Web Development Live

As an avid Apple afficianado and advocate of all things open source, my stance on Microsoft is usually clear-cut: I don’t care for it.  Everything about Microsoft’s business practices rubs me wrong.  With that said, I was surprised to learn that Microsoft has been toying with its own little pet social network since the beginning of the year.

Well “social” might not be quite the right term for Microsoft’s baby network, which is called TownSquare.  Consider it a more elite community of Microsoft nerds.  Perhaps a better term would be the anti-social network.  Townsquare is an intranet-based social network currently open to all Microsoft employees, and shares many similarities with Facebook.

All the normal social goodies - pictures, bios, updates, feed are included on TownSquare for each user and shared with the Microsoft community.  Additionally, Microsoft employees can see when documents and files on the intranet have been updated  or modified.  The whole thing is designed on enterprise newsfeeds to compile various public information about employees on the network.

Microsoft is also sharing TownSquare with a group of select consumers who are responsible for testing Townsquare.  All the testing and restructuring can’t possibly be for Microsoft’s own good time, though; it wouldn’t surprise me if Microsoft did a revision or two and marketed the intranetwork social structure to businesses.  As one of the main features is updating users on document and data revision on the intranet, many businesses could, no doubt, benefit from such advances.

Which brings me back to my original issue with Microsoft.  What could be a fantastic tool developed by some no-name third party developer will undoubtedly be marketed for sale by Microsoft to small business owners who will buy into the product simply because it has Microsoft’s stamp of approval.  If anything, I would be delighted to see a third party developer replicate the social structure for viewing profiles and updating intranet-public documents as open-source freeware, available to all.

The entire reason I believe that Microsoft will continue to spiral downward is because the who’s who in Microsoft’s management will never be able to adapt to the new, very open style of program sharing and development, and leave behind the monopoly mindset. In the end, Microsoft will have to buy into a little Darwinian theory and adapt and evolve, or go the way of the dinosaurs.

They are also offering No-cost tools to assist webmasters and domain developers. Their most recent offering - Stomper Site Seer - is a web-based tool that you don’t have to pay for. It generates a lot of information about your site in one report.

Even if you don’t sign-up for Stompernet (and most people won’t) their free educational offerings are amazing. This is stuff that you’d pay a lot for elsewhere. By giving away some of their material they hope to get people to sign-up. I plan to stay a member.

One major component of Stompernet is SEO. They provide unsurpassed training to help you rank in Google. Using these techniques I have been able to consistently rank on the first page of Google for the term “Domain Parking.” There is also a lot of training on building Online storefronts using affiliate links or drop-shipping.

Some stompers have built multi-million dollar businesses from the techniques they learned (and others have struggled because of the sheer volume of information available). Faculty members include Jerry West, Howie Schwartz, Andy Jenkins, Andy Edmonds, Dan Thies, Brad Fallan, Dave Taylor, David Bullock, Don Crowther, Leslie Rhodie, Sherman Hu, Mike Stewart, Paul Colligan, and Ed Dale.

Stompernet includes professional coaching and face-to-face conferences several times a year (at no extra charge). The conferences usually last for three days on a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

The last few have been in Atlanta. I attended the last two and found them to be at least as valuable as T.R.A.F.F.I.C. or Domain Roundtable, but with a different emphasis. Many of the attendees are small business owners with mediocre domains. They learn from people like Brad Fallon, who makes millions every year with the site MyWeddingFavors.com.

The video that you view at the site has a playlist button that will allow you to view all other free videos, such as their Going Natural 3 - Video 1. This video will teach you how to design an AdWords campaign, using a real-world example that occurred when Google dropped an ecommerce site from their rankings.

When you finish reading this, go check out the video and try their tool on one of your developed or semi-developed domains. Stompernet will probably be closed again by the time the June NameMonetizer newsletter comes out, so I want DomainNameWire readers to at least have a chance at this training.