At around midnight tonight I got an email from Bing with a link to try their new beta Social Search. The process was pretty simple, after I clicked the link to join, I was redirected to Facebook where I authorized the application to connect. After that I was redirected back to Bing with the default query “movies” already populated in the search box.

I did a few searches and wasn’t all that impressed with the results, although the concept is still pretty intriguing. I have around 1,500 Facebook friends, most of whom live (or have lived) in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.

It was surprised to see such poor social results for things like local restaurants in my area. In just a few short moments I came to a conclusion, the data just isn’t there at the local level yet. My friends don’t “like” many local brick and mortar businesses on Facebook, because local businesses are still trying to understand social media.

Of course most of the buzz on social networks usually goes back to sports, pop culture, and politics, and that’s where I really did enjoy the Bing Search + Social experience. I had no idea so many of my male friends on Facebook “like” Kim Kardashian, and a search for local sports teams yielded some interesting tweets and fan pages.

I’d definitely check it out, but just don’t expect it to revolutionize search, at least not yet…

Want an author with Klout? Soon it will cost you.

Haven’t really been blogging here much lately, frankly I think there is already too much noise online. But when I saw the potential in Google’s new author rank combined with Google+, it was too much to ignore.

AJ Kohn wrote a fantastic piece here that lit a fire under me the other day. Of course authorship markup isn’t new, it just hasn’t mattered until Google+ came along. I’ll keep this short and sweet, and here’s the way I see it all playing out.

The Problem at Hand for SEOs

We all know it’s getting harder and harder for large companies to “buy SEO”. Sure there are awesome boys and girls out there hustlin’ like Jon Cooper, but for the most part everybody wants the short cut to the top of the SERPs.

With the advent of social search it’s naive for all of us to think we can continue to fake Google out with such ease. If you don’t have real buzz, authentic quality, and awesome content you won’t win in the long term.

I don’t know about you but I’ve seen my fair share of websites rocket and crash over the years. It’s about as much fun as trying to win the Mega Millions jackpot.

Enter author rank, Google+, and a bunch of hungry Google executives eager to see both take off…

A Bold Forward Looking Statement

Authorship will become a traded commodity, and author rank will drive metrics like Klout even further so that the authorship can be bought and sold with a level of certainty. Just like page rank become the staple of the link buying age, author rank metrics will give you (the product) credibility on the open market.

Not since the age of buying links could you influence such a wide range of SERPs so quickly. In no way am I advocating subverting Google’s terms for profit, just saying it’s going to happen sooner rather than later. Buying and selling +1′s had no real promise of ROI to it, but that isn’t the case with buying author rank on the open market.

Of Course Google Will Fight This

I know Google will fight this, just the way it fought people selling links. That didn’t stop people from selling them, and it didn’t stop it from working for almost a decade. Just ask build my rank how much Google discourages selling things that were never intended to be sold. Ooops I hope I don’t get banned for linking to them. Better nofollow/noindex/noXplode that href.

Big G will penalize authors who tie their author rank to bad neighborhoods, and they will dilute your author rank if you use it in too many places at once. But we all know people will try anything to make a buck.

I guess in the end it just depends on whether or not you want to risk your credibility for the right price. It certainly just got a lot easier to identify the real players in SEO land huh?

The Big Picture Says 1,000 Words

Ready to buy some author rank Klout? Google just made it easier than ever

Q&A with Ben Silverman of Pinterest at SXSW Interactive

The following is my rough outline from the 11AM SXSWi session featuring Pinterest Co-Founder Ben Silverman. Lots of great advice on monetization, design, building a successful business, and social communities.

Q&A with Pinterest Co-Founder Ben Silverman

Job History

• Started in sales support for Google, working specifically with Adsense.
• Quit Google to develop iOS applications, before starting Pinterest.

Background

• The idea came from visiting people’s homes, and seeing “collections” of people’s lives that needed to be shared online
• Wanted a person’s “board” or collection on pinterest to be more beautiful as a whole than each image could be individually.

Design

• Quality was the most important aspect, with meticulous testing done on layouts, contrast, colors, fonts, and how the site would work in different people’s devices.
• Ben liked to go to bookstores and look at lifestyle magazines, to gauge interest in certain verticals.
• In a world were buzz dies after 24-48 hours, the pinterest boards have a timeless elements.

Early Months

• For the first 9 months pinterest only had 10,000 users
• Ben personally emailed the first 5,000 users thanking them for signing up, and opening ongoing communication
• Up until the middle of last year it was only 5 people working in his apartment

Interesting Uses

• Each day people find a use for Pinterest that they would have never thought people would use it for
• Lot’s of museums have joined lately, to share their art with the world.
• Travel boards are also new, and people create elaborate travel guides to cities all over the world.

Competition

• Clones have always happened, now they just happen faster and faster
• Most of your focus shouldn’t be racing against competition, but against making the greatest product possible.
• The competition doesn’t come from similar design, layouts, or code, it’s all about the people

Copyright issues

• As a company they care about that issue, overall it is part of their culture, and giving value back to each of the users.
• The mission of the site isn’t to keep people on the site forever; it’s driving traffic out in the world, and driving real actions to build their content.

Monetization

• Long-term monetization will have to be something that speaks to the heart of the product itself.
• Helping people discover things they wouldn’t have found on their own.
• They have a lot of work to go on the discovery process before they continue with monetization.

Future Innovations

• Redesigning the profiles on Pinterest, to make your profile very different from what you have on Facebook and Twitter. A visual snapshot of what you are about, and to make it easier to discover new people based on pins
• Expanding the number of things you can pin to include Vimeo and Netflix.
• Platform expansion with a common and stable API framework for developers.

Social Community

• We have to invest in social norms the same way we invest into infrastructure and technology
• Getting the right kind of behavior in a social site is important to growing the community in the right direction
• Early on they personally reached out to users, to make sure they were cultivating the community correctly and encouraging the right behaviors.
• They character different kinds of users, because each has it’s purpose in the overall growth of the website.
• New ways to share are simply new ways to connect with other people; we are always actively seeking out ways to connect in new ways.

Launching a Successful Business

• Most people generalize whatever they did, and act like that was the strategy that made things work.
• People will say great founding teams have a certain look and feel, but every company cuts it’s own path.
• Every company is under a lot of pressure to look and act like the last company that was successful.
• Be good to the people that you build relationships, so fin
• Identify those people that are passionate about your products from the start, which will be immensely valuable as feedback.

Mistakes

• Sometimes they overthought problems, as long as you can see failure as one more option that’s off the table; you’re in a good place.
• Don’t be paralyzed by so many options, the best way to find out is to ship, the worst thing that users and customers can say is no.
• It’s important to have people outside your business that you have good relationships with, don’t get tunnel vision in the way you think about your company.

Closing Remarks

• Pinterest is still small, 20 members, 10 joined in the last four months.
• The team culture is the core of their business; rather than have a figurehead, they want to grow as a team.

Pinterest Apps Posting to Facebook Wall Without Permission

Earlier today I had to do something that I don’t have to resort to very often, revoke the permission of a Facebook app I had previously authorized. I checked my Facebook timeline tonight, and discovered a slew of posts to my wall from Pinterest. Although I hadn’t used Pinterest in a few days, the posts were made since I last checked my Facebook wall this afternoon (in the last 6 hours).

In hindsight I wish I had screen capped some of the posts, but I was so upset my first and only thought was to delete the posts and revoke permission of the Pinterest app. It’s not that the content was vulgar or embarrassing, it was mainly pictures of landscape photography and various categories I had pinned things to recently. It’s really the principal behind the whole thing, even though I realize that I did authorize them to post without my permission.

Ben & Jerry's "Taste the Lin-Sanity" Ice Cream with Fortune Cookies

Ben & Jerry’s, the iconic ice cream brand famous for flavors borrowed from a broad swath of the culinary spectrum, has apologized for including fortune cookies in its “Taste the Lin-Sanity” frozen yogurt sold at a Harvard Square location in Boston. The Vermont-founded company has replaced the fortune cookies in its honey-swirl, Jeremy Lin-inspired variety with waffle cones.

This coming only days after ESPN’s, “Chink in the Armor” debacle, which left two people fired and a third suspended without pay. If nothing else, this is a firm reminder to give your products a politically correct glance before they are released to the public. The internet of 2012 is a much more cruel and unforgiving place than in years past, with people so desperate for headlines they’ll throw anybody under the bus.

New Meta 'NoPin" Code Lets You Block Pinterest

While most people are looking for ways to get more of their images pinned, Pinterest quietly added a feature that allows Webmaster to block users from pinning their content. What if I don’t want images from my site to be pinned? Just add a meta “nopin” code to the <head> section of your website or blog. The tag universally applies to every page (and more importantly every image) hosted on your site.

<meta name="pinterest" content="nopin" />

Pinterest says in their help section that when a user tries to pin content from your site, they will see the following message.

“This site doesn’t allow pinning to Pinterest. Please contact the owner with any questions. Thanks for visiting!”

However, when I installed it on my blog as a test run I got, “We couldn’t find any images: This site doesn’t allow pinning.” For most of us we would never want to block a thriving social network like Pinterest, but for some who have copyright concerns, this is a simple fix.

ESPN's Racist "Chink in the Armor" Headline about Jeremy Lin

I almost couldn’t believe this racist headline was real when I saw it, ESPN posting the caption, “Chink in the Armor” below an image of Jeremy Lin. I thought it had to be a fake, but sadly it’s not. Is the “Chink in the Armor” headline legit or fake? Judging by the feedback so far it looks to be 100% real and a total PR failure on the part of ESPN Sports Network.

Last night somebody at ESPN made the total fail of posting this image online, and it stayed live almost 30 minutes. 30 minutes is forever in internet time, and somebody at ESPN will likely lose their job over this. Even if they didn’t intend the Jeremy Lin caption to be racist, you’re telling me nobody thought about somebody interpreting “Chink” as a word you probably shouldn’t call somebody of Asian decent.

This is another perfect example of how one tiny slip up can cause months of cleanup in terms of reputation management. People will allow you to get away with a lot of stuff online, and sports is no exception. However, this is something you just can’t look past, no matter what your ethnicity. Do you think people are overreacting about this? Would love to hear some feedback on it…

Rivals Football Recruit Linebacker Keith Brown Signs with Louisville

Like any good reputation management aficionado, I like to keep tabs on certain keyword phrases in Google. Many have to do with my job, industry leaders, and current events, but my name is also an important part of the mix. Lately I’ve been seeing more and more buzz about a prized recruit linebacker who happens to have the same name as me.

Keith Brown, a top inside linebacker recruit, has committed to the Louisville Cardinals. Brown stars for Miami’s Norland High School. Offered by over 30 BCS schools, Brown had actually committed to the Miami Hurricanes and Illinois in previous years. He decommitted from Miami to commit to Illinois, but decommitted again from Illinois after the firing of Ron Zook.

Hope this Keith Brown doesn’t do what that Keith Brown did, and add more junk to the SERPs for my name…

Is Microsoft Gearing Up for Bing+ a New Social Experience?

Microsoft wants to help you stay up to date on the latest and greatest in your social world with msnNOW. Microsoft just made it a lot easier to stay in the know on the stories people are talking about, searching for and sharing the most.

They scour the most interesting trends from real-time sources like Twitter, Facebook, Bing, YouTube and other Breaking News , so you’ll always know what’s happening with the hottest social trends and stories on the Web.

Then some “expert” editors add key insights on why a story is trending, if it’s true and where to find out more, so you’ll be the most informed of your friends on the latest trends.

What is msnNOW? Is Microsoft Preparing to Launch a Social Network?

Gplus Badge is a Must Have Google+ Plugin for WordPress Blogs

With millions of people flocking to Google+, it’s time we all focused more it. Google isn’t being passive about their new social network, they are using everything in their arsenal to drive adoption. More popular brands have thousand of followers already, but for some it’s not quite that simple.

With that in mind, I started looking for wards to highlight my Google+ profile on my Wordpress blog. My goal was to showcase my profile in the sidebar, and help drive my readers to add me to their circles on Google+. After looking through dozens of different options, I finally settled on Gplus Badge, a highly customizable Google+ badge plugin for WordPress.

How it Works

It adds a widget to your Wordpress blog that will display an “Add to Circles” badge for your Google + profile or page. You simply update the plugin with your Google+ URL, and it does the rest of the work for you. Gplus Badge then displays your name, profile image, number and images of people who have added you in their circles.

The other great thing about the plugin, is that brands can use it to gain +1′s and followers as well. I only use it for my personal Google+ account, but I can see this badge being extremely beneficial for brands. Your visitors can +1 your TLD without leaving your website, or they can use the link to

Advantages

1. Gplus badge is not restricted to Google+ pages, it works for profiles as well.
2. Gplus badge can show your profile image, the official Google+ badge can’t do this.
3. Gplus badge can show the dynamic “Add to Circles” button for pages, so people can add your page to their circles without leaving your site.
4. Gplus badge shows the number of your followers on Google+, the official Google+ badge can’t do this either.
5. Gplus badge can show images of people who have added you to your circles, this adds credibility to your followers.
6. Gplus badge can show a +1 button for the website as well, so your TLD builds authority as well.
7. Gplus badge is fully customisable. You can choose which information to show or hide (size, header, follower images, +1 button, background colors, border colors, text colors and much more).

Developer Credit

Props to Skipser Arun for creating an awesome WordPress plugin. Be sure to add him to your circles as well!