My apologies for the lack of updates since getting back from SXSW, things have been hectic, that and the fact I’ve been struggling with how I want to really approach this site. From one side of the coin I’d rather turn it into a magazine like blog, in which i write well defined articles on business, blogging, and the web, now on the other hand I kind of want it to be free to evolve. So for now, we’ll stick with the status quo.

So why the lack of updates? Well SXSW was a whirlwind, kinda knocked me behind schedule a bit. Infinibill is coming along, a bit behind schedule, but I can’t release something prematurely. Also on the plate is infinitrack, which will offer small businesses the ability to manage orders and inventory via the web. If you put the pieces together, you’ll notice we’re up to something interesting ;-).

Castvertising is coming along too, should be out in beta by early April. I’ll post some more later, but for now this is all you get.

Oh yeah, infinimedia’s 10th anniversary design should be ready this weekend.

Well this is sort of an intermediary wrap up of my texas adventure. My first full day was a long one, missed the start of the first sessions because of the insanely long line to pick up my badge. I did catch the last 30 minutes of Cameron Barret’s session on blogging, which was neat seeing as I’ve been reading Camworld on and off for 6 years.Next up was “How to be a web design superhero” by the pair of brittish Andys (Budd and Clarke). This was a great panel, although they didn’t cover anything deep, they put on a good show and managed to weave alot of creativity into it. If you can catch the slides online (can’t remember the url) I recommend grabbing them.After a quick bite of some local texmex food, I headed back for Jason Fried and Jim Coudal’s keynote. It was interesting to see what thye covered, as I’ve never heard Jim speak before, Jason covered alot of the stuff he talks about during his getting real workshop (well as much as you can in 20 minutes).3:30 rolled around, and I decided to check out “How to make $$ with your blog design skills” which i went to not to learn how to design, but rather to see if I could pick up any pricing practices. Peter Flaschner made some great points, especially about how the market for blog design is going in relation to the overall market for design. At 5, I checked out James Archer’s panel on small businesses, which I thought was really well put together (they even have a website!)After the long day of panels, frogdesign threw quite a party at some warehouse, complete with free beer and music. Gotta love the free booze. I was amazed at the number of people. Its interesting to see what kind of cool people you run into at these things. The rest of the night was a bit of a haze, but hey, isn’t that what SXSW is all about?p.s. check out these guys’ site, ran into them last night, it was kind of weird to talk CSS when drinking, but again, when in rome right.p.p.s. i’ll post some more updates on today’s events when i get a chance. must get sleep.

I’m writing this on my way to Austin for SXSW this weekend. This is my first SXSW, but I’m excited, so if you are going to be in town, and want to discuss the web, startups, or anything else, let me know. Post a comment here. BTW if you know of any good parties, let me know, i’m always up for a good time.Back to the matters at hand, the Seekum design should be rolling out this weekend. Hopefully you all like it.Also, Castvertising is approaching a beta state where I can show it off to you all. In the meantime, sign up to get an exclusive sneak peek at it a couple days before it launches. InfiniBill and infinitrack are coming soon too, just been waiting on some SSL issues for those apps to be unleashed. Yeah, i know, got a lot on my plate, but you know what, this is the perfect time to take these projects on (according to Joe Krause of Jotspot at least).

Social networking (you know myspace, facebook, etc.) has become one of the most popular sectors on the web lately. With traffic growing at such a fast rate, it seems like the early entrants were plagued with the lack of any previous examples to learn from. It was their missteps that created the current market for social networking. New entrants are popping up here and there, and quickly gaining on the old incumbents; does friendster even matter anymore?So why have a few of these emerging networks taken off, whereas others have fallen by the wayside? Well to simplify the argument, we can use one word: focus. Now I’m sure I can already hear the whining coming in of “how can you say focus is the indicator, look at myspace?” Well to that I respond that focus is in fact what catapulted myspace to popularity. Its initial focus (and they might argue current as well) was on music. By helping kids connect with the little known groups they liked, they helped these bands promote themselves nationwide, and seeing as we were all kids at one point, we know how kids delineate themselves along musical lines. Case in point the cliques of Goths, rockers, gangstas, etc.Look at facebook; they also aligned themselves with a focus: college kids. Their success lay in their keeping it exclusive to college kids at first (so they would feel both inclusive and exclusive at the same time). Xanga has taken off by targeting high school kids, same concept.Friendster targeted everyone, where are they today? Struggling to get a buyer and stay afloat. Where did they go wrong? The very beginning in my opinion, I mean c’mon they never had a clear focus, never had a good way of monetizing their immense eyeballs other than generically targeted ads. Then they suddenly became that guy in the room who used to be cool, but no one wants to be seen with anymore. Alas they are a lost cause. If I were a party interested in purchasing them, I would have to think long and hard about how I could build my OWN friendster in 6 months with 1/5th the money, and have as many subscribers in 12 months as they do after 4 years.Now as far as monetizing the concept, I’m going to pick on myspace for a bit, if only because they seem to me like the cool kid with lots of friends who hasn’t really amounted to much, but they’ve got a rich father who supports them. If I were running myspace, I would immediately launch a tier of premium services: let people license exclusive songs for playback on their ipod and their myspace page, sell cheap multimedia stuff that other companies are making money off of for people to put on their pages ($1/week for special flash games, stuff like that). They would bring in easily another $100 million right there in revenue if 5% of their users bought them. Where I would bring in the most revenue for myspace: data mining. There are literally billions of dollars to be made by becoming the central place for marketers to find out about GenX, y, and Z or whatever they are calling kids these days. Fastest way to tap them: targetted music recommendations. How do you gather the data for this fast? Look at what bands these people are friends with or linking to, and find similar bands whose labels are willing to pony up the dough.Instant hit factory.Myspace (and friendster, facebook, etc.) has to figure out how to maximize their transaction revenue. They have to figure out how to make the most $ from each kb of data they send out, because at the core that is their business, monetizing data, whether Rupert Murdoch likes to think of it that way or not.p.s. can anyone tell me why my tags are repeating themselves below? i’m using wp and ultimate tag warrior