Sorry again for the delay. I have a nagging cold that prevents me from going to bed at any time other than what I like to call Rand o'clock (~3:00 am or later; yesterday I was so desperate to get some rest that I watched Silent Hill on Encore Mystery in hopes that it would bore me to sleep), and due to lack of zzz's I was Zombie Becca today. After a nap and a bike ride, however, I felt revived enough to bring you this week's Roundup Thursday. Enjoy.

Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week:

Three star links:

  • Intern Danny (yes, that's what I call him) showed me NotchUp, an interesting site. Basically, you sign up for their program and fill out a profile, and then companies find you and pay you to be interviewed for a job. It kind of puts the ball in a different court. I'm interested to see whether this business model takes off or if it falls flat.
  • Eric Enge interviews Adam Lasnik, my favorite Lindy Hoppin' foodie. Sadly, they don't discuss food; rather, they talk about web spam, linking, and more.
  • GoDaddy took a different approach to this year's Super Bowl ad--they ran ads that hyped their "too hot for TV" ads that you could watch on their site. The result? Half the traffic as the 2006 ads, but double the revenue. Hmm, so you're telling me that by piquing your audience's curiosity, you can get more targeted traffic and better conversions? Who'da thunk it...
  • Ian Lurie is hosting an Internet Marketing Strategy Weekend April 5-6 in Seattle, WA. The purpose of the seminar? To "...work with your fellow attendees and [Ian] to create an integrated internet marketing strategy. When you'll leave, you'll have what you need to improve the results you get online." His writeup of the strategy weekend is amusing, so check it out and see if you want to shell out the $4,000 (or $3,999 if you're stingy, but $8,000 if you dare mention the term "web 3.0") fee.
Four star links:

  • Google opened up their social graph API, meaning that third parties can grab social graph data that is produced by linking (found via Techcrunch, which also features a nice informative graph about the API).
  • Rogue Columnist brings us an article detailing what's really wrong with newspapers and why they're failing. It's a really interesting look at the issues in the newspaper industry. If you're jonesin' for more newspaper woes, may I suggest this season of the Wire? It's good stuff.
  • Information Week details five reasons why Nokia should buy Yahoo. Rand actually likes this idea, and thinks it could be a smarter move than letting Microsoft buy them.
  • Newsweek details how the Internet doesn't take advantage how we as humans optimally process information, which is by scanning. It highlights an ideal way to present information, which is by zooming (displaying information like a landscape, and giving people the chance to zoom down to the details), which, the article claims, "has the potential to take human-computer interaction to a new, more productive level."
  • Juice Analytics examines the "Colbert Bump," which is the bump in sales guests experience after promoting their product on the Colbert Report. The post is complete with neat graphs that show the bump in action.
  • Sucks to be you, Rand. Sci Tech News brings us a study that says "creative genius...[is] turned off almost like a tap if a man gets married and has children." Well, actually, seeing as how I'm the creative brains behind the SEOmoz outfit, I guess Rand getting hitched isn't that big a deal. ;)
  • Eytan Seidman, the management director for Microsoft Live's Search Core Relevance Program, is leaving the company to work on a startup with his brother. Search Engine Land has a good article about Eytan's history at Microsoft and a couple of "tribute videos" (sheesh, it's not like he died, Danny [Sullivan, not Intern Danny]).
Five star links:


YOUmoz entries:
  • Free Money from Google! Enemy News talks about various ways to get followed links from Google via their announced Knol project.
  • Pay for Post Mozzers. Carfeu brings up an interesting question about whether SEOmoz should pay people who contribute posts to YOUmoz. The general consensus in the comments was no, but it's a good discussion and I applaud Carfeu for bringing it up.
  • The Complete Introduction to Joomla SEO. Man, the Joomla posts keep on comin'. Ekal provides a basic introduction of the Joomla CMS platform.
  • Microsoft + Yahoo! = Better Search? Carfeu talks about the Microsoft offer to buy Yahoo! and asks what it will mean to search and what our opinion is of the proposed merger (if there will even be one).
  • ...and the SEOmoz Premium Winners are... Seamag announces the winners of the YOUmoz entry contest that awarded a free year of Premium membership to first place and a free month to second place. Congratulations to Crash and SlightlyShadySEO for winning the big prizes!
  • How Responsible Are Bloggers for What They Post? Florida asks us how responsible bloggers are for what they post in terms of journalistic integrity and accuracy of information.
  • Do Thumbs Hold Weight? Let's Test It. JustFred authors a post to test whether our thumb system holds any weight with search engine rankings.
  • Google Local Sign in England. WavyDavy shares with us a Google Maps marker sign he saw in the UK.
  • Rogue PPC Results from Google. HannahS notices some strange PPC ads depending on what she searches for.
Best of YOUmoz:
  • Give Your Readers Something To Do by vingold authors a great post about having actionable content on your website and ensuring that your users can derive some takeaways from it.

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