community Archive

Earlier this week I sat down with Girl Ambition co-founder Hilary DeCesare. The service is launching to the public today and I was able to capture our interview on video below. Hilary describes the service as, "Girl Ambition includes an inspirational online show, games, contests and other activities that promote self-esteem and teach on-line safety". The real goal is to help tween girls (ages 9-13) feel better about themselves.

The site also offers video hosting and chat/IM. In our discussion, we talk about what makes Girl Ambition different than Club Penguin, what about boys?, how the email service works and online safety. The site also offers information for parents. I wonder if they should explore creating a desktop/Adobe Air application that could make sure the child can’t get out to the full Internet and only live within the Girl Ambition service.

Hilary also noted that MySpace deletes 25,000 profiles a day due to underage use.

Girl Ambition is launching with a multi-faceted business model. Account access is $4.95/month and they also are partnering with a variety of companies on content and sponsorships. I think there’s also a great opportunity for brands to leverage the community for focus groups and product learnings. The company is looking to raise a round of funding currently.

We covered the launch of another niche community last summer named SavvyAuntie. Both SavvyAuntie and Girl Ambition have business models and communities that are supportive and encourage heavy usage. Perhaps Hilary and SavvyAuntie founder Melanie Notkin should partner as there could be some good crossover traffic.

apologies for the sound, the cafe was quiet before we started then the staff decided to prepare for lunch!

We covered the new aunt-community SavvyAuntie when it launched earlier this month. SavvyAuntie reminds me of Dogster in that both are very niche in their user demographic but drive very passionate, loyal users. To learn more about SavvyAuntie, I headed over to their headquarters in NYC and met with founder and Auntrepreneur Melanie Notkin.

Some of the topics we discussed in the video interview below are:

• Who is Melanie Notkin
• What’s SavvyAuntie all about
• What types of content are on SavvyAuntie
• What are you doing to make sure that members who signed up in the initial press buzz continue to remain active in the community
• What’s the business plan
• How do you effectively use your blog to drive traffic but more importantly share your expertise
• Long or Short? (stolen from Wallstrip) Twitter, iPhone, Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Hulu

Melanie says you can follow her on Twitter and she will follow you back unless you tell her that you are looking for a girlfriend – she blocks those people. Thanks Melanie for the time this morning learning about SavvyAuntie!

I was checking out on of my favorite blogs this evening.. that is the one of Chris Messina… and he had a review of BarCamp Portland. In the review he discusses a new comprehensive communications tool (CCT) called Pibb. Now I remember Pibb. My roomate in college loved Mr. Pibb. Oh boy he drank that soda day and night!

Anyway, back to this new Pibb. I have played with this for a bit now and am really impressed. I love the multi-threaded discussions. Pibb is built using the GWT (Google Web Toolkit). This tool looks like a great way to communicate as a team. You can invite people to your Pibb Channel. I could see using this for a new product launch and having multiple streams of discussion within the channel. What's great is that then the tech team can see what's going on in marketing and vice-versa.

I guess I think of it as a very fancy IRC plus a top notch message board.

Chris notes one issue, "Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like there are permalinks available for the transcripts, but I’ve put in a request to the developers who were on-site for such a feature."

And I have one item that I think will hinder their ability to grow quickly/exponentially. It's the forced OpenID requirement. Yes, OpenID is growing, we have it as an option on CN for login. But it should be just that for now. An option. Don't force it on the average non-geeks unless you only want your app to be geek-friendly. Eventually OpenId might become the standard protocol for login services, but for now, offer me a choice.

Update: Chris sent over this quote regarding the OpenID after reading the above, "This app, and the other JanRain projects, are important in that they dispense with archaic siloed user accounts and require the use of the decentralized OpenID authentication system. We'll probably start to see more of this, as we have on AOL's Ficlets."

Here is a screenshot from the BarCamp Channel (Chris has some additional screenshots on Flickr):

Earlier this week, GrandCentral celebrated their one year anniversary of their Project CARE program in San Francisco. The program gives voicemail accounts to homeless people in San Francisco and to-date they have given over 400,000 voicemail messages out. I have no idea how much this costs GrandCentral but it's a great service. With more and more cities removing payphones, this service becomes even more critical.

Craig, GrandCentral CEO notes, "The government can throw tons of money and resources at the homeless problem by providing housing, job training, medical care, etc., but if there’s no way to contact a person to let them know they got the job, or the room became available, or the TB test came back negative, then that money is MUCH less effective than it could be."

I have been in many cities in the U.S. and in Europe and I don't think any city has a worse homeless problem than S.F. It is great to see a startup doing what a big company could have been doing for years. Think about ways you can help your community.

Hats off to Craig and the team! If you want to learn more about GrandCentral, check out my interview from late 2006.

Earlier today Wetpaint announced that they have added the ability for private messaging for their Wiki clients. Now, PBwiki has announced that they have partnered with YackPack to provide a new widget for their Wiki clients called WalkieTalkie.

YackPack has created the WalkieTalkie, a widget that you can install on your PBwiki in about two minutes. Then, each and every human or humanoid who visits that PBwiki of yours can simply click-and-hold the YackPack button and, through the miracle of “Technology,” talk to anyone else visiting the page. It’s like an online virtual intercom and it adds the power of voice to any collaboration.

“There is something magical about hearing someone else's voice,” said Ramit Sethi, PBwiki co-founder. “It takes collaboration to an entirely different level. It's more personal and takes away the OMG FLAMER LAMO stuff that you see on IRC. It brings people closer together.”

With these communication changes, I stand firm that 2007 is more Wiki than Mashup. Of course neither of these tools, Wepaint nor PBwiki are available for install on your server, but only as an ASP model. As I noted to Ben from Wetpaint, they should package it up and offer it for a nominal fee. Just look at Vbulletin for a great example of how this can work.

SoloSEO has launched a variety of new tools to help maximize your MyBlogLog experience. SoloSEO notes, "Our tools go beyond the basic searching and browsing available at MyBlogLog by relying on the networks created between MyBlogLog users and Blog communities." 

The tools include:

• Compare Blog Visitors – want to see if there is overlap between CN and Mash? What about x and y? I like this because you can see which visitors hit your site plus your top competition
• Compare Your Contacts – see which contacts you have in common with other contacts from the same blog
• Compare Community Members – similar to the Compare Blog Visitors above, here they compare the people who have favorited a community with another favorited community
• Common Communities between Contacts – see what other communities your contacts have in common and add them to your list
• Show All Visitors – this tool shows you 6x more visitors than the MBL widget does. Tres cool!
• Add Missing Contacts – find and add missing contacts to your MBL contact list

This is a great example of taking a tool and creating added value from it. Great job SoloSEO!