooling, which reduced congestion. The New York Review of Books Verified account @nybooks
2017/12/18: We're celebrating the close of another year by sharing our most popular research stories of 2017. Revisit medical imaging research that could help change the way we detect and treat cancer. http://stanford.io/2ySMEv1 Reply Retweeted 5 Like 4 Direct message Ocean Conservancy @OurOcean
2017/12/20: Coffin house: two feet wide, six feet long, low roof. 200,000 people in Hong Kong live in boxes with up to 30 boxes in an apartment. See the photos at Reply Retweet 1 Like View Tweet activity
2017/12/20: Is it true that a US senator was paid $7m in a tax break to vote for the GOP tax bill? That's outrageous! Everyone knows you only need to pay $50,000 (tops!) for senator's vote! Reply Retweet 1 Like View Tweet activity
2017/12/21: Happy #WinterSolstice! 14 replies 420 retweets 862 likes Reply 14 Retweeted 420 Like 862 Direct message
2017/12/24: 'The difficulty is the point': teaching spoon-fed students how to really read ~ When the logic of capitalism means universities are run as businesses, much is lost, by Tegan Bennett Daylight https://www.theguardian.com/books 2017/12/24/the-difficulty-is-the-point-teaching-spoon-fed-students-how-to-really-read … Sarah Holland-Batt, Ruth Quibell, Damon Young and 7 others 5 replies 49 retweets 80 likes Reply 5 Retweeted 49 Liked 80 Direct message
2017/12/26: A Russian Facebook page organized a pro-Islam protest in Texas. A different Russian Facebook page called for an anti-Islam rally at the same location. It cost Russia only $200 in Facebook ads. Review of Australian Fiction @AustFiction
2017/12/26: Here's a good overview of how Putin / Russia use social media to create disinformation to create tension and chaos in Europe and the US.
2017/12/26: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted Entefy So much of what I do today wasn't possible ten years ago. Or even five years ago. It's hard to remember how life used to be. Didn't we always have smart phones?Andreas Ramos added, Entefy @Entefy Here’s a look at some of the most interesting jobs that barely existed 15 years ago. And a lesson about #lifelonglearning. #Technology #Education https://blog.entefy.com/view/503/15-jobs-that-barely-existed-15-years-ago … Stanford Engineering Verified account @StanfordEng
2017/12/26: More freezing of bubbles. Now, better lighting and corn syrup has been added to my mixture of dish soap and salt (had to wait for Sobeys to open 😉) @PrairieChasers @PhotoEdCANADA
2017/12/27: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted 😶 Mr. Robot 🤖 You gotta watch "El Camino Christmas" on Netflix. Another new movie by Netflix. Very funny, crazy comedy.Andreas Ramos added,
2017/12/27: Wilhelm von Humboldt: "whatever does not spring from a man's free choice (...) does not enter into his very nature" so he works with merely mechanical exactness, which means "we may admire what he does, but we despise what he is".
2017/12/27: Woke up exhausted. Danny Kaye jumped into my dream for an all-night song and dance musical. Yes, I like Danny Kaye, but not when I'm trying to sleep! Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2017/12/28: I used to think people made rational decisions. But now I know I was wrong
2017/12/28: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted 🌎Animal Watch 🌍 Man's best friend? No, it's "dog's best friend". Who saves dogs from broken ice and floods?Andreas Ramos added, These heroes will do ANYTHING - jump in an icy river, break into a 🚗, form a human chain - to save a 🐶’s life
2017/12/28: What car do you have parked in your driveway? It shows your income, race, sex, education, interests, politics, and more.
2017/12/29: And UC Berkeley, Stanford, VCs, startups, dotcom boom, hydraulic gold mining, the Comstock Lode, psycho daughters of the super rich, industrial extractive capitalism, Trump family's bordello, Facebook, and more.
2017/12/29: Do you like dark chocolate? How about black coffee (no cream, no sugar)? Gin & tonic? Ah, ha! You're a Machiavellian psychotic narcissist! A high sensitivity to bitter compounds shows increased emotionality in humans and rats. Or maybe you're a rat.
2017/12/29: Lunch w Gray Brechin, author of "Imperial San Francisco" (history of San Francisco from 49ers to 1945). Talked about geography, geology, economics, history, sociology, politics, geodemographics, Big Data, Silicon Valley, finance, atomic bombs, $2,000-per-night hookers in 2 hours.
2017/12/29: Sun dogs over San Francisco Bay. View from UC Berkeley. Sun dogs are the bright spots next to Sun. You can see arc around sun.
2017/12/30: Overheard. "Unicorns... are they endangered or are they extinct?" Reply Retweet Like 4 View Tweet activity
2017/12/30: Today's project: replace the rain gutters.
2017/12/31: Finished the gutters. Rest for a bit and get ready for New Year's party. Happy 2018, everyone!
2018/01/03: collect spring water. call it "Raw Water". set the price at $37 for 2.5 gallons. what's next? Clear Air? Here's a new one: "Plain Stupid". #RawWater
2018/01/04: Did the #Earthquake wake you? "A serene and clean conscience is an untroubled conscience and thus we can sleep well and deeply." -- St. Gregory the Great :-)
2018/01/04: East Coast has #Blizzard2018 and West Coast has #Earthquake. A bit of balance. 1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes Reply 1 Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/01/04: Is the #GOP really only three billionaire families? The Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and Robert Mercer are the major donors and thus bend the GOP to their will. Read more at
2018/01/05: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted NASA While East Coast freezes, it's spring in California. Trees are budding. Flowers are out. Very odd.Andreas Ramos added, NASA Verified account @NASA It’s cold…& hot! While colder than average temps consume the Midwestern & Eastern U.S., other parts of the country have been experiencing hotter than average conditions for this time of year. Take a look at this temp anomaly…
2018/01/06: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted Mary E. McGlynn The Gorilla Channel... on Netflix!Andreas Ramos added, Mary E. McGlynn Verified account @MaryEMcGlynn Replying to @netflix MAKE THIS HAPPEN, @netflix!
2018/01/07: #RawWater: Your Silicon Valley Guide on how to order raw water in a restaurant. "Raw water, well done, please!" = hot water. "A glass of raw water, medium!" = Room temperature. "I'd like raw water, medium rare!" = With an ice cube.
2018/01/08: Reading Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death", a critique of TV. Replace "TV" with "web" and you get the same point.
2018/01/09: Steve Bannon has been pushed out of Breitbart by Rebekah Mercer for his attacks on Trump.
2018/01/09: Where is Stephanie? She's the next Hemingway.
2018/01/09: You've heard of the American Dream? Las Vegas is the American Nightmare. Everything is for sale. If you come to the US, you must see #LasVegas at least once.
2018/01/10: Quantified Baby: The use of biometrics and bio-feedback monitoring tools to collect data to show trends to allow you to optimize your baby for optimal performance. (Wait, is this real or is this a joke?)
2018/01/10: US Foreign Relations Committee report on how Putin's Russia uses secret services, media, companies, Russian mafia, cybercriminals, religious orgs for disinformation, election interference, corruption, harass opponents, assassinate enemies, and more. https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/FinalRR.pdf …
2018/01/11: California Update: In the last few weeks, we've had fires, earthquakes, and landslides. What's next? Sea monsters attack San Francisco?
2018/01/12: Aerial video captures majestic view of grey whales off the coast of Monterey, California.
2018/01/12: Growth hacking isn't a tool or method. It's an attitude. (By one of my students.)
2018/01/12: What if you had two cups of coffee?Andreas Ramos added, @Entefy 4,000 words per minute: that’s how fast you talk to yourself in your head. #brain #science https://blog.entefy.com/view/368/New-meaning-to-thinking-on-your-feet …
2018/01/13: Super bright day. San Francisco Bay. World News Tonight @ABCWorldNews
2018/01/15: Alibaba & Microsoft AIs now outperform humans in reading/comprehension. They can answer questions better. This will replace search engines. Yes, this means Google.
2018/01/16: "Even my exaggerations are exaggerated!" -- Trump (in "Fire and Fury", p. 98).
2018/01/17: Because they cannot be seen too often, & because the tide may just be beginning to turn in terms of the fight against plastics, here - again - are Chris Jordan's canonical images of albatross chicks on Midway Island, their bodies rotted down around the plastic that killed them.
2018/01/23: At Davos: Eying the snow outside from a shuttle bus, one Indian banker turned to another and said, “Well, Donald Trump will be happy. Everything is white!” Robert Macfarlane Verified account @RobGMacfarlane
2018/01/23: At San Jose Sharks vs. Winnipeg. Hockey.
2018/01/23: So an iPhone will explode if you bite it? Down, dog!
2018/01/23: Starting mid-Feb, Google Adwords will begin to automatically generate variations of ads, based on ads, keywords, landing page, etc. Very useful idea for GAW advertisers.
2018/01/24: Edelman interviewed 30,000 people for a global survey on trust. Most trusted: Technical experts and academic experts :-) At the bottom: CEOs, board of directors, journalists, and government officials :-( Reply Retweet 1 Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/01/24: Planning summer vacation travel? BlueWander's travel experts will do the research and plan everything for you for free, from what to see to where to stay and eat. http://www1.bluewander.life/
2018/01/25: A bunch of idiots in New Zealand put a fake star in orbit. Why is this bad? Now every idiot ad agency will do the same. Fake stars for soft drinks, cars, bimbo actors, movies, whatever.
2018/01/25: At Google's icon park. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/01/25: In 2017, 46 global #tech companies have reached #unicorn status ($1B+). | @howmuch_net 0 replies 4 retweets 1 like
2018/01/25: We watched Bright (on Netflix). It's terrible, but most viewers loved it. Why? Gala Gil Amat @GalaGilAmat
2018/01/26: "The Great British Empire Debate." @kenanmalik weighs in on the imperial revisionism controversy on which the sun never sets, via @NYRDaily http://www.nybooks.com/daily 2018/01/26/the-great-british-empire-debate/ … via @nybooks 0 replies 18 retweets 35 likes Reply Retweeted 18 Like 35 Direct message
2018/01/26: On the impact of Facebook and Google on society and democracy. http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily 2018/01/the-new-surveillance-capitalism.html … Matt Seaton Verified account @mattseaton
2018/01/27: When my cat's food bowl is empty...
2018/01/27: You've never seen snowman like these. A bank security guard in China makes all sorts of snow sculptures. http://www.wenxuecity.com/news 2018/01/27/6932589.html …
2018/01/28: we made pasta by hand last night. no machine. all by hand. also made a sort of stroganoff with duck, mushrooms, chanterelles, rosemary, brandy, sour cream. plus salad and wine. yes, a lot of work but super delicious. 🥂 Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/01/29: i thought it was a joke that Elon Musk was selling flamethrowers. It's actually true. $500 for a flamethrower. They've sold 10,000 in 48 hours. It's a must-have for the coming BBQ season. Reply Retweet 2 Like 3 View Tweet activity
2018/01/30: I updated my page on what to see and do in San Francisco. http://andreas.com/what-to-see-in-san-francisco/ …
2018/01/30: Who are drug dealers? Pharmaceutical companies shipped 20M pain pills to a town of 3,000 people in West Virginia over 10 years. That's 2m per year. 666 pills per person per year.
2018/01/31: 5:14 a.m. we got up to see the red blue moon. Cool! Back to bed. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/01/31: Check it out! This is what the #SuperBlueBloodMoon looks like from Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland. http://nbcbay.com/43jkxXI 0 replies 14 retweets 35 likes Reply Retweeted 14 Like 35 Direct message
2018/02/01: In the last 80s, we watched the USSR, a global empire, collapse. It had no industry, its leaders were liars or corrupt, military couldn't win a battle, citizens were dying. The Soviets didn't care anymore. The same is now happening in the US. https://shar.es/1NEwaT NBC Bay Area Verified account @nbcbayarea
2018/02/02: 1) Russia's web meddling is a problem. But the real problem is at Google, Facebook, Youtube, etc.: they MUST make money (investors demand it) so they MUST show ads. Anyone can post anything and whatever gets attention will get clicks, which makes money (+$50K/month).
2018/02/02: 2) This creates massive incentive for irresponsible people to post bizarre stuff about flat earth, bitcoin scams, make bucks fast, conspiracy theory, child abuse, vicious racist and sexist junk, and so on. Google Facebook Youtube ignore this because it makes so much money.
2018/02/02: 3) How much money? In 2017, Google made $100 billion & Facebook $40B and growing quickly. In their crazed dash for money, they are wrecking society. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/02/02: 4) Google Facebook Youtube are lying when they say AI can filter this. For years, Google tried to stop spam with algorithms and filters: failure. Here's Google's Big Secret: they have 10,000 humans who review websites. It's not algorithm, it's people.
2018/02/02: 5) To solve this, they must hire 10-20,000 people (or more) to review/approve ads and videos. It can be done because Google is already doing this for webpages.
2018/02/02: Ah, the magic of capitalism! Over 1,300 cryptocurrencies with total value over $405 billion.
2018/02/02: Fiona Apple's "Across the Universe" is a remarkable juxtaposition of beautiful poetic lyrics against a background of absurd, meaningless violence. Each makes the other stand out. 1 reply 0 retweets 1 like Reply 1 Retweet Like 1 View Tweet activity
2018/02/02: Search engines algorithms offer most-clicked content. Add advertising. The result: people create junk to make money, so you get spam and scams in Google, Facebook, YouTube... 1 reply 1 retweet 1 like Reply 1 Retweet 1 Like 1 View Tweet activity
2018/02/02: To make more money, Youtube picks videos w/ max clicks+time. This creates a feedback loop: the crazier the video, the more clicks it gets; Youtube gives it more exposure; people make yet crazier videos. Here are some of top videos at Youtube.
2018/02/04: News Release: Two reported mountain lion sightings in #PaloAlto last night. Details: https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civica/press/display.asp?layout=1&Entry=1592 … 1 reply 9 retweets 7 likes Reply 1 Retweeted 9 Liked 7 Direct message
2018/02/05: The #StockMarket #DowJones is down 4.5%. What goes up, must come down. It was fun while it lasted. #StockMarketCrash Palo Alto Police Verified account @PaloAltoPolice
2018/02/06: Oxford study finds Trump followers share more fake news than everyone else combined. Political polarization is primarily a feature of the extreme right.
2018/02/07: So the English were originally black and whites were immigrants from the Middle East... BBC News http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42939192 … . 1 reply 0 retweets 1 like Reply 1 Retweet Like 1 View Tweet activity
2018/02/12: Driver follows GPS. Turn right! Onto the railroad tracks. CalTrain comes along, car is shredded. Smoking ruins. Driver is okay. Reply Retweet 2 Like 4 View Tweet activity WIRED Verified account @WIRED
2018/02/12: In other news, this @BostonDynamics robot just learned how to open doors and let itself out. 1,025 replies 7,234 retweets 13,648 likes Reply 1.0K Retweeted 7.2K Like 14K Direct message
2018/02/12: Join a frat... and your lifetime income goes up 36%. It's all about connections.
2018/02/12: One of the emergency responders said he has seen 10-12 cars follow GPS instructions and drive onto the #Caltrain tracks.
2018/02/13: Catherine Lespine, Director of all INSEEC schools worldwide, visits INSEEC SF this week.
2018/02/13: How Facebook has been dealing (or not dealing) with fake news and spam.
2018/02/14: Dazzling fireworks light up the sky in #NewYork for #ChineseNewYear. #YearOfTheDog 30 replies 356 retweets 860 likes Reply 30 Retweeted 356 Like 860 Direct message
2018/02/14: Haven't read "Fire and Fury", Michael Wolff's book about the Trump White House? Newspapers talked about the scandal stuff, but not the overall book. I wrote a short (4 page) neutral summary of the book. #FireAndFury @MichaelWolffNYC See http://andreas.com/fire-and-fury/ Reply Retweet 3 Like 4 View Tweet activity
2018/02/16: Chun jie kuai le! Happy Chinese New Year! Year of the Dog. China Xinhua News Verified account @XHNews
2018/02/16: Enough is enough! Women's March Youth EMPOWER is calling for students, teachers, and allies to take part in a #NationalSchoolWalkout for 17 minutes at 10am on March 14/2018. Join us in saying #ENOUGH! http://bit.ly/EnoughMarch14 2,337 replies 38,190 retweets 63,115 likes Reply 2.3K Retweeted 38K Like 63K Direct message
2018/02/17: See paragraphs 45, 54c, 55c, 55d, 74, and 82 of the Mueller indictment. Russians and volunteers, members, and officials of the Trump campaign interacted. Sections 25, 26, and 27 cover the laws that make such interactions unlawful. Reply Retweet 1 Like 4 View Tweet activity
2018/02/18: At Muir Woods National Monument #Redwood forest. To go, either drive (you must have reservations) or tour bus from SF (~$50). We went up to the higher trails, where there was nobody else. Lucky to have a redwood forest so close to SF. #MuirWoods #NationalParks
2018/02/18: For Chinese New Year, we went to Muir Woods and Muir beach. For dinner: Kaoya (Chinese roast duck) w Chateau Larrivet Haut-Brion 2009. Cat sampled a bit of the duck and gave it Four Paws. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity Women's March Verified account @womensmarch
2018/02/20: If you want to know more about #study #scholarship at #Heidelberg, contact me. I graduated from there. German Consulate LA Verified account @GermanyinLA
2018/02/20: Thinking about studying in #Germany? Then check out the 4 scholarships @HeidelbergHAUS is offering for US students to study at @UniHeidelberg For more info and applications, visit these 2 links: http://t1p.de/ki3h
2018/02/23: Cat sleeping in the tea house. note the fruit in the loquat tree; it'll be the largest yield ever. the tree is filled with loquat (also called pipa in Chinese or Chinese plums). v delicious, like a cross between a strawberry and a lemon.
2018/02/23: me and Helen in the #redwoods at Muir Woods National Monument. if you're near Napa, go! (but be sure to make reservations! required!) Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/02/24: #ICYMI Miners are racing to extract the world's last bit of #digital gold. Here's a look at some fascinating links between #Bitcoin and gold. #cryptocurrency 0 replies 8 retweets 13 likes Reply Retweeted 8 Liked 13 Direct message
2018/02/24: Andrew Sullivan on opioid epidemic in America: The problem is that it’s a solution to a problem
2018/02/24: By reading between the lines of the #MuellerInvestigation, we can see how deep US surveillance can reach. They're using emails and text messages from ten years ago. Entefy @Entefy
2018/02/24: Fraud doesn't describe this. It's out of control looting. Trump said he would drain the swamp; no, he brought out the Swamp Monster.
2018/02/26: America uses 99% of the world’s hydrocodone and 81% of its oxycodone. It uses 30X more opioids than is medically necessary for a population of its size. From the NYMag article. New York Magazine Verified account @NYMag
2018/02/26: Want to pitch your #startup to #investors? Here's a list of #SiliconValley #pitch events: https://www.eventbrite.com/d/ca--san-francisco/pitch/ … https://www.eventbrite.com/d/ca--san-francisco/start-up-pitch/ … https://www.eventbrite.com/d/ca--san-jose/startup-pitch/ … https://www.walkersands.com/Pitch-And-Demo-Events-For-Tech-Startups#West … Good luck! Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/02/26: We moved into new offices, but this wall has been left open for a few weeks now. I knew what I had to do. Malboury Jones @Malboury
2018/02/27: CafeX coffee robot has a crowd at 1p. All watching it make coffee. No truth to rumor that Starbucks will replace baristas with robots and rename itself Starbots. 3 replies 20 retweets 73 likes Reply 3 Retweet 20 Like 73 View Tweet activity Malboury Jones @Malboury
2018/02/27: Coffee robot! 1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes Reply 1 Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/02/27: InfoWars got another strike on their YouTube account for a Florida shooting video, now one strike left before they get banned. 134 replies 695 retweets 2,583 likes Reply 134 Retweeted 695 Like 2.6K Direct message
2018/02/27: There was a development...
2018/03/01: Looking for #pitch events in your #SiliconValley #startup to meet #VentureCapital #VC? Here's a short list: https://www.eventbrite.com/d/ca--san-francisco/pitch/ … https://www.eventbrite.com/d/ca--san-francisco/start-up-pitch/ … https://www.eventbrite.com/d/ca--san-jose/startup-pitch/ …
2018/03/01: Why does #Google #Facebook #Youtube refuse to block content? Good ol' 47 U.S.C. §230(c)(1). If they edit content, then they can be held liable. 10,000 class-action lawyers will pounce. So digital media companies insist they only transmit content and thus not liable. Reply Retweet 1 Like 3 View Tweet activity
2018/03/02: The CD disc is in its final days....
2018/03/02: Trump's steel tariffs started a trade war. The EU replied with tariffs on US motorcycles (Harley-Davidson), Kentucky bourbon whiskey, and blue jeans. Why those? This affects states with key politicians aligned with Trump. They will call him very soon. 1 reply 2 retweets 9 likes Reply 1 Retweet 2 Like 9 View Tweet activity
2018/03/02: Trump's trade war hurts... our allies. The top steel exporters to the United States: Canada, Brazil, South Korea and Mexico (by volume). China isn't even in the top 10. Reply Retweet 1 Like View Tweet activity
2018/03/03: Google Android Oreo
2018/03/04: Quantum mechanics and... aesthetics? Does aesthetics matter in quantum theory? Yes, because the view that you choose will open avenues of thought... and close off other approaches. Physics and philosophy are interwoven.
2018/03/05: #VirtualReality #VR pods at the mall. $10 for ten terrifying minutes.
2018/03/05: When my cat yawns, do you also yawn?
2018/03/06: /2 Many of those EU tariffs are aimed clearly at US states that have key GOP politicians. The EU will put pressure on them to stop the Trump tariffs. If the tariffs happen, it'll cause recession, massive job loss, severe impact on state economies.
2018/03/06: /3 Mid-term Congressional elections are in November. If there's a Trump recession, the GOP loses the House, the Dems take over, and they'll instantly impeach Trump. He won't be able to do anything for the next two years. It's Trump's move now.
2018/03/06: If Trump tariff happens, EU raises tariffs against US steel pipes, rolled steel, grills, sinks, ventilators, ladders, steel tanks for liquefied gas, motor boats, lipstick, bedlinen, motorcycles, jeans, kidney beans, bourbon, rice, cranberries, orange juice, peanut butter, tobacco 1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes Reply 1 Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/03/07: So #GeekSquad employees get paid by the #FBI to check the content of customers' computers? I wonder how many other companies with access to your computer's files are FBI informants. 1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes Reply 1 Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/03/07: “When your old-ass parent is like, ‘I don’t know how to send an iMessage,’ and you’re just like, ‘Give me the fucking phone and let me handle it.’ Sadly, that’s what we have to do with our government...” 23 replies 167 retweets 530 likes Reply 23 Retweeted 167 Like 530 Direct message
2018/03/08: Seals in San Francisco. Golden Gate in background. Ryan J. Reilly Verified account @ryanjreilly
2018/03/08: Support #InternationalWomensDay! Tonight is the world broadcast premier of @SheStartedIt on @FuseTV, spotlighting female tech entrepreneurs including Entefy's own @Brienne_G. https://www.fuse.tv/she-started-it 1 reply 14 retweets 21 likes Reply 1 Retweeted 14 Liked 21 Direct message
2018/03/08: There was a web... before the web? In the 80s, France had Minitel: read the news, multi-player gaming, groceries w/ same-day delivery, buy theater tickets w/ credit card, remotely control thermostats & other home appliances, bank account, chat, dating. Reply Retweet 3 Like 3 View Tweet activity Entefy @Entefy
2018/03/09: Scientists found Ice-VII in diamonds. Wait... Ice-VII? Are they going to find Ice-9? Ice-VII inclusions in diamonds: Evidence for aqueous fluid in Earth’s deep mantle Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/03/11: (To my niece at 10a at #Ghirardelli) "Want ice cream?" "Isn't it too early?", she asked. "It's never too early for ice cream!" We go in & ask waiter, "Is it too early for ice cream?" "It's never too early for ice cream!" Reply Retweet Like 7 View Tweet activity
2018/03/12: At #Entefy annual stockholder event. What they're doing and what's coming.
2018/03/12: If your phone is on #TMobile, you can turn on free #spam blocking. It's easy. Dial #662# (as if it is a phone number). That turns it on.
2018/03/12: The next version of Google Android is P. Google always names these for candy. What starts with P? Android Pop-Tarts? Android Popcorn? Android Peeps? Android Pez? Android Pixie Stix? Android Pop Rocks? I think it'll be Android Peeps. It's Google's style to be super cute.
2018/03/13: At IgniteXL pitch night. South Korean startups.
2018/03/14: Theranos raised $700m for a $9B valuation... and it was all just fraud. It never worked. They did fake demonstrations to raise money. CEO Elizabeth Holmes will be penalized. The SEC is telling startups they can't lie to investors.
2018/03/16: Artificial intelligence (AI) movies have sexy babe robots. That's not AI, that's "Babe-I". People in the 1800s thought mechanical transportation would be steam-powered mechanical horses; many now think AI robots will be hot chicks. Yeah, right.
2018/03/16: I spent several weeks investigating the Silicon Valley 'ratcatchers' who go to great lengths to identify employees who leak information to the public 24 replies 384 retweets 476 likes Reply 24 Retweeted 384 Like 476 Direct message
2018/03/16: No more clocks? Our living wall clock stopped working. Why replace it? I don't have a desk clock or kitchen clock. I've never set the clock on the microwave, stove, and DVD player. Why bother? We all use our cell phones now as clocks. 1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes Reply 1 Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity Olivia Solon Verified account @oliviasolon
2018/03/16: The new happy hour. The pot clubs in San Francisco have happy hour: come in, smoke pot, and get happy. Starts at (go ahead, guess it) 4:20 pm. Cannabis-infused mojitos, beer, brownies, cookies, tea, etc., priced at (yes, you guessed it) $4.20. Who says innovation is hard work? Reply Retweet 1 Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/03/17: Thinking about your summer vacation? Bluewander is a vacations concierge service that helps people to plan vacations. Local experts help you with #flights, #hotels, what to see, #events, and so on. More at http://www1.bluewander.life
2018/03/19: Voice of America VOA + INSEEC U: present Silicon Valley & Africa: Growth & Challenges. How African entrepreneurs deal with SV and Africa. Panel + documentary "Beyond the Unicorn: Africans Making IT in Silicon Valley". 6p Wens, Mar21 SF. Register (free): Reply Retweet Like 4 View Tweet activity
2018/03/21: How to fix #Facebook? Get rid of advertising. If no ads, no need to discover your likes, interests, etc. No need for FB to sell your data. Charge $2 subscription fee. Same for #Google, #YouTube, and all the others. Reply 1 Retweet 1 Like 3 View Tweet activity
2018/03/22: Timely @nybooks piece on rising threat of #BigData for #CyberOps & political influence — and the US Government’s hand in funding & enabling this dangerous new cyber-tech landscape. 1 reply 17 retweets 19 likes Reply 1 Retweeted 17 Like 19 Direct message
2018/03/23: 1/ The #Facebook/ #CambridgeAnalytics scandal isn't just about data. Political parties, politicians, newspapers, etc. define issues and act for/against. Data analytics doesn't need issues; by collecting data, one can know the likes/dislikes of any group and thus manipulate them. Reply Retweet 2 Like 2 View Tweet activity Jake Murray @jake_murray44
2018/03/23: 2/ Use #Google, #Facebook, data with #microtargeting, A/B split testing, geodemographics, data analytics, etc. allow small teams (10-20 people) to manipulate society. Political parties #GOP #DEM liberal, conservative, religious, socialist, ecological, etc. are irrelevant. Reply Retweet 1 Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/03/23: 3/ If democracy is based on votes, then use these data tools to get sufficient votes by targeting each group with its own messaging. Test with +50,000 ads to find the perfect slogans + images to affect a target. Traditional democracy is dead. Reply 2 Retweet 3 Like 5 View Tweet activity
2018/03/24: China is starting to remove ATM machines because few people use them; they prefer digital payment. I can't remember the last time I used an ATM; it's been years; I have no idea what my PIN is. Reply 2 Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity INSEEC U. San Francisco @INSEEC_U_SF
2018/03/24: Proud and honored to host @abennett @VOANews @VOAAfrica and distinguished panel for #beyondtheunicorn We continue to bring #African @groupeIFG students to #SanFrancisco and #SiliconValley to train the #Innovators and #Entrepreneurs of tomorrow. Watch here https://www.facebook.com/voiceofamerica/videos/10155673379578074/ … African Technology, Andile Ngcaba and M'vunganyi
2018/03/24: Want to freak yourself out? I'm gonna show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it 4,635 replies 165,750 retweets 260,485 likes Reply 4.6K Retweeted 166K Like 260K Direct message
2018/03/26: @HeidelbergHAUS funds incredible scholarships for master's & bachelor's programs in any field & for students' choice of 1 or 2 semesters at the internationally renowned @UniHeidelberg. Applications will close June 15th! http://owl.li/hGYh30j4U4b
2018/03/26: Headlines: "Congress wants to drag Google and Twitter into Facebook’s privacy crisis". Translation: "Congress smells BIG opportunity for campaign donations! Show me the money! No money, no honey!" GCRI New York @gcri_ny
2018/03/26: Parking in DC and NY will have you getting out the car like 232 replies 22,417 retweets 57,349 likes Reply 232 Retweeted 22K Like 57K Direct message
2018/03/27: Palantir, a national security contractor owned by Facebook board member Peter Thiel, was allowed access to the Facebook data harvested for Cambridge Analytica on an informal basis, whistleblower claims. 0 replies 21 retweets 14 likes Reply Retweeted 21 Like 14 Direct message Dylan Curran @iamdylancurran
2018/03/28: Humanity’s Genes Reveal Its Tangled History
2018/03/28: See all the data Facebook and Google have on you. By Dylan Curran. Reply Retweet 1 Like 5 View Tweet activity Paul Lewis Verified account @PaulLewis
2018/03/29: Opening game: Oakland A's vs. Angels. Beautiful summer weather. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/03/30: Micro-sushi... made on a single grainn of rice. Sushiya No Nohachi, Tokyo.
2018/03/30: What does this mean? Watch out for snakes... that can chase you at 15 miles per hour? Speed snakes? Reply 2 Retweet Like 3 View Tweet activity
2018/04/01: #Tiangong1 China space station is coming down in the next two hours. At the moment, it's headed for the bottom of #SouthAmerica (Chile, Argentina). Then pass over #Atlantic and then Central Africa. It's headed for China & Beijing! :-) Live track http://www.satflare.com/track.html?q=37820#TOP … Reply Retweet 3 Like 4 View Tweet activity Rosy @rose_k01
2018/04/01: #tiangong1 just rose up 100m as it passes over Saudi Arabia. Is Allah protecting Saudi? 1 reply 1 retweet 1 like Reply 1 Retweet 1 Like 1 View Tweet activity
2018/04/01: #tiangong1 Okay, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay: #tiangong1 passed over you. But #tiangong1 headed for Africa now. Reply Retweet 1 Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/04/01: Avocado Coca-Cola! Yes, Coca-Cola is introducing three new Cokes: avocado, sourdough, charcoal. Coca-Cola says these are ideal for any brunch social media photo: guaranteed to see the ‘likes’ rolling in.” Reply 2 Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/04/01: Enjoy Meeoowww Choir 😂😂 #AprilFoolsDay 2 replies 17 retweets 24 likes Reply 2 Retweeted 17 Like 24 Direct message
2018/04/02: Helen and I go out to fly #kites at the Bay.
2018/04/02: New York Magazine writes about the scale of corruption around Trump.
2018/04/02: Testing Google #Adwords Ad Variations (Swap Headlines) tool. The account has a 7% increase in clicks across hundreds of ads. Go to Google Adwords, "Drafts & Experiments", select "Ad Variations", click "Go".
2018/04/03: 1/ It's not Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, Google... The problem is the shift in concept of Self. Only 20 years ago, the Self was mostly self-managed (for better or worse, mostly indifferently). Today, the data-centric web *structures* the Self. Reggie @UrFavorite_Ex
2018/04/03: 2/ Data analytics, geodemographics, and massive amounts of data allow companies to create a personalized experience Just For You. That's why the web is so seductive: you're looking into a mirror that reflects a better you at you.
2018/04/03: 3/ Orwell, Huxley, etc. hoped the Self could rebel, or at least, push back against the State. But the social web takes over the construction of the Self. Today's rebel has to rebel... against his/her self. And even that rebellious Self... is structured! Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/04/04: In Washington DC/20,000 people protested the murder of #MLK50. 1,200 buildings + 900 stores burned. US Marines set up machine guns at US Capitol; 3rd Infantry Army guarded the White House. 3,100-police, 13,600 US troops, 1,750 National Guard.
2018/04/04: Martin Luther King's murder on April 4 1968 led to the greatest wave of social unrest since the Civil War. Over 100 cities burned. The Civil Rights Act was quickly approved by a wide margin in Congress on Apr. 10th. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_assassination_riots …
2018/04/04: Trump started a trade war with China and Europe. China's response: 25% tariffs on 106 items in agriculture, automotive, energy, and industrial production. Everyone in these US industries is facing layoffs, factory shutdowns, or farm bankruptcy.
2018/04/04: Trump's 25% tariffs mean that US consumers will pay more. When companies are protected from competitors, they don't lower prices: they RAISE prices so they can make more money. Consumers have no choice.
2018/04/06: Here's an idea: @Facebook @Google @Apple commit FULLY to EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) #GDPR. All apps in the app stores must comply with GDPR. If Facebook Google Apple are on the side of its users, then use #GDPR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation … Reply Retweet 2 Like 5 View Tweet activity
2018/04/06: Last year, China exported $506 billion of goods to the US. The US exported $130 billion to China. 25.7%. China produces 4X. If you want a new TV, washing machine, fridge, clothes, etc., buy now before Trump's 25% tax kicks in.
2018/04/07: A suitcase of pepperoni, 40 seagulls, and a hotel room. Hilarious story! https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/juliareinstein/seagull-pepperoni-hotel-ban …
2018/04/07: The State Department’s plan to ask all visa applicants for social media information invades their free speech and privacy rights, as well as the rights of their American friends, families, and professional associates.
2018/04/08: America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics 2017-retail-debt/ … @bbgvisualdata Reply Retweeted 1 Like Direct message
2018/04/08: For FB and Google to make money on ads, they give user data to advertisers. Solution? Free basic version, fee for advanced version, and corp version for companies. No need to share user data. But... Google and FB valuation will drop by hundreds of billions of dollars. EFF Verified account @EFF
2018/04/08: Yes, it's true, Palo Alto dogs have their own chauffeur. Dog sits serenely as he glides along the street. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/04/08: Yesterday, rain all day, so wrote HTML5 +CSS all day. My http://andreas.com site will soon be mobile-first HTML5 responsive design. Today, sunny + windy, so flying kites w Helen. Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/04/09: Watched @ElizaRickman 's new video "Pretty Little Head". It's private at the moment, only for her Kickstarter backers. Coming soon. #ElizaRickman eComm Guy @eCommGuy
2018/04/10: #Adwords 2.0 is coming. #Google #Adwords good ol' Keyword Planner was changed and redesigned. A few nice features (location of traffic for top keywords, trends chart for desktop vs mobile, etc.) but it took away the ability to drop in/200 keywords (now, only three :-(
2018/04/10: Did #Facebook share your FB data with Cambridge Analytica? You can check at this Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/help/1873665312923476?helpref=search&sr=1&query=cambridge%20analytica …
2018/04/10: Mark Zuckerberg is now living out every young person's worst nightmare: trying to explain how tech stuff works to the nation's elderly
2018/04/11: The Zuckerberg/Facebook/Congress hearings are a joke. Nearly each of those politicians has "received campaign donations" (i.e, pay offs) from Facebook. See below. Nothing will change. FB will make more billions, bribe Congress, and screw the users Robby Soave Verified account @robbysoave
2018/04/11: This is fun, if you haven’t tried it yet@NewYorker’s first musical cover!
2018/04/11: Yes, Congress, there's a solution to data problems at Facebook and Google. But it will be very painful. http://andreas.com/facebook-vs-congress/ …
2018/04/12: The Onion re Zuck: "We'll pretend like we’re doing something right now. But once the heat dies down, you can go right back to whatever it was you were doing. Oil execs, bank CEOs — they’ve all been in that chair and came out totally fine. You have no reason to worry." Michael Luo Verified account @michaelluo
2018/04/14: Do this. Go visit the new Apple Visitor Center. In Cupertino, next to new ring HQ. The coolest place in Silicon Valley. Amazing stuff to see. Kids will love it. Be sure to go upstairs. Open every day. Reply 1 Retweet 1 Like 5 View Tweet activity
2018/04/16: Google has a new search tool: Talk to Books. You ask question and it scans several hundred thousand books and offers answers by authors. Try it at https://books.google.com/talktobooks/ Reply Retweet 1 Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/04/17: New verb. When you use both Uber and Lyft, you're "uberlyfting".
2018/04/19: Ever seen blackberry flowers? Our blackberry bush has flowers.
2018/04/19: New Verb (well, new to Congress :-) "You got Zucked!" As in, what #Zuckerberg does. Marky promised in #Congress last week that #Facebook would comply "in spirit" with #EU #privacy laws (#GDPR). Ha, suckers! Today, FB moved their data out of Europe. No EU laws now!
2018/04/19: Worried about #Facebook and #privacy? Don't worry about that. Instead, worry about #Palantir. Great article in #Bloomberg on a v shadowy data-tracking company and how it tracks you.
2018/04/20: Talked with a corp's systems administrator. He didn't know what an IP address was. Uh, oh... better start to check the site security...
2018/04/21: My book "Startup" has been translated to French. We'll release the book on Amazon in French in a few weeks.
2018/04/22: I finally signed up for #WhatsApp. Few use it in the US because txt msg are free (included in phone service) but almost everywhere else, people pay for txt msg, so to make it easy (cheap) for them, I added WhatsApp.
2018/04/23: Very pretty caterpillar. He has lots of tiny details and colors. However, this is a "pretty duckling", the resulting Tiger Moth is rather plain.
2018/04/25: Featured on @PBS, the @Anatomage Table is the only fully segmented real human 3D anatomy system@StanfordMed uses its extremely detailed interactive visuals to teach radiology and virtual dissection. Explore it yourself, Sat. 5/19 at #HealthMatters2018: http://healthmatters.stanford.edu
2018/04/25: Former Congressman talks openly about bribes. That's how it works.
2018/04/27: A few more places to find #internship #intern, #entrylevel jobs: http://Glassdoor.com , http://Idealist.com , http://AbsoluteInternshipcom.com , http://LookSharp.com , http://InternQueen.com
2018/04/27: Looking for #internship #intern, #entrylevel jobs? Try these: http://RippleMatch.com , http://Internships.com , http://WayUp.com , http://AfterCollege.com , http://CollegeGrad.com , http://CareerRookie.com , http://CollegeRecruiter.com . If you find more, let me know. Clive Thompson Verified account @pomeranian99
2018/04/27: The Korean war will finally end. North and South Korea have agreed to reduce tension.
2018/04/27: What do people really learn in business school? Why does it matter? Stanford Health Care @StanfordHealth
2018/04/27: Your occasional reminder that private equity funds have wildly accelerated the demise of retail, and attendant massive layoffs:
2018/04/29: our neighbor's dog cornered a skunk and happily barked at it until he got skunked. three days and he still smells. now he can't go in the house :-) lots of skunks in Palo Alto, often in our backyard. very beautiful animals. shy and near-sighted. just leave them alone.
2018/04/29: Pixs from our travels in Sichuan, China #BlueWander
2018/04/30: In the last 90 minutes... Wrote and launched an ad campaign in three languages for eight countries, 1,900 keywords, and 21 ads. That's the power of digital marketing. Now it's time for lunch!
2018/05/04: Breaking News: Yesterday's truth that refuted last week's lies is now today's lie and last week's lie is true again. This is true and will continue to be true for the remainder of this hour.
2018/05/05: Like, what's the big deal with Russia? #15 on the list? A dinky $1.5T? Losers. Amazon did $240B in 2017 and, at their rate of growth, they'll soon be bigger than Russia. Russia's GNP is basically oil; they don't build anything, and what they have, gets stolen by their mafia.
2018/05/05: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted Eliza Rickman It's here! Eliza Rickman's new music video "Pretty Little Head". Must watch. Eliza raised the largest KickStarter funding ever to make this (I was one of the donors). Warning! Definitely NSFW!Andreas Ramos added, Eliza Rickman Verified account @elizarickman Eliza Rickman - Pretty Little Head (Official Music Video): http://youtu.be/kwno-F90gms?a via @YouTube
2018/05/05: Rank by GDP: 1. US $19T 2. China $12T 3. Japan $4.9T 4. Germany $3.7T 5. California $2.7T 6. UK$2.6T 7. India $2.6T 8. France $2.6T 9. Brazil $2T 10. Italy $1.9T 11. Texas $1.7T 12. Canada $1.7T 13. New York $1.5T 14. S. Korea $1.5T 15. Russia $1.5T
2018/05/06: A bit of background on Cohen (Trump's "lawyer"). Decades of fake car crashes, medical fraud, borderline mafia: what a lawyer!
2018/05/06: The 17% drop in foreign student visas. 28% fewer Indian; 24% fewer Chinese. Foreign students contribute $36.9B to the U.S. economy during the 2016-2017 academic year. $6.3B less for universities and colleges.
2018/05/07: Is #ContentMarketing dead? Graph from Google Trends for "content marketing", last five years in the USA. Look at the ten-year trend: the Christmas dips go deeper each year. This year, April data is down at the level of 2015. Too many spammy articles?
2018/05/08: SPOTS STILL AVAILABLE FOR STUDENTS AT MORE THAN 450 COLLEGES https://buff.ly/2rpDg0f
2018/05/09: IBM employs 366,600 people. But at LinkedIn, 563,107 people claim to work for IBM. That's 196,507 people with fake resumes. Widespread problem. Solution: Blockchain?
2018/05/09: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted Christina Wilkie First, it's bribery, then it's extortion.Andreas Ramos added, Christina Wilkie Verified account @christinawilkie WOW. Novartis source tells @statnews Cohen came to them promising "access to not just Trump, but also the circle around him … we were hiring him as a lobbyist.”…
2018/05/09: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted Khanderao Kand I'm going to this. Come to the conf and we can talk.Andreas Ramos added, Khanderao Kand @khanderao We are hosting http://GITPRO.org 2018 Conference on Emerging and Trending Technologies : focussed on #Artificial Intelligence, #Blockchain, #IOT and other Trending Technologies Sat 9 Jun San Jose. Discount Code (Limited time) MAY10 https://lnkd.in/gdj4CjT Dr. Monique Rinere @mrinere
2018/05/09: So.@firstrepublic... Michael Cohen (Trump's bag man) used your bank to receive, hold, and transfer money for his bribery, corruption, threats, and coercion. When did you become aware of this? What's your position on this?
2018/05/09: Wow I did not know that: The worldwide disease burden (loss of life or disability due to disease) has fallen by 40% in 26 years. Humanity has never seen anything like it before! ht @HannahRitchie02 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/disease-burden-from-communicable-diseases …
2018/05/11: More Dr. Monique Rinere Retweeted Sean Love it @skd3121Dr. Monique Rinere added, Sean @skd3121 This delights the German nerd in me. Wish I were still teaching, because this would be a great way to demonstrate the importance of capitalizing nouns in German... #german Reply 1 Retweeted 1 Liked 3 Direct message
2018/05/11: Watch this video from Google as they roll out their voice AI. Watch the Googlers cheer and laugh. It's a cult. Just like "The Circle". Zero sense of social responsibility at Google. Dina D. Pomeranz @DinaPomeranz
2018/05/14: Never get tired of this: The moment deaf children and adults truly hear for the first time. Beautiful to watch. Science is amazing.
2018/05/15: Mom, "What is it that you do for work?" Me, "Today, I'm leading a workshop on web analytics." Mom: "????" Me: "Computer stuff." Mom: "Oh!" Reply Retweet Like 4 View Tweet activity
2018/05/15: So @Facebook finally gets serious about the millions of fake accounts. They deleted 580m fake accounts, about 25% of all 2B accts. When will @Twitter do the same? Steve Stewart-Williams @SteveStuWill
2018/05/16: More Claire Chang Retweeted igniteXL What better way to experience Seoul - live/work/build your company - all paid! #GrandChallenge is back. 80 companies will be accepted. APPLY TODAY: https://www.k-startupgc.org/ Claire Chang added, igniteXL @igniteXL ‘Innovation Powerhouse’ South Korea Recruits Startups from Abroad https://techcrunch.com/sponsored/innovation-powerhouse-south-korea-recruits-startups-from-abroad/ … #Korea #Asia #startupcompetition #startup #global K-Startup Grand Challenge 2018 https://techcrunch.com/sponsored/innovation-powerhouse-south-korea-recruits-startups-from-abroad/ …
2018/05/16: Woohoo! Going to #MakerFaire this Fri afternoon. One of the coolest Silicon Valley events of the year. Always lots of great ideas and stuff to see.
2018/05/17: 43% of US families can't afford basics of middle class life. Four of every ten families. Most have jobs, but the pay is too little. http://money.cnn.com 2018/05/17/news/economy/us-middle-class-basics-study/index.html … via @GoogleNews
2018/05/18: #MakerFaire broom-bot!
2018/05/18: #MakerFaire cat back pack! Cat has bubble window and side view!
2018/05/18: 3D Rabbit puzzle Palo Alto Police Verified account @PaloAltoPolice
2018/05/18: At #MakerFaire. These students built a chip-contolled solar panel that follows the sun, east to west, and high/low angle for summer winter. What college? Ha! Eighth grade students! V cool. Reply Retweet 3 Like 6 View Tweet activity
2018/05/18: At #Stanford #baseball game, waiting for #fireworks! Stanford Health Care @StanfordHealth
2018/05/18: At Google Headquarters. Innovative architecture, no? No. Real story? SGI built the HQ... and went bankrupt. Google bought it.
2018/05/18: Let your pets know that the fireworks show at the end of tonight’s @StanfordBSB game is coming up shortly. 🐶 🐱 #GoStanford – at Klein Field at Sunken Diamond Palo Alto Animals, Mountain View Police, Los Altos Police and 7 others
2018/05/18: The Google Dinosaur. Official story? To remind employees that Google should not turn into a fossil. Real story? When Page & Brin became billionaires, they bought all sorts of crazy crap :-)
2018/05/18: The wait is over! This Saturday, join us for Health Matters, Stanford Medicine's free community event. Enjoy talks from leading health specialists, insightful biometric screenings, and interactive exhibits for all ages: http://healthmatters.stanford.edu #HealthMatters2018
2018/05/19: At Stanford #HealthMatters2018 Ask anything with nurses, doctors, researchers
2018/05/19: At Stanford #HealthMatters2018 lots of onsite free checkups today
2018/05/19: At Stanford #HealthMatters2018 patient therapy dogs!
2018/05/19: At Stanford #HealthMatters2018 The therapy dogs at Stanford Medical. Come and meet them! Free all day today.
2018/05/19: At Stanford #HealthMatters2018. Free all day today. Here, she's using VR to explore Stanford new hospital.
2018/05/19: Kids learn that they too can do medical research At Stanford #HealthMatters2018
2018/05/19: Learn about diabetes, prevent, live with it. At Stanford #HealthMatters2018
2018/05/19: Learn healthy cooking and meal preparation at Stanford #HealthMatters2018
2018/05/19: Meet Guinness, Stanford patient therapy dog at Stanford Hospital. Super nice dog. 10 years on the job. At Stanford #HealthMatters2018 Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/05/19: Simple device to diagnose effect of concussion. For football players, etc. At Stanford #HealthMatters2018
2018/05/19: VR games help children to enjoy their visit to doctors and hospitals. At Stanford #HealthMatters2018
2018/05/20: Several Chinese friends in China say that #Google search engine is working in China now. Possibly a test?
2018/05/21: Discover nearby environmental organizations working on issues you care about, and find out how to volunteer your skills to help support the cause. http://pat.ag/gvyca #AnswerWithAction
2018/05/26: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted Khanderao Kand I'll be there!Andreas Ramos added, Khanderao Kand @khanderao Hosting 7th Annual Conference GITPRO on Emerging and Trend Technologies and Leadership on 9th June (Sat) 830am-530pm At Paypal Town Hall in San Jose. Tracks: Artificial Intelligence-ML, Blockchain, Trending Technologies like IOT and Leadership. Total 30+…https://lnkd.in/gVXCpHc
2018/05/26: Spectacular art at Stanford. Chihuly's Tre Stelle di Lapislazzuli ("Three Stars of Lapis Lazuli") in the atrium of the Lorry Lokey Stem Cell Research Building at the Medical School. Or Peter Wegner's "Change as It Changes" at the business school.
2018/05/27: In blind testing, wine experts can't tell the difference between wine: cheap or expensive, red or wine, French or Californian, etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_wine_tasting …
2018/05/27: We can't stop watching this! This #puffin was clearly enjoying the wind beneath his wings #skydiving @Natures_Voice @DiscoverCoast @VHEY_UK @Welcome2Yorks @VisitYNT @YCNature @coastmag @BTA_Bridlington Video: Michael Babcock
2018/05/28: Memorial Day isn't equal. The Bible Belt, Rust Belt, and Midwest had the most military deaths in proportion to their populations.
2018/05/29: 1/ How are you targeted in #Facebook marketing? Just click from +230 checkboxes to show ads at people #Facebook, #Messenger, #Instagram (soon #WhatsApp). What are the categories? Here's a partial list: TV, accessories, administrative, arts,...
2018/05/29: 10/ parents with children, parents with early school age, parents with preschoolers, parents with preteens, parents with teenagers, parents with toddlers, personal finance, pets, photo uploaders, politics, professional degree, property size, reading, real estate,
2018/05/29: 11/ recent home buyer, recent mortgage, recent move, recently in this location, recently moved, relationship, renters, restaurants, retail, returned from recent travel, rugby, running, sales, science, separated, shopping, single home, single, small business owners,
2018/05/29: 12/ small business, small office, smart phones, soccer moms, social services, some collage, sports, stay-at-home moms, tablets, tech adapters early, tech adapters late, timeshares, toys, travel business, travel casino, travel commuter, travel cruises, travel currently,
2018/05/29: 13/ travel family vacation, travel freqently, travel international travel leisure, travel personal, travel, travelling to this location, trendy moms, upcoming birthday, used cars, vehicles, veterans in home, weddings, weight training, widow, women, working women, yoga...
2018/05/29: 14/ and finally.... young adults, young and hip, and zumba. Amazing, no? Every possible interest, activity, and stage of life, incl. 72 genders.
2018/05/29: 2/ advertising, age (13-65), agriculture, alcohol, all, anniversary within 30 days, apartment, architect, arts, associate degree, aviation, away from family, away from hometown, baby boomer, banking, baseball, beauty, beverages, body building, business, buy beauty, buy food,
2018/05/29: 3/ buy clothing, buy drinks, buy health, buy home and garden, buy outdoors, buy pet products, buy sports, car buyer, car owners, car shopper, civil union, cleaning, clothing, college graduate, community, complicated, computers, condo, construction, consumer electronics,
2018/05/29: 4/ cooking, cricket, cuisine, current events, dating, design, dieting, digital, divorced, doctorate, domestic partner, donate to animal welfare, donate to arts, donate to cancer, donate to children's causes, donate to culture, donate to environment, donate to health,
2018/05/29: 5/ donate to politics, donate to religion, donate to veterans, donate to wildlife, donate to world relief, economics, education, engaged, engineering, entertainment, entrepreneur, events, exercise, extraction, facebook page admins, family, family-based household,
2018/05/29: 6/ farming, fashion, fatherhood, finance, first-time owner, fishing, food preparation, food, football, forestry, friends, gamers, gen X, government employees, grad school, grandparents, gyms,. physical fitness, healthcare, high school graduate, higher education,
2018/05/29: 7/ home and gardening, home buyer, home owner, home square footage, home value, house mates, household, in college, in this location, income ($30K-$500K) in high school, language (choose from dozens), library, likely to move, long distance relationship, maintenance,
2018/05/29: 8/ management, marketing, marriage, married, master's, mathematics, media, medical home office, meditation, men, millenials, mobile devices by brand, moms in big city, moms in corporate, moms in fitness, moms in green, moms in high school kids, moms with grade school kids,
2018/05/29: 9/ motherhood, motorcycles, movies, multi-family home, music, new job, new moms, new parents, new relationship, new teen drivers, newly engaged, newly wed, nursing, nutrition, open relationship, operations, outdoors, parenting, parents new, parents with adult children,
2018/05/29: And we'll have fun, fun, fun until daddy takes the T-Bird away! https://digiday.com/media/gdpr-mayhem-programmatic-ad-buying-plummets-europe/ … #EmailMarketing #emailgeeks 1 reply 2 retweets 4 likes Reply 1 Retweeted 2 Liked 4 Direct message
2018/05/30: Fox alternate reality: the stories it covers obsessively — and those it ignores, and why. https://www.vox.com 2018/5/30/17380096/fox-news-alternate-reality-charts … via @GoogleNews Chris Marriott @CSMarriott
2018/05/30: More Christina Wilkie Retweeted Sanofi US New: Sanofi, maker of Ambien, responds to @therealroseanne's claim that she was 'Ambien tweeting': "Racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication."Christina Wilkie added, Sanofi US Verified account @SanofiUS People of all races, religions and nationalities work at Sanofi every day to improve the lives of people around the world. While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.
2018/05/30: People of all races, religions and nationalities work at Sanofi every day to improve the lives of people around the world. While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.
2018/05/30: Some ideas such as time crystals are so unexpected. First it's not possible, then it's speculation, then it's theory, and then real. Crystal atoms align themselves on points in space; time crystals align on points in time. Super cool. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_crystal … Sanofi US Verified account @SanofiUS
2018/05/31: "We found that brainteasers are a complete waste of time. They don’t predict anything. They serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart.” Laszlo Bock, SVP of people operations at Google
2018/05/31: Street protests in San Francisco against Google buses. HumanProgress.org @HumanProgress
2018/05/31: Was the Industrial Revolution good or bad for humanity? Consider the following. Between 1831 and 1881, French incomes rose by 100 percent. As such, France made twice as much economic progress in 50 years as it did in the previous 1,800 years. https://buff.ly/2vgf4me
2018/06/01: Karin Lachmi, Chief Science Officer and founder of Bioz, writes about the state of lab research in her Forbes article. Lab researchers must deal with new technology, data quality, ecommerce, and transparency. Paul Stamatiou 📷 @Stammy
2018/06/03: Pair of lizards on the backyard brick pile. These are 100-year old bricks.
2018/06/04: Traditional fundamental physics (particles, fields, forces, symmetries) are just artifacts. Physics in terms of elementary building blocks appears to be wrong, or at least of limited reach. More at...
2018/06/05: Are private confs now a thing in Palo Alto? Nidhi Kathuria, former VP of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) w +10 years in FinTech, talked about blockchain and fintech at our house.
2018/06/05: Going to #GITPRO on Sat. Conf on AI, ML, blockchain, fintech, IoT, cats. At PayPal HQ.
2018/06/05: I'm reading "1491". Everything you learned in school about the New World Indians before 1500s is wrong. Their cities were larger and better developed than European cities. But disease wiped out 95% of the population. 1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes Reply 1 Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/06/06: Amazon offers "search / review / compare/ buy", all in one platform, which Google doesn't have. Amazon is also now selling ads ($4B/yr).
2018/06/06: Bad news for Google: 49% of people start at Amazon to buy stuff. They aren't using Google Search nor clicking on Google Ads.
2018/06/06: Digital advertising is shifting from desktop to mobile. Desktop ad spend stopped growing in 2013. Reply 2 Retweet 2 Like 3 View Tweet activity
2018/06/06: friend says, "advertisers don't affect me! I make my OWN choices!" I say, "so it's all by chance that you wear a SF Giants baseball cap, Ralph Lauren polo shirt, Tommy Hilfiger jeans, and Nike shoes?"
2018/06/06: I love this slide. How many years for a new product to reach 25% US market share? 80 years for dishwashers to reach 25%. 30 yrs for radio; 35 yrs for microwave. But 15 yrs for PCs, 10 yrs for cell phone, and less for the web. Things really are spreading faster.
2018/06/06: I read Mary Meeker's 294-slide deck (!) so you don't have to (and yes, I know most of you didn't...). It's an annual report about the Internet. Here are a few slides that I found interesting.
2018/06/06: Let's start with VC money. It's spiking fast, just like in that good ol' year 2000. And what happened after 2000? The party ended.
2018/06/09: At #GITPRO blockchain conf. All day.
2018/06/09: Nidhi Kathuria, former VP at Royal Bank of Scotland, talks about the details of blockchain in fintech at #GITPRO
2018/06/09: Why the +30% rise in suicide in the US? Lack of health insurance, budget cuts to treatment, few care providers, and lack of national policy. http://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-bourdain-kate-spade-suicide-rate-mental-healthcare-costs-2018-6 … via @GoogleNews
2018/06/09: With Khanderao Khan, head of #gitpro conference today.
2018/06/11: Finally discovered why @nytopinion has so many bad takes.
2018/06/11: So what's up with Vice? Is it worth billions... or zero? See how crazy it can get at an East Coast online magazine. Very good article about Vice.
2018/06/12: Happy Hour!
2018/06/13: Google sent me a Google Beacon. It's the size of lipstick. Stick it to the ceiling. It tracks visitors' mobile phones, time, etc. People's pics & reviews of my office are sent to me. My website shows up on their phone. Interesting.
2018/06/13: I joined Facebook 12 years ago (June 14/2006). Today, I rarely use it, maybe look at it every three months, maybe a few postings. FB became too many likes, comments, shares, etc., plus too many ads. Too busy. I now use Twitter. Easier to use and read. It's a micro-blog.
2018/06/13: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted Dumbo Dumbo is being remade? Odd. A few years ago, we watch all the classic Disney movies: Pinocchio, Bambi, etc. The best was @Dumbo. Well done, good artwork, colors, story, etc. If you can find a copy, watch it.Andreas Ramos added, @Dumbo This March, the beloved tale will take you to new heights. Watch the new trailer for Disney’s #Dumbo.
2018/06/14: Before 1492, no oranges in Florida, no bananas in Ecuador, no paprika in Hungary, no potatoes in Ireland, no coffee in Colombia, no pineapples in Hawaii, no rubber trees in Africa, no chili peppers in Thailand or China, no tomatoes in Italy, no chocolate in Switzerland.
2018/06/14: Hey, want an mega Amazon office in your city? http://JD.com , a Chinese e-commerce giant, has a new Shanghai fulfillment center that can ship 200,000 orders a day. It employs four people. They service the robots.
2018/06/14: Leading a class of students on a tour of Stanford. We looked at sculptures, buildings, fountains, parks, etc. , plus of course shopping.
2018/06/14: The Mori Digital Arts Museum in Tokyo
2018/06/15: Did you know the web used to be powered with... steam? Did you know that nearly all of what we think is so new and today was actually started more than 150 years ago? Email addresses, online chat, online games, crazy valuations, and more... http://andreas.com/faq-steamnet/
2018/06/16: Elizabeth Holmes of #Theranos faces decades in prison and $100m or more in fines for massive fraud. #GrowthHacking gone wild. https://qz.com/1307507/elizabeth-holmes-of-theranos-faces-decades-in-prison/ … via @GoogleNews
2018/06/17: Buy more stuff! 42% of global e-commerce transactions took place in China last year, more than France, Germany, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. combined (McKinsey Global Institute).
2018/06/18: $15.4 trillion worth of mobile payments were handled by third-party platforms in China in 2017—more than 40 times in the US. Alibaba handled nearly 54% of those payments and WeChat Pay did 39%. In the US, Starbucks has 40% share. The US is way behind.
2018/06/18: President Trump: “Crime in Germany is way up." Official statistics: Germany last year recorded its lowest number of criminal offenses since 1992.
2018/06/18: The US government is uncomfortable if people say it puts children in cages. The US government is comfortable with putting children in cages. NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt Verified account @NBCNightlyNews
2018/06/19: The Holocaust was legal. Slavery was legal. Segregation was legal. The brave woman who cared for and hid my 6 year-old aunt in an attic in Budapest was a criminal. She broke the law by sheltering Juden. Legality is not a guide for morality.
2018/06/19: Under the Golden Gate Bridge on a boat tour with students at INSEEC San Francisco. Bridge is v impressive from below.
2018/06/20: Although there is much talk about startups, there are fewer today. In the last 30 years, startups fell from 13% to 8% of companies. Here are several reasons for this.
2018/06/20: Cat fell off the ladder. Asking for a lawyer. I think he's faking it.
2018/06/20: Trump is also taking the toys away from children at the border. The children are put in cages, with lights on 24 hours a day. They have no toys or anything else to play with.
2018/06/21: Only a few more days: my book "Startup" in French. Translated by Cyril Ghattas, an engineer in France and student at INSEEC who has lots of startup experience in France. We'll release this worldwide via Amazon in both print and ebook. Mark Murray
2018/06/21: The first space selfie! Buzz Aldrin on Gemini flight 1966 took his selfie. He was later 2nd man on the moon (and 1st to piss there!). Nice guy w great sense of humor. Now u know where Buzz Lightyear got his name.
2018/06/21: When a new technology becomes a buzz word, it also becomes obsolete.
2018/06/22: A panda, asleep high in a tree, dreaming panda dreams.
2018/06/22: eNewsletters that I read daily: - Axios https://www.axios.com/ - 3 Quarks Daily https://www.3quarksdaily.com/ - Quartz https://qz.com/ - Arts and Letters Daily (ALD) https://www.aldaily.com/ - Pacific Standard https://psmag.com/ If you know good newsletters, tell me.
2018/06/22: If you (or family/friends) have a small (local) business, check out Google My Business (http://google.com/business ). It allows you to add your biz info, pixs, etc. into Google, plus you get a free website. Very easy to set up. I made a webpage at http://andreascom.business.site Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/06/22: Our cat LOVES #worldcup Reply Retweet Like 2 View Tweet activity
2018/06/22: Photos by Helen and me of panda bears in Chendu, China. In this pix, a panda ignores 100 tourists.
2018/06/22: So what is psychographics? Cambridge Analytica and Facebook use this.
2018/06/22: V good summary of the massive fraud by Elizabeth Holmes at Theranos here in Palo Alto. Many VCs were involved in this. https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news 2018/06/22/bad-blood-in-silicon-valley …
2018/06/22: Why the panda pixs? We got a digital photo frame (@Aluratek 14", 4GB, $99) and I loaded it with some 2,500 pixs, so now I'm seeing many photos that I'd forgotten.
2018/06/23: The #PlaceboEffect is just one way our minds can alter reality.
2018/06/23: This has been the president of the United States over the last two weeks -- via @NBCFirstRead https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/has-been-president-united-states-over-last-two-weeks-n884971 … Two. Weeks. 28 replies 326 retweets 317 likes Reply 28 Retweeted 326 Liked 317 Direct message
2018/06/24: And here's a list for what to see and do in #SanFrancisco http://andreas.com/what-to-see-in-san-francisco/ …
2018/06/24: Growing a ginger plant. Cut piece of ginger (size of your thumb), cover w soil, a bit of water, seal with plastic wrap, put in window. When it comes up, remove plastic. Stanford Health Care @StanfordHealth
2018/06/24: Our latest house project: we replaced the concrete paved path to the front door & studio w 100-yr old SIMONS bricks. Made in LA. Friend gave us 5,000 of these. More about these bricks at https://calbricks.netfirms.com/brick.simonssimons.html …
2018/06/24: What to see and do in #PaloAlto and #SiliconValley http://andreas.com/what-to-see-in-silicon-valley/ …
2018/06/25: If #Philosophy got out of their Ivory Tower and did a bit of research, they'd waste less time. #Anthropologists studied hundreds of cultures around with world and found seven basic moral rules, based on cooperation.
2018/06/25: Stanford opened a blockchain research center.
2018/06/26: a friend gave us a #GoogleHome device (thanks, friend!) i set it up and played around with it. among other things, it plays the sounds of a thunderstorm. this is kinda cool. we don't have thunderstorms in Palo Alto (well, rarely). other sounds include oceans and crickets.
2018/06/26: Watch a breakup from the Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland. That piece of ice is the size of Manhattan.
2018/06/27: Google Adwords is now Google Ads. They've been rewriting the code base for three years. GAW and Analytics will be tied closer together. It includes Smart Campaigns (automated ads for small business). DoubleClick turns into Google Marketing Platform.
2018/06/27: Of course! I set up a @GoogleHome and within hours, it has a system-wide crash :-)
2018/06/29: Visiting #CETYS university in Tijuana. A top engineering and business school. Sports too. Pix of women's national college basketball team.
2018/07/01: Ever heard of @FrenchBee ? French airline. Oakland to Paris for $189. https://us.frenchbee.com/en
2018/07/02: Rode a taxi in SF today. Driver had no cell phone. At home, he has a rotary phone. No computer. He said passengers always have a cell phone, so they can look up any address on Google Maps. So yes, it's possible to live outside the digital world.
2018/07/02: Thailand cave rescue: Boys found alive after nine days. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44688909 …
2018/07/02: Very red sunset. That's the Napa and Yolo wildfire.
2018/07/02: “We are the first. Many will come.” This is the moment rescuers reached 12 boys and their football coach who had been missing in an underground cave in Thailand for nine days.
2018/07/03: Why do you refill a #birdbath every day? Because #birds splash around like little kids! Five #robins in this pix from our backyard.
2018/07/04: i got a camera when i was seven years old. i've had cameras ever since. i took many of my family's photographs. here's my dad in 1964. my camera that year was a Minox. ever heard of those?
2018/07/04: San Francisco homeless problem is out of control. Over 15,000 homeless on the streets. A medical conference canceled b/c it's not safe or clean.
2018/07/05: For thousands of years, Europeans knew all swans were white. Black swans were impossible... until they went to Australia. Black Swan Theory (well, actually, a metaphor): Somethings can't happen, but when they happen, we adjust theory to fit and forget previous reality. My pix.
2018/07/05: I tried the Samsung Gear S3 Digital Watch for ten days. Here's my hands-on (or is that on-hands?) review. http://andreas.com/tried-the-samsung-gear-s3-smart-watch/ …
2018/07/05: The acronym for #GoogleAdwords was GAW. The acronym for Google Analytics is GA. #Google renamed Google Adwords to Google Ads, so the acronym will be... GA? Wait. That doesn't work.
2018/07/06: France wins over Uruguay, 2-0
2018/07/07: In Palo Alto, the trees are painted blue.
2018/07/08: Watching "The Same Sky" ("Der gleiche Himmel" in German). Cold war spy drama in Berlin in 1972. Good counterpart to Babylon Berlin, set in 1939. Both highly recommended, both on Netflix. Same Sky captures the mood of Germany in the 70's unclear transition from old to new.
2018/07/10: Another graph: Unemployment trends from 2002 to 2018. Starting in 2010 (eight years ago), unemployment has fallen steeply and the number of available jobs has risen. These are long-term economic trends. Again, no political party gets the blame or credit.
2018/07/10: I often hear from friends that crime is up. No, it has been going down for a long time. Here's the violent crime rate from 1990 to now. No need for guns, etc. Despite hysterical news sites, the US is pretty safe now. No political party gets the credit or blame.
2018/07/12: #Twitter says they're deleting fake accts. 14% of Trump's twitter followers are fake (7.1m of 46.3). 22% of Obama's twitter followers are fake (12.4m of 91.3). Will #TwitterPurge really delete those fake accts? See https://www.twitteraudit.com/realDonaldTrump and
2018/07/12: Bear Cam is live again. Watch bears slap salmon at Katmai National Park in Alaska. Live web cam.
2018/07/12: I finally got rid of Wordpress (too hackable, too much spam) and went back to HTML. I wrote my own template (HTML5, mobile-first, responsive design, floating navbar). See my new website at http://andreas.com
2018/07/12: Today's book: Don @dtapscott and Alex Tapscott @alextapscott Blockchain Revolution. See what all the talk is about :-)
2018/07/13: 2017 revenues @Google = $110B. Per Morgan Stanley, 36% was display ads, which is $32.7B. 50-70% of that is fake/fraud clicks. Google makes $16-22B on fraud. They know it's fake clicks, but, hey, it's money, so they do nothing. Don't use ads in Display, Youtube, or apps.
2018/07/13: It's not fake news, witch hunts, angry Democrats, or FBI lovers. The Dept of Justice indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers for hacking the 2012 election. This is Trump's OWN branch of government that indicted them. Read the indictment.
2018/07/13: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted Melissa Chan Angela Merkel, Leader of the Free World.Andreas Ramos added, @melissakchan “Others don’t do this,” Mr. Stanzel said, of Ms. Merkel’s push on human rights. “The British are desperate for a trade deal; President Macron of France is new; Trump uninterested.” https://nyti.ms/2mbUhc2
2018/07/13: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted NBCWashington Isn't this the end? The water in Washington D.C., capitol of the US, is unsafe to drink.Andreas Ramos added, NBCWashington Verified account @nbcwashington MAP: Don't drink the water. D.C. is warning thousands of residents of a contamination risk. Check our interactive map to see if you're affected http://nbc4dc.com/Qcn715j
2018/07/13: More Andreas Ramos Retweeted The Associated Press > 20. The object of the conspiracy was to hack into the computers of U.S. persons and entities involved in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, steal documents from those computers, and stage releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.Andreas Ramos added, The Associated Press @AP Read the grand jury indictment of 12 Russian military officers for conspiring to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election here: http://apne.ws/Zr6KZDU
2018/07/13: Who else looked at the map to figure out where #Croatia #Cro is? They're not even the underdog, they're the #underpuppy. Incredible that they made it this far in the #WorldCup , all the way to the #WorldCupFinal
2018/07/15: #WorldCup Anaximander @AnaximanderKatz
2018/07/15: I want to be as happy as Ronaldinho. #WorldCupFinal
2018/07/15: More #Jiusion #microscope pixs. Nuggets of #gold, smaller than sand grains. We used to hike in the Sierras above Sacramento, where the 49er gold rush happened, so we panned for gold and found these bits.
2018/07/15: Playing w Jiusion USB microscope. $19. Connected to my Samsung Note 8 cell phone.
2018/07/15: We've got our French coffee, croissants, and quiche. Start the game! #worldcup
2018/07/15: When I lived in Denmark, we often went to the #Vestkyste (West Coast). After storms, the waves wash up amber. Here is a grain of #Amber. Next to it is a tiny #emerald crystal. Both are the size of grains of sand.
2018/07/17: A centipede under the @Celestron Digital Microscope. 32.7mm long. He's alive. After the pixs, I set both of them out in the yard.
2018/07/17: Bought a @Celestron Digital Microscope. Here's a carpenter ant (very common in California, especially in our kitchen):
2018/07/17: Cat asleep in the tea house in our backyard
2018/07/17: If colleges accept students only on academic ability, it'll end affirmative preference for both minorities AND legacy students. May the odds be ever in your favor!
2018/07/17: Updated my page on how to take better pixs with your cell phone. People, pets, landscapes. Lens, tricks, methods, settings, light, layout, composition, and more. http://andreas.com/cell-phone-photography.html …
2018/07/17: You can see the US's foreign policy towards other regions. Many of those weapons ended up pointed at the US.Andreas Ramos added, @wgeary America is the world's largest weapons exporter. I was curious to see what this looks like over time, so I mapped the flows of arms transfers leaving the U.S. from 1950 to 2017. The data comes from @SIPRIorg 's Arms Transfe…
2018/07/18: And here's Barney Google and his horse Sparky. https://t.co/FMWHBb3imH
2018/07/18: Ever wonder how Google got its name? In 1923, Billy DeBeck drew a comic strip Barney Google, a billionaire with a Google Building and airliner. There's even a hit song "Barney Google with the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes". Copyright in 1923 and still valid. https://t.co/txK3xVtaC9
2018/07/18: Forget Jurassic Park movies. This is what Tyrannosaurus Rex T-Rex looked like. Lots of colorful feathers, tiny arms, small tongue. The front is balanced by the thick heavy tail. https://t.co/MHW3Nc0k35
2018/07/18: Used analytics to find the pages at http://andreas.com that users tried to find but don't exist. Made 301-Redirects to send them to the right pages. This is part of the cleanup after removing Wordpress and going back to HTML. See http://andreas.com
2018/07/19: Going to the #rugbyworldcupsevens in San Francisco this Saturday. Rugby World Cup.
2018/07/19: Katsushika Hokusai, Japan's best known artist, is Japan's least Japanese artist. To Westerners, his "The Great Wave" woodblock is the quintessential Japanese image, yet it's quite un-Japanese; it's a Western painting seen through Japanese eyes. https://t.co/kExI7xczGl https://t.co/55SafW5bQL
2018/07/19: This is pretty funny. Google estimates there are 130 trillion pages on the Web, up from 30 trillion in March/2013. The vast majority will never be seen.
2018/07/19: William Schockley had his lab at 382 San Antonio, Mt. View (near the Safeway) where he made the first transistors and chips. It all started there. Bldg gone, but these transistors sculptures are up. See the N696? https://t.co/jouZ9AqEKZ
2018/07/20: In 1994, I worked at a mega-corp. I told the board of directors we had to register the corp's name as a URL and set up a website. They discussed it and said, "No, we see no value in this." Blockchain today reminds me of the web in 1993. But it will be much bigger than the web. https://t.co/eWjQmjzUyG
2018/07/21: #RugbyWorldCup7s in San Francisco #rugby now, France vs Australia . We're VIP guests of #tudorwatch #borntodare https://t.co/V6KieMr1XF
2018/07/21: Family values. Democrats are less inclined than Republicans to cheat on their spouses. The Ashley Madison adultery site is mostly Republicans, Libertarians, Greens, & unaffiliated voters. https://t.co/4LwNFrBAnh
2018/07/21: Scrum, ruck, and muck! #RWC7s #RugbyWorldCup7s in #SanFrancisco . Watching world Cup in rugby. Guests of #tudorwatch https://t.co/1honHq85jt
2018/07/21: Very good (and clear) overview of Martin #Heidegger work in philosophy. This is what I studied (in German, at the University of #Heidelberg) before I got into computers. Heidegger is to philosophy as Einstein is to physics. https://t.co/OTjOsEPnVC
2018/07/22: 2/ In Shepherd Mead's future, marketing satisfies every need and the population ends up in a bland, mediocre future of desires and virtual orgies. Marketing is the end of the future. See more about Shepherd Mead's "The Big Ball of Wax" at https://t.co/hAHDLBGYJ0
2018/07/22: Shepherd Mead's "The Big Ball of Wax" (1955), set in the mid-90s, had organic veggies, car phones, voice dialing, big-screen TVs, TV audience voting, televangelists, graphic novels, self-driven cars , videotape, virtual reality, electric cars, and the collapse of the USSR. https://t.co/wY1mvHvcSH
2018/07/22: Watched Rugby World Cup Sevens in #SanFrancisco. V cool game. #rugby is like a mix of soccer and American football, with more action. Lots of #ruck #muck #scrum. Guest of @RolexTudor and @FourtaneJeweler #RWC7s. #rugbyworldcupsevens https://t.co/Nmg06f3GqK
2018/07/22: What to do this weekend: Stanford has a great (and free) art collection: Rodin's Gates of Hell, The Thinker , The Kiss, The Three Shades. Peter Wegner’s Change as It Changes at the business school. Chihuly's Tre Stelle di Lapislazzuli at Lokey Stem Cell Research Building.
2018/07/23: 1/ Steve Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford/2005 may be the best commencement speech ever. But what about the guy who spoke AFTER Steve Jobs? Here's the story of that forgotten speech. He was scheduled to speak after the main speaker, but he played Stanford football and...
2018/07/23: 2/ didn't really know who Steve Jobs was. Anyway, graduation was three days (and nights) of endless party and drinking and he fell asleep at 4am of the day. He got up at 10a, covered up with a cap and gown, and dragged himself down to the stadium. But... no speech in hand...
2018/07/23: 3/ So while Steve went on for 15 minutes ("connecting the dots", "love & loss", "death"), my friend asked all his football buddies for quotes, inspirationals, whatever, etc. and it got all scribbled down. When Jobs finished with his "Stay foolish", etc., everyone was so...
2018/07/23: 4/ ...caught up with emotion over such a great speech that whatever my buddy said was totally forgotten. Which was quite okay, because it was such a horrible speech. In the chaos of commencement, he lost his scraps of paper, so the speech is lost forever. Luckily.
2018/07/24: @WeWork lunchrooms won't serve beef, pork, poultry. It'll reevaluate seafood, eggs, dairy, alcohol. No reimbursement to staff for meals w/ meat. It is phasing out leather furniture and single-use plastics. All meals will now be a stick of celery that died of natural causes.
2018/07/24: After 3 years of warning, Google will get serious about HTTP. If your website is HTTP, users will see a BIG WARNING MESSAGE that your SITE IS UNSECURE. Yep, that'll kill your traffic. Go to your hosting company & get SSL Certificate to make your site HTTPS. About $50/year. https://t.co/JjsLi8NinL
2018/07/24: Useful guide to the optimal image sizes for various social medial platforms. https://t.co/P6lA4UovwB
2018/07/24: Woman comes home and finds a mountain lion asleep on her sofa. Cat has a long relaxing nap. https://t.co/KyuqM3R1So https://t.co/apT29uiEXC
2018/07/25: 1/ Why does #Google, #Youtube, #Facebook, etc. allow #neonazi and #fascists to post? In 1996, dotcom lawyers sprinkled cash on Congress and put 47 U.S.C. §230(c)(1) in the Communications Decency Act. If your copy of the US Code is in the kitchen, I'll post it here, to wit:
2018/07/25: 2/ "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." This means dotcoms are telephone poles. If people staple rants to poles, telcos have no responsibility..
2018/07/25: 3/ because it is not editing or reviewing the content. If a dotcom were to start blocking user content, they would lose the immunity of §230(c)(1). They would have liability for the content. A #mommyblogger gets offended and a dozen lawyers leap to her side and offer to sue.
2018/07/25: 4/ Thus Goofle/Facebutt/YouBoob refuse to do anything about editing/reviewing/blocking #fascist #racist content because that would unleash the Wolves of Hell, also known as the Class Action Trial Lawyers #TheCATL.
2018/07/25: Anywhere else, people break into houses to steal the TV or jewelry. But in Palo Alto? Oh, no... https://t.co/BpOHzW8okp
2018/07/26: It really works! https://t.co/TTYReThQvS
2018/07/27: The Intellectual Property Clinic at Lincoln Law School of San Jose is a #patent & #trademark pro-bono clinic in Silicon Valley. Free #IP patentability, patent searches, #USPTO actions. The only non-ABA USPTO-approved clinic in the US. Go https://t.co/hL8M7Fb7ny
2018/07/29: #yellowjacket #wasp #bee https://t.co/73qJzSvshe
2018/07/29: Playing around with my digital microscope. Here's a Yellow Jacket (a type of wasp). https://t.co/BDMzsTzOZp
2018/07/29: Tail of the yellow jacket. They have tiny hair on their backs. I showed the photos to Helen, who said this is why she didn't want to study biology. Didn't want to look at bugs, especially in close up view. https://t.co/iWiT70Jz0K
2018/07/30: "We WANT lies!" James Kacouris, a shareholder, sued #Facebook because FB removed 500m fake accounts, which caused FB stock to drop 18%. Some may say #investor #shareholders really believed fake #socialmedia numbers. Do they also believe in the #EasterBunny? https://t.co/tKzWkD7hTw
2018/07/30: #Facebook added 10,000 humans to block threats of violence, sexist/racist insults, Russian attacks, spam, fraud, etc. #Google will have to do the same: Youtube is a sewer of threats, attacks, spam, fraud. Youtube is also massive ad fraud ($15-20B/yr) https://t.co/zntuNsgYeD
2018/07/30: Law school in Silicon Valley has a FREE clinic for IP law. They review your IP contracts, patent application, etc@LincolnIPClinic https://t.co/VAgjDNy0Gu
2018/07/30: My "Startup" book is being translated into Spanish. It's already in French and Korean. #SiliconValley #startups #innovation #entrepreneur #translation https://t.co/mL4lWRl2LU
2018/07/30: Watch robots in a Chinese warehouse. The KPIs: Performance +3X. Human labor -70%. https://t.co/buvhZPaRph
2018/07/30: Why are Rodin's sculptures so popular? See what I wrote about The Thinker, The Three Shades, The Kiss #RodinExhibition #BritishMuseum #MuseeRodin #RodinMuseum #Paris #art #artwork #thinker #sculptor #artworks #arts https://t.co/r6caO4BGoq https://t.co/g2qUCI1bF9
2018/07/31: I wrote an SEO ebook as a short guide to Search Engine Optimization w #Google for my students. All you need for #SEO for small websites, personal sites, #smallbusiness #website, and so on. All the links, tools, etc. included. It's on #Amazon. https://t.co/IvXQizo7bB https://t.co/qFCDbfH1at
2018/07/31: Places to #find #internships & entry-level #jobs RippleMatch, Internships, WayUp, AfterCollege, CareerRookie, CollegeGrad, CollegeRecruiter, Glassdoor, Idealist, AbsoluteInternshipcom, LookSharp, InternQueen. #interns #internship
2018/08/01: #WhyIJoinedTwitter Because ten years ago (Aug 9th/2008), I sat next to Jack Dorsey and Ev Williams at a conf at UC Berkeley where we were speakers. I asked them, "So what is Twitter?" Reply, "We don't really know... but you can try it." So I signed up.
2018/08/01: The New York Review of Books @nybooks writes, "Previously undisclosed evidence (...) incl. highly confidential #WhiteHouse records by Trump’s top aides provides (...) evidence (...) implicating (#Trump) in obstruction of justice." https://t.co/atNVIudbBJ
2018/08/02: The French translation of my book "Startup" is up on #Amazon. You can get it at Amazon #worldwide in English, #Korean, #French. #Spanish in a few months. #Startup #SiliconValley #PaloAlto #Entrepreneur #Investor #cofounder. How to get it? Go https://t.co/MeBFoTq8nD https://t.co/KQj7w3NEke
2018/08/04: #UN #statistics shows 18.25m #Americans live in extreme poverty. But the #Trump @WhiteHouse didn't like that number, so they dropped it to 250,000. The #USSR and #EastGermany also lied about reality... until they collapsed. https://t.co/RzSLfM7Onm
2018/08/04: The first attempted #assassination by two #drones with #C4 #explosives against #Venezuela #President #Maduro . Watch as the #army runs away in the video. https://t.co/AJc35fThlG
2018/08/05: "Almond milk recalled for containing actual milk." In response, dozens of makers of candy, potato chips, ice cream, cookies, and soda drinks assure the public there is no food whatsoever in their products.
2018/08/05: Trump writes that he knew his son was meeting w Russians to get info against opponent. This is collusion and he admits it. https://t.co/JPEVXw26Fg
2018/08/06: #TodaysWord: #Ideengeschichte (#German noun): Research into the history of #ideas, using #history, #politics, #literature, #languages, #etymology, #philosophy to trace back the origins, development, meaning, relations, and impact of ideas. https://t.co/L0wpiH5xwc https://t.co/s42cn1jlil
2018/08/07: #Google is developing a @GoogleNews app for China. Great! When it's done, maybe they can make one for the US. The current @GoogleNews shows stories based on clicks, i.e., lots of clickbait junk from crappy "news" sites. It's pretty useless. https://t.co/HOBPyBiWaz
2018/08/07: #TodaysWord: Gemuetlich (#German adjective): Pronounce geh-MUTE- lich. The #comfort among a group of good #friends. Evenings in German homes are gemuetlich. In contrast, American TV living rooms are corporate #marketing free-fire zones. #family #life https://t.co/HuHnT5zexw https://t.co/sGLSg5BqIV
2018/08/07: i looked at the list of all the sites, services, and apps at which i'm signed up. at most of them, i deleted all of my files, photos, postings, contact lists, etc, and then cancelled the accounts. if there is no account, hackers can't find my profiles. https://t.co/Wq3ot7JzMa
2018/08/08: #TodaysWord: Mu (#Japanese noun): By definition, this can't be defined! To be mu is to #think without words, categories, or distinctions: to think without thinking. You constantly think mu, such as when you walk without thinking about anything. #japan https://t.co/2eYbilEdxK https://t.co/mqsqJx07Q0
2018/08/08: 1/ Twitter says Inforwars doesn't violate their policies. What is Twitter policy? https://t.co/hUf1E1tkiG "...we prohibit behavior that crosses the line into abuse, including behavior that harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence another user’s voice."
2018/08/08: 2/ Factors we may take into consideration include (...): - the behavior is targeted at an individual or group of people; - the report has been filed by the target of the abuse or a bystander; - the behavior is newsworthy and in the legitimate public interest.
2018/08/08: 3/ Twitter Rules: "You may not make specific threats of violence or wish for the serious physical harm, death, or disease of an individual or group of people." You may not engage in targeted harassment of someone, or incite others to do so (...) to harass, intimidate, or silence
2018/08/08: So @infowars clearly violates Twitter's policies but Twitter does nothing. So there must be more to this than what @Jack and @Twitter say. Or is Twitter's policy meaningless?
2018/08/08: Wait, does Trump mean "Red Dawn"? Run for the hills! Watch the skies! https://t.co/S6GW0Mv7VO
2018/08/09: #TodaysWord: Sabi (#Japanese noun): The #patina of age. Americans scrubbed the #StatueOfLiberty to remove the copper's green patina. Others however like the discoloration that arises from time, such as the browning in one's favorite #tea #cup. #japan https://t.co/OjGurJy2hx https://t.co/qEFzAS0sDD
2018/08/09: 22 Hummingbirds Sitting in a bath Washing their beaks Making a splash. Gotta watch this. https://t.co/Y1MiY2rqZO
2018/08/09: AI #invoice #management #startup: you take pix of your #receipts & #invoices; the #ArtificialIntelligence adds it to your #business #expenses. Takes an hour. Why? It's not AI: a person in #India is doing the work by hand! AI= Actual Indians! :-) https://t.co/LRdLuQK58D
2018/08/09: How to write the perfect #elevatorpitch for yourself, your #career, your #startup, your #job, whatever. Write elevator #pitches that other people will actually use about you. You'll get #introduction, referrals, #client, #jobs, #funding, #investment https://t.co/3tPMDMzuaT https://t.co/szKgGtEI9U
2018/08/09: Michael Tomasky writes a very funny line about Trump's tweets and obstruction of justice : "(...) get yourself placed under federal investigation and try mimicking Trump’s Twitter habits and see what happens to you." https://t.co/xLwrWDbXkF
2018/08/09: The #USSR killed 4m #Ukrainians. #Putin, a Lieutenant Colonel in the #KGB, wants to rebuild the #USSR to threaten #Europe & #US. #Trump & #GOP #Republicans meet w/ this monster. Read what the #USSR did in the #Ukraine https://t.co/wsH0PEzhbC
2018/08/09: The irreproducibility problem is showing up in nearly every research field. You must be careful when relying on prior research. https://t.co/brz1FejLfV
2018/08/10: #Glamping = #Glamorous +#Camping. We talked today about a service that offers $10,000 per night camping #experiences. What, the #bear dances Chopin for you? https://t.co/Zt7PGTicsU
2018/08/10: #TodaysWord: Ta (#Chinese verb): The #understanding that lets one take things lightly. When you're certain of your #skill, you face situations with relaxed #confidence. #China https://t.co/4KmjX5h0TE https://t.co/tPpzpjoSVT
2018/08/10: Good info on @Google #revenues. 13 depts made $145m #revenue Q2/18, a mere .04% of Q2/18 $32.66B revenue, but lost $732m. Google ads made $110B in/2017. #Google is a 20-year old one-trick pony with no idea how to make more money. https://t.co/98gPPhhvjh
2018/08/10: More We also talked about (A Very Large #SiliconValley Company) (it could have been #Google, #Facebook, #Cisco, #Intel, or maybe another; I forget which one). Someone asked, "how many work there?" And she replied, "about half of the ones who show up." https://t.co/MuOotgfFe8
2018/08/10: The 13 #Google divs? GV = VC. capitalG = invest. verily = #health. Access = fiber. Calico = #biotech lifespan. Jigsaw = tech+geopolitics. chronicle = #cybersecurity. Sidewalk Labs = urban innovation. Deepmind = #AI. Waymo = cars. Loon = #WIFI balloons. Wing = #drones. X = secret
2018/08/12: I wrote more why #Google #Youtube #Facebook #Twitter, etc. allow #racists, #NeoNazis, #alt-right and others to post their articles and videos. It's all about a law you've never heard of: 47 U.S.C. §230(c)(1). https://t.co/nuSnbteKxS
2018/08/12: When you have #persimmons and #squirrel, you put the persimmons in little mesh fruit bags to protect them from squirrel #monsters. Mr. #Cat is slacking on the job and ignores the squirrels. We'll have about 40 persimmons this year. https://t.co/ccQvSFJk6I
2018/08/16: 1/ Corp lawyers & lobbyists wrote the laws on consumer data tracking to make it legal to track you. 2,914 tracking tags: Advertising 1750, Site Analytics 630, Customer Interaction 277, Social Media 100, Essential 64, Audio/Video Player 60, Adult Advertising 23, Comments 10.
2018/08/16: 2/ What to do? Use Ghostery. Free addon for your browser. Sign up (free) and you can block all tracking tags. Allow only the ones that you want.
2018/08/17: #BlackCatAppreciationDay Dash was a very cool cat. Extremely intelligent and super fast. https://t.co/uYDcmhQG9s
2018/08/17: #TodaysWord: Hyggelig (#Danish adjective, pronounced Hew-geh-lee. ): A winter evening with a warm wool #blanket, a quiet fire, the dozing #cat, and close #conversation with good #friends is #hyggelig #denmark #dansk #dane https://t.co/oQbuSEyNz8 https://t.co/HjakTGU4wS
2018/08/17: Wait, @Facebook inflated its audience numbers to advertisers? I'm shocked! Shocked! https://t.co/V4Amftg0GL
2018/08/17: “You could be No. 1 company in #Germany, but in #France people won’t have heard of you.” — Harry Nelis, #VC Accel Partners on why #Europe struggles to build tech giants. Well, they did build the web, #Skype, #CERN, #SAP... , but asides from that, what have they done for us?
2018/08/18: Have you ever noticed Rodin's The Thinker isn't really thinking? Something else is going on. #RodinExhibition #BritishMuseum #MuseeRodin #RodinMuseum #Paris #art #artwork #thinker #sculptor #artworks #arts https://t.co/aumCkUGKbG https://t.co/Pv0CBh7mtV
2018/08/18: How do you say "Startup" in Spanish? Emprendimiento? Estartup? :-) We started the translation of the book into Spanish. The translator is Mexican. A team of Spanish native-speakers reviewing each chapter. The first chapter is done. https://t.co/jdk8Mu4lzv
2018/08/20: #TodaysWord: Haragei (#Japanese noun): #Communication not by words, but by body cues, stances, motions, glances, and #winks. #Spaniards use a tilt of the head that most tourists don't notice. #japan https://t.co/pkNgO69cJD https://t.co/5T0HQWxBqI
2018/08/20: At #SaltPointStatePark, there are lots of cliffs and rocks at ocean. Found this crab hiding between rocks. https://t.co/B0zensAC4n
2018/08/20: Dragonfly lands in front of us at Point Reyes (south shore) and sat quietly while I took his photos. #Photography #lnsects - NSA Anthur https://t.co/MKzIGziWCV
2018/08/20: Helen avoids the waves. V cold seawater. https://t.co/6jORseoaJY
2018/08/20: Several #seaAnemones at the low tide pools.. we drove from #paloalto to #FortBragg an DC stopped at every Calif state beach. https://t.co/89TfS0MG8D
2018/08/21: #TodaysWord: Lagom (#Swedish): "Just the right amount to be perfect" (as in, "it hits the spot", but we don't have a word for that). How much #coffee? Is this dress right? How much #money do you need? It's lagom. #Sweden https://t.co/nizL8fnVIn https://t.co/HbkRGFuHEB
2018/08/21: Another pix of Glass Beach at Ft. Ross. Although the city dumped their garbage into the ocean for decades, the result is quite nice. The "beach" is about the size of a living room carpet! :-) https://t.co/tIZdUiHQlC
2018/08/21: Helen n me at #MuirBeach. https://t.co/s24QnqvwWi
2018/08/21: Kellyanne Conway: "Alternative facts" Trump: "Fake news" Trump: "What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening" Giuliani: "Truth isn’t truth" George Orwell's "1984": "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."
2018/08/21: Vanderbilt study raises questions about Google's massive tracking. 15m sites show Google ad. 30m site use Google Analytics. Chrome is 60% percent of all web browsing. Chrome has 1B monthly users. https://t.co/GqhpTetloW
2018/08/22: #TodaysWord: Maya (#Sanskrit noun): #Illusion. We create and #live our #life in a world of words: #political structures, #creditcards, #legal relationships, etc., and forget the unseeable world that creates these. https://t.co/xBbyN5jlUA https://t.co/ZdGU8teMtE
2018/08/22: A #starfish at Salt Point State Park (Calif). Very rocky coast, lots of climbing down to see the crabs, starfish, jellyfish, anemones, fish, and so on. This starfish is perhaps 10"/26cm across. https://t.co/6kRzC6pQxV
2018/08/22: Grains of sand from the beach. Each is about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. I used a digital microscope for the photograph. https://t.co/eEPQQymbvq
2018/08/22: Tried @MastodonProject yet? #Mastodon is a sort of decentralized @Twitter without @Jack or the ultra-right (yet...) It's Twitter without ads or central control (no, @Jack). Read about #Mastodon at https://t.co/bSiLS0V8ns https://t.co/cWaPBwO7Il
2018/08/23: #TodaysWord: Serendipity (#British noun): Finding good things by chance. Taking a long drive on a #Saturday and finding a secluded #beach where one has a great afternoon. Or finding cool things while fooling around on the #web. #English https://t.co/cQjj5E5fEt https://t.co/biyEco6c7F
2018/08/23: Playing around w #Google #Adwords Dynamic Search Ads. Google's documentation is a mess. I'll write my own. If it works, I'll implement it for my clients@Google makes $130B/yr... but can't afford proper documentation :-( https://t.co/H4vjKmt2wk
2018/08/24: #TodaysWord: Wabi (#Japanese noun): The flaw that creates uniqueness. Western culture sees #beauty in mass-produced #symmetry, like #Porsche. Japanese see a cracked tea cup's wabi makes it different from all other #teacups. Everyone's face has wabi. #japan https://t.co/ROj3nSktjK https://t.co/gUIqmPpLas
2018/08/24: Finally got my new @Samsung Note 9 configured. Bought it at 9 am. Only 2.75 hours! https://t.co/D4TjKg3uMb
2018/08/24: https://t.co/Fia4DzYe7S
2018/08/24: It's no longer if, but when... https://t.co/cFSI4oYmDP
2018/08/24: MIT Technology Review @techreview has a great article on #visualization graphs of filter bubbles. #Political positions can be linked and graphed. https://t.co/3BEVj3czjr
2018/08/26: #cat brought in a baby field #mouse. I cupped him up in my hands, took a pix, and released him back to the yard. https://t.co/7xf8NCeoAS
2018/08/27: #TodaysWord: Zanshin (#Japanese noun): Relaxed alertness. Many people think to relax is to escape from one's surroundings; my #cat dozes at the window yet is aware of everything. #japan https://t.co/TherWmosNS https://t.co/drSDayDBuT
2018/08/27: Details on @Facebook 's fact-checking teams and how they work, and how #Facebook deals with #fakenews. They fact-checking teams are in 17 countries. The anti-reality people continually harass them. https://t.co/pUNpdHaWo8
2018/08/27: Do states with more #undocumented #immigrants have more rates of crime? No. The more undocumented immigrants, the less #crime. See the study that was published in March in the journal Criminology: https://t.co/GzDLhbWGsu https://t.co/XVLTaimEzq
2018/08/27: Who commits crime? US citizens or illegal aliens? The libertarian Cato Institute looked criminal conviction data for/2015 from Texas Department of Public Safety. See the chart: https://t.co/bai513rJWG
2018/08/28: #TodaysWord: Mokita (#NewGuinea noun): The truth everyone knows but no one admits. I'd give examples which we all know are true, but... well, it's better left unsaid. There's plenty of mokita in your #office, in #politics, your #family, and your #friends. https://t.co/6i8TmrwV9a
2018/08/28: Sometimes, the New Yorker has cartoons that only the New Yorker could do. https://t.co/xVobQMuBO2
2018/08/29: #Trump says #Google is against him. He doesn't realize there isn't "one" @Google. You get YOUR OWN results, based on your past searches & behavior@jbentons asked people to search for "Manafort" & send screenshots. The results? They're all different. https://t.co/edQcbhbLfl
2018/08/29: waiting for a meeting to start, so i'm fooling around with a macro len on my cell phone. here's close-up of a dime. #pix #photography https://t.co/0mDlwxzHyl
2018/08/30: Helen found these pebbles on a beach at the ocean. She calls them "white rice pebbles" :-) https://t.co/Td81UictkP
2018/08/31: +305 #GrowthHacking tips to grow bigger faster. Growth Hacking methods include legal, gray, illegal, & very illegal. Sorted by #visibility, #onboarding, #retention, #offboarding. See https://t.co/LvPBaXNDhr https://t.co/RNlXiDCH64
2018/08/31: @Mikeallen of @axios wrote a v funny analysis on why the right can't build its own social media site. #1: "There's no sport in spreading right-wing memes without triggering the libs. That's the whole point!" https://t.co/B7dtSDRJWx
2018/08/31: Digital #Supermodels like @lilmiquela (1.3m @instagram followers) have authorized @Twitter accounts or @Shudu (130K Insta followers) appear in @voguemagazine. No more supermodels who want high fees or get old. Digital is becoming more real than reality. https://t.co/LhaI9NuVcP
2018/08/31: whew! a good day of writing. finished the final chapter for the update of my book. and it's #Friday. where's the #beer? https://t.co/wYblgdIK1t
2018/09/01: Orchids in the backyard https://t.co/bTYIWgYb4c
2018/09/03: Happy #LaborDayWeekend to all who work! Went to #Pacific ocean at low tide at #Pescadero & climbed on sea cliffs. A #crab hiding in crack of rocks. https://t.co/GCR5qtIzfS
2018/09/03: Kids playing in the surf. Yeah, super dangerous due to cross currents, but whatever. At rocks out there, 15-20 seals. https://t.co/RPr4OlHD6q
2018/09/03: On way back, stopped for a #hike in #redwoods. #California: ocean and forests within an hour. https://t.co/vzu6udXq3b
2018/09/05: #Venezuela #inflation is 1m/yr now. In #Germany I bought a 50,000 #Reichmark bill. Germany had #hyperinflation 1918-1924. The bill is dated 11.19.1922. By 11.1923, the bill would be 5B Reichmarks. By 1924, US$1 = 4.2 trillion Reichmarks. https://t.co/VwZDtbj10D
2018/09/05: So no functioning president; cabinet & staff act without oversight; GOP Congress hides under their desks; Democrat party looks the other way; Supreme Court is a pawn; US military ignores orders. Isn't this anarchy? No government? The US adrift? https://t.co/OKBAXJ38xF
2018/09/07: Is @puregear still in business? I emailed them a week ago; no reply so far. Or are they shutting down? Anyone know
2018/09/10: #BookReviews: "Linked" by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi: how networks, incl. #socialnetworks, #websites, #biology #food chains, #business, #proteins, etc. can be #quantified & described with #mathematical laws. https://t.co/PgAeZL3VPa
2018/09/11: Amazon is filling its pages with ads. V dangerous for Google: people go to Google to search but they go to Amazon to buy.https://t.co/LKl3tO1PoM
2018/09/11: I'm cheering for Hurricane Helene! https://t.co/d3vqak4Jed
2018/09/11: New Guinea Singing Dogs. These wild #dogs (never domesticated) from New Guinea have a two-tone #howl. They break from tone to tone. Pretty cool. Play the video to hear them. Our #cat came over to see what was going on.https://t.co/WdxuVvoDdX
2018/09/11: Rodin's The Three Shades: How to understand these three figures. #ThreeShades #RodinExhibition #BritishMuseum #MuseeRodin #RodinMuseum #Paris #art #artwork #sculptor #artworks #arts https://t.co/aumCkUYlAg https://t.co/S98OQyFgfM
2018/09/14: "#McNamara's Morons": The worst scandal of #Vietnam War? 350K low IQ men drafted & sent to war. 70% Black/Latino. 3X death rate. Unable to follow orders, 180K dishonorable discharge.https://t.co/JyFQA5Ie8jhttps://t.co/KV8OqEvKxbhttps://t.co/XZVtG6shLp
2018/09/14: Mars in evening sky. Follow the green line to #Mars. Bought a 5mW green #laser. Point out stars, #satellites, etc. Only $20. Great for #stargazing #astronomy https://t.co/PggIoept3Z
2018/09/15: Workers' lockers. Their individuality is the lock: each is different. https://t.co/bkKj6pmMKm
2018/09/16: The #orchids are starting to bloom. More in a week or so... https://t.co/o1MqGAHMTL
2018/09/17: Cats in Osaka notice an earthquake before it happens. They begin to seek places to hide. Watch the video. https://t.co/exQbCXScsg
2018/09/17: What's happening? #Poetry. That's happening. A weekend retreat of poetry and discussion. Nov. 3-4 in Menlo Park, Calif. See a list of previous poems. More info (and register) at: https://t.co/rAWfuVb6Ib https://t.co/4IauxEN0px
2018/09/18: New Word: Monopsony. A market situation in which there is only one buyer. For example, Google in search. Or Google in digital ads.
2018/09/18: Oh, this is really funny. See what corps "know" about you. I have kids, a pickup truck, a high school degree, and live in the UK. https://t.co/CLpDwglelo
2018/09/19: Rodin's Bellona Goddess of War was Rosé Beuret (his mistress). Why does this work let you understand Rodin? #RodinExhibition #BritishMuseum #MuseeRodin #RodinMuseum #Paris #art #artwork #sculptor #artworks #arts #bellona https://t.co/aumCkUGKbG https://t.co/mOe4rVYNlS
2018/09/21: "We have determined that we'll be able to fill 80% of the user's display with advertising before inducing seizures.” -- Ready Player One The movie is 97% pop cultural references to the 70s & 80s. https://t.co/jSFSeEcyo0
2018/09/22: Japan's #Hayabusa2 #robots landed on an asteroid. Here are the robots' first photos. https://t.co/8VIFIAhEdD
2018/09/29: @Walkme lets people "Create tutorials for any enterprise software within seconds without any technical knowledge." Now I know why so much enterprise software technical documentation is clueless. https://t.co/vzViqPpIei
2018/09/30: In Silicon Valley, a few billion dollars makes you just another working class joe who does the grocery shopping with his daughter. https://t.co/KjiqqtR2Ml
2018/10/01: Yep, good ol' Section 230. I must wonder how much was "paid" in "campaign donations". https://t.co/9k03MKuZPj
2018/10/02: What's the difference between #pictures and #photographs? Pixs are just #pixs. Photographs have composition, light, depth of field, and subject. Combine all of these to evoke emotions. The hardest part? Make it look easy. #art #photography https://t.co/UirIzby37n
2018/10/03: reading @AdamcFisher 's Valley of Genius, new book about Silicon Valley. it covers the early days of SRI, Apple, SGI, Netscape, etc. he's right: key people did it for fun and challenge. https://t.co/QXbYrXJzwv
2018/10/03: Rodin's The Gates of Hell: What is it about? Why so many figures in this art piece? What are they doing? #RodinExhibition #BritishMuseum #MuseeRodin #RodinMuseum #Paris #art #artwork #sculptor #artworks #arts #GatesOfHell https://t.co/aumCkUGKbG https://t.co/pSbszOtFdm
2018/10/04: 1/ Facebook has been hacked. FB ID/passwords are being sold for $2. If you use your Facebook ID to log into other sites, you must change your FB settings. Here is how to do this:Go to your Facebook pageOpen the "Settings" (click the little triangle at upper right corner)
2018/10/04: 2/ Select "Settings"At left side, select "Apps and WebsitesYou will see other sites that use your Facebook loginSelect them and click "Remove"Click the tab "Expired" to see sites you haven't used recently.Under the first six, there may be "View All". Click to see them.
2018/10/04: 3/ Select them and click "Remove"At left side, select "Business Integrations"You will see other tools that have access to your Facebook accountSelect them and click "Delete"At the bottom, there is PreferencesIn the section "Apps, Websites, and Games", click "Edit"
2018/10/04: 4/ This lets you use Facebook to log into other sitesClick "Turn Off"Finally, change your password
2018/10/04: Today is National Taco Day, National Poetry Day, and National Vodka Day.I can see that taco and vodka days are advertising gimmicks. But poetry? https://t.co/q2YCwOjyaw
2018/10/06: Orchids on the patio... https://t.co/vyCB53BA1f
2018/10/07: Looks like chili peppers, but it's Chinese goji berries. A friend gave us a few stems and it has grown into a Bush with 75-100 berries. https://t.co/SuMhdZ7qBA
2018/10/07: Yes, unemployment is at 3.8%, a 40-year low... because fewer people are working (60.3%). 39.7% of able-to-work aren't working. https://t.co/Hcku3EmUOF
2018/10/08: Google+ to be renamed Google- as Google shuts it down for lack of use.https://t.co/HU9SuxhWm2
2018/10/09: (...) some brands find Google search ads "quaint" and want their budgets moved to Amazon because it directly correlates to sales. 49% of product searches begin on Amazon. (...) Amazon is a seamless shopping experience. More at https://t.co/QqLpTCDCNk
2018/10/09: We saw this in the #SanFrancisco #BayArea on Sunday night. We couldn't figure out what it was. Most of the #WestCoast saw it. https://t.co/yfr8IQMaC1
2018/10/10: If you like books & you're in #SF Bay Area... Book Arts Jam: Day of #book, #print, #paper for #writers & #readers. Speakers, #authors, exhibits... #RedwoodCity Sunday 11a-5p Oct 21. Bay Area Book Artists (#BABA). More at https://t.co/0xu4JaWisj Please RT! https://t.co/9GbdCn7D7I
2018/10/10: Useful Stuff: If you're using Chrome on a desktop computer, you can use https://t.co/QwISpePuVe to receive, write, and send SMS text messages in your browser.
2018/10/12: Lauren Rojas launched a balloon for a school project. Her video shows it went up to near space 93,625 feet / 17.7 mi / 28.5 km. Cool video. Watch it at https://t.co/gkioEFdNZg
2018/10/15: A paper shaker is always busy but doesn't get anything done.Paper shakers arrive to work early and leave late to seem they are always working. Paper shakers will work when sick to make a show of it.
2018/10/15: Farmworker says to farmer, "We need a Porta-Potty!"Another farmworker waves his arm at the fields and says, "A Porta-Potty? Hell, we've got/200 acres of Porta-Potty!" https://t.co/R43YQSapBE
2018/10/15: Pix from Lauren Rojas' #space balloon #GoPro camera. #SanFrancisco #BayArea. Red spot is #Cargill salt ponds. Our house is on other side of bay. SF at top. https://t.co/A6XHHXoSdX
2018/10/15: Read "Valley of Genius" by @AdamcFisher this weekend. Interviews w/ key people in Silicon Valley that cover SV's development from early 70s to/2011. Lots of insider details, incl. the fights, scandals, chaos. https://t.co/5r4eDW65uC
2018/10/17: Flying @ChinaSouthern @CSAIR_GLOBAL? Their online confirmation is just for fun. When you get to the gate, there is no confirmation. Many unhappy #passengers. #ChinaSouthern https://t.co/j3zeSY2HM8GIF
2018/10/17: Massive fraud at #Facebook. Based on Facebook's fake data, news media fired #journalists. https://t.co/6R0LePsVxV
2018/10/17: Rodin's The Kiss: What's the real story behind this sculpture and why it was banned for decades? #RodinExhibition #BritishMuseum #MuseeRodin #RodinMuseum #Paris #art #artwork #kiss #sculptor #artworks #arts #Rodin https://t.co/aumCkUGKbG https://t.co/JAFXc5drFE
2018/10/17: ⚡️ “Check out the stunning nature images from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards” https://t.co/vo5mSgir5x
2018/10/19: I knew there was white noise. But have you heard pink noise, red noise (also called "brown noise"), and grey noise?There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
2018/10/19: If you like PJ Wodehouse or "Three Men in a Boat" by Jerome K. Jerome, try "The Perpetual Astonishment of Jonathon Fairfax" by Christopher Shevlin. Extremely funny, great writing.
2018/10/19: Well, yes, but it's Spain. The Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona finally gets its building permit 136 years after work began.https://t.co/AEKd58MnEF
2018/10/21: Wife is visiting her family which means... cat can eat on the table! https://t.co/0IYEGbBkoH
2018/10/23: If you use Google Adwords and your ads are placed in apps, you must read this. Ad fraud has become very complex to steal tens of millions of dollars. https://t.co/PQBEHXQSNr
2018/10/24: Oh, no! China is ahead of the US! Quick! Everyone fall out of your cars! https://t.co/dBqn3Q52KB
2018/10/24: the #Irish play hurling, which proves they are insane. #hurling is #soccer + #baseball, where every player carries a bat, run like crazy, and they all swing wildly at the #ball. in comparison, US #football is a tea party with stuffed toys and a kitten.https://t.co/7jxjAr8Czu
2018/10/28: The Hill: Jewish leaders tell Trump he's not welcome in Pittsburgh until he denounces white nationalismhttps://t.co/yFMY9Wtliovia @GoogleNews
2018/10/29: @Amazon can publish #ebooks for #Kindle in Arabic, Japanese, and Hindi. But not in Chinese. They can clearly handle the language, but they don't. That's a bit odd. Why?
2018/10/29: Carved into the side of a cliff in #China: two #scholars, probably talking about #books. I took this #photo several years ago. I liked it for its subtlety: just a small niche in the rock with two small #sculptures. https://t.co/47ML5Vasqk
2018/10/29: The New Yorker: How to Read “Infinite Jest”https://t.co/Gnm2vnWB7l
2018/10/29: This appears on National Cat Day... is there a conspiracy? Watch what he does. #NationalCatDay #catwalk #fashion https://t.co/V7uWqIgda3
2018/10/31: Coming. My book "Startup: Second Edition". Lots of updates & new 30-page chap. on Silicon Valley acquisitions, based on interviews w/ investment bankers, attorneys, VCs, investors, & founders on how to sell startups. On Amazon in a few days. I'll post link for free copy. https://t.co/98ksUlUtJ7
2018/10/31: Q: Are we allowed to say "Happy Halloween" or must we say "Merry Halloween? https://t.co/rsern227gK
2018/10/31: The Nanny hysteria in Silicon Valley. People spy on nannies in parks to see if they are using their cell phones. Parents are banning digital devices for their kids.https://t.co/1NxBNynx0Z
2018/10/31: They looked so mean!https://t.co/wQl4XcM8Ho
2018/11/01: What's worse than a spider? A giant robo-spider battle-bot! https://t.co/b34OwMaIGV
2018/11/01: Yet another #AutonomousVehicle in #PaloAlto. Most car makers have offices here to develop these. I see #Google #Waymo cars daily. Tip: if you see one, avoid it. Don't drive behind/next to it. They're erratic, do crash stops, block traffic, and get confused. https://t.co/rEz9Hdbtjp
2018/11/02: Testing URL #compression. #Google's https://t.co/9sNDQwLkgi is blocked in China, so I can't use that. https://t.co/NRxpybtA6W works (I checked with friends in China). I'll convert links to #T2Mio for my next book.
2018/11/02: Try this. Debussy's "Clair de Lune" performed by Michael Dulinhttps://t.co/taOSgoSMJT
2018/11/05: A friend is named Theda. I asked her if that had to do with Theda Bara. When she was born, her mom spoke no English and asked the eldest daughter to suggest a name. Daughter loved 1910s #silentfilm. Thus she's named after Theda, the original film vamp. https://t.co/ChmNxsAZH1
2018/11/05: Bear market is coming. https://t.co/RNeZNNi5ue
2018/11/05: Simon Wren-Lewis writes in the #LRB that sub-prime loans were a trigger for/2008 crisis but not the cause. The cause was a #Banking network that is regulated nationally but acts globally (i.e., w/o regulation). #Austerity led to #Brexit, #Trump, etc.https://t.co/XUUwXZyCdi
2018/11/06: Happy Diwali to everyone! https://t.co/oCqtaybRPz
2018/11/07: 1/ New: 2nd ed. of my book "Startup" is out. How to build #SiliconValley #startups. New chapter: how to sell a startup. TODAY ONLY: Get the #ebook for #free at #Amazon. Go now. Stop reading. Tomorrow, it'll be $10. https://t.co/OU0bHeepET https://t.co/qHNSFjfhC1
2018/11/07: 2/ Yes, you can share this link with your friends, startup team, chat lists, students, and so on. Free #ebook at #Amazon on #SiliconValley #startups. In 24 hours, it goes up to $10. Tell them to go to https://t.co/OU0bHeepET https://t.co/HjXDvA86Tl
2018/11/07: Is #pandora @pandora down? No #music.
2018/11/07: This explains much of the last ten years. The/2008 economic crisis was used for politics. https://t.co/lJkAoMy2Ox
2018/11/08: Did you notice #Trump's trillion-dollar bribe offer to #Pelosi yesterday?"If you don't investigate me, I'll give you a trillion dollars in #infrastructure, #healthcare, etc."What will Dems do? #Indict or take the deal & create millions of jobs?What would YOU do?
2018/11/09: Anniversary of the Fall of The Berlin Wall. Nov. 8, 1989. What was it like to experience that day? I was there and I wrote about it. It's the only personal account of the Fall of The #BerlinWall.https://t.co/E0UPHsXGCO
2018/11/09: FYI: Your #cellphone has a #camera. Not everyone realize this. VC was on a conf video call. During call, he went to toilet and set the phone nearby so he could continue to watch the conf call & sat down. Everyone saw all. Nobody said anything... until the post-call meeting. https://t.co/kZlHTv3NZg
2018/11/09: I saw this too in Palo Alto. Sky was red. https://t.co/HTLE0FhxMZ
2018/11/09: So very LA. https://t.co/Ls21kOHYqZ
2018/11/09: The federal prosecutors' evidence is clear: Trump directed illegal actions. Trump broke the law. The next step is indictment. See The Wall Street Journal #WSJ https://t.co/sc2aHZL35d
2018/11/09: “What they wanted to see was how many ads could they put on digital without people getting really upset.”#Google #Facebook made $900m on political ads.https://t.co/NzslIKEwL9
2018/11/12: Can you make #money with a #blog? Here is what blogs actually earn. The numbers are definitely not what you think. #CPM, #RPM, #Google, #GoogleAds, #Adwords, #Adsense, #Youtube, #PPC, and more. https://t.co/4LV0iG59Gz
2018/11/12: In all the talk about #contentmarketing, has anyone noticed #advertising is closer to #poetry, not #prose? A good ad has a surface, emotions, deeper messages, universal truths. Prose is narrative w literal description. V good prose is closer to poetry w layers of meaning.
2018/11/14: “Personally I think the idea that fake news on Facebook ... influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea" -- Mark ZuckerbergSo is the opposite also true? “Personally I think the idea that ads on Facebook influence sales in any way is a pretty crazy idea."
2018/11/15: Japan’s cybersecurity minister has never used a computer. Yoshitaka Sakurada, 68, admitted as much in parliament, after it became obvious he hadn’t heard of USB sticks.
2018/11/15: Many are walking around today with masks: paper filters or elaborate air masks. See https://t.co/PineR7SN25 for air quality in your neighborhood. https://t.co/ZDEXTxE1RJ
2018/11/15: Question. The air in all of #California is filled w smoke from the fires. What's going to happen when one of these fires gets to a large marijuana farm? https://t.co/zpn8c71s7w
2018/11/15: Top photo: #SanFrancisco w clean airBelow: #SF w current bad air. Look carefully in that grey cloud. https://t.co/RUvCPubEBi
2018/11/16: In SF Bay Area: no fireplaces, fire pits, etc, until Tues Nov/20th.See https://t.co/yeBQp4SzQ0 For automated phone alerts, call 1-800-430-1515Get text alerts: Text “START” to 817-57For air level, see https://t.co/HfiZ0IzWvg or https://t.co/dIlRognxjY https://t.co/tMAiEGfkGy
2018/11/17: A good summary of the Brexit chaos in the UK. Nobody knows what is going to happen, but whatever the result, the UK's political landscape will change.Britain's Brexit drama: What you need to know.https://t.co/kV4FRpFKigvia @GoogleNews
2018/11/19: i wanted to say, "Squeaky wheel gets the grease", but that's a cliche and who wants grease? so i rewrote it, "Barking puppy gets fed." https://t.co/Y7ivYtcIJH
2018/11/20: Hokusai's "The Great Wave" #woodblock isn't very Japanese; it's #Western #painting, thru through Japanese eyes. #HokusaiKatsushika changed Western art: nearly all we see now is from #Hokusai | See https://t.co/kExI7xczGl https://t.co/1MDlQNrzAH
2018/11/20: We've been watching "Narcos: Mexico" on Netflix. V good followup in the Narcos series. What's next? "Narcos: LA"? "Narcos: CIA"?
2018/11/21: Have you noticed that people send a txt msg to say they're going to call? Why not just call? Or they text to ask if I'm home. "Yes, I'm here; where are you?" They're outside in the car. "Why don't you just knock on the door?"
2018/11/21: Remember the Invader #Caravan Swarm & #Trump's promise to use the US #Army to block them? Yeah, right. So many have already reached #Memphis, #Atlanta, #Chicago. They knew how to cross the border. But the media + Trump never told us that.
2018/11/23: Suicide dropped 29% worldwide since/2000 but rose 18% in US largely among white, middle-aged, poorly educated men in areas that were left behind by booms and crushed by busts. Editorial in The Economist.
2018/11/24: The White House turkey has refused Trump's pardon and will cooperate with the Mueller investigation. https://t.co/Th7K7zDaVR
2018/11/25: Put up new Xmas lights. Previous lights have been (and lit) since/2011. https://t.co/CE4n9iFmDU
2018/11/28: For more about me and what I do, see my website at https://t.co/qUu4PLFMb7 Here's a pix of Lower Antelope Canyon (at the east end of the Grand Canyon) https://t.co/gY6fhab9bj
2018/11/28: When I told friends I was #writing a #book on how to write books, they said, "OMG!, I need that book!" Why write books? You get #projects, #jobs, #speaking engagements, #visibility, #recognition. Write & publish in 90 days. | See https://t.co/wrQhP6V2Al
2018/11/30: #Corporation pays $20,000 monthly to its #adgency, which delivers data... but corp has no access to its accounts in #Adwords, #Facebook, #GoogleAnalytics. Highly likely, agency has fake numbers for #adfraud. If you don't get independent data, it's fake data.
2018/12/01: It's not just in US that someone is named "#Abcde". A guy in #China has a special name. Look carefully: the character appears 3X in char. Top=thunder, top right=dragon. So... he's "Triple Thunder Dragon"? But mostly, people call him "hey, you!" https://t.co/9VXAqxe3Dw
2018/12/02: Me + cat editing Startup book for #Chinese #translation. Spanish 80% done. I'll add photos to #ebook versions. #startup #VentureCapital #innovation #SiliconValley https://t.co/uP27cw3bPr https://t.co/L0SOjUvphN
2018/12/03: I forgot I had this pix of the #dinosaur in #Google HQ. Google says it reminds staff to keep innovating or Google becomes a dinosaur. The real story? When Page+Brin became #billionaire, they bought silly stuff. Like a #tyrannosaurus dinosaur. Toys for boys. https://t.co/uuuxx7Qc0i
2018/12/07: Hey, @LinkedIn , can you add a #spam button to #LinkedIn messages? Easily 99% of messages to me are unwanted spam. This makes LinkedIn messaging nearly useless.
2018/12/07: Listen to the wind on Mars. https://t.co/VR72VuBazu
2018/12/07: What Is a #SiliconValley Seed #Startup? An excerpt from my #Startup book. In English, French, and Korean. Spanish and Chinese coming soon. Read it at https://t.co/nSFKDgZ0Wm #innovation
2018/12/09: Do #Mexicans take #American #farm #jobs? In 2008 #recession, United Farm Workers #UFW website offered #farmworker jobs. 4m visited, 12,000 applied, 12 showed up for work. None lasted more than one day. It's backbreaking work. P. 91, #NYRB, 2008/12/20. https://t.co/NSM9U7fnH3GIF
2018/12/09: Do #Mexicans take #American #farm #jobs? In/2008 #recession, United Farm Workers #UFW website offered #farmworker jobs. 4m visited, 12,000 applied, 12 showed up for work. None lasted more than one day. It's backbreaking work. P. 91, #NYRB, 12 20/08. https://t.co/NSM9U7fnH3GIF
2018/12/10: #SiliconValley’s Iceberg: The Secret about #SiliconValley Connections. An excerpt from my #Startup book. See https://t.co/puoGkNCqsr #innovation https://t.co/6BZ2ltHs2Z
2018/12/12: "All right everyone, line up alphabetically according to your height." --Casey Stengel
2018/12/12: #cloudme @tweetcloudbot
2018/12/12: Red light at night,Battery needs charging.Red light at morning, Low battery warning. https://t.co/UmdxEZp64eGIF
2018/12/12: The #Trump White House paid @Accenture $14 million for just two new U.S. Customs and Border recruits. Accenture will collect nearly $300m. #CBP #USBPChief #looting #fraudhttps://t.co/1jHdjZ9Uaa
2018/12/12: The Demo@50: 50th anniversary of Doug Engelbart's Demo. The 1968 Mother of All Demos and its ongoing impact. Tonight. Computer History Museum. See https://t.co/8GhFa0cfcX and https://t.co/V1c2mWLRsw
2018/12/15: See #Comet #Wirtanen this weekend Sat and Sun. Look southeast after 7 pm for Orion (three stars lined up, nearly vertical) . The top star points to Wirtanen, a fuzzy green cotton ball. #Comet46pwirtanen https://t.co/zxnKtQo9R4
2018/12/17: #SiliconValley #Startupping in Three Steps. The basics of doing a startup. An excerpt from my book about Silicon Valley #Startup. See https://t.co/NGTmLj5pwl #innovation
2018/12/18: "... Malls with big box stores and subdivisions behind high walls to keep out the roar of the highway. Like this whole country was built from a box of Legos that only had thirty different pieces." Andrew Diamond, Gate 76.
2018/12/18: @DougLeone of @sequoia: "I've had dinner in China at 10 pm. And people go to work after 10 pm. And we don't see that in the US." And we don't see that at Sequoia on Saturday mornings. We see an empty parking lot. They don't care to work?https://t.co/EuXTYP2Tw7
2018/12/18: @DougLeone of @sequoia: "I've had dinner in China at 10 pm. And people go to work after 10 pm. And we don't see that in the US." And we don't see that at Sequoia on Saturday mornings. We see an empty parking lot. They don't care to work?https://t.co/EuXTYP2Tw7
2018/12/18: Neighbor's #ChristmasDragon is up! Some negativists say #dragons aren't Christmasy. Yes, they are: he's wearing a Santa hat. So there. Dragons were in #Bethlehem, behind the #Christmastree, #Yuletide log, and the #football game on the big screen. https://t.co/XgzidcmDWO
2018/12/20: Pixs of #SiliconValley. Last weekend, we took #photos of SV and #PaloAlto for my #book on #Startups. If you work here, let's see how many of these places you know. https://t.co/mhKUrLDcge https://t.co/Q9JkVBLBRy
2018/12/21: Me + cat editing Startup book for #Chinese #translation. Spanish 80% done. I'll add photos to #ebook versions. #startup #VentureCapital #innovation #SiliconValley https://t.co/uP27cw3bPr https://t.co/L0SOjUvphN
2018/12/21: The perfect place for #Chinese food! And... it's perfect! Great food. Hao chi! In Milpitas at McCarthy Ranch, near Cisco (San Jose) https://t.co/QVcOHPHTvx
2018/12/22: A Chinese Christmas card for everyone https://t.co/q9VMiSFlzu
2018/12/24: Be on the lookout for someone talking about Martin Van Buren (8th President of the US (1837-41), 9th governor of New York, 10th U.S. Secretary of State). I gave his biography to a friend, but someone stole the Amazon package. https://t.co/oel10IwuGF
2018/12/24: started the process to convert my book to an audiobook. you'll be able to hear it while jogging, commuting, cooking, ignoring your boss, whatever. listening to voice talents to pick one. also this week, writing the courseware for the video class. recording video next week. https://t.co/ppldRXYz2e
2018/12/24: Want to know more about #Accelerators, #Incubators, #CoWorking Spaces for #SiliconValley #Startups? An excerpt from my book about Silicon Valley #Startup. See https://t.co/tmNEZzjl1z #innovation https://t.co/NTlWIPNGO7
2018/12/26: (New York Times) Daughters of foot doctor say he diagnosed Trump with bone spurs as 'favor' to Fred Trump.Is everything in Trump's life just fake, fraud, bankrupt, or a pack of lies? https://t.co/yv4at2iUvPGIF
2018/12/26: 1/ @AdContrarian @acfou In Dotcom Boom '95-2000, the metric was eyeballs, which was measured by hits, i.e., files requested from a server. An HTML page with one image is actually two files, so that's two hits. Marketing people however didn't understand this, so it was easy...
2018/12/26: 2/ to fake by adding more files. Page + 4 pixs? 5 hits. 10 pixs? 11 hits. What if you create 1,000 tiny 1x1 blank pixels? 1,001 hits! Woohoo! Hockey stick growth! Valuation shot up, Wall Street gushed, investors pumped money, and the boom was on.
2018/12/26: 3/ That led to all sorts of games, such as slicing images, etc. But in 2000, everyone realized the metrics were fake and the dotcom boom crashed. Total collapse. #adtech #adfraud
2018/12/26: 3/ That led to all sorts of games, such as slicing images, etc. But in/2000, everyone realized the metrics were fake and the dotcom boom crashed. Total collapse. #adtech #adfraud
2018/12/26: 4/ To solve problem, #Clicktracks developed #webanalytics in 2002. Finally, real #metrics. But the problem shifted. #Adagencies, ad distribution networks (#ADN), #advertisers, #publishers use ad metrics. Easy to fake. We're heading for another total crash. #adtech #adfraud
2018/12/26: 5/ The problem is the collusion between #adagencies, #ADNs (#Google, #Facebook, #Youtube), publishers (Google, FB, Youtube), #marketing, and #clients. They all want BIG numbers b/c that is big #salaries, fees, and #valuations. They all know it's fake.
2018/12/31: We picked the last two #persimmons from our tree. Super delicious. https://t.co/4TIo17LXpF
2018/12/31: Welcome to #SanFrancisco! https://t.co/mspw4OGwsc
2018/12/31: Why does every #movie start with five or more animated logos of various production and distribution companies? Nobody cares. Put those at the end, along w credits that everyone also ignores.
2019/01/01: #hummingbird at #bird bath. No #BirdBox here. He's just drinking #water. This afternoon in #PaloAlto. https://t.co/SyUiVXb8ObGIF
2019/01/01: Saturated colors are normal now in #photography. Started w #Instagram filters. #digitalphotograhy changed the way we see. #Pix of #Paris. Movies also changing, such as #BusterScruggs. https://t.co/eLiixgMnLv
2019/01/02: Doesn't it feel like 2019 is almost over? https://t.co/3wxVwboLic
2019/01/02: Doesn't it feel like/2019 is almost over? https://t.co/3wxVwboLic
2019/01/02: If you like #Tarkovsky's films, watch #Cuaron's #ROMA, esp. the scene where the maid (Yalitza Aparicio) walks around the house, turning off lights. Utterly brilliant filmmaking: concept, photography, lighting, details, etc. @ROMACuaron
2019/01/02: If you like #Tarkovsky's films, watch #Cuaron's #ROMA, esp. the scene where the maid (Yalitza Aparicio) walks around the house, turning off lights. Utterly brilliant filmmaking: concept, photography, lighting, details, etc@ROMACuaron
2019/01/04: Book Update: #Chinese translation is 40% done. As translators work, I'm testing #ebooks in Chinese for #Amazon #Kindle. For English #audiobook, I have voice samples from four #narrators; I'll choose one tonight. #Spanish is 90%. I'll also release Spanish audiobook. https://t.co/a36Stjkbnw
2019/01/06: Will this happen in the US? The US national debt is $22T. The US must grow substantially to pay that, but global warming may force an major long-term recession. https://t.co/bnp4gKCSA1
2019/01/08: We're doing the #Birdbox challenge tonight! Watching #Birdbox while blindfolded. https://t.co/7OzhchjNMC
2019/01/09: a friend asked this; i thought all knew. in #GoogleAds #GoogleAdwords, check Recommendations; do as many as possible. when your #Adwords score goes up, your impressions go up & cost-per-click drops. if you can't fix, then dismiss the item. that raises the score. https://t.co/UQjbQtHIhH
2019/01/09: Dear #Amazon, I just wanted a bag of cat food, not a pickup truck! Amazon now puts #advertising on the box. Will #ads never cease? https://t.co/j3FphESVrZ
2019/01/09: We watched Monty Python's "Life of Brian" (best Christmas movie ever!). Loretta (Eric Idle) may be the first (1979) to raise the right of every man to give birth to a child as symbolic of the struggle against oppression (or reality).https://t.co/1RuuyYArz0
2019/01/10: Chinese New Year: Year of the Pig.https://t.co/F4vzoIqp2R
2019/01/11: #Miami International (#MIA) closed a terminal due to a lack of #TSA security staff due to the #Trump #shutdownThe Miami airport website says see https://t.co/5rmurNX3Og for more info, but the TSA website isn't updated... due to the Trump shutdown. https://t.co/MyrvMwM77e
2019/01/11: Upgraded #EditPlus again. I started with version 2.0 in 2005, then 3.0, followed by 4.x, and now, 5.1. Amazing text edit w/ regedit capability; you can change hundreds of files in one operation. It's freeware; I pay the $35 to support the developer. @EditPlusTweets
2019/01/11: Upgraded #EditPlus again. I started with version 2.0 in/2005, then 3.0, followed by 4.x, and now, 5.1. Amazing text edit w/ regedit capability; you can change hundreds of files in one operation. It's freeware; I pay the $35 to support the developer@EditPlusTweets
2019/01/11: You as the #Founder of Your #SiliconValley #Startup. An excerpt from my book about Silicon Valley #Startup. See https://t.co/LdlLMfumE9 #innovation https://t.co/rDZRDQJhIc
2019/01/12: In 2009, researchers found that cows with names produce more milk, confirming the Wisconsin dairy adage, "Speak to a cow as you would to a lady." Hmmm... some men would be banned from dairy farms. https://t.co/l2gth8Y3yj
2019/01/12: Our new neighbor. #Tencent's new office building on Park Blvd. in Palo Alto. Few blocks from us. They make #WeChat. https://t.co/N9OZ62qKun
2019/01/13: #Audiobooks #podcasts require extra work. i made a list of all links as a clickable webpage. also had to number all illustrations and create an addendum w/ illustrations. also changed hundreds of acronyms into words. answered dozens of queries from narrator.
2019/01/14: @Axios writes that @AOC #alexandriaocasio has more followers & interactions than all other Dems. And more than the five major news media COMBINED. Fascinating article on social media vs. old media/old politicians.https://t.co/eY0xtmqWkl https://t.co/tsX0eIBrJd
2019/01/14: @Axios writes that @AOC #alexandriaocasio has more followers & interactions than all other Dems. And more than the five major news media COMBINED. Fascinating article on social media vs. old media/old politicians.https://t.co/eY0xtmqWkl https://t.co/tsX0eIBrJd
2019/01/14: Did five hours of video on Saturday for @FintechSchool's video course of my @Startup book. Video by the @BeFastTV team in SF, which makes corporate video. It'll come out in a few weeks. https://t.co/5XQPlb2zxH
2019/01/14: How to Get #Advisors for Your #SiliconValley #Startup. An excerpt from my book about Silicon Valley #Startup. See https://t.co/Uj7K0XYO95 #innovation https://t.co/lMSaqnELqW
2019/01/15: listened to the audio of the first chapter of my #Startup book. when i read my writing, i hear my own voice, but when i listen to the narrator, i hear the words in a new way. she added her character and tone. like meeting yourself who's a different self. https://t.co/iiBHs1SOzu
2019/01/15: San Francisco at rush hour last night. I liked the different colors: sky, walls of buildings, the lit offices, the red lights. https://t.co/qP7yMJzMAK
2019/01/16: Tip: Friend told #DishTV #Dish that he will cancel the account. Dish lowered the monthly fee to $60/month + 2 new receivers that record up to like a billion hours. Free installation. https://t.co/qIDcuXseos
2019/01/17: I have some 500 pages at my website about #technology, #SiliconValley, #startups, and so on. The #1 Most Popular page with the most traffic? #Poetry by #MaryOliver. Mary Oliver passed away today, a great loss for all. Read a poem by her. https://t.co/JN7MN7NjYg
2019/01/17: Prevent #Facebook from showing ads to you based on your behavior, interests, friends, and background. Go to your Facebook profile; click “Settings”; click “Ads”, click “Your information”; and turn off everything. Forward this to your friends. https://t.co/HrO0mlteAr
2019/01/17: The change in trust of US institutions, 1979 to 2018. Steep drops for #media, #religion, #banks, #schools, #Congress. https://t.co/Tdd7pnVhZ1
2019/01/17: The change in trust of US institutions, 1979 to/2018. Steep drops for #media, #religion, #banks, #schools, #Congress. https://t.co/Tdd7pnVhZ1
2019/01/18: Long week coming up. Monday: Teaching #analytics all day. Tues: Presentation to #engineering students. Afternoon: Speaking to #eMBAs. Wens: Client meetings. Fri: Lunch meeting. I've been writing presentations all day. Cat is exhausted.
2019/01/18: When you write code... https://t.co/0hlwBzmPbp
2019/01/19: a friend has an extensive (hundreds!) collection of frisbees, including an original Frisbee pie pan. at the pie factory, employees tossed the pie pans around during breaks. all frisbees come from these pie pans. https://t.co/QLu60KH5Kv
2019/01/19: It's late Spring in Palo Alto. Yes, in mid-January. Far too early. #globalwarming https://t.co/4OFGa4M2R1
2019/01/21: #Hackers use a #Nest camera to send warning of incoming #NorthKorea #missile attack. #Google doesn't tell customers about this. https://t.co/ZlUxSf8vZUvia @GoogleNews
2019/01/22: #Brexit-backing businessman Sir James Dyson (#Dyson vacuum cleaners) is relocating the Dyson head office from the UK to Singapore. Goodbye, losers! https://t.co/eJ2eDfp5BzGIF
2019/01/22: #TSA told airport security at a California airport that excessive absences hurts security at the airport, and warned of "disciplinary action" for employees who miss work. "You'll be punished if you don't show up for work when we don't pay you." That'll really help morale! https://t.co/pcfbUA8BsqGIF
2019/01/23: #Spanish translation of #Startup book is done. editor is proofreading the text. it then comes back to me: i do layout & production. global publication 2019/02/20: #Spain, Latin America, #Mexico, and 40m Spanish speakers in US. https://t.co/zXylxybX1ZGIF
2019/01/23: #Spanish translation of #Startup book is done. editor is proofreading the text. it then comes back to me: i do layout & production. global publication Feb/20: #Spain, Latin America, #Mexico, and 40m Spanish speakers in US. https://t.co/zXylxybX1ZGIF
2019/01/23: i donated. you can too. help #GirlsInStem https://t.co/AOmMSC0TGp
2019/01/23: la #traducción al #español del libro #Startup esta listo. estámos revisando el texto. luego vuelve a mí: hago diseño y producción. publicación el 20 de febrero: #España, América Latina, #México y 40 millones de hablantes de español en EE. UU. https://t.co/GeL2ejchS7GIF
2019/01/23: la #traducción al #español del libro #Startup esta listo. estámos revisando el texto. luego vuelve a mí: hago diseño y producción. publicación el/20 de febrero: #España, América Latina, #México y 40 millones de hablantes de español en EE. UU. https://t.co/GeL2ejchS7GIF
2019/01/23: Watched #babydriver (2017). Amazing film with action, music, camera, colors, and a cast of great actors. Fun movie. Watch the trailer. https://t.co/oNRFEf67C2
2019/01/23: Why Set Up Your #Startup in #SiliconValley? An excerpt from my book about Silicon Valley #Startup. See https://t.co/txUgLlNf18 #innovation https://t.co/XbpMjUTNOj
2019/01/24: At #parc today for #HelloTomorrow conf on future tech.
2019/01/24: Question: When people were rescued in the 1800s from #drowning, #snow, etc., they were always given #brandy or #whiskey. Why? Any ideas? Any when did that stop? And why? https://t.co/cN3XdTx1P6GIF
2019/01/24: Someone told me about this and I thought she was joking. It really exists. Raw, gluten-free, vegan, kosher-friendly, paleo-friendly, organic, pesticide-free cannabis macaroons.
2019/01/24: When marketing goes crazy... https://t.co/Gt1DZiCKSY
2019/01/25: Every Trending topic today is about #Trump. What a day. https://t.co/xgbsX72teE
2019/01/25: New book on #startups in Latin America: "Crossing Borders" by Nathan Lustig (2019). Co-founder Magma Partners #venturecapital invested in 50 #startup. @nathanlustig #VC #funding #Brazil #Mexico #Argentina #Chile #Colombia #Peru #innovation #startuphttps://t.co/FYgcmXzAw1
2019/01/25: New book on #startups in Latin America: "Crossing Borders" by Nathan Lustig (2019). Co-founder Magma Partners #venturecapital invested in 50 #startup@nathanlustig #VC #funding #Brazil #Mexico #Argentina #Chile #Colombia #Peru #innovation #startuphttps://t.co/FYgcmXzAw1
2019/01/25: The same at #Google. If you've ever wondered why so many Chinese and Indians at @Google but only 3% Latino and 2% Black, here's the answer. https://t.co/qbNsE6Fr3z
2019/01/25: Very good article about the collapse of journalism and the news media, both online and print. Lots of details. https://t.co/kMUCZpNmOy
2019/01/26: Cool! Bought an original certified Canada Moose jacket on eBay for only $50. To prove authenticity, seller showed me the patch! https://t.co/etn1s3w4Ls
2019/01/27: At the shore, looking west, Palo Alto to the low mountains. Lots of ducks, sandpiper, and other birds. https://t.co/gF7Vp77NDd
2019/01/27: David Cole (@DavidColeACLU, Nat. Legal Director, ACLU and Professor at Georgetown) writes (NYRB 2019/02/07 ) about social media. In his review of "Twitter and Tear Gas" by Zeynep Tufekci @zeynep , he cites the following:https://t.co/bC4VZ6L9Uq https://t.co/ZdDpqzvQVR
2019/01/27: David Cole (@DavidColeACLU, Nat. Legal Director, ACLU and Professor at Georgetown) writes (NYRB Feb. 7/2019 ) about social media. In his review of "Twitter and Tear Gas" by Zeynep Tufekci @zeynep , he cites the following:https://t.co/bC4VZ6L9Uq https://t.co/ZdDpqzvQVR
2019/01/28: Update. #Startup book #Chinese translation is 70% done. Expect publication in March. Publisher arrived from #China. At lunch, we came up with the next book. More lunches in next few days. https://t.co/TPUKZoN8P3
2019/01/29: Bloomberg: Harley-Davidson Profit Is Wiped Out by President Trump’s Tariffs.https://t.co/Xg2lI7wsVw
2019/01/29: Can you make $$$ with ads in your #blog? #Google #Adsense pays out $1.38 RPM. To make $1,000/month, you must show 725,000 ads. Most media sites aren't making money. Massive fraud? See data at https://t.co/Fs3WtSqM20 https://t.co/u79GqTPCTJ
2019/01/29: gotta watch. v cool music video. https://t.co/FA4HZ7OtMj
2019/01/29: Make $ with ads in your #blog? #Google #Adsense pays out $1.38 RPM. To make $1,000/month, you must show 725,000 ads. Most media sites aren't making money. Massive fraud? See data at https://t.co/Fs3WtSqM20 https://t.co/u79GqTPCTJ
2019/01/29: True or False: You can go to #Starbucks and get a #puppycino for your #dog:
2019/01/30: #Books, books, books... See if your public library is part of https://t.co/iZYwKuitAY. Read +50,000 books with your #library card number. Go to https://t.co/TQEcR31Gpi https://t.co/n9WtoUTVba
2019/01/30: @aoc Hey, Alexandria, why don't you give your own State of the Union #SOTU on your #Youtube feed? I'd much rather hear what you have to say. I think many others will agree. @SpeakerPelosi @SenSchumer
2019/01/30: @aoc Hey, Alexandria, why don't you give your own State of the Union #SOTU on your #Youtube feed? I'd much rather hear what you have to say. I think many others will agree@SpeakerPelosi @SenSchumer
2019/01/30: Isn't capitalism the most wonderful system? Sell opioids, create addicts, and then sell treatment to addicts! Win-Win! The #Sackler Family Foundation gave millions of #philanthropy dollars to clean their name. Win-Win-Win! Everyone wins! https://t.co/3lOAIQn251
2019/01/30: OMG... it turns out @TitaniaMcGrath was right! Twice! https://t.co/8LtzClYAZP
2019/01/30: The view in Minnesota... @tonyaSims https://t.co/tEn2sOO1ga
2019/01/30: The view in Minnesota.@tonyaSims https://t.co/tEn2sOO1ga
2019/01/31: Ajit Pai at the FCC @AjitPaiFCC #FCC is covering up the massive fraud w public comments that he used to stop #NetNeutrality. He must resign. There must be a criminal investigation. https://t.co/IF3sqgvcOE
2019/01/31: Have you noticed that the #PolarVortex seems to be happening only in the US? The US weather maps stop at the US border. It's actually much colder in Canada. At -60F, Canadian Girl Scouts sell cookies door-to-door. #PolarVortex19 #PolarVortex2019 #PolarVortexPets https://t.co/jdJprz91rm
2019/01/31: My #book had more babies :-) After I wrote 12 books, I wrote a book on how to write #books. Many used this to write their own books. Here are two new books by Frederic Lucas-Conwell @flucasconwell https://t.co/UBWqjT8hWD https://t.co/c2DJeQKQuQ
2019/02/01: > "The American indie and academic theater has come to the conclusion that it is racist for a white writer to only write plays about white people and racist for a white writer to write plays with racial and/or ethnically diverse characters." https://t.co/XxvQzUVzyP
2019/02/01: Q. What's the biggest mistake for a #startup founder?A. Raise money too early. #Investor gets too much control. They want returns, so they force you to focus on revenues, which means you don't develop the product/service anymore. Result: Weak product/service. https://t.co/jgQQg1Fee1
2019/02/02: "They Shall Not Grow Old" by Peter Jackson uses archive film of #WWI to show what it was like for the soldiers in that useless stupid war. 98 points at Rotten Tomatoeshttps://t.co/tRW9PYCEvq
2019/02/02: And another #SelfDrivingCars. I see various ones every few days https://t.co/QkeTRIQtAW
2019/02/02: another #SelfDrivingCars car #Robotic #car in Palo Alto https://t.co/0jzKwaGI0A
2019/02/03: V good analysis of #unicorn: "The deal you offer to investors: you give us shedloads of money ... until we get to be the winner that takes all. ...you can cash out (in the overvalued #IPO). #startup #SiliconValley https://t.co/3JMfo9dhPmvia @GoogleNews
2019/02/04: If you use the #Facebook mobile app, it will track everything. Tip: delete the #Facebook app and use the browser to log into your #Facebook account.
2019/02/05: "#Curling is the only #sport that makes any person think they could be in the #Olympics. You're watching it on #TV and you're thinking 'Man, I got a broom in the garage. I'm going to go sweep the driveway!"
2019/02/05: WASHINGTON (Borowitz Report)—A leak of Trump’s schedule left millions of Americans relieved Trump spends 60% of his time watching TV. Carol Foyler, of Minneapolis, said, “Just knowing that he’s spending 60% of his time doing nothing makes me feel somewhat better.”
2019/02/06: Gallery Opening: Art Show in SF. 40 #French #engineering #INSEEC students mixed #art and #technology to explore frontiers. 3p-9p, 2019/02/07. 910 Howard St. #SanFrancisco. Food & drinks.https://t.co/i5PQJkwKJt https://t.co/xfWU8KOiuX
2019/02/06: Gallery Opening: Art Show in SF. 40 #French #engineering #INSEEC students mixed #art and #technology to explore frontiers. 3p-9p, 7th Feb. 910 Howard St. #SanFrancisco. Food & drinks.https://t.co/i5PQJkwKJt https://t.co/xfWU8KOiuX
2019/02/06: Okay, #China invented #gunpowder and #fireworks, so they have a thousand years of experience at this, so it's safe... sort of. Happy Chinese New Year! #ChineseNewYear https://t.co/PmQQAfZatl
2019/02/07: Getting ready for start to teach a new class in #digitalmarketing. Today: #analytics. #Metrics is the basis of digital marketing. #INSEEC https://t.co/F3tBR2cXDGGIF
2019/02/07: Today! 3-9 pm. https://t.co/w1esMPRrAK
2019/02/07: Today: Art Show in SF. 40 #French #engineering #INSEEC students mixed #art and #technology to explore frontiers. 3p-9p, 7th Feb. 910 Howard St. #SanFrancisco. Food & drinks. https://t.co/QLpNXIbqWJ
2019/02/08: wo engineering students from San Jose State University #SJSU came over for two hours of brain storming around their startup idea. Very creative ideas. #Google, watch out! https://t.co/psQFqB4iHo
2019/02/09: Google sells your personal information so advertisers can advertise directly at you. To block this: 1) Search at Google for "My Google Account"2) Click "Data & personalization"3) Click "Web & App Activity"4) Uncheck "Include Chrome history..."
2019/02/09: There are several kinds of #digital #fraud, incl. #AdFraud (steal from advertisers) and #MetricsFraud (fraud on investors). #Data, #statistics, & digital technology has become so complex that fraud is rampant. Large companies basically just put up with it. https://t.co/pNRrE8CUIj
2019/02/10: An idea for #Netflix: you upload a bunch of photos of you and your friends. Netflix shows you a #movie in which all of the characters are you and your friends. They could do this with #Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, etc.
2019/02/11: When you work from home:Mon: Don't talk to #cat (b/c cats can't talk)Tues: Start talking to catWens: Cat starts talking with youThurs; Argue with catFri: Don't talk to cat(Weekend)Mon: (Repeat...)The same happens with your #dog. https://t.co/Udmv5pTJfy
2019/02/12: At local engraver to make a sign. They have their own signs. https://t.co/etbjGxQHh7
2019/02/12: I'm teaching a course in Digital Marketing at @CSTUdocorg. Learn digital marketing for your startup, your company, or set yourself up as a consultant. I share all of my docs: checklists, strategies, ebooks, etc. March 15 in Silicon Valley. See CSTU.https://t.co/beKfO7TZgL https://t.co/RxDTjMwQ7D
2019/02/13: Did it spark joy? https://t.co/M273FfZPCR
2019/02/13: I will teach Digital Marketing at @CSTUdocorg. Learn for your startup, your company, or set yourself up as a consultant. I share all of my docs: checklists, strategies, ebooks, etc. Starts March 15 in Silicon Valley. See CSTU.https://t.co/beKfO7TZgL https://t.co/ULCuxrQDxH
2019/02/15: i'm updating #TwitterBook for 20
2019/02/15: i'm updating #TwitterBook for 2019. how to use #Twitter for all sorts of stuff. definitely stuff about #Twitter that you didn't know. it'll be out by mid-March want a free copy? sign up at https://t.co/0Hi4RCkeHc(you may retweet this) https://t.co/tmmpnyBsLI
2019/02/15: i'm updating #TwitterBook for/2019. how to use #Twitter for all sorts of stuff. definitely stuff about #Twitter that you didn't know. it'll be out by mid-March want a free copy? sign up at https://t.co/0Hi4RCkeHc(you may retweet this) https://t.co/tmmpnyBsLI
2019/02/19: amazing. @Twitter removed @ManageFlitter's Twitter API access on 2019/01/31 without warning. Twitter killed ManageFlitter.
2019/02/19: amazing@Twitter removed @ManageFlitter's Twitter API access on 31 Jan/2019 without warning. Twitter killed ManageFlitter.
2019/02/19: From the LARB, "...people ask, ‘What kind of atheist are you, a Christian atheist or a Muslim atheist?’ Because it makes a difference."
2019/02/20: a bit of a long article, but it's good research into social catfishing and how complex it has become. https://t.co/BXiGDJwUR3
2019/02/20: Digital #advertising in US will surpass traditional ads in 2019. $130B on digital #ads vs. $110B traditional ads. By 2023, digital ads = +66% of ad spend. Ad spend in print #newspapers & #magazines will drop 18%.https://t.co/9abBTL1wI6
2019/02/21: Reading Shawn Flynn's interviews w Silicon Valley people. Free ebook at Amazon. https://t.co/iH7cEUg5X7 https://t.co/mGIH1cTaLC
2019/02/23: #ChineseNewYear #Parade in San Francisco, #Tonight, #Saturday, 2019/02/23. #saturdaynight #SanFrancisco https://t.co/Uct7OtOykF
2019/02/23: #ChineseNewYear #Parade in San Francisco, #Tonight, #Saturday, Feb. 23. #saturdaynight #SanFrancisco https://t.co/Uct7OtOykF
2019/02/23: See? Helen leaning out of the #zeppelin. It floated over the landscape, not very high; you could hear people below. We went over #Google, #Facebook, #Stanford, and so on. Zeppelins, small planes, big planes, #helicopters. We haven't gone up in a hot-air balloon yet. https://t.co/36pD6Ktok2
2019/02/23: There was a #zeppelin in #SiliconValley five or six years ago. One day, we went up for a ride. You can open the window and stick your head out to look around. https://t.co/3rQCxRkTee
2019/02/25: #Dog catches #frisbee at 83 yards. Cool! #Guinness World Record and World Flying Disc Federation #WFDF Record is by Davy Whippet & Rob McLeod at 134 yards (402 feet). Anyway, it's a great catch. Good dog! https://t.co/ax2WzbNaCP
2019/02/25: How to add weather to your Google Calendar:in the URL https://t.co/rxrG9C3KuM , replace "57702" w/ your zip code. At left side of Google Calendar, click "Add Calendar", click "From URL"Enter the URL. Bingo. Daily weather forecast in your calendar. https://t.co/nGaiPOMRNT
2019/02/25: i found a new kind of software bug. i named it "anti-bug". what should work, doesn’t, and what shouldn’t work, does. how to fix it? you don't fix it! because what's working shouldn't work, but is working, and if you fix it, it won't work. it's the "Who's on First" of bugs. https://t.co/Lfx1zi2pcU
2019/02/25: Why we didn't watch the #Oscars2019 ? Because they give prizes to movies that we've never heard of. #GreenBookMovie? Who cares what it's about, or not about! I never heard of it! And we watch +100 movies annually!
2019/02/26: Movies' phases: effects, silent narrative, talkies, color, TV, tape, cable, DVR, DVD, streaming, mobile..
2019/02/26: Watched #Australian movies "Secret City", "Wanted", and "Pine Gap on #Netflix. We learned: 1) No #kangaroos, 2) #Australians don't talk like #CrocodileDundee, 3) everyone in gov't is selling nuclear secrets to N. Korea, 4) All cops are crooked 5) They drive more than Americans.
2019/02/26: What a great deal! App game is free for only $5! https://t.co/BhlcmvocCh
2019/02/27: Trump to Kim: "Does the US have an extradition treaty with North Korea? What's the fee for an expedited political asylum? Asking for a friend." https://t.co/Y3P6OkKt1m
2019/03/01: i updated #TwitterBook for 2019. it's my book about #Twitter. there are many new things in Twitter, plus other things disappeared, along with many tools. i'll post the URL in a few days so you can get a free copy.
2019/03/01: In #SF. V creative #graphicsdesigner artist. Solo art show. https://t.co/jWqxXq4les
2019/03/01: Why did #HighSpeedRail (#HSR) fail in #California? Massive corruption. Politicians and billionaires tried to loot $100B from the public till.Here's an example https://t.co/unPGnN2Vjm
2019/03/02: Chinese Moon Bridge. Its goal: allow #boats to pass under. But it's real goal is to create the circle #reflection. Can you think of other examples where the goal is both practical and #illusion? https://t.co/Khmiy3SibR
2019/03/02: Silly #Google Tricks. Put this into #GoogleTranslate. Click the English speaker. Listen to it in English. "El perro de San Roque no tiene rabo porque Ramón Ramírez se lo ha cortado." Try other languages: #French, #Russian, #Thai... https://t.co/vb9e6E9E5Q
2019/03/03: Learn Chinese. Lao shu hui (Lao shoe way) = mouse club. That's multi-level marketing (#MLM). A bunch of little mice collect grains of rice. Better name, no? https://t.co/W2bZCldUhqGIF
2019/03/03: We're walking at San Francisco Bay marshlands near Alviso. https://t.co/jLXtXT3GoB
2019/03/04: #Scooters are so #innovation #SiliconValley cutting edge! So... 1916! Yes, that's a scooter in 1916 in #London. https://t.co/0XWKOqH8nG
2019/03/04: I updated #TwitterBook for 2019. How to use #Twitter's advanced features, including Threads, Lists, Polls, Pins, Moments, Dashboards, Mute, #hashtags... #TwitterBook is free today at #Amazon.You can share this link. Go https://t.co/lKAbfAXHd9 https://t.co/IDFDJmXnjqGIF
2019/03/04: I updated #TwitterBook for/2019. How to use #Twitter's advanced features, including Threads, Lists, Polls, Pins, Moments, Dashboards, Mute, #hashtags... #TwitterBook is free today at #Amazon.You can share this link. Go https://t.co/lKAbfAXHd9 https://t.co/IDFDJmXnjqGIF
2019/03/04: V good summary of digital tracking. "When companies use data about everyday life situations to make both trivial and consequential automated decisions about people, this may lead to discrimination, and reinforce or even worsen existing inequalities."https://t.co/jVE81mZq5L
2019/03/06: "Multiple Democrats urged their colleagues to stay off Twitter — where lawmakers sparred over the weekend."My, my... pull back the curtains and we see what Congress actually does. Party leaders fight for control, but members can go directly to voters... https://t.co/HN9oucoBhIGIF
2019/03/07: Philippe Antunes will translate my book on #twitter to #French. It'll be ready in May for #France, #Belgium, #Switzerland, #CotedIvoire. #ReunionIsland, #Cameroon, #Canada, #Djibouti, #Senegal, #Seychelles, #Vanuatu, and more (I've met people from all these). #Twitterbook https://t.co/hBdjMCaCTH
2019/03/08: Imagine if... #Facebook was a #government service. Nothing changes; it's all the same, just it's by the government. There would be howls of protest from all sides over the total #surveillance and #tracking. https://t.co/IsUqnNPZOW
2019/03/08: Imagine if... #Google was a #government service. Nothing changes; it's all the same, just it's by the government. There would be howls of protest over how Google chooses which site gets to be at the top of search results. https://t.co/6xcvsYgJYa
2019/03/08: My cat got an admissions package from an Ivy League university. Really. Should I fill it in for my cat? As his guardian, I can sign it, right? Or should I wait for Stanford 's offer and use this as his safety school? https://t.co/Wy5gKARYR5
2019/03/09: @franciscoEstev3 have you seen this? https://t.co/mGndWHSHMA
2019/03/09: @franciscoEstev3 have you seen this? https://t.co/mGndWHSHMA
2019/03/09: BBQ season is coming! put together this morning two new benches for the side yard deck. cat supervised. https://t.co/yWukDrIdqr
2019/03/10: Any difference in creativity in #students who have studied in a foreign country, who plan to do so, and who do NOT plan to #study #abroad? Study shows a marked difference. 74% of #SiliconValley are #foreign, which contributes to #creativity .https://t.co/1BBedvFWIc
2019/03/10: It was a good week. Mon: My new book #TwitterBook came out. Tues: Book is #1 #Amazon #BestSeller for #SocialMedia. Wens: Started translation to #French. Thurs: Saw #YiyingLi's art show (she made #FailWhale). Fri: Asked to lead 2-hour webinar on #Twitter for the #DMA in May. https://t.co/3BUJNrfHzB
2019/03/10: The hunter returns with his prey. Feast in the village tonight! #cat #mouse #hunt #predator #nature https://t.co/dAXSMPhNvK
2019/03/12: #TwitterBook 2019 in paperback is up on #Amazon. Advance use of #Twitter. For #researchers, #journalists, #politicians, #celebrities, #marketing, #Youtube #cats, etc. Many thanks to @monteclark for technical proofreading! Also an ebook for Kindle.https://t.co/vXI8dKRY11 https://t.co/KoZHOBGGcD
2019/03/12: #TwitterBook/2019 in paperback is up on #Amazon. Advance use of #Twitter. For #researchers, #journalists, #politicians, #celebrities, #marketing, #Youtube #cats, etc. Many thanks to @monteclark for technical proofreading! Also an ebook for Kindle.https://t.co/vXI8dKRY11 https://t.co/KoZHOBGGcD
2019/03/13: Looks like @Facebook crashed today. Yesterday, it was #Gmail. #Facebook
2019/03/13: v good article by @DuncanARiach about #SiliconValley and the diff to #SanFrancisco. it matches my experience in SV. SV is technology. SF is web media sites and apps. https://t.co/RngtQHlfe9
2019/03/14: #innovation can be v simple and totally brilliant https://t.co/Yozc1GbGM2
2019/03/14: #yaledad caught by #FBI for #securities #fraud. To get lighter sentence, he squeals on #Yale #CollegeCheatingScandal. Turned in other staff and #parents. #alumni #Homecoming2019 will be awkward! https://t.co/l2ItsMHx6GGIF
2019/03/14: 761 families paid the USC football coach to get their children into USC. Will there be a public list? What happens to those people? #collegescam #AdmissionsScam #CollegeCheatingScandal
2019/03/14: At Gott's in Ferry Building for a #Burger. https://t.co/o1uGbDCJiz
2019/03/14: Happy #Pi Day! #PieDay #pi https://t.co/wdxsb5hSxF
2019/03/15: #Questions to Ask #Customers to Build Better Products. An excerpt from my book about #SiliconValley #Startup. See https://t.co/uE2qXKF9q3 #innovation https://t.co/PAtxD8wByv
2019/03/15: I'm teaching Digital Marketing at CSTU. 1st class free. Learn keyword research to find 20,000 keywords for your startup, project, company, etc. Register (free) at https://t.co/6EJu5LQThM https://t.co/HXBh47GtKt
2019/03/15: I'm teaching Digital Marketing at CSTU. 1st class free. Learn keyword research to find/20,000 keywords for your startup, project, company, etc. Register (free) at https://t.co/6EJu5LQThM https://t.co/HXBh47GtKt
2019/03/16: Something to think about while you do other things... https://t.co/xdhUiJW1Sl
2019/03/17: #Photography sometimes, black and white works better than color https://t.co/D6RhinfC86
2019/03/17: We planted a sprig of #goji berry last year which has grown to a large bush. It has beautiful small #flowers. Soon, it'll have lots of red berries. V popular in #China. Also called #wolfberry. https://t.co/52PCEDaWEi
2019/03/18: Teaching #Google #AdWords all day at #AcademyX today. #Keywords, ads, #bids, #KPI, plus tips. https://t.co/nyYEuQvQ7j
2019/03/19: "France's EU Minister Names Her Cat 'Brexit' Because After He Cries To Go Out, He Won't Actually Leave." Every #cat is named #Brexit https://t.co/aCHT5q46dK
2019/03/19: #Computer #Simulations And The Universe. #Physics can move beyond #experiments to use #computation to simulate and explore #universes. https://t.co/m73qADCZx7
2019/03/19: Remember in The Wizard of Oz when they ran through huge fields of #poppies? That's South #California right now. #SuperBloom #superbloom2019 https://t.co/saQVbQta1K
2019/03/19: while you're writing a tweet and you begin a #hashtag, #Twitter shows how often the tag is used (see screenshot). you can pick the best one from the list. works only in mobile and only on #Android (sorry, #Apple #iPhone users... :-( https://t.co/rK2IgLvx9Y
2019/03/20: Get your kids in a good #college. No need for #AdmissionsScandal. #FBI approved! https://t.co/6id1tflUxN
2019/03/22: https://t.co/hUSYwrwRor: Big gods came after the rise of civilisations, not before, finds study using huge historical database. At ~1m population, societies change moral systems. https://t.co/Uj3CqwJjME
2019/03/22: Job openings at #DigiContentHub. Bonus perk: Adderall in our first-aid kits! https://t.co/b4j8QVCb7K
2019/03/24: Any suggestions for the best sites for stock #photography? #stockphotography Lots of original pixs that don't look like stock photography? https://t.co/mLZ2sn10NO
2019/03/25: My copy of Wolfgang Streeck's @wstreeckblog book "How Will Capitalism End?" arrived. He discusses #economics, #capitalism, #democracy. https://t.co/ZAT6N2EwR7
2019/03/25: The Little Red Hen in #SiliconValley... Or is it now the Little #Capitalist Hen? Or the Little #VentureCapital Hen? https://t.co/2siebw7G3G
2019/03/25: Yep, #Trump's victory dance. https://t.co/8KWmKXdrCI
2019/03/26: So #Apple is going to have an #AppleCard? In 2019? Wow... so... late. I had a Yahoo Card... many years ago. Here's my card from 2008. https://t.co/ZB1GsSSrzz
2019/03/27: #Morning. Go to #kitchen. #Cat sits at empty #food bowl. Cat says, "___________" (fill in the blank). https://t.co/thbOW6pFAe
2019/03/27: @HubSpotSupport Hi. I registered and downloaded the ebook for social media at https://t.co/0XcZdoskNM , but the compressed file won't open. Is it compressed for Mac? Or the compression is broken? -- andreas
2019/03/27: A #crypto-asset management firm reports around 95% of trading volume on #Bitcoin exchanges appear to be artificial. So... #fake #bubble? https://t.co/SMfxFHKdqo GIF
2019/03/27: i led all-day SEO class yesterday. what it's like to teach in Silicon Valley? engineers come with a long list of questions, ask questions all day, discuss technical details down to the bone. super cool! defending a doctoral dissertation is kid's play in comparison. https://t.co/QxG1wjIi3M
2019/03/27: My #Windows #search was slow. How to speed it up? Open Settings. Search for "Indexing Options". Click "Modify". Turn off what you don't want to be indexed. Click "Advanced" & select "Rebuild". It'll search and find almost instantly now. https://t.co/iuGhDwzjOU GIF
2019/03/28: Twitter... now w dark mode. Turn on in Settings. https://t.co/6KdMLmZZDg
2019/03/31: go to Google search. search for "do a barrel roll". click the first entry. yes, go ahead and try it. see what happens. https://t.co/RztuE2GRIs
2019/03/31: Good article (w/ #photos) of the origins of #PaloAlto and #Mayfield. Some may remember Whiskey Gulch (now, the #FourSeasons hotel). It had lots of #saloons (and more). Rossoti's was also "one of those" saloons. Only one saloon now in Palo Alto. https://t.co/NSBwWCanqp
2019/04/01: good ol' #taxi works better than #Uber #Lyft. driver knows the city, shortcuts, uses bus lane, takes left turns on lights. much much faster. just say #ballpark, #trainstation, or #transamerica & he knows. Uber drivers say, "what?" Try it. Taxi are faster. https://t.co/mEhRRr2xe8
2019/04/01: I'm teaching 2-hour #webinar for DMA-NC on how to use #Twitter. Based on my recent book about Twitter. This isn't get-rich-quick junk. I show you Twitter's advanced tools and features for professionals. 2019/05/01, 10a PST. Space limited to 200 people. https://t.co/LdLQoR00hY
2019/04/01: I'm teaching 2-hour #webinar for DMA-NC on how to use #Twitter. Based on my recent book about Twitter. This isn't get-rich-quick junk. I show you Twitter's advanced tools and features for professionals. May 1, 10a PST. Space limited to/200 people. https://t.co/LdLQoR00hY
2019/04/01: i'm testing a new Google product. Google Tulip. it works. my tulips are growing 7% faster. https://t.co/caX5n7S98P
2019/04/01: It's true. Only text messages and knocking on the neighbor's door. No internet for about six hours now. https://t.co/meHraTQ2Lp
2019/04/01: sometimes, we forget politics is just one thing among many things. while talking with a friend, i said Trump wants to shut down Obamacare. he said, "what's Obamacare?" he really didn't know. https://t.co/vb04VtH5Bw
2019/04/01: wanted new pair of jeans. but nobody sells men's all-cotton jeans anymore. only stretch fabric at #Macys , #Nordstrom, #Bloomingdale... what do #Cowpunchers wear now to punch cows? at one of those $400 jeans place, clerk whispered to me, "try online". https://t.co/lThFHJ98nL
2019/04/01: yes, it's true: we had a massive outage in #PaloAlto today. no #electricity, no #internet for about six hours. i caught up on a lot of work w/ no #Twitter, no #email, no #Google, etc. https://t.co/2VzDQH1Lff
2019/04/02: Welcome to modern work... #Google fired temps and told staff that offering support or even thanking for years of work would make Google liable. Staff were told to distance themselves from temps so Google could avoid legal responsibility.
2019/04/04: Friend is visiting from #China. Brought #Colombian #coffee from China. V popular there now. https://t.co/Fjta6pF70u
2019/04/04: the #Book life. reviewing audio of my book #Startup. release in two weeks or so. the #Spanish translation also being reviewed. #lunch tomorrow w/ #Chinese translators. #TwitterBook in #French also coming. writing #courseware for classes (+500 #Powerpoint slides) https://t.co/OrT6WS42j8 GIF
2019/04/05: #Birdseed is for #birds, not #squirrels! https://t.co/odjTJW7h3w
2019/04/05: it's 8 am in #PaloAlto #SiliconValley. do i write #machinelanguage code? #SEO for a global corp? build a #startup? meet with #VC? no... i... feed the chickens. neighbor's on vacation, so i take care of her #backyard #chickens. https://t.co/y2hwbTncS9
2019/04/08: Mark #Zuckerberg offers to help #Congress to write rules for #socialmedia and #Facebook. The #fox offers to install the #chicken coop's #securitysystem https://t.co/XSYdmb35M6
2019/04/09: When you come to my house, you may notice (nobody ever has) a tube of lipstick at the top of the door. That's Google Project Beacon. It uses bluetooth to track people. Shops use this to track number of visitors, time, etc. https://t.co/Gm1jUf5V9n
2019/04/11: #Hackathon for micro mobility, hosted by at #INSEEC in #SanFrancisco. Starts today, next 72 hours. https://t.co/nWdxqcckuI
2019/04/11: A friend was in #Cuba recently. Now we know where Burger King stole its logo! #CulturalAppropriation! https://t.co/AvIKcxexNe
2019/04/11: Any suggestions for #shawarma in #SanFrancisco?
2019/04/12: How do you say "tweet" in French? You'll learn soon. #TwitterBook has been translated to #French. Coming soon worldwide in print and ebook. The book about #Twitter.
2019/04/15: Bonfire of Online #Content Media... #Univison bought #Gizmodo and #TheOnion for $200m... and dumped them last week for $50m. Not profitable. I expect #Layoffs in the existing online media sites that still exist. https://t.co/fY9YVNolon
2019/04/15: Notre Dame Cathedral in #Paris is burning.
2019/04/16: What is it with death threats? During the Masters golf game on Sunday, CBS Atlanta interrupted with a tornado warning. People sent death threats to the meteorologist. That's ridiculous. https://t.co/u3R5JF9ye8
2019/04/17: Excellent guide to #HRefLang. Thanks, Jens! https://t.co/5zVHASZ1Cc
2019/04/17: Helen returned from China this morning. Eva came to visit from Denmark last night. Helen is jetlagged nine hours behind. Eva is jetlagged 9 hours ahead. It's 2p for me, 5 am for Helen, 11pm for Eva, and the cat is confused. https://t.co/vPg9ZU3ezx
2019/04/18: Downloaded the #MuellerReport. 400 pages. Weekend reading by the pool. Get your copy PDF at https://t.co/63RnhQRQwm
2019/04/18: Is Ticky Tacky Little Boxes best song ever about #suburbia? https://t.co/a7R7mpPyN4
2019/04/19: Japanese Maple... https://t.co/s8ehJ8WOez
2019/04/19: Money doesn't talk. Money screams. When @Youtube CEO realized she would lose money, she did something about it. https://t.co/bfp48q7xrn
2019/04/20: Friend asked me, "Do you use GoGoDuck?" He meant, @DuckDuckGo I like the name #GoGoDuck better. https://t.co/w07FemZLo9
2019/04/21: Mi libro de Startup en español. Traducción y revisión están listas. Gracias a Edgar y @GalaGilAmat . Estoy haciendo el diseño hoy. Estará disponible esta semana. Startup book in Spanish. Translation & review are done. I'm doing layout today. It'll be available this week. https://t.co/oJSz6qIf9c
2019/04/21: ¡Happy Easter! 🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰🐰
2019/04/22: If you've ever wondered about Jordan Peterson or Slavoj Žižek, read this summary of their debate. #slavojzizek #JordanPeterson https://t.co/yv3TDhYEzp
2019/04/23: #Amazon quits #China. https://t.co/7SUeuceB8s, the China operations of https://t.co/Kko1PD1HLl, is shutting down on 2019/07/18. Too much competition. I wonder how this will change Amazon's policy on #Chinese #books and #ebooks. https://t.co/EFgmvpPqHo
2019/04/23: #Amazon quits #China. https://t.co/7SUeuceB8s, the China operations of https://t.co/Kko1PD1HLl, is shutting down on July 18th. Too much competition. I wonder how this will change Amazon's policy on #Chinese #books and #ebooks. https://t.co/EFgmvpPqHo
2019/04/23: #Question: What's the best #OCR app (Apple or Android) to convert photo of business card into text file? I want to collect name, title, email address from a pile of #businesscards. https://t.co/VjBVaMK5yy
2019/04/23: Comment dites-vous #tweet en #français? #Books are happening. The #French translation of #TwitterBook just arrived. Translation by @antunes_philipp. Now to do layout. Startup #audiobook submitted to #ACX for final approval today. Looking at 2019/05/14 release date. https://t.co/JgxKnIUQGX
2019/04/23: Comment dites-vous #tweet en #français? #Books are happening. The #French translation of #TwitterBook just arrived. Translation by @antunes_philipp. Now to do layout. Startup #audiobook submitted to #ACX for final approval today. Looking at May 14th release date. https://t.co/JgxKnIUQGX
2019/04/23: Layout for #Startup book en #español está hecho. Ajustes finales al texto, incluida la biografía del traductor, la biografía del editor, etc. Update: Layout for #Startup book in #Spanish is done. Final adjustments to text, including translator's bio, editor's bio, etc. https://t.co/D29ubiv2jH
2019/04/25: You must watch this video. A #chimp uses #Instagram. The UI is so good that chimps can use it. He scrolls, selects, watches. And scrolls again. https://t.co/YBHyDfchuY
2019/04/28: At Apple. Large crowd of several hundred visitors. Doors opened at 11a. They streamed in with wild applause and cheering. Asked employee if this was normal. She rolled her eyes and said yes. https://t.co/DS4Ei9MtCJ
2019/04/29: A search engine in 1950... https://t.co/yuLhDD0Cs5
2019/05/01: . @Golden is a new project: a sort of Wikipedia + Google. I wonder if it's possible to do that now or if it's too late. The web was "pages w/ info" (Google, etc.) and then became the social web (FB, Twitter...) Anyway, check it out. https://t.co/1bAdUx15w1
2019/05/01: @Golden is a new project: a sort of Wikipedia + Google. I wonder if it's possible to do that now or if it's too late. The web was "pages w/ info" (Google, etc.) and then became the social web (FB, Twitter...) Anyway, check it out. https://t.co/1bAdUx15w1
2019/05/01: Another print shutdown. ESPN Magazine stops publishing. It's been losing money for years. https://t.co/zqriGAZQrV
2019/05/02: On train to SF. Reviewing Monte Clark's draft of book on advanced #LinkedIn strategies. Coming in July. @monteclark https://t.co/jdWHV3w6KJ
2019/05/02: On train to SF. Reviewing Monte Clark's draft of book on advanced #LinkedIn strategies. Coming in July@monteclark https://t.co/jdWHV3w6KJ
2019/05/10: Get your kids in a good #college. No need for #AdmissionsScandal. #FBI approved! https://t.co/6id1tflUxN
2019/05/17: Gotta watch. #HongKongBallet does Ravel's Bolero like you've never seen. https://t.co/hWQkRaEBmj
2019/05/19: #Goji berry tree is filled w berries. Grows very fast. Sparkling with rain drops and sunlight. Yes, #cat in the background https://t.co/r1jzl8n6vL
2019/05/19: #Wikipedia is structured #information. #Google search is unstructured information. Google is a random Wikipedia.
2019/05/19: Flash... Bang! #thunder and #lightning in #PaloAlto. That on was less than a 1,000 feet away. https://t.co/eutFApiYoh GIF
2019/05/19: Helen saw this for first time. Doris Day sings "Que sera, sera". She said, "wow, she can sing... she's so clear..." not like today's grunting and chanting. Actors in the 40s really could perform. https://t.co/RW6rmRtBlN
2019/05/19: Prepping this weekend for #SEO meetings. Updating my slides. But first, shopping run at @Costco for supplies.
2019/05/19: Yesterday was final #DigitalMarketing presentations at @cstu. Students did great work. I took lots of notes of new ideas and clever uses. Rest for a few weeks and we'll start the next class.
2019/05/21: Great map of the #SanFrancisco #BayArea #water system. #PaloAlto & #SanFrancisco get water from the snow pack on the Sierras near #Yosemite https://t.co/D0006hdCRo
2019/05/22: . @Bloomberg writes about the people who make $100,000/year and live in #vans and #RVs in #SiliconValley. https://t.co/wlvSBRqZjA
2019/05/22: @Bloomberg writes about the people who make $100,000/year and live in #vans and #RVs in #SiliconValley. https://t.co/wlvSBRqZjA
2019/05/22: At #Stanford, east of the art museum, is the #sarcophagus of the Stanford family: dad, mom, junior. Roman temple w pair of male #sphinx in front. And behind? https://t.co/kyWeNipi0O
2019/05/23: #SanFrancisco's high cost-of-living: there are as many #dogs as #children under the age of 18 in SF. In #PaloAlto, one #church has only two #children in its #choir. Too expensive for kids. https://t.co/khvu8KJdPG
2019/05/23: The Old Bridge at #Heidelberg... in China. It's part of the @Huawei corporate campus. https://t.co/ost7nzeUsd
2019/05/24: #cats sleep 70% of their lives. Now you know. https://t.co/sPqW7d0uwV
2019/05/24: #Mayexit. UK Prime Minister Theresa May pushed for #Brexit and ended w her resignation today. Nobody wants the job. The UK is a total political mess. https://t.co/DJVxstRatf GIF
2019/05/24: Next Friday, 2019/05
2019/05/24: Next Friday, 2019/05/31: Advanced #SEO #Webinar. Lots of details about SEO for Google. How #Google AI works, advanced tools for meta-tags, edit hidden image #EXIF info, #canonical, #HREFLang, & more... all in plain text w/ examples. 2 hours. See https://t.co/UatfmyVPna
2019/05/24: Next Friday, May 31: Advanced #SEO #Webinar. Lots of details about SEO for Google. How #Google AI works, advanced tools for meta-tags, edit hidden image #EXIF info, #canonical, #HREFLang, & more... all in plain text w/ examples. 2 hours. See https://t.co/UatfmyVPna
2019/05/25: A young man from rural Ghana who sold his livestock to buy spy glasses so he could travel across the Sahara to secretly film people smugglers. https://t.co/6L9abX9PLG
2019/05/26: Jack Ma talks about #regulations and #innovation. He says it v clearly. With innovation, you keep up. Without... you fall behind. Watch the video. https://t.co/BkTzIXHMGm
2019/05/26: So... gleeful speculation in GOP that if Dems impeach Trump, it'd bring out GOP voter base in huge numbers. Trump is toying with this idea. Thus the preposterous notion that Trump will bring about his own impeachment to get re-elected. See the article. https://t.co/rEroLBy2Ui
2019/05/28: A whimsical #sculpture in #PaloAlto. In a park on a busy street, the traffic runs by. https://t.co/pSusU8GjP6
2019/05/28: Finished slides for Advanced #SEO webinar: Google's machine language; 8,000 human reviewers; deep website analysis to fix indexing; #HRefLangs; #Canonical; SEO for v large sites; #Reinclusion; Image #EXIF tags, +20 more. All in clear English w/ examples. https://t.co/UatfmyEevC
2019/05/28: pix of the @CSTUdocorg digital marketing class. me in the back w the @UCBerkeley #Bears hat https://t.co/2ksdlniXVX
2019/05/28: So... @LinkedIn also has human reviewers who check postings and articles for expertise and quality; they also block spam and junk postings. Yes, @Facebook and @Youtube could do this... but it would cut their revenues.... https://t.co/hPTCMhqnJU GIF
2019/05/28: Travel Advisory: Last summer, China issued a travel warning for the U.S. Beware of shootings, robberies, high costs of medical care. Chinese tourism to the US fell 5.7% last year for the first time in 15 years. https://t.co/QSbq7ORtij GIF
2019/05/28: What actually happened in the US #CivilWar? What were they fighting for (or against)? Why did it come to war? Excellent account of the positions at the time. https://t.co/5AN85mHRWv
2019/05/29: 3, 2, 1... Pitch! #Pitch event in #Sunnyvale tonight @TechCode. 385 Moffett park Drive. Go!
2019/05/30: Two cardboard boxes, a sleeping bag, and someone sleeping on a doorway in #SanFrancisco #homeless https://t.co/Jz5Uwz7myq 0
2019/05/31: Free #Kitten. https://t.co/cV2opFYJLY
2019/05/31: We watched Ida, a #Polish film directed by Paweł #Pawlikowski (2013). Excellent script, camera, acting. See it, if you can. https://t.co/JKfgZdrJyW
2019/06/01: #Audiobook of my #Startup book is coming. this weekend, i'm working remote w/ Fawn in #Quebec to write the webpage, the newsletters, the social postings, ads, bios, pixs, etc. Launch Wens worldwide.
2019/06/02: From 2018/10 to 2019/03 @Facebook deleted 3.4 billion fake accounts. Wait... if #Facebook says it has two billion users, but it deleted 3.4 billion... is it just me and my cat on Facebook? https://t.co/vJq21l3C2k GIF
2019/06/02: we're working on the release of the #audiobook of the #Startup book. in a few days. Fawn in #Quebec; me in #PaloAlto in #SiliconValley. simultaneous editing of docs, postings, etc. writing digital ads, email newsletters, webpages, etc. https://t.co/4IOXgc2wbk
2019/06/03: #Cat likes #watermelon https://t.co/iNDhMuicX1
2019/06/04: Link to the page for Startup audiobook. Book by me and narration by Fawn Alleyne in Quebec. https://t.co/LDaXZlSbli
2019/06/04: So the UK stole $45 trillion from India during colonialism? Why wasn't this in my history books? https://t.co/q1QykUNFq8
2019/06/05: See Andreas (in #PaloAlto) & Fawn (in #Quebec) worked together to turn a #book into an #AudioBook. We wrote an blog about the process... and we tell you everything! If you're a writer, you'll see how to make your #AudioBook. https://t.co/LDaXZlSbli https://t.co/dHJgnHapMa GIF
2019/06/05: The Startup #AudioBook is finally ready. Learn how to build your #startup while you're driving, commuting, running, cooking, walking the dogster, or laying by the pool! https://t.co/LDaXZlSbli https://t.co/cfL3amC1Dx GIF 4
2019/06/06: #Lunch w @INSEEC_U_SF at the #roboburger in #SanFrancisco #SF. 5 min per burger, 1 every 30 sec, 230 per hr. Everything is fresh, made on the spot. @EatAtCreator. Next stop, a #robocoffee. https://t.co/2xRGDTPV7C
2019/06/07: #DueDiligence is part of #startup #acquisition. Did you know you can do #DueDiligence on your #investors and #VentureCapital #VC too? #Startup #AudioBook covers this and more. https://t.co/LDaXZlAAtK https://t.co/CDWCFHEX4l GIF
2019/06/07: Looking to sell your startup? Learn about #acquisition. How to set your startup to be an takeover target, how to find buyers, how the acquisition process works. #Startup #AudioBook covers this and more. https://t.co/LDaXZlSbli https://t.co/VGzA395QBl GIF
2019/06/07: Yesterday, I released an #audiobook about #startup. I worked w/ a #narrator in #Montreal #Quebec. For part of this project, we kept notes on how we made the audiobook. Yes, we tell EVERYTHING. https://t.co/ACqvX7gcuD https://t.co/WD6o7ssHr1 GIF
2019/06/08: 100-Year Egg for #lunch. Its translucent. https://t.co/qFdSY1zDiR
2019/06/08: Happy #DragonBoat Day! https://t.co/V9NxdUskWq GIF
2019/06/10: #electricity is out in #PaloAlto . V quiet.
2019/06/11: The whole family of #squirrels at the #birdfeeder. Baby squirrel at top knocks out #bird seed to momma squirrel and poppa squirrel below. https://t.co/HPjZWcpzl8
2019/06/13: #California #HighwayPatrol #motorcycle #police spotted this licence plate. How many errors can YOU find? :-) #Califas! And how many days until you can buy these in tourist shops? :-) https://t.co/yRCp9ALChA
2019/06/13: Lilies in our front yard #lily #Flowers #flower https://t.co/apEIBNOEYs
2019/06/16: Estoy haciendo el diseño de mi #Startup book. Esta es la traducción al español. Enviaré un boletín en una semana. ¿Quieres una copia gratis? Registrarse en https://t.co/0Hi4RCkeHc https://t.co/Xs5sfCGDph GIF
2019/06/16: I finally have a few hours free, so I'm doing the layout of the #Spanish #translation of my #Startup #book. I'll send a #newsletter in a few days. Do you want a free copy? Sign up at https://t.co/0Hi4RCkeHc https://t.co/9i7Fh3Juak GIF
2019/06/16: Layout done for my #book on #Twitter, #French translator: Philippe Antunes @antunes_philipp. Ginger makes cover this week. Mise en page terminée de #Twitterbook. Traduit en #French par Philippe Antunes @antunes_philipp. Quand Ginger aura la couverture prête, j'enverrai le livre. https://t.co/5SLFJXvZ5r
2019/06/16: Layout for #Spanish #Startup is done. 1 hour, 25 minutes. Now to get the cover text (front, spine, and back) done and the #book can go to print. https://t.co/5ZAYFxHNCy GIF
2019/06/17: Learn how to build your #SiliconValley #Palo Alto #startup while you're walking your #dog, #driving, #commuting, #running, #cooking, or laying by the #pool! The Startup #AudioBook is here for your Summer Reading. https://t.co/LDaXZlAAtK https://t.co/KEUczC8xxw GIF
2019/06/17: Report on search engine market share by continent and country, worldwide. https://t.co/kg3HLhvmEn
2019/06/18: The French title for #TwitterBook will be "Twitter, Trucs et astuces pour le maîtriser" ("Twitter: Tips and Tricks to Master Twitter"). Title by Philippe. Cover will be done tomorrow.
2019/06/18: Want #VentureCapital #VC to be #investing in your #startup? What about #DueDiligence? The #Startup #AudioBook covers this and more. Learn more. https://t.co/LDaXZlSbli https://t.co/09Yjves0xb GIF
2019/06/19: 15,000 people are the "algorithm" at @Facebook. They moderate #Facebook videos in horrible work conditions. Facebook moderators break their NDAs to expose desperate working conditions. https://t.co/Hym4DGZseg via @GoogleNews
2019/06/19: 2 of the #French students at #INSEEC. I remember when #AbercrombieFitch was jackets for hunters. They relaunched the company as a new brand. One day, @Nike may be a dog food company. https://t.co/4kVuP6SD9X
2019/06/19: i did a test run of a #webinar today; learned one thing: use your cell phone for great audio (that's not what i learned) but... cell phone connections can drop. halfway through webinar, no connection. had to log in again. lesson: don't use cell phones (that's what i learned). https://t.co/5yNaV5UdcN GIF
2019/06/19: The startup world: #accelerator #incubator #coworkingspace #ycombinator #500startups and more. What are they? The differences. Which one for you? Or… none of them? The #Startup #AudioBook covers this and more. https://t.co/LDaXZlSbli https://t.co/mgygJr4JaH GIF
2019/06/20: Science fiction, #China, US, #technology, #science, broken #umbrellas., #politics.. all in one article. #SciFi . Jiayang talks with Liu Cixin in the @NewYorker. https://t.co/dzGm0pVz1l
2019/06/20: The New York Review of Books writes about the war times diaries of Ernst Junger. He shows a world so different. 65 years ago seems like 500 years: how things have changed. I ordered the book at Amazon. https://t.co/4Ql56XER2Q
2019/06/23: #Twitter #book in #French is coming. A few more days... // Ce n'est pas encore un autre #livre de #marketing sur Twitter. C'est un guide pratique des nombreuses fonctionnalités de Twitter. Beaucoup de détails surprenants sur la manière dont les gens utilisent réellement Twitter. https://t.co/oPlWDCaIvb
2019/06/23: Put down your coffee before you read this. Bob Hoffman @AdContrarian writes, "A research expert said that to understand Gen Z we must forget everything we know about Millennials, who were digital natives, and understand Gen Z, who are "digital aboriginals."" https://t.co/8IDgig5nqX GIF
2019/06/23: This is why #cats are banned on #golf courses. #golfcourse https://t.co/MW8S82e4xW
2019/06/24: "Subject for study: the ways propaganda turns into terror. The beginnings in particular contained much that people are going to forget. That is when power walks on cats’ paws, subtle and cunning." -- Ernst Junger in Vicennes, 1941/05
2019/06/25: Shakespeare Meets SEO... https://t.co/IxGkWgcAW2
2019/06/26: A public toilet is at the same time both the most personal and the most impersonal space. https://t.co/jLuQr9fzY4
2019/06/26: That's what it's like to write #books. By knowing sub-topics, the topic becomes clearer. https://t.co/DIyG5qvw3v
2019/06/26: This may amuse some of you. Back in 2000 BC, I made a webpage for #PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) (#PalmPilot...). #Bandwidth was the string between 2 cans, so it had to be super light. Much talk about this at the time. Open it on your phone at https://t.co/wEBtRPRvrN https://t.co/PTYFnzj9cJ GIF
2019/06/27: 14 hours, 33 minutes, 15 seconds until #France vs #US #Women #Soccer #Football #footballfeminin
2019/06/27: How can #Amazon send stuff so cheap? Because they built their own shipping system: #planes, #trucks, #vans, etc. https://t.co/xtoCTUFjAw
2019/06/27: La versión en #español del #libro "Startup" finalmente está lista. Lo podrás conseguir en unos días. Enviaré correos electrónicos y tweets. // The #Spanish translation of #Startup finally done. You'll be able to get it in a few days. I'll send emails and tweets. https://t.co/280gN9geEx
2019/06/27: What’s the #GrandmotherPitch? Learn how to make your five-word #ElevatorPitch that everyone will remember about you. Based on tips from 26 startup founders. The #Startup #AudioBook covers this and more. https://t.co/LDaXZlSbli https://t.co/kshWgBEwsu GIF
2019/06/29: #Fireworks at #Stanford after the #football game https://t.co/bxNyE1pxf7
2019/06/30: The new books in French and Spanish launch in two hours. Webpages are up in #French and #Spanish, newsletter & tweets are scheduled, and I can go to sleep. #Book release starts in #China, goes to #India, #Africa, #Europe, and then #Americas. https://t.co/UKe5SRtNoZ GIF
2019/07/01: #Twitter, Trucs et astuces pour le maîtriser. Écrit par Andreas Ramos. Adapté en #français par Philippe Antunes. #Gratis cette semaine. https://t.co/9stVRxfTph https://t.co/KeXKEjkyzp GIF
2019/07/01: Al fin esta listo mi libro sobre #Startup, ahora en #español! ¡Consíguelo gratis esta semana! https://t.co/H4Pqkj5S9U https://t.co/7YYkkwanf8 GIF
2019/07/01: Book Credits: Spanish translation: Edgar Estanislao in San Jose Spanish editor: @GalaGilAmat in London French translation: Philippe Antunes in Paris @antunes_philipp Cover illustration: Ginger Cordoba in Sacramento @ginger_designs Office cat: Anaximander @AnaximanderKatz https://t.co/4eWBnb890J GIF
2019/07/01: Mi libro en español sobre cómo hacer una startup. Aprende a construir tu startup. ¡Gratis esta semana! https://t.co/H4Pqkjnt1s https://t.co/canP9X9aTl GIF
2019/07/01: My other books are FREE this week. Get "The Big Book of #ContentMarketing", "#Startup" (in English), #TwitterBook, "How to Write a #Book". All are free #ebooks this week (reg. $10) Go to Amazon & search my name or go https://t.co/Fxgj5PAXo4 & click the book that you want. https://t.co/nxDR957e9m GIF
2019/07/01: Nouveau livre sur #Twitter. Écrit par Andreas Ramos dans la Silicon Valley et traduit en #français par Philippe Antunes à Paris. #ebook #gratuit cette semaine. https://t.co/9stVRwYi0H https://t.co/g7BxlWlGIt GIF
2020/01/09: At #CES, day 3. Men's business suits are so over. Maybe 1% wear dress shoes, only one in 1,000 wear suit and tie. Everyone else is brunch casual w running shoes. https://t.co/mBI0Oc3Edk
2020/01/11: A great short film for New Year. https://t.co/6JjBWbW6Dc
2020/01/11: Coming next... 88 underground sleeping pods in #SF at $1,000 per month per pod. No windows = peace! This proves #capitalism is the Best of All Possible Worlds! #SanFrancisco #SiliconValley https://t.co/sde2nn6cGU https://t.co/kVFjvKS1ZP
2020/01/12: The #cat life... doze by the #fireplace as we talk. https://t.co/ZXeKr2MyQY
2020/01/16: Storm clouds coming... https://t.co/BWpTOcqsdD
2020/01/17: Lively backyard. Two squirrels and four birds at the birdfeeder. The squirrels hang upside down on the oak tree and blend in. There's a loquat (piba) fruit tree in the background. https://t.co/IdUqwccrVV
2020/01/21: #Neanderthals built stone circles in a #cave in #France 176,000 years ago, or 40,000 years before humans came to #Europe. See article for #photos and research by #archaeologists. https://t.co/Z58UFElIH9
2020/01/21: Can somebody PLEASE write a filter that blocks all postings, emails, messages, or news which contain the phrase "Harry and Meghan"? https://t.co/o1juKz1e9S GIF
2020/01/21: Let's Learn Chinese, lesson #42: In chinese, "lao mein" are "scooped noodles" and in Cantonese, "lo mein" are "stirred noodles". Japanese copied these, but since they mix up "L" and "R", they say "ramen". So when you order "ramen", you're saying "noodle noodles". https://t.co/aCTntIwQti
2020/01/22: Chinese New Year has fireworks and #DancingDragons, yes, but the real thing is the vast amounts of food. The average person in #Taiwan will gain 1.7 kg (3.7 pounds) this week. #AWSL! #ChineseNewYear Happy Mouse Year! https://t.co/PIztTVTD2E GIF
2020/01/22: Summary of the #Trump #impeachment in the #Senate: No witnesses + no evidence = no trial Why are the Republicans doing this? Because they know he is guilty. #Coverup #whitewash #GOPCoverup
2020/01/23: Youtube... for your cat? Paul Dinning has hundreds of videos for cats, including the Oscar-winning eight-hour “Bird Bonanza” with almost seven million views. Dinning created eight of the 10 most-viewed videos for cats in 2019. https://t.co/JeScCwU5zW
2020/01/24: Shawn Flynn interviewed Bob Hoffman @AdContrarian about marketing fraud and how marketing will play a part in the #2020elections. He tells it like it is. No filter. @iamshawnflynn #marketing https://t.co/Q9H9J4f117
2020/01/25: Started Chinese New Year with a tea egg. Egg is boiled on a strong tea, which gives it color and taste. Quite good! #ChineseNewYear https://t.co/kdfrT8En2T
2020/01/25: The Indian politician Shashi Tharoor humorously observed, “The sun never set on the British Empire because even God couldn’t trust the Englishman in the dark.” https://t.co/AdPQyffgu3 GIF
2020/01/27: Friend gave us several sacks of fresh #walnuts from their trees. I'm used to store walnuts. The fresh ones are delicious. https://t.co/zWDuCC6tqb
2020/01/28: Chinese entrepreneurs registered 714 #blockchain firms in #China in January. There are 26,089 blockchain companies in China. https://t.co/YvjUn2AeuD https://t.co/omNSdI1pUy GIF
2020/01/28: Piketty is coming https://t.co/3kkGJudlyY
2020/01/28: So which one has gone #viral? The actual Corona virus or misinformation about the virus? https://t.co/hZ9FjY5c51
2020/01/29: The #Coronavirus isn't cause for such panic. The common #flu kills some 35,000 Americans every year. This season, an estimated 15 million in the US had the flu and 8,200 died so far, according to the #CDC. Last year, 60,000 died. #WuhanCoronovirus #wuhan https://t.co/Hk0CAyuTwQ GIF
2020/03/13: #Trump says #Google has 1,500 engineers to build a "#Corona Test Screening website". 1) It doesn't take 1,500 engineers 2) Five hours later, it's still not up Two interns could do this in an hour: 1) Create a spreadsheet with list of test sites 2) Upload to Yext 3) Done
2020/03/13: It's official now. Free testing and care for everyone in the US for #Coronavirus #Covid_19 https://t.co/cP301ZrFGg
2020/03/13: Summary: 1) Trump finally doing something 2) Big corps will make billions on this 3) Trump refuses to even acknowledge his mistakes 4) No free testing, no money for workers who stay home, free health care, etc. #coronapocalypse #NationalEmergency #TrumpPressConference
2020/03/14: i wrote an FAQ on how to teach classes via online video conference tools w/ #Zoom. also applies to #GoToMeeting, etc. you can share it, post it, etc. #ZoomUniversity #onlineschool #OnlineClasses https://t.co/ngEAJtLzHG
2020/03/15: Read this to understand why social distancing is effective. https://t.co/VaYmv4AyZT
2020/03/15: To talk with friends in #China, I use #Wechat. To talk with our #cat, I use #WeCat. https://t.co/t3K2h6K5Cr
2020/03/16: We're in lock down in the San Francisco Bay Area. 6m people. Under the order, essential travel is allowed only for necessary supplies, healthcare, or aid to family or friends. https://t.co/Kb9wXAuer8 GIF
2020/03/18: #Trump's real nightmare... https://t.co/mViYyjKXJM
2020/03/18: . @CA_DMV Why is the DMV still open? Hundreds of people still go to each DMV office every day. They will infect DMV staff and each other. CalPers is shut down. Schools are shut down. The DMV is nonessential. You MUST close the DMV. Now. @GavinNewsom @CAgovernor
2020/03/18: A roll of #toiletpaper lasts about two weeks for a couple. Here's news from #Costco for those who bought 126 rolls :-) Five years of toilet paper? https://t.co/mxpynk45sI
2020/03/18: Okay, what's next? What will change in three months, six months, a year? Single payer Obamacare for all. Progressive tax at 30, 50, even 70% to pay the massive costs. Nationalization of entire industries. What else?
2020/03/18: To Gavin Newsom: Why is the DMV still open? Hundreds of people still go to each DMV office every day. They will infect the DMV staff and each other. CalPers is shut down. Schools are shut down. You MUST close the DMV. Now. @GavinNewsom @CAgovernor
2020/03/18: Unprecedented conf call w #California governor Gavin Newsom #cagov to all state union workers #SEIU right now re #COVID2019:
2020/03/19: Here we go again. #NBC News failed baby math. Are their #journalists really that dumb? Nice hair, yes, but ding dongs. Send 500 million dollars to 300 million people will be $1.66 each. https://t.co/s1PV70a1d5
2020/03/19: Here's the moment to prove the value of #3Dprinting Can you #3dprint a #ventilator? Do it. Put the code online. Share worldwide. Save people. Screw the companies that want to make money. Forward this. Retweet. A group of hacker kids could do this. https://t.co/HhWntwp4nB
2020/03/20: 2020 is over. It'll take the rest of this year just to recover from the current few weeks... and probably 2021 too. Tens of thousands of small businesses + restaurants will disappear. Video conferencing will become standard for office + schools. Many will leave big cities.
2020/03/20: On the massive insider stock fraud by US senators... FDR noted: “We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.” https://t.co/BPNcCHW3sF GIF
2020/03/20: One good thing about the lockdown... I can turn off the screen security lock on my phone! https://t.co/2GCDCTZ3S8 GIF
2020/03/20: See? It's possible. Open-source project spins up 3D-printed ventilator in just one week. https://t.co/NOnEh6KS1m via @GoogleNews
2020/03/20: Uh oh: ABC News is reporting that hospitals in Washington State are preparing for "triage decisions" because they are overwhelmed with ICU #cov19 virus patients.
2020/03/21: #Camgirls... i thought that was a 90s thing. college girls were making thousands of dollars a month, sitting at their desk to do their homework. #Coronavirus brought back the camgirls. see "EdTV"; a great movie about the early web. #Covid_19 #CoronavirusPandemic https://t.co/Z8Z6XvOopH
2020/03/21: I wrote an FAQ on how to make your own hand sanitizer with aloe vera. Easy to do. Step-by-step with photos. https://t.co/NriZyz5VS7 Please retweet, forward, share, pass along. #handsanitizer #CoronavirusPandemic #Covid_19 https://t.co/8RSepOKOGE GIF
2020/03/21: Project to use 3D printing for mass production of oxygen ventilators. It doesn't have to be beautiful or perfect, just that it works. https://t.co/9SCg2GCIli #CoronavirusPandemic #COVID19outbreak
2020/03/21: So you have Purell hand sanitizer. But do you have gold-infused hand sanitizer? For hands of gold... of course. Only for movie stars, rap artists, billionaires, and US Republican Senators. https://t.co/dPDw7elE6T
2020/03/21: The #coronavirusus was not created in a lab. Here's how we know... https://t.co/j5fQEPdCZ5 #Covid_19 #COVID19
2020/03/21: Younger Adults Make Up Big Portion of Coronavirus Hospitalizations in U.S. New C.D.C. data shows that nearly 40 percent of patients sick enough to be hospitalized were age 20 to 54. ( NYT)
2020/03/22: 'A worldwide hackathon': Hospitals turn to crowdsourcing and 3D printing amid equipment shortages. https://t.co/ErAK1j8bjw
2020/03/22: Sign this petition to Gov. Newsom to shut down the DMV. It's not essential. People will get sick if the DMV stays open. Close it! https://t.co/RMWhLbQHm9
2020/03/22: We should calm down. A six-time bankrupted reality TV star is leading us. 1
2020/03/23: About 30% w #COVIDー19 lose their sense of smell. https://t.co/wCK9x7leZQ
2020/03/24: #Trump chloroquine will cure #corona. #DrFauci said don't do that. A couple in Arizona took Trump's medical advice. Husband is dead and wife is in critical condition. #COVID2019:
2020/03/24: #Trump poster #NotDying4WallStreet #CoronavirusLockdown https://t.co/goeAfRWFYk
2020/03/24: once a long time ago, people said, "it'll only happen in a month of Sundays"? that's what we have now: it's a month of Sundays. all days are feel like Sunday afternoon, with no traffic, no shopping, waiting for Monday...
2020/03/25: At #Costco , employees stand by to put #toiletpaper in shopping wagons. One per person. Pallets of toilet paper and water. https://t.co/xaSsLQj5tJ
2020/03/26: Four weeks ago, he had $5 billion and owned Bubba Gump, the Houston Rockets, Golden Nugget casinos, Del Frisco’s Steakhouse. Today... none of these may survive. Just like in the Great Depression: Billionaires one week and bankrupt a week later. https://t.co/Sb09TZJPe1
2020/03/26: Stanford Medical is asking for help and donations for its medical teams who deal with #COV19 patients and for researchers who are studying antiviral treatments, new therapies, and pandemics. https://t.co/joN3xaKLpJ
2020/03/26: The #Coronavirus checks. When, how, who, how much. Here's everything you need to know. https://t.co/SdDnAtCdlh via @nbcnews
2020/03/26: The stock market is up today. But before Wall Street calls for champagne, snow, and hookers... In Sept 1929, the stock market crashed... but quickly recovered and all was good... Until Oct 29th, when it really crashed. As Yogi Berra said, "It ain't over 'til it's over." https://t.co/WguLZG0WbQ GIF
2020/03/28: Stanford Medicine now has drive-thru #coronavirus #COVID19 testing. Stanford researchers developed its own coronavirus test for hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. See more at https://t.co/Bh0Fhcmj60
2020/03/28: What's the data on inflation? The price of many things that I normally buy, especially common food items, are now double or triple.
2020/04/29: "What goes up..." https://t.co/WkyatpmqZL
2020/04/30: Population density in the US. https://t.co/YGQBFj0Too
2020/05/01: Magic Leap, which raised $500m, today fired 1,000 staff (50%) and renamed the company to Magic Fall. https://t.co/LSn31ExAAL GIF
2020/05/01: The Capitol's attending physician told senior Republican staff yesterday that he doesn't have the equipment for rapud testing for all 100 senators when they return to work 2020/05/04. Not even senators...
2020/05/03: Super good! https://t.co/xrTm2qyjfi
2020/05/05: #Airbnb 2020 revenue will be 50% lower than 2019. Today, 25% layoff or 1,900 staff.
2020/05/05: This #salamander thinks he is well-hidden... https://t.co/7c8Y5NABgz
2020/05/05: Two white men with guns chase, shoot, and kill a 25-year old black jogger in Georgia. "Travis, the guy is running down the street, let's go." Police does nothing. https://t.co/lqXl95i6Y7
2020/05/06: #NYT report on excessive deaths. This gives a better picture of #COVID19 epidemic. Data isn't complete and more will be added later. A good start. It's remarkable that it took a newspaper to show this. The government should have reported this. https://t.co/GuVDswKLy5
2020/05/06: Azzam, the world's largest superyacht, is 180m (600feet) long. That's a row boat! Cruise ships are twice as long with room for 8,000. Cruise lines are going bankrupt so maybe I'll buy a cruise ship for $50,000 and park it in the bay. https://t.co/pH6YSLCI8n GIF
2020/05/06: Do you think it's horrible what other cultures eat? Surprise! They think your favorite food is horrible. Here is the List of Weird Foods around the World. See if your favorite food is here. Yep, every culture is here. Bon appetit! Retweet! share! https://t.co/1SbEHpZDgb https://t.co/cKmkIXZrJy GIF
2020/05/06: More than 700 (58%) employees at a Tyson Foods meat factory tested positive for coronavirus as the nation braces for a meat shortage due to the pandemic. https://t.co/dx7mYARRON
2020/05/06: Okay, a #dinosaur 🦕 on a #bicycle 🚲 If dinosaurs rode bikes, would they still be alive today? https://t.co/ri4H30IoTo
2020/05/06: Space Farce! No, wait, Space Force! With Steve Carrell, Lisa Kudrow, and more. On #Netflix #SpaceForce #spaceforcenetflix https://t.co/i2IlwUo5Eq
2020/05/07: 2020/05/04, the European Union hosted a video conf call w heads of nations, banks, and orgs to raise 7.4 billion euros ($8 billion) for research for a coronavirus vaccine. On the call: Europe, China, Australia, Jordan, & many others. Who wasn't on the call? The US.
2020/05/07: 30 minutes? https://t.co/ZW4GZzRxol
2020/05/07: Another victim of #COV19: The American ideals of "do whatever you want", "go wherever you want". Summer vacation, travel, group BBQ, trendy restaurants, movie houses, football games, shopping malls, amusement parks, camping... not this year, and maybe not for several years. https://t.co/ItLBQjm0q2
2020/05/07: Google has a new website that shows consumer products, ranked by activity (sales? searches?). If you're selling something, it'll show you top categories, products, etc., incl. map of location in US. Go https://t.co/HUrThhfV1t https://t.co/w6KXdDitnp GIF
2020/05/08: I updated the FAQ of tips and ideas for better video conference calls with @zoom_us Zoom, @gotowebinar, @Hangouts, etc. #zoom #goto #videoconferencing See https://t.co/sxj0Yu21kD https://t.co/xOriogNcXG GIF
2020/05/08: Some people complain that Zoom work calls with pets and kids doesn’t look professional. Well, one of the victims of COV19 was the professional office world. We’re all working at home now. Welcome to cats, kids, and whatever else. https://t.co/v0yw2NOxJQ GIF
2020/05/17: Bob writes about @megancgraham 's NBC article on ad fraud. See how a reporter quickly set up a fake site and started making money. It's super easy. https://t.co/Yk0Q9obdEA
2020/05/17: Obama's talk last night: “This pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing. A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.”
2020/05/17: Today's Critter: little #salamander in the wood pile. #nature https://t.co/AC2nJHNaZ2
2020/05/18: Is Google the #Baidu of the US? In 1996, Robin Li patented RankDex to use hyperlinks to measure quality of sites. In 1998, Larry Page used Li's work to develop #Google. Larry Page cited Li's work in his US patents for PageRank. https://t.co/KAFM68EAno GIF
2020/05/18: Side effects of hydroxychloroquine include paranoia, hallucinations, anxiety, and psychosis. See WebMD. https://t.co/UTOe7dSR7K
2020/05/18: Today's critter #Photos . Two #squirrels at backyard oak tree. About five squirrels have their nests in the trees. In early morning, they run around the tree, up and down. https://t.co/QnOo2YmKrg
2020/05/18: What about China's Social Scoring System?: Like every algorithm & system, a few will game the system. A few will figure out how to get high scores (but not TOO high: that's a sign of tricks).
2020/05/19: From Facebook: Facebook Online Hackathon on growing communities and driving social impact! #BuildwithFacebook across Messenger, Spark AR. https://t.co/BRVDmUxUSg. $21,000 in prizes. Free swag for every member. Register at https://t.co/mb4Mbg3eLV
2020/05/19: Ready for the #Boogaloo? The US is turning into #Pynchon's "Crying of Lot 49" https://t.co/dMbX7ZCfM0
2020/05/19: So what do I do in Palo Alto after teaching a university class via #Zoom in #EmailMarketing? Feed the #GuineaPigs and #chickens! https://t.co/Epjh3noZZo
2020/05/20: Facebook adds storefronts to #Facebook and #Instagram. FB had this ten years ago but it didn't go anywhere. #Wechat, #Pinterest, and others have been doing this. #FacebookShops #ecommerce https://t.co/orRpJQ0XEP
2020/05/20: Using https://t.co/tWztQgmSqA for your #programmatic ads? Here's a few of the sites where #MediaNet shows your ads. Yes, nine digits. Over 990 million fake sites... Who clicks on those? No, WHAT clicks on those? MediaNet's own little bots do the clicky-clicky and you pay. https://t.co/a6uYs0HZyM 1
2020/05/21: #Russia continues to attack the US and DC does nothing. https://t.co/ZiSrFfSt6l
2020/05/21: A beautiful test! https://t.co/TpFcVHuazM
2020/05/22: It's coming here. The White House already does stuff like this. https://t.co/b18N2DEGYs
2020/05/22: Today's #critter #pix. Lizard pokes head from under the rocks. #photography #NaturePhotography https://t.co/UFBNKoObyW
2020/05/23: Did you know that #bougainvillea #flowers 💐 have... flowers? https://t.co/ySGHCq6nKb
2020/05/24: Any organization (business, non-profit, gov, etc.) must now be fully digital, end-to-end. Otherwise, a pack of buzzards will create layers (orders, payment, shipping, delivery) to grab payments + fees, taking as much as 60% of your revenue. https://t.co/qTfL51MlVz GIF
2020/05/25: #Cats melt at 93F (34C). https://t.co/xDEO7qvMFY
2020/05/25: Georgia has 40% unemployment...? https://t.co/Y6qOuEYIur
2020/05/27: Be safe with social distancing! Helen with bear in Canada https://t.co/EPUWfjT3Fp
2020/05/28: At Slate, @BridgetOBarrett writes... "(The moderation rules...) that Facebook, Reddit, Snapchat, Twitter, and YouTube were following was potentially manipulated by the very source of the misinformation they needed to correct." https://t.co/WUB3liH24H
2020/05/28: Exactly. #Trump will use the government to punish companies. #GOP and #Republicans must stop this. https://t.co/5qrS1gVUKI
2020/05/28: Here is #Trump's Executive Order to #censor #Twitter. Action Points: - A committee will be appointed - The committee will make a report Summary: Blah, blah, blah. In a week, Trump will move to the next crazy idea and everyone will forget this. https://t.co/ZtZo4vQwKR https://t.co/rRCgqeVZ0R GIF
2020/05/28: Mark Zuckerberg said on Fox News that #Facebook is "hands-off" when it comes to political speech. Mark is trying to stay out of Trump's war on Twitter. But change in 230 will affect all #SiliconValley, both #SocialMedia AND Google/Bing, plus any site w forums. https://t.co/5AV9KxYeFm GIF
2020/05/28: No law will fix this mess. Currently, the US rightwing is good at twisting the rules. In the 60s & 70s, Yippies & Black Panthers did this. Insiders, as insiders, make & uphold rules, while outsiders, as outsiders, learn to manipulate rules to get anywhere. #TwitterFactCheck
2020/05/29: 100,000+ dead. No plan for the #pandemic. 40m lost their jobs. Pointless trade war with #China. Cities on fire. The US does not have a president. The US does not have a government. https://t.co/W5Dt1mHQkp
2020/05/29: Add to the flames: Trump quits the WHO.
2020/05/29: Add unpaid bills to the list... https://t.co/V1zOi7TCj3
2020/05/29: Bad news for Trump. Young blacks, whites, asians, and latinos are coming together. https://t.co/yg8fRStHak
2020/05/29: I've lost count of how many cities have demonstrations: #Minneapolis, #NewYork, #LosAngeles, #Chicago, #Washington DC, #Oakland, #SanJose, #Brooklyn, #Memphis... Police stations and police cars are in flames. The #WhiteHouse is sealed off. https://t.co/ODRxrocPkB
2020/05/29: List of my upcoming DMA-NC webinars for 2020. Two hour, university-level, live webinars. Calendar at https://t.co/cU0LIC62de SEO: Fundamentals 2020/06/03; Intermediate 2020/06/12; Advanced 2020/06/19. SEO: Fundamentals 2020/10/30; Intermediate 2020/11/06; Advanced 2020/11/20.
2020/05/30: Is this an endangered Tibetan Rabbit-eared Moth? https://t.co/wQi5aSiKQD
2020/05/30: One farm in Tennessee distributed Covid-19 tests to all of its workers after an employee came down with the virus. It turned out that every single one of its 200 employees had been infected. https://t.co/743rOnTzDB
2020/05/30: The US today... https://t.co/EzxPfl4A2G
2020/05/30: Watch live at the White House "Protesters knock down White House security barricades as anger mounts across the US over George Floyd’s death" https://t.co/p8W51Gc31F
2020/05/31: #Facebook internal study found that its algorithms tend to emphasize divisive topics... and @Facebook chose to do nothing because it was afraid of #conservatives. https://t.co/bsy0JyewB2
2020/05/31: Anti-fascists storming the beaches at D-Day. https://t.co/wrahVV8PEU https://t.co/jHaGW9mLDE
2020/05/31: Hey, @Google, it's basic SEO. Easy to fix. https://t.co/JXPxkwbcOE
2020/06/01: Red = #US cities with protests against police violence. Yellow = States that need #NationalGuard https://t.co/8HQMY0HDfX
2020/06/10: #Trump refuses to rename Ft. Bragg. Let's go to Wikipedia... "Bragg is generally considered among the worst generals of the Civil War. Most of the battles in which he engaged ended in defeats. Bragg was extremely unpopular with both the men and the officers of his command..."
2020/06/10: 96% drop in spend... https://t.co/7sIItI2eP2
2020/06/11: Okay, @Caimh 's "Angels in the Moonlight" is the funniest book I've read in years. Crazy dialog with insane characters. The line about jazz, sax, and the goose is hilarious. Do NOT read this in bed; your wife will banish you to the guest room. Great writing, Caimh! https://t.co/3F7wkoM42s 4
2020/06/12: Folks, here's a question. 3 months ago, there were lots of #videoconferencing tools: #Zoho, #Goto, #Meetup, #WebEx, #JoinMe, etc. But #Zoom shot straight up and got 200m users in three weeks. Why? Why did people abandon established tools and switch to Zoom? https://t.co/iA8X1CU4tB GIF
2020/06/13: A Black man shot and killed in Atlanta last night. Atlanta police says "“...male was shot by an officer in the struggle over the Taser.” Watch the video. No. As he ran away, the police shot him in the back. https://t.co/kxHMkV7D72
2020/06/13: Q. What about #copyright on #gif #memes? Can we use them for our company's social media postings? A. Gifs have copyright, but nobody really cares if it's personal postings. But... if a company uses a gif, it can be sued. So... make your own gifs for business postings. https://t.co/o1WO773R6g GIF
2020/06/13: Try this. 1) Open #Zoom 2) Add friends 3) Open #Netflix 4) Share screen Everyone can watch your Netflix movie via Zoom. I call this #Zoomflix (tm) https://t.co/Ff0drtve1M GIF
2020/06/14: We watched Mae West in "She Done Him Wrong" (1933, with a young Cary Grant). It was... terrible! Just a series of comedy lines, no acting, no plot, bad camera. Her singing voice has the melody of a peacock. #MaeWest, so famous for so long, has disappeared. https://t.co/tZUcBn2YPu GIF
2020/06/15: Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on 1863/01/01 and freed 3.5m slaves. But the Czar of Russia had already freed 23m serfs with the Emancipation Manifesto of 1861/03/03... nearly two years earlier. Lincoln copied the idea, including the name. https://t.co/IC60il7mvp GIF
2020/06/15: It's started again. Local communities are issuing their own currency. This also happened in the Great Depression. https://t.co/YBC2X24qFX https://t.co/5AAm7faULI
2020/06/15: Only 10 days left... Do you want to do a #startup? Get $120,000 in #funding, no #equity taken. 60 #startups will win. Connect with global corps like #Samsung, #LG, #Hyundai, & more. All living expenses paid. Deadline 2020/06/25 | Apply https://t.co/zNSl5GMg1K | Please RT! https://t.co/YdLwnBouWv
2020/06/16: About one million of the four million freed slaves either died or suffered from illness between 1862 and 1870. Freed slaves were neglected by union soldiers or faced rampant disease, smallpox, cholera. Many simply starved to death. https://t.co/HyuvwcNXyg
2020/06/16: Only 9 days left... Global #StartupCompetition by #SouthKorea | $120K cash | No equity taken | All expenses paid | 60 #startup will win | Sponsors = #Samsung, #LG, #Hyundai | Deadline 2020/06/25 Info & apply https://t.co/zNSl5GMg1K Please RT! https://t.co/Hx0rYjLpHK
2020/06/17: #Blacks and #Latinos die of #COV19 at far higher rates than Whites. One reason why whites don't care much about COV19: It doesn't happen to anyone they know. 75% of whites don't know a single Black or Latino. An additional 18% of whites know only one Black or Latino. https://t.co/sioW0KyKbI 6 6
2020/06/17: > National security adviser John Bolton said Trump sought Chinese President Xi's help to win re-election during 2019/06 meeting. So... #China is our enemy, except when they help #Trump and the #GOP is okay with that, except when they tell us that China 🇨🇳 is the enemy?
2020/06/17: The Economist writes on what #China thinks of #Trump & #Biden. The China/US relationship will be the key issue for the next ten to twenty years of #geopolitics. https://t.co/P7L0hblBQ7
2020/06/18: Only 7 days left... Do you want to do a #startup? Get $120,000 in #funding, no #equity taken. 60 #startup will win. Connect with global corps incl #Samsung, #LG, #Hyundai... All expenses paid! Deadline 2020/06/25 | Info & apply https://t.co/zNSl5GMg1K | Please RT! https://t.co/G2cuvRfK6b
2020/06/19: "Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature." -- Rich Kulawiec https://t.co/kZbscrRi6n GIF
2020/06/19: #Juneteenth ! https://t.co/fa347f1RQV GIF
2020/06/19: The CEO of #Wirecard quits after $2 billion goes missing. Did he check the sofa cushions? I lose my keys sometimes and often, that's where they are. https://t.co/LPKTPQaoWK GIF
2020/06/19: The original 13th amendment was passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president. It would have made slavery permanent. https://t.co/54EtbccJap
2020/06/19: The US government has given up on #COV19 and will just let it happen. This is... really bad. https://t.co/wrCqSVFFNQ
2020/06/20: Last Week Left... Do you want to do a #startup? Get $120,000 in #funding, no #equity taken. 60 #startups will win. Connect with global corps like #Samsung, #LG, #Hyundai... All living expenses paid. Deadline 2020/06/25 | Apply https://t.co/zNSl5GMg1K | Please RT! https://t.co/y7mVInsuB9
2020/06/20: One million tickets. Ten thousand show up. 99% cancelation rate Tomorrow is going to be a very hard day in the bunker. Watch that video. https://t.co/JjPKsZ88nx
2020/06/21: According to the graph from European Centers for Disease Control, the US does only 20 to 40 tests per case of #COV19 Despite fewer cases, other countries on the graph conduct 1,000 to 5,000 tests per case. The US has given up. https://t.co/LXK2nA7Szr
2020/06/21: Andrew Little, Public Information Officer for #Tulsa Fire Dept, confirmed on Sunday just under 6,200 people. #Trump campaign staffer told Forbes on Sunday that #TrumpRallyFail turnout was 12,000, which is 2X the Fire Department estimate. #TrumpMeltdown https://t.co/lrTwWLx9pk
2020/06/21: Bignonia #flower in the back yard https://t.co/A8hGgckfe6
2020/06/21: Looking up in the oak tree. https://t.co/YqwEVrB0L2
2020/06/21: One of the nice things about #summer: roadside #fruit stands. Here, Bing cherries and Queen Anne #cherries. 4 boxes for $30. https://t.co/EO1EskCXK7
2020/06/22: Last chance... do you want to do a #startup? Get $120,000 in #funding, no #equity taken. 60 #startups will win. Connect with global corps like #Samsung, #LG, #Hyundai... All living expenses paid. Deadline this Thursday, 2020/06/25 | Apply https://t.co/zNSl5GMg1K | Please RT! https://t.co/pnaeaMlz6i
2020/06/22: Politico re the Tulsa debacle: 1.1m registered, but looking at registrants' voting histories, 300,000 were fake. Only 2-300,000 lived within driving distance. Worst-case scenario, they concluded, was an audience of about 60,000. https://t.co/JE01Qi3Tvb
2020/06/22: Starting this Saturday, I teach university-level course in digital marketing at CSTU. 1st class: Keyword research. Ten ways to find keywords. You'll see how to find 50,000 keywords and how to translate them to ten languages.
2020/06/23: #Trump on Tuesday said he was serious when he told his administration to slow #COV19 testing, contradicting senior White House aides who said Trump was joking. “I don’t kid. Let me just tell you. Let me make it clear.” Here you see the result. COV19 is out of control. https://t.co/XZ3fYx5aCZ
2020/06/23: Easy to see the impact of #Politics on a #pandemic. https://t.co/EOsjyrTN4B
2020/06/23: John Bolton's book on Trump was converted to PDF (5.5MB) and is now being distributed for free on the web.
2020/06/24: #DMA #SantaClara closed today. An employee was tested positive for #COV19 #Corona. All employees sent home for two weeks.
2020/06/24: More from Florida... https://t.co/6oXt3mJ2cq
2020/06/24: That's right. #Trump isn't kidding. No tests. https://t.co/alQukTxxcD
2020/06/25: anyone have any idea of how many in the service industry are now working from home? for the US? France? Germany? https://t.co/Pd0jRzaFIt GIF
2020/06/25: So... #Keyword. #GoogleAds Planner shows keywords with data (searches, competition, bids, etc.). #SEMRush & others also offer keyword data. People use these tools to choose the best keywords for SEO, social postings, content marketing, search ads, social ads, and so on. https://t.co/QUVugqnpgt GIF
2020/06/25: What's possible to say about this? https://t.co/XxuJREPyel
2020/06/25: when i said, "wow, it's 2020/06/24. The year is half over", Juan Arteaga said, "This half year feels like a decade." https://t.co/ZBciorRLKp GIF
2020/06/26: "Consumer behavior has changed more in the last three months than in the last ten years." -- Juan Arteaga That's the result of adapting to #COV19, #lockdown, massive unemployment, pay cuts, travel restrictions... https://t.co/M28ASFyZr7 GIF
2020/06/26: For our cat, every day is Saturday afternoon. For me, every day now is Wednesday. https://t.co/3epVdeO4bh
2020/06/26: For the twenty years or so, popular culture was obsessed with #zombies and #vampires. Movies, TV, parties, and more were filled with the living dead. And we now really have a #pandemic with many dying and dead. But nobody talks about zombies anymore. https://t.co/BRk197Ap8n GIF
2020/06/27: Russian military intelligence offered bounties to Taliban militants for killing US soldiers in Afghanistan. Trump was told in March. April. May. June. Trump did nothing.
2020/06/27: There goes another few points in his supporters. https://t.co/esZvyRAZdM
2020/06/29: Thanks to #Trump's leadership, we slowed the spread of #COV19. -- VP Mike #Pence, 2020/06/16, New York Times Who are you going to believe? Mike Pence or #JohnsHopkins? https://t.co/enTZDXbY8q
2020/06/29: Will #Trump quit? Trump may abandon his re-election if he believes he has no chance of winning, GOP operatives told #Fox News. Fox cites Tucker Carlson and #GOP insiders who are concerned about Trump’s re-election amid abysmal polling numbers. https://t.co/076k3hIDpA
2020/06/30: GOP Senator Rand Paul said today, “We shouldn’t presume that a group of experts somehow knows what’s best for everyone.” I could write many things here, but I think it speaks for itself.
2020/06/30: nobody wears a mask in my dreams at night. https://t.co/xU5GrkL6Uv
2020/06/30: Trump was given a written briefing in February that Russia offered bounties for killing US soldiers in Afghanistan. Three US Marines died. Trump did nothing about it then. Trump does nothing about it today.
2020/06/30: You know it's bad when Bloomberg News begins to talk about the US as the next Venezuela. "Large-scale unrest would undoubtedly result and -- in the worst-case scenario -- the U.S. could collapse like Venezuela." https://t.co/KnXwOK922n
2020/07/02: More details on the bounties on US military: - $100,000 bounty to kill a US soldier - Average annual income in Afghanistan is $1,295 - The bounty is 77 years of income - The Taliban outsourced the work to criminals - Rahmatullah Azizi (Afghan) is one of the middlemen
2020/07/03: The Little Mermaid... a racist fish? https://t.co/CkhKAd1MZa
2020/07/04: #COV19. "We need to live with it." Police violence. "We need to live with it." Poverty. "We need to live with it." Racism. "We need to live with it." Russia messes with our elections. "We need to live with it." Pull down a slaver statute. "Ten years in prison!" https://t.co/TaSxLAPU7M
2020/07/05: The #Harvard #corona #cov19 map for US counties is at https://t.co/GtvJU5Lzaj https://t.co/NkU0tGRyWV
2020/07/06: "Accelerated darwinism" is how Deborah Weinswig, CEO of Coresight Research, describes some of the retail bankruptcies of 2020. Fashion suffered the most.
2020/07/06: Is there irony in that people who reject #Darwin and #evolution theory also reject #masks? #COVID19Pandemic. https://t.co/jKrpR4X6Bv
2023/02/01: How soon will #LinkedIn allow #AI chat tools to have their own LinkedIn profiles? Companies have profiles. It's going to happen, sooner or later. https://t.co/ezRHMU9bZQ
2023/02/02: #AI + books + art + photos + copyright + lawyers = lawsuits Many issues whirled together. https://t.co/5nojdL5RNu
2023/02/02: #ChatGPT is blocked in china. Microsoft Teams now has ChatGPT. Teams is not blocked in China. So... let's see if it'll work in China.
2023/02/02: Clear guide to the key issues in the #DOJ #Antitrust action against #Google for ad pricing manipulation. https://t.co/KbzSK8p7GI
2023/02/03: #GA3 vs #GA4: Have you compared the user data? For one acct, there is a 19.85% difference in direct traffic in #GoogleAnalytics. Tip: Start collecting data, compare, and notify others in your teams and mgmt there may be significant changes in the data. https://t.co/YfstVgxGJn
2023/02/03: So you can't use ChatGPT because it's crowded? Try Perplexity. Works just as well. https://t.co/qKx3KbK0iP If you find alternative, please post.
2023/02/03: ~30m sites use #GA3, but only ~10% use it. That’s OK for #Google: they get user data from 27m sites. So Google won't lose that tracking, Google will add #GA4 to all GA3 accts. Sites can opt out, but since they never look at GA3, they won’t know they can opt out! Win-Win! https://t.co/FbT9NJQ7W3
2023/02/05: @ylecun is right: Cats (& most mammals): - aware of situations (safe, danger, quiet...) - aware of others (prey, friends, enemies...) - emotions (happy, bored, angry...) - communicate (ask to be fed, left alone...) - explore, know territory, and more. Machines are just things. https://t.co/oVDwl5JeOP
2023/02/05: Juniper Research has estimated (ad fraud) at $68 billion. Ad Age magazine estimated it at 20% of online ad spending - about $80 billion today. The ANA (Association of National Advertisers) in the U.S. estimated (...) $80 billion and $120 billion. Global ad revenue = $800B. https://t.co/pdaVcthhGa
2023/02/06: On AI tools to generate #images and #art: - Hardcore artists don't need these. They work on their own inspiration. - Other artists (the rest) will use these for inspiration. #midjourney #stablediffusion dall-e, etc. https://t.co/Iifu1SQkxE
2023/02/06: Per @Google Quality Rater Manual #GQR, the AI & reviewers look at EEAT (experience, expertise, authority, trust). #AI generated text, images, or video will have little impact because these won't have EEAT. In fact, such sites will likely be marked as spammers and blocked. https://t.co/OnUFSt0i3L
2023/02/07: Looking for a good news source without clickbait? @voxdotcom news articles go into origins. causes, and details. Information, not entertainment. https://t.co/dljU4h4B8C
2023/02/07: Okay... next idea? https://t.co/IRJfmxhIH6
2023/02/07: Tuesday, 6:45 a.m., Feb 7th... and nothing new in Google or Bing yet. Waiting... #ChatGPT @Bard
2023/02/07: Useful to know for your #startup. https://t.co/xQCcv0W2mC
2023/02/08: #Google's "trusted testers" are likely the same 14,000 Quality Reviewers that score the Rankbrain AI. Much of what Google presented in Paris this morning was old stuff. I've seen this stuff. Mostly "science fair projects": fun clever demonstrations but not available. https://t.co/miBp9duDJy
2023/02/08: Google lost more than $100bn in market value when its Bard chatbot gave a wrong answer to a simple question. Analysts said the Google Paris event lacked details on how it will answer Microsoft’s ChatGPT challenge. https://t.co/xcScHF9zqj
2023/02/08: In the next four months, #Google has to deal with: - rollout of #Bard (its chat AI) - #Microsoft's strategies - rollout of #GoogleAnalytics4 #GA4 - impact on revenues and #GoogleAds - impact on ranking Plus DOJ antitrust, Texas antitrust, EU GDPR, and more... https://t.co/5Il2sLX5En
2023/02/08: Most of what Google presented today as new had already been presented eight months ago. I saw this stuff eight months ago. Demos are nice, but not real products. That's why Google stock fell $100B today. 8%. Google has nothing to show. https://t.co/mhsT7eH5n2
2023/02/08: There's an opportunity w/ LLM, but Google isn't capable of rolling that out. Pichai did not lead. He allowed this mess. Teams have been wasting time in trivial stuff. No leadership or creativity. There will be serious postmortem and deep changes at G in the next few weeks. https://t.co/mhsT7eH5n2
2023/02/09: #ChatGPT can be very useful for #marketing. https://t.co/RIDAelgLyA
2023/02/09: Google uses extensive testing to collect data to make decisions. They've tested AI chat in search, looked at the results, and realized it would lead to large loss of revenue. Microsoft does same. MS saw the loss would hurt Google more. So they rolled out #ChatGPT https://t.co/XNfqFDzEsf
2023/02/09: MS Goal: Kill Google. In an interview with the Financial Times, #Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella made clear his company was prepared to use the new technology to drive down profits in search and that gross margin was “going to drop forever”. https://t.co/DgkGu9wvgb
2023/02/09: V good summary of the problem w ad-sponsored search. Google's model has deep problems. He shows a viable alternative with AI search tools. https://t.co/DCFNUvXNAd
2023/02/10: #Google to add #GA4 to 30m GA3 accts. Users can opt out, but 90% never open accts, so they won't opt out. Why? GA3 uses cookies. G doesn't want to lose data. Google's legal defense will be, "We told them, but they chose to not listen." The EU will laugh and slap a $500m fine. https://t.co/cHsy4qryol
2023/02/10: A new concept: AIO. If you use #SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to show up in search engines, then... You use #AIO (AI Optimization) to show up in AI results. https://t.co/Jr4lU6JKkT
2023/02/10: A note from your lawyers on the copyright of images: - Per US copyright law, AI-generated text or images are not created by humans so there is no copyright. - Workaround: Make a small edit and then you can claim copyright © for the text or image. https://t.co/DiMTYtnHhu
2023/02/10: Perplexity in your browser... now. https://t.co/cZh7nov1Ys
2023/02/11: Stochastic parrots: what does that mean? https://t.co/srs9Ie88wi
2023/02/11: “The understanding these current systems have of the underlying reality that language expresses is extremely shallow,” said Yann LeCun... Which is also why much of #philosophy and religion is shallow or irrelevant. They're based on texts or logic. https://t.co/Dj1q9Gb8DA
2023/02/12: Dan McCreary@dmccreary on AI moats. ChatGPT has an advantage: its 100m users creates a massive amount of testing and feedback. https://t.co/FwhaAFtd4T
2023/02/13: A one meter meteor fell between Paris and London at 4 am this morning. Lots of great videos. https://t.co/ZXRRHhcpG2
2023/02/14: The poor engineers must flatter him or be fired. https://t.co/nLcfS65p6y
2023/02/14: Yes, but if you look, Musk doesn't use any lists. I noticed this months ago: he didn't know what they were or how to use them. Many Twitter users don't know about Lists. https://t.co/jaQdQ6PbhK
2023/02/15: Note: #GoogleAds offers "PMax (Performance Max)", which promises to increase views and clicks. No, it's actually "Profit Max" to increase profits for #Google. Your ads are sprayed across 230 Google websites and 250+ Google apps. As always, collect and review data. https://t.co/yHbQmhZxGF
2023/02/16: If Musk is able to jack up the number of impressions to flatter his ego, how likely will he use this feature to increase data for his friends? Or crash data for his enemies?
2023/02/16: In other news, 360,000 Tesla cars recalled today because they are dangerous. "Look! A squirrel!" https://t.co/pP0bTR48Dt
2023/02/16: Note: Anyone who tweets that ChatGPT, Bing Sydney, or any AI is sentient, conscious, alive, or similar will be unfollowed or blocked. People who say stuff like that have no idea what they're talking about. https://t.co/HstcnFbzYw
2023/02/16: The train from SF to Mayfield (previous name for Palo Alto) is the oldest train line west of the Mississippi. Still running today. https://t.co/vsAt9q8g2N
2023/02/16: v useful prompt for writing: look at this, add a summary, list the points, list the weak points, and add suggestions for improvement: [article, text, url]
2023/03/31: List of legal actions against #Google over antitrust, fraud, privacy, intellectual property, micro transactions, and more. Google has 400+ lawyers. Not a complete list. https://t.co/cyATKGo6oE
2023/04/01: @elonmusk calls for government regulation of AI. How about government regulation of social media? Starting with Twitter? https://t.co/JJ9zHP0RYk
2023/04/02: Hiking at Pinnacles National Park (125 miles south from San Francisco). Lots of condors. Several flew by so close that we could hear their feathers rustling in the wind. Dozens circle very high. https://t.co/50NNgyaDtp
2023/04/02: Paris voted to rid the streets of the French capital of rental electric scooters. 90% of votes for a ban, official results show. https://t.co/cQ0TSLaq7E
2023/04/03: New use case for AI-generated art: Book covers. It's expensive & difficult to make book covers because these are done by hand. Multiple drafts, edits, etc. AI design tools could look at tens of thousands of covers to design attractive, successful book covers. https://t.co/IvixgTJ5wz
2023/04/04: Most AI tools are "just yet another individual's tool". Good, but limited. A better direction for AI tools would be "AI-augmented collective intelligence". I look forward to MS Copilot, which adds AI to Office with team collaboration. https://t.co/98qoHTzKPo
2023/04/05: China, France, and Sweden will soon launch their own AI. India and Pakistan are likely also working on their AI. Or does the US really think others will stop and the US will be the only ones w AI? https://t.co/l0YKBinZYe
2023/04/05: Claude says he is not the droid that I'm looking for. https://t.co/b8bCKoClme
2023/04/06: Did any science fiction ever describe anything like ChatGPT?
2023/04/06: imagine if electricity, telegram, the locomotive, cars, and airplanes had all appeared, fully-developed, at once. each one changed everything. we are only beginning to realize the implications of how AI will change things. https://t.co/bjbYA6aoHI
2023/04/07: Forbes' 30 Under 30... get 30 years https://t.co/eqsYXO6T3x
2023/04/08: Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!—Oh! times, In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways Of custom, law, and statute, took at once The attraction of a country in romance! -- William Wordsworth
2023/04/08: The stampede starts soon. Google Analytics 3.0 will stop collecting data on July 1st. That's 77 days. There are ~30 million GA3 accounts. They will be switched to GA4. New interface, new type of data, new reporting, new everything. Late June will be amusing. https://t.co/MpbJZl7D46
2023/04/09: Eggs from the farm. https://t.co/ZdhN6bVqdM
2023/04/09: Try this prompt in ChatGPT: Summarize in 300 words. Add key points in bullet points. Add counter arguments in bullet points. List weaknesses in bullet points. Add how to improve in bullet points. https://t.co/DWREHxVUNa https://t.co/tQG5IFQ9hg
2023/04/11: https://t.co/BZCOQBH6wo
2023/04/11: If there are squars (square stars), then are there flanets (flat planets)? Does this prove the Earth is flat? Or do we have to wait until April 1st, 2024 for proof? https://t.co/9bUV14wMBr
2023/04/11: LRB on corruption in UK cops. - Individual. Cop takes £20 bill to drop traffic tickets - Penetration: Organized crime pay senior police to ignore crimes - Institutional: The Met prevents the APPEARANCE of corruption while corruption continues unchecked. https://t.co/yT9vCWvmYu
2023/04/11: To verify facts in ChatGPT or any AI, use the following to search, find, and summarize peer-reviewed articles. https://t.co/Ybu1x556Th https://t.co/LDIognHBki https://t.co/qKx3KbK0iP https://t.co/sx5J0fT44y https://t.co/Md2ctuBofr
2023/04/12: Asad Shehzad launched ChatBABU in Pakistan, a free chatbot that works similar to ChatGPT. Go to https://t.co/aYHp2VFmxt Does anyone know of AI chat tools for India?
2023/05/20: Today is 5/20. That's wu-er-ling in Chinese. But Chinese love to talk in puns, so it means something else. Ask a Chinese friend :-) https://t.co/AZaWCZRY8i
2023/05/21: did parameters disappear in ChatGPT? last week, i could use [use "n" with value = 5] to get ChatGPT to give me five versions of the response. today, it says it won't do that. did OpenAI turn this off?
2023/05/21: Does anyone know when MC Escher's"Hand with Reflecting Globe" appears in Martin Gardner's column in Scientific American? Does anyone have access to an index to the Scientific American? https://t.co/PvNuBpBwMv
2023/05/21: From reddit r/chatgpt : https://t.co/lmu1zucw4k
2023/05/21: on 6 October 1927 in the silent movie "The Jazz Singer", Al Jolson suddenly spoke. the audience was astounded. silent film became talkies. watch this. https://t.co/1zvBfLQMVB why this? it's what's happening now with #chatgpt #AI #genAI
2023/05/22: did ChatGPT change the color of its icon from green to purple? https://t.co/Cxz26rw9Tm
2023/05/22: Google Duet AI. https://t.co/9hjnQho0nD
2023/05/22: put down your coffee ☕ before you read this. https://t.co/vmHwGufbvw
2023/05/23: #gml2023 i get the feeling Google is trying to become Tiktok + Amazon.
2023/05/23: Tip for students: Ask ChatGPT to write in your style. The prompt: Act as a college student. Here are several paragraphs of my writing style. Write your replies in my style. "Hey, prof! Look! That ain't no AI. That's the way I write!" https://t.co/NZ79ChmY16
2023/05/25: Three bugs in Zoom: Zoom/Meeting/Shared Screen/Advanced/Powerpoint as Virtual Background: 1: Keyboard arrows work intermittently or stop working. 2: Animated Gifs aren't animated. 3: No laser pointer.
2023/05/26: ChatGPT has a sense of humor. I asked it about my cat Anaximander Katzenjammer. "Despite being a cat, he is associated with several books as an editor. These books span Twitter usage and digital marketing, making Anaximander Katzenjammer quite a unique office cat!" https://t.co/mViJnzyzmE
2023/05/26: Coca-Cola pulled out from Russia. So Russia began making its own Coca-Cola. https://t.co/u8HDLs58Q7
2023/05/26: The Prompt: Read these questions from students. Group the questions. Add a few representative quotes. Show sentiment with values of positive, neutral, or negative. Show results in a markdown table. [pasted 32 students questions.] It created five categories w/ results.
2023/05/27: "android" is commonly used for female robots, but "android" is the male version and "gynoid" is the female version. https://t.co/hsuiSaYvRa
2023/05/27: the more I use and teach genAI, the more I see how fragile it is. it takes quite a bit to set up and prepare it. entering text is delicate. results must be evaluated. most don't realize this and are easily frustrated. much better versions must be developed. https://t.co/8CrjU3D4hm
2023/05/28: AI doesn’t use SEO ideas: - Meta-tags - Headings - Keywords - Technical SEO: site speed, mobile-friendly, HTTPS, HRefLang, structured data, XML, bounce rates... - Local SEO - Mobile SEO - Analytics and ranking reports Not “one result.” Just click Regenerate to see more.
2023/05/28: Did Elon Musk break Twitter's Bookmarks again? Blank page on desktop.
2023/05/29: Learn Chines: Hambaobao. that's hamburger 🍔 in Chinese. shredded spiced pork. delicious. https://t.co/yz7WzycTFy
2023/05/29: many look at the @pewresearch poll and note the age of #ChatGPT users or all users. But look at race: Latinos and Asians use AI 3X more for work than whites. Blacks 2X over whites. the same for learning. https://t.co/VDPLaLBDJ9
2023/06/17: meanwhile... eurolandia bans AI. https://t.co/kLNIVRLho0
2023/06/18: The #Caltrain SF to San Jose train will soon switch from diesel to electric. It took some time to do this. Southern Pacific (SP) announced that it would investigate the electrification of the line in September 1921. It has taken 102 years...
2023/06/18: very clever work at Nike. https://t.co/YCtRcpIbji
2023/06/20: A list of 2,400 topics at Google. Use this for targeting your ads. https://t.co/syFr0zZb4X
2023/06/20: a text is not a clear glass window through which we see the author's intention. a text is a prism that refracts the author's intention into a spectrum of meanings. https://t.co/vW5x29bHce
2023/06/21: happy soltice! https://t.co/5ztO2oveFt
2023/06/21: Neanderthals made cave markings in France 57,000 years ago. https://t.co/dOmC5dCx3Y
2023/06/21: Stories from the California DMV. the written driving exam is multiple choice questions on a computer. a fellow passed, went home, but forgot his tablet. he came back the next day and asked for it. the DMV manager picked up a tablet, clicked it, and ask, "is this your tablet?"
2023/06/21: The definitive slogan for Silicon Valley: Il nous faut de l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace! https://t.co/UiFAcoveKC
2023/06/25: so Prigozhin will retire with his billions to Belarus. But the 10-20,000 Wagner mercenaries? back to prison? absorbed into the army? start their own PMCs? in 1300s to 1600s, European mercenaries either were hired, or if not, roamed about and looted the countryside. https://t.co/4Ul6bagGLr
2023/06/28: if you use Google Ads and it's set to place ads in Display and YouTube, you should check placement reports. these ads have very low or no results, yet Google earns billions, because advertisers don't understand the settings. https://t.co/MNBAmGIKjC
2023/06/29: conversation at a coffee shop... A: Next... B: I'm Ariel. A: I'm sorry, what? B: Ariel A: How do you spell that? B: Like the Disney movie. The Little Mermaid. A: Oh, okay. So no tempest? https://t.co/dWFCs0EdZt
2023/06/29: Yet another deliberate multi-year multi-billion dollar fraud by Google... But hey, we can trust them with AI data! https://t.co/Ero7seSKIG
2023/06/30: the danger of AI isn't job loss. the danger is to the 1%. every technological revolution has shifted knowledge, wealth, and political power away from the elite 1%. https://t.co/MfchfUa1A2
2024/01/01: The Dictionary of the History of Ideas is available from the University of Virginia at https://t.co/2Nayf4D9jp so you can read it on your phone. The five-volume set (3,000 pages) is only $40-50 in paperback at Amazon.
2024/01/03: the new Huawei phones can do this without Starlink. sorry, Elon, your idea is obsolete. https://t.co/p9ts5gkFKR
2024/01/03: the worlds that we build in our mind evaporate like fog in the bright light of data. https://t.co/l9Ak9vY97U
2024/01/03: why would anyone search for "virtual doctor near me"?
2024/01/05: Do you know your LinkedIn score? Your credit score determines your credit. Your LinkedIn score determines if you show up in LinkedIn. Don't hide under the bed. Get that mouse! Use LPO. LPO (LinkedIn Profile Optimization) improves your LinkedIn profile. Get my LPO ebook. https://t.co/Oqz6GUmORM
2024/01/06: List of upcoming movies for 2024: Sequels, prequels, remakes, relaunches, and universes. Can we just skip ahead to 2025?
2024/01/06: one day, there will be an AGI. soon thereafter, another AGI. will there be a difference between the two? wouldn't any AGI be able to replicate another AGI's capabilities? https://t.co/GuAqigGvpC
2024/01/11: "(In college,) they get a belief system installed (libertarian, liberal, Marxist, etc...), just like you install an operating system, and they spend the rest of their lives like zombies." -- R. Vondersnitch many friends' ideas in their 40s is they learned in their 20s. no change
2024/05/30: meetings w people from Ghana, Kenya, Dubai at #GenAISummit
2024/06/01: i was talking with someone who also built websites by hand back in the mid-90s. remember spinning logos? rotating earth? marching ants? aah, the good ol' days.... https://t.co/qQMM8sdRaO
2024/06/01: on flight from Japan at 30,000 feet the stewdardesses handed out chalk the captain lowered the windows and we reached out and scratched a chalk line on the roof of the sky https://t.co/4o2npctWwH
2024/06/02: friend last year warned me AI will kill us all. a few months ago, he began using it. he then set up a service to create AI summaries of competitors for clients. he now has a website, ads, etc. how to deal with AI doomers? show them how to use AI to make money. https://t.co/UYX0IHRlkv
2024/06/03: GPWho? Reuters survey of 12,000 people in Argentina, Denmark, France, Japan, U.K., U.S.: - 7% of US use ChatGPT daily. - 47% of US have never heard of ChatGPT. - 85% of US never used or heard of Google Gemini or Microsoft Copilot. https://t.co/QQOleRLW20
2024/06/04: I don't know of any science fiction novel that included agents or multi agent systems (MAS). we're quickly moving beyond the imagination of the 70s and 80s. https://t.co/Pvxn4cGVV7
2024/06/04: Meet my new student, Emily (age 12). I've been saying I could teach a high school student to use AI to produce better marketing than marketing
2024/06/10: fun opening video, but now an ad for Apple TV? #wwdc24
2024/06/10: is he real or AI? a friend suggested women are better able at identifying whether an image is real or AI. perhaps because women's eyes see more hues. any research on this? can women identify images better than men? https://t.co/bSq2ZChfVk
2024/06/11: you guys realize Elon Musk has an iPhone, right? latest version. and Tesla cars are well integrated with IPhones. So how is this ban going to work? or he'll just move on to something else in a few days?
2024/06/12: is GPT dead? remember GPTs, custom AIs that you could build yourself? - OpenAI promised GPT Store in January. didn't happen. - yesterday, Microsoft dropped support for GPTs. i think GPTs are obsolete. the frontier AIs are racing towards AGI. add MAS to that. no need for GPT. https://t.co/p8mV6INY4a
2024/06/13: both in person and online. this Saturday https://t.co/0IJ4VyfiKh
2024/06/13: it's crazy how fast genAI is evolving. every week is a significant shift in understanding what's no longer relevant, what's happening, or what's coming. as Dorothy said, "People come and go so quickly here!" https://t.co/DcfpUfvj62
2024/06/14: "The Lineup" (1958 Eli Wallach, 7.3 Imdb, free on Amazon). it's a great film noir cops & gangsters movie. Eli Wallach is great as a psycho hitman. Lots of background shots of San Francisco. if you REALLY know SF, you'll see lots of stuff no longer there. https://t.co/sycnt72QAQ
2024/06/14: a new word: mouse jiggler 🖱 it moves the mouse so the company surveillance thinks you're working. available on Amazon for $5. compliant with Goodhart's Law. https://t.co/kyYl2BWKwm
2024/06/14: in the rear view mirror, things fade away... https://t.co/Ryf7iAfB14
2024/06/14: the US military ran an antivax campaign in the Phillippines. 48,000 people died of covid. https://t.co/BmG83rsBpD
2024/06/15: but haven't we already had this for centuries? half of people are IQ 100 or less. they have to deal with people who are more intelligent, sometimes much more. we can see how this has worked out. it'll likely be the same with ASI. https://t.co/iSZOajswy3
2024/06/16: "The Fairfax Redemption". it's out. 4th book by Christopher Shevlin in the massively popular Jonathon Fairfax series. hilarious, great writing, great British humor. if you like Douglas Adams, PG Wodehouse, or Caimh McDonnell, read Chris Shevlin. free Kindle Unlimited.
2024/06/21: Did you know pigeons can get "string foot"? Did you know you can easily help a pigeon with string foot? Read this article from the BBC to learn how you can help your feathered friends (also known as "sky puppies"). https://t.co/cjrFf7dvzG
2024/06/21: it's odd that linkedin doesn't create a better Twitter. they verify the accounts. everyone in AI, SV, research, academic, journalism, etc, is probably already on LinkedIn. and it's very good at blocking junk postings. I wonder why they don't do this.
2024/06/21: just like dogs, city pigeons were created by humans. that's why they live in cities among people. read about the sky puppies. BTW, I've noticed there are no city pigeons in Beijing or other Chinese cities or in India. https://t.co/cjrFf7dvzG
2024/06/21: Preparing to teach "digital marketing + AI" for July at CSTU again. How to apply AI wherever possible to digital marketing. It's a fun class and I look forward to this. I'll post more in a few days.
2024/06/22: soon cameras will animate your photos. if art changes into animated images, artists complaining their art has been stolen will suddenly become irrelevant when we've moved on to expecting all images to be animated. just as when silent screen stars suddenly became obsolete. https://t.co/it1Kpd9KvT
2024/06/22: there's such a thing as powdered alcohol? Just add water. invented in Japan in the mid 60s and banned in most of the US (probably by the US wine and booze industry?) https://t.co/e5LCIRAAIJ https://t.co/wSaGATeY4A
2024/06/23: wildfire season has started in Calif. map of current forest fires (with airplanes) at https://t.co/jsgrAtwJmU the yellow areas are smoke. https://t.co/15QgEeoBOO
2024/06/24: Biden finally solved the Assange problem: guilty plea with no prison. WASHINGTON (AP) — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will plead guilty to a felony charge in a deal with the U.S. Justice Department that will free him from prison.
2024/06/26: i'm reading a business book. the word "delve" appears 24 times on 51 pages. hmmm... https://t.co/Psbiz5WcPi
2024/06/26: Toys R Us' ad, the first 60-second commercial ad generated by Sora AI. actually, quite good, both in concept and technically. it's the beginning. soon, it'll all video ads will be AI-generated. TV shows and movies are next... https://t.co/KLZUz920AY
2024/06/28: seagull beach party! 🏖 at San Francisco beach https://t.co/tvBSV9YWbz
2024/06/30: And that's it. i give up on Twitter. too toxic. moved to Blue Sky.

The End. For Now.

Analyze Twenty Years of Blog and Twitter Posts in an AI

Use AI to Discover

Blog Postings for 2003

Blog Postings for 2005

Blog Postings for 2006

Blog Postings for 2007

Blog Postings for 2008

Blog Postings for 2009

Blog Postings for 2010

Blog Postings for 2012

Ad CTRs and A/B Testing

Facebook's ComScore White Paper

The Results

Problems with the ComScore Document

Summary

Comparison against Google, Bing, Yahoo

Added

Solar Charger for USB Smartphones

Facebook's Black Hole

What's a KPI anyway?

A Great Leap for Marketing...

Google Consumer Barometer

BurgerBots: Who needs workers anyway?

Google Glass

Google and the American Revolution

KPIs: Tracking the Numbers

Finally, Easy Semantic Web Markup

Dealing with Google...

The Problem with Marketing

No Control Group

Insufficient Data for Statistical Significance

Marketing Doesn't Do Numbers

Marketing Doesn't Want Numbers

The Solution

One-Page Business Plan for Your Startup

Write or Curate? Do It or Talk about It?

What's the Best Sources for News and Information?

Yahoo vs Facebook: Who Will Win?

What Is Yahoo's Claim?

Has Yahoo Won on this Issue Elsewhere?

What about Facebook?

Blog Postings for 2013

What If Apple Ran the Post Office?

The Basic Elements of Content Marketing

More about the Metrics

The ROI in Content Marketing

Update: A Case Study

I'm #78,755! :-)

Google Cars: It Sounds Like Science Fiction

Conference Calls: What Works?

Requirements for a Valid Case Study

How to Use this List

What about Case Studies for Content Marketing?

Does Link Building Work? Or Is It Fraud?

How to Make a Whiteboard

eBay Research on PPC

Another Google Product Shuts Down

Post-Computer? Post-Google?

Innovation, Disruption, and the Google Car

5 of Top 10 eBooks Are Self-Published

How to Set Up a Monthly Newsletter

How to Collect Your Email Addresses

Scrub the List

Designing the Newsletter

How to Track Conversions from Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.

The Real Story in SEO

Silicon Valley, Politics, and Society

Unique Look for your Twitter page

Influencer Marketing: Who to Contact?

Google and the NSA: Who's Lying? What's the Truth?

Metrics and... Wine?

Cloud Storage... In the Year 1546 AD?

A Trillion Passwords? How to Create Two-Step Passwords

Use Word Clouds to Review Social Postings

GMail Visualization: See who you're emailing

The Grandmother Pitch: What Do Your Advocates Say about You?

The Grandmother Pitch

How to Use This: Make It Easy for Others to Talk about You

Next Steps for You

The End of Corporate Email?