VENTRINO TRAFFIC EXCHANGE SCRIPTS

We are updating the list and running a $100 first prize competition for the best entry (click here for details), so if you have any ideas I look forward to your entry.

The Wish List is a valuable resource and is a low cost way to get improvements to your script.  We operate a flat development cycle with no branches.  This means if you need something and are not prepared to wait we may take on your project but you must understand that the improvements you pay for will be released to everyone.  You do get the advantage of having it before the official patch, but that’s about it.

If you do not want to share your great ideas with other owners you can engage other developers, many of whom know how to develop specific code for you without the fear of it being lost next time you patch.  Many of these programmers also assist other members on the forum and some of them advertise in the Third Party Products & Services forum.

Advertising.  What is it?

The answer is in the question.  It’s purpose is to inform us of what it is that someone wants to tell us (or sell us).  And the person with the most money can tell (or sell) more people than anyone else.  At least that’s the way it used to be.

The earliest advert I remember is for Smash, a powdered potato mash product.  A crazy advert with a bunch of aliens observing how we “peel potatoes, boil them for 20 minutes and then smash them to bits”…. instead they want us to boil water and chuck in potato flavoured dust made from polypropylene (an edible plastic normally used for cleaning cookers).

When I created the first traffic exchange there was no advertising on the Internet, no banners, no text ads, Yahoo was the only search engine and it didn’t offer any advertising other than the option to add your own URL.

It was intended to help senior management understand the web.  I worked for a large organisation with an admirable attitude toward new technology.  They were aware the web would be important and had decided everyone should become involved.

The trouble was there was little point.

Apart from half a dozen websites it was a dull place.  The traffic exchange (codenamed web exchange at the time)  recorded interesting websites so they could be shared.  Users would add websites, rate them, and add a description in mu

ch the same way as a social application such as Digg does today.  Other users would be able to browse each website and leave comments.

The product was tailored for use in a corporation and at the time it seemed unlikely it would become an advertising medium.  But looking back to 1994 from 2009 it’s hard to remember what it was like living in such an unconnected world.

The power of advertising is now in the hands of the consumer rather than the advertiser.  We decide what we see and we must be financially rewarded too.  How startling it must be for ancient advertising agencies to discover their new business is modeled on the humble traffic exchange?  And where has all that TV revenue gone?

Heck, even a blind chicken finds corn sometimes…..

From time to time I ghost write blog posts on the subject of communities.  Recently requests have grown for reviews of community based applications and as a software developer by trade these are the kind I like most.

The “social phenomenon” is a big community driver.  Places where people like to meet are definitely treasure troves, at least as far as investors are concerned.

My own belief is places such as digg and facebook are doomed to failure.  Why? Well not because they are not useful or because the attract large communities, they are both good at that.  I believe they suffer from the same problem early web site builders ran across at the beginning of the 90′s.  That is, how do you make people pay?  All to often web sites fall back on the age old web-disaster, aka Advertising.

facebook face the largest negative profits in history and have little to show for it apart from a clueless and somewhat depressed founder – other than a community.  And what if that community turns on them?  Would facebook and digg be as popular if they sold to Microsoft? That would be as damning for them as allowing perverts free access to their membership.

As a keen member of both communities I don’t like to think of them under threat, but herein lies the conundrum.  How can they make them commercially viable.  facebook’s revolutionary and functional advertising implementation is encouraging.  To put a dent in their negative equity will need more than that.  As a user I am reluctant to invest too much time in facebook as it’s unlikely they will survive the test of time.  Quite how Zuckerberg’s backers take it when he shrugs of yet another $150m loss is hard to imagine, and digg are in a similar position.

Self built communities will work for the common good.  That is we will join communities of specific interest that are not encumbered by the generalisation of sites such as digg and facebook and that do not need a commercial reason to exist.

In the Internet gold rush all kinds of crazy ideas were backed but it’s those that had done well offline that really excelled online.  The weird ideas remained exactly that, weird and mostly not profitable.

The age of the community is coming, it will be in every aspect of our lives and advertisement will be replaced with real information, possibly even fact.  Bill board and media advertisers will lose their grip.

I have believed for a long time that as radio lost ground to TV so would TV lose ground to the web but never did I think it would happen so fast.