Welcome to the class. This first day of class is an introduction to what the web is today. In a word, the web is everything. It’s serious, funny, helpful, annoying, casual, informative, powerful, beautiful, ugly, cryptic, useful, and anything else you want it to be.

Lessons from YouTube

The following video is one of the most watched videos on Youtube EVER. It’s just about the silliest 60 seconds you’ll ever spend in front of a computer, but you’ll be just one of nearly half a billion people who shared the same experience. Is this the power of the web, or just a testament to humankind?

YouTube originally started out as a video dating site. The tag line was, “YouTube: Tune In, Hook Up.” The founders were a few young guys who thought they were on to something great. When they launched, nobody took the dating part of their site very serious. Instead of uploading video dating profiles of themselves, they uploaded dump videos of their cats, vacations, sports highlights, and everything in between. Instead of considering their venture a failure, they adapted the site to what the users wanted — the ability to broadcast themselves. The tag line changed to “YouTube: Broadcast Yourself.” And a $1.65 Billion web phenomenon was (re-)born.

About this class

By taking this class will accomplish the following:

• Have FUN. If you take this class too seriously, I will de-friend you on Facebook or stop following you on Twitter.
• Learn web culture. Who uses Twitter? Facebook? LinkedIn? Google+? What else?
• Understand how to build a site and gain an understanding of the tools to grow your skill set after this class
• Understand the fundamentals of search engine optimization (SEO)

SEO Basics

• Page Rank
• Find 10 sites, each with a different page rank (1 through 10).
• Keywords
• Semantic HTML
• The SEO contest. Big fun. Seriously!!