Freestyle Blogs

It was just a matter of time, wasn’t it? To be honest though, I had this idea way before myspace was around, or at least popular. I had mentioned to WMDave that we needed a site that basically would build itself.  Sort of how our La’ Messageboard worked. We build it once and it continues to build from then on with little to no assistance from us.
We played around with the idea for a bit. Created pages with photo, music and data up-load capabilities.  But no matter what, it was difficult to navigate and confusing.
We finally canned the idea for a bit, when suddenly, I was introduced to a site called “myspace”.

This site, in my opinion at the time was no more than a dating site, and as I played around and explored it, I didn’t want my wife catching me and getting the wrong idea.  Anyway, the more I used it, the more I thought, what a great product. I showed it to WMDave and told him, “This Is What We Need”.

This all happened around 2004 and when I saw the speed and popularity that myspace experienced, it was, damn! Once again, another incredible idea that someone else beat me to. So on with our business and life we went.

Many know I am a huge business magazine subscriber, and seeing sites like myspace and facebook take on the front covers, bragging about the millions they made or sold for, I was sick. But eventhough someone beat us to it, we did have on our side a market that we can cater to. Our very own Freestyle market. We had already covered all basis in the market with La’ Radio Live, FreestyleBlast, FreestyleBlogs, our cologne etc… Well what if we created a social site that catered to the Freestyle Market?
Okay, we got the idea, but how do we build it?

We did our research and outsourced a little help, but it was mainly WMDave, who got us what we needed. It was a bit pricey, very time consuming and extremely frustrating. But guess what?

On September 1st 2008 we launched FreestyleFriends.com and within just a couple of hours, we had over 200 registered members. The excitement was incredible. We watched as the numbers began growing, keeping a close eye out for the bugs, complaints and more importantly, the hackers who like to try and enter sites while they are first being launched.

We got a couple of calls and emails about minor things that we needed to address on the site.  One was the actual separation of the Fans and Industry databases. This was tricky because the site was up and running and we can see people registering while we were still doing small changes.

Suddenly, I hear an Oh oh, come from WMDave. “What happened” I asked. “I think I deleted the entire file”. I laughed, because he has cried that wolf before with some of our other projects. “No I’m serious this time”. He was!

I stayed cool, and thought this as more of a blessing, because I rather ask 200 people to re-register while they still hadn’t even built their pages, than ask 20,000. So I told him, shut us down and get to work. For those who think, “I” never sleep… I do sleep, just very little, approximately 4 hours a night.  Now WMDave? He doesn’t sleep. I think he gets most of his sleep while drive… A school bus! Lol.  Just kiddin, don’t wanna get him in trouble.

I tell people all the time, shut down early and try and be in bed before midnight, then get up early.  That’s my personal key to functioning the way I do.

So we fixed one of the problems and quickly re-launched the site. People were confussed. I decided to just deal with them as they come, instead of trying to explain to everyone what happened and what they need to do.  It was simple, re-register and re-build your page and re-request all your friends again. 

The site is running on a more frequest back-up system now, being backed up multiple times a day, instead of just once a week. You see, that’s where running sites like this become tricky and tedious.

So we are back up and running, and we still have a ton of work to do. We did our best to keep the navigating of FreestyleFriends.com as close to myspace as possible, only because we feel it would be a bit more familiar and easier to get started for those myspace loyalist.

I’m sure as you log on and begin to use the site, you will find many areas that need either improvement or even change. Believe me, if you spotted it, so did we and it is on the list of over 100 improvements already logged in out FF To Do List.  But, please, feel free to let us know anyway. Just send your ideas and suggestions to WMDave@La-Entertainment.com (he’s gonna kill me for that)

When you get a chance, please log and and register at www.FreestyleFriends.com it’s fast, free and fun. Then pass it along to your friends and family.

I’ll see you there!