Desktop Nexus Blog

I was just alerted to our traffic stats on Compete.com, and while the numbers are way off (we’re actually getting about 50,000 visitors per DAY), the growth line is definitely going the right direction.  We’ve experienced fantastic expansion over the past few months, and we have very ambitious plans for expanding our site in early 2009.  Stay tuned. 

Christmas is just around the corner, and whether it’s with holiday music or santa hats, a lot of people are starting to get into the spirit.  Around here at Desktop Nexus, the Christmas vibe has hit hard.  We have our tree up and decorated, and almost every computer has a holiday-themed desktop background.

If you are looking to share in the spirit, we’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite Christmas / Winter / Holiday wallpapers here on Desktop Nexus.  Enjoy! (continue reading…)

One of the primary reasons we’ve finally gotten around to starting a blog is this whole Toyota DMCA issue.  It’s spreading very quickly online, and I’ve been amazed at the response and support we’ve received on this.  If you have no idea what I’m talking about… take a look at the great article TorrentFreak wrote.

This is an incredibly powerful example of how brands can either flourish or crash-and-burn when an event goes viral on the internet.  In this case, Toyota put us in a difficult situation: forcing us to decide between possible (expensive) legal action or disregarding the rights of our members.  I have no doubt that other sites were contacted with the same strong-arm tactics as us, however I couldn’t in good conscious delete wallpapers to which I wasn’t sure Toyota held the copyright.  I was very clear in saying that I do not want to violate any copyrights, and if Toyota provided accurate DMCA Takedown Notices, I would be happy to immediately delete any images that might be in violation.  At one point, I even went as far as offering Garrett Biggs (at Toyota) a form template for DMCA Takedown Notices, where he would just have to fill in the blanks and send it back to me.  I never received it back, but was instead presented with more removal demands.

After long discussions and feeling I was getting no where with Mr. Biggs, I finally decided to email a few blogs who might be interested in this DMCA butchering story.  Specifically, Conley at Free Culture News took interest in our story and contacted a few friends (namely Ben at TorrentFreak) who ended up getting this snowball rolling.

After this started spreading around, I followed the story and started reading all the comments that came flooding in.  I was amazed by how this backfired on Toyota, and how much negativity was being thrown around.  As I said earlier, viral events can be a PR nightmare for a company… especially one like Toyota who invests to much into preserving their brand name.  I decided to collect a few of the most amusing, extreme, or interesting comments that I found scattered around the web on this topic.  Now, for your enjoyment, here they are after the break: (continue reading…)

Hello world!

This is our first post on the new Desktop Nexus blog.  Wecome!

We’ll be using this blog to post up wallpapers we enjoy on Desktop Nexus, industry news that relates to us, any updates or changes to the site (allowing public comments and feedback), and anything else we feel like posting. 

We hope this blog will allow you to get to know the people who run Desktop Nexus on a more personal level.  Our site is based around a community, so it only makes sense to leverage a blog for reaching out to hear feedback on what we do (or don’t do) with Desktop Nexus.

Don’t forget to sign up for the RSS feed (top right corner) so you’ll get updates whenever we post them.

Thanks guys!