Announcing the new Yuku blog

Welcome to the new Yuku blog. The Yuku team has set up this site to share the knowledge we and our fellow Yuku community leaders have gained over the years in building, fostering and promoting online communities.

Over the next several weeks, we’ll share with you the best techniques for making your site as visible as possible on the web, including detailed descriptions of the “Top Ten SEO Secrets for Social Networks.:”

If you’re already an Search Engine Opimization expert, the converation in the coming weeks may be a good refresher. You may even grab a few new tricks for how to apply SEO to social networks.

If you’re new to the mysterious world of SEO, this list of ten SEO tips is a must read. It’s hard enough to build a community and make it lively, but it can be a whole other challenge to get your community known on the web. These SEO tips can be very helpful.

As we start sharing this SEO secrets, we invite people to comment on the tips. Please share your own experience. What has worked, what is hype and what does not work. SEO is ever evolving, and we don’t pretend to have all the answers. But these ten SEO principles are definitely a good start toward making your community easy to find.

An Age of Data Mining and Closet Mining

As teenage girls start in the search of their first support bra they’re also seeking support through their friends on how to create a ‘look’. Pikkee, a pre-beta, boot strappin’ app that allows friends to virtually share their existing wardrobe with their friends on Facebook and other social networks, is aiming to organize and enhance this very innate human interaction.

Pikkee CEO Mandy Silverman says she wants to bring the daily experience of choosing an outfit to the Internet and make it easy for friends to get and give fashion advice. With a $21 billion online apparel market and the ubiquity of digital devices – some 80% of teen girls have access to a digital camera – an app like Pikkee could become a handy tool for fashion conscious dressers to get news ideas as well as find ways to stretch their clothing budget.

“The economy is down and people are trying to make more of their wardrobe. Pikkee is all about picking out what to wear. Real friends connecting with you, that authentic experience, and talking about the clothes you already have,” says Silverman.

CTO Mike Hsieh is releasing the product after 4 months of development, and the initial goal is to learn how early adopters use the technology. Are users taking digital pictures of everything they own, creating a virtual closet? Are they using themselves as models? What does the mix look like between user-generated content and searching through the 150 affiliate clothing images to add to their wardrobe? Pikkee’s UI is simple and crisp. The backdrop of a cork board that the user tacks up outfits to for feedback brings me back to the dorm days.

Pikkee’s intern, Cara McLaughlin, is entering her senior year in high school and tells me she’s seeing a trend among her friends towards putting a little more thought into their ‘look’. She elaborates to describe how friends are seeking out friends’ opinions on their wardrobe or look of the day because teenagers are taking more risks with fashion and want to find unique outfits. Is this desire and need for individuality yet others’ approval different from when I was a teenager? I’m leaning towards no. But it will be quite interesting to see how Pikkee will keep up with the teenage girls’ tech savvy and ever adapting ways of using their digital camera, mobile devices, and social media outlets.