Press Pass: Dan "Shoe" Hsu Takes on the Bitmob
The former Ziff Davis exec. talks about the fate of his former company and the recent launch of his new community-driven gaming site, Bitmob
7/2/2009 1:20 PM | 5 Comments | Page 4 of 4
Our content's not the kind of standard previews/news/reviews newspaper-style content that we've done before, because we just can't compete with the IGNs and Kotakus of the world on that level. So we're doing alternative content like features and interviews and cultural-based stories that you don't find anywhere else.
On managing a community-driven site
Part of the bigger difference in what Bitmob offers that other sites don't is that we're very community-focused and what we do is we work with the community to produce that content. What that means is any user could go into the site, sign up and start posting articles. That goes into what we call the MobFeed and we're discovering that a lot of people just love reading the MobFeed, what everyone is posting, including industry people to see what the community is talking about. ...
Not shown: The bit-pitchforks and bit-torches that the bit-villagers carry during their assault on the bit-outsiders.
Now if we find an article in there that we particularly like -- either this is well-written or it's funny or it's insightful, it's something that's very complementary to our site -- we'll go in and editorially vet the story -- we'll proofread it, we'll fact check it, we'll make sure it's accurate, we'll correct any grammar or vocabulary problems -- and then we'll promote it to the front page alongside our content. So we're basically promoting our community members to freelance or industry writer status. We're giving them an opportunity to get their work published outside their individual Wordpress blogs or anything like that. ...
We have a plan for some type of reward [for community writers] for sometime in the future ... that's part of what we need funding for. We don't have the ability to reward users right now other than recognition, but the business seems to work really well because people are excited about getting published on this site. We have a lot of really positive feedback from the community involved with what we're doing at Bitmob. We had one user tell us "Well, one of my stories on Bitmob, even if it doesn't get promoted to the front page, will get more views than a lifetime of posts on my personal blog," so he just likes having that outlet and a bigger audience to talk to.
I actually had someone at E3 come up to me, one of our fans, and say, "You know, when I first heard of Bitmob, I thought you were taking advantage of us by getting free work out of us," and he was kind of mad about it, but after he got a chance to read it and get involved with the site, he decided he really liked what we were doing, so I was really happy to hear that.
