Next week, Matt & I will be sitting down to architect the new version of SEOmoz's website. We'll be adding a lot of functionality, streamlining the user experience (particularly for those who land on the home page) and adding some new sections to the site. One of our major focuses is on improving the experience of our most loyal readers - the passionate community of between 500-1000 folks w...
Snail mail is dead, right? Apparently not! Recently SEOmoz received a written letter from a well-meaning entrepreneur at a federal correctional institution, asking us if we could send him any information about SEOmoz's services. ...
I was recently interviewed on video (in a t-shirt) at our offices here in Seattle by Payscale.com for their Salary Stories blog. I'm not sure if I'll ever be fully comfortable with how I look on video, but it might be something to experiment with. ...
We promised an interactive, Web 2.0-esque way to participate in SEOmoz's hiring process, and here it is. Below are six blog entries, each written by our hiring finalists. Read each blog entry, then vote for the one that you think is the best. Remember, the topic we assigned to our interviewees was user-generated content. Think of the following when reading each entry: ...
User generated content seems to be a pendulum-swing against the 1980s and ‘90s-style elitism that had all aspects of the media, including the web, tucked away in the firm grasp of a small, skilled group. Now, the opposite is true: In no other public way can the regular folks you see promoting themselves on Bebo or dishing out ...
Seattle Internet startup Trailfire is attempting to blaze a path through the web bookmarking community and straight into your disorganized life. Besides a misleading appeal to pyromaniacs, the service offers some features that are unique, straightforward to use, and potentially very advantageous. Trailfire is essentially a bookmark plug-in for yo...
I started out this post with the idea that, as Danah Boyd observed, “privacy is not a set of information, but a feeling.” I was planning to use the Facebook “privacy” fiasco to probe the idea that users demand a certain level of comfort and security fr...
The user-submitted, Web 2.0 world is, in theory, built upon the idea of a democratic, free-flow of news and ideas: free of the framing, restraint and editorial control of the mainstream media. Unfortunately, much has been made recently of the not-so-egalitarian power structure that exists on bookmarking sites such as Reddit and, particularly, Digg.With an estimated ...
We've all seen it. The hurried post, the random cameraphone image, the poorly-thought-out home video. What is disguised as an interesting tidbit of information or entertainment is quickly revealed to be a waste of your time. A torpedo, if you will, threatening to sink the ship of your efficiency. The ocean is the web in this metaphor. That last sentence was a depth charge. See how this works?...
"This site is blocked because its content may be offensive to the political, moral, or religious values of the United Arab Emirates."Last year, two talented young Americans left their home in Seattle for a one-year stint in Dubai at a TV startup. They were homesick and hurtling from the culture shock, both on the street and in the workplace. Hungry to reconnect and shivering ...
After more than 100 resumes, 20 interviews (including a few grueling ones), we've narrowed down our candidates to 5 standouts. This diverse group will be asked to write a blog entry over the weekend and submit them to us on Monday morning, at which point, we'll let you vote on which blog entry you like best. The entries will be anonymized, but they're all on a similar topic (though I expect to ...
This morning, Mystery Guest made an appearance in Cranium's new online version of their Pop 5 Game. It's a take on guessing pop culture references based on visual clues and the web team has done a great job making it into a Flash game. ...
I was reading my usual forums today when I came across this post: Here is a good thing to keep in mind - not just in beta but throughout your entire life. No matter how right you might be and no matter how good your ideas are they immediately get diminished by using inflammatory language. Saying "go back and change w...
The most common question I receive after I've written any of my posts is: How can I get started and learn what you know? And that's a difficult question to answer. Not because I don't think it's possible, but because there is so much that you can do in the SEO field. Let's take black hat out of th...