My wife and I went to the local “hicnic” last night to do some people watching and stumbled upon the best carnival game EVER!

It’s basically rat roulette where you place your bet ($0.50) on a color, they spin a giant roulette wheel with holes in it, and free a rat, which up until this point being held captive in the center of the wheel under a colander. If the rat runs into the hole that matches where you placed your bet, you win!

Like I said, it’s the best carnival game ever and I’m not sure how it took me so long to discover it. I took a quick video of it on my new iPhone 4 (video quality’s not too shabby) so everyone could enjoy although nothing quite beats the rush of being there. My favorite part of the video is the maniac screaming “Damn you RAT!” after losing.

For the last few years we’ve been beaten over the head with the idea that your company should be involved in social media. And to a large extend I agree.

But you need to be careful WHO is involved in social media for your company. If for example, your chairman is a hot headed moron who’s likely to post the literary equivalent to a temper tantrum for all the world to see, he might not be the best candidate.

Thankfully, Dan Gilbert, chairman of Quicken Loans and majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers has provided a great case study for you and your company’s CEO on what NOT to do.

Background

For the non-sports fans in my audience, allow me to set the stage for Mr. Gilbert’s meltdown. LeBron James, one of the two best players in the game, and almost certainly a future Hall of Famer was deciding where he wanted to play basketball for the next several years. James had played for the last 7 years for Gilbert’s Cavaliers and as an Ohio native, was the home-town hero.

The Mistake

Unfortunately for Cleveland, LeBron decided to join his friends in playing for the Miami Heat. In response, Dan Gilbert posted a letter (as seen below) to Cav fans on the team’s website.

click for full view

Agree or disagree with LeBron’s decision, love him or hate him, you can’t tell me Gilbert’s letter improves the image of the Cavs or Quicken Loans.

While I can only imagine the frustration Cleveland fans must be feeling right now, Gilbert’s letter lectures calls LeBron selfish, narcissistic, heartless and a traitor. All of that for choosing to go “work” with his friends in what he deems a better environment.

By using such strong language Giblert doesn’t help improve his company’s image (which should be the goal of all social media efforts), but rather makes it seem like they’re led by a unstable hot head who lashes out when things don’t go his way. Not to mention the fact that we’re still talking about a GAME. James didn’t betray national secrets or abuse kids or kill puppies on his way to the podium last night. He simply didn’t make the decision Gilbert wanted.

The Problem

Given Gilbert’s reaction to bad news, it’s no surprise there were no Quicken or Cavalier employees around that were willing to tell Gilbert the letter was a bad idea. While it’s great for CEO’s to be excited and engaged in social media, there HAS to be someone that can prevent debacles like this before they start.

Somewhere along the line last night, Gilbert needed an employee, whether someone from PR, Legal, a member of the social media team or hell, even the IT grunt (come on dude, at least change it from comic sans!) who posted the letter, to step up to the plate and challenge the idea. “Excuse me sir, but is this REALLY the face we want to show to the world right now? Can we maybe tone down some aspects of the letter and make it seem a little bit more positive in nature?”

Sure that version of the letter might not have made many Cav fans feel better, but it also wouldn’t have given the rest of the world the mental image of the chairman of Quicken Loans thrashing around on the floor kicking and screaming because he didn’t get the toy he wanted.

While the twitter rep for Quicken might think the letter show’s Gilbert’s a “passionate guy” I’m certainly not the only one who was repulsed by it.

And those are just some of the fan reactions! I don’t know about you, but my goal for social media is NOT to have people questioning the sobriety of my company’s chairman.

So yes, many companies DO need to be involved in social media. However, you also need to have systems set in place to make sure the engagement is positive, and helps improve your company’s image, rather than damaging the brand. If your CEO wants to blog, fantastic! But you’d better have the balls to intervene before he or she throws gasoline on a fire. If you can’t do that, or your CEO’s ego won’t allow that, you’d probably be better off if they avoided social media like the plague.

P.S. Yes that’s me throwing some sort of tantrum when I was younger. I’ve grown up since then, something it appears Dan Gilbert hasn’t managed to accomplish.

Jason Calacanis was nice enough to have me on his This Week in Startups show this week, and believe it or not, he admitted I was right “about 50%” of the time (in soccer that’s a win right?)! Also, I’ve also been given the title of “VP of SEO” for Mahalo so I’m sure that will look good on my resume.

No offense to miixxy (the “jayter” to lead off the show) but I’m starting the video at about the 30 minute mark because my segment is over half an hour long and frankly, I kind of doubt you want to watch over an hour of Calacanis and my ugly mug.

Chime in below and let me know how you think I did and whether Jason or myself changed your mind. Enjoy!

Mahalo, the incredibly successful spam factory, has apparently decided to rob their writers blind.

For those of you unfamiliar with the site, Mahalo has a TON of content much of which is written by hundreds if not thousands of writers. These writers HAD been working under a revenue sharing model which meant if their pages did well, they got a cut of the Google AdSense profits.

Naturally this was an appealing model for many writers, as an article written today could turn into a passive income source for years to come given how well Mahalo ranks in the search engines! Not a bad gig right?

Just one problem… Mahalo has decided to end the revenue sharing program effective June 30th.

They’re not closing it off to new writers, or even closing it off to new articles. They’re ending the entire thing.

So writers who have put in countless hours of work creating content for the site, will no longer earn the income that was promised them.

Where I’m from if someone doesn’t pay me the agreed upon price for my work, I call that stealing.

Mahalo’s Response

Jason Calacanis, Mahalo’s founder, has responded to the criticism of this move in several places. Unfortunately, none of the responses actually address the fact that his company is stealing money from the pockets of the very people who helped build his site.

Writers Will Earn More

Jason’s first defense is that this model will actually help most Mahalo writers earn more money. While that might very well be true, it still sucks big time for anyone who wrote content under the old agreement. Calacanis in fact admits this saying “The small number of folks who had the killer revenue pages are going to be disappointed.”

Calacanis’ admission that Mahalo will be “disappointing” writers with high revenue pages is astounding given his vehement denials of the allegations.

The Writers Wanted the Change

Jason claims they did this “because 19/20 writers voted in favor of getting paid a flat rate over revenue sharing.” While that could also be true (I’d be interested in seeing where that vote took place), it doesn’t change the fact that ALL Mahalo writers are no longer receiving the payment they agreed to when writing the content.

The Content is Creative Commons

I’m not sure why or how, but Calacanis somehow got it into his head that this whole issue was about what license Mahalo uses for the content. The license Mahalo uses has absolutely nothing to do with the agreement between Mahalo and the writers creating content for them. Let’s move on.

These Accusations Are Lies/False

Calacanis has responded in several different places stating that the accusations being leveled against Mahalo are “lies”, “false”, and just made “by one person who is upset we changed models.” In one tweet he pointed me towards a Mahalo post about the change asking me to check the facts. Unfortunately for Calacanis & Mahalo the blog post announcing the change only supports the allegations against them.

They ARE ending revenue sharing, and they AREN’T offering writers any alternative. That’s the accusation being made, and Mahalo’s own post doesn’t do anything to dispute it.

And, throwing doubt on Calacanis’ claim that these accusations are being leveled by “one person,” a Mahalo question page was created by a different writer than the one mentioned in David Porter’s post which brought the issue to my attention. While someone at Mahalo attempted to silence the critic by deleting the post, the magic of the internet and a quick screen shot by @neyne preserved it.

(...Click for full view...)

And if that’s STILL not enough to convince Mr. Calacanis that several writers are upset about being ripped off, this comment on Mahalo’s own post was deemed helpful by over 25 other Mahalo members!

(...Click for full view...)

That certainly doesn’t sound like it’s just one rouge writer causing trouble for Mahalo.

This is an SEO Conspiracy

Just about any time Mahalo is criticized, Calacanis claims it’s just a bunch of angry SEOs trying to get back at him for criticizing the profession several years ago. While it is true that many of Mahalo’s critics are SEOs, I personally could care less what Calacanis has to say about the industry. Stealing from hard working writers just to improve his bottom line, now THAT I have a problem with.

A Way Out

Obviously Mahalo has a right to pay new writers however they want. If new writers are willing to work for peanuts and a copy of Calacanis’ self produced rap album (I’m making this up folks) that’s fine by me.

However, these writers produced content under a specific agreement and that agreement should be honored.

I’m no lawyer but Mahalo’s actions certainly seem to be a breach of contract.

Instead of treating the very people who built his site like crap, I would urge Calacanis and Mahalo to honor their initial agreement for all articles created under those terms.

If they’re absolutely unwilling to do that (I suspect some pages are making way too much money for Mahalo to be open to that idea) let the writers take their content elsewhere.

No, this isn’t going to help the writers replace their lost income. But at least the content wouldn’t have been stolen from the writers. Mahalo could easily replace the content with new, residual free content without losing much if any income.

Note: Lest this post appear one sided, I’ve extended an offer to Calacanis to be interviewed as a part of this post. I’m not holding my breath on that one, but if he, or anyone else involved feels like chiming in, I’ll make sure to keep you all up to date.

Update: Calacanis has agreed to be interviewed (see above) and also states that Mahalo was “clear from the start that we might change revenue sharing if it didn’t work.” I would certainly like to see the documentation supporting that claim, and I’ll be sure to address the issue if/when the interview happens. Stay tuned!

image source: anarchosyn

Now that Facebook has turned fans into “likers” (another in a string of idiotic decisions) they’ve opened up their notification emails to all sorts of exploitations for comedy’s sake.

Earlier today a friend of mine suggested that I like his company. Naturally my 12 year old sense of humor kicked in and I wondered via Twitter how long until I started seeing people “suggest you like men” etc.

Never one to disappoint, Kenny Hyder quickly obliged by making that very suggestion. Muhammad Saleem did what he always does and kicked it up a notch. You can see their handiwork in the image above.

So, my fellow friends with adolescent senses of humor, what other entertaining suggestions can you come up with? Feel free to link us to some more images and I’ll update this post with the best (worst) submissions.

Enjoy!

As I was playing around on Twitter tonight instead of sleeping (long story & it starts in Israel, no seriously) I saw my buddy Olivier mention that Rand Fishkin had blocked him.

Now, Olivier was being a bit belligerent with Rand sure, but I’ve never known Rand to be thin skinned and trust me, I’ve tested that theory time & time again.

So I jumped over to Rand’s twitter page only to see this somewhat shocking image you see above.

Now that’s odd, I thought. I can’t believe Rand would really lock his Tweets down. I mean attention whores like us want anyone and everyone hearing what we have to say.

Naturally, I clicked the send request button.

After clicking I’m then informed that Rand has blocked me (a possibility I suppose) but I’m allowed to see the stream that had just been labeled private.

So um.. which is it Twitter… did Rand make his Twitter stream private, or did he block me?

Opponents of framing (or framejacking as I prefer to call it) have had a good couple of weeks.

First Digg announced that Kevin Rose was taking over and his first order of business was to kill off the Diggbar.

This morning, I received an email letting me know that Hootsuite was putting an end to the framing ways of their URL shortener ow.ly!

Those are two huge blows against the despicable practice of framejacking other people’s content with your own crap. There’s just one problem…

In the same email Hootsuite announced that they’re creating a NEW framejacking URL shortener called Ht.ly to replace Ow.ly’s functionality.

So yes, I am happy that Ow.ly will no longer be trying to frame content. Yes, I’m happy that my friends on social sites who for some reason don’t mind that Hootsuite’s pants are burning, can use their favorite service and I will once again be able to click their links, guilt and annoyance free.

But I’m not going to give Hootsuite a big hug for creating another frame jacking toolbar. They know it’s wrong, they’ve promised in the past to stop the practice, and yet they just can’t seem to bring themselves to do the right thing.

And since I seem to get this argument every time I talk about framing, yes this goes for Stumble Upon with their frame, Google Images for their frame, and anyone else that diminishes the value I get in exchange for my content.

Hootsuite users, please use the Ow.ly option as I won’t be clicking on any Ht.ly links. Or better yet, tell the lying framejacking piece of crap Hootsuite to piss off and use a straight URL shortener like Kl.am.

Image sources: Jeff the Trojan & busyPrinting

It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Raven SEO Tools. So naturally, when they published a post earlier today promising a “Big Summer Surprise” I got more than a little curious.

The post promises to “change how you research, monitor and report on site intelligence” and explicitly mentions their partnership with MajesticSEO. Now I don’t know about you, but when I hear research and MajesticSEO in the same sentence, I immediately think link data.

If you combine the idea of link data with the fact that Raven recently announced automatic SERP history for some terms, it doesn’t take long to come up with some pretty impressive ideas of what’s coming.

Well, I did a little more digging, and while I can’t reveal my source, it looks like Raven is most likely working on an Open Site Explorer killer.

And, as long as they do it with the same standard as the rest of their toolset, I think the SEO community will be in for a treat. If you need me, I’ll be counting the days until “summer.”

image source: patries71

I was privileged enough to be asked to speak to a group of small business owners at the Market St. Louis conference yesterday. I was pretty confident they asked me more because of what day it was (April Fools day for the dense ones in the crowd) than because of my expertise in SEO but I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

That’s good news for you if you were planning on giving me a horse with bad teeth. You can relax now. You’re in the clear.

In any case, I decided to discuss one of the questions about SEO that I’m asked most frequently, “How do I get more links?”

I’ll tell you right off the bat, for you SEO veterans out there, there’s not much ground breaking material in this deck. But, you may still want to look it over to know whether you can point someone to it the next time they try and get some free consulting time from you by asking this well worn question.

If, on the other hand, you’re a small business owner that wants to rank better in the search engines and receive more organic traffic to your website, this deck is for you!

And I’m such a nice guy that I’ve decided to go ahead & provide you with links to all the tools that I mentioned on slide 23.

• SEObook’s Toolbar
• SEObook Hubfinder
• Yahoo Site Explorer
• Open Site Explorer
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Raven SEO Tools
• Majestic SEO
• Linkscape

Enjoy!

image source: ToonRefugee

Raven SEO Tools has launched their second installment of the RavenHunt contest. If you remember, that’s the online scavenger hunt that I won to receive a free Flip Mino HD.

As it turns out, I probably should have held back my enthusiasm because the prize THIS time is an Apple iPad!

But, once again, my loss is your gain. Or at least could be.

Since I’m not eligible to win this time, the field is wide open! Plus, there are a ton of prizes. They include:

• First Place:
  • Apple iPad
  • 1 year Pro subscription to Raven
  • Premium Membership to Search Engine Land
  • Copy of The New Community Rules by Tamar Weinberg
  • Copy of Web Analytics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik
  • Official RavenHunt t-shirt
• Second Place:
  • 6 month Pro subscription to Raven
  • Official RavenHunt t-shirt
• 3rd-10th
  • Official RavenHunt t-shirt

Now, the first two clues were releases yesterday BUT you can join pretty much any time before Friday and still have a shot at winning.

Each clue is going to give you a letter, and at the end of the week you’ll need to enter the secret phrase to win. It’s a good time (I’m participating this week even though I can’t win a prize) and um… did I mention the iPad?

Here’s the thing though, even if you don’t win, Raven (have I mentioned lately how much I love this company?) has introduced a $19/mo basic plan so it’s not like you have to go broke to use their amazing tools.

Hell, they even have a 30 day free trial that doesn’t require a credit card to sign up!

So what I’m saying is pretty simple. Follow @RavenTools on Twitter, jump into the Raven Hunt for your chance to win an iPad, and for the love of everything holy give Raven SEO Tools a try. There’s just no good reason not to.

Disclaimer: Yes, my links to Raven SEO Tools are all affiliate links. Why? Because if you take my advice and actually USE their tools, an affiliate commission will be the least you can do to thank me for turning you onto such an amazing resource. You’re welcome.