By Tom Miller
Dizzy Thinks. Often. But not very thoroughly. Or fairly.
A quick paragraph to deal with Mr Big Celebrity's attack on me this morning (could you get any more pompous?)... I suppose he reckons that everyone writin
g about new media should be a cabinet minister or a full-on basement dwelling techie?
The explicit point of my post was that you don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand the difference between a site in development and one that is ready to go live. I'll concede that the beta banner is still up, but before, you couldn't even use the voting mechanisms. The faceless press man at CCHQ didn't even notice that the beta banner was still up before the site was launched!
Now, on to something useful.
Dizzy reckons that our nameless tribute act's site have somehow ouflanked us in one of his carefully selected Google searches. Side point, but I think he's also a bit harsh, describing them as insignificant, and all.
Think about how specific that search is, how many words you have to run through Google (the international version, no less) to produce this result...
"Together we can make change happen - LabourSpace.com"
A bit complicated, that phrase. It works fine as a title for an article, but is a clumsy Google search.
Let's try some others:
From Google UK:
"Together we can make change happen"
LabourList comes first and second. No mention of Labourist.
"Labourspace"
LabourList comes high. Can't see Labourist anywhere.
"Ed Miliband"
LabourList is on page 4. Once again, Labourist is at the back of the queue.
"Squeezing the Lib Dems" and "Obama Breakfast" both provide top rankings for LabourList. Probably because they're rather obvious searches that someone would actually look for, rather than contrived tracts that a Tory with a few spare seconds can crudely googlebomb.
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Not our job Tim, sorry...
You'll want 10 Downing Street for that one, I'm afraid.
"BTW, why does your comment box appear off the screen and then fail to word wrap so I can read 'what I'm typing thhere as its' all a grey space?"
Because you're doing it wrong.
"the opposition forgets I have been in this job for five days"
I have only "skim" read this article as it appeared in my RSS feed. I did thoroughly read the linked Dizzy article. As a technical piece yours is not a great article, but as method of engaging other bloggers it has served its purpose.
The over riding argument seems to be whether the left or the right "get it" in terms of the new technology.
My question to you is if the Government "get it" why then are they perusing the national database for communications and web surf history, when if they understood the first principle of electronic data they would not be pooling this information in electronic form. Electronic data will only be totally secure when computers are in control of us, you cant write a credible secure code without a backdoor, unless you are stupid.
My second question is how would you handle all that data without being heavily reliant on software, also full of "backdoors".
If Labour "get it", it is not apparent from you policies.
i have to say, incidentally, you are living up to your reputation
The sandbox will artificially dampen the page's true search ranking position until it has become a more established site.
(Also... Do. Your. Research. First is not always best, and you do not want to goad me into an SEO game, battle or war. Because you will lose.)
Tom Miller was waving some 'likely' queries about; I figured I'd show him what one looked like. I get hundreds of visitors every day from just one of those queries on a relevant post - that could be more relevant now that Gordon Brown has been offline for months - thereby setting it apart from anything that Tom might consider contrived. Happily, my example also highlighted the web ineptitude we have come to expect from the present regime.
But thank you for the small courtesy of not deleting my comment. This time.
(That said, I note with interest that you have so far failed to publish my comment about the - ahem - freewheeling way in which LabourSpace.com was promoted recently.)
The service has been down since August 2008, BTW. Barack Obama was ready to go with a custom-made interface on Day One.
(*'squeezing the lib dems' is an obvious search? really? rea-ching.)
[Will you be deleting this comment also, Mr Draper? On what basis? You'll look a bit silly banning me for daring to complain about past deletions. That's been tried before.]