I’m going to let you all in on a little secret: the web can be a sleazy place. Well, maybe that’s not a secret, but I’m not talking about 2 girls and their cup of questionable content, or Nigerian businessmen that have an incredible offer to get rich if you send them $100.00; I’m referring to the day-to-day web you and I use every day.

The web can be a wondrous source of information and entertainment, often all rolled up into one eye-popping image – enter the infographic. You may not recognize the word, but I’m sure you’ve seen them: images containing all sorts of interesting facts about something, laid out in an interesting way and full of pictures and charts to make the numbers fun. Check out this neato infographic about water:

(Click image for full view)

Simple. Easy to read. Full of fun facts that you can pass along to coworkers. What you’re probably not thinking is that this image’s sole purpose is to manipulate the web and destroy all that is good in this world (May be a slight exaggeration). How is it doing this? By manipulating SEO – search engine optimization.

The goal of most revenue-generating websites is to bring in site traffic; whether the site makes money from ads, links, or selling things online, they depend on traffic, and most sites rely on Google to get it. You type in a keyword on Google, and all sorts of relevant sites full of useful information pop up in the search results – or at least that’s what you think happens.  In reality, sites with no useful information that often do nothing other than link to other sites often dominate your search results. These sites know they offer nothing of substance and manipulate SEO to get high rankings in search results. One of the ways that they do this is by using infographics.

In a perfect world (wide web) the best sites would come up in Google searches. They’d reach the top of the list by having quality content that users find relevant and useful. In the real world, garbage site jig the system to try and get you to visit their awful, useless sites like this one:

If you were to search for the term “Online Education” this site may well appear in your search results. But don’t be fooled, this site offers no real content; its sole reason for existence is to get you to click on the links to other sites. This is how they make their money. Essentially it is just an extra step between Google and where you want to be, designed to make money off your searches. Google spends a fair bit of time working to prevent this, as it’s in their best interest to make Google searches as useful as possible; however, many people are employed full time to find ways to beat Google too. Each time Google closes a vulnerability,  it’s only a matter of time before someone figures out a new loop hole.

But how does this relate to Infographics?

Check out where the water infographic comes from:

Online education dot net. The infographic is hosted by the same crappy site that has absolutely nothing to do with water – so why would they post this? The reason is that if enough people view the infographic, if enough people share and repost it, if they do this enough times with enough infographics, eventually their site will start appearing in your Google search results, even though it offers absolutely no value to you. I’m not going to explain how that is done in this post, but be assured that when you are viewing this infographic – you are supporting pure evil!

Of course, not all infographics are link-bait, and many are put out by quality sites that do offer useful content. What I’m referring to is sites with no relevant content that create infographics for the sole purpose of driving traffic to their garbage websites to manipulate SEO.

So what does this mean for you as an online advertiser?

It means that your site is fighting for online presence with other sites using nefarious practices to gain an unfair advantage. It means that your great site, full of relevant content, may rank lower than a garbage affiliate site. It means that you may need to turn to paid Adwords to get a front page presence, and end up paying more than you should to get the attention your site deserves. (We can help with that )

This problem is not just limited to infographics, and it’s more widespread than you may think. Many popular bloggers and websites are paid to embed links in their posts, or re-post infographics. To get as sense of how nefarious and widespread this problem really is, I suggest reading this post by a person who made a living doing what I’ve described:  http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/d7e24/my_job_was_to_game_digg_using_infographics_voting/

The more you know.

I have been very fortunate in the past few years with my phone choices (besides some mobile carrier headaches) and have been able to take part in the growing app revolution. The estimation that 2010 would be the year that mobile would become the primary browsing source for most North Americans was not so far fetched as more and more smart phones came to the market. No longer were Blackberries restricted to business professionals and the cost differences between a smart phone and a generic calls-only phone became irrelevant with 3-year contract deals. However, a few reports have stated that while Canadians are stepping up their technology purchases, the reality is that mobile use in Canada is still strongly skewed to primarily voice use.

While Comscore stated that 35% of Canadian mobile users (May 2009) are taking advantage of their phone’s features beyond voice (up from 30% in 2008), 65% of Canadians are still using their phone for voice and text only. More recently, a report from Delvinia Interactive called “Managing the Hype – The Reality of Mobile in Canada” stated that of total minutes of use – 89% of time spent was on voice calls and only 15% of time spent was browsing.

Then, to take the debate a little deeper, companies like Google (who have definitely learned their Netscape history lessons) predict that applications for the mobile are just a fad as web code catches up to allow easy mobile accessibility through browsers. Apps we’re currently depending on will be plugins in the future and will be contained within browsers (such as IE, Firefox, etc) on mobile. However, with all the proprietary fighting going on in mobile land, I don’t think that Google should hold their breaths – especially with their current decision in the land of net-neutrailty. And while the occasional hack gets through Apple’s restrictive browser offering, if you’re on an iPhone – you’re unlikely going to see much of that functionality built into Safari in the future.

These numbers made me a little wiggy as I am such a lite user of voice communication and an app addict. However, since I can rarely use my own habits to represent any demographic population, I decided to poll the DSA Network to ask them what their favourite app or phone use were in the past year. The answers back supported the research and while I am the first to proclaim that mobile is here to stay, it is no small wonder that Canadian advertisers are slow to pick up this emerging media. I’ll be posting the DSA poll results over the next 2 days.

Here are my favourite apps, what are yours?

Gowalla, Foursquare and Groupon for after,
Movies, Urban Spoon have the local answer,
Bump, I-Nigma Reader and Google Maps
These are a few of my favourite apps.

Games looks so groovy on the tiny screen,
Drop7, Sudoku, so good it’s obscene,
Secret of Monkey Island from my past.
Lightsaber Unleashed is a Jedi blast.

I prefer Twittie for my twitter addiction, Reddit‘s mobile app give  daily non-fiction,
Bump makes business cards all paper-waste traps, these are a few of my favourite apps.

When I don’t know, what the song is, I just launch Shazam.
But my all time favourite app is DropBox it’s a productivity grand-slam!

“Places” now active in US, coming to Canada soon

On Wednesday, Facebook announced the launch of their new application “Places” which is meant to work similarly to emerging trend apps Foursquare and Gowalla. The idea is that Facebook will be able to strengthen their link to mobile and give local advertisers an even more granular way to reach their targets. When a Facebook user visits a particular establishment, they have the option to “check-in” on Facebook through their phone. A user can also tag friends and their Facebook news feed will in turn show everyone that has been tagged with that users check-in.

Of course there are both pros and cons to the new app and the biggest drawback that everyone seems to be focusing on is privacy. Facebook is no stranger to controversy around their privacy settings and it is not surprising that the naysayers are zeroing in on this fact. Facebook’s solution to privacy concerns around Places is to have a default setting of “friends only” with the option to open this further to “everyone” or the other extreme of turning it off all together.

Click here to read the rest of the article

Yesterday, the web was lit up with the new cover of Rolling Stone magazine, feature 3 very naked cast members of the HBO hit show  “True Blood”.  Accompanying this provocative image was the usual battle over whether such an image should be considered NSFW (not suitable for work).  Many people would say that they (or their HR dept.) would find this image unsuitable to be displayed on a screen at work.

Yet the same image can be found displayed publically in almost any newsstand selling the magazine, so why would the same image that can be displayed in public be inappropriate online? Is there a double standard for what can be viewed online and what can be viewed in public?

Consider the Dove ads that have appeared on many billboards: (more nudity after the jump) Click here to read the rest of the article