I'm sure most of you have heard of the social networking site "MySpace" so I don't need to go into great detail about what it is.

However, those profiles formerly only used by people are starting to feature commercial products that appeal to teenagers. Computer Games like World of Warcraft or Adidas - click the links for examples of what a MySpace profile can be like when done well ;)

Although commercial advertisement requires prior approval from myspace (and I'm sure comes with a high price tag), there's no mention of non-commercial products like Rosetta. TV stations/shows and radio channels are also increasingly starting profiles of their own, some of them also local stations without a large advertisement budget.

By designating computer and science related interests for the user 'rosetta@home' other people with those interests will find Rosetta as a possible friend ;)
Although I'm not sure how many people have either of these two examples selected as interests, according to Wikipedia the 100th million member registered last week and the user base is growing by about 500,000 per week. Bound to find some computer science/biology student who hasn't heard of Rosetta, but is going to spread the word once they find out ;)

BOINC combined has half the active users that sign up for MySpace every week. (380,000 active hosts, by the way)
The incredible amount of people that can be reached through MySpace can not be overhyped, which is why it's a very powerful advertisement site for commercial products.

You can also 'buy' advertisement that will show up on people's profiles, but the price is only available on request. I don't know what kind of budget the Rosetta team could dispose for that, but the good thing about the site is that it's like a bush fire: throw away a match and the fire will be there (and more powerful than ever) long after the match has burned out. Maybe the team would consider a short but large campaign... many users visit their profile every day, so it's bound to be seen.

Even without that, a profile allows other users to add Rosetta as a friend, and if they rank it as one of their best friends, every person accessing their profile will see Rosetta and can visit the profile. -> free advertisement.


With Dr Baker's approval I'm sure we could get a proffessional looking profile up and running in a short amount of time. The site allows almost unlimited use of html and css, so should be fairly straight forward.

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Well you'd sure have my MySpace link :)

Sounds like a good idea. I'm not too sure it would really drag a lot of people to the project, but we could always try to all link to the rosetta@home user in the first place, and if something happends, well then we can think about budget-powered action...

Nice idea.

- trib'

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good idea, i know the network and we could also create a rosetta@home group

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Oops - I just noted my link to the world of warcraft profile actually went to a different tab I had open! Now it's too late to edit, maybe a mod could change it for me?

It's worksafe (and I suppose funny ;)) but since I replaced the link with text, it'd also be misleading. The actual link is: http://www.myspace.com/worldofwarcraft

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I like the idea. Suggest you draft a space, and post a link here requesting a project blessing before promoting the site and asking others to link in to it.

BTW, mods cannot revise your text, they can only delete or move entire posts. This feature prevents them from playing "big brother" and modifying the past.

If you need help with it, I'd suggest using this thread to ask questions or request references and then once you've got a draft ready, to post here and request feedback and ideas on making it more interesting or attractive to the younger audience that's common on MySpace.

I ran some Google ads for about a month, and found inexpensive word prices for words like "science fair" and "science project" that would tend to have a younger searching audience then the more expensive words like "cancer" and "alternative medicine". So, might be worth trying to hit some of those words and ideas.

Here are some good references to help you get started with the material:
Letter to inactive crunchers (which later was decided to send to everyone on Rosetta as a newsletter)
Tell-a-friend letter and landing page.
Rosetta banner suggestions
and Bumper Sticker ideas
How can we bring more users to Rosetta?
Input from High Schoolers
and for completeness, Soriak has already posted a PowerPoint presentation describing Rosetta.

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Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

I'm sure most of you have heard of the social networking site "MySpace" so I don't need to go into great detail about what it is.

However, those profiles formerly only used by people are starting to feature commercial products that appeal to teenagers. Computer Games like World of Warcraft or Adidas - click the links for examples of what a MySpace profile can be like when done well ;)

Although commercial advertisement requires prior approval from myspace (and I'm sure comes with a high price tag), there's no mention of non-commercial products like Rosetta. TV stations/shows and radio channels are also increasingly starting profiles of their own, some of them also local stations without a large advertisement budget.

By designating computer and science related interests for the user 'rosetta@home' other people with those interests will find Rosetta as a possible friend ;)
Although I'm not sure how many people have either of these two examples selected as interests, according to Wikipedia the 100th million member registered last week and the user base is growing by about 500,000 per week. Bound to find some computer science/biology student who hasn't heard of Rosetta, but is going to spread the word once they find out ;)

BOINC combined has half the active users that sign up for MySpace every week. (380,000 active hosts, by the way)
The incredible amount of people that can be reached through MySpace can not be overhyped, which is why it's a very powerful advertisement site for commercial products.

You can also 'buy' advertisement that will show up on people's profiles, but the price is only available on request. I don't know what kind of budget the Rosetta team could dispose for that, but the good thing about the site is that it's like a bush fire: throw away a match and the fire will be there (and more powerful than ever) long after the match has burned out. Maybe the team would consider a short but large campaign... many users visit their profile every day, so it's bound to be seen.

Even without that, a profile allows other users to add Rosetta as a friend, and if they rank it as one of their best friends, every person accessing their profile will see Rosetta and can visit the profile. -> free advertisement.


With Dr Baker's approval I'm sure we could get a proffessional looking profile up and running in a short amount of time. The site allows almost unlimited use of html and css, so should be fairly straight forward.

I approve definitely!! I know about the long range of myspace from my kids; it is a great idea!

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so i´ve created a myspace group for rosetta (i hope you didn´t intend to create one). Here´s the url: http://groups.myspace.com/rosettaathome

As soon as the myspace profile is done, I can change the design to match with it.

Dr. Baker, I hope you don´t mind me using the official logo and the description. Or shall I include a copyright note?

bye

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Just joined the group :)

Hope this has some success.

- trib'

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cool, by the way everybody can submit pictures too ;)

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Dr. Baker, I hope you don´t mind me using the official logo and the description. Or shall I include a copyright note?

Not trying to speak FOR Dr. Baker, but he is a busy person. He's confirmed in the past that any of the information and graphics on the website are fair game. Although if you were to modify them in any way, you might want to review.

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Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

thanks for the info feet1st!

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MySpace is evil.

There's a reason many K12 school districts block all access to it. Don't expect much action from that audience.

Do you *really* want to be associated with that cesspool?

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Proudly Banned from Predictator@Home and now Cosmology@home as well. Added SETI to the list today. Temporary ban only - so need to work harder :)



"You can't fix stupid" (Ron White)

I agree. Myspace, facebook, and other similar sites are evil. But that didn't stop me from getting sucked into facebook.

Should there be a group on facebook too? It reaches mostly college students (though I think it's been extended to highschoolers recently too). I'd say college students are a huge target audience. They (we (I)) are attracted to this kind of project pretty easily (and a lot of them don't worry about electricity costs in the dorms - so they can run their machines all night and not have nightmares about what it will cost them in the morning).

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so i´ve created a myspace group for rosetta (i hope you didn´t intend to create one). Here´s the url: http://groups.myspace.com/rosettaathome
bye

I just tried searching for "rosettaathome" on myspace and got nothing. If people can't find it intentionally, how are they going to find it by accident (which is part of the goal)?

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Reno, NV
Team: SETI.USA

so i´ve created a myspace group for rosetta (i hope you didn´t intend to create one). Here´s the url: http://groups.myspace.com/rosettaathome
bye

I just tried searching for "rosettaathome" on myspace and got nothing. If people can't find it intentionally, how are they going to find it by accident (which is part of the goal)?

that should be fixed soon since rosetta@home and Boinc is in the description.
It´s surely not indexed yet in their system.

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The profile also isn't up yet, or you'd likely find that ;) I'll have time to start on it tomorrow.

Good idea with the myspace group! Is there a way to transfer ownership over to Rosetta's profile when it's up though? Not a big thing, but it'd be handy to have a link to it on the group main site - I never used myspace so not sure if you could just put it up along with yours. That'd work too ;)

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the group is now up!

@Soriak: I have to check if it's possible, I'm not sure

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The first version of the profile is up. The url is: http://www.myspace.com/bakerlab
Rosetta was taken and rosettaathome can be difficult to type for some people - the username is Rosetta@Home though and if you search for that it'll show up ;)

Suggestions for improvement are always welcome, I'll also see if I can find something in Dr. Baker's Journal to quote that'd still make sense to someone who has never heard of Protein folding before.

We have to avoid an information overload, but still answer the frequent questions.


Also if someone could look at the first point of the FAQ that'd be great - I listed the NIH and Gates Foundation as two of the people funding it, I hope that's accurate. The Gates foundation did make a contribution, but I'm not sure in what capacity NIH is involved - they have their logo on the front page.

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Good work ;)

Being critical, I think there's a benefit to the background being white rather than black - it might sound daft but people are more trusting of a site that is white!

Danny

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I agree with dcdc that black as a background is problamatic. Choose white or at least something bright. Second the width does not fit in 1024x768 resolution which is still quite common, perhaps you can make the width a bit smaller. That is the first impression, will read the FAQ later.