The C-Suite Digital Handbook

Daily Bytes: Static Websites, SEO ROI, & Social Media History

Today’s Daily Bytes looks at the end of the static website, metrics for measuring the ROI of your search marketing efforts, and the evolution of Social Media over the last 40+ years.

Death watch:  Static destination websites

The destination website, where companies pour all their digital resources into maintaining their websites, has come to an end with the rise of social media and distributed content throughout the web.  In this post, Shel Holz, known digital communications expert, blogger and author, points out that the destination website is not dead.  He points out that “the static company website has a new purpose.”

ROI is the New Ranking

In ClickZ, search engine marketing expert Julie Batten advises that businesses need to treat their SEO efforts like they would any marketing or promotional activity.  In order to do that, businesses need to have a “strong measurement framework in place”.  She argues that standard metrics like keyword rankings/positioning, number of pages indexed, number of inbound links and page rank are less important to developing that framework.  In this very useful post, she provides insights as to which measures are now more important and how to calculate “Organic ROI”.

The History and Evolution of Social Media

This post from Webdesigner Depot is not a “byte”-sized piece!  It covers the 40+ years of social media’s evolution.  And to think that we often think of it as something that just emerged!  I suggest reading the post in detail when you can.   In the meantime, I have summarized the historical timeline below [much like I would have done preparing for a history exam in school!]:

Precursors to Social Media:  70’s, 80’s and 90’s:

• Usernets
• Bulletin Board Systems
• Online services, e.g. Prodigy and Compuserve
• IRC [Internet Relay Chat], ICQ and Instant Messaging

Early Social Networks – The Late 90’s:

• Dating Sites
• Forums
• Six Degrees
• Asian Avenue, MiGente, BlackPlanet
• LiveJournal
• World of Warcraft

Major Advances in Social Networking – Early to Mid 00’s:

• Friendster
• Hi5
• LinkedIn
• MySpace
• Facebook

Niche Social Networks:  Mid 00’s:

• Ning
• Company-Sponsored Social Networks
• Media Sharing
• Photobucket
• Flickr
• You Tube
• Revver

Social News and Bookmarking:  Mid-00’s:

• Delicious
• Digg
• Reddit

Real Time Updates: Late 00’s:

• Twitter
• Posterous
• Tumblr
• iPhone’s Role in Real-Time Updates

Lifestreaming and Lifecasting:  Late 00’s:

• Ustream.tv
• Justin.tv
• FriendFeed

The piece also goes into analysis of the trends, concerns and criticisms of social media as well as social media’s role in pop culture.

What are your thoughts about where it is evolving going forward?