Connecting the Dots

One thing we're very conscious of with the Mayo Worldwide Community project is the need to include as many people as possible, as much information as possible and as many other websites/projects as possible.  The purpose of the website is to add to what is already online--not to replace anything.

So, some of the things we'd like to connect with:

1. Facebook
2. LinkedIn
3. Local news/media outlets
4. Global/Regional news outlets
5. Other existing communities
6. Other business and event listings

The first two are probably the most useful to the future website users.  There are some pretty nifty ways of allowing site members to use their existing Facebook login and profile info when they join our new website.  This would make it a REALLY quick process for becoming a site member. 

But, it's possible to get even more connectivity between our site and Facebook.  For example, we can connect a user's profile on both sites so that when their wall or status is updated on one site, it's updated on both.  Several websites already do this and it seems like a handy way for people active on a number of websites to keep them all in sync.

I haven't seen this done on LinkedIn, but I've heard some similar things can be done there.

Most local media in Mayo have RSS feeds.  So, we have one way open already of aggregating news stories.

However, what we're hoping to do is to provide website members with news and events filtered both for their locality and Mayo.  So, if you were a website member living in Toronto, news and events of interest to you in the Toronto area and in Mayo would be highlighted to you.  You could also search for events in other places by date, location or event type (ex. trad music, indie music, historic talk, etc.).

For the site to be useful to business owners, I think people would like a business listing to show businesses with Mayo connections around the world.  Ideally, we'd want to build on what exists already.  So, it may be possible to do some kind of data sharing between the new Mayo.ie and existing business listing websites so that everyone benefits.

What do you think?  Fire on any feedback or ideas you have about our project to me by commenting below or emailing me at webmaster@mayococo.ie.

Also, please join our new Mayo Worldwide Community Group on Facebook to keep up with our project and to be one of the first invited to use it when it goes live.

Rick Love