elvinfish.com

So last thursday we received an email from CherryTap.com. They wanted to form a partnership with one of the resource sites that I run with a friend. This would have been great news if they were reaching out to us with an exclusive deal; however, I’m pretty sure they have approached other resource sites with the same offer. Ironically, we were in the process of launching a new resource site aimed at the CherryTap audience, but they decided that they rather tap the traffic of our somewhat established Myspace Resource site, instead of the new CherryTap graphics site. All in all, it is still great that they contacted us. Anyway, we agreed to a trial run this weekend so that they can gauge how much traffic our site can send them, and also to see whethere or not the traffic converts.

 I’m not expecting good results on monday. We only get around XXX number of clicks on adsense and the rest of the ad clicks go to Valueclick Media and I don’t know if we can afford to send our traffic to CherryTap for nothing. Well, I’m not saying that I don’t want to send CherryTap traffic, it’s just that I know that we will not be able to send them enough traffic to become a featured link on their page. And without a prominent link spot, it is unlikely that we would get any traffic from them.

With that being said, if by some miracle we do end up sending them a load of traffic. I’d be a happy fish. I’ll be sure to post about what happens with the trial and all sometime next week.

Oh, and for those who don’t know what CherryTap.com is, well I can best describe it as the intoxicated version of Myspace with a lot of skin to boot.

With social networking websites emerging left and right these days, it doesn’t surprise me that someone has started a site targeted at senior citizens. MyTimeHero.com, is a new online community which caters to senior citizens.

Look, we all know how hard it is to find new euchre partners and trade recipes in real life at any age, but these activities and others become considerably more difficult when you are up there age wise. With the increased difficulty mobility wise, and potential health issues, senior citizens can often find themselves isolated from the rest of society. So, I suppose that it makes sense to offer these silver foxes a community where they can interact with like minded individuals. And, just to clarify, when I mentioned euchre and recipes, I wasn’t making a mocking old people; in fact, the webs site’s introduction addresses these two activities directly; just read it for yourself.

Whether you would like to compare the best travel stories or find new Euchre partners, share a recipe or brag about your kids or grandkids, let myTimeHero.com connect you with your peers, new friends, and acquaintances from around the world and around your community. Make yourself at home with no struggle to fit in among teenagers. myTimeHero makes it easy to be yourself.

Now that we’ve got a general idea about myTimeHero, here are a few notable features that I found while exploring the website. It is a typical social network site with some good features for the demographic it is targeting.

Accesibility

• MyTimeHero, provides options for increasing the size of the text on the landing page itself. You can find the arrows to increase and decrease text size at the top right hand corner.
• The website has a very clean design, extremely easy to read and navigate. The colour scheme is easy on the eyes, and reminds me of pumpkin pies.

Registration Process

• The page leading to the registration form is a bit misleading. It features what seems like three thirty-something year old women sitting around a laptop. I thought this was a community for old people, not hot looking MILFS.
• What’s interesting about the registration page is that it age restricts new accounts. Meanings, if you were born after 1977, you would have to lie about your birth date to get a user account.
• I’m not too thrilled about the fact that there is no voice option for the captcha code. Those things give me enough trouble as it is. I think they should look into providing that option for better accesibility.
• The cool thing is, after registration you receive a sub domain, like http://elvinfish.mytimehero.com, which isn’t too hard to remember when you need to pass it to a friend/relative.

Website Features (Source)

• Personal customizable profiles
• Create and join interest groups
• Write articles in your blog
• Search for other TimeHeroes
• Send and receive on-site messages
• A safe all-around experience free of “spam” and “phishing”

The site is decent, and I haven’t really researched the competition, but this would be a nice quiet place for the mature web users. You won’t find any pesky teens on myTimeHero.com. As for the brand, “My Time Hero,” sounds like a bad movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Well, I suppose everyone should run out and get their grandparents to sign up. I would, but they are all dead. And if you are still trying to figure out what euchre is, then here is a link.

Fans of iTunes should check out AmieStreet.com, an up and coming music website focused on independent music. Amie street can be best described as a hybrid of a social network and an online music vendor. In short, it is a healthy mixture between Myspace and Apple’s iTunes.

Registered users of amiestreet.com can participate in a healthy mix of exploring new artists, recommending their favourite bands and buying music tracks online. On the other end, bands can register, promote and sell their music and expect to pocket up to 70% of the revenue generated.

Amie Street’s promise is that no track will exceed $0.98 USD, and that is pretty competitive pricing in my opinion. The current leader in online music sales, iTunes, charges $0.99 a track the last time I checked. So, you could be saving a whole penny! What makes Amie Street’s pricing model so unique is that prices for tracks are determined by the fans. In addition, the pricing model allows incentives for both the customer as well as the band. As a user you can actually get paid for participating on the website.

The dynamic pricing model is driven by what Amie Street dubs, “The Rec System.” The Rec System, is summarized on the company’s website as responsible for the following function:

REC system: The REC system drives the site’s music discovery process. The price of a song is determined by how many times it is purchased, and Amie Street pays customers for discovering and recommending great music. For example, if a user “RECs” a song when it costs 0 cents, and the song grows to 98 cents, the user receives 98 cents for RECing that song. Members are able to see who REC’d a song and can find other users who have similar music taste so they can find more music they will like, allowing niche communities to flourish on Amie Street, and ultimately showcasing the music that is relevant and compelling on a global scale.

I think this is a neat system and the website has a lot of potential to develop into something big. However, so far Amie Street hasn’t been a viral success. I have been keeping an eye on the website’s traffic for the last four months and it seems as if  growth has been slow, according to stats on alexa.com. There might be more bad news for the company as Myspace gets ready to sell music online. With a database of over a million artists and a well established user base, Myspace could not only knock out websites such as AmieStreet.com but, could be a strong competitor of Apple’s iTunes.

We will just have to see. In the meantime, go check out Amie Street; It is a treat. Sometimes I just like to park on the, “about me page,” and sample some free tunes.

Between two go daddy accounts, I have managed to amass twenty six domains. Out of these, I have only managed to develop and monetize four domains (not including this one). Most of the domains are really crappy, and I don’t plan on renewing them; however, a couple of them have potential.

So I’m going to admit that I’m addicted to registering domains, although compared to other people my addiction isn’t too bad. There are many out there that have more than XXXX domains registered. And, I will say that I am constantly in awe when I hear people talk about the number of domains they own; however, I wouldn’t want to get stuck with their renewal bills.

Last night, after work I purchased two domains, socialnetworksafety.com and socialnetworksafety.org. These purchases were inspired by the recent lawsuit filed my Myspace.com against Sandford Wallace for alleged spamming and phishing.

As social networking sites grow, the number of “enthusiasts,” out to exploit the average user is likely to grow proportionately. And, maybe there is room for one more advisory group, to protect uninformed users.

I’ll keep you posted if anything develops from the recent purchases.