At the NYC photobloggers3 event this past Wednesday I ran into a guy handing out these really slick flyers for something that looked really interesting called NowPublic.com. At first blush it seems like a really neat idea. Open source journalism. People list what they want to read about, people contribute footage. Importance is determined by people voting on whether the story interests them. The only trouble, of course, is that it's impossible to navigate to anywhere or to do anything. There are options and buttons and tabs everywhere, and nothing to tell you how to use the site. When the FAQ has almost no content, that's a sure sign of trouble. I've burned two hours trying to find out how to find assignments, how to change my subscriptions to customize my news feeds, and why I would upload photos in the first place. The user interface, in a word, sucks. To my eye, at least, there is not good seperation between the news producers and the consumers. Specifically, there should be a nice simple frontpage, much like CNN or GoogleNews, where the consumer can just read the headlines and get what they want. People can rate the stories they find useful (or combine a rating system with a pageview-counter), and have a script automatically rearrange the front page to show the most rated/populor items. No logins necessary. A seperate interface, accessible from a large link on top, would bring you to the news producers portal, where you could submit a story. No linkage to other news sources required, just write whatever story you want to submit. Some simple broad categorizations (location and type, checkboxes instead of dropdown lists, 20 checkboxes total), and then add your own keywords. And keywords is where the real organizing power lies. A third subspace interface would be for photographers/graphic designers to see open stories and submit their work. The writer, can select whichever art/photo they like (let's say no more then 2), and then Publish. Or, if a writer doesn't want to have art or doesn't like the photos submitted, then can just Publish without any graphic accompaniment. At large editors (ie: NowPublic staff) could administrate (ex: remove spam disgused as stories, grossly inappropriate pictures) and act as editors (ie: make manual adjustments to story placement). To summerize the workflow (bold words are actions): 1) Writer Submits story, Adds Keywords, Chooses Categories. 2) Photographer/graphicsWrangler Submits eyecandy to accompany story. 3) Writer Selects eyecandy, Publishes story. 4) Based on popularity of keywords (derived from formula measuring pageviews on stories with same keywords, reader ratings on keyworded stories, overall popularity of writer based on pageviews of previously submitted stories), story is automatically placed on news pages (either front page or in nested sub-pages). 5) Editors monitor/tweak keyword placement on stories, tweak placement of stories on front page (probably for breaking news). A further refinement could be a rolling ticker or list in the Publishers portal containing Assignments: stories requested by the public or by the editors. Either way, I don't think a international rollout is the best way to go. I'd have started local and then begun to branch out. My largest complaint is that there is far too little content and far too much complexity of the whole thing. I can't figure out how to customize my front page just to read the news. I can't stand that everything is dropped into a 1,000 item dropdown menu or scrolling list. I can't stand that all the new stories are 1 line long and link to actual news items published by another outside website (I mean, that's what GoogleNews already does). It's just too much to click and to not click with things rolling or openning or closing and I can't find anything I want anytime soon. It just sucks.
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