Original content may be king, but the queen has to be aggregation.

Lists, compilations, and roundups of other resources are found on the home page of Digg, Reddit, and just about any other influential site every single day. Why? Because there’s a lot of value in sorting the wheat from the chaff (so to speak). It helps people save time and organize quality resources.

A quality top 10, top 43, or 100 great [fill in the blank] ’s types of posts and articles receive lots of attention and are probably one of the most bookmarked types of content online.

» Continue reading “Can’t Create? Aggregate!”

Today we launched a new project: Art of Blog. This new site will feature one blogger per day with a verse of wisdom from their blogging experience, written in a style reminiscent of the teachings found in Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

Throughout the years the Art of War has been successfully applied to business, management, and other competitive disciplines. With an ever-growing army of new bloggers joining the ranks, it is becoming more and more important to refine your blogging skills and differentiate yourself from the masses.

» Continue reading “The Art of Blog”

A few times I’ve heard people ask advice about picking the right domain name. It typically goes something like “well the .com is taken, but I can get the .net for $10″ or something similar.

My advice? NEVER go with anything other than a “.com” for anything that you care about. If you’re building scraper sites, go wild with .us or .info’s all you want, but if the project in question is anything you want to last or build a brand around, ALWAYS go with a dot com, even if you settle for something not quite as stellar.

» Continue reading “Your Mom Goes to Dot Com”

Branding tip of the day: When naming your new company/website/concept - do not use generic or common words.

Can you spot the difference between these?

• Commentful
• Co.mments
• coComment

They are 3 separate services doing a very similar thing - tracking comments you make on other websites - but I’d fail a multiple choice test if you asked me which is which. (looking them up as we speak)

Commentful installs a blinking light in your browser, coComment attaches itself to forms you fill out online, and co.mments works via a bookmarklet that allows you to select what posts to track.

» Continue reading “Comments, Commenting, and Comment Tracking”

In December I posted about Blockbuster rolling out their Total Access in-store & online video rental service. At the end of the post I said I’d subscribe to and compare both Netflix and Blockbuster and see which one is better…

I signed up for both Netflix and Blockbuster Total Access on a Friday in January at the same time. I got 3 DVD’s from each service on the following Wednesday. The turnaround on both services was 2 days - if I dropped the movie in my mailbox on Monday, I’d have a new one by Wednesday. Essentially Both Netflix and Blockbuster Total Access had the same turnaround times for my area. (Your mileage will vary).

After having both services for a few months I can say that both of them are very similar. So what are the differences?
» Continue reading “Netflix vs Blockbuster Total Access”