IN THIS ISSUE:

• Better Ways to get Some Link Love
• Twitter Shrugs

BETTER WAYS TO GET SOME LINK LOVE

Those of you who are weary of my anti-blogroll rants (sorry, Ben!) will be happy to know that I’ve decided to take a more positive, user-friendly, happy, less-angry approach to encouraging my fellow bloggers to attract links without the silly mile-long list of blogs in the sidebar.

We all know links are necessary to build page rank. (We all DO know that, right? Of course we do.) And hopefully, we know by now that scripted blogrolls are not the way to do that effectively (see Why Blogrolling is Useless, and Using [and Abusing?] rel=”nofollow” to Preserve Page Rank.

S,o what are some better ways to attract linksthat are also search-engine friendly (Word for the day: in the SEO world, these are called “white hat” techniques, as opposed to “black hat” techniques that will only work until search engines like Google find a way to block them)?

1. Writing great original content that other bloggers and websites want to link to is always a good option (and the preferred one), then use your social networking skills to draw readers and bloggers to your content.
2. E-Mail other bloggers, with links to your best stories, and ask them to link to you. You might suggest a link exchange, in which you also link to one of their pillar posts, or a recent post.
3. Post an open invitation for bloggers to exchange links on a specific topic. For a good example of this in action, see Careerealism.
4. Create images or content with basic html code that for other bloggers to embed in their websites. One of the most well-known examples of this in action is ICanHazCheezburger.com

Do you have other ideas? We’d love to hear them!

TWITTER SHRUGS

In December, we discussed, “Where will Twitter go from Here?” In preparation for the New Year 2009, Twitter made it clear that it intends to become a revenue-generating site. The question was how to do that.

What we’ve seen since then is more and more third parties seeking to create revenue-generating third-party applications based largely on Twitter. Examples are PostLater.com, BudURL.com, SocialToo.com Dossy’s Twitter Karma, all of which offer free versions of their service with paid upgrades or requests for donations.

Well, Twitter recently made some changes and upgrades, which rendered many of the third-party applications temporarily inoperable, and panic has ensued. Some folks are really angry.

While I’m a little bit disappointed that I can’t check my Twitter Karma this morning, I can’t honestly say I’m surprised to see this happening. While some fantastic software has been developed using the free open-source development model, it was a Utopian idea that was not sustainable, as evidenced by the fact that truly industrious developers have been using the the free software only until they can figure out how to tweak it and make a profit.

Other problems innate with the open-source environment is that there is no way to protect truly unique ideas, and no practical way to stop spammers and hackers from using the code for nefarius purposes.

So what’s the answer? More regulation? Regulation has a long history of creating more problems than it solves, so I won’t be supporting any moves in that direction.

Over the next few years, however, what I believe we’ll be seeing is a clash of civilizations - the relative anarchy of Web 2.0, vs. the civilized world, where people are able to copyright their creations, and are required to take responsibility legally for those creations, and are able to make a profit on those creations.

Will this increased involvement of the legal system in the Web 2.0 environment lead us down the path of socialism or capitalism? (Start or join the discussion, here.)

Also see:

• Twitter OAuth “Temporarily Disabled”, Developers Left Hanging
• Web 2.0 is…(a lie).
• Where will Twitter go from Here?

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