It was a fiasco alright.
The thing that was most disappointing to me, was that Jeremy Shoemaker and Shannon Poole did not limit their discussion to me. They chose to include my relationship to Heather. Heather is (and has been) my very best friend in the search community. My relationship to Heather is none of their business. They got all of it wrong. They were also in the wrong.
As posted in Tweets the afternoon of Tuesday, February 17th.
I must say how proud I am of our search industry. Response from SMX has been really great! It's also interesting to see who gets it wrong. Some people seem to refer to me, post about me completely false information without taking the time to care about facts before publishing.
This is like old school versus new school. In the old days, no one would write about a colleague without fact checking first, reaching out. Without the correct information, people would be highly embarrassed going on record and talking about or writing about something false. Why is it that today, some people feel compelled to raise their star by reporting instantly anything they hear?
Is it the immediacy of blog? Is it RSS propagation madness where readers look at the same headline 15 times with small variations by SEOs looking to score limelight? I-Search was rational because there was time before a post went live, and the authors had time to catch me before I published it. Plus, they trusted me to look after them. I had the readers and posters best interest at heart.
Today, it's a free for all and hurtful to some. Flames would not get published in I-Search, and when I dust off Search Return Digest, I hope the audience listens, even if it's 24 hours old. I mean, what's so important to know about some slight change to SERPs that you have to know before 5pm today that tomorrow would be no good?
It was interesting to witness just how people react to me when I'm not staring them in the face. Anyway, they also seem to move too fast and take what doesn't belong to them. That's where it becomes fairly more serious. In all the immediacy of Twitter, blogging, Facebook and MySpace, the hasty need to be reminded: there are laws governing use of stuff.
So, if you blog, don't take images that don't belong to you, write something salacious about colleagues based on what you know nothing about. I have an interest in controlling my message, obviously, and the trials and tribulations dealing with it are very fascinating to me. I've been witness to awesome colleagues, who have treated me with respect before SMX West, and afterwards. Just amazing - thank you!
I had to go to the Web to find where people treat me unkind, use my news as a platform to make themselves seem somehow bigger. My story somehow just helps people shine, or illuminates the true nature of their beliefs. The most interesting part are the falsehoods. The best part are my friends and respectful colleagues. Thank you for everything - especially Danny!
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