HostingCon Quotables
“It's sexy, fun, exciting...“
By the numbers
Here's a few fun facts on HostingCon 2008.
| 2 |
| Number of Web hosting providers exhibiting this year headquartered in Plano, TX: SoftLayer (Booth 423) & Layered Tech (Booth 301) |
| 10 |
| Terabytes/day in data transmission takes place in Chicago. |
| 1500 |
| Expected attendees, this year at HostingCon 2008. |
| 4321 |
| Distance, in miles, to Chicago from intergenia (Booth 115)
headquarters in Germany. That's 6897 km/3773 nautical miles in case you're wondering. |
| 12,000 |
| Cost, in USD, of the Harley being given away by Pingzine et al. |
| 20,000 |
| The net square feet of booth space used by HostingCon. |
| 25,000 |
| Number of different custom server configurations installed by Layered Technologies. |
| 65,000 |
| Number of websites hosted by HostMySite.com (Booth 411) |
| 303,000 |
| Number of Google Results for "HostingCon" (07-25-08) |
| 15,000,000 |
| Number of shares involved in the IPO of managed Web hosting company, Rackspace. |
| 22,500,000,000 |
| Operating profit, 22.5 billion USD, for Microsoft in FY08, up 21 percent. |
The Social Animals
HostingCon 2008. Chitown was hot , super sticky and full of exciting, riveting and spirited discussions on hosting - even hosting related components.
The Marketing Round Table on Monday morning showed that even the hosters want to jump in to social media big time. Why not..."it's sexy, hot and exciting," according to Brett Tabke, moderator of the session on Monday morning.
Tabke noted that even in conferences featuring the search engine thought leaders (MSN, Yahoo, Google, Ask.com), that social media segments were far better attended because of the marketing interest at the moment.
Hartland Ross, eBridge President, cautioned hosting companies about the time component required to achieve ROI, noting that it entails constant effort on a regular basis. Ben Fisher, VP of TechPad Agency, took a similar stance but advocated use of word of mouth among customers that were pleased with your product or service offering as a cost-effective basis to pursue this strategy. That makes sense because your raving fans will tell their friends on blogs or forums or whatever social media they choose.
Amy Armitage, Business Development Director of Lunar Pages , said that hosts should try contests on blogs or forums. Her company has enjoyed success on similar contests, noting that if downloadable components are included it could spell some traffic bonanza.
The mere fact that this was one of the better attended sessions, shows that the marketing task is still one of the most difficult on the Web host's plate. Tabke showed that keyword wise that Web hosting and hosting services were among the toughest sectors to compete in after Legal, Pharma, Gambling and B2B Marketing.
Lack of Green
This year's HostingCon docket was a bit skimpy on the Green Hosting trend. Well, actually there were no items on the syllabus at all. That's a shame because it's evident that the Web hosts don't have all the answers on this issue. In fact, many of us have no real answers.
So if Tech giants such as IBM, Intel, and National Semiconductor are making leaps in solar energy and other hosting companies are making data centers more energy efficient as I write, isn't it important to publicize these victories and help Web hosts understand the importance of these efforts. Okay, virtualization is a green solution more or less, so indirectly there's some coverage but an event of this size and scope, must include Green Hosting or Green IT.
If you have some time to visit a book store, this is a quick, fun read: Wake Up and Smell the Planet: The Non-Pompous, Non-Preachy Grist Guide to Greening Your Day. Actually, this could somehow work into a marketing move from dedicated hosting provider, The Planet...hmmm.
You can learn more from the following websites, free of charge, and paper:
www.greenyour.comwww.treehugger.com
www.freecycle.org
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