Blue’s WordPress Blog

One other thing that’s bugging me (sorry) about Yuku: you can’t view Yuku boards with JavaScript disabled.

That’s probably because of all the JS files loaded when any Yuku page is fetched. And that is probably due to Yuku being a web application based on AJAX. AJAX? That’s an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML.

Now, in Labatt’s latest WordPress Blog entry I mentioned earlier, he writes:

“Q: Will there be a javascript-free version? I don’t want to enable javascripts.
“A: Yes, that is in the works. For every feature and function that uses javascript, there will be an HTML version of the feature. This is not available now but is being developed.”

Well that’ll be a good trick! Y’see, I’m no techie, but to me, if AJAX is so closely integrated and reliant on JavaScript, how can you then have a non-JavaScript version?

Let’s take another look at that Wikipedia entry:

“While no browser plug-in is required for Ajax, it requires users to have JavaScript enabled in their browsers.”

This will be worth watching…

A new update has been posted to Labatt’s WordPress Blog on ezboard. He starts by saying he loves a good April Fool’s joke - maybe that’s why they’re pushing on with the launch* of Yuku?

Anyway, looking for content, I note that they’re still unable to fix the browser crashes users are experiencing using Internet Explorer and earlier versions of Firefox. They’ve also explained where the name “Yuku” comes from: it’s apparently an aboriginal word for “tree”. Uh-huh. Not sure why they’d choose an aboriginal word when they don’t appear to want to be represented there - no registrant yet for yuku.com.au - but of course it does allow us to have a laugh at their expense with jokes about trees and Yuku…

He’s confirmed that there will be no ezSupporter feature in Yuku. What this means is that for any Yuku user who visits a non-Gold Yuku board, they will see adverts (presently ezSupporter status stops adverts being shown on ezboards).

And talking of adverts … still no mention of the much-heralded advertising revenue sharing with community hosts. How strange…

*I must admit, I thought the launch had taken place at DEMOfall in 2005…

Looks like it.

In this main entry in Labatt’s WordPress blog on 13 March 2006, he writes that ezboard customers are welcome to try Yuku and move their ezboards over to Yuku any time they want. Seems pretty cut and dried to me.

And yet post #3 in a thread on Yuku’s Help [sic] Forums dated 26 March 2006 has one of ezboard’s staff saying that Yuku isn’t ready for ezboard migrations!

Well? What is the situation?

They’ve been complaining about rumours and misinformation spreading around and yet here they are contradicting each other!

In other news, there’s been another separate post on Yuku from another staff member suggesting that advertising revenue sharing was “originally planned”. That implies (to me, at least) that the plan has been changed. I wonder if that’s why they’ve kept the whole “better than free” thing quiet…

Much is made by ezboard about the number of registered users they have. OK, their website is fairly out of date, but here they claim to have over 10 million active members. Elsewhere, it is claimed there are 13 million registered users. At DEMOfall 2005, they claimed 5 million users every month. If you look at the “Market Opportunity” section, it is claimed that Yuku had more than 14 million registered users and that it was growing at more than 200,000 registered users every month. That would mean that by March 2006, there should have been more than 15 million registered users on Yuku.

And yet, if you go to their user search, it displays one page of 20 users but claims there’s 388 pages: as with many aspects of Yuku, it’s broken. But even if that is correct, 388 x 20 = 7,760. Oh and any one person can have up to 5 profiles. Slightly less than 15,000,000 users then…

Apparently, they’ve started copying user profiles from ezboard over to Yuku which is why some people can’t set up accounts there to match their existing ezboard usernames. I suppose that helps with the registered user account: people having to register additional user accounts just to try it out.

Yuku: “Better than free”?

If you watch Robert Labatt’s presentation at DEMOfall, he says that Yuku is better than free becuase they share advertising revenues with the individual board owners (he refers to them as “community leaders”). He says that an average large community - whatever that is - should receive $3,000 to $5,000 a month.

I will admit to laughing when he says that Yuku backs up its sites on an ongoing basis - tell that to those who lost so much data when the backups were non-existent in June 2005 - and that what sets Yuku apart from other solutions is that they charge you a fee and don’t share advertising revenue.

Let’s just backtrack there for a moment.

Other solutions charging a fee, but the implication being that Yuku doesn’t, being “better than free”? Why then is there an FAQ post telling people that there will indeed be a cost for Gold boards, whatever they may be on Yuku? Never mind, surely it’ll all be explained in the main FAQs? Ah yes! There they say that Yuku is a completely free online service. So why the other FAQ saying there’s a cost? Or the section in the Yuku terms about fees and fee-based services?

Never mind: Yuku shares advertising revenue, unlike its competitors.

Does it? Er, then why can’t I find a single reference on Yuku to the plans and programmes for advertiser revenue sharing?

Maybe they haven’t settled this yet despite having apparently worked out revenue models last September. And yet in this blog entry for early March 2006 ezboard’s CEO specifically invited people to move their boards to Yuku there and then!

Yes, I am probably the first person to be banned from Yuku.

Why? Well according to ezboard/Yuku:

Sorry, your login attempt failed.

Your account has been banned.

Reason: this is richard H Morris, who is actively trying to destory ezboard/yuku

[emphasis added]

Is this the same Yuku that claims to have 14 million registered users? And little old me - who occasionally has the audacity to tell the truth about his experiences with ezboard - might in some way be trying to destroy such a global leviathan!

Thanks Rob, I’m honoured to think your company should think I could in any way be a threat to it.

One of the big parts of the DEMOFall presentation by ezboard’s CEO, Robert Labatt, was that its new community hosts would be able to make money from banner and presumably other advertising.

Here’s what Computerworld had to say about the presentation:

“* ezboard demoed Yuku “community blogging.” Big new idea here is that the company sets a user up with a website, then the user builds content and the company sells advertising, and ad revenue is shared with the user. Ezboard figures a successful site could earn a user $3K-$5K per month, which gets paid through a PalPay account.”

So it’s not just me who reads that that is the big thing about Yuku as far as ezboard is concerned.

And yet just a couple of months later, we have ezboard’s CEO quoted as saying:

“How Not To Make Money From AJAX

“While a popular approach to monetizing AJAX applications is advertising, there is a problem: There are no “page views.” For example, suppose that on an AJAX Web page, you want to view the body of a news article, so you click a news headline link. Rather than refresh the entire page (a page view) as you would with a traditional web page, the AJAX technology downloads just the body of the news article and rearranges the Web page to present the article content.

“Because there are no longer page views, we are worried that the Web site analytics companies, like Nielsen/NetRatings, will not accurately count the traffic to AJAX style sites,” said Robert Labatt, the CEO of Yuku, a blogging software based on AJAX. “But, ultimately, an AJAX application is likely to be better for advertisers because it provides better control over when, where and how ads are viewed.”

Hmm. Not such a good choice of platform perhaps?

It’s here using WordPress as usual… Except this time, he’s formatted it all to be centred. Takes you back to the old days of web pages, doesn’t it?

So, what of the highlights?

Well he has decided that the best way of silencing people from talking about Yuku on ezboard now is by instructing his monkeys not to answer those questions there.

I’m not sure users will notice the difference. Of course, the slight problem there is that users who don’t have Javascript enabled - meaning they can’t access or post on Yuku - or that tiny percentage of users who use Internet Explorer and therefore see crashes all over the place won’t actually be able to post anything!

Well played, ezboard!

He’s also reiterated the requirement for a Gold ezboard to have at least 6 months of Gold status at the time of being switched over to Yuku. Nothing wrong with that, is there?

Well actually, yes: if you have a Gold Community with more than 30 days’ Gold remaining, you can’t actually extend your Gold status! The system doesn’t allow it, so if you have between 1 and 6 months’ Gold status remaining, you won’t retain it on Yuku and you won’t be able to do anything about it. I hope the ezboard ezOps like adverts…

What he has also confirmed is that there will be no equivalent to ezSupporter on Yuku. So if you visit any non-Gold Yuku board, sorry, “domain”, then prepare for an onslaught of adverts. Oh and Rob: you ought to know that what Yuku call “domains” are actually sub-domains.

So, let’s have a little look at Sunday, 26th March. What’s so special about that date?

Well for the women, it’s Mothers’ Day (or Mothering Sunday).

This year, this means I shall be foregoing the pleasure of riding down to the Ace Café London for a gathering of the ZRX Owners Club at the Ace’s “Kawasaki Sunday”.

But what else is under threat that day? Well how about:

• 12.45pm to 2.00pm BBC1 MotoGP from Jerez; and
• 3.00pm to 4.30pm ITV1 British Superbikes from Brands Hatch

We’ll ignore the World Rally Championship coverage from Spain directly after the BSB showing.

Bastard!

ezboard’s CEO has updated his ‘official’ blog again - I don’t know, nothing for a year and then three already this month - and as usual he puts a spin on the overwhelmingly negative comments Yuku has been getting in the ezboard help [sic] forums.

His first spin is that he says he’s happy to see all the concern being raised. Happy? Oh yes, it’s because the ezboard users “deeply care” about ezboard. What he doesn’t mention is that his band of support [sic] monkeys have been running around banning people from those same forums who’ve been raising those concerns. Two-faced? ezboard? Surely not.

But the funniest bit of his message concerns the little browser ‘issues’ they’re experiencing on Yuku. Little insignificant things like Yuku causing users’ Internet Explorer sessions (and indeed sometimes their PCs) to crash when viewing Yuku.

So where does he want them to report these issues? Why, in Yuku itself, of course! ~:0)

Still I suppose if people can’t post about browser crashes in Yuku on Yuku then it won’t appear to be a significant issue, will it?

He then suggests users change over to Firefox to allow them to vuew Yuku. But wait: didn’t that have similar problems too? Never mind.

Oh and if you can view Yuku without your PC crashing then that may be because you’re browsing with Javascrupt turned off … in which case you can’t use Yuku anyway either. Maybe that’s in part due to the 12 Javascript files (to go with the 10 stsylesheets) that are loaded in the header on each page?

In that CEO Blog entry he tries to encourage people to move over to Firefox so they can actually view Yuku without it crashing, saying that today the best Yuku “experience” - I take it he means one that even works-ish - is on Firefox, although he continues to write its name incorrectly.

He also makes a big deal out of some stats. before saying that it proves IE does not have a 90% market share. Now take a look at the source of those stats (W3Schools). They say:

“Why so high Firefox figures?

“W3Schools is a website for people with an interest for web technologies. These people are more interested in using alternative browsers than the average user. The average user tends to use Internet Explorer, since it comes preinstalled with Windows. Most do not seek out other browsers.

“These facts indicate that the browser figures below are not 100% realistic. Other web sites have statistics showing that Internet Explorer is used by at least 80% of the users.”

More misinformation from ezboard. Oh and the most apposite quote from the browser stats. page is this one:

“First get your facts; then you can distort them at your leisure.”
Mark Twain

How very true … especially with ezboard.

Following on from this recent post, I had another look at Robert Labatt’s ezboard CEO Blog today:

http://www.ezboard.com/labatt.blog

Yes, it does indeed say that “ezboard CEO Blog is proudly powered by WordPress”.

So let’s get this right: ezboard, Inc. is still launching its new flagship product, “Yuku”, which will combine message boards and blogs into one product. And yet their CEO chooses to set up (very recently) a WordPress installation for blogging?

OK, so he hasn’t got the hang of posting working URLs yet, but you can’t have everything with these Internet professionals, can you?