RAAK

When Google Search turns semantic, what should you do?

According to Econsultancy, that date can't be too far in the future anymore. Semantic search will see Google doing their best to provide direct answers to users' search queries, instead of supplying them with a list of links. This means you'll have to provide answers to questions in your field of expertise in your content's markup, to keep scoring high in Google's eyes. This will see a complete revolution in SEO, where SEO will mean turning your content into perfectly 'minable' data. And this, at last, might finally sign in the dawn of Sir Tim Berners-Lee's big idea for the web: the ability for machines to 'understand' content.

Does Klout measure your social capital, or something else?

Brian Solis has just published a paper on Influence. He rightly points out that we'd be silly not to take services like Klout and PeerIndex seriously, despite their flaws. Solis also points out that they don't really measure Influence, but rather "social capital". We think he is right and wrong.

A public Chatroulette

The Internet is interactive, but broadcasting tends to be one-directional. So whither internet TV? Brand new startup OnTheAir has a novel approach. They will enable conversations to be broadcasted: Ideal for celebrities, bloggers and the like, looking to include their audience members in their broadcasts.

Kickstarter's funding dollars have a lasting effect

Kickstarter has an amazing case study on their blog. In short, before the 3.3 million dollar breakaway success of the game Double Fine Adventure on Kickstarter, the Video Games category averaged 629 pledges per week. After Double Fine, the category boasts an average of 9755 pledges per week. This behaviour was mirrored in the Web Comics category. This means, instead of having an exhaustive effect on the available pledges, a surge in pledges seems to attract even more.

The problems of popularity beset Pinterest

A few weeks after Tumblr banned content that promotes self-harm, like bulimia and anorexia, Pinterest has done the same. However, the so-called Thinspiration content is still freely available. In other news, pointing to how tough life can be at the top, Pinterest has been infiltrated by spammers who are making as much as $1000 per day from their spam bots. They claim Pinterest is by far the easiest network to spam these days.

Does Tumblr have an SEO problem?

It would seem so. In a detailed blog post Dan Zambonini details why he moved his websites from Tumblr to WordPress. He reckons that if the simplicity of Tumblr is not key, WordPress's SEO makes it the 'must have' choice.

Creatives of the week – Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg

Take one designer, one mathematician, a desire to invent new ways for people to think about data and you get Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg. The pair have been working on data visualisations since 2003 and currently lead Google's Big Picture environmental initiative. But in their spare time they make nice things too, like this gorgeous map of wind patterns in the US.