Hi.
I’m Mark. This site, as well as WordBuzz proper, is finally up and running.
It has been an idea of about one and a half years in the making, and it has changed focus more times than I care to count. It started out as an idea for my theatre friends to help them promote their shows. The one question that began it all was that there had to be a better way. Facebook is great for friends, you know; birthdays, parties, whatever. Really good for that. But if you are promoting a show, it gets lost in that sea of “what Lord of the Rings character” are you type thing.
And then, from TheatreBuzz, it grew. A bit ambitious, perhaps, but I wanted (still do) to build five sites, across all the discliplines; theatre, music, film, art, and finally word.
Soon, assuming people like and use WordBuzz, I’ll spread onto those other fields. This is the testing ground; what people like, dislike, love or hate will shape what it is going to become.
I work full time in the web industry, so it’s hard to find motivation for freelance work. Nobody wants to work eight hours (or more), then head off home through traffic only to begin again on some other project. Oddly enough, it wasn’t like that with this site. I stopped, started, rinsed and repeated until I’ve realised and focused on getting enough out there to go live.
Things don’t have to be perfect. With the help of the users, mainly in telling me what irritates them (and hopefully they will!), I’ll get a really good site that fulfills its goal: I really want to provide a set of tools, be it blogs, social networking, events calendars, what-have-you, that let’s people not only find out about new events, shows, artists, writers, et cetera, but get their work out there, get it noticed, and get on with their craft. It shouldn’t be difficult.
Theatre, well grassroots theatre, for example, still mainly get around by handing out posters, and word of mouth. Music is the same, and those and other crafts make Facebook pages, post on Twitter; anything to get the word out. I’m not saying people shouldn’t do that. But instead of making a WordPress site, or a Blogger, or LiveJournal, I’m hoping they make one here. Because unlike those other sites, everyone here is interested in similar things.
I want it to be another tool in their belt, and hopefully (if not ambitiously) the only tool that is really needed.
Yeah, so let me know what you think. It’s a long way from being complete. And I’m trying out a soft launch, letting word of mouth people find it, roadtest it, and fix problems as they occur.
Cheers.
-Mark
Mark Cipolla