Intense Web Media

…I do not recommend Yahoo. IWM was one of the first domains I purchased several years ago (I believe it was on the same day I purchased Intense Debate, not a coincidence). Being a noob and knowing zero about how to build a website, hosting, or going about purchasing a domain I decided to go with Yahoo! as my host and domain registrar.

Admittedly, I don’t claim to know everything, but I do know that my experience with another domain registrar has been far easier, cheaper, and with less technical problems. With Yahoo! hosting my site I am sometimes not update immediately, even after clearing my cache and a couple other things I have tried. Also, Yahoo! discreetly hides that you can have multiple sites hosted with one shared hosting account. I didn’t find this to be true elsewhere. Their hosting fees are also higher than normal +$10 per month. Many places supply cheaper hosting. Back in the day, I didn’t know all this. As I have come to find out, people have gone through some of the same issues with Network Solutions.

This is a classic case where the trusted name does not supply the best service. The opposite circumstance would be going out blindly shopping for speakers and purchasing Bose speakers. The name recognition, the cost, and the word of mouth is enough for me to purchase Bose and in my experience I have had great speakers. Yahoo! is providing a lesser grade service, and charging more than competitors…this will not go on forever. Others will realize what they have gotten themselves into and go through the trouble of changing their provider to a better service. Yahoo! does a few things well and I am getting better acquainted with their Yahoo! Live product and kinda liking it. Still, they need to take account of what they are doing well and what they are not. Then, either correct the problem to provide a remarkable service or discontinue the product as keeping it alive will only further blacken the self-inflicted bruise on themselves.

With all of this said, I am changing my hosting provider.

Google has released some interesting new features today.

One new feature is feed recommendation. What is interesting is the method they come up with feed recommendations. For example, one of my recommendations was a Japanese blog, in Japanese. None of the blogs I subscribe to are Japanese blogs so I am wondering why this is part of the top 20 recommendations.

As for bundling feeds, I am not sure I am interested in this. I already have a few hundred feeds to read and it is too much. I suppose for someone new it is advantageous, but for most I am guessing it will go unused.

On the other hand, search for feeds will be used. This should get interesting.

Alex Iskold has an interesting post up at Read/Write Web that the blogosphere seems to be interested in today.

Essentially, he differentiates between making money from the “Long Tail” and being apart of the long tail. If you are a blogger and part of the long tail then you are going to have difficulty making money is the conclusion.

I would agree with his estimate. I will say, that money derived from blogging through traffic and advertising like adsense is not the only benefit from blogging. While someone in the long tail of blogs may not make much money from blogs, if they speak to a niche group and have a core group of readers, that blogger can become an expert/spokesperson to that niche. So, instead of dollars being made, the blogger is increasing their personal branding. This could lead to job opportunities, partnerships, and speaking engagements which isn’t immediately quantifiable and thus left out of the equation.

I don’t think Alex would disagree with my feelings, but I wanted to say that value can be derived while still in the long tail of bloggers even though their readership may not be gigantic.

Outbrain is a widget that easily lets someone rank my blog posts. They have taken a lot of time and thought in the development of it (notice how well it blends into my blog).

I met John Logioco who does biz dev for them at the Blog World Expo and he is a good guy.

What I have heard most from people after explaining Outbrain is that “it is just a five star rating system.” It’s not very sexy, to this I respond with something along the lines of how the value this widget brings to me is immediate. From day one I see utility in what it gives me. This is the same type of response we have been trying to create with the Intense Debate comment system. If you are a widget, you cannot count on the network effect to takeover immediately. You must give users value from day one. A great post about creating value from day one is over at Steve Poland’s blog and is about a conversation he had with Scott Rafer.

As many of you know Scott Rafer was involved in MyBlogLog and it is a good read if you have not come across it yet.

The guys behind Outbrain are smart and although I don’t know the full extent of their plans, you can count on it being more than just a five star rating system. Good luck to them.

There is a cyclone swirling around the blogosphere about ClosedPrivate.

The details have not been released, but it seems to be the polar opposite of OpenSocial.

The instigators have been in hiding, but experts say the movement is organized by Brad Feld and Alex Iskold. This could only mean one two things: they are well funded, and their logo is sure to include the color blue (or something blue-ish).

The initiative seems to be in stealth mode and our people on the ground claim they are in pre-alpha testing. We are trying to secure an invite, but everything seems to be very cloak and dagger. We called their offices, but the answering machine played a message in some type of Easter European language. Our translators are on this like sh** on a stick.

If you have information leading to the exposure of what the ClosedPrivate initiative is all about, leave a comment in my most excellent commenting system.

Okay, so we all know I moved to Colorado now to work on ID full time. Moving here isn’t quite the same as if I would’ve moved to a town where I know no one. Here, I know a few people and I am trying to meet more so one sometimes has to do things they are not accustomed to doing.

One day a few weeks back I stepped out of my comfort zone and did something most males with a certain amount of pride would not do: hot yoga. Micah Baldwin, an Intense Debate user, invited me to check it out. After reading some of his posts about his hot yoga adventures, I had to give it a shot. What was particularly attractive would be the potential comedy that would arise when women release their trapped air (fart, for the lay person).

For the unfortunate few who may be unfamiliar with hot yoga, it is a 90 min period of yoga in a 105 degree room. I had never performed yoga, but I figured if I can do it at 105 degrees, then room temperature will be no problem.

And so we went to hot yoga and much to my disappointment, there was no gas passed by incredibly good looking, sweaty, women. The experience was genuinely good besides the long periods of incredibly awkward positions we were asked to do.

So, the moral of the story is to step outside of your comfort zone as a person and you will be rewarded with great experiences you can apply later. For me, I have something to chat with yoga bloggers about.

This will be the first Thanksgiving since being in Iraq that I will not be with family. Since moving to Colorado to work on Intense Debate I have felt closer to family than I did when I lived in Florida. The reason: Skype.

Since moving, I have evangelized my family about the merits of Skype. I picked up my MacBook Pro back in August and it came with a webcam. I never had use for one before, but my family has embraced seeing me in the flesh. So much so, I have two uncles, one grandma, my parents, in-laws, Sister-in-Law, cousin, and a few more all with webcams now.

This Thanksgiving we will be using Skype to connect and see Thanksgiving as it happens. It will be like Justin.tv with Memaw, turkey, and more. I am actually looking forward to it even though I won’t be there. I am sure my wife feels the same. Ain’t the web great?

If anyone is interested, I am giving Tumblr a try here. You can keep track of my Tweets and some miniblogging. Think of it as Crunchnotes, Morgan-style.

Over at Intense Debate we have made lots of changed over the course of the last week.

• New Theme (Chameleon)
• FeedFlare- to show the amt of comments within a feed reader
• multilanguage support
• customization options
• and more, check out our blog for more info (http://intensedebate.com/blog)

I have also made some personal changes. My wife and I have moved to Boulder in order to pursue ID and I had to quit my “real” job, as my wife referred to it.

I once heard Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn say “Entrepreneurship is like jumping off a cliff and learning how to fly on the way down.” This is a sort of anxious feeling and hard to put a finger on. At any rate I am feeling this right now as a first time entrepreneur, but I am totally game for the challenge.

I have learned so much already in such a short amount of time and met some amazing people. I am really thinking this business is like any other business I have been involved in whether it be the Marine Corps or medical sales. It is who you know that makes a difference and also asking for help. Connections are everything and acting like you deserve it is another piece that I’ll have to elaborate on later.

The last week has been amazing for me and for Intense Debate. Last Wednesday we were given a fairly positive review on TechCrunch.

Since that time we have been contacted by some great people who have really opened up the floodgates when it comes to the potential of our product. I think the TechCrunch profile has been more valuable from a networking perspective than it has as a pure traffic driver (although that helps .

The moral of the story is listen to people talk about your product and you will find opportunity. You will also quickly find out where you need to spend time whether it be on pure technology or just marketing. For us, some of our criticism was that we host the comments and that the publisher loses data. This is partly true…we do host the comments (not unlike any other widget), but we don’t hoard the data. We will be releasing an importer/exporter feature that will allow anyone who adopts ID to import all previous comments and also export all comments from their blog. So, the publisher never really loses any data. This one criticism has spurred increased development on the exporter and also changed the way we market our product.

This Thursday is our “Investor Day” and we are psyched to present our product to national media and a boatload of investors. I will let you know how it turns out.

I had a great time Friday night at the TechCrunch party in Menlo Park, California.

I met some great people including Salim Ismail, who heads up Yahoo’s Brickhouse, Joe Dipasquale from Collegewikis, Duncan Riley, and lots more people from many different startups.

There were basically three types of people attending:

1)Entrepreneurs

2)Venture Capitalists

3)Women looking for mates

I was under the impression that there was a lack of good looking women in silicon valley. I guess they all decided to attend the TC Party.

All things considered, I am glad I made the trip. More people know about Intense Debate than they did before and that is all I could ask for at a networking event.