A content items’ life cycle in Triond is very simple. A file is submitted, and becomes “Waiting”. Then it is either “Published” or “Disapproved”.

Up till now, the Triond user interface presented article of any status in the “Welcome” and “My Content” sections. However, many of our users noted that the inclusion of “Disapproved” content items in the user interface is somewhat useless. They would like to see “Waiting” and “Published” items, but if an item is disapproved, it ceases to be of any interest to the content creator and just overloads the view.

We agree with them. So from now on Triond will not show “Disapproved” items any more.

We are happy to receive these kinds of feedback mails from you, as they help us improve Triond. Please continue to feedback.

The first reaction that I sometimes hear after I tell people about Triond is something like: “So, is this like blogging?”

Well, the answer I guess is yes and no, whereas the “No” part of the answer is stronger. Trionds’ members do have something in common with bloggers – they both publish their original content online. Sometimes even the nature of the content is quite similar. That is mostly true when comparing Triond to professional blogs where authors share valuable information with the community.

However – Triond is not about personalization, and is not there only to satisfy one’s hunger for exposure. It is more about satisfying one’s hunger period…
Triond focuses on monetizing your content, distributing it widely and effectively so you will generate an income – not just as a public stage.

I wouldn’t want to compare it in more details. Maybe I will find the time to do so in a later post. In the meantime, I will give you my bottom line: To blog or not to blog – that depends on your motivation: If you just want to publish your content or to build a personal reputation – then blog. However, if you feel that you have valuable content that you are willing to share and would like to be paid for doing so (why wouldn’t you?) – Then become a Triond member and start publishing.

I must note that Triond does provide somewhat of personalization. Your content is not published anonymously and all Triond members have personal pages linked to from their published content. But then again – personalization is not the issue. Monetizing is.

I am not a marine biologist. But I have seen plenty of movies involving those sea creatures, be it fish or mammals, that roam the oceans and the vast seas, away from the reach of man and technology (although some optical fibers do happen to cross the silent celebration of life that happens there). I have also read some books involving those creatures. “Moby Dick” was it? Or maybe “20,000 Leagues under the Sea”? probably both. Anyhow, I have developed a notion of how things work down there.

The whales are big. They are also large in their numbers. They can swallow tons of fish in a slurp, and then can toss their bones out in an intestinal jet (again, i’m not a marine biologist, so don’t take me literally). They are overwhelming, can swim fast and make a great impression.

Sharks are different. They are big, but nothing like the whale. There aren’t a lot of sharks out there, but a shark immediately leaves its mark. They reign terror on their surroundings, also on the whale. They swim fast, and know exactly when to attack. They do not swallow tons of fish in a slurp and then toss their remains away, but pick their pray and digest it until it is done.

The simile should be clear. As Triond is already on the air, and marketing efforts are on the verge of launching, we are fish. There are whales and sharks all around us. If being digested and carried in the belly of a marine-beast is our goal, we won’t go for whales, we’ll go for sharks. At least at the begining. 3 Sharks are already on our sights, and we are 1 whale down.

Updates, I am sure, soon to come.

Last few days were very exciting and the vibes were good at the Triond project.

After some bug fixes, new features we have added and better functionality and design that we added to the basic Writing4Living project, we will soon be ready to launch Triond and we are quite joyful.

I hope Writing4Living users’ transition will be smooth, and that they will not be too bothered with it. We will leave Writing4Living online for a short time but then we will redirect all requests to Triond. Actually, the transition is not such a hassle. All one has to do is to go to another location. The log-in process is the same using the existing username and password and the interface is quite similar as well (well… it is much better…).

Once we launch Triond we will start marketing it intensively, so the number of our writers (now Content Creators) will grow rapidly. We will publish lots of interesting content of all media types: text articles, video, audio and images.

Of course our existing users will benefit as their content will gain a boost of traffic and so their income will rise. Good for them. After all, Triond isn’t worth much without our Content Creators community and whatever is good for them – is also good for us.

Well, enough for now. I still have some work to do so we can launch alright. Stay tuned for the launch announcement.