Accept no substitutes

Day: July 29, 2007

Perez’s Carrboro (and Hungarian) Connection

Today’s NYTimes gives a buncha ink/electrons to celebrity gossip Perez Hilton. He is to people as shoeblog.com’s the Manolo is to footwear. No question. But there is more to this story than gay Cuban guy goes to LA and spreads the dirt. Perez is raking in the dough thanks to great ad sales and very very good rates through Henry Copeland‘s Carrboro-based BlogAds.com.

Of the business side, Henry dishes on the rates:

Mr. Lavandeira’s blog [PerezHilton.com] commands as much as $9,000 a week for a single advertisement and $45,000 for the most expensive ad package, according to Henry Copeland of Blogads.com, the ad sales representative for Perezhilton.com. His demographics — a largely female readership, with an average age of 26 — lure ads from fashion brands, spirits companies and, of course, Hollywood.

And Hungry? BlogAds is a multi (at least dual) national corporation with staff in NC and HU.

How I Gained and Lost My Fangs

They came from Serbia. That gave me an edge. Danica bit me first. That was hours before anyone else in my network was aware of the Vampire Facebook application. Without SuperWall, a lure at which I refused to even nibble, I only got 10 bites per day. So inspecting my FriendWheel application. I looked for friends who for the most part were unconnected. My hunch was that Marc Granovetter was right on Facebook as he had been on so many social networks. If he was right, the loose ties in my network would lead to more entrepreneurial Vampires, those more likely to bite folks that I would be unlikely to reach otherwise. Then, I figured, in this clearly pyramidal schemed application, I would quickly advance in the Vampire hierarchy.

What’s more it worked and worked well. Soon I advanced to Vampire Bride to Vampire Mistress and then to the barely clad and overly muscled Vampire Ninja or was that Jedi? I was too busy staring at the picture to read the words. At that point, I’d need to double my over 1200 points to get to the next level whatever that might be.

But today, I became tired of Vampiring. I imagine that a successful Amway Diamond might feel the same way, but I would hope with a bit more guilt over those more recently bitten.

I had seen my Vampire Army grow and seen my other Vampire friends advance (not yet to Ninja I might add with no small touch of pride). So far so good. Then I dropped by 30 points. My fellow Army members were wising up.

I too chunked the Vampire app. It was fun. Slightly obnoxious (sorry to have added to your burdens Jason Calacanis ;->). And sated some small competitive desires that were keeping me from Buddha-hood.

See you later Vampires. Still there on Facebook tho.

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