Jason Unger

Does Your Content Look Good?

Posted by junger - 12/27/07 at 11:12:57 am

You might have great content, an engaging angle on a topic and a well-thought out story, but if your content doesn't look good, it may not matter.

So how do you make sure that your content looks good?

The background here is that Web users do not read — they scan.

This is why it is important to break up the text with bullet points, write short paragraphs, and be clear and concise.

If your content doesn't look easily digestible, your visitors won't read it.

I don't like when a paragraph goes longer than 4 full lines — normally 3 lines are my max. If it looks like it will take too long to read, I won't read it.

The next time you post a story online, take a look at in in draft mode and imagine yourself as a reader.

Would you want to "sit through" that story?

Penelope Trunk Fired From Yahoo! Finance

Posted by junger - 12/27/07 at 09:12:17 am

How to deal with getting fired (from Yahoo)

Wow. If there's any columnist out there today who doesn't deserve to be fired, it's Penelope Trunk.

But she's been canned from Yahoo! Finance, according to her blog, because her career-oriented columns lower the overall CPM of the finance-related articles on Yahoo.

While this is a legitimate excuse, it's not like there isn't money to be made in career advice advertising. People will pay for material if they know that they'll be getting something valuable in return. Penelope's columns deliver that.

Even though she's written her last column for Yahoo, at least she gets to go out with a promo for her blog and RSS feed.

(Yes, she is my friend on facebook.)

Blogging is One Thing, But Stealing Content is Another

Posted by junger - 12/26/07 at 03:12:51 pm

Slashdot picked up a story CE Pro ran last year (like, June 2006) on The Batcave Home Theater, a custom theater room up in Maine.

It's not new, but the link from Slashdot (a huge source of traffic) went to a site called Slashfilm (not related, as far as I know). So, Slashfilm was getting tons of traffic from content that they didn't create.

Normally, I'm okay with that — obviously, I'd like to get the traffic, but you have to live with the fact that sometimes you don't get what you want.

The problem, however, is that
1) Slashfilm didn't bother to link to the original article on CE Pro (a quick mention of the "June 2006 issue of CE Pro" was all we got)
2) They took the entire slideshow, cropped out our watermark, and posted it

The non-linkage isn't right, but can be easily remedied. On the other hand, taking the images and cropping out the watermarks is stealing content.

This is the second time in two weeks I've had to deal with people stealing content without proper attribution.

I emailed Slashfilm's editor, Peter Sciretta, asking him to add a link to our story and replace the images with the original, watermarked versions.

I haven't heard back from him (and it looks like his site is down now), but in reality, it doesn't matter if he replaces them or not. The images have already been cropped, our watermark is gone, and anyone who sees them can distribute them without attribution.

So, what are you supposed to do in this situation?

I emailed CmdrTaco (aka Rob Malda), who originally posted the story at Slashdot, and told him the story. It's not like I'm worried about bloggers promoting and sharing content we create — it's doing it without proper attribution and basically stealing credit for other's work.

CmdrTaco went ahead and changed the link in the Slashdot story to the original article on CE Pro, and now we're getting the influx of traffic.

What's the moral of the story?

Don't steal and properly attribute or it will come to bite you in the ass.

Keeping Busy Over My 4-Day Weekend

Posted by junger - 12/23/07 at 11:12:51 pm

It isn't often I get a four-day weekend without having to take any days off from work, so I'm keeping busy by … well, just watch the video.

The Problem With Digg Users: You Can't Leave

Posted by junger - 12/21/07 at 12:12:42 pm

Digg users are huge fanboys — that's a given. But they're so loyal to the site that they won't leave it, even when they get banned and buried.

Why?

Tamar Weinberg lists a number of problems with Digg, suggesting that no one pay the $300m asking price the company is shopping itself for.

People getting banned from the site seems to be a regular occurrence (my entire office got banned for digging from the same IP), but they all seem to want back in.

Is Digg more of a crack to people than Facebook?

Why can't Digg users find another site to share social news? There's a huge market out there, and for start-ups like Mixx, there's an opportunity to become an early power user.

Digg users, don't become blinded by an allegiance to the site. Obviously, the folks behind it seem to want out.

(You can still watch Diggnation even if you aren't a regular digger. It's OK.)

(img: Adam Tinworth)