Going live
Navigating your way through a website should be a smooth experience. But ensuring that it actually is, can be a rather rough ride…
Today, Project Red Stripe’s first service goes live: the site to gather ideas from the outer world (as opposed to our Big-Brotherish dungeon). But as I am writing this, we’re still busily testing our handful of web pages – and still finding bugs. There are files that have mysteriously disappeared, broken links and (inevitably) typos. And then there is this browser called Internet Explorer, which most netizens use, but which makes life rather difficult for web programmers…
Overall, though, our little application, called Red Stripe robot, held up quite well. I tried breaking it by putting in a very long idea (about 50 pages of text) and tagged it with the term “test” 50 times. The site accepted the submission without protesting, but it showed up 50 times in our database where all the ideas are stored (a bug Stewart, our resident geek, has since fixed; we’ve also limited the length of submissions to 400 words).
It’s the non-technical stuff, though, that has proven the real hassle, particularly since we want the whole world to be able to submit ideas. Are the terms and conditions legally ok? What about the privacy policy? Closer to home, will our colleagues at the mother ship actually send the e-mails out to readers of Economist Group businesses and put our ads up on their websites?
Barring a last-minute catastrophe, recipients of our e-mail and those who see our ads can click through to our new homepage. It directs users to a brief that explains what we’re trying to do and a web form into which they can type their ideas. Once they click that “submit” button, they’ll get an e-mail thanking them for their contribution, which goes directly into our database to be examined later.
Yet there is even more going on behind the scenes. We ask contributors to “tag” (web 2.0-speak for “label”) their ideas with keywords that will then appear as a “tag cloud” next to the form. We also have an administrative online tool to look at each idea, add more tags and write comments.
Once we have 25 serious ideas, we’ll start taking a closer look at the submissions. In the meantime we’ll do some brainstorming to come up with some ideas of our own. So, as we say in our brief, start polishing your crystal ball - and tell us what the future holds for The Economist Group. The deadline is March 25th.
March 11th, 2007 at 4:37 am
NOW YOU SUCKERS THE MONOPOLISTS HAVE COME TO REALIZE THAT YOU CANT STOP IT…SO IF YOU CANNOT STOP IT THEN JOIN IT… NOW YOU WANT MY BEST IDEAS FOR FREE… SUCKERS!!! WHAT IS THERE FOR ME EH? IT SOUNDS SO MUCH LIKE A BIG CON JOB….ALL THESE CORPORATIONS TRYING TO PRETEND THEY ARE FOR FREEDOM…….HA HA HA HA HA HA
March 11th, 2007 at 5:08 am
Nice idea. Very Web 2.0. But the entire concept of Web2.0 is becoming jaded, fast. More and more people realise that Web2.0 means collaboration among users for the profit of whoever runs the site. The compensation for the ‘revolutionary ideas’ doesn’t match what you’re expecting to get out of it, so while you may have some contributions, I don’t think they’ll be as ‘revolutionary’ as they could. Offering a partnership, some kind of stake-holding, in a Red Stripe subsidiary could, but that would mean giving up some ownership, and at that point traditional media companies have become hesitant.
Websites, particularly Web2.0 sites, (can) solve network and informational inefficiencies. Yet if the contributors are not sufficiently compensated, there are few barriers to prevent them leaving, or having their idea somewhere else (an established network is, of course, a barrier, but the short history of ‘Web Communities’ and even Open Source projects, shows that users can herd around a few prominent users when they leave). I work making ‘contributory websites’ and pushing the envelope of rewarding users in as close a way (and there of lots ways, some of which I have figured out and some which surely I haven’t) to match their contribution. You’re the Economist Group, you should have thought about this, they’re all basic economic concepts and pretty interesting to consider.
Is this post enough for a 6 month (~$50) web subscription?
March 11th, 2007 at 5:59 am
Yeah, sure. That’s the ticket. Spell out great ideas to you so you and others can walk away with them. Why should I not just beat them into life and then shop for VC?…
March 11th, 2007 at 8:41 am
So let me get this straight. I come up with an awesome business idea that’ll make you tons of money and all I get out of it is a six month subscription and a thank you note? You’ll have to pardon me if I’m not tripping over myself to submit ideas to you. I suggest you reconsider the economics of what you’re proposing. Your present compensation structure is not economically viable.
March 11th, 2007 at 11:57 am
You, my dear friends, suck ! I was pretty excited about your idea but coming to the site was underwhelming to say the least. Why the hell don’t you put the submitted ideas online immediately, without editorial filtering?
Let the visitors filter out the good ones ! You’re supposed to be sharing, but in reality you’r just hoarding. In the new world, hoarding sucks, ergo: you suck …
March 11th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Two questions here.
We thought a lot about both of these - i.e. why only a six-month subscription for your idea and why don’t we post ideas immediately?
Taking the second point first, we considered this with the idea that comments on each post would be a way of voting for or developing them further. Having seen some of the “ideas” posted, it’s probably just as well that we didn’t just publish them immediately because of their offensive nature. We did consider the merits of a “Digg” style system (rather than a Dell IdeaStorm one!) but rejected it for two reasons, the main one being that we want to be able to develop ideas independent of the public posting system (or do what we’re paid for, as one poster pointed out). The other reason was that we felt that all the ideas would not be as well developed and that this together with the sheer number of ideas posted might make voting tricky.
I know that there are ways round this, but the fact is that we are only six people and that we only have six months. We felt that to develop and support a decent voting system would not be the best use of our time right now (if that’s The Idea, though watch this space).
Taking the first point, if you have an idea that will stand the test of VC funding, then go ahead and speak to one - our project is not for you.
What we wanted to do was to allow people that might be passionate about what The Economist does or could do to suggest things to us. So far, many of the suggestions are not more than what may better be called thoughts - that is, they need building into something that would allow them to be compared to other ideas, costed, etc.
We knew that these two points (and our Terms and Conditions) would be bones of contention, but we wanted to give you the opportunity to suggest stuff to us in an easy way. I hope that we’ve done that, even if (with more time) we could have done it differently.
March 11th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
The terms of this project, particularly aditional terms 3-9 you are offering are dire for anyone more serious than a casual observer. This in and of itself is unproblematic for people who have no interest in exploiting their own ideas. Sites like cambrianhouse.com are more appropriate for such. However, my complaint is simply that you have to delve into the terms and conditions to find the “assign such rights to The Economist Group absolutely if so requested” clause. Maybe your FAQ or front page could commend this information better.
March 12th, 2007 at 5:12 am
sorry, but I get more out of reading ads in The Economist print version than here — at least there’s high quality glossy pictures of something desirable to look at….
Nothing I’ve read here demonstrates that you have a sense of mission (other than: I have to sound enthusiastic about this wild fishing expedition for million dollar ideas to seem deserving of the goodies there might be in this for me) or the first clue about how you need to interact so that it might generate a creative intellectual exchange about developing (possibly crazy) ideas. And, hell, those you want to impregnate your barren world with wonderful new ideas aren’t allowed to know and comment on each others thinking even. Say what ?!? Forget It ! This is not a place I need to come back to. You can come find and join us at some public forum, and participate. If you can tickle out some good ideas, well, you are welcome to walk off/away with them to go find your pot of gold at the end of some rainbow. You have my blessings.
Though I wish you well, So Sorry, I fear that dog won’t hunt! It got too many fleas…
March 12th, 2007 at 9:02 am
You might be wondering about the cause for the sudden flurry of activity surrounding this blog and the impassionate comments against the ‘business model’ of Project Red Stripe. As it stands, you have been slashdotted [http://slashdot.org/articles/07/03/10/2158202.shtml].
I must agree with other commenters on the fact that the incentive structure being offered in order to encourage the submission of ‘radical’ business ideas is, at best, weak and most likely ineffective. What the current incentive model might attract are the kind of ideas and wish-list suggestions any long-term reader/subscriber of TEG publications could supply via a direct-marketing campaign which would cost a fraction of the GBP 100,000 allocated to this project.
As an observer of innovation and entrepreneurship matters, long-time Economist reader, and someone who is pondering whether to submit an idea or not, I humbly offer the following intuitions:
1. There is a wealth of interesting and potentially revolutionary ideas out there. However, what drives true innovators is passion, and the need to materialise change.
2. Yet, while ideas might abound, having the material and financial resources to implement them is a difficult proposition, and thus the marriage of the idea with an appropriate setting for it to flourish seldom occurs.
3. A corollary of the above is that an innovator will only release a veritably innovative idea if s/he can be guaranteed a stake in the development, implementation and coming-into-fruition of it.
4. The content and readership are already in place (something that would not happen in the case of a good albeit raw idea in search of VC funding) and those are your main assets.
In other words, if I have a great idea, and you have the content and infrastructure to see it through, why not make the idea-holder a stakeholder in the process? E.g. offering an internship or even a job as part of the group that will eventually implement the idea. That would also be a way to get highly-motivated, top-skilled, and commited people into the organisation. Additionally, it would bind the success of the idea with the success of the organisation, a nearly-certain way to ensure employee loyalty.
While I find a Creative Commons Attribution-like license to be appropriate for the dissemination of non-commercial works, this is a case of survival in a shifting business environment, and its nature necessarily proprietary.
As such, I suggest you make the innovator a co-proprietor.
March 12th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
to show you that I REALLY DO mean you well I would like to call your attention to another site/project that I just read about at HEISE.DE:
Innovationsportal CeBIT Next sammelt Ideen
(http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/86562)
you’ll have to admit that that sounds more attractive than what has been presented here so far.
and best of all, you can participate and intigrate what you find interesting there to benefit your project!
p.s. if your German is too weak, you can spend some of your GBP 100,000 on someone to act as your intermediary — most nearly every educated central European should be able to translate for you…
Good Luck!
March 13th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Ludwig IS German (see https://projectredstripe.com/blog/2007/02/02/redstripe-introductions-ludwig-siegele/).