Facebook Is The Ant; Zynga Is The Grasshopper

Facebook Is The Ant; Zynga Is The Grasshopper

Editor’s note: Adam Rifkin is co-founder and CEO of PandaWhale, an online network of interesting things and people. He has never owned Facebook or Zynga shares. . You can follow him @ifindkarma.
Facebook and Zynga have experienced similar roller coaster-like devaluation from their peak stock valuations, and they’ve been partners for years, which is why MarkZ and MarkP often get lumped together in the same sentence by fearful investors whose stock is underwater: “Facebook and Zynga (insert analysis here).”
Such bundling masks a deeper structural truth. The reasons that the two companies have tanked in the market could not be more divergent, and more indicative of the character and strategic vision of the startups’ respective founders. Forget any analysis that lumps the two companies together, and instead find lessons in Aesop’s fable that are important to every startup founder.
Zynga is the Grasshopper in Aesop’s fable, playing and trying to get others to play. The fundamentals of Zynga’s business – even when it was working perfectly – are to ensure a steady stream of new games (often via M&A), to grease the user acquisition machine via advertising on other venues (largely Facebook), and to incent users to rope in their friends (via in-game promotions). This strategy depends on playing with copious amounts of capital to buy companies, ads, and promotions, and yet Zynga’s IPO and secondary seemed less concerned with raising capital for Zynga’s corporate coffers. After all its financings, BusinessInsider estimates that Zynga has about $1 billion in pro-forma cash on hand.
Grasshoppers just want to have fun. In March, Zynga’s founder Mark Pincus enriched himself and a few other large shareholders with giddy abandon; the goal of their secondary offering was to provide liquid exits to several existing shareholders. A longer-term thinker would NOT have cashed out a lot of his stock, but Pincus did. In fact, Pincus sold 15% of his ZNGA stock.
A lawsuit against Zynga contends that Zynga executives were selling even though they knew the quarterly numbers were weak. Long-term-focused management does not sell its stock in blocks of 15%; it sells cautiously in tiny amounts scheduled regularly over many years. Examples include Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Pierre Omidyar, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin.
Facebook is the Ant, stashing resources for the winter with grim determination, regardless of which interest groups might be hurt in the short term (among them: investment bankers who were squeezed down to 1% commissions and retail investors who bought high). Mark Zuckerberg’s goal for Facebook’s record-breaking $16 billion IPO was to put as much as possible into Facebook’s corporate coffers, not his own; through financings to date, Facebook now has over $10 billion in liquid assets.
In retrospect, it’s extraordinary to think about Mark Pincus selling $200 million of Zynga stock and $38 million of Facebook stock to enrich himself, while Mark Zuckerberg only cashed out barely enough to pay his tax bill. Let that fact sink in for a few moments, and then compare how Zynga employees feel with how Facebook employees feel about their respective stock prices going down.
Ants work hard, driven by a higher cause. Mark Zuckerberg truly believes that Facebook’s mission – to make the world more open and connected – is the biggest and most important in Silicon Valley. I’ve heard stories that even his relationships with close friends have suffered if those friends chose to sell Facebook stock on the secondary markets or otherwise showed a lack of faith in the long-term mission of the enterprise. His motivations are far closer to messianic zeal than most investors (and David Fincher’s Social Network movie!) recognize… and simple pattern-matching shows us that the greatest companies in technology are started and sustained by founders like him, who live for the mission.
Mark Pincus, by contrast, seems obsessed with his wealth. With some of his early stock gains, Pincus bought a posh 11,500 sq ft, $16 million mansion on the Gold Coast. He has been living large for years, with multiple homes. Zynga evidently spends $1.37 million a year for Pincus’s personal security – in the top 3 of all public companies behind Lockheed Martin and Oracle. Pincus’s stock obsession was first demonstrated by his attempt to claw back stock grants (extra classy touch to do it during the “quiet period”!) from loyal long-term employees — a move so audaciously selfish that I heard entrepreneurs muttering about the long-term damage to the entire startup ecosphere if early employees started thinking their stock could be taken away within weeks of an IPO.
Compare that with Mark Zuckerberg, who lives more like Larry Page than Larry Ellison. He has a single Palo Alto abode that is biking distance from Facebook HQ. His wedding was a backyard affair for fewer than 100 guests with “catering” that appeared to consist largely of tacos, followed by a honeymoon that was newsworthy largely for the money he DIDN’T spend (no tip on a $40 dinner! lunch at McDonald’s!). He lives a life that allows him to focus his energy on Facebook.
Zuck’s goal is to deploy Facebook’s giant war chest and tremendous talent to build a “social utility” that will outlast his lifetime, like Walt Disney and Steve Jobs before him. Pincus, on the other hand, is so out of ideas that Electronic Arts is suing Zynga for copying them too much. Perhaps he’ll get lucky and online gambling will become legal in America soon. But even the gambling-will-be-legalized wager is a demonstration that he’s willing to bet the company on something that MIGHT happen, and lose. Zynga may still have $1 billion in its coffers, but the actions of Pincus do not demonstrate that he knows how to prudently employ that capital. If Zynga fails, whatever, at least he got rich in the process. If a Game-of-Thrones-like Winter is coming, it will be game over for Zynga as they burn their remaining cash and run out of resources.
If Mark Pincus wants to demonstrate that he’s in Zynga for the long run, he will deploy the $200+ million from his March payout, to buy ZNGA shares on the public market the way Netflix CEO Reed Hastings just did with FB stock. A great poker player demonstrates commitment by going “All In”.
The values of startup founders are baked deeply into the DNA of their startups, from inception on. A founder’s character, attitude, and strategy contribute significantly to the corporate culture, so it’s interesting to compare the “culture of play” with the “culture of making the world more open and connected.” To understand the two Marks is to appreciate how they’re making choices now that affect their companies’ future prospects profoundly. Zynga is having fun, like the solo Grasshopper, because times are good. And Facebook, like an army of Ants marching, works tenaciously and tirelessly towards its vision of a better future every single day.

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Facebook Groups Let You See Exactly Who Has Viewed Your Photos, Too

Facebook Groups Let You See Exactly Who Has Viewed Your Photos, Too

In July, Facebook rolled out a new “seen by” feature for groups, which let people know who has seen a post or announcement in that group, and when. And, although Facebook didn’t make much of a song and dance about it at the time, it looks like it is actually offering this feature on photos, too.
As you can see in the screenshot below, the “seen by” feature in photos works just like the “seen by” feature for other group posts: someone who posts a photo to a group can see how many people in that group have viewed it, who those people are, and what time it was that they viewed the photo. And that information is not exclusive just to the poster, either — others in the group can see who viewed a particular picture, too.
The “seen by” feature on a photo was first brought to our attention by Christo Wilson, a computer science PhD student at U.C. Santa Barbara, whose professor, Ben Zhao, was the one who first noticed it appear on a photo of his daughter that he posted to a group of users.
Zhao told TechCrunch in an email that he first noticed it on Friday. “I have a lot of friends who visit a group page we created for my baby daughter, and the first timestamp showed up last night,” he said.
I joined Zhao’s daughter’s page as well, and I could also see the names of all the users who had viewed each photo. This feature doesn’t seem to be appearing on other Facebook groups that I am in, yet.
It’s unclear whether Facebook would ever extend the “seen by” feature to photos that appear on all users’ accounts, not just those of groups.
On the one hand, Facebook has clearly been growing the number of places where people can view who has viewed their content. In May, Facebook added “seen by” details to messages between individual users and groups. Then in July, it appeared on group posts. In that context, it makes sense for it to extend to group photos, and possibly more.
Zhao notes this could be ”a phased rollout and something that will be coming for other more broader contexts as well.”
On the other hand, making something like this more widely used could be viewed as Facebook encroaching too far into how it monitors — and reports — on how the social network gets used. Photos have a more personal nature, and as Josh pointed out when Facebook launched the group “seen by” feature, it would be unlikely this could be used for general photo browsing:

Facebook spends a lot of time fighting spam and scam hawking “profile spy apps” that would supposedly let you see who has viewed your profile. It’s repeatedly stated that no app can do this, and I’d say it’s highly unlikely to ever show who looked at photos. I mean, people might be a lot more apprehensive to browse photos, especially of romantic interests, if they knew other people could see their activity.

But in any case, if privacy concerns and apprehension deters users from looking at photos, that would run counter to Facebook’s bigger strategy to get people using photos more, part of how it hopes to keep people engaged on its platform.
If a feature like this, which basically will tell someone when you have looked at his/her photographs, feels uncomfortable now, there may well be a time when it feels less so. Facebook could be the one to usher in that change.
As Zhao notes, it’s “just another step in the ‘Zuckering’ of our social norms, slowly eroding what most people consider to be over the line from a privacy perspective.” (In his work, Zhao happens to specialize in “large-distributed networks and systems, data mining and modeling, security and privacy, and wireless / mobile systems,” with current projects focused on “querying, modeling and mining massive graphs, analysis of social networks and online communities, and wireless systems and protocols.”)
In groups, that discomfort in any case should be less so — the picture has been sent to a group you are in, so of course you might look at it. That’s slightly different from visiting another user’s (say an ex-boyfriend’s) set of photos and browsing through them all.
And it puts Facebook more in line with Path, which also lets users know who has viewed their “moments.” That alone could be a sign of how Facebook is trying to better tailor its service for those who want to use it in these more personal, traceable ways.
We’re reaching out to Facebook about this feature and will update as we learn more.
Update: Facebook confirmed both that photos posted to groups have been included in the feature since launch, and that the “seen by” feature is only for photos that are part of a group post, not others. “We have not announced plans to extend the seen by feature to other products beyond Messenger and Groups,” the spokesperson said.

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Facebook: A Fate More Similar To Yahoo Or Google?

Facebook: A Fate More Similar To Yahoo Or Google?

Editor’s note: David Cho is CEO and co-founder of Sidebark, the private photo and video sharing service.  Prior to founding Sidebark, he was a leader in Bain & Company’s digital media practice.
How much more valuable do you think Facebook is than Yahoo?  Let’s say I gave you 1% of Facebook’s stock.  How much of Yahoo would I have to give you to part with that share?  5%?  10%?  More?  (Or would you just move to Singapore and renounce your U.S. citizenship?)
What about Google stock?  Would you make a 1% for 1% trade?  What about 0.5% of Google for your 1% Facebook stake?
Well here’s what the stock market thinks: Based on market cap, Facebook is closer in value to Yahoo than it is to Google.  After sliding under $20 per share, just two and a half months after going public at $38, Facebook’s market cap hit $45B, closer to Yahoo’s $20B than Google’s $210B.
The two companies represent two possible future states for Facebook.  Google: Thriving, a colossus in digital advertising with a stranglehold on search, the kind of company that creates billion dollar businesses out of secondary products.  Yahoo: Shrinking, trying to find its identity with a revolving door of CEOs, while seeking ways to improve monetization of its still massive user base.
These two companies pretty much represent heaven (Google) and hell (Yahoo) for Facebook.  Or to steal from Dante’s Divine Comedy (no, not this one, this one), Paradiso and Inferno.
Right now, according to Wall Street, Facebook is edging perilously close to Inferno.  So what gives?  Is Wall Street right, and more importantly, can Facebook find salvation?
By virtually any measure, Facebook runs a fabulous business.  With a billion (!) engaged users, Facebook recorded $1.2B in revenue and $300M in profit in its most recent quarter and has $10B in cash to invest in the business.
But the stock market does not reward current performance.  Stock prices reflect investors’ expectations about a company’s future performance, and particularly for stocks like Facebook, growth.
This is partly why Facebook’s stock price took a beating after its most recent earnings announcement, even though it met the earnings guidance that it had set for itself.  The problem was that many analysts believed that Facebook was “sandbagging” its numbers.  The stock price reflected that expectation, and when Facebook merely met its earnings guidance, the stock took a tumble.
So what should we expect for Facebook’s growth?  Facebook will almost certainly start to create separation from Yahoo ($1.3B revenue in Q2 2012).  But do we think it can eventually grow to Google’s size ($11.0B), nearly 10x bigger than Facebook today?
To get a sense of Facebook’s growth prospects, we can start by breaking down Facebook’s revenue into its component parts: number of users; mix of those users; and average revenue per user (ARPU).  Let’s look at each piece individually.
Number of Users: This is all about product, and Facebook has obviously crushed it here.  They have added 250M users in each of the past three years, and these users are becoming ever more engaged on the site.  But how much growth is really left?  In the US, its most mature market, Facebook grew its user base just 5% in April vs. the same time last year.  In many other markets, Facebook appears to be hitting saturation as well.  While some headroom still remains, Facebook is rapidly approaching a point where hyper-growth – driven by growth in users – will plateau.
Mix of Users: What do I mean by mix?  Not all users are created equally.  A U.S. user is more valuable than an international user, and a web user is more valuable (today) than a mobile user.  As has been well-covered, however, engagement is rapidly shifting to mobile, and most of Facebook’s user growth is coming in developing markets.  Both factors will serve to mute the impact on revenue that arises from continued growth in users.  In other words, even if you believe that Facebook can grow its user base by, say, another billion users, revenue will not necessarily double.
Average revenue per user (ARPU): This one is all about business model, and it is here that Facebook will need to generate consistent growth to find Paradiso. This in turn will come down to two factors: How well it leverages its competitive advantages of scale and data to attract large-scale brand advertising, and how successfully it grows new monetization models like payments.
On the first, Facebook has done well in attracting small and medium businesses and other so-called “performance advertisers” to the platform, but the game will be won or lost based on attracting the billions of dollars that brand advertisers like GM, Proctor & Gamble or AT&T still spend offline.  While online advertising has grown to nearly $40B per year, offline advertising (TV, print, radio, etc.) is still a ~$140B market.  Facebook’s scale will help in attracting these dollars, but they have hit bumps along the road in doing so.
To help land these brand advertisers, Facebook will also need to continue to be aggressive in how it uses user data to deliver strong ROI.  We’ve already seen Facebook experiment here with sponsored stories, using your friends’ likes to insert ads into your mobile feed.  I expect we’ll see many more experiments in the future as Facebook uses what it knows about us to improve ROI.  In fact, Sidebark, the company I co-founded with Nick Stanev, was founded in part in anticipation that privacy concerns will get worse, not better, on Facebook.
The second factor of finding secondary sources to monetize the user base is a wild card.  Facebook has been successful building payments as a meaningful revenue source, and many pundits have offered other adjacent businesses that Facebook should enter (Facebook phone, anybody?)  But I think it’s hard to rely on the discovery of new business models to project Facebook’s growth.
So where does that leave us? Decelerating growth in users, unfavorable change in user mix, and a question mark in ARPU. In the short term, Facebook is certain to grow, but the question of Inferno vs. Paradiso will take quite some time to sort out.  In order to catch up to Google and find Paradiso, Facebook must be aggressive in driving strong ROI for its customers, the advertiser. But to avoid Inferno, they must not kill the golden goose – their amazingly engaging product – through overly aggressive use of user data or otherwise sullying the user experience. It’s a fine balance, so for now, I’ll hedge my bets and say that Facebook is in Purgatorio and take my 1% to Singapore.

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7 questions asked by noob designers, answered

7 questions asked by noob designers, answered

Anyone who writes about web design or runs a web design blog (like this one) is bound to get questions from new designers on a pretty regular basis. And most of us try to answer those questions as time allows (which, unfortunately, isn’t as often as I’d like).
Since time can be an issue, I’ve pulled together some of the most common questions that get asked over and over again, and tried to answer them. These include things like where to learn to design, what skills you need, and how to get clients.
Now, I’m sure there are other questions out there that new designers have, and if you’ll leave those in the comments, we’ll try to do a part two and answer even more.

What skills do I need to learn to become a good designer?

A lot of people might be tempted to answer this with “design skills, duh!” But “design” isn’t really a skill. It’s a result. You need other skills to reach that result.
So what are the skills that go into a good design? Here are the basics:

• A sense of spatial relationships and proportions.
• A good grasp of color theory.
• The ability to take what’s in your head and translate it to pixels.

Sounds simple enough, right? Basically, good designs are made up of a number of different parts. Knowing how to arrange those parts in an aesthetically-pleasing way requires a good sense of spatial relationships and how proportion affects perception.
Good use of color reinforces those relationships and can take a boring design to the next level. Color theory is part science and part art, but it’s probably one of the easiest things for a designer to master.
The ability to take what’s in your head and put it into pixels covers more of the technical aspects of what a designer does. You need to have the skills to use the tools available to a designer to actually create the design. That means graphics programs, programming languages, and more. If you can’t make your ideas into reality, then you’re not a designer, you’re just another schmuck with a “brilliant idea”.
A few auxiliary skills you should probably learn include:

• Project management
• Managing clients
• Basic bookkeeping

While not strictly design related, those are all valuable skills if you want to be a freelancer, and can still be useful even if you work in a corporate environment.

How and where should I start learning?

I’m a firm believer in learning by doing. There are thousands of tutorials out there that can teach you everything you need to know about design, and then some. There is no single best source for learning how to design websites.
I’d propose a three-step process for learning how to design websites.
First, find some good reference sheets for HTML and CSS. There are dozens out there, so just find one that seems like it’ll be easy to use.
Next, start in on some tutorials. Google is your friend here. Look for web design tutorials. The Tuts+ network is a good place to start, but they’re not the only site out there that has high-quality tutorials. Follow a few of them from start to finish to get an idea of the whole process.
From there, start taking existing sites apart. Use tools like Firebug to see the code (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript). Figure out what makes them tick. Figure out which plugins and technologies they’re using. Then rebuild the site from scratch, preferably without copying and pasting their code.
You could spend years reading books and articles that tell you how to build a website. But until you actually dive in and start creating, you’re only going to get so far.

Should I jump right into HTML5 and CSS3 or learn older versions first?

This is kind of a trick question. A lot of new designers don’t realize that HTML5 and CSS3 include not only all the new technologies we keep hearing about, but also all of the applicable “old” technologies in the previous versions (minus those that have been deprecated).
In other words, you should spend your time learning HTML5 and CSS3. If you learn HTML4 (or XHTML), you may be learning things you’ll need to un-learn when you start in on HTML5. The same goes for CSS2 vs. CSS3. So just learn the newest/current technologies, plus any work-arounds you might need for older browsers.

When should I learn a graphics program like Photoshop?

If you want to be a designer, you need to master some kind of graphics program. This could be Photoshop, Fireworks, Illustrator, GIMP, or any other program that does what you need it to. The thing is, even though you can technically design a site entirely in the browser, and with CSS3 you can even create some graphics without bothering with an image editing program, being proficient in this kind of program will be necessary at some point and will make your life easier more often than not.
So in answer to when you should learn something like Photoshop, I say this: as soon as possible.

Do I really need to learn to code?

There are designers out there who never touch code. Some of them do this by choice: they just don’t like to code. But other times, it’s because they never learned how to code.
You really should know your way around basic front-end development. Even if you choose to outsource this or you work on a team where you only need to focus on the visual design, knowing the ins and outs of how code works will make your designs better. Knowing what’s possible and what’s not will also make you easier to work with from the perspective of developers.
I would strongly recommend learning HTML5 and CSS3, at the very least, and familiarizing yourself with enough JavaScript so that you can use jQuery or another library without tearing your hair out. If you decide to learn additional programming languages beyond that, it’ll only help you become a more versatile and well-rounded designer/developer.

How long does it take to get your first client?

Sorry to use a cliché, but how long is a piece of string? Some designers are naturals. They can learn how to design well in a matter of a few weeks or a few months. It’s often the technical aspects that hold them back in the beginning, rather than creative ones.
Other designers take years to learn their craft before ever taking on paid client work. Either one is fine. If you feel ready to take on other people’s projects after a couple months, then go for it. If it takes you years to reach that point, that’s fine, too.
A couple of bits of advice: first, make sure you have a few projects of your own completed before you start working for someone else. That means completed entirely, from creative brief to finished, live site.
After that, you may want to consider designing a site for a friend or family member for free or at a deeply discounted price just to get used to working with a client before there’s a significant amount of money (and your reputation) on the line.
One last bit of advice: start small. As tempting as it might be, taking on a huge project early on can be a disaster. Until you’ve honed not only your design skills but also your project management skills, you’re better off sticking with more manageable projects.

Where can I find clients?

This is the question everyone asks. There’s no one answer. You can start bidding on projects on sites likeElance.com. You can check Craigslist and other sites for local jobs. You can even call on local business owners to see if they’re interested in a new or redesigned site.
Let your friends and family know that you’re open for business, and ask them for referrals to people they know who might be interested in your services. Write articles for design and business blogs that showcase your expertise. Be active on social media and make sure that your followers and friends know you’re a web designer. Basically, put yourself out there as much as possible and go after new clients.
Finally, make sure that your work is excellent. Your good work and good reputation are the best advertising you could ever hope to have.

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Great jQuery plugins for fresh websites

Great jQuery plugins for fresh websites

One can only imagine how tough it was to practice web design back when everything seemed so new — during the days of Netscape Navigator and Microsoft FrontPage. Looking back, it seems like such an archaic time in the history of web design. It was almost impossible to design something of supreme and intelligent creativity. Back then, you were seen as creative if you had an awful flashing background or colored scrollbars.
There wasn’t a ton of flexibility really when it came down to the nitty gritty of design. Many of the layouts were the same and mimicked what was seen in magazines and newspapers. I mean just think about it: not too long ago we were able to finally figure out a way to use decorative fonts online. Beforehand, it was all Arial, all Verdana and all Times New Roman — in 2012, can you imagine living that life?
Tables were the norm and those weren’t too flexible. Speaking of flexibility, how did we ever live without responsiveness? If you wanted to design a website a while ago, you pretty much were boxed in to work with what you had. No one complained then, but thank goodness for progressive technology.

Now…

Fast forward to now, and we can pretty much design anything the way we want to, in whatever we want to. These types of things shouldn’t be taken for granted, but as new generations of designers and developers enter this realm, it pretty much is. I mean, just a few months ago, we were finally able to use style sheets to create rounded corners — how quick do we forget?
The advances in web design can be contributed to the ongoing evolution of different coding languages. You can’t have a great web design without some great web development (and vice versa). And you would think, things may have gotten more complicated as far as development goes, but it’s pretty obvious things have gotten easier. Take a look, for example, at HTML4 vs. HTML5.
One of the greatest developments in, well, development and design has been the usage of jQuery. It’s probably one of the easiest JavaScript libraries to learn and code with, as well as do some pretty neat things with. If you’re designing freely and/or desire some really awesome interactions between your design and your audience, you will probably use jQuery.

The plugins

jQuery doesn’t just up the ante of your actual design but it makes for smoother user experiences. When websites should be made to welcome your audience and make it easy for them to move around, this is important. The design is also important if you are using a large amount of creativity with your design. Basically, there should be no limits when it comes to creating websites, and jQuery is extremely helpful in making sure you’re not trapped in boxes. So what can jQuery do for you? Below are some great plugins that allow you to be as creative and fresh in web development as possible.

jQuery grid mobile

Some designers like to open up the program of their choice and design whatever they want to with no qualms. There are others who like having a method to their madness. Web design standards suggest that we should utilize grids to help us design great and effective web sites, especially if you’re designing a blog or news site. A second part to that idea, is that the grid should be flexible and responsive. This plugin allows you to create multiple columns with (and without) responsiveness.

ArcText.js

Just a couple years ago, if you wanted to have some really great fonts and typographic effects on your website, you had to open your desired design program and create a graphic with whatever you wanted on it. It was an ok technique until people realized it wasn’t the most flexible, nor did fare well with search engine optimization. With advances and technology, however, we’ve become able to use decorative fonts online. Not just that, but with this plug in, we are able to add some styling to them that wouldn’t otherwise be available outside of Photoshop.

Fancy Moves

A common trend in modern webdesign is the ability to make things move. It’s almost impossible to visit a website and witness static images — almost everyone utilizes an image slider in some form or fashion. Many of these sliders are automatic and change pictures given a specific time frame. There’s nothing wrong with that, but how can you take such a concept and make it greater for the user experience? This Fancy Movies plugin seems to have that figured out by letting viewers control the slide, not just by clicking the next arrow but through comfortably hitting the arrow keys on their keyboards.

FitText

Typography in design is extremely important. Web designers need the ability to use whatever fonts they want to and then put it together in whatever way they desire. Through things such as Cufon and CSS, that’s possible, but of major importance lately is the responsiveness of a website. If your design can’t be flexible, it’s almost useless and one of the main portions of sites that has to be responsive is the typography. FitText allows your headers and filler text to be great, no matter window size or device used to check your website out.

Hover Zoom

The way in which certain elements react to interactions on a site can impact (negatively and positively) the way in which viewers react to it. One simple interaction that is always being played up, is the hover feature. When you put your mouse over an image or even a link, it’s almost common for that element to do something; and the better the reaction, the better people will respond do it. This plugin is for pictures that, when hovered, zoom in or out and also provides additional information. If correctly utilized this can be extremely effective. Not to mention, the design will fare well.

jRumble

What designers have to realize is, when making websites, we have a lot of power. We can make people see what we want them to see and not see the things we don’t want them to see. Basic design principles, like balance and hierarchy, can help to sway the focus and interest of viewers. There are subtle ways of doing this. jRumble is more passionate about getting one to see and notice things in a more forceful, blatant way. It’s a fun plugin and when used sparingly can be effective for whatever purpose. Just remember not to over do it.

jQSlickWrap

Creating layouts for your text can be a difficult thing. It’s not just about the fonts you choose, but also the way in which you present it that makes it effective. If you are designing a site that plans on having big blocks of text, setting it up improperly may cause your readers to be totally uninterested in whatever you’re saying. Many designers have issues when trying to make images and text interact well with each other. If you aren’t extremely into the blocks of text or you find that you want your text and images to interact more, this may be the plugin for you. No more newspaper-esque readings, but more creative freedom.

jQuery Offset Animation

As previously stated, static websites aren’t as common today as they may have been in previous years. Many things have become contributory in helping to create dynamic websites that move and interact well with their viewers. One thing  jQuery had added to that conversation is the ability to create great animations and transitions from element to element. This plugin creates a smooth sliding or sweeping transition to move from one element to the next. It makes for a very enjoyable website.

Scroll-O-Rama

With a name like ‘Scroll-O-Rama’, you might pass this plugin up, but I’d advise you not to. As fun and great as this plugin is, I believe it can be made popular you in the trendy niche of single page websites. As you scroll around single page websites, you kind of expect something to happen. This plugin pretty much allows headings and text to dance as you pass by it. It’s another plugin that’s used mainly for decorative purposes, but if you can sprinkle it about your site and use it in the right places, you could play this plugin for a strength.

jQuery Shadow Plugin

To add a bit of depth to images or elements sometimes, designers like to use drop shadows. There are two popular ways in which designers create shadows and that’s through CSS or creating the shadow in their design program and typically saving it as some sort of transparent file. Most times this works and sometimes there can be some issues but what’s great about this plugin is it allows you to add different shadow types to whatever elements you like without having to design them, and it works cross-browser.

Slitslide

Good transitions in websites make for a fun and tantalizing experience. We’ve already given you a great plugin for element to element transitions, but this plugin is great for page to page transitions. With this Slitslide plugin, the page splits, slides and introduces new pages directly behind it. This is an extremely dynamic tool that adds some excitement and flavor to sites that may need that extra level.

Tipped

Tooltips are an element used for many reasons; to draw attention, add information or whatever you can fit in it. It acts much like a hover effect, where if used properly can be extremely effective. There are a ton of jQuery plugins that cater to the development and use of tooltips. Tipped is a plugin that works and has many features, most of which are customizable by HTML5 and CSS, which makes for an easy and smooth build.

Tubular

We can all agree that a flashing background is not where creativity lies. However, there are other things that can be added to your background to give your website a bit of a spark. You may just be strictly about design and want a well put together pattern, but you might want something a bit more dynamic. Tubular is a plugin that allows you to use YouTube videos to serve as your background. Think of the fun and creative possibilities one could score with this.

jmpress

Some websites or sub-sites are only around to give us a bit of information. There may not be a ton of copy and there may not be a ton of photographs, but it’s important information nonetheless. In many encounters with these volumes and types of information, we are used to putting and presenting them in slideshow type manners. This jQuery plugin is reminiscent of that, while using an infinite background with some great animations.

 

jQuery Knob

We live in a very visual time, where numbers and information is easier to see than it is to really think about. Some of us even prefer to see our information before we really understand it and can use it. If you have some information to offer, this plugin is great to help visualize numbers. It’s an interactive dial/circle graph of sorts that works and allows viewers to change the information as well.

3d Thumbnail Hover

We already talked about the image hover effect and how it can be great effective for web sites. Well, what if you want a little more pizzazz for your images? This plugin gives you an image hover effect that reveals information with a bit of a 3D twist.

blur.js

Good design can really be the difference between a good and a bad website. Oftentimes, the decision isn’t about the design as a whole but about the little details; that’s why we use tooltips and great headline texts. This plugin adds a bit more detail to your site, if you desire. This plugin creates produces psuedo-transparent blurred elements over other elements. This is a decorative plugin, but can be used to benefit.

Conclusion

There are many ways to enhance your web design to make it fresh and appealing to your visitors. Keep in mind that you want to make something that’s not only creative, but creative and effective. The tools we have now are great and what’s even better is technology is still increasing and better things for website creation await us.

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YouTube Ranking Factors - Whiteboard Friday

YouTube Ranking Factors - Whiteboard Friday

 

This week for Whiteboard Friday we are taking a look at how to get a video to rank on YouTube. Each month YouTube receives over 800 million unique visitors who watch more than 3 billion hours of video, traffic we can't afford to ignore. So how do you get videos to rank for competitive terms on YouTube? By paying close attention to these 12 important ranking factors.
Do you agree with these? Disagree? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

 

Video Transcription

Hi, my name is Jeff McRitchie from MyBinding.com, and today we're going to be talking about how to get your videos to rank better on YouTube and specifically YouTube ranking factors. We're going to cover 12 specific YouTube ranking factors, kind of in 2 different categories.
The first category would be the content that you create. These are things that are really in your control. Not everything about ranking on YouTube is in your control, and yet you have the ability to affect it all by the content that you create. So that's really the place to start is by creating awesome content and then uploading that content in a way that is going to put your best foot forward on YouTube.
So let's talk about the first six ranking factors that fall under the category of content. The first is title. You want a title that is going to be awesome. You want a great click through rate. You want people to want to watch your video. So when they're doing a search on YouTube for a specific topic, you want to pop up, and you want someone to say, "That's exactly what I'm looking for." So not only do you need to do the keyword research ahead of time to understand what someone needs, but you also need to deliver on that concept, so that they know that that is what I want, and then when they watch the video, it's not something totally different.
So, when you are setting out to create a video for YouTube, the title is probably the most important thing. You want a title that's going to draw people in, but then you also want to make sure that you deliver on that title. If you are going to say that you have the best video on SEO ever, you better make it the best video on SEO ever. Otherwise, people are going to say, "That's lame." They're not going to click through. They're not going to respond. They're not going to do anything. So title is your first and most powerful tool. You're going to want to do the keyword research and make sure you have a call to action in your title.
Second is description. You want to write a real description for your videos. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a video, and it's like a link to your website is the only description in there. Or, "This is a great video on . . ." and it has like one keyword in it. Write a description. Talk about what your video is all about, what makes it unique. Put some keywords in there, but write it from a real perspective. Make sure you put a link in there to whatever you want, fully qualified URL, and it will light up so that people can click on it. But the real purpose of the description is to make sure that you describe it.
Content is king, and this is a place for you to make sure that you have content. For us, I make sure that my writers write the descriptions. They take time. We write 300 to 400 to 500 words in a lot of cases. Maybe we'll do 200 or 300 words, and then we'll add the transcription below. But you want to make sure that you have something unique that's really about the video. Take the time to write it. It's really worth it.
The third ranking factor on the content side is your tags. You want at least 10 tags. You want them to be keywords, you want to do your keyword research, and you want to make sure that they're relevant for the video. Something that's weird about YouTube that's a little different than Google is that you can have a video that's all about something, and if you don't use that keyword in there, it doesn't really do the semantic matching for you. So, you could have a video that's all about something, but if you don't spell it the right way or if you don't use the plural version versus the singular version, then YouTube won't even rank it. So you need to make sure, at least until Google gets better at it, that you put those tags in there that have both plural and singular. Do your keyword research. Again, make sure that you understand, what are people looking for that are going to need to watch this video.
The fourth YouTube ranking factor on the content side is transcription. This is something that most people don't know about. I'm going to tell you about it today. That is that YouTube has a feature where it's going to try to transcribe your video for you, and it is horrible at transcribing your video. If you've ever tried to read the transcription that it does by machine, it is awful. However, something else that they don't tell you is that they use those transcriptions to rank your video for keywords.
So, if you were to slip something, and there's actually been some tests done on this, where someone transcribes a video and throws in a word that isn't mentioned anywhere in the description, anywhere in the title, and then you type that in a search in YouTube and up comes that video. They are indexing the transcriptions. So take the time to go ahead and transcribe your video word for word. Upload the text file. It will match up the words. It will then make your video closed caption, which will increase your click through rate, and it will also allow you to rank better for that video. Just a quick tip on that. Definitely worth doing. If you're going to take all the time to make the video, take a few extra minutes and transcribe it and make it happen.
Number five, I put this under the content side of it, and that is your channel authority. You control your content, which means you control your authority. Google is looking for channels that have authority, and it's going to use that as a basis for your ranking. It's going to be easier for someone who consistently creates awesome video to rank for terms versus somebody who just throws up a random video. Now, it's a little bit controversial just in that YouTube also has the power to let any person with a cell phone rank really well for a video if they have enough engagement, which is what we're going to talk about in a minute. But all else equal, if you have a good channel that you have great content on and good engagement on your other videos, that's going to flow over into your current video and getting it ranked. So, you want to make sure that you look at all of your videos as a whole and your channel, not just your single video when you're trying to rank.
The sixth is delivery. I put this over in content, because really, ultimately, if you make a crappy video, Google and YouTube will figure it out, and you're not going to rank well. If you think about it, their best interest is providing people with videos that are awesome, that provide the user with exactly what they're looking for, that users say, "That's what I'm looking for," that they interact with. And if you can't do that, if you deliver content in a way that's really poor, the users aren't going to like it. They're not going to watch your video. They're not going to stick around. They're not going to comment. They're not going to engage, which is the next thing that we're going to talk about. If they don't do that, you're not going to rank. So, you need to make sure, when you set out to do a video, that you make an awesome video and not a crappy video. That's really the key. If your users are telling you that your videos are crap, then you need to look and say, "Okay, what am I doing wrong, and how can I change that?"
That's the content side, the stuff that you control directly. By making awesome content, you can then create awesome engagement, which is really the second part of ranking on YouTube and probably the most important. All else being equal, if you do all of these things and there's no competition, you're going to do great. But if there are other people with other videos that want to rank, and let's face it, almost any industry has other videos that want to rank for the keywords that you want to rank for, you're going to need to do more than just throw up a video with a great title tag and a description and some tags and transcription. It's kind of like creating a website but not telling anyone that it's there. So, now suddenly you have to take it to the next level. You need to get some engagement. That's the next six ranking factors that really come into YouTube. I'm just going to go quickly through them so that you can understand some of the different things that YouTube is looking for.
There's kind of a chicken and the egg thing that happens with YouTube. So in order to rank better, you need views. In order to get views, you need to rank better. So there's the sense in which you need to get the word out and allow people to see your video. Use your social media sharing, use your website, use your blog. Whatever network that you have, get people to go watch your video. Once they've watched it, then Google is going to say, wow that's an awesome topic, and they're going to want to rank you better. But it's not just about views.
They're looking at the quality of those views. That's why I put attention as the second part of number one. They're looking to see, how well are people receiving that? I don't know if you've ever logged in and looked at a specific video in the engagement report that you can get on YouTube. It's really cool. Basically, what you can see is how long people watched, where they fell off. So maybe you have a trailer on the end of your video. You're going to watch this nice graph, and everybody's following, following, following. Bam, they're gone. They got to the advertisement. They say,
"Okay, I'm done with this video." You can also see that maybe that happens. You delivered your point, someone got bored.
If your audience is getting bored, YouTube is using that to determine how good your video really is. So, if people are watching it all the way through, if they're totally engaged, then YouTube is going to rank you better than somebody who has a video where they watch the first 10 seconds and they're out. So that's something to keep in mind. You're going to want to look at those reports and make sure that you have the attention that you need. And if you're not, do something to fix it. Make sure that your next video is awesome all the way through, or recreate that video with a new version that's going to garner the attention that you really, really want and need.
The second part is inbound links. I know everybody in the SEO world is talking about inbound linking right now and everything. But essentially, YouTube is using inbound links to videos as a ranking factor. Surprise, surprise. It's Google. Inbound links are king. So, think about ways that you can build links to your YouTube channel and to your YouTube video specifically. So they're looking for both channel links, and they're looking for links to that specific video.
Now, awesome video content gets natural links. People say, "Hey, I saw this great video over here. Go ahead and take a look at it." It's going to build links naturally, but there are ways that you can help that process along by sharing it on your social media, by making sure that your users know that it's there so that they can go and watch it, especially your most engaged audience, which are going to be the people that you're dealing with. For us, that's our customers.
You're also going to want to make sure that you share it on your blog. Those count. You're going to want to make sure that you share it anywhere else where you can that gets people to know about your video so they can link back to it. And if they're really interested, they will link. So, you don't need to go and sit there and try to rack your brain on how to build links to your YouTube videos, and yet you need to always be thinking about how to build links to your YouTube videos. On the other hand, you should always be building links to your YouTube channel, and that should be natural.
All of your profile links, like when you do an email, you're going to have your YouTube channel in the bottom. When you do a press release, you should have your YouTube on there. On your website, you should link to your YouTube channel. It's just natural that you're going to want to promote your YouTube channel, because your YouTube channel is important to you, and you want people to see the stuff that's there. So, that's something that kind of gets overlooked in the YouTube ranking factors, but inbound links are really important.
The third is social shares. You have the ability on YouTube to easily and quickly share stuff on social media sites - Twitter, Facebook. It's simple to quickly share on your own, and it's simple for your users to share as well. Make sure you share it on your own, and hopefully you're going to have people reshare that. Google is tracking that. They're looking for it. They're looking for social signals for these videos. As more people share it, it's going to raise you up in the rankings. Again, it's just one factor in the basket of factors in terms of engagement.
Fourth is embeds. That's going to be people who want to embed the video on their site. Also included is you embedding it on your site or blog. So, if you think about creating your video, you don't want to just leave it on YouTube. You want to then go and take that and embed it somewhere. Also, you have the ability to turn on or off the embed feature. Now, you have to kind of weigh that out in terms of, maybe you don't want people to embed it. But the more people that embed it, the better it's going to rank. So, you kind of have to say, is there a specific reason why I don't want it embedded on other people's sites? If there is, then you can turn it off. But I suggest turning it on, and letting bloggers, letting people embed that right onto their own sites. You're going to see that your rankings will raise as people embed those videos onto their sites.
The fifth under the engagement section is comments and video responses. So this is really key, and Google is really good at figuring out which comments are spammy and which comments are real. So don't try to game the system. Try to produce content that's going to be awesome so that people want to comment on it. So, people who come and say, ask a question, respond back. If someone comes and says, "This is an awesome video," make sure you reach out to them. Google is looking for videos that build social following and that people interact with, because it shows that the video is being watched, that there's quality, and that it's really a worthwhile video to rank. So you're going to want to build up those comments.
On the other hand, they're also looking for video responses, which is a lot harder to get. So, how do you get somebody to make a video in response to your video? That's a pretty tall tale, but it also is a huge ranking factor. Because if someone's willing to do that, then, often, that says to Google, wow, this video really made sense to them or was really important to them. So one of the things that you can do is you can make your video a video response to other videos that might be out there. Now that's not quite as powerful as somebody making a video for you as a video response. You can also add your video as a video response to your other videos that you have on your channel. Again, not as powerful as somebody making a video for you as a video response.
Now, if you have a friend or you know somebody else who does video and you want to trade video responses, that would be awesome. Ask them to make you a video. Ask them to respond to it. Get in front of their webcam on their laptop and record a quick video response that says, here's what I really liked about this video, or this is how I feel. Upload it to their own YouTube channel, share it, and respond to the video and put it as a video response. That's going to be a huge factor for you in terms of ranking. It's just one of those things. It's kind of a big favor to ask. Video is not that easy to create for a lot of people. So it's one of those things that you've got to kind of weigh it out and say, "Okay, how big of a favor can I ask of my friends?" if I want them to create a video response for me.
Then, the last under the engagement side of things is likes and favorites. So there's a like button, just like Facebook. You can sit there, and you can thumbs up or thumbs down. You want, obviously, lots more thumbs up than you want thumbs down. You want people to say, "Hey, I love this video." But a thumbs down isn't the kiss of death for your video, because at least people are engaging with it, and they say, "Okay, I didn't like it." That might tell you, if you get too many thumbs down, that maybe you need to create a better video. But ultimately, you're looking for people to engage with the likes/dislikes side of things. And you also want them to favorite your video, which means that you really had an impact on them, that they really wanted to share it with their people. The more you share it and the more they share it, the better your video is going to rank.
When it comes down to all of this, content and engagement, there's actually an internal page rank system inside of Google and inside of YouTube that causes the rankings to fluctuate. That's why link building and inbound links work. That's why you have all of these different factors at play. When someone shares your video and it's on their channel, they're passing page rank to your video. When somebody accepts that as a video response on their video, they're passing page rank and authority to your channel and to your video. So you're going to want to make sure that you're engaging with the YouTube community, that you have your videos out there, that other people are engaging, because it's going to show up in their feed. Their feed is going to pass internal page rank to you.
Again, internal page rank, what I say that is that they're shuffling it, but they're trying to determine how well does your channel and your video really fit into the YouTube community? Ultimately, if you create awesome content and get great engagement, then you're not going to have any problems at all ranking for the keywords that you really need to rank.
Thank you and that's Whiteboard Friday.

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15 Tips to Speed Up Your Website

15 Tips to Speed Up Your Website

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

After seeing some tweets and analyzing the SEOmoz website, I decided to write some tips and tricks that candecrease pages load time as much as possible. Any search engine wants to provide users a great user experience, just like Google, and a fast site improves overall site quality and increases user satisfaction. Everybody deserves a fast web experience. Some of the following tips are implemented well by SEOmoz, but I will explain them anyway because of their general usefulness.
"Experiments demonstrate that increasing web search latency 100 to 400ms reduces the daily number of searches per user by 0.2% to 0.6%. Furthermore, users do fewer searches the longer they are exposed. For longer delays, the loss of searches persists for a time even after latency returns to previous levels." Google says.
I will list a variety of factors (+ useful tips from Yahoo and Google) and will use SEOmoz as my example:
Note: Making a backup before starting is necessary!

a) Server

Choosing suitable hosting for your venture is the first step in starting a website. Hosting with a professional configuration can be of big help. Here you can find some good tips about choosing hosting.

1. Leverage browser caching

"Expires headers tell the browser whether a resource on a website needs to be requested from the source or if it can be fetched from the browser’s cache. When you set an expires header for a resource, such as all jpeg images, the browser will store those resources in its cache. The next time the visitor comes back to the page it will load faster, as the browser will already have those images available," says CJ Patrick in a nice article about how to use expire headers to set caching: Expires Headers for SEO
Unfortunately, it seems that SEOmoz doesn't use expiration for stylesheets and images.

2. Enable Keep-Alive

"A Keep-Alive signal is often sent at predefined intervals and plays an important role on the Internet. After a signal is sent, if no reply is received, the link is assumed to be down and future data will be routed via another path until the link is up again," says wikipedia.
In fact, HTTP Keep-Alive allows TCP connections to stay alive and it helps reducing the latency for subsequent requests. So contact your hosting provider and tell them to think twice about this! Most hosting companies disable this feature, (including SEOmoz's host) because it's an optional feature (whenever it transfers less than 60 bytes per request).

3. Enable gzip compression

* Image by betterexplained.com
"Gzip is the most popular and effective compression method currently available and generally reduces the response size by about 70%. Approximately 90% of today's Internet traffic travels through browsers that claim to support gzip," says Yahoo.
Gzipping reduces the size of the HTTP response and helps to reduce response time. It's an easy way to reduce page weight. You can enable it by adding the following code to your .htaccess file:

# compress text, html, javascript, css, xml:
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
# Or, compress certain file types by extension:
<files *.html>
SetOutputFilter DEFLATE
</files>

Or, use the following PHP code at the top of your HTML/PHP file:

<?php if (substr_count($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING'], 'gzip')) ob_start("ob_gzhandler"); else ob_start(); ?>

Or, simply use plugins for your CMS (like the WP HTTP Compression plugin for WordPress).
SEOmoz uses gzip. However, some external javascripts (AdRoll, Simpli and CloudFront) could reduce transfer size more than 60% by using gzip.

4. Make landing page redirects cacheable

Mobile pages redirect users to a different URL, (for example www.seomoz.org to m.seomoz.org) so making a cacheable redirect can speed up page load time for the next time visitors try to load site. Use a 302 redirectwith a cache lifetime of one day. It should include a Vary: User-Agent as well as a Cache-Control: private. This way, only those visitors from mobile devices will redirect.
Since SEOmoz doesn't support any specific mobile version, it can't have this problem (someone should take care of the bad behavior of SEOmoz's website on mobile devices)!

5. Use a CDN

A content delivery network (CDN) is a collection of web servers distributed across multiple locations to deliver content more efficiently to users. The server selected for delivering content to a specific user is typically based on a measure of network proximity. For example, the server with the fewest network hops or the server with the quickest response time is chosen. As you can see in the above image, it loads from different servers, based on the visitor's region. You can compare CDN hosting with standard web hosting here.
It seems that SEOmoz uses Amazon CloudFront for this functionality and I've tried MAXCDN, It's awesome, too. You can manage your caches and lots of other useful tools in one WordPress using W3 Total Cache.

b) Content elements

Since you don't have total access to your server, content elements are the most important things that you can manipulate. Let's start with the most obvious weakness of SEOmoz:

1. Minimize redirects

Sometimes to indicate the new location of a URL, track clicks, connect different parts of a site together or reserve multiple domains, you need to redirect the browser from one URL to another. Redirects trigger an extra HTTP request and add latency. Only keep redirects which are technically necessary and you can't find any other solution for it. These are Google's recommendations:

• Never reference URLs in your pages that are known to redirect to other URLs. Your application needs to have a way of updating URL references whenever resources change their location.
• Never require more than one redirect to get to a given resource. For instance, if C is the target page, and there are two different start points, A and B, both A and B should redirect directly to C; A should never redirect intermediately to B.
• Minimize the number of extra domains that issue redirects but don't actually serve content. Sometimes there is a temptation to redirect from multiple domains in order to reserve name space and catch incorrect user input (misspelled/mistyped URLs). However, if you train users into thinking they can reach your site from multiple URLs, you can wind up in a costly cycle of buying up new domains just to stop cybersquatters from taking over every variant of your name.

This image shows what happens when your browser tries to load SEOmoz.org:

As you can see, the greatest latency is the result of some external redirect chains. SEOmoz is using about 20 redirect chains that slow down the load time about 3000 milliseconds.

2. Remove query strings from static resources

You can't cache a link with a "?" in its URL even if a Cache-control: public header is present. The question mark acts the same as Ctrl+F5. Use query strings for dynamic resources only. SEOmoz is using two dynamic URLs with "?" because of using KISSmetrics, but 2-3 queries are reasonable ;)

3. Specify a character set

Specify a character set in HTTP headers to speed up browser rendering. This is done by adding a simple piece of code into your header:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

Note: Some CMSs use functions for character set (like WordPress with <?php bloginfo('charset'); ?> ). I suggest that if you are sure about your character set, write it instead of using PHP functions. It helps to minimize request size, so try to use HTML instead of PHP everywhere that is possible.

4. Minify your codes

Removing HTML comments, CDATA sections, whitespaces and empty elements will decrease your page size, reduce network latency and speed up load time.
You can use simple online tools like Will Peavy minifier, and if you are using WordPress, Autoptimize can optimize and compress your codes and it supports CDN as well. By the way, SEOmoz could save 620B by compressing its HTML.

5. Avoid bad requests

Broken links result in 404/410 errors. These cause wasteful requests. Fix your broken URLs (pay special attention to images). Use online broken link checker or use WordPress link checker for free. You can also read about Xenu Link Sleuth and Screaming Frog tools at SEOmoz that can be really helpful.

6.Serve resources from a consistent URL

It's best to share Google's recommendation:
"For resources that are shared across multiple pages, make sure that each reference to the same resource uses an identical URL. If a resource is shared by multiple pages/sites that link to each other, but are hosted on different domains or hostnames, it's better to serve the file from a single hostname than to re-serve it from the hostname of each parent document. In this case, the caching benefits may outweigh the DNS lookup overhead. For example, if both mysite.example.com and yoursite.example.com use the same JS file, andmysite.example.com links to yoursite.example.com (which will require a DNS lookup anyway), it makes sense to just serve the JS file from mysite.example.com. In this way, the file is likely to already be in the browser cache when the user goes to yoursite.example.com."

7. Reduce DNS lookups

DNS lookups take a meaningful amount of time to look up the IP address for a hostname. The browser cannot do anything until the lookup is complete. Reducing the number of unique hostnames may increase response times. Just look at how a DNS lookup can take about 3 seconds of load time in SEOmoz. You can measure yours, by using Pingdom Tools. I do want to mention that when I re-tested the homepage of SEOmoz.org from a server in Dallas, it showed better results than it did before I started writing this article.
Note: Sprite your images. This means put images that are loading every page of your site together to reduce your DNS lookups. SEOmoz combined lots of its images into one, like this sprite image. You can find more information on SpriteMe

c) CSS, JS and Images

1. Specify image dimensions

Your browser begins to render a page before images are loaded. Specifying image dimensions helps it to wrap around non-replaceable elements. If no dimensions are specified, your browser will reflow once the images are downloaded. In order to do that in <img> elements, use height and width tags specifications.
Note: Don't use dimensions to scale images on the fly -- the user will still be downloading the original file size, even if the image doesn't take up as much space on the screen.

2. Optimize images

Images can contain extra comments and use useless colors. Keeping image sizes to a minimum is a big help for users on slow connections. Try to save in JPEG format. You can use a CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+S shortcut to save an optimized image in Adobe Photoshop, use Yahoo! Smush.it, or if you are using WordPress, you can install the WP Smush.it plugin.
SEOmoz could save more than 50KB by optimizing images on the main page, particularly those in the slider.

3. Put CSS at the top and JS at the bottom

Putting stylelsheets in the document head of the page prohibits progressive rendering, so browsers will block rendering to avoid having to redraw elements of the page. In most of cases, users will face a white page until the page is loaded completely. This also helps you to make a standard web page according to W3 standards. And,put your javascript code at the bottom of the page for the same reason.
There are of other ways to speed up a web page, but I have tried to write about the most important ones which even professional bloggers (like SEOmoz) can sometimes overlook. Of course, site speed is not the main goal but even an ideal website with a bad load time will find it hard to achieve success. Run the fastest website you can in order to reach your goals faster.
Now, let me repeat: DO NOT forget to make a backup before making any changes and don't forget to share your tips or questions by commenting. :)

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