(Part II of my Twitter Q&A this week. I hope you like them. If you do, please “Facebook Like” so that I get a sense of the interest in this type of post. Here is Part 1. )
The GOOGLE LOVE RANK (patent pending)
@EdGallois: If you Syndicate original content google might get upset Or should one re-write? Google is no fan of duplicate content it seems…
ANSWER:
Google is MY BITCH! It’s a tool. I type in “Azaelia Banks” and I expect to get lyrics, music, videos, photos and, because Google is so great I also expect to find out if I’m spelling her name wrong and maybe even where she lives.
If I live my life according to how Google ranks me then I am rank.
Do not worry about SEO for your blog. That is last on the list of things I worry about. That said, I am about to give you my patented formula for having the most followers to your blog:
Google works on their patented “PageRank”. If a page has a lot of links going to it then it has a higher pagerank. And if the pages that link to you already have a high pagerank, then your pagerank goes even higher.
So let me give you a fool proof method for having high SEO and it works for other things also.
It’s called the LoveRank (TM) – patent pending.
The more people who love you, the higher your LoveRank. And the higher the LoveRank is of the people who love you then your LoveRank goes even higher.
If you have a high LoveRank there are many many advantages. For one thing, your Google PageRank will be trivially high. You don’t even have to think of it anymore. And the other advantages…you’ll find out quickly what they are.
How do you increase then your loverank? Just be nice to people and be honest with them. It’s really easy and it’s not corny. Try it.
WHEN WILL FACEBOOK FADE?
Daniel Leslie @dan_leslie: For how many more years will facebook be the dominant social network until something else replaces it?
ANSWER:
Great question. Let’s look at the history. Lycos bought Tripod (the first social network) for about $50 million. Yahoo bought Geocities for about $3 billion. Then there was Friendster (used to be big everywhere, now big in the Phillipines). Then MySpace (bought by NewsCorp for $500 million), then Bebo (bought by AOL for a billion or so, sold by AOL for $10 million), Orkut (owned by Google and big, in of all places, Brazil) and then finally there is Facebook but there’s also Twitter and Google+ nipping at its heels. There’s also various niche social networks.
Facebook has 900mm users and is in every country in the world. No other network came even close to that in size and reach. Facebook has a great API to interface with games and other apps. They are the largest photo-sharing network in the world. They are basically the largest dating site in the world. Companies no longer put their website URLs on commercials- they put the URL of their Facebook pages.
And Facebook is just beginning. I’m 44 years old. When I’m 104 years old I’ll still be using Facebook every day.
REFORMING THE US CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
J. Sanudo @JSanudo: How would you change the US criminal justice system?
ANSWER:
Every organization builds its culture from the top down. If the CEO is a jerk then everyone in the company will begin to feel anxious, paranoid, hateful, gossipy, etc.
The top of the US criminal justice system is the US Constitution. Unfortunately, every Article and Amendment in the Constitution has been broken and abused by our judicial system. Without exception. So the top of our system is completely broken.
So there’s two solutions: top down and bottom up:
– Top down, we need a new Constitutional Convention. What worked in the 1780s might not be appropriate now. It’s worth once in awhile thinking about this. We also have to wonder why the Constitution has been so badly broken over the years and come up with better checks and balances. New technologies allow us to do that.
– Bottom up, a society is made up of individuals. As the individuals seek to improve themselves and their psychologies, society itself will improve. Again, it doesn’t matter to what extent you do that but even the barest paying of attention to improvement physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually each day will do that. The better people are, the less attention will be needed for our US criminal justice system.
BE QUIET
Alex Bakula-Davis @AlexBakulaDavis: Hypothetically if 2day you’re responsibilities were frozen (work, family,friends) and u had the day 2 yourself, what would u do?
ANSWER:
I would be totally silent for the entire day. Too many people want to talk all day. Here’s “10 Reasons Why You Want to Talk Right Now”
Talking is an addiction. Like sugar. We get instant feedback. We get stimulated. And then when we stop talking we feel a little bit of a lull. A down.
I wish I had more opportunities to just be quiet. Not even with my mouth but my head. Sometimes I feel my mind runs away too fast into too many directions that it has no business. But if my mouth can’t keep shut how can my mind keep shut. So first step is to just be quiet. That’s what I would do with my free time if I had a day to myself.
WRITING ABOUT FAILURE
Ben Nesvig @BenNesvig: Worked at a start-up that failed. Good or bad idea to write a book about the experience and everything we did wrong/learned?
ANSWER:
There’s been lots of books about startups that have failed. As an agent once told me (in 2001), nobody wants to read about failure.
That’s not always true. (Sam Lipsyte has a fun book, “The Ask” which is a novel about a failed startup).
That said, make sure you have an interesting twist on it. Like, maybe the failure is the result of a series of bad sexual encounters between various interlockings of employees.
I know you know how to do it.
MY FAVORITE KUNG-FU YOGA MOVES!
Claudia Azula @ClaudiaYoga: What is your favorite and least favorite yoga asana?
ANSWER:
I am, of course, not a yoga expert.
So this applies to me personally.
But I like the first move in most Yoga series. The Sun Salutation. It’s divided into several steps. The first step stretches your body higher. Then you bend down and stretch to touch your toes. Then you jump back and do a pushup. Then you stretch your back. Then you roughly stretch your toes again and take five deep breaths (as I’ve been taught it).
In other words, you stretch many muscles in your body, you get some strength exercise, AND you control your breath. All day long your mind is going wild and that lets your breath go wild. But if you have to actually think about your breath for a few minutes a day then that prevents your mind from going wild.
The sun salutation is like “the egg” of yoga. An egg is often considered the simplest full meal. Let’s say you do 6-10 sun salutations. That right there is like a mini-workout. You’ll probably be tired and sweating, would’ve stretched quite a bit and would’ve have exercised your muscles. It’s not a full workout but for someone who doesn’t exercise it will be hard.
My least favorite (other than the ones I completely cannot do) is the headstand. How come? Because I get afraid to be upside down. I can only do it if someone is holding me up. Unlike Claudia who can do the headstand then after 20 counts bring her legs slowly perpendicular to the head stand and remain there another 20 counts, then get into a lotus position upside down and who knows what else.
But here’s an interesting thing about the head stand I just learned. We all know that as we age our muscles sag. You can see it on your face, stomach, etc. But you can’t see it on the muscles inside your body, like the heart muscles. But they sag too and the sagging causes heart disease and other problems with circulation.
So moves like the head stand (and the shoulder stand) are very important because they move your vital organs back in place and help to reverse the effects of this internal sagging. And again, more opportunities to control your mind over your breath (not so easy to breathe upside down).
If any yoga experts want to add to this, please do so. I would love to know other people’s favorite and least favorite positions.
FINDING MEANING IN LIFE DESPITE BEING “MEDIOCRE”
Zac Stewart @zacstewart:How do you find meaning in what you do once you realize you’ll never be a war-hero-tycoon-einstien-conquistador-space-doctor?
ANSWER:
In other words, can life have meaning in mediocrity. Even worse, what if you are bad at most things instead of being great at things. Then you might think your life might really suck.
There is nothing wrong with seeking greatness. Nor is there anything wrong with not achieving it.
Between the banks of greatness and mediocrity the entire river of life flows. It’s only when you get stuck on the muddy banks that life becomes unpleasant. That you become mired down.
If you flow with the river, you accept whatever comes. You don’t have to be great. And its not bad to suck at something. Most of life is not under our control. Accepting life as it is leads to great happiness. And even those moments of greatness are only fleeting and are often accompanied by great suffering.
100 years from now none of us will have a building named after us. So it’s important right now to just swim in the river, back and forth, and accept where it takes us. Maybe we are curious about something we see. Swim there! And then swim somewhere else. Accept where you are.
Sometimes gold is turned into fancy bracelets and necklaces and other ornaments. And sometimes gold is just gold dust. But it still has the same value. It’s still gold no matter what. You are gold.
WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM ORPHANS
RobNonStop @RobNonS: Many successful/powerful people in history are orphans. Why? What can non-orphans conclude/learn/apply from this fact?
ANSWER:
There’s the fake world and the real world. The fake world is the world where we we’re nice diapers until we finish college, graduate school, internships, “startups”, our first divorce, etc. I admit it. I peed in my pants and needed diapers until I was in my 30s. I still occasionally do.
Then there’s the real world. Where you are the young Bruce Wayne. Your parents are shot and killed right in front of you. So you buy a trapeze and a set of weights with your billions and you start training yourself at an early age. And you start building weird gasses for utility belt. And you learn more about the ugliness of the world and the people who will want to harm you. And every day you work out and prepare yourself for the battles you know that will come your way.
You get a 20 year head start on the people who are still peeing in their pants in their 30s.
I don’t know if orphans are more successful or not. But “dropping out” of the fake world as early as possible and training to become Batman will make you more than human. Will make you a superhero. And only then can you save lives.
IRRITATING STARTUP TIPS
Tanvi Surti @tanvisurti: Do you find all the startup tips and advice out there irritating and counterproductive sometimes?
ANSWER:
Yes, Yes, yes. I mentioned this last week: there is NO SUCH THING as the word “STARTUP”.
If I open a deli at the corner is that a startup? What if I then have a facebook fan page? Does that make it a startup? What if I sell things online and then use a recommendation engine for other things you might like at my deli? Now can I go to a “Tech Meetup”? What if I give badges to all the people who “Check in” to my deli. And then I offer “flash group discounts” on my facebook fan page for everyone who orders Crest toothpaste at my deli within the next five minutes. Am I now a startup?
Do I need a CTO for my deli? Or a CMO? What will MAKE ME COOL! When will I finally get invited to startup parties with 5000 guys and 15 girls. I’m sorry, girls, I’m even in mentor programs for women entrepreneurs. We need MORE THAN 15 OF YOU at Tech Meetups.
Finally, my deli needs a Klout score if it’s going to be a startup. And I need to stream news about other delis onto my facebook fan page and use twuffer to schedule my regular tweets about my flash group discounts on Nabisco crackers. I am going to have the COOLEST STARTUP at the tech meetups with my deli.
Or I can just quietly build a business that supplies a good or service that people really really need and plow my profits back into building more of those goods and sell to more people and get bigger and bigger. Then I can use the profits to borrow money from a bank so I can build goods faster and sell more. Then I can repeat that until I’m really big, I’m helping a lot of people make their lives better, and I’m getting rich.
That’s called BUSINESS.