Monthly Archive for March, 2009

PEER 1 Customer LANDFLIP Experiences Explosive Growth

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 | by Rajan Sodhi |

Continuing to highlight fast-growing customers as part of our recently launched “Million Hits” campaign, we would like to introduce you to LANDFLIP, who has experienced significant growth since joining PEER 1 in October 2007. PEER 1 provides LANDFLIP, a top land real estate online listings site, the scalable managed hosting solution needed for its intense online growth.

Founder, Ryan Folk, recently told us that, “The speed of the network is phenomenal, and the PEER 1 infrastructure allows access to LANDFLIP with extreme speeds from anywhere.”

In LANDFLIP’s first year with PEER 1, they experienced a 460 percent growth and now see more than 350,000 unique visitors each month! The company continues to grow, despite today’s economy, as people are looking for more tangible assets and land is an advantageous option.

A big congrats to the folks at LANDFLIP on their success and growth. For more information, please visit our Resource Center and view the LANDFLIP case study: http://www.peer1.com/resources/questions/145/LANDFLIP

Remember, if you’ve experienced, or are experiencing, sudden online growth, we want to hear about it! Tell us about your experience and we’ll share your story here.

PEER 1 Net Promoter Score Increases by 76 Percent

Thursday, March 26th, 2009 | by Rajan Sodhi |

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Thank you PEER 1 customers for showing us the love. In our most recent Customer Pulse Study, you gave our Managed Hosting services a Net Promoter Score of 30, a 76 percent increase over last year. To put this score in perspective, according to Satmetrix 2009 Net Promoter Industry Reports, among Internet service providers only 3 of the 9 providers received positive scores, with AT&T topping the list at just 11. Adobe led consumer software with a high score of 46, Verizon Wireless led cellular providers at 40, and Apple led computer hardware at an incredible 77.

So, what is a Net Promoter Score (also called Net Referral Score)? It is based on the idea that every company’s customers can be divided into three categories – Promoters, Passives, and Detractors – by asking one question:

How likely is it that you would you recommend PEER 1 to a friend or colleague?

Customers respond on a 10-point rating scale and are categorized as follows:

Promoters (score 9-10) are loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and refer others, fueling growth.
Passives (score 7-8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who are vulnerable to competitive offerings.
Detractors (score 0-6) are unhappy customers who can damage your brand and impede growth through negative word-of-mouth.

To calculate our Net Referral Score, the study takes the percentage of customers who are Promoters and subtracts the percentage who are Detractors. This resulted in a score of 30 for PEER 1. A strong customer focus is very important to us. We take all your feedback to heart to further improve our communications, product offerings and support. Thanks to all of you who participated in this year’s study and we won’t stop trying to win you over. That’s a promise.

See official release

ServerBeach Hosts Record Auction for Superman Comic

Monday, March 23rd, 2009 | by Rajan Sodhi |

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We are excited to tell you about some great news regarding one of our customers, ComicConnect – the online marketplace for comic buyers and sellers. This fantastic ServerBeach customer of nearly three years recently held an online auction, resulting in the record-breaking comic book bid of $317,200!! The $317,200 comic is the first-ever Superman comic, “Action Comics #1”, and is considered to be one of the ten best-condition copies in existence.

There is an estimated 100 copies of “Action Comics #1” left, but most are in poor condition. The original owner of “Action Comics #1” bought the comic at a second-hand shop for 35 cents in 1951. He was nine years old at the time, and his dad thought that spending 35 cents for a comic that originally cost 10 cents was down-right silly, and a poor use of his son’s spending money!

Throughout the auction, ComicConnect experienced incredibly high traffic rates. ServerBeach helped ComicConnect prepare for the auction by upgrading its service, including installing an enterprise-grade server that could process the high activity levels. ServerBeach was very proud to support this effort and was able to confidently handle these extraordinary traffic volumes without any issues.

ComicConnect had great things to say! “ServerBeach went the extra mile to provide the hosting support we needed for this auction,” said Ben Smith, vice president of ComicConnect. “With a high profile online auction such as this, the ability to scale to support peak traffic flow is imperative and everything went off without a hitch. We worked closely with ServerBeach to prepare for the auction and our account representative was available at all times to address any potential hardware or software issues common with this intensive type of online event.”

For more info check out today’s announcement: http://www.livemint.com/2009/03/17212409/First-Superman-comic-fetches.html

PEER 1 Pays New UK Employees to Leave

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 | by Rajan Sodhi |

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Dominic Monkhouse, Managing Director of PEER 1 UK Today we announced our venture into the UK, with new headquarters in Southampton to support our European expansion. We’ve also launched a new recruiting drive to find “Sales Supremos, Technical Gods, Data Center Managers and a Network Guru”, and we’re damn serious about it. So much so, we’ll pay you to leave. We’re offering to pay all successful new employees £1,000 (approx. $1,400 US) if they want to give up their jobs in the first two weeks.We want to ensure we only employ those who are fully committed to delivering outstanding customer service.

Employees will enjoy benefits including ‘Dress Up Smart Day’ once a month and ‘Free Food Day’ the day before payday. We’ll also run ‘Cock-up of the Month’ (love the British slang), an opportunity to learn from and celebrate mistakes, as well as having PlayStations in the office and ‘Beer O’Clock’ at 4pm on Friday to let off steam. This is how my new British counterpart, Dominic Monkhouse, puts it:

“If you are the most driven, ambitious, enthused, charming and downright brilliant candidate out there, we’ll give you a great job in a cool office, pay you a good salary, and give you endless self-development opportunities. We get IT at PEER 1. PEER 1 is the Number One web hosting provider in Canada and we’re now on a mission to be Number One in the UK. We’re hell-bent on being the best B2B services company in any sector. For that reason I am offering any new employee £1000 cash to leave in the first two weeks. This way only those employees who really get it, who are thoroughly and wholeheartedly committed to raising the standards in hosting and service to the highest level will stay.”

You can listen to Dom talk about PEER 1′s new recruiting efforts in this hilarious interview with Radio Hampshire. Nice work, Dom.

If you are in the UK, near the UK, or want to move to the UK and know you’ve got what it takes, email your resume/cv to hiremenow@peer1.com

Official news release

PEER 1 Named in Vancouver’s Top 5 Best Business Blogs

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 | by Rajan Sodhi |

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We are honored to be listed on The 5 Best Vancouver Business Blogs . PEER 1 has been mentioned as having the ability to come off as personal on our blog, focusing on community-sided topics and contests as well as keeping the balance right between company announcements and posts that are just for fun.

At PEER 1 we’re always striving to continue this balance. It’s very important to us to maintain not only a professional atmosphere to show people how PEER 1 is the smart choice for business solutions, but to also include a personal presence and allow everyone to see that we are real people too.

This past weekend ServerBeach – our dedicated division, exhibited at the Interactive Festival at South by SouthWest in Austin, Texas and were listed as one of the Top 10 Companies Most Discussed on Twitter. Be sure to take a look at the pictures on Flickr that were taken at this event and follow us on Twitter for news and upcoming contests:

PEER 1 on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/peer1

PEER 1 on Twitter: @PEER1

I’m Headed to SXSW with PEER1 – Will you be there?

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 | by lsabinwilson |

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HI! I’m new here – thought I’d drop in and make myself comfortable..knock around a little – kick the tires and see how things run here at the PEER1 blog. Let me introduce myself – Let me introduce myself: I am Lisa Sabin-Wilson and I am the author of WordPress For Dummies, and the creative director of E.Webscapes Design Studio. I’m really excited to announce that ServerBeach and I are joining forces this weekend at the SXSW Interactive Festival and bringing you some really COOL schwag at the ServerBeach/PEER1 exhibit booth!

What kind of schwag, you ask? Well, if you’re a fan of the WordPress blogging platform like I am (and I KNOW ServerBeach and PEER1 are) – you’re in for a treat if you drop by the ServerBeach booth. I will be hanging out with these great folks and spending some quality time at the booth making sure you have access to the following WordPress goodies:

WordPress For Dummies: ServerBeach will be giving away free copies of WordPress For Dummies at their booth, and as a bonus – I will be present at the times stated at the bottom of this post, to do book signings. So stop by the ServerBeach booth and pick up your FREE autographed copy of WordPress For Dummies. Already have a copy? No problem – stop by the booth to say hi … I love to meet my readers, and I’ll sign your copy!
WordPress Q&A: During the times I will be at the ServerBeach booth, I am also available to do a quickie WordPress Q&A if you have any specific questions on how to use WordPress on your site or blog. I’ll have my laptop ready with a clean install of WordPress open, ready for your questions.
Premium themes, anyone?? I do a lot of custom design work for WordPress users over at E.Webscapes – - for SXSW I am doing 5 free themes for WordPress users – available ONLY to SXSW attendees who stop by the ServerBeach exhibit booth on March 14-16, 2009. Here’s what you do: stop by the booth and ask for the super secret link to Lisa’s WordPress themes they are giving away. That’s it! (the themes are free and completely GPL). (ServerBeach just might give these themes away to the general public after SXSW is over – that is totally up to them, but for now, they’re available from the ServerBeach exhibit booth at SXSW exclusively.)

Let’s see…. today is Wednesday. That means I have exactly TWO days left before I head out to Austin. I’m looking foward to visiting the great state of Texas – I’m originally from Texas (born in Houston). Plus, I’m really looking forward to getting away from this artic Wisconsin weather.

I’ve been hard at work developing the exclusive ServerBeach WordPress themes and I’m almost done! I’ve been working night an day making sure you have some really fantastic WordPress themes to take home with you from SXSW – - a little token to remember us by. I like it here so much on the PEER1 blog, I just don’t wanna leave! So, I’ll stick around a little bit longer and give you a special sneak peek at a few of the great WordPress themes ServerBeach and I will be handing out at the ServerBeach booth at SXSW in Austin this weekend:

ServerBeach at SXSW 2009

SXSW ServerBeach and PEER1 bring you WordPress For Dummies and FREE WordPress themes

ServerBeach WordPress theme

Want to see more? Well, you’ll just have to stop by the ServerBeach booth at the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin Texas this weekend and you’ll get the whole package of 5!

ServerBeach, Lisa Sabin-Wilson and WordPress For Dummies

I am appearing at the ServerBeach booth on Saturday, March 14 from 1-4pm, Sunday, March 15 from 1-4pm and Monday, March 16 from 1-3pm. I’m really looking forward to seeing my good friends from ServerBeach again, after the fun we had hanging out at the BlogWorld Expo event in Vegas last November!

If you’re attending SXSW and have your profile set up at my.sxsw.com – you can add me here. Otherwise, follow me on Twitter – @LisaSabinWilson – I’m sure I’ll be all a twitter about it!

PEER 1 Employee and Band to Play at SXSW

Monday, March 9th, 2009 | by Rajan Sodhi |

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PEER 1′s IT Security Engineer Scott Clark (also known as ‘McGyver’) will be playing with his well-known band, “Asphalt Valentine” at South by SouthWest this year in Austin, Texas on March 19, 2009, 6:30pm at Club Malaia.

I had the opportunity to steal a few moments out of Scott’s hectic schedule for an interview -

How long have you been a PEER 1 employee? Asphalt Valentine has quite the exposure, do you find it hard to balance IT work and your music?

I have been employed with Peer 1 since April 2003 (via Interland in Atlanta), so that puts me about 6 years next month. If any one remembers “Green Box” and “Project Clean” you will realized just how long that has been… I was hired on a Sr. Security Engineer and haven’t budged since. J But it has been a terribly interesting ride so far… I have seen a lot of faces come and go and have also seen a lot of organizational changes since those early days, but I am incredibly proud and grateful to have ended up where I am at now – at Peer 1. Peer 1 is an awesome company with great talent and a bright future. Peer 1 has it right – it is all about the customer, and if we ever forget that, we will be doomed to failure.

You can read the full interview here: http://serverbeach.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/peer-1-employee-band-ashpalt-valentine-to-play-at-sxsw/

Monthly Archive for March, 2009

PEER 1 Customer LANDFLIP Experiences Explosive Growth

PEER 1 Net Promoter Score Increases by 76 Percent

ServerBeach Hosts Record Auction for Superman Comic

PEER 1 Pays New UK Employees to Leave

PEER 1 Named in Vancouver’s Top 5 Best Business Blogs

I’m Headed to SXSW with PEER1 – Will you be there?

PEER 1 Employee and Band to Play at SXSW

Map of the
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Monthly Archive for March, 2009

PEER 1 Customer LANDFLIP Experiences Explosive Growth

PEER 1 Net Promoter Score Increases by 76 Percent

ServerBeach Hosts Record Auction for Superman Comic

PEER 1 Pays New UK Employees to Leave

PEER 1 Named in Vancouver’s Top 5 Best Business Blogs

I’m Headed to SXSW with PEER1 – Will you be there?

PEER 1 Employee and Band to Play at SXSW

Map of theInternet 2011

Sign up for our Newsletter

Map of the
Internet 2011