Twitter is a platform (with etiquette, but still a platform). It is home to a number of broad and niche communities. Ditto Facebook. They both provide users with a set of tools and things they can do.

Digg is both a platform and a community, but Pligg (more…)

Get SEO ROI Services' RSS Feed
Curious why you should subscribe? The best reason I can give is that you'll find original ideas here. Not rehashed, generic beginner tips like "Top 5 Ways To Write A Great Title" On a related note, if you need SEO services, here's where to get more information.

(I promise to be back with premium material next week. For now, here’s for your own entertainment…) My friend Nick recently got an apology from Facebook Ads for disapproving his campaign(s) erroneously. A commenter wrote: “Get the same comment from the Adwords team and surely the end of the world is neigh [sic].’ Well, it appears the end is nigh, as I got this in my email: (more…)

I’ve been asked the question recently in connection to business blogs: Should I blog on the company’s official site/domain name, or should I blog on on a fresh domain name? Each approach has its advantages, but with current search engine algorithms, my advice is to have the blog on (more…)

A girl I was close with in high school wanted to get her nipples pierced. I’d heard some horror stories about nipple piercings and decided that I’d do some research on the topic to try and dissuade her, assuming she’d learn from others’ mistakes. (more…)

I’ve decided to start a semi-regular link love thing sharing items I’ve recently come across that I’d like to share with you folks as being valuable resources. This “Linking Oot N Aboot” column name comes from David, who remarked to me upon seeing a picture of me in a suit with a poppy: “You’re a canuck too?!” Yep, sure am! And though I don’t have the maritime/Atlantic Canada pronunciation that we seem to be famous for, I’ll shamelessly use my country’s national slang for the hell of it. (more…)

I ran a poll on Facebook targeting Facebook users 18-24 to find out whether they were aware of the existence of the Facebook Blog. 83% of them were not. This was following up on what Jane wrote at SEOmoz, regarding how she would make the Facebook blog more visible and certain other changes she’d make. After the jump, the precise details of the poll data. (more…)

I really dislike Google. Bill Gates, on the other hand, is a very charitable guy and MSN hasn’t done any deals with the devil nor helped terrorists, like Google has (hat tips Sunshine and Atlas). So I’m squarely in Bill’s corner. Here are the 5 things MSN/Live Must do to win search share from Google and Yahoo. (more…)

Here is the final campaign data of my two Facebook flyer campaigns, both of which were terminated December 3rd. All things told, spending under $2 for about 30,000 impressions seems like a sweet deal to me! Plus, I got some clicks and awareness, and it helped me make a good industry connection that has since translated into a few links. So while Aaron paid $500 for links through AdWords, (more…)

From the NYT (yes, that link is a nofollow and no, it’s not by accident) comes news that Montreal company (I love our city!) Weblo is helping users sell advertising on their Facebook profile pages. That’s not all though. Weblo is also empowering users to sell ads on their Youtube, Blogger, Myspace, Orkut and other web profiles.

Facebook, naturally, is none too pleased. For one, they’ve got competition to sell ads on their own site now. For another, these ads directly integrated into users’ profiles are likely to feel very spammy. Or to use a Facebook rep’s words, “cluttered.”

Will they stay or will they go? Well, Facebook could easily boot Weblo off their site. But chances are you’d just see other people come up with similar apps and it would get very laborious to ban all of them. Besides, how do you tell your users that some content isn’t allowed on your site? Unfair as it may be to Facebook, people will bitch about censorship and all that jazz. So Facebook needs to come up with a plausible answer to the problem of profile advertising, asap.

Ironically, they could probably solve the problem by collaborating with their big advertisers on it. Have them spend some dough to test it out, offer a rebate on Facebook advertising in exchange, and see if it works. I’m betting it won’t. And this being the web, advertisers will eventually stop using the platform as word spreads that the ROI sucks. Theoretically, at least.

If the ads do work out and Facebook directed its big advertisers to it, then there could be some competition between Facebook and Weblo. But Facebook could ultimately win that fight by booting Weblo and encouraging users to add an official copycat app to their profiles. The best part of it, for Facebook, is that they get an unknown company to take the heat if the idea doesn’t work out. After the stiff reception Beacon got, the last thing Facebook wants is more negative publicity for their ads. So they can see with advertisers whether this is finally the solution and then boot Weblo (or just buy them out entirely?).

Perhaps that’s what Facebook planned all along…

Since Facebook announced their new ad platform, they were allowing advertisers with existing Flyers campaigns to continue running the campaigns until said campaigns were paused or deleted. Now, those campaigns will be automatically shut off by Facebook on December 3rd. (Edit: This is gaining traction at Sphinn. Please Sphinn it to help it go hot!) (more…)