Foolproof, Cutting-Edge Web Site Marketing Techniques (From 1995)

Are you whining that no one is reading your blog (even though you're just blogging for yourself)? Got a Web site you want to promote? Here's how we did it 11 years ago (it worked then, it should work now, right?):

Waaaaay back in the infancy of the Web, there was a USENET newsgroup that was specifically for announcing new Web sites: comp.infosystems.www.announce

If you had a new Web site, you would post a description and URL, and people would check it out.

Yes, the Web was still new enough back in the day that we needed to (and could) do this.

It's 11 years to the day that I posted my announcement -- here it is from my archives:

From: joelogon@minipax.phantom.com (Joe Logon)
Date: 13 Jun 1995 23:13:52 GMT
Organization: Recording Angel

"I like you as a friend." -- "I don't want to risk our friendship." -- "I don't look at you *that way*."

Sound familiar? Then perhaps you should look at "Joelogon's Foolproof Guide to Making Any Woman Your Platonic Friend." Explore with me as we try to answer the eternal questions:
*Do women realize what utter devastation they can cause to the male pysche by uttering just these words: "I just want to be friends."?
*If they do know this, do they enjoy it (as it seems they must)
*Includes: "Care and Feeding for Your New Platonic Friend," "Do's and Don'ts of Cultivating and Maintaining a Platonic Friendship with a Woman You Would Otherwise Want To Have a Relationship With and Quite Possibly Marry"... AND MUCH, MUCH MORE!!

Joelogon's Foolproof Guide to Making Any Woman Your Platonic Friend
<URL:http://www.phantom.com/~joelogon/platonic.html>

--
     | Joe Loong | joelogon@phantom.com |
 ### | http://www.phantom.com/~joelogon
-0n0-| "...the Recording Angel, making occasional
 \-/ | adjustments in the direction of the
     | interrogation..."--William Gibson
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Don't see your post yet? Read
<URL:http://www.halcyon.com/grant/charter.html>

Now, it's not like I have the anniversary memorized or anything. I was just feeling a little nostalgic (I'm getting some thoughts down for a future entry about death), so I was rooting around some of my old text files, and lo and behold -- 11 years to the day.

I also note that my current .sig file is pretty close to what it was then.

Anyway, you might be saying, "This can't possibly be true." To that, I would say: Check it out in Google Groups... PWNED, BITCHEZ!!11!!ONE!1!

The Platonic Friends site is still around (http://www.joelogon.com/platonic/); I keep making noise about turning it into a blog (it's still getting a few hundred hits a day, and I haven't touched it in any substantive way in about 4 years), but I'm ambivalent. This is because:

1. It's so been done


2. I am lazy


3. I don't really feel like being the Patron Saint of Pathetic Losers Who Think They're Sensitive Guys But Are Actually Just Chickenshit (again)