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There are a couple of upgrades happening this week that I wanted to let you know about. First, and most exciting, is Netvibes Ginger is getting released to the public! Yes, that means you! Even if you’re not an existing Netvibes user, starting tomorrow, you will be able to get your very own Netvibes profile! Just pop over to Netvibes.com, and sign up. Done!

The other upgrade I wanted to let you know about is from my webhost, 1and1.com.  On March 06, 2008 between 12 am EST and 6 am EST, 1and1 will be upgrading the servers that t-e is hosted on to  the rock solid Debian/Linux 4.0 operating system. In addition, Perl, Python and Ruby are all getting upgraded to the latest. What does this mean to you, my dear visitors?

Actually, not that much. There may be a brief outage during the upgrade, but apart from that, t-e will be exactly the same, though I am hoping that my already good load times will get great, but that’s just me. I’m not expecting any problems, because in the 4 years I have been with 1and1, the (very) few problems I have had were resolved within a matter of minutes, even when I called tech support at 3 am.

With hosting plans starting at $4.99/mo, and one or more domains included (depending on the package), and additional domains priced at $6.99/yr for a .com, 1and1 would have to truly screw up to convince me to move. But all of that pales for the geek in me, when confronted with the fact that my sites are hosted in a $25 million dollar facility, with daily backups and triple redundancy. If you hear a strange dripping sound, that’s just me drooling. Sorry.

If the preceding paragraph sounded a bit like a sales pitch, I apologize, but I truly am a bit of a fan of 1and1. I cannot recommend them enough to anyone who is on the lookout for solid, reliable, and affordable hosting. End of sales pitch.
All in all, a busy week, with more coming up. I have some related experiments on the go, and will be reporting the results soon. Without giving away too much, they involve Entrecard, Project Wonderful, and Spott as effective means of generating traffic.

That’s it for today, and I will talk to you soon

WARNING! The following is a late hour rant, and might not be worth the time it took to write. You have been warned. 

It’s late, I’m tired, and there, sitting in my inbox is another bloody email, marked “Urgent!” Not really thinking about what I’m doing, I click it up. Sure enough, there’s the pitch: “urgent”, “time limited offer”, etc, etc, ad nauseum.

The only thing that’s urgent about this kind of crap is my need to hit the delete button. It offers me nothing of real value, just a bunch of promises, promises that prey on the fears, insecurities, and greed of Joe Average. Almost invariably it turns out to be an affiliate marketer  pushing some other affiliate marketer’s ebook or course, chock full of stuff that he, in his turn, got somewhere else. So not only is it crap, it’s used crap!

Speaking as an internet marketer myself, I completely fail to understand why marketers are even using these kinds of techniques anymore, when the market has very clearly shifted (and rightly so, I might add) to what I call value marketing. That is, marketing that gives the prospective customer something of genuine value that they can take away right now, for free. Solve an immediate but urgent problem, and the prospect will love you, and quite possibly return to buy one of your paid offerings. Why? Because you helped them out, and established some trust, that’s why.

No “secret” techniques that “they” don’t want you to know, and will “virtually” create wealth “overnight” (quotes deliberately added). No empty promises, neither. The credo of the 21st century marketer is real value and earned trust, not hype and hysteria. Get out of the damn stone age, people!

If you’re just joining us, I have been running an experiment over the last few weeks evaluating some rumours that Google is punishing blogs that employ a do-follow plugin with lower positions in the search engine results. I don’t mind telling you that it’s been a bit of a roller coaster ride as my target article surfed the ranking waves from day to day, but the end result is not quite what I expected. You may want to read the first two articles, “No Follow, Do Follow, What?” and “No Follow Do Follow Update”, before continuing on here.

Here are the Cole’s Notes, taken almost exactly from my own notes:

The target search phrase for this experiment is “Netvibes Ginger”, in quotes for exact match, without quotes for broad.

Tuesday: “I Haz Ginger, and it is Cool” is ranking at #77 in the Google SERPs

Wednesday and Thursday applied some Social Marketing strategies to the article.

Friday: Article has dropped to #90… ? Apply some more SM strategies….

Sunday: article has cratered in the SERPs, crawling in at #160 for broad match, and #86 for exact. (All previous rankings reported were for broad match) To quote (my son): WTF?

Tuesday night: return techne-eikon to a no-follow blog by disabling the do-follow plugin.

Wednesday, around noon: I Haz Ginger is ranking at #25 for exact match, and #23 on broad match.

Monday: More gains, rising to #13 broad match, and #16 exact.

Wednesday: Restarted do-follow plugin (this would be Wednesday, February 13)

Which brings us to today, slightly more than a week later, Thursday, February 21, 2008: The target article is ranking at #22 for the broad search “Netvibes Ginger” (sans quotes), and #23 exact (with quotes).

If my results are even remotely typical, it doesn’t look like Google is using the presence of a do-follow plugin as a factor in it’s Search Engine results. That’s good news for those of us who wish to reward commentors with a link back to their site. At this point, I will freely admit that I wanted Google to fail this little test of mine. Based on the early results, I even expected it. I tend to distrust mega corporations like Google, Microsoft, and the like. As I proceeded with the experiment, my head filled with scathing vilifications and pithy comments as I shredded the evil corporation for punishing your average, everyday nice guy blogger. But that’s not the way it is, so my poisoned pen must remain in its drawer, at least for today.

All that aside, I am actually happy to know that do-follow bloggers are not going to suffer for having the do-follow plugin on their blogs. I had already determined that once the experiment was over, t-e would remain a do-follow blog irrespective of the results, as I completely agree with the ideals behind the movement. So there it is, then: with a complete lack of fanfare I must declare that, to the best of my knowledge, Google does not allow the presence of a do-follow plugin to affect its search engine results.

Here are some more resources for no-follow and do-follow for you to, er, follow:

Andy Beard’s comprehensive list of do-follow and no-follow plugins for a variety of platforms. No matter which way you swing, Andy’s got the good for you.

Michelle MacPhearson recreates an interesting experiment testing whether or not no-follow links provide any link juice. She also provides some excellent links on the topic, a must read for anyone interested in getting better rankings in the SERPs.

I know, I know… I said I would update my experiment in a month, but the results demand that I update sooner. If you haven’t read the first article in this experiment yet, pop back a week and read “No Follow DoFollow, What?”, then come back here to find out what has happened so far.

Welcome back

At the time that I decided to disable the do-follow plugin, Google was ranking the Netvibes Ginger article at #90 in the SERPs. By Wednesday, the article had rocketed up to #25 on exact match, and #23 on broad match, a jump of 65 positions! That’s 6 pages closer to the coveted front page of Google!

Unfortunately, I may have diluted the experiment a touch… You see, I went on a blog cleaning rampage, and in the process deleted any and all irrelevant posts from t-e, including a dozen sponsored posts. As you may be aware, Google frowns upon sponsored links, and has been shown to slap blogs that have them, so when I removed them I may have inadvertently put myself back in the Almighty G’s good graces.

I say may have, because I’m not entirely convinced (more on why in a moment) that the sponsored posts had very much to do with it, but in the interests of good research, I have to consider the possibility. So here’s the plan: As of the Monday night following the reinstatement of no-follow, the Netvibes article was ranking in the Google SERPs at #13 for broad match, and #16 for the exact term “Netvibes Ginger”, making for a total leap forward of 8 pages. As of right now, I am re-enabling the do-follow plugin.

If it’s dismissal was part of the leap forward, then turning it back on should cause the article to slide back down the results pages. In fact, that’s exactly what I expect to happen. Here’s that why I mentioned: You may recall that last Friday I had a guest poster here on t-e. Teeg wrote an article called “Web 2.0 for Small Business” for me. She also dropped a link from her blog to mine in an unrelated post. To be clear, this was an in post link, not in the side bar, or a comment, but a topical and relevant link back to techne-eikon.

According to Google, the link doesn’t exist. Period. I am getting no Google juice from Teeg’s mention, or from a couple of other incoming links that should be showing up. The other thing that I want you to notice here is that Teeg’s site (SUComments.com) is a do-follow blog, and does not have any sponsored posts. In short there is no reason that I am aware of that would cause Google to discount the link, save the do-follow feature. Hence, I think that enabling the do-follow here will cause me to get slapped as well.

So techne-eikon is once again a do-follow blog, and we will see where we are at in a week or so. While we wait, please feel free to leave a comment. What do you think? Is Google slapping us for wanting to share, and play nice with each other? Should they be allowed to get away with it if they are? You tell me

This article is a guest post by Teeg, of SUComments.com

The first thing to remember about web 2.0 is that the web is no longer driven by whatever businesses decide to put up a website. At one time, the programmer was king, and businesses were forward-thinking if they created a web presence. Now, just about every business you can think of has a website, including the construction company working on our local mall?!?

Yesterday’s websites were huge, clunky thinks, which they could be, because most people had slow internet connections. Once someone got to your page, you knew they would likely read the content, if for no other reason than they were waiting for the next page to load. With connection speeds that could take a minute and a half or more per page, yesterday’s web design called for having a lot of different content on one page, much like a newspaper or some magazines.

When internet connections got faster, people discovered the joys of visiting page after page looking for their favorite topics. Websites that wanted to catch the attention of these users soon discovered that yesterday’s layouts weren’t working. People weren’t forced to sit and read a long page while they waited for the new page to open, they could hop on a page, see if it caught their interest, and hop off. Today, the average visitor spends less than 2 seconds on a web page. That means that you have about 1 second to catch and keep their attention. For a website designed for today’s visitors, think presentation instead of newspaper.

Have you ever watched a good presenter? He doesn’t put his whole speech up at the beginning of the program and leave it up the whole time. Instead he brings a pile of slides or power point pages, and presents 3 to 5 pieces of information on each slide. This is the perfect example for a business website. Consider each static page you create (pages like your About and Contact page, Directions to your business, and any other pages where the content remains static) as a new slide. Does the page grab your attention for 1 second? Do the important facts on the page stand out? Is there little enough information that the visitor won’t get overwhelmed and leave? Finally, and most importantly, do you grab their attention enough that they will want to click through to the next page?

This is one of the most important parts of todays websites. If the presenter gets up and tells you what the presentation is about and it doesn’t hold your interest, it’s unlikely that you’ll stay for the rest of the speech, especially if there’s something better you could be doing with your time. The internet is like a huge conference, where all the speakers are presenting at once. If I don’t catch something on a page that’s important or interesting enough to hold my attention, I’ll go to the next presenter. Even if you’re selling a product or running an off-line business, if I don’t catch a piece of information that sets you apart from the others, I won’t stay.

If you want to try this for yourself, I suggest using StumbleUpon as the easiest way to quickly visit a lot of sites with similar content. Using a web search also works, but then you’ll have to keep coming back to the search. Either way, look up a topic, or choose a topic on SU to look up, and start looking at pages. Give yourself just enough time to see the page and click the stumble (or back) button, and continue until a page catches your eye. Now look back at your website and imagine you’re a visitor coming to it the same way you just visited all the other websites. As a stranger, would you spend time on your page? Or would you go back and look for something different?

Teeg is a StumbleUpon expert, having held a Top Stumbler position for several months, before moving on to write SUComments.com, where she provides valuable insight and advice for the beginning Stumbler.

It is well known that Google prefers it that we use the no-follow tag on our blogs. The premise is simple, and on the whole I have to agree with it. In principle. If your not familiar with the no-follow tag, it essentially tells Google not to follow a particular link, and by extension, not to share your PR with the other end of the link. The stated purpose is to help prevent irrelevant link juice from diluting the search engine results.

Here’s how it works: let’s say that I mention your blog in one of my posts, and nice guy that I am, provide a link to you. An in post link is fine, as it is (usually) topically related, and will not have the no-follow tag attached to it. Comments, on the other hand, are a whole different story. If I should mosey on over to your blog, read something interesting, and decide to comment on it, any linking from my name to my site in the comments section of your blog will be a no-follow link by default. This varies a bit from one platform to the next, but it is the default for most blogging systems such as WordPress.

This can be a good thing, as it prevents hit and run commenting from people with lovely names like “buy-viagra-here”.

On the other hand, it does not reward bloggers for participating, and this is where it gets a little sticky. Some bloggers took enough exception to this policy and practise that they created plugins for the express purpose of removing the no-follow attribute from all links on a blog. To date, I have used one of these plugins, as I appreciate comments on my blog, and don’t mind giving a little link juice back. To me, it’s the cyber equivalent of buying you a cup of coffee as a thanks for your part in the conversation.

That has changed, at least for the time being.

It started with a little Search Engine Results Pages experiment. You may recall that a few weeks ago I wrote an article titled “I Haz Ginger, and it is Cool”. Well, one day I decided to see where (or even if) that article was ranking for the search phrase “Netvibes Ginger”. Keep in mind here that I didn’t SEO this article for that term, I was just curious. Surprise! It did rank, coming in at #77 in the Google SERPs! That’s when the idea for my little experiment was born.

If you have been following the Internet Marketing trends of late, many of the new teachings are centered around Web 2.0 and Social Marketing. I decided to try out just one of the techniques, and see if I could influence the rankings for that article one way or the other. I won’t go into the gory details here, but the net result was that all my efforts resulted in no attributable change to that article’s rankings. What the heck is going on?

My first thought was that the gurus weren’t telling me the whole story. They might even be flat out lying. Not a pleasant thought, to be sure. Then I came across a post explaining why Wayne Liew decided to set his blog back to a no-follow blog. After reading his article, I embarked upon a research project, to try and determine the truth of his concerns.

While I didn’t find anything definitive from Google, I did run across some rumours that Google was penalizing blogs that use the do-follow plugins. Looking at Google’s TOS, and some statements made at Webmaster Central, I have to say that it is possible, as it is completely in line with their primary concerns: the sanctity of the Google Search Engine Results.

So now I embark on a new experiment. I have disabled the do-follow plugin for techne-eikon for the time being. I’m giving it a month, and then we will see what happens, not just to my Netvibes Ginger article, but to t-e in general. Will I gain near instant PR, as one fellow claimed? Will I rank higher for various keywords, now that I am a no-follow kind of fellow? We will have to see. I will report my conclusions when the experiment is over, and let you know what I think at that time.

But while we’re waiting, what do you think? Leave me a comment, and let me know. Even if I can’t at this time give you a do-follow link, know that I wish I could, and am very grateful to anyone who does comment. This policy of mine may change in a month or so, so you might get the link love anyway You never know…

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A business, any business, lives and thrives on numbers. For an internet business, those numbers include traffic, click through, and conversion rates, but they all add up to one number: your profit. But what numbers should you be looking at when you are evaluating a new opportunity?

The first figures we usually look at start with dollar signs. How much is this going to cost me, and how much can I make? While these are important to know, and certainly they aren’t the first numbers we should be looking at., these are the things that all too often drive us to a buying decision. Because of this, too many would be businessmen are doomed to fail before they ever get started.

You see, the marketers who are selling the opportunity are looking to make money, just like you. The difference is that they have already looked at the other information, and know that most of it is boring, especially when compared to potential profits. They know that we are greedy. We want big bucks, and we want them now!

Case in point is Frank Kern’s recent Mass Control campaign. This has to be one of the most heavily marketed products that I have seen in the Internet Marketing space in a very long time. Frank started the campaign by describing how his work has made multiplied millions of dollars in 24 hours of sale time. The campaign them went on to tell you and I that the course would teach us how he did it, so that we could apply his strategies to our businesses.

On it goes, with some (very good) videos getting released, videos that gave away information. Looking good so far. Then came video #3 (I think?). It’s titled “$36,000 in Four Days (Disco Version)”. In this video, which was little more than a testimonial, Frank gave one small part of the course to Michael Koenigs, with the instructions to follow, with no help from the master (Frank). Michael followed the instructions (more or less), and made $36,000 over 4 days, for 3 hours of work. That’s heady stuff, but is it an accurate representation of how this one strategy will work for your business? Probably not, and I’ll tell you why:

Our attention was drawn to the wrong numbers. At least the wrong numbers to base a buying decision on. We were told that Michael was going to try the technique out on three small lists, totalling (if memory serves) about 15, 000 subscribers. I know one of the lists was 8,000, but I’m not sure about the other two. He sent out the copy and paste email, and some follow up emails, and four days later is $36,000 richer. And he only worked on this about 3 hours.

However, in the video, Michael showed us actual screen captures from his shopping cart software, and here is where I got interested. It’s easy to see the dollar totals for each day’s sales, as they are pointed out to us. But scanning the rest of the page, it’s not hard to tell that his products sell for $500 to $1000 apiece! It’s not hard to make large amounts of cash when you are selling a big ticket item. The numbers that I found more interesting were the actual number of sales per list.

But before I get into that, just a quick disclaimer: I’m doing most of this off of memory, just because I don’t want to watch the video again. So if the numbers aren’t entirely accurate, you know why. They should be reasonably representative, though.

Now that we have that out of the way, here’s what I remember: from the 8,000 list, he made about 17 sales. Assuming that the price tag on that particular product is $1000, that’s $17,000, which isn’t too bad at all. But what if the product was a $20 ebook instead? That’s only $320, a far cry from thousands. Another consideration is this: 17 sales on a list of 8,000 is a conversion rate of slightly less than one quarter of a percent, which could be close to the industry average for his market. Truth be told, I have no idea, because I’m not in that market. What I do know is that a percentage that small sucks in my market. So really, I don’t know if his conversion was any good at all. Was it higher than his usual? Lower? Or about the same?

These are the kinds of things that I want to know before I’m going to invest in any business opportunity, and the sort of factors that you should be considering before laying your hard earned cash down.

Greed, or the desire to profit, is natural, and can be a critical factor in the psychology of your success. But when evaluating any business, you have to put that aside, lest your desire lead you into falling for yet another big numbers game, a game in which the big numbers only work for the seller, and not you, the consumer of said product.

Here’s a free affiliate marketing ebook for you to download. It used to be a paid product, and a quick scan of the contents shows that it ain’t no lightweight “buy our product to be come really rich” kind of book. I just downloaded it, so I can’t say much, except that a quick look at the table of contents tells me what I’m doing this weekend.

Here’s a quick look at the table of contents for Sections 1 and 2:

• Section 1: Affiliate Marketing 101 – Preparing for Success
• 1.1 - What is Affiliate Marketing?
• 1.2 - How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
• 1.3 - The Benefits of Affiliate Marketing
• 1.4 - Separating Fact from Fiction
• 1.5 - How Does an Affiliate Earn Money?

• Pay Per Sale:
• Pay Per Lead:
• Pay Per Action:
• Pay Per Click:

• Section 2: Finding Profitable Affiliate Opportunities
• 2.1 - What Interests You?
• 2.2 - Researching the Market
• 2.2.1 - Start with a High Level Overview
• 2.2.2 - Measure the Demand
• 2.2.3 - Check out the Competition
• 2.2.4 What is Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)?
• 2.2.5 Market Research Summary
• 2.3 – How to Identify Merchants with Good Affiliate Programs
• 2.4 - Selecting the Best Merchants to Promote
• 2.4.1 If You Were a Customer
• 2.4.2 Does it make Sense for Your Website Visitors?
• 2.4.3 Sales and Reporting Considerations
• 2.4.4 How Many Return Days?
• 2.4.5 What is the Merchant’s Reversal Rate?
• 2.4.6 Payment Considerations
• Do They Offer Custom Payouts for Top Affiliates?
• 2.4.7 Check out the Merchant’s Feedback
• What are Their Customers Saying?
• 2.4.8 What Kind of Marketing Material Do They Offer?
• Section 2 Resources
• Tools to Measure Keyword/Market Demand:
• Affiliate Networks:
• Affiliate Forums and Blogs:
• Keywords - The Foundation of Your Success

You can get the whole book here: High Performance Affiliate Marketing

Cheers, Marc

Like so many other people, I subscribe to way too many newsletters, making for a very cluttered and noisy inbox. One of these newsletters comes from Michael Bungay Stanier from Box of Crayons. I like Michael’s newsletter because it is usually packed with good information, and I don’t get a new one every second day. Unfortunately, in the latest newsletter, I have to say that Michael made a mistake, and it’s not a trivial one. You see, Michael created a free e-book, and as things stand now I will never read it.

Here’s the problem: the online marketplace is getting very crowded. In the last month or so, there have been so many new courses and ebooks offered that it’s making my head spin. In addition to this, many of the marketers have discovered the power of video, and are releasing stuff for us to watch at a furious rate. The problem? The clock is ticking. I (and I suspect, many of you) just don’t have the time to go through all of these materials. And along comes Michael, tossing his ebook onto the pile.

His latest newsletter was filled with a list of useful products for me to peruse, the last one in the list being his free ebook. “Cool”, I think, and proceed to click the link. It takes me to an Order Confirmation Form from paypal. The first line on the form is as follows: “All Prices in US Dollars”. Erm… What happened to free? The next line tells me that free offers do not need Credit Card details, so that answers that question, but according to the rule of first impressions, my enthusiasm has taken a big hit. My “no” program is now running.

Proceeding down the page, I see that in this case free does not mean easy. The vast majority of ebooks can be downloaded for the price of your name and email address. Simple, fast, and easy. Not so with this one. The paypal order page wants my Full Name, my email (these are ok), AND my day phone and my full address. If I was paying for the product, this would be acceptable, but for a free ebook? Too much work, and you’re asking for details that are, quite frankly, not necessary to the transaction.

Here’s the point I want to make: if you are marketing anything, and I mean anything at all, you must make the process of getting your product into your customers hands as easy and painless as possible. That the product is free makes absolutely no difference at all. People are naturally wary of any offer, and if you make it difficult, or ask for something in return that you have absolutely no right to, you will drive prospects and customers away at a furious rate.

As I stated before, I don’t have much time available to me. To have to stop what I’m doing, fill out a form with details that I don’t want to give out, and proceed through three or more clicks just to get yet another ebook is excessive, and that’s why I won’t be reading Michael’s book. Based on the quality of his newsletter, I’m sure that it’s a very useful book, and honestly, based on his writings I am almost tempted to go through it anyway. If I didn’t have to fill in my phone and address, I probably would have gone through it anyway. But I do, so I won’t.

To sum it up, Michael’s mistake boils down to one thing: using a system designed to process cash for goods transactions for a free product. The top line, “All prices in US dollars”, activated my “no” program. It was all downhill from there, and ultimately killed the sale. The phone and address requirements were just the bits of evidence that the program needed to substantiate its paranoid scepticism. My advice? Re-release the ebook, using a simple name and email form, and save the paypal page for his paid offerings.

For the rest of us, let’s take a lesson from this, and always remember to make the transaction process as smooth and easy as possible. To do otherwise is to drive customers away, and that’s probably not the result we are looking for, is it?

/*EDIT*/ Unfortunately, I misspelled Michael’s name in the title. It is supposed to be written a before e, not the other way around. Sorry ’bout that…

I only just discovered Netvibes Coriander release just over a month ago, and was instantly hooked. This Friday last, I was offered an invite to Netvibes Ginger private beta, and if I was hooked before, I’m a flat out junkie now. If you don’t know what Netvibes is, let me take a moment to give you the quick and dirty on it.

Netvibes’ by-line is “(re)mix the web”, and that is exactly what it allows you to do. Your Netvibes page is a personalized home page that allows you to put all your online stuff in one place, making it easy to access without the need for a million bookmarks. There are also pre-configured widgets, tabs, and universes that you can add to your profile, making it easy to discover new stuff on the web. If you haven’t tried Netvibes out yet, you should.

The upcoming Ginger release adds a social element to Netvibes, but I’ll get into that in a moment. First I’d like to tell you about one of the new features that I truly appreciate: the ability to separate my page into a private page, and a universe, or public page. One reason that I never even considered publicizing my old page is because I had the email module on there, and I didn’t want to show my emails to the world. Now, with this new private/public feature, it’s not a problem.

I have my gmail, facebook, and other profiles on my private page for easy access, and anything that I think would be interesting or useful to the world at large in my public universe. Now I can start inviting friends to come and visit my page, and easily add modules, and share some of the cool things that I find here and there across the ‘Net.

I Haz no Friends

Perhaps the most important new feature that Netvibes is adding to Ginger is a suite of social functions, centered around the ability to add friends, and follow them. To note: these are two separate (though related) functions. The other thing to note is that the friends function seems to be for Ginger users only. As everybody will be upgraded to Ginger soon, this isn’t a huge issue, except for reviewers like me. To put it another way: I am the only person in my circle who is using Ginger, and consequently have no friends.

But, in the spirit of thoroughness, I went looking for some new friends. I started with Mike, the kind individual who sent me the invite in the first place. Unfortunately, there seems to be a few Mikes using the new system, and I have no idea as to which one he is. Taking a random guess, I added a “Mike” to my friends list, not because I thought he was the guy I was looking for, but because he has an interesting universe. This particular Mike seems to be into food, and that was good enough for me. Voila! I am now friends with Mike

My search continued, and I now have two Mikes and a Janos in my friends list. I don’t actually know any of them, and herein lies one small peeve that I have with the system. I have no way to message them, and introduce myself, or explain why this weirdo from Canada is randomly adding them to his list.

Adding a friend is simple: you can either authorize Netvibes to search your email for other users, or you can type a name in the search field directly. Once you find who you are looking for, just click the icon beside their name. This will bring up some profile information, with a link to their public page, an add friend button, and an rss button.

The add friend button is self explanatory, but clicking the rss button doesn’t do exactly what I thought it might. When I clicked Mike’s rss button, a small window popped up, asking me if I wanted to add Mike’s feed to my page. I okayed it, and got an rss module that listed his recent public activity, which brings me to my next point. The new Netvibes allows you to update your status, creating a Twitter-like micro blogging environment. People can, by adding your rss feed to their universe, follow you around, Twitter style.

I Haz Stars in my Eyes

Yet another nice feature is the ability to star interesting items. Starring an item is similar to adding an item to your favourites, plus it gets added to your feed for all your friends to see and share. Unfortunately, you cannot add comments to your friends items, so communications between people is hampered. I would like to see some system to allow me to communicate a little more directly with the people in my contact list, similar in style to Facebook or Digg.

I would also like the ability to initiate some private communications with an individual, rather than just hoping that they are actually following me. The micro blogging updates are cool, but not always the most appropriate venue for communications.

Overall, I am thoroughly enamoured with Ginger. There is one more feature coming up. It hasn’t been implemented yet, but Drive promises to add one more element to the ‘Vibes experience: the ability to share files between friends. Drive will provide 2GB of online storage for each Netvibes user, with the ability to add more. The files that you upload can be shared with your friends.

I Haz a Thought

Overall, I am well and truly pleased with Ginger, and as I said at the outset, am now a confirmed Netvibes junkie.

Netvibes Ginger is a huge improvement on an already excellent product, especially with the addition of the social components. Unfortunately, though these features are a good start, they fall a little short of the mark. I like the ability to subscribe to people’s feeds, to be able to star items that really catch my interest, and I really like the separation of private and public pages.

However, the lack of communications ability between users beyond subscribing to their updates is a demerit in my books. The Twitter like functionality is cool, but with Twitter modules available for your page, there is little reason to switch to the Netvibes system. While you can export any module to your blog, there is still the issue of either switching from one to the other, or duplicating your micro blogging across platforms.

You cannot build a solid online community without fairly transparent communications. I understand that such a system is not without its dangers, but as so many other communities have demonstrated, the price is well worth it. I can only hope that these features will be added at a later date.

All that said, it is my considered opinion that Ginger is very cool, and well worth the small amount of time it takes to set up your page. To sum it up in one short sentence, I haz Ginger, and it is good.

You can check out my Netvibes Ginger page here, and when you have one of your very own, make sure to add me as a friend.