Paul Fleming - Flemo: Between Sydney, Philadelphia and the World Wide Web

Akismet does a great job of preventing a lot of spam comments on your blog. A few do sneak through but a lot of them can be very complimentary.

“hello there, i just saw your web portal via google, and i would like to tell that you express interestingly good on your website. i am truly struck by the method that you write, and the subject is excellent. anyways, i would also like to acknowledge whether you would like to exchange links with my website? i will be to the great extent than willing to reciprocate and put your link off in the link exchange area. waiting for your respond, i would like to convey my appreciation and cheers!”

I mean, for someone to “express interestingly good on your website” is quite obviously a very touching sentiment and one not to be taken lightly. Of course I am willing to reciprocate.

And this one

“Cheers for this informative article. I am constantly searching for information on different subjects and it’s seldom far away on the internet. I’ll be coming back soon.”

They will be coming back soon. That’s great news. But my favorite of late that really offers up the warm and fuzzies and actually finishes with a smiley face is

“I view are made up of unnecessary waste copied from some other websites a trillion times, nevertheless I have to give you credit this website is in truth decent and also possesses a lot of unique substance, therefore kudos for stopping the trends of exactly copying other people’s websites,”

My website is in truth decent. If you don’t have a few comments slipping through the cracks, maybe once in a while have a little peek at what it does pick up. It may well cheer you up.

I don’t consider myself anywhere near an expert at Social Media but do use as many tools as I can to check out and see if there is any value there for myself or clients. In Australia, we have bizarre nicknames for just about everything so I was poking around to see if folks use nicknames for certain well-known Social Media ‘moves’ but I came up empty. I figure it might be time to try and build a starter list.

Changing of the Guards – someone who replaces their profile picture more than 3 times in a week.
The Grizzuti - a person who only retweets (named after Barbara Grizutti Harrison who coined the quote “There are no original ideas. There are only original people.”)
The Drew – someone who uses social media to promote a fund-raiser or charity. Named after my mate Drew who sold his twitter name to Drew Carey for the Livestrong Foundation.
Brokeback – someone who keeps threatening to quit using social media tools like twitter but just can’t seem to do it. Named after famous Brokeback Mountain movie quote “I wish I knew how to quit you.”
Earhart – a person who suddenly disappears from the Social Media Radar (most likely because they are applying for a job).
Peeping Tom (also lurker) – someone who watches Social Media conversations but never participates.

It’s a start. I’ll keep building on the list but any suggestions are welcome and I’ll make sure to add.

I’ve been a longtime Yelper, since its inception actually and was happy to be part of a system that grew quickly and demonstrated a new way of thinking for people and businesses. Even taking into account the “masses are asses” and fake reviews, you could always get a sense for a place based on majority. I’d often read a few posts before making a dining choice and then happily post mine once all was said and done. A pleasant little arrangement I thought.

Then I started noticing things. I didn’t really give it a great deal of concern but I discovered that several of my reviews weren’t showing up. At first I thought it might have been at the request of the establishment I had reviewed but some were negative and some were positive so that didn’t make sense. I had also by this stage, been running a couple of paid client yelp accounts (against my wishes mind you) and I asked to remove some negative reviews which they didn’t do so I figured that wasn’t the case. (FWIW I didn’t really want them to remove them, I was merely probing). So it turns out to be Yelp’s review filter that is responsible for the disappearing reviews. OK well I’m sure they’ll be working on that problem (it still exists).

So earlier I told you that I took over management of a couple of sponsored accounts, the ones that just allow you to do a little more with your account like add a slideshow and special announcements and directly contact reviewers and it didn’t take long for me to realize these were next to useless, especially considering the $300 – $750 they were charging. There’s also the option where your ad will appear on other listings which is ridiculously based on impressions rather than clicks and as such, was a lot more expensive. I also learned that the clients were locked into an annual agreement so we had to wait until it ran out. The results were very ordinary too. One of the accounts averaged 15 visitors to the website from Yelp with 0 conversions, the other did generate a good amount of traffic to their site but about the same as before the “sponsored” account making their $3600 a pretty poor investment.

And now the latest is that I’ve been watching a client listing lose good reviews due to the “review filter” to be told that they didn’t feel the reviews to be genuine and meanwhile a competitor quite obviously has his own review (including his picture and name) on his own listing. It was flagged a while ago but it’s still there. One can only suspect they are paying for the privilege?

So I’ve gone cold on the service. They keep talking about transparency and changing options but I’m pretty much boycotting it and think they’ve screwed the pooch by not listening to the community earlier and creating some pretty ridiculous options for customers and businesses. I’m backing UrbanSpoon right now.

Having been a Sea Eagles fan all my life (I was born in Manly hospital), now being located in Philadelphia makes it a little tough to get to the games. Realistically, it’s just as tough getting to watch them as well which still amazes me, even when paying extra for the privilege. I’ve really been digging the coverage for IPL cricket games on Youtube and DirecTV (for free no less) and still find it quite unbelievable that I can’t get the same coverage for my NRL.

Currently, these are my options. www.AussieSport.TV (and it only works if you use the www….weird) show replays of the games (and highlights) a few hours after the game. The quality is poor and of course you can’t watch on a Mac and it’s around $10/month.

I recently discovered Omnisport.tv which looks a little more promising. I haven’t given it a go yet, mainly because it looks like they only offer live games which, when you take the time difference into consideration, isn’t always favorable so not sure why I would fork out the extra cash for games that I could potentially miss.

Can anyone help me out here? I’d be happy with high quality games that I can play through my computer (perferably mac) and view on my TV like I do with hulu. Anyone? I’d also be curious to learn why it’s so difficult (my guess is licensing).