Search Featured: Craig Newmark, owner and founder of craigslist

Back in 2002 I’ve lived in Ocean Beach, San Francisco and worked at Haight
and Cole. I went by the craigslist building a few times and it didn’t look
like much. I’ve used Craigslist back
then and when I moved to San Diego, I was happy to see he put up a San Diego
section lateron.
Now craigslist is known world wide as a place to find just about anything, a
business directory, a free alternative to ebay, a place to meet people.
Craig Newmark is one of the few who will be likely to have a permanent place
on the web for generations to come, so I am happy to have had the
opportunity to conduct an interview with the man who came out of nowhere to
become one of the first to connect the dots of the web:

Mike Dammann: Craig, you have started out in a small building in San Francisco and have
now become one of the top internet site owners.
At what point did you realize that craigslist was going to be bigger than
anything you have ever done and what was the first thing that you did to get
ready for what this would turn out to become?

Craig Newmark: Never was much of an observation like that, since growth was always slow
and steady. On a continuous basis, we try to keep ahead of the
performance curve. In the race between the tortoise and the hare, we’re
the tortoise.

Mike Dammann: A lot of people out there want money, they want to make money online, but
don’t really have a clue or any guideline on how to go about it.
You on the other hand seem to be the opposite. You filled a need without
even monetizing for quite some time, correct?
What was your initial goal and how have your goals changed since then?

Craig Newmark: Never had an initial goal, just wanted to give back to the community.
Now the commitment is larger, and it’s all a matter of following through.

Mike Dammann: Other websites: Do you own any, have you ever failed at any projects? Are
there projects you have yet to start?
No need to reveal anything, but I would like to know what else inspires you
and if there is anything new that we can expect from you.

Craig Newmark: I’ve made a coupla of big blunders early on, at craigslist, that I can’t
talk much about. Some of my consulting efforts didn’t go anywhere,
including a box that was supposed to be a cheap home server, in 1996.

ike Dammann: Let’s look for a moment on how the internet has changed since you have
started. How marketing has shifted. Back in the days, social media was
unheard of.
There obviously was a need back then which has not been filled until
recently. Unlike most sites which have started back then, your model has not
changed, only expanded.
Are you planning to ever change anything from how you have been operating
for years and if so, why?

Craig Newmark: No changes in the sense you mean; we do one thing really well, and don’t
want to screw that up. There will be more cities, more languages, and
always better customer service.

Mike Dammann: I’m curious as to how much time and energy you guys are spending to cut down
the spam. I am assuming with your traffic it must be quite a bit. Do people
get the hint that spam won’t last long, or are spammers getting smarter and
what advice would you give any platform owner out there when it comes to
keeping their community clean?

Craig Newmark: Can’t disclose anything along these lines. You don’t want to tip off
the bad guys.

Mike Dammann: I have checked your blog before
conducting this interview, and obviously it’s tough to miss who you support
in this upcoming election.
Even though I myself am vocal in this arena, I am not always sure if it’s a
good idea and would like to get your opinion on a comment which I have just
read here:
“Ultimately I feel it’s my duty to vote based on what’s best for myself, my
family and my own situation.

I feel it’s *NOT* my job to change anyone else’s mind because their
situation may be very different from mine.

my $.02″

Do you think that us supporting a candidate is good and what approach do you
believe to be the best? How do you educate people who have not that much
interest in learning about what either candidate stands for?

Craig Newmark: I think 2008 is much like 1776. Back then, the Founders gave up pretty
good representative democracy, with some means for grassroots efforts. The
Internet allows one to scale grassroots efforts from thousands to millions
and that complements the representative system well. I feel we all need
to stand up for what we feel is the right thing.

Educating people, I’m not so good at, but I’ve been blogging and doing
public speaking, hopefully with some effect.

Mike Dammann: Your resume and previous
interviews have shown me that you feel comfortable being a “nerd”, yet you
have been in
the limelight for quite some time.

What is it about the net industry that so many talented programmers have
such poor social skills, yet there are some who combine both worlds well?
Are you more inspired by the technical aspect of the web, or are you more
motivated by what you want to bring to the world and then find a way to
deliver that?

Craig Newmark: Some people live in their head a lot, and have good technology and
engineering skills. I’m one such person, initially attracted by the
tech but now I’ve become a kind of community organizer. That works for me.

Mike Dammann: I forgot how much it was, but you have been offered a substantial amount of
money for craigslist and didn’t sell it. I sometimes ask myself what will
happen to sites like yours some day, let’s say in 100 years.

Are you the kind of person who has a hard time separating from his own
creation and what are you going to do to impact a continuance of your own
vision with the project?

Craig Newmark: I’m committed, and persistent, and just don’t even consider separation.

Mike Dammann: Craig, this last question is about the future of the web. Where do you see
the web in 50 years? What sorts of phenomenons do you see coming which have
not been thought of yet? What sort of advice would you give web marketers,
creative people and entrepreneurs who want to become an early part of
something new and how do you yourself anticipate your very own role in what
is about to happen?

Craig Newmark: That’s a huge question, hard to start.

For sure, I think the primary connection to the Net for most people will
be increasingly smart mobile phones. It’s easier, in much of the world,
to set up wireless networks, and maybe everyone needs a phone.

Be careful when picking a real estate domain name (Sarasota Association of Realtors)

http://gulfshoreslife.wordpress.com/2008/10/17/the-sar-pokie-hey-thats-what-its-all-about/

The SAR Pokie - hey that’s what its all about! Sarasota MLS | Sarasota Association of REALTORS Board

Sing the SAR Pokie along with your fellow REALTORS! Thank you Sarasota MLS and Sarasota Association of REALTORS Board!

http://www.oak-lawn-il.com/sarasota-mls-attacks-one-of-its-own/

“Normally, I try to stay local on this blog but every once in a while something comes up that I feel is important enough to write about of a non-local nature.  This post is about the Sarasota MLS, or SAR, that has fought one of its dues paying members to force him to get rid of a long-held domain name for his #1 Sarasota real estate website, originally named thesarasotamls.com.

Although SAR MLS isn’t the only area that has tried strong-arm tactics on the term “MLS” (multiple listing service), I haven’t heard of such a case as this one.”

http://www.inman.com/news/2008/10/16/mls-name-dispute-lands-in-court

http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=5025

http://www.soldbyjennifer.com/what-does-mls-mean/

http://www.previewvegascondos.com/real-estate-news/dont-cross-the-sar
http://www.ericonsearch.com/sarasota-association-of-realtors-they-need-my-online-reputation-management-help/

http://www.ryanwardrealestate.com/WordPress/sarasota-association-of-realtors-sar-slaps-one-of-its-own/
Right now we are all in danger of losing what we own. Actually, it would be like that was realtor.com setting the standards.
Realtor.com has been making news regarding what is and what isn’t allowed when it comes to using real estate related domains,
business names as well as user names on forums. Now we have SAR MLS doing the same thing. This will continue.
The safest thing you can do in life is never to pick any word that has been branded before.
What happened with Marc is that his work can no longer continue on that domain, which is like building an office and
being told that you cannot use it.
Anyways, this is Luxury Sarasota Real Estate .
Great looking website!

Marc uses Andre the Giant as his avi on forums. Glad to see he looks far better
Contact him here …

Never make a decision in anger

I see a lot of people making their decisions based on anger. What I am talking about is voters with their minds made up. I am not making comparisons, but thruout history, some of the worst empires have risen out of the ashes of regimes the citizens were extremely upset with.

Let me throw out a couple of examples here:

Red October. Russians were tired of the Czar. The hatred opened the door for the other extreme causing 72 years of disaster. Before 1933 Germany was in bad shape and Germans voted someone into office who was most outspoken against them.

I see a lot of danger here when people are ignoring one side’s warning signs.

I am not comparing Obama to Hitler or Bush to the Czar, but I am saying that before you vote for someone, you need to calm down and look at the reality of what both candidates stand for.

You can vote in what you consider your own best interest. You can vote for a tax cut promised to you, but will that really get the country back in shape, or is it going to give Americans a little more spending money for a year to be followed by even worse financial problems or stagnating back to where things are now?

We also need to look at both side’s history and get an idea of who we may have up there. I do not consider all personal matters unimportant. I think that right now is a great time for people to calm down. Drop the namecalling, stop the hatred and open up your mind. Look above your own situation for a minute and decide on who you trust to leave the country in better shape in 4 years.

Hope you are not offended with a political post, but I see a lot of people closing their eyes and refusing to look closer at issues which determine what the next 4 years may turn into.

The problem I have is not with who some people want to choose, but why. The lack of reason for it. The desire to pay back those they are angry with. The fact that Americans are willing to overlook so many questions which have not been answered.

We don’t want 4 more years of what we have seen, but we don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater either and need to decide rationally who we would trust to lead us into a new beginning.

Free links according to Matt Cutts

In this post you can see how you would find links from other websites hitting a 404.

My question would be why we don’t just have all of the non assigned urls automatically go to the homepage. What better way is there than have every questionable link go to the homepage providing it has a good navigation system for the visitor to find what they came there for?

I can already think of so many links I get which don’t go to specific page, but my question is if I should really spend all that time to email every webmaster to change it rather than just setting it up so that firetown.com/whatever goes to http://www.firetown.com directly?

This is something to benefit whom? Google? The website owner? The visitor?

I think that when I look at the visitor, it is best for him/her to get to the homepage and then find his way to get information related to what he/she is looking for.

Just my 2 cents.

10 things I hate about people

1. People who point at their wrist while asking for the time…. I
know where my watch is pal, where is yours? Do I point at my butt when
I ask where the toilet is?
2 People who are willing to search the entire room for the T.V. remote
because they refuse to walk to the T.V. and change the channel
manually.
3 When people say ‘Oh you just want to have your cake and eat it too’.
What good is cake if you can’t eat it?
4 When people say ‘it’s always the last place you look’. Of course it
is. Why would you keep looking after you’ve found it? Do people do
this? Who and where are they?
5 When people say while watching a film ‘did you see that?’. No Loser,
I paid $12 to come to the cinema and stare at the floor.
6 People who ask ‘Can I ask you a question?’….. Didn’t really give
me a choice there, did ya sunshine?

7. When something is ‘new and improved!’ Which is it? If it’s new,
then there has never been anything before it. If it’s an improvement,
then there must have been something before it, couldn’t be new.
8 When people say ‘life is short’. Life is the longest  thing anyone
ever does!! What can you do that’s longer?
9 When you are waiting for the bus and someone asks ‘Has the bus come
yet?’. If the bus came would I be standing here, moron?

10 When people say ‘I slept like a baby’. Well if you slept like a
baby does that mean you were waking up every couple of hours like
babies do?

A riddle

Being on the email list of my kid and her friends is a lot more enlightening at time than being on the email list of search engine marketers.

This is something to show you how simple life can be.

There is one riddle.

What is greater than God, More evil than the devil, The
> poor have it, The rich need it, And if you eat it,
> you’ll die??

Get it?

No?

Let me tell you this:

> When asked this riddle, 80% of kindergarten kids got the
> answer, compared to 17% of? Stanford ? University ?seniors.?

At the end of the email it went

Send this to 10 people and then press shift and you will
> get the answer.?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> P.S.. You won’t believe this, but this really does give
> you the answer!!!! Really, it does most things do not, but
> this one REALLY does!And this is NOT a lie. I swear!

So do you have the answer now?

Personal branding is bogus?

recently I have found some new inspiration. I dunno why but I like it when I communicate with people who get it. When that happens they normally tell me to not stoop down to other people’s levels, even though they may be more visible or successful than me at the moment, and at that time I realise that the answer is not to just go ahead and go with their flow, but be the best me I can be.

My speech on personal branding is a post I have read and he says … well, he says a lot about someone I didn’t even know existed.

But I do now, so I guess personal branding does work, fake or real.

SO here are a few ways to brand which I believe to work:

1) create  a mystery around the person or the brand. Use friends to help. Create confusion, start rumors, hearsay, offbeat stuff and contridictions to have others wonder and pass it on.

2) Visibility, right place right time. Be on pictures with people likely to be passed around.

OK at this point I have to tell you i do not recommend or like 80 percent of what I am posting here, and it’s not advice, but it’s stuff I have seen work a lot of time …

3) talk about people in the public eye where they really get pressed into defending themselves against “What was your name again?”

4) pretend to know something. I mean seriously, you can say the dumbest things, but if you style is fresh, it will piss of the knowledgable, more boring “experts” who will come in to correct you. Kill them with dingyness. Make them look like boring old geeks and tehy will stay around and have the whole following from webgeeks get to know your name. Trust me, the knowledgable will stick around and get your name out. They will try to look cooler thinking YOU are trying to look smart. They will pass it on to others trying to get help proving you wrong while not looking uncool.

There is more I will post lateron. I mean, this is starting to get to me now, I promise I will edit and add more to this post lateron.

I believe that you should brand yourself with whatever style is best for YOU though.

5)  ….

stand for something.

find something within you that you know people like.

I myself for example do not think searchfeature.com is a great name, others do. why? Because it doesn’t get remembered as something that is different and makes people smile. Like that dude who chose user name

cockwaffles on twitter. I mean, I will see someone with that name post in 10 years, and I’m going to remember him. (Thanks E.L., that was a good one).

What happens in life is that creative people are not always good strategists business wise and vice versa. If you manage to be both, you’re in. Have ideas, be a cool person AND be able to put things into action? That’s the key baby!!!

6) Make it look like you have a huge following. Some people have a bunch of fake posts on their forums and blogs. So people will be like “ummm, I don’t know who this is but maybe I should”.

7) be  you. the only you that only you can be. period! The world needs no more copies.

You can be a great fake, but be a unique fake. A funny fake, or annoying fake. Or even better be it the real way.

You can do what you want. But do it. The key is that most people are too afraid to be unique, they want to play it safe, but trust me, they all love the crazy ones who they wished they had the guts to be like.

(by the way, I am now starting to do the less bad ways compared to my first few posts)

make fun of someone who people pay attention to. But not hateful. I know a lot of you love reading matt’s blog. Why not have (ok I keep my ideas for myself at this point and will pass them on to someone who …. stay tuned)

9) combine 2 worlds as they have never been combined. like when you see two people act in a movie together who you would never see in real life together. or rarely. It creates chemistry, builds bridges and allows people to view you in situations they themselves would wonder how they would be able to deal with.

10) go it all the way. Remember: once branded, there is no turning back. so be careful what you want to be known for. Imagine today is the last day on earth. How will you be remembered?

You have 24 hours to get there. So get started …. NOW!

Mike

Blogs I really like

Ever since I have started in SEO, I have experienced what I call link greed. And very protective and often just selfish behaviour. I get seriously pissed when someone is trying to get me to link to them and won’t even offer a link back. Many have linked to me and not even mentioned it, I have found that by accident, and that is something very rewarding, it’s when you just link because you like what you have read.

I have dismissed many of the blog roll requests I have gotten, simply because I looked at the blog, not the PR and asked myself if I would ever come back to read that blog, if it leaves me curious as to what may come soon, and in most cases the answer was no.

So in addition to the many interviews with great bloggers I have had, I will randomly pick some blogs and add them to this post. This will not be SEO Scoop, not the daily blog revue.

I will keep this really simple, and pick something I think you guys should read (if SEO blogs are what you are into).

Internet Marketing Access

I don’t know the owner. By accident I have come across it, the owner dugg or sphunn my post about where SEOs host, and I checked it out and LOVE the style and the topics he chooses.

http://www.internetmarketingaccess.com/2008/10/03/will-google-target-article-directories-next/

This is what people out there should be reading. 9 link bait ideas gives you actually ideas.

I don’t read a lot unless I get attention drawn to me quick. And if you don’t keep it, then I prefer trying to figure something out myself. This blog made me actually read. SEO hosting is a post where he says:

“Domain Name Registration - Do not use the same domain registration company for all of your sites.  That is the first mistake you can make, even though as of this post Google (or any other engine) has not come out and said they compare whois info of each site that is linked to each other.  Instead, you will want to register your domain name’s with various registration companies and use there privacy service.  This way when a whois lookup is done, they will not only see different privacy labels, they will also see the domain names are registered with several different companies.  Another thing as of this post, there is no proof that Google or any other search engine will devalue a website that uses private registration.”

Not sure whether or not this is the case, but it sounds like something worth considering.

Peace.

Say “No!” to SEO!

I have seen yet another website where the vibe and the feel of it was completely destroyed by over optimization.
I think that when you look at a website and create it, you need to have the same mindset as if you produced a TV commercial.
Something like the Gap commercials.
You need quality, true inspiration, energy and art.
Something that sells, and when your main focus is Google rankings, you are likely to lose a lot of that.
Search engine optimization is something I know a lot about, but also something I am trying to avoid.
I personally do not believe in making changes to a site which has the right feel to it.

The internet is full of boring websites dominating the search engine results pages and mainly because their true essence has been sold out in order to rank high in Google.
If you want to keep your website just like it is, then focus on building links.
You can buy links or you can use a strategy that gets you exposure.
The best links you can have are ones from blogs with related subject matter. You should always have a few pages with a lot of text. I am using the word text since the overused term content dillutes the meaning of it.
People do not like to read too much, and having too much text too soon will sidetrack people from hiring you, so use a blog or some backpages for that and build links into that.

When you build a site, your only focus needs to be to convert traffic into business.

If you want to rank, then use other sites to do that.
Whether or not Google likes it, do not let a search engine dictate how to build YOUR sites.

You will win in the long run. Try PPC, buy banner spots on sites that rank.
If your site performs right, you will be a lot more successful using your instinct than building a site for Google instead of those that are coming to your site!

~ Mike Dammann
http://www.firetown.com

Google your name

One of the things that has helped me a lot when deciding which domain names and sites to use to drive traffic to my sites, was to Google my own name.

Now remember: If you have a domain name you REALLY like, your focus should be to build traffic there, brand it. But you can use other sources to help get traffic and get the ball rolling.

I get about 70k results for my name. First result is my domain name with my name in it, no surprise there.

Then there is my old blogspot blog. Then my facebook profile and also my Google knol.

You really should not spend too much time on those other networks. Unless of course you like it.

I am hooked on Facebook, and it does help at the same time, but I don’t go there with the intention to drive traffic to my sites, even though it is always in the back of my mind.

Linked in and Squidoo are always up there. And a couple of forums are ranking my profile and then of course there are some individual pages added from my sites and blogs.

Overall I would recommend googling your own name once in a while to get an idea which of your sites have a lot of power. Then you should add a little bit of content here and there. See if you get more traffic from that. But never forget that branding is what will keep you going when the algos change.

Make sure your main site is functional and providing something people like and have your banner appear on all your online resources.

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