Should GWW Focus on Content Creators, or Merge?
There's several of us here who create content, some sell content.
We probably are also webmasters, in the true sense, since we webmaster the websites for our own content, our own studios, not (just) blogs and such that have affiliate links to other Client/Sponsor sites.
But as is periodically discussed around the horn, the real number of webmasters has shrunk significantly since 2008, while content creators - including myself - have never really had a good infrastructure to hang out in - and network, buy, sell, trade.
Every once in a while, a webmaster will come on here to promote his new effort. I go to the site, and immediately hit the 2257 statement link. Up pops a phonebook page of listings of entities that have provided the content! Where did they all come from? What's their e-mail?? (ICQ doesn't work on OSX.)
So then, like now, there's chatter that there should be mergers. One could argue that the Mitosis that hit GWW in 2008 didn't need to happen. The worst loud-mouths went away, anyway.
What I would like to suggest:
This Forum uses a script package. GFY and GD use script packages.
All three are discussion forum scripts. There are other forms of scripts, in addition to forums. Every couple of months, the adult industry has trade shows. There are scripts that create trade show-like "Malls," for buyers and sellers of products and services. And others that emulate FaceBook.
I would like to see something like that implemented. Bec could whip up any of the WP and non-WP scripts out there that create networking sites, that (can) create networking sites that resemble the Trade Shows that (some of us) enjoy going to, to see the wide range of vendors in a handful of categories, then to be able to see all of their "pitches," and for us to be able to chat or message, or otherwise get in contact with."
All of the existing discussion Forums eventually do one thing very well: someone says something - true or false - that makes someone else mad. Users get worked up in a lather. Moderators get medieval. When the whole point is to get some eyeballs on the ads of the advertisers.
Talk is cheap. How about a Trade Show emulating site, that brings all of the buyers and sellers together, with, or withOUT, the "Forum" area, where competitiveness and boasting, politicking and puffery, does nothing to make any of us any money.
If I am looking for somewhere to travel to, or a place to buy something, how does it do any good to wade through forum posts? Why can't I go to directory of "Asian Content Sellers"? e.g.
Dolphin has a script package that can create a Facebook like environment, where the emphasis is on the "biography" and timeline of the user, not (just) the forum posts. A YellowPages type site, with profile pages for all of the buyers and sellers.
You don't need "Moderators," if the purpose is not to provide an infrastructure that only invites bar-room brawling. You can have a Forum area that is educational, but when the topics point to personal opinion, there's an immediate 50/50 probability that someone is going to get heated.
What you might need, rather than more Moderators, will be a "Salesman," human or virtual, to collect nominal fees from Sellers of goods and services, to exist as Profile pages that sell. Like they do at Trade Shows. Like Yellow Pages does.
