Open Salon

Salon.com was one of the first online-only magazines, and now they hope that their user-generated (and tip-friendly!) Open Salon will become the latest darling of the blogosphere.

What is Open Salon, what is its reason for living, why is it there?

Open Salon is a hybrid of a blog and a social network. It exists to provide an outlet for bloggers who want to interact within a community of other bloggers and have their work seen and evaluated by this group. Additional motivation to join results from the fact that the editors of the parent site, Salon Magazine, may select outstanding posts from Open Salon to be featured on the widely-visited Salon.com. The focus of Open Salon is simply writing – it is not a personal blog or a news blog, per se, but a combination of both.

Who was it founded by and what was the idea at the start?

Open Salon was founded by Salon.com, often just called Salon, which was one of the first online magazines, with content updated every weekday. Its major focus is U.S. liberal politics, but it covers a range of issues. Open Salon grew out of a desire to extend the reaches of Salon, allowing its sophisticated readers to interact with each other and with the magazine. Salon saw the need to modernize and participate in the blogosphere and social networks; thus Open Salon is a combination of these two components of the cyberworld. It began as beta test, where over 1,300 bloggers were invited to build a hosted blog network. Open Salon expanded its launch to the greater public on August 11, 2008.

Who owns it now and how is it organized, business-wise?

Open Salon is directly linked to its corporate parent, Salon Media Group. The New York-based director of Open Salon, Kerry Lauerman, was previously an “editor in various capacities” at San Francisco-based Salon Magazine. All other corporate officials are based at Salon (such as Editor in Chief Joan Walsh and CEO Elizabeth Hambrecht).

What’s the business model, as far as you can determine?

Open Salon is still owned by Salon Magazine, but it does not appear to be a major profit generator at this point. Membership is free, and pages do not include advertising. It seems to be more of a service for Salon readers, though it is also designed to attract new members into the Salon fold: Open Salon advertises on television with its slogan, “You make the headlines.” The only component of Open Salon that features money is the tipping system, in which a user can tip another user in approval of his or her work. The system is operated by PayPal competitor Revolution MoneyExchange. It appears that Open Salon itself does not generate income, but serves as an extension of the Salon brand.

Who is the target audience, in the old fashioned sense: the likely consumer of the site’s content?

Open Salon’s ideal demographic skews toward the liberal side, and includes intellectuals with a passion for writing. Many of these users have come to appreciate the work done by professional journalists on Salon, and seek to emulate some aspects of this in the context of blogging on Open Salon – or at least reading the posts on Open Salon.

What can users do at open.salon.com? What are their powers, so to speak?

Because Open Salon is “part blogging platform, part social network,” users at the site can simply sign up for a free membership to create an in-site blog and be provided with a built-in audience for their work. Open Salon is accommodating to those who are already established bloggers, by allowing them to create and name their own basic blog page – complete with a photograph, blogroll, and archive of posts – within the context of the site. Posts have no minimum or maximum length. The social networking aspect of the site includes the user’s optional ability to add friends, and rate, comment, and tip others’ posts. Users simply declare their friendship with other users, though unlike social networking site facebook, adding a friend on Open Salon does not require a mutual agreement from both parties. Each action users perform is listed minute-by-minute for all to see in the “activity feed,” modeled after facebook’s “news feed.” Ultimately, their powers as bloggers can extend beyond the Open Salon community, as many are driven by the incentive to have their posts featured on Salon.

Who are the ideal users of the site, the ones Open Salon is truly made for?

The target audience is readers and enthusiasts from Salon.com who want to extend their participation with the site into the realm of blogging. These readers are generally well-educated, sophisticated, and politically moderate-to-liberal. Many are amateur or professional writers who may also hope to have their work presented on Salon.com, as some of the highest-rated posts on Open Salon may be chosen by editors to be featured on the parent website. The site’s function as a blogging platform attracts experienced bloggers, who utilize Open Salon as an extension of their personal blogs. These internet-savvy users may not have been previously familiar with Salon, but are exposed to it and welcomed into the brand through Open Salon.

What do the most active users–the power users, the super-contributors- tend to do at the site?

These users tend to be the most prolific writers, responding to the daily “Open Call” section or current events in order to stay relevant. This makes their posts more likely to be selected by the editors for placement on the “cover” page, and thus read by more users. In addition to writing, super-contributors frequently rate, comment, and tip on other writers’ posts, allowing their names to appear consistently on the activity feed.

How does that differ from what more casual users would do?

Besides the non-members who simply read posts on the site, casual members may write an occasional post that tends to be more relevant to their personal lives than to the Open Call or current events. Their participation in others’ posts through comments, ratings, and tips is limited.

Anything especially nifty or extremely effective about the technology available at the site?

The tipping system is perhaps one of the more unique features of the site, as it experiments with the idea of optional generosity within a community. Because the site was only launched in August 2008, it is not entirely clear as to how effective the tipping system is on the site.

How about any features of the site that work really really well?

Interestingly, though perhaps controversially, the presence of editors seems to enhance the quality of the site. Because the editors select the most outstanding pieces to feature on the main page, the attention is drawn to these posts, and thus the focus of the site is the highest-quality material.

What do the Open Salon community standards say?

Open Salon does not seem to specifically list community standards at this time; the sophisticated users of the site seem to coexist relatively well without emphasizing such standards. However, one user claims that he was a victim of “cyber harassment” on Open Salon, and calls for the site to re-evaluate its community standards.

How active would you say the users are in communally enforcing those standards?

Open Salon is primarily populated by well-educated intellectual writers; the tone of posts and comments seems to indicate a desire to encourage debate and discussion, without inciting conflict. Open Salon users expect to maintain a sense of class that avoids many of the pitfalls of participation on an optionally-anonymous online community.

Divison of labor:  What work does the Open Salon professional staff do to make the site “go?”

Interestingly, though perhaps controversially, the presence of editors seems to enhance the quality of the site. Because the editors select the most outstanding pieces to feature on the main page, the attention is drawn to these posts, and thus the focus of the site is the highest-quality material. Users comment, rate, and tip these posts most. In addition, the staff poses the daily Open Call question to stimulate the creation of posts. Overall, the editor-generated daily fresh “cover” page and Open Call feature provide the impetus for user generation.

As distinct from… What work does the user community do that makes the site go?

Open Salon provides a much-needed midway point between “mainstream media” and blogging. By clearly linking itself with the Salon and establishing an appearance in the parent magazine as an aspirational point for Open Salon users, the site maintains the legitimacy of “mainstream media” in the blogosphere. In this way, the setup of Open Salon mirrors that of iReport, in which users participate on the site with the goal of having their content appear on CNN. Yet Open Salon also asserts its role as a community of bloggers, who connect with each other horizontally through friends, comments, ratings, and tips. The content of Open Salon also reflects variety of the blogosphere, ranging from hard news and current events to personal stories and random ruminations.

What kind of reputation system is there for contributors to the site?

Post ratings provide an opportunity for users to evaluate each other’s content. But notably, Open Salon only allows users to submit a positive rating of a post (through the “thumbs up” feature). However, there is a “flag” feature that notifies editors of a user who is in some way inconsistent with the reputation standards of the site.

What other mechanisms are there for creating trust at the site and how do they work?

The “add a friend” feature links users to each other and establishes a sense of community and trust. Friends can also send each other private messages and extend their interactions beyond Open Salon.

What do you think binds the user community together?

The Open Salon community seems to be bound together by this desire: to participate in a venue for intellectual discussion on a wide range of topics. Due to the site’s inherent connection to Salon, users who appreciate the parent magazine find others who also fit this demographic. It is easy to become invested in Open Salon: users can easily become friends, comment, rate, and tip, and this horizontal structure is conducive to building a community.

Why do you think people come back to Open Salon? What are they getting by returning?

People return to Open Salon because it allows users to be their independent blogger selves, but with a stronger connection to each other and to “mainstream media.” They seem united in building a more erudite and meaningful version of facebook – with the possibility of making money and being featured on the web site of a widely-read magazine!

Finally, is the community at Open Salon capable of doing actual journalism?

Because Open Salon is at its heart a community of writers, many of whom focus on current events and aspire to be featured in Salon Magazine, there is potential to do actual journalism. In fact, many Open Salon users describe themselves as journalists in their brief profiles. However, Open Salon operates much like its parent in its magazine format, creating a mix of primarily news analysis and personal stories. Thus the more casual, opinion-friendly and discussion-based nature of the site is not as conducive to objective reporting or breaking news.

Is it capable of doing great journalism?

Open Salon users seem to have a knack for finding compelling stories, whether they are based on personal experience or current events, and tend to be more educated and experienced as writers. This combination has the potential for excellent magazine-style journalism. But at this point the blogging community of Open Salon is ultimately secondary to its parent magazine; the very best journalism is brought to the larger, more respected, and widely-read venue of Salon.