Ourmedia

Last year, Jeff Jarvis called out for "a place for his stuff" in a series of posts.

Well, JD Lasica and Marc Canter have given it to him.

It's called Ourmedia.org.

In Jeff's posts, he says that this will be a big business for someone.

But Ourmedia is free.  So it will be interesting to see if Ourmedia remains a non-profit endeavor or like Craigs List, it finds a way to be free for most things and generates revenues with others.

I've played around with Ourmedia and to be honest, I am struggling to make it work for me.

Part of the problem is that there are two accounts you need to make Ourmedia work.  You need an Ourmedia account and an Internet Archive account.  The integration isn't seamless and it has created problems for me.  I am sure they'll get it fixed, but right now I am having a hard time with Ourmedia.

Others are having different problems with Ourmedia.

Regardless, this is a service that is worth paying attention to.

Comments

[Niraj]

Fred:

The folks have even admitted the site is an alpha release. They're developing as they go along. Don't know if that's a wise thing to do, though.

[Michael Tippett]

A variation of Ourmedia that aims to generate revenue was also released this week. Frank Barnako at CBS MarketWatch summed it up like this:

"A pair of Web sites debuted this week to give people a place to store digital content, including notes, articles, letters, audio recordings and even home movies.

J.D. Lasica, a writer, and Marc Canter, founder of the company that became Macromedia, are behind Ourmedia.org. ...

The other site, NowPublic.com, is based in Vancouver, B.C. Its founder, Michael Tippett, said people can be their own news reporter, producer and even presenter.

"Technology has broken the corporate news monopoly. Digital cameras, camera phones, blogs and RSS put the tools of the news trade into the hands of the public, and now real news comes from real people everywhere," Tippett wrote on the site.

The idea is people can request stories about topics or events, and others can carry them out. "It's kind of a clearinghouse for news media," he told the Mercury News."

[mark pincus]

ourmedia is great. now we need OURMARKETPLACE - an open source marketplace that will let anyone transact with anyone else and any network participate without any friction (that is fees and MBA 'make-it-betterness').

[JD Lasica]

Hi Fred,

Email me and we'll get you going. It shouldn't be that hard.

best,
jd
co-founder, ourmedia