#web 2.0 was like social and social had a lot of silliness but also some bright spots

[queenlua]

the whole story of “how massive government spending in university and military contexts really funded Silly Valley 1.0″ is a pretty well-known tale at this point, but it’d be interesting to see a writeup contrasting that against the current investment environment (VCs and private companies that stay private as long as possible) and how that (negatively, imo) distorts what’s possible for people to explore

[do-you-have-a-flag]

tumblr ramble time: 10 years in

the nostalgia cycle and web 2.0 coinciding to make tumblr appealing again has made me reflect on what could be done to sustain this website reasonably in the 2020s.

firstly: the Big Players of the internet atm are advertisement heavy, fill a need, and widely accessible rather than targeting niche user bases. They use data collection for advertisers, user based content creation, algorithm based non chronological feeds, and monetisation integration

Tumblr doesn’t lend itself to multiple factors, it’s a niche website and always has been, the non algorithmic feed and lack of identity based presentation are features that are great for users bad for advertisers.

so let’s look at the branding this site has both intentionally and unintentionally:

tumblr started in the personal blogging era of the internet, it was more artist oriented with a broader multimedia and microblogging appeal. it could compete with some of the features of livejournal and twitter and sites like deviantart ect.

 it started as a fairly hipstery art space and blog site and got somewhat taken over by fandom because the interface really lent itself to community building similar to forums, like reddit you could be incredibly niche in topic, like pinterest you could build mood boards by tagging and sideblog curation. 

and the community aspect was interesting in these early years. there were huge events in the us, tumblr holding screenings and parties and meets. the site had it’s own meet up feature to encourage users around the world to meet out and take photos together and gave out little packs of stickers and pins to anyone who organised a local meet up in their area.

you had some famous people on here but it was mostly authors and youtubers and musicians, the sorts of people who would benefit from a casual online space to interact with fans that wasn’t as formal as a promotional account or as publicly scrutinised as twitter. actors and musicians and artists who were already pretty online anyway were able to have blogs that people could see their posts in their dashboard feed without the need for an rss reader, the ask box feature and reblogs features gave unique interaction opportunities.

reblogs instead of reposts was already a great feature, unlike with twitter and facebook post threads the entire conversation people have on posts is given equal visual importance, but different threads of interaction are possible so there’s no official version of a post’s replies. while this can lead to some awful interactions it’s always open to the most interesting results.

Similar to youtube vloger subcultures, tumblr subcultures were hugely popular and lead to so many in-jokes and memes and friendships and opportunities that still impact the internet today. yes aesthetic movements, memes, but also artists networking and getting their work out there, people discovering hobbies, multiple disciplines of knowledge interacting and being inspired, collaborative projects and custom theme editors and silly rp blogs building skillsets that would come in handy years down the line. Not to mention just allowing a space where reposts are easily able to cite external sources.

So yes the cultural impact of tumblr is still happening on the internet and you see people getting nostalgic for the way this site works as well as the communities on here. the shift away from desktop browser to mobile browser interface is frustrating. the explicit content ban effected users more than it did spam bots and there’s always been a moderation problem when it comes to harmful content (something 4$ch*a n exploited in the past). and while a lot of the issues tumblr has are not unique to this social media platform, many other websites being far worse, there is a sort of hypocrisy of scrutiny tumblr goes through BECAUSE it is a site with niche appeal. from the beginning it’s always had a steep learning curve because of the positive feature that is self curation. 

so what do I think tumblr can do to keep trucking after this?

instead of leaning into individual monetising it should reverse it’s choice to try to compete with established platforms in high effort projects and just make integrating external features easier. stop punishing people for including external links and allow for patreon and donation buttons. as those technically only link to external sources tumblr wouldn’t be responsible for the content being monetised and therefore would avoid the issue of copy-write claims while still allowing users to make a living simply promoting their work on this platform. that’s not unlike twitter after all.  

what about advertising? ads between posts IS preferable to sponsored posts to me personally, i think advertisers would have to work to actively use the platform in clever ways if they want to succeed, anything less than entertaining viral marketing that doesn’t hide the fact that it’s advertising would be instantly mocked and driven off. i think the secret might be in returning to a very old tactic.

sponsored events. events that encourage creativity and give a platform where the cost of the facilities and organisation is simply covered by brands, similar to how a lot of cons run. look into what users like, give them a space to be compensated for their work while still promoting the website and by association the brands sponsoring the even, and an event that is actually fun and interesting. I know we are in a pandemic but think of online panels, festivals with artists, virtual competitions, puzzles and scavenger hunts, teams and daily surprises, prizes and actually paying official participants. have people host smaller events on their own blogs that you would round up on an official one, hell fandom parties and big bang events have done this sort of thing loads of times. not every attempted event in the past turned into a dashcon, it really is okay to try things.

screw it you HAVE the data on what the most popular tags are, you HAVE a q&a feature, instead of just video replies  involve a campaign of daily trivia, commissioned fanart, give aways, raffle off an official zoom call,  have an actor answer a question in character, build up hype so people actually interact beyond just reblogging the final answer videos.

while tumblr hides it the html editor for blog themes and ability to make multiple pages is still useable, make a coding competition, run a little diy coding tutorial, slap an option on the dash to customise icons and stuff like how people used to do with add ons, pay the xkit people and integrate some of their good work officially. 

i think what tumblr needs to do is take this rare opportunity to rebuild a good will with it’s userbase and that can only be done if people feel respected, lean into culture building, court advertisers who are relevant, let people have some level of control over their blogs and don’t punish users by removing safety tagging and access to external resources! tumblr does not have the stability or resources to compete as a video platform, it’s entire set up is antithetical to crypto nonsense, and it’s user culture is an extremely stubborn one. instead of trying to become something it’s not it should lean into what it already has and make embedding and integration of other websites features easier. 

i’m not an expert on web design or marketing or economics. so take everything i’ve said with a grain of salt and some compassion. but this is just how i feel as someone who discovered this site in 2009 and joined in 2010 and has seen how viral posts i’ve made have had, like, material positive impacts on real people somehow (no exaggeration) and how friendships and relationships and careers have been started on this silly little website... so it would really be a shame to watch it fumble this chance for redemption

[fumbliesthots]

2018 - Year in Review

Hot Mess Bitch à la Jan Bon - the most impressive dish I made (or participated in making) this year, on 31 Dec 2018. I guess now this space is for photos of what I did on NYE, following tradition of last year. It comprised of honeyed butter biscuit (baked from scratch!), sausage cream gravy, garlic polenta grits, cheesy scrambled eggs, topped with more uncased Italian sausage. 

I was kinda procrastinating writing this post I guess because I was placing such unnecessarily high expectations on this post to be the motherlode of all reflections this year, especially since I have started keeping a handwritten (almost-daily) journal recently. Sorry bloggy, I hope you don’t feel jealous.

This year feels too short and too long at once. I almost cannot remember what I did for the first half of the year (partly also because my journal writing habit only started post-June when Janz handed me my first journal book and encouraged me to start writing in it so that I can remember and process stuff that happened in my life). 

Maybe it feels long because I accidentally travelled a little too much this year (What blasphemy! Like too much is a thing when it comes to travelling?) But that was mostly thanks to the opportunity to do so from my work trips. Let me count the cities: Rome, Venice, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Brussels, Bruges, Krabi, NYC, Seattle, Vancouver, Melaka.

Oh yeah and I turned 30 this year too. It’s surprisingly uneventful, but I guess this year is when I started feeling more like an adult, less wet behind the ears and more okay with being myself. Especially since now at work I’m surrounded by so many young people, and it feels kinda weird that they seem to look up to me and come to me for advice. 

New things I tried in 2018

Improv. I took an improv 101 class at the beginning of the year. It was good fun and pushed me out of my comfort zone to be less self-conscious and more spontaneous. I see some potential in using the concept of improv for the design process and I hope one day I can convince my colleagues to go check it out as well.

Piloxing. I wanted to make use of ActiveSG credits for the first time, and the idea of mixing pilates and kickboxing intrigued me. It was ok, pretty fun and not as intense as I expected. It’s kinda like a high-impact cardio exercise. Not my thing but I enjoyed it while it lasted.

Speaking at public events. I was invited as a speaker and panelist at General Assembly to talk about my experience as a designer. The first one was scary (and embarrassingly eventful). The next 2 as a panelist were more relaxed as I didn’t need to prepare that much. There is kind of an adrenaline kick doing this kind of thing sometimes, haha. 

Journal writing. I have to thank Janz for encouraging this habit by giving me a notebook for my birthday. I think writing down thoughts and just things that happen in the day really helps me process stuff and is kinda therapeutic. I would write about conversations I had, things I observed, and maybe even stuff I watched. 

PTTC aka Physical Touch Treatment Centre. This might sound a bit weird but in our Krabi UX teambonding trip, the girls were training me to be more touchy in showing sayang. That included patting heads and linking hands. And now I have become kinda good at it. (Okay.. this still sounds weird!)

Confessed to a boy. Rejected by said boy. But now we are good friends and I think I’m happy with that. And I think I’m pretty low maintenance and self-sufficient as a person/non-gf. This year I also concluded my online dating experiment and the result is the realisation that I don’t really need to find a partner to have a fulfilled life. Actually I already knew that from the start but this was a validation. But I’m grateful to have met so many guys from outside of my social bubble that I wouldn’t have met in otherwise. And the experience of meeting strangers also trained me to be more thick skin and be more socially confident. Glad I did this.

Things that made me sad in 2018

Colleagues that left. Early this year I was kinda shook when Michelle left. Even though we are not that close as friends, she and I had a good partnership as my researcher. Then Leonard, then Lydia, our dear POs. And then Gaofeng and Ernie left. My fellow Easy Team pioneers from the very beginning. :(

Macbook died. Itchy backside made me prematurely install Mojave OS before it was company-approved. My computer ended up getting corrupted and the IT guy tried so hard to help me save it for 2 whole weeks. In the end with all means tried, there was no choice to reformat the whole thing, and I lost all my files. That was an emotional 2 weeks.

SG team got booted off project. I found out after coming back from a trip and it hit me like a suddenly flying slap. But I don’t think it was anyone’s fault, just circumstances. And now I actually look forward to new challenges after this project comes to an end for me.

Chief Laihock’s passing. Chief was a great leader and strong pillar holding up GUI for the past 11 years, an inspiration to me and many people who know him. His passing was a sudden one and because of this keeping the kampung became a problem. I feel for the core team members who are working so hard to keep things running and continuing to fight this fight. Such passion is admirable and makes me want to do whatever I can to help.

Things I’m happy about in 2018

Read more books. Somehow managed to squeeze in more books into my reading diet this year. I’ve been gifted and lent many books this year and I guess because of that I was obliged to finish them, and that turned out to be a good thing. I also somehow unknowingly influenced some young’ins to start reading as a habit too, which surprised me. 

Learnt to monkey bar. I had a random goal of learning how to monkey bar in September. I’ve never ever been able to do it, when I first saw other kids playing on it in pri sch and felt left out and embarrassed because I couldn’t. But this year I decided to see if I could train myself to do it, perhaps because the bar was always at the fitness station downstairs mocking me. And in November I showed it. That sense of jubilance and exhilaration I had when I finally made that first swing from one bar to the next was amazing. And in the next couple of weeks of training I finally made it through the entire ladder. Woohoo!

Strengthened bonding with colleagues. This year the UX team has expanded quite a bit. We welcomed in Janz, Lily, Oppa, Shirshir, Shishi, Lulu and Lala. And we got close almost instantly, which I think is unusual for team of such size. Boss has done an incredible job in scaling positive team culture somehow, and I think for next year our challenge is how to spread this culture beyond just our team. 

Launched a fundraising campaign for GUI. The GUI web team’s work did not slack off since the launch of the 2.0 website last year. We did another release of 2.1 with some improvements after conducting some usability/feedback session with folks. And then in August when news of Laihock’s passing triggered the urgency to raise funds to keep GUI going and keep the land, we worked very hard meeting every week to come up with ideas on how to start a fundraising and awareness campaign. We pushed this campaign out in November and now to continue the efforts to tweak and optimise the message. Grateful to have a supportive volunteer team working hard together on this.

Didn’t take an MC this year. Last year I got sick quite often, almost once every 2 months. Then Gaofeng gave a suggestion that intrigued me. Exercise more. I decided to give it a try. And I’m proud to report that ever since I started exercising every alternate morning, my MC count this year has declined by 100%. I still got sick once or twice this year but it wasn’t so serious that I had to be bedridden. And I found going for a jog in the morning actually lifts my mood for the day. Two birds, bingo.

Knitted a hat. I joined our office’s Knit For Love group to learn how to knit a hat, and all knitted items would be donated to Singapore Cancer Society. I managed to finish mine in about 2-3 months after lots of getting stuck and having help. I was surprised that there are actually quite a few knitting enthusiasts in our office. And even to see a different side to those very notoriously fierce colleagues in the office - they were very kind and patient when it comes to teaching and guiding others. I love discovering new kinder sides of people.

Favourite things of 2018

Nonfiction Book - Crucial Conversations. Borrowed this from Lydia’s bookshelf. We even have a book review club at her house now to share our learnings. This book has valuable advice on how to handle tough conversations and I hope I could put it to proper practice and truly learn to do it.  

Fiction Book - A Dog’s Purpose. A gift from Janz she got at Strand Bookstore. This was a surprisingly thought-provoking book despite the silliness of the premise. Best of all, it’s only USD 48 cents. 

Podcast - Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. This one was recommended by Wei, a new friend I made from the DesignOps summit. Nothing can replace my love for Invisibilia but this one was another surprising gem. I like how they dissect and examine each chapter through lens of different themes and that made this beloved series even more meaningful.

Youtube Channel - Vox. I like the variety of smart educational and timely content presented in a visually appealing and simple to understand way. I especially liked their series explaining music and politics.

Music - Tessa Violet. Dodie. Chillhop radio. Pomplamoose.

Day memory - Cycling in Bruges with Eos. This was literally my idea of a perfect day come true. We had a cheap and cheerful breakfast at Hema, then rented a bike, and cycled all the way to Belgium in cool autumn weather, passing beautiful fields of flowers and farmlands and smelly cows. Had a sumptuous seafood lunch before heading back to town, serendipitously stumbling into an art gallery opening with free wine. Had a pigeon for dinner, then ending the day listening to jazz at a bar. 

Trip memory - NYC/Seattle/Vancouver with Janz. I liked our adventurous/slipshod spirit and the resulting shenanigans we got into because of that. And all our silly and thoughtful conversations in between. And the food we got to try and coming up with a weird rating system for them. 

Bonus - Making a Chinese rap music video with Jess. Jess and I bonded a lot during this 3-week Prague rotation trip. I liked practicing our rap every day walking to and from our office and hotel, and basically everywhere we go. She is such an easy person to have fun with, and we get a kick filming ourselves and annoying Leonard along the way (bless him).

Things to work on in 2019

Figure out how to be a leader. I recently got promoted to Design Ops Lead of the team. There will be a lot of dealing with people and processes, and that is something I have to learn how to manoeuvre. But having a new challenge is always exciting.

Being more articulate and assertive. Along with the above might mean learning how to better communicate expectations and handling tough situations.

Plan more and be less slipshod about things. There are times to be happy-go-lucky and be spontaneous about things. But wisdom is knowing when to pay attention and take care of the details, especially when the outcome might affect other people, not just myself.

Being more caring with my parents. Last year one of my resolutions was to improve my communication with my parents. I tried by listening to more chinese podcasts and speaking chinese more often. But I realised sometimes talking is not enough, it’s the tone and body language. How you show attention and care that matters. 

Continue staying healthy. In the mind and the body. That means keeping and perhaps even increasing my regular exercise regime. And meditate more regularly! 

So here’s what I did on the first day of 2019 – Taking a beautiful hike with my lovely buddies! It’s a gonna be happy new year, oh yes.

[myupdatesystems-blog]

On-Page Web 2.0 Optimization Quick Tips

New Post has been published on https://myupdatesystems.com/2017/04/08/on-page-web-2-0-optimization-quick-tips/

On-Page Web 2.0 Optimization Quick Tips

The best way to protect your name online is to own your Google search results.

As far as Google rankings in search engine optimization and online reputation management are concerned, there is some seriously low-hanging fruit to be had. What we mean is these are 6 easy tips you can apply to any web page or social media profile to quickly optimize it to help it rank for any keyword. Now, it should be noted that on-page factors aren’t everything; your off-page linking needs to be solid as well, but these are the best practices for what you can do on-page.

At its core, SEO is all about the 80/20 principle (or even more like 90/10) in that 80% of the results can be had from 20% of the effort- through a little magic known as on-page optimization. First, let us define our base terms here: on-page optimization (as its name might imply) is any changes you make to a web page to make it more prominent in the search results.

This is opposed to off-page optimization, which are changes you can make to sites linking to your target website. On-page optimization is physically altering the content and structure of the target site; off-page optimization is changing the link structure or anchor text pointing at that site.

Compared to off-page optimization, on-page is much easier to understand and execute and is also where a lot of the power of our complete method is derived from. That said, both elements need to be present in order to work well. A highly optimized site with no links pointing to it will never rank well, just like a site with no quality content on it buttons of backlinks won’t hold up in Google’s eyes.

That said, here are our best 6 tips on how to optimize your web profiles to rank in Google.

1. Exact match domains

Currently, one of the most important (yet simplest) factors in Google’s ranking algorithm is the domain name. If a searcher enters the query “lose weight fast,” Google assumes a domain with a name like “loseweightfast.com” must be extremely relevant, because why else would those keywords be in the domain name?

The assumption is that a website titled “loseweightfast.com” must be all about losing weight quickly, and thus is given a tremendous boost in the rankings for those keywords. Now, this isn’t an end-all-be-all rule; if it were Google would be ridiculously easy to game for specific keywords, but exact match domains DO carry a ton of weight.

Most social media and web2.0 websites allow you to customize your profile URL in the account settings. If you can, set every one of them up for your exact name or your business’ name. The more exact you can be, the better. If your name is the omniscient John Smith, Facebook.com/johns will not rank as well as facebook.com/johnsmith would so be precise, and be consistent.

The primary keyword we wanted to target for this website was “clean name,” and since “cleanname.com” was already taken we added another descriptive word to get cleannameblueprint.com!

2. Get your header and title tags in line

Following the logic regarding exact match domains, make sure you have your exact keywords in the header and title tags of your web profiles. What are header and title tags? They’re the short descriptions, usually right around or after the site name that explain in a sentence or two what the page is about. These are given extra weight in ranking your profile since they’re meant to be representative of the whole page.

Keep them short, sweet, keyword rich, and to the point. For a professional profile which looks better? [About John Smith] PICS [John Smith – Experienced IT professional and network specialist, San Francisco, CA]

These not only help the search engines rank you but give all visitors to your page a good picture of who you are and what it is you do.

3. Optimize your “about me” section

This is where you’ll spend the most time optimizing your profile, simply because the better your about me biography is, the better impression you’ll make on both Google and anyone who stumbles across your site. One quick tip: try writing the biography in the third person. Yes, this might seem a bit difficult and hard to read at first, but it is possible to write clean and professional biographies in the 3rd person. Look at any corporate executive’s “About me” page for inspiration; most are written in 3rd person tone of voice.

The reason? Writing in 3rd person allows you to fill the About section with the most important keyword: your name. As a GENERAL rule, the more your keyword appears on the page the more Google will view it as authoritative on that topic. I emphasized “general” because there is definitely such a thing as too much; in fact blatantly repeating the same keyword over and over again is called keyword stuffing and can be penalized by Google.

Professional search engine optimizers have been citing the optimal keyword usage rate should be between 3-5% of the total text. Thus if you write a 500-word biography you want to mention some form of your own name around 20 times. The recent consensus, however, has been that the exact percent doesn’t matter as much as it used to; just get your core keywords in there a few times and focus on making the rest of the content as high-quality and organic as possible.

Also, make sure you’re adding some variety and switching around your keywords by using synonyms. If your full keyword is “Dr. Johnathan R. Smith” then try to rotate between the following iterations:

John Smith John R. Smith Dr. John Smith Dr. John R. Smith Johnathan Smith Johnathan R. Smith Dr. Johnathan Smith Dr. Johnathan R. Smith Dr. Smith Mr. Smith

By switching it up you’re less likely to set off spam alerts in Google and less likely to incur a ranking penalty for trying to game the system.

4. Give Google more information

Remember, Google is extremely hungry for content. The more you can give it, the better of you’ll rank. When it comes to the biography, the typical recommendation is to use between 300-500 words. In our experience, the more keyword-rich text you have on a page the better, so we don’t even cap it at 500 words. In the interest of saving time you might want to refrain from writing 1000 word short novels for your professional biographies, but as a general rule the more you give Google the better off you are.

Likewise, fill out as many relevant fields as you can. Work experience, Education, hobbies, professional organizations, and even charity work and family info. A complete picture you can paint, the more authoritative Google will see your site and the higher it will rank.

5. Smile! Add a picture

Google also looks at the types of content on a website in addition to the information it contains. Thus a site with images, video, and audio content all related to your keyword is assumed to be much more information rich and is given priority in the rankings. Now not everyone has a YouTube page or videos about them, but everyone has a professional picture or two they can post. Not only does this help with rankings, but also lets people get a better sense of who you are. It might seem silly, but having a welcoming profile picture can really help build rapport with potential clients and business partners. We trust people, not computers. Tip: name the picture yourname.jpg (no spaces, dashes, or unnecessary words).

6. Link it up!

The last easy factor to on page optimization is also the core of off-page optimization; links! Thankfully, web2.0 makes this one incredibly easy to do- most profiles have dedicated spots to link to your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other profiles. Just add your username and you’re set!

Beyond basic linking to your other social media profiles, also try to include links to other informative and authoritative websites that might help a reader better understand something you’re talking about on your profile. For example, if you are a Doctor specializing in breast cancer treatment, linking to a site like the breast cancer foundation can lend your site tons of credibility.

Sites like Wikipedia or About.com along with most.gov and.edu domains are all seen as highly authoritative to Google, so providing relevant links to such sites lends credibility to your profile and can help it to rank more prominently.

7. Play tag- get those meta tags in.

I’m almost hesitant to include these, and the reason why they’re down at #7 is simply because tags don’t affect rankings like they used to. For those unfamiliar with how tags work, they’re essentially mini categories that are supposed to help search engines find and rank your site regarding those topics you get tagged as. So our breast cancer doctor might include tags for “Dr. John Smith” and “breast cancer.” Meta tags are not visible to the end searcher but are an invisible way to help your pages get indexed correctly for the right keywords. Or at least they used to be.

Search engine marketers found that they could easily game the meta tags by keyword stuffing them to gain an edge over competitors who didn’t use as many tags. Google ultimately was forced to discount the effect of meta tags, and these days they carry almost no weight. No, it doesn’t hurt to include your most prominent keywords as tags but beyond that, they just aren’t worth your time. They DO help your sites rank within their internal search engines, however. So if you tag your LinkedIn page with certain tags, when people search for those terms in LinkedIn your page can appear more prominently. Overall their effect is minimal, but they won’t hurt to have so might as well include them.

So that’s it! Hopefully, this guide will help your profile sites rank more prominently and help protect your search results from unwanted negative content.

Clark Jameson is a private social media and online reputation consultant and co-founder of Clean Name Blueprint. Clean Name Blueprint has made it their mission to teach readers how to leverage social media platforms and SEO tips to create a strong positive web presence and clean your name in Google.