Mike Boland blogs about the dismal market penetration of RSS…
Matt Ryan reported for the Burlington Free Press today…
Vermont campaign signs along Vermont 15 in front of the Essex Junction Shopping Center have prompted a departing state legislator to call on citizens to boycott businesses within the center — even though the businesses’ managers said they had nothing to do with the signs.
Rep. Peter Hunt, a Democrat from Essex Junction, wrote in a post on Front Porch Forum on Oct. 17 that he would stop shopping at Aubuchon Hardware, Rite Aid Pharmacy, Sherwin-Williams, Quality Bake Shop or “any of the individual store (sic) who have taken this political stance as long as they have these signs on Pearl Street.”
“I am disappointed that these business (sic) have chosen to a (sic) political stance to support candidates from one party,” Hunt wrote. “This is completely out of line.”
He concluded with, “I hope all of you will also shop in other stores.”
More than a dozen FPF subscribers have responded on our service, none in agreement with Rep. Hunt’s call.
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is opening up the third round of its News Challenge.
We’re giving away around $5 million in 2009 for the development and distribution of neighborhood and community-focused projects, services, and programs.
If you have a great idea that will improve local online news, deepen community engagement, bring Web 2.0 tools to local neighborhoods, develop publishing platforms and standards to support local conversations or innovate how we visualize, experience or interact with information, we’d like to see it! You have the opportunity to win funding for your project and support within a vibrant community of media, tech, and community-oriented people who want to improve the world.
Deadline Nov. 1, 2008. The good folks at Knight have a hand in so many great projects that it’s tough to keep track. We’ll be submitting an application to take Front Porch Forum to the next level… the two paragraphs above describe FPF to a tee. We were honored previously this year to be involved in a couple Knight initiatives.
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More from Peter Krasilovsky today…
Homethinking, which rolls out a service today that lets users compare neighborhoods in cities. An art gallery lover in Soho, for instance, might find the 7th street corridor in Washington D.C. to be their place. Gramercy Park is considered a match for Nob Hill in San Francisco.
Mike Boland posted today about a conversation with Center’d’s CEO who…
positions the company as a deeper dive into events, which breaths more functionality into all of the nuances of planning local outings. With the tag line, people, places, plans, it also brings in some social features and local search functionality.
The value proposition lies in the integration of these otherwise disparate local media categories. The idea is that a group of friends can plan a weekday dinner outing, find the location, read reviews (Yelp integration), invite people, and set up a landing page as a central source for event management. One can argue that this already exists with Google Maps, Yelp, and Evite, but the main point is that it doesn’t exist all in one place.
Center’d formerly was known as FatDoor.
Peter Krasilovsky reports today…
Getting people to submit reviews is hard. We’ve seen incentives such as $5 coffee cards (a lot), $10 gas cards, and direct donations to charity (InsiderPages‘ current model)…
This month, Angie’s List, a paid service founded in 1995 that counts 650,000 members… launches a review campaign with the biggest review incentive we’ve seen yet: a free Flip video camera for 15 submissions. The camera is worth about $120. Reviewers also get entered into a $5,000 sweepstakes.
The twist is that all 15 reviews must be for local services, and three of the submissions must be for Angie’s new medical category. The reports on Angie’s List aren’t likely to be rushed affairs, since each one follows a template with six questions — and your name is on it.
Whether you call them the “Three Ms” – members, messages and moolah – or the “Three Cs” – community, content and cash – one of the three critical elements to any Web 2.0 site is “user generated content.” Those with the magic attract content, while others pay for it. Some people get bent out of shape about this kind of thing… see it as a sin against all things webby and wonderful. Not me.
Angie’s List is an established successful big business. They charge people to participate and now they pay people in certain cases to write their reviews. This seems similar to the business of publishing as we’ve always known it… a publisher pays a writer to write and then sells the writing to readers for a fee.
Front Porch Forum does not charge its members to participate… to read or to write… although we have given away a few donated ball game tickets and gift certificates in raffles among members who posted recently. Who knows what the future will bring?
I think we’ll see more and more experiments among Web 2.0 sites to capture a greater share of the three Cs. Or is it the “Three Rs?” Readers, ‘riters, and revenue. Gotta have lots of all three!
UPDATE: Andrew Shotland chimed in too.
Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more