When Google’s “Panda” Algorithm Collides with Duplicate Content

If you’re a Webmaster, it’s likely you’ve heard about the Google latest search algorithm — “Panda” — and all the benefits and implications of this update. Today, we wanted highlight what happens when Google Panda collides online with duplicate content. There have been plenty of opinions written about Google Panda and duplicate content, but we want to provide some background and examples to help you better understand how Panda and duplicate content might affect you.

What is Duplicate Content?

Duplicate content is a term used in the field of search engine optimization to describe content that appears on more than one web page, within the same web site. When multiple pages within a web site contain essentially the same content, search engines such as Google can penalize/not display that site in any relevant search results.

Should you be Concerned?

When Google released Panda, there was a significant outcry from legitimate business and publishers who were either downgraded overnight in their search engine page rank or dropped all together. For many of the businesses, the Panda algorithm reduced SEO rank and decreased visitors, site revenue and online market awareness. Some websites even experienced damage to their brand, as their customers and prospects questioned whether they were still in business.

We’ve spoken with Cult of Mac, Digital Trends and several Fortune 1000 businesses, and they’ve all said the same thing: They were penalized and downgraded as a result of the Panda release as a result of unauthorized duplication of their content. They had done everything to comply with Google in optimizing their SEO configurations, but the third-party websites scraping and duplicating their content (outside of their control) caused their page ranks to fall.

Google’s Official Stance on Duplicate Content:

“We do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results.”

“In rare situations, our algorithm may select a URL from an external site that is hosting your content without your permission. If you believe that another site is duplicating your content in violation of copyright law, you may contact the site’s host to request removal. In addition, you can request that Google remove the infringing page from our search results by filing a request under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.”

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66359

Where is This “External” Duplicate Content Coming From?

Sometimes, it’s not clear how third-party sites obtain copies of legitimate work. Typically, they either steal it by manually or automatically scraping the content. The scraped content is then republished onto their sites, providing no credit or link to the original work.

What does that look like? It’s not difficult to find examples, but I tracked one down that seemed particularly ironic. Here’s an original article by PC World on Google’s War Against Scraper Sites:

Here’s a duplicate copy of the same story that doesn’t give any credit to the original PC World article:

It’s clear that we’re not looking at a coincidence here. The title, article content and images are all identical. The scraping site didn’t even attempt to mask their plagiarism with synonym changes. Why would they do that? Just take a look at the ads on the scraper site … They want to profit from the keywords and traffic driven by PC World’s content.

What Can You Do About It?

• Listen to Google
  Google provides a list of tips for using rel=”nofollow” and canonicalization to ensure they are able to identify you as the original author of content and avoid penalizing or downgrading your business’s search ranking results.
• Learn About DMCA and Use It
  If your content has already been duplicated by unauthorized publishers, you should learn more about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and how it can help get help remove your content from infringing websites. Two helpful resources to start learning the law and your rights are Google’s official DMCA policy page and the United States Copyright Office.
• Be Proactive About Stopping Scrapers
  We believe the best solution is to implement practices and or services to proactively prevent people or web scrapers from harvesting or scraping your content in the first place. Although web scrapers can be difficult to detect, there are tactics and/or services that can be implemented to limit certain behaviors on your website(s). Some of the quickest ways to make strides in the right direction are to implement rate limiting rules, to block traffic from blacklisted IP addresses and to use Captcha to help reduce automated web scrapers.

While none of these tactics are fool-proof ways to completely prevent your content from being duplicated, the more barriers to entry you have, the more difficult it will be for web scrapers to repeatedly duplicate your content. Distil built an enterprise-ready platform to monitor and prevent site scraping, so if you want some help in the protecting your content, try our our service. Whatever route you take, the key is to make sure that whatever tactics or services you implement, you don’t forget about your legitimate traffic … You don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Be proactive, but make sure you keep your priorities on the user-experience and quality of your site(s).

-Sean Harmer, Distil

Beyond my closet-full of black and red shirts (many of which are visible in Tech Partner Spotlight video interviews on YouTube), even when I’m out of the office I find myself “checking on customers’ servers” quite a bit … I use quotes in there because that the justification I give myself for spending time (that I’d probably spend anyway) on platforms that leverage SoftLayer’s infrastructure.

Because SoftLayer operates with an “Innovate or Die” mentality, we tend to attract customers that innovate in their own businesses. Whether that trend is intentional or not, it makes sense: Why would a fast-moving platform or application with massive growth and scaling needs be hosted with a provider taking “enterprise” time to provision a solution that ends up being “enterprise” only in name? “Enterprise Class” is not the same as “Internet Scale,” and that distinction is pretty significant when a business might have one visitor on Monday and a million visitors on Tuesday. Platforms and applications that grow like that usually operate with a high level of what I like to call “awesomeness,” so when they choose SoftLayer as a hosting provider, I feel like I need to investigate their awesomeness personally … And that’s how I’ve become a die-hard user of many of SoftLayer’s customers.

One of my favorite customers to “check on” is Tumblr. If you aren’t familiar with Tumblr, I recommend that you go to their site right now and immerse yourself in their community. I actually remember the day Tumblr signed on as a customer; I was genuinely excited that they’d be hosting on our platform. Even if that excitement was because I could justify having my Tumblr dashboard open in the background at work. I don’t think anyone could have expected the platform to grow so phenomenally in a few years, but Tumblr’s numbers are pretty staggering these days: 16.7 billion (yes, with a “B”) monthly pageviews of 55.7 million blogs with 23.1 billion posts. I wasn’t one of the first accounts on Tumblr, but I tell myself I have some kind of Tumblr cred … And I use my “limited-edition” black background and Japanese dashboard logo to prove it:

Another SoftLayer customer who’s gotten a lot of press over the past month or two is OMGPOP. OMGPOP scaled “Draw Something” to tens of millions of users on SoftLayer’s infrastructure (which you probably know), but what you probably didn’t know is that as “Draw Something” started growing in the market, it was also spreading virally in our office. You’d be amazed at how many SLayers caught the bug. Here’s one of Steve Kinman‘s works of art from a recent game:

While Tumblr and OMGPOP manage to snag a good amount of my free time, my most recent obsession has been playing NomNom Combo from Eastside Game Studios. I had a chance to meet a few of the guys from Eastside Games at GDC this year, and George Karidis told me that I should download NomNom Combo to check it out before I went to the launch party we sponsored for them in San Francisco. As it turns out, he created a monster … By the time the party rolled around, I had to tear myself away from strategizing the best way to move up the game’s all-time “Top Score” leader board. Two months later, I can say that all of my efforts have been validated:

I guess if I had to make a long story short, if you have an addictive app or game that you want to move to the SoftLayer platform, it would be brilliant move from a growth and scaling perspective. One request I’d have is that you warn me, though. I want to have time to bury my head in the sand so I don’t get hooked on more SoftLayer-powered goodness … I’m running out of “free time.”

-@khazard

Before I get too far, I should probably back up give you a little context for what the show is all about if you aren’t familiar with it. In his opening keynote, Citrix CEO Mark Templeton explained:

“We call it ‘Citrix Synergy,’ but really it’s ‘Synergy’ because this is an event that’s coordinated by us across a hundred sponsors, our ecosystem partners, companies in the industry that we work together with to bring you an amazing set of solutions around cloud, virtualization, networking and mobility.”

Given how broad of a spectrum those areas of technology represent, the short four-day agenda was jam-packed with informational sessions, workshops, demos and conversations. It goes without saying that SoftLayer had to be in the mix in a BIG WAY. We had a booth on the expo hall floor, I was lined up to lead a breakout session about how business can “learn how to build private clouds in the cloud,” and we were the proud presenting sponsor of the huge Synergy Party on Thursday night.

Our partnership with Citrix is unique. We incorporate Citrix NetScaler and Citrix XenServer as part of our service offerings. Plus, Citrix is also a SoftLayer customer, using SoftLayer infrastructure to offer a hosted desktop solution. Designed and architected from the ground up to run in the cloud, the Citrix Virtual Demo Center provides a dashboard interface for managing Citrix XenDesktop demo environments that are provisioned on-demand using SoftLayer’s infrastructure.

My biggest thrill at the conference came when I was asked to speak and share a little of our expertise in a keynote address on simplifying cloud networking. I like to tell people I have a great face for radio, but that didn’t keep me off the stage. The hall was packed to capacity and after defeating a few “demo gremlins,” I got to show off how easy SoftLayer makes it for our customers to take advantage of amazing products like Citrix Netscaler VPX:

In my “Learn How to Build Private Clouds in the Cloud” breakout session, I had a little more time to speak to the larger question of how SoftLayer is approaching the shift to cloud-specific architectures and share some best practices in moving to a private cloud. Private clouds are a great way to provide real-time service delivery of IT resources with a single-tenant, customized, secure environment. However, the challenge of scaling and managing physical resources still exists, so I tried to explain how businesses can leverage an Infrastructure-as-a-Service provider to add scalability to a private cloud environment.

Thanks to SynergyTV, that presentation has been made available for all to see:

As I joked at the beginning of the breakout session, an attendee at Citrix Synergy was probably bombarded by “the cloud” in presentations and conversations at the show. While it’s important to demystify the key terms we use on a daily basis, a few straight days of keynotes and breakout sessions about the cloud can get you thinking, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Beyond our capabilities as a cloud infrastructure provider, SoftLayer knows how to have a good time, so after we took care of the “work” stuff in the sessions above, we did our best to help provide a little “play” as well. This year, we were the proud sponsor of the Synergy Party, featuring Lifehouse!

Citrix Synergy 2012 was a blast. As a former rocket scientist, I can say that authoritatively.

-@nday91

What does that look like to you?

You might need to squint your eyes and tilt your head or “look beyond the image” like it’s one of those “Magic Eye” pictures, but if you’re a geek like me, you can’t help but notice a striking resemblance to one of the most iconic images from Star Wars:

The SoftLayer API looks like the Death Star.

The similarity is undeniable … The question is whether that resemblance is coincidental or whether it tells us we can extrapolate some kind of fuller meaning as in light of the visible similarities. I can hear KHazzy now … “Phil, While that’s worth a chuckle and all, there is no way you can actually draw a relevant parallel between the SoftLayer API and The Death Star.” While Alderaan may be far too remote for an effective demonstration, this task is no match for the power of the Phil-side.

Challenge Accepted.

The Death Star: A large space station constructed by the Galactic Empire equipped with a super-laser capable of destroying an entire planet.

The SoftLayer API: A robust set of services and methods which provide programmatic access to all portions of the SoftLayer Platform capable of automating any task: administrative, configuration or otherwise.

Each is the incredible result of innovation and design. The construction of the Death Star and creation of the SoftLayer API took years of hard work and a significant investment. Both are massive in scale, and they’re both effective and ruthless when completing their objectives.

The most important distinction: The Death Star was made to destroy while the SoftLayer API was made to create … The Death Star was designed to subjugate a resistance force and destroy anything in the empire’s way. The SoftLayer API was designed to help customers create a unified, automated way of managing infrastructure; though in the process, admittedly that “creation” often involves subjugating redundant, compulsory tasks.

The Death Star and the SoftLayer API can both seem pretty daunting. It can be hard to find exactly what you need to solve all of your problems … Whether that be an exhaust port or your first API call. Fear not, for I will be with you during your journey, and unlike Obi-Wan Kenobi, I’m not your only hope. There is no need for rebel spies to acquire the schematics for the API … We publish them openly at sldn.softlayer.com, and we encourage our customers to break the API down into the pieces of functionality they need.

-Phil (@SoftLayerDevs)

Cutting out the Middleman with Nexmo

These days, optimizing mobile messaging deliverability comes at a price. Businesses must connect to multiple carriers, operate heavy infrastructure, and build their own data analytics. On top of that, many third-party SMS solutions require contracts, price negotiations and significant up-front costs.

Nexmo was created to eliminate the need for a business to connect to carriers or complex third party protocols through simple, powerful RESTful and SMPP APIs. Our scalable infrastructure allows you to send and receive SMS in high volumes to over 5 billion users around the world. This is a market need that hasn’t been addressed, and we approached it with a few ideas in mind. If you were going to replicate the functionality of Nexmo on your own, these are the key areas you’d have to look at:

Direct to Carrier Model

With every hop, the quality of a connection has the potential to degrade, and cost inflates. Adding intermediaries in the chain also impact the granularity of collected data, such as delivery reports and reasons of failure. By reducing the number of hops to the final subscriber you’ll see:

• An improved delivery ratio and lower latency
• Enhanced security
• Fewer single points of failure
• Reduced cost, less fat in the chain

With a closer position to the final carrier, a business can access more “Telco” data like phone status, whether it is ported to another network, or if it’s roaming abroad. With that information, you can also make better routing decisions and ultimately see higher delivery ratios.

Get Your own SMS-Enabled Phone Numbers

We’ve seen in the last two years the emergence of “Over the Top” (OTT) messaging apps such as Google Voice and TextPlus. Those apps provide a virtual phone number to each user, and Nexmo behaves similarly by enabling apps to behave like a “super virtual carrier” without the need for heavy Telco infrastructure. North America is the most mature market with OTT players generating significant SMS traffic, and now these models are going abroad. We pinpointed a unique need in the value chain:

• Source virtual phone numbers from global carriers
• Build the business models that protect carriers’ interests without eliminating the opportunity for innovative apps
• Provide the elastic and scalable cloud infrastructure for high volume two-way transactions

Nexmo approached those needs with APIs that enabled app developers to search for available phone numbers, provision new numbers and cancel numbers they weren’t using any more. It doesn’t take days or weeks to launch in a new market … Apps can launch in a new market in a matter of hours with minimal upfront investment!

Improve and Track Deliverability

Enterprises and developers have shifted the focus in the buying process. They are looking for more transparency and accountability, so tracking and monitoring hundreds, thousands or even millions of messages can be of utmost importance.

For every SMS sent, the Nexmo API provides a detailed report of delivery. We push this data into the cloud in real time, displayed in two ratios:

• The Success Ratio: The percentage of message received by the phone. This ratio measures how well traffic is performing.
• The DLR Ratio: The percentage of messages with a delivery receipt. This ratio tracks infrastructure and route performance.

Follow the Life of a Message from the Cloud

Most B2C services and resellers that send millions of SMS for things like alerts, phone verifications and access codes can get swarmed when it comes to user support. We know that’s an intimidating prospect for any business looking to add SMS functionality to their app or platform, so we let our customers follow the life of a message from the cloud and gather more information about it. Some of the information we’ve found most helpful to track:

• How fast was the message was delivered?
• Was the phone available for receiving SMS?
• Did the user enter the correct phone number?

Keeping an eye on these basic kinds of stats reduces the pain of supporting a large user base and enables your support staff to answer questions quickly because they have a good foundation of information.

Receive Outstanding Support

Building a customer centric culture is a sustainable competitive advantage. It is even more meaningful in a commoditized, price-driven industry like wholesale telecom. If you’re going to approach the world of SMS messaging and deliverability, the need for outstanding support is even more urgent because, given the nature of SMS messaging, results are expected immediately.

When we started Nexmo, we knew that, and I’m proud to report that we constantly score over 95% in customer satisfaction, and we’ve noticed a few tricks that have helped us maintain that level of support:

• Hire the right people: Empathy and service mindset are more important than technical skills
• Provide self-help tools and open knowledge bases: Customers appreciate finding solutions by themselves
• Measure help-desk performance and constantly improve: KPI includes first meaningful reply time, resolution time and satisfaction ratio.

We hope these tips can help you build on your existing support or give you a jumping-off point if you’re just getting started.

There is so much more I could tell you about our experience in building Nexmo into the platform it is today, but it’s a lot easier for you to just see for yourself. If you’re interested in learning more about Nexmo, visit http://nexmo.com, sign up, and be ready to go live with us in a matter of minutes … And to make it even easier, you can use the free credits we provide to give the platform a test drive.

If you’ve been intimidated by the daunting task of knocking on the doors of telcos and carriers to get easy-to-use and easy-to-track SMS functionality in your app, Nexmo can save you a lot of headaches.

-Tony Jamous, Nexmo

Dragon Boat Racing is a lot more brutal than it looks. While a good team will look like they’re effortlessly and rhythmically gliding through the water, they’re still pushing their bodies to the limit … Just watch some of our SLayers try to hobble around the office today, and you’ll see that the competition wore us out. The experience was more than just a good time (and a reason many of us are still sore); it reinforced to several of us — especially newer employees like me — that SoftLayer is more than just a “company” or an “employer.”

SoftLayer’s founders wanted to create a an environment — a culture — unlike any other, and from my perspective, they were phenomenally successful. You don’t have to take my word for it, though. SoftLayer is a regular on those “Best Companies to Work For” lists, specifically because the company encourages employees to get smarter, get healthier, have fun and and enjoy coming to work. Now that I think about it, I need to get the management team to provide some free Bengay the next time we get out in the dragon boats!

The dragon boat races provided me an opportunity to meet and get to know some of the SLayers I hadn’t met yet, and it was wild to see how quickly we shared a sense of camaraderie and pride to be SLayers as we raced down Buffalo Bayou in Houston.

Beyond the fun and physical exertion of the weekend, one valuable lesson I think we all took away from this experience is that staying “in sync” can prove to be difficult at times. Once we learn to anticipate each others strokes, we became a stronger team … The obvious parallels to our day-to-day responsibilities at SoftLayer should speak for themselves.

I’m proud to be a SLayer and thankful that SoftLayer creates both an extraordinary place to grow our careers and an awesome environment to make great friends. I hear we might be planning to continue this tradition, and if so, SoftLayer can count on us to be there to support our coworkers. If you’re interested in joining us, we have positions for all sorts of skill sets (and I’m proposing we give additional brownie points to applicants with rowing experience)!

- Cassandra

Before I give you an example of one of the challenges I had to tackle early on, I should back up and explain a pretty important observation I had about SoftLayer: Despite how cheesy it may sound, SoftLayer is a family. If you are willing to learn and have a good work ethic, SoftLayer will to take you under its wing, and the sky is the limit. I was willing to learn, and I’d like to think I have a good work ethic, so I took on a pretty ambitious task: Learn Linux.

As a Server Build Technician — the physical “hands and eyes” in a data center — you can’t get by without an intimate knowledge of Linux. As it turns out, trying to learn everything there is to know about Linux is sort of like saying “Get to the end of the Internet.” Even after a few years of working with Linux, I still learn new things almost daily, and I’m sure that I’ll continue to learn as long as I’m surrounded by Linux servers and other brilliant technicians who can share their Linux expertise. I could probably write a whole series of blog posts about all of the crazy things I’ve seen Linux servers do, but I’ll focus on this “intro” blog first. Since starting with SoftLayer, my tenuous grasp of Linux was strengthened and eventually validated by my Linux+ certification!

That’s only one little example of the kind of environment SoftLayer creates, and I could share dozens more.

When SLayers are treated like individuals rather than “employees,” the culture is different. Managers and supervisors LISTEN to your problems/frustrations and are quick to offer their help and advice. I can feel comfortable to express personal issues with anyone in management, and I’ve had a handful of heartfelt talks with higher-ups that I would never dreamed of having at previous jobs. As a result, I’m excited when I walk into work because I feel like I get to hang out and work with friends for eight hours every day.

My coworkers and I can joke around one minute, and the next minute, we can have a serious and thoughtful conversation about how we could improve our processes or serve customers better better. Not only does that experience make for a comfortable working environment, it also creates a net of trust among coworkers. You know without a doubt that you can rely on your coworkers for anything.

I know it sounds like I’m stretching the truth (and the blog word count), but to be honest, there isn’t enough room on this page to describe exactly how awesome I think the people at SoftLayer are. I’ve made many, many friends and roughly zero enemies. That’s a pretty good ratio if you ask me. If you are even a TINY bit interested in IT, there’s no better place to get your career started (or continued) than SoftLayer. There are positions for every skill set and level, and it doesn’t stop there … You aren’t locked into one position or department if you find yourself more passionately drawn to another area of the business. SoftLayer encourages you to branch out and explore your career options, and if you want to move up, you’re encouraged and supported by management to put forth the effort.

TL;DR If you’re interested in getting into anything IT related, SoftLayer has a place for you, and as a very happy employee, I’d highly recommend taking advantage of that opportunity.

-Broc

Beyond sharing technical news and content about what’s happening in the world of cloud computing, I’m also responsible for keeping our customers in the loop about all of our trade shows, conferences and events. If you’ve been to a technology trade show in the past year, you probably saw SoftLayer. We sponsor, attend or exhibit at more than sixty events every year, and it feels like I have been to them all. I know the ins and outs of every event on our schedule well before it begins, regardless of whether that event’s down the street or in an exotic location like Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, Amsterdam or London (Interesting fact: In the past week, we had events in all of those locations).

Social media is one of the ways our customers and followers can keep a pulse on SoftLayer’s activity and growth. We travel the world to share how we help customers Build the Future, and as a part of the social media team, I get to help introduce that conversation. Let’s use Internet World as an example.

Last week, a group of SLayers traveled to London to attend Internet World. To prepare for Internet World, I tried to schedule and share as much relevant content about SoftLayer with the #iwexpo audience to generate awareness and drive traffic to our booth. At larger shows like Internet World, we typically have a conference session or speaking engagement, and on the expo hall floor, you’ll usually see a crowd like this one milling around our booth:

The Server Challenge generates its own social media — from word-of-mouth “you’ve gotta try this” conversations at the show to the typical “social media” channels like Twitter and Facebook. The gamifiction of rebuilding a miniature SoftLayer server rack is one of those interesting, entertaining and innovative ideas that seems to be unique to the mad scientists at SoftLayer. Invariably, the competition “ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings,” and at Internet World, we had the most dramatic competition conclusion ever … But we’ll get back to that in a minute.

From a social media perspective, the folks who stop by SoftLayer’s booth want to watch the leader board as the show progresses. The expo hall may be open for several days, so it might be tough to keep an eye on the Server Challenge leader board … Attendees then trust us to keep them informed via social media. Every day, we post the latest times to beat, and when we look at our analytics, it’s wild to see the number of people clicking through to see the current top ten times. It doesn’t seem like much, but a few hundred people at Internet World wanted to know what this table looked like throughout the whole show:

The top two times you see on the final leader board caused the late-show dramatics. Joseph Waite clocked a fantastic 1:03.68 to secure the top spot on the board in the middle of Day 3 at the show, and Rob McEwen stepped up to the challenge for his Day 3 attempts about 10 minutes prior to the scheduled close of the expo hall. With about 25 onlookers, Rob stopped the clock on his second attempt with a time of 1:02.14 … Good enough for first place.

The problem: One of the drive trays was not installed all the way.

Because we want to make sure the winner has everything installed correctly in the fastest time, we had to add 5 seconds to his time for the mistake, and we gave him one more chance to complete the challenge to be fair to him. Unfortunately, the final attempt didn’t beat Joseph’s 1:03.68, so the new iPad was destined for Joseph. While Rob was a little bummed, he understood the reasoning for the decision, and he committed to stopping by our booth next year to win his iPad outright.

I was a few thousand miles away from all of this activity, but I felt like a major part of it given my social media involvement in tracking and sharing the latest updates. The best part of my job is when I get to interact with our customers, whether it be face to face or virtually. I want the messages you see on @SoftLayer and facebook.com/SoftLayer to be entertaining, interesting and helpful. We want you to feel connected to what’s happening at SoftLayer and what we’re all about.

Speaking of giving you insight into “what we’re all about,” I can’t wrap up this blog about Internet World without sharing a little “insider” information about the SLayers at the booth: They’re pretty competitive. They ran their own internal Server Challenge:

And if anyone is curious about the fastest time we’ve ever had in the Server Challenge, you can see it right there at the top of the list. Though to be fair, Kevin’s probably done it a few thousand times.

-Rachel

Yes … SoftLayer was invited to the White House!

I was honored and humbled to be recognized as one of 5 Entrepreneurs in Residence for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. As a part of the Entrepreneurs in Residence initiative, I joined the other private sector participants in the Secretary of War Suite on April 26 for an EIR roundtable meeting. I’d describe the meeting as “historic,” but given the “history” at the White House, I might have to choose a different word:

The USCIS is looking to make it easier for entrepreneurs and innovators to get to the United States to have the opportunity and resources they need to build the next Google or Facebook … or SoftLayer. It’s no coincidence that the Entrepreneurs in Residence roundtable discussion harkened to a few hundred similar conversations I’ve had with startups, startup accelerators and incubator programs so far this year. On the topic of startups, I wasn’t just an empty suit … though I was wearing a suit (for a change).

When it comes to credibility in the startup space, SoftLayer has become quite an authority. Beyond our own growth and success as a startup a few short years ago, we’ve spent the last year investing in relationships with startup communities and the organizations fueling innovation in the US and around the world. For a perfect example of that investment, just look at today’s news: SoftLayer Gives Next Generation of Entrepreneurs Foundation for Success with TechStars National Sponsorship.

You’ve heard us say it a million times, and you’ll probably hear us say it a million more: SoftLayer loves startups, and we want to do everything we can to inspire, mentor and cultivate the next wave of world-changing businesses. From providing mentorship and hosting credits to participating in the conversations that will shape the startup landscape in the US for years to come, SoftLayer’s representing.

If you have an idea, a business plan or just a brilliantly talented team looking for some direction, take a look at the TechStars 2012 Program Schedule and Apply for TechStars to get in on their fun in San Antonio, Boston, NYC, Boulder or Seattle. If you already have a killer startup that just needs a little help in scaling your success, hit us up at startups@softlayer.com, and we can tell you a little more about the Catalyst Program.

-@PaulFord

That value proposition is one of the biggest driving forces behind our partnership with RightScale. We’re cloud computing soul mates.

RightScale understands the power of automation, and as a result, they’ve created a cloud management platform that they like to say delivers “abstraction with complete customization.” RightScale customers can easily deploy and manage applications across public, private and hybrid cloud environments, unencumbered by the underlying details. They are free to run efficient, scalable, highly available applications with visibility into and control over their computing resources available in one place.

As you know, SoftLayer is fueled by automation as well, and it’s one of our primary differentiators. We’re able to deliver a phenomenal customer experience because every aspect of our platform is fully and seamlessly automated to accelerate provisioning, mitigate human error and provide customers with access and features that our competitors can only dream of. Our customers get simple and total control over an ever-expanding number of back-end services and functions through our easy-to-use Customer Portal and via an open, robust API.

The compatibility between SoftLayer and RightScale is probably pretty clear already, but if you needed another point to ponder, you can ruminate on the fact that we both share expertise and focus across a number of vertical markets. The official announcement of the SoftLayer and RightScale partnership will be particularly noteworthy and interesting in the Internet-based business and online gaming market segments.

It didn’t take long to find an amazing customer success story that demonstrated the value of the new SoftLayer-RightScale partnership. Broken Bulb Game Studios — the developer of social games such as My Town, Braaains, Ninja Warz and Miscrits — is already harnessing the combined feature sets made possible by our partnership with RightScale to simplify its deployment process and scale to meet its customers’ expectations as its games find audiences and growing favor on Facebook. Don’t take our word for it, though … Check out the Broken Bulb quote in today’s press release announcing the partnership.

Broken Bulb and other developers of social games recognize the importance of getting concepts to market at breakneck speed. They also understand the critical importance of intelligently managing IT resources throughout a game’s life cycle. What they want is fully automated control over computing resources so that they can be allocated dynamically and profitably in immediate response to market signals, and they’re not alone.

Game developers of all sorts — and companies in a growing number of vertical markets — will need and want the same fundamental computing-infrastructure agility.

Our partnership with RightScale is only beginning. You’re going to see some crazy innovation happening now that our cloud computing mad scientists are all working together.

-Marc