Are Things Really This Bad

Over at TAZ a guy has been trying to sell his vB5 license now since 08-10-13 the cost is down to $105 and has been for quite a while. It looks like he can't give it away .. Says it all really.

 

Yes its really that bad i sold my vBulletin 4 licenses for 100 dollars a few years back this was around the 175 dollars. vBulletin 3 licenses are going between 50 and 80 dollars but the 45 dollars transfer fee makes it expensive. The market for secondhand licenses is really bad when it comes to vBulletin don't for get that they do not earn anything on a secondhand license, in their minds they only want to sell new licenses but they can't because of the EU a Judge ruled that a license is to be transferred (short version the real things is very complicated). The US you can only transfer once after that you can't transfer anymore.

 

I am seeing a lot of discussion on sites about how much the number of sites using VB has declined.

It would be logical for us to assume that the VB management is aware of this, any idea if they are taking any actions to correct the loss of so many customers? I see little or no evidence of any such actions.

 

I'd venture to say, the IB leadership know about the issues, but the people/ person with the responsibility either don't /doesn't know how to make the right decisions and lead properly to get the right results, or they don't really care or it is a mix of both. I don't know and it is really is sad for me to see the downfall.

Scott

 

It is sad to see people who have spent a lot of money on rubbish like VB5 and are now finding it hard to even sell it and recover some of their lost money.

But I guess there are people who still support VB despite what they are doing to customers.

 

You know? I don't even think all this is done on purpose, really, as you are inferring there Al. I mean, to sell shoddy, questionable quality and then to think you can still be successful and make decent money at it could only be something a total idiot would think. Right?

Scott

 

What you say is something to consider. We can only go on the information we have so far. One avenue to consider is that they genuinely thought that by introducing what they THOUGHT would be a system that was so far in front of anything else on the market, it would put them in the box seat and show those upstarts who left to start their own system what a large organization could do.

Combined with a lawsuit to stifle the competition, it would be reasonable for an out of touch businessman to think it could work and glory would follow.

However reality caught them off guard. The lawsuit did NOT wipe out the competitor and indeed in some ways alienated them from their customers, who saw through what appeared to be a David and Goliath struggle and it was not well received.

In a fairy tale world, VB5 would be the saviour, but again reality hit and it was not what was needed, ergo it failed.

Compounding the demise of what was once a market leader are the attitude of the management in hiding and not responding to their customers needs. along with the contempt shown to customers by the VB support staff. The banning for illogical reasons and the posting of defamatory comments about their customers both on and off VB sites, is guaranteed to alienate customers and result in very rapid disillusionment.

As many many customers have repeatedly informed them that the customer comes first, it is a stupid move to denigrate customers at every turn.

 

It is only an observation, but I seem to be detecting a slightly more (Dare I use the word) respectful attitude from the VB support staff.
Less banning and derogatory remarks to customers.

I am sure that the response to them by so many customers has made them re-consider their actions at least a little. This is an improvement, however it falls far short of re-instating the banned customers and posting apologies for past wrongful acts.

I suppose we should be grateful that some of our concerns are having an impact.

 

vbulletin licenses were around 70.000 in 2011. If half of those licenses were upgraded to vb4 or bought a new license then this would have yielded around 7 million dollar over the course of 3 years, so 2,3 million per year. Compare this estimation to IB's 100 million advertising revenue. Losing on the relatively small 2 million in vb sales, while increasing on a 50 times larger stake in advertising revenue? That seems like a pretty sound business decision to me. Unethical yes. Totally idiotic? Absolutely not. Cunning would be a better description.

 

Less banning?

Of course there's less banning, there's hardy anyone left posting over there.

 

ROTFLMAO!

 

Hmm...I am not sure what you mean. Are you saying they purposely release poor quality products? How is losing on the vB sales increasing their advertising revenue? The one has no real direct influence on the other.

And there was a smart purpose behind trying to build up the vBulletin brand name for IB. A major amount of the advertising revenue is being made on antiquated and most likely dying vB3 forums. The original idea to buy vBulletin was to strengthen their future business and not to weaken it. I say this, because you don't pay $17.5 million for a brand, just to stuff it in the garbage can after a few years. And why also set such a large development team on vB4? Why invest in making a Facebook App? Why try and develop a mobile application? Why buy out Forumrunner? Why produce vB5? Why do all of that, if the goal was to simply milk the brand for what it was worth?

Nope, I'll give IB the benefit of the doubt and chalk vBulletin's problems to the wrong person leading making the wrong decisions at the wrong times, with at least a partially correct purpose in mind. They don't want to deliver miserable quality, but they can't seem not to either. The fact they never have come clean on the mistakes they've made is what is mind blowing and why they keep faltering and why they will continue to falter. They also don't understand what building customer loyalty is all about and I think they consider customers just a bunch of minions, who should just shut up and fork over their money.

Fortunately, being successful at business simply doesn't work that way.

Scott

 

It's the time factor. How is it possible for anyone to make the same mistakes repeatedly over such a long period of time? The only conclusion I can draw from this fiasco is that the person responsible is either stupid or doesn't need to care or both.

 

I have no plausible answer for that question either.

Scott

 

I think Internet Brands bought vBulletin for the right reasons but they thought that software development was like selling ads and databases like their automotive vertical. They bought it because they saw that more and more people where using it and that Internet Brands websites the majority where running it, also the information what websites run vBulletin was interesting for them. What they did was panic after the release of vBulletin 4 they have no people that can lead or vision software what's needed for the customers, the panic became even bigger when there most experienced developers left before vBulletin 4 was released. The cost for vBulletin 4 needed to be low and profits very high they thought its vBulletin so anyone will buy it and see that its good and that its the future. That went well for a time but they knew people where not convinced, so to make it better they developed on a high passe 4.0.1 to 4.0.8 but with all the new issues in the software they panic again. Now to make up for it by solving issues they released and bought stuff for vBulletin they had no idea that it would go so wrong even after all the warnings we gave as customers.

Who is at fault well every one that works on vBulletin including all the managers, the staff because they are to afraid to lose their work either by taking action that can get them fired or simply by continuing to work for the company. While i can't blame them work at the moment is not easy to come by, but even they should notice that vBulletin has not the glamour it once had. When you make your curriculum vitae would you put vBulletin on it because people now know that its not looking for quality.

The managers are also to blame including the CEO they should have addressed the problems and talk directly to the customers, but nothing at all they are sticking their head in the sand and do if nothing is wrong. A good manager all ready would have posted how to fix the issues and what to expect so that people can have some idea where the software is going. If you look at Xenforo and IPB vs vBulletin the first two knows how to get people hyped up by new features and improvements their marketing is very good, vBulletin has absolute no idea how to bring the product to the customer, even a student doing marketing 101 would be a major improvement.

 

Most of IB's money making boards are still on 3.x. It's far fetched but what if the plan was to tank their competition by putting out crappy releases of software. Competing boards would upgrade and have all sorts of problems. vB 4 wasn't what I'd call stable until 4.1. 4.2 is pretty much rock solid but looks like it belongs in 2006. vBulletin 5 is just a joke. Any popular vB 4 board upgrading to vB 5 would surely see a drop in traffic and thus a decrease in revenue.

If you're grossing 100M/yr - A 17M insurance policy to tank your competition isn't that far fetched. What they didn't plan on is a competitor like XenForo cropping up and snapping up market share with a well designed product.

 

I've always thought the same thing Dan.

Even if they suck at software, it's easy to hire people who get it. There's really no excuse.

 

I'm a little disappointed in you that this possibility has not made sense to you yet. The concept is quite simple: tank the websites that compete with you, so that you strengthen your position in search engines and attract more advertising revenue.
Tell me: why did vB not fix the CMS suicide issue that I reported to them in 2010? It was fairly simple to see the issue and to fix it. They fixed thousands of issues, but not this one.
Why did vb4 offer a new specific url structure different from vbseo, instead of just including the same? It was advertised as a replacement. Sites had to switch.
Why does vb5 again have a new url structure, and countless SEO issues?
Sure, that may all be coincidence and no ill intent may be at play. But IB benefits none the less, and its becoming really hard to imagine that alone can be that stupid. If we would make list of [****][****][****][****]ups from 2009 till now, then that would be a mega thread alone. It would also include more than a few examples of unethical and possibly fraudulent behavior.

It seems pretty clear that IB has been buying up a lot of communities in the last years. Just in a couple of years they claimed to own tenfold of the years before. Thats quite a rise. I have seen quite a few webmasters throw the towel in the ring because of the frustration that vb4, mobile apps, and forum runner caused.

IBs advertising business seems to do very well, so they are not weakening their business at all. The investments made were a drop on a hot plate.
So what do vb4, vb5, the facebook app, mobile apps, forum runner have in common? IB doesn't use most of it for its own sites and its all pretty much a dead end street for vbulletin customers.
The vb T&C give vbulletin the right to use any of the data flowing through their servers & sites, which means that they may if they so wish access very valuable member data of tens of thousands of websites. While this may or not be the case, its a valid way of making money. Especially if you are already making hundreds of millions in advertising.

An incompetent company can make many mistakes. This company has proven that it can do nothing right when it comes to software development. Yet, they do quite well on their own websites.
And they evidently are masters at cornering the market and eating up significant parts of verticals.

To me the most logical explanation seems that IB does not want vbulletin customers to be successful.

I do not think milking the brand is very relevant. It looks as if its more draining and tanking competitors and about cornering the verticals IB is in.

I really do not think its reasonable to assume that the same management can make such a massive number of accidental [****][****][****][****]ups which all happen to hurt the same sites they compete with. No one is that incompetent. As said, one can simply hire someone competent.
Do you remember when Don accidentally posted about vb SaaS and vb5 being planned? This was before Fabians list was posted. I highly doubt that list of functionality was ever meant to materialize in vb4. It seems more aimed at luring webmasters into migrating their websites to vb4.

IB and IB management does not seem incompetent at all. They are masters at cornering the market. Take the Law vertical for example. @jadmperry and @The Law can tell you all about whats happing in that one.

Here is a tidbit on that:

And there is much more to discover when you start digging.

 

Some of you guys are good at finding things out. VB is a private company as far as I am aware but can anyone find a copy of their profit and loss statements?

Or who are shareholders. I have seen that Lynne has shares, anyone else have them that we know.

 

@Alfa1 - Your arguments are logical and I can't really refute them at all. It is certainly true, if enough blunders are done without remorse or acknowledgement of error, then someone on the outside could consider them intentional.

I beg to differ on the "IBs advertising business seems to do very well". Although I can't prove it one way of the other completely, their taking on $380 million in debt to pay almost a third of that debt to their owners as dividends tells me something is awry. It tells me serious profits are missing.

All in all, whatever the case may be, most of IB's actions means vBulletin will sooner or later die. I guess we can agree on that.

Scott