Mark McLaren of McBuzz Communications and Wayne Bishop, owner of Arbutus Software Inc., creator of Joint Contact, will present “Introducing Web 2.0″, a seminar offering an overview of new developments in online marketing and collaboration using social networking tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, blogs and RSS.

Introducing Web 2.0 will be held on Wednesday, July 2, 2008 at the Community Center at Mercer View, Mercer Island, Seattle.

SUMMARY
LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, blogs, Wiki’s, Podcasting, RSS, XML. The Web 2.0 movement has ushered in a host of new technology and business opportunities that can leave one feeling dizzy and confused. In our 60 minute seminar you’ll learn the basics about popular Internet trends that can help you promote and manage your business.

For more information, see the Introducing Web 2.0 web page, or Upcoming.

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McBuzz Communications LLC joined the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce in December 2007. We are looking forward to being a part of this very active organization and the thriving Seattle Eastside business environment it represents. Bellevue is a city of roughly 118,000 that, along with Kirkland and Redmond, belongs to the booming Eastern side of Washington State’s King County.

The Bellevue Chamber sets high standards. It responds quickly to requests from its members and prospective members. It does a great job of communicating with the business community about networking opportunities and other events and resources. And it understands the importance of growing its membership.

The majority of the Chamber’s membership is small businesses and consultancies, which is a great fit for McBuzz.

Here’s the McBuzz Communications company profile on the Chamber website.

With backing from organizations like the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce, McBuzz is looking forward to a great 2008.

Just as a side note, the Bellevue Chamber also excells from a web marketing standpoint. The McBuzz Communications company profile was online the same day we joined! And it was indexed by Google in about 24 hours. That is good stuff — because an incoming link from the Chamber is good for search ranking, and it also simply means that McBuzz can be found immediately by searching the Chamber’s website, or by Googling (or Yahooing) keywords like “bellevue chamber mclaren” or “bellevue chamber mcbuzz”. This is not the case with all Chamber of Commerce websites — but it should be.

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It’s official. McBuzz Communications LLC has moved its offices to Seattle, Washington.

Here is our new address:
2701 California Ave. SW #269
Seattle, WA 98116

Our toll free phone number remains the same: (800) 209-2919.

We will continue to serve our customers in Pittsburgh, of course, with the same courtesy and attention to detail we have always provided. (Pittsburgh customers can still use the (412) 344-2328 phone number.)

Face-to-face meetings outside the Seattle area will require a little more advance planning. Otherwise — business as usual!

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Quotable: “When you hand the keys over to the mob, they’ll drive wherever they want to go.”

A great story on the front page of the L.A. Times today raises all kinds of interesting questions about the future of Search ranking, social networking, censorship and piracy (copyright) on the Web.

User rebellion at Digg.com unearths a can of worms
The site relents and lets members post a code that aids piracy despite threats of legal action.
By Alex Pham and Joseph Menn, L.A. Times

Digg.com is an influential social networking site that ranks news stories and blogs by allowing members to cast votes in their favor. You can find a Digg icon in the “SAVE AND SHARE” panel of the L.A. Times website. and it’s the first icon under the “SHARE” link on the New York Times article listed at the end of this post. With enough votes, a story can appear on the Digg.com home page, and this can significantly increase the number of visitors to the site carrying the story.

In addition to the increase in traffic that can come from Digg.com itself, sites that appear on the Digg.com home page also get an accompanying boost in search engine ranking. Digg.com is an authoritative website with 34,000 sites linking to it and a Google PageRank of 8/10 (i.e., huge). When Digg.com links to a site, it imparts some of its authority to that site, “authority” = better rank in search engines. Users may also decide to link to a site they see on Digg.com, boosting its ranking even further.

When Digg owners tried to remove references on Digg to a bit of code that allows people to make pirated copies of HD DVDs, users revolted by voting in favor of any and all pages displaying the code. Digg rankings were flooded these pages, effectively disabling the site.

Now Digg owners have decided to allow the code to remain on their site, which means they face a costly lawsuit from the DVD industry, a lawsuit that could potentially bring an end to Digg.com.

Who really runs Digg.com? The authority of sites like Digg.com is based, ostensibly, on ideals like free speech and the democratic nature of the Web. But, as the L.A. Times article notes, Digg owners already take down references to pirated copies of Photoshop software from their site. Where should Digg draw the line?

As companies like Google and News Corp. spend billions of dollars to harness the advertising power of social networking sites like YouTube and MySpace, it will be very interesting to see just how much they will be willing to let hoi polloi the People decide their fate.

Related Article:

In Web Uproar, Antipiracy Code Spreads Wildly
By Brad Stone, New York Times, May 3, 2007
Sophisticated Internet users have joined up to distribute a code used to prevent piracy of high-definition movies.

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McBuzz Communications will launch mcbuzz.com 2.0 in a few days. Until then, please visit the current mcbuzz.com website.

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