Geolocal homeabase
Here’s a nice article by Fred Stutzman about social networks:
Transience in Social Networks, or How to Beat MySpace and Facebook
Some key tips he writes about:
“Find a niche and exploit it”
“Be geolocal.”
“Exploit a content area. Basically, find some content that people love and wrap a social network around it.”
My goal is not to beat MySpace or Facebook, but facilitate people to help the world in a better way. Still, I’d like Helpalot to be successful, so the tips Fred Stutzman writes about will be taken into account.
At the moment I have no geolocal home base, I probably need to pick a focus-point for this. I see two options:
- Utrecht, the city I live in The Netherlands makes sense for all the obvious reasons.
- A US city might be good for the English language, the large charity culture and a can do mentality.
Another option is to just post the link to the test version on as many sites as possible and just wait and see where the geolocal home base(s) will take shape.
Probably it’s better to pick a city in advance, so I can focus my efforts on potential users. Especially as I’m planning to do some offline and viral marketing (How about a real knight handing out flowers at Utrecht Central Station?).
Recently I had a nice Skype conversation with the people of Greatnonprofits.org. They have some overlapping goals, focusing on the evaluation of nonprofits. We are not joining efforts for now, but we help each other if we can.
For that matter; they are searching for some tech-skilled people to help building their site. It might help if you live near San Francisco, because that’s where they are based. In that same category; I could use some help with building Helpalot. More on how you can help at How You Can Help.