Blufftontoday, money tomorrow.

Not for nothing: Bluffton today is the best website we've been forced to visit this semester.

It's an interesting piece of money-making technology that I actually am very interested in (HINT: I registered with the site, and hope to blog as often as I can). There are many ways that the site makes money:

First, and probably most blah, is the ads. They're everywhere, which is typical of this type of site, amongst others. One notable piece of ad-throat-stuffing is this non-pop-up popup, which does not register as a new window, but as a free floating image (or whatever it may be). I'm guessing even if you click the "close" button on the upper right hand corner of the image, it's still registering it as a view/interaction, and the site gets paid off it. Clever clever.

Secondly, and most important, is it's user interactivity. This is a major driving point of what the site has to offer. There are so many cool features on this site that make the user actually want to contribute. The first thing I noticed was the masthead photo of the mainpage: provided and created by a user registered with the site. That is an awesome part of Blufftontoday.com. The ability to take my own personal photo, and have it welcome users to the site. Secondly, user blogs, separated in catagories "community", "expert" and "staff", are directly posted in an easy to read, photo-enhanced (when supplied by blogger) portion of the site. Isn't that the appeal of wanting to become a journalist/writer : have your work read by others? This way, it's right there for people to look at. Simple.

Another portion that is really interesting is that Bluffton owns the rights to the blogs, and can choose to use them for print newspaper. This is good, and bad. For starters, a person's blog, which could include an informed rant on why you should steam vegetables rather than boil, can wind up on the front page of the Health section of the newspaper, forever immortalized (a bit overdramatic, I know) in print. Now, you don't have to professional journalists to be print published. However, on the flip side of the same coin, Bluffton owns the rights to your blogs, your personal blogs. Even if you don't want it to be published in print, they still can. Plus, they make money off of it, and you don't see a dime. This is another way the site/paper makes money: a significant amount of user-generated content.

This site differs from others in style. It's a lot simpler in shape and form, and does not rely heavily on multimedia and their own created images. rather, most of the content and reason to come to the site is to read what others in the community have to say. Bluffton is a great site, with great potential.