Oldham, a small town in the UK midlands, had the foresight to open up a social and political networking website, inventively titled Oldham Says, in the hopes of fostering a sense of community, sharing news, and gathering opinions from Oldham residents. Traffic statistics for the website collected over the past six months suggest that, despite the good intentions of the Oldham town council and cooperation from the Greater Manchester Police, the site has been a complete and utter failure.
Averaged out over the six months from April to September, the site garnered just 14 unique visitors per day, with the number sinking to as low as 10 per day during the summer holidays. The total count for the period was just over 2500, making each and every visit to Oldham Says worth approximately 10 in design, development and
web hosting costs.
Fortunately, the site has seen a spike in visits during the past few weeks, largely as a result of publicity surrounding the websites failure. This is almost certainly related to the fact that the 25,000 tab for the website was paid by local taxpayers. Says one member of the Taxpayers Alliance when asked for comment on the sites failure by the Manchester Evening News, this situation is made worse by the fact its proved so unpopular - it looks as though this is just a costly PR stunt gone wrong"".
In addition to criticisms over the financial origins of the site, detractors have also pointed out that the execution of the website was half-baked, and that this is the reason for its pronounced failure in serving the local population. One Oldham resident agreed that the site was a good idea in principle, but that it simply didnt come off well.
Nonetheless, now that the site itself is up and running, volunteer administrators and free user generated content and
domain hosting services will keep it alive for the foreseeable future. The old advertising maxim, theres no such thing as bad publicity, may prove true for Oldham Says as well, with all the negative press concerning the site actually serving to generate traffic and, one would only hope, improve the currently half-baked content and layout.
