Mind you, that’s probably normal in Yuku-Cuckoo Land…

It looks as though - with no sign of the Yuku release on the horizon and the two-months-and-counting silence from Rob Labatt, their “problem solving kinda guy” boss - some of the ezstaff are getting their messages mixed again. Apparently, some people are confused about official and non-official Yuku forums, so Alison helpfully tells us - in an obscure, non-official Yuku forum, which ones are which:

“The lobby is the hub of yuku. The lobby is made up currently of several forums.
There is the announcements forum which is the main place to get the latest information about yuku.
There is general chat, which is not a help forum - but that does not mean you cannot discuss yuku in it.
There is the help and FAQs forum which is designed to guide people to the wiki FAQ, and also help us track when the FAQ doesn’t answer the questions posed. I think people will still seek more hands on help from places like gethelp.

The developers forum is designed to keep track of bugs

The skins forum is designed to help people customise their domains and skins. (Ben, you seem to think that skins did not deal with css when first started, but that is not the case. Our skins are created using CSS. How could we have a forum about skins and totally ignore CSS?) The skins forum, however, is run on a user helps user basis, just like the cool tips & tricks forums on ezboard were.

The promote forum has been only recently opened, but its to deal with all aspects of promotion, including the public community showcase as per ezboard, which is why the beta showcase will be moved over there.”

Thanks for that, Alison.

But wait a minute: if the Lobby is the hub of Yuku, why isn’t it included in the links at the bottom of every page on Yuku? After all, a truly bizzare “Entertainment” one is on many Yuku forums, but not “the hub” of Yuku. And wasn’t ‘Silent’ Rob Labatt’s “Yuku Blog” the place to find out “what’s happening on Yuku”?

Oh and neither of those places have covered what I would have thought would be a very important announcement. Remember at DEMOfall 2005, Labatt told everyone that Yuku was “better than free”? Well they may have dropped that advertising puff as they don’t appear to want to share advertising revenues with board owners any longer, but what they have announced by the back door as usual is that:

“Is Yuku Free?

Yes. Yuku is a completely free online service.”

So if Yuku from ezboard is “completely free”, why are its staff still suggesting people pay large amounts to keep their ezboard Gold communities?

And how do ezboard, Inc. intend to pay for all that bandwidth and salaries? The Google Adsense advertising in everyone’s profiles? Who knows?

Maybe all their new celebrity members are going to pay for it. “Their what?” I hear you ask. Yes all those celebrities flocking to endorse Yuku. Like Brad Pitt who apparently works for them as a coder and gets added as a “friend” to every new Yuku sign-up.

I mentioned earlier a link on people’s Yuku boards called “Entertainment”. This links to this Yuku forum which also appears on the Yuku homepage and must therefore be an official Yuku forum (that Alison somehow forgot to mention…). That appears to serve up lots of showbiz RSS feeds - easy enough to do: I do it on some web sites of mine.

Now if you take a look at the lower section of that page, you’ll see links to “Celebrity Profiles” which just happen to be Yuku profile pages (you know, the profile pages carrying adverts). Apparently, celebrities including Christina Aguilera, Nelly Furtado, George Clooney, Eva Longoria, Justin Timberlake, Clay Aiken, Cameron Diaz, Mischa Barton, Gwen Stefani, etc. have all made their own profiles on Yuku. Wow! I never knew they were so adept at doing their own pages! Or that they all knew about Yuku…

I mean, surely no-one at Yuku would make all those profiles themselves just to attract people from searches on Google and the other search engines to view the profiles and the adverts on those profiles, would they? I mean, that would obviously boost the potential earnings from what is presently the only source of funds visible to the casual visitor. But wouldn’t Google be a bit pissed off?

No, I think it’s more likely that those celebrities have all decided they really want to be a part of Yuku… Stop laughing! Look, Yuku is so good that Justin Timberlake has even started stalking me online and pimping his Yuku profile. Unless it’s good old BJ again pretending to be him.