SEM Wired

I love infographics. Back in the days when the internet wasn’t still mainstream, I used to flick through dictionary pages and get stuck into those dictionary illustrations focused on a specfic jargon. Those illustration made possible get a grip of loads of information with a quick glimpse, it was a really dense amount of info beautifully displayed.

Information has evolved from then, but I feel the same amazement whenever I stumble upon an infographic.

A quick round of the most interesting infographics I’ve bumped into in the past few days, focusing from Yahoo! users search habits, first million of users for HootSuite, WordPress and and Apple VS Microsoft feud.

• Yahoo 2010 Year In Review – What happened at Yahoo! during the past year? Here comes a quick summary.

• Apple vs Microsoft 2010 Christmas Sales Showdown – 2010 Christmas Clash of the Titans

• How the World Is Using Cellphones – If you’ve ever wondered about cell phones, here’s a some impressive information

• HootSuite Reaches 1 Million Users – Props to the guys of Hootsuite, here’s a bit of background information if you’d like to get to know more about it.

• The Power of WordPress – One of the main reasons behind the content-revolution of the past few years, a must-read/see infographic about this CMS.

On the 21st september, at 2.54 PDT, Twitter has experienced a attack through a XSS (Cross-side scripting) vulnerability. Due to malicious code being executed, a massive retweet spread though all users,

Generally speaking XSS attacks exploit a lack of control on HTTP GET and POST requests. Malicious code is injected through a URL pointing to the affected website, allowing most kind of queries to be executed. Defacement should not be worst in case of less visited website but as the outcome can incredibly grow in magnitude if considered the amount of visitors.

This is the code used:

http://t.co/@%22onmouseover=%22document.getElementById(%27status%27)

.value=%27RT%20Matsta%27;$(%27.status-update-form%27).submit();
%22class=%22modal-overlay%22/

When you move your mouse pointer over a link and you are logged into your Twitter account, your account will post a new RT (ReTweet) that points to a link to the Twitter account of the user “Matsta”.

The worm spread over all terminals with javascript activated. Some people obviously panicking at Twitter Headquarters (or probably just laughing their ass off for being fooled by a script-kid), for a few minutes internet went back to be a less noisy, content based network, as it originally was. Considering the amount of uselessness spreading through twitter these days, a smart worm is for sure an improvement in content quality.

Back in the years you were like if you could score a shell on a *.ac.kr server, with a PHF or ftp-bounce attack. Script-kiddies nowadays can just hit the news with a smart URL… I’ve never though that web security would have grown according to the number of visitors and variety of services and protocols available, but is probably time to catch up more than ever.

On a side note, attacks like these may also show what the really security attitude of these companies, definitely in need of a real improvement.

Since Twitter went online, beside the early adopters enthusiasts, I always heard many people debating on its actual usefulness.
Still, it is one of the fastest growing platforms, despite its weaknesses, its extreme vulnerability to spam, or its 150 characters limit…

This very last point has been thoroughly debated: 150 characters are not enough to deliver any message and force people to limit the scope of the message they can send.

A few weeks ago, Johnathan Schwartz, former Sun Microsystem CEO, resigned via his his twitter account.

Within 150 characters he managed to say that we resigned from his position, and also gave an explanation for his resignation with a haiku:

Financial crisis

Stalled to many customers

Ceo no more

This should be the right way people should use twitter, and haikus, because or their ability of defining a whole world within a few lines, just fit perfectly this media. Johnathan just seems to have understood this pretty well.

When resigning from a position we often send plenty of emails out, to co-workers, colleagues or acquaintances: Johnathan just exploited the speed and efficiency of Twitter, with no need to waste that much time on writing emails, also getting positive results for his personal brand, communicating directly with the right audience and successfully delivering the message.

Next time we twit, let’s just make sure it is for something meaningful..!

Like everyone else who’s in this industry, I daily read loads of stuff, bog posts and articles, about how good SEO is, how important is to be ranked for the right keywords, how successfull a product can be if is commercially developed on the internet through SEO and online marketing services.

I read loads of this stuff and I’m honestly starting to get sick of it. Years ago things were simpler: marketing departements had no even idea about what SEO was and how crucial the internet would have become in a few years.

Now everybody jumps on the bandwagon… just take a look to your list of Twitter followers: how many people or companies you can find which supposedly know all secrets about SEO and internet marketing? Well, take a few of them and read those blogs and articles. As pointed out by Derek Powazek in this article:

The problem with SEO is that the good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work, and it’s poisoning the web.

Then it goes deeper analysing his own perspective about the industry and even if it goes to harsh sometimes, I can only agree with him. The fact is that all the hype about SEO it’s just artificially created by the market. Good webdesign and content shouldn’t need any “seo expert”.

However the need of search engine optimization professional tells us that the quality of web development these days (and the quality of the content) are getting worse and worse, requiring someone to artificially (and magically) make them appear on search engine simply correcting all those stupid mistakes developers do. It’s a pretty simplified explanation, but I guess it delivers the big picture about what the industry has become nowadays.

Take a look to the reaction to the articles as well: from the offended “seo professional” to the old school coder, to whom “magic seo practice” sound obvious. It’s quite interesting and gives also an idea about the different character the industry of made of…

Here’s the full article. And think about adding the Derek blog to your feeds, it’s worth it.

Companies prefer to spend/waste their money on banners, Adwords and affiliates campaign rather than producing some silly tv clip. It was pretty predictable.

Especially if we realize the current economic downturn. I guess it means that advertiser prefer to spend money where they can get some more valuable feedback information, with a more precise and extensive targeting and value for money.

Sounds right to me…but are we really sure that sticking banners and Google Adwords actually works?

Let’s get some hints from the same Guardian article’s comments:

Record £1.75bn online spend… and you still can’t make a profit with your website.

Indeed. Everybody knows or has been working on a company or project which injected a awaful amount on money on internet advertising without getting any profit back, not even in the long term.

This one it’s even better:

I don’t think they actually wasted all that money but expectations on conversions and sales, yeah, those might be quite high if spending get’s up to those digits. And guess what, while only getting away from the last economic downturn, so they guy here could be pretty right.

Anyway, the following comment might settling this down:

I disagree with many of these posts. Web advertising is much more accountable than TV, radio and print advertising – which is why it works. It doesn’t matter if some of you ignore them. Enough web users see them, and, more importantly, click on them.

That’s pretty much my opinion on the problem. And also the way things actually work out in a real enviroment, if you happen to work in marketing or advertisement.

The perception people has got of online ads it’s quite biased though: those who do not click on ads think they do not work:

…but according to these figures (1.75bn quids is not a few pennies) there’s actually some people who click on those ads and purchase products.

In the end, better a few more ads on a page (and adblock activated) rather than more tv crap (who does watch tv anymore… ).

The original article here.