SearchKing Re-launch

[massa]

First I want to say a sincere thank you to Search Engine Watch for allowing this post and many past considerations regarding this topic. SEW does an incredible job of providing a true resource to the search engine marketing community and for that alone I am grateful. My appreciation and respect for the courtesies extended to me personally go way beyond. To Danny Sullivan and all the moderators, thank you for a job well done. You deserve every bit of the recognition you get!

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SearchKing Re-Launch 5-30-06

Preamble
Why would someone wish to expend resources on a pursuit that offered little obvious reward? An endeavor that had many competitors far advanced. A pursuit that guaranteed a lot of work, dedication and focus with no guarantee of any level of success.

There can only be two logical conclusions. That someone is not of sound mind or that someone believes the endeavor has merit. Whether I happen to represent the former or the latter may well be for you to decide for yourself, but for me, I am embarking on just such a pursuit regardless. Why? Because I believe with conviction that:

I said I would and therfore, I should

all men are created equal and are basically good

man's potential for good is unlimited

all men should have the freedom and the right to create and pursue goals that serve the common good

people are important, in fact more important than anything else

given the opportunity, the majority of people will speak and act honestly and that should be supported

the smallest of us have as much right to strive and succeed as the greatest of us

the ONLY logical reason for technology to exist is to serve man and empower man to create more of the things that make life better

technology should exist to serve man and not the other way around.

relevancy is completely subjective and can not be determined without emotion being involved, therefore, only a human can determine true relevancy as that human sees it

a scalable, human reviewed, data storage and delivery system is workable and can be done

there is a market and a need for online niche communities because humans are motivated by association and interaction with like-minded people

the internet is in need of leaders with moral fiber and those role models can easily stand out from within niche communities

you can build anything as long as you have the right tools

These things have merit and if one person builds something of value with the tools or services I can play a role in providing, that is in itself a reward.

[massa]

SearchKing Re-Launch 5-30-06


We will relaunch SearchKing as the backbone of a community of topic specific, or geographically specific, community builders. Our purpose will shift from being the traffic generating center of the worlds largest network of independent portals to:

To provide tools, support, education and motivation to a community of individuals and companies wishing to build and maintain a topic specific community of their own.

*Our beliefs and philosophies will change little if at all from 1997 but our focus will shift from offering portal tools to people to help them build a niche directory into a community, to offering community building tools which will have a human reviewed, topic specific directory as a primary value proposition. While this may seem like a subtle distinction, it is not in terms of what we will be able to offer and support. This shift in focus will allow us to expand our support to virtually any and every available tool on the net making the community inclusive as opposed to exclusive.

*We will continue offering a shared version of Hyperseek because we still have a lot of data within that framework and there is a core group of webmasters and past SearchKing customers and portal partners who are familiar with the program. However, we will devote as much time and money as possible to acquiring scripts, programs, licenses and partnerships to offer a much expanded list of community building tools.

*We intend to offer the service as one of the absolute most affordable community building services on the internet but we will no longer offer a free option.

*We will require no participation in any service, business, partnership or commitment between SearchKing, Inc.and any other third party. This includes, but is not limited to, links to any particular site or page and/or participation in any advertising or promotional activities operated by or participated in by SearchKing, Inc.

*We will take all reasonable steps to ensure that the world is well aware that SearchKing, Inc. is a privately held corporation and is acting solely as the provider of services and that all customers, members, providers and suppliers are completely independent and act of their own free will based on their own goals and motivations without pressure or manipulation, either open or covert, from SearchKing, Inc., it's partners, suppliers, shareholders or employees.

*We accept that there may be negative feelings due to decisions regarding the SearchKing Portal Program from the past and want it known that SearchKing as a company and myself personally, hold no feelings of ill towards anyone and that all are welcome as long as there is not an obvious intent to disrupt or hold back our desire to move forward and provide a service that may be of value to a lot of people.

*We intend to put into place, some key management personnel that many of the SearchKing members from the past will likely recall. In spite of public statements or conflicts, these are people who displayed ability and loyalty to the community, as well as the topic specific portal industry as a whole, above and beyond the call of duty.

*I personally will take steps to make it clear that SearchKing is not me and I am not SearchKing. I want SearchKing to be ran by it's employees and directed by the needs of the community.

*We will not start off with a search engine specifically designed to drive traffic to our members. We are in the process now of developing a new system to use a scalable human review algorithm but first need to provide our core group with a way to locate and review data quickly and then aggregate that data into something of value to the public. We will however offer a directory of communities using a simple rating system relying on the judgment of the reviewer.

[JasonD]

Congratulations Bob and good luck

[unreviewed]

Good luck to you Bob!

That said … I’m curious why an old marketing pro like yourself would squander a free advertising opportunity by announcing a product that isn’t yet ready? I think you have a good marketing opportunity in front of you, … few industry reporters would not forget the “Google Incident” and good free exposure could result from your resurrection story if properly presented and promoted.

But you would need to actually “have resurrected” first. :cool:

[grnidone]

Bob, I just tried to add a site and got a 500 server error. Are you still working through bugs?

[AnthonyCea]

Tried to submit ForumPostersUnion.com to your directory and it did not tell me if the submission was taken, it just took me back to the same page!

[massa]

>Good luck to you Bob!<
Thank you for the kind wishes. But it actually has very little to do with me.

>squander a free advertising opportunity by announcing a product that isn’t yet ready?<

It isn't about advertising opportunities. It isn't about promoting a product that is "ready" and it isn't about me being resurrected. As I stated, it is about the belief I have that online communities are going to play a VERY important role in the shaping of the internet in the coming years.

Online social interaction is very closely related to SearchKing's original mission and there is a need for a place that offers tools, education and support for people interested in building online communities.

There is nothing we can wait for to be ready. It would be like not posting in your own forum until you had enough people posting. Online communities exist now. Just ask Myspace.com But there are few resources available for people to discuss the whys and hows of building and maintaining one.

[massa]

actually, I'm not working on anything. There are people much more qualified than I am but they don't rely on me to tell them what to do.

If a submission didn't get accepted, or if anything happened that you weren't expecting, then I'm sure that is a problem that either the webmaster is working on at the moment or is unaware is a problem. There are help links at the top of the page and I would personally appreciate it if you notify the webmaster of anything you feel is amiss. Please go to the forums or contact webmaster@searchking.com

there is a lot of work going on so please bear with us.

[sebastian]

Am the only one who could care less about this dude?

...ok, sorry - i'm grumpy today.

But to make this post not a complete waste I will teach everyone something:

Lesson: make sure you secure your phone system. Make sure every user, whether they have voicemail or not, has a password. If not, hackers will attack the VM, brute-force attack extensions until he/she gets in. Then through VM admin, the hacker forwards a crazy amount of calls to Bangledesh all via the unsuspecting employee's extension.

That's big phone bills boys and girls.

There. I taught you something. Now it was my turn to ramble on about something not really dedicated to search.

Carry on...

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

Good to have you back on track, Bob!

[mjr]

Tried to submit ForumPostersUnion.com to your directory and it did not tell me if the submission was taken, it just took me back to the same page! We were working out some bugs - All is working now. :)

[AnthonyCea]

We were working out some bugs - All is working now. :)


Good deal man, I took the time to resubmit and it worked, great work and good luck with this!

[bhartzer]

Good luck, Bob. When is the launch party?