Central Perk

miercuri, 23 mai 2012

Damn Cool Pics

Do You Speak English? Yes, Sure [Video]
16 Passive Aggressive Car Alarm Notes
Boston Car Crashes from the 1930s
The Secret Side of Military Spending [Infographic]
Epic Parenting Fail at a Laundromat
Glowing Text Installations
30 Worst Parking Jobs Ever

Posted: 23 May 2012 05:06 PM PDT

The guys from Russia exceeded the speed limit and decided to speak in English with a Ukrainian policeman. They were sure that he does not understand English and just let go and they will not have to pay a fine.But ...

16 Passive Aggressive Car Alarm Notes

Posted: 23 May 2012 03:11 PM PDT

I suppose the "I'm going to throw a brick through your window," line is frightening and probably effective, though couldn't these people think of another threat? I think that the Sharpie one is the most clever of the bunch, though I particularly enjoy the lines like, "no one wants to steal this piece of..." well, you get the idea.

Boston Car Crashes from the 1930s

Posted: 23 May 2012 11:48 AM PDT

Some photographs of Car Accidents happened in the 30s in Boston.

These photographs taken in Boston in the '30s show us that there were just as many reckless drivers back in good old times as there are on the roads now.

The Secret Side of Military Spending [Infographic]

Posted: 23 May 2012 11:29 AM PDT

The United States military budget rose for 11 consecutive years, going from $354 billion in 2001 to $721 billion in 2011. That's an increase of 104%. While 2012's proposed budget signals the first decline in military spending in over a decade, it is a drop in the bucket and if the past is any indication, actual spending will surpass the budget and once again take us into record territory.

Click image to see a larger version.

Via OME

Epic Parenting Fail at a Laundromat

Posted: 22 May 2012 10:52 PM PDT

Parent puts child in a washer to scare him off but accidentally starts the machine. The dad found out that the washing machines automatically lock and begin their cycle once the door is shut. The paramedics looked at the kid and he escaped with only few bruisesand he was laughing when he came out of the laundry. A sign in the left hand corner of the frame reads 'Junior wash $2.95'. But it was not supposed to be taken quite so literally.

Glowing Text Installations

Posted: 22 May 2012 10:12 PM PDT

South Korean artist Lee Jung created and photographed this gorgeous series of text-based light installations.

Via Booooooom

30 Worst Parking Jobs Ever

Posted: 22 May 2012 09:43 PM PDT

With such limited space, sometimes parking in the city can be pretty tricky. Just ask the thirty people featured in this list.

Why the Marketing World Needs More Correlation Research

Posted: 22 May 2012 02:14 PM PDT

Posted by randfish

Do more tweets of a URL lead to higher search rankings on Google? Do longer articles get more shares on Facebook? Do emails that contain images have lower open rates?

These, and hundreds of other questions marketers are constantly asking, can be answered mathematically through correlation data. Yet, it seems there's an unfortunate bias against correlations, specifically in the SEO community. Part of this has to do with the well-known maxim "correlation is not causation." This is eminently true.

However, I LOVE to know correlation, even when it's wholly disconnected from causation, and I'm surprised more marketers rail against the acquisition of this knowledge. After all, we constantly use correlation-based observations in our everyday lives, scientists use it frequently to discover potential hypotheses and put forward experiments to test them.

For example, I personally care less about what Google actually uses as ranking elements in their massive algorithm than on what kinds of sites and pages tend to perform well. To my mind, it's much more fascinating to learn, that, for example, stories that appear in the Google News results are much more likely to have images originally sourced by the news publisher than it would be to find out that the algorithm uses an exponential decay factor on freshness based on inputs from a certain set of trusted account usage. The former is actionable; the latter much less so.

We can apply this to email outreach, public relations, talks at conferences, conversion rate optimization (a practice based almost entirely on correlation), and virtually any other quantifiable practice in our work.

Here are just a few examples of great work in the field of marketing that leverage correlation data:

Dan Zarrela's series on the Science of Social Media, Science of Retweets, Science of Timing and Science of Facebook Marketing
The Open Algorithm Project from Mark Collier
Correlation data in SEOmoz's own Ranking Factors Study
What Mike King learned analyzing 300K outreach emails w/ Buzzstream

I fail to understand why this work is criticized as being "just correlation; doesn't mean anything" rather than embraced as "awesome; new correlation data on which to form testable hypotheses." Yes - correlation does not imply causation. But it does show a relationship, and those relationships can form the basis of guesses and tests. I find it challenging to argue why this work should not be done and shared, yet the bias is clearly out there.

Of course, there's always the danger of presenting correlation research which is then misinterpreted or misused, as the folks from PHDComics brilliantly illustrated below:

But, I'd rather risk some misunderstanding and have the data available than not investigate the connections between things in the marketing world out of fear.

Here's just a few ideas for correlation-based research that I'd love to see someone put together:

Correlation between a topic/phrase/brand trending on Twitter and search volume spiking on Google
Correlation between Facebook shares, Tweets and Google+ shares for URLs across various industries (where are some networks potentially stronger/weaker, what are the outliers, etc)
Correlation between amount of funding and revenue/growth/success across industries (think this would be fascinating to entrepreneurs)
Correlation between types of share buttons used on a website and quantity of shares received
Correlation between # of email subscribers to an RSS feed and the rankings / social shares of that feed's content
Correlation between search rankings and RSS feed inclusion overall (do URLs that are included in feeds tend to perform better than those that aren't?)
Correlation between sentiment (positive, negative, neutral) of content on various sites and their success in social media
Correlation between social shares and traffic
Correlation between Klout score and traffic driven to URLs shared (to see if Klout lines up with how much traffic that person's tweets/shares drive)
Correlation between having a testimonial, physical address, email address, and/or phone number on the page and higher/lower rankings in Google's search results

If you or your team feel confident, capable, and excited about potentially doing this work but need some funding or publishing support, we'd love to talk. Just drop me an email (rand followed by the @ and seomoz dot org).

p.s. Check out Dr. Pete's excellent "Mathographic" on correlation vs. causation to learn more about the difference and the nuances.

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Watch a Concert at the White House

Your Daily Snapshot for
Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Watch a Concert at the White House

Over the past several years, dozens of musicians and performers have come to perform at the White House in celebration of American musical culture.

We've put together a brand new collection of those performances, from Paul McCartney to John Legend, and now you can watch them all in one place.

Check out all the videos on WhiteHouse.gov/Performances:

Seth's Blog : Dancing on the edge of finished

Dancing on the edge of finished

Before, when your shift was done, you were finished. When the inbox was empty, when the forms were processed, you could stop.

Now, of course, there's always one more tweet to make, post to write, words with friends move to complete. There's one more bit of email, one more lens you can construct, one more comment you can respond to. If you want to, you can be never finished.

And that's the dance. Facing a sea of infinity, it's easy to despair, sure that you will never reach dry land, never have the sense of accomplishment of saying, "I'm done." At the same time, to be finished, done, complete--this is a bit like being dead. The silence and the feeling that maybe that's all.

For the marketer, the freelancer and the entrepreneur, the challenge is to level set, to be comfortable with the undone, with the cycle of never-ending. We were trained to finish our homework, our peas and our chores. Today, we're never finished, and that's okay.

It's a dance, not an endless grind.