Ever look at an empty apartment or house?

Webmetricsguru.com reminds me of an empty apartment that I’m moving into - with all my stuff (ie: RSS Feed, New Template, Google Analytics, Graphics, and not even all my posts loaded in - after all - I wrote more than 3000 in the 2.6 years I had it at KMM).

I have a designer I’ve hired to come up with a really “different” template - for this blog - I’ve given her my vision and now I’ll wait to see what she comes up with.

And there will be ads running here too, but my ideas of that are to use much more targeted advertising than before, and go right after the post itself - I’d like to go with Buzzlogic and perhaps, AdRoll, for our new Blog Network.

And I’ll be at Search Engine Strategies next week - and I’m hoping to get the Google Penalty that was applied to the entire Know More Media Blog Network - it seemed unfair when it was inflicted last January - though I was held captive by Know More Media’s advertising decisions with penalized me, and the rest of the bloggers, even though we had nothing much to do with why the penalty was applied.

Anyway, that’s in the past.

Be patient for another couple of days while we get Webmetricsguru.com up to date and re-invigorated - with a new look and feel.

marshall sponder

Time to move on to a new and much better opportunity - and starting 2008 off well, I'm leaving IBM for a new opportunity at Monster.com where, among other things, I'll be working closely with the Visual Sciences platform.  Should be fun!

I'm excited and grinning.

One of the first things I did, after making some calls yesterday, was have a drink with Ancient Shriner (Code4Software.com's Jared Freedman) in Second Life, at one of the houses he's built - that's wine I'm having - in case you can't tell.  I'm the avatar on the left, Jared is on the right.

I was at a book signing tonight to see James J. Cramer - Jim Cramer's Stay Mad for Life:

  James J. Cramer - Jim Cramer's Stay Mad for Life
December 05, 2007 7PM
@ Barnes & Noble Booksellers
Union Square
33 East 17th Street
New York, NY 10003
212-253-0810
Book reading/Book Signing
Get a signed copies:212-253-0810

 

The event was also mentioned in The Street and added to my last post about the Sub-Prime Mortgage Rate Freeze and the Florida Fund Collapse, both of which James Cramer mentioned in his talk and book signing tonight.  

I enjoyed listening to Cramer though I'm not sure if he's right about everything he mentioned, or not; but he agrees that Real Estate, buying a home, is a losing money proposition and will continue to be, for at least the next 18 months, if not longer.

I decided to start an additional blog - one that I can have more control over - a blog where I'll complete what I start here, in some cases. 

I posted there for the first time today - Thanksgiving - My first post to Eye Metrics - Marshall Sponder, Blogger.

The new Blog's name is www.eye-metrics.com and while I could also think of it as www.my-metrics.com (which I just registered).  I guess I'm like Frank Sinatra, and I want to do my own metrics, my way.  I'll find a unique slant, and a way to combine, fully, my Art with Web Analytics in a way, that perhaps, I hold myself back from doing here.

When I saw a Google Alert on my name just now and found myself at Bloglist: Marshall Sponder in Practical ECommerce; I almost forgot that I gave an interview to Practical ECommerce about 9 months ago (and totally forgot about it). 

Actually, the interview with me was published in July, but for some reason, I didn't find out about it till now - when Google Alert picked it up.

Me, earlier this year - actually this is a photo I like (decide to use a group portrait from the evening I met Craig Newmark at a Mediabistro Blogger Party and masked out those surrounding me - I guess I have my reasons)

Well - here's the interview http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/528/Bloglist:-Marshall-Sponder/ 

BTW, if you want to see what company I'm in, look at the other interviews that Practical ECommerce published - here are some of the more notable one's from my perspective - Interview: Oneupweb CEO On The Future Of Search, Interview: Microsoft Exec on Future of Software, Jeremiah Owyang is on my WAA Social Media Committee Interview: Ecommerce Implications From Social Media while Andrew Goodman is pretty well known in the SEM industry Bloglist: Andrew Goodman as is Rand Fishkin in the SEO Community (which I'm also part of) Bloglist: Rand Fishkin.  Who can forget about Jakob Nielsen (even when we want to) Bloglist: Jakob Nielsen.  I used to get Yaro Starak's email Bloglist: From SEO to Self Development but ended up finding it didn't really fit me - still, he's interviewed here too.  Also Anne Holland from MarketingSherpa, a woman I've met a couple of times briefly - Marketing Tips From Marketing's Sherpa and Craig Newmark, who've I've met earlier this year Craigslist.com's Craig Newmark while Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne is a brand that I keep running into - even if I've done no work with them up till now.   Chris Anderson, who wrote the Long Tail was also interviewed - Wired Magazine's Chris Anderson while GoDaddy's Bob Parsons: We're Only Seeing the Tip of the Iceberg is famous for his GoDaddy domain and the Superbowl.

Ok, I'm in good company - just wish they told me about the post earlier - I'd have promoted it over the summer had I known - oh well, better late than never.

I took a look at Practical Ecommerce traffic stats as compared with my own blog, Webmetricsguru.

It looks like Practical Ecommerce gets about as much traffic as I'm getting now on Webmetricsguru.com (70,000 - 90,000 visits per month) if Compete.com is not too far off. 

Since my blog gets and has gotten very good traffic for a Web Analytics Blog  getting interviewed here, is an honor and I'll be reading Practical ECommerce regularly ongoing.

Anyway, I am glad my Interview with Practical ECommerce was just published…and on Thanksgiving…what more can a blogger ask for?  Ok, they didn't actually publish it on Thanksgiving - but since I found out about it today, to me it's like it had been published on Thanksgiving.

I was interviewed over the weekend by web analyst and fellow blogger Anil Batra over at Web Analysis, Behavioral Targeting and Advertising blog.  I briefly met Anil Batra at Emetrics Summit in San Francisco earlier this year but have been aware of his blog for a while.

Here's the links to my interview; it's in two parts becasue it was really long.

• Interview with Marshall Sponder - Part I 

• Interview with Marshall Sponder - Part II

Overall, I think it was the best interview I've given to date.

Last Sunday I Met with Penelope Trunk who wrote BRAZEN CAREERIST The New Rules for Success; in this post I'll review Penelope's  BRAZEN CAREERIST book. 

I did read the entire book - did not skim the pages and Penelope Trunk signed my copy (with a nice paragraph).

Some of ideas Penelope puts forth in direct and unconventional way are as follows:

1. The American Dream for Gen X/Y is not about money or security - it's about fulfillment and is measured by leisure time to spend more free time for things Gen X/Y enjoy doing.
2. Changing jobs often is the norm for Gen X/Y and it's more important to grow and learn - there's no job security, no pension and usually no long term prospects with any company, any longer.
3. However, when your working for someone, your chief job is to make your boss happy.
4. Authenticity is the most valued quality of Gen Y - being genuine, doing things you know and believe in and not doing things you don't believe in.
5. You get hired for a job because you are liked, not because your competent - being hired is a measure of  how comfortable your interviewers feel with you and if they like you enough to want to work with you.  You can study and prepare for an interview and it's very helpful to become a story teller - find a way to tell your story.
6. Sex Discrimination is here to stay - and it's best, according to Penelope, to realise it's happening and do your best to ignore it, transfer to another department or find another job (she mentions that fighting Sex Discrimination directly usually does not work and ends up being a bad career move for many Woman - and she gives examples from her own life (she follows her own advise).
7. It's important to work hard, but not too hard, and not to be the hardest worker but the smartest work, or at least, a smarter worker.
8. Electronic communication can't improve the relationships you don't have with your coworkers - you need some face time.

There's a lot more in BRAZEN CAREERIST that is much different than you'll read in any career book I've seen before this - Penelope cuts her own path and makes a convincing case for her approach to the workplace and work/life balance.

One thing that came up when we met last week - children with Social Autism (IE: Asperger's Syndrome) have, or are going to have a very hard time finding jobs and keeping them because Autistic people lack key social skills, despite being brilliant.

As a result, I hope Penelope Trunk writes her next book (or a future book - it does not have to be the very next book) on how Autistic and Socially Challenged children can find jobs and hold down a normal life / job, etc.  It's not an easy job, Penelope would have her work cut out for her - but we both have interests in such a book being written - because we both have children that have those issues.

In fact, growing up, it's possible I had/have some of those same issues and my life has not been easy (at least, to me it's seemed very hard - maybe to someone else …they'd say my life was easy). 

I would have thought that with so much of life today being dominated by the Internet - a brilliant but socially autistic child can thrive and find work - I believe, is still true.   However, what Penelope says is also true - you can't get or hold down jobs if you don't get along with / like the people you work with and vice versa.

As far as buying this book - I think everyone would benefit from reading it and I'm sure BRAZEN CAREERIST will be a success for Penelope Trunk - and lead to more books, and hopefully…the book I hope she'll someday write for her kid and mine.

Buy BRAZEN CAREERIST - you will like and learn a lot from this book! 

I spoke with Brian Eisenberg at SES NY06 a couple of days ago and he mentioned, in passing, a new book of his that’s coming out.  Did not say anything more about it.

Tonight I got the scoop about the new book from the FutureNow Blog.

If this new book "Waiting for your Cat to Bark" is marketed like "Call to Action" i’d expect there will be discounts offered before the book is published.

I’m looking forward to reading Waiting for your Cat to Bark.

At lunch today I sat at a table of Bloggers, most of them fairly well known.   In fact, Chris Pirillo was sitting across the table from me and I’m looking at one of his blogs right now.   Chris is in day 6 of his GoogleFasting.    I think he’s trying to avoid Google for a week to get over what he termed "his addiction" to the search engine.

I suggested that maybe he just needs to give up his addiction to all search engines…."Just don’t use them".   He was not quite ready to go that far….Yet.

I told Chris that I wish he’d change the background of his personal blog from the wood coloring to something a little easier to look at.   

It sounded to me like Chris Pirillo is a very, very successful Blogger with a ton load of traffic every day.  It appeared that alot of the bloggers I sat with knew each other for quite some time and many had worked together before.

Another Blogger I sat next to was B.L. Ochman of Whatsnextblog.com

From B.L. Ochman I got the first real explanaition of what I needed to do for Juan Enriquez in terms of Blog Buzz for his book the United States of America.  I wish I had spoken to her two months ago.

It’s not that my ideas about Blog Buzz were wrong - they were right on.  Still the real way to generate Blog Buzz for an author was this:

1. Juan Enriquez, in this case, should have his own blog where he releases information about this book and material not in the book.

- invite bloggers to post to it (perhaps in some cases, contribute to it) and get the Buzz started.   Keep releasing information on his blog and build up many backlinks.

2. The Podcast thing would have helped too… as he speaks well.

In other words, Blog Buzz comes from generating BUZZ from your Blog….no Blog, no BUZZ.    I’m sure I probably missed a step or two and if I did, B.L. Ochman, please fill in the blanks.

She was also doing a lot of corporate consulting work and her blog also has a large following.

So that was my lunch.   Oh yes…one more thing.  

There was a famous Spammer that came by and was talking….was not paying much attension to the conversation on that side of the table.  Turns out the famous Spammer is loved by Google because he generates so much money for the big G.   In fact, the Spammer scrapes content from all over the web and then creates fake blog sites and runs AdSence on them.  People then go to these sites and try to escape them, often clicking on one of the AdSence Ads. As a result, the Spammer makes several thousand dollars a day in earnings - mostly off of the poor advertisers.    Poor Advertisers - your AdWords high CPC ads are going to support Spammers that are delivering worthless traffic to you (by the time such traffic reaches your sites….the visitors probably hate where they landed).   

Yes,….interesting lunch.

A lot changed since I started writing this blog over two years ago - just wanted to quickly update that while I work for Monster Worldwide, nothing I say here represents their beliefs or opinions; they’re just my own.

Also, I’m an artist and have a blog called ArtNYC, or www.artnewyorkcity.com and another Web Analytics Blog, www.theanalyticsguru.com - The Analytics Guru is my own personal analytics blog.

I continue to post to other blogs on occasion, such as www.Smartmobs.com but most of my work is in the blogs I’ve mentioned above.