Is Google News useful? Certainly on a good day.

Is it human? Not so much.

A week after the Dr. Laura n-word controversy hit the fan, Rosenberg typed |Dr. Laura n-word| in Google News and was amazed to see  a story from Associated Content at the top of the results

AC, of course, is the “content farm” recently acquired by Yahoo; it pays writers a pittance to crank out brief items that are — as I’ve written — crafted not to beguile human readers but to charm Google’s algorithm.

AC’s appearance in the Google lead position surprised me. I’d always assumed that, inundated by content-farm-grown dross, Google would figure out how to keep the quality stuff at the top of its index. And this wasn’t Google’s general search index recommending AC, but the more rarefied Google News — which prides itself on maintaining a fairly narrow set of sources, qualified by some level of editorial scrutiny.

Rosenberg goes on to quote the lead paragraph from the AC story, which squeezes the phrase “Dr. Laura n-word” three times into one paragraph. Rosenberg correctly pegs the style — or more accurately, the lack thereof — to nothing more than the “determination to catch Google’s eye by repeating the phrase ‘Dr. Laura n-word’ as many times as possible.”

So there you have it: Associated Content and their ilk may be the first media written for algorithms, not people.

Ronsenberg concludes that the result of this “is consequential for all of us.” I say writing for algorithms is the best way to dumb-down the state of media overall.

Of course that’s an oversimplification, yet it’s almost that basic: women use social networking tools to make connections while men use social networking tools to raise their status, leveraging content-oriented sites like Digg, YouTube and LinkedIn; I believe UC Berkeley’s Lorrie Thomas nails it when she says men use social media as an “interactive Rolodex.”

…women, the gatherers and community builders, had to work as a team to survive. They needed to use each other as resources and adapted to be more supportive by sharing their plans, shortcomings and advice. Today, women are still more likely to be forthcoming and verbose than men, she says, a difference that is reflected online.

Women are the majority of users on conversational sites Twitter, MySpace, Bebo and Flickr; because of their predisposition for conversational media, a woman who advocates for a brand online is more likely to influence her friends—the real nugget for marketers.

Facebook is 57% female and attracts 46 million more female visitors than male visitors per month. Plus, women are more active on Facebook. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says women on Facebook have 8% more friends and participate in 62% of the sharing. “The social world is led by women,” she concludes. And they’re leading that charge online.

This is a powerful statement for the importance of social media and a day we all knew was coming: “The world’s gone social. And women are more social than men,” according to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. And to think that the virtual communication differences between the sexes can be traced to evolutionary methods of survival.

Today is HARO’s second anniversary and it’s been a lifesaver for hundreds of reporters and surely thousands of sources. For many PR pros it’s as mandatory as the morning’s first cup of coffee. As its reputation and popularity spread, what would a sudden influx of “newbies” do to the quality of leads and sources? Will HARO someday suffer its own eternal September?

We hope not. HARO is one of the most helpful tools in a marketing pro’s toolbox. May it ever be so.

More importantly, is Apple going to win the interface war? Jesus Diaz at Gizmodo (among many others) have posited that the desktop metaphor does not translate well to the mobile milieu.

And is the iPad, as J.S. McDougall predicted on HuffPo, a Kindle-killer?

A Short History of the Tablet Computer

Gizmodo: Apple iPad First Pics

I have to tell you how much I enjoyed Tom Hansen’s Scribbles episode, Tag Lines 2.0. Perhaps all the better since I had just encountered the tag line “We’re the Expert Vibrator Guys.” Yes, you can become a member of the Vibration Nation but to their credit, the company (which makes industrial vibrators) is also very big on lean manufacturing.

So I jumped at the chance to present prose that described a new facility, just opened, for the Freight and Salvage, the oldest folk and roots music venue west of the Mississippi River. Fully LEED-certified and 18,000 square feet of eco-friendly confines in the style and low-key tradition of the venue itself.

Meyer Sound co-founder John Meyer

So here we have a lot happening: a world-class sound system and its unique installation, center stage; everyone from the architect to the HVAC deserve mention… and oh yeah, please do it in 700 words or less. When we added the quote from Meyer Sound co-founder John Meyer, explaining how rare it is for a venue to be designed for sound from the ground up, it went over the word count.

I do what I can.

Read the case study.

If ever there was a company built on Darwinian theory, Bluewolf might be the one.

It was formed as the big consulting firms struggled with the end of the mega project era and the beginning of more affordable enterprise services via Web 2.0, cloud computing and platform-driven innovations (they were one of the first salesforce.com partners).

Realizing that brands always require fine tuning, persuasivecopy was engaged to re-align the consultancy’s services array, with a particular eye toward search engine optimization.

Of course there are some personal favorites. In the introduction to customer care the myth of the 80/20 rule is shattered. Within the prose covering demand generation it is declared “Marketing has Changed Forever.”

It is good to be a “marketing widget” for this Web 2.0 leader and early adopter.

Visual Data Group is North America’s Elite Reseller of QlikView, an amazing business intelligence product that uses in-memory analysis and reporting to manipulate millions of database objects rapidly and intuitively.

Visual Data Group is a prime example of what a copywriter can do for a small enterprise: I named the company (also securing the URL visualdataexperts.com), created the tag line (True Business Intelligence) and wrote and directed the opening Flash animation, in addition to writing much of the site that is not oriented toward the QlikView product itself.

But QlikView is what people want to know about, so much of the copy comes straight from the QlikView site with some adaption for North American prospects. Forms, white papers and visitor tracking are the important, integral elements for this custom site based on a database-drive content management system for scalability and flexibility without sacrificing “legacy” work.