Woohoo! It looks like Google has completed its quarterly Pagerank updates.

Pagerank (named after Google’s co-founder Larry Page) is Google’s classification of a site’s relevance. A higher Pagerank means that the site will appear higher up if searches match what’s on your site, which in turns should result in more traffic to the site.

TubeBattle managed to get a Pagerank of 4 (which is pretty good being a new site).
All my other sites have received a Pagerank of 2-3 (mostly 3).
Even wandering.net received a Pagerank of 3.

Yes, we all know sex sells. And more often than not, it just seems like the Internet is used for porn. But it’s never really struck home about how much drawing power sex has until about a week ago…

I started TubeBattle as a new mashup: video sharing (a la YouTube), community-driven content & rating (a la Digg). Even as I write this, TubeBattle is the only site of its kind. I’m sure someone out there is busily copying the idea, but that’s OK because I’ve got developers working to some kick-ass new features ;).

TubeBattle’s growth has been pleasantly surprising, quickly gaining a strong user-base. I’ve introduced new and interesting battles for people to participate in, such as:

• Top rated videos from YouTube, Digg and TubeBattle users
• Viral videos that people are talking about on blogs
• Movie trailers
• Music Videos

TubeBattle has the ability for users to leave feedback, and I kept getting requests to apply the battle format to sexy videos. I was undecided for a long time, unsure whether I wanted TubeBattle to go in this direction…

Going back to the basic tenent of TubeBattle’s philosophies (that it’s a community-driven engine), I created the Sexy Videos battle. And in just under a week, we’ve blown past 1,600 votes for that battle (and surpassed 5,000 votes today, it’s 9th day of existance). The number of votes cast each day has been increasing, and traffic to the site has broken previous records.

So coming back to the “business lessons” learnt here:

• Start with a philosophy for whatever you do (work, website, etc) and let it guide you - don’t change mid-stream.
• If you’re in “business”, then take yourself out of the equation - sell what buyers wants, not what you want them to buy
• Many people use the Internet for many things. But the bulk of it is for sex stuff

There are many personal ironies in the fact that I’m learning about this reality now… one of which is that I work and live in Las Vegas!

So it’s been 3 weeks since TubeBattle went live. The stats have been impressive so far.

• Total # of visitors since opening: 9,267 (3,089 per week or 441 per day)
• Total # of repeat visitors (visited more than 1 time): 845 (9.1%)
• Total # of videos served up: 10,560
• Total # of votes cast: 644

Here’s a snapshot of my Google Analytics Geomap, showing where all the users are coming from:

As part of the ongoing development of the site, my developer has completed most of the visible changes. The site now displays some “activity counters”, such as # of users online currently, # of videos in each battle, # of votes that have been cast (in total as well as for each battle). I’ve noticed a huge up-tick in votes being cast, since the counters went in. I’m also overjoyed by the fact that the “# of users online” has always been in the 3-15 range every time I check the site, so it looks like people are really enjoying the website!

TubeBattle’s opening was a success beyond my wildest hopes!

In its first week, it clock 1,768 unique hits with 5,436 pageviews. Users span the globe, from the Americas (North and South) to Europe to the Middle East to Asia and Australia. I think pretty much everywhere there is Internet

The busiest day occurred on the 6th day of the first week. It clocked 907 hits primarily coming from StumbleUpon.com. StumbleUpon is a system where users recommend web sites for others to check out. This is a great sign of TubeBattle’s ability to attract organic (natural) and viral (word-of-mouth) traffic.

And perhaps the statistics that I’m most proud of. As mentioned above, we had 1,768 unique visitors. Here’s the cool bit… of those, 139 were return visitors. I’m overjoyed that in the span of 7 days, we’ve had 8% of all visitors returning (within days of their first visit!).

I’ve re-engaged the developer who helped me write TubeBattle.
We’re starting work immediately on v1.1 - nothing revolutionary, some bug fixes, some major and minor tweaks to make a better experience.
But planning has already begun for v2.0, which will bring a whole new angle to TubeBattle. THAT will blow people away!

ps: For those who are tracking, I changed TubeBattle’s logo. I’m moving away from blatant Web 2.0 logo styles. I’ll make another post of what my new style is another time (but you’ll be able to see it on TubeBattle right now).

As promised earlier, the make-over for CelebFace has been completed.
Here are some current screenshots:

Ultimately these are superficial changes.
Next up, I’m going to get a developer to do some coding that’ll allow CelebFace to expand to the level I envision. Stay tuned for that!