Remember my previous post about adverts being shown on trial Gold ezboards?

Well, in answer to another customer query, ezboard has given more details as to why they decided to change the policy to show adverts:

“…Unfortunately, certain people were manipulating the system by using one Trial board for 30 days then moving on to a newly created Trial board, again and again, as a way to have an ezboard without paying for it in any way — either by displaying advertising or by purchasing Gold. You can thank those dishonorable people for the ads on your Trial board…”

Well that explains that.

Er, wait a minute, let’s look at that again. ezboard claims it is “the largest online community network on the planet”. Elsewhere ezboard appears to claim to have 10 million “loyal, active and engaged” users and over 500,000 active communities. ezboard also claimed at DEMOfall last year that:

“Yuku has more than 14 million registered users and 500,000 communities. Yuku is growing by more than 200,000 registered users and 6,000 communities a month.”

So on that basis – as in September 2005 Yuku only really had a handful of alpha testers – ezboard should by the end of June 2006 have had well in excess of 15½ million registered users, going by ezboard’s figures and claims.

And yet ezboard were apparently alerted to users setting up trial board after trial board every 30 days and decided that that was serious enough issue for them to change policy? Given that such “dishonourable people” would surely have killed off their new ezboards by continually moving their ezboards to new names and URLs, how significant could this have really been?

Mind you, it’s also the case that they modified the ezboard code in early May 2006 to put in placeholders for advertisements at a time when they claimed not to be updating ezboard but just maintaining it pending the enforced move of all ezboards over to Yuku.