Imagine for a moment, that you’ve strapped yourself to a wild bull and they’re about to throw the gate open at the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas, Nevada .. and the real beauty of it all is that you’ve never been on a bull in your life. All you know is that this is something that might be fun, exciting, and maybe just a little dangerous.
The twists and the turns of the internet, not too unlike bull riding, can throw even the most experienced among us for a loop.
Regular, everyday average people, login to the internet every day, and are taken for the rides of their lives the minute they decide to click that mouse for the very first time.
It’s a ride so wild in fact that just last week, I was dealing with a client once for the first time and he had as many as 5 toolbars installed in his browser, and couldn’t figure out for the life of it all, how to get rid of them. If his panel had been any smaller than 20 inches, he wouldn’t have been able to view the site he was visiting.
Just because someone online says that it’s good for you, doesn’t mean that it is. Used Car Salesmen are a dime a dozen when it comes to the world of being online.
When Google popped off a few years ago about not counting the description tag in their algorithm, I kept right on writing the description/keyword tags. A few of my internet buddies thought I was nuts, it was only after I explained to them that other search engines still counted these tags, that they settled down a bit about it.
This whole social networking thing kind of has me in a quandary as well. By quandary, I mean to say that if Facebook’s own founder can’t figure out how to make money off of the some 350 million odd users on his service, what makes Google and Bing so sure that they can? Or .. are Google and Bing just so desperate for monetary gain and position that they themselves would be willing to throw caution to the wind for a few cheap clicks?
I’ve been to Facebook. I’ve had an account there for over 2 years, and what I get from the whole experience is that people over there aren’t interested in looking at what’s passed off for ads on that platform. In the old days of the WWW, we called it spam .. Now, I guess, they are called ads. I guess that when you become desperate enough for money, you’ll change the meaning or definition of something so that you can find a certain justification in whatever it is you are doing.
You know what I mean:
Toilet Paper – Bathroom Tissue
Trailer Houses – Mobile Homes
Spyware – Toolbars
Spam – Targeted Advertising
A few weeks ago, I was all about getting completely rid of any social networking references on my domain — instead however, after giving it a bit of thought, I decided to be rid of the existing accounts and start all over again. This time there would be quality, I figured. Surely the internet is big enough to have some quality left, I thought to myself, and I went on with creating a new Twitter account, and completely blew away my existing Facebook account to reflect only one solitary business page. And Myspace? — totally gone forever, and the term, “forever”, doesn’t seem like a long enough period of time when I think about just how long Myspace should be gone.
The internet, not to unlike that old wild bull at the rodeo, will throw you if it can. It’s important to remember to not get all caught up in the noise.
The internet is a living, nearly breathing, fast moving thing, and if you must venture out into the badlands of it, be sure to hold on tight.
