Tell me if you disagree with this next bit

-iii- Playthings still have to work.

1. Transition Voice likes to be provocative and talk about how the US government and big business are manipulative bullies etc.I’ve tried a few semi-provocative posts. Worth it sometimes, not always.

( – NB: Readers like articles to be surprising AND PLEASANT )

2. Low Carbon Hub has a team of ‘hub advisors’ who write their blog posts. You can send messages to advisors. This page makes clear to visitors this site is a bonified resource for them. Each advisor has a different speciality. We could do more along these lines, with an ‘about us’ section on blogs and articles?

2. The AV Club knows exactly what kind of person reads their site. They are their own demographic. Perhaps we could find out more about ours? The AV Club site contains nothing that its visitors won’t want to play with. All reviews, love columns. It’s a sweet shop for geeks and fanboys.

4. The Independent has this feature on its opinion articles. It’s installed its own system of Strongly Agree vs Strongly Disagree votes, instead of using a Facebook plug-in or straight up comments section with up-voting and down-voting. They obviously want people to get passionate in this part of their website.I don’t think we would do this, or have the visitors to do this, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

5. MNN – Mother Nature Network. These guys use a points system so people can find out what bird they are, beginning as a chick and eventually becoming a bald eagle. Is it meant to be inspiring? Just a clickety reward system. For sites like VIVATIC this would work along Taskrabbit lines – the better you are the more you can charge. Could potentially work if we included author bio’s for our articles, but I doubt this is going to happen.

The next slide is on the Uswitchblog, which is pretty dry. It’s informative, and I think it’s a good blog, but from the engagement data looks like no one reads it.

However, they have this one writer who writes weird articles. His pieces always attract reponses. Who knows whether this means much in actual terms, but it’s a thing I’ve noticed.

dafuq did I just read