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Evolution is defined as ‘any process of formation or growth; development’. In order to be successful in the dot com industry, you must learn to adapt and evolve. Web sites have to stay current with the latest trends or they risk losing visitors, or even worse folding all together. Yahoo! is the perfect example of an ever evolving website. Their new innovations and designs helped them not only survive the dot com bust, but come out even stronger. Today they are one of the most visted websites in the world (#1 on Alexa).

In today’s post I want to take a quick glimpse at the history of Yahoo! and how they’ve been a pioneer for all of us. Using an awesome tool called ‘Wayback Machine’ we can take a look back at Yahoo! and any other website since their creation. It’s an awesome tool. You can spend a lot of time playing around and watching how so many successful websites have changed over the years.

October 1996
This is the first capture of Yahoo we have. It looks like a general directory from the outside. They have thousands of websites already listed. They have a sports section and a stock section. The Dow was at 8,427…If only I would have got in back then! They have an awful looking header image that looks like it was made in paintbrush.

January 1997
The first thing I noticed was they moved to two columns in the center, instead of having one column left aligned. They also worked on the header. It now looks cleaner and appears to have buttons. At the top they also have looking for a job, date, car? Adding new features is a great way to keep visitors coming back. If you scroll to the bottom you can also see they added chat rooms. Chat rooms were the craze back in the late 90s.

February 1998
1998 looks almost the exact same as 1997. I don’t see any major changes during this time. They still have the search bar at the top and all the directory listings in the center. I did notice more links at the top for personals, weather and shopping.

January 1999
Once again, the home page still looks similar to the year prior. However, there are a couple new important features added. New features include Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Travel and Yahoo Games. Adding Yahoo mail was probably the best thing Yahoo ever did to improve themselves and maintain dominance in the industry. I don’t know one person without a yahoo mail account, even if it is used for spam. Yahoo Mail crushed the competition. Anyone remember Rocketmail?

February 2000
Now we are finally seeing some changes on the Yahoo homepage. After three years of pretty much staying the same, they now moved to more of a portal feel. They added a green highlight box at the top of the directory, they added another column to the right side. They made the font larger for the directory categories. Another big feature I see added at the top center is Yahoo Messanger! Lots of big things happened in 2000 for Yahoo.

January 2001
This is the look and feel that I most recognize Yahoo with. Maybe because I first started playing Yahoo fantasy football in 2001, so I visited their site many, many times a day. They added a lot more links to the top center.

January 2002
The homepage still pretty much looks the same. No major changes that I can see.

January 2003
Finally seeing some color on the homepage. We are also seeing our first wave of advertisements. I see a Sierra Mist logo and a TD Waterhouse logo. Prior to this year, Yahoo didn’t have any ads on the homepage. I bet they saw a HUGE increase in annual revenues after adding advertisements. There are also a lot of organization changes. The site looks a lot cleaner and put together now. There are color differences for the divided sections. The header logo looks a lot cleaner and sharp.

January 2004
Looks very similar to 2003. I’m sure a lot of advancements were made on the backend and in the subpages, but the homepage looks very similar. They have the latest news displayed on the homepage and they are featuring Yahoo Autos! right in the center.

January 2005
For the first time we see less importance placed on the directory, and more importance placed on their other features. The directory listings on the homepage shrunk in size. It looks like here they are trying to be more of a news portal than a directory.

January 2006
More advertisements on the homepage. But everything else seems to be similar to 2005. Can you notice any major changes?

February 2007
Yahoo made the most changes to their homepage from 2006 to 2007. It looks completely different now. While all the information on the homepage is the same, they overhauled the look of it. You can now login to your mail account right there on the homepage. The made the search bar larger and more prominant. They added a left sidebar for the first time. Take a look at the header changes from 2006 to 2007. All those goofy logos are now gone and all they have is the Yahoo! logo. Rotating news is now featured right there in the front center. Another thing you might notice is ‘where’s the directory?’ in 2006 we saw the directory moved to the very bottom of the homepage, now it is completely gone.

Yahoo was founded as a directory, and today we don’t even see it on the homepage anymore. That’s what happens when websites evolve. Out with the old and in with the new I guess.

I know I didn’t provide as much details descriptions as I could have. I basically wanted you to see for your self how Yahoo has changed over the years. Take a look again at 1996 and then 2007. It’s hard to imagine how it could be so different.

If you know of any other websites that look a lot different from when they started, post a comment and I’d love to take a look.

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I thought it would be fun to point out my top 10 favorite websites to visit. These aren’t necessarily my top 10 most viewed websites (I visit Google all day long, but it’s not one of my favorite places to go). Forgive me if I name a few of my own websites. Sites are not listed in any particular order.

1. Gator Envy - One of my own sites. I spend a lot of time on it. Not because it’s one of my own, but because I am a diehard Gator fan. I can talk with people who share my passion for the Gators and get the latest news.
2. Seinfeld Scripts - I posted this site in my previous entry. It is a great site. I love Seinfeld and find myself referencing the show almost everyday of my life. My buddies and I like to quote parts of the episodes that deal with what we’re talking about. There is hardly a day that goes by where I don’t say “remember that one episode”.
3. ESPN - Can’t live without it. Breaking sports news all day long.
4. Snopes -  I don’t visit Snopes on a regular basis, but when I do I can always find what I’m looking for. It is a great site. Whenever you get stupid chain letters like aluminum cans giving you cancer, you can always go to Snopes to find out if it’s real or not. You can spend hours there.
5. Jaguars Official Site - As much as I love the Gators, I love the Jaguars. I love reading the message boards on the Jags site. I don’t participate as much, but I’m there every day reading. Great resource for everything Jaguars.
6. Digital Point - The best webmaster forum out there. Flooded with new, fresh posts every minute. Thousands of people online at a time. The best free advice out there. If you aren’t a member, then you better sign up.
7. FFToday - I am a big time fantasy football player. This is one of the best fantasy football forums out there. It crashes on gameday sometimes, but overall you can get some good advice. And a lot of the times, the members are funny as hell.
8. You Tube - Who doesn’t love browsing videos on YouTube. I’m on there everyday looking at the dumbest videos ever created. Not to mention I also use them to fuel MVP Flix.
9. Deadspin - I don’t agree with everything they blog about, but a lot of the times it is funny. It’s probably the biggest sports blog on the internet. They post many times a day and are always the first to get something out there.
10. My own blog. I do enjoy posting here everyday, even if I don’t know what to write about. I like having this little journal. It helps me keep track of things and to reach out to other members of our little webmaster community.

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I’ve been sitting here in the wordpress admin panel thinking of a topic to write about today. I hate theses days. The days when you really have nothing to say, but don’t want to let your readers down by not posting. Everyone says if you want to increase traffic and keep traffic, you have to blog consistently.

I’ve been blogging at a rate of 1 post/day for a couple months now. I already take weekends off, so I don’t feel it’s right for me to sit here and not post anything when I have a fan base counting on it. That’s like a rock band just skipping a city on a tour because they don’t know what to sing about. Ok that was a bad analogy, but you get what I’m saying.

This reminds me of a Seinfeld episode, or a series of episodes, where Jerry and George go to NBC because NBC wants to start a pilot for their show. The NBC executives ask George what the show is going to be about and he says “Nothing.” How can you have a show about nothing?

It’s an interesting concept that seemed to work for Seinfeld for 10 seasons. Every week they had a show about ‘nothing’. When I don’t know what to blog about next time, I’m going to apply those same methods. I’ll blog about nothing, but it will turn into something.

I realize that this is probably thr worst blog post I’ve ever had. I really wanted to put some content out here for you to read.

If you get bored, check out Seinfeld Scripts. It’s one of the best sites on the web. They have the complete script to every Seinfeld episode.

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Everyone knows that Yahoo Publisher Network pays more than Google Adsense. If you make the switch, you won’t even get 10% of the number of clicks you were getting, but the payout per click will increase 10-20x. It’s quite impressive. However, there is still one thing that boggles my mind with Yahoo.

With Pimp Myspace in January using Adsense I made $125 for the month. Since making the switch to YPN I’ve made $375, and thats in just under 30 days. Sure my traffic has increased maybe an average of 200 uniques/day, but that doesn’t coe anywhere close to making up for such a huge increase. Yahoo pays more.

I’ve very happy with YPN, except for one thing. The earnings fluctuate way too much. Google was easy. I earned about the same thing everyday. Yahoo on the otherhand is like a schizo. 15 on Friday made me $8.43. 16 clicks on Saturday made me $20.34. What’s up with that? 1 extra click on Saturday increased my earnings by $12.00? I know some ads pay more than others, but that’s just weird.

And it happens to me all the time. Thingsalways have a way of averagine out though. I’ll make $14-15 a day usually, but every once in awhile I’ll get those weird days over $7 or $8 and then like $21 or $22.

I might play with my ad targeting to see if that changes anything

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I’m going to start something new for Friday’s. Every Friday I’m going to post a video, probably from Youtube, that I enjoy. It could be something funny or something awesome like that Cannon Rock from a week ago. So sit back, grab that big gulp you keep on your desk and enjoy the show.

Please silence your cell phone. Thank You.

Chad Vader, Day Shift Manager - Episode I

There are 5 espisodes of Chad Vader, so if you liked it, just search Youtube for the sequels.

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Everyone and their mom has heard of Myspace and if you’re in the web publishing business then you know what Myspace marketing is. It’s basically adding a million friends to one of you 40 Myspace profiles, then spamming messages, comments, and bulletins to all your friends, praying that they click on a link you put inside. It’s not noble, but it can be effective if you do it enough times.

Facebook, however, you may not have heard of (ending a sentence in a preposition? Yikes!). Until recently, Facebook only accepted college students into their network. They required you to have a .edu email address. In the last months to a year, Facebook decided to cash in on the social networking money and open their doors to everyone.

Facebook doesn’t have nearly as many members as Myspace, but in my opinion, their members are of better quality. Quality over quantity, right? Facebooks isn’t flooded with fake profiles built solely for the purpose of spamming.

I am not authorized to write a post on Facebook advertising the myspace way (spam), but I’m not familiar enough with how it works. I used to have a Facebook profile back in the day when it was brand new and I was a junior in college. I deleted it though before I graduated because of rumors that employers were checking interview candidate’s profiles.

Anyways, Facebook offers a different form of advertising than Myspace. On every Facebook profile, you will see what is called a Facebook Flyer. Flyers are small forms of advertising that are targeting to the members school.

If you have a website about the the Florida Gators (like me), you can order flyers to be sent to all the members who list the University of Florida as their school. This has to be 1000% more effective than spamming people on Myspace. Facebook gives you targeted advertising for a fair price.

You must place a minimum order of $50 for Facebook Flyers. But you can split it up between any school you want. $10 for UF, $10 for GA, $10 for LSU, $10 for USC, and $10 for Notre Dame. They make it very easy for you to pick your target and advertise them. For $50 to one school, you get 25,000 Flyers. You can also spread it out of many days. You can do 5,000 Flyers a day for 5 days.

Depending on the size of the school you want to advertise to, 5,000 flyers may last you a day, or it may last you a week. It all depends on how many members are in that school.

I have yet to test this form of advertising for Gator Envy, but I am definitely planning on it once the Fall Semester starts up. If you have used Facebook Flyers before, I would love to hear about your experience and the results. It’s not free like Myspace spamming, but I think $50 to advertise on one of the web’s top 50 websites is a pretty good deal.

For more information on Facebook Flyers, click here.