DotToday, So much more than just a gTLD! Not only an integrated solution; it’s a complete Magazine System!
Historical Background - Gap analysis
Much time has passed since Sir Tim Berners-Lee in March 1989 laid the foundations for the World Wide Web. The original (with clear objectives) provided an accessible publishing and sharing platform, where all people, organizations and companies had an equal chance of starting and succeeding.
Already the early web era showed that the preparation of individual websites (development), operations (servers), a constant supply of content (media) and the creation of attendance (marketing) lead to increasing costs, time and technology racing.
Google's decade-long dominance of two major elements can be traced back to the search-engine, helping to navigate the chaotic web, while the AdWords-engine helps the isolated millions of business websites to advertise.
Blogs on personal levels have created an Internet publication…. for efficient and standardized access to ordinary people, and the micro-blog (Twitter) appearance, and the effective consumption of web content, allows Facebook to make progress in the field of community development and advertising.
Today, the key news websites (BBC, CNN, and AOL), public-policy magazines (nytimes.com), and the dominant Internet companies (Google, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Youtube etc.) are all controlling the formats, content and access. Technological competition forced the small, medium and even the larger companies to be more social, not to mention the civil society organizations, cities and countries, which prevent the web, and thus the development of economic growth as well.
Today, companies that do not become ‘Social Enterprises’ will not survive this economic cycle. Becoming a Social Enterprise is, however, more than just having a Facebook page or a Twitter account. It is a transformation process in how your business thinks, decides, works and collaborates. Like all transformations processes, the one towards becoming a Social Enterprise is also part people, part process and part technology. Changing people’s perspectives, beliefs, and attitudes about social technology is critical to the transformation.
Europe Today – Economic background
Europe's social, economic and "internet ecosystem metrics" show, that the indicators of Europe's information society is increasingly lagging behind those of the USA and Japan. 3.5% of GDP investment in the existing rate on the Internet generates 20% of the economic growth. (MCKINSEY GLOBAL INSTITUTE REPORT, MAY, 2011)
The failure occurs because the digital market is fragmented, suffering from inadequate interoperability and standardization, efficiency, low information security and accordingly, a lack of user confidence, lack of network investments and inadequate research and innovation efforts. Also the digital literacy and skills of the users is not satisfactory. (EU Digital Agenda 2020)
Europe is often said not wanting to build goodwill for Facebook or Google, as being US government controlled Data flows.The local people (geographically as well as Industry wise) want to build their own magazines for themselves and the world: for example, london.today, paris.today, berlin.today, pharma–industry.today) along with millions of historical regions: champagne.today, cognac.today. Also global brands like Heineken would need a global collector magazine: heineken.today, for example could truly open the Heineken world with pubs, hotels, events, research programs, and concerts. Open for all consumers and maybe even competitors, to have the final choice and appreciation be made and determined by true interaction with its consumers.
Origin of our concept – French wine regions today
In the summer of 2009 UDT was contracted to develop a broad and all encompassing website for CNAOC, the large powerful French winemakers’ lobbying organization in need of a broad communication platform and an efficient organizational office application.
To do so we studied CNAOC’s office real life daily processes, work and objectives. All know-how and learning, resulted in the creation of a powerful website, together with a paper-free office application and extranet management community facilities. But in fact it was also the birth of the development of the integrated solutions offered by the dotToday Magazine system, which has become the key value added element to the planned launch of the dotToday Magazine System.
In April 2010 UDT experts pointed out that the 19 world-famous historical wine regions (amongst which ALSACE, ARMAGNAC, BEAUJOLAIS, BOURGOGNE, CHAMPAGNE, COGNAC etc.) and the web presence of the many wineries in the respective regions are simply not able to display, promote and structure information, and by doing so, clustering and using the power of these formidable brands. After in-depth analysis UDT showed CNAOC the market needs, and the technical solution to fulfill those needs, being a new online magazine Platform! This uniform platform is easily applicable, with a standardized system to prepare a common platform for the presentation of the regions and their respective business activity.
Deployed infrastructure
The "dotToday Magazine System" deploys an infrastructure-platform, which integrates all currently available social and business media platforms, search robots, RSS feeds and all other information collecting and redistributing systems on the web. It is locally organized (regions, mega-cities, industry basis, in fact every form of community with any common interest) and integrates with all relevant stakeholders (businesses, civil organizations, municipal institutions, museums, theaters, education, local media and advertisers, etc.). As a result all standard and modern business information, publication and communication becomes accessible at low cost levels using standardized easy applicable technology integrated in the platform (magazine system) without constant and costly ‘technology-racing’, without IT specialist dependency and always changing technology standards. And the traffic it builds? it is simply phenomenal! And for each and every one of the users, that is the ultimate driver! Traffic, within the selected, created, or joint community!
Continuous, dynamic,
user-generated content
"Engaging marketing" such fashionable words. Yet it seems still unthinkable and unrealistic to realize continuous, dynamic, renewable, grassroots, user-generated content. But not any longer. In the new "dotToday Magazine" platform, the success of an entity (person, company, civil organization, municipality, or any interest group) depends on the uploaded content and the news value and quality of the content! Hence content quality and readership prevails at all time. IT management, creating accessibility and awareness and keeping complex sites in the air, become secondary. And the IT specialists of the present will become the business consultants of the future.
Collaborative platform
The UDT platform solution, with endless communities, offers easy technical solutions, - in fact it becomes a new standard with self-created news magazines - providing a new, understandable publication platform, and making the social/business content and media management easy. Competition and accessibility for each individual and business becomes the driving force, with self-created and uploaded content, competing with content of other community competitors.
The 100 of millions of isolated websites will become a technology of the past. The future will be the collaborative web system in which the economic value (digital content, community, business, civil, and social networks) is essentially locally or community generated. Capital and revenue are locally concentrated. And finally, profits are also generated locally and only the technology infrastructure that come with the dotToday Magazine System is provided and steered globally.
One-year laboratory work
In the digitally poorly exposed and organized region of Balaton (Hungary) UDT conducted a one year research and testing project, studying local entrepreneurs, networks, NGOs, universities, municipal leaders, regional experts, local investors, big sponsors (Heineken), a national financial experts, technology companies, and multinational to comprehend their web marketing an social behavior. The feedback from this 1 Year real-life (semi-closed Beta version) laboratory or pilot for UDT has been clear and convincing. The "Balaton Today" project made it clear that the more healthy and open a society is, and the more free a press exists, the bigger the chances for a successful and faster role out.
In conclusion, our open society based platform, is endlessly applicable for as many communities in existence or for those to be created as a result of the dotToday Magazine system. The clear and indisputable advantages of our system is, that it is so easy to use, it triggers so much traffic, it is remarkably cost efficient is not controlled by Google, Facebook or any of the large technology companies of today, and yes, it is so flexible in its server configurations.
Top level domain - dotToday
The most recently announced changes in the use and adding of new top level domains (in our case Community X. (dot)Today) provides great opportunities for new social, economic, and human logic application as well as for a re-structuring of the business web usage. It is freer and eliminates many of the weaknesses of currently existing platform where content remains a problem and boredom factors increasingly are playing a role.
"Differentia Specifica"...
Our „dotToday" platform provides daily, new, fresh, dynamic, self-provided content of interest to the particular community member.
Key issues we are still working on
Who owns the information, which business model to apply (investor dependent)? How to assure quality content, and appropriate use and through what instruments? How to deal with legalities, governments needs for control of information, and how to roll-out this system which most likely will spread like a virus! How to skim the endless advertising and account sales opportunities? And last but not least: Who is among the first (strategic) investors, to take on this opportunity with us?
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