We’ve all seen the Twitter Fail Whale error, but this is something new. Around noon today, it looked like all twitter “following” and “follower” stats reset to zero. Dreadfully, I thought, no, please tell me I did not lose all my friends and have to hunt them down, explain and restart the relationships. Seems the stats are back now. For a few moments at least, I had the same number of Twitter followers as Ashton Kutcher. Hardly enough time to apply for a guest appearance on the Larry King Show.

Diggileaks? Digggate? Diggournolist?

I normally don’t blog about politics, but have little choice today. I just discovered that I am part of a conservative censorship group on Digg.com that has been

caught red-handed in a widespread campaign of censorship, having multiple accounts, upvote padding, and deliberately trying to ban progressives.

At first, I thought it might be a joke because of the premise that a group of conservatives have nearly succeeded in wrestling control of Digg away from the overwhelmingly progressive audience. But, the Alternet.org post went popular on Digg yesterday. It now has over 9000 diggs and 2500 comments–more than I recall ever seeing. The news is getting mainstream media attention this morning with a post at guardian.co.uk.

The organizer of the investigation and likely Digg Patriots’ infiltrator is said to be Digg user novenator. The timing of the release is probably due to the fact that buries are going away in the very soon to be released new version of Digg. 

The writer of the post, oleoleolson, says that the group:

has become so organized and influential that they are able to bury over 90% of the articles by certain users and websites submitted within 1-3 hours, regardless of subject material. Literally thousands of stories have already been artificially removed from Digg due to this group.

Joining the Digg Patriots

Long and short. Did I join the Digg Patriots? Yes. Did I participate in burying progressive stories posted to the group? No.

I can’t tell you much about the Digg Patriots because I don’t know much about it. Digg Patriots are conservative diggers. I am flattered to be part of such a feared right wing conspiracy, but there are some things you must know.

• I am a conservative with strong Libertarian sympathies. Guilty.
• I am deeply disturbed about government spending, taxes, waste, erosion of freedoms, weakness in foreign policy and many other policy shifts over the past twenty years.
• I don’t speak for the Digg Patriots Yahoo Group.
• I enjoy Digg. But I try not to take it too seriously.
• I use one Digg user name, clickfire.
• I spend about 10 to 15 minutes per day reading, digging or submitting stories to Digg.
• Occassionally, I bury a story if it is blatantly untrue or offensive.
• Most of my Digg submissions are technology related.
• I have a lot of awesome friends on Digg of various political persuasions.
• I believe and hope that real truth will always triumph over popular truth.
• I don’t bury or digg because someone in a Yahoo group says to.
• If I were going to participate in a group that gamed Digg, it wouldn’t be a Yahoo hosted Group.
• The users listed in the story as Digg Patriots who I know are exceptionally nice people, especially EMFK, alanocu, gbudavid, thoughtsonthis, phoenixtx and ChronicColonic (I don’t know that all of these people are Digg Patriots, I’m just going on the assumption of the story).

Back in May of 2009, I received an invitation from a Digg friend:

About 50 of us conservatives from Digg have got together to shout at a yahoo group that I created.

I signed up and noticed a few other friends there, read a few posts, exchanged greetings, and left it there after about the first week.  I dugg many of my Digg Patriots friends stories when I saw them on Digg, liked the stories and had time. I still do. But, I barely have time to digg my friends stories, much less bury ostensible enemies’ stories.

Criticisms

The most obvious problem with the story is the absence of sources or corroboration of the information. I don’t even know if what he is saying is true or not because I wasn’t an active member. It may be good enough for the sympathetic audience but why not go a step further and be a journalist?

His guilt by association take is troubling to me. The notion that if you become a member of a Yahoo group with a few clicks of the mouse, you must agree with everything that everyone in the group posts. And you must be active and guilty of cheating. The writer makes no distinction in friends who simply joined the group and those active members who may be violating the Digg terms of service. An important distinction, don’t you think? Who wants to spend time sifting through pesky details? Researching individual user data on Digg? Are you kidding? Do you realize how long it would take to verify if each one of the Digg Patriots members names published were actually active in the group and doing what they were accused of?  No, I’d rather wikileak it, sit back and watch the viral oil spew into the social ocean.

Another problem is exagerration. The writer seems to be trying very hard to sell his story, using superlatives and shock speech. I suppose some audiences respond to this approach but cutting this close to mendacity does more harm than good to me. I wondered earlier this week if the patriots’ group was still active and was a bit surprised to hear a friend say it was still in existence, but not as strong.

What are the ethics of infiltrating a private group to publish personal information for gain?

I don’t know if a ”Digg Patriots’ Hit List” exists and if so who would be on one. There are at least two different versions of hit lists that have been published, a short one by  oleoleolson and another longer one by FreakOutNation.

I recognize many of the people on the list. Except for Novenator, they are not the sort of flaming liberal zealot types that one would expect to be on a conservative hit list. How do I know? I know because several of them are my friends and people I digg regularly because I like their stories. In fact, several of them work in the search marketing industry and have interests that supersede politics as has been pointed out.

Smurfz, ZetaDog, VTbarera, nahsrocketeer75, Mwtapp, kplo, Blinker1315, Bukowsky

To the above, I want to say to you that I would never bury your stories because of someone asked me to. I consider you my friends. I know that you know that, but I just wanted to say it publicly.

Being active in social media and having been a serious news consumer before sites like Digg and Reddit appeared, I often think about how popular news differs from traditional reporting. My observation is that people believe what they want to believe. Not always what is true. This is the essence of social media news sites where you vote the stories you want to believe to the top. No need to verify facts. Just click that button and make it true for the moment.

Should Digg ban everyone in Digg Patriots? Should Yahoo Groups ban novenator? Should Facebook ban certain likers? I hope that Digg will do the right thing and dust off their powerful spam sniffing tools and look at who was actually going against the TOS on an individual basies instead of just banning everyone who ever signed up for Digg Patriots. They seem to be occupied with the launch of the new bury-free version of Digg. A bury-free Digg. Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.

Update: This post appears on Digg here with some counter comments.

A few other conservatives have spoken out on the Digg Patriots issue:

• The Fake “conservative censorship” Digg scandal by Conservative Brawler
• The DIGG ‘censorship’ controversy–an alternative view by Anthony G. Martin

Have you tried Foursquare, the lightweight mobile app that let’s you “check-in” to various locations you visit? Foursquare shows you what restaurants, coffee shops, stores, etc. your friends are visiting. You win badges along the way depending on what types of places you visit and how far you travel in certain time periods. You battle with your friends to become the “Mayor” of a local place of interest. The more check ins you have, the more likely you are to be awarded mayorship. 

What you see above is pretty much what Foursquare is

Is it another mobile game? Is it a local search engine? Some pass off Foursquare and competitors Gowala and BrightKite as a time-wasting gimmickery. Not me. 

This is why I use Foursquare: 

Competition

Okay so you pretty much have to go to work everday, right? So, you might as well show everyone who the virtual boss is, i.e. the Foursquare Mayor of your company. Dominate your friends with the click of a button. Appealing, huh? Even though what you are competing for may not have actual value, winning is fun. Bragging rights and pride can give this stuff a great deal of virtual value.

It appears my former co-worker, Kraig, stopped using Foursquare after losing the mayorship. George, of SEO Lair fame, laid low until I went on a three-week vacation, then snatched the mayorship out of my hands. When I got back, I was accused of having spammed Foursquare because it took him so many check ins to steal my mayorship :) 

Security

Just knowing that your friends and family members have arrived is a good thing. 

Snooping

You’ll find your friends in the strangest places. And they will find you. I caught my Mom checking in at my Aunt’s house one day out of the blue. Trying to sneak into town without buying me lunch? 

Savings

Foursquare mayors do earn currency in the form of store discounts. Offers are in the early stages of being rolled out, but you can imagine the potential for viral insanity when friends start competing for mayorships over favorite venues.

History

This is just a recent local check-in history, but Foursquare history becomes more interesting for those who travel often and far. Those who do are establishing a travel log with the click of a button, a trip journal that remains ostensibly forever. This proved to be a neat feature for me when I visited Indonesia and could not even pronounce some of the city names, much less remember them. The record preserved in the Foursquare online account appears to be comprehensive. I wouldn’t be surprised if Foursquare developed the history feature further, perhaps adding a trip map or RSS feed or making it exportable.

Exploration

The exploration and discovery aspect is a good reason to use Foursquare. If you like to travel but do not like travel planning like me, then you just arrive at the hotel and start the Foursquare app. Seconds later, you will be looking at dozens of the closest most popular places to visit. Let me see you do that, Google.

Local + Social

Until Foursquare, local was not a part of my social media experience. I wouldn’t mind attending some of the local meetups, but I have not really been motivated to take the time and risk of going to a Yelp event or the like. Foursquare is bridge between online social and offline social. Seeing and discussing locations around town with Foursquare friends has made me better informed and engaged.

Of course, if you want to take it to the next level, there is even a Foursquare dating app for the iPhone.

The Singles for Foursquare iPhone app lets you view and chat with singles who are at your current location.

Foursquare is so simple. You love it or you hate it. I try a lot of different apps and social media services. It takes a lot for me to really get into an app. I’m in.

“Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven” -John Milton, Paradise Lost

“I’m not your boy.” -Emory Rowland

One week has passed since I traded my SEO Manager title for full time entrepreneur. I want to report back to you some things I’ve learned over just the past seven days. Some great wins along with a few defeats came my way. Here’s what is going through my mind along with some lessons learned and discoveries.

Doubts

Not overwhelming doubts but they have appeared. Can I actually succeed? I have told my wife not to worry, that I will make it happen. Talking about my trials and successes with you here will force me to stay accountable-hold me to it folks!

A little early to feel like Gary Cooper in High Noon

Making a Good Living

In the kickoff post, I didn’t mention what I would actually be doing and what my plan was—I know you thought I didn’t have a business plan and I forgive you. It turns out that being underestimated by others can be a strong success driver. I hope my competitors continue to underestimate me. In fact, if you are a competitor, you do realize I’m just some bored, unemployed, blogger right?

For some perspective, I’ve been behind the doors of an agency managing SEO client and cost per action campaigns for four years. During my off time, I’ve been tweaking Clickfire.com and building out other sites (can’t wait to tell you about these). Yeah, I love this stuff so much, I do it in my spare time at home.  I also feel like I’ve tightened up my affiliate marketing and social media optimization sensibilities.

So here I am on my own. What am I doing? A lot of my friends assume I’ll be setting up shop and trying to sell SEO services to whomever I can. Not exactly. SEO consulting or any kind of consulting for that matter can be a great way for established experts to make a living doing what they enjoy. For those with years of proven results and a network of industry contacts, this track becomes even more tempting.

But SEO consulting has its problems.

• Control – the most obvious drawback is that while the consultant may be working from home with flexible hours, he’s helping someone solve their business problems, that is, working for someone, that is, having a boss, that is, being told what to do. He will never get full credit for his contributions. Recommendations will be compromised and the consultant can easily be blamed for a VP’s mistakes.
• Sales, support and administrative burdens – A consultant could farm most of these tasks out but my sense is that the risk of being dragged into stuff other than figuring out what the client’s problem is and solving it will never be very far away.
• Limitations – I suppose there is no limit to what a client might be willing to pay. If a consultant’s skills are truly valuable, why is the consultant not deploying them for himself? I realize this doesn’t work for every industry, but with SEO, the little guy can compete with the big guy, which is one reason I so dearly love SEO and which leads me to what I really want to do as an entrepreneur.

I Don’t Want to Make a Good Living

I want to make a killing. My business will use organic search, paid media and email marketing strategies to develop and monetize web properties through advertising agreements. I don’t want to share specific targets or goals, at least not yet, but I’m looking at a time frame of one year to judge success and whether I want to continue. I will be doing some SEO consulting for select clients but I’ll stay devoted to the freedom and rewards of making my own business a success. Such as:

• Control over all major business decisions - freedom from being forced to observe the fruit of bad decisions warned about
• Ownership of all properties – 100% equity, zero company politics
• Profits go to me – (see org chart)
• Responsibility – I kind of like the idea of having no one to blame

Takeaways from the Week

• Work with partners, not for bosses – I love all of the partners and contractors I work with. If you don’t like working with someone, don’t.
• Get away and think – Escaping to a place of solitude gave me an opportunity to do what other entrepreneurs may not be able to do inside the office: thinking.
• Contracts are your friends – Sign a contract before investing time in any project
• Think big – why settle for the egg when you can have the chicken? Or the hen house? Why not the farm?
• Don’t spend too much time on social media, but definitely spend time. It’s beautiful.
• Listen to loud music while you work - the others won’t matter as much.

Good Morning Everyone!

Today is is an exciting day for me. It’s my first day on my new job of working for myself. I can already see that there is a big difference in working for a boss and being the boss. Another thing that strikes me about my first day on the job is how different certain things are from my previous job.  I’m getting the feeling that maybe I have been missing out on some benefits. Am I totally off base or could this be true?

New Org Chart

Let’s get one thing straight. I’m in charge.

New Office Staff

I love the people I worked with at my previous job, but not nearly as much as my better half/bookkeeper.

New Office Space

This is pretty much where world domination will occur.

New Company Switchboard

I challenge anyone to show me a better solution.

New Commute

Traffic consists of the ottoman and any clothes or objects dropped on the carpet.

New Accounting Department

I’ve been using QuickBooks for years and love it.

New Server

• Intel 3210 Processor – Quad Core
• 4GB Ram
• 2 x 500GB HDD SATA
• Raid Card (Raid 1)
• CentOS 5.x 64bit – cPanel/WHM with Fantastico
• 2000GB Bandwidth
• 5 IPs
• Fully Managed

Stare at those stats for a second… Yeah. It’s all good. I stumbled onto a dedicated server about a month ago and will be writing more about this subject later. Not having a good dedicated box had been holding back my business back more than I had realized.

New Smoking Policy

Nuff said.

New Bandwidth Usage Policy

If I had a boss, trust me, I wouldn’t be able to hear him. It’s going to be loud. I mean loud, brother.

New Company Car

I like the black one.

New Coffee Maker

Don’t even think about becoming the Foursquare mayor of this joint.

New Dress Code

I don’t wear pajamas.

New Salary

No complaints so far :)

Shh… It’s 4:59 pm. Friday. The sushi lunch buffet has faded.  The weather looks promising for the weekend, a slight breeze judging by the swaying trees and fluttering of leaves outside. The person patiently waiting at home seems farther away than the very last row in your spread sheet. I can feel something about to happen.

The exits have been effectively sealed by the paid search team. Attempt to leave on time and they look up from their computer monitors.

“Ah, leaving early? Must be nice to be caught up,” inferring that SEO must be easy.

So, you remain at your desk and try to finish the day’s tasks as fast as you can. Today could be the day you leave the office on time. Then…

“I know you’re busy–”

You look up.

“But I need…”

Have a look at some examples of the 5 O’Clock SEO request taken from real life experiences

• Can you do a site analysis for ___ .com? Just run it through your template. It shouldn’t take long.
• Would you mind whipping up some quick keyword research on ___? I just need ___ words. It should be easy.
• I just need you to put together a quick rankings report showing how ___ stacks up against ___.
• Accounting received a check. What’s it for?
• Can you turn in the paperwork for that software? It’s late. I think you purchased it last Friday, late afternoon.
• How about giving me a lift to the Paid Search happy hour? Oh, you’re welcome to tag along, of course.
• Can you write up a quick link building proposal for ___?
• Did you enter your work hours on your time sheet?
• Do you know what’s wrong with this printer? You used it last, right?
• My cousin has a little Web site that he’s trying to get to rank for…
• I found some great domains that we need to register.

Who Issues Friday 5 O’Clock SEO Requests?

• Account Services – client deliverables
• Senior managment – most commonly, a request to buy a domain–usually fairly quick, even considering the paperwork, unless it’s a premium domain.
• Director of Sales – usually a new business proposal
• Interns - signing time sheets, questions
• Accounting – random paperwork

So you’re sitting there feeling safe last week at 4:59 and the president eases your office door open and looks in. You brace yourself during the silence. Here comes a classic 5 O’Clock SEO Request. Then he says:

“Going out for drinks with us?”

These are the types of psychological appeals spammers make and someone you know always falls for. Most of this is produced through automated blog commenting software. Want to know how many times all of the SPAM messages below are returned in Google exact match search results? Try 574,266. This tells me that Google either can’t or won’t remove this stuff from their index. Why make SPAM searchable?

Example of a SPAM comment that appeared 13,400 times in Google for the exact match search

Guilt

Stop killing yourself with cigarettes!
Cigarettes are filled with poisonous toxic chemicals that will take years off your life.
Take the step towards changing your life now with LiveFree Patches, guaranted to help you stop smoking and give you a new lease on life!
I’m happy to report that it worked and that I haven’t had a smoke in over 11 months. Thanks for giving me my life back.
Scott, CO
Take Note!!
Special discount prices now in effect, but won’t last long!
Click here for more information

Charity

This website is very nice and colorful too. Its nice to have something to show others where you attend church and to show all the smiling people filled of the goodness of the Lord. You have a wonderful website here. May God rich bless you always.

Greetings…

Discussion about the earths temperature increase – or global warming are most often disregarded as too scientific – however, earthquakes and mass death should not be another disregarded statistic. Hundreds of thousads are dead and homeless

Please offer financial or volunteer assistance to Chile and Haiti

http://www.google.com/relief/haitiearthquake/

Please, do not delete the given message. Money obtained from spam will go to the help hungry to children uganda

Gratitude

Thank for making this valuable information available to the public.

Commenting usually is not my thing, but i have spent almost an hour on the site, so thanks for the info!

Flattery

Great site. I will bookmark for my sons to view as well!

Who does your SEO work?
I’d give you a PR10 for sure LOL – nice work here.
Very Nice

Can I quote a post in your blog with the link to you?

this article is very interesting and very informative, a lot of people including myself can learn from this site, great work!!! hi five for you!

This is such a great resource that you are providing and you give it away for free. I love seeing websites that understand the value of providing a quality resource for free. It’s the old what goes around comes around routine. Did you acquired lots of links and I see lots of trackbacks?

Your guestbook is example of middle-class guestbooks. Congratulation! I’ll show your site and guestbook to my friends. 

I really enjoyed this. You can look your article comments. This information has really been helpful for most of the readers. I really appreciate the way you have written about this. I will really like to read more on this from you. I know your expertise on this. I must say we should have an online discussion on this.

Technical Help

This internet site is really quite good, but for some reason it does not display properly when trying to view on my Nintendo Wii. If it helps, the console uses the Opera browser and am impelled to using the console for accessing the Net whilst my PC is away being restored.

The difference between a spy web cam and a normal spy cam is that the data is transmitted live on the Internet, rather than to a receiver.

I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…

I’d prefer reading in my native language, because my knowledge of your languange is no so well. But it was interesting! Look for some my links:

Camaraderie

Russia 2 – 1 England

The interesting concept about the possibility of gambling online is that it reunites players from all the countries on every continent.

Persuasion

A spammer named “Richard” attempts to convince bloggers with the comment that he can reduce their spam if they will only link to him from their home page. Excerpt:

hello, my name is Richard and I know you get a lot of spammy comments,

I can help you with this problem. I know a lot of spammers and I will ask them not to post on your site. It will reduce the volume of spam by 30-50%. In return Id like to ask you to put a link to my site on the index page of your site. The link will be small and your visitors will hardly notice it, its just done for higher rankings in search engines. Contact me icq [removed] or write me [removed], i will give you my site url and you will give me yours if you are interested. thank you

1. Today is George Fischer‘s birthday!
2. He’s a nice guy and will probably link back to you.
3. Help George rank for his name in Google instead of a piping manufacturer with obscene numbers of backlinks.
4. Get SEO tips from a blogger who regularly tests ideas and pushes the limits to find answers.
5. Another excuse to get the text ”SEO” on your SEO Blog.
6. You’ll get a new Twitter friend.
7. SEO Lair (www.seolair.com) is an up and coming blog – get to know George before he becomes an inaccessable A-Lister!
8. If you’re a beginner SEO, ask George that question that’s been bugging you and I bet you’ll get the answer you need.
9. He’s a SEO Manager at a top search engine marketing agency: Response Mine Interactive.

George Fischer sketch courtesy of Brendan Alberts

I’m sitting there conversing with Sarah about an important financial transaction and just as things start to get heated, I realize she is a “Virtual Agent.”

I know. There are more Digg tools out there than you can shake a virtual shovel at. I’ve tried many. These are the tools I find myself going back to and using over and over again to build and prune my friends list and track stats.

These digg tools:

• will help you become an influential Digg user
• won’t risk getting you banned 

1. BiggBoard by Brainnovate

BiggBoard is a “real-time dashboard for Digg.com”

BiggBoard lets you type in a Digg username to see how well your story submission is performing during the 24 hour period it has a chance to make the Digg front page.

Enter your username from Digg in the box at the top, and then select a story you would like to track from your upcoming list. There is no need to refresh the page, everything happens automatically and you can track your stories as they move from left to right and hopefully to the front page.

Digg has de-emphasized its category structure so that it is not always apparent what category or subcatory the user is looking at (ew, those yucky old web 1.0 pointers). Brainnovate lets you see how fast your submission is moving up the categories to the top compared with other stories. Use this tool to determine the best categories to submit to. For example, you may want to submit your story to “Microsoft” instead of the potentially more competitve “Software” or “Industry News categories.”

I used this to speculate about the Digg bury brigade and accomplish some therapeutic whining.

2. Friend Statistics

Do you expect your Digg friends to digg at least some of your stories? Do you have Digg friends who go AWOL? Friend Statistics let’s you keep tabs on how many of your submissions your friends are actually digging. Not reciprocating enough for your taste? Drop them. Or at least don’t digg their silly lolcats stories anymore!

Enter your Digg user name and this script will tell you which of your friends are digging your submissions – and which aren’t. FriendStatistics.com will analyze your Digg friends list and tell you which of your friends have dugg the last 10 of your digg submissions, and which of your friends have not. It will also tell you which users in the digg community other than your friends have dugg more than five of your submissions.

3. Neaveru

Are you the kind of digger who wins the hearts of your friends with witty comments and ascii art? Do you love making your political enemies mad until they bury your comments into oblivion? A lot of diggers use comments to charm other diggers into friendship. Neaveru let’s you see statistics on the last 10000 comments that you’ve made along with the actual comment itself. You can use this to see how popular your comments are with other diggers, even if they are not your friends.

4. Social Blade

Want to buddy up with Digg power users and win their friendship? First, you need to know who they are. Social Blade let’s you see who the real Digg powerusers are and were. Track where you appear on the top lists of users as you begin your journey to the top.

Input your Digg id into Social Blade and see a snapshot of all your digg story stats or the stats of others graphed out, active and non-active. I usually go straight to the top 1000 active user list to see if I’ve risen or fallen and who is above. Feeling nostalgic for your old friends who were banned from Digg? Enhance your reminiscing with the Digg Graveyard. There’s a lot more nifty stuff at Social Blade to check out.

5. di66.net

Like Social Blade, di66.net gives you top user data too but also gives up some other very interesting data that can help you determine how to craft your titles and descriptions.

• Top Words in Titles
• Top Words in Descriptions
• Digg’s Top Sources
• Most Popular Digg’s Topics

You can see all the top domains sources that any user is submitting. Pretty cool.

This tool has implications for my SEO brethren out there. Just look at this screen cap of the top Digg words in titles. Once you get past all the stop words and superlatives, you see what subjects users are voting to the top. You can choose stories within those topics in the hope that they will be received well by diggers.

Now where is that really cool Digg tool that does everything I want in one click? Twitter? Ah, that’s another post.