I'm creating this post to claim my blog on Technorati - but it again leaves me waiting for the day when I'll just have one profile, one network, and one service to integrate this all together.  Posting the link below is just the start, apparently, of the claiming process.  I've already had to create a username and password - and next I'm sure I'll be asked to create a profile picture, make friends, and share my pithy thoughts with the world... I for one will be welcoming Facebook's and Google's new data portability standards with open arms.

Technorati Profile

SEO Book has an interesting post today on the value of a #1 Google Ranking. In the article Aaron Wall does a great job analyzing the topic and included tons of links to support his position.

A couple of points I found interesting:

• All the data on Google and the importance of the top few results. Much of the data has been around for a while but a report I hadn't see is iProspects Blended Search Results Study. A couple of good which sound accurate to me include:
• 48% of visitors click on image or video results when available as blended search
• ~50% of users revise their search after reviewing the first page of results
  
• The links to Compete's keyword destination tool. Competes tool shows the percentage of traffic each site receives for a given keyword - pretty interesting. This could in fact be a potentially fantastic tool to understand the distribute of click throughs for certain keywords, but it appears (at least on my initial tests) that the tool currently is based on a small sample size and should only be taken for what its worth
• The long tail of keywords search. I found this quote amazing: "On May 16, 2007, at the Searchology event, Google's Udi Manber state that 20 to 25% of the queries that Google sees in any given day are queries that they have never seen before" - wow

So I recently signed up for twitter and hearing about it and reading about it online (this TechChrunch article finally pushed me over the edge).

What it really reminds me of is old AOL IM away messages, or more currently, Facebook status updates - just on steroids. I really think Tweeter just brings to those applications what RSS feed does for news sources...allows you to quickly see what people are up to, thinking, saying about your company - all in one place.

Which bring me to why is this even necessary? If Twitter is just a new way to communicate with my existing network is it destined to fall our favor once other social networking sites add these features? Is micro-blogging its own niche threw which Twitter can take over?

My take, at least for now, is no.  There will be a convergence of social networks happening soon and I fear for any social networking site whose killer app is sole communications tool, not an entire platform. There is simply no logical reason for me to maintain my status/profile/friends on multiple sites. I'm not sure Facebook is the answer, or if the Google led open social initiative will solve this problem, but at some point it has to come together. I am one person, with one profile and one network.

That said - we are still on the tip of the iceberg for social media. Location based social networking is going to be huge and the engineers certainly aren't done innovating in the communications space yet.  It'd just be nice if I didn't have to manually sync my phone with my Facebook profile when it happens...

The new facebook privacy controls were exactly what I was looking for.  Currently I keep a seperate LinkedIn profile for my professional contacts, but there are certainly times when those two groups get blurred and I'm left to wonder if I should accept a facebook invitation from a future employer (which really happend).  This forced me to clean up my facebook profile (read: make it much more boring) and accept.  But now that will no longer be an issue.

The question is now - What does LinkedIn offer that facebook doesn't?  I've written before that I beleive a fundamental difference between Facebook and LinkedIn is that Facebook is the private me (for only my friends to see) and LinkedIn is the public me.  But if I can provide and update both personas from one content source - why use two different sites? Seems to me that LinkedIn is headed for a sad fate.  I guess the question in the long run is - Will people want to keep multiple profiles or can every site just leverage the content I post to Facebook?

This is the problem that my alma mater - Amherst College - faces with  its alumni relations.  I receive general letters in the mail, an alumni magazine, emails blasts - of which 2% is interesting to me.  In sending out these mass  messages Amherst is trying to connect with everyone who ever graduated, without establishing a strong connection with any of them.

What Amherst (and all colleges & organizations) should be doing is micro-communication.  Find a way to send out a small out of highly targeted/personalized content that people can opt in for and will actually want to receive.  I would be interested in hearing news if someone I know received some nationally recognized award, but I'd be much less interested to hear about some stranger the graduated 30 years before me.

The athletics department does this to some extent through and opt in email service for articles on specific teams, but this isn't even enough.   Amherst (and the athletic department specifically) should go even further and allow people to customize their content is as many was as possible.

Athletics should do 3 really simple things:

1) Set up an RSS feed for the sports related articles.  I for one would be much more tolerant of receiving more headlines if I could peruse them along side my other sports related feeds and without needing to surf to the site itself.

2) Leverage social networking to stay connected with young alumni.  Amherst Soccer could have a Facebook page, for instance, that is updated with scores, video and comments from the game. LinkedIn could be used to help connect current students with alumni in related fields and help develop mentoring relationships.

3) Allow and encourage students to blog on the site. Hearing first hand accounts of the experience of current students will help all alumni remember their time spent at the college.

By taking these steps Amerhst athletics could target its communication to the relevent audeince and create a strong, more lasting connection between the alumni and the school.

LinkedIn's Senior Director of Product came to speak at MIT Sloan late last week and had some interesting things to say about the differences between what LinkedIn is trying to accomplish and Facebook is trying to do.

A couple of the key differences in their approach that I found most interesting were:

1) The idea that your LinkedIn profile is your public you, while your Facebook profile is your personal you.  This idea isn't all that new but to put it into context, if I'm meeting someone for the first time and they know the informaton on my LinkedIn profile (that I went to Amherst College, worked in consulting for a few years) then I just think they've done their homework. If they know the information on my Facebook profile (that I just got back from a soccer tournament in Austin Texas) then thats just creepy.  This means that your LinkedIn profile is what you want the world to see, and your Facebook profile is what your want your friends to see - two very different markets.

2) LinkedIn is focusing on utility, while Facebook is focusing on fun.  Adam talked extensively about how they are taking a conservative approach to opening up API's and allowing 3rd party developers onto the site because they want to position the site as a tool to use in business, not a medium used for entertainment.  For this reason LinkedIn is very focused on its demographics, which based on the numbers Adam presented are on par with that of the wall street journal.

3) LinkedIn mobile.  Adam touched briefly on the LinkedIn mobile application that was officially released on Monday. I actually really like the direction they are going with the iPhone version of the application - making it almost like a digital business card.  If just a few click strokes I can look someone up, add them to my network, or get the background of someone I'm about to meet with.  It worked very well in my limited testing last night.

As LinkedIn begins to open its API's to more developers it will be very interesting to see how the information is used and the steps LinkedIn takes to ensure everyone's privacy.  For instance I talked with Adam after his talk about the idea of including LinkedIn profile information with Salesforce.com.  When a telemarketer calls you out of the blue would you want them knowing your full profile information?  Would you want a sales team to route your lead to a salesman who went to the same undergrad institute and therefore could potentially connect with you better?  How about at a CSR at a call center? 

1. It marks a continued shift to make information easily accessible, any time any where, and as a result is continuing to lower the transaction costs of shopping.  I for one know that if they added these bar codes to the bottom of Us Weekly photos, and my fiancee ad the right phone, our credit card bill would be about $100 more each month
2. It also shows another example of how mobile technologies are going to change all of our lives.  I often think of the current state of the mobile as analogous to the internet in the mid 90s.  In the 90s the first companies to go online basically took their old business model (catalogs) and pasted them statically online and it wasn't for 3 to 5 years until the more innovative models were developed.  Similarly now most companies are simply trying to see how they can make their current service available on a mobile device, instead of being innovative in the space.  This product by Google is a good example of a company thinking outside the box to come up with something unique.

So here we are at my first post and I thought it’d be appropriate to just tell everyone what they can expect from me going forward. 

• First, you can expect short posts with lots of links.  I use my RSS feed daily and have found that I like the short posts pointing me to other interesting stuff the most useful (a la John Battelle’s SearchBlog).  I’ll plan on copying that style here…thanks John.
• Second, you can expect a wide range of topics. Right now I am really interesting entrepreneurship, search engine marketing and mobile technologies form a business perspective…but I also love Boston sports and have a lot of strong opinions on the role of athletics in education, so I’ll be talking about that too. 
• Finally, the truth is I have no idea what you can expect because I don’t know what to expect myself.  I’m currently working on an internship at HubSpot and figured what better way to learn about Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing than to start my own blog.  Will this continue when I get back into the daily grind of business school this spring?  I have no idea…but stay tuned and you’ll find out. 

Are there other things you’d like to hear from me about?  Let me know…