From MySpace to Facebook
I have my DVR set to record 60 Minutes on CBS every week. As a result, I recently watched Lesley Stahl interview the 23 year-old CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. By the way, Mark reminds me of a younger Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com.
I already had an account on MySpace, but I was never happy with MySpace. MySpace is unpredictable. The site is choppy. The advertisements are too much, and it belongs to Fox.
After watching the Facebook piece on 60 Minutes, I scrambled to create an account. I liked the site's privacy control, crisp style, and subtle ads.
Unlike MySpace, which uses ColdFusion, Facebook is powered by the open source PHP script. This helps my PHP scalability discussion with co-workers. According to the Facebook Developers Wiki entry, "Facebook was developed from the ground up using open source software, and we are proud to give back to the open source community through various open source projects." I think this statement helps to explain why the Facebook site is so much more responsive and less cluttered than MySpace.
So today, after setting up my Facebook profile, I posted my last message on MySpace which reads, "I've moved to Facebook. I'm no longer accepting friend requests on MySpace. Thanks."
Continue reading Comments (0) Jan.15.2008.
AdBrite Continues to Offer a Stellar Alternative to Google and Yahoo for Website Publishers
We've all read the news stories of the great dot com disasters in the late 90’s. The stories involved web-based companies that provided services completely free in the hopes of making money in advertising sales. Without a doubt these were true disasters, however a major problem with the "give it away and sell ads" model was simply the enormous amount of overhead associated with these young and untested business models.
Today the cost of getting a website up and running is nominal, and unless you are processing credit cards, the main cost of a small web-based company is the monthly hosting fee.
With word processing like HTML editors and the acceptance of web-based programming languages such as ASP and PHP, professional and useful services can be created on the Internet by individuals. Within this individual based framework which has very few expenses the "give it away and sell ads" model can work.
If you are lucky enough to have found a niche audience and provide a decent service, the next step would be to create or outsource your advertising. Several companies provide such services. The big players in this market are Google and Yahoo.
At the same time, a couple of small and flexible companies are offering similar and possibly better services for us individually powered sites. My choice is Adbrite. I first discovered AdBrite when they were still called HTTPads, and have watched the company morph into an outstanding service (they briefly went by the name MarketBanker).
I prefer AdBrite because the process is straight-forward, transparent, and simple both in concept and design. The site is very easy to navigate, and the process is so simple it requires very little documentation.
AdBrite has several features that I find refreshing: 1) they send checks net 90 days with a very low minimum of $5 dollars. 2) They maintain a directory of sites selling ads organized by categories (buyers can pinpoint their audience). 3) They handle all the ad hosting and payment processing.
During my several years of experience with AdBrite, I have always received excellent service via email, and new features geared at helping companies generate ad revenue seem to be implemented quickly. AdBrite is solving problems with simple solutions. In other words they are breaking the barriers of the often ambiguous on-line advertising industry.
To quickly summarize, well managed niche market sites can still generate profits. The key is finding a niche market, building a respectable site, and working with companies such as Adbrite that are breaking down the "old school" mentality of the advertising industry.
Continue reading Comments (2) Dec.08.2007.