Udo's Techblog

Robert is apologizing for some remarks he made, because he thought a few Web 2.0 sites might eventually surpass the mighty Google. Of course, some pretty loud people didn't like that. SEO guys certainly weren't amused. Now he's apologizing, among other things, for pissing so many people off:

3. Attacking SEOs needlessly, which caused all sorts of people, including Danny Sullivan to get their hairs up in a fighting stance.
[...]
7. Jumping into a battlefront (SEO’s vs. Google) without really understanding how that warfront will go.
8. Not making it clear that I was making some BIG assumptions. Like that Google won’t adopt and that Facebook will open up enough to make it possible to build a new kind of search engine in public on top.
[...]

Well, from a normal user's perspective, SEOs are the scum at the bottom of the world of search. Their "optimizations" make it harder for legitimate content to bubble to the top. They are a big reason why Google has to keep tuning that ranking algorithm so it doesn't return "You searched for X, buy X from us now, save big $$$" exclusively.

Speaking of normal users' perspectives: sure, I think Robert's initial statement was somewhat off course, but hey, that's his opinion. Why not stand by it? He's allowed to it without getting attacked on a personal level like that.

My personal opinion? Sure, if you're a well-connected A lister, social software seems powerful, so you're gonna be naturally biased towards Facebook, TechMeme and whatnot. Because everything you and your friends do bubbles to the top of the pile, and the same mechanism attracts more of the same content. However, for less popular people or anyone who's interested in niche information, social selection doesn't work so well. There, I said it.