Tipped off to Participata and the new bakersfield.com profile tools. Join now! - By N.L. Belardes
Last night I was tipped off by a software engineer/journalist/visionary Californian employee of the latest cutting edge technology pouring out of the bakersfield.com media machine.
I already knew that members could make profiles—a top secret email had given me the nod about the local paper integrating people ala MySPace addicts-style via profiles, instant integrated blogging, etc. Yes, we people who are on the Net are addicted to the Net. Grab us, integrate us, give us a long chord with a cyber plug-in straight to our brains and there’s a good chance we’ll snap ourselves right in to the mothership. Or wirelessly.
That’s what MySpace people wish they could do (and livejournal, and friendster, and classmates.com—you get the picture).
I use MySpace, but let’s face it, there are problems with it. And people don’t just want to network though MySpace. People want social integration uniquely through their own community, while branching out to outlying communities as well. It’s what I do.
In comes the new era spawned by the local newspaper’s need to grow and Dan Pacheco’s nouveau vision of integrating people on the web not just with media, but into media, so that citizen’s become emboldened pseudo-journalists with unique ways to integrate their collective and individual words and thought. Science fiction? Perhaps H.G. Wells would have thought up such tools; or maybe this is just the natural progression of technology in today’s instant Internet world where average people can touch anyone with the right six degrees of separation and Internet-laden connecting pathways…
How?
Plug yourself into not just having a new kind of profile with a blog, but now you can network with journalists who aren’t hidden behind the flashiness of MySpace, but empowered with media-connecting, people-connecting tools that include uploading audio with ready RSS Feeds built in. (Check out Pacheco’s profile. While you’re at it, check out his blog where he talks more about Bakersfield.com blogs, and then check out his bakersfield.com profile where he gives handy tips in how to customize, interact, and upload audio files.
It’s where the world is going anyway. Expect your home to be automated with RSS feeds, your pet to have RSS feeds (your Chia pet too), your watch, and your microwave oven. Connect to them with an aggregator in the near future along with getting updates on your neighbor’s coffee pot all fed directly into a MySpace-style receptor so everyone can see the most intimate secrets of your daily life…
You’re bored at work? Connect to the people in your city instantaneously without getting bogged down by finding email addresses, or sifting through MySpace friend pages. Ease of use, clickability, findability…
In the meantime, the podcast and blog revolution has hit the mainstream media bigtime.
And that means The Bakersfield Californian, aka bakersfield.com, aka bakotopia, the Northwest Voice, the Southwest Voice, and MÁS magazine have revolutionized not just one local paper, but perhaps the national and global media and city centers as well. Sure, I have concerns. But that doesn’t mean not to use the profile engine for yourself as a tool to help promote individual thought and to meet people within communities you may have never known existed.
A new social integration software platform?
That also means the local paper won’t die… but has actually transformed a portion of its business into a new product that can be shared on the enterprise level. The enterprise level means between major media entities to be incorporated with little spawning bakotopia’s usuing bakomatic software, and sprouting up (hopefully) a new kind of MySpace, a MEDIAspace using the richness of what Pacheco has helped brand as Participata: “technology that helps local publishers connect with their communities through user publishing and social interaction.” Yes, one enormous media engine might purchase 200 licences to Participata, which means big bucks in the pockets of what was thought to be a local dying newspaper.
It’s what bloggers and MySpace junkies are already doing, but now in a friendly platform that can be owned by media organizations, city centers, etc., as a tool for social networking with a somewhat controlled environment (because it can be tailored to suit specific community social interaction needs).
I asked Dan Pacheco a little more about the Participata platform, what kind of feedback he has been getting, and how it might integrate into media sites and more:
Ever since we launched Bakotopia.com a year ago, we have received an increasing number of calls from others who want to use the "Bakomatic" technology that powers it. Most of these inquiries come from newspapers, but we occasionally also hear from other businesses, like non-profits.
The number of inquiries we have received has increased exponentially. As a result, we have been thinking about how we can help others benefit from what we've developed without it becoming a distraction to our core business, which is and always will be serving residents and businesses of Bakersfield. Participata.com is our vehicle for that.
Participata.com showcases the functionality of our community and social networking platform. We are still working out the pricing and licensing terms. Anyone who is interested in using this platform can fill out a contact form on the site. While we may not respond immediately, we are capturing all this data and will get back in touch with the organizations we think we can serve best.
Note that Participata will only require the software and basic documentation, but we will not host and support it over time. You must have a technical staff that is familiar with Web system administration for open source PHP and MySQL applications. This makes it the perfect choice for medium to large organizations -- such as other newspapers -- that, like The Bakersfield Californian, are committed to innovation in the digital realm.
Dan Pacheco
Participata is happening because people like you interact, read my blogs and other folks online words. It’s because you comment and make your own profiles and check back periodically; it’s because you are observed on MySpace, Blogger, LiveJournal and yes, nlbelardes.com (a community site because it is so shared with the people)(noveltown.net will hopefully get there too), interacting, uploading media, blogging, sharing favorite songs, or your songs, or like me, being the media and sharing with others…
Am I getting paid to write this article about product branding? No, I’m not.
And that’s OK.
Sometimes it’s not about the money or about differences, it’s just about getting the word out and letting you know when there is a good tool that you can use to further connect in a community where you’re likely already connecting in many ways.
Besides, the Participata engine might be coming to your area, and you might need to know how to pronounce bakomatic (bake-oh-matic).
Join profiles wherever you can. Why not? They all lead back to you...
I already knew that members could make profiles—a top secret email had given me the nod about the local paper integrating people ala MySPace addicts-style via profiles, instant integrated blogging, etc. Yes, we people who are on the Net are addicted to the Net. Grab us, integrate us, give us a long chord with a cyber plug-in straight to our brains and there’s a good chance we’ll snap ourselves right in to the mothership. Or wirelessly.
That’s what MySpace people wish they could do (and livejournal, and friendster, and classmates.com—you get the picture).
I use MySpace, but let’s face it, there are problems with it. And people don’t just want to network though MySpace. People want social integration uniquely through their own community, while branching out to outlying communities as well. It’s what I do.
In comes the new era spawned by the local newspaper’s need to grow and Dan Pacheco’s nouveau vision of integrating people on the web not just with media, but into media, so that citizen’s become emboldened pseudo-journalists with unique ways to integrate their collective and individual words and thought. Science fiction? Perhaps H.G. Wells would have thought up such tools; or maybe this is just the natural progression of technology in today’s instant Internet world where average people can touch anyone with the right six degrees of separation and Internet-laden connecting pathways…
How?
Plug yourself into not just having a new kind of profile with a blog, but now you can network with journalists who aren’t hidden behind the flashiness of MySpace, but empowered with media-connecting, people-connecting tools that include uploading audio with ready RSS Feeds built in. (Check out Pacheco’s profile. While you’re at it, check out his blog where he talks more about Bakersfield.com blogs, and then check out his bakersfield.com profile where he gives handy tips in how to customize, interact, and upload audio files.
It’s where the world is going anyway. Expect your home to be automated with RSS feeds, your pet to have RSS feeds (your Chia pet too), your watch, and your microwave oven. Connect to them with an aggregator in the near future along with getting updates on your neighbor’s coffee pot all fed directly into a MySpace-style receptor so everyone can see the most intimate secrets of your daily life…
You’re bored at work? Connect to the people in your city instantaneously without getting bogged down by finding email addresses, or sifting through MySpace friend pages. Ease of use, clickability, findability…
In the meantime, the podcast and blog revolution has hit the mainstream media bigtime.
And that means The Bakersfield Californian, aka bakersfield.com, aka bakotopia, the Northwest Voice, the Southwest Voice, and MÁS magazine have revolutionized not just one local paper, but perhaps the national and global media and city centers as well. Sure, I have concerns. But that doesn’t mean not to use the profile engine for yourself as a tool to help promote individual thought and to meet people within communities you may have never known existed.
A new social integration software platform?
That also means the local paper won’t die… but has actually transformed a portion of its business into a new product that can be shared on the enterprise level. The enterprise level means between major media entities to be incorporated with little spawning bakotopia’s usuing bakomatic software, and sprouting up (hopefully) a new kind of MySpace, a MEDIAspace using the richness of what Pacheco has helped brand as Participata: “technology that helps local publishers connect with their communities through user publishing and social interaction.” Yes, one enormous media engine might purchase 200 licences to Participata, which means big bucks in the pockets of what was thought to be a local dying newspaper.
It’s what bloggers and MySpace junkies are already doing, but now in a friendly platform that can be owned by media organizations, city centers, etc., as a tool for social networking with a somewhat controlled environment (because it can be tailored to suit specific community social interaction needs).
I asked Dan Pacheco a little more about the Participata platform, what kind of feedback he has been getting, and how it might integrate into media sites and more:
Ever since we launched Bakotopia.com a year ago, we have received an increasing number of calls from others who want to use the "Bakomatic" technology that powers it. Most of these inquiries come from newspapers, but we occasionally also hear from other businesses, like non-profits.
The number of inquiries we have received has increased exponentially. As a result, we have been thinking about how we can help others benefit from what we've developed without it becoming a distraction to our core business, which is and always will be serving residents and businesses of Bakersfield. Participata.com is our vehicle for that.
Participata.com showcases the functionality of our community and social networking platform. We are still working out the pricing and licensing terms. Anyone who is interested in using this platform can fill out a contact form on the site. While we may not respond immediately, we are capturing all this data and will get back in touch with the organizations we think we can serve best.
Note that Participata will only require the software and basic documentation, but we will not host and support it over time. You must have a technical staff that is familiar with Web system administration for open source PHP and MySQL applications. This makes it the perfect choice for medium to large organizations -- such as other newspapers -- that, like The Bakersfield Californian, are committed to innovation in the digital realm.
Dan Pacheco
Participata is happening because people like you interact, read my blogs and other folks online words. It’s because you comment and make your own profiles and check back periodically; it’s because you are observed on MySpace, Blogger, LiveJournal and yes, nlbelardes.com (a community site because it is so shared with the people)(noveltown.net will hopefully get there too), interacting, uploading media, blogging, sharing favorite songs, or your songs, or like me, being the media and sharing with others…
Am I getting paid to write this article about product branding? No, I’m not.
And that’s OK.
Sometimes it’s not about the money or about differences, it’s just about getting the word out and letting you know when there is a good tool that you can use to further connect in a community where you’re likely already connecting in many ways.
Besides, the Participata engine might be coming to your area, and you might need to know how to pronounce bakomatic (bake-oh-matic).
Join profiles wherever you can. Why not? They all lead back to you...
This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on
Friday, June 09, 2006.
You can leave your response.
Thanks for the nice, honest writeup. And also for the great product idea of an RSS-connected Chia Pet! I'll get started on that right away ;-)
And yes, openness is the foundation of community. In the new world, smart marketers take advantage of all the free stuff they can. Unlike other sites (like Myspace a while back with YouTube before its users revolted), we let anyone link out to anything they want to. And that's because we really do consider profiles and blogs on our site to be YOUR space. We have some basic rules to preserve civil discourse and decency (and legality), just like any public forum does. But that's as much as we get involved.
I thought this was an interesting article also published today on social networking websites and the Pentagon... people always need to watch what they say...
I tell my own kids who are myspace junkies to not air personal drama, etc...
I agree. People should be policed to the point of being decent... whatever that definition may be as long as it prevents photos of death, dead children, pornography, etc...
Cool! I filled out a profile a few weeks ago when I noticed bakersfield.com had added this. The blog feature is cool, I'm posting my blogs there now. Hope people see them, not sure how Bakersfield.com will be sharing them.
By the way, your link to this post from the musicrev page doesn't seem to work...
Check this out...
http://people.bakersfield.com/home/viewblog.php?id=14
Flippin sweet. I guess that 14 means I'm only the 14th person to start a blog on bakersfield.com
It's working now. Yeah, that's another good forum to post your theatreaddict.com write-ups...
leave a response