Classifieds: where commerce and community intersect

A little over a month ago, my team -- which usually focuses on things like hyper-local blogging and social networking -- did something that I think more newspapers should be thinking about. We launched a new self-serve classified ad placement tool that's focused on the future.

We call these enhanced online ads because they have nothing to do with print, and they leverage the online medium to the fullest extent. But what they really are is blogs reinterpreted as ads. We basically took our successful blogging engine, tied it to a secure payment gateway, tweaked some of the presentation and called the results classifieds.

This sounds simple, and it is -- but for newspaper classifieds it's a fundamental change. People on Bakersfield.com and our other local sites can now post an unlimited amount of rich text, pictures, and even audio and video (currently from YouTube) to tell stories about stuff they're selling. The result is something that's closer to eBay than traditional newspaper classifieds -- which I lovingly refer to as a "Haiku ads" because people forced to describe products in three lines using shorthand. By contrast, the new ads have lots of room to tell stories.

Enhanced online ads are fully integrated with our other community offerings, too. When you post an ad, you have the option to automatically link to your user profile so that people can see other things you're selling, in addition to your recent blog entries, comments, photos, articles and anything else you have contributed. We also include a link to post an ad right next to the button to submit a story, post a blog entry or post photos.

Another benefit of tying classifieds into our community platform is that we can provide fun new ways for people to shop by keywords in ads, just as people can browse for profiles by interest. We're having fun seeing which keywords are more popular -- something you can't do in traditional Classifieds which are organized by category. Well guess what? Portable keyboards is not a "classification" in our newspaper, but wow, there are already three ads with that keyword today. There are plenty of more utilitarian keywords too, like mowers and couches.

We like the tags because the let users tell each other what's hot in the marketplace right now, rather than having to always be locked into our rigid categories. And since the Classifieds are on all nine of our brands in Bakersfield, you can see how different products are of interest to different audiences. Bakotopia's keywords are naturally more eclectic than those on The Northwest Voice.

On the backend, we built a flexible tool that gives us granular control over pricing for each category. We can set the price to list (which is usually free for merchandise), the number of each upsell to include (such as photos and videos), and the cost for additional upsells. We can also set a package price that bundles upsells together for one fee. In this way, users have many choices over what to put in their ad and how much to pay, but if they don't want to get into the weeds they can just choose a package and proceed with composing their ads. It's not that different from buying a computer on the Dell or Apple Web site.

Yes, the ads are already making money. No, I can't tell you what the amount is (we don't release revenue information). But I can tell you that after just one month, the weekly revenue is already increasing at a fast clip and we're practically getting love letters from people thanking us for creating a better way to advertise locally.

I'm fully aware that many of the "content people" who follow me and the Bakomatic platform are probably yawning right about now because they think this has nothing to do with them. That's really unfortunate, because I would argue that this has more to do with user contributed content than a lot of other initiatives that fall into that category. Classified ads are the oldest form of user-contributed content in newspapers, right next to letters to the editor, and for a long time they were the only way that average people could get their messages out to the public without having to go through editorial gatekeepers. I'll never forget the award-winning journalist who once told me she got some of her best stories by looking for bizarre classified ads and calling the advertisers.

And that's just it: classifieds are stories that just happen to cost something to tell. Heavy users of eBay will tell you that the products with the most interesting stories get the most response and sell for more, and that can only happen because they have the space and tools to express themselves. It's gratifying to be able to say that in Bakersfield, people are already comparing enhanced ads to eBay, and thanking us for providing them when they get a call about their products in hours rather than days.

I can't wait to see what stories come out of our new enhanced online ads. In addition to making lots of money, I hope this results in our own local version of Antiques Roadshow.

Technorati Tags: Classifieds, community, Bakomatic

The Victoria Advocate's Local Information Network

Hats off to the Victoria Advocate for making the list of finalists in this year's Digital Edge Awards in the most innovative visitor participation category.

This little-known independent newspaper in southeastern Texas relaunched its Web site in October to focus on conversation around news, using the Bakomatic social media platform that they purchased from Participata LLC and The Bakersfield Californian, as well as some of their own PHP applications.

If you've ever used Bakotopia.com, the site we launched nearly three years ago (and which Bakomatic grew out of), you'll see some familiar elements -- such as recent blog posts and comments, "Seen on the Scene" photo galleries and user profile interests. I'm of course proud to see our ideas and technology extended to other markets in this way, but Victoria didn't stop there. They also integrated discussion into news stories, and they dynamically bubble up the most talked-about stories right to their home page.

What I love about the Advocate is how it harnesses interest in news to engage people in other ways. Thanks to the user profiles that show up next to each comment, conversations around news inevitably bleed into other types of community interaction around user profiles and blogs. For example, you may see a comment from someone about a school story, click on his profile picture and find out that he has the same hobbies as you do. This is a perfect example of how newspapers can position themselves as not just providers of local news and information, but also as the glue of their community. You may go to a newspaper site to read a story someone e-mails you, then find yourself engaged in conversation and social networking quite by accident.

Many people were involved in the success of the Advocate's relaunch, but in my opinion the real champion from the beginning is Dan Easton, the newspaper's Vice President of Interactive.

I will never forget the e-mail I received from Dan one year ago, when I was tired and jet-lagged after traveling to London to speak at the World Association of Newspapers conference. He'd heard me speak at an Inland Press Association conference and wanted to know if we'd thought about collaborating with other independent newspapers like them. I think the phrase "in the spirit of open-source" came up at least three times in that conversation, and he was clearly on fire about community and open source (which makes sense -- at a high level, open source development is one type of user contributed content that just happens to be code). After agreeing to wait a day to let me get over jet-lag, we continued e-mailing ideas back and forth at a rapid pace, and they eventually purchased Bakomatic last spring.

As we all build upon successes and our work becomes more established within our companies, perhaps we independents will be able to work more collaboratively in the future. This is already happening to an extent with fully open-source platforms like Drupal, but almost never for proprietary newspaper-specific stuff. And it's not exactly easy to do that, as it would require a commitment by multiple independent news organizations to work in that way and staff around it.

I'm personally too busy to manage that myself, and I don't know when we would be able to do it, if ever. We still intentionally operate in scrappy "Rebel Alliance" mode, pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. But I always enjoy talking to people who see that same future possibility, because it is something that should and hopefully will happen one day if independent newspapers are going to survive. Dan Easton is one of those people.

By the way, in case you've never heard of Victoria, it's a city of about 100,000 that is just south of Austin and southeast of San Antonio. Here it is on a map:



View Larger Map


Technorati Tags: victoria advocate, bakomatic, participata

Georgia AP seminar presentations

I spoke last week at a Georgia Associated Press seminar, on the invitation of Augusta Chronicle managing editor Elizabeth Adams (a belated thanks to Elizabeth for helping organize a great lineup, and for all of her hospitality!)

Some of the attendees expressed an interest in reading my presentations in more detail, so I've uploaded them to this site. You can read them via the following two links:

• Social Media: Letting the audience speak for itself.

• Street Cred: Using print and "terrestrial marketing" to drive audience and revenue.
  

The first is the same old stuff I've been talking about for three years, but updated with more recent info. It's all good, but nothing new if you read my blog regularly or have heard me or other Californian employees speak.

The second is all new. It addresses a lot of questions that people are increasingly asking us. Namely:

• How to grow local audience online, and how local "street level" marketing fits in.
  
• How we marketed Bakotopia.com at launch and how that's changed over time. (There's a more personal back-story to that -- if you want to know just ask me sometime!)
  
• The Bakotopia print edition.
• How print circulation is increasing with niche products even as it decreases with general interest products.
• The importance of branding and brand identity.
• How niche brands can span delivery mechanisms (print, online, CDs, mobile, etc.)
  

Speaking of print, our licensing arm Participata.com is now providing some sample print editions for two of the Bakomatic-powered brands here:
http://participata.com/printeditions.html

That includes some sample editions Bakotopia magazine. I encourage anyone with an interest in Bakotopia to check out the magazine, because it really shows how social networking drives print pickups and vice-versa. If MySpace had local magazines all over the country, they would look like this.

bakersfield, bakomatic, bakotopia, georgia associated press, participata

Social Networking, Moms and Niche Products

A few years ago when our New Products Group at The Bakersfield Californian started throwing around terms like "social networking" and "online persona," we were met with a lot of blank stares from our colleagues. It must have all sounded so theoretical and foreign. But fortunately they trusted that we knew what we were talking about. We went on to be one of the first newspapers to show how social networking is the perfect tool for serving local audiences, and we created a technical foundation to help others do the same.

It's funny how quickly things can change. Now it's rare that a week goes by when I don't read a press release about a new newspaper-run social network. And I'm increasingly hearing about separately-branded niche sites, which is something we tried early on with sites like The Northwest Voice, Bakotopia and others. Some of these, like Pioneer Newspaper's The JHub, use our technology, while others like Dan Wheeler's BigLickU (don't worry, it's safe to click that link!) or Morris Communications' Savannahnow use other technology and, increasingly, open source solutions such as Drupal.

A few months ago, it really struck me how far this industry has come. I was speaking at an event along with Jennifer Carrol, vice president for new media content at Gannett. She talked about some of Gannett's efforts to reach out to underserved audiences, including pet owners and moms. Their Indymoms.com site was particularly interesting to me because I've been telling people for years about how my wife (a mom of two) has little time to read the newspaper, but rushes to the Boulder RocknMoms Yahoo Group whenever we need a recommendation for a plumber, information on food allergies and a variety of other subjects.

Now, Editorsweblog cites a report that Gannett's niche Web sites, of which Indymoms is only one, are set to bring in $3 million per year. And this is is happening during a year when mainstream newspapers are seeing massive declines in circulation and revenues.

There are many ways to interpret this data, but my personal view is that less time and more choices push people toward niche products. And they stay with them because they solve problems in ways that are more in tune with the changing rythms of their daily lives. This is the gist of a presentation I just gave to members of the Georgia Associated Press News Council.

There's no way to buck the niche trend because it's being driven by forces that are outside of the control of media companies and the advertisers they depend on. For this reason, I believe the future of the newspaper industry lies in giving every niche audience possible a little place of their own, while still maintaining the ability to aggregate and segment audiences for advertising, and to deliver vital news and information that's relevant to everyone.

The implications of this are staggering if you take it to its logical conclusion: we must operate more like Yahoo Groups or Ning than a traditional newspaper. Instead of relying on one portal for everyone, we must have literally thousands of local hubs that focus on niche interests and micro communities. We're just now starting to get our minds around this and how to really make it work. Check in with me in another 6 months and maybe I'll have a solution.

I realize this may sound a little nutty, so let's take this out of theory and back down to earth. In my wife's case, it's clearly much more efficient to post a note on the moms' Yahoo group in the morning asking for plumber recommendations, knowing that her mailbox will contain 3-5 trusted choices that night, than it is to spend a little more time fishing various Web sites, newspapers and directories for leads. We've had so much success with this "Mom Knowledge Network" that I now ask her to post questions on my behalf -- for example, when I was looking for someone to build a deck, and again for someone to finish our basement. In both cases, we found very good, dependable contractors who were vetted from other moms. And those scrutinizing moms don't lie!

Gannett didn't stop with Indianapolis and Cincinnati. It's now rolling out 39 moms sites across the country, potentially turning a few local niches into a national vertical with local hubs.

Just so nobody mistakes this post as a big ad for Gannett, there is a tangential tie-in to another company -- The Sacramento Bee, owned by McClatchy -- and The Bakersfield Californian. Not long ago the Bee came to us asking if they could use our Bakomatic software (the technology behind Bakotopia and our 9 social hubs in Bakersfield), and they secured the rights via our licensing arm, Participata LLC.

And what's the first site they launched with it? You guessed it: a moms site! SacMomsClub.com launched late last week and is already experiencing good early growth. According to the Bee's Rick Rodriguez, SacMomsClub is ...

... a place where mothers can connect with one another online, share experiences and communicate on issues important to them and their families. The site includes calendars, forums, blogs, photo galleries, contests, links to helpful information and news stories.

And from development manager Blaine Wasylkiw:

Visitors to the site will play a pivotal role in creating, guiding and shaping the content and direction of the site, and it will continue to evolve to meet the needs and wants of our audience.

But that's not where the niche story ends. Gannett's own Arizona Republic earlier this year launched Amp.az, a youth-oriented social networking hub in Phoenix modeled after our Bakotopia.com. Also powered by the Bakomatic software, it's evolving into Phoenix's underground entertainment hub.

AZCentral.com also gives every user the right to a profile and blog using Bakomatic. And on top of that, they've created an Arizona Moms hub inside AZCentral that reskins profiles and blogs on AZCentral so that moms can connect with each other.

With all the focus lately on dismal financial numbers and print circulation trends, I think it's important to keep the big picture in mind. While some see a world where newspapers cease to exist and sites like Slashdot serve as primary news sources, I'm seeing a very different trend.

Yes, many (but not all) people are ditching print and turning to all-digital news, sometimes from traditional news companies and sometimes not. At the same time, more and more niche web sites and print publications are appearing and thriving. More time is being spent on one-to-one and many-to-many communication, versus the one-to-many model of traditional media.

But simultaneously, more and more traditional media companies -- like Gannett, McClatchy, Morris Communications, Pioneer Newspapers and The Bakersfield Californian -- are getting into the many-to-many game. And they're doing this while still finding ways to make their flagship Web sites more dynamic and participatory in nature for the people who identify most with those brands. In a way, they're "superserving" the people who love their newspaper brands and increasingly treating them like just another niche segment. While this may mean removing certain types of general-interest content and focusing more on content that their communities find most valuable, that's OK. Niche products have taught us that it's good to give each audience more of what they want most, because if don't do that they just find it elsewhere.

So to the Prophets of Doom out there, I offer this. For those traditional companies that are open to changing with the rest of the world, it's a new day that's full of exciting possibilities, and we should feel fortunate that we're part of a rising tide that will take journalism into its next incarnation. Whatever happens to the traditional model should have no bearing on that, as long as the companies that operate them see where things are going and continue to invest in community and participation.

bakomatic, social networking, mcclatchy, gannett, participata

Wanted: Amazing PHP Web 2.0 developer who likes to hike and ski

It's been a long, hot summer. And busy! As usual, I'm in trouble of having the worst update record of any blog. Or maybe I'm just falling into the overwhelming statistic of deadbeat bloggers.

Well, now I have a pretty good post. We're hiring! If you know of anyone who would be good for the following position, please send them my way. It's the perfect position for a smart PHP developer with some leadership skills who also likes to hike and ski (as it's based in Colorado).
___________________

Development Manager, Social Networking / Web 2.0 platform

We're a small, creative team on the Front Range of sunny Colorado that creates social media applications for The Bakersfield Californian, an internationally-recognized, independently-owned newspaper in California. Our award-winning "Bakomatic" platform powers the Web sites of several newspapers, including The Bakersfield Californian and The Arizona Republic, as well as several niche community sites (see case studies here: http://participata.com/casestudies.html)

As our responsibilities grow, we’re looking for someone who can lead the technology vision for this platform and everything that it enables in the future. We need a flexible, fun-loving PHP developer who has a passion for and understanding of “Web 2.0” applications. The position will involve overseeing core development – currently managed through an outside development firm – and recruiting and managing one or more junior developers. For this reason, some experience managing or overseeing the work of other developers is very important.

Job requirements:

• Proficiency in XML, CSS, and comfort with standard web development tools (SSH, FTP, CVS, etc.)
• Proficiency with PHP and MySQL
• Able to learn from documentation, and Googling for answers
• Excellent communication skills, and ability to work in a “virtual” setting using primarily e-mail and telephone
• Ability to travel regularly
• Ability to be on call for after-hours and weekend support in emergency situations
  

Please send a resume and links to interactive database-driven Web sites you have worked on to dpacheco@bakersfield.com, and include "PHP Developer" in your subject line.

You must be in the greater Denver, Colorado area or able to relocate, and be able to comfortably work out your home using provided equipment (laptop, internet, phone, etc). Regular in-person office meetings in the Boulder/Denver area, and travel to Bakersfield every two months, will be required.

This is a full-time position with health benefits, vacation and 401(k).

Technorati Tags: Bakomatic, Participata, job

Bakotopia's Print Magazine

It seems like every other week someone else in the news industry is predicting the death of print as online audiences grow -- sometimes even using the growth in online communities as evidence.

As the creator of many online communities, I've always found this odd. It's not print in particular that is going away, but rather the way in which we use print -- and other portable mediums -- to engage audiences and advertisers. We may think of our products in terms of their delivery buckets, but the consumers and advertisers who use them think of them as brands. They respond well when those brands cater themselves to the audience -- regardless of the medium.

Nowhere is this more evident than with the two-year-old Bakotopia.com community site, which recently debuted a CD and print magazine.

Bakotopia started in 2005 as an online community for the young, hip, and young-and-hip-at-heart of Bakersfield, California. Its initial purpose was to help "young" people of Bakersfield meet, hook up, sell stuff, buy stuff, vent and much more. I started and ran that community for the first year, then passed it on to Matt Munoz, who has succeeded in making Bakotopia a household name among its target audience.

As a result, Bakotopia as a brand has evolved into the defacto hub of the hopping Bakersfield music scene. On the web site there are more than 500 songs by local artists -- enough to justify creation of the Bakotopia Compilation CD in March, which features 16 local bands. (You can buy the CD for $5 through Paypal. See the ad on the Bakotopia.com home page for details).

Over time, the community kept asking when we'd create a print magazine, and other ways to take Bakotopia with them wherever they go. That's how the biweekly Bakotopia print edition was born.

This is no small operation. Every other Thursday, 10,000 copies are delivered to 150 locations throughout Bakersfield, including music stores, coffee shops, alternative clothing stores, skate shops, nights spots and college campuses. And its pages are full of affordable ads from many of those same establishments.

The best way to describe the magazine is what MySpace may do if it produced a magazine, but with a more local flavor. Within its pages, users find many of the same people they may have met on the Web site, along with expanded art, entertainment and downtown living features. Several pages are dedicated to showcasing excerpts from things people post on their user profiles, blogs and comments. But others offer exclusive interviews with people in the community -- whether or not they're members of Bakotopia. And in every case, the magazine refers to a keyword on the Web site to read the whole story.

The magazine also has advertising (as does the Web site -- contrary to what people remember from our first year of operation). That's not the only reason the print edition was created, but it's a big one. It's good to remember that while online audiences are growing, the people and businesses who use them all live in a very terrestrial world.

We have observed that the participatory Bakotopia.com drives virtual encounters that ultimately leads back to real-world interactions. And sometimes we fuel that by producing concerts and having a visible presence at local events. Layering a terrestrial print product onto a thriving virtual community will only increase overall audience interaction, and by focusing on the users, we believe we can create circular behaviors between the print and online products. That in turn will lead to even more audience growth, which will create opportunities for more advertising and maybe even new delivery mechanisms that fuel even more growth.

So is print dead? I don't think so. If anything, terrestrial content delivery is thriving in Bakersfield -- and the fastest growing segment is in niche communities. The Bakersfield Californian is very lucky to have realized this early on with The Northwest and Southwest Voices, Mas magazine, and now Bakotopia. Congratulations to Matt Munoz and the team at Mercado Nuevo for launching the Bakotopia Magazine!

Technorati Tags: bakotopia, bakomatic, newspapers

The Arizona Republic Licenses Bakomatic Platform

This week, The Bakersfield Californian made a major announcement about a new relationship with The Arizona Republic, one of the most innovative newspapers in the digital realm. They'll be using the Bakomatic Platform to provide social networking, blogging and more on AZCentral.com and other sites. We're very excited about it and look forward to seeing how they use the software to drive their goals.

Following is the press release that went out this morning:

The Arizona Republic Licenses “Bakomatic” Platform

(Bakersfield, Calif. Jan. 10, 2007) – The Bakersfield Californian and The Arizona Republic today announced that the Republic will license the Californian’s social media software, Bakomatic (bake-oh-matic), through an arrangement with Californian subsidiary Participata LLC (www.participata.com).

Bakomatic is the homegrown software that runs the award-wining Bakotopia.com and the blogs, user profiles and registration system on Bakersfield.com. It also powers all of the user-contributed content features of citizen media pioneer Northwestvoice.com, and seven other niche audience-focused Web sites.

The platform is an end-to-end solution that makes it easy for any newspaper to provide My Space-like social networking, blogging, user publishing and “citizen journalism.” Bakomatic is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Knight Batten Award for Innovation in Journalism in 2006 and the NAA’s Digital Edge Award (the Edgies) in 2006. Bakotopia and Bakersfield.com are Edgie finalists for 2007.

The Republic, a daily newspaper owned by Gannett, plans to use Bakomatic to enhance the community offerings of its local portal, AZCentral.com. Already one of the most popular local news Web sites on the Internet, AZCentral.com will leverage Bakomatic to be even more participatory in nature. The Republic also hopes to use Bakomatic to drive other audience-focused initiatives.

“AZCentral.com has a long reputation of producing unique, cutting edge technology thanks to our talented team of software developers,” said Adam Hooker, Digital Innovations Manager for AZCentral.com. “We are all looking forward to the opportunity to bootstrap our social networking projects using the Participata software,” he said.

The Californian was equally positive about the development. “Our organizations share a lot of the same intellectual DNA,” said Dan Pacheco, Senior Manager of Digital Products for the Californian and project lead for Participata LLC. “We both have a passion for audience participation, and we both see the need to reach well beyond traditional newspaper boundaries when it comes to the digital realm. And of course, we’re thrilled to see our software and philosophies applied at a large, prestigious newspaper like the Republic.”

The Bakersfield Californian decided to license Bakomatic in July of 2006 after receiving numerous inquiries about the technology over the past two years. The Republic is the second licensee, after Shaw Newspapers. “We will always remain focused on our local market, and that’s why we created this platform and will continue to invest in it,” said Mary Lou Fulton, Vice President of Audience Development. “But as more newspapers look to The Californian as a leader, we see that our work also has value to the entire industry. We’re very happy to let other newspapers share our success and also help us make it better.”

That dedication to ongoing innovation can be seen with the recent launch of Bakomatic 2.0 – which among other things lets users embed their favorite videos from YouTube along with their own content. “We spend a lot of time watching how people use our tools and responding to their feedback. Supporting YouTube was a natural progression of that,” Pacheco said. The next version of Bakomatic will seek to add businesses into the mix, giving users the ability to rate and review local establishments, and for businesses to be able to create lists of favorite customers to whom they can provide special deals in the future.

Currently, only newspaper companies may license Bakomatic, with pricing on a sliding scale based on daily circulation and the number of sites they plan to create. This allows newspapers of all sizes to duplicate The Bakersfield Californian’s success in growing audience reach through user participation. In the future, licensing may extend to other industries based on market demand.

Bakomatic is available as an enterprise solution, meaning that customers need a knowledgeable technical staff able to install and maintain the software. More requirements and software specifications can be found at http://participata.com.

The Bakersfield Californian is an independently owned newspaper providing local, national and worldwide news to more than 230,000 readers in Kern County. Headquartered in Bakersfield, Calif., The Bakersfield Californian has been family owned for more than one hundred years, with the founder’s great-granddaughter, Ginger Moorhouse presiding as publisher and chairman of the board. In July of 2006, Editor and Publisher magazine listed The Californian as one of “Ten That Do It Right,” an annual listing of the most progressive and innovative newspaper companies in America.

Technorati Tags: Bakomatic, Participata, AZCentral

About Dan Pacheco

Dan Pacheco is a pioneer in online media and community with a 13-year record of achievement in consumer-focused digital experiences. His background has proven invaluable in understanding the impact of social media on traditional media models.

As of June of 2008, Dan is managing The Bakersfield Californian's Printcasting product. Printcasting is a two-year, $837,000 project proposed by Dan and colleague Justinian Hatfield in the Knight News Challenge, and is one of only 16 winners chosen from 3,000 applications worldwide.

The Printcasting product will let anyone create a self-updating, printable PDF newspaper, magazine or newsletter using content from RSS feeds and local self-serve advertising.

The team will later market the tools in Bakersfield, then reprint and locally distribute the best publications. The theory is that this will be a more scalable way to grow local audience and revenue around niche interests in print, a medium that local advertisers prefer but can't always afford. In the last phase, they will sign up organizations in 5 other cities to do the same. For more information, see http://printcasting.com.

Dan has been involved in online community and community publishing since the days of dial-up BBS's in the mid 1980s. But he got his feet wet at Washingtonpost.com, where he was one of their first online producers. He helped launch The Post's first web message boards and launched its first business and technology sections.

He later joined America Online and spent 6+ years working on mostly web-based community products. Dan held key content & product leadership roles for AOL Groups, AOL Hometown (personal home pages) and AOL Pictures, among others.

From 2004-2008, Dan has served as Senior Manager of Digital Products at the independently-owned Bakersfield Californian newspaper, where he and longtime colleague Mary Lou Fulton applied the concepts of citizen publishing and social networking at a local level. The Northwest Voice, the first U.S. newspaper citizen journalism initiative in 2004, and Bakotopia.com, one of the first newspaper-run social networks, are the Californian's two most well-known initiatives. In December 2005, the Newspaper Association of America selected Dan for one of their prestigious “20 Under 40” awards for Bakotopia. The "Bakomatic" platform that emerged from Bakotopia earned a Knight Batten Award in 2006, and Bakotopia won an NAA Digital Edge Award in the same year.

Since then, Dan's team has extended these concepts to the core newspaper site Bakersfield.com and a total of 11 locally-focused community brands, all of which are awash in social media activity. Many of these features can also be found on the sites of companies that have licensed the Bakomatic platform, including The Sacramento Bee (see Sacmomsclub.com and Sacpaws.com), The Arizona Republic, The Victoria Advocate and others. Learn more about them on Participata.com, the Californian's licensing venture that sells the Bakomatic platform.

Dan holds a degree from the University of Colorado School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and currently sits on its advisory board. He telecommutes from his house in Broomfield, Colorado (right outside Boulder).