using the term "friend"

The dual use of "friend" as one who reads and one who trusts doesn't necessarily reflect the definition used in everyday speech. Even individual users on a user's friends list contains a mixture of people met through online friendships, real world friendships, general interest, and courtesy (a user "friending" someone who "friended" them). Sometimes, a friends list is something entirely unrelated to social relationships. Rather, it is a reading list, a puzzle, a collection, or something random with no social significance.

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"Friend" is used, without qualification, to describe very different things in the LiveJournal community. This is sometimes a source of hurt feelings, conflict, and other misunderstandings. This is intensified since "friending" and "defriending" ( to add or remove another user from your Friends list) is so easy. On the other hand, real-life friendships are formed and lost over longer periods of time.

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Creating a friend relationship on LiveJournal requires no permission, or action, by anyone but a single user. Any user has the power to friend any other user. Many users are sensitive to being added as a "friend of" controversial users or someone they actively dislike. To counteract this, a feature was added. It allows users to hide the entire list of others who listed them as friend.

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On April Fool's Day, 2004, the LiveJournal staff did a prank on users by changing the terms "friend" and "friend of" to "stalking" and "stalked by." While many users wanted to keep the terms, it caused controversy. This was particularly with those who were victims of stalking.

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Despite the problems, the word friend continues in use. It defines these multi-faceted relationships on LiveJournal. Possibly, this reflects the designers' intent for LiveJournal to become more like an off-line community than some purely on-line organizational structure.

Google kicked me out

I started a website July 2005. It took 6 months to get out of "the sandbox" aka "the pit of dispair" for those in it. Finally, the big day came when entering my domain in Google actually produced results This was after google had used multiple megabytes or more every month for 6 months indexing the website but hadn't included a single page. Fairly quickly after this, level 2 and 3 pages started making showing in Google. I got pagerank of 2 (not great but a big improvement over 0).

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Around a week ago, I began to notice results dropping. Only the main page and 58 "supplementals" were showing. These were all pages from July/August 2005 (they had cached pages then but never included them in the index). Anyway, today, all the supplementals are gone. A site:xyz.com command produces 1 result. It is my main page. And, it's not text from my main page in the description. Instead, it is the description from dmoz (i.e. the google directory). Basically, I've returned to "sandbox" purgatory, or possibly even worse, plain old "I-don't-really-exist hell".

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The thing which is hard to understand is why. It's a non-profit fansite. It is for an actor who is a household name. Their is original content. In fact, it's so original, I feel confident saying there is a lot of material on the website which isn't found anywhere on the web. That's because we actually scanned it, or wrote it.

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We have inbound links from PR 9 websites like IMDB and DMOZ with lots of 6's and 7's. We have won awards for being a great website for content. We are on Page 1 in both Yahoo and MSN for searches on our main keywords. If we are not the best, certainly we are in the top 2 websites for our type of content type.This is why we have plenty of inbound links from peoples blogs, livejournals, forums, etc. to our main page AND deeper web pages.

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discussing the Google sandbox

In the old days, it seemed the monthly update cycle was due to the three weeks needed to go through all the iterations to resolve PageRank. Definitely, PR is calculated differently these days. However, why would PR iterations slow down so much? I'm believe in the complete replacement of PR as the basis of website ranking (although it probably plays a part later)

My thoughts on the Sandbox revolve around Google no longer basing it on the page but on the Search Phrase. After the Florida update, we could compare two radically different sets of results using the -asdf string. It seems the new results were not a filtered subset of the old PR-based results. Instead, they were an entirely different set of results. Obviously, there were some results in common, but not as far as ordering.

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These search phrases were called 'money phrases' because they were primarily centred on phrases targeted by commercial web sites. The number of covered phrases expanded massively in August, 2004. It covered non-money phrases. In addition, there was a 'website filter' applied. It would suddenly reduce all the website rankings of pages, massively. This was for all the search phrases Google recognised.

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Following this line of thinking, you see a possible explanation for the way the Sandbox works. You create a website. At first, the web pages are 'folded in' to the results. At some future time, between a few days and a few weeks, they are given more permanent ranking within the search phrase.

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Maybe, Google does a 'do we trust this website' calculation. It is a combination of Trustrank, age of links, nature of links, power of links, similarity in pattern of links to spam networks, or whatever. After this, the traditional algorithm, including PageRank, is applied.

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The idea of 'trusting websites' relating to a single iteration of some set of factors is interesting. It was thought 'search phrase' ranking (such as Latent Semantic Indexing) was beyond the current computing power for a large number of search phrases. But some people who wrote papers, on these subjects, ended up working at Google.

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Each profile has two standard "blurbs": "About Me" and "Who I'd Like to Meet."

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Profiles contain sections about standard interests, including music, television, books, and movies. There are specific personal details, with marital status, physical appearance, and income. Profiles contain a blog.

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Customizing MySpace includes uploading images to the site. Choose one of the images as the "default." This image is shown on the profile's main page. Also, it appears to the side of the user's name on comments, messages, etc. MySpace.com has recently added the option to upload videos.

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There is a count of the friends the user has. A total of eight friends, or "Top 8," are shown on the profile. It has a link to a page listing all of the user's friends. Below this, there is a "comments" section. Here, friends leave comments about the user for all viewers to see. Most users leave comments which are intended to be personal. This leaves the whole MySpace network to read their business.

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Kobe Bryan'ts greatness

Some cats don't see this. If L.A. thought they had to drop either Kobe or Shaq, they made the right decision. How do you keep Shaq at his age & size over a player in their mid to late 20's? And, they probably haven't reached their full potential.

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MJ set a rediculous standard. However, Kobe is the closest to being Jordanesque. When you look at MJ's career, it's doubtful Kobe accomplishes the same. MJ set the bar too high, so I don't judge him on an MJ scale.

Out of the 3 NBA Championships, all of the MVP's went to Shaq. This put Kobe 3 in the hole. He's in the hole for the 2006 MVP, as well. Personally, Kobe made Shaq look better. If there were no Kobe, L.A. would not have won that game 7 to Portland in 2000. They would have struggled with Indiana in the Finals.

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Kobe is similar to MJ in their ability to get a shot off at will. They both create instant offense. Shaq has to be in postion to create offense. Kobe does it anywhere on the floor. He is the closest to MJ as a threat in the clutch. I've never seen Kobe on the bench, in LA, for fear of being fouled at the end of a game.

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Cats only question Kobe because of the MJ comparisons. He perceived as arrogant, or too confidence, or guilty for the stuff which went down with Shaq. MJ was questioned until no one could deny he was the greatest. The same happens with Kobe.

hand-coding in Yahoo SERPs

Yahoo does not seem to trust their SE algorithms. The hand coding is becoming more and more prevalent. It is approaching full-on editorial directory status, since they are hand-editing the related searches as well.

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It's sad Yahoo sunk a quarter billion into search technology when they bought inktomi, etc. only to bag it and go the directory route. If this is the direction they are going (it appears to be), they need to dedicate more resources to the hand-edited areas. There is no excuse for waiting years to update certain areas.

Furthermore, Yahoo needs to disclose which serps are hand-coded. Then, give users some explanation why they are seeing these results. Are they Yahoo partners? Was it the site design? Are their qualified editors for the areas websites are affected?

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Seriously, they need a little FAQ about how they rank websites, like all SE's do (vague but something). Plus, ADD the truth. "Often, when our technology is not deemed sufficent, we choose to select the ordering of pages".

Let's be clear, it's not about how good or bad the hand coded serps are. This is about them not handling it properly. If they want a good directory, they NEED employees who are somehow qualified to be editors. And, they NEED to occasionally update the serps.

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Lastly, there is a lot of room for corruption here. They blatantly place websites wherever they see fit. It is not by software, but by preference of their staff. One wonders how and if corruption is avoided.