Three star links:

• BuddyTV (and buddies of SEOmoz) recently received $6 million in funding. They do some smart SEO on their site, so we’re always happy to see an SEO-savvy company get money flung at them.
• Great, we get a link from the NY Times but it’s about Rand’s facial hair. Maybe next they’ll link to a post about me clipping my toenails.
• Brent Csutoras talks about Reddit’s new UI and features. A lot of the changes seem positive–I love the content on Reddit, but their interface always seemed boring and too text-heavy.
• Apparently Wikipedia is going to become an actual encyclopedia in Germany. Their most popular entries will be turned into a book. I bet David Hasselhoff’s entry will be a separate volume.
• The FBI has taken to posting fake links in order to nab child porn suspects. Apparently the courts approve of this technique, so maybe Sarah can explain to us how this diffuses the whole "entrapment" argument.
• Apparently Twitter’s uptime is ridiculously high. I wouldn’t know anything about it, of course, because I am the only marketer left in this world who does not have a Twitter profile.
• StumbleUpon now has 5 million users and has had 5 billion stumbles. I think that roughly half of those stumbles are from Rand while he’s on conference calls. (I totally outed you, Fishkin!)

Four star links:

• Have a rivalry with a competitor? Try a little friendly competition via advertising–such as these car ads and their escalating ribbing.
• Apparently nearly $5 billion will be spent on social networking tools by 2013. Web 2.0 has officially asploded, and now businesses are setting up to tackle the next generation of the web. Hell, even Dilbert has gone web 2.0.
• PBS talks shares the truth about IT consultants and says that while some are great, a lot don’t know squat. The article also provides tips on how to identify a potentially bad or unskilled IT consultant. I think we run into this problem with all types of consultants, especially SEO, but that doesn’t mean that a few bad apples should ruin the bushel. However, it is imperative to be guarded and understand that not all consultants are the cream of the crop. (Why do I keep using agriculture metaphors?)
• Apparently too many choices can be mentally exhausting. I’ll admit to being indecisive about trivial matters–one time I stood in the produce aisle at the grocery store for about 10 minutes while I pondered whether or not I wanted to buy an acorn squash (okay, seriously, I’ll stop with the fruits and veggy mentions…though now I am getting pretty hungry).
• This style guide for blog design is really cool and provides great examples.

Five star links:

• UrbanSpoon provides us with a fantastic example of how to leverage newsworthy topics by creating link bait for your site. They took a quote about Barack Obama voters being (I’m paraphrasing here) "latte drinkers," "Prius drivers," "Birkenstock wearers," and "trust fund babies," and actually looked for a correlation between those claims and the voting spread of Obama vs. Clinton. The charts are nerdily awesome and the post is fascinating, to say the least.

YOUmoz entries:

• Why Copyright Owners Hate YOUmoz. Samirb touches on copyright law, illegal sharing, and free content generation.
• 3 Things Internet Marketers Can Learn from TV Commercials. Samirb analyzes television commercials and extracts some handy tips that apply to Internet marketing.
• Skype Enters India Holding Google’s Hand. Swayam talks about the Indian culture’s reticence to adapt to new technologies.
• An Exclusive Interview with Farrah Hamid of Hakia.com. Lindop interviews Hakia’s Communications Coordinator.
• Standing on the Shoulders of Goodman and Konefal. Bookworm SEO gets some insight about Google Adwords’ broad match changes from Andrew Goodman and Amy Konefal.
• The HTTP Referer: Friend or Foe? Thetjo provides instructions on how to use the HTTP referer tool and its benefits.
• Chris Sherman SMX China Key Note: Search 3.0, Search 4.0 and Beyond. Smcilreavy gives a recap of Chris Sherman’s keynote from SMX China.
• Tools or Fools? RyanOD shares a list of SEO tools along with their prices and his feedback (if he’s used them).

Best of YOUmoz:

• Calamier wrote Help! I’ve Been SEO Sabatoged!, which accounts his discovery of a massive influx of spammy links to his site and his worries about how the search engines will react. It’s a great post–well, not the situation, but it sparked a great discussion and some tips on how to address something like that if it happens to you.

New events added to the Events Calendar:

No new events were added this week.

New additions to the SEOmoz Marketplace:

Featured job postings:

• SEO/senior analyst for Overstock.com in Salt Lake City, UT
• Contracted SEO in Constanta, Romania
• Contracted SEO expert and portal website Drupal expert in Ft. Lauderdale, FL
• Natural search consultant for Netconcepts in Madison, WI.

Featured companies:

United States/North America:

• MacDonald Consulting Services in Milwaukee, WI
• Atlwebsite.com in Pittsburgh, PA
• New Shoe Media in the US
• LandLot in Denver, CO
• Proseo Solution in Alhambra, CA

Featured resumes:

• Welf didn’t offer a whole lot of information about him (or her) self, but he/she is looking for employment.
• Ann Smarty (aka SEO Smarty) is an experienced SEO consultant, blogger, and social media marketer who is currently looking for employment. Ann provides a lot of great value and insight to the SEOmoz community, and her YOUmoz entries are among our best user-generated content.