Archive: December 2007
2007 proved to be one heck of a year for us. We have surely seen our share of high and lows but one thing always remained constant...our desire to continually better this company. That desire has created an environment of constant change within the organization that is echoed outside of the organization. We are always looking for ways to do things better and improve our offering for our customers. 2008 will be no different. In fact, 2008 will usher in some of the biggest changes yet.
I want to thank those of you who have stuck by us through all the changes and challenges we have had throughout the last year. Creating a new industry isn't easy. There is no play book to look at, no successful companies to mirror in our space. We have to try things out, see how they work and make adjustments as needed. We always have the best intentions in mind, though I am sure sometimes it may not seem that way.
We have created a special community here. It's the reason I get out of bed in the morning. I love the team members I work with and the people we serve as a company, no matter how crazy you are (Mr. Fab). I am blessed in that I love what I do. There are certainly days when our friends at GOOG and TC drive me a bit batty, but I am more than willing to deal with those days in exchange for being part of this community.
So what will 2008 hold for IZEA? I have a few predictions:
1. SocialSpark will be incredibly successful. Blog Sponsorships will takeoff.
2. Pete will finally stop talking with that fake British accent.
3. Mike Arrington and I will write a book together on the power of controversy.
4. There will be no less than 2 weddings and 2 engagements within our team.
5. We will finally move into our new office.
6. PostieCon will be held in Orlando.
7. Marcus and someone from the IZEA team will start dating.
8. Cass will finally knit me my clown sweater.
9. Posties who lost PR will regain it, but it won't matter because of RR.
10. We will at least double our sales of 2007.
11. Half of these predications won't come true.
In all seriousness I am fired up for 2008. It is going to be extremely exciting and I can't wait to release SS and IZEARanks. What are your predications?
I've got a party at my house tonight to get ready for... I'll see you all next year (that never gets old).
Matt Cutts was gracious enough to respond to my previous post regarding no-follow links. I am still hoping to hear back from some of the other engines, but I recognize that many people may still be out for the holidays. I want to address his comments one by one.
I approached you at PubCon because I wanted to talk more beyond the conversations we've had over email, and I thought that discussing it in person might help. As I recall, you were interested to hear whether Google was consistent in taking action on sites, so I mentioned several of the larger sites that Google had taken action on to demonstrate that we were willing to respond to PageRank selling by big sites.
First, I want to say thank you for approaching me at PubCon. The line after your keynote was crazy long, so I decided to take a seat near the line and work while I waited. I was going to approach you after you were finished but to my surprise you came up to me first. It is refreshing to see how open you are despite our difference of opinion on some topics. I hope we can maintain that openness, my goal is to help define some standards everyone can be happy with as the leader in our space.
My objective in our conversation was to revisit some of the questions I had asked via email and gain further clarification and color. Email can easily be misinterpreted. Some of the responses didn't make sense to me and some of my questions were never answered.
I was indeed interested in understanding why there hasn't been a uniform application of PR penalties for sites with paid pagerank passing links. We talked about TechCrunch in particular, as well as some other sites like them. Unfortunately, your response in the P.S. confirms that there is indeed a double standard when it come to enforcement of Google's policy. Let me explain why.
I first brought TechCrunch and other sites to your attention (if you weren't already aware of them) on November 20th via email. We later discussed TechCrunch again at PubCon and you said that they were indeed in violation. After our conversation I waited to see what would happen to TC, a silicon valley insider and a blog who makes Google a pretty penny. I wish I could say I was surprised that nothing was done.
Now, almost a month later TC decides to add a no-follow to their most recent thank our sponsors post and you commend them in your comment. You were clearly aware of the situation. You said it was a violation. Why didn't TC suffer the same punishment as the smaller bloggers that were hit with a PR0? Why is there a double standard? What about the previous thank our sponsors posts that still don't have no-follow?
It is this double standard that makes it very difficult for us to enforce policies on linking. Competing businesses are not held to the same standard.
Then we talked about PPP's policy on nofollows. While it's great that in the future, required links will be nofollow'ed, I mentioned that I fully expected people to try to use "recommended, but not required" links as a another way to try to buy PageRank-flowing links. That view appears to echoed by some of your own advertisers, e.g. http://boards.payperpost.com/viewtopic.php?t=9722&start=12 mentions "I've been active as both an advertiser and a postie for several months. As an advertiser, I really only see value in PPP as an SEO tool..."
Some advertisers clearly don't understand our value proposition. Just as some advertisers probably bought a mini solely to get a link from Google, or a sponsorship badge to get a link from TechCrunch, we have some advertisers who are just interested in links. We have over 13,000 advertisers and I can assure you that this is not the case with the majority. If it were we would be foolish to require no-follow in SocialSpark.
I think quoting me as saying "ALL links inside of any sponsored post should carry the no-follow tag period, regardless of whether they are required, not required or even link to the advertiser paying for the post" is different than our conversation. I believe that I said that adding nofollow to all links in paid posts would certainly be safe. Then I asked if you were going to require nofollow on required links, why not put them on all links in paid posts? I think you replied that your business model didn't support that, but I may be misremembering.
I may be misremembering our conversation, but this is what you said in an email to me: "Google (and probably all search engines) will consider all links in a paid post to be paid. If a link were truly editorial, someone wouldn't have had to pay for a review to get that link--the PageRank seller would have made the link on their own, without any payment involved." This email response is what prompted me to gain further clarification on the subject at PubCon as it left me confused. I think my recount of the conversation and the above email snippet are aligned.
As I see it you are saying that unpaid editorial content is the only content that should be passing PR. Why? Because it is the only content that would exist on its own without payment involved. ALL other content is compensated in some way. Or is some paid content ok... so long as it isn't a sponsored post? If so why?
If Google's stance is different than what I gathered from the initial email or our conversation please comment and let me know.
As a company that does paid posts (or as a postie), I support your right to do whatever you want in your paid posts and on your site. But in turn, Google reserves the right to protect the quality and relevance of search results. And this is not a Google-only stance; every major search engine has come out against selling links that affect search engines.
And I support Google's right to protect the relevance of search results. However, just because someone does a sponsored post doesn't mean that person is selling links. I support No-Follow for any links required by an advertiser, but why should a blogger be forced to no-follow any other link? The blogger is not selling those links. You are making some sweeping assumptions.
Regards, Matt Cutts P.S. I'm not sure if you noticed, but it looks like in its recent "thank you sponsors" post, TechCrunch did nofollow their links: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/21/techcrunch-sponsors-5/ And as we talked about earlier, Google does a pretty good job of recognizing banner ads, even those 125x125 ones.
I already tackled part of this above. But the 125x125 ads are another animal. You say that Google's algorithm does a good job of detecting ads that pass PR. Great, but why isn't the same PR penalty applied to those blogs that use them and don't adopt no-follow? Instead you decide to simply ignore these links. So if a PR passing link is hard to detect you penalize, if it is easy to detect you simply ignore. Again, this is another double standard.
Technorati Tags: Double Standard, Google, Matt Cutts, No-Follow, nofollow
Matt Cutts and I sat down for a conversation after his keynote earlier this month at PubCon. We spoke for quite some time about Google’s policy surrounding paid links and specifically the use of no-follow tags. I have to say that I like Matt and I enjoyed our conversation. However, I don’t completely agree with what he had to say regarding sponsored content.
I explained to Matt that in SocialSpark all links required by an advertiser would carry the no-follow tag. I thought this would be a great thing. Matt commended the decision, but then added ALL links inside of any sponsored post should carry the no-follow tag period, regardless of whether they are required, not required or even link to the advertiser paying for the post. That means if Nikon pays me to review a camera and I link off to a site about photography that link needs to be no-follow, along with the link to the blog of my buddy the photographer. His reasoning was that the sponsored post wouldn’t exist without the sponsor paying for it, therefore all the content is commercial and should be no-follow.
The ramifications of that statement and policy didn’t hit me until I was on a jet back to Orlando. Is Google really saying that all content that is commercially driven by a sponsor should carry no-follow tags? Let’s look at what that would mean at a higher level.
1. Every link on this blog should have a no-follow tag.
2. Every link on the IZEA corporate site and millions of other corporate sites should have a no-follow tag.
The fact is a huge amount of content on the web is sponsored in some way. I am paid to blog on the IZEA blog as part of my salary. I largely write about and link to things with a corporate agenda, whether that be linking to a blogger in our network, a promotion, or another IZEA owned website. None of the content I create would exist without payment to me, and while I am not paid on a per post basis the content I create is most definitely influenced or driven by this company.
Under Google’s policy all of the content I create on behalf of IZEA should carry no-follow tags, regardless of whether there has been actual payment for any individual link. So now it’s not just paid links that require no-follow, it becomes commercial content in general because “it wouldn’t exist without payment”.
When we announced we would require no-follow links in SocialSpark I was really excited. In fact I still am as I think it is the right thing to do. But no-follows on all sponsored content just doesn’t sit right with me.
If we decide to enforce no-follows on all links where does it end? How/where/why does Google draw the line between bloggers like me and those when get paid on a per post basis? Am I exempt because I am on salary and they aren’t? We are both driven by our sponsors, I just happen to work full time for mine and blog exclusively about them. I am not required to link to anything and either are they, but under this scenario I should be using no-follow for every link.
I titled this post An Invitation to Google, MSN, Yahoo and Ask.com because I want to hear what all the major search engines have to say on this subject. Matt, if you are reading this post and I have got anything wrong here please correct me.
IZEA is still committed to no-follow on advertiser required links in SocialSpark. We have already put a no-follow option in PayPerPost. However, I would like to get some input from the other engines, bloggers, advertisers and search experts (would love feedback from Andy Beard, Danny Sullivan, Rand Fishkin, Aaron Wall) before we commit to anything more.
Update: Great post by Andy Beard. "There is absolutely no way I can comply with these current new demands, I would have to stick nofollow on every link within some of my most popular and highly rated content."
Technorati Tags: Aaron Wall, Andy Beard, Ask.com, Danny Sullivan, Google, matt cutts, MSN, Rand Fishkin, Yahoo
I just wanted to take a moment to thank all of the Posties who've made donations to Habitat for Humanity in the name of IZEA. It's not too late if you would still like to take part. I have no doubt your contributions will make a positive impact on someone in need. We're hoping to get more involved with charitable initiatives in the coming year, so keep a close watch on the blog and on the boards to find out how you can take part.
Again, thanks....
I just wanted to post a heads up. Izearanks.com went into test on Friday with a handful of external users. Those users have been dilligently banging away on the site and have found a couple of bugs that we'll have fixed in short order. At this point it looks very likely we'll be opening the site up to everyone the first week of January.
Izearanks.com is a new site that lets users not only see the stats we have gathered to produce their RealRank, but also compare their site against any other in the system. You can drill down to see the detail traffic and rank information for a week, zoom out to see months of data at a time, and even view the realranks top 100. There's even an API attached for people to start producing their own applications that make use of izearanks data.
As expected, there are a handful of people gaming the system, and so the next phase of the project for us will be to start building out solutions to identify cheating and stop it. We don't expect this to have a specific end date but rather will be an ongoing exercise for quite some time. Given the nature of RealRank in particular (that's its an open formula, and that we want it to be adopted far and wide) we're even asking for people that find ways of gaming the system to let us know what they did. We'll then use the data those people provide to help extend the system and ultimately move towards our goal of having RealRank be the definitive traffic based ranking system on the Internet.
I was spending some time on the PPP message boards earlier this morning, and came across a thread (http://boards.payperpost.com/viewtopic.php?t=10082) started by Postie Mama BoK. Apparently a group of Posties were looking to do "something nice for the IZEA staff," and Postie homeschoolzoo came up with the great idea of having everyone make a donation to a charity. So what we've done is selected Habitat for Humanity, and if you so feel led you can make a donation. Simply visit the following link: https://www.habitat.org/cd/giving/donate.aspx?link=1. There is a field that allows donors to select "Click if donating on behalf of a company" if you would like to donate on behalf of IZEA.
If you would like to learn more about the Habitat for Humanity organization click here.
To anyone who makes a donation, a HUGE warm thank you from the entire IZEA team! It is much appreciated, and certainly something very thoughtful during this holiday season. You are making a difference in someone's life.
Have a safe and happy holiday!
If you would like to join me for the Town Hall Meeting tonight please go to this address.
http://breeze.mindcomet.net/izea/
You will need to register as a guest. I hope to see you there!
As I mentioned in an earlier post we will be launching IZEARanks public in early January. IZEARanks uses ITK (IZEAToolkit) to report blog traffic data, this is the same toolkit used in PPP. At launch IZEARanks will be reporting your RealRank along with Pageviews and Visitors. This is the same type of information already provided to advertisers in the PayPerPost system, but it will be visible to the public on the IZEARanks site.
We have built in the ability to hide visitors and pageviews if you are uncomfortable with showing these stats for some reason. After you create a profile and claim your blog on IZEARanks you can manage these settings. If you know in advance that you don't want pageview and visits data displayed and would like us to hide it for you prior to launch please send us a ticket or leave your url in the comments.
The last month and a half has been a bit crazy around the IZEA offices. I felt like SocialSpark was on track at PostieCon and we would be well through our initial Alpha at this point. Unfortunately we were thrown for a bit of a whirl shortly after returning from the event. The PR issue caused us to fast track a public ranking site for RealRank and make changes in PayPerPost that we didn't intend to make until after SocialSpark launched. We have also been battling an ever increasing amount of spammers who are trying to use Zookoda to sell you Viagra and Canadian Meds. As a result our development staff has been splintered and we couldn't release the Alpha as we intended. For that I apologize. Believe me, nobody wants these sites live more than we do.
If you were at PostieCon we haven't forgot about you. We will hook you up with a SocialSpark test drive as soon as we possibly can, but we aren't there yet. Both IZEARanks (the public site for RealRank and eventually other rankings) are slated to go live in January. IZEARanks will go first and SocialSpark will follow later in the month.
Randy and his team have been traveling around the country showing off the features of SocialSpark and the response from agencies and brands has been extremely positive. I am confident we have a killer app on our hands and I can't wait until we unleash it.
We told you SocialSpark was going to be awesome! And, here's an example.
IZEA is now accepting video clips for consideration in the soon to be launched Community Section of SocialSpark. This interactive page will serve up user videos and provide viewers with a deeper understanding of the people fueling the growth of the blogosphere. That's you!
Think of it as a commercial for you and your blog. Explain who reads your blog, and what type of content you focus on. Show potential advertisers how they'd benefit from working with you. You know, put on your marketing hat and have fun with hit... make it stand out. Who knows, you might just turn out to be a SocialSpark rock star!
IZEA is utilizing Brightcove Studio to manage the submission and distribution of content in the Community Section video player. As a result, you'll need to create an account as part of uploading your videos. It's simple and easy. So upload your video now! Ideally videos should be no longer than 60 seconds and no larger than 100MB. Click here for technical specs.
Upload your video now! You will be notified by email when your video is approved for inclusion. We look forward to reviewing your submission.
