Emily Chang - eHub Interviews

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Visit CommonTimes, originally added to eHub on Sep 24, 05.

eHub Interviews CommonMedia

Thanks to Jeff Reifman of CommonMedia for this email interview posted October 22, 2005.

eHub: What is your web application/service about?

CommonMedia: CommonTimes is a community news aggregator which uses the social bookmarking and tagging model to build a community newspaper. Users can customize the front page and get read their news via RSS.

CommonBits is a bittorrent distribution community for progressive political multimedia.

CommonTunes is a bittorrent distribution community for freely available music.

eHub: Why did you start this project?

CommonMedia: I wanted to provide an easier way for people to share political media.

eHub: How much time do you devote to its growth? Do you have a day job?

CommonMedia: 2 hours per day on average. I have a couple of day jobs - www.actionstudio.org is one of them.

eHub: How large is your team and what are your backgrounds?

CommonMedia: There are two of us programmers. Me and Garrett Moon - a student at Western Washington University.

Brian del Vecchio (www.hybernaut.com) sends me great ideas all the time.

eHub: What is your design philosophy?

CommonMedia: I try to build cool features that are fun or useful and have a relatively simple, straightforward design. It would be great to have more design resources, we just don’t.

eHub: What technologies are you currently using?

CommonMedia: Debian Linux, PHP, MySQL, XML, RSS, Eclipse, Magpie, Ducksoup, FeedCreator

eHub: If your project is live, what are the most requested features from your users/community?

CommonMedia:
Support for licensing
Improved user interface, incl. AJAX
Channel editing (it’s coming)
More integration with other Web services

eHub: Does your user base reside in a primary geographic location or is it distributed?

CommonMedia: U.S. and distributed.

eHub: Where do you see the project heading in the next 6 months? The next 2 years?

CommonMedia: Unclear, depends on traffic and growth.

eHub: What is the greatest challenge to your success?

CommonMedia: Driving traffic and growth.

eHub: What is the one thing you need to get to the next phase of the project?

CommonMedia: More traffic, more user awareness, more bloggers talking about our site.

eHub: Do you have a business model? If so, what is it?

CommonMedia: Not at this time.

eHub: If you’re able to disclose this information, how much traffic or usage do you see on an average day?

CommonMedia: On average, 12-18,000 page views per day across our network, but occasionally a lot higher.

eHub: What is the one thing you’re most proud of about the project?

CommonMedia: The uniqueness of the CommonTimes’ presentation of the news - it’s what the community chooses the news is.

eHub: How would you describe the shift that’s occurring with the web right now to future generations?

CommonMedia: It’s very cool. I wouldn’t want to own Microsoft stock five years from now.

eHub: What site(s) do you visit everyday other than your own?

CommonMedia:
Bloglines
Google
TypePad
Waxy.org/links
Seattle Times

eHub: How many hours of sleep do you get a night?

CommonMedia: 5-9

Thanks to Jeff Reifman of CommonMedia for this email interview posted October 22, 2005.

Visit CommonTimes
Originally added to eHub on Sep 24, 05

» More eHub Interviews

eHub Interviews is a series with the creators of Web 2.0 applications and services by Emily Chang, author of eHub, designer, and co-founder and principal of Ideacodes, a strategic web consultancy in San Francisco that she co-founded with Max Kiesler.

Also see eHub Interviews in Japanese at CNET Japan

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