Iarfhlaith Kelly - Code agus Craic

When was the last time you had an original thought? Something 100% your own idea. Think about that for a second before you answer.

I bet it’s harder then you expected (it was for me). Chances are, most of the opinions you formed and the recent decisions you made were heavily influenced by media, friends, family, preconceptions, and past experiences.

Sometimes it’s hard to form your own opinion. With the constant barrage of news, blog posts, tweets, ads, TV, radio, billboards, and sponsors it’s no wonder your own ideas on what’s good and bad, right and wrong all get completely squashed. Our point of view is programmed into us.  We’re influenced on conscious and sub-conscious levels. It’s inescapable.

But, if we can find a way to push past the subliminal messaging and ignore the biased reviews of the media (as hard as it is), we give ourselves a great power, and an opportunity to think clearly.

This year I’m going to make a large effort to form my own opinions. It’s not going to be easy, but I’m sure I’ll be happier for it.

If everyone made more of an effort to form their own opinion instead of following along with popular belief then I’ve no doubt we’d all be a lot better off.

Ever watched The Truman Show? The 1998 movie with Jim Carrey as a man who discovers his entire life is a reality TV show. I watched it again recently and it struck a deep chord with me. Partially because for a movie made over 12 years ago (before Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare or even Google was storing tons of our information) it highlighted the issue of privacy, albeit in an entertaining way. But mostly it resonated with me because like Truman, without ever questioning it, we have accepted the world into which we have been presented.

The movie begins by showing how Truman Burbank became the first human baby to be legally adopted by a television network. And the network producers decide to run a reality TV show where Truman lives out his entire life in a mockup town constructed under a massive artificial dome in the Hollywood hills.

Everyone except him is an actor, everything around him is fake, and his entire world has been constructed by Christof, the omnipotent creator of the show.

For 30 years Truman lives out his daily life of routine without ever questioning his surroundings or the rules of his own world. He doesn’t push boundaries, challenge himself or others, and makes no attempt to break out of the mould into which he has found himself. Does this sound familiar to you?

Relating this back to our own lives I can’t help but feel that the same attitudes exist all around us, especially in our professional lives. For the most part, we believe what we see and we take it as gospel. We don’t question the state of the art, we don’t challenge it, extend it, or try very hard to disprove it. We simply accept it as fact.

This is a dangerous reality. How can we ever hope to do great things if we settle with for our present state of life?

For Truman, he starts to question his reality when an outsider named Sylvia, infiltrates the show and raises doubt in his mind about the circumstances of his life. From thereon in Truman begins to notice things. He begins to see behavour in people that doesn’t make sense, he begins to recognise patterns that don’t seem normal (even though he doesn’t know what normal is), he starts to question his surroundings and begins to push the boundaries created for him by Christof.

It’s this new heightened awareness that brings Truman to realise that his entire world is a lie and leads to his eventual escape from the artificial dome.

But without that element of doubt given to him by Sylvia, Truman may have spent the rest of his entire life trapped in a world where nothing is as it seems. For myself and for everyone reading this I think we should all try to be a little more like Truman, challenging our surroundings and questioning everything, because when we do that we can do truly remarkable things.

The Tuesday Push is a bi-weekly cooperative effort by bloggers to help get the word out about the chosen web service in a co-ordinated way. This time around it’s MyTown.ie.

“MyTown provides local information about each Irish town, such as weather forecast, news, events, attractions, maps, and business listings (including accommodation and entertainment).”

I usually take a slightly different approach to the Tuesday Push and try to highlight things about the web app or service that works, and things that don’t. This week is no different. Hopefully the guys behind MyTown will find this helpful and constructive feedback. That’s certainly my intention.

The Strategy - The Good Parts

First off, the strategy. Lets look at what’s good about the approach of MyTown.

It’s operating in a narrow channel.

Having a niche is a great. It means you can focus on delivering exactly what that small set of people want, usually resulting in a very focused and specific tool. But sometimes the niche is a little small, reducing the overall potential of the business. To counter this, MyTown are providing hundreds of narrow channels, each one focused on a small community. This has the potential of encouraging people who live locally to gain a voice online.

They’re asking for money.

Straight off these guys are setup to take payments online. Too many web services launch with a ‘wait and see’ approach. Hoping that they’ll be able to figure out a business model at some stage down the line. This is unsustainable without funding. So a better way is to start charging users from the get go. MyTown have taken this approach. Fair play.

It’s a manageable amount of content.

Whether it’s user generated, imported, scraped, or hand written there’s a manageable amount of content on the site. Each town has a reasonable amount of sections and sub sections to fill data into them. But with little micro communities constantly submitting content, this should ensure that the content grows steadily with the user base.

It’s a franchisable scalable business.

If it works in Ireland it can work anywhere. A lot of entrepreneurs use their home town as a testing bed for something with a potentially wider appeal. If MyTown becomes a successful viable business, then there’s no reasopn why it wouldn’t work in the UK or anywhere else.

It’s up and running.

It’s easy to criticise from the sidelines. To point out other people’s mistakes and feel smug when it doesn’t go right. But you’ll never get anywhere with that attitude. It’s dispicable. These guys from MyTown have put their heart on their sleeve and launched something. Now that they’re out there they can tweak, improve, test, tweak, and improve again. All under the eyes (and with the input) of their users. This is the only way to get things done. By actually doing it.

The Strategy - The Not So Good Parts

Despite all this positivity, there’s still a lot of work to be done. Here’s a few of my thoughts on their strategy and how it might be improved.

Who is this website for?

I can’t figure out if this website is for locals living in these towns or for tourists visiting it. I think this is a crucial decision as I don’t think you can provide a great service for both of these people in the one place. They’ve got totally different needs. For example, if I’m a local I don’t need a Google Map showing me where in Ireland I live. And if I’m a tourist, I don’t need to know what cars are for sale in the area.

Having a defined target market is absolutely critical, and I’m not sure who that is here.

There’s huge competition in this space.

This is a pretty cluttered market at the moment. Listings websites are a dime a dozen. There’s YourLocal.ie, Entertainment.ie, RateMyArea.com, IGOpeople.com, Boards.ie, MyHome.ie for property and AutoTrader.ie for cars. All of these sites command huge audiences and focus on one specific niche. MyTown is trying to cover all of this under one roof. Very risky.

Lots of features but not enough data.

MyTown offers a large variety of sections and listings for each town, yet a lot of them have very little content. For instance, the gallery sections in may of the towns I looked at were completely empty. And the same with the events calendar, not a lot going on.

I would almost cut some of these features and focus on nailing just a couple of them first. Doing it better than anyone else. Once you get a small part of it right, grow it out and slowly reintroduce some of these additional features. It’s all about having a critical mass of users, built up slowly over time.

What’s compelling me to stay?

MyTown seem to be doing a lot of things reasonably well, but nothing stands out that would keep me here and get me coming back. There’s no compelling data, local community or a killer feature enticing me to revisit the site.

There’s no clear call to action on the homepage either. I don’t know what to do next.

To encourage people to visit, and then to keep coming back I think there needs to be at least one very compelling reason. Whether that’s the sum of all the information about my town or something else entirely, it needs to be dressed up and presented in a way that gives a sense of community. Because the best thing MyTown has got going for them is the narrow channel of each town.

I’d focus on that, and add on the rest later.

I’m thinking of buying an iPhone. One of the new 3GS’s with video recording, improved battery life and all those lovely bells and whistles…

Now I know I’m a little late to the party on this, and everyone in the tech industry already has theirs, but the truth is, I’ve been waiting for an iPhone with a better camera before I dove in and signed myself up for an 18 month contract with O2.

One thing has been bugging me a little over the decision to buy. Something holding me back, and I haven’t been able to put my finger on it - until now. So here goes.

Staying Ahead

The thing is, I love being ahead of the posé and I love having something different. I always want to be the one that has the gadget no one else has. The coolest TV or the fastest broadband. Whatever it is, if I haven’t got the best one, I’d often prefer not to have one at all.

It’s pretty shameful I know, but I’ve always been like this. Recently I’ve been thinking about why I crave it. And I think the answer is that I want to be seen as a leader and not a follower. That’s not so strange right? I mean who doesn’t? But what I’m coming around to now is that it’s not about being different or special. That’s not important. It’s about being yourself. So whether that’s wacky and unusual, or completely mainstream, the key is being honest with yourself.

Mainstream versus Alternative

I’m coming around to the idea that if I want to be alternative and quirky, then that’s what I should do. Similarly, if I fancy going mainstream and moving with the crowd then that’s what I should do too. So long as in both cases, I’m being true to myself and not making decisions on what other people think.

So, if I want to buy an iPhone, I shouldn’t have a problem that everyone else already has one. I should recognise that Apple have made a killer device that’s head and shoulders above the rest. So despite the fact that it may be cool and different to buy a Pre or a Hero, I should embrace the iPhone because it’s the best phone in the world. Who cares if everyone else agrees with that!

The Little Voice

But it’s not that easy, because there’s this little voice inside my head saying “Hold out for the Hero, it’ll be awesome”. - That’s just me sitting on the fence again. I really wish that voice would disappear and let me get on with purchasing that iPhone I want so badly.

The point here is that regardless of whether you want to do something amazing, buy something outrageous or be something totally different, or whether you want to follow the crowd, fit in, and play it safe it’s all absolutely fine. So long as you do it for your own reasons. Being different is great, it gets you recognised. But if that means having an inferior phone (or whatever else you’re considering), then maybe it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

Now watch me buy that iPhone.