Weburban legends? Webben Legends? The word urban is more geographical one so what do you call massive misapprehension that’s gone viral on the internet?
Syntax aside, here are three things I commonly hear either from fellow web professionals either in forums or in real life. Question is, are they true or not?
1. Worst Job at Google – Social media content moderator
Whilst it’s no secret that Google uses algorithms and automated processes to filter content when a search is done. They recently tightened their image filtering to a bit of controversyy, but probably to the relief of those on the legal team.
My friend, he’s a sys admin and Ubuntu expert but don’t hold that against him, brought up the story of ‘The worst job at Google’. This is supposed to be the people who monitor uploaded content. Images, videos and anything else that makes up publicly submitted content. That for all the sophisticated search algorithms, that automated algorithms do not work as they should. Yet.
It sounded feasible to me that such a job should exist, but the part I found difficult to digest was the circumstances. M revealed how they only took people on to do this short-term, that those doing this would typically be contractors and given little to no support.
So I found this article and read. Social media workers exposed to things that criminal professionals are trained for? Harsh.
Possibly True – I’ve no first person accounts, but evidence suggests it is.
2. Domain parking – Make a fortune
Suddenly inspired, you come up with the perfect name for a web business. If you’re like me, the first thing you do is check domain availability in line with the names you have. Having an original and memorable domain name is vital to your business…I see no harm in letting it dictate the name of the company either. Well, unless your business name is Pen Island.
But..oh no someone has gotten there first! And even worse, the cheeky scamps are not even doing anything with your desired name. The technical term is ‘Cybersquatting’ and good news is it’s not legal.
Well not really. Well it’s the usual thing: it’s a lot more complicated then that and country dependent. Over here in the UK it’s Nominet who resolve such things – read more.
In my opinion, cybersquatting isn’t the problem it used to be thanks to just how efficient and easy search has become to use. No longer are we subjected to Yahoo style directory and given the right input, what you want will usually be found. So as long as your business is worthwhile and you can get people talking about it, its less of a worry.
Remind me to talk through my idea on how to slap people through the internet at some point.
Trueish – But relax
3. Cancer Awareness – State and they’ll donate
Chain e-mails are so very 2000. Why send an email to a ton of email addresses when you can just broadcast it on social media channel of your choice! Facebook is probably the worst candidate for this.
Whilst I was initially put out by the heavy-handedness of their filtering on their feed, I’ve recently become grateful as it seems to have now adopted the position of sending those amusing images, or worse, ‘do this 100 times and you’ll get great karma’ style. Harmless, but annoying.
The worst examples are the mass posting promising actual proper remuneration. XXX company will donate £1 (usually dollars, but I’m British so…nurr) for every time this is shared. It’s a big fat lie.
Analytics are a good compass for monitoring content popularity and audience but are by no means effective in gaining succinct numbers. With that and the sheer amount of content that goes on Facebook and ways of sharing links that there is no realistic way to track these things.
False – So very false.
Happy Friday all.
