Your feedback is welcome: New authors, process, upgrades and other admin goodness
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Hi all,
I just wanted to write a small note about recent behind-the-scenes activities at GnW.
There are many other professionalesque blogs in the country now covering it and telecom, but unfortunately very few of them provide valuable insight or discussion… most of them exist only to capitalize on sensational news with adsense-based revenue.
Adsense loves traffic but doesnt care if the website is even functional as a community – so sites like these focus heavily on heavy-keyword density SEO-oriented posts with lots of masala and calculated controversial writing to get hundreds of people through to the site and onwards to click the ads which are otherwise littering the sites.
We didnt want to be forced to go down this path, and have always wanted to write about the issues from an analytical point of view (which always has lower "keyword" density than would be SEO friendly). For example, a very recent post "IT on the verge of decline?" had a lot of repetitions of "Information Technology" as a keyword and a controversial headline but next to no insight, so the post was almost immediately deleted.
Our strategy has attracted large brand-name advertisers to form relationships with us directly because of the relevance of the site, and we’re thankful to people such as Symantic, Dell, Intel, Telenor, Mkrf, and others for choosing us as a platform to be a partner of.
In this spirit, the first thing I want to tell you is that we’ll continue running a content management publication that is based on building strategic partnerships on new ideas (like Startup Insiders) that people want to connect with and be a part of. Its just a much more healthy way of building a brand and a business around it.
In light of keeping a high standard here, recently we’ve been focusing more on our backend process. We got Saad as a fulltime editor here, he have a number of fulltime writers in training these days, and we’ve created a pretty neat real-time story management process and system that everyone is using now. It’s pretty cool because we’re literally funneling all the public info and chatter from across the paki-web into one real-time infostream that everyone can track, comment and collaborate on. Hopefully you’ll be able to see good results from it in time.
We’ve also begun working on the long-overdue upgrade to GnW… this isnt just a technology upgrade. We’re currently building partnerships with companies to introduce new activities and items on the site (just like the BumpIn live widget that was added recently), and talking to people in the community to figure out the content direction, types of sections on the site etc.
We’re also working a brand new thing that I hope will become a major part of your daily reading… should be announcing that within a couple of weeks.
And ofcourse, we’re going to stay extremely firm to our original vision that we want the community of supporters to be incharge here taking it forward. All the previous contributors like Mansoor, Sohaib (reallyvirtual), Salman Munir etc have been made contributing editors and have been brought into the inner circles of what we’re doing.
If you also want to be a part of the community helping us take gnw forward feel free to email me at osama@greenwhite.org and we’ll take it from there.
Also feel free to email me with any criticism or feedback. Remember to be fair though – very harsh criticism deserves to go in a private email, balanced stuff can go in the comments.
3:23 pm
Two areas where GW can go: marketplace and knowledge base. Imagine what you’d need to launch a software development shop or a call centre (in other words: a modern office) and create a marketplace where people who need those services can go.
For example, whenever I receive an inquiry about good places to set up IT operations, I always recommend Pakistan but I have no solid data on key inputs needed, such as office space. GW could start listing office space for rent that has access to high-bandwidth connections (T1/E1 and up). Include prices – for transparency and to help with rapid feasibility analysis. GW can imitate Craigslist and charge for listings.
You could include other ingredients such as equipment leasing, hosting services, and branch out from there.
Allow your members to provide comments and for the membership to mod (rate) comments up and down. When there is a product or service that makes your life easier, don’t you want to talk about it?
Allow advertising in your marketplace so that vendors can offer special discounts and let readers know about special products, services and features. Vendors will benefit from advertising on GW because of the highly targeted viewers.
A knowledge base may sound like a lot of work when you first think about it. But that’s what community-based wikis are for. Let your audience do the work, with GW serving as the rational moderator.
For example, if I’m recommending xyz location, I want to be able to quickly have access to current information on taxes. Have you ever tried to find tax info online in an easy to read format? Good luck.
On the example of taxes, GW will find that tax authorities will participate in your knowledge base because it makes their job easier. It will also force them to come out from behind their bureaucratic walls and communicate in plain language.
The main part of GW (the part we see today) should continue as a news source. But GW can and should set up a structure for capturing and managing info of a less transient nature. Some of it will be of a technical nature, e.g., how to set up a DNS name server.
Ads on your wiki pages? If the ads were relevant, I would appreciate seeing them.
Last but now least, one issue on usability is the issue of font colours. As someone who, like 10% of American men, has some form of colourblindness, I find low-contrast fonts hard to read. In the substantive article sections, if GW could strive to maintain high contrast dark black fonts on white backgrounds, that would be great.
6:27 pm
Awesome feedback Anthony – thanks!
5:54 pm
GreenWhite is doing a great job.
Is it possible if you could make the tags available in a cloud form? currently they take a very long vertical space on the screen.
1:05 am
Nimble – thanks for the feedback… definitely we’ll be doing that
7:04 pm
Hey there Osama,
I think hiring Saad Khan fulltime was a much needed push for G&W for more frequent coverage. My suggestion would be to start something like crunchbase.com for the local industry. The idea would be to have a snapshot about any local company. Things like: Who are the key people in the company, what funding do they have, whats their revenue figures, who are their competitors, major milestones. It doesn’t have to be a lot just a listing of what’s what and who’s who.
I’m looking forward to the new layout, the current one is too crowded for my taste. But on the whole, I’m happy with what you’ve done!
Vive la révolution!
10:12 pm
http://www.netgrouping.com