NowSourcing.Com » Interviews

Gentlemint, Start Your Engines: A Pinterest for Men

Brian Wallace — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:00:43 +0000

I’m sure you’ve heard your female friends obsessively talking about Pinterest, the greatest social network since sliced bread. But what about men? We need our mancave of a pinboard/social network to show off our wares. Luckily, Gentlement has accepted entered the foray. We couldn’t wait to hear more news about them, so we decided to sit down and interview them:

1 – Tell us a little bit about yourselves.
The site is co-founded by myself (Glen Stansberry), a web designer. The other co-founder is Brian McKinney a designer and developer. Since starting the site, we’ve added Alex Kritikos, a fantastic programmer and sysadmin. Oh, and we’re all based out of Lawrence, KS.

2 – Why the name? Why the moustaches?
The name: we had a few picked out before we started building the service, but after deliberating for a while, we just settled on Gentlemint. It was a play on the world Gentleman and mint, but mint in the treasury sense. Gentlemint is a mint of manly things

3 – How do you plan to beat Pinterest?
We don’t. Everyone has kind of taken to believe that we’re trying to be the male version of Pinterest. While we do have similarities with Pinterest, we have features (and many more on the way) that make us very different.

At the core of our service (and Pinterest’s) is link sharing, and link sharing sites have been around a long, long time before we entered. Also, we’re focused around a specific set of content, whereas Pinterest houses everything under the sun.

4 – Besides targeting men, how do you plan to differentiate from Pinterest? (or how do you currently)
Well, like I mention above, we’re only focused on one type of content. That alone makes us very different from Pinterest.

5 – Do you censor what people put on there to make sure it’s manly enough?
We censor flagrant and inappropriate posts, and posts that objectify women. (We actually have a healthy community of ladies who post to the site, and we want them to be comfortable too.) As far as the “is it manly enough?” censoring, we kind of just let the Gentlemint community do that. For the most part, everyone understands what type of content should be on the site even though we haven’t created guidelines or anything yet. That’s actually one of the best parts about the community: everyone seems to understand what should be added to the site.

6 – You’ve just started advertising. Do you think the community will be resistant to it? Other income streams?
So far everyone has been hugely supportive of our advertising, actually. We have other revenue streams in mind, but for right now we’re just focused on making the site much better. After all, we did put the guts of the site together in 12 hours. (See more here)

7 – What’s the road to profitability? Any funding / acquisition plans in the future?
Not really. We’re just taking everything one day at a time.

Thanks Glen, Brian, and Alex – we wish you best of luck on your awesome site! We’re big fans.

Bonus:We’ve got 5 Gentlemint invites to give away. Leave us a comment to get in on it. First come, first served.

Fan Mail Response: What it Takes to be a Social Media Strategist

Kristina — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 19:19:53 +0000

Last week we received an email from a 13 year-old, with an interest in working in the social media field. The following is the inspired, and flattering correspondence:

Hi,

My name is Terry. I’m 13, and I’m in seventh grade. I’m always thinking about what I want to do with my life, and while I’ve thought of nursing, engineering, ministry, and countless other professions, I’ve never settled on one idea for more than a few days. Except one. When I was in forth grade I saw an article on the Google, Twitter, and Facebook offices, (I think I was on stumbleupon.com and looking at design, which I was in to at the time,) I decided to do further research on them. This led me to looking at more than the offices, but program development, advertising, and things like that that went on in all three. Ever since, on and off I’ve considered jobs at places like Google or Facebook. The two, especially Google, continue to impress and interest me. But recently my friend and I were in class school on our schools MacBooks, we had finished the work early and were just looking at things on Google like the Google Gravity, Let It Snow, and the Google PacMan, when I begun thinking more and more about the work that goes into programs like Google Chrome and the tricks on Google. That night, I was on Pinterest, on the geek section, and found a link to your website. It was something about color, and for the last few weeks I have been thinking about a career at a company like NowSourcing or Google or Facebook. I know that I’m in seventh grade, but I really want to know what kind of work you do, what school you had to go to, what that requires. I’m really, really interested in a career like that in the future, and want to know what it requires. I really hope you respond, because I’m very interested in this type of work.

Thank you,

Terry

We wanted to publicly respond to Terry, in an attempt to possibly help others understand this field better.

The wonderful thing about social media, SEO, infographics, and so on, is that it allows you to use your imagination, communicate with a wide variety of people, and create identities for people and businesses online. At NowSourcing our degrees range from advertising, and interactive media, to business administration, and journalism. Being motivated and passionate are two key ingredients if you want to succeed in a field like this, as well as setting boundaries with clients, and maintaining good character throughout. Without these things, no amount of talent will give you any long-term satisfaction.

Now, what do we do? a great definition of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) would be: the art of moving to the top of a Google search – that’s what this is really all about. If Google likes you, you’re in. Doing this organically takes a lot of fine tuning, and you can find yourself sitting on the line of being real and sounding like an advertisement. Advertising, in it’s actuality, is not a bad thing – manipulative, and invasive advertising is where people stop paying attention or even become irate - and it’s understandable. As an outsider it can be difficult to see people in promotions, advertising, even public relations, as human – but even the advertiser gets advertised too, and probably hates the same things we all do.

Blogging is a great way of building credibility with Google, but what some tend to forget is that it has to be good and consistent. It is very important to put out interesting, quality content. Which means, in this field, you need to be a bit of a writer. You also need to be able to write on many different subjects, sometimes on a whim. We often use blogs for links, which is a way of getting page views, that’s not invasive. This is also where you would want to launch an infographic, like the Psychology of Color (which you saw on Pinterest), because when it goes viral that page and your website get a lot hits – organically moving you up in a search.

When it comes to the social media side, you are not only building social networks, maintaining them, and creating an identity, but this is where you are the public relations department. How do you deal with a bad review right there on your client’s Facebook page for everyone to see? If you take any public relations courses when you get to college, the case studies show that the ones who take full responsibility, and fix the problem makes it in the end. This is an area where that good character comes in. You need to be honest with your customers, and your clients, and you need to make them happy. Sometimes this can be hard because they don’t actually know what is going to make them happy down the road. You may find yourself in a bind when these situations arise: you’re the expert, but they’re the client. This is why boundaries are so important, and need to be set in place from the beginning.

Terry, your interest seems to be on the more technical side, app design may be something you would enjoy. However, all the previously discussed aspects will be your business at some point – some more than others. I urge you to continue looking into the whole big world that is social media, and keep up with it, because it is constantly changing. There are a lot of areas you could major in when you get to college that would compliment this field, so I would choose one that you may be able to do multiple things with. You may consider blogging, as well. Try sitting down and thinking of what you would really enjoy talking about (maybe new applications, Google, Facebook), create an outline, and then write something once a week or twice a month. This will sharpen your writing skills, help you to be in the know about what’s launching, and by using a site like WordPress to do this, you will become familiar with the tools and mechanics. You can also explore the SEO side through your blog by including keywords, links, and promoting it on social networks. I can say that if you came to me at 22, looking for a job in social media, and I see that you have experience in these areas, and a strong understanding about the latest and greatest technology, I would be very impressed.

There of course are so many other areas, and aspects, but I hope this helps you to get started. To those of you our there who have questions, or maybe also have input for awesome people, like Terry, feel free to comment.

Interview With Creator of SearchRank, David Wallace

Kristina — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 16:41:33 +0000

NowSourcing President, Brian Wallace, interviews SearchRank founder, David Wallace, no there is no relation. Find out just how David got to where he is today. With his innovative thinking and drive – David has become an influential leader when it comes to search and online marketing. He will also discuss the future of infographics, and a few of his favorites to date.

1 – You’ve got a great reputation in the SEO world. For those readers that don’t already know you, tell us a bit about your background?

Believe it or not, I was not introduced the “the computer” until 1996 when we purchased our first PC – an AST 133mhz machine running Windows 95. After a few months of “playing around” with this new toy, I thought that there has to be a way to make money with this thing.

After about 6 months, I signed up to be an affiliate of a company that designed websites after attending one of their seminars. It was pretty straight-forward: I’d land the customers, help them decide what they wanted to do and the company I represented would design and host the sites. That worked well for a few months until the web design company forgot what their purpose really was and rather focused on seminars to sign up more and more affiliates (they made a lot of money with affiliate sign-up fees). Long story short – they began to lapse badly in their design work so I bought a copy of Frontpage and learned how to design sites myself.

As far as being a marketer I actually stumbled into search marketing quite accidentally after first starting my “online” career in web design in 1997. We owned (still do in fact) an Arizona construction and home improvement portal that we were trying to market but with zero budget. Therefore I relied heavily on performing what optimization techniques were available to my knowledge base at the time, most likely derived from writings of folks like Danny Sullivan and Jill Whalen. As a result, we were successful in getting that site to rank well in the search engines that were around at that time (no Google at this point).

So, we began to offer these types of “SEO” related services to clients, at first for very nominal one-time fees, until a light bulb went on in my head and I discovered the “retainer” model. We went from a small local web design company whose clients pretty much resided in our own locale – Arizona, to an international company serving clients not only across the nation, but around the globe as well.

Almost 15 years later, my company continues to focus its energies on managing search and social media marketing campaigns for our clients. We also continue to run our own niche websites including that Arizona home improvement one I spoke of earlier. The two I am most excited to currently work with however are Disney-O-Rama, an “all things Disney blog, and Infographic Journal, an “infographics only” blog.

2 – Why another infographic site?

Prior to presenting in the most recent PubCon conference in Vegas, I was looking around for suitable places to submit infographic work. Because I was speaking on the topic of infographic marketing via social media, I thought I’d include a list of sites that accept submission of infographic work. The results I came up with were scarce so I thought, “Why not launch our own?” So we did.

Now, Infographic Journal is not another Visual.ly, that is a self-serving infographics site, but rather a blog where we select some of the best infographics and data visualizations to post on a daily basis. We also accept free submissions of infographic work to be considered for publishing. It’s been a lot of work thus far and the site is still pretty new, but I personally feel that Infographic Journal is the most active site, next to Visual.ly of course, in featuring infographics all in one place on a daily basis.

We soft-launched the site in September 2011, finished its look, feel and structure around the middle of November and really began to publish content on a daily basis in December. In December alone, we published 157 infographics and as of the time of this interview, we have over 220 published infographics. Not bad for only a couple months of hard work.

3 – What are your goals for the site?

To take over the world, what else? No, but in all seriousness, we simply want Infographic Journal to be one of the top sites in its niche. I know it will take some time but I firmly believe that it will eventually hold a top spot as far as “infographic-only” blogs/sites go.

I certainly realize that companies are creating and marketing infographics for their own sites and benefit, but I want Infographic Journal to be a place that combines the best of the best in infographic work, all in one place and then of course provides credit (and links) to the original source and/or designer.

Ultimately, once the site is established, we hope to attract advertisers and possibly even companies who need help in marketing their infographics via social media, link building and the like.

4 – What’s been your favorite infographic so far?

Anything your company has done! All kidding aside, I have enjoyed pretty much all of the infographics NowSourcing has created as they are of very high quality. But I would have to say one of my favorites thus so far has been the “Alternative Holidays: Festivus For the Rest of Us” not necessarily because it is the best one but rather because I am a huge Seinfeld fan. Other than that, I like the infographics that are either humorous in some way such as “Geek vs Nerd” or informative such as “Anatomy of a Killer Facebook Ad Campaign.”

5 – If you’re like us, you’ve probably seen a lot of tech infographics. What’s the most imaginative industry you’ve seen an infographic so far?

If we are referring to what is currently on Infographic Journal, I’d have to say that “Complete Guide to Energy Efficient Home Lighting” did a great job providing useful and entertaining data on a most boring subject – light bulbs. I mean, who wants to know anything about light bulbs? We turn them on when we go into a room and hopefully remember to turn them off when leaving. We hate having to change them and if most are like me, we put those tasks off until the weekend “honey-dos” or something. Whoever designed this infographic did a great job compiling what most would consider boring information into an format that made it interesting to read and visualize. I actually read through the whole thing as well as shared it all over the socialsphere.

Infographics like this prove that just about any industry, no matter how un-exciting or boring they think they might be, can take advantage of this new type of content marketing – visualizing data.

6 – Where’s the future of infographics going? Interactive? Mobile? Video? All of the above?

I think all of the above. We are already seeing this. The vast majority of them will most likely continue to be these large graphic representations of data simply because they are so effective. In our short attention span of a world, a well designed infographic enables people to easily digest data at a much faster rate than say, reading a blog post or even watching a video.

How about infographics that tease the user but then lead them to a more instructive video? Or an instructive video that then provides a checklist format infographic? I can see them all working together in the scope of content marketing.

7 – Anything else we should know?

Anyone who is reading this who would like to submit infographics for consideration to be published on Infographic Journal can visit http://infographicjournal.com/submit-infographics/ and follow the instructions to do so. I’d say that 99% of everything that has been submitted to date has been published so there’s a great opportunity there to gain more exposure for infographic work.

We’ve already received inquiries about advertising on the site but at this point, we are not offering anything. Personally, I’d like to see the site earn some Google PageRank first as well as graduate out of the “new site sandbox” Google won’t admit to, but still has in place. I won’t go into that now as it is an entirely different subject. It shouldn’t be too long though as I feel the site is growing at a good natural pace. We will probably do some more aggressive marketing of the site in the near future which at that time, I’d feel better about actually offering services to paying advertisers.

In the meantime, we will continue to collect and feature as much of the great infographic work that is taking place out there that we come across and continue to accept free submissions of infographic work as well. If you want to support us, please make sure to subscribe to our RSS feed and additionally follow us on Facebook and Twitter. And by all means, if you like anything you see while on the site, share it socially on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and any other social networks you frequent. ~

Interview with Mark Seall, Co-Founder of Mapvivo.com

Brian Wallace — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:12:12 +0000

With me today is Mark Seall, co-founder of Mapvivo.com. Mapvivo is a travel social network that I predict will be making big waves soon – welcome, Mark!

1 – Tell us a bit about your background.

I’ve spent the past 10 years working in a range of industries, from Telecoms to logistics to banking, mostly in project management or consulting roles. In 2004 I took 18 months off to do a full-time MBA, and when I realized that working in banking hadn’t given me the change I was looking for I got into the start up scene – first with Green Options Media, and now with MapVivo.

MapVivo was the brainchild of founders Mike, Tom and Wojtek. It was formerly in beta as mapness.net, and the guys managed to get angel funding for it earlier this year, at which point I joined the team. I was impressed when I saw the concept for the product and couldn’t wait to get started.

2 – Where does the name MapVivo come from and what made you think of the concept?

The name comes from weeks of brainstorming which resulted in a list of domain names that were actually available! But we like the name MapVivo because it’s all about bringing maps to life, which is what we try to do – bring journeys to life by placing your images and experiences onto a virtual map.

3 – MapVivo was launched last year, and then just relaunched this week – what plans do you have in store?

Lots! – Social networks are growing as a source of upstream travel referrals (the places where people hang out on the web immediately before they book travel). Online search solves the simple problems for people in terms of travel, but doesn’t help you so much if you are wondering what the best places are to visit in the Australian Outback, for example.

So our plans are – further develop the social aspects of the site (including comments, member messaging and joint travel journals), better leverage and integrate with existing social networks (the feature I love about MapVivo right now is the ability to update my journey, and then send this directly to my Facebook contacts) and develop search and tagging capabilities to help travelers benefit from the hard won travel experiences of others.

By the way – search for “Australian Outback” on MapVivo to get an idea of places to travel there.

4 – How will MapVivo embrace social media? I know that you have an interest in the subject.

As I mentioned, social media is becoming increasingly important in travel. We already allow users to share travel journals directly on Twitter or Facebook and we plan to further improve integration in future releases – we are keeping an eye on Facebook Connect, and on other similar developments. We also want to start using social media not just as a source of traffic, or as an address book – there is a tremendous amount of value out there in terms of the conversations and interactions that take place, and we have some ideas about how we can leverage that value for our users. But I won’t say too much about these plans just yet.

5 – What is your ultimate goal with MapVivo.com?

Our ultimate goal? We want to provide an amazing resource for travelers to help them share the magic of travel, and to get the most out of their journeys all the way from planning to getting home and wondering about the next trip.

6 – I know that the travel industry as a whole has really taken a hit in the world economic slowdown. Why start a travel business now?

Well, the travel industry won’t be down for ever. Travel is part of the human endeavor, and even if people are traveling a little less they can still be a part of the travel experience on MapVivo! Like most industries travel will recover, and we are busy building value for when it does.

7 – Any final thoughts?

Above all, we hope people enjoy using our product – that’s what’s ultimately important above all the strategy and social media talk! If people enjoy it then the rest will come together.

Be sure to visit MapVivo.com and follow them on Twitter.

MapVivo.com – The World’s Online Travel Journal (killerstartups.com)

Interview with FirstDigg

Brian Wallace — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:41:27 +0000

With us today is top digger and the brains behind SocialBlade.com – FirstDigg.

1 – Tell us a little bit about your background.
I’m 28 years old, currently live in New York (the state, not the city), and like long walks on the beach — wait what type of interview is this again? =] I’ve have been working in the telecom/networking/software industries since I graduated college (go UMass!) and am originally from Massachusetts. I like to travel and have been able to do my fair share of both business & personal travel over the course of my life so far and have met many cool people in the process.

Meeting Israeli Diggers: MediaSight, TalSiach, FirstDigg, AllINeed

Meeting NYC Diggers: numberneal, FirstDigg, gbarberi

Meeting fellow YouTubers (some famous some not so)

2 – What made you first interested in Digg?

I’ve been a Digger for almost four years now joining shortly after the site was created. I believe I first heard about Digg from the TV show The Screen Savers when Kevin was introducing it to the world. For many years before that I had been going to Slashdot for my news and Digg looked to be an up and coming replacement for old-style media. At the beginning I still needed to visit other sources because Digg just didn’t have everything, but I loved that anyone could submit something and you had the ‘preview’ of what was going on in the upcoming section where you too could help out and pick what was good and bury what was bad. At the beginning I did a lot of looking around in /upcoming, but after a while it got overwhelming and I stopped going there. A little over a year ago though I decided to try my hand at submitting and I discovered a completely different side of Digg, both rewarding & challenging but above all, addicting.

3 – What inspired you to create SocialBlade?

When I first started submitting to Digg it was purely to see ‘what it would take’ to hit the front page, but after the first day of doing that I quickly became addicted. I found that I was good at it and that I could use this skill to hopefully fill in some of the missing gaps in news articles that didn’t make it to Digg. I then started to look around to see who was most successful on the site and started studying them a bit to get tips. One of these people with Muhammad Saleem. What he was doing on twitter was occasionally when one of his stories hit the front page he tweeted a [Digg Threshold] message with some data on # of Diggs, etc. I found that information very interesting, but found that there was no way to find out how many Diggs a story took to hit unless you saw it at the moment that it did hit. Since this information wasn’t available anywhere I decided to take a crack at the Digg API and see what I could come up with, and that’s where SocialBlade came from as a permanent source of this information for everyone.

4 – Tell us about SocialBlade’s improvements over time, and plans for the future?

Since SocialBlade went live almost a year ago it has added graphs, trends, and one of its most popular features, the top user listings. The top user listing section though I can’t take all the credit for, though I’ve done a bit of improvement to it. Christopher Finke is the original author of that but discontinued it releasing his code. I picked it up and integrated it into SocialBlade to continue to let people see that information. As for plans for the future, I’ve have a ton of ideas just haven’t had the time to create them yet. One of the things I had wanted to do for example was create a sort of user portal around the site where you could create an account & customize what you saw, and also get alerts when stories you are tracking/submitted go popular. Hopefully someday I’ll get the time to create that.

5 – Views on Digg criticism / bannings? Surely you have something to say, as SocialBlade has the Digg Graveyard.

Lets be honest here, some people truly do abuse the system and do, even beyond TOS violations, and do unethical things to get stories onto Digg. There are sites that sell Diggs or automatically Digg stories for you and I do believe that those type of things shouldn’t be tolerated. That being said I am against the complete all out ban on scripts and I feel that many of the bans may be unsubstantiated.

I’m a programmer and a hacker (the good definition of the word) at heart and I feel that there are so many things that scripts can do to enhance a website. Scripts are just tools which are neither good nor bad. With tools you can build anything from a spaceships to bombs.

Just to illustrate the point, I use a whole horde of greasemonkey scripts across the internet to to add features to sites that are missing. For example I hate having to click on the next page button time after time on websites to continue to use the site. I prefer to be able to just keep scrolling down and down the page and have it automatically loaded for me, and on Digg, Flickr, Twitter, and many other sites I’m able to do this with a script called AutoPagerize. Just so there is no confusion though let me say flat out, I don’t use any scripts on Digg to automatically Digg anything or any malicious or gaming scripts so if you’re reading this Digg, don’t ban me please!

So in short, I feel that scripts themselves should not be a reason for banning, its what you do with them & what ones you use that should be looked at. Also, the bannings aren’t really helping anything anyway. It’s the fundamental way social news is built that is not working right now. That’s what needs to be worked on further.

Lastly you asked about the Digg Graveyard. When a digger gets banned, or “buried” by the Digg staff there is no way to know unless you try to visit their profile page. The Digg Graveyard was created as sort of a community announcement to let people know who was no longer with us, and approximately what date they were buried. Since this information was getting passed around anyway, I just figured it’d be nice to see it all in one place and have it be automatically updated.

6 – We don’t see much of you on other social networks. Why not?

Since I am using the social news networks primarily as a reader and not a marketer or blogger Digg does a fairly good job of delivering what I need in terms of news. I did use Reddit for a little while but I found its interface to be much less manageable. If I’m gone from Digg for a few days and want to catch up on news for example I can, just start on page one and keep going until I see something I saw before. This isn’t, or at least wasn’t the last time I checked as feasible on sites like Reddit.

Basically though, what it comes down to is this. Digg has a good enough interface & enough sources to deliver enough of the news to me that I don’t have the time nor feel the need to push into many other social news networks. So when submitting, I’ve dedicated some of my free time to filling in the holes I’ve found on Digg, helping to give back to the community there.

Anyway, regarding social networks outside of social news, I have become attached to Twitter & YouTube. Make sure you follow & subscribe to me! =] I have accounts on other sites including Facebook, and Linkedin, but those are more to keep a profile and I don’t really do much with them. If I was to measure the amount of time I spend on different websites online, probably at least 50-75% of that time could be split between Digg & YouTube. YouTube is my other hobby. Ever since I got an HD camcorder a year and a half ago I’ve been making videos on my free time for there. Nothing all that spectacular but I entered one of my videos in a contest and won a trip to Singapore from it. Diggers may also enjoy my April Fools’ Joke from last year “YouDigg” or a video I recorded from the Digg(nation) Meetup in NY last year.

7 – What do you think the future of social media holds? Will Digg make it? How about other competition social news/networks?

I think Social Media or Social News specifically does need a bit of work, but still has the potential to succeed in the future. If an algorithm can be created to fairly and accurately detect what you are interested in and deliver news from the entire web in a timely manner that matches those interests to you filtering out everything that isn’t interesting to you then I think social news will defiantly be a winner. Digg currently does not meet all those criteria, but I believe is striving for that. I think we are a long way still from eliminating ‘old media’, but I think over the next ten years social media (and Digg) will evolve to deliver a much more accurate picture of what is hot news in the world & interesting to you as a reader.

Digg definitely has a big head start, but if someone else beats them to the punch on these things it’s still anyone’s game.

8 – Any advice for those that want to become “top diggers?”

Most people consider “top diggers” to be the person who has the most front page stories on Digg, and while I do agree that is part of it, to me a “top digger” has always also meant being the must successful with each submit as well. In addition to learning the ins and outs of Digg and how the site ticks, and spending a ridiculously amount of time on the site, I really recommend thinking like an editor. After all that’s what everyone else on the site is supposed to be doing when digging up or down your story. The biggest thing I can say is submit only quality stories. Don’t submit things just to submit even if you know that it will do well on Digg because its the right type of a story. That just clogs up the tubes and is effectively social media spam. If you focus on quality you will do well, become respected, and everyone will benefit. That’s always been my goal.

Overall Top 1000 (sorted by Popular Ratio)

Top Active (90d) (sorted by Popular Ratio)

9 – Any final words?

Thank you first for giving me this opertunity to express myself and explain to everyone a bit of what I do. If you’d like to learn more about me follow me on my social news profile on Twitter or my alternative profile, subscribe to me on YouTube, check out my site SocialBlade and of course add me as a friend on Digg.

Week 7 – Louisville Soup

Brian Wallace — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:58:28 +0000

It’s really a lot of fun meeting someone for the first time in person after only speaking with them online. Such was the case in meeting Mike Campbell aka Louisvillesoup on Twitter.

We had a chance to meet over coffee at one of my more favorite places in town. If you’re in Louisville, you’ve probably been to the Starbucks on Hurstbourne. What’s really special about this location is that it was previously a bank. So, the bank vault is now a meeting room! Coolest war room around to plan your next heist

but I digress….

Back to Mike. Mike’s a really sharp guy. CPA turned social media ninja, Mike had been in attendence to one of my speaking events several months ago. And he credits me for getting him hooked on Twitter. So I suppose that I owe an apology to Mike’s friends and family for this addiction, though he assures me that he’s received significant value and productivity from the great microblogging platform we all know and love.

We spoke about the benefits and drawbacks of social media in the workplace, and how some social media tools (blogs, intranets, wikis) can be great for productivity and collaboration. I look forward to speaking with Mike and the rest of you out there soon!

Remember, you can win an iPod Nano by traveling the furthest to meet me, sponsored by Geeks.com.

Previous 10 in 10 posts:

Week 6 – Meeting Erin McMahon aka Firestar9s

Brian Wallace — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 12:09:15 +0000

Believe it or not, Erin McMahon aka Firestar9s is the first woman to be featured in the #10in10 experiment. Erin currently works for the Metro United Way of Louisville. It was a lot of fun speaking with Erin, and hearing about social media activities through the point of view of a non-profit. Erin definitely has a can-do attitude, and is eager to learn social media. Metro United Way is already on the way into the world of social media, as can be seen from the Flickr, Facebook, and YouTube links off the homepage. I first spotted Erin off Twitter, and is one to watch.

Erin asked a lot of specific questions about blogging and her natural curiosity shows a high aptitude for a road to success in social media. It was a pleasure meeting with her, and look forward to speaking with her in the future.

Come on, y’all – don’t be shy. Wouldn’t you like to win an iPod Nano? Come from the furthest to meet me, and Geeks.com will send one to your door. You might even get a coffee out of the deal

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Week 5 – Meeting Scott Hack

Brian Wallace — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 20:00:58 +0000

It’s been a few weeks since the last 10in10, so let’s get things back in gear.

Had a moment to sit with Scott Hack, a pizza shop owner turned real estate / social media man. Scott’s a great, personable guy and we had an enjoyable discussion about the ins and outs of social media. Originally, I saw Scott on Twitter, and have since then checked out his real estate site, he definitely seems to be ahead of the curve of other real estate professionals. He even put up a post about us meeting before I did!

Scott is one to watch, as he continues to tie together his business skill, personability, and use of social media.

It’s not too late to try to win the Geeks.com 10in10 contest, the person that travels the furthest to meet me wins a iPod Nano!

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Digg Bannings: Interview with Diggboss

Brian Wallace — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 23:29:17 +0000

With me today is a popular former Digg user, Diggboss. Thanks for joining me, Diggboss. Ok, let’s get right into it:

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. When did you start getting into social media in the first place, and which network did you like the most from the start?

2. When did you first discover Digg, and what were your impressions of it back then? How do you think it has been in its progression and dealing with growth, enhancements, and issues?

Answer to 1 and 2 above -

Thanks for having me and giving me a chance to talk to you. I am a Freelance programmer. I specialize in Data Extraction services and writing web-robots or spiders as they are called. Hence the spider avatar.

My first exposure to social media was through digg.com. I didn’t know then that Digg was a “social media site.” I absolutely loved and still love Digg, I am not active on any other social media site other than Digg, i created accounts on Reddit, SU, etc but never found them as interesting as digg. I still don’t even have a MySpace or FaceBook account.

I guess I started from mid 2006, reading news and interesting geeky stuff on digg.com. I became an active Digg member since April 2007.

3. Although Digg has issues with your scripts as you have noted on your site (http://checkfriends.appspot.com/), any plans for creating scripts for other social media sites?

I am not into any other social media site as much as I was in Digg, I do use Plurk and Twitter sometime for micro-blogging but only rarely. So there are no plans for any scripts on any other site.

4. Had you kept your Digg scripts secret, only for personal use, would Digg have caught on you?

I could have kept it a secret but I thought it was a benefit to other Digg users so I wanted to share it. I had no idea it was going to end up like this.

5. Do you feel that your scripts had proper disclaimers on yours scripts? Remember that many Digg users probably don’t understand what goes into a script, API calls and the like. Do you feel upset that many people were just booted , assuming that the reason was due to your scripts?

My scripts used Digg APIs. Anyone can use Digg APIs. Digg data is open under Creative Commons.

6. Do you think that Digg was justified in banning you due to creating your scripts? It could be said that letting users create such scripts would give them an unfair competitive advantage versus diggers just using the tools that Digg alone provides.

Absolutely not as I said anyone with a little knowledge of CURL or WGET can make use of the APIs and do what I did.

7. Which begs the question: what should developers that work outsite of Digg be doing with the Digg API? Colorful charts of who’s Digging what?

Digg is not FaceBook, coders please stay away from Digg. Digg does not have open policies and does not support coders. Every script is a BAD script. Digg uses its TOS to its advantage.

8. Ever think of starting your own social media site? Seems like you have the head for it.

Haha, thats an outrageous question, nope, never.

9. So what’s next for Diggboss?

I am sure Digg would restore my account, I don’t have an alternative. I am banned.

I loved Digg and will continue to love it, my love for digg is not conditional.

Interview with The Man About Social Media – Rohit Bhargava

admin — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:19:10 +0000

Rohit Bhargava (@rohitbhargava) recently opened up for people to pick his brain to promote his new book, Personality Not Included – and I am very pleased to present to you, at long last, his answers!

Thanks so much Rohit for letting us pick your brain

Trisha: I used to work for Best Buy many years ago (big surprise, in the Computers department), and as an employee I felt they had a lot of personality – but it’s hard to tell from the outside.

How does internal culture weigh up against external personality in terms of importance?

Rohit: You bring up a great point in your example of Best Buy of companies that focus on the internal culture but don’t necessarily translate that to what their customers see.

The unfortunate truth is that most companies are in one category or another.

They either focus on internal training and retention – and do a great job there, but don’t do enough to transfer that voice to external communications … or the opposite situation. Ultimately, I don’t think you can pick one as more important – but try to work towards becoming more evenly balanced.

Trisha: How can a company encourage their culture to “leak” out?

Rohit: Seems like you anticipated my answer to the first question!

One easy thing companies could start to do is make some of the methods that they use to collaborate or communicate internally visible to their customers. This could involve something as simple as migrating an internal blog to an external one … or a more concentrated effort to encourage employees to share the facts about what their jobs and company is like.

It is amazing what you can get employees to do if you just help them have a story to tell, and ask them to share it.

Trisha: You tend to use “my book” instead of “this book” (I’m an ENFJ, sorry). What is your reasoning for that?

Rohit: You’re right – and it is something I thought about. The traditional way would be to have it all in the third person, but as you already uncovered, I prefer to have a more individual voice.

This is something I struggled with on my blog, but decided that it was more authentic if I used the word “I” and wrote from my point of view. That was a decision I decided to carry through to the book.

Trisha: What are some of the most disastrous personality campaigns you have come across?

Rohit: Interesting question, but I’m not sure that I could point to a whole lot of efforts as a “personality campaign.”

The one thing that does come to mind was the whole video series that Agency.com did for the Subway Pitch. That was a lame attempt to demonstrate the personality of their agency that failed miserably and led to employees leaving and public ridicule. In the end, it comes down to authenticity as a part of personality.

The video failed because it was pretending to be authentic and came across as anything but.

Trisha: Are there any rules of thumb for avoiding big personality mistakes?

Rohit: I think I started to answer this at the end of the last question. Authenticity is key … the other big thing to avoid is falling into the trap of giving up control.

One counterintuitive piece of advice I share in the book is that giving up control is the type of advice overpaid marketing consultants provide because it’s popular, but it’s not right.

The real trick is to learn how to share control with your customers. This is about engagement and conversation. It is not about throwing up your hands and letting consumers say what they say without engaging them.

Perhaps the better description is to get away from the idea of control altogether.

Trisha: You’re widely regarded as the man who coined “Social Media.” How did you get into doing this – was your career wholly methodical, or a series of open doors when opportunity knocked?

Rohit: Wow, I think you might be giving me too much credit with this one! I think you are probably referring to “social media optimization” – which was a term I introduced on my blog which has rocketed through the search marketing industry …

Either way, your question about whether my career has been methodical … I think it definitely hasn’t.

In fact, anyone who tells you that they have had a five or ten year plan and are sticking to it perfectly is either a complete liar or someone without much motivation or ambition.

The best careers are the ones where you do take the chances when opportunity knocks. I moved to Australia when I was in my late 20s because I wanted to have an adventure and found a job afterwards. It turned out to be one of my best career moves.

I think if you keep an open mind and be flexible, you will have far greater success in your career than if you seek that one perfect role and avoid taking risks along the way.

NowSourcing Featured on WebProNews

Brian Wallace — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 02:47:30 +0000

Here’s the recent video interview I did with Mike McDonald when WebProNews came to town when we had our inaugural Social Media Club Louisville meeting.

Those WPN guys have a nice looking microphone. I took it from Mike when it came time for me to talk. Watch for it, they had a little fun editing there. Almost like built-in viral video appeal, lol

NowSourcing Interview on Broadcasting Brain

Brian Wallace — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:09:35 +0000

Mark Dykeman of Broadcasting Braininterviewed me in his latest in the series of Catch the Brainwaves. Mark and I talk a bit about NowSourcing, Collective Thoughts, and and social media / blogging scene. Go check it out!

Interview with Social Media Hotshot, ViperChill

Brian Wallace — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:29:07 +0000

With me today is Glen Allsopp (yes, I checked the spelling unlike everyone else that trips up on the n’s, l’s and p’s ). Thanks for joining me.

Thanks Brian, that does get quite annoying but I’m assuming it’s an american thing to use the 2 n’s. Glad to be doing the interview.

1 – Cool. So tell us a little about yourself. Most of us that have been keeping up with you know that you’re one of the younger members of the social media revolution (although Adam Fuhrer has got you beat, he’s 13) and have heard about your travels between your homeland of the UK and South Africa. Tell us a little about yourself and what got you interested in social media in the first place?

Basically I had just turned 16, was in a rubbish part-time job and wanted to earn some money on the side so I could quit and focus more on college. I started building websites in order to sell them, and as anyone will tell you, the value goes up substantially if you can show a large number of backlinks and decent traffic stats. I originally started out focusing on SEO and had some great results earning over $1,000 in a month just from online wages, which wasn’t bad at 16. I then continued this and setup ViperChill when I was 17, offering services to others from what I had learned in the past.
I found social media just to be a great way to get involved in building traffic from blogs and the social news sites. I setup a ‘test’ site to further my experiments, in the first month I had a link from 4 of the Technorati Top 100, was featured on Techmeme and built up over 2,000 links.

2 – I find that many folks try to get into social media, but try as they might, they don’t seem to get it. There is often a misunderstanding of “using a community for traffic” vs. “being a valuable member of the community”. Can you give us an idea of how much time you spend per day on social media?

There is definitely a misunderstanding of social media, which usually occurs when people blank out the word social and just think it’s all another marketing tool, I’m glad to say that those people probably don’t get very far. Regarding how much time I spend on the sites, really depends on the definition, for example I wouldn’t say I spend more than an hour a day on Digg / Mixx but always leave Google Reader open to be able to check on new stories. As far as StumbleUpon I’m not much of a friend user I just submit whatever I find interesting and see what happens from there, usually what I find interesting is related to internet marketing though so my on site ‘friends’ enjoy the content as well. At max that would be 1-2 hours per day, but I definitely class blogging as social media so that goes up a bit. As an example a post I’ve just wrote for search engine land took me over an hour, and some of my own blog posts can easily take 30-60 minutes so it can add up.

3 – You’ve recently made a decision to join up with a marketing company to handle their social media, rather than only continue on in your own company, ViperChill. While I can fully respect any confidentiality here, can you tell us a little bit about doing social media for yourself (your company) as it compares to working in more of a corporate environment for someone else? Also, how do you split out your time on your blog vs. Viperchill clients?

To start things off, I no longer take on clients for ViperChill, I will usually refer them elsewhere to someone like Jim Tobin for Social Media or the SEOmoz recommend list for SEO. When I did do work though it’s certainly very different, the clients I could pull on my own weren’t usually large (a couple were) and didn’t really have the resources to create Facebook applications, blog widgets or videos for a YouTube campaign. I actually find it hard working from home, my concentrations levels can be down especially when I have friends asking me to go out all the time. What I try to do is get as much out of the way as quick as possible, even if it’s working a 20 hour day just so I can have a bit of lenience to blog and network online knowing that I don’t have as much work to worry about. My schedule isn’t great and it’s something I’m working on as my plan for 2008.

4 – Any advice for folks that are trying to enter the social media arena? What networks should they start on first and why? Or, should they start on a single network? Also, do you think that it is a necessity for them to at least start with a blog?

It really depends on what people are trying to get out of it, whether it’s for personal gain or client gain. I absolutely hate Reddit but I know it can drive traffic so it’s still something I get involved with, and I’m slowly moving away from Digg on a personal level because I just don’t enjoy the community as much and using the site. If it’s for personal reasons like promoting a blog I would use StumbleUpon, add friends who are submitting content they find interesting and basically promoting the content of other sites in their niche. It can be easier to start with just one site if you are new to the whole thing, I would define Mixx as StumbleUpon’s community and Digg’s system so that can also be a good place to start, whatever the user prefers using.

5 – What would you say that your best personal strength is in social media? I’d say you’re a stats man, but I don’t want to compartmentalize your talents.

I would say it’s more in creating linkbait style posts, although i don’t do enough of them on my blog. I only did the stats posts because I knew people would find them interesting, they were a lot of work but the results were worth it and i think it showed some clear facts about the sites. The StumbleUpon stats post received 53,776 visitors from StumbleUpon in 1 month, whilst the 1 about Digg made the Digg homepage. While my stats posts have done well I would say it’s just a part of creating content that people would find interesting. Although anyone can be known for creating interesting linkbait, the likes of yourself, Lyndon and Maki it’s still a good quality to have.

6 – No doubt you’ve heard by now the recent Digg revolt. For those that haven’t heard, early am this Thursday many of the top Diggers were fed up with the recent Digg algorithm change that effectively handicapped the top users by making their submission stay in upcoming until around 200 diggs. An organized boycott was coming into place, right on The Drill Down.

http://babblin5.com/2008/01/23/two-diggs-one-cup/
http://thedrilldown.com/?p=58
http://revoltnation.blogspot.com/2008/01/digg-is-game-lets-play-for-real-this.html
http://www.brentcsutoras.com/2008/01/23/200-diggs-1-voice-diggers-had-enough/
http://soshable.com/rose-adelson-digg/
http://www.cornwallseo.com/search/index.php/2008/01/24/digg-revolt/
http://www.techipedia.com/2008/kevin-rose-and-jay-adelson-on-digg/
http://muhammadsaleem.com/2008/01/24/from-revolt-to-resolution-in-12-hours-or-less/

What’s your stance on all this? Do you think that having Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson jumping in on The Drill Down is too little, too late?

You know its rather funny and nobody will believe me but I have a post going live tomorrow that is called ‘Digg’s $300m Mistake – Reputation Management’ which basically highlights all their communication issues. I added a little update to it today (I created it on tuesday) that links to Tamar’s post on the subject. I definitely think its too little too late, they still didn’t answer why they don’t respond to emails, that in itself is disgusting in my opinion, and dodged a few questions if I’m correct?

That you are. I can understand that the sheer volume of emails Digg must get could be heavy, but ignoring its loyal user base is a mistake.

It shouldn’t have taken all of this to happen just to get them to answer some questions, they really do lack in reputation management skills and that is costing them badly.

7 – How do you think Digg will end up now?

Digg will still have a large community and be a popular website, the issues people have been talking about have been around for a while and it’s usually the marketers complaining (unless it’s about bannings). I for one have lost regard for the site and it’s owners and I’m sure a lot of others have aswell but it’s certainly going to take a while for them to lose their huge amount of traffic and stop being the leader in this field.

8 – You say that they eventually will stop being the leader in this field. Any predictions as to who will be successor to the throne?

I think they that IF they stop being the leader it’s not going to happen overnight, it’s not like they have suddenly started banning users / sites and started ignoring emails. I’ve sent emails over a year ago that never received a response so they do have issues but many are nothing new. As you can probably tell from the tone of this interview I would love Mixx to be the successor I’m just not sure they have the brand that can stop them being seen as another ‘Digg-clone’, which is a shame because they offer a lot more. I think everyone was surprised when StumbleUpon announced they had over 2 million members (double Digg at the time) so its definitely doing better. To keep things on the homepage voting style sites though I would love Mixx to be the king if you like, but that’s unlikely for quite some time.

9 – Great stuff! Any final thoughts?

For people getting into social media, don’t just do it because you want to drive traffic or do work for clients. Do it because you enjoy doing it, I’m using Digg less and less because I’m starting to grow to not liking using it but it still has great potential. Start a blog, network with others in your niche and see how things go from there. And remember, it’s never too late to start. I’m only 18
and although I’m in a good position and have a good understanding, I’ve seen 40+ year olds make as much a success of their efforts.

Thanks for the interview Brian, I enjoyed doing it.

Thanks for stopping by, Glen. Really enjoyed it, and looking forward to more of your posts on the Viperchill blog and Collective Thoughts!

10 Reasons to do Blog Interviews

Brian Wallace — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 21:38:13 +0000

As you probably noticed, I am a big fan of interviewing others on my blog.

And why not? Aside from the fact that I get to exchange ideas with brilliant people, it gives the blog a different, more conversational flavor. Here are 10 reasons why you should think about doing blog interviews, too:

1 – Mix things up. It is difficult to be a news beacon, constantly finding the latest of what’s going on before others. Even if you’re great at it, you have to sleep sometime. Someone else may have the inside scoop.

2 – Create a real conversation. Some of the top diggers have done a good job of every post being a conversation in their weekly podcast, the Drill down. They make a point to have regular guests as well. Social Blend does a fine job of this as well.

3 – Paid reviews seem cheap. It comes off as more believable to have an interview over a paid review any day.

4 – Interviewing will get you links. You’ll get links from the interviewee at a minimum, potentially along with part of their audience as well.

5 – Other people will get the idea and interview you. Since you will now serve as a forum for others to get noticed, people will want to interview or quote you as well.

6 – Become an influencer. If you interview a software company, you should be on their list of private beta testers. This will allow you to get a head start in the next new new thing.

7 – Bring in a new discipline of expertise. No matter what your blog focus is, you can bring in folks from all sorts of disciplines. Squareoak had a good example of this recently, considering that they write a social media blog and interviewed an economist.

8 – Freeze writer’s block in its tracks. Can’t think of anything meaningful to blog about? A good back and forth interview will not only produce a sweet piece of content (the interview itself), but will also get you thinking about follow up questions and new post ideas.

9 – Beef up your journalism skills. Show the world that you are more than a borderline crazy person / ranter with some solid journalism skills. Doing some background on the interviewee and verifying sources goes a long way, and shows that you know your stuff.

10 – It helps you get new gigs. Regularly doing interviews brings such a fresh source of content that you will reach your blog goals more easily, be it RSS subscribers, consulting, or new blogging gigs.

NowSourcing Featured on Social Blend

Brian Wallace — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 12:04:35 +0000

NowSourcing has been featured as the first ever special guest for a weekly podcast called Social Blend. The show features some of the best names in Mixxers, featuring Greg Davies (cGt2099 from The-TrukstoP.com), Joe Fowler (SilentJay74 from JuicySnake.Blogspot.com), and Brian Hill (Bdog2g2 from MixxingBowl.com) have come out with their second ever episode. Topics included social media, New Year’s on the Internet, and the Iowa Caucuses. Have a listen and let me know what you think – this show was a lot of fun to do, and hope to be on again in the future.

Life After Digg: Interview With a Banned Top Digger

Brian Wallace — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 14:17:35 +0000

With me tonight is Greg Davies, known by most of you as cGt2099, one of the former top Diggers (in fact, Christopher Finke’s top 1000 Digger’s list still shows him at #106), and also runs The-Trukstop.com (more info on his background here).

Thanks for spending the time to interview with us.

You’re welcome my pleasure.

1 – We had a chance to catch up with Greg and talk to him about life after Digg. Greg, do you think that you’ve been given a fair shake? Especially considering the content that got you banned was front page on Reddit?

That’s a loaded question. Digg has terms of service, which I, like everyone else agrees to when you sign up. I had been banned a couple of times before, for stupid mistakes, and so the guys behind Digg must have believed, “enough is enough”. It’s their playground, and they set the rules; so I’m fine with that.

On the other hand, there didn’t seem to be any consideration into the fact that I was an extremely active submitter at Digg. I’d posted 1800+ stories since June 2006; and they didn’t seem to consider that I was observing the TOS a majority of the time. Consider also, that some diggers have been banned in the past numerous times also – some of them banned for infractions such as accepting payment for submits/Diggs – the consequences I faced at Digg just didn’t seem to be consistent with the repercussions that had been dealt out in the past.

2 – Digg has really done its fair share of changing the way people look at news. Social media can now deliver the news faster than a lot of traditional media. What did you think of the whole Blu-ray controversy where Digg banned several users and the whole community revolted?

The HD-DVD Riots of May 2007 started out as a valiant effort by some users – but turned into a joke. It caused a huge influx of users to join up just so they could act like Johnny Knoxville and the Jackass crew. So, while I could understand and see the initial point of standing up for yourself and your friends; it turned into something ridiculous. Many regular users were glad once the issue was resolved.

But the key thing about the revolt is that the power of Digg doesn’t truly lie in the hands of Kevin Rose, Jay Adelson et al… the power is in the hands of the users. THEY decide what makes the front page. They’re in control. So while the greatest aspect of Digg becomes raising awareness about certain issues the mainstream media isn’t covering; it’s also it’s greatest dictator: don’t be surprised if another riot happens there one day.

Yes, that’s very true. The power of social media is in the hands of the users. I recall hearing about the Virginia Tech shooting through social media, so it is a very real and powerful force.

3 – You’ve had over 1,800 Diggs submitted and over 30,000 stories Dugg in your Digg career. about how much time would you set aside a day for such activity? Also, how do you view Digg changed over time as it grew in popularity and underwent more social networking changes with the new profile and shout options?

It’s never really been a case where I would “set aside time” to submit stories and Digg stuff. I would just take it all on a “take it as it comes along” basis. So, it would be too hard for me to put a number on it. I would just somewhat integrate Digg into my regular internet surfing and online work. The new profiles at Digg were fabulous, and I really enjoyed the change. It took a little getting used to, but I found it a very valuable tool in being able to connect with others easier. All of a sudden; more diggers were accessible – and with something like Digg, the more networking you have with others, the better.

The shouts, on the other hand, are another story altogether. It seemed that from the get-go, shouts were perceived very differently among different users. Some saw them as great opportunities to share stories; others saw them as just a reprehensible method of spamming others. I honestly did my best to give a chance for the shout feature. If someone shouted me; I’d shout ‘em back. But it just became overwhelming and way too time consuming. I ended up having to turn them off on my profile – it was just too much.

4 – What advice do you have for Diggers just starting out? What do you view as compelling content, and where do you think people should go to be on the lookout for good content?

If you’re starting out, don’t dive into the submissions straight away. Seriously. Take the time to just lurk, Digg, read, and even comment. Get a feel for the place first. That’s usually a good method of learning what kind of material has the tendency to become popular. Also, if you only just registered recently; don’t set yourself an unrealistic goal like becoming the number one Digger.

Getting to the top takes time and patience. A LOT of time and patience. When looking for content to post to Digg; I found that the best place is usually with what you are already doing online. In other words, take a look at your regular surfing patterns. Are there any good sites you’re visiting that you don’t often see on Digg? Submit the content from them – others may enjoy it.

One example I can give you is the heavy metal site Blabbermouth.net. When I started submitting content to Digg, I NEVER saw that site there. So I started posting content there. I was surprised to find out how many Digg geeks were also metalheads such as myself. Also, get into RSS feeds, and check out what other social news / social bookmarking sites are making popular. There’s a good chance that if it’s popular at Reddit or del.icio.us or StumbleUpon, then there’s a good chance it might become popular at Digg too.

A handy resource for that is popurls.com. Also, don’t just submit any old thing just for the sake of submitting something. Submit something that grabs your attention. If it grabs your attention, then it’s possible it’ll grab the attention of others too.

On a side note, if anyone is just starting out on Digg and is curious as to how to get on Digg’s front page, you might find this article I wrote about it of some help.

5 – I can’t imagine that you would want to be done using social media just because of what happened with Digg. There has been lots of activity on Digg surrounding your ban, and many are wanting you back. What communities do you think you will explore?

I’ve always bounced around different social sites, be it social networking (MySpace/Facebook) or social news/bookmarking (Reddit, etc). At the moment I’ve crashed the party over at Mixx.com. It’s similar to Digg, but it’s new, fresh and just starting out. And since starting out over at Mixx, I’ve been posting quite a lot. I’m hoping the community grows over there because it has a lot of potential.

On a related note, I’d like to thank those who’ve been sticking up for me with the whole “permanent ban” issue. Your support is very much appreciated.

6 – Have you closed the book in your mind about Digg? Or would you get right back into it given the opportunity?

If my account is ever reinstated, or if I’m ever allowed to re-register (they permanently banned via IP also, so I haven’t bothered even trying to set up a new account), I would probably submit content to Digg still. But I’m very comfortable with Mixx at the moment, and would love to be more proactive in that community to help it grow.

7 – Any closing comments?

I’d like to say cheers and thanks to all my friends and fans I networked with over at Digg. It was awesome, and the interaction made it all worthwhile. Also, take heed to what you are posting on Digg. Just because it hits the front page on other sites, doesn’t mean that it will fly at Digg – the admins have itchy trigger fingers…. but if you do fall into the ban clan like myself, come on over and help me shake up Mixx.com a little bit.

[Editors Note: If you're wondering what got Greg banned for the 4th and final time, he speaks about it at length in his personal blog here (h/t: Lyndon)]

Update: looks like support for Greg has really been taking off – check out this parody video of Chris Crocke’s leave Brittney alone:

Interview: Developer of WordPress Secret E-Commerce Weapon

Brian Wallace — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:08:34 +0000

Here with me is Dan Milward, CEO of Instinct Entertainment LTD – makers of the E-Commerce plugin for WordPress. Thank you for taking the time.

1 – What made you decide to go out and write an E-Commerce plugin for WordPress?

Years ago I wrote a WordPress wish list on my blog. One of those wishes was for a Shopping Cart plugin – months later when a client asked me to build them a shopping cart application for WordPress I positively jumped at the opportunity. The only other option at the time was EzStatic Micro Shop and that was not a plugin – i.e. too hard for me.

2 – There are lots of good WordPress themes out there, but I haven’t seen a lot of them that are geared for E-Commerce sites specifically. What is your favorite WordPress template for E-Commerce?

At present K2 because it is easy to use – even then though it has its quirks and a lot of my developers find it difficult to customize I still like it because it is quite powerful as far as themes go – especially when coupled with the modules plugin (which extends the widgets functionality).

I think the simpler the theme the better – people want to be able to customize their sites as much as possible which is why it makes sense for us to make as many widgets and tag includes for WP e-Commerce as possible.

Back to the point though. I don’t think that there are any really good themes designed specifically with e-Commerce in mind. This is something we have recognized and it is something we’re working on – we’re especially excited about the next generation of DropShop that we are working on with Nick La from n design studio – here is a sneak preview:

3 – Looks like you guys have been rolling out some nice new features (for those of you that haven’t tried out the drag and drop shopping module, try it out here). Care to tell the audience about any upcoming features?

Well if you like the live search feature in the Apple.com website then you’ll like the new enhanced search form coming soon. DropShop is about to get another visual overhaul, product tags are on the way in, product zooming is being planned, and future versions will be heavily optimized and we know that the next version of WP e-Commerce will load more then 70% faster then before.

4 – Are you taking appropriate steps are to make sure that your E-Commerce system is SEO ready?

Of course. This is very important to us and we have already integrated WordPress Permalinks with WP e-Commerce to make URLs more human readable and search engine friendly – plus we are about to release the new product tags feature.

I’m not sure if this is the right place to mention it but the ‘share this’ social networking feature is also integrated with WP e-Commerce and we have RSS feeds for all products and product categories.

5 – I’m under the impression that blogs are overtaking the web by force. They are indexed by search engines faster, can be a news authority, have most all of the features that a content management system (CMS) has, and now they also have the ability to do E-Commerce. How to you envision the future of blogging?

Funnily enough I was thinking about this today.

You see I use WordPress for everything, there is not much that it can’t do (and if you can think of something it can’t do then I’m sure you can make a plugin to make it do it) and so it struck me that I haven’t refereed to or even thought of WordPress as an actual “blogging tool” in years – so although you are right in that blogs are taking the web by force (I think that they always have been) I think that in some funny way the word blog is becoming synonymous with the word website. Strange huh…

But you asked about the future of blogs not WordPress. Blogs are here to stay. It is as simple as that.

Here’s a thought. When I was studying New Media one of our tutors told us that the porn industry drove website design and technology I think that now possibly it is blogs and blog developers that are changing the face of the internet. We are the new driving force…

6 – Since your E-Commerce software is a plugin, are there things that you think you will never want it to do as compared with a full scale E-Commerce system?

WP e-Commerce is becoming more and more full scaled all the time – we have OS Commerce, Zen Cart users, and e-Junkie users migrating to us all the time. I think this is because the first two pieces of software are legacy (old school) and e-Junkie users would prefer an all in one WordPress experience.

To be totally honest I believe that the only missing features in WP e-Commerce that would stop it from being called a “full scalle” solution would be UPS / Fedex shipping integration. And these are in the planning stages now. In fact if there are any readers reading this now who have experience integrating UPS etc that would care to lend a hand we would love to hear from you!

However I also think that for the average e-commerce user this does not matter – especially if you are in the business of digital downloads then it does not matter at all.

[Editors note: more product info for the E-Commerce Plugin can be found on Instinct's Wiki located here.]

How do you become a StumbleUpon power user? Ask a 16 year old.

Brian Wallace — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:55:03 +0000

For those of you that don’t already know her, Anna (Aivsdog) is a power user over at StumbleUpon with over 500 fans and 5,000 pages liked.

Hey Aivsdog, it’s a pleasure interviewing you. Thanks for making the time.

It is my pleasure to do this for you and to let everyone know how wonderful StumbleUpon is.

1. How did you start out at StumbleUpon?

I don’t really remember how I came across it but I do think a friend of mine mentioned it and I thought I would check it out.

2. Tell us about what keeps bringing you back to StumbleUpon.

I am always coming back because of all the new things people are thumbing up and discovering. Also all the wonderful people on the StumbleUpon. I made a lot of wonderful friends. Some of my friends on StumbleUpon are ferusvulpes, FATCATdagg, anahey, StormJosh, zspada15, SantaGauss, pkirsch, and you.

3. Surely, you’ve noticed a surge in users / user activity lately. How would you say that the SU community has changed?

It is such a wonderful friendly community to finding the best things across the web and I think that is what keeps people coming and joining. There are also new sites being added every second. Ways to meet people with the same interest and same website interests. It is colorful and creative. Just a great place to hang out.

4. You’ve really become a popular user with over 125 reviews and 500 fans. And at such a young age, no less. I find that folks that are Generation X and older sometimes have a hard time understanding the latest generation’s success on social news / social bookmarking sites. Maybe it’s just that I’m still relatively young yet, but I have no trouble seeing why. When I was a kid, the Internet barely existed (no www for sure), and my first computer didn’t even have a harddrive (Apple IIc). Today, people grow up with the Internet all around them and with all the tools available. Not that everyone young is tech savvy, but you almost need to go out of your way to at least have some aptitude. What are your thoughts?

It isn’t actually hard to understand. Remember that we young ones learn things quicker and easier and plus if you have a interest in it you will even learn it quicker also. Our young brains are still developing and don’t confuse things as much as when you get older. Also we have better memory. I am an Internet lover and just love doing anything with social networks and finding things that are fun, interesting, bizarre, and anything that catches my eye. I have always had a computer and internet in my life and just you learn more and more every single day you use it. StumbleUpon is actually made pretty easy to understand so anyone can use it no matter what your age might be. Don’t give up if you don’t understand it right away.

5. What other types of social media sites do you like?

I love social networks. Some other social networks that I enjoy are myspace, facebook, and livejournal. There are so many others and always new ones being created.

6. Social Media such as StumbleUpon has become the latest craze in the Internet Marketing industry. Do you see yourself going into this type of industry in the future?

I would love to do something with the Internet and social networking. But my main career idea is something with animals and photography. Like an animal photographer. I will probably do some kind of job on the Internet some time in my life. I probably will have some different small jobs. Maybe sell some things on the Internet.

7. Any tips for those that are just starting out in StumbleUpon now?

Take your time and explore and learn about StumbleUpon. It does take some time to learn how to do everything and get the hang of things. Go to different peoples pages and see what kind of things attract people to your pages. Some people with great things and helpful pages that i visit often are sehsxu, chris789, 7HL, geoff, starspirit, tutto, CherishMe, and lots of others. Keep your StumbleUpon page updated. Come by my page if you need help with anything and check out my pages that are always being updated.

8. How much time do you spend on StumbleUpon?

I get on and off the internet during the day and so I am on it between 2-5 hours is a good estimate of time I spend on StumbleUpon. Usually whenever I am on I am on StumbleUpon and never far from it.

NowSourcing featured in Sphinn user behavior interview

Brian Wallace — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:51:38 +0000

NowSourcing has been featured in a group interview regarding Sphinn user’s behavior on the SEM Portland blog.

For those of you that haven’t already been to Sphinn, it is a wealth of knowledge for SEM specialists and social media experts. It is based on the popular Pligg open source content management system (read: customizable Digg clone). Topics on Sphinn range from more traditional SEO methods such as link building and directories to domaining to social media. A variety of content will make it to the homepage – which certainly won’t get you the same traffic as the Digg homepage, but it is a much more targeted audience, so the chances that you will get some visibility and backlinks are good. My Ode to Stumbleupon post recently went hot, so you can see the variety of things that people find interesting there.

Back to the interview – here are some of my thoughts on how an SEM can leverage Sphinn to increase their visibility in the search community:

“By taking full advantage of what the site has to offer. At the least, put in an avatar (all of the top sphinners except one have one). It is a good idea to put in your websites, blogs, and other social network id’s in your profile. Submit regularly, but this is a choosy bunch. If you are submitting your own content (it’s fine to do so here, by the way), make sure it is relevant and that you know what you’re talking about. Same goes for submitting someone else’s site.

Check out the full interview here.

Interview with Reddit co-founder, Alexis Ohanian

Brian Wallace — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 13:58:36 +0000

We had a chance to catch up with Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit (second from the left).

Alexis now works as a Product Manager for Condé Nast, the now parent company of Reddit. This interview comes at an interesting time in the social news world, as Reddit beta changes are going live and Netscape is moving over to Propeller.com:

Thanks for your consideration of this interview for the NowSourcing blog. It’s really a pleasure.1 – How is life after the acquisition?

For me, not much has really changed. We’ve been given a great deal of autonomy an d we all have health insurance now, which is nice. In fact, whereas my job used to entail everything-not-programming — there are departments full of more talented individuals doing many of the duties a startup has to do much better than I ever could. It’s especially nice not having to do accounting anymore.

2 – Is being a product manager for Reddit different from what you thought?

Frankly, I didn’t know what a product manager was, so I didn’t think anything of it. (I’ve been quoted as calling myself a “project” manager, but I was later corrected — it should be “product.” I’m still not sure of the difference.)

3 – Isn’t it kind of weird?

“Weird” as in different? Sure.

4 – I know that Evan Williams eventually left Google when Blogger was bought out. Your thoughts?

I’m sure he had a good reason to give up all that wonderful free food.

5 – Reddit seems to have fallen out of favor with many people I speak to about social networking. People who are new seem to not be able to break in to the community, and other social networks seem to be either larger (Digg, Netscape) or faster growing (Stumbleupon).

It seems you’re using a pretty broad definition of social networking, which is fine, but we’ve always tried to avoid becoming a “social networking” site (in the “be my friend and I’ll be yours” sense of the phrase). We built Reddit to be a place to go to find new and interesting content online. If a feature wasn’t going to work toward that end, we weren’t going to implement it. For instance, I don’t think Reddit would be a much better site if users could poke one another.

I’m not sure what you mean by “break into the community.” The way we look at it, communities aren’t meant to be “broken into” — like a car, home, or my parents’ liquor cabinet. In that regard, I’m happy people are having trouble “breaking into” Reddit. Our unique front page has an inherent resistance to cheating because of the way links actually rise and fall on it; a determined group of users can’t push a story right to number 1 like on every other social news site — links have to earn a spot on Reddit’s front page by being consistently voted up over time.

Oh, and in a display of bad timing, Netscape announced the shutdown of it’s social news site just a day before I got your email. I suspect the traffic they did have was largely from users who still had netscape.com as their default homepage and thus not the right audience (and perhaps a few nostalgic Netscape Gold-ers?)

6 – You seem to have caught on to this when you sent out your survey on when Reddit jumped the shark. What advice do you have for the new Reddit user?

The only advice I have is from our user-created reddiquette (reddit-etiquette) wiki: http://reddit.com/help/reddiquette

And don’t spam. We hate spammers — Steve especially hates spammers.

7 – How is beta going? When do you think we will see the new version of Reddit stable and rolled out?

The new release is coming out in stages and going well so far (no downtime yet). I notice you blogged about yesterday’s update already; we’ve already seen a solid number of folks branching out into the new communities we’ve opened up.

8 – Who would win in a fight: the Reddit Alien, or the Google Doodle?

Depends on the Google Doodle, really. Some holidays I just don’t think they’d stand a chance, but others might be a bit more challenging. They certainly have the advantage of legacy — I’ll be the first to admit that the entire idea for changing our logo came from [their] logo, I just think I’ve taken it to excess by doing it so often and so randomly. Our mascot is from the future, though, which implies that it must survive, since it was able to travel back in time…

Ponder that one the next time you’re passing the bong.

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