[Shinkaze]

Saw the thread about all the enthusiasm for the GMail accounts, good to see. working on a similar system for online Automotive and Motorcycle communities and can use some input. Check out the site and tell me what you think.

http://www.streetfire.net

We're in Beta right now and will be live in 2005. Once the product is up running in a production environment we'll start talks with site owners about implementing the service. In the meantime though we could use some open input into what folks think so far.

-Adam

 

[TheWraith]

*yawn*

Oh, sorry.

 

[Shinkaze]

*yawn*

Oh, sorry.

Hey man, If that is your input that is valuable to me. It's a new bussiness model and we need input on it good and bad. Any particular reason you don't see a value in this?

-Adam

 

[TheWraith]

I think it's the fact that you're little more (or less) than a web hosting (re)distributor, reselling webservers as every other 14 year old has done since the late 90s. ...for "communities". While, generally found in online gaming communities, this business model of yours is tired. Hence, my yawn. The concept of buying a shared or dedicated hosting plan from a distributor and reselling those services to communities, is by far a gold mine or new opportunity. You don't have a new business model. You have a very old one. The only value I see is that you become yet, another, one among millions of other non-dedicated hosting (re)distributors on the Internet. You continue to flood the marketspace. One more won't tip over the boat and it surely won't favor your profit margins.

I don't mean to devalue your efforts, but I could go register "cheapsportbikehosting.com", secure a virtual hosting plan for an average of $24.95/mo with a starting package of 2000MB space...and begin reselling cheap web space, simply just email, etc. to this community and trump your "business model". You're not coming up with anything new. Your community reseller package has been done a thousand times over.

That's all.

 

[Shinkaze]

PS I see you're an SBN contributer, that is the idea behind this service. Allow a site like SBN choose from a menu of services (webmail, file sharing, contacts, classifieds, calendars, etc) and if members purchase a premium feature, then the profits go to SBN. Whereas if a user pays for a Yahoo mail account SBN doesn't recieve any contribution.

 

[Shinkaze]

I think it's the fact that you're little more (or less) than a web hosting (re)distributor, reselling webservers as every other 14 year old has done since the late 90s. ...for "communities". While, generally found in online gaming communities, this business model of yours is tired. Hence, my yawn. The concept of buying a shared or dedicated hosting plan from a distributor and reselling those services to communities, is by far a gold mine or new opportunity. You don't have a new business model. You have a very old one. The only value I see is that you become yet, another, one among millions of other non-dedicated hosting (re)distributors on the Internet. You continue to flood the marketspace. One more won't tip over the boat and it surely won't favor your profit margins.

I don't mean to devalue your efforts, but I could go register "cheapsportbikehosting.com", secure a virtual hosting plan for an average of $24.95/mo with a starting package of 2000MB space...and begin reselling cheap web space, simply just email, etc. to this community and trump your "business model". You're not coming up with anything new. Your community reseller package has been done a thousand times over.

That's all.

True, there are many sites reselling services, but this service also networks features. so for instance if SBN and CBRWorld.net both decided to use this service, then a member of both communities can check his/her @sportbikes.net and @cbrworld.net account from one interface. Also a member of SBN could share a file or classified across multiple domains. Moderators of SBN can moderate content if needed entering their site and vica versa.

 

[TheWraith]

You enter into the polital arena of why segregate communities are as they are, segregated. SBN may not want to be associated with CBRworld.net in terms of services for members, or vice versa. They may not want their names uttered in the same sentence, for all that matter. To compare to a more grand scale, Microsoft wouldn't want itself associated with (or known associating with) a service distributor that shares a backbone of functionality with Apple. If it came to bear that @msn.com email accounts and Apple's .mac service accounts were all sourced from the same provider, they lose brand nativeness. They lose coherance.

SBN and cbrworld.net are separate communities and it's very likely that is by design. They probably don't want to share common services. SBN wants you to come here...to value its particular banner impressions. Likewise goes for CBRWorld.net. They have no motivation to share traffic. You're trying to bring separate web entities together and it's my opinion that it will be a wasted endeavor. The domains are separate because they choose to be. It's completely within the capabilities of sportbikes.net, .com, and .ws and cbrworld.net, and every other umpteen dozen different RR-specific, GSXR-specific, Hayabusa-specific...etc. site to come under one umbrella on the Internet.

They simply don't want to.

 

[Shinkaze]

I understand what you're saying but conversly SBN and say LS1Tech.com both run on VBulletin 3, they maintain their own moderators, advertising and sponsors. In that vein this is the same. Ads run on the system will only be ads that site-owner has put into the system. Moderation (if the site owner want to moderate) will be that site owners moderators. The only point that content starts to cross domains is in the classifieds and files, if a user chooses to expand his/her search outside of the domain they are in. Additionally a vendor that is an authorized sponsor on one domain may not be on another domain and the system tracks this, thus a Vendor can have regular user status on one domain and authorized vendor status on another domain where they can post ads or whatever the site owner allows.

 

[TheWraith]

In that regard, what you just described, it sounds as if you're wanting to engage a banner rotation platform that only displays advertising content where it is required, requested, or otherwise applicable. I deployed a banner rotation script onto a set of websites circa 1998. You subscribed to the banner "service", you injected a bit of specific code into your HTML, and you could track all your banner stats via a centralized control panel. It was structured around online gaming, specifically Interstate 76 by Activision - and wasn't profit/company based, it was fan driven, community banners.

Want your "online clan" website banner displayed? Sign up, insert code, manage.

Sounds like you're wanting to implement the same kind of idea but with actual advertising, not just overzealous "link me!!!" efforts. Sites like SBN code up bells and whistles into THEIR particular vBulletin in the effort to lure visitors to their site (over some other). Come to SBN and you, too, can enjoy the "XYZ" feature, that isn't available at Ls1Tech.com, etc. While I certainly don't speak for SBN or anyone else other than myself, I don't see them wanting to share bells and whistles, least of all...advertising partners.

 

[Shinkaze]

Sounds like you're wanting to implement the same kind of idea but with actual advertising, not just overzealous "link me!!!" efforts. Sites like SBN code up bells and whistles into THEIR particular vBulletin in the effort to lure visitors to their site (over some other). Come to SBN and you, too, can enjoy the "XYZ" feature, that isn't available at Ls1Tech.com, etc. While I certainly don't speak for SBN or anyone else other than myself, I don't see them wanting to share bells and whistles, least of all...advertising partners.

Well they wouldn't share advertising partners. Indeed their advertisers don't have to subscribe to the service and even if they do it's free. The value they get is an agregate listing of what content is being searched for in the classifieds, as well as reports of what is being sold in the classifieds. Here is an example.

for Example U= User, S= sponsor X=not signed up for that portal.
------------SBN------LS1Tech
Person 1----- S ----- U
Person 2----- U ----- S
Person 3----- S ----- S
Person 4----- X ----- S

So Person 1 can recieve agregate uer reports from the classifieds, post as a sponsor etc on SBN, but not LS1Tech. Person #3 can see agregate information for both classifieds system and post as a vendor and advertise on both sites. Person #4 is only signed up at LS1Tech so they would not see SBN material.

Note: this is assume that both SBN and LS1Tech sign up for classifieds, it's entirely possible the LS1Tech just wants to give away Free 1GB mail accounts and the interface would only reflect that functionality that the site owner has set up for.

-Adam

 

[TheWraith]

Does LS1Tech pay you to sign up for classifieds, or just the free 1GB email? After all, you're giving email to LS1Tech's members (example). If they're going to pay you to "host email", why wouldn't they host it themselves? If I were LS1Tech, I could very easily purchase additional drive space for POP3 webmail accounts and offer my own "webmail.ls1tech.com" portal for web-based email. Why would they want to go through you?

 

[Shinkaze]

Does LS1Tech pay you to sign up for classifieds, or just the free 1GB email? After all, you're giving email to LS1Tech's members (example). If they're going to pay you to "host email", why wouldn't they host it themselves? If I were LS1Tech, I could very easily purchase additional drive space for POP3 webmail accounts and offer my own "webmail.ls1tech.com" portal for web-based email. Why would they want to go through you?

Sure they can do this themselves, but that's a cost center (cost them money to code it, support it, purchase the space, maintain the bandwidth and expertise on it).

We approach Ls1Tech or SBN as a paying vendor. (i.e. here is a free service for your users and we will pay you a vendor fee to offer it to them).

 

[Shinkaze]

Wraith,
Check your PM for your pass key.

-Adam

 

[TheWraith]

I'll assume your idea and momentum has died since it has been several weeks and you still haven't responded to my PM with issues identified.

/end

 

[Krazy Hawaiian]

I like his avater :lol Looks like my dog :lol