The I.B.M. Web Portal
A 2008 In Review
by MIKE DURANT

It is that time of the year when we take a look at the past twelve months and dream about the future.  There have been a great many really 'magical' things on the internet in 2008.  First and foremost, the I.B.M Web Portal site, where you are reading this right now. It came together and has grown into something really special. There are a lot of people that you can thank when you happen to run into them.  Kirk DeWeese and his Electronic Wizards at Micro.com did a great job of getting all the behind the scenes heavy lifting done to put this together and kept it working. Great job guys! (read more)

Next, the unstoppable Mel Kientz has been working hard to make sure that you had great content to read. Does this guy ever sleep?  Over seven hundred content pages and close to a thousand spiffy graphics. You can not imagine the extreme efforts required to collect all the content that you have been enjoying.  My hat goes off to you Mel. 

And, of course, we have to thank our dedicated I.B.M. Board of Directors. They were willing to take that giant leap-of-faith to set this whole thing up. But the biggest thanks goes you, our I.B.M. members and those of you that clicked on www.magician.org .  If you had not taken the time to drop by from time to time just to see what was going on in the world of magic, this place would have turned out to be just another static web site, patting an organization on the head.

So, here are some interesting facts. Back in 2006 with just a static web site, magician.org was pulling in less than two million page views that generated about eight million internet hits. In 2007, that increased to over two million page views generating eight and a half million hits. The site went Portal in 2008. In looking at this past year, the stats grew to just under five million page views generating over fifteen million hits. The unique visitor stats for the past year measures 171,897 generating 320,703 in number of visits.

When I Googled "Magician" while writing this article, the site placed second behind Wikipedia. All of this without purchasing a single ad-word.

If content is the backbone of this site, we should also salute the contributing writers.  They can be found by clicking here.

So, with all that gushing out of the way, lets look at a couple of the other Internet high points in 2008.

We had an awesome combined IBM and SAM convention.  If you couldn't make it ... or if you want to relive some of the great time, you can find lots of great stories and pictures from the convention on the Portal.  Moving a bit farther from home, we can see some great successes elsewhere on the Net.  Take a look at the sites like Fantasma Magic, Elusionists, Reel Magic or Genii Magazine.  These guys have steadily grown their Internet presence. 

Each of these sites had something special to offer.  On top of their full service store site, Fantasma had their wonderful and affordable mini downloads.  Ellusionists had a look and feel all their own and was one of the first sites to offer 'on-line' content.  Reel Magic is the first 'video magazine' and Genii continues their very popular forums... probably the most active forums for magic and magicians.  There are, of course, other sites that had some great content.  Check some of the older articles on the portal as well as back issues of the Linking Ring.  Many of those sites are still alive and doing well.    

Unfortunately, not everyone was successful.  Some sites failed for obvious reasons.  For others, the reasons were not so clear.  Take the Lecture Network for example.  This was an amazing effort to make the best lectures that the magic community had to offer available to anyone on the net.  Perhaps they just picked a bad time to start.  Maybe the magic community was not ready.  It is hard to say.  But for what ever reason, it seems that there just was not enough support and the Lecture Network had to close their doors.  But even in their failure, they were worried about their loyal customers and they are putting together an archive of the great material that they had collected.  That really shows how committed and dedicated they were to the magic community ... rather than making a 'fast buck'.  I am sorry to see them go, but perhaps their example will inspire someone to try something similar in the future.  It was a spectacular success from the stand point of what we, the members, got.

And, since the New Year is here, lets talk about something that we are bringing back after a short lapse.  For a number of disparate reasons, The Ring Website Contest was not held last year.  But now we are back and ready to get that going again.  The information that you need should be available on the "Contest Central" page, hopefully just after the first of the year.  You can find a link to the Contests page just below the Cups and Balls icon in the "Members" area (just click the 'Members" link button near the top of any page). Happy New Year to all ~ Mike D.