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(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting and Internet solutions provider Aplus.net (www.aplus.net) has introduced a new mascot named Jeff to add a face to a new feature called "Ask Jeff," which provides online business owners with expert advice and immediate answers on online business topics.
According to Aplus's announcement this week, Jeff is part of the company's ongoing efforts to reinforce its position as a complete online resource for Internet businesses. Modeled after a tech guru and trivia whiz who is skilled at answering even the toughest questions, Jeff is accessible to business owners throughout the Aplus.net website.
"Jeff was born in Smalltown, Kansas in 1985," begins Jeff's biography that explains his unlikely fondness for computers and the Internet. "Jeff discovered the vast amount of knowledge available on the Internet when his family bought their first computer in 1993. By 1995, he built his first website. Jeff's favorite thing about the Internet is being able to find answers to questions."
Beginning this week, visitors to Aplus.net's homepage will be greeted by Jeff, who is waiting to answer customer questions.
In coming months, Aplus said, he will also be found on other portals outside of the Aplus.net community ready to answer questions about web hosting, e-commerce and online marketing including search engine optimization, channeling Aplus's accumulation of knowledge over the company's 13 years of providing web hosting and Internet services.
Showing some thinly-veiled symbolism, Aplus was founded just one year before Jeff's family bought a computer and it began online services the year he built his first website.
Jeff not only answers business questions, but he also welcomes users to stump him with trivia questions, explaining that "since joining the team, co-workers have been trying to stump this trivia expert to no avail."
Aplus marketing director Amanda Rusich said in a statement, "We know our customers are going to enjoy interacting with and learning from this fun new personality. Aplus.net has been in the consumer tech industry for almost two decades, and many of our team members have been working in the Internet business since the early nineties."
More Gap model than goof-ball, good-natured Jeff is joining the ranks of a cast of memorable mascot characters that define web hosting companies.
Go Daddy (www.godaddy.com) commissioned a logo from a designer to no avail, however, the designer sent the company's CEO doodles she and her little daughter drew on her computer. Miraculously, the collaboration resulted in the iconic "Go Daddy Guy" logo.
Singlehop (www.singlehop.com) co-founder Dan Ushman explained that there is more to his company's "dorky looking frog" mascot, "Poindexter," beyond the obvious (that frogs are known for hopping around). Unsatisfied with a simple frog, Singlehop created a logo to represent a frog more likely to "compile a Linux kernel while configuring a Windows SQL cluster," which better represents the company than a frog from nature.
Read Back Issues of WHIR Magazine
October 2009 - Web Hosting's All Star Team
This has been, for us, one of the most interesting, exciting and challenging build-ups to an issue of the magazine yet, Web Hosting's All Star Team. The balloting process was our first experiment with a kind of user participation we're planning to do a lot more with in the months to come. We had thousands of ballots submitted, with hundreds of write-in suggestions and a demonstration of user engagement that has us feeling super positive about the project.
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July 2009 - What am I Worth?
One of the interesting luxuries of working on a project like the printed WHIR magazine is that it allows us to play with things like our point of view from one issue to the next. In recent months we've been giving added attention to the kind of practical and applicable advice aimed at smaller hosts and resellers. This issue carries on with that point of view, asking, in our cover story, "what am I worth?" It's a complicated question without a clear-cut answer.
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May 2009 - The Blueprint for a Small Web Host
I was a little surprised by how difficult it became to see this idea through. We set out to assemble a blueprint for a small hosting business, but butted up pretty quickly against the general impossibility of covering all the territory that was out there to be covered. The basic constraints of a printed magazine, and the less-than-infinite amount of time we had available forced us to face the fact that we could never produce an exhaustive guide to starting a hosting company.
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