Server Problems Fixed

Thanks to some great press from TechCrunch and Mashable yesterday, we’ve had some trouble handling the load caused by the extraordinary traffic volume.  If you’ve attempted to visit tagga.com in the past 24 hours, you’ll know what I’m talking about.  Our site has either been down or deathly slow, but we think we’ve fixed the problem.  We are back up and running now and the site is quite responsive.  We hope that you’ll give us another shot now that we’ve upgraded our infrastructure and (hopefully) left our load problems behind.  Please let us know if you run into any problems by emailing us at support[at]tagga.com.  We hope you enjoy a fully operational tagga!

Chris Richardson
tagga developer

WE DID IT, WE’VE LAUNCHED!

The team here at tagga is really excited that we can finally share with you what we have been working on in stealth. Keeping this quiet and under wraps has been really hard – mostly because we like what we have built and we hope you do to.

We are launching the first mobile bookmarking platform! Tagg is a free service that lets anyone tag real world items and web snippets to their mobile phone.

With Tagga, you can:

-Create a text message campaign to tagg your favorite restaurant; sell your car; update people of your next music gig or your sports tournament
-Surf the web, find some content you want to take with you, and then click to send to phone. It’s a “Look Ma! No pen” tool
-Subscribe to news feeds that you like and get the data on your mobile
-Advertise
-Make money by publishing with tagga tools on your website
-Follow other taggers

If you want to get your own keyword (e.g. TEXT SARAH to 82442), you’d best hurry. It’s first come first serve. See our recent coverage in TechCrunch.

We hope you like it. If you don’t, tell us. We are always open to comments and feedback.

‘tagg ya later

tagga team

Blogathon Vancouver 2008 over!

This is the 49th post and it’s been a blast.  Blogathon Vancouver 2008 is now over, for me at least.  It doesn’t actually end until tomorrow night, so keep reading if you can.  Thanks to all who paid attention and/or donated.

Cheers,

Chris Richardson
tagga developer

tagga launch

It’s an exciting week for us here at tagga, we plan on launching late next week.  If you haven’t already guessed, our service has to do with SMS.  We are creating a means for marketers to setup mobile advertising campaigns for free, if they so choose.  We are also creating a site for consumers to view and mobilize web content.  We are pretty excited about it.  If you are a marketer looking to start a mobile advertising campaign or a web content publisher looking to get your content out there (and make some money), be sure to check out tagga near the end of the week.  We hope you’ll like what you find!

Chris Richardson
tagga developer

Viral Video

Is viral video a good marketing technique?  I tend to think it isn’t.  I do like it when sites have instructional videos that help you use and understand their service.  I’m pretty sure that the nondescript flashy, sexy or funny video doesn’t get people clamouring for a product.  I recall one particular video from Ooma, produced by Ashton Kutcher, that was quite terrible.  I do remember the video, but I’m still not buying an Ooma box.  Marketers do tend to think viral video is a viable means of selling something, so much so that there are even viral video marketing companies.

Chris Richardson
tagga developer

S-E-Oh no he didn’t

I’m surprised at how little most tech marketers know about SEO.  It’s definitely becoming more mainstream, especially considering that catering your site to Google is the best way to get free traffic.  I saw a report once that showed 75% of clicks on a google search page go to the first three non ad results.  If your site isn’t in the top three, you are going to have to pay for your traffic.  If you want to see how well your site is doing with SEO, check out WebsiteGrader.  It’s free and they’ll email you a report on how your site is doing.

Chris Richardson
tagga developer

Email Newsletters

Personally, I hate email newsletters.  I rarely ever read them.  I usually find them smarmy and overly marketingish.  In fact, they mostly make me angry.  I consider them SPAM whether I’ve signed up for them or not.  What I really want to know about is something great, not that nothing really happened this month but you want to market to me anyway.

Sadly, I don’t think email newsletters are going away anytime soon.  They are a staple of internet marketing. That being said, you might as well do them right.  Check out this article on Creating an Effective Email Newsletter.

Chris Richardson
tagga developer

Customer Evangelist Manifesto

At a past job, one of my roles was as Customer Evangelist.  It’s a stupid title, but it was an interesting role.  Customer interaction for a business is not as simple as support and marketing, there is also listening.  As a customer evangelist I was able to go beyond customer support to engage the user.  I got to hear about what they liked, didn’t like, and what they wanted to see.  I also got to reach out to customers when we had something new cooking.  It put me in a really great position to share with the rest of the team. It also gave me a lot of influence because I had the customers opinions backing me up.  I recommend that anyone in customer support or marketing act as an evangelist for their company.  When I was starting out with evangelism, I found the Customer Evangelist Manifesto very helpful.

Chris Richardson
tagga developer

I don’t like Facebooks apps

Okay, I like Superpoke, but only for defenestrating people.  I think most Facebook users are growing tired of apps too.  One look at the Adonomics leaderboard shows that active user rates are dropping.  Not many new apps are showing up and going viral either.  App developers have had a lot of their means of going viral taken away too, not that Facebook users are very receptive to app invites anymore anyway.  Last weeks F8 conference didn’t receive as much fanfare as the previous years launch of Facebook platform did, but I think there were some interesting developments nonetheless.  What excites me most is a payment system.  I would use an app that I could use to buy stuff that my friends have recommended.  I’m surprised that doesn’t really exist yet.  I’m also hoping that Facebook will release some new killer apps via the preferred apps program.  I’m hoping that app quality will go up with Facebook itself more involved.

Chris Richardson
tagga developer

Lolcat

How did this get so popular?  I find lolcat quite funny, but I still can’t understand how icanhascheezburger is one of the most popular blogs in the world.  I would like someone to write a Tipping Point style book on where lolcat came from and how it got to be so popular.  There is even a lolcat translation project for the bible.  Maybe Catholicism should seize this opportunity to reach out to the youth of America?

Chris Richardson
tagga developer