Perceptions
Promises
- If you build it, they will come. We promise (tacitly) that a good AboutUs page will drive traffic
- Brand Promise to:
- Website owner
- Contributor
- Reader
This is my info
- AboutUs is stealing my content (copy righted or otherwise) and personal information
- If this is open-edit, then anyone can (and will) mess with my page or change my images, just because they can.
- I should be able to protect/lockdown my page/info/photos
Tricksters
- Promised traffic knowing full well I wouldn't get it; I wasted my time
- Hijackers, all my traffic goes away, now I know why
- "Total ripoff of Wikipedia
- Greedy
- Tricksters, fooling vanity searchers into visiting our site, making money off those we trick (Ads)
- Copyrighted material stealers (original bot)
- For profit
- A link farm
Meta concerns about the site
- Immature - Shallow info about lots of domains
- Unfocused - Lots of content, need more features to focus offerings
- Not sure we can pull it off, people see some value; not sure exactly what we do
- Ineffective or Waste of time - not helping me w/traffic, though I took the time, fixed up my page + was a featured site - dissapointing
- Great idea, not well implemented
- Trying to get their act together, but not there yet. Have to be prodded into change.
Confusion about AboutUs
- Hollow - All shell and "no community"
- Many scrapped pages ... very little community generated content
- Think that the AboutUs page is the actual company
- Hard to explain
- Market confusion about our owning domain names that we don't
- No value - what do we bring to the table?
- I heard through the grape vine that aboutus has developed tools for people to easily create their own Wiki page. I don’t easily see where to find these tools, for example under title something like, “Create your own website, that allows all of its visitors to edit and expand its content and structure”.
- Confused about whether aboutus hosts other organizations' Wiki websites? If so this can cause confusion to the customers of these other organizations, because they come to a "branded" website (URL address showing “aboutus”). The organization's customer thinking instead they should be seeing at the URL address, the name of the organization that aboutus is hosting. This involves a political and marketing issue: Which entity gets “branded” and recognized by the populace in a big way? In such regard lots of organizations want their name most prominent in the URL space. Do other organizations have to give up their easily recognized URL name if aboutus is the site host, meaning it must be commingled with the aboutus name in the URL address space?
- Please excuse content placement – I’m not real sure where to put this, under confused?, confused about how aboutus can help or add value to our organization. One example: In the world outside the Wiki community gathering large numbers of like minded people is called “coalition building” and routinely goes on. In effect people are “linked” and form a large group with common project focus – an admittedly “too slow” process today. In the world of atoms and “physical stuff” as apposed to bits and bytes, at the end of the day these groups often seek money to gain progress on their project, and can’t get it. Does aboutus plan to offer one or more solutions to this common “after linking with like minded” process problem?
- We'd very much like to support "coalition building" by bettering the tools for collaboration and helping people self organize on the site. Hopefully this process will help those seeking to raise money, etc. Ray | talk
AboutUs is unimportant
- Insignificant, and "eddy" in the internet river. 60K visitors per day isn't much different from 0 (in terms of a head start)
- Overrated - publicly accessible info (Whois). Open source platform (MediaWiki). Anyone can do the same
Wikipedia and Longtail
- An extention of Wikipedia. People are new to the whole idea - but know Wikipedia and assume the same
- Champions of the Longtail. A place for the little folks!
- More open than Wikipedia
- The next Google - said by others, but not a goal of ours
Staff, accessibility, ease of interaction, helpfulness and presence
- Friendly and helpful - when you are needing help, you get it
- Helpful and friendly
- They're friendly
- Accessible, can call Ray, the CEO directly. Also lots of staff in the IRC room
SEO tool
- Necessary SEO stop
- Place to go for SEO - necessary for SEO
Functionality, ease of use, utility
- finding info / editing it
- A great research tool
- Finding related sites via category is AWESOME
- Easier to edit than my own site
