Smartpunters.com - Its like blogging for dummies

Smart Who? - 06:12 PM, October 23, 2005

A letter from the President:

"A blogging service... Are you going to cut down trees?"  That's what my friends said when I told them I'd put over $500,000 of my own money into a new type of online service that I myself have enjoyed for years. Except when I did it we didn't call it a blog, we called it an online ledger. Daily Change List. Online Diary. You get the idea.

My how times have changed.

Not too long ago we all sat around a 133 mhz machine looking at photos of the latest sports illustrated model downloading at 14.4 baud on modems the size of dinner plates. We'd sit and watch with anticipation as each line of the girl of the month was downloaded and drawn on our screen and once completed we'd oooh, ahh, talk about her cellulite, and then click a link only to do it all over again. Not only did we repeat the same moves that froze time for us as the download continued, we enjoyed it. Today I clicked on a link a friend sent me that had a coupon for lingere for my wife from Victoria's Secret Online. The entire page loaded in less than a second except for one pic in the corner. I was irritated. I immediately thought something was wrong with their server. Poor design, I imagined.

My how times have changed.

And today I write this note more as a blog entry than an open letter - though what could be the difference? - having invested half a million dollars in a pastime I love. Where people from all over the world can come and write about their lives, read about others, and share music, movies, and more with the click of a mouse. That's progress. That's what makes the world go around. People. Friends. Relationships and the inner nuances of everyday life. It's my hope and maybe my gamble that a few people feel the same way. It's my hope that thousands or even millions will see the Smartpunters way of doing things and say "Hey, that's exactly what I was looking for in a community!" and settle down with us.

We're growing already and it's only been a month. You'll notice a LOT of changes in the next few years as we stretch our wings and fly. I expect just like with online chat moving to mp3's moving to movies we'll see blogs move from text to sound to video. It's likely inevitable. But one thing's for sure, whatever changes occur you can count on Smartpunters.Com being on top of them. And who knows? Maybe the next evolution of the online world won't be Brittany Spears latest news. Maybe it'll be you and me and our blogs. The excitement over a new baby at the Smith household or the sorrow of a passing grandparent at the Andersons. That's real life. And if it is, maybe things haven't changed so much after all.

-Bill Braxton

President/CEO

Smartpunters.com