Attention Internet wallflowers: the days of keeping your opinions to yourself are over. At least that’s the hope of Cody Caudill, developer of the new social networking website OurConvo.com. As the latest entry into the blinding assortment of social networking sites on the Internet, OurConvo.com invites users to share their views on any and every topic. And he promises to keep Internet bullying and abuse (known as “flaming”) out of the conversation.
free speech without the abuse “Far too much mean-spiritedness surfaces during online comment threads,” observes OurConvo.com developer Cody Caudill. “We want to encourage people to express themselves, but we don’t want them to suffer the abuses that you see every minute on YouTube, Facebook, and even Craig’s List,” states Caudill, adding, “Frankly, there’s no reason for that kind of nastiness, so we’re not going to put up with it.”
According to Caudill, OurConvo.com was designed to provide a “kinder, gentler” place for people to communicate online with a vast audience, build private groups for discussion, or simply to glean insight into public opinion. And while the site is not about Political Correctness, it is Caudill’s hope that people will express the widest possible variety of views and insights without having to endure the “snarkiness” and insults of those who disagree with them. Which means, he hopes, that people will feel free to offer opposing viewpoints.
“There isn’t just one audience for the site,” says Caudill. “OurConvo.com invites everyone to engage in conversation, and is the first site of its kind to promote free speech without tolerating the flaming that happens everywhere else,” he observes.
“We anticipate true diversity of content. The conversations that have begun range from intelligent discussions about someone’s favorite book to controversial topics,” Caudill says.
OurConvo.com’s goal is to make it easy for anyone and everyone to join in The Conversation. The site allows visitors to join OurConvo.com by using their Facebook profile, simply by clicking the Facebook Connect icon and posting. In fact, most people come to the site through a link shared on Facebook, according to Caudill, who notes that there were 1,378,028 impressions of one of its advertisements on Facebook.
OurConvo.com is straightforward, so that people can jump into any conversation, immediately. “I found myself drawn into the site. I had joined and was replying to a conversation within a matter of minutes,” says OurConvo.com user Layna Evans.
The site’s “free speech without the abuse” concept came to Caudill more than eight years ago. The site has been in development over the past nine months. And, while its functions were finalized on April 1, this is no Fool’s Paradise. To date, there have been…
1,970 visits, averaging four pages per visit, and spending 4minutes/5 seconds each
973 absolute unique visitors (more than half of these have returned at least once)
Visitors from all 50 states, including Romania, Vietnam, Egypt, Kyrgyzstan, and Qatar
7,059 page views
49% new visits from 41 countries.
OurConvo.com represents a central marketplace for ideas and topics to come together, and it offers topics that will prompt nearly anyone to start talking. And, while it is meant for users to offer their opinions on a wider range of topics, as OurConvo.com user John Andres put it, “Ideally, this will become like an unedited version of Wikipedia: just the facts.”
OurConvo.com’s simple, crisp site closely resembles most other discussion forums, without the complicated interface. Each conversation is assigned a unique URL, for easy sharing and quick access. Replies are displayed on a single, continuous page, making them easy to follow. Users can choose to receive email updates when any or all conversation strings are updated. Users may also choose to receive RSS feeds whenever the site is updated. OurConvo.com adheres to a strict no SPAM policy and privacy policy.
www.OurConvo.com.
