Google, Youtube and my other thoughts

Well as you probably heard by now, Google has bought youtube for a 1billion.  Wow! thats a lot of dough.  Web 2.0 seems to be very big business.  Now you know why I’m trying to get into it.  I hear that yahoo is trying to buy facebook for 1.6 billion.  Well I wonder how users of youtube are going to react.  I feel that there will be some type of backlash, expecially if Google changes any of the features.  Which could very well happen with all the copyright issues that youtube will soon face.  But all in all it looks like a good move for both sides, the owners of youtube are rich and have Google to help with copyright issues and Google now has a foothold in the file sharing industry.  Now, why Yahoo would spend a bil on facebook seems a little strange to me. I mean, yes facebook has a lot of members, but how is it worth 1.6 billion?

AJ and the goals

My partner in Sweetsecond.com is AJ. AJ is a very smart guy and has a lot of great ideas. As promised earlier here are the short term goals. 1) Drive as much traffic to the site as possible 2) Make the site as sticky as possible 3)Get a ton of members to sign up so we can start making some noise in the industry. I did some reasearch and found a couple of websites that divorced singles frequent on a regular basis. Both are divorce related. (Big surprise). I’ve decided that once I finish optimizing the site that I will advertise on these sites. As well as the advertising, I’m going to try to utilize social bookmarking sites as much as possible. I’ve already added the site to stumbleupon.com and I will soon start sending articles and blog post to reddit.com. I am very exciting about the whole process and I believe that soon things will start to turn.

The City Part 2

Since I last posted I have chosen an SEO/marketing expert to get the ball rolling.  He doesn’t actually live in the city, but his qualifications seem okay.  I sent him an email called “The goal” which basically laid out the plans to drive traffic to the site.  He completley understood it and is currently working on phase one of “the goal”.  His fees seem very reasonable for the work he will be doing.  Anyway next blog I will talk more about “the goal”.  Peace Out

In the City

Since we last spoke I’ve attempted to find a SEO/Internet marketing specialist in the city of Chicago.  I think I found someone who is pretty good.  The whole goal right now for Sweetsecond is to have some type of presence on the web.  So this SEO specialist is supposed to help us with things like keywords, Google Adsense and other things of that nature.  I’m gonna give him a call tomorrow morning and see what’s what’s.

Sweetsecond.com press release

Social Networking Internet Start-up SweetSecond.com Hopes That Love is Sweeter the Second Time Around

Chicago, IL – Sept. 5 – America’s love affair with the Internet continues to bear fruit and multiply in the form of a new social networking site targeting divorced U.S. residents called SweetSecond (www.SweetSecond.com). And after surviving the financial workout that is the divorce process, the newly singled may be comforted to know that a SweetSecond.com membership is free.

There are a number of dating-related social networking sites that target members based on race, religion, politics and sexual orientation. SweetSecond is the first to cater to 30+ aged divorced individuals,” Joseph Okojie, CEO of SweetSecond.com said.According to the last-reported U.S. divorce rate provided by the National Center for Health Statistics, there are 38% divorces per capita per year in the
United States. The rate has steadily hovered around 40% over past last decade.  

“The best estimates claim that there are around 23 million divorced singles living in the
United States. At SweetSecond we believe that another divorced single can best understand and accept the sometimes complicated lifestyle of a potential mate—issues that arise when children are involved for example, and dealing with holidays and custody issues,” Okojie stated.

Becoming a member of SweetSecond.com is fast and easy. Visitors fill out one simple form. Once the registration process is complete, members may build an online profile that includes the ability to upload up to ten images to their personal page. Members may contact one another via email, send ecards, blog and share stories about their “new life” with other divorced individuals in a special forum.

“Movies like Must Love Dogs and You’ve Got Mail illustrate that older Americans have now embraced the Internet in many ways—especially as a viable way to meet Mr. or Ms. Right,” Okojie added. “The phrase ‘geographically undesirable’ is no longer a barrier to initiating or maintaining a relationship. As individuals learn about each other through the online community, they arrange for ‘get to know you better’ weekends or weeklong trips. For the person who is divorced, and may not have a very flexible schedule, an online community is a great way to ‘screen’ someone without a huge time investment.”

Contacts: Josh Alexander, 312-735-6913
or Joseph Okojie, 312-730-7697

contacts@sweetsecond.com

Source: SweetSecond.com

Myspace sucks. The saga continues

These are my 6 reasons why I think Myspace.com is the most overrated thing on the web. 

1. It’s slow. 

For a site that supposed to be the great torchbearer of web 2.0, it crawls. Pictures take forever to load, songs take forever to load and don’t even attempt to do a friend search.

2. Speaking of Pictures. 

Okay I get it, you wanna show off the pics from last nights party or you been hitting the gym and now you want the world to see your pecs.  Well why not use Flickr.com or Theblackstripe.com or one of the other sites for digital picturing sharing.  These sites are faster and more user friendly than Myspace. 

3. Numbers lie. 

How many registered users does Myspace have? Maybe 10 million, 50 million, 100 million?  Who cares?  The number of people who are actually on the site on a daily basis is a just a fraction of the registered users.  I know people who haven’t gone back to the site since they first registered.  Yeah, there is a lot of activity on the site, but it seems to be generated by a small percentage of its total members. 

4. I Have 250 friends.

Or do I? The friends you acquire via Myspace aren’t really friends.  Most of the users have hundreds of “friends”, but have never met any of these people.  I’m not saying you have to meet a person to befriend them.  But, you have to leave more than message on their Myspace page ever few months to consider someone a friend.  Most people don’t even do that much, they just accept every friend invite that is sent to them.  Yeah, c’mon Busty Blonde 2006 is really your friend. 

5. Annoying Advertising

I know that websites have to make money.  But the advertisements on the site are just ridiculous.  There big, flashy, animated and just makes the users experience unpleasant. 

6. Find your niche

Myspace is just a big mash of site that has millions of members.  None of its features are spectacular.  There are numerous sites on the web now that offer better features as well as members who actually use the site on a regular basis.  For example if digital photo file-sharing is your thing, you might like the aforementioned flickr.com better.  If you’re trying to keep up with classmates from high school, why not try classmates.com.  If you’re in high school, give Facebook.com or Sconex.com a whirl.  Recently divorced and need someone to talk to?  Sweetsecond.com is your place

I know there are a dozen other reasons why Myspace sucks, but this is all I could think of now. 

Sweetsecond.com

Okay, Sweetsecond.com is a social networking/dating website that I created.  I’ve been working on it on and off since my senior year of college.  I re-did the site and got a new partner, so here are the stats from my first press release.  29,330 reads, 403 estimated pickups, 2 prints and 24 pdf downloads.  All that sounds good and dandy, but we need more members to sign up.  So I went to Elance and put in a bid for some advertisers to help me with some banner ads, google ads, etc, etc.  We’ll see how that works out.  Cross your fingers.

Brave New World

Well tomorrow the press release for my company, Swwetsecond.com will be distributed.  Actually in a few hours.  I’ll be back to tell you more about Sweetsecond.