The Smalltown Blog

Smalltown: Win an iPhone

A quick note to announce Smalltown is having a fun contest to encourage our members to update their personal profiles. We're giving away an Apple iPhone to the best new personal profile submitted.

All one needs to do is login at www.smalltown.com, upload a photo, type in some interesting text, and enter to win the iPhone.

Details can be found at http://www.smalltown.com/ipod_promo.html

Smalltown is not a social networking site. So why are we having a promotion to encourage registered users to update their profiles? There are two reasons.

First, when we originally storyboarded the registration process, our goal was to make it as zero mass as possible. It's quick and simple, and we don't prompt users to register until they try to complete a task that requires it. So many users don't even know they can customize their profiles. The contest helps make them aware that they can upload a photo and write something about themselves.

Second, we're looking into ways to make Smalltown a bit more fun. We're finding that Smalltown sites are becoming so rich with information that they're also becoming a bit dry. This contest is a simple first step into injecting some more local color to keep up with the deep local knowledge.

- Hal Rucker

 

Virgin Towns and Halo Towns

Smalltown, San Carlos went live today. This is our seventh Smalltown site; we continue to make our way down the Peninsula from Millbrae to Palo Alto as planned. The most interesting detail regarding San Carlos is that we built the new site and pre-loaded it with content in only two weeks. Our very first town, Burlingame, which is about the same size as San Carlos, took four times as many person-hours to prepare. We’re figuring out how to launch new towns in much less time for much less money.

Our ability to launch a new town efficiently will be very important when we start to expand to hundreds of towns. We’re speeding up the process in three ways.

1. We’re learning that “Halo Towns” are easier to launch than “Virgin Towns”. Burlingame was a virgin town because it was first. There weren’t any adjacent Smalltown Sites. On the other hand, San Carlos borders several towns that already have Smalltown sites. We believe it is very important for a user to have a great first experience doing a search at a Smalltown site, so we preload each site with content before going live. If a town like San Carlos is touching towns with existing Smalltown sites, the Webcards in the halo towns are included in the search results. (This feature can easily be turned off by the user.) The neighboring towns which have been around for a while make the virgin town look better. Bottom line: we now know that halo towns are much easier and can plan accordingly.

2. We’re happy if 85% of the content is updated and accurate. The last 15% is just too time consuming to track down and correct. We find this to be a reasonable compromise because our data is “self healing”. If we didn’t see a vacant building and remove it from our data, we’re probably okay because one of our users will click on “report this” and tell us about it. Unlike most directory information databases, the longer a Smalltown site is around, the more accurate its data becomes.

3. Our processes are getting better. We’ve had time to try out several variations of walking down streets with a camera and a clipboard, and the current process is much faster and more accurate. The next step is to build some custom technology that eliminates the need to carry both a camera and a clipboard. Perhaps a wireless device with a keyboard, a camera and a database – it’s easy to visualize.

Some relevant links:

The new San Carlos site: http://www.smalltown.com/sancarlos/

The new Daily Digest: http://www.smalltown.com/sancarlos/html/dailydigest

Press Release: http://www.smalltown.com/pressreleases.html

Visit the "City of Good Living" www.smalltown.com/sancarlos

- Hal Rucker

 

A Good Problem to Have

So many people in the Smalltown community are making Webcard postings and listing new content, the original design of the emailed Daily Digest has become obsolete. We're launching a new design today with its own simple navigation to make it easier to scan through everything that's new.

The left hand column has a list of all the sections of the Daily Digest. Click on a section name in the list, and you'll jump right to it. The Coupons section is a special case because, now that we have dozens of valuable special offers every day, the coupons are also organized by category.

Another improvement is we list local events that are happening today, and future events that are being announced for the first time. And as before, all the items in the Daily Digest link back to their respective Webcard on the Smalltown site.

Note at the top of the layout there is a photo and paragraph about a topic of local interest. That actually is a place keeper for our first new product since the Webcard posting, an area for a local advertiser to pay to sponsor the Daily Digest. The photo will be the main photo from their enhanced Webcard, and the text will be the description from their Welcome Tab. Naturally, we will label the content as a sponsored listing.

Here's an example of the new design: http://www.smalltown.com/sanmateo/html/dailydigest

The next feature coming soon is a local "Sales Calendar". This tool will enable local merchants to announce, describe and post sales and promotions on a dedicated calendar that appears on the Home Tab. The new content will be included in the Daily digest.

Please let us know what you think of the new design.

- Hal Rucker