As a matter of fact, I am funny. That's why they call me Mr. Funny.
Web Informant #113, 2 June 1998
What becomes a community most?
When the web first got started (it seems so long ago, but we are only talking a
few years), everyone was talking about Community. The notion was that
having a place to hang your HTML would foster a sense of belonging or
purpose as well as serve as a way to attract visitors to your site and keep them
coming back for more. That was the idea, anyway.
But a very different kind of community is being used by some of the better
web sites these days. Rather that create the electronic equivalent of a "be-in"
(for those of you too young to remember, these were mass rallys of the 60's to
increase awareness of The Issues), this new notion of community works from
the outside in. Sites make extensive use of personalization and data-driven
webs to attract and keep visitors. Here are three examples:
-- www.wirelessdimension.com, a site that will help you pick the right
cellular carrier meeting your particular criteria,
-- www.scorecard.org, a site developed by Phil Greenspun for the
Environmental Defense Fund that tracks chemical polluters in your
neighborhood, and
-- www.ipxstream.com, a site that tracks recent developments in IP
Telephony, run by "Broadband Bob" for the CATV Cyberlab.
Those of you that have tried to price cellular plans know that it isn't easy:
while it is nice to have choices, the market is far too confusing for anyone to
make much sense of it all. I recently spent the better part of a morning to try
to help my mother-in-law buy a phone and pick a plan. I limited myself to a
single shopping mall in suburban Virginia -- there were no fewer than 10
different retail outlets to buy phones and sign up for service. The kicker for
me was getting what I thought was the same carrier's brochure from two
different stores -- only to find that the prices inside the brochure were
different!
So wirelessdimension serves a good purpose by cutting through the confusion
surrounding the different cellular options. It isn't perfect: they don't yet
provide information on roaming areas nor do they list roaming surcharges
(which can add up to quite a bit of dough if you travel), although the
company assures me they are working on these enhancements.
The second site, Chemical Scorecard, also speaks towards reducing the data
clutter. They help those of us concerned about what is being dumped into our
backyards. In addition to searching the Superfund and other federal
databases, the site has some nifty features where you can send form letters to
the offending corporate officials.
Finally, IP xStream puts together a great deal of information about IP
Telephony issues, including the progress of standards, listings of net-based
resources, and various regulations around the world concerning voice over IP.
The site also has a subscription service where visitors can sign up and receive
the latest news via email, similar to my own modest efforts here with Web
Informant.
All three sites are very different, but they accomplish some of the same goals:
they allow visitors to quickly find information, and make it easy to do so in a
way that is personal or speaks to one's particular circumstances. For example,
if you want to search for a cellular plan or find out the largest local polluter,
you can quickly focus in on a particular metropolitan area. The cellular site
shows instantly the results of your criteria, so you can decide whether you
have too few or too many choices to pick from, and you can compare service
plans side by side on screen or print them out.
As I said earlier, this is a very different notion of community from what we
were all predicting back in the early days of the web. Sure, there are plenty of
sites that offer up chat rooms or discussion forums, and these have some
attraction and draw. But being able to personalize a site and find the relevant
information that meets your own needs is a powerful tool, and one that will
motivate me to come back for further exploration.
Self-promotions dep't
This essay comes to you via Tokyo, where I am teaching my two-day
eCommerce tutorial at the Interop show. Coincidentally, this morning I was
able to pick up a copy of the Daily Yomiuri, which carried my Portals
column in its Cyberworld pages. While I have been writing many hundreds of
articles over the years for a wide variety of publications, I must tell you it was
quite a thrill to see my own work published so far from home.
yomiuri.co.jp
David Strom
david@strom.com
938 Port Washington Blvd., Port Washington NY 11050
+1 (516) 944-3407
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entire contents copyright 1998 by David Strom, Inc.
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