Blue’s WordPress Blog

Saturday was good.

I post a bit on visordown.com and one of the guys there organised a ride-out from Red Lodge around Suffolk and Essex starting at midday. So I set off - leaving the kids home alone - at 11.00am and blasting down to Red Lodge. This mainly involved riding on the wrong side of the road as the A11 was clogged with bloody tourists and people whose lives have ended (i.e. drivers of diesel-fuelled people carriers).

One of my mates from the ZRXOC made it but left too early - the pace quickened (considerably) later with alleged speeds of 120+ in places (and I saw 150 and accelerating sitting bolt upright on my local closed road on my way home).

He also missed the most expensive soft drinks in the world evah at the Swan Hotel in Lavenham: £2.50 for my orange and grapefruit and £3.50 for a pint of lemonade (well syrup and fizzy water from one of those pumps) for a bloke with a SV1000 which was pulling some absolutely minging wheelies.

Photos from our cuppa stop at Finchingfield are here »

The woman in the tea shop was - ahem - rather attractive too

I said my farewells when we got to Newmarket as I thought I should get home around tea time, but that meant missing out on a barbecue, more’s the pity.

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

…I’d fit right in with Yuku.

Yes, one of the few bits of ezboard actually migrated across properly to Yuku appears to be the going back in time bug. Good to see the Yuku developers have managed to port that bug over to the new platform.

Lots of reports on the Yuku Help [sic] forums - the ones where, post-Yuku “help” policy implementation, you hardly ever see a Yuku employee - from people with disappearing posts, people having to post new threads to bring back hidden ones, etc.

Oh and take a look at the view and reply counts. Yes, they’re all wrong as well! Well, at least they start that way, then they change…

As usual with those external hyperlinks to Yuku, you’re advised to click and go and do something else for a while until they load.

…or so it appears. And yet more evidence of “misleading statements” or “factual inaccuracies” from ezboard.

So the plan today was to look at yesterday’s post about the $4,172 price for a Gold community and do a table to compare prices and features of a phpBB forum and a vBulletin forum hosted with DreamHost with what “The Clayboard” had paid to use ezboard and were likely to pay when that board is migrated over to Yuku.

Now the reason I’d originally used the Clayboard as an example was that according to Big Boards, it was one of the largest ezboards. I’d followed the links to the other main ezboards listed and found that some of them had deserted ezboard - understandably so - or didn’t have a link showing through to their Community Chest details.

Then it occurred to me that if I manipulated the URL for the Clayboard’s Community Chest (or used elements from it), I could get the information I was after. Which was when I made some interesting discoveries…

Now a while back, on 24 March 2006, an ezboard employee made a categorical statement in reply to a suggestion that “one extremely large and popular board on ezboard was promised free gold for life”. ezMish replied that:

“That’s totally false.”

Another point to consider is that as I noted here, ezboard are now showing adverts on Trial Gold boards. Except that’s not the case in all situations…

Anyway, back to the Community Chest URLs. The first board I tried was the JJB board. Now, firstly, you should read this announcement from them, which I’ll edit:

“We are now considered a VIP board with R&D (research and development) status.

What does that mean?

We are no longer a typical Gold Community that has to pay to renew our subscription every year….”

So that directly contradicts what ezMish wrote for starters.

Viewing their Community Chest contributions, it seems that JJB has $3,438 in its chest and is currently enjoying an ad-free Gold Trial for free since 24 July 2005.

Moving on to the NikeTalk board that Robert Labatt, ezboard, Inc.’s CEO, wrote about in glowing terms in his Yuku “blorum”. Here are their Community Chest stats.

Yes, there is a similar entry: 7/24/05 2:57:52 am Purchased “Gold Trial” for $0.00

They still have $2,333 in their chest despite an $1100 withdrawal by “Anonymous” on 12 January 2005.

I’ve left the best until last: Survivor Sucks. Here are their Community Chest stats.

Yet again, their last “purchase” was a Gold Trial for $0.00 on 24 July 2005. Of more interest is what’s left in the kitty: just $31. Why? Well because “-Anonymous-” withdrew $7,943 on 3 April 2006, just two days after their “Holy of Holies” started this thread entitled “How to Learn to Stop Worrying and Love Yuku“.

Interesting stuff, eh? You draw your own conclusions from this; I already have. I’m sure there’s nothing untoward or underhand going on.

…get out of the Yuku.

Well I suppose it had to happen eventually. Yes, after 8 days of inactivity despite his role as “Customer Support Lead” at Yuku, ckerr has finally made a post on the Yuku Help [sic] forums.

That would be to provide some customer support then? Er, no. It’s applying the same “shut up and go away” mentality they previously applied to ezboard’s Help [sic] forums. Here’s the policy (as usual for Yuku, click the link, go away and make a coffee and it might have loaded when you get back).

I particularly liked this bit:

“This policy is necessary to ensure that users receive help from fellow Yuku users or Yuku Moderators in a timely manner.”

I agree: it would be an improvement to see Yuku Moderators providing assistance in a timely manner (or at all).

Oh and of interest is this choice of wording for what Yuku is:

“…the Yuku profiling and message board products.”

So there we are. Yuku is officially two separate products with a common name: a replacement for ezboard and a lame attempt to jump on the MySpace bandwagon…

Or at least, that’s how ezboard sees it. You see, part of the issue with ezboard is that every ezboard community is hosted on shared servers and what one board does affects the rest.

How so? Well take this post in the ezboard Help [sic] Forums. Apparently, one board’s members are seeing connection timeouts and delays and have seen fit to complain.

The cause of their problems? Another board on the same server that has the “who’s online” feature enabled.

The solution? ezboard will see if they will turn that feature off!

Bearing in mind ezboard’s charges for Gold communities and how cheap servers are these days, there’s really no excuse for this at all. Clearly ezboard, Inc. are setting profit before customer experience.

After all, if one of the larger boards on the server being complained about paid $4,172 in January, don’t they deserve their own server?

What’s truly mind boggling is what they get for their $4,172 a year. Just look at this graphic:

20GB of web space and 1TB of bandwidth a month. For $7.95 a month. And those limits increase every week! Oh, and the icing on the cake is that they offer “One-Click Installs” of phpBB forum software so even the excuse that people aren’t comfortable installing forum software doesn’t really wash.

Still no real sign of much Customer Support over on Yuku - even the ezApologists are getting sarky - but in the meantime there are reports from Yuku and ezboard of viruses or worms being detected by Norton:

http://p080.ezboard.com/fezboardfrm87.showMessage?topicID=8521.topic

http://help.yuku.com/forum/viewtopic/id/2969

Not the first time we’ve seen such reports on ezboard, but it’s a first from Yuku.

Before you begin to think that Yuku has finally driven me cuckoo, I should point out that it’s not me with the Santa Claus fixation, but ezboard, Inc.

How so? Well if you recall my earlier post, an ezboard staff member had written that they expected ezboard board migrations to be ready to start around the end of 2006. And what elese happens towards the end of the year? Yes, Christmas Day. Wait, wait. Work with me here

If you go and read Robert Labatt’s CEO Blog written using WordPress, you’ll see there that he refers to “ezboard elves”.

And the final piece of the jigsaw? Well if you read my piece yesterday about the lack of Customer Support over in the Yuku Help [sic] Forums and then visit those forums, you may notice that one or two ezApologists have been doing all the replies recently and that one of those now (Chris) has a custom usertitle: “yuku helper”. So a bit like Santa’s Little Helper then?

So there we are: Rob Labatt on his sleigh around Christmas bringing ezboard migrations to the ezboard faithful, all made possible by his elves and supported by his little helpers. A scene to warm the heart!

Where have all the Yuku/ezboard Customer Services [sic] staff gone? They must be busy in the Yuku Help [sic] Forum, surely?

After all, a lot of ezboard’s customers are asking for support and help over there. So let’s see where they are.

http://ckerr.p.yuku.com/

“My name is ckerr (aka James). I am the Customer Support Lead here at Yuku and I’ve been working at ezboard since July 6, 2000.”

Last Seen 07/13/06 14:00:21

http://michelle.p.yuku.com/

She’s another employee, noted for a terse style…

Last Seen 07/07/06 16:22:55

http://jennifer.u.yuku.com/

My mate Jennifer, the one who made unsubstantiated claims about me and wouldn’t put up any proof no matter how many times I called her out.

Last Seen 07/11/06 17:36:39

http://goalieaunt.u.yuku.com/

Doesn’t appear to know how to update her Yuku profile…

Last Seen 07/13/06 15:53:54

http://nigh-eve.u.yuku.com/

Last Seen 07/03/06 14:19:15

What about Robert Labatt? http://rob.u.yuku.com/

Last Seen 07/14/06 16:06:30

Hurrah! What’s Rob been doing? Where’s he been helping? Well let’s have a look at his most recent post:

Account import notes New Topic 07/07/06

So, as the customers seem to be saying, there’s no support and no help from Yuku…

I’m intrigued. An “Important Announcement” has appeared at the top of ezboard communities that the board administrators can choose to show as they see fit. It reads:

“Important ezAnnouncement: Meet your ezboard friends on Yuku and check out their profiles. You’ll be amazed with what you can do with the new Yuku profiles. Click here to get your ezboard account into Yuku now!”

Now unless you’ve been a regular visitor to the ezboard Help [sic] Forums or your community administrator has been keeping you up to date with developments with Yuku originally leaked out by ezboard, you’d probably be wondering what on earth this is all about.

If you go to ezboard’s “Important Announcements” forum, you won’t see any announcement as to what Yuku is. Only if you go to your Control Center will you see an image inviting you to migrate to Yuku. Or perhaps, you’d need to know about the ezboard CEO’s WordPress Blog. That’s not a separate post in “Important Announcements”, by the way.

So let’s look at this announcement again. No clue as to what Yuku is or that ezboards will all be closed down having been forced to migrate to Yuku. No, it’s all about user profiles.

If you take a look at Robert Labatt’s Yuku profile page you’ll see it’s a MySpace clone: take a look at Tom Anderson’s MySpace profile. Tom Anderson is MySpace’s co-founder.

Note that Yuku has copied MySpace in that new registrants to MySpace have Tom added to their friends and as I reported here, Yuku does the same with Labatt and up to nine others. Of course, that’s where the comparison ends. Whilst Tom has, at the time of writing, 92,950,935 friends, Rob can only muster 2,282…

So it’s clear the direction Yuku is headed. After seeing how well MySpace has done since it started in 2003, ezboard wants a piece of that action by trying to reinvent itself as a MySpace clone. Three years too late…

Maybe that’s why the Yuku development emphasis was all about profile pages first, sub-domains next and now finally on message boards?