To start off, let me introduce you to myself and the people I will discuss in this article. I am Christopher Stokes, a intern over here at SYP. The three main people I will discuss is Matt, Marlon Taylor, and Adrian Wilson. Matt's main job is to oversee the operations of SYP. I guess you could consider Matt the guy to go to when you are unsure about anything regarding the company, because he knows everything. Marlon is the partner with Matt, he helps out with a lot of different things and brings a lot of new idea's to the table. Adrian is tech. guy, or like we would call him, the smart one. He does everything from setting up ad deals, handling customer service, and correcting coding problems. Just for a quick reference, I will call these three brilliant people the "Proprietors" when I refer to all three of them at once. Now I could go on and on about what they all do, because they do A LOT, but because this isn't the book and just a article, I will keep it short.

Day one, the day when ShowYourPic.Com was thought of. I'm not really sure who thought of ShowYourPic.Com, or how it came about, but one of proprietors decided that they need a new website, better than the original playazpage.com website they operated and better than any other dating or picture rating website out there. They all saw that the potential was there to become one of the largest online communities online since there aren't any websites online today combining the features of a picture rating website and a matchmaking website. So they wanted to be the first, they wanted to set the standards, they wanted to be the "Icons" on the internet, and so they will be one day. But first things first, they needed a good name to call their all new site. The whole team brainstormed several of times on what name to use for the website but they had a few problems; for one it had to be short in length but easy to remember. Now there are millions of .com's out there, so it was very hard to choose a name that already wasn't chosen and that will stand out from the rest. Well after several of hours of discussion and many note taking napkins, they decided to go with the name ShowYourPic.Com (SYP). Great choice don't you think? I mean we are a picture rating website, and in order for you to get rated you have to "show your picture" right? Well we all thought so, and that's the name we stuck with.

After choosing the name for the website, Adrian went to work on developing a look for the website, and let me tell you this, it wasn't easy. I can recall over at least ten completely different layouts and designs. He switched the color schemes from blue, to red, to orange, to green, to back, and back to blue. Then he created different formats for the site, he created a flash website, to a image map site, to plain text, and to a modified playazpage.com design, you name it he tried it. Well after hours, days, and weeks of hard work and creativity, we came up with the design we have now. To be honest with you, we had one before this one and this design was a last minute idea.

We had all the pages developed on the other design and all we needed to put the site up was the coding behind it, but then out of the blue everyone changed their mind to get a more professional layout that will expand our target market, so we went with this design. Since I'm telling you this, I might as well tell you some rumors I've been hearing in the break room about the design. Word has it that the proprietors is strongly thinking about giving the users (you people) a choice on what design you would like to use while browsing SYP. That means while your friend may like and use the current design, you can use the all new red design, and your other friend will browse SYP in the green design, all of them having their own unique look and feel. How great would that be? Don't get your hopes to high up though because it is just a rumor and nothing else. We will all just have to wait to see if it actually may happen in the near future.

Now on to the details of SYP...
The proprietors knew they wanted a new site, but they wasn't really sure exactly what was going to be new about it and make it stand out among all the other sites online. So they all brainstormed and did hours of research on what types of features SYP should have. To start off with they all knew they had to have the battle and rating features, but they wanted more so they researched even more. After hours, and hours, of more research each of them came to the table with fresh idea's to have on SYP; such as model material or not, reward points, user mailbox, detailed profiles of members, buddy list tool, and all of the other features that you can currently find on SYP. There is even more features though they had and didn't get a chance to be on SYP on opening day. I can't tell you what exactly they were since it is stored away in the top secret files of SYP but I can tell you it was some good stuff. When I asked the proprietors about the features they had that aren't on the site now, and if they are going to add them, they told me that they have a lot of good idea's and is in the process of adding new features to the website daily making it a never ending process. So I guess that's good news to know because each day SYP will be getting better and better with new features for the users.

Now since we have the name, the design is complete, and all the details figured out, the proprietors hired a technical team, or as I would like to call them, "the techies", to handle all the programming of the website to get everything up and running correctly. I personally don't associate with the the techies much since they are always busy working and seem very stressed out in the office, and I don't know where they found these guys from because they work like crazy; I'm talking like all day and night seven days a week! To tell the truth, I have never seen one of them leave to go home or even come in the office! They are always here when I get here and always here when I leave. Crazy stuff huh? Now if you can understand everything they have to do, then you will understand why they worked so much. Heck, no average Joe can develop a website like SYP, not even a city of average Joe's can do that. Only the SYP techies can do that, and they did a good job.

Everyday in the office the proprietors was provided with a list of updates and questions from the techies about certain aspects of SYP. Now every time I see them looking over that information, they didn't seem really happy. They would meet in the conference room and stay behind the closed door for hours at a time. When they finally leave the conference room they all look stressed out and ready to go home. I'm not sure what all went on back there but I know I heard arguments on the daily basics so I know they had to run into some disagreements. Despite the arguments and disagreements though, they all still got along good and come in the next day fresh ready to do it all over again.

Back to the techies though. I don't know how much they get paid to do the work that they do, but with all the hours they work, it must be a lot. But how? I really don't know. SYP is a private company and all of its assets come from the proprietors. That's right, no stock market, no big time investors, just three young adults with a dream and money from part-time jobs. Now I know personally that the proprietors made a lot of sacrifices to work on SYP such as cutting drastically back on their spending to devoting hours of time of hard work in the office. No, they weren't getting paid for the time they spent working on SYP, they don't have to clock in and out, they don't even ask to "cut the check", they just worked living on one ultimate goal, and that's to open up SYP. As crazy as it may sound, its the truth. Now you may call them stupid for that, or you may idol them and walk in their footsteps to achieve your goals, but whatever you do, have respect for them. Readers, people like this don't come around often so me, myself, will never forget them no matter what.

What is taking SYP so long to open?
The main reason that it took so long for SYP to open is due to the complexity of the features on SYP. There were a million and one things to program for the website and it took a lot of time, more than the dynasty had originally planned. It turned out to be ok though since everything is completed the way that they wanted it. The only drawback the proprietors had with the amount of time it was taking to open SYP is that new websites were coming out everyday taking small pieces of what SYP was going to be but in order to avoid any law suits, I will not mention the websites that stole some of our idea's.

Nobody at SYP is really sure how other people knew about our features and they didn't want to go around accusing their employee's about it, so it was just ignored. Like one popular line goes though, often copied, but never duplicated. So what if another website took our battle feature, ours is better; so what if a website took our points system, ours is better. The proprietors really don't care though since they know that all the features SYP has are original and the best out there. Besides, the trio has plenty of other things to worry about other than other small websites trying to take their idea's.

All the coding is done, and SYP is ready to launch.. Well just about...
Now I have a question, how did you find out about ShowYourPic.Com? It was most likely from a advertisement you saw on another website. Now we have tons of advertisements out there on websites we think people just like you would be on. It wasn't cheap at all though to get the ads on those websites, it cost them some serious money. The proprietors saving's account is just about empty due to the cost it took them to advertise. None of them originally planned to spend a lot on advertising, but since they want everyone to know about us, they did what they had to do so everyone could know about us.

Now after the proprietors spent all of their hard earned money on advertising, they decided to open up the website to the public which brings us to day one of ShowYourPic.Com, the start of a new era of online communities and dating websites.

I hope this article gave you a good look on what it took to make SYP reach that Grand-Opening day. Me and the entire team at SYP would like to thank all of our dedicated users for supporting us in the long and frustrating process to open up SYP. Please stay tunned for more articles by me giving you information about new features, SYP events, and much more that you don't want to miss. I'm Christopher Stokes, and so long!

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