Facebook Kills Network Pages
Posted by Mitch on May 31, 2008
Either tomorrow or Monday, Facebook will be eliminating the networks function of their site. For those who don’t know, networks gave you a chance to initially link up with people who had something in common with you, such as region of the world or country, college, high school or business. When I first signed up, I picked the network where I lived, and it gave me a chance to look through that network to find other people living in my area that I might know. I also was able to sign up for my alma mater’s network because I have a specific email address associated with the college.
With that gone, people are pretty much going to be relegated to having to find friends by popping in their names or email addresses and doing the individual search. Some people might find their friends in one of the many groups that are there, though, if you remember my post on Facebook, the groups are all overrated (even mine, unfortunately).
Of course, there are going to be some other changes, which Facebook probably needed to make, and probably what MySpace needs to think about doing some day. Many people who haven’t seen the news are going to awake tomorrow or Monday and wonder where everything is, and what’s going on. I think the networking thing is the most significant thing they’re doing, though, and I’m curious how new people will be greeted. I won’t see it, obviously, so I hope I get to talk to some new people to see how they got in, and what they think about the process.
Of course, I’m still hoping Facebook does something with their servers, because it’s still one of the slowest moving sites I deal with. Maybe they need to take a page from Google at some point, but I think they’re hedging their bets, wondering just how far social networking groups like theirs will be relevant, especially as everyone starts to notice that, though there are lots of members, there’s very little real participation between those members. I wish them, and me, well.
Error Doctor To The Rescue
Posted by Mitch on May 31, 2008
First, if you notice to the right, there are now a few sponsored links to products. I’ve added those there because, well, this is a marketing blog that’s trying to earn some money, but also because I’m familiar with most of them, including the one I’m about to write on now.
I use Firefox for my browser, and I love it. What I especially love are all the customized things you can do with it. For instance, instead of having the boring background and frame that most other people do, on the browser here on my main computer I actually have a theme that highlights the Kansas City Chiefs, because I love the colors, and because I like the team, though I’m mainly a Dallas Cowboys fan. On the Firefox browser on my laptop, I’m using the theme from the show Futurama, which has all these icons of characters from the show instead of the regular buttons.
Something else it can do is allow you to change the look of some of the pages that one visits from time to time. For instance, this is what my Google looks like:
And this is what the images page looks like:
And this is what my Wikipedia looks like:
You can download the stuff you need to do things like this by going to a page called Userstyles.org; lots of great stuff there. Anyway, once I got a taste of that sort of thing, I learned that there’s another page called Userscripts.org, which is special scripting that people have created so that you can do things on pages that you probably really shouldn’t be able to do. For instance, one script allows you to download any video you see on YouTube in a MP4 format, though there are plenty others in other formats. One that I use a lot is one that increases the size of pictures on Facebook to the size they actually are, so I don’t have to keep trying to figure out what people look like from all those small profile pictures.
On the Userscripts page, they warn you that some of the scripts might cause problems with your computer from time to time. Though I’m usually a pretty cautious guy, I figured that everything was going to work just fine, because, after all, it did with the Styles site. I loaded five or six scripts that did different things, and everything seemed to work for maybe 30 minutes. From that point on, my computer basically locked up. I rebooted multiple times, and that did nothing. I unloaded all the programs from the Userscripts program, which is called Greasemonkey, and that did nothing. I ran Regcleaner adn that did nothing either, because it didn’t know what to do. I tried running my antivirus, spyware and spam programs, but they wouldn’t work either. I was stuck.
Then I remembered that I had Error Doctor on my computer, and I decided to give that a try. When one’s system is running reasonably well, it usually completes its job in about 2 minutes. In this case, it took the program 15 minutes to do its job, but at the end of it, when I told it to fix everything, it did its job perfectly. I then ran it a second time, just to make sure, and in two minutes it was done, with nothing except some minor registry clean ups. I rebooted the computer, and everything came back just as it had been beforehand. I did load two of the scripts back, which were really the only two I’d wanted in the first place, and I’ve had no problems since.
Now, if that’s not a ringing endorsement for Error Doctor, I don’t know what could be. It’s not all that expensive, and it works wonders. So, if you’re ever in need, make sure to grab a copy. It could save you a lot of money on the back end.
Sean Branagan Talks About Marketing
Posted by Mitch on May 29, 2008
I went to a presentation here in the Syracuse area today for a series called “Talking Business: A Conversation With…” Basically it’s a monthly interview series with local business people who’ve done well. They’re interviewed by a moderator, then questions are allowed to be asked by the audience.
Today’s presenter was a gentleman named J. Sean Branagan, president of a company called Communigration, which is a PR & marketing firm for technology companies.
I love going to things like this, but especially today I enjoyed it because he talked about his concepts of marketing for small businesses. This is what he does, but those small businesses have very expensive and specific technology, which of course means he’s competing against fewer people for very big dollars, and he has to find ways of standing out from the crowd while still addressing the potential clients needs.
He talked about his process for coming up with the right message to get across. He starts out by writing a 50 word statement of some kind. Then he whittles that down to 25 words. Next he whittles it down to 10 words, and finally he shoots for 3 or 4 words that fully capture just what a company does. His thought is that if you can come up with a way to tell people what you can do for them with a super short statement, and are ready to back it up with more information once you’ve hooked them, then you’ll succeed where other businesses that do what you do fail.
It makes a lot of sense, especially if you pay attention to TV commercials. Nike’s “Just Do It” is probably one of the best known 3-word phrases in the world today. “Coke Adds Life” was one of my favorites from way back in the day. One of our local community colleges has the phrase “We Build Futures” that’s very popular. Remember State Farm Insurance, “Like A Good Neighbor”? And even Mazda’s “Zoom Zoom” stands out; you know what the commercial is about as soon as you hear that, even if you never hear the name of the product.
Can this same model work with an online business? Unfortunately, no one thought to ask this question, including me, while he was up there. I tend to believe that branding of some fashion is imperative to helping one establish an identity of some sort, though. Google’s first page is unique with only their name; so is Yahoo’s. YouTube might have been as popular a site if it had been called “Upload Your Movies”, but it might have been overlooked also. Trying to find a way to capture the eyes and attention of a visitor to your site just may help them stay for a little while, and if it does, you’ll have the opportunity to make money in some fashion, and that’s never a bad thing.
It was a wonderful presentation, and it got me thinking more and more about what I can possibly do to make my sites visually more interesting, as well as finding something more to captivate their eyes. I’m Just Sharing,… heck, I still like that!
Subscribing To RSS Feeds
Posted by Mitch on May 28, 2008
RSS stands for “really simple syndication”, and basically it gives people an opportunity to follow new content from websites or blogs that are often changing what’s being presented on the site. For instance, if you notice on the top right side I have a little icon giving people the option to syndicate my blog, so that they will be informed every time I write something new. I want people to subscribe to my blog so that my message will spread, but there’s reality that many people may not quite know what RSS feeds are.
The video below talks about it in a little more detail, as well as how to use it witnin Internet Explorer. I use a separate program that’s not associated with my browser called Feedreader to put all my feeds into, and it’s free.
After watching that, I hope you decide to subscribe to my feed; I won’t be mad if you do. 
Meanwhile, I can’t take full credit for finding the video, so I thank Barbara Ling for writing about it on her blog.
Twitter’s On My Nerve, And I Just Got There!
Posted by Mitch on May 28, 2008
I’ve been on Twitter for less than a month, and I’m already starting to get irritated with it.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Sure, I came to it kicking and screaming because, like most people, I just didn’t quite get the concept. Basically, it’s fast and immediately blogging, or more like quick notes of what you’re doing at that moment. You’re only allowed 140 characters, including spaces, to say what you want to say; this makes you think just a little bit more concisely, which is hard for someone like me who wants to go on and on.
Once I started, it just grabbed me and I thought it was pretty neat. I found a few friends to follow, and as time went on, people started to find me, people I didn’t know, and that was neat. What happens is that you can follow people throughout the day and they can do the same to you. I’m following 3 or4 more people than follow me, but that’s okay. At least half the time I post a link from a new blog post, whereas 25% of the time I’m putting out a thought, and the other 25% I’m talking to someone.
One of my friends introduced me to TwitterFox, since I use Firefox, so I didn’t have to always sign onto the Twitter site I thought that was pretty good also, until I started getting these strange messages, “rate limit exceeded”, with a different number all the time. I thought that was odd, and asked my friend about it, but he said he hadn’t noticed it, probably because he’s not as anal as I am at looking at stuff. I also noticed that, quite often, the light blue “T” of TwitterFox that’s sitting at the bottom of my browser goes red, and that’s when you know it’s down.
I tried to figure out what the problem was, couldn’t, deleted it and reloaded it, and nothing was solved. I then went to Google and did my research, to see if anyone else was having the same problem. And that’s when it hit me; it’s not Twitter Fox at all, it’s Twitter. It would seem that it’s experiencing the same problems that both Facebook and MySpace experienced with rapid growth, which then brings on server issues. Just this past weekend Twitter announced they’d had a major server crash and were rerouting things, but they never fully shut us down, or so I believe.
So, though I’m still going to be “twittering”, I have to admit that it’s not fun when I go to post a message and everything is frozen. And it doesn’t matter whether I use TwitterFox or log onto the page and try to post something; when they’re down, they’re down, and there’s nothing you can do about it. However, I know the visits to this blog have increased since I hooked up on Twitter, so I’m not going to complain too loudly. They haven’t increased on my other blog, though; I find that interesting.
Anyway, if you ever get the urge to follow me on Twitter, just click on this link. I don’t think I’m going anywhere for awhile. You can learn more about it by checking out this link to eNetworking 101.
FreeCreditReport.com Really Works
Posted by Mitch on May 27, 2008
Different kind of post today. I’m hawking FreeCreditReport.com because they really work. How do I know this? I’m a member, of course.
Here’s my story. I went to this site last September and signed up to get my free credit reports, just like the commercial stated. Then I went ahead and signed up for the monthly credit alert. This followed my wife and I being turned down for a line of credit at the bank where our mortgage is.
Then I started noticing different agencies looking at my report. I knew this because FCR (that’s what I’m calling them for now) sent me alerts each time there was an inquiry. Next thing you know, I started getting phone calls and letters from collection agencies, even though I knew I didn’t owe anybody. So, I finally took a good look at the report. I noticed that there were two derogatory reports on there, and I knew I had paid at least one of those for sure. I thought I’d paid the other one, but I wasn’t sure.
The one I was able to take care of fairly quickly, as I had something proving that the account had been settled years ago. The other one, in my heart I knew I’d settled it, but I wasn’t sure I could prove it. Credit agencies are wild, though. They don’t wait too long to decide to get to the escalation process. What’s also funny is that multiple agencies will be going after the same amount; I believe that’s fraudulent, but so be it.
Then I got a break. I found a letter that showed that I had set up the agreement to pay back an outstanding debt. I remembered the phone call and I remembered the guy, and I had his name on the letter outlining the agreement. Now I was set. I contacted Experian through FCR, and I also contacted the company that I’d paid this account to, back in 2004, of all things. Like the other company, they had never reported it as being satisfied, and, of course, now I know why we got turned down. Sheesh!
Now, here’s the upswing. Just by sending my request through FCR that I was disputing the derogatory statement, my credit score jumped up 60 points. I now have the letter proving that, indeed, the account is satisfied, though the weasels didn’t back date it because they said they didn’t have full access to records that old (yet we’re supposed to have everything if they happened to contact us, right?), so the letter is dated fairly recently. My credit score should jump up a bit more, as this will mean I have nothing bad on my report. Course, it would be great if their letter showed that it was taken care of four years ago, but hey, we take what we can get.
So, it’s been worth it for me to have FreeCreditReport.com following the activity on my account, and I can wholeheartedly recommend them. Of course, you don’t have to pay anything if it’s your first inquiry, or if the last time you checked was more than a year ago. Per federal law, we all get one free credit report a year. But these guys have done well for me; and there you go.
LinkedIn Loses One Of Its Top Supporters
Posted by Mitch on May 26, 2008
Are you a member of LinkedIn? I’ve been on LinkedIn maybe 3 or 4 years now. Not counting the people I already knew from elsewhere, in that entire time I’ve only personally met one of those people, and only once had a second conversation with someone I’d met there. So, it hasn’t really been much of a benefit for me.
However, my friend Vincent Wright has been a major advocate pretty much since he signed up. He’s gone out of his way to set up all sorts of groups for LinkedIn members to participate in. He’s set them up on LinkedIn, then went a step further and set one up on Yahoo. Both groups have had a fantastic response, lots of participation and members, a bunch of great topics.
Yet, even there, one could notice something always seemed to be missing. People were talking, but no one was really doing the kind of business LinkedIn said they could do. Truthfully, LinkedIn has never been set up for open communications; at least not the free version. I don’t know anyone paying to be a member there, so I don’t know if it’s easier for them to communicate with each other or not.
Anyway, back to my friend Vincent. He started noticing some things a while ago, and now it’s gotten to the point where he’s written a post called The Audacity Of Nope that I think anyone who participates in LinkedIn, or may be thinking about participating, should check out, just to make sure they feel it’s what they want to sign up for. I mean, if they can turn off someone like this, someone whose professional life, it seemed, revolved around LinkedIn, then what is there for the rest of us whose only hope has been to make some connections with the type of people we’d like to work with?
And trust me, I’ve really given it the ol’ college try. I’ve asked for connections through people I already knew, but never received a response from the one I wanted to meet. LinkedIn only allows 5 connection requests at a time, so you have to decide later to eliminate some and try again with someone else. For my main career, there’s not a lot of options out there as far as people I’d like to meet to help my business out. If only two of these people had responded, I might feel as though it was a great place to remain. Right now, I have to admit that I’m thinking it just might all be a waste of time. I’m not dropping out just yet, but I am leaning that way.
This brings about an interesting question to ask all of you; how do you really feel about some of these social or business networking sites? How many of them are giving you what you really want or need? Who remembers my post on my thoughts about Facebook? What say you, folks?
Need Some Brainstorming Help
Posted by Mitch on May 25, 2008
Talk about an exciting last few days!
First, I got asked to do a guest blog post for C. A. Simmons on his blog Circle One Connect, reviewing the book Before You Quit Your Job by Robert Kiyosaki. I first wrote a longer version for one of my other websites, Reviews Of Everything, then changed it up for his site. That way, we both get a bounce from the same book; I thought that was kind of cool. At some point I hope C.A. does a guest post for me.
Then I got a unique opportunity to review and help edit Guy Kawasaki’s next book, which will be book number nine, and that was wild because I not only got to help, but I got to pick up some tips that I should be able to use in my business. That’s always a good thing, and I’m glad to have been a part of it all.
I also spent some time yesterday working on a couple of my websites, trying to update and add more content because I want people who come to my sites to get some value out of the things I’ve written, as well as, hopefully, entice them to buy some of the products I show.
However, I’m having some thoughts about one of my sites, and I thought that I’d put it out here to see if anyone wishes to make some comments on it. I have a site called Services And Stuff that just doesn’t get any juice whatsoever. When I purchased the domain name years ago, my thinking was that I wanted to create my own type of web portal or directory, but I wanted it to be a bit more exclusive. I didn’t want a lot of junk links popping up; I wanted to be able to verify that all the businesses on the site were legitimate, whether they were marketing services or products; hence the name. I also wanted a place to put all these neat looking affiliate link ads from Commission Junction, which I’d just joined at the time.
The original design I actually loved, but it really did look amateurish. I was trying to be cute, but in retrospect, it was clunky, though I left it alone for about 8 months. Then I did a total redesign, which is what you’ll see if you visit, and thought it was much better. I was prepared for growth if it came, because I figured I’d make a little money off it, and as it grew I’d make even more money off it, and I don’t mind doing the work when money is involved. It seemed like a perfect site to generate passive income, so to speak.
But it’s generated almost none. Frankly, I’m thinking the vision for the site is askew at this point, and I’m trying to figure out how to change it up again. I still want to have a place where people can request me to post their links, but I want a better opportunity to make some sales, as in adding pages where I can write about affiliate products and the like; at least I think I do. I’m proud of the page rank of 4 it’s attained, and its Alexa rank isn’t bad considering I don’t have the Alexa toolbar helping to drive it anywhere, but it barely gets more visits that my ROE.info site, and that’s a shame because the Reviews site has only been up since February.
I’m only about 24 hours into the thought process, which is why I’m putting it out there to the universe. Brainstorming only works when there are more brains in the storm, right?
So, let’s see where this goes, and I thank anyone who leaves a comment for their thoughts on the matter.
New York State Is Killing My Affiliate Business
Posted by Mitch on May 24, 2008
Well, today’s been interesting, I must say, for a Friday before a long holiday weekend.
I had two of the affiliate programs that I advertise for through Commission Junction tell me that they’re discontinuing my association with them because I live in New York state, and it’s stupid law which says out of state companies that do business in New York state online must collect sales tax from his customers and pay the state. One of them even went so far as to tell me that if I reincorporated my business in New Jersey that they’d be happy to have me back.
What am I talking about? Here’s a pdf link to a memo from the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, Office of Tax Policy Analysis, Taxpayer Guidance Division that addresses this new legislation.
Sure, the economy isn’t tough enough for everyone right now, with gas almost $4 a gallon, the price of food and other stuff going up drastically, property taxes are going up, our Thruway fees are going up, postage just went up, and now New York is basically going to kill online business because this is just the tip of the iceberg. Amazon has already filed suit, and many other companies aren’t far behind. And, if it’s withheld, I can see more of these companies deciding they’re just not going to do business with New York, and there’s the farm, folks.
We already have one of the worst credit ratings in the country, we’re suffering mass exodus from the state, including New York City, because we have the highest tax rate in the country (at least we did; we’re up there in any case), the state is trying to close hospitals and make others merge in an effort to stem costs (with what I still feel was the recommendation from an illegally created panel; thanks Pataki), and now this? I mean, not that I’m making all that much money from it at this very moment, but taking away the opportunity for me to even have the chance to make money online certainly doesn’t help, does it?
For the first time I’m starting to wonder if my wife is correct and maybe we should leave this state. I have always loved it here because I think central New York is just a beautiful place, but I have to admit that it would be nice living in a state without income tax or restraint of trade for a change, one that’s not one of the most regulated states in the nation on a yearly basis (how much do people in other states pay for their annual car inspections anyway?).
No sir, I’m not a happy man today.
How Far Are You Willing To Go For Promotion?
Posted by Mitch on May 23, 2008
A friend of mine Sue Tosto, a relationship coach, recently wrote a post in her blog titled What Kind Of Attention Do You Want. Her basic lament is how these days one goes onto a site such as Facebook or MySpace and sees these young girls barely dressed and wondering if that’s really how they want to project themselves.
I’ve been reading things lately where both men and women are losing the opportunity for getting some pretty good jobs because more and more companies are hiring someone whose responsibility it is to go online and look for information on these applicants, and they’re going to sites like those above and not liking what they see, and turning down those applicants. It’s not only about qualifications anymore, especially as the web has given everyone the opportunity to express themselves in whatever fashion they so choose. Not only that, but as we learned from the Miss New Jersey situation last year, setting those pictures up as private means literally nothing anymore. I have enough knowledge to be able to figure my way into a lot of things; I just don’t (cough).
I think about that sort of thing all the time as I work towards promoting all of my businesses. In Hollywood, agents may say that any publicity is good publicity, but most of us don’t have the luxury of trying to recover from negative publicity, especially when it gets out to a large audience. And, truth be told, negative publicity doesn’t mean you did anything wrong either; some marketing ideas just don’t work.
For instance, think about your image of a lawyer. Now try to think of that same lawyer wearing baggy sweats and a baseball cap. Now imagine you’re in deep trouble of some sort, and need a very good lawyer to get you out of trouble. Who are you going to when you need help? If you didn’t already know the guy in sweats, you’re going to someone who looks the part, right? If you saw a commercial on TV from a lawyer wearing sweats and a baseball cap and he or she was telling you how good their law firm is, how much credibility do you think that would carry, whether it was true or not? Memorable, sure, but credible?
For my “day time career”, there’s a certain standard that’s expected for me in order to get contracts. Consulting has its own set of rules, and the kiss of death would be to decide to be far away from the norm. I already have an uphill battle, being one of a very few minorities who do what I do, so the last thing I can afford is to be seen as too much of a radical or party guy, both of which aren’t my nature, but on my business blog I will tackle issues that I won’t address here.
I met one guy locally who’s a millionaire, and he was telling a group of us some of the things he’s done over the years in promoting his businesses. Some of those things make good business sense; some of them would basically end the careers of the rest of us.
So, let’s relate this to being online. We all want traffic and visitors, and we all want to be credible. At the same time, all of us knows that if we can find a way to stand out from the crown that we might increase the number of our visitors even more, because people might want to see what the heck you’re going to do next. Now, Rich Jerk might be able to get away with abusing visitors, but most of us can’t do that sort of thing. We also can’t, or shouldn’t, have all sorts of bells and whistles when people visit our site, because those things get really irritating. I talked a couple of posts ago about how much I hate popups, but something else I can’t stand is either music or video automatically playing when I visit a site; irritating as sin. I also don’t like flash start up pages; get me to the content quickly.
So, how far will you go in promoting your business or blog in order to achieve a substantial online status? How far should you go? What kind of attention do you want? Hey, that’s how we started, isn’t it? 
I'm Just Sharing is a blog about sharing my thoughts about internet marketing and other things. Read, enjoy, and buy! :-)
