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Use the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine to Completely Scrub Your Internet Presence


Tuesday January 26, 2010

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Web 2.0 and social networking may not be for everyone! Living in a world of “avatars” and mood status updates is not as important to some people as it is others. One finds this out after they have already taken the time to set up detailed accounts about themselves. Thousands of people have found that closing a Facebook, Myspace, or LinkedIn account isn’t the easiest task. Sure you can turn your account off or deactivate it, but all of your personal information and pretty much everything you have typed in is archived somewhere along the vast information highway. Killing one’s virtual self has been quite a burden, almost equal to the burden of living it. So then, how does one commit virtual suicide?

Now, you can use the Web 2.0 suicide machine to completely scrub your Internet presence. The program will use the log in information you provide and go through all your social networking accounts deleting your existence. “Suicide Machine has assisted more than 1,000 virtual deaths, severing more than 80,500 friendships on Facebook and removing some 276,000 tweets from Twitter”, according to TIME Magazine. Suicide Machine is so popular that thousands of people are waiting their turn for their own “cyberoffing”. “Our server is so busy handling the requests,” says Suicide Machine co-creator Walter Langelaar. Whether for a good or bad, there is no turning back or second chances at life; once you have committed to the deletion it will take nothing short of an act from God to reverse the procedure. When the suicide process is complete you’ll receive a “cybermemorial” on the site. “RIP, 2.0. We’ll miss you”.

Facebook, so far is the only social network in up in arms about this new service and feels that the company is breaking the law “citing violation of users privacy”, which is impossible because the individuals voluntarily submit their information to Suicide Machine; LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter have not yet publicly made a comment about Suicide Machine. Earlier this month Facebook blocked Suicide Machine from accessing its site. However, that has not slowed down Suicide Machine’s creators, the euthanasia goes on. “Compared to the more than 350 million users [on Facebook], we think deleting a few hundred is not very impressive, but they picked up on it as a potential threat”, says Langelaar.

If people are waiting in line to have their Internet lives deleted for good, then it will be interesting to see if the trend continues. So many people open social networking accounts and never once go back online to use them, so then deletion makes sense in that they would no longer want their information out there.

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Wordmark for Twitter logoWordmark for Twitter logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What is it about Twitter? A simple question, a simple program, a complex answer – maybe even unexplainable. If you were to type “twitter” into a Wikipedia field you would find this: “Twitter is a free social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications”. If you have a basic understanding of the World Wide Web today you probably understand words like blogging, add a micro- to the beginning and you have tiny blog posts, called Tweets. Simple, Right! What isn’t so simple is why one would ever want to broadcast short transmissions about their day-to-day activities; why would I want to ask questions, and take interest in what a total stranger is doing with their life?

Twitter has been around since 2006, it quietly gained steam at first while people figured out its potential and spread the word. Twitter grew exponentially worldwide and although it has slowed down in the last year, its user numbers are in the millions! Twitter is a tool for the 21st century speeding up the flow of information, allowing people to tap literally into the resources of the entire world. Twitter has no time zone, no deadlines; it is not bound by conventionality! We don’t have to check our favorite news websites to know when a story has “dropped” anymore, no more one sentence emails either – Send a Tweet! Web 2.0 is about life, interaction and feeling like the impossible is possible; the World Wide Web is alive and constantly expanding, now it even has a voice.

Can anyone explain why Twitter has been so successful in such a short period of time? Maybe not, but I do know that in general people want to feel like they have a voice; now, everyone can guarantee an audience, hopefully a full house. The fact that Bill Gates signed on board yesterday says a lot. In eight hours he had over a 100,000 followers!

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It seems it is almost impossible to keep abreast of all the SMO and SEO news. You can scan the headlines on Google, Yahoo, your favorite newspaper or tech magazine and the amount of information is astounding. Just today I again realized I have an account with Google Reader which automatically sends me more information. I signed in and saw my Google Reader inbox had 851 items! I guess you now know I have been too busy for Google Reader. But this post is not about the Google Reader, it is about how to keep our Webconsuls’ clients abreast of internet marketing news. Turns out Webconsuls set up SMO and SEO news feeds for you and our clients over two years ago. So again I ask the proverbial question: Is anybody “listening” or in this case reading?

The experts keep talking about Twitter. I have a Twitter account, I follow and am followed; however, there are a few things about Twitter that annoy me. Today I will just mention two: (a) some people provide TMI (too much information) or should I say information that is redundant (since they have more than one account) and useless information; (b) it often takes two to three clicks to get to the meat of the message. Let me give you a real life example. Today I signed into my Twitter account around 6:30AM (MST). I read a Tweet that said: “6 Reasons to Embrace Social Media Today Web 2.0 Journal”. So I clicked on the link, but instead of being taken directly to the article I was taken to a TweetMeMe page that listed 65 Twitterers who had RT (retweeted) this article. I then click on the original link and I am taken to a blog post by Web 2.0 Journal. I read the article, it was interesting, but didn’t really provide too much new information, it was more one writer’s opinion. Just like my blog post today, is basically my opinion.

Here is my advice for today. If you want to go to one place and read the headlines for SMO, then I invite you to visit Webconsuls News Page. There you will find the current SMO headlines and you only have to click once!

P.S. If you want to find me on Twitter, click here.

P.P.S. As always, let me know what you think.
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The key to managing crisis is to keep an eye on the long term, while you’re dancing in the flames.

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished, That will be the beginning. – Louis L’Amour, A special congrats to Dick & Francene for choosing the right partner.

What’s Next? The Current Financial Crisis, The Ultimate Reboot & Homo Evolutis.

The Current Financial Crisis? Stop Evolving, Stop Growing. The Ultimate reboot is at hand.

I would argue that we are already living in the time of the ultimate reboot and Homo Evolutus. You can see those people all around you. Notice the kinds of tech that you or your friends are now using, Facebook, iPhones, and bluetooth headsets. Some people are evolving right before our very eyes.

This same evolution is going on with the information that we use, as it is moving to the cloud where our devices are just the access points to this info.

The sweet spot is the chatty innovator who is using your product or service and talking about it on the internets. These people are aware of what is going on because they are learning on the fly how to digest this deluge of information.

Does your site have a, blog, an RSS feed, video, an audio podcast? If it does great! You are feeding these innovators the information they want in a way they find usable, if not you are still living in a Web 1.0 world.

Web 2.0 is a phrase that we see bantered around all the time. To me a Web 2.0 website gives me the tools to Follow, and Interact with, the information that is being produced by the site, Either from the site owners themselves ( Like this blog ) or via user generated content, think Digg or Youtube.

Watch this scary and at the same time inspiring Ted Talk, that will point out the fires we are dancing thru today, and new ideas that are forming the basis of our tomorrows.

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To file or to label? That is the question.

I enjoy reading productivity and organization books and blogs. This does not mean I always take the advice, but I do have a curiosity about how other people get things done. We all experience different demands, there is no single solution for any of us. Productivity gurus and email management specialist recommend using labels and not a file based system. Files are cumbersome and often take more energy and effort to maintain, while labeling is efficient and does not impede work flow.

What I want to share with you is the change I have made within my gmail account. I was terribly resistant to this change because as my post title confesses … I am a chronic filer. Filing is what I know. Even though I had gmail, a web-based solution, I was still using Outlook to sort and file email.

Trusting my email to a label based system using gmail’s search function seemed scary but I am finding it to be far superior. I have shed my Outlook program and am working only within the gmail interface.

What I am finding is that the opportunity to file an email in two different categories is a great asset. How often have you wanted an email in more than one place as a reference or a reminder? Labels give me an opportunity to “file” in multiple reference positions. “To Dos” and “Projects” categories can collect reference emails and be available with a click of the label, using the underscore and other unique characters in your labels enables you to separate these items from other labels and keep them promenent in your label list.

I will be using the search function in my gmail, labels will replace folders and my inbox will be my sorting area. Here is a video which gave me the inspiration for my current system and I must share that I am really pleased with the change and only wish I had done it sooner.

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I may be stating the obvious here, but I don’t think so. YouTube is not just a video sharing website as described in Wikipedia. YouTube is a video search engine built with Web 2.0 social functions.

YouTube has a search function and YouTube is being searched by people to find entertainment as well as information. How you title, tag and list your video helps you place for different search terms. YouTube’s Web 2.0 functions make it natural and easy to share your video with your social sites and the star rating encourages quick feedback from viewers.

As a searcher I have actually started to go directly to YouTube to find information. I have found this very helpful in the “how to” department. A query for just “how to” on YouTube returns millions of results. The number and variety of “how to’s” will amaze you. I especially like the list of related videos offered up with each result allowing me to browse related topics I may not have thought to search on.

Just looking at the search numbers at YouTube will convince you of the wide variety of viewers turning to YouTube as people once turned solely to web search. If you haven’t tried YouTube as a search engine I would highly recommend bookmarking this one or entering it as the home page for one of your internet browsers so it is ready to go when you are ready to search.

YouTube is definitely where the conversation is taking place. If you weren’t around for the CNN-YouTube Presidential Debates take a look at this Wikipedia article on how YouTube was used to collect questions for the candidates in the CNN televised debates.

Take a look at YouTube for “how to’s” related to your niche or specialty. Are there places to become part of the conversation. Do you have a “how to” to add or comment on?

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It is Saturday morning and tomorrow I will turn 59. I was hopeful that at this age I wouldn’t still need to be concerned about tags and labels, but hey I still do laundry at least once per week and in this day and age I find myself discussing the pros and cons of labeling or tagging blog posts. Let’s talk about clothes first: What is it about the tag or label in the neckline of a shirt or top that is so annoying? I ask this question, because as a woman I can categorically state I have never removed a tag from a piece of my clothing. But I can also attest that my significant other hates tags in the neckline of his clothing and he has on occasion twisted himself into the shape of a pretzel to attempt removing the tag while he is wearing the garment!

He claims it is scratching his neck and driving him crazy. I maintain that this is learned behavior from childhood when his mother tried to make him comfortable and dutifully removed all tags. You should know that when my children were little I never removed a tag from the neckline of their shirts, pajamas or the like. It was a sociological test I was running in my own little world. The truth is I really don’t care if my spouse removes these tags, unless, of course, the tag includes the laundry instructions.

Can’t tell you how many golf shirts have been ruined because they needed cold water as opposed to warm, or they should be hung to dry! Clothes manufacturers came to our rescue about 2002 and invented the tagless label. Accordingly, Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst at NPD Group, a Port Washington, N.Y., market research firm stated in 2005: ”Tags are a very emotional issue.” Is he kidding me? Illness, death, bankruptcy, divorce, crime, war and the like are emotional issues, not TAGS!

My blog commitment has been to make you laugh and to offer you something useful, so today I am including a PDF that you can print and hang by your laundry machines. It is a Guide to Home Laundering and Dry-cleaning Symbols. The reason you may need this is twofold: 1) You may find that when you launder your clothes, someone has removed not only the neckline tag with laundering instructions, but they may have removed the additional tag sometimes found elsewhere on the clothing. 2) You may discover that the laundry instructions are written in size 2 font and in universal code. Take a look at these instructions; you may be amazed at how often you have misinterpreted a symbol.

Now for a short discussion about Web 2.0 Tags and Labels: I will make this short and sweet. You can read a lot about labels / tags, as they relate to blog posts. I will only offer you my very simple observation. Tags and labels have always been important in our day to day life, even before we had the world wide web. Think of it this way. The tag/label is an identifier, it guides the reader to more information about the subject matter within your historical blog posts and it perhaps provides just a bit of information that will make your life easier in the case of Web 2.0 allowing your blog to be found by more people. If you really want to understand this in greater detail, contact Webconsuls’ Social Marketing guru…Darin McClure, because I have to go do the laundry!

P.S. I know I took 599 words to enlighten you today. Happy Saturday!

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The social net is fragmenting at an amazing rate. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to post to all of your favorite sites thru one location? So all of your friends who prefer to be logged into Bebo, Blogger, BrightKite, Facebook, hi5, Jaiku, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Mashable, MySpace, Plaxo Pulse, Plurk, Pownce, Tumblr, Twitter, Xanga, can stay in touch without having to track you down on your favorite social site of the moment. (Plurk! -DRM)

Posting Agnosticism, Say it, Ping.FM.

Comment on this post and we will make sure you get a beta invite code.

Got Ping.FM?

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More from the fun things to do on the internet list.

PMOG, Passively Multiplayer Online Game, as one of the beta testers I want to give everyone else the heads up that PMOG is now outa Beta!

Go check it out, the game allows you to leave traps and gifts along a mission you set up across any webpage. Using a Firefox tool bar, with support for OpenID, this is a fun new gaming concept.

Send us your PMOG Missions so we can check them out!

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drop.io: simple private sharing to Webconsuls LLC

Here at Webconsuls We love testing out new Web 2.0 tools. Today’s Test, Drop.io

Drop URL
http://drop.io/webconsuls

Email Drop
Attach media and email/MMS it in.
webconsuls@drop.io

Voicemail Drop
Leave Webconsuls a voice messages at this drop.
646-495-9203 x 58154

Conference Call Drop
The number below is our drop’s private conference call line.
218-486-3891 x 199666477

Fax Drop
To receive a fax into this drop, sender must prepend this coversheet. Please Note, Sometimes a fax can take up to 30 minutes to be received.

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ABSTRACT Tasks like image recognition are trivial for humans, but continue to challenge even the most sophisticated computer programs. This talk introduces a paradigm for utilizing human processing power to solve problems that computers cannot yet solve. Traditional approaches to solving such problems focus on improving software. I advocate a novel approach: constructively channel human brainpower using computer games. For example, the ESP Game, described in this talk, is an enjoyable online game — many people play over 40 hours a week — and when people play, they help label images on the Web with descriptive keywords. These keywords can be used to significantly improve the accuracy of image search. People play the game not because they want to help, but because they enjoy it.

Luis von Ahn is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, where he also received his Ph.D. in 2005. Previously, Luis obtained a B.S. in mathematics from Duke University in 2000. He is the recipient of a Microsoft Research Fellowship.

He describes other examples of “games with a purpose”: Peekaboom, which helps determine the location of objects in images, and Verbosity, which collects common-sense knowledge. He also explains a general approach for constructing games with a purpose.

Reading Time: 9 minutes

About a month ago I sat in on a Social Marketing Optimization (SMO) Training Seminar. The obvious purpose of this seminar was to teach a company’s employees the importance of SMO, which is how to get involved by setting up a Stumble Upon account, becoming a regular user of Stumble Upon, writing blog entries, posting comments to blogs, etc.

The trainer took a few minutes to explain that Social Marketing or Social Media is not a new convention, in fact all of us have and continue to participate in Social Marketing activities in our everyday lives; however, this participation traditionally may not have occurred on the web, but instead in our daily contacts with friends, neighbors, co-workers, storekeepers, etc. As the trainer explained this phenomena, if you need a recommendation for a plumber you might first call your trusted next door neighbor, before searching the web for plumbers in your neighborhood.

At the time I thought that this was a clever analogy, but it came to me later that a closer analogy to the anonymity of web SMO might be the traditional Service Station proprietor.

Do you remember the old-fashioned Service Station owner? I have fond memories of a particular Service Station owner ~~ my father, Joe, who owned a Service Station from about 1955 until 1963. When my father first leased the station it was a Wilshire Service Station located at the corner of 7th and E Avenue in National City, CA.

Looking back I now realize that Joe was an original and natural social marketer. How he came to own the service station is another story, but suffice it to say the service stations, as we knew them then, offered anyone, who ventured into the station, a wealth of assistance and information. And while my father had a good number of regular customers, for the most part the daily customers were strangers to my father. And yet these strangers, not unlike today’s web social group members, depended on him for more than gasoline.

If the customer needed driving directions, no Mapquest, just ask Joe or one of the service station attendants. If you needed a local or state map, they were provided by the service station at no cost! Need a suggestion for a good restaurant, again no IPhone with Google maps, just ask Joe and he might send you to the El Juan Cafe for Mexican cuisine (still in business) or Keith’s Family Restaurant (still operating) for home-made fried chicken. Looking for a particular church, Joe only had to point you across the street to St. Mary’s Catholic or just down the street to St. Matthew’s Episcopal. Need to know what was playing at the local movie theatre, Joe could tell you the current film and show times at the Bay Theater (built in 1944, the building is still there but for sale for $2.7m.)

And let’s not forget that service stations in years past did not have mini-marts, but they did offer you a clean restroom, a soda machine, they could fix a tire, tune your car and if you needed a phone, just come on in and you were given the opportunity to use the business phone. No payphone on site and certainly no cell phones.

One of my favorite memories of Joe, as a social marketer, was him serving as an impromptu employment agency. Frequently local people would stop by looking for work and if Joe didn’t have an opening, he would know which businesses in the neighborhood were looking for employees. Over the years, Joe employed many family friends, offering them part-time positions to help make ends meet. No Hot Jobs or Monster.com…just stop by and talk to Joe.

And there were even days when a complete stranger would come into the station, ask for a fill-up; however, when payment was requested suddenly they would indicate they had no money. These strangers would then barter with my father leaving a watch or something else of value promising to return later with cash to redeem their item. I don’t know, you might call this a little credit union, pawn shop, or even pay day advance.

father and son

Sometimes the service station would serve as a small used car lot. Local people would ask to park their cars with a “for sale” sign posted on the car. My father bought more than one of these used cars over the years, the most memorable being a seven+ passenger Cadillac Limousine, circa mid 1940s. (see the photo of my dad in front of the black Cadillac taken in 1960, wearing his Wilshire shirt, with my then four year old brother, Michael, sporting his own Wilshire shirt.) Could this have been the precursor for CARMAX?

I like remembering my father and his service station. He took good care of his customers and he was always willing to provide recommendations, not unlike today’s blogs, and other on-line social media and marketing vehicles.

Click here to learn more about:

the history of service stations or to enjoy photos of the Bay Theater.

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At Webconsuls we know good technology when we use it. That is why we have moved our email to “Gmail for your domain”. Gmail for your domain is hosted by Google, so there’s no hardware or software for you to install or maintain. Each email address gets 2 gigabytes of storage, spam and virus filtering, with search tools that will help find information fast. Instant messaging from right inside the account so that it’s easy for everyone to work as a team.

There is even more cool new functionality!

A customizable start page, http://start.webconsuls.com/

A brandable mail page, http://mail.webconsuls.com/

A place to share documents across the desktop or across the globe, http://docs.webconsuls.com/

And a place to share and keep track of those important appointments, http://calendar.webconsuls.com/

Are you ready for Web 2.0?

We can help you get there. Click Here

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Social Media Optimization uses the tools of Web 2.0: blogs, RSS feeds, social networking sites, social bookmark buttons, tagging, multimedia posts, and wikis, to target an audience, create an online presence and to develop familiarity and authority with the customer. SMO is about using these tools in conjunction with a website to spread your content far and wide, to create opportunities for others to link to your site and to establish yourself as an authority.

Social Media Optimization harnesses the power of the social network. Web 2.0 provides numerous and growing opportunities to become a participant in the on line communities. Social networking sites create new opportunities to reach potential customers and to establish a dialogue. Social Media Optimization operates in a way that is analogous to “word of mouth” advertising but is more efficient due to the tools and organization of the internet.

Developing content and posting in appropriate social forums, using the current tools to tag and make your content easy to distribute and link to is the focus of a Social Media Optimization Campaign. Building a wealth of informative posts using various media is an efficient and productive way to spread your reputation and encourage a discourse with customers.

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Build a Better Blog Tips

  1. Establish. yourself as the authority in your niche by writing and posting quality content.
  2. Use multimedia postings to provide variety and more personal connection with your customers.
  3. Give your content wings. Make it easy to spread your content. Adding an RSS feed enables those who find your content compelling to subscribe to your blog and be alerted to newly posted items. Developing a regular readership is a great way to encourage business and repeat business.
  4. Add bookmarks. Give your readers a quick and easy way to suggest your content to others. Social bookmarks give you the opportunity for members of social bookmark communities to spread your content with a click of a button.
  5. Title your blog post with appropriate key word search terms. Always write your content for readers, but take opportunities to encourage search engines to recognize content which contains your targeted keywords.
  6. There are various search engines, blog directories and web based RSS aggregators which your content can be submitted to, drawing more traffic to your website and creating backlinks to your site.

But the biggest blogging tip of all:

7. The most important thing to remember about blogging is JUST DO IT!!!! Don’t get bogged down with the infinite checklist of all that can be done to a blog. As you blog often and consistently your familiarity will lead you to incorporated more functionality.

BLOGGING … Just do it!