My Name is Kate

Client Plug: Osmosus.com - New Sustainability Community Website Launches

Last week I was pleased to be part of the launch of a new website: Osmosus.com.  Osmosus is a social network where people can interact on their journey to sustainability.

A couple of cool things about Osmosus:

• Personal "Green Space" where you can state your "green creed", blog,  track events and connect with others.
• There is an intricate carbon footprint calculator where you can put in your current lifestyle which will calculate your carbon emissions.  You can then model a number of different scenarios for reducing them.
• Osmosus has a news centre which collects enviro and sustainability-related news into one place.

For the launch, Osmosus has partnered with the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation.  For every new member, they are donating $1 (up to $10,000) towards planting a new orchard in a metropolitan area.

Social Media Activities for Launch

I thought I'd capture what we did here for launch - for those of you who have similar situations coming up.

Personal Message to Beta Testers: we had a small group of folks who helped us test various aspects of Osmosus prior to launch.  We sent out a note to them a few days prior, letting them know what was happening and trying to keep them in the loop about development and communication activities.  This kind of personal touch is important.  Your early adopters and beta testers are so valuable and their perspective becomes even more so over the long-haul.  You want folks who were there in the beginning.  Hunch.com just launched (congrats!) and one of the things that they are doing on user profiles is giving early members a special badge to commemorate their early contributions.  Great community fostering, IMHO.

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Blog: Doran (the founder of Osmosus) started a blog to keep folks up to date on what's happening at Osmosus, particularly from a development perspective.  As we go forward, I hope we can evolve this into more of a team effort (similar to what happens over at FreshBooks' blog - possibly my fav web product blog, though MOO's blog is a close second) as well as a place where we can showcase the great ideas and activities of community members (one of the reasons I love MOO's blog - they do this so well!!)

Product Development Words of Wisdom

Todd Sieling, Product Manager for Ma.gnolia and all around smart-guy, published a gem on his blog today.  Discussing "Less is More" in context of the Playstation3 and the Wii, Todd states ...

It’s never the specific technologies that make great products. Instead, it’s the careful selection and combination of those technologies into a coherent experience that wins people over.

Amen.

I would only add that it is what fires the imagination in people and enables them to do more than they thought possible that makes a great product experience.