Mango Oranges

Editor’s note: Jonathan Burdon is the owner of several web hosting related sites including but not limited to: AlreadyHosting, MangoOrange, 110mb, and WebHostingServices. This article is intended to provide factual information but may also contain some personal opinions and thoughts of Mr. Burdon.

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Hi readers, I am excited to be blogging with Christmas only 3 days away! This year has flown by and has brought with it many exciting changes in the hosting world. Today I want to discuss three web hosting headlines that took place in and discuss how each were game changing.

Headline #1: Endurance Group Acquires Bluehost
This was a huge headline that may have slipped under the radar for many; however, the story is big for many reasons. The endurance group is the owner of several large web hosting brands, including but most definitely not limited to: iPage, FatCow, Justhost, Hostmonster, FastDomain, iPower, and the list goes on-and-on. This company over the last few years have operated with one mindset… BUY out the competition!

The cool part about the Bluehost acquisition is that it pushed the Endurance group into the lead for hosting the most websites on the web… It is quite an accomplishment to say you are literally the biggest web hosting provider on the web. GoDaddy still remains the registrar with the most domains hosted; however, Endurance has mastered the hosting side of things. I have reviewed many web hosting companies in my day and I am very impressed by Endurance Brands, I am very shocked that they can maintain quality support with such fast growth… But they have done just that, so Endurance I applaud you!

With that being said, I am also a fan of competition. I believe that competition makes individuals and corporations work harder to improve the overall experience for the user (which is a good thing), so I would hate to see Endurance acquire many other large companies… Sure that may be a bit selfish of me, but I think having a HostGator out there to compete separately against EG cannot be a bad thing.

Overall, this was big news for the hosting world! I have several friends over at EG so I congratulate you guys on this big achievement!

Headline #2: Continuing Towards a World of Cloud!
The trend didn’t necessarily start this year but it definitely kicked into full gear over the past 12 months! Users are finding the cloud to be a much more flexible, fast, and reliable solution to host their websites and startups. Major companies like Apple are even allows their client base to back up important data like documents and phone numbers to the cloud.

Sure, compared to shared hosting and dedicated hosting the cloud is still just infant; however, mark it down that Jonathan Burdon predicts that in 5-10 years most every company will be making a shift to the wonderful world of the cloud! Or wait… Will the cloud be old news in 5-10 years? Who knows.. Don’t you just love how technology gets better with every second!

Headline #3: Massive move towards getting web hosting affiliates to follow FTC guidelines.
As one of the larger web hosting affiliates on the web this headline really intrigues me and quite frankly I think is a good thing. I will be the first to admit, before the FTC started cracking down really didn’t have any disclosures on it that said it received commission. I really wasn’t trying to deceive anyone, I honestly guess I didn’t see any harm in earning a commission by providing users with useful information as long as the user was not put out in any way.

With that being said, after a major crack down on affiliate sites in other industries, major web hosting providers took matters into their own hands. After discussing legalities with the FTC these web hosting companies came up with standard language and disclosures that should be listed throughout affiliate sites like mine (AlreadyHosting), the disclosures would tell readers that the site does receive commission for referrals and are independent of the hosting company itself.

When I was told that these notices needed to be added to my site, I actually had no problem with it… To me the more a user is informed the better decision they can make. My sites now have the disclosures and I didn’t see any drop in sales as a result of adding the extra language. I really feel good about this push for added disclosure, too many people have a misunderstanding and misconception of what affiliates do thus resulting in a negative view by many; however, reality is affiliate marketer are essentially the driving force of the entire online economy! Added disclosure is a win/win for users and the hosting company, so I give major shout outs to the hosting providers who led the charge!

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Personal note from Jonathan Burdon: I hope you enjoyed this article discussing three news stories relating to the hosting industry! Some of these stories may have slipped under the radar, but I think they were all game changing and ultimately shifted the direction of the hosting industry in some way. I am excited to see what has in store!

 

 

written by mangoorange \\ tags: Jonathan Burdon, Web Hosting