Versions 3.15
* Enables SearchReviews opt-in and configuration options for all users.
See: Toolbar -> Tools -> Toolbar Options -> Configuration tab -> Web Search

On previous versions of the Stumbleupon Toolbar you were presented with a choice as to whether or not you wanted your Google Search results injected with Stumbled info. The problem this time comes from the fact that even if you don’t want your Google results to be altered by StumbleUpon and you Opt-Out of this in your settings, you are still presented with an altered version of Google in a very sly way.

Here are the StumbleUpon settings, set to NOT alter your search results:

However, even with these settings turned off, a search on Google still produces a nice little link up at the top that reads See Friend Reviews in the same font as Google up with the rest of the Google Account Options.

This spyware-like behavior is also found on Ask, Yahoo, and MSN.

Wikipedia defines spyware as:

Spyware is computer software that is installed surreptitiously on a personal computer to intercept or take partial control over the user’s interaction with the computer, without the user’s informed consent.

– Wikipedia Definition

It’s fairly obvious that I’ve tried my best (short of uninstalling) to deny my consent to this behavior and though they state upfront that you are opting-in, the ‘configuration options’ section and options within would lead most users to thinking they could disable this “feature”. That, however is not the case and thus starts to blur the line between what is acceptable behavior in regards to your user information and what is actually spyware. Now it’s known that Stumbling is fun and that it can drive traffic and whatnot but surely they could come up with something better than this.

That said if you’re a fan of Stumbling you’re probably wondering:

How to disable StumbleUpon’s “See Friend Reviews” on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com

You have 5 options to disable this unwanted behavior:

1. Uninstall the Toolbar.
2. Have patience. The link will disappear on it’s own after three weeks.
3. Get click happy. It will disappear after it’s been clicked three times regardless of your other actions.
4. OBEY. This link will also go away if you sell your soul to Satan and complete the contact import.
5. Go for Beta. The beta version of StumbleUpon will allow you to disable the prompt via the “Show StumbleUpon prompts and logos” checkbox on the Configuration tab of the Toolbar Options dialog

Now 5 different options of getting rid of this atrocity is more than Gator will give you. However all of these remain unpublished and unpromoted solutions to this problem. The fact is that even though they might garner some information which makes stumbling better and also new users from this approach, it’s obviously setup to benefit them way more than it would benefit the end user. And when you start digging around trying to figure out different ways to get rid of unwanted behavior from your favorite toolbar, you really have to start questioning it’s intentions in the first place.

UPDATE (11-25-07): It appears that version 3.16 of the Firefox StumbleUpon toolbar includes an OPT-OUT for this. Problem solved. Now you only have it if you want it, which is really how it should be.

1. Most of you come off looking like slimy infomercials or at best, bad Mac vs. PC ripoffs
2. There’s not much that you could cover in a video that I couldn’t absorb faster by reading.
3. I look/feel horrible on film

Regardless of my reservations, some people are into videos and worse comes to worse, occasionally I must oblige and be a part of them. That said, in watching this, the facts are still applicable but hopefully I’ll be able to overcome my personal reservations and someone, somewhere will benefit. So behold, my first, and yes completely impromptu interview with Sage Lewis of Web Marketing Watch:

Social Media Optimization Interview:

I hope my headache isn’t too obvious and that I was able to hold it together for you…

Well, it leaves them no better off than they were a year ago to be honest. Most people, though they may have heard of Facebook or MySpace or whatever, are no better off than they may have been well over a year ago before the marketplace was flooded by Web 2.0 wannabes. Now instead of trying to figure out how to leverage these spaces to their advantage, they are left to try to sort out the myriad of social sites for which there is no guidebook. What’s more popular… Netscape or Zimbo?

Though we, as web marketers might know the answer, the real truths for anyone involved come across when they try to measure their success. And this is where we talk about the glue that holds all of everyone’s efforts together. Be it through Social Media Optimization, SEO, PPC, or whatever cockamamie thing someone might be trying this week, the magic that makes this all more valuable than any other form of media is the precision with which we can track this, ie. analytics. And with that I am happy to announce a new blog by a highly skilled individual which aims to keep us all informed… Joe Abraham from AnalyticalNews.org.

In his introduction, Joe says..

I started this blog not only because I am in love with stats, but also to be a stats evangelist. I want to help demystify stats and help people find a good fit…

Best of luck to you Joe. I hope you follow through with your new blog and your mission. Check it.

Anyways, this time around AdWeek goes balls to the wall and uses social media to help it along as it’s decided to invade Second Life with their own island where you can go at any time to relive the weeks festivities and watch their presentations. Their site doesn’t scream that they’ve actually embraced the fine art of social media optimization but meh.At least we know it’s a crock and they were kind enough to create their own Rikers-esque island you have to go out of your way to get to instead of invading a virtual Manhattan. We all know that Ad Week is just another way for the actual city to make a few bucks with an ego-boosting handjob. No harm in that, I guess. While you’re celebrating, get out a fresh tissue and check out a site that really understands your needs… Adsturbation.

So how do you explore different ways to use existing services to their maximum benefit? By stepping outside of the box. And there’s no better way to step outside the box you’re in than by creating a whole new situation, a whole new set of ideas, and doing a bit of roleplaying if you will. I’d been thinking of this and did a bit of searching around to see if something had been done (why do work that others have done for you?) and I came across something interesting: a social media marketing game.

There’s a wiki entry on the game HERE.

It’s not perfect by any means but it’s a good start towards something. If I find some time I might tweak it or reinvent it or make it more … I dunno.. better?

For now though let’s look at what’s done.

Objective:
Promote conversations about what social media tools may be appropriate in different situations.

What you Need:

• Cards from this PDF.
• A brief list of scenarios or companies, projects, products that need promoted.
• People willing to sit around and play your little mind games, divided into teams.

The Play:
Each team gets a scenario, and ten points. Points represent budget (be it time, money, effort). Each card has a budget cost. Each team can draw at random from the deck as long as the cards they have don’t exceed their budget. Blank cards are for any other idea. Based off of this idea they must ask the person who’s putting on the game, how much of a budget their blank idea card is worth.

Each scenario must be discussed and the cards used as tools to further the social media marketing effort. With the tools given to them they must create a brief marketing strategy to present to the other groups. The more creative and effective.. the better.

_________

That’s it basically. It’s just sort of a social media marketing brainstorm session, though I guess if you got people that were really into it, it could be kinda fun. I think one of the main challenges here would be to make the game competitive. Right now it’s not, which is the complete opposite of the real world of marketing and especially the world of social media marketing. But.. it’s a start and a step in the right direction.

Anyone have other ideas on how to make it better? Anyone find any other games?

Well my friends, the line has been crossed into the world of SMO and it will be interesting to watch the outcome, even if it does signify an un-official beginning of another hundred-year war.

The news is that Apple officially threw it’s hat into the smart phone arena with the announcement of the iPhone. The iPhone is a slick looking phone with DRM crippled media playback and a price tag that ensures only the coolest richest kids on the block will get one first.

This, as you might gather, comes straight out of the Marketing 101 playbook: Create and own the rights to a product or future product. Release the news. Create a buzz. Sell your stuff. Become rich(er).

It’s really no surprise or big deal. When someone as large as Apple releases some hot new designed tech gadget, it’s automatically going to create a stir and people will flock to see what all the fuss is about. The problem this time out is that they kinda decided to rush through the first step in the rules. While they have created the product, they don’t actually own the rights to use the product name: iPhone. Turns out that a little company(by the name of Cisco), who happens to be more entwined in the interwebs than Apple could ever be, actually owns the rights to that name with a trademark that reaches back to the mid ’90’s.

Still, you say, what has this to do with Social Media Optimization? So there’s a trademark dispute going on between two heavyweights in the tech industry. Who cares? As it turns out, you do. Or maybe not you, but people like you. As a company in a Web 2.0 environment, the end consumer can have a weight that you might not be ready for. You can’t expect that what you do will just create positive hype. That’s all Web 0.4 and old school media (like TV/radio) in which you’d get either:

• a nod from the media or influenced hype to help you sell whatever
• a media thrashing (usually if you screwed the pooch or sold OJ the knife under the table)

In 2007, with Web 2.0 and social media, you have to expect the people you are subtly trying to screw over to use the medium against you. They have a voice. They have an opinion. They have a place to get their voice to the masses. Enter Cisco, who have recently learned the importance of paying whatever PR company they pay to maintain their blog.

The fact that a company who is so behind the infrastructure of the net that you are probably using something of theirs to read this, would have a blog which allows comments in the first place is a sign that people who aren’t hip to social media are way behind the times. The fact that this company would use this medium to strike out and make their say on important legal matters to the public, is a testament of the power of social mediums in today’s marketplace. The fact that they have received hundreds of comments that have been unmoderated and actually shown they are listening to or at least reading these comments only speaks to the future of social media optimization.

As you may have guessed, as a rebuttal to Apple’s press release and trademark infringement, Cisco replied with a blog post declaring the illegal nature of the venture and their displeasure at such. Be sure and read the umpteen hundred comments following the post too.
What interests me in all of this is not whether Apple succeeds with the iPhone or not. It’s more along the lines of whether the concept behind socialized media wins or not.

You see, beyond a feud that includes 2 companies that couldn’t give a toss about me, lies a paradigm of questions regarding the philosophy of the age of Social Media.

For decades, we the public have been spoon-fed news, opinions, and ideas. For decades we have lapped it up like a thirsty dog shown a bowl of fresh water. The problem is that a dog will drink a dish of muddy nastiness if it’s parched enough. It’s been shown that we are not much different, save the fact that we have to be told when we’re thirsty. My hope, and probably a false one, is that with a new medium.. a new level playing field.. people will not only piss in the bowl of muddy slop they are presented, but on the very concept of their thirst.

I know it won’t happen. At root, I’m an idealist, but I can’t help myself from getting a bit excited when a company who has been feeding a bit of flashy crap to the masses gets served a piece of the pie they’ve created.

Thanks to Rohit for the heads up on this story.

On paper it sounds great. However there’s always the fine print. Who owns the soapbox? Who pays the bills? Are there restrictions to your freedom? What the fuck is a EULA?

Beyond MySpace, let’s look at the more simple approach to having a place to spew: Digg. It is the 2.0 to Slashdot’s 1.5. Regardless, Digg is now and as social media bookmarking sites go, no one can touch them even though many feel there is room for several big players on the verticals of this technology. As countless online publisher’s quickly learn, even with enormous amounts of traffic, it’s difficult to get people honestly involved in new stories and concepts.

These other sites seek to pick up where Digg’s audience leaves off… allowing for those interested in a different segment of society. But each of these segments, as well as Digg’s segment itself, relies on it’s submitting supporters to relay news and stories of and beyond themselves which they feel will do one of two things:

• Enhance the community by supplying the audience with pieces of information that could be beneficial on some level
• Feed their own ego by achieving an alternate goal.

Ignoring the endless potential for discussions behind this list is the actual focal point of this article… and that is to be able to achieve or attempt to achieve either of these goals, one must possess a certain sense of freedom.

Though I can’t speak to living in a different country, from my experiences living in the US, I’d say it’s a pretty fair assumption that most take their freedom for granted expecting that not only what they say will be heard, but that it seemably has some inherent right to be heard. This bridges the gap across most people’s lives here, including their online ones, which appear on the surface to not only have such concessions but offer them up in trade for the most minimal of efforts.

What people mostly take for granted on social media sites is that because they say it, it’s fair game. Their content is protected and their voice is free to be heard from mountains on high. Because their content is either selfless or selfish, they automatically assume a right to have their opinion displayed before the masses for judgment. However what most people blatantly ignore is that their content is subject to a filter over which they have no say… The filter of the editors or the platform on which they stand.

While posting your views on a site in China, Tunisia or Egypt could land you in prison, posting your views or advertising views to which you think should be paid attention cannot lay you in custody here. But heaven forbid some moderator at some social site should attempt this in proxy… HELL NO! They have no right! You should be able to spout off as much as you feel necessary!! The community should support you for your efforts to uphold the freedom of not just yourself but free-thinkers everywhere!!!

The dice are dropped here. They fall wherever the house calls them.

Lets say it like this:
It’s of NO surprise to ANYONE that when you go to Vegas and bet a ton of cash, you’re probably going to lose. Why? Because the house wins the majority of the time. You know this going into it. With this knowledge you either:

A) hope that you can skim off the top or
B) figure you are smart enough to outwit the house long enough to make your spread and get out before you become a laughable parody on CSI

Withholding your logic in the above example, it’s already stated that you know the odds, that they’re stacked, and in favor of someone else. I would say that while the same type of odds apply to social bookmarking sites, the majority of people don’t see it that way. In part I agree.

At SES Chicago ‘O6, Jason “Entrepenuor in Action” Calaidon’thaveenoughnamis spoke from his ego-infested pedestal on the fact that he had helped Netscape break from a free thinking internet browser developer to a whored out version of Digg under the AOL umbrella. In his ever-so-wizened mind this translated into some sort of DRM in which the people that actually provided the company the structure on which to stand would have to receive scrutiny from above. Thanks Jason. If truly a prick ever deserved mockery, you called it down ten-fold in December. And here I thought this year might be boring.

However, even if I am the only one out there to call a punk ass bitch for what they are, I have to say at least on that day.. he was honest. Honest in the fact that he felt that social media needed moderators. Honest that he had taken part in helping contribute to such moderating agendas and moreso, that he worked towards a structure that paid people for licking his ballsac. Brilliant! It’s like indulgences for sellouts everywhere! The pope would be proud.

So here we have a service that is looking to place itself alongside the leading service for that industry. This service has figured out an incentive (on top of freedom, ego, etc) for people to contribute. The downside is that playing off of this illusion architecture leads to false righteousness by the very people who hold this structure together, ie. YOU.

Like Digg, who has it’s own problems with it’s community, Netscape recently exercised it’s right to control the supposed freedom of it’s members. While trying to imitate another Digg feature which allows users to ‘bury’ stories by ‘Sinking’ them, a multitude of voices was unified in protest against what they felt was an encroachment on their freedom to declare what was important. This voice of freedom can be heard HERE.

As is likely with public standoffs, a bunch of people got pissed the fuck off and tempers flared. One member got banned. Threads were removed. And the gestapo walked with a clean slate and a scar he can show off to impress Cobra Commander. Netscape, of course, closed and locked the thread.

Moral of the story:
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you… regardless of what side you’re on.

Essentially I have to say that social media optimization for a blog is pretty tricky the same way that SEO can be. Sure you can make a perfectly SEO’d site that will be all text and linked in/out to oblivion but most of the time that site will be ugly as sin and the inner designer in me won’t let that happen. Same goes with SMO. There are, it turns out, about a bazillion different plugins, widgets, icons, and options to enable you to easily get your site socially optimized. However with each thing taking up a certain amount of space, sites can quickly become cluttered with social litter. This is no more asthetically pleasing than a site with no layout and has just about nothing to do with social media optimization. It reminds me of people who go nutty with Adwords and have them mixed in their menus and headers and footers and inbetween articles and paragraphs and fuck! If you need spare change that bad, leave the blog behind and get a job. Consider panhandling. No one wants to look at that shit and the ads aren’t helping anyone. It’s visual vomit two-point-oh.

Just like ads, the song remains the same for those trying to socially optimize as well. Due to so many people trying to get a piece of the social bookmarking landscape, the number of little buttons you could have on your site is staggeringly offensive to your optical nerves. Add all those del.icio.us and furl buttons to the connundrum of different RSS reading services, a few technorati and feedburner banners, some mybloglog rolls, and thumbs from your flickr gallery and you have a site that’s full on going to be unsafe for people with the slightest bit of taste. Everyday I thank god that the majority of these social widgets aren’t animated gifs, lest even tasteless epiliptics be harmed.

There currently isn’t a good solution for visual vomit as far as social media optimization goes other than to choose your battles and your delivery well. I’m not saying that this site has the best solution out there. In fact I’m just getting my feet wet with them and working on breaking them in slowly, to see which are beneficial to this site and which to the communities at large.

Part of this means trying new things and always being willing to know when something isn’t working,is a waste of time, or just plain looks bad. It’s a delicate balance and it’s something that takes time and adjustment. Just like good web design. Heh.

Unfortunately for you readers out there it’s the job of this site to know what’s what and some of that is going to mean testing the waters with new ideas and new trends. Some of these will be successful and some of these will be completely a waste of all our time. It also means that while this site is pretty scaled back design wise, some of these tests might not be the prettiest and I ask for your forgiveness in advance.

Know that the ugliness which is sure to follow pains me as much as it does you, if not moreso. Keep that in mind as we proceed and feel free to ask questions or offer up suggestions as we go.

For those of you coming into this article down the road looking for advice on how to implement social media optimization techniques into your design, let me layout a few basic ground rules:

1. Be mindful of the end user’s experience.
2. Don’t overthink things. Society never does.
3. Pick your targets and know the reasoning behind your decisions.
4. Be true to your design. Good design will always match form for function.

And that’s it. Remember this site is far from the pinnacle of these rules, more of a testing grounds so don’t get pissed if I toss them to the wolves

Here are the results:

Powerpoint

Converted to GIF