Kerstin Baker-Ash

Ninja Fail Cat?

Tired of seeing the Fail Whale? How about some droll Fail Clouds, a Terrance and Phillip Fail Bomb (a good thing, in my opinion), a forlorn-looking Fail Bird or even an Edward Scissorhands Ninja Fail Cat?

I like it; it suggests that many different types of engineers are working on getting Twitter back to normal, each playing an integral role in restoring my service.

Ah, well - it was an attempt to be a bit more lighthearted. Me = Ninja Fail Cat!

Three Requests to the SEM Industry from an "Outsider"

In what seems to be something lurking on the horizon for ages, the last week has seen some pretty nasty comments flying back and forth from people I would consider titans of the SEM industry. While I don't want to praise and insult in the same breath, there's a lot of pettiness and bulling each other up just for the sake of it, and for an outsider, this presents a huge obstacle to overcome if you want to "make friends", learn from people in the industry and climb that rope. So my thirtieth (which isn't a huge milestone) post is asking for advice, asking for niceness and asking for people to take their blinders off and develop the contributory nature of the industry. It really was like this once. Seriously.

Request #1: Try to be a bit more Jenny-From-The Block once and a while, and develop people in the industry. You were here once too. You were trying to crawl your way through the quagmire that makes up the industry, and someone helped you out and gave you a break. It sounds fluffy and paying it forward, but that's what the industry was good for once. People, in their recent push to be the best, biggest, and loudest look down their noses at newbies who, while not new to the industry, are new to the popularity contests that the cutting-edgeness of the industry provides in the form of forums and microblogging platforms.

Request #2: Try to meet at least one up-and-comer or even just a plain old n00b per conference. Some of the so-called experts in the industry surround themselves with clackers and hangers-on, and seem to be stuck in a rut of everyone telling them they're great - that's wonderful. Give back. Test. Try new things. Expand your horizons beyond pure SEO. You might even become better than you already are.

Request #3: Write for the sake of teaching, not to be applauded. I love the idea of Sphinn. I'd love to be Sphunn. Some of the best things I've seen, though - not Sphunn. Not even Dugg. They're from the people who, although very well versed in what they do, share for the sake of sharing. We've moved on from high school, right? Sure, life is one big popularity contest, but we're mature enough now to recognize that a lot of people have good ideas that aren't on the top 100 of "Greatest Hits" on Sphinn. Aren't we?

Look, I get we're all trying to make money. I'm very far from suggesting that we don't need to self-promote. We absolutely do. I really do believe however, that what makes the industry unique is the amount of collaborative power that we have. We don't use it though, because we're climbing over each other to be the biggest, loudest, rudest SEM out there. There are some great examples of people in the industry coming together to make a beautiful blog or center of knowledge - I'd like to see some more.

Holy E-Mails, Incisive!

To the folks at SES and Incisive, thanks for the e-mail list. :) Whoops.

iPhone Apps and No 3G For Me

So now that I've upgraded to the 2.0 software for the iPhone, I've been staying up past my bedtime fiddling around with some new apps. This post is a test of sorts for my Typepad app.

I did try my hardest to get a 3G iPhone on Friday, but O2 sold out pretty quickly of the 16GB. As much as I want a new iPhone, I'm finding it hard to justify spending money and tying my hands for another 18 months for something I don't think will offer much of a difference to my phone at the moment. I'll see when they have some back in stock. Until then, here goes a 2.0 app test...

iPhone Woes

In case you've been living under a sheltering llama below the Brent Cross Tube station, you'll know that Apple's (AAPL) iPhone 3G is coming out on Friday. Current iPhone users were able to pre-register and receive a text to order their brand spanking new 3G goodness at 8.00 BST this morning - except O2 made a huge mistake in failing to anticipate the surge in overwhelming demand.

I was psyched. I'm a big Apple fangirl, buying into the hype and even switching my home setup from ugly PC mess to a Mac idyll; a MacBook for travel, and an iMac with toys like Aperture and even iWork (I've yet to convert my husband). You might be very unsurprised to learn that I bought the iPhone the day it came out in the UK, so I was really looking forward to the pre-order functionality that O2 dangled in front of fanboys and fangirls the moment Jobs confirmed that 3G was on its way. Drooling with expectation, I logged in. I could finally get more storage, GPS, 3G - it was going to be a new, iPhone utopia. I entered in my credit card information.

The site timed out.

I entered my credit card information again.

The site timed out.

I called customer service and asked if I could just order it on the phone because their intarweb was broken and I didn't want to charge my credit card over and over again for the same iPhone. Trained to be as annoying as humanly possible, she read from a pre-printed piece of paper (stumbling over words) and telling me that I should order it online. When I repeated that the site was down, she repeated her call center script. I know it's not her fault specifically for O2's mega fail, but seriously - some personality, some understanding, some sympathy... it goes a long way, love. Something like, "I know you're trying, and I'm hearing the same thing from a lot of customers this morning. Unfortunately, there's just huge demand right now and we hope to get it back up and running soon." Not only has O2 failed to prepare for an easy-to-anticipate surge, but they've trained their call center employees to be repetitive and unsympathetic. After three hours of alternatively entering in phone codes and credit card details, I was greeted with this:

Will it prevent me from getting a 3G iPhone? Probably not, but I'm not looking forward to getting up on a day off with family visiting to go and line up for a new handset. I'm hoping that my town doesn't have a high demand, just like last time when we were the only two people in the store (with fifteen employees, it was like a personal shopping experience).

At the end of the day, I'm a huge Apple fan. I love my iPhone now, and I will burst with pride with a new iPhone 3G in due time. I'm just not a happy fangirl right now, and I very highly doubt that it has anything to do with creating buzz about the new product - O2 just didn't get it.

Fail Whale: The Ongoing Twitter Saga

Now that there's a fan club and merchandise available to purchase, the Fail Whale has become a bit of a pop culture icon for regular Twitter users.

At least now, they're trying to give themselves time limits on how long the service is going to be out for:

The only problem with setting time limits on service outage/maintenance upgrades is unfulfilled expectations. As it stands now, it's been much more than 10 minutes, which must frustrate the hilarious Lisa Nova to no end:

Since Twitter has reportedly raised $15 million in VC funding, what are they spending it on? Monetization theories? More $10 stock photo purchases? Twitter's ongoing problems only serve to push users to Twitter-esque clones, which are okay, but not as simple, easy and connected as Twitter. It's a shame, because it's something that needs to be taken care of before more people jump the whale.

Google Might Know Where You Live, But Not Me!

Following Michael (Graywolf) Gray's blog post earlier today about Google knowing where he lives, it was rather timely that I found out Google still has some issues sorting out where I live or work.

One of the great (and concurrently not so great) things about living in the UK is the lack of IP address separation and geographic know-how by engines to extract location data from your computer. Firstly, AOL, Talk Talk and various white label subsidiaries have been known to use the same IP as the States, so right off the bat we have discounted a sizable chunk of the population. Secondly, a lot of the remaining providers use proxy servers, so IP addresses are identical and indistinguishable from each other. Also, our wonderful Victorian copper wiring and telephone exchange proximity internet system won't allow a block-by-block breakdown like they do in the US (I spoke about this at SES Toronto in June, along with my hope that the government will live up to its promise of massive fibre optic cabling by 2012). While some sources would say that IP targeting has about a 65% accuracy rate, a very detailed post about the results of testing IP locations in the UK can be found at Merjis Internet Marketing's blog.

What does this mean for users in the UK now? It means, among other things, that you'll often see things like this pop up on web services who are trying to determine your geographic location. Although the format remains relatively the same, I'm still not quite up to speed on Ukrainian.

It's not the first time I've seen this crop up, either. It almost seemed that German and English AdWords was battling it out for supremacy. Then again, it could've been a little-known EU regulation coming into force...

SES Toronto Recap - Finally

And so begins a long-overdue post about Search Engine Strategies in Toronto. It was a very busy two days, and I was honored (or is that honoured?!) to speak about the UK market alongside some pretty big names in the industry.

Frederick Marckini got "back to basics" during his opening keynote. Get your initial strategy right, and don't wait for the success to come to you. 'Nuff said.

Many people who read this blog (and don't read this blog, to be fair) know that I am an avid user and fan of Twitter. I was especially excited to attend the Twitter session with great presentations from Lee Odden, Chris Winfield and Dave Snyder. I'll let the links speak for themselves, although I'm disappointed that Kevin Ryan still hasn't been swayed into much more Twitter usage after such great presentations from high-profile advocates of microblogging...

The Advanced Issues in PPC track was refreshing, with Bill Tighe providing a bit more than just standard Google fare. I also stopped by the SEMPO Canada booth (I belong to SEMPO UK) and chatted with Alexandre Brabant in Franglais, a bit of Shiac and some Quèbecois thrown in for good measure. Result? I need to work on real French, not just the mangled stuff I picked up at university.

I was torn between the SEM Toolkit and Social Media Success panels, but since I've been on a bit of a social media bender of late (and I'm pretty pleased with my current toolkit), I went with the latter. I was especially impressed with Li Evans' presentation.

The Yahoo! Canada/Epiar party gave me a great opportunity to schmooze with some people I greatly admire in the industry, and at the risk of over-gushing, I'll leave it there.

A great conference overall, and the smaller size made making new friends and contacts within the industry easier. I'm looking forward to more SES events on the horizon, and continuing to be aided in the development of my skills by some of the best and brightest SEMs. Thanks for a great conference, guys!