The three panelists for episode 7 of Pokin’ Holes were:

1. Paul Northup, [@PaulNorthup]
2. Sandy Kalik, [@skalik]
3. and me [@AdamPieniazek]!

Download the Pokin’ Holes – dm Design podcast. [Note, will take you directly to the .mp3 on the Dart Boston site].

Here’s a video of Dave Dabliaso’s thoughts on the shows as well as final comments from the three panelists.

Subscriber Increase Investigation

My first instinct was that Google fixed something on their end that showed more accurate numbers than before. Not satisfied with going off instinct, I set off to investigate. In a sign of the times, my first stop was search.twitter.com. After plopping in feedburner and scrolling through the tweets, one from Marko Saric told the feedburner story:

FriendFeed subscribers show as RSS subscribers in FeedBurner now. I have 3500 RSS subscribers!?! Stupid change.

Many other bloggers had similar sentiments about the FeedBurner-friendfeed integration. David Spinks from Scribnia gave three reasons why adding friendfeed to FeedBurner sucks:

1. …someone may subscribe to me because they’re interested in my twitter and facebook updates without ever really having interest in my blog.
2. On FF, similar to twitter, you can miss a post, and unless you go back to check if it’s there, you’ll have no idea you missed it.
3. Friendfeed isn’t as active as it may claim to be.

Louis Gray builds off David’s first point, that not all your friendfeed subscribers actually read your blog:

The company’s comments on this change state that “you are putting your words in front of a lot more people”, so theoretically, they should be counted. But I believe it is less-intensive to follow someone on FriendFeed than it is through standard RSS, and I have no idea how this handles duplicates, though I can guess it’s somewhat controlled, given my own stats jumped by a mere 5,000 when my wife went up by more than 9,000.

The latter half of Louis quote is interesting. It seems that FeedBurner somehow accounts for duplicate subscribers, in other words people who are subscribed to your blog via RSS and friendfeed don’t necessarily get counted twice.

So, is this change really a negative for blog publishers? Does it skew your subscriber data and make it inaccurate?

Possibly.

But, is it a big deal?

Not a Big Deal

I don’t think so. All FeedBurner really did is provide more data about people who are potentially reading your blog. Over the past few months, there’s been a lot of chatter about how some people were ditching their feed reader and relying purely on Twitter or friendfeed for new blog posts. Considering that trend, it’s not a bad idea to pull in subscriber counts from the various social outlets and include them in your subscriber count.

Some bloggers, like Bill Bolmeier, actually like the change as it gives them a nice boost to their subscriber count.

A better way to categorize these social subscribers would be via reach or a new category, but including them in the total subscriber count is still not a big deal.

There is one main reason why adding friendfeed subscribers to the FeedBurner count is not a big deal, you can filter out the friendfeed results.

By clicking subscriber stats, FeedBurner will show you where your subscribers come from. Just take your total, subtract out your friendfeed numbers and you have a number closer to your true subscribers. Personally, I’d rather have more data than less data, especially if with one click I can calculate the total minus friendfeed count.

Having said that, here’s an interesting note on how Google defines subscribers:

FeedBurner’s subscriber count is based on an approximation of how many times your feed has been requested in a 24-hour period.

Are all my friendfeed subscribers really requesting my blog feed?

No.

Whereas in a feed reader you pull in feeds, on friendfeed they’re pushed out and some people pull them in. To that effect, I’ll agree that the new total subscriber count it not a true representation of your subscribers, but it’s still not a big deal. So do a little bit of simple math to get at your real subscriber count and don’t buy into the hype, the friendfeed addition did not ruin FeedBurner.

1. Password Change Reminder

After setting up a new blog, Wordpress will post a message at the top of the admin panel reminding you to change your password from the auto-generated one to something you’ll remember better. It’s not a huge change, but a nice little addition to make the initial installation process just slightly more intuitive.

2. Photo URL in Media Section

In what seems like a nod to the Thesis Theme crowd, the photo info in the media section now includes a section at the bottom with the photo URL. Previously, you’d have to click through to the photo twice to figure out the URL (either two left clicks or a left and right click), now it’s right there after you upload the photo.

It helps the Thesis users, as it allows you to upload a new picture and immediately have the URL to use for the post image section.

3. Drag and Drop Widgets

Wordpress 2.8 adds a Mac style drag and drop interface to the widgets section. You can now drag new widgets into the active widgets sidebar, and reorder them by dragging the widgets around. In Safari on a Mac, the feature is a little buggy and at times doesn’t grab the widget. Luckily, if you click the screen options tab you can activate accessibility mode, which places an “Add” link next to each widget.

4. Add themes from admin panel

Wordpress added the ability to install plugins directly from within wordpress in their previous release. The feature now makes its way into the theme section too. You can search for and add any theme from the Wordpress.org theme directory directly from the admin panel.

5. Configure number of columns on admin dashboard

If you click screen options after logging into Wordpress 2.8, you’ll be presented with the option to choose how many columns should display on the dashboard [Kudos to Marko, would not have spotted this otherwise]. It’s a nice feature that helps reduce clutter and gives you more control over how to organize your Wordpress installation

Here’s the full list of changes in Wordpress 2.8. What cool new features have you found or enjoy in Wordpress 2.8?

Met a bunch of smart, passionate people. Won a free book! And got connected with a very cool non-profit via our social media consulting giveaway. Then, to top it all off a bunch of the Dart Boston people came by and integrated their post podcast wrap party with our networking event. Check out their show from last night featuring Swagger Paris.

Sport in Society

As you all know, The 42nd Estate contributed four hours of social media consulting in a giveaway to the non-profits in attendance at #NFACBoston. Sport in Society is the group that won our giveaway and they seem like a perfect fit for our interests and expertise.

Sport in Society:

uses the power and appeal of sport to foster diversity, prevent violence, and improve the health of local and global communities.

Considering we have Sports Fan 4 in our network of sites, Sport in Society should be a great way to combine our love of sports and helping non-profits with our web strategy experience to benefit this great organization. Using sports in the community to unite people and solve problems is something Josh and I have talked about extensively in the past so we’re very excited to put it into practice.

Check out Sport in Society on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. We’ll be bringing much more to you soon about how Sport in Society works, their goals, and how we can all help them improve our society via sports.

Networking works

As Sian-Pierre and I are both graduates of the 2002 class at the Boston Latin School, I gave him and Monique a few social media and web marketing pointers here and there to help out my fellow entrepreneurs. One of the big general tips I’ve continuously preached to Monique and Sian is that building a web-site is really about building a community and connecting with like minded individuals.

After our coffee shop meeting, Sian and I headed down to the tweetup at the Red Sky Lounge. It was Sian’s first ever tweetup and such a rousing success that he’s already discussing starting similar events in Paris when he heads back.

Why was it such a success?

Dart Boston Builds Bridges

Sian and I both met tons of great people at the tweetup. Meeting passionate people, no matter their field of expertise, is always valuable but meeting someone who can help you and who you can help near immediately is priceless.

At the tweetup, Sian met Cort Johnson from Dart Boston. When you meet Cort, it’s instantly apparent that he is genuinely passionate about being a young entrepreneur and helping other young entrepreneurs. In a nutshell, that is what Dart Boston does.

More explicitly, Dart builds bridges between entrepreneurs who need help and feedback from certain areas, with talented professionals in those exact fields. It’s a similar concept to Boston Young Entrepreneurs, but whereas BYE connects entrepreneurs from all fields with other entrepreneurs, Dart seeks out three targeted experts to directly connect with the young business owner and provide them feedback where they need it most. They accomplish this via their podcast show, Pokin’ Holes.

And that brings us to why Sian found his first tweetup to be so amazing. After talking to each other, Sian and Cort realized they could both help each other. Cort needed a young entrepreneur to help on this week’s Pokin’ Holes show and Sian (like near any entrepreneur) loves getting help from experts. So, this week, Sian-Pierre will be the guest entrepreneur for Dart’s Pokin’ Holes podcast, where he’ll receive help from three experts for his Swagger Paris site.

Dart Promotes Entrepreneurs

Cort and the other members of Dart saw that the City of Boston is filled with smart, passionate people in all fields, but also noticed that the various industries are quite segmented from each other. Dart is an attempt to bridge that gap and bring all of us closer together to help each other make our startups succeed.

Dart Boston does not stop there though. Cort explains that another goal of Dart is to:

create a marketing channel where all the young entrepreneurs in Boston can showcase their projects. Many young entrepreneurs don’t yet have the credibility to turn heads toward their individual projects. Dart Boston is creating a channel that everyone can collectively promote, in turn bringing more eyes to each entrepreneur’s individual project.

Each individual entrepreneur or startup faces a steep climb in reaching the top of the marketing mountain, but together we can create our own marketing force (we love empowering people and organizations to become their own marketing force here at The 42nd Estate). It’s a great concept and one that could potentially help all young entrepreneurs in Boston.

Update: Here’s the link to the Pokin’ Holes podcast episode on Swagger Paris.

We’ll bring you an update on Sian’s spot on the Pokin’ Holes show after it wraps. Come meet up with Sian-Pierre, Cort, and the other members of Dart Boston at Red Sky Lounge for an after-show wrap party. I’ll (already) be there too as part of the Networking for a Cause Boston event, where The 42nd Estate will give out four hours of social media consulting to one non-profit.

Facebook Pages Get Usernames

Usernames will not be limited to individual profiles, but will also extend out to the Facebook pages for businesses and organizations. If you run a Facebook Page with a name likely to get scooped up, make sure you’re on Facebook right after midnight to protect your brand. A caveat is that to get a username for pages, the page will need to:

be live on Facebook prior to the May 31, 2009 cut-off date and have a minimum 1,000 fans as of May 31, 2009.

If you own the rights to a name, you can fill out a copyright violation form to alert facebook that someone is ingringing on your copyright. You can also take precautionary measures and prevent the registration of a trademarked username.

If you’re thinking of snapping up a generic keyword to help with your organization’s SEO, stop. Facebook will not allow the registration of generic usernames (pizza, flowers, etc.):

At this time, generic words are not available as usernames. Facebook encourages all users and Page administrators to create a username that closely matches the true identity of their name or business.

Use Your Real Name for Facebook Username

When signing up for a username for you Facebook profile or page, ensure it’s a good one as you will not be able to change your username. Dan Schwabel, the personal branding expert, advises that you do not get cute with your username and simply pick your real name to ensure people can find you.

It’s huge news from Facebook and will go a long ways towards Facebook getting more search engine traffic. It also means individuals and organizations will be able to find your Facebook profile that much easier so it is crucial that you keep it clean and professional. Best of luck everyone in snagging your desired username!

Connect with The 42nd Estate on Facebook for more updates.

The overwhelming vast majority of you will respond, “heck yeah”!

So, please, for the sake of the number 42, install the Subscribe to Comments plugin on your wordpress blog.

Now!

New comment notification leads to more comments

There’s almost no argument against it. This simple plugin will allow Wordpress to automatically notify commenters when a new comment is posted. If you use a third party commenting system (such as Disqus or Intense Debate), most of them already have this feature built in, but for the rest of you this simple plugin will increase comments, add depth to your discussions and keep people coming back for more. There’s almost no downside.

I did say almost no downside. If you get a rush of new comments and have a lot of people subscribed to those comments, there is potential for your email server to get overloaded. It is extremely rare and if you are getting that much traffic it might be time to upgrade to upgrade to a dedicated or virtual dedicated server.

When leaving comments on blogs that don’t have an option to subscribe to new comments (via e-mail) I’ll often leave a note telling them to install the plugins. It’s annoying leaving a great comment and having to refresh my browser to see if there’s a response. Often, I write the comment and forget it and the discussion dies.

Don’t let yourself fall victim to this one time comment discussion. We love the Subscribe to Comments plugin so much we use it on nearly all our sites and included it in our list of essential plugins for new wordpress blogs.

As it took form, the internet attempted to connect information and people. As it developed, it began to take on the form of its own society. Once the World Wide Web arrived, there was no questioning that a digital culture had been created. People socialized via linking to each other, discussing topics on message boards, and chatting over messaging platforms long before blogs, Facebook, Twitter, et al.

Originally, the intent of this post was to go through the history of digital social media, but Brett Borders beat me to the punch and did it so well that I’ll point you to his brief history of social media post. A great point he makes is that digital social media actually began on the good old telephone. During the 50’s phone hackers would record messages on corporate voice mail systems and share the call in number with other phone hackers, who would leave messages that the original hacker could respond to in his next “show”.

If we focus purely on social media, it may have existed for even longer. Would you consider Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, the first multi-page newspaper in the U.S.A., to be a form of social media? The first (and only) edition of the paper was published in 1690 with a blank page at the end for readers to write comments and pass along. That’s right, a newspaper was the first media form to encourage readers to write and share comments.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide if Publick Occurences represented a form of social media. In either case, the truth remains that social media is not new and has been around for at least a few decades.

Chill out!

The 42nd Estate member Justin Wright writes about the importance of taking breaks. The benefits he lists include:

• Time to think
• Time to do hobbies and work out
• Refresh the mind
• Increase your motivation

Check out the full post for tips on how to make the most use of your time off.

Twitter review

Over at Only The Internet’s Best Reviews, we posted a review of everyone’s favorite micro-blogging platform, Twitter! From the Twitter review:

witter is not the first social media site, but combining social media with mobile technology with near instantaneous communication was a brilliant move that continues to reap benefits for Twitter and its ever expanding community.

PageRank Sculpting and Social Media in Plain English

Over at We Demand Videos, there’s two videos I’d like to point you towards. The first is related to the recent news that Google tweaked their PageRank algorithm by changing how nofollow links affect Page Rank for internal links. In the video, Matt Cutts from Google discusses Page Rank sculpting.

The other video is a breakdown of social media in plain english by Common Craft. For anyone knew to the social media buzz, or just wants an easy way to explain the benefits of social media to clients, friends and partners, check out how ice cream is like social media.

Big Papi’s decline

The new addition to our blog network brings us the ever-changing opinion of Josh Gans on David Ortiz. He’s evolved his opinion from thinking David Ortiz did not use performance enhancing drugs, to everyone is innocent until proven guilty, to “I have a gut feeling that he [David Ortiz] did [use Performance Enhancing Drugs]“.

There you have it, five great posts from The 42nd Estate blog network. Share your favorite posts below.

Networking for a Cause [NFAC] is an event held by the NFAC organization, which connects young professionals with non-profits looking for skilled help. It’s a great event and one we’re proud to be attending and sponsoring. The NFAC Boston event will run from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM. The Red Sky Lounge is located at:

Red Sky Restaurant & Lounge
16-18 North Street
(Near Faneuil Hall Marketplace)
Boston, MA 02109

John Haydon will also be giving away a social media audit at the event. Mark J Carter, the event organizer, will also give away four copies of the book, “Saving The World At Work” by Tim Sanders.

Social Media Consulting Package

For our giveaway, we will analyze your web-site, blog, and social media campaigns. We’ll look at your web presence from an end user’s perspective and advise you on how to improve it to make it easier for people to find you on the web and connect with you. We’ll also review any copywriting on your site(s) and suggest edits to improve its flow and impact. With our suggestions, you’ll be able to streamline your social media campaigns and increase their effectiveness.

If you’re a non-profit organization in the Boston area looking for social media help, make sure to register for the Networking for a Cause Boston event. It’s sure to be a great time and we hope to see you there!