Just over a month ago, I was shocked when I was force-fed a twitter screen takeover while looking at my domain names registered at GoDaddy. Immediately, I did some news searches to see if GoDaddy had purchased Twitter because it seemed very out of place. There were no such announcements. In fact, there was verylittle news about this development.
Every time I’m in my account tweaking my domains, I can’t help but notice the twitter promotion overload. I can’t help but wonder why GoDaddy would take such a keen interest in helping to fuel more twitter accounts. From a service perspective, it is pretty lame because it is already incredibly easy to check name availability and sign up for twitter. I could think of a hundred other features GoDaddy should build and promote instead. If it were a two-way arrangement, where Twitter promotes domain registration for Twitter user names, then I could see the benefit.
So why do you suppose GoDaddy is pimping Twitter so much? Is GoDaddy going to buy Twitter? Is Twitter paying GoDaddy for this treatment? Is GoDaddy’s product development team overly caught up with Twitter & group-think led them to believe this add on would separate them from other registrars? I have no idea, but it will be interesting to watch this over time.
Here are more screenshots showing how much GoDaddy is pimping out Twitter within their domain dashboards:
As lame and as stale as many of their sites were, I still faintly remember the first GeoCities site I created in ‘96 or ‘97. I wish I could dig it up, but I have no idea what happened to it, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it were one of their better sites ;)
Yahoo announced they’ll be closing it with no buyer, just 10 years after they bought it for $3 billion. It’s really sad Yahoo didn’t improve the service and keep up with the times.
For those who still have Geocities sites they care about, check out the Free Geocities Migration services Wetpaint has offered up.
If you are on Facebook and haven’t had the pleasure of reading a 25 Random Things About Me note about one of your friends yet, you are missing out. Normally not a fan of chain letters or tagging memes, I will admit the 25 Things activity on Facebook is fascinating.
History of Facebook 25 Things Notes
Facebook notes were launched on August 22, 2006, but didn’t receive heavy usage until 2009 thanks to a new viral phenomenon that started off as “25 Random Things About Me.” Memes using notes on Facebook are nothing new, entire websites have been put together to catalog and inspire various memes-most as lame as the emails that have been going around for over a decade.
The Velocity of 25 Things
The earliest entries I can find via various search tools for 25 Things is mid-January. I really saw it taking off in my personal network starting in February. Using Google trends, I compared 25 Things searches to searches for an older site people might be familiar with: 43 Things.
As you can tell from the chart, 25 things searches increased rapidly, easily overshadowing 43 Things despite the fact that users won’t find Facebook notes entries doing this search, nor will they find definitive information about the origins of it.
How to Find 25 Things Notes
If you do want to find all your friends 25 things postings, I suggest you follow these steps:
1. Login to Facebook and make sure you are on the main page (click Home if you are not sure).
2. Click the drop down arrow for more feeds (blue arrow next to live feed button)
3. Choose notes.
4. Scroll down and you will likely see activity around 25 Things postings.
5. Click show more posts at the very bottom if you want to look for more postings.
Facebook 25 Things Learnings
There are things we can all learn from Facebook’s 25 Things success:
Patience is important in business. Facebook could have easily scrapped notes long ago due to low activity.
Never underestimate user-generated content.
Viral successes are often luck
Providing a platform where UGC viral successes can happen is important
I noticed a lot of people commenting on how Facebook didn’t make sense to them until they started reading other people’s 25 Things posts – this simple meme has created an amazing amount of value for Facebook and their traffic reflects it:
Caught this today when performing a search for other engines while on Yahoo. First time I’ve seen an engine attempt to keep their users from jumping to another engine, which is very common practice as indicated by my Actual Top 10 Search Terms of 2006 post.
I was performing a search for MSN search (or “Live”) in Yahoo because I didn’t have it in my Firefox search dropdown.
Here’s what I saw:
I wasn’t paying very close attention and started typing in my search into the Yahoo shortcut search box shown above. Notice it says: “You could go to MSN. Or you could stay here and get straight to your answers.”
I can’t recall seeing this before, so I decided to see if they were doing the same thing to Google (which has got to be one of the 10 most popular search terms on Yahoo):
Again, notice it says: “You could go to Google. Or you could stay here and get straight to your answers.”
Seems strange to have a Yahoo shortcut for something you were already immersed in. What do you think about this? Is it right? Would Yahoo be pissed if Microsoft or Google did the same?
Note: I was one of the bloggers to help chose the blogger award winners
I suggest you take a look through the list, you might discover some interesting sites or services you may not have discovered before – I know I discovered a few new sites going through the judging process.
In an effort to get more entries into the 2009 Webby Awards, the Webby Awards teamed up with some online video rockstars to promote entering. Eventually there will be five videos, but here are the first two:
I’ve had the pleasure of judging the Webby Awards, the Web 2.0 awards, an international pageant, and now the Mashable Open Awards.
Like many awards, there is the judges choice and the people’s choice (both an honor to win for any website). Below is the form you can use to submit your choice (cast your vote before midnight Sunday, November 30th):
The NY Times reports that the largest spam gang on the Internet is being shut down, starting with their assets being frozen. Some key numbers shared in the article:
This group makes $400,000 a month
They send 10 billion spam emails per day
This group, at one point, sent out 1/3rd of all spam
90% of all email people receive is spam
If these numbers are true, then:
The group made 1/7500th of a cent for each email sent (the only cost-effective way had to be sent from unknowingly affected computers)
Email users should expect a 33% drop in spam, and an 44% drop in overall incoming email volume.
I wish it were true, but I’m skeptical that we won’t see such drops. Unless the penalties are extremely harsh, other spammers will step in to get a piece of the newly available spam pie.
This well-done video featuring the likes of Jennifer Aniston, Halle Berry, Courteney Cox, Ellen DeGeneres, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Jonah Hill, Dustin Hoffman, Ashton Kutcher, Eva Longoria, Tobey Maguire, Demi Moore, Natalie Portman, Forest Whitaker and other celebs, is sure to be one of the most rapidly deployed viral videos. The non-partison video is aimed at getting more people to vote using the invite 5 friends meme strategy.
At the time of this posting, the video has less than 100k views. I expect it will surge to a million views in short time.
I’m registered to vote, so I’ll pass this along to 5 more who run websites or blogs in the search community:
Every time I’m in my account tweaking my domains, I can’t help but notice the twitter promotion overload. I can’t help but wonder why GoDaddy would take such a keen interest in helping to fuel more twitter accounts. From a service perspective, it is pretty lame because it is already incredibly easy to check name availability and sign up for twitter. I could think of a hundred other features GoDaddy should build and promote instead. If it were a two-way arrangement, where Twitter promotes domain registration for Twitter user names, then I could see the benefit.
