What is the most important thing that we can do to improve Guruza?
I will select the 5 "best" answers and then pick one at random for the reward!
rich-collins-computer:~ rcollins$ irb
irb(main):001:0> require 'rubygems'
=> true
irb(main):002:0> require 'facet/array/at_rand'
=> true
irb(main):003:0> "Dave | nerkles | AgeKay | Jake McArthur | funnyguilly | larry | jer | bryce".split(' | ').at_rand
=> "Dave"
irb(main):004:0>
Congrats Dave and thanks for all of the suggestions from everyone!
People succeed in answering Rich Collins's questions 37% of the time (32 successes in 86 attempts).
Answers by: Dave | nerkles | AgeKay | Jake McArthur | funnyguilly | larry | jer | bryce
I think the best thing is to move beyond the self-contained website. To become a big power player, you'll need to do something to differentiate yourself. Right now, the only reason I check on Guruza (or even know it exists at all) is because (1) I started talking to Adam in his pre-Guruza days and (2) I can actually make a little money by answering questions.
Here's what I would do if I were you...I'd make industry partners. First, I'd make it easy to set up Guruza categories, and associate these categories with user accounts. Then, I'd do a "meta-PR" run, pitching Guruza to numerous online bulletin boards. Tell them how you can set up an account for the board administrators and how they can easily link to a customized section from their bulletin boards. Then, if their board users want to use Guruza to ask tough questions (or at least questions they want to pay for), they can VERY easily do so.
Here's the kicker...since you make 20% off each question, just share some of those profits with the board administrators...something like 5% to 10% of the total question value. Yes, this does mean you get a smaller cut, BUT, you're likely to get a lot more questions then. Board administrators have financial motivation to link to Guruza in a highly-visible way, which will likely pay far better for them than ad revenue.
The reason this might actually work is because board admins would actually advertise it and encourage users to use Guruza (profit-sharing-based PR), it would be trivial to implement (the admins would just have to add a link to a customized forum-specific Guruza page), and some bulletin board users ask questions so hard, no one wants to take the time to answer the questions--right now, bulletin boards offer no direct option to pay for an answer AND still hit your target audience.
Off the top of my head, I know I've used places like NICOclub to ask car questions, and sometimes it would have been nice to be able to pay for a more immediate answer, especially if I had to get my car working by the next day. Also, I know my mom frequents needlework places like TWdesignworks, and I could go on and on. The basic thing is, nobody using these boards know that Guruza exists, and so there's a chicken and egg problem...I could ask a car question here & now, but the likelihood of a good answer on Guruza at this point is not so good.
Also, if you get a "propose a higher reward" option implemented, then you could give bulletin board owners a piece of code they can use that adds a button for "suggest a reward". If someone uses the regular bulletin board to ask a question that a guru thinks is more suited for Guruza's reward system, they can click the button and suggest a reward.
Additionally, you could eventually add systems that will feed back questions and answers to the bulletin board (so people don't have to do separate searches on the bulletin board AND Guruza), give board admins some customization or control over their Guruza pages, or other things of that nature.
That's my $0.02, and if you do it and start taking off big time, you can keep the reward and hire me as a VP. :)
Also, if you want to do meta-meta-PR, you can talk to the different people who make bulletin board systems (like MyPHP) and give them maybe 1% if they simply add the Guruza option as a selectable default. They'd make a little money, individual board owners would have even less setup work to do (and still make a healthy %), and board users get to offer money for answers.
These are great ideas Dave. Adam and I will talk about which community sites we should target. Let us know if you have any suggestions. I think sites that address big "pain points" (heh new buzzword I am hearing alot now) might be a good choice. Let problems with Windows / Spyware ... etc.
That was like / not let - really need to get editing of comments in place ...
I would think some of the better places include auto maintenance/repair and open source. Boards hosted by closed-source software companies(in theory) *should* be supported by sales and provide customer support--however, independently run boards about closed source software (Windows/Spyware, etc) would make sense.
About the open source boards...I think that's a prime candidate because Guruza could be *the* way of compensating developers for their efforts. To that end, maintaners of RoR boards could add them, or the Lisp site CLiki could add a non-wiki-editable link in the column. If you could work out a deal with someplace like SourceForge or Freshmeat, wherein a Guruza link for each project is provided, then that could not only be a large source of Q&A, but it could also serve as the foundations of a pay-to-implement system. If I really wanted project X to add feature Y, I could offer money Guruza-style. That might come with a whole new set of issues regarding accountability, etc., but it's all in the same vein as the current of Guruza--instead of getting an "answer" from a guru, the guru add a feature/fixes a bug, etc.
Oh, and that's another thing...if you could hook up with Bugzilla and/or FogBugz, where bug reporters have the option of establishing bug rewards (or adding to existing bug rewards), then that might work too. I've actually seen a bug being tracked where people were offering money for a particular bugfix. Guruza would provide a channel for these types of transactions. If only there were a button on the bugtracking screen that let me know that such an option were available...
Interesting ... I like the open source support angle.
I was never much of a forum guy - I prefer IRC. But this looks like a pretty big site:
perhaps a good candidate
Agreed, that site looks like it gets lots of use.
I think the comparison between forums & IRC is like the whole comparison between GUI & command line or IDE vs. emacs/vi/(insert favorite editor here. Yeah, the whole text thing is simple and consistent and whatnot, but the graphic-based systems are a lot more convenient for typical users. As I mentioned, my mom even uses online forums; that said, I highly doubt she would ever use IRC (much less figure out what it stands for, and if she did, it would likely scare her off). It's not nearly as accessible, might require installing something, and has a steeper learning curve in general. Guruza is simple enough my mom could use it (esp since it uses Paypal), but she has no motivation to thus far. However, she has problem spending money online, espeically if it's something as personal as someone answering her question (and she can pay using Paypal).
Also, if board administrators like the idea of adding Guruza links, you could additionally let users enable Guruza "Ask me" buttons in their profiles, so that to the left of each posting (where their username & avatar is located), the "Ask me" button is there as well--it would be especially useful for resident experts (which there tend to be a number of these).
Good idea - I guess that you have already seen the ask me feature?
We already have web chat (in case you haven't used it), but we are considering changing the format from its current form (individual conversations for both chat and comments) to threaded messages that all users can take part in and a chat room on the site for each question.
Yep, I've even already considered using the button myself.
Is the web chat an in-browser experience (like Google Talk)? I tend to stay away from instant messaging apps myself because they're too distracting & time consuming, but if it's enabled in-browser for Guruza only, I'd be much more likely to use it. As it stands, I don't see a "chat now" link...would it appear if I provided IM information, or would I need to run an IM app separately?
In any case, I think a simple chat feature would be nice but not necessary for a good user experience. Indeed, conversational-style responses to questions are likely to be less thought-out and well-written, although it may help in pinpointing specific desired answers. At any rate, I think that PR-type efforts and partner integration are the bigger issues at this point. Without it, Guruza may eventually fade into oblivion, regardless of how well it works or how many features it has.
I'd guess that many of the people who currently frequent this site are the ones looking to make some money (like myself) rather than ask questions...if the questions dry up, you lose that audience too, and then there's not much reason for anyone to visit.
> In any case, I think a simple chat feature would be nice but not necessary for a good user experience.
Have you seen campfire:
They do a pretty good job with web chat.
> At any rate, I think that PR-type efforts and partner integration are the bigger issues at this point.
Yes our priority right now is more users, not more features.
Also, a small change you could make is in the emails sent out to users when someone responds to their question/answer. The email is listed as coming from "accounts", but if this were changed to "Guruza", it would be easier to filter and just make more sense in general.
I just deployed a fix. Let me know if the from is now Guruza.
Looks like it's still from accounts@guruza.com, even in the header. Could be because it's part of the same conversation in Gmail though. You may want to check your email from this message to verify...
Hmm the from is set to:
Guruza <accounts@guruza.com>
Should work but I see it did not work for the mail you sent me either.
hey dave - sorry to bug you again - just testing ...
ah ok I think it is fixed now
Yep, the last one looks good. Thanks.
I had a typo earlier....when talking about my mom using online forums, I meant that she has no problem spending money online. (emphasis "no")
Ah ok I was wondering about that