Category Archives: Grand Effect

Grand Effect Member Corvida Interviewed

I just wanted to write a quick shout-out post to fellow Grand Effect member, Corvida of SheGeeks, as she was recently interviewed on Center Networks.

Corvida is definitely a name to watch in the blogosphere, and that is why we are glad to have her in the Grand Effect network. Her passion is quickly being recognized, and rightly so. Personally, it is always nice to see Grand Effect members continuing to do well. We definitely have a network of stars.

From the interview:

Allen: Is Facebook worth the $15 billion valuation?

Corvida: Hell no! lol Facebook is not with $15 billion. If it were, they wouldn’t have half the problems they have now. If they were, monetization wouldn’t be a problem. They’ve gotten too big for their own good and in the process I feel their value has actually decreased. Facebook was worth a lot more when it started out than it is now based on my usage of Facebook and why people joined it in the first place. What made it special when it first launched, that excitement is long gone, especially if you were apart of Facebook before the hype, like I was.

Check out the full interview for more information on her thoughts regarding the newest trends on the web and don’t forget to check out SheGeeks.

Originally posted on April 28, 2008 @ 12:19 pm

Welcome the New Grand Effect Site

10 Replies

Grand Effect has a new design! There are still many features that need to be rolled out, and content pages definitely need some more tweaking both in the CSS site, and just in imagery and whatnot, but the main skeleton of the site is ready, as well as the features that were prevalent on the original site.

I have also added a combined RSS feed to allow people to subscribe to all of the Grand Effect blogs with one Master RSS subscription link. This is really handy for us as we will be adding a few more members soon. If you want to subscribe to each blog individually, we have also made that easy to do.

I hope you enjoy some of the small details I put into the site. Content related concerns will get tightened up over the coming weeks. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to one programmer, Andrew McCloud, that I will definitely be highlighting in more detail shortly, as he really saved me by converting it from an image into a full xhtml/css template that I was then able to change into a WordPress theme rather easily.

Please feel free to let me know what you think. I know I am no designer, but I really think that it is my best work yet.

Originally posted on May 1, 2008 @ 3:11 am

Business Enemies?

5 Replies

I think of myself as a pretty good guy and most people seem to tolerate me fairly well, but sometimes, no matter what I do, I seem to ruffle other people’s feathers. While, I don’t think this is one of those cases, I do find it interesting that Paul Scrivens, a man that I highly respect and dare I say, envy online, has listed Grand Effect, the network that I co-founded as one of his business related enemies.

I always secretly hope that a competitor to 9rules would stand up. With the new 9rules coming shortly there will be more defined targets for us to keep an eye on. Chawlk goes head-to-head with plenty of other sites and if we don’t do better than the competition we die. Grand Effect is very similar to 9rules and I like to monitor what is going on over there to see what we can steal or do better. That is why you want enemies and although I have no problem with David Peralty or Sarah Perez I am going to put their network on my enemy list. “Enemy” may be too strong of the word, but I hope you can understand where I am going with this.

I haven’t yet figured out if I should be excited, or worried, as Scrivs has always done well when he gets competitive. And the support team he has in 9rules with Mike Rundle (a talent set that Grand Effect could sorely use), and Tyme White (we could use a person like her as well) make Grand Effect look rather small. The flip side though is that Sarah, myself and the rest of the Grand Effect members are getting very excited over the attention we have been receiving from all the wonderful blogs that are taking interest in what we are trying to build.

Much like I thought 9rules original intentions were, we have decided to keep things small, leveraging the power of the group and helping members with things they don’t have time to become experts on, namely advertising and promotion.

I never saw Grand Effect as competition to any other network out there, as none of our membership belongs to a network and they are all self-established brands, but if Scrivs needs to have a business enemy to remain competitive, then I look forward to helping increase that competitive spirit to really see how far he can go, while still attending to the needs of the people around me.

Do we really need business enemies to remain competitive?

Originally posted on April 8, 2008 @ 12:35 am

Grand Effect Grows Again

Mashable Mentions Grand Effect

8 Replies

There are a handful of blogs out there where being mentioned is one of those gold stars you put on your mental calendar and just yesterday, I was able to give myself a gold star with Mashable mentioning the Grand Effect blog network that I am part of.

I almost feel embarrassed though as we have such great members, but the network site is in disarray. I am working on a redesign which should be up sooner rather than later with tons of new content which highlights our great members and the advantage of advertising with us as a collective.

I am no Mike Rundle though, so please be patient as I put it all together, and I hope you will like it. It will be a marked improvement over the current site, and it will have many more features and rate cards for advertising on each member’s site as well as the network as a whole.

I want to give a huge thanks to Mark at Mashable for mentioning us. I am very humbled that we got a nod from such a great site, and I hope the hordes of people stay away until I can get the new site unveiled.

For those that are interested, here is a little snippet from my attempt at a new design:

Originally posted on April 5, 2008 @ 10:54 pm

eXtra For Every Publisher

Tips on Being a Better Blogger