Group Update 1

13 May

Our group has come up to full speed. After a couple of weeks of casually discussing possible directions we could go in, we got together for a few hours — armed with an agenda — and  and banged out the hosting, content, and structure plan for our site. Now we are ready to really move.

We are going to start by focusing on the homepage and the more straightforward sections of the site. A couple of sections, specifically the job and rental posting areas, are sparking a debate on whether we should sell the spots to boost our revenue plan or offer them for free to fuel user-created content. We discussed competitors and the models they use, but there’s a real variety out there. For example, MediaBistro.com charges for all of its job postings, while Craigslist.com has paid job postings in some cities and free job postings in others. Craigslist also charges for a rental posting in some cities and lets users post free housing ads in other places. All of the housing postings on Domain.com.au are paid spots.

At this point, we are thinking we might try paid job postings and free rental postings so that we can see how the two options behave once they are live.

Another on-going discussion has centered on image usage issues. We are covering some businesses on Lygon Street, and many of the restaurants in the area have websites with nice art on them. Trouble is, we are not sure what sort of copyright issues we need to watch out for. We are assuming we would need clearance from the companies to use images from their website on ours, so we have decided to take our own pictures at least for now. I am looking into Australian copyright laws … but until I have slogged through the facts, I am off to grab some snapshots!