About Us
eCommunityGuide.com, launched on December 15, 2000, is an
award winning business concept developed by a team of UMass
graduate and undergraduate business students. Our mission is
to design a network of online community web sites that serves
as an indispensable extension of each community in the Pioneer
Valley, acting as a local lens, making everyday living easier
and more enjoyable. We harness the power of technology to meet
the needs of the community by making information instantly
accessible and communication more effective. Our virtual
merchant and visitor guides will enable local businesses to
reach a larger and more highly defined audience, propelling
local commerce into the digital age. Our targeted audience
includes local residents, community merchants, prospective
residents, and external parties seeking information about the
locale. Through the development of a network of community web
sites, we plan to create a vital platform for shaping
synergistic relationships that will utilize economies of scale
and enhance the vitality of the community and its individuals.
Founder Peter A. Gelinas developed the concept for an
online community guide back in early 1997, with the development of Hadley
Online (www.hadleyonline.com), an information site serving the
town of Hadley, Massachusetts. After noticing a constant
stream of visitors to Hadley Online each week (often exceeding
2,500 visits in a town with a population of just over 4,400
residents) Gelinas decided to recruit a team that would expand
upon his original concept. This resulted in the birth of
eCommunityGuide.com, which was later awarded as a finalist in
the April 2000, Mass Ventures
Five
College Business Plan Competition and recipient of a grant
by the National
Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA).
Development of the eCommunityGuide charter network is a credit
to the efforts of over 15 core people to date, as well as numerous
strategic partnerships and alliances that serve to enhance the
offerings of the community sites. Our goal is to continually
grow our network, ultimately expanding across the entire
Pioneer Valley and new regions. Through
continuous improvement and active user feedback,
eCommunityGuide.com plans to regularly enhance its features,
tailoring the network sites to the specific needs of each
community.
On August 15, 2001, version
2.0 of our Community Guide product was released, repositioned
as the PioneerValleyGuide.com community network by
eCommunityGuide, accompanied by the introduction of new
technology and content features to provide the best online
guide experience for residents and visitors of the Pioneer
Valley area.
Using the Pioneer Valley as a prototype, we seek to expand our
product to cover the New England market. We will offer our
technology as a platform for local media sources to not only
provide their publication online, but also operate an online
community guide for the areas that they service. We recognize
the need for local media sources to compete online and provide
additional value to the communities they serve, and therefore,
we strongly believe that our technology will provide this
market with an inexpensive, proven and customizable web site
that will increase their profitability as well as increase the
communities’ quality of living.
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