| Website | gemzies.com |
| Category | Games, Video and Entertainment |
| Phone | +31-6-27095251 |
| Employees | 3 |
| Founded | 2008 |
Gemzies -from “gems”- wants to help people getting started on the Internet, on serious topics. To do so, Gemzies aims to “start” at the point a Wikipedia-page “ends”.
Gemzies-pages are focused on a single topic. On that topic, they provide a structured and community-rated list of suggested sites, videos, images, news and books.
Gemzies-pages are created and maintained by fellow experts, who want to show their expertise to the rest of the world. Gemzies provides a ‘virtual stage’ for these experts, providing for expert ranking lists, expert search, and expert ‘tracking’.
Gemzies thus adds Digg-type rating, and Delicious-type tagging, to serious content focused on any single topic.
The problem There is no shortage of content on the internet. For every subject you can check thousands of websites, all giving you more or less the same info.
At this moment there is no website easily allowing experts to collectively gather, review and tag all kinds of serious ‘web favorites’ (sites, videos, images, books, news), on any possible subject, in a single, structured page.
The solution: Gemzies-pages Gemzies-pages are focused on a single topic. They contain a structured overview of suggested relevant websites, videos, photos, books and news on that topic, all in just one view.
Gemzies-pages are filled and maintained by fellow experts, die-hard fans, or anyone with a serious opinion, on anything from Al Gore to ZZ Top. Anyone can apply to start a new Gemzies page, providing a clear affinity with the subject, and providing the topic isn’t commercial or explicit.
Gemzies-pages need the passion, a bit of commitment, and the expertise of individuals who want to show their knowledge on Internet content to the rest of the world. By its very nature, Gemzies-pages will thus contain topics that people have a passion for, like sports, music artists, professions, science, hobbies, global issues, etc.
Unlike other initiatives, Gemzies does not pay a vast editorial staff to build the ultimate human powered link directory. Instead, Gemzies offers ‘15 minutes of fame’, highlighting both the authors, and the most valuable contributors, to a Gemzies page.
A virtual stage for experts Our contributors add and review entries, simply for the sake of helping others getting started.
Experts who contribute to Gemzies-pages, are ranked on a ‘virtual stage’. Their contributions can be tracked, thus reflecting their expertise to the rest of the world. What comes from that is up to the experts themselves…
Visitors can easily search for experts, and their individual contributions. Experts can be ‘bookmarked’, informing visitors when new entries have been made by the expert, all depending on the privacy settings chosen by the experts.
Creating Gemzies pages Page creation is a simple process; it takes an average user 30 minutes to publish a first version of a Gemzies-page, containing at least 10 relevant entries (videos, sites, images and books on a single topic). Gemzies takes care of page structure, look & feel, video display, etc.
The creator of a Gemzies page is recognized as ‘author’ of the page. After publication, the Gemzies-page is ‘open’ to the rest of the world, to add new entries and review existing entries. Fellow experts who contribute to the page, are automatically added in the experts ranking list.
Gemzies provides tools to suggest relevant content for new entries, using APIs from Google (to suggest relevant websites and books), and Youtube (for videos).
Finally, a Gemzies page automatically displays the latest news on the specific topic (currently based on Google News).
Content tagging and rating Similar to e.g. Delicious, contributors can add tags to new entries for a Gemzies-page, or suggest additional tags to existing entries. These tags support other users to browse the Gemzies-page. The tags are also fed into a search engine (basic, for now), enabling visitors to search for relevant content across the entire Gemzies database.
Similar to e.g. Digg, visitors can ‘vote’ on the suggested entries from others. Based on these votes, the most popular sites, videos, images and books will appear ‘on top’ of their category. Unlike Digg (and many of its clones), we allow our visitors to ‘vote’ for anything but news, since we consider news to have a much shorter-lived life span, when compared to sites, videos, etc.
Page quality Gemzies fully understands it needs to grow towards a tipping point, in order to increase the relevancy of its content.
To quickly judge the “quality” of a Gemzies page, it will be ranked with an overall quality indicator, ranging from 1 to 5 Gemzies. These Gemzies are earned based on a.o. the number of active contributors, and the average rating of entries by visitors and fellow experts.
