Persistence pays off in ‘real time’ for Windy Citizen
Brad Flora
For Brad Flora, the smart Chicago Internet entrepreneur who founded the popular content-sharing website WindyCitizen.com, the third time proved to be the charm.
On Wednesday, Flora was awarded a $250,000 grant from the Knight Foundation’s 2010 News Challenge to develop new uses of digital technology. It came after Flora’s third attempt to win a piece of the foundation’s prize money, which this year totaled $2.74 million.
“I’ve been told I’m one of the — if not THE — most persistent applicants they’ve ever had,” Flora said Thursday. The first time he applied in 2008 he hadn’t even finished his new media graduate studies at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
Flora, 28, went on to launch Windy Citizen just after he graduated from Medill in May 2008 and continued to operate and improve the site (which now bills itself as a “web service that lets people share their favorite Chicago news and events with their friends and neighbors”), all the while refining his pitch to the Knight News Challenge.
This time around, he hit the jackpot with his ingenious idea to develop and improve software for “NowSpots,” real-time ads as a way to help online startups become profitable. (“These ads are designed to be engaging as they constantly change — showing the latest message or post from the advertiser’s Twitter account, Facebook page or blog,” the foundation noted.) Said Flora:
“I have no insight into how the winners were picked, but this year’s group includes a lot of people who have already been working on these projects in some fashion and sought funding to take them to the next level. In our case, we’ve been seeing success on a very small scale with our brand of real-time advertising. Funding from the Knight News Challenge will let us spin that off and make these same sorts of ads available to publishers of all shapes and sizes at scale.”
Since news broke of Flora’s good fortune, he’s been inundated with well-wishers. “Response in the last 24 hours has been great,” he said. “People are signing up to our e-mail launch list. I’m hearing from publishers and other startups.”
And no doubt from one or two job seekers as well.
blogs.vocalo.org
How wonderful! Thanks for writing about this!
This is such great news for anyone that has been worried about or has been bitchin’ about newspapers dying! Media is evolving…how we get news will always be on the cusp of of the evolution in communications. How thrilling to be living in a city that has so much talent and leads the charge in adaptation and hard work. Congratulations Brad Flora! Keep up the hard work and enjoy the evolution! WindyCitizen.com rocks!
I’ve never heard of him or his site or anything else in this story, but I’m interested in learning more…Thank You.
Thanks for writing about this Robert. Here’s my write-up: http://annatarkov.posterous.com/i-knew-him-when
Thank God. My nightmares about the evolution of big media and online advertising were keeping me up nights.
Brad Fauna is a class act, and with a quarter mill in his pocket, even classier.
Can he use the money to buy out the insipid Garry Meier?
Wow 5 comments. Get with the times or get left behind.
Palsgraf, I was thinking the same thing. This has to be the least-commented-upon item that Feder has posted since he joined Vocalo. There’s a lesson in here somewhere for Feder. (maybe that it’s better to write about TV news people and folks on WGN-AM and WLS-AM than about obscure social-media/aggregators — whoops, I mean, “Internet entrepreneurs” — whom no one’s reading?)
And wow — not even a Melissa Forman/”semi-lovely” comment! The mind reels….
Also, where *is* Bruce Wolf? Bruce, come back!
What I’d like to know is which organizations are the “big media” that “LumpenDrone” is complaining about–and how much money his rich North Shore parents’ trust fund has to pay for his Logan Square loft and the Beemer he uses to drive to and from the U of C, where he’s been studying for his Ph.D. in Hegelian philosophy for the last eight years.