Collectors Gain From Colnect and WorthPoint Partnership

We're happy to announce a new partnership between Colnect and Worthpoint.

WorthPoint is the place to help you discover your hidden wealth. WorthPoint can make you money in any financial climate. Value, sell and acquire with precision, through:
* Extensive valuation data & expert advice
* Networking with and promotion to trading partners
* Access to the largest auction houses & other trading venues
* Inventory from hundreds of antique dealers
* A collecting community 350,000-strong and growing every day

Collectors from both Colnect and Worthpoint can now benefit from special offers.

Frognector's Visit in TheMarker's ComVention 2010 - First Part

Frognector has decided to share with us his impressions of the Internet convention he has visited today. @Frognector is @Colnect's superstar frog and has been attracting collectors to Colnect for the last year.

Dear fellow frogs and humans (especially collectors as the rest are simply less interesting...), please bear with me as this is my first post outside the swamp where I usually pass my time. Your comments are welcomed here and will motivate me to post more pictures.

This year's ComVention was held in a much scarier place than last year. A dinosaur roared at me and although he initially scared me, he actually just wanted to compliment my green outfit.



As I'm against war, I jumped a green soldier that was running amok in the convention and told him he definitely should collect militaria instead of actually firing it.



Some of the geeks around didn't know me and looked at me pretty oddly. Luckily, this guy had a green shirt so we had a good connection.



But not every goof with a green garment is that friendly. I was almost eaten alive.



Luckily I was saved by a guy with a mask.



And went on to talk about Israeli Palestinian business with a red head.




Using Ouriel's new iPad, I explained to her Colnect has long been available in both Arabic and Hebrew, as well as 48 more languages.



She was quite impressed and...

to be continued

If you want to see the second part you'll have to comment here.

10,000 Collectors Collect and Connect on Colnect

Colnect has achieved probably its most prestigious milestone to date, as we now have 10,000 registered collectors from all over the world! This accomplishment was greatly accelerated by a record number of new collector sign-ups over the past couple of months, a trend that surely indicates Colnect is on the verge of becoming one of the world's most popular collecting sites. Perhaps even more impressively, 109 countries spanning every continent are now represented by at least one active Colnect collector. As our international reach expands, we can only except even more collectors to discover the benefits of using Colnect to collect and connect with fellow collectors from all around the globe.




While all this is obviously great news for the site, individual collectors (like YOU) stand to benefit most from Colnect's rapid development. More collectors means more possible swap partners as well as a greater number of potential contributors to Colnect. This is a crucial point, since Colnect's catalogs are created and managed entirely in a wiki-like fashion, meaning the catalogs can only be as complete as the resources of our collectors. In addition, having an incredibly diverse membership on Colnect will open up many more opportunities for new collectible categories, with several of these already in the planning or development phase. As always, feel free to contact us if you would like to assist Colnect with language translations, adding new items to the catalogs, or editing the current catalog data.

Facebook: Celebrate Your Birthday Every Day

Since Facebook's inception and rapid ascent to global prominence, many users have doubtlessly experimented with ways to play practical jokes on their friends or to get a certain message across, depending on their reasons for using the social networking site. One simple yet highly amusing method has been for a user to change their birthday periodically in order to repeatedly generate the massive flood of greetings left on their walls from well-meaning "friends". All that is required to pull this off is a simple profile modification and a sufficient number of gullable and/or forgetful friends. Due to Facebook automatically displaying birthday notifications on every friend's homepage, this can also be a highly effective way to generate clicks on your profile and attract attention, even if some people don't write on your wall or actually see through your little ruse.

To test out this practice, founder of Colnect conducted a small experiment whereby he and an associate entered a fake "Facebook birthday" into their profiles on two separate occasions within a 4-5 week period. One interesting stat he wished to uncover was how many "friends" would obliviously send him birthday greetings on both days. As he observed, his Facebook friends list is a particularly fascinating test group, since it consists of people he has fairly close personal relationships with and those who are entirely virtual connections made to promote his collectors web-site. In the end, he found the results of his skullduggery both humourous and befuddling.



On his original fake birthday, he received a total of 63 birthday wishes on his Facebook Wall and Inbox, while his associate's profile accepted 47 such misplaced greetings only a couple of days following his non-existent celebrations. Perhaps most interesting is that he also received three "Happy Birthday" phone calls from real world friends who believed the information on Facebook, despite having attended his real birthday celebrations only six months earlier. "I didn't realize how forgettable my party was," the chairman of the collectibles web-site quipped. In addition, his 2nd fraudulent Facebook birthday generated 62 well wishes, including 26 repeat offenders from the first day barely one month prior, while the second time around his associate's profile received 57 greetings and 17 duplicate wishers from before.

Although the direct ramifications of this may be trivial, it does perhaps illustrate a tendency of users to automatically accept information displayed on Facebook as absolute fact, even when contrary evidence is readily available (in the cases of those who wished the same person "Happy Birthday" twice within a matter of weeks and his real world birthday party attendees). Savvy Facebook users and spammers could easily utilize this fact to manipulate others for far more cynical purposes. It also brings up the question as to why Facebook lets its members change their birthday an infinite number of times, given that by definition it's a static piece of information. While it's understandable that someone could lie or mistakenly enter an incorrect birthday when they first registered and wish to correct this, allowing users to alter their birthday on multiple occasions seems to be opening the door to such blatant shenanigans.

So what's your opinion on this? Should FaceBook limit the ability to modify one's birthday?

Colnect's PhoneCards Catalogs Exceeds 222,222

Colnect's phonecards catalog, which already was the largest in the world, has continued to grow and now features over 222,222 cards from 229 countries. This means that over 22,222 phonecards have been added to the site in roughly the last 3 months (since our last milestone), a reflection of the dedicated efforts made by our many volunteer contributors. We would especially like to thank the co-ordinator of the phonecards catalog, Ignacio F López Vico [iflvico], for helping to organize all these additions and ensuring that Colnect's phonecards catalog continues to be as up-to-date and comprehensive as possible.



Brazil continues to lead the way in phone cards added to the catalog, with over 60,000 having been uploaded for Colnect collectors to mark in their "Collection", "Swap" and "Wish" lists. Germany and the United States also have notably significant quantites of phone cards on Colnect at more than 10,000 each. With such a dedicated team of volunteers continually supporting us, the sky is the limit for the future of Colnect's phonecards catalog and the site as a whole. If you would like to contribute in any way to Colnect, please don't hesitate to Contact Us.

Collectors Flock to Manage Their Collections and Swap Lists on Colnect

Colnect's popularity amongst collectors has surged in recent weeks, with site traffic reaching record levels and new members signing up at unprecedented rates! For instance, Colnect received an impressive 5,000 visits yesterday (February 22), whereas only 1 month ago we were setting records with a mere 4,000 daily visits. This indicates a phenominal growth rate and should bode well for our goal of developing an extensive collectors community touching every corner of the globe. The number of new collectors has also smashed all previous records, as 48 new members signed up on February 22 alone while 258 registered for that entire week (both records we plan to break soon).



A key reason behind this exceptional progress is likely our recent overhaul of Colnect's layout to make the entire site more user-friendly, attractive, and easier to navigate. These changes have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from long-term Colnect members and new collectors alike, who have responded by using the site more than ever to meet their collection needs. Some credit also goes to Colnect's volunteer translators and their manager, Ben Ulster, who have done an exceptional job translating pages from the site into 47 languages! These translations are an extremely important long-term project that should one day allow collectors from anywhere in the world to use Colnect in their native tongue. If you would like to contribute to Colnect through translations, catalog additions, or have any other feedback, please Contact Us.

Colnect Surpasses 8,888 Collectors!

Colnect has reached yet another milestone today, as more than 8,888 collectors from around the world have registered to take advantage of our unparallaled features. This lucky Chinese number follows months of significantly accelerated growth in both new members and catalog items, trends that bode well for transforming Colnect into one of the world's most popular collectible sites. At its current pace, Colnect should eclipse the prestiguous 9,999 collector mark by the end of March. Colnect has also surpassed the 100,000 page view per day (or 3 million page view per month) plateau, illustrating the site's growing appeal to collectors.




Although progress has been quite impressive, this only represents the tip of the iceberg for Colnect's full potential. We have imminent plans to add new categories such as gift cards, create or improve many more languages, and continue enhancing our existing catalogs. With the help of our many volunteers, Colnect will continue giving collectors an unmatched collection experience and reach even greater heights!

In the long-term, we envision a site where collectors anywhere in the world can register and utilize Colnect entirely in their language of choice. However, this goal will only be achieved with the assistance of volunteers around the world. If you would like to assist Colnect in any way, you are always welcome to Contact Us.

Colnect Unveils Dynamic New Look to Improve Collecting Experience

Colnect is excited to launch a brand new layout that is both prettier and easier to use for collectors! One of the most important changes is a greater emphasis on displaying only the relevant category information for a particular collector, meaning that someone who only collects stamps can easily customize their top menu bar to display only pages important for stamp collectors (i.e.: clicking on a collectors' list will show only those who have stamps). This reorganization has become particularly warranted in recent months with the addition of several new, highly-specialized categories that appeal primarily to niche collectors. In addition, numerous smaller modifications have been made that will make navigating the site more efficient and intuitive, such as checkboxes that indicate when an update is in progress and automatic redirects to item list pages. For a complete list of changes, please see the new Face-lift page.



Creating the new version of Colnect entailed months of meticulous design, experimentation, and consultation with collectors. Although adjusting to the new layout may take some time and there will inevitably be some temporary glitches, we feel that the aforementioned advantages will make this project beneficial for the entire Colnect community in the long-term. Please send us any feedback you may have about these changes so that we can continue working to improve Colnect and make your collection experience more enjoyable.

Colnect's Alexa Page Rank Climbs to 83,000

Colnect continues its ascent in the Alexa rankings, as we are now ranked ~83,000 in the site's measurement of total worldwide traffic. This progress is an unsurprising result of Colnect's newest collectible category additions, worldwide community of collectors, and regular catalog improvements.



Although moving up these rankings becomes a more difficult task once inside the top 100,000, Colnect's future growth prospects remain bright and should keep rising in both total traffic and overall page rank as more collectors worldwide become aware of the immense benefits offered by Colnect. In addition, our plans for adding or improving many new languages and significantly expanding numerous catalogs will increase Colnect's global appeal and ultimately our Alexa rank. Feel free to contact us if you would like to get involved in any of these projects and help make Colnect even more useful for our international collectors community.

Colnect's Hotel Key Cards Catalog Now Exceeds 2,000 Items

Colnect's catalog of Hotel Key Cards, one of our newest categories, has been growing at a tremendous pace since its launch and has now eclipsed the 2,000 item milestone! Although expectations were high following our most recent category additions, even the most optimistic collectors would probably not have expected such impressive progress over so short a time. This great news means hotel key card collectors will have much greater selection in choosing items for their wish list and in finding suitable swap partners, as larger catalogs make collection management and setting up exchanges even easier on Colnect. "I am pleasantly surprised by the rapid development of our new categories," Colnect founder Amir Wald remarked. "Our long-term goal is to be able to break into every hotel room," Wald quipped. Right now, 75 countries are represented in our hotel key cards catalog, with the largest being Spain, followed closely by the US while Mexico trails further behind.

Colnect's catalogs operate under wiki-like principles, meaning trusted collectors can add their own personal collections onto the site and make any necessary changes or updates. We would like to thank our hotel key cards co-ordinator, Ignacio F Lopez Vico [iflvico], for making these significant improvements possible. In addition, we would like to recognize the following nine contributors, whose collaborative efforts have brought the hotel key cards catalog to its current state: FELIX, Juan, cuevas, motikr, bruun01, minos, fquimbo, Trudyh, and Dijor.

Feel free to contact us if you want to help add items from your personal collection into one of our catalogs or have any new category suggestions.