It never fails to amaze me how so many people using all these automated twitter apps to find and follow just about anyone, will, in fact, follow just about anything.

As a bit of an experiment following a discussion about ‘how easy it is to get followers “WITHOUT” using anything automated’ I set-up a Twitter username with no picture, no bio, no weblink, nothing. Oh, and no tweets. I had one ‘regional’ keyword in the username, that’s it.

I was one of the ‘unknown’ twitter users:

But sure enough, within a few days I had followers.

What on earth were/are they following? Do I smell?

So to all you folks who think you’re popular because you have thousands of unknown followers: Guess what. There’s a lot of Twitter users who would follow a bad smell – as long as it had a Twitter account – of course.

Things that make a ya go hmmmm!

… or should I say the .CO Domain Exploitation BAND-WAGON?

Here we go again… The next wave of exploitation is upon us.

While the .co domain gold rush was gathering pace, we (after making initial enquiries) were under the impression that you had to have some connection with the phrase of the domain you wanted to buy in order to be eligible to actually buy it.

How silly we were to think there would be any ‘policing’ of it. After all, if it means someone or some company was set to rake in a few million, who the heck gives two hoots who buys your brand name or a domain they have no connection with, whatsoever?

Well, as it has turned out: No-one.

No-one policed the purchasing of the .co domains and no-one will police all the tricksters who will now turn around and sell them to the highest bidder.

The ‘restrictions’ on buying the domains were complete and utter bull-shite – just like everything else on the web. It was open to being exploited – and it is being.

For frigs sake – can’t we trust anyone?

It seems anyone with twenty quid can buy a .co domain. And many people did – with no intention of using them. They just knew it was Internet Gold Rush phase 4,875.

A couple of things you should know about the .CO domains:

- The .CO domain relates to COLUMBIA? Not the UK, not France or Germany or Australia or the USA. COLUMBIA?

- If Google ignore the country code then the domain becomes non-geographical which means it is extremely unlikely to outrank any country specific domain in your own target country.

- When did you see a .TV or .ME or .EU domain outrank a .co.uk in the UK, a .de in Germany or an .fr in France? They don’t because they are not geographically targeted.

Think about it.

However, many people will sell them and many will queue up to buy them.

Here’s an email one of my clients received from someone who saw the opportunity and has obviously re-mortgaged his house to buy a shed load of .co domains in order to sell them to the highest bidder (ps: all spelling mistakes are his, not mine):

I am the owner of www.DoubleGlazing.co and am in the early stages of listing my domain for sale when I looked up the term DoubleGlazing on Google and found your website.

Duh! If we were that easy to find, do you think we need a new domain?

I had planned to develop this into an affiliate site for double glazing companies, but other projects are currently encompassing my time.

Bull… Do we believe he ever had any intention of using it? Nope!

DoubleGlazing.co is very descriptive, and could be used for your main site, a redirect or a trade extension to complement it.

Really? ‘Very Descriptive’. This guy needs a dictionary! Use as a ‘redirect’ and get slammed by Google. Great idea. Look, buddy, if these domains were so hot, how come you got your grubby palms on it and not a real Double Glazing firm?

The braod search term “Double Glazing” got 135,000 local(UK) searches and exact search term of 40,500 last month alone.

Like as if we don’t know that. Amazing source of market data – now if Only I knew how to use Google…

The term is extremely easy to market, the name itself will give you the edge on your competitors, and would be very presentable and professional on business cards, stationary, and other forms of major media, such as television and newspaper.

If its that easy to market then why waste our time?

I wanted to be courteous enought to ask someone who will actually utilizes this term with their own services. If you have any interest in owning my domain DoubleGlazing.co, please let me know.

The courteous thing would be to not exploit the .co domain thing in the first place.

If this email was a bother to you, I deeply apologize and will move on elsewhere. The sale is now open to offers (although, I do have a price point in mind).

I hope no-one buys them!

Personally – I hope anyone who has bought crap loads of these domains will be left with them (and an empty bank account) and prove, once and for all, that trickery, scams and blatant exploitation has run it’s course and no-one is stupid enough to think a brand new domain is the answer to all their business dreams.

For frigs sake – the guy can’t even spell!

Seriously, if you can’t make your business work with the domain you’ve already got – what difference is a new domain going to make? Duh?

UPDATE: I just found out that the guy who owns DoubleGlazing.co wants £1,500 for it. Hmmm. £1,500 for a domain that isn’t even indexed by Google. That has no authority. Has been registered for about a month and cost the guy about twenty quid. Well, I have 2 words for the tricky little dude and the second one is ‘OFF’. All the leading Double Glazing firms in the UK have well established websites that rank consistently in the top few slots on Google – why on earth would they see any value in the new domain?

It makes me laugh when I read endless blogs about how to ‘do’ Internet Marketing and the ‘right’ ways to do this and do that and how the ‘experts’ get top-ranking within hours for their clients and how the got 47,000 number one ranked phrases – oh yeah; and how they raked in million$ in a matter of weeks with a sprinkling of ‘black hat’ SEO.

Give me a break and get a life.

Do you think Sony tells Panasonic how they build their amazing Plasma and LCD screens so that their competitor can copy-cat their high definition pixel perfection? I doubt it.

Do you think Nissan exchanges industry secrets with Toyota, or Ferrari tells Mercedes how to get more down-force and achieve higher cornering speeds on their Formula One cars?

Nope!

Hence there is competition. Competition is good. It keeps people on their toes. It forces businesses to constantly be working on developing something better than they already had.

Do you really believe an SEO dude would divulge all the real ’secrets’ of SEO to all and sundry? Would you?

Whatever business you are in the last thing you would do is distribute a leaflet to all your competitors telling them how to develop, how to sell, how to install, how to manufacture, how to be as good as you. How to be YOU.

I wouldn’t. I don’t divulge what I do for any of my clients because:

A) They don’t want me to.

B) I don’t want to. It wouldn’t be right.

C) That would be suicide.

Why would I encourage my clients to be the same as their competitors?

If I was to tell all about what my clients do; how their manufacturing works; how they get remarkable results form their online marketing; etc., that would enable everyone (their competitors) to do the same. The result would be every company doing the same thing.

I believe in a level playing field but everyone plays a few cards close to their chest.

While I’m a big advocate of ’sharing’ and being helpful, sometimes it makes sense and is often an obligation to ‘keep schtum’.

Shut up and drive! Just get on with being the best and enjoy the complimentary envy as your competitors try to keep up.

SEO, Internet Marketing, Blogging, Link Building (Link Baiting), Blog Commenting, Forum Signatures, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc., etc., etc., there’s a book on everything. Some of them are actually an okay read but loads are complete waffle that should have stayed as a blog (isn’t that a con when you pay good money for a book only to find it’s a compilation of blog posts?). Ya know that really winds me up. Not only is everyone a freakin’ expert at telling everyone else how to run their business (just ‘cos they know how to write a damn blog) but anyone with a Twitter following can publish a bloody book about anything.

Everyone’s a fffing expert.

Grrrrr! There – a few ounces of frustration vented. I remember the days when you had to have written some bloody good stuff before a publisher would entertain the thought of sending it to the editor then the printers and then shelling out on distribution etc., Now it don’t matter.

Side note: Just the other week, while in an exchange with a rather well known author (I rarely name and shame), I questioned the logic and accuracy of a statement they had made and almost instantly without even a whimper they backed out of the discussion. I was just getting started but they couldn’t even be bothered to stick up for their work. Typical. Lame. Pathetic. Expert at writing but sod all else.

What I’d like to know is: where’s the book written by Apple that shows all PC manufacturers how to make a better computer? Where’s the book by Adobe that tells all wannabe Photo Editing Software developers how to build a better Photo Shop?

Duh? ‘Shooting oneself in the foot’ comes to mind…

Ask a top athlete how s/he runs so darn fast. Ask how s/he gets out of the blocks so fast and up to speed quicker than the other runners.

Ask a Baseball player how he manages to hit the ball out of the park and maintains an enviable hit average…

Ask an F1 driver how he gets his car around the circuit a full second faster than his team-mate in an identical car.

Ask a baker why his cakes are always the best in town. Why customers queue up every day.

Then ask a leader in any industry how they became the most envied brand. How they got to be so bloomin’ good at what they do.

They’ll all tell you the same thing: Practice, baby – practice.

They didn’t find the answers in a $20 book from Amazon. They didn’t have 73 million ‘experts’ telling them how to bake the perfect cupcake, how to tweak the front wing a few degrees up or down or if you put your hands a certain way you’ll get out of the blocks 1,000th of a second faster.

There’s no magic formula. There’s no ‘hidden’ secret. It’s about practice – trial and error – ‘old school’. A tweak here and a tweak there and monitor the results. You can’t find the answers in a $20 book. You can’t find the true ‘how tos’ in a free newsletter. Come on. If someone has spent half their life becoming the best at something do you really think, in between being paid $20,000 a day to apply what they know for top-paying clients they will tell you and I how to do the same?

Nope. They’ll happily tell you a lot of what they do but they sure ain’t gonna divulge the most valuable bits. The stuff that takes their results from ‘average’ to ‘remarkable’. The stuff that takes them from a few hundred bucks a day to tens of thousands a day in earnings?

Would you?

You’d most likely put a nice smile on your face – bounce around with oodles of confidence and keep schtum.

Many times it’s confidential information, anyway, so a lot of what these ‘experts’ do for their clients is (and rightly should be) kept under wraps.

Oh yeah, the “how they raked in millions in a matter of weeks with a sprinkling of ‘black hat’ SEO” is most likely BS so keep your $97 in the bank and start practicing.

Here’s a couple more thoughts:

Your local plumber might tell you how to fix a dripping tap but he’s not going to pop round and show you how to install a  full central heating system. Is he?

Your electrician might tell you how to change a fuse but he is highly unlikely to describe in fine detail how to wire up you entire house.

Well, perhaps. On a nice lucrative daily rate he would.

Why would a true expert spend years of their life being in college, university, apprenticeships or just the world of hard knocks – just to tell everyone else how to do what they now know how to do?

Read between the lines, folks. There’s a reason some newspapers are free and similarly there’s a reason why there’s a gazzilion bits of free info out there in web land…

If we all used the same SEO tricks, the link-building and the many other ’secret’ methods that all the “experts” have been writing about for the past several years, then we’d all be the same, right? None of us would stand out!

Every car dealership would have a similar website, they’d all have similar blog content and they’d all weave a web of links by hiring in some dude who knew how to position links in forums, blog comments and the like – they’d all be doing what the experts say would get them to the top of Google.

If every builder provided the same sort of content, used the same analysis software to determine the perfect meta-data, page titles, headings, body content, etc., (based largely on ‘averages’) and each blogged about all the breaking news in the building sector – along with weaving their web of inbound links – how could Google decide which should be numbero uno and which should be demoted to positions 2, 3, 4 etc., – or worse – dropped from the index all together?

Not sure about you but the idea of upsetting the Google bots doesn’t float my boat – nor does being ‘average’.

There’s always going to be competition for the top slot and someone will always find something that will give them that extra boost and nudge themselves into the eyes of the eager searchers who don’t want to scroll down to the bottom of the top-ten. How do you make sure that is your business?

Regardless of all the ‘game-changing’ ‘turnkey’ ‘hidden’ ‘amazing’ ’secrets’ it’s not about tricks.

There are very few secrets. There are very few ‘methods’ that Google’s team haven’t seen as ’spamming’ and have not already slammed the door shut on those ‘below the belt’ moves.

Why would Google sit there while everyone is trying to pull the wool over their eyes with spammy methods and dirty tricks?

Google has an objective to deliver the best results to every user of their system and that can only be achieved by being several steps ahead of all the self-proclaimed “experts”. The “experts”, I should add, who spend half their time in Starbucks speculating and writing about what Google will do next (with very little evidence they are correct – but they convince the vulnerable and desperate) and the other half willy waving about how many number 1 rankings they’ve got.

Its all been done before. Long before these marketing rookies with their analysis software and their cloaking, redirects and spam came along there were ways of ‘playing the system’ for all it was worth.

Remember when the Yellow Pages listed companies like AAAArdvark Building Services and 111111 Double Glazing? The trick was used by many advertising agencies who capitalised on loopholes in the way the Yellow Pages printed the listings based on who could have the most As at the start of the business name. Yellow Pages slammed the door firmly shut on that trick in the late 90s / early 00s but many companies still tried it – even today business will modify their listing name to jump from page 3 to page 1 f their preferred business category.

Dirty tricks don’t work long-term. Never had and, fortunately, never will.

Google has consistently slammed doors shut on ‘tricks’ because once the trick gets out and everyone starts using it, the accuracy and relevance of search results becomes compromised. Every time some spammy method becomes so widely used, it loses it’s ‘oomph’ – it is no longer unique, no longer being used by one or two forward leaping websites. If everyone did it then everyone becomes the same – again.

A football team could have the world’s greatest player (or the worlds ‘hardest/feared’ player) but still be mid-table when the silverware is handed out.

The one thing Google has been consistent about in all their years of development is that they want to deliver relevant results – and that means preventing dirty tricks from influencing the rankings. Just like the football teams. They all have the same size squad, they all start with zero points but, no matter how evenly matched they seem, only one can come out on top. The ones who try dirty tricks lose players to suspensions and injuries while the ones who keep their noses clean, play by the rules but play smart; they are the ones most likely scoring the goals, steering clear of penalties and finishing the season with a dilemma every other team swishes they had – do we need a bigger trophy cabinet?

Playing within the rules, avoiding cheating tactics that may (or may not) provide short-term results, playing fairly but playing better than anyone else is what generates long-term ‘champion’ status.

Try to trick Google and it will be like tripping the forward as he enters the 18-yard box – you will be penalised; you will concede a goal, you will most likely lose the match, the player and suffer at the end of the season – was it worth it?

Google is a keen eyed referee and they (he, it) doesn’t miss a thing.

Cheating, tricking, ’spamming’ might get you five minutes of nose-bleed dizzy heights but in the long-term, the websites and blogs that play within the rules – consistently creating relevant content – will win. All other things being equal, of course.

Do you want to be an ‘also ran’? Do you want to finish with ‘mid-table’ mediocrity or in the relegation zone? Or are you going to play by the rules, train harder, run faster, have supreme ball control and come out with your arms waving to the crowd as you do your lap of honour?

Anyone can be an also ran! Anyone can break the rules! But not everyone can be remarkable and stand out above the crowd. You can!

When I bought my iPAD recently, one of the big selling points was that I could get Microsoft (it is not made by Microsoft folks) Office for a fiver (£5) which meant I could carry on using the same Word Processor I’ve been using for donkeys years – and which I’m comfortable using.

I could have got Apple Pages but, as I have iWork and Office on my Mac and as I’ve hardly ever used iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynotes), always favouring MS Word, I was chuffed that I didn’t need to learn anything new for the iPAD.

However… Doesn’t that sound familiar when talking about anything related to Microsoft – ‘however‘? However, there’s a major glitch, which I didn’t find out until I’d used the iPAD to rough draft loads of doc files.

Because I write, a lot, my theory was that I could draft up any idea in the Microsoft Word (DOC) format and then I send the file either via email or using DropBox or even through iTunes so I could then make my final edits on either my Mac of PC. So far so good. No probs with the app itself, it works a treat. No probs at all with either creating and editing Word docs or Excel spreadsheets. The problems arise when you try to save a file once you’ve edited it on either Mac or PC.

When I open the doc files on either laptop, make a few edits and try to save it without changing the file type, Word crashes.

Every time.

On the Mac the workaround is to change the file type to DOCX when saving but workarounds should not be necessary. On the PC, with my older version of Office I only have the option of saving as DOC and even if I change the file name and try saving to a new location, Word crashes.

The idea behind having the iPad is to make me more productive without complications.

I still love the iPad – I still think it is the ultimate ‘gadget’ for people who ‘think on the go’ and who want a way to jot down, scribble down, type, record voice memos, anytime anywhere and I don’t leave home without it – but, sorry Microsoft, I’m off to buy Apple’s Word Processor App, Pages.

UPDATE:

Since writing this post I have spotted an update from the developer in the iPad apps where they acknowledge and I assume fix the compatibility issue. While its good that they have quickly dealt with the recent spread of posts about compatibility, it should have been blatantly obvious before the app was released how people would use it and how important it was for the 2 parts of Office HD to be compatible with Microsoft Office for Mac and Office on the PC…

This reminds me of my ongoing gripe with the whole “there’s an app for everything” – if the developers weren’t in such a hurry to get the next app out there, they might actually take some time to field test the darn apps first and they might just get a few more positive ratings.

Just looking at the feedback and ratings for Apple’s Pages app compared to the very few ratings and feedback comments for Office HD should have given me an indication that, even at a mere fiver, Office HD could be a damp squid – as it was.

I’m off to test the new update now. I’m guessing I’ll have to open all my DOC files on my iPad and re-save them with the updated version of Word in order for them to be compatible with Mac or PC – or are the files I already created going to remain incompatible?

Another update will be added later…

By the way, I just noticed that my negative feedback about the app was not published so I guess the developers don’t like an even balance of good and bad reviews.

ANOTHER UPDATE:

Well, I gotta say – these guys have sorted it. After updating Office HD I created a new DOC on the iPad, saved it to DropBox and opened it on my Mac (Office 2008 for Mac) – I edited the file and it saved absolutley fine. Next test was on my PC; opened the same file (including the edits from the Mac) in Office XP (a few years old now), edited the text a bit more and again, without any problems, the file saved fine.

Returning to my iPad, I re-opened the file from DropBox in Office HD and ba da bing – there’s the new versiopn.

Well done guys. Good work. The only negative is that I just wasted money buying Pages as a replacement app. Software, like websites and anything, should be thoroughly tested. The only outcome of a device or an app that doesn’t work correctly is a pissed off customer. Like I am now. Albeit not massively out of pocket but I have wasted money nonetheless.

Have you found any surprise issues with the iPad or the apps?

When I was fourteen, any glance of lady boobies had my giggles on overdrive for the rest of the day. I was a sheltered young whipper-snapper. Heck, I remember thinking bellybuttons were, ya know, a rude bit. Until I figured out we all had one and they are all pretty much the same – smelly.

I never got off on it. Porn. I guess Debbie Does Dallas was enough for me in my tender teenage years, and the same goes for blood and guts movies too. Texas Chain Saw Massacre was a shocker – a right doozey to a naive young lad like me and, as it happened, was such a shocker it was removed from the shelves in the early eighties.

They got talked about though – a lot! Every decent video rental dude had a copy he loaned to his favourite customers! Everyone wanted to see them to see what all the fuss was about. They were remarkable – like ‘em or not.

Going back those twenty or thirty years anything out of the ‘norm’ was a shock, a kick in the head and a landmark for what was, and has become more, ‘acceptable’.

Now that most of us have seen shock horror in the likes of Hostel and Saw and with so much sickly porn on every site from YouTube to BluTube (don’t pretend you never looked) and the sad (not the teary kind of sad) thing is, it’s not shocking any more. Whatever your view on it, I bet you’re not shocked by it? Repulsed by it perhaps, but not shocked.

Once you’ve seen body parts gouged out with a bloody meat hook you’ve seen ‘em all.

It’s all become the norm. It’s actually quite boring. Like most products, services, businesses; boring. The remarkable ones stand out – but with most businesses playing the safe card, the remarkable ones are few and far between.

Many business owners think their product or service is remarkable – a cut above the rest – many go so far as to create their own hype to convince others, and possibly themselves, that they truly have something different, something better, something with a lot more ‘__________’ than any other doodle-flip made or sold by their competitors.

Some actually believe they are so remarkable that they have no competitors. We all have competitors. Unless, of course, your name is Debbie and it’s 1978 and your ‘company‘ ‘Teen Services” is doing something no other ‘business’ is doing.

If you’re having to shout louder than everyone else to get word out about whatever it is you do then you have a teeny weeny problem; Your offering is clearly not doing the shouting for you because no-one is telling anyone else and the reason for that is because it’s nothing outstanding. Self-induced hype is not needed for truly remarkable ideas, products, businesses. Anything that really does stand out gets talked about.

If something is worth talking about, guess what? People would.

No one gets excited about ‘yet another porn movie‘ or ‘yet another Friday the 13th‘ do they? And no one gets excited about un-remarkable products, inventions, and services. What’s the point? Would you want to be the one talking about ’so what’ kind of stuff in the work canteen? Of course not. You want to talk about things that excite, things that have some ‘wow’, things that are worth talking about, things that are – without hype – totally remarkable.

If your business is ‘just another __________’ then you need to start thinking. To stand out from the crowd in a world where we’ve seen everything and nothing seems very remarkable anymore, you need to think how what you do can be better, more ________ something that is unheard of.

Playing safe won’t get you noticed. If Debbie and her friends had kept their clothes on, had she never tootled off to Dallas, would anyone have cared what Debbie done? She’d have just been ‘yet another Debbie‘.

Once you’ve seen boobies and bottoms you’ve seen ‘em all. Albeit varying in size, it’s not much to get excited about. Although walking into a mechanics workshop usually gives most hot-blooded males a smile when they observe the tasty calendars on the wall, it’s not going to make ya say ‘wow’.

If Debbie did Dallas today we wouldn’t be all that impressed, I mean shocked. In fact, we’d just brush it off as nothing remarkable, no big deal (yet another porn movie). She’d get a few minutes of fame on daytime TV, a Facebook page with loads of hormonal ‘Fans’ but a few weeks later all would be forgotten about, leaving Debbie wishing she had done something shocking (done Dallas) before we’d seen it all before.

We don’t shock easily anymore. Few things make us stop, look and listen baby, because so little is different. Or its all been done before. Our attention isn’t so easily grabbed by anything new.

We automatically assume every product or service we see advertised is just another ‘_______’. Unless, of course, we hear it is something outstanding, something remarkable.

The word soon got around about Debbie and Co when ‘Teen Services’ started offering its ‘remarkable’ services… Boy oh boy did the folks of Dallas respond. Teen Services made money (apparently). Lol.

What can you do to get people talking about your business? No you can’t hire someone like Debbie. Well, you could, it just wouldn’t be so remarkable these days.

What can you do that is remarkable?
Perhaps you already do something remarkable but the right people (those people who love to talk) don’t know it yet?
Perhaps a tweak here and there can take your offering from being ‘just another ___________’ to being the wow product or service everyone is talking about?

If nobody is talking about it, if you are constantly thinking of ways to ‘get the word out’ and how to attract more customers that the other guy, then, like it or not, you most likely are just like your competitors and don’t have anything remarkable, you have ‘yet another _______’!

A few years ago I gave away quite an expensive TV stand and just recently, after moving house and rearranging TVs (etc., blah, blah, blah) we could have really done with it. What did I do? Well, I went out and bought a new one, of course. I’m not gonna go and take back what I gave away, that’s just not on, is it?

But if you’re Facebook, that’s exactly what you do.

What do you do when you get too big for your boots? Well, you either squeeze, rather uncomfortably, into the boots you’ve got or you get bigger boots, of course. Or, if you’re Facebook, you just reclaim some of the extra room in your boots that you’d previously shared with other people – us.

The Indian Giver!

If you wanted a piece of Britney, it will have to be a smaller peice after August 23rd.

Yes, folks. The big screen real-estate reclaim is about to happen – finally – after almost a year of speculation and wondering “when” it would happen. Late 2009 turned into early 2010 and early 2010 turned into ‘summer’ and now, at late summer, Facebook have plans to roll out the new advert-friendly version from August 23^rd, apparently.

I just remembered. I gave free hosting to a few of my clients for some minor projects – perhaps I should change my mind and take it away. Or send them an invoice just ‘cos I realised I could make a few extra pennies with that bit of space. Would that be a reasonable thing to do? Tease people with a freebie and then take it back?

Well, in my book the answer is no. But we’re talking about (a) the Internet where nothing is really free and anyone who believes it is are as thick as two short planks and (b) I’m not a Harvard geek who owns (part owns? whatever…) the almighty Facebook and has not a care in the world for the end-user who made FB the behemoth it has become.

Just you wait n see boys and girls. Many of the big platforms will empty our purses soon enough with all things free becoming chargeable to some extent on the ‘tease me sell me’ deal we’ve all subscribed to. And if charging us to use the service is seen by the share-holders as too much of a risk – we’ll all have to adopt an extreme case of ad-blindness+++ or go crazy with more and more flashing boxes all over the screen – each one gagging for a slice of our pay-cheque.

Little ol’ Ning have done it – started out offering everything including the kitchen sink for free and then recently went to a paid-only model – after tens of thousands of people had been busy creating their Ning networks. It was a guaranteed truckload of cash from all those users who didn’t want to abandon their accounts.

Vimeo did it – sort of – downgrading the free version when they launched Vimeo Plus in 2008. $60 a year may not sound like much per user but multiply that by the hundreds of thousands of users and that was one heck of a pay day for Vimeo.

HootSuite is another cash-cow after going from completely free to having multiple ‘paid’ versions. How many gazillion people got hooked on HootSuite, created numerous RSS feeds only to find that if they wanted to carry on as they were it was gonna start costing $$$.

Many more platforms have used the finest demonstration of “Permission Marketing” right before our very eyes. We jump on the free this and that like flies on poop – many of knowing full well that the free lunch won’t last forever. Well, just maybe the latest steps at Facebook are an indication that the soup kitchen is drying up.

We gave Facebook the permission to take over our lives.

We jumped on FB in our pyjamas and our suits creating pages for our social life and our businesses. We all played ball but, my business brethren – now they want the ball back – well – part of it at least.

Facebook gave us a playground of some 760 pixels and waited patiently while we squeezed our favourite recliner into the space and made ourselves comfortable. With what comes across to me as “what’s yours is mine and what’s mine is – erm – mine” kind of marriage, they want the space back – leaving us with enough space for our trusty old over-stuffed arm-chair that Grandma gave us (ya don’t think she’ll want it back do you?)

Facebook know where the money is and they want it – lots of it.

I, like many, have no idea what Facebook plan to do with the reclaimed land or how many new adverts we’re going to be bombarded with, but it’s no surprise that this is happening. They won’t shoot themselves well and truly in the foot by charging us to use the mammoth social platform (yet) so the obvious best way to boost the value of the IPO (when it happens) is to create more advertising space.

No doubt many of the investors want to see their moneys worth and that means adverts – splattered all across your space and mine.

Facebook – we know your game.

Millions of pounds, schillings and pence (or dollars and cents if you prefer) down the proverbial s-bends. All those businesses around the globe that spent vast sums of money on developers designing the perfect ‘welcome to our Facebook page’ tabs and interactive content. All now up in smoke, down the drain, into the same black hole of the dot com boom… However you want to look at it, it is our loss.

I’m sure it won’t be long before the vultures are out in force offering the “resize your Facebook content” services with the scare tactics “fix it or lose it”. Well, you won’t ‘lose’ it by not fixing it. It may look a bit squew-wiff though. 760 pixels won’t fit in 520 pixels no matter how hard you try to bend it, twist it, and squeeze it.

By the way: Do you want your Facebook page redesigning? Okay that was a pathetic imitation of a developer (I mean vulture – of course).

Anyway, back to being a little bit serious; the official Facebook statement reads:

“These updates are designed to simplify navigation for users, reduce complexity for developers, and enable us to build the next generation of tools for growing your business with Facebook.”

Do you believe that? Do you believe there’s something in it for you and me? I don’t. I’m quite capable of navigating Facebook and haven’t heard anyone crying about navigating it.

Reduce complexity for developers? Which developers are them then? The ones who build games? The ones who do a marvellous job at exploiting Facebook code and trick us into clicking the ‘universal like buttons’?

“enable US to build the next generation” – ah ha – a bit of truth in that sentence perhaps. Notice the ‘US’ in that sentence. That’s not ‘us’ as in you and I, that is ‘us’ as in Facebook.

“for growing your business with Facebook”. Oh please don’t make me laugh my sides are hurting already. Oh – I get it. You want ‘us’ (now ‘us’ means you and I folks) to buy more adverts… Gotcha dude. Yep. I’m hearing you now. So you (Facebook) can make more money.

I see it this way:

When Facebook was launched we all seemed to be heading ‘wide’ screen. We were viewing the web on wider laptops and the space was plentiful enough for us to have 760 pixels and, with web-sites going a little wider to use as much of the wider screens as they could (within reason) FB had enough pixels to display as many ads as they wanted and we were all happy.

Along came the (second) smart phone boom with apps for everything, including Facebook. Facebook without ads on a small screen is a big problem for Facebook and all the investors. It sure doesn’t look good on the IPO documents that would say “sorry, but Facebook ads are only shown on desktops and laptops which will lose us umpteen billions per year in lost ad revenue”.

Along came the iPad, the Kindle and many other variations of ‘small screen’ devices and it was back to the drawing board. How can we keep doing what we’re doing but maximise ad space when many devices are dipping back down to 1024 pixels and less.

Obviously, Facebook needed to address this issue and they knew it. If they want advertising space – for real ads – something had to give and the giving was not going to be done by FB, oh no, we’re giving back what was given to us. 240 pixels each please… Hand ‘em over or else!

Facebook wants the pixels back. End of.

By the way. All the above is purely speculation, of course. Facebook may, in fact, be reclaiming the 240 pixels in order to have a uniform page layout across all tabs (at the moment the custom tab is 240 pixels wider than all other tab content (the Wall, for example). But what do I know? Nowt. I am completely guessing at why FB are taking back the 240 pixels and I could be proved completely wrong.

Let me also clear up the issue about advertising. If the real intentions of Facebook (or any platform for that matter) is to use space for advertising I have no issue with that whatsoever. Advertising pays bills and helps to keep a lot of great apps and features free. What gets my heckles up is when we, the users, are given something as part of the ‘deal’ (the deal being that our use of such a platform helps promote it to other users and boosts its overall value to investors) and then have part of what we were given taken away.

But, whether I’m miles off the mark or whether there’s any new ads do, in fact, appear all over our Facebook profiles and pages – I enjoyed writing my take on it, and hope you enjoyed reading it.

What do you think?

Looking around the web, if we take all the ‘expert advice’ too seriously, then we would reach the conclusion that most of us know bugger all about how to write and present content via websites and, most relevant to this post, blogs, and only a select few really know how to be what some of us think we are; content creators… bloggers.

A great post by Mr Brogan a few months ago reminded us (and believe me, there are many who desperately need the reminder) that “your blog is not your job” but then the folks at ‘Copyblogger’ would have us convinced that we’re not a true bloggist unless we blog 5 times a day, every day – while abiding by ‘their’ published ‘rules’ of course – ‘cos they know best, of course.

Anything less than the consistency and regularity that one achieves with an All-Bran diet is a clear sign of a ‘bad attitude’ apparently.

So, with my non-scheduled, niche jumping, random sporadic approach to blogging, I have a bad attitude, apparently.

Oh gosh – who is right?

Well, in some ways – both and neither.

Chris is right that ‘blogging is not a job’ unless, of course, it is how you generate your income or you get paid to write ’sponsored posts’ or to blog on behalf of a client, but, in most cases, blogging is something we do when time allows and when we find something worth writing about. Me, I do it because I love writing. Simple as that. Not sure if that alleviates some of the bad attitude or not…

Maybe the folks at Copyblogger who say “you must blog consistently and regularly and you must collect reader data, you shouldn’t use bad language and there must be X amount of words in the summary and at least X number of words in the post and it must have a picture (bored yet? I am) and you must do all the other things that works for them” should realize that not everyone is blogging all the way to the bank. Some people do it for fun – its not all about business or to make money. Some people are not writing content to attract and support advertising revenue or to get adsense clicks.

Fun doesn’t come with a rule book and so I say to anyone who writes a blog simply because they love writing – do it your way and sod the ‘rules’.

You should do what you are comfortable with – even if it is NOT what someone else does.

As Chris has also rightly said, you should ‘make your own game‘ (“You can do what’s come before or you can take a unique swing at the world“). To me, some of the best bits of advice are found at ChrisBrogan.com and the advice relates to many types of business and business activities.

Who the heck makes all these stupid “rules” anyway?

Well, often its busy bodies who think they know best but most often it is people who figured out what works for them and then take it upon themselves to dictate to all of us that they (and, of course, only they) know the ‘magic secret’, the ‘be all and end all perfect strategy’ so, surely, it must be the only way to do it. Truth is, they are not rules, at all. They are someone’s ideas. Just because ‘it’ works for them doesn’t mean its the only way to do ‘it’.

If I listened to all the experts about Internet marketing, about SEO and about the ‘right way’ to write content, I’d never have gotten anywhere and I’d never have time for a life.

If we listen to all the suggestions at Copyblogger and Problogger etc then, whether you are the owner of a double glazing firm, sell used cars, publish a magazine, clean windows or make wedding dresses – if you want to blog – there’s rules you have to follow…

~Bollocks~

Whatever happened to individuality? Being different? Unique? Real?

Remember humans?

• We look different
• We talk different
• We sound different
• We see things in different ways
• We have individual opinions and beliefs
• We like to do things in our own unique way
• We each like different styles
• We all like different ‘fashion’
• We act different and
• We have unique personalities…

Why did Richard Branson, Donald Trump, Alan Sugar, (and many others) become so successful? It wasn’t just about having a good business head on their shoulders – they dared to be different. They said ’sod the rules’ and did it their way.

As Seth Godin wrote in his great little book ‘The Purple Cow’; “Then, within twenty minutes, we started ignoring the cows. The new cows were just like the old cows, and what once was amazing was now common. Worse than common. It was boring.”

And that is the outcome of everyone doing what they do just like everyone else does what they do because someone said we must do what we do just the same way as they do what they do.

Nothing unique, nothing individual, nothing remarkable.

“A Purple Cow, though. Now that would be interesting. (For a while.)”

So if its all the same to you Mr Copybloggist and Mr ProBloggers; I’ll write my next blog post when I’m good and ready, when I get time, when I have something I’ll enjoy writing and sharing. And no I will not comply with the ‘rule’ that states I must give away a cheesy $27 (erm, worthless) ebook in exchange for reader (cough, I mean ‘marketing’) data.

If that means breaking the rules then I’ll break the rules and offer a big shout out to anyone else making their own game.

Each to their own.

When I got my MacBook Pro I thought it was the bees knees and that has not changed, I love it – I really don’t mind that I’m a slave to the mighty Apple. But, no matter how much I love my Mac I never took her, I mean it, of course, to bed.

I guess, in a way, taking any kind of laptop to bed to read a PDF or a couple of blogs would be like lugging a volume of an encyclopaedia to bed to read about who invented the pogo stick – a bit overkill.

I’m often in close proximity to my mobile phone, a good book and a notepad and pen where ever I go – including bed. I’d definitely feel somewhat vulnerable – naked even – without the means to jot down any crazy idea that popped into my head at silly o’clock.

But a laptop, a MacBook? Never. What if I fell asleep with it and it fell on the floor, what about the glare and that hum you get from all devices – hardly audible from a Mac but its there – and really, do I really want a gadget in bed with us?

Well, yes. Yes I do. And I found the perfect night time companion. Not just a night time companion – the perfect companion for everywhere. The newest Apple in my life our lives. It’s like a new puppy – everyone wants to play with it.

Meet my new iPad. Adopted less than 24 hours ago this beauty slots right into my ‘always on – always thinking’ lifestyle. I’ve read blogs, I made a few notes, and the book I was reading got demoted to the floor giving our new adoptee prime position on the bedside table.

Not all adoptions go smoothly but I think this one is going to be a total success… Even my wife likes having a play. You should have seen her smile during the ten o’clock news – flicking left, right, up and down like an absolute pro until, inevitably, she was tired and I got to play with it myself for a while.

What is also cool is that when I sat at my desk this morning, a little tired about last nights lengthy play-time, I was amazed that my MacBook Pro was still talking to me – we are as tight as ever and, it seems, there is no risk of my man-parts being removed because I took it’s cousin to bed.

If what we’re seeing today is the future – someone shoot me now, please. Put me in a plywood box, hit play on ‘Wish You Were Here’ and send my splintered butt down the conveyor belt…

What on earth happened over the past 15 years to make us all turn into gossiping old grannies who sit around telling the world what happened to someone else, to spend our lives name-dropping and spilling the beans… Beans, that were, a few years ago, uninteresting and remain so – but for some odd reason that I can’t fathom out, all of a sudden the world is sharing the gossip and we’re all listening – well – not me – not exactly.

I personally think there are far too many extremely sad people out there with far too much time on their hands and far too much income generated from Adsense ads on their website gossip column. They simply can’t be bothered to create anything original – spending all their time regurgitating, retweeting, reposting, re-status-updating, reblogging…

Blah blah blah blah friggin blah.

Who actually reads all this stuff the 700^th time it is blogged or retweeted?

Who cares that Sarah Palin had a post deleted by Facebook? Nice publicity stunt, though. And do we really need to hear – for the 400^th time – what CB said on his blog last week?

How many more millions of blog posts about Facebook privacy will become bandwidth fodder before we’re all sick and tired of hearing about it?

I’m sure Chris likes the publicity but he must get a bit fed up of seeing his name used purely for the retweet value – though it adds no value to the post it was used in.

Flipping heck people, get a life and move on. There’s more to life – seriously. Ask around. There are millions of people getting on with real stuff that is actually quite interesting. Try having a real conversation once in a while, you may actually find that no-one is actually that bothered about how many users Facebook has or what Zucker – whatever his name is – said at whatever conference last week.

People are already speculating about the possibility of Facebook reaching 1 billion users. OMG! If it ever happens it is most likely many years away but I suppose – if it brings clickers in who might click on some 50p ads then it’s worth some screen space – even though it has virtually zero relevance to how we use Facebook in 2010.

But, fortunately, thanks to petty news snippets, I have been reliably informed that Coke is, in fact, more popular than Pepsi… Thanks to someone who clearly has not enough action in their life – they blogged to my rescue about some advertising data that has resolved my life long mystery about coke and pepsi.

I feel so enlightened. Thanks lifeless person who took the time to write that.

Oh yeah – and thanks to the person who kindly just regurgitated Chris’ months old blog post “The 10 Worst Social Media Mistakes” – I was waiting for that to raise it’s head again. I can relax now. That blog post is how old, exactly?

Is this the enlightened path to the future? Oh please. Change the record.