Recently Facebook has installed the timeline layout which allows users to scroll back all the way to when they were born.  The only thing is that it doesn’t have much information about us in that time of our lives because Facebook was not around then.  There was no way for us to post about the things we loved.  This is where BuzzFeed came in and saw a chance to expand on what Facebook has started.  They have begun installing buttons on a few posts asking questions such as, “What was your favorite computer?” or “What toys did you play with as a kid?”.

BuzzFeed believes that this will allow people to once again experience things they enjoyed in there earlier years.  They expect to see an increase in social sharing traffic since many people enjoy sharing stories and talking about the past and the popular things they remember.

Can Facebook Conquer the Past? is a post from Internet Entrepreneurship - Class Blog of ENTR 409 at Grove City College

All you have to do is answer two questions:

1. What problem are you trying to solve?
2. How do you intend to solve it?

Once you have answered those questions, your idea will go to Quirky where they rate and sort all the ideas for the week. Each week the top 10 ideas are selected and those ideas go through the process of research, design, and branding. As long as the idea is still a viable product, it then goes through a pre-sale. Once it hits the threshold (the amount that need to be sold before mass producing), the product is manufactured on a higher level. Quirky is a great way to get a new product in the market fast and an easy way to make some money!

Quirky is a post from Internet Entrepreneurship - Class Blog of ENTR 409 at Grove City College

Buckley sold his first website for around $200 at the age of 15. Since then, he has created and sold a number of websites. Menewsha.com was Buckley’s most well-known project to date. Basically, Menewsha allows members to create and customize avatars to their liking. In an interview, Buckley said he has always been interested in virtual communities. It’s this interest and knowledge of how important social networking is that has allowed him to create websites people enjoy and keep coming back to. Social networking is a factor so many websites are taking advantage of today, and rightly so.

In the same interview, Buckley said perseverance was the single factor that helped him become successful. It’s what drove him to success. We saw that same perseverance in Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network during class today. Perseverance is a quality entrepreneurs need. Perseverance drives people to push past the tough times – criticism, tedious hours of work, etc.

Josh Buckley has reached success at such a young age, and he did it through persevering through tedious hours of work. He knew what he wanted and didn’t allow himself to become distracted or discouraged. Perseverance is a must for entrepreneurs.

The Young Entrepreneur Part #2 is a post from Internet Entrepreneurship - Class Blog of ENTR 409 at Grove City College

The Wall Street Journal wrote an article claiming that Pinterest had been setting up deals with the merchants that have been guaranteeing the consumers will know that the purchase was because of the link from Pinterest and that not only will the website get credit for the purchase but they will also receive royalties for the purchase from the merchants whom actually sold the product. CEO of Pinterest, Bill Silberman, quickly turned down and the claims and said that Pinterest’s plan for monetization  has been finalized yet. So when will this exactly happen? I mean they have to find someway to start to making money and they should act fast because this website is blowing up and blowing up fast. They need to make the next step into keeping up with the people of their site or they will experience a major set back in the near future.

Pinterest: Where to Go from Here? is a post from Internet Entrepreneurship - Class Blog of ENTR 409 at Grove City College

WordPress is a Wonderful Whimsical World: Part 1

WordPress is a Wonderful Whimsical World: Part 2

Part 1 explained the purpose and benefit to using WordPress & part 2 explained the versatility of WordPress. Now let’s get to it!

Okay, if you’ve followed my first two posts, you now have a WordPress account and you’re ready to get started. What’s first? Well, unless you like the rather unattractive basic default theme you need to obtain a new theme and apply it to your site. WordPress offers over 1400 themes for free, so feel free to browse and apply some free WordPress themes. This is really your only option if you registered for a free WordPress account. If you went ahead and signed up for premium, as highly suggest, you can get any WordPress theme (whether free download or purchase) and apply it to your site through a zip file upload. I’ll discuss installing premium themes and plugins in a later post.

Here are a few cool WordPress theme sites you may want to check out:

• WooThemes
• ThemeForest
• AllureThemes
• BuddyPress
• Catalyst
• DevPress
• ElegantThemes
• MOJO Themes

WordPress is a Wonderful Whimsical World: Part 3 is a post from Internet Entrepreneurship - Class Blog of ENTR 409 at Grove City College

Here are the first 5:

1. Catherine Cook: She developed MyYearbook.com, which now has over 5 million members! MyYearbook is a social network, similar to Facebook or MySpace, and has a very similar revenue model. The site sells ad space and credits for the site’s games, and we all know this is a very powerful model.
2. Ashley Qualls: She developed WhatEverLife.com, a MySpace layout company. By developing eye-catching layouts and knowing her target audience (teenage girls), she has made millions of dollars! Not by charging for the layouts, those are free… she places ads on her site, and gets huge payoffs from Google. And to think, she started at 14 years old! WOW!
3. Paul Bourqe: Paul runs a company that simply markets products online, and he makes $500,000/month doing it… His website gives useful information and produces thousands of leads for him! uberaffiliate.com
4. David Wilkinson: A 14 year old kid who loved video games, turned that love into an online business, with reviews and advertisements! AffiliateDefined.com
5. Carl Ocab: He runs CarlOcab.com, a site which simply tells people how to make money online. From good ad placement and affiliate deals, he’s making thousands of dollars/month, and he’s only 15!

A Millionaire by When?? is a post from Internet Entrepreneurship - Class Blog of ENTR 409 at Grove City College

You can ask Zaarly for Goods (like a backpack or couch), Services (like a hairdresser or guitar teacher), Experiences (like a tour), or Tasks (like putting together furniture or picking up laundry).  Once you ask, you can give an offer and work out the details with the seller.

I really like the simplicity of the site and it’s concept.  Visually, I think it looks pretty sweet too.  Check it out at http://www.zaarly.com/ .

How about Zaarly? is a post from Internet Entrepreneurship - Class Blog of ENTR 409 at Grove City College

• Test for success – Do not make anything live on your site until you’ve tested it, again and again.  If customers do not like something, or see the site before it’s ready, they might not come back and doubt if you know what you are doing.
• Hook ‘em – Your site must become a ‘destination’.  Hook your customers and give them reasons to come back.  If your value proposition is strong, and you know how to market it, you can attract customers and keep them coming back for more.
• Make your business a household name – Build an engaging site with a name that customers recognize.  You’ll have to spend on strategic marketing, but if you’re smart and focused it will pay off.
• Be careful if people start to like you – Build your business to handle success.  Make sure you have servers and software to handle your site’s traffic.  Plan lofty goals, but implement what you can handle at the moment.
• Calculate internet time – When things go wrong, plan how long it will take to fix it.  Then divide that by number by five.  That’s how soon you should fix it.
• Get to know your neighbors – Get to know your supplier, as well as your supplier’s supplier.  Make sure your demands can be met by all of your “neighbors”.

Winning E-Commerce Strategies is a post from Internet Entrepreneurship - Class Blog of ENTR 409 at Grove City College

This website is more of a blog than anything else but the concept was so fascinating that I had to share it.

Dear Photograph was created by Taylor Jones, 22, who was looking through an old family photo album one day and came across a picture of his little brother on his third birthday. He noticed that it was taken in the very same living room he was in, so he held the photo up so that it matched up exactly to the room and took a picture. He uploaded the new picture onto a blog he created, added a caption starting with ‘Dear Photograph’ and it almost immediately went viral.

Dear Photograph, Thank you for everything we had.

Now with 20,000 visits a day, Dear Photograph is a site where anyone can post their pictures of an old photo in the same setting years later and write beautiful captions about the event or family member pictured. It really capitalizes on our current fascination with nostalgia, not only with family members, old friends, and remembered places, but of photography itself. Polaroids are cool again and the contrast of the old photos against the same (but higher quality) setting is marvelous.

Because of his blog’s sudden popularity, Jones quit his job and is currently wrapping up a book about this concept. Supposedly, he’s also talking to TV and movie executives about turning his idea into film.

His site is simple but elegant and sometimes heart-wrenching and I encourage you all to visit.

Dear Photograph is a post from Internet Entrepreneurship - Class Blog of ENTR 409 at Grove City College

This is an issue because until very recently, there was a page on Google’s site that said all Safari users were protected from any tracking done by Google. If Google was indeed tracking all their customer’s web-browsing habits, that would be a violation of the FTC settlement which barred the company from misrepresenting their privacy settings.

Two advocacy groups, Consumer Watchdog and Electronic Privacy Information Center both charged Google with lying to their customers by telling them that they had complete control of the protection of their data when they were actually going around the setting themselves.

Google claims that the reason they bypassed the ‘no cookie’ feature on their Safari browser was to put social-networking buttons on their ads so that if someone liked an ad they could share it on Google+. Safari is the only browser to have a default security setting that prevented companies from placing ‘cookies’ on people’s computers but after Google breached the settings, their advertising network was able to track users’ web browsing.

With the sheer size and power of Google, it’s overwhelming to think about all the information this company is privileged to and all the things they could find out about you.

Google Caught in Red Tape is a post from Internet Entrepreneurship - Class Blog of ENTR 409 at Grove City College