CarlosX360.com was born on Jun 12th, 2006 – roughly 5 years old. Carlos360.com was born on March 13th, 2008 – roughly 3 years old. Since the inception of CarlosX360, I’ve gotten a lot of backlash from a lot of people, and communities. And since then, I’ve challenged their backlash. I’ve battled negativity with an iron fist – I even went as far as killing one community for the damages they’ve caused me. Hampered and stalled my progress.
That’s okay, well, its not okay, but I can still move forward. I have been writing about video games for close to 9 years. Ten long, hard years. I started in late 2001, when GameCube launched. I was scouring the internet for the right place to earn experience through writing for websites. The very first website that I have ever written for was GameCube Advanced (GCA) – a property that Advanced Media Network (AMN) championed as the flagship website.
Throughout these 10 years, I have jumped from AMN, to small sites, to big sites, and meanwhile I posted on many big forums. I learned what works, and what DOES work. I’ve been through hell and back.
So, now you got the backstory. Satisfied? Okay, now, lets get onto the topic at hand. First, let me talk about trends.
ESPN 360° – ESPN registered ESPN360.com in 2004, they launched the site in 2005 to deliver customers live sports through high-speed internet service providers that have partnered with ESPN. This essentially means that the 360 degrees reberates back to their analogue TV broadcasting. And they still can do this. However, they want to rebrand the service to ESPN3 this april. To learn more, click here.
Yahoo 360° – Designed as a social network for Yahoo fans. They were going for a social network that does almost everything, by reberating content between users – 360 degree rotation. Blogs, Photos, Networking. It failed because it was a sub-domain, rather than a top-level domain. It hurts a little bit more when MySpace, Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter started to take off. To learn more, click here.
Colgate 360° – Designed for freshier, healthier breaths, because 80 percent of bacteria isn’t on your teeth. To learn more, click here.
Norton 360° – Designed and marketed as an “all-in-one” security suite for software-side firewall, phishing protection, and the detection, the removal of malware. Distribution is through downloads, pre-installed as an OEM Software for the company’s partners, and a retail box copy. To learn more, click here.
So, as you can see, the trend has been going on way before Xbox 360 launched. Many different kinds of companies are using “360” for various reasons.
Recently, I’ve posted an article on my forums and submitted it to N4G, it has garnered a little bit of negativity here and there. The purpose of this blog post is to respond to them. I not only encourage constructive criticism, but I also encourage feedback. As I will do WHATEVER is necessary to drive and reberate traffic around my websites.
Ever since my teenage prime, I have dreamt of building and leading a large corporation. And ever since I was just a kid, I’ve always wanted to design, and develop video games. I even have a backcatalogue of concept art from my ideas of games. And since I was a kid, I’ve always wanted to go to a prestigious trade show – my dream was fullfilled in 2005 when I went and helped John Olin put out content on XboxEvolved. I’ve been going for 3 years now, this year’s E32010 would be the fourth. For a long time, I’ve wanted to create communities, through creating websites. That’s 3 dreams fullfilled so far. Granted, my company isn’t large corporation yet, but its a start. The community for the network isn’t there yet, but again, its a start.
From the very beginning, my mission was to find a name that is memorable, easy to remember, easy to type. During the initial Xbox Live re-launch in late 2005, I had a name in mind – CarlosX360 – a merge of an old name with a trend that has been going on for quite a while. At E32006, Shigeru Miyamoto said “Revolution isn’t a very inviting name.” Originally, I intended to use “CarlosRevolution” as my brand. So, after seeing the quote by Miyamoto, I’ve decided “That’s it, that settles it. CarlosX360.com will be taken.” A month later, it was taken by yours truely, and it became what you see right now.
CarlosX360 was created with brand awareness in mind. One of the mistakes with “Carlos X” was that I didn’t know there were hundreds of others with Carlos X attached to them; the domain name was taken, the social media websites already have Carlos X taken. It was a mistake that I have learned to re-create, re-invent, and re-brand myself as a new name. Thus CarlosX360 is born.
These are the rules for success with domains:
Short Name: If you have a short name that is easily memorable from the back of your head. Then you just bought yourself a premium domain name, especially if its a top-level domain. The longer the name, the harder it is for people to remember your domain name.
Hyhens: They are worthless. Meaningless. Imagine you want a name like teamxbox.com but its taken, so you go and buy team-xbox.com with the intention of grabbing the entire Xbox market. You want them to come back to your site, but you find out you made a bad decision later because people will forget to put in the hyphen and go to teamxbox.com instead. This is ten times worse when you have something like my-domain-name.com – unless you want google to bring in most of those visits.
Say it out loud: Does it sound like a name you could remember later? It doesn’t have to be catchy right away, but it grows on you.
Does the name provoke a feedback loop? Your website can’t be controversial unless the name provokes it. I get a lot of reactions from people on COD4, and MW2 no matter if I win or lose. I can hear people saying “Carlos,” “CarlosX360,” or sometimes “X360” – If the player really want to make others hate me. I play a lot on PSN with COD4 and MW2 with CarlosX360.
I have found that word of mouth is the most effective source of marketing, and this is something I want to capture. I want to do whatever it takes to get to prestige, even if I have to be controversial. I’m used to controversy, just ask anyone at E-mpire and they’ll tell you.
Vince Mchanon became famous through his “evil corporate chairman” and everyone “hates” him. But it was only a marketing ploy to fearlessly market his name and his company as a global phenomenon. Superstars benefited through storylines with him. Just ask the revolutionary Stone Cold Steve Austin who revolutionized wrestling through doing something that no other performer has done on national television – the bird. Flipping off his foes, his arch rivals, and well, his boss.
That said, let the comments commence:
What’s with this BS and 360 blogs, fanboys, sites previewing/reviewing PS3 exclusives? Is it a joke? Or they feel insecure.”
First of all, I’m not insecure. Second of all, my website isn’t a one-console website, its a multi-console website. The reason why I bought Carlos360.com and not championing the CarlosX360.com website as a blog is because of people like you. There’s a strategy involved when I use this setup.
Doesn’t matter that this guy wrote positive words, we can’t approve it just cuz it is positive and dismiss it when negative.
Ridiculous.
How is it ridiculous? If you don’t like articles like the one I posted on N4G, then don’t click through them! Simple!
It is ridiculous that 360 guy, 360 blog, 360 sites, preview or review PS3 exclusives like how it has been in past few months. If you think that is okey, than something is wrong with you.
It would surprise you that I’m not currently an Xbox 360 owner. I own, and play PS3 games. The only two websites that have 360 on its name in my network of websites are CarlosX360.com (and its family of domains) and Carlos360.com – each with a purpose. The rest are niche console and game websites.
if he or those blog7sites want to write about PS3 and Wii games, than make those sites multiplatform oriented, do you get it?
CarlosX360 has always been intended to be a network hub for each and every one of the niche websites. It has always been intended to be a corporate home. It was designed with versatility in mind – I can have someone code it to be a webshow website, which I am actually planning to do.
Let me quote myself to make myself perfectly clear:
Don’t be confused by my username. I’m using this username because I found an idea in Xbox 360’s name, and decided to merge my old nickname “Carlos X” with 360, since “360” is in other words “Revolution” but I asked myself “revolution isn’t inviting, how can I alter it?” Then came along Xbox 360. Take two and two and merge them together! So, basicly, I’m merging a old name with a catchy trend.
I go further into detail:
CarlosX360 was designed to be a company providing video game industry news, media, a personal site committed to delivering off-the-wall commentary of the gaming world. It was my dream to build a website for many years. I want to build a community that has that superstar potential – the website isn’t “all about me” its about building branding awareness, and all at the same time; create a community of gamers. I want to build my own gaming network. What you see today will be tommorrow’s greatness.
Furthermore:
My mission is to create brand awareness of CarlosX360, through building a gaming community as the first priority; since gaming is my passion. I want to move to other entertainment venues, but I must tackle down the whole gaming passion in order to move to new venues. One day, CarlosX360 will be the parent company of a centralized gaming network much like Ziff Davis was.
Seriously, I don’t see what’s the problem with having 360 in a brand’s name, much less a website. What if Youtube went and made Youtube360.com, would you give them backlash? Would you give Twitter360.com a backlash if they made one? Oh, I might as well throw in Myspace360.com! Hm?
Finally, I hate blogs, but its what I can work with for now until I can get someone to code a television show website, and a CMS for me.
Editor’s Note: This article was written by CarlosX360 (Carlos Morales) and is a copyright of CarlosX360 Co. Ltd.
