From Praized…
Graham Hill of TreeHugger.com fame offered 9 lessons web entrepreneurs should take heed of.
- The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Humans don’t really change. If something feels wrong, it probably is.
- Incentives drive the world. For employees, for business development, etc.
- Truth is told at cash registers and not in focus groups. Look to the data and test a product by selling it.
- Listen to Fred Wilson.
- The network is the computer. It has to be open and all about online applications. Think Gmail, Last.fm, Mint.com.
- Think product first, marketing later. This new connected world takes care of a good portion of marketing if you have a great product.
- Barely enough money is a good thing. It keeps you hungry and makes you focussed. Helps you find what’s the core of your business.
- Companies are bought not sold. It might be a clich© but it’s true. Play hard to get.
- Good guys win in a connected world. Media has been democratized and spin control does not exist anymore.
VC Fred Wilson wrote this week about his Outside.in and Everyblock.com. The comments are interesting too. Fred wrote…
Techcrunch calls outside.in a competitor of EveryBlock. I think collaborator is more like it. It’s going to take more than one company to rebuild the local newspaper from the ground up.
Amen. Front Porch Forum is very different from either of these efforts, but plays in the same space. With 30% of our pilot city subscribing and a large percentage posting, we’re definitely well beyond just the heavy web users that dominate much of Web 2.0.
Marc Andreessen (go UIUC engineering!) writes today about a group of neighbors in Seattle creating an online social networking using Ning to address concerns over a recent crime wave…
From Bill Gossman and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
“I’ve lived here 11 years and never seen anything like this,” said Bill Gossman, a Magnolia resident who about two weeks ago started a neighborhood Web site [on Ning] that he dubbed sleeplessinmagnolia.ning.com.
The social network, Gossman said, has received 55,000 page views and brought together 550 block-watching neighbors to share information, tips and experiences…
That’s great. It’s an example of the kind of thing that people are doing with Front Porch Forum all across our pilot city of Burlington, VT (30% subscribe already). Crime and neighborhood watch activities are common… as well as lots of other uses.
Ning, in addition to having amazing resources, provides “white label” social networks… that is, build your own. While Front Porch Forum provides the network/forum for 100% of the neighborhoods in its service area… and it’s designed to address the real problems of isolation and individualism by helping nearby neighbors connect.
Congratulations to the Everyblock team… they just launched this new service in Chicago, New York and San Francisco…
EveryBlock filters an assortment of local news by location so you can keep track of what’s happening on your block, in your neighborhood and all over your city.
Powerful stuff. I might subscribe to an RSS feed of my neighborhood if I lived in a large city… but I doubt I’d visit regularly. Also I wonder if the info flow will be appropriately scaled. That is, if Everyblock delivers a phone book worth of minutia every day for one neighborhood… that’s too much. And too little info flow doesn’t work either.
Looks like they’re on to something powerful. They seem to be making good use of the free $1.1M gift given by the old newspaper money people at Knight.
I was pleased to be interviewed recently by John Barstow of the Orton Family Foundation regarding “innovation in place.” The Orton Family Foundation is and has been involved in some fascinating work. John asked insightful questions about Front Porch Forum.
Occasionally Front Porch Forum is criticized for hosting moderated online forums. The critics worry about freedom of speech… giving every hothead unlimited space to vent seems to be some kind of gold standard.
While I recognize the immense value that our Bill of Rights grants us, especially freedom of speech, I also feel that the incivility found on many online spaces stifles free speech from those of us less willing to step down into that kind of environment.
So it was heartening today to read Charles C. Haynes piece on this subject. He writes, in part,…
I want people to read The Case for Civility: And Why Our Future Depends On It, a just-released book by Os Guinness — an influential Christian writer and public philosopher… Guinness urges us to focus on the urgent question that confronts the United States and the world: How do we live with our deepest differences, especially when those differences are religious and ideological?
The answer, he argues, begins with a rejection of extremes on both sides of the culture wars. Say no to a “sacred public square” — where one religion is privileged at the expense of others. And say no to a “naked public square” — where all mention of religion is removed from public life. Both are unconstitutional and unjust.
Guinness proposes an alternative vision of America, a vision consistent with both the letter and the spirit of the First Amendment: A “civil public square” where people of all faiths and none are equally free to enter public life on the basis on their convictions and where the government neither imposes nor inhibits religion.
Among other things, a civil public square requires forging a civic agreement to uphold the rights of others, even those with whom we deeply disagree, and a commitment to debate our differences with civility and respect.
Haynes goes on to say…
Civility doesn’t mean we all pretend to agree; it isn’t “niceness” that papers over disagreements. Differences matter — and we should debate them openly and freely. But how we debate, not only what we debate, also matters.
Civility, argues Guinness, doesn’t stifle debate or dissent. On the contrary, genuine civility “helps to strengthen debate because of its respect for the truth, yet all the while keeping debate constructive and within bounds because of its respect for the rights of other people and for the common good.”
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