Pair bank on potential of novel website

A new, innovative website with a novel name has the potential to be the next TradeMe, say its developers.
Designed by Hamilton website design company Evos Group Ltd, the website allows users to create a personalised page of web links, like bookmarks or favourites, that can be used on any computer.
Evos director Jamie Moore and his business partner Daniel Karaitiana conceived the idea when Mr Moore's father, Simon Moore, who travels overseas for his company Puku Golf, wanted a platform to easily access his favourite websites.
"People have bookmarked their favourite sites on one computer," Mr Moore said. "If they go to another computer or they are in an internet cafe . . . they don't have those links with them. This (site) will allow them to get those links from anywhere."
Evos Group Ltd began through the Young Enterprise Scheme in 2004 when Mr Moore and Mr Karaitiana were Cambridge High School students.
Mr Moore, 20, is now studying Management at Waikato University and Mr Karaitiana, 21, is a Media Arts student at Wintec. They have two full-time employees and one part-timer.
Their bookmarking website has one major point of difference. Rather than have one specific name, it has many unique names which, by default, lead to the site.
A user accesses it by typing any circle of six letters and/or numbers on the keyboard starting from anywhere on the keyboard, going clockwise or anti-clockwise. They then add '.com'. For example, wedxza.com, t54edf.com, bvftyh.com.
The company has invested $50,000 in the project, having designer Alex Taylor working on it almost exclusively for six months, and buying 580 .com domain names.
Mr Moore said once people got used to using a geometrical shape on the keyboard they were unlikely to forget it.
"The only way it is going to work is by people spreading the word. (It's got) a novelty effect. It's a hook for the tech community to talk about and for people to pass it on."
Mr Moore said the site, launched three weeks ago, had the potential to became highly used and valuable.
Use statistics showed that people already were using it as a homepage.
People could use the site as a starting point every time they went on the web. - "Based on that the potential is massive. It's all about one person finding the bookmarking useful and telling another person."
The site was simple to use, free, and had no advertising.
Mr Moore said highly used sites attracted interest from companies like Google, which had paid millions of dollars for exclusive-search bar rights.
"Seeing lots of people finding it useful would be a buzz," he said. "If that happens then it will make a tonne of money."

By TAMARA PENNIKET - Waikato Times Monday, 30 April 2007