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It’s what you want. The very popular StumbleUpon concept is simple: when you sign up, you provide the service with some of your interests, and you install the neat little toolbar. Once you’ve got the application installed, you can simply begin stumbling and you can tell the system how you feel about the page that was served to you. By clicking on the thumbs up “I like it” button or by clicking on the thumbs-down button, you teach the SU system what content you truly enjoy. By stumbling and sharing your finds to other users, you’re personalizing your own experience and the experience of your peers as well.

The personalization concept — where content is being provided based on your own desires — has proven to be quite successful. Since it was introduced two years ago, StumbleUpon now boasts over 1.8 million users, and is continually expanding. Version 2.90 of the toolbar, which came out earlier this week, is incorporating the relatively new video social search engine that it unveiled in December. StumbleUpon is truly growing…

And so is Digg.

At half the amount of subscribers that StumbleUpon has, Digg is aiming to emulate the SU concept, a recent BusinessWeek article has reported. Hot on the heels of StumbleUpon, Digg (which launched its own video extension five days after StumbleUpon did) is aiming even higher to SU’s core success model: a recommendation tool.

According to Kevin Rose, Digg’s founder who is quoted in the article, “Digg will be smart enough to know what interests you” and it will serve content that fits within the tastes of its users. For current subscribers, this means that Digg will serve content based on the stories users have dugg or buried. If you used the service to promote pages that you truly liked, the Digg system appears to not be much different from StumbleUpon.

More and more companies are involving themselves in what can be an imminent threat (well, perhaps not just yet — and it still depends on who you ask): personalization. Google’s personalized search is being promoted more heavily. As more and more people realize that there are only a few items that may be of interest to them when they search, systems are learning to adapt to user preferences through their own algorithms. As Google explains it, if you’re searching for “dolphin” because you want to learn more about the football team from Miami, you’re not overly concerned with results pertaining to marine life. Depending on the types of pages you visit and the domains upon which these sites are located, Google’s personalized search will rank these pages higher than the undesirable results, thus providing you with a searching experience that like that of no other user. To Google, this is a move provide quality results and reduce the unnecessary clutter.

To make our websites shine through these results and be obvious to the viewer, there will likely be obstacles that we’ll need to overcome. Good content is a necessity. Telling your friends is a good way to get the word out. Promoting these pertinent sites through social search is still going to be very useful.

We’re bordering on a new era, one with incredible challenge and obstacles, but one that does have the end user — you — in mind, and hopefully everyone in all communities will be happy with the results.

Yesterday, Rich Schefren did a packed conference call with more than 1,000 people eager to ask him questions about his new product, the GPS Guidance Profit System.

Pick up the free report he wrote a couple of weeks ago on eliminating your constraints here

Just the free report itself is full of good information that anyone could act on right away.

They got A LOT of answers, and a seminar's worth of actionable content, too. The listeners enjoyed it, and because Rich had a good time doing it, he's ready to do another "short" version of Rich-TV on UStream.

It won't be up for 26 hours this time like the last one a week or so ago.

Rich will be giving away a free GPS Program to someone watching live on Ustream.tv, plus giving out even more constraint-busting advice.

It starts at 1:00pm Eastern time, and going for a while. Then they'll be closing down the Guided Profit System to new enrollments.

I got a ton of advice and information out of the 26 hour webinar, so I'm certain this shorter one will also be a great use of your time.

Use this link to go to Rich's Ustream.tv channel at 1:00pm Eastern time on Thursday… Rich-TV GPS Giveaway on Ustream

Ask any question about GPS and eliminating your constraints that you want. And pick up some ideas from the answers to other people's questions.

Then he'll pick one lucky person from the Ustream viewer roster… and give them access to his Guided Profit System Program… absolutely FREE.

See you on Rich-TV.

Tags: RichSchefren, gps, guided profit system, removing constraints, gps giveaway on ustream, Rich-TV

Editor-in-Chief of Wired, CHRIS ANDERSON says that the future belongs to those that serve the millions of untapped niche markets as well as they serve the masses. Read his manifesto to find out how unlimited shelf space and personalization can revolutionize your business.

Super interesting article in a downloadable .pdf format, this page offers four different "manifestos" on the Long Tail: 

http://changethis.com/search?action=search&query=The+Long+Tail

Prior to taking over Wired in mid-2001, Chris was with The Economist for seven years in London, Hong Kong and New York in various positions, ranging from Technology Editor to US Business Editor. His background is in science, starting with studying physics and doing research at Los Alamos and culminating in six years at the two leading scientific journals, Nature and Science. He lives in Berkeley, California with his wife and four small children. Chris wrote The Long Tail, which first appeared in Wired in October 2004 and then became a book, published by Hyperion on July 11, 2006. An updated version of the original article appeared here<\a> at ChangeThis in December 2004.

Tags: TheLong Tail, Chris Anderson, niche markets, untapped niche markets, revolutionize your business, Wired, The Economist

After reading this article by Russell Wright of ThemeZoom, http://www.theme-zoom.com/167/are-you-putting-content-in-the-wrong-place/,  I realized that I may have set up my sites in the wrong way, using the content in a way that did not help me.  Even Twittering in a way that was not helping me.

I was a member of ThemeZoom when they first introduced their service back in 2005 or early 2006, but I didn't understand a thing.  Since then, I have changed quite a bit, and ThemeZoom seems to have developed their services as well.  I think the people at Themezoom really put out a lot of quality info. Take a look at the article about how content can be scored and placed correctly or incorrectly, as the case may be. For example, much is talked about the importance of researching your online "verticle market" and "keyword clusters".  It's all very scientific and detailed.  No messing around when it comes to marketing.

There are also articles and video instruction  talking about tests they have carried out and are in the process of carrying out, like the difference between using Tube  Mogul and Traffic Geyser.  Russell Wright says that  you will get ranked for keywords with fewer than 500,000 competing pages on Google when you submit a properly tagged video.  That we should only use You Tube videos on our main site if it has relevance, otherwise You Tube videos should be used on your support sites and only HD quality videos should be used on your main sites.  Hmmm - now that's interesting - that there are quality scores associated with the quality of the audio and visual content on your site.  They talk about where to use widgets, about the purpose of your primary website (you USP of course) and that it is the business question you are proposing to answer with your USP that is presented on the main site, that we should not use spun content on primary website, when you use excerpts from books…

The membership they have is called Krakken and is by invitation only.  I'm inviting you:

<a href="http://www.themezoom.com/amember/go.php?r=171&i=10&s=1">By Referral Only - Qualified Candidate Link</a>

                                                                                                                                        Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: Content, Right place for content, content strategy, Russell Wright Themezoom

Today, 01:07 PM

This is a progress report on my participation in the Thirty-Day-Challenge (30 DC): I just wanted to let others know that even if your main site disappears from the SERPS, you can still have a presence representing your main website. This is what happened to me. My main URL disappeared from the SERPS and I was fretting something awful. I checked with the Google diagnostic tool to see what could be wrong, but there is and was  nothing wrong with the site in that respect. (It could do with some good conversion work, among other things.) I continued working on the social networking aspects and lo and behold my URL can be found in the SERPS due to a COMMENT I made in a group! The DIGG position never disappeared. In fact, when the part of my site that was in position one disappeared, the Digg position became #1. Now part of the site is in #1 again, the Digg link is in # 2, and in both the broad phrase match, and in the exact phrase match, there are 3 positions, including the comment. Mind you, I am still very irked about my site disappearing from the SERPS. I will certainly continue to follow the conversation, make those comments and build relationships. In this way, it doesn't really matter if the main URL is in the SERPS or not because I will have many more positions there due to other links from social networking sites. http://friendfeed.com/angelaw

Tags: SERPS, Thirty-Day-Challenge, search engine ranking, disappearance from SERPS, Google, Google diagnostic tool, social networking, URL, commenting, DIGG, Digg link, AngelaWickenberg

Got positions #1 and #2 within 1 hour

Tags: thirty-day-challengeexperiences-from-30-day-challenge got-positions-1-and-2

In June, Google updated Google Trends with numbers and the ability to download results to a spreadsheet. They received a lot of great feedback from agencies and advertisers on how they're using the new version; from identifying new growth markets to optimizing their Google AdWords campaigns.

Today, Google launched Google Insights for Search, a new product designed with the advertiser in mind. It provides more flexibility and functionality for advertisers and marketers to understand search behavior, and adds some cool new features like a world heat map to graphically display search volume and regional interest.

Like Google Trends, you can just type in a search term to see search volume patterns over time, as well as the top related and rising searches. You’ll also have the ability to compare search volume trends across multiple search terms, categories (commonly referred to as verticals), geographic regions, or specific time ranges.

Let's take the example of entering the term apple. You'll notice that the majority of top related and rising searches are associated with the brand Apple.

Google Insights for Search allows you to filter this query by the Food & Drink category, resulting in a dramatically different view of search volume trends and related searches of apple, the fruit. You can also use this filter to compare search terms with the category (for example, apple compared to the Food & Drink category).

Read the entire post here:

http://adwords.blogspot.com/2008/08/announcing-google-insights-for-search.html

Tags: Google_Trends Google_Insights_For_Search Adwords Google_Adwords