Here is a list of groups featured in the video.

Mister

Fawn

Car Jack

SelfSays

Lettercamp

Bars of Gold

Child Bite

Silver Ghost

Lightning Love

1. All of us are not Internet nerds. Contrary to belief, not everybody who is a part of the Detroit Social Media community are all Internet nerds. I have met a wide array of people who just enjoy the community. I met have musicians, writers, lawyers, doctors, and engineers through Social Media.
2. We don’t speak nerd. Even though I am fluent in nerd, I never had to use it at any Social Media event. Very few of my conversations at a tweet up or any other event is about Social Media. I had discussion about sports, music, movies, and politics. I connected with the first people I met at my very first tweet up talking about the being Filipino with my friend Henry, and discussing movies and music Shauna, Chris and Brian.
3. If you want attention bring a 40 oz. At a Biznet Tweet Up I brought a 40 oz, it was most cost effective adult beverage I could think of. Ever since then I have consistently brought a 40 oz to every to Biznet Tweet Up. You might ask why this is important? It’s because I was consistent. I learned that you have to be consistent in this community. You can get away by making a big impact at the first two or three events you attended and then live off the notoriety you received from those events. You need to be consistent online and offline to make a true impact.
4. Be yourself. This is probably the most important thing I have learned. Don’t worry about trying to impress people, being the funniest or most interesting person in the room. Just relax and be yourself.
5. We all care about the community. Everybody in the Detroit Social Media community is very passionate about it and the city of Detroit. We are constantly thinking about how to make our community and city better with Social Media. Whether its bringing a group together to do some volunteer work or having discussion on how to transform Detroit from a Manufacturing city to a Tech City. Everybody in the Social Media community deeply care about Detroit and the little community that we have built together.

As an avid football fan I have the unfortunate luck to be a fan of the two worst football teams in the last 8 years. These two teams are the Detroit Lions and the EMU Eagles. I know that many people share the pain of being a Lions fan, but very few people share the pain of being an Eagles fan.  Every Saturday I watch my Eagles loose another game, and Sunday the process is repeated with my beloved Lions.  Neither team has had a winning season in the last 8 years.  The Eagles haven’t had a winning season in 10 + seasons (the Eagles last winning season was in 1995) and the Lions haven’t had a winning season since 2000.

As bad as these teams have performed in the past, it looks like there is hope in the future.  Both the Lions and the Eagles have hired new coaches who are determined to turn their teams around.  I am very excited to see what the future holds for both of the teams.

Do you think you have it worse than me as a football fan?  I would love to hear about it.

Matt in Bleeding Red

I was talking with an acquaintance of mine who is in a band in the Detroit area. I mentioned to him in passing that I thought his band had an edge in the market because they “Do not suck.” He then proceed to laundry list some other Detroit bands that were “fantastic” but lacked exposure to really get the radio play. Some names he mentioned I recognized and liked as well. Most names he mentioned I recognized and knew to be, well, pretty awful.

This is entirely subjective, of course. If I think a band is bad, does than mean that they couldn’t be a commercial success? No. But when about a thousand people think that way, the writing is on the wall. Not every band is a hard luck case. Some just suck. In fact, I will go out on a limb and say must just don’t sound good.

I have been thinking a lot about that conversation as it pertains to others parts of the Metro Detroit art scene. We have a cavalcade of organizations that, right now, are being hit hard with the economic downturn. All are affected, but some more than most. I am a gainfully employed actor in the area and can certainly say that some theaters are right on the brink. I can also say that these same theaters are some of the ones we should push over.

I am not talking about the ones who have had to cancel a show or cut some people. Everyone has had to do that. I am talking about the ones who can’t keep their doors open. There are a handful across the state that come to mind.

While it may be a detriment to have fewer theaters to be employing actors like myself, the quality of the art will be lifted. It is not coincidence that these theaters with severe money problems are the same ones that have grossly mismanaged their situations and continue to churn out a craptastic product. Few exceptions exist. Their actions do not inspire me to help them out in any way. After all, what are you paying for?

Trust me, the void caused by losing these places would be filled quickly. We have too many talented people in this state to leave an audience without a show. Four great companies have opened the doors in my area through the last 6 years and are flourishing. It’s not the star power, or the ads, or even the location that has made them successful. It is the caliber of work they produce. No wonder people want to shoot movies here (that and the huge tax break).

This is not an attack on any particular theatre and, chances are, you’re thinking of a different theatre than I am. Like I said, this is subjective. Unless thousands of people vote with their wallet and use this time to let the comatose theatres rest in peace. Then it’s a movement that will ultimately make the theatre community stronger. Now that would be something I’d go see.

View This Poll

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View This Poll

The Results!!

I know I am little late with these put here are the results on my What would you give up for a month polls.

These polls were done completely out of fun and the were very unscientific. So please do read that much into them! If you have any conclusion or thought regarding the results, please leave a comment!

A lot of people are not quite familiar  what FriendFeed is, and why Facebook wanted to acquire this little known Social Media  application.  FriendFeed  is a  aggregator service were you can feed all your Social Media applications into.  It is one stop shop to see what your friends have been doing on the web (great for internet stalking), and it updates in real time.   I have my FriendFeed account linked to my  Amazon, Blog, Brighkite,  digg, Flickr, Linkedin, Pandora, Stumbleupon,  Twitter, Vimeo, and YouTube accounts.   Now that sounds like a lot, but  users can feed up to 58 different services in their FriendFeed account.  With the ability to aggregate all these services FriendFeed  will be the perfect partner for Facebook Connect.  FriendFeed also  has something Facebook has been chasing after for a  very long time,  REAL TIME SEARCH.   The greatest thing Facebook acquire when buying FriendFeed is  its talent.  The people  behind FriendFeed are former Google employees who developed Gmail and Google Maps.  Who  knows  what next great thing  these guys  will think up in the future.

iLike…. MySpace…… I am going to be honest I really didn’t know too much about iLike when I found out MySpace purchased them.  What I did know is, iLike was one of the first third party applications released on Facebook, and it gave Facebook’s users the ability to share their thoughts about music and concerts, post their favorite songs on their profile, and even purchase songs and concert tickets .  After reading up a little more on iLike I understand why MySpace purchased them.  MySpace is trying to go back to its roots.  When MySpace first started, it was the place to discover new music.  Everybody from your favorite local band to Brintey Spears had a MySpace page were they  share their music with their fans.  MySpace even tried to start a record label out of this popularity.  Since MySpace has lost the battle as Social Networking king to Facebook.  MySpace is now trying  reposition itself as a niche social networking  site to musicians and music lovers.   I do see one big problem with iLike.  iLike’s popularity lies within Facebook.  How will MySpace convince iLike’s Facebook user to come back to MySpace?  I guess we will just have to wait and see.

The two companies are going in two different  directions with their recent acquisitions.  I wonder if these recent moves will help both Facebook and MySpace stay relevant, and avoid the path that  Friendster went a few years ago?   For Facebook I say yes.  The FriendFeed acquisition will help Facebook  be a major player in the Real Time Search Wars.  For MySpace, I am still undecided.  I think MySpace took a step in the right direction, I just wonder if it is enough?

What are your thoughts?  I would love to know!

I know I am a little late with this blog post, but I needed a little time to fully think about all the implications of the Microsoft/Yahoo deal.   Unlike Microsoft’s previous attempts to buy Yahoo, Microsoft agreed to have a Search partnership for the next 10 years with Yahoo.

After looking over the deal multiple times Microsoft has to thank Yahoo’s former CEO Jerry Yang for this deal.  When Microsoft originally offered to buy Yahoo in 2008 for $47.5 billion, Yang was very adamant in not selling to Microsoft, citing that Yahoo was worth much more than the offer.  Now a little more than 1 year later Microsoft ended up getting what they wanted; Yahoo’s search technology, and for considerably less on what they offered in 2008.

So what will come out of this partnership?   How will it affect the future of Search?   Will it help to innovate search or slow it down?  What does the deal mean for the everyday Internet user?  How does Google feel about the deal?

With this partnership Microsoft will roughly have 28% of the market share in paid search.  That means an increase in competition on MSN AdCenter.  So we can say goodbye to the good ole days when MSN AdCenter was a cheaper solution to Google AdWords.  PPC Advertisers will be forced to bid more on keywords to compete with all the new advertisers.  I am waiting to see if the increase competition will have an effect on AdCenter’s high conversion rate.  I guess we will know the answer in the first quarter of next year.

The competition won’t only effect PPC   advertisers; it will also affect SEOs who will start optimizing their pages for Bing.   Unfortunately this increased competition will include all the spammers, which will dilute Bing’s search engine results page (SERP).  It will take time to refine their algorithm in order to shift out all the spammers, and to clean up their SERP.   Will this initial attack from the spammers drive away users? We don’t know?

What will happen to all of Yahoo’s other properties?  Yahoo Directory is one of the major directories on the Internet right now.  Will a link from it still be valuable? Will we loose Yahoo Link Data, one of the largest providers of link info in SEO?  What about one of my favorite Social Bookmarking site Delicious?  Will it dissolve when the deal is finalized?

I guess will we have to just wait and see what will truly come out of this deal.

1. I come from a big family. I am the youngest of 6 children.  I have 4 sisters and a brother.  3 of my siblings have families of their own.  In my immediate family there is  17 of us. But my large family doesn’t stop there.  I have a total of 33 cousins (first), raging from 52 to 22 years in age.




2. I am an adrenaline junkie.  I love taking risk and trying something new, I guess that’s why I like Muay Thai.  Some of the crazy stuff I have done is skydiving, bungee jumping, and shark diving.  I have done some of these things multiple times. The next adventure I want to take is the  Gathering of the Pack.




3. I am trying my hardest to be “Green”.   This summer I bought a rain barrel to conserve on my water usuage.  I mostly use the rain water I collect to water the plants in my yard.  To combat Vampire Power, all the power strips in my house are smart power strips. All the showers except for one, have high efficiency shower heads. And of course  I have replaced the majority of the light bulbs in my house with fluorescent light bulbs.




4. I love to cook, but I hate cleaning up afterwards.   So sometimes I will avoid cooking if I have to clean up afterwards.  My favorite thing to cooks is bbq.  I make my own  spice rub and bbq sauce.  Currently I have been very interested in Filipino food.  I always ask my mom on how she makes my favorite Filipino dish, pancit.   I currently have the Food Network and my friend’s Talitha cooking column bookmarked in my browser.  Whenever I get a new recipe I always look for a way to improve it or personalize it to make it my own.




5. I love playing music.  Just like any other Asian child when I turned 5 I was given the choice of playing either the piano or violin.  For some weird reason I chose both.  As I got older I started taking on more instruments like the  bass and the guitar.   Currently I am trying to teach myself how to play the Didgerido.  Sadly  I have lost a lot of my skills as a musician, but that has never stopped me from playing music.

I hope this post shed a little light on who I am. If you want to know more feel free to ask me!

This week   the Internet giant Google   announce that it was releasing an operating system (OS).  With this latest venture Google will have their hands in a lot of aspects of everyday life.  In the ancient days of the early 2000’s, Google was a simple search engine, now Google has the G1 and Google chrome and soon to release Google Os.   With all these products, and more sure to come, Google is starting to sound like a monopoly.

Now we have seen this happen before with Microsoft just a few years ago.  In 1998 Microsoft was accused of bundling its services (mostly Internet Explorer) to its operating system.   This gave Microsoft an unfair advantage over other browsers like Opera and Netscape Navigator, which you had to either download (back before everybody had high speed connections) or purchase in a store.

With Google coming out with its own OS, could they get into the same trouble as Microsoft did?  Even though Google has already released Chrome, there is no doubt in my mind that they will bundle Chrome with other Google services to their operating system.   The only difference between Google and Microsoft is the availability of browsers today.  With high-speed Internet everywhere we are able to download a new browser in a few minutes.

Another factor to also think about is Google’s ability to retrieve even more information about our Internet usage.  All this information will help Google develop a better algorithm to improve its search in both organic and paid results, but to me its sounds a little bit Big Brotherish.

What are you thoughts on this subject.  I would love to know?

For those of you  who don’t know what nofollow tags are, let me give you a little history lesson about them.  Nofollow was first launched in January 2005. The tag was described as a tool for web site owners to identify  untrusted links, like blog comments or paid links.  When the search engines would crawl your  page a nofollow tag would let them know to disregard and to not follow  a certain link.

By 2007, a few SEOs  realized that the you could use the nofollow tag in an SEO strategy called “PageRank sculpting”.   In PageRank sculpting an SEO would add the nofollow tag to a certain links to prevent PageRank from accessing those pages, giving the links without the nofollow tag with a little extra juice to rank higher in PageRank.  Essentially these higher ranking links would help your organic rank in the SERPs.

For example, lets say PageRank is a candy store and the links are dollars.  At the PageRank Candy store you are only allowed to spend $10  (links).  If you had 10 links then you would have $10 to spend.  Now if you  decide to  put nofollow tags on five of your links, this would make these links worthless, but would make your 5 remaining link  worth double ($2).  So now with you have five  $2 dollar links which you  can spend at the  PageRank Candy store.

Sometime in 2008 Google  decided to change the rules.  According to Matt Cutts  adding a nofollow tag to a link didn’t really do anything to affect PageRank.  At first, Google made subtle changes to how they counted  nofollow tags in hope that people might notice,  but they didn’t.  So Google made more drastic changes on how they  counted nofollow tags, but still people did not notice.

After that history lesson you are probably wondering  what this has to do with  Copy and Paste Navigation.  With nofollow tags loosing their value in SEO, many SEOs will  try  to limit the number of links they will use on a page.  So instead of diluting  a page with links,  you might  start seeing web pages with  the  actual web address in the copy alongside with some anchor tags.   Many SEOs will also turn off links to old pages were the link and page carries very little value to them.

I remember in the old days when meta tags carry a lot of value in the search engine’s algorithm.  When the search engines decided that they were worth very little value to them, people didn’t stop using them, they just decided not to focus on them  like they used to.  With the change of rules in nofollow tags, “Page Sculpting” and other linking strategies will not disappear, they just won’t be as important as they used to be in a SEO strategy.   As  Matt Cutts  tweeted ; “Hey, did you hear our lastest inside tip? Make relevant content ;)”

If you like that video, check out @CharlieCurve’s remix of the printer smashing.

I grew up my whole life in the suburbs not to far from our friend Bob, but I just recently moved to the big city of Chicago. I am now suffering suburban withdrawals complete with cravings for strip malls and a walk up window at the Dairy Queen. I came from a land of parking lots and driveways, a suburb of the Motor City; the most anti-public transportation city in the world, and was dropped off in a place of alleys and busses.

First I noticed that their idea of housing is all apartments and what they call condo’s are just apartments. There is virtually no such thing as a single family home around here and defiantly not one with a driveway. I never realized how much I would miss a driveway, the ability to pull right up to one’s house and unload groceries or unload you belongings while moving in. There is none of that here you must park on the street and if you are really lucky you might have your own parking space in one of the alleys behind the building. I really can’t complain about the parking too much since I foolishly gave up my car. I’m dumb.

There are no two ways about it, giving up the car was stupid but financially and ecologically responsible. I realize now after my good intentions and good will have faded that I yearn for the roar of an engine or that weird airplane noise my old car used to make. I now have to walk everywhere or take dreaded public transportation. I have to tell you I’ve never taken a bus in my life, not even the one to school. The only times I’ve ridden a bus is for field trips or to travel from state to state. Mostly I avoid public transportation for right now, it’s warm and I can walk, it’s good for the fat kid to get some exercise. I avoid the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) because it hates me, it knows I’m from the Motor City and harbors a deep hatred for our kind. You think I’m kidding but every time I have attempted to use the CTA it has wrecked me.

Trip number one: Meat Market. I went to a butcher shop a few miles away and I walked there. When I left it was pouring rain so I thought I would catch a bus they are supposed to run every 15 minutes but I waited in the rain for over forty.

Trip number two: Downtown to visit friends in the West Loop. I took the train thinking that it’d be a better bet. So I had to take the red line and transfer to the blue line to get to their place. So everything is going great up until we get on the blue line, we get on and go a few stops then they announce that this is the end of the line and everybody has to get off. What?!? I needed to go just one more stop; evidently there is construction on the line so it is down for the weekend. They tell us there are busses that will take us to where the line picks up again and to go to the street. I figure it’s only one more stop so I ask a CTA worker how far is it to the next stop, he tells me about three or four blocks. He lied! It was like 8-9 blocks.

Trip number three: Lincoln Park for a beer with friends. You would think that I’d learned my lesson by now but there really is no cheaper way to get around the city. So I take the train again feeling better about this endeavor since I will be no where near the blue line. So I get on the red line and head south the train stopped twice for a few minutes on the track, I should have read into this a little more, and we arrived in relative good time (15 min).  The trip home on the other hand took me an hour! It was not rush hour; it was 11pm. What could possibly be going on at 11pm? More bloody construction. First I couldn’t get to the right platform so I took the train in the wrong direction to the next stop thinking I could get going the right direction there but no that station was under construction too and packed with people. So I waited there with the throngs of passengers waiting for the next north bound red line to appear which took about twenty minutes. Then I realized that most of the people on that platform also wanted to get on this train we were packed in like it was rush hour in Tokyo with those men who push you onto the train with those boards. I thought this was it, just inhale everyone’s odor for fifteen minutes or so and I’d be home, I could do that no problem. Ahh but that is when the magical voice comes over the PA to screw me yet again; saying that the train is going to run express (next stop will be way past my station) so if I want to get home I have to get off. So I desperately push against the mass of people squeezing past a dozen or so people to be released onto the platform still two stops from “home”. As I was expelled from the train I heard the evil voice say, “there is another train right behind this one for those of you who are not going express”. Lies! Another twenty or so minutes later that train shows up and gets me to my stop. Finally! I’m off the hobo train from hell.

Maybe it’s just bad luck or maybe the CTA hates me. I’m convinced of the latter, I know it can smell that I am a car loving, gas guzzling, public transportation hating Detroiter and it throws up any obstacle it can to thwart me at every turn. Oh well it’s all I’ve got for now, so I will keep trying and maybe one day we will make peace with each other; or I’ll move home.

Over the last few weeks I have noticed a few articles and videos celebrating Detroit.  Being a very big fan of Detroit I  was very ecstatic to  see that people appreciate the city  I love.    Here are my three favorite story’s about Detroit.

1. A great video done by the Great People at Model D.

2. Here is a great story from an outsider (Geoff Livingston)  on the determination of Detroiters to turn their city around.

3.  Last but not least,  A great story in CNNMoney.com on why Detroiters love Detroit.

Do you know any great storys about Detroit?   Please share them!

If you are PPC advertiser your probably have overlooked the usefulness of Negative Keywords.    Negative Keywords are keywords that prevent your ad from showing up in irrelevant searches.  For example, lets say you are an advertiser that is selling furniture, specifically bedroom furniture.  One of the keywords that you are bidding on is “furniture”.   Since this keyword is very broad it can come up in searches for “dining room furniture”, “office furniture”, and “patio furniture”.   If you include the negative terms dining, office, and patio you will be saving your money on these otherwise wasted impressions.

To add negative keyword you simply put  a – right next to your keyword.  In our furniture example our negative keywords would be entered”

-dinning room

-office

-patio

So how do you identify negative keywords?  Here are few steps that will help you out.

1. Take a look at your keyword logs from analytics servers.  Take a look at the keywords towards the end of your list. Look for keywords that are completely irrelevant to what you do.
2. Look at your Search Query report  (in Yahoo you will have to ask the analytics team for this information).  Once again look for keywords that are completely irrelevant to what you do.
3. There are multiple keyword tools out there that can help you out.
4. Use your noggin.  Try to brainstorm with other people on your team to come up with a good list of negative keywords.
5. Hit up forums on any Search Engine Marketing community website.  There you are bound to find someone who will post a list of generic   keywords (like free) that you can enter into your keyword list.

After going through all these steps you probably have a pretty good list and understanding what negative keywords to use in your ads.  Is you work over?  No, you have to remember to constantly refine your list of negative keywords by subtracting and adding new keyword in order   to have an effective campaign.

I can not stress how important it is to use negative keywords.  It is a very important strategy in PPC.   With quality score deciding what position your ad shows up, negative keywords help you create more relevant ad groups by eliminating keywords that are not related to your business.  Negative keywords help in eliminating wasted impressions, which will drive up your click through rate (CTR), this help improve your quality score, making your add showing up in a higher position than your competitors

Above is the page views over a 1year period for Facebook and MySpace

Now we have seen this problem before. In 2005 there was a Social Networking site called Friendster that was slowly dying off while MySpace was blowing up. MySpace success was attributed to features (blogs, mp3s, feeds, and videos) which Friendster could not offer to its users. A few years later MySpace was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp. NewsCorp saw MySpace very differently from its founders, and decided to make the site an ad heavy social network portal. The new design of the site brought in ad dollars and a $900 million deal (which expires in 2010) with Google. With MySpace focusing on Ad dollars instead of their community, users started abusing the site. One of MySpace’s flaw and strengths lie within the user’s ability to personalize their page. MySpace users have the opportunity to fill their profiles with music players, videos, pictures, and other widgets to all load at once which slowed down page load times. What is better than the latest Katie Perry CD loading in a music player, clips from the Hills, and pictures of Chris Brown loading all at once? Everything! Another problem with MySpace was it was open to everybody, even fake profiles. MySpace never policed its users to make sure that they are real people. If MySpace decided your profile was fraudulent and deleted it, you could sign up the same account the next day.

Meanwhile there was a site called Facebook that was gaining popularity. When Facebook started it was exclusive only to college students. Facebook took a very different approach to their Social Network than MySpace. Facebook decided to strip down the site to the basics (very similar to how Friendster operated). Eventually those college students graduated and joined the real world. These news grads brought their education and Facebook with them to their new jobs, which garnered interest by their co-workers. With all this new interest in Facebook, Facebook decided to open its self to everybody, and its membership grew exponentially. With all this huge growth Facebook has done a very good job of keeping the site authentic.

So how can MySpace turn it around? I feel that MySpace has to be part of a trend, phenomenon, or something special. I remember just two years ago musicians/bands used to be discovered on MySpace; we used to get celebrity gossip direct from a celebrity’s blog. Now all these things happen somewhere else. MySpace needs to be part of the conversation again; MySpace needs to give its users some authentic experiences. If MySpace cannot figure out how to be part of the conversation again they will most certainly fail.

What are your thoughts? How do you think MySpace can revive itself?

So one day my good friends Aaron and Jake called me and enlisted my help in raising awareness for an event that celebrated Ypsi and a great organization called the Ozone House. Needless to say I was more than excited to bring my specialized skills to this event. So last Saturday I attended Arms Around Ypsi, I brought my Flip camcorder, and took some footage of the event. Below is the finished product of all the footage I took.

Make sure that you are surrounding your keywords with brackets { }  not parenthesis ( ).  The advertiser below used the brackets at the beginning of the keyword, but used a parenthesis at the end.

Capitalization  is one of the biggest ignored problems with Dynamic Keyword Insertion.  They way you capitalize your keywords will directly affect the way the keywords are capitalized in  your ad.  For example:

• If you want  ad title to be in all capitalized letters (DESKTOP COMPUTER), you would enter your keyword into the title like this;  {KEYWORD: Desktop Computer}
• If you want only the first letter of every word to be capitalized (Desktop Computer),  you would enter your keyword into the title like this; {KeyWord: Desktop Computer}
• If you would like only the first letter of the first word capitalized (Desktop computer),  you would enter your keyword ino the title like this; {Keyword: Desktop Computer}
• Finally if you want your ad to be in all lower case letters (desktop computer), you would enter your keyword into the title like this; {keyword: Desktop Computer}

I generally that see most advertisers  only capitalizing the first letter of the first word.

 If you have any question, please refer to Google’s Adwords Help resource.

Will Social Media replace E-mail?  When is the last time you sent a personal message via e-mail? For me it’s been a very long time.   For the last few years all my social and personal communications have taken place in Social Media outlets like, Twitter,  Facebook,  Linkedin, Friend Feed and even Myspace (yes that is correct I still check my Myspace account every now and then).  My Gmail and other e-mail accounts have been strictly used for my professional and business communications.  So I wonder will Social Media eventually replace E-mail?

When I first started using the Internet, e-mail (and aim chat) was the first social network I joined.  Now my e-mail has been relegated to professional communications, social network notifications, bank or financial alerts, and of course spam!  With business using e-mail has a marketing tool I have seen a lot more of “25% off” “One Day Sale Only” or “Free Shipping” and less of “How was your day?” or “Happy Birthday” in my Inbox.

Whenever I wish a friend Happy Birthday I usually do it through Facebook or Twitter, or when I find out a friend is pregnant or just graduated college I send them a little congratulations note via Facebook.  I honestly can not remember when was the last time I sent these messages in an e-mail.

In Neilsen “Global Faces and Networked Places” report. Social Media has overtaken E-mail as the 4th most popular Internet activity.  The study reports that in 2008 two-thirds of the world’s population visits blogs, social networking site, or other social media websites. 1 out of every 10 minutes we spend online is on Social Media websites

So Should Google, Yahoo, or Hotmail be scared? Maybe. At Morgan Stanley’s technology conference, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt was asked what he thought about Twitter.

“Speaking as a computer scientist, I view all of these as sort of poor man’s e-mail.”

Oddly enough at the same conference Mr.  Schmidt also plugged Google’s Twitter account.

So what do you think?   Let me know!

Last Tuesday the Detroit City Council passed a resolution  to demolish the old  Detroit Central Train Depot on Michigan Ave and  Vernor Hwy.   Upon reading this news, I was very happy to hear that Detroit City Council actually did something right, but I was amazed to hear that  multiple people didn’t share my opinion.    Many of my friends were very sad if not angered by this decision.  I wondered why some of my friends  were so disappointed  by  the City Council’s resolution.  Then it finally hit me.  All of my friends  that were disappointed  were artist (mostly photographers), and have taken pictures, or planned to take pictures inside or outside of the decaying landmark.   I realized that the Train Stations was their Tiger’s Stadium. 

 Even  though  the train station has a great historical past, what purpose does it serve to the community of Detroit  now or in the future?   There have been multiple plans to use the building  for a casino, the new Cobo Center, or  as the new Detroit Police Headquarters, but none of those plans  ever left the idea stage, so the building  just sits there  unoccupied and going into further decay.   The owner,  Manuel Moroun has admitted multiple times that he has no immediate plans for the  property.   So I ask  why not tear the building down? Demolishing the building will give the owner or another developer the chance to build something useful on the site.  Will I be sad to see it follow the footsteps of Tiger Stadium? YES!  But in order for Detroit to rebuild itself, we must  get rid of the useless structure and replace them with something  that will help the community.  Beside, if they  tear down  the building, it will always live in our memories, pictures, and Transformers the movie.

 I would love to know your opinions