The most popular specific searches across our local properties are always brand names - Sears, [local grocery chain], McDonalds, etc etc.

What has always boggled my mind is if you visit a franchise/national brand store (eg Sears or McDonalds), they all have a franchise locater. It is an obvious feature that people would like.

But what absolutely boggles my mind is why this data is locked? If I was McDonalds, I would want to make sure everyone knew where you could find McDonalds. I would want to make sure all closed down stores were not listed. I would make this data available for free.

The reality is, no matter how much they may want to crawl back into their cocoon, people use other sites to find their brands. Even niche players get a significant enough chunk of traffic. Sure, McDonalds may talk directly to SuperPages.com. And YellowPages.com. You can argue that it isn’t profitable enough for them to have a direct relationship with everyone - fine. But is it really in their interests to allow other companies to publish bad data? Of course not.

If I could sit down the responsible for their internet operations, I would just have one question to ask: “Why don’t you allow anyone and everyone to download a list of all [insert name here] locations? All these people are doing is *promoting* your business”

There is a lot of talk about walled gardens of data, and how web 2.0 is suppoused to change that. There are some legitimate reasons for walled gardens, but for franchise data? None.

And nothing says web 3.0 like a trademark.

Found this little nugget on a post about Flowchart.com. Nevermind the selective positive reviews - web 3.0?

For all of the naming garbage that is web 2.0 and web 3.0, arguably web 3.0 is about relationships and connections - semantic knowledge (meta data) from underlying information. The easiest way to visualize it? Flowcharts.

I find this as bad taste as things come - I look forward to seeing it enforced.

We just had our 500th (now a total of 501) comments from 162 posts (including filler ones by me).

Just wanted to thank the readers for making this an two-way conversation - not me just spouting out inanity.

I’ll update this post later (in the middle of a business deal) with some of the more popular posts.

There are many posts about how Digg traffic sucks. I agree with those sentiments (been Dugg about 25-30 times).

The earlier argument was that it lead to a lot of links. I used to agree - before. Nowadays, it seems like getting Dugg leads to no/very little linkage. That is if your story has made it - in the last 10 days we have had four pages/sites Dugg indirectly - our own submission was buried, but a site like Lifehacker or News.com (that just linked/regurgitated what we said) made it through.

So - if the traffic is useless, and its ability to generate links is weakened - why would anyone want to buy Digg?

Something to chew on.

My last post on Wowhead.com, a World of Warcraft fansite going for $1 million got a lot of attention. Personally, I had come across Wowhead a few times, but had come away impressed.

I thought it would be interesting to chronicle which succeeded and why. I’m going to only be covering Allakhazam (the original), Thottbot (the upstart), and Wowhead (the golden boy). Other interesting sites are around (especially the site that proceeded Allakhazam)

Originally there was Gameznet (with its site eq’lizer). It was the pre-emptive EverQuest site. Allakhazam came after eq’lizer, and both were kept upto date manually. Users would send updates (screenshots) to the admins of the sites. They would extract the information and then publish it online. It was a tedious process, but both sites did a great job. Arguably eq’lizer was the biggest one (first-mover advantage).

Then came along Flashlink. It was a site way ahead of its time - subscription for access to content. While still a foreign concept to many today, back then it was unheard of. Flashlink went out, purchased Gameznet, and tried to impose a subscription model. This was right after the dot-com implosion, when CPM rates plunged to < $0.001. Subscription was the way to survive.

Allakhazam was forced to do the same. But while Flashlink imposed subscription on the entire site, Allakhazam only did it to parts of the website. So while Flashlink/Gameznet sunk like a stone, Allakhazam was able to weather the implosion of the dot-com boom. People left Gameznet and went to Allakhazam in droves - partial content was better than none. Allakhazam it/himself came across as a person - it wasn't a corporation you were paying, it was a hard working gamer. A fair enough angle.

Using EverQuest as his base, Allakhazam was also wise to realize that no MMO lasts forever. So whenever a major MMO came out, he was ready. Dark Age of Camelot? Check. Star Wars Galaxies? Check. Final Fantasy XI? Check. For every single one, he was the #1 database website. Sure there were others, and they might have had better coverage in certain sections, but his sites were far more complete than the rest.

Content was winning. Yet at the same time - all this content was manually submitted by end-users, and then manually inserted into the system by Allakhazam and his staff. Efficient? Not even close.

Then came World of Warcraft. Talk about being blind-sided.

Blizzard decided to open up the game to really embrace programmers (I argue this is one of the reasons for WoW’s success). Using LUA (a programming language), a programmer could write scripts that interacted in the game.

Thott was one of the early beta testers of World of Warcraft. As leader of Afterlife, one of the most popular EverQuest guilds, Blizzard had directly invited him/his guild into the game. Consider him a sort of celebrity in the game.

But Thott was also a damn good programmer. Seeing what LUA could do, he wrote a script which saved information on everything the user saw - items, quests, creatures, NPCs, etc. He then wrote a program that would connect with the Thottbot.com site, and upload this data.

The entire process had not only been simplified, but the middle man was cut out. Allakhazam depended on users to send data, the admins to verify, and then the data to go live. Thottbot’s system required no manual submission by the end-user, no verification by admins, and the data went instantly live.

Furthermore, the entire interface was not only simplified, but also made more intelligent. Instead of having a heavy website with lots of graphics and community elements, Thottbot.com was all about the data. The frontpage was simple a search form (just like Google), and the pages were as simple as you could get. Streamlined, and bloat removed.

One other big boost - Thottbot was packaged with Cosmos, which was the most popular add-on pack when the game was released (I don’t know about its popularity now). While Allakhazam had its existing userbase, Thottbot was able to hitch a ride on Cosmos and get a lot of traction quickly.

Thottbot quickly overtook Allakhazam, even while Allakhazam covered a half-dozen games and Thottbot only World of Warcraft.

Eliminating ‘waste’ won. No longer did the user have to manually submit, nor the admin verify. The steps from ’submission’ to ‘live’ was streamlined. And so was the site - bloat was eliminated, and focus (on the data) was awarded.

But Thottbot had its own faults. It completely removed any sort of administrative oversight, allowing stupidity to run rampant. Its backend was messing, requiring over one hundred servers to function. And while its design was functional and simple, it was ugly.

And so came in Wowhead. Reading over comments on why people like Wowhead, the same bullet points stuck:

1. Wowhead actually moderated comments. While Thottbot was littered with useless comments (this is all supposition, I’ve never played WoW in retail), Wowhead actively removed useless comments. Good idea - let all comments go live instantly, but remove the crappy ones.

2. Wowhead was aesthetically pleasing. It kept the focus on search just like Thottbot, but it was good to look at.

3. Wowhead was fast. The backend was intelligently designed. It didn’t need the huge server resources that Thottbot did. Google was built for speed, and Wowhead did that for World of Warcraft.

Evolution (via meta-moderation and design) won. While the user was still empowered, the admins still took an active interest, and moderated what they thought was crap. They took the best of Thottbot, found its biggest weaknesses, corrected them, and released.

And now they are $1,000,000 richer. Kudos to them - they built something wonderful.

For those that have read my about page, I used to be involved in the MMO (massively multiplayer online) space. Since quitting and focusing on (what I see as) more lucrative markets (local and blogging), I’ve still kept a good relationship with pretty much all the large players - while I tired of it, keeping abreast of news is interesting.

So today, after tucking the missus to bed and getting on the computer to catch up on some email, I saw an interesting email in my inbox (from a trusted acquaintance). Wowhead, a popular World of Warcraft website, was purchased for over $1 million.

Some quick background (hold on, it can be a bit confusing):

Before WoW launched officially, a lot of EverQuest players were invited to beta test. One of them was Thott, leader of one of the largest EQ guilds (Afterlife). Being a resourceful programmer, and utilizing WoW’s LUA programing interface, he wrote Thottbot. The program basically stored information on all quests/items/creatures/characters/etc that the user came across, and then uploaded it into a centralized system (Thottbot). Users around the world could then load up information, find out how to do quests, where to go, etc. Distributed with the most popular WoW add-on (Cosmos), the site was an instant hit.

Before Thottbot, the pre-eminent database site for online games was Allakhazam. It had the largest subsites for the (then) most popular games - EverQuest, Final Fantasy XI, Dark Ages of Camelot, and Star Wars Galaxies. Allakhazam was a subscription site, making money from people willing to pay for features like advanced search (incidentally, all the content on Allakhazam was actually user-submitted).

I had the mental fortitude to snap up Thottbot (for IGE) right before WoW came out of beta. I can’t disclose the details, but it was in the $xxx,xxx range. For the amount of traffic the site got, it was an absolute steal.

With Thottbot on the scene, Allakhazam greatly suffered. Why would people pay for a subscription with everything for free on Thottbot?

Another quick aside: for those new to MMOs, companies like IGE sell virtual currency and goods for real-world dollars. For all the (unwarranted) hype of Second Life, IGE et all are far bigger - they push hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of goods every day. A lot of players don’t like them - they believe virtual good sellers corrupt the ‘pure’ nature of the game.

Allakhazam.com was operated by a guy who used the nickname ‘Allakhazam’. He was one of the fiercest anti-IGE players around. I had once offered him $1 million (before WoW even entered alpha) - he wasn’t interested. Anyway, the site took a hit, and after a few years of struggling to survive, he eventually broke down. He sold out to IGE for roughly $7-10 million. The justification was that he sold the site to ‘Affinity Media’, which owns (but isn’t) IGE. Anyone with half a brain knew that they were the one and same.

So - with Thottbot/Allakhazam owned by IGE, they pretty much owned the WoW fansite market (and thus a huge audience to push their wares to). At least, if it wasn’t for Wowhead. A late-comer, the site was an instant hit, with its clean UI and fast loading speed (think of Thottbot as Altavista, and Wowhead as Google). You can see on Alexa how Wowhead has grown while the others have stagnated.

And so ‘Affinity Media’ has struck again. Verified by three different sources, the price was confirmed at over $1,000,000. The lower limit was 1 million, while the upper was $1.5 million.

And people thought running a fansite wasn’t worth it

UPDATE: Some people have asked for proof - I can’t give you that. But - I did confirm with another source. As far as I am concerned, this is solid. So Digg it.

UPDATE2: IGE has been ’supposedly’ sold off by Affinity Media. They used FUD when they purchased OGaming. They used FUD when they purchased Allakhazam. Just some more FUD - rest assured IGE/Affinity Media are still very connected.

UPDATE3: The FUD doesn’t end. Remember - I sold OGaming to IGE, while they claimed it was ‘RPG Holdings’ that purchased it. I’ve experienced it firsthand. I talked to another contact - it is a bit byzantine (how the site was ’sold’), but as it stands, IGE US LLC’s parent company is Affinity Media. Certain properties may have been sold, but not the company itself.

UPDATE4: The sale is confirmed:

News travels fast! We were hoping to have the time to put together a proper announcement about this, but it appears word is already out, so we wanted to acknowledge it: now that IGE is out of the picture, Wowhead has decided to become a part of the ZAM Network.

I leaked the sale before it was officially announced, so that shows I did have someone on the inside (my past with Thottbot etc just confirms it). All the same contacts are saying the same thing - Affinity is still very much involved with IGE.

UPDATE5: At the recent VRGood Summit, it seems Brock Pierce (CEO of IGE) talked about getting out of the game, with no mention of IGE having been sold from Affinity. Consider this sale supposedly happened over two weeks ago, seems a convenient thing to forgot. Not to mention walking around with an ‘Affinity’ badge.

UPDATE6: I’ve written about why Allakhazam, then Thottbot, and now Wowhead became the top dogs. More developer/design-focused.

The recently concluded TRAFFIC (in New York) conference had their domain auction, with the total proceeds exceeding $11,000,000. The two notable giants were creditcheck.com for 3 million (which I do agree with) and seniors.com for 1.8 million (which I don’t agree with).

There were some other interesting domains that didn’t sell (Scotland.com was priced at 3 million). Regardless, the real biggie was the one in my title - Blogging.com went for $135,000. Blogging.com itself is an actual site, thought Alexa/Compete don’t seem to think much of it.

So - $125,000 (lets give the site a value of $10k) - worth it?

And I am happy to pronounce the launch of our geocoding service - iBegin Geocoder.

We now feature:

• City sites (eg Toronto)
• Business data/listings
• Weather
• Geocoding

Whew

Everyone is jumping on the ‘how to make money online’ idea, usually sprinkled with a dash of ‘digg-loving lists’.

But advice is suppoused to be something accumulate over the years. People who shouldn’t be dishing out advice are. And it is bad advice. To pick out an example: 5 myths about blogging.

Claim #1: “You have to be passionate about your subject”
If you want to be successful, damn straight you have to be passionate. To really ‘win’ you need to slog through the bad times. You need to put in the hours. And you won’t put in those hours unless you care.

Claim #2: “Focus on creating good content and the readers will come”
I agree to a certain degree - I had previously argued that unique content is not enough. Emphasizing enough. Yes you need to promote online - but half the battle is getting people to come (promotion), the other half is to keep them coming back (content).

Claim #3: “Commenting on lots of blogs will draw readers to your blog”
Commenting on other blogs is one of the best things I have done. Quality and quantity have no bearing on each other. I am a frequent commentator on various blogs - in the last 30 days I have commented on roughly 250 different posts. What commenting has done is two fold:
1. It qualifies who I am to other people. People associate a voice with who you are - in my case, I (like to think) that I comment thoughtfully. You can easily extend this concept to messageboards - often times as conferences I meet people who have read what I write and come away with a positive image.
2. It is a way of selling ‘hello’ to the blogger. Most bloggers watch comments on their blogs obsessively. Commenting is my way of saying ‘Hi, nice to meet you’. Many times I’ve commented on blogs for months before contacting the blogger - and when I do, the blogger knows who I am.

Claim #4: “You must stick to a regular posting schedule no matter what”
Yet again I disagree. I have more than enough anecdotal evidence that posting intelligently regularly is the best way to increase subscribers/traffic.

Claim #5: “The most popular blogs have the best content”
This one I actually agree with. It goes with my previous statement that you need both promotion and content.

So - one for five. Advice and good advice are two different beasts.

And some good advice on writing.

The first of my previously mentioned three releases, this is a soft launch of our geocoding service: iBegin Geocoder.

Basically enter any address in the US/Canada, and it can convert it to GPS coordinates. Enter any lat/long in the US/Canada, and it can give you the address it translates to, the nearest intersection, and the nearest major intersection.

Any application that works with user locality in US/Canada needs geocoding.

It should be ready by Wednesday for commercial usage and fully complete.

In the mean time - if you find any bugs, drop a comment.

UPDATE: Just wanted to add - the system is likely slow right now as we are working on some internal mechanics on the server. When we launch it will be butter smooth.

UPDATE 2: And our geocoder has launched.