Online news portal Woza is starting to show signs of life. The site, which was closed down two months ago when the Bytes Technology Group withdrew its financial support, has begun re-instating some of its services.
Kevin Davie, Woza founder, says the site is operating in "virtual mode", with many of the services being re-instated by "a collection of people working part time".
Davie says staff members have not been hired and funding has not been secured. Instead, the new site is now "community-driven".
"The strength of Woza was always the community," says Davie, and it is the community that is "bringing it back stage by stage. I would like to say that we are bringing back services on a daily basis, but in reality it is not that fast."
While the news service has not been revived, Davie says they are working on software to allow visitors to post their own news. This process should be completed in a few days.
"The advantage of the Internet has always been that people can put up their own views." And now Davie intends building Woza around this. "You may get your breaking news elsewhere, but you`ll discuss it on Woza."
He says traditional local news vendors don`t think about news in this way and he expects Woza to capitalise on this.
"The people never really went away," says Davie, although he does expect to have lost a portion of the readership. "Now it rests on how quickly we can get the site back up."
Just before its closure at the end of May, Woza recorded 5.5 million page impressions a month.
The first job for the new "community-driven" site is to get the traffic back, says Davie. "Then we`ll need to get someone to look after the sales, and then we may be able to hire a journalist or two."
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