End of Geocities

Yahoo kills Geocities - another reminder that nothing remains the best forever. I taught my self  to make a very basic website using Geocities, so I am sorry to hear that it will no longer exist.

Tech companies and layoffs

So Google will lay off 200 employees . On the internet things change soon .  And when tech companies become too big, they find it difficult to innovate and have very high overheads.

Facebook and your information

Facebook users information - this is another reason why I never use social networking websites, whatever content you post can be used by website owners. However big or reputed the website, the person or company who owns the domain name controls all the information

Instead have your own websites , there is no fear of censorship , even if it makes 1$ a month,  it is sufficient to pay domain renewal and hosting fees.

Social networking and blackmail

One of the reasons why  I  avoid social networking websites, you never know the true identity of the person you are interacting with and any information and/or photos can be misused.  Speaking on phone is a much better way to know a person.  Photos taken can be very embarassing at a later date , so it is better to be careful about what you post online.

Twitter = time pass

These 2 months are devoted to hands on  market research - one on ecommerce in India (will start a separate blog on it) and survey of websites in general.  One thing  I have noticed is that most people in  the 30- age group are on twitter.   In real life, no one really cares what you are doing,  so why should it be different online?   But if you have nothing better to do, twitter is good time pass.

Indian market size

Online jobsite space - this is an interesting post, not for the post content, but for the comments.  One of the things I fail to understand, is why  these companies with so many resources at their disposal, find it so difficult to raise revenues.  Till three years ago,  almost all my revenues were from local customers, and even today , they contact me and say they are willing to pay.

Two of the major problems could be that the market is too crowded and they are only  targetting a very small section of the market - people who speak fluent English, are familiar  with social networking and similar fads. There is a much bigger market,  people who have a lot of money,  but they will never trust an arrogant marketer who speaks to them in patronizing tone.

And that is why internet usage in India will remain low, why these tech companies don’t leave me impressed.  Every day, when  there is no electricity for a few hours at least ,  both my broadband connections from different ISPs are down,  I cannot access the internet and I would prefer to have all data stored on my hard drive.  To make money from the Indian internet market, try to understand and listen to the customer who has the money.

Free does not pay any more

Monetization free vs paid

I realised a year  ago that returns from Adsense were diminishing, but I am still surprised that most people depend so much on this monetisation method.  Though  I am not interested in this kind of website (and I don’t think I ever will - too controversial here),  I was following this blog because it was run by one person.  If you are single person managing your websites, your overheads are low and you can break even easily.  But you should be able to manage all aspects technical and non-technical , keep an open mind and experiment with other monetization methods continuously.

Dangers of social networking

Competitive intelligence and online marketing - the internet can be a very powerful tool for getting information about anyone or anything.  That is why I never provide any kind of personal information online , unless it is payment related, though social networking is a big fad now. And I wish members of SiliconIndia and other social networking websites would stop sending me invites with their photos.

The internet police

The power of the internet police

Spamhaus is considered “the” resource for spam and used by  registries as a reference, who ask for suspension of domains based on these lists.

But they themselves are not 100% reliable, there are many false positives. After I made the previous post,  I got a nasty comment about how it was my fault that  I registered the domain name. I wanted to registered a domain name this week, it was a nice name, but again listed on Spamhaus  3 years ago.  Instead of  wasting my time again getting it delisted,  I decided not to register the name itself.

The  SPAM blacklists are compiled by volunteers, then why do registries and registrars rely on them?

Unreliable SURBL and Spam blacklists

About a  month ago,  a  domain of mine  omes.info  was suspended  because it had appeared in the SURBL blacklist, which was a very ” reliable” source.  The registrar said that the domain was suspended since the registry (Affilias I think) had complained about domains listed in the blacklist and thousands of domains were suspended in a short time.

Since the domain was parked since I had registered it more than 6 months ago, I decided to investigate.  I had to remove Privacy for the domain. I use Privacy for personal safety reasons, are those who maintain the blacklists  going to help me when I get troubled by crank calls?

I found that the domain had been blacklisted 3 years ago and had since expired. I had no connection with the earlier registrant of the domain name, but was still penalized because SURBL and other spam blacklists were outdated. I had paid the registration fees for the domain, but because the information was inaccurate, I had to waste time  because of this, sending the documentation to get the domain whitelisted.

The entire removal process took  5 days, so  I hope the Spam blacklists are more accurate in future.   A registrant pays for registration of a domain name for 1 year initially, why is it blacklisted forever ?

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