As a longtime music blogger, I’m a firm believer in the power of the blog.

Although very few blogs (my own included) have the web traffic of mainstream media sites (e.g., CNN.com, NYTimes.com, etc.), the fact remains that millions of people read blogs every day, and many of those people trust and rely on the content they find on blogs. Indeed, if that weren’t the case, would I be getting 20-30 emails from bands and music publicists every day about new records, new tour dates and the like?

So we at Rogomo understand the value that comes with being mentioned on a blog. And, fortunately, we’ve been getting a bunch of great blog (and other website) mentions over the past couple of weeks, both in the United States and around the world.

As a “thank you” to the folks behind these sites, we wanted to give them a quick shout-out here on our own blog. I apologize in advance if we’ve left anyone out!

EmilyChang.com
Geekissimo (Italian site)
Generation Web
KillerStartups.com
The Museum of Modern Betas
Simple Spark
Web2Null (German site)
WebInside (Polish site)

Our thanks to all of these sites, and to anyone else who has posted about Rogomo or tested out the site!

Hey everyone! We wanted to let you about some exciting new features that we’ve rolled out on Rogomo today. Many of the features we’re adding today were recommended by you, our users, so we think you’re really going to like them!

Today’s new features include:

New User Interface Design: We’ve redesigned the look and feel of Rogomo to make it more sleek, intuitive and just plain better looking. This even includes a slightly new look for our logo! Check it out:

In addition to the new color scheme, new buttons, new tab design, new sign-up page design, and other changes, we’ve also listened to your comments and have implemented standard HTML menus which should hopefully be easier to use.

Redesigned Expert Profiles: We’ve redesigned our expert profiles to give our experts more flexibility in how they describe their services, fees and qualifications.

Every profile now has separate sections for a Summary of the expert’s services, a listing of the expert’s Qualifications, and a detailed Description of the services the expert is offering. Additionally, experts can now use HTML in both their Qualifications and Description fields to personalize their profile even more.  We’ve also added a separate field for experts to list their fees up front (although you are always free to adjust your fees on a transaction-by-transaction basis).

Affiliate Marketing Program: In early April we’ll be launching a brand new partnership with the Share Results Affiliate Network. This partnership is the first of many exciting new steps that we’re taking at Rogomo to spread the word about Rogomo and start expanding the Rogomo community.  We’re also in talks with a number of potential partners to help expand our reach even further, so if you’re a Rogomo expert, be sure to stick around your Start Selling page to be available for new buyers!

We’re excited about these changes and hope you will be too!  If you have any questions, feel free to contact any of us here at Rogomo or post a question over on our Forum.

We’re proud to announce that we’re launching the public version of the Rogomo Beta today, which includes a number of new and improved features to our original limited Beta that we released this past December.

One of the things we’ve been most excited about over the past few weeks is the great feedback that we’ve been getting from our users. We want to thank everyone who has contacted us. You have not only helped us with today’s release, but you’ve also helped us plan exciting new features for future releases.

Today’s new features include:

Built-in Free Instant Messaging:  We’ve added a free text IM tool that allows buyers to reach a Rogomo expert quickly and easily via his/her profile. Rogomo still works with any communication tool you want (i.e., phone, video calls, IM, etc.), but this tool makes it easier for buyers to reach an expert to set up a session or even to conduct a session through the IM tool.

Here’s an example of what our IM tool looks like in action:

New Profile Tools and Directory Features:  We’ve also added three key features that give buyers more information about our experts. First, we’ve added the option for experts to add a personal photo to their Profile. Second, we’ve also added the option for experts to display their real name in addition to their Rogomo ID. Together, these new options give experts the ability — if they want — to provide more information to potential buyers that help establish the buyer’s trust of an expert. Finally, we now display each expert’s “average price per minute” on the profile page and in the directory, which helps potential buyers gauge how much each expert charges.

Take a look at our founder John’s profile to see how these new features look:

Design and Stability Improvements:  Finally, we’ve made numerous improvements to the design and stability of the Rogomo.com website. Some of these you will see and some you won’t — however, all of them help improve the speed and stability of the Rogomo service to ensure a great experience for both buyers and experts.

We hope you like these new features as much as we do. We’re working hard on a bunch of other features, and we’re always excited to hear your thoughts on Rogomo and what features you think we should add. If you have any ideas, please feel free to post in our Forum.

The time has finally come…

We are thrilled to announce that Rogomo has officially launched as a limited Beta!

That means that we can finally answer the question — what is Rogomo? Simply put, Rogomo is an online marketplace for the purchase and sale of live advice and expertise.

What does that mean? It means that if you’re looking for tutoring, tax advice, computer help, business consulting, relationship advice, or any other type of expertise, you no longer have to spend hours doing Google searches, skimming through Internet message boards, or reading Wikipedia entries. Nor do you have to waste valuable time driving across town to meet a tutor or expert.  Instead, you can come straight to Rogomo, use our Expert Directory to find a Rogomo Expert with the expertise that you need, and start talking to your Expert from the comfort and safety of your own home or office.

Similarly, if you have expertise or knowledge that would be valuable to other people, you can sign up as a Rogomo Expert. Anyone can be a Rogomo Expert as long as you have knowledge that someone else is willing to pay for. Are you looking to supplement your income? Do you want to earn some money while you’re going to school? Rogomo makes it simple for you to turn your knowledge and expertise into income.

We’ll be posting more information on the blog about buying and selling on Rogomo as we go forward, but to tell you the truth, we think it’s pretty easy. Sign up for a Rogomo account now and find out for yourself. Or feel free to check out our Frequently Asked Questions for more information as to how Rogomo works.

We hope you enjoy using Rogomo as much as we’ve enjoyed building it. And we’re always happy to hear ideas about Rogomo, so feel free to drop a comment below or on our Forum if you have any thoughts!

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve run a music blog in my spare time for most of the past two years. Since it’s only a hobby, I don’t spend a lot of time looking at my web traffic. Sure, I’ll check my average numbers on occasion, but for the most part I really don’t pay much attention.

The story is different with Rogomo, though. Once we launch, it’s going to be important for us to be able to monitor and analyze our traffic. We need to know who’s using our site, how they’re using it, and, if we can, why they’re using it. To do this, we’re going to have to rely on web analytics software to do the heavy lifting. The problem, however, is that there’s a lot of different programs available, and there’s no easy-to-find resource to help you decide which one to use. (Or, if there is, we sure didn’t find it.)

So, in an effort to save other folks the time and frustration of researching all of the available options on the market, we figured it might be a good idea to share what we’ve learned in this process. While I’m sure this post will be outdated by next week, it should at least get you on the right track a little faster.

From what we saw, there are really three main questions to answer in order to find the right web analytics software. First, do you have your own web server? If the answer is no, then your choices of software on the market are essentially halved, and you’ll have no choice but to use analytics software that relies on page tagging. Page tagging is exactly what it sounds like — you cut and paste a short piece of HTML code onto every page of your website that you want to track, and when a user comes to that site, that user is tagged with a cookie which reports information about where the user came from, how long they stayed, and what they did on your page. Our favorite page tagging tools were Google Analytics, which is free and pretty powerful, and Mint, which is beautifully designed though a little less powerful (see also SiteTracker and StatCounter).

We had two main problems with page tagging tools. First, page tagging forces you to add JavaScript code to every page on your site, which can be extremely time-consuming and difficult, especially if you have a variety of differently-formatted pages. Second, and even more important, page tagging forces you to depend on a third-party tool to analyze your traffic and provide you with information about your traffic. In other words, important (and potentially confidential) business information is being sent to and from a third-party. This flow of information could open up vulnerabilities in our server, and could also slow our server down. These aren’t chances we want to take.

So, if you do have your own web server, you may want to look into analytics tools which analyzes your web server’s logfile. One of the biggest benefits for a company like Rogomo is that server logfiles, in addition to showing what your users did, also shows you what they tried to do — i.e., if your user tried to do something on your site but got an error message, logfile analyzers will tell you (but page taggers won’t). More information on the differences between logfile analyzers and page taggers can be found here.

Finally, there are also programs out there that are “hybrids”, which offer analytics based both on page-tagging and logfile analysis (i.e., Moniforce, NetTracker). However, based on our concerns about page-tagging (and price), we chose the logfile analyzer route.

The second question you need to answer is whether you want to host the software on your own server or whether you prefer that it be hosted elsewhere. Assuming you have a server (see question #1), the answer to this question really only comes down to how comfortable you are (or someone on your team is) installing the software on your server, as well as any future updates, and maintaining it going forward. Obviously, sometimes it’s just easier to have someone else do it — in that case, you can use software which is “hosted” on someone else’s servers. The more interesting “hosted” programs we found included CrazyEgg, which has great looking screen heatmaps, and Xiti, which was crazy expensive. (PS: The majority of the page-tagging programs are also “hosted”.) The more interesting “server” programs included AWstats and SmarterStats. Additionally, there are also a couple of programs, like Moniforce and NetTracker, which can either be placed on your server or hosted elsewhere. Like I said above, there are a LOT of options here.

Since we think we’re comfortable maintaining the stats program ourselves on our server, we decided to look at the “server” programs. That basically narrowed our choice down to AWstats, Moniforce, NetTracker and SmarterStats.

So that brought us to the third and final question — how much were we willing to spend?. Frankly, some of these products are really expensive, running in the thousands of dollars. One program called ClickTracks offers its professional grade product for $9,300. Moniforce and NetTracker didn’t list prices on their site, but are clearly designed for large enterprises (and enterprise-sized budgets). While I have no doubt that there are companies out there that need that type of power, and have that type of budget, Rogomo is not one of those companies.

Thankfully, AWstats is free, and SmarterStats is $199, so we had two legitimate options. At that point, we looked at a ton of message boards and comments around the web about the two programs. Both had good reputations, but at the end of the day it seemed to us like SmarterStats was the more commonly-used program, so that’s what we chose. We haven’t been able to put it to a lot of work yet, but we think we made the right choice. We’ll let you know for sure once we’ve had a few months to test it out.

(Photo source)

There was an interesting article in Tuesday’s New York Times about the so-called “Bubble 2.0,” and the growing belief of many that we’re on the verge of a second Internet bubble burst. One quote really stood out to me — one of the people interviewed stated that “entrepreneurs [have] begun to think that the financing game is best played by avoiding actual revenues — since that only limits the imagination of investors.”

The article made me ask myself — why does history repeat itself?

Consider that from 1999 to 2001, there were plenty of people who, like now, were happy to throw out their finance textbooks and leave startup valuations to “the imagination of investors” rather than looking for actual revenue. And for a while it seemed to be working. People got rich. We were told that we were in the middle of the “new economy”, and that the rules of the “old economy” didn’t apply anymore. In fact, people were so convinced of this “new economy” that some even tried to create wholly new, Internet-based currencies like Flooz.com (remember the Whoopi Goldberg commercials?)

We all know how that turned out. The majority of the hot new Internet startups burned through incredible amounts of money, and investors eventually bailed out of their investments when “the imagination of investors” became less important than future profits. Tech workers went from being paper billionaires to collecting paper checks from their nearest Unemployment office.

The lesson that I thought we had learned from Bubble 1.0 was that we shouldn’t invest solely on “imagination.” However, instead of learning this lesson, investors repeated their mistakes just a few years later as they poured money into the real estate market. There was no rational reason for the sudden and dramatic increase in home prices, aside than the fact that everyone else was investing. Many investors started “flipping” homes for a living or buying up many homes as investment properties. And for a while it too was working. People became rich overnight. Real estate was clearly “different” (just as our “new economy” had been).

As we’ve learned, though, real estate is not different. People overcommitted themselves, and now are being foreclosed upon left and right. Homes and apartments are sitting empty. Condominium buildings are being converted to rentals. Prices are falling quickly. What we’re seeing is that popular thinking — best demonstrated by a popular Miami real estate website’s tagline, “Bubbles are for bathtubs” — was clearly wrong.

To be fair, the real estate investors that helped build the housing bubble were generally not the same people involved in either the first tech bubble or the current tech market (I’m not ready to call it a bubble, yet). But others, including the homebuilders, banks and even the Fed, should have been able to look at the market and see that history was repeating itself.

So, to get back to Tuesday’s New York Times article — are we repeating our mistakes of the past and will this lead to a Bubble 2.0? It’s hard to say. There are some key differences between the tech market now and in 2001. It’s less expensive to start an online company today than in the past (something Rogomo has benefitted from), meaning that the barriers to entry are lower and that it’s a new crop of investors in the current market. However, much like Bubble 1.0, it seems clear that many investors are still basing their investments on “imagination” rather than hard numbers. In addition, much like the real estate market, established companies are overpaying for innovation for the simple reason that their competitors are doing so as well (i.e., eBay/Skype, Google/Doubleclick, etc.). The value of these startups are increasing dramatically. People are getting rich (again). But will it last this time?

The reason that history repeats itself is because we refuse to learn from our mistakes and instead let greed and hubris cloud our judgment. The investors driving up the so-called Bubble 2.0 valuations don’t believe (or at least hope) that the lessons from the original tech bubble apply to them. They should know better than to ignore history.

Personally, I learned my own valuable history lesson from the original tech bubble that will forever guide my investments — don’t take investment advice from Deloris Van Cartier.

Clue #2: Rogomo is not… a gang of outlaw female ninjas.

If that doesn’t give it away, then nothing will…

So we still haven’t started talking about what Rogomo is yet. We will soon, I promise. However, since we know there are literally hundreds of thousands of you (give or take hundreds of thousands) out there spending your days postulating and guessing, we figured we would start giving you some hints as to what Rogomo isn’t.

We already established that Rogomo isn’t a company that will use an unnecessarily spinning child to promote its service.

And now we can also reveal that Rogomo is not… a service for blending your iPhone:

So does that clear things up for you?

As we get closer to the launch date for Rogomo, our minds have been turning to the issue of marketing. It’s all well and good if we have a great website and product, but if no one knows about it, or understands the value of our product, then we’re in trouble. So it’s important to have a clear, effective marketing message and plan.

We’re working hard on honing our marketing, and we’re keeping our fingers crossed that we’ll get it right. Or at least as close to right as possible.

One thing I can guarantee you, however, is that our marketing will not involve children actors. Personally, I mute every commercial I see with a child actor. I find commercials with kids to be incredibly pandering and annoying (see, the little girl who used to do the Diet Coke commercials, the kid who does the Verizon Fios commercials, etc. etc.). Actually, let me amend that - I find commercials with kids to be even more pandering and annoying than normal commercials, if that’s possible.

So it’s with a real sense of disappointment that I link to the new ad/marketing video for Ooma, a new VoIP service that actually seems like it might be a cool service (if only I could figure out exactly what it is). The clip was apparently produced by Ooma’s creative director, Ashton Kutcher, and for some inexplicable reason features a child discussing the product for 1 minute and 45 seconds. Effective? Not so much.

Thanks to Valleywag for the heads up.

OK, so we’ve been a little lax around here lately. I’ve been keeping my other blog up to date, but I’ve been neglecting this one, essentially treating it as that “accidental” second child that neither parent really wants. Well, no more. I’m back, and I’m here to stay. Don’t pretend you’re not excited.

Let’s start with the nitty gritty. Our developers tell us that our website should (I stress should) be just about done my this time next month. That’s not to say we won’t find bugs and other issues that push back our “grand opening” a bit, but we’re an essentially optimistic lot here at Rogomo, so we’ve all got mid-October circled on our calendars. (Exactly how one circles “mid-October” on a calendar is a topic of a later post.) We’re also a semi-secretive lot, however, so we’re not quite ready to start giving specifics about what Rogomo is all about. But soon, I promise…

In the meantime, here are my pop culture picks of the week:

(1) It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (FX, Thurs., 10pm). Along with The Office, IASIP is just about the best comedy on TV these days. And, as much as I love The Office, the fact remains that IASIP is funnier. Last week’s premiere episodes were fantastic, and I can’t wait to see more.

(2) Eef Barzelay by Eef Barzelay. The new album from Eef Barzelay, formerly of Clem Snide, doesn’t even have a label yet as far as I know but has already leaked onto the Internet. And it’s fantastic. Eef has always been a master of marrying sad yet catchy songs with intelligent, literate and (often) hilarious lyrics, and he manages to put it all together on this album with what might be his strongest batch of songs yet (IMO). You may not recognize his name now (unless you heard his recent soundtrack to the Rocket Science), but this is an album that should finally pay dividends for him. Recommended tracks: “Could Be Worse,” “The Girls Don’t Care” and “Make Another Tree”.

(3) Left for Dead by Wussy. Another album that’s technically not out until November, though you can order it here. Wussy are one of my favorite bands going right now, and this album, their second, cements this position of honor. Surprisingly, singer Lisa Walker gets the honor of singing lead on the majority of the songs (she split duties with former Ass Pony Chuck Cleaver on the band’s first album), but it works just fine. Recommended tracks: “Rigor Mortis,” “Jonah” and “Sun Giant Says Hey”.

(4) Did Britney hire someone to kill KFed? I don’t know about you, but I find this infinitely more interesting that the whole O.J. situation. The O.J. thing is a red herring - this is all a ploy to get O.J. in jail so that he can infiltrate the prison gangs and find out who killed Nicole and Ron. You heard it here first.

(5) Finally, the most interesting movie coming out this week is, by far, Good Luck Chuck. (I kid!) Seriously, setting aside the Iraq melodrama of In the Valley of Elah, which comes across in the trailers as an updated version of Courage Under Fire, the only truly interesting movie this week seems to be Eastern Promises. They pretty much had me at Naomi Watts.

More soon, I swear.