Louisville Mojo

Louisville's online phenomenon, Louisvillemojo.com, has been going strong for 4 years now and has branched to other cities in addition to boasting 66,869 local registered members. It offers a calendar of local events and happenings, forums, mini websites for members, profiles, free classified ads and more.
Mojo's creators envisioned using the web as a way to build the community, and the community has responded in surprising numbers.

"We thought we'd have 1,000 to 1,500 members in a year to a year and half," said Chuck Burke, one of the four Louisville Mojo founders. Instead they had 30,000.

The surprising growth of Louisvillemojo.com is another example of the explosion of the trend known as open media. Open media, also known as "mind share", consists of blogs and social network sites that allow users to voice their opinion and interact. The turn to open media is similar to the turn to alternative weekly newspapers. People are seeking alternative means of looking for true information outside of corporate America, and open media allows them to communicate freely with each other, sharing information and interacting.

Leading the way in this trend was the popular www.craigslist.com. Craigslist was launched in 1995 and has grown to be a global network in 50 states and 34 countries. Like Mojo, Craigslist offers free classifieds, postings and message boards, but Louisville Mojo also offers more of a social network, allowing members to post profiles and picture galleries. Louisville Mojo is also getting ready to add the ability for writers to upload their articles, essays and stories. There are other similar sites that offer social networking such as www.alwayson-network.com and www.myspace.com. All of these sites have a different atmosphere but seem to pose the same growing concern to newspapers and media websites.

Although it isn't a global network, Mojo is branching out. Mojo now has sites in seven cities including Louisville, Lexington, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Tampa and Nashville. As Mojo branches out to other cities, they have to rely on flyers, street teams, word of mouth and other guerilla tactics to promote as they are being refused advertising by newspapers.

"They see Mojo as a competitor," said Burke. "We offer a couple of things for free that generate revenue for them, such as profiles and classified ads. Many newspapers are affiliated with or own matchmaking services that charge a fee."

Anthony Perkins, co-founder of Always On and media technology expert, speaks at journalism related conventions about the open media revolution and isn't surprised Mojo is refused advertising or that newspapers feel threatened.

"They're obviously afraid," he said. "It's a very threatening thing. In the beginning of the internet, there were a lot of bold statements about how it would affect certain industries, and then nothing happened. Now those statements are coming to fruition. Newspapers are now being threatened as were the music and entertainment industries."

Perkins said that when the internet became available to consumers, they could log on and read the web. Now, they have realized that they can post to the internet and share whatever they want. He said that 44% of Americans are posting something to share on the internet. While some are sharing photos and such with family and friends, others are sharing industry news, promoting, and networking globally.

"[With the open media sites] you can network globally just like you are in a room together," Perkins said.

Part of the allure of open media seems to be the ability to mix business with pleasure. Louisvillemojo.com has 35 to 40 million page views per month, and its members use the site to stay in touch with friends, meet new ones in a safe environment, express opinions, share humor and advice, find out what's going on around town, and even kill time while on the internet. It is also used as a business promotional tool, to benefit charities, promote musical and artistic events, look for work or employees, post classifieds, and advertise. During the day, one can find over 1,000 locals online.

Another interesting feature is the "mojo live" interest groups, which are tied into the calendar and offer space for news articles. Members can use their live group to feed the titles of their articles (with an RSS feed) to another site.

"Mojo is what you make of it," Burke said. "Some use it as an online playground, to find out what's happening around town, networking, dating, and some use it for all of these at once. Everything bleeds from one aspect into the other."

Mojo's focus is on localized communities, but Perkins thinks that the next step in open media is for bloggers and social networks to band together around similar content and networks. He said that it is easier to find a market for what you are trying to share in a global market.

Perkins believes that traditional news venues have a chance at surviving in the evolving world of open media. He believes that the solution lies with joining the revolution instead of trying to beat it.

"They should roll their static one-way networks into open media networks where users can interact," he said.

According to Perkins, "Over 3,000 corporations including GM, Yahoo!, Microsoft, HP and IBM use blogging and social networking to 'step over the head' of the media and communicate directly to costumers, suppliers and employees."

Even those reporting the news are turning to blogs and social networking. According to a survey done in May of 2005 by the University of Connecticut Department of Public Policy (which Perkins uses in his seminars), 83% of journalists report using blogs and 55% of those admit to using them for their news-gathering work.

Is Louisville Mojo a threat, though? Burke said no at first, but changed his mind after thinking about it for a moment.

"I think all independent sites that allow people to communicate and share opinions and facts pose some threat," said Burke. "Corporate media can be biased, unbalanced and choose what they express. It's not just independent sites that pose a threat, but the web as a whole has broken those walls down."

The topic of open media and the threat it poses still brings up debate. Some feel that people will always turn to and trust traditional news venues over bloggers and open media, but even traditional news venues are beginning to worry and look for ways to bring in more readers from younger generations. Louisville Mojo member Joseph Alvey (Yevla) believes that open media is changing the way the world communicates and welcomes the changes that open media offers.

"The internet is changing our very relationships with one another, and how we interact with the world around us. With new technology, a kid in a basement can make a newsletter - no longer constrained by connections, favor, etc. He can log onto a forum and post his opinions, and become a local 'web celebrity'. I think these changes will reach much further than the news in the long run, into all media. I think the stars of tomorrow will come from sites like these."