Jahanshah Javid

Immediacy

JJ, I don't think immediacy is the reason why some of us are more willing to share our thoughts or, as some would say, our whims on FB rather than on IC. I think immediacy gives it a more informal air and that might make it easier to share things but I don't believe it is the only reason I use FB. What makes me personally more comfortable on FB is that I have control over who is amongst my "friends"  (who I am sharing my thoughts with) so it's not a public forum like IC. Even amongst those "FB friends", as Orange mentioned, I can control who can see what. In fact you were on my limited profile until I met you. :) I

Incidentally I have noticed that even on FB the "public figures" who are indiscriminate about whose "friendship" requests they accept they tend to be more formal and actually rather cautious about what they share on their profile pages.  

Having said that, I understand the attraction of FB, but don't think IC would necessarily work like facebook unless we were enabled to "make" our own groups of friends to interact with. I am not even sure that is what IC should aspire to do. it could become a small component of IC,(I guess like the chatroom but with more control over who you chat with) but the strength of IC, in my opinion, is it being an open forum.

My two cents. :) 

JJJ U need to empower ur users. No1 wants to be micro managed!

JJJ have you ever been micromanaged?  Since the inception of i.com you've been your own boss so I don't really know if you can understand the impact of being micromanaged.  Maybe talk to someone who knows how it feels.

As you know I've always been an advocate of allowing users to control comments in their "own" blog.  Prior to that I was an advocate of allowing only registered users to comment.  Heck I even took a break from i.com for a year because i.com was being abused by bunch of free loaders.

Now is it better or worse with only registered users?  Do you remember all the fears about i.com would lose being "unique" and bunch of other fears?  

As you know we have tons of annoying people on i.com who want nothing more than to annoy others and be the spokesperson of the "silent majority".  Be a loud mouth of the "silent" majority!  So for these people (who are plenty enough) there is nothing better than the fertile grounds that i.com provides.

In your comment below to Nazy jaan you ask   I can't stress enough about the importance of immediacy. iranian.com has more than 11,000 registers users but only a fraction bother to post anything. Why is that?

I sincerely believe it is because you're trying to micro manage your users by being the only person who can control and remove the comments.  Therefore, people are "intimitated" to post something of their own.  They just don't want to deal with the Irooni-baazi. Everywhere else in blogsphere they have that option but here.

In my opinion it has nothing to do with immediacy and being behind times as you claim in the answer to your own question.  i.com is "user friendly" enough.  I believe "intimacy" has as much to do with it as "immediacy"!  Now if that sounds like a joke, well it actually is!

Anyway good luck!  I can discuss more if you're interested if not this has already been a long comment.  

Everything is sacred

A Short Burst of Inconsequential Information!

"We came across the word 'twitter', and it was just perfect. The definition was a short burst of inconsequential information,' and 'chirps from birds'. And that's exactly what the product was." – Jack Dorsey, the Creator of Twitter

JJ,

I applaud your on-going efforts to improve this site and I believe that any enhancement that provides the better “ease of use” and the “look and feel” is valuable. I will save my judgment until I have had a chance to see the new Iranian.com, but here are my general comments and observations.

To me, Iranian.com is something like the Huffington Post, a collection of news items, commentary, celebrity sightings and of course, S.I. swimsuit models, all with an Iranian flavor! The blogs generally reflect the views of the Editor and its readership and as such, it is narrow but deep, instead of broad and shallow. I believe that the quality of the content and commentaries need to be of the highest priority and not be sacrificed for fast and short posts and inconsequential random thoughts! Otherwise, the place will turn into a hodge-podge of comments by folks who have nothing else to do and just want to hear themselves! “I tweet therefore, I exist!”

You say that the desire to become more Twitter or fb-like is driven by the fact that the majority of the11,000 registered users are not participating in blogging and commenting. Well, maybe they just don’t have anything to add to the discussion and would rather sit back and watch. 

Think of it this way. Iranian.com is like The American Idol! You have the people that are willing to show their talents (or make a fool of themselves!) on the stage; the bloggers. Then you have the audience that would cheer or boo the bloggers; the commentators. And finally, you have the majority that are sitting at home and are being entertained. You could give them an opportunity to send a “thumbs up, or thumbs down”, which you are planning to do, but that’s the limit of their participation.

Best of Luck!

thanks Jahanshah, sounds interesting.

Thanks Jahanhah. I read your blog once. I may have to read it once more. I also read the comments and it seems that some long time contributors are not so keen on
importance of immediacy. I would have to say that I would give more
weight to your ideas simply because as the publisher of Iranian.com from
start to now, I trust that you have been exposed to more feedback from
users. For instance, I have family members and friends who are IC readers but do not
contribute. What makes them not contribute?  I usually do not ask them
this question. However, I believe that you have heard the answer from many  of readers and it probably has been that it has not been user
friendly enough for them to contribute.

I also know from personal
experience that I have never used some of the features offered by IC.
May be if posting video were easier, I would have done it already. Also immediacy is important since I see featured news by IC and they are great but many hours later, same news items are still there. With more immediacy, this would not be the case.

Your comment to Orang is interesting to quote, where you wrote:"But the iranian.com envelop is more like a safe that opens with 10 keys
and a nuclear combination lock in the basement of the Swiss Central
Bank! It's tough getting your word out here." 

Hips don't lie

Can you add a kinda ring tone or something here. It'd be swell to hear a ding dong each time there's a flag going up, even better if we can download our own fave tunes.

I'm biting my tongue not to call you "Your Majesty", for he too ruined the foundation for the facade.

Never increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.

Limiting to one ID

I like Anahid's idea of limiting each user to one ID. I am still not sure on the best way to enforce it however it will prevent fake "debates" betweeon the same person.

It will also give some teeth to banning. To balance it I would like banning to be more like suspension so that an ID is allowed to return after a period.

I know my thought as not real cooked but I just wanted to throw some out there. I also agree that envelope is not as important as content. But it does matter a bit.

The envelope vs. Combination Safe

Thanks Orang. Just one thought: Content is always more important than the envelop. But the iranian.com envelop is more like a safe that opens with 10 keys and a nuclear combination lock in the basement of the Swiss Central Bank! It's tough getting your word out here. We need to make it much easier and faster for content to makes its way onto iranian.com.

Thank you for your hard work !

Appreciated !

Beh Omideh Eenkeh Beh Payeh Ham Deegeh Peer Besheem:

Tintin Celebrates 80th Birthday

;0) 

Content is more important than envelop but Envelop counts too

I've always thought that Content is more important than envelop but Envelop counts.

Ofcourse we need better user interface but what made Facebook, Wikipedia or Google succesful was that they offer something people was waiting for.

In parallele of providing same technology standards as other sites, we need think about how we could improve content.

per example sometimes you want share a thought with everybody and sometimes you want just share it with selected people. It is what offered by Facebook (groups or selected sharing). I would do it with IC if it was possible.

We could also imagine an area people could exchange services and help when they are travelling. Per example, we could have a tag saying you could advice people travelling in your area and people could post questions (a little bit like twitter).

People should provide their suggestion about what they need more than how technically it should be done.

Cheers.

Something for everybody

Thanks Nazy. I can't stress enough about the importance of immediacy. iranian.com has more than 11,000 registers users but only a fraction bother to post anything. Why is that? It's because iranian.com is way behind the times; we are not offering the most options in a user-friendly fashion.

I see nothing frivolous or unintelligent about posts on Facebook or Twitter or Balatarin. They are popular because they give choice and variety.

We need to create an environment for people to do anything they wish, from random thoughts, to blogs, images, links and ...

Writers will have more reason to come to iranian.com, not less. My idea is that blogs and other substantial content should still have two-thirds of the front page. Instead of blogs being lost and relegated to Blog Central, we should get rid of Blog Central in its current boring format and give more prominence to bloggers on the front page.

Again, immediacy! Much of the content on iranian.com is 24-72 hours old! The world is changing by the hour, by the minute, second! Why should I or anybody wait that long to say or share something? Why should I be on Facebook half the day, when instead I could be on iranian.com where there's a much larger audience than the few thousand friends on Facebook?

Good Luck!

My first hit, after understanding the issue of immediacy, was the change of atmosphere here. I mean, the gap between exchanges allows IC users to take a breath/settle in thought and reactions, before responding to the other readers. In a more immediate environment, i can imagine a lot of intensity among already-intense users. Is that good or bad? Well JJ, if you ask me, I prefer real communications to quick/ superficial ones. 

Also, I'm thinking the quality of contact on FB differs from here. Most of us have a background or face to face connection with our contacts. The ones that we have not met face 2 face, we know about their characters from some professional or social venue. Even Friends of friends can be cross-checked in so many way.

Well, I am excited for you JJ, for sure. And I trust your judgment with any changes on your site. And I do look forward to experiencing the changes.

I will come back to this thread if I can offer more feedback. 

Interesting

Thanks for the update, Jahanshah. It sounds really interesting. I know everyone is gung-ho over Facebook. While I cannot deny its reach and impact as a social networking tool, I'm afraid I cannot hide my low opinion of the caliber of superficial exchanges which take place on Facebook.

One of the most prized features of Iranian.com, in my humble opinion, has been the caliber of dialogues taking place on it, before any other Iranian medium attempted it, and better than any other since. Though important issues are always brought up by some intelligent Iranian users on Facebook, the speed with which the information is updated and pushed down and out of the thinking arena is so fast, I often wonder how much settled in people's minds and how well the issue was understood, let alone debated.

I hope that in your search for bringing excitement to the look and feel of Iranian.com, you are looking for more than just the speed of refreshing the pages, and that there are still corners of the website which will continue to lend themselves to thinking and reflection, debate, and most importantly, good writing.

Even today, I believe it a shame to have good writing pushed down the front page in favor of videos and copy/pastes, and mediocre and sub-mediocre writing.

When I make the rounds among Iranian American writers, the most shared sentiment about Iranian.com is: "Jahanshah gave us our first chance to start experimenting with our writing." Writers, some of whom accomplished authors now, remember you and this site so fondly for that chance. I hope you remain faithful to quality in certain areas of the website as you have for the past 15 years.

For whatever it's worth, my friend.

So Exciting!

Great ideas, and Good luck with the implementation of all these changes! It sounds pretty complicated, considering the difference between the size of Facebook (the company) and IC's team! 

Thank you, JJ jan for all your efforts! I'm sure that this new Iranian.com is going to be a wonderful place for us to waste our time and to let our blood boil happily! (just kidding...really!)

Azarin