If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!

So I’m cruising through twitter this AM and I get a message from DaveR about a job he thinks he’s found for me. Now my first thought was Dave sent me a link to the Disney Chief Magic Officer job, which is very cool, but more of a ceremonial position more than anything else. However what he actually sent was a more interesting, more frustrating, and to be quite honest … insulting.

DaveR Twitter and the Disney Job I’ll Never Get »

Sphere It

Vanessa recently spoke about Twitter By Phone, Now With Default Scoble, and I agree with her it’s a problem, however what we really need to do is deal with the cause of the problem not the symptom.

We Don’t Need Less Robert Scoble We Just a More Filtered and Relevant One »

Sphere It

if you’ve been experiencing an unusually high vote count to get to the homepage or are getting buried more often than not in the past week drop me an email, and let’s compare notes.

Sphere It

I was up late last night watching as Digg’s citizens fiddled while Digg burned, here’s my opinion on the matter.

The Day the Digging Died »

Sphere It

Since I received a few ‘hey are you ok it’s been more than 2 days since you blogged emails’ Thought I’d let you know I’m alive and doing well just buried under a mountain of work with some looming deadlines.

I was also just appointed moderator of the Social Media Tagging and Bookmarking Optimization forum at WebmasterWorld. It’s a new forum and it’s just getting off the ground, but feel free to stop by and post your questions or comments.

I’ve been a member on WMW since 2002 when I wandered into to ASP forum with some noob questions and some helpful folks set me straight. I can also say that WMW was a very big part of helping me learn the skills I needed to leave my 9 to 5 day job and go out on my own, so I’m glad to be in a position where I can hopefully do the same for others.

Tags: wmw, webmasterworld, seo, social bookmarking

Sphere It

Since I was recently deputized an officer of the Facebook SEO, SMO, SEM group (my real title is NSFW) I was informed my wall comments were lacking in diversity. Since well I am a whore and not in any way too proud or above begging, consider this an invitation to be my request being my friend on facebook. Ok it actually helps if I know who you are, but I’m flexible. Also bonus point if you write on my wall.

What are the benefits of being my facebook friend … well as my crackberry addict friend told me recently, in her gentle and supporting way “dude you’re addicting to poking”. Also Lisa can tell you the benefits of being on my list of stalkee’s (how funny will it be when BruceClay.com starts ranking for the keyword “Lisa”) and I’ve even been known to give facebook gifts every so often, especially to my BFF.

Sure we have a lot of fun but there have been at least a handful of interesting posts back there. Also since we are absolutely free to hold you up for public ridicule if you have the idiotic idea to try and spam back there the signal to noise ratio is pretty high, so c’mon in you know you want to give it a try and here’s my profile if you want to be my friend.

Sphere It

Last week on Lee Odden’s blog he made a post about Crowdsourcing and Subvert and Profit. However what I’d really like to talk about is comment made by Simon of Bon Prix since it’s something I hear/read quite often:

Social networking sites have their place, not everyone wants the entertainment 18-24 year old segment anyways, the richer pickings are the older demographic.

To address that we need revisit the concept of the Linkerati

Linkerati the Pawns of Social Media »

Sphere It

Be sure to check out my post on SEL Top 12 Ways To Win Friends & Write Magnetic Headlines

Sphere It

After doing some extensive testing and empirical data gathering over the past two weeks I am 99% convinced there is a digg auto-bury feature. Certain domains are flagged to be automatically buried and removed from the normal voting system with as little as one vote and within few as few hours of getting in the queue. These aren’t just SEO content domains, they aren’t anti digg domains or content. There’s simply no way enough people could have seen the digg submission to actually legitimately bury the story.

The Digg administration will continue to hide behind the guise of user moderated democracy, however with lack of voting transparency (yes buries are votes and need to be transparent) what we really have is an oligarchy ochlocracy of web 2.0 knoblemen.

Update: Hat tip to Matt for his most excellent vocabulary skills!!!

Sphere It

Last night someone submitted a story form my blog to Digg, however when I logged in this morning here’s what I found …

Does Digg Have an Automatic Bury Feature? »

Sphere It

So Digg announced a new category today Microsoft. Why not just call it the ‘Everything Except Vulnerabilities will be Buried Category’ instead

Sphere It

Well MyBlogLog it was fun but I’m on the Boycott as well.

Sphere It

In case you missed it SEOMoz had a piece on digg today Dear Digg.com: I’m going to save you a million dollars with three lines of code. Oh sure it bit sensational in title but the advice is sound, Matt tells Digg how to fix their “www” and non “www” cannocical issue. However some of the comments are:

ArchieAndrews said

“Q: What do you call 100 dead SEO’s at the bottom of a lake?
A: A good start.”

and

GawtMilk said

What’s better then ten SEO’s nailed to a tree?
One SEO nailed to ten trees.

When you write your articles and content you might want to keep in mind that these are the folks who vote (or bury) your story, you can’t change their world view, best you can do is adapt and blend in.

Sphere It

Interesting the way more and more toolbars and widgets such as Linkedin and Stumbleupon are now affecting page displays, and even the SERP’s. Think having a high/good stumbleupon rating is good for your site and makes you more clickable … I do

StumbleUpon Tool Bar Update »

Sphere It

Since Google is giving away more backlink data, and I’ve been saying social media is really about getting the backlinks I thought It’s time to put up or shut up and show some stats.

Social Media - It’s the Backlinks Stupid »

Sphere It

You know what linkbaiting has been getting a bum wrap lately. Everyone from Nick W, to Eric Ward, to a majority of the readers at copyblogger. Well I’m going to take the unpopular and politically incorrect stance of defending link bait.

Are You A Master Link Baiter or Just a Flasher »

Sphere It

When I speak with clients about blogging one of the key point I try to stress is that they should try and not only write about their niche, but try to take advantage of and tie into current events. The more widespread and front of mind the news or event is the better. To illustrate this point I’d like you to consider the Super Bowl which is coming up this Sunday.

Kevin Federline, the Super Bowl and Blogging »

Sphere It

When Yahoo purchased MyBlogLog many wondered, was it a good deal, and why exactly was Yahoo paying so much. For those of you who’ve never bothered to check your stats or wondered what all the fuss is about I’d like to point out a few points.

Data Gathering from Blog Widgets »

Sphere It

Muhammad Saleem who runs the Mu Life (an excellent blog for anyone playing in the social bookmarking playground BTW) has nice post on 6 reasons why people submit to Digg. However like a lot of people he misses out on #7, which can have far more benefit in the long run.

Why Do People Submit to Digg - Reason #7 »

Sphere It

In my initial post Going Viral to Build Defensible Traffic, I posted some graphs showing how going viral built up my RSS subscribers. Yesterday I pushed out another viral post that did WAY better than I planned on it doing.

Going Viral to Build Defensible Traffic, Part II »

Sphere It

Late last year Darren Rowse on Problogger had a post about How to Build a ‘Digg Culture’ on your Blog. The post discuses how going viral can increase your reader/subscribers over time which build in long term defensible traffic. The graphs he used were hypothetical but accurate. Last week I created the situation so thought I’d show you some real stats.

Going Viral to Build Defensible Traffic »

Sphere It

Jason pretty much nails it on this one, and if really want to understand social communities, not just abuse them you should read his post Will digg die the death of 1,000 cuts?

Sphere It

One of the things I hear a lot is how do I do link bait for a boring industry like <insert industry here> . All you really need to do is think out of the box and go with a trend.

Ghost Riding the Whip - Insurance Linkbait »

Sphere It

Ok I’ve been carrying this post around in my head for a while and am I’m finally going to spill it, here are my tips on how to completely screw your competition in a web 2.0 social media world. How to be a Dirty Digger »

Sphere It

Two events caught on in the social seo web world today and I’d like to take a look at each them. Going Viral in a Social Web World »

Sphere It

I’m ticked off that no one’s ticked me yet. Damn it what’s a guy got to do to get some love around here, follow the banner if you want to tickme and join my group if you want.

Sphere It

I’ll admit it I’m a regular Netscape.com user and I think their system is much more feature rich and user friendly than Digg, or should I say it used to be … Netscape.com Butchers Profile Pages to Jack up Page Views »

Sphere It

I came across a post today that was actually pretty interesting. I’ve been trying similar things but I think this execution was really good, for lack of a better name I’m going to call this a compilation post. What is a Compilation Post »

Sphere It

If you play on Digg or Netscape and use firefox you may tfind these two new extentions pretty cool. They help you keep up with your friends activities, seeing stories they submitted and voted for.

Netscape Friends’ Activity Sidebar

Netscape’s Digg Tracker

Sphere It

If there was ever any doubt that spam has invaded tagging and technorati it was disolved last night. I logged into technorati and this was the list of tags I was presented with:

Sphere It