Looking for a great baby shower gift? Be sure to checkout our Wittlebee Baby Showers Basic Box. We partnered up with Joyus to bring you this unique gift option.

This box of amazing kids clothes makes a perfect present for any shower. There’s three different options:

The girl’s box: Be the belle of the baby shower with a Wittlebee Baby Shower Basics box for girls. The box features 8 items in various shades of pink, sized for babies from 0-3 months old. Items include onesies to t-shirts, leggings, and socks.

The boy’s box: Make sure to arrive at the baby shower with the coolest gift in tote. The Wittlebee Baby Shower Basics box for boys has 8 items of clothing for your friend’s newborn, size 0-3 months. Colors include blue and green and there’s a wide variety of onesies, shorts, leggings, and socks.

The gender neutral box: So she wants to save the big surprise for later? Give her a little surprise in the meantime, with the Wittlebee Baby Shower Basics box in neutral. We played it safe on this one, with 8 items of clothing in shades of yellow, pale green, white, and cream. Clothing items include: onesies, t-shirts, pants, and socks, fit for a baby from 0-3 months old.

Order through Joyus now to receive a special discount price of $35.

So I’m here in Austin Texas for the annual geek shindig known as SXSW. More precisely I’m huddled under the covers in my room using my laptop for warmth as it’s just too damn cold out. Yes the rain is pretty much ruining SXSW for me but I’m a big whiner when it comes to bad weather.

I’m also starting to wonder how can this trip be saved? I think the only way is through the two things that make SXSW great. Drinking and the latest social app. Better yet, let’s just combine the two.

First let’s start with Highlight. This is the break out app at SXSW this year. It’s similar to the location check-in app Foursquare except you don’t actually check in. Instead your location is broadcast at all times and you are alerted when friends (or friends of friends) are nearby. It’s both creepy and interesting and I plan to use, iPhone battery permitting. They call it ambient social networking and if you can say that with a straight face, well, good for you.

However it’s lacking a lot of context. For example, there isn’t really enough info to encourage the serendipitous encounters I believe the app creators are looking for. So let’s give it a little help as we introduce the official Highlight SXSW Drinking Game, aka #highlighting.

Here’s how it works:

1. Download and install the Highlight app
2. Charge your phone (you’ll need the juice)
3. Change your bio/blurb in the app to use a structure like: Hello I’m <name>, I’m into < your interests> and I’ll buy you a drink if  you <an action you want>. #highlighting (See more examples below)
4. That’s it! Now await for your first Highlighter to approach you to share a drink, a story and perhaps more.

Example Blurps:

• Hi I’m Sean, I’m into online marketing and I’ll buy you a drink if you tell me my hair looks nice. #highlighting
• Hi I’m Katie, I’m into PR and I’ll buy you a drink if you don’t interpret that as flirting. #highlighting
• Hi I’m John, I’m into coding and I’ll buy you a drink if you can help me find another Python developer. #highlighting
• Hi I’m Brian Solis, I’m into engaging and I’ll buy you a drink because I buy everyone drinks. #highlighting
• Hi I’m Bob, I’m into social media and I’ll buy you a drink if you come back to my room so we can make some bad decisions together. #highlighting

There you have it! Happy Highlighting and best of luck with your kismet.

Introducing Wittlebee, a new way to keep up with your kids’ basic clothing needs. Get a box of amazing kids’ clothes every month, with styles and sizing that intelligently adapt to your needs.

Ever since I first blogged about subscription commerce, I’ve been quietly trying out a few concepts in the space. You see when I became a new parent last year, my entrepreneurial itch quickly shifted from social media to the needs of the modern family.

To say becoming a dad is a transformative experience would be an understatement in my case. It completely changed my outlook on life and redirected my passion inward to my growing family. Along with that, I saw a lot of opportunities to disrupt the various industries that parents depend on. I wanted to start with kids’ clothes, an expensive and difficult thing for parents to keep up with.

With Wittlebee I’m looking to save parents time and money, but also to help put an end to those “mall meltdown” moments. So please check out the site and help me get the word out.

I also want to send a huge thanks out to Mike Jones and the team at Science - without them, none of this would be possible. Oh, and of course my wife Laurie and daughter Charlotte. After all, they’re the inspiration for everything I do.

Press from Today’s Launch:

• “Birchbox For Children’s Clothes” Wittlebee Wants to Automate Your Kid’s Wardrobe - TechCrunch
• Science launches its third startup this month, mom-commerce site Wittlebee - Venturebeat
• Wittlebee Launches, Headed by Sean Pervical, Backed by Science - So Cal Tech
• Startup Series: Wittlebee A Clothing Club for Well Dressed Kids – Jessica Gottlieb
• This Company Has Launched Three Startups In One Week – Business Insider
• Never Want to See The Inside of a Mall Again? Sign Up For Wittlebee! – Mom Finds
• Kids Clothes Go Subscription-based with Science Inc. Backed Wittlebee – TechCocktail
• What happens when geeks have kids? They create shopping sites like Wittlebee – The Next Web
• eCommerce Service Wittlebee Shops For Your Kid’s Clothes, Giving You Less Stress - Bubbilicious
• Good idea: Wittlebee kid clothing club – Babycenter

It’s literally that good.

Really though, it’s a new bookmarking service that has been all the rage lately. Seeing how it just surpassed 10 million monthly visitors, it’s hard to deny there’s something there.

Now that I think about it, I remember when we relaunched Myspace last year and the Pinterest team accused us of basically ripping off their layout. I knew that wasn’t the case so I also remember sarcastically tweeting at them something along the lines of ”Wow, you invented the grid layout? You guys are going to be rich!”

I guess I was right.

Of course, there has been no shortage of articles about Pinterest lately. Most focus on two things though, the amount of women that use the site and the amount of money dirty marketing people are going to make from it. While both of those things are relevant to my interests, this article is about neither. Instead, let’s talk about the men of Pinterest.

The few, the proud, the Peen-terest.

Hunter Walk

http://pinterest.com/hunterwalk/

The inspiration for this blog post via a recent Tweet, Hunter is a force of good at Youtube and Google. On Pinterest, he has compiled one of the best collections of vintage sports posters you’re likely find anywhere.

Tristan Walker

http://pinterest.com/tristanwalker/

Tristan runs biz dev for Foursquare and was one of the first dudes I followed on Pinterest. His boards include some great collections of dream cars and iPhone home screens.

Evan Sharp

http://pinterest.com/sharp/

As a co-founder of Pinterest, Evan has a massive amount of Pins as you might imagine.  This former architect certainly has an eye for nice things to look at, including his board of beautiful complexity.

C.C. Chapman

http://pinterest.com/cc_chapman/

Sure C.C. is a well respected author, photographer and consultant but he’s also generally a great guy to follow on any social network. That’s also the case on Pinterest where he pins bits of awesome and products he loves. He also recently blogged his feelings on Pinterest mania.

Chris Brogan

http://pinterest.com/chrisbrogan/

As a general rule of the Internet, by default, Chris must be included in every list-based blog post. If you’re in the market for a new bag, Chris may have already pinned it for you.

Matt Galligan

http://pinterest.com/mattgalligan

An entrepreneur several times over, Matt has started to create boards that feature his want list and personal style.  He’s also collecting inspiration for the office space at Circa (his latest company).

Sean Percival (hey, that’s me!)

http://pinterest.com/seanpercival/

Yes, I put myself on my own list. I’m apparently that shameless. Currently I’m pinning photos of pretty ladies and various computers I’ve used over the years.

Other men of Pinterest that belong on this list? Let us know in the comments.

In case you needed more proof they are one of the few web companies to support the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). A bill that currently threatens to ruin the Internet and probably kill a few kittens in the process. Obviously we don’t want that.

So to that end I propose a new meme. Introducing Scumbag Godaddy (inspired by Scumbag Steve of course).

Make your own!

Ready to move your domains away from Godaddy? Here’s their directions.

Looking for a good domain name provider? I recommend Dotster and Namecheap.

Want to know more about SOPA? Check the Wikipedia.

Get the latest news on this Techmeme thread.

The post received a lot of good feedback and several CEOs of the companies featured reached out to me. I was able to talk with a few of them since then and gain more insight into this emerging space. KISSmetrics was even nice enough to turn my graphic into a full-blown infographic.

So to keep the discussion going I’ve been keeping notes about the main ingredients of a good subcom business. Here are my thoughts so far, after poking around, talking to folks and signing up for many of them.

 Authoritative Curation

Two very pretty buzzwords that are a big part of the subcom movement. Since many of these subscription services focus on a narrow niche it’s implied that the people behind the site really know the space well. When you sign up to a subcom you really want to feel it’s the best possible experience.  Everything from the tone of the marketing, the design, and of course the product offering should shine through as very authoritative.

 Simplified Ecommerce Funnel

The checkout process on a subscription service can be much different from your standard ecommerce user flow. For a subcom experience it’s best to strip away as much as possible in fact. Take a very Apple-esque approach to your design and user experience. Take away from it until it just works. This is where A/B testing becomes a critical exercise for any new subcom.

 Convenience

People can be lazy and associate high value to solutions that save them time. It’s not enough on its own to carry a subcom business but if you can marry convenience with a few of these other ingredients you’re on the right track. If you can provide the convenience without charging a massive premium you’re doing really well. Bathroom consumables seem like a huge market that is going to really take advantage of the convenience of auto-ship.

 No Stockpiling

It’s important for all subcoms that subscribers never feel like they have “too much of a good thing”. For example if you sold a perishable item you would never want the customer stockpiling too much in their pantry. As soon as they start to think they have too much of a product they’re on the ropes, possibly ready to unsubscribe. One nice thing some companies are doing is giving customers the option to pause or skip a subscription. This is a win-win because the seller doesn’t lose the customer and the customer can always reactivate themselves at a later time.

 The Zappos Experience

Most readers are likely familiar with the Zappos experience, specifically around customer care. Basically going above and beyond to keep a customer (and employees) happy. Since most subcom businesses start off small it’s probably important to instill these values from the beginning. I had one monthly membership club call me personally to check my order details only to follow that up with an email right from the CEO. That level of personal touch is not typical today but can help define a company. I love the personal touch and I’m sure I’m not alone.

Small Delights

Some might argue that it’s the little things in life that matter. For a subcom it’s really about a lot of small delights. In fact some of these businesses are nothing but small delights in the form of many product samples. Other subcoms are supplementing their core offering with small delights. Those little things go a long way to keeping the customer happy, subscribed.

Content

Content was king of course until the Huffington Post turned into a sausage factory. Just like sausage, you really don’t want to know how it’s made. However, with subscription commerce there are a lot of great opportunities to create content around the brand and its audience. I’m talking about going beyond just a blog to super-serving customers with compiling content across multiple channels each month. Only a few existing subcom businesses are doing this well right now.

Are there more key ingredients to subcom businesses? Let me know in the comments below.

“Most people make money pointing to content, not creating, curating or collecting content.”

-Rishad Tobaccowala

This quote is bouncing around today thanks to the WSJ. I think it makes a lot of sense and wonder if this thinking can help end the land rush around curation and the desire to be a “super curator”.

My genuine feeling is that, at this point, we have too many curators. If any major event happens (especially in the tech space) my social streams are now flooded with the same information and links over and over to the point of nausea. Everyone wants to share, I can appreciate that. People are also gunning for that coveted “first to post” status. This makes a little less sense to me, but is also understandable. As we build larger audiences across social networks we look for more and more ways to delight and entertain those audiences.

For the consumer, however, over-curation can be a really bad thing. A web service wins when it can distill a topic of interest (or many topics) into its purest form. Google has done this with search, for example. A contrasting example, on the other hand, would be Twitter. For both general feed consumption and search on Twitter, well, it’s a real mess. I’m sure we have all had that feeling of “OK, yes I get it, I’ve seen that headline 500 times now” when a major news cycle is making the rounds. I know I have, and with increased frequency of late.

Of course being in the tech space makes one more susceptible to over-curation, but I see the same patterns outside of tech. It’s also happening on platforms other than Twitter. Yes, even normal people are over-curating the web. From moms to mom and pop brands, everyone is resharing and it can be downright annoying.

It’s probably a good time for some more lessons on how to be a good curator before things get really out of hand.

Personally I love the model so I’m bullish on the opportunity here. I’m going to both build and invest into the space, so lately I’ve been doing a lot of research on it.

To start with, some people have been calling this different things. For me it’s easiest to describe the model as subscription commerce or subcom for short. I’ve also heard things like “lazy boxes”, “sample boxes” and “replenishment” but subcom is probably sufficient for industry insider talk and blogging. It’s also nice and short for platforms of brevity like Twitter.

In terms of what’s out there let’s first take a look at the subcom brands already launched or in beta. Below I’ve laid that out in one of those matrix grids. To keep things simple let’s start with some basics about the businesses and organize them by rough scale and whether they target males or females (or both).

clicky to enlarge

As you can see these businesses are leaning female-focused right now. That makes sense but means there is likely a lot more opportunities for male-focused subcom. It’s also important to note that Amazon is already part of this space and while they don’t push subscription very hard they could at any time. Any of these businesses that reach large-scale are likely acquisition targets from Amazon as well.

Here’s a more extensive link directory of the various players. Click around and see if any of them excite you enough to sign up. If you have experience with some of these brands already, please let me know in the comments.

Clothes and Fashion

• ShoeDazzle
• Jewelmint
• Stylemint
• Me Undies
• Manpacks
• The Under Shirt Club
• Panty by Post
• Trunk Club
• Adore Me

Google+, the new social platform from Google, has now added support for verified names.  The team over there is moving quickly to iterate the product and extend its reach throughout other areas of Google. That’s a good sign for fans of the platform.

Verified names are similar to verified accounts on Twitter (notice the difference in the language used). A small badge appears next to the user’s name on their profile. See the above video for an example of the hover-over behavior.

There has certainly been no shortage of debate over Google’s controversial real names policy. This quick move and the language used tells me they really want to drive that policy even further. Structured data, segmentation and verified identities are going to be very important for the future of both social networks and search engines. Google is going to need things done a certain way to maintain ownership in those areas.

I can relate to many of the concerns of that policy and know many of those affected. I haven’t commented much on the issue because it’s not how I do things. I’ve always put my real name out there (likely too much) as I’ve experimented with the various social networks over the years.

Now it’s now longer progressive to build an online identify around your real name or a pseudonym. A name on a Google search results page is going to be a big part of that online identity. Having a Google verified name might just be the ultimate ego SEO for some. I only see people turning to Google more and more to verify other people’s identity or intentions.

I was a bit of a hardware hoarder to say the least.

At the time I lived in a tiny guest house in Hollywood, and this monster was right next to my bed. Actually it was a futon so I’m not sure that qualifies as a bed. It’s amazing I was able to get laid at the time.

Once Laurie and I moved in together much of my hardware hoarding had to end. Our first few apartments were so tiny there was simply nowhere to put the stuff. Around this time desktop computer technology (and pricing) was also changing. It was much easier to just punch up Dell and build your own system instead of the Frankenstein machines I was building from both found and stolen parts.

Now that I can actually afford some decent hardware I keep it pretty simple. For the desktop it’s Dell XPS system. I usually rotate out the complete system every 2-3 years. After playing with a few monitor configurations I’m now using three 30” monitors. I still spend the same amount of endless nights staring into these windows; they’re just a little bigger than they were in 2003. :)

Even though the laptop has become a standard for most, I still really enjoying having a big ol’ desktop setup. It’s always here at home waiting for me and does so many wonderful things.

Long live the desktop.

]]> http://www.seanpercival.com/blog/2011/08/11/my-desktop-now-vs-then/feed/ 1 dude 3-monitor-multi-setup http://www.seanpercival.com/blog/2011/08/03/one-year-as-a-dad/ http://www.seanpercival.com/blog/2011/08/03/one-year-as-a-dad/#comments Wed, 03 Aug 2011 04:23:43 +0000 Sean Percival http://www.seanpercival.com/blog/?p=5151

Today my daughter Charlotte turned one. Hard to believe that it has already been a year since her birth, but then again, you all warned me the time would go by much too fast.

Turns out you were right.

That’s OK though. We’ve had some great moments this last year, and I’ve treasured every one of them. I’ve buried them deep in my mind to never forget them and shared some of them across various social apps to preserve them further.

I haven’t blogged much about being a dad mostly because it’s just hard to blog period these days. I think for many the blogging barrier to entry is just too high now compared to the smaller formats available today (like Twitter). Shame too, because personal blogging is still one of the most compelling formats on the Web. Just take a look at the author known as ”EJ” and the recent Airbnb dust-up if you still need proof of that.

Back to the subject of daddy blogging–another reason I haven’t blogged much on being a dad is that frankly, I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. In terms of being a dad, there’s an incredible amount to learn and to do that first year. I’m actually surprised they let you walk out of the hospital with these tiny creatures without first making you take some type of 6-week training course. Thankfully, my wife has always been there to help us. Seriously though, without her, we would both be lost and probably be wearing dirty diapers. To the single parents out there who manage to do it all, I really salute you.

I hope to be able to write further about being a dad and share more stories here. I miss the writing and hope it can serve as some type of record for Charlotte later in life. That’s probably the biggest change that has occurred inside me this year. Now, with everything I do today, I’m thinking about how it can improve her tomorrow and the tomorrows that follow.

How can I have the right answers to any questions she has?

How can I have enough money to cover it all?

How can I get her not to date until she’s 30?

See, I’m already getting way too ahead of myself. Let’s just work on year number two for now.

Thankfully I had some team members like Charles Hollins (who produced projects like theangryklown.com and fivephotographs.com) and Kat Ahn who does local standup comedy in addition to appearing on The Office.

The two of them, along with the rest of my former team, created something that we hope will appeal to our old co-workers, veteran users of Myspace, and anyone who follows the social networking space. It’s a parody of a Myspace marketing meeting where we go through some crazy ideas to save this iconic Internet property. It also touches on something we were never able to accomplish there. To essentially “own the joke” about Myspace and have some fun with it.

I’m not about having regrets but I wish we could of better owned that joke and perhaps used that momentum to tell a new story. I’m sure I speak on behalf of my team when I say that working for Myspace was a tough but great experience. So please enjoy our little video and best of luck to the new owners and our remaining colleagues there.

Normally I recommend a company like Adblade to friends and clients. They have a nice offering and some great partners that include a lot of the major news sites like USA today, Fox News and MSNBC. In addition to great placement on these news sites they also use some unique ad creative that tends to out perform the usual stuff.

Oh and if you’re looking at the other side of the business and trying to monetize your own library of content they can help with that too. Overall its a pretty nice holistic approach for publishers or brand marketers out there.

Check it out and let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Here’s a roundup of some of the more popular images circling around Google+, listed roughly in the order of their appearance. We’ve been through so much already people, so many bad animated GIFs.

You can encircle me here.

by Josh Fisher

The Joy of Tech comic from GeekCulture.com

By Yiying Lu

However I shouldn’t have been.

Mint is a company which has taken something boring (money management) and made it interesting with great design, even down to the little details like this.

Now instead of getting frustrated and shaking my fist like I usually do when met with a system down page (I’m looking at you, capitalone.com!), I can relax and smile – returning to obsess over my pennies tomorrow night, of course.

Visit http://maintenance.mint.com to see more examples.

Check out the below video for a tour of what’s new:

Download the latest version at http://wordpress.org/

Almost immediately after the Google+ launch, we started to see a few, mainly tech-related blogs, creating brand profiles there.

However, the Google+ profiles aren’t really set up for brands. The profiles ask a lot of questions more applicable to humans–for example–if a profile is male or female. This created some initial confusion, but Google VP of Products, Bradley Horowitz, quickly responded with:

”Let me be clear – and I’m sorry if this wasn’t obvious – we are not currently supporting brands, organizations, and non-human entities in the Google+ field trial.

Supporting these non-human entities is an obviously great feature – we have no allergy to it at all! It’s just not part of the system we are currently testing.”

So, while we wait to see how Google plans to incorpate brands into Google+, I decided to come up with a little concept of how that might look. Once I started to hack this together, it became clear just how powerful brand pages could be on Google+.

Click the image below to enlarge; check out my notes below, and please let me know your thoughts in the comments section.

• Inclusion of Google +1 Button: Brands have official websites, and those websites can benefit from receiving +1’s right on the profile page.
• Verification: Determining if a profile is genuine is important. Brand pages will need some way to verify a page and then reflect that status.
• Google Maps: As many brands have physical locations, it makes sense to offer some type of Google Maps module.
• Displaying Circles: Unlike personal pages, brands may want to show off their circles. Here’s a great chance to segment your audience and showcase top fans or employees.
• Canvas Page: For the middle column, (labeled ”About Us” in this example), brands would prefer a less structured module. The ability to stylize and include custom marketing creative would be great.
• Google Offers: Once Google Offers (Google’s answer to Groupon) rolls out more widely, I can see it being included here in the sub navigation. Brands may want to call out active offers even more prominently.
• Sparks: I like them and hope Google continues to further develop them. In the right column, brands could feature Sparks related to their brand or products.

Related: The Google Plus 50

Add me to a circle: http://gplus.to/percival

This week, Google released its long-awaited and first, really serious entry into the social networking world.

That’s Google+ or Google Plus if you’re nasty.

I’ve been playing around with the new service, and I really like it. I think Google actually did a great job here.

A major thing it has going for it is the UI and design. It’s really well done. Using Circles, Google’s way to sort and organize friends, makes Goodle+ very intuitive and even, dare I say, fun to use. However, those Circles really looked like a big rotary dial to me, so I whipped up the above image.

This is unemployment day one, and I love it.

And me on Google+ here.

Around the web:

• Google opens up, then closes Google+ invites due to “insane demand”
• First Night With Google Plus: This is Very Cool
• Google+ Solves the Social Privacy Problem by Making Friending Very Complicated

In any case, Myspace was hot and on a ridiculous trajectory as it introduced social networking to the masses. I had been using it since its very first days. As user ID #3201, I was apparently an early adopter even back then.

During that same time, I was basically toiling as a crappy Web developer working on boring websites. I wanted to work at Myspace badly. I mean really badly. I applied for nearly every job it posted–even if I didn’t completely understand the role or job title. Myspace never returned my many job applications, so I ended up taking a different path. Perhaps the company sensed my desperation. More likely, it just had too many applications to manage. The stories coming out of Myspace were as sensational as its traffic growth, so there was a great deal of interest in working there.

Fast forward a few years to late 2009. I found myself sitting in the lobby of Myspace in Beverly Hills. By now, a few things had changed. For one, the company’s trajectory was a little different. I also didn’t have to beg for a job this time. No, instead the company would be pushing me to join–selling it as a big opportunity to make an impact.

They didn’t have to push though.

I would say “yes” mostly because I loved the story behind Myspace. Los Angeles doesn’t have many huge Web players. I almost felt it was my obligation to the city and tech community to try. Try what? To try and make something happen. If we could only move the needle enough, perhaps we could save the iconic Internet destination that Myspace is. Furthermore, to do that alongside Mike Jones and the many other world-class colleagues at Myspace was a dream ride.

Today, however, that journey ends. It was my last day along with majority of my team that handled Online Marketing. I want to send a “thank you” to the team that continuously worked through many challenging situations with both style and class.

As far as what’s next for me, I’m happy to say not much right now. I’m going to enjoy some time with my family and sit on a few beaches. When I’m back though, I plan to return to the start-up world.

I’ve missed it so.

Around the Web:

• Myspace to Be Sold to Specific Media for $35 Million
• Myspace Acquired, CEO Out: Email From Mike Jones
• News Corporation Sells MySpace for $35 Million

Social networking sites and our lives

Today, at the All Things Digital D9 conference Microsoft demoed their next generation operating system Windows 8 for the first time. There actually are a lot of nice surprises to come there — check out the video below for all the highlights.

What really stood out to me was this screenshot showing a split keyboard UI for tablet use. This is a great idea for people with big hands/penises.

With your thumbs and the close grouping of keys shown here, I bet you could really move on this thing. Right now I type like this on the iPad, but in portrait mode. It works, but it’s clumsy and strains your hands.

It’s also interesting to see Microsoft making so much progress on tablet UI. I think it was 1999 when I was at Comdex (now defunct but back then, a huge tech conference) and saw Microsoft demo their first tablets. Needless to say, those never worked very well.

Today things are different. Windows 8 actually looks really good. The product seems to take the best parts of many other Microsoft products like Xbox, Windows Phone and even the KIN. Together in concert, those previous efforts may have just rebooted the now iconic operating system.

The Video

Around the Web

• AllThingsD
• Microsoft
• Techmeme

Ironically this image makes me want to buy an iPhone 5 even more….

/via Reddit

Well lucky enough for you I put some of my ideas down in graph form.

This is basically my rough thoughts of how viral content is circulating online these days. Key points being that StumbleUpon is huge and under-hyped, Reddit is the new 0-day (zero day) source for viral content and Buzz Feed is becoming a major distributor (and creator) of viral content.

Oh and your aunts and other family members are still the last to know about the latest viral thingy. We still love them anyway of course.

Agree or disagree with my graph? Let me know in the comments.

(Click to zoom)

So while Facebook comments are generally higher quality and less prone to trolling, they don’t offer much value to websites that leverage comments for SEO.

Of course it’s an interesting time for publishers as their platforms become more and more Facebook dependent. Most will confirm that referral traffic from Facebook continues to grow, so it makes sense to continue investing there. However, it’s still important to maintain some control over how The Google sees and processes your pages, and even more so if your content is the type that generates long comment threads. All those comments help to send a lot of good signals to The Google; all the right signals actually like relevancy, freshness, and perfect organic keywords.

Google likes signals.

I reached out to Facebook’s unofficial (?) SEO guy Alex Schultz on Twitter to ask about better SEO support for Facebook comments. I didn’t hear back, though. I was curious if they planned to address this issue in future iterations of their social plug-ins. Ideally they would offer a version of comments the bots could read well, along with some form of a permalink for each comment.

At the same time I also wondered how Disqus, another large comment engine, handled this issue. Disqus CEO Daniel Hu confirmed via Twitter that they serve up a plain-text version within an invisible DIV layer, which is something the Google-bot can easily crawl. Upon doing some test searches, this does appear to work well for most (but not all) sites using Disqus.

Google is never crazy about hidden text, but they do allow it in some cases where Javascript is used. It’s very important, however, that you show EXACTLY the same content a normal user would see. Obviously if you change or manipulate the content, Google takes issue with that. In the case of Facebook comments it might be best to simply render the comments as they appear through the Facebook APIs (minus some of the UI and buttons).

To be honest, though, I’m not exactly sure what’s the best way to handle something like this. I thought it might help to get things started and publish some easy code to render Facebook comments in plain-text. From there I’m hoping others adapt the code and improve upon it. So down below you can download the code to get started or click here to see it in action. If you load that page and view source you can see the comments rendered in a hidden DIV.

Publishers implement Facebook comments in many different ways.  So I’m hoping to get feedback in the comments on whether this worked for you. Please let me know if it did, or if you find a better solution.

Download Code

Here it is. I’m dead, and this is my last post to my blog. In advance, I asked that once my body finally shut down from the punishments of my cancer, then my family and friends publish this prepared message I wrote—the first part of the process of turning this from an active website to an archive.

If you knew me at all in real life, you probably heard the news already from another source, but however you found out, consider this a confirmation: I was born on June 30, 1969 in Vancouver, Canada, and I died in Burnaby on May 3, 2011, age 41, of complications from stage 4 metastatic colorectal cancer. We all knew this was coming.

That includes my family and friends, and my parents Hilkka and Juergen Karl. My daughters Lauren, age 11, and Marina, who’s 13, have known as much as we could tell them since I first found I had cancer. It’s become part of their lives, alas.

Airdrie

Of course it includes my wife Airdrie (née Hislop). Both born in Metro Vancouver, we graduated from different high schools in 1986 and studied Biology at UBC, where we met in ‘88. At a summer job working as park naturalists that year, I flipped the canoe Air and I were paddling and we had to push it to shore.

We shared some classes, then lost touch. But a few years later, in 1994, I was still working on campus. Airdrie spotted my name and wrote me a letter—yes! paper!—and eventually (I was trying to be a full-time musician, so chaos was about) I wrote her back. From such seeds a garden blooms: it was March ‘94, and by August ‘95 we were married. I have never had second thoughts, because we have always been good together, through worse and bad and good and great.

However, I didn’t think our time together would be so short: 23 years from our first meeting (at Kanaka Creek Regional Park, I’m pretty sure) until I died? Not enough. Not nearly enough.

What was at the end

I haven’t gone to a better place, or a worse one. I haven’t gone anyplace, becauseDerek doesn’t exist anymore. As soon as my body stopped functioning, and the neurons in my brain ceased firing, I made a remarkable transformation: from a living organism to a corpse, like a flower or a mouse that didn’t make it through a particularly frosty night. The evidence is clear that once I died, it was over.

So I was unafraid of death—of the moment itself—and of what came afterwards, which was (and is) nothing. As I did all along, I remained somewhat afraid of the process of dying, of increasing weakness and fatigue, of pain, of becoming less and less of myself as I got there. I was lucky that my mental faculties were mostly unaffected over the months and years before the end, and there was no sign of cancer in my brain—as far as I or anyone else knew.

As a kid, when I first learned enough subtraction, I figured out how old I would be in the momentous year 2000. The answer was 31, which seemed pretty old. Indeed, by the time I was 31 I was married and had two daughters, and I was working as a technical writer and web guy in the computer industry. Pretty grown up, I guess.

Yet there was much more to come. I had yet to start this blog, which recently turned 10 years old. I wasn’t yet back playing drums with my band, nor was I a podcaster (since there was no podcasting, nor an iPod for that matter). In techie land, Google was fresh and new, Apple remained “beleaguered,” Microsoft was large and in charge, and Facebook and Twitter were several years from existing at all. The Mars rovers Spirit andOpportunity were three years away from launch, while the Cassini-Huygens probe was not quite half-way to Saturn. The human genome hadn’t quite been mapped yet.

The World Trade Center towers still stood in New York City. Jean Chrétien remained Prime Minister of Canada, Bill Clinton President of the U.S.A., and Tony Blair Prime Minister of the U.K.—while Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, Kim Jong-Il, Ben Ali, and Moammar Qaddafi held power in Iraq, Egypt, North Korea, Tunisia, and Libya.

In my family in 2000, my cousin wouldn’t have a baby for another four years. My other cousin was early in her relationship with the man who is now her husband. Sonia, with whom my mother had been lifelong friends (ever since they were both nine), was still alive. So was my Oma, my father’s mom, who was then 90 years old. Neither my wife nor I had ever needed long-term hospitalization—not yet. Neither of our children was out of diapers, let alone taking photographs, writing stories, riding bikes and horses, posting on Facebook, or outgrowing her mother’s shoe size. We didn’t have a dog.

And I didn’t have cancer. I had no idea I would get it, certainly not in the next decade, or that it would kill me.

Missing out

Why do I mention all this stuff? Because I’ve come to realize that, at any time, I can lament what I will never know, yet still not regret what got me where I am. I could have died in 2000 (at an “old” 31) and been happy with my life: my amazing wife, my great kids, a fun job, and hobbies I enjoyed. But I would have missed out on a lot of things.

And many things will now happen without me. As I wrote this, I hardly knew what most of them could even be. What will the world be like as soon as 2021, or as late as 2060, when I would have been 91, the age my Oma reached? What new will we know? How will countries and people have changed? How will we communicate and move around? Whom will we admire, or despise?

What will my wife Air be doing? My daughters Marina and Lolo? What will they have studied, how will they spend their time and earn a living? Will my kids have children of their own? Grandchildren? Will there be parts of their lives I’d find hard to comprehend right now?

What to know, now that I’m dead

There can’t be answers today. While I was still alive writing this, I was sad to know I’ll miss these things—not because I won’t be able to witness them, but because Air, Marina, and Lauren won’t have me there to support their efforts.

It turns out that no one can imagine what’s really coming in our lives. We can plan, and do what we enjoy, but we can’t expect our plans to work out. Some of them might, while most probably won’t. Inventions and ideas will appear, and events will occur, that we could never foresee. That’s neither bad nor good, but it is real.

I think and hope that’s what my daughters can take from my disease and death. And that my wonderful, amazing wife Airdrie can see too. Not that they could die any day, but that they should pursue what they enjoy, and what stimulates their minds, as much as possible—so they can be ready for opportunities, as well as not disappointed when things go sideways, as they inevitably do.

I’ve also been lucky. I’ve never had to wonder where my next meal will come from. I’ve never feared that a foreign army will come in the night with machetes or machine guns to kill or injure my family. I’ve never had to run for my life (something I could never do now anyway). Sadly, these are things some people have to do every day right now.

A wondrous place

The world, indeed the whole universe, is a beautiful, astonishing, wondrous place. There is always more to find out. I don’t look back and regret anything, and I hope my family can find a way to do the same.

What is true is that I loved them. Lauren and Marina, as you mature and become yourselves over the years, know that I loved you and did my best to be a good father.

Airdrie, you were my best friend and my closest connection. I don’t know what we’d have been like without each other, but I think the world would be a poorer place. I loved you deeply, I loved you, I loved you, I loved you