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So after nearly four months of silence from “Silent” Rob Labatt, ezboard, Inc.’s CEO (or at least he was ezboard, Inc.’s CEO - I can’t verify he’s still there), there have been one or two changes.

The first changes were to his profile page with the disappearance of his Friends List. The significance of this is that in a MySpace-copying move, Labatt and others were added to all new Yuku accounts as a friend in the same was as Tom from MySpace. So the fact that Labatt’s friends list apparently topped out at under 50,000 was significant when they were claiming 14 or was it 15 million members…

The next change was that his profile page also hid his latest posts as the fact he hadn’t posted anywhere on his “third love” was a tad embarrassing.

But most significant of all is that his Yuku Blog - “What’s Happening on Yuku” - has all but disappeared! Certainly all the content has gone.

And likewise his CEO Blog on ezboard is now simply redirecting.

Maybe all those “ready for primetime” announcements and missed targets had become too much for his masters and he was becoming an embarrassment to them? Who knows? The mystery deepens.

In the meantime, ezboard appears to be hiding its lamentable history … yet again.

So with the latest code push (something around 22,000 versions so far and it’s still got bugs!) ezboard finally rolled out a chatroom for Yuku boards.

We’ll forget the frankly childish “Flash Emotions” and avatars for a moment and the fact that when you enter a room the last few conversations are displayed for all to see.

Let’s look, though, at the useful feature: “Predefined Message”. Yes, with a couple of clicks you can easily say “whats [sic] your asl?”, “what are you into?” and ”Are you free tomorrow?”

So there you go: perfect for you to groom or meet someone… {rolls eyes}

The answer, of course, is “who knows?”

But there are a few more weird and wonderful things going on, according to one post by an ezboard/Yuku representative. In response to a post where a user mentions that “Silent” Rob Labatt is conspicuous by his absence, she writes:

“As for Rob’s updates, well, what can I say? The lobby announcements forum is the place to get the latest news, and from time to time the developers forum might feature some snippets (although if they are relevant I’ll repost them). No-one working on the system really has time to attend to a quality and continuing blog, and that includes Rob. It might have been a nice idea, but it didn’t work out. I’ve been trying to get someone to update the FAQ page - its been out of date since the word blorums went out of use, and the links to report a bug are also out of date. But I don’t think Rob’s blog is linked from there any more.”

The query from the user said, amongst other things, that “the lack of ongoing communication (i.e. where we are headed) makes the system and the company appear to be somewhat… directionless”, which echoes what I’ve been writing here for a long while, i.e. that ezboard, Inc. and Yuku appear to be lacking in clear leadership and proactive management and indeed lacking in any direction whatsoever, chopping and changing tack regularly and missing by miles any targets and deadlines they do deign to publish.

Labatt’s CEO Blog on ezboard is similarly silent since October 2006.

So let’s look more at what the ezboard representative wrote. Now, “The Lobby” isn’t actively linked from the main site-wide footers and is touted by Yuku as “a great place to find out about Yuku features and meet people”. Not to find out what’s happening on Yuku, which just happens to be the title of Labatt’s Yuku forum. And if you visit the Lobby, you’ll see that it’s mostly filled with inane drivel from a small band of users, Yuku Groupies, if you like!

The Developer Blog is linked from all the footers, but is generally pretty quiet with no real announcements at all.

But it’s this that got me:

“No-one working on the system really has time to attend to a quality and continuing blog, and that includes Rob.”

What exactly does he do? ‘Blue-sky thinking’? “Thought leadership“? And wasn’t Yuku his “third love”? No, he appears to have no time to make a quick post either on ezboard or Yuku to let people know what’s actually happening and when Yuku will be out of beta. Or anything else, for that matter.

So no updates on advertising revenue sharing, backups, pricing for Yuku, timescales, etc.

Oh and talking of backups, ezboard still seem to have ‘issues’ with them…

…and it will be my last.

Yuku is the future and ezboard the past.

With apologies to John Miles.

According to ezboard, Inc. CEO “Silent” Robert Labatt’s Yuku profile page (the famously-named “Rob U” one):

“…my third love is Yuku”

And yet the last post he made - whether a new post in his “What’s Happening on Yuku” board or as a comment to another post elsewhere - is now over three months old.

Maybe he’s fed up with Yuku not working. Or not being “ready for primetime” by the end of 2006 as he stated it would be.

Either way, he appears to have fallen out of love with Yuku…