To tell you the truth, I’ve written and rewritten this post so many times that I’ve lost track of the number, and yet each time I’ve started over, I discover another nuance to this subject that I previously either overlooked or just did not know.  Likewise, I’ve found that I’ve had to really explore and in some cases rethink, my personal opinions on the matter.   It’s one of those subjects that is as certifiably troubling as it is far-reaching in its implications.   The battle over net neutrality, politically, ideologically and technically reaches far beyond what most people think net neutrality is about.  Most of America, get this, are not involved in the operations of the internet and have no idea that this battle is even being fought, let alone, the implications of its outcome.

What do you think Net Neutrality is?

According to Wikipedia -

Network neutrality (also net neutrality, Internet neutrality) is a principle proposed for user access networks participating in the Internet that advocates no restrictions by Internet service providers and governments on content, sites, platforms, the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and the modes of communication.

The principle states that if a given user pays for a certain level of Internet access, and another user pays for the same level of access, then the two users should be able to connect to each other at the subscribed level of access

Currently, everybody online right now is experiencing the basic principle of net neutrality.   We connect to any site we want to via our web browsers, we connect to online services via UI’s like Seesmic, twhirl or tweety, and we can access the web via our smart phones, like the IPhone, Blackberry or Android phones.  We take our online living very seriously and personally, joining communities, creating discussions, viewing news, reading blog posts that interest us, and shopping for the things we want, without many problems.  We create websites like personal family sites, information sites, blogs, forums, video sharing or e-commerce sites, and generally we need only to invest in the right type of hosting, and some underlying security and support structures.  If we want people to actually find our site online, we invest in search engine marketing, advertising and social outreach.  I’m oversimplifying having a presence online a bit, but the basics are there.  There should be no identity, governmental or private, that hinders our access to the web or hinders our online properties from being accessed.

That basic freedom to access and be accessed on the web in the way we are all accustomed to is, in my opinion, very much at stake, and those who are blissfully unaware of what’s going on and how it will affect our online lives is an issue that is as frightening to me as the future of internet access.  If you are of the frame of thought that the net neutrality issue is NOT an issue, that somehow either free market principles or a governing body like the FCC, or just sheer internet power and expanding technologies will do away with any problems we might face, I would love to join you in a collective “Close my eyes and go to that happy place until everything goes away” group hug.  More than once in my life I have overreacted to issues, and for all of our sakes, I sincerely hope that this is one of those times.  But something about the current state of debate is different this time around, and my internal ohshitometer is blinking up a storm and is making my brain itchy.

Hey, wanna see an ugly fight?

Probably the worst thing that could happen to the net neutrality debate is that it has entered into the political arena, where the daily cacophony of ideological babble has turned the subject into a big, wet, seething mass of toxic putrid meat covered in coaxial cables, CAT5, feces covered spikes and cat piss soaked razor wire…and that’s on a slow day.  At times, you would think that someone gave two mentally challenged hyenas chainsaws and blowtorches and told them the subject for debate was “What came first, the chicken or the egg?”  Flame war, as a term, pales in comparison to the spit balls on fire exchange that is currently going on.  A search online for anything having to do with net neutrality will lead you into a world of incredulous claims and unfounded assertions, the likes of which make a clear headed adult want to cry.  Both camps, pro and con, have valid points and just as equal shady points.  Where it gets really wretched is when the social distortion of us vs them and the batshit insane arguments made by people who, polarized by political or ideological messages and FUD, and certainly entitled to their opinion, feel that those in the opposition are employed by the Lucifer Holdings Inc. and should die in a fire while being eaten by zombies in lederhosen.  Ahhh, the internet, you have to love it.

No matter what side of the argument you stand on, both pro and anti net neutrality proponents have a significant stake in the outcome.    You can say that the neutrality argument is ultimately about the freedom of the internet and those using it (which it most certainly is,) but to overlook the huge piles of cash in the corner, behind the Wizard of Oz curtains, would be a foolish oversight.   When business entities as large as those involved are in a slobber knocker, the results off the outcome will affect everyone, whether they are in the fight or not.  We who paddle in the wake of these giant companies are going to see changes in our online lives.

Egregious arguments.  Who’s worse?

On one side, you have the proponents of net neutrality, which have banded together in various organizations to lobby the government and the FCC to pass net neutrality regulations in order to maintain the free access of information that is the current norm.    On the other side are the opponents of net neutrality, which have also have formed groups to lobby congress and the FCC directly to not regulate the internet in any way and allow the market to provide access as it has always done, without restrictions or regulations that they consider would hurt innovation.

Both of these arguments, which I think I’ve whittled down to their most basic form, are valid points of view and sound completely reasonable.  Up until now, there has not existed a distinct net neutrality law and the internet world has relied mostly on a hands-off approach.  However, you can argue that government regulation of the internet has existed under regulatory provisions policies of the FCC under Title II of the Communications Act which categorized the internet as telecommunications services, as well as by provisions set forth by the FTC.  In 2005, the FCC reclassified Internet regulations under Title 1 as an information service.

President Obama pledged support for net neutrality in his campaign, and his pick for FCC Chairman, has been championing reclassification of the internet back under Title II, up until it lost a Supreme Court hearing against Comcast.  Now however, he’s proposing a new set of rules, which surprisingly, the ISP’s actually love to death.  Now you can see why the aforementioned ohshitometer started blinking.  Where the conversation gets really muddled, and downright scary, is the subject of paid prioritization.

Paid prioritization may be used by ISP’s to charge for delivering some content faster than others.  They want to charge content publishers priority access to their customers and have clearly announced the intention to do so.  The ISP’s propose that the growing need for broadband services must be paid for, and charging content providers fees is one of the ways to improve their connectivity to users and help pay for broadband innovation and expanding the services.   Sometimes these fees are referred to as QoS fees, or Quality of Service.

Obviously, online giants like Google, Facebook and Amazon don’t like the paid prioritization argument in any way, shape, or form, and support net neutrality enthusiastically.    The looming danger of paid prioritization practices would put a serious dent in their market share and profitability.  They enthusiastically support net neutrality laws; any altruistic motives might be questionable.  So many have come together in groups or initiatives to support neutrality laws with others entities like Free Press, The ACLU, Media Access Project, Public Knowledge and Net Coalition.  These groups memberships are an impressive list of who’s who of some of the most profitable companies on the internet. Some of these include:

Open Internet Coalition

Save The Internet

Internet For Everyone

However, among them are also neutrality proponents of a more ideological bent as well.  You owe it to yourself to read through the list of members.

Other neutrality proponents, like the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, have concerns over the wording of the FCC’s neutrality proposal because of what it finds as a loophole in wording concerning the “unlawful distribution of copyrighted works.”  So now you know why the Entertainment Industry is all for neutrality laws.

One of my favorite groups can really and truly be called grassroots.  The Open Source Democracy Foundation, founded by those lovable scamps at Reddit.com

But what’s evident in that list is that there are a lot of e-commerce sites on there.  If they are seeing a danger to its bottom line, should that mean that I, as an online retailer, should be seeing that danger as well?

Opponents of any FCC neutrality regulations would include..every major ISP in the United States, including AT&T, Time Warner Cable, Comcast and Verizon, under the auspices of Hands Off The Internet,  (You would think these giants of industry would remember to re-register their domain) along with conservative action groups like Americans for Prosperity, Heritage Foundation, The Progress & Freedom Foundation for starters.  Before FCC Chairman Genachowski introduced his current proposal for regulations, these groups steadily lobbied the FCC to not regulate the internet in any way, or to greatly limit the role of government.  They have argued that non-regulated, free market principles and access to competing providers would objectively regulate the broadband space, and provide for the investments needed to improve broadband service across the US.  They also argue that paid prioritization is absolutely necessary for recouping funds needed to manage their networks and invest in expansion.

One of the first salvos of the paid prioritization view was fired by SBC (now AT&T) CEO Edward Whitacre in 2005 in Business Week Magazine:

How concerned are you about Internet upstarts like Google, MSN, Vonage, and others?

How do you think they’re going to get to customers? Through a broadband pipe. Cable companies have them. We have them. Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain’t going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there’s going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they’re using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?

The Internet can’t be free in that sense, because we and the cable companies have made an investment and for a Google or Yahoo! or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes [for] free is nuts!

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_45/b3958092.htm

AT&T has been one of the most vocal ISP’s that have made a case against any net neutrality rules, and are very active in sending the FCC it’s written opinions on the matter.   In one, “AT&T Comments to FCC on Net Neutrality ” (179 pages.  You have been warned)  paid prioritization takes center stage.

As discussed in our opening comments, the proposed “nondiscrimination” rule would be grossly overbroad in two key respects. First, as described in paragraphs 106 and 107 of the NPRM, that rule would not be merely (or even primarily) a nondiscrimination requirement in any meaningful sense of that term, but something far more onerous, in that it would flatly prohibit any voluntary commercial relationship in which a broadband access provider “charge[s]” an application or content provider “for enhanced or prioritized access to [an end user]” over unspecified links in the portion of the provider’s network closest to that end user. NPRM ¶ 106. This is not a “nondiscrimination” rule; it is a line-of-business restriction.

It continues

Proponents of net neutrality gloss over these infirmities, supporting the proposed rule as though it were an ordinary “nondiscrimination” requirement. But decades of administrative law precedent confirm that it is nothing of the sort. It has never been considered “discriminatory” (much less unreasonably so) under principles of common carriage for a provider to offer different tiers of service to different purchasers, depending on their needs and preferences, even when buyers of the higher-tiered services receive greater priority than other users to shared transmission resources.

ISP’s argue that prioritization is already in use and not subject to scrutiny, such as the use of dedicated hosting to boost performance or CDN (content delivery networks) to avoid bottlenecks at the server.  It seems as if they are arguing that since they are in the CDN business themselves, they should be able to charge for priority access across the spectrum.  No doubt that they have a point to make, but I’m starting to take a bit of issue with that assertion that this practice is an example of why paid prioritization practices or discriminatory practices should be allowed as part of their business model.  The ISP’s have not directly mentioned, other than Google, Yahoo, Bing, Amazon and Facebook, which types of content providers they want to charge prioritization fees, but I’m getting a sinking feeling that their hinting that it’s small businesses like me.  I don’t agree with this position, and my thoughts mirror those of Benoit Felton, CEO of Diffraction Analysis.  In his blog post,  The Slow Suicide of Net Discrimination, he wrote -

There’s nothing that suggests that in an authorized tug o’ war between network operators and the new generation of content and application providers, things wouldn’t go exactly the same way. In fact there’s every reason to believe otherwise. Broadband, as I have often argued, is not a service per se, it’s just something that enables the customer to access services. In other words, I don’t buy my broadband because of the Orange, AT&T or Singtel brands, I buy it because I want Facebook, Youtube and the thousands of other cool services available online.

Think about this: if Google was to refuse a toll to access the AT&T network and discontinued its services over the AT&T network as a consequence, who would suffer the most ? I think it would be AT&T, and I think it would have very quick effects on their customer churn. I don’t think it will ever get to that, but it does suggest that the only content and application providers that the network operators could badger into paying would be small guys who probably can’t afford to pay anyway.

I see it as my role as an analyst to tell the emperors I interact with they are naked (if they are), but in this instance I found it stunning that despite defending a net-discrimination position whole-heartedly my clients seemed never to have looked at the economics. This in turn tells me that inside these organizations this stance works as an ideology and that no factual information can displace this belief that a net-discriminated internet would allow them to solve their perceived revenue issues.

I would be remiss if I didn’t put some things into perspective from the web property owners’ point of view.  In principle, no one hinders your site from reaching those that want to see it, but as site owners, we take measures to improve our accessibility.  Those who have online properties pay and use technology to improve website rendering efficiencies on a daily basis, dependent on the capacity needed to run their online applications for minimum acceptable performance from the internet users point of view.  For instance, I run an e-commerce site selling umbrellas.  The platform I’ve chosen to run my catalog of products and the ability to purchase those products (Magento if you’d like to know) requires enough processing power on my server platform to:

1. Actually run
2. Render the presentation HTML to the user in what is an acceptable amount of time.

So I’m paying some wampum for an enterprise level VPS platform with guaranteed performance and traffic capacity so that visitors to my site will be able to view it in the manner they are used to and will accept.  Do I HAVE to do that?  No, I can run that application on a shared hosting environment, and it might actually run for the first five people that visit the site, but would churn down to a crawl when the sixth person arrives, and in turn, slow it down for everybody else afterward, including the five that got there first.  This is hardware performance, nothing else.  I don’t think I have to tell you what happens to any website that runs slow all the time, or times out while you’re on it.  You move on to something else with a smirk of disgust.  Also, I’m already paying for bandwidth via my hosting provider, who contracts and pays their Tier 1 providers to ensure my site is available across the internet.  So no ISP’s, that isn’t a prioritization example.

What?  You thought that Facebook was hosted on a shared hosting plan?

The fact remains however, that both users and content providers already pay for access to the internet.  In theory, net neutrality really has nothing to do with the fact that access to the internet is something we have to pay for.  Tim Berners-Lee (you do know who that is right?) My Comcast and VPS hosting bills says otherwise.  What’s troubling about the debate is what happens after that connection is made.

Net Neutrality is NOT saying that one shouldn’t pay more money for high quality of service. We always have, and we always will.

Right about here is when my head started to spin.  It’s obvious to me that the neutrality debate is incredibly complicated, and any decision to enforce regulation or not, carries consequences that we have yet to understand.  The internet, and online business in particular, is at one of those “points in time” that history is made.  What really started confusing me is that many internet marketing providers weren’t very vocal on the matter.  Search as I might, I only found a few in the online marketing arena to have an opinion on it.    I found myself asking whether or not this issue crossed their desks, or, if they just didn’t want to get involved.  This is a bit confusing for an industry that not only tells prospective customers that they must be on the internet, but also that they should hire them to maximize their efforts.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not “calling out” or “crying foul” on this, I just wish I had a bit more insight on it.

So I contacted a few voices that I really wanted to hear from.  To be fair, some tried to answer my questions, but I’m positive time and busy schedules didn’t allow.  However, I was really happy and honored when Aaron Wall from SEOBook gave me his thoughts on the matter, particularly with his issues with Google -

Generally an informed society which has abundant access to information, and entrepreneurs who have fairly open access to markets are both things that a person would have to be either self-serving or an idiot to be against. But, like most other important words in the political economy, it gets warped. Thus I view the words “net neutrality” as a political issue claimed to be supported by many business interests for furthering their own business interests. Whatever versions are supported are supported only to weaken competitors or strengthen one’s own business positions. Google is a good example of this in how they considered net neutrality fundamental, and then did back room deals with the likes of Verizon.

Society preaches the virtues of transparency, but think of how hard financial engineers went to hide their losses over the past decade. The self dealing that was core to CDOs, all the stuff that is off the balance sheet and held at inflated values today. Think of all the fraud and deceit that was core to them booking their “profits” before letting the rest of society eat the mirroring “losses.”

Yes it turns out that almost everyone is in support of open markets and transparency in neighboring markets, but few of the people who claim to push for it actually fully want it. The folks who do high frequency trading that front run the market use collocated servers which give them a competitive advantage by putting their trade in just before yours can execute. The Google algorithm is not open, and AdSense publishers needed an Italian newspaper to sue Google for Google to finally disclose AdSense payout terms. That only took about 7 years!

I can’t sit here and tell you that, as a small business owner, I don’t have a biased opinion on the matter.   I try to be as pragmatic as I can in most matters, and I completely agree with Aaron on this.  However, I’m one of those businesses that would be hurt if paid prioritization would be allowed and would be directed at me.  It smells of a double return, or double dip.

It has also become painfully obvious that I am not a journalist.  I can research as best as I can across the internet for information as can anyone and often find the right information.  But the constant change in positions and new information on the net neutrality debate kept getting the best of me.  The name that kept on coming up as the most up to date informed person was Karl Bode from dslireports.com.  I asked him if he could give me some insights, and he was gracious enough to respond.  We had a nice back and forth via email -

One of my fears is that e-commerce as well as bandwidth heavy content providers would be affected by paid prioritization, Karl said -

Yeah, as you probably know, it really began in 2005 with AT&T’s Ed Whitacre proclaiming he’d like to offload network expansion costs magically to some content companies whose ad income he envied (namely Google). The phone and cable companies have long been envious of this ad income, but given that their business to a large degree has become turf protection — above say even running a network — their first thought of course wasn’t cooperation with these new businesses — it was “how can we rig the game, artificially constrict the pipe, or somehow give our own content business efforts a tactical advantage?” Fortunately the Internet is fairly resilient and phone companies (after years of government pampering) aren’t particularly good at innovation or competing — so they haven’t had quite the luck on this front that some had feared (so far).

I mentioned that I’m not a proponent of government regulation, and actually prefer a more hands off approach.  Big corporations are incredible at innovation and entrepreneurship, but also have a history of screwing things up.  Meaningful regulation, in this case, might not be that bad.

Yes — I think this is where I get annoyed with modern discourse. The common “wisdom” these days is that all regulation is inherently evil and corporate self-regulation is the path to some kind of magic Utopia. I think that’s lazy thinking, protecting individuals from having to weigh each instance of regulatory action on its merits and supported by industry fauxcademics. I still believe you need a balanced, intelligent regulator on the beat that knows when real rules are needed — and when to stand back and let business work. Instead of reforming our regulatory structure so it works, we’ve got people who enter politics now under the entire platform that government can do nothing but fail, which of course helps ensure that this is precisely what happens.

So right now, we have revolving door lobbyist-regulators who do little more than nod dumbly at whatever giant corporation wields the most influence and carries the largest sacks of money, allowing them to run the asylum. Lip service is paid to consumers, innovation, and small business — but by and large this government’s actions are dictated by the wealthiest and largest companies. That doesn’t serve small business or consumers, and the end product is clearly illustrated by events like our financial implosion (dysfunction likely to be continued shortly courtesy of similarly lax higher education lending practices).

I think there’s an area where small business, entrepreneur and consumer interest overlap that nobody has really tapped into yet to initiate some useful change. But this has to be associated with a broader, cultural change in the way we think about business.

I think neutrality and privacy are two areas on the beat I cover that could be helped by meaningful consumer protections. Unfortunately, the rules I’m seeing crafted in both of these arenas is little more than showmanship or lip service. This seems to be true now regardless of which party is in office, so these issues rise above and beyond typical partisan bickering. Right or left, Progressive or Libertarian, nobody but AT&T benefits by a government where AT&T’s top lobbyist is writing the rules of the road — and that’s where we are right now. Instead of fixing this, the country seems to prefer yelling at one another on cable news.

There are probably much scarier issues with net neutrality that I just don’t know enough about to articulate, such as an over reaching FCC, but the case that there is not a lot of discourse going on, particularly with search and internet marketers confuses me.

I couldn’t agree more. You’ve got these issues potentially impacting millions of entrepreneurs as well as small, mid and large businesses. These folks don’t seem to realize that a mega-ISPs’ version of a perfect Internet inevitably involves everyone, on multiple levels, overpaying for service, and a gated-wall, old-boys-club approach to doing business online. Unfortunately, we’ve now got companies like Google, who used to be a very vocal champion on network neutrality, realizing its more profitable to shelve those principles in order to protect the billions in potential revenue their Android partnership with Verizon delivers. Go compare Google Senior Policy Director Richard Whitt’s speeches and policy filings from 2007 with those from late 2010.

To me, I’m not even sure anymore if the FCC is the right governing body to regulate the internet.  Over regulation is a big concern of mine as well.  I’ve read most of the proposals, and no-one has been able to clearly define to me what legal content is.  And, the priority access issue isn’t even addressed in the latest proposal.  I mean, they address fair use and access, but what if the ISP’s decide that what’s fair is that all e-commerce websites get charged for access to its customer base.

Many partisans get bent out of shape about what they perceive as the FCC over-reaching on some of these issues. However, if you actually dig into most of the things the FCC has done — be it the national broadband plan, merger approval conditions, Comcast’s no-fine wrist slap for throttling traffic or this recent neutrality rule proposal — you’ll almost always find there’s very little actual regulatory action or hard rules there. What the FCC over the last two decades spent most of their time doing is showmanship that gives the illusion of consumer protectionism, while under the surface they delivered carriers whatever they asked for (a bigger slice of USF funds, merger approval with no meaningful conditions, greater subsidies, fewer consumer protections).

For example, the national broadband plan makes  a big show about delivering 100 Mbps service to 100 million households by 2020 because that sounds really impressive. In reality, that’s something that will happen without the FCC lifting a finger given relatively inexpensive cable technology advancements such as DOCSIS 3.0. Modern regulatory consumer protection is largely theater. I think many individuals and groups would immediately lose their mind if a regulator in this country actually did its job instead of just putting on a dog and pony act.

That said, I’m really not some kind of pro-regulatory fanatic; I try to argue for regulatory balance.

I continue to argue that you might not need network neutrality rules if there was competition in the broadband space, acting as an organic form of punishment for carriers who try to engage in bad behavior – be that unfair prioritization, over-billing, or ridiculous added fees. But the FCC has shown repeatedly they’re not willing to tackle these issues for fear of upsetting say – AT&T, who not only has paid more in campaign contributions than any company since 1990 – but is now a cornerstone of our intelligence gathering operations. I’d actually prefer the FCC spend this time tackling the lack of competition in this sector. I also wouldn’t mind if the FTC did their job and put an end to some of the predatory pricing practices in this sector, such as companies that make up phony fees and bury them below  the line – giving them the ability to jack up the real price while leaving the advertised price the same.

Karl, where do we stand?  What do you see is a possibility?  How scary has this become?

It’s scary, but in context none of this is really new. I think the neutrality issue is only one symptom of a broader disease with very deep roots in this country. False lip service to free markets. Partisan bickering distracting people from real issues. Lack of competition. Useless, bribed regulators who last week worked for the giant corporation they’re now regulating. Protectionism dressed up as everything from patriotism to consumer advocacy.

Despite rhetoric, I do not believe regulators are going to act on the neutrality issue in any serious, meaningful way. I think you’ll see a lot of salesmanship from the FCC about this new neutrality plan being pro-consumer, but I’m absolutely certain that when released you’ll find their rules riddled with clever legal loopholes — and empty provisions requiring ISPs do things they were already doing voluntarily (ex: Comcast already telling people details about their network management technology). As a cherry on top none of this will even be enforceable, given the FCC’s tenuous authority as a result of their court loss to Comcast.

With any chance of serious government neutrality regulations dead in my opinion (and dead even before the recent elections), I think if small businesses and entrepreneurs want to keep an eye on this battle, they can focus on two things:

One, this country needs a serious effort to improve competition in the broadband space. Companies can’t get away with this kind of behavior if consumers are able to vote with their wallets. Contrary to carrier claims and public wisdom, we do not have a free, competitive market in the broadband space. We have a scattered amalgamation of uncompetitive monopolies and duopolies that all-but-own Congress, and literally write the regulation that governs their sector. If small businesses and content companies aren’t banding together to have themselves heard, they will ultimately be trampled underfoot by ridiculous policy that allows companies like Comcast/NBC, AT&T or Verizon to engage in any anti-competitive behavior executives can dream up.

Two, with the FCC debate “settled” in the mind of carriers, you’re going to see a renewed push to impose a low cap, high per gig overage pricing model, since the FCC’s rules expressly give the green light to such plans. Despite a lot of arguments to the contrary, these models are NOT In the best interest of the content industry or consumers. Flat rate broadband is perfectly profitable, encourages content consumption, and is easy for consumers to understand. The industry would like people to believe they’re interested in broadband pricing models that are simply about getting people to only pay for what they use. Were that the case, the vast majority of ISP customers, who use virtually no bandwidth, would downgrade service, wind up paying $5 a month and costing carrier billions.

The industry’s dream plans involve a flat rate fee (say $30) a cap (say 40GB per month), and then a steep per gig overage (usually ranging from $1-5 per gig). People need to ignore the nonsense they’ve read and understand this push isn’t about paying for what the consumer uses. It’s about artificially constricting the pipe, despite fixed and falling ISP costs and the continued decline in the cost of both bandwidth and network hardware. It’s about imposing high additional surcharges on households to protect carrier TV revenues from Internet video. It’s about exerting control and avoiding an ISP execs worst nightmare: life as a dumb pipe, where the only thing they’re useful for is running a network.

But what do you really think?

Not being a journalist and not a disinterested third party, my opinion on the matter is based solely on what I fear will happen to me and small businesses online.  I can only outline those things that I feel are detrimental from a personal point of view.  Having said that, I believe that my personal points of view are relevant to the conversation.  I’m in the soup, and I see the spoon coming down.

Relying on the FCC and federal regulations is problematic to say the least.  If the weak net neutrality provision sponsored by Chairman Genachowski are actually adopted, we are going to see loopholes and gray areas that will be the subject of litigation for years to come, up until it reaches the Supreme Court.   However, if net neutrality rules are written too strictly, and the FCC is actually given enough power to actually actively regulate the internet, the open nature of the internet, the actual neutrality we are hoping for, are doomed as well.  Then we will really see ungodly management costs imposed on the ISP’s and content providers to screen out pornography, gore and possibly even political culture.  If I have to employ sixteen million tricks to get around ISP filters just to get to /b, or Encyclopedia Dramatica, the internet as a communication channel is doomed.

Allowing the ISP’s to regulate themselves is like allowing a sex addicted pedophile to go to a child beauty pageant, not a good idea to say the least.  There are just too may temptations for the ISP’s to rig the game in their favor and their bottom line.  In the end, whether or not the ISP’s start charging for paid prioritization or not, as a small business owner, I have to be weary of any possible threats to my business.   With these issues being debated, and the FCC proposed plans that bear little resemblance to what we’ve been experiencing during our online lives, I really don’t think my fears are completely unfounded.  I’ve said that I do see both sides of this issue, and I want to express that I really do.  In a capitalist society, you don’t want to restrict any company from making money in a fair manner.  The question is whether paid prioritization is fair or not.   Maybe I’m not qualified to make that judgment, or since I’m a online business owner, I’m obviously biased.

I’m not anti-big corporate.  Like I said before, big corporations are beautiful things.  They innovate, they enterprise, they employ thousands if not millions of people.  I aspire to be a big corporation one day.  It’s one of those awesome American Dreams.   I have a cursory understanding of free market principles; I’m benefiting from them.  But I don’t think that the principles of a free market contend that a business entity does not have a fiduciary responsibility for its own growth.  Allowing the ISP’s the power to prioritize traffic based on paid benefits vs real necessity is not beneficial to the internet.  Free market depends on two things, the freedom of capitalism to create opportunity, and a market to exist.  (duh)  In this case, there is just not enough competition in the broadband space to justify the call for self regulation.  If there was plenty of competition in the ISP space, WE WOULD NOT BE HAVING THIS CONVERSATION.  Let’s put it this way, in my town, I can choose from Comcast and, let’s see, oh yeah Comcast.    I don’t have a choice as to what broadband provider I choose, and neither does 95% of America.  That’s right, 95% of the US is serviced by one, or just two broadband providers.  That is not competition and it does not allow for free market principles to regulate the situation.  Further, the ISP’s have such a hold in their regional markets, that it’s nearly impossible for a new provider to set up shop.

A lot of the opponents of net neutrality often point to Google and it’s monopoly on search as an example of why paid prioritization is necessary.  Oh Google, why do you cause so much angst?  I have a love hate relationship with Google.  I love to hate them, and and I hate to love them.  But the fact remains that Google is a destination site.  You don’t have to use it to travel the web, and you don’t have to use it to search the web.  There are other search engines out there, one that has about 30% of market share.  (Binghoo or Yabing)  Monopoly Google is not.

It’s amazing to me that in the US, not only are we having this conversation, but that an oligarchy is really being considered as a good thing.  What’s further driving me nuts is that we are considering two opposing bad things, FCC rules vs No FCC rules, when realistic, business savvy and  consumer helpful options are available.  See what happens when we let the crazies run the hospital.

Links – With Comments

Over that past few weeks, while I was researching this whole kerfuffle, I came across a lot of good information, and a lot of crazy poo poo.  You are more than welcome to look through what I’ve found, but keep your hands away from the trolls, they bite.

Internet Innovation Alliance – Run by Larry Irving.

Long Live The Web – Scientific American.

Institute for Policy Integrity Net Neutrality Issues

NetCompetition – a PR campaign set up by the ISP’s.

ARSTechnica Net Neutrality – These articles are MUST READ.  Great treatment of the debate on NN.

DSLIReports Net Neutrality – Karl helped me a lot researching this, and reading his posts on the matter are gut busters.

Public Knowledge Net Neutrality – Washington DC citizen activists with an incredible roster.

Is Net Neutrality an FCC Trojan Horse – Looking at the net neutrality in a different light, this article really enlightened me on whether the FCC should be the right tool for the job or not.

Electronic Retailing Association – with a cool video.  If online retailers are not fearing this yet, they should be.

Wired on Net Neutrality – I really liked these articles, and their comments.  Watch for trolls.

Stop The Cap- Everything.

LATimes – Filling In the Blanks on FCC’s Net Neutrality Proposal – Ahhhh.

22 Different Reasons Why the FCC Should Avoid Imposing Net Neutrality Regulations -  A compelling argument from the opposition, particularly on market principles.  Oh, and Mike Wendy works for the Progress and Freedom Foundation.  Let’s see who they work for.   Oh, that’s what a paid shill looks like!  Still, you have to pay attention to the argument.

Technology Liberation Front – owned by Adam Thierer, who happens to be the president of the Progress and Freedom Foundation, and is well compensated by these guys.  In all honesty, paid schills are trying the represent the company that hired them, although on the sly.  I still need to know what they are saying so I can make sound judgment.

Scott Cleland: The Precursor Blog – says he’s an analyst, until I found out he is a hired PR man for AT&T.  Now I really know what a paid schill looks like.

McCurry: Upgrading the Creaky Internet – Mike McCurry is a partner at Public Strategies Washington Inc. where he provides strategic communications counsel. He is a co-chairman of Hands off the Internet, a coalition of telecommunication-related businesses.

Net Neutrality FAQ by Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School.  This is a MUST READ.

DPSProject – Makes sense.

Why Google Needs To Stand Up for Themselves – Dave Davies is a friend of mine, and opposes net neutrality.  He’s the reason I listen to opposing views.

The Consumerist on Net Neutrality – Yes, this affects consumers.

Paul Misener of Amazon.com on net neutrality - Pretty much sums up why I have to side on pro net neutrality, but with realistic governance.

Stop Moaning About “NET NEUTRALITY” — Of Course ISPs Should Be Able To Charge Higher Rates For Premium Traffic – Henry Blodget, yeah, that Henry Blodget, completely misses on this, and shows no understanding what’s fair for small business.  *Note – read through the comments and you will see my entry into the Going Completely Apeshit Awards.  I didn’t even form a coherent statement.   But you will see Dan Frommer vomit inanities.

Search traffic and impressions and page rank and link building and keywords and all of that internet stuff is what most search marketers go completely batshit crazy about.  Some search marketers will try to get traffic for almost any keyword that is even loosely related to their webpage, and to me, they are wasting resources and wasting their time, and cluttering up the internet while they are at it.   So doods, stop, you’re making me type in run-on sentences.

In this maddening land grab of search results page property, some search marketers are forgetting something pretty important…marketing.  It seems that after what is relatively only a few years, what’s been missing from search marketing is the actual marketing.    This is not to say that EVERYBODY is lacking in the marketing skills, just a general trend I’ve been noticing.  And, it’s cyclical, whenever a new crop of sites start going for the gusto, it’s 2002 all over again, with the links, and the spam, and the strange keywords, and a whole bunch of other internet shenanigans which Google looks like they are rewarding.  The strong online sites know the value of marketing and they use it to their advantage.  The wannabe’s, not so much.

But at this point, marketing the term has taken on so many new sets of definitions that it’s hard to filter out what real marketing is from what “somebody” says it is.  As I was preparing this post, I was contemplating giving all three of my readers a quiz, and then I woke up.  Let me just tell you what marketing really and truly is.  No long treatise on marketing segmentation and age specific retail comparisons, those are for uppity ups who need to do complex statistical formula so their privates get all tingly.  No, the definition AND purpose of marketing can be summed up in one life changing sentence.

Marketing is presenting the right product, to the right person, at the right time, with the right message, for the right price.

That’s it.  That all of it.  That one sentence is the secret to killer frickin’ marketing.  If anybody tells you otherwise, they are trying to impress you and get you into bed, or make you wish to see them naked.  There are very rich and necessary subtleties to marketing that make that sentence even stronger, and yes, data mining is up there on that list.  But data and research are meant to help you achieve what that one sentence encompasses.  If someone has a different definition that they can prove is more true than mine, then I will buy and eat one of the packs of sno-balls that has been sitting on a shelf for 6 years  from my corner gas station.  I’ll even take a picture of what is happening to me three hours later and post it on twitter for the world to see.   That’s how dedicated I am to my shizzle.

But how do I, or any badass marketer, knows this to be true?  Well, experience teaches like a mofo. It’s not the same to know something you learned from books as to actually be wearing your Stacy Adams when you get beat up by an old guy, but I digress.   Each phrase in the sentence is a concept.  They are not dependant on any order unless your marketing campaign creates the order.  Each of these concept phrases is dependent on all the others, and each must be true to complete the cycle.  Get all of them, and you have the optimum marketing opportunity for your sale, and usually converts your opportunity about ninety-nine percent of the time.  Get each one right, and your gold.  Miss on any of them, and you’re done.   Can you still convert if you only hit a few of the concepts?  Sure, that’s possible, but not as rewarding, and certainly not as frequent.

Think about it.  Marketing is essentially about finding and creating opportunities, the end result hopefully being a “sale.”  The sale could be the sale of a product or service, or the ability to sell someone on clicking on an affiliate link.  This one sentence covers everything from selling t-shirts online to affiliate marketing iPads.  Here is an example of what exactly it is that I’m talking about.

In the retail bricks and mortar world, say what you want about Walmart, but one thing they know how to do is sell products, and they use a lot of the right kind of marketing to do it.  Here is one genius marketing tactic they’ve been employing for at least the last year.  Toys in the cereal aisle.  Yes Georgia, that’s really good marketing.  It is also product placement and effective sales, but it’s perfect marketing.   Here’s why.  If you’re shopping in Walmart, they’ve already got to points working on you, the right time and the right price.  You are shopping , so you represent a hot opportunity, and you know that Walmart discounts everything, so almost everything you are shopping for at the time is at the right price.  Ok, but let’s say you are towing along a 4 to 6 year old with you, which happens to be the source of a major percentage of impulse buys.   This child is more than happy to inundate you with every possible argument from every possible angle on why they absolutely need a LEGO Star Wars Droid Fighter in order to survive the next few years because they will never, ever ask for anything again.  So they are hitting you with the right message, which is “Please shut this child up” without even trying.  So what do you do?  You avoid the toy aisle like I avoid dentists with blood in their hair, and keep on shopping.  You head towards the cereal aisle and whoah and behold, Captain Crunch and LEGO!  You are the right person, a parent, at the right time, shopping, receiving the right message, toys and cereal blasted to you at 300 words per minute, about the right product, NO DUH, at the right price; it’s discounted, so grab it.  That’s good marketing.  No, it is not IMPULSE, and yes, it is good SALESMANSHIP, but good marketing delivers the opportunity good salesmanship.

But how do you translate this online where the first step in any marketing opportunity is search?  A great example would be BBGeeks.  Rae Hoffman is a great online marketer, and I’ve blown smoke up her ass before, and I don’t blow smoke up peoples rears that often, but it’s well deserved. She has done an awesome job of marketing BBGeeks, and creating the kinds of marketing opportunities many of us wish to have.  And when she told everyone how she did it, I certainly paid attention.  How does BBGeeks fit into the marketing mantra of truth? Let’s go old school rap on this, BREAK IT DOWN:

• The Right Product – Sure there are plenty of cellular products that people go on and on about, but only two of them have captured the love and imagination of the nation, and one of them are BlackBerrys’.  The other one is pissing everybody off.   But the BB is a topic of conversation, and topics of conversation are often searched for and purchased online. BB owners and potential owners share some common needs.
• The Right Person – The BB owner or potential customer wants something a bit more than flash and lights.  They need communication and performance, and a set of functions that will facilitate those needs.  They can go one way or another, but the BlackBerry has them.  They want to make their BlackBerry special, and BBGeeks shows them how.
• The Right Time AND the Right Message- BBGeeks doesn’t necessarily go after potential customers with when they are interested in the features of a BlackBerry.  BlackBerry and RIM do that just fine all by themselves. However. BBGeeks is there with the right message when a potential BB customer is getting to the nitty gritty, improving their BB or finding the right service providers, or pimping out their BB.  BBGeeks is there when a BB owner needs help, via twitter, or when they search a particular BlackBerry application and why it’s spouting German cuss words at you.
• The Right Price – Free is good.  Free attracts.  It doesn’t hold, but it attracts strongly.  With a vast amount of free help, free information, free reviews, and the freedom to communicate, the BBGeeks customer is ready to buy the app, or the service, or the actual phone at a price that is now evident to them represents value.

Anyone can argue that I’ve got my analogy all messed up, but I’ve been playin’ this game for years.  BBGeeks owns the secret to marketing sentence, and if you are an online entrepreneur, you can too.  Make the right decisions when marketing your products or services, and follow the Secret To Marketing.  It’s actually quite easy.  Some Do’s And Don’ts:

• Don’t try to sell a 160,000 dollar car to a 15,000 dollar car customer, or vice-versa.  See how Rolls-Royce does it. (Right Price)
• Why in the hell are you marketing DeWalt power tools to 50 year old homemakers?  See how Toolbarn does it. (Right Product)
• It’s five o’clock and Mom is driving the kids home after soccer practice.  She’s tired, she’s hungry, she’s got kids screaming.  Not a good time to tell her about your sale on lithium cell batteries. (Right Time)
• Tell your stereo customer who is interested in Bach and Beethoven about the fidelity and presence of the mid-base tones of the speakers you want to sell.  Don’t tell them how much their ears will bleed when they crank up Manowar.  (Right Message)
• If your customer is shopping for one of the worlds finest leather couches, don’t tell them they can have it in six easy payments of 399.99. (Right Price)

And as for how this relates to search marketing?  Well, search results aren’t just an opportunity for someone to find you; it’s an opportunity to tell a potential customer that they need you. If you have high end luxury products, don’t go for “discount” and “lowest price” in your keywords.  If you an affiliate marketer representing toys, attract your audience with “fuzzy warm bears” or “fun outdoor games”, and use prices in your descriptions;   Parents like low price, but they don’t trust cheap

And if you’re ever on a bus in Atlanta, don’t even mention shoe shines.

You heard it right.  Fuck SEO all over the place.

I don’t like SEO anymore. “SEO” the term has been vilified and bludgeoned to death because of its constant redefinitions and wacko interpretations.  I’m constantly amazed  at some of the utter tripe I am exposed to in my daily internet meanderings, that I’m not surprised when so many of the general audience think that “SEO” is synonymous with sleaze and snake oil.  When SEO companies are marketing themselves as an ETHICAL firm, you know there is somebody pissing in the industry coca-cola.  Although there are fantastic internet marketing shops and experts out there, the rise in the dufus firms is frightening, if not downright dangerous for the site owners who parlay with them.

My gripe is not new and I am not the first person in the online field to rant about “the state of SEO.” or “SEO is dead.”  For the record, I don’t think that Search Engine Optimization is dead, in fact my business requires my understanding and implementation of it.  I’m a fan of search optimization.  But the “SEO” brand in and of itself is something I’m just not interested in anymore.  How can I care about an acronym that’s completely misused and misunderstood by people who are more interested in the “SEO fame game” than anything else?  In the interest of becoming famous, those partaking  will blog, speak and holler the most bombastically fruity information in their ever-expanding attempts at getting a landing on sphinn.  I’ve got some mad respect for badass Sugarrae, and on an interview on seobook, she hit the nail on the head.

SEO Bloggers are like reality TV stars… Most don’t have the talent, they just have the platform to pretend they do.

Kinda like, “I’m  not real SEO, I just play one on the internet.”

In a sense, I’m glad that more and more people understand and respect the need for a proper search optimization initiative, and that’s due to the awesome work  of some respected authorities in the field informing the rest of us on good practices.  However, the proliferation of get rich quick, adsense millions, easy money scams has enamored a set of misled individuals into believing that they are SEO super heroes.  It’s incredible to me that one can get a blog and a twitter account and suddenly brand themselves as  “expert” SEO and Social Media Consultants who wouldn’t know what qualified traffic is if it came and sat on their face and wiggled.  This flood of inaccuracy is part and parcel to my estrangement from the term.

A few weeks ago I read a post called “7 Red Flags that Reveal to Google You’re an SEO Criminal – Avoid These!“  Now, I think Gyutae Park is a competent search advocate, but this post in particular, in my opinion, completely misfires.  This conversation, in this framework, is all wrong, i.e., aligning search optimization with criminal behavior.

I’m sorry, but WTF?  Spamming the search engines is what one should avoid (unless you have ten thousand urls you can burn, but that’s another blog post).  In my opinion, the whole premise for this post is improper, let alone some of the points made.

While Google’s business is to return highly relevant search results that provide value to users, SEOs seek to reverse engineer the algorithm and manipulate rankings for their own gain.

Not a fair statement, and a little lacking in a correlation to facts.  Although Google indeed might be targeting seo’s, I would trust Michael Gray or Outspoken Media with any of my sites, and I know for a fact that they get awesome results for their clients.  These trusted experts are hired as advocates for websites where the owners know that they have what it takes to responsibly make the argument to the algorithm that their site is authoritative for a set of related keywords.   Or take this analogy, I wouldn’t even dare to go to court and represent myself, so I hire a good lawyer.  C’mon dude?!?  Link bait is one thing, but polluting the conversation is not right.  And there is more of this SEO criminality in the rest of the post, and the ensuing comments did not make matters any better.  When Todd Malicoat, another expert I’d trust with any site I own, makes the following comments on sphinn;

It’s discussions like this, why I decided it was probably best if I didn’t write things for the “seo community” much anymore.  Topics like this really make me want to rebrand “what I do”, even though I’ve always been PROUD to be an seo (little less so, when I read things like this).

I’ve got to agree.  It’s disheartening for this kind of karma to be out there.

A recent series of events has also attributed to my hatred of the term “SEO”.  I attended a local meet-up of search and internet people.  At first, I was really excited about hopefully meeting some interesting people and seeing who is out there in the Miami search and internet industry, and for the most part, it was cool.   Except that I had these two conversations that emphasized my belief that it is becoming too easy for a person to think they are an expert at Super Deluxe Super Hero Rockstar SEO.

In the first one, I meet a young and energetic dude who introduces himself to me enthusiastically to proclaim his prowess and seo stylings.  Telling me he’s been doing SEO for 5 years, he is really experienced at all this badass seo stuff and I should read his blogspot blog to see all the people he’s helped.

Blogspot blog, check.

The conversation turns to research and practices, wherein I mention a cool article by Danny Sullivan on Twitter and business cards.  The response.  “Who’s Danny Sullivan?’  Taking a step back so I could catch up with my shoes, I realize that it is entirely possible for someone to work in the search industry and NOT know who Danny Sullivan is, though if you are interested in expanding your skills past the sandbox, start knowing who he is ..now.  But to work in the search field, supposedly for five years, and not know who he just doesn’t make sense to me.

As a follow up, I also met up with another online expert, this time in website usability factors..  Again, as the conversation progressed, I found a blank stare for the words A/B testing, and an even blanker stare when I mentioned Kim Krause Berg, and a straight admission that she’s (NOT KIM KRAUSE BERG, the girl I was speaking too) never heard of eye tracking or heat map testing.  The usability expertise she proclaimed might actually be effective, but the value of it, in my eyes, went down.

Story time.  When I was a kid, about 14, I picked up the bass guitar.  I actually got pretty good; played in bands, jammed with some stars, got signed to a label on Tuesday, dropped the following Friday, all that stuff.  But when I had just picked up my bass, about a month later I knew who Stanley Clark, Bootsy Collins, Charles Mingus, and this up and coming badass Jaco Pastorius was.  I was intrigued with my instrument and the environment of it best practitioners.  This enthusiasm for the  professional bass – playing community was something I shared when I first started trying to get sites ranked, and I followed forums and articles.  My experience “coming up” was definitely during the internet wild west days,  when industry experts were first making names for themselves, but to be a professional in any industry and not know who the top players are just doesn’t imply validity to me.

Let’s put this out on the table; I don’t consider myself an seo expert, always more of a student and fan.  Search optimization is not something you learn in one sitting.  I’m learning something new everyday, and relearning something every other day.  I’ll even venture to bet that most of the seo rock-star set, those who earned their reputation from years of hard work, learn something new everyday as well.  Search is a shifting art form, with the rules being changed, sometimes on a daily basis.   But it seems that all of a  sudden, one wordpress installation makes someone the chief SEO bigshit at NASA.

And sometimes, people who should know better are the cause of the maligning of search.  I think these individuals have a perceived authority entitlement to either scream out their mistreatment at the hands of search suggestions (IMO because their intelligence suddenly ran out on them), or a whorish attempt to create link bait by outing a technique, pointing out a loophole beneficiary, or discussing in public that which is private.

Other times, it’s booger snot moves from the search engines themselves which makes a rumblepup do a double take.  The “nofollow” debate is over and Google does what it does because it can, and we deal with it and move on, but no one can tell me that the whole thing wasn’t an “Ahhh fuck this shit” situation.

So the acronym SEO has lost it’s luster for me.  I’ve had to correct so many completely backwards programs lately, that it’s no wonder those who need to hire a search advocate feel that the industry is full of badness and idiocy.  Adding in brand spanking new “social media tards”  who further muddy the conversation doesn’t help either.  There is a full, big picture here, that requires a conversation along all lines, search, social and offline, that’s not being heard.

The big picture is lost on some small eyes I guess.

Well, a few hours of photoshop and a couple of days of Thesis 1.5 then 1.5.1, and rumblepup.com has a brand new design.  It most definitely represents the way I feel about blog design, and thankfully with a great framework like Thesis, it makes it even easier to fully realize what you want your blog to be.

I can’t say that I’ve used Thesis to it’s fullest extent, and I’m sure I probably came up with some goofy implementations of the custom.css code, but I’m happy with what I’ve acheived so far.  I’m sure there are some additional improvements I can do, and I’ll be getting to them as soon as I learn how to do them.  Thesis hooks have not been my best area of study, and I think I have a weird installation of WordPress 2.8 going on, but eventually, I’ll get to everything I really want.

For the longest time, I’ve been using Thesis 1.1.  I knew how to work it, and in many ways, that framework was a bit easier for me to understand.  Alot of that initial Thesis framework was very similiar to a traditional wordpress theme, where typical functins existed inline in the code.  That is not the case anymore.  Everything concering the look, feel, spacing, layout, you name it, is handled by the onboard Thesis Options and Thesis Design.  Passed that, it’s the hooks baby, and as Chris Pearson promised me I would “pwn them“.  I’m working on that pwnage.

And in other news, this is probably my shortest post in a while.  Hope you enjoyed the brevity.

Today I’m 40. Forty. A 4 with a 0 behind it. Four decades. Yeap, no matter how I write it, it looks like a long time. Depending on how long I live, I could either be at the halfway mark or a little less than half of my life. But you know what? It hasn’t been a big deal. Really hasn’t. I’ve seen other doods go through strange midlife crisis stuff, as if hitting 40 was some kind of bell going off signaling the timer is running down. I was half expecting a last minute holy shit moment, but it hasn’t surfaced. Maybe it will, when I’m 45 or something, or maybe tomorrow. Who knows? People are strange that way.

What I have noticed is that I’m reflecting a lot lately. I’ve been looking at where I’ve been and where I’m going. I’ve been looking at the world around me and seeing the changes in life, technology, politic’s, ect. It strikes me that some of the changes in the world, the change to the flow of history, where things that I expected, like the evolution of computing, the internet, some political changes; and then there where things that happened that I wasn’t expecting at all, like the Teletubbies. Really, what’s up with that?

I’ve lost friends and I’ve lost family. My Uncle German, my aunt Norma, and the one that threw me for a looper, I lost my father Alfredo three years ago. I just don’t know how to express the way I feel today when I think of Papaluca. There is so much I wish I could tell him, and show him, and ask him. There’s this whole conversation that I need to have with him that I can’t. It’s tough. I’d love to bring him to my house, sit him down in a comfortable chair, hand him his favorite beer, a good cigar, and go:

Hey Papi, today I’m 40. How am I doing Pop? What can I expect now? What’s up with all this new eyebrow hair dood? What do you think of my new home? I’m working as hard and as best as I can. What do you think of my pretty wife? I love her a lot. Do you think she’ll make a good mommy? My car engine is a little loud, what do you think it is? Am I a good son Papaluca? Am I making you proud?

…

Of course, I’ve gained a bunch of things to. I started and closed a business, and now I’ve started and growing a new one. I have really good friends. I have a beautiful wife, and we’re gonna make big, beautiful rumblepuppies. I have my family, my mom Myriam, my brothers Lazaro and Alfred and his family, and my cousin Errol (Elli) and his family are still with me. My grandmother Maria (Doña Maria) turned 100 years old dood. She still gives me those awesome birdie kisses. I have a wonderful home, and it’s in a relatively calm neighborhood.  (Hey, big ol Cuban me lives there.  We’re loud folk) And the best part, I’ve still got places to go and people to see.

My body ain’t the same it used to be. Fuuuccckkk that part sucks. Yes,  I can definitely feel a bit perturbed at aging. I can still drink people under the table, but I gotta train for it. When I was in my twenties, I could stay awake for a week. Now that I’m forty, I can stay awake for a week with 4 hour breaks every day. When I was 20, a six foot tall wall was a hindrance, today it’s a freakin’ wall. When I was twenty, I could do 20 things at once. Today I can do 3 things at once, but I can prepare for the other 17.   When I was twenty, running was not that big of a deal, I did it for football all the time.  Today, if someone suggests running,  I suggest some other form of traverse, like a car.   I don’t remember much of my twenties, cause, you know, tequila.

But it seems a little surreal to me.  Inside my head, there’s an 18 year old rumblepup with long hair that’s looking out my eyes at the world.  He’s the one who still goes apeshit for music, and movies, and that sweet XBOX360 Elite I got for Christmas.  He’s the one that reaches for chocolate donuts and a gallon of Cuban coffee likes it’s no big frickin’ deal.  He’s the one that’s a fan of Warren Ellis.  He’s the one that hears the  word “boobies” and pokes his head up as if  the Continental Army just marched in.

“40 years old?  Bullshit, ” he says,  “I’m gonna live forever.”  Then their is the 40 year old with a bald head looking back in there and saying “Thanks for stickin with me kid, we’ve still got a lot to do.”

Early on in my marketing career, right about college, I discovered advertising and marketing giants that literally influenced the way I thought about all creative communication until present day.  Whenever I think about a new project or marketing initiative, one of the first things that comes’ to mind is; “What would Bernbach, Ogilvy, or Burnett do?”  Let me tell you right now, that if you don’t know these names, it would do you a world of good to find out.

Before the Cluetrain Manifesto, before Seth Godin and Viral Marketing, and before Mike Moran and Do It Wrong Quickly, there where these three.  They shaped advertising in their day, and the days to follow, and set a standard that knowing it or not, if you’re a good marketer, you already set yourself to follow.

What these three did and how they did it, in a time when the modern age of US consumerism was evolving in response to a more sophisticated consumer, was to explore advertising, and in relation, marketing, and created a new philosophy that mixed art and science to come up with some of the most successful campaigns anyone had or has seen since.

Just to clarify, I’m talking about Bill Bernbach, David Ogilvy, and Leo Burnett.  Ad men par excellence.  Go ahead and click on the links so you can learn yourself a little something.

And what do these three men have to do with today’s internet/ digital media world?  Simply this, “What’s true today was true yesterday” or my favorite, “All that’s old is new again.” These guys just didn’t change the ad and marketing space, the created new and exciting ways to explore it.  Just reading up on some of their campaigns will seem like complete déjà vu.

Bill Bernbach had an artistic and poetic bent the created a new way of thinking about advertising.  He was the mind that came up with the “Think Small” campaign for the Volkswagen Beetle, which is still recognized as the best advertising campaign of the 20th century. He just didn’t make some pretty pictures and some copy, he created concepts about the products he was trying to sell.  He made his campaigns exciting in a way that that very few had seen before.  He believed the good communication and good art would convey how good a product is.  He set out to prove that advertising and marketing was an art form, and those that did not treat it as such would fall by the wayside.    How many times have you seen bad marketing tank a product or service?

“Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art,  and good writing can be good selling.”

David Ogilvy was the quintessential advertising logician.  To hear him talk, you would think that creativity was a four letter word and should be burned out of the brain with acid.    He was into meticulous research and staying close to reality.  When he did a campaign, the first thing he did was learn everything, and I mean absolutely everything, he could about the product he was creating a campaign for.  When he created one of the best taglines for an automobile…ever, it was all research that led him to it.  “At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”  This after he spent hours combing through the actual car, driving it, sitting in it, and generally bugging the shit out of the engineers.  So, putting both the product and the consumer in his mind, he found that one detail which made the difference.  The Ogilvy Method was used to completely know the product and the products clients.

“We in direct response know exactly to the penny how many products we sell with each of our advertisements. Your favorite music is the applause of your fellow art directors and copywriters. Our favorite music is the ring of the cash register.”

Leo Burnett was a branding animal.  There’s just no other way to say it.  He believed in creating an image around a product was recognizable and communicated the meaning of the product.  This is the man who created The Green Giant, Toucan Sam, Charlie the Tuna, and Tony the Tiger, just to name a few.  He concentrated on style and symbolism, creating what he called the “inherent drama” of a product.  Leo created a brand culture within his own company as well, using a big, black pencil throughout his career to symbolize the warmth and humanity of the people behind ideas.  Burnett was in all things very human and down to earth in his approach.  He believed in ideas, and the culture of ideas born from human imagination. And believed in having fun in what you create, and being bold and honest.

“Creative ideas flourish best in a shop which preserves some spirit of fun. Nobody is in business for fun, but that does not mean there cannot be fun in business.”

Three big names and three big ideas; the vision, the research and the brand are three of the most important concepts in any campaign.  If you’re not using these, then you’re not doing a good job at promoting your product.  It’s not just text links and traffic, but believability and communication.  In this internet age where we judge things by traffic, clicks and conversions, I often wonder what these three would have done.

Between you and me, I think they would have kicked our collective asses.

Yahoo Giants Of Advertising.  I suggest it highly.

Bill Bernach on GOA.

David Ogilvy on GOA

Leo Burnett on GOA

Yesterday I posted a about the problems I see with Thesis.  Since Santa’s gonna be here any day now, I’ve got a set of wishes that I’d like to pass on to Chris Pearson on his ongoing work with the Thesis wordpress theme/framework.   Now, Chris might make me look like a big dummy when he releases COSMO/ 1.4 and this stuff is already in there, but I’m just pointing out what would make me PERSONALLY happy.  Apres moi le deluge and all that stuff you know.

1. Page, Post, and Archive Layout capabilities.  For instance, doing it oldschool, I modified the rumblepup theme for a 3 column layout on the front page and archive pages, and 2 column on the actual posts.  Why?  ‘Cause I’m a BAMF, that’s why.
2. More “sidebars.”  COSMO was originally going to be a “Magazine” type of wordpress thing.  Can’t really do that with only 2 sidebars.  Since you’re handling a lot of the layout dynamically; How about adding some kind of “Choose the number of sidebars you want” kind of thing.
3. 1000px!  I chose Thesis for a couple of reasons.  One of them is that it uses available space on  the screen in an elegant way.  If you switch to a 2 column layout in the current thesis, you back to 800px.  Keep some 1000px options dude!
4. Footer Divs.  Could use an easier way of adding content in the footers.  Why?  Although some people think that footer content is going the way of the dynasour, I think it’s still a viable area that can add to the user experience.
5. While we are on the footer….  Let’s try to look at multiple sections choices, such as 1,2 and 3 column choices.
6. A better commented css file.  Yes, I can read a css file, but a lot of the bloggers who don’t need to learn somewhere, and comments as to what and how each css element affect the design will not only make a happier customer, but a better blogger and a better advocate for thesis.
7. Hooks are awesome, but….  The Thesis hooks system is killer for me, but like I said before, it takes some patience and experience to really put them to use.  Sugarrae’s tutorial went a long way to help, and nothing is like experience, but I think this could be a simpler process.  When you’re done with COSMO, please come back and ‘splain a few things.  Rick is doing awesome, but he’s all alone.
8. EVERYTHING.  I want it to do everything.  Anything and everything I want my blog to do, Thesis should do it and now.  (Ok, I’m kidding, but some new bloggers actually think this way)

Again…Chris can blow me out of the water with 1.4, and all this shit is in there, but maybe not.   Look, in the end, Thesis is what it is, a premiere theme offering much more than what other themes offer, and that in itself is a knee knocker.  However, I’d like to see it taken up one more level.  Chris Pearson is someone who pushes the envelope (ooh, Top Gun reference no less) and I think he has plans for pushing harder.

First things first, I love the Thesis Theme from Chris Pearson (Yes, that’s an affiliate link.  Click on it, it’s good for you).  I’m running my own customized version of it here on rumblepup.  In fact, I’m running at least three others.  I’m sure you’ve seen one of your favorite blogs start using it as well.  I thought I was all cool and stuff when I was an “early adopter” of it, and I reveled in all the creative ways bloggers where customizing their own Thesis powered WordPress blogs (I just can’t bring myself to use the word ‘pimpin’ anymore).  But try as I might, I’m starting to get a little “meh” about it.

The base design of Thesis, in and off itself, is really a great layout; 1000px width for plenty of space, a great markup, 3 columns to put all your stuff, a neat media block where you can put video or images, and a killer header menu.  What’s not to love?  In fact, the blogging community has loved it so much, it has earned widespread adoption.

And therein lies’ my little problem.  Everybody is using the theme, with little or no changes to the base layout of it.  In all honesty, there is NOTHING wrong with “run what you brung,” and the first step to any kind of online success is GETTING ONLINE.  There are a plethora of “hurray rah rah” quotes you can stick in here, but at this stage in the internet game, even a business card site is a step in the right direction.

Success always breeds imitation.  See something that works, try it yourself.  And here is where Chris Pearson really made a theme that kicks ass.  Out of the box, with a few clicks of the mouse, you can change your theme to THREE different kinds of layouts, and a whole bunch of customizations you crank out just by clicking off options.  NICE.

In fact, it’s so nice, that one look at the theme on someone else’s blog, and bloggers just had to have it.  And have it they did; you just have to hand it to Chris Pearson for being an awesome marketer and an awesome theme designer.  The buzz and the affiliate program he put together, along with a little push from influential blogs like Brian Clark’s Copyblogger and Rae Hoffman aka Sugarrae, spread the theme like wildfire, and just impressed the shit outta me.

So…back to my problem.  The theme is being adopted by blogger after blogger, and with all the tools at their disposal to “customize” their Thesis framework, most opt to choose to do the same thing, over and over again;  A header image, three columns, a whole bunch of advertising, or they stick an image in the upper media box, and viola, another obvious Thesis theme.  Does it work?  Of course it does!  It’s a good theme.  Am I starting to get really tired of seeing only slight variations on the theme?  Ooooooh fuck yes.

You know, maybe I’m just being a dick.  I don’t mean to be, and for the most part, I’m trying to be fair. The truth of the matter is that we see this same theme layout over and over because most of the adopters are new or obviously not design orientated.   This group of bloggers are trying to blog professionally,  or at least making a courageous go at it. (some hurrah’s and huzzah’s here folks)   And the inherit danger I am seeing is that there is something that might be lost.

Brand.

Over and over again, online success comes down to a few principles, and one of the most important in my mind is your online brand.  I don’t want you to think in any way that brand is only visual.  It’s not.  It’s a mixture of a group of things that create a corporate culture.  But the visual aspect of any online presence is right up there in the top five things which make the wheels spin.  A recognizable brand is important folks.

That’s not to say that there aren’t any original takes on Thesis.  There are some customizations that are just out of this world.  So good you can’t tell what theme is actually being used.  But for the most part…not.  I’ve started a brand new personal game as I travel the web.  I call it the “and there it is” game.  I average about 2 Thesis spot’s a day now.

I guess you can say that this problem is actually an indicator of a much greater problem, the general suckiness of free blog templates.   I mean, have you seen some of these things?  The good themes get used up so quickly by so many people that when critical mass hits, it’s hard to tell one blog from the other.

When I started on the internet, at a time I affectionately called “the cute ducky animated .gif days”, website design was in its “design” infancy.  Only a few really knew how to do it well, and the rest where just learning.  Those early designers who knew what they where doing, like razorfish, became millionaires, then sold their company and the rest of us grabbed up any html template we could.   These sucky templates where all over the place, and the free ones where the worst of the bunch.  Yellow characters in 6pt Times New Roman on blue backgrounds and a bunch of shiny, blinking .gifs all over the place, oh the humanity!

As the wordpress blogging platform evolved, so did themes.  But as great designers started popping out themes…uhm, well, less than great designers started popping out themes…a ton of themes…lot’s and lots of themes.  Frickin’ teal blue and brown background themes where all the elements are REALLY, REALLY BIG, and the text is really, really small.  Most look like they where designed by someone who just got Photoshop and wanted to show off their mad skills at making beveled rounded corners.  It was template hell all over again.  And what separated really good themes from really bad themes was that the really good themes where ALL OVER THE PLACE, or they cost money.  Thesis is both; a professional theme that costs money and is ALL OVER THE PLACE.

Thesis 1.3.2 was a fantastic roll out, but in all honesty, doesn’t let me do what I really want to do and doesn’t let the average blogger get past a certain point.  The manual isn’t really that thorough, and a few bloggers had to stand up to simplify it.  The frame work doesn’t really allow for granular changes once you have made a decision on the basic layout, because the entire layout is based on the inside Thesis functions.  Whereas before, with 1.1, which was a little more traditional,  I could grab one the theme files, do some changes, rename it as something else, or just change ‘cause I’m a badass that way, and bust out something I need.  Or get some awesome help from Rick “the animal” Beckman.  That’s not the case with the current Thesis, though Rick is actually going batshit crazy with all the work he’s doing in the forums and as support tech extrodinaire, or busting out Open Hook, new installation after new installation are now just different column layouts, but basically “and there it is.”

Look, I can’t really talk a lot of shit here, because I’m still trying to figure the whole hooks and ladders bit with Thesis as I write this, and I’m sure I’m going to get smacked around for it, but it seems to me that once you made some basic design choices via the custom options, it’s no more soup for you.  I like different layouts for different sections of my blog.  Why?  ‘Cause reading a little column down the left third of the screen kinda sucks, but that’s just me.  The answer for this and other design stuff I would like to do I’m sure are in the hooks someplace, but I see another problem on the horizon.  Will I eventually “get it?”   I sure I will.  But I have about 10 years experience makin websites from scratch.  Some bloggers have about 1 – 2 years of working with wordpress and themes, and not a lot of flight time with the deeper nuts and bolts of design, which might or might not help them get past a certain point.  But now if the average blogger want’s to really make a unique impact with their blog, they have to think about brand.  If they want to create a brand, then they have to delve deeper into design, or hire somebody who can design it for them. It’s the nature of running a website.  You want it real special, you have to work at it.  Don’t want to work at it?  Then you get a website that looks the same as everybody else’s, and there goes you brand.

Chris has thrown down a gauntlet with Thesis that a lot of other professional theme and web designers haven’t.  He laughs in the face of other “premium” themes and says “Oh yeah, you with your three color choices, my theme gives you ALL color choices, ha ha!”  But I think that there are a couple of things that could really and truly make a difference here.  I hear that Thesis 1.4, affectionately named COSMO, ’cause it was gonna be something else but Mr. Pearson the badass changed his mind because badasses do that shit, will address my “you’re being a dick” concerns.  I’m really hoping for it.  I have some tips, and I’ll be sharing them, but as usual, my posts are biblical in nature, so I’ll follow up with my “tips to the Thesis man” tommorow.

Oh deary me.  Seems I’m the latest one to get hit with the china domain name scam.  Haven’t heard of it?  Oh, this is a cool one.  You don’t have to take my word for it, it’s been going on all over the place.

You see, this nice domain name registrar company in China has noticed that one of their customers is trying to register YOUR domain!  And, to make things even worse, they are trying to register your Intellectual Property Rights as well!  Well, this gosh by golly good ol Chinese Domain Name Registrar has decided to do the right thing and contact you so you can avoid this whole mess!  They will allow you to head off this nefarious domainer at the pass and register the domains with them on your behalf.

What a cool company huh?  They’ll be happy to send you a list of all the domain names this international terrorist mastermind has given them to register, along with their special “you almost got robbed but we are here to save you” rates so they can  register it for you!

Wow, bestweb-service.net is great ain’t they.

It works like this.  They start going through the Internets, and find your domain.  How?  How’d you find this site?  They just did, trust me on this one.  Then they check of possible combination’s of your domain name, but ending in different tld’s, that are available, then hit you with a scary letter that sounds like this

Dear CEO&Principal,

We are a professional Internet consultant organization in Asia, which mainly deal with the global companies’ domain name registration and internet intellectual property right protection. Currently, we have a pretty important issue needing to confirm with your company.

On Nov 26, 2008, we received an application formally, one company named “SUSNES Holdings Ltd.” wanted to applied for the Internet brand “badassdomain.com” and some domain names through our body.

During our preliminary investigation, we found that these domain names’ keyword and internet brand is identical with your trademark. I wonder whether you consigned SUSNES Holdings Ltd to register these domain names through us or not? Or is SUSNES Holdings Ltd your business partner or distributor in Asia? Currently, we have postponed this application of this company temporarily already. In order to deal with this issue better, please let the principal make a confirmation with me by telephone or email ASAP.

Best Regards,

Lydia

Auditing Department (HK)

Tel:     00852-95660496
00852-95660489
Fax:     00852-82261011
Mail:      lydia@bestweb-service.org
Web:     http://www.bestweb-service.net

Wow, how nice, so I took the bait to see what would happen, and I sent them this.

Lydia,

I have owned “badassdomain.com”, net and org since 2005-10-16, and have registered the brand as a Trade name.  So What exactly are you blathering about?

I have no idea who is SUSNES Holdings Ltd, they are not my business partners in any way, shape or form.  Wait, are those the guys I see hanging out at the local gin joint with a couple of hookers, a crack pipe, and a donkey with questionable underwear?  I mean, I don’t frequent these kind of establishments, but those fuckers owe me money.

Please feel free to contact me should you have any further questions.

Thank you.

Mr. Rumblepup
CEO&Principle&SuperHeavyweightChampionOfTheWorld
“badassdomain.com”

To which Lydia quickly and kindly responds:

Dear Mr. Rumblepup,

Have a nice Thanksgiving Day!  Thank you for your reply. If you have no relationship with them. According to our working experience, there are 2 possibilities:1.SUSNES company is a domain name investment company, they want to register these names before you and sell back to you to gain profits;2.It may be a commercial method, SUSNES company is consigned by your competitor to register, they are trying to replicate your idea and let your customers feel confusion.

We knew your company has registered the domain name “badassdomain.com” and own the intellectual property, this is why we informed you. But now SUSNES company do not want to register your trademark or domain name “badassdomain.com”, they wanted to apply for other domain names and internet brand you have not registered yet.

Following are all the domain names and internet brand which are submitted by SUSNES company:
1. Domain name
badassdomain.cn
badassdomain.com.cn
badassdomain.net.cn
badassdomain.org.cn
badassdomain.asia
badassdomain.hk
badassdomain.tw
badassdomain.biz
2. Internet brand
badassdomain

Because domain name takes open registration, this is international domain name registration principle. So SUSNES company has right to register it. As a domain name registrar, we have no right to stop their application. I think you must know some cases about the domain names grabbed by the third party,we also won’t want to see similar things happen.

As the company whose trademarks relate to the applied domain names, you will get the priority to register these domain names and internet brand. If you think these domian names are important to your company,we can send you a dispute application form and help you to register these domains within dispute period, this is a way to prevent domain name from grabbing. Of course, each company has their own idea. If you don’t think their registration will confuse your clients and harm your profits, you can give up. In order to proceed next step work better, please give me your decision as soon as possible.

Best regards,

Lydia

..

Now, you have to understand that at this point, it’s 4AM in the morning and I’m feeling a wee bit wicked.  I mean, this is just entertainment at this point, so I respond on more time.

Lydia,

I’m sorry, but I can’t understand a fuckin’ thing you have written.  Not only does this read like the wacky information you find on those Chinese Herbal Tea Diet Pills, like “the state of obesity is the fact of being too fat” (Ha, that one always gets me) but it’s also so incredibly eyeball socket grating as well.

I mean, what does ‘Thank you for your reply. If you have no relationship with them.‘ supposed to mean?   Are you thanking me for my reply as long as I don’t have a relationship with them, because if I do, then to hell with me?

‘According to our working experience’.  Wow, your working experience actually SPEAKS to you?  Mine hasn’t spoken to me since I went to work for Siegfried & Roy all those years ago, but that’s another story.

‘they are trying to replicate your idea and let your customers feel confusion.‘   Oh yeah?  Well what if my customers are not allowed to feel confusion huh?  I mean, I know the Chinese State pretty much controls everything over there, but over here in the US, the only people who control anything are the ones with the big tanks.

‘they wanted to apply for other domain names and internet brand you have not registered yet’ OHHH, is that all?  Go ahead and let them have those domains.  I’m good with that, cause none of my customers are in China, and you know, I own the .com and everybody knows that there are those Chinese Malware Sites and all.

‘As the company whose trademarks relate to the applied domain names, you will get the priority to register these domain names and internet brand.’ Now your just trying to make my head spin.

‘If you don’t think their registration will confuse your clients and harm your profits, you can give up.‘ NEVER, NEVER will I give up.  Don’t you understand, that this is my calling in life?

‘In order to proceed next step work better, please give me your decision as soon as possible.’ I mean really, What the Holy Hopin Horseshit is that?  Does that mean you want my next step better work, or are you warning me about a hole in the floor, and to be carefull where I work?  Or is that step?  What, do you think people in America can’t walk or something?

Ok, since you said please…here’s my decision.

Go away and take a course in ‘Using your brain to think – The Curly Method‘ and see if we can get some better communication going.

Yours Truly

Mr. Rumblepup

CEO&Principle&SuperDeluxeHamburger

badassdomian.com

I haven’t exactly gotten a call back yet.

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