Heck, if I were MSN, I'd charge even more money considering customers will benefit from the inside scoop. Maybe they'll offer a special - "if our efforts don't help you rank on MSN but boost your Google rankings, we'll give you a rebat." If a company like MSN doesn't make enough money in one area, it goes somewhere else like SEO. Maybe they'll invest their profits into a better search engine or find a way to get more searchers to use it. Have to run to check out the latest "SEO service offerings" at Circuit City. Or was that Bob Evans?

Thanks for the feedback; wish I could be more up front about what we found - but who wants to make lawyers rich? Some of the rankings aren't great, but the amount of text has us wondering what influence may be there for any number of keywords.

Thanks for sharing with this community. Our  whole industry needs to know about these folks. Of course, it's just an arrest. There's always the fun court date...and the possibility of a book deal based on prison life...

I think it's worth the occasional exercise...to see "friends" profiles. At a corporate level, I don't know what you can really do.

On a personal note, my wife and I knocked my son off My Space 2 years ago because we got tired of his "friends' " language and junk like "if you were going to commit suicide what method would you use?" and "if you were a bottle of alcohol what would it be?"

I like Jennifer's comment about religion. Personally, I don't think it's appropriate to include religious references in a Facebook profile meant to be used for professional/corporate purposes. That said, having a separate Facebook profile to discuss religion is an entirely different matter. Seems silly to have two profiles, but that's a way to respect an employer even though both profiles inevitably will be linked by the same friends.

Matt Keough here at Fathom SEO also raised some good points while posting about Jennifer's piece:

http://www.fathomseo.com/blog/index.php/2008/01/03/antisocial-media/

"While I certainly understand her concern, I don’t share it completely. For starters, I do think that anyone sophisticated enough to be poking around Facebook (pun intended) on a reconnaissance mission might be hip enough to know that folks “friend” each other for many reasons and may be a little more indiscriminate than they are in real life. Although usually called “friends”, there is an understanding that a social media friend is not really a true blue friend, right?

Secondly, just by looking at your profile they probably get a fair idea of your interests if you have developed it to any extent. If you have not developed your profile, and they are using your tertiary connections as a surrogate for your values - I question their judgment."

I guess if Google isn't writing the content, it's still honoring its mission to "organize the world's information" as opposed to "organize the world's and Google's information." I doubt it will take flight - not in the proposed format. If it does at some point, I hope the exercise helps develop spam defenses rather than encourage another Wild Wild West for spam enthusiasts. Just because it's a Google toy, will that mean Knol will rank #1 for everything or will Knol have to follow all of the ranking rules (like that would ever happen)? A huge downside of Knol is that the content could be lame - just like you find all around the Internet. I don't write as often as I should, but time and circumstance get in the way. Mostly, I only write when I have something to contribute. Will knol pages be drivel or insightful. My money is on the former.