It looks like another year has come and gone.  And, like in past years, here are the top 10 things I learned in 2009 (at least as I see them):

1. Specializing in ‘Local’ internet was one of the smarter career moves I ever made. Who would have thought that the sum of all the small dots would actually add up to such a big picture?  Trust your gut, sometimes it tells you the right thing.
2. The Internet business is much, much different in California than it was in Chicago.  Things here move a bit faster and carry a lot more weight.  Not to mention, the weather here is great.
3. Years later, most people still don’t really ‘get it’ when it comes to SEO.  This surprises me.  But, it does make room for a lot of opportunity.  I have been doing SEO for around 10 years now, and that makes me 2 things: a) a lot grayer than when I started, b) one of suprisingly few people who actually seem to understand what it takes to rank a website in the SERPs.
4. The way things are shifting, if you don’t know feeds by now you are probably doing something horribly wrong.  The Internet is made up of tubes, of course.  It is only now becoming obvious that all of these tubes connect to make money for people who are good at filtering/sorting/combining what comes out of them all.
5. PPC advertising is not dead, not by a longshot.  But, it sure isn’t changing fast enough to keep its market share of SEM.  Turns out that display advertising has a place in the budget of even the smallest of businesses, assuming you know how to do it.  Yahoo seemed to get this when they bought Right Media, Google has been scrambling to catch up with that one— DoubleClick is still not all that effective as a display exchange and OpenX seems doomed to be an ad server.  I have little doubt that Google will succeed in the end, and fear Yahoo won’t be able to fulfill the potential RM has because of politics.  I guess that’ll be for 2010 to see.
6. When is Twitter going to figure out how to monetize effectively?  Seems a bit overdue, don’t you think?
7. Facebook seems to get it.  As a result, Facebook will probably be the biggest IPO of 2010.  Its not a bad ad platform.  Now that the privacy concerns seem to have gone away (think Beacon).
8. Bing has kind of fizzled.  I don’t see enormous growth there, although they do seem to keep tons of pages in the index for a really long time.  That’s appreciated.  Of course, never rule them out.  The Yahoo-Microsoft deal will probably start showing within the next year.  I, for one, am still excited by the possibilities.
9. If it is a good idea, Google’s probably already thought of it.  I like to think that bar codes on small business window’s that could be photographed by cell phones and easily searched on a mobile search site was my idea…. but, let’s face it Google had time to already build it, so they probably thought of it before I did.  I’ve got a few ideas that I’ve got locked in a briefcase hidden under my mattress that I’m sure Google hasn’t thought of yet.  At least, I think they haven’t.
10. Lastly, thanks to an absolutely horrible economy and all the other awful things going on in the world, I once again have been forced to realize how truly fortunate I have been.  Real estate aside, I remain pretty insulated from all the bad things out there for yet another year.  I am blessed with a gorgeous wife, a beautiful daughter and a stinky dog.  I always get to work on things that are exciting and new, I work with scores of brilliant people, and coming to work has never been a chore for me.  How many people can say that?  Not many.

Here’s hoping everyone has a happy and safe New Year, and that 2010 is full of opportunity and joy!

Happy New Year

-Ari

If you pay any attention at all, you have by now been overrun with all the hype surrounding Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing.  If you don’t believe me, go to Twitter and check the trending topics.  Even more interesting, check out all the posts referencing #badabing.  I don’t know if these are all industry insiders using this, but there sure do appear to be a lot of them posting their comments/findings about the new engine.  

Microsoft is calling Bing a “decision engine”.  That’s all well and good, but really Bing doesn’t seem like anything that new or groundbreaking.  Don’t get me wrong, the search seems good.  Better than live.com.  The association of topic-relevant information within the search results pages is new and well executed.  If nothing else, Bing deserves some action for that.  Some of the expanded data (although there isn’t a whole lot of it yet) is interesting.  

But, what makes it a decision engine and not a search engine?  Users are still searching based on keywords.  Users are still looking at the results pages to decide what to do next.  Sure, the user experience has been slightly changed and even improved.  But, this is not a major change.

If you want to see some real rethinking of the basic search premise, I suggest you instead check out Google Squared.  The latest from the Google Labs is a pretty cutting edge and interesting retooling of the entire search experience, essentially combining a series of searches to refine the information presented based on the relationship of those elements.  It also provides some pretty useful data all together on a single page, much like what Bing takes pride in achieving, but in Google Squared’s case it is a column-based layout where each column is customizeable providing the opportunity for really unique results.

I am happy for Microsoft and thrilled to see a decent search product out of them.  I think the launch of a new brand will be successful in getting user adoption and helping people forget live.com, msn.com, and the other marginal efforts of the past.  But, make no mistake in who the real innovators are.  Clearly, Google still holds that honor.

Friday funny: http://tweetvalue.com/

This site says that my own Twitter profile is worth…. drumroll please… 3 whole dollars.

That’s great, now if I just create 333,333,334 more free profiles I can sell them all and retire.  To who?  Uh, well I guess I’ll have to believe the tweetvalue folks that there’s some sort of market out there for $3 Twitter profiles.  Of course, things are only valuable if there is a demand.  I have a little bit of a hard time believing that there is any demand for my profile with all 13 followers.  I have a lot more friends on Facebook and LinkedIn, are those worth hundreds?  

Come on now, social networking is great… but social networking profiles themselves have absolutely no inherent value.  The only value are the pages that get more traffic as a result of them.  And, if you actually did manage to sell one of these Twitter profiles that would never transfer.  So, congrats to the folks at tweetvalue for a clever domain name and a shot at the gold.  But, this time I think you’ve missed the mark.

Let it be known, I tend to stick up for the small guy.  In the recent Superbowl, I rooted for the Cardinals (even though I didn’t think they either deserved it or had any real chance of winning.  I prefer “somewhat local” to “mega global” any day of the week.

Also let it be known, I tend to be willing to pay premium prices for superior products.  I am no cheapskate, I know that the old adage “you get what you pay for” is more often true than not.  Heck, I spent a few years in the high-end stereo business, so I even understand and accept theories of “diminishing return”.

So, when I choose a service provider because they are the underdog, even when their product is not competitively priced, I expect quality in return.  Unfortunately, Hostway thinks it is okay to charge more and deliver inferior service.  This combination not only leaves me with no other choice than to discontinue my service with them, it leaves me mad enough to blog about it.  Take that, Hostway.

What made me so mad?  Years ago, I signed up for hosting with them and registered the domain name through them.  Sure, the price was high.  But, at the time I was doing a lot of work with Hostway (marketing for their clients, etc), and thought the premium guys would be worth it.  Truth be told, my experience has been pretty good for a number of years.  Until now.

All I want to do is transfer my domain to another host.  This has locked me in a customer support death spiral that is making me pull out my hair.  I have threatened to report them to ICANN.  No help.  I have sent them links to TUCOWS lost password page.  No help.  I have begged and pleaded for service.  Any service at all.  No help.

So, here I am.  7 days into this and no resolution.  The best I’ve gotten was a human response saying “thank you for your patience, this has been escalated to level 2 support”.  I don’t care what your support structure is, Hostway.  Your lack of service is astonishing.  It is so bad, quite frankly, that I may have to reconsider some basic principles I have yet held so dear.

Thanks a whole heck of a lot.

Google Insights (http://www.google.com/insights) is reporting that post-inauguration, Barack Obama has surpassed some pretty big names, at least in terms of search volume.

Is this a good time to do some arbitrage for my Amazon affiliate program?  My Google results are only showing two PPC ads, both positive messages and neither peddling either of his books.

Nope, this is a time for renewal (and reconciliation, according to the White House today).  Today is not a day to eek out tiny profits as an invisible middleman.  Today is a day to revel in hopefulness, pride and pray that Mr. Obama can do something to fix this wretched economy before it is too late.