Where in the world is the vBSEO Team? Mystery solved... at Topify. :)

Perhaps this explains the lack of team presence and rampant customer complaints (aka pleas for help) at vbseo.com.

Juan Muriente is in Chicago now and is affiliated with Topify.
http://www.topify.com/team

As you can see, Oleg (vBSEO's lead developer) is listed there as a co-founder and CTO.

Juan is not listed on the team page, but is associated in some way. He's publicly noted his affiliation with another founder. My guess is he doesn't want his name published in association with them right now. You be the judge:
http://downloads.zdnet.com/search/?compid=10269958

Is Topify another Crawlability Inc. "investment"?

 

The lack of vBulletin explains it more than anything. It's just the price of having your business depend on another.

 

And I'll add that it really wasn't the same there since you and a few others left some time ago. Life goes on, everything changes.

 

I would guess that Ray and Jack are the money behind that, and they probably brought Oleg in for his coding skills.

 

I appreciate it Code Monkey. When we were there, we stayed focused on vBSEO, and we really cared about it.

We've known that it's been getting run into the ground for a long time. Juan will love the excuse of vBulletin's problems. But vB doesn't stop him from having some decency. I'd be ashamed to put my name behind a website that is accepting money and having its support forum fill up with people begging for help.

 

Crawlability Inc. doesn't have any money, so your guess is a good one. And Oleg is a great addition to any team. The guy is a work horse. Very talented, very fast, and a pleasure to work with. Getting him into a professional team where everyone around him is doing their job will be exciting to see what he can come up with.

We do know that Juan is associated though, or was at some point recently - see the link above. The Crawlability investment would perhaps related to some code they developed. I suppose it could be some kind of acquire-hire for Oleg, but they really wouldn't need to do that. They could just recruit Oleg directly.

They (Crawlability) were developing stuff like Tweetboard, Fanversation and God knows what else. And behind the scenes they've been pursued by Chicago based "investors" trying to buy them for a liquidation price that would help Juan pay his taxes - at least that was a part of their sales pitch. The deal didn't happen because Juan would not turn over any of the financial data to his co-founder. He wanted her to sell without seeing the state of things. Ha ha.

 

very interesting..

 

Brandon - this would be a great time to get Juan for that interview he dodged the last time you asked. I think he owes some accountability to the forum community and - more importantly - his customers. Over 10,000 people have (or had) vBSEO installed, and more are still purchasing. Yet the support forums are filled with people asking for help, almost non-existent staff, and the troll takeover is in full effect.

 

I actually sent him a text this morning after reading this, I've tried over and over to get him to sign up here and even when we talked in KCK 6 months ago he wasn't against getting on here and answering questions, just seems he's very busy... so I don't know

 

If he convinced you of that, Brandon, this guy is true Jedi!

He wasn't too busy to fly in to KS for a beer. He's just too busy to answer questions on a forum, or post a status update to his customers over at vbseo.com practically begging for support of any kind. When does the BS end?

 

Suggestion: Text him and ask him why he wanted $100,000 for vBSEO, but it had to be done in 7 days. And ask him how much he owes in taxes. Might also want to ask if he feels any sense of responsibility to his paying customers, and when he'll take vBSEO offline. The $149 includes support.

 

He's definitely a charmer ..lol
I sent him a link to this thread, so we'll see

On a side note, I was checking out that app and it looks pretty nice. Seems similar to tapatalk and forumrunner? More competition is always good.

 

Hiding is his number one strategy. I'm expecting Ilia will get another nasty email privately - and he'll call his Mom to complain - but I'm extremely doubtful you'll see him make an appearance here. Juan, you're certainly welcome to drop in. No fly in necessary.

 

Seems like more of a family matter then at that point..

 

I guess so, if we were all 10 years old.

 

ya.. I don't know.
I'm still waiting on the rest of the vbhackers database that I've been told is still intact

 

Hey Brandon - sorry to hear about that, but that's the MO.

Listen - I'd just ask one thing for the community. If he doesn't respond to you, or if he responds whatever excuses he gives (even if unflattering to me), please share the reasoning here.

Legal, I'm above all this, etc.

It's notable news to the community that the vBSEO team is gone AWOL without any notice, and is now showing up somewhere else while still accepting payments and not delivering contracted support included in the $149, at least not at any reasonable period of time.

 

You're very forgiving. In my world view, if you sell something, you deliver it. If you charge for support, you provide it. And if you ever decide to stop doing either of those things, you close down the business with your apologies. You also don't tell customers you are going to do things you have no intention of doing. Customers at VBSEO have been mislead for years.

They tell you they are "working on it" while Oleg is building Topify, presumably.

We decide on a selling price. What customers are able to achieve is earned by them, not us, and we can't stop supporting them because we take credit for their success.

Level of vbulletin complaints has absolutely nothing to do with VBSEO staff disappearance. Did the vbulletin support team quit, get new jobs, stop responding, and not tell anyone?

What I like most about Brandon is not his Jedi force, but his integrity! He's friends and colleagues with us all from the old school days, but he still gives honest feedback whether I like it, or Juan, or anyone else.

I think he's interested in finding out what's up, like all of us forum world peeps, and I doubt that he's impressed by a disappearance like the one they are pulling, even if he still supports and encourages their future success in Topify or other projects.