One of the afternoon presenters at WordCamp San Francisco is Scott Porad of Pet Holdings, otherwise known as the LOLcat franchise whose sites get millions of visitors each day.

The focus of his talk is the network of sites that they run which all have the following in common: They’re all humor/entertainment-centric, they’re all hosted on WordPress.com, and they’re all based on user-generated and user-driven content.

(honorable mentions added to the list above include PIctureIsUnrelated.com and ThisIsPhotoBomb)

He talks about the evolving style of the internet, more specifically the way content is created, sourced, and distributed. “User-generated content is not new,” says Scott referencing The Gong Show, letters to the editor in news papers and call-in talk radio. He also mentions America’s Funniest Home Videos that was sourcing from the concept of home videos that were cost-effective and easily produced. With technology these days not only can people submit content but they can choose what gets pushed back to them (instead of editors or show producers selecting the content to publish from the submissions).

User-generated content becomes crowd-controlled. The internet takes educated guessing out of content — Porad gives an example of his friend who works at a record company who seeks out new talent, making “educated guesses” about what the populace might like or purchase. His next slide features the American Idol logo to drive that point home.

JPG Magazine is an example he uses of crowd-powered content, taking high-rated user-submitted photos and publishing them in a magazine. People will go tell their friends to purchase the magazine so they can showcase their work. Same goes for Threadless which does this with e-commerce. “UGC… user-generated content can easily turn into user-generated crap.” UGC is being sorted on websites ie. “was this review helpful, yes or no?” The community will tell you what they want.

Porad says a question he gets often is how long can the “free” model last — how long can you keep asking for free content from people. “It depends on the category you’re working in.” He said if you win a design contest on Threadless you get paid. “I think it’s human nature that people like to express themselves, we provide the tools to help people express themselves and tell funny jokes.” Porad says they provide an outlet for a certain element of human nature, people want to be that funny guy or girl. Also, everybody wants attention, “but I don’t think everybody wants to be Lebron James famous.” He compares that to being “internet famous” ie. the picture of your cat made it to the home page of I Can Has Cheezburger. “It’s a way to make people feel special.”

From ICanHasCheezburger

Scott then walks us through the submission feature on the LOLcats site, “the name of the game is – get as much as you can.” He also mentions that screening is important, but on the LOLcats site they just watch for language and nudity — humans approve images before they can be posted.

“Moral of the story” is… audience creates the content (it’s not new but it’s getting easier), audience chooses (which is new and transformative) and create + choose = better and more relevant.

My first session of the day is with Matt Cutts from Google whose presentation will be “Straight from Google: What You Need to Know”.

Matt says that the number one request he receives or hears is “I want to do better in Google”. He says that WordPress already takes care of 80-90% of your SEO and offers up a few plugins that will help you fight spam and up your SEO. “The beauty of WordPress is that you don’t need to do a lot of stuff.”

Helpful plugins
Cookies for Comments
Enforce www. Preference

He goes on to explain that before you can rank better on Google you need to understand how they work. Getting to PageRank most people in the audience think it’s based on “fairy dust” or “secret sauce” although Matt explains it’s based on: The number and importance of links pointing to you.

Avoid Backlink Obsession or what Matt calls “BO”. How does Google rank pages? You want to be relevant and reputable. “If you do not love something, don’t write about it – life’s too short.” It all comes down to being relevant — What do you love? What are you good at doing? What do you have to say? His SEO tips = keywords. Think about all the ways you can naturally describe something, “you don’t have to stuff it or sound unnatural.” A great tool is the Google Keyword Tool.

Basics in WordPress include optimizing your URL structure… having clean urls like http://miss604.com/contact instead of http://miss604.com/p=?1222546. You can also update your post’s permalink structure individually to optimize single posts. He says you can also optimize your category structure — mark things as “apple” and not “cool stuff”.

“After you mention ‘furniture’ once, two or three times, we know you’ve got furniture.” Don’t go keyword crazy – you still need to keep your content relevant. “If you’re reading it aloud and it sounds stilted, you’re overdoing it.”

Matt’s next tip is to update often followed by applying the ‘Katamari Philosophy’… “the one thing you learn in Katamari is that you’re always reaching.” He adds, “Start small, start in a niche where you can do well, and that might be a very small niche. But then build up, build up, build up. Don’t overreach.”

He also says gaining reputation is important to Google and ways to build that up is by providing a useful service, doing original research or reporting, give great information, and find a creative niche. “If you have one good idea, that can carry you so, so far.” Next tips are writing some code and live blogging is a great help. Also you can make lists (people love lists) and create controversy (bumps up comments).

“Should I do a podcast or a video? Well put your photo up on Hot or Not and if you’re a 6 or higher, do video,” says Matt.

There are a ton of Google tools for bloggers including Webmaster Tools. A tip from Matt is to look at who is linking into your 404 pages (broken links) and it may be worth contacting the author to get them to fix the link. Also, use Analytics to find out what your top posts are. Revisit them and toss in some updates if they’re old or outdated.

A question from the audience is about bounces, meaning how many people come to your site then leave right away. Matt says that “related posts” plugins and links are helpful in keeping readers on your site, exploring your content.

Matt also says don’t fall for scams and don’t run scams — it’s actually in the WordPress terms of service to not use the site for evil err I mean phishing or scamming.

Photo credit: John Biehler on Flickr

He says one of the top tips he can give is to UPDATE your WordPress, make sure you’re using the latest version. An example he gives is the Nazi Party website where there is a bunch of code at the bottom that is obviously spam… “Who do you hate more, the Nazis or the hackers that hacked the Nazi Party website?”

Matt has his talk up on his website, which you should check out since I missed a few chunks. I think his commentary was great and they’re all things I believe in. I’ve been asked how I get readers or followers on Twitter, as though there’s some kind of a trick or scam to it. The thing is it’s organic — I care about my content, my readers, my audience, and I use all of the legitimate tools out there to help build and promote what I create and share.

We’re at the Mission Bay Conference Centre in San Francisco for WordCamp which is a conference and all-out love-fest for WordPress (the platform on which this site runs and on which I’ve based my entire business. I’ve decided I won’t possibly be able to cover everything I’d like to in a timely fashion today so instead of liveblogging sessions I’ll be doing a day blog throughout the day today.

Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com / WordPress) announced that today’s hashtag on Twitter is simply #WordCamp since we’re the only WordCamp happening right now. He began WordPress 6 years ago (when he was 19) and we’ll be having an anniversary party for the platform later tonight.

I’m currently doing a tour at the Genius Bar, which is a help desk for all things WordPress. I’ll be here til 10am with Lloyd Budd (of Automattic) and then Duane, John Biehler, Dale, and John will also have shifts.

Update: I already ran into Mark from Weblog Tools Collection (an amazing WordPress resource online) and look forward to meeting many more cool people.

Update: I’m heading over to live blog Matt Cutts’ talk but will keep this post open to collect all of my thoughts throughout the day.

Update: The BBQ lunch was great and we’re gearing up for Matt Mullenweg’s Q&A session.

Update: I sat in on Scott Porad’s talk as well as one from Cali Lewis. I’m shutting down the Twitter feed now for the rest of the day.

Update: We headed out to the WordPress anniversary party at Automattic’s headquarters where I met some great people including Tara “missrogue” Hunt and Cali Lewis.

Automattic were fantastic hosts, providing free beer/wine, crepes made before your eyes, fresh popcorn, and a delectable selection of desserts (including the WordPress cupcakes). Duane wanted the “Canadians” to represent shut things down so it was a late night but very fun-filled.

This afternoon John and I met up with John Biehler (who is also in town for tomorrow’s WordCamp) and we took a stroll.

Photo credit: John Bollwitt on Flickr

We went from the waterfront up through Chinatown and back down through Union Square. It was really fun to explore a city with such a unique landscape, cultural diversity, distinct architecture and rich history.

San Francisco’s Chinatown is the largest outside of Asia and the oldest in North America, established in the 1850s. Vancouver boasts the second largest Chinatown, after San Francisco.

On Thursday we’ll be heading to San Francisco for this year’s WordCamp, which will be combined with a WordPress anniversary party at Automattic headquarters.

I’ve been using WordPress to power my website since 2006 and over the last three years I’ve come to know, code, and develop the platform, using it as a base for my company’s business. John and I co-founded sixty4media in 2008 in order to provide social media consulting services however the main focus of the company is providing custom WordPress websites.

2008 client samples, showcase for 2009 to be updated in the coming months

We offer design, theme creation, theme customization (tweaking any of the thousands of themes you can download from the directory), tutorials, and everything in between. We believe so strongly in WordPress that last summer we facilitated WordCamp at BarCamp with Duane and this past January, we organized WordCamp Whistler along with our friends at Brave New Code once again.

Since most of the themes we create are specifically commissioned by our clients, the way that we try to give back to the WordPress community is by promoting the platform, being involved with WordCamps, providing tool tips, and I also offer up free screencast tutorials every now and then to help educate users.

If you haven’t had the chance to check out WordPress.com (for web-hosting with a strong community portal) or WordPress.org (for self-hosted, custom sites with plugins) I highly recommend looking into this platform for all your website needs (not just blogging).

Toward the end of this week (after I do my Bard on the Beach + dinner contest draw) I’ll be covering our trip to San Francisco and including several posts from the conference which takes place on Saturday, May 30th. So far the Vancouver contingent includes John, Duane, John Biehler, and myself (please let me know if you’re heading down as well).

I’ve been a speaker or organizer at every WordCamp I’ve attended so it will be fun to sit back, relax, and absorb what the great lineup of speakers have to offer.