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 I’ve been trying to get someone to update the FAQ page - its been out of date since the word blorums went out of use, and the links to report a bug are also out of date.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…