The Community Site has existed for over six months now in which time it has come from nothing to being a thriving hub of activity. In this post I present to you our plans for the next six months. We have so many ideas for improving the site – from live chat to OpenID to social networking – and in the roadmap below we have tried to balance the perceived benefit to the community with our time & resource constraints.
What?
Why?
When?
What?
Why?
When?
How?
What?
Why?
When?
How?
What?
Why?
When?
How?
What?
Why?
When?
How?
What?
Why?
When?
How?
What?
Why?
When?
How?
What?
Why?
When?
How?
What?
Why?
When?
How?
Notes
What?
Why?
When?
How?
What?
Why?
When?
How?
What?
Why?
When?
How?
What?
Why?
When?
How?
What?
Why?
When?
How?
What?
Why?
When?
How?
This entry was posted by Tamlyn Rhodes on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 2:15 pm and is tagged with Roadmap and is posted in the category Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Hmm... some nice ideas, but I also think PN are getting a bit ahead of themselves here too. For example, the whole social networking thing... why not just leave that to the sites that do it best, such as Facebook? I think the idea of integrating external information (such as the last.fm idea) in to people's profiles is alright - although I'm not sure it justifies the development time when there're more important things you could be working on - but trying to get a fully-blown 'social network' going on here is a little OTT, I think.
Similarly, I don't think bringing customer blogs on to the community site is a good idea either. I come to this site for things about PlusNet, not to read its various customers rambling on about things. (I'm not even that keen on the integration of external news from sites such as Engadget.) On the other hand, the '1 click install' of WordPress to a customer's webspace is, IMO, an excellent idea - that way people who don't really know what they're doing can get started very easily.
The chat room and user-generated support pages sound interesting, although I notice that they somewhat duplicate stuff Usertools has been doing already for years now... which means I think PN should consider lessons learnt from that. Namely, that the whole 'tutorials' thing - which 'user-generated support' is basically a duplication of - never really worked out, as evidenced by the fact that a 'tutorials team' doesn't even exist any more. Of course, there is one difference in that people would be encouraged to submit articles ad-hoc rather than join a 'team' to do so first, but still, I have a feeling that most people are too busy to want to write support articles when, arguably, that's the job of the company they pay for their service to some extent. But it might work quite nicely if it has an element of incentivisation - perhaps, say, a month's free internet connection for whatever's the top-rated article one month (which would obviously require a voting system).
In short, I think PlusNet are trying to do too much with this community site - trying to turn it in to a jack of all trades, which will most likely become a master of none. Focus on what the community site can offer which other websites can't - namely, integration with PlusNet and its staff. If I want technology news, I'll always get it elsewhere. If I want to 'socially network' with people, I'll always go elsewhere. But if I want to know what's going on in the world of PlusNet, I'll always come here - unless the site fills up with so many superfluous things that make doing so tiresome.
"people would be encouraged to submit articles ad-hoc rather than join a ‘team’ to do so first"
Also, people would be encouraged to comment on existing articles either to correct inaccuracies, update or expand on content. These comments would then be integrated into the main article by the staff or moderators. Ultimately we want to blur the line a little between staff and customers allowing everyone to contribute in a meaningful manner.
I agree with you about keeping the customer blogs off the community site and I almost removed that entry from the roadmap but decided to leave it in until i find somewhere else to put it!
The social side is interesting. I agree that we could never compete with facebook or myspace for social networking, nor would we want to. However it's true that people have different friends in different areas and for different purposes. The friends I would have on the plusnet community are different from those I have on facebook which are different from the ones I have on flickr, last.fm etc. We already have a community, the social features would exist to allow easier and more natural communication within it. It's not definitely going to happen but I think it's an interesting idea that deserves some attention.
Here at Plusnet we're always trying to use clever open source things to make our lives easier. Sometimes we write our own and make other people's lives easier too!
We sell broadband, phone, VoIP and more to homes and businesses in the UK. Winner of 9 out of 11 Categories in the 2008 USwitch survey. Winner of "Best Consumer ISP" at 2008 ISPA awards. Voted number 1 in the Broadband Choices 2008 survey.
© Plusnet plc All Rights Reserved. E&OE
Community Site News is powered by WordPress
