The weeks leading up to Yahoo! Open Hack Day have been long and stressful, to say the least. Being part of a start-up, as so many people in the industry have been or still are, these periods are to be expected. And a good percentage of those same people have probably been through the gruelling experience that Rob and I are experiencing. Kazoom Innovations Inc., the company that contracted us for the last two years on a variety of endeavors, will no longer be needing our services. Although the company will continue to exist and there is the chance that Rob and I will be returning to do more with the company, for the most part, the company, like so many other Internet and tech companies, has gone under. I wish nothing but the best of luck as Kazoom moves forward, and am left feeling quite empty at the prospect of having to leave something that was so enjoyable and could have been so fruitful.

When we both joined the company, it was with great excitement, energy, and enthusiasm. I would never describe the situation as stifling, but many of the efforts of Rob and I were overruled by management, as they attempted to establish the direction for the company. Like many tech companies, a clear business model was never really established, and as the company continued to plug along, it seemed more and more apparent that the lack of a clear focus or plan was clearly affectingÂ? success.

Without sounding too sentimental, it is important to realize that all good things do come to an end, and perhaps it is time to move on. We’ve both gained a wealth of experience, and perhaps this can be put to use in our future endeavors, and if we’re lucky, we’ll be able to discover the same excitement, energy, and enthusiasm for our next jobs that we had when we entered this one. Without sounding too final, this is a chapter in the book of Jay And Silent Rob that has been written. Hopefully this next chapter that is beginning will be as enjoyable as this one has.

Heading to Yahoo! Open Hack Day, no job to come home to and nothing to hold us back, maybe, just maybe, this is how everything is supposed to play out. Hopefully we can parlay the success into something we can come home to.

In a post a few weeks backÂ? I talked about how changes on the net can lead to huge backlash from users. One of the examples I used was Yahoo!’s The 9, and how I went to the site one day and found the quality of the vlog to be horrible. My comment was that users have certain expectationsÂ? from their websites, and if these expectationsÂ? are not met, users willÂ? quickly find another source that meets their expectations. An off-hand remark I made in the post was about the host and my net-girlfriend, Maria Sandstone (it’s even better since I’m not positive what her name is).

The 9 was started in July of this year and features links to nine different things on the net, from sites, to articles, to videos. It ends with the comment “Now get back to work!,” which is probably a fair statement to make. The rundown is a nice quick way to take a break from the day, and I imagine that many people, like myself, visit the site while at work. As an attractive young woman, the host obviously is attracting attention on the net, but it’s quite difficult to tell what her name actually is, despite the fact that she says it every day in the vlog.

It turns out that her name is actually Maria Sansone, not Maria Sandstone. What’s interesting is theÂ? incorrect spelling has actually generated quite a bit of traffic toÂ? our site. There are many different examples of this phenomenon on the Internet, where sites have sprung up with alterred spellings or typosÂ? of common websites, names, shows, or anything else related to popular culture. These sites then offer advertising related to those errors, and suddenly have an effective business model. Although I have no stats to back up the statement, I wouldn’t be suprised if almost half the registered URL’s would fall into this category of website.

What happened with our site wasn’t on purpose, but it illustrates an important aspect of the web. If a quick mention of the mispelled name can provide us with so much traffic, an ambitious individual could quickly create a website that targets this traffic. This is just another reason the Internet is so taboo, because it’s so easy for people to prey on these types of innocent mistakes. The average person would be unsuspecting and could quickly be turned off the Internet, because they were mislead.

Click here for a real link to Maria Sansone.

A recent article on VentureBeat has been creating a lot of noise in the blogosphere. The post was by Auren Hoffman, CEO of Rapleaf, and talked about eVite and Socializr. I originally heard about the post on Paul Kedrosky’s site, and I think Paul has a good point, much the same as the comments that were predominantly against having Auren’s post on the site at all. Matt Marshall does seem like a good guy, and I do agree, controversy is good, and whileÂ? it probably was a mistake to publish it, I do think the majority of the article was pretty bang on.

Any company that existed in 1999 has to go through some sort of significant upgrade it it expects to maintain itself to maintain its relevance. This is not limited to a hardware upgrade or just a facelift, but adding features, widgets, or new technologies into their code to bring it up to the new standards that are present on today’s Internet. It’s interesting that not many people actually cared about what was being written, instead focsussing on the fact that there is a plug for Socializr, a company that Auren invested in.

When I read Michael Arrington’s post on Dogster, I felt that was probably a worse case of an investor trying to plug their product. The difference is that Michael’s post clearly states that he is an investor, while Auren’sÂ? post contains a disclaimer when he starts talking aboutÂ? Socializr.Â? Most of the post would be acceptable, but that one final paragraph seems to haveÂ? put a sour taste in a lot of mouths. What’s interesting is that despite the factÂ? the TechcrunchÂ? post stated from the beginning it was propaganda,Â? the influence of Techcrunch is so significant that it will obviously have a positive effect on Dogster. Auren’s post, on the other hand, was quite clearly critiquing one site and mentioned an alternative that the author happened to be an investor in. I see the conflict of interest, but fact is fact. AnyoneÂ? frequently harassed by any of these sites, be it eVite or some other viral website, would understand these complaints. Now, I agree the whole Socializr bandwagon has left much to be desired, but it’s probably good for eViteÂ? to have competition. Hopefully Auren hasn’t caused too many ripples in the lake to prevent Socializr from staying afloat.

Having said all that, I wouldn’t complain if Matt let meÂ? write about why FKMarry is SO much better than HotOrNot, RateMyBodyÂ? or any of those other rating sites. One day, we may even let users upload their own pics!

Well, this week has been very busy for us here, but through all that there has been a little silver lining. Jay and I got a golden ticket to go to Yahoo!’s first ever open hackday in Sunnyvale, California. This event will be one-of-a-kind with the best-of-the-best web and internet developers coming together from around the world. The full details can be found here.

The event is on September 29th and will wrap up with a party all hosted by none other than Michael Arrington of techcrunch.com. Needless to say, we are both really excited.

We will be leaving from Vancouver, BC on Wedensday night and we might have room for one other developer to help cut costs. If you are into development, Yahoo! or road trips, please email us. rob (at) jay and silent rob (dot) com or jason (at) jay and silent rob (dot) com.

With the announcement that advertising sales have slowed down for Yahoo!, there was a huge drop in the share prices for the company as well as several other large online companies. This is definitely a concern for anyone involved in the industry, and it is important that we all take notice. Several of the initiatives in this current Web 2.0 wave have models that are based around advertising dollars, and despite the inconsistency between the online advertising budgets and online purchasing/spending, the move away from more traditional advertising mediums is going to be slow.

For a company looking to save money, advertising is a tough area to pull from. If you use that portion of your budget effectively, it should be one of the areas that actually generates a return. Rather than being an actual cost, it becomes more of an investment. With online advertising, the investment, from the perspective ofÂ? old-fashioned, conservative companies that have multi-million dollar advertising budgets, is far more volatile.

Do I think that this is the start of a bubble? Well, yes and no. The movement of advertising budgets to this newer and sexier platform will continue to be a slow process. It’s somewhat of a if it aint broke, don’t fix it attitude, and many of these companies may not be setup to fully appreciate the benefits of advertising online. Companies need to embrace online advertising, but they cannot use the same approach that is used in traditional forms of media. With many of the up and coming Web 2.0 companies (anyone else cursing O’Reilly for that term yet?) depending on these advertising dollars, we will see them start to drop off. This could be considered a bubble bursting, but I like to look at it as more of a survival of the fittest situation. Those companies best able to adapt to the situation, where advertising revenue isn’t significant enough to sustain their business, will evolve their business models to maintain themselves.Â? These businesses will thrive, whileÂ? those companies unable to adapt, will simply become extinct.