twitter

I was researching a little today about the laws and what not regarding a client taking photographs and using them on their Facebook page. ElementalUk is a Water Sports Adventure Centre in Cornwall and they've a nice shiny new facebook page.

So I was curious what the law had to say regarding these guys taking pics of everyone enjoying themselves on the beach and then uploading to facebook. I mean they want to show the World how cool a place it is right?

After some deliberation and much chat it was Rachel Clarke on Twitter, who was really helpful in helping me understand the laws and guidelines for taking pictures and using them on a facebook page.

So thanks Rachel.

After studying a few resources such as the one here, it seems that as the beach is a public place it is legal to be able to take photographs providing they are not for commercial use - which in this case they are not as they will not be "DIRECTLY" making money from the photographs.

A nice Friday win for the guys.

It's really easy these days.

No, really it is.

OK so in the past it was hard (cough) to rank on the front page of Google if you were new to the business, in any sector. Lots of things were (actually still are for non real-time) taken into account in order for your site to rank well for a given term. Lots of weight is given to credibility, i.e. other sites (humans) thinking your site IS credible, by the way of incoming links. If we all link to a site it must be good content right? This model has been Google's backbone product for years, forever actually.

Then came Twitter and the mob

This experiment has been conducted numerous times in other places, and you may have come across it already, but because I think Google is shooting itself in the foot it warrants a mention.

So Google has started including "real-time" results in its index, in particular from Twitter, the micro-blogging service. This basically means it is open season for you and me to actively use this service as a tactic to appear on the front page of Google for any given search phrase.

Down to business

So considering Tiger Woods is hot news at the moment I figured this would be a good test target for ranking. Before the inclusion of real-time the chances of appearing on the front page of Google for "Tiger Woods" were slim pickings for mere mortals. Typically, of course, it would usually have only been credible news sources, or perhaps other content that was mass approved through incoming links (us all linking to it). That is still the model Google has in place with the exception of a little iframe half way down the page, the real-time zone.

So I sent out a tweet as follows

OK, so a tweet that clearly contains Tiger Woods and some other attention grabbing nonsense and an all important link that someone may click on (in this case an intelligence test, just for the irony of it).

So a few moments later, literally within a minute or so I searched Google for "Tiger Woods" and sure enough found my tweet.

You can clearly see my ridiculous tweet, and my url.

Why is this bad?

Well think about it for a moment, this is now open season for real-time spam... hell I might even employ someone in a developing country, pay them peanuts, to sit down and tweet nonsense all day, with affiliate links included in the tweets, and target very competitive key phrases. < oh that happens already?

What do you say? - you could say hey Chris this is fabulous, people are all wonderful people and good through to their core, and we'd never ever game the system, our tweets are credible and we only speak the truth. Well folks, I have news for you, that is not the case with the masses, and once the search dudes and dudettes catch on to this (done), you can be sure to see utter nonsense in that real-time zone.

Google, you have gone nuts.

Well I thought it was funny.

Click here for the large version

I suppose some might say, "switch the emails off", but then again usually I enjoy getting DM from friends, but now and then you do something and you attract a heap of new followers, which I am grateful for of course, but still, what a way to start your day, eh?

We could get into a debate about auto-dms merits, I mean do you auto-pilot your account?

Sometimes I find myself taking long breaks from twitter which I must say I thoroughly enjoy. I'm one of those guys that avoids institutionalisation at all costs, any time a situation becomes repetitive I seem to find little interest in the culture.

I use the phrase institutionalisation purposefully because like many work-place cultures identical practices creep in, normalities develop and before long you can find yourself smack bang in the middle of complacency.

I don't think I'll be permanently out of the scene, I have too many great friends that love the world of twittington, though I'm sure I'll continue taking extended breaks. I'll also not be making any silly big statements of "hey that's it I deleted my twitter account", hmm although ...

Anyway there we go that's on my mind today.

Do you find you have feelings like this, do you get bored with spaces and cultures, what do you do to get the funk out?