Interview with Joel Comm - Internet Pioneer (Apr 1996)

Maybe neither. The last thing we need is yet another juvenile list of "k00l Linx" or a top-heavy corporate monstrosity that requires an ISDN line to navigate. I think the future of the Web belongs to small entrepreneurial teams with vision, focus and enough courage to believe in a good idea.

Joel Comm's WorldVillage is such a venture. He and partner Ken Burge have created a pretty nifty spot in cyberspace that's a BBS, an online magazine, and a website all rolled into one. They've got software reviews, download areas, articles, chat and games in an attractively designed package. No annoying registration screen, and no credit card required. Just wipe your feet please, and have a cup of coffee in the Multimedia Cafe.

There's enough dynamic content here to choke a horse, and they've garnered an impressive stack of awards from all over the place, but there's just one little problem: people are not showing up in quite the numbers they expected. I spoke with Joel Comm about the experience of running what he calls a "mini-AOL" on the Web to get a better understanding of the challenges involved -- here's what he had to say.

Doc: Joel, would you describe for me the WorldVillage concept and your motivation for doing it?

Joel: Well, we've always called ourselves a virtual community, although we're still working on that to some degree. So I guess you could describe WorldVillage as an online magazine with interactive material, focusing on home software for the masses - a pop culture type of site.

We had actually created a disk-based magazine available for download over the Internet, but in late 1994 we realized that with the direction that Internet was taking, this would be a perfect opportunity to publish to the masses without having to worry about distribution. Our goal was to provide a good family-oriented site that focused on the types of games, educational and multimedia products that "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" would be looking at for their own family.

Doc: So was it your aim to make WorldVillage a money maker in it's own right, or is it just a freebie to attract interest in some other service you offer?

Joel: No it is definitely a for-profit venture. We hope to build the site to the level that we're acquiring more sponsors, especially in the software publishing industry. We've got two sponsors now in Legend Entertainment and Adam Software but of course we want to expand that.

We find that building content around the sponsorship is really the direction these things need to go. The little banner links are nice, but people are looking for more to do. So we try to cooperatively work with potential sponsors to build some kind of content that would add value to their advertising dollar.

Doc: I see nice example of that in the Manic Maze, which revolves around Legend's "Mission Critical" game. What are the most popular areas in WorldVillage?

Joel: Definitely the Gamer Zone. And the Chat is also very popular -- when we put chat online, even with the simple forms-based package we're using we saw our hits skyrocket. A big part of our traffic is going into the Chat room now. Again, it's the interactive content... people really enjoy finding something to do and places they can go online. I think that's why they enjoy the Maze and the Gamer's Site of the Day so much. It's like a mini-AOL, only it's on the Web and you don't have to pay $2.95 an hour.

Doc: There is an insufferable void of interactivity on the Web, but it looks like you're making some progress towards making it more than a one-way medium.

Joel: Right, in fact we just got done with a meeting of the minds here. We're going to be offering some more "live" features like interviews, in addition to the trivia contests we have on Wednesday nights. We're also looking forward to creating an actual online adventure with Java scripts -- something that nobody's really been able to yet on the Web. Now that could be fun!

Doc: Is the Telecom Reform Act going to affect your site?

Joel: Well yeah, but I think it will affect us positively. I think people are looking for safe sites that they know are dependable, where parents will feel comfortable browsing and sending their children.

Doc: Were you surprised at the features that turned out to be the most popular after putting WorldVillage online?

Joel: A little bit, yeah. We originally thought the reviews would be the biggest draw, but as it turns out, people tend to treat the Web less like a magazine and more like a fan club. We find that when we do interviews such as Gloria Stern's piece on Grant Miller (of Myst fame), that we get an exponentially higher number of hits than for the reviews, because there's a lot of Myst fans out there. They've played the game, loved the game, and they want to know everything they can about what's going on behind the scenes.

Doc: Did you have to go looking for startup funding, or was this another case of "back-pocket" financing?

Joel: It started in the back pocket, but when we realized that putting in an ISDN wasn't going to be enough to handle the traffic, we went ahead and pursued some minority funding. It wasn't a huge amount, but we did get enough to upgrade to the equivalent of two T-1's and I was able to leave my regular job (layout, design and database work) and work full-time on WorldVillage.

Doc: What type of hardware& software do you use?

Joel: We run a Pentium 133MhZ machine with 64 megs of Ram, and a fast-wide SCSI hard drive. We've been using O'Reilly's WebSite for NT, but it's a piece of junk from our perspective. Because of a memory leak in the product we see crashes, lockups and reboots each and every day. And when it crashes, the hit cache is not spilled out to the log - the other day we lost 90,000 hits.

When it's working, it works great and it's fast. But the O'Reilly people have blamed Microsoft and told us there's no fix for this in V1.1 - so we've already started to move our site over to Linux.

Doc: Has there been any abuse of your chat room? If so, how do you deal with that in the anonymous realm of cyberspace?

Joel: We have had occasions where teenagers would come in and make crude remarks or even impersonate other people. It's tough dealing with that because you either have to monitor it very closely, put some kind of filters in place, or just shut it down.

I'm not for government censorship of the Internet, but I do believe each content provider has the right to decide what goes on their site. We've made it clear on the entrance to our chat room that "adult language" isn't appropriate because we want people to feel comfortable here. So there have been times where we've been forced to deal with individuals who were ruining it for everyone else.

We've developed a community of regulars in the chat room. People are really starting to get to know each other and develop a sense of comraderie there. That's the aspect of virtual community we want to create, and once we get our new chat server running where people have passwords and are limited to just one handle things will be much better.

Doc: I see you've won lots of "cool site" and "top pick" awards, but traffic is still less than you'd like. What have you done to bring WorldVillage into the public eye, and how well have the various strategies worked?

Joel: I definitely think that Yahoo is one of the best directories to be in because of the way they categorize, and they've also been the most reliable in terms of getting my postings up quickly. Getting listed in directories is good, and being picked as a cool site is important too. In just five months we've gotten sixteen awards from places like I-World, CompuServe, and NetGuide -- and those are good for a temporary boost in traffic, but it's kind of like two steps forward, one step back. As it turns out, people tend to treat the Web less like a magazine and more like a fan club...

O'Reilly's WebSite is a piece of junk from our perspective.... We see crashes, lockups and reboots each and every day. The biggest challenge is getting the masses to know that you're out there, and getting listed in as many places as you can. We don't have the advertising budget to spend big bucks, so we're hoping that some good press will help to pick up the traffic.

Doc: What else is involved in the daily upkeep of a combination BBS/website/online magazine?

Joel: People are starting to get to know each other and develop a sense of comraderie there. That's the aspect of virtual community we want to create. My partner Ken handles most of the technical details, such as keeping the server running, installing new software and doing custom programming. Tim Stiles is the mastermind behind the cool images on WorldVillage, and he deserves a lot of credit for the great 3-D images he's created on his Mac.

I wear about six different hats. There's always the job of making sure all the links we put up are legit, and I handle lots of e-mail since I've got 40 writers to keep track of, make assignments, and do copyediting for. And of course I'm always contacting software companies to get stuff to review, and then sending it out to the reviewers. We also put two to four new articles on the WorldVillage Daily page each day, which is a lot of ongoing work but we have to keep things fresh and current.

A good part of my time is spent doing public relations work - visiting new sites and talking with those people about reciprocal links, and making phone calls to other companies where there's a chance for cooperative efforts. I also spend time on the phone talking with owners of websites that we could develop content or traffic for, in the hopes of gaining additional sponsorships. It's a tough job, but I'm having a blast doing it!

This article was originally published in the April 1996 issue of Boardwatch Magazine.