9rules Relaunch and Submission Rounds

9rules is one of those communities that you have to be part of to understand. There’s no community on the Web that is quite like it.

It’s both exclusive—official members are handpicked during each submission round—and open—my.9rules brings everyone else into the conversation. It’s not just a social network, it’s a social content network. It’s constantly evolving, growing, and concocting experiments that redefine what it means to socialize on the web.

On April 30th, 9rules will launch a new (or is it old?) version of its website, but that’s not the only date present and future members should mark on their calendars. There’s also a new set of submission rounds, the first of which is on May 7th (followed by August 6th and November 5th).

More from 9rules

As an aside, check out these 9rules-related links they’ve been cooking up:

• 3by9, a blog written by the 9rules team
• Quofda, which stands for question of the day
• Expert Idiot, a blog about internet companies

There’s one more website I’ll discuss with more detail below.

Emersian, a design blog by Paul Scrivens

Just how prolific Paul Scrivens is boggles the mind. Emersian is an unpretentious blog about design. One of his latest entries, You Are Not A Designer, is sheer proof of that. I particuarly enjoyed this bit:

The problem is how many people can design solutions to fix the problems a site has? How many people can take the ideas of their client and translate them properly to the screen? How many designers can look passed their own style and design a site that fits the current project?

… Push your limits. Test your boundaries. Designers like to work within their comfort zone because they know what they will like. Make something ugly to possibly come up with some ideas on how to make something beautiful. When you need inspiration create your own.

He ends the piece saying Emersian is an exercise in expressing his love of design, not his expertise in it. Once again we come across a website redefining what popular notions dictate otherwise. That design is more about learning prevailing over knowing, purpose over trendiness, foundations over superficiality, possibilities over limits. It’s always a struggle balancing these pairs, but that’s part of the job.

Ordering Up A New List

Steve Smith’s Ordered List has been one of my personal favorite designs since I began blogging. His black and blue color scheme with subtle highlighting was fantastic. Well, now all of that is gone, but let me be the first to say that I love the new look.

The motivation behind the redesign was actually to enhance the business aspect of the site. He has deemphasized the blog while enhancing the exposure of his personal company. Of course, besides the shift in the site’s philosophy, he also refreshed the look. A new brown color scheme is the most obvious change. If you would have said that it was going to be brown, I probably would have thought it was going to look terrible, but Steve pulled it off. He also subtly realigned elements, which makes sense for his new business orientation.

The only thing that was changed about the logo was the color scheme. Interestingly enough, I noticed that the logo was actually an unordered list, not an ordered list… But, it is still a great logo, conveying the basic idea about its namesake.

On a typographical note, I am a big fan of the way his actual posts look. The large font of the opening paragraph with the subtle line beneath really set it apart. It also helps to draw the reader in to the article. Additionally, there is a refreshing lack of advertisements. In fact, he doesn’t even have a sidebar, leaving all of the focus on the article, which is presented in a very easy to read font. Overall, the redesign is great.

Relaxing In The Lounge

The folks over at Devlounge have utilized a major technique that we preach about here at Wisdump; whitespace! That’s right, they have cleaned up their look and reemphasized their content. But somehow it still leaves something somewhat lacking.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the overall look. Yet I can’t help but notice that it seems like a bit of a step backwards, whether that was their intention or not. It resembles their previous look to a strong degree. I know that isn’t a bad thing, but I just feel slightly cheated. Again, I like the look, but a part of me is somehow slightly resentful.

As I mentioned before, their content has become the focus. Everything has been simplified; there are no distracting elements and advertising is at the bare minimum. There is a distinctive lack of graphical elements, which is impressive, because the site still has a tremendously professional feel. Again, this redesign was more about removing things than it was about changing or adding things. It is a quintessential grid design.

Personally, I would have preferred to see a tweaking of their previous design. I liked the artistic flair of the banner and I also thought that the magazine layout of the homepage was interesting. It was a bit complicated to navigate, but I thought it really stood out. So some enhancements would have been preferable for me, yet overall, I still like their new design.

This article was written by J David Macor.

If you actually read what I write you will notice that I called my.9rules a “feature” of 9rules instead of trying to describe it as a full-blown social network, when in fact it does basically everything that other social networks do. However, there were two things that we kept in mind when working on my.9rules:

1. We didn’t like how current social networks handled us.
2. We wanted to actually make a social network have meaning if we were going to attach it to the 9rules brand.

Last week I asked the question of “What don’t they do well?” and I had Ali in mind when I was writing it. For me, most social networks try to sell me on too much stuff that I don’t need. I already have sites that I write on so I don’t need a blogging option. I use Flickr for sharing online photos so I don’t need another place to do that. del.icio.us handles my links and last.fm watches my music. So as you can see I really don’t need another platform to handle this data, but it would be nice to have a place outside of my sites for others to see what I am getting into.

That is the approach we took with my.9rules. We live in an open data world now. We have so many accounts setup in so many different places that it is hard to understand why some sites believe they have to give you another way to store data. In all honesty we probably couldn’t do photo-sharing better than Flickr or bookmarking better than del.icio.us so why even bother? The point shouldn’t be to lock people in so they are forced to use your site, the point is to offer them a compelling solution so that they want to use your site.

Another issue I have with social networks is they aren’t very social. Usually you get to leave a comment or send a message and that’s it. Maybe you get to be a voyeur into someone’s life, but most places simply offer a one-to-one conversation mechansim. At 9rules, we have Notes where great discussions take place yet there was no way to really get to know the people who you were having these conversations with. In a nutshell we had the “social” without the relationships and created my.9rules to fill that void.

So now you can get to know about the people you are having conversations with through their blogs, photos, links and music. This isn’t about aimlessly adding friends just to see your number go up. This is about actually building relationships with people that share the same interests as you and this is only the beginning.

In any decision we make we always ask ourselves if this will be a benefit or detriment to our Members and our readers. If it ever is we scrape the idea, no matter how much money it might make us or how popular we could become. Because of decisions like that we get asked what our business plan is and how do we make our money? We always have to smile back and ask why does that matter if all we do is continue to help out people.

If 9rules was to disappear tomorrow would our legacy be that we just couldn’t make a dime (we do make our money, just saying) or that we created something special to a number of people? What about any other web company that has started up in the last two years, what’s their legacy and were they even around long enough to have one? Today is our Round 5 and as of this writing we have been averaging over one submission per minute.

One submission per minute…

So many people were waiting for us to open the doors for this round that we had 100 submissions in the first 15 minutes. It’s hard for me to offer advice on how to make a lot of money since I haven’t done that yet, but I can offer one piece of advice that I think should apply to any company. Stick to your founding principles that aim to do good and even if you succeed or fail in other areas such as financials, you can walk away at the end of the day with your head held high.

Still going for those millions though.

Fortunately, Mike Rundle (does he ever drop a design that isn’t hot?), understood the public’s reaction and we went back to the drawing board. We could’ve released another version of the homepage a week later and were very close to doing so, but realized that changing too quickly can wear people down and we did not want that to happen. We also knew we had some new things planned for 9rules and when I did the initial skeletons of the site, we found that these new features enhanced the homepage tremendously.

Looking at the screenshot of the previous 9rules you can see aesthetically it is a nice looking site. The problem was it was a very busy, nice-looking site. Instead of being able to scan the page you almost got lost in it to the point where you just wanted to get away before your brain exploded so our first goal was to simplify things. Here is what we came up with:

So even though we added a whole new dimension to the site, 9rules Notes, we were able to compact the page and make it easy for your eyes to skim. There are still some adjustments to be made such as short descriptions of what each column represents and a couple more stylings, but we are very happy with what we were able to achieve by subtracting from the previous design.

So please go check it out and take a tour for yourself and post some Notes and thanks for the incredible feedback after our last redesign. Without it we might not have been able to achieve what we did today.

So if you haven’t submitted your site yet and would like to join the Community then please do so or if you know of a site that you think would be a good fit for us then encourage them to submit their site.

After this round we will be releasing some new features for the whole Community (this includes non-9rules readers) to enjoy and there are some interesting design decisions that we had to make that we will surely write about. Till then, I thank everyone who continues to read our sites and I personally look forward to reading many more.

Last week I am sitting in my chair stressing like crazy because I am trying to figure out how to pay for Mike’s love for cars, Colin’s love for milk (inside joke) and Tyme’s love for…ummmm…toys, when suddenly an email comes across my desk from a Mr. Arno Zimmerman. I never heard of the man in my life, but you know when a guy like Arno Zimmerman talks to you, you have to listen. So I read the email which said:

Dear Mr Scrivens,

My sincere apologies for writing to you unannounced. My name is Arno Zimmerman and I am CEO of an Internet domain name acquisitions agency based here in Los Angeles, California.

My agency is currently engaged by a well-known Hollywood studio. The studio is producing a new religious movie called The Nine Rules. Although I cannot give you full information about the movie, I am authorized to tell you that the movie is about Moses’ early years before he was given the Ten Commandments. The story tells of his early experiences and the first nine rules that he was given by God. The movie has an all star cast, including Brad Pitt in the title role, and will be released in the fall.

My client is therefore very keen to purchase the rights to the domain name 9rules.com from you.

I am sure that you will understand that I cannot provide you with much in the way of information about our client at this time. However I can assure you that they are sincere in their offer, and that they are keen to conclude this purchase quickly.

I would be interested to learn how much you would require for this transfer of ownership.

Many kind regards,

Arno Zimmerman
CEO and Internet domain name acquisitions

Hot damn, I’m about to make some money. Sell off a domain and I still own ninerules.com, which I could sell to him if he wanted it. Of course there are some logistical problems such as backlinks and all that type of stuff, but maybe I could work out some .htaccess agreement. I could think of a new name and 9rules would kind of have to start over again, but with 7 digits sitting in our account that wouldn’t be too much of a problem. God bless Arno.

Let me do some research on this man. Damn, can’t Google his name or company. Fair enough, let me check out this movie that he speaks of that comes out this summer. Can’t find shit on imdb and the last photo of Brad Pitt looks like this:

No beard or anything, so obivously the movie is done, Brad shaved the beard and the movie studio is just keeping it underwraps. Fair enough and I think it’s time to reply to Arno.

I would gladly consider the sale of the domain, but a major issue is that my company, 9rules, Inc. uses the domain obviously for our own business purposes so I would have to say that we are looking at something more than just a transfer of a domain. This would require us to come up with a new name for the company amongst other things.

I’m always interested in listening to whatever offer you are willing to put on the table, but I do admit it would take a considerable sum for me to part with the domain. And honestly the lack of information about your company makes me hesitant to further this conversation. I understand why you cannot release details of your client as to prevent me from contacting them directly, but some further information about you and your company would put me at ease a bit more.

Alright Arno, throw me a number so we can get to work here. Has to be 7 digits or I walk to another studio.

Many thanks for your prompt reply. I can understand how cautious you must be in circumstances such as this. Hopefully I can allay your concerns.

My company, Zimmerman’s has been working with our studio clients here in the States since my wife and I moved from London, England to Encino, California some months ago. We have been working with several major film studios and we are currently engaged by a number of Hollywood studios as we specialize in the acquisition of domain names for the film industry.

Recent years have seen a decline in the number of religious movies being made in Hollywood. As I mentioned in my previous email, The Nine Rules tells the story of the young Moses . The Nine Rules will inject new life in the genre and will star a number of popular actors of today.

Moses will be played by Brad Pitt who has grown a beard especially for the part. Natalie Portman has been cast as Esther, a young servant girl with whom Moses falls in love. In the climax of the movie, Moses must choose whether he is to marry Esther or to go walking in the mountains (where he meets the burning bush and is given the tablets containing the Ten Commandments). While the story of Esther and Moses is not told in the Bible, the writers hope that this aspect of The Nine Rules story will present a more rounded character for Moses than has been seen in previous movies. The Nine Rules is adventure, romance and religious epic all rolled into one movie.

Being the CEO of an Internet based organization yourself, I am sure that you will know of the increasing difficulty in acquiring original domain names. I also fully understand that your organization uses this domain name for your business purposes.

I can assure you that my clients are sincere in their offer, and that they are keen to conclude this purchase quickly. I would be interested to learn how much you would require for this transfer of ownership.

Seems like a great story and the logic behind using the religion genre makes total sense to me. Maybe our Religious Community would like to get involved. Okay, I guess it’s on me to throw a number out there so here we go.

Hope you enjoyed your Easter Sunday. I have given this a ton of thought and these are the issues that arise with the selling of the domain:

• 3 years worth of backlinks will not be easy to build back up again.
• A name and brand go behind 9rules and therefore starting over from scratch is not an eviable position to be in.

Since our company has already received a number of inquiries for investment I can not part with the domain for less than $1.7M and understand I must throw a number out since you were reluctant to put one on the table. I am more than happy to listen to any counteroffers.

Alrighty then Arno, let’s see what you got.

Many thanks for your prompt and considered reply. Under normal circumstances your proposal of $1.7 million would have been perfectly acceptable and we would have been happy to agree to your terms. However I have some unfortunate news.

My agency has been informed today that in light of the sensitive situation in the Middle East, the direction of The Nine Rules project has been changed and a new script has been written.

The movie will now not be about a biblical Moses, but will instead tell the story of a young man growing up in the mountains of Mexico. In this new story, Manuel (Moses) falls in love with a young senorita, but despite his love for her, he must travel into the mountains accompanied only by his donkeys. The new movie will be called The Nine Mules.

I am very sorry that we were not able to conclude our business and I will be sending you and your associates VIP tickets to the opening night of The Nine Mules (traditional Mexican costume optiotional) in compensation.

So I can’t make my partners happy because of some mules? Ain’t that a bitch.

You may or may not have noticed that we launched with a new site on Tuesday. You can read a little bit about it over at the 9rules blog. I know one of the bigger issues that will come up is the color selection. Mike will be writing an entry at Business Logs shortly to discuss his design choices, but I wanted to ask the Whitespace readers what you see with the site that could be done better? It’s definitely not in its finished form, but from a functionality perspective we think it is better than the previous version and so we have launched it.

Hope everyone enjoys their weekend.

The Problem

The current homepage works well with a limited number of sites and only one language, but our group of English sites continues to grow and soon we are announcing Spanish sites into the network. We don’t want a list of 100 sites (the list is too big already) and we want the user of the homepage to have an option of whether they want English only, Spanish only or a mix.

Your ideas also have to keep in mind that new languages will be introduced in the future and more and more sites are jumping on board. Also giving everyone equal face time on the homepage is very important.

Hopefully you can see the challenge this presents, but it’s a fun challenge indeed. If you had to do what we are doing how would you go about it? Our solution was to stop looking at the page as a homepage and more of a web application.

We are looking for all types of content-based websites and if your site is different from what we currently offer our readers then even better.

There have been a couple of great discussions concerning the 9rules Network, but the best one to date was started by Matthew Pennell. The entry and the comments go into great detail as to what the network is about and how everyone is starting to view it. If you would like an inside perspective on how things are going for members then you might be interested in Darice’s perspective.

Unforuntately, after the last round was over I missed emailing some of the people who submitted their sites to explain why their site was not accepted into the Network. If you are one of those people do not hesitate to email me at scrivs{AT}9rules.com to let me know of my oversight. I have no excuses for this happening and would like to correct it as soon as possible.

UPDATE: The submission page.