Question

Topic: Branding

Building A Consumer-generated Media Space

Posted by Anonymous on 4/12/2007 at 3:49 PM ET 500 Points
We are an e-commerce site selling products and services to a large hobby market.

We have invested heavily in a new, cutting-edge storefront and site, programmed in asp.net. The one piece of the puzzle missing that we really would like to have is a kind of Consumer-Generated Media (CGM) space on our site.

A simple forum is not really enough, as our users are looking for more, and we find that a forum will not allow us to focus our marketing message enough. We have looked at licensing MP's Know-How Exchange and are considering it, but I thought I'd put this out there as well.

Ideally, we want a space where users can not only interact with each other (moderated forum), but can upload projects (text, images, even videos) and import various rss feeds and then, digg-style, vote on or rank projects or content, or at least provide feedback on it. All this, we want integrated into our site with a clean, user-friendly interface.

Does anyone know of a solution out there that would allow us to offer this kind of space?
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Harry Hallman on 4/13/2007 at 8:18 AM Member
    You may want more than just technology. It helps to have folks who can help you with the marketing as well. Try contacting www.octanecorp.com a fellow named Brandon Sutton. He has built social networks, which it sounds like you want. He uses a pretty flexible technology but the real strength of his company is marketing.
  • Posted on 4/15/2007 at 12:02 PM Accepted
    I don't feel joomla is the answer to what you require. Joomla is php driven, though php is cross-platform and can be installed on a machine running asp, odds are your server admin won't and secondly you will no doubt be using SQL for your database and joomla is more setup for mysql server.

    Secondly, it would have to be integrated with your username/password scheme you are using for your storefront.

    It would be easier to advise if you had a link to your store or would tell us what the storefront is using. I'm assuming you didn't have the entire storefront coded from scratch or you wouldn't be asking the above.

    tj
  • Posted on 4/15/2007 at 2:40 PM Author
    Thank you for taking the time to analyze and question other advice.

    I share your concerns about joomla, although it is a fantastic tool. I've been back and forth with our developers since that response was posted as to whether the php could be integrated the way we wanted into our asp.net code.

    Unfortunately, I can't provide a link to our dev site in a public forum, but I can tell you that we are using VP-ASP as our storefront, with pretty extensive customizations. I have contacted VP-ASP about joomla-like content management systems, but haven't had any luck.

    Any further comments you have would be most appreciated.
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