Islamizator?

Well, I really didn’t expect this. Yesterday I’ve approved someone’s funny but weird tattoo. I thought it would stay hanging at the bottom without much attention, as 90% of all tattoos that I receive do. Apparently that was more than a harmless prank. I’ve been framed – someone decided to push the agenda and propelled tattoo to the top.

It seems that there’s a campaign against Tattoolizator. First, PayPal has received few complaints so I had to ask my lawyer to sort out the situation. Then Wikipedia page about me, which has been there for a few years, has being attacked. All of a sudden, the review says that the article may not meet “the general notability guideline”. Well, it’s hard for me to decide. I’ve earned my first 1.5 million dollars at the age of 16, published first magazine in Russia about internet, invented and then successfully promoted the whole new subculture in “runet”, with its own language. By the way, that language became so popular, that it’s spilled over into daily life and now is being used in books, ads and on TV. The wiki page has been there for a while, but only now, when I launch the new project – Tattoolizator, the vandalism and the whole crusade against me is taking place. As the time passes, more and more it looks like a planned and well-thought attack.

Now I’m worried about that tattoo, which at first looked silly to me. I need to go ahead and get attention about the contest from Apple fans – there is a version with famous Apple logo too. I’d much rather be having “Think Different” slogan tattooed on the shoulder, than for the rest of my life having a tattoo for which any Muslim fanatic would try to chop my arm off, and, perhaps, not only the arm. By the way, the very next day someone from Argentina uploaded the image of me without the arm and in a wheelchair. As far as I know, there are many religious zealots out there.

I really hope that I would not repeat the scandal of Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and that my portraits would not be burned by protester on the streets of Muslim countries. Besides, they would be pleased to do it when they learn that I’m a Jew.

Video comment on tattoolizator.com.

Video comment about tattoolizator.com:

in english
in spanish

I know video sucks :-), but I promise to record a new one very soon in a better quality!

Tattoolizator, the pre-story.

Okay, as I promised in my first post I will explain now how I came up with an idea of tattoolizator. :-)

My wife have a tattoo for many years and I wanted to make a tattoo too, but never had a moment go to the tattoo salon. A couple of months ago I saw Miami Ink show and a friend of mine told me that this is an actual tattoo salon in Miami. I decided to go there one day and finally to make a tattoo.

Well, later I forgot about it until I was eating sushi a couple of months ago in some place on South Beach very close to Miami Ink (I didn't even know that, I just saw Miami Ink salon there when I was waiting for the valet to bring my car). So I went in with my friend and one of the sales manager asked me "what are you looking for?" and I said "a tattoo", then he replied back to me - "oh, no shit!". Well.. You know I got used to a better service, like uhm.. shopping in Bal Harbour Shops, where everybody is really willing to help you.

I understand it was stupid to say "I want a tattoo" in a tattoo salon, but I really didn't know what tattoo I really want, so I expected to be in the best tattoo place in the US and I thought they will consult me, will give an advise, show some examples, etc. So I've tried to talk to this guy, but it looks like they think they're celebrities because they're on the tv, etc., so he was not friendly with me at all and just I left.

I wrote about it in my russian blog and asked people to give me an idea for my tattoo, so I got many interesting concepts, but
sometimes it's even more difficult for me to choose when I have too many options, so I decided to let my readers to choose a
tattoo for me, but to get more professional art done I promised to give $1,000 prize for the author of the tattoo that will get more votes.

I got a lot of tattoos, but nothing nice and I raised the bid to $16,000 for the author of the best tattoo that will get the majority of the votes. I got more tattoos and more professional concepts. 

While doing this I was thinking how to avoid a possibility of flashmob. One of the arts were submitted by Art Lebedev, famous russian design, author of the first OLED keybaord, he have over 100,000 very loyal readers daily in his blog and if he would ask his readers to support his design any design he will offer would win. So I came up with an idea to vote by SMS and PayPal donations.

Later I decided that I can rise more funds than $16,000 like this, but to get significantly more I decided to lift the rule about the ban on commercial and humiliating tattoos. And this is how the idea of making a tattoo became an idea to open tattoolizator.com website. I have now three developers working on this site, still have a couple of issues, but it's working and little by little gets more popular. In the first 3 days we got about $400 and about 160,000 visitors.

Well, maybe the story is stupid and idea is not the most brilliant, but I already promised all that to my readers and even if I get only $1,000, I will still have to give $16,000 for the winner and $16,000 for the charity and get maybe the dumbest tattoo on my hand, but I feel like it may work out and the site will be famous.

So now I challenge myself and hope that I will manage to make it famous, so if dumb tattoo wins at least I will have a financial explanation to it...

AdSense.

One of my readers in my russian blog suggested to add AdSence to Tattoolizator.com, so all revenues from advertising on the site come to the same pool as money raised from voting and are split in the same way.

I like the idea and we'll give it a try.

Let's begin.

Well, first of all let me introduce myself.

I'm Egor Lavrov, 27, was born in Moscow, Russia. I'm quite famous among russian IT crowd due to several projects I had. I never got to learn english very well, so I'm sorry about it, I hope it is quite understandable. :-)

When I was 16 I've managed to convince my parents to invest US$30,000 into my business plan and I came up with the first printed magazine about the Internet in Russia. It was called "Planet Internet". It was not very popular, because not too many people knew about the Internet yet, so I had difficulties in finding advertisers.

I had to give ads almost for free or in exchange for favors to different companies in Russia and the only real customers I had was Internet Service Providers. So once I met with the owner of one of them, who also used to be a young Russian banker. That was a time of almost no regulations in Russian financial sector, so being a banker back then was something similar to being a gangster, lot's of easy money and short lives.

So this guy offered me good money to sell him the business and I accepted the offer. This is how I got my first serious profit in my life. :-)

Later I created a scandalous alternative project in Russian Internet called as simple as "fuck.ru", but it had nothing to do with porn. It was a first place in Russia where anyone can write anything, without any censorship what's so ever. It became extremely popular really quick.

I even created new form of Russian slang and sub-culture there that still exists and develops, but I don't participate in it anymore and most of the new generation Internet users in Russia don't even know that I was the one who came up with an idea of such sub-culture.

I had to shut down this website once I was hired by one of the presidential candidate to run his campaign in Russia. I also had several threats to shut it down from people who were saying they are from Russian cyber police, but it's not clear for me if it was really a police or just someone jealous to my success. I'm not even sure that cyber police existed in Russia back then.

Apart from running a campaign I opened up the biggest portal in Russian Internet that was called "obozrenie.ru" (means review in russian).  Website was designed by famous Art Lebedev designer, the guy who is now know for the first OLED keyboard.

I was also making annual "internet" parties for the IT crowd in Russia and thanks to me most of this people met in person for the first time. Now most of them are running huge internet companies and are not the same nerds that were there on that party many years ago...

I didn't have other online projects other then a couple of blogs in russian. My blogs are in TOP20 of all blogs in Russia, unfortunately I can't write in english the same way I do it in russian, because I don't know the language on the same level, it's not my native language, so my texts in english are less interesting to read. :-(

My wife is Dominican. We setup business with her to distribute Apple, Bang & Olufsen and Vertu in this Latin American region. Business goes quite well, you can read about it in the article that was published recently in "100 Thousand Club" magazine. I set it up, but it is basically managed by my wife, so I felt a little bit depressed and bored past year, so that's one of the reasons I decided to start the "tattoolizator.com" project, but I will tell you about it in next post here.

Thank you for coming!