Looking back at 2008

Playtime is over! I’ve used the past period to experiment with some forms of promoting my posts and trying to get more traffic. Although the results were satisfying as you can see in the graph above, it felt more like ‘work’ than ‘hobby’ for me. Because doing this is rather time and energy consuming. And that is not a good thing…if you’re not making money from it, that is!
The above graph illustrates the short period from October until end December for this blog. And it’s no surprise that it’s possible to get a peak of visitors and views, no matter how humble your blog or post is. But to keep this visitors coming back you need to invest a lot in time and energy…but I’m gonna focus on other things instead.

Setting goals for 2009

While reading My Internet Goals for 2009 I found out writing your goals down works very therapeutic and very refreshing. Although very personal it can be interesting and inspiring for others too.

Now that the new year is getting closer it’s time for me to get my goals clear and focus on them. Maybe you should write down your own goals too?

Aytemir.com: Design, Develop…Blog!

The main goal for this blog has always been a supporting blog for the projects I’m running or planning. I’ve used the past months to experiment with some social media and I’ve learned a lot, which I hope to use in return when I’m ready to promote these projects once their ready.
I will keep the current categories and write about the progress of the projects listed below. I’m prepared for a lack of visitor peaks, but the content should be useful (for me) when starting a another/new project.
At a certain moment I think I might have to say goodbye to the Unstandard theme…

Uppedd: Ranking and Rating the Stars!

This will be my ‘Pièce de résistance’. Like the rest of the projects I’m going for the easy route and use already existing tools and plugins and try to go (private) beta in 2009!
Although the concept is rather basic, it still is a rather ambitious project and it’s potentials are very promising.
Expect to read more about this projects in the coming posts.

Fan-Tas-Tic! Science-Fiction & Fantasy Art Gallery

I was always meaning to do something with my favouriet genre: SF&F. While writing Best of 2008 for developers: 2008+ tips, tricks, scripts and sources! I came across a bunch of WordPress powered CSS galleries and got this fan-tas-tic idea: Why not do the same for fan-tas-tic SF&F art!

Fan-tas-tic.com was luckily not taken and from now on will it be not only my own personal favourite gallery, but visitors can also submit other SF&F art and vote on the submissions.
I’m aware there are already other great resources for SF&F art, but they mostly miss some of the basic features of these Web 2.0 galleries, like tags, rating and ranking or they also contain less fantastic work.

BAOA: Blogging About Oracle Applications

This niche technical blog is actually for my company and I it’s about time it got pimped. It needs an upgrade, new look and feel and a lot of more useful plugins.
The content is absolute king and therefore it needs more audience, yet only from the same technical niche, which is a great challenge.

VoetbalPortaal: Exclusive Soccer Forum

I’m considering this soccer forum project actually as finished, since there is not much more I’m gonna change about it.

Summary

Note that I’ve not set any goals regarding monetizing any of the new projects. And initially the design will be of based on a existing theme in most cases.
The focus will be on getting things finished instead.

It seems that the credit crisis has speed up the process of the inevitable burst of the Web 2.0 ‘bubble’. Yahoo, Veoh, Break, SearchMe, Wikia, Zillow, Jaxtr, Heavy just to name a few. All of them had to let some of their staff go recently. And more Web 2.0 companies probably will follow, which will mark the burst in the bubble for sure.
And here are 10 reasons why and why you should be happy with that.

1.Too much Web 2.0 companies and services

Let me start with saying that there are too many Web 2.0 companies and services. I actually started once too bookmark the interessting ones, but I gave up soon enough. Now I simply search for them when I need them.
With a so much crowded web area it is only natural that some of these are doomed to be…doomed.

2.Too little time for so much Web 2.0 services

Maybe it’s because there are too much services, maybe it’s that because we have so little time. Even in the same niche there a lot of choices. Work, friends, family, hobby’s, sport. And internet. Although Web 2.0 is the ideal concept to combine all of these most of us still have to deal with all of this in real life.

3.Too much of the same companies and services

Competition is a good thing, but there are too many services which are practically the same. The distinguishing features are sometimes only tiny and al lot of them are actually more of the same.

4.Localized versions of the successful concepts

A lot of services have localized versions or clones and sometimes plain ripoffs, which might be a better alternative. Or in the worst case you might find the need to use both of them. These localized versions sometimes make the bigger international version actually unnecessary.

5.Overwhelming numbers and features

Although there are a lot of sites who list and categorize these sites and applications on different levels, the number of companies and services are still overwhelming.

6.Hard to keep up with all the services

Because the overwhelming numbers of companies it’s hard to keep up with al theses services, accounts, tips and tricks. And it’s even harder to stay up to date and make the most of a particular service.

7a.App hopping

And when you’ve found a services which meets your needs you come across a better one. The grass is always greener on the other side, isn’t it? It’s hard to stay loyal to service. You sometimes at least need to check the competition out.

7b.Start all over again

After having chosen a service it might get tempting to switch to another service, which may seem better. However this might also mean that you have to start all over again and eventually loose all that you have built.

8.Lifetime of company and service

You can not be certain about the future of a service. Even the mighty Google with their Apps have a lot of ‘downtimes’ and who guarantees me that a small company with a obscure name and service stays available all the time I need it.

9.Only tech savy community

By joining a Web 2.0 application as a first adapter I tend to forget that most of these user are only tech savy people and that my public should be broader than only these folks.

10a.Bad business models

Let’s not forget that most of these companies have a bad business model or don’t have one at all. Sometimes it’s hard to understand how a service got funded anyway

10b.Survival of the most usable

These cleansing will make sure that only solid services are here to stay and that end users can be assured of continuity.

Now that the bubble bursts, or at least is inflating, you should be happy: you have more time to spend some quality time, less services and companies to follow and don’t bother to keep update all the time.