Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry  Perhaps the new owners of this forum can explain just exactly why they are so intrested in Forums/Online communities?
Yes i read the crowdgather link but truth be told it doesnt make sense to me. Most people on these kinds of forums enjoy them BECAUSE they are usually free of ads/adverts ( Most community owners rely on their communites for donations etc IF need be to keep all going ) and ofcourse are owned/ran by everyday people like themselves. Why the AOL, MSN, Yahoo chatrooms etc are dying a slow miserable death. IMO
Truthfully?
Can have all the features/best software etc but at the end of the day it is not gonna amount to a hill of beans because people will go where they feel true community Spirit which starts with the owners on down to the Moderators and then most of all the members. ALL have a say in one form or another and all know that neither is there just looking to make a buck or whatever off eachother. Looking for a way to make a quick buck off your membership is the quickest way to kill it. Sorry but i see no other reason for Crowdgather to be around. Can say this or that but at the end of the day you all are looking to make a buck be it thru adverts or whatever covering your online communities. In either case Business and pleasure do not mix online. Something i tried to tell another very popular weather forum ( well was ) a few yrs back who wanted it ran etc like a corporation. People were leaving and or didnt want anything to do with them because of it. No it wasnt owned like this is by a Corporation but it was ran like one. They have sence begun to change and get away from that and it is slowly recovering. Meanwhile the biggest weather forum on the net continues to explode because they are privately owned by everyday people who ACTUALLY DO have a love for the Weather. And trust me it is not ran like a corporation either. Donations keep the site alive. Not well placed adverts etc all over the forum/homepage for the members and or guests of their site to see. Trust me i myself avoid sites with adverts placed everywhere. I dont care for those extra cookies to get into my system. More work for me to get rid of them. Besides they are ugly and in some case ruin the flow of discussion at some places that have them.
At the end of the day if i go to a car site forum i will greatly appreciate knowing the owners of said site ACTUALLY does have a intrest in Cars. If i decide to go to another weather forum again i enjoy knowing the person/people who own it are into the weather like i am. I am at these places to interact and talk about my hobby with others who enjoy the same as well. I am not there to be the target of adverts or other money making schemes by the owners of said sites. I am nearly 99.9% sure most others feel the same way. Nothing against you guys personally but i for one dont care to help some big corp guys destroy the little guys who actually do share a common intrest in my hobby which i have had a love for all my life. Appointing people from the weather community as forum mods and admins isnt gonna help either because at the end of the day all will still know big corp is running things.
If it were me i would be looking for other ways to make money for the corporation who owns this site. Trust me trying to buy up all the Online Communities is not the way to go. Most people will try to get away from them and go elsewhere as they have begun to from AOL, MSN, Yahoo chatrooms etc. Just some friendly advice.
Sorry if that bugs anyone not meant to.
So with that said i again ask why would you guys get involved with Online communities?
Thanks. |
Dear Harry,
I read your entire post and felt that it was much more an expression of how you feel, rather than a legitimate question for us.
I appreciate that you have a lot of passion and emotion for what you feel. You are free to have your opinions, but that doesn't make it any easier for me to address since it is after all just your opinions.
Also, your facts regarding IM, MSN, etc seem silly to me. People are not in chat rooms as much because there is more to do on the internet- not because something is wrong with chat software. Your logic escapes me.
CrowdGather is a corporation, but I am a long term forum owner and member who decided to build a business around forums. I don't understand your reference to 'big corporate guys destroying the little guys who share a common interest in your hobby"? Where does that come from? This is a small forum that is pretty much left alone except for us providing help with infrastructure and forum fixes. Soon we will begin an aggressive marketing campaign to bring more hobbyists here, but that should only help things out. The owner listed it for sale which is how we came to own it.
I started a company around forums because too often good communities die because of a lack of resources. CrowdGather wants to make it better for forum owners and forum goers. You may have your opinion as a casual observer of forums and maybe even the owner of a small forum, but please understand I owned and operated 8 forums (including 3 big board listed ones) before I launched this company so I am in a legitimate position to tell you that you don't seem to understand how hard it is to survive on donations and the goodwill of your members once a forum gets really big and expensive to run.
I am glad to keep addressing your questions as you pose them in this thread.
Sanjay