Hacking IT: Message in a Vottle
There is a huge gap in the online classifieds arena, with all the leading services we keep reading about being based in, and focused on, America. Microsoft recently launched expo.live.com and it is very impressive. Then there is Google Base and of course, the famous Craigslist.
But Vottle is home grown and it is cutting edge. All of these online services mentioned here, except for Craigslist, are in Beta testing phase. Yes, this is destined to be the year of the online classifieds.
What is a Vottle? On the site it is listed as a noun and a verb. I like this name – it is catchy. Vot? Vere? Vhy? Vell, check out this web site – like a message in a bottle, now it is in a Vottle. The site has currently just completed its beta testing and I am going to place a bet that this is going to catch on.
Look, I got to come clean here and say that I know the guys implementing this site and I know where it is getting built, yup, back on my turf at Internet Solutions. This is a social project they are championing there and it is nothing short of cutting edge.
The Vottle project is about our community. It is about bringing people together. And it is about empowering the consumer at large – that’s you and me! The Vottle project allows you to network online, to buy and sell goods, and it enables you seek out other like-minded people. The Vottle project is also about taking responsibility for our community – the CRIME WATCH component has a lot of potential and could be a valuable tool that may allow us all to gain valuable insight as to our community’s well being. I say "could" and "may" because like all community projects it needs to be embraced by the community – again, that is you and me!
I have played with Vottle quite a bit. It is super-fast and has some very intelligent features. Also, it is aesthetically cool and has some very smart AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) functionality which makes for a highly compelling online experience.
Vottle can be described as an online classifieds or a community service or a crime reporting tool or simply, just a cool web site. The intention is that it also becomes the place where local artists can publish their works, and it is
a tool for sharing the best of what a comm unity, our community, has to offer.
The longer term potential here is quite extraordinary. It certainly is in line with another big Internet growth area when it comes to searching, and that is "context". For example, you could see what people love doing in South Africa and then you could spawn another browser view and see what is hot in Japan. By viewing two browser windows side by side you can quickly gain insight into what makes a community tick.
The ability to view what is popular in your community and then comparing this to another community could be a brilliant tool – again, we will know in time, as the Vottle database needs to be populated by the users out there, you and me again. So on that note let me say this: just Vottle it!
Ronnie Apteker is one of the founders of Internet Solutions, the country’s largest corporate Internet service provider. He is also a movie producer, an author of two books and sometimes a stand up comedian.
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