I was talking to someone today and telling them about the wedding domain name and website templates model I talked about in my last post. It is always good to bounce ideas off the “average” person in the street and see what happens. In this case, he suggested that instead of just weddings, why couldn’t it be done for a person’s life events?
My Life Events
How many life events does a person have either minor or major that they try to document with photos or videos? Everything from births to weddings to parties to holidays. People post photos to sites like Flickr from various events to share with others but they are often disorganized and no better than keeping them in a suitcase under the bed.
The wedding example I discussed previously incorporates photos, written messages/guest book, videos and so on. So the suggestion from my friend was to extend this to organize a person’s celebrations and memories into a website using a unique domain name and website templates.
Everything is then annotated properly so no one is trying to figure out who is in the picture or where it was taken. Who hasn’t experienced the fun of pulling out an old album of photos and looking through it?
Socializing my life events
Taking this idea to the next level, you could imagine that people will want to share certain celebrations or events with other people. Selectively allowing access to various parts of their website could be a great way to start virtual social interactions.
If for example, someone went to Hawaii for a holiday and came back and posted their photos and trip report, then the software could link “Hawaii” and “holiday” with others who also did the same. In addition people looking for places to go on holiday could also search for people’s experiences in Hawaii.
Social Media
I have to say I am not a big social media person, maybe because I do not have the time but I am trying to be open minded and try it out. I have started Facebook recently but I haven’t got too excited about it yet.
A templated website with the ability to capture my photos and videos and text though sounds like something i would use. Has anyone seen something like this? If not, I think there is a gap in the market to beat Flickr and others at this game.
Domaining
Finally look at the potential to sell domain names here. BarrysLife.com might be a nice one for me to document my life. Again using the wedding business model I spoke of previously, you could think of packaging domain names to uniquely identify each person’s website.
So what do you think? Is my friend onto something? Would you use such a service?
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s actually not that bad of an idea!
Hi,
Of course this idea has lots of merit but…
From what I understand it takes lots of money
to create and maintain such a site.
The possibility of monetizing the site early
on is remote so you would need deep pockets
or an “angel” with deep pockets.
Costs are something to consider.
True Patrick. From what I understand, social networking sites struggle to make money. However in this case, it could be a tiered approach with a basic free level and then subscription for extras. In the wedding example, they bump up the price for fancier templates and more options and top tier included ability to upload video. So subscription could fund the site.
Startup costs could be considerable depending on how much functionality was built in from the beginning.
I’m having a hard time understanding the My life Events concept as presented above. How would this differ from running your own blog? If creating a social network around a single concept independent of facebook is the idea, then sure there are good quality, free software available out there, your imagination is the limit, go for it. Also keep an eye out for the open source Buddypress which is soon to be released.
o.
@namer
There is a big difference between blogs, which portray a person’s unbridled ramblings about his thoughts each day, and special events (ala Omega’s Significant Moments) which are a person’s path of passage in life, i.e. graduation day.
As an ad professional, and a Facebook/LinkedIn/Friendster/Ning/Twitter user, I can only say that context is everything. ‘Free’ is good for everyone, but as they say ‘nothing in life is free’, unless you are willing to work for free as well. Facebook.com is starting to lose its popularity since they started their advertising programs.
It’s always the value add you provide like in Weddingchannel.com that makes for willingly paid value, why do you think the world economy is in such a mess today?
Namer: A blog isn’t structured. The idea is to use templates for different events with fields to be filled out. You can see the same idea if you go to dating websites. They have fields you have to fill out and pictures to upload etc.
Secondly it is a group of likeminded people who want to share their happy times similar to the group of likeminded people in a dating website.
For me Facebook feels too empty and pointless. Think of this as Facebook with a strong focus and purpose highlighting and sharing special events in people’s lives.
Hi,
I think there is something wrong with the
feedback box.
If you don’t truncate your sentences only part
of a long sentence will be readable.
When I left my comment on costs yesterday, I saw
that my sentences needed to be shortened so I
kept hitting the Return button.
Reviewing the comments today I can see all of
what I wrote but cannot read all of what
everyone wrote including yours.
Here’s the first sentence you wrote about my
comment as I am able to see it:
“True Patrick. From what I understand, social networking si”
Here’s a sentence both truncated and not:
I hope you don’t mind my commenting on the
problem I am having reading these blog comments.
I hope you don’t mind my commenting on the problem I am having reading these blog comments.
Patrick,
I can see your comments in full short or long. Can you tell me what browser you are using? No one else has mentioned the problem so i would like to try to track it down. You can email me at admin@predictivedomaining.com if you like.
thanks
Barry, I am using Firefox.
If it’s just me, never mind.
Patrick
thanks Barry and Terrance i think I’m understanding this concept a little bit better now, so the point is to create an outlet for people to share similar life experiences and through this interaction they become more meaningful, and enhance this life event for someone the next time around?
oyster
Namer: Yes, I think it would probably work on several levels:
1. think wedding where the couple wants to share their photos and videos etc with friends and family and extend that idea to all major life events
2. think graduation from college where you want to share again photos and videos with classmates as well. Maybe you want to write something such as a congratulations message.
3. Share information with the public. People who graduated from the same college can find your text, photos and videos and connect with you
4. Find information. For example, you had your wedding in Venice, Italy in a small church. Someone else wants to get married in Venice, Italy but doesnt know what the churches there are like. They find your wedding photos and videos and connect with you to find out more.
5. it is a place to collect all those disorganized photos and videos of important events in your life and share them with friends and family. An archive that you can share with your kids etc.
There are probably more uses i haven’t thought of.