Dear Rob,
It’s been over a month since you (or someone from your local area purporting to be you) commented here in my WordPress Blog suggesting you’d like to give me a better understanding of what you’re trying to achieve with Yuku. I invited you to comment on any of the posts I make here and initiate a conversation.
Whether or not that comment was from you, I know that you and/or your colleagues at ezboard/Yuku regularly read this, the other version I publish on my Movable Type Blog, my LiveJournal and indeed the posts I make over on an Invision Power Board. Let’s not forget that in your situations vacant adverts, you claim to have a flat management style and everyone works with you. Given the small numbers of staff employed at your San Francisco offices, I can readily believe that to be the case.
So it seems strange that you’ve been so backward in coming forward, as they say, to address the points I raise in my blogs.
I’ve written about the continuing delays in getting Yuku ready for general public use, the strange set of access log entries that appear to be an authentication hack, adverts on Gold Trial boards, issues with your “near flawless” user migrations, the apparent high costs of running a Gold Community, the apparent lack of customer support on Yuku and some strange figures for the costs of Gold status on certain, key ezboards as well as a number of other issues.
None of these have produced any replies or explanations to help me understand the ezboard position.
So I thought I’d make a list of some of the points I’d really like to understand.
1. Advertising Revenue Sharing: when, how and how much?
One of the key elements – probably the key element – of your presentation at DEMOfall in September 2005 was your plan to share advertising revenues with the Yuku community leaders with a sum of $3,000 to $5,000 being mentioned. Now, that must surely be Yuku’s USP and should bring the users in en masse, I’d have thought. So why do you appear to have quietly dropped this most significant feature? If it’s still a live goal, please tell us when it will be implemented and how the revenues will be shared.
2. Free Gold ezboards: where did the money go and how many major boards are being effectively funded by the other boards?
I mentioned some significant sums being withdrawn by anonymous individuals or entities from the main ezboards, as well as their apparently having enjoyed free Gold status since July 2005, shortly after the May/June 2005 data loss and shortly after you yourself wrote:
“The attack does not change our long-standing policy of not providing refunds. This was agreed to by every user each time a service order was placed or payment made.”
So where did the sums I mention in this post go and how many major ezboard communities are effectively operating for free?
3. How much will a Gold Yuku cost?
Yes, I know you’ve said that it should be much like ezboard’s charges, but as Yuku is based on an entirely different architecture, how exactly will it be priced? And bearing in mind what your colleague, Sean Foote, wrote, why shouldn’t Yuku’s charges be significantly less than the charges fixed a long while ago for ezboard?
4. How much will YukuSupporter be?
This question must surely be easier to answer as ezSupporter itself was priced on a nominal basis anyway.
5. When will people be able to backup their boards?
Bearing in mind you wrote this on 23 June 2005:
“the new community engine has solved many of the issues that you have experienced on ezboard in the last year. It is faster, more reliable, offers automated back-up to your home computer, fast restorals”
Why isn’t this feature available on either ezboard or Yuku? One of your staff members has said it will be available “eventually”. And yet you promised it last year, both in your post-data lost messages and of course at DEMOfall.
6. Does ezboard backup its boards properly?
This was, of course, our major complaint last year when it became clear that no matter what you wrote, ezboard had not backed up our message boards safely or securely. If they had been, no hacker would have been able to access them remotely as you claimed.
After all, ezboard is now charged as a premium service when compared with other offerings in the marketplace. Shouldn’t we expect the features we get elsewhere?
7. When will Yuku, with all the promised features, actually launch?
I know you’re smarting from the way I’ve been ridiculing your inability to meet any deadlines or timescales, but you must have a plan for when you need or will be able to launch Yuku properly with all the features your original blog entry promised.
8. Will it be as slow still?
You’ve been promising improvements to the time taken to load pages on Yuku for months and months now and yet it’s still like treacle in winter. Is that as good as it gets? If not, when will you be revealing the new, quick Yuku?
9. How soon after Yuku is launched will ezboard be closed down?
Bearing in mind your advertisement for someone to support ezboard on a contract basis was only until the end of 2006, how soon after you launch Yuku properly will you close down ezboard? As you should be well aware from posts on ezboard and Yuku, there are many boards that don’t want to leave the old platform behind. What are your plans for dealing with those boards?
10. Does ezboard intend to employ sufficient help staff for its customer base and does it intend to have them actually help their customers?
We’ve read the new policy for the Yuku Help Forums and yet people haven’t seen the promised support there. Let’s not forget this is only a small subset of your customer base and there are – please correct me if I’m wrong – no ezboards migrated over yet.
Your staff have also said that the full complement of Yuku support staff hasn’t been put in place yet, so when will there be sufficient customer support people in position?
11. Why is ezboard so expensive?
This in part is tied up with earlier questions, but the main elements are covered in my post here. Why is ezboard so, so expensive compared with other hosting arrangements?
12. Does Yuku see itself as a successor or even a challenger to MySpace?
I’ve mentioned the emphasis that’s being put on profile pages on Yuku as it seems to be postioning itself as a MySpace clone. Why is that emphasis there on profiles rather than community? It’s clear from the order you’ve carried out development that profiles are your main priority. Is it the $580M paid by Murdoch?
13. Why did someone from an IP address associated with ezboard apparently attempt an authentication hack using usernames and passwords only used on ezboard?
My post on this subject is here. It’s no secret that ezboard has access to both usernames and (unlike a vBulletin installation, for instance) passwords for all its users and the ezMods have regularly signed in with your customers’ details to troubleshoot issues. The details are very worrying and frankly disappointing. What is ezboard, Inc.’s position on this?
14. Given that ezboard’s job ads. state that everyone works with the you, did you sanction the authentication hack as you must have known about it, surely?
The question here is in the heading above. If you were unaware of what took place, what have you done since in terms of your staff and the authentication hack? Or was this in no way connected with ezboard, Inc.?
15. What’s the state of play with the FBI investigations into the claimed hack?
You wrote at the time of the May/June 2005 data loss that the FBI were involved. Given the clear and precise information the hacker must have had, surely any perpetrator must have been apprehended by now? If not, why not?
—oooOOOooo—
You’ve read all these points before – especially the details of the apparent authentication hack that seems to be bookmarked by you and your staff – so you should be able to comment here fairly quickly, I’d have thought.
I’ll look forward to your point-by-point reply.
Yours sincerely,
Richard
