Join us for the San Francisco Net Tuesday on September 9 featuring
Involver: How Nonprofits Can Create Video Campaigns for Social Networks. Looking forward to seeing you there!
The Voices of Earth (VOE) website will connect internet users with bloggers from around the world. Bloggers will be able to register an account (they will provide the title, url, and feed information for their blog). They will also add their country location. They will not blog directly on VOE – rather, updates on their blog (whichever blogging service they use) will be reported on VOE, organized by region and country. Interested visitors who do not have a blog will also be able to register accounts in order to use certain special features of the site.Any internet user will be able to look for blogs to read, but additional features will be open only to registered users: each lobby will include a “chat” feature where people can communicate with others who are logged in. Additionally, users will be able to create profiles viewable by other registered users. A signature feature of the website will be the “Chat Shuffle,” a feature which will randomly pair an individual user with others from around the world. It will be possible to set parameters, such as a common language, or to simply roll the dice and see what happens. If the chat feature proves successful, then the site can run periodic scheduled group chats on cultural subjects bringing people together for targeted or more thematic discussions.The VOE regional and country pages will also offer visitors informational guides editable by registered users. These will include basic information such as population and country stats, which can be added by the webmaster, but also useful phrases, information about the culture, and recommendations for travelers added by locals. For example, as a user I might edit the USA page and write that in my city, Boston, a useful phrase is “it’s wicked cold!” I would also write that a summer visitor should go to the Harbor Islands, and recommend the North End for Italian food, and so on. Besides being a lively portal to the blogosphere, the website would thus provide useful travel tips.