Wetpaint, AboutUs and users
In the interview with Wetpaint CEO Ben Elowitz two things stuck out in my mind:
a) “What we've found is that the number one most requested feature from Wetpaint over the last couple of months, is private sites”.
b) That Wetpaint is trying to push the “techie stuff” out of the user experience, so as to attract the larger populace.
In regard to both there is lots of “hype” in the Wiki community about giving the average Joe and Jane the tools they need to “do their own thing”, in the way they want to do it. I say “hype” because one should follow the money – where are the development dollars being spent – what is the highest priority? I still don’t see the spending focused on enabling better and richer user interface (from the visitors point of view). Rather I still find that at any Wiki site I visit, aboutus, Wetpaint, PBwiki, etc. – I am too much forced into “their” (back end folks) way of doing this or that, rather than enabling how I want to do it.
One can argue, “Martin, you are an extreme nutball and don’t represent the norm of the larger populace, and we just can’t justify spending money to make it easy on just you”. To that I say, am I really so different than the norm when I ask for:
1. Let me add content to my page(s) without learning code (WYSIWYG is just a start in this direction) 2. Make it waaay easier for me to share graphical “stuff” 3. Mark it waaay easier for me to design my own page layout 4. Make it waaay easier for me to find like minded, relative to my private Wiki 5. Allow me to do what I want on my private Wiki without incurring a learning curve.
Web site start-ups are always trying to figure out how to generate revenue to be self sustaining – and gravitate to the “let’s attract lots of eyeballs so we don’t have to charge our visitors any fees, rather let’s get the money out of our advertisers”. In contrast I am willing to pay a service fee for the above “five”. As one example I suspect that if a person has a passion for this or that, and currently there are only four people with common interest in the virtual space, and you tell them that within a short time you can bring into their virtual space an additional 200,000 people, of like mind and passion – many would be willing to pay for that service – because in the real world getting that many people involved in “your thing” typically takes a huge amount of advertising and marketing money.
In regard to the five points mentioned some suggestions:
Try to give the entity wanting a private web site two basic options:
a) use an existing template, thus no design burden
b) A “real” blank page, with nothing on it. "Then where is one going to put the advertisements that enable the free site?" In such regard I already find Wetpaint cluttering up my private site with too much advertisement space. Keep the adds tiny and out of the way (of course that conflicts with the entities paying for the add space). And again - I am willing to pay a premium not to have all of this add junk on my private Wiki – give me that option.
Once I have my blank page make it very easy for me to create my own page layout and graphics, etc. The web site “homestead.com” I have found, makes this orders of magnitude easier - lots is simple “drag and drop”. Why reinvent this wheel? Perhaps to license the relevant software from this company and integrate.
At my private page let me “brand” my own domain name, rather than “about us”.
Keep the connection stuff “invisible”. Let the software brains figure out how to sift through my private Wiki content to find similarities with other private Wikis – and put this information into some type of common space. As one with a private Wiki site I am willing to let this monitoring occur. Why? I want to see if there are “zillions” of others with my same passion(s) that I do not know about now. Then make it easy for me to invite these others I have found at the common space, to come to our private Wiki space.
Currently I use some private Wiki spaces to communicate with small groups of people for special projects. In such regard I am using PBwiki as the host, because unlike aboutus it has better “WYSIWYG” capability, which makes it easier on the other folks in my group to communicate. I use PBwiki over Wetpaint, because it allows me to erase more of the “junk” I don’t want on the page (much less add space, etc.).
I’d love to use “aboutus” for my private Wiki spaces, but currently I don’t see the relevant tools I need. I also suspect this is because aboutus management does not want to be “another” Wiki hosting web site. However this “not wanting to be” issue begins to bump heads with the issue of, “how does one attract and hold more users?” MartinPfahler
