As you might know, Upcoming.org, an online social event calendar, was recently purchased by Yahoo. Blogger.com, starting off as a website that provided people with free blog accounts, was acquired by Google quite some time ago. And Friendster.com, although it has yet to be acquired by any big-name company, already has more than 20 million users since starting three years ago.

Why are these simple online websites so popular?

And more importantly, what can you, as an online marketer, learn from this?

Well let's look at these websites more closely.

Blogger.com - This is a website which allows people to set up their own personal blogs where they can ramble and post messages, and share these entries with their friends.

Friendster.com - This website allows you to link up with your friends, make new friends, and find out that John, your friend's friend, is actually your sister's friend's friend. Neat!

Upcoming.org - This is a simple online social events calendar, allowing you to tell the world, and more importantly your friends, what events are upcoming in your life, be it a wedding, a birthday, or even a talk show that you are going for!

The concepts behind these websites are simple enough. But what really drives them to success?

The answer is simple. People. It is people driving these website, and big companies LOVE people.

People are the most important things on the internet. Or rather, people are the internet. Every website, without its people appeal, without people coming to it and using it, is useless.

So the million-dollar question: Armed with this knowledge, what the heck can you do about it?

The first thing I would tell you

The second thing: Change the whole outlook of your website from your new perspective. Change EVERYTHING you do about your business. Focus on your visitors. What can you give them that they want? Or rather, what do they want most when they come to you? Give that to them. No strings attached.

And the final thing: We are all selfish people. As I type this article, I am thinking about how I can profit or gain from it. So here's this little nugget of gold for you. Look around you. What are people doing? What do people want or what are people doing offline that they can do online but are not doing? Find out what that is, and you'll have a killer idea. You can be the next Friendster.

Just now I told you that as I type this article, I am thinking about how I can profit or gain from it. Well here's how I can, and how you can. Find that killer idea, and employ my services to build up your new killer business.

Until then, good luck!

Daniel Loh is a freelance writer and programmer. He is also an internet marketer who has been in the business since the turn of the 21st century. If you’ve got a killer (or not so killer) idea you want to bring to life, here’s how: http://www.ebooks-lab.com

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