Sheara Wilensky . com

Many people I come into contact with still don’t know what Twitter is — except mainly the SEOs and web guys — but I have a feeling that will be changing soon. Twitter is the latest social media distraction addiction application that combines instant messaging, blogging, and setting a Facebook-like status. It’s an interesting concept - members are having conversations, but are posting one or two sentence answers at a time, for all to see. In fact, Google indexes “tweets”. It’s micro-blogging, if you will. And people are addicted.

Some people post one line questions and wait for answers. Some people like to state what they are doing and when. Your tweet can be directed at one person in particular, or be a general comment. And like other social media applications, you can increase your network of friends - who’s following you, and who are you following.

Now as much as I admit to be addicted to Facebook, and a host of other social networks, I refuse to join Twitter. Maybe I’ve seen one too many episodes of Law and Order SVU, but I feel like constantly posting updates of one’s whereabouts for the world to see is going to get a young female into trouble. Do you know everyone “following” you on Twitter?

Twitter has received positive press recently. Just last Friday, April 25th, CNN.com posted an article about a young man “twittering” his way out of an Egyptian jail.  He posted updates of his status on Twitter via his mobile which led to his rescue.

SEO guru Chris Winfield wrote an article recently on Search Engine Land about how Twitter helped him to make an informed purchase.

It seems like everyone gets it but me.

If you have ever been to Le Souk at Avenue B and 4th in the East Village, you have undoubtedly experienced the same thing I have: lines that don’t move, ridiculous waits, and horrible, horrible service. And yet, Friday night after Friday night, Saturday night after Saturday night, the restaurant/lounge continues to draw such large crowds to the point where it takes 20 minutes to get from one end of the bar to the bathroom. I myself have gone a few times despite all of this. But the last time I went was about 3 years ago, and I have stopped going ever since. Here’s what happened:

A couple of friends from Chicago are visiting New York City, and I think it would be fun to have dinner and smoke Hookah at Le Souk on Saturday night. I make a reservation at 10 PM for dinner for five. We get there, the place is so packed that we can hardly get through the front door. After several attempts at locating the hostess and a long wait - apparently reservations mean nothing here - we finally get seated for dinner at close to midnight! We are starving. We order drinks and Hookah, and place a food order as well. Close to 1AM, we have our drinks and Hookah but still no food. We are making the best of the wait time, a belly dancer comes out which is entertaining. But still no food after several polite inquiries from the waitress.

We are fed up and decide to leave money on the table for the drinks and Hookah and get up to leave. As we are leaving, of course the food comes out. We tell the waitress we don’t want it, we have been waiting an hour and it’s one o’clock in the morning and we can’t eat the heavy Middle Eastern dishes.

Now the manager comes out. We are so upset and frustrated, and I feel terrible for having chosen the place. My friends from Chicago don’t deserve this kind of treatment. My friend who is with me just graduated from law school and chooses this particular night to show off what he learned. He is arguing with the manager and the waitress, explains how we had a 10PM reservation and we are now receiving food at 1AM. One of the bouncers/security is grabbing my lawyer friend by the arm and won’t let him go! The manager brings our party to the alley behind the restaurant - holding us against our will - and tells us the owner will come meet us shortly. They simply won’t let us go.

The owner comes out and he is DRUNK. Drink in hand, slurring, can barely stand still. Anyway, more arguing occurs. Finally, we settle the bill for the drinks we ordered and we leave.

What an awful, horrible night out.

Now, I am no stranger to the Manhattan restaurant and nightlife scene. The service industry in New York City pales in comparison with other cities, because well, if you don’t go back, it doesn’t matter! There are hordes of people who will! The shitty service at Le Souk, well, maybe they were understaffed that night and they were too crowded. That’s forgivable. But a drunken management? Holding us against our will? That’s just unacceptable.

I wish I could say that Le Souk is closing because people stopped going. That’s not the case though. They simply lost their liquor license. Check out this post from NY Mag about the closing of the restaurant. Another Manhattan establishment bites the dust. Good riddance.

So today is the last day of the Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo which has been going on since Monday at the New York Hilton. I’m not there today, because, well, I stayed out too late last night and have work to catch up on from this week. But — Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were awesome!

I was live blogging five of the sessions for my new friend Barry Schwartz of SE Roundtable - so check out the site to read my transcripts. I especially liked the Orion Panel on Tuesday because it was a lot of fun watching John Batelle bash Jack Menzel from Google (the attacks were meant for Google, not Jack). John “suggested” that Google is manipulating algorithms so You Tube and Google Finance appear in the number one spots for video and stock searches (remember when Yahoo Finance used to be number one?). That Google has turned into a media company and is shying away from their original focus which was purely on search. That Google is “capturing a second click” according to John, monetizing still after the search result is clicked. Jack defended Google by saying that they are just trying to give the most relevant stuff, if that happens to be You Tube, it will be up there, and there is nothing biasing the algorithms.

Anyway, it was a highly entertaining panel. What are all your thoughts on this?

Another session I enjoyed was called Search Engine Friendly Design. A lot of back-to-the-basic stuff for SEOs, like alt tagging and breadcrumb navigation structures. But it served as a good reminder of best practices that we sometimes tend to forget, and the panelists all held the attention of the audience.

Last night was fun! We went to the SearchBash party at Spotlight in Times Square. It was my first time at Spotlight, though I had been wanting to go since they opened last year. A karaoke bar that provides backup singers! Brilliant. The naked singing cowboy was there! My brother Avi Wilensky of Promediacorp and a few others were great singing Violent Femme’s Blister in the Sun. Equal shout outs to the woman singing Like a Virgin, and the guy singing Journey at the end. Anyone know who they were? They were fabulous. Thanks to the sponsors of the party, Webmaster Radio, Bruce Clay, Cranberry, ABC Search, Lyris and PR Web.

You can check out more SES coverage on some other blogs:

• Top Rank Blog
• Greywolf’s SEO Blog
• Just Searching

To those of you responsible ones who made it today to the sessions, enjoy. Great week, and we’ll see everyone at the next conference.

The Search Engine Strategies conference and expo will be hosted in New York City this week, from March 17th to March 20th, at the Hilton New York. SES will feature presentations and discussions on all aspects of search engine optimization and search marketing. This year’s workshops will be covering the typical topics such as Link Building Campaigns and Social Media Marketing. But look out for the interesting new workshops, such as “How to Build Investment Interest in Your SEO/SEM” and “Igniting Viral Campaigns”.

Speakers include John Batelle, Founder of Federated Media, Andrew Tompkins of Yahoo! Search, Gordon McLeod of the WSJ Digital Network, and several others.

The expo hall on Tuesday and Wednesday is free if you register online. It’s great for networking and for scoring great schwag.

I’ll be busy live blogging the sessions so look for me and say hi!

And of course, don’t forget about all the great after-parties, such as the IMNY/Best of the Web Charity Party which will be taking place at Black Finn on Tuesday night, March 18th. All proceeds from the event will be donated to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

The poem 8 Roses was written by my good friend Liza Saniefard, who is a beautiful writer. It was written after last week’s massacre at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem Israel, in memory of the eight young boys who were senselessly murdered. The third line in the poem, “They are the roses that have been picked”, is a line from Shir Hashirim which was quoted by one of their Rabbis after the attack. Our hearts and our Tefilot go out to all of the family and friends.

Full details can be found at the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

//

8 Roses

Buried with their books
Stained by their innocent blood
“They are the roses that have been picked”
Eight little boys
Young men
With nothing but love
For their country
And their Yehadoot

These boys didn’t
Don’t
Initiate attacks
They shouldn’t have to be watching their backs
After centuries of oppression
Years upon years of religious suppression
They should be free to examine every digression
Of Jewish thought
Especially in the holy land
That 6,000,000 lives bought

They sit peacefully in their Yeshiva’s
Even after the government cut their funding
They don’t care about the money
They just care about one thing
Yehadoot
And the freedom to live it
To recite it
To give it
To their own
To the Ethiopians that love it
Yes, Doron
They have a version
They want more of it
Another side of their coin
Another Jewish community
Another place to call home
Something called unity
Yehadoot
That intimate tie that binds
That IDENTITY truth
That beauty that waltzes with the soul
That lives in hearts and minds
That brings the weary into the warmth
That teaches men to be kind
That marries
Links
Connects
Finds
The lost
Accepts
The rejects
For
They
Have too long been tossed
By the winds of prejudice

Now they have freedom to find a place to fit in
All those children of Israel
Crawling in their own skin
They shouldn’t have to in their homeland
A place to begin
//

You catch Liza’s poetry live this Tuesday night, March 18th when she will be reading at the Bowery Poetry Club.

I’m sure all you foodies out there caught the season premiere of Top Chef last night.

Check out this fabulous review by my sister, Chef Monsta.

The Studio School is a private elementary school that has been relocated to two adjoining brownstones on West 95^th Street. The school began construction on these sites in 2005 when the pre-existing buildings had been demolished and major excavation ensued.

We are now in March 2008 and I am still privy to the lovely noises of construction outside my bedroom window.

For the past 2 and a half years that I have been living in my apartment, I have been graciously woken up before 7AM, Monday through Saturday, from drilling, sawing, workers yelling, Hispanic music blaring from radios. And incessant banging.

This morning it was a strange wooshing sound - torching! - that sounded as if an airplane was taking off in my backyard. And as I write this blog post, the wooshing has evolved into more drilling.

There have been neighborhood complaints over the years, even building petitions, but to no avail. The school opened to students this past fall, and work is still being done outside! Three years to construct a building the size of a brownstone? It’s really incomprehensible. The work over the past few months has been to the terrace where apparently the students are to have recess.

Anyone out there like to express their shared pain? Does anyone out there know if this is ever going to end???

Now I hear torching AND drilling.

Bye-bye metal trees. Roxy Paine’s three stainless steel sculptures were taken down today after nearly 11 months on display at Madison Square Park.

The two 40-foot metal trees - Conjoined and Defunct - and a 7-foot high metal boulder - Erratic - have been up since last May as part of the Park’s ongoing modern art displays. They were supposed to have been taken down in December. I guess the public responded well to the display, or the Park department got lazy to take them down. I’m interested in seeing what crazy sculptures will be featured next.

New Yorker Roxy Paine is an internationally recognized conceptual artist who’s sculptures are on display in public parks across the nation. For more information on the three sculptures check out the Madison Square Park website.

Blind Melon gave the second performance of their 5-month nationwide tour last night, March 1, 2008, at the sold out Hiro Ballroom at the Maritime Hotel in Chelsea. Shannon Hoon’s replacement, lead vocalist Travis Warren, surprisingly rocked the audience. I was unsure how they would perform with the new lead, given Shannon’s unique and easily distinguishable voice, but they did a great job. The sounds were familiar, the hits were all there. Many songs were dedicated to Shannon, such as “Change” Shannon’s favorite (and mine). The playlist included Soup, Galaxie, Toes Across the Floor, and of course No Rain. They also played new songs from their new album which will be out on April 22nd. Travis’ mother came out to join the vocals on Cheatem Street.

The sound quality was fantastic and the venue was small and intimate, only 250-300 tickets were sold. A lot of true fans were in the house. I was able to get pretty close to the stage. Check out a clip of No Rain.

Google Sites is a new application that allows users to essentially create web pages in an easy to use, code-free manner. If you’ve ever used Google Docs, or Google Spreadsheets, it works in a similar fashion - the program is within the browser window. Google Sites allows you to import videos, documents, calendars and other attachments into a web page with just the click of an insert button.

Google Sites is a structured wiki - a collaborative database environment - typically used as a shared writeboard allowing users to add, remove and edit information. This allows for the free and simple sharing of knowledge which everyone can use.

Officially launched this past Thursday, February 28, Google Sites in my opinion is best for creating intranet pages within a small organization because it is template based. It’s also good for managing projects. Especially for startups on a budget. If you take a look at the Google Sites overview page, you’ll see what I mean. In the vision of Google, Sites, of course, has a simple user interface.

Google Sites was developed by JotSpot, which it acquired in 2006. JotSpot was the first company to create wiki applications in 2004, targeted to small and mid-sized business. JotSpot has been working on Googe Sites for the past 16 months.

Google Sites has been getting a lot of mixed reviews. Critics are disappointed that given the time it has taken to develop the software, it should be able to create more sophisticated sites. They are saying though that soon developers will be allowed to create advanced applications for the product (think: Facebook) so in the future Google Sites will be more flexible.

I think what Google set out to do - allow the non-coder/non-techie community to participate in the creation of web applications - should work fine for now. Can’t wait to see how Google takes this new application to the next level. Thoughts?