You’d think they’d be setup to handle the traffic?

Or is it ironic that a site with a reputation of bringing down other sites is partially down itself?

(shot taken at 10:25pm US EST 28 Mar 07)

Originally posted on March 28, 2007 @ 7:26 pm

Leading Worldwide record company SonyBMG has announced that effective April 2 it will no longer accept demo tapes/ CDs from aspiring artists, and in turn will now only consider applications from musicians who blog their wares.

The move is effectively the death of the demo tape, the well trodden path to a recording contract over the last 40-50 years.

SonyBMG UK and Ireland Music Entertainment chair and chief executive Ged Doherty says the company was moving with the times.

“Blogging is clearly one of the major trends in music, media and entertainment…So it makes complete sense for the major labels to use the process in a creative way to encourage, discover and communicate with new artists.”

Vale the Demo Tape. Killed by Blogging in 2007.

(via ABC)

Originally posted on April 1, 2007 @ 8:22 pm

Amsterdam, one of the landmark business in Second life, modeled on the city’s red light district, and specializing in adult content, was sold for $50,000.

The previous owner, whose avatar is called “Stroker Serpentine”, says he sold the iconic virtual destination “to focus on a new, bigger adult business”. Little is known about the city’s new custodian, except that he is — perhaps appropriately — from the Netherlands.

Amsterdam is one of the first places that most first-time players visit in Second Life, mostly due to the ‘titillation factor’.

InformationWeek has more on this titilating development.

Originally posted on March 30, 2007 @ 1:35 pm

I mentioned Google’s new pay-per-action scheme about a week ago. Since then, the announcement raised more questions than it answered, and so Google ventures to answer some of them for you.

1. Do pay-per-action ads show on Google.com or on sites in the search network?
2. I am an advertiser using My Client Center (MCC) and am interested in the pay-per-action beta test for my clients, as well as for my own business. What are my sign up options?
3. Is it possible to set a cost-per-action (CPA) value (i.e. the amount I’d like to pay for a specific action) as a percentage of the amount of the purchase rather than as a fixed amount per purchase?
4. I am also an AdSense publisher and would like to participate in this test. How can I sign up?
5. I am not a US advertiser, and wonder when pay-per-action will be available in my country?
6. Although I am not a US advertiser, my campaigns do target US customers. Can I participate in the beta?

And then of course there is the official pay-per-action advertising FAQ.

Originally posted on March 30, 2007 @ 1:25 pm

The Ying and Yang of the startup business.

Michael Arrington has announced that TechCrunch has acquired famed Web 1.0 failures site Fucked Company in a script for assets deal.

Arrington says on the deal:

Since FC focuses on the negative news coming out of startups, and TechCrunch tends to focus on the positive, this combination may seem odd. But the sites are in fact extremely complementary. For example, the audiences are about equal in size and have very little overlap. So from day one we will double our reach and traffic.

To be honest I wouldn’t have visited Fucked Company in maybe 4-5 years, and am surprised it was even still going, and yet Arrington getting into the dead pool game is a sure sign that the boom is on the way out and that TechCrunch is going to have less and less positive start up stories to blog about….indeed remember 31 March, it could become one of those tipping point days in the history of Web 2.0, where the lead cheerleader for Web 2.0 went negative by acquisition.

Update: suggestions elsewhere + in the comments here that this is a April Fools Day joke from Arrington. Dave Winer seems to think it is, but the post is dated 31 March, not April 1, and as far as I can remember, jokes on March 31 don’t count as April fools day jokes. If it is a joke, Phillip Kaplan is in on it given the intro splash page at Fucked Company has a “big news” intro and a TechCrunch style logo for the site. Time will tell I guess, but oddly enough I still think the acquisition makes a lot of sense, even if it is a big joke.

Originally posted on March 31, 2007 @ 5:18 pm