As owners of boards, what do they want?

AckwelFoley

If in business you are not movinf forward, you are moving backward - an old business saying.

Inlight of the new development announced today, the question entered my limited capicity of thought - What is the main objective of boards going forward as a business?

It is a business at the end of the day ultimatelty, because it attracts investors, but what is the long term goal? More members?

I know revenue comes from adverts, is it simply a case of the more popular the forum the more revenue the owners can make from advertisments due to boards.ie's audience figures?

What are the possibilities other than that? Sorry if im being a little monorail in my thought process here its friday and beer and goodtimes are close, but am i missing something as to the possibilities of where boards could end up in 10 more years?

EKRIUQ

I'd say they want to be mods of the Property and Accommodation forum, seems bit drastic to buy some of boards but I'm sure its worth it!

Wibbs

Information and media outlet portal for Ireland. Online newspaper/TV station with bulletin board threaded throughout. Throw in a buy and sell/ebay type dealio to boot, cars, houses, stuff. Could also be used as a portal for shops that pay for online frontage too. That would be the obvious direction I suppose.

There exists a large penetration of the market as far as the numbers of registered users goes, which should attract ad revenue and investment, especially if the actual user figures go up.

mike65

Are you talking about our new masters?

They want click-throughs.

Mike.

Flamed Diving

I think working more on the social networking element of boards.ie would pay dividends.

Bob the Builder

Flamed Diving wrote: »

I think working more on the social networking element of boards.ie would pay dividends.

Am i the only one that thinks that that idea would be ghay?

Flamed Diving

nevf wrote: »

Am i the only one that thinks that that idea would be ghay?

Yes, but that is only because gheyness is ever present in you mind.

Bob the Builder

Flamed Diving wrote: »

Yes, but that is only because gheyness is ever present in you mind.

like omg, no need to be such a biatch about it... :pac:

tbh

snyper wrote: »

?

What are the possibilities other than that? Sorry if im being a little monorail

the way I see it, it's either one of two things. Either the admins want to raise money to keep the site going and expanding, or they want to expand the site to raise money. Which do you reckon it is? And, really, when it all comes down to it, does it make a difference?

One.Time

tbh wrote: »

the way I see it, it's either one of two things. Either the admins want to raise money to keep the site going and expanding, or they want to expand the site to raise money. Which do you reckon it is? And, really, when it all comes down to it, does it make a difference?

I'd go for option B bosco. As you get older you somehow debate with yourself and previously held ideologies lose their worth as you debate with yourself.

Who wouldn't go for the money? When you are about 20-30 the world is your oyster! When you are 30-40 it is a different story

Overheal

or they want to utilize the boards team to help redevelop dabs itself?

Big_Mac

Or, it could be the beginning of a plot for world domination.....

Steve

Overheal wrote: »

or they want to utilize the boards team to help redevelop dabs itself?

The team being CuLT?
I know he's good but don't give him a big head...:D

bug

It's been registered as a limited company since early 2000.
I assume no one starts a Limited share company unless they have business interests going forward.

In that respect and with no information available to me other than whats been posted it's taken a few years for this particular development I for one welcome our new Ant overloads.
Whatever, the changes, if any, will be very apparent to the community as it stands, but I'll take Devore's word for it that nothing community detrimental will change. Detrimental, I suppose is open to interpretation. The hardcore for example get upset at main page feature changes. I still am none the wiser to the difference between smods cmods and whatever mods but it makes no odds to me.

Anyways, it's not business savvy to excommunicate your base, rather, to expand upon it. These lads know their stuff at this stage. I assume they've investigated all avenues.

AlmightyCushion

bug wrote: »

I still am none the wiser to the difference between smods cmods and whatever mods but it makes no odds to me.

Mods moderate a forum or more. See that list of forums under my username, that's the forums I mod. I can ban people from those forums and do other shít there too. On forums I don't moderate I can't do any moderatery stuff. I can't people etc. Cmods are like mods but moderate categories e.g. rec, sports etc. Smods are like mods but they moderate the whole site. They can ban your ass from the whole site as well as other stuff (They're the guys you shouldn't piss off ). Normal mods and cmods can't siteban users.

bug

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Mods moderate a forum or more. See that list of forums under my username, that's the forums I mod. I can ban people from those forums and do other shít there too. On forums I don't moderate I can't do any moderatery stuff.I can't people etc. Cmods are like mods but moderate categories e.g. rec, sports etc. Smods are like mods but they moderate the whole site. They can ban your ass from the whole site as well as other stuff (They're the guys you shouldn't piss off ). Normal mods and cmods can't siteban users.

Well fair play because, I read about three posts into moaning feedback threads at the time, when it all changed, and the care factor was zero.
It was alot of reading for a pass the time sort of hobby.
I work in a hierarchical environment and boards.ie is there to leave that all behind.

It's whole lot of layered cake, that I don't care to eat, just incase there's peanuts in it and I may be alergic to peanuts, and I don't eat cake anyways. But appreciate you taking the time.

witnessmenow

@overheal

Buying a share into boards to use their team to re develop the dabs site isn't exactly a smart business move for daft!

Also, i'm sure there is cheaper ways to get a good web dev team than buying a % in a company.

Also correct me if i'm wrong but no one has mentioned the admins selling it out right, i presume they would if the right offer came along

latenia

bug wrote: »

It's been registered as a limited company since early 2000.
I assume no one starts a Limited share company unless they have business interests going forward.

I thought they did it so they could the .ie domain name?

Tigger

latenia wrote: »

I thought they did it so they could the .ie domain name?

nope cloud changed the business name of his interest to boards for one day to get the .ie

clever really

SimpleSam06

Wibbs wrote: »

Online newspaper

Thats being done already by a lot of sites. If they could find a way to work blogs into the news media, maybe with a crediting system, that might be new. If you really want to make an impact in that area, look into getting in with Amazon or one of those and supply people with ebook readers, boards discount or something like that.

Wibbs wrote: »

TV station

Youtube, gonna need lots of hardware and software to pull that off, plus beaucoup bandwidth.

Wibbs wrote: »

Throw in a buy and sell/ebay type dealio to boot, cars, houses, stuff. Could also be used as a portal for shops that pay for online frontage too.

Thats dealing with entrenched industry groups there, for example cars, most dealers have a program installed by carzone that uploads their stock automatically every week. They don't want to have to do it twice. Auctions are a blinding nightmare to deal with as well, without some sort of secure delivery/escrow service, and even then you'll get stung by something that works when you try it but doesn't work tomorrow.

The biggest challenge in all this, I would say, is integrating it in a way that doesn't piss off the majority of boards members who just want to come for a chat.

DeVore

Daft have a bigger tech team then us by far! We only have Cult
We may use part of the cash for another clone of Cult but we arent sure yet. The only thing we are agreed upon is that we all like Boards more or less as it is and that our core values of high user involvement in the site and that Boards will remain free to use. There was no arguement about those sorts of things, the Daft guys were very keen on those from the start.

From there, we havent yet planned where we go from here but it will be more then click throughs.

DeV.

DeVore

Tigger wrote: »

nope cloud changed the business name of his interest to boards for one day to get the .ie

clever really

*ahem* .... that was me.


DeV.

Flamed Diving

What about Flancrest Enterprises?

Tigger

DeVore wrote: »

*ahem* .... that was me.


DeV.

ok you're clever then

TiggeR

DeVore

The title of this thread is misleading. Daft were offered a minority shareholding in the company. It really doesnt give them much of a say over how things work around here.

DeV.

stepbar

But as with anything in Business, the Daft guys are going to want a return on their investment. It would be retarded to think otherwise.

As far as I can see Daft have made a smart investment here. Being in the online marketspace themselves, they recognise the value of being able to tap into a user base of over 100k+ users. My guess is that we will see an expanded property section within boards and perhaps a few new forums with content from Daft. I would say the ultimate goal of Boards.ie (correct me here) is ultimatly a trade sale to an organisation like Google or the like. Like wise could be said of Daft.ie.

DeVore

I wont speak for the other admins but I am not looking for a trade sale to Google. I would prefer to build this site into the central site for Irish people online. I'm pretty sure you wont see things like expanded property forums here, I mean, Daft already own 90% of the property market in Ireland, I dont think they need our help. We have given no assurances on return on investment and certainly no timeframe.

DeV.

The thing is when your aligned to actual decent real world business people, and The Sunday World finally tie Snyper to the horrors commited by his offline persona.
Is that going to see the end of the free for all attitude to having a laugh?

Steve

So why invest then?

Greater exposure? unlikely if they already have 90% of the market.
Advertising revenue? I hope not, I wouldn't like boards to turn into a a big flash site with the content being obscured by the neon lights.

As a subscriber, I consider myself to have invested in boards and my return is the enjoyment of using it - as stepbar said, I don't see how daft is going to gain though..

Tigger

SteveC wrote: »

So why invest then?

Greater exposure? unlikely if they already have 90% of the market.
Advertising revenue? I hope not, I wouldn't like boards to turn into a a big flash site with the content being obscured by the neon lights.

As a subscriber, I consider myself to have invested in boards and my return is the enjoyment of using it - as stepbar said, I don't see how daft is going to gain though..

i don't think boards is gonna change much
i think boards is big and full of ideas and that daft have decided to diversify their internet holdings
both sites make money (if any) from advertising and the hope that this kind of targeted made for measure advertising will be more valuable in the future


doubt that daft will change the future of boards et al

SimpleSam06

stepbar wrote:

I would say the ultimate goal of Boards.ie (correct me here) is ultimatly a trade sale to an organisation like Google or the like.

Yarrrg fire and forget business models, pumping companies up in the hopes they will be more attractive to buyers, should have died with the eighties.

SteveC wrote: »

Greater exposure? unlikely if they already have 90% of the market.

They don't. They have a lot of traffic, which no doubt has taken a severe beating with the property collapse. What they are doing is wisely investing their gains in a diversified portfolio so they don't get dragged down with it, and I would call boards a fairly solid investment.

If boards can afford to employ a developer for 35k a year plus enough to keep the lights on, they are doing a hell of a lot better than almost every other website out there.

If you are really interested you can request the boards public accounts from the CRO for a fiver.

DeVore wrote: »

I would prefer to build this site into the central site for Irish people online.

A bold ambition, but if you manage to pull it off, you'll be the first anywhere. Stick to what you're best at, otherwise proceed with caution - you don't have media here, you aren't delivering a message, you have people, which ain't the same thing.