What Spot.Us Will Look and Feel Like…. Soon
For those that are joining us via the New York Times article or Romensesko, please note: Spot.us is not really ready for prime time. The wiki is part of our early phase – just to get a proof of concept and see what happens when we put our axe to the grind.
In the Fall – the site will be much more dynamic. Want proof? Here’s a random page mocked up.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. When Spot.us launches in full, it will be a dynamic site that allows community members, freelance journalists and news organizations to all meet in an open marketplace.
And now for some RADICAL TRANSPARENCY.
Some of you may want to see the sausage being made. I know when I watch startups it’s something I appreciate. So without further adieu – I give you the Spot Us Flickr account. I’ve uploaded the vast majority of preliminary designs for spot.us to this account. It’s not pretty – but it’s there for viewing.
These designs don’t have any skin (no colors or branding). They are still being developed (you can even see comments back and forth between the designers). This is NOT for public consumption, ie: it’s not how the site will look or feel come this Fall – but if you are interested in how Spot.Us will function – studying all these designs might help you understand just how we intend to organize members of the community and let journalists pitch the public. Or – you can wait for a future blog post that will explain it in more detail (it will save you the time of having to study all these wireframes).
Still: Radical transparency – if you want to peek under the hood, here’s the latch.
Related posts:
Dave- I think you’re doing this the right way man. Keep it open, honest, and transparent and people will love it. Don’t hide mistakes or even failures, and definitely don’t hide successes because they are coming your way bro.
Great work! Spot.us ActionsTalk interview as soon as you get something up ok?
In your words, Rock On.
[...] that is in the process of becoming embodied on the Web. Cohn is bravely developing it in public, showing his blog readers his designs as they evolve, plunging forward with improvised test-bed proof -of-concept [...]
David:
I also think you are doing this in exactly the right way. Now you know how we felt when we took reelchanges.org public in pre-beta mode with most of the site features not working yet! The goal was to show people the vision and draw in collaborators. The old model, waiting for the big “ta-da” rollout as you call it, only ensures that whatever you rollout will not contain the good ideas of many people who could have made contributions earlier in the process. It’s messier this way, yes. But a truly wonderful beauty can emerge from this type of a mess. Kudos to you for “showing your work.” That’s always the best way to learn. Onward!
Hey David, I have known your projecto throguh the The New York Times article and I think it’s great. I am a journalist from Uruguay and I am always thinking about traditional media crisis and possible ways the media could take in the future. So again, I think your idea is very interesting. I have written an article about it, in Spanish. Here it is: article
[...] I’m being cynical. I just hope that in a few months when the site is ready (preliminary designs here) that we will still be able to get the kind of media attention we’ll need in order to get a [...]