We notice that Brian is up for creating a Nairnshire portal. He cites his aims as follows:
1. Tourism – Hook up with the Visit Nairn tourism group and other related bodies to provide promotional literature on the website for tourists on the website
2. Internet access – Provide an online portal and discussion area for locals as well as tourists, to help build up Nairn’s profile online,
3. Community fund – Set up advertising on the website, and use the income to fund small community projects across Nairnshire
1. Tourism – Hook up with the Visit Nairn tourism group and other related bodies to provide promotional literature on the website for tourists on the website
2. Internet access – Provide an online portal and discussion area for locals as well as tourists, to help build up Nairn’s profile online,
3. Community fund – Set up advertising on the website, and use the income to fund small community projects across Nairnshire
We can't help wondering if Brian's skills might be brought to bear on a fruitless adventure here, although as you can see by the comments on Brian's article he may indeed have some support. The idea sounds fine but would it ever work? Take advertising in Nairnshire for example, nobody does that better than the Nairnshire Telegraph, it is they that remain the main source of commericial information in our community and will probably buck the downward trend of the dead tree media and continue to do so for some time. The problem for any Internet initiative as we see it is that we are not big enough to provide a reasonable income for such a venture. Experts in this field reckon it can be done with bigger communities however, perhaps Inverness would be a better target for a community venture.
Too small for a profitable Internet outfit then but small enough to maintain a local weekly newspaper, a well-loved veritable institution. It is there that people will continue to go as the first source of all Nairn debate for at least another generation in our opinion. Nairnshire.co.uk will just not work (in our opinion) in the same way that Caithness.org is an effective community bulletin board. We can continue to have some fun but in the county of Nairnshire it is the boys and girls in Leopold Street that are the true professionals in this community portal game. Newsprint will rule for a wee while longer in these parts.
Oh, you're absolutely right - there's no way a community portal is going to become a major tour de force for Nairnshire over-night.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I've highlighted only very small small scale ambitions to start with - take the project forward with baby steps and modest ambitions it can grow from.
While indeed the issue of publishing and advertising revenue is a sore one in both online and offline media at present, there is clearly a lot of potential advertising spend to tap into, even locally, as demonstrated not simply by the Nairnshire Telegraph, but also your own Adsense, Visit Scotland events, and feature booklets such as Spotlight and others which focus on tourism interests as well as local service provision.
A third of my business turnover is already brought in through internet advertising, and even I'll admit that this stream has so far been poorly monetised by my business.
However, I'm changing a core part of my business model to tap into online and offline advertising opportunities much more efficiently, and plan to ride the Nairnshire community project on top of investment I'll be putting into this.
Few things become an over-night success, but with careful planning and development, you can develop strong long-term objectives, and this is precisely what I plan to achieve with the new community portal - which still has a long way to go before it is completed and can be sold into advertising opportunities - but from small acorns...
- Brian
Nice to see someone trying to make money out of our community - NOT
ReplyDeleteNot everyone's cup of tea then this new 'Nairnshire' site out of the ashes of the Cinema of Dreams, the mission statement does contain the following information however.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, the project intends to use all advertising revenue to organise, set up, and implement community projects across Nairnshire.
Brian! Gods Gift To A Starving Nation
ReplyDelete(Or Town).?
We've got plenty of food in Nairn, (well as long as we don't all turn up at the Co-ops at once. It's the lack of choice that is our problem.
ReplyDeleteJust take it or leave it for goodness sake it's the web, do your own thing if you don't like someone else's efforts.
ReplyDeleteI do read Brians mynairn now and again but find that he is often very out of touch with how I feel about Nairn. I agree with a comment made on the spin blog about another of his blogs
ReplyDeletehttp://nairn-blog.blogspot.com/2009/11/do-they-mean-us.html
he often seems arrogant and I would say not the person to be running a community based service
I like the gurn and the nairnshire for my community information.
What you have to say is interesting Brian. I've seen stuff like Spotlight come and go in the past. I don't even bother looking at it it goes in the recycling bin with the ICA. The last time the postie devlivered the two of them together, excellent time saver two in the blue box for the price of one.
ReplyDeleteYou're determined to have a go and fair enough we'll see what happens but again I feel that the Nairn advertising market just isn't big enough for what you're planning. Pretty soon other models of harvesting hyperlocal news and encouraging local debate will be coming along and even then they probably won't get past the piece of paper we go out and spend 40p on on a Monday Night or a Tuesday morning.
For anyone interested in what is happening in the changing media world and how hyperlocality is becoming an important commodity in net terms, then Jeff Bridges Buzz Machine is a good starting point.
His latest article is about CNN investing in a start-up called outside.in. You follow the links from state to your city and you end up with a page like this this
We already have something similar I suppose with wikio but the outside.in seems to be more of a coalition of willing participants were as the wikio bots harvests everything useful like google, only google news doesn't incorporate blogs in their news pages. I should imagine an outside.in operation in the UK would probably list all Nairn content under Inverness.
Sorry for telling you what you already know Brian, this bit's just for the non-techie minded gurnites out there.
Sometimes I find that I go to read something or someone I don't like just as much as stuff I approve of. - Just a general comment lol
ReplyDeleteI know that you sometimes quote or link to other blogs gurnmeister which draws comment here on the gurn rather than the original blog
ReplyDeleteBut that is just occassionaly and I have also seen you bring a halt to such comments with the suggestion that readers comment on the other blog
My point is having looked at Brians so called community site he is publishing all posts from Nairn blogs and inviting comment there
I would be pissed off if I was a Nairn blogger to find my work appearing lock stock and barrel on his site, drawing comment from his readers rather than on my blog
I for one won't be reading the new Nairnshire blog but will remain a loyal gurn follower
Sorry for the rant but I don't think content stealing is right which is what he is doing
Please keep up the good work of the gurn
Brian seems to want to provide a ‘me too’ service whilst raking in advertising for himself. Nairn has the Nairnshire and the Gurn for us locals, and sites such as Visit Nairn for our tourists, all provide an excellent service as is, Do they really need to be lumped together, I think not
ReplyDeleteNairnites are pretty good at raising funding for many community groups. I would prefer to have the support of local people and companies rather than the likes of a multi national company with questionable ethics coming in through the back door by advertising
Could Brian not join a local group that would use his talents and skills rather than go it alone with a project I don’t think we really need or will use?
Brian is just publishing title lines from the Gurn. He did try for a more wikio aggregator type approach (which you can see if you follow the link above). It didn't work however and just published the entire post, a situation which he quickly rectified when I indicated my (post 2 litres of Co-op cider)* considerable displeasure last night. I accepted his explanation that it was a bug in the software as it was obvious that the Mynairn and Nairnmatters content (wordpress blogs instead of Blogspot)was aggregated in the normal and appropriate fashion.
ReplyDeleteThat's the web some of your content appears elsewhere, if it is done responsibly it probably means more traffic for you. You have to live with it unless you are a mega rich media oligarch then you can try and do something about it :-)
Feck it life is too short to worry, as long as entire posts don't appear then Brian is following netiquette and in a way it is quite a complement that someone feels your feeds worthy of attention.
*Even have to go to the s****** Co-op for booze now. SNP Government give us a Sainsbury's or I'll vote raving loony instead at the general election.
What a busy evening in the Gurnosphre :-)
ReplyDelete@anon @ 6.18
That and similar questions are perhaps best asked elsewhere, sorry I'm not Brian :-)
@anon (Turner prize for...)
ReplyDeleteHad decided before receiving your post to close this thread but feel asleep watching some sci-fi and thus didn't tidy up for the night.
For better or for worse the Nairnshire Community Forum has been launched and as Bill has said on The Spin, it is the consumer that will decide.
If you still feel strongly about this issue why not comment over on myNairn.
Noticed on the bottom blog with ref
ReplyDeleteto The Turner Prize, has someone from Nairn been nominated ???
Oh dear... while the 'bairn wasn't looking, the grown-ups seem to have been throwing their toys out of the pram.
ReplyDeleteSadly, the tantrums seem to have been more cock-up than conspiracy. Misunderstandings have led to accusations of bad faith, and a general souring of the mood.
We should move on, with perhaps a little more willingness to live and let live: I share E Maree's regret (in her comment on MyNairn) at the closure of the Spin. I hope it's only temporary. We need the Spin to puncture a few balloons, just as much as we need My Nairn for thoughtful debate, NairnMatters for planning discussion, Simply Swans and Plot Tales to celebrate nature, and (last but certainly not least!) the Gurn for practical local comment.
And so, in the season of goodwill, and to lighten up the mood, I had thought of suggesting requests for appropriate (Winter)song titles for our various Nairn bloggers...
for the Gurn: Crosby Stills & Nash - "Carry On"
for JT's Swans and PlotTales: Satchmo - "It's a Wonderful World"
for Brian of MyNairn: The Animals - "Don't let me be Misunderstood"
and for the Spin, I was going to suggest (with apologies to Neil Young) - "Keep on mocking, it's a free world". But maybe now it has to be The Equals - "Baby come back".
Season's greetings...