Daily Archives: September 28, 2009

The dawning of the new age

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With on the onset of the latest trends happening in the internet, borders are actually being teared down. Compared to 5 years ago the type of sites I am now building for clients is a totally different breed.

Back then, clients were all asking for sites that look sleek, cool and standalone. When I first built an ERP system for my second company Frontiera Group that was integrated with the EBay API, none of the other companies in Singapore were doing.

Nowadays instead of looking sleek and cool, clients are actually demanding for sites that are CONNECTED!

Yes! connectedness. This is the new buzz word with this web 2.0 trend that has dawned upon us. By connected it means the ability to populate multiple strategic places with our intended content with just the click of a button.

A simple illustration could be that of ThingsToDoSingapore.com, a single entry on ThingstodoSingapore.com results in a post on the Facebook Fan Page, your own facebook profile page as well as a post on the Twitter Page. Plus and update on Ping.Sg

At the same time, it aggregates contents from YouTube.com and other blogs too.

Not to say the other mirror sites:

blog.thingstodosingapore.com
thingstodonear.info
thingsfuntodo.com

Companies are starting to demand for increased ability to put contents in front the face of their target audience with less effort. That is the expectation that an IT company has to meet in the Web2.0 age.

Thankfully all hope is not lost, no single programmer has to spend long hours in front of the computer just to create those functions. We have the open source community to back us up. All we have to do is to just fill up the gap when we do find one. What we fill up, we give back to the open source.

In this web 2.0 day and age, power is no longer held in the hands of the few but divided amongst the mass.

Then again on the other side of things. while this utopian view is what most observe, conforming to social norms, a few tends to rise to the top. This commonly is called the black swan.

It is indeed worrying. Consider these black swans as the hubs and the rest of us as spooks. Suppose if someone does cripple the hub, the rest of us the spooks will definitely get affected.

Such a scenario was experienced on ThingsToDoSingapore.com when the Russians decided to do a denial of service attack facebook one day due to some renegade Russian expressing one radical view too much over the internet and harnessing too much support.

Due to the connectedness ThingsToDoSingapore has with the facebook connect API, it experienced slow loading times for the period until the facebook team fixed the Russian problem.

While it seems connected is a good option, it does have its pros and cons like all systems.

Domain names as the new landed property

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During a conversation with Jim, a few weeks ago, he mentioned how sub domains could actually be captilized and subsequently monetized. Having thought long and hard about it, this idea suddenly occurred to me.

The most important about domain names is not really how cool it sounds but rather how closely it matches a set of keywords very commonly searched but not much competed for.

I think ThingsToDoSingapore.Com was such a case. Just yesterday, while researching on google keyword tool, I chanced upon another new set of keywords Things Fun To Do, and hence I created a new site. ThingsFunToDo.com.

So why spawn all these site, think of it as investing in real estates. While most physical real estates are very expensive and allows you an ROI of in best case scenarios 100%, domain names are difference, costing as little as just $20 per year, it is like buying a vacant lot. What you do on this lot really determines its selling price after. Even a subsequent selling price of $2000 would mean an ROI of 1000%.

So why not go for it? The game plan thus is to generate content that reinforces the positioning of the domain name, thus over time, increases the ranking of the site on major search engines.

Once thus done, you would then have on your hand a cash cow which you could start milking. The easiest way is to put up the lot for sales at a premium price. However another even better way is to actually, sublet out tiny plots of that virtual lot and become a land lord. Why not? This will really ensure a nice and comfy income in the long run.