community updates

Clever Commute TV – can you help us grow?

About Tuesday Night on NJT (with observations for all)

About Tuesday Night on NJT (with observations for all)

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It was a terrible night for NJ riders.

Overall, the Clever Commuters did a great job of helping each other. Our systems handled the volume well…and lots of new people have signed up. Overall – we broke all records.

What can I say when I see thousands of strangers helping each other? It’s awesome to experience this model working…and I am thrilled about the potential.

In the spirit of further improvement, I wanted to share ideas in the context of Tuesday night. I’ll try to frame them as “do’s” (to avoid focus on the negatives)…but i’ll be explicit where needed.

Send your messages to Clever Commute from the e-mail address you used when you signed up.
You’d be surprised how many messages came from people’s “other” account…and we could NOT automatically send those because only recognized addresses may send to the list

Share information (don’t ask for it).
We know you want to know. But an “ask” model will not work if 1,000’s of commuters each ask questions of 1,000’s of commuters.

Put your message in the subject line of your e-mail.  (use the body only if you need to)
That makes it easy and good for your fellow riders as well as our advertisers. You have about 140 characters to use….you’d be amazed what you could fit there
Advertise with us
With thousands of riders and so many messages sent, we have a great platform with excess capacity. We have great rates…and the ability to target your audience in several great ways (e.g., AM/PM). We are aggressively pursuing deals of all size. Here is our ad kit http://budurl.com/cleveradkit
 Yes…you CAN advertise to just your line…at rates that will pleasantly suprise you. Rates go down as you advertise to larger Clever Commuter audiences

Help us grow
Please tell your friends, colleagues, co-workers, neighbors about Clever Commute. I’m thrilled at the growth to date…but increasingly concerned about the future if we don’t “scale up”. We have some great ideas / enhancement in the pipeline…but we need more zeros on our numbers in order to get true economies of scale from them.

I think that’s it for now. My mailbox is always open. Let’s grow and get some new sponsors.

Thanks,

Conductor Josh

Clever Subway Beta – Welcome!

Clever Subway Beta – Welcome!

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Fueled by demand from our riders, we have launched Clever Commute for the NYC subway.
We think that if you look at the available info on www.clevercommute.com, you should have all you need to get up-and-running and start getting value from the system.

Here are a few points:

1. Put us in your address book so you have the address handy
(the “send-to” address was on your “Welcome” mail…and if you don’t have that…just let us know)

2. Sure, you sometimes will not have connectivity underground…but that’s OK.
All we are saying here is when your line is _so_ badly messed up that it forced you up to the street…then that’s a great time to send a message letting your fellow passengers know.

3. Our system is powered by…YOU. The more folks we have…the more power we have.
Please take a minute to tell 10 friends to sign up.
Remember to keep Clever Commute in mind when there are problems.

4. Let’s experiment and see what comes of this.
We’ve been doing Clever Commute on the commuter rail for over 3 years now…and it works great.
We have these guidelines – https://clevercommute.com/blog/page-rules-of-the-road/
But…if we need to adopt them for use on mass transit…then we’re open to exploring that.

Thanks again and welcome aboard!

About last night (the storm on December 19th)

About last night (the storm on December 19th)

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Here are some facts:

  • 94 different messages were sent
  • 59 different senders sent the messages
  • 13 different routes had people helping out

Overall…we’re pleased with the way people helped each other out…and the way that the system held up. We had a slew of people signing up before the storm…and we thank each of you for referring your fellow commuter to Clever Commute.
In the spirit of continuous improvement, here is what we see as our homework:

  • Re-evaluate the format of the ads / sponsored messages. While we value the revenue they provide, we are always looking at ways to streamline things further.
  • Making things better for people who use their cell phones. If that is you, then please read this post

There’ll be more messy weather ahead…considering that this storm happened before the official start of Winter!

Thanks,

–Josh

How we are thinking about Twitter

How we are thinking about Twitter

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For starters, if you are not familiar…then try this: http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter

The idea that I am thinking about is very straight-forward…and does not take advantage of all that Twitter has to offer…but it would be a very functional start:
In-scope commuter lines will have a Twitter “account” that will tweet the Clever Commuter alerts. SMS users may the use the “follow via SMS” feature…and therefore receive the alerts via their cell phones. People who chose to follow. (AND get SMS updates on their cell phones) would receive the 140 character updates…which come from their fellow commuters. The messages are designed to be very “clean” and free of ads, promotional messages, footers, signatures, etc.
Our recently-released tech upgrade gives us this flexibility and we are exploring a “beta” soon.

Why is this appealing to Clever Commute? it’s adds value to the product…at zero cost…and no impact to non-users

  • It provides a way for us to provide fast and free service for commuters who use their cell phones.  (FYI – sending true SMS would otherwise cost us money. Our legacy of sending email to your phone has a few flaws…which are largely address by this new approach.
  • There would be no impact or changes to experience of the other Clever Commuters (e.g., Blackberry, iPhone)
  • Twitter can handle the volume

It’s key to note that Twitter solves for a key problem I have: the current Clever Commute “user experience” on a cell phone is “just OK”. (signup is tough…and now that we have sponsored messages and footers, the actual messages are too long)
We’d also add that Twitter is good for today…but we could also “swap it out” and / or publish to other social media (Facebook, Friendfeed…etc.)

It’s a new world…and we’re excited about it
For now, this will be a beta program…and we’ll evaluate the impact after a few months and then determine if we’ll continue.

For people who chose not to use Twitter, absolutely nothing will change…so this will be a non-event for them.

A time of giving…from Clever Commute to you (new features)

A time of giving…from Clever Commute to you (new features)

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As of Monday, December 1, we will start phasing in some exciting changes to Clever Commute. For now, we expect that the only changes you can actually “see” will be for the better. Here is an overview of what is going on:

(1) Improved messages in your inbox:

(a) Cleaner content – In order to help protect your privacy and improve quality/readability of the “alerts,” we have implemented a new real-time process to strip out extra content…and leave you with “just the facts”.
(b) Better “footers”  – they will now contain “Did you know?”-style updates from Clever Commute (us) to you. These are separate from the actual alerts that are sent by your fellow commuters. So, please look for the new tips at the bottom of the mails.

(2) Sponsorship opportunities coming soon – As we have shared in the past, it’s key for us to keep Clever Commute free-to-use by commuters. Our business model continues to evolve…and we have received consistent feedback from you that an advertising-based model would be a suitable solution. We are in the final stages of planning to support this approach.

If you are an advertiser interested in connecting with the Clever Commute ridership, please look for the updates we have posted at our blog

(3) Lots more! – In the next few weeks, you’ll be hearing about several new products and services which include

  • more/better choices for text messaging / SMS
  • RSS feeds and widgets
  • Integration with Twitter and similar services

So…if you see anything out of the ordinary on Monday and beyond, please let us know (feedback -at- clevercommute dot com). Note that we’ve done some very rigorous testing…and will be closely monitoring things as well.

Thanks,

Conductor Josh