The part time web
Lately, I have been dealing with the founder/managers of a group of Australian web sites, mostly via email. Some of the sites are fairly prominent ones that you could easily assume are run by dedicated full time teams or individuals. But so many of these webmasters are off busy at their full time jobs, with their site ticking over in the background. Therefore a lot of the correspondence happens after hours when the webmaster gets home from their day job and excitedly checks their site’s Inbox for the day’s proceedings. Proof is in the fact that I often receive emails from their home/site address and again separately throughout the day from their completely different work address which might be from a major company’s domain for example.
A lot of them are pulling it off quite well. Sites where content needs to be hand-reviewed often have hardcoded quarantine delay periods where user-submitted content simply sits idle until the webmaster gets home from work and clicks on the “approve” button. But this is all seamless to the users of such sites, who still see quality content trickle out as each day passes.
Its a mix of enthusiast type sites performing great user-centered services that have little or no business model; and sites with a serious business model that just don’t have the momentum for the founder to leave their main source of employment. Both categories of sites are also in the hope of being bought out - I believe mostly due to the MySpace and YouTube hype that is spreading like a rash lately. The biggest thing these two heavyweights have done is inject fresh inspiration into the IV of young web entrepreneurs who now have this dream that their site doesn’t have to have a business model to make them rich. Hence I am seeing a lot of dedication and large hours being put into what one might label as charity web sites.
Next time you pay for a service from a seemingly busy or successful web site, think about the possibility that the guy who runs it is making coffee at work for his 9-5 office job boss or working in an IT helpdesk somewhere.
Tags: Web development