2004: Google unveils Gmail. It will change webmail… and a few other things as well.

Five years ago, if we wanted to talk to somebody halfway around the world, we'd open up Outlook, Eudora or some other bulky piece of software on our desktops and type an e-mail.

Most of us had webmail, which was a convenience on the road since we could access it from any computer, but it wasn't enjoyable. Web inboxes were slow and cumbersome, messy with checkboxes and radio buttons, and often so riddled with spam they had to be emptied frequently lest they reach capacity.

Gmail changed all that. It was fast and elegant just like a desktop app. There was so much storage, you never had to delete anything. In fact, you couldn't — there wasn't even a Delete button! And you didn't miss the Delete button since it was almost entirely spam-free.

Gmail was so slick and easy to use, many of us switched to it full-time and have never gone back.

On its fifth birthday, it's difficult to ignore the enormous influence Gmail has had not only on web-based e-mail services, but on rich web applications in general. Several of the concepts introduced by Gmail, which were at the time on the bleeding edge of application design, have since been adopted by the web's mainstream.


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Over the weekend I was asked twice about social bookmarking and links, and whether or not those social links have SEO value.

I find that the answer to this question is detemined on how one values SEO and linking. Sure, some of the links from bookmarking sites do not use nofollow, and this may help with your search rankings and inbound linking. I’m a big fan of the verticalization of linking, so I believe that if a niche social media site links to a site which shares its same vertical niche and target, the link is worth more.

The Power of the Profile

Futhermore, social media profile pages can still send some nice juice to the website linked to from that page. If the profile is REAL and active, chances are the link will be worth more. Setting up social media profiles across social sharing and video sites is always good for branding, as an image can be uploaded to the profile and sometimes those profiles will rank well for a brand name, especially Twitter profiles. I highly suggest registering your brand across social media sites for the brand-value, and before your competition does. Try using Check User Names for this, it’s a tool for checking your brand or keywords across nearly 100 social media sites to see if your branded profile is still available.


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THE popularity of Google’s search engine in the United States just grows and grows. In the past three years, its market share gains have even been accelerating, making some people wonder whether the company will eventually obliterate what remains of its competition in search.
Certainly, antitrust scrutiny is a growing worry at the Googleplex. Last year, the company abandoned a proposed advertising pact with Yahoo when the Justice Department said it would file an antitrust lawsuit to block the deal. Last week, a small Web site operator, TradeComet.com, filed an antitrust suit against Google, accusing it of unfairly manipulating its advertising system to harm a potential competitor.

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