Lots of things contributed to The Palace's success. In my own opinion, making client registration codes free by Electric Communities (later renamed Communites.com) to everyone greatly expanded its reach and was probably the single biggest factor in its success. It would've continued, if not for the unfortunate drying up of the online advertising market in late 2000 and early 2001 during what was the "dot-com crash". Communities.com also brought in new users, and revenue, from custom Palace server building partnerships with leading brands like CBS, MXG.com, Red Herring, Sweet16.com and, yes, KoRn. The Palace, Inc., (its predecessor owner) did this as well, with numerous partnerships including Intel's Boardwalk (renamed The Welcome Palace), South Park, and others.
Cheers,
Doug
|