Facebook, in all their “wisdom” has decided to change the layout of how you are delivered status updates from your friends. In essence, removing your choice as to what you want to see and only showing what Facebook feels is most important based on a popularity contest of which status updates receive the most comments or likes.

Instead of boring you with the details of the Facebook News Feed change ,  I’ll share with you a hint on how to change your Facebook News Feed back to the way it was.

How to fix your News Feed in 3 simple steps

• Create a New Smart List: using the smart list feature on the left side of your Facebook page, create a new list. Call it anything you want, I called mine Most Recent.
• Add all of your friends to that new list: here you can add everyone that you want to see updates from. If you add them all then you will see everyone’s updates. This may suck for people with a few hundred friends but you can edit them later.
• Now when you want to visit Facebook, just click on your new smart list and you will see ever status update back as it was in chronological order, before Facebook changed everything.

As of now this little hack works. Please leave a comment below or find me on Google+ or Facebook and let me know if anyone else has found any other way or if this fails to work for you.

This is an assumption usually made by people who either do not understand the Search Engine Optimization / Internet Marketing industry or by salesmen who are just trying to capitalize on the internet marketing phrase to pull one over on an unsuspecting client and to boost their own marketability.

Whats the Difference between Sales and Internet Marketers?

So maybe you aren’t sure what the difference is between Search Engine Optimization / Internet Marketing and Internet Sales.

Let’s put it in simple terms. Say you go to a car dealership to have some repairs or regular maintenance done on your car. Would you rely on a car salesman to do the work or would you require that a trained mechanic do the work for you? Just because a salesman works there and can sell you a fancy car doesn’t mean that he is qualified, has the specific technical training and experience to actually work on your car like a mechanic would.

Shady salesmen have given SEO’s and internet marketers a bad name for too long. Anyone can go to Barnes and Noble, pick up a $10 book or read a couple websites and then claim to be a search engine professional. A salesman is just that, a salesman. His job is to find new clients, make a sale, bring in the money and sometimes act as the liaison between the client and the internet marketing department.

The search engine optimization and internet marketer’s job is to find out what the client is trying to accomplish and make sure the goals are met. This is done through extensive keyword research, on site website optimization, content creation, market research, studying analytical data, cross linking, inbound link creation, local optimization, social networking, extensive testing and reporting to the client along with many other things.

The internet marketer has to know what type of on site changes will hurt the client or will benefit them. They have to keep up to date with search engine trends and algorithm changes that will affect their rankings. They have to know what their competition is up to to stay competitive with them. They have to know the difference between white hat and black hat techniques. They have to be able to learn their clients industry, know what terms people are actually searching on and what is the best way to get those people to the clients website and convert them from curious shoppers to loyal customers.

As you can see there are many different factors involved when it comes to internet marketing that the average internet salesman has no knowledge of or experience with. Be sure to ask who your internet marketer is and if there is a way to contact them if you have any questions. A reputable salesman, when confronted with specific questions that they do not know, should have no problem saying they do not know the answer but will pass it along to their search engine optimization and internet marketing team to be sure to get you the correct answer.

When it comes to internet marketing; just the same as it is with your car repairs, always leave it to the professionals.

With such a large percentage of sites being affected its safe to say that webmasters, SEO’s and business owners around the country have feverishly been staring at their site analytic’s and trying to figure out what they can do to regain any positions they have lost.

Do Not Panic

Well first off DO NOT PANIC! The worst thing that you could do as a business owner is to over react to something that you don’t have a solid understanding of yet.  This change isn’t even 2 weeks old yet so the results are still filtering in. This is the perfect time to just sit back and watch and learn and ask yourself these following questions:

• did my site take a hit?
• if so which pages fell and which didn’t?
• is there something that stands out on those pages that dropped that is different from the pages that didn’t?
• did my competitors take a hit?
• is there any correlation between my site and my competitors as to drops or raises in search results?

Asking yourself these questions and taking time to actually study your data will help to ensure that you are able to make any changes that need to be made and not cause more harm to your site.

It seems that the biggest complaint from the 500 million + members of Facebook is that they always seem to make changes to the layout of the site just when everyone finally gets comfortable with them. It makes one think if Facebook has ever heard the term “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”.

Then again, in Facebooks defense, they can eaisly say that in the ever changing world of the internet, he who doesnt adapt, advance and grow will be left in the dark. Just look at what has happened to MySpace lately.

Either way, this change seems to be one that will actually be welcomed since it is just improving the functionality and interactivity of user profiles. Below is a video example of the new Facebook Profile, tell me what you think.

It’s common knowledge now that when you see a search box on a web page such as Google, you instinctively know (or have been trained) to type your search questions there. After firing up Internet Explorer with Google being the default page I see this: (see image to left)

Like I said, I don’t use IE often so I checked this with Firefox & Chrome to see if they were delivering the same type of home page. Of course they weren’t so this leads me to only one conclusion:

“Google feels that anyone still using Internet Explorer is either  “Non Tech Savvy” or just plain stupid and can’t figure out where to type.”

Of course that is just my opinion and in no way is meant to represent Google’s opinion but in a world that is so dependent on the internet and accustomed to using search engines, not to mention the fact that Google receives several hundred million searches a day, it’s a pretty passive aggressive way of stating the obvious on how Google perceives Internet Explorer users.

Has anyone else seen this? Is this something new or has this always been here and I’ve just never seen it because I don’t use IE? Am I being to harsh on Internet Explorer users? I’d love to hear what you think so leave your comments below.

So what is Facebook Places?

Those familiar with other check-in type mobile apps such as Foursquare should have no problem using this new Facebook feature.

Basically its a feature that allows users to tag their physical location and share that information with their Facebook friends. You will need to be using the most recent version of the Facebook application for the iPhone or if your mobile browser supports HTML5 and Geolocation, you can access it through touch.facebook.com.

Say you found a delicious new Sushi restaurant that you just have to share with your friends you can tag it. Say you are at the movies, the mall shopping, at a concert or even Disneyland, you can tag your self and any friends that are with you to let all your other friends know where you are, all with just the simple click of a button.

When you “check-in” at a location, you, along with who ever is tagged with you, will show up as a status update on your page and in your friends News Feed letting everyone know where you are and who’s with you.

Say good bye to those next day conversations of the concert you were both at and didn’t even know it. Facebook Places is a perfect way for meeting up with friends who you didn’t even know were at the same place.

Just be careful to set up your Facebook Places Privacy Settings so you don’t have any stalkers

It’s official, Google is now allowing certain company websites to dominate the first 8 results for certain products or searches.

For a quick example go to Google and search either Apple iPod or Hewlett Packard Printers. Notice the majority of the results all take you to either Apple’s domain or Hewlett Packard’s.

This announcement was made yesterday on Google’s Webmaster Central blog which basically says that they are now allowing a single domain to have multiple results, up to 8 in most cases on a single search result page.

Apparently Google feels that for certain searches, a companies website may be diverse enough to give the searcher all the information that they need before showing other, possibly more accurate results.

What this means for you as a searcher is that now you have to spend more time searching; past page 1, just to find the most relevant information to your search. That is if you want to actually find something not on the parent company’s site, which in most cases is what people want in the first place. People know they can go to the company website for anything about that product but go to search engines to find results not from the company website.

No idea if this will last but all we can do is hope that Google knows what they are doing, and if not be smart enough to change it back to the way it ws.

I checked when I got to work and saw everyone else was still receiving the original organic SERP report layout. Once again I came home just now and saw I am still receiving the new layout and figured id post up some screen shots of it. Is this a test? A sneak peek at how Google Caffeine will look?

Original: notice where the right arrow show number of searches and my location, the search box is much larger and the options listed on the left hand side.

Original: showing more with the number 9 position showing more options and more then the regular 10 results

Original: notice the related search suggestion box

Now notice the options with the first “More” option selected:

An finally notice the options with the 2nd “More” option selected:

Some years ago back in February 2004, I came across this little start up social networking site called MySpace. At first MySpace didn’t seem like much compared to its only potential rival Friendster which has been around for a while. Since I was a member of Friendster and a few other news groups and small social networking sites I figured why not join this other one and see what MySpace has to offer.

The MySpace of 2004 resembles next to nothing to the MySpace of today. You were only allowed a small handful of photos, you only had a “top 8″ for your friends and the only way you could get a fancy background, graphics or custom profile was if you actually knew how to code the HTML and CSS your self. It was fun, simple and little to no spam or phishing of any sort to worry about.

By word of mouth, MySpace started to spread on the internet. And with the help of some of its more famous members such as Tila Tequila, MySpace started to spread like a virus. It’s membership skyrocketed like no one has ever seen and support websites that taught people how to customize their profiles and even profile generators started sprouting up all across the net. Some of the better code generating sites were even able to charge for their layouts. MySpace was flourishing, people were making money and everyone was happy.

Welcome News Corporation and Fox Interactive Media

Things were going good for MySpace but unfortunately things were about to change.

Just like with every other social popular entity in the internet, MySpace started to get the attention of more traditional media companies who wanted a piece of the MySpace pie. In July 2005 News Corporation, the parent company of Fox Interactive Media purchased MySpace for a cool $580 million.

What seemed like almost over night things started to change for the popular social networking site. Storage capacity increased allowing unlimited number of photos to be uploaded, support of flash profiles, videos and music players. Profiles for famous musicians, comedians, celebrities even every day companies such as Nike, Coca Cola and Hollywood movie studios all were becoming standard on the site.

With all this popularity and media exposure it was only a matter of time before the criminal element started to make its appearance. News coverage of cyber stalking and pedophiles and political and religious hate groups appeared on the evening news at least once a week. Then came the spammers the phishers and all the fake profiles from dating and adult websites started flooding members inbox and friend requests. It got to the point where no one wanted to even log in or at most had to make they profiles private in hopes of avoiding all these scams.

Its safe to say the fun of MySpace was gone and all that was left was a corporate ideal of how a social site should be.

The Rise of Facebook and Twitter

Around the same time in 2004 another social networking site originally called thefacebook.com but now more formally just known as Facebook was started over at Harvard University. This was more or less a social site for Harvard students but eventually expanded to other college students then high school students and finally, to anyone aged 13 and over across the country.

Out of all the social sites on the internet the battle for supremisy was between Facebook and MySpace and in April 2008 Facebook took the lead. Facebook surpassed MySpace in number of unique visits a day with Twitter in a close 3rd and MySpace started to feel the crunch.

Members who were tired of all the commercialism, spam and lack of new features were being driven away in massive numbers to Facebook and Twitter. Twitter is a social micro-blogging site in its most simplest form. Members are only allowed to post 140 characters at a time so think of it as your status update on MySpace, short simple and to the point.

Now why is Twitter so important? Well lets just say this simple micro-blog has had enough influence on the net to make MySpace add a status feature which resembles Twitter and Facebook tried to buy Twitter but failed and shortly there after redesigned, to the hatred of most its users, their entire layout to have Twitter’esq features.

And lets not forget the “Evil Google Empire”, who a few weeks ago was talking down about Twitter, calling it a “poor man’s email system” conveniently just as Twitter was launching its new search feature. Sources say this is typical of Google to do when it feels a web property is a threat,;discredit the threat and then acquire the threat. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see Google place a bid for Twitter in the next few months.

Ok so the last section got a little off on a Twitter Tangent but it just continues to show how “simplicity of design and function” and non-commercialism is the key to a successful social network.

Facebook has luckily found this out early on with their Terms of Service mistake a few months ago where they changed their TOS to the uproar of all its users, so much that it made the nightly news and they had to change them back, to their new re-design which will also probably be reverted back to the original layout.

So the lesson for all social networking sites to learn here is that social sites need to listen to their members, and ask them what they want before changes are made. A social networks isn’t the place for commercials or a place for you to saturate with and bombard members with new movie premiers, music releases, dating services or other advertising campaigns. It’s the members that make the site a success not the corporations who buy them.

Too late for MySpace. It went from being that hip cool new club on the strip to being that 2nd class night club where all the 40 year old men hang out trying to pick up on the 21 year old girls that no one really wants to hang out at. Just not a fun scene anymore.

All things considered this was a basic blog convention where I went and sat around listening to some people speak and hope I pick up some good ideas. But what I think was the best part of the trip was the opening night party that was held at the Las Vegas Hard Rock Hotel and Casino’s own night club “The Joint!”

Picture a few hundred bloggers, geeks, Search Engine Optimization specialists and others who I still couldn’t really classify in any category, drunk off their ass thanks to the open bar and free food provided by the Hard Rock Casino. The drinks were strong and flowing. The DJ was very good and kept the music flowing.

My stay at the Imperial Palace Hotel and Casino wasn’t really worth mentioning apart from the fact that this was one of the worst Casino Hotels, or any hotel I have stayed in. The parking structure was confusing, no signs saying what level you were on or direction to where the exits were. Also after you park you have to either take the stairs or the elevator down to the ground floor, walk past all the dumpsters, and the maintenance workers break room, through another outside hallway then into a side door to get into the lobby. Let’s not forget avoiding all the taxi and visitor traffic because you have to cross right through the valet area.

Once inside the lobby of the Imperial Palace you have to take another elevator just to get up into the casino, and the check in is at the front which is in accessible without having to go through all this if you park in the parking garage. Ohhh and there are a whole seperate set of elevators you have to find to jsut get to your rooms. Speaking of the rooms, those were pretty nice actually. But the Imperial Palace is in a horrible location because directly below us was a small little outside cabana club right off the Las Vegas Strip who decided to play music till 3am every night. I was on the 10th floor and it sounded like they were in my room with me. I really wouldnt recomment the Imperial Palace Casino to any one.

I gambled a little bit, won some then lost it again but hey thats the fun of Las Vegas right? As for the speakers all of them were pretty informative and gave some good ideas but the one I enjoyed the most was with Thomas Frey – Google’s Top Rated Futurist Speaker from The DaVinci Institute. His outlook on what the future of 50 years from now holds for the internet and the world in general were pretty interesting and thought provoking. Ideas of Universal commerce, and no more country boarders paint an very exciting future, at least to me.

Well hopefully everyone will enjoy what the future has in store and Ill be sharing some new things with you as the weeks pass by.

-Randy-