Find Buffalo Blog

Yesterday I wrote on my frustration with Topix in trying to give them the user generated content they’re after. As stated, I contacted them after posting this and here is what took place:

• My email to Topix.com support was responded to within an hour and after trading a few replies my submitted story was posted.
• It sounded like (what they responded with) the main reason was the lack of a human editor for the Buffalo, MN news page, proving that even with all the glitz and glam of technology, it still takes human power to make things work correctly. I could really expand on this as human gathering, editing, approval and attention is the key to any great local website … but I’ll save that for another day.
• Lastly I choose to become part of the solution and submitted to be the editor for Buffalo, MN news. Within an hour I was approved … so let my duties begin.

Overall, I’m still not impressed with what had to take place to get this to happen. Isn’t the hard part of any business model, service or product getting people to engage the first time? Making a great first impression should be a major priority. Many users I feel would not have contacted them and their contribution would have sat dormant and that would be the last time they tried to participate or contribute. I was impressed with the timely replies to my emails and the quick resolution on their end … so it seems their customer service is in place to bail them out.

Topix.com has been redesigned and moved from it’s (dot)net domain to (dot)com. They reportedly paid 1 million dollars for that. Along with the redesign was the goal to get more local news contributors. I looked at it as a way to promote FindBuffalo and put better content on their site. Win - win I thought.

I made my way into the Buffalo, MN section (view here) and submitted my recap of the Buffalo Bison boys basketball state championship, submitted a photo and gave them all the info their form asked for … and then ….. nothing. I have not received an email, the story has not been posted … no contact of any sort. Why? I can’t tell you. Surely they would be interested in posting an original story and photo on the biggest things to happen in Buffalo in the last decade … thats what great local news is all about right?

They got me all the way to the end, had me put in the effort to participate, and then left me with nothing. What a bad experience. I’m sending them an email to their info address and we’ll see what happens with that. Stay tuned.

Over the span of the young life of the internet and websites, different things have taken the driver seat and been in control of where the buzz is at and where things are headed. From portals, to chat, to e-commerce, to search … new functionality has come along that captivated users, built passion and sent the masses of web staff scrambling to capture that buzz for themselves. By all signs, today’s driver is video.

More people are making videos, more people are sharing videos, more sites are showcasing video. USA Today featured an article today, Magazines start studios to join online video craze, in which the likes of Time and TV Guide are forming production groups to bring video content to users. Just one more example of how the holders and sellers of content are diversifying how that content is communicated. Just one form is no longer adequate. Don’t just print your story and take a few photos, but take along a film crew and create a video segment as well. Readers/users/watchers want a muli faceted experience and want the ability to see every angle, through a variety of mediums. As a constant consumer of news, articles and media … I’m all for it.

This all led me to think even more about video on FindBuffalo. This would be a strong differentiator … as the local newspaper, the local radio station, the city website … none of them … offer anything close to local content in video format. Whether it be an edited, overview of the city council meetings or the roving reporter on the street getting local thoughts on hot issues/topics. While video is not my forte, I would say I need to find a few opportunities to expose this advantage. I welcome any ideas.

Since FindBuffalo launched I’ve been visiting DMOZ.org daily to submit my site to be added to Buffalo, MN. I also had the intentions to become an editor for the Buffalo, Minnesota section. I can’t do either. Both “URL submission” and “become an editor” have been out of commission since October upon my research of other blogs and news posts. For the longest time this was the first stop on the internet to submit a site and let the world know “I’m here”. It has long been a trusted, human made directory. Some suggest that part of the issue lies in the number of sites being submitted daily in ratio to the number of editors (speculated at millions of sites to be reviewed by thousands of editors). Others sugest that DMOZ is permanently dead for one reason or another.

I don’t know what to believe, but each day I hit up the site hoping they are back, hoping to submit my site.

I’m out in Colorado this week for a conference on the content mangement solution (SMC) that FindBuffalo.com is built on. I’ll offer more on that but I did want to drop a few notes here on what the community portal scene is like out here in the Aspen area. When you have a community like Aspen that is somewhat secluded from other areas and has a unique offering like being a travel destination and a ski destination you have a great recipe for portal success. You have a local community with desire to stay connected and a large number of people looking to come into the area to ski, shop, dine and see the Mountains.

My first find is the Chamber of Commerce website. The internet has obviously had a major impact on access to a chamber’s information and many chambers run their site much like a portal. Besides a community calendar, business directory and other info, the Aspen Chamber also offers online booking for lodging … now that’s a portal!

Next I find AspenClassifieds.com, run by a local web design company. The site is focused on classifieds but also offers  a business directory, lodging info and local employment.  This site does offer some good info but the visual effort seems minimal … not the best advertising for this web form if you ask me.
As well, there are tons of regional and national travel sites grabbing the search results for Aspen due to it’s offering and reputation, but the local sites are where it’s at.  Local portals, hard at work trying to deliver the local scoop.

Since I started blogging about FindBuffalo and other internet musings, my spotting around to other blogs has increased about 400% (very solid stat). I used to read a few blogs every now and then … and I still remember the first bog I came across, Mark Cuban’s BlogMaverick. I’ve found some other good ones over time, Gigaom had cred with me as I’m a big Business 2.0 fan.

So now I’m in deeper and I find myself consuming just blogs “on the rocks”. I’ll get on the laptop and just bounce from blog to blog, just running with whatever catches my eye. I don’t even dare mix in a plain website … no Yahoo or ESPN, no StarTrib or CSS Mania, just straight up blog. I can’t help myself and I don’t think I want to. I just want to soak up the knowledge, the angles, the purpose and shape of each post. So intoxicating. I’m too skitzo on what really energizes me right now but I’m sure I’ll find a way to give some shout outs to those that compel me to push ideas out. I know I could BlogRoll them, but it seems so empty to me not to attach why I deem them worthy of mention. I’ll figure out something … until then I’ll continue to enjoy in moderation or abusive amounts.

Thank you for indexing me last night sometime between 12:00am and 6:00am.  I have been waiting for you for days.  How did you finally reach me?  Was it a link from another site?  Was it the request for indexing I submitted to you?  Was it the PR (see post below) that came across your news desk?

It sure would be helpful if I knew how you found me.  Maybe you should consider sending me an email, educating me on this process. But the important thing is we are together now and you can start to know my every move and offering.  I do hope this relationship is a wonderful one.

p.s. - I know you and Yahoo aren’t exactly friends, but could you mention to her that I exist?

Thanks!

As with all projects the second you launch them it seems as if you missed things all over the place. Maybe that is just me and speaks to my BETA testing skills. I created a “Hot 5″ list of things that need to be corrected, tweaked and looking into and I think I’ll keep that as a weekly thing. If things move along and more items are shored up then I can extend it to be a monthly list. Nothing life threatening though …

The other piece here is waiting to get indexed. If this blog had generated some readers this is where I would ask for your 2 cents. Since it will be me reading this a few times to make sure I have no major errors in spelling … I can’t answer my own question. I have 2 sites linking to my home page right now so hopefully Google and Yahoo will crawl one of those and end up here. I submitted to the big dogs of search so hopefully they will come soon. I feel like I’m sitting on hold with some 800 support service, waiting to exist.

Well, after about 8 months of planning and work FindBuffalo.com is viewable to the world. This is a 2 man, grass roots project … and hopefully we’ll find a volunteer or two along the way. The next month or so to end 2006 will be spent working out the bugs, putting good ideas to work and getting things ship-shape. The site is built on the Site Management Console from Intrcomm Technology and it is a great hosted CMS. I have worked with the SMC for 5 years now and truly believe in it’s abilities, flexibility, scalability and most of all, ease of use. My job (FindBuffalo.com is a hobby) utilizes this system to build our websites and it services everything from banking sites to e-commerce.

Not a soul knows about this site so we will be building a brand and user following from nothing. I’m extremely interested to see how some of the SEO tactics I’ve put together perform. I’m sure I’ll be blogging about that plenty. Thats enough for post number one, on day number one. Cheers to the future.

Site Users on 12.7.06: ZERO
Sites linking to FindBuffalo.com: 2