Google has too much power online, they can make and break anyone that they choose.

If you write a bad article about them, or sell links, or do this or that, they can remove your site from search, not that I get much traffic from search, thankfully I’m a social marketer more than an seo marketer, and most of my traffic comes from pinging identi.ca, twitter, friendfeed, and facebook.

Apparently if somebody clicks a bunch on adsense ads on your website, you WILL get banned from adsense, does this seem fair? I didn’t do a thing, one person ruined me from collecting my adsense revenue. After a year I was at $90 and then in one day got $7 worth in ad clicks. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if someone who works for google made all the clicks so they wouldn’t have to pay me.

I even told google about the suspicious activity, before I was banned. Does this seem right? Sure, I could go register a new adsense account in my wife’s name, but what would stop them from banning her account when we reach $90 again?

Which is why I’m launching a new facebook group: Google Haters. This is a group of people who basically hate google, perhaps a union of bloggers standing up for our own rights. According to google the internet is a tyrrany and google rules, but I believe we can fight back.

Have you been banned from adsense, adwords, or search rankings? Drop your comments or join the Google Haters group on facebook. We’ll have adsense click-off weekends, and do our best to wreak havoc on the internet king. I’m totally peeved at this and I believe in fighting back when I’ve received an injustice. If you’ve been hurt by google in anyway this will be a great way to fight back.

Join the facebook group now!

Of course you can call me mad, or an idiot, or over-reacting, but just wait - anyone can be hit by google, I always did my best to follow all the rules, I never broke any rules, and I still got banned. It can happen to anyone, I highly recommend just quitting google and trying another ad network.

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Tags: adwords, bloggers, facebook, Google, marketer, search rankings, Twitter, tyrrany

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Popularity: 11% [?]

Image via Wikipedia

If you haven’t heard we’re launching a School on the New Media. Topics will cover blogging, SEO, SEM, PPC, Affiliate Marketing, Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, Stumbleupon, RSS / Feed Readers, Time Management, Best Practices for Blogging, Entrepreneur Classes, Online Business related classes, etc….

We will be giving away FREE Classes to select individuals - to be eligible you absolutely must subscribe to our newsletter (note you also will receive free entrance in a contest to win a gas card!)

To Apply to be a Teacher go here for the application information.

You can also help us out by digging or stumbling the page.
[display_podcast]

Popularity: 17% [?]Rate this: 2.8

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Tags: affiliate marketing, conversational marketing, entrepreneur, facebook, feed readers, friendfeed, gas card, Seo, social marketing, Social Media, Social network, Time Management, Twitter

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 School of Social Media [9:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Downloads 46

Popularity: 17% [?]

What is it?

This project is an Online University of ALL aspects of New Media. Topics will include:

• Blogging (Including topics on each of the major blog software, tagging, installing the software, upgrading, theme modifications, plugin development, link building strategies, seo strategies as they relate to blogging, marketing a blog, tools and resources, proper blog etiquet and grammar, and many other topics related to blogging)
• Social Media (Including creating podcasts, and videocasts, recording interviews via skype, minor video editing courses, uploading videos, promoting your video’s and podcasts, etc…)
• Social Networks (How to build a large network in the social world. How to become an authority in your network. How to expertly use and manage the many different networks. Differences of the major networks like twitter, facebook, squidoo, myspace, knol, and how to best utilize each different network - perhaps a course for each network as well. etc…)
• RSS / Syndicated Content (Includes what is a feed, how to use a feed reader, different type of feed readers, ways feeds can benefit your blogging efforts, how to get blog ideas from other’s feeds, etc..)
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization techniques, how to effectively use / create linkbait, how to build the most high quality linkbacks in the quickest amount of time, how to effectively perfect your blog’s seo, how to raise your rankings in google, blackhat and whitehat techniques for seo, etc….)
• SEM (How to use PPC campaigns and other methods for marketing via search engines, how to get the most from your marketing dollar, how to get discounts on advertising, how to create and track ads,)
• Affiliate Marketing (Using affiliate ads on your blog; Marketing Affiliate programs via ppc campaigns, creating and running your own affiliate program; other best practices for Affiliates and Program Owners.
• Other Internet topics as they come up.

These are just a few of the many courses that the university will hold.

Currently we’re looking for individuals with the knowledge and experience to teach in an online classroom environment. Ability to create videos / podcasts related to the class is very important. Also important is having the equipment and know-how to hold live streaming chats / training sessions.

Experience using moodle is also a nice plus, but not necessary.

Compensation will be based on number of students you have in your class. There will initially be an enrollment fee to enroll in the college, and a fee per class taken. Tentative prices will be about $99 for enrollment, and $29 per class. Some classes may cost more, and we may have some exclusive classes if we can get some A-list teachers on the board, these may be as much as $99 for the individual class, but it will be definitely high quality learning experience.

There will be a share method of distributing earnings, all the money earned minus costs of hosting and other business fees, will be pooled, each person will receive a number of shares based on their position in the company, these share though are not stock in any way shape or form, they are simply the way we determine payout.

Example: Company earns $100. $10 goes to hosting / fees. Leaving $90. We have 8 teachers, of which 7 teach 1 class, and 1 teaches 2 classes. The 7 each get 1 share, the last gets 2, and that’s a total of $10 per person, except the last who gets $20.

This is the best way I can think of to make things fair, this example was just a small one to make the math simple.

I’m accepting applications / resumes for this position right now - I’m looking for people will real-life experiences. Please provide the following:

1. Link to your blog / website / and any sites that you’ve worked for.
2. Your experience relating to the topics that were mentioned. Please also provide an outline for the course topic you’re interested in teaching. Be as detailed as possible.
3. Not required but an audio / video of why you think you’d be a good fit as teacher, plus if you could teah a small lesson 5-10 minute on any aspect of blogging, or social media that would be a huge plus.
4. Resume if applicable not necessary though - if you send in a video and I like your teaching style, then I’ll be sold.
5. Anything else you’d like to add. You can email your resume / application to: patrickwcurl@gmail.com

Notice: The top teachers will receive seats on the Board, which will mean higher pay for less work.

We will also be working to create the best certification program for social media on the planet, certifications that will be able to make a person stand-out to corporations that need help marketing online.

We are estimating having as many as 1000 students at any one time, and our earnings could be substantial. We may also branch out into other online training programs as well in the future. This is definitely a great opportunity to be part of something big.

Popularity: 4% [?]

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Tags: affiliate marketing, blackhat, blog school, engine optimization techniques, facebook, feed readers, marketing affiliate programs, new media school, podcasts, ppc school, school for blogging, school of new media, school of social media marketing, search engine optimization, sem school, seo school, seo [...]

Popularity: 4% [?]

Jason Calacanis, one of the most influential bloggers on the scene right now, founder of Mahalo, exploiter of twitter and facebook, has announced he is going to quit blogging. What has the world come to? Eh, maybe it’s for the better.

I’m waiting to see a social network popup just around ‘betting’ whether or not he will come back to blogging. After-all I’ve quit blogging for a bit usually during the summer slow-down, but I always come back. For a true blogger, it’s almost an addiction, I can’t see how one can claim to completely give it up..but we will see.

After all Jason is known for link-bait scams, perhaps this is another one of his publicity stunts.

My personal message to Jason Calacanis: If this truly is the end for you, I tease, but I hardly know you, I regret not having the opportunity to get to know you better, or form any kind of relationship. I do however wish you the best of luck in any endeavor that you go to from here. Have a happy retirement!

Related articles:

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• Jason Calacanis picks fight in Palo Alto with missing Wikipedia founder [Jimmy Wales]
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Popularity: 28% [?]Rate this: 2.5

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Tags: addiction, blogger, bloggers, exploiter, facebook, jason calacanis, publicity stunts, quitter, scams, Twitter

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Popularity: 28% [?]

Obama is somewhat of a newcomer on the political scene, and yet he has garnered a huge following.

He has beat great odds to become the number 1 candidate for presidency. He is even beating McCain out by many points in states that normally go to republicans, like Montana.

Why is this?

Because Obama has embraced web 2.0.

He has embraced sites like facebook, twitter, and youtube. He, and / or those on his marketing team know the power that social media holds. Not to mention many fans of Obama can be found embracing social media - for instance this popular video by Obamagirl.

Obama, is also the only candidate suggesting a cabinet position aimed at web / technology.

I personally believe that Obama’s use of web 2.0 and social media may be the beginning of a paradigm shift in America. I believe that we may be on the verge of a new era in US politics. Call me optimistic, but I believe with social media, politicians will hold less power, and more power will be put in the hands of the people.

Most Americans believe that we’re headed in the wrong direction. Many believe that a huge catastrophe is on the horizon. Whether natural or economic, our future is not certain anymore.

All things change, and many things always need change but go unchanged. I believe for America to survive that there will come a day of reckoning where the great minds of the country will have to get together and re-organize our country from the ground up.

The reason we have a representative democracy and not a full democracy is mostly because in the days of the founding fathers it would’ve been a logistical nightmare. They didn’t have the lines of communication that we have today.

If you’re a skeptic on the power of social media, you really should check out opencongress.org it is a refreshing social network brought to us by: Participatory Politics Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation.

This is a great site for following the politicians that you want to follow. You can see their voting patterns, history, etc. You can also see other politicians like them, or those who are totally the opposite.

You can follow the issues that matter most to you, like Access to Health care, Abortion, etc…

You can actually vote on the issues, and bills that you’d like to see pass legislation.

The site doesn’t get as much publicity as it should - yet. But I can see it becoming a huge playing field for bi-partisan politics to take hold.

Those who aren’t net-savvy may miss out here on this great opportunity to share their voice / opinion, but I believe this is a great start to a new democracy 2.0.

To read more about the features of OpenCongress.Org check out this article at ReadWriteWeb.

Here are some good related articles:

• The Facebooker Who Friended Obama
• Obama and the Facebooker
• Chris Hughes, Facebook co-founder, Has Big Role in Obama Campaign
• How Barack Obama won Facebook

Popularity: 32% [?]Rate this: 2.5

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Tags: abortion, cabinet position, catastrophe, day of reckoning, facebook, founding fathers, logistical nightmare, many things, marketing team, mccain, new era, obama, paradigm shift, presidency, president, representative democracy, skeptic, Social Media, Social network, Technology, Twitter, web technology, wrong direction, youtube

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Popularity: 32% [?]

I launched this blog a year ago this month, and when I first launched it my primary focus was to make money. I’ve learned a lot in that year, and made many mistakes. I actually gave up on this blog for about 7 months.

I came back to it on March 15th of this year. In fact I had lost all the previous posts, I’d done and had to start anew. (Roughly 130+ posts gone). My original theme was using the law of attraction to bring $1 Million into my life by the age of 30, which I believe was perhaps a bit over zealous.

My new goal - apply what I’ve learned in my year of blogging, and help other’s become successful. I’d also like to launch a few social related businesses eventually, that are currently in the ‘idea’ stages.

My 50 States Roadtrip / American Blogger Directory is just part of gaining an keeping an audience.

You’ll notice the most successful blogs out there aren’t just individual people talking while everyone listens. The most successful blogs are communities, where people interact with what the blogger is writing.

You’ll notice almost every post they write gets tons of comments, trackbacks, pingbacks, etc… It’s no coincidence - without this community atmosphere on your blog it is nearly impossible to keep your blogging growing.

Without interaction from your readers your blog will die. Just as a flower needs sunlight to live, a blog needs comments / reactions from the community at large.

Here are some tips to build your Community.

1. Tweet ALL posts to Twitter. There are some good wordpress plugins for this like Twitter Tools or Twitter Tools for Tweetburner. I highly recommend tweetburner because of it’s statistics and shorter urls.

2. Build your Social Presence. Many might call it spamming, but if you look at Robert Scoble, and Jason Calacanis this is how they got huge. They built up the max number of friends on facebook, and they have 15000+ followers, a lot of those were gained by initiating the follow, ie following first.

3. Comment Frequently on other blogs. There is a secret power method for this which I will mention in another upcoming post, I will show you how to build hundred of incoming links extremely fast and easy.

4. Respond to your Audience. If someone sends you an email, drops a comment, replies to a twitter comment you made, etc.. Take the time to respond. Now when you have 10,000 hits daily it can get hard, and you might miss a few here and there - in blogging you don’t need to be perfect, just do your best.

People like to know they’re being listened to, this will go along way towards building a large following.

5. Ask a lot of questions. People like to be heard, and asking your readers questions via blog posts is a great way to give them this opportunity to voice their opinions. This makes it more fun to visit your blog, and increases the interactivity of your blog.

A lot of times I will ask a specific question at the end of my blog posts, and it will usually garner a lot of comments.

6. Be kind to those who are kind to you.  When someone takes the time to follow you or add you on a social networking site - reciprocate. Also when someone takes the time to link to your site - go to the post and leave a thankyou comment.

7. Stumble incoming links. If you stumble all of your own links, you’ll eventually end up getting banned. One secret is stumbling any and all incoming links. If someone is kind enough to link to you in a post, go ahead and stumble or digg it, and you will get a lot of traffic, plus you’ll help them get traffic. It’s a win-win scenario.

8. Link to other blogs often. I’ve talked about this a lot - but linking to other blogs will get you on their radar as it shows in the dashboard on wordpress, and secondly you’ll get a pingback / trackback from their site.

9. Start a meme. My Twitter Meme: Feed the Twitter Monster, has taken off hugely and gained a ton of incoming links and traffic, be creative though, and make it your own idea. Do something unique.

10. Start a resource for bloggers or website owners. I’ve just launched my American Blogger Directory, but it has already received a ton of hits and results. This of course is also part of my 50 state roadtrip, which is looking to be getting a lot of acclaim online as well.

11. Network with other bloggers. Friends will always give you more attention, and having more blogger friends never hurt anyone.

You can use some tips from my article on becoming friends with A-listers, many of the tips relate to networking in general.

12. Build your subscriber feeds. Market it anyway possible. The simple fact is you need subscribers, if you haven’t read it - here’s 39 great ways to get more RSS Subscribers.

13. Make your posts simple to follow and you’ll have mass appeal. Make sure the text doesn’t run together, as most people have low-attention spans and can’t be bothered with reading whole paragraphs anymore. Lists are huge in fact I try to write 1 list every week, as they tend to bring me a lot of traffic just because they’re lists. - I know it’s crazy!

14. Get active in Forums. If you have the time, you might want to try being active in popular forums, or just answering questions on the different answer sites like yahoo answers, this will help build credibility, and lead to more traffic.

15. Share and share alike, then share some more! When you launch a new resource, pillar article, etc you definitely need to tweet / send it to your social networks. However, you should also retweet it, if it is bringing in traffic, and subscribers.

I generally send my rss feed link to twitter once every 3-4 days asking for more subscribers. Especially when I get close to the next big number like 200 - asking people to help you ‘break’ a number is a great way to get them to actually subscribe, it might be tricky but it works.

I also send my best links, resources, and posts to my followers on twitter and ask them to digg or stumble the posts. This usually brings in a huge amount of traffic. When doing this make it extremely simple, though. Send them the actual link to digg or stumbleupon, so they don’t have to work. People are lazy and want instant gratification.

Another good tip is to help out other bloggers by forwarding their promotions to your followers, they may do the same for you some day. This can lead to some very interesting viral marketing.

16. Write your damn content, already! Last and foremost the #1 method to building a community blog is frequent posts. The more the better, I’ve said it a hundred times the more content you have,  the more traffic, comments, and interactive your site will become.

Popularity: 95% [?]Rate this: 2.5

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Tags: American Blogger Directory, blogger, Blogging, community atmosphere, facebook, followers, jason calacanis, law of attraction, make money, more rss subscribers, robert scoble, rss subscribers, Social network, social presence, trackback, tweetburner, Twitter, twitter monster, Wordpress Plugins

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Popularity: 95% [?]

First off, I love twitter, it is definitely my pick as far as social networks go, but I cannot discount the power and reach of facebook.

My current goal is to get as many facebook friends as possible, facebook has built in protections for adding a ton of friends so I would just like to ask you, my readers to take a moment and add me to your facebook friend’s list. Let’s see if I can get to 5000 by the end of April, 2008.

Just go here to add me.

Popularity: 38% [?]Rate this: 2.5

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Tags: facebook, Social Networks, Twitter

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Popularity: 38% [?]

My wife and I are planning on going on a roadtrip - to visit the top Blogger(s) in ALL 50 states. This is going to be a HUGE Blog promotion.  

Our Goal: Find & Interview the most popular / successful bloggers from all 50 states. (We might even choose 2 for some states. We will be doing an interview via text, audio, and video. If you prefer not to do audio/video that’s fine as well.

Photo Coureoousy of Hometown Invasion.

If we choose your blog, you will receive:

1. Permanent Blogroll Link.
2. Your interview will be taken in video, audio, and text formats - in order to gain the highest exposure. They will be submitted to ALL video / ipod networks.
3. You will also receive exposure in many blog posts leading upto the roadtrip.

What we need to make this a success:

Currently, our resources are a bit limited, as we are a new and growing blog. Donations via paypal would be greatly appreciated - they can be sent to: yourstruly AT patrickcurl.com - or you can click the button on the sidebar(Note: Paypal just doesn’t play fair with wordpress posts / pages) .

All donations of $20 or more will receive a 100+ word review. All donations of $40 will receive a 300+ word review.  All donations of $60 or more will receive a 500 word review, and a 6 month link on a blogroll labeled “Roadtrip Sponsors”.

Before we go we’re trying to raise enough money to buy a laptop, and a new video camera. If you would like to sponsor or donate one of those to us - we would make sure you’re on the list of stops, as well as receive a 1000 word review, and a permanent link on our Blogroll.

We could also use help in promoting this - if you could write a blog post about it, we would really appreciate it. Who knows - we may choose to stop by and interview you!

We are going to be doing a blog post each day, seeking bloggers from each 50 states - so stay tuned if you’re interested in being a part of this!

Other ways you can help us out:

1. Follow us on Twitter.
2. Subscribe to this blog.
3. Add me to your facebook friends.
4. Blog about this Promotion.
5. Send a link to this post to all of your twitter friends.
6. Bookmark this post.
7. Digg this post.
8. Stumble this post.
9. Sphinn this post.
10. etc… Do anything possible to get the word out. The more people we have in on this, the more exciting this will be. We may also visit a few locations on our way, and do mini-interviews on a bunch of bloggers.

PLEASE DO NOT COMMENT on THIS PAGE - IF YOU’RE RECOMMENDING A BLOG TO VISIT. I will be putting up a page for each state by letter, please comment on that state, and I will choose the best blogs from each state. (1 letter per day, actually.) Please do feel free to comment on your thoughts of this program.

I’m also thinking of having EACH Blogger contribute a ‘Souvenire’(spell?) and having a big contest when we get back. Let me know your thoughts. Comments are greatly appreciated!

Official Pages to Join:

• Bloggers in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas - Please Leave a Comment.
• Bloggers in California, Canada, Colorado, Connecticut - Please Leave a Comment.

Popularity: 48% [?]

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Tags: 50 state roadtrip, 50 states, 50 states 50 bloggers, 50 top bloggers, Blog, blogger, Blogroll, digg, facebook, stumble, Summer Roadtrip, Twitter

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Popularity: 48% [?]

Update: I forgot what year it is, updated 2007 to 2008 in title.  

Life stream, I believe it was facebook who first came up with the idea.

Now most social networks have it built in. Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, simply are nothing more than a lifestream.

Friendfeed and Socialthing both aggregate all of your feeds, and lifestreams.

Friend feed recently announced the launch of an API which you can read about here, here, and here.

Mashable did a good write up today listing 8 life streaming sites.

Here’s the list:

1. Correlate.us - has cool graphing features regarding your life stream.
2. Friendfeed - Need I say more? Most talked about aggregator, combines most of your social networks, blogs, lifestreams into one.
3. Iminta.com - currently in private beta, but offers 26 services. You can read a more detailed review here.
4. Life2Front.com - has the goal of pushing virtually more content to your feed, than any other service out there. Currently in private beta.
5. LiveZuu.com - Lifestreaming, with a focus on sleekness and prettified designs.
6. Mybloglog.com - This has been a community player for a long time, and has recently added lifestreaming.
7. OneSwirl.com - Same as the rest, with the feel of an rss reader, and an event calendar.
8. Profilactic.com - Supports over 150 different services that you can import from, letting your friends, and colleagues no virtually everything you could possibly do online…
9. Socialthing.com - Currently in private beta, it’s goal is to allow you to bring your friends with you, wherever you go onto any network.

Right now it seems the two biggest competitors are Friendfeed and SocialThing, Friendfeed seems on top for now though because they are always adding new features, and their launch of an api will only make the service better, where as Social thing, is getting in the game a little later, and has a lot to catch up on.

Popularity: 43% [?]Rate this: 2.5

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Tags: aggregate feeds, correlateus, facebook, friendfeed, iminta, jaiku, life stream, Life Streaming, life2front, livezuu, MyBlogLog, oneswirl, pownce, profilactic, Social Networks, social thing, socialthing, Twitter

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Popularity: 43% [?]

We scored a video of the New Facebook IM, that’s about to be launched in the ‘next few weeks’, via Mashable.com.

It seems to be something akin to Gtalk, the only issue that seems to be looming big, is what it will amount to for those with a huge number of friends. For some in the 5000 friends club, it could be a nightmare sorting through IMs, that of course is yet to be seen.

Personally, I think it’s amazing they have waited so long to launch a chat device, that’s almost one of the first things launched on most social networks.

Watch the Video:

Popularity: 23% [?]Rate this: 2.5

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Tags: facebook, facebook chat, facebook im, facebook instant messenger, facebook social network, meebo

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Popularity: 23% [?]