03.09.2010 at 4:31 pm | Have your say »

Conquering doubts: GEO.de’s story on user-generated contents

A proposal allowing the public to use the GEO.de website as a platform to share their photos with the rest of the world raised some eyebrows when this idea was put on the table a few years back.

GEO.de project manager Daniel Olzien said they had a rough start for their travel community site two years ago after high-level people in their company, publishing house Gruner + Jahr (G+J), raised the possibility of mediocre works that would be associated with the brand.

He said some of their officials were worried that reputation of GEO.de and the print magazine GEO would be compromised if they accept photos and articles from the public.

These qualms, however, have been proven wrong now that the travel community site has been successful in generating great photos, he said.

“We are now in the point where we have about four million page impressions per month and I’d say it’s enough for our community,” he said.

GEO Editor-in-Chief Christoph Kucklick said most of their editors are traditional.

“When we started this [website] it was highly controversial because it contradicts the very classical model – editors know best and tell the readers,” he said.

He says that as a result, they were told to make a website far different from that of the main GEO.de and when “in case it [the new website] ruins our brand we could easily switch it off.”

“Now we see that the result was quite the opposite. Actually in terms of quality on community sites, we have a very high standard,” he noted.

Starting point

All of these positive developments came because of effective website management.

Olzien said they check their members’ account, thus, they know how long these members had been with the community and how much each had contributed to the website.

“We take a look at everything and sometimes maybe 0.1% there’s a problem because some people take a photo from a book or violated a copyright or so. In this case we write to users and take things offline afterwards,” he said.

He cited convincing people to go to GEO website, for one, and to contribute to it as the most difficult tasks of starting an online community.

“From all the people who visit the site roughly 10 percent actually join and from this 10 percent actually actively contribute. This one percent is the portion you need to convince to get the website get going,” he said.

Both GEO executives concurred that online moderators are needed to prevent members of the community to hurt each other through harsh words.

“In our experience you have to have a moderator. You have to watch it (conversations on your website) otherwise it (discussions) can go over-the-top and you’ll have big problem,” Kuckllich said.

And since GEO.de accepts photo contributions from its members he said that copyright of all these contributions are being respected.

“We really can’t assure that someone isn’t using it but we do we respect the copyright [of the item] and if someone contributes a picture from another website (the) copyright stays with them [owner of the photo from another website] and if he or she wants to take it offline we’ll take it offline,” he stressed.

Expansion

Olzien said they continue to have healthy number of members in their communities because of GEO’s reputation as a travel magazine.

“One of our advantages is the brand GEO. They know about the quality, they know about the feeling, they know about the ideas behind it,” he said without detailing  on the number of their community members.

He said they already had the “necessary momentum” for their online travel community to further expand but admitted that “we still need to grow some more to really make an effective community for anyone who wants to take a look and travel to other countries.”

Since its first edition came out in Germany in 1976, GEO has been known as a monthly travel magazine that publishes educational articles accompanied by similarly great pictures. The magazine is now being distributed in 21 other countries like India, France and the United States and uses these countries’ main dialects.

Aside from the travel magazine, GEO has also extended its line to GEO Saison, a tourism-focused magazine; GEO Special, individual country or city-focused magazine; and the science-focused GEO Wissen and GEO Kompakt.

Another magazine is focused on history, GEO Epoche, while the GEOlino is specially made for children.

The main GEO.de website was launched in 1996 and survives on advertisements. Since its inception it contained journalistic content as well as interactive additions like audio and video and all of these are presented like how it is done in the magazine.

In 1998, its children-related website was launched with contents that include educational and kids-friendly games. GEO.de also came out with its online shopping site during that year and sells books among other things. (30)

| Tagged Case Studies, Community, Geo, Magazine, Pictures, Travelling, Users