blog.extendr.com

Additions to report criteria now avalible to premium accounts include individual click tracking, time specific referal slices, and a log of all traffic.

.extendr allows customization of your profile. The free version allows 6 foreground and 2 background colors and premium adds fully customizable colors. Premium also enables custom background images and profile pictures for more personal pages. Each version also lets you type a brief summary to provide some additional context about yourself. Note that your summary will also be used as the meta description for your profile which is what will be printed about your .extendr page in search results.

A recent feature addition to .extendr is the Tour. The .extendr profile is a great way to present your links, but we thought we could do better at letting people check out all of somebody’s .extendr links in succession. By either adding “/tour” to the end of someone’s .extendr address or clicking the “My Tour” button in the top right of their profile, a viewer can go through all of someone’s links, one at a time by clicking on the right and left arrows.

Now, we do use an iframe for this, and I am well aware of the controversy, and even downright anger, a lot of site owners have over misused iframes, but we believe that this use adds value to our web experience and we hope (and have heard) people find it useful. Unfortunately, there are quite a few sites out there that will detect if they’re loaded inside an iframe and break out of them..which stops the .extendr tour immediately when this happens. We’ve handled this by maintaining a list of these sites and loading an informative message during the tour when one of these sites is detected with a link to open the site in a new tab so the tour may continue. If anyone does find sites that are still breaking people’s .extendr tours, feel free to let me know!

Check one out at http://neilberget.extendr.com/tour.

At one point I was a window washer. When I was looking for a different gig and trying to make the best impression of myself. I would meet people in person and be able to control and package the information they received. However, when I met people online or left my card with them I had no idea what would be the best link to give them. I was continually wondering what they would find of me online. Moreover, I could not game google enough to get the links I wanted on the main page of my search results.

So, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I built a site full of the things I wished google would find of me. I tossed a little personal brand texture in, and stuck it up on one url. When I started sharing that one place that included my picture and video links right along with my company and personal websites I got huge feedback. Both traffic and positive words about the concept were sent my way. That’s when I thought maybe I had something to build as a service so others could do the same.

I approached Neil, a friend from those formative college years, with the idea and he agreed to be the developer ninja on the project. .extendr.com was born.

Since then we’ve been developing a tool to help people do more than wave at each other online. Our goal is to help people say, “Hello” in a way that makes a great introduction.

We’re happy to welcome you along for the ride. — Joseph

Our email feature is advanced. It doesn’t matter that you call your email links in .extendr.com because when an email link is clicked a light box loads with an email form in it. This adds security from bots looking to add your address to spam lists and it offers you the flexibility to respond to whatever email comes in with the appropriate address for that particular correspondence.

If you have your email links named with your email address consider changing it. We hope this helps you simultaneously hide from bots but be more accessible to real people.

There is some discussion out there regarding if the business card is dead. Well, it is more than a discussion. A handful of companies are actively working toward that end.

To our minds, the insight the discussion is addressing is that a growing number of us are gaining more and more contact points, more than you can put on a card for example. So in that sense the card is dead. We’re simply pushing on the boundaries of the surface area on a card. Further, the trend is to get mini cards, i.e. MOO.com. Not only that, but we also change our communication habits quite regularly. So, what is the point in having a card at all if after printing it it just changes anyway and there is to much to print?

Well, we have on a number of occasions, had someone give us more than one card. We still want to give something to people when we meet them. Or better, it seems we want to help them remember us. So in that sense the card is not dead.

It seems the card is both dead and alive but to be sure it is changing. Enjoy http://www.thebusinesscardisdead.com and http://www.thebusinesscardisnotdead.com. We made them redirect just for you. No matter which side of the field you land on for this challenge it seems some part of our solution can help you share.

Google is going to find you. It is just the way it is. Maybe you’ll run a race at some point, your name will be printed somewhere, some place and boom, you’ve been found. So, the question is about what will be there when someone asks Google about you?

Google, in this sense then, can be seen as that contact, that friend that knows everyone in the crowd at the party and is so nifty, cool and interesting. Google is the disembodied entity most people have a real opportunity to meet. Google is the one you want to hangout with. The difference is that you don’t have to wait in line to introduce your self to Google and to strike up a conversation.

This is, in some sense, a factor in the decision to start extendr. We looked around and asked ourselves what it would be like to introduce ourselves to Google in a clear and elevator-pitch kind of way.

We don’t have the results yet. We hope you check it out and decided if the service is right for your goals. We’ll keep you updated as we continue down the path of this prototyping adventure.

Oh, least I mention that we also think .extendr.com could be a real nifty way to consolidate all your stuff in one place so as to make it easier to share your stuff with embodied people too. See, the “share” link and the “get cards” option for more on those strategies.

We think we have an idiom among us. It seems to be the popular notion regarding getting jobs and general success in the world, among the circles we run. Go ahead, tell someone you’re job hunting and its highly probable you’ll hear, “It’s about who you know” mentioned at some point in the conversation.

We at .extendr.com wonder though, does that really capturing what’s going on? To our minds its really more about who knows you. To that end then, its in all our best interests to make it easy for people to know us.

This insight, among a couple others, is part of why .extendr.com exists. Our goal is that on some level .extendr.com can be of assistance to you in your pursuit of being known.

Maybe we can all start using a new phrase and get it to spread, “It’s about who knows you.” Who knows, maybe you can stick that idea in your personal branding tool kit and use it to your advantage.

Greetings from .extendr.com. We’re excited to be in beta, which we might keep the mental concept of for a very long time. However, we are eager to move this along to being open to the public. Until then we are issuing handshake codes. Let us know if you’re interested in helping out with a little quality assurance and we’d be delighted to pass a code along to you.

We’re looking forward to helping you share.

Cheers!

.extendr.com will be a great accelerant for your networking. We’re exited to be working on our Alpha and even more excited to switch to Beta. Check out our homepage http://www.extendr.com and sign up if you’d like to be informed when we do.