My Personal 2011 Infographic

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Greg C.

We had a great idea back in September when we were creating the 5th Birthday Infographic for AddThis, and planning the year end infographic we release in December each year, that wouldn’t it be great if we could give our publishers their own infographic. The design and development team of Jeff, Foo and Aaron did a great job of getting these graphics out to our publishers this week. Now publishers who use AddThis can have a nice recap for their 2011 that they can post on their blogs Here is mine:

WordPress or Tumblr, Which Is the Right Blog Platform To Get Visitors?

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Greg C.

A few friends recently have asked which platform they should use to start a blog. Invariably the decision comes down to WordPress or Tumblr. Currently I am using WordPress that I have hosted at Dreamhost. I have used both blogging platforms extensively and have observed some really big differences in each platform’s ability to help you get visitors. Here are some observations I have made using my own blogs’ data and from data we have internally at AddThis.

According to Google Analytics, my Tumblr blog has no Search Engine Optimization (SEO) juice. I have almost zero referrers from a search engine. This means the only way Tumblr gets me new visitors is from social traffic or people manually typing in my address. WordPress does a great job with SEO, and with the All in One SEO Pack making sure my posts are crawl-able is very easy.
Visitors are more likely to share from WordPress blogs than they are from Tumblr. WordPress’s platform is easier to customize where the sharing buttons appear on each post increasing the likelihood to share. Shameless Plug: AddThis supports both WordPress and Tumblr and we give you tips on how to get the most out of sharing with each platform.
When sharing from Tumblr does occur, it delivers social traffic, and in one specific case it delivers a knockout. When I see someone share my Tumblr blog post to StumbleUpon, it is amazing to see how much traffic that arrives on my site from StumbleUpon. A single share drives on average, 500 views, which is amazing. On WordPress a single share to StumbleUpon drives 3 views on average. I have asked people at StumbleUpon and Tumblr why that may be and neither company could explain it.

Tumblr’s popularity continues to grow, and if they can get me more SEO juice the platform would be attractive. In the meantime, WordPress does a better job at delivering all three types of traffic (direct, social and search). If your audience skews younger, and if you don’t care about SEO juice, Tumblr is your platform.

If you want to move your blog from one platform to another here are two tools I recommend:

Tumblr to WordPress – Tumblr2WordPress by Hao Chen
WordPress to Tumblr – Tumblrize

Using Social Media Trends to Help You Get A Job

Posted on October 29, 2011 by Greg C.

On November 15th, I am going to be speaking at the University Club of DC on behalf of Syracuse University about how social media is changing the way we network and get jobs. I participated on a panel back in April on a similar topic at American University’s Social Learning Summit.

About 3 years ago, companies started wising up to using social networks to promote their brand and connect with customers. These channels opened up a new form of 2 way conversations, whether companies wanted that or not. The exciting thing about this new way of interacting with customers was that it created entire new teams within companies usually led by someone with the title “Social Media Manager.”

Fast forward 18 months, and these same channels are no longer for B2C companies to connect with customers. These social channels have given companies or brands the ability to reach customers with offerings, loyalty rewards, even the ability to view job postings. On the other end of the conversation is you.

When you create a profile on a social network, you in effect are creating a brand. My Facebook profile, my Tweets, this blog, it is a representation of me and my brand. Your online brand can work for you or against you, and knowing how and when to use it can greatly improve your chances at making key connections and getting a job.

I can’t wait to share my insights on the tools we use and the trends we see in when it come time to getting a job and networking. To register for the event click here. If you can’t make it out to the event, you will be able to follow along on twitter via #SUDCSocialMedia.

Haters Gonna Hate — But Google Wallet is Significant

Posted on May 26, 2011 by Greg C.

Google announced their Google Wallet program today where your phone is now your wallet. This is made possible thanks to Near Field Communication, NFC, which I wrote back at the beginning of the year was key to so much of what Google was up to. The test will begin this summer and run in 4 cities, and expansion to other cities will follow.

One particular “early review” from Jay Yarow at AlleyInsider says that adoption will be slow because using a credit card is too easy. I think that is really near-sighted and here is why:

Security of your credit card in public places continues to be a problem. In the UK for example, when you pay for a meal at a restaurant, they bring the credit card reader to your table so you can watch them scan the card.
Not everyone has the ability to have a credit card, as rules tighten around credit, and I assume they will continue to do so, Google Wallet gives parents the ability to distribute money to their kids to use.
Local deal and advertising via Google Wallet is going to be huge thanks to Google Offers. While it is not a Groupon killer, Google has a head start on getting deals out to Android/Wallet users.
5 years from now will we think about carrying a wallet, or will a single device do it all? I am guessing/hoping it will be a single device.
Google just sent a huge shot across Apple’s bow with this feature. I believe Apple will make some kind of NFC announcement at WWDC in 10 days, how can they not?

So haters can hate, but Google moved the ball down the field today with this announcement and for the first time since getting an iPhone 3+ years ago, it makes me question whether it’s time to switch.

AIM and Google Talk Federate…Off with the Multihead

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Greg C.

Can we finally put to rest the multiheaded IM clients that require me to log into 5 different services? My former colleagues at AOL finally turned on federation with Google after 4 years of Google running an AIM multiheaded server in their data center.

The Old AIM GTalk Multihead Logo

Turning off the multihead unwinds one of the most over engineered solutions in the history of messaging. When AOL and Google did the original deal around messaging in 2006, we were not ready to do federation, so we proposed a multihead. At the time the negotiations started Google only had a desktop client, but soon after we started talking Google unleashed something called Caribou on us. Caribou was the code name of Gtalk in GMail, and needless to say it threw a wrench into our plans. In the end Google wrote a server side multiheaded experience using a client side library that had to handle 1000s of threads. It was a miracle it worked, and a lot of great engineers made it happen. Thank goodness we can turn it off now.

With federation comes the hope that we can break down the walls of the IM networks that have existed for 12+ years. For users they get the ability to talk to their friends regardless of networks and use the application they like best. For the networks, federation means an application battle royale. Personally, I will use GTalk when I am at my laptop at work since we use Google Apps here at Clearspring. For my iPhone and iPad I use AIM because Google’s mobile experience on iOS is lacking.

Let’s hope that the other networks can figure out how to federate with each other and we can all stop using clunky multiheaded IM applications.

[iPhone vs. Android] Sometimes Better Does Not Beat Popular

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Greg C.

We have two distinct camps in the Clearspring offices. Our CEO, Hooman Radfar, and a few others believes that Android will dominate and clean up the mobile phone market, while a large contingent believes that iPhone might not lead in market share but they will continue to be the phone that leads innovation and is the bright shiny object in the sky for many.

Last Monday a study came out that showed one third of teens wanted to buy an iPhone “soon.” That number is on top of the 17% of teens that already have iPhones.

The technorati has been quick to point out how Apple may be making the exact same mistakes as it did back in the 1980s as it pertains to their iOS platform strategy. Experts will tell you by creating a walled garden for application developers and having a singular hardware and software platform, Apple is opening the door for Android to be the operating system for every other carrier and phone. The one problem with that theory is demand.

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s the purchase of personal computer purchases was price driven. Back then Macs routinely cost over $2000, so when competitors started building inferior machines for half the cost, Macs lost market share and the rest is history.

The mobile space is different. First, the phone itself is cheaper as hardware in 2011 is a commodity. Second, consumers have more purchasing power than they did back in the 1990s, and that despite a major recession in 2008-09, consumers seem to still be buying electronics and cutting back in other areas. Third, consumers, and especially teens and young adults, want the cool and hip product, device or technology. Even if Android is a better platform built on a better device, people think the iPhone is a status symbol. Much like the BWM 3 series, there are better built cars for the price in the market place, but that does not stop people from buying the car because it is a status symbol.

So where does that leave us. Sometimes a better technology is not preordained to be the most popular or the coolest. If the teens of America have any say, Apple is going to have a hard time replicating the failures of the late 1980s, simply because the brand is considered hip by youth.

Google goes all in on WebM

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Greg C.

I really applaud Google for pushing all their chips into the center of the table on ON2 VP8 (otherwise known as the CODEC that powers WebM) rather than continue to support H.264 in Google Chrome. I know a lot of those in the tech community think Google is crazy to do this. However, when you stop to consider the cabal that the patent holders of H.264 have enjoyed, it was time someone stepped in to break it up.

The move does not come without risks. One of the main reasons H.264 was adopted as the standard was, believe it or not, the porn industry. As soon as Adobe added H.264 decoding in its Flash Media Player 9, video could be consumed at a super high quality and done so cheaply.

In the last 12 months Google has purchased ON2 technologies to compete on the CODEC front and Global IP Solutions (GIPS) for video and audio processing. Wiring this all up Google can offer real time peer-to-peer audio video sessions to go up against Skype and Apple in the space. We have to assume that Google has crunched numbers and that using ON2 plus HTML5 is cheaper to serve video up as well.

As I mentioned late in December with the Skype outage, the battle ground is shaping up quickly between Google, Apple, Skype, and to a degree Microsoft and Mozilla with their browsers. With H.264 going royalty free until 2015, in the end the user wins as more HD video is available on the internet, unless you are still using Chatroulette, because no one wants to see that in HD.

Why I am Grateful for Google Chrome

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Greg C.

Over the past few weeks I have gotten a couple of new computers. I have an iMac at home, and at Clearspring I have a MacBookPro and the set up for the machines could not have been easier. Years ago when I would get a new Windows machine and when I was writing AIM Windows or the core cross platform IM library, the level of pain to get the machine set up was unbearable.

The biggest change, beyond not having to install all the developer tools like Visual Studio and corporate tools like Microsoft Office, is that most of my tools are via the browser. Now before this sounds like a complete infomercial for Google Chrome, know that this is more of a thank you note to the Chrome team. Installing Chrome on each new machine all of my bookmarks and plugins easily synced. Total set up time, 15 minutes…

While Xmarks and other tools could have solved this issue with Firefox and other browsers, it was painfree with Chrome. Let’s not even get started with IE, which at both AOL and Clearspring we still see users with IE6. In the case of Safari, one would think Apple could make this work via MobileMe, but how many people want to pay money each year for a feature that Google gives away free.

myAOL supports Open Social Containers

Posted on May 28, 2008 by Greg C.

Today at the Google I/O Conference in San Francisco, Eric Staats, one of AOL’s Principal Software Engineers announced AOL’s support for Open Social Containers during the “Meet the Containers” session today. From Eric’s post over on the OpenSocial API Blog:

Over the next few months, we will implement the Gadget specification on myAOL, and eventually we will support OpenSocial across our products and platforms. By using this single widget application framework, AOL will take a significant step toward becoming a more open service, making it easier for developers to leverage our APIs to enhance AOL products and services with creative new applications, and ultimately leading to a better experience for millions of users.

Supporting these gadgets across myAOL and other AOL services it continues AOL’s commitment to giving both developers and our users the best experience across the web.

Sum of the Web

Greg's new blog about the web, DC, sports and all things social.

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