Software pioneer launches social site

Petaluma's Lauren Elliott helped create Carmen Sandiego, the star of computer games, books and TV shows that rang up more than $100 million in sales since 1983.

Elliott, 61, is hoping for another hit with Personal News Network, a social networking site launched earlier this year.

It's part of the Web 2.0 revolution that brought us MySpace, YouTube and Facebook, sites that let millions of people put their words, photos, voices and videos online.

PNN.com has only eight employees, with four working at its headquarters in Rohnert Park.

But the site is growing fast, Elliott said. It's targeting 80 percent of Internet users who have never blogged, he said.

"Everybody has wonderful stories, and there's got to be a way of sharing them," he said. "We make it so that anybody can go online and tell their stories."

Visitors to PNN.com can follow the adventures of Erica Ortiz, a 28-year-old college student and professional drag racer.

There's Donna Lange, who blogs while sailing around the world solo on a 28-foot boat.

Moms blog about their kids, and Harry Potter fans speculate about Voldemort's next move.

There are reports from an Army unit trying to restore normal life to a shattered Afghan village, and stories from a refugee camp in Africa.

PNN makes it easy for amateurs to post stories, photos, audio and videos online through a drag-and-drop interface and user-friendly graphics, Elliott said.

Since February, PNN has attracted several thousand contributors and hundreds of thousands of views. Ortiz, who will have her own reality show on PNN in September, gets 50,000 views a month.

PNN makes money by selling ads on its most popular blogs and sharing it with bloggers. The business hopes to make a profit starting early next year, Elliott said.

Elliott was an early employee of Marin County's Broderbund, the educational software company that released the first in a series of Carmen Sandiego titles in 1983. In the series, Carmen is the elusive ringleader of a gang of international thieves. Players track Carmen and her cronies around the world, using geographical clues to find them.

Elliott started several Internet ventures after leaving Broderbund, including Scrapbook Press, a Petaluma publishing company that distributes its books on the Web and through traditional channels.

In 2004, he published "With Love, Aunt Eleanor," a lavishly illustrated remembrance of Eleanor Roosevelt written by Elliott's mother, the first lady's niece. The experience inspired him to start PNN, he said.

"I realized it's these kinds of stories, told by all of us, that need to be shared," he said.

Elliott spent two years and several hundred thousand dollars of his own money to get the business off the ground, he said. He wouldn't disclose revenue, but said the business has been growing 10 percent a month.

PNN has offices and a recording studio at Sonoma Mountain Business Cluster, the technology incubator at the former Agilent Technologies campus in southeast Rohnert Park.

Self-publishing on PNN and other social networking sites is changing the way people get their news, he said.

"I really do think it's the future," Elliott said.

You can reach Staff Writer Steve Hart at 521-5205 or steve.hart@pressdemocrat.com.