I recently read an article in the New York Times that asked the question, “Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?” The author, Duncan Watts, states that cumulative advantage occurs “if one object happens to be slightly more popular than another at just the right point, it will tend to become more popular still.” He says that if in fact people do not make decisions independently, but are rather socially influenced, then predicting hits is impossible no matter how much you know about individual tastes.

Duncan writes, “As a result, even tiny, random fluctuations can blow up, generating potentially enormous long-run differences among even indistinguishable competitors.”

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Everyone is hiring, at least for the foreseeable future internet marketing agencies need talent badly. Since this article is addressing the self made I-Marketing guru this specifically applies to you. Assuming that the prospective employee has both paid media and SEO experience the agency will most likely, from what I have experienced stick the new hire in the paid media department. The reason for this, in my opinion, generally revolves around the idea that paid media at large agencies tend to be money making machines. So generally, the more people in the department, the happier the client. Keep this in mind if you really want to do SEO and not paid, make it clear at your interview exactly what you are interested in. Taking a step back, it is important to recognize that not all big agencies are what they seem, with some careful research beforehand you can get a good grasp on what environment would be right for you.

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I am not sure how to begin this blog post, for it was not that long ago I didn’t even know what a blog was. Yes, I am that out of touch. But, I am one of the lucky ones, I have a great supportive team here and they try not to point and laugh often.

I am new to SEO, Search, AdWords, PPC, and all the tech-savvy acronyms that people in this industry speak of. Keeping my head above water most days has proven to be, well, not so easy, but I try!

Lately, I have been asked to participate more on projects. Considering I am the office manager here I felt it only right that I not ask anything of my staff that which I would not be willing to do myself. Knowing this about me, my boss has taken it upon himself to sign me up for some SEMPO courses (did I mention that I don’t know when it is best to just stay quiet?). Now you must keep in mind that I am one of the many that still think a cookie is a reward after a 10 mile run and a firewall is to protect your person, not your computer!

I have started with “The History of Search Engines.” While most of it was interesting, some of it was still over my head, but considering it is geared towards the newbie, I was able to keep up. After passing the first test with an “A” I am left to wonder what my life would be like if I were the lucky college student who sat up late one night on a project, only to become a name that would pass through the lips of millions? What if? Moving forward, I am off to study chapter 2 and open my eyes and mind to the many wonders of online marketing. I will keep you posted or should I say “Blog” you later?

I’ll start this post by saying, I’ve been using the internet since CompuServ. Ok, so compared to some of you who have been using the internet since the BBS days and text based multi-player Star Wars games, this might not seem like that long ago. Anyways, during the dot com boom, even though I was only 14 years old, I caught the entrepreneurial bug like so many others. My claim to fame is that I created iTunes before there was ever an iTunes, Joost before there was ever a Joost, and Facebook before there was ever a Facebook. Seriously!

In 1998, I started my first internet business, a Hypermart page selling ‘backup’ copies of music CDs. The page had a list of songs from which the consumer could create a custom playlist to be burnt to CD and shipped straight to the consumer’s door. This was before there was hardware MP3 players (For those interested, the first hardware MP3 player was released in the summer of 1998)! We received 1 order, and the customer submitted a fake credit card number. The site had the worst page design ever, and no audience at all other than five of my closest friends. Failure. Now, there is iTunes!

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