Steven Covey published The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People and it was a great book.

When Dr. Covey came out with a new book, The 8th Habit, I was skeptical.  Why didn’t he think up the 8th habit right from the start?

Now I understand it.  Ideas evolve.  We are the sum total of your experiences at any point in time. You create a set of rules that you believe are universal.  In my case, I am the author of The Seven Laws of Internet Search.

The Original Laws …
1. Permutation
2. Completeness
3. Iteration
4. Frequency
5.  Process
6. Taxonomy
7. Measurable Results

It has been about a year and a half and now, guess what?  I came up with another Law of Internet Search.  The 8th law could not have been created by me…unless I was able to observe people learning and implementing the first seven laws in their Internet search activity.

Here is what I observed:  The Internet is “non-homogeneous”.  The idea of homogeneity  also resonated with me as I wrote the original seven laws.  I played with the idea of a Law of Non-homogeneity.  This means that the Internet exists in many different formats and there is no way to query everything, with a single method or game plan.

“Non-Homogeneous” sounds ugly.  To define something with “non” in front of it…it would be like cheating.  Each of the seven laws of Internet Search is meant to be a simple axiom of advice.    I failed to get my concept of Homogeneity into the laws.

Why did I fail?  It is simple.  Each of the seven laws is a solution.  Whereas “non-homogeneous” or “non-homogeneity” was talking about a problem.

What was I trying to get at?  It is also simple.  The Internet is not homogeneous, therefore, many different methods are needed to search it.  It is those very search mechanisms that the 8th Law takes into account.  The 8th law is  The Law of Environment.

In fact, the 8th Law is so important, I have moved it the top spot in The Laws of Internet Search.  It is now The 1st Law of Internet Search.

To understand the Law of Environment.  Get your mind around the concept of the Internet having many modalities. Many sites, each with it’s own set of rules or search environment.

Next.  There are some simple questions to ask.   What is the access method?  What are the sites restrictions?  Etc

In addition to the simple questions about the environment, the more advanced Internet search may want to dive into further understand the full capabilities of the search environment.

Once the simple questions about the environment are answered, the Internet search can proceed with quantifiable expectations on what to expect from their chosen search medium.

For example, it is important to understand that Google will only give you a maximum of 1000 results from any search.  Even if Google reports that their are 2450 results, you only have access to the first 1000.  Understanding this is understanding the limitation of the environment.

Here are the The Laws of Internet Search, Reloaded

1.  Environment
2. Permutation
3. Completeness
4. Iteration
5. Frequency
6. Process
7. Taxonomy
8. Measurable Results

Dr. Steven Covey, now I understand. Looking forward to the ninth law.

I blog when I am inspired and I blog when I am mad

Today I am mad… and I figured I would give an education to those people who just don’t get it.  Listen up oh ye job posting spammers.

Here is the problem:   10-15 years ago, someone profited from sending mass emails to every contact they had an email for.  What did they send?  A job posting or a candidate.

This was not a common thing, “back in the day”.  So it worked, and a handful of people made a bunch of placements due to an enhanced network reach and the wonders of email.

Please be a student of history here.  Follow this logic

Things change.  New technology usage of any type tends to be simple and adopted by the few.  Next, the technology gets wider adoption and it gets more specialized, due to changing needs.  So sending 1000 people your candidate or job posting (henceforth “blasting”) worked 10 years ago, but today it adds to noise and has reduced impact.

Today, I got “twitter spammed”.  Someone I added to my network, posted a bunch of job postings to their account.  I was following them so the entire first page on my iPhone was filled with their postings.

I am no-longer following him.  In fact, I removed just about everyone I was following, and will only adding people that don’t do the “pizza post”.  What is a pizza post?  It is when someone has nothing better to do than tell every detail of their life.  Even if they have great thoughts sometimes, I refuse to follow anyone who used the medium for the drab and uninteresting… give me ideas and make me think!

Back to job order sharing and candidate blasting.  The problem is that if you do this despicable act, you are part of the problem, creating noise, creating spam,  LinkedIN spam, twitterSpam, etc.

Here is how to do blasting right.

1. Build a solid network of OPTS-IN that want to accept candidates or open Job Orders.
2. Build a strong network of people in your field, you will have better luck sending to a targeted group of 25 than a mass spam of 1000.
3. DO NOT assume that because someone is connected to you on a social network (ie LinkedIN) that they want to get blasts from you.  THIS IS NOT OK.
4. If you want to use Twitter, create a separate account for blasting.
5. Use a network that is highly specialized for blasting.  Don’t use a medium like LinkedIN unless you are in a group specifically for sharing of Jobs and Candidates.
6. Actually TALK to people that are in your network.  If you are to do business with them, adding that human element sooner rather than later will help make you a better partner.
7. If you are one of the people that gets a blast and did not opt-in.  Remove them from your social network

There is so much possibility in candidate and job order splits, if done right.

For vendors creating new offerings in this space (taking advantage of existing social networks)

1. Think your model through so you don’t add more noise for all of us
2. Understand that people are best served if they can separate the blasting from their social network personas
3. Give your users the tools to be targeted.
4. Above all, make sure your venue has some sort of opt-in

A few months ago, I suggested to Reid Hoffman, Founder of LinkedIN to create a “flag” in LinkedIN that told you when a message was mass-mailed.  This should be very simple for them to implement.  If someone sends THE SAME message out to over 50 people on LinkedIN, the “mass-mailed”  flag is set.   This would give LinkedIN users the ability to immediately (1) delete the offending email and (2) remove that person from your network

Reid replied that they were looking at such an option already.  Sure.   I’m still getting spam Reid.  Spam is good for LinkedIN, I would be surprised and impressed if they added the feature.

So here is an idea for someone to build a useful service:

-Create a system that you can forward a linkedIN (or any social network) spam message to
-Pick some reasonable threshold.  If any one person is reported over that threshold they go on a “block list”
-Create a LinkedIN application that automatically deletes those messages

SocialSpam.com domain is available;)

I will give a $10,000 coupon/bounty, good for any Broadlook software, to anyone who builds this application.

I really hate spam.