So last week or so, I blogged about how ReviewMe’s real benefit wasn’t in creating buzz for advertisers; rather, it could be used for SEO purposes, in that ReviewMe creates a marketplace for purchasing inbound links from your pick of high PR sites.

Want to know what Google thinks? Matt Cutts, Google software engineering guru, was interviewed at the recent PubCon in Las Vegas — and its quite revealing. Check out the inteview over here, and fast forward to around the -7:30m point. At that point he starts talking about how Google recognizes social media optimization, and how some marketers might want to use ReviewMe, PayPerPost, or even Text-Link-Ads, and its other brethren to create backlinks to their sites.

The money is in this phrase: “… I’ll put it to you this way — I’m not a fan when people don’t provide total disclosure … if you want to pay for links to generate traffic — totally OK, just make sure it doesn’t affect search engines”.
So basically what he’s saying is that using these sites to create traffic is a legitimate reason for using these services; but to use them to boost your search engine placement is a bad idea. Instead, he suggests using the “rel = Nofollow” attribute to those links, so that Google won’t be fooled.

Matt Cutts doesn’t explicitly say that sites who use these methods in an effort to improve their Google rankings will be penalized in any fashion; however, his language suggests that he is keenly aware of their usage for this purupose, and that it definitely seems a no-no in his book.

And there you have it.

Now, whether or not they have the technology to tell that an advertiser has paid for that link or not — particularly through PayPerPost — is up in the air. But, iIf Google is a god to you, then you’ve just heard it from the lips of one of their high priests — paying for links for the purpose of improving your SERPs is known to Google … and you should use it at your own risk.

tip: Amit Agarwal [through Facebook!]

UPDATE 1 @ 0032h: For some evidence on this topic check this particular Digg that wasn’t deleted, but was buried. In the comments there is chatter about the Digg submission that was obliterated, an admission from the Digger who’s account was deleted and his reasons for posting the results of a phishing attack

So, let’s tally the frontpage gaffe’s for Digg these past few weeks. First, there was the fake PS3 story about over 650 000 PS3 units that had to be recalled; next, there was the the spammer who profited big time from getting his post from a splog onto the front page (weight loss tips from a dental site? come ON).

Well, all that was minor beans compared to this.

Thanks to some quick detective work over at Zdnitchit, there was another front page funtime story last night around 11pm; because the submitter and the post have been obliterated (not buried), we’ll have to take his word on things — but for the amount of detail he’s coming up, it sounds too amazing to believe its made up.

What happened?

The cliffnotes version is that a phisher’s attacks on 6000 MySpace accounts — email accounts, passwords and all — was published as a post on some blog; that blog was posted to Digg, exposing it to hundreds, perhaps thousands of visitors before it was taken down (and had over 200 votes, apparently)

Some people, before it was obliterated, decided to test the account names and passwords by actually going into myspace and fooling around with those accounts.

It worked.

One commenter (before the whole thing was allegedly blown up) also mentioned that many people use the same passwords for all kinds of things — including PayPal accounts … which you log in with your email address.

For a privacy disaster that makes the AOL Data Valdez scandal a few months ago look like a piss in the pond, I hope three examples in as many weeks is enough “proof” that Digg needs to button down on its front page news.

Jason Calacanis has left the building. Enter stage left: CK Sample III, the new Managing Editor and Lead Anchor.

It seems that the higher ups have gone with the natural successor to Jason Calacanis, and that’s his right hand man at Netscape — CK. Check out his own blog for more details about the man, but he seems well edjamacated if nothing else. :)

It certainly quashes a few ideas.

#1) Peter Rojas isn’t heading Netscape — duh, and obviously.

#2) AOL isn’t planning to change Netscape.com’s strategy: Clearly, hiring CK means that the higher ups plan to go with Netscape in its current format for at least the short term and possibly the long one as well. CK was hired, it seems like, before Mr. Calacanis’s Weblogs Inc. was purchased by AOL, and has been a mainstay behind the scenes at Netscape if Mr. Calacanis was its public face. Their hiring of Mr. Sample is a clear vote for their faith in Netscape.com’s plan and changes [insert obligatory comparison to Digg].

For those who don’t like to roll up their pants and wade into the comments section of my blog, CK stopped by yesterday to offer a few hints as to what they’re doing to boost Netscape’s membership / traffic: (more…)

UPDATE 2 @ 1600: Seems like spammers aren’t the only ones to get to the front page –  a phisher’s attacks were recently published, including email addreses, and passwords to MySpace accounts last night.  Looks like the absence of checks and balances has led to severe privacy violations if the story is true.

So to any readers who have been with blog for any length of time, you’ll recognize that one of my favourite punching bags topic, is how Digg says its doesn’t have a cabal of editors when it secretly does. In principle I understand why they say this — they have a button no other social bookmarking site does, and that’s the “bury” button. Sure, it creates problems (a la “Bury Brigade”), but I suspect its purpose is to allow individuals to police Digg itself.

If a site is crap for whatever reason, fine — bury it. In theory, it allows Digg to prevent itself from being “gamed” and all kinds of things — provided the Diggers don’t want to be gamed in the first place.

However, its not perfect — even with Editorial (Spam killing) back up. As Jason Calacanis and Mat Ingram said yesterday, all kinds of crap get through to main stream media all the time, even with proper editors.

Having said that, I think its time for Digg to reconsider its policy, in light of Nial’s Kennedy’s work that shows Spammers are getting the upper hand on social bookmarking sites — and in particular, Digg [I agree -- its the "must read" of the day].

He discovered that over the weekend a splogger got a post to hit the front page. As of its current counting that’s over 800 diggs. Nial found this out through a bunch of methods, but you can clearly see that his “Geek’s Way to Losing Weight” is clearly out of place on the blog which if flogging dental products and dental resources.

I think this has to be a call for Digg to change its ways and employ some better method of control. Unlike mainstream news media, when ‘mistaken’ news items get coverage it rarely leads directly to more sales for the target of that news coverage — but as I’ve mentioned in the past, when you game Digg there are direct financial benefits, and they are not insignificant. Even if you calculate the “opportunity savings” through an equivalent amount of Adwords placement, how much do you think 70 - 100 000 uniques over 24h is going to save?

Its easy to do the math — at a minimum of 0.05 per click, that’s $5000 for 100 000 uniques.

That’s money, man!

(more…)

That is to say, allowing your precious media properties to give away free samples of itself can allow to increased viewership of said media property.

Absolutely SHOCKING?!

Actually, no. Verifying what many had thought to be intuitive for a long, long time, (including Jon Stewart, the Daily Show, and Comedy Central) CBS released a statement through YouTube’s press release department verifying that after its legal partnership with YouTube that viewership in the “Late Show with David Letterman”, “Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson” have all increased 5-7% (the “Early Show” with Katie Couric also increased, but they neglected to state the actual numbers) — thanks to video clips seeded through YouTube.

Of course, the real interesting thing is how the RIAA and music industry, as well as the movie industry, will view this as a whole.  Sure, it is not a completely analogous situation, since 2-5 minute clips of a television shows do not equate to ALL of the television show, and, TV is constantly making new material; however, surely it does provide some incentive to start exploring “free” as an option.  Particularly when many do have the opportunities to mine a “back end” — what with music having all kinds of swag and concert tickets to sell, and the movie industry with its follow up DVD (now Blu-ray and HD-DVD) products.

What we can look forward too, if I can extend a line of thought from Mr. Kirkpatrick of TechCrunch, is the TV networks working furiously to try and disintermediate YouTube into insignificance with the rise of their own broadband offerings; quite frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if they used YouTube as a testing ground to see if it (free content) worked.  Extending that line of thought, unless its expressly written into a contract somewhere, look for the balkanization of content, with choicer stuff going to their own services, and lesser stuff going to YouTube.

Mike Arrington, postchild and first cheerleader for all things Web2.0, announced a couple days ago to little fanfare that he’s taking a break.  I guess going 24/7 for a little more than a year takes it toll, as well as feeling like a punching bag for all the detractors you’ve attracted.

My guess is that the day-to-day operations have moved on to Mr. Kirkpatrick et al while he vacations with the folks.  One does wonder, however, how Mr. Arrington plans to spend his time after his retreat.  After all, he has mentioned in the past of having aspirations for the crunch network far beyond its current incarnation.  Will he move to a more managerial role in growing the number and quality of his assets?  Merge with other properties to create a mammoth Web2.0 beast? (GigaCrunch?) Or after  his time of introspection, will he move on to something else entirely (and wouldn’t that be the canary in the mineshaft!).

Time will tell though — and in that time it’ll be interesting to see if the voice of TechCrunch changes at all in this time as well.

So with some of the noise Gannett made about a month ago, and the news that the BBC is exploring user generated content, one would think that the evolution of news lies strictly in involving your audience.

Not so.

Someone made a point during the Gannett discussion about whether or not crowdsourcing was an attempt to cut down costs; although the news you get in return is of questionable quality, its fresh, its unique — and its cheap.

Well, that thought has been extended, and then some, with the outsourcing of editorial, copywriting, graphic design, and whole departments to the far east (read: India). The International Herald Tribune reports that, for example:

WAN, a Paris-based organization representing 72 national newspaper associations, conducted a global survey of about 350 newspapers in Europe, Asia and the United States, and company executives reported that they expected the outsourcing to increase, although few were willing to farm out all of their editorial functions.

Since then, the memos have been churning: The Columbus Dispatch in Ohio announced its intentions to shed 90 graphic design jobs and ship out the work to Affinity Express in Pune, India. The Contra Costa Times, a California newspaper newly acquired by Media News Group in the breakup of Knight Ridder, revealed plans to shift ad production positions to Express KCS in India, which bills itself as the “world’s media back office.”

It does mention Reuters, however, as an example of a global media business that embraces the benefits of outsourcing — and does so easily, conflicts with local guilds aside, because there are probably no real local roots to speak of (like the Associated Press).
It reminds me of that panel I attended a few weeks ago at a local University (York University, actually) — with Mat Ingram as one of the panelists. The other panelist, mentioned something that struck me at the time — that news is a commodity. But I think news only remains a commodity when you’re not able to add value in a way no one else can.

And that’s where I think that the future of news lies – the local news, news that is immediately around you, news that is contemporary and relevant, and its news you just can’t outsource.

On the other hand, it is a domain that user generated content and crowdsourcing can obviously play a role. Traditional news organizations will have to recognize these truths one day, and capitalize on some examples as News-as-community (even online ones) that are really the future of what the news can and should be.

Which is funny in some sense, given how it seems like some local newspapers have thrown in their lot with Yahoo and want to be done with it [if anyone knows of a masterplan, let me know]