Global Grind answers questions

Lately there has been lots of speculation and questions about Global Grind’s latest redesign. Well, the folks over at Global Grind have actually been watching the exchanges. CEO Navarrow Wright contacted me to address some of the speculation and to clarify some things about what they are doing. I think I covered most of the questions we all had from our discussion the other day however if I missed anything Navarrow mentioned he can answer any other questions you may have directly in the comments:

BW2.0: Hi Navarrow
Navarrow Wright: Hey Angela

BW2.0: Ok, I will get right to the heart of what most of our readers want to know. As of yet they are not sold on how this “New Global Grind” can actually help them as publishers, in fact one reader (Ryan B.) described the new site as “having to fight my way through a mob” in order to get his content seen and actually get traffic back to his site. Any comment?
Navarrow Wright: Actually I have several.

BW2.0: LOL
Navarrow Wright: Global Grind had always been about giving the urban/ hiphop community a place to have a voice and a place to give creative professionals ( bloggers) a place to introduce their content to a larger audience.
Navarrow Wright: So we do that in 3 ways:
1. By allowing users to submit, rank and rate content from any source and promote it to their peers
2. By grabbing feeds of a sampling of sites and promoting that are of interest to this audience and promote their content; and
3. By having a team of curators find content and promote it as well.

Navarrow Wright: We are constantly working to the improve the mix of those 3 items to make sure that bloggers and content readers get value from the experience.

Navarrow Wright: Sorry I know that’s a wordy answer.
BW2.0: Nope you’re good.

BW2.0: In regards to #2 are you talking about aggregating content from a predetermined list of sites?
Navarrow Wright: To start with yes, but soon users will be able to suggest sites to be added to that list.
BW2.0: Since you all aggregate some of your content now, how do you determine who you aggregate from? And I should also ask if you have always aggregated in this way, seems like it is a bit different now?

Navarrow Wright: So we have always done it this way but in the new version of the site we have integrated it. We also had a globalview section which is a start page style aggregation section; but the problem with how it was before was that people were not seeing all the content that was there and they also did not know it was a source to find content to grind ( submit or vote on).  So what we have done now is integrated that content into our main areas by automatically pulling those feeds into the content area, then allow users to be the first to give an opinion of that content and take ownership of it.
Navarrow Wright: And that helps with the 80/20 rule as well in social media. Which I’m sure you know that with most social media sites 80% of the content is submitted by 20% of the audience.
Navarrow Wright: So you have to scale the audience to see real volume.
Navarrow Wright: What we have done is created a hybrid of viewing patterns to give different types of users what they want (it’s all about choice). For the user that just wants up-to-date content from multiple sources we give that through a mixture of feeds and submitted content (think Digg meets Google reader) but we also give them some flexibility in a few other ways now.

BW2.0: I follow you, but it still seems like content that may be submitted by bloggers is now harder to find because of this new direction and mix.
BW2.0: Is there a way to show/hide content, UGC vs. mix, etc?
Navarrow Wright: Are you reading my product map? So, yes that is coming soon.
BW2.0: LOL
Navarrow Wright: Very soon you will see the ability to see submitted content vs. feed content.

BW2.0: Also your Publisher Network is basically an Ad Network that syndicates a publishers content (I don’t know the in’s and out’s and am over-simplifying) as your value add. What is the core difference between GGPN and other Ad Networks?
Navarrow Wright: Well it’s more than that. Right now “ad network” is the new buzzword. Everyone is starting them but if you look at our partner Glam. What did they do differently? They created ways to promote the bloggers content to a larger audience (larger audience =more revenue) where most ad networks today say “Hey we can sell your ads for a higher CPM” but they don’t give you ways to grow traffic.
BW2.0: Right.
Navarrow Wright: So what we are trying to do is not only help bloggers monetize their content better but also put their great content in front of more people. That’s one of the core ideas of Global Grind, to be a hub to do what I call “audience introduction” and grow all the sites’ user base.

BW2.0: Ok so how will content be differentiated between organic UGC, aggregate, and Publisher Network content?
BW2.0: Like what are the benefits between the 3, Publisher it can be monetized but what about the others?
Navarrow Wright: Well there will be some real estate dedicated to content partners in the network but I believe the core benefits we have exist for all types the question is do you partner with GG to monetize it effectively.
Navarrow Wright: For example now you can come to GG and get a link to a page that shows you all the content from one source like this one for example http://globalgrind.com/source/www.blackweb20.com
Navarrow Wright: That page will constantly update as your content comes through GG and you or your fans can use that page to promote your content to a larger audience.
Navarrow Wright: And if you’re in the network we are helping you monetize that traffic.
Navarrow Wright: Does that make sense? Let me know because I’m not done.
BW2.0: Ok so the difference essentially is between manual submission and auto updated through aggregation AND the ability to monetize directly w/ GG and monetize indirectly through traffic sent to your site?
Navarrow Wright: Yes but there is more.
BW2.0: LOL, ok
Navarrow Wright: So let’s say you agree that there is value in what I’ve shown you so far. Let’s take it step further and say what if I as a blogger want people in the huge social networks to have access to my content and we gave a link to put on your site that said “view my content on large social network that has millions of users who don’t know about my content yet” the actual button would have shorter text.
BW2.0: LOL, ok
BW2.0: Like most bloggers I would be interested
Navarrow Wright: Ok then I think we might have something special to offer them ?
Navarrow Wright: So what I want people to know about Global Grind is that we are all about enabling creative entrepreneurs the ability to get their content in front of as many people as possible. Enabling users of the net to see the breadth and depth of content this audience has to offer. And allow the voice, thoughts, and perspectives of this audience to be front and center.
BW2.0: Well…for me and my readers (some have technology related blogs) where would we go on your site since you all removed the Technology section? Why did you guys take it off?
Navarrow Wright: Ha! I knew that one was coming.
BW2.0: Of course, know that is the burning question! I was kinda upset by not seeing that in your new design.
Navarrow Wright: Well the first challenge for any site is how many content areas are too many content areas?
Navarrow Wright: And we when we first launched we had about 11 categories and then even more subcategories. Which was too much, and what we were attempting to do is show that this audience cares are about a lot of broad and deep topics.
Navarrow Wright: But then we thought, “Who are we to determine what that list should be?” the users should decide so we created “Grind groups” which do a few things:
1. Basically allow the users to create infinite sub-channels on any finite topic they choose.
2. Allow people who are passionate about a subject to share with everyone on the site or with a group they select and choose.
3. Allow people who like what Global Grind offers from a feature stand point but want to control what content is there and who is interacting with it.
BW2.0: Ok, another way to put your content on GG. Seems like a lot of work for the publisher, the days of simply grinding interesting content and getting on the homepage are over?
Navarrow Wright: Not at all. All the things that got you to our homepage are still there and even in the next few weeks you’ll see more ways for people to access and grind your content. It would be there already but our dev team has to sleep sometime
BW2.0: LOL
Navarrow Wright: But also to your point, people create groups on places like Ning everyday. Groups just extend the subject matter and still allows content to be front and center. I mean already people have created groups about slavery, movies, there’s a group for teens, a Christian group, etc. I was going to create the Tech group myself but I was hoping you would show GG some love and do it.
BW2.0: We will
BW2.0: Ok lastly, Congrats on the increase in traffic! There has been some discussion about where this increase came from; what was the cause? Extra promotion or was it purely making the site more usable?
Navarrow Wright: Well prayer mostly! But also from bloggers such as yourself seeing traffic from having their content on GG. And in turn putting more content on GG. We are seeing consistent traffic trends in a positive light month over month and we are excited to continue to roll out features for people to get more access to content. We don’t see ourselves as a content site about specific content. There are enough great content sites out there. We create a place where we can present the world according to this audience and they have diverse tastes.
Navarrow Wright: In terms of being more usable I’d like you and your users to tell us. We will continue to evolve the site to meet the needs of our users please encourage your users to send me suggestions to feedback@globalgrind.com. I want to know what they think we do well and more important what we are doing wrong.
BW2.0: Thanks for taking the time to answer some of the question our readers had! You will be watching the post to comment directly right ? ?
Navarrow Wright: Of course and I want to see the blackweb20 tech group and lastly go Barack! http://globalgrind.com/tag/barack+obama
BW2.0: LOL