Cracks me up that the guy who replied to me to rant about how the admin-oversite model stifles free speech posted most recently to the MSFT thread there saying he'd reported someone there to the admins for harassment. And resorted to childish name-calling in the post in which he said he'd done so.
I really doubt RB, even in the current much-improved ad environment, is even coming close to paying more than a couple of salaries from ad sales. The place is a very big mess and I simply can't imagine it being very popular with advertisers.
I'd like to add it to our suite and though I'd want to tighten the reins a bit by telling the admin to grow a set or putting someone in the position who brings a set with them, it occupies a niche that we don't currently have covered. I'd like to either acquire them to get that niche covered or roll out a separate site that does cover it.
And the niche I'm talking about isn't directly tied to the market per-se. The niches I see these sites occupying are more about the characteristics of their users. Here, we keep things very civil. iHub's a bit more rambunctious. RB is completely out-of-control chaos. I think some of the chaos can be reined in (for example, spam goes completely unchecked), but I do like the idea of RB being a place with major attitude. A philosophy of "Say what you mean, and if you have to be vitriolic to do it, knock yourself out. Those who don't like the heat can use our other sites." I'd like it to keep all of its rambunctious nature, but draw a firm line at spam, threats, and invasion of privacy. Flame wars? Forbidden here and at iHub (well, permitted in specific places on iHub), but no outside stifling/intervention on RB. Though I'm not that kind of netizen and don't understand that kind of netizen, I know they exist in great numbers and think they should have a place. Their place is currently Yahoo and RB. Let them have their place, make the site more stable, fast, and feature-rich, and it'll gobble up quite a bit of Yahoo's marketshare.
I'd also add in features they don't currently have (private messaging and search are the two biggies) and make those available with a subscription. Gotta keep the lights on, after all.
But if we owned RB, the biggest changes would be in the mechanics of how it works, and the next biggest change would be to very actively stomp out the spam, invasions of privacy, multiple accounts, and threats. I wouldn't even want "personal attacks" to be mentioned in its terms of use. Want to flame me and call me every name in the book? Fine. I can flame you right back or if I don't like it, I can use either of the other two sites, which don't tolerate that kind of behavior.
Personally, I've used the "flame you right back" approach a time or two on Raging Bull, and have to admit it really can be cathartic. <g>
And though that model, as-is, still wouldn't play well for the advertisers, I have a lot of ideas how RB can be the most "free-wheeling" of these sites yet make money and be a lot more useful and functional than it currently is. And in the way we found that SI and iHub don't cannibalize each other (it's worked out to be even more synergistic than I'd expected), I don't see a lot of SI/iHub/RB cannibalism either. If the sites can continue to maintain their differences in terms of *who* they appeal to. I just don't think one or even two sites (and the rules that go with them) can appeal to all market discussion participants.
BTW, the guy who said on RB that he'd create a competing site in a month obviously has never written such software. Granted, most of the 16 months it took me to make this version from scratch were spent migrating the data (and being constantly distracted from it until Dave put on the Admin badge), creating such a site is an endeavor that takes months; not weeks. And going from zero users to hundreds of thousands of them takes years. iHub has been in a very strong growth phase for the last 3 years and currently has "only" about 50 thousand registered users. |
