ambient

As someone who just spent the last two years building technology to help large advertisers optimize their search campaigns, I’ve been eager to get a better handle on social media, what works, and what the best tools are. In the last week since launching Gridjit, a social portal for Twitter, I’ve learned quite a bit.

Here’s a quick list:

• Bloglines seems to be more comprehensive than Google Blog Search in what it finds.
• Twitter is heavily indexed by Google and Bloglines. Surprisingly, Ask.com does not seem to make use of Bloglines for its own search results. Seems like a natural use and could start to differentiate them from the other engines. Too bad.
• Ask.com does do something very interesting with Bloglines. If you want to be indexed by Ask, they recommend that you create a Bloglines account and register your site in your Bloglines profile. It’s their take on Sitemaps, and I think it’s a great idea. It’s slow though (Gridjit is still not indexed).
• If you’re into web analytics (who isn’t?), GetClicky should be your new friend. I find it much faster than Google Analytics, its results are truly real time, the interface is beautiful, and its availability in iGoogle (Google, duh.) makes it a killer app. It’s not suited, it seems, for sites with tons of traffic, so I’ll let you know what I do when I get there.
• Yahoo, in terms of search results, is actually doing a very nice job. I found their results to be much more accurate, IMO, than even Google’s for Gridjit related sites.
• Twitter is even better than I thought. I don’t know of a better way online right now to meet new people, create friendships with people around the world, and share ideas about what works.
• I am seeing a crazy amount of innovation coming from Europe and Asia. I received quite a bit of email from people in those regions and, as a result, was introduced to some of the projects going on outside the US.
• In short, SMO is most definitely the new SEO. For some background information, I designed, developed, and helped launch a product called Organic Insight at Covario (formerly SEMDirector). I learned a lot about SEO, and I’m seeing that I have to relearn almost everything. Amazing what just a year or two does.