Trying To Make Birders Less Socially Awkward
According to Slate:
The bird-watching site, Birdpost, looked like the most promising new social networking site debuted at TechCrunch50, the Sundance of the Web start-up world. Birdpost's target audience is less narrow than you may think: There are 18 million birders in America, and they spend $32 billion each year on their pursuit, according to the company's founders. Birdpost allows users to share data on where they've made their finds. If I'm birding at Lake Dell Valle in California and spot a bald eagle, I'll add the bird to my Birdpost profile. (I can do it from my computer or my phone.) If you've been looking for a bald eagle, you'll get an alert telling you where I've just spotted one. Birdpost also has a way to make money—it's free for now, but it'll begin to charge a subscription fee once it attracts many users.
Now, my questions is, why do this over eBird? Has anyone tried both and have a comparison? I'm curious to see how this is going to further affect birding listservs. I've already noticed a difference on one of the Minnesota birding listservs. Hardly anyone posts to that particular list anymore (apart from rare bird alerts) because members of the list take it upon themselves to post back channel emails to new people who post sightings of palm warblers (that's not rare enough) or to photographers (quit posting links to your photos, you're only trying to make money off of them), or people who post backyard bird sightings (I pay good money to have the listserv emails sent vis text to my cell phone, you're wasting my money), or bloggers (quit spamming the list, we know you make money per click on your website). On that last one, I'd love to know how a blogger can make money per click--how did I miss that gravy train? Add that to the envitable infighting that happens every few months, I can see why BirdPost looks good.
In other news, Minnesota BirdNerd has filmed the rarely seen, Happy Bird Bander Dance.
The bird-watching site, Birdpost, looked like the most promising new social networking site debuted at TechCrunch50, the Sundance of the Web start-up world. Birdpost's target audience is less narrow than you may think: There are 18 million birders in America, and they spend $32 billion each year on their pursuit, according to the company's founders. Birdpost allows users to share data on where they've made their finds. If I'm birding at Lake Dell Valle in California and spot a bald eagle, I'll add the bird to my Birdpost profile. (I can do it from my computer or my phone.) If you've been looking for a bald eagle, you'll get an alert telling you where I've just spotted one. Birdpost also has a way to make money—it's free for now, but it'll begin to charge a subscription fee once it attracts many users.
Now, my questions is, why do this over eBird? Has anyone tried both and have a comparison? I'm curious to see how this is going to further affect birding listservs. I've already noticed a difference on one of the Minnesota birding listservs. Hardly anyone posts to that particular list anymore (apart from rare bird alerts) because members of the list take it upon themselves to post back channel emails to new people who post sightings of palm warblers (that's not rare enough) or to photographers (quit posting links to your photos, you're only trying to make money off of them), or people who post backyard bird sightings (I pay good money to have the listserv emails sent vis text to my cell phone, you're wasting my money), or bloggers (quit spamming the list, we know you make money per click on your website). On that last one, I'd love to know how a blogger can make money per click--how did I miss that gravy train? Add that to the envitable infighting that happens every few months, I can see why BirdPost looks good.
In other news, Minnesota BirdNerd has filmed the rarely seen, Happy Bird Bander Dance.
Labels: news
posted by birdchick at 7:15 AM
13 Comments:
Well - I checked out (and signed up for) Birdpost. I think the reason that some established sites are declining is that they fail to a) catch on to new technologies, that make the use of sites better, and haven't noticed that birding has gone mainstream. A dry, scientific approach might not be the way to stay current.
Cheers, Klaus
"18 million birders in America, and they spend $32 billion each year"
assuming the first number is correct the second number seems really high even if we factor in birding holidays and the odd expensive new scope/tripod/bins. Do you as a birding industry insider have any feel for whether its an accurate number?
tai haku,
I'm always skeptical of statistics, they can be manipulated to ANYONE's advantage. That said, I think the number of people who watch bird is that high...but they are not all hardcore birders like me. That number includes people who pause to glance out their window to see a cardinal, people who choose to visit a national park on a day off for wildlife view--if it happens to be a bird,that's great.
What gets tricky are the people who do not consider themselves birders but have two field guides, a pair of binoculars and will vist some sort of park once or twice a year, quite a few even have a scope aimed at their feeders. But they do not consider themselves birders.
I don't know, it's almost as if people interested in birds prefer to be as cryptic and unnoticeable as a fall warbler.
...or maybe a lot of people out there who don't think they're "specialist" enough to be considered birders, or that "proper" birders have to work somewhere in the field? That's a clumsy guess, but posssibly not too far-fetched: I've been going nuts lately learning to recognize birds and birdsongs, and even to get out and see some that I've never seen. Yet I don't call myself a birder, mainly because I've never gone on a serious birding trip.
Which seems goofy, actually, now I think about it. Okay: I'm totally a birder! A birder who needs to hike more. :D
Birdpost is a blatant rip-off of the NONPROFIT eBird project that has been around for years.
Much of the Birdpost application seems to be a repackaging of some of eBird's new features like Google Mapping, Notable Birds Gadget, etc.
They obviously used existing eBird features as the kernel, added a few unimpressive social networking 'bells and whistles' (which birders won't care about) and voila.
And unlike eBird, Birdpost is of zero value to bird researchers and conservationists, since Birdpost data is very poorly screened for misidentifications, spurious reports and "nut job" birders compared to eBird and other real citizen-science projects.
I urge birders to use eBird instead - after all, it not only lets you record, track, map, search, alerts, etc. - but it also helps conserve the birds we care about.
Birdpost is a for-profit ripoff of an existing nonprofit product.
For Shame!
Regarding later plans for other non-avian wildlife: those will having harmful effects when used on, say reptiles (since both legal and illegal commercial turtle and snake collectors can use the Internet too).
Birdpost will not affect LISTSERVS.
It does have the potential to affect eBird and other REAL citizen-science projects.
When I say Real citizen-science projects, I mean those whose DATA is actually used by researchers and conservationists.
Birdpost data will not be, for various reasons.
So if you care about conserving birds for future enjoyment more than personal convenience, USE EBIRD!
I tried to look at birdpost, but since it wouldn't actually let me see anything without signing up, I'm not going to.
I'm more worried about it drawing away from ebird -- which actually serves a useful scientific purpose -- than from local listserves.
Hm, just found you! Didn't even know these sites existed. I shall check them out. Let me ask you a question, please. I just had my yard designated as a certified wildlife habitat. But I have one ten year old cat that goes outside some. Do you think it is wrong to have a cat and try to preserve wildlife at the same time? Is that defeating its purpose? Just curious as to your viewpoint.
Brenda
Below someone mentioned ebird was non-profit.
So why is that big fat Ziess logo sitting up there
in the upper right corner? Who profits?
I don't have a problem with a birding website being for profit. There seems to be this unwritten rule somewhere that anything regarding birding should be free. I think in the long run, that is a disservice for birding. If we can find a way for there be more jobs in birding--that pay a livable wage, we'll get more people involved.
I do question why we need multiple sites for bird reports in North America, that seems to split up the research.
And a note for anonymous comments - if you want people to take your argument seriously, put your name with it. Too many anonymous and angry comments trashing BirdPost and praising eBird by anonymous posters almost makes a reader wonder, "Is this someone who works for or is involved with eBird trying to woo me away from BirdPost?"
Just something to keep in mind.
Brenda,
Your question is, "Do you think it is wrong to have a cat and try to preserve wildlife at the same time?"
No, I do not think it's wrong to have a cat and preserve wildlife...so long as the cat is an indoor cat.
Why can't a non-profit have an ad on their website or have a sponsor? Being a non-profit doesn't mean money magically appears in your bank account. Non-profits take a lot of money to run. All "non-profit" means is that no one makes a profit at the end of the year. There are no shareholders who make money for doing nothing. Employees still need to get paid salaries, websites still cost real money to run.
As you said Sharon, people have this weird expectation that everything bird (or nature that matter) should be free. Some people get upset that I charge a fee to teach astronomy programs. "The night sky is free!" they say. True enough. Having me teach about it costs money. Same goes for birds.
A lot of great comments! I'm Jason Peery, co-founder of Birdpost. Birdchick, great blog! I find it kind of interesting that anonymous people are posting the same pro-ebird, anti-birdpost postings all over the internet. For the record, I hope ebird and all pro-birding, pro-conservation websites succeed! Not sure I understand why anyone interested in furthering birding would want another birding site to fail, even if it does charge. By the way, we're not charging any time soon, but if we do, perhaps it'll help offset the $300,000 we spent out of our own pockets in order to create a more fun, useable birding website. If it doesn't, I'm still glad we did it.
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