On the opposite side of the spectrum, Burton outlined her baker’s dozen of “worst” enterprise architecture practices. The EA methods that Burton said muddied efforts and missed overall business returns are as follows:
1. No link to business strategic planning and budget process.
2. Confusing "IT Architecture" with "Enterprise Architecture."
3. Lack of governance.
4. Too much standardization.
5. Focusing on the art/language of EA rather than the outcomes.
6. Strictly adhering to architectural frameworks.
7. An "Ivory Tower" approach by IT and EA team members.
8. Lack of communication and feedback.
9. Limiting the teams to IT resources.
10. Missing performance measures.
11. Picking a tool before understanding business needs.
12. Focusing on the current state first and primarily.
13. Thinking that implementation equals completion.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Worst Methods for Enterprise Architecture
What is Enterprise 2.0?
Enterprise 1.0 | Enterprise 2.0 |
| Hierarchy | Flat Organization |
| Friction | Ease of Organization Flow |
| Bureaucracy | Agility |
| Inflexibility | Flexibility |
| IT-driven technology / Lack of user control | User-driven technology |
| Top down | Bottom up |
| Centralized | Distributed |
| Teams are in one building / one time zone | Teams are global |
| Silos and boundaries | Fuzzy boundaries, open borders |
| Need to know | Transparency |
| Information systems are structured and dictated | Information systems are emergent |
| Taxonomies | Folksonomies |
| Overly complex | Simple |
| Closed/ proprietary standards | Open |
| Scheduled | On Demand |
| Long time-to-market cycles | Short time-to-market cycles |
The Principles of the Global Workforce
1. Distance doesn’t matter.
Employees now expect to be able to collaborate in real-time with any co-worker. They expect to have access to whatever data or services the company offers no matter where they happen to be. Where in the world that co-worker actually works is irrelevant. They may be working from home, different offices, at airports, manufacturing facilities, or even on a ship somewhere. Knowledge workers need the flexibility to work wherever they must in order to best complete their jobs. That may mean on-site, at a customer’s office, or even from the quiet of their own home. IT must be an enabler for the way business needs to operate. Waiting 20 minutes for a file to be sent between workers – even if they are across the world from each other – is no longer acceptable for the employee or for the customer project that they are working on.
2. Business never stops.
With a globalized workforce – and a rapidly globalizing customer base – businesses cannot afford their operations to be stopped for even a few minutes. Responsiveness to disaster or failure – often characterized by recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) – must go far beyond responding to common problems like a failed SAN or a downed fiber connection. Issues like hurricanes or a flu pandemic might force workers to operate from home for an unspecified period of time. Compromised data centers may require enterprise to rapidly switch operations to secondary locations with no loss in information.
3. Applications and data must be available everywhere but all in one place.
With organizations working harder to protect their valuable data and sensitive customer information, many IT organizations are engaging in IT consolidation projects. Consolidating data makes it easier to track, protect, and restore. Beginning with remote tape backup and progressing to more complicated projects like file servers, document management applications, PLM systems, and Web applications, CIOs are demanding that data be brought back from remote offices. At the same time, businesses recognize that the data and applications were “out there” for a reason – that’s where they needed to be accessed. So while consolidation is an important strategy for data protection and cost control, it can negatively impact business operations unless LAN-like performance can be maintained everywhere.
4. Knowledge must be harnessed – and data must be managed.
Consolidation goes a long way to eliminating the islands of storage and data that evolve over time. But with organizations being required to react quickly in the face of
change, or move in order to take advantage of an opportunity, flexibility in moving data and applications is essential. CIOs must be able to quickly move massive amounts of data, and potentially set up application infrastructure in remote locations overnight. New offices and merged/acquired businesses must quickly be absorbed into the fabric of the existing organization by providing them immediate access to new systems and data.5. There are no second-class enterprise citizens.
The days of the “important” people working at corporate HQ are rapidly fading. Employees everywhere are now empowered to make important decisions. Whether it is designing or manufacturing a product, working with a customer, or working on a localized version of an advertising campaign, work happens everywhere. And the work of the distributed employee isn’t less important than anyone else’s work. Just as importantly, these workers need to interact with their colleagues, applications and data everywhere. CIOs and IT managers may no longer prioritize workers based on their geographic location. Every member of the enterprise needs to have access to the same applications, at the same level of application performance.
from "The CIO's new guide to design of global IT infrastructure"
Cynefin Framework
The Cynefin framework has five domains. The first four domains are:
The fifth domain is Disorder, which is the state of not knowing what type of causality exists, in which state people will revert to their own comfort zone in making a decision. In full use, the Cynefin framework has sub-domains, and the boundary between simple and chaotic is seen as a catastrophic one: complacency leads to failure.
- Simple, in which the relationship between cause and effect is obvious to all, the approach is to Sense - Categorise - Respond and we can apply best practice.
- Complicated, in which the relationship between cause and effect requires analysis or some other form of investigation and/or the application of expert knowledge, the approach is to Sense - Analyze - Respond and we can apply good practice.
- Complex, in which the relationship between cause and effect can only be perceived in retrospect, but not in advance, the approach is to Probe - Sense - Respond and we can sense emergent practice.
- Chaotic, in which there is no relationship between cause and effect at systems level, the approach is to Act - Sense - Respond and we can discover novel practice.
via en.wikipedia.org
7 Primary Business Drivers for Social Media
- Enhance branding and awareness
- Protect reputation
- Extend public relations
- Build community or loyalty
- Extend customer service
- Facilitate research and development
- Drive sales or leads
via briansolis.com
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Cloud Decisions
• Evolution rather than replacement.
The private cloud can evolve from existing virtualized infrastructure, enabling the transition to cloud computing without a complete and disruptive infrastructure overhaul.
• Security and compliance.
With a private cloud, data is retained within the enterprise, behind the corporate firewall, where IT can exercise full control over security, privacy, and regulatory compliance. With public clouds, enterprise data is housed in external data centers—and may move from location to location, without IT’s knowledge or consent. The dynamic movement of data in a public cloud may also present compliance challenges with local regulations.
• Service level agreements (SLAs).
Keeping applications in-house can help IT continue to meet SLAs deining performance, availability, and other critical business requirements. Some external providers may not be able to furnish the same level of service.
• Cost.
A large enterprise private cloud can provide economies of scale, resulting in total cost of ownership (TCO) that is competitive with or lower than public clouds. Intel IT, for example, found that services can be hosted internally at equal or lower TCO than hosting them externally.
• Building expertise.
Architecting a private cloud enables IT organizations to develop a knowledge base that can be applied to public clouds in the future. When creating the private cloud, IT will need to develop detailed application and data inventories, and gain key skills such as managing cloud SLAs. This experience will help build effective relationships with public cloud providers, enabling IT organizations to assess whether they meet enterprise requirements
(excerpt from http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/cio-agenda-paper-vmware.pdf)
Social Network Users' Bill of Rights
1. Honesty: We will honor our privacy policy and terms of service. 2. Clarity: We will make sure that our policies, terms of service, and settings are easy to find and understand. 3. Freedom of speech: We will not delete or modify user data without a clear policy and justification. 4. Empowerment : We will support assistive technologies and universal accessibility.5. Self-protection: We will support privacy-enhancing technologies. 6. Data minimization: We will minimize the information users are required to provide and share with others. 7. Control: We will work toward enabling users to own and control their data and won’t facilitate sharing their data unless they agree first. 8. Predictability: We will obtain the prior consent of users before significantly changing who can see their data. 9. Data portability: We will make it easy for users to obtain a copy of their data. 10. Protection: We will treat user data as securely as our own confidential data unless they choose to share these data, and notify them if these data are compromised. 11. Right to know: We will show users how we are using their data and allow them to see who and what has access to their data. 12. Right to self-define: We will allow users to create more than one identity and use pseudonyms. We will not link them without their permission. 13. Right to appeal: We will allow users to appeal punitive actions. 14. Right to withdraw: We will allow users to delete their accounts and remove their data.
The 5 Laws of Engagement
Law 1: We seek comfort in relationships: Surround us with community, which we’ve seen success with like Facebook, Twitter and 4chan. Most interestingly is PostSecret, an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.
Law 2: We all have something to say. So give us tools to express ourselves. Tools include comments, notes, and all the fun things Facebook has given us with Timeline, etc.
Law 3: We need to feel important. Use rewards to make us feel special. How do you make people feel special? One way is through exclusivity like Gilt Group. One way is through badges on Foursquare.
Law 4: We are hypnotized by beauty. Give us something beautiful to look out. Flipboard puts the image first. Instagram is a series of beautiful images within a community.
Law 5: We are captivated by the unknown. So target our curiosity. Foursquare does this with points! Pinterest does with page after page of constant intrigue.
via thenextweb.com
Anne Boe's Keys to Successful Networking
- Clarify your career goals.
- Develop long-term win-win relationships.
- Nurture your network daily.
- Be actively involved in your community.
- Meet as many people as you can.
- Take your business cards everywhere.
- Make friends, even when you don't need them.
- Act like a host, not a guest.
- Become an interested person.
- Develop your listening skills.
- Trust your intuition.
- Take people risks.
- Master the art of small talk.
- Work smarter, not harder.
- Value yourself and your life.
- Take action daily towards your goals.
- Become your own energy manager.
- Learn to ask for what you want.
- Give thanks for what you have.
- Acknowledge your skills and talents.
- Say "Thank you. "
- Become an inverse paranoid - decide the world is conspiring for you.
- Determine your priorities - protect your energy.
- Learn to want what you have.
- Know that there are more side doors in the world than there are front doors.
[Source: Anne Boe]
Creating an IT Strategy - Management by Maxim
I have heard that 90% of all businesses do not have a written Business Strategy. Its in their heads - but as an Enterprise Architect how do you extract it so that you can create a viable IT Strategy? Often times CxOs don't have time to have a strategic dialogue. One way to solve this problem is to employ the "Maxim Process"
The Maxim Process is described by Broadbent and Kitzis as a pragmatic way to extract enough information for a good enough IT strategy while not investing more than a day’s workshop with senior management. The CIO will organize a workshop with CxOs, which will lead to documenting 2 kinds of so-‐called Maxims:
A typical Maxim Workshop will be split up into two parts:
To give examples imagine an old economy financial service provider like a big insurance company that runs more than one brand name on the market. For such an enterprise you could find the following business maxim:
SOURCE: TOGAF9 QuickStart Guide 2009
The Maxim Process is described by Broadbent and Kitzis as a pragmatic way to extract enough information for a good enough IT strategy while not investing more than a day’s workshop with senior management. The CIO will organize a workshop with CxOs, which will lead to documenting 2 kinds of so-‐called Maxims:
- Business Maxims
- And as a result IT Maxims
A typical Maxim Workshop will be split up into two parts:
- Part 1: Finding the Business Maxims,
- Part 2: Deriving the IT Maxims
To give examples imagine an old economy financial service provider like a big insurance company that runs more than one brand name on the market. For such an enterprise you could find the following business maxim:
- Create synergies in back office and service functions wherever brand identity is not compromised
- Define standard architectures and platforms used by all of the group’s companies in order to leverage synergies and to reduce IT cost
- Harmonize the IT application systems for the group’s companies wherever there is a business case for this.
SOURCE: TOGAF9 QuickStart Guide 2009
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Eight Hybrid Thinking Principles for Enterprise Architects
- Coordinate from the outside in. Once the "outside" design is in place, it serves to guide the foundation for inside structures.
- Pursue a portfolio of strategies. Evaluate many small bets instead of single large ones
- Harmonize, rather than optimize. Enterprise architects learn to focus on "harmonizing" a diverse set of existing approaches and less on creating an optimal approach from scratch.
- Coordinate, rather than architect. Hybrid thinking approaches view the enterprise as a collection of interdependent portfolio management processes, with the goal of coordinating across and among these portfolios.
- Focus on interactions, not interactors. Hybrid thinkers must focus on coordinating the behaviors among systems rather than optimizing the internal mechanisms of such systems. Gartner sometimes refers to this approach by the phrase "architect the lines, not the boxes." "Lines" refers to behaviors shared among systems, and "boxes"
- Embrace a different approach to standards. The focus shifts from thinking of standards as "inhibitors of choice" to "enablers of change." Hybrid thinkers emphasize that the purpose of standards is to enable coordinated interactions and behaviors to change and evolve.
- Encourage continuous and participatory interaction. Hybrid thinking charrettes enable individuals to overcome traditional process barriers by fostering more collaborative, creative and meaningful outcomes. Design is done best when it is peer to peer.
- Focus on business outcomes, not IT outcomes.
Source: Gartner 2010
What Does an Enterprise Architect Do ?
| Business Technology Strategy | ||
| What You Know | What You Do | What You Are |
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| Organizational Politics | ||
| What You Know | What You Do | What You Are |
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| Consulting | ||
| What You Know | What You Do | What You Are |
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| Leadership | ||
| What You Know | What You Do | What You Are |
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| Technology | ||
| What You Know | What You Do | What You Are |
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| Risks and Rewards | |
| Risks | Rewards |
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Source: IFEAD
What is the difference between Architecture and Design?
Architecture
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Design
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Essentials dictated by the mission (problem, need or opportunity) and its environment
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Decisions compatible with the architecture
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A different architecture implies a different mission
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Different designs may address the same mission
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Defines a class of acceptable solutions
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Defines a single specific solution
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About suitability or fitness for purpose, as defined by the mission
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About engineering optimization, within architectural constraints
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Role of the architect is mostly to make correct inferences about the mission, solution and environment
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Role of the designer is mostly to make correct decisions about the solution
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Architecture is done by architects
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Design is done by developers
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Primary audience is mission and solution stakeholders, which usually includes designers and implementers
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Primary audience is solution implementers
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About the mission and solution in their environmental context, i.e., outward looking
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About components and subsystems of the solution, i.e., inward looking
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Kim Cameron's 7 Laws of Identity
1. User Control and Consent:
Digital identity systems must only reveal information identifying a user with the user’s consent.
2. Limited Disclosure for Limited Use
The solution which discloses the least identifying information and best limits its use is the most stable, long-term solutio.
The Law of Fewest Parties
Digital identity systems must limit disclosure of identifying information to parties having a necessary and justifiable place in a given identity relationship.
4. Directed Identity
A universal identity metasystem must support both “omnidirectional” identifiers for use by public entities and “unidirectional” identifiers for private entities, thus facilitating discovery while preventing unnecessary release of correlation handles.
5. Pluralism of Operators and Technologies:
A universal identity metasystem must channel and enable the interworking of multiple identity technologies run by multiple identity providers.
6. Human Integration:
A unifying identity metasystem must define the human user as a component integrated through protected and unambiguous human-machine communications.
7. Consistent Experience Across Contexts:
A unifying identity metasystem must provide a simple consistent experience while enabling separation of contexts through multiple operators and technologies.
via idcommons.org
Ten Topics a Venture Capitalist Cares About
According to Guy Kawasaki The ten topics that a venture capitalist cares about are:1. Problem
2. Your solution
3. Business model
4. Underlying magic/technology
5. Marketing and sales
6. Competition
7. Team
8. Projections and milestones
9. Status and timeline
10. Summary and call to action
2. Your solution
3. Business model
4. Underlying magic/technology
5. Marketing and sales
6. Competition
7. Team
8. Projections and milestones
9. Status and timeline
10. Summary and call to action
[Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net]
Guiding Principles for Enterprise Architects
Minimalist Architecture PrincipleEssentially, the Minimalist Architecture Principle says “if a decision can reasonably be made by someone with a more narrow scope of responsibility, defer the decision to that person or group.” This means that architects only make decisions that require the overall perspective and authority that the architect has. If a decision has local impact, then the architect has no need to mess with it. If the decision has broad impact, and the impact has highly strategic consequences, then the decision fits the minimalist architecture criterion.
Minimalist Architecture Principle: Make only those decisions that have to be made at this level of scope to achieve the business strategy and meet the architecture objectives and vision.Decisions With Teeth PrincipleAnother way of pruning the Enterprise Architecture decision set is to apply the Decisions with Teeth Principle. Decisions that have teeth are those that are both enforceable and enforced. They can and will be adhered to, and if not, there will be consequences. This means that the decisions must be well-formed. They have to be unambiguous and have a clear scope of applicability. And there must be a governance process that allows for discovery of breaches and determines consequences, rather than simply granting exceptions.
Too often, architects and their deployment communities treat enterprise architecture decisions as statements of “general good.” These decisions are treated like guidelines or suggestions, which other architects, designers or implementers choose whether or not to follow. Such decisions have no teeth.
This may highlight a need to improve your governance process, but even with a strong governance process in place, objections raised in the name of customer advocacy have a powerful shield. That is, arguments in favor of the “general good” are susceptible to counter-arguments made in the name of a customer or immediate concern.
The reason to avoid making decisions that are likely to be dismissed is simple: you do not want the whole Enterprise Architecture to be tarred with the failure brush for the sake decisions that will be ignored and/or cannot be enforced. Further, it is a waste of time for the architect to make, and for others to think about and then ignore, such decisions.Decisions With Teeth Principle: Only include decisions in your Enterprise Architecture that you, and the governance organization, are willing and able to enforce.This presents a conundrum which is resolved by applying another principle, which we call Connect-the-Dots. According to this principle, each architecture decision must be rationalized in terms of business goals, architecture requirements, or higher-level architecture decisions. You see, the only voice that stands any chance of holding its own against the voice of the customer is the voice of the business. Business strategy represents the voice of the business, and connect-the-dots creates a compelling chain that links business strategy to architecture goals to architecture decisions.
At its best, business strategy is well grounded in the voice of the customer and it is grounded in the voice of the business telling the story of competitive differentiation. It takes into account the competitive environment, the value network, internal capabilities and financial goals. Enterprise Architecture that takes business strategy as its starting point, and shows how each architecture decision is necessary to achieve the business strategy, expresses the voice of the business, and follows the connect-the-dots principle.
When the case has been made that the enterprise architecture decisions satisfy these three principles, then that set of decisions can be described as the technical expression of the business strategy. When such a decision, clearly driven by the business strategy, is ignored, we need to realize that it is not the architecture that is being brought into question, but the strategy itself. This focuses discussion where it belongs. The overall business strategy, like the enterprise architecture, optimizes across the organization. We need to not get distracted by debate about technology questions when the real issue is clarifying and enforcing what is strategic to the business.Connect-the-Dots Principle: There must be a traceable connection from business strategy to each enterprise architecture decision
via bredemeyer.com
NIST Definition of Cloud Computing
On-demand self-service.
A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such asserver time and network storage, as needed automatically without requiring human interaction with each service’s provider.
Broad network access.
Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standardmechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g.,mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs).
Resource pooling.
The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. There is a sense of location independence in that the customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact
location of the provided resources but may be able to specify location at a higher level of abstraction (e.g., country, state, or datacenter). Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, network bandwidth, and virtual machines.
Rapid elasticity.
Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned, in some cases automatically, to quickly scale out, and rapidly released to quickly scale in. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be purchased in any quantity at any time.
Measured Service.
Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability1 at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported, providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.
Helpful Facebook Resources
Five Ways to Organize Information
In his book Information Anxiety, Richard Saul Wurman notes that there are five basic ways to organize information:
- Alphabet: The organizing principle used by dictionaries and telephone books.
- Category: The segmentation of things by attribute or functionality, such as color (shirts) or capabilities (product line).
- Continuum: Similar to category, but rather than using discrete buckets, this uses a range of values that are expressed in numbers or units. Examples of these magnitude measures include from small to large or from light to heavy. A list of products ordered by price would be a continuum; at the same time, the products could be categorized as inexpensive, moderate, or expensive.
- Location: Physical location — in geography, points on a map; in anatomy, muscle groups; in an equipment manual, an exploded drawing.
- Time: A timeline or a set of eras, useful when describing product or organizational history.
10 Places to List Your Local Business
If you have a small business and you have just created a website then you want to started advertising your site. The best way to get recognition is to have your URL listed on other websites. The easy way to start is to create a business listing in as many directories as possible. Here is a list of 10 to get you started.
Done is the Engine Of More
The Cult of Done Manifesto
- There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
- Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
- There is no editing stage.
- Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
- Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
- The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
- Once you're done you can throw it away.
- Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
- People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
- Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
- Destruction is a variant of done.
- If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
- Done is the engine of more.
via brepettis.com
Monday, March 11, 2013
TOGAF Architecture Development Method
The TOGAF Architecture Development Method (ADM) provides complete guidance for implementing and executing an organization's enterprise architecture. The process consists of multiple, consecutive phases enclosed in a closed loop
The purpose of the Preliminary Phase is to identify implementation process stakeholders and get them on the same page about the enterprise architecture work. This phase delivers Architecture Guiding Principles that is based on the organization's business principles and describes process and criteria for monitoring the EA implementation's progress.
Phase A of the process is dedicated to articulating the EA vision. The Architecture Vision artifact draws upon the business drivers to clarify the purpose of the enterprise architecture effort and to create first-cut descriptions of the baseline and target environments. If the business objectives are unclear, then part of the work in this phase is to help the business to identify its key objectives and corresponding processes, which the enterprise architecture must support. The Statement of Architectural Work, which is also produced in this phase, delineates the EA's scope and constraints and presents a plan for the architectural work.
Phase B is dedicated to detailed work on the architecture of the business domain. Both baseline and target architectures that were outlined in the Architecture Vision are detailed to make them useful inputs into technical analysis. Business process modeling, business object modeling, and use case modeling are some of the techniques that are used to produce the Business Architecture, which in turn includes gap analysis of the desired state.
Phase C is concerned with delivery of Application and Data (Information) architectures. This phase draws upon on the baseline and the target architectures started in Phase A (Architecture Vision) and results of the business gap analysis (part of the Business Architecture) to deliver Application and Data architectures for both current and envisaged environments, within the scope and according to the plan outlined in the Statement of Architectural Work.
Phase D completes the detailed architecture work of the TOGAF ADM cycle with the delivery of Technology Architecture. As in the preceding phases, gap analysis and draft architectures are used as a baseline, as are the architecture guiding principles agreed upon in the preliminary phase. Modeling notations, such as UML, are actively used during this phase to produce various viewpoints.
The purpose of Phase E is to clarify the opportunities presented by the target architectures and to outline the potential solutions. The work in this phase revolves around feasibility and practicality of the implementation alternatives. Artifacts produced here include Implementation and Migration Strategy, High-level Implementation Plan, and Project List, as well as an updated Application Architecture that acts as a Blueprint to be used by the implementation projects.
Phase F moves to prioritize proposed implementation projects and perform detailed planning and gap analysis of the migration process. This work includes assessing dependencies between projects and minimizing their overall impact on enterprise operations. In this phase, the Project List is updated, the Implementation Plan is detailed, and the Blueprint is handed to the implementation teams.
As the list of projects stabilizes, the focus shifts to formulating more specific objectives and recommendations for each of the implementation projects. During Phase G, connection between the governing architecture (TOGAF) and the development organization (which may be regulated by the combination of RUP and the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), for instance, or some other project management methodology) is established and selected projects are implemented under the formal architecture governance. A phased deliverable is Architecture Contracts, which are accepted by the development organization. The ultimate outputs of Phase G are the architecture-compliant solutions.
The focus in Phase H shifts towards change management of the architecture baseline that is achieved with the delivery of the implemented solutions. The phase might produce a Request for Architecture Work that sets targets for a subsequent cycle of enterprise architecture efforts.
via ibm.com
What is Twitter Spam
Spam: You may not use the Twitter service for the purpose of spamming anyone. What constitutes “spamming” will evolve as we respond to new tricks and tactics by spammers. Some of the factors that we take into account when determining what conduct is considered to be spamming are:
- If you have followed a large amount of users in a short amount of time;
- If you have followed and unfollowed people in a short time period, particularly by automated means (aggressive follower churn);
- If you repeatedly follow and unfollow people, whether to build followers or to garner more attention for your profile;
- If you have a small number of followers compared to the amount of people you are following;
- If your updates consist mainly of links, and not personal updates;
- If you post misleading links;
- If a large number of people are blocking you;
- The number of spam complaints that have been filed against you;
- If you post duplicate content over multiple accounts or multiple duplicate updates on one account;
- If you post multiple unrelated updates to a topic using #;
- If you post multiple unrelated updates to a trending or popular topic;
- If you send large numbers of duplicate @replies or mentions;
- If you send large numbers of unsolicited @replies or mentions in an attempt to spam a service or link;
- If you add a large number of unrelated users to lists in an attempt to spam a service or link;
- If you repeatedly post other users' Tweets as your own;
- If you have attempted to "sell" followers, particularly through tactics considered aggressive following or follower churn;
- Creating or purchasing accounts in order to gain followers;
- Using or promoting third-party sites that claim to get you more followers (such as follower trains, sites promising "more followers fast," or any other site that offers to automatically add followers to your account);
- If you create false or misleading Points of Interest;
- If you create Points of Interest to namesquat or spam.
LinkedIn Reveals the 10 Most Overused Job-Hunter Buzzwords
via mashable.com
Perhaps all phrases become clichéd after a while. I think, as with all writing, I am looking for something that is both engaging and authentic. Did I mention that I am versatile and charismatic?
Quirky - Socially Developed Products
A Socially Developed Product™
via quirky.com
Inventors pay $99 to submit their idea to the this co-creation platform. Then the community of designers with co-design and improve the product. Then Quirky helps the inventor sell the product and if enough people buy it - then it will go into production. Revenues from the "e-shop" are shared with the community of influencers.
Pay with a Tweet - A social payment system
Sell your products for a tweet.
In today's world the value of people talking about your product is sometimes higher than the money you would get for it. ‘Pay with a Tweet’ is the first social payment system, where people pay with the value of their social network.
It’s simple, every time somebody pays with a tweet, he or she tells all their friends about the product. Boom.
Click here to create your download button.
I really like this business model. It seems really obvious too. Content producers or coupon creators could promote their other products and business by charging people with a tweet. You can create a "sell" button that will allow tweeters to download content - but I would like to see this model extended to other things.
The Answer is Simple - Seth Godin
"The answer is simple"
...is always more effective a response than, "well, it's complicated."
One challenge analysts face is that their answers are often a lot more complicated than the simplistic (and wrong) fables that are peddled by those that would mislead and deceive. Same thing is true for many non-profits doing important work.
We're not going to have a lot of luck persuading masses of semi-interested people to seek out and embrace complicated answers, but we can take two steps to lead to better information exchange:
1. Take complicated overall answers and make them simple steps instead. Teach complexity over time, simply.
2. Teach a few people, the committed, to embrace the idea of complexity. That's what a great college education does, for example. That's what makes someone a statesman instead of a demagogue. Embracing complexity is a scarce trait, worth acquiring. But until your customers/voters/employees do, I think the first strategy is essential.
You can't sell complicated to someone who came to you to buy simple.
Being trained as an "engineer" and an "analyst" - I embrace complexity but I find more often than not other people dont appreciate the detail.
Yogile - Impossibly Easy Photo Sharing
Yogile is a new photo sharing service that makes it incredibly easy to share images privately and within groups.
While established photo sharing sites already exist, Yogile is different because it lets multiple people contribute with ease. Once you create an album, you get a customizable URL and e-mail address to share with anyone who wants to add photos, either as e-mail attachments or uploads through the site. There’s no need for these users to register, keeping the process simple and hassle-free.
Take a wedding, for example. Dozens of attendees take their own photos, all from different cameras and angles. While you might try asking everyone for their shots afterward, Yogile offers a smart alternative.
via crunchbase.com
I registered and set up a simple public photo album in about 5 minutes. The execution of the site is quite elegant. Its easy to add descriptions and titles. I like the ability to email photos to my custom email yogile account - just like Posterous does. I see a reference to an RSS feed in the html source - so there is probably away to tap into the feed. The Yogile domain doesnt have a lot of indexed pages - and ones I see dont seem to have good meta descriptions. And Id love to see some personal information in the html titles - so that Google picks it up. Photos are a great way to spread your personal brand - especially if it is tagged well and has a story. Join the fun at Yogile.com
Google Instant and SEO – Thoughts About How It Changes Things
- We May See More Traffic to Regional Sites. People regularly enter “cheap gas” and “best dentist” in search engines – without qualifying the searches at all. Organic results tend to send people to national portals, but suggest-driven search gets them closer to well optimized, regional sites. A search for “cheap gas” without Google Instant offers gasbuddy.com at number one organic result, while a “suggested” search for “cheap gas houston” gives houstongasprices.com.
- Google Instant Drop Down a new micro “SERP”: Those who make their way into the suggest feature get a “better than #1″ position.
- Google Instant Results May Change Long-Tail Search Optimization. Those of us who believe in doing long-tail marketing may find an decrease down the tail from search, and a greater need to develop segments of our site to serve those long tail queries. Searches that used to come in with two word phrases may now have 3-4 words, which helps with medium-tail optimization, but longer phrases previously further down the tail may be “clipped.” This will concentrate search terms so that Adwords bids will rise and competition increases in a sort of “cluster” effect.
- Google Instant SERPS offer More Impact for Trademark Blocking in PPC. If your trade name is offered in Google Instant results, and you’ve filed a trademark complaint form, the results page will be free from paid competition giving you a better shot at the traffic through organic or ppc links.
- Google Instant Can Improve User/Searcher Skills Forever. With Google Instant constantly popping up when you go about your daily queries, many who never really thought of keyphrases will now start to think about them. It will be a constant reinforcement of our efforts to think about how consumers search. We may have to adjust our planning to meet these enhanced skills.
- Google Instant Can Be an Ad-Hoc Negative Keyword Tool. There are other ways to be more comprehensive, but Google Instant can help to identify negative keywords you may want to enter in your campaigns. And I saw some negative phrases with higher index numbers that never showed up in Google keyword tools.
- Dramatically Reduced Spelling Error Opportunity. While many of us set up adgroups to capture spelling errors, this will have a decreasing impact as people start to use the suggest feature as a live auto-correction. Typo-campaigns may get less traffic.
- Hijacking Google Instant May Become a SEO Technique. It may become possible to hijack Google Instant so that competitive phrases are strategically flashed to the user. For example.. if you sell “abc widget” then a suggest of “abc widget fails miserably” could be used to divert traffic.
- Better Searches Offer Improved Analytics Information. With the user making clear choices among those available, we’ll have better information about what is enticing and engaging to the users. Vague, high volume two-word searches are always confusing when we’re looking to make decisions, and this might just help us plan better.
- Google Adwords Impressions will change. We’ll need to consider how the rules of 3-seconds’ delay, clicks etc. It’s hard to yet predict what is happening.
- Users will do more exploration. When users don’t fully know about a topic, this can change how they approach search. Searches for “corneal transplant” can see many new avenues about the procedures, treatments, etc and spend more time in these sub-categories.
- Content Creation for SEO may cluster around Google Instant suggestions. If a given suggestion is offered more often, it makes sense to design content for that phrase and special derivatives. If someone is searching for “Lasik Surgery” – content optimized for “Lasik Surgery Risks” would tend to get a lot of clicks it might otherwise have missed. But considering personalized search here, we cannot precisely predict what will be searched for.
via buzzmaven.com
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