Facebook Jumped The Shark

With a disastrous IPO behind it (Launched at $38, touched $42, now at $28), and a full set of lawsuits ahead, the 'kick 'em while they're down squad' has gone into overdrive 


Of course Facebook ain't dead, and it'll be a long time dying - just like the rest of the non-mobile web. I'll use it until they prise it from my cold dead hands!!

But I do agree that Facebook has jumped the shark - and I'll tell you the date - May 12, 2011. 

That was the day that  Facebook was caught with their pants round their ankles using Burson Marsteller to spread poison about Google.

At the time, it wasn't a killer blow. But once the doubts about the IPO began, that loss of trust in FB (and all their hired b-sh*tte*rs) crystalized into fear that the whole IPO was one big scam.

Of course it wasn't a scam - after all, FB believed their own PR by then, so they just did what powerful guys always do - help their pals and leave the little guy to pick up the pieces.

It all matters now, because the lack of trust will make breaking into mobile tougher; it'll make overcharging advertisers tougher; it'll even make schmoozing lazy journos tougher with their next PR effort.

No,  Facebook ain't over, not even close. But yes,  Facebook  jumped the shark.

Google's Panda - The Main Factors

A member called 'Brinked' wrote an interesting article about Google's Panda - The Main Factors at Webmaster World, in which he described some of his findings in dealing with clients whose sites had been 'Pandalized' by Google's recent "Panda"  update.


It's worth reading that thread in it's entirety, but - perhaps unsurprisingly - I have chosen to highlight my response to his excellent work, as the issue is one that I feel quite strongly about.


Re-written content? The sludge of the internet; untold billions of pages that essentially add nothing (except a few Adsense clickers trying to escape). 

Un monitored auto-generated pages? A total waste of space. 

Poor page design? MFA in effect, though possibly not in intention; no more, no less. 

And Panda goes to the heart of the problem - intention - as no update has done before. 

Because it's effectively very cheap to produce 'content', and search engines have always favoured 'content rich' sites, there has been an explosion in totally pointless pages, just like the tonnes of pizza delivery leaflets I recycle each year, we have become buried in quantity, leaving quality at the bottom of the pile. Panda has sought to redress this. 

I do accept - and always have - that there are some innocent victims of the collateral damage of the Panda process, but you have illustrated the awful truth that if people have nothing to say, they should shut up - not plaster the web with mind-numbingly dull, repetitive content. In fact the only place I would disagree with you, is that I advise people to simply lose those pages, not just try to 'pretty them up' in order to escape the Panda scythe - I suggest that your unsuccessful cases might try that approach with success. 

If Panda really succeeds in letting a bit of quality shine through, then the price is worth paying. 

Let's face it, if there was a $1.00 per page tax on URLs, 99% of pages on the web would disappear overnight, and no-one would miss them. 


I applaud Google's attempts do what the taxman can't - encourage quality rather than quantity. And I note that the vast majority of those who complain are those running sites with millions of one-paragraph-pages, written or paraphrased by machine, surrounded by ads.


Many webmasters cannot see anything wrong with using Google to drive visitors to sites which are no better than those pizza delivery leaflets, while the genuine innovators find it hard to dig themselves out from under the drivel.