After one year in beta, HeavyAsHell.com announced its public relaunch on March 1, 2010, and within 24 hours broke its own traffic records. The site fills a gap in the social news community for fans of rock, metal, punk and other guitar-based genres.
HeavyAsHell aggregates the best stories about “heavy” music from around the web. It sprung from the negative experiences founder Mark Carras had with other news aggregators that buried or denied stories about harder genres, literally shutting out fans, journalists and bands from the benefits of social news. While the site will provide a haven for certain types of music, says Mark, “Heavy is in the ear of the beholder. Johnny Cash covering NIN’s “Hurt” is heavy.”
There are two registration levels at HeavyAsHell. Bands register an account with basic information to create a page that will catalogue all its news. Everyone else – fans, writers, bloggers, site runners, labels, publicists – register as users. Users are essentially site editors. Users can submit news, reviews, videos and photo links that they find on the web. They can comment on content, and can vote on posts which in turn will position the story higher on the site. These various activities accumulate “sins” (points). There will be benefits to being an active sinner.
Starting March 1, HeavyAsHell will be giving away more than $10,000 in prizes to the top registered users. Each week, the top user will win $1000 while the second place user gets $500 and the third place $250. Additional prizes will be provided by Nuclear Blast America, Prosthetic Records, Rock Ridge Records, the band Mongrel and others. Users will be ranked automatically by their submissions, comments and voting activity. Full Rules and Conditions will be posted on the site at www.heavyashell.com/contest.
Also during this first month, Mark Carras will host a live streaming video show during which he will respond to user questions and comments, and connect with the community. Mark has a deep interest in providing music fans with the most interactive tools the internet has to offer, and is particularly enmeshed with the heavy music world.
In the late 1970s, Mark’s father brought home a used computer to refurbish as a father and son project. That turned into a decade- long obsession with the technology, and by the early 1980s, Mark taught himself programming. Around that time, he also started Mosher’s Mayhem, an old-school Xeroxed fanzine for guitar-based music. This led to a public access video show, giving further exposure to artists.
In 2000, Mark moved this visibility to the web, launching AbrasiveRock.com, which in 2006 morphed into RockMyMonkey.com, a site Mark still operates, providing news, reviews and interviews (including with Anvil, Judas Priest, Testament, DropKick Murphys, Tenacious D, Twisted Sister, Feat Factory and Kiss).
The software behind HeavyAsHell is SocialVoter. SocialVoter is a Web 2.0 CMS that allows for the users to control the content (similar to Digg or Mixx). It was written by Keith Wagner of DarkerNemesis.com and is an open source program.
www.heavyashell.com
www.twitter.com/heavyashell
www.facebook.com/pages/heavyashellcom/232045699290
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