Twitter Tools
I’ve been logging into my Twitter account everyday now for about a week. So far, I like it. I had to take off the alerts to my Blackberry because it was too much and I couldn’t tell if my kids were texting me or if Natala was at another fancy spa. (Love you Natala!) 
At any rate, I came across two pretty cool Twitter tools that I wanted to share.
This comes in handy (even though the date is off for me by a day). Basically you enter your Twitter account name and you’ll get a display of 100 updates from people you are following. You can also choose how often you want it to refresh between 3, 10 and 30 minutes.
Now this is a Facebook application, so I think you have to have it installed and it picks up your tweets through Facebook. I haven’t actually tried it because I’ve stopped adding apps to my Facebook account for a while, but it’s interesting to watch for a minute or so. You basically get to see Twitter updates from all over the world.
Real Estate Webmasters Banned by Google
I try very hard to stay away from the drama that constantly engulfs Morgan Carey and Real Estate Webmasters. But this one is worth commenting on because it’s such a great example of what not to do.
Late last night, members of REW’s forum started posting that they weren’t finding REW in Google searches. This morning my inbox was full of emails asking if I thought they were penalized. After conducting a few searches on their most popular terms, it appears that they have been tossed in the penalty box. Not only are they not showing up, there seems to be an across-the-board toolbar adjustment as well.
Morgan’s reaction was to write a very long post that outlines his penalty assessment process. While discussing REW blogs, he quotes from his TOS the section that clearly explains REW’s strict stance on behavior intended to manipulate SERPS:
"Search engines: REW blogs perform very well in search engines - this is due in no small part to the fact that our authors write high quality (Unique) content that does not violate any search engines guidelines and is often referenced from other sources on the web. Our rules against link spam and other forms of search engine spam or low quality advertising posts ensure that REW Blogs are able to maintain their authoritative status by providing our readership with the highest quality (Unique) content possible. It is also very important that these rules and regulations are strictly enforced so that search engines can trust that they are indexing and ranking high quality "Human" contributed, edited and moderated content. Link schemes: Any attempt to artificially inflate page rank or link popularity is not welcome here. Search engines frown upon this kind of behavior, and it does nothing for the user experience - when a link is placed in any section of REW Blogs (In a post, in the relevant reading section, in the related links of a post) it should be done so for the sole benefit of the user, and NOT to send yourself link juice / page rank."
He also goes on to say:
Just to be clear directory aside - Real Estate Webmasters does not participate in any kind of link exchange (Solicitation or otherwise) on our domain http://www.realestatewebmasters.com. We do not sell links from our domain http://www.realestatewebmasters.com, we don’t buy links, we don’t spam comments with our links - in fact - we are so damn busy building technology for our clients that we wouldn’t have the time to go out and try to get links even if we wanted to - it’s the old "The carpenter’s house is in the worst shape in the neighborhood
By the time you get to the end, you walk away thinking that the penalty is definitely undeserved. But here’s the flaw in Morgan’s post:
He is making the assumption that any penalty that might be imposed would be directly related to guideline violations involving the REW site. It would be great if that’s how it always worked, but that just isn’t the case. (If you don’t think that’s true, just ask Bob Massa). Occasionally, search engines do issue penalties for general behavior that shows an overall disregard for the sanctity of their guidelines. And when that behavior is a direct contradiction to their constant flow of pro-guideline public spin, the penalties can be quite severe.
Here’s an example: (from an email being sent out by REW staff)
My name is Nick May. I am a Link Manager for Real Estate Webmasters. I am emailing you today to introduce a new, free system we have developed, based on contextual-quality links. This system is designed to put more focus on a fewer amount of links, as they would be located on pages full of content, relative to the site. Instead of having links placed in directories, 5 links will be placed on an already established contextually relevant page. Our format will be a bit different than the format you use. Your links, on our pages, will appear as comments and we will be using your keywords as the commenter’s name. You add 5 of our clients to one of your content pages and in return, we will add your site to each of those client’s sites, on a content filled page. This is just an introductory email to let you know a little bit about it. This system is working for our clients and I have some examples to show you, if you’re interested. Email me back and I will fill you in with all the information you need. Thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope you will take part in this excellent new program.
(Emphasis Mine)
OK, so last spring many of REW’s clients got in trouble for cross-linked directories. Now, six months later REW staff members are sending out dozens of these emails (and have been since last June) offering to create fake blog comments stuffed with your desired keywords in exchange for you putting back the links that used to be in the spam directories that caused all the trouble in the first place.
So how is it Morgan forgot to mention these emails in his public plea to Matt? Is this employee sending these emails without Morgan’s knowledge? (Maybe it’s the same employee that hacked into the PREN Forum?) Or maybe he thinks there’s no way Google would know about these emails? I have no idea for sure, but you at least have to give him some credit. It takes a lot of balls to stand up in public and declare to the world that your shit doesn’t stink, even when so many people know it does.
The Digg Reel
Well if you haven’t had enough of Digg for the week, you can now enjoy the prior week’s top Digg/Dugg videos via The Digg Reel.
This is a recap with a mtv/vh1 feel that covers the videos, the creators and the digg submitters. If that’s not enough they also highlight some of the comments.
No need to hit play for each video, this is one streaming video that is all inclusive, so you just hit play once and watch the show.
Depending on what your thoughts are about Digg, this will be either very cool or extremely lame.
Digg Algo Stirs the Pot Again
If you are a top submitter on Digg have you noticed the need for more Diggs to get your story to the FP. I know I have. It was a few months back when they made their change to the shout system that I seem to remember having gone through this, then things settled down a bit. Having 151 diggs and not hitting the front page is lame and frustrating. At least Digg is being fair though…see the last story. Even Kevin Rose isn’t hitting home with 120 diggs. Ya think they did that on purpose to try and give the impression that everybody is equal and what’s good for Mr. Rose is good for everyone else?
Looking for CSS Designers
I haven’t had any time to blog lately because I’ve been buried with work related to PropertyTown. We’ve been banging out a bunch of new features, and we’ve been swamped with inquires from agents interested in moving on to our system. All in all, the new year has been good. The only real problem is the fact that we don’t have enough manpower to handle the frontend design work.
We are in desperate need of freelance CSS designers who can crank out quality designs for our clients. Our system runs off of a single master theme, so there is no php work involved. We just need people who can take some static html and our master CSS file and turn it into something stunning. (ala http://csszengarden.com/)
We have several projects ready to go, and the number of inquiries we’re receiving is growing weekly, so we’re looking for people that are interested in a long-term working relationship.
If you are interested, please reply to (greg at 3dogmedia.com) with some samples of your CSS work, and I’ll follow up with you with more details.