Ignition Partners & Curious Office invest in SEOmoz
This was posted over at Curious Office today!:
While the deal isn’t fully closed as of today, I’m pleased to confirm a report that that Curious Office and Ignition Partners are working hard to finalize the partnership and investment in SEOmoz. SEOmoz is a great information source for anyone looking to understand how to use search engine optimization to better market their business. I’ve been using and following SEOmoz myself for quite some time as search has become increasingly interesting to me over the last few years. The “About” page on SEOmoz says:
SEOmoz provides companies around the world with consulting, Internet marketing and search engine optimization services.
However, what most people who look at SEOmoz from the outside don’t know is that they are primarily a producer of paid, premium content. That is, the vast majority of their revenue stream (which is already an impressive $ figure by the way) does NOT come from consulting services. Certainly, that is how the company got its start several years ago but over time, the founders (Rand and Gillian Fishkin) began to realize that high quality, organized content was something that webmasters and online marketers would pay for.
Over the last few years, SEOmoz has marketed themselves tremendously. Anyone who follows the search space will have seen one of the folks (probably Rand) speaking at the Search Marketing Expo, Search Engine Strategies & PubCon Publishers Search and Marketing Conference series around North America (and Europe, too). They’ll also often present to private conferences for venture capital firms, private companies & educational institutions.
All in all, if you know and care about search marketing and optimization you’re probably already aware of SEOmoz.
Reputation management: an emerging vertical on the web
I bet that there really aren’t that many people that know that “Reputation Management” is a growing vertical software and services industry. The number of vendors who offer Reputation Management services is rapidly growing and I expect that growth to continue for several years. But what exactly is it? According to Wikipedia, Reputation Management is:
Reputation management is the process of tracking an entity’s actions and other entities’ opinions about those actions; reporting on those actions and opinions; and reacting to that report creating a feedback loop. All entities involved are generally people, but that need not always be the case. Other examples of entities include animals, businesses, or even locations or materials. The tracking and reporting may range from word-of-mouth to statistical analysis of thousands of data points.
Search engine reputation management actually has it’s own acronym: SERM. SERM tactics are often employed by companies and increasingly by individuals who seek to pro actively shield their brands or reputations from damaging content brought to light through search engine queries. Some use these same tactics reactively, in attempts to minimize damage inflicted by inflammatory (or “flame”) websites (and weblogs) launched by consumers and, as some believe, competitors. An increasing number of wealthy individuals pay a good deal of money ($25,000 - $75,000 per year) to insure that search engines provide the correct “face” that these individuals believe most reflects their actual persona. For example, a former CEO of Boeing might decide that he is no longer interested in the first five links of Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) to reflect aerospace news and his role in it. Instead, that person may have long since retired and instead desires that the search engines more correctly reveal his full time work in philanthropy. Many times such individuals simply want to draw more attention to the good causes they believe in. More often than not they prefer to leave bad news behind and replace it with more timely, and appealing, SERPs which suggest a more palatable legacy.
Businesses are increasing realizing that the web reflects the very product or service sentiment that executives are trying to market, adjust and maintain. On the Internet, your business is vulnerable by what others are saying about you. Consumer reviews:
- influence consumer perception
- respond to / protect against negative reviews
- thwart competitor attacks and bogus reviews
- improve online brand / service awareness
For the most part, the major search engines actually do a pretty democratic job of revealing what people generally think. But they aren’t truly built to reflect sentiment very accurately. So, the first 10 SERPs for your name, business or product might not reflect your own view or interpretation. As more people decide they want to control SERP positioning and realize they can do so (to some extent) then the Reputation Management industry will continue to thrive. Online Reputation Management posits that you should discover both emerging opportunities and threats while you can still influence their outcome. With evolving reputation management solutions, you’ll uncover details buried deep within worldwide conversations found on billions of pages of the public Internet as well as in the millions of stories published in the mainstream press. Your ability to adjust what you see will fall to the SERM and SEO experts who will be more than happy to charge a fair share to get Google to align more closely with your own desire. Watch this space!
The ultimate Seattle car?
This is the new Audi RS6 V10.The car will be fitted with a de-tuned
5-litre V10 borrowed from the Lamborghini Gallardo. Sources predict the addition of a turbocharger to the S6’s 5.2-liter V10 engine should generate something between 550 and 600 horsepower. Lamborghini can’t be pleased that a high-performance saloon and wagon from Audi will soon be pumping out more power than its entry-level exotic supercar. It’s got tons of room, tons of power and it’s four wheel drive. Perhaps the ultimate super car for the Northwest.
One of the best movies I’ve seen in years
In the East Germany (GDR) of 1984 they apparently spied on everyone. A German police detective Gerd Wiesler, a keenly idealistic supporter of the communist regime, is assigned to spy on playwright Georg Dreyman, who, he is told, is suspected of Western sympathies. Stasi (German police) agents secretly enter Dreyman’s apartment in order to install small microphones in the light switches and electric sockets. Wiesler and his assistant Udo monitor the activity in the attic space above the apartment, typing a summary of activities for the record after each shift. As they watch the lives of their suspects unfold they are forced to reconsider everything they thought they knew about their beloved government.
Seriously, this is one of the best movies I’ve seen in years. At the 2007 Academy Awards it won Best Foreign Language Film winner.
Rent it!!
What exactly is a “luxury consumer”?
According to the Luxury Institute:
The top 10% wealthiest U.S. Households based on Net Worth are further characterized as follows:
11 million households who can choose to live a 360-degree luxury lifestyle
Own 70% of all the wealth in the U.S.
Average net worth of $3.1 million
Average annual income of $256,000
Earn 45% of the aggregate annual income in the U.S.
For most luxury goods and services firms, these are the 20% or less of the clients who deliver 80% of the profits.
A couple announcements…
I’m a bit late to report that Imagekind has has concluded a deal with Snapfish. It had already hit the press but I had not posted it here. Similar to the flickr project, this latest development allows all Snapfish users to have their very own gorgeously printed, matted and frame photos sent directly to your home. Snapfish by HP is an online photo service with over 40 million members worldwide.
I am also pleased to report that a Curious Office company (FeedDigest) was acquired last week. Congrats to Peter Cooper for working hard on FeedDigest and finding a suitor who appreciates the company as much as the thousands of businesses who rely on it for timely, dynamic content publishing.
Walking in Seattle with iPhone camera in hand
Hey what happened to summer??
This is what it looks like off of Queen Anne Hill in Seattle (where I live) today. What’s up with that? Some summer eh!?
The most amazing models I’ve ever seen
And no I don’t mean female model. If you’re not a car lover this post won’t mean much to you. This Italian family has taken their love of cars and turned it into a passion driven small business. Terzodalia models are the most exacting 1/3 models ever.
They actually take apart old Ferrari engines to get the models and moving engine parts exactly right. Cost? Thousands.
DEMO 2007 videos
Check out theDEMO 2007 site. Why am I posting it here? Because I’ve been watching these videos in the background while working on other things and its amazing what I’m able to learn about other companies without actually having to spend time on their site. I can work on other stuff while some CEO helps me understand why his project is supposed to be different than the other 20 folks I thought he was competing with. Pretty fun actually.
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Rainbows
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Vanishing America
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Friends from Monaco
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Cadillac
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Old stamps
