Empty Streets Special: Entrecard Under New Managerment

Entrecard sent all the members an email notification that tackles the topic mentioned above. This is what the email said:

Dear Entrecarders,

It is with great excitement that I announce Entrecard.com, Inc. has
been Acquired by ZipRunner Inc.

ZipRunner has the resources, vision, and dedication to Entrecard that
will allow it to grow in pursuit of the vision I laid out nearly two
years ago.

Moving forward, my relationship to Entrecard will be that of an
advisor, and I will help the good folks at ZipRunner take the whole
project to the next level.

ZipRunner Inc. was chosen out of a number of potential suitors because
of the resources they can dedicate to the project, their exciting
vision for the company’s future, and their understanding of social
media and the blogosphere.

I urge you all to look forward to a bigger, better Entrecard, and I
couldn’t be more proud to bring it to this point before passing the
torch. I’ve heard first hand all the great things that are in store
for the company and it’s members, and needless to say it has me quite
excited.

If you would like to keep in touch with me in the future, you can
find me at my new blog Ontrapranore.com where I look forward to
sharing my stories of entrepreneurship and starting/running internet
companies.

Whether you love or hate the decisions I’ve made for Entrecard in the
past, I always did the best I could to move the company forward given
the resources I had, and I always had the best interest of the members
in mind. Now, with new management and ownership stepping in, I urge
anyone who has left the service to give it another chance, and I urge
those who have been loyal members for days, weeks, months, or years to
look forward to a brighter future, a reliable and stable service, and
great new features and strategic direction.

Signing Off,

Graham Langdon
Founder of Entrecard
Ontrapranore

This has been quite a surprise to a lot of people since we had gotten word that Graham was very passionate at keeping Entrecard going and was no longer selling it. How this is going to look for us the members moving forward may be anyone's guess but I have to admit it would be a bit strange and eerie for many that have been here with Graham since the beginning and have felt how much heart and soul he has put into this organization. It was through Entrecard that many of us bloggers have found a way to converge, meet, and build friendships from across the globe in a highly innovative manner. Many also owe to this site their rankings and stats and much more. Looking forward to what is to come but feeling sad that Graham is not going to be around much is what may cause a stir of mixed emotions amongst us all. But our prayers to Graham today as I am sure this was the toughest thing he could have ever decided on doing. This was his baby and now it has finally grown up.

Graham if ever you do end up reading this article - Keep smiling always :) xoxo

For all of us members of Entrecard, I think we should all share what we feel and speak our mind with him over at his new site. I am pretty sure that he would want to hear from all of us. :)

Sports Saturday on Empty Streets: Amanda Beard

Next on the line up of most searched athletes is Amanda Beard. Based on Yahoo she was number 5 on the most searched athletes and with due reason. Amanda Ray Beard (born October 29, 1981 in Newport Beach, California), is an Olympic-level swimmer and model from the United States of America. Beard participated in the 1996 Summer Olympics, 2000 Summer Olympics, 2004 Summer Olympics, and 2008 Summer Olympics, capturing a total of seven medals, the most recent in the 2004 games. She held the world number one ranking of 200 meter breaststrokers in 2003. In U.S. competition, Beard won three 200 meter breaststroke, three 100 meter breaststroke, and two 200 meter individual medley US National titles.
Here is a video of Amanda Beard showing us why she has become one of the most sought after athlete of 2008:

Empty Streets Special: Entrecard Outage Today

Update: Entrecard is now back up and running smoother than ever. Their new RAM Update is working AOK. They had to upgrade the ram on the servers since they mentioned that there is a huge growth in the traffic occuring as many more bloggers are joining the entrecard site. To all the new ones Welcome to Entrecard :)

Am sure that by now you would have probably noticed that when you drop on an Entrecard widget you would have noticed that it would give you a purple outage remark. Here is the full details of what is happening according to Entrecards page error remark:
Outage

Unexpected outage. During a routine ram upgrade on the database server our hosting provider installed a bad chipset, we are scrambling to try and get them to remove it again, we'll be back as soon as we can.

Served from s02

So for those dropping today I guess it would be best to rest for awhile and hope that this gets resolved rather quickly and hopefully something like this wont happen again in the future.

Entrecard no longer for sale: But Be Aware of Added Rules :)

***Graham's answers below (updated - Oct 1, 2008)
Entrecard is no longer for sale which is good news for all of us Yayyy! but take note of the additional rules below and please read carefully as you may be violating the terms of agreement and wouldnt want to risk another deletion sigh hehehe.

In order to continue operating in the long-term, Entrecard needs make some significant changes. These are summarized below:

1. Buy credits for less: Entrecard is now selling 1,000 credits for $6.00.
2. More pricing increments: Instead of prices doubling every time, there are now a few more steps. The new price points can be found on the Advertising page in the wiki.
3. Members are not allowed to sell credits: This goes for ebay sales, posts in the Marketing forum, and posts on other forums. If you have references on your site to the sale of credits, please remove them immediately, as it is now against our terms.
4. Credit transfer limits: Members are allowed to make a maximum of 14 credit transfers a week, up to a maximum of 1,000 credits, whichever comes first. This means you can still run contests where you give credits away for free, and under 1k per week. Note: This does not affect linked blogs, you can transfer unlimited credits between linked blogs.
5. Transfer tax: From now on, all transfers, including transfers made with our new payments API, will be taxed at a rate of 12.5%. The taxed credits will be sold to members (see #1).
6. Blogs cannot be unlinked: Once you link a blog, it’s there for good unless you ask us to delete the blog from your account. This prevents linking/unlinking to get around the credit transfer limits, and it also stops you losing access to a blog if you unlink it in error, which happens a lot.
7. No more coupons: You are no longer allowed to send coupons.
8. Shop closed: Except for Entrecard upgrades (Featured Status, Fast Pass) the Entrecard Shop is now offline until further notice. Please do not request a seller token until the shop returns. When it comes back, it will be bigger and better. We’ll communicate more details nearer the time.

To read more on this simply click on the link here: New Entrecard rules

***Here are some Updates and responses that Graham has made:

Graham Says:
One thing at a time. We do hope to soon be able to provide selling EC from the dashboard, in a real supply and demand market, but we need to move towards it with a sustainable model first. This is the first step.

Please understand that our long term goals are a healthy economy with a middle class. That means we want you actually making money off your credits. but, at the same time, we need to figure out effective ways to thwart the credit farmers out there.

Naturally, this should help with the splog/credit farm problem, because there is no longer a financial incentive to farm credits. once we roll out the free market exchange for credits, that incentive will be there again, and we need to figure creative ways to curb credit farmers and gamers. it is our long term goal, but we need to do it right.

as for daily drops, we may lower it, we may keep it the same. I’m in favor of lowering it but I need more input from people.

EntreBlast - So Graham, how can one achieve this ‘elevated status’? I just finished off a 37,000 EC contest and I’m planning to do another one, and more after that as long as I’m here.

Graham Says:

We’re working towards a method of sanctioning contests and will update everyone on the blog once its ready.

It will involve some sort of inspection, to see where your credits came from, some sort of planning so we know the exact day you’re giving them away, some sort of accountability -that you’ve been active in the community and we know who you are vs. someone who just shows up today with a million credits suspiciously and wants to hold a “contest”

So once we have some firm ground rules in place, the huge contests can continue because we do not want to see the contest culture of Entrecard die!

We'll update this continually once more input and data has been obtained but for now hope this helps a lot of us with similar questions as to where is Entrecard going with all this and the question of those with huge contests.

Entrecard in Deep Waters: What can we do to help?

I have to admit after reading this news from friends Bloggista and Bono I was shocked as I am sure that many more who use this service and are now comfortable with it are going to be a bit uneasy.

Many of the problems lie in the fact that Entrecard has failed to anticipate the huge influx of service users and the continuous need for maintenance and support. To do that for millions of bloggers across the globe requires a humongous amount of resources and a dedicated staff but unfortunately this has always been a one man show for the most part.

One thing is that nothing is definite according to Graham but if ever he does end up selling entrecard it would be to a group that would be responsible enough to keep it going and this time going for the better and ensuring that history doesn't repeat itself.

I speak about this in totality not only to inform but to ask all of those that use it such I, the question that Graham may be too shy to ask from us.

Is there anything that we the users of this service can do to help Entrecard out of this predicament? In more ways than one we all owe Entrecard for the support and the revolution it has started that has inadvertently helped us out in more ways than we had expected. You can't deny the income, the traffic, the quality of readers and more importantly the friendships formed and found because of this incredible revolutionary blogging service. this is truly something we all have to ask ourselves and help spread the word around. Entrecard needs help but are we ready to give it the help they need?

For those that have just gotten wind of this service here is a video of what got me started on the bandwagon of Entrecard :)

Entrecard Warning: New Rules to Follow

Entrecard Account Holders Please Read the New Rules of Entrecard Below as many friends such as Marzie of Mariuca, my Sister Nash many more have been affected by this unknowingly.

Rules

1. No nudity: Entrecard, and its members blogs, are generally family friendly. Blogs with images containing nudity are not permitted. This includes nudity in advertisements.
2. English only: Until we develop the infrastructure necessary to facilitate non-English language blogs, English is the only language allowed in Entrecard.
3. Minimum 5 posts: Blogs with no posts, or less than 5 posts, will be removed.
4. Content must be original: Unoriginal content provides no value to the reader. A site that consists only of posts from “free article” sites, copies of articles from news sites, stolen or scraped content is not allowed.
5. No full-screen ads: Blogs that include a “Skip This Ad” popup or other full-screen ads will be removed.
6. No illegal file downloads: Blogs that link to illegally shared files, such as music, movies or software, will be removed. By “illegal” we mean content that you do not have the right to distribute. Linking to free, legal music and software is permitted.
7. Entrecard widget must be present: Including the widget on your site is a requirement if you wish to participate in Entrecard. Note: Please see Note 1 regarding WordPress.com.
8. No redirects: Sites that use a redirect (such as tinyurl links) as the URL on their account will be deleted.
9. No duplicate accounts: If you have more than one account for the same blog, the duplicate account will be deleted.
10. URLs must be valid: Sites with URLs that do not work or are wrongly typed will be deleted.
11. No autoplaying audio: This includes music that plays automatically when you visit the page, or short audio ads that come up unannounced.
12. Content must be recent: Sites that have not been updated in six months will be removed.

Notes

1. Sites on WordPress.com cannot place the Entrecard widget, as JavaScript is not permitted. Please use this form to ask WordPress.com to allow the Entrecard widget. The more people who do it, the more likely it is to happen. Until they allow the widget, existing sites on WordPress.com will not normally be deleted for not having the widget, however please do not register any new Entrecard accounts for blogs situated on WordPress.com. Also, if you have an account for a WordPress.com blog, please do not drop cards until the situation is resolved. We apologise for the inconvenience.

Additional Rules

Sites that violate the above guidelines are fairly easy to spot. There are some additional requirements, many of which are subjective.

A1. Sites that are not blogs, e.g. indexes, directories, forums, or stores. Note: In some cases a site may be allowed if it is not a blog. The site must have a blog attached to it that meets the rest of our Blog Quality Standards, and the Entrecard account must link to the blog rather than the site itself.

A2. Sites that only consist of paid posts, product review, affiliate links, or general spam. Basically, sites that only exist to make money without providing any useful content. Note: This does not mean that Make Money Online blogs are not allowed. It just means that the blog must have some valuable content and not be entirely made up of paid posts.

What to do if your site is deleted

You will receive an email confirming the deletion along with a reason. If you can update your site so it meets our quality standards, please contact support at entrecard dot com. We will not reopen accounts until they meet all of the above quality standards.

IT IS an Absolute MUST to follow These Rules if you want to continue enjoying the benefits of Entrecard. These were generated for a purpose and most of these things Justified. If you want to know more Please visit Entrecard