Yes, today is Yuku’s first birthday!

It was launched on this date at DEMOfall 2005 a year ago as being “available today”. Watch the presentation from ezboard, Inc.’s CEO, Robert Labatt. Listen to how he mentions that Yuku is “better than free”, that an “average large board” can make $3-$5,000 per month from being on Yuku and then hear how he differentiates Yuku from the other products in the marketplace: sharing advertising revenues with board owners, backing up the boards on a regular basis and actively promoting those boards.

Then go and have a listen to the podcast he made at DEMOfall. Listen how he says that what’s wrong with blogging is people leaving Spam as comments and how by enabling other people to blog communally, Yuku is somehow different – I can’t see how letting people comment on a Yuku board will somehow prevent Spam, but there you go. Again he seeks to differentiate Yuku from other products by saying that you can make money from being on Yuku as it’s “better than free” in that they share advertising revenue with board owners and here he also says that board owners can make money from paid subscriptions to parts of their boards too.

So let’s see where this product, “available today” a year ago today, is now.

Backups? {hollow laugh} No, that’s not available to board owners yet and we know from our bitter experiences how farcical the supposed ezboard backups were:

“Weekly backups and free restores protect your board”

Yeah, right….

Promotion? Er, no…

Sharing Revenue from Advertising and Subscriptions? No. Not even a peep out of ezboard on that element since DEMOfall.

“Available Today”? Well, it’s still in beta. A miniscule fraction of ezboard’s message boards have transferred across on a trial basis as guinea pigs for the board migration. Just another half a million or so claimed boards to go then…

And just like many one year olds, its proud parents can’t see any failings. It’s still crawling rather than running fast. It’s a big financial burden on its parents as it doesn’t contribute to the family economy but just costs them money. And it really does appear to be full of crap! The ezboard staff all think that their baby will show great promise too: how many times have we seen them write that Yuku will be great when it’s mature?

Oh and one last thing: according to the press release that ezboard, Inc. prepared:

“At DEMOfall 2005 ezboard, Inc. (station #18), the largest independent online community network, today transformed online communications with the launch of Yuku, the world’s first, free community blogging platform.  Community blogging is the next generation of online communication and with Yuku, people can bond together in a shared, collaborative environment. Bloggers and community leaders may also generate revenue from their online activities.”

And as usual, Robert Labatt’s direct quote is somewhat telling in terms of what he said then and what we know the true position to be:

“‘Yuku goes one step further than free by sharing revenues from targeted advertising and premium content subscriptions,’ continued Labatt.  ‘With Yuku, community leaders can focus on growing their communities using the integrated promotion tools.  In turn, Yuku supports them by selling targeted advertising.’
“Yuku is currently available.” [emphasis added]

Note carefully the use of present tense there.