I honestly hate to write about this and I will not be talking in any specifics. But in the past week or two there has been a lot of sadness around the industry, the search industry of course. No, this does not relate to Microsoft or Yahoo. No, this does not relate to Ask.com possibly giving up on search. This relates to the SEM/SEM community.

I will link you over to three Sphinn threads, all with opinions and comments that might make an outsider go – wow, this is sad. In all the years that I have covered this industry, and I have been doing this a really really long time, I have never really seen it at this level. It is like three or four different events and actions have overlapped at the same time to cause an incredible about of hurt throughout the industry.

If you are unaware of anything that is going on, then that is good and I suggest you do not get involved. As a matter of covering this as at this particular site, I must. As promised in our mission, I must report on the “Pulse of the Search Marketing Community” and the pulse right now is in hyperdrive and much of it is over anger, fear, dislike, a ton of miscommunication and it all amounts to not having respect for each other.

Respect is a key element in my personal life. Before doing anything, anything at all – I try so hard to think and say, is this how I would like to be treated. Like I said in the Search Engine Roundtable’s Code of Ethics back in 2005.

In any event, I can just hope this short post impacts those who read this and understand what is going on.

Here are the three threads at Sphinn. Each thread links to a blog post, each blog post has comments and there are also comments at the Sphinn threads. Again, if you think nothing is going on, then I honestly would not read them – because they place a sad light over our industry and industry that has been struggling externally with respect issues and now has major respect issues internally – more than ever before.

The Sphinn Expose – My Story About Social Media Networking, SphinnI Refuse To Participate In The Vicious Nastiness Going On In Our Industry, SphinnUnintended Consequences, Sphinn