Web Philosophy
Written by Matthew J. De Reno Wednesday, 04 April 2012 20:04
Where Patch.com Went Wrong with Hyperlocal
Patch.com (owned by AOL.com - yes, of 1980s Internet fame) set out to do something ambitious: become the national media leader on delivering profitable hyperlocal news coverage. By all indications, it does not look like that ambition will bare fruit. I am not celebrating that fact, but traditional media will likely smile.
What Is Hyperlocal?
Hyperlocal describes websites that focus on very specialized topics of interest only to people in a very limited geographic area. Typically, school board meetings, restaurants, community group meetings, and garage sales are big news makers for hyperlocal websites.
To carry out its ambitious plan, Patch systematically launched hundreds of hyperlocal websites, each with a full-time editor, sales person, and a network of listings contractors, and what have you. The idea was to provide coverage of the so-called lesser served suburban communities, which typically are made up of attractive market demographics.
Written by Matthew J. De Reno Wednesday, 07 March 2012 10:44
Think Like A Hub To Grow Your Small Business Website
According to latest trends, index search appears to be going down whereas "app search" - as in mobile app stores - appears to loom as an emerging, ultra-competitive Internet marketplace. It would further appear that more and more Internet surfers are relying on trusted brand awareness sites, which serve as marketplaces for well known products. This possible shift in the search marketplace could be the power of hub centrality at work: the bigger a hub gets, the more links it tends to attract.
Google should take notice because the power of hubs just might be the reason that Google someday looses its own preeminence in the search marketplace. You, as a small business owner, should take notice, because the principle of hub centrality can work for you or against you in very powerful ways.
Hub centrality is a network phenomenon that is not merely a property of dominant websites but most things that exist in everyday life. The people with the most friends, tend to attract more friends much easier than those that didn't have many to begin with. So what does this mean for your small business website?
You can leverage the principle of hub centrality to great advantage. At the very least, you should be educated about how it affects you.
Case in point: a key component of the Google search formula is that inbound links are super important. How many people link to you, increases your value in Google's eyes, which by virtue places a great value on the principle of hub centrality. Google, then, is in the business of creating and promoting hubs. As hard as it is to fathom today, if Google doesn't innovate and try other things, they will likely give way to even a greater hub than itself.
Read more: Think Like A Hub To Grow Your Small Business Website
Written by Matthew J. De Reno Thursday, 19 January 2012 19:03
Killing SOPA
U.S. lawmakers are kowtowing to the so-called "Internet community" and the website blackout protest that was organized regarding SOPA. Though this is widely viewed as a victory for the Internet community, I wonder if that sentiment is truly well-founded.
SOPA is the controversial legislation which would ostensibly give big companies a lot of power over smaller website owners, who might otherwise not have the resources to fight allegations of content pirating and copyright infringement. The Stop Online Piracy Act (a House bill commonly called SOPA) and the Protect IP Act in the Senate (called PIPA) permits the U.S. attorneys general and content copyright owners to lower the boom on websites that display or link to their copyrighted intellectual property or offer up fake imitations thereof.
Written by Matthew J. De Reno Wednesday, 16 February 2011 09:54
A Bold Challenge To "Content Is King"
Most web folks have heard the industry saw that "Content is King." Allow me to challenge this notion for a brief second and present the case for presentation. You will see this is merely not a question of philosophy. There are concrete realms where presentation matters and not only does it matter, but perhaps it reigns supreme. I don’t want to say presentation is superior, because I am not out to flip the “Content Is King” maxim on its crown. I will argue, however, that presentation is equal to content in many ways. At the very least, it surely is no second prince. This article will explain why.
Let’s start with the basics. Can you truly separate presentation from content? I say no you can't. The only thing that is all content without any concept of presentation whatsoever is perhaps the idea of the human soul. Other than that, things must be presented.
So how can I best present the case for presentation and challenge the notion that “Content Is King”? I will begin with the simple assertion that content NOT presented is no content at all. Content without presentation is an idea about content. Information is content and presentation co-existing together. Content can't exist without some sort of presentation.
Written by Matthew J. De Reno Sunday, 05 December 2010 23:20
Will Your Family Have Its Own Website?
Nowadays most people that need a content management system (CMS) are organizations ranging anywhere from your local church to a city government. Will there come a day, however, when each individual family on your block will have its own website? Picture this: (insert your family name).com? That sort of thing. Perhaps someone will suggest a new top-level domain such as “.fam” or something like that.
My daughter is in second grade and already has asked me about a personal email account. I told her Google does not allow kids her age to have email accounts, which they don’t (and for good reason). Nonetheless, it is fairly obvious today’s generation of kids are growing up in a brave new social, web-driven world. Telling such kids you remember living before the Internet (insofar as it became a big part of everyone’s lives in the 1990s), and even cell phones for that matter, makes you sound like a dinosaur.
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