Merging and Dominating

Have you ever merged with another forum in your niche? If so, what were the circumstances? (Did you merge your forum into the other or vice versa)

Do you ever try to swindle new competitor start-up forums and try to buy them out and merge with you? Or do you let them grow and actually compete?

 

I never knew you could merge two forum databases easily. All of our forums have been grown from nothing and any future forums we create will too.

I could understand someone buying out some other sites domain name to steal their traffic and members etc more than buying their whole site.

 

I've been offered a buy-out on a new startup forum before, but most the time the offer isn't even worth half the time you've put into it.

But, I do also try to get other forums to merge or buy them out in the niche and redirect all their content into my site. It makes growing easier and faster

 

I offered to buy out a new competitor last year and never got a response. I was really after the domain name, which is the unhyphenated version of one of my domains. Their forum has three whole posts, last I checked (a couple weeks ago).

 

I brought a "database" of one of my competitors however my phpmyadmin keeps timing out when i attempt to import it - which is annoying.