ridertown.com
April 1, 2003
Ridertown Forums
Last month I hinted at something new in development for ridertown.com. On March 13, we opened Ridertown Forums, a full-featured discussion board. This is a free, open-access bulletin board service that enables Ridertown.com visitors to post their opinions, comments and messages directly to the web site from their keyboards. The Forums were in use on their first night online and more than 100 posts have been made so far. Topics range from Iraq to schools to downtown revitalization to sports, and are still available to read and reply to.
The Ridertown Forums are an example of a service the traditional media cannot offer: a combination of the instantaneous access of live call-in radio with the archival access of a letter to the editor. They are a permanently open town meeting, with minutes. I look forward to Forum activity at election time.
We had to make some major upgrades at ridertown.com to add the capability to host the Ridertown Forums -- one more step toward our destination of becoming The Local Medium.
Area News
The Spring Street Journal. (Auglaize County's Only Locally-Owned Newspaper) added a new feature in March, a page devoted to Area News. This new page permits us to post non-local news of interest to St. Marys residents, and attract area consumers to see your advertisements. You do sponsor ridertown.com, don't you?
Medium Well Done
Ridertown doesn't have a mission statement, because mission statements are meaningless, pointless, humorless drivel inflicted upon thoughtless people by overeducated, overpaid sanctimonious MBA/SBA bureaucratic politically-correct drones, which, if honest, would all read, "Our Mission Is To Make Money." In my opinion. Of course, if your mission statement is hanging on the wall across from you as you read this, I'm sure you lead a better life because of it.
What ridertown.com does have is an idea: to be the source and destination of everything St. Marys. (And make money.)
The internet is changing the world. Twenty years ago, online communication was text-only. Ten years ago St. Marians could finally get online with a local, instead of a long-distance, phone connection. With the advent of broadband access, more and more local homes and businesses are not only online, but online all the time. This year will see local competition among broadband service providers for the first time. Prices will fall, resulting in more users.
Broadband means not only faster connections, but vastly increased amounts of information transfer. More speed and more volume. Already, radio stations provide bandwidth-intensive audio programming over the internet, and there are many internet-only "radio stations." In the not-too-distant future, increased bandwidth will allow video transmissions with tolerable picture and sound quality. And existing software can turn an ordinary PC into a videophone today.
In other words, over the next ten or twenty years, home computers will replace every major home communication device invented in the last 120 years.
At the same time, St. Marys is home to no locally-owned traditional media. After vacuuming your advertising dollars out of town for 30 years, sooner rather than later The Evening Leader will in all probability close her St. Marys office, thank you ma'am. Frankly, that sucks: business you see, driven by mission statement. As much as I enjoyed joining everyone in bashing the Leader over the years, I will be sad to see her go. Some of you may remember my brief 1995 stint as Editor at The Evening Leader, but few know that my great-grandfather, A.C. Buss, owned the Leader Printing Company for many years and hired K.C. Geiger. They'll both be spinning in their graves I'm sure, the day the Leader officially moves to Wapak.
With the assistance of Dave Stilwell (a better-known former EL editor), for three years I have worked on ridertown.com, grooming it to fill the void in local media. We intend Ridertown.com to be The Local Medium. Hundreds of St. Marys households have internet access now; PCs will one approaching day be as ubiquitous as TVs. If we have our way, there will be no need for anyone in St. Marys to buy a newspaper or turn to radio or TV for local news. Why not?
Because they have Ridertown.
Life Is Good - Hit Me!
Unique Visitors to ridertown.com in March 2003 outnumbered those same month previous year 4646 to 3839 (a 21% increase), extending Ridertown's streak to 31 consecutive months bettering same month previous year numbers. FYI, "Unique Visitors" is a conservative counting method, recording only one request per remote computer per day. Computer stations that are used by more than one person, such as at businesses, libraries, schools, etc. will still only be counted as one visitor each day. Beware of other website claims for "hits" (requests for all file transfers including individual graphics). For example; over a recent 12-month period (2002-2003) Ridertown received 61,000 "Unique Visitors," but more than 7,500,000 "hits."
Solid Advice for a Better Life:
If you don't laugh at yourself everyone else will do it for you.
Thanks for visiting ridertown.com!
Chris Botkin
Have Your Machine Talk To My Machine
ridertown.com is owned and operated by Chris Botkin, a fifth-generation St. Marian born and raised who is active in local service organizations and a heck of a nice feller despite a dearth of perspicacity, pulchritude and luck. Ably assisting is Dave Stilwell who is busy with family and volunteering beyond any reasonable bounds of human endurance. We both have day jobs, too. Our goal for Ridertown is world domination, but we'll settle for dragging St. Marys kicking and screaming into the Information Age. Are you going to come quietly, or do we have to use earplugs?
If you're not in Ridertown, you're virtually nowhere.
The World Wide Web Goes Local
V i r t u a l S t . M a r y s , O h i o
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