Big news at vBulletin.com...

Should I have not answered the direct question posed to me?

 

To be fair it's not showing any 5.0.6 sites, vbulletin.net or otherwise. Is that the list from which VB5's "1%" market-share is calculated?

 

Ok, let me pose a direct question...

Do your superiors (like McGanty) at vB know about and understand the various concerns we have expressed with vb development? Second question... Do they care or just think they know better then us what we want?

 

Nah... That query only shows stuff on the root of a domain simply because it was a much simpler query to run real quick. vb.com doesn't show up there because it's running in a folder on the domain. But yes, the 1% does include the ones in folders.

 

I would love to know how you define 'many'.

Only in my book there isn't many vB5 sites at all, not self-hosted nor in cloud cuckoo land.

 

Using various search criteria I was able to pull up 23 sites running on vBCloud. I was able to find 7 on the vbulletin.net sub-domain while the rest ran on their own domain.

http://rabidbadger.vbulletin.net/
http://morallybankrupt.vbulletin.net/
http://captainslater.vbulletin.net/
http://scrotnig.vbulletin.net/
http://shadetreemuscle.vbulletin.net/
http://mudslide.vbulletin.net/
http://cyberpolice.vbulletin.net/

http://forum.pulseheberg.com/
http://www.horsesandsaddles.com/
http://www.standtallforjesus.com/
http://www.verizon718.com/forums
http://www.agasaria.com/
http://www.bortle1.com/
http://www.silentboxstudios.com/
http://www.viphile.com/
http://www.westcoastfirearms.net/
http://www.webmarketingforum.net/
http://www.herodreamforum.com/
http://www.forosbitcoin.com/
http://www.plasticcardforum.com/
http://www.vasworkshop.com/
http://forum.heroesofthestormitalia.com/
http://www.evanixairgunforum.com/

Unsurprisingly all of these sites have little or no activity which is probably to be expected at this early stage and most of them are bug ridden...

http://www.horsesandsaddles.com/for...ss-member-links/130-wabash-valley-enterprises
http://www.silentboxstudios.com/contact-us
http://www.vasworkshop.com/

I'm fairly confident at the time of posting that this list is reasonably representative of sites the running on the vBCloud.

I do believe the vBCloud could have been a solid business decision had it not been for the abysmal failure that turned out to be vBulletin 5. As it is this fork now means there are two rotten versions of vBulletin to develop and support with what appears to be ever dwindling resources. I keep reading how vBulletin 5 is improving all the time but it really isn't. Anyone who has played around with the article system in the latest beta (http://vbulletin.admin-talk.com/ if you haven't) will know that it's actually not improving at all and almost certainly getting worse.

 

Joe do you even have access to sale numbers ?

 

Why are people so obsessed with vB's sales numbers? lol

 

I would say people aren't obsessed with the numbers, but are trying to make it a point to chop Joe down a notch or two.

Scott

 

I'm sure they know of concerns because probably 95% of customer concerns are shared by staff and have been brought up by staff in meetings. Also they have read posts on the forums even if they don't respond often.

I have no way of answering the question if they care or not since I don't read their minds nor have any significant interaction with them.

I know it's easy to portray people as fools but generally people don't get to their positions by being idiots- I must assume they have some sort of plan even if I don't see the logic in it all the time.

As I've told you before I don't have direct access that I can look it up at anytime but we (support) have been getting regular updates on Cloud sales figures and we got the most recent one yesterday, so yes, I'm pretty confident I know the sales figures.

The 27 sites found by @zappaDPJ is a great effort- and may well be all the sites currently indexed by search engines- but it is still but a fraction of total vBCloud sales. Remember- every vbCloud sale is a brand new forum- not everyone is ready to make their sites public the day they sign up.

 

If that is the case, they will fail.

 

No, I don't think it's too bad either. It looks like they will do better on this than selling licenses. That's more people running it on their own domain to date than I expected we'd see.

 

WHY? Why is VB/IB acting this way? Just my thoughts on this. It seems that despite having 100,000, now less than 70,000 "customers" many will not be paying for anything. In my case I am running VB4 and I can run it for life, so the financial return for VB excluding updates and advertising is zero.

Now try to look at it from VB side. How can they use this customer base to make money? They came up with an idea for a super dooper top of the line technical marvel and called it VB5. Despite it not being ready, it appears to have been rushed out to counteract the appearance of a viable competitor.

BAD mistake. As I said at the time and so did many others more experienced than myself, it was ill conceived and unfinished.
It also failed to take into consideration the fact that not all the potential customers are technical whizz kids.

The answer was obvious, but totally overlooked by the powers that be in their haste to outdo the looming competition.
Let them work the answer out for themselves I for one do not feel inclined to enlighten them.

To increase the income, they came up with what in bean counters terms was a good idea, bundle VB5 in with the others, so that if anyone wanted ANY VB software they HAD to buy VB5. thereby boosting the numbers of people who were VB5 holders. this would look good to those in power.

Again they totally missed the concept of what was needed.

Enter another idea, VBcloud. The concept is in some ways good, take the onus of running a site off their customers.
The implementation, using the current staff of developers and staff is where again VB fail.

Notice throughout this whole process the main and vital important aspect is totally forgotten . What is it? =The CUSTOMER.

Once a customer has lost trust and confidence in any organization, it is hard (some say impossible) to get it back. While I feel it is not impossible, unless they change radically then they will fail.

 

Or: inurl:vbulletin.net

https://www.google.com/search?q=site:vbulletin.net#q=inurl:vbulletin.net&safe=off

 

Oh have you? So if you have been getting reg updates, why not share them here? Looking from legal side - anyone interested should be able to get it. This data has to be kept publicly available. Thats the law.

So now - share that data with us.

 

And what "law" would that be?

 

That is so called Public Information Act (PIA) and it is in force. It forces companies which sells its own goods/services to collect and share its turnover, sales data and so on

 

Yeah.... try applying that to IB based in California. And, in the places where IB does have to show their sales numbers, they don't have to break it down by types of products sold (vB "cloud" versus licenses, etc.).

 

Ups what? Didnt know that its based in US...... Than you are right