Our site is a collaborative enterprise that incorporates an aspect of social networking, and relies on user-generated information for news and events. We're taking care of the stop-specific promotions by working with local merchants, and we hope this creates an initial "sticky" factor by keeping users coming back to check for a new deal each day. Fix-it projects for local communities seem to be a big hit as well, and we're hoping they add to the stickiness of the site.

Why do I keep talking about stickiness? Activity on our site is crucial. We've taken steps to generate stories and event listings from freelance journalists and local entities -- however, we need to get users to start using the site and generating buzz.

We've laid the groundwork in our efforts last year by hosting events in local neighborhoods around the rail in order to gain support and demo our site. During these events, we met individuals who will most likely be our new adopters and influencers. Now we've got to take the example from social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace and spread the word to as many people (within our target audience) as we can to get users on our site!

Here we go...

And for those not familiar with our project, here's a description of what we're building:

CityCircles is a collaborative platform where users and journalists work together to create and share information around each light-rail stop in the Phoenix metro area. That includes news, events, promotions, classifieds and social networking. There's even a community improvement tool that helps our users create, join and accomplish projects that make the city a better place for everyone. Think of us as the context that makes your urban experience more meaningful, your digital sidekick in the city.

Listen More Than You Talk

In order to start building awareness and spread the word about CityCircles, we hosted a few "community preview" events in Phoenix, Tempe, and Mesa. Needless to say, we were humbled by the turnout at these events. These events gave us the chance to discuss our project with people and potential users in a more intimate setting. We gathered meaningful feedback that helped us prioritize and develop the features and functions we would soon roll out on the site.

It was very interesting to observe how different target groups got excited about different features and functions. For example, Arizona State University students were most interested in the events and promotions going on around each light rail stop. Citizens living around the rail were very intrigued by our "Fix It" function, which allows users to post community improvement projects and organize groups around those projects.

We also began to realize how crucial it is to develop a mobile version of CityCircles. We are now focusing our efforts on making that happen. A smartphone app is definitely in our plans as well. However, we're not as concerned with that right now because our market research showed that nearly 80 percent of our target audience does not yet have a smartphone!

Learn From the Competition

When we first started out, over a year ago, we didn't notice anyone else doing what we were setting out to do: deliver geographically-based information and build communities around that information.

Now it seems that competitors and substitutes are popping up everywhere. From FourSquare, to the smartphone app Where and CityVantage, we started to get intimidated! However, we are doing things differently from what's currently out there. We need to focus on what makes us different -- such as our team -- and continue to foster the relationships we've been building with our constituents. We also need to learn from what these sites are doing right and follow their example.

Ours is still very much a work in progress, and we are constantly learning -- that's the exciting thing about starting a new venture! We welcome any advice and feedback from anyone else who has gone through the process.

Our launch party in Tempe this past month led me to realize that this is all just now starting...

Up until that moment CityCircles had been a concept that we've had to explain to our friends and colleagues - using hand gestures or drawings. Many people thought the idea was cool but just couldn't visualize it. Lots of people asked: "when can we play with it??"

On October 8th we finally had something to show our constituents! At our launch party we demo'd the alpha site and received lots of great feedback. With every comment made by our audience (about 70 or so individuals) I realized how much potential this project has and how much work is yet to be done.

In the meantime (while our brilliant programmers are hammering away on changes, additions, features and functions) Adam and I have been working on building relationships with the communities around the light rail as well as the local merchants. We're looking for participation from the communities in creating content for our site - neighborhood news, community improvement projects, neighborhood events, etc.

Getting buy-in from local merchants will be crucial in building a sustainable business model. So far a lot of local businesses have expressed enthusiasm in trying to promote via our site. We've got some eager participants who can't wait to see this site launch.

We're trying our best to build momentum before CityCircles is released to the public. We'll be sending some invites out this week so we can get users to play with the site and provide as much feedback as possible. However, we plan on releasing new functionality and features very often in the next coming months.

Where are we today?

It has been an incredibly busy couple of months! As Adam mentioned in his last post, we were featured on "Good Morning Arizona" last month. They want to have us back when we finally launch the project and have us demo it on live TV. Very exciting!

We've made lots of progress in building the site. We've found two great guys (our programmer, Caige, and designer, Scott) who are helping us build and launch our project! Working with them has been a great learning experience, from building wire frames to information design. We're hoping to have a beta launch by the end of September. With this goal in minding, we are planning a launch party in Tempe, Ariz., the first week of October. The launch party will be a great way for us to demo our product and conduct a fun scavenger hunt using the mobile version.

One of the other things that has kept us busy these last few months has been getting in touch with stakeholders to get buy-in and assistance. We've met with the Tempe Chamber of Commerce, Phoenix Arts Council, Tempe Convention and Visitors Bureau, and have a few more meetings in the works. Everyone has been very supportive and excited about the idea.

Our next step is to meet with the local businesses around the light rail to build awareness, get their feedback on what we're doing and how we can make it better to serve their needs.

We still have A LOT of work ahead of us but are making great progress so far.

Sidenote: We are STILL debating the name of our site...

The idea developed in a digital media entrepreneurship class at ASU and now here we are almost a year later and finally getting it off the ground...

The conference in Boston was a significant milestone for us. It allowed us to finally confirm funding, which provided us with legitimacy. Not to mention opened the door for some publicity. After the conference we received a few phone calls about interviews for local news sources such as Good Morning Arizona. Very exciting!

RIght now we are concentrating on getting a product out there by September. Our original date was December but a meeting with our advisors convinced us that it might be too late and we should have SOMETHING out by September. The pressure is on...

We are currently working with our programmer to release a website (optimized for mobile) which will provide information per light rail stop (i.e. services, businesses, events, and promotions). We are still working on figuring out when to roll out each feature.

The next step is to conduct some market research with both users and advertisers (local businesses around the light rail). We'll be working on conducting those over the next few weeks. They will be conversations about what each constituent would like to see, what their needs are, etc. I think they will provide a lot of insight!

We're also in the process of building partnerships. We had lunch with the president of Phoenix Magazine this week to discuss potential synergies. Right now we're disucssing advertising opportunities for both the magazine and for us if we partner...we have some other ideas up our sleeve but its too soon to discuss.

Coming up on our next post: Our interview with Good Morning Arizona and our meeting with Phoenix Downtown Voices!