New: Citysearch, a division of IAC, wants to build out Sidewalk.com as a local guide site, and instead of launching their own coding project is testing the crowdsourcing waters. Entrants get a shot at a $10K prize and (possibly) additional funding to realize the project. Here’s the outline of the contest: Continue reading »
Jul 012009
Mar 192009
I remember in the early days of the Web it wasn’t uncommon for a site to tell you that you could only view the site in a particular browser, or that if you didn’t have a specific resolution you might not see everything. Eventually, web designers figured out that rather than telling the user how to browse, they would design for the user and ensure the site rendered correctly in the major browsers and most common resolutions.
Ball State University, a member of the Indiana state university system, is further differentiating itself from its better-known siblings IU – Bloomington and Purdue by pouring money into new media:
Jan 012008
While flipping channels, I ran across an episode of City Confidential, a show that takes viewers on a trip to an American city while recounting a murder there. This particular episode involved two business partners – one was convicted of killing the other. The murder victim was apparently exceptionally hard working and capable, and was abandoning the shared business due to the poor performance and lack of effort on the part of the other owner. The slacker parter, seeing that the business was already in trouble and would certainly fail without the other’s contributions, was found to have killed him – apparently to take advantage of a hefty “key man” insurance policy that would have paid the firm’s debts and left the remaining partner well-capitalized and in full control. While few business partnerships will lead to murder, lots of them do generate hard feelings when the partners seem to have different expectations for their effort and performance. Nowhere is that more true than with Web businesses.
Oct 122007
Today, I was driving in San Francisco with a couple of other SEO-types and we spotted a prominent billboard for Google’s 411 service. The sign wasn’t too specific, but it conveyed that it was a free directory information service of some type. So, being intrepid explorers, we gave it a whirl from the car. First, we spoke the city, “San Francisco.” Then, we were prompted for a business name or category. We thought residential lookup might have been an option, but on the spur of the moment, we gave it “restaurants”. We were then prompted for an address or an intersection, and it recognized “Market and Valencia” without a hitch. In each case, the speech recognition was correct on the first try and our input was repeated for confirmation. It then proceeded to list restaurants close to that location, offering to connect us with their phone number or text the info to our cell phone. Both features worked fine. Three jaded techies were impressed by the accuracy and overall functionality.
Oct 042007
Every community operator knows that it takes different kinds of participants to be successful. Some people come looking for answers, others come to help. Some like to expound at length, while others say little. Some are lurkers, others are prolific contributors. Researchers from Cornell and Microsoft have produced some interesting research that graphically represents different community roles.
Sep 112007
A key aspect of Web 2.0 is letting users create or enhance a site’s content. This sounds great, but in practice can be hard to achieve. The Web is littered with dead forums, unreviewed products, spammed-out wikis, and other failed attempts to build user-created sites. Consulting giant McKinsey has posted a research brief, How companies can make the most of user-generated content, that helps explain why users add content to websites, and how to best encourage the process. The firm surveyed nearly 600 users of four German video sharing sites, and reached some interesting conclusions:
Aug 232007
The good news is that companies, even big ones, are waking up to the power of online communities, and that they are taking steps like starting their own communities for discussion, ratings, reviews, and social networking as well as participating at other sites. The bad news is that sometimes they get carried away. The latest corporate goof was by Comcast, who apparently hired an inept PR firm to get their message out by impersonating sports fans. The site administrator at SpartanTailgate.com did some basic IP sleuthing and outed the miscreants in a post titled Wake up Martin Waymire Advocacy Communications! (Comcast hired site posing as BT fan). Oops… not very subtle. (Via Consumerist – Comcast Caught Astroturfing About “Big Ten” Channel and FanHouse.) Unfortunately, Comcast is hardly the only firm doing this.
Since the early days of Internet-based communities and chat rooms, individuals found that they could invent new online personas for themselves. Unencumbered by real-world details like physical appearance, social status, and their back balance, they could “be” themselves and interact with others doing the same thing. In most cases, the online relationships that developed were simply friendships, sometimes involving harmless flirtation; occasionally, more serious romantic relationships developed, leading to a sort of online addiction and eventual in-person meetings and affairs. In the early days of the Internet, the press frequently ran stories about a spouse who left home to be with someone met in a chat room. Eventually, the novelty of these stories wore off (I’m sure in the early days of telephone service someone ran a story, “Man uses telephone to meet secretly with lover”), and they disappeared. Now, Alexandra Alter of the Wall Street Journal has written an interesting story that illustrates the new form of online infidelity, and which raises the bigger question of how “real” online communities like Second Life can be. In Is This Man Cheating on His Wife?, Alter chronicles a fascinating example of an online relationship that seems at least as real as the physical-world relationships of the participants.