Can you game the system?

I'm at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference reporting for Yammer.

Dan Olsen is the CEO and co-founder of YourVersion, which Olsen describes as Pandora for real-time web content. Just as you tell Pandora about what music you like, with YourVersion you tell them about what kind of information you like. And in both cases the applications respectively serve up music and news/real-time content to your desktop.

YourVersion launched last year at TechCrunch Disrupt and won the people's choice award. Olsen is back now mostly showing off their iPad application. Given that the device is mostly for consumption, it's really a natural for a YourVersion application.

I talked with Olsen about people gaming the system for these recommendation and social bookmarking applications such as Digg. Olsen said that depends on implicit vs. explicit tracking and how you're measuring. Clicking to read an article is implicit. Retweeting an article is explicit. Olsen said they're tracking both behaviors, but weighted more to implicit data, which is considerably harder to game.

Another aspect that Olsen measures with YourVersion is historical credit. For example, if Engadget publishes an article about the iPad and has historically had popular "iPad" articles, then YourVersion will give it a little showcasing credit. After that they'll let the audience vote the article up and down implicitly and explicitly.

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Will it improve storytelling or lead to Frankenstories?

I'm at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco reporting for Yammer.

Almost a full year ago I wrote an analyst report entitled "Real-Time Search and Discovery of the Social Web" (get your copy of the 20-page PDF), and I argued that one of the failures of the value of the real-time web is the lack of editors monitoring the data and then republishing it in a digested form. While the volume of content being created is phenomenal, and the different search and discovery tools all provide amazing value, what's lacking is the ability to truly make sense of all this content by someone who truly knows the category.

At TechCrunch Disrupt, I saw one possible solution with Storify, a web-based application that lets you search real-time content and add it very easily to your blog post. At the show, I was sitting in between two fellow journalists who were completely wowed by the product and immediately sent a link of it out to all their colleagues. They were both excited and scared. Will it improve journalists' ability to create content or will it give power to non-content creators to create half-assed stories or, as one reviewer on stage called it, "a Frankenstory"?

Watch my demo and interview with Burt Herman, CEO of Storify, as he shows off the product.

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Voice-based search, cloud-based services & much more

Ialmost didn't make it to my first TechCrunch Disrupt because of client work, but I managed to make the trek in, all revved for disruption!

Battlefield Session 1 Disruptors

The complete list of all Tech Crunch Disrupt presenters showed a wide range of start-ups and business models. A few that stood out in my opinion:

@Qwiki presented as a voice information experience platform. The use case scenario that the founders presented looked too futuristic, yet intriguing. I think it is just a matter of time before we will be switching to voice-based search with images to match.

@Storify, a social media flipboard that allows bloggers, journalists and social media enthusiasts to share stories, was another popular disruptor.

I found Cloudflare (@Cloudflare on Twitter) interesting as a service to enhance site performance ("supercharge your website!")

Meanwhile, Gunzoo, a startup from Japan, presented a new way to search videos. The concept of “fabric video” looked cool, but the presentation content failed to capture and deliver how cool this platform can be.

At the end of Battle Session Day 1 SeqCentral presented a cloud computing based tool that will help DNA scientists collaborate in the cloud.

Judges asked the hard questions on use case scenarios, revenue streams and distribution channels, which not many of the participants were able to clearly respond to or justify. Nerves? Perhaps, but these are three really basic questions that need to be defined when taking an idea into planning and execution to create your startup.

Conference hookups

Glad I came to TechCrunch Disrupt because I would have missed the opportunity to meet Tara Hunt (@missrogue on Twitter), who launched @shwowp here while I lunched along the Start Up Alley hallway. Then a few minutes later Gina Bianchini, the former CEO of Ning, was waiting in line in the WC. In case you don’t know, both Tara and Gina are women who rock the tech world in the Valley and beyond.

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A River Walk by FotoFransen

Today is the first day of fall. The past few months have been a whirlwind -- not sure where the summer went! But we wanted to share our greetings for a wonderful, vibrant autumn (or spring, for our readers down under).

Some info about the fall equinox.

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With evolution comes change. With change come new ideas and new rules. At the second annual Social Media Law Conference in Seattle this month, a handful of thought leaders gathered to share and learn about the impact of social media and emerging technologies on the law.

John Palfrey, Jr., co-author of Born Digital and professor at Harvard Law School, opened the conversation by citing six major legal problems dominating the legal conversation around social media and technology:

• security and safety
• privacy
• intellectual property
• credibility of information
• information overload
• computing in the cloud

Law practitioners need to learn and understand the complex legal issues in a socially mediated world. What is the rule of law when it comes to emerging media?

A question of identity

When your offline and online identities collide, is there such a thing as a separation? When the wall between your offline and online personality is fast becoming non-existent, accountability in the social space and the physical space is a must. As your digital dossier exponentially grows over time, individuals should be more concerned about how information is gathered and stored. Should we expect that privacy concerns can be handled through less regulation? Dave Horn, Assistant Regional Director at the Federal Trade Commission in Seattle, says, “No, we will definitely see more regulation.”

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Is it Angry Birds, Air Hockey, or an Air Horn?

I know you like to think that you're highly productive with your mobile device, but in reality you probably spend more time playing Angry Birds than any other application. At the APPNATION Conference in San Francisco, shooting interviews for Dice, I asked the attendees to reveal their "guilty pleasure app." Do you know all these apps? Have you played with any of them?

Got a guilty pleasure app of your own? Reveal what it is and why on the Dice Facebook page and you could win a Samsung Galaxy S mobile phone.

To enter the contest go to http://facebook.com/dice and click on the "Contest" tab. Hurry, deadline is September 30th, 2010.

Roxio's "Angry Birds" game.

Today Socialmedia.biz welcomes Jessica Valenzuela, a top branding expert, as part of our team of consultants providing thought leadership in social media and social marketing.

This week was action packed, with Demo Conference Fall 2010 and WITI Technology Summit -- I am revved with excitement from my first week of exploring the Silicon Valley events! I can't wait to share the key learnings from CIOs of high-profile organizations and my personal top picks among the startup companies that presented and were on exhibit.

Meanwhile, if you have not yet, make sure to add Mobile 2.0 Silicon Valley and Think Mobile West to your events list. Here are a few reasons why you should attend:

• The future of evolving media is in mobile. Learn how the experts are building their mobile ecosystem.
• What is the latest technology and innovation in mobile? Get your answers from CTOs, CIOs and guru developers.
• How do you effectively measure performance and metrics?
• What is the secret sauce of the successful mobile applications? And more!

Who should attend?

Both events will benefit brand managers, product managers, IT and mobile leaders within global companies and high-growth startups. I also recommend it for entrepreneurs who want to have a better understanding of mobile platforms, resources, distribution channels and metrics. As an entrepreneur who works closely with clients in the creation of their products, it is important for me to understand how to extend my client's platforms into the mobile arena at the very beginning of each creation process.

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Guest post by Karan Singhal
SEOmoz

These days, it's hard to find legitimate content that will help your search engine optimization campaign reach its potential. Most of the time, the content available to you doesn't really help you.

So below I'll provide 25 tips that, when used effectively, will skyrocket your search engine rankings, often with little effort. Avoid shady techniques that could end up costing you a Google penalty.

Let's begin our list with a little thinking:

1. Think about what you're offering - With search engine optimization, you must always keep in mind what a visitor can get from your website. Whether it's reading free blog content or the opportunity to buy a product, make sure there is a reason why people should come and visit your site, and always remember it. This will help you focus your SEO content on the keywords that matter.
 
2. Think about what people are looking for - A bit of an extension from the last tip, it's very important that during keyword research, you should know what people are looking for. What you're offering and what potential subscribers/customers are looking for are rarely identical. However, you can make it so that some of your main keywords are what people are actually searching for. This works great with longtail keywords, even after Google's May Day update. For example, if you're a car dealer, because people looking for a car might search "affordable safe cars," make that becomes one of your keywords, even if some of your cars are expensive.
 
3. Internal linking is key - How can you rank high in search engines without too many external links? Although most webmasters, even those involved in internet marketing and SEO don't know it, internal links are just as important as incoming links from external websites. Learn more about internal linking.
 
4. Use anchor text - Any kind of link can be made more beneficial to your website by using anchor text. Anchor text is your actual link text. What does anchor text tell search engines? What keywords you want to rank high for. "Click here" is a poor anchor text link. Learn more about using anchor text effectively: How To Target Keywords Using Links.

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Even looking back most people still can't figure out the mobile app market

At the opening night party at the APPNATION conference where I was reporting for Dice, I asked the attendees, "What do you wish you knew a year ago that you know today about mobile app development?" Their answers are fast, impulsive, and conflicting.

Also from APPNATION is this Amazing example of augmented reality on top of a print magazine. Check out this new way of cheating at crossword puzzles.