What headline would you put on Drumbeat’s new front page? Last week we asked for your help — and a flurry of interesting ideas came back through the mailing list and comment thread. Taken together, they provide an excellent snapshot of what Drumbeat’s all about (see the word cloud above).
Here’s a round-up of some of what I found inspiring or helpful. I’ve paraphrased for brevity in places, and changed punctuation a bit to make them consistent. The creativity of this community really inspires me. Not sure if there’s a clear winner here yet — but it’s been a terrific exercise so far. And inspired some ideas I’d like to share in a follow-up post. But for now…
Open innovation. Powered by you.
Start. Build. Play.
–Heather
Connect. Share projects. Change the world.
–Jaime
Open everything. Powered by everyone.
–Danny
Open web. Open minds. Open world.
–Miraj
Collaborate. Innovate. Commence awesomeness.
–Jessica
Embrace. Build. Share.
–Karl
Build the open web. Build the future.
–Nathaniel
Open up.
–ELS
Collaborate and grow ideas for the open web.
–Nuss
Love freedom. Build the web.
–Paul B.
Share ideas and projects. Help change the web.
–Carlo
People. Possibilities. Ideas. Think Open.
–Jade
Together, we build the web.
–Salve
Build the change you want to see in the web.
–Arnaud
Share the beat. Build the future.
–Lucy
Comments and analysis
–Laura
Words that focus on what people *do* are better than vague adjectives. If we lead with “Build,” for instance, something like “Build the Web”, then by implication we mean the parts of the web that are open (because we’re inviting people to build it).
–Paul O.
–David
Where does that leave us?
For the front page headline, I’m persuaded by Paul’s argument that words that focus on what people do (verbs) are better than adjectives and nouns. Many of the ideas people shared are great potential tag lines — but a tag line is different. Tag lines can be poetic and more aspirational — these headlines need to clearly signal what our users do here. If Foursquare is “Check in. Find friends. Unlock your city,” we need the equivalent set of verbs for Drumbeat. For me, Jaime’s use of “Connect” and “Share projects” is a breakthrough in this regard. More ideas on that in a follow-up post!
IMO you want to avoid the word build. Drumbeat is supposed to appeal to everyone, not the technical people already involved in software projects that literally do create and change the architecture of the web. If you say “we build the web” my response is “Well I can’t do that, you’re not for me.” I know it’s a word that most people came up with, but “open” is up there, too, and it was definitely criticized for not being clear to someone who isn’t already involved in open web movements.
Your current thought process seems to be leaning towards something a lot more literal than your original call. Might I suggest that if you write up the document explaining what drumbeat is about it’d be a lot easier to then figure out how to say that concisely in a headline. Explaining the open web is an easier problem to solve in more words, then the headline can be modeled after that.
Hi, Lucy. Thanks for this!
The updated “about Drumbeat” page is here:
http://openmatt.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/what-the-frak-is-drumbeat/
This is the document you mentioned that explains what Drumbeat is.
And I’ve just posted this overview as well:
http://openmatt.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/connect-share-projects-hack-everything/
Three cents: I like “Open web. Open minds. Open world.” 🙂