(Updated)
It has to be new, has to be weird, it will take off. I guess that’s the mantra of so many entrepreneurs, and it often works.
It certainly did for Alex Tew, creator of the Million Dollar Homepage – he just wanted to fund his college expenses, but I think he is funded for life. The last 1k pixels were listed on eBay, peaking at $140K, but after fake bids..etc it sold for a “mere” $38K. Rumor says his creativity yielded Alex a job offer, too, not that he needs one.
1000Tags is already being compared to the Million Dollar Homepage on TechCrunch. It may not be that original, but certainly is “cool”. At $25–$100 for shared tags and a lot more for exclusive ones, it could very well reach $1M.
I sense a new “land-grab” rush develop here: it’s easy to boost your traffic by buying a generic tag that describes your blog/site/product and be the only one listed in that category ( at least for a while). Just check out Software. 
We’ve seen something similar when Technorati introduced tagging entire blogs, not just posts.
One would think the initial rush will be for exclusive tags (?), of which only 50 will be sold. I’m not sure how that works though. For example “wiki” takes me to Socialtext directly. Based on the larger font (font size depends one either the number of subscribers or the price the exclusive owner paid) and the fact that it’s a direct link, while others go to a listing format, even if there’s only 1 entry, I would assume it’s an exclusive tag – very smart of Ross to have secured it:-) However, the system still allows me to buy it as a shared tag… go figure (?) (see update 2. below)
Let’s check back in a week.
Update (1/12): Not surprisingly, the first ones to spread the news are bloggers:
- Yay! Free ad for us!
- Tag Cloud Forecast: Partly Greedy
- 1000 Tags: The New Million Dollar Homepage
- after million now is thousand ?
- 1000tags.com … bring tagging to advertising … simple … successful?
Update 2. (1/12): Wow, these guys are fast, less than an hour later they fixed the bug (see wiki example above). That means the tags that bring up a site directly bypassing the list are exclusive ones.
Update 3. (1/13): Steve Rubel is bullish about Tagvertising.
Update 4. (1/14): Milliondollarblogspots, a blog-specific copycat of the Million Dollar Homepage launched. Yawn. Real bloggers know better then this. (hat tip: Paul Kedrosky).
Tags: 1000tags, milliiondollarhomepage, tagging, tags, marketing, advertising, tagvertising, creativity, web 2.0, wiki, SocialText
I hate to say it, but a similar effort, that is a copy (or not so copycat? seems a bit original) is already on the run. The truth is that the concept is a lot better. The guys who did this propably know what a tag is… http://www.forevertags.com
To tell you the truth, I kind of dislike the concept of “1000 only, 1 million only” and so on. It just gives an expiration date to the whole concept, and looks like the guys who do it are only in for the money. Do it guys, but NOT in a way like say… “Private tags”. Wow! tags are dead by default that way! The only traffic this site gains, is by curius who are dazzled by the MDH success, and want to see it happen again.
Anyway, I am in no way affiliated with the forevertags.com website, and honestly, if you think so dont publish/delete this comment.
I don’t belive in censoring comments, so I wouldn’t delete it even if I thought you were affiliated with them and were promoting your site.
I don’t know what makes it a better concept, to me it’s just another one. But here’s a clue: it’s not the site itself, it’s the buzz you can generate. 1000tags managed to get the word out bigtime… a Google or Technorati search on Forevertags returns 0 (zero) hits. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see…
“The guys who did this”… Heh, the domain was registered two days ago and someone with absolutely no relation with the site is advertising it on the blogs he’s seen people talking about 1000tags.
Burn 😛
1000tags – ist Tagvertising das n