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by BenS
5764 days ago
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I think this site will succeed or fail based on the quality of the food images. I would recommend you look at how opensourcefood.com cultivated high quality images from their community. If a low standard is set, I don't think there will be much you can do to make the site valuable. |
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(disclosure: I was the founder, but sold it in 2009 - it is basically unchanged though)
Setting the standard from the start is something any founder of a UGC site needs to be actively involved in.
In the case of OSF I was responsible for much of the early content, armed with my dSLR. I then invited friends who were similarly equipped and they added awesome photos/recipes, which really helped set the tone.
I also actively deleted crappy content. I felt like a douchebag for doing it, but there was a standard I wanted to maintain. People who got their content removed would receive a list of tips to help them take better photos for next time :)
Eventually this scales out of control. You can see the content from the early days is still the most popular: http://www.opensourcefood.com/recipes/all_time_best
And it's all pretty high quality. But you can't keep that going forever as you community grows from hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands and beyond.
It's super important for early adoption though. Visitors have to visit your site and go "wow, I want to be part of this!".