Cameron Olthuis

We took the wraps off Serph yesterday which means we gone from private beta to a more open beta. You still need to signup but once you do we’ll send the invite shortly after.

Serph is a web application we built to help people track buzz across the web as it’s happening. The full writeup is over at Pronet so check it out. Now lets go Serphing!

I love it when big companies get called out for having a crappy online marketing strategy (Blockbuster).

I’d also like to add that their natural seo sucks; if you’re a company like Blockbuster how the hell do you let someone like DVD Avenue out-rank you? I bet I could fix that problem in about 5 minutes. Blockbuster, if you’re listening here’s a freebie: put your main “money keyword” in your title tag. Replacing parts of that image with real text wouldn’t hurt either, in fact just recode the entire HTML, it’s awful. Sometimes I wonder how some of these people still have jobs.

This would also be a good time for Blockbuster to respond if they’re monitoring their buzz. We’ll watch the original post to see if there’s a response. I’ll keep you updated.

For of those of you who maybe don’t spend as much time on the web as I do, you’re probably wondering what MyBlogLog is? It’s a small, bootstrapped, social network for bloggers. They recently had a win by selling to Yahoo for $10 - $12 mil.

So the reason they won? In two words, their widget. The whole success of that company was because of their widget. Without the widget they would have never grown they way they did. And fortunately for them they were the first ones to think of it. Other social networks could’ve made the exact same type of widget and it probably would’ve worked really well. The whole blogging connection didn’t hurt either.

Hell, other social sites could probably still create a similar widget that would work. Lets take Digg for example; if they created a widget where you could see which diggers were visiting your site it would probably work. Not only would it increase the user base but it would also strengthen the core of the overall community.

Overall MyBlogLog was a great idea that was properly executed, but it also makes for a great widget marketing example.

PS - Here is my MyBlogLog page, but I don’t use the widget.

I just saw that my little brother posted a video of himself skiing on his MySpace page. It’s been a couple years since I’ve had the chance to ride with him and I didn’t realize how good he is now. The switch 720 he does at the start of the video is slick. I’m also diggin’ the big mountain stuff too.

Derek Olthuis

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I’m proud of you bro!

PS - If any sponsors see this, he’d be a great addition to your team.

PPS - If you wondering who the heck Tanner Hall is…

Lee Odden posted a great list of must read marketing blogs. I would add one to the list, Eradicate Perplexity, a brand new blog from my friend Scott Orth. I had the chance to get to know Scott at SES Chicago, he’s a very smart SEO and I’m sure you’ll be hearing his name a lot this year.

Update: I didn’t realize Scoreboard Media was missing from Lee’s list. It’s quickly becoming one of my favorites. Read a couple posts and you’ll see why, the style of writing is second to none. Lee, if you reading this take a look, you’ll like it.