NEWSTROLLS
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
NewsTrolls,
Inc. is a corporation dedicated to the collection and dissemination
of news, articles, and opinions on all things Internet.
We represent a collective spirit dedicated to the expression of
free speech through our links, articles and postings.
NewsTrolls is also an on-line community devoted to vociferous debate
on social, political, economic, and personal issues. In its dedication
to free speech, NewsTrolls will not censor the speech of any posting
member of the community of NewsTrolls Threads.
NewsTrolls, Inc. believes in the free market and the opportunity
of any individual to contribute to the birthing of the Internet
Culture via our site.
The NewsTrolls mission is to be a global meeting place of information
and free debate with the ultimate goal of increasing diplomatic
relations between people of all nations, ethnicities, gender, and
socio-economic backgrounds.
So that's the official version of NewsTrolls...but there's so much
more than what a legal statement of purpose can tell you. One of
our contributors, Stephen Downes, wrote an excellent piece for our
launch in September entitled
"One of the Greats is Gone" In his article, Stephen explains
how and why NewsTrolls came to be.
"While we at News Trolls have disparate ideas and beliefs, we are
united by our interest in media. We have in common the understanding
that the leading edge of thought about the internet does not consist
of How-To guides or the reports about the top software companies.
We are interested in the medium itself: how it gathers news, how
it disperses news, and how it makes news. We are interested not
so much in how it works - and even if we were, there's no shortage
of such sites, including the now lamented HotWired - as we are interested
in how it's used.
"The medium is the message", wrote McLuhan famously, and less famously,
"the content is the viewer." We are interested in the content, because
in the content, lies the viewer. What is important about the internet,
and interesting about the internet, is how people's values and beliefs
are reflected, and how they collide, locally, nationally, and globally.
The content of NewsTrolls centers around the daily trolls which
is where I come in. I'm just another nameless face, a Pasty Drone,
like so many others. After several years of industry-specific Internet
Research, it dawned on me: Knowledge is the new economy. Knowledge
goes over walls, under dams, and through every government, no matter
how repressive. Product is derivative, knowledge is primary. The
stories are out there as they have always been, but now we can access
them instantaneously and disseminate them globally.
Every newspaper, TV show, and magazine has some kernel of knowledge
or information to troll out. But the real meat of the information
comes in the relative connections to be made by sifting through
varying global perspectives on the same issue. It is in the comparison,
the spin, the choice of words, where knowledge is found. The trolling,
the comparison, is what I do daily-- what William Gibson in Idoru
called being an "intuitive fisher of patterns of information".
NewsTrolls links to stories and breaking news on hundreds of other
sites, providing viewers for the linked sites (and those sites'
advertising content). In so doing, NewsTrolls increases the linked
sites' exposure to our readership.
Due to popular demand, we established a UserTrolls
page where the readers can be the trollers and post their own
links to news stories that they feel are important to share with
other readers. So knowledge grows collectively through open and
interchangeable paths between contributor and consumer.
Another unique aspect of NewsTrolls is the development of the site
itself. NewsTrolls runs on the Linux Operating System and an Apache
Server. Everyone who wishes to contribute does so in whatever aspect
they are most knowledgeable. The development is done in the open
(with the exception of emails containing passwords) in our Developers'
Thread which is currently on its thirty-third incarnation and is
ongoing. I know of no other site whose history of development is
out on the web for any and all to read and learn from.
As of July 1, 1999, NewsTrolls is receiving around 500,000 hits
per month and growing. We have two opt-in email lists: HTML and
text, both with a growing subscriber base. Our average unique viewer
accesses 23 pages per viewing period, an affirmation of our uniquely
high "stickiness" factor. We have recently added our own Open Source
banner ad engine and our rate is currently $2 per 1000 impressions.
NewsTrolls, Inc. is a virtual entity. The collaborators work via
NewsTrolls Threads, email, and an occasional phone call. Geographically,
we are incorporated in New York City but our collaborators hail
from California to Canada to Germany to the Netherlands to South
Africa to Oregon to Minnesota to Virginia. And our lurkers (a term
used to describe readers who read and visit but don't post in Threads)
are from every country on the planet.
Stay tuned...
--diva
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN
ADVERTISING ON NEWSTROLLS
Email Pasty Drone, CEO, at pastydrone@newstrolls.com
or CJ Wolf, President and COO, at cj@newstrolls.com
