Hoard 08 Online in Review

2008 was my first full year working online with nothing related to TayTV. In the beginning of '08 I found myself working on three different paid projects simultaneously Propeller, AOL News and Mahalo. I was afraid to admit that I was a little overwhelmed with work.

I made a decision to leave AOL News, first of all the project wasn't going as well as I had hoped and Mahalo gave me a golden opportunity to work within the archiving industry. The original TayTV was about archiving quality, here is a screengrab courtesy of WayBackMachine of TayTV back in 2005.



Working at Mahalo has allowed me to get my hands deep into archiving again, the infrastructure there is perfect for building entertaining and educational archives for users, and going in there I know it's a long term project, the boss has said many times that it's a 5 year plan he's working on, so when I see an imperfect archive, I realize we have time to perfect this stuff, and that's what I'm there for, to improve our pages.

My greatest asset so far (other than working more hours then they'll pay me for) is adding videos to archives, each time I touch a Mahalo page that has either no video embed, or a dead one, I venture out and look for the most responsible replacement, after years of video research (over 1000 clipped uploades, and 3000+ research video posts), I am certainly making sure pages get the best video options for users. I look at this way, if a user finds a video they are interested in on a Mahalo page, then they will sit there and watch it... on Mahalo...where it is surrounded with useful information and links about that topic. It's a thing of beauty, and being able to help build Mahalo has been a pleasure in 2008.



At the time that I was hired at Mahalo I already held two jobs with AOL, one with Propeller and one with News, I attempted to juggle all three along with my other online communities, but it turned into a big bucket of fail. Blogging on AOL News brought a lot of stress, probably most of it from me putting it on myself but it almost seemed like I was looking for an exit. I loved the idea of blogging about politics and sharing mind blowing stories in the same space as guys like the Young Turks and Daily Show Alumni Mo Rocca, but blogging was a sideshow to my research for video. I would love to pro-blog again in the future, but only if I'm approached by the right person at the right time, and I can continue Archiving.

When I started at Mahalo, my main duty at the beginning was checking the incoming links, deleting the spam, and archiving the quality gems, which was no problem, I could do this all day, however so many new Pages were being started through the Link Submission engine, we couldn't keep up with building them. Some organization was needed for the relatively young archive. Our Department created a "To-Do" section. The terms that we thought could potentially be built out into full blown pages were categorized and saved. There are thousands. That list honestly makes my mouth salivate because it just shows how many archives will be built someday. If Mahalo is developed properly there will be chance to build, maintain and curate all these interesting and potential information hubs, it sounds very fun.

Things were going smooth for the most part, we had a production line operating where some of us would check the links, others would build out the pages and others would complete the Guide notes for the pages....Unfortunately Mahalo ended up cutting a large chunk of their staff due to the whole "economic crisis" and the whole "To-Do" production line was put on hold as I moved to another project on the site. The last part of 2008 was tense, we felt as if we were fighting to keep Mahalo alive, watching co-workers leave left-right and center wasn't much fun to watch.

Mahalo made a brisk move and introduced Answers, which is where I've been stationed as a moderator and researcher, it's put a lot the curating and archiving on hold except for my continued progress on the Today in History archives which I've been working on since August and are looking to make it full circle in '09 and really get down to business by adding extra padding to each page, everyday.

Beyond Mahalo, I started a couple blogs, after leaving Newsbloggers there was a blogging void I needed to fill, first I started Twitter account (which is a "microblog") it has been interesting to watch Twitter really take off, I also false-started the InternetResearchLeague.com blog right after I got hired at Mahalo, thinking I could figure out a way to encourage people to submit links to Mahalo by creating such a "league" - it never really worked out, it just added to my early year chaos, and of course I settled on this blog jhoard.com, simple, easy, not having to care about traffic, just really murmuring to myself is pleasure enough. Blogging was a lot easier when I was a angry muckracker working at a call center living with my parents trying pay off debts. But now that I'm a full time online worker, with my own house...It's hard to venture out and find reasons to get angry? Perhaps that's why my blogging has declined, anyway, we'll have to see what 2009 brings.

The absolute highlight to my online experience 2008 was receiving and email from James Burke where he complimented my work on my DUC (The Day the Universe Changed) Documentary guide that I built on Mahalo. I am slowly making progress on Connections.



Anyway, that is Hoard's year in review