Entrepreneurial self starter at Looking for my next great adventure
Past
President, CEO, Director at ezboard, Inc.
Consultant, Entrepreneur at Self
Research Director, Consumer Internet, Web Services
This part of his summary amused me:
“Most recently Mr. Labatt was CEO of ezboard, Inc. a profitable and growing network of consumer generated and white label enthusiast communities. During his over three year tenure at ezboard Mr. Labatt delivered the companies [sic] first profits, conceived and released the successful successor to the companies [sic] core community product and negotiated and sold the company to a strategic buyer.”
Strange how he doesn’t mention the loss of customer data whilst under his tenure. Nor the extended (and continuing) beta status of the software.
Funnily enough, there’s no mention of any of this on ezboard, Inc.’s web site or on yuku. I wonder if that’s to calm the jitters about the move to the (still beta, still buggy, still un-priced, still ad. revenue selfish) yuku?
Of course, all of this could be wildly inaccurate so I wouldn’t necessarily rely on any of it.
For a while now, the staff over in the yuku help forums [sic] have been claiming that there are no forced migrations of ezboards over to yuku and that they have to be requested by board owners.
ezboard, Inc. has yet to reveal pricing for ad. removal from yuku boards; and
yuku is still in beta, which is the excuse they always trot out when somebody complains that something isn’t working on yuku
ezboard, Inc.’s Help Wiki still says“Do I have to switch to this next version of software? No, not unless you want to.” and “Do I have to move my board to yuku.com domain? No, you do not have move to yuku.com.”
Of course, being ezboard, it appears that the truth and the statements at item 3 above are mutually exclusive…
Or what about this?
“Will my ezboard forum be switched over without my consent? No, boards will need to be switched by the admin. At this stage, they will not be switched over by our system if you do not initiate the switch.”
So nothing to worry about then.
Oh dear. “ezdollar”, presumably someone working for ezboard/yuku, writes:
“My understanding is that they are now migrating some small batches of boards without the owner’s request, but, a few days before migration, those boards should display an Important Announcement at the top of the board, stating that it will soon migrate.
“If the developers had been able to write an upgrade for the ezboard program, it would have been sent out to all servers and no ezOp would have had any choice whatsoever about whether to use the new version or not or when to make the switch to the new version. The upgrade would have happened virtually (if not literally) overnight. This is really no different than a major ezboard upgrade, except that, in effect, ezOps have been able to choose to go to the new version early, and the upgrade is being done gradually instead of overnight.
“Migrating your account to Yuku has nothing to do with board migration.
“Having Gold or not having Gold has nothing to do with migration.
“As I keep saying… if you have issues with Yuku, you have to take them up with Yuku staff by posting at Yuku Support or opening a Yuku Help ticket. We may feel your pain, here, but we simply can’t help you with most Yuku related issues here.”
So that confirms that they are indeed moving boards without the owners’ say-so. And it makes no difference if they’re Gold – with no ads. – or non-Gold. I bet gold communities won’t be very happy when they start showing ads. … which is due to happen soon, no doubt, as they have recently confirmed they are finally working on yuku versions of gold communities and ezsupporter which should be ready for testing “within a month or two at the latest“…
So there you have it: forced migrations despite what they tell you elsewhere. Forced migrations from release code (if buggy) to beta code (very buggy and incomplete). What a way to treat your long-suffering customers!
Oh and still no word on whether they plan to actually share revenues with board owners as ezboard, Inc. CEO, Robert Labatt, promised. And where is Mr. Labatt? Incredibly silent, even for him…
On 7 March 2006. ezboard, Inc. CEO, “Silent Rob” Labatt used his WordPress blog to announce Yuku (having launched it in September 2005…), stating amongst other promises that he and his little band never kept that:
“Later you can click a button and your board will automatically move to Yuku – archives, threads, members, banned users and all!”
Well it appears that “later” is almost upon us: there’s a global ezboard announcement going around that mentions “Next generation of ezboard: Yuku” with hyperlinked text saying “Upgrade your community now!” The hyperlink is to this page: http://www.yuku.com/ezboard/import/
Now the problems start to appear: you have to be logged-in to Yuku to view that page which means that for anyone who’s only been on ezboard, they can’t exactly have a one-click button to have their board and indeed their ezboard account migrated as they need to set up a Yuku account first … doh!
The second problem is that ezboard were saying that they were reserving ezboard account names on Yuku so if you are JosephTBloggs on ezboard, you shouldn’t be able to regsiter an account under that name on Yuku.
So, you go ahead and register, say JosephTBloggsTest on Yuku and then you go back to that page. It says:
Welcome to Yuku!
Importing your Ezboard Community is one click away. The process generaly takes up to 24 hours depending on the size of your message board. We will contact you by email when your board is imported into Yuku.
By clicking “I Accept” you have agreed to the terms.
Having problems? Get help now!
And then there’s a button labelled “I ACCEPT”. So still not quite a one-click install as you have to manually enter the user-unfriendly URL of your ezboard and then click a button and wait.
So there’s the next problem: someone at ezboard is going to have to check that the person who’s filled in this form is the same person who is the “ezOp” or board owner on ezboard and hence has the authority to do so: a tad tricky given that the Yuku username and the ezboard username probably won’t match and neither might the e-mail address.
The next problem is that they don’t actually make it plain that Yuku is still in beta and hence it isn’t working properly still.
And then there’s the big problem for all their Gold Communities: how much will Yuku cost? It’s a hell of a leap of faith to say that you’re going to go through the pain of migration from ezboard to Yuku – apparently with your members’ contributions to the community chest intact – without knowing what the cost will be for a gold Yuku community when they start rolling out the banner ads. on the free Yuku boards.
And finally, the Yuku developers acknowledge that your new Yuku board won’t necessarily look like your old ezboard one, so hard luck about losing all that work!
Still, once this is all done – and I doubt that the 24 hour target will be met, somehow, ezboard will have yet more claimed members – including those extra Yuku accounts that people will need to start the migration off, remember and whilst they’re looking at the benefits to ezboard, Inc. of the migrations, I’m sure they’ll be thinking that the ezboard to Yuku migrants won’t want to go through all the pain of moving again despite finding that life at Yuku may not be what it’s cracked up to be.
A win-win situation for ezboard, Inc. though. Well … apart, that is from the lack of new income from Gold ezboard Communities and ezSupporter subscriptions. Best hurry up and roll out the ads, Bob.
[edit, 17 November] One other issue I forgot: on ezboard, a user could sign up for what they called a local account, that could only be used on the ezboard they signed up from: useful if the global account of the same name had been taken. The only trouble is, when an ezboard is migrated over to Yuku, a different Yuku account is created such as JosephTBloggs.yukuboardname. Unlike migrated ezboard global accounts, migrated ezboard local accounts would lose all their private messages. You’d have thought they’d warn users…
Two years plus is a long time in Internet Time. When Yuku was launched as being “available now” in September 2005, its unique selling point appeared to be the way ezboard, Inc. were promising to share advertising revenues with message board owners.
In the presentation, ezboard, Inc. CEO “Silent Rob” Labatt is seen showing off the message board functions and user profiles that had been in development since early 2005.
Unfortunately for them, they’ve since wasted all of 2005, 2006 and now most of 2007.
The idea to combine message boards, user profiles, blogs and media hosting in one place was a good one even if not entirely original – most things on Yuku from ezboard, Inc. are ideas that someone else has had previously – as for instance WordPress can be extended with plug-ins and third party software to incorporate discussion forums, photo albums, etc. with the added benefit of an option to self-host the whole shebang and include advertising to generate a revenue stream as I do here.
In June 2005, Yuku was being touted by Labatt as the next generation of ezboard (although the name ‘Yuku’ had not been unveiled at that stage). Inexpicably, they concentrated not on ezboard migrations or getting the message boards ready for users. No, instead ezboard concentrated on the user profiles no doubt spurred on by the growth of MySpace and indeed Facebook. But by doing so, they dropped the ball and simply became Yet Another MySpace Wannabe even down to the evident similarities in their Terms of Use. Of course, extended beta tests are nothing new, c.f. Google’s applications and services, but then they are not usually quite this long for such products.
In the meantime, however, everyone else has moved on. vBulletin is a very accomplished message board application and one I use myself for three different discussion boards and it’s far better in my opinion than Yuku is. And of course there’s now vBulletin Blog to go with the board software. I’ve already mentioned WordPress and its plug-ins capability.
And now another major player has revealed online communities, blogs and social media in one place.
“Every member of your community can create a personalized profile page. Standard Profile pages include the following content:
“Personal profile information, such as a photo, interests, or location information
A list of comments submitted by that user and comment responses
A list of recommended posts, forums, and comments by that user
Forums, community blogs and a number of templates and skins.”
So as time drags on and “Silent Rob” Labatt continues being elusive, maybe going for glider flights in Hawaii or going karting with the (small number of) staff, Yuku falls further and further behind the competition whilst not charging its users for the bandwidth and (reducing…) image storage.
Every domain and sub-domain at yuku is serving up a blank white page this morning. I wonder whether “Silent Rob” Labatt will post something about their excellent uptime in due course? No, probably not.
And as irony would have it, “outdated”, “buggy” ezboard is working fine. I bet the Admins. of the boards migrated over to yuku are pleased…
Alison “Let It Rip” Harrison does, though, say that “there is a slightly major feature many people are still waiting for” which she qualifies as being a threaded topics view. Oh and “a few other things” and “a few bugs”.
I think she’s being a tad economical there: there are a number of long-standing bugs and a number of recently noted bugs including some truly bizarre behaviour with tags disappearing or even being added to, and of course what’s also missing is the ability to back up the yuku boards off yuku if – for whatever unimaginable reason – you don’t trust ezboard, Inc. to backup your data properly… This personal backup ability was something that “Silent Rob” promised back in the summer of 2005 when they lost all those thousands of messages and the supposed backups were somehow also deleted.
And still no word on pricing or the major selling point of yuku: sharing advertising revenues with message board owners that made yuku “better than free”.
Remember how “Silent” Rob Labatt finally broke cover to thank his remaining staff for a “fantastically smooth release”when they ‘pushed’ yet another Yuku update?
This time, it’s about JavaScript, not just their CEO, “Silent” Rob Labatt.
Over in their official support forum, someone asked when the promised JavaScript Library would be available to allow board owners to customise their boards.
Another user asked the direct question again and it was ‘answered’ by a Customer Services [sic] representative with nothing but an embarrassed smiley…
Another user asked the direct question as to whether board owners would be able to add their own scripts.
And another asked the big question: whether they would be able to use web analytics software – a reference, I think, to Google Analytics. Now as we know, ezboard, Inc. are already running Google Analytics on every Yuku page so I doubt they’d want the users running their own versions (if indeed they’d run side-by-side) especially if ezboard, Inc. start charging for Yuku boards on the basis of page views as they do on ezboard (also without any independent or board owner verification)…
In chimes one of the ezApologists – who happens to run vBulletin on his own site – to give reasons why it would be A Bad Idea to allow board owners to run their own JavaScript on Yuku.
I’ll let another user answer that point:
“I totally understand. Was this a big issue on ezboard? I never had any problems.”
Ah yes. It was fine on ezboard but not on Yuku. I see…
And no official response yet as to precisely when the JavaScript Library will be available and what it will contain, including whether the customers can run web analytics scripts on Yuku as they can presently on any self-hosted solution (as I do here).
Well I missed the second anniversary of The Great ezboard Disaster of 2005: the day when – depending on who or what you choose believe – a hacker managed to delete the current ezboard posts and at the same time access and delete the backups or someone running some script at ezboard on the boards cocked up royally. Despite claiming to have got the FBI involved and despite offering a $5,000 reward, no news as to any investigations or apprehension of the alleged hacker has ever been released. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.
So anyway, like I said, I missed the second anniversary which probably goes to prove that I am not obsessed with ezboard, Inc., contrary to what their representatives and ezApologists would have you believe.
Now, what have they accomplished in those two years?
You may recall that their CEO, Robert Labatt, chose his updates on the data loss to announce they were working on a brand new version of ezboard which they later chose to christen Yuku, presumably as the ezboard brand may have become tarnished irreparably.
Yuku was then launched as “available today” at DEMOfall 2005 in September of that year. The USP that was the focus of their “Better Than Free” strapline was that ezboard, Inc. were promising to share advertising revenues with board owners and that an “average large board” could make $3-$5,000 per month from being on Yuku. They were seeking to differentiate 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.
Of course, back in September 2005, Yuku was at alpha release stage: not even beta. Development of the ezboard platform had stopped in early 2005 and their focus was firmly on Yuku.
Labatt started posting regularly in his “CEO Blogs” on ezboard – using WordPress, obviously… – and then on Yuku. When it became apparent that all the target dates for the transition from ezboard to Yuku were as likely to be met as it was that weapons of mass destruction were present in Iraq, rather than actually making promises that ezboard, Inc. could meet, Labatt blamed “nastygrams” – presumably like this blog – for being mean and come 1 November 2006 simply stopped posting completely!
The date for Yuku being “ready for prime time” of late 2006 came and went with a whimper and now here we are with Yuku trying hard to beat Google’s offerings in terms of the longest ever beta.
So where are we now?
There has been absolutely no mention of sharing advertising revenues with board owners.
There has been absolutely no mention of when board owners can backup their own boards themselves if they don’t trust ezboard, Inc. to do it properly (and who could blame them?).
Yuku boards are currently free to operate and unlimited in size and display no adverts. Almost the exact opposite of ezboard, so why the faithful stay at ezboard and choose to pay for the privilege [sic] escapes me.
It’s just as well they do, though, because the only revenue from Yuku comes from the Google Adwords displayed in the user profiles.
Big boards like the JJB Board that has been migrated over to Yuku are currently using up server space and no doubt bandwidth like there’s no tomorrow (an inadvertent quip, but maybe apposite): their General Discussion forum alone runs to 1872 pages (and counting) of threads.
ezboard have stated that users and boards have unlimited storage space for images.
Combine those last two, and all those cheap servers that Labatt photographed and added to his blog (before it got removed as a source of constant embarrassment to them) will soon be full and creaking under the stress. Don’t believe me? Well take a look at this:
The entire system is very slow to download for me today. It is not happening elsewhere- just Yuku.”
Presumably this is so that former ezboard users will feel right at home…
Talking of which, one of the features they used to promote heavily was the ‘global community’ of ezboard. Personally, I never used to visit other ezboards unless by chance: I posted on our board and our board alone. I did, on the other hand, suffer from the global nature of usernames being used up: the one I wanted had been registered before I joined ezboard and despite it never being used for quite a few years, it was never available for re-registration. Now ezboard told people that all ezboard usernames would be reserved on Yuku so that JoeBloggs@ezboard wouldn’t lose his username to some other JoeBloggs@Yuku. Which is all very well except that that simply means that in the absence of an abandoned username purge, the usernames available on Yuku are that much fewer.
ezboards used to have what they called “local accounts” so that you could join just one board and be JoeBloggs@ASingleBoard. Now that they’ve started the board imports, they’ve had to create another class of user and those usernames were getting unmanageable, breaking carefully laid out board styles, etc. So the Yuku team came up with a whole host of new indicators for different sorts of Yuku accounts. This has not gone down well and doesn’t actually seem to be working properly either (no change there then)…
That aside, things must have improved generally with the better Yuku? Well no: their Customer Support [sic] is as bad as ever. We remember that despite being an Internet Services company, ezboard, Inc. seemed to only observe regular office hours, Monday to Friday. Well now it’s worse than that: they don’t seem to work Fridays either!
“Hey carrie we will try and jump on these quicker — but you posted on friday :\”
So there we have it: Yuku still in beta, it’s head honcho apparently now logging in – or being logged in by a colleague, present or former – but still remaining silent on what he once claimed was his third love. No sign of any hints about pricing, admin.-managed backups, costs, etc.
I’m truly amazed that they haven’t gone out of business or at the very least sacked the man ultimately responsible for their being where they are presently, Robert Labatt.
