By Liam Eagle, theWHIR.com
October 1, 2007 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — This week’s WHIR blogs had the attractive distinction of being mostly attached to current events - which is not to say that the more theoretical or whimsical musings that often populate the blogs are not attractive, but that the unique distinction of this week’s material was itself attractive.
On Sunday (the 23rd of September) I happened to be in the office. And I happened to have the Seahawks-Bengals game playing in the background. And I happened to be reading over a bit of press material from Go Daddy that was relevant to both the work I was doing and the football game I was listening to. So I happened to put up a blog entry about it. New Go Daddy spokesman and Bengals receiver Chad Johnson had appeared earlier that week on CEO Bob Parsons’ Internet radio show. During the conversation, Parsons had promised a donation of $50,000 to the Feed The Children foundation, a group Johnson works with regularly, should he perform a “Go Daddy dance” in the end zone following a touchdown – a little hosting-related context for the football game.
Following up on that particular post – the Seahawks managed to keep Johnson out of the end zone in the process of putting together a 24-21 victory. Perhaps we’ll see the Go Daddy dance on MNF against the Pats this week.
Carrying on with the current-events theme of things, Paul Hirsch posted on Tuesday about his own efforts, along with a few as-yet-unnamed collaborators, in putting together a hosting association – a much-discussed project that has never reached fruition in any of its past iterations. Using his blog to announce the project, Hirsch said the research was done and that the project is “moving forward.” His invitation for comments has since sparked a small but interesting discussion, to which hosting providers may want to contribute. And no doubt more information about the project will be forthcoming.
Tom Millitzer reported Wednesday on the rumors that EMC had made a deal to acquire online backup and storage company Mozy for $76 million. He was particularly interested in the rumored value of Mozy, considering the investment of $1.9 million in 2005 the company appeared to be built upon. With a still-limited number of companies competing in the online backup space, he says, Web hosts may want to consider throwing their hats into that ring while there’s still room for competition.
In an outright departure from the focus on events I described above, Hartland Ross made a post discussing the distribution of dollars in a Web host’s marketing budget, and where that money might best be spent. The post served as a bit of an introduction to a series of ideas he intends to explore at some greater length in the future, so it dealt in part with the idea that a lot of hosting businesses don’t seem to have spent much time developing a plan for their marketing efforts at all.
And returning, finally, to the relationship with events, the final blog post of the week was my own recap of the PEER 1 Network customer event that had taken place here in Toronto the previous night. The most interesting aspect of the event for me was the opportunity to sit down and talk for a few minutes with marketing director Jose Santos, who was noticeably excited to relate his own experience with the company. PEER 1, he says, is a company with a truly unique culture, and a truly exciting place to work. It’s a usually-inaccessible perspective on a company’s business, and an interesting way to get to know one of the businesses we frequently cover.
While it wasn’t universal – or a particularly unusual focus for theWHIR – this week’s general relationship with current events gave the blogs a perspective that was a bit of a departure in tone from the material we more commonly post, which was itself interesting.
