EVO Newsletter #4: All Aboard the EVO Rocketship!!!
EVO clients, partners, investors, and friends-
Three months ago at a domain conference in San Francisco we formally announced the release of the fourth version of the EVO platform - a fully flexible framework that would allow us to expand the features and robustness of our network on a number of exciting fronts. With v4 as our launching pad, the Company has forged ahead at a rocketship’s pace…
On scalability and stability:
To maintain and grow a network comprised of hundreds of thousands of dynamic sites and millions of unique visitors, we instituted a customized, virtually scalable datacenter in April/May. With this datacenter built within the v4 framework, we are now aggregating, storing, and distributing data feeds across 1500+ sources and are integrated directly with over 25 partner databases. To load one page on the EVO network can require pulls of anywhere from 2 to 10 different data streams from our partners around the web - our new architecture can do this in less than one second. We continue to push for even better site-load performance and have dedicated an entire team to handle this process as the network continues to scale.
On services-based verticalization:
Moving beyond v3’s ability to create media-rich portals (news, photos, video, podcasts) and product-based eCommerce sites, the launch of v4 has enabled EVO to extend its reach to the buildout of services-based domains. Verticals such as careers, travel, real estate, education, and local-based services are now addressed via partnership integrations with best-of-breed Internet properties including Careerbuilder, Priceline, Homegain, Foreclosure.com, CUnet, Superpages, and TicketNetwork. Users can now apply for a job or school, book a flight or hotel, find a property, get concert tickets, or even chat with a live agent directly on an EVO site! The result, bounties that yield multiples beyond simple ad-supported models.
On unified revenue reporting system:
As you already know, the EVO platform has a multitude of monetization partners that pay out out on various bases: per impression, per click, per action, and per lead. Because of the lack of standards-based reporting, every monetization partner integrated on the EVO platform provides us with a different reporting format: online portal, email, excel sheet, CSV, etc. To add to this complexity, partners vary in their reporting updates: real-time, daily, weekly, and even monthly. We have dedicated resources over the past few months to automate partner report ingestion and tracking to provide our clients with a unified view of all revenue streams and full reporting transparency down to the per site level.
On community features and user-generated content:
To add further depth and increase value to the users of our network, we have instituted a number of community-based features over the past few months to encourage a higher degree of user engagement. EVO’s proprietary content gateway now allows for commenting, profile creation, and content submission from users across our network, helping to improve return user rate. In addition, a recent partnership with wiki-leader Wetpaint gives users the ability to easily create pages of media-rich content with tools directly integrated on the site. Upcoming partnerships with social networking tools and file sharing companies are slated over the next few months as we continue to target increased site interactivity and return visitor rate.
On platform intelligence:
In addition to infrastructure buildout, EVO has injected key pieces of intelligence into the platform in the last few months. After being assigned a domain quality index (DQI) score, domains brought onto the system are now run through a semantic filtering system and categorized by topic, geography, and industry. ‘ComeVisitNYC.com’, for example, is semantically understood to be travel-focused and NYC is recognized as New York City, thus building out a site with hotel and transport offerings in New York. For sites without a geographic-based domain name, the platform automatically locates a user based on IP, allowing a more general site like ‘JobSnagger.com’ to offer jobs specific to your local area. More intelligence to be developed over the next few months includes optimization of color, logos, and content/ad placement as well as additional user profiling for a more targeted user experience.
So as you can see, we’ve been very busy manning and building the EVO Rocketship these past few months. As always, we are glad to have our clients, partners, and investors onboard as we continue to blast onward and upward!!!
- EVO Team
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EVO Partnership Network Growth
EVO would like to welcome the following premium partners now integrated into our network:
- Careerbuilder (Careers)
- ClipSyndicate (Videos)
- CondoCompare (Real Estate)
- CUnet (Education)
- Dominion Enterprises
- Foreclosure.com (Real Estate)
- Homegain (Real Estate)
- Marchex (Ad Network)
- Payscale (Career)
- Priceline (Travel)
- Superpages (Local Business)
- TicketNetwork (Local Events)
- WetPaint (Community)
EVO partners on deck:
- 5min (Video)
- Almondnet (Profiling)
- Amazon (eCommerce)
- Ebay (eCommerce)
- Flux (Social Networking)
- Scribd (Content sharing)
- SharedReviews (eCommerce)
- Trulia (Real Estate)
- Thumbplay (Mobile)
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