Dave Walker

Hasbro and Mattel, the owners of the Scrabble game, are trying to shut down Scrabulous, one of the most popular games on Facebook and a direct rip-off of Scrabble. Much has been said about whether this is a good move of not by a company trying to protect its trademark and whether this will be a public relations disaster in the name of patent protection.

3 things to note

• Scrabble is one of the most popular board games of the last few generations with no sanctioned online version
• Scrabulous is bringing in new fans to Scrabble
• These fans are buying the physical game

Naturally, a Facebook Group has been created to try to save Scrabulous (called Save Scrabulous - go figure). As of 3:20 this afternoon, the group has 8850 members. The group is growing too fast and too big for Hasbro/Mattel to ignore. We saw last month how the Facebook group Fair Copyright for Canada contributed to delaying a piece of legislation in the Canadian legislature; can the groundswell of Facebook users influence a multinational corporation?

Hasbro outlines its position:

SCRABBLE has been entertaining millions of people around the world for 60 years so we are not surprised that fans have thoroughly enjoyed playing Scrabulous on Facebook.com. What consumers may not realize, however, is that Scrabulous is an illegally copied online version of the world’s most popular word game, the copyrights and trademarks for which are owned by Hasbro in the U.S. and Canada and Mattel in the rest of the world. We encourage fans to continue to lay down online tiles at sites that have legally licensed the interactive rights to host SCRABBLE fun. (bold is mine)

Remember - there is no online arena for Scrabble. Plus, Hasbo misses the point by a mile: players don’t care about licensing. They care about the game. Matthew Ingram says: “…how people interact with your brand is pretty much up to them, not you. If you’re smart, you will be glad they are interacting with it at all, and you will find a way to capitalize on it.”

Will Hasbro clue in and join the new millennium by embracing Scrabulous or will they demonstrate a RIAA-like inability to adapt to new market conditions? Can the mobilization of the Facebook army Save Scrabulous?

(3:45 and the group has 9200 members: 350 members in 25 minutes? Pay attention, Hasbro)

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The New Year’s Day slaying of Stefanie Rengel and the subsequent (and inevitable) Facebook tribute page once again shows that the law cannot keep up with the social developments and implications of the Internet and especially Facebook. Facebook, and social networking in general, is redefining how society interacts on the Internet, and how the law cannot keep up with these new social definitions.

The Toronto Star’s article “Gag orders in the Facebook age” quotes:

The Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) prohibits the publication of information “… if it would identify the child or young person as having been a victim of, or as having appeared as a witness in connection with, an offence committed or alleged to have been committed by a young person.”

The key here is “the publication of information”.  The article goes on to state:

[…] while media outlets are prohibited from naming the victim and the youths charged, their names and faces are all over Facebook.

“It’s a very good question if the people who post things on Facebook are actually breaking the YCJA,” Peel Const. Wayne Patterson said. “I guess it all boils down to whether Facebook is eventually determined by somebody that it is a publication.”

Alain Charette, media relations spokesperson for the Department of Justice, said the restriction “does apply to the Web, including Facebook … generally publication covers a very wide spectrum.”

Facebook is not a newpaper article, or a publication in the traditional sense. Facebook represents social processes digitally, in this case, mourning. It’s our virtual meeting grounds, not a series of published articles or blog posts. It’s as if a group of Stefanie’s friends got together on the sidewalk on which she was slain but could not mention her name as they were talking about her life.

So, is Facebook a publication? Just because something is on the Internet, is it published? Technically yes, but is that the intention? This blog posting is published, and is intended to be a publication, but the group I create on Facebook is not intended to be a publication.

Our society is being redefined in this digital age. The law, as usual, lags behind.

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Blogging can bring out the best and worst in a community. Commenting on blogs is the fundamental way to create conversation and build community, and legitimate commenters can extend and enhance the conversation. Unfortunately, open comments attract people “who make it their business to criticize anything written and the people who wrote it, in some sort of sad attempt at self validation by being nasty towards others for the sake of it.” (Duncan Riley, “Comment Trolling Has A Psychological Explanation” on TechCrunch).

Certain posts tend to bring out the trolls, especially any post slamming Apple, so it seems. Rob Hyndman went through this experience recently when he blogged about the difficulties he had upgrading to MacOS Leopard (an upgrade that’s gaining some notoriety).

My favourite comments from the Comment Trolls:

• “So what you are saying is you didn’t understand the install proccess, and then finally did an archive and install and yet didn’t understand how that worked either? Why would you be using some idiotic, 3rd party password file when Apple builds this functionality into both Tiger and Leopard? What other obscure software have you installed? My 12 year old understands this stuff far better than you do.”
• “I sure hope no-one ever follows your advice.”
• “wow rob, you are a dummy.”
• “buddy, you deserve a typewriter for being such a retard. along many here who added likewise zero computer knowledge.”

Comments like these add nothing to the conversation, and, for a novice blogger (which Rob certainly is not), can be quite difficult to manage. Andy Wibbels writes: “A big fear among newbie bloggers is how to handle things when a rogue commenter starts using your blog’s comments as their own private graffiti board - especially if they start hurling abusive language at you or other commenters.”

So, what can you do when a rogue commenter shows up? Here are 8 strategies:

1. Ignore it. If the post is getting a lot of comments, often the commenting community will chastise the troll. It may not stop the troll, but it may add a new dimension to the conversation. However, if this is not the tone you want to set for your community, you need to take action.
2. Step into a flame war. If a member of your commenting community (regular or casual) gets into a flame war with a troll, step in and tell them you won’t stand for this kind of discussion, and block them if necessary. This is your blog and unless you encourage this kind of aggression, it will poison the community.
3. Delete the comments. This won’t stop the comments coming, but it will remove the offensive material from the site.
4. Block the troll’s IP address. There are tools on the administration side where you can block the address from where a troll is coming. Persistent trolls can switch IP addresses, but they’d have to be pretty dedicated. Check the help forums for your blog tools to find out how to do this.
5. Moderate your comments. Moderating comments doesn’t allow for spontaneous conversation, but you can preview comments before they are posted. Be sure to moderate new comments promptly.
6. Use a comment spam filter. Spam filters can catch comments based on language (usually a list of offensive words); this can prevent some of the more offensive comments from being posted. Try the Akismet plug-in; it’s been good for me.
7. Review what you write. Some types of blogs seem to bring out the trolls. If you want to bring out the Comment Trolls, try slamming a Mac product. This will bring out the evangelists.
8. Don’t fight them. The Comment Trolls aren’t looking for debate or discussion. Responding to the comments will invite further flaming - any response is often what they are looking for. Ignore them, and hopefully they will go away.

Blogging is about putting your ideas out to the public. Everyone has different ideas, and you must expect some controversy once in a while. The majority of comments are usually well-reasoned and extend the conversation, but the trolls can sour the experience. Just remember, it’s about them, not about you.

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When I talk to my social media clients about generating social media traffic, the question inevitably comes up: How can we get on the front page of Digg? And I answer: Are you sure you want to be on the front page of Digg?

Digg’s advantage is the ability to deliver raw traffic to one particular post or article. If the article is written in a Digg-friendly format known as ‘linkbait’ (lists, breaking news, etc.) and you can mobilize your friends and fans to Digg the post, you can drive a significant amount of traffic to the article.

However, this traffic generally does not convert well. They are one-time visitors which generally do not convert well: they don’t click on ads, they don’t visit other pages on the site and they rarely turn into regular visitors or community members. There’s always the argument that with a volume of traffic you will inevitably get some people who convert, but how much effort are you putting into getting a 0.1% conversion rate? That’s 100 conversions per 100000 visitors. And you have to repeat that tomorrow. And the day after that.

The quality of visitors is also questionable. The etiquette within a community usually prevents the more immature commenting and name calling; the lack of a community can garner lots of stupid, non-constructive commenting. Simply opening up commenting to the world doesn’t ensure valuable participation; the majority of comments on YouTube videos are mostly ego-builders for the commenter (although it’s nice to have a pat on the back for a cute video, would you invite a commenter to dinner?).

It boils down to this: Do you want lots of raw traffic for one day, or a steady group of committed fans who visit regularly and contribute to the conversation? This will affect what you write, how you write it, and the other techniques you will use to meet your social media marketing goals.

I am currently working with a client where raw traffic seems important. This business relies on volume, and getting as many people as possible to convert - conversion measured in this case as simply moving over to the main site. However, getting people from the blog to the main site is a huge challenge, and there are big questions around the effort of blogging relative to the conversions.

On the other side, the community is strong. The Facebook group and Page is a success; there is a lot of action and involvement. These are people who are committed to the company and the community, and these people are the company moneymakers - people who directly contribute to the bottom line.

The raw traffic option looks great in the web stats, but you need to ask yourself: does the traffic convert relative to the effort? Should you be chasing traffic or should you focus on building community? Think about how you use Digg yourself. Are you looking for breaking news or something to run the clock out on Friday afternoon? Digg is great. Are you looking for content - things that closely relate to your personal and professional interests? StumbleUpon is a far better tool. And of the two, which kind of site will you become more involved with?

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Yesterday, Chad Lorenz wrote of the death of email in Slate Magazine; to quote Mark Twain “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” Email has a long way to go before it is dead, and a long way to go before it needs to see a doctor about that cough. I agree that email has lost it’s position as the Great Communication Poster Child. The lustre has worn off, and email has been relegated to the communication toolbox rather than being displayed prominently on the shelf.

The ways we communicate are as varied are the people who communicate. Sometimes we sit down for a long conversation, other times we give a speech, and often it’s shouting a couple of words across the room. Back when email hit the mainstream in the mid-90s (don’t forget - email has been around since 1961), it was seen as the communications wonder-child - “nothing could be faster and easier than e-mail”.

Email quickly showed its shortcomings - synchronous communication being the primary problem. Like letter-writing,  email was not suited for conversation. ICQ and instant messaging soon became the favoured method for non-verbal synchronous communication. Over the last few years, we’ve seen the rise of different forms of digital communication, including mobile text messaging, wikis, blogging and microblogging, and messaging via social network profiles. All of these tools work in conjunction with email; they are not replacements.

Where does email fit in? Email is still the tool of choice for long-form, one-to-one asynchronous communication. A letter to family, business communication, contact from a web site - email is still a great tool for that. But planning the office Christmas party? Too much back-and-forth; wikis might be a tool of choice. Sending a link to a group of friends? Microblogging (Twitter) solves that nicely.

Although it may be true that teenagers are abandoning email, it’s not a wholesale rats-abandoning-the-sinking-ship scenario yet. Teenagers are the early adopters for the new technologies that address email’s shortcomings. The style of communication dictates the tool, not the other way around. Many conversations are synchronous back-and-forth chats, to which email is not suited. Teens have adopted new technologies that make this more efficient, accounting for a decline in email use.

Like most email users, I get frustrated with email - I count over 90 emails flying around a company of 10 people regarding the Christmas party. An in-house blog, microblog and wiki could have solved this, and made it much easier to plan this party. And I am perfectly happy with the size of my, well, you get the idea…

Email may go the way of the telex eventually, but it will be a different form of asynchronous long-form one-to-one communication that replaces it. Not Twitter.

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Over the last 16 hours or so, there has been much hue and cry over Facebook’s new ad platform. Many commentators cry “I won’t shill for Coke” or “Don’t tell me what me Facebook so-called-friends are reading”. Fine. I won’t tell you about this excellent band I just found. Do you care if I don’t tell you?

Like it or not, our real friends are our second biggest influencers, and I would not have heard about many excellent books if it wasn’t for my close friends. I appreciate these recommendations, and try to return the favour, which I also know is appreciated. If a friend fills out a widget on Blockbuster.com recommending a movie, I will pay attention.

What Facebook misses is the idea of what a friend is. Facebook gives equal weight to our close family, our closest friends (our “inner circle of advisors”), our work acquaintances and the guy with whom we were college roommates for three months. Even among our wider net of associates, certain people have different weights of authority in different areas. If I had Rob Hyndman among my friends (I don’t know him, but I like his commentary on the tech world), I would take his recommendations on books, but probably not air conditioners. And, with apologies, I really don’t care what you drink.

Facebook, I need to categorize my friends. Inner circle, friends, superficial acquaintances (you don’t need to use this terminology). If you would also give me tools so that I can specify the types of recommendations I get from my friends, I would greatly appreciate that. For example, I will take book and music recommendations from Tad, but not from my cousin. If Steve (the snappy dresser) reviews a shirt, I’m listening. Mike: tell me about the skis you are buying this year, but I don’t care for your taste in beverages.

If Facebook wants to make this “a strong trusted referral for your brand”, then I want recommendations from people I trust in certain areas, not my “Facebook friends”.

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Facebook made a range of announcements today, but the one that struck me is “Beacon”. Zuckerberg explains, quoted from TechCrunch:

Social distribution, now here is where it gets interesting. When somebody engages with your (the advertiser’s) page, that is spread virally through the network. When someone says they are a fan of your brand, that becomes a trusted referral. It goes right to their Mini feed. A strong trusted referral for your brand.

One of the issues with “Facebook friends” is that the majority are not really friends from whom a referral means anything, but a group of superficial acquaintances from whom a referral means almost as much as random review on epinions.com. I’m lucky - the vast majority of my friends (at a paltry 47) are people I trust and from whom I would probably consider a recommendation or opinion. I wonder about those with 1000 friends. Does a recommendation mean anything? Especially if 1000 people are recommending 200 different items in the same category. Who do I believe? Why would I care to sift through all this information and try to make an informed decision?

I’m thinking that this will end up like the groups: a way to align yourself with a brand, but the identification with the company (as it is with many groups) is more to brand yourself than to engage with like-minded people.

Hmmm… creating not corporate pages, but promotion pages. That would be interesting. If I saw that “Dave Walker entered the iCoke.com Untimate Nintendo Wii Contest”, that might get me interested.

I can’t wait to see how this will work, and how companies will use this, good and bad.

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Some CSS, coding and design sites and articles I find useful and interesting:

• 24 Ways. 24 tips and tricks in 24 days. Done each December for the last two years, and I’m really looking forward to this year’s crop (hoping they do it…).
• CSSPlay. Lots and lots of CSS examples.
• Web 2.0 How-to Design Guide. A deconstruction of Web 2.0 design tropes. Some great ideas, and some things to avoid doing if you’re getting tired of the Web 2.0 look (Is Web 2.0 dead? Read this…) 
• Registration Usability - 87 Registration Forms Tested. An excellent look at registration form design from Get Elastic.
• Building a Bulletproof Contact Form with PHP. Clearly written, easily implemented and accessible for PHP novices. And critical for database security.

Happy Monday! Now to get my glasses fixed so I don’t have a headache by noon. Darned toddlers…

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After a sh**storm yesterday (did I hit a nerve? I saw a 5x traffic spike) and a looong night with a teething toddler, here’s a whole lot of not much.

I just launched a web site for a new Vietnamese restaurant in northwest Calgary, the Green Papaya. No wonder I’ve been craving Vietnamese food for the last few weeks. Can’t wait for it to open. Web site notes: the Vietnamese characters were the toughest part of the site. Just sourcing the HTML entity codes was difficult, but I found a great site for it, and I’m glad I know my eth from a dyet.

I have created the first draft of my Squidoo Lens, Social Media Marketing Action Plan. Comments? Please be kind, I’m still battered and bruised (but pugnacious - watch out). It’s aimed at smaller business who want a way to get started interacting with their customers online in a non-”marketing” way.

Things I’m reading:

Interesting article on raising a brand-free kid. Something I’m struggling with, having a toddler of my own.

Primate Diaries. Monkeys, evolution, athieism, Intelligent Design and religion. Put your thinking cap on.

And I will never pass up a chance to promote The Comics Curmudgeon.

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Yesterday, I promised I’d look at where my blog traffic comes from, and I’ll gove some insight into some of the marketing tactics I use to get traffic.

We all want people to come to our blog, but if you simply write a post and let it sit there, it’ll be hard for anyone to find. You need to actively get your information out there; the good news is that the basic steps are quite easy, and can give decent results.

Couple of things:

1. I use Google Analytics on every page of my site, including pages outside of my blog. The direct referrals usually come to the home page, not the blog.
2. I’m doing basic marketing, not aggressive marketing so the volume of traffic may not seem impressive, but I’m happy with it. I don’t have any goals for the blog - just get it out there. I’m using this blog as a test arena for a few theories, too.
3. The blog is two weeks old; it’s too early to get fine patterns, but there are some obvious trends.

Overall traffic

Since October 14:

• 352 Visits
• 678 Pageviews
• 1.93 Pages/Visit
• 56.82% Bounce Rate
• 00:02:27 Average time on site
• 77.27% New visits

I’m OK with the visits; this week has been a significantly higher average over last week because I’ve tried a new bookmarking tactic. I’m not thrilled about the 1.93 pages/visit - I need to cross-link other parts of the site much more heavily. This should help with the bounce rate as well. Time on site is OK, and the % new visits is OK for a new blog - I’m still building a regular audience.

Sources

I’m really interested in this one, especially with the PageRank reshuffle this week.

• 17.9% direct traffic
• 74.72 referring traffic
• 7.39% search engine

The low search engine traffic is interesting - very few people come to the blog (or the main site) via search engines. I’m OK with that - the terms I’m using on the main site are very competitive, and I’m not doing any PPC campaigns. This volume of organic traffic is OK since this isn’t the focus of the marketing. I’m pretty pleased with the 75% referral traffic - people are linking from other sites. The backlink strategy is working.

The actual sources are even more interesting:

1. StumbleUpon: this is amazing. This is my single biggest source by a wide margin, and I’ve only been Stumbling the site for 3 days. I’ve had 118 visits, but the best part is the bounce rate from Stumblers is a very respectable 35%. They are reading and exploring the site. Thanks, Stumblers!
2. Direct: 63 visits
3. Digg: 61 visits. I’m surprised here. Even though Digg is a respectable third place, I’ve been Digging for two weeks, and the bounce rate from Diggers is high. The thing I don’t like about Digg is the categorization - I still need to find the performing categories.
4. Seth Godin’s Blog trackbacks. This is the next strategy of commenting on other people’s blogs and linking back to yor own. Seth’s blog is an excellent read, and there’s always an insightful observation to comment on. I’m trying to limit myself to one trackback a week, but it’s hard. Interesting thing: I would have expected traffic spikes on the days I comment, and complete drop-offs on non-commenting days, but there is still traffic coming from the non-sommenting days. People read the archives, and the comments in the archives there. I’d love to know what his average pages per visit is.
5. Google (organic). This is highly disappointing. Plenty of traffic, but 91% bounce rate and an average of 7 seconds on the site. People come, see that it isn’t what they are looking for, and bail. I need a better SEO/page content strategy.
6.  and on. This is mostly linkbacks from comments I’ve made on other blogs. It’s the long tail, but respectable traffic.

Visitors

• USA: #1 by a long shot, with California, esp. Silicon Valley, leading the way. No surprise there.
• Canada: #2. Thanks, countrymates!
• Great Britain #3
• and into the long tail. Hi to everyone from outside North America, and thanks for reading!

Loyalty

Not a surprise here, but I can do better. 1 visit is the top spot (no surprise), but I’d like to say ‘hi’ to everyone in the 9-14, 15-25 and the 26-50 (which is probably me before I took my IP address out of the equation) groups; I have some regular readers! Yay!

Browsers

This floored me. But, upon reflection, not surprising, considering the audience.

1. Firefox: 63.35% (Wow - this is *waaay* above the typical market share of browsers)
2. IE: 33.24% Again, surprising, considering Microsoft’s market dominance
3. Safari: 3.12% Hi, Mac people!
4. Opera: 0.28% This represents 1 visitor, which was probably my testing the CSS.

The IE 6/7 split is about 67%/33% for v6. v7 is coming on fast. Firefox is interesting. Even though it sent nearly 2/3 of my traffic, the time-on-site is low (1:11 min) and viewed 1.61 pages on average. IE users, on the other hand, spent, on average, over 5 minutes on the site and looked at 2.5 pages. IE users, despite the lower number, are using the site much more.

I’m not going for any conclusions right now; I’ll do that later when I have more data. There are a few strategies I’ll be testing in the coming week, and blogging about the results. Stay tuned!

Thanks to all my visitors, and I hope you are enjoying the blog!

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