Rants

I’m a little cranky at the moment.

I want to fast forward the internet. Either that or sleep through the next 5-10 years.

This SEO stuff is getting me down. I know things are always changing, but at this point they can’t change fast enough for me.

A depressingly large subsection of the internet seems all too willing to prostrate itself at the altar of the great SEO diety. If you want the right customers to see your products, you need to have a great search rank, and that means you need the right keywords in the right places, plenty of backlinks, active comment boards, a constant stream of fresh content, and the list goes on.

Few businesses seem to be looking to the future rather than directly at the ground in front of them. Search engine rankings, in their current incarnation, won’t be around for long.

While they are still somewhat ill-defined concepts, the “semantic web” and “web 3.0″ seem to be aiming for an internet not limited by what’s placed within constraining HTML tags–the current basis for search engine rankings. The forward thinkers at the World Wide Web Consortium envision an internet where machines understand one another more like human beings do–that is to say, less in terms of specially designated tags and more in terms of meaningful context. At present, if I tell Google I have a website about hippos, it asks me to put the word “hippo” into about a dozen different boxes, put the boxes in the right place, tie a string between my boxes and other peoples’ hippo boxes put something new in the box every day, and paint the box with a picture of a hippo. Then, and only then, will the rest of the world know about my hippo website.

When I tell you I have a website about hippos, you instantly form a picture in your head of what my site might be like. In other words, your brain is already semantic. The web gurus want Google to be more like your brain. And when you ask Google for hippo websites, it doesn’t have to think about the boxes, strings, and paint jobs. Instead, it can say, “Mkay, but what kind? Like do you want pictures or facts? Obscure? Funny? Cartoons? Do you need it for a paper? Or are you just bored? Talk to me.”

Let me put it another way. During the punched card era, when a computer program literally consisted of a box of cards placed in just the right order, if you removed a single card the entire program was ruined. Now you can type “Skee Ball Cha” into Google and it’s already guessed you want to know about skee ball championships and dug up hundreds of websites to cater to your fancy. Now try to imagine how today’s Google will make similar advances over the next several years. Everything is marching towards an internet that “understands” users instead of simply reading a series of punched cards (or HTML tags).

Yet online businesses seem all to happy to invest in hole-punching technology. The recent fall of Ezine is a fine example. Prior to January of 2011, when Google implemented its “Farmer” search algorithm update. Ezine Articles often ranked very high in a number of searches. Ask Google how to hang a picture, and one of the first five results would be an Ezine article about it. Ezine played the game well, pumping out tidal waves of content with all the right things in its boxes and all the right strings tied up. Were the articles any good? Did they actually provide useful instruction on how to hang a picture? With little exception, no. Articles composed by authors being paid little to nothing to churn out keyword-rich garbage attracted plenty of traffic but left most users disappointed by the lack of real knowledge being imparted.

Then Farmer hit, and Ezine all but disappeared from the search rankings overnight, as well it should have. Google found ways to make the algorithm more complex and prevent people from gaming the system as Ezine had done. As we speak, some of the nation’s best web engineers are devising new ways to outsmart would-be opportunists eager to make a quick buck by giving search engines all of the nectar but none of the fruit.

Some companies, however, and looking ahead. They focus on providing well-composed, well-researched, meaningful content without worrying too much about mechanistic SEO. They may not get instant legions of traffic by showing up on every single first page for every single Google search pertaining to their markets, but they get bookmarked, revisited, blogged about, and respected.

In the offline world, people with something of value to say generally find themselves with bigger audiences than blathering morons (I know, I know, Twilight/Rush Limbaugh/Snooki/etc. exist, but let’s not get too cynical just yet). That’s how I optimistically view the future of the web. The more semantic it grows, the more intuitive and refined, the more it will become able to recognize, appreciate, and promote real, meaningful content. So why base your marketing efforts on ethically questionable and ultimately doomed tactics?

Let’s get back to the basics. Be a merchant–provide something of value to your customers. Do what you can to get the word out concerning your business, but keep the focus on providing things that will truly help them live better lives. No matter how many startups enjoy meteoric rises by seizing on holes and flaws in the market, they almost all share a destitute fate.

Here in Chicago, complaining about winter is just a thing we do. It’s cathartic, communal, and commiserative. That’s co-misery . . . ative–you get the idea. We complain about the cold weather, wind, and lack of sunlight during the winter months, and we do it up right.

Usually, I complain with the best of them, but this year was different. This year I had a bone to pick. People started whining about winter in August. It wasn’t even fall yet, and people had just barely begun to notice that the days were no longer 92 degrees but 89 degrees. Bring on the prognostications and ominous foreboding.

October rolls around, and all I hear about is Old Man Winter, despite the fact that we had a generally beautiful fall. By the time it finally snowed, on the second to last day of November, I’d heard so much about winter that you’d have thought we’d been buried drifts for months.

In this way, Chicagoans make winter longer than it is. Granted, there have been some harsh ones here, and somehow the lake, the grid layout, and the generally narrow streets and scarcity of greenery in some neighborhoods do make it a bit ickier than some more rural places that get colder temperatures and more snow. But there’s a lot to love about winter–don’t worry, I won’t go into all of it. You know you thought the Snowpocalypse was cool and you like sweaters–and complaining about it gets you into a cold state of mind.

In fact, recently those smartypants scientists have learned the the “brown fat” in your body, which protects you from the cold, can take a few weeks to get activated. This means that if you tough out the first few weeks of cold without wearing eight layers once it hits 45 degrees, your body will get used to it a little. I can remember doing this as a kid in Montana before I knew there was actual science behind it. I was simply too lazy to bring a coat everywhere and liked to think of myself as tough, so I’d go out in 20 degrees without a coat. Mid-winter I’d always notice that I didn’t get as cold as everyone else did. Gold star for twelve-year-old me.

The scientists just illustrate my point: Cold is in your head, at least to a degree. Several degrees, in fact. On the thermometer. PLAY ON WORDS.

So, dear Chicago, next fall can we just chill out a bit (Eh? Catch that one?) with the collective dread? Let’s enjoy the warm sun whilst it tarries in the sky and abstain from the portentous pessimism.

A favorite professor of mine in college, by the name of Roger Henderson, once told me that he preferred never to take in more than one great movie, play, or book per week. According to him, you can’t fully absorb one if you’re on to the next one so quickly.

It seems like there are two ways for an artist to consume art: One in which you throw a lot of things in the pan and serve them up pretty fresh and raw, and another where you may throw in fewer things but let them simmer longer.

See the analogy? Eh? From the title? Eh??

The implication, I suppose, is that if you consume art at a rapid clip, you don’t absorb it well and your output is more likely to become derivative, whereas if you let things percolate, they mingle together in a more sublime and subconscious manner. Indeed, this tends to be the way I like to think about inspiration for myself.

On the other hand, landmark films have been made by people who watch a movie every day, and great books have been written by voracious readers–in fact, I’ve often heard it said that if you’re not a voracious reader, you shouldn’t fancy yourself a writer.

I’d say it takes all types. I’m a stew guy, but I love stir fry too.