Between plurking, blogging and writing, I still have time for a little update on my very own plug, which I really neglected over the past weeks.

I am currently confronted with having to move to my own place, I got the opportunity to encounter one of the fuggliest types of people ever. I decided to round them up into a short, comprehensive list for the records.

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I know I said I’ll be posting more often, but it takes some time getting used to the new life: waking up at 11 am, yawning for 10 minutes, getting myself motivated for working, actually working and so on. It’s something on the softer side of life, so bare with me…

I just came from seing a cheezy comedy, What happens in Vegas, which turned out surprinsingly well. In this movie, this chick gets dumped by her boyfriend and decides to go to Vegas, where, whilst drunk, marries a stranger. To get straight to the point, she realizes she’s always trying to please others and forgets how to be herself. Basically, it’s a movie about following your instincts, doing what you love and going after those you love.

photo credits: rosephotosetc

Probably one of the reasons I seldom post here, although I have an idea every once or two days is the lack of time.I am caught up with work and some projects aside which I really love (the latter part that is). If you have been following me on twitter, you know what happened these recent days. After more than a year of doing SEO in one of the dullest industries you can come across, I’m moving towards what I love, which is web 2.0 and social media.

It’s a big step considering I have been working for 2-3 years for different companies. I can now choose where I work from, when I do it and what I want to do. My plans are pretty clear at this moment: write more on my blogs, take on more projects, write more linkbaits, contribute more to social media (just passed the 9,000 pages milestone on StumbleUpon) and take some more for myself. Plan on meeting new people, traveling more and just seeing how far I can go.

I’ll still be online most of the day and night active on digg, stumbleupon, reddit and the others, writing, chatting and blogging. So hope to meet new people and strenghten the relationship with my existing friends. Looking forward to a happy, productive summer! Thanks to all the friends that support me now and in the past!

There was a time when blogging wasn’t solely motivated by money, but instead valuable information for particular web communities. I’d like to think people are still blogging for pleasure, but John Chow seems to have forgotten his roots and believes otherwise. Overdone and just another cookie-cutter monetized site with more emphasis on income than content, he’s lost his readers in exchange for the big bucks.

I started my blog with the impression that AdSense was the only viable option for monetizing it. The n00b that I was, I subscribed to John Chow’s site so that I could learn more. However, this awful post lead me to doubt. It simply attempts to promote a eBook for generating traffic. When you have so many free options available — valuable content you can easily dig up, why pay for it?

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Here banks never open when they should. That’s why I have to wait for 5 or 10 minutes in the freakin’ rain to get in. When I finally get in, I have to pass all the other idiots that came after me but want to get ahead.

I only had to get the PIN for my card, since I somehow misplaced it. While waiting for the chick to scan my ID card, one guy was moaning around, asking where he can exchange 2 euros to get 2 beers.  He was pointed to the cashier.

After 2 minutes I hear him screaming and complaining. They needed his ID card to make the exchange and he didn’t have it. “You can get 2 beers without an ID card. What has the world become?” Why he wanted beers at 9 am in the morning I don’t know. I really can’t understand people that drink during the day. It’s sad and depressing. But then again… that’s just me.

For almost a week now, this tune has been haunting me: Terranova & Austin Leeds - Follow Me. Looking forward to a busy summer, especially the upcoming house parade festival. Will finally see Markus Schulz and Cosmic Gate, ftw.

Going back to the web side of things, adsense kept injecting the page of an article with public service ads. Why, you ask? Just because the article contained the word “nude” one time. And it wasn’t pr0n or anything. The page got some hype eventually, all by itself.

Just discovered some brilliant quotes from George Carlin. Check them out, some really funny ones!

These days I focused on launching a new project which I hope will be big. Stick around, something is bound to slip!

Are press releases the lazy man’s way of getting one or two links? When you don’t have time to get some links through good ol’ fashion way, you stick a press release on some website, pay for some overpriced links and wait for the outcome. Ideally, your press release will be featured by major news sites. Normally, it gets lost and not even indexed. Haha!

A change was recently implemented on digg, namely the removal of the white stripe next to each digg button. I am not sure as to why it was done, nothing official was announced but I was used to the way every button looked like.

Once you get many friends, the stripe will appear at almost each submission that gets on the upcoming list. But I can live without that. What I really miss what the small window that appeared when you scrolled over the button, showing you the friends that recently dugg the story. It was fully removed, as I noticed: when you see a webpage with that digg button, the green stripe is still there.

I guess from now on, we will have to use the digg alerter.

later edit: just a bug in digg’s system!

In a response to my friend Lyndon and his article about digg not being social media marketing, I want to give you my take on the issue. The chat was long and productive, even though it started from a plain hello.

Considering the recent algorithm change, I had the chance to reconsider what digg really means for the virtual environment and why everyone is  struggling to get on the frontpage. And yes, what it comes down to is finding those 100 people in the 50,000 visitors you receive upon getting frontpage. Those 100 people are your target audience, the ones that will acknowledge your article, your brand or your website.

But isn’t there an easier way to get to that small crowd? If you look at it from a different perspective, it is. Social media goes deeper and offers the platform for any niche communities to stay in touch and share their opinions.  So if you’re promoting - let’s say - some new get-thin recipe based on fruits you need to go to the website treating weight issues, to bloggers that frequently write about the subject.

It’s a lot more work, I know, researching, investigating and involving yourself in the community but the outcome will be much bigger. Still, for a more targeted audience, StumbleUpon is the answer. And if you wanna go deeper than that, you know about social media website for niche topics such as fashion, environmental issues or tech.

It all comes down to time and how little we have. How much time are you willing to invest in your work? And these days I don’t have that much to do what I want. But it’s all for a noble cause. I learned a lot of things and I’m still learning.

Got around to reading Matt Cutts’s predictions for 2008 about the face of the internet. Some interesting points raised, ones more realistic than others…

2008 will be the year that hacking and search engine optimization collide in a major way - got that right! just woke up two days ago with a website invaded by a Turkish harker. But this won’t go far enough. If you’re on a secur server of a well-established hosting company, you just need to replace the password with a random one. So take this opportunity and secure all your accounts with a tight password.

The most exciting product/start-up of 2008 will not be a Web 2.0 company. Instead, it will concentrate on improving email productivity. - Can’t really see this happening. Social media is ever growing and it has to make up for all the niche topics and communities out there. The web will continue to develop around social media and not e-mails. Just my 2 cents.

An RSS startup will add the ability to take a normal RSS blog feed and produce a “best of” feed that picks only the most popular/controversial/interesting items. - Since you are already subscribed to the RSS of a website, then you are interested in most of the articles if not all posted there. I’d like to have the opportunity to pick the best posts, not have an algorithm do it for me.

Domains for $4 - I can see this happening. I just caught an offer from my hosting company that sold domains for 6 bucks. Why not discount it more? Imagine all the domains that will pop up and the spam you’ll get.

If you’re interested in the rest of Matt’s predictions, check out the post. As for my thoughts, I think environmental blogs will grow even further, some new social media website will arise and SEO will turn more into SEM. Looking forward to see what the web will be like this year.

It was about time I blog something more personal. You will find here my ramblings about social media, search engine marketing, music, life and various tips.

Be sure to check again!