[Theforum] evoltspotting

Madhu Menon webguru at vsnl.net
Wed Dec 5 11:30:40 CST 2001


At 10:45 PM 12/5/2001, Michele Foster typed these words:
>IOW, I don't see any valid reason to abandon one project in favour of
>another .. especially since that project is working well; at least in my

I'm not advocating abandoning it - yet. I see one as more productive than 
the other.

(Aside: Does IOW mean "in one word"?)

>opinion .. technically speaking it works good, and a lot of effort has gone
>into building it.  It's a nice addition for evolt.org.  I guess the survey
>will give us some numbers whether more effort should be put into that
>project or not.

My point is that there are other sites that are doing exactly the same 
thing: adding links in various categories. And they have a head start too. 
There's bound to be a heavy overlap between d.e.o and those sites anyway, 
and if anything, we may be behind the rest.

We would simply be duplicating work that other sites already do, with 
nothing to differentiate our effort from theirs. I refuse to believe that 
50% of our links will be stuff that's not mentioned on any other site. The 
blogging community is usually pretty efficient at spreading the links around.

Marketing is all about differentiation, and IMO, the FQA (or FAQ) would be 
"unique" for evolt.

>  I guess the survey
>will give us some numbers whether more effort should be put into that
>project or not.

Don't have to wait for that. Our site stats should tell us how many people 
visit. Dan?


>Remember, d.e.o. is as good as we make it .. Simon's built a nice
>infrastructure .. add valid/good links and we've got a nice list.

(warning: software design lecture ahead)

Well, assuming that we take it seriously, we need to make it EASY for 
people to contribute. People like us read several articles in a day (I 
think) and I usually can't be bothered to visit the site, sign in, and add 
links to categories.

As an example, sign up for an account at SaveThis.com

If you had to visit the site to add links to your account, it would be 
tedious. Instead, they have a bookmarklet directly for my account that I 
can just click. It immediately opens up a pop-up window with the site URL 
and page title filled in, a list of my categories (with the option to 
create new ones), and a textarea for comments. The whole operation takes 
less than 5 seconds. It's a joy to use, and indeed I use it frequently.

We need something like *that* for evolt to make it work for a community.

Regards,

Madhu

<<<   *   >>>
Madhu Menon
madhu at members.evolt.org
Blog: http://madman.weblogs.com






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