Travis Vocino Experiments in Art, Science & Technology.

Why don’t “normal” companies do this?

Today 9rules had a streamcast hosted by Tyme and Scrivs (Mike was in the chat). Basically, they went over some opinions on sites that were submitted during yesterday’s open call for blogs using Ustream.tv.

Now, 9rules is a younger company of course, but what stops other larger sites from doing something like this? We’re all looking for a new layer of uber corporate transparency. Every decent web company has a Twitter feed, a Flickr account and everything else you can think of. There remains a level of interaction that seems untouched by most companies though.

Human Personalities

I have to admit, before attending this streamcast, the personalities at 9rules were largely unknown to me. I didn’t follow their Twitter accounts, I wasn’t active on Chawlk and didn’t do much to get involved.

Now I feel somewhat connected to the whole thing. It’s odd but now I feel like I want to be part of it. I did submit my site and I hope I get accepted. On a larger scale, it’s very interesting to see how the human element changed my feelings toward what is normally just data and graphics.

Giving your users the ability to actually see and, more important, feel who you are is invaluable. It’s a connection of intimacy largely lost on the internet.

This is somewhat surprising given that we have so many tools available to us to communicate with companies willing to provide that level of transparency.

New Transparency Ideas

I’d like to see more organizations get into this. Perhaps a monthly streamcast with the founders of the company — or at least the tech people or PR people.

Right now I’m working with Pras to do a weekly video blog that talks about the things we’re working on in order to build our brand, build his brand and get that interaction going which is classic in creating interest on the internet.