Viral AboutUs Vision
Contents
October 2008 email exercise
Ahsen asked:
I visit AboutUs because...
- It is the best place to find clear and concise information about any particular website, which is especially helpful in the case of companies or products.
- I want to find and share constructive information mostly about businesses/websites.
- I visit AboutUs because when I am looking for a site that “does” something, I get better results than Google
- I visit AboutUs because you know it's a place to describe the websites and people I care about.
- I can find quick and useful information about every website.
- It shows up high in searches, but not always first. And, like products on shelves, I never choose the first item.
- It turns up in my search results
- I visit AboutUs because it is a top search engine result and I thought I was going to the website itself, not AboutUs.org.
- I visit AboutUs because it is a top search engine result and I was curious what it was.
- I want to keep my company information up to date and useful.
- I want to know more about a site that requires me to share personal data, before sharing that data with it.
- It's pretty
- Green is my favorite color!
- Its a place where I can share my ideas without any hassle.
- I can find more summarized information about a site than on the site itself.
- I can find information that I can't on the website itself.
- It presents data about websites more clearly and consistently than the sites themselves do.
- I feel its going to become the de facto standard for About Us pages on the web and I like being on the cutting edge of stuff.
Purpose of the Exercise
To coalesce an articulated vision for AboutUs.
27 May 2008 Meeting
We had a series of 20 minute small group conversations in both Lahore and the US to complete the statement: "I come to AboutUs & stay because..."
The statements we came up with
I come to the AboutUs website to ...
- read and write about myself and about you.
- promote organizations and products I care about.
- praise or constructively critique in public a company I'm doing business with.
- get in touch with people that have dealt with a company I am going to do business with.
- find summarized view of companies and sometimes information that's missing on the original website
- obtain business intelligence
- collaborate in an industry group
- organize my piece of the web (personal interest groups)
- build my business' web 2.0 presence
- to connect/collaborate with others who share my passions (it serves the function of a yahoo chat group)
- to build a global marketplace for business, organizations, and ideas (the Internet's farmer's market ... show us your wares)
- to become a web presence expert
- to learn how websites, businesses, etc are engaging in web 2.0 sphere
- to find the real views about any website and business,
Next steps
- Have another meeting on Friday at 10am PST to distill the above sentences into basic statements of vision for the site.
- Once we have several possible directions, let's apply some filters to each vision.
Possible Filters
- Who's the audience?
- Can we manage the risk?
- Can we accomplish it?
- Are we inspired by it?
- Does it take advantage of what got us this far?
