Plank.ly logo

What Formspring.Me did for .ME, Plank.ly is still trying to do for .LY. Will it make it? The guys behind the project are confident they will.

So far, like Formspring.Me they are doing well, even without plankly.com, which apparently was squoted earlier this year.

At the moment they claim to solve the following pains:

* Learn more about your friends, family, and co-workers
* Follow, ask questions, and get answers
* Create a profile, create connections

Surely not much, considering there is a good bunch of other sites that can do this.

Card.ly logo

Hot news from Card.ly. This one of the most successful .ly start-up so far seems to be acquired or taken over by BusinessCard2.com.

Below goes their today’s announcement:

Dear card.ly User,

Card.ly is now part of BusinessCard2.com!

Over the months to come, we plan to integrate card.ly into BusinessCard2. The result will be the largest and most capable network of web-enabled business cards on the planet. Before any changes occur, we wanted to alert you to the integration plan.

90-day plan:
1. Your card.ly profile will resolve to your current domain. For example, your card.ly address card.ly/name will remain as is during this transition.

2. By October 1, 2010 you will be automatically supplied with a BusinessCard2. In most cases your card.ly name will also be found at name.businesscard2.com.

3. Your card.ly login credentials and password will remain the same at card.ly during the transition.

4. Your BusinessCard2 user name will be your email address. For security purposes you will need to create a new password with BusinessCard2.

5. The integration of card.ly to BusinessCard2 will conclude November, 2010.

Frequently asked questions:
Q: Why are card.ly and BusinessCard2 joining forces?
A: Both services have a vision for a business card for the internet. Bringing card.ly and BusinessCard2 together will make for a stronger offering and better product.

Q: Will my information be safe and secure?
A: Yes. We are committed to protecting your information and respecting your privacy.

Q: How do you plan to communicate changes to my account?
A: Before changes are made, we will notify you by email.

Q: Where can I find out more about BusinessCard2?

A: You can learn more here: http://businesscard2.com/learn-more

Q: What costs are involved?

A: Businesscard2 is free, so your account will remain free. If you pay for your account at card.ly, you will no longer be charged (note: similar paid features may not be available at BusinessCard2).

What you can expect:
During this transition period, your card.ly account will be unaffected. In November 2010 your card.ly account will become a BusinessCard2. Not all design elements of card.ly will be immediately available in BusinessCard2, but we are soliciting your ideas and suggestion for popular features you’d like to also see available in BusinessCard2.

BusinessCard2 advantages:

- Improved search engine optimization
- Card sharing on websites
- More organic traffic
- Free storage of more than 40 types of files
- Fully YouTube-enabled
- Available in both HTML and Flash
- Works on iPhone and iPad browsers
- And much, much more!

We value your ideas and feedback. Please submit questions and ideas to us at http://businesscard2.com/feedback.

Sincerely,

The BusinessCard2 Team

Lief Larson – http://lieflarson.businesscard2.com

Tanner Thompson – http://tanner.businesscard2.com

Kurt Menne – http://kurt.businesscard2.com

Jereme Allen – http://jereme.businesscard2.com

And the second mailing with press-release:

Workface buys Card.ly
businesscard2 | September 1, 2010 at 1:14 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/peHBR-2p

First covered by TechCrunch this morning, it’s official that Workface Inc. has acquired Card.ly.

Card.ly is now part of BusinessCard2. Over the months to come, we plan to integrate Card.ly into BusinessCard2. The result will be the largest network of web-enabled business cards on the planet. Before any changes occur, we wanted to alert you to the integration plan.

90-day plan for current card.ly users:

1. Card.ly profiles will resolve to their current domains. For example, your Cardl.y address http://cardly.com/name will remain during this transition.
2. By October 1, 2010 all Card.ly users will be automatically supplied with a BusinessCard2. In most cases, your URL name will be found at http://name.businesscard2.com.
3. Your Card.ly login credentials and password will remain the same during the transition.
4. Your BusinessCard2 user name will be your email address. For security purposes you will need to create a new password.
5. The integration of card.ly to BusinessCard2 will conclude November, 2010.

Frequently asked questions:
Q: Why are Card.ly and BusinessCard2 joining forces?
A: Both services have a vision for a business card for the internet. Bringing Card.ly and BusinessCard2 will make for a stronger offering.

Q: Will my information be safe and secure?
A: Yes. We are committed to protecting your information.

Q: How do you plan to communicate changes to my account?
A: Before changes are made, we will notify you by email.

What you can expect:
During this transition period, your Card.ly account will be unaffected. As of November 2010 your Card.ly account will become a BusinessCard2. Not all design elements of Card.ly will be immediately available in BusinessCard2, but we are soliciting your ideas and suggestion for popular features you’d like to also see available in BusinessCard2.

BusinessCard2 advantages:

* Improved search engine optimization and directory services
* Ability to share your business card on select websites and social media
* Upload and store more than 60 file types
* Fully YouTube-enabled
* Available in both HTML and Flash
* Works on iPhone and iPad browsers
* And much, much more!

We value your ideas and feedback. Please submit questions and ideas to us at http://businesscard2.com/feedback.

Thank you,
The BusinessCard2 Team
PRESS RELEASE:

Workface buys card.ly

MINNEAPOLIS (September 1, 2010) –Workface Inc. completed its purchase of card.ly from Massachusetts based Harkness labs. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition will help Minneapolis-based Workface bring its technology to a larger user base.

Card.ly was launched in 2009 by serial entrepreneur Dan Blake, who also created the wildly popular video chat service, Tinychat. “Card.ly is a great service and it has tens of thousands of incredible users,” said Blake. “With the success of Tinychat we haven’t put more work into card.ly, but I thought it was important to find a good home for the service because I’m fully behind the need for an Internet business card.”

In 2007 Workface released BusinessCard2®, a rich interactive business card for the Internet. The company has been operating BusinessCard2 as an ongoing concern ever since. “Even in this challenging economy, we have been blessed to find opportunity and growth with BusinessCard2,” said Larson. “Our mission is to digitally interface business people with customers in a way that preserves the human condition and card.ly allows us to further that mission.”

At this time card.ly users will be unaffected, but Workface plans to integrate card.ly into BusinessCard2 in the months to come. “We’re very excited to bring these two services and visionary users together into a single, larger offering,” said Larson. “The result will be the leading network of interactive, web-enabled business cards on the Internet today.”

###

About Workface Inc.
Workface Inc. was founded in 2006 with the vision of humanizing the Internet and powering localized and relevant 1:1 real-time engagement. The company’s Workface® platform is customer engagement software that enables businesses to empower their sales and service force to digitally engage directly with customers on their corporate and third-party websites, search engines and mobile, in real-time. More information: http://workfaceinc.com.

About BusinessCard2
BusinessCard2 is a self-marketing tool designed to empower business people to create, promote, and broadcast their unique persona throughout the Internet. It is an open business tool that features improved identity-level search engine optimization, the ability to share business cards on select websites and social media, uploading of more than forty different file types, and engagement through messaging and live chat. More information: http://card2.com.

Paper.li missed paperly.com so they decided to go with paper.li and paperli.com. And yet, paper.ly works just fine too:

Paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter into an easy to read newspaper-style format. Newspapers can be created for any Twitter user, list or #tag.

This is a great way to stay on top of all that is shared by the people you follow – even if you are not connected 24/7!

Nevertheless, as our recent research argues, .com in such cases is a minimal asset as it does not provide any significant traffic. People will google it and find the site they need in just 10 seconds.

Push.ly Logo

Push.ly, is a free mobile service, which allows its users to track mentionings of their nicknames on Twitter and then delievers the findings to the mobile phone.

One can follow up to 30 accounts in real-time. Push.ly uses Notifo to deliver push notifications to mobile devices.

Present.ly home page {click on the image to zoom in}

Present.ly is a microblogging platform that keeps your company connected in real-time. Increase yourteam’s productivity by posting updates, sharing files, exchanging ideas, and more.

It makes use of both domain names .com and .ly, so the brand focus is clear.ly on .ly.

The look and the sound of a jing.ly address is what very important to us.

For the sake of argument let us analyse traffic stats of four well-developed .ly projects. All of them forward their *ly.com’s to shorter versions of *.ly names (bitly.com->bit.ly, chumly.com->chum.ly, graphicly.com->graphic.ly, pagely.com->page.ly).

bitly.com vs bit.ly

chumly.com vs chum.ly

graphicly.com vs graphic.ly

pagely.com vs page.ly

As you see, .com has zero traffic these days. Well, not true. Of course if we take a reverse sample, when *.ly is forwarded to *ly.com (as in the case of weeb.ly), the lead domain name will have all the traffic. It is all about the marketing in the end of the day.

weebly.com vs weeb.ly

However, it is the shortnest and jingliness of catchy .ly domain names that form their core value.

Now Turkish Airlines came up with “Globally Yours” theme:

{click on the image to zoom in}

This big posted was spotted in the most crowded Zagreb’s street this summer:

{click on the image to zoom in}

[1] http://sincere.ly/yours/!Bd$6x
[2] http://sincere.ly/yours/!Bd$1r
[3] http://sincere.ly/yours/!Bd$1L

Weebly logo

What can you do with Weeb.ly?

• Create a free website & blog
• Easy drag and drop interface
• No technical skills required
• Dozens of professional designs
• Free domain hosting

Sincere.ly logo

Ever wondered what would be the shortest and most elegant way to say “sincerely yours” or “yours sincerely”?

Of course it is sincere.ly with two extensions:

• sincere.ly/yours

• yours.sincere.ly

Certainly allowing for free accounts and many handy features for bloggers and social media fans.

Other than that, all good “sincere” domains are taken and widely used as well. Just have  a look on few freshly googled examples:

Sources:

• http://www.sincerely-yours.co.uk/
• http://www.sincerelyyours.com.au/
• http://www.sincerelyyoursinc.com/
• http://www.yourssincerely.co.uk/
• http://www.yours-sincerely.net/

Chum.ly screen shot {click on the image to zoom in}

Let us introduce you to the new social media network Chum.ly. With a jingly “Be a Social Media Genius” they have paved a good way into the digital world indeed.

The key features include:

• Manage your social media in one place.
• Update blogs from the web, email or mobile.
• Send long posts with video, audio, images & docs.

Of course chumly.com is forwarding to chum.ly.