Idea Hub: a birds eye view

Ideas are our source for progression. Some - the light bulb and PC - have been monumental. Others – the snuggie or the [something], have made us laugh. But most have changed our lives in one way or another. Imagine a hub to share ideas with anyone in the world. A site that allows you to seek advice on just about any topic – from gift and recipe ideas to company slogans and logos – the ‘Idea Hub’ website is your one-stop source to seek and share ideas for just about anything you’re looking for.

is free the future?

What do you think?

Read Malcolm Gladwell's critique of "Free," Chris Anderson's (editor of WIRED)new book.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/07/06/090706crbo_books_gladwell

Who will win the content war?

Idea Hub: revised

To build on the initial idea of the “Idea Hub” website:

How the site differs from existing forums such as Yahoo Answers and Ask.com:

More multimedia – right now, Yahoo does not include pictures or videos for any of the feedback posted on the site. The multimedia elements will be extremely advantageous because a number of

Focus on ideas – other sites focus on advice and conversations – not solely on ideas. The Idea Hub will be for people to share ideas – not advice or just their opinion on something. If someone needs an idea for a party, corporate slogan or logo, recipes, gifts, etc – a myriad of topics.

Corporate involvement – now, with the number of companies building social networks, it only make sense to encourage their participation on the Idea Hub. Hallmark for instance can peruse the ‘holidays’ category and offer suggestions to those who need ideas for Mother’s Day. Safeway can offer some recipe ideas for someone who needs ideas on their next holiday party. Of course, any user can share ideas but the corporate involvement will make the Idea Hub different from other forum sites on the Web.

Understandably, the topic categories will need to be regulated and kept to a smallish number. This will avoid clutter and keep the site organized. The site will start with a small number of categories and could potentially grow from there. These will include:

Recipe ideas (food and drinks)
Hospitality ideas (party planning, etc.)
Holiday ideas (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mother’s Day, etc.)
Gift ideas (significant other, wedding, anniversary, birthday)
Corporate branding ideas (logos, slogans)
Design ideas (home décor)

Content regulation:

While the site is in Beta form, all content will be moderated by a small team.

This team will also be responsible for building awareness about the Idea Hub. They will build a profile for the Idea Hub on Twitter and Facebook to engage audiences. Because the success of the site is dependent on the number of users who contribute, this awareness building will be the most important element of the initial launch. To encourage corporate involvement, the Idea Hub will rely on social networks to engage with companies on their own social networking sites and blogs. If for instance a user is looking for advice on a particular recipe, the Idea Hub moderators can go onto the Food Network’s Facebook page and encourage their experts to offer feedback.

Creating a Community around Content

I think the immense popularity of social networks was the driving force of community building and online organizing. The difference however, between an organization that simply uses the Internet and one who uses it well, is to create conversations, engage their audience and solicits feedback – not push messages on them.

Whether an organization wants to or not, they cannot ignore online communities. Personally, I think they should use them to their advantage. In his book, Here Comes Everybody: the Power of Organizing without Organizations, Clay Shirky explains how social networking sites are revolutionizing the way individuals around the world communicate, form groups and exist within them to influence social and cultural issues.

Among his many compelling observations, Shirky’s assertion “when we change the way we communicate, we change society,” epitomizes how companies, organizations, the media, political figures and even individuals now use the Internet as a tool to build networks around the world and conduct a myriad of activities such as learning and sharing interests, discussing societal issues, communicating information on current events and sharing photos to encourage the free flow of information and ubiquitous communication.

Although a number of news and non-news organizations are now building communities around their content, I wanted to call attention to a few that are successfully engaging their audiences with multimedia tools:

CNN:

The CNN iReport is a great example of a news organization that is building a community around its content. The iReport even helps CNN create content – a feature that, in my opinion, helps strengthen their community. By creating this community of ‘iReporters,’ CNN gives individuals the autonomy to report on their own story. By featuring these stories on the CNN web site and at times on CNN TV, these individuals are automatically part of a community that CNN created.

CNN also collaborates with Facebook – during the election last year, anyone could login to Facebook and stream the debates off of CNN’s Facebook page. This allowed people to share their perspectives on certain issues.

Washingtonian:

One of my favorite magazines and sites – I think the Washingtonian does an excellent job at community building. I am an avid reader/follower of them and I think this is because they really make me feel engaged in their content. Some of their tactics:

Twitter:

· Their Twitter feed is constantly soliciting feedback from followers – they ask questions such as, what is your favorite sandwich in DC?
· They ask people to “ReTweet” their posts for a chance to win tickets to one of their events – a great way to build awareness.
· Posts are not sporadic – they are constantly updated and focus on a number of topics including upcoming events, news, new articles, etc. – so, you’re never bored with the content
· Actively respond to posts from their followers – I LOVE this about them. If someone tweets something like, @washingtonian looking for something fun to do in DC tonight – Washingtonian tweeters will respond with some suggestions!

Facebook:

· The Facebook page is integrated with the Twitter page – a way to get more followers and fans
· Able to mass communicate to their fan base
· With more than 1,000 fans on Facebook – they can gauge the demographic of their readers

The site itself also welcomes comments and feedback to all of their posts. Readers can also submit pictures for photo contests, etc.

Southwest Airlines:

Southwest does a great job of creating a community of loyal followers. Their Twitter feed is constantly updated with information on flights, contests and soliciting feedback. Read one of their latest Tweets:

Live in DC area? 1st 25 to DM me spend SAT night in NYC w/ guest! Flight & hotel on us! Flight is SAT from BWI! Rules: http://bit.ly/2l1IIF

They also frequently Tweet responses to their followers – a great way to create conversations as opposed to pushing messages of promotions, etc.

Southwest has a really great blog that is full of multimedia content to engage their followers. They post a number of pictures to their Flickr page - of destinations they fly to, their employees and their planes. Because they host on Flickr, flyers can also put up their own pictures and add them to the Southwest page.

They also keep a reoccurring poll on their blog that solicits feedback from their blog readers.

The blog features videos and text entries – both feature user comments.

The Idea Hub

We all have ideas - our world is and always will be built on them.

Some have been revolutionary: (think: laptops). Some have made our lives easier (think GPS devices). Some make us really happy (think: Oreos). And some we mock - but secretly enjoy (think: the Snuggie)

So how do most of these ideas come to fruition? Some might be carefully crafted after spending hours on end in a conference room. Others may be spontaneous thoughts we come up with during our daily jog. And for just about anyone, the Internet is a common tool we can all use to craft and execute our ideas.

A budding entrepreneur for example can use the Internet to seek advice from online forums on a company slogan. A band can connect with other musicians on music sites to bounce band names off of each other.  A daughter can post “Need Mother’s Day gift ideas” on her Twitter feed and wait for responses from her peers. While all of these niche sites are great – what if, for example, the entrepreneur can help the musicians come up with an amazing idea? Or, suppose the musicians can help the daughter with her Mother’s Day gift?

The “Idea Hub” website will be a centralized source for anyone, anywhere to access ideas and advice about anything. Seem vague? That’s the point. The Idea Hub will be for the mother who needs advice on her child’s birthday party, the small business owner who wants to gauge the reaction of a logo or a high school student in India who needs advice on US colleges. Users can log onto the Idea Hub and connect with like-minded individuals for advice and ideas on just about anything they can imagine.

Logistics:

The site will be organized category – and will include a myriad of topics such as:

• Gift ideas
• Party themes (by age)
• Recipes  
• Corporate slogans
• Band or business names
• Logos
• Home décor
• Fashion
• Books

If a category is not listed, the user has the option to start a new forum to share new ideas.

Imagine: the Craigs List of idea building and sharing!

Multimedia:

The Idea Hub will of course not be as mundane as a site like Craigs List. Depending on the category a visitor is accessing, a user can share photos and videos with each other.

Some examples:

A user wants recipe ideas for their next tapas party, he can login to the Idea Hub, sort ideas by the ‘recipes’ category, search for tapas and find photos that compliment various threads of advice/input from other users.  

A small business owner is trying to design his company logo. He can sort by the ‘corporate branding’ category and load up a preview photo of his proposed logo. From there he can gauge the reactions and tweak/alter the logo based on their feedback. Because the Idea Hub has a broad audience – he can have inputs from anyone – graphic designers, other business owners, kids – and who knows what will transpire from their creativity. 

Politico 44: where is the news?

I have to admit that until this assignment, I was not aware of Politico 44. After reading the site for the past couple of days, I think I get the gist and drew a few conclusions:

• More links in the Whiteboard – I get what happened, but where is the additional information?
• Great, I know Obama and Biden’s schedule – now what?
• Effective to link to other news content in the Speed Read – adds credibility
• Great place for up to the minute information – site is constantly updated
• Too much unnecessary scrolling
• Awkward archives – needs to be more visible to readers

I definitely think the site fulfills the needs of today’s on-the-go, two minute attention span news readers. While I do not necessarily agree with just reading a headline to stay attuned to current events, the majority of news seekers do not seem to have the attention span or time to read an entire article.

Whiteboard:
I think the Whiteboard is Politico’s answer to keep people informed with up to the minute news. My one peeve – where is the news in this? Right now for example I am reading the Whiteboard and see the following snippets of information:

GIBBS BRIEFING -- DEFENDING HEALTH CARE REFORM: Gibbs the "public option" in health care "is nothing more than the ability to provide more choice through competition." (2:59 p.m.)

Major Garrett asks if detainees are being read Miranda rights in Afghanistan. "I think I need a little more information," Gibbs says. (3:06 p.m.)

Asked what Obama is "inflexible" on in health care reform, Gibbs doesn't bite: "The president is going to watch what happens on Capitol Hill." (3:10 p.m.)

In the town hall tomorrow, Gibbs says Obama will talk about, "not just the case for reform...but how we improve the way health care is delivered."

Message on a public health care plan: "Increasing choice through competition is important." (3:16 p.m.)

More after the jump... GIBBS BRIEFING -- FROM THE TOP: Robert Gibbs opens his briefing with yet another special guest -- Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, who's there to talk about the DTV switchover. (2:16 p.m.)

What if I want some more information? How can someone possibly know what happened – or form an opinion on it - by reading 20 words on an issue? I understand that the Whiteboard is a product of new trends, though I think it should have some links where readers can find more information or an article that delves further into these small bits of information. Also, I could probably get over this if the Whiteboard had more substance, but I’m not a huge fan of the amount of scrolling you have to do to read the page.

Calendar:
Maybe I am being too critical but I kind of wonder what the value is in having the calendar tool. If the intent of a blog is to provide a wealth of information – what is the point of knowing what they are doing at the time or adding the calendar tool to my own site (via the sharing tool) – especially when the monthly calendar does not have any information on it?

The Speed Read:
I like this – I think it is nice that Politico is streaming content from other news sites. And, it follows a format that makes sense for this kind of blog – include a small piece of the article and link it to all of the information.

Up to the minute information:
It is definitely a current blog – it’s kind of funny how current has a completely new definition these days. What used to mean every day, then meant every hour and now means every 30 seconds. Politico 44 is constantly updated with multimedia content – for example, shortly after the shooting at the Holocaust museum, Politico 44 had video from Gibbs’ press conference.

Lots of scrolling:
This seems so trivial but it gets so frustrating when you have to keep scrolling down a page. I like sites that include information at the top and lets the reader click for more information – I think Politico 44 could follow this same format and retain more readers. Realistically, I will not know they have a story on JP Morgan and TARP because unless I scroll to the bottom of the page (doubtful) I would never find it.

Awkward archives:
For a blog, access to archives is extremely important primarily because content is so constantly updated. On Politico 44, a visitor needs to scroll all the way to the bottom to access specific categories such as information on Biden, specific policies, etc. I think these categories need to be more easily accessible for site visitors.

Overall – it is not a bad site – I just question what the point of some of their tools are. It’s almost as if they are using multimedia just for the sake of using multimedia.

Some questions I have after analyzing the site:

Do you think other news sites will format their content similar to the Whiteboard or a Twitter feed? What value does this offer people – if we just include a small piece of information?

And, on a broader scale, is multimedia content – news in the form of video podcasts, etc. – more valuable in communicating information? Does this have the same or better effect on audiences?

powerful politics

The 2008 election redefined politics - not just because of the historic results - but also because it was the first election that was so widely reported on the Internet. Websites that reported on the election updated their sites minute by minute (in some cases) to share information with interested audiences.

Much like a candidate will not be able to win an election without successfully using the Internet, a publication will not be able to report on an election without an effective website. During the fall semester I took a class titled Digital Campaigns and we studied the Internet closely to learn how publications used the Internet to report on the election. After studying some sites closely, I came to realize what (from a project perspective) I think are some important components to a political site:

Creating a conversation and initiating discourse:

I think it is important for sites to engage their readers - after all, that is one of the beauties of the Internet isn't it? We can share our views and opinions with others by leaving a comment on a site, linking to related articles or uploading our own multimedia work (ie videos, photos, etc). I really liked the CNN iReport site - they still keep this up now, but throughout the election this tool was incredibly effective in allowing citizens send in videos about issues they cared about and their perspective on the candidates. And, for sites as widely followed as CNN, candidates could reference some of this user generated content to address issues that the public cares about.

Be consise and keep the page organized:

When it comes to politics, staying consise is key. I used to reference Talking Points Memo pretty often during the election because while there was obviously a wealth of content to report on during the election, they organized their site in a concise way and I was able to access information quickly. If there was a topic I needed additional information on, I can easily click on a story for additional information.

Use related content, keep it updated, have some 'top stories' and let us search quickly:

These seem like pretty basic features but they really go a long way when it comes to political coverage. I like Chris Cillizza's 'The Fix' blog - he keeps the top stories easily accessible via links on the left pane. He has a search bar that allows anyone to retrieve stories using basic terms (because he catagorizes entries with general words), enables searching by category, links to related political blogs and has an email subscription tool.

And though there are a number of sites with these same components - I just wanted to call attention to a few that executed some effective political projects prior to, during and following the election.