comments

• Adam on June 20th, 2008:

  OMFG are you serious!

• Adam on June 20th, 2008:

  I’ll be in the corner crying if you need me :’(

• James Lacerenza on June 20th, 2008:

  RIP kNewsroom, 2008-2008

• Kristen on June 20th, 2008:

  So sad, I’ll be over with Adam. Understand the reasoning, but I’ve got a couple of comments and questions:

  1) It would have been great if this obit had been posted this morning when today’s edition was published, before anyone sunk their time into writing or linking stories. Seems clear this was known last night when Ben was writing the eulogy.
  2) Will we get our watts back from knewsroom investments we made today?
  3) There seemed to be a lot of good suggestions about knewsroom that were never acknowledged. I’m not complaining, I know you’re understaffed, but it would seem that figuring out ways of keeping knewsroom alive could have been a great group project.
  I’ll miss you knewsroom…it was great while it lasted…

• Ben Kaufman on June 20th, 2008:

  Kristen, we should definitely give todays investors their watts back.

• Kristen on June 20th, 2008:

  Thanks Ben - do I get extra watts for guessing last night what the eulogy was about?

• Kristen on June 20th, 2008:

  knewsroom support group anyone… reading the news just feels pointless now Knewsroom was really a lot of fun. Thanks kluster for letting it live as long as it did.

• Christina Lewis on June 20th, 2008:

  OH my goodness. I just saw the announcement. And I was nearing the end of a political article to post, too.

  Ben and Kluster crew, I am so sorry that Knewsroom didn’t work out. But I wanted to take a moment and thank you for setting it up; it was wonderful while it lasted. I think it was a marvelous idea - and that it could be a marvelous idea still with a few tweaks here and there. I did see this coming though, and I was dreading it.

  A couple of questions:
  1. Are we still going to get paid from our past written articles?
  2. Is there any chance that we could see a new and reformed Knewsroom at some point in the future?

  Lastly, I would like to say that I have been blessed with a large family. My Mom and all four siblings were Knewsroom/Kluster members, and they voted faithfully for my articles (and many others). Two of my brothers even collaborated on articles about technology and global warming. Is there a way for me to prove that all of those accounts belonged to real people and were not my own attempts to play the system?

  Again, thank you so much for Knewsroom, and I have a fervent desire to see it resurrect someday. If this is a thought anywhere on the radar, please let us know so we can input our ideas to make its second coming a great success.

  Blessings,
  Christina Lewis

• Gabriel Krieg on June 20th, 2008:

  This is very sad (but I sort of expected it). Unfortunately, I think the release of namethis only a short time after knewsroom really killed its chances. There were also some real problems that were never addressed. For one the design was weak, especially compared to the design of klusters frontpage and namethis, both of which deserve applause.

  Second, there was too much competition for the site to be viable so early in the game. What really made the site unique was the kluster model, but I think it mainly attracted kluster members to the site, but the kluster model also meant that very little was timely since it took 24 hours to verify content. Other news aggregator do this in real time.

  Third, I think the marketing effort could have been much stronger. The only way to get outside readers is through a really strong marketing campaign.

  I understand that klusters resources are limited and I doubt it would have been worthwhile to invest the time needed to get knewsroom off the ground. However, I think that perhaps a similar website that utilized only original content would be a worthwhile investment, even if the rewards were only in watts and ad revenue. If blogs prove anything, its that people are perfectly willing to write great content for free.

  Why not rebuild knewsroom into more of a web magazine (think Slate)? Use the old knewsroom algorithms, but instead provide writers with some percentage of revenue and watts (60-80%) and share the rest with investors. Since watts don’t cost anything - the primary costs would be bandwidth. I think it would be much easier to find readers for original content and the site could really be a viable competitor with helium or triond.

  The system could market itself. Since monetary rewards would be based on ad revenue, it would encourage writers to advertise in order to increase payouts. As a blogger, I know it take time to establish enough readers to make even a small amount of money, and what a site like this needs more than anything is time, time and advertising.

  I hope you will consider this as something for the future. Knewsroom had a lot of loyal users, and its a shame to lose them.

• Ben Kaufman on June 20th, 2008:

  Christina,

  Thanks for your input and evangelism.

  Yes, cash earned is cash earned, you’ll be able to start drawing funds out of your account next week (assuming you’ve received and activated your payoneer card)

  we’d be crazy if we considered Inviting friends/family and asking them to support you/your ideas “gaming the system”… thats considered totally kosher.

  there are a few namethis users who are actually managing multiple accounts as a single person and investing 100% of their watts into ideas they created across these multiple accounts… that is what lacy’s post was about this morning. We have dealt with that issue (and those users)… and hopefully its behind us.

  We at kluster do believe in ghosts, and that’s all i’ll say about the future of knewsroom.

• Christina Lewis on June 20th, 2008:

  Ben,

  Thank you so much for your response to all this. I’m still recovering from the shock. One minute Knewsroom was up, and the next, there was a headstone inscription. My heart hit my shoes, and my mind is still whirling.

  I have received my Payoneer card in the mail - and thank you so much. I saw your other blog about working in the last bit of Payoneer code and testing the system before putting it up live. Thank you again for the update…

  And thank you also for the clarification on friends and family. Your explanation of all the “gamers” buzz going around makes sense now, and… thank you again.

  *raises hand* I, too, believe in ghosts! I thought Knewsroom could be both a lucrative idea, from Kluster’s perspective, as well as a very noble one - being a community-directed publication.

  On a more personal note, I am extremely grateful for Knewsroom’s influence in my life. I have been a professional writer for several years, but I never thought of branching out into journalism. My Mom, who is on Facebook, initially saw your ad there and forwarded it to me, and the rest is history. I plan to pursue freelance journalism as… at least a side career, for now. All this is thanks to you, Kluster crew.

  I will continue believing in ghosts.

  Blessings,
  Christina Lewis

• Wade on June 20th, 2008:

  NAMETHIS.com is rigged. Who ever has the most watts is almost always going to win.

  I vote that you can no longer invest in your own name and anytime your invest in a name you are forced to invest in 3 other names you like.

  There is no demoracy in the system we have now. Who ever is the richest watt wise has the most influence, what a shame. If you really want to pick the best name, you have to give everyone a fair vote, rich or poor.

• Wade on June 20th, 2008:

  NameThis.com is rigged…

  In about a year, someone will have 500,000 watts to their name, and a new person will only have 1000. Why should one person have 500 times more influence on a name than another person?

  The person with 500,000 can invest all their money on a crappy name and still win. Do we want to be putting out garbage names?

  It’s not fair and the name results will be skewed.

  The only way to make it fair is to make it so you cannot vote for your own name. But what if you and a friend start working together and voting for each others names?

  Ok, so every time you invest, you must invest in 5 different peoples names. that you like

  I think this will give the best democratic results. The REAL best name will float to the top, not a poor name that some watt rich person voted for.

• Kristen on June 20th, 2008:

  Wade - your idea about voting for 3 other names along with your own is good if everyone played fair, but we now know that’s unfortunately not the case. Someone can just vote for the name they want and then for three other names that they know don’t stand a chance.

• d t on June 20th, 2008:

  I’m sad to see the demise of knewsroom though I haven’t been able to spend as much time as I would liked on it in the last 2 weeks or so. Also, I believe namethis cannibalized some of the attention that knewsroom would have got … I share Christina’s hope that knewsroom would be resurrected in some shape or form in the future.
  Thanks for the great opportunity to be part of something good.

• Gabriel Krieg on June 20th, 2008:

  Wade, if you read back through some of the blog posts and comments, you’ll see some discussion and explanation of how the algorithm takes care of this. I believe that the algorithm has been restructured to account for investments ones own name suggestions (I don’t think they do much anymore). This is a good post/thread to read for more info: http://www.klusterfck.com/2008/06/13/klusters-decision-engine-some-explanation/.

  I think one problem with requiring voting for other names, since this is an investment system, is that I sometimes only see only one name I like - would I be required to then invest the same amount of watts in several other names if I only wanted to vote for one? I think that these issues will be resolved soon.

• Julien Harksen on June 20th, 2008:

  Oh well

  It was fun while it lasted. I can’t say I enjoy namethis as much as knewsroom.. I will participate every now and then though.. I’m looking forward to your next project

  I loved Knewsroom..I even made an account for my grandad on knewsroom(even though he doesn’t have an email(I gave him my other one)) He wrote news articles after world war 2 and he was just watching/learning the system and doing some minor investments before he wrote some of his stories.. but I guess it’s too late now Would have been fun to see what he wrote.

  Could we get a little clue as to what your next project might entail Ben ;)?

  -Julien

• Kristen on June 20th, 2008:

  FYI kluster team - when I clicked on namethis (under lab projects) from my dashboard, knewsroom appeared. It also looks like someone just posted an original article there. Like Ben said, ghosts…

• Kristen on June 20th, 2008:

  This is the knewsroom page that still appears…http://namethis.com/news/editions/37-june_20_2008

• Tiffany on June 21st, 2008:

  This is so sad, I loved knewsroom, I had never heard of anything like it before I saw it; though I understand why it happened. I hope to see it resurrected in some way in the future.

• max on June 21st, 2008:

  screw this, im finding something else to waste my time w/!

• Adam on June 21st, 2008:

  @ Ben-doggie-dog, Bo ‘diddly’, Lee ‘insert nickname here’, and K.O.

  Wow, where do I begin? Alright let me begin by saying that I think knewsroom was/is a brilliant idea, it still just needed a few adjustments. I don’t feel like the site was ever properly monetized, therefore how could it possibly support itself. I can’t help but believe that if the site were making a profit, then it would still be around even if it did not fit the Kluster model to a tee.

  Please just answer one question for me. If it were possible to make knewsroom profitable from day one with no financial loss (like the namethis business model) and ensure that contributors were able to be rewarded fairly, would you bring it back? (I believe in ghosts too. Oh and aliens. Oh, oh and profits… mmmmm, profits.)

  I really do understand that it did not fit the original Kluster model, but hey, post-its came from a superglue formula reject, and the platypus came from… well I don’t know, but those had to be a mistake too, and look how awesome platypuses are, I mean seriously. Most importantly, what am I supposed to do with the knewsroom tattoo on my neck? It’s summertime, I can’t go around wearing turtlenecks, it’s 92 degrees and muggy here!

  I don’t want to get into all the details in a comments thread, but I also know that knewsroom and namethis could be making Kluster a lot of money if they were well monetized. By monetized I don’t mean just slapping adsense all over either, there are some great channels that would fit perfectly in with the sites.

  Okay, that’s my rating and raving for the moment. One for me *takes a sip* and one for my homie *pours some ‘Dew” on the ground*.

• Allison Reynolds on June 21st, 2008:

  Loved Knewsroom and can see it being resurrected with different content….would work awesome for amateur pr0n (lol!…serious) or similar niche information/entertainment that is community produced.

  Hope to see it back… and definitely enjoying NameThis despite the gaming and people not reading the briefs

• Gabriel Krieg on June 21st, 2008:

  @allison - I think you have the solution…can we call it kr0n?

• Kristen on June 21st, 2008:

  As I’m trying to move on from knewsroom, I’m starting to now wonder how long my watts will hold out. Despite using namethis regularly, I haven’t won any watts since the first day when I had a first and second place finish (for 2 different campaigns). I foresee running out of watts fairly quickly without knewsroom around. On the upside, I guess I can’t be accused of being a gamer

• Felipe Villamil on June 21st, 2008:

  Sorry that Knewsroom didn’t last, but I know you guys at Kluster will come out with something as cool as knewsroom so good luck guys

• Duane Melius on June 22nd, 2008:

  Dear sir / madam.

  Just a short note because I haven’t got time to go into a rant, but I started off as thinking your site namethis.com was great. What a fantastic way to make use of my lunch hour in a fun and productive way…

  So I contributed to every open brief on the site giving two or three names, four and five, for some!

  Sit back and let the investment mature I thought. I wasn’t prepared for the sour shock that would come my way.

  I named the “reverse web searching” brief with a totally original name which I dreamt up on the spot. The name was elgoog (google backwards). I even checked the domain name to be on the safe side. Imagine my dismay when I received the notification that the (ever so slightly inspired) el-goog was the winner. Let me make it clear that this name was not on the site before I made my contribution. I think it’s obvious, as mines is the purer form of the idea.

  I’m sure you can think of how the system could be open to abuse. Its a shame, because it could be a great thing if these bugs are ironed out. I won’t be using your site again, unless you can come up with a fix that works. Perhaps the client can have veto rights over the name. After all, they are the client. If my work gets used anyway and mr (or mrs) el-goog gets the cash then that is a travesty.

  Yours sincerely

• Matthew Cua on June 22nd, 2008:

  Although I received news that knewsroom died yesterday….I wasn’t able to comment because of typhoon fenshen hitting my internet connection >.<

  Anyway I’m really really really saddened if not devastated that knewsroom died.

  I loved knewroom and tried to contribute as much as i can but i guess it wasn’t enough

  Looking forward to your next kluster project, I’ll be sticking with you guys since you guys gave me so much

• Matthew Cua on June 22nd, 2008:

  *Brings out Ouiji Board to contact the Ghost of knewsroom*

  I really miss knewsroom….my quicklink to it in my browser shall stay there for a long time

  BTW Ben, when can we have our watts returned for the last unfinished issue ? since I invested 2/3 of my watts there

• Matt on June 22nd, 2008:

  @duane the community thought el-goog was a better name. collaborative brainstorming means sometimes a derivative idea might be better then the original. be heartened that your idea had more availability for investment, so it did have some advantages. in the end, the community felt more strongly about the variation. i see no travesty there.

• Stacy Prince on June 22nd, 2008:

  @Matt, I still hope you all will consider trying out “concept threads” for namethis. While on first glance it would seem the community liked “el-goog” better, you can’t really be sure it was because it preferred the name itself over elgoog — it could just as easily have been its placement on the list at a given moment (random), or a function of how many new entries there were to read through at the time. I think most of us enjoy how namethis entrants bounce ideas off each other and can see how effective a brainstorming tool it is. But it could be even more productive if it could be both competitive and cooperative; one shouldn’t have to waste energy covering one’s butt (posting “elgoog” and “el-goog” and “el.goog” and “elGoog”) every time one has an idea. A thread approach (being allowed to add on to someone’s idea in a sportsmanlike way) would protect and reward everyone, while modeling the very community-based decision-making you all are banking on.

• Clare on June 23rd, 2008:

  Sorry from me too.
  And seconded - I’d love to be involved in redeveloping the concept, I think we were really onto something: strong original content well rewarded, profile, an enthusiastic audience participating in setting the agenda. It just needed to be a bit more complicated behind the scenes and we could have come up with something that matched up to many of the biggest news sites and provided a way for niche editions to be produced by different organisations.

• Jon on June 23rd, 2008:

  @Duane and Matt, it seems to me that anyone who chose to invest in ‘el-Goog’ hadn’t really read the brief properly. Aside from the fact that there is already a spoof website called elgooG, reversed web searching doesn’t mean the opposite of what Google does. Also, how happy would Google’s lawyers be about a rival subverting their brand like that? I have no problem with it as a suggestion, but ideas such as that should really be an inspiration for others to run with. It is not a finished concept in itself. I would be interested, too, to see a breakdown of who invested in it – and how much. I think Gabriel Krieg’s results over the weekend are interesting (as he fully admits elsewhere on the blog). That’s not to say his names aren’t good ones, just that his investment patterns are revealing. Good on him for resolving not to invest so heavily in his own suggestions as a result, but how many of us will be so scrupulous?

  In my opinion, great concept though it is, namethis needs to change a lot. It needs to protect itself from the gamers (who want what? Kudos? Cash?). It needs to protect itself from suggestions such as Green Cross as an environmental charity, domain names that have already been taken. It needs a system of investing/voting that works and prevents it from becoming a clique.

  It needs to do these things to become a commercially viable proposition, and to keep keen those who enjoy participating. If lame-o suggestions keep winning then people will lose heart. Here endeth etc…

• Allison Reynolds on June 23rd, 2008:

  Card has made it here to Australia!

• Wilson Lin on June 23rd, 2008:

  Perhaps namethis can consider having moderators to run through the list of names and group them into the “concept groups” suggested by stacy. At the very least, having moderators can help identify and remove those names that are against the design brief. Any removed names can be moved into a list at the very bottom so people can still look at the names for inspiration, but they would be able to see what should not be submitted as ideas.

• Gabriel Krieg on June 23rd, 2008:

  @wilson - There absolutely needs to be some situation of moderation, but I think there are too many flaws with having designated moderators to make it realistic:

  1. There are, on average, hundreds of names per client request. Checking each of these for copyright infringement, compatibility with clients request, .com availability, etc. ends up being an enormous amount of work for a few people.

  2. Who gets to be a moderator? It would be an unnecessary drain on the kluster team to moderate thousands of suggestions a day unless they hired designated moderators. Selecting moderators from the community creates its own problems - primarily the issue of bias, unless moderators weren’t allowed to participate. But then where would the incentive to moderate come?

  I think a more viable solution is the very model that kluster prides itself on - community involvement. However, rather than leaving it up to the market, there should be a separate, community verified system of moderation. One way to do this is by simply flagging suggestions that violate the criteria or infringe on an existing company. At a certain threshold (say 20 flags to throw a number out) the name is automatically removed, or placed in the red (a special flagged name zone).

  A rating system could also serve this function, but has the obvious downside of potentially revealing where people are investing (therefore causing investment for the sake of investment rather than for the sake of actual name preference).

  The other option is a comment system - allowing people to argue for or against certain names and report violations. The advantage of this is that is fosters discussion and education. There is a lot of theory out there that goes into product naming, and allowing people to discuss and defend certain names could foster better results in the end.

  I am in favor of a combination of the comment and flagging system together. I really like Stacy’s derivative idea - which could be integrated into the comment/flag system. Also timestamps would be nice too. I doubt that investors had a major preference between elgoog and el-goog, but one came first. If we could see that, it could help lend credit to originality.

• Gabriel Krieg on June 23rd, 2008:

  @Jon
  Agreed with the whole elgoog thing - google would be on that faster than you could say “yahoo”.

  As for my winning, I’ll display my winning names with watts invested and my stake (keep in mind that winning names receive an automatic 80% stake so only the last 20% counts)

  Soma (Investment=0 watts, Stake=80%, Place= 3rd)

  The Fine Print (Investment=450, Stake=98% , Place=1st)

  Friend Tip (Investment=425, Stake=96%, Place=1st)

  Friendsider (Investment=125, Stake=91%, Place=3rd)

  StockUp (Investment=575, Stake=89%, Place=1st)

  Spectate (Investment=650, Stake=99%, Place=2nd)

  Club à la Mode (Investment=947, Stake=99%, Place=1st)

  I am providing this information for the sake of transparency, but also to question the algorithm. I have posted some of this info in another thread, but I want to place it here is as well. As you can see, my investments in my own names have increased as I have gained many watts over the past few days (as have my investments in other peoples names that I liked).

  I think most of these names do reflect community support, however I have to question those in which my stake is 98% or above. The only way that I could see these as being community verified is if the received numerous very small investments as in less than 10 watts (granted most peoples investments in others names are generally small, but i doubt they fall this low in the range).

  There is also the very likely possibility that very few people are investing other peoples names. Right now the risks are high, and the returns are generally low and so a few investments are making a huge difference, but that is hardly what i would call community verification.

  If the latter is the case, then the multiphase solution that numerous posters have advocated on this blog is an easy solution. For those not familiar, a simple multiphase system works something along these lines:

  Phase one - open suggestion period, possibly investment capped - this is to verify the top 25 or so names

  Phase two - suggestions are closed, investments are no longer capped (although their influence can be), pool is much smaller

  This creates incentive to invest watts by thinning out the pool (and thus significantly reducing the risk). Also, unless an individuals name makes the cut, there is no longer the risk of voting against ones own suggestions, which will also likely increase investments.

• Mark Casey on June 24th, 2008:

  RIP, Knewsroom. We hardly knew ye. I hope we can find some new way to implement the system!

  @Gabriel Krieg: Are you, by any chance, from Bloomington, Indiana or did you attend IU? I only ask because the two names you listed first from your NameThis successes (Soma, The Fine Print) are landmarks from Bloomington. Soma is a hip local coffee joint and The Fine Print was a (now defunct) university publication. Just wondering!

  Keep up the good work, Kluster team. As much as I hate to see Newsroom go (and I really do), I do agree with the fact that it isn’t inkeeping with the crowdsourcing/entrepreneurial theme of Kluster labs.

• Gabriel Krieg on June 24th, 2008:

  @Mark - Nope, never been to Indiana except during a flight layover - I’m in North Carolina

• Jon on June 24th, 2008:

  @Gabriel
  Thanks for posting all that – quicker than you can say Oohay! Your transparency does you credit and if you don’t already hold public office maybe you should consider running. I’ve followed similar patterns of investment when I’ve done well, which has made me a little suspicious of the algorithm. I think the percentages are probably a little skewed because (this is my hunch) there is less activity on the site from Friday to Monday. More than anything we need to get people investing consistently in names other than their own.

  You certainly have some great ideas there - hopefully the kluster bods are listening and maybe they’ll implement them. I agree with you about the moderating: I think something should be done, but it will have to be community-driven. The two-phase system definitely has legs.

• hitch on June 24th, 2008:

  @ gabriel. thanks for posting the details of your winnings, as we applaud transparency. i am looking into these data sets to assess that the algo isn’t misbehaving and to report back to you all about the why’s. i know it can be confusing.

• Jon on June 25th, 2008:

  Continuing this theme, I notice that I have just won with Malestrom. I invested 100 watts in it and my stake was 91%. Which means, if my adding up is correct, that a grand total of 81 watts were invested in the name by other people. That doesn’t strike me as a ringing endorsement. What would happen to the result if we couldn’t vote for our own? Also, when I invest in names suggested by others, I routinely bung 50 or 100 watts in their direction. I think people aren’t voting often enough and they aren’t investing enough. People love thinking up names, but the investment aspect needs to be made more attractive to people – otherwise the whole ‘world-validated’ tag starts to seem a bit dubious.

• d t on June 26th, 2008:

  I’ve not invested in a lot of my own names, save a few. I think it may be time to use my 26000 watts to my advantage?

• Duane on August 12th, 2008:

  i wont be wasting my time.

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• zodiaclove on October 11th, 2008:

  hey
  I don’t agree with what you wrote really….
  please explain further a bit more for me ;D

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