Center of Cyberspace
The basic concepts of this idea has to do with XFN relationship linking technologies. This could either be a contest oriented thing, or like Steve Poland talks about over at this post
, an ongoing situation that is constantly ranking individuals.
Obviously for this concept to work some spidering/algorithm technologies are also going to have to be in place in order to track and database the threads. Where Steve’s idea talks about the “Fortune 500 of people” this idea is more about the social aspects of ones popularity. Sort of a “how many people are linking to you” scenario with a lot of visual data thrown in to keep it interesting.
The spidering technology would have to be sophisticated enough, using search engine-like algorithms and such to give appropriate “weights” to a persons depth and width charts as well as to back linking (i.e., I link to you and and say you are my friend, but you link back to me and call me an acquaintance. Story of my life ) This would have less weight than if we both linked to each other as friends, and less weight than if you didn’t link back to me at all.
This idea could create a “Center of [Your Site/Organization/Community” widget/service that would allow you to see what your “local pond” looked like and how that would compare and relate to the Net as a whole.
Widgets and plugins would of course be created that could be ad supported (in discrete visual locations graphic and/or text-wise), and placed into participating sites. Maybe this becomes a replacement for the “blogroll” sections that many sites display now? Ajaxy action would be cool in that once a page is loaded if the widget simply updated on a site owner chosen amount of time, the visitors would get very dynamic information fed to them. Of course this wouldn’t be necessary for site participation.
Creating specialized niche widgets is another angle that might make including the technology into ones site more interesting. The “Center of Cyberspace: Dating” edition would be used at online dating and relationship sites where the XFN rel attributes of “friend/romantic and “physical (met/not met) scenarios tracked and displayed specifically for that niche widget.
And the sponsorship opportunities could be quite deep: dating sites would be an obvious choice for that niche’s widgets, as would wedding dress makers, or tuxedo rental businesses, valentines candy manufacturers, etc. (”February’s CofC: Dating widget brought to you by Sees Chocolates“)
The tie-ins and niche opportunities here could be endless all as a result of the creation and spread of the idea. And if this were something I were to be actively involved with, I would push hard to create an affiliate marketing income stream for the participating site owners. Not only will they gain value by simply having the niche widget on their site, they would have an opportunity to share in the income generated from the ad click through’s.
So, as a site/blog owner or a community member, how would you use this sort of service? Would you be more interested in having a sidebar display type of widget, or could you see dedicating and entire page to displaying a full sized map with some sort of color coded links/threads? How would this idea better benefit the quality AND quantity of traffic coming to your sites?
Consider subscribing to Boldly Going's RSS feed
You'll receive all the latest Notes and Articles!
Comments
-
Featured Book
