One of the few interesting things things days about yuku - apart from how quickly their ideas have been overtaken by others who’ve actually released message boards, profile pages and image hosting that actually works and is reliable - is one of the threads in their support [sic] forum about problems with the chatrooms that they claim to be one of their “improved features” over ezboard.
Sheesh! That’s been running for almost three months and it’s clear that the chatrooms are up and down more often than a whore’s drawers and that when what appears to be their only tech guy “Ransom” says it’s up, that’s not what the actual users experience.
Why on earth do the poor people over there stay when there are so many better alternatives out there?
On 7 March 2006. ezboard, Inc. CEO, “Silent Rob” Labatt used his WordPress blog to announce Yuku (having launched it in September 2005…), stating amongst other promises that he and his little band never kept that:
“Later you can click a button and your board will automatically move to Yuku - archives, threads, members, banned users and all!”
Well it appears that “later” is almost upon us: there’s a global ezboard announcement going around that mentions “Next generation of ezboard: Yuku” with hyperlinked text saying “Upgrade your community now!” The hyperlink is to this page: http://www.yuku.com/ezboard/import/
Now the problems start to appear: you have to be logged-in to Yuku to view that page which means that for anyone who’s only been on ezboard, they can’t exactly have a one-click button to have their board and indeed their ezboard account migrated as they need to set up a Yuku account first … doh!
The second problem is that ezboard were saying that they were reserving ezboard account names on Yuku so if you are JosephTBloggs on ezboard, you shouldn’t be able to regsiter an account under that name on Yuku.
So, you go ahead and register, say JosephTBloggsTest on Yuku and then you go back to that page. It says:
Welcome to Yuku!
Importing your Ezboard Community is one click away. The process generaly takes up to 24 hours depending on the size of your message board. We will contact you by email when your board is imported into Yuku.
By clicking “I Accept” you have agreed to the terms.
Having problems? Get help now!
And then there’s a button labelled “I ACCEPT”. So still not quite a one-click install as you have to manually enter the user-unfriendly URL of your ezboard and then click a button and wait.
So there’s the next problem: someone at ezboard is going to have to check that the person who’s filled in this form is the same person who is the “ezOp” or board owner on ezboard and hence has the authority to do so: a tad tricky given that the Yuku username and the ezboard username probably won’t match and neither might the e-mail address.
The next problem is that they don’t actually make it plain that Yuku is still in beta and hence it isn’t working properly still.
And then there’s the big problem for all their Gold Communities: how much will Yuku cost? It’s a hell of a leap of faith to say that you’re going to go through the pain of migration from ezboard to Yuku - apparently with your members’ contributions to the community chest intact - without knowing what the cost will be for a gold Yuku community when they start rolling out the banner ads. on the free Yuku boards.
And finally, the Yuku developers acknowledge that your new Yuku board won’t necessarily look like your old ezboard one, so hard luck about losing all that work!
Still, once this is all done - and I doubt that the 24 hour target will be met, somehow, ezboard will have yet more claimed members - including those extra Yuku accounts that people will need to start the migration off, remember and whilst they’re looking at the benefits to ezboard, Inc. of the migrations, I’m sure they’ll be thinking that the ezboard to Yuku migrants won’t want to go through all the pain of moving again despite finding that life at Yuku may not be what it’s cracked up to be.
A win-win situation for ezboard, Inc. though. Well … apart, that is from the lack of new income from Gold ezboard Communities and ezSupporter subscriptions. Best hurry up and roll out the ads, Bob.
[edit, 17 November] One other issue I forgot: on ezboard, a user could sign up for what they called a local account, that could only be used on the ezboard they signed up from: useful if the global account of the same name had been taken. The only trouble is, when an ezboard is migrated over to Yuku, a different Yuku account is created such as JosephTBloggs.yukuboardname. Unlike migrated ezboard global accounts, migrated ezboard local accounts would lose all their private messages. You’d have thought they’d warn users…
Two years plus is a long time in Internet Time. When Yuku was launched as being “available now” in September 2005, its unique selling point appeared to be the way ezboard, Inc. were promising to share advertising revenues with message board owners.
In the presentation, ezboard, Inc. CEO “Silent Rob” Labatt is seen showing off the message board functions and user profiles that had been in development since early 2005.
Unfortunately for them, they’ve since wasted all of 2005, 2006 and now most of 2007.
The idea to combine message boards, user profiles, blogs and media hosting in one place was a good one even if not entirely original - most things on Yuku from ezboard, Inc. are ideas that someone else has had previously - as for instance WordPress can be extended with plug-ins and third party software to incorporate discussion forums, photo albums, etc. with the added benefit of an option to self-host the whole shebang and include advertising to generate a revenue stream as I do here.
In June 2005, Yuku was being touted by Labatt as the next generation of ezboard (although the name ‘Yuku’ had not been unveiled at that stage). Inexpicably, they concentrated not on ezboard migrations or getting the message boards ready for users. No, instead ezboard concentrated on the user profiles no doubt spurred on by the growth of MySpace and indeed Facebook. But by doing so, they dropped the ball and simply became Yet Another MySpace Wannabe even down to the evident similarities in their Terms of Use. Of course, extended beta tests are nothing new, c.f. Google’s applications and services, but then they are not usually quite this long for such products.
In the meantime, however, everyone else has moved on. vBulletin is a very accomplished message board application and one I use myself for three different discussion boards and it’s far better in my opinion than Yuku is. And of course there’s now vBulletin Blog to go with the board software. I’ve already mentioned WordPress and its plug-ins capability.
And now another major player has revealed online communities, blogs and social media in one place.
“Every member of your community can create a personalized profile page. Standard Profile pages include the following content:
“Personal profile information, such as a photo, interests, or location information
A list of comments submitted by that user and comment responses
A list of recommended posts, forums, and comments by that user
Forums, community blogs and a number of templates and skins.”
So as time drags on and “Silent Rob” Labatt continues being elusive, maybe going for glider flights in Hawaii or going karting with the (small number of) staff, Yuku falls further and further behind the competition whilst not charging its users for the bandwidth and (reducing…) image storage.
One of the ways that the ezboard/yuku staff seek to deflect criticism - in addition to their present toolbox that includes banning people, editing posts, hiding posts and threads and being able to post from individuals’ accounts - is by derailing a thread by posting meaningless waffle in a support thread with the help of their usual band of sycophants and ezApologists.
This is particularly used where the complainant makes the mistake of posting in the yuku support chat forum rather than the bug forum. Well I say ‘mistake’, but if it’s not a bug, they’re stuffed in terms of the lack of a general customer service forum.
Take for instance this thread in the yuku support [sic] forum by someone complaining of harassment by means of a yuku board having a pop at individuals. After setting out the issues, the individual writes that: “I have sent numerous emails to YUKU and they’ve come back to me. I’m not sure the actual address I’m supposed to complain to.” Shortly after this, the thread is derailed by the ezApologists and yuku staff talking about trout-slapping, squirting with silly string, etc. After 41 replies, mostly of that ilk, the user posted something else that has since mysteriously disappeared and one of the cronies writes:
“I really don’t think we needed that posted Chloe. Just as long as the staff has been alerted they can look into what needs to be done. Even is she does it in private, the staff can find out.”
Now is it just me or is that reply sanctimonious in the extreme, especially considering the poster is just another user (even if they don’t seem to see themselves that way)?
Every domain and sub-domain at yuku is serving up a blank white page this morning. I wonder whether “Silent Rob” Labatt will post something about their excellent uptime in due course? No, probably not.
And as irony would have it, “outdated”, “buggy” ezboard is working fine. I bet the Admins. of the boards migrated over to yuku are pleased…
Alison “Let It Rip” Harrison does, though, say that “there is a slightly major feature many people are still waiting for” which she qualifies as being a threaded topics view. Oh and “a few other things” and “a few bugs”.
I think she’s being a tad economical there: there are a number of long-standing bugs and a number of recently noted bugs including some truly bizarre behaviour with tags disappearing or even being added to, and of course what’s also missing is the ability to back up the yuku boards off yuku if - for whatever unimaginable reason - you don’t trust ezboard, Inc. to backup your data properly… This personal backup ability was something that “Silent Rob” promised back in the summer of 2005 when they lost all those thousands of messages and the supposed backups were somehow also deleted.
And still no word on pricing or the major selling point of yuku: sharing advertising revenues with message board owners that made yuku “better than free”.
