In what has become an exciting turn of events, another chapter of my career is underway.

As the title suggests, I have resigned from ADP, Inc. and will remain on hand for transitional efforts through February 6, 2009. My time spent with ADP has been incredibly enlightening. From the highs of successful projects to the automotive industry’s role in our economy, I have met a number of wonderful people and learned a wealth of knowledge.

Those who have known me a while likely know that I have co-founded two SEO firms in the past. Rather than start up another firm this time, I’m going to back to a simpler time of consulting on organic SEO and project management.

Thankfully too, I am fully booked and unable to accept any new contract work or opportunities. This is a very, very good opportunity both to exit ADP and make the most of a new and exciting opportunity. There may be more details in coming months, too.

I’ve opted to rewrite this entire post. It was perhaps too personal for an SEO blog – and too open ended to be used constructively.

This past Saturday afternoon I decided to disconnect and head North with nothing more than a duffel bag and a few too many Red Bulls. The whole point was gain some clarity as well as a new perspective of things. I drove through a few areas and saw a couple of things that meant something to me sentimentally.

It wasn’t intended to this dramatic retreat. I think the first rendition of this post made it seem that way though. I was just out to clear my head a bit.

And it worked. Wonders. I had to text message my brother and email my mother a few times to make sure I was going to the right places – but aside from that, the disconnection held up.

I feel like this week is an important one for me and those who know me… And clearing my head really allowed me to realize what was most important relative to those topics.

Refreshed, I offer you these tidbits of advice…
1.) Check the forecast. I had no idea it’d snow so much
2.) Red Bulls are not water. Consuming them in abundance develops serious cases of the shakes
3.) Bring a variety of CDs. The radio in the car doesn’t work much at all, so I had 2 cds repeating
4.) When you see snowmobile races on a lake, you’re too far North.
5.) You’ve spent too much time in the car if you dance and get giddy to songs like this

I hate that I’m writing this post, but I’ll be damned if this service goes unnoticed by any of the 13 readers of my blog. I’m lying. I actually love that I’m writing this. Passion like this doesn’t come frequently to me, so when it’s here – I’m tapping it.

As the post title suggests I’m talking about uSocial. Specifically, uSocial.net. I’m not sure what they prefer to go by and we won’t know too much more until they launch on December 1st. When I hope you choose not to do business with them.

Emails from Serena Adamson at uSocial.net

I was contacted early Monday by Serena Adamson, the Publicity & Marketing Manager for uSocial.net. She emailed me about a joint venture opportunity where I would effectively pimp uSocial.net in exchange for some affiliate commissions.

It makes sense, provided that you didn’t take time to learn about me before pitching me. It was just last week that I ranted on ethics and social conversations, right?

Okay, fine.

So I took the bait looking to hear more about this wonderful proposal. The response I got back was both appauling and frustrating. Social Media Marketing is for some reason seen as a relative to Search Engine Marketing. I don’t buy that other than for the value of link generation – but that’s another topic for another time.

Rather than post Serena’s entire reply, here are two parts I want to highlight. The emphasis placed on certain sections are all my doing.

uSocial.net is a traffic generation company who provides our clients with high-quality traffic at a cost that cannot be compared with PPC, banner advertising and most other forms of traditional paid traffic generation. We manipulate social bookmarking sites like Digg and provide our client’s content on these sites with paid votes, enabling them to quickly and easily reach the front page of these sites and in turn, receive a flood of traffic. On average with our clients in testing, we have been able to provide over 100,000 unique visitors in 24 hours with an investment which upon launch will cost clients between $200-$300 USD with Digg, and around $100-$150 with StumbleUpon and Propeller. However, we have experienced up to 220,000 unique visitors in 24 hours. And unlike cheap paid hits sites, this is all quality, unique traffic coming from social bookmarking sites.

…

While most people can see the extreme value in investing in votes for sites like Digg, many are apprehensive about using such services as in the past it has resulted in their social bookmarking accounts being closed, or their site being banned from these sites. With uSocial this is a thing of the past for clients as we submit their content for them as well as place paid votes on it, meaning the risks involved in such practices are now a thing of the past.

Normally I would just fire off an irate reply, but I decided to see how far I could get Serena to go here. I asked her openly if I could blog about uSocial.net here on my blog with the intentions of raising awareness to the service, the launch of it, and its impact on the space. Word for word, that was my request.

Serena was all for it.

What About Ethics?

It’s no secret that Digg (and other communities) have taken strong stands against those in violation of the terms of service. Accounts have been banned. Sites have been effectively excluded. While some can rightfully get upset about how they’ve gone about doing that, Kevin Rose and the rest of Digg are trying to make the entire community a better place.

Enter the topic of ethics.

Don’t get me wrong. I could use some extra money just as much as the next guy. I’ll still favor ethics over a quick buck any day.

But these guys have a trademarked tag line of Get votes. Get traffic. Get Paid.

It sounds like one of those “Get Listing in 3,457,286 Search Engines -GUARANTEED” claims of bullshit.

Whatever happened to transparency? Why can’t they just say with no degree of uncertainty – that they’re spamming the shit out of social networks, polluting the user communities and gaming what is shown as the most popular stories?

Another thing. On their About Us Page they display their email addresses as an image with the following disclaimer:

You won’t be able to click the addresses above as we’ve made it an image to prevent those naughty spam-bots getting a hold of it, so we ask that you simply type it manually into whatever email program you currently use.

Right, because you’re all about the reduction of spam on the ‘net. I hope no one posts your email addresses of contact@usocial.net or affiliates@usocial.net anywhere else for those bots to find.

Sorry, it’s just unethical. I may not care if they didn’t try to dismiss the “risks involved” to site owners. You and I both know that someone will hire them in an flash and pay up for their services, and eventually get burned.

Secretive Social Bookmarking Ninjas

In the link building and search engine marketing space, ninja has become synonymous with Jim Boykin‘s firm, We Build Pages, an organization that has Jim fighting to preserve their image in the honor of ethical marketing.

uSocial.net claims to have “Secretive Social Bookmarking Ninjas”. As if ninjas alone conjures up images of massive, fumbling thugs who do nothing but stand out like a sore thumb.

When you decide to use uSocial to generate traffic for your website, sales page or product, we use our extensive network of secretive Social Bookmarking Ninjas to generate as many votes as you’d like for your website or content on social bookmarking sites Digg, StumbleUpon and Propeller. This will result in your website or page being shown on the much sought after front  page of these social networking portals and inevitably lead to a flood of traffic to your site…

More on the ninjas can be seen in their FAQ section:

Who votes for my submission on the social bookmarking sites?
We have our own network of Social Bookmarking Ninjas who are all employees of uSocial. Whereas our competitors rely on other Internet users to vote on content for them, which is not only unreliable but can result in some disgruntled social bookmarking site users giving negative votes, our worldwide employees are all screened and their voting monitored to ensure that the greatest possible amount of your votes are delivered to you, as well as being delivered on-time.

Flaunting Their Success in the FAQs

One visit to their FAQ page reveals that they’re openly gaming Digg and others. Remember the whole account deletion subject? Check this FAQ out:

Am I doing something illegal when using your vote-buying service?
No. While social bookmarking sites don’t like people buying votes on their sites, there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing it. Sites like Digg forbid you buying votes as part of their terms and service and they can close your account as a result of you purchasing votes, though we have already served tens of thousands of votes and as yet, not one of our users has reported to us their account has been closed.

They then go on to casually address the risk they’ve already sold you against:

Is is possible my social bookmarking account could be banned if I buy uSocial votes? Unfortunately yes, this is possible as several of the sites we use forbid it as part of their terms of service, however we have already tested thousands of votes over dozens of accounts and as yet, no account has been closed due to the secretive and advanced methods of vote generation we use.

Protect Social Communities

The great thing about social communities online is that they tend to police themselves pretty well. I hope if nothing else, some of the more conscious members of these networks can help spread the word about uSocial and be on the lookout for their continued spamming when the company officially launches on December 1st.

If you happen across something you think is suspect, keep an eye on it and those involved with the item’s promotion. It’s pretty clear that uSocial has a network of ninjas into the hundreds.

Parting Shots

uSocial.net also touts their incredible charity program saying that they want to have a positive impact on the world they’re polluting. Awesome. It’s time to use their own words against them. “..thank you for supporting us and in turn, supporting a positive change in this world. Do your part — help us make a change!”

Help me make a change here. Let’s rid quality sites and communities of these slimy characters.

When I had to cancel my plans to speak at ScarySEO, I was bummed. I actually fear speaking to groups. There’s something about the social anxiety and fear of bringing nothing of value to the table that’s simply intimidating.

It doesn’t matter how large or small the group is… It’s simply tough for me to get used to.

I was sitting around a bar Monday night with Eddy, Hunter and Matt before we went over to the Cambridge SEO Meetup Group’s event where I was speaking. Once they convinced me that a stiff Sapphire and Tonic may do me some good, I was good to go.

At the end of the night I was more than happy to have been there. Attendees engaged in conversation and proactively gave one another suggestions and feedback. it was exactly what an SEO meetup is all about. But, I still worried about not having brought enough information, insight or perspective for folks to appreciate.

I just went back to the meetup page though and saw some of these comments…

“ Excellent speaker. Real world experience that relates to what I do on a daily basis. ”
Todd Greenwood

“ I thought the presentation by Eric Lander was informative and certainly worthwhile. I am new to the SEO space so some of the allusions to php coding was a bit above my head, but I actually got most of the content. I also liked the interaction with the audience. I learned a lot from the questions being asked and liked the relaxed and open atmosphere of the meeting. ”
Claude Pelanne

“ The speaker was excellent. He dismissed some old myths about how to do SEO and told us clearly how to modify our web sites to generate more business.
Jerry Shapiro

“ Another excellent meeting and discussion. The speaker was excellent and full of unique insights. The ensuing discussions resulted in some excellent knowledge sharing and fruitful interaction. The networking component was excellent with good exchange of contacts and information. ”
Kiril Stefan Alexandrov

“ It was my first time, and being someone who is just getting to know SEO it was great! I took a ton of notes so that I could read more about the things that I did not know. The open forum was great because real world problems were discussed and advice was given from the guest speaker and the more experienced audience. Overall, I thought it was a great meeting. Well orchestrated. ”
Joshua Brown

Seriously guys? I owe you a tremendous amount of thanks.  Last Monday night was exactly what I needed on so many levels. Anytime you’d like for us Rhode Islanders to join you again, you let us know. :)

Just throwing a feeler out there to see if any of the local SEO crew will be heading into Providence on Tuesday night to meet Nick Gerner of SEOmoz when Jill Whalen, Pauline Jakober and Jonathan Hochman throw the next installment of SEMNE events.

I’ll be there. Likely with a hearty crew of my ADP search team. If you’re planning to attend, hit me up with an email or comment so I know to look for you and say hi.