Leaving Las Betas... Get your memorials FREE for one more week.

Well here we are. Another week gone by and we're putting in a whole host of changes.

First, we're going to make some tweaks to the home page so that it looks / aligns a bit better. I think it may also help a bit with SEO but we'll see when we get there... We don't want to be like Facebook redesigning every 6-9 months, but I think the changes are a net positive.

Props out to Nicole Ferraro of InternetEvolution.com who "gagged" when she saw the Facebook "Like" button on the memorials. It didn't register with me until someone posted a memorial for a 10 year old girl. Somehow "Be the first person to LIKE this" just hit me way hard and I nearly lost it. We're changing the button as I type this.

Once the payment system is in and tested we'll be leaving Beta (finally!) and start charging for memorials. So if you have a family member or a loved one that you'd like to share photos and memories with your family, you've got a chance now to create a free commemorative memorial anytime before September 30th.

Last note - today a Utah serviceman was killed in Afghanistan. I'm thinking that it would be good if we didn't charge the military, policemen, firemen, etc. for memorials. I think anyone who has served their country should be honored in every way possible. What do you think?

Until next time...

Two weeks in - How we doin'?

Well it's been an interesting 2 weeks since we launched. Where do I start?

We're still struggling to get the shopping cart customized so that we can accept payments on the site. The software we selected is new, and they're still ironing out the bugs as we go. So much for collecting money out of this thing. The good news is that we can now offer and accept coupons on the site - so let the 100% discounts begin! (or uh... continue...)

We've gone through testing a new invite system that allows us to send HTML emails, and we did quite a bit of testing to make sure they don't arrive in your spam box when they are sent. It also has the ability to put people's photos in the email. That should be coming online this week. Fingers crossed.

We knew at some point we'd have to make a policy decision on handling memorials for pets. Then lo and behold we get our first PET MEMORIAL.  Yes, it's a pet mouse. Yes, it's from Germany. Yes, it's in German. What can I say? We now accept Pet Memorials. Guess somebody needs to update the Terms of Service. (And write a version of it in German.)

We've started running ads across a number of websites. Many are flash ads that I can't display on this blog - and some traffic is finally rolling into the site. But I really don't care for the quality of the hits you get at Adwords. Most people just close the box as soon as it pops up. There must be a better way to get people's interest...

Marketing is never easy when the subject matter is death. The press (who ironically make quite a living telling us "who died today") has really been hit or miss with our product launch. Here's a miss: Nicole Ferraro who covers Web 2.0 sites at InternetEvolution.com doesn't really care for our "social deathworking" moniker - or the subject matter in general. She found a place selling cremation jewelry - which even I admit is a bit creepy. I mean, even I draw the line at selling you a coffee mug with Uncle Joe's picture on it while his funeral is going on. It's a tightrope we walk when we're dealing with a sensitive subject, and there's very little room for humor. But every day I learn there's a little bit of room for humor, when I told one of our programmers about her negative take on things, his first response was "She's really cute."  Programmers...  ;-)

Check out her cuteness, her tirade against the ghouls of the internet (and my response) here.

That's it for this week. Tune in next week for more fun from Ghoul Central, where another press release is sure to drive the media into a somnabulistic typing frenzy. Or not...