Bring JU to the masses

Published on May 20, 2010 By CharlesCS In Blog Communities

I came to JU many years ago looking for a way to put by constant talking to good use. Joeuser.com was a very interesting website, a site I fell for almost instantly. The people on the site were mostly very educated, very direct and not afraid to point out your ignorance. The JU community was a great one back then.

Lately JU has gotten a bit slow on the articles and the comments. Only a few senior members remain and those who join don’t post or comment often. I know it has a lot to do with JU members being mostly of Republican or Conservative opinions, but I find it sad that those of Democrat or Liberal opinions have little by little either moved away or only poke their heads out every so often and quickly go back to their little corners where they watch JU from a distance.

Just the other day I wrote an article looking for advise on a new blog site, one I could not only start a new blog but that I might find similar features found on JU. In the end I found that while there are many sites out there such as blogger.com, blogspot.com and wordpress.com with interesting features and options, they all lacked one thing I loved most about JU. Exposure.

Writing an article on JU automatically exposed your article on JU’s “Recent Article” section on the main page. Any comments made on your article would automatically put it on the “Recent Article Comments” section on the main page. And if you manage to get enough people reading and commenting on your article, you might find yourself on the ‘Popular Articles” section of the main page. But the best part is the “Featured Article” section when not only will your article be displayed in big bold letters but even a short section of the article is shown giving those who see it a taste of things to come if they click on the title and go directly to the article itself. Write enough articles, get enough comments and make enough comments yourself and you can find yourself on the “leading blogs” and “leading users” section of the main page. Now that is what you call exposure, except JU is not out there listed with those other blog sites as an alternative blog site to use.

This is where I come in (and any of you who would like to try something similar) with my new style of blogging for JU. My goal is not only to get people to read my article and post comments, but also to bring more people to JU in the hopes they sign up, comment and maybe even pass the word. How will I do this? Please see the bottom of this and future articles of mine as I provide options for everyone to share my articles with the rest of the Internet community with Twitter, Reddit and Digg. In addition I will also be posting likes to my facebook page, thanks to an interesting plug-in for my Windows Live Writer (which i finally got working) that will automatically post to my facebook page a link to my article as it’s posted and another plug-in will do the same for my Twitter account.

So come on JU member, lets make JU the best blog site on the Internet. Let bring JU to the masses. Heck, this may even bring more customers to the Stardock side of JU and maybe even more members for Wincustomize. The way i see it, it’s a win win situation if it works. So a the song says “Let’s get it started”.

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Comments

Nitro Cruiser

on May 21, 2010

Chuck, you know, I understand where you're coming from. I see the slow down here on JU. Most of our liberal and Democrat members have moved on, and why not, they can get agreement with their views at places like the Huffington Post or DU. Our most vocal to-the-left members that comment seem to be our Canadian neighbors.

JU is a component of Stardock, and as such exist to support the software. Those of us on the political blogs are there at Brad's pleasure. He could cut it off at anytime and continue on with business. And who would blame him? It does cost valuable resources after all. I believe it is more of a service, as Stardock knows who the paying customers are, and it does keep many of the older members coming back. The game forums are much more lively (I check those from time to time too). but the crowd is much younger and politics might not be a big interest for them at this stage of their life. Besides would you really want to spar the fine points of the distribution of wealth with a 10 year old? Even if they are knowledgeable, experience matters. I'm sure they think the same about guys like me concerning the latest video games lol.

I'm sure Stardock would welcome the additional traffic, as the curious will look at other parts. As for the political blogs, I have mixed feelings. I enjoy engaging people, both like minded and of differing opinion. New blood is always welcomed. But you touched on something, as it is, it seems like a family (at times a bit dysfunctional), I even appreciate the black sheep (MF are you reading? lol). But I feel if it were on a scale of say the Huffington post, a lot of the charm would be gone.

My advice to folks new to the JU political blogs is, be prepared to defend your point with facts. If it's your opinion, than say so. If things get heated take a break, try not to let it get personal (it can be hard to tell in written words, so use emoticons ). Humor can be hit or miss. And most importantly have fun. Different topic different attitude, if you disagree on one thing you might agree on another.

Oh one last thing... don't be a spelling/grammar Nazi. We ALL make mistakes from time to time. That said, try your best to be correct and communicate effectively, folks appreciate the effort.

Kazriko

on May 21, 2010

I recently moved my blog here from Livejournal. I like it, but find that it has a few deficiencies that make it hard to get the word out and bring others in for participation. Maybe a handful of tweaks on this would make it easier to bring people in? Support for OpenID for those writing comments, for example. A better RSS feed (one where we can control what gets hidden and shown, and that properly tags articles with the date they were written, rather than when the feed is being accessed.) Maybe optional reply notification as well.

CharlesCS

on May 21, 2010

Sounds interesting, perhaps the JU Admins might take note of this. I discovered those button at the bottum of my articles as a way to pass the word to other sites about my articles, hopefully reaching a bigger audience. I am not getting many comments yet, but my views are growing big time and I think thats good.

Kazriko

on May 21, 2010

I don't use Digg or Reddit, but I could probably link your post from my Google Reader shared items.

One of the stickier social sites I've been on was Gameslurp.com primarily because they have reply notification turned on by default. If you post to a thread, you get an email for the first reply that arrives to that thread. If you then go back to the thread and read it, it resets the notification so you get another reply. This may not be the best way to do it though. Maybe an RSS feed of replies to threads you have commented on? Sometimes I lose track of a thread because I don't know that it's still active...

Kazriko

on May 27, 2010

Sadly, it seems I can't keep using JoeUser precisely because of the flaws I described above. I'm finding that many RSS sites including ones that my friends use end up showing the same article over and over again because of its poor implementation of the RSS protocol in general. I'll probably keep following a handful of blogs here, but as a place to dump my own thoughts it just isn't going to work. Not to mention that it doesn't work with Google Chrome's web browser, and its replacement ImpulseDriven doesn't even work properly with Firefox, nor does it have an RSS feed...

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