Last year during the Tour de Georgia I had an idea for a new web site/service, a photo/experience sharing site. The idea came while I was stading on top of Brasstown Bald waiting with a few new friends. One of us had a video camera and the others had digital cameras (some better than others). The conversation turned to picture and video sharing. We exchanged e-mail addresses and said "send me your photos/videos."

This same exchange took place on just about every stage, always with a different group of people. It even happens to me when I go to the US Grand Prix in Indianapolis each year. I thought why not create a web site where everybody can share not only photos, but video and perhaps narratives about the event. Flickr has the photo sharing part down, but not video or narrative. Plus is it also missing a bit of organization. Sure there is tagging, but that does not always work.

My idea was a combination of Flickr and Slashdot. Editors would create event categories and events in the system. For example: Cycling: Tour de Georgia. Users would then be able to post whatever they wanted, photos, videos, audio files or write-ups of the event. Everything would get posted, but similar to Slashdot there would be a member-moderation system. Visitors would be able to rank the quality of a post. If you shot a great picture of the finish or had a well written story it would rise to the top. Users would be able to use the tools the sytem provided or link to content on their blog or other services.

The name I came up with was "I Was There". Of course Iwasthere.com is taken.

Other issues always come up, like how do we make money? Advertising? we all know how well that works. But the hook for ad dollars would be the targeted market. We know that everybody uploading and viewing content about the 'Tour de Georgia' or any other event are obviously interested in that event. Then there is the critical mass thing. If I check out an event and nobody or just one person has posted content I might not be that interested in posting mine.

Today Flickr and blogs can fill most of the needs of this system, but it lacks the central organization. Flickr and Technorati will only turn up so much content tagged 'tourdegeorgia'. Services like Yahoo 360 and MSN Spaces allow users to connect to other users with similar interests, but who is cross-connecting the competing services?

During this year's race I once again thought about my idea from 2004. Sure I can read the TDF Blog or Operation Gadget for other TdG stories, but I want more.