An Important Lesson About Grassroots Media
Steve Outing,
Editor, Publisher,
Nov 28, 2007
Steve Outing pens an interesting column about the failure of his most recent venture, a company that produced grassroots sites for sports enthusiasts. The idea was that they would seed the site with professional content - contributions from a pro rock climber, for instance - and depend on user-submitted content for the rest. The problem, he writes, was that the result wasn't attractive enough to draw in enough traffic to make it viable. The quality was uneven and people had to search through the bad content to get to the good. He would hire more professionals and would have editors select and highlight only the best of the reader content. "In my view -- and based in part on my experience with the Enthusiast Group project -- user content when it stands on its own is weak. But it's powerful when appropriately combined with professional content, and properly targeted."
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