Industry News

I’ve been a Vinyl, Me Please customer since January 2015. Back then things were pretty basic. For roughly $25/month they would send you a “Record of the Month”, along with a custom art print and cocktail recipe. It was cool, and helped to expand my musical palate quite a bit.

But sometime over the over the past year or so they kicked things into high gear. VMP now offers a “Classics” track (my favorite!) and a “Hip Hop” track in addition to their “Essentials” track (the original “Record...

I continue to be fascinated by Instagram’s cultural and economic impact. Taylor Lorenz writes in Posting Instagram Sponsored Content Is the New Summer Job:

Helen Boogzel, CEO of Boogzel Apparel, said her company receives a steady stream of messages from young people — almost universally girls — looking to make extra money, and that teen marketing has been critical to the young company’s growth. “Some companies buy positive reviews or try to get into fashion magazines,” she said....

In their article 5 Best Practices for Running a Successful Remote Team, “Sparky” writes:

All team members should have their working hours posted publicly, so colleagues know when they’re “on the clock,” so to speak. If you have a hybrid environment where some people are remote and others aren’t, this will help alleviate pressure on the remote employees to feel like they always have to be available. […]

It’s also a good idea to schedule daily syncs with remote people, as well...

I’ve been really intrigued by Ryan Singer’s thinking around Products as Functions:

Products are easier to reason about when you think of them as functions. They transform an input situation into an output situation.

This lets you describe what the product does as a transformation of the user’s circumstance instead of a bundle of features.

I’ve been using this thinking on a new project we’re working on at Postmark. I like this approach because it gives us a framework to...


Nicholas Carr chases down the origin of the phrase ”It’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature.” This bit stuck with me:

INABIAF—the initialism has earned a place in the venerable Acronym Finder—is for programmers as much a cri de coeur 1 as an excuse. For the rest of us, the saying has taken on a sinister tone. It wasn’t long ago that we found software ­dazzling, all magic and light. But our perception of the programmer’s art has darkened. The friendly-seeming apps and chatbots on our phones...

I did it, I asked John Mueller of Google to please give additional advice to SEOs and webmasters about the Google Medic Update, the core algorithm update on August 1st. He said there is "not really" any more advice to give.

The truth, then, is this: our generation was raised with an understanding that the image we portrayed mattered more than who we actually were. We believed this not out of some malevolent, externally imposed agenda, but because it was actually true. The result was that nothing we ever did felt organic; instead, everything felt like a checked box. You played sports to prove you were competitive. You took classes to get grades, those wonderful letters that separated friends and induced panic...

The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal. Those who are angry may be reconciled; those who have been injured may receive a recompense: but when the desire of pleasing and willingness to be pleased is silently diminished, the renovation of friendship is hopeless; as, when the vital powers sink into languor, there is no longer any use of the physician.

— Samuel Johnson, No. 23....

Google has announced that the new beta Google Search Console is now getting the link report. Google said they are moving the Links to your site and Internal Links report from the old interface into the new Google Search Console under a single Links report. I do not see it rolled out yet but it should be live soon, Google says.

I am seeing some webmasters and SEOs claim they have seen recoveries over the weekend with some of their sites impacted by the Google Medic update that took place on August 1st. I am not sure if we can trust these reports or if they are confusing this Medic update with a different update - but I am seeing some people claim they recovered.