Thoughts on The WELL

I've been a member of The WeLL conferencing system for, let's just say, a long, long time. Since 1200-bps modems were expensive. Each year, membership has been dropping. Not surprising: there's no marketing or demand-creation to speak of, and I think many on The WeLL are kind of glad there aren't twice or three times (or one hundred times) the members that there are now.

One thing I would love to see The WeLL do is add an XML/RSS feed -- updated daily -- that carries summaries of what's new around the WeLL: what topics are most active, where the flame wars are, what some of the more notable people have said recently on the system,etc. This feed could be presented both as a blog readable in browsers, or as an RSS feed readable by, well, stuff that reads RSS like NetNewsWire for MacOS X (a terrific new freware app, by the way!).

I suspect that having such a blog and RSS feed would generate a steady flow of interested parties finding something worthwhile enough to become a member for. Posted by brian at September 6, 2002 03:37 PM