WiserEarth UK

I would be interested in attending the meeting and agree that an open discussion here might help clarify what we would like to get out of it.

Personally, I am try to set up a social networking site for the Open University Development and Environment Society. At the moment, we've got a "group" on WiserEarth, but issues have been raised about its external profile, usability, speed-of-access, bugs and stickiness. Only 15 of the current 100 members have signed up, and we're nowhere on the 'search' radar for the thousands of OU environment and development students.

However, I'd like the society to "walk the talk" and avoid for-profit social networking facilities which are often supported by advertising from not-so-nice companies. So it would be great to have an idea of wiserearth's development plans, funding sources etc

Hi Bowo,

you're probably aware of what the term 'stickiness' means, but for the benefit of others who may not have come across it, there's quite a good definition on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_content

Andrea

so, our problem is that we've got a decent number of people signed up, and generally speaking because of the very nature of distance learning, people from the OU are more than happy to participate in online discussions etc. and indeed, I am party to some pretty active and independent online groups already (e.g. http://systems-place.org/index.php ). It might be early days yet for the OUDES wiserearth group, but maybe there's something not quite right about its architecture, speed, coolness, etc which isn't getting the punters in.

Speed, for example, may seem a trivial issue, but research has shown that even a one or two second delay does put people off. And I have experienced more than that on wiserearth. I have broadband and don't seem to have any problems with any other social networking site. It might be the case that the Wiserearth servers are tucked away somewhere relatively inaccessible to the UK network?

There are other issues, such as the current glaring white background, but I'll raise these and other potential problems with Camilla when we speak next week.

Cheers,

thanks for the links to various bits of information.

There's definitely room for improvements. Did you notice any speed improvements the past month or so? We've been doing several tweaks to the system. We're also working on improving the usability.

And it does take a bit of work to increase the 'coolness' factor (overcome the "glaring white background" phenomena), but that's not impossible to do. Let me know if you want some help with that.

p.s. I thought it was that 'sticky', just wanted to make sure. And yes, it's possible to make items 'sticky' by going to the pencil icon menu, click on the "Manage..." link, and click on the gray push-pin icon beside each item to have it turn yellow and make the item 'stick' on the group's front-page. More info about the group features on the small info icone beside the blue Admin/Group Tools button.