Having gotten back to my reporting ways, one common refrain I heard: you guys are not exposing the network content as effectively as you should. We do a round-up post every day, but apparently that is not enough. We also have a “recent posts from the network” block in the sidebar. Is there a better way of exposing the best stuff from our network of blogs? Looking forward to hearing from you.
How about using a digg-like concept. Let the readers rate the item. And then we could have a separate section on the side that shows sorted top rated items on different time frames – past 1 day, 7 days, 1 month and so on.
You are heavily focused on broadband, Mobile, Gaming, VOIP. I know they are dear to you, in my opinion these topics do not really resonate with general audience.
If you want to be mainstream audience more coverage should go into Office 2.0, Web 2.0, Networking 2.0, Enterprise 2.0.
You should take advantage of your journalism background to bring down some of the FUD being generated by the vendors and some of the A list bloggers.
4.You have no product review section. At least one review per week in a specific product category.
5.Your home page in the morning should clearly give all the latest news in the market place with your own twist.
I would love to see more coverage on enterprise applications, saas etc. For example coverage on upcoming Netsuite ipo. Analysis on the Netsuite S-1. How it compares with Salesforce when they filed for ipo. Anyalysis and views from blogs that cover these kinds of topics would be very valuable.
Hopefully you’ll hear from the people who said that but the options you offer seem to cover the obvious possibilities.
Do you have something more specific to work with than a vague general statement like “you guys are not exposing the network content as effectively as you should” which doesn’t really tell you much?
Folks,
thanks for the feedback. i have been trying to write on different topics, though have stayed away fro SAAS/Enterprise Software type stuff, since those are areas where I have no obvious strength.
Regardless, I think you guys do have a good point, and Ramana thanks for reminding me about the reviews. I want to do those, just sometimes put them on the back burner.
I will try and be more “timely” as they say.
Clyde,
I have been trying to show case what’s on our other sites. Basically where I don’t write as much, but other writers are doing a bang up job. People have told me that, “oh we didn’t know that foundread.com or webworkerdaily.com were part of your network.” So that is something i am trying to fix.
Secondly, I have to admit that i tend to default to the areas of my strength than rest of the market, which i guess is an effective way of dealing with lack of time.
I loved “Om and Nial sessions”.
A diggnation-like podcast that sums up of what has happened throughout the network during the week would be much appreciated!
“People have told me that, “oh we didn’t know that foundread.com or webworkerdaily.com were part of your network.” So that is something i am trying to fix.”
Om, you may want to consider building a widget that pulls together content from all your blog networks and displaying them prominently on the front page (go to http://www.realtimematrix.com to see an example of a Techcrunch vortex powered by ij.am.). Let me know if we can help pull something like this together for GigaOM.
Hi Om,
Since we last met, we’ve evolved our widgets to what we call a “vortex” for just this purpose. We just launched one for TechCrunch to resolve with a similar issue – consolidate multiple blogs to a single interactive module showing the most recent content. Users can tune it and copy it straight to their Netvibes or iGoogle page. We will be unveiling the iJ.am “configurator” at the TechCrunch party 7/27 which will enable anyone to create their own. Happy to create one for you in the mean time – give me a call.
Jeff
couple of thoughts to share:
the left column sidebar is too thin, so it doesn’t provide for easy headline reading, and it’s easy to completely miss the module for recent posts around the network. that’s probably the bulk of the problem.
separate modules for each network site (always displayed or randomly selected) would help emphasize each sites specific topical nature
as a random aside, i’m not sure i get why broadband, mobile, voice are gigaom topics, but video (newteevee) and lifestyle(web worker?) are independent web sites. so the double navigation at the top kinda throws me, and i don’t click on it usually…
hope this helps, and keep it up.
Om, I get what you’re up to. I was confused cause it seemed like you were asking for feedback but you’ve got the mixed feed of recent posts which is already basically a widget and you’ve got the network site links.
If anything, you could make them more prominent. For example, the Recent Posts header and the other headers could be even darker. The site links near the top could be a bit bigger.
It seems like you’re on top of it and maybe the fact that you’re getting content suggestions is evident that your longtime readers (I’m new) are now satisfied on this issue.
I’m certainly satisfied!
I personally think you should set up a network site (perhaps gigaomnimedia.com) that shows nothing but some of the latest posts from around the network. Somewhere where I can just quickly come to in the morning and catch up on some of the news from around the industry.