Expanding Our Community
There is no disputing that Tastyfresh.com is an internationalcommunity. It always has been and always will. The only problem with itbeing international is that we have not built a local community at thesame time. This has always been a concern of mine. In the past, we'vetried local message boards, but either they were never used or thepeople using them never interacted with the other boards. We've triedto push the idea of groove fellowship, local groups who would meet oncea month, but there wasn't a good way of recruiting or coordinatingthese efforts. We've even tried to promote labels and artists as wellthrough links and profile listings, but that content kept getting outof date faster than we could update it. Until the recent advent ofsocial networking, the best tool we've had on Tastyfresh.com formeeting likeminded people has been the message boards. There is nothingwrong with that, but I believe that this fact has also kept others frombecoming active on the site. I've talked at length before onthe boards about the disparity between forum members and people whoview the site. In September 2009, we had 5,938 visitors. Currently, wehave about 400 members on the forums (minus a few spam accounts). Ifyou do some simple math, that means that only 6.7% of the people whovisit this site have taken the effort to join it. If you look at thosewho have posted at least once, that number drops to 275 members. That'sonly 4.6%. When you look at the numbers, we have a very small communityand a large number of casual readers. I would like to change that. Over the past couple of monthsI've been researching a product called Jomsocial and reading up on howto run social networking sites. Given our myspace, facebook and twitteraddictions, it seems that the best way to keep up with an individualhas changed from a message board to a profile page. In fact, profilepages have always been part of what I've wanted to do here. Every fewmonths I get five or six emails from people looking for DJs. Every weekor so, there is one about where people live. Then there are the almostweekly "where can I find Christian producers" ones. If the members ofthis site could just have profiles, maybe we could help those new tothe site make these connections more easily. After reviewing Jomsocial,I showed it to the senior staff and they all agreed that it was a solidenough idea to keep pursuing. And this week, Jpuddy set up a demoserver for us to do some testing. It really is turning out to be agreat tool.
So, you are probably wondering what Jomsocial is. It is a socialnetworking component that can be easily integrated into Tastyfresh.com.It will give every member here a profile page. You can "friend" peoplealready on the site and invite others to join Tastyfresh.com. You willbe able to form groups just like other social networking sites. Byincluding this, you will also be able to more directly contribute toTastyfresh.com's content as I will also build in a tool for articlesubmissions. If we like what you write, we'll publish it. It's thatsimple. There's a lot more that Jomsocial can do, but one of the moreimpressive things is that it can be connected directly to your Facebookaccount allowing content changes that you make in Facebook to bemigrated to Tastyfresh.com as well. In short, the staff and I believethis is a good next step for us to take in expanding our presence inthe scene.
The only catch is that Jomsocial doesn't come for free. It is acommercial product and will cost us $150. As always, when the sitecomes across an expense outside of hosting, I turn to the community toinvest in it. Even in a small community, $150 is not a large amount toraise. If fifteen people give just $10, we'll be done. I don't want youto blindly invest in this site, so please research Jomsocial foryourself at www.jomsocial.comand pray about it. If you don't feel led to give or that this is theright direction to go in, don't feel obligated to support this effort.If you do however see like we do the benefit in bringing socialnetworking to Tastyfresh.com, please consider supporting this endeavor.If you have any questions about this, please let me know and I willaddress them. Once you're ready to contribute, all you have to do is chip in.
So, you are probably wondering what Jomsocial is. It is a socialnetworking component that can be easily integrated into Tastyfresh.com.It will give every member here a profile page. You can "friend" peoplealready on the site and invite others to join Tastyfresh.com. You willbe able to form groups just like other social networking sites. Byincluding this, you will also be able to more directly contribute toTastyfresh.com's content as I will also build in a tool for articlesubmissions. If we like what you write, we'll publish it. It's thatsimple. There's a lot more that Jomsocial can do, but one of the moreimpressive things is that it can be connected directly to your Facebookaccount allowing content changes that you make in Facebook to bemigrated to Tastyfresh.com as well. In short, the staff and I believethis is a good next step for us to take in expanding our presence inthe scene.
The only catch is that Jomsocial doesn't come for free. It is acommercial product and will cost us $150. As always, when the sitecomes across an expense outside of hosting, I turn to the community toinvest in it. Even in a small community, $150 is not a large amount toraise. If fifteen people give just $10, we'll be done. I don't want youto blindly invest in this site, so please research Jomsocial foryourself at www.jomsocial.comand pray about it. If you don't feel led to give or that this is theright direction to go in, don't feel obligated to support this effort.If you do however see like we do the benefit in bringing socialnetworking to Tastyfresh.com, please consider supporting this endeavor.If you have any questions about this, please let me know and I willaddress them. Once you're ready to contribute, all you have to do is chip in.
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