Replystorm's Blog

Flickr, Copyright Policy, Irena Jovanovska

replystorm — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 23:09:45 +0000

An example of Irena Jovanovska's stunning nature photos

This week we’ve ReplyStormed a Flickr page by Irena Jovanovska, who has taken some remarkable photos of animals, insects and flowers. Sixteen comments have arrived so far, which we’ve forwarded to Irena Jovanovska‘s email address today. We hope she’ll give us some feedback — either by email, or as a comment to this blog post.

After receiving some excellent feedback (20 comments in all) through ReplyStorm, Tamara Schuit, herself an accomplished nature photographer, has sent some very informative emails about Flickr members and their concerns over copyright protection (i.e. what rights exist over photos which have been published on Flickr and how to protect your rights to the original photos). We’ll try to post some of the discussion points in the next blog post.

If you’d like your blog or website “ReplyStormed” – or know someone who’d like it — please feel free to contact us or leave a comment here with the person’s URL. There’s no cost. This is a free service while we continue to experiment with the product model.

The Nature Photos of Tamara Schuit

replystorm — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 23:32:12 +0000

We chose another photography webpage for the latest “ReplyStorm” session – the beautiful work of Tamara Schuit. In two days she has already received a dozen replies (all of them glowing about her wonderful nature series of photographs), each user selecting his or her favorite photos and explaining what they liked best. When we selected Tamara, we sent her an email about the concept of ReplyStorm. Perhaps she thought we were trying to solicit something from her, because she replied that she’d “have to decline the invitation.” Anyway, we’ve sent off the 12 replies to her just now, and hopefully she’ll let us know what she thinks. If not, that’s fine too. We wish her all the best.

Addendum: After emailing the comments to Tamara, this is what she wrote back to us:

“To be honest, I went back and forth, debating about the concept. I, like many Flickr members are always wary of our images being linked to due to recent misuse issues and violations of our copyrighted material – many images have been showing up on websites or being sold without our permission. Not that I thought that would happen with ReplyStorm’s idea but when I declined I felt better safe than sorry. Please remember that all of my images are copyrighted and cannot be used in any way (personally or professionally) without my consent.

That said I felt all of the ReplyStorm comments were very well thought and insightful. Many times the comments received by fellow Flickr members are brief but your members really impressed me with their attention to detail and what they noticed in my images. Bravo to you all! Based on your comments I even went onto my site and added some information to my descriptions to help clarify what the image is and if any post processing techniques were used to create the final image.

Thank you all and I look forward to hearing more of your comments.”

Afghanistan Gallery

replystorm — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 21:09:39 +0000

This time we thought we’d try ReplyStorming a Flickr page. We selected Todd Huffman’s captivating photos of Afghanistan, and asked people to select their favorite photos, and explain why they liked them. The results were so positive — 19 very interesting replies in just 3 days! – we thought we’d select another Flickr page for the next ReplyStorm (any suggestions on a Flickr page we should select?).

Jacob Schriftman received 16 replies to his review of Anne Frank’s Diary, which was featured in the last ReplyStorm post. Just received an email from him. He writes: “Thanks so much for the extra traffic! I certainly didn’t expect that many detailed replies to what was just a quick book review. Quite a nice surprise, though perhaps a bit disproportional: The wonderfully solicitous responses far outweighed my post in substance. Maybe one of my weighter posts would have served the purpose better?”

Jacob Schriftman on The Diary of Anne Frank

replystorm — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:03:02 +0000

This time we decided to “Replystorm” a particular blog post, rather than an entire site. The selection was Jacob Schriftman’s blog post on The Diary of Anne Frank. Schriftman is himself an accomplished writer of books which examine, amongst other things, Christian philosophy and the writings of C.S. Lewis. So far ReplyStorm has generated 15 responses (more coming) on Schriftman’s blog post. We are emailing him the responses.

Kimberly Snyder, who is in Bora Bora right now, also wrote a thank you note yesterday after we sent through a majority of the 30 replies she received from ReplyStorm on her blog (30 is the new record, by the way). “Thank you for sending this! It is very interesting!”

Envision IT

replystorm — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 04:40:28 +0000

Kimberly Snyder of Envision Beauty

The next two bloggers I “replystormed” were again selected randomly: Kimberly Snyder and Idhries Ahmad. Kimberly, a remarkable world-traveler, skincare expert, and yoga practitioner based out of New York City, has an informative and well-presented blog about women’s health and beauty which is associated with her cosmetic’s business — Envision Beauty. With this Replystorm, in the last two days, at least 24 new, unique users – women who care about health, beauty and yoga – have visited Kimberly’s blog and written their thoughts about it. Most of them were very impressed. When I first approached Kimberly by email, she wondered why she’d want so many people writing comments on her blog, so I’ve collected the comments in a single document which I’ll email to her separately.

Idhries Ahmad is a journalist based in Delhi, India. He writes about IT-related issues, with a recent post on a speach given by Bill Gates. So far 16 unique users from this ReplyStorm initiative, all of them interested in the type of IT news he delivers, have visited his blog and given their feedback, which I’ve also sent him in a single email. His response: “Thanks for selecting my blog and extremely thankful for the wonderful comments that readers have posted. Wonderful Ideas.”

Any suggestions on who we should ”Replystorm” next?

The Healthy Hostess

replystorm — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:49:04 +0000

The first blogger I approached was The Healthy Hostess, who has a delightful cooking blog from Ohio, USA, with a diverse range of healthy recipes and detailed photographs of the food. How did I select the Healthy Hostess?

The Healthy Hostess

It was a matter of a few random clicks, that’s all — but once I saw her page, I was immediately impressed by it. She turned out to be wonderfully receptive and friendly, promptly replying to my initial inquiry. I then approached members of the “Cooking” topic in our web community, and 19 of them visited The Healthy Hostess Blog — 14 of them gave their detailed feedback. The Healthy Hostess responded with: “I loved the feedback! The readers had really great ideas that I am excited to work into the blog! I love how they told me what they liked and what they thought I could add.”

She also gave some excellent feedback herself on ways we can improve the ReplyStorm concept. So it looks like the first attempt was a success! Thank you Healthy Hostess!

Welcome to ReplyStorm — Day One

replystorm — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 09:41:44 +0000

Over the last 10 years I’ve founded some Internet properties and, with my company, have developed some “collective intelligence” technologies (with several US patents). I’m now experimenting on new ways to employ the technology across the Internet.

My idea with this ReplyStorm blog is to select a different blogger, or blog post, every few days. ReplyStorm will then select a group of between 10-30 unique users (or even more) from the web, and will encourage them (using the “collective intelligence” technology) to come and read the blog — and give genuine, engaged feedback. Think of it as a focus group which is motivated to give their best possible feedback.

ReplyStorm selects this group of unique readers based on the topic of the blog. So, in other words, if the blog is about politics, ReplyStorm will select 10-30 users who are interested in politics.

We will then update this blog with the results.

If you’d like your blog to be considered, be sure to let us know.