Funny Speakers

There’s lots to talk about from the conference – the tips, the tools, the companies that were there, covering everything: SEO, SEM, PPC, social media marketing, link building, content strategy, etc. But what I think I enjoyed the most, aside from running into so many AMAZING people, was that many speakers made me laugh.

I got to the conference late, of course, since I was working on my presentations at the last minute, as I always do. (It’s an illness.) So the first funny speaker I heard was Gil Reich, who never fails to amuse. Then there was Michael King, who flew in from the US to be at SMX! He was hilarious…and educational, all at the same time.

I think that Gil and Michael warmed up the crowd, so it made it relatively easy to get the audience to laugh during my talk – and laugh they did (thank God). And then there was Marty Weintraub. This guy is in his 50s (he told us in his talk!), and has more energy than all my kids combined. He definitely keeps you interested and entertained.

Overall, there was just a good, positive air at the event. Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick), the event chair, of course deserves TONS of credit for taking the leap into the Israeli conference scene in 2008 with the mini SEO conference, SphinnCon. That first get-together was about 150 people, and every year it has grown. Kudos also to all the organizers and sponsors, for making it all happen.

The Story

Lots was tweeted, blogged, presented, photographed, etc. during and after the conference. So I curated a lot of it in the following Storify board. I’ll be updating it as more SMX Israel related info is published.

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Here’s how my Washington Post reading activity showed up in Miriam’s Facebook news feed:

As viewed in Miriam's facebook news feed

Here’s how an aggregation of Miriam’s Facebook friends’ reading activity appears at the top of her news feed (how does it get to be at the top?!):

Facebook Social News Reader in Miriam's news feed

That hidden area on the right are thumbnails of Miriam’s friends next to articles they read.

Is this an example of the beauty of our online social lives, or is it an incredibly aggressive invasion of our privacy?

Social beauty

On the one hand, people get to easily share things they find interesting with their network. Instead of having to go into facebook, or use a social media management tool, to share the articles they like, the Washington Post does that for them. And isn’t that a lot of what we do on social networks?

Massive invasion of privacy

On the other hand, do you really want your Facebook friends seeing EVERYTHING you’re reading? Here are some examples of why this type of automatic sharing could work out badly:

• You’re thinking of getting divorced, and are doing research on divorce laws or recent divorce cases.
• You’re questioning your sexual orientation, and are reading up on what it means to be homosexual and come out of the closet.
• You adore Justin Bieber and read every article about him. But that is best kept under wraps, isn’t it?

This is aside from the fact that you’re also giving these Facebook apps permission to access some of your details. And yes, apps are forever, if you let them be. Answer a questionnaire once about your knowledge of Sesame Street and two years later, that app is still viewing your information (unless you remove it of course, which I explain how to do below).

Also, if you install this app, you can’t see your own posts in your profile! Only your friends can. Which means you can’t remove anything from appearing there. Read an article about how to exorcise demons? It’s in your profile forever.

Massive social chutzpah

These social facebook news readers are clearly win-win for the news sites behind them. Their content gets wider exposure, and assumedly click-throughs. Except…if you see that your friend read an article and you’re interested in reading it too, and click on the article in your facebook news feed, you aren’t taken to the article! Instead, you arrive at the app installation page where it asks you to install it:

Washington Post Social Reader Facebook app installation page

I have to install an app to read your article? You want access to my name and birthday so I can read your stuff? Buh-bye.

We’re very curious… How many people are actually installing these apps in order to see the post? Being forced to add it in order to read an article must deter many. So by strong-arming us, the Washington Post is losing a lot of potential views. Also, you can’t like or comment on these posts, which removes the social aspect of this type of activity. But at least the Washington Post gets to dip directly into many facebook profiles!

Change your settings

So facebook users, beware! Installing an app gives the app owner direct access to lots of your personal information.

If you do install one of these news sharing facebook apps, note that you can change the settings, choosing who can see your posts from it and who can’t. Here is how to do it:

1. Log in to Facebook. In the top right hand corner is a downward facing arrow. Click on it.
2. Click on Account Settings.
3. In the left-hand sidebar click on Apps.
4. Click the Edit button next to the app you want to edit.

Then you’ll see the following:

Washington Post's app settings

It is recommended to once in a while go into your facebook settings and see what apps you’ve installed and remove whatever you don’t use or don’t recognize. You’ll be surprised what’s lurking there.

These facebook apps are sneaky too

Here is the kicker of the Washington Post Social Reader app. I did not sign up for it and suddenly it was there, sharing my reading habits with my network. I seriously don’t remember ever seeing that installation screen. Maybe I clicked on something to install it, but if I did it was not made clear to me at all.

Meanwhile, I had no idea that my reading activity was being shared with others until I looked over at Miriam’s screen (I happen to be Facebook friends with her) and saw this:

What the?!

Surprise Deena!

Wow! The Washington Post and I are BFFs and I didn’t even know it!

What do you think?

So you know what we think about this app but what do you think? Have you seen different news-feed apps that work differently than what I’ve described here? Would you, or do you, use an app of this kind?

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How to embed media in WordPress in a second

If you want to embed, for example, a YouTube video in a post, all you do is paste the URL of the video into the editor, unlink it and save/publish. See our ultimate guide to embedding HTML and iframes in WordPress on WPGarage for more info on how this works.

The problem is that it doesn’t seem to work 100% of the time. Luckily, there’s usually a reason for this. So if you’re having trouble embedding media in your WordPress site, see if the following tips help you out.

1. Your WordPress site isn’t set to enable embeds of this kind.

Whenever you set up a WordPress site, you have the option to allow embeds or not. Make sure you’ve chosen this option.

1. Go to Settings > Media.
2. Under Embeds check the option: “When possible, embed the media content from a URL directly onto the page. For example: links to Flickr and YouTube.”
3. Save changes.

2. You aren’t using the right link

It’s possible you aren’t using the right link. For example, maybe you copied the link of a channel instead of an individual video.

Here is an example of a URL that won’t work:

http://www.youtube.com/illuminea#p/u/1/LlSeZIHroNw

Instead, the URL should look something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlSeZIHroNw

Lets see it work (all I did was un-hyperlink the above link to get the embedded video below):

Man, it’s so easy I could spit!

3. Extra code is messing things up

Maybe extra code is being added to the WordPress editor without you realizing. Try embedding the link into the HTML editor instead of the Visual one. If you see any extra code aside from the link itself, remove it.

4. The YouTube user isn’t allowing embeddings of their media

When someone uploads a video to YouTube, they can choose whether or not others will be able to embed their video around the web. If they chose not to allow it, no matter what you do, you won’t be able to embed it into your site.

Want to know how to change the embedding settings on one of your YouTube videos? Here’s how:

1. Make sure you’re logged into YouTube (with your Google account).
2. Click on the arrow next to your username in the top right-hand corner.
3. Click on My Videos.
4. Click Edit info on the video you want to edit.
5. Scroll down to Embedding and click the arrow next to it in order to see the two options.
6. Choose whether or not external sites will be able to embed your video.
7. Click Save Changes.

Anything else?

These are the problems we’ve found that prevent the awesome WordPress embed function from working. Have you found any other issues that don’t allow you to embed using links in WordPress?

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Feedburner is the only tool available that allows you to measure the number of people subscribed to your feed. It also allows you to offer people an email subscription option, which automatically sends them new posts by email if they subscribe to that option.

In order to measure the feed subscribers via feed reader, you need to redirect your blog’s feed to a Feedburner URL. Most of the time, people use the regular Feedburner URL that looks like feeds.feedburner.com/MyFeed. But you can also have a branded feed URL like http://feeds.illuminea.com/illumineaBlog. Here’s how to do it:

1. Go to http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mybrand and login with your Google account. Copy the higlighted text after CNAME.

2. Go into your cPanel where your domain is hosted and open the Simple DNS Zone Editor:

3. Add a CNAME as follows. In the Name field, type in: feeds In the CNAME field, paste in the highlighted text. The cPanel automatically fills in info to create a subdomain: feeds.thedomain.com. Basically, Google/Feedburner has you set up a subdomain that points to Google’s servers so they can serve the feed on your subdomain.

4. Wait up to 24 hours for propogation to finish. You can tell when it’s finished by going to feeds.yourdomain.com and getting a login page instead of a 404 error page.
5. Go to http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mybrand and fill in your feeds.yourdomain.com where designated on the page.
6. Click Activate.
7. Check to see if it’s working. Your feed should look something like this:  http://feeds.illuminea.com/illumineaBlog
8. Make sure to change the URL everywhere that a link to your RSS Feed appears but note that people can still sign up to your old URL: feeds.feedburner.com/illumineaBlog so you won’t lose out on any followers.

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UPDATE: After posting about the Social Media Workshop, we received requests to give an additional seminar on SEO – search engine optimization. So, we added a One Day Seminar on “SEO – The Fundamentals of Optimizing your Site for Search”.  If you register for both the Social Media Workshop and the One Day SEO Seminar, you’ll get a 15% discount on both!

To register, click here

About the workshop

We will be covering:

• Key concepts of social media and online marketing
• Search engine optimization and why it’s important for social media marketing
• Identifying goals and audience
• How to use Twitter for marketing: Setting up profiles that work for business, building up community, promoting your profile, what and how to write, monitoring, measuring, the best tools, etc.
• Getting the most out of LinkedIn: Using your personal profile to achieve business goals, customizing your company page, understanding the power of LinkedIn groups and Questions
• YouTube: Why YouTube is a huge opportunity, creating and optimizing your YouTube channel, optimizing your YouTube videos, growing your community
• Using Facebook for business: Profiles, Pages, Groups, Questions. how to analyze Facebook Insights
• Managing your web presence: How to manage your social profiles, content, and campaigns, Social media dashboard options and setting up your dashboard, Monitoring tools
• Getting your site ready for social media activity: Optimization, capturing leads, shareability, email marketing, analytics, social buttons

View the full workshop schedule here and register

Lecturer: Miriam Schwab
This workshop will be taught by Miriam Schwab, the Friendly CEO of illuminea, who is recognized as a leading developer on the WordPress platform and regularly lectures and serves as a web marketing evangelist and resource to the broader internet community.

To see a list of the conferences and events that Miriam has spoken at, click here

Workshop details

Dates: July 20, 27, August 3, 2011 from 9:30am-1:30pm

Location: Tel Aviv area (Exact location to be announced)

Last day to register: July 13, 2011

The workshop will be taught in English.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions: info@illuminea.com

To register, click here

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This person wanted to target people who liked the facebook Page of a particular chain of stores in Israel. This brand has an official Page on facebook, as well as a bunch of unofficial ones. Their official page alone has over 14,000 fans, yet when the person selected that Page under Likes and Interests in the Facebook Ad dashboard, they were told that the estimated reach was less than 20 people. I tested this out, and the results were the same, no matter what country or age group I entered (including all ages):

I was determined to get to the bottom of this, so I started running a bunch of tests. Eventually I realized the following:

If the title of a facebook Page has Hebrew in it, the Estimated Reach number is much lower than the number of fans. In fact, the number is always 20 or less – this goes for sites with 50,000 fans and up. And having English and Hebrew in the title doesn’t help. However, if a Page’s title is in English, even if the content is completely in Hebrew the Estimated Reach is in line with the number of fans of the Page.

I wanted to see if this is a problem with non-latin languages in general on facebook, so I decided to test a page with Arabic in the title: Al Jazeera Channel. The Page has over 1.2 million fans. I tested the Reach for this channel in a bunch of countries with large Arabic speaking populations: Israel, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, United States, United Kingdom, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt. The Estimated Reach for those countries ranged from 20 to 180 at the most. When I added all these countries, the estimated reach maxed out at 240 people, which doesn’t really make sense.

So unless I’m missing something, which could be, it seems that Facebook Ads have a problem with Facebook Pages with titles in Hebrew or Arabic. Which makes you wonder if there are any other issues with Pages with titles that include Hebrew, Arabic, or possibly other non-latin languages like Chinese or Russian. And if that’s the case, maybe Page owners should use English titles wherever possible for now.

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But if you read through his post, it seems clear that he actually thinks that social media activity is important, he just doesn’t like the way it’s often done: he doesn’t like when marketers aren’t transparent, are irrelevant, can’t write, and don’t know their customer. Oh, and he also thinks marketers shouldn’t forget about the end goal of making money while engaged in all the social media coolness. Well, anyone who conducts marketing activities like that is not only a poor social media marketer; they are a terrible marketing professional and should find another profession. ASAP.

So let’s assume that most people involved in social media marketing on a professional level have half a brain and understand the basics of marketing: if the goal of marketing is to make money, is social media the way to go? Studies repeatedly show that the online marketing activities with the best ROI are search engine optimization (SEO) and email marketing. Social media comes in way after them. So how is the social media frenzy justified?

Here’s how:

Social Media is the new Website

It is hard to prove that websites make money for companies. I don’t mean ecommerce sites, but sites that say who the company is, what they do, etc. Yes, these types of websites can be optimized for conversions, but in many cases they’re not. And even if they are, do the few clients who were directly and measurably converted by the website (i.e. they contacted the company via a form on the site and eventually became a customer) justify the costs of maintaining a good corporate site? The answer is yes: websites are important, and it’s accepted that every company and organization needs one. The reason for that is that it serves an important supportive role in sales – it’s an important stage that potential customers go through to assess whether a company is right for them. Social media marketing is approaching that same level – an important supportive element in marketing and sales, that potential customers, and existing customers, seek out.

Social Media Makes SEO and Email Marketing Better

Social media activity is increasingly being shown to be an important signal in a site’s ranking; it can also be a relatively large source of traffic to a site (which is generally the goal of SEO – to increase traffic to a site). Social media “outposts” can also help you increase your email marketing mailing list by encouraging people to sign up, and sharing past newsletters.

Social Media is the New “New”

Social media marketing is so new, and changing all the time (thanks facebook), that it’s impossible to know where it’s headed and what the potential really is. The only way to find out is to test, and then test some more. Like in every other area of online marketing, discovering new opportunities demands a few brave souls who are willing to risk their marketing budget and take the plunge. They’re definitely not idiots: they’re trailblazers. They should be applauded, not ridiculed. This is a necessary part of innovation.

Social media is not just a cool new toy – it’s a new and important part of the web. And people who understand it – as part of the online marketing mix – will be hired.

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Facebook is rolling out some major changes to how Pages work. Some are good, some not. The good changes include the new layout of facebook Pages with the tabs on the left sidebar instead of at the top, and, starting March 11, 2011, the ability to use iframes, HTML, Javascript and CSS without the FBML App! This is going to totally change how you can develop facebook Pages! Party time!

One of the recent changes in the “not so great” category is facebook’s decision to remove the “Suggest to Friends” link on facebook Pages. Admins of a page can still access this feature in the Edit Page area, but fans cannot. So, we’ve been flooded with requests to add an Invite Friends Tab to facebook Pages.  Here are the steps for how to create the Invite Friends Tab on a facebook Page, but keep in mind that as of March 11, 2011, facebook will be deprecating the FBML App.

1. Go to  Static FBML App and click on Add to Page in the top left corner of the page. You will then see a list of your facebook pages. Click “Add to Page” to add the application.
2. FBML is now added to your page.
3. Go to the facebook Page you’re working on and click Edit Page.
4. Click on Apps.
5. Click on the FBML Apps and click on Go to App.
6. Give the Tab a title like “Suggest to Friends.”
7. Copy and Paste the below code replacing illuminea with your organization.
   Important! The action URL on line 3 of the code MUST be http://example.com and NOT http://www.example.com. No WWW welcome at this party.
   
   If you don’t follow these rules, you will get an error that says “Sorry, your request could not be processed. Please try again.”

   <fb:request-form
   method="post"
   action="http://facebook.com/illuminea"
   type="illuminea"
   invite="true"
   content="Connect with iluminea
   <fb:req-choice url=http://www.facebook.com/illuminea label='Go' /> ">
   <fb:multi-friend-selector actiontext="Invite your friends to connect with illuminea" rows="3" cols="3" showborder="true" />
   </fb:request-form>

8. Save Changes.
9. Go to Edit Page > Apps > Click on the Suggest to Friends App you created > Go to Edit Settings and click “Add” where it says Available (see screenshot).
   
10. You can see this in action on illuminea’s facebook Page.
11. When your friend receives the invitation it says “Friend has invited you to “Static FBML”. Not so pretty so for now make sure your message text is really good! I hope there will be a better solution for this.
    

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SphinnCon is coming back to Israel on January 9, 2011, and it’s a conference that I think any one who is serious about search marketing should seriously consider attending.

What is SphinnCon?

Have you ever heard of SMX? Well, SMX (Search Marketing Expo) is “the [my bold] original and best search marketing event.” We in Israel are lucky since SphinnCon is a unique SMX-related event that takes place outside of the US, and as far as I know it so far has only happened here.

SphinnCon Israel is the premier networking event designed for SEOs, SEMs, SMOs and affiliate marketers to exchange ideas, influence the industry and build their networks. Get a full day of sessions and keynotes (and snacks) from some of the industry’s leading experts, from Israel and abroad. For example, this year’s speakers include Sam Michaelson from Five Blocks (who’s always entertaining), Olivier Amar from PointUp Media, Branko Rihtman (active on Twitter as @neyne) from Whiteweb, Dixon Jones from Receptional Ltd., Eli Feldblum from RankAbove, Kevin Gibbons from SEOptimise, and more. Chris Sherman, the Executive Editor Search Engine Land & President of Searchwise, is also coming, which is cool, along with Kaspar Szymanski, Google Search Quality Strategist from Google Dublin Office. What a lineup!

The whole thing is being programmed by the awesome Barry Schwartz (also known as @RustyBrick), who is a leading personality in the world of search engine marketing thanks to his work at RustyBrick, his very popular site The Search Engine Roundtable (which just got a site redo on a custom CMS – check it out), and his multitudinous writings on Search Engine Land.

(I’ve always wanted to use the word “multitudinous” and now I have. Success.)

And I’m speaking there…

I’m speaking on the first and last panels at the conference: at 9 am on SEO Tips, and at 4:30 pm I’m moderating the panel on Social Media in SEM & Search. Which basically means I’ll be there all day! See the full schedule.

How to register

If all of this sounds good, you can register here. Attendance costs $100, which is not cheap for an Israeli conference, but considering it’s an SMX conference, and the leading people from the industry who are coming from overseas and Israel, and how useful and enjoyable the last SphinnCons were (see my posts reviewing the previous SphinnCon events), it’s worth considering.

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Why WordPress?

WordPress is an open source Content Management System (CMS). Basically this means that regular people like you and me can, relatively very easily, build and tweak websites that are cool, clear, professional and unique.

What is the course exactly?

When: Starts Feb. 15, 2011. 9:30am-1:30pm Tuesdays for 8 weeks.

Where: Our office in Jerusalem

What: Here is the course outline:

1. HTML
2. CSS
3. How do websites and internet work? (And how to get mine to work)
4. Familiarizing yourself with WordPress part 1
5. Familiarizing yourself with WordPress part 2
6. Working with template files
7. Programming 101
8. Social networks, SEO, RSS…

Who’s teaching? Us, the illuminea team, will be teaching the course. We are the ones who work with WordPress every day and are very excited to share our knowledge with others!

Price: The course is 4,300 NIS though you’ll get a 10% discount if you sign up before January 13 and a 15% discount if you’re already an illuminea client. You will receive three months free hosting of your website and a certificate at the end.

Language

We decided that we’ll first offer the course in Hebrew. You can see our landing page for the course here.

Please let us know if you have any questions and/or if you may be interested in attending this or a different course later on in English.

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Logic might tell you that you should be able to comment on a photo you were tagged in but actually that is not what gives you the ability to comment. What will allow you to partake in discussions under a photograph with your lovely face in it is if you “Like” or are Facebook friends with the person or entity that posted the photo on Facebook.

So that’s what wasn’t working!

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Yesterday I attended the Cellcom Media Conference at Tel Aviv University. I’m assuming that Cellcom produces this mega event every year in order to strengthen its brand perception in the market. They almost managed to do that at yesterday’s event – if only they hadn’t ended up acting so cellphone-company-ish at the end.

Free lunch, great speakers: so far so good

Cellcom, one of Israel’s big-three cellphone companies, holds this conference every year, and this was the third one. It’s the first time I was invited to attend this free event and when I saw that Dennis Crowley from Foursquare was speaking, I jumped on the opportunity to hear him in person.

I got there for lunch (after getting lost – WITH my GPS), and was completely overwhelmed. The lobby was full of people swarming around (the Foursquare Swarm badge awarded to conference attendees was fitting) and lining up to get lunch. I could barely find a place to just stand and have a phone call without getting bumped. Cellcom had obviously gone all out, with one of the nicest venues I’ve seen for a conference, an amazing lunch, about 1000 participants, and top-level speakers they flew in from overseas.

Despite the crowd I did manage to run into a few people I knew, who told me that the morning sessions were mostly good. These sessions included Jeremy Gutsche, founder of TrendHunter.com; Phil McKinney, CTO for HP’s Personal Systems Group; Kahina van Dyke, EVP and General Manager at MasterCard (at least they had one woman speaker); and Anthony E. Zuiker the creator and producer of the television series CSI.

Chad Stoller speaking at Cellcom Media Conference

After lunch we all filed in to the hall for the next lectures. The first speaker, Chad Stoller from BBDO, was really good and managed to keep his cool and sense of humor despite major technical issues with the projector. He spoke about how social media is changing the world of advertising, and showed the example of how BBDO implemented a facebook connection on BlueRay disks for the popular TV series Trueblood that allowed users to interact with the show and share scenes with friends on facebook. I particularly liked this idea of his: We used to gather then share – i.e. invite everyone over to see our photos. Now we share then gather – i.e. we post stuff online, and people gather around it.

Piers Fawkes speaking at Cellcom Media Conference

Next we had Piers Fawkes from PSFK, a highly influential guy from a highly influential trends and research group. He spoke to us (in a lovely British accent) about ways that retailers are integrating social media in their marketing activities. He brought some interesting examples, but overall I was generally too busy being appalled by the obsessive shopping culture in the US, where young girls’ main weekend activities are shopping and then showing people their plunder on YouTube. And we wonder why there aren’t more women in upper management, or why the US hasn’t had a female president. Yuck.

Cellcom needs to learn some social media lessons

During Piers’ talk I checked twitter to see what people were saying about the conference, and saw the following from Dvir Reznik:

http://twitter.com/#!/dvirreznik/status/4496142742061056

Apparently, Dennis Crowley wasn’t actually showing up at the conference – he was to speak via video conference.

Here’s what Crowley had to say about this:

http://twitter.com/#!/dens/status/4511795494522880

Foursquare's Dennis Crowley on video at Cellcom Conference

Having a speaker via videoconference is totally legitimate. But at least let people know – I mean, we’re all going to realize what’s really happening at some point. Cellcom listed Crowley with the rest of their speakers, so we all assumed that he’d be speaking in person too. This type of behavior on the side of Cellcom was inconsiderate and not-quite-honest. This type of not-quite-honestness reminded me, and others, of the many encounters we’ve had with Israel’s not-quite-honest cellphone companies:

http://twitter.com/#!/itamarw/status/4513870500597760

An overriding theme of the conference was social media. And overall, the conference was pretty good on that level: they invited “influencers” (there were many impressive people there) to a free conference, treated us all really well and gave us great content. But not being up front about Crowley was a fashla. Why not just tell it like it is? In the end, we felt like we’d been had.

Yaron Orenstein summed it up well on facebook (my translation from Hebrew):

Cellcom, who knew that Crowley would draw a lot of interest, put his talk at the end of the day in order to “secure” a captive audience. This is without doubt demeaning and exploitative behavior on the side of Cellcom.

I still appreciated the conference, so thank you Cellcom. I really enjoyed it. But maybe in the future, try to adopt the transparent style of social media that was so expounded upon all day, and don’t try to hide things, k?

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My how the mighty have fallen. Wait, quite a lot of mighty have fallen lately. There’s the monstrous financial firms on Wall Street that came tumbling down at the beginning of the latest economic crisis. How about Apple overtaking Microsoft in May as the world’s most valuable technology company? Or Blockbuster – remember them (we still have them here – till Netflix comes to Israel…we’re waiting)? Unable to keep up with Netflix their stock was recently delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. And then of course there’s Amazon, the online book store that everybody said would never beat their brick-and-mortar competitors. Etc.

Warren Buffett and Companies with “Moats”

All of these companies were “too big to fail.” And yet they did fail – spectacularly. Why?

Warren Buffett talks about how he likes to invest in companies that have a “moat” around them. What he means is that they are so strong and well defended, their competitors can’t threaten them. These moats should preferably surround a fancy castle, which is run by an honest, hard-working and able duke. If the moat is big and full of alligators, even better. See the video below where Buffett expands upon this idea during a talk to MBA students in Canada (it’s worth watching all 10 videos – Buffett’s awesome):

But note how he says that companies need to defend their moats. Just because you have a moat, you can’t sit back on your laurels and assume you’ve won. Defending the moat involves innovating, and making the right management and business decisions.

Dear Israel: please have mercy on small businesses

Aside from that lesson, there’s one more lesson that I wish governments, particularly Israel’s, would heed: don’t put all your eggs in the big-business basket. Governments and banks tend to favor the big guys – with credit and tenders and good interest rates and overlooking accounting inconsistencies. But there’s no mercy for the small business. Between all the taxes, the lack of financing and the “take-no-prisoners” attitude, it’s a tough ride. And yet it’s known that small businesses employ the most people in our economy.

So elected representatives: please consider going easier on small businesses. We are, after all, the lifeblood of the economy.

Yahoo!’s demise in pictures

To sum this all up, here’s a snazzy infographic depicting the rise and fall of Yahoo!:

Research by Scores.org

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Yeah right.

If you were to follow all those rules, I think you’d end up spending the rest of your life guessing and retrieving your passwords.

Lost cause, ay?

But maybe there is a good solution now. I read a blog post on Digital Inspiration called Choosing Different Passwords for Different Websites. They showed this cute, short video by Mozilla that gives tips on how to create safe passwords.

In this video they tell us that in order to make a strong password, you take the following steps:

1. Pick a phrase that’s easy to remember. For example: What’s love got to do with it?
2. Change any possible words to numbers: What’s love got 2 do with it?
3. Use the first letter of each word: Wlg2dwi?
4. Add some special characters: ###Wlg2dwi?$$$ – This is a customizable password.
5. Add a prefix or suffix made from the name of the website. So, for Facebook: ###Wlg2dwi?$$$FB

Could these tips alleviate the need to have a place where you save all your passwords? Honestly, I have the feeling most of us are too lazy to actually take their advice, but it does seem to be good advice.

Will you try to implement these rules to your passwords?

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What are the changes?

It actually took me around a week to find out about the changes but once I found out, it was clear as day that something was fishy in Facebook land.

I woke up and found my email inbox all but flooded with messages mainly from strangers that looked something like this:

Turned out that Facebook had made the following quite anthropologically interesting change:

People can now add their Facebook friends to groups without the friend’s permission.

To be clear, in general, there is almost nothing I’d ever want to do to anyone without their permission. And now, if I ever want to invite someone to a Facebook group, I am basically “forced” to force them into the group. No more suggestions. That would just be too civil, wouldn’t it?

The new automatic settings

Wait. It gets more amusing (and then more amusing). So now this person is in a group without even being aware of it. Now to add to the pushiness, the automatic notification setting is that members of Facebook groups receive messages to their email every time someone posts or comments there. Every time.

That explained all the emails I’d received. Mind you, 99% of them were not about the group but instead attacks on the creator of the group for adding all of us without our permission. (I stood up for him, explaining that it wasn’t his fault, but Facebook’s fault. Aren’t I kind?)

As for this notifications setting, it’s very easy to change but you’ve gotta be on the ball or else it’s very annoying. You just click on “Edit Settings” in the upper right-hand corner of the page when you’re in the group, then a window pops up and you edit it as you wish.

The grand finale – I’ll never ever forgive you!

Now, ready for this? This is the other end of the new ability to add people without their permission.

If my lovely friend added me to a group and I decided I am not interested in that group, I can opt out. That makes sense. The crazy part is that this means that my possibly-well-meaning friend will never be allowed to add me to another group again. Ever!

I must say that this part of the new set-up makes me think that whoever was behind it has super unhealthy personal relationships. Because seriously, assuming I am not on bad terms with any of my Facebook friends (I hope I’d remove anyone with whom I don’t want to be communicating at all), why would I want this to be so final? I probably opted out just because the group is not of interest to me. That doesn’t mean I never want my friend to be able to recommend any group to me ever again!

This, of course, is not to mention the fact that if, to begin with, the friend was sending me a suggestion instead of a forced joining, this wouldn’t even be an issue.

This change is actually childish, though even children usually only talk like that (“I never want to play with you again!”) and then 10 minutes later they’re playing as if nothing happened.

I do wish I wasn’t married to Facebook

So, those are some of the latest changes. I read a seriously lol-ful blog post about these changes by Danny Sullivan. The title is too long to quote here (I’d have to start paying for real estate) but it’s a great story about someone (true story) who was added to some highly embarrassing group just to prove the point I’m trying to prove here (that Facebook Groups are evil, of course).

Facebook so often does things that are so unfriendly that an urge arises from deep within me to leave Facebook. And then I remember… Too bad I have close to 90 photo albums and so much other information there. (I would absolutely love to have a way to download all my info from Facebook so I have it somewhere other than there.)

So instead of wishing I could leave, I just wish that Facebook would head on down to someone else’s office, say, Google, and ask them for some tips on how to make changes that gently fall into place and make the user’s experience just that much more pleasant and fun, instead of making changes that sort of slap you in the Face and make you wish you could take the Book and slap them back.

P.S. All of this is not to mention that really Facebook should take the pluses of groups and the pluses of pages and just put them together into one. But that’s for another post.

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This venture is win-win for Automattic and for the bloggers on WordPress.com. Automattic is showing the love to its bloggers, by giving them the opportunity to get more exposure for their posts. This encourages bloggers to open blogs on WordPress.com and stay there, which is good for Automattic since many of those bloggers are or may become paying customers.

Darnell Clayton over at the Blog Herald wonders whether Automattic will open up the site to self-hosted WordPress users. I can’t see that happening since I think the point of this is to support the WordPress.com community. However, maybe there’s an opportunity here for someone to start a site like this for WordPress.org users…

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This is an important end to a serious usage barrier that existed until now for PayPal in Israel. Israeli merchants couldn’t really use PayPal as long as the interface for customers was in English, and it certainly makes life easier for them in terms of setting up their accounts.

It’s kind of funny that PayPal released a Hebrew version, since last week I gave a lecture to a group of Gush Katif evacuees on how to use PayPal in order to sell their art to a wider market. (Fact: unemployment in Gush Katif hovered around 0%. Since the Jewish residents were removed from the area, their employment rate is around 30%.) The group did not speak English, and found the English interface to be daunting. I told them that PayPal had mentioned plans to make PayPal Hebrew, but I didn’t foresee that happening any time soon. Nice to see I was wrong.

Here’s my presentation (in Hebrew, with English screenshots), which is a basic intro to getting started with ecommerce and PayPal:

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For those of you interested in the WordPress side of things, the calendar is running on a nifty premium plugin. It took quite a bit of tweaking to get it running properly, but the plugin’s creators were very helpful, and we’re quite happy with the results. (Miriam plans to do a plugin review on WPGarage.com.)

You’ll see that there is the calendar view of events, and a list view. If you click through to specific events from either of these views, you’ll see all the information related to the event: date, time, place, and relevant pictures and multimedia.

The calendar view on our Israel business and hitech events calendar

This is an exciting upgrade for us since we’ve had a popular though quite lo-tech calendar on our site for quite a while now. We’re very happy to offer you a much easier to view and easier to use version of the same, useful information.

Check out all the cool features, and if you have any events you’d like us to add to the calendar, please send them to info@illuminea.com. Enjoy!

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Inbal Hotel – the first in their field

Inbal Hotel Facebook photo contest

It’s easy to jump on the social media bandwagon once it’s already moving, but to be the first to get the bandwagon going in your field can feel a little daunting. As far as I know, the Inbal, a hotel in Jerusalem, is the first Israeli hotel to really go all the way, social media speaking. From their gung-ho presence “all over” Facebook and Twitter, it’s easily apparent that Ruth Waiman, the enthusiastic Executive Assistant along with Online Marketing Manager Pinny Orzach, the SEO/SEM person, have been given the OK to really give social media a try.

It really is a risk when a company decides to put a substantial amount of employee hours towards a social media presence. There could be growing pains when a conventional company puts itself out there in the world of social media. Often there is a slight image change as the company shows itself to be more hip and young through their social media presence.

You’ve got to be at least a little creative and really quite proactive to keep your social media presence alive and well. It’s not just about posting, “The chef is now cooking duck for dinner.” It’s about being cool, fun and interactive.

The Inbal Hotel’s latest photograph competition is exactly that – cool, fun and interactive. Actually, the beauty of their competition is that it isn’t about the Inbal. It’s about Jerusalem. You can enter the competition by posting up to three photographs you’ve taken of Jerusalem on their Facebook wall. At the end of October the best photograph will be chosen and the winner will get a night for two at the hotel.

When I wrote to Ruth about their latest contest, she explained:

To further boost our interactions on Facebook on both English and Hebrew walls, the photo competition was launched and has been receiving enthusiastic feedback from the outset.

Having now received close to 80 photos on the combined pages, we’ve definitely noticed an increase of fans and interactions and are hoping to involve external photography professionals for the judging due to take place early next month.

Ruth also mentioned all the events they’ve been hosting at the hotel, including the WordCamp afterparty (which we, as the WordCamp organizers, are really grateful for) at the beginning of September.

Nefesh B’Nefesh’s “This is my Israel” Campaign

Nefesh B'Nefesh This is My Israel campaign

Slightly before the Inbal’s competition commenced, Nefesh B’Nefesh (NBN), the organization that supports Jews who move to Israel, started a photo contest on their facebook page. To participate in this competition, people were requested to take a picture of themselves holding a sign that says “This is my ISRAEL” somewhere in Israel. The place where they are photographed should be one that they see as truly representing Israel for them.

Also, a fun campaign that is not about the actual organization behind the campaign, but instead about “you” and Israel.

What a wonderful use of social media to get people involved in an organization and, of course, more connected to each other and Israel.

It is currently voting time on the NBN campaign so you can go to the album and click “like” on your favourites. The winning photographer will receive a Flip video camera. Sweet.

Goals and drawbacks

The main goals of campaigns of this kind are exposure and building a certain image and relationship with your followers. As long as your campaign really is, as I said, fun, cool and interactive, and not all about you, the image and relationship aspects will probably be fine. The only problem with these types of contests is that if you want to participate in the contest, you might hesitate telling others about it since the last thing you need is more competition!

(Of course that brings up the question, why am I writing about it here if I plan on entering the Inbal contest? I suppose my blogging addiction is stronger than my “I need to win” attitude.)

Otherwise, both of these contests are a great and fun use of Facebook.

And here are my pictures

So yes, I plan to enter three of my pictures in the Inbal competition. Here are the photographs I’m considering. Which ones do you think could be winners? Help me choose! I really could use a night in a fancy hotel.

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I was recently looking at a post on LinkedIn, and I noticed something I had never noticed before: underneath the poster’s profile picture is a link that allows me to “follow” them.

Follow? What is this, twitter?

I remember when LinkedIn announced that companies can now be followed. That kind of makes sense, since companies are entities. But I had never noticed the follow-people functionality, and I don’t love it.

LinkedIn is about quality

I like that every social network has its own unique flavor. Aside from the varying features of each network, I build different types of relationships in different ways on each social network. On twitter, I’m pretty open to following anyone I think has related interests, and of course anyone can follow me if they choose. On facebook, I’ve become more open about who I approve as a friend and I don’t actually have to have met them previously. But I still won’t confirm friendship with people who don’t seem to have anything in common with me (common being a very loose term – could apply to geographical location, interests, etc.) or who seem shady.

LinkedIn is the last remaining place on the web where I value quality over quantity. My connections there only consist of people I’ve met, whether on- or off-line, or with whom I’m building a business relationship. [Side rant: I don’t understand people who don’t know me and send me the default LinkedIn introduction message of “I’d like to add you to my professional network.” Take a  minute and introduce yourself, tell me why you want to connect, or where we’ve met!]

I think that this type of quality vs. quantity approach to LinkedIn is what gives anyone’s network there value. For example, a big part of LinkedIn is introducing people. If I don’t really know the people in my network, I can’t introduce them to others, and that reduces the value of my network. If I don’t really have a relationship with my connections, then they’re just numbers.

And that’s why I think adding follow functionality is inappropriate for LinkedIn. One-directional relationships there are not part of what LinkedIn networking is about. The value of connections there is when they’re mutual and people can use those connections to build and develop serious business relationships.

And besides: why does every network have to be a twitter wannabe? Yes, there are cool things about twitter, but come on. A little less copy-catting, and a little more innovating please.

How to see who you’re following, and who’s following you, on LinkedIn

Now that we know that this functionality exists in LinkedIn, You can manage all your followers and followings on LinkedIn as follows:

1. Click on Groups on the top navigation bar in LinkedIn.
2. From the tabs that appear on the top of the page, select Following.
   
3. You’ll see in the top-left corner of the page a list of links, including “People I’m Following” and “My Followers.”
   
4. Click on either of those links to see who you’re following, and who’s following you. You’ll notice that under each person, you have the option to follow/unfollow, and to get email alerts:
   
   If you choose to get email alerts about a person, you’ll get an email every time they do anything on LinkedIn. This is a good feature if you really want to keep a close eye on someone, but not if you just want to be connected.

LinkedIn automatically sets you to follow all your connections, and for your connections to follow you – that’s why you’ll see that you’re already following quite a lot of people.

So now you know how to manage following on LinkedIn. What do you think – is this a useful feature, or just another example of twitter wannabe syndrome?

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