Since the tools and most of the building blocks are already provided to you, it takes just a little bit of tweaking and some original content to create truly unique and useful sites that attract return users and search engine love. With the release of DevHub, site owners can finally control the true potential of their own portfolio.

How to get started…

• Once you log into your account, click on ‘My Sites’ and then select the tab titled ‘DevHub Sites’.
• You will notice that in this initial test period, we have turned on the ability for you to edit any of your sites already accepted on the EVO platform.
• Choose a site to begin developing by clicking the ‘Customize’ button and start exploring! Drag and drop modules, change templates, upload pictures, provide your own logo, or add your own text - all the heavy-lifting is done for you in the background.
• Please note that in this initial version of DevHub, you begin with a blank canvas with which to start creating your website so anything previously generated on the EVO platform will be lost. In our next round of updates, you will have the option to edit sites using what the EVO platform has already generated as your starting point.
• Current modules available in this initial launch include: text editor, picture upload, background editor, text ads, local directory, e-commerce, and job postings. Within the coming weeks we will be launching even more robust modules, including: videos, podcasts, news updates, software downloads, and industry-specific modules.
• If you have any questions, feel free to give us a call at (206) 441-4399; we’d be happy walk you through a demo and provide you with tips.
• Please

Remember DevHub is still in its beta stage, so we will be iteratively improving upon the platform by incorporating feedback from you into our rapid two-week release cycles. Please feel free to click on the feedback form in the top right hand corner of DevHub and let us know how we can improve upon the platform, bugs you have encountered, and features you would like to see in the next release.

One additional note: please only use the Firefox or Safari browsers for now when editing sites on DevHub. We will be releasing an Internet Explorer version shortly.

If you do not have Firefox or Safari, you can download them here:

• Firefox (download)
• Safari (download)

Once they are created, sites will render fine on all browsers.

Now go create something cool!

- Team EVO

Major structural parts of the new platform have already been rolled out and hopefully you’ve been able to realize a significant increase in page load time. In the course of this transition, some design elements on the sites have been affected and tweaks to get it back to normal are happening as you read this.

Next on deck will be a complete earnings reports relaunch, which is what has been causing a delay in the reporting on the current system. When you login to the new system you will notice a different interface and the DevHub logo (more info on that to come in our next newsletter). In addition to updated stats, our new earnings report system includes faster load time, new analytics, and CSV file export (in direct response to our clients’ requests).

Finally, the site editor. With drag and drop functionality, text and photo uploads, logo and backdrop uploads, and access to our monetizing modules — this one will finally break the barrier between a parked site and real development. The same toolset we use to rapidly generate sites is now opened up you! Currently in its beta form, we will be providing seats on a client by client basis to those who are willing to provide feedback and work within an evolving framework. Let us know if you are interested.

We respect your patience and sticking through it and from what we’ve already been able to see internally, it was definitely worth the wait…

A Little History…
One year ago today, EVO Landing was conceptualized with the purpose of creating a comprehensive media network built upon the emerging principles and resources of the open Web.

A survey of the landscape at the time revealed a vast amount of barren Internet real estate which remained underdeveloped and which provided little utility to Internet users. Meanwhile, new and exciting sources of rich content, community and monetization were materializing on Web 2.0, yet these experiences largely remained disconnected and underexposed. While the land and the building blocks were readily available, the tools and infrastructure needed to develop these raw materials were not.

With this in mind, our vision for EVO was to create a platform upon which all these resources could be easily combined, organized, and distributed - creating a network of unique properties on the Internet which benefitted from the sum of all these parts. Barren sites would gain from the infusion of new sources of content, community and monetization, while these sources now gained access to more forms of distribution. Most importantly, internet users would receive value and utility from websites focused on unique content and community.

To do this was no easy undertaking, as we had to form relationships with both domain owners as well as content and monetization partners in addition to building the technology platform with which this entire exchange could occur. Over the past year, a number of developments have occurred to enable us to reach this vision:

- Over 2.5 million domains have been submitted to the platform.

- We have partnered with hundreds of different web properties, aggregating thousands of different types of content across a wide range of media and industries.

- We have iterated through five rapid development cycles to arrive at a platform with true scalability on the back-end and flexibility in the front-end.

This brings us to today… Version 5.0

We are excited to announce the latest platform upgrade which will dramatically improve our network of sites. Built from the ground up with complete modularity and flexibility in mind, sites are no longer inhibited by pre-set templates and constraining design parameters. The technology platform still provides a high degree of automation but also permits customization for unique properties such as:

In addition to development on barren domains, existing sites developed in the past can now be ingested directly onto the EVO platform to take advantage of the platform’s SEO and monetization capabilities. Some simple examples include:

What’s in store for the future?
We’re also excited to provide a preview of upcoming capabilities enabled by v.5. Because of the flexibility and modularity we have incorporated, a WYSIWYG editor ideal for customized site design and content creation will be extended to select clients and development partners in coming weeks. This approach will extend the toolset and resources of the EVO platform, providing a trusted community with the power of rapid creation in a way the Web has never seen before.

A Sneak Peak…

More to come in a few short weeks. We hope you are as excited as we are!!!
Get Ready for a revolution!
-Team EVO

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EVO to attend T.R.A.F.F.I.C. | New York
Representatives from the EVO team will be attending the upcoming TRAFFIC domain conference on September 23-26, 2008 at the Brooklyn Bridge Marriott Hotel in NYC. Mark Michael, cofounder and SVP of Strategic Marketing & Sales, will be speaking about the Company’s progress to date and its upcoming revolutionary exchange platform. If you haven’t already, sign up here. We hope to see you there!

We will be performing upgrades, revenue partner additions and maintenance to the EVO Manager/ Admin.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Have a great weekend.

–EVO Team–

At 3:45 in the morning is when our sites are getting indexed by search engines and so is some of the heaviest and most ruthless traffic we get.  We are working on the physical architecture for our upcoming release on August 14th, but the kind of traffic we’re getting means that we’re getting pretty heavily referenced by search engines.
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If you are a client, feel free to call regarding any strategy, concerns, future plans…etc. As you can imagine we get flooded with hundreds of “one line emails,” and many of the questions are answered in our Questions and Answers section of this blog.

However, in an effort to keep all clients in the loop regarding platform performance, I (Mark A. Michael) will update this blog more frequently as our latest release on August 14th nears.

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.

Find Real Estate:

Book Travel:

Find a Local Business:

Get an Education:

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)

AD Network
Portfolio Manager
Analytics Upgrade(s)
Page By Page (Sections of Sites that get the Most Traffic)
Search Terms
User Stats (Account Signups/ Active/ Inactive)
Activity Stats (Commenting, Forum Posting)

Platform Intelligence
Spam Filter
Ticketing
Custom Pages
Forum Upgrades
Real Estate
Travel
Movers
Videos
Music

We are in the process of revamping our reporting to allow for traffic stats viewing even if there is no revenue reports for that day. You will see that in the coming weeks.

We are currently transitioning our caching, analytics, and web servers to a new data-center to take advantage of our new module based version 4 framework. This process should be completed by early next week and you will see a considerable change in site speed and uptime.