Really?

Jazzy

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055698077

so what other exciting offers will be made avail to me on boards.ie ltd?
is this the new direction* that boards is taking? i remember hearing the cries of a man saying "devore doesn't know what hes sitting on". the man in question was a suit who's business it was to try and exploit people for their money, any and all. I won't go into details but a few mods and posters here will know exactly who i am talking about.


Disgusting.

*best possible word usage.

humanji

A company advertising on Boards? I don't get it.

5starpool

Someone is offering a product in a forum they have paid for. Hardly disgusting.

I'm not in favour of blatant advertising in general, but it is only akin to having an ad in the paper or on tv surely?

Steve

Boards has 4.5 employees now, wages have got to be paid somehow

humanji

Also, hasn't it been done with the help of a lot of Boardsies?

Sparky

Any more complaints Jazzy?

If anything it is a step forward.

I'm not a magnet customer, but I do think that it's one step in the right direction having the ability to post here in a forum that they have to take care of and get my query dealth with.

Dav

I want to address this as Jazzy seems to have very strong feelings on it.

Magnet came to us asking how they might be able to talk to our members - they were one of the first companies to get an "Official Representative" account and the "Talk To" forums have been around for a while (we called them Commercial Interaction forums before). These Official Reps are subject to our rules just like any other member and if they wish to post in a forum outside their own, they get permission of the forum's moderators to make sure it won't be out of place - and the mods are free to (and have already in some cases) said no to some of these sorts of interactions - there's no pressure on Mods to do this because the Reps are paying for the privilege.

So to get into the specifics of this: having been given the OK, Magnet came along and asked Boards.ie Gamers what they'd like in a broadband package and got a very positive response. Magnet have now put together this package with our member's help. This is similar to what UTV Internet did a few years ago btw. Jazzy can you as a gamer *honestly* say that a company asking you what you want and making it happen is a bad thing? Would you then not want to hear that your ideas had been put into action (hence the two posts on this by Rory outside of the Magnet forum - on Games and on Broadband)?

Any business is welcome to talk to us about doing this - Boards.ie has *ALWAYS* wanted to be the place where the people of Ireland can talk to a business or a policital party or a government body or whoever and expect to get results. Similarly, we expect these businesses/politicians/etc to answer their customers/constituants/etc and play by our rules. That has been the plan from day one. This is the power of the internet - people have a voice now should they wish to use it. It takes time for these sorts of things to happen, but we're finally starting to see it take shape.

I'm happy to answer any more questions on this if people have them.

Dav

Tallon

This is a truely great idea, i really don't see what the issue is here?

Well done to boards.ie for testing and provide info on it

Dades

Jazzy wrote:

Really?

As far as I can see the service offered isn't compulsory.

No idea what all the knicker twistage is about, tbh.

aidan_walsh

A company listened to customers needs and designed a product aimed at meeting them? And used boards to do it? While funding boards (thus benefiting all its users) in the process?

We want more like this please, surely?

deRanged

Dav wrote: »

Would you then not want to hear that your ideas had been put into action
...
(hence the two posts on this by Rory outside of the Magnet forum - on Games and on Broadband)?

I wonder is it the fact that the response was outside the paid forum that is the problem?

aidan_walsh wrote:

We want more like this please, surely?

if every forum becomes an advertising medium then I would say not.
the commercial interaction forums (or whatever they are called) are excellent, as is the largely unbiased open advise given by boards.ie members on companies and products.
the lines could become blurred very fast. I know if I was paying for a commercial forum I'd want to be able to post within mainstream forums if other commercial entities could. Assuming of course that they don't pay specifically for that purpose, but if I'm not careful I'll start a conspiracy theory

Dudess

Boards not taking advantage of a business opportunity... would be quite dumb.

dr.bollocko

Boards needs income streams to survive. There won't be any annoying pop-ups. I think it's a great idea.

Beruthiel

Jazzy wrote: »

Disgusting.

A company came to Boards and paid for the privileged.
In the process that company took the advice and suggestions of this sites members in order to provide a better, more efficient service.

So in conclusion:
Boards made money so it can pay it's staff.
Boards gamers got a faster, more efficient service.

Disgusting indeed....

FlutterinBantam

If those fcukers who make that white two ply shite paper with the so called "absorbant pockets" come on here, I'll only be too glad to give them some market research:mad:

And some of their used product!!!

Steve

want.thanks.back.here

Kinetic^

FlutterinBantam wrote: »

If those fcukers who make that white two ply shite paper with the so called "absorbant pockets" come on here, I'll only be too glad to give them some market research:mad:

And some of their used product!!!

I know what I'd tell them....... tri-ply please!

Orion

aidan_walsh wrote: »

A company listened to customers needs and designed a product aimed at meeting them? And used boards to do it? While funding boards (thus benefiting all its users) in the process?

We want more like this please, surely?

That's just crazy talk. You've obviously been assimilated :pac:

watty

About 90% of the population can't get this Wonderous Magent product.

So I wouldn't worry about it being an advert on Boards. I'd worry about it being MISLEADING

Only 66% of households now have phone line (thus potential for DSL). Only a small percentange can get Magnet Fibre or LLU. This service isn't possible on on regular resold bitstream DSL.

The average length of phone line in Ireland can do about 4Mbps max.

Magnet is one of the top 3 ISPs. But they are only available to a tiny fraction of Ireland due to the incompetance of Goverment and Comreg. Unless you are on fibre the performance of DSL is ultimately limited by the copper pair Magnet rent off eircom. Even on LLU, where a significant number of people using a multipair cable in a duct from exchange the interleaving has to be raised to allow speed due to cross talk. So I'm sceptical as to how many LLU customers can get this performance.

The Advert should make it clearer that this is available to limited people. Also there are REGULAR services that give good pings.

I don't even have a phone line or Fibre. Ping from the Countryside, about 10km from Limerick city centre.

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\WINDOWS>ping www.heanet.ie

Pinging samhain.heanet.ie [193.1.219.57] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 193.1.219.57: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=60
Reply from 193.1.219.57: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=60
Reply from 193.1.219.57: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=60
Reply from 193.1.219.57: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=60

Ping statistics for 193.1.219.57:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 19ms, Maximum = 22ms, Average = 20ms

C:\WINDOWS>

Orion

Fair points from Wally. However I'm on a phone line on a Bitstream reseller and my pings are worse than his on a so-called regular service.

~$ ping www.heanet.ie
PING samhain.heanet.ie (193.1.219.57) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from samhain.heanet.ie (193.1.219.57): icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=46.3 ms
64 bytes from samhain.heanet.ie (193.1.219.57): icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=46.0 ms
64 bytes from samhain.heanet.ie (193.1.219.57): icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=47.0 ms
64 bytes from samhain.heanet.ie (193.1.219.57): icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=46.0 ms
^C
--- samhain.heanet.ie ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3011ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 46.028/46.361/47.024/0.398 ms

tbh

to answer your question:

yes, really.

L31mr0d

While I don't have any issue with this advert, I can understand where Jazzy is coming from. It's like kicking a snowball down a mountain. The snowball isn't the issue, it's what crushes the town at the bottom that is.

Is there some restriction in place or criteria for these adverts? I mean if Budweiser wanted to post an advert for The Gentlemans Club will they be allowed?

How frequently can these ads be posted?

Will they be posted everywhere?

Dav

deRanged wrote: »

I wonder is it the fact that the response was outside the paid forum that is the problem?



if every forum becomes an advertising medium then I would say not.
the commercial interaction forums (or whatever they are called) are excellent, as is the largely unbiased open advise given by boards.ie members on companies and products.
the lines could become blurred very fast. I know if I was paying for a commercial forum I'd want to be able to post within mainstream forums if other commercial entities could. Assuming of course that they don't pay specifically for that purpose, but if I'm not careful I'll start a conspiracy theory

I'm extremely busy this morning folks, but I wanted to say that I'll be back later on to give a proper answer to this and the similar points raised by RopeDrink and Leimrod, so if you'll accept my apologies in not being able to answer you straight away, I'll talk to you about this in the afternoon.

Further questions and feedback are welcome in the mean time.

Dav

PogMoThoin

I'm against the whole idea of subscribers advertising outside their own forum. I run the adblock plus addon on firefox to block ads, I subscribe here and have the option of turning them off. I don't want to be tripping over them in ordinary forums like gaming. Down with this sort of thing

Turd Ferguson

I agree with Jazzy on this. It's not that particular ad but its the precedent its setting. Whats to say in a few months time that we dont have loads of paid adverts as stickies all over the shop? Its both silly and disgusting.

DeVore

1. They didnt "pay" for this thread, I dont know why you all jumped to that conclusion. They paid for a Talk To forum, but that gives them no automatic rights what so ever to post in other forums.

2. They went about this the right way. They engaged, took on members feedback, worked with the users of this site (120 of them), devised a product and tested it with them. What do you think we were going to do... turn around and say "no, you cant let them know that its live".

3. We arent exactly going to be drowning in companies doing that any time soon, I wish we were, but the feedback of "we should have some criteria, even if its subjective, going forward", is fair and good. We'll make that happen. Magnet DID contact us and got our approval before posting that.

4. UTV did this back as far as 2002... http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=63228&highlight=UTVinternet
So I dont know where every is getting this "oh Boards is changing" stuff. We're just being more efficient about it.

I know Dav will be back later t respond, he's up to his tonsils today, but I wanted to make those points. I do take the point that we dont want hundreds of these in forums, but to be fair, this isnt some "paid-for-spam", this was an announcment to the people that have worked with them to get a product they wanted that it was finally being launched. If you cant see the difference there, then I really dunno..

This sort of "us boardsie's telling them (politicians, companies, journos etc)" has always been my goal.

This sort of thing gives me a boner. Is that wrong??

DeV.

PogMoThoin

Couldn't they have told them its live in the thread they already had? Why start a new thread just to advertise? I fail to see how its an announcement, its advertising.

Edit: I see its also a sticky in the Broadband Forum

aidan_walsh

deRanged wrote:

if every forum becomes an advertising medium then I would say not.
the commercial interaction forums (or whatever they are called) are excellent, as is the largely unbiased open advise given by boards.ie members on companies and products.
the lines could become blurred very fast. I know if I was paying for a commercial forum I'd want to be able to post within mainstream forums if other commercial entities could. Assuming of course that they don't pay specifically for that purpose, but if I'm not careful I'll start a conspiracy theory

DeV touched on most of the important points, but its also the case that for threads like this the Reps need to have the permission of the forum mods in question. This is a requirement of their Talk To forum.

As such, I don't see it becoming too much of an issue. I don't see the forums becoming too swamped with threads like this. The majority of the Talk To groups tend to stick to their own forums for this, but where it helps a specific group like this one did I don't see a problem in one thread pointing it out to that group.

DeVore wrote:

This sort of thing gives me a boner. Is that wrong??

Probably a discussion best had between yourself and Darragh

Dav

Thanks for your patience folks. I apologise in advance for the length of this post, but I want everything to be as clear as possible.

I think that first of all I should clarify what it is we want Official Representatives to be. These are people who work for a company and who will answer questions on behalf of that company. Over the years, there have been many people who operate on boards like this - they've been allowed to stay as they've been honest about who they are and they give value to our members - now we're just giving them a clear badge to identify them.

After a lot of discussion with the moderators we came to an arrangement that it would be down to the individual forums to allow (or not) Official Reps into their communities - it would be up to the mods if they thought it's the sort of thing they should ask the communities about or not as they have a better feel for the places. There has not been (and won't be) pressure from us here in the office to allow these people access to our members in their own communities if they don't want that - we often joke in here in the office about when the Daft.ie Official Rep account went into the Accommodation & Property forum and got banned straight away because they don't allow or want that sort of interaction in that community. We tell business etc who're asking about these Official Rep accounts that we make no guarantees of the levels of interactivity they will get from Boards.ie - it's up to them to make it work, not us.

Getting more specific about this, the Games and Broadband mods have previously indicated that they're happy to have Official Reps in their forums as they felt having questions answered by a company is very beneficial. So, after once again confirming everything was ok with them, Rory from Magnet began to engage with our members on those forums. What followed, amongst other things, is that Magnet wanted and got feedback on a package for gamers and designed by gamers.

So roll on to this week and we get the news that their package is ready to go and how best might they tell the members outside of their Talk To forum. I said I'd ask the Mods of the forums that gave them the feedback if they thought posting a thread saying "we've put this together thanks to your help" would be acceptable and consensus was reached that we'd have a thread announcing it and directing people over to the Magnet Talk To forum would be ok because 1) they were delighted to see we'd been directly responsible for this happening, 2) we wanted to keep discussion on the topic in one place and 3) felt it's fair to give some kudos when a business has shown that they really do give a damn about what Boards.ie members have to say.

Magnet did not pay for those 2 threads.

Magnet have however, proven that their involvement in boards is far more than just advertising though - this is direct customer interaction for them. It's more than just saying yes and no to broadband availability or reporting problems to the engineers. We (here in the office and the mods involved) felt that this was more than just a "we're offering a discount to boardsies" piece of news, this was big. This is why those two threads were given the go-ahead.

The main thing to have come out of this is we've broken new ground with this sort of involvement with a business on boards.ie. We need to make sure we do the best thing by our members. We don't intend to offer that sort of a thread to anyone as a form of advertising - as I said in this specific case, the threads happened to 1) inform the members that the product they helped design was now live and 2) give credit to Magnet for they way they've gone about this.

Taking the example above about Budweiser advertising like that in the Gentlemen's Club - what if they paid for a talk to forum, had an official rep account and designed a brand new beer based on the input of the members of boards.ie? Would you think that letting people know they could hear more about it on their forum was a terrible idea? However, if they wanted to come along and say "hey, we're offering boardsies 2 for 1 on bottles of Bud, can we have a thread on the Gentlemen's Club forum to tell people" that's not something we'd give any consideration to at all. Sure, it's value for boardsies, but that is direct advertising and they haven't earned it.

Sorry it's taken so long, I offer this:

tl;dr:
You cannot buy a thread to advertise your product or service, but you can earn it. After a lot of consultation with people involved, we felt Magnet earned it.

Dav

deRanged

DeVore wrote:

They didnt "pay" for this thread, I dont know why you all jumped to that conclusion.

given that people normally aren't allowed advertise in forums, and we know that

They paid for a Talk To forum,

you can see why people might wonder.

thanks very much for the detailed answer Dav.
it certainly answers any questions I had.

DeVore

Yeah, sorry deranged, its just frustrating sometimes.

We have had people like pix.ie working with the photography forum for a long time, no one complained because they were *respectful* of that space. Thats a big part of this for me.

As Dav said, you can EARN the right, you cant buy it from us, and the mods have to approve it. Some mods have in fact issued blanket bans on any Commercial Rep from posting in their threads as it is.

DeV.