Back in it with another update. I’ll try keeping the blog as fresh as possible, as often as possible. It’s not always easy with all the time I spend on marketing, development and sales activities but I gotta keep the people informed.

First off, here’s a small bit of information for those not in the know. Our main developer Jayson, has been having back problems for over a year now and this unfortunate situation has drastically curbed the amount of time he has to spend on NewNeek.com. Since Jayson’s primary role is developing new features, we need him as healthy as possible so that the site can continue to have new content! The reason I mention this is that I am not going to be as involved in development as I have been. I am switching roles to sales and marketing so that I can drive membership up as much as possible.

But I thought it would be nice to inform you on the new features that are coming along. You know, as part of the whole marketing thing! Jayson, even through his back problems, he has been spending some time working on a new alert system. What’s the alert system you ask? I’m glad you did, it’s a lovely new feature that we’re very excited about and it will be part of our next release. Here’s an example.

- When you receive a new comment -> Triggers an alert to your email address
- When you receive a new message -> Triggers an alert to your email address
- When someone links to your want -> Triggers an alert to your email address
- When someone adds media to your want -> Triggers an alert to your email address

Of course, all of this can be turned off should the user wish to not receive any form of alerts. So with the alerts driving members back and the guides helping new ones learn how to use NewNeek, we’ll be pretty much in the driver’s seat towards keeping NewNeek fresh in the minds of people.

Another cool feature will be in your My Wants section. Let me show you a brief screenshot so that you can get the idea of what it does.

My Wants - New Grouping

 If you noticed, there will be a new grouping function that will seperate your wants. In the screenshot, it is represented by the “3 days ago” grouping. So instead of the current cluttered look, your wants will be neatly divided by groups, based on the sorting option you chose. Even better, we’ll remember what sorting option you last chose and redisplay your wants the same exact way the next time you reach the page.

Just a little something to help improve usability. With this concept in mind, we’ve also reformatted the want steps so that they are simple and easy to manage. We’ve gotten rid of the “published” field and replaced it with a “is completed” field. This way, you can let visitors know that you’ve completed the step without having to play around with dates as its set up now. Here’s a quick snapshot of that to give you the general feeling of it.

Want Steps - Tab Organization

You also probably noticed an “Organize” tab? This tab will allow you to change the order in which the want steps appear on NewNeek. Wan step management has never been this simple in all of NewNeek’s existance. I’m anxious to share it with all the members. Speaking of sharing, when will this update be ready you ask? In all honesty, we’re looking at an early March scenario. So you won’t have to wait long before you start using these new features!

Until then, look for more updates to the blog from a marketing perspective.

Joey

The push will consist of marketing the site at a Montreal Canadians game. On March 14, 21 and 28, they will be hosting games at the Centre Bell against the Devils, Maple Leafs and Sabres. It will be the perfect time and opportunity to approach people attending the game. Our plan is to give them a NewNeek.com card that will invite them to join the site and win a contest. The contest will be a pair of tickets to see the Canadians in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Granted they have to make the playoffs first! To be eligible to win the contest, people will need to sign up during the month of March. Afterwards, we will pick the winner in April and send them off to a playoff game. It will be very interesting and it will be my first experience with selling something to people I don’t know!

Apart from that, we will also try to build partnerships with local businesses for some other contests and promotions to market the idea. We will start with businesses in Trois-Rivieres and then expand slowly but surely. We constantly need to push hard to get the product out there. It’ll start with word of mouth and it will spread as people start using it constantly. There’s one thing i’ve noticed since going live back in September, the site is really incredible to use when people are putting in new content every day. That can only happen if we have more members. Even if it feels it’s stagnating right now, there’s a lot of people that will be joining soon. It also gives me the time to finish off the help guides before the masses arrive.

The help guides will be videos that help new users learn how to use NewNeek. The videos will have audio and will definitely be faster than reading through paragraphs of text on how to do something. Some of the guides i’m developing are how to use NewNeek, how to create a want and how to add an image to a want.

When all this is done, i’ll make sure to post some images cataloguing it all. It should make for some very intriguing ready. Until next time!

Joey Montambeault

Right now, the steps are disorganized information. You can enter a new step, but what good is it when you can just enter a comment? My goal, is to make the want steps more interactive. I don’t know if i’ll allow users to comment on individual steps, but i’ll definitely allow the owner to add more information to an individual step. New fields are going to be a title, some sort of start/end date for steps that have yet to be started or completed. This is key because it gives direction and a clear idea of what is happening to the want when you arrive on it. If the user hasn’t put in any steps, then the section simply doesn’t appear. This is a great way from seperating complex wants from simple ones and I definitely want both varieties on NewNeek.

To go along with the steps, over the weekend, I completed the user awards and community page. I also started working on a media section that I think will be very interesting. For the first time since NewNeek has launched, I will allow anonymous people to contribute to the site. They will be able to add links of media to the want. Of course, this will be done in a discrete fashion as I do not want them polluting the website. But i’m very anxious to put it online and see where it goes from here.

After this update, I will try to iron out the My Account / My Friends section. These sections are missing a little something something and i’d like to start opening them up to increase participation from new members. I really want to reduce the cluttered look and feel. We’ll see how that goes, but it will definitely take me into 2009. Afterwards, i’ll start exploring the mobile section to add more content to it. So that you can take your wants with you, everywhere you go!

There’s a lot of work to be done, and this doesn’t even include marketing / sales duties, which I promised myself I would start doing more of. Now that I have received my business cards, I no longer have an excuse. Oh and they’re quite flashy too, very good looking! I’m anxious to spread them around and see if it generate any word of mouth. We’re getting more and more visits every day, so all of this is very positive. Now, if we can just get them to sign up!

Joey who hasn’t been sick yet this winter …….

When I look at our site statistics, we are having a steady flow of visitors. It is holding at around 150 people a day. But for whatever reason, we’ve had no sign ups. One of the main problems is that the site is oriented towards people from Quebec. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but when americans arrive on the site, they see french content and are probably turned off. I can’t blame them, I do the same thing when I arrive on a website that has a foreign language. To resolve this, I will start working on targeting content to the type of visitor. If I see it’s an english visitor, I would like to present some english content before showing french content.

What’s cool is I found a javascript library on Google that can basically detect what language a sentence is written in. For example, “Je veux un avion” would be detected as french and “I want an airplane” would be detected as english. This is great as I can save this value in the database and use it to target wants. There’s a lot of work ahead but I am very positive. The technology Google uses is called n-term approximation. It’s pretty cool stuff. It breaks down words into 2 letter combinations and then through mathematics, determines probabilities that these combinations are found in all the different languages.

When i’m not promoting the site, i’ve been working on user awards on www.newneek.com. My goal with this is to show appreciation to the members that are staying involved in the website and essentially keeping it alive. I’m gonna have some cool categories like “Most Viewed Member”, “Most Viewed Want”, “Most Commented Want” etc. These categories will be refreshed on the first of each month with the winners of the previous month. I’ve got a small screenshot I can share to demonstrate what’s coming.

Screenshot for new awards section

With christmas coming, I hope to start distributing the business cards and get the number of members over 100. That would be a very cool thing going into 2009. That’s what I would really want for christmas, more than any material thing that could be given to me.

Joey : who will be debt free in less than a month

But knowing that we want is just one part of the equation. What I obviously want is for the website to get noticed and become popular. But the overall objective right now is just for it to pay itself. If it can cover server costs, than i’m one happy camper. If it can cover server costs and generate some money for marketing, than i’m a very happy/excited camper. I definitely think it has its place on the net. Of course there are websites about wants, but I don’t think that any of them are doing it quite like we are right now.

When the website launched in September of 2008, there were a lot of bugs and issues to address. We worked hard and pretty much fixed most of them. Around the same time, I started contacting a web designer to help me with the overall look and feel of the site. We were very hesitant at first, not knowing if she could get the job done. We also didn’t know what to use as a logo! I mean, how can you correctly describe or even picture a want? When you’re a dentist, it’s easy to put up a sign of a smile and bingo, there’s your logo! But for NewNeek, anything in the world can be a want. A want can be world peace, but that doesn’t mean our site logo should be a peace sign!

So finally, during a brainstorming session, we came up with a play on the word NewNeek (unique) and the connection between the wants and the people who want them. The result is what you have right now in the blog header. A nice clean little logo that shows what we’re all about. I’ll let you guess what it stands for… For the slogan, we use ”it’s what you want”, which is quite possibly the best slogan i’ve ever come up with (and trust me, i’m good at finding slogans).

Now, with our logo completed, it was time to get some business cards. Being from Quebec, we had the business card designed in french to cater to the local population. So the same web designer that I talked about earlier was re-commissionned to design the business cards for us. I’d like to share them with you and know if anyone has any opinions on them. We’re looking at getting 1000 printed for this one …

Business Card 1

This card will be used for marketing purposes. We’ll try to give as many as we can to generate word of mouth and additionnal visits to www.NewNeek.com. The slogan printed is “c’est ce que vous voulez” which can be translated into “it’s what you want”.

For the second model, it’s the same kind of design but this one has our names and a site logo. We will have 100 of these made. This one will be used when we’re doing official NewNeek business deals. One idea I have is trading ad space with shops that have walk in customers. This way, I can leave a deck of business cards at the entrance and have shoppers pick them up. I would then set up an advertisement for that company on the website. It’s a win-win situation for two businesses that do not compete against each other and have the same sized clientele. Here is an example of the second card.

Business Card 2

I’d love receiving feedback about the cards. I think they’re very edgy and precise, which is the look i’m going for with NewNeek. This week, I will have more news about NewNeek. While I wait, I suggest you start cataloging some wants on NewNeek!

: Joey

Such a simple word, yet one word that evokes many emotions whenever we think about it. To want is to be human. Whether we’re rich, poor, healthy or sick, we find ourselves wanting something everyday until the day we die. However, wanting is not instinctly human. When we are born, we need. We don’t want a roof over our heads, we need it or we don’t survive. So if we have shelter and food, then we’re pretty much all set. Right?

Not exactly. There exists a 3 need theory that drives human more than anything else in life. You will surely find yourself having needed at least one of these once in your life.

1. Need for Achievement

2. Need for Power

3. Need for Affiliation

The need for achievement is wanting to better ourselves everyday. When we have a goal in mind, this drives us to work hard to try to achieve it. Achievement can be anything in the world. It also has different criteria depending on the person. Achievement can be successfully raising a family, learning a skill, graduating from university, climbing a mountain, etc. Achievement is neither good or bad. Achieving is just the moment between a state of non attainment to a state of attainment. Nothing more, nothing less.

With achievement comes power. The need for power cannot be confused with having an army and wiping out good or evil from the world. Power is influence. When people see you as powerful, they often give you their respect. This allows you to gain influence over these people. With their help, you achieve things, based on your agenda agenda. This doesn’t mean you are mind controlling them. It’s just that humans feel secure when surrounded by powerful people.

Let’s take a second and imagine a sporting event where a close game is being fought and eventually won by one of the teams in the dying seconds. If you were in the stands, watching the game, you would probably be rivetted by the action taking place. If someone were to put a blindfold over your eyes, you would become enraged and tear it off. At this specific moment in time, the game and players have a powerful influence over you. Nothing is more important. If your team achieves victory, you feel by affiliation, that you have also won. That night, over a drink or two, you will recount the action, to other like minded people, about all that took place during the game.

We do this because humans need affiliation. What good is going to the game if you cannot talk to anyone about it afterwards? Humans need friendship and acceptance. If you cheer for the same team as someone else, you have a bond with them. No matter who you are or where you’re from. The need for affiliation brings us to surround ourselves with people with similar wants and needs. Countless associations accross the world exist because of the need for affiliation.

This is where needing and wanting become intertwined. As a human, i will always want something to help me relieve the need for achievement, influence or affiliation. If I buy a new golf club, I will probably be seen at the driving range in the next few days practicing with it. If I have a friend with whom I golf with frequently, he or she will probably know soon enough that I have added a new weapon to my arsenal. I am therefore seen as more powerful because this might help me achieve a hit of 250 yards instead of the usual 200 yards.

So the need for achievement, power and affiliation is one reason why we want. But is it something more than that? What do you want? Personally, I built a site all about wants. I invite you to check it out. I am curious to see what people will enter as wants, what category they fall in and what motivates people to achieve those wants.

Joey Montambeault