This summer’s biggest meme was born when an exuberant, hairy hippie posted a video of his reaction to two rainbows spread wide across the sky. And spread it did. Once the video went viral, there were auto-tuned songs and parodies galore, and every major media outlet wanted to snap up an interview with the summer’s unwitting sensation.

So when the double rainbow video creator, Paul Vazquez, aka Hungrybear9562, was found to be shilling for Microsoft Windows Live Photo Gallery, judgments were cast that he had made a deal with the devil. Mashable posted a eulogy for the meme while others gave Hungrybear a little more credit for figuring out how to profit from his popularity.

The Death of a Meme?

Profitability was a concept we were all wondering about, after all. When the video first gained mainstream attention, Fast Company interviewed Vazquez:

When I asked what he would do with his newfound popularity or influence, Vasquez wasn’t certain: “I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Last night I went to an Indian sweat and I prayed really hard about this. When I shot the video, I was not high at all, I was not having sex, and I was not hiking, as a lot of people assume. This is my land that I bought in 1988. Wait, what was the question?”

Yes, Hungrybear, it’s hard to cross the viral-commercial divide.

Then, did Vazquez slay his credibility by taking Microsoft’s offering? I don’t think so. I think the move fits with his spirit of being along for the ride, and if someone’s willing to give him a little corporate sponsorship, why not run with it?

Because double rainbow was such a moving and raw moment, I don’t think following up on it with product endorsement takes away from the beauty of the original. Double rainbow is a part of people’s lives now. In fact, just this morning I said, “What does it mean?” and Susan replied, “Double rainbow all the way across the sky!” [It's a bad habit of mine —Susan]. The message of the meme is appropriate in so many instances. There’s no killing the driving force behind a truly touching campaign.

Infused Energy for a Brand

We’ve said it before. There’s no such thing as an original idea. And when it comes to creating sticky marketing, one way to go about it is to leverage others’ success.

Now, it occurred to me this weekend, after meeting some specimens myself, that there are people who have never heard of the double rainbow video, let alone been touched by Hungrybear’s unabashed wonder. Will Microsoft’s campaign work for them if they don’t have the original reference? There’s the potential that the marketing campaign will give the viral video new life if the uninitiated search for the root of the campaign, but the ad as it is probably won’t work if the cultural touchstone isn’t already in place.

It’s also worth noting that sometimes chasing that rare viral vehicle for marketing efforts isn’t always the smartest move. Sometimes it can distract you from important business goals like quality, value or longevity. But for the 14 million plus who have made Double Rainbow Guy part of their pop culture repertoire, Microsoft is using its deep pockets exactly as recommended by piggy-backing the summer’s biggest hit. Those who love the commercial and even those who don’t appreciate the business-spin will, like every well performed sleight of hand, certainly remember it.

Commercializing Viral Magic: Can It Work? was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services and SEO tools provider.

Google Buzz has been riddled with criticism from its on-set and has made many changes to their privacy regulations since then. Just a few days after it launched, certain features were tweaked like auto-follow becoming auto-suggest, the ability to hide Buzz from your Gmail account, and it no longer connecting to Reader or Picasa. A few weeks after that, Buzz did a “privacy reset” which had users go through and edit their privacy settings to make them just what they wanted them to be.

Regardless of these changes, Hibnick and her lawyers pressed on with their case. Seven plaintiffs were named in the suit and each of them are said to be receiving about $2,500 each, 30% of the sum will be going to pay lawyers fees and the rest of the money will be donated to organizations that help promote user awareness of Internet privacy. Along with the hefty payout, Google must also do more to educate users about Google Buzz and its impact on their privacy.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google Settles Buzz Lawsuit for $8.5 Million

Here is a breakdown of every field within an add-link window in the Link Manager.

?

Owner

Every user in the system will be in this drop down. By default the owner is you, but you can assign ownership to another user.

Status

Choose one of the following:

Queued: Saved for later
Requested: Requested, not active
Active: Link is currently active
Inactive: Link is no longer active
Declined: Requested, but declined
Ignore: Do not build a link to this site

Creation date

This is auto-filled with the current date, but you can change it if you want to.

Link Type

Choose the type of link that you are building. (You can also create your own custom link type.)

User submitted: Manually added
Content exchange: Distributed content
Paid (permanent): One-time fee
Paid (temporary): Renting link
Blog comment: Left comment
Organic link: Naturally occurred
Indirect/other: Everything else
Affiliate: Link for affiliate campaign
Competitor backlink: Utilized when running Yahoo! Backlink Import

Anchor Text

Enter the keyword(s) used for the link.

Link URL

Enter the URL of your site.

Tags

If you’re working with a team, it can sometimes help to use tags for links. Frequently used tags are listed below this box — click on one to auto-populate with that tags. From the main Link Manager view, you can search for tags in the keyword field.

Link status

If you check the link status box, the Raven Tools system will check every 30 days for changes to the link record, such as status changes, whether the anchor text is correct, even if the Page Rank of a website has changed.

Assign task

Assign tasks to other members of your team from this page, such as asking someone to make contact with a website owner requesting a link. (See last week’s Tip Tuesday!)

Website URL

This is the exact URL where your link is going to live. If you have link monitoring activated, this is the exact URL Raven is going to check.

Main Contact

You can add contact information for the site. If you or someone else on your team has already filled in contact information for the site, it will appear automatically.

Website Type

Choose the type of website you are building the link to. You also have the ability to create custom website types.

Original Page Rank

Enter the Page Rank for the site now.

Current Page Rank

Raven Tools will update the Page Rank every 30 days if a change has occurred (if you have the Link Status box checked).

Quality Score

The Raven Tools internal score on the overall health of a site.

Comments

If you need to leave a note for yourself or another team member about a site, record them here and they’ll stay with the link record through its life.

And don’t forget…

This process is made even easier by using the Raven Firefox toolbar. If you come across a site you’d like to build a link to, just click on the “Add Link” button in the toolbar, and Raven will autofill as much information for you as possible.

Also, certain aspects of the Link Manager have changed purely because of a request from our users, so if there is a field that would simplify your work, let us know.

Follow Raven's Internet Marketing Blog for information on Internet marketing techniques, news, and updates on Raven.

In a post this morning from Google’s official blog, they point out that the process of creating a new account at a website can be a very lengthy and often times requires you to go to your email inbox, locate a verification email and click a link that redirects you back to the site you are trying to access and then doing whatever else that site is asking you to do before the registration process is complete. While this is not the case for ALL sites and the process does vary in steps, it does happen and Google admits that it has been a practice of theirs as well.

However, with the start of Yahoo email users, Google is allowing them to create accounts to begin the use of services such as Google Docs, Reader, Groups, etc. with OpenID. After users go through the initial registration page they will see a button that will take them to Yahoo to verify their info. The page will ask you to “agree” to signing into Google with your Yahoo ID, hit the button and you are all ready to start accessing Google services.

Google says they are hoping that other email providers will follow suit so they can expand this feature.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Yahoo Users Can Now Sign Up for Google Accounts With the Ease of OpenID

As of last week, Sony said they would be featuring Google TV on its sets, also Samsung said they would be looking for a way to use the service. This announcement comes just a week after Apple unveiled their new Apple TV device (down to $99 from $229 and a quarter of the size of the original) and it’s plan for TV show rental at 99 cents and movies for $4.99. Schmidt also announced that this web-browsing service would be free.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google TV Coming to a Console Near You This Fall

You’d probably like a few examples?

• Zappos built a culture based on surprise or, as they called it, WOW. They create WOW by giving customers free upgrades to overnight shipping and building a culture before a business.
• I remember getting warm fuzzies hearing that Disney had left milk and cookies in Scott Stratten’s fridge when he was visiting with his son. He was so surprised he tweeted about it to share with others.
• Coca-Cola got a lot of praise with its Happiness Machine a few months ago.
• And we can’t forget the viral power of the unexpected.

These are all relatively small gestures that got attention because they came at a time when the recipient wasn’t expecting them. And because of that, they were remembered.

At Outspoken Media, we’re all about little gestures. I thought today we’d share just one example of how we try to use Shock & Aw in our community. It also happens to be my favorite.

If you’ve ever left a comment on Outspoken Media you’ve seen our Thanks For Commenting page. The page is pretty simple. We used Joost de Valk’s Comment Redirect plugin to redirect new commenters to a hidden page on Outspoken. We use this page to thank new commenters for becoming part of our community, formally invite them to keep hanging out with us, and then offer some more social ways to stay in touch with Outspoken on the Web. So what, right? It’s just a page. Probably nothing special to users.

Well, if you think that, you’d be wrong.

[These are mostly older examples because Twitter Search took the morning off. Dear Twitter Search, please fix yourself before I wreck yourself.]

Every week I receive tweets/emails/new blog comments from new community members who love that page. They love it because they weren’t expecting it and because it’s warm. Usually when you leave your first comment on a new blog, nothing happens. Maybe you’re taken to a page that says your comment was accepted or has been placed in moderation. However, there’s no life there. We try to use our Thanks For Commenting page to keep the relationship going. We thank people for spending their time with us, encourage them to keep doing it, and we do it in a way that doesn’t make them (or us) feel slimy. The page is written to be personable and make people feel like we’re reaching out as friends. I can tell you the response has been more powerful than I ever would have imagined.

The page surprises people. And they really like it.

People like small surprises. They like it when you do the little things that show you’re paying attention and that you care. Surprise your audience by appearing where they wouldn’t expect you, making the little things big, and going further than your business has to. Our personalized Thanks for Commenting page is just one way that Outspoken tries to ‘shock & aw’ its audience. We’d oprah all of your cars if we could but, well, it’s just not feasible this year. Maybe in 2011.

What are you doing to shock & aw your audience? What little surprises do you lay out for people to find? What have you seen other sites do that you want to steal emulate? I’d love it if you’d share some in the comments today.

Raven’s first regular radio show begins the day after Labor Day (today), when you’ll be pretending to do the work you normally pretend to do on a Monday, meaning you’ll have time to tune in.

“Weapons of Mass Marketing” (a name conceived by the fine folks at WebmasterRadio.FM) launches at 1 p.m. EST on WebmasterRadio.FM.

It’s a DIY internet marketing show co-starring Raven product manager Jon Henshaw and product marketing manager Taylor Pratt. They’ll share advice and their favorite tools for PPC, social media, affiliate marketing, SEO and more.

Other reasons to tune in:

• Witty banter
• Occasional strange noises
• Giveaways: the first person to email Taylor Pratt with today’s secret word gets a free Raven T-shirt.

“Weapons of Mass Marketing” airs on the first Tuesday of every month at 1 p.m. Eastern. Episodes are archived exclusively on WebmasterRadio.FM, and they are available on iTunes.

Follow Raven's Internet Marketing Blog for information on Internet marketing techniques, news, and updates on Raven.

Let us bow before the gospel of the geek…. and away!

Lead Story 

SEO’s social media darling makes big changes

As many of my long time readers know, I am a bit of a Sphinn power user. For those that have no clue what I am talking about, some background. Sphinn is a social media/voting site along the lines of Digg. It was started by the gang at Third Door media (Search Engine Land / SMX) back in 2007. Originally the site was very popular and almost reminiscant of the days on ThreadWatch were peeps from all corners of the SEO/IM world gathered.

That was then, this is now. Things went reasonably well there for the first year or so, but things started to decline after about 1.5yrs. They then decided to try some improvements to see if they could breath some more life into the place. Thus was born, Sphinn 2.0. Unfortunately there were a littany of issues with the new site and that did little to improve things (at first).

Now? Well it seems they have decided to remove voting all together now. This means, essentially, that it has gone from social to a link round up. Members can still submit and comment on posts they deem worthy, but that’s about it. From there the editors will decide which posts are worth having on the site. Here’s some coverage on the reactions for the move;

• Sphinn Is Dead: Long Live Anything Else
• Sphinn to remove voting; thoughts from a power user!
• Sphinn Pulls Plug on Voting; The ‘Community’ Reacts

Is this a bad thing? Who knows. Time will tell. I was quite excited at the prospect of Sphinn 2.0 which also really didn’t go anywhere. As noted in my own post on it, I shall give it the benefit of the doubt and see where it goes.

Enough of the drama du jour, away we go….

Talk of the Town 

Search Geek Central

Search Patents

/end SOSG session

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Weekly Search & Social News: 07/09/2010

The first rule of blogging (and dinner conversation) is to avoid talking about politics or religion. However, sometimes politics can have a massive impact on our industry and as such, today we’ll be taking a look at a few scenarios in the upcoming US Congressional elections and how this may impact SEO and the internet more broadly.

“Net Neutraility” is a term bandied about by lots of folks and it means different things to different people. Whilst it is probably not the most important issue for the average American heading into these elections it certainly warrants understanding- and it certainly will be one of the most important for SEOs, e-commerce managers, and online businesses.

What is Net Neutrality?

“Network neutrality” (AKA Net Neutrality or Internet Neutrality) is basically what it sounds like: the internet is meant to be neutral. This suggests that content, sites, platforms, etc. are not to be controlled by internet service providers or the Government. This does NOT – as so many of us have found – necessarily exclude any of these entities from gathering and sharing “private” information.

Further, Net Neutraility suggests that information, connections, users and so forth should all be treated equally. The principle is intended to guarantee a level playing field for all users. That is to say, it is to ensure that there is not preferential treatment in the order in, or speed with which, information is transferred.

Remember how much it sucked to do just about anything on the internet as recently as 10-15 years ago? Remember when your 56k modem seemed blazing? Remember when you had to wait overnight just to load a short video clip?

Thank goodness we don’t have to do that anymore… though without net neutrality this may soon become the standard again. Nothing like progress, eh?!

What Are The Threats to Neutrality?

The biggest threat to neutrality is discrimination. Absent the “free and open” part of the internet, service providers could charge a premium to allow you to view certain types of content. For example- without Neutrality, the major providers could charge you a “premium” to allow you to stream video, an additional “premium” to play video games online and an additional premium to connect to secure sites.

Lobbyists. It should come as no surprise that there is a lot of money at stake here and the best and brightest of the lobby groups have been raising and spending funds to try to make sure that the Government does not pass any laws (or permissions to the FCC) that might block service providers from charging extra and/or showing preference towards one type of content or user and another.

Why Net Neutrality Matters to You

Net Neutrality has become a tacit constitutional right on par with the 5th amendment for many avid internet users. The freedom of speech (as well as, erm- expression) has been extended to the internet in ways previously unseen and documents/publications are being created in this crowded public space at an alarming rate.

The extension of a non-neutral net could lead to censorship of certain pages or websites all together. Just think how terrible it would be if the only “non-premium” source for news was Fox News.

Censorship to one side, the non neutral web also means that internet and telecommunications companies cannot control the flow of information which allows for more open and “fair” competition and we need not look any further than the global marketplace that is Google to see how this could impact businesses.

Despite this, it is hard to deny the fact that search engines, on the other hand, are already able to control the results they return and our increasing reliance on one or two main search engines for our information does raise some questions about how much people really do care about filtering of information.

The internet, viewed as a global marketplace (for information, products, etc.) is not unlike the “real life” global marketplace in its openess- however there are already obstacles to accessing certain types of information in place and already exist control points for information: Apple won’t allow you to use their products to create and promulgate “inappropriate materials” and equally Google acts as a form of Federal Regulator on advertising standards (thou shalt not buy links!).

Though, at least they do not have the control to forbid me entirely from sites. They may not “support” it, but I can still transfer and view information from sources not up to the Google/Apple rating.

How Would this Impact SEO?

Well, think of it this way- given that recent reports have suggested that the current Google algorithim prefers faster sites, the extreme end of the spectrum would have hosts and service providers charging you considerably extra to have “faster” service and could even artificially filter/limit the information passed to/from your site, unless you were willing to pay for premium service.

It is hard enough to find good hosting now- and if this sort of behaviour is allowed is there really anything to prevent people using this to scam others?

The requirements in the terms of service from Google maintain that you cannot “cloak” any information or show different information to Google than you do to everyone else. It could become awfully difficult to ensure all users receive the same information with limitations on plug-ins, types of content and different media types.

Additionally, say goodbye to all those wonderful Firefox plugins you use for SEO. You can also bid farewell to the leaps and bounds being taken with HTML 5 and by Google’s team to index more types of user-friendly and attractive sites requiring scripts.

A non-neutral net may not sound outrageous to some of you out there- some may even think this is the status quo- but it is not and could have a serious impact on usability, SEO, and competition. If a small business cannot afford to pay for the faster service it seems extraordinarily unlikely that they will ever make it big. If the average customer cannot view online checkouts and make transactions via PayPal without paying a small fortune say farewell to the e-commerce boom.

It is tough enough to break into any market and compete with the big guys, the last thing a small business would want is to pay a premium in order to do so.

Pay-per-view and TV on Demand may be great and may be worth paying a premium for on your television as they are relatively new technology. However- optimising a site for usability and for search could become an exorbitantly expensive task and all of the “pretty” things that make websites so wonderful would be much more difficult on designers, developers and users alike with this “pay-per-view” mentality.

So, Who Should I Vote For?

Right, so I’m not going to tell you who to vote for. There a number of issues to consider and although Net Neutrality is essential for day-to-day employment and the entertainment of some, I can appreciate that it is not for all. If you are not bothered by any of the above, don’t worry about my suggestions. If, however, you are troubled by the movements afoot in Congress you may want to pay attention.

The general trend (based upon my research) is for Republican party members to be opposed to net neutrality whilst Democratic candidates seem more likely to be in favour. This is not universally the case so we shall provide as much additional information on the individual candiates as available.

Image from: Five Thirty Eight by Nate Silver

There are obviously other issues that may have a more immediate impact on the economy, on the safety of troops overseas, and the future of medicine. However, putting all these other issues aside for a moment, here are the stances of the candidates in the Senate races that matter (and are still seen as “close” races).

Senate

“Oh, If only we had a different process we’d vote ‘yes’,  you vote ‘yes’ if you believe ‘yes’! You vote in favour of something if you believe it’s the right thing” – Anthony Weiner

There are 19 seats up for grabs in the Senate. Of these seats only 9 are considered to be “up for grabs” so pay attention if you’re from any of the following states.

If you see your state and a candidate is listed as not having a public stance, I urge you to call their office and find out where they stand (provided below). I have carefully placed those who have spoken publicly in favour in bold and have provided a link to the homepage of all those who have not provided a public stance.

New Hampshire:
Likely Democratic Candidate: Paul W. Hodes
View on Neutrality: No public stance.

Likely Republican Candidate: Kelly Ayotte*
View on Neutrality: No public stance found.

*The Republican party has yet to settle on a candidate in this race.

Pennsylvania
Likely Democratic Candidate: Joe Sestak
View on Neutrality: For

Likely Republican Candidate: Pat Toomey
View on Neutrality: No Public Stance

Ohio
Likely Democratic Candidate: Lee Fisher
View on Neutrality: For

Likely Republican Candidate: Rob Portman
View on Neutrality: No Public Stance.

Wisconsin
Likely Democratic Candidate: Russ Feingold
View on Neutrality: No Public Stance

Likely Republican Candidate: Ron Johnson*
View on Neutrality: No Public Stance

*Primary to be held Sept. 14

Illinois
Likely Democratic Candidate: Alexi Giannoulias
View on Neutrality: No Public Stance (contact info at bottom of page)

Likely Republican Candidate: Mark Steven Kirk
View on Neutrality: No public stance (contact info at bottom of page)

Missiouri
Likely Democratic Candidate: Robin Carnahan
View on Neutrality: No Public Stance

Likely Republican Candidate: Roy Blunt
View on Neutrality: No public stance

Colorado
Likely Democratic Candidate: Michael Bennet
View on Neutrality: For

Likely Republican Candidate: Ken Buck
View on Neutrality: No Public Stance

Nevada
Likely Democratic Candidate: Harry Reid
View on Neutrality: For

Likely Republican Candidate: Sharron Angle
View on Neutrality: No Public Stance

House of Representatives

Senators may get all the credit but the House will be equally important in passing legislation on Net Neutrality.

There are 99 seats in play this cycle, of which 33 are considered to be a toss-up.

Despite the importance, given the volume and the number of primaries that still need to be decided, I will save the analysis of the House candidates for another day. Please let us know what you think!

Resources:
Save The Internet
Wiki

About the Author:

Sam is a lead SEO at Distilled and wrote his masters’ dissertation on US Congressional Elections.

He will be speaking at the upcoming Pro SEO Seminar here in London. Tickets are still available but
flying like hotcakes so get your tickets now!

With this new downloading service, it could replace the current integration system it has with Amazon’s MP3 store and really bolster its Android line to be even more of a competitor against iPhone’s then it already is. While iTunes currently accounts for 70 percent of all digital music sales in the U.S. record labels are very excited about the prospect of a company taking on Apple; the music industry sees this battle as something they could thoroughly benefit from.

In an article posted in June, Mashable’s Christina Warren said that it seems as though Google’s “ultimate goals is to have a cloud-based subscription service that could stream direction to Android-based devices” by first launching a downloading service that is incorporated into their search engine, then progressing into an online subscription service by next year.

Do you think this service could be real competition for Apple and iTunes? Would you give it a try?

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google’s Music Service to be Launched by Christmas? It Sure Seems Like It