For-Profit Citizen Journalism Sites
July 7th, 2005 by kevin

I saw this blog on for profit citizen journalism sites(LINK) through technorati a few days ago and have been to busy to spend the time to communicate my thoughts.

We were approached in November of last year by a company that owned
11 sites across 5 markets in Asia. Some of the sites had nearly a ten
year history of self publishing with a lot of User Generated Content in
the form of early web bulletin boards. Suffering from lack of focus and
overall outdated UI we were tasked with redoing them.

We decided to re launch all the sites as an open forum using the
strengths of social software to foster communication and innovation.
Some of the sites have been increasing in traffic and use, while others
still are waiting for the tipping point.

We are a small startup working real hard on a socially networked life and career development tool called Gooru.
We have been successful consulting on social software and the
transition companies need to take to web 2.0. Our success so far has
been through listening to the users, interacting one to one, and
knowledge we have gained from years of community building on the web.

Our citizen media services are provided free of charge, and we’re
going to do our best to keep it that way. Our intention is to derive
revenue from commercial uses such as advertising and pushed media.

www.malaysia.net
www.indonesia.net
www.singapore.net
www.tamil.net