Citizenbay is a city centered citizen journalism project that will pay users whose contributions are voted the ten best by readers each day in 60 cities around the US and France. Set to launch late this month, it’s a project of New York based Oleg Tscheltzoff. Tscheltzoff says his stock photo service Fotolia (which Mike Arrington has reviewed positively) proves the “micropayments for content” model can work. Tscheltzoff’s Fotolia contains more than one and a quarter million photos after a year in operation.
Years after it’s grown passé to say the web makes the world smaller, there’s now a strong case to be made for the importance of local information on the web. (See the big guys fighting over local search.) Citizenbay is a well constructed site that looks like it could make a good run on the local social news milieu. That space could quickly become very crowded, though, and it’s hard to feel too confident in any new site of this type. Citizenbay is currently accepting emails for notification of launch in the coming weeks.
Contributors will be paid between $1 and $5 per original article voted by readers into the top ten each day for each city, users who submit articles they did not write will receive $1 each time a submission makes it into the daily top 10 for their city. It may not be professional journalism, but it could be a nice little chunk of change for top users. It beats some of the AdSense sharing schemes I’ve seen lately.
South Korea’s OhMyNews is probably the best example of a site that pays users to contribute news coverage, but it’s not an unusual approach. Citizenbay stands out for its integration of many media types into one site. The site has a partnership for example with one of France’s biggest YouTube clones, DailyMotion, to have video submissions automatically cross posted to the video sharing site with city names as tags.
Citizenbay combines user submitted text, photos, video and audio displayed in an ajax rich social network style with sections for news, classified ads and coupons and local events. There’s also a duplicate story filter. Tscheltzoff believes that localized ads will be able to command a higher than normal CPM and he’s got some cash left over from selling his French web hosting company to finance the compensation of users until the site takes off. The site will also charge for some classified ads if it picks up enough steam.
Users can easily subscribe to news channels by location, topic or author. All of this makes sense and the site is relatively pleasing to navigate and use - but I can’t help but think that it will need something else to succeed. The partnership with France’s DailyMotion could be a big help; perhaps if Citizenbay could find a similar partner in the US it’s chances of success would be increased.
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Wow, a static landing page…
I think Craig has a very valid point there (and it’s not just because we share the same first name)!
I was up and ready to write about this site as I’m sure it would appeal to the audience who read my French site - but what can I actually write about?
Yes, I could link through to Techcrunch but still no one is going to be able to have a try of anything.
So unless I somehow cross Citizenbay again when it goes live they have missed the opportunity to promote their work.
A plea. If you are a start-up, even in beta mode, give us something to write about and to send interested people to so they can find out more.
Marshall, could you be a little more specific about the “case for local information on the web”? MSN, YHOO, and GOOG are coming out with products that have clever mapping features, coupons, etc., but what problem do you feel they are solving and why is it relevant now? I don’t necessarily disagree, but I was curious as to what you specifically meant.
The real challenge here is getting sufficient content. Like the idea!
I love this idea. i can imagine some neighbor writing a crimewatch column for the neighbors, or someone else writing a real estate column.
Gather.com has a walled garden approach to paid citizen journalism. Seems to be working.
JC - an interesting discussion could be had for sure. The biggest thing I think of when I write things like that is that ubiquitous connectivity for many people means that the web isn’t just something you use at home - it’s a layer of information that can be laid over everywhere we go. Web reviews of off-line businesses in search results, for example, have the potential to make or break restaurants, auto mechanics, you name it. History, economic, geographic data - there’s so much place-based info that we could connect with and make use of. I was just talking with some friends last night about businesses uploading their own photos into Yahoo! local search. So much is possible as web use is increasingly integrated with the rest of our lives.
In the future, the web will be available everywhere.
In the future, our deepest thoughts and feelings will
will produce content for the web.
In the future, we will create income simply by logging onto the web.
In the future, the wealth of the web will be evenly distributed.
In the future, your comments will change the world (www).
ISHA
In the future,
startups will race to end poverty instead of racing to accumulate and keeping wealth.
please only review companies which allow public access…and have a product…otherwise…its some company spouting vapor…trying to get money b/c they’re going broke.
it also makes TechCrunch look amaturish
Good project and ideas. Looking forward to hearing & seeing more.
Whoa there fellow TC commenters. Lets stop all the whining. I can’t be a beta tester, you can’t be a beta tester, but Marshall can. We should be thanking him for actually offering an early look at what it will be.
We’ve done it already … in the most isolated city in the world. We don’t have huge money behind us yet
and we still are developing our product, but those interested in this growing area should have a look at Perthnorg . We’re probably what everyone calls BETA, but decided against using that term.
My only hesitation towards the citizenbay model is that by having an automatic stream from another partner site it takes away some control from the human editors - the users of the site.
For the record, I am a former journalist but now a proud Cit J - citizen journalist.
is it me or $5 a pittance for writing a story. I mean, if you were lucky enough to write one top headline a day, you’d be in for $100 a month. Which would be a good wage, if you lived in Africa. A wire charge would quite quickly eat it away.
It’s great to pursue an incentives model, but the incentives have to be appropriate against the effort.
From what i read , its from $1 to $5 per articles per city per day as long as you enter in the top 10 in the city. And it looks like seeds are also accepted for $1 (M: users who submit articles they did not write will receive $1 each time a submission makes it into the daily top 10 ). The question is what are the cities ? How many ? If there is lots of cities x 10 articles x $1 , it can end up being lots of mony to be made everyday for top submissions.
Let’s see how the guys from digg will react to this website. Maybe, they will offer to pay money too….
Is neo-Techie for real or is this some sort of strange performance art?
All his posts are usually irrelevant to the topic and comprise only of (amusing I must say) hyperbole along the lines of “in the future, our deepest thoughts and feelings will produce content for the web.”
I have to agree with the Craig’s and other comments that are grumbling about not being able to get into the site that you are reviewing. I have a very limited amount of time to look over new websites and Citizenbay just blew the 5 minute chance they had.
I realize Marshall gets to beta test a lot of stuff that the rest of us don’t, but he should resist the urge to get the “scoop” on the rest of the bloggers out there and only talk about it with it’s open to everybody.
I’m irked with Citizenbay for not telling me more while my curiosity is perked and with TechCrunch for sending me on this waste of time. Ticking off the TechCrunch subscribers and targets of Citizenbay’s PR efforts is not a sign of a successful “buzz” campaign.