June 22nd, 2009
Last week, we launched a Web site that has undergone quite a makeover. RockfordWoman.com still has print magazine content, but that’s really just complementary to three major components: social networking, shopping and news.
Why did we do this? We wanted to create a safe, smart, sophisticated community for influential local women.
This is what Linda Grist Cunningham and I wrote for the current issue of the magazine.
You’ve probably seen the ads in the newspaper for the new site; they started appearing Sunday. We also will run a story in Friday’s GO section to remind you. And we are pushing to the site from rrstar.com.
I am getting a sore wrist from approving users: We’re up to around 80 now. I’ve been pleased by the interest and diverse backgrounds. On the Web, I am reminded of the same thing I encounter with the magazine: We have so many great women in the Rock River Valley!
February 20th, 2009
Web sites, just like ours, have terms of service.
Let’s just say Facebook changed its “TOS,” setting off a frenzy of people worried that Big Bro declared the right to own their content forevermore. An L.A. Times story puts it this way:
In this case, users weren’t content to hand Facebook the rights to their personal data. They also were unsatisfied by a (CEO Mark) Zuckerberg blog post Monday that many thought amounted to “just trust us.” Users carried out their protests on the website, using the tools Facebook provides for posting blog entries and rallying around causes.
Facebook since has pulled back while it considers what to do next.
I found pretty good points of view from the New York Times.
A pretty good summary of what has happened is here, as well as a lesson. See below.
… why would anybody pay more attention to Facebook’s terms of service than to the other contracts we casually accept? Who reads the roughly 17,500-word “terms and conditions” contract governing Apple’s iTunes Store before buying a song? Who digests Microsoft’s nearly 5,500-word license for Windows Vista before booting up a new PC?
For that matter, how many home buyers read in full the terms of their mortgages before signing stacks of settlement documents?
A company might be understood, if not forgiven, for thinking that people have gotten out of the habit of reading contracts.
Not for the first time, Facebook has learned otherwise. The company, however, can scrape some good out of this debacle by setting a better example.
It’s started things off well by prominently flagging its changed terms of use in a headline atop users’ home pages. The company is also inviting users to contribute to the next set of terms; the group Facebook set up for that purpose drew more than 30,000 users in the first 12 hours.
But their input shouldn’t be limited to providing ideas that Facebook can grind into the usual legalistic sludge. The company should post a draft of its next terms for members to work over.
Wired offers another lesson:
The way through is clear. Craft the legalese to protect the website, but include the comic book version of Moby Dick. Make it very clear what happens when and if someone quits. And regardless, users should know that anything that gets put up on Facebook is likely to survive whatever deletion the site might honestly undertake in hindsight — it’s the nature of the internet to remember the worst.
And perhaps more importantly, sites need make it easy for people to delete everything if they so choose. Few will, but giving the option prevents posts like the Consumerist’s from turning into a tedious three-day media affair.
P.S. Loved this headline: “About-Facebook…”
February 19th, 2009
Have you ever heard of Kachingle? It’s basically an itty-bitty, voluntary tip jar for blog readers to contribute to sites they visit. Click!
This has come up ever since much buzz has been made over how to save newspapers, including micropayment on the Web.
The Newsosaur (an “old” journalist exploring our “new” clothing) says the math just won’t add up. Meaning the revenue would barely pay for a handful of reporters, basically.
February 11th, 2009
Last week, our editor blogged about the Time article about “how to save your newspaper.” Some of it suggests that if there were an easy micropayment system, to “use as you go,” that the media could benefit.
This week, there’s a suggestion out there that newspapers should cease posting news to their Web sites for a week so that people would understand their value. A petition, actually. It certainly would pain Google and Yahoo, who feed all those headlines to their users.
Actually, there’s been a bunch of reaction to that Time story. Notably, Jon Stewart from “The Daily Show” suggests we use addictive ink. And an opinion that “news by the slice” won’t cut it.
September 9th, 2008
For an hour this afternoon, all of our Web sites were down because of a problem with the online system we use to publish content. We are back up now. Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.
September 9th, 2008
Our Web sites are down right now. If some of you come to this blog from means other than our rrstar.com home page, you might not know this. The company that provides our online system is working to fix the problems, which have brought down most of our sister sites, too.
