Collectors Joining Colnect on March - a New Record

March has shown record growth to Colnect's collectors base. Many collectors still use Colnect without registering and enjoy the free catalogs offered on the site. Over 60,000 people have visited Colnect on March. However, to manage their personal collection with Colnect, collectors have to register Colnect. This March, as Colnect passed the 10,000 members milestone, a record growth of 11% (1,033 new collectors) was achieved.

We extend our warm welcome to all new members of Colnect. Colnect is built by our members and the more collectors join, the better our catalogs will get.

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.

Thousands of Indian Students Yearn to Join Colnect Family

In response to the partnership we reached with Freshersworld.com, India's most popular students web-site, thousands of young Indians submitted applications to become Campus Ambassadors for that site and are now eligible to fill three exclusive Colnect internship places! We are overjoyed to see the dedication from some of the sharpest minds on campuses across India. As of March 9, 139 applicants from around the country have been chosen to represent their schools as Campus Ambassadors for Freshersworld. This reflects the enormous talent pool on display at Indian universities and the potential of its students to achieve greatness in their endeavours. From these, the top three finishers in the final phase will win the grand prize of an internship and will have the opportunity to work on various projects at Colnect.



Given our ambitious plans to continue building Colnect into the best collectors web site, the addition of three sharp, committed young minds to assist us with many technological and managerial projects will be most welcome. For our collectors, this means that we should be more responsive to your questions and concerns, while also having more resources at our disposal to make long-term improvements that should enhance everyone's collection experience. However, the key to Colnect's future greatness is having dedicated contributors who provide their unique expertise of a particular collectible or language to benefit everyone! If you would like to help with catalog additions, modifications, or language translations, please feel free to Contact Us.

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's TeaBag Catalog Surpasses 3,000 Items

Colnect's tea bag catalog has grown steadily in recent months and now features over 3,000 tea bags from 48 countries. Although it's not among Colnect's largest categories, tea bags have developed a significant community of collectors on Colnect to connect and swap with. We would like to commend the hard work of the tea bags coordinator, Carine De Pauw, whose continued dedication to Colnect has earned her the prestigious 3 stars.



If you are a tea bag collector, feel free to sign up on Colnect and upload items from your collection to the site. The current success and future greatness of Colnect rests on the shoulders of devoted volunteers like Carine and YOU.

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.

90,000 Stamps in Colnect's Free Catalog for Stamp Collectors

Colnect's impressive stamp catalog has experienced phenomenal growth recently and has now surpassed 90,000 stamps, with over 8,000 having been added in the last 30 days! This remarkable progress was made possible by the dedicated support of our many stamp contributors and collectors, who are selflessly adding and improving items in the catalogs every day for the benefit of every member on this site. Colnect is especially grateful to our stamps coordinator, Fabian Eicke, for his tireless work in organizing these catalog contributions and helping to create an extensive database that all stamp collectors can enjoy.



Although we are pleased with these results, there is still much work to be done. If you have any stamps or other collectibles not yet in Colnect's catalogs, feel free to Contact Us so we can include them. Doing this can help you find an appropriate swap with collectors from around the world while also benefiting the Colnect community as a whole. In particular, we would like to include substantial numbers of stamps from a greater variety of Asian and African countries.

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.

Collectors Visiting Colnect Over 111,111 Times this January

Colnect set new traffic records in January, as over 111,111 visits were made to the site throughout the month, more than a 16.16% increase from December! This milestone reflects Colnect's continued surge in popularity and its strong commitment to expanding the resources available to collectors. January also saw a sharp rise in collector registrations, with a record number of new collectors joining the Colnect community. This recent growth means that 115 countries are now represented by active Colnect members. In addition, the number of Unique Visitors to Colnect jumped more than 17.17% compared with December to over 51,234, while total PageViews increased by over 24.24% to more than 2,727,272. Since Colnect is a unique site, we prefer to use non-round numbers in our reports.

Although this latest news is extremely promising, the development of a truly global community is an ongoing process that requires unyielding effort from both administrators and volunteers. If you have any suggestions or ways to improve the site or would like to help add new items to our catalogs, please don't hesitate to contact us. We are also currently looking for translators to help display Colnect pages in many languages, with the following being of particularly high priority: Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese (especially Traditional script), Hindi, and Punjab.

Colnect Presentation on TechAviv Peer Awards

Colnect is proud to publish its narrow 2nd place finish at last month's Tech Aviv Competition onto Youtube and other video-sharing sites. The video shows Colnect's entire presentation to the hundreds of Tech Aviv members in attendance and clearly illustrates the rapturous reception we received from the audience. It begins with an updated and more comprehensive version of the entertaining video displayed at Colnect's victory in the European Startup 2.0 Competition and concludes with a brief discussion about the company by founder Amir Wald.



Since this competition and the video's creation, Colnect has added even more languages and continued the expansion of its catalogs to enhance the collection experience for our global community. We rely on dedicated volunteers to contribute their knowledge of a particular language or collectible category in a similar fashion to Wikipedia. If you would like to get involved in improving Colnect or have suggestions for new collectibles that should be added, please don't hesitate to contact us.

29 Million Colnect Pages Indexed on Google?

Colnect's rapid growth is being reflected in its presence on the world's most popular search engine, as we now have an astounding 29 million pages indexed on Google! This number is made even more impressive by the fact that only 2 months ago, Colnect's total page indicies were at only about 10% of its current tally.



However, these numbers are quite dubious, as performing a search with Google's Canadian version yields only 1.1 million search results, while others produce page indices in the range of 3-5 million. This begs the question of how exactly Google calculates the quantity of indexed pages for a particular site and if this number has any reliability or basis in reality. Although Colnect has added many new lanugages and categories over the past couple of months that would explain a certain increase in pages, a 10-fold increase over this timeframe seems entirely unrealistic. Only time will tell whether this enormous figure can sustain itself or fall back to a total more in line with past values.

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 Announces Exciting New Partnership with FreshersWorld

Colnect is thrilled to announce that we have formed a partnership with India's most popular students web-site, Freshersworld.com in which the three talented students who will win the competition will have the opportunity of traveling here and interning with us!




The site has launched a new program called "Campus Ambassadors" in which students from Indian universities who demonstrate exemplary leadership skills will become intermediaries between their schools and Freshersworld.com. The selected campus ambassadors will then be evaluated based on both their performance in that role and their previous qualifications, with the winners being eligible for many great prizes. Of these, the 3 Grand Prize recipients will have the opportunity to intern with Colnect in a country renowned for its innovation and technological prowess.

While interning at Colnect, these Campus Ambassadors will undertake a variety of important projects, such as managing Colnect's rapidly expanding global community, improving the web-site's design and functionality to make it more user-friendly, and searching for creative new ways to grow the business. As an on-line start-up, Colnect offers flexibility unmatched by virtually any large companies along with a diverse range of tasks that will provide prospective interns with critical experience in an area of their choice.

Colnect's Google Page Ranks Advances to 5

In an undoubtedly positive reflection of Colnect's impressive growth and development over recent months, Colnect's page rank on Google has improved to an all-time high of 5 (PR5), besting the previous mark of 4 (PR4). With our total collectors exceeding 8,000, 10 collectible categories being made available, and constant catalog improvements, it's no wonder that more sites link to Colnect and that Colnect's status is advancing on Google.

This upgraded page rank will likely mean higher Google search results for Colnect, which should translate into greater traffic, more new registrants, and ultimately an even better collection experience for current Colnect collectors. Given Colnect's current progress, it's quite reasonable to expect future upgrades in its Page Rank as the site becomes more recognizable and well-established on the web. However, this might require extra patience, since moving to a higher Page Rank becomes progressively trickier as the levels increase.

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.