I'm a big believer in putting the call to action above the fold, so if you enjoy the post, I'd be grateful if you did one or more of the following:

1. Subscribe to YOUmoz's feed. While SEOmoz's feed is top 50 on the web with about 20k readers, some great content posted here is only followed by about 500-600 people.
2. Credit me with a link to my own site, SEO ROI (preferred anchor text "SEO consulting services," "SEO ROI services," and variations thereupon ... deep links to services pages also much appreciated). If you're really too lazy or have no blog/site, subscribing to my RSS feed would be nice.
3. Better yet, link to something you found in this article that you enjoyed. Like one of these Sphinners' content? Link that up!
4. Sphinn this. (And if you're the first to Sphinn, leave a comment with the Sphinn link.)
5. Have these bright folks stimulate your mind.

And now, onto the meat and potatoes:

Google's guidelines on one topic per page aside, I've got so much running through my tiny brain I need to get it all out or I'm gonna go nuts. I've got several topics in the works, but I wanted to start off with the following:

Sphinners You Might Not Know But Should

First, I hereby decree that all future search-related algorithms be named according to the formula "X Rank," where X is the main ranking idea. First, to make everyone's favourite algo genius's life easier, and second just for pure entertainment sake (it sounded entertaining in my mind :P).

Second, I was having a glance through Sphinn's top users rankings as well as their top content, and I realized that while I know a fair amount of those folks (know who they are, I mean), there's a number that I don't. I had a look at 20 of the top unknown (to me) Sphinners' sites and have the following to share with you as a result. Not only should you add their RSS feeds to your readers, but <del>spam</del> add them on Sphinn too!

Todd Mintz

If you live in or near Portland Oregon, there's a blog for you: SEMpdx. Turns out they've also got an interest in Mr. Slawski's patent and algorithm analysis. And you coulda met 'em at Pubcon. SEMpdx features the writings of the insightful Todd Mintz.

Jeff Quipp

Next, we have Jeff Quipp of Toronto search marketing firm Search Engine People. Amongst other things, he needs to be congratulated on a recent citation in Technology Quarterly, and he's also got a cool SEO lyric contest. A certain "Katrina Boydon" won that with a parody of I Will Survive called "I Will Optimize." I'd like to ask everyone reading this to link both to Jeff's site and to the I'll Optimize YouTube video. They've given SEO its own theme song! How many other industries can claim that?

Rose Sylvia

Rose Sylvia is a talented PPC blogger. On Sphinn, she has the vivid-image name, Flying Rose. In true social style, she  shares her gratitude to some of the things and people we occasionally take for granted, but which ultimately make life worth living (including, natch, the Internet :D). See her attitude of gratitude post for a good intro to social blogging!

Rose, you might want to consider renaming the blog or getting another URL if you're going to focus on communication skills so much! (Speaking of which, Rose is also a contributing author at the excellent Collective Thoughts social media blog. To the rest of the Collective Thinkers, please don't feel slighted that I haven't included you here; I'm working on a piece just about you folks. You could also help me with that by answering the questions below. :) )

David Harry

Another blog I've noticed around the social media space that features some great writing and is also backed by a popular Sphinner is Huomah. David Harry, Sphinn alias the Gypsy (aside: it's so much harder for people to find you when you have a made up name! Yes, so says "bookworm-seo"... hey, I'm Gab on Sphinn at least :P).

What's nice about his blogging is that it's not just advice - which gets annoying after a while when everyone has X# great tips on yada yada - but some nice editorializing. Like his point on getting a grip on SMM. He's right - social media marketing isn't the silver bullet. [The silver bulllet, if you're wondering, is Coors. Duh!]

Mystery Marketer

The next fellow I'd like to present tot you is not only a Sphinner, he's involved in the Small Business Brief site too (leave a comment here if you're a member at SMB's pligg site or are about to join). And in another show of his skill with social media, he's been interviewed by Li Evans and recently spoke at SES. So who's this wunderkind search and media marketer? None other than David Wallace of Search Rank, of course.

Tamar Weinberg

In my last post on YOUmoz and Sphinn people of note, a few of the comments suggested that I should be paying attention to Tamar. Truth is, I'd already noticed her once or twice but from the time I started writing this article to the time I finished, I just ran into so many of her posts it was mind boggling! Talk about social media branding!

First, I loved this cutting criticism of Digg's Kevin Rose. It's so well written, the points so well taken, the arguments so incisive, you wonder how anybody could possibly disagree. (The people commenting to say one of the mods may have jumped the gun on the Digg group submission still can't explain his blatant duplicate submission.)

Second, I related a lot to her response at 10e20 to the 5 Things You Didn't Know About Me meme. I passed my license exam without being able to parallel park (I forgot to put my turn signal on and finished about a foot and a half from the sidewalk), I came to SEO from another branch of the web/tech world (I wanted to figure out how to get more traffic to my blog), and have also wondered how you'd get Kosher food at the search conferences, being an Orthodox Jew too (seems like I'm in good company :) ). 

Third, Tamar wrote an intelligent piece that cites Michael Gray on something I wish I had understood when i started blogging two years ago. I won't spoil it by repeating the quote or summarizing the post. Suffice it to say that you need to learn that social media means community participation. Which is kind of the theme of this post, if you're paying attention.

Fourth, for my fellow SEOmoz fans (I know you're reading this), Tamar hung out with the gang, as you can see in her Pubcon pics. Very cool!

Chris Winfield

Chris is not only a top Sphinner, he's the founder of 10e20. (What does 10e20 mean, by the way?) And it appears we share at least one common interest: Facebook ads. Chris had this sweet little item in early November on Facebook advertising and its press coverage.

As if being the headbosschiefguy of one of the top moblogs around (aside: It seems that if you're starting out now and want to be competitive, your blog needs to have multiple authors, or you need to participate in a moblog, at least. What do you guys think?), Chris is also a Threadwatch editor. You know what that means, right? No? Do a whois search. Chris is connected like a motherboard! Wow that was both lame, weak, and geeky ... I'm reaching new heights! 

Oh, and did I mention this guy gets called up for background and quotations by the likes of Forbes and the Wall Street Journal? 

One more shout out to 10e20 before I move on: as a person who is fascinated by political marketing, 10e20 showed me that Digg was dedicating a section to the Presidential candidates.

Shana Albert

Shana is the nanny (cue Fran Drescher music) behind Social Desire. I noticed one of her posts when it went hot on Sphinn. Shana shared a personal experience that I found pretty interesting. She started her professional life at an office where they took forever to give her a permanent position just because she was a young, attractive woman, as her boss put it. Weird gender discrimination, if you ask me. Perhaps a bit stranger that she should end up staying eight years, but apparently she got along well with her officemates.   

In another quite intelligently written piece, Shana wrote a guide to entering social media. Hint: There's more to it than commenting on blogs and participating at social networking sites! Is it any wonder it did over 40 Sphinns?!

At the same time, Shana's also expressed something I've worried about myself: getting addicted to social media. Chatting is addictive, and it doesn't quite matter if we're talking about doing it as part of a forum thread or in blog comments, etc. In the post, Shana shares just how much time she dedicates to social media. From my own experience, I'm not at all surprised.

Just trying to keep up with and comment on what's posted here at the moz is pretty time consuming, let alone keeping up with Sphinn: Slightly Shady SEO (another Sphinn discovery of mine), Brand Curve, Mike Belasco's, Michel's (French), Emergence Web (French), Praized, Frog in the Valley, Nicolas' SMO blog, Greg's Screenwerk (I don't comment much, but I'm a loyal reader, Greg), Understanding Maps & Local, the Local SEO guide, or the solid up in coming SEO smarty. Consider: I used to stay up till 1 or 2 am just to read Problogger or Entrepreneur's Journey posts (ironically, I don't read either anymore - SEOmoz and SEO Book are my main fare nowadays... though I won't comment as early if you keep posting at 4 am Eastern, Rand :P!).

Glen Alsopp

AKA Viper Chill, Glen's got some terrific ideas on linkbaiting, including giving away free linkbait ideas. Perhaps more impressively, Glen's doing good with social media. A guy like that deserves some juicy links with good anchor texts, so let's see ...

Glenn offers search engine optimisation services (the "s" is his South African spelling),  brand monitoring, and like my friend Vin, who describes the idea as redefining your vertical, Glen shares the tried-and-true link building tip of going off-topic.

Marty Weintraub

Sphinn matters a lot to Marty, alias aimClear. What's nice about Marty's blogging is that he talks about the pricing of SEO, not just the practice of it. Kinda like Andy Beal's SEO business advice.

Paralleling a certain new addition to the SEOmoz team, Marty also covers (a bit) search marketing and the law. See here for his take on disclosure. 

That said, I was a little bored reading Marty's local search coverage from the previous SMX. Put your address on the website, make your content accessible to mobile users, local search spending is X billion and will grow to another number I won't be any more able to grasp either.... Blah. But then, I shouldn't blame him because I think the search conferences aren't doing a good job of covering local search (you'd be better off just reading Greg's Screenwerk, Andrew's Local SEO Guide, and especially Mike Blumenthal's Understanding Google Maps and Yahoo Local).

But Marty compensates elsewhere. See his interview with Avinash Kaushik, for instance. Interesting, if not particularly actionable. My question is: How do you meet those different needs when most visitors ignore your navigation?

Sebastian X 

Have you ever considered writing pamphlets rather than blog posts or articles (seems very 19th-century-propagandist to me, but what do I know?)? Have you ever considered cloaking your robots.tx file? Have you ever considered making your logo a crab that others mistake for a lobster? Well apparently, Sebastian's left you behind (along with his last name, apparently, which he claims has been lost in cyberspace).

All silliness aside, Sebastian is probably, with Hamlet Batista and Mikkel deMib, one of the most technically advanced search marketers there is. I, for one, learned a boatload about javascript redirects (useful if you're an affiliate and want to outrank the merchant yet need to link to them) and other redirects from him. (Can't find the original post I read, unfortunately.)

Tadeusz Szewczyk 

In addition to being remarkable for having a name with three Zs in it (can you say Scrabble points?), Tad writes one of the best SEO blogs around: SEO 2.0. For one thing, he's got this great post on how to treat your RSS readers and how it compares to attracting new ones (though I think that ultimately if your current readers are satisfied, they'll refer you new ones). Major props on the better definition of RSS, btw. Remote Subscription Services makes a lot more sense!

Practicing what he preaches and in the same vein as Tamar, Tad also recommends getting into the mixx. But while I think Tamar still diggs, Tad no longer diggs and only mixxes.  

Patrick Altoft

Pat's profile on Sphinn was recently viewed by my acquaintance from EF, Handsome Rob. Rob's a very knowledgeable SEO and internet marketer, so if Patrick's got his attention, you know he's worth checking out.  

One of his posts I'd like to highlight is his Funny Keywords post sharing Compete analytics data for Digg, Technorati and co. I think that competitive analytics is a direction search marketing is moving more and more towards (think Spyfu, KeyCompete, etc.), and it's cool to see the big sites' data. (For those of you who are interested, Valleywag's analytics are public, too.) 

Another is the blogger's guide to the apostrophe. Grammar is important and if your speling sux, I hope u get your just deserts.

Wiep Knol 

Wiep is a Nederlander, which makes him automatically cool by association with Edgar Davids.  

More interestingly, Wiep is a good organizer and has produced a Link Value Factors article a la SEOmoz Search Engine Ranking Factors piece. It features contributions from some of the best people in the business, like Aaron Wall and YOUmoz's own Hamlet Batista. Patrick Altoft contributed, too. Perhaps the best quotation, however, comes from someone I just discovered by reading the article, Andre Scholten:

André Scholten: “I think the Scrabble value of the domain name is more valuable than the Alexa ranking.”

A recent Sphinn submission of Wiep's considers LinkedIn's recent remodeling, including the launch (finally!) of an API.  He also recently shared a piece that went hot telling Google to suck it up on paid links. Speaking of which, he has some nice link posts rounding up other bloggers' writings on links. In fact, he puts me to shame, as I missed this great one from Slightly Shady sharing 13 tricks to get links.

Halfdeck

I'd noticed Halfdeck getting mentioned in the comments on my last post on Sphinners and YOUmozzers,  and when I dropped by his site in writing this, I realized I'd actually visited before.  It's a bit above my head, but I'll share this in the hope Half or someone like Hamlet can leave a comment summarizing what he was talking about. Halfdeck wrote about getting more of your content indexed with "third level push." The whole thing's very technical and unfortunately for me, I'm not that technically knowledgeable.

Incidentally, I found and then lost Halfdeck's Sphinn profile link (at least I thought I did, now I'm beginning to doubt he has one). in the meantime, you can see his YOUmoz member page.

Bill Hartzer

I first came across Bill in an email from Ralph Wilson's Web Marketing Today newsletter (a bit beginnerish now), in which Bill shared the tip on finding directories by searching for "keywords"+"add url" and such. Chances are you already know Bill, but I included him because he's one that doesn't get his fair share of props, imho. 

Bill shares news with us of Yandex getting an award from the World Economic Forum (Yandex is the #1 SE in Russia). As a bookworm, I'm inclined to link as well to Bill's recommended marketing reading list. And as someone offering search reputation management services, I think Bill's knocked it out of the park with news of an integrated reputation review site. That is going to have an impact! (As an aside, I'm a little anxious about the anonymous ratings program. If you're going to say something, shouldn't you have the courage to stand by your review? If it's critical but fair, what do you have to worry about?)

I also wanted to write about SEOptimise, who's fairly well known but not quite A-list, as well as RaiseMyRank, but I just got really tired after writing the other profiles (besides, I can't find the Sphinn profile for RaiseMyRank). I excuse myself by pointing out that I did mention Slightly Shady SEO, who's a great Sphinner, as well as Hamlet, Mikkel, Andy, Ann, and a whole bunch of others who are on Sphinn.

Lastly, I'd like to ask each of the Sphinners named here (and any others not named here but on the top list) for an interview. It'll help the community get to know you better! If you could answer the following 10 questions by way of email (Gab at seoroi.com), I'll repost them as a series of columns here, as well as organize the lot of it into a coherent article. Naturally, you'll get links (and traffic ;) ) throughout and hopefully some RSS readers (or massage oils, if that floats your boat) to boot.

1) What benefits have you seen from your activity at Sphinn?

2) Share 3 - 5 key elements of your success with Sphinn.

3) What other social networks do you participate in (Digg/clones, Facebook/LinkedIn/Myspace, Ning-type sites, forums, specific blogs you comment on a lot)? Can you share your usernames there, and what type of content you'd consider sharing with the other members of those sites as well what you wouldn't pass on?

4) What features (besides those announced, like "Mark as spam/Bury") would you like to see on Sphinn?

5) Are you a socialist or a medium?

6) Define the term: "Sphinn doctor."

7) Besides only submitting their own stuff or only sphinning their own stuff, what are some common mistakes  people make with social media?

8) Tell us a minimum 3 non-Sphinn items about yourself that people could use to catch your eye on Sphinn (i.e. to Sphinnbait you).

9) Which of Cialdini's 6 principles do you feel most important to gaining influence and why? Can you share some anecdotes?

10) What is the future of social media? 

 Thanks!