I have been doing a bit of investigation of basic SEO for my wife’s e-commerce site: Every Little Girl. In the process I have discovered that SEO Sites Suck. As far as I can tell, they all have the same basic advice rehashed in slightly different ways. Most sites seem so ‘dense’ with content that it is hard to figure out where to start. ‘Quality content’ is one of the golden rules repeated over and over again… yet the content on most SEO sites is of questionable quality. Oh sure – there are lots of words there, and if you read them they do make some sense…. but there are so many of them (words that is) compared the the concepts that they are trying to communicate.

Now given that people who run SEO sites are presumably pretty good at SEO, and given that most of the sites I find are through Google it is fairly safe to assume that the sites I have seen represent the ‘state of the art’ when it comes to web sites built for SEO. Undoubtedly SEO is a very complex topic – but it seems as though SEO tactics is actually increasing the complexity of the topic. Rather than focus on the concise expositions of key concepts, SEO seems to demand voluminous rehashing of SEO nuances. For example, the top result when searching Google for ‘search engine optimization beginner’ gives me one ‘Beginners Guide’ that is 10 chapters long. Even Google’s own guide – that appears on page of the the results – is a 32 page pdf – and yet many sites do not even have the basics covered.

It seems that the number one rule of SEO is ‘quality content’. But really what is meant is ‘quantity of perceived quality content’ – more copies of what looks like quality content all linking to each other is what seems to score well. This struck me in particular when looking at a couple of the leading ‘SEO’ sites. There structures are all very similar. In particular an ‘SEO Tools’ page seems mandatory for a good ranking SEO site. And on that page there is between 10 and 40 different ‘tools’. It is hard to escape the impression that these pages are written for the benefit of the Googlebot – and not for the benefit of the user.

Of course, it appears that many others have made the same realisation way before me, including Michael Arrington, Peter Yared and Peter again.

One of my goals for 2012 has been to ‘move the needle’ a bit between my own consumption of internet content, and creation of it. I have been ‘sucked into’ an excessive consumerism of internet content over the last few years. In order to try and increase the amount of content creation that I do. This goal is not very SMART… in fact I can’t even remember what most of the letter stand for…. I know that goals are ‘supposed’ to be SMART…. Why?… because someone said so….. maybe there is a study that says that ‘SMART’ goals are achieved more than non-SMART goals…. maybe I should Google this…. find some references, quotes, links for this article…. And so seems to end most of my efforts at content creation. It doesn’t seem to matter if it is some code, or a blog post, or even a twitter update, the path has become all too predictable.

In 2011 I challenged myself to pick the next project I thought of – and see it through to implementation. Ths resulted in Skorebug. There is a lot still missing – but it is in fact a live functioning web app – so I should be proud of that much. During this I was constantly tempted to drop it in favour of the ‘next good idea’ I had, or not to progress it because I was reviewing the ‘best web framework’ to use or so on. However after finishing up this project many months ago, I have not yet taken up a new one… and ‘creation vs consumption’ index has slid drastically again. Is one project a year as much as I can muster?

So for 2012 I am trying something different. I am disconnecting the internet for an hour a day. I toyed with this idea for many months but could never bring myself to do it. I felt like some sort of addict terrified of the prosepct of being without my beloved internet for an hour of ‘work time’ a day. (This doesn’t include ‘leisure time’…. turning off the internet for an hour while I watch TV doesn’t count 😉 So come 2012 I have switched on Stayfocussed’s ‘Nuclear’ option to disconnect my Chrome browser for an hour a day every day. Yes – my computer still works… skype still works… heck – even Firefox and IE still work. (Since I predominantly use Gmail for e-mail – email is also turned off.)

So far (about one week in) the implications of this have been disturbingly awkward. The mental fidgeting that happens 5 minutes after the internet disconnects…  what to do?? mmmm…. Coffee maybe?? That takes another 5 minutes…. how am I going to fill the next 50? 

At the very least it has resulted in this blog post. It has also resulted in some more time talking with people and more time spent with pen and paper, or my text editor or my mind mapping software. It definitely feels like the ‘creation vs consumption index’ has improved a bit. But perhaps the most significant realisation was that ‘the world hasn’t ended’. I was worried that I would find ‘really urgent’ things that would force me to start a browser, or respond to an email or something within that hour and that I would end up hijacking myself as quickly as I began. But one week on – and that hasn’t happened. And despite my concerns of withdrawal I find myself welcoming the hour of disconnection. I haven’t yet ‘created’ that much… a couple of blog posts and paper scribbles… but I feel the beginnings of some control over my excessive consumerism returning. So if you are thinking of ‘disconnecting’ for a fixed period each day – go ahead, take the plunge… who knows what we might end up creating!

I came across a bit of a storm recently epitomised by Design is Horseshit and The Designer Fund. I have been thinking a bit about the ‘value’ of design in a start-up context lately. For a long time, the ‘Standard Model’ of a web startup has been to have a technical co-founder and a business co-founder. You needed someone who could implement your idea, and someone who could ‘sell’ your idea. But more recently, the web startup space has become more crowded and good design has become a feature of many. I tend to agree with @yongfook:

Design is merely the barrier to entry to your product not getting lost in the primordial soup of startups. It is simply your ticket to a seat at the table of possible contenders.

There is no doubt in my mind that this ‘design barrier to entry’ has increased over the last few years as the number of web startups has exploded. So the real question is as what point does design become such a strategic and core aspect of the start-up that you need someone to live and breath is as much as a technical co-founder lives and breathes the ‘functionality’, and the ‘business co-founder’ lives and breathes the promotion of the site.

I am fascinated by the rise of “Big Data”. It has become one of those “hot topics” and looks like continuing the trend in 2012. The ability to combine large amounts of data, both structured and unstructured, from private and public sources has the potential to have a profound impact on a range of businesses (and is already in some cases).

So I am learning about Hadoop and Cassandra and Amazon Compute Clusters and k-means clustering and…..

All of this crunching gives me more data. Some of it lovely scatter plots, or charts that I can put trendlines on, and but in the end I am just ‘looking at the data’.

Now I have spent many years “looking at the data” in many different contexts, and it has always amazed me what a ‘black art’ it is. It seems that good data insight comes from an experienced person who understands both the data and the business staring at these charts like some medieval soothsayer staring at lizards gizards before incanting their insights. (For another metaphor, read ‘Data Alchemists’.)

I think one of the reasons that it is such a black art is that the most interesting ‘Insights’ are those that are not part of the collective psyche at that particular point in time. And knowing what is not known seems to be particularly challenging.

I am forever being frustrated by my own ability to spend waste huge amounts of time ‘reading’ the internet believing that this is productive. And so it seems are many others, for example, here and here

From time to time I get “motivated” and re-organise my reading habits. Sometimes I cull my regular feed lists, sometimes I limit reading to certain hours of the day, sometimes I attempt to disconnect completely for a day or more, sometimes I make a conscious effort to substitute ‘doing’ for ‘reading’. All of these are worthwhile, and work for a while…. but inevitably, like some sort of drug, it creeps its way back into more and more of my online time.

I think this experience is pretty common, and I know many have written strategies to help address this (I have read them after all!!). But what I haven’t seen discussed much is why it is such a powerful force. What is the neurological/psychological basis for this ‘addiction’. And it does seem to feel like it is some form of addiction. I am reminded of some research into ‘random rewards’ creating addictive behaviours. Does that help explain what is going on? If so, what is it about ‘reading online’ that triggers the shot of serotonin in your brain. Food, or physical drugs I can understand…. but why reading?

I read an article today (that I lost the reference to) that talked a bit about ‘the network’ – and it got me thinking about my earlier post about ‘Humans and the network’. I almost called it ‘Humans and computers’, but somehow ‘the network’ seemed more appropriate. Reading this other post today made me think that this distinction is in fact a big one.

It is only in the last couple of years really – that we have started to interact with ‘the network’ independent of ‘the computer’. For this to happen two things need to be true. Firstly, you must be able to interact with this thing via multiple devices in a seamless fashion. This was starting to become true with laptops and desktops c.2005 – but really started properly with the release of the iPhone and subsequent devices that could browse the internet – significantly better than anything before it. (Remember, that was only 4 years ago!!) The second thing needed for us to interact with ‘the network’ – is true two way interaction. The ability to be able to create as well as consume content – on the fly – and for that content to appear on sites like Facebook or Twitter and then directly impact your network – which can then respond in kind – that is real interaction.

So today – in 2011 – it seems to me that our interactions are no longer with ‘the computer’ but are directly with ‘the network’. To some this just means being able to post and view Facebook on their phone and their laptop. But we have only scratched the surface. In the next few years it will mean much more than this. For example, in the days of the relatively static internet, the internet is just one thing – your internet and my internet are more or less the same. But when we have a fully dynamic and direct interaction with the network – then your network and my network begin to look very different (just like our real world networks are very different). Our social networks, our search results, the ads being displayed to us, the products being displayed to us by Amazon – even colour schemes and news items – all start to become unique. (This gives rise to the much talked about ‘Filter Bubble’.)

To put it another way, we have come to understand that computers are good at many things… they give the same result to calculations all the time, they never get bored, they never forget, they essentially do what we tell them to do – nothing more and nothing less. But these things are not true of ‘the network’. Have you ever posted something to Facebook only to see it disappear a short while later? Have you ever had some email from a trusted source suddenly get routed to your Spam folder? The ‘network’ does forget… and it does make mistakes. ‘The network’ and ‘the computer’ are very different things indeed – and over the next couple of years – we will interact more directly and transparently with the network itself – and we will be amazed.

I haven’t posted for a while…. natural wax and wane of projects I guess. My previous project (http://www.skorebug.com) has tapered off somewhat, and so had my posts here. But now I think it is time to broaden the scope of what I write about and see where that leads.

The thing that has been on my mind somewhat lately is the fit (or otherwise) between humans and the network. This is clearly a big (and possibly unproductive 😉 topic – but I thought it worth trying to focus some of my thoughts “on paper” (“in a database somewhere in the cloud” doesn’t have quite the same ring).

The ‘net brings a huge deluge of information to us every second. It seems that I spend stupid amounts of time ‘filtering’. Between news sites, old fashioned feeds, twitter, email and so on – I spend way too much time each day trying to ‘keep up’ and an inordinate fraction of time seems to be spent weeding through chaff to get to the gems.

There are some great services that attempt to make this ‘better’ (Summify is one of my favourites) – but invariably they end up being ‘yet another data source’ in my daily routine and I am left strangely unsatisfied. 

In contrast, if I am ever away from the computer for more than a few days, the backlog of reading becomes mountainous. I let the mountain persist for a few days or even weeks – until eventually I realise that there is no way I am even going to get through this mountain… and I just press ‘delete’ – the mountain disappears in an instant and bizarrely it is never missed – and I have a fleeting insight into the futility of the the effort.

But inevitably I am drawn back into the cycle… as are thousands of others, reading blogs and twitter feeds and facebook updates – persisting despite sensing that it is somewhat unsatisfying. There is no end of ‘self help’ style advice: turn off your email, schedule fixed times, cull regularly. These are all things that I can do. But what I have been wondering lately is ‘what can the network itself do to help?’