Mashable: Off the Deep End

I wrote in January that the popular web news site mashable.com was obsessed with Twitter. Since I wrote that piece, they’ve only gotten crazier, though at least they’ve become a bit more honest about it by putting not one but two huge “Twitter” buttons at the top of their site.

Since January, they’ve also changed their tag-line from “All That’s New on the Web” to “The Social Media Guide”. Its a smart move, I’ll give them that; instead of a shotgun approach aimed at the entire web, they’re focusing on the niche that is currently getting the most attention. That’s one of the side benefits of having a name that means nothing: if they decided to cover cake recipes starting tomorrow, they could do it.

Another change seems to be including the advertising pitch right in their “About” page. Usually the general public doesn’t see its own demographic pitch, but Mashable puts it right there for the its readers to see:

Mashable will put your brand in front of the most tech-savvy early adopters, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, influencers, Web 2.0 aficionados and technology journalists. Mashable is also popular with bloggers and members of social networking sites — an increasingly influential demographic.

Wow – I’m impressed by how influential and tech-savvy I am, but I must say I feel a little dirty being used for my demographics.

Anyway, the purpose of today’s post is not to simply slag Mashable in any way possible (for example by posting links to hilariously bad early versions of their site, all of which pitch the latest “hot” web 2.0 startups that have since shriveled and died). No, today’s purpose is to simply point out how far off the deep end Mashable has gone into Twitter obsession.

At least in the early days, Pete Cashmore & Co. had the sense not to put all their eggs in one basket – they seemingly pitched any site that sent them a press release. But now it seems they’ve decided that Twitter is the future, period. Unfortunately, that makes it tough to run a web site, since there’s only so much to say about a service that sends tiny messages between users. So let’s take a look at the latest “social media news” according to Mashable:

Flirt140: Can You Find Your Dream Date Via Twitter?

Tweetmeme Shows Off the Future of Twitter Search

Tweet Street: 7 Extraordinary Twitter Uses in the Home

OneRiot Speeds Up Twitter Search and Adds Digg to the Mix

Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed

ThreadedTweets: Turn Your Twitter into a Realtime Conversation

TwitterJobSearch: Find a Job on Twitter

Literary Tweets: 100+ of the Best Authors on Twitter

The Retweeting Movement Adds Some Powerful New Tools

Please – anyone who gives a crap about about any of the above topics, write me and let me know why.

Of course, if Mashable is wrong, and Twitter is not the future of the internet and the next evolutionary step of mankind, they can always change their focus again. But as long as there’s an Archive.org, some of us will be here to throw it back in their faces. Sorry Pete, you deserve it for feeding into (and feeding from) the self-perpetuating “hotness” vortex of a phenomenon that is destined to end up here.

Twitter Flu

Since I slag off Twitter regularly, I’ll let others do the talking today:

• Swine flu: Twitter’s power to misinform from foreignpolicy.com
   
• How False Rumors Can Cost Lives from canonical.org

And, because I can’t resist, a few (actual) recent Twitter updates. Names are unchanged, to expose the idiots. Is there really any difference from the cartoon above?

Realtime results for swine flu

2135 more results since you started searching. Refresh to see them.

• 
  NYKitten3483: i am so not taking my baby anywhere. this freaking swine flu! so not cool. a baby died from it. i am so not happy.
  less than 20 seconds ago from mobile web · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  GinBlossoms_Guy: Packing a bowl at the job-site with my new friend Miguel. How do I bring up swine flu without sounding too racial?
  3 minutes ago from Twittelator · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  Trevor_Latulas: I was really sick this morning. Hope I don’t have Swine flu. That would sux
  3 minutes ago from TwitterBerry · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  stphmli: swine flu is a conspiracy.
  6 minutes ago from web · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  nickicortese: Someone in the US died of swine flu! Holy Shit!!!!
  6 minutes ago from TwitterBerry · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  isnotanarab: Bin laden homies made swine flu…check the facts
  6 minutes ago from AndTweet · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  TTownTommy: Hmm the new movies coming in May may play 2 empty seats with the swine flu outbreak
  8 minutes ago from Tweetie · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  theimaginarykid: is not shaking anybodys hand and I’m about to start rockin mask and gloves like Mike Jackson. just heard swine flu hit the chi.
  10 minutes ago from UberTwitter · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  butterrs: so my roommate is sick, hope its not swine flu.
  15 minutes ago from TinyTwitter · Reply · View Tweet
• 
  brittanylovato: an entire family in Cibolo with swine flu. I am officially terrified. IT’S GONNA GET ME!!!
  17 minutes ago from web · Reply · View Tweet

How to Use Google Trends to Spike Your Traffic

In a previous post, Google Trends: The Borg Speaks, I talked about the strange and sometimes disturbing movements of Google Trends.

In that post I had some fun using Google Trends as a radar of our bizarre cultural zeitgeist. But that is far from its only use. For one thing, bloggers have found a clever, perhaps less than scrupulous way to use Google Trends to gain a large bump in their site traffic, and thus their advertising income.

Now, I’m not necessarily advising this technique, but in the spirit of full disclosure of the black arts, I’ll tell you how to do it.

For this to work well, your site needs to already be a) reasonably popular in terms of traffic, b) already listed by Google, and c) indexed quickly by Google Blog Search after each post – quickly meaning a matter of minutes. If c) isn’t happening, make sure your blogging software is set to ping “http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2″ after each post. The faster your post is indexed, the better this will work.

Step One: Find It

Google Trends is updated frequently throughout the day. As it updates, wait for a newly popular subject to bubble up. Look for one without much competition in the search results – something new or uncommon. That’s not too difficult in a society which creates new “celebrities” on a pace of about twice a day. Sometimes a neologism will pop up, usually after being spoken by someone on a popular TV show. Grab it.

Step Two: Write It

Write a quick, keyword-heavy post on this hot subject. The content can be cribbed from Wikipedia, imdb, or AP News – it just needs to be relevant to the subject. The first couple of lines should be inviting to a searcher (i.e. “Everything you want to know about _____”, “Hot nude pics of _____”, etc.). Use the popular term by itself as the post title, for maximum keyword density.

Step Three: Ping It

The final step is to ping Google as quickly as possible and get indexed. If it works, searchers will see this post in the top few results for one of the most popular searches of the day. That can mean thousands of clicks. If you have advertising which pays by the impression, you just made some money. Even if you have pay-per-click ads, you’re likely to get quite a few extra clicks from people simply looking for somewhere else to go after they’re done with your page.

Now, that’s how to do it unethically. But do you really want to post solely for the sake of gaining traffic? If you were a store owner, do you just want to get people inside your store with a window display, or would you rather work on having satisfied repeat customers?

Then again, how unethical is it really? Isn’t this really just another form of what the Huffington Post does – re-packaging other people’s work and putting it in front of more noses? Don’t get me started; let’s save that for another post.

So there are open questions and gray areas. If your post is relevant to your site and to the subject, and you manage to add some value, then clearly you’ve served a purpose, even if you’ve marketed your goods in an manipulative way. And isn’t all marketing inherently manipulative? Doesn’t a consumerist, advertising-based society favor manipulative tactics over quality, innovation, humanity and all that other bullshit people still seem to care about despite decades of soul-crushing propaganda? 

I think the only way to answer these questions is with an experiment. Tune in tomorrow for a Google Garbage™ Special!