A Facebook app called YearBookYourself is doing its rounds and going viral because of its high level of awesome. Before I talk more of the bore, here’s what I would’ve looked like had I been 23 in the 80s.
Awesome, I know. Go check out YearBookYourself, upload your pic and see what you would’ve looked like anywhere from the 50s to the 2000s, with a 2 year interval. Share the results! (on your blog or in the comments! :-))
As the regular readers here know very well, I’m quite the techy and invest a lot of time in the social web and the web 2.0 landscape. Doing that, I realize we sometimes take things for granted, so to speak. We feel like YouTube or Facebook have been around for an eternity, but neither of them are more than 5 years old (or open to the public for that amount of time).
The web changes, fast and so does the world around us (which this video reminds us of). Many bloggers and web fanatics, see search engine optimization (SEO) as something holy. If you just figure out the right keywords, manipulate your site’s content in such a way so that the search spiders will crawl your site and give you high traffic rankings, then you’ll be successful.
One of the most important ways in which Google gives page rankings, is links! If your content is linked to often, then it’s worth more than content that is not talked about a lot. To Google, the only content more valuable than that is the content whose publishers will pay for to promote it. Basically, Google assumes that your content is worth talking about, based on the links. The problem that arises now however, is that Google’s becoming less and less able to track the links coming from the most valuable conversations: those on social networks.
Earlier I mentioned Facebook. If you click a link on Facebook, it sends you to the page with a nice and shiny Facebook bar above it. On Facebook a link to this post would look something like this:
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=123091020346&h=ukq9m&u=L423Y&ref=mf
Instead of like this: http://www.basbasbas.com/blog/2009/07/20/the-death-of-seo/
Popular social bookmarking service Digg also does something similar. Actually, they’re worse, because Digg is actually hijacking traffic.
Probably the most common SEO killer is the Short URL. Services like TinyURL, Bit.ly, is.gd and tr.im make URLs shorter so they fit into the 140 characters that Twitter offers, or just so that long and ugly URLs look more elegant or are easier to paste somewhere (sometimes email clients tend to mess up really long URLs).
Where will this lead?
Half the time I’m looking for something, I use Twitter’s search engine. Why? Well, it’s time relevant, personal, let’s you interact with those that share the content and it can reveal trends. Twitter’s engine is still a bit basic and I expect to see some marvellous services that will start rivalling Google in the coming years. OneRiot could be such an engine. Maybe it will be Friendfeed if they reach critical mass so that Friendfeed will not be just for techies anymore.
What do you think? Will social networks mean the death of SEO as we know it? What is SEO anno 2009 and what will it be five years from now? What role will social media play in this?
Share this story on Twitter or Facebook! Here’s the short URL: http://bit.ly/QJ4u0
For a while now I’d been thinking it would be kind of cool if there was a Tweetup in Sofia, especially after all the Twestivals in 202 cities around the world. Well, a fellow Sofia resident, @brainpicker, contacted me with the idea and now it’s finally going to happen.
It will be held on the 24th of February in a bar/club called Hambara, which is a very special location. It’s located at ul. 6-ti Septemvri 22, just behind restaurant Zion. You can recognize it by a wooden doorway in the alleyway behind the restaurant; the door’s unmarked and you have to knock (more here). Would love to see you there at 9 o’ clock in the evening!
So if you’re a Twitter user in/around Sofia, then come to the meet up. Help spread the message and use the hashtag #hambara09.
See who’s Tweeting about the Sofia tweetup (#hambara09) (more…)
amfufu.com by @RuthsCreations has won the Giveaway! So long Entrecard!
I announced earlier that I’ll be leaving Entrecard in my 8 Reasons to Quit Entrecard post. The day has come and my final ad has run. I’m leaving now. I have however 1100+ credits left, that I’ll be GIVING AWAY to visitors of this blog.
For the next 24 hours every EC user that Tweets me (http://twitter.com/spartz) a link to their profile gets a chance to win a share! (keep reading!)
Since I want everyone to have an equal chance and don’t want to give away 100 credits to people (since that’s really nothin), I will do it as follows…
I’ll divide the total number of participants by 7 and pick that number of winners via random.org. I previously suggested to give every seventh person a share, but since this can be monitored, I decided to make it more random. So tweet me now (!) using this format:
@Spartz I am joining your Entrecard Giveaway (http://doiop.com/EC). The link to my profile is: http://is.gd/c9sQ
You can use a link shortener for your profile URL at is.gd – but this is not a rule. 😉
Just follow these simple rules. I highly value people who follow instructions, because it shows that they care and that they’re paying attention. Any entry not according to instructions will not be counted.
I guess this adds one more reason to the list of reasons to use Twitter. 😉
BasBasBas.com is about my life as a Dutch student living in Istanbul. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul and travels in the region. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.
I am leaving Entrecard. For a while now, I’ve been thinking about it and recent events have made the decision all the more easier. I’ve turned off advertising on my blog. When my last ad finishes, on the 16th, the widget goes. Until that time I’m still returning drops.
Entrecard is a social network for bloggers who can drop by each others’ blogs and earn credits in return. With these credits, they can advertise on each others blogs. A nice system, but in the end it’s not worth it for me.
If you’re a blogger using Entrecard, don’t take any of the following points personal. If any of them insult you, please keep reading on until the end of this article.
This is a blog about countries, travel, life abroad, culture shock. Yet this post is about technology. About Twitter, to be exact. Why?
I’ve been “using” Twitter off and on for over a year now, but it was only up until very recently that I really got it. I love it. They only thing I don’t love about it is that many of my friends, readers, family, acquaintances are not using it and I’d LOVE to interact with you via Twitter.
Briefly, Twitter is a service where you can share your thoughts in micro-blogs of max. 140 characters. These messages are shared with your followers who get your updates. They can then choose to interact with you. You can also follow other people for their updates.
Here are 5 reasons WHY you should sign up for a Twitter account and start using it.
Maybe I convinced you… Maybe you just need to try it out and see for yourself. Here’s what you need to do to get a good start on Twitter:
First things first. Go to www.twitter.com. Sign up. Follow me.
Are you already using Twitter? What’s your nickname? Why are you using Twitter? Do you have any other useful tips?
Besides following me on Twitter… you can also follow this blog via RSS or email updates. 😉
Thank God I didn’t wake up with a hangover today. Where to begin!
Censorship’s creeping up on us. Just 3 weeks ago I wrote about Turkey’s ban of Blogger/Blogspot, which I didn’t write about because I specifically care about Turkey’s internet, but because I care about the freedom of the internet. I’m sure a lot of visitors were able to stay detached from the situation and not care so much, maybe this time the news will have more impact because even Germany is guilty of web censorship now.
Lutz Heilmann, a German parliament member, took legal action against Wikipedia, because of an article mentioning his alleged involvement in the Stasi, Eastern Germany’s secret police during communist time. Great job in proving you’ve not been a member or showing that you’ve changed by getting the web censored, it’s almost like if the police called for web censorship after being accused of Gestappo practices. Oh wait, that actually happened.
What happened in Germany is that www.wikipedia.de no longer links to wikipedia.org, the main site of wikipedia. The German version of Wikipedia is still available through de.wikipedia.org.
It looks like Heilmann realized what kind of shitstorm his legal procedures were starting to bring down on him and before accidentally flushing his future political career down the toilet and he issued a press release (in German) saying that Wikipedia can make Wikipedia.org accessible via Wikipedia.de again. He also adds that it wasn’t about censorship for him. Hey, guess what, this is exactly what China says too. Good job, Lutz.
Last night after coming home from meeting with Hans, a Dutch expat and international communication specialist in Istanbul, I had an email in my inbox from my girlfriend telling me that there was an earthquake in Sofia. She’s fine, her family’s fine and I believe my friends are all safe, since I already spoke to those living closest to the epicenter. It was a 4.0-magnitude (Richter scale) earthquake lasting 2.3 seconds.
This morning there was an aftershock, which was less heavy.
Coming back to the topic of internet freedom, Brazilian bloggers and internet junkies (in the good sense of the word) took to the streets in São Paolo to demonstrate against the Digital Crimes Bill, which defines cyber-crimes and stipulates penalties accordingly. Bloggers feel the bill, which was passed by the Brazilian Senate in July, is too loosely formulated and might lead to over-surveillance of the internet at the cost of freedom of speech and expression.
What are some of the best initiatives you have seen regarding the freedom of speech on the internet? Or, completely unrelated, have you ever been in an earthquake?
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In response to the intimidation of a Dutch police woman, both on- and offline, head of police union ACP, Geert van de Kamp, has called for web censorship.
An investigation has been launched into the intimidation of the police woman, who works for the foreign police of The Netherlands. In the night of Monday to Tuesday, unknown people vandalized the front door of the police woman’s house with red paint.
Also, the tires of the police woman’s car were slashed.
A group called the Winterschilders (Winterpainters) claimed responsibility for the act by posting a message on indymedia.nl, which included the full name and address of the police woman (and a picture, claims the police union). Their message reads:
Tonight The Winterpainters visited XXX, foreign police, XXX, XXX. (XXX replacing her personal data which have been removed by indymedia)
Her frontdoor got some red paint on it; symbol for the blood of the people that suffer due to the practices of the foreigner police.
We also made sure she couldn’t get to her work quickly today (flat tires).
This is a warning to all her colleagues of the modern gestapo (foreign police, immigration and naturalisation service, justice dept.).You are responsible for what you are doing.
Stop it.The Winterpainters
Gerrit van de Kamp, head of police union ACP, calls the incident “unheard of”, saying this “absolutely cannot and may not happen again.” And what better way to react to Gestapo accusations than calling for censorship?
Van de Kamp wants to ask the ministers of Justice and Internal Affairs to make it impossible to publish messages like the above on the internet, saying it should be “technologically possible” to filter such messages.
Gerrit van de Kamp, you are either unaware of what exactly is “technologically possible” or you are calling for censorship. In a statement on ACP’s website, you call for “preventive measures to prevent name & address data of police people to be posted on the internet”. That’s a lot more nuanced and understandable, yet it is impossible to put such filters in place without seriously endangering the freedom of the citizens you’re serving. You are asking for ISPs to filter what their users are posting to the internet:
Such a filter would be a step towards fascism. Yes, you have the duty to protect police staff, as do we, as Dutch citizens, but you are calling for a very extreme measure. The internet shall not be filtered, instead, prosecute websites or people that post this data on the internet. Call for tough laws and higher penalties to discourage people from committing these acts. That way it will be the websites’ responsibilities to filter the content posted to them.
Also, there have been many reports over the last 5 years about ill-treated asylum seekers and there has been a lot of protests about this, this incident being the most extreme protest thus far. Maybe it actually is time for the government to have another look at what’s going on and punish those responsible for incidents.
The suggested measure in your reaction is disproportionate. Please reconsider.
That will be all.
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I became a fan of ‘Everything’ on Facebook and got this announcement which I thought was particularly funny. I’m sure it would have made Douglas Adams proud. I know it has nothing to do with this blog’s normal topics, but since it I found it exceptionally humorous for an online thing, I had to share it. 😉
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Right now, Blogger and *.blogspot.com domains are available again while courts await further evidence backing Digiturk’s claims. Great. Let’s hope it stays that way. After YouTube got unbanned, it got banned again, so who knows what will happen.
The ban has been lifted by the Turkish court that previously blocked Blogger last Friday. They have requested “missing evidence” but made it clear that the ban could be reintroduced after the legal procedure is completed by the prosecutor.
Digiturk, Turkish license holder for the broadcasts of Turkish football league games, asked for blogs with links to pirated streams to be removed. Blogger did not reply and Digiturk went to court, getting millions of innocent blogs blocked. The statement that “Blogger did not reply” makes me think all Digiturk did was send out an email – and as some of us know, if you email Google services, be prepared to wait two weeks. They should have called.
The law that allows for the blocking of domain names still stands. Many popular sites are still blocked. Blogger can be blocked again. It’s not over, but at least Blogger’s available again. Yet still we can expect to see more of this:
And the protest banner posted on Turkish (as well as international) blogs hosted at blogspot.com:
Thanks to Hans for his useful tip!
Thanks to the Istanbulian for further information.
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